"Are you hungry? I'm starved."
"Me too-- what would you like? I'll take you anywhere you want. In fact, come on, decide in the car."
Kathy decided on seafood, so we headed toward the town of Freeport, to its shoreline stretch of seafood restaurants. I had a million questions to ask her, and she knew it, but we kept the talk small until we were at the bar of the Schooner Inn, waiting for a table.
"Should I begin by asking you where exactly you've been, what the hell you've been doing for the last few months, or do you want to work backwards and tell me your immediate plans?"
"I wanted to tell you all along what was going on. I always knew I owed you that, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. And as far as my plans, I haven't got a clue."
"Fair enough, so lay it on me. How's your friend the professor."
"He's dead. He died Tuesday morning, and he was cremated yesterday." Her eyes filled up with tears, and she turned her head away.
"Jeez, I'm so sorry. Do you want to talk about it? We can wait, you know."
"No, I haven't had the opportunity to talk to anyone while all of this was going on. He had no family, and his friends who came over to see him while he was sick didn't like me, and that's an understatement."
"What about your friends at Princeton?"
"I really didn't have anyone left that I was close to. You know, when I graduated, so did they-- they left, and I was still there. It was a tough time, alone and watching him waste away like he did."
"What was it? What was he sick with?"
"He had an enlarged heart. He'd had it his whole life, but it ultimately led to heart disease, heart failure. He'd been getting weaker and weaker over the last several years, and he knew what it was, but he wouldn't go back to his doctor. When he finally did, there was so much deterioration that they told him he had two options. Get in line for a heart transplant, or try a new procedure-- it was something called the Batista procedure, named after a Brazilian doctor who developed it. He told his doctor he'd rather die than have someone else's heart in his body, so go ahead with the operation.
They did it, and it bought him another eighteen months or so of reasonable health, but they said he'd waited so long that too much damage had been done. He just got weaker and weaker, and the other morning I couldn't wake him." Tears were rolling down her cheeks. I took her by the arm and we walked outside the restaurant.
The Schooner is located at the south end of a north-south block; the back of the restaurant is up against a canal that leads to the Atlantic Ocean. And right there, behind the restaurant, they've built a little plaza, cobblestones and flowers and benches. It's beautiful, and because the night was cold and windy for October, we were there alone. We sat down on a bench; the view was across the canal, to very large, almost mansion-like homes on the other side. Every few moments a boat would cruise by, leaving a trail of foam, their lights brightening the dimly-lit plaza. We sat and watched the peaceful but endless traffic for a while, before I asked her what had been on my mind for months.
"Did you love him?"
"Yes, but not like I love you. He was the most amazing man I've ever met. He was brilliant and he was kind and loving. He was a philosophy professor and it was his life. He always said he was really a professor of the study of life, but they wouldn't let him call his class that.
"I took the class my second year there, and even though I had heard he was a very unusual professor, I still basically expected whatever you get in Philosophy 101. And he did teach us a little about the great thinkers-- you know, Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza, all the guys." Her tears had turned to smiles. I guessed she was reliving good memories for the first time in a while.
"But he spent most of the semester getting us to think about life, our lives, our place in the universe, where we fit in the great scheme of things. He loved nature; he spoke of the majesty of trees. And animals-- he tried to teach us to respect all creatures, independent of their stature. He was very deep, but there was also a beautiful simplicity about him and what he tried to teach us."
"You used the word tried'' twice in your last few sentences. Why? Wasn't he effective?"
"Effective? Let me put it this way: too many of the people in the class I was in had only one thing in mind-- get a good grade. Get an A, that's all they gave a shit about. And he knew it, but it didn't dissuade him. He rarely gave any tests-- so few, in fact, that some of the students complained that they didn't have enough opportunities to raise their grade if they had gotten a low mark on one of the few he did give.
One day a couple of them were making that argument in class-- in a nice way, of course-- it was Princeton, you know." Sarcasm just dripped off her tongue. "So in the middle of a girl explaining why there should be at least one more test before the semester ended, he interrupted her."
"Excuse me, Jenny, we'll get back to your points in a moment. I want everyone to take out a piece of paper and write down your name and home address. When you're done, please pass them to the front of the room." We looked around a bit at each other, but we did as he asked. When he got the papers, he asked us if we would give him a moment to determine how we did. We sat and watched him read each paper and place a mark at the top. He worked with a very small smile, and when he was finished, he began to read out the names, one at a time, followed by their grade.
"David Wilson, A. Robert Durant, A. Kathy Scully, A. He saved the girl who had been asking for another test for last.
"Jenny Auslander, A plus. Miss Auslander, I apologize for breaking your train of thought- please go on." That's the kind of teacher he was, I couldn't sum him up any better than that."
"I don't quite understand why he wouldn't consider a transplanted heart. It doesn't seem to fit with the philosophy of the man you just described."
"He said that we were as the universe meant us to be. He wouldn't even let a dentist put a false tooth in his mouth. 'One shot, we've got one shot at it, that's it,' he'd say. I thought the same as you-- that there was an inherent contradiction in his own life philosophy, compared to what he taught us, but he was quite comfortable with it. I guess we all have seeming contradictions in our lives-- at least they seem like contradictions to the people around us." She smiled, and I nodded my head.
"I sure wouldn't argue with you on that. But what about your relationship with him outside of the classroom? How'd that get started?"
"It was the year after I took his class, my junior year. I went to meet a friend of my mine for lunch at a little place in town, and he was there, eating alone. My friend was late, and after a while he got up, came over to where I was sitting, and asked me if I'd like to join him. My friend never showed up One thing led to another, and we began to see each other, always at his place. For a long time-- months-- it was just a friendship-- platonic, you know? But one day it just happened. He was very gentle, he made love slowly, he was a very tender man."
"When did you find out he was sick?"
"We didn't make love that often. I sometimes wondered why, but I never questioned anything with him, I just kind of listened to him. Once we went a few weeks, and he just kind of blurted out how bad his heart was, and that he'd had a setback, but he was feeling better, and we could go back to making love in a week or two. He made it clear it was his heart, and it was serious, but that he wasn't in any immediate danger."
"Immediate or not, wasn't that kind of freaky? Weren't you afraid you still might kill the guy?"
"Well, looking back, it should have been, but it wasn't. It's so hard to explain-- he was just so wonderful to be around. He taught me so much about life, and living in the moment, and for the moment. He made me forget about my problems, and I guess even his problems. He made me feel good about myself, not to feel guilty about the kind of sex I like to have, being adopted and my family not telling me, my mother screwing around, all of that stuff. He even made me stop feeling funny about being the little rich girl, having so much while so many people have nothing."
I was discovering new pieces of Kathy and it felt good. And, not surprisingly, I was seeing pieces of me in her. At the same time I wondered the obvious: had she at least subconsciously been looking for her birth father, and had used the professor as a substitute? I finally decided it just didn't matter.
"Was he ever married?"
"Yes, for a few years, when he was in his twenties. He said one day, he got up and she was gone-- no note, nothing-- she'd taken all of her clothes and exactly half of the money they had in the bank together. It broke his heart, and he didn't have a relationship with another woman for many years. During that period of time, he decided to make changes in his life, the philosophy he would live by. He said over time, he not only forgave her, but he credited her leaving with making him a better person. He lived with a woman for a few years about ten years ago, but they drifted apart. He said he'd had a few relationships with students of his, much like the one we were having, and that we should just enjoy this time together and not worry where it would lead."
"I'm not clear on something-- when did you know he was actually dying?"
"Not until the last few months; we had pretty much stopped seeing each other. Maybe I should say I stopped going over to his place when he asked me. I guess I was getting tired of him, or I realized I was falling in love with you, Murphy. But I saw him on graduation day, and he looked awful. He asked me to come over that night just for old times' sake, 'a drink and some memories' is what he said. I was there just a few minutes, and he matter-of-factly told me he probably only had a few months to live."
"So you're relationship was basically over before you started taking care of him?"
"Well, our sexual relationship was, but I still loved him, and I felt like taking care of him as best I could. Keeping him company was really all I did, was my responsibility. So I watched him get weaker and weaker, and finally it was over."
"God, you've just come through a nightmare, except it was real."
"I know it must seem that way, but all I can tell you is, it wasn't. He seemed to be so accepting of everything, he talked of what a great life he'd had and how fantastic the experience of teaching Princeton students had been, and what an honor it was to just be called professor Barton. He never stopped being peaceful, and one day he just never woke up." Her tears belied her words.
"Would you like to continue this inside? You haven't completely lost your appetite, have you?" Truth was, I was starving.
"No, I do want to get something to eat. I haven't eaten anything since lunch yesterday. Come on."
Our conversation over dinner switched its focus to me, my foster family visits, how I was coping with the imminent folding of Scully Sales, and what I planned to do after it finally took place. A bit of the hard edge that had been so pronounced in Kathy before our conversation outside slowly returned as we talked.
"He's really a miserable human being to everyone in the world except me-- I don't know how he lives with himself. My theory is my mother figured that out sometime after they were married, and said 'the hell with him'-- that's why she had at least one affair, and frankly I'd bet she had more. She's probably got somebody now-- it would serve him right, he's such a lousy husband. I see them. I hear stories about the families of the girls I knew at college, and I can't imagine ever getting married. It just seems to screw everything up, you know?"
