Mother goes on and on. She’s apparently kept a careful list of all the Tremonts back three generations. She even brings in my grandfather’s first cousin, who, as a young man, climbing through a fence in Wisconsin with a shotgun, blew off his lower jaw so he could never eat properly. He lived his life out as a hermit in the woods.
She doesn’t miss one variant. Everyone in my father’s family who has been in any way abnormal is on her list.
I don’t argue with her, but my father’s family is, at least, normal. There is no suicide, no divorce, no crime. They generally work hard all their lives. There’s no real alcoholism. Uncle Pete might qualify but he worked till he was seventy, so he’s not exactly an alcoholic; he just drank a lot. All my first cousins on my father’s side, and there are almost thirty of them, work for a living. The state has made money in Social Security off this family.
Now Mom starts her story about Dad. How he was always peculiar; how when she was about to marry him, Aunt Trudy, Dad’s oldest sister, warned her.
I can imagine the warning. The Tremonts are a great bunch of kidders, and Mother has never understood teasing or kidding. Vron’s the same way. It isn’t worthwhile because they don’t play along; they get mad. Also, sometimes Mother will pick out something said in fun, treat it as serious, then use it to her advantage. I suspect Aunt Trudy calling her brother Jack “peculiar” is in this category.
And—oh, God!—Mom’s convinced Dad isn’t quite white. My granddad, Dad’s Dad, was half American Indian: Oneida, one of the Iroquois nations. But to my mother he wasn’t Indian, he was nigger. My father does have a darker-than-Irish skin and beautiful full lips, shovel-shaped teeth. He also has a prominent eye-socket ridge, and high cheekbones. As he’s gotten older, he looks more and more like the Indian on an old nickel.
Also, Mother has a friend named Fanny Hogan. This might be one of the most vulgar women in the world. They’ve been friends since they were twelve. Fanny has a loud, deep, fruity voice. She divorced her husband after driving him into a loony bin, then kicked her only daughter out of the house at sixteen. She’s lived alone since. As a child I hated and feared this woman.
For years, Fanny ran Mother’s life, told her what clothes to wear, picked her boyfriends. Mother likes having somebody tell her what to do, so she can complain. That’s probably not too original a pattern. When Mom met Dad, Fanny Hogan was jealous.
Fanny told Mom Dad was most likely a good part nigger and she’d have little black pickaninny kids. Somebody’d snuck into the woodshed was the way she put it. She insisted Mother could make sure by looking down Dad’s backbone; it would be a deep yellow or brown at the bottom. Mother’s dragging Dad to the shore when they’re dating so she can get a look, but they wear one-piece suits, all one piece top and bottom.
The night they’re married, and finally in bed, Mom keeps turning on the light, looking down Dad’s back to see if she’s married a nigger.
Mother’s always nourished the idea she’s married a man with a genetic deficiency. And now, finally, it’s beginning to show.
I don’t want to get angry. I know Mother is only trying to protect herself. She has such a terrible insecurity about her own value, about her own continuity, about everything she is, she strikes out in every direction; and the more frightened she is, the worse she gets.
I wish I’d understood this better when I was a child. So long as everything goes well, Mother is generous and kind. But if she feels threatened, she turns into a holy terror. If she feels jealous, or unloved, or ignored, it’s impossible.
I sit for an hour and listen. I hold back; this is something Mom needs to do. She’s preparing to have Dad die. If she can make him seem unimportant, she’ll be able to bear it. At least that’s my rationale as to what her rationale is. Who knows what’s really going on?
Joan comes back from the hospital. Mom’s finally asleep and I go out to the living room. Joan’s crying.
“It’s awful, Jack. What can be the matter with him?”
I tell her what the doctor told me.
“No, Johnny, it’s more than that. There’s something seriously wrong. He’s scared to death; I’ve never seen anybody so scared.”
Joan calls me Johnny on stress occasions; the last time was when she miscarried at five months visiting us in France. I was Johnny when we were kids.
Joan gradually calms down. I go over everything I can think of to reassure her. She needs comforting so badly, she’s willing to believe almost anything.
