Mr. Eames

Let me explain now, how I became a cynic. In Santa Clara, the city in which I grew up and down in, there is a stream of highways, bus stops and overpass roads that lead every which way in a very well-organized and strategically orchestrated mess of hedgerows, apartment complex slums, dingy breakfast diners and half-finished graffiti murals on patches of abandoned railroad cars, and illegible road signs in construction jungles. South of this picture is a rolling ocean of hills with power plant valleys and telephone wires running through it like a fungus, keeping it all electrically charged, a reminder that we are never alone. Past those hills, the land becomes level and suburban with patchwork housing, all similar estates, with concentrated areas of taller, well-to-do miniature mansions with would-be vineyards enclosed in half-acre plots, and driveway after driveway you will see forest green to chipper and chartreuse shades of square, manicured lawns. Beyond suburbia lies the infested coastal mountains somewhat east of Santa Cruz and north of Monterey Bay. A long, winding road of these can never suffice to impress upon you the magic that lies deeper within, where the redwoods sprout up on the way in and intermix with other species throughout, leaving a forest so thick and dense you cannot see above you but for seven or eight feet of the thorniest canopy. In the civilized area there you are able to walk on paved streets and pay six dollars for a glass of wine, if you'd like to, but you will stand still in the midst of constant nature, connected to a buzzing wire somewhere.

Here I found a home. It was a rare occasion to be bothered there save by the barista Madeline at the Café Artisan and a vagrant who introduced himself as Tiny. I entertained one too many conversations with the pair and unfortunately, they became my loyal companions. Communication with my father had stopped years ago after he had retired and began to ignore my phone calls. Communication with my mother had stopped after she died of a sick spell from her pancreatic cancer. Since my mother had passed, I had since grown strangely callous and rarely reminisced properly in mourning or in grief. She was one of my harshest critics during my childhood, and always one of her own. I think in retrospect she was a terribly good mother to me. She was a talented dancer, a skillful seamstress, the type of whom all my friends were envious. It had been sixteen years since her funeral and eight since I'd began work at the city college teaching in the English department for a weak salary and an old, rotten cabin in the mountains.
The word ‘cabin’ might possibly mislead your imagination's take on it, Mind you, my place was a paint-chipped, ground-floor one bedroom residence, somehow wedged between overgrown Bays and Sycamores as though it were a cyst on the earth itself- as though I returned home everyday to something animal that fed off of the roots and dirt of its neighbors. Some poor, ambitious family likely built or began to build what must have been in some places a thirteen-foot deep swimming pool in the back of the place, but was now unrecognizable as to its purpose as it had been completely covered by vines and small ground plants like clover and mustard flower, so that now there was a large crater of greenery as though God had pressed his thumb into the soil years ago, and decided the ground was too bothersome to toil with or till further. It graced the place with a divine charm that left the wood grossly pliable like gold and the windows always agleam, never fogging up or gathering grime. Likely that is why I bought the house, besides the fact that I was impatient, impartial, and broke.

At the college, I refrained from unnecessary socialization and kept out of hallway talk and staff room coffee conversation. I was generally absent from the useless staff meetings, and I liked to think of myself a sort of object of infamy.
At the beginning of my first year teaching, after lectures or before hours, students might drop in for a chat about their assignments, literature questions, the weather and whatever else. The less I spoke with them in return, the less they began to show up, and eventually the visits became significantly less frequent. In fact, I really never had visits from students anymore at all. The exception was a girl in my English Composition course. She seemed unaffected by my disinterest and persisted in stopping by. Her name was Ellen.

“You’re doing a fine job in place of Professor Montemurray, you know. I don’t think anyone even misses him. He could’ve at least left you his lesson plans, though. There's hardly a week left of the semester, you realize,” she said and then laughed.
“He did, actually. I threw them out. I didn’t much like his lesson plans," I replied
“I thought he was decent," she said.
“I wouldn’t have used them,” I said with a little too much irritation.
“Are you busy, Mr. Eames?” she asked.
“I am. Can I help you?" I replied.
“No, no, I only wondered," she explained.
“I’m not really busy, I guess," I conceded guiltily.
After looking a moment at my changed countenance Ellen whirled around and said, “Well, I’ll see you Thursday.” And that was that. She had gone away. I had the feeling I had done something wrong and needed to rectify the situation, but I shrugged it off and continued my work. I was awfully curious about Ellen and tried to listen to her more often during class because I felt rude for having snubbed her during our first visit.
As Ellen bowed her head to rest in class or yawned so that her head was tilted backward, I saw that she had small scars on the side of her face in a row like stitches. They were slightly hidden by her hair that hung all over like Christmas lights strung up in a hurry. Her mouth sat frowning, small underneath a thin, lady-like nose that was freckled and always flushed red. Despite her childish features, she carried herself well, and sometimes gave me the feeling she was far wiser than I. She constantly read during the lectures but managed to pass all of my tests with A’s. A young man named Jared that sat beside her was the sort of all-knowing class maven, but Ellen’s remarks and answers had a profound depth that Jared’s sort lacked. He would challenge her, they would argue, and she would win. Once or twice I had thought of suggesting she put away the book, but it seemed to me that Ellen was more intent on my words in the middle of her novel than all the others in their wide-eyed attention.

Saturday night I spent typing up mismatched pieces of short stories in the Café Artisan, as I did sometimes for cathartic reasons, or possibly because I hate the feeling of drinking alone, unoccupied. Madeline stared sideways at me while shining her glasses.
“You get paler everyday, Polly," said Madeline.
“Madeline, it’s Jonathon,” I corrected her, not really minding her nicknaming.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I won’t call you what you’re not. Not James or John or whoever, you birdie, you know how you are.”
“Sorry?” I laughed and she continued on. Madeline’s bun was pinned tight behind her head and she had a pencil behind her ear.
“You lush,” she laughed, “you come back here for more, you bird, and you say you’re through with me and this drab old place and then you leave and you always come back. This is your cage, Polly, and I am your only friend.”
“Oh you bitter old-” I started.
“Cracker?” She asked, offering me a snack from behind the bar with gleaming eyes. Madeline smiled big teeth and made her way down the bar to talk to me close, looking me in my face the way she did as though she were going to lay some ancient, sacred truth on me.
“It’s always a pleasure, Polly, to be your only friend,” she told me.
She poured me a cognac and swirled it around in the glass, smiling before handing it to me. Madeline's smile was by far the most tangible evidence of her humanity. I drank it over the span of a half an hour while writing, and thanked her when I was through. The story I was writing I called "Camille’s Arsenal" and it was absolutely worthless. Madeline spoke up again, looking over my notes. “So, the college," she began, "go on, it’s right in the city you say?” mildly interested.
“Yes, right smack dab in the middle of it all, and a block away from the park and that little oriental district you love so much,” I replied.
“Sounds about right. Isn’t everything a block or so from everything down there?” she asked me.
“Anyway, I like it," I said.
“Well don’t you forget about your old Cracker, Polly.”
“Unfortunately, I cannot,” I said and winked at her. I continued writing, more of thinking, trying to think, waiting for a thought.
“Well, Polly,-” she began, her eyes widening threateningly with a crystal allure that meant she wanted to talk for hours. I could not bear to feign interest in anything anymore. I stood up and smiled broadly.
“Well! Look at that, it’s late. I’ll pack up. Tomorrow’s the midterm. See you another time, Madeline," I said and I left the Artisan so quickly, I may have flown.

I thought the whole drive home about how terrible my writing becomes after a strong cognac and a dull conversation.

On Monday Ellen came back again and sat in the front of the classroom with a book she held open in front of her.
“You gave me a rather generous mark on my position paper, Mr. Eames. I don’t think I even worked an hour on it, you know," she confessed.
“It was well written," I said, "I suppose you are just somewhat of a person of depth.”
Without answering she began to read her book, which she was now holding closer to her face. A few twigs of her dark brown hair had escaped the shade of the cover. I disliked working with her there.
“Hopefully, Mr. Eames, you will be pleasantly surprised then, when I turn in something worth reading, next time,” she said with a superior tone that slightly irritated me, and I nodded in response.

The next week she came back again and the more often she came in, the more she had to say and the less it all pertained to my class or her marks on papers she’d written. Ellen began to confide in me and spill her every thought on my desk, in a heap next to the grading sheets. At times, Ellen would grow emotional and speed up her speeches until I could no longer make out their meaning, but merely responded according to her tone. Some days Ellen suggested books for me to read and new albums I ought to buy, but I often found her taste too youthful and began to forget this or that suggestion. Sometimes Ellen would spend an hour simply sitting or leaning on the podium, not saying a word, and when I would address her or say hello she would leave or show signs of disdain for me.
Ellen had a very volatile temperament that made her a sea of emotional turmoil. One day Ellen would apologize for a rude remark she had made, or on another day she might act as though we were strangers and sit shyly in front of me, her pink nose pointed at the floor and her frowning mouth in a weak smile. Ellen, I am sure, had parents, friends, a world in which she lived, but in those days she seemed to exist only in my classroom, like a note of its silence or a piece of its furniture. Ellen was the light switch on the wall and the curtains I expected to see on the windows. Her constant presence there now controlled the look of the place, as though when Ellen was happy the walls had the light of a pale yellow newly brushed across them, or when she was sad, a gray shadow fell over them and would change at her whim like the sun breaking up the clouds or the wind shifting their shapes. It really was that changing and that vivid. She had become permanent and effective. Certainly, I knew her rather well.

Late one Friday I walked down the street from the college to the Artisan and found Tiny, who was loitering outside, humming in the cold. 'The Way You Look Tonight', I think it was.
"You know, Ms. Madeline won't mind you bugging around in there," I told him, "she likes the company and I'd think you'd enjoy the warmth, Tiny."
"Ah, John," he replied, in a dusky, cool voice, "couldn't go in there. Couldn't settle in. Couldn't settle in much any place, except yours maybe, when I'm welcome," while he gazed outwardly.
"You're welcome, Tiny, just get inside someplace," I urged him, suddenly feeling protective of him. I looked at his beard and mustache, stained with cigar smoke and bleached from Lord-knows-what-else.
Tiny would always look seriously into the sky, no matter the time of day, and seem otherworldly for a moment before changing the subject when he got uncomfortable. It was becoming on him.
"I took a hike earlier. Found a nice place with a view down the mountain and stayed there a while. Settled there," he said.
"I'll see it sometime," I said, half-heartedly. I was beginning to feel the chill, and I licked my gums and stretched my legs, standing there outside. Emptiness with Tiny was never truly empty. The quiet was only so deep; his thoughts were all over the place really.
"Better go," he breathed, and was off.
Tiny had no home, I knew, but where he went whenever he went away baffled the hell out of me. He sometimes had on clean leather gloves, new boots or different coats, nicely worn-in jackets and wool or leather caps I couldn't have kept cleaner myself. I had no idea where he kept it all. He was the sort that seemed to have been born right out of the ground and able to lodge in the sunken crevices of old trees or the damp beds and cold quarters of abandoned inns. I had invited him into my own home on several occasions for coffee in particularly harsh weather, but had never noticed which direction he went off to as he left, or from which he came as he got to my door. Of all the pitiful hobos and drunks that flecked the city, he was similar in few ways to the rest. He was entirely civil and had good, wholesome manners. He never begged for money, but found it nobler to scrounge and live rat-like in the places where no one would find him. He never smelled of liquor, only a musk of tobacco and mothballs, and he spent any money he had on cassette tapes and Vienna Sausage cans, which he frequently spooned out of and kept snug in an inside coat pocket. I felt comfortable with him, although distant sometimes, not because I disliked him, but because I almost felt inferior around him with his unabashed wild side and fearless mentality.

