A Changed Man (45 page)

Bonnie’s at the podium, talking to the crowd. Or
supposed
to be talking. Her mouth is open, but no sounds are coming out. Poor Bonnie looks crazed as she pauses and wonders where to begin. Bonnie! Get it together! She’s talked to groups before. Vincent addressed a major crowd, and he happened to be dying. Vincent roots for Bonnie as if she were a horse he has money on. Come on, Bonnie. Come on. He wants her to look good up there, if just for herself and the kid.

With each second Bonnie stalls, her pals on stage—wardens and prison matrons in black robes—seem more upset. No one’s looking at anyone. No one knows what to do. Bonnie has to pull this thing out of the fire.

Bonnie says, “If I had to pick one word that Brotherhood Watch is about, guess what it would be?”

Excellent decision: Bonnie’s quoting Maslow. How sweet. It’s sexy, that in this crowded room only Vincent and Bonnie—well, and maybe Danny—know that.

Bonnie says, “I’d say that one word was:
change.
The man I work for, a great hero, Meyer Maslow, believes that the world can be changed. One heart, one person, one man or woman or child at a time.”

It’s good that she’s saying something. But it’s not great to hear her repeating the tired crap the boss says all the time. Just don’t let Bonnie start preaching about forgiving without forgetting.

Bonnie says, “I only wish you could meet my friend Vincent Nolan.”

All right! We’re getting somewhere! Bonnie’s calling him her friend. So she must still like him. She must still like him a lot.
This
gets Vincent’s attention. And for some reason, everyone else’s.

“But the fact is,” Bonnie says, “change is the one thing—the only thing—you can count on.”

Where is Bonnie going with this? Get back to Maslow—and Vincent!

Then Bonnie begins to ramble about how everything they expect to happen is not going to happen, because something else will happen, and about change being hardwired—a phrase he can’t believe she’s using—and even about their parents splitting up and…Vincent has to help her! He’s got to get her attention and shock her back into talking about something concrete.
Talk about the foundation.
That’s what Bonnie told
him
before the dinner at which he’d nearly died.
Nearly
died. Didn’t die. The difference is all that counts.

The crowd of kids and parents wait.

Bonnie looks back toward the last row. It’s as if she’s looking for him.

She finds him in two seconds. She can’t believe it’s true. She’s overjoyed to see him. She doesn’t try to hide it.

Which still won’t make this easy. But the brightness he sees in Bonnie’s eyes, sparkling behind her glasses, is the green light that makes it possible for him to start walking toward the stage.

The crowd watches Vincent walk down the aisle. Mr. Changed Man has learned a lot since that first day he tiptoed into the foundation. Onstage, the blond guy with the nerd glasses shoots a worried look at Bonnie. Bonnie smiles and mouths Vincent’s name. Another key in the lock.

Doesn’t Bonnie want to finish her speech? Apparently not. She says, “Here he is. Vincent Nolan.”

Vincent feels like Elvis again. The crowd is going nuts. As Bonnie gives him the podium, he kisses her on the cheek. It’s total theater. And totally real. The crowd loves it. Everyone’s clapping. He catches her eye as they separate. He almost starts to say something, but what? How happy he is to see her.

Vincent waits for the applause to die down. He says, “I’m really glad to be here. But I have to say, I’m getting a little nervous about public speaking. The next to last time I talked to a group, I nearly died. And the last time, someone nearly got killed.”

There’s a tiny stir of unease from the folks behind him onstage. Maybe they were hoping to pretend that no one knows what happened on
Chandler.
They know a little part of it, which is bad enough, and it’s created a tiny charge, but Vincent has defused it. He’s not saying
who
nearly got killed; no one is going to ask. The crowd exhales another sigh. Another wild burst of applause.

Now he can move past that and tell them what they need to hear. Which is…what, exactly?

He’ll give them the basic love message. A duck could be somebody’s mother. He’ll tell them they have to
do
something. Get off their butts and get moving. Do good.
Be
good. Love your fellow humans. Be conscious. Change one heart at a time.

Everything he says will be true. He’ll believe it with all his soul. He’ll make it up as he goes along.

It will come to him when he needs it.

V
INCENT’S CHASTE LITTLE PECK
on the cheek is the public
kiss that an exuberant kid might give the favorite guidance counselor who helped him make it through high school. But as he pulls away, their eyes lock. And even Bonnie can see that he has come here because of her. It’s as if they have a second or two to find out everything in the world they need to know. The glance is like a conversation, or like the promise of one. Bonnie can’t imagine what they will say, but she’s looking forward to it. She’s looking forward to everything now. How much can change in a heartbeat.

The crowd rips into a round of applause. What are they applauding? Would they be cheering like that if they’d seen what really happened on
Chandler
? Probably they wouldn’t care. They’re cheering for a guy who was on TV and who is taking time from his busy famous life to come here and to talk to
them.

And probably they’re right to applaud. So what if the guy screwed up? The fact is that Vincent has come out of hiding and shown up here because he’s trying again. Trying to be a human being. As is Meyer, and Bonnie, and, she hopes, her kids. Shouldn’t Vincent get credit for trying?

