Touchy and Feely Read online

‘Can you feel your feet yet?’ asked Robert.

  Feely nodded. His feet were beginning to itch, as if his boots were crawling with fire-ants.

  Robert said, ‘This is when you have to respect guys like Peary.’

  Feely said nothing, but blew on his gloveless hands.

  ‘You know who I’m talking about?’ Robert asked him.

  Feely shook his head.

  ‘You never heard of Robert Edwin Peary, the first man to reach the North Pole? April 6, 1909.’

  ‘I never heard of him,’ Feely admitted.

  ‘Schools today,’ said Robert. ‘Just because Peary was white, and male. I’ll bet you’ve heard of Malcolm X.’

  ‘Malcolm X? Sure.’

  ‘There you are, see. But Malcolm X never went to the North Pole, did he? Malcolm X never went within a thousand miles of the North Pole. Just as well for him. He probably would have been eaten by a polar bear, mistook him for a giant penguin.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Feely. ‘Penguins aren’t indigenous to the North Pole. Only the South Pole.’

  ‘Indigenous,’ Robert repeated.

  ‘That means naturally living there.’

  ‘I know what it means. I just can’t get over the fact that you can say it at eight o’clock in the morning. Let’s go get some breakfast.’

  He drove out of the railroad yard, past boarded-up sheds and rusted bogies. They had stopped here late last night after they had managed to get themselves hopelessly lost. Robert had tried to take a cutoff at West Cornwall, but they had ended up driving for three-and-a-half hours around Red Mountain and Lake Wononpakook with the snow falling so thickly that they felt they were being buried alive. Eventually they had found their way back to Route 7, only five miles north of where they had left it. Robert had sent Feely into a roadside store outside Falls Village for bread and Kraft cheese slices and Twinkies, and they had eaten a picnic in the car, with the engine running to keep them warm.

  As they drove into the center of Canaan, Robert said, ‘Let me give you some advice, Feely. You can use all the twenty-dollar words you like, but these days nobody listens, and even if they did listen they wouldn’t understand half of what you’re talking about. So you should save your breath to cool your chowder.’

  Feely said nothing, so Robert gave him a nudge with his elbow. ‘If you want people to respect you, Feely, you have to do something. And I don’t mean something pissant. I mean something cataclysmic. Now that’s a twenty-dollar word for you. Cata-freaking-clysmic.’

  Feely looked out at the snow-covered houses. ‘Are we still talking about Peary?’

  ‘No, we’re talking about anybody. We’re talking about you and me and that old geezer standing on the corner over there. If you don’t do something cataclysmic, people will never take any notice of you, and they’ll never remember you after you’re gone, like your father’s sperm never even wriggled as far as your mother’s egg, and how tragic is that? Or if they do remember you, they won’t remember the good things you did, the little acts of kindness that you never asked for any credit for. Oh, they’ll remember the times you screwed up, or the offensive things you said after fifteen Jack Daniel’s. But if you want to make any kind of impression in this world, my friend, it’s no good trying to be persuasive. You have to do something that pulls the rug right out from under people’s feet. Something that makes them go ho-o-oly shit.’

  As they neared the town center, they passed a small yellow house on a hill. It had a snow-filled yard that sloped steeply down to the road. Although it was so early, a small girl in a bright red coat was building a snowman, with twigs for arms and a carrot for a nose. Her mother was watching her from the kitchen window.

  Robert slowed down. ‘What do you think that is?’ he said. But before Feely could answer, he said, ‘Happiness, that’s what that is. Completeness. The mother. The child. Beautiful.’

  He drove on. Where the sun was falling across it, the snow was already melting, and the streets were thick with slush. Feely still hadn’t stopped shaking with cold and he urgently needed to go to the bathroom. After a few minutes, however, they reached a large Victorian railroad station on the right-hand side of the road, its rooftops covered in snow, and Robert slowed down again.

  ‘Union Station,’ said Robert. ‘This is where the Housatonic Railroad used to meet up with the Connecticut Western line. It used to be really something, this station, a grand historical monument. But there was a fire, four or five years ago, and all the timbers were soaked in oil, as a preservative. That was good thinking, wasn’t it? They were damned lucky to save anything at all.’

