The Portable Veblen

27 SEE FOR YOURSELF

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way.” So said Søren Kierkegaard, that rumpled, bewildered Dane.

Up the old La Honda Road, near the crest of the coastal ranges, the squirrel warmed in the sun while some of his offspring chattered nearby in the trees. As in a dream, he saw a plastic bag blowing up the ridge through the green and golden meadow, full of lupine and dandelion and filaree. It bounded over old stumps and bulging roots and rocks and stones and depressions, racing and halting, flattening and rising on a draft.

He blinked drowsily in the light. The bag blew into his tree, inflating and rising, spinning and twirling, then filled out with the certainty of flesh.

— Ah! Son!

— Dad, are you okay?

— I need spectacles! I thought you were a plastic bag.

The boy had grown a goatee and joined the Nutkinistas. The squirrel didn’t like it, but a young man had to find his way. “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people” was what the boy had tagged on the bridge across the creek — just at the spot where the couple had agreed to this union.

That was in the chill of winter. Now it was a brighter day, the sun bounding toward the solstice. Not a gust or a cloud nor even a massive horde of his kind to stop them. The kits were living and loving. Jays and warblers spoke over one another, but not loud enough. Wasps built on the lengthening days, too busy to sting. Even the wildflowers were whispering. Or was that just the sound of his life-fuse burning down?

His old dad used to say: No matter how well wound, the workings of the clock wind down.

— So, meet for an early dinner, Dad?

— Since when do I take an early dinner?

It seemed a considerable number of folks had found their way to this spot, not to witness a disaster, but to cheer this couple on. They parked in a line along the narrow road, and marched upward, the men in pressed Hawaiian shirts with gray hair gathered in ponytails, the women in ethnic prints and ceramic jewelry.

The parents of the man wound ribbons around the branches and trunks of the trees, and placed flowerpots all around. The woman’s stepfather helped set up the chairs and tables on the ridge, and a few musicians arrived with their resonant wooden hulls to tune them. The woman’s friend brought up large artichoke soufflés in big rectangular pans, baked hams stuck with cloves, yeasty rolls. She had made a cream cheese — frosted carrot cake, three tiers tall.

Miss Veblen Amundsen-Hovda stood at the bottom of the clearing, wearing her simple dress. She held a bouquet of small white rosebuds, and had lily of the valley in her hair.

The man took his place at the heart of the grove, still on crutches. Next to him was another man holding the simple silver ring that had been found in the gully. The musicians produced a pleasing tune, and the young woman turned and whispered to her mother at her side that she loved her.

The mother whispered back: “What am I going to do without you?”

“You still have me,” the woman said.

“It’ll never be the same,” said her mother.

“It’ll be okay, you’ll see,” she said, squeezing her mother’s hand. Then she let go, and advanced to the spot between the stumps.

• • •

THE SQUIRREL had made his rounds the night before, stopping at the Wagon Wheel Motel on El Camino, in time to hear the mother say: “Maybe Paul is better than we think.”

“Maybe so,” said her man, who kissed her shoulder.

“Linus. What’s got into you?”

“I guess it’s the motel room, it brings back memories.”

She laughed. “We’ve had some fun, haven’t we?”

“I believe so.”

“She and Paul must have a terrific sex life, or none of this would be happening.”

“Could be,” said Linus, snapping out of his reverie.

“Rudge looks awful,” Melanie said.

“Did he ever look good?”

“He used to be a very attractive person. It’s shocking. It’s the medications that hollow you out like that. He shook your hand?”

“He did,” said the man. “A fairly firm handshake.”

“Veblen doesn’t look anything like him, does she? She looks much more like me.”

“Very much so. She has your smile, your eyes.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t have much of a wedding,” said the mother, reaching for her husband of many years. “I wasn’t sure it was going to last, remember how provisional I thought it all was?”

The man nodded. “And have you gotten used to me yet?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Have I turned out how you hoped?”

The mother’s throat lumped up. She might well wonder if she’d truly reciprocated all the kindness and love he’d shown her, and if she could ever catch up.

“You didn’t even want to marry me. You thought I was a dud,” the man chided.

“No!”

“You thought I was a square, not your type. You liked the early Jack Nicholson type. The dangerous guys.”

“Sometimes you don’t know what’s your type until it finds you.”

That was enough. The squirrel moved to the room in which the man’s elders were staying. There, before him, stood the groom in tears, embracing his mother and his father in a confessional and cathartic moment at its peak. The older brother was joining them; the groom was letting him in.

Well. He took a deep breath and moved on.

In the course of observing the goings-on at the Wagon Wheel that night, in between several mealy oak nuts, he also witnessed the man known as Rudgear trying to run away twice, requiring the groom’s elders to guard his door. And later, he saw the older brother struggling with the elders, and he had to be tied to the bed and injected with alprazolam. It had not been an easy night for anyone.

The officiant began to speak. Everyone settled. The woman turned to the man between the sacred stumps, on a bed of redwood sorrel, with a long view of the cobalt sea.

He remembered an afternoon in her youth when the weather was warm and the sun fell for hours on her shoulders after she’d packed herself a lunch to spend the day in the century-old crab apple by the ravine. There was a comfortable crotch about ten feet up that held her like a travois, and sometimes she fell asleep in it. He’d watch her to make sure she didn’t fall. There came a time when the sun came straight down on the part in her hair, and she’d felt her scalp burn. Later, small beetles came out along the shady sides of the limbs, colliding senselessly like tiny bumper cars. She noticed a wound on the tree where a branch had split, full of earwigs that she dug out with a twig, scattering them from their hermits’ home. Then she regretted it, and wondered how hard it would be for the earwigs to start over.

Was it worse for earwigs to lose their home in a tree, or for a tree to be riddled away by earwigs? she had asked out loud, knowing full well there was no answer to it.

“And into this estate these two persons present now come to be joined. If any person can show just cause why they may not be joined together, let them speak now or forever hold their peace,” spoke the officiant.

Justin chose the moment. His chair squeaked loudly as he flung out his arms and said, “I was strangled. When I was a baby! And Paul understands me now.”

The guests all turned to behold him, strangled as a baby.

“Quiet down, Justin,” said Bill.

“Paul understands me! Because I was strangled when I was a baby!” Justin yelled again, starting to cough.

Bill stood and pressed Justin back into his seat. “Quiet, boy. I mean it.”

“Paul, do you understand me now?” Justin called out.

Veblen looked to Paul, who said, “Dad, it’s okay. I do, Justin. I understand you now.”

Bill hesitated, then sat again. Justin kicked his legs.

The squirrel scuttled down the redwood, and dashed around them in that zigzag pattern that made squirrels look totally insane.

Perhaps he was.

“Oh, he’s lovely!” someone said, pleasing Veblen very much.

“Yes, look at it.”

The squirrel was having fun, putting on a show.

“When a wild animal comes near people, it means it’s sick or rabid,” Melanie declared, and for the squirrel, that was the last straw.

“I was strangled, but now I’m okay!” bellowed Justin, beating his chest.

“Shhhhhh!” hissed Bill.

“Holy god, it bit me!” screamed Melanie, for it seemed the squirrel had stopped under her chair and given her calf a strategic pinch.

Linus kneeled in the duff to examine the wound.

“I’ll have to be treated for rabies! God almighty, I’ll have to go under those needles! Get me some ice!” sobbed Melanie, and even her former husband, Rudgear, jumped up to be of help.

There came a scratching sound and some fiber showered down from the redwood, and then came a chittering in the tree.

Seeforyourselfforyourselfforyourself.

So there was a pause in the proceedings, as the wedding party splintered to help Melanie with her new sore.

The couple held back, to help by not helping.

And from a branch in the tall tree, a small gray squirrel released a mighty roar.