He shifts his cane between his legs. He looks down, then at me. I give him a quick glance from my driving. I’m working up onto the freeway entrance at Lincoln Boulevard.
“Something I told the doctor, John. It’s strange but this world here has come into that one.
“I told Bess about us, there in my own world, and now she knows all about everything here. She believed me. Dr. Delibro says it’s because I want her to believe but I’m not so sure. Bess wants to know everything about our life here. She only wonders where Hank and Lizbet are; she’s convinced I’m seeing into the future somehow. She wants me to describe how she looks as an old lady and she can’t believe you’re bald and have a beard. I didn’t tell her I have a beard, too.”
Wow, I’m feeling transparent again! These days the physicists are saying the subatomic structure of any object, this car I’m driving, anything, can’t be fitted into a framework of space and time. Words like “substance” or “matter” have become devoid of meaning. This seat I’m sitting on is coming out of nothing, traveling through a non-medium in a multidimensional non-space. What we’ve been calling reality is up for grabs; time is a mind projection.
It’s even possible the future has as much effect on what we call event, present, as the past. Causality is losing its effectiveness. My decaying bald-topped mind is spinning; maybe I’ll create a few new solar systems without knowing it.
“What did the doctor say about this, Dad?”
“He made me go through it about three different times and asked a peck of questions. He’s taken to writing these things down; I think he believes me, John.”
He pauses again.
“But I’m beginning to feel he suspects I might be crazy. He just could be right about that, too. Your mother’d sure be glad; she’s been saying it for years; she’s better than any psychiatrist; cheaper, too.”
With this, he leans back and laughs in the most uncrazy way imaginable. I start laughing with him. I’m glad there are no cops patrolling this section of the Santa Monica Freeway. If they saw two older men with beards driving along laughing their heads off, they’d stop us for sure.
“I told the whole family there about you, Mother and Joan; about my operation, and about me seeing a psychiatrist. They all laughed and Hank wanted to know what a psychiatrist is. To be honest, Johnny, they’re pestering the devil out of me. What on earth can I say to little Hank and Lizbet; I can’t tell them their daddy just made ’em up. That’s terrible. What do you think I ought to do?”
God, what a question! If I start advising him on what to do in that world, it’ll grow more real, somehow make this one less true. I want to go home to my family, to Vron and Jacky. I’m realizing how in my own mind Paris, France, is less believable, less real than Dad’s crazy dreamworld. It seems so far away, so long ago. I can’t believe I do actually live in a houseboat on the Seine outside Paris; that I have an old water mill in central France; that I’m an artist. It sounds like one of the biggest pipe dreams anybody ever made up.
“You’d better ask the doctor, Dad. I don’t know what to say. Did you tell them they’re all a dream and you have a real life here? Did you tell them that?”
“Oh, no, Johnny, I couldn’t do that. I’m not so sure about things myself. I just told them how this part here is like a dream. I wasn’t lying, that’s the way it is. When I’m here, like now, that part’s a dream but when I’m there, this gets to be the dream and I have a hard time believing it.
“I’ll be honest with you, John, it’s better there. If I had my choice, I’d make that part the real life for us.”
At home we sit around the living room. There are some times when I’m sure Dad has left us. I’m itching to ask but I’m embarrassed. It’s like asking a woman if she’s having her period because she’s acting differently. There’s no real justification except simple curiosity and it’s an invasion.
Mom’s tough to be with. Luckily, Billy’s gone back up on the forty acres. Mother, wandering around, the Lady Macbeth of Colby Lane, bugs Billy beyond endurance. I can’t blame him. Mom’s impossible when she’s scared; she’s striking out in all directions, trying to give some substance to things. Nobody’s safe near her.
We’re sitting there in the living room and she starts off. Dad’s in his rocking chair, Mom’s on one of the dining chairs turned half around from the table and I’m sitting in an upholstered chair by the door. We’re all within a few feet of each other.