Monday I woke up early to call my father. The dial tone rang for three minutes and was cut off by a machine voice telling me to leave a message. I thought the voice sounded presumtious and hung up the line. I taught a lesson that day on rhetoric, and then afterward I felt lousy for no reason and turned off half the lights. I felt hung over, and I was not. Ellen came in and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of my desk so that I could not see her face at all, but only the summit of her tangled hair.
"No good lesson today. What a waste of yours and my time, you know," she said.
"Your, and my," I corrected her. My shirt collar felt tight.
"Well, whoever's, but it was lousy," she said.
"My apologies." I started at my grade book, marking up essays I hardly remembered assigning. The room looked the same- the walls, white.
"Mr. Eames," began Ellen.
"Yes, Ms. Mars?"
"I think you're awfully broken. You show it, you know, you're no good at hiding it," she said.
"Broken? I am quite intact, I believe," I told her, tightening up further. I still could not see her, but I had stopped looking for a face and was now organizing the graded essays on my desk.
"Oh come off it. You are, aren't you?" she demanded. I seemed to have somehow upset her. I laughed.
"Mr. Eames," she went on, "don't go all funny on me."
"Oh, I don't even know how to be funny," I told her.
"You're a natural," she said. Ellen sat up straight and her eyes peered over my desktop, scanning the papers and at last they smiled up at me and sunk back down again.
"Ellen, you're a liar," I said.
"I'm also curious, actually," she said, "why you're so sullen every day and lonely, you know, broken. But I will wait. You'll come around. Everyone loves to share their tragedies."
"I haven't got any of those," I told her.
"Except that overgrown facial hair you've got going on," she mocked me.
I felt my chin and tried to find myself in a window, but the room was still too dim.
The next day Ellen did not come back after class, and I wound up writing a few pages of drivel and throwing them out. I forgot to grade the rest of the essays or check my box for mail. I was backward. At home I vacuumed the living room and swept the kitchen but left the dishes in the sink. Miraculously the postman found my mailbox, which he often gave up trying to pry open amongst the shrubbery and I got my mail for the first time in weeks.

There was only a water bill and a letter from my aunt telling me she would be sending me more letters from now on and wiring me some money when she got the chance. I don't know why she felt the need to do that or tell me that way, but it was nice to hear from her. She lived in Palo Alto with my uncle Chris who was my mother's older brother. He and my aunt Sophie used to come to Santa Clara for Thanksgiving ever year until my mother died. That's when my uncle started drifting into a solemn nightlife and ignoring much pertaining to his family or his job. Uncle Chris and Aunt Sophie were married in a Baptist church when she was only seventeen. My uncle was a shameless and cutthroat racist with very little tact and a very large heart. He had an active sense of humor and a limited sense of self. Chris used to say that he rescued my aunt from the dirty life of a liberal and that once they were married, she voted on the Republican ticket every election thereafter. She used to laugh at all of his jokes and host parties for him and his friends on holidays. They really were happy for quite some time.

Unfortunately, there was a rotting sort of tension under the baseboards of my family that formed when my mother died. On my mother's side, the story went that when my mother was diagnosed with the cancer, my father was unfeeling and hardly helped her with medications or caring for the illness, and on my father's side, they say that my mother never took care of herself or helped care for her children, blaming the illness for her neglect. I don't know who was ever right or wrong. I really don't know my mother at all.

Into the spring, it warmed up in the Santa Cruz mountains. The earth turned and the sun spat gold into the trees of the place where I lived. Tiny dropped off a finch in a Chinese food carton on my doorstep one afternoon and it died in the hot weather. My windows shone and the mud in my yard dried and cracked underneath my feet when I walked outside. One morning I caught Tiny standing barefoot with his corduroys rolled up around his ankles in a puddle in the street. He said he liked to watch his reflection change shape with the water in the wind. Summer was pressing in on me and less than a month was left of the second semester. I felt aged and browning like a leaf. I felt tightness in my chest that made me want to travel. Something within nature had that effect on me, something akin to jealousy of her effervescent youth or perhaps I really was getting old.

The next week at the college Ellen left quickly after class, and although I had coffee in close proximity to the other students and professors outside my room, I realized halfway through how little I had to say and how much I wanted to go home. I left them in the hall with a half of a wave and a mumble of a "Good Day". I stopped at the café before returning home. Madeline poured me a brandy and I drained it and asked for another. She poured me another in a long glass. I drank it quickly and it burned in my throat and left my lips cold. Something about that made me feel like I should have had a sad story to tell or tears to let go of for Madeline to absorb and understand, but I had nothing to say. I left after a detached conversation and the gut wrenching realization that I would have to do something just to do something.

A day later I lectured on fallacy and as I kept checking the time, I wondered once or twice if my wristwatch were broken or slow. I dismissed class early.
"What have you been up to?" I asked Ellen before she piled up her things to leave. It was a Friday and the next week would end the year. I drew the curtains and took a seat at my desk. The room felt increasingly hollow and the walls looked absolutely colorless, but the light from the window had hurt my eyes. “I just rarely see you anymore," I told her. Ellen's face was caught off-guard. She looked confused over something and I felt tense and embarrassed.
"I don't know, really," she said, "I think I've just been working too much." She put her things down and smiled, then let her tiny mouth fall back down again comfortably. "How are you?" She sat down coolly.
"You don't have to stay. It is dull, this classroom. I just wondered if there was anything interesting going on in your life that you might want to share." That seemed to me like a stupid thing to say, even before I said it. Ellen had always told me everything without hesitating to censor herself or hide anything too personal. She was an open book that had fallen shut behind a shelf, and now, in loneliness, I was summoning her back as though she was all I had left.
"Well, I'm a little frustrated with Jared," she began, "and my mother's gone off again now leaving me with this god awful Bradley person, who quite frankly acts like he's still twelve years old. He doesn't even like me and while I'm at work he makes the place such a mess. I don't understand how someone who sits around all day can wreak such havoc. And I'm in love, you know. That's also true. And I've been working on my transfer to Columbia, which I will be attending in the fall. So, congratulations to me, then." Ellen looked grown up to me now and her eyes were not shining with childish wonder, but with confidence.
"That's all very interesting. Who's Bradley again? And wasn't your mother dating a Francis before?" I asked. She reeled on, explaining, "Well, after she left Francis, she went on a vacation to Prague for a few weeks and brought home some Czech I despised royally. Oh, Milos or Milan or something, but that was all last year. You've got Francis mixed up with Sam. Sam was a keeper. But she couldn't see it. I guess he's working in Arizona now. Mom didn't want to move for his job. And well the new one's Bradley, and he's terrible. She left him also, but he had no where to go so instead, she went off." She took a deep breath and smiled curtly.
"Brilliant." I tried to remember what had happened to Ellen's first father, but I couldn't think of it. She scratched her head and I saw her little scars hiding behind her hair.
"You're not going to ask about who I love?" she asked.
"Well go on then," I told her, now curious and slightly concerned. I wondered why I had nothing interesting to share about my life the way Ellen might have once wanted me to. All of this time I had felt that Ellen's trifle ventures were beneath me in some way and now I found that I had none of my own with which to compare them.
"Well, firstly, we met for lunch in that park down the block. He's the one that dropped your class on the first of the year! Remember? The tall one, remember?"she asked me, lighting up.
"Yes, I remember him. Go on," I said, and I thought about my father and what he was doing. I wondered for a moment if he were thinking by some odd chance of what I might be doing, and then if he ever overestimated me. I never finished a thought.
"Well, we just started talking so often and found he lives near Mr. Allen, who just so happens to live down the street from my office! And everyone at the office thinks we're seeing each other, which must mean something; I mean he stops by all the time and I don't know. I think he's really wonderful." Ellen composed herself and recovered her posture, realizing her voice had escalated and she was speaking in limericks. The little look she gave me made me laugh.
"Well, good," I said, "Are you going to follow in your mother's footsteps and trade him in every month or so?" Her expression darkened and I thought I might have offended her.
"Mr. Eames. That was impolite." She chuckled.
She talked for a little while about her mother and her job and some new things she planned to do after moving to New York for university. Eventually it became dark outside and she asked me again if I were broken. She asked me why I never confided in her. She told me that I seemed unhappy and untoward. She told me that life is only as much as you make it. She told me that I was a brilliant professor and that I ought not to look so hard on myself. She said that in life, the good only comes to those who go after it. Everything else is just luck. I don't know where she got it all from. And then she went home.

That summer I spent driving to and from Santa Clara where my father had turned up incredibly ill from over-dosing and professedly attempting a suicide. Having been unconscious for an inordinate amount of time, he was extremely fragile and called an ambulance to rescue him. Some oaf from the papers publicized the scandal in small print somewhere, because that's how my aunt learned of it all, and likely she assumed that's where I had heard of it as well. She had written me a few letters and I'd read them blank as to what she was writing me for. Apparently my father was ill for several weeks before I found out about it, and my aunt had tried to encourage me through my undiscovered grief. I spent some time with her at my father's house, cleaning it up and keeping it going while he lay in bed. My uncle never came with her to help, but he might have had a good reason. I never asked her, and she never even mentioned him once.
"John give me a hand with this fish tank, how do you suppose he cleans this out?" She held a large lamp above the tank and some junk she'd found lying atop the glass.
"Sophie," I said, "I really don't know."

Sometimes my aunt would make my father breakfast and he would refuse to eat anything at all. He would tell her that she couldn't cook. I would have to order him Chinese take-out or else he wouldn't eat all day. I felt a little sorry for her at times, trying so hard for someone so unfeeling. I never came in to talk to him; I only helped Sophie and then went away. In spite of what is expected of this sort of relationship, my father did not, in fact, need me, and he had always had a way of letting me know that. At the close of summer my father passed on, leaving me the house, my inheritance, and the Louisa II, his sailboat.
I thought for a long time whether to move back home or sell my father's house. I decided to continue working at the college and left the house alone in Santa Clara, its keys hung up on the ring, the alarm going off unrestrained every morning, and the fish, obliviously circling their seaweed, in an empty home inside their glass cage.

