The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (3 page)

“I hope with something good,” offered Gilbert. “Like a nine year old girl.”

“Or another baseball game,” suggested Bonnie.

“I promised him a trip to the aquarium,” said Judith.

“I hear they have a flag there,” said Bonnie. “Maybe Arnold can set it on fire.”

“Okay, have your laughs. But the whole episode was pretty damn terrifying.”

“Do you mean you were afraid for your physical safety?” asked Bonnie.

“Yes, that too. But there was much more to it.”

Bonnie removed her spectacles and rubbed the bridge of her long nose. “What do you mean?”

“I mean there’s something unnerving about armchair patriotism. If I’d been at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, it would have been different. And I probably would have stood up too—just to show respect. But what does standing up at a baseball game have to do with loving my country?”

“Here, here,” echoed Gilbert. “What’s that Chesterton one-liner? ‘My country, right or wrong’ is like saying ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’”

“In Arnold’s case,” Judith interjected, “it was mostly drunk.”

Gilbert and Judith laughed. Arnold smiled too—although his mother, a settlement worker, had never touched even a drop of medicinal brandy. But his mother
had
been a temperamental woman—Judith said irrational—and she was more difficult as a teetotaller than most people are intoxicated.

“Let’s keep mothers out of this,” said Arnold.

“To keeping mothers out of this,” said Gilbert, raising his wine glass.

Bonnie’s expression remained hard and intense. She didn’t take her eyes off Arnold. “Well,
do you
love America?” she asked.

“What’s the supposed to mean?”

“It’s a pretty straight-forward question, Arnold.
Do you
love America?”

Quintessentially Bonnie Card. She had a knack for
asking these sorts of questions: What was wrong with child pornography? Why was one-person one-vote a good way to organize society? How could meritocracy and inheritance co-exist simultaneously? Bonnie had nearly lost her university post several years earlier when she’d delivered a commencement speech at N.Y.U. in which she’d proposed mandatory infanticide legislation. She’d advocated a strict utilitarian standard that argued for drowning disabled babies before they experienced pain. She’d even compared parents of cystic fibrosis sufferers to child abusers. There had been protests, boycotts. But Bonnie had stuck to her guns. And she’d picked up supporters as well as detractors: The Hemlock Society had given her its public service medal; Jack Kevorkian had written to her from prison. But then the September 11
^th
attacks occurred and the media had little room for
baby-killing
philosophers. The episode had done nothing to dampen Bonnie’s premise-rattling interrogations.

“I’m not going to answer that,” said Arnold.

Gilbert raised his glass. “The defendant pleads the Fifth.”

“It’s beside the point,” Arnold added.

“I don’t think so,” said Bonnie. “I think it
is
the point.”

“You’re badgering the witness, honey,” said Gilbert.

“You
don’t
love America,” Bonnie persisted. “You’re just afraid to admit it. They made you say the Pledge of Allegiance one too many times in elementary school and
now you can’t see things clearly.” She forked an olive from the jar and carefully carved out the pit. “Can you honestly tell me you love your country, Arnold Brinkman?”

“I’m grateful for the privileges I have as an American,” said Arnold.

“That’s not the same thing,” she answered.

Arnold had never given much thought to whether or not he loved America—but now it seemed pretty obvious to him that he didn’t. Not in the way Nathan Hale had loved America. Or even in the way his late father, a Dutch-Jewish refugee, had loved America. In fact, he found the idea of sacrificing his life for his country somewhat abhorrent. Moreover, it wasn’t that he disliked abstract loyalties in general. He loved New York, for instance: Senegalese takeout at three a.m., and strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the first crisp day of autumn, and feeding the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. If Manhattan were invaded—if New Jersey were to send an expeditionary force of militiamen across the Hudson River—he’d willingly take up arms to defend his city. He also loved Sandpiper Key in Florida, where they owned a time-share, and maybe Brown University, where he’d spent five years of graduate school. But the United States? No one could mistake his qualified praise for love.

“I like my country as much as the next man,” said Arnold.

“No offense, Arnold,” said Bonnie. “You wouldn’t
know the next man if he bit you on the ass.”

Judith stood up. “That’s my prompt to serve the fish.”

“I’ll come with you,” offered Gilbert.

Card followed Arnold’s wife into the kitchen.

Arnold found himself suddenly alone with Bonnie. This always made him feel slightly nervous. It wasn’t that he didn’t both respect and trust Gilbert’s wife, but that he was never quite certain what she might say or do next. She possessed just the right irreverence to do a person serious damage.

Bonnie leaned forward. Too close. (She’d never learned to modulate personal space properly.) Although Gilbert’s wife didn’t smoke, Arnold suffered an irrational premonition that she was about to puff a cigarette into his eyes.

