Kristopher Jansma - Why We Came to the City

Jacob had the fleeting feeling that those pale little shrouds of children were actually looking at the Chinese food — waiting for their moment to reach through the glass and steal a wonton. He forgot all about the book in his hand for a minute as the commercial continued — the 800 number flashing on the bottom. Should I call? he wondered. He had always thought these things were scams, or fronts for religious organizations. The sane, human thing to do was to change the channel. To take up club-league kickball. To read all the cartoons in the New Yorker and stuff the rest. To sit down and have some lo mein and talk about his epic journey to find an epic poem about an epic journey. In other words, to live.

“It’s cold, but you can heat it up,” Oliver said, turning back to the television screen just long enough to confirm that his show wasn’t back on yet.

• • •

Jacob carried the book everywhere: under his arm up and down the Stamford antiques district as he and Oliver searched for new light fixtures; on the seat beside him on the bus, underlining passages during red lights; just inside his duffel bag with an Attic Greek dictionary so that he could retranslate stanzas late at night in the common room. He worked on it so obsessively that he nearly forgot that he had promised to fly home to see his parents for his birthday the week before Ella would be leaving. He’d have missed the flight entirely if Oliver hadn’t noticed it on the schedule — months ago Oliver had requested that Friday off so that he could catch a less crowded midday flight and get down to Florida before night fell. (His parents now refused to drive after dark.)

“I need a day off anyway,” Oliver said. “Let me drive you to the airport.”

Jacob didn’t need to pack. They kept a drawer full of warm weather clothes for him down there, and his mother always had a new toothbrush waiting in the holder in the guest bathroom. So he carried the book with him out to Oliver’s truck, slid in beside it, and immediately resumed underlining. After several weeks he was still only on Book 15, where the goddess Athena is urging Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, to hurry home before his mother, Penelope, weds one of her many suitors, and there were still nine books, plus a lot of conclusions he meant to draw at the end. If he was going to get it to Ella before she left Anchorage House, he’d have to really dig deep.

“It’s good to see you studying again,” Oliver commented as they drove over the Whitestone Bridge. Out the passenger-side window, Jacob could see Queens rising up across the river, and somewhere beyond it, he knew, was Manhattan. His old apartment and his old notes and his old life, all waiting there for him to return.

“Are you thinking about going back for your doctorate?”

“Is there something like art therapy but with poetry and books? Is that a thing?”

It had been some time since he’d seen Oliver look pleasantly surprised. “Bibliotherapy! Yes, there have been some good articles written about it. I could pull a few together for you if you’d like.”

“Thanks. I’ve been thinking I’d like to try it.”

“You mean start therapy?” He actually shouted this, utterly delighted, as if he’d been waiting ages for Jacob to say it.

Annoyed, Jacob explained, “No, I want to give therapy. I mean, I minored in psychology. I think I’d be good at it. If Sissy Coltrane can do it, I can too.”

They rolled on past the New York Times building, and soon Jacob could just spot the remnants of the old World’s Fair.

“Sissy has a certification in art therapy,” Oliver said after a while.

Jacob snorted. “What Sissy has is an alpaca muumuu and a sense of entitlement.”

Oliver groaned. “This is about Ella Yorke, isn’t it?”

Jacob didn’t answer but went back to annotating the book until soon they were winding along the terminals of Kennedy Airport, heading for Delta.

When they finally got to the curb where all the bag handlers were waiting, Oliver forced a smile. “Well,” he said, handing Jacob a small silver case, “if you want to get certified in bibliotherapy, I think it’d be brilliant. But in the meantime, maybe you can use these.”

Inside the silver case were twenty or thirty business cards that in gilt letters read, JACOB BLAUMANN. MASTER AND COMMANDER OF POETRY. SPECIALIZING IN EPIC WORKS. Jacob turned one over in his hands once or twice and then slid the case into his breast pocket. They were beautiful.

“These are perfect,” he said. “Oliver, really. Thank you.”

He couldn’t think of the last time he’d bought Oliver a present, and certainly not out of the blue, and he considered apologizing until he realized that Oliver was trying to segue into something else.

“Jacob,” he began, “I understand how rough this past year’s been on you, but honestly, we might need to face the fact that this isn’t… I mean perhaps we ought to—”

But Jacob hurriedly kissed him on the lips and pushed the side door open. Once he was out, he tried to close the door, only it got stuck, and he had to stop and open it again.

“It’s jammed on the seat belt there,” Oliver said.

“I can see that.”

“Just push it back inside.”

“I’m—” He bit his tongue and knocked the belt back inside. Then he closed the door again and waved goodbye. Oliver drove the truck off past the police officers, who were directing everyone away. The door was still wobbling. Way down near the very end of the lane, he watched as Oliver stopped, got out, came around, and with a firm hand this time, convinced the door to stay shut.

Jacob kept notating while he was standing in the security line. When the time came, he placed the book into the little gray bucket, set the notepad on top, and sent it off into the X-ray machine. The business card case he placed, with his keys, belt, three pens, shoes, and cell phone, in a separate bucket.

“Excuse me, sir?” the security guard asked him on the other side, as he reassembled himself. The guard looked at the book and thumbed through the notepad at the scribbled foreign lettering and sketched boat diagrams and maps of routes, as if they might contain secret codes or be some kind of blueprint for a bomb. “Is this everything?”

“Yes,” Jacob affirmed. “This is all I have.”

Progress. One whole book finished between boarding and taxiing, and Telemachus and his father were reunited at last, but then about an hour into the plane ride, the pen that Jacob was using to mark up the book began to leak. Cursing, he tried to mop up the spill with the back side of one of Oliver’s business cards.

“Do you need to borrow a pen?” asked the woman next to him. Jacob looked at her for the first time since she’d sat down beside him. With long red nails, she dog-eared her place in Heaven Exists! , a book about a boy who allegedly died, went to heaven, and returned to report about it.

Jacob thanked the lady for the offer. She fished in her purse a moment, until she pulled out a ballpoint BIC.

“Oh,” he said, hesitating, “it’s blue.”

“Sorry?”

“It’s a blue pen. I’ve been writing all my notes in black. Does that sound crazy?”

The woman didn’t say but looked a little nervous as she tucked her pen back away.

“How is that?” Jacob asked, thumbing toward her book.

She made an unmistakable eh face before asking, “What’s that about?”

“This jerk who gets lost at sea for thirty years.”

“Do you have a big test on it coming up?” she pointed to his notebook, which Jacob then covered slightly with his hand.

“No. It’s a gift for someone.”

“Lucky someone,” the woman said.