The Death of All Things Seen Page 9

  His father shifted, took his hands from the wheel, and, describing the strength of Per, made the halted chop at something that could never be felled in a single blow. He described the stance, the measured series of blows, the angled cuts, impressing at all times the absolute isolation of it all.

  In those years of first discovery, he explained, men lived rough, authentic lives and gathered in encampments at season’s end in the trade of goods and services. A breed apart from others, they were all alike among their own kind, because of the physicality of the work, their shoulders broad, their arms and legs thick, hands like shovels. But, lamentably, they were a sort others did not willingly suffer drawing alongside, the comparison too striking in their collective favor, so, when camp broke, each giant went its own way.

  In the clearing of the far North, his father maintained, there were no stories of drunkenness or disaffection with life. Each could carve, and did, reeds planed to a fine-grained translucent parchment, wood whittled to release the fluted trill of a songbird’s call.

  They were on a grey scratch of road.

  His father drank again from his tumbler of whiskey. He imagined Per, in the metronome swish of a weighted axe, in great advancing strides coming upon a stream, drinking like a horse in a satiating quench, and, at day’s end, pitching an impoverished tent, flint struck against the coming dusk, a glow of kindling coaxed with a whisper, the sudden bloom of his shadowy form and his hand cupped like a teller of a great secret.

  It was thus told, in the way stories are, for the listener, but for the teller, too. His father filled with an emptiness of his own days pitted against a heroic life that most probably never existed, which made it all the more irreconcilable, more tragic, because he believed it in his heart, and he would not be dissuaded that there was another way, when there never was.

  9.

  JOANNE DIDN’T KNOW anyone could still get carsick. Maybe it had been the McDonald’s. It was a plausible alternative explanation.

  They were in the suburb of Winnetka. Joanne rubbed Grace down with baby wipes. Norman was out of the car, too, compliantly holding the box of baby wipes.

  Joanne pointed to a shop across the road from a café. Maybe Norman could get a coffee, while ‘the girls went shopping’. Joanne turned to Grace. ‘Maybe they have dolls?’

  *

  Norman acquiesced, left them and went over to the café and ordered a double espresso. In a day waning toward a darkening sky, he saw already, beyond a tree line of oak and cedar, the visible glow of city-light pollution, a soft, bathing light belying an afternoon of falling temperatures and the gridlock of a treacherous afternoon commute.

  They might yet be trapped out here. There was the issue of Randolph. Norman didn’t want to think about it, the piling of responsibilities that could pull you under and take you from any central and focused interest. There was much beyond his control.

  Norman felt it. All that had been so recently lost to him. Not least, the loss of Daniel Einhorn’s investment that might have propelled Norman toward greater success. Money accrued in the essential fraud of how so much of the world had been built upon deceit. It sickened Norman, not least that it had ended before he could cash in. There was the sudden and unsettling sense that his life had reached a point where the best years were behind him. It struck out here in the most unlikely of places, not in the confines of his office, but in the run of life and the coldness of an advancing afternoon.

  In the quiet indeterminacy, Norman opened and reread Nate Feldman’s email. What struck him again was the language, the authoritative but ingratiating, accessible tone. Here was a man who could find a broad and accomplished reach in the measure of a single line or two.

  It irked Norman. It must have been this way with Mr Feldman. The executive shorthand of a voice and lines that could communicate a buoying optimism or reprimand, without ever using the exact words of praise or indictment. Mr Feldman moving around the center of an emotion, so he was never any one thing, but the sum of a continuance in the aftermath of great slaughter, and at the end, sequestered in a skyscraper, among a pantheon of demi-gods surveying the antlike procession of what now constituted the emerging world.

  Norman looked up in the contained world of the coffee shop. He felt like a man long submerged, breaking the surface of water again. His breath came in fits. He should have stayed at home. This advance on his old life, it meant nothing. What did the Feldmans want from him? He felt himself asking it.

  Despite his better judgment, Norman did a search on the name Nate Feldman. There was an article concerning a Nate Feldman and the sale of Grandshire Organics to a Toronto-based multinational for 15.5 million Canadian dollars. The article was dated April 11 2001. In bold lettering, midway through the article, Nathaniel Feldman was listed as founder and CEO.