“Do you know what your problem is, Arnold?” asked Bonnie.

“I have friends who think too much.”

“You’re risk-averse. You create these wonderful opportunities for yourself, but then you don’t have the courage to follow through on them.”

“I suppose you wouldn’t have stuck out your tongue.”

“That’s water under the bridge,” answered Bonnie. “It’s what you do
now
that matters. You should call the newspapers and defend yourself. Announce that you
don’t
love America—that patriotism is a refuge for scoundrels
and all that.”

“Talk truth to power,” said Arnold.

“Talk common sense,” said Bonnie. “But you won’t do that. I know you too well. You’ll offer some lukewarm apology, something about stress or nerves or whatnot, and you’ll go about your business.”

Gilbert entered carrying the platter of sizzling fish.

“You two still going at it?” he asked.

“I’m saying he should capitalize on his celebrity,” answered Bonnie. “He has a moral obligation to denounce the mob.”

“Celebrity,” scoffed Judy. She held a tureen of homemade couscous. “This will all blow over. In a couple of days, nobody will remember.”

“Do you think so?” asked Arnold.

“I hope so,” said Judy.

“Me too,” Arnold agreed. “I wasn’t destined to be remembered.”

“A toast,” proposed Gilbert. They all raised their wine glasses. “To not remembering.”

“Not remembering,” Judith chimed in. “The national pastime.”

And they drank.

They stayed up with the Cards until well past midnight, talking politics and neighbourhood gossip, polishing off a second bottle of wine, but Arnold was out of bed before the sun rose above the mansard roof of the community playhouse. The morning glories around the drainpipe still kept their blossoms clenched shut against the dew. On the fire escape, sparrows flitted among the terracotta pots. Otherwise, the predawn was grey and still and silent, punctuated only by the periodic rumbling of sanitation trucks. Arnold
loved
the first hour of a spring morning in Greenwich Village. Wandering through the rows of antebellum townhouses—on their second date, Judith had taught him the difference between
federalist-style
and Greek revival architecture—Arnold could fool himself into believing he’d stepped back into the previous century. One could easily imagine running into Edith Wharton on a street corner, or exchanging greetings with Walt Whitman, or sharing a stroll with that pioneering American botanist, Nathaniel Lord Britton, who’d live on West 11
^th
Street while he taught at Columbia. Even Britton would have admired the all-indigenous community gardens tucked into the numerous hidden courtyards. What the great naturalist would have thought of the recent horticultural efforts of the block association, the oversized
marigolds and snapdragons suffocating the hawthorn roots along the avenues, was another matter entirely—but one couldn’t deny these rings of floral invaders
were
beautiful.

Arnold retrieved his
New York Times
from the front steps. He flipped through the Sports pages, then the Metro section. Nothing about tongue-thrusting. Not a word. The incident didn’t even make the article about the game itself, which the Yankees had won on a grand slam in the fifteenth inning. Arnold dabbed his forehead with his sleeve. He wasn’t famous! What a wonderful way to start off the work week! There’d been a small story on the local television news the previous evening—he knew because Guillermo had phoned him—but mercifully Arnold’s social circle did not watch the local news. Most of their friends didn’t even own television sets. If he were lucky, a few weeks would pass before anyone actually made a positive ID on him; by then, some other fool would have lit a match during a gas leak, or bathed his children at an automated car wash, or stuck his penis in an electric citrus peeler, and nobody would care that Arnold had ever been born. His sister-in-law would also be home by then, and Ray would be back in Connecticut, and life would have returned to normal. Or at least to baseline. Normal might be pushing it.

That morning, Arnold lost half an hour clearing crushed beer cans out of his newly-planted caladium. His neighbour’s son—recently expelled from Binghamton—
had been discarding his trash over the fence. The neighbour was Ira Taylor and he had some foggy connection to Taylor & Taylor Securities, the bond firm, but it didn’t appear to involve much in the way of office work, because the man answered his own doorbell at all hours of the day. Arnold found his neighbour abrasive and overbearing. When he complained about the litter, Taylor told him not to “blow his doughnuts.” It would be taken care of, the securities trader assured him. But you had to cut the kid some slack. “Tell me you never tossed an apple core out a car window or put out a cigar on the pavement,” said Taylor. “Let it go, old man. Let it go.” Arnold hated being called “old man” by a guy his own age. But he had cut the son slack. Twice. And the problem, as evidenced by the pizza boxes full of cigarette butts, had certainly not gone away. It was the kid’s lucky morning, thought Arnold. He’d let him have a fourth strike. After standing up to all of Yankee Stadium, Arnold had no hankering to duke it out with his neighbour.

