For some reason that night I was overwhelmed with a feeling of loneliness and sadness. I curled up in my bag, and a small rain cloud moved across the field and showered me, and I thought about big spaces and empty spaces. I wished my pop were in the tent with me so that I wouldn’t be afraid, and then I wished I weren’t afraid. I only know about America, and really not all that much, but I know it’s not a place to let down in and be lonely in and, of course, frightened in. There is something about my country that never lets you be truly comfortable, really belong. At least for me. I thought of Tony Amaral, one of the guys at the lounge in East Providence. He was the nicest guy, but every now and then he’d get all tense and say, “What are you looking at?” or “What are you laughing at?” and you’d feel how threatening and how ugly he could be. I feel like that about my country sometimes. I really felt that under the apple tree. Also, I felt hungry.
I moved my heartbeat up to my shoulders, but it wouldn’t listen to me. It’s something that requires concentration, and I was feeling so hopeless that my hopelessness was all I could concentrate on. It’s a big country and it’s me. Maybe bicycles and men aren’t good, even though most of the time it feels like a good combination. I curled lower into the bag, holding myself against my unhappy thoughts. Sorry to be alone, angry to have spent my fortune on hot dogs. My stomach rumbled, and I ran my fingers over the space where sixty or seventy pounds of guts used to rule. I was going back, I knew, and the swish of breeze through the apple boughs knew it, too. In the morning there would be Silverwood and Ontario and Pomona, and later in the day, right before dark, there would be Cheng Ho, on the Venice colonnade. But first this difficult night.
68
Bethany’s marriage to Jeff Greene was a smooth example of how a wedding ought to be. Nothing went wrong. Dave Stone and his ushers kept the seating flowing, and the organ music that my sister had selected was perfect. “Love, Be in My Understanding” was—I’m not just saying this—magical. When Bethany walked down the aisle with my pop, I thought the Ides might burst. Sharon Thibodeau and her maids of honor were positively angelic. On the steps of Grace Episcopal after the ceremony, Byron Lapont, from Lapont Photography Studios in Barrington, took about two hundred shots. Bethany and Jeff. Bethany and Jeff and Dave and Sharon. Bethany and her maids. Jeff and his ushers. Me and Pop and Mom and Bethany and Jeff. They were wonderful pictures, and we would put them everywhere, and later Pop would spread them out and look for clues.
We left the church in a caravan, two limousines leading the way, and crossed the George Washington into East Providence, taking the Taunton Avenue exit to Agawam Hunt Country Club. In the Hole in One Room, Bethany and Jeff and their attendants were announced, and we ate from a huge buffet table set up by Shroeder’s Delicatessen and danced to the rhythms of Armando’s Hideaway, a six-piece band fronted by Tony Chambroni, who wasn’t half bad.
Norma had driven Bea over. She got herself out of the van and wheeled to the stairs. One of the valet parkers, a nice old black guy, backed her up the stairs, and she came into the Hole in One. Bethany ran over and hugged her and twirled her around. Norma wasn’t self-conscious or anything. All you had to do was look at the way she smiled at Bethany and you understood history. When she saw me watching her, she arranged herself taller in the chair and looked serious and tough. There was a bank of floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind the buffet table, where golfers could examine their swings. I examined my new belly, hard and round, and my ass and my snug tux. I undid my jacket button and had my fifth or sixth glass of sparkling wine.
Count squeezed in between Jeff and Dave and launched conspiratorially into one of the classics:
“Couple of Jews, by mistake, walk into St. Pat’s. . . .”
“We’re Jewish,” snapped Dave.
Count looked at Dave, then Jeff. “Okay, couple of coons, by mistake, walk into St. Pat’s. . . .”
Count finished the joke to chuckles from Jeff and cold stares from Dave and spotted Father Solving standing alone next to the gift table. Count was five feet away from him when he joyfully launched into it again.
