The Portable Veblen

9 THE STOIC GLACIER METHOD

In 1920, fearing that his ridge cabin up on the Old La Honda Road had been sold through a mishap with the deed, Thorstein Veblen smashed the windows of the cabin with an ax. His second wife, Babe, was dying, and he’d planned to bring her there to mend, and his grief knew no end.

For the rest of the country, recovering from the Great War, it was a year of optimism. Spirits were so high in the financial sectors, anarchists had no choice but to set off bombs on Wall Street. Veblen lived for a while in a boardinghouse in New York with Mr. James Rorty, author of Our Master’s Voice, who regaled him with petrifying stories about the reach of the advertising industry. A massive storm cloud of excess would build during the decade, and Veblen had been fully aware of the collapse that it would bring.

Maybe it was then, Veblen thought now, that he developed his reputation for melancholy, inspiring people to describe him so pathetically, even on highway road signs:

VALDERS MEMORIAL PARK

Hwy. J, Valders, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin

One of Wisconsin’s most controversial figures, Thorstein Bunde Veblen, was born near here July 30, 1857. He was not a popular teacher but attracted dedicated followers. During much of his life, Veblen remained estranged from society. His pale, sick face; beard; loose-fitting clothes; shambling gait; weak voice; and desperate shyness enhanced this estrangement and deepened his loneliness. Yet the society which did not accept Veblen the man did come to value the products of his penetrating mind. His books and articles have been described as perhaps “the most considerable and creative body of social thought that America has produced.”

What nitwit wrote this? Veblen wondered, home alone with her work Sunday morning, Paul having gone out with his family. The indignity, the failure to understand anything about him! The nod to his work, but the most superficial, cowardly appraisal of his person! Sometimes she felt like nobody got it when it came to Veblen. All he wanted was less waste, less junk, less vested interests, less counterfeit life. Was that so hard to understand, people?

• • •

HER SPACIOUS MORNING was interrupted by a call from her mother, who expected a detailed account of the latest developments without delay. There was some sun in front on the walkway, and Veblen went outside to ventilate.

“Well?” said her mother. “Did Paul’s family come?”

“Yes, they did. We went out to dinner last night, and they’re coming over here tonight.”

“So? How was it? Did they reveal anything about themselves this time that put you on guard?”

And though she was still feeling resentful about her mother’s attempt to send her to Norway, Veblen made sure not to say the Vreelands were too great, even hinting at the problems Paul had with Justin, because nothing made Melanie feel better than knowing other people had problems.

“Lots of problems.”

“Be more specific.”

“I guess Justin’s problems kind of eclipsed Paul’s childhood.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Not exactly,” said Veblen, hearing in the rise of her mother’s voice a forming judgment.

“Hmm,” said her mother.

“Last night Paul’s brother almost choked to death in the restaurant,” Veblen threw in, to distract her.

“It’s not uncommon. Many people sit down for a nice meal and keel over dead, with no condition at all.”

“Right. Anyway, I think you’ll like them, within reason. They can’t wait to meet you.”

“Well, good,” said her mother, as if people looked forward to meeting her every day. “They’re not snobby?”

“No! Not snobby at all.”

“They’re not — shallow?”

“No.” Veblen leaned over and pulled up the taproot of a sow thistle.

“I had a very unpleasant dream last night,” her mother said, changing course as a result of hearing too much good news.

“What was it?”

“That you and Paul couldn’t marry. That something went wrong.”

“Is that wishful thinking?”

“No, Veblen. Don’t pursue that. It’s beneath you. Anyway, the dream made me worry.”

“It’s normal for you to worry, so don’t worry.” She found another thistle to pull, allowing the pleasant smell of the ground to waft up with the root.

“How does Paul’s father treat his wife? That’s very telling.”

“He’s very nice to her.”

“How do they treat their disabled son?”

“They’re nice to him too,” Veblen said. “But it’s tricky.”

“Oh?” Her mother’s voice brightened considerably.

“I haven’t figured it out yet. I need to watch them a little more.”

“Well, watch, then. It’s important you know what you’re getting into. Are you having any doubts?”

“No, no doubts.”

“Veblen, that’s not normal.”

“My whole life you’ve told me normal is bad.”

“Veblen, why can’t we just talk like two friends? I’d like to know what you’re feeling!”

“I’m telling you how I feel. I feel happy.”

Her mother let out a dissatisfied sigh. “I sit here waiting for any scrap of news from you. It’s pathetic.”