Once he’d gathered up the candy bar wrappers and the Doritos bags and what appeared to be the strap from a woman’s brassiere, Arnold plunged headlong into his weeding. No new tares were actually visible on the surface. He’d been over this ground too many times for that. But he made a point of churning the soil, particularly the moist earth beneath the Japanese maple, because prevention was the best herbicide. First he worked with a spade, then with a short-handled hoe. He lost himself
in the labour. Gardening provided him with the same high that long-distance runners found in marathon training and actors discovered on the stage. The rustle of footsteps in the butterfly hedges took him by surprise. Arnold spun around, brandishing his hoe.

“Jesus, Mr. Brinkman,” said the trespasser. “You look terrified.”

The voice belonged to an unfamiliar young woman. She was pudgy, with wide-set eyes and the upturned nose of a German peasant, but she was still of the age at which every girl is gorgeous by default. It was an ephemeral beauty. All long hair and smooth skin. You couldn’t compare it to the high cheekbones and perfectly curved brow that would keep Judith stunning into her seventies. But the girl was eye-catching. Not so different from the hundreds of other large-breasted, bare-armed graduate students and aspiring artists who rolled their eyes at Arnold every day on the streets of Greenwich Village—except that this young woman was standing in his yard. She wore a cream-coloured tank-top and carried a canvas bag over her exposed shoulder.

“Could you put that down?” she asked. “I’m not a burglar.”

Arnold tentatively lowered the hoe. He still feared this might be some sort of elaborate con-game or blackmail scheme—he knew they enlisted teenage girls for just such rackets—but at least she didn’t appear to be violent.
“Explain yourself,” he ordered.

“I figured you wouldn’t remember me,” said the girl.

“I know you?”

Arnold tried to place the intruder’s face, but couldn’t. Had he taught her? Had she worked at the nursery? At some point, all of his former students and employees had blended into each other. Common wisdom said that when you died, you passed through a tunnel of bright light and encountered everyone you’d ever known. Nobody said what would happen if you couldn’t recognize them.

“I interviewed you for the N.Y.U. newspaper,” said the girl. “About five years ago. When you gave that talk on ‘living off the land’ in Central Park.”

“Five years ago,” echoed Arnold. “I think I do remember you.” The truth was he’d not only forgotten the interview, but he couldn’t even remember the lecture.

“See, I’m not a burglar,” said the girl.

“Okay, but how did you get in here?”

The girl smiled mischievously. “Magic.”

“Would you care to be more specific?”

“Ladders.”

Arnold looked in the direction she’d come from. Sure enough, the upper rungs of a ladder protruded above the butterfly hedge. On the top step, surrounded by a tangle of black-eyed Susans, a catbird twitched its long dark tail.

“I set up one ladder on the sidewalk,” the girl explained. “I carried the other one to the top and put it
down on the opposite side of the fence. Then I just stepped over horizontally. It’s a neat trick I learned in journalism school.” Arnold must have looked puzzled, because the girl added: “I borrowed one of the ladders from the theatre across the street and the other from the liquor store down the block. I told them you needed them for your garden.”

“I’ll be sure to thank them.”

“I’m Cassandra. Like from ancient Troy.”

She extended her pale hand. Arnold didn’t take it.

“Well, Cassandra, you still haven’t explained what in God’s name you’re doing in my back yard at seven thirty in the morning.”

“You won’t be mad, will you? I want an interview.”

Arnold tossed the hand hoe into the grass. “An interview?”

“I’m interning at the
Daily Vanguard
. The new progressive paper. And when I told them I recognized the guy from the baseball game, they totally promised me a front-page byline—if you’d agree to talk. How awesome is that?”

“There’s nothing to talk about. That’s yesterday’s news—no need to stoke any fires. You’re a weekly, right? By the time you go to press, nobody will remember me.”

“We’re a daily, Mr. Brinkman. The
Daily Vanguard
.” The girl rummaged through her canvas bag. She passed him the local newspapers one at a time. His photograph—tongue protruding—appeared on every cover. In The
Daily
News
, the headline read: “Mystery Man Mocks Nation at War.” Newsday ran the caption: “Tongue of a Snake.” But none was more direct than the
New York Post
. At the angle they’d photographed him—with one arm raised to block the glare—he bore a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler delivering a Nazi salute. Underneath, they’d printed “THE ENEMY WITHIN” in bold letters.

“Yesterday’s news,” she mocked. “They’ve forgotten you already.”

Arnold stared dumbfounded at the tabloid cover; they’d even dotted the i’s in “WITHIN” with miniature swastikas.

“Don’t look so gloomy,” said Cassandra. “You knocked the Bare-Ass Bandit off the front page of the
Post
. I think that’s pretty fucking cool.”