“Couple of Jews, by mistake, walk into St. Pat’s. . . .”
Like at the rehearsal dinner, there were toasts by everyone, and I thought it was terrific how people could come up with such meaningful and loving remarks of good luck and happy life, until Dave Stone quieted down the crowd by whistling.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, like a big-deal, in-charge kind of guy. “Ladies and gentlemen, if I can have your attention, please. As you all know, the wedding of the fabulously handsome Jeff Greene and the perfectly beautiful Bethany Ide was a harbinger of great things to come for these two terrific people. So before they change for their honeymoon . . .”
Oooohs and laughter from the crowd.
“I think it’s appropriate to ask Bethany’s brother and Jeff’s brand-new brother-in-law, Smithy Ide, to offer the final toast.”
Like in a movie, the group of people parted, and I stood alone next to the buffet table. At first I had forgotten I held two glasses of wine. I am a person who does not do well with anyone looking at me, let alone a roomful of people all wearing those goofy wedding grins. I put one of the wineglasses down on the buffet table and held the other glass with both hands.
“I hope,” I said, “I . . . I hope that a whole lot of happiness and really good things happen for my sister.”
I thought for a second or two.
“. . . Oh, and Jeff, of course. Really, really good things.”
Everybody laughed at my oversight, and their laughter turned into applause and Jeff and Bethany gave each other a little kiss and a click of their wineglasses. Mom and Pop kissed, too. Norma had wheeled close to me and stared at me. I wished I had clinked glasses with her then and kissed her, too. But I didn’t. I finished my wine. Then I finished the other one, and then I had some more.
69
By the time a slice of orange sun was hitting me, I had ridden three hours. I had gotten myself too upset to sleep. Being hungry probably had a lot to do with it. I put this stretch of road into Los Angeles as my most unhappy. Doubt is terrible. Not that I had any doubt about my own stupidity, to do what I was doing. I was pretty confident I was in an idiot world of my own. But to have come to my middle age without any idea at all about anything . . . I tried to listen to my heart rhythms, to move them as I rode, but my brain was pedaling in another direction. Finally I settled on the road itself, and I followed my sister’s flight over the San Gabriel Mountains.
I came out of the night and kept to the roads adjacent to the freeways. Here is another thing I find disturbing about how I look out at the world. I see the walled-in communities. I see parking-lot freeways. I see a western city spread left to right and not up, and I say to myself, This is not Rhode Island. As if there is a common thing going here I cannot understand. I needed food. I was exhausted. I could no longer see my sister in the sky. Both of my tires blew out at the exact same time.
I walked backward for a hundred yards or so, trying to discover what could have ripped up my tires, but I couldn’t find anything. I walked on until I came to a gas station. There was a woman filling up a car with gas.
“You work here?” I asked.
“Do I look like I work here?”
She topped off her tank and walked into the station. I followed her, waited while she paid, and then said to the teenage attendant, “Do you fix bike flats?”
“Bike flats? Uh-uh.”
I could smell the coffee on the counter over the shelves of breakfast pastries. “Any bike places around?”
The kid got out a piece of paper and drew a map. “You’re here. Okay? If you go right on Forest, past the cow place, about, uh . . . about seven or eight miles, there’s Lippit Exxon station run by this guy, and he does bikes and boards and that shit. Okay?”
“Thanks.”
I took the piece of paper. I started out, but the coffee and the doughnuts wanted me to look at them. “How much is the coffee and
the pastries?”
“Dollar.”
“Dollar?”
“Each.”
“Any bananas?”
“Behind the chips. Apples. Oranges. Whole thing. What do you want?”
“I don’t have any money. I was so stupid the other day, I spent all my money on hot dogs.”
The kid stared at me like the bum I must have looked like. “I’m on a bike ride from Rhode Island. I’m not a bum or anything. Listen, I’ll give you a lightweight blue tent with fiberglass poles and stakes and fly in perfect condition that a doctor in Indiana paid two hundred and seventy dollars for if you’ll give me some doughnuts and bananas and spring water and maybe a couple of apples.”
