A Way With Words - Chapter 15
“When I have to leave Sri Lanka, first I go by boat to India. I stay a little while in a village near Madras while I'm waiting for my false passport. I am staying with a family and they have young girl there who is 17. Very pretty. First time I see her, I feel so bad because she is wearing a white sari.... That mean she is a widow. She is married when she is 15 but her husband die one year later. Now her life is over.... Why? Because she can't go back to her own family and her husband had no brother who can marry her. So she will live with husband's family all her life as servant. First night I am there she come to my room and I make her happy. Second night also. Last night I tell her after, Listen, you are nice and beautiful girl but I can't marry you. I have too many problems and have to leave the country. She was sad but did not cry. I still think about her.”
December 23, 1987
Ennis had never stayed this late at the office when it was empty. Once when he and Jay had made plans to see a movie in Brookline and it made no sense to go all the way home to come back, he'd hung around. But that time the art department had been working late, deep into final production. He'd gone across the street to pick up the pizzas the designers ordered and then ate a couple slices with them. On this Wednesday night two days before Christmas the offices were completely silent.
He was flying to Kansas City the next day to spend Christmas with his family and had paperwork to put in order. Until this year he'd always taken the bus; now that he had a salaried position, he no longer had the luxury of taking his time to get there.
As he'd anticipated, Jay had turned down his invitation to spend the holiday on the farm. His sister had just had twins and they both knew his mother would be putting even more pressure on them to reproduce - and of course get married first. To his mother, Jay was officially Ennis' fiancee. She wasn't going to Philadelphia, though; she had traded Christmas for Thanksgiving with another photographer.
At 7:45 Ennis had cleared his backlog, tidied his desk and was putting on his jacket when he heard the fax machine at the front desk begin to hum. He'd already ripped off the long tail of junk faxes that had arrived since Susan left for the day, so he paused by the desk and waited for this last one to creep out. It was for Lureen from one of the advertisers. He tore it off and brought it into the advertising department where he laid it on her desk. He'd hardly ever been in there because Lureen tended to go to their office to chat with him and Don.
There was a partition between her desk and the other ad salesperson's and Lureen's side was covered with snapshots, which Ennis paused to examine. Lureen was in almost all of them alongside people her age; they seemed to be from her college years. There was one of her standing between two older people in front of a combine harvester though it wasn't in a field but on an asphalt lot. He guessed they were her parents because she'd mentioned that her father sold farm machinery.
Ennis knew Lureen had gone to Texas to spend Christmas with her mother and wouldn't be back until New Year's Eve. He decided he should leave the fax with someone else in advertising. He looked for a pen to write a note on the fax before he moved it to another desk, but Lureen was tidy and there were none lying about. He opened her desk drawer. As he was picking out a pen from her nice collection of fancy ones, he spotted the corner of a yellow photo processing envelope in the main part of the drawer. He knew he shouldn't poke around in her things, but he was curious.
The envelope contained a 5x7 color photo of Lureen and a handsome young man. Ennis heaved a breath and sank onto Lureen’s chair, staring at his face. He hadn't thought about Jack Tornado in years but this was exactly the way he'd imagined the radio DJ to look, before he’d seen his photo and learned his real identity. Thick dark hair, even features, a friendly smile. Memories of those Sunday nights spent on the couch talking to Jack Tornado came flooding back. He had been so lonely then.
After a moment he brought his attention back to the picture he was holding. The couple wore formal clothes, Lureen in an off the shoulder white satin dress, her hair pulled back in a simple chignon. Her handsome companion - Jack? - was wearing a gray suit with a white carnation in the lapel. The photos were taken outdoors in front of some out of focus greenery so he could only guess at the context. Was this a wedding picture? Their expressions looked more amused than in love, though. No wonder Lureen was unimpressed by the color separator salesman -- she was with someone even better looking. Or had been.
He was sliding the photos back in the envelope when he was startled by the fax machine clicking on again in the reception area. He shoved the envelope into the drawer, picked up the fax from Lureen’s desk and stepped around the partition to deposit it on the desk on the other side, not bothering with a note. Then he went out to check the incoming fax.
He was looking at it upside down and didn't register the names on the letterhead right away, but he certainly recognized his own name at the beginning of the message. Startled, he walked around the desk to read the letter line by line as it emerged.
Date: December 23, 1987
To: Ennis Delmar
From: John Twist
Re: S. Ravindran
Would you please ask Mr Ravindran to have his wife send the letter in which they were notified that their request for permanent residency in Germany had been denied. Thank you.
There followed a scribbled signature. Ennis put his knapsack on as he waited while the rest of the page inched out so he could tear it off. He heard the fax go brrrrrp, indicating one last line of text. He glanced over and saw in small handwritten block letters:
PS MERRY CHRISTMAS
He stared in surprise at those last words for a moment. Twist was still at work too, and probably alone. If he called now, he could finally talk to him. But he should also call the pay phone at the detention center and give Ravi this message since he had to leave for the airport early in the morning -- he didn't have time for two conversations that night. He hesitated a few seconds, then picked a piece of paper out of the recycling box next to the desk. For a second he considered writing something flip; instead he simply marked OK and his initials on the blank side and sent it back to the firm's fax number. Then he called Ravi.
