Confessions of a Crap Artist

  As we drove by Paper Mill Creek he saw the fishermen down in the water and he saw, for the first time in his life, a flashing white egret out on the marshes, fishing.

  “You see blue heron up here,” I said. “And once we saw a flock of wild swan. Eighteen of them, on an inlet near Drake's Estero.”

  After we had passed through Drake's Landing and had started up the narrow blacktop road, Saw Mill Road, to our place, Jack said, “It's sure quiet up here.”

  “Yes,” Charley said. “At night you'll hear the cows bellowing.”

  “They sound like dinosaurs stuck in the swamp,” I said.

  Perched on the telephone wires, at the last bend of the road, was a falcon. I told Jack how that particular falcon spent his time standing on the wire, year in year out, catching frogs and grasshoppers. Sometimes he looked sleek, but other times his feathers had a molting, disreputable look. And not far from us the Hallinans lost goldfish from their outdoor pond to a kingfisher who stationed himself in the cypress tree nearby.

  Not so many years ago elk and bear had roamed around the hills overlooking Tómales Bay, and the winter before, Charley claimed to have spotted a huge black leg at the edge of his headlights; something had gone off into the woods, and if it wasn't a bear it was a man in a bear suit. But I did not discuss this with Jack. There was no point in providing him with the local myths, because he would soon enough be concocting myths of his own; and it would not be bears or elk that meandered down into the vegetable garden after dark and ate the rhubarb—it would be Martians whose flying saucers had landed in the Inverness canyons. Now it occurred to me to remember the feverish flying saucer activity at Inverness Park; a rabid group already existed, that would no doubt draw Jack into their midst and give him the benefit of their twice-weekly explorations into hypnosis, reincarnation, Zen Buddhism, ESP, and of course UFOs.

  5

  The boy and girl, in rust-colored turtle-necked wool sweaters and jeans, rested their bikes against the pharmacy building and leaned against each other. The girl lifted a finger and brushed a speck from the boy's eye. She and the boy conferred at their leisure. Her face, in profile, with its ringlets of chestnut hair, was like the profile on an earlier coin, possibly a coin from the 'twenties or the turn of the century … an archaic profile, the face of allegory: mild, introspective, impersonal, gentle. The boy's hair had been cut to the shape of his head, a black cap. Both he and the girl were slender. He stood slightly taller.

  Beside him, Fay watched through the windshield of the car as the boy and girl moved away together. “I have to know them,” she said. “I think I'll get out and go ask them to come up to the house and have a martini.” She started to open the car door. “Aren't they beautiful?” she said. “Like something out of Nietzsche.” Her face had become remorseless; she would not let them get away, and he saw her keeping her eyes on them, not losing sight of them. She had them in view; she had located them. “You stay here,” she said, stepping on to the ground and starting to close the car door after her; her purse, from its leather strap, swung against the car. As she started off her prescription-ground sunglasses fell from her arms, to the gravel parking lot. With haste she snatched them back up, hardly noticing if the lenses remained intact. So concerned was she with making contact with the boy and girl that she began to lope. And yet she retained her grace, the poise of her lean legs. She ran after them with consciousness of herself; she kept in mind what impression her appearance would make on them and on the other people who might be watching.

  Leaning out of the car, he called after her, “Wait.”

  Fay paused questioningly, with impatience.

  “Come back,” he said in a false tone of voice, making it sound as if she were going in to shop and he had remembered some item.

  Her head shook, gesturing no.

  “Come on,” he repeated, this time stepping out.

  Without moving toward him or any farther away, she waited as he approached her. “God damn you, you motherfucker,” she said, as he got up to her. “They're going to get on their god damn bikes and pedal away.”

  “Let them,” he said. “We don't know them.” Her determined interest in them, the extent of the fascination that showed on her face, had made him suspicious. “What do you care about them?” he demanded. “They're just kids— no more than eighteen at the most. Probably up for a swim in the bay.”

