The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (39 page)

I say this because among the other things I inherited from him, the insomnia is unfortunately one of them. He used to say he was lucky to have it because he got to own more of the day than anyone else and loved the mysterious quiet of the deep night. I do not, but that is not important to this story which, in an important way, hinges on one sleepless night I experienced not long ago.

I think he had a lover once but even now cannot be sure. I would never in a million years ask my mother however because she loved him very much and since he died, has spent the years sifting her memories of him through some kind of benevolent strainer that leaves her with only happy or sadly-sweet memories of their life together.

The reason why I mention this lover is because of my father’s one real peculiarity: he was an absolute dandy when it came to clothes. He spent thousands and thousands of dollars on them and was never satisfied with what he had. Never. Gray suits, blue suits, gray-blue suits. A tie rack that took up one whole door of his custom-made closet. A closet that was so off-limits to us kids that even the thought of going near it gave us the shivers. When I learned German in school, I realized the only word that properly applied to my father’s closet was VERBOTEN. “Forbidden” has too many soft, sissy sounds in it.

He went to Europe once a year on business for a few weeks. A month or two after he returned, big beautifully wrapped boxes from places like Charvet or Hilditch and Key would arrive at the door, full of silk ties or cotton shirts white and thick as milk. A suit? He bought suits, plural. He knew half the salesmen at Paul Stuart and I’m sure had one of the first charge cards from Brooks Brothers.

Clothes didn’t mean anything to us kids except now and then we absolutely had to have the exact same sneakers that Bob Cousy or Willie Naulls wore on the basketball court. Other than that, if our Dad owned a million sweaters, so what? So what if Mom’s closet was half the size of his, or that she regularly tsk’d her tongue whenever he came into the house with another shoe box under his arm, looking vaguely naughty but at the same time hugely pleased? If I were to ask her about this today, my mother would smile and say “Your father’s only vice—new suits. Give him a new suit and he was happy for a month.”

But it’s not that simple. I have my own children now and what worries me most about them is what they will remember twenty years from now that I wish like hell they’d forget. I know from my own experience children remember nothing logical or momentous so much as things quirky and appropriate to their personalities. When I was nine I saw a man run over right in front of me, but that’s just a lot of vague, unpleasant images now. What I really remember down to the last detail these many years later was going to my first New York Yankees baseball game with Dad and because it was cold, keeping my hands in his overcoat pocket the whole time. That was also the first time I ever tasted coffee because he said it would warm me up. I can still feel the warmth of it on the edge of the paper cup.

It’s the old adage about giving a child a present: it doesn’t matter how wonderful or expensive it is because if the child is very young, they’ll like the box more than the present. Give them the biggest Christmas ever, but when they’re grown they’ll remember only how hard the marzipan was in their Christmas stocking that morning.

Normally my father was a calm, solid fellow. But when he was preparing for his trip to Europe, he raced around the house all in a flurry for two or three days before he left. All of us tried to stay out of his way as much as possible because he was like a train that’s gone too fast and is almost out of control. I used to think his flurrying was because he was harried and edgy about his trip, but now I’m not so sure. What I remember most distinctly was the collective sigh of relief we’d all breathe when he was finally out the door and we had the house to ourselves again. Not that we wanted him to go—just that we wanted that
part
of him gone. We knew when he returned he’d be our old Dad and pal again and things would be well until next year’s trip.

I am the only one of the men in our family who looks like my father. It is startling how over the years I have come to resemble him more and more. At forty-five I have the same kind of wrinkles, same slight smile, the same head of peppery brown hair that he had until the day he died. Not to mention the insomnia. And I’m glad of that because I liked my father very much. I liked his manner and the way he thought about the world, the way he dealt with his often-rowdy household. But now I think I know something that makes me like him even more. It is not the sort of thing you are supposed to either know or like about your father. Yet I do and it makes me smile. The secret sharer. However I am not one hundred percent sure that it is the truth or if there is even a glimmer of the truth in it, but I like to think so.

Several months ago I was in Vienna for a medical conference. I don’t like to travel and even the lure of a piano recital at the Konzerthaus there did little to wipe the frown off my lips when I picked up my bag and headed out the front door of the house. So unlike my father in this, I approach any trip like others do battle.

I was staying at the Sacher Hotel as you are supposed to do if you’re only going to be in Vienna once in your life. Unfortunately with the combination of the insomnia and jet lag, I found myself up half the nights I was there either prowling the streets or finding myself at whatever open bars I could find in that quiet town, with an unwanted drink in front of me and a desperate longing to close my eyes and rest for a few merciful hours.

Halfway through the conference I found myself sitting at the Sacher bar very late one night drinking alone and wishing for the thousandth time I could either go upstairs to sleep or go home.

With my back to the door, I only saw people when they were all the way into room. Since I wasn’t watching too carefully, I didn’t see or hear her until she had said his name and put her small hand on my shoulder.

I have left out something very important. When my father died four years ago at a very contented seventy-nine, my mother asked if I would like his wardrobe. My brothers thought I was out of my mind (or at least ghoulish) when I said yes. I felt it both an honor and a gift of great import to own and continue to wear such beautiful things. I knew I would appreciate them for the rest of my life and psychiatrists be damned, wearing my father’s clothes made me feel like I had been given some of the great style I had always admired him for as I grew older and could appreciate it.

I was wearing one of his Henry Poole suits that night in the Sacher bar. A favorite gray flannel that was cut just so that he always took with him when he went to Europe because, Mother said, he felt like the king of the world in it.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and a woman’s voice, tentative and sweet, said my father’s name the way the French pronounce it “On Ree?”

The voice both asked a question and made a kind of frightened statement at the same time. I turned, not knowing what to expect. What I saw was a woman of about sixty-five, striking and stately and apparently from some Eastern European country because when she spoke again it was with a very thick accent. Also her face had those eerily high cheekbones and deep set eyes one sees in photographs of Russian gentry at the turn of the century.

When I turned and faced her completely that marvelous ruined face set into a frightened, almost stunned expression. She was seeing a ghost and she could feel the material of his familiar jacket under her fingertips. Face to face with a part of her past that had suddenly become the very real present with no reason why.

Whatever the case may be, she said his name again, a statement, the whole time staring at me as hard as a human being can stare. Then she said in a dry whisper “But it is
impossible
! You must be more than seventy now. More! Like me! It was forty years ago!”

Her hand was gripping my shoulder now, her fingers digging in. She looked at it there and then at the wonderful suit that made my father feel like a king. Recognition flooded her face, but it was horrendous, impossible stuff.

Before I had a chance to say anything, she snatched her hand away and shaking her head violently from side to side, fled the room.

Had her “On-ree” been my father? Had she touched his suit,
this
suit with love and expectation as they rode in black boxy taxis across London, coming from the theater, going to dinner, the great magical moments of both their lives here now, this evening, however long he could stay with her this time? Later the suit and her clothes on the floor together of a hotel room at Brown’s or the Connaught. Two figures out of the movies we watch now on the Late Show, telling ourselves “God, I wish life was like that!”

I can’t be sure. It is impossible to tell. But what I have been thinking about recently is something more terrible, particularly when I am awake again at three-thirty in the morning and clearer about things than I sometimes like. If she did believe it was my father that night, or even some other Henry she had known and loved long ago, then all of the rites and rituals of the world she had gone by for all of her long life were suddenly and irrevocably wrong. The kind of sacred mysteries we must avoid because they are monstrous. Mysteries, like lost sleep, that leave us hopelessly alone in the middle of the night with too many hours of shadow and silence to bear.

