Bomb Cyclone and its Effects on Harvard - 17
A Novella
5
A strange day – being an unwelcome guest in some else apartment. This was my position at the moment. It is one thing to visit someplace and have a party, which had been easy to do - but that was almost a week ago, and I had still not moved out of Sai's place. Becoming a permanent unwelcome guest was neither what I desired, nor what Sai would wish for. But there we were sitting at the breakfast niche, where I was eating cereal and he was looking at me sipping espresso. It seemed to me he was chiseling the foam. If it were Trumpodynamics – eventually Everything would be filled with the worst possible item imaginable, whether people, places, or ideas.
“I hate to bring this up, but do not you think that it is time for you to find another place to go?”
My 1st reaction was to apologize and explain, but we both knew that neither the apology nor the explanation would ameliorate the lack of planning that I had put into this. Part of it was that it was quite convenient to find the individuals who would finally enunciate their roles in my drama. But the other part was that it was more than just convenient to be in place which was much different from my immediate ex-home. Thus there was no nagging resolve to go anywhere in particular. Indeed, there was no place else to go. Thus his question roiled my gut and singled to me that it was time to move on. But where was a different question entirely?
“May I stay for a week?”
“And what are you going to do in this week?”
“Meet my real father.”
“You will have to explain this to me.”
“I was living with my mother and someone who claimed to be my real father but was not. I have since learned wear to locate him. Then I will go someplace. I am searching for voices.” That last point was an attempt to be mysterious. Tu connais la musique.
He stared at me and then looked out onto the Charles River with people walking their dogs, clouded but not rainy – and littered with seagulls who were plying the wind upwards. Or as someone said: the dogs and all of the birds.
“I hope you find the problems you are seeking, they are obvious to anyone looking at you - but it is clear that you do not see them yourself.” He remained turned away, and I think was speaking both to himself and me. What problems he saw in me I do not know.
Along the Back Bay, on Beacon Street, the old buildings crowded like they had always been here - of course, that was an illusion, but a competently rehearsed illusion. They were cheek to jowl in their clustering. Mainly red but with the occasional white as if to emphasize their difference from each other, and yet the same in their splendid unity. Some were houses, and some were the location of, not centers of commerce, but quaint establishments of some sort of learning, or pseudo-learning. Grand names of college or center, that amounted to little in the grand scheme of things. Taking a piece of paper, I checked the number and headed in. It was, supposedly, a college - though one of the more obscure ones that the city of Boston conveyed.
But then, the occupant was obscure as well - he did not have a Wikipedia page, and he would be unknown to me, and his 1st work was indeed execrable. He was also my father, which said a great deal about me as well. I was an obscure child of 2 obscure writers, who had left an obscure text, which had just barely made any sort of mark. It was depressing, and I nearly walked away from all of this. But then something made me charge in if only to know the zones of my mettle - if it could be called that.
So merrily skipping up the low stone steps to meet my doom and a half. At the top of the low-slung set of stairs, there was a framed door encapsulated with glass - and barred with iron vertical peaks that ran from nearly the top to nearly the bottom. Placing my full weight against the pinnacles, I was just barely able to open it and go in. The floor was smooth oak, with thick varnishing to engross the regular inches of slats that ran down the narrow corridor. On the left the door was open, and one could see through its glass that it was designed to take in whoever needed help. There were signs of a down-to-glass, which made some attempt to direct people to the more common areas.
None of which applied to me. But after a few minutes of discussion with the person who was signed to correlate questioners with some form of answer, I was on my way to an office that contained the individual that I sought.
3 flights of stairs, each one slightly lower than before, a nadir which wall it was higher was progressively in the depths, I turned down the hallway. This was incredibly antique linoleum, gone were any pretenses of style. The walls were covered with various papers behind plastic. Only half of the rounded lamps were lit, and they had been replaced by fluorescent bulbs. All in all, it felt like one had come to visit some lower reaches of hell, or at least of purgatory, in the bottom quadrant.
Standing in front of the maple door, covered by a translucent window, upon which set in need typographical letters was the name that my real father had used. It was always the name he used.
With a flourish, knocking was the act that my arm took. In a moment there came a deep voice which said to come in.
Tip-toeing in, my face came into view 1st:
“Hello, I am Ms. Lefevre.”
At this point his face went from looking at a paper, to immediately staring sort of blankly. As if he waited for this occurrence, but blew his line.
“So you're the one that half of my paycheck supports.”
“If you want to look at it that way - I suppose that could be one interpretation.”
“I knew it would be rude of me to chase you away, but why don’t you meet me at 5:30 at the main door? And I will explain myself because that is what you want, isn't it?”
Merely nodded, checked my silver petite watch, and made my way down to the front door. Expectations were foiled - somehow, right then and right there would have been the better point, at least in the plot. But it was not to be.
For a few hours, I looked at Beacon Street, towards the Commonwealth Mall, and in the opposite direction to the Storrow Ave. highway and beyond to the river with Cambridge and MIT. But each moment I rehearsed how the conversation should begin.
What came to me was the conversation in a novel was so eloquent, so urbane, or when wrestled to the ground it is wet came off its brown in a torrent - as if the language itself was transformed into corn and dryness of its nature. But in reality, people who I knew could write at least we have a happenstance of fluidity, were made to struggle with the reality of their situation. And it was dull.
I placed myself in this category as well - here I was standing on Beacon Street, with the Prudential tower and what was once known as the John Hancock Citadel, scattered with 19th-century buildings surrounding me - and all I spit out was tripe and drizzle, with nothing left to design with elucidation.