For a second the kid didn’t say anything. I watched his face, and then I watched his pimply cheeks.
“Let me see the tent,” he said.
70
Bethany and Jeff had talked around their honeymoon. Bahamas, Bermuda, even Europe. In the end they drove up to North Conway, New Hampshire, to the Level Wind Lodge, where they would hike and plan and get used to being married. I was relieved they chose to stay in New England. Bethany was a New Englander, and, really, Jeff was, too. It’s just a feeling that you have a place to fit in, even if it’s a little harsh in an accepting kind of way.
At the end of the reception, they both changed into regular clothes and kissed and hugged everyone and drove off from the front of the Agawam Hunt Country Club in Jeff’s new Fairlane with cans tied to the back. I have never seen my pop so attentive to Mom as they watched the car roll onto Taunton Avenue and up to 195. He held her tight with his big pitching arm while he waved with his glove hand. He was crying. Hard.
I walked back into the club and had a screwdriver at the bar, and then I went out to Mom and Pop, who still stood there.
“They’re gonna be great. I mean, I feel good,” I said.
My pop squeezed Mom.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
71
My bananas and doughnuts kicked in after a few miles of my walk to Lippit, and I talked out loud to Norma, and to Mom and Pop and Bethany. There was a warm breeze and a salty kind of smell, and I could feel my sadness and, I guess, despair blowing off of me. People that you love can lift you and confuse you. Understanding them doesn’t seem so important when they’re inside your head. That’s why love should be easy. I guess it is. I just don’t know.
It was surprising how very clear Norma was to me. I mean, the physical Norma. I must have taken these snapshots in my head, because I could see her exactly how she was on my porch the night I left for Shad Factory. Her tight red hair, big round eyes. The way her smile was like cotton and how soft her face became when she spoke about Bethany. But I remembered the anger and the grip of her beautiful long fingers on her wheels.
“Norma,” I said, and I smiled. “Hey, Norma,” I said again to myself.
A small, hard, flat-faced Spanish man about my age was working on a car on the side of the Lippit Exxon station.
“Kid said I could get my tires fixed around here.”
“Sí,” he said, not looking up from the engine.
“I got two flats.” He didn’t say anything. He grunted as he pulled up on his wrench.
“I don’t have any money.”
He looked up at me.
“I’m not a bum or anything. I’m on this trip from Rhode Island, and I spent all my money on hot dogs like a stupe, but I got this nice saddlebag and stuff, and I’ll give it to you if you can fix my tires.”
He raised his head and laid the wrench on a greasy towel draped on the car radiator. “That saddlebag?”
“Yes.”
“What stuff?”
“I got a nice alpaca sweater and a pair of sneaks I’ve never used, and—”
“Size?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?”
“Yes. And some pants and socks.”
“C’mon,” he said.
I followed him to the back of the station. He unhooked the saddlebags and handed them to me. Then he flipped my bike onto a long, waist-high vise. While he stripped off the ruined tires, I looked around his shop. Skateboards hung neatly against a plywood wall. Each one more colorful than the next, with peculiarly particular designs and angles. All of them said LUIS across the toe part. Most of the bikes were used, but they were polished and equipped with new wheels.
“I like your shop,” I said.
“I like it, too,” he said with no inflection.
“Are you Luis?”
“No.”
He walked to a metal cabinet and pulled out two new racing tires, still in their plastic bags. He started on the back wheel. “Rhode Island, huh?”
“Yes.”
“All the way?”
“I took some trains in New York and a truck a little in Arizona.”
“Rhode Island,” he said, shaking his head.
“Yes.”
He moved to the front rim of my very beautiful bike. “That’s not a real island, though, is it?”
“No,” I said.
