I'm a Stranger Here Myself (28 page)

We’ve been back in the States for nearly two and a half years now, if you can believe it (and even, come to that, if you can’t), so you would think I would be getting the hang of things by now, but no. The intricacies of modern American life still often leave me muddled. Things are so awfully complicated here, you see.

I had occasion to reflect on this the other week when I went to pick up a rental car at the airport in Boston, and the clerk, after logging every number that has ever been associated with me and taking imprints from several credit cards, said: “Do you want Third-Party Liability Waiver Damage Exclusion Coverage?”

“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. “What is it?”

“It provides coverage in the event of a Second-Party Waiver Indemnification Claim being made against you, or a First- or Second-Party Exclusion Claim being made by you on behalf of a fourth party twice removed.”

“Unless you’re claiming a First-Party Residual Cross-Over Exemption,” added a man in the line behind me, causing me to spin my head.

“No, that’s only in New York,” corrected the rental car man. “In Massachusetts you can’t claim cross-over exemption unless you have only one leg and are not normally resident in North America for tax purposes.”

“You’re thinking of Second-Party Disallowance Invalidity Coverage,” said the second man in the line to the first. “Are you from Rhode Island?”

“Why, yes I am,” said the first man.

“Then that explains it. You have Variable Double Negative Split-Weighting down there.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” I cried in a small whimper.

“Look,” said the car rental agent, “suppose you crash into a person who has Second-Party Disallowance Invalidity Coverage but not First- and Third-Party Accident Indemnification. If you’ve got Third-Party Waiver Damage Exclusion Coverage, you don’t have to claim on your own policy under the Single-Digit Reverse Liability Waiver. How much Personal Loss Rollover do you carry?”

“I have no idea,” I said.

He stared at me. “You don’t know?” he said.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the other people in the line exchanging amused glances.

“Mrs. Bryson deals with these things,” I explained a trifle inadequately.

“Well, what’s your Baseline Double Footfault Level?”

I gave a small, helpless, please-don’t-hit-me look. “I don’t know.”

He drew in breath in a way that suggested that perhaps I should consider taking a Greyhound. “It sounds to me like you need the Universal Full-Coverage Double Top-Loaded Comprehensive Switchback Plan.”

“With Graduated Death Benefit,” suggested the second person in the line.

“What’s all that?” I asked unhappily.

“It’s all here in the leaflet,” said the clerk. He passed one to me. “Basically, it gives you $100 million of coverage for theft, fire, accident, earthquake, nuclear war, swamp gas explosions, derailment leading to hair loss, meteor impact, and intentional death—so long as they occur simultaneously and providing you give twenty-four hours’ notice in writing and file an Incident Intention Report.”

“How much is it?”

“One hundred and seventy-two dollars a day. But it comes with a set of steak knives.”

I looked to the other people in the line. They nodded.

“OK, I’ll take it,” I said in exhausted resignation.

“Now do you want the Worry-Free Fuel Top-Up Option,” the clerk went on, “or the Fill-It-Yourself Cheap Person’s Option?”

“What’s that?” I asked, dismayed to realize that this hell wasn’t yet over.

“Well, with the Worry-Free Fuel Top-Up Option, you can bring the car back on empty and we will refill the tank for a one-time charge of $32.95. Under the other plan, you fill the tank yourself before returning the car and we put the $32.95 elsewhere on the bill under ‘Miscellaneous Unexplained Charges.’ ”

I consulted with my advisers and took the Worry-Free plan.

The clerk checked the appropriate box. “And do you want the Car Locator Option?”

“What’s that?”

“We tell you where the car is parked.”

“
Take it,
” urged the man nearest me with feeling. “I didn’t take it once in Chicago and spent two and a half days wandering around the airport looking for the damned thing. Turned out it was under a tarpaulin in a cornfield near Peoria.”

And so it went. Eventually, when we had worked our way through two hundred or so pages of complexly tiered options, the clerk passed the contract to me.

“Just sign here, here, and here,” he said. “And initial here, here, here, and here—and over here. And here, here, and here.”

“What am I initialing?” I asked warily.

“Well, this one gives us the right to come to your home and seize one of your children or a nice piece of electronic equipment if you don’t bring the car back on time. This one is your agreement to take a truth serum in the event of a dispute. This one waives your right to sue. This one avows that any damage to the car now or at any time in the future is your responsibility. And this one is a twenty-five dollar donation to Bernice Kowalksi’s leaving party.”

Before I could respond, he whipped away the contract and replaced it on the counter with a map of the airport.

“Now to get to the car,” he continued, drawing on the map as if doing one of those maze puzzles that you find in children’s coloring books, “you follow the red signs through Terminal A to Terminal D2. Then you follow the yellow signs, including the green ones, through the parking ramp to the Sector R escalators. Take the down escalator up to Passenger Assembly Point Q, get on the shuttle marked “Satellite Parking/Mississippi Valley,” and take it to Parking Lot A427-West. Get off there, follow the white arrows under the harbor tunnel, through the quarantine exclusion zone, and past the water filtration plant. Cross runway 22-Left, climb the fence at the far side, go down the embankment, and you’ll find your vehicle parked in bay number 12,604. It’s a red Toro. You can’t miss it.”

