Birds of America (16 page)

Albert sized up Bill’s weight loss and slight tan, the sprinkle of freckles like berry seeds across Bill’s arms, the summer whites worn way past Labor Day in the law school’s cavernous, crowded lecture halls, and he said, “Well then,
some
people might think it a mishandling of your position.” He paused, put his arm around Bill. “But hey, I think it has made you look very—tennisy.”

Bill shoved his hands in his pockets. “You mean the whole kindness of strangers thing?”

Albert took his arm back. “What are you talking about?” he asked, and then his face fell in a kind of melting, concerned way. “Oh, you poor thing,” he said. “You poor, poor thing.”

Bill has protested, obfuscated, gone into hiding. But he is too tired to keep Debbie in the closet anymore. The body has only so many weeks of stage fright in it before it simply gives up and just goes out onstage. Moreover, this semester Debbie is no longer taking either of his Constitutional Law classes. She is no longer, between weekly lectures, at home in his bed, with a rented movie, saying things that are supposed to make him laugh, things like “Open up, doll. Is that drool?” and “Don’t you dare think I’m doing this for a good grade. I’m doing this for a
beautiful
grade.” Debbie no longer performs her remarks at him, which he misses a little, all that effort and desire. “If I’m just a passing fancy, then I want to pass fancy,” she once said. Also, “Law school: It’s the film school of the nineties.”

Debbie is no longer a student of his in any way, so at last their appearance together is only unattractive and self-conscious-making but not illegal. Bill can show up with her for dinner. He can live in the present, his newly favorite tense.

But he must remember who is here at this party, people for whom history, acquired knowledge, the accumulation of days and years is everything—or is this simply the convenient short-hand
of his own paranoia? There is Albert, with his videos; Albert’s old friend Brigitte, a Berlin-born political scientist; Stanley Mix, off every other semester to fly to Japan and study the zoological effects of radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki; Stanley’s wife, Roberta, a travel agent and obsessive tabulator of Stanley’s frequent flyer miles (Bill has often admired her posters:
STEP BACK IN TIME, COME TO ARGENTINA
says the one on her door); Lina, a pretty visiting Serb teaching in Slavic Studies; and Lina’s doctor husband, Jack, a Texan who five years ago in Yugoslavia put Dallas dirt under the laboring Lina’s hospital bed so that his son could be “born on Texan soil.” (“But the boy is a total
sairb
,” Lina says of her son, rolling her lovely
r
’s. “Just don’t tell Jack.”)

Lina.

Lina, Lina.

Bill is a little taken with Lina.

“You are with Debbie because somewhere in your pahst ease some pretty leetle girl who went away from you,” Lina said to him once on the phone.

“Or, how about because everyone else I know is married.”

“Ha!” she said. “You only believe they are married.”

Which sounded, to Bill, like the late-night, adult version of
Peter Pan
—no Mary Martin, no songs, just a lot of wishing and thinking lovely thoughts; then afterward all the participants throw themselves out the window.

And never, never land?

Marriage, Bill thinks:
it’s
the film school of the nineties.

Truth be told, Bill is a little afraid of suicide. Taking one’s life, he thinks, has too many glitzy things to offer: a real edge on the narrative (albeit retrospectively), a disproportionate philosophical advantage (though again, retrospectively), the last word, the final cut, the parting shot. Most importantly, it gets you the hell out of there, wherever it is you are, and he can see how such a thing might happen in a weak but brilliant
moment, one you might just regret later while looking down from the depthless sky or up through two sandy anthills and some weeds.

Still, Lina is the one he finds himself thinking about, and carefully dressing for in the morning—removing all dry-cleaning tags and matching his socks.

Albert leads them all into the dining room and everyone drifts around the large teak table, studying the busily constructed salads at each place setting—salads, which, with their knobs of cheese, jutting chives, and little folios of frisée, resemble small Easter hats.

“Do we wear these or eat them?” asks Jack. In his mouth is a piece of gray chewing gum like a rat’s brain.

“I admire gay people,” Bill’s voice booms. “To have the courage to love whom you want to love in the face of all bigotry.”

“Relax,” Debbie murmurs, nudging him. “It’s only salad.”

