The Portable Veblen

12 THE PASSENGER YEARS

It is one kind of trouble to kiss your fiancé good-bye in the morning and immediately turn your thoughts to another man. But it’s another kind altogether if the other man has been dead for nine decades, or is of the genus Sciurus.

Until this engagement, Veblen thought she knew what she was about. By thirty, she had managed to put away the simmering loneliness of childhood, finding relief in things outside herself, such as in skillfully tending family members who were scattered and needy, and becoming a secret expert on the life of Thorstein Veblen. To ward off uneasy feelings that crept in at unguarded moments, she’d drawn upon a wide array of materials and activities, keeping up with all major periodicals of the day, typing along to Norwegian films, clipping interesting pictures from magazines for some future project, taking brisk bike rides. And then came Paul, and the whole enterprise of their future. Escapist feelings at this point showed a serious breakdown in self-discipline. And strangest of all, right at the moment she should be happiest.

An analyst might ask her to start with her earliest memory. Her mother would insist she go to the doctor for a thorough workup, a philosopher might take a prod to her facticity, an anarchist would suggest the trouble lay with the state, and a social critic such as Thorstein Veblen would be sure to mention the many ways her instincts had been thwarted as a citizen of her age.

A few quiet sobs made her feel moist and self-pitying. When the squirrel was around, she felt grounded, real, at ease. Did it matter if relief came in the form of an animal who stuck around and seemed to care?

• • •

NO DOUBT, her idiosyncrasies abounded. Needing to accommodate her mother to such an extent was clearly one of them.

In the old days, after Linus moved in and began to do the shopping because her mother came unglued in the aisles, she started to receive an apple in her lunch every day, old and grainy and tasteless. Every day she’d take a bite hoping for a nice crisp juicy apple, but to no avail. Then she’d feel guilty about wasting a whole piece of fruit that had grown to maturity for nothing, only to be buried in the tomb of her desk. One day, trying to retrieve her pencil case, Veblen disturbed the order of things and apples began to pour onto the floor, as if she’d hit the jackpot in an apple slot machine. All told, twenty-six of the bruised and moldering fruits rolled through the class, and everyone, even Mrs. Ahrendt, was laughing. The kids gathered them and had a special time out, walking down the road to a horse farm, to throw them into the feed.

The next day, Mrs. Ahrendt came in with a story she’d printed out for the class:

I was sitting in my class one day, minding my own business. I saw something out of the corner of my eye just as I was about to write. I thought at first it was Mrs. Ahrendt. I glanced up and as I did I noticed it was a shiny, red object. It was alive and moving toward me! I looked more closely at it as it advanced. I thought to myself, “It’s a colorful creature from another planet.” It inched closer and closer. Could it be an apple the size of a human? I blinked my eyes wildly. Holy applesauce. It was a giant walking apple with a human head. I knew that head. I realized with a shiver what had happened. Veblen, the apple-eating, apple-saving, apple-happy girl, had been transformed into an absurd, abnormal, but appetizing apple!

The class laughed and Veblen felt what it must be like to be a star. To be notorious for hoarding apples was not wholly unglamorous, and surely better than the last stunt she had been known for, covering her eyes during the class picture because the flashbulbs scared her.

“You should have told me you don’t like Red Delicious,” Linus said that evening. “You’re right, they’ve been hybridized beyond recognition. I can start buying McIntosh or some nice tart Pippins.”

“Okay. What about a generic banana?”

“I hope people don’t get the wrong idea,” said her mother.

“Like what?”

“Is she going to write something about every child in the class?”

“Melanie, this is cute. Let’s not overreact.”

“Why should my daughter be called absurd and abnormal?”

“Appetizing too, Mom! I’m appetizing!”

“And apple-happy,” said Linus. “That’s praise in my book.”

Indeed, this was one of the first public compliments Veblen ever received, and thereafter, kind words that came her way put her in mind of herself as a giant, walking apple — a sure way to keep one’s pride in check.

• • •

OH, THERE WERE plenty of ways to do that.

After work on Monday, wrestling her bike into the garage, Veblen received a call from her mother, who was so excited about something, Veblen had to ask her to slow down.

“Linus and I had just gotten back from a very bleak shopping trip to the Costco in Santa Rosa when our phone rang. It was a woman named Susan Hinks.”

“That’s Paul’s assistant,” Veblen said, shocked.

“Yes, exactly. She said that Dr. Paul Vreeland had asked her to look into a referral for me, and that he wished to speak with me. Next thing I knew, he was on the phone! Well, I was quite surprised. You must know all this, don’t you?”

