“I think I should go,” Robert said.
“Go? What does that mean? Go to this guy? This ‘researcher’?” He tried to give the word a sarcastic edge, but sarcasm just seemed immature now.
“Yes.”
Robert took Jonah’s hand, but his own hand was so cold from the drink that it felt as far from reassuring as possible. Jonah would remember the press of fingertips of a man who had already left him, who was already thinking of his researcher and the night ahead and what would follow, now that he could live and be loved. Now that he was free. Robert Takahashi said, “It’s been a very nice run. We weren’t lonely. But now maybe we should see where the wind will carry us, so to speak.”
• • •
The streets of lower Manhattan actually resembled a wind tunnel that night. Jonah’s tie flipped over his shoulder and he stuck his hands into his coat pockets, feeling the contours of an old, fossilized tissue inside one and the linty coins and swan song subway tokens with their cut-out pentagram centers in the other. Jonah couldn’t go home yet. Instead he found himself at Ash and Ethan’s doorstep not too far away on Charles Street, ringing the bell, which gave a resonant sound from deep inside the house. A security camera purred and angled down on Jonah’s face, then a female voice with a Jamaican accent spoke to him from an intercom. “Yes, who is it please?” This was Rose, the nanny.
“Hi, Rose,” he said as lightly as he could. “Are Ash and Ethan around? It’s Jonah Bay.”
“Oh wait, turn a little; yes, I can see your face now. They’re away, Jonah; they flew to the ranch in Colorado. But they’ll be back tomorrow. Ethan has meetings. Is there anything I can help you with?”
“No,” he said. “It’s okay. Just tell them I was here.”
“Wait a moment, all right?”
“All right.” Jonah stayed on the step, not sure why he was being asked to wait, but very soon Rose opened the heavy door and asked him to come in. In the front hallway, a pale and tranquil space where the light seemed to come from a hidden source, the nanny handed Jonah a cordless telephone. Then she showed him into a sitting room that he hadn’t ever been in before, and, still partly drunk and anguished, he sat on a plum velvet settee below a large painting of a vanilla ice cream cone.
“Robert left me,” he said to Ash on the phone with a suppressed cry.
“He left you?” she said. “Are you sure? It’s not just a fight?”
“We didn’t fight. He’s got someone else.”
“I’m shocked, Jonah.”
“A ‘researcher.’ Apparently I’m too withholding.”
“That’s not true,” said Ash. “You’re a very loving person. I don’t know what he’s talking about.” But of course she did know, and was just being polite. “When I come home,” she said, “I’m all yours. But spend the night at our house tonight, okay? Rose and Emanuel will set you up. I wish we were there, but we flew the cast of Hecuba out here for rehearsals, and Ethan came too. You can have breakfast with Larkin and Mo in the morning; would that be okay? You can check on them for me. I hate to be away from Mo. He doesn’t do well with change in his routine.”
So Jonah spent the night in the second-floor guest room, which in his view was almost as grand as the Lincoln Bedroom in the White House. He distantly remembered that his mother had taken pictures with a Polaroid the night she’d spent there, back when Jimmy Carter was president. (Rosalynn Carter had loved “The Wind Will Carry Us,” and had cried a little when Susannah sang it after dinner.) In the morning the sunlight spread across the bed where Jonah slept, and someone knocked on the door. He sat up and said, “Come in.” Ash and Ethan’s children walked into the room, and Jonah was startled to see how much they’d changed since he’d seen them last a few months earlier. Larkin was beautiful, poised, heading toward adolescence. Mo, poor kid, appeared uncertain and not exactly right even just standing doing nothing. The way he held himself was disconcerting. He stared at Jonah searchingly.
“Hey, you guys,” Jonah said, sitting up and suddenly feeling self-conscious. He was never able to sleep with a shirt on, so he was bare-chested now. His hair, still long, had begun to go gray, and he worried that he appeared to these children like a menacing, effeminate gypsy. But Jonah always felt that something was wrong with him, no matter how many people exclaimed over his face or his long body or his designs for devices to aid disabled people or his “gentleness,” a word that often, irritatingly, got used to describe this held-back, polite man.