  Feely could see that the building had once been L-shaped, but the southern wing had been burned down almost to the ground. A tower that stood at the corner of the L had been charred black, but restoration work was already well advanced, with scaffolding and freshly re-boarded walls.

  On the left side of the station parking lot stood a diner made of converted railroad cars, painted red-and-cream, with a neon sign on top saying Chesney’s Diner. ‘This’ll do us,’ said Robert. ‘I think we could both use a cup of strong coffee and a shit.’

  He parked around the side of the building so that the Chevy couldn’t be seen from the road. As Feely climbed out, the cold air cut into his nostrils like a craft knife. Robert said, ‘If anybody asks you, you’re my son, OK?’

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘What’s the matter, your ears frozen up, too?’

  ‘No, but we don’t share anything like the same physiognomy.’

  ‘What’s that in human?’

  ‘I mean I don’t look like your son.’

  ‘I know. And the reason for that is, you aren’t my son. All I want you to do, if anybody wants to know, is to say that you are.’

  Feely frowned. He didn’t like the sound of this at all. This sounded suspiciously like part of the conspiracy. First of all they tempt you to deny your brother; now they want you to deny your father, too.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Robert. ‘I knocked up some Cuban girl, OK?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Robert took a deep breath. ‘It’s very simple. I don’t want any of the people in this diner to remember us, after we’ve left. I want us to pass through like ghosts. If we say that we’re father and son, we’re less likely to make any kind of lasting impression.’

  ‘But why should we?’

  ‘Because this is Canaan, Connecticut, where the straight people live. Because I’m a thirty-five-year-old white guy and you’re a teenage Cuban in a stupid hat.’

  ‘OK.’ Feely needed the bathroom too urgently to argue any more.

  Inside, Chesney’s Diner was warm and steamy, with rows of cream-colored Formica tables and red leatherette seats. The radio was playing ‘This Old Heart of Mine.’

  ‘Hungry?’ asked Robert, breathing in the greasy aroma of breakfast. But without a word, Feely hurried to the door with the little railroad engineer on it.

  Robert sat down and sniffed and pulled off his gloves. There were only about a dozen people in there: three huge construction workers in furry caps, their cheeks bulging with food; a spotty young realtor with property particulars spread out all over his dirty breakfast plate; a worried-looking middle-aged woman with a small fidgety boy who kept blowing bubbles into his raspberry milkshake; a black UPS driver; and—at the next table—a bespectacled girl in a khaki stocking-cap and a thick khaki sweater, who was eating yogurt and reading a dog-eared yellow paperback of T.S. Eliot.

  An aluminum-trimmed counter ran the length of the railroad cars, with perspex cabinets filled with pound cake and donuts. Behind it, a chimp-like woman in hugely magnifying eyeglasses was busily making toast and clearing up dishes, while a mournful man in a folded paper cap was frying eggs and staring at nothing at all, as if he were waiting to be struck by a divine revelation or a fatal coronary, without too much hope of either.

  ‘This old heart of mine,’ sang Robert, along with the radio.

  When Fee
ly came back from the bathroom, his hands still wet, a large glass of orange juice was waiting for him. ‘I already ordered,’ said Robert. ‘I hope you like pancakes, and bacon?’

  ‘I can remunerate you.’

  ‘I said I ordered, kid. I didn’t say I paid.’

  The woman in the hugely magnifying eyeglasses came around and poured them both a mug of coffee.

  ‘You traveling far today?’ she inquired. ‘They say there’s more snow on the way.’

  ‘Well, we’re not planning on going too far,’ said Robert.

  The woman stayed where she was, staring at Feely. Feely glanced up at her a couple of times, but didn’t say anything. It was like looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars.

  Robert said, ‘Me and my son . . . we just came up to pay our respects at my mother’s grave.’

  ‘Oh. Your folks came from Canaan? What’s their family name?’

  ‘Baker. But we’re from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, originally. We’re just passing through.’

  ‘Now, isn’t that something! My family on my father’s side come from Pittsfield and some of them were Bakers.’

  Robert said, ‘Really?’

  ‘Maybe you know Maggie and Lavender Baker, 1243 Fenn Street. They’re my aunts.’

  ‘Sorry, can’t say that I do.’