Albert indicates in a general way where they should sit, alternating male, female, like the names of hurricanes, though such seating leaves all the couples split and far apart, on New Year’s Eve no less, as Bill suspects Albert wants it.

“Don’t sit next to him—he bites,” says Bill to Lina as she takes a place next to Albert.

“Six degrees of separation,” says Debbie. “Do you believe that thing about how everyone is separated by only six people?”

“Oh,
we
’re separated by at least six, aren’t we, darling?” says Lina to her husband.

“At least.”

“No, I mean by
only
six,” says Debbie. “I mean strangers.” But no one is listening to her.

“This is a political New Year’s Eve,” says Albert. “We’re here to protest the new year, protest the old; generally get a
petition going to Father Time. But also eat: in China it’s the Year of the Pig.”

“Ah, one of those years of the Pig,” says Stanley. “I love those.”

Bill puts salt on his salad, then looks up apologetically. “I salt everything,” he says, “so it can’t get away.”

Albert brings out salmon steaks and distributes them with Brigitte’s help. Ever since Albert was denied promotion to full-professor rank, his articles on Flannery O’Connor (“A Good Man Really
Is
Hard to Find,” “Everything That Rises
Must Indeed
Converge,” and “The Totemic South: The Violent
Actually Do
Bear It Away!”) failing to meet with collegial acclaim, he has become determined to serve others, passing out the notices and memoranda, arranging the punch and cookies at various receptions. He has not yet become very good at it, however, but the effort touches and endears. Now everyone sits with their hands in their laps, leaning back when plates are set before them. When Albert sits down, they begin to eat.

“You know, in Yugoslavia,” says Jack, chewing, “a person goes to school for four years to become a waiter. Four years of waiter school.”

“Typical Yugoslavians,” adds Lina. “They have to go to school for four years to learn how to serve someone.”

“I’ll bet they do it well,” Bill says stupidly. Everyone ignores him, for which he is grateful. His fish smells fishier than the others—he is sure of it. Perhaps he has been poisoned.

“Did you hear about that poor Japanese foreign student who stopped to ask directions and was shot because he was thought to be an intruder?” This is Debbie, dear Debbie. How did she land on this?

“Oh, God, I know. Wasn’t that terrible?” says Brigitte.

“A shooting like that really makes a lot of sense, too,” says
Bill, “when you think about how the Japanese are particularly known for their street crime.” Lina chortles and Bill pokes at his fish a little.

“I guess the man thought the student was going to come in and reprogram his computer,” says Jack, and everyone laughs.

“Now is that racist?” asks Bill.

“Is it?”

“Maybe.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Not in any real way.”

“It’s just us.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Would anyone like more food?”

“So Stanley,” says Lina. “How is the research going?”

Is this absent querying or pointed interrogation? Bill can’t tell. The last: time they were all together, they got into a terrible discussion about World War II. World War II is not necessarily a good topic of conversation generally, and among the eight of them, it became a total hash. Stanley yelled, Lina threatened to leave, and Brigitte broke down over dessert: “I was a little girl; I was there,” Brigitte said of Berlin.

Lina, whose three uncles, she’d once told Bill, had been bayoneted by Nazis, sighed and looked off at the wallpaper—wide pale stripes like pajamas. It was impossible to eat.

Brigitte looked accusingly at everyone, her face swelling like a baked apple. Tears leaked out of her eyes. “They did not have to bomb like that. Not like that. They did not have to bomb so much,” and then she began to sob, then choke back sobs, and then just choke.

It had been a shock to Bill. For years, Brigitte had been the subject of his skeptical, private jokes with Albert. They would make up fake titles for her books on European history:
That Kooky Führer
and
Hitler: What a Nutroll!
But that evening, Brigitte’s tears were so bitter and full, after so many years, that it haunted and startled him. What did it mean to cry like
that—
at dinner
? He had never known a war in that way or ever, really. He had never even known a dinner in that way.

“Fine,” says Stanley to Lina. “Great, really. I’m going back next month. The small-head-size data is the most interesting and conclusive thus far.” He chews his fish. “If I got paid by the word, I’d be a rich man.” He has the supple, overconfident voice of a panelist from the Texaco Opera Quiz.