Everyone’s a mixed bag. That’s why they call it
human.
What was it that Vincent said about Raymond and his friends? They couldn’t deal with the gray areas. But that’s where they all live, all the time. Add up all the virtues and failings, they’ve all got something in each column. Even Raymond. Hate is a serious minus. But at least he’s clear on the fact that it’s wrong to steal from your cousin. Which is a plus in Raymond’s column, and a minus in Vincent’s. The problem, thinks Bonnie, is how efficiently love erases the calculations.

Vincent waits for the applause to die down. He says, “I’m really glad to be here. But I have to say, I’m getting a little nervous about public speaking. The next to last time I talked to a group, I nearly died. And the last time, someone nearly got killed.”

No one knows how to take this. A tiny shiver goes through the crowd. If they hang on, the moment will pass. A few people laugh nervously, but not the people onstage. They have a different view of Vincent. They’re observing him from behind. They can, if they want, watch his right foot rubbing, like a cat, against his other shin. It’s pure little-kid nervousness, and the sight of it moves Bonnie more, she knows, than it should.

Vincent stands behind the podium, gripping it with both hands, leaning forward as if he’s trying to reach every kid in the crowd. The parents can listen in if they want, but this is between him and the graduates.

He says, “I can bet that when I say just one word—
future
—everyone in this room will imagine something different. And have a different feeling about it.”

Obviously, two safe bets. But what future does Bonnie imagine? Domestic bliss with a former skinhead who beat up his cousin on
Chandler
? Stranger things have happened. He gets along with Danny and Max. He’s nicer to them than their father, who, unlike Vincent, has all the surface makings of a perfect dad. Dear God, what would Bonnie’s parents think now? Maybe they would see beyond the surface to what she admires—what she loves—about Vincent. Who cares what anyone would think? It no longer feels like a choice. What happens now will happen.

Vincent seems to be speaking again. Bonnie needs to pay attention.

“Though maybe,” he’s saying, “there are some of you out there who can’t imagine any future much beyond tonight’s senior prom.”

Every kid’s tiny chuckle adds up to a laugh. Please, Bonnie prays, don’t let him tell that story about the Latvian girl who ditched him for the Puerto Rican.

“I don’t know what I can tell you about the future,” he says. “Except that it’s both way longer and way shorter than you might think.”

He’s getting metaphysical now. It’s like listening to Meyer. Bonnie wishes Meyer were here to see how Vincent’s got them hanging on every word.

“So you need to act fast,” Vincent tells the kids. “Watch yourself. Do your best. Don’t smoke, don’t drink…well, don’t drink too much. Don’t let your heads get turned around. If something goes wrong, don’t blame it on some…group that makes less money than you do.”

The parents get a big kick out of this, and everyone claps, even those parents who routinely blame everything on their secretaries and maids. The teachers and administrators and staff applaud, a group justifiably attuned to inequities of pay.

“The main thing,” Vincent says, “is that I don’t want you guys becoming guys like me.”

This is a little tough for the kids. They
sort of
know what he means. That is, most of them know that he used to be a white supremacist. On the other hand, he’s the one onstage, and they’re out in the audience, and they’re listening to
him,
so what exactly
is
the part they’re not supposed to be? He can only be talking about what he
used
to be. And so, no matter what he says, everything about him and his situation—at least at the moment—telegraphs the fact that you can start off as one kind of person and end up as another. Actually, it’s inevitable. Isn’t that what Bonnie just tried to tell them?

They weren’t about to listen to her. But they see it before them now in every cell of Vincent’s body.

“Be fair,” he’s telling them. “Try to do some good.” He’s so simple, so fully present. They’re on the edge of their seats.

Bonnie can’t get over the fact that Vincent has just told them more or less what he said that first day he walked into Meyer’s office. I want to help you guys save guys like me from becoming guys like me. That’s what he claimed he wanted to do. And that’s what he’s doing. Or trying. Are there guys in the room like him? Yes and no. Maybe. Who knows?

Bonnie feels as if she’s zipping back and forth across the chasm between that afternoon and now, between who Vincent was and is, between who she was and is, between everything she believed that day and everything that’s happened since. It’s like trying to recall a dream that slips away, second by second.

Soon the ceremony will be over. Bonnie will look for Danny and see if he wants a ride, which of course he won’t. Then Bonnie and Vincent will be left alone. And what will happen then?

Bonnie is about to find out. But now, for just a few seconds, she wants to leave the present and think back to that afternoon she met Vincent. It’s as if she believes there is something there that might help her step more bravely into the difficult future ahead.

She closes her eyes and thinks of the story that Vincent told her and Meyer that first day, the story about the rave. She imagines the flashing lights, the deafening music, the feeling of an overwhelming love like pounding wings in her head. For a moment, she almost imagines that she can hear the thrumming wings. Then it passes, and Bonnie opens her eyes to find that the roar in her ears is the applause of a crowd of people cheering the messenger who has come to offer them a vision of the meaningful life before them.

Francine Prose
is the author of thirteen books of fiction, including the novel
Blue Angel,
a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent book is
The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired
. A recipient of numerous grants and awards, including Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, she was a Director’s Fellow at the Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. She lives in New York City.

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Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich