CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I LIED TO POP AND UNCLE TOM ABOUT CHRISTMAS. I TOLD THEM I was going to spend the holidays with some friends in the Caribbean. They weren’t impressed.
“Tell them to check under your mattress for errant peas,” Uncle Tom said.
The Falcon was equally disgusted by the truth. I hadn’t planned to tell him anything at all, but he overheard me on the phone talking to Sister Mary Ellen.
“So this is some obscure Catholic missionary effort . . . good grief! Don’t tell me. Let me guess. They operate a modeling agency on the side. How reputable can these nuns be when they blithely take you on to do what, exactly? Look good on camera and provide them with the highly exploitable resource of my name? You know there is a war going on, don’t you? Or has it escaped your notice? This Catholic organization of yours . . . they’d like nothing better than to see you killed so they can wring every last bit of publicity from your battered corpse. Oh well, suit yourself, I’ll tell Ingrid to make a spot for your ashes over the fireplace.”
He carried on like that for the rest of the morning. For maybe the first time, I realized that despite all the conversations over many years, we had really ever had only one conversation.
The day I was scheduled to leave I went to see him at his office in Boston—I was hoping the impersonal setting might ease our farewell scene. The Expositor was his first North American paper, and he still maintained an office at the historic Winthrop building, which he had bought in the forties and where Thought-Fox Inc. was still headquartered.
The building retained a lot of old-fashioned charm, and you could still open and close the windows. “Last time I checked, this was not the moon,” the Falcon said about why he resisted modernization. “There is no need to be protected from the earth’s atmosphere.”
I ran into my old nemesis the editor, Douglas Pierce, when he intercepted me on the way to the Falcon’s office. Accompanied by a group of editors, he was on his way to see my grandfather.
“Well, if it isn’t Shoes. So are you here to take over? Is today the big day?” he asked me as the others laughed.
“No, nothing so exciting, just here to speak to my grandfather,” I said, striving to appear good-natured as half the group fell all over me and the other half ignored me, each faction’s conditioned behavior arising out of their own particular set of prejudices.
The Falcon had an assistant whose office acted as a guardpost to his own. I had my hand on the door to her office when Pierce took the opportunity to remind me that I was a parasite.
“And one more thing, Shoes, all this”—he gestured expansively with both arms outstretched, like an evangelical contemplating the gates to heaven—“my entrée into the upper echelons of journalism, wasn’t handed to me on a silver platter, you know. I climbed the ladder—every goddamn rung—the hard way. There were no rich benefactors to carry me around on a satin pillow before handing me the keys to the universe. . . .” He furrowed his brow, furry point forming, as I smiled anemically in polite concession to his intended insult.
“What is it, Pierce?” My grandfather unexpectedly appeared at the door, looking austere.
“We had an editorial meeting scheduled today with all the section heads.” Mr. Pierce wanly turned to indicate the others, all of them visibly ill at ease, assembled around him. An epidemic of throat clearing and nervous coughing erupted.
“Well, it will have to wait. As you can see, my grandson is here. Marie will let you know when I’m free,” the Falcon said. “And by the way, Pierce, straighten your tie. Your position doesn’t entitle you to ignore the dress code.”
The Falcon’s office was modest but attractive. The walls were exposed brick and board and batten and lined with books, including many of his own scholarly analyses of Dickens’s work. The original wooden floor creaked as we walked together, and he sat at his antique desk, more typical of a university or a library than a business office. There were two lovebirds in a brass cage, Dennis and Beryl. They were a Christmas present from Bing and me when we were kids.
“So how may I help you?” he asked, folding his hands in front of him on the desktop.
I sat across from him. “I’m not happy about how things went the other day at the house, and I wanted to say good-bye. I’m leaving tonight.”
“I prefer that you not go,” he said, picking imaginary lint from his lapel.
“I know, but I’m going.”
“Why?” He raised his voice—his imperial voice. The one that was used to issuing commands and having them obeyed. “You’ve never demonstrated the slightest interest in politics or world affairs or the plight of your fellow man. Is this some sort of misguided tribute to your mother, who, by the way, was not a serious student of the world?”
“Don’t you think I know that? I don’t pretend to be Albert Schweitzer.”
“I think the appropriate comparison is to Michael Rockefeller.”