He passed me my keys and a large box filled with documents, insurance policies, and other related items.

“And good luck to you,” he called after me.

I never did find the car, of course, and I was hours late for my appointment, but in fairness I have to say that we have had a lot of pleasure from the steak knives.

I have been watching a movie called
Magnificent Obsession
lately. Made in 1954 and starring Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, it is one of those gorgeously mediocre movies they made in abundance in the early 1950s when people would still watch almost anything (as opposed to now when you have to put in lots of fiery explosions and at least one scene involving the hero rappeling down an elevator shaft).

Anyway, if I’ve got it right,
Magnificent Obsession
involves a handsome young racing car driver played by Rock who carelessly causes Ms. Wyman to go blind in a car crash. Rock is so consumed with guilt at this that he goes off and studies eye medicine at the “University of Oxford, England,” or some place, then comes back to Perfectville under an assumed name and dedicates his life to restoring Jane’s sight. Only of course she doesn’t know it’s him on account of she is blind, as well as apparently a little slow with regard to recognizing the voices of people who have left her permanently maimed.

Needless to say, they fall in love and she gets her sight back. The best scene is when Rock removes her bandages and she sputters, “Why, it’s . . .
you
!” and slumps into an extravagant but comely swoon, but unfortunately does not strike her head on the coffee table and lose her vision again, which would have improved the story considerably, if you ask me. Also, Jane has a ten-year-old daughter played by one of those pigtailed, revoltingly precocious child actors of the fifties that you just ache to push out a high window. I expect also Lloyd Nolan is in there somewhere because Lloyd Nolan is always in 1950s movies with parts for doctors.

I may not have all the details right because I have not been watching this movie in order, or even on purpose. I have been watching it because one of our cable channels has shown it at least fifty-four times in the last two months, and I keep coming across it while trawling around looking for something actual to watch.

We get about fifty channels in our house—it is possible on some systems now to get up to two hundred, I believe—so you think at first that you are going to be spoiled for choice, but gradually you come to the conclusion that the idea of the bulk of TV these days is simply to fill up the air with any old junk. I have watched “current affairs” investigations that were ten years old. I have seen Barbara Walters interviewing people who died years ago, and weren’t that interesting to begin with. On this very evening, under the category of “drama,” my cable channel magazine lists as its most sublime and compelling offerings
Matlock
and
Little House on the Prairie.
Tomorrow it recommends
The Waltons
and
Dallas.
The next day it is
Dallas
again and
Murder, She Wrote.

You begin to wonder who watches it all. One of our channels is a twenty-four-hour cartoon network. That there are people out there who wish to watch cartoons through the night is remarkable enough, but what is truly astounding to me is that the channel carries commercials. What could you possibly sell to people who voluntarily watch
Deputy Dawg
at 2:30 A.M.? Bibs?

But perhaps the most mind-numbing feature is that the same programs are shown over and over at the same times each night. Tonight at 9:30 P.M. on Channel 20 we can watch
The Munsters.
Last night at 9:30 P.M. on Channel 20 it was
The Munsters.
Tomorrow night at 9:30 P.M. on Channel 20 it will be—did you guess correctly?—
The Munsters.
Each
Munsters
showing is preceded by an episode of
Happy Days
and followed by an episode of
The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
It has been like this for years, as far as I can tell, and will stay like this forever.

And it is like this on virtually every channel for every time slot. If you turn on the Discovery Channel and find a program on Hollywood stunts (and you will), you can be certain that the next time you turn to the Discovery Channel at the same hour, it will be a program on Hollywood stunts. Probably it will be the same episode.

I have the fondest memories of programs from my childhood that I would adore to see again in small, measured doses—a little
Burns and Allen,
perhaps some
Jack Benny,
a discriminating selection of
Leave It to Beaver
and
Sgt. Bilko,
maybe a little
77 Sunset Strip
and
Wagon Train
for nostalgia’s sake—but I don’t want to watch any of them over and over and over, at the same time each night, and in any case I won’t because the best of the old programs seem curiously forgotten and unavailable. I just don’t understand it.

No doubt the fault is mine. When I left America I had never lived in a household that received more than four channels. In England, for the next twenty years, it was four channels again. So it may be simply that I have not developed the skills necessary to deal with such a multiplicity of choice. Then again it may be that it’s just all crap.

What I can tell you is that with so many channels to choose from, and nearly all of them interrupted every few minutes by commercials, you don’t actually watch anything. As a friend recently explained to me, you don’t watch television here to see what is on, you watch it to see what else is on. And the one thing to be said for American TV is that there is always something else on. You can trawl infinitely. By the time you have reached the fiftieth channel you have forgotten what was on the first, so you start the cycle again in the forlorn hope that you might find something absorbing this time through.

I’d love to go on, but I must leave you now. I notice that
Magnificent Obsession
is about to start, and I really would like to see Jane Wyman lose her sight. It’s the best part. Besides, I keep thinking that if I watch long enough Lloyd Nolan will shove that little girl out an upstairs window.