His turn comes; he hands his ticket to the driver, moves down the aisle, and selects a seat at the rear because it is as far away from the woman as possible. In Cleveland he will change buses for New York; after a night sleeping on a hard bench in the Port Authority station, his suitcase tucked under his legs, he will catch the first bus to Boston, departing at five A.M. As the big diesel rumbles to life, he finally turns his face toward the window. The rain has returned, dotting the glass. The spot where his father parked is empty.
As the bus backs away, he opens the bag in his lap. It’s surprising, how hungry he is. He tears into the sandwich; six bites and it’s gone. He downs the milk without removing the carton from his lips. The carrots are next, devoured in an instant. He barely tastes any of it; the point is simply to eat, to fill an empty space. When all else is done, he opens the little box of cookies, pausing to regard its colorful illustrations of caged circus creatures: the polar bear, the lion, the elephant, the gorilla. Barnum’s Animal Crackers have been a staple of his childhood, yet it is only now that he notices that the animals are not alone in their cages; each is a mother with her baby.
He places a cookie on his tongue and lets it melt, coating the walls of his mouth with its vanilla sweetness, then another and another, until the box is empty, then closes his eyes, waiting for sleep to come.
Why do I relate this scene in the third person? I suppose because it’s easier. I know my father meant well, but it took me many years to process the pain of his decree. I have forgiven him, of course, but absolution is not the same as understanding. His unreadable face, his casually declarative tone: all these years later, I still puzzle over the apparent ease with which he dispatched me from his life. It seems to me that one of the great rewards of raising a son would be the simple enjoyment of his company as he moves into the real business of adulthood. But having no son of my own, I can neither confirm nor deny this.
So it was that I arrived at Harvard University in September 1989—the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse, the economy in a state of general decline, the national mood one of weary boredom with a decade of drift—friendless, orphaned in all but name, with few possessions and no idea what would become of me. I had never set foot on the campus or, for that matter, traveled east of Pittsburgh, and after the past twenty-four hours in transit, my mind was in such a state that everything around me possessed an almost hallucinatory quality. From South Station I took the T to Cambridge (my first ride on a subway) and ascended from the cigarette-strewn platform into the hubbub of Harvard Square. It appeared that the season had changed during my journey; muggy summer had yielded to tart New England autumn, the sky so shockingly blue it was practically audible. In my jeans and slept-in T-shirt, I shivered as a dry breeze moved over me. The hour was just shy of noon, the square thick with people, all of them young, all apparently at perfect ease with their surroundings, moving purposefully in pairs or packs, the talk and laughter passing between them with the crisp assuredness of batons in a relay race. I had entered an alien realm, but this was home to them. My destination was a dormitory named Wigglesworth Hall, though, reluctant to ask anyone for directions—I doubted they’d even stop to talk to me—and discovering that I was famished, I made my way up the block away from the square, looking for someplace inexpensive to eat.
I was to learn later that the restaurant I chose, Mr. and Mrs. Bartley’s Burger Cottage, was a beloved Cambridge landmark. I stepped inside to an eye-watering assault of weaponized onion smoke and the roar of a crowd. Half the city appeared to have shoved itself into the cramped space, filling the long tables, everyone trying to talk over everybody else, including the cooks, who were shouting out their orders like quarterbacks calling signals. On the wall above the grill was an enormous blackboard bearing elaborate descriptions in colored chalk of the most off-puttingly garnished burgers I had ever heard of: pineapple, blue cheese, fried egg.
“Just you?”
The man addressing me looked more like a wrestler than a waiter—a huge, bearded fellow wearing an apron as stained as a butcher’s. I nodded dumbly.
“Singles at the counter only,” he commanded. “Grab a stool.”
A place had just come free. As the waitress behind the counter whisked away the previous occupant’s dirty plate, I slid my suitcase against the base of the counter and took a seat. It wasn’t very comfortable, but at least my luggage was hidden from view. I took my map out of my pocket and began to look it over.
“What’ll you have, hon?”
The waitress, a harried-looking older woman with sweat stains at the armpits of her Buger Cottage tee shirt, stood before me, pad and pencil poised.
“A cheeseburger?”
“Lettuce, tomato, onion, pickle, ketchup, mayo, mustard, Swiss, cheddar, provolone, American, what kind of bun, toasted or plain?”
It was like trying to catch bullets from a machine gun. “Everything, I guess.”
“You want four different kinds of cheese?” She had yet to lift her eyes from her pad. “I’ll have to charge you extra.”
“I didn’t mean that. Sorry. Just the cheddar. Cheddar is fine.”
“Toasted or plain?”