  “I wonder if they're brother and sister,” Fay said. “Or if they're married and on their honeymoon. They can't live around here. They must be just visiting. I wonder who would know them. Did you see which way they came from? From which end of town?” She watched the boy and girl pedal off up the hill of Highway One. “Maybe they're on a bicycle tour of the United States,” she said, shading her eyes to see.

  Having lost them, she got back into the car with him. As they drove home she conjectured.

  “I can ask Pete the Postmaster,” she said. “He'd know them if anybody does. Or Florence Rhodes.”

  “God damn you,” he said, “what do you want to meet them for? You intend to screw them? Which? Both?”

  “They're so pretty,” Fay said. “They're like something that dropped out of the sky; I have to know them or perish.” She spoke in a flat, harsh voice, with no sentimentality. “The next time I see them I'm going up to them and tell them point blank that I can't stand not to know two such fascinating people, and who the hell are they and why.”

  “I guess you're pretty lonely up here,” he said presently, feeling indignation and melancholy. “Living up in the country where there's nothing to do and nobody worth knowing.”

  “I just don't intend to overlook a chance to meet somebody,” Fay said. “Would you? If you were me? You know I like to have people over at dinnertime—otherwise it's nothing but child-feeding and dishwashing and mat-wiping and garbage-disposing.”

  He said, “You crave society.”

  At that, his wife laughed. “I crave it like crazy. I'm almost out of my mind for it. That's why I spend most of my time in the garden. That's why I always go running around in blue jeans.”

  “You Marin County society matrons,” he said, half joking, half with wrath. “Sipping coffee and gossiping.”

  “Is that how you see me?”

  “Ex-college queen,” he said. “Ex-sorority girl marries well-to-do man, moves to Marin County, starts modern dance group.” He saw, to their right, the white clapboard three-story hall in which the dance group met. “Culture to the farmers and milkers,” he said.

  “Kiss my ass,” Fay said. And after that neither of them said anything; they stared ahead, ignoring each other until he had entered the driveway and was parking.

  'One of the girls left the door open,” Fay said in a low voice as she stepped from the car. The front door of the house stood open, and the collie's tail could be seen. Without waiting for him she walked away and into the house, leaving him by himself.

  It bothers me, he thought. Her reaction to those two young people. Because—why? Shows something is lacking. She doesn't get something she should get.

  True, he thought. Neither of us do. We both crave it … he had first noticed the boy and girl himself, had called his wife's attention to them. The soft fluffy sweaters. Warm colors. The pure skin, such freshness. What had they conversed about in such low tones? The girl stroking the boy's face, soothing and cherishing him … deep in their combined world, while standing before the Tómales Bay Pharmacy, in the middle of Saturday afternoon, with the sun shining down. And neither of them perspiring…

  Barely touched by us, he thought. Not even aware. We're shadows drifting around, going nowhere.

  The next day, while he was in the post office buying stamps, he saw the boy and girl again. This time he had driven down alone, leaving Fay home. He saw them, with their bikes, at the corner, apparently trying to decide on something; they had stopped on the curb.

  An impulse came to him to stroll out of the post office and up to them. Lost? he would ask. Trying to find some
house in particular? No street numbers; too small a town.

  But he did not. He remained in the post office. And presently they pushed their bikes from the curb, into the street, and wheeled off out of sight.

  At that he felt empty.

  Too bad, he thought. Opportunity missed. If Fay had been here, out the door she would have gone. That's the difference between us; I would think of it, she'd do it. Be doing it while I was trying to figure out how to do it. Just start doing it— she wouldn't think.

  That's what I admire about her, he thought. Where she's superior to me. Now, that time … when I met her. I would just have stood there forever, staring at her, wishing I knew her. But she started talking to me, asked about the car. Without hesitation.

