American Purgatorio (6 page)

In thinking about moving, however, I was preparing myself for the prophecy that would ultimately fulfill itself. Sitting in the chair, the sheet spread over my chest and shoulders, I'd planted the seed of moving, and although I thought I had it under control, before I knew what I was doing, that's when my face was cut. Just barely. Not the barber's fault. He wasn't being a bad barber. I just happened to twitch, slightly, and the uniform surface across which the blade had been cutting was suddenly not uniform. It changed direction, or I changed direction. And although it was more of a nick than a cut it didn't matter. It wasn't what the barber had
done,
it was what he had
said.
An impossibility, he'd said. Hopeless, he'd said, referring to my attempt to find Anne. He was wrong, but he'd said it.

And when he whisked away the white sheet, smiled politely, and indicated that I should rise, I wasn't ready to rise. There's something called “dealing with anger,” and yes, I'd been angry plenty of times, but I wasn't especially skilled at dealing with the feeling. It always seemed a little dangerous. But it was preferable to the fear that he might be right. And so I was mad, and I knew I was mad because, although I still felt obligated to tip this guy, when I stood up from his chair and reached into my pocket I started feeling for something insignificant, some coin with which I would show him my displeasure. But since I'd used all my coins for the telephone, I pulled out instead a wad of folded dollar bills, and the bill on the outside had writing, in blue ink, “I
Victor.” This was the bill I handed to the barber, not thanking him, just handing it, hoping he would understand what he'd done, hoping he would feel ashamed and penitent, but of course instead of looking at the bill, he just took it, stuck it in his pocket and turned to his waiting chair.

3.

It was easy enough to dismiss the opinion of a barber by classifying him as an idiot. He might have been an idiot or he might have been a savant, it didn't matter because what he'd said had been untenable. I knew where Anne was going, and the idea that I should give up hope of finding her was … I wouldn't even say the words, even in my head. Negative thoughts would drain my confidence, and I needed my confidence, and was trying to stop any leak of any confidence I had. And yet I could feel it ebbing away. Replaced by doubt. And doubt wasn't good. I wanted to be honest and admit the complexity of what was happening, but I refused to doubt my project.

I was determined not to succumb. And what enabled me not to succumb was anger. Until now the anger had been camouflaged by other emotions but now it was beginning to show itself, creeping out from the shadows and attaching itself to the objects of my world.

My car, for instance.

I liked the car and I trusted the car, but it wasn't completely perfect. First of all, it wasn't made for someone more than six feet tall. Even with the seat in a semireclining position my head rubbed up against the brushed-velvet roof. And because I was constantly in a semireclining position, my neck was aching from the strain of holding up my head. Also the radio reception was almost nonexistent, and although I'd brought along a few tapes, the tape player didn't seem to work anymore. Also, the engine sounded like the keening of an agonized child. I knew these were minor inconveniences, outweighed by the usefulness of the car and my feeling of partnership with the car, but still I felt betrayed.

And then the car didn't start.

I was standing on a commercial street, with decorations on the light poles, looking into the open hood of the Pulsar, jiggling the wires connecting the battery to the rest of the engine, hoping something would happen. And when nothing did I kept trying, listening to the sound it made as it almost started but didn't. I tried to will it to start. I knew where the spark plugs were and pushed them deeper into their sockets. I felt the belts and looked for what they call the starter, assuming the problem was related to that. I did everything a nonmechanic might think to do. I hit various parts of the engine with a screwdriver, and then I tried the car again, hoping that my luck or my desire or my desperation would somehow change what was happening. And when it didn't I wanted to hit the car, but since I needed the car, the only thing I could think of hitting was myself. I imagined placing the tip of a large gun next to my temple and blowing a hole through my head.

That's when I saw this person walking in my direction. I wasn't parked that far from the highway, where apparently this guy had been standing, not quite
on
the highway because that was illegal, but standing at the place where Charleston ended. He walked over and joined me at the fender. He was wearing a blue watch cap.

“May I help you?” I said.

“What's the problem?” he said, and he looked under the oily hood at the oily pieces of engine. He braced his hand on the radiator, reached in, jiggled a few wires, and told me to give it another try. He had a wispy virginal beard and smelled of patchouli. I told him I'd already given it a try, but this didn't seem to worry him. He said something about giving the car some time.

“Time for what?” I said.

“It's a car,” he said, as if that was an explanation.

“Yes,” I said, “and it's a car that's not running.”

He told me again to try it, and because he seemed so sure of himself I got in the car, and when I turned the ignition the car miraculously started. It seemed miraculous to me anyway, so when this man, whose name was Alex, asked if he could have a ride I asked where he was going. “Lexington,” he said, and immediately I cleared away the various maps and boxes from the passenger seat to make space for him to sit. Which he did.

Now things were ticking. I felt that my mind, the unconscious part of it, knew what was happening. Without quite knowing why, I became convinced that by giving him a ride I would relieve some of the pressure I was feeling. And by pressure I mean the sense of failure that was lodging itself in my upper chest.

By sense of failure I mean the disconnect between the world I wanted and the world as it was. I saw Alex as a bridge, both a bridge and a compass, and by compass I mean a part of the natural world that would tell me where to go. Try as I might to become part of the natural world, I was separated from it, and I thought Alex, with his army-green backpack, his worn-down running shoes, and his home in Kentucky, would have access to parts of the world unknown to me, such as where Anne was.

