Freedy went home. Not home, but to his mother’s. On the way he sniffed up the last of his crystal meth. Tweak. Zing. Snow started falling, or maybe not.
This was all temporary. What he needed to do was put together one of those nest eggs, and then… start a business, say. Since pools were what he knew, why not a pool business? Had to be in a warm climate, not California, too superficial, like everyone said. Warm climate, not California: Florida! And would it hurt to look up Cheryl Ann while he was at it?
The kitchen was a mess: muffin tins everywhere, jars of ingredients with the tops off all over the counters, milk and eggs that should have been put back in the fridge left wherever she’d happened to put them down. He dug a muffin out of a tin, took a bite, threw the rest in the trash. Didn’t even taste like food.
Freedy stood over the trash, having smelled a familiar smell. He saw the stubbed-out end of a joint in a discarded tuna can. That meant she was in her bedroom, having one of her naps. Get fucked up, take a nap-part of her life cycle.
Freedy heard the mail falling through the slot, went to get it. Electric bill, phone bill, coupons, something about hunger in Guatemala, and a letter addressed to his mother. He held it up to the light, rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, thought he felt a little crinkling. Made him curious, like Curious Whoever-he-was, some monkey she’d always been reading to him about when she wasn’t painting nightmares on his walls. He was curious and she was napping-how the goddamn hippies lost the world.
Freedy had heard about steaming open envelopes but never actually tried. How hard could it be? He plugged in the kettle, always handy for tea-there were dozens of different teas on the shelves, chamomile, lemongrass, raspberry, banana, pick-me-up teas, relax-me teas, teas for thinking, teas for feeling, teas for wiping out cancer. Steam came boiling out of the kettle. Freedy held the envelope over the spout.
Nothing to it. The flap loosened all by itself, and Freedy peeked in the envelope, saw a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it: no writing on the paper, but C-notes inside. Two of them. Suddenly it was a C-note kind of day: had to be a good omen.
Two C-notes in an envelope and nothing else. Couldn’t be her welfare or her disability or whatever the hell it was: the government didn’t send cash. Some muffin buyer? With no statement, no name? Some pot thing? But drugs weren’t dealt like that. There was an exchange, this for that, at the same time. Still, with her, maybe a pot thing. What else could it be?
Freedy heard her in the hall. Before the kitchen door opened, he had the money resealed and on the counter with the rest of the mail. Moving at the speed of crystal meth.
“Hi, Freedy,” she said, yawning and scratching under her tit. “I had the most amazing dream.”
Freedy kept his mouth shut; he never wanted to hear another one of her dreams.
“What are you up to?” she said after a little silence.
“Just making tea.”
“You are?”
“Want some?”
“Why, sure, Freedy, that’s very thoughtful of you.” She sat down. “The mango-ginkgo would be nice-that orange box.”
Freedy had never made tea before, but how hard could it be? He opened the box, took out a handful of teabags, dropped a few into each cup, poured in the boiling water.
They sat at the table, drinking tea. “My goodness, Freedy,” she said after the first sip. “You’ve got a knack.”
“Don’t mention it.”
She smiled at him. “It’s nice having you home, Freedy.”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea how long you’re-any idea what your plans are?”
“Yeah, as a matter of fact. But it’s too early to say, if you know what I mean.”
“I do, Freedy. I know that one very well.” She turned her shadow eyes on him. “We have something in common after all.”
The fuck we do. “This, uh, father thing,” Freedy said.
“I’m sorry?”
“Walrus.”
“Walrus?”
“Wasn’t that what he was called? My father, I’m talking about.”
“I beg you not to raise your voice, Freedy. You know I can’t deal with violence of any kind.”
“I’d just like a few facts about him, is all. I’m not a Portagee or something, am I?”
“Please, Freedy, no discrimination.”
“But am I?”
“No. You come from bland ethnic stock, just like me.”
Freedy missed that one. “What was his real name, for starters?”
“Real name,” she said. “I don’t even know what that means.”
“Like on the goddamn birth certificate.”
She leaned closer to him; he could smell the pot smoke trapped in all her hair. “I’ve told you before, Freedy. It was a one-time thing. Very special, of course, but one-time. He was a stranger, really, passing through. In a mental sense, more than physical. Try not to judge me too harshly. The times were different then, and the person that was me…” Her eyes focused on something distant. He heard music coming faintly from her bedroom: Cat Stevens, or some other artist of the first water, whatever that meant.
He finished her sentence for her: “No longer fucking exists.”
Later he thought of examining the envelope the money had come in, maybe checking the postmark or whatever that thing was called. By that time the kitchen was cleaned up, sort of, and the envelope gone.
Peter Abrahams
Crying Wolf
11
I’m aware that this is known as the course that teaches you how to think. Anyone here for that reason should transfer at once. No one can teach you how to think. You must teach yourself.
“Did you bring a sample of your writing?” asked Professor Uzig.
Second semester, first day back at Inverness, 8:00 A.M., Professor Uzig’s office in Goodrich Hall. Nat, petitioning to enter Philosophy 322, Superman and Man: Nietzsche and Cobain, handed Professor Uzig several essays from the first term, as well as the prize-winning “What I Owe America.”
Professor Uzig flipped quickly through the school essays, came to “What I Owe America,” paused. His eyes darted back and forth, scanning with a speed and intensity that Nat, sitting across his desk, could feel. Professor Uzig glanced up.
“Do you believe this bilge?” he said.
“Which part, specifically?” Nat said; a composed reply, perhaps, but his face had grown hot at once, a change he hoped his fresh tan concealed.
“Here, for example,” said Professor Uzig, turning a page. He seemed so much harsher than the dinner guest at Aubrey’s Cay, didn’t even look the same. He wore a charcoal gray tweed jacket, white shirt, and navy blue tie, his hair was combed, and his tan, which had been much deeper than Nat’s, had almost completely faded. “Where you write, ‘The nation is like a monument continuously under construction and the job of the citizen is to make it better.’ ”
The question: did he believe that? Professor Uzig watched him, the papers steady, absolutely still in his hand,