"Well, from what I saw at the families I stayed with, I can't find much in your words to disagree. How did Professor Barton,… was that his name?" She nodded. "How did he feel about marriage, or do I really need to ask?"
"He didn't think much of it, he just felt people should stay together as long as it made them happy, and then they should move on. I'm aware of the obvious hole in his thinking, children. We talked about that, but he couldn't deny that he had no solution for the inherent conundrum."
"Wow, Ms Princeton graduate, inherent conundrum. I'm impressed." I wasn't as impressed with Barton-- the more she talked about him, and the more I thought about it, the more I began to think of him as just another guy with a great line. A truly excellent line actually. He had the gorgeous Kathy eating out of his hand for a couple of years, and had actually bragged to her that there'd been a few others like her before. No wonder the guy died so peacefully.
I still haven't left the Motel 6 outside of Chicago. The further I get away from New York and Kathy Scully, the more I want to go back. I think the old professor, as shifty a guy as he was, had a number of things right about life, especially the part about living in the moment. The moment I'm in right now demands Kathy Scully. I was the one who said good-bye. I'm going to be the one to see if we can figure out a way to make it work Forgive and forget, that's my new motto. And I know how to get back to Route 80, east!
After the dinner at the Schooner Inn, we drove back to my place and spent the rest of the weekend together. I ran Saturday and Sunday mornings, and she spent a few hours with her mother Saturday afternoon; but other than that, we were together every minute. By Sunday night, I knew all there was to know about this girl who for so long had been an enigma to me. Now, I'm not saying from that point on I could make clear sense of why she did some of the things she did-- especially the thing that put me on Route 80 west in the first place-- but at least I understood her far more than before.
There's no putting into words how great the next six months were for me. And that was with the continuing sad saga of Scully Sales getting sadder all of the time. The joy Kathy and I shared, the love and companionship, must have been as close to complete bliss as we mere mortals could find. She lived with her parents, but spent many of her nights and all of my free days with me. She convinced her father that she was just taking some time off to get her head together, and would then be going to grad school in the fall. She told him she wanted to teach-- elementary school, for a start-- then maybe get her Ph.D. I used to kid her about how gullible her old man was.
"So he's still buying this elementary school teacher stuff?"
"Yes, and why not?"
"Do you think he may come to realize there are more professional oboe soloists than Princeton grads teaching fourth graders?"
"My daddy loves me and he wants me to be happy. What's wrong with that?"
"Nothing now. What happens in September when you're not at Columbia grad school or wherever the hell you're telling him you're going?"
"It's a long way to September, Sean-- all I've got to do is think of something else to do."
"Got any ideas at all?"
"You should talk-- what if Jim isn't able to take you with him?"
"Forget it. He guaranteed me, if they don't want me, they don't get him. Don't switch this to me, Miss Political Science major-- you're the one without a plan."
"Now there's where you're wrong. I've got a plan. I'm just not telling you." She had her little girl grin on.
"Let me guess: your plan is to live for the moment and be patient-- things will work out."
"I've got no secrets left from you, Murphy. I do believe I've given you far too much information. I may just have to disappear for a while to make some new secrets You wouldn't want our relationship to get dull now, would you?"
"I'll tell you what: 'dull' isn't a word I could ever see myself using to describe anything about you, or us."
As strange as it seems, we never talked about the fact that neither of us knew our real parents. One or the other of us might make a little joke or reference to it-- it was always there-- but we never really surrounded the subject. For my part I found it comforting in a way that she was 'like me', and perhaps she shared that feeling. It had to be one of the main reasons we came to understand that we looked at the world in very similar terms, even while growing up as differently as any two people could.
As far as Kathy's penchant for 'doing it out in the world', I was able to keep us out of trouble while keeping her candle lit, so to speak. She liked to go out to dinner without anything on under her clothes, and a little grab at the bar, or a little foot under the table, often did the trick. I had no problem doing whatever she wanted to do, and whatever we could manage doing, in my car, whether it was in a shopping center parking lot or on the side of the highway. We disagreed on time of day-- I insisted on darkness; she always felt sunlight would be a great turn-on. That was one battle I won.
At Kathy's insistence, I tried everything in my power to track down my old friend Richie. My now monthly, or even more frequent, calls to Mike got him in on the case. My master plan was for Mike and I to locate Richie, and then get the three of us to have a reunion on Long Island, with Mike's family. But I needed to find Richie to make it work.
Mike and I knew that he went into the Marines, and we had heard he got kicked out after a few months. A friend of Mike's knew a Marine lifer, and Mike called him. A few weeks later, he called back, and told Mike that all he could find out was that Richie's discharge was dishonorable. We weren't shocked. Richie Marist was the single craziest person I've ever met in my life. Short but stocky, and extremely powerful, I'd seen him beat at least a dozen kids half to death in the three years I spent with him at the Learys'. He was an alcoholic at sixteen, and a cokehead at seventeen. He was one of those guys that, if he was your friend, you were safe in any situation, but if he was your enemy, you'd never get a night's sleep until you got back on his good side. If I had to bet, I'd bet he's spent at least some time in jail. And if he did, he was the toughest son of a bitch in there, too.