School started back up, and on the first day Ellen informed me of exactly how many days, hours, and minutes until her transfer to Columbia. She said she could not wait to be somewhere worth her time and money. She had on that superior, irritating tone she often took, but it didn't bother me, because everything about Ellen seemed to radiate truth and happiness; I knew she was glad to see me. During a lesson on one particularly bright Monday, I had been having a hard time concentrating and felt distracted but I could not place my finger on what.
"Now why would he open up this way?" I asked the class, "Someone explain to me his purpose." I sat back in my chair, searching the room for eyes.
Someone spoke up from the back, "Well, who says it has to have a purpose?"
There were a few laughs, and the room was quiet. Jared raised a hand and replied, "It's clear that he's alluding back to the beginning of time- he's trying to lay down a strong exposition to begin something similar to that of... well, the beginning of the world."
"Righto. Good. And aren't there times when an author does not allude to anything or give anything a deeper meaning? Aren't there times when, possibly, it's all for show- mute aesthetics?" I asked, and I felt loud and strict, my voice booming throughout the silent air.
This time there was a show of hands and Ellen's, somewhere among them, then her voice.
"When given the option, sir, whether some writer intended I did or not, I would rather take out of a story whatever I think it has to offer me: entertainment, or possibly profound meaning where it wasn't even meant to show up, moral codes embedded in the very idea of the piece. That's just my opinion."
Someone coughed and a few others found him and looked away.
"So, Ms. Mars, what you mean to say is that the audience ought to interpret the meaning of the piece. To each his own, relativism, haphazard individuality type thing?" I was chewing my lunch and at the edge of my desk chair. She did not respond immediately, and I began to change the subject, "Well, class," I paused at the sound of her voice.
"What- I am saying, sir," she had interrupted me, "is that no one should read literature because they care about how the author felt. We ought to care about learning for ourselves, you know, taking from what we see and making what we will of it."
"Well," I spoke slowly, "if that's how you are oriented. This is analysis, and like all things, has its purpose."
"Like most things, Sir." She crossed her legs again and looked back down at her notes.

That night I walked down the road from the college which parted on one side to a small Japan-town lit street with wooden shop signs and hanging paper street lamps, which shone red atop some of the weather-faded sidewalk shades and past the Artisan, which was closed unusually. Then to the small park with a tall swing set and water fountains a long way off. The steel flask in my pocket that my father had left me was cold, but I was glad to have it. Its contents ran down my throat and warmed my stomach like glowing embers. It was a long walk back to my car parked uphill past the café. I drove quietly and isolated, feeling a numbness in my eyes as though they could not fully close.
When I reached my step I unlocked the door, and when I got inside I felt as though it had taken me at least ten minutes, standing on my porch without the light working at the lock. I drank a glass of port and wrote a brief letter to my aunt merely because of insomnia and the lack of motivation to leave the kitchen for bed.
The letter wished her luck with her sewing pattern designs she had told me about, and stated quite plainly that I thought they were the best thing I had ever seen. I felt like telling her that she'd been a doll to help me so much with dad. I felt like writing that she and my uncle were the only family I really had. I felt like embellishing the piece with all sorts of blandishments and sentimental nothings giving it meaning and an almost tangible weight in its envelope. I wanted to go on for pages with "how are you"s and "it seems like only yesterday"s, but truthfully I had none of that to say and I don't think I really cared how she was at all or why my uncle never came with her to help my father before he died, or why my father tried to kill himself in the first place, or why I had become such an empty, shallow gentleman. I planned to read some of Sophie's other letters to try and find some constructive, moral codes or criticism in them that didn't actually need to be there for me to find, like Ellen said that I ought to, but it turned out I was drunk and would never read over them again, and since when did I bother with Ellen's suggestions.

Tuesday I woke after a storm passed over my thatched roof during the darkest morning in which the moon still sat commanding over the expanse of the sky. I watched it there through the bathroom window as I showered in sporadic hot and cold water. I realized I had not shaved in several days and forgot again when I left for breakfast. Ellen suggested after class that I shave because I was looking "awfully old and impoverished". I laughed a little although she regarded me in an unflinching, motherly way when she said it.

"Don't be smart, Ellen."
"I can't help it," she replied.

Jared walked in carrying Ellen's books and asked why she had not come along with him. She dismissed herself and smiled cordially at me as she left. Jared looked back at me and hollered as he went, "Thanks for keeping an eye out!" I did not know what that meant at all. I began to clear off my things to go home. As I opened the door, a woman with dark hair and a tweed business skirt fumbled at the doorknob on the other side. I almost knocked over her notebooks by opening it before she was able to get a hold of it.
"Ma'am do you need help with those?" I asked her.
"No, no, I've got them. I'm here for the seminar, am I early?" she asked, and I smelled her perfume as she wiped sweat from underneath the hair covering her eyes. "No there's certainly no seminar," I told her with a little laugh and felt rude.
"Oh. Oh, well all right. Thank you." She turned and balanced her stack of notebooks, speed walking down the pathway into the main square. I watched her for a moment to see if she would drop all of her things, but she held them, teetering on the brink of collapse. I was about to close my door and go to my desk, but I had been on my way into the square myself, and would have to walk awkwardly behind her for some time before being clear of her at the corner.

That night I went straight home and took a bottle of my father's old scotch from the cupboard. I drank it as I wrote in silence about Camille and her Jewish fiancé; the story was coming along terribly. At midnight Tiny thudded on my door with his gloved fist and smiled like a Cheshire cat when he came into my kitchen without having been let in. I was startled up from my chair, but nonetheless charmed. He hugged me as though we were brothers and sat cross-legged on my rug in the den.

"Mm, you're a little bit muddled, aren't you, chap? Is that scotch on the counter?" Tiny asked. He strained his neck to look up at the bottle.
"I'm all right. Where's the fire?" I said, looking a little irritated.
"Jonathon, ah I have been thinking about you." he said.
"I have been thinking about changing my locks," I replied, half serious.
"You see, John, I've just wondered, 'Boy! Johnny's got that boat, and nobody to set sail with!'" He wore fingerless gloves underneath the leather, and pulled a spoon from his coat pocket. I saw him look at me sideways, waiting.
"Well. I do have the boat," I conceded.
"That's right, I forgot, you have a boat, don't you?" he said. Tiny was carefully scraping a sausage can for the last of it.
"What?" I was a little muddled.
"Well, if you're asking me to sail with you I'd be absolutely obliged," he reassured me.
"Well, I never said," I began, trying to explain soberly that I had no actual idea what he was talking about.
"You never said that I could come along. I know. I don't know why I'd think that you would," he said, exhibiting the cerebral preoccupation of a madman, trailing off afterwards with some kind of gibberish-like, lip-smacking confabulating.
"Well, I mean, it's not that you can't come along, it's just,-" I spoke but couldn't think,
"Oh wonderful, really? I'm invited?" he said, looking up.
"Well, if anyone, I suppose it would be you,"I reassured him.
"Oh bother," he exclaimed, "and I was so worried you wouldn't think to invite me! When exactly will we leave?"
"I didn't exactly plan to-" I started.
"To work while you're on holiday. Of course not. Why would you? When is it that your holiday starts, again?" he asked me.
"Not until November, but I mean,-" I began thinking about working. I hated working.
“Oh November, November. Beautiful month,” he said. I began to imagine November, my favorite time of the year. It was always so brisk in November. He licked his lips and wiggled his toes in his boots.
“Yes, I love November.” I replied, nonplussed.
"Oh, you were going to go in November? My, well, I thought maybe we could wait until December, because I have a few engagements, but if you want to go in November, we'll go in November."
"Don't be silly, Tiny. If you're busy, we can certainly wait. There’s no need rushing the trip. I just don't know if I want to-” I became in love with the idea of sailing in the December.
"Miss Christmas here, with all of your friends, I know," he said.
"Oh, well, I mean... I haven't exactly got plans for Christmas, I guess,-" I said. Those bastards, they say they're friends, and never call, I thought.
Tiny had stood up and was making his way out the door.
"Well, good! You’re free as a bird!” he hoorayed.
“Free as a bird. Yes.” I looked at him and tried to make sense of it. I did feel free, although I almost had to puke. Tiny was dizzying sometimes.
“Then it's all set. Thank you so much for inviting me, Jonathon. It will certainly be a merry Christmas for the both of us!" And he left. Just like that. As he shut the door behind him I counted the days until December and thought I needed to buy a calendar for my living room. I lost interest in Camille's melodramatics and shut up my notebook. When I fell asleep, I dreamed of the ocean and my sailboat teetered atop spiked waves on the brink of collapse.

Class began and ended like nothing, and it was only a week until the first of December. Tiny had come by every day to remind me about our trip which I had no intention to go on, and Ellen told me I should tell him so straight out. I generally was a straightforward and square person, unless I was drunk, in which case I became a bit of an optimist. Ellen strolled in during lunch with her hands behind her back.
"Mr. Eames," she sat down, "are you ill?"
"Ellen, what on earth? I'm perfectly well, why would you ask?" I said.
"Seem ill," she said, so simply I felt, I must have been ill. She took out her notebook and began to scribble filigree along its columns.
"I seem ill?" I asked her.
"You do, yes. You look it, and you teach in that manner, you know, like you're ill."
"Well, I'm not," I said.
"Sleeping all right?" she asked me.
"The only way people have done it for centuries. It's really not too difficult, believe it or not."
"Well, you look tired." She had her eyebrows raised, scrawling some notes on her paper.
"Tired? Ill? What are you getting at?" I realized she was stroking her chin and smiling at me.
She laughed. My beard had been growing wildly for weeks now, it seemed.
"Oh, come off it! Fine, I'll shave damn it." I told her.

We laughed and she told me she would have to leave before Jared found her in there. When I asked why she rolled her eyes and told me that he was a nuisance. I had not caught on to what she and Jared had together, but I assumed it were something trivial and did not ask. Jared came in as she was leaving and she ignored him completely. He pretended not to notice her and came to my desk with something on his mind. "Mr. Eames," he asked, "how long until we're given the final?"
"I'm not sure. I'm working on it as we speak," I replied, annoyed. Jared said thank you and left, after Ellen. I had told the class in the morning that the final would be given before the end of semester so that we would have time to reflect on the course afterward, but I suppose he had not listened.

