Anything Can Happen Page 7

  We fought over the career of Ed McMahon. We argued whether Ed had been a slave to Johnny or a star in his own right.

  Could we both be right? We made up. We vowed to have no more big dinner parties. We did the right thing. We had a nice day. We had a good one.

  And then, suddenly, it was all gone. Gone. And now...

  Lately, I have tried without success to attract Ashley's interest. She says everything is boring. I attempt to engage her in politics. Boring, she says. I show her a photograph of Attorney General John Ashcroft. I read her the latest biography of a dead U.S. President. I turn on the PBS series on the American ice cream cone. Ten parts. Lots of postcards. Boring, she says.

  The world of current events, which enchants me completely, sets her to yawning. Nuances of language, which have me mesmerized, hold her not. Books, movies, the antics of public figures, all of which make me leap for joy, are nothing to Ashley. I try to bring back the old days. I sing her "Macho Man." She looks away. I sing "Kumbaya." She says she's never heard of it.

  Now, on our boat, the Ashley Montana, I plead with her. "Don't be bored, darling," I say. "Let's find an island. A place for us. Somewhere." We had already visited ten such islands. One was on the Perillo Tours. Yet none of the islands had truly seized Ashley's fancy—an illusive thing, to be sure. Nonetheless, the idea perks her up.

  "Aruba?" I suggest. She shakes her head no. "Anguilla?" I offer. She rolls her eyes skyward. "St. Barths? St. Kitts? St. Croix?" Not a nod.

  Ashley says, "How about Portosan?"

  I explain to her that Portosan is not an island.

  "How about the Caicos?" she says.

  "Never heard of them," I retort.

  She sits bolt upright. "Never heard of them? Never heard of the Caicos?" She explodes in laughter so shrill it scatters the fish.

  "Ashley, Ashley," she sighs woefully. "Everybody knows the Caicos. The Caicos are it! Tom Cruise goes there. Penelope Cruz is there right now. On a cruise. Claus von Bülow, Lizzie Grubman, Norman Mailer. All the best people. Look, I'm sorry. But if you've never heard of the Caicos, what's the point, I'd like to know, of us going on?"

  It is the moment I have dreaded. Shamelessly I beg her to stay with me. But I can see that she's ready to jump ship. It was plain from the start: She has her world, I mine.

  "Go," I tell her. "But stay dry."

  "Good-bye, Ashley," she says, and jumps overboard.

  For a minute or so I watch her swim toward shore, in her hat, the water beading—and immediately evaporating—on her swimsuit as she glides through the sea. Soon she is far away. I turn my yacht about and sail north. I am heartbroken, yet enlightened, and full of warm memories of our time together—while in the distance, with the sun full upon the sea, and the air as free as a dream, Ashley Montana goes ashore in the Caicos.

  How to Live in the World

  These instructions come in French and Japanese as well, and in other languages, but don't let that throw you. Don't let anything about the enterprise throw you. You can do it, anyone can do it, because one really doesn't live in the world when it comes down to it (and it always comes down to it). Rather, one waits for the world to live in you—as a composer waits for rapture, and then becomes the life he seeks.

  But, if that sounds a bit abstract to you, a little hoity-toity, read that part of Specimen Days in which nurse Walt Whitman is attending the Union fallen and near-dead in the U.S. Patent Office in Washington, D.C., which doubled as a hospital during the Civil War—where he notes, with barely a critical remark, that the same species capable of coming up with the most dazzling inventions made of wood and brass was just as capable of blowing off one another's limbs. The hall was filled with bright machines side by side with men on cots, massaging their new stumps.

  It is the way you feel when listening to national politicians speak of our great power and our powerful greatness while in your heart, you recall that still and airless afternoon in Africa, when you held an eleven-year-old in your arms shortly after he had died of starvation. Light as a feather. His last breath went out of him like a drop from a vial.

  So, how to live in the world? Wait till the end of the day, when the family of swans has sequestered itself under the drawbridge near the NO WAKE sign, and the light has stalled above the open mouth of the creek, so that the sun burns like a coal in ash, and the wind is a rumor on your face, your limbs, and you are filled with wonder and remorse. Then go treat the wounded.

  Aubade

  Inseparable from the dark dawn, this white chair, stained brown-orange at the top of the back cushion, and the ink scratches on its arms. This yellow pad. This Bic without its top.

  This silence and these words that remain silent yet push and elbow

  each other out of the way like Hollywood extras vying for attention. These dreams

  that go forward and back, past scoundrels and geese in great flights and the outrages of history, which, since they are dreams,

  become birds, then baseballs, then blues numbers and my dad in his kitchen, singing show tunes in his slippers.

  This morning, this life. One could die of happiness.

  Instructions to the Pallbearers

  Use the casket for a planter. I never did like boxes. Instead, prop me up on a high place where I can face the water—a bay, not an ocean—so that boats may pass before my blind eyes, and the noise of children playing on a float may attack my deaf ears. Then leave me to rot. And, keep the worms away, if you can. Death ought to be different.

  On the Other Hand

  On the other hand, rejoice. The heat from the fire has blistered the blue paint on your door, and the ashes from the volcano are floating like chicken feathers everywhere, and the mouth of the earthquake has swallowed up the silver and the books, and as soon as the tsunami arrives, there will be nothing left—no piano, no red vase from Italy, no antique Shaker shovel, no tennis trophy—not even a photo ID to tell you who you are.

  But this, I will remind you, is what you wanted—to be free of possessions, to reflect on the worthiness of life, to be as noble as the heart allows. And, ID or no, you know who you are.

  The Grateful Living

  At last: A clean, clear image. The sunlight on a gull; the gull on a piling; the piling on a channel. The channel noses through to the open bay, and the bay to the sea. But I don't need to go there now. The gull is enough, plenty. I don't see why eternity has to go on forever. Here is my place in the world.

  Thank you. Thank you and you and you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I have two editors-in-chief. One, Ginny Rosenblatt, first saw my work forty years ago and felt that it needed so much editing, she married me. The other, Jane Isay, who doubles as editor-in-chief of Harcourt, while not going as far as Ginny, has joined the effort toward my improvement with great skill and gusto. I thank them heartily and wish them continued good luck.

  Thanks as well to Gloria Loomis, my agent of twenty-seven years, who keeps at it in spite of her better judgment and to Jane Freeman, my artist-transcriber, who translates my work from the original Sanskrit and who also makes so many helpful suggestions, I begin to resent them.

  An old high-school teacher of mine is cited in one of these essays. Jon Beck Shank was a poet, a great, good heart, and a gift to those lucky enough to learn from him. I'm forever grateful for his words of encouragement spoken so many long, winding years ago.

  Roger Rosenblatt