Finally, we decide it’s best if she go home. I’ll take care of Mom. In the morning I’ll visit Dad and let her know right away how he is.
Later, I call Marty and give her some idea of what’s happening to Dad. She starts crying, so Gary comes to the phone. I tell them to stay out of all this. Their job is having the baby. This is my job now.
“Mom and I aren’t going to be having any more babies and the best favor you two can do us is having yours.”
They try to argue but I insist. I tell them I’ll yell for help if I need it. I promise on a stack of Bibles. This whole business is between Joan and me.
9
In the morning, we have ham and eggs at the Pizza Hut. While Dad’s paying, I roll the car down to a gas station. They have eight-tracks for sale on a revolving rack. I make the big move and buy a Dylan tape.
I check the water, oil and battery. There’s enough motor to power a locomotive there. The battery’s big as a box of apples; the dipstick’s so long I could break my neck holding one end looking for oil on the other. Then, the damned machine drinks twenty-two gallons of gas.
We’ve beaten most of the trucks out and start winding through beautiful country. I pull my tape out, fool with the dials and slip it in. I balance the speakers and we’re wrapped in sound. I look over to see how Dad’s taking it, but he’s hunched hard-eyed over the wheel, as usual.
I lower the reclining seat, and watch the scenery float past. The sky gets bluer as we get higher and the air is sharp clear. The trees are more pine, less deciduous. The sound system is so great it’s almost like earphones. I’m drifting along.
We go through the tape a couple times. The breaks aren’t bad. Trouble with eight-track is each part’s exactly twenty minutes; breaks can come anywhere.
We’re into the second song again when Dad asks if we could turn it off for a while. OK. I don’t want to make a scene, but I can’t keep my mouth shut.
“What’s wrong with Bob Dylan, Dad?”
He looks up quickly and smiles, one of his Yoga-meditation guru smiles.
“Nothing much, Bill; only two hours solid is pushing it.”
“Gee, Dad, these songs are important. He’s singing about things we should all put our minds to.”
“Please, just for a while, Bill. We can listen some more later.”
We cruise along quietly; packed silence.
“He’s better than those Mafia-type moaners, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, those guys you and Mom like so much.”
He doesn’t say anything.
“Christ, all they do is take some dumb simple idea like ‘I love you’ or ‘kiss me’ and grind away at it.”
I’m not sure he’s heard me. He can block off completely when he wants to.
“Well, Bill; let’s see if I can explain my feelings.
“First, it’s been so easy for so damned long. My generation started marrying, settling down at the beginning of a thirty-year boom. Most of our friends are semiretired, with a house on a hill, a pool and a Cadillac.
“Hell, anybody white and half bright who even tried could make it. And you kids grew up in the middle of this. Nobody can get excited struggling for something they’ve always had. We’re accustomed to twenty-minute showers, thick, six-foot-long towels, clean underwear every morning, wheels, freezers full of food, stereos, the whole thing. And, on top, there’s the business of ‘having’ to go to school.”
Boy, he’s getting close. Billy boy, you’ll never learn!
r /> “Now, today’s kids want to hear about hard times, hard people. Guys like Bob Dylan tell them. You know, Dylan’s name is Zimmerman, comes from Hibbing, a town outside Duluth, Minnesota. He’s singing Tennessee because Tennessee is supposed to be manly, poverty, earthy talk. Actually, he’s imitating Woody Guthrie imitating an Appalachian dirt farmer. And he’s not out in a corn patch singing those songs, either. He’s in a recording studio, surrounded by technicians. There are different specialists with blenders, dampers, amplifiers; mixing, putting together all the honky sound. It’s totally computerized; not even Dylan ever hears himself sing the way it sounds.”
Now he’s the technical genius. Hell, he can’t play “Jingle Bells” on a harmonica without making mistakes. I dread Christmas. Every year he whips out his harmonica and massacres all the Christmas carols. How far is it to Philadelphia?
