Antrim, Donald - Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World

Rita’s voice interrupted this reverie. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Robinson?”

“Excuse me?”

“I was pointing out the virtues of tolerance and respect between peoples from diverse walks of life.”

“Right. Yes. Certainly.” What was she getting at? Nothing. She was just being herself.

I sipped coffee. The bison’s belly, where the cup had rested, was wet and warm. It felt sweet. The kids seemed to be enjoying Rita’s spurious elaboration (appropriated, if memory serves, from the “children’s classic” Heidi, in my opinion one of the world’s more defective pedagogic texts, an inane paean to cruelty toward the physically disabled — disabled readers, that is, who can’t get up from their wheelchairs and walk, like Clara — rationalized as Christian rectitude and saccharine good manners) — but anyway, as I was saying, the kids seemed to be enjoying Rita’s elaboration of Pocahontas’s daily hikes down the precipitous mountain path to read Virgil to her blind grandmother. I kept thinking about little auburn-haired Sarah — the “adult,” not the child. This image was, of course, a modified Meredith. Sometimes, with my wife naked and pressed close to me, her breasts and stomach and the fronts of her legs on my chest and stomach, on my legs, well, we wouldn’t even bother to pull away the strands of her hair coming between us into our mouths.

The tots on the sofa made curious gurgling noises. Occasionally one of the mothers would go, “Shhh.” Rita read patiently through all these familial sounds. “‘For true love of her Captain, the girl did hazard her own dear life.’”

I bolted the dregs of my coffee. It so happens I know a thing or two about the Pocahontas legend, and the fact is there’s convincing doubt in certain academic circles regarding the veracity of John Smith’s “true biographical” account of his dramatic rescue at the hands of the daughter of the chief of the Chickahominy. Smith was a well-known self-aggrandizer and brownnoser who was suspected of embellishing his travel narratives (published to acclaim in London) in order to gain favor and influence at court. Still, it’s a good tale: a sexy pagan throwing herself in death’s way to deliver a Protestant. Why wreck things for a bunch of kids by invoking esoteric polemics? I set the soft white Styrofoam cup on the floor, stood and whispered, “Rita, thanks for everything. Sorry about that book. Give my best to Jerry.”

She paused in her reading. “Why, Mr. Robinson, we’re coming to the best part.”

“I’ve really got to be going. Back to the lawn and all. No rest for the weary.”

Rita said, “Children, can we all say bye-bye to Mr. Robinson?”

“Bye-bye,” said the children.

“Bye-bye,” I said back.

“Bye,” chorused the moms.

“Bye,” I said again. “Bye.”

Then out the door and into morning. Right on Water and right again onto Wisteria, walking fast through humid air settling over tall palms that threw no shade over the tile roofs of neighborhoods where dogs barked. Out here in the world, things appeared normal. There was, and this seemed fitting, a distant somber growl of lawn mowers chewing grass. Difficult to say how many lawn mowers, or down which streets. Here and there insects darted, their luminescent wings brightly sunlit. A man fetched a paper from his sandbagged porch. I waved to him, and he kindly waved back. Farther down Wisteria, a girl wearing shorts and a halter top rode past on a bicycle, her hair trailing her. “Good morning,” the barefoot girl cried.

When I arrived at the house Meredith was seated at the kitchen table, studying the morning edition, munching toast and drinking tea. She wore her indigo cotton bathrobe loosely belted; her hair hung wetly combed. I cruised over and stood by her chair and looked down the front of her robe. Floral scents of shampoo filled the air. Newspaper headlines splashed across the blue Formica table in front of my wife’s belly: SPORTSMAN LANDS RECORD MARLIN, HUGE FISH CALLED “ASTONISHING.” Breathlessly I said, “A minute ago I imagined you in the shower, and now here you are, you must’ve been showering at exactly the instant I had my vision.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in that kind of thing.” She tilted her head back to gaze at my unshaved face. “Did you come to bed last night? Where were you? And what’s that thing?”

She was referring to the bison, which I’d unthinkingly carted home, underarm like a football. I tossed it in the corner and told Meredith, “I’ll explain later, let’s make love,” flinging away the knapsack, stripping off my shirt, running gritty hands over Meredith’s arms and shoulders. I licked the back of Meredith’s neck; I squeezed her; hugged her; reached down and pulled the sash girdling her robe.

“Pete, wait. We don’t have time, Bob’s coming over.”

“Bob?”

“From the Holiday Inn yesterday. We made an appointment. He’s going to help me reenter trance. Bob says it’s crucial to stay with the initial impulse and follow the open stream to the unconscious. He’s offered to coach me on breath work.”

“What’s that?”

“Rhythmic breathing required to induce feelings of emotional well-being. It’s part of a safe and secure trance experience. I’m sorry, honey, I have to get dressed. We can have sex later, okay?”

“Can we?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“Yes.”

But later Meredith went swimming feverishly into archaeology. It was ten o’clock on a bright new day. Sunlight poured into the living room, hurting my eyes. Bob, the trance coach, who was a pleasant-looking guy if you like a closely trimmed mustache wrapping a thin mouth — Bob reclined on our living room sofa and instructed, “In, out, in, out, easy, ride the feeling, yes, calm, right, deeply now, let it out slowly.”

Meredith sat on the rug in half-lotus position. She wore summer clothes revealing shoulders and back, and, on her mouth, lipstick of an ephemeral cast. Now her eyes were closed, her tanned feet bare. I watched her toes twitch, and I noticed her head metronomically nodding in time with twitching toes, back and forth, back and forth; she looked opiated. I reclined a few feet from her, in the big wicker armchair. Bob had made me promise to keep quiet during the proceedings, a superfluous request, I thought, and one that was invasive, but what could I say? I slouched down low in the chair, propped my feet on the coffee table, drank my bitter coffee. I hadn’t had a bath and my clothes smelled. Pounding drums rolled from stereo speakers flanking dusty bookshelves. Every now and then Meredith shuddered; her body stretched and jerked. It frightened me to watch this. Bob leaned away from her and toward me; his eyes were, I saw, very, very deep in his face. In low, confiding tones, the professor explained, “We’re witnessing a personal devolution from lung to gill breathing. It’s a process of psychic regression in which the trance initiate accesses memory at the cellular level and rides the DNA chain like a wave back into prehistory.”

“Ah.”

Meredith’s mouth opened and closed; she made gulping noises; her body swayed. The more this went on, the more it depressed me. Midmorning sun kept blasting through the living room windows onto my contorting wife, whose movements seemed to me, within the context of Bob’s presence, indecent. It was a question of marital intimacy and the sanctity of environment: namely, this room, stocked with furnishings selected by me and Meredith, together, for our life.

Bob leaned forward on the sofa. His face hovered close to Meredith’s. He tapped one foot in time with the drums. The scent of flowers filled the air — a bowl of drying rose petals rested on the shelf above the records Meredith and I used to play while we made love on the sofa in the days before we could afford a proper bed. Meredith’s dress was hiked up and from the right angle you could see up it, and this made me anxious because I couldn’t tell whether Bob was getting a view. He wore a vacant gaze. Meredith performed little irregular motions, making her hair fall forward over her face to cover her eyes and mouth. I reached out to adjust her clothes. It was hot in the living room and everyone was sweating. Meredith’s head rested on a pillow embroidered with images of fish. Bob’s voice intoned, “Deeper, Mer,” and she twitched.