The Body Of Jonah Boyd

Eight

THAT MORNING NANCY hustled me out of bed early. As it turned out, she had already called a tow truck for my car, and it was on its way. I only had time to guzzle down a cup of coffee and ask that she give the Boyds, who were still in bed, my regards, before the truck arrived; with great speed and dexterity, the driver hooked my poor car to its tail, like some enormous fish. At last I climbed into the cab, and he gazed at me in frank bemusement: a woman wearing last night’ makeup, in a wrinkled blouse and too formal skirt. He gave me his phone number, though, and proposed that I call him if I had any free time over the weekend.
For the rest of the day the logistics of auto repair consumed me. The world shrunk to a narrow island consisting of my apartment at one end and at the other the local Dodge dealership, with only a stretch of freeway I had no means of navigating in between. Gaskets, oil filters, and catalytic converters became the stuff not only of my conscious life but of my dreams. I had trouble sleeping; even wearing earplugs I could not block out the noise of the freeway—an invasive noise, so different from the soothing hum of Florizona Avenue. The dishwasher was noisy too; everything in that apartment was gimcrack, assaultive, and I woke up in the morning with a headache. I wanted breakfast, and had no food. I wanted to get out, and couldn’t, which was probably why, when Nancy phoned around ten-thirty, I could barely contain my delight. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said, “I know you’re busy with your car, but I need some help. Can you come over? I’ll pay for a taxi.”
“Of course,” I said, trying not to sound too overjoyed. “But what’ wrong?”
Something crunched in background. “It’ better if I explain once you’re here. It’ really quite—oops, I’d better go. Oh, and Denny—thanks.’’
I arrived half an hour later. Nancy was on her knees at the foot of the staircase that climbed to the kitchen, rifling through the contents of an overturned garbage can.
“I got here as fast as I could,” I said. “But what are you doing?”
“Oh, hi.” She was inserting a rubber-gloved hand into the morass of turkey parts and soiled paper towels. “I’m really so glad you’re here, Denny. I’m afraid there’ been some trou-ble.”
“What happened?”
“Jonah Boyd’ lost his notebooks.”
“But I thought they were leaving this morning.”
“They did leave. Two hours ago. But then about an hour after that, I got this frantic phone call from Anne. They were on the interstate, and they’d pulled over at a rest plaza. It seems that once again Jonah had one of his feelings, just like on the way from the airport, and so they pulled over to make sure the notebooks were still in his briefcase. And they weren’t.”
“Oh, no. Where could he have left them?”
“That’ just it, no one knows. They might be here in the house, or they might not. Because yesterday he took Ben down to the arroyo, and he definitely had the notebooks with him then. And then we all met up at a Chinese restaurant—they came in the rental car, Ernest and I drove Anne from the house—and he might have had them there, too. The problem is, he can’t remember when he last saw them. It’ so exasperating! Oh, what’ this?” She fished out a box that had contained some frozen Parker House rolls. “No, nothing here.”
“But they shouldn’t be that hard to find. I mean, there are four of them, and they’re not small. Have you called the Chinese restaurant?”
“They don’t open until five.”
“What can I do?”
“If you could just help Ernest out in the study . . . Daphne’ doing her room, and Ben his. The Boyds have turned around and are going to do the arroyo. I’ve told everyone to adopt this system I saw on television, where you divide each area into quadrants and go quadrant by quadrant. A woman found a lost diamond earring that way.”
Having put the garbage can to rights, we went inside, where I found Ernest in the study, removing the cushions from the daybed. A piece of popcorn, I saw, had lodged in one of the corners.
“Nancy told me what happened,” I said. “Any luck so far?”
“No, and there’ not going to be,” Ernest said. “And you know why? Because they’re not here.”
“How do you know?”
“Isn’t it obvious? They’re in some Dumpster, or burned up in the incinerator behind the Chinese restaurant. Who cares? The point is, if he’ lost them, it’ because he wanted to lose them. Textbook parapraxis.”
From typing Ernest’ correspondence, I was familiar with the term, if not this particular usage. “But I thought parapraxis meant letting something slip that you didn’t mean to say,” I said.
