The Cloud of Unknowing (2 page)

Lou had a coupon for the El Morocco Motel. The sun was already low when they checked in and the day hadn't been warm, but Jonathan and Kitty were in the pool by the time Lou got out of his shower. He went outside and sat on a lounge chair in the astroturfed courtyard with a newspaper he'd taken from the lobby. First Jonathan, then Kitty climbed out and stood on the lip of the pool holding their noses. Jonathan counted one-two-three and they jumped, upright and stiff-legged, back into the water, then climbed out and jumped in again. The sun sank below the cement wall and the underwater lights came on, casting the children's faces in a cathode glow as they paddled back and forth.

Lou wished now that he'd tried harder to convince Helena to come with them to Florida, but she'd said she was too busy—substitute teaching, waitressing at a coffee shop. That was Helena: serious and self-sufficient. She'd refused his financial help when she moved out. Well, he hadn't explicitly offered any, but only because he knew she
would
refuse. And perhaps, a little, because he'd hoped she would become discouraged. Even exhausted, Helena was beautiful—as desirable as ever to him, perhaps more so. He had coaxed her into his—their—bed a few times over the past year, and he hadn't abandoned the idea that he might persuade her to give up her apartment and move back in.

The sky was completely dark when Kitty and Jonathan got out of the pool. They were shivering and their lips were blue, so he made them get into a hot shower. They ate dinner at the coffee shop next to the motel and went back to their room and played a few hands of gin rummy. Lou supervised the flossing
and brushing, tucked the kids in, and turned off all the lights but the one on the nightstand between the two big beds.

“We're going to Disney World tomorrow, right?” asked Jonathan.

“Yes, tomorrow,” Lou said. “Probably tomorrow. If not, then certainly the day after. Now, who is in the mood for a Comrade Borodin story?” he asked, removing his shoes and lying down on the other bed, arms folded behind his head. His mind was already working, and he didn't wait for a reply. “It seems that Comrade Borodin's wife, the beautiful Grushenka—”

“The countess?” interrupted Kitty. “The one who liked to catch flies in her mouth?”

“The
former
countess,” Lou said, remembering that he'd used the name before. “She'd renounced her title, as Comrade Borodin considered the aristocracy to be decadent.”

“Is there a hedgehog in the story?”

“As it happens, yes, there is a hedgehog. Borodin's best friend was a hedgehog named Chauncey. But more of that later. As you will recall, Comrade Borodin worked at the F. Gladkov Main Moscow State Institute of Physical Culture, which is sometimes called simply—”

“Glavmosgosfizkult,” Jonathan said.

“Precisely. Glavmosgosfizkult. One summer, Comrade Borodin's brigade went to the Ural Mountains to construct a hydroelectric power station. In fact, Borodin's brigade had been called away every summer for eight years to some eastern province: a cement factory in Kamchatka one year, the next year a magnesium processing plant on Lake Baikal, and so forth.”

“Dad?”

“Yes, Jonathan?

“Next time you go to Russia, can I go with you?”

“Maybe so. Could be.”

“Dad, what about Chauncey?” mumbled Kitty, already half asleep.

“That was what Grushenka wanted to know—what about Chauncey? Because during these summers, it fell to Grushenka to change Chauncey's litter box and take him for walks.

“‘Dearest Chauncey,' Grushenka would say while they walked, for indeed they had become very close, ‘why does Borodin prefer the companionship of his brigade?'

“‘Ah, but you are wrong, Grushenka,' said the hedgehog. ‘He thinks of you day and night, and even keeps your picture on his footlocker. It is well known that he gazes tenderly at your yellow hair and red cheeks before he falls asleep, so that he may dream of you, and that every day, as he mixes concrete for the foundation of the hydroelectric power station, he whispers the name
Grushenka.'
”

The sheets rustled as Jonathan turned on his side. Lou saw that they were both asleep now. They looked so much alike: the same sharp chins and messy, shoulder-length hair—as dark as his, but straight and fine as corn silk, like Helena's. Kitty had on her brother's old tiger-striped pajamas, the ones she'd worn for Halloween last fall. She'd invented a mythological creature with the pajamas and a rabbit-fur hat and a face mask of a mouse that she'd picked out at the drug store. As Lou undressed, switched out the light, and lay down again on his own bed, he thought about another story.

She was nineteen years old when they met, and already a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where she'd enrolled in the college at age fifteen. He was studying on the GI Bill. She'd been looking for a Russian tutor, and they'd given her his name at the department. She came to his basement apartment on Drexel Avenue—shy and quiet, a sylph in a peasant skirt. He told her to memorize Tatiana's letter to Onegin.
When she returned the next week, they sat on orange crates in his room, and she recited for him in halting Russian:

       
I write this to you—what would one want?

       
What else is there that I could say?

       
'Tis now, I know, within your will

       
To punish me with scorn.

       
But you, for my unhappy lot

       
Keeping at least one drop of pity,

       
You'll not abandon me.

In the morning they spread out Jonathan's map on the table in the coffee shop. “Look at this,” Lou said, “we're only ten miles from Cypress Gardens!”

“But that's the opposite direction from Disney World,” Jonathan said.

“I think we have a coupon for Cypress Gardens.” He looked through his billfold. “Indeed we do; two free passes. We can leave Kitty in the car.”

“Daddy!”

“All right, I guess I can pick this one up. You got the hockey tickets.” Lou had been saying this for years. “You got the hockey tickets,” he'd say as he put a dime in the turnstile or paid for their pizza or handed over their tickets at the movie theater.

“It's a garden, Daddy?” Kitty asked. “A flower garden?”

“Flowers of every hue. And Spanish moss.”

