Read Online The Splendid Things We Planned: A Family Portrait by Blake Bailey - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Blake Bailey
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water.
That was the last I saw of Scott for a long time. For a week or so I contrived to stay away at friends’ houses, and one day when I came home to change clothes, Scott was gone. He’d decided to go back to New York for no particular reason.
THAT WAS THE year my parents’ marriage, long moribund, came to an end. They still had moments of companionship, but mostly they led separate lives. Even when my mother was home she slept alone in my old bedroom, which she’d converted into a kind of Arabic caravansary—a low brass table with elaborate pewter pitchers, tapestries of desert scenes, and the like. But the whole Arabic thing had palled, and I imagine such decor served only as a bleak reminder of certain failed experiments. Little wonder she preferred life in Norman: most of her stuff was there, and she’d taken up with a tall, baby-faced grad student, Dave, who helped her care for some famous chimps who knew sign language.
On the surface, at least, my father grudged her nothing: for a long time she’d been unhappy—despite the seeming festivity of her life—and now she was somewhat better. Besides, Burck was doing his own thing as well. That summer he went to Colorado for an Outward Bound program. Slender enough to begin with, he returned several pounds lighter and glowed with idealistic notions of a better life: more simplicity, more reflection, fewer “poisons” such as coffee and alcohol (which he’d never consumed to excess anyway). He showed me a photo of his Outward Bound group, all of them happily bedraggled after their long ordeal in the mountains; Burck was the oldest by far (forty-five), but his smudged and grinning face was boyish. That summer, too, he spent a month or so with a family in Sweden. The mother was a big woman in her late thirties named Elsie, who’d met my father while touring the States with an avant-garde acting troupe. She was the type who sensed “connections” with certain people—correctly so in my father’s case. A couple of years later, I too visited Elsie’s family in Sweden, and they spoke of Burck as an almost holy figure—so kind and curious and fun. They showed me a drawing that the little girl had made of my father in a diving pose at the village lake. By comparison I was a big disappointment: a glum, self-conscious adolescent, I was taken aback by Elsie’s persistent wish to discuss things like masturbation; also (to my later shame) I showed little interest in getting to know her daughter, then a shy thirteen-year-old who didn’t speak much English and was rather plain. For my father, though, it was a liberation of sorts. Not long ago I found some letters he’d written my mother from Sweden, all about how hopeful he was for a renascent marriage on his return.
AMONG MY FATHER’S resolves that fall was to rescue Scott from New York. My brother’s letters and occasional phone calls had become increasingly bizarre, all the more for being fairly articulate. With a lot of elaborate wordplay he described all the “crazy moothray fookrays” that one encounters in the course of a long, idle day in the city. A bum in Tompkins Square had put a knife to Scott’s throat and demanded a blow job; certain people, normal-seeming to begin with, had beaten the shit out of him “for no reason.” He was persecuted on all sides but, with a kind of wan bravado, insisted he was happy. New York was the only town for him.
Burck went to an address in Hell’s Kitchen indicated by Scott’s letters. I picture him standing on the sidewalk in his suede blazer and loafers, the rabble reeling around him as he glances from an envelope to a squalid tenement and back to the envelope again. Scott’s apartment was several flights up; perhaps there were a few sunburned, shirtless junkies asleep on the stairs. Though my father had alerted Scott to his visit—writing well in advance and specifying date and time—Scott wasn’t expecting him. He received my father warmly but had a hard
That was the last I saw of Scott for a long time. For a week or so I contrived to stay away at friends’ houses, and one day when I came home to change clothes, Scott was gone. He’d decided to go back to New York for no particular reason.
THAT WAS THE year my parents’ marriage, long moribund, came to an end. They still had moments of companionship, but mostly they led separate lives. Even when my mother was home she slept alone in my old bedroom, which she’d converted into a kind of Arabic caravansary—a low brass table with elaborate pewter pitchers, tapestries of desert scenes, and the like. But the whole Arabic thing had palled, and I imagine such decor served only as a bleak reminder of certain failed experiments. Little wonder she preferred life in Norman: most of her stuff was there, and she’d taken up with a tall, baby-faced grad student, Dave, who helped her care for some famous chimps who knew sign language.
On the surface, at least, my father grudged her nothing: for a long time she’d been unhappy—despite the seeming festivity of her life—and now she was somewhat better. Besides, Burck was doing his own thing as well. That summer he went to Colorado for an Outward Bound program. Slender enough to begin with, he returned several pounds lighter and glowed with idealistic notions of a better life: more simplicity, more reflection, fewer “poisons” such as coffee and alcohol (which he’d never consumed to excess anyway). He showed me a photo of his Outward Bound group, all of them happily bedraggled after their long ordeal in the mountains; Burck was the oldest by far (forty-five), but his smudged and grinning face was boyish. That summer, too, he spent a month or so with a family in Sweden. The mother was a big woman in her late thirties named Elsie, who’d met my father while touring the States with an avant-garde acting troupe. She was the type who sensed “connections” with certain people—correctly so in my father’s case. A couple of years later, I too visited Elsie’s family in Sweden, and they spoke of Burck as an almost holy figure—so kind and curious and fun. They showed me a drawing that the little girl had made of my father in a diving pose at the village lake. By comparison I was a big disappointment: a glum, self-conscious adolescent, I was taken aback by Elsie’s persistent wish to discuss things like masturbation; also (to my later shame) I showed little interest in getting to know her daughter, then a shy thirteen-year-old who didn’t speak much English and was rather plain. For my father, though, it was a liberation of sorts. Not long ago I found some letters he’d written my mother from Sweden, all about how hopeful he was for a renascent marriage on his return.
AMONG MY FATHER’S resolves that fall was to rescue Scott from New York. My brother’s letters and occasional phone calls had become increasingly bizarre, all the more for being fairly articulate. With a lot of elaborate wordplay he described all the “crazy moothray fookrays” that one encounters in the course of a long, idle day in the city. A bum in Tompkins Square had put a knife to Scott’s throat and demanded a blow job; certain people, normal-seeming to begin with, had beaten the shit out of him “for no reason.” He was persecuted on all sides but, with a kind of wan bravado, insisted he was happy. New York was the only town for him.
Burck went to an address in Hell’s Kitchen indicated by Scott’s letters. I picture him standing on the sidewalk in his suede blazer and loafers, the rabble reeling around him as he glances from an envelope to a squalid tenement and back to the envelope again. Scott’s apartment was several flights up; perhaps there were a few sunburned, shirtless junkies asleep on the stairs. Though my father had alerted Scott to his visit—writing well in advance and specifying date and time—Scott wasn’t expecting him. He received my father warmly but had a hard
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