“But that’s OK, Bill. It’s just I don’t want to hear about hard times; it doesn’t interest me. Dylan’s only another entertainer like Crosby, Sinatra or Como. It’s what he’s paid for; singing things people want to hear. Dylan’s worked up a voice that’s just right, black enough but not too black, red-neck but not hick, an acceptable squeak of poverty. Here’s a nice bourgeois Jewish boy who’s been turned into an event.”
He’s quiet. I’m praying he’s finished. I’ll hide the tape in my knapsack, forget about it.
“One more thing, Bill. There’s the voice. I’m not talking about the Tennessee accent but the voice itself. It violates me. There’s something tight-jawed. I don’t feel this is a rational person with whom I can talk, work it out. There’s hate in that voice, just generalized hate.”
Oh, boy! I can see there isn’t going to be much Dylan played on this trip. I only wish I could get my eight dollars back.
We’re behind a whole line of trucks on the way up Loveland. The old man isn’t about to pass, either, so we lug along at thirty, thirty-five. The car’s heating up. At this altitude, in midsummer, any water-cooled engine is in trouble.
At last, the road widens and we come to Vail. It’s the American idea of a picture-postcard town, like the place in Austria we skied when we were kids. Only it’s blown up five times normal size. It reminds me of Santa Cruz: Twentieth Century National Forest style, everything wood and glass.
We stop for gas, then go into a restaurant. We have flapjacks with eggs and real maple syrup. I lay it on, all over the platter and let it soak in; lots of butter, too. We don’t have maple syrup in France.
When we’re back on the road, I push in the tape again. What the hell, I’ve got eight bucks invested. I can’t just throw the damned thing away. I balance the speakers, low, and I’m inside that harmonica. Outside it’s beautiful: clear sun and deep drops on both sides with pine trees all around. I watch huge cumulus clouds booming ahead and let that music come into me.
I don’t know where Dad’s mind is. We’re in the same car but it seems as if he’s a thousand miles away. There’s no sense keeping up a conversation; it doesn’t go anywhere. He’s probably still sweating all that crap in California.
I don’t know why it is but I don’t seem able to save money. I get a chunk together and it disappears. Sometimes I think I have holes in my pockets; I have it, then when I reach for it, it’s gone; like I dreamed it.
I’m working in that boatbuilding place, sleeping in a sort of flophouse, trying to get a bundle together when I get a letter from Mom saying Dad’s in California and Grandmom’s had a heart attack. I hitch down there, figuring maybe I can help.
By that time Grandmom’s out of the hospital but Granddad’s totally bonkers. He’s gone, flipped. He doesn’t know who I am, doesn’t know who my father is. And Dad looks awful; he must’ve lost fifteen pounds since I last saw him. He’s pale, balder, grayer; worried-looking. I move into the garden room; Dad’s sleeping in the side room.
I stick it for more than a week, then Tom comes down from Santa Cruz. He’s cut out, too, and has a car. My folks own a forty-acre hill in Topanga Canyon, so Tom and I move up there. Tom has a terrific battery-driven stereo and a tent.
We haul water in the car and shop at the Topanga market. I borrow Dad’s little Honda 175 and we ride it over those fire trails, ducking the fire department. I take a few spills and knock in one side of the gas tank, bend the brake pedal and break off the clutch handle, but I pound out the tank, spray it with some paint, bend the brake pedal back into place and replace the handle. When I’m finished, you’d hardly notice.
While Dad’s with Granddad in the hospital, I come down and sit with Grandmom. That woman’s absolutely insane. All day long, it’s “Why don’t you shave off your beard; what’re you hiding from?” or, “Why do you wear that long hair?” or, “If you must have long hair like a girl, at least wash it.”
God, it’s a constant hassle. One day she comes at me with a pair of scissors. “Here, Billy, I’ll just cut off this one part sticking out over your ear.” I duck away. “Come on, don’t be silly; let me trim your neck anyway.”
Then sometimes she comes into the back bedroom while I’m sleeping, after she’s supposed to be in bed. She comes sliding in, snooping into everything.
One day she goes through all my underwear; throws them into the bathtub and washes them. She’s supposed to have a heart attack and she’s washing my underwear. She tells me no girls like boys with dirty underwear. What a mind!
