and everybody in it is haunted. Mother is terribly ill. And if she goes, if she slides all the way out, she'll try to take you with her. I know her, David. I'm the only one who knows her.'
Meredith and I were married between my junior and senior years at Leighton Gage. A week before the event, I got a letter from Ken Wild.
I'm writing because I want somebody to tell me whether I am alive or dead. I have been asked that question recently and I couldn't think of an answer. So if you get this letter, write back as soon as you can. This way I'll know I'm alive. Are you really going to marry Miss Dairy Products USA?
I'm in the Michigan woods photosynthesizing. My big problem this summer, aside from life and death, is that I don't have any classes to stay away from. A man should never be left without a class to cut. I flew up here in my father's company's plane, which was full of territorial managers on their way to hunting lodge for business meeting and ribald chortling. Two thousand pounds of condemned pork. Just before we were due to land, an engine, flamed out. First thing I did was put out my cigarette. I believe this is called coolness under fire. But a second later I found myself on the edge of panic. Nobody else seemed even slightly upset. Were they really a planeload of Zen masters? Then we were landing, no trouble at all, and I was filled with disappointment. Because it had not been enough. I wanted to land in flames with crash-wagons screaming down the runway. Perhaps you understand this sort of pathos.
Dostoyevsky sat next to me barbering his humorous fingernails
I fish, I hunt, I write my wounded lines. My father wants me to join the firm after graduation. For the moment all I have to do is assure him I'll think about it seriously. Everybody craves assurance. It's the coin they insert in reality. It doesn't matter whether anything comes out of the machine as long as they get their money back. What a pity it is that you're reading this with such lack of compassion. Saying poor dumb Wild he's like everybody else, pissing all over his own toes. I am writing a mock-epic poem-you won't believe this-I am writing a mock-epic poem about a boy who grows up among wolves somewhere in Siberia. Several distinguished publishers have indicated a wary interest.
Write to me with news of the archduke. Jesus I hate this kind of letter. If only I were less sane. I could write poems the size of cathedrals!
I had taken Wild's letter, along with paper and pen and three cans of beer, to my favorite spot in Old Holly. This was the slope behind the firehouse, a green and treeless place, always private, facing west so that the grass turned slowly golden green as the sun circled toward the far hills. The slope dropped a hundred feet or so to a sort of lesser valley, a barren area of boulders, stunted trees and the scratched earth of a dried-out creekbed. Across the valley was a small hill, and on top of it, at the eastern limit of a large estate, was a pasture; and from the slope you could see the horses moving slowly, heads down, the lovely mild curves of their necks, grazing, moving against the more distant hills; or standing, where the hills dropped away as if to graze also on some low meadow, standing against the sky and the rich citrus setting of the sun.
Wild, of course, had yet to meet Meredith. Miss Dairy Products USA was a name of my own making and Wild was merely repeating my own bad joke. I had known, as junior year drew to a close, that I would ask her to marry me. I also knew, pending her acceptance, that we would return together to Leighton Gage for my final year. My classmates in their evolving worldliness would consider Merry too pure, too naive, too inexperienced to be let loose outside of Disneyland. So I tried to prepare them-a joke here, an anecdote there, an occasional nervous quip. And as I said these things I would often think of her, in a London park or square, on a bench beneath some granite admiral, and she'd be so pretty, nodding as the pigeons nodded, pouting at the pouting children in their prams, so pretty and white, those thrifty breasts, salvation of Western man, furling a yellow umbrella. Some good-bad nights I spent, loving my self-hatred. I was trying to prepare them, that's all; take the glint off their eager scalpels. I punished myself by going for long underwater swims in the artificial lake, coming up gasping, the sky regarding me through misty spectacles, quite curiously. And still I tried to prepare them. These are the things men do when they have orchestrated their lives to the rumble of public opinion. Merry arrived with me on campus the following autumn. They all said she was a nice girl and seven of us took a mass touchless shower.
Writing to Wild on the slope I did not mention her. I made no reference to the flaming engine and his soul's need for crisis. I said nothing of his mock-epic poem, which was obviously just another scenic dream. In fact I wrote just one line:
Even from this long way off, in the magnet-grip of an impending century, it is painful to write about her. It has taken me this long just to organize my thoughts. And although I think I have come to terms with everything, it will be interesting to see whether I can put it on paper clearly and openly. Or whether I must blow some smoke into this or that passage-some smoke to hide the fire.
One summer she bought two dolls, one for Jane and one for Mary. Jane put both dolls on her dresser. But my mother objected and so Mary's doll was put into Mary's abandoned room. Jane was always trying to discuss these things with me. In her confusion she was comforted by the sound of voices. It was an article of her faith that tragedy could be averted, or at least detained in the sweep of its tidal and incomprehensible darkness, by two reasoning people sitting in a familiar room and discussing the matter. I didn't want to talk about it. I feared silence less than the involvement of words. Distance, silence, darkness. In the vastness of these things I hoped to evade all need to understand and to cancel all possibility of explaining. Jane came into my room with a pot of tea and closed the door behind her.
'What are we going to do?' she said.
'About what?'
'You know what.'
'There's nothing to do,' I said. 'We should see about a doctor. Some shrink on Park Avenue. But that's up to daddy, isn't it? I'd like to finish this book and get it back to the library before they close.'
'What are we going to do about the dolls?'
'Leave them where they are and forget it.'
'What do you think it means, David?'
'How the hell do I know? Now let me finish this book in peace.'
'You can finish the book tomorrow.'
'It'll be overdue.'
'It must have something to do with our childhoods,' Jane said. 'She must be trying to make up for something.'
'Sure. Childhood. Absolutely.'
'I'm trying to remember whether I had any dolls like this when I was little. Maybe we wanted this particular kind of doll and she didn't buy them because they were very expensive. They look expensive. I wish Mary was here.'
'Look, she bought a couple of dolls. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. All I can say is I'm hurt that she didn't get anything for me. I wanted a fire engine. No fire gingin for Dabid. Dabid want big wed fire gingin. Dabid want to play with Jane and Mary. But mommy no buy him pwetty toys. Jane go way now so Dabid can wead his wittle book. Go way, Jane. Bye-bye. Jane go way. See Jane go. Jane is mad. See how mad Jane is. Jane slam Dabid's door. What a bad wittle girl. Jane all gone. Bye-bye, Jane.'
The following April, at school, I was summoned to the telephone. It was my father. I remember what I was wearing. I was wearing white Top-Siders, white sweatsocks, a pair of olive chinos, and an old basketball jersey, white with blue trim and lettering, bearing the number nine. While we spoke I studied these articles of clothing intensely, as if keeping a mescaline vigil, my eyes seeking those immense explosions of beauty which are known to occur in the swirl of a grain of cloth.