She slammed shut the garage door. “He didn’t tell me anything.”

“You didn’t make him do this?”

“Definitely not.”

“Well, he had actually taken the time to think about my symptoms and he’s leaning strongly to the adrenal glands as the source of the problem. He said there were two possible places I could go for a study, UCSF and Stanford. Naturally I said Stanford would be my preference, so he said he’d have his assistant find out which would be more suitable and let me know. Now, I’m not joking, ten minutes later this Susan Hinks called, and said Stanford might have a place for me in the next few months. Can you believe it?”

“No, I can’t,” Veblen said, wondering how Paul could have done this to her. He clearly didn’t understand the delicate balance they’d achieved. Her house had never felt so vulnerable.

“So I’ll be able to spend some time with you, and I am thrilled. He feels I may have primary aldosteronism. If I take part in the study, I’ll be hospitalized for two weeks, my diet will be controlled, my urine will be collected, I’ll have a saline infusion, and I’ll be given something called spironolactone. Then the study continues for one to two months as an outpatient. The only known risks are rashes, decreased libido, and tender nipples.”

“Ho!” chimed Linus, somewhere in the room.

“I am really touched by this, dear,” said her mother, passionately. “Please tell Paul how touched I am.”

“So, you’re coming — when?” Standing outside her house in the late afternoon, Veblen had almost lost her voice. It was clear that her mother was now more excited about the trial than about the wedding.

“I don’t know yet. Is this a problem?”

“No,” Veblen said, kicking the trunk of the Aleppo pine.

“You sound uncertain.”

“No, I’m just tired.”

“Have you eaten well today?”

“Pretty well.”

“Are you taking your iron tablets?”

“Yeah,” she lied.

“Will you ignore me when I come?”

“No.”

“Will you make me feel like a hanger-on?”

“Not on purpose.”

“We also received an invitation today from Paul’s parents to a rehearsal dinner before the wedding, which was nice.”

“Oh, good. Nothing fancy, probably just a barbecue.”

“But I’m worried that if we come down the night before and I have a bad night, it will ruin the wedding day for me. I’m considering the possibility of forgoing the rehearsal dinner and getting up bright and early to drive down.”

“But how bad could it be?”

“I don’t sleep well in motels. I don’t sleep well anywhere. Will I be able to spend any time with you or will you be busy with everyone else?”

“You’re sitting with me when we eat, how does that sound?” Veblen said, groaning.

“All right. But you know how much I hate being ignored in crowds.”

“I think this is enough reassurance for now,” Veblen said, remembering the American midcentury philosopher John Dewey, who said in Art as Experience that there was a definite problem when wholehearted action became a grudging concession to the demands of duty.

“You’re very good to me, dear,” said her mother, taking Veblen by surprise.

• • •

SHE CAME INSIDE, threw down her bag, and was greeted by the unmistakable sound of life pent up, of plans derailed, and of a creature biting mad.

“Oh, no.”

And she thought the squirrel knew better!

Veblen found her flashlight, wrestled the chubby ottoman into the shower stall, balanced her desk chair on it, and pressed aside the hatch.

A blast of warm air smacked her face, laced with an odd trace of Turkish coffee and musk. She blinked and peered through the darkness marked by a few slats of light from the vents. Cobwebs brushed her skin, clumped in her eyelashes, across her lips. In trying to clear them, she noted they were softer than cashmere. (But imagine the label, “pure virgin cobweb,” which really wouldn’t do. Yet silk originated in the glands of worms, and no one seemed to mind.) Her nose began to tickle. She wielded her beam.

There was the trap and the squirrel, her squirrel, holding on to the wiry bars like a little jailbird. The fine scruff, the tufted ears, the crisp white chest and gray mantle, and the high-flying plume of a tail.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” She deflected the beam from its eyes. “I never thought you’d get caught!”

The squirrel rattled the bars.

“You’re too smart to be trapped. Did you want to be trapped?”

The squirrel provided no clue.

“I’m sorry, you fine squirrel.” And she made a quick decision. She pulled the trap closer and carefully lifted it down. The squirrel sat still and exuded great dignity and courage in its present circumstances. “I’ll make sure you get to a good place. I can’t promise what Paul might do if he found you.”

She transported the squirrel outside, her face close enough to his body to smell him, a warm, lovable smell, like the top of a baby’s head. She placed the cage on the front seat of her mustard-colored Volvo. A plan was rapidly forming, and after a quick look at her watch she began to pack an overnight bag, along with the assortment of supplies she’d been stockpiling to deliver to her father.