She definitely would not tell her mother about the squirrel following them to the restaurant and spelling muumuu, then hitching a ride over to the motel. “Mom, did you ever have a wedding ring?”

“Yes, I had a hideous little gewgaw from Rudgear but I got rid of it a long time ago. You know what I did with it? I hurled it out the window while driving down the highway.”

“Good for you, Mom. That’s your style.”

“And, dear, need I ask — are you taking your medications?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I’m really good.”

“No twenty-four-hour crying jags?”

“None.”

“Paul’s parents certainly get to see more of you than I do,” her mother complained.

“I’m planning to make your pork tenders recipe for dinner,” Veblen offered, shaking out her welcome mat.

“You have to use fresh parsley, not dried,” her mother said. “Will you have fresh parsley?”

“Yes.”

“And tenderloin? You can’t use chops.”

“Two tenderloins,” Veblen said.

“In the vacuum-sealed package?”

“Yep.”

“Let me know how it turns out. Will I hear from you tomorrow?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“Wonderful. Live!”

“I’m trying!” she said, kicking a sodden magnolia pod into the street.

• • •

VEBLEN THOUGHT about her mother’s imperative to live! later that day, while cleaning the place and cooking. How, exactly, was that supposed to happen? Was making pork tenderloin her mother’s idea of living? Or simply that Veblen was forming new relationships with new people? She wondered if her mother would ever move beyond her current phase, hiding out in Cobb, venturing out only to go to the Rescue Squad Thrift Store. She’d been to the Rescue Squad with her mother many times, wondering why her mother felt so alive there. The shop was filled with racks of old garments and linens, shelves of broken toys and worn shoes. One whole room held telephones and lamps and outdated appliances. The older women who ran the shop knew her mother by name. “Hello, Melanie!” they’d hail her when she came in to determine the quality of the latest haul. In her bearing at the Rescue Squad was the hint of a scout from Sotheby’s. What happened to her mother, why was that her life?

Veblen had once read an illustration of her mother’s syndrome in the William James essay “The Energies of Men.” It described the “habit of inferiority to our full self…. The human individual… possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use.”

Come to think of it, she could surely be accused of the same.

• • •

THAT AFTERNOON a sudden wind shook the trees and swept off paths and walkways, only to litter them again with debris from the trees. A bird’s nest came down on the sidewalk, luckily without eggs in it. A heavy branch broke on a magnolia tree down the street, and remained attached by a thick band of bark, folded beside the old trunk like a broken wing. The power went out for a while. Veblen didn’t mind; she had her good old typewriter.

Young Veblen would hide in the attic to read old newsprint. A thrifty family does not make single use of anything, and papers went upstairs maybe for reading or maybe for insulation or maybe for both. The language in the newspapers was elegant, and he compared all the words he knew in his mother tongue to the words he read in the new. Many came from Old Norse, such as anger and awkward, and geyser and gosling, and husband and hell, and outlaw and ransack, and thrift and want and wrong.

In the newspapers he came upon countless advertisements for all sorts of strange, newfangled things:

*Steel Collars Enameled White! Having the appearance and comfort of linen, readily cleaned with a sponge!

*Non-Explosive Lamps, from the Non-Explosive Lamp Company! Satisfy yourself on the truth of this assertion!

*Electric Belts by the Pulvermacher Galvanic Co! Bands and appliances for the cure of Nervous, Chronic, Special Diseases! Avoid vendors of Bogus Belts and Appliances, especially the tricky concerns who pretend to send belts on trial!

He believed less in god than the struggle of a thinker in his nightshirt.

He cried at the death of a caterpillar.

He took apart a dead squirrel bone by bone.

He kept acorns in a can until they popped forth with maggots.

He ran zigzag from the system and saw wages as hour counting.

You see, the work of maintaining your life with your own skills was never counted in hours. The days were long and arduous, but there was no wishing them to go by.

The very word “weekend” was a monstrous little propaganda of modernity. Of gladness that time had passed, your very life!

From the attic he laid his plans:

To infuriate corporate schemers!

To annoy government wasters!

To drive developers completely insane.

To teach gluttonous consumers lessons they wouldn’t soon forget!

To create havoc for the rude and the nasty, to waylay specious marriages, partnerships, and other misconceived unions!

To madden captains of industry!

To screw academic toadies!

To make “pest” his middle name!

