A Way With Words - Chapter 29
At the end of chapter 28, at home after the Boston Marathon, Ennis had just received a phone call from John Twist.
May 1988
My folks have a ranch in Colorado. It's a dude ranch in the summer because nowadays you can't survive without taking in paying guests. It was my job to take them out horseback riding.
When I was sixteen one of the guests was a high school guidance counselor. I guess he could tell I was... restless. He encouraged me to apply to college. Not to UC Boulder but out of state. So I ended up going to Rice University, in Dallas.
I met Laura at Rice. She wanted to get far away from Texas after we graduated so we came up here to go to grad school. She got into Tufts and I went to Suffolk Law School. The first year was fine but I had some problems the second year. I dropped out and got this paralegal job. Laura quit too and went to work in sales.
Ennis watched the catcher through his binoculars. Rich Gedman was in fine form, tagging out two runners at the plate. He felt lucky to be there - he'd never been able to get tickets to watch the Sox play the Yankees before, and on a Saturday no less. And when they found their places in the bleachers, he couldn't believe it: one of them was the red seat.
John Twist sat silently next to him. When they'd met at Kenmore Square station, he'd greeted Ennis with a smile, but a very small one that was hardly visible in his beard. It had yet to reappear. The three times Ennis had seen him, John Twist had been wearing a suit, then a long wool coat outside in winter. His grim demeanor and his formal clothing had made him seem over thirty. On this spring day he appeared younger in jeans and a windbreaker and a Red Sox cap, but he seemed no more relaxed than he had those other times. Ennis guessed he was close to his own age, but his soul was much older.
It had also become clear to Ennis that Twist was a post-season fan, one who paid attention to baseball only if the home team had made the playoffs. One of the lawyers had bought the tickets to this game months before, and when a conflict arose he'd offered them to Twist on the Friday after he'd received Ennis' fax. Ennis wondered if he ever would have replied to his invitation if the tickets hadn't dropped in his lap.
Since they'd taken their seats Ennis had done most of the talking, which had to be a first. The bare outline of John's life story had come in dribs and drabs over six innings and left Ennis with more questions than it answered. Why did he call Lureen Laura? Or not mention that they had married and were separated? Why did he say he’d gone to Suffolk University’s law school and not Harvard? When was he going to tell Ennis to call him Jack?
On the other hand, Ennis had told a lie, too. When John had asked him about his job, during the phone call, Ennis had said he worked at New Age Magazine. The readership overlapped a bit with East West's, and a lot of the content was similar, and the offices were not that far from East West, so it didn't feel like a total lie. Maybe 95% of one. But John Twist was such a cipher that Ennis was leery of making a space in his life for him. He didn't want Twist to link him to anyone else, especially Lureen. He hadn't even told Jay he was going to this game with him. Anyway, she was working.
He hadn't spoken to Kaj since the evening of the marathon, when he'd called Ennis to ask how Jay was. Then he'd started to tell him about a letter he received from his mother two weeks before, some story about the girl who had pestered him to marry her accompanying his younger sister on a visit to India. But Ennis hadn't been able to focus on that tale. He'd been remembering the expression on Kaj's face after he'd "healed" Jay, and how the longing in those gray-green-hazel eyes had made him feel. He'd made up some excuse to cut the conversation short, while he still could. In the back of his mind was the notion that he might be able to talk to John Twist about Kaj, about the other thing weighing on him. But first, he had to get something straight.
During the seventh inning stretch, he asked Twist if he wanted a beer. When he answered no, Ennis turned to him and said, "The time I came to the law firm, to give you a package, why did you pretend not to be you?"
John Twist looked directly into his eyes for the first time since they'd sat down. They reminded him suddenly of Joe's, when they'd sat in these same seats almost exactly four years before.
"If a scruffy looking guy in black leather arrived at your office with a big parcel and demanded to see you personally," John replied dryly, "would you let on you were the one he wanted?"
Ennis had to look away at those last words, and forced himself to stay in the present. "But later, when we met on the street," he persisted, fixing his gaze on the Citgo sign, "you still pretended not to be you, even after you knew who I was. And you pretty much called yourself a fuckup."
"It's a long story," John muttered. "Listen, I appreciate you inviting me to this game, even if I supplied the tickets. But I-"
"You know, I've been visiting those Tamils for eight months," Ennis broke in. He had to get this out. "And one of them, the one who got accepted by Canada, he... he's still in Boston, waiting for his papers to be processed. And I've become friends with him. But I found out he did some things over there that... that probably wouldn't have helped his case. I like him, and I'm glad he got asylum. But he's not as innocent as Ravi... Ravindran. And look at him, still in there, application rejected when he-"
"Is he the one with the tea company?"
"Yeah. Is it because his family has money that-"
"His Legal Aid lawyer is friends with Ravindran's lawyer. She told him Karunarajav had some injuries, probably from torture, that would make it hard to live a normal life in his country. She saw the medical report, but didn't say what had happened to him. Anyway, that might've been a factor in him getting accepted. To Canada anyway."
In his mind's eye Ennis began scanning Kaj's body, wondering what... he forced himself to stop.