“Look—” I leaned forward in my chair. “Nothing bad is going to happen. It’s all being supervised. It’s just like a foreign exchange program. I would think you’d be happy that I’m doing something serious for a change.”
“There is a considerable difference between making an informed choice to undertake a difficult journey and stumbling into a war zone as if you were some sort of privileged pop star on an adventure holiday.”
“Is it so wrong to want to see what I’m capable of? Maybe I just want to do something good for a change.”
“Oh Lord, that’s what I was afraid of,” he said, sitting back in his chair and looking skyward, his arms folded at his chest. He was getting angry. He picked up a paperweight and banged it back down again on the desk, making a loud boom. “You’re obviously being manipulated by this nun. Ask her to show you some evidence of God’s interest in good works—and don’t settle for some damn quote from the Bible. From what I’ve observed, He’s just like the rest of us, preoccupied with sports and Hollywood and keeping Elton John happy.”
“I’m not here to argue with you. What do you want me to be? Some useless rich kid who everyone thinks is a coward? Maybe they’re right. I’ve got to do something. I don’t want to wind up thinking of myself as one of those guys on the Titanic who wouldn’t give up his seat on the life raft for some little kid.” I was sounding a little desperate, my veneer of calm rapidly cracking.
“Collie, stop romanticizing things—you’re embarrassing yourself. These are not legitimate questions. Most people won’t even surrender their seats on the bus to a paraplegic, let alone sacrifice their lives in an emergency at sea.”
“What’s the use? I don’t know why I thought I could talk to you. You’re not listening to me. You never have and you never will.” I stood up to leave. “I’ll see you when I get back.”
“Sit down. This discussion is far from finished. You have no experience, no knowledge, no insight into the culture, nothing to offer, no way to protect yourself. You can’t speak the language. . . . You don’t know a thing about what’s going on down there.” He stood up and leaned across the desk, waving his hand in front of my face. “These supposedly disinterested Catholic organizations are up to their eyeballs in it—”
“I know enough. I’m not going to be on the front lines. I’m just helping out around the convent for a couple of weeks. Take it down. You’re way overreacting.” I was getting a little hot under the collar myself.
“For your information, there are no front lines. Pardon me if I’m a little intense. We’re dealing in absolutes here. Do you get that? I’m trying to preserve your life, you know, that tenuous ephemeral thing that can be snatched away in an instant, never to be retrieved . . . the thing you’re so anxious to throw away. The thing that Bingo lost in a similar lapse of judgment. How badly do you want the infinite to kick in, Collie? How many miracles do you think you get?”
The Falcon’s long-term assistant, Marie, appeared in the doorway.
“Mr. Lowell, I can hear you down the hall,” she said. “The others are starting to take notice. Is everything all right?”
“Let’s run this past Marie, shall we?” the Falcon said. “Collie has decided he’s going to jump on a jet and go to El Salvador for the Christmas holidays.”
“Oh no, Collie, you can’t be serious,” Marie said. “What does your father say?”
“He’s okay about it,” I said, feeling uncomfortable about lying. Withering a little under the attack, I was aware of sounding adolescent and defensive.
The Falcon threw up his hands. “Oh well, then, that’s different. Why didn’t you say that in the first place? That would have been a hard-fought and -won endorsement, because as you know, your father is always so thoughtful in his decision making. What did you do? Leave a message taped to the fridge? ‘I’m off to El Salvador to get killed. Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass the family. I plan to die with my Oxfords on.’”
Sensing emotions were escalating beyond the scope of her pay grade, Marie made a discreet exit, scurrying back into her office.
“I’m not looking for your permission. I’m telling you what I’m doing. Take it or leave it. As for me, good-bye, I’m going away now,” I said, searching distractedly for my jacket. “I’ll call you in a few days.”
“Collie, you haven’t a clue what’s awaiting you. You think because you’ve had a rough time of it these last few months that you’re equal to whatever happens. You can’t even defend yourself against the critical views of others. You’re a babe in the woods, and the woods are full of nasty surprises that make your losses seem like a walk in the park.” He paused to regroup and try a different tack.
