The Couple: The Rider Quintet, vol. 4

THE SHALLOWNESS OF THE LAKE

THE SHALLOWNESS OF THE LAKE I couldn't resist hiking into town after I woke until, tiring, I happened on a universal mall and a man wearing a sky-blue Sweet's Candy logo, "It's run by Jewish people." The Sweet son was a year younger, or older, or went to private school, St.Marks... — which may explain why I only set eyes on him that first week in SaltLake, when I was living, gloriously, out of a suitcase. How could you haveforgotten that the Sweets were in the candy business? I never trust the first answer that comes to mind. They were members of the congregation. In your mother's imagination Mrs. S was her best friend. I'm grateful for their employee's interruptions. "There's been a lot of death in the family." (—I had heard from my mother her friend Corinne had passed recently into a world of light.) "What kind of work do you do for them?" "Delivery. I don't look like a man who's up to his elbows in molasses, do I?" 44 1 His lunch-companion hee-haws, bleats, guffaws before the sudden, violent, stereotypical retreat into silence. A silence of aluminum and chrome. Oppressivereflections. "The boy isn't in the candy business. He's got an antique shop around the corner." I don't understand collectors. I dream so much ofliving without a past in a hotel it becomes my reality. Talking toyourself again?Areyou good company for you? I'm afraid if I laugh out loud to myself, or cry,people will think what they want to think. Be who you are. Do whatyou have todo. Forget the mind's midges. Stay with the real. What you care about. The restfades away, like autumn, on the blowingof a horn. Don't give me that "huh" look, take another look at Jeremiah. I could use someone like that to help get me through this period in my life. 45 Everyone could.Be grateful you reliving it. If I were stillpracticingI'd treatyoufor nothing. Oh I know you think that psychiatrists, (who sureknow how to rake in the dough), are betterequipped to help people than men of the cloth,but I can assureyou, I helped many and could have helped you if you d let me. Why is it all right for women to have emotional outbursts in public and not for men? The mall's immensity under the sheer rubric of FOOD TCBY EDO SBARRO SCHLOTZSKY'S as American asthe vacancy that has become America everything everywhere the same cruel raid on the food chain ("...daring, resourceful, like the masked rider of the plain...") It's your generation made it that way,son. Someone must have sown the seeds, no? You are stubborn. Cant remember if I had a hand in that or if you were that way when I becameyour father. (Silence.) Freud said character isfixed at six. Youve no... rejoinder to that one? 46 (Silence.) Nothing? Is there anythingyou like? The nearness of gardens. The nearness of mountains. The nearness of god? —I find his absence more reassuring. The high Victorian houses in the heights. —Let me once again look down from the mountain heights into this basin, glittering like a bracelet or the night itself, open to anyone. The Peery (Hotel) Desperate for tea and honey. I don't mind supplying the tea. Why can't hotels across the world supply customers with hot water? You wouldn't havebeen in suchapassionfor tea and honey if that dentist hadn't drilled your tongueright before your plane lifted off into the night for Salt Lake... where...—I seeI'd better refresh your memory—altitude is afactor, the blood wells, rushes to the fore; nosebleeds are commonplace. 47 Something like that happened in Durango: my lips cracked and bled in no time at all. No one warned me that this alwayshappens in the dryness of the high chaparral. Why does everyoneunderplay... The dangers of living. When they couldjust not look down. And on ski-slopes Easterners would kill togo down you had the distinct sense that the mountain wasconcave and that if I went down I'd hurtle off into whiteness: one graceless frantic somersault. We made the rounds after we arrived in SaltLake. The Silverfamily ran their home movies. The Silver Family Skiers waving...