I Hate to Leave This Beautiful Place Read online

  As for Reeds Lake in the summertime, its nocturnal waters, moonlight, starlight, and especially the trumpeter swans ghosting along the hull of the paddle-wheel steamer, seldom failed to provide a reprieve from a fifteen-year-old’s operatic despairs. Also, I found it was a place where I could think things through. Not that I ever succeeded in thinking anything through to perfect clarity, or even usefulness, but I was aware of trying to. In essence I went to the lake to think. And to slip into the water and dog-paddle a few yards behind the swans, I suppose daring them to turn and unfold with startling velocity those S-curved necks and strike me with their beaks. That had happened only once, when I was caught unawares, daydreaming at night near the paddle wheeler, and a swan was right there and it was too late to swim away or dive underwater. For a week I had a bruise risen black-and-blue above my right eye. I might’ve been blinded by a swan, which would at least have been unique. Apart from that skirmish, I always had the rarest sense of a peaceful heart at Reeds Lake. Yet the most magical times for me were whenever enough gulls—they migrated from Lake Michigan—gathered on the paddle wheeler, so that the shifting weight of them would make the boat begin to turn, if only a foot or two at most. I always hated to leave that place. Every time, I hated to leave.

  After studying North American Indian Waterfowl Traps, Weirs, and Snares for five or six nights in a row, I felt prepared to apply my one-book scholarship to the real thing. At a hardware store I purchased strips of balsa wood, framing wood, nails, twine, and a length of window screen for the trap’s walls (my use of the wire screen was cheating a little in authenticity). Water weeds, for camouflage, I found at Reeds Lake. There I was, waist-deep in the water at about two A.M., the lake misting, completing the construction of a trap. Given my limited carpentry skills, focus and intent were not enough; the result was less trap than contraption. Still, I situated it just beneath the paddle wheeler and fixed it to a splintered part of the hull with twine. When I first entered the water, ten or so mallards scooted off, honking in alarm. I placed “duck pellets” and bread crusts on a small platform inside the trap and retreated a dozen yards, sinking until I was neck-deep in water. From there I kept the trap under surveillance, vaguely aware of a pair of swans off to my left that appeared to be sleeping, heads tucked into back feathers, all exquisiteness in their moonlight repose.

  Soon the mallards cautiously drew close to me. At such proximity, they were, in the intricacies of their plumage, surprisingly lovely. The expressiveness of their muttering, gargling, and quick nostril-fluting, the repertoire of coded signals, was hypnotic. I suppose I was lost in all of that when, quite suddenly, a swan reared back, water fantailing in moonlit droplets from its wings spread full width, then lurched forward, emitting a kind of choking hiss, hell-bent on destruction. In its approach the swan sent the mallards packing, then darted out its head directly into the trap, lifted it up, and finally wore it like a fencer’s protective mask. Caught like that, the swan went berserk, violently shaking its head and neck back and forth, attempting to disengage itself from the trap.

  However much I was taking this all in, I hardly expected the swan to have the sheer strength to push the trap underwater in the direction of the paddle wheeler, and in a few moments I grew terrified because it hadn’t surfaced again. I didn’t know whether to wait it out or swim over and in some sort of adrenaline rush attempt to intervene—how would a person even do that with a swan? I should not have thought but acted, because all motion had stopped: the swan was now visibly floating, but drowned.

  Back to the evening when I sat on the basement stairs talking to Paris Keller. I told her about the letters I was writing. I don’t know why I did that. Perhaps her sheer presence, the bold, natural way she had exposed her breasts, turned the laundry room into a confessional. Perhaps I wanted her to think I was interesting in some way, that I had depths. “You put them in envelopes and put stamps on them and everything?” she asked. “You paid good money at the post office and everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you haven’t sent a one. Not one letter.”

  I walked over to the metal cabinet and kicked the bottom drawer. “They’re all in here, Paris,” I said.