She begins talking to me about how crazy Dad is. She’s pulling out all her memorized litany of Tremont variations from the norm through four generations. She’s tolling them off like a rosary, the five infamous mysteries; I listen and fume. Dad’s between pretending it isn’t happening, and listening. He’s like a very genteel woman who’s forced by circumstances to hear barroom language.
It goes on and on; nothing’s enough. I know she’s wanting me to argue and I don’t want to. But then I can’t help myself. You only kid yourself into thinking you’ve grown out of it, that you can respond as an adult logically, sensibly, to parents. I turn to Dad.
“Dad, why do you let her talk like this? Why do you put up with it? It’s not good for either of you to have her spout all this rot. She’s the one who’s acting crazy.”
Mother keeps talking over my first sentence, but then shuts up. If I’d talked to her directly she’d have kept on, only louder. Using a carom shot, talking to Dad, has her buffaloed.
“We all know she does this because she’s scared, but backbiting at everybody doesn’t help. You’ve got to help her stop.”
I turn toward Mom.
“And, Mom, you should know better. You don’t really believe this nonsense; you’re only saying it to make yourself feel like a big shot and three-star martyr. Dad’s doing his best. We have an expert working with him. This doctor says Dad’s not crazy. In fact, he’s impressed with how Dad’s survived the past thirty or so years without going crazy.
“If you’re so convinced Dad’s crazy, tell me in private and we’ll work things out. We can put Dad in a home, or you in a home, or something. But for God’s sake don’t sit there talking in front of him as if he’s a dog who doesn’t understand!”
Dad’s turned white. He leans forward and lurches out of his platform rocker. Instinctively I stand with him. I’ve no idea what he’s going to do. Maybe take a punch at me or maybe Mom. It could be anything.
He leaves his cane and shuffles toward us. Mother’s up, too; looking even more scared than I feel. Dad spreads his thin arms and we go toward him. He pulls us close to his breast and holds us tight. His whole body is shaking. Nobody says anything. It’s as if we’re in a two-hand-touch huddle, except we’re not leaning over, our faces are straight up, pushed next to each other at different heights.
Dad kisses us both several times; it’s the first time I can remember his kissing me since the day I was sent off to first grade. He begins talking and his voice is low, cracked.
“Don’t do it, Johnny. Please don’t say those things to your mother; you’re too clever, you know too much. We’re family, that’s all that counts. Let’s love each other and forget. Loving, more than anything, means letting people do the things they have to do. Johnny, you live in Paris because that’s what you have to do. Mother here has to do some things too; so do I. It’s the way it is. Please don’t fight; it kills me hearing you talk this way.”
Then he starts crying hard and Mother breaks into sobs. I’m crying, too. Now we’re the Burghers of Calais standing in our own rain. Maybe it’s time to break the huddle, call the signals and snap the ball. These kinds of stupid thoughts are tramping through my mind. Real emotion is tough for me to handle; I’ve got about twenty lines of defense to keep from feeling.
Finally we sit again. Dad sighs and begins talking. I can’t get my mind around it; who the hell is this guy?
“There are some things maybe you don’t know, Johnny. When I met Bess she was only fifteen. She was just recovering from a bad nervous breakdown. She co
uld never even go back to school again. I was eighteen and working at Hog Island as a carpenter. I wasn’t happy; in fact, I was miserable. I didn’t like living in the city and I was missing the farm. I felt everybody could see I was only a farm boy and was laughing at me.
“It was a big change, John. You know, winter and summer, none of us kids wore shoes regularly on the farm. We walked to school with shoes tied around our necks and put them on when we went inside. I never owned a pair of shoes till we got to Philadelphia. I’d get Orin’s. Those shoes never wore out; we only put them on for school and church.
“You can’t know what a change it was coming from Wisconsin where I knew maybe twenty people all together and half of them were my brothers and sisters. There I was in Philadelphia, talking funny with a farm-boy Wisconsin hick accent; I was afraid to open my mouth. I’d be jammed in trolley cars with people who didn’t know anything about me and didn’t care. Everybody seemed to know what to do and where they were going. People would bump into me because I couldn’t even get out of the way. I didn’t know how to flush a toilet, use a telephone or dance.