“Mom and Dad said you were here, Jonah,” said Larkin. “They said you should stay and have breakfast with us if you can. Emanuel is making waffles that Mom says are to die for.”
“I don’t want to die,” Mo said with a quivering mouth. “You know that, Larkin.”
“I was kidding, Mo,” his sister said, putting an arm on his shoulder. “Remember? It’s a joke.” Then, over her brother’s head, she said, “He is the most literal person any of us has ever met. That’s the way people on the spectrum can be.”
After getting dressed, Jonah followed the sound of the children’s voices, which led him one flight up to a well-stocked playroom. Larkin stood at an easel, painting a skillful landscape that was apparently based on the view from her bedroom on the ranch in Colorado. Mo lay on his stomach on the carpet like a much younger boy. So many Lego pieces were scattered around him that it appeared as if there’d been a volcanic explosion and all the flung bits had cooled and hardened. Jonah stood in awe, just looking; long ago he’d loved Lego too, and what all those little pieces could do. In a sense, he’d gone to MIT because of Lego, and now he worked for Gage Systems because of his early interest in what interlocked and what did not.
“What are you making?” he asked.
“A garbage claw,” said the boy, not looking up.
“How does it work?” Jonah asked, and he crouched down and let Mo Figman give him a demonstration of the uses of his invention. Right away he saw that Mo possessed a visceral understanding of mechanics that went deep and wide. Jonah questioned him about the functionality of the garbage claw, and asked him a series of problem-solving questions relating to use, form, durability, aesthetics. Mo shocked him with his cool skill, yet he was grim about it all, too. Lego was what he loved, but he behaved like a worker, like one of the child laborers who had inspired what had now become Ethan’s cause.
At the breakfast table a little later, Jonah was tended to like the Figmans’ third child, instead of like a man who’d been broken up with by another man only eight hours earlier. Jonah sat with the children in the sunny kitchen, looking out onto a garden that featured a wall threaded so heavily with vines it appeared like the underside of a tapestry. He ached to have lived here, to have had parents like Ash and Ethan and not like his mother, who’d been well-intentioned but unable to save him from being ripped off and diminished. Up on the farm in Dovecote, Vermont, Susannah Bay still lived with her husband, Rick, and taught guitar and prayed, and was revered in that enclosed world, famous and beloved within the membrane of the Unification Church. She assured Jonah that she liked her life there very much, and that she had no regrets about slipping from this larger world into that smaller one. In her daily life she was admired for her talent, which was so much more than he could say for himself.
“Are you okay?” Larkin suddenly asked him. Jonah was surprised, and he wasn’t sure how to reply.
“Why wouldn’t he be okay?” Mo asked. “He doesn’t have anything wrong with him.”
“Again, you’re being really literal,” Larkin said. “Remember, Mo, we talked about that?”
“I’m okay,” Jonah said. “But if you’re picking up something, it’s just that I feel kind of sad right now.”
“Sad? Why is that?” said Mo, almost barking out the words with impatience.
“Well, you’ve met Robert, right?”
“The Japan man,” said Mo. “That’s what I always call him.”
“Oh, you do? Oh. Well, he doesn’t want to be my partner anymore. So that w
as hard for me. He told me last night, which is how I wound up here.” The conversation was starting to take a peculiar turn; why was he discussing his love life and his breakup with two children? Also, the words felt imperfect; he hadn’t exactly ever been anyone’s partner.
Larkin looked at her brother, fixing her gaze on him in a specific way that she had clearly done before. “Mo,” she said. “Did you hear what Jonah said about being sad?”
“Yes.”
“So what’s the appropriate response right now?”
Mo looked around desperately, like someone searching the classroom walls for an answer on a test. “I don’t know,” he said, his head dropping slightly.
“Oh, it’s really okay,” said Jonah, putting a hand on Mo’s shoulder, which was all wood, like the back of a chair.
“You do know,” said Larkin softly. Her brother looked at her, waiting it out, waiting to remember, and suddenly he found the answer.
“I’m sorry,” Mo said.
“Say it to Jonah.”