“I don't want to look at moss!” Jonathan protested. “I thought we were going to Disney World today.”

“Well, I don't think we should be too rigid. Let the wind take us where it will, right?
Drifting along with the tumbling tumbleweeds
.”

They spent all morning at Cypress Gardens. Actresses in antebellum dresses fanned themselves on rustic footbridges. They saw a waterskiing exhibition, and then Lou took a picture of the kids sitting on a bench on a carpet-covered platform in front of a painted plywood backdrop that said “Citrus Royalty.” It all reminded Lou a bit of strolling the grounds in a faded European spa town: Marienbad, with an overlay of all-American bunkum.

Lou hoped they could find a cheap place for lunch, perhaps a roadside hamburger stand. But after driving for an hour, he gave up and pulled into the parking lot of the Seminole Diner, a sprawling new building clad in sheet metal and pebbled stone-face. Out of habit, he steered them to a booth that hadn't been cleared off yet and swiped a few onion rings off a plate before a scowling waitress snatched it away.

“Who's in the mood for a tuna sandwich?” he said.

Jonathan leaned his elbows on the table and scrutinized the menu. “I want a Monte Cristo.”

“I don't think you'd like it,” Lou said, hoping to redirect him to something less expensive. “They're usually made with tongue. Fried pig's tongue.”

“That's not what it says here. ‘Danish ham and cheese, served on French toast and dusted with powdered sugar.'”

“We could go back and forth on this all day. How about a tuna sandwich? That's what I'm having. What about you, Kitty? What looks good?”

“When can we call Mommy?” she asked.

“Why don't we wait a day or two and then call her when we have something interesting to tell her? Or you could write her a postcard. I'll bet she'd love that. Now, what do you want to eat?”

“Can I have French toast?”

“French toast it is.”

“How come she gets to have French toast and I can't have a Monte Cristo?”

“For chrissake. Have a Monte Cristo, then.”

Jonathan only picked at his sandwich when it arrived. While poring over the menu, he had overlooked the fact that it came with jelly, which he didn't like. Lou gave Jonathan his coleslaw and ate the rest of the Monte Cristo himself.

A few miles south of Interstate 4 they stopped at a filling station. While their gas was being pumped, Lou got out to see if he could find a better map.

“Dad,” said Jonathan, who had followed him inside, “don't get mad, okay?”

“What is it?”

“You have to promise not to get mad first.”

“All right, I promise. I promise I won't get mad.”

“I'm hungry. Can you buy me these?” He held up a packet of neon-orange crackers.

Lou took the crackers from Jonathan and looked at the package. Milk solids, palm oil, monosodium glutamate. Junk. He sighed and handed them back. “You're really hungry?”

“Yes, really, I am. I'm really hungry.”

Lou spotted a cardboard box next to the cash register filled with little paper sacks. He picked one up; the bottom half of the sack was transparent with grease.

“Boiled peanuts,” the attendant said as the cash drawer sprang open. “Wife makes 'em.”

“Boiled peanuts! Now that's something you won't find in Cambridge. Let's get a bag of boiled peanuts instead of these.” He took the crackers out of Jonathan's hand and put them back. “Where's your sister?”

Kitty was standing in front of the soda machine with the door open, tugging at a bottle.

“Daddy, can I have an orange soda?” she asked.

Lou pretended not to hear her. She followed them back to the car with her fists jammed in the pockets of her windbreaker, dragging her sneakers along the pavement, and got in next to Lou. There was a dispute about whose turn it was to sit in front. Jonathan and Kitty had agreed to switch off at each stop, but they'd neglected to agree on what constituted a stop, and since it had only been twenty minutes since they left the Seminole Diner, Kitty didn't think the gas station should count. She put up a half-hearted fight before climbing over the seat.

As they pulled out of the station, Jonathan popped a boiled peanut in his mouth and spat it out the window. “Blekh. This tastes like a boiled
toe.
”

“God damn it, Jonathan. You want to come with me next summer, and you won't eat a bag of peanuts? What do you think we eat over there? French toast and orange soda? If you want to spend two months in the Soviet Union, you'd better be prepared to live on cabbage soup and black bread.”

Jonathan stared ahead angrily, clutching the greasy bag in both hands.

“It's all right,” Lou said after a bit. “Pass them over here.” He tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth. It actually was a little like chewing on boiled toes. He swallowed the mouthful and put the bag down on the console.

He heard a sniffle from the back seat.

“Kitty, you can switch with Jonathan after the next stop,” he said.

“I don't care.”

“Are you mad at Daddy about the orange soda?”

“You said we were going to call Mommy.”

“I said we could call her in a few days, Kitty. We can't be calling Mommy every time you get mad.”

She threw herself down on the seat and began crying in earnest—howling sobs that Lou couldn't ignore. He pulled onto
the shoulder, got out of the car, walked around, and opened the back door. She was curled up with her face buried in the seat back. “Why don't we go for a walk, Kitty?” He held out his hand for her. “Let's stretch our legs.” Kitty climbed out, and they walked along the road for a bit. The sun had finally broken through, and bits of crushed shell glinted in the light-colored gravel. On both sides of the road were orange groves behind high page wire fencing.

“Daddy, I don't want to live in Florida,” Kitty said when she'd calmed down. “Mommy won't like that house, and I want to stay in Cambridge with Mommy.”

“Oh, Kitty. That was a joke.”

“We were tricking the lady?” She looked up at Lou. Her face, blotchy from crying, still registered uncertainty.

“We were tricking the lady. We're going to Disney World, and maybe we're going to see the ocean, and then we'll get on a plane and go back to Cambridge.”

“We aren't keeping the car?”

“Of course not! That was a joke, too. We'll ride our bikes when we get home, just like always.”