Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

Potter took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and sat down beside Renée on the couch. Her hand squeezed his and she leaned against him. He closed his eyes and took a burning swig of his drink, then turned to match his mouth with hers. She came alive all over, digging her nails in his back, squirming and sobbing and gasping. Potter struggled out of his clothes, still keeping his mouth on hers, yanking and jerking his way out of shirt, belt, slacks, and Renée wrenched free of her robe. Potter, now only in socks and shorts, fell upon her.

She whispered “Wait,” and swiftly pulled her nightgown over her head; it floated to the floor, making a blue puddle. Potter pressed down on her, feeling himself grow, and she started tugging down his shorts, when she suddenly froze.

“What—”

“Shh.”

There was a creak in the hallway.

Potter didn’t move or turn to look.

“What are you doing?” the boy’s voice asked in a sleepy grouch.

Potter closed his eyes as tight as he could.

“You get right back to bed this minute immediately,” Renée said in a quaking sort of hiss, “you get right back to bed and go to sleep.”

After a silent infinity, she let out a sigh, and Potter raised his head. Renée was sitting up, but huddled over, her hands pressed against her temples. She looked cold and bony and frail, like a refugee or a prisoner who had just been stripped of his only clothing.

“Jesus,” Potter said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Potter sat up on the couch. His head was throbbing, and his prick had shrunk to what felt like the size of a cigarette. Renée picked up her nightgown and draped it around her shoulders, shivering. Potter looked down at the heap of his clothes, inside out and messily tangled. It looked to him like a snapshot of his life.

When he left he kissed her lightly on the forehead and said he would call her.

She thanked him for the lovely dinner.

The day after his date with Renée, Potter had to teach. He had an Alka-Seltzer, three aspirin, and a glass of orange juice for breakfast, but still he felt nauseous and aching. The minutes ticked off like separate eternities. He repeated himself, coughed a lot, and could hear the restless motions of legs crossing, pages riffling, throats clearing, and yawns. Between classes he went to his office, closed the door, and sat with his head on his desk. For lunch, he had one of the secretaries in the English office bring him back a grilled cheese sandwich and a chocolate malt. By the time he got through his PR seminar in the afternoon he was beginning to revive, but he still felt shaky. He figured fresh air would do him good.

He strolled down Beacon Street toward Arlington, and took one of the paths that curled into the Public Gardens. The air was cool and brisk, and so were the people. No one was idling, as they did in the Indian summer time, but all seemed to walk with purpose, toward some appointed destination. The sky was cold, lavender and pink. Austere. Potter stopped by his favorite statue, the one commemorating the discovery and first medical use of ether. The statue was of a woman holding a child. On one side of the base was inscribed a line from Revelation: “Neither shall there be any more pain—”

Potter wondered if he reported to the emergency ward of the world famous Mass General Hospital, whether they would give him a dose of ether. If he were ever a president or dictator, he would see that such a service was available to the public, an emergency facility that would dispense some sort of pill or gas or potion for people who felt the kind of pain that came from having nothing to do and nowhere to go and feeling nothing inside.

In the absence of such a service, he walked. He walked to the glorious statue of George Washington on horseback, and then up the wide center mall of Commonwealth Avenue, with its grey and weather-greened statues of assorted great men of the past. He stopped briefly at each one, as he often did, reading the inscriptions again, making a kind of silent visitation to their memory. There was Alexander Hamilton, and John Glover, a revolutionary soldier from Marblehead. There was Patrick Collins, a turn-of-the-century mayor of Boston, whose qualities engraved in stone proclaimed not only that he was honest and talented, but also that he was “serviceable.” Potter liked that. The notion of being a “serviceable” man. But most of all he liked the staunch figure of William Lloyd Garrison, at ease in a chair that seemed like a throne, whose base bore the words of the great man himself declaring that “I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.” Actually Potter didn’t know a damn thing about Garrison except that he had been a leading abolitionist, but nevertheless the confident, uncompromising words, the grand aristocratic sweep of the sentiment, speaking from an age that seemed more courageous and clearly defined in its purpose and conflict than his own amorphous time, gave Potter a quick, adrenaline thrill. The whole Avenue, with its solid statues, its great trees, its fine old houses lining either side, had a stateliness that Potter enjoyed.

He was finding in general that he liked Boston better than Cambridge. He liked the “old” feeling of the brick sidewalks and yellow-tongued gaslamps on Beacon Hill, liked the open, majestic feeling of the Commons and the Public Gardens, which were laid out on a more intimate, human scale than Central Park, and were less threatening; walking those paths, you expected to be panhandled, yes, but not mugged or raped or murdered.

Boston was grace and tradition to Potter. Cambridge was Harvard. Cambridge was students. Walking through Harvard Square, if you were not a student or someone who might be a student, you felt like an alien, felt as if you stuck out from the crowd, like a German tourist in the South of Spain. Every time Potter went through the Square, the Yeats line flashed automatically through his mind: “That is no country for old men.” Old, in Harvard Square, seeming anything over thirty. At most. The atmosphere was youthfully oppressive.

When he got to Mass Avenue, Potter walked up to the Hotel Elliot at the corner of Boylston and had a couple of drinks in its pitch-dark cocktail lounge. Then he decided to blow a few bucks on taking a cab home, which would spare him a trek through Harvard Square.

Back at his apartment he prepared himself a large tumbler of Scotch and soda and ice, and turned on the seven o’clock news.

The war in Vietnam was still “winding down,” like a busted alarm clock.

Martha Mitchell had made another of her famous late-night phone calls, bawling out someone who had criticized the Nixon administration.

Tension was high on the Israel-Arab borders.

Suburban mothers in Michigan were picketing against school-busing.

The Orioles had taken a lead on the Reds in the World Series.

The Celtics had a three-game win-streak going.

Derek Sanderson vowed that the Bruins would go all the way.

Tomorrow would be cloudy and cool, with scattered showers.

Potter found himself suddenly laughing.

They called that news?

He went to the kitchen to make a new drink, but first made a pledge to himself that he would eat.

The most simple substance available seemed to be a can of Hormel chili. Potter took it off the shelf, set a pan on a front burner of the electric stove, and got out the can opener. A do-it-yourself home dinner kit. He would do it a little later. First, he made the new drink.

It was situation comedy time on TV, and he pushed the button in, rejecting. Canned chili was bad enough without having to add canned laughter. He put a Judy Collins on the stereo.

When you’re down in Juarez in the rain and it’s Easter-time too —