Timescape

“Don’t need Reds to teach you anything you can’t learn in Laos,” Cliff said.

“What did he say about Cuba?” Penny persisted.

“The missile crisis? Nothing.”

“Hum.” Penny said triumphantly. “What’s he written, this guy, anyway?”

“There was a little stack of his publications. One-Dimensional Man one of them was, and—”

“Marcuse. That was Marcuse,” Penny said flatly.

“Who’s he?” Cliff murmured, pouring himself some Brookside into another glass.

“Not a bad thinker,” Penny admitted with a shrug. “I read that book. He—”

“Learn more about Reds in Laos,” Cliff said, hefting the gallon jug so he could pour by resting it on his shoulder. “Filling ’em up here?” he invited, looking at their glasses.

“I’ll pass,” Gordon said, holding his palm over his glass mouth, as though Cliff would pour into it anyway. “You’ve been in Laos?”

“Sure.” Cliff drank with relish. “I know this stuff isn’t up to that of yours—” gesture with glass, a ruby red sloshing—“but it’s one damn sight better’n stuff over there, I’ll tell you.”

“What were you doing?”

He looked at Gordon blankly. “Special Forces.”

Gordon nodded silently, a bit uneasily. He had gone through graduate, school with a student deferment. “What’s it like over there?” he asked lamely.

“Shitty.”

“What did the military people think about the Cuban missile settlement?” Penny asked seriously.

“Ol’ Jack earned his money that week.” Cliff took a long pull of the wine.

“Cliff is back for good,” Penny told Gordon.

“Right,” Cliff said. “R ‘n R forever. Flew me into El Toro. I knew ol’ Penny was around here somewhere so I called up her old man and he gave me her address. Caught a bus down.” He waved a hand airily, a shift of mood. “I mean, it’s okay, man, I’m just an ol’ friend. Nothing big. Right, Penny?”

She nodded. “Cliff took me to the senior prom.”

“Yeah, and did she look great. Ridin’ shotgun in a pink evenin’ gown in my T-bird.” Abruptly he began to sing “When I Waltz Again with You” in a high, wavering voice. “Boy, what crap. Teresa Brewer.”

Gordon said sourly, “I hated that stuff. All that high school hotshot business.”

Cliff said levelly, “I’ll bet you did. You from back east?”

“Yes.”

“Marlon Brando, On the Waterfront, all that? Boy, it’s a mess back there.”

“It’s not that bad,” Gordon murmured. Somehow Cliff had hit upon a precise similarity. Gordon had kept pigeons on the roof for a time, just like Brando, and had gone up there to talk to them on Saturday nights when he didn’t have a date, which was pretty often. After a while he had convinced himself that dating on Saturday night didn’t have to be the center of a teenage life and then sometime after that he had got rid of the pigeons. They were filthy anyway.

Gordon excused himself to get some more wine. When he came back with a glass for Penny the two of them were remembering old times. Ivy League styles; hot-wiring cars; the Ted Mack Variety Hour; the irritating retort “That’s for me to know and you to find out”; Sealtest ice cream; Ozzie and Harriet; Father Knows Best; duckass haircuts; the senior class repainting the water tower overnight; girls who popped bubble gum in class and left, pregnant, in their junior year; My Little Margie; the dipshit president of the senior class; strapless evening gowns that had to be wired to stay up; penny loafers; circle pins; Eloise, who ruined her crinolines falling in the pool at the all-night party; getting served in bars where they didn’t give a damn about your age; girls in straight skirts so tight they had to get on a bus stepping up sideways; the fire in the chem lab; beltless pants; and a parade of other things that Gordon had disliked at the time as he burrowed into his books and planned for Columbia, and saw no reason why he should be nostalgic about now. Penny and Cliff remembered it as dumb and pointless, too, but with a differently soft and fond contempt Gordon could not summon up.

“Sounds like some kind of country club.” He kept his voice light but he meant it. Cliff caught the disapproval.

“We were just havin’ fun, man. Before, you know, the roof caved in.”

“Things look okay to me.”

“Yeah, well they’re not. Get over there, in mud up to your ass, and you’ll find out. The Chinks are nibblin’ away at us. Cuba gets all the newspaper space, but where it’s really happenin’ is over there.” He finished his wine, poured another.

“I see,” Gordon said stonily.

“Cliff,” Penny said brightly, “tell him about the dead rabbit in Mrs. Hoskins’ class. Gordon, Cliff took—”

“Look, man,” Cliff said slowly, peering at Gordon as though he were nearsighted and waving a finger erratically in the air, “you just don’t—”

The telephone rang.

Gordon got up gratefully and answered it. Cliff began mumbling something in a low voice to Penny as Gordon left the room but he couldn’t make it out.

He put the receiver to his ear and heard among the hiss of static his mother’s voice say, “Gordon? That’s you?”

“Uh, yes.” He glanced toward the living room and lowered his voice. “Where are you?”

“At home, 2nd Avenue. Where should I be?”

“Well… I just wondered…”

“If I was back in California again, to see you?” his mother said with irritating perception.

“No, no,” he paused a fraction of a second, about to call her Mom and suddenly not wanting to, with Special Forces Cliff within earshot, “I didn’t think that at all, you’ve got it all wrong.”

“She’s there with you?” Her voice warbled high and faint, as though the connection were getting weak.

“Sure. Sure she’s here. What do you expect?”

“Who knows what to expect these days, my son.”

Whenever she called him “son” he knew there was a lecture on the way.

“You shouldn’t have left like that. With no word.”

“I know, I know.” Her voice weakened again. “My cousin Hazel said I was wrong to do that.”

“We had things to do, places we’d planned to take you,” he lied.

“I was so…” She couldn’t find the word.

“We could have talked about… things. You know.”

“We will. I’m not feeling so good right now but I hope I can come out there again soon.”

“Not so good? What do you mean, Mom, not so good?”

“A little pleurisy, it’s nothing. I threw away money on a doctor and some tests. Everything is fine now.”

“Oh, good. You take care of yourself, now.”

“It’s nothing worse than that strep throat you had, remember? I know these things, Gordon. Your sister was over for dinner yesterday and we remembered how—” and she was off in her usual tone of voice, recounting the events of the weeks, tracing an implied return to the fold of the wandering sister, of making cabbage soup and kugel and flanken and tongue with the famous Hungarian raisin sauce, all for one dinner. And after, the “thee- yater,” the two of them taking in Osborne’s Luther (“Such a fuss about things!”). She had never budged his father downtown to lay out his good hard money for such things, but now the process of reclaiming her children justified such small luxuries. He smiled fondly, listening to the easy flow of words from another, earlier life three thousand miles away, and wondering if Philip Roth had heard of Laos yet.

He had a picture in his head of her at the other end of the long copper cord, her hand at first clenched white around the telephone receiver. As her voice softened he could sense the hand relax, the knuckles not so pale now. He was feeling good as the call ended. He hung the heavy black receiver back into its wall mount and only then recognized the choking gasp of repressed crying coming from the living room.

Penny was sitting on the couch beside Cliff, holding him as he sobbed into his cupped hands. “I didn’t… We