“I’m sorry.” Ethan’s son said it in a voice that strained for expression, though Jonah didn’t have to strain to find any feeling to meet it.
SEVENTEEN
Manny Wunderlich at eighty-four was vigorous but mostly blind. His wife, Edie, was not so vigorous, though her eyesight was decent. Together, though, they were no longer in a position to have even a partial day-to-day directors’ role in their summer camp, and they both knew it. Probably they should have stopped completely years earlier. The 2010 season had just finished; Paul Wheelwright, the young man who’d been running the place for them over the past few years, had been uninspired, they felt, and attendance was way down. Yesterday they’d fired him, telling him there were no hard feelings, but they were looking to go another way with Spirit-in-the-Woods next year.
“Manny. Edie,” Paul had said to them. “I actually do have hard feelings, because I tried to make this place work for you. In some ways you’re both living in the past, and it’s very frustrating for me. This just isn’t the kind of camp that twenty-first-century kids want. Kids are all tech-savvy now. I know it’s difficult for you to face that, but unless you find someone who can really bring the place into the present day, I’m worried that it’s only going to get worse, and you’re going to lose too much money to make it feasible to run at all. I could have done so much more with it if you’d let me.”
“Computer game design,” Manny said with derision. “That was your idea of so much more?”
“Well, yes, we would’ve had a computer lab,” said Paul. “It wouldn’t just have been a place to design games or check e-mail, though the kids could have done those things too. Their parents would have loved to stay in touch with them electronically. As for computers, don’t forget that everywhere but here, things are completely computerized now. But all summer, for instance, some of these kids were off in the animation shed drawing on paper. That’s got nothing to do with the real world.”
“The real world?” said Edie, offended. “Tell me, Paul, how well did someone like Ethan Figman manage in the real world? He drew on paper too, didn’t he? And yet he managed to adapt when things changed. We gave him a foundation here; that’s what matters. A foundation of creativity. Does everything have to be explicitly pre-professional? In my estimation, he ended up doing just fine. Or perhaps slightly better than fine, some people might say.”
“Edie, I am obviously well aware that Ethan Figman attended Spirit-in-the-Woods a very long time ago. He’s mentioned it in many, many interviews, and I’m certain that you’re extremely proud that he’s an alum, as anyone would be. It’s amazing and wonderful that he got his start here.” He paused. “Why don’t you hit him up? I’m sure he’d drop a bundle on this place if he knew you were struggling like this. He and his wife would probably buy the joint. She went here too, right? Didn’t they meet here?”
“We would never ask him for anything,” said Edie. “That’s crass. Our motives are pure, Paul.”
“Well, you can have all the purity you want, but if the place goes under, you know what you’ll be left with? A lot of scrapbooks from old productions of Mourning Becomes Electra starring a bunch of fifteen-year-olds with zits.”
“Now you’re being rude,” said Manny.
“I just think you’re keeping these kids from having access to all the available tools,” said Paul. “It’s amazing what’s out there now. The Internet has cracked open the possibilities for everyone. If a kid has always fantasized about . . . Abbey Road, now he can suddenly be there. On the street, or even in the recording studio. Suddenly even a certain kind of virtual time travel is possible. It’s amazing what this does for the imagination.”
Manny shook his head and said, “Oh, come on. You’re telling me that because of the Internet, and the availability of every experience, every whim, every tool, suddenly everyone’s an artist? But here’s the thing: If everyone’s an artist, then no one is.”
“It’s good to have principles, Manny, but I still think you have to adapt to the times,” said Paul.
“We have adapted,” Edie said. “In the 1980s, with multiculturalism, we made an executive decision to offer traditional West African drumming, and as you know, our drumming teacher Momolu has been with us ever since. We were instrumental, so to speak, in helping him get a visa.”