“I know a place full of squirrels for you to meet,” she said, throwing her things into the car.

Did he appear to listen? She was so sentimental!

And in no time she hit the road, feeling encouraged by the squirrel’s appraisal of her actions.

• • •

IT WAS A GOOD HOUR before she called Paul, past Salinas.

“Now?” he said, sounding almost shocked. “Where are you?”

“Near Soledad.”

“It’s weird you just went. Why didn’t you warn me?”

“I’m telling you now. Don’t you have a conference tonight?”

“Yeah, but I thought we’d go together to see your father!”

She said calmly that maybe his opinions on her mother were enough for the time being.

To which he replied, “So you are punishing me!”

She mumbled something about plenty of time for that. And then asked him about the plans for her mother, the trial, what was the big idea with that?

The squirrel let out a few clucks, as three CH-47 Chinook helicopters ripped through the sky on their way to training exercises at Camp Roberts.

“She loves me now, doesn’t she?” Paul said.

“Well, she’s assuming it was a caring gesture. But do you really think she belongs in that program?”

“Sure, why not? The adrenals came to me in the middle of the night, like an inspiration.” He laughed in a sinister way.

She shuddered. All she wanted was to walk down the sidewalk holding hands, looking at gardens, mentioning whatever she felt like mentioning, feeling happy, maybe whistling. They had done that!

“No, really, I’ve been doing a lot of — thinking,” Paul said. “Your mother and I could end up best friends. I think she has some wounds I can relate to on some level.”

Her eyes widened. “Really? That’s not necessary.”

Paul said, “By the way, the Hutmacher caterer called me, wants to discuss the menu. I didn’t know what to say.”

“Yeah, I guess we need to decide what we’re doing,” Veblen said flatly.

“If we go for it, the choices are some kind of beef en croûte or chicken Veronica.”

“Gee, I’m not sure I’d want either. What is chicken Veronica?”

“Chicken with some kind of sauce — maybe with grapes.”

“Now you’re punishing me. How about neither?”

“You know, other couples spend hours poring over these details. Aren’t you excited about our wedding?”

“Of course I am,” she replied, changing ears.

“What about a gift registry?” Paul said next. “People have been asking me what we want.”

“Ugh, those seem so greedy.”

“People like them, Veblen. It helps them choose.”

“William James liked to say, ‘Materialism’s sun sets in a sea of disappointment’!” She was in the mood to be annoying.

“What a killjoy!” Paul said.

“Do you know the Easterlin paradox? It’s that your happiness shrinks in proportion to how much stuff you have.”

“Now you’re against gifts of any kind?” Paul asked, sounding slightly enraged.

She told him not to worry, they’d have their gift registry, and to wait until she got back. “In the meantime, you should read Tim Kasser’s The High Price of Materialism and Gregg Easterbrook’s The Progress Paradox, and David Brooks’s Bobos in Paradise,” she continued, willfully.

Paul said, “I guess I’d better not tell you there’s a boat I’m interested in.”

“A boat?”

“It’s a thirty-two-foot Weekender made by Sea Ray. Do you know anything about boats?”

“Nothing,” she said.

“Well, the Sea Ray is a very nice brand of boat, and it would be pretty amazing to have it.”

“I don’t know why, but all I can think of is commodity fetishism.”

“This one — I went out today to see it — is incredible. And guess how much?”

“Now we’re getting into affluenza.”

“This boat’s in mint condition. It’s a 2004, but the family only used it a few times before the father was called to duty in Afghanistan from the National Guard. His wife wants eight thousand dollars.”

“Isn’t that taking advantage of someone when they’re down?”

“Her husband almost tore my arm off today, by the way,” Paul said.

“Sorry,” Veblen said. The extraneous status symbol brought to mind a vast trove of writings Veblen had familiarized herself with about the extended self. “I never knew you wanted a boat.”

“I’ve always wanted one,” Paul said. “But I still have to find out about berths and insurance. It might be a little out of reach.”

“A boat. Okay, I didn’t know.”

They said their good-byes, that they’d talk later, the skin on her face stiff with the effort of civility.

The gray highway rolled beneath her. The Salinas Valley was busy with vegetables. She passed vans filled with field workers coming home, shining RVs, dusty trucks. In a short while she turned on the headlights and began to let down her guard.

“Am I genetically doomed?” This thought always bothered her, and it was her stated goal not to be taken advantage of by her genes. “Can you tell?