“I met Mother on a rainy day in a doorway near John Wanamaker’s. She came into the doorway crying her eyes out. She was crying because she’d borrowed her older sister Maggie’s fancy hat without asking and now it was getting ruined in the rain.
“I had a big old-time umbrella my mother made me carry and I opened it over her. Gosh, I guess if Mom hadn’t made me carry that umbrella I’d never even’ve gotten to know you. Bess, think of that.
“Well, Bess was pretty, and scared. She was the scaredest person I’d ever met. It wasn’t just the hat; she was scared about the thunder and lightning, she was scared the trolley wasn’t going to come; she was scared about what time it was, and she was scared of me. Something inside me wanted to help her not be so scared.
“And, Johnny, Mother’s always been that way. Sometimes she acts strong and likes to be bossy, but inside she’s scared. It’s something you’ve got to remember.
“That day she finally let me go along with her in the trolley, and when she got out I followed her, keeping my umbrella over the hat. She led me to a big stone house and said this was where she lived, and goodbye. I stood across the street waiting to see her safe inside but two big dogs came barking at the door. She ran away and down the street in the rain; it wasn’t where she lived at all.
“That’s the kind of thing she does, Johnny, because she’s so scared. I chased her, laughing, but she was mad and I thought she might be crazy but I loved her already.”
I look at Mom. Her eyes are blank, her face a mask; she’s stunned.
“And you’re not much different, Johnny. You were the scrawniest baby I’ve ever seen in my life. For the first three months you cried without stopping. It’s a wonder that didn’t drive your poor mother absolutely crazy. Then, you grew up to be the scaredy-cattest kid in the neighborhood. I used to think sometimes you caught it from your mother.
“You were afraid of the dark. You were afraid of loud noises; you used to hold your fingers in your ears at baseball games and you’d stuff cotton in them on the Fourth of July. You were afraid to ride a bike, to roller-skate, even to swim. I don’t think you learned swimming till you were over thirteen years old.
“And you were afraid of all the other kids on the block. You’d come running home with some little kid half your size chasing you. That’s how you learned to run, running away from everybody.
“I was sure you’d never learn to take care of yourself; that you’d live with us all your life. I remember being so embarrassed because you were one of the world’s worst baseball players.
“And you grew so fast, early. For a while, when you were about ten or twelve, you were a head taller than anybody in your class. This made it worse. Little kids would take turns beating up on you so they could say they licked the big sissy down the block. Summers, you spent your time hiding in the cellar, on the porch reading or later fooling around with your birds. Sometimes I look at you now and I can’t believe it’s the same person.
“What I want to say is, you’re a lot like your mother, John. You’re fighting all the time but in your own way. Maybe that’s why you live in France instead of America. You don’t want to compete, you want to stay apart.
“But, in another way, you’re different from Bess. You get that part from me. There’s something in me that’s wild, wild like a wild animal. It was in my father, it’s in my brothers and two of my sisters; we aren’t quite human, quite civilized. There’s some animal quality and it can come out anytime. I’m surprised we’ve gotten as far as we have without having a murderer in the family.
“I don’t know what brings it on; could be all those years living in the woods, or it could be the Indian blood.
“You know, Johnny, your great-grandfather was a trapper. He never lived in a house from the time he was thirteen; he married a full-blooded Oneida Indian. Your great-grandmother, my father’s mother, was over six feet tall. She was stronger than any man, and could talk only Indian and French.
“I never heard her speak one word. That grandfather and grandmother of mine lived practically like prehistoric people. They didn’t homestead and settle till my dad was seven years old. They lived with the Indians and had no real religion; so far as I know they never got married—at least, not in a church.
“Dad used to tell stories about how they’d drift along, tending the traps, buying furs, caching, then packing them all out in canoes. They were animals, Johnny, and it’s still there. It’s in me, it’s in you, too, and we always have to fight it.”