Ellen appeared in my classroom again the following day with a flier and a look of determination and excitement. "I think you would really love this. It's just a book club, but the discussions are always wonderful and it's all the teachers you never talk to; I just think it would be nice if you joined," Ellen said, and she laid the paper on my desk in front of me. I took a look. It was black and white and had a cartoon picture of a coffee cup in the column. According to the flier, the group was currently near the end of Breakfast at Tiffany's, and intended to finish the first three books that would be assigned to the freshman Literature classes for the coming semester. This seemed to be a great way to improve upon our lesson plans and align our separate syllabi for the students. I was always attracted to projects like this that seemed to promise a more efficient way or a more perfect method.
"Ellen, you attend this?" I asked.
"No, silly. It's for professors only I think. I just eavesdrop from the back sometimes for lunch. I like to hear what Mr. Allen has to say," she explained, and fell into a momentary daydream.
"Of course you do. He's what, the young one?" I assumed.
"The old, brilliant one." She went red.
"Ah, I see. Well, I'll have a look when I find time."
I meant to throw it out after she left, but I thought that would generate some kind of bad karma, so I wrote myself a note of it. Besides, I thought I could use the company, or some besides Ellen's.
It was a small book club that met every week in the staff room, where the elitists of Santa Cruz academia circled around a cherry wood coffee table with their hot water teas and crossed legs.
"Everyone, you know Jonathon," Mr. Allen announced, dully. I had never met any of them before.
I saw a familiar face. She had come to my classroom accidentally, mistaking it for the location of her seminar course. We had an exchange of familiarity, but she did not introduce herself or smile. I sat down in an armchair and waited for it to begin. Everyone was engaged in his or her own small discussions in hushed tones and side-glances at Allen to see if he were starting to speak yet or not. In the two chairs across from mine were the woman that had stopped at my room and another that I remembered slightly speaking with once, but could not recall her name. They were leaning in and talking like wild fire in whispers.
"John, you've met Jane and Margot haven't you?" Mr. Allen looked at me with his brows low and his voice in a low hum. He felt sorry, I think, for not introducing me properly to everyone.
"No." I replied.
Jane leaned over the center table to shake my hand, "Jane Lance, and you're John." She sat back down, and the other leaned forward.
"Margot Haas. It's nice to have a new member," said the woman I had met in the tweed business skirt. She laughed and sat back again beside Jane who took to talking to her again.
Allen stood up, "And Eames, that's Philip Crank over there. Great guy."
I stood up with Allen. Truthfully I had met Phil Crank before, and rather liked him, but I waited still to be introduced. He came over to us and because of his height or perhaps because I was distracted by his other features, his journey across the room seemed but a few very large steps.
I shook hands with him and he began to stutter at me.
"Really is nice," spat Crank, "to have uh, a new face!" His laugh was ghastly.
"It's nice to see you, Phil." I laughed a little and sat down.
"It's good to have you, really! You're the, er, rebel that b-b-boycotts ah, all them meetings, aren't ya!" His brow was quivering and his smile was a frightful blare of light.
"I suppose so." His comment made me inwardly light. Crank began to talk to Allen and I looked back at Jane and Margot for a moment. The other people in the room sat on the outskirts of the circle, in hard-backed chairs with their books on their laps, a page parted by a thumb, waiting.
"Well!" Jane coughed, "shall we start? Who finished it?"
The last time I had read Breakfast at Tiffany's I was in high school, but I raised my hand anyway. This had been my first time coming to the book club and I felt comfortable for no reason. Almost the entire room raised its hands, and then it began. We all shared our thoughts, our insights, and Allen led the discussion. Jane suggested questions but made no comments. She merely laughed at everything I said, and Margot sat still and clever. I saw her speaking side comments to Mr. Allen occasionally. I stayed later than everyone else talking with Allen about the book club. I wanted to know about the next meeting. I suppose I had enjoyed myself. He answered my questions and waited patiently for me to leave. When I got home I searched my bookshelves for The Catcher in the Rye, and read a letter from my aunt. It said that she wanted to see me and spend some time again. It said that she missed her nephew and hoped that I was doing well. It also said "Do you need any money?" My aunt was incorrigibly kind to me in times of family disaster or inauspicious waves of bad luck.

It was now the middle of December and I was beginning to think Tiny would be going on the Louisa II alone. He found a pair of rods and fishing wire at a secondhand store and said that the owner let him take them for free. He also said that she thought him charming. I was working constantly at the college, and had since been to one other meeting with the club after we had all started The Catcher in the Rye. After class on Monday I met with Mr. Allen in the hall as we were on our way to the staff room.
“Eames, did you get the list of guests to the department seminar on Friday?” He said and did not look at me. He even walked ahead of me and sped up.
“Yes, I believe Jane dropped it off in my office," I replied, though I was not sure she had.
“All right. Take a look at it. Maybe contact those who signed up. Check the attendance. You will be there, won’t you John?”
“Of course,” I replied. We found the door into the staff room and entered together. Everyone was milling around with their drinks, making conversation that bled together, resounding in its ebbs. Allen would sit down and it would all stop, slowly and train-like. I sipped from a paper cup and tapped my foot to nothing. Jane sat across from me and hung her hair over one of her shoulders, looking at the reflective table into her own eyes. Margot came in ten minutes late after the meeting had already begun. When she entered, she held her sandals in her hand and walked on the soles of her feet. It made her look weightless and gentile. She usually wore strong black on her eyes and her dark hair slumped down, but today, it was brushed out of her face and seemed to swim with her as she walked along.

“Sorry.” She sat down quietly and crossed her legs, waiting for Jane to fill her in.
As Allen asked a few questions, we all began to talk and soon I found myself with Jane, listening to her talk about her weekend in the city and some man she shared a cab with. I did not realize until I became exhausted from forced laughter that I did not find her funny. The coffee was thin and the conversation was dimly lit. When I left I made my way to the Artisan and Madeline saw me in the window. I saw her mouth out “Johnny!” but could not hear her. She smiled at me when I came in, and came over to me as I sat down. There were several people in the café, but she left their talk to pour me my drink.
“Madeline, how have you been, dear?” I asked and opened up my notebook, pathetically titling a page with the date and a heading, like “The Café”.
“Missing you sorely, Polly.” She turned away and poured me dark ale. I laughed. She spun around and leaned on her hip.
“Tiny says you’re taking him sailing in the Bay or the Pacific or somethin’, well’s that true? You and Tiny and a heart to heart out at sea?” She asked. Madeline laughed and swept around and smiled.
“No, I am not taking him any such place. He coerced me into sailing with him when I was shnockered and then disappeared talking about fishing and my father’s old boat," I explained. We shared the thought and took big drinks of our own. She held a glass of sherry.
“You never have a drink with me, you old Cracker, what’s this?” I said.
“Leave me be,” she put the glass under the counter and stood up, “You should go with him. You should do something," she said, looking pityingly on me.
“Madeline, and what do you do?” I snapped at her and I felt rude.
“I work, and take care of my cats and this old place- it’s not much, but hell, I like it, and that’s more than you can say about what you’ve got going!” she said. Her eyebrows looked thick and she smiled, but it was to soften the truth, not to correct it. I grabbed my things and left. She looked after me, and then turned to sweep the floor. I didn't go back to the café for some time.

I left the café and went home. I fell asleep after hours of lying awake on top of my sheets. I had felt cold and tight before drifting off. I wondered if I were getting sick. The next morning I woke up with the flu and a headache so painful I felt as though my eyes would roll out of my head like marbles onto the floor. I called a substitute to teach my class and got back into bed. In a dizzy rush I stood up and lie back down before I slept all day. I dreamed and woke several times and then it was dark out. I felt alone and watched the window wondering if Tiny might grace me with his cheer and quirky spirits. He did not come, but I dreamed that he came. I woke again in the middle of the night with a dry mouth. I had not eaten. I felt awake. I stood to test my strength and I shaved my beard in the bathroom with the hall light on. The room's darkness spooked me and the tile chilled the bottoms of my feet. Ellen's voice was sounding in my head telling me I looked impoverished. She said, "Go to sleep, Mr. Eames." I heard her laugh at me for being so old. I heard her talking to Jared and I heard her growing up. I was exhausted. Don't grow up Ellen, I thought.

I slept this way for three days, slowly healing and fighting off the illness with flat ginger ale and salt crackers. When I felt better I packed a load of things into my duffel bag and waited on my porch for Tiny. I knew he would come, and he did.
"Feeling any better?" Tiny asked me. He had on a permanent look of adventure and waited by my car with his hands holding his backpack straps. I laughed at him and we set off. The drive to my father's house was not so bad. It went by with comfortable conversation. Tiny reminisced about his old lovers and his wars and his ups and downs and sideways tales of this or that until I could simply no longer believe anything that he said, but it was all very well-appreciated. He was a natural storyteller, and I never much cared for non-fiction anyway. Taking a few things from my father's shed, we made our way to the Bay and onto the Louisa II. It was the middle of the night before we left the harbor. We were gone for the remainder of my holiday and I came home with a new sense of self and friendship and the aftereffects of living off of sardines, Vienna sausage, and ginger ale for two weeks.
We spent Christmas on the boat and it was more or less the best Christmas I had ever had. We shared a bottle of rum like true shipmates. I remember Tiny telling me he had nothing to give me but that he would tell me the secret to life if I were interested. I told him I was not, we laughed, and then I gave him the boat for Christmas. I do not attribute that to the rum or even to the impulsive generosity that overwhelms one at Christmastime. I would have given it to him anyway. He had a knack for sailing and simply by the way he handled her, I knew that Tiny and Louisa belonged together.

When I went back to work the book club was in the middle of The Catcher already. Some of them looked at me as though I were an intruder at the next meeting and after it were through, Margot informed me that they had all been having the meetings at Tom's Books for coffee once a week. I told Allen I was sorry to have missed them and he told me that he was jealous I had gone sailing and missed the confounded club dates. He said it like a joke and then sipped seriously from his mug and walked off. Jane began to show up after classes to talk and she sat on my desk like a child. I found her a little intrusive and often loud or overbearing, but sweet. I hoped from time to time that she would come with Margot. Maybe I could get to know Margot through Jane, and then we would get married. Though sometimes I did not have anything to say to Jane, which was not because she was too profound or because I could not find the words, but because it was sometimes difficult to understand her when I was not listening. Whenever Ellen and Jane were in my classroom together, there was a bit of a clash of interests and Jane would look irritated while Ellen would talk. Ellen did not seem to have any opinion of Jane, but rather acted as though she and I were alone in the room. Jane would sometimes interject to say goodbye, and I would tell her it was nice talking with her. I do not know if I was convincing. A few weeks of this went on until Jane stopped coming into my room for lunch. She even began to ignore me during the book club.

Jared and a few of his friends were standing on the grass outside the gate of the college having a smoke as I walked out of the building for lunch. It was a Monday and January was coming to a close. It was cold, and they looked cold, even with their jackets and lit cigarette cloud. I stopped to ask Jared about Ellen, and if he'd seen her. He said that Ellen had transferred early and had been packing all day that Sunday. I asked him if she had left yet, and he said that she had. His eyes were red and he squinted in the white light of the overcast sky. The others were talking. I said thanks and kept on my way. I heard him spit on the ground as I turned my back on him. I wondered why Ellen had not told me she would be leaving. That seemed to have been a very long day for me.

On Wednesday I received a letter from Ellen in my box at the college and I read it while I waited for class to pile in.
"Dear Mr. Eames,
How did I forget to tell you that I would be leaving for Columbia? I suppose you have figured it out by now. Don't bother asking Jared anything; he's been sore since I told him I was disinterested in him. I think he even took up smoking. My mother dropped Brad and she's getting married next year to a Mr. James Gilbert “Perfect”. Only joking. His name's Hanover, but that's what she calls him. New York is beautiful. It's been snowing actually and I never realized how light snow could be. In contrast with the rain we see in the west, it's refreshingly gentle. You should get out more. I mean come to New York. Don't go sour!
Always, Ellen"

I folded it back up and slid it inside its envelope. Class came in and I taught them how to be more like me. "Don't ever think that just because you like to write, you'll be a writer. Do you understand?" I told them. They nodded their little heads and quoted me on notebook paper. Jared was not in class and I scratched my head looking for Ellen.
"Get out the text I assigned," I said.