  The clothes dryer had stopped spinning and Paris took out the T-shirt and, facing away from me, slipped it back on. “It’s my fault I was standing here looking like I looked,” she said. “But once you saw that, you made the decision to stay and talk. Polite to stay and talk, but not so polite to stare, my friend. You could’ve sat a few rungs up, huh?”

  “You could’ve asked me for a spare shirt.”

  “Touché,” she said. “Well, I have to get going. Your brother and I are going to the drive-in and doing stuff after.”

  “Goodbye, Paris,” I said. “You won’t tell anybody about the letters, will you?”

  She made a gesture like she was zipping closed her mouth with her finger. Then she comically mumbled, “Mum’s the word.”

  There are certain incidents that will not allow you to forget them. The Japanese have a saying: “Rain enters your diary.” It refers to the melancholy that is forever part of your personal history. Later, you find the diary and read it and rediscover how you were experiencing life. The diary remembers for you.

  When I assert that I can recall only one conversation with my father with any confident degree of accuracy, I mean it. That is because I wrote about it in a diary.

  The conversation took place because my father, listening to WGRD in Dykstra’s Apothecary, had heard the announcement that I had won $666 in a contest.

  I scarcely saw my older brother that summer. “Michael lives on another planet,” my mother said. “It’s right here in Grand Rapids, but it’s another planet.” He was eighteen. Black chinos, black shit-kicker boots, duck’s-ass haircut, indoor pallor. Always exhibiting a pained, wistful expression. Cut from the James Dean or Sal Mineo mold. He was working different jobs—he did groundskeeping work at a cemetery for a few weeks, for example—and the rest of the time he spent with Paris. He had an apartment on Union Street. I always wanted to see it, but I didn’t know the exact address. I thought he may have been living there with Paris. “I’d venture to guess they cohabit” is how my mother put it—her vocabulary was inventive. Truth be told, I didn’t know much about my older brother’s life at all.

  As I said, my Ford was parked in our driveway, license plate and all. One morning in late July, at just after eight—the summer-camp bus had just picked up my two younger brothers at the corner and my mother had already left for work—I was eating cereal and drinking orange juice at the kitchen table, listening to WGRD. The disk jockey, “Mad Marty” Sobieski, whose morning rock-and-roll program ran from seven A.M. to noon, was gabbing away between tunes. His signature shout-out during his show was “Mad Marty’s throwin’ a party!” Sometimes he’d add, “Former president Dwight D. Eisenhower said he’d drop by, but he canceled. Oh, well, maybe next time, Ike.”

  That morning, Mad Marty talked a blue streak about the “license plate lottery.” In fact, he was about to announce the first winner. The deal was, WGRD’s director of programming, at eight-fifteen sharp, would reach into a bin containing, on strips of paper, the license plate numbers of “every legally registered car in Grand Rapids, Michigan.” There was a lot of excitement at the radio station. Though WGRD was just background noise while I ate breakfast, when the winning number was announced, a bell went off in my head. I turned up the volume. Mad Marty repeated the number again and again. “If this is your license plate number, call Mad Marty right up here at WGRD, then come on down and collect the prize money of six hundred sixty-six dollars and no cents! You heard me—six hundred sixty-six smackeroos!”

  By now you’ve figured out that the winning number was on my brand-new license plate. I’d memorized it because, besides my telephone number, it was the only number that meant anything to me. Still, I went out to the driveway just to make sure.

  I telephoned the radio station. Then I called Pinnie Oler a
t home and told him my news. “I take it you’ll give at least half to your mother,” he said. “Okay, then, get downtown and become a millionaire. Take the day off work. I’ll consider it that you called in sick. See you tomorrow morning. I’m going to have to start charging you for every Nehi orange from now on.” I didn’t know what to say. Pinnie interpreted my silence. “Jesus, Howard, just kidding. Such a serious kid. Your sense of humor’s in the trash can.”