  There was an insert photograph, the evidence incontrovertible. Nate Feldman, the spitting image of his father. His age was listed as forty-eight, the same age Mr Feldman had been when Helen had come under his sway of influence. It did something to Norman, the alignment of these men in his life.

  He pulled up Mr Feldman’s obituary, the lauded account of his heroics in the Pacific, his subsequent rise within the Insurance industry. He was an avid outdoorsman. His interests included golf, fishing and carpentry. He was born in Saint Cloud, Minnesota.

  Norman set his phone aside. He felt an out of body experience. The Feldman men, they had a shared acumen for making money. He felt a fitfulness of breath. He wanted to go home. It was too much to bear. He had been wrong in appeasing Joanne when she had suggested they go see the house. His first instinct had been right.

  Goddamn the Feldmans! Goddamn Nate Feldman! He felt the mantra of words repeated. They undercut an understanding he had always believed, how the universe worked in relation to one’s efforts and hard work, when now, it was all too patently apparent that the universe didn’t align with that at all, and that greatness was bestowed on certain persons. He had read about it, fundamentalist sects attesting that certain men were predestined to salvation and that God, in showing favor, allowed them to stand as pillars of virtue and examples of God’s favoring grace. There was nothing unabashed about wealth and success. It accounted for every televangelist in a three-thousand-dollar-suit asking for tithes from the faithful, the sick and indigent alike.

  Something inside him dropped. It was envy, yes, that, but also a sense of his own shortcoming, an unsettling and fundamental misunderstanding of the world, and how it could be negotiated by a man like Mr Feldman and seemingly, too, by his son, Nate Feldman, when he, Norman Price, had failed so miserably, he, along with Walter and Helen.

  How could he not help but compare the Feldman trajectory, their greatness, the Feldmans’ sentient awareness of trends and markets, and the ennobling reach of Mr Feldman, who had come from nothing. It was there in black and white, goddamn it!

  *

  A half-hour had passed. Norman felt obliged to order another espresso. He got up and stared into the approaching dark. They should head back home. There were times when nothing seemed worth it.

  He was on the verge of a meltdown. He thought of alternatives to going back into the city. They could push on north into Wisconsin, stop at some rest area and search the Internet for some mid-winter, cut-rate deal at a boutique hotel along Lake Geneva. Why not salvage the remainder of the week, make use of the car, spend a quiet reprieve around the languid history of a lake where the robber barons of old had retreated in the midsummer heat? He could call and simply extend the car rental.

  He would suggest it to Joanne when she got back. He thought of Randolph, the infuriating reach of this responsibility. They would go and simply get Randolph, or maybe Norman would simply drop off Joanne and Grace, and then return the car himself, but then the car was in Joanne’s name!

  Norman struggled to regain a sense of perspective. It didn’t matter, the particulars, what he did, or didn’t do. It was about what Nate Feldman thought Norman was doing. That was the goddamn point.
He felt the fury of distraction. He had never worked well under pressure.

  He would not meet with Nate Feldman. He took a deep breath to reorient himself. A reasonable lie coalesced. He was vacationing at Lake Geneva. It was all that needed to be stated, no explanation given. It was just a stated fact. He liked the idea very much. A mid-week retreat was just the sort of casual ease Norman wanted to project on goddamn Nate Feldman. Yes, any meeting with Nate Feldman would have to be postposed. Fuck Nathaniel Feldman.

  If he had showed as requested, it would have favored the Feldmans. He knew it. Nate, rising to meet him, a sherry or brandy proffered, something Feldman-like, the gracious reach and quiet accommodation, and Norman, the obsequious and simpering recipient of such airs and graces, where there would be no question of Norman paying. It was billed to the room, all taken care of, the expediency and decorum of a man versed in gaining the subtle upper hand.