On Thursday I went to the book club, but was behind in my reading. I sat beside Margot and when she realized I had not read up to where the rest had left off, she laughed at me. I poured myself some tea and she handed me the sugar off of the far side of the table. Allen was talking about Holden's brazen attitude or something.

"What makes you think I'm a sugar sort of person?" I asked her as I looked down at the dish.
"Well, tea can be bitter without it. I think Jane brought this week's blend," she said and smiled.
"Oh, I see. Well then it might possibly be far too sweet already," I said, and Margot put down the sugar bowl.
"Disgustingly sweet," she whispered.
"Certainly too sweet for my taste." I sipped my tea and watched Allen. Some others were laughing with him and I could not hear why.
"Well, I like plenty." She spooned sugar into her cup and took a drink.
"You need it." I squinted, looking up at Allen and then down at my book.
"After a day like today, I need more than sugar in my tea," Margot said. She laughed a little.
"You do seem a little dry," I told her quietly.

We went for drinks at a pub in the city after the club let out and our visit lasted too long. She became tired and sunny as though the wine had reached her heavily. I asked her if she would like me to take her home when it became black outside and she smiled at me and told me she could handle herself. We talked a little longer and smiled with whatever was leftover from the evening. Margot put on her coat and walked to the door. She stood waiting for me and I followed after her. I opened the door and she walked out to stand on the sidewalk. I looked down at her and my eyes felt dry and heavy in my head. There was a streetlight, which shone down on us and Margot closed her eyes under the yellow hue. I asked her again if she wanted me to drive her home. She looked out at the street and said no thank you. We stood there while the street sat waiting, and the darkness was still, and the yellow beam of the streetlight hummed behind her eyes. I could not think of anything but instead of everything at once and Margot and the night that enclosed us.

When the night had ended, I walked to my car and sat thinking for a while before leaving. The next morning I was tired and lost, but it was certainly a well-earned exhaustion and it made me glad to be alive for no reason whatsoever.

Another letter came from Ellen on Friday. I opened it and read it over.
"Dear Mr. Eames,
I am having the time of my life trying to catch up to everyone here. The year's half through and I'm brand new to all of this. I'll have plenty to do next summer. Speaking of which, do you remember Jack? He's the one I dated over the summer, the tall one. He's attending Columbia and we take English 1-A together. Turns out we're both interested in the humanities. I think that's why he dropped your class. Only joking. Don't you miss my kindness?
Always, Ellen"

I did miss the sarcasm, but luckily it was not as hard to come by as I had thought. Margot came into my classroom.
"Oh, a letter. Am I interrupting a moment, here?" she asked, and she smirked and flopped into a chair against the wall where the curtains hung.
"No, I'm all finished. How’s the weather out there?" I said, laughing at her a little. Her hair was wet and her clothes looked heavy from the weight of the rain.
"Oh lovely. A little warm though. You might want to take off that jacket before heading out," she said.
"So hot you decided to take a swim, eh?" I asked.
"It was an undeniable urge," she replied.
"I have those from time to time," I admitted.
Margot took off her jacket and walked over to my desk.
"John, are you going to the party for Mrs. Smith?" Jacquelyn Smith was the secretary of administration and was turning eighty-two. Jane Lance had decided to throw a party for her and sent invitations to most of the staff. I had not received one personally but had been invited by several others already.
"I don't know. Isn't that Jane's ordeal?" I asked.
"I don't think she'll mind you coming, it's a birthday party for Pete's sake."
"Well, she did make the effort to not invite me." I filed a few papers away to clear off my workspace.
"She needs to grow up a little bit. Come along, everyone from the club will be there, I think."
"Mr. Allen's going, eh?"
"I think so. Will you come?"
"I might. Do you teach this early?"
"No, I only teach in the afternoon."
"Well, lucky you."
"I am."
"I'll see you at Jane's exclusive get-together then?"
"Only if you decide to crash the party." She laughed while she walked outside my room.
"Party crashing would have to be my favorite pastime." I said and she laughed in response. I smiled. Margot met me outside the staff room before Mrs. Smith's birthday. The fluorescent lights made everyone look more tired than they were and the streamers hung limply on the walls. Margot and I decided to head out for dinner after she kissed Jacquelyn on the cheek and had a finger sandwich. I took her to the Café Mare where we ate pasta and drank a bottle of wine. It was delightful to be around Margot the way it was delightful to be alone in nature or in the maze of avenues in a skyscraper city. She had the sort of all-around beauty that struck you immediately but took its full effect only after you really knew her. She spoke so carelessly and so willingly that she never seemed to run out of happiness or conversation. Her eyes sparkled and her wit stung. I had never known another person like her, and I was taken with her.

In the morning on a whim I bought a bicycle and decided I would use it. Tiny sat propped in a treetop on the roadside across from my yard and watched me wheel it behind my house. He was having lunch and told me, "Johnny, looks like rain!" I told him to come down and show me how to tend a bicycle and keep it nice. He hunkered down and threw his lunch in a sack. He smelled like chili peppers and it looked like cranberry juice or watery wine had stained his mustache. He touched the bicycle in quick pats and small pinches around the waist of it, like a doctor might a patient. He twisted the seat around until it squeaked and looked through the spokes on his knees, spinning the wheel round and round. He stood up. "Looks nice to me. Keep her in the shed and pump the tires when they go flat. That's about all there is to it!" He found the glass door and made his way inside, then he opened the kitchen door for me as he walked in behind me. We talked and I offered Tiny a seltzer and then a beer from the fridge, which he swallowed wholly.

When he left, I cleaned my cabin. I took everything out of everywhere and dusted the baseboards of my entire life in one fell swoop. I washed clothes in large laundry loads and scrubbed the doors and floors all the same. I changed the sheets and the pillowcases of my room and the living room, which was littered with dust and balled up paper mistakes. I reorganized the dishes that filled my cupboards, the jackets and dress shirts that lined my closet, the junk that lay between the cracks and crevices of closets and kitchen drawers. I vacuumed the carpet and swept the tiled bathroom until I looked around me and felt that my home was pristine with cleanliness and the shine and luster of a job well done. I swept the front porch and clipped some of the twigs and loose branches that crowded my walkway. I re-staked the mailbox and hammered it into a clean plot of ground. When I was through, my cyst in the earth was a jewel in the rough, instead. I took a long shower, shaved for a good, careful amount of time, and went out to have my hair trimmed at the barbershop by the market. The day was well over and I went to sleep feeling wonderfully and genuinely good. In the morning I called my aunt to say hello and asked if she were all right. She spoke with me for a while about my uncle and told me he was going through another one of his crises. I told her not to worry, but it was automatic and I said it thoughtlessly.
"I love you, Jonathon. Thank you for being there."
"It's really nothing, Sophie. I hope everything gets better with Chris."
"All right. Well, I'll be praying for you, too you know."
"I'm sure you will." We hung up and I went to the Artisan for a coffee. Madeline's cat slunk around my ankle as I stood in the doorway taking off my coat. It was February.

"Madeline!"
"Polly!"
I came and sat down, the both of us smiling.
"Tell me little bird, what on earth were you thinking missing my happy hour Friday?"
She wiped a mug dry and poured steaming coffee. I watched it spill into the mug, as I imagined happy hour at the café without me. Tiny likely stopped by and moved on. Joe and Faye Cook, the old married couple must have come by for a date and a cheap gin and tonic. The ex-barman Chuck Kinsley and his various dates and party friends might have had a dinner and a quick fix round. Ms. Belle, the dancer would come in wearing red and leave in a man's jacket. I imagined the street lamp shining on newcomers, some folks from the neighborhood and some from other cities. A few nomads or new faces would come in looking for warmth and find themselves in loud laughing and a family of strangers. Madeline would walk around the room carrying platters of hors d'œuvres and holding clear beer mugs, two to a hand. Men would fill the back tables of the little hallway pub and smile at her as she left them with their drinks. Madeline would beam and her cheeks would go red and shine. I imagined the sound from the Artisan dying down as the street outside became narrow and bent into the corner where the Mare sits atop a small three-stair curb. Margot and I had stood there, exchanging in the quiet with steadfast warmth. She had looked at me with kind eyes and her soul stood outside of her body, in the artificial light of the street lamp. She would have kissed me, I wondered.
"What, were you out with someone? What's that look you've got?" Madeline looked at me curiously, half-smiling and sliding the coffee at me. I still stared where the coffee had been poured.
"I was out with someone. Yes, actually. I was out." I held the mug with both of my hands and smiled into the reflection of the coffee.
"You? Out? I don't believe it."
"Well, I'm out right now." I took a drink.
"Oh, so you were out, alone, then."
"I was with someone."
"With someone?" She raised her eyebrows.
"I was with someone from work."
"Oh, a man."
The pub was full of morning sounds, the squeal of steam leaving the coffee pot chamber, the little plastic clasps and flipping open, falling closed, of all the spoons and trinkets in the kitchen behind the counter, and the sunny laughter coming from outside accompanied by street talk, dog collar jingles and the bell on the side door with the wooden "Open" sign. Even the sunlight from the window made sounds, like praise and gossip, and admiration.
"I was with a woman."
"Oh, the old one with the birthday. You were out at the old woman's birthday."
"I was with another professor from the college. Her name is Margot."
"Margot? A Frenchie?"
"Yes." I drank more of my coffee and picked up my things to leave.
Madeline twirled her little curl on her forehead and pinned it into the rest of the mess behind it. She had a bobby pin in her mouth.
"Well, wait just a minute, Polly-" She stuck the pin into the mess. I left money on the counter and gave her a look.
"Thanks for the Kona- you know me well." Her smile followed me out the door. I slipped out and whistled as I walked to the park to catch up on some writing. I knew I would wind up disappointed in myself, but it was a good sort of feeling regardless, to write, and so I did. In the park there were beggars sitting on a bench talking behind their newspapers. I watched a child step on a bug and a leaf and his shoelace, and then ask his mother for her help. I looked up through the trees at the sky and then at the grass, which was sparse at the foot of the tree I sat beneath, but thick at the edge of the walkway, and it was green and new. I held my pad on my knee and wrote a letter to Ellen.