  It occurred to him that if Fay hadn't started up a conversation with him that day in the grocery store, back in 1951, they never would have met. They wouldn't be married now; there would be no Bonnie and Elsie; no house; he wouldn't even be living in Marin County. She makes life over, he realized. She controls life, whereas I just sit on my can and let it happen to me.

  God, he thought. And she's certainly got firm control of me; didn't she engineer this whole business? Get me, get the house?

  All the money I earn, he thought, goes into maintaining that damn house and everything in it. It drains, it absorbs. Devours me and everything I make. And who gets the benefit from it? Not me.

  Like the time she got rid of my cat. He had found the cat hiding in a supply shed down at the plant, and for almost a year he had fed it in the office, buying cat food for it and giving it scraps brought back to the office from his lunch. It had been a large fuzzy gray and white cat, a male, and in the year it had become devoted to him, tagging around after him, which amused both him and his employees. It never paid attention to anyone else. One day Fay had stopped by the office for something and had seen the cat, had noticed its devotion to him.

  “Why don't you bring it home?” she asked, scrutinizing it as it made itself comfortable on his desk.

  He answered, “It keeps me company here. When I'm doing paperwork at night.”

  “Does it have a name?” She tried to stroke it, but the cat moved away from her.

  “I call it Porky,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it eats everything anybody gives it,” he said, feeling embarrassed, as if caught in an immodest or unmas-culine thing.

  “The girls would love it,” Fay said. “You know how they've been wanting a cat. Bing is too big for them, and that guinea pig they got at the museum did nothing but crap all the time and hide.”

  “It would run away,” he said. “The dog would scare it.”

  “No,” she said firmly. “Bring it home. We'll keep it inside. I'll feed it; it'll be much happier there. You know you're only down here at night once a week at the most—look, it'll be in a warm house, which cats love, and it'll have all the bones and scraps from three meals—” Petting the cat, she added, “And I want a cat, too.”

  In the end she persuaded him. And yet, watching her try to stroke the cat, he felt convinced that she did not really want the cat around the house; she was actually jealous of it because he liked it and wanted to keep it away from her, down at the plant. He kept the cat separate from his life with her, and to Fay that was intolerable; she strove to draw the cat in as part of her world, dependent on her. In his mind he had a quick image of Fay weaning the cat away from him, pampering it, overfeeding it, getting it to sleep on her lap— not because she loved it but because it was important to her to think of it as belonging to her.

  That night he brought the cat home in a box. The two girls were delighted and set out milk and a can of Norwegian sardines for it. The cat stayed in during the night, sleeping on the couch, apparently contented. The dog was kept locked up in a bathroom, and neither animal came in contact with the other. For a day or so Fay fed and cared for the cat, and then one night, when he got home, he found the front door open.

  With apprehension he tracked down his wife. He found her out on the patio, knitting. “Why's the door open?” he demanded. “You know we're keeping the cat in for another couple of days.”

  “He wanted out,” Fay said, her expression lost behind her huge glasses. “He cried, and the girls wanted to let him out, so we did. He's around somewhere, probably down in the cypress trees chasing squirrels.”

  For several hours he roamed around with a flashlight, calling the cat, trying to catch sight of it. He saw no sign of it. The cat had gone off. Fay did not seem worried; she served dinner calmly. The two girls never mentioned the cat. Their minds were on a party that some boy had invited them to on Sunday morning. With despair and fury he choked down his dinner and then arose to resume searching.

  “Don't worry,” Fay said, as she ate her dessert. “He's a full-grown cat and nothing'll happen to him. He'll turn up in the morning, if not here then back at the plant.”

  In a frenzy, he said, “You think it can hike twenty-five miles across to Petaluma?”

  “Cats travel thousands of miles,” Fay said.

  They never saw the cat again. He put an ad in the Baywood Press, but no one reported having seen it. Every evening for over a week he drove slowly around the area, calling the cat and searching for it.

  And all the time he had the deep, intuitive sense that she had done it on purpose. Got the cat home so that she could let it go. Had deliberately gotten rid of it because of her jealousy of it.