When Mike and I finally gave up trying to find our old friend (even those forty-dollar internet deals turned up nothing), I decided to just bring up the issue of Mike's old man one more time, but this time in a more direct fashion.
"Why don't you bring the family out to the Island for a few days. I'd love to meet Nikki and your kids in person, and we could all go over to your parents. It'd be like old times. Even better." Same as the first time I brought it up. Mike was quiet for a moment or two.
"There's stuff I can't forgive him for, Sean. Stuff I don't want to talk about-- but if you knew, you'd understand. As I got older it bothered me worse, and it wasn't the shit about him pushing me to be great in everything That was just bullshit. It wasn't anything like that."
"Maybe if we talked about it, and you got someone else's perspective, you might not think it was that bad. Try it on me-- come on." There was no pause this time.
"You want to know? Okay. He was a drunk until I was about twelve. He used to come home loaded, and beat the shit out of my mother right in front of Elizabeth and me. Elizabeth would try to call the cops, and my mother would beg her not to-- she'd say that after the cops left, he might kill us all. He was a wild man, Sean, the absolute worst."
"But you said 'until I was twelve,' so he got sober then. Didn't he turn his life around?"
"Yeah, he turned his life around, but what about the two lives he..." Mike stopped speaking, I could hear him breathing. I waited a bit before pressing him.
"Say what you started to say, man-- it's me, you know?"
"The reason he quit drinking when I was twelve is..." he took a deep breath.
"One night, we were all sleeping when he got home. The screaming woke me up, and I lay in my bed-- up in our attic bedroom, Sean-- I laid there listening to him yell at my mother. It got quiet for a little bit, and then I heard my mother screaming, crying hysterically. I heard the door slam, and the car leave the driveway. I went downstairs expecting to see my mother alone, but they were both gone. Man, she was almost four months pregnant, and that son of a bitch father of mine beat her so bad she had a miscarriage. And I'll tell you something else, Murph: they told my mother it was twins, man. Twins! A boy and a girl-- I would have had another brother and another sister. My old man killed two of his kids; there's no other way to look at it. Now, you tell me how the hell could I forgive him for that."
"Jesus Christ, Mike, I don't know what to say. Man, I'm sorry."
Since that conversation, we've never gone more than a few weeks without either calling or writing. I've got more pictures of his kids than I know what to do with. But I've never brought the subject of reconciliation with his father up again, nor will I.
Except for the company Christmas party at the Scully home--and even that eventually turned out okay-- this past holiday season was the best one of my life. I had Thanksgiving dinner with the Learys, followed by Thanksgiving dessert with Jim and Maureen. But my real desert was Kathy-- it was one of the many nights we spent together at my place. Before we did, we drove on the Belt Parkway, along the ocean, for the first time since the night of our first date, our first REAL date.
"I know where we are-- you taught me: this is Brooklyn."
"What a sheltered life you've led-- amazing. First of all, we're still in Queens, on the way to Brooklyn. Secondly, you've lived your whole life thirty minutes from here. And lastly, I know you've driven through here a hundred times. How else could you get to Princeton, New Jersey? And with all that, it takes me to tell you where you are. Explain that to me."
"Explain what?"
"Explain what? I guess I'm asking how you never noticed where you were when you were there. How's that?"
"I know when I'm with you, and I know when I'm not. How's that?" She cuddled up very close to me, her left hand on the back of my neck.
"Okay, I give up. You win-- a clear-cut knockout blow." The child in Kathy was a side I was seeing more and more in her. It was so disarming as to be frightening.
"What's new at the office? Daddy hasn't said anything lately. In fact, I haven't seen him much other than at dinner today, and there were so many people there that we didn't get to say more than a few words to each other."
"I'm waiting for the next shoe to drop-- if it's Krause, it could be the end. Now I hear Randu is already unhappy with us. We're not going to make the summer, I'd bet big bucks on it."
"You don't have big bucks."
"You do-- back me."
"Let me get this straight: I'm to loan you money to bet that my father's business is going to fold in a few months?"
"Yes. What's your problem? When it folds, he's not going to lose anything, he's made sure of that. We've got no pension plan, there's so little severance pay that it's a joke, and he's rich as hell anyway. So break out the cash."
"What do you want?"
"I want to stop at the next parking area. I want to look at the ocean, and I want to screw our brains out in the back seat."
"Show me your collateral." I did.
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Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden