Vacation (17 page)

I recall one day when the man sat down on a bench and I stayed behind a wall so he wouldn’t see me. I had to lean over somewhat. I could see the toe of one of his shoes. He had one leg crossed over the other. He bounced it now and then. That’s his shoe, I thought. It doesn’t matter if the rest of my life is falling apart. I’m taking care of that shoe.

I felt connected to him and who knows that I wasn’t? He could be related to me for all I know. He could be my brother. He could have once been my lover during my early crazy days. You never know. We could be married somehow, some mistake could have occurred on the marriage certificate, like a baby being switched at birth—that could have happened—so that during those few months my real husband had been escorting me while the phony stayed at home.

SPOKE

I’ll tell you another thing I notice about my country. The chickens sleep in the trees here. I had forgotten that and then I remembered it at my grandmother’s. Each evening the chickens follow each other around and around the yard. The head chicken directs. And when the hour of nightfall approaches, they all follow the head chicken up a little staircase into the tree. That’s fine with me, everybody’s got to have someone in the lead.

There were the expectorants she may have objected to—semen, drool, pus, piss.

Agriculture. Myers wasn’t a nature man, if she wanted that.

His autograph, his hair, other components of style. Payday proper as well as investments, potential for growth, sexual habits. She no longer loved him, had not maybe for years, and he would never know why. He didn’t want to be alive anymore, didn’t care, hadn’t cared about anything but her in a long time—and Gray.

The hotel people would coming back this way. He’d better figure out where this Corn Island was and get moving.

Corn Island. Pink-shelled, sandy, spotlit. Myers imagined it: himself, hunchbacked, folded, Gray nearby. But here Myers was, without credit cards, without much cash, down one arm—could he walk there from here? He didn’t know which way it was, he didn’t know how to get out of this rickety town, how to scoot around the perimeter and avoid the brick-dumb hotel intelligence. He wasn’t exactly inconspicuous. But look here, he still had his briefcase and within it the guidebook. A man with a book like that is a man with a place to be.

SPOKE

It’s a pretty neat trick the way those chickens go into the tree. My grandmother was working on it when I arrived. She said that the night before somebody had come along and tried to steal one of her chickens. She woke in the night and looked out and saw a man coming down the road under the moon, a dark figure against the pale landscape. He stopped under her tree. Or next to the tree, really. It’s a small tree, so the chickens don’t have to climb too high. The man stopped and reached in to grab a chicken. But the chicken put up a fuss. He left it and shuffled off.

Myers slid down the wall, propped the guidebook open on his lap.

Getting there was going to be easy street, as they say. It would be what they call a snap. All he had to do, the book said, was first get to a place called Bluefields. It’s on the Atlantic coast. What? How was he going to do that? No, no, it was no problem. All he had to do was first find the lake, which was around here somewhere, then get a boat that would take him across it, meanwhile passing four or five more most beautiful islands in the world, according to the guidebook—even though Corn Island was the
most
beautiful, out on a sea, after all, which had to be better than a lake. And, well, he might not be able to get across in one boat, he might have to take a couple, a few—five at most, or six—to get him through that lake. No direct rides. All he had to do was take a boat, then another boat, then another and another, as many as it took, then a bus would take him to a town, then—oh, get this—
another
boat would take him down a river to Bluefields and from there he didn’t know. The guidebook didn’t say how to get from the last town to the most beautiful island in the world, and it was a stretch, you could see from the map, a mess of ocean, a hell of a lot of water between the last documented spot and the most beautiful island in the world.

Myers had a question, if you don’t mind. Had anyone actually
been
on this island? Were there any
witnesses
?

THE WIFE’S CONFESSION (PART VII)

Of course I couldn’t carry on like that forever. Each night I came home and lied to my husband, stood flat-footed through our standoffs, slammed the closest door. I lied to the people at work, shunned friends. I grew more alone and deceitful each day. And it wasn’t normal, what
I was doing, I knew that. If anyone saw what I was up to, they might call the madhouse. They might call the police. And you know what else?
I still wasn’t happy, not at all.

The fallout began to fall. I tried to force myself to stop. I made myself go straight home, stare at what I was supposed to, eat what was at hand, but the next day, cursing myself, hating myself, I was back.

Just one more day, I told myself each day, leaving my office early (again), hurrying to his office before he slipped out. That’s it now,
I swore to myself, arriving home at ten to my indignant husband. That was the last time, I said to myself. But the next day I went on.

Once as I rushed up the street after him, I caught a glimpse of myself in a window. I was wearing a black raincoat and I had an umbrella under my arm. I was scuttling—this is the only way to say it. I was like a cartoon scuttling up the street in a smock. It took me a moment to recognize myself and when I did, I felt drastic, crazy. I hurried on.

SPOKE

The next night she went out to protect her chickens. She waited in the dark for the man to come back. Meanwhile I came walking down the path because it happened to be the same night I was arriving from my foreign land to see my relations for the first time in twenty years. I was swaggering. I was looking at myself. I could see myself—even my shadow was strutting, because I was coming home like a son of the Bible, looking for welcome and ready with my tale. I was imagining them seeing me and the tearful reunion I’d have and how I would later relate it to my child or wife, if I ever had any. I would tell them about that starred night I showed up at my grandmother’s many years after I’d left and gone to a country where my words grew confused and I forgot what was home and never remembered again. I came walking down the path in the dark and I could see my grandmother’s lean form outside.

She came into the path, pointed a mop.

Stop right there, she said. Don’t think I don’t know who you are.

No, no, there will be transport, the guidebook assured. He just had to show up in Bluefields and say, Where’s this Corn Island, the most beautiful island anyone ever heard of? I could use something like that just now, I really could.

Which Corn Island do you want? they would say.

Which! For crying out loud. There’s more than one of the damn things?

All right, yes, the guidebook admitted. There are two. But Myers wanted the bigger one, of course, because what is better—a bigger most beautiful island or a smaller?

THE WIFE’S CONFESSION (PART VIII)

I knew from the beginning that anyone who could leave a home as evenly as he had could leave a new home too. He could disappear the same way he had come, and that would be the end of it. It was likely to happen no matter what I did.

I began to dread it. I wasn’t sure I could bear it if he left. I decided I would leave when he did. I’d step out of this wrong life I had made and into a new one. I’d follow him right out of town. I figured I would have some indication, some warning of his intention, a suitcase in his hand perhaps, but if not, it didn’t matter. I was determined not to lose him. At that point I was following him with the persistence and intensity of the noonday sun. And I could go on forever this way. But I knew, even as I formulated this plan, that it was ridiculous, absurd. I didn’t care. I bid farewell to my husband in my head. I kept some gum in my purse for the ride.

People do things like this, they
do
, and if it doesn’t make them happy, at least it keeps them alive.

One day I followed him into the bus terminal.

Myers looked up from the guidebook. What was that noise? Were they coming back? He listened. Not yet, but it was time to make his move.

He wasn’t going to be able to lug much. He’d lost most of it already. The hotel personnel left to hold down the hotel were probably this minute going through his suitcase. He didn’t need all those belongings anyway, all those coats and whatever he had there, a suit for God’s sake, and that hat, all that cloth carried over land and water. Still, he hated the idea of their opening the suitcase, shaking out the winter coat, holding it up in confusion. Was there something wrong with this fellow (tap to the forehead) upstairs? Is it any wonder he didn’t pay his bill?

SPOKE

So my reunion turned out to be awkward, what with my being almost attacked with a stick and run off the land like a goat. Then my relations thought I spoke funny, though they tried to be polite. They all had the same question. They all wanted to know, if I loved them so much, why hadn’t I come back sooner? All the other boys had come back years ago.

What took
you
so goddamn long to come home? they said.

THE WIFE’S CONFESSION (PART IX)

He went into the bus station, bought a ticket. I didn’t want to lose him in line so I would buy mine on board. I waited for him outside the men’s room, then wandered behind while he strolled to the gate. My hands were shaking. My vision was blurred. I followed him up to the last moment but when he set his foot on the bottom step of the bus,
I fell back. I watched him go. The bus pulled away. Who knows why he went.

I remained.

Because that, it turns out, is who I am.

I lack the courage it takes to go after whatever disastrous thing it is that I want and the fortitude to accept gracefully the bad choices I’ve made. Leaving, staying, it’s all too hard. I’m still walking around these same places. I am itinerant but steadfast. It takes bravery to care for someone—no matter who he is or what made him, whether he is weak or walking or jumping out of windows. The risk involved is enormous.

As for him, the fact is he had gotten on the same bus he had come in on. Maybe everyone goes back. We chase the thing we flee.

After he left, I don’t want to say I moved like a shadow over the face of the earth or be as dramatic or as religious as that, though it was like that. I was still married, it turned out. I was practically not married, that’s how new it was, and if anyone tells you it’s easy to fake love, well, let me tell you, you cannot know the emptiness of my world those first few months. The city was nothing but an enormous unfolded newspaper. And there was this husband that needed caring for and a job to be gone to and got from. There was the purchase of objects and the consuming of them. One can watch the screen to feel numb.

Most people have about as much as that, I think.

What did Myers even need from this briefcase? He didn’t need the laptop anymore with the precious projects on it, just electronic stains and punctuation marks, a black-smudged screen. A man needed to be covered up, of course, and he seemed to be that. Jelled items having to do with cleanliness and presentation, especially around the face and mouth, would be useful, and a few other small things he had here.

He put the laptop on the ground.

SPOKE

The next day my grandmother decided she needed a taller tree to keep the chickens safe, so she built a new staircase going up a taller tree, and she dismantled the old staircase leading to the shorter tree. But at sunset she couldn’t get the head chicken to go into the new tree. The chicken stood by the old one squawking. This isn’t surprising. Nobody knows a new home. My grandmother took a broom and chased the chickens around with it while I watched from the porch. She raised masses of dust. Finally the head chicken found the new staircase, mounted it, first one step, then another. The chicken looked around. She went up a third step. She called to the others, and one by one they all followed her up into the new tree.

Ahoy, Myers,

I’m waiting. Did you come yesterday? I thought I saw you but you left too fast for me to step on your tail and hold you here. I can’t find the airport here in paradise. I can’t find the exit ramp, the elevator down. There seems to be no trapdoor, no fire escape, no knob to rattle. Come get me. I’m ready. I want to go home.

Gray

So with only briefcase, his other final belongings gone (he’d never miss his coats, the raincoat, he’d always despised it, and the heavy wool one, he’d always despised it too, and the suitcase, so what, papers, a pile of clothing) (Myers looked out the gate, the street was unpeopled both ways)—