K
ROPIK WAS EATING A
liverwurst sandwich when the kid came in. No more than seventeen, the boy had the obnoxious look of someone too smart for his own good. A wiseguy but no wise guy. He marched right through the open door and stopped in the middle of the nondescript office. Two windows, two large filing cabinets, two brown wastebaskets, two dented and scratched green/brown metal desks. On the wall was a photograph of the most recent President of the United States.

The boy looked slowly around, as if trying to decide whether or not to buy the place.

Kropik dabbed delicately at his small round mouth with a white paper napkin and folded it carefully into quarters before dropping it into a wastebasket next to his desk. Plus the kid had red hair. If there was one thing Kropik didn’t like, it was red hair.

“I found you!”

“You certainly did.”

“I cannot fucking believe it! This place is a rumor, a myth. But here I
am,
I’m actually here!”

Kropik disliked that kind of language but refrained from protesting. Red hair and a dirty mouth. What a distressing combination. Embarrassed, he looked at his half-eaten sandwich. Liverwurst and Bermuda onion. Creating a good liverwurst sandwich was a modest feat but a satisfying one nevertheless. The secret was in knowing the correct brand of German mustard to use and the exact width of the onion slice—

“So. I made it. Now what?”

“How did you find us?”

The boy crossed his arms and smiled “I have my ways.” One could almost smell his smugness wafting across the room.

“We
are
in the phone book. You only have to look us up. We’re also on the Internet under governmental offices. It’s just that few people bother.”

That took the wind out of the boy’s sails. And how
would
one define the precise color of that awful hair? More orange than red, it was the color of a carrot left in the refrigerator too long. Exactly! Dead carrot red.

“There wasn’t even a name on the door or anything.”

“People find us if they want to. We’re a government agency. It just takes a little looking.”

“I found you.”

Always the diplomat, Kropik smiled warmly. “You certainly did.”

Suddenly the boy seemed at a loss for words. People who came to this room were often speechless. Or exhausted. Angry. Hysterical. Rarely calm. In fact few calm people entered this place besides Kropik and Aoyagi. But both of them were employees so
they
didn’t count.

“I don’t remember my mother. She died when I was really young.”

Kropik stood up and shuffled over to a filing cabinet across the room. He wore a pair of tartan wool bedroom slippers from LL Bean which looked enough like street shoes to pass for street shoes, or so he thought. In truth he looked like an old man shlumping around in a pair of shabby bedroom slippers. But then again, he
was
an old man and didn’t pretend otherwise. Unlike his office mate Aoyagi with his “Grecian Formula” hair dye and gold doodad charm hanging from the effeminate gold chain around his neck. Aoyagi was still trying to be a swinger, but even a word like that in Kropik’s active vocabulary defined what decade he came from.

“Don’t you want to know my name?”

“We already know.”

In surprise, the boy’s mouth twitched open and then quickly closed. He knew where he was but still couldn’t hide his shock that the old geezer knew who he was without having to ask. “I just thought—”

Already fingering through files in the cabinet, Kropik held up a hand to stop him. “Details aren’t necessary. It’s all known.” His favorite sentence. Forty years on the job but still he never tired of saying those three words. Enjoyed seeing the look on people’s faces after he said them because the reactions varied so greatly. Some swallowed like characters in a cartoon. You could see their Adam’s apple swell to the size of a Ping-Pong ball and move slowly up and down. All that was needed was a balloon over their head with the word “GULP!” written in it to complete the picture. Or they looked away, acutely embarrassed to realize there were no secrets in this office. Everything was known. Remember that time in the bathroom when you thought you were alone? Or that inspired (albeit illegal) trick you pulled with your mother’s will? The dubious tax return, the secret bank account, the XXX Internet addresses in Amsterdam you dialed up at midnight when you thought no one was watching? Forget it; someone
was
watching. Your worst dream just came true. And how! Those were the people who looked away. The Realizers. In a blaze of ugly trumpeting light they realized that finding this office might help in one way, but was also going to flatten them in another.