“This is a good bike. Kids like mountain bikes around here, but if you go on the roads . . . good, good bike. I’m gonna tune it up, too.”
“Thanks.”
He inflated both tires, then straightened the front wheel to line it up with the back. “This pull to the right?”
“A little, maybe.”
“Won’t now.”
“Thanks.”
He put a thin spread of clear jelly over the chain. “Teflon,” he said.
“Wow.”
“And graphite. They got everything. They got it all. You know, road dust won’t even stick to it now.”
He put a little drop of solvent on each brake mechanism and took my bicycle from the vise. “Like new. Better than new.”
I handed him the saddlebag. He opened it up and took out the items one by one and laid them on the floor. Then he went to the metal cabinet and rummaged for a minute. He pulled out a dirty red saddlebag that had been patched with what looked like an old piece of blue jean. He brushed off the dust and tossed it to me.
“Just the new saddlebag. You keep the other shit. I got little feet.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I knelt down and started pushing my stuff into the new old saddlebag.
“Luis was my baby.”
I stopped and looked up at him.
“Not, you know, baby. Thirteen. Big boy. On the back of a pickup fooling around, you know, thirteen. They weren’t going fast or nothing, and they’re good kids and Luis goes off the back. It’s heads. You can’t hit heads.”
He shrugged and looked over my head and lit a cigarette. I would call him wiry and hard, but when I thought he was as old as me, I was wrong. Or maybe it was the bikes and the skateboards. He seemed young, hard face and all. A dry wind spurted onto us and stopped.
“My sister was named Bethany.”
He looked down at me and didn’t seem surprised.
“She was a beautiful girl. A woman. Only she—not all the time or anything, but sometimes—she heard this voice, and then it was awful.”
The buttons on the old saddlebag were missing, so we tied it together and onto the bike with clothesline rope.
“I’m so sorry about Luis,” I said, before I pedaled away.
“I’m sorry, too.”
I nodded and left him walking toward the car engine. I checked my map and figured I was somewhere around Fontana. I would go down to Valley Boulevard, and fifty miles later I would pick my way into Venice. I looked over to the bike man and wanted to say something more about Luis and maybe make him feel better. I didn’t, though. I guess you bump into people, and it’s all about how they bounce off you.
I rode easy on my amazing bike, and without thinking I said, “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.”
And then I said out loud, “I said that for Luis.”
72
 
; We knew this:
Mr. and Mrs. Jeff Greene drove up and around Boston, took the turnpike to Concord, New Hampshire. At Meredith they cut a corner of Lake Winnipesaukee and took 16 the rest of the way north to North Conway. The weather was “glorious” (Jeff’s word). The Level Wind Lodge was perched on a ledge of granite overlooking Echo Lake. It was a Victorian house full of squares and points that a young couple had painted white and turned into a hotel. It was very homey, which was why Bethany had chosen it from the many brochures she had sent for. From the front porch, you could see Mount Washington, the highest peak east of the Mississippi and a mountain Jeff had hiked up with the Boy Scouts. All around the lodge were trails for exploring. The food was particularly excellent. Jeff has told us that Mrs. Thatcher, who was the owner along with her husband, Mr. Thatcher, cooked traditional New England Colonial style but added a special touch of European Nouveau. He has told us they both enjoyed Mrs. Thatcher’s food very much. They had corned beef one night, with potatoes and cabbage and carrots, all boiled the way it’s supposed to be, only it was served with a hot curry sauce and a cool chutney. That’s what Jeff meant by the Nouveau touch. It was important for Jeff to tell us this, and so when he sat at our kitchen table and told us what he knew, we listened hard, because we knew it was important to him. Mom even wrote down a recipe that Jeff had on a piece of paper written by Mrs. Thatcher. I’m going to put it here because of Jeff. It’s called:
Mrs. Thatcher’s Pork Chops and Sweet Potatoes
(serves 4)
4 sweet potatoes
Flour
½ cup orange juice
4 pork chops