15b
November 1st, 1980
“Mrs. Del Mar? Hi, my name's Joe...Joe Angstrom. I'm Ennis' roommate.... Well, he's in the bathroom with a bad nosebleed... Don't worry, it's nothing serious. It just came on all of a sudden right before you called. He asked me to tell you he'll call you back in a few minutes when it's stopped. It's... not an emergency, is it? 'Cause I know you usually call him on Sunday night... Oh right, Thanksgiving. You really like to plan ahead! Well, as a matter of fact I was going to invite him to come to my family's house for Thanksgiving since we don't have the whole week off and I'm from New Jersey... No New Jersey's near New York... South of New York... Oh, about 4 hours from Boston... That's right, very close.... Well, there are farms in New Jersey, too... No, not wheat. It's called "the Garden State" because they grow a lotta vegetables. But look, Ennis will call you back in a little while. I'm gonna go check on him.... Nice to talk to you too, ma'am. Right. Bye.”
I stood in the lounge by the pay phone and stared at Joe over the wadded up cloth I was holding against my bloody nose, thinking how surprised my mother must be at having such a long conversation with a perfect stranger. Joe had said more words to her in five minutes than she'd heard from my mouth in a month. While I was still on the floor outside the elevator he'd whipped his red bandana from his back pocket and handed it to me, then rushed in to take the call before Mike could get me in even more trouble. When I heard him mention his Thanksgiving invitation, I felt a thrill go through me. Joe had told me a lot about his family; now they would be more than just characters in his stories.
Joe and I didn't go to the dining hall for the rest of the weekend, finding excuses to eat out. When we went down for breakfast Monday morning, the big table had broken up. Sandy was on the other side of the room with her roommate and other friends, including Virgil. Joe and I sat alone together for two meals, but after that he managed to draw a couple other guys to our table and then two more who lived on different floors but knew him from class.
The girls on our floor were cool to me for the rest of the year, and also to Joe for a long time. He had charm and looks, though, especially when his dark hair grew out and I cut off the bleached ends for him; those girls cracked one by one. But it seemed as though each girl had taken what I'd said to Sandy as a personal affront whereas the guys never once mentioned it. Whatever they thought of Sandy or my words, it had nothing to do with them. Only Mike would occasionally whisper, "Nice parka!" when a curvaceous female walked by.
Joe never said one word about Sandy after that sucker punch and neither did I. I saw her huddled with her friends at meals and was sure they were talking about me, but he and I behaved as though nothing had ever been different.
But inside I was a mess. Even before Sandy bloodied my nose, Virgil had made it clear that I'd failed at something important. Whoever I was, it seemed that just being me wasn't going lead to happiness. I would have to look outside myself for something to bring me peace.
By Tuesday, I felt desperate. I was barely aware that it was election day but Joe asked if I wanted to go with him to watch the returns with the Barney Frank campaign at a hotel ballroom out in some suburb. I didn't, and was relieved when he didn't insist. I had other plans.
That morning, Joe had handed me my new fake ID - his friend had come through. Now I was 21 on paper. I'd looked at myself in the mirror, hoping I could really pass for that age. I decided that tonight I would test the card, without Joe along.
That afternoon, I'd walked past a club on Comm Ave and noticed that the band whose strange, sinister name I'd seen stenciled everywhere was playing that night. So after Joe left for the evening, I put on my leather jacket and went out. At the door they took my money with only a cursory glance at my ID.
Mission of Burma was already playing. Or rather blasting away. All the little tables were occupied and the only space left was the dancing area between them and the stage. On subsequent visits to the Paradise club I would realize that for this band, the management had reduced that space to the minimum because it wasn't the kind of music that inspired exuberant dancing. Which suited me just fine.
I stood against the wall and watched the two guitarists and the drummer slash and bash away at their instruments. Their loose beige pants and gumdrop colored collarless shirts trembled and shimmied on their thin, taut bodies as their hands flailed furiously against the steel strings. The drummer jerked and shook as if electrocuted. I tried to make out the lyrics they were barking out, but could understand only one line: This is not a photograph!
This noise was just what I needed then. The energy shooting out from the band and the relentless, deafening crash and whine pinned me to the wall and made it impossible to ponder or brood. I felt calmer than I had in days.
I drank nothing that night and didn't move from the wall. The club got more crowded as the night went on and soon I had neighbors. People began to move into the dance area to listen; a few of them began to thrash around and others simply jumped up and down in place. At one point, I turned my head to look at the people around me and noticed a girl, also with her back to the wall, who looked just like the one in black punk regalia that I'd seen outside the bus station on my first day in Boston. She stared back. Nothing happened that night, but I still wonder if the chorus the guitarists were yelling at that moment was what sent me in the direction I took a few days later: That's how I escaped my certain fate!
Mission of Burma at the Paradise in 1980:
Chapter 16 >>
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