He was going home, he said, and as we drove through the Appalachian hills I briefly recounted my experience at the gas station in New Jersey. Even without hearing the whole story, Alex seemed to understand. He told me to let it go. He said that trying to contain it would only give it power, and what I ought to do, he said, a more effective approach, would be to admit it exists, allow it to exist. “Let it out and see where it goes.”

“By ‘it' you mean…?”

“Take it off of yourself and put it into the world,” he said. “It won't go away if you keep pushing it away.” Trying to get rid of it, he said, was just another way of holding on to it.

I still wasn't sure what the “it” was we were talking about, but that was all right. I was content at that point, happy for something that wasn't the wavering radio, or the hissing tape player, and this guy's voice, whatever he was talking about, was soothing and tranquil.

And so we drove, taking periodic gas stops and pee breaks, and part of the regimen during these breaks included a dose of yoga. He was religious about his yoga, which is why, when we stopped at a roadside Kuntry Kitchen restaurant, while we were sitting at a table by the window waiting for the check, Alex slid out of the bench seat, stretched out on the smooth blue carpeting, and began a series of salutations to the sun.

This particular action might have been typical in an ashram somewhere, but it was atypical in this particular restaurant, and a woman at a nearby table, an older woman facing Alex, puffing away on a long thin cigarette, began shaking her head. Alex couldn't see it because he was involved in his posture, but I saw the woman, and I mention it because, although what she'd done was nothing out of the ordinary—a simple shake of the head—I felt as if she'd reached across the several tables separating us and grabbed my heart in her fist. She'd reached
through
my chest, into its beating muscle, and I could feel a pressure building up in my body and directed at this woman for imposing her judgment on another member of the human race who happened to have a different set of beliefs.

That's how I saw it anyway.

And the odd thing was, that although she wasn't shaking her head at
me,
I was the one who felt the pressure. And so, following Alex's earlier advice I stood up and walked to her booth. I hadn't rehearsed what I was going to say, but concentrated on just letting it out. Let it out, I thought, and I said to her, “Is there a problem?” That's when I noticed, sitting across from the woman, her husband, or a man taking the role of husband, strong and big-bellied, and although my question was mostly rhetorical, the man was saying that there
was
a problem. And I said, “Well why don't we look at the problem a little closer, because I think it might be
your
problem.” At which point he stood up, or tried to, but because he was near the window side of the booth—and also because of his belly—he couldn't stand up that easily.

And I'm not saying I didn't have any judgments because I had plenty, and I knew it, but I wasn't concerned with noticing those judgments because I was more concerned with acting on them, with making these particular people experience a suitable form of punishment.

I wanted to be mad at something. And this is it, I thought, meaning this is the experience of anxiety turning into excitement. Instead of directing the pressure of that anxiety at myself, I had gotten it off myself and was aiming it at something in the world. And I liked it.

So there we were, the woman sitting, the man half standing, and me. And of course no sudden wave of understanding washed over the table, and in fact both of us, or all three of us, were trying, in our looks, to belittle and intimidate the other. I wanted the man to back down, and I wanted the woman to retract, not just her look, but her judgment.

Although her judgment hadn't bothered Alex—who blithely continued his salutations—it bothered me. And although the couple eventually left without incident, it continued to bother me. I couldn't get that lady, or some residue of that lady, out of my body. She was stuck inside my body, burned into my body's memory, and I was unable or unwilling to leave her behind. As I walked back to the car I was still feeling, in my stomach and chest, the incipient rage that for a moment had been directed at something other than me, and was now back
in
me, submerged inside the shell I had come to call myself.

4.

We spent the night in a rest area, Alex in the car and me, nestled in my sleeping bag, on a grassy area next to the car. The diesel engines of the big trucks rumbled all night, and the high voltage illumination, meant to prevent crime, prevented me from sleeping. On the one hand I thought I
should
sleep, and on the other I was still imagining retributions for the lady back at the restaurant.

The next morning I was walking out of the cinder-block bathroom when Alex, practicing his yoga on the grass, suggested I take off my shoes and join him. I was willing enough to touch my toes if I could, but before I did, while I was lining up my feet, he tapped my chest and told me to let the air out. He told me to relax my shoulders and take a deep cleansing breath, and because I was used to following instructions I was about to follow his. But I didn't want to take a cleansing breath. A deep cleansing breath might have alleviated the symptoms I was feeling, but I didn't mind the symptoms.

Thank god for anger, I thought. Although I didn't know what it was protecting me from exactly, I could tell it was giving me a chance to feel something other than loss. In that sense it was good, if not necessarily pleasant. Compared with loss or sorrow, anger was a balm, and rather than let it go, I wanted to perpetuate it. And when Alex started talking about Anne I had my opportunity.

He suggested, matter-of-factly, that maybe my wife
wanted
to disappear, that maybe she preferred
not
to be found. He'd seen the photo on the dashboard and I'd told him a more complete version of the dark car at the gas station, and the brakes screeching, and then Anne disappearing. And now he was saying, “She probably needs some space. A little time away,” he said. And although he didn't laugh when he said it, or even smile, I told him I wasn't joking. He said that he knew I wasn't joking, that he didn't mean it as a joke, but by then it didn't matter.

Maybe I didn't like his cavalier manner, or maybe I had a problem with his presumption. Or maybe I hated the idea that what he'd said was possibly right. Which it wasn't.