Then she asks if I know how to wipe myself properly. I almost expect a demonstration. She tells me to use several sheets of paper folded over and wipe from the outside, not between the legs, and to wipe at least three times. I can’t believe it; she has no idea of privacy. I don’t know how Dad takes it; imagine having her for a mother.
Finally I blow up. Dad’s out painting and she’s been bugging me all afternoon, wanting to know if I go to church, if I’m still a virgin, do I have a steady girl. I tell her she’s driving me crazy, she’s driving Dad crazy and she probably drove Granddad crazy. She has a crying fit, goes into her bedroom and slams the door.
When Dad comes home, I tell him what happened.
“What the hell, Billy, you know she’s sick.”
He doesn’t sound mad, only discouraged. I feel like a shit, but I’ve about had it. Tom’s gone back to Santa Cruz; he left me his tent. If it gets too bad, I can always move back on the hill again. Tom’s going to be a psychologist.
Hell, there’re already too many psychologists; too many everythings. Too many engineers, too many chemists, too many doctors, too many dentists, too many sociologists. There aren’t enough people who can actually do anything, really know how to make this world work.
When you think about it; when you look at the way it really is; God, we’ve got—well, let’s say, there’s 100 percent. Half of these are under eighteen or over sixty-five; that is, not working. This leaves the middle fifty percent. Half of these are women; most are so busy having babies or taking care of kids, they’re totally occupied. Some of them work, too, so let’s say we’re down to 30 percent. Ten percent are doctors or lawyers or sociologists or psychologists or dentists or businessmen or artists or writers, or schoolteachers, or priests, ministers, rabbis; none of these are actually producing anything, they’re only servicing people. So now we’re down to 20 percent. At least 2 or 3 percent are living on trusts or clipping coupons or are just rich. That leaves 17 percent. Seven percent of these are unemployed, mostly on purpose! So in the end we’ve got 10 percent producing all the food, constructing the houses, building and repairing all the roads, developing electricity, working in the mines, building cars, collecting garbage; all the dirty work, all the real work.
Everybody’s just looking for some gimmick so they don’t have to actually do anything. And the worst part is, the ones who do the work get paid the least.
I know I’m not the first one to figure this out, but I think even Marx was only looking for a way out of work; Lenin, too—two more middle-class slobs.
So Tom’s going back and be a psychologist. He can join th
e vast army of psychologists catering to all the people feeling guilty because they aren’t doing their part. Not only that, none of them can even take care of themselves anymore.
I wonder where the hell I fit in with all this.
10
The next day I phone Dr. Ethridge. He’s been Dad’s doctor at Perpetual the past fifteen years. After being put off several times by switchboard operators and nurses, I get through.
I explain what’s happened. Ethridge goes into his act.
“Ahh, Mr. Tremont, this kind of thing happens all the time. Dr. Santana knows exactly what he’s doing; he’s a fine young surgeon. I’ll go see your father this morning; he’s been a patient of mine a long time. You know, we both come from Wisconsin.
“We might just have to accept it, Mr. Tremont, this could be the onset of senility.”
He’s giving me the same bullshit as Santana.
“So fast, Dr. Ethridge, instant senility? I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“Well, Mr. Tremont, you know he was getting forgetful.”
I keep at him.
“But, Dr. Ethridge, he went in for the operation perfectly aware and now…well, wait till you see him.”
I pause, he doesn’t say anything.
“Dr. Ethridge, would it be all right if I come with you when you see him this morning?”
There’s a pause again. He could be reading or writing something at the same time he’s phoning.
“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary. I’ll see him on the morning rounds and phone you after lunch.”
He hangs up.
I tell Mother I’ve talked to Dr. Ethridge and he feels everything is going to be all right, we aren’t to worry. Of course, she wants to go see Dad.
“No, Mom, the doctor says we’re not to visit; he needs rest and sedation. Dad’s nervous and anxious about the operation; an older man like him doesn’t adapt easily.”
“Jacky, if we can only get him home, he’ll be all right.”
She’s convinced if we can get him out of the hospital, he’ll be perfectly fine. She can take care of him and that’s what he’s used to, “instead of niggers pawing him over.”