Early Autumn

CHAPTER 20

I had never been to a ballet before, and while I was interested in the remarkable things the dancers could do with their bodies, I wasn’t looking forward to the next time. Paul obviously was. He sat motionless and intent beside me throughout the program.

Driving back to Maine I said to him, “Ever been to a ballet before?”

“No. My dad said it was for girls.”

“He’s half right again,” I said. “Just like the cooking.”

Paul was quiet.

“Would you like to do ballet?”

“You mean be a dancer?”

“Yeah.”

“They’d never let me. They think it’s… they wouldn’t let me.”

“Yeah, but if they would, would you want to?”

“Take lessons and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded. Very slightly. In the dark car, trying to keep an eye on the road, I barely caught the nod. It was the first unequivocal commitment I’d seen him make, and however slight the nod, it was a nod. It wasn’t a shrug.

We were quiet He hadn’t turned the radio on when he got in the car, as he almost always did. So I didn’t either. Past the Portsmouth Circle, on the Spaulding Turnpike, an hour north of Boston, he said without looking at me, “Lots of men dance ballet.”

“Yes,” I said.

“My father says they’re fags.”

“What’s your mother say?”

“She says that too.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t know about their sex life. What I can say is, they are very fine athletes. I don’t know enough about dance to go much further than that, but people who do know seem to feel that they are also often gifted artists. That ain’t a bad combination, fine athlete; gifted artist. It puts them two up on most people and one up on practically everybody except Bernie Casey.”

“Who’s Bernie Casey?”

“Used to be a wide receiver with the Rams. Now he’s a painter and an actor.”

There were a few streetlights and not many towns now. The Bronco moved through the night’s tunnel as if it were alone.

“Why do they say that?” Paul said.

“Say what?”

“That dancing’s for girls. That guys that do it are fags. They say that about everything. Cooking, books, everything, movies. Why do they say that?”

“Your parents?”

“Yes.”

We went through a small town with streetlights. Past an empty brick school, past a cannon with cannonballs pyramided beside it, past a small store with a Pepsi sign out front. Then we were back in darkness on the highway.

I let some air out of my lungs. “Because they don’t know any better,” I said. “Because they don’t know what they are, or how to find out, or what a good person is, or how to find out. So they rely on categories.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean your father probably isn’t sure of whether he’s a good man or not, and he suspects he might not be, and he doesn’t want anyone to find out if he isn’t. But he doesn’t really know how to be a good man, so he goes for the simple rules that someone else told him. It’s easier than thinking, and safer. The other way you have to decide for yourself. You have to come to some conclusions about your own behavior and then you might find that you couldn’t live up to it. So why not go the safe way. Just plug yourself into the acceptable circuitry.”

“I can’t follow all that,” Paul said.

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “Let me try another way. If your father goes around saying he likes ballet, or that you like ballet, then he runs the risk of someone else saying men don’t do that. If that happens, then he has to consider what makes a man, that is, a good man, and he doesn’t know. That scares the shit out of him. Same for your mother. So they stick to the tried and true, the conventions that avoid the question, and whether it makes them happy, it doesn’t make them look over the edge. It doesn’t scare them to death.”

“They don’t seem scared. They seem positive.”

“That’s a clue. Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both. Reality is uncertain. Lot of people need certainty. They look around for the way it’s supposed to be. They get a television-commercial view of the world. Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they’re supposed to be and being scared they aren’t. Quiet desperation.”

We passed a white clapboard roadside vegetable stand with last year’s signs still up and the empty display tables dour in the momentary headlights, native corn, beans. And then pine woods along the road as the headlight cone moved ahead of us.

“You’re not like that.”

“No. Susan says sometimes in fact I’m too much the other way.”

“Like what?”

“Like I work too hard to thwart people’s expectations.”

“I don’t get it,” Paul said.

“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The point is not to get hung up on being what you’re supposed to be. If you can, it’s good to do what pleases you.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

“Even now?”

“Yeah.”