"Ms. Mars, I'm glad to hear you are attending Columbia. Hopefully my class benefited you, and you are prepared for the new challenges you face. I am also glad to hear about your mother. Perfection is hard to come by these days. Tell her congratulations from your old professor. My classroom certainly lacks your exuberance nowadays, but I have managed to find other company. Don't laugh. I mean it. Thank you, by the way, for giving me that flier some time ago. Some of the people I see at that book club have become good friends of mine. I don't know if I told you about the sailing trip I took with Tiny. Anyway, that was where I'd gone for the holidays. Hope all is well.
- Mr. Eames"

I folded the letter and left to pick up a salmon for dinner from the market. I came home with a few paper bags and something I'd picked up for Monday's lesson plan. In the afternoon, I read more of The Catcher in the Rye and fell asleep mid-day with my socks on. When I awoke it was getting dark and I called Margot for dinner. She told me I sounded groggy. I told her I was making salmon and that I wanted to pick her up and drive her over. She laughed at me. I picked her up at six and it was dusky outside. I told her she looked lovely. She wore denim jeans and a pea coat. Margot had a way of making fun of me with her eyes but I meant it; I did like the way she looked. She spoke up indifferently.
"Remember when I told you that my mother's house caught fire?" She looked out her window.
"Yes, what all happened to her?"
"She moved back in with my father. They're actually getting remarried at fifty. I think my dad's almost sixty now actually." She bit her thumb nail.
"Well, that's nice. Aren’t you happy? When's the wedding?" I pulled into the driveway of my cabin. Margot opened her door and got out.
"They're having it in April. I wanted to know if you'd mind coming along as my date." She waited by the door and I opened it, taking off her coat.
"Here, I'll take it. I'll go, of course. Good for them." We had dinner, and she poured herself wine. As it went, we began to laugh and talk about the college and Crank, Mr. Allen and all the rest of them. She told me about her family and her friends. I told her about my stories and their pointless plots. She gave me ideas and I told her she ought to be a writer. She told me I was crazy. My house was well lit, and we had good, colorful conversation. In the light, she looked full and beautiful. I showed her what there was to see of my cabin and then we slid open the glass door to look at the back of my yard. I hadn't been there since I'd moved in, and it was refreshing to feel the wind come in from the coast.
"Never was much of a swimmer." I said as I caught her looking down at the green crater betwixt the trees.
"Oh, it's a swimming pool?"
"Was."
"I like it." She looked up, but there was no sky. I wanted to remember to trim the trees in the morning. I never realized how many of them I had. She took a breath and blew it out, watching the white air. She told me that she loved the forest, the mountains, and that I was lucky to have a place like that. She said that everyone sort of lives in the city and that the city gets dull and cumbersome. She said that it's a joke to live in the city. She said that it'll drive everyone either to the poorhouse or the loony bin. She kept talking, and I felt hungry and tired. Margot reminded me then of a girl called Sam Smith from high school that used to wear her hair in braids and knots everywhere like a doll. Sam used to say that it was a joke to live in the city. She used to say that it was a joke to live at all.
I drove Margot home when it became late and we both sighed in the remainder of our Sunday. As she walked to her door I drove away and thought of her. I imagined her smiling inside her doorway or thinking of me. I imagined her walking up to bed feeling calm and at peace with the way that things were. I wanted to be something solid for her to agree with or hold onto. I imagined her being happy, but I was not sure that she was. My mind tossed the thought over and kneaded it, breaking it up into pieces and crumbling them in my fingers for worth or truth. I wished that I knew what to make of it. I was so curious I became bent on it, and found it difficult to sleep again.

Monday came fast and strong like a tidal wave, and it ended as abruptly. That week I heard from Ellen again, and felt sorry for forgetting to mail her my letter. She wrote that her mother was getting sick. She also wrote that everyone was getting sick, and that she hoped I was not. She added a P.S. to the bottom that said, "Eames, I'm going to be an English major, and whether you like it or not, I'm going to teach." I felt sorry for her in a way, and I laughed in the emptiness of my classroom.
At the end of February Sophie called to tell me she was getting a divorce. She and Chris had discussed this many times, but I suppose he had finally decided to act. I told her I was sorry and that I wished there was some way I could help. She told me that she needed a place to stay and a helping hand with the move. I knew what she meant, and I suggested she take the old house in Santa Clara. I drove up to help her move on the 20th. I still had to write the final for my classes, but she sounded almost nervous, and I knew she needed me. My uncle was not there when I came. The drive had taken a while and I imagined at length how I might talk to him after so long an absence. I was relieved not to have to, and I stayed most of the day, packing.
Sophie served tea and made pigs-in-a-blanket. There were two women there also, packing up knickknacks in pages of The Tribune and advertisement papers, eating, and talking chaotically about what a fool Christopher could be. They coaxed and prodded poor Sophie with their sympathies and girl-talk. The two absolutely loved me and when I introduced myself as "Jonathon, Sophie's nephew", they gawked and clasped their hands at their chests, making double chins for themselves and thick-lipped smiles. Sophie was in between tears most of the day and when she introduced them she was so stuffed up I had to call them both "Miss" the whole time.
"If only Genevieve could meet a guy like him, huh!" said one to the other.
"No kidding! A gentleman!" said she to her friend.
"Nothing like..."
"Oh poor Sophie!" They both cried and kept packing away, walking together to the loading truck and then back again still in the midst of their jabber and hollering.
Sophie tried to apologize for them, and I asked why ever would she apologize. I knew, but I really didn't mind. It was dark before we finished and all of her things were in the truck. She managed to hide a weighty check in a letter she gave me, and the memo read "RENT".
She called me that night to reassure me that the alimony was plenty for the house and anything else she or I might need. I found that hard to believe, but she never missed a check.
As the spring heightened the rain lessened, the sun became lazy and hung low in the sky, and the cherry blossom trees around the college shed little pink snowballs all over the walkway and the square. The wind carried them around, shuffling them along like children, and everything smelled like grass and running water. On the grounds outside there were benches that I never sat on and little canopies of oak trees shading the pillared halls. Before March began I sat beneath them when it was still sunrise and Margot met me there. She drank coffee from a thermos. When she offered me some I said it was all right because I do not like so much sugar as she does. The dark was not dark, for it was like the deep recesses of an ocean at midday. The sky was light, and the ground was cold. She asked me if she would ever meet my friend Tiny that I spoke of so often, and I told her that if she’d like we could all have dinner. Margot had plans. She reminded me of her parent’s wedding and asked if I were still available. We talked things over. I left for my classroom and walked up the path from the square.
I read an essay titled “The Politics of Progress” that astounded me the night before and I was thrilled to talk to the student that had turned it in. His name was Paul Bishop, and he shook my hand when I approached him after class. I asked him a little about his thesis and his background and his hobbies and he told me everything and then some. We had lunch, and we had coffee and then later we had dinner, and by the end of the day I knew him backward and forward. I was impressed by his manners, his stories, and his precocious interests, and I think he found me overeager and childishly enamored with him. Margot came in on the fifth of March and Paul was there with me, discussing the previous election and the feud with his parents over his vote. We were laughing, and we stopped to greet her.
“Margot Haas!” She shook his hand, and he held it and smiled and said, “Paul Bishop.”
She was wearing stockings and lipstick. We all talked for some time and then Margot left to teach class. I had to read over some papers, and I had him there to discuss them. Paul was going to teach Philosophy at Brown or some place after he graduated from post at Queen Mary University in London. He told me that he loved California for its entertaining follies and dirty beaches, but that Europe had given him such a time he would have to go back. Paul said that his father used to take him fishing in Pine Flat and camping in King’s Canyon. He said that he would never forget those times. He said if you went fishing enough, one day you’d find yourself talking to the water and the open air, and that’s when you realize that life is in business and education. He said he was a believer in education. Paul said that Aristotle once said, “Education is the best provision for the journey to old age”. Paul was a great guy.

Ellen wrote to me twice in March: once to tell me that her stepfather had lots of money and that she would be able to fly over during the summer to see her old friends, and again to tell me that she and her friend Jack were now “inseparably in love”. Her job in the city sounded nice, but she was once again working part-time in an office and she had always disliked the monotony of a cubicle building and the taste of microwave chicken dinners. I wrote back to her weeks later.

Dear Ellen,
It’s nice to hear you’re working again and that your stepfather is well off. I hope all of that helps with tuition. You seem to be doing well for yourself. Jack sounds nice enough. Keep him in check. The end of the semester is coming up; I am glad you will be able to travel and see your friends. I, too, will be traveling if I’m able. There is a student in your old class named Paul and he quite reminds me of you. Well, he is nothing like you, really, except that he is always around and won’t stop talking. Only joking. Keep on working hard and soon you will be out of college and on your way.
And Ellen, I highly discourage you from taking up a career teaching. We both know you are already overqualified, as you have, as a student, taught your professor things that he would never have learned on his own, and made a difference in his life as a friend. I think it best that you do something that will better profit you. And I do mean profit.
-Mr. Eames

I sent it off, and felt a fraternal warmth rise in my chest and die away. It was strange to imagine her walking around New York, making business calls, and turning in papers to some thoughtless university professor. She would introduce herself to strangers as “Ellen Mars” and walk quickly to her classes with her books. I thought then of Margot and left the college at four to buy the appropriate apparel for her parents’ wedding. As I was being fitted, my tailor kept calling me “Mr. James” while he pinned and marked and it bothered me so much that I paid hastily for the work and left like a flustered tabby.

The wedding reception of Mr. Dietrich and Mrs. Fleur Haas was on a warm night under a lit tent in a vineyard north of Aptos. The band played smoothly, constantly and everyone held champagne flutes and wore diamonds. Margot danced with me, and her father talked to me in a drunken, happy state for ten minutes while she left our table for the bathroom. He told me that Margot was an artist, and that she used to run around the house in her skivvies singing Sinatra and Fitzgerald until her mother spanked her for the noise. Mrs. Haas wore a cream-colored dress and she asked me several times if I liked the color. She had a big laugh and big hands. She was six feet tall in flat sandals. I asked her how long she and Dietrich had been married before and she told me it had been twenty-seven years. When Margot returned, her mother was in the middle of a story about her first wedding, and she continued telling it to Mr. Haas when Margot sat beside me. Mrs. Haas said to Mr. Haas, “Well and you must remember the poor Cadillac and all those dogs! Oh, damn that Old Jimmy and his traditions!” They laughed. Margot thanked me for coming in a quiet voice. She smiled at me, leaning on her arm, and her eyes were closing and opening slowly. As we went for a dance a few older couples stopped her and told her she had gotten so old and so beautiful. I laughed at this and introduced myself to all of them. They told Margot she was quite the lady and that her date was a gentleman. They were all well over fifty years. The music filled my head while we danced and I held Margot with my hand on the small of her back. She swayed and we talked about the weather. When the song changed, she took my hand and walked me back to the table where her mother still sat talking about Old Jimmy and the clan of dogs chasing the Cadillac with the tin cans.
“There must have been a hundred of them, all barking and chasing after us!” She shook us up with her laughter. I drank more champagne and the night kept on until her parents were long gone on another honeymoon and the older guests had all shuffled out and gone away in their shiny cars, with their made up faces and featherweight eye frames. There were some men cleaning up the place and they would look at us, confused while they folded chairs and rolled the tables away. Margot walked with me out to where all the cars had been parked in a lot of grass beside the vineyard. She looked up at the stars and I thought of Tiny and asked her if she were uncomfortable.
“I’m fine. I’m glad you came. This would have been very different for me otherwise.”
“Of course. Your parents are nice.”
“They are, yeah.” She was still looking up, and around her like a little girl at an amusement park.
“It’s a nice night for a wedding.”
“My god, it is.”
We left and the next morning the stars were gone, replaced by a flat, blue sheet of sky.