“Yes, that’s terrific, and Momolu is great,” said Paul. “But multiculturalism is easy. Of course you folded it into the life of the camp, and I know it’s a much more diverse place now than it used to be. But I think technology is a lot harder for you both to accept. Racists and xenophobes think multiculturalism is the enemy of America, but you guys think technology is the enemy of art, which is also not true. When Ethan Figman was a camper in, what, the mid-1970s, I guess?—the technology didn’t even exist. Now it does and you can’t pretend it doesn’t. Artists in all fields have tremendous digital tools available. Composers do. Even painters. Ninety percent of all writers use computers. I understand if you want to move on from me. But even without me, I think you need to make some changes across the board—not just getting computerized but also maybe branching out a bit in other directions.”
“What directions?” said Manny in a defeated voice. His eyes would not let him really see the face of his tormenter; all he heard was this dispiriting barrage of doomsday reports, emanating from a hazy male figure who shook his head a lot.
“Well, like llamas. I’ve already told you that you could offer a workshop in llama care; a lot of camps have that these days, and it’s very popular. Girls in particular seem to like taking care of them. They’re smarter animals than you’d think, and quite manageable.”
“Thank you for your input,” said Manny.
“And, well, you could offer sports. Not just Ping-Pong or the occasional Frisbee toss. One arts camp I heard of even has a Quidditch team,” he said with a light laugh. “Today’s arty teenagers are more well-rounded than in the past. They want to bulk up their résumés. Speaking of which, you could also offer a community-service credit.”
“For what?” cried Edie, the tougher of the two Wunderlichs. “‘They cleaned their teepees?’ ‘They sewed costumes for Medea?’ ‘They helped each other roll a joint?’”
“No,” said Paul patiently. “For real things. And there’s something else too. You need to be on social media. I recognize that phrase hurts your eardrums, but bear with me. You should not only have a page on Facebook but you should be on Twitter.”
“Twitter,” said Manny, waving his hand. “You know what that is? Termites with microphones.”
“This is really quite enough, Paul,” said Edie. “You’ve made your point. We appreciate all the work you’ve done. Your last paycheck should be in the front office. You ought to run along.”
“Now who’s being rude,” he murmured, and he shook his head as he walked away.
• • •
On a city bus Jules Jacobson-Boyd drowsed and drifted. The night before, she and Dennis had returned from
taking Rory up to the state university in Oneonta for the start of her senior year; Rory was looking forward to taking a class in a subject her parents didn’t understand, Environmental Spaces. Though not stellar like Larkin Figman, Rory had emerged from childhood intact, a middling student and an antsy, enthusiastic person who knew she wanted to be in motion, to be outside in the world. Out in environmental spaces. She had moved out of the apartment smoothly and unhistrionically when she left for college, and though people said that because of the terrible economy kids didn’t fully leave home until age twenty-six anymore, she showed no sign of needing or wanting to come back. Rory occasionally descended over a school vacation with a couple of friends in tow, all of them outdoorsy, jocular young women, not entirely knowable by their parents. At age fifty-one, Jules and Dennis were entering what for most people was a quieter period—a slight roll down a soft incline. Dennis remained in decent spirits from the Stabilivox, though it made him gain weight that he couldn’t take off. He liked being back at the clinic, and he now subscribed to three different sonography journals and had become so knowledgeable that the staff at the clinic all came to him with questions.
Jules and Dennis had rented a car for the drive up to Oneonta; their no-nonsense daughter with the frizzy dark hair and big open face had hugged each parent hard in turn, then one of her housemates in the pink off-campus run-down Victorian had leaned way too far out an open second-floor window and called, “Rory, get your ass up here!” And now, riding the packed bus down Broadway to her office, Jules sat with her head against the window, her eyes flickering closed and then open, when she became aware of a woman sitting across from her. Soon the whole bus became aware of her too. Every few seconds the woman gave herself a severe smack in the face. Jules watched with excited shock. Then the woman accompanying this poor woman gently took her hand, whispering something to her. They actually seemed to be having a conversation, and the disturbed woman smiled and nodded. There was a moment of silence, and then the disturbed woman freed her hand and, once again, bang, she hit herself even harder. Again, the other woman spoke to her gently. They looked somewhat alike, and were probably sisters. Maybe they were even twins, but the disturbed one’s face had been rearranged over time by the agonies of her condition, so the two women really didn’t resemble each other all that closely.