“Yes, but it can also mean answering a question wrong on a test because you secretly want to fail. Or losing something"— he formed his fingers into quotation marks—” ‘accidentally on purpose.’”
“And you think that’ what happened with Boyd?”
“There’ no question. Consider that twice already—that we know of—he’ been saved just in the nick of time ‘thanks to the intervention of the muse,’ or some such nonsense. I mean, you don’t just keep losing things, and losing them, and never take any precautions, unless on some level you’re really hoping to lose them. Or because you get your kicks from the risk, the danger.”
“But a novel—something he’ been working on for years—”
“For all we know, the bit he read us is all there is, the rest of the notebooks are blank. Or think about it this way: You’re betting everything you’ve got on one book, and one day you wake up and realize it’ just not very good. Then what do you do? If it’ lost, no one will ever be able to criticize it. It will never be a failure. It’ll exist in some sort of ideal state for all eternity, as a ‘lost masterpiece.’ Of course, that’ a pretty desperate tactic, and not one, I suspect, that any normal person would opt for consciously—but from the point of view of the subconscious, it makes perfect sense.”
Nancy came in. “What are you two doing just standing there and gabbing?” she said. “We’ve still got the living room to do.”
“Relax. There’ no need. They’re not going to turn up.” Ernest replaced the cushions on the daybed. “As head of this household, I hereby declare this search over.”
“But if we haven’t looked—”
“There’ no point. Give it up.”
Ernest went outside, to his office.
“He doesn’t like Boyd,” Nancy said, getting down on her knees to peer under a table.
“Why not?”
“All that talk about the muse got on his nerves. Also, he didn’t appreciate what Boyd read. He said it was porno-graphic.”
Ben slunk through the door. “Nothing in my room. Daphne’ still looking in hers.”
The bell rang. “Oh no,” Nancy said. “Who on earth could that be? I hope it’ not—”
But it was. Opening the kitchen door, Nancy admitted the Boyds. Anne looked—if this was possible—even more rumpled than she had upon her arrival from the airport. As for Jonah Boyd, he wore on his pallid face an expression of mute resignation—as if he had fast-forwarded through panic, false hope, and anger, and now stood on the brink of a premature acceptance.
Anne was not in anywhere near so calm a state. “Any luck?” she asked, shimmying out of her ratty coat.
“Oh, Annie, I’m sorry, not yet. How about on your end?”
“None.” She sat heavily at the tulip table. “Although we left a description with the police, and they’ve promised to keep an eye open down at the arroyo. We went by the Chinese restaurant, too. They weren’t open. I tried to get into their Dumpster but it was locked.”
“My wife is indefatigable,” Boyd said with great fatigue. “She would climb into Dumpsters on my behalf.”
“Jonah, why don’t you sit down, too? Would you like some coffee?”
“Thank you.” He eased himself into a chair. “And thank you—all of you—for helping out. It’ rather embarrassing, what’ happened.”
“Now there’ nothing to be embarrassed about. Anyway, all we’ve done is what any friend would do. We’ve looked. I’m just sorry nothing’ shown up—yet.”
“Well, don’t trouble yourselves too much. This is no one’ fault but my own. Oh, hello,” he said to Ben, who had just wandered into the kitchen. “And how is your new poem coming along, young man? The one about the sea ele-phants—”
Anne hit herself on the forehead. “Are you completely mad? Do you live in a dream world?”
“No, I do not. Thank you, Nancy.” (She had just handed him a mug of coffee.) “I simply fail to see, lady wife, why ordinary life has to stop completely just because there’ been a slight setback.”
Anne buried her face in her hands. “This is the end,” she said. “And what are you supposed to do now? Return the advance to the publisher? In that case, we’ll be broke. We’ll have to sell the house.”
“Oh, Anne,” Nancy said, “I’m sure it won’t come to that.”
“And you’re coming up for tenure. Without a book, what are you going to tell the chair? This is supposed to be your breakthrough novel, remember, the one that’ going to make us rich. Good God, it’ the end of everything.”
“Now look,” Nancy said, “there’ no need to be so negative. We’ve hardly begun to look. We just have to be calm and methodical, and Jonah, maybe you need to try to retrace your steps. To work at remembering—to the best of your ability—the last time you were sure you had the notebooks.”