“Jack here gets paid by the word,” says Bill, “and that word is
Next?
” Perhaps Bill could adroitly switch the subject away from nuclear devastation and steer it toward national health plans. Would that be an improvement? He remembers once asking Lina what kind of medicine Jack practiced. “Oh, he’s a gynecological surgeon,” she said dismissively. “Something to do with things dropping into the vagina.” She gave a shudder. “I don’t like to think about it.”

Things dropping into the vagina
. The word
things
had for some reason made Bill think of tables and chairs, or, even more glamorously, pianos and chandeliers, and he has now come to see Jack as a kind of professional mover: the Allied Van Lines of the OB-GYN set.

“After all this time, Bill is still skeptical about doctors,” Jack now says.

“I can see that,” says Stanley.

“I once had the wrong tonsil removed,” says Bill.

“Are you finding a difference between Hiroshima and Nagasaki?” persists Lina.

Stanley turns and looks at her. “That’s interesting that you should ask that. You know, Hiroshima was a uranium bomb and Nagasaki a plutonium. And the fact is, we’re finding more damaging results from the uranium.”

Lina gasps and puts down her fork. She turns and looks in an alarmed way at Stanley, studying, it seems, the condition of his face, the green-brown shrapnel of his dried acne cysts, like lentils buried in the skin.

“They used two different kinds of bombs?” she says.

“That’s right,” says Stanley.

“You mean, all along, right from the start, this was just an experiment? They designed it explicitly right from the beginning, as
something to study
?” Blood has rushed to her face.

Stanley grows a little defensive. He is, after all, one of the studiers. He shifts in his chair. “There are some very good books written on the subject. If you don’t understand what happened regarding Japan during World War Two, you would be well advised to read a couple of them.”

“Oh, I see. Then we could have a better conversation,” says Lina. She turns away from Stanley and looks at Albert.

“Children, children,” murmurs Albert.

“World War Two,” says Debbie. “Wasn’t that the war to end all wars?”

“No, that was World War One,” says Bill. “By World War Two, they weren’t making any promises.”

Stanley will not relent. He turns to Lina again. “I have to say, I’m surprised to see a Serbian, in a matter of foreign policy, attempting to take the moral high ground,” he says.

“Stanley, I used to like you,” says Lina. “Remember when you were a nice guy? I do.”

“I do, too,” says Bill. “There was that whole smiling, handing-out-money thing he used to do.”

Bill feels inclined to rescue Lina. This year, she has been through a lot. Just last spring, the local radio station put her on a talk show and made her answer questions about Bosnia. In attempting to explain what was going on in the former Yugoslavia, she said, “You have to think about what it might mean for Europe to have a nationalist, Islamic state,” and “Those fascist Croats,” and “It’s all very complicated.” The next day, students boycotted her classes and picketed her office with signs that read
GENOCIDE IS NOT ‘COMPLICATED’
and
REPENT, IMPERIALIST
. Lina had phoned Bill at his office. “You’re a lawyer. They’re hounding me. Aren’t these students breaking a law? Surely, Bill, they are breaking a law.”

“Not really,” said Bill. “And believe me, you wouldn’t want to live in a country where they were.”

“Can’t I get a motion to strike? What is that? I like the way it sounds.”

“That’s used in pleadings or in court. That’s not what you want.”

“No, I guess not. From them, I just want no more motion. Plus, I want to strike them. There’s nothing you can do?”

“They have their rights.”

“They understand nothing,” she said.

“Are you okay?”

“No. I banged up the fender parking my car, I was so upset. The headlight fell out, and even though I took it into the car place, they couldn’t salvage it.”

“You’ve gotta keep those things packed in ice, I think.”

“These
cheeldren
, good God, have no conception of the world. I am well known as a pacifist and resister; I was the one last year in Belgrade, buying gasoline out of Coke bottles, hiding a boy from the draft, helping to organize the protests and the radio broadcasts and the rock concerts. Not them. I was the one standing there with the crowd, clapping and chanting beneath Milosevic’s window: ‘Don’t count on us.’ ” Here Lina’s voice fell into a deep Slavic singsong. “Don’t count on us. Don’t count on us.” She paused dramatically. “We had T-shirts and posters. That was no small thing.”