  It coursed through Norman, the sense of envy, this Feldman stock, this great breeding, and Nate Feldman, in crossing his legs, in the attitude of relaxed consideration, would begin, and so politely, conveying his sympathies, how sorry he was for the tumult and violent nature of Helen’s death. He had read about it. Such a dreadful business, the way it occurred, quietly suggesting that he hoped it had nothing to do with his father.

  It would be textbook Feldman, Nate seeking not so much to exonerate his father, but to extend his father’s influence, advancing some preternatural hold Mr Feldman had over others, all this serving the Feldman name – the Feldman mythos.

  Norman could see it no other way, and what the Hell right did Nate Feldman have to interfere with his life? This was the Feldmans’ presumptive pedigree – all they were, and what he, Helen, and Walter weren’t.

  Fuck the Feldmans! There was a name for a play. He said it under his breath. It stood as a singular indictment. If Nate had the audacity to impose on his life, then Norman would hang the name Feldman out to dry for the world to see, Nate, that goddamn Draft Dodger, and that insufferable father of his, that mincer of words, that ineffectual fop. The truth of it, the insurance company had gone near bankrupt under his charge, the Chicago office slashed and re-staffed with temps. He was a goddamn drunk, and everyone knew it! No wonder he jumped to his goddamn death!

  Norman was indisposed. Yes, that was it! His secretary had just informed him of the conflicting date. He had a pressing deadline on a new play. He hoped Nate would understand. He was muttering words as he began writing out the email, suddenly confronted in the construction of a lie, whether he should give his secretary a name or not, and, in the imagined sense that he had a secretary, he thought of his mother and Mr Feldman and all that had come before. It made him angry that Helen Price was his mother and that he was attached to a past and to a woman like that.

  He was still in the midst of writing his excuse, when he looked up and saw Joanne advancing across the street with Grace.

  *

  Grace was dressed in a smart black wool blazer, pleated tartan skirt, white ankle socks and patent leather Mary Janes. Joanne slipped Norman a primrose-colored envelope with a raised seal that contained the receipt. She made Grace turn like a figure on a music box.

  In quietly observing Grace, Joanne said, ‘We are all being slowly poisoned. You know that, right?’ She was referring to McDonald’s.

  Norman knew, or he had heard the story umpteen times, about a chicken nugget that had purportedly lasted six months beneath a car seat and showed no sign of decay. It had gone viral on YouTube. Joanne began to repeat the story.

  Norman added in a mildly contentious way, ‘It’s the sort of event that would have constituted a miracle in biblical times. Maybe we’re just tired of miracles.’

  His comment was met with a tisk of mild admonishment. Undeterred, Joanne said, ‘Doesn’t she look beautiful?’

  There was no denying Grace’s exoticness. In her outfit, she looked to Norman like a smarmy character from an upmarket children’s book. Madeline. He wasn’t quite sure if the story was set in Paris or New York, or if Madeline was even French.

  It didn’t quite matter. What mattered was that the Madeline series was there in his mind at all, suggesting a lamentable downward reach of art and story, the economy of words and sparse images, one diminished form propping up the other in the shorthanded way these stories worked; parents trawling to unearth what might engage a four-year-old or, more accurately, what might engage the sensibilities of overbearing mothers who felt they knew what might engage a four-year-old, when it wasn’t established what a four-year-old might genuinely be interested in at all. It didn’t matter, the entire children’s book industry was in the service of parents, not children.

  There were times when Norman lamented the serviceability and truism of the TV shows of the fifties and sixties, a confederacy of ordinary left to sit before shows like Tom and Jerry, Tweety Bird and Sylvester the Cat or The Road Runner, when the message was less ambiguous, when life was all about the chase, and where, in just about every scene, you got a frying pan in the face, or you stepped in the spring of a bear trap, or you ended up holding sticks of dynamite that blew up in your face. These characters should have been on currency for the Truths they harbored.

  Norman kept looking at Grace, the cardboard cut-out of her features, the flat face and the slanted eyes, the composite shorthand identifying features a good illustrator could turn into a signature series. And then the question surfaced, why couldn’t he do the same? A compendium of Grace & Randolph books – Grace & Randolph Learn the Hard Truth About China’s One Child Policy; Grace & Randolph Get Undercut in the Lemonade Stand Business and Learn Hard and Fast Truths about Outsourcing; Grace & Randolph Learn About Derivatives and Futures and Why Daddy Won’t Sleep with Mommy Anymore and is Banging his Secretary.