  I took three connecting buses downtown to WGRD. I never thought I’d ever get to meet Mad Marty Sobieski in the flesh. He was a specter, a disembodied voice like the Wizard of Oz. Turned out he was about forty years old, wore a suit and tie and owl-eyed black-rimmed glasses and bespoke shoes. And he took all of two minutes with me.

  He came out of his broadcast booth and had some lackey take a snapshot of us both holding the check. “Well, kiddo, congratulations. Don’t let all this cash give you too much of a hard-on. On second thought, you look like you could use it! Ha ha ha!” He shook my hand in exaggerated pump-handle fashion, said “Look at that scowl! Groovy. Too cool for school,” and disappeared back into his booth. I heard the beginning of “Baby Love” by the Supremes. By the time I made it to the ground floor and stood gawking at my check, the lobby’s sound system was playing “Do Wah Diddy Diddy” by Manfred Mann. And when I got on the first bus and turned on my transistor radio, Mad Marty was saying, “Two in a row by Mr. Manfred Mann—oooooh, I just can’t help myself!” And then he played “Leave My Kitten Alone.”

  One day in early August at about six-thirty P.M., Paris drove up and parked in front of our house. I was sitting on the porch. “Your brother’s got the flu. He’s throwing up and complaining. Getting the flu in summer’s a real drag. Well, at least he doesn’t have to paint that house for a couple days, right? Wanna go to the movies?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Aw, come on, fuckstick.” That was her pet name for me.

  “I don’t know. What’s playing?”

  “Zorba the Greek’s supposed to be good. It’s at the Majestic.”

  “You want to go to the movies with me? I don’t get it.”

  “Tell me the truth. Have you ever been to the movies with a girl?”

  “Nope.”

  “See how easy telling the truth is with me?”

  “I’d better ask my brother.”

  “He suggested it, actually.”

  “Still, I’d better check with him.”

  “Just call him up, why don’t you?”

  “Okay.”

  I went inside and dialed Michael’s number, which was on a piece of paper held by a magnet on the refrigerator door. I let it ring and ring. He didn’t pick up.

  Back on the porch I said, “There’s no answer. What’s Zorba the Greek about, anyway?”

  “A Greek person named Zorba. His adventures.”

  “What time’s the show?”

  Paris was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that read ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. I didn’t comment, but she saw I’d taken notice. She looked at her watch. “Twenty-five minutes. We can just make it.”

  Against my better judgment, or on behalf of it, I don’t know which, I got in the front seat. “We can each pay for our own ticket, okay?” she said. “That make you less nervous?”

  “Fine.”

  We both bought popcorn and settled into seats in the middle section, about a fourth of the way down the aisle. The Majestic was a magnificent World War Two–era movie house with a cathedral ceiling, plush carpeting, and employees dressed like bellhops; it was all going to seed but was still the best theater in town. The air conditioning felt good. This showing was sparsely attended: the closest person was at least four rows away.

  After the coming attractions, the movie got under way. When Anthony Quinn started to demonstrate his famous finger-snapping, drunken, all-joyful-abandon Zorba dance, Paris, staring at the screen, unbuckled my belt. She lowered the zipper of my blue jeans, reached in, and started to slowly (and allow me to say expertly, though I’d had nothing to compare it to) stroke me. This went on well past Zorba’s dance. At one point, she leaned close and said, “It’s okay, darling. It’s okay, I’m in no hurry. The movie’s hardly halfway through I bet.” She had on some subtle, breathtaking perfume, and I think it was that, mixed with the tangy fragrance of her sweat, dried in the coolness of the theater, as much as the ministrations of her fingers which drove me to distraction. When I pulsed hard and exploded, thickly, into her hand, she whispered, lipsticked lips touching my ear, “That feels nice,” speaking for both of us, I hoped. Then she got me all tucked back in and zipped up, and even buckled my belt. Whispering again, she said, “A nice girl would go to the ladies’ room now, but I don’t want to miss any of the movie. It’s making me want to go to a Greek island.”