“You had them at the arroyo,” Ben said. “I remember seeing them on the bench.”
“But did I have them when we got up to leave? That’ the question.”
“I think you did.”
“Or at the Chinese restaurant. Does anyone remember seeing them at the Chinese restaurant?”
A vague shaking of heads greeted this question. No one could remember.
“What about yesterday morning, when you were out in the backyard with Ben?”
“That’ right. We sat down in that very odd barbecue pit.”
“But that was before we went to the arroyo,” Ben reminded, “and you had them at the arroyo.”
“Oh, so I did,” Boyd said. “So I did.”
A silence fell. “Well, the police here are very good,” Nancy said after a moment. “I’m sure you can count on them.”
“And when does the Chinese restaurant open?”
“Five, I think.”
She looked at the clock. It was half past noon.
I could tell from her expression that the prospect of having the Boyds on her hands until five, watching the clock, was more than she could stomach. So I said, “Maybe at this point we’d do best to head back over to the arroyo ourselves, and do a more careful search.”
“I don’t know how much ground is left to cover,” Boyd said. “We checked all around the bench where Ben and I sat, not to mention in the garbage cans, and there was nothing.”
“Still, it couldn’t hurt to have a fresh pair of eyes. I don’t have anything. I’m waiting for my car. I’d be glad to help. And I’m sure Ben would too—wouldn’t you, Ben?”
“Why not?”
“Oh, well, if you think that’ a good idea,” said Nancy, the relief in her voice audible, at least to me. “Unless, of course, you’d prefer just to wait here, in which case I could make some lunch . . .”
“No, no,” Anne said. “I think the last thing we want to be doing is just sitting around. I, for one, would rather be on my hands and knees in the bushes, digging.”
I stood. “Well, shall we go, then?”
“We can take the rental car,” Boyd said, standing too. And then the four of us shuffled out the back door.
Nothing turned up at the arroyo. We spent about two hours scouring the bushes around and behind the bench on which Boyd and Ben had sat, and also around several other benches, in case they had gotten the benches mixed up. Anne sifted through every trash can, while Boyd and Ben dug through the carpet of fallen leaves that blanketed the ground. They seemed to work happily together, and not for the last time, I wondered what kind of bond could have united this pair, a successful novelist of middle age and the teenage author of some pretentious verse. Perhaps Boyd really had seen in Ben’ writing a germ of raw talent that he thought worth cultivating. Or perhaps the connection was sentimental, the fruit of a longing, on Boyd’ part, for a son, and Ben’ for a father—understandable, given that at this stage Ernest paid practically no attention at all to Ben, while Boyd hardly ever had the chance to see his children, who lived with their mother in Dallas. In any case, they had spent the better part of the weekend sequestered together, first in Ben’ room, and then in the barbecue pit, and then here at the arroyo, caught up in an orgy of reading and talking at some point during which (maybe) Boyd had stood up and walked away without his notebooks. They remained pregnantly behind, covers opening to reveal gold-edged, cream-colored tongues that called out in inaudible voices not to be abandoned, as the little tin soldier had called out as he went down the drain: au secours . . . And meanwhile Anne Boyd patiently made her way through the contents of yet another trash can: crumpled paper bags, banana peels, used rubbers, sheets of newspaper smeared with dog shit, a dirty sock . . .
After about two hours we gave up. We had a rather late and unhappy lunch at the Pie ‘n Burger, during which Anne said almost nothing and ate with surprising animation, while Boyd ate almost nothing and spent practically the whole time talking with Ben about poetry. I paid the bill, confident that Nancy would want me to, and offer to reimburse me. Then we headed over to the Chinese restaurant, where as luck would have it, the cook was just opening the front door. Because he spoke almost no English, explaining to him what had happened proved to be a frustratingly protracted enterprise, in the course of which Boyd was forced to resort to the tired device of drawing out his misadventures as a kind of comic strip. Fortunately the hostess soon arrived, a snappy and efficient woman who remembered Boyd from the night before and assured him almost before he had asked that he had left nothing behind. Nothing was in the cloak room, or the kitchen. Nor would she and her staff have ever allowed any items so obviously left by customers to be thrown in the trash. It took all the calming influence that Boyd and I could muster to dissuade Anne from forcing the poor woman to unlock the Dumpster so that she could climb into it. Eventually, however, she must have been convinced that there was nothing further to be learned at the Chinese restaurant, for she thanked the hostess, and drifted out the door. Boyd thanked the hostess as well, and tried to give her a tip, which she refused. He left his phone number and asked that she call him if anything should turn up. Then we all turned around and followed Anne to the parking lot.