Mother’s nodding her head now; this is something she can live with. Jack the Ripper, North American version of Tarzan the apeman.
“One reason I married Bess was she liked beautiful things. She’d always lived in cities and all her family’d lived in cities as far back as anybody could remember. She likes nice furniture, she keeps a clean house and we live like decent human beings.
“You can see I’m not like my brothers or even my father; I’m civilized. I don’t drink much and I don’t run around. My brothers are all dangerous men, except Ed. Ed was lucky like me and married a good woman. Aunt Mary trained him just fine. You could never predict my father or my brothers; never tell what they were thinking or what they were going to do. None of them ever held full-time jobs in their lives. Pete and Orin and Caleb were always drinking or running back into the woods to hunt. Winters they’d curl up and hibernate like bears.
“Now, my mom did a good job with Dad. At least she got him into church and he took care of us kids. But he didn’t dress like a normal person or do things like other people. You know, Johnny, he never paid a dime to Social Security or paid any income tax in his life? He lived on the outside of everything. He lived down there in southwest Philadelphia as if he was living on a farm or in the woods. All those buildings, cars and everything didn’t mean a thing to him.
“I didn’t want to live that way. Look, I’m a civilized man; look at these hands, they’re clean, I’ve got all my fingers. Look at this house we’ve got here, with this beautiful furniture, rugs and all. We live like real city people and that’s all your mother’s doing. Don’t forget that.”
What can I say? I know he’s serious; he wants me to understand. I’m wishing Delibro could hear this. Mother’s sitting there, still crying. She’s sniffing and peering at me, eye-talk, “See what I mean, Jacky, see what I mean?” And Dad’s making such sense. I feel awful, like a child. He’s been seeing through it all these years and saying nothing, letting it happen because he respected us.
“John, I know sometimes you must worry about Billy and little Jacky.
“It’s hard for fathers to wait, but you have to give boys time, they’re slow. Sons are what worry a man because most men are scared, so they’re scared for their sons.
“Johnny, I’m not worrying about you anymore and I don’t want you worrying about me or Mother. Let’s enjoy our own lives. We’re all fine.
“I’ll keep going to that psychiatrist doctor till I get myself straightened out. Johnny, you go home to Veronica and Jacky. Mother and I will be OK; we all just have to stop worrying so much.”
After this long speech, he leans back, rocking, smiling from one to the other of us, smiling as if all the rules of the family haven’t been broken into a thousand pieces. The odd thing is Dad doesn’t act as if all this talking is out of the ordinary. Here he’s talked more in fifteen minutes, said more, than he has in the past fifteen years; and he’s just rocking and smiling.
I begin to sympathize with Mother. It’s not so much physical violence she’s afraid of, it’s mental. He’s capable of saying anything, rolling through all the sacrosanct temples of thought and emotion built during more than fifty years of mutual hypocrisy. He’s scuttled all the rules of their relationship.
Dad pushes out of his chair again and this time takes his cane. He moves off down the hall smiling back at us over his shoulder. He glances at the clock over the TV.
“Well, I’m going to put on my baseball-watching costume. It’s almost time for the Dodger game.”
He shuffles off down the hall to the back bedroom. Mom looks at me.
“Jacky, that’s not normal the way he’s talking. He never talked like that in his life. Something’s happened; he’s a different person.”
She’s stopped crying. This is my mother actually out there in front of me. She’s scared enough so she’s not putting it on or trying to pull anything over. It’s the first time I have the feeling we can truly talk.
“Mom, I think this is the true John Tremont. He’s been hiding for over fifty years. I think that’s the way he really is inside; he’s a smart man who didn’t even know it himself. How was he ever going to find out he was smart? Everybody’s been profiting by making him think he wasn’t. I’ll bet Douglas and G.E. has made ten million dollars off his ideas. They wanted to keep him down, get the most out of him for virtually nothing. Everybody’s been leaning on him all his life, including us.