My aunt called to tell me that she and Chris were back together and that he was all sorry’s and tears about it. We had a nice conversation and she told me that she hoped she could keep living at my father’s house, and that Chris would probably be moving in there soon. I told her it was fine, and that I was very happy for them. She told me that everyone at church was glad to hear of it too. I suppose they had all been heartbroken at divorce and encouraged her to make amends.

Tiny was over at my cabin on the weekend and he insisted we went hiking together. Into the woods, we waded through a small pond and he told me I should get off the damn trail already.
“It’ll just take you to the scenery with the little waterfalls.” He said.
“All right, well then that sounds nice. Let’s go see them.” I suggested.
“Do you know what a little waterfall looks like?”
“Yes, I suppose they look like average waterfalls, just smaller.”
“Right.” He walked further away from the trail. I followed. We went into the places where there were weeds and tall grasses that slapped not at my ankles but at my neck. Tiny lay in the grass by the little stream where water bugs dig. He put his hands in the water and touched his face. He said that hiking is only fun if you’re covered in earth and things stick to you as you walk along. He said that was the only way to live. We followed the stream until it turned into a small pond and we fished for some time. Whenever he thought a fish too small or too happy he would throw it back and whistle a little while. Tiny laid his last catch in a canvas bag he slung over his shoulder, and I caught nothing.

There was a tree alone in the middle of a plateau of wind-flattened grasses where the forest ended and looked out over a large expanse of hills and farms with wire fences and tiny square cemeteries lied peaceful in the midst of it all. Tiny slumped down at the foot of the tree and fingered a small lump of tobacco out of his coat pocket with his muddy fingers. He lit a match and puffed contentedly on his pipe, looking out over the grassy cliff. I joined him, and squatted by the tree, watching the smoke blow away from his face in the soft wind. His wrinkles were black and brown and his irises were greener than I had ever seen them. I heard humming, faintly, and wondered if it were coming from him or from me. I spoke to break silence.
“Sure is nice up here.” The moment was cliché and tired.
“An’ I bet you wish you were standing behind a wooden gate looking at little waterfalls with signs telling you where not to step and kids giggling with their mothers and their sisters.” He looked up from his pipe but his head didn’t move.
“They’re that popular?”
“You don’t get it, Johnny, but that’s okay, and I forgive you.” He looked up and his face went blank and dark. Tiny became estranged from me and I missed him as his eyes left their whites. I thought that maybe he was really alien or spirit.
“You remember about that woman I told you about? Edna?”
“Vaguely.” I did not.
“After the war, I came home to her. She was a good wife. She believed in poetry and the Holy Spirit and she believed in art and in music. She was beautiful, Jonathon. Prettiest woman I have ever known.” He lit a match to restart his pipe.
“What happened?” I knew he would tell me even if I had not asked, but I knew he wanted me to ask; I knew he wanted me to be enchanted by the thought of her.
“She died. She died when she was only thirty-three. My Edna.” He touched the grass on the other side of him and slid a few blades between his fingers.
“What a shame.” I was uninterested. “How did she die?” I looked at the ground. He ignored my question entirely.
“She used to carry an umbrella with her all around Monterey ‘cos she was paranoid of the rain. She would take one out on a day as hot as now. I used to tell her not to worry so damn much but she would always worry just the same about everything. The lady carried a rabbit foot on her key chain and had a switchblade in her garter. I used to take her for donuts at Hank’s place- oh what was it-” he searched.
“Doesn’t matter.” I said
“Well, anyways, she’d come with that umbrella and her keys and what not and she’d only drink the water. She never ate anything that she didn’t make herself. She didn’t hardly trust even the water they gave her! Johnny, she was somethin’ else.” He smiled at the memory as though it were replaying in front of his eyes. I wanted to tell him about Margot, but that seemed unsuitable for the moment.
“Well, she does sound interesting. I don’t know anyone like that.” I sat down uncomfortably in the grass.
“And you never will, John.” Tiny tapped on his knee and hummed something familiar. It was always familiar. For a few minutes we sat, and he reminisced silently.
“So, then, how did she die?” I asked again.
“How did who die?” Tiny asked back.
I paused and responded, “Never mind.”
“You know, that boat has done me good, John. I must say she is the nicest thing anyone has ever given me. Including my folks. And they’re the ones that gave me my life, I guess!” He chuckled and smoked.
“I’m glad you can put it to good use.” I smiled, imagining Tiny in the boat, sleeping and sailing and eating. No matter how hard I tried I could not place myself in the thought with him.
“But you know what, John?”
“What.”
“It was foolish not to ask me about the secret to life back on Christmas. That would have served you better than a boat or a house or anything. That would have served you well. But it’s all right and I forgive you.” He puffed and inhaled deep.
I tried to recall the instance and felt strongly that the offer had been a joke. I remembered him sitting on the ground, rolling his ankles and stretching in long-john underwear, laughing half-drunk and bright-eyed. He was sorely apologizing for not buying me a gift, and I could not tell if her were hysterical in liquor-tears or in gayety. Tiny was the only person I knew who could seem careless but never thoughtless, and incredibly kind but harsh and brutal at once. If anyone knew the world’s mysteries and divine secrets, it would have been he. All of the answers must have been forever hidden away somewhere, and why not in his very coat pocket.
“I have some ideas of my own.” I said lamely.
“Are you happy?” He looked straight into my face as I sat up. We were very close and I felt a sort of pressure and tension that came generally with heat and difficult questions. The wind had stopped and the still warmth from the sun permeated the canopy of our oaken, foliage sunshade. The gray-brown and black hair that adorned his aged forehead stuck in places with sweat and I could tell that he would be getting up to leave soon. He was comfortable, I could tell, nonetheless.
“I am happy.” I said to him, and I felt the breeze on my arms and on the mud that besmirched my ankles. The sun had dried most of it, and it was cracked and stuck loosely to my skin.
“Don’t kid yourself, John.” Tiny handed me the pipe, straightening his legs out. I took a long drag and blew out the smoke, which burned the roof of my mouth. Ordinarily this talk from Tiny would bother me and I would leave him wherever he was in a huff of indignation or annoyance, but I felt relaxed and unsullied by frustration or anger. The tobacco left my lips dry and I handed his pipe back to him. He held it in his mouth at the lip, his mustache flapping with his puffing. The miscellaneous sounds of the outdoors came through very clearly now, with the rustle of leaves and the hum of wind and her friends and enemies. I could feel the fullness of that lonely hillside and it made me nervous and thought-ridden to be there with Tiny.
“I am happy. Why would I be upset?” I lay back and put my hands behind my head. I was looking up at Tiny, sitting with his feet crossed in front of him. They seemed a long way off and he looked old and tree-like himself.
“It’s not being upset. Listen here.” He paused, and I felt very young and defenseless while he spoke, “The secret, if you want to know, to life, John, is that it’s not about whether you’re upset or depressed. You can even be happy, but you might not be living. And that’s it right there. Living. That’s all there is to it. There’s no way to do it but to do it.” He kept on humming and I think he would have been scatting if his mouth were open. He tapped the bowl of his pipe on the tree trunk and clumps of ashy tobacco fell onto the ground and disappeared into the grass. He looked into the bowl of it and then took a little handful out of his bag and packed it into the chamber. He said, “John, that’s really the secret. That’s the whole damn thing.” He lit it up.
I was puzzled and my stomach felt full and sick. We hiked back when it began to darken outside and I fell asleep in the early morning hours alone in my bed, my mind for hours wandering between dark and light. Margot came over in the morning and knocked on my door. I opened it in my pajamas and ran a hand through my hair, which was still dirty from the hike.
“Breakfast?” She asked me. Margot held a bag from the market deli and she handed it to me and came inside. I apologized for the mess, as there was a pair of muddy boots on the mat and coats and fishing rods lay on the couch. There was a duffel bag with mud all over it and grassy stains on the tile in the kitchen. There was a blanket with fish scales and blood on it on the porch and my tackle box lay open on the counter with all of the hooks and bait spread across the countertop.
She scanned the place quickly and forgave me. She asked about the trip, because it was obvious I had been some place, and then she straightened up while I told the story. She told me she wanted to meet this Tiny person. I suggested we have him over for breakfast and she said she was leaving soon. She stood close to me. I asked her why she came over and she kissed me flatly on the lips before answering. We ate the breakfast she brought. When she left I shut the door and got into the shower. The grime from the hike seemed to have penetrated my skin and become a part of me. It took a half an hour until I was relieved of the feeling.
Summer came and Ellen came home. She visited the college to see Jared and a few others. The day she was on campus she came into my room and smiled broadly as I sat at my desk. I was sitting, I suppose, the same place in which she left me and I wondered if she thought me to be a wallflower, a homebody or an outcast, or more simply a deadbeat. She was lighter than before but her nose was a darker shade of pink. She brushed newly cut bangs out of her face and hugged me, downright in my classroom. We spoke briefly and caught up with most of the news from Ellen. She seemed to have lost her breath when she entered the room and only found it again after she left.
“It has been wonderful seeing you, Mr. Eames! You really should see New York!” Her laugh was girlish and short-lived and then she was gone again.
I had seen New York, actually, as a child. I spent a summer there living with my mother because she and my father had decided it best to take time apart. My mother said that she needed to find herself, and that I was such a part of her she couldn’t do it without me. I had since wondered if I were lucky, because I have always seemed to know exactly where I am. My aunt had financed her move, and then begged her to come back, because my father won little Sophie over in a phone call, in which legend has it, he blubbered like a baby.
I went to my aunt’s house in the evening. I wanted to talk to my uncle, because I felt that it was the proper thing to do. Sophie opened the door and embraced me maternally. Her arms were bony and her hair was disheveled. The roots of it were all pale and gray while she had streaks of red and brown elsewhere. She said it was a treat that I was coming over. I told her I wanted to talk to my uncle, and she told me he was not home.
“When has he been home?”
“What does that mean?” She asked.
“I never see him.”
“Well, he’s out for groceries.” She grew defensive.
“All right. I will wait for him then until he comes back.” I sat down on a kitchen chair. She walked to the fridge and spoke up.
“He won’t be home for a while. He went out of town.”
“I thought he was grocery shopping.”
“He went grocery shopping out of town.”
She poured the tea and her lips quivered. I saw her hand struggling to hold the pitcher. She set it down, and then she broke, her eyes in tight anguish, and I held her and stroked her hair. She did not speak.
“Sophie, it’s all right.” She sobbed into my shirt collar.
“John, he never came back. He just never came.” I felt sorry for her and did not know how to respond.
“I thought the two of you had-” I stopped.
“I thought he would come back! The ladies from church all wanted him to. They pretended to hate him, but they hate me. They liked him, and you needed us to be okay. I shouldn’t have told everyone, but I thought he would come back.” She sniffled and her hair was a fluttering, straggly mess.
“Sophie, you haven’t done anything wrong to me or to anyone else.” I squirmed and patted her back, and she held on tighter. I felt uncomfortable and stagnate. I suppose I was only capable of a rather impaired sympathy for lack of an understanding or because I could not reconcile myself to show a sorrow I did not know. Sophie was my mother’s sister-in-law. She had always been there for my mother when she was ill and would reprimand my father brazenly when she found that he saddened her. On my birthdays she would come down with carrot cake and presents every year until my mother died. She used to buy me popguns and candy cigarettes and she told me that I was only allowed to pretend to be mischievous. I would run to the door every time the bell rang, hoping it was her and my uncle there to say hello. My father used to say that Sophie was a hippie and a loose tramp. I told my father not to say things like that, but he meant it very sternly and would walk up to his room whenever she came by. One day in my thirteenth year, Sophie came over in the night and told my father that if he ever needed any help with me, she would be more than willing. He cursed at her cruelly with a threat and a choke in his voice, and she cried in anger and left. I remember the feeling in my stomach when I heard them, and it was the only time I can say that I have ever felt real pity in my life. I knew how he could make a person feel, and I felt it deeply, acutely lying there in my bed.
The ice in the tea pitcher melted and I watched the sun go down through the plastic blinds that hung unevenly over the window. My father’s old house was asleep, and my aunt cried so hard I worried it would all wake up around me. I felt sorry leaving her there alone. She hated being alone, and she knew so.
On the way home I stopped at the Café because it was bright inside even at midnight. Madeline was half asleep on a barstool behind the counter listening to Joe Cook speak meaninglessly between gulps of amber rum. I sat down beside him and he looked at me. His eyes were teary and slit-like. His whole face looked wet with rum on his lips and tears on his cheeks. I told Madeline to wake up a little. She roused herself up and tightened her apron with her hands behind her back. I asked for a chamomile tea and she did not listen but poured me a brandy. I drank it anyway and listened as Cook wallowed and ached for something which neither Madeline nor I could figure what.
“Joe, I’m sorry.” Madeline slumped down into her stool again and laid her head on her elbows atop the bar. Her hair was held in a bun with a pencil.
“Thanks for the brandy, Madeline.” I gestured to her with the glass and took a sip. Joe moaned in little sobs and I left after I finished my drink. I went home to sleep and thought of Madeline, wondering when she would make him leave, or if she would at all.
I took Margot to an amusement park by the beach and we walked on the boardwalk listening to seagulls and roller coaster screaming. She ate ice cream, wore a sundress, and held her sandals in her hand. Sometimes she looked very lady-like to me and I would tell her so or look at her too often. We spent several days together during the summer at my cabin, going out every morning for breakfast or else we would sleep in and cook for ourselves. Margot and I became very comfortable together and she spoke less and less to me every day; I wondered if she had run out of happiness or conversation. In July, I asked her to come with me to the parade on Independence Day and she refused and said that I bored her. We did not argue, and I spent the fourth at the parade alone. I ran into Allen and we went for drinks afterward to catch up or talk solely politics and figures.
Allen was a self-proclaimed independent thinker with solid common sense and an effortless, amusing wit. He liked to be considered a pessimist, but often seemed to be only a downbeat, lackluster husband of some likely tolerant woman with a good sense of humor. He spoke of family as though it were an asset to his pride, and he showed very little sentiment concerning it. I knew Allen to be the type that prefer others found him quirky and strange, and would encourage them to believe so by being himself to the point of being rude. I found him blunt, funny, and tall. Most of the staff at the college were either offended by him or enamored with him. After a few drinks I found that he loved the outdoors, and when I told him about Tiny and the things we had done, he was impressed with me and winked as though we now shared a brotherly bond. He was a very loud man and had his way of grabbing attention without necessarily meaning to so that the barman would often catch my eye to inform me I was being held responsible for him. Allen had strong blue eyes and a thick, deep voice. Whenever we spoke at the college it seemed watered down with coffee but now it was upheld with vodka and his demeanor took on a new impact of power. He loved his job teaching but spent time passionately discussing the problems within the board and education system. I agreed with him because he simply left no room for anything else. He told me to go fishing with him before the summer ended. I told him I would try to find some time for it.
Allen’s first name, as I now learned, was Thomas. We took a walk afterward to get some air, or as Tom said, “some smog”. I enjoyed his company and now had the feeling that I missed the book club awfully. Tom suggested I come for dinner and meet his wife and children. I told him about Paul and suggested we invite him to join the book club. He said yes, I said yes, and then we split ways for the afternoon.