We drove in silence back to the Wrights’ house. “Any luck?” Nancy asked eagerly as she opened the kitchen door for us, then—seeing the answer in our faces—tightened her smile into a line and went to make coffee. The Boyds stayed another half hour before heading off to Big Sur in their rented red Chevrolet. Anne was no longer frantic. Waving goodbye, we promised to call if we heard anything from the police, or if anything showed up at the house. But I think at this point we all felt fairly certain that the notebooks were gone for good.
It was nearly dinnertime. Rather gloomily, Nancy set out bread, mustard, mayonnaise, and lettuce. Ernest sliced leftover turkey. We made sandwiches for ourselves—Ben, to my surprise, did not toast his bread—and then Ernest, Ben, Daphne, and I sat down at the tulip table and watched the evening news, which seemed oddly comforting under the circumstances. Only Nancy could not rest. While we ate, she ricocheted around the kitchen, opening cupboards and drawers and peering inside them, until Ernest shouted, “Will you stop that? You’re not going to find his goddamn novel in the cutlery drawer.”
“I’m not looking for his novel,” Nancy replied. “I’m looking for the blue bowl I use for potato salad.”
“But we’re not having any potato salad.”
She turned to the television. More news of the war. “I wonder where the Boyds are now,” she said, as if to herself. “Do you think anyone will ever find the notebooks?”
“No.”
“Ernest, don’t be such a pessimist! Anne seemed so sad. To be perfectly honest, I’m worried about her.”
“If you ask me, she’ been hysterical from the get-go. Leaving Clifford Armstrong like that—not the behavior of a well-adjusted adult woman.”
“But Ben and Jonah Boyd certainly hit it off. Didn’t you, Ben?”
“I guess.”
“Did he read you more of his novel?”
“Yes.”
“And was it as good as what he read aloud on Thanksgiving?”
“I guess.”
“Oh, it seems so awful, to lose something like that. Like losing a child, almost . . . I don’t know what I’d do if it were me. Maybe he can reconstruct it, from memory.”
“A four-hundred-page novel? I don’t think so.”
“Don’t be fooled,” Ernest said. “What people get, most of the time, is what they want.”
The phone rang. Nancy hurried to answer it. “Oh, Mark,” she said, her voice rising with a mixture of pleasure and fear she seemed barely able to contain. “Honey, are you all right? Is something the matter?”
Suddenly Ben was on his feet. “Let me talk to him,” he begged, grabbing his mother’ arm.
“Just a second, Ben! Your brother wants to talk to you. Hold on! Honey, what’ wrong? How was the Thanks giving?”
Daphne and I cleared the table. As he was wont to do when he thought no one was looking, Ernest winked at me. The turkey carcass, from which several meals had already been scraped, lay bony and denuded on its platter, surrounded by trembling flakes of gelatinized juice. Perhaps Nancy would boil it for broth, before throwing it into the trash she had earlier searched so patiently and so fruitlessly. In any case, she would get rid of it. No one wanted to look at the thing anymore. And then she would return to her piano and her crowned heads, and I would pick up my car. Daphne and Glenn would make love in his apartment. Ben would write another poem.
You see, for most of us, I could envision a future. Even for Ben I could envision a future. And yet for the life of me I could not envision what was going on inside that red Chevrolet.
I put on my coat. “I’m taking Denny home,” Ernest suddenly announced to his wife, who either didn’t hear him or elected not to answer him, so caught up was she in her conversation with Mark, and in pushing Ben off her arm.
That is as much as I knew of what happened that Thanksgiving, and as much as I would know—for almost thirty years.