  We didn’t speak about this in the car. In fact, we never spoke about it ever. About a week later, I received the first of many telephone calls like this one: “Hello, Howard? This is Jacob Garnes, Mandez’s father.”

  There in my kitchen, between pounding heartbeats and hard-to-catch breaths, I immediately understood that Paris had mailed my letters. It had to have been Paris. No one else knew where the letters were hidden.

  As for the conversation with my father that entered my diary: When I got back home from WGRD with my check for $666, I sat at the kitchen table looking at it. I may have had a second bowl of cereal. No more than half an hour later, Mr. Dykstra’s Studebaker appeared in the driveway. I stood at the window and watched my father crouch out from the driver’s seat. I couldn’t imagine how he persuaded Mr. Dykstra to loan him the Studebaker—the thought occurred to me that he’d stolen it. Either way, there it was, right in the driveway.

  My father hadn’t noticed me yet. He was dressed in light brown slacks, brown loafers, a white short-sleeved shirt. I could see his sports coat slung over the front passenger seat. Really, he was as handsome as a movie star. He glanced briefly at the house, walked to the back of the Studebaker, popped open the trunk, took out a hammer, slammed shut the trunk, laid his left hand flat on the trunk lid, and brought the hammer straight down on his thumb. He winced and slumped in pain, then closed his eyes and leaned against the trunk for a moment, as if he were about to faint. He tossed the hammer in the back seat and walked into the house.

  He hadn’t been in the house for well over a year. What I theorized right away was that he’d battered his thumb in order to deflect my mother’s anger and suspicion away from him. Desperate and inane—he was a coward that way. My theory wasn’t far-fetched at all: I’d seen him invent such distractions three or four times before. This time the bizarre plan didn’t have its intended effect because my mother wasn’t home. To this day, I’m amazed that he didn’t even know her work schedule.

  I was alone in the house, sitting at the kitchen table, the check next to my cereal bowl. My father stood in the doorway, appraising me. “You’ve gotten too skinny,” he said. “You’re a skinny goat, son.”

  “Since I’m your son, does that make you a goat, too?”

  “That’s witty. That’s thinking on your feet.”

  “What happened to your thumb, there, Dad?”

  He held out his hand and studied it, as if beholding an object separate from himself. “Oh, that,” he said. “I accidentally slammed it in the car door. Get me some ice cubes and a towel, will you?”

  I stayed at the table, trying to stare him down. It must’ve looked stupid. I was dressed in a black T-shirt and blue jeans and black high-tops, no socks. I had let my hair grow. I was the only one among my friends and acquaintances who had a ponytail.

  “What’s that on the back of your head?” my father asked. He was nothing if not well groomed. He always kept his hair in what he called a “businessman’s cut.” When I didn’t answer, he said, “Cat got your tongue?”

  He walked to the refrigerator, opened the door, took an ice cube tray from the freezer, set the tray on the kitchen table, and pried out some cubes with his ever-handy ja
ckknife. The jackknife was on a key chain. He wrapped the ice cubes in a dishtowel and sat down across from me at the table. He swathed his thumb in the towel.

  “Slammed the door on it, huh?” I said.

  “You aren’t hard of hearing. That’s good. That’s a good thing.”

  “It must hurt.”

  “What’s that on the back of your head?”

  “Where’s the hammer? Still in the back seat?”

  “What hammer, exactly, are you referring to?”

  We stared at each other for a long, silent moment. I could hear the refrigerator humming.

  “I guess it’s a badge of individuality, that goddamn ponytail. It’s a short ponytail. But still noticeable. Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you might not be the type of young man interested in girls.”

  “I don’t get what you mean.”

  “Never mind.”

  “I see you’ve got Mr. Dykstra’s Studebaker out there.”

  This stymied my father—how would I know whose car it was? How had I come by such knowledge?

  “It’s a borrowed car, true enough.”

  “Borrowed from whom I already said I know.”