Wind would blow - and nothing would come out of our collective heads, except inanity, gobbledygook, and sloth. And it was the sloth that I hated the most because it said that if only someone made some insignificant effort - something wonderful could occur.
Thus I bent over the lower pillars of iron, to look at the yew bushes and the remains of last year's gardens. Time passed as I went up and down the boulevard – Turning around so that I would be standing in front of the double doors. And I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
But not “and waiting” – that would be too long.
Just before I went in, the doors opened and there stood the man. I wanted to insert some meaning into his being there. Contemporaneous flutters whirled in my stomach, because this was a moment that I had waited for, and I was not going to blow it as he had done.
“I was wondering when you were going to make an entrance and appall me with some pseudonym.” I made a note of the difference between plume and guerre.
He startled, somewhat - and then let out a guffaw, which was entirely out of place with his camel coat and mercilessly black shoes.
“You should have worn a herringbone cashmere to deliver that line.”
“Unfortunately my wardrobe is someone limited by line budget.”
“That will be corrected in due course. Now what do I the pleasure of this visit, if I may be so bold?”
“You know what this visit is for, and now that it has arrived, what are you going to say for yourself?”
“In the cosmic scale of such matters – my work is done. The rest of my life is recompense for that inescapable instant of passion. It is all downhill for me.”
“That seems rather a dismal view of affairs.”
“I turned out unable to do my talent but just able enough to teach others.
“That is unseemly harsh to self-judge.”
“Nevertheless, it has something veracity from my perspective. But you have almost unlimited possibilities.”
“Within the limits of my intelligence, that is.”
“There are many things in which intelligence is a deficit, which you will find out soon enough. But I do not think you are lacking in that department.”
“What am I good for?”
“Military leaders top around 125-130, and most are much less - they have to communicate with much lower people, and communicate effectively with simple instructions. Lee, Napoleon, and Eisenhower were not great intellects. But then their job was to communicate to the great, almost obscene geniuses on one hand, and the front soldier on the other hand. Intelligence is only enough to get you into the game. You just have to pick the right set, the correct place. Welch was not the brightest but he did know how to strip down GE and sell it for parts.”
“What if I want more?”
“Then you just have to do less and make it count. I hear you want to write a great novel, then one is all that you need. Just one, and make it great. And you do not even need much to set a statement. Strunk and White wrote the book on usage, and only White wrote novels - and those are for children. I would say that more have read their text, than Orlando or Ulysses.”
Thinking about it, I did not know who exactly came up with the outline of the novel, now that it was firmly in view.
“So you are saying pick my area and to it well.”
“Barbara Tuchman only really wrote 3 great works of history, but she did it with flair – which is all that mattered.”
The summer of my 14 years I consumed her telling all the 13th century. But it had confused me, because her time was the 1st world war, and I did not see the 1st world war in her tail, though it perplexed her a great deal.
“What about you?”
“My failure was not to realize the limitations, not be the gift of intelligence. I am not suited as a great mathematician - and therefore I failed.”
“What were you good at?”
“One thing was stealing away another man's woman - and I was slick and smooth with that. I could have written a decent novel, but did not have the will to turn empty prose into the stuff of grandeur.”
“Why did not you stick with it?”
“Because my goal was not writing a novel, and you and I both know what my objective was.”
I looked up and down his countenance and form, and tried to imagine what it must have been like to be him at my age. Surely something in the novel was telltale of him.
“I do not understand you.”
“I think you do - imagine being someone who wants one thing very badly, and then when it is ripped out - and crystallizes in ejaculation - realizes that he is not going to want anything that bad, again.”
“And you were fine with this?”
“Fine? No. but accepting, accepting that I did not have the drive to be just a chain on a giant link from past through the player present to the farthest future.”
“And that is I you are?”
“It is your time, and you must start with apologizing to your friends, and then get on to your work - because it is indeed toil, sweat, blood, and tears which you either must accept, or decline, and be like me, a failure.”
Spinning away was my first response – but then he corralled me, and tried to form a sentence:
“I know that you do not have many - if any friends.”
“What concern that is it to you?”
“Come to live at my place, while you will not be at Boston Latin, you can graduate rather than getting a GRE. Some massaging must be in order.”
“You are saying that Umass at Amherst is acceptable.”
“What else do you want?”
“It was just a dream.”
“If you do not tell anyone.”
“I have told people, just not you.”
“Then let me help.”
“You can't get me in.”
“Flood the zone is the appropriate trope. Every college wants people like them.”
He offered his arm, and I was led to his place. He told me what used to be called the “kook policy” - and though the term had long since been removed, the same idea sign was still applicable - especially when other factors and other people were pushing for the individual. Which I hoped was me.
Though it probably was not. “The universe is stranger than we can imagine.”
He absently said: “Oh, do not trust your pretend father. Trust your real mother to look after herself.”
“Why does he lie?”
“Constantly, incessantly, persistently. You probably told you that he wrote the book.”
“Did he?”
“Of the three voices, there was one which was wilted and placid. Who do you think that person is?”
I became so quiet that I couldn’t have fit a pause in edgewise.
We were going up the stairway to his apartment when he turned to me and whispered: “And one more thing. Though he isn’t going to do it, he is going to have you terminated.”
“Why is that?”
“Because until you started to question the loose threads of your family’s murky past, he had everything he wanted. You have upset that.”
Then we entered into a room which could have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It was out of place in Boston. It would be my home for my time in high school. It is where the bomb cyclone mixed.
Signs were not so sanguine about the rest, and I knew in my stomach that there were more shining and shimmering motives in the mix.