Steve Martin - The Pleasure of My Company

Clarissa’s studies progressed and she engaged herself in them with fervor, and she grasped the language of psychology quickly. The vocabulary and concepts came easily to her and she hinted that she had an affection for the subject matter that the other students didn’t. At night she would catch me up on what she had learned during the day, give me shorthand analyses of syndromes and disorders, and then would go over comments she had made in class to get my opinion of them.

Clarissa was always thoughtful toward me and would express her gratitude for my assistance in her life, and I would thank her in return, which always left her puzzled. The impact she and Teddy had had on me was made clear one afternoon when a packet of mail arrived, forwarded from my old address. One of the envelopes was from Mensa. I opened it and read that it had been discovered that, as I had guessed, my scores had been compromised by human error, and would I like to take the test again? My first thought took the form of a shock: Human error at Mensa? What chance then did McDonald’s have, and the Rite Aid, and CompUSA? My second thought took the form of a semantic shudder at the phrase “human error”: Is there any other kind? My third thought was No, I didn’t want to take the test again, because here I was having a life, even though it was a pastiche of elements of the life of someone else.

One night I got a phone call from Clarissa asking if it was all right for her to be home later than usual. “Would you be okay? Were you going out?” she asked, “Can you watch Teddy; is Teddy okay?” Sure, I said.

Teddy and I had an evening of bliss. He was the model child and I was the model adoptive/uncle/friend. We cavorted on the bed, we played trash can basketball, we played “Where’s Teddy?” at professional levels. Finally a cloud came over him and he conked out on my bed and I slid him over and rested next to him. My lighting rules were still in effect and the soft thirty-watt lamp on my chest of drawers was balanced nicely by the solar glow in the living room. My door was ajar and I could see the front window and door as I lay in relative darkness. I used this solemn time for absolutely nothing, as I drained my mind of thought.

Tonto.

That’s who I felt like when I heard the footsteps coming along the second-floor walkway. I thought to myself, “There are two of them, Kemosabe, and they’re coming this way.” I heard Clarissa’s voice, then a man’s. They spoke slowly, each response to the other delivered in the same whispered tone. Her answers were shy; his questions were confident and cool. They passed the window and I saw him looking at her as she looked down, fumbling for her keys. The door opened and he stood outside while she moved in, putting her purse down and turning around to him. He spoke to her, and he stepped into the apartment. Her hand touched the light switch and the hard overheads went out, sending my body into rigor mortis. But I watched. They spoke again and he put his hand on her arm, pulling her toward him. She responded. He moved his hand, sliding it up under her hair. He drew her into him and rested his forehead on hers, and I watched him close his eyes and breathe deeply to absorb her. His lips brushed her cheek and I saw her surrender, her shoulders dropping, her arms hanging without resistance. His hand went to her back and urged her, pressing her against him. Her arm went up to his waist, then around his back, and he moved his lips around to hers and kissed her, her arm tightening, locking on his back, her other arm sliding up to his elbow. Her head fell back and he continued kissing her, standing over her, then he stepped back and looked into her eyes, saying nothing.

It is hard to find that the person you love loves someone else. I knew that my tenure with Clarissa and Teddy would have an end.

It was early June, and I had continued my pattern with Teddy, and had continued to incrementally withdraw my attachment to Clarissa. There were other nights, nights involving quiet door closings and early morning slip-outs. These sounds made my detachment easier, even though there was no official announcement of a pledge of love, even though, as far as I knew, there was no introduction of the new man to Teddy, which I felt was wise of Clarissa and protective toward her child.

On a particularly disastrous afternoon I was in charge of Teddy and he and I engaged in a battle of wits. My mind was coherent, rational, cogent. His was not. As compelling as my arguments were, his nonverbal mind resisted. We had no unifying language or belief. I wanted a counselor to mediate, who would come and interpret for us, find common ground, a tenet we could agree on, then lead us into mutually agreed-on behavior. All this angst was focused on a cloth ring that fit over a cloth pole. He screamed, he wanted it, he didn’t want it, he cursed-I’m sure it was cursing-and there was absolutely no avenue for calm. But there were moments of transition. The moments of his transition from finding one thing unpleasant to finding another unpleasant. And he would gaze into my eyes, as if to read what I wanted from him so he could do the opposite. But these transitions were also moments of stillness, and in stillness is when my mind churns the fastest. I looked into the wells of his irises, into the murky pools of the lenses that zeroed in and out.

I had spent time with him; I had been the face, on occasion, that he woke up to. I was fixed in him; my image was held in his consciousness, and I wondered if his recollection of me had slipped beneath the watermark of his awareness and entered into a dreamy primordial place. I wondered if he saw me as his father. If he did, everything made sense. I was the safe one, the one he could rage against. The one from whom he would learn the nature, the limitation, and the context of the cloth ring on the cloth pole.

I constructed a triangle in my head. At its base was Teddy’s identification of me as hero, along its ascending sides ran my participation in Teddy’s life, however brief that participation might prove to be. At the apex was the word “triumph,” and its definition spewed out of the triangle like a Roman candle: If one day Teddy, the boy and child, approached me with trust, if one morning he ran to my bedroom to wake me, if one afternoon he was happy to see me and bore a belief that I would not harm him, then I would have achieved victory over my past.

But my thoughts did not mollify Teddy; he wanted action. It was now dusk and he continued to orate in soprano screams. I decided a trip to the Rite Aid was in order, and he softened his volume when I swept him up and indicated we were on our way outside.

The sky over the ocean was lit with incandescent streaks of maroon. The air hinted that the evening would be warm, as nothing moved, not a leaf. Teddy, a strong walker now, put his hand up for me to take, and I hunched over and walked at old-man speed. We walked along the sidewalk and I occasionally would playfully swing him over an impending crack. I approached the curb, where I normally would have turned left and headed eight driveways down to where I could cross the street. But I paused.

My hand smothered Teddy’s. I looked at him and knew that after my cohabitation with Clarissa was over, he might not remember me at all. Yet I knew I was influencing him. Every smile or frown I sent his way was registering, every raised voice or gentle praise was logged in his spongy mind. I wondered if what I wanted to pass along to him was my convoluted route to the Rite Aid, born of fear and nonsense, if what I wanted him to take from me was my immobility and panic as I faced an eight-inch curb. Or would I do for him what Brian had done for me? Would I lead him, as Brian had me, across the fearful place and would I let him hold on to me as I had held on to Brian? Suddenly, turning left toward my maze of driveways was as impossible as stepping off the curb. I could not leave Teddy with a legacy of fear from an unremembered place. I pulled him toward the curb so he would not be like me. Recalling the day I flew over it with a running leap, I put out one foot into the street, so he would not be like me. He effortlessly stepped off, swaying with stiff knees. I checked the traffic and we started forth. I walked him across the street so that he would not be like me. I led him up on the curb. I continued my beeline to the Rite Aid, a route I had only imagined existed. Across streets, down sidewalks, in crosswalks and out of them, all so Teddy would not be like me. I was the Santa María and Teddy was the Niña and Pinta . I led, he followed. I conquered each curb and blazed a new route south and achieved the Rite Aid in fifteen minutes.