  ‘Well, they tend to keep themselves to themselves, these days. Lavender must be eighty-six if she’s a day. But if you’re a Baker . . . who knows, we could be blood-related, you and me, and your boy here! Although I’m taking a wild guess that his mother didn’t come from Pittsfield!’

  ‘You’re right there,’ said Robert, with forced joviality. Then he added, ‘Puerto Rico.’

  The woman remained by their table for a little while longer, nodding and smiling, but then the construction workers all heaved themselves out of their seats and stamped their feet and put on their coats and wanted to pay, and she had to return to the counter.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said Robert.

  Feely hissed, ‘Why did you have to tell her all of that?’

  ‘What? Who cares? None of it was true.’

  ‘But I thought the whole idea was not to make an impression. Ghosts, you said. Now it’s lodged in her consciousness that she encountered a father and son who had visited a grave in Pittsfield and their family name was Baker, same as hers.’

  ‘So? I just made the name up.’

  ‘She’ll recollect our appearance,’ Feely persisted. ‘She’ll recollect that you’re Caucasian and I’m Hispanic.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Feely, what choice did I have? I’m going to sit there like a dummy and say nothing at all? She’d have recollected us even more, if I’d done that.’

  Feely felt trapped, almost panicky. He was convinced that no matter what family name Robert had invented, Baker or Jones or Ararallosa, the woman would have pretended that they were blood-related. That was how the conspirators lulled you into a sense of false security. They encouraged you to lie, and they knew perfectly well that you were lying, but they pretended to believe you, so that you would paint yourself into an existential corner.

  The woman brought their pancakes, a tilted stack of half-a-dozen each, with dripping syrup and melted butter, and rashers of crispy bacon on the side. ‘Enjoy,’ said the woman. For some reason, Feely looked round at the cook. He was elaborately picking his nose with his little finger.

  A Transparent Story

  ‘Listen, Feely,’ said Robert, with his mouth full. ‘If you’re not happy, I’ll leave you here, and drive on without you. No problem. It’s all the same difference to me.’

  Feely toyed with his fork. ‘It’s just that I don’t understand why you want me to masquerade as your son. I’m not your son.’

  ‘There’s no mystery. I just don’t want people to remember seeing me on my own. You don’t have to be my son. You can be anything you like. My trainer, my accountant, so long as we’re together, as a pair. But the way you’re dressed . . . “son” just seemed the most plausible, that’s all, and even that’s stretching it. You look more like my personal goat farmer.’

  ‘Why don’t you want people to remember seeing you on your own?’

  ‘Because . . . there’s something very important that I want to do. You remember what I said about cataclysmic? I can’t explain it to you. Not yet. But I will, when the time’s right.’

  Feely lifted the top pancake with his fork and then let it flop back onto the stack.

  ‘You’re not hungry?’ Robert asked him. ‘Listen, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have ordered pancakes if I thought you didn’t like pancakes. I thought everybody liked pancakes.’

  ‘It’s not the pancakes,’ said Feely.

  ‘Then what? Come on, you can tell me, I’m a total stranger.’

  ‘It isn’t easy to verbalize it.’

  ‘Hey,’ smiled Robert. ‘I thought you were a walking Webster’s.’

  ‘I don’t . . .’ This was the most difficult admission that Feely had ever made. He looked across at the girl reading T.S. Eliot and for a split-second she caught his eye and smiled, as if she knew exactly what he was going to say.

  ‘I don’t know what to give credence to, any more.’

  Robert wiped his mouth with his paper napkin. ‘You mean like you’ve lost your religion? Jesus Christ, Feely, plenty of people lose their religion.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with religion. It’s me.’ He took a shallow breath. ‘I can’t define my existence.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Robert.

  ‘I don’t know who I am or where to go, or what to do when I get there. I thought if I headed north . . . but what happens when I can’t go any further north?’

  ‘You start going south again. That’s the nature of the planet. There’s no way off it, Feely.’

  ‘Escape velocity,’ said Feely.

  Robert painstakingly scooped up the last of his syrup and sucked it off his spoon. ‘There is only one way to escape, Feely, and that is to sign up for Mars. But even if you manage to escape, you still won’t know who you are. Who you are is (a) your family, (b) your friends, and (c) your property.’