“Do you understand human nature? Are you in any way prepared for the evil that men do? Nothing surprises me. Nothing anyone does will ever surprise me. I worked for a time as a war correspondent for one of my father’s papers. I once saw a ten-year-old girl shot dead deliberately by an Allied sniper as she drew water from a well in a French village. And we were the good guys. Tell me that Mother Teresa has been eating orphans in Calcutta and my only response is to wonder if she prefers them poached or scrambled.”
“But can’t you understand, I need to find out these things for myself. What am I supposed to do, piggyback on your experiences and live off your wealth?”
“It sounds like a reasonable choice to me—why else accumulate money and power except to insulate your children from the world’s evils? If I’d wanted my grandsons to see war, I would have relinquished my fortune and taken a job in the press room.”
“For the last time, I’m not going to war. I’m just driving some nuns around a village for a couple of weeks. I’ll be fine.”
“Please, Collie, don’t go.” The Falcon sounded almost pleading. He walked toward me. He reached for my arm. “Don’t do it. It’s no place for amateurs. If you go, there is a good likelihood that you won’t come home.”
He made a unique supplicant. I almost gave in. I wanted to give in.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He let go of me and rubbed his face with his hands, dropping his arms suddenly to his sides. He walked over to the window and sat in an armchair next to the birdcage.
“All right, I can’t stop you, but you must listen to me. Promise me you will trust no one. Remember, Collie, you can’t trust anyone.” He leaned forward in his chair, lending emphasis to his admonition.
“Except friends and family,” I qualified, confident in my response.
“No one!” he repeated. He wasn’t kidding.
“But your family . . .”
“Especially not your family.” He was reacting with spectacular annoyance to my naiveté.
“What about you?”
“Not even me,” he said, sinking back into the chair.
I thought he was exaggerating to make a point. I assumed it was his way of urging caution. That was before I realized I couldn’t be trusted, I couldn’t even trust myself. I didn’t understand that life consists in hidden possibilities and unknowable motives and that steadfastness of character exists, if at all, between episodes of private discord.
“Well . . .” I was hemming and hawing at this point. “I should get going.”
“All right,” he said, rising back up to his feet, decorous and formal, as if he were extending courtesies to a junior officer.
He extended his hand. We exchanged a brief glance, and something that I saw in his eyes made me come in closer. I kind of extended my arm around his shoulder—call it a half hug as opposed to a halfhearted hug. His forehead flushed crimson.
“Yes, well,” he said. “You don’t want to be late.”
“I’ll see you again soon,” I said as he sat down and picked up his reading glasses and began to examine the documents he’d set aside.
“Hmmm . . . ,” he muttered in acknowledgment, head bent over, not looking at me as I walked away, backpack thrown over my shoulder.
I don’t know which was more memorable—the day I realized that Ma didn’t love me or the moment I realized the Falcon did.
Outside on the street, the air was cold. The snow mirrored the sun, and the snow was everywhere. There was so much light, I could hardly see. The rush of the winter wind filtered through the thin, loose layers of my clothing, wedging itself like an ice pick deep in my bones.
The Falcon’s words terrified me, but I was going. I didn’t know why I was going. I didn’t know what I was thinking. I was just going. I wanted a change of scenery, but that wasn’t it. It was nothing I could explain even to myself. It was something I needed to do, take a hatchet to my life and hack away at it. Maybe if I went away, when I came back it would all be somehow different. I would be different. In those days, I thought that life was a point system, and occasional planned acts of goodness would somehow help balance my wildly skewed scorecard.
Each step I took away from the Falcon’s building was accompanied by an urgent crunching sound, another perilous crack in the glass. I don’t like the cold. I have this indelible image in my mind, left over from when I was a kid in a grocery store. I saw a little boy about my age, his tongue stuck to the bottom of a can of frozen orange juice, and I just stood there, not knowing what to do, just waiting for something to happen.
I wondered what the temperature was like in El Salvador.
“Excuse me, sir.” The stewardess touched me on the shoulder. “Sorry to wake you.”
“That’s all right,” I said, straightening up in my seat, glancing out the window to the gathering lights below.
“Please fasten your seat belt. We’ll be landing soon.”
“Okay. Thanks.” I smiled and watched her walk down the aisle toward the cockpit, her perfume a thin trail of scent wavering in the air like the surrounding white cirrus clouds.
I turned my attention to the glimmering ground below, my first luminous sight of El Salvador. It was 1983—the year of my so-called revolution.