In the remainder of the summer I crossed ways again with Ellen once or twice, saw she and Jared talking in the square as we exchanged waves, and visited Sophie a few more times for moral support. My home was all a mess again and the trees and plants that had crowded my walkway once were now reclaiming their ground. The mailbox had retreated back behind its shade and dust settled everywhere, gently within the walls of my cabin. Autumn burst forth not subtly but volcanically and explosively, the trees drying up alight with the fire of the red sun and the wind giving oxygen to the flames. The farms the lined the coast were half green and half brown, with acres of pumpkin and grape vineyards, and garlic plants stretching across for miles by the bay.
At the start of semester I told Margot to meet me for coffee. We had not spent much time together and I missed her. She appeared at the café in the morning and I smiled at her. She looked tired. She told me she no longer wanted to see me and then she finished her coffee and left. The bell dinged behind her and Madeline looked at me with pity in her eyes. I left the café and went to teach at the college.
Paul was in after class to talk and Tom Allen joined us. We all three sat there, talking up the news, the weather, and Tom’s family life. I thought very determinately of my next class lesson and of the conversation at hand. Paul began to tell Tom his plans for the future and Tom commended him for his ambition and “guts”. I listened and added here and there. I shuffled a few papers over to find a letter from Ellen that had been dropped off on my desk that morning. Mr. Allen spotted it and asked if it was from a former student.
“Yes, how could you tell?” I slid my finger under the flap, cutting it open and pulling the letter out.
“Ellen Mars, I remember her. She was a quick one.” He tapped on the desk and Paul began to talk about Ellen as well.
“I had her in my Psychology and Art History classes. Never liked her much though. She seemed a bit arrogant.” He bit the inside of his lip and was about to continue. Mr. Allen ruffled his brow.
“She could be, yes. The girl had a terrible crush on me though- used to look at me from the hall during the book meetings and follow me afterward to ask me about the books. She tried to take my courses but they were all full. I felt a little sorry sometimes, because I couldn’t often talk with her.” He looked at the letter, remembering. I spoke up then.
“Well, she often came into my class as well, but I doubt it was anything like that.” I folded up the paper.
“Well, I just thought she was a bit nuts. Once after Art History she ran into me in the hall and yelled at me. She called me a brute and brushed her hair out of her face. She had all these scars, like this,-” Paul gestured with his hand by his face in the corner of his forehead, “weird stuff.” He stood up to draw the curtains. Allen laughed a little bit.
“She had those from her cat. She told me once about it, because I asked her when I saw the scars. She said she rescued it from a pound and that the thing was not all there, you know.” Tom scratched his head and Paul said “Yikes”. I thought back about Ellen’s scars and then thought about Margot and wished I had not put her off.
“A cat, eh?” I remarked and then the conversation picked up as Paul brought up his sister’s pets and Allen was mildly entertained. He went on a while about his wife’s canine affinity and his children’s’ allergies to animal hair.
“She has this prowess for tending to toy dogs and kittens, but my youngest throws a fit of sneezing every time she brings one home.” He found his story funny, and told it heartily, as Jared laughed at him. The two were preoccupied and I left for the staff room, hoping Margot would be there, too. She was not. I returned to my class and Allen and Paul had left, as class was starting.

The day ended and I went home. I smoked the tobacco from the canvas bag Tiny left in my kitchen with the little wooden pipe. The wind hollered outside and all the lights were off. The small light from my pipe gleamed and glowed when I puffed on it and I could not see anything else. I stood on my back porch looking down at the grass and then up at the trees. I was not hungry and I had not eaten. The stars were all over the place, throwing their glassy sparks down through the tree leaves. I felt sick again from smoking, and I set the pipe down on the table as I went back inside. My socks had holes in them and I resolved to buy a new pair in the morning. It was going to be a long weekend. I thought I might take Sophie to lunch or give her a call to show that I cared. I examined myself for a moment in a mirror and wondered if I did care. The stubble on my face and my tired eyes were a sign to me of age. I felt apathy. I would not be writing Ellen any more letters. Tom and I were friends, and I decided I really would make time to go fishing again. I did want to meet his family. I think Paul bothered me. I may have been jealous of him. He was so young and he was going places, but he was foolish and lighthearted. My cabin was colder than it had been in a very long time. Spiders stalked me from the ceiling planks and I flicked the light switch on in the kitchen. I looked around and saw Tiny’s pipe and my fishing rod still leaning against the doorway to my bedroom. Margot had left a sweater on the sofa and I would take it back to her later. I felt like my father’s fishes, but lonelier with no way to forget anything. I could not forget, so I just thought of all of it. I thought of the pain my aunt must be feeling, for she at least knew how good a thing love could be. I thought of Margot and I did not feel anything at all but want for her, and want for her friendship and company. I thought of Tiny sprawled prostrate at the foot of a tree somewhere or hiding under something sturdy for the night to sleep. He was at peace and I did not see how or why. I thought of my father and my mother and wondered if they were together now. I thought of the college and Paul and of Ellen in New York and wondered if she were broken too. Possibly she hid it well, or simply decided not to be. Her letter had made its way into my bag and I set it on my nightstand before falling asleep.

“Dear Mr. Eames,
It was so nice to visit the college. Jared and I had fun catching up but his dramatics will always irritate me. I know you don’t care, but I thought you should know, Jack and I are still together! You know old Mr. Allen? That’s who Jack reminds me of. He’s an old soul. My mother and hers are all right too. Go figure. Besides my real dad, this is the longest she has stayed with anybody. I think eventually, everyone grows up. Even people like her, and people like me. Well, maybe I grew up a long time ago, but you know that. I hope things really are going well for you. I’m glad you have Tiny to keep you busy. My job in the city is a rush- lots of paperwork and what ever else. It does help with tuition. So does Gilbert. I’m considering moving back to California after college if I’m able, so that I can be near my mother and Gil. If I do, I’ll be sure to stop by more often. Thank you for that sentiment, by the way, but I intend to teach. You see, I used to want to be a journalist or veterinarian, or some talentless writer, but I met someone who truly inspired me and have since changed my mind. He’s a bit of a downer and an awful cynic, but he’s a fantastic professor and friend, which is all I could hope to be. Hope your summer was supreme. Don’t go sour!
Always, Ellen”