  ‘I don’t have any family,’ said Feely. ‘Well, not any more.’ He hesitated, and then he added, ‘I don’t have any friends, either.’ He laid his hand on his battered blue folder. ‘And this is my only material possession, apart from my hat.’

  ‘Funny, isn’t it?’ said Robert. ‘You and me, we couldn’t be more different. You’re Cuban, from the city, and I’m just a white dude, from the suburbs. But we’ve both taken our seats in the same rapidly sinking lifeboat. What a pair of assholes.’ He sniffed again, and then he said, ‘What’s that, in Cuban? Assholes?’

  ‘I don’t know. Zurramatos, maybe.’

  ‘Zurramatos, I’ll remember that.’ Robert reached into his pocket and took out his business card. ‘That was me. Robert E. Touche, Divisional Sales Director, Transparent Rulers, Inc., of Danbury, Cee Tee. Well, I showed you before, didn’t I? But that was me. That was who I used to be.

  ‘When I was twenty-three I was going to be an architect. I was going to design houses like nobody had ever seen before. Eat your heart out, Frank Lloyd Wright. But Linda got pregnant before I could finish my studies and Linda wanted to keep the baby so we got married. It was a struggle to make a decent living and so I accepted an offer from Linda’s dad to work for a limited period for Transparent Rulers, Inc.

  ‘You know what we made at Transparent Rulers, Inc.?’

  Feely shook his head.

  ‘We made transparent rulers. Also transparent set-squares, T-squares, compasses and geometric shapes. We dominated the US market in transparent freedom curves. They used to be called French curves, but you know, after the war with Iraq . . .

  ‘To cut a short story short, “a limited period” at Transparent Rulers, Inc., turned into a year, and then a year turned into seven years. Linda and I bought a house just outside of New Milford and we had two more children and you couldn’t have imagined a more
contented family. That was me, Robert E. Touche, that was who I was. Divisional Sales Director of Transparent Rulers, Inc. Husband of Linda. Father of Toby, Jessica and Tom. Owner of 1773 Milford Lane. Weekend fisherman. Secretary of the Litchfield Historic Buildings Preservation Society. Zurramato-in-chief.

  ‘That was who I was, Feely. That was me.’

  ‘So what transpired?’ asked Feely.

  ‘What transpired was, I suddenly turned up. The real me. The me who was going to be an architect before I made Linda pregnant. The me who loved to take chances, and have a wild time. When I was marketing transparent rulers in Chicago I met a girl. Her name was Elizabeth and she was everything that Linda wasn’t. She was passionate and exciting and all of those damped-down fires in me that I thought had gone out for ever, she blew on them, woofff, and they burst into flame.

  ‘I felt ten years younger. I saw all of the opportunities that I’d missed out on, all of the chances I could have had. One night Elizabeth and I stood on top of the Hancock Building and we looked out over the city and the lake and there it was . . . the whole world, there at my feet. Glittering. Dark. Calling to me. Here I am, said the world. You can still take me. The world was like a woman with her legs apart.

  ‘You can guess the rest. I went home and I told Linda that I was going off with Elizabeth. I walked out on my wife, my children, my house and my job. But when I got to Chicago Elizabeth wasn’t interested in somebody who didn’t have an expense account, and she didn’t want commitment, and she certainly didn’t want me.

  ‘Elizabeth only wanted one-night stands, with other women’s husbands.’

  ‘That must have been a catastrophe,’ said Feely, trying very hard to look sympathetic.

  ‘Catastrophe? I kid you not. It was a bummer of the first water. I crawled back, sackcloth and ashes. But Linda wasn’t in any kind of mood to forgive me, and her dad wasn’t in any mood to give me my job back. I lost my house and most of my savings, and when I went crazy I lost visitation rights to the kids, too. In the space of seven-and-a-half months, I went from domestic bliss to Dante’s Inferno.’

  He paused, and prodded at a strip of bacon. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s all my fault. I don’t even know, if Linda had taken me back, if I could have stayed with her for any length of time—children, house, job or not. I say “domestic bliss” but once Elizabeth had shown me what I could have done, and what I could have been, and what kind of woman I could have had . . . There was Linda, in her brushed cotton nightdresses, and her hair in rollers, and her moles. And there was Elizabeth, with her shiny black hair, and her lips like a turned-on codfish, and her full Brazilian wax.’