"Does Ravi have a chance with Canada?" he asked.
"I don't know. Probably not, actually. He doesn't have any relatives there, and his wife and kid are in Germany. I bet what'll happen is that eventually his wife will have been in Germany long enough to get a more permanent status and he'll be able to go back. But it will take a while. What's the matter?"
"And here I didn't think you liked to talk," Ennis said.
"Just not about myself."
"What did you raise on your ranch?"
"Cattle. Folks still do. Red Angus."
"You miss it?"
"Probably as much as you miss wheat. Or corn. Or whatever you grow in Kansas. Seeing as you're still here."
Ennis told him about the farm in western Kansas; which crops they cultivated and the animals they raised for their own table; about the accident, playing baseball and his summer job in Garden City. He didn't talk about Jack Tornado, or why he chose BU, or about Joe. He lied and said he'd majored in American Literature, as that seemed like a more logical explanation for his dead end job.
John Twist described the ranch in eastern Colorado (they were practically neighbors), what the "dudes" did during their stay and where he took them riding in the mountains. He'd show them the Basque graffiti on the aspen trees up there, where lonely shepherds of long ago had carved words and pictures into the smooth, pale bark. Sometimes a whole family would come and he'd have a companion or two for a little while. He didn't say why he'd chosen to go to Texas, or how his parents felt about it. He didn't say why he was still in Boston.
They carried on talking, ignoring the game and the people all around them. Before they knew it, it was the bottom of the ninth and they hadn't even paid attention to the score. John Twist hadn't told him much about his life, but Ennis knew enough about ranching to be able to draw a mental picture of his childhood. It was a relief not to have to strain to imagine what a tea plantation looked like, or how a warm, sun-ripened mango tasted.
When the game was over, they walked the block or so to Kenmore Square. Ennis proposed they stop for pizza but John Twist said softly that he had to go home, he had things to do. They could have taken the T together, because John lived near Davis Square, which was two stops after Harvard Square. That would've been the logical thing to do, the sensible thing. But sense was a faculty that Ennis seemed to be gradually losing control of.
The Gardner museum was just a few blocks away and it was almost closing time.
John Twist:
29b
April 1984
To this day I can't watch The Simpsons because the sight of Marge Simpson reminds me of that blue towel piled high on Tracy Flick's head as she stood in our kitchen with her arm stuck out, waiting for me to shake her hand. This was the girlfriend Joe had been spending so many nights with? It probably seems hard to believe that for almost four years he and I had managed to avoid any close contact with each other's hookups. They were glimpsed from afar in clubs, or hurriedly introduced and whisked away. We'd had a few parties at our place, but they'd never occurred when either of us was with anyone in particular. I couldn't even say I'd ever had a girlfriend, exactly. No woman had ever become attached enough to me to call me her boyfriend.
I stared at Tracy Flick's hand for a few seconds before shaking it. She had a firm grip.
"Joe's told me quite a lot about you," she said.
Glad to hear it. Haven't heard a peep about you. "Mmm."
"He says you're a journalism major. Have you had any interviews yet?"
"Only did research and copy editing during my internships. No interviews."
"I mean job interviews."
"Haven't had any yet." I was staring at the blue turban, wondering how she managed to wind and tuck it so that it looked so neat. I had yet to crack a smile and I was damned if I would as long as she was in our apartment.
Joe saved me from further grilling when he entered the kitchen.
"Hey," he said, "I see you've met."
Tracy flashed Joe a big smile. "Ennis and I were talking about our plans after graduation. I'm a political science major at Northeastern," she explained to me. "I've done all my internships in Washington."
Northeastern University had a work-study type of academic schedule in which students spent every other trimester working for a company or organization related to their field of study.
"Tracy's already lined up a job on a senator’s staff. Hey, I meant to tell you, Barney Frank officially offered me a job in his office the other day. So I'll be going down right after graduation."
I wish I could travel back in time to that kitchen and tell myself not to worry, that I wouldn't be a fuckup forever, that I had to go through this god-awful period in order to meet a series of people who would one by one pull me out of the hole I was in. But at that moment all I could see was the ground opening up before me and I felt too feeble in mind and spirit to save myself.
"I'm glad for you," I said dully, turned and went into the hallway. My bike was near the door; I lifted it onto one shoulder, went out and hauled it down the stairs. I pedaled away and rode aimlessly, morosely in the weak April sunlight.
I had one class that day and I was skipping it, even though it was one I really liked. I'd followed one professor's advice and was taking an art history course - Twentieth Century Abstract and Expressionist Art. He said I would learn from it plenty of cultural references that were important for a journalist to be familiar with. After only one class I felt that there might be a place in the world for me after all. The paintings the professor showed us didn't inspire me to take up a brush, but for the first time I sensed there were other people who saw the world the way I did.
I rode near Fenway Park, and along the Fens. I realized I was near the Museum of Fine Arts and that to justify my absence from class I might go in there. Joe had never been very interested in art, so I'd never visited the MFA. Outside the front entrance was a banner with two names I knew from class: POLLOCK ROTHKO.
When I came out of the museum two hours later, I didn't feel as lonely as when I'd walked in.
chapter 30 >>
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