  He knew his main problem had always been having too large a vocabulary and having too much to say. It was anathema for an artist. Maybe he could go with a Chinese Alphabet book, be ahead of the curve in the insipid way parents were now anticipating the reality of what was fast approaching – the decline of the West.

  *

  Joanne was suddenly interested in an organic quiche and pine nut kale salad. The café had juices starting at $6.95.

  A clutch of older women had been quietly assessing Grace. Norman caught their eye as one of the elderlies volunteered that her granddaughter was learning Chinese. She gave Norman an obliging smile. It was obvious they had been disparagingly querying who had the sexual problem, Norman or Joanne.

  Norman said, ‘It came down to a Bichon Frise, a Shih Tzu, or her. She won out, on account of the prospect that she has a longer lifespan and we might end up living off her.’

  It set the elderlies on edge.

  A man in a get-up of yellow cashmere sweater and tomato red pants came across to their table in a quiet arbitration of glowing familiarity. He gave off a new car smell. His name was Roger Carlyle. He was in real estate. His face was on his business card. That seemed to be his essential credential, a face.

  Norman could see Roger give Joanne the once over. Roger, it turned out, had a tape recorder. He wanted to know if Grace would like to record the Pledge of Allegiance? It was a sales quirk, something he burned to a CD for anybody who bought a house.

  Joanne was quietly flustered. Roger had his eye on her. Obviously, she controlled the purse strings, or Roger was giving her the impression he thought so. Norman could see the spark of intrigue Roger engendered in Joanne. This was like someone hitting on your kid sister. It let him understand, too, something deeper about Joanne, about what sort of man she might let enter her life. She was seeking alternatives.

  Joanne admitted that Grace didn’t know the Pledge of Allegiance. It didn’t dissuade Roger. He had a contingency plan, a laminated card, like a prayer card, with the pledge on it. She could read it.

  Norman intervened. Grace wasn’t, in fact, reading English yet! He said by way of distracting Roger, ‘Isn’t it true that The Breakfast Club was filmed near here?’ which,
in fact, it had been, at New Trier East, and ‘Wasn’t Home Alone also filmed here?’

  Yes, of course it had been, they both had, Roger Carlyle was wildly impressed. Maybe they were in the market for a house after all. Wasn’t Norman up on his history! His hands came together in the gathering warmth of a deal.

  Norman sidled toward his own interest in the arts, and theater especially, leading toward a reference to his own success in the Chicago theater scene, with the tacit understanding that anything he said could be verified in the surreptitious click of a website. It made lying that much harder in the cast-iron Truth of easily accessed facts. But there was enough to pique Roger’s interest in a downturned market.

  Norman rattled on about Second City TV and the great glut of talent that came out of Chicago. Belushi, Aykroyd, Candy, Murray and Chevy Chase.

  Well, maybe they weren’t all Chicagoans, but they might as well have been. They were associated with Chicago, and that’s what mattered. What they shared was a commonality, all involved in the great irreverent classics like Caddyshack and Stripes and, of course, the lampooning send-up of those damn Nazi sympathizers out in Skokie in The Blues Brothers.

  The titles, of course, revealed Norman’s age, but, then, who wasn’t getting older, Roger baited with the good business sense there might be an uncovered treasure here.

  Norman turned toward Joanne. He was talking in a way everybody could hear. ‘I’ve always said, if you want to understand Chicago in relation to the politics of Reagan’s Trickle-down economics, just think of an incensed Ted Knight in his brass-buttoned, blue double-breasted captain’s jacket facing down a bug-eyed Rodney Dangerfield speeding toward him in his power boat in Caddyshack. It says something about the driving vengeance of class warfare!’

  It didn’t quite make sense in how he said it. His voice reached a sudden pitch of hysteria. It was the Feldmans at the root of it. He kept talking.