“When Paul criticizes my mother it feels worse than it should. Because she’s not me, right? But it ruins my wish that I’ve met someone who fully accepts her, and therefore fully accepts me. She’s like a secret third breast! And I’d been hoping for a person who wouldn’t scream and run away when he sees it. Figuratively, of course.” (She and Albertine had once theorized that Hillary Clinton had a third breast, based on a suggestive shadow in a photo.)

“Meanwhile, Paul’s family is really nice, and he acts like they’re his third breast and that I should run away screaming. But I don’t want to run away screaming!”

It seemed the squirrel sensed the gravity of the matter. She began to type Easy Courtship Disrupted by Angst on her steering wheel.

Shortened it to ECDBA. ECDBA. ECDBA…

“Do you criticize your family to everybody you meet? You probably all get along and love each other. I want to belong to a family like that. My next question is: should I look for someone who belongs to that kind of family? My hunch is no, because then it would be like I’m marrying the person’s family, not the man. This is all so exhausting!” With that, a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

As the drive wore on, other thoughts occurred.

WOMBAT COUPLE.

“Do squirrels marry? Doves and wombats do. Though I doubt any species likes to be generalized about, and there are probably plenty of single doves and wombats who are quite happy with their lives. You’re male, aren’t you? I’ve always thought so.”

Rather clinical to try for a glimpse of a penis, but she did, she got just the right angle between his legs.

“Sorry. You know, when I was young, I called you squills.”

The squirrel jumped to the fore at this point, and made a sound not unlike a set of castanets. Its plume of a tail flickered rapidly back and forth. She felt the air displaced on her arm, which reminded her of adventuring in the night. She decided to listen to Ravel’s Bolero, slipping the CD into the portable player plugged into the cigarette lighter. She’d always loved the hypnotic piece, which starts with a lone flute and builds into a raucous throng of instruments.

“Squills, yes,” she said. “My grandmother used a fake British accent when she was out in public and called them squills. My mother hated that.”

All at once it felt wonderful to be out on the road, part of a convoy of trucks. She phoned in sick for work the next day, felt released. She remembered how excited Linus would get on car trips, pointing out the difference between a fuel tanker that was full and one that was empty. The empty ones bounced. There was another kind of truck she’d always liked, with a quilted rear door. Linus said those were refrigerated trucks. Her mother would get worked up about some kind of explosive hubcap on trucks that could blast off and penetrate passing cars, something she’d learned on an exposé on 60 Minutes. She’d always yell at Linus to pass trucks in a hurry. Veblen still passed them quickly, wondering if one of the hubcaps would suddenly rocket into her car. Mostly she remembered a kind of wonderful, drowsy feeling, being little in the backseat, allowed to sleep while they drove through the night. Everyone in the right place, strapped in, looking forward. No one acting out. The passenger years.

At last she came to the old Mission San Miguel, where she had seen many ground squirrels and intended to release this one. But no sooner had she pulled off the highway in the twilight and driven around to the area outside the mission and parked than she felt full of grief and tension. In her headlights she saw the rough, rutted ground where the squirrels burrowed, and realized at once that this squirrel was not a ground squirrel at all, but a tree squirrel, a whole different sort of squirrel entirely. “I can’t let you go here!” She gasped. “I’ve made a mistake. There might be a few tree squirrels around, but what if there aren’t?” Renewed by this logic, she backed up and drove away as quickly as she could.

She remembered her spot in the old crab apple where she retreated to sit and think, lining up her spine along the trunk, eyeing the horizon. She’d let her eyes water so the view was blurry, which gave certain qualities of the world neglected by clear eyesight the chance to come forth, such as the shocking beauty of color, and she remembered this with compassion for that silly young self, which had deserved to have her hand held.

“My mother would get out the binoculars and see me talking and thought it was a sign of childhood schizophrenia, so I had to start positioning myself at a certain angle to have some privacy. Or not move my lips. So I’m a good ventriloquist.”

She laughed, recalling the range of problems her mother thought she might have. “Like trichotillomania!” She wrinkled her nose remembering the trichotillomania period, when her mother watched vigilantly to see if Veblen so much as touched her hair for an instant, ready to pounce and pronounce it a pathological crutch.

“Do you know what that is? It’s some kind of urge to pull out your hair. I never had that urge at all,” she added. “I bet you haven’t either. Your fur is your pride and joy. And it pads you and keeps you warm. So does hair.”

The squirrel shook, and fluffed up.