The Bare-Ass Bandit had been terrorizing the city for weeks. This nude, saber-wielding outlaw confronted lone pedestrians and stole their clothing. All of it. Undergarments. Medical alert bracelets. Hairpins. In one instance, he’d even demanded a woman’s sanitary napkin. Then he made the victim watch while he tried on their garments. But in recent days, his M.O. had grown odder, providing a wealth of material for the tabloids. In one instance, he’d kidnapped the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Brooklyn from his bedroom, and left the cleric bound and naked in Prospect Park, with the words “Jesus didn’t save me” scrawled across his chest in human faeces. The
following week, he’d hijacked a bus of disabled senior citizens returning from Atlantic City and run off with their wheelchairs and prosthetic limbs. Only a libellous rag like the
Post
could think to lump him and Arnold in the same category.

“This is absurd,” said Arnold.

“Of course it’s absurd. But it
is
. That’s why the
Vanguard
is giving you a chance to tell your own side of the story. We’re on your side.”

“I don’t want to tell my side of the story,” snapped Arnold. He felt thirsty, dizzy. “
There is no story
.”

The girl shifted her weight from one short leg to the other. She looked as though she might pout. “Please, Mr. Brinkman. We’ll help each other out. What’s that expression old people use? ‘You scratch my back and I scratch yours.’”

No, thought Arnold, we won’t. And he used that ‘old people’ expression all the time. He suddenly realized how uncomfortable he felt having van attractive young woman alone with him in his garden. They weren’t
that
far apart in age—no further than Rochester and Jane Eyre or Scarlett O’Hara and Frank Kennedy. (Arnold had just finished writing a chapter on the significance of vines in
Wide Sargasso Sea
and was polishing up an article on the role of cotton strains in
Gone With the Wind
.) He knew he hadn’t done anything wrong with the girl—he hadn’t even wanted to do anything wrong—but the notion that Judith
might suspect him of wanting to do something wrong was enough to make him uneasy. “You shouldn’t be here. My wife will be downstairs any minute now.”

“Cool. Do you think I could interview her too?”

Arnold looked down at his feet. He toyed with the keys in his pocket. Where the sprinkler hose was leaking, a thin stream of water fizzed anaemically. Clouds of vapour rose from the hot flagstones. The day was going to be a scorcher.

“Look, Cassandra,” said Arnold—in the same voice he used with his nephew. “You have to leave. This is not a good time.” He decided he hadn’t sounded forceful enough, so he added: “This is private property.”

“Come on, Mr. Brinkman. You’ll to have to talk to the press eventually. So why not me? I was here first.”

“Enough. I’m going inside to have my breakfast. You can let yourself out the way you came in.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mr. Brinkman. You need all the friends you can get.”

Arnold walked toward the tool shed. “I have plenty of friends.”

That’s when the pandemonium erupted on the other side of the fence.

Arnold and Judith had purchased their brownstone from a paranoid ex-Weatherman who’d gained twenty-seconds
of fame for founding a Caucasian Auxiliary to the Black Panther Party. “Hurricane” Cohen’s one remaining legacy was an elevated stone platform at the corner of Arnold’s yard that the radical had used to keep watch. Standing on the three foot ledge, the observer had a clear sight of the front steps and both sidewalks as far as the avenue. A carefully constructed blind kept it a one-way view. In Cohen’s day, there had also been an escape tunnel that connected the yard to the vacant lot behind the sex toy museum, but the city had covered the exit with a storm grating. Arnold later filled in his end of the burrow with cinderblocks. He’d kept the platform as an ornamental piece and surrounded it with ferns. When the first shouts and sirens rose over the fence, he climbed onto the
moss-coated
ledge to take a look.

Television vans lined the entire far side of the street. CBS. NBC. FOX. Some of the news crews were already broadcasting. Others lounged against parked cars, sipping coffee from Styrofoam cups. A crowd of pedestrians and local merchants had also ventured down the block to watch. Arnold spotted Darmopolis, the blind proprietor of the liquor shop, scratching his bushy moustache. Also the Chinese barber who spoke with a French accent, and the homeless poet, and the identical twins from behind the dairy counter at the Gourmet’s Paradise. The twins wore matching red bandannas around their necks; they took turns whispering into the blind Greek’s ear. Lots of
the other faces were unfamiliar: random pedestrians who happened to be cutting between avenues at that moment. In the centre of all of the mayhem stood Ira Taylor, looking far too comfortable in only a dressing gown and slippers, being interviewed simultaneously by several reporters. The bond seller was practically conducting a press conference. He occasionally pointed in the direction of Arnold’s townhouse and made animated gestures, but it was impossible to hear his words over the ebb and flow of sirens.