  One evening, with wariness, he said to Fay, “You don't seem especially disturbed.”

  “By what?” she said, glancing up from her pottery. On the big dining room table she was busy shaping bowls from clay. She wore her blue smock, shorts and sandals, and she looked quite pretty. Resting on the edge of the table, mostly ash now, her cigarette burned away.

  “By the cat disappearing,” he said.

  “The girls were quite upset,” she said. “But I told them that a cat is more adept at taking care of itself than any other kind of pet that gets out and goes off. And up here there's gophers and rabbits—” Tossing her hair back she finished, “It probably caught the scent of game, and now it's gone wild, having a hell of a good time out there in the woods. They say a lot of cats brought up here do that, get the scent and go out after it.”

  He said with care, “You didn't mention that when you got me to bring it here.”

  To that she did not bother to reply. Her strong, effective fingers shaped the clay; he watched and noticed how much pressure she was capable of exerting on the material. The muscles along her arms rose and changed shape; the tendons stood out.

  “Anyhow,” Fay said at last, after he had said nothing but still remained, “you were too emotionally involved with it. It's not healthy to be that involved with an animal.”

  “Then you did get rid of it on purpose!” he said loudly.

  “No I didn't. I'm just commenting. Maybe it's better that it ran off. This proves you were too deeply involved, or you wouldn't be carrying on so. My god, it was just a cat. You've got a wife and two children and you're carrying on about a cat.” The sharp contempt in her voice made him shiver. It was her most effective tone, full of the weight of authority; it recalled to him his teachers in school, his mother, the whole pack of them.

  Unable to carry it any further he turned and walked off, to pick up the evening paper.

  There in the post office, recalling his lost cat, he felt a terrible loneliness and sense of deprivation. After buying his stamps he set off, back to his parked car, recognizing that the failure on his part to make contact with the boy and girl had linked itself in his mind with the loss of the cat. The breakdown of relationships between living things … the gulf between him and other living things. Why? he asked himself as he got into the car.

  Fuck it all, he thought with bitterness.

  He drove reflectively, doing a bad job of getting the car from the lot and on to the street. And then, just past the Mayfair Market, he saw propped up against the loading
dock two racing bikes. Their bikes—they had gone into the May-fair Market. Without reflection he brought the car to the curb, leaped out, and hurried across the street and up on to the sidewalk and through the open door and into the dark, cool old wooden market building, among the vegetables and displays of wine bottles and magazine racks.

  Toward the back of the store the boy and girl lingered together at the shelf of canned vegetables. He hurried toward them; he had to approach them, or have the weight of conscience on him for months. Fay would never forgive him—impelled toward them, he arrived to confront them as they filled a wire basket with cans and packages and a loaf of bread.

  “Hey,” he said, his ears red and burning. Astonished in a controlled manner, they turned toward him. “Listen,” he said, plucking at his belt buckle and staring down, then back up at them. “My wife and I noticed you yesterday—or the other day, I mean. We live up here, at Drake's Landing, about five miles down the road around Paper Mill Creek, past Inverness Park. My wife's up at the house dying for company.” He added, “We've got a horse if you like to ride. How about dropping by and chewing the fat? Could you be talked into staying for dinner?”

  Wordlessly, the boy and girl exchanged glances. As he stood there, they communicated silently between them and came to a conclusion.

  “We just recently moved in up here,” the girl said in a soft, low voice.

  “You're newly weds?” Charley asked.

  They both nodded. Both of them seemed shy and reserved, but glad that he had approached them.

  “It's hard to get to know people around here,” he said to them, feeling immensely pleased with himself for having made the contact with them; he had done it, been successful. Fay would be filled with respect. “You have a car?” he said. “Oh that's right—you're on bikes. We noticed the bikes.” He heard himself chuckle. “Well, we can toss them in the back of the car.”