• • •

PAUL ARRIVED with his family at dusk. They had spent the afternoon cruising open houses. They called out, “Invasion of the Vreelands!” as they came in with damp bags jiggling with wine and beer bottles and Hansen’s pomegranate sodas, a bouquet of yellow jonquil, and a loaf of Francese bread sprinkling flour in a white paper sleeve.

He kissed her in the kitchen. “Dad and I had a talk this afternoon,” he muttered. “It’s the first time he’s ever said he might be part of the problem. Ever!”

Veblen, who believed in slow, incremental changes, glowed with satisfaction. “See? You’re using the stoic glacier method.”

“Remind me, what is the stoic glacier method?”

“It’s the slow process of shaping someone’s behavior by force of one’s own personal stoicism.” (“If you wish to be loved, love,” said Seneca, a Stoic of note.)

“Wow. Maybe so.”

To have family and friends to make dinner for! (Though she wondered what Paul would find fault with after they left.) Cocktails (vodka and lemonade), little appetizers (mushroom turnovers), the voices, the combustion. Justin was going around examining everything in her house, even in her bedroom.

“Justy, come on, give Veblen her privacy,” Bill called.

She glanced in and saw Justin leaning over and touching her pillow. Some drool spilled from his lips.

“Open houses sure have changed,” remarked Marion. “They stage the place with all that furniture and fake artwork. It used to be you just went inside and saw how somebody lived, and you bought a house.”

“They put in a lot of fancy bells and whistles and jack the price through the roof,” Bill proclaimed. “You know what they wanted for the last one? Two point three! For fifteen hundred square feet! That’s bullcrap!”

“Dad, admit it, living in Garberville you’re not in the mainstream.”

“It’s not his values,” said Marion.

“A beautiful, clean house with all the things you need aren’t your values, Dad?”

“All bells and whistles.”

“Your father made you a very fine life,” Marion ventured. “Someday I believe you’ll see that.”

“It could’ve been better,” said Bill. “I’m not saying it was the best.”

“Dad, it was okay. But things are expensive here.”

In her small kitchen, with its old green tiles and Wedgewood stove, Veblen made a special drink for Justin, with fresh lemons, sugar, mint, and ice. Then she blended the rest with vodka and poured it into her best glasses.

Paul checked the squirrel trap in the attic, still empty. He’d replaced the sauerkraut and mace with a slice of cheese a while back, and now Veblen heard him gasp.

“Very funny,” he said, bringing down the plate. “Fess up.”

Veblen said, “It’s a Rorschach of your projections, Paul. An id intrusion. Your repressed desire to believe!” And she took a picture of the mysterious cheese before Paul heaved it into the trash.

THE CHEESE.

“Hmmm,” Paul said, eyeing her.

“Mr. Science Man can’t explain everything,” Bill said.

“Dad, we had squirrels in the house, remember? How did you deal with them?”

“We lived peaceably with the wildlife.”

“No, Dad, you got rid of them. We had a blackout once. We had solar anyway, but they chewed the wires.”

“They dislodged the wires.”

“Did you use steel wool?”

“I plugged a few holes. They went away.”

Justin asked her, “Do you love Paul?”

“I do,” she said, still thinking about the cheese.

“I do too.”

Paul smirked over the edge of his cocktail. “I’m so lovable.”

“Do you love me?” asked Justin.

“Of course,” said Veblen, giving him a hug, wondering if he really hated Paul and wanted to ruin the wedding. He moved his body as if to press himself against her breasts. She gently backed away.

With some urgency, Justin ran to the bathroom.

“If I were you, I’d stay here,” Bill said. “This is a sweet place.”

“Thank you,” Veblen said, grateful that Bill saw the charm in her simple cottage, with its limited market orientation and many outdated fixtures. But then it seemed something was wrong, Paul was pacing by the bathroom door, Marion was murmuring to him. Paul was angry. Marion was angry at Paul for being angry. Veblen retreated to the kitchen.

She heard Marion at the bathroom door, knocking gently. “Justy? Come on now.”

“Don’t just stand there, do something!” Paul yelled.

Veblen chewed fiercely on her inner cheeks, wishing she were outside with a cool breeze on her skin. What kind of crisis was it, that Justin was in the bathroom? Couldn’t Paul surmount his regressive tendencies? Through the window of the place next door she saw her neighbor Donald Chester remove a flat of macaroni and cheese from his microwave, with no one to eat or regress with at all.

She sliced lemons and chopped parsley, heard the unfastening of the lock.

Then Paul’s voice: “You little shit.”

And Justin calling out: “Don’t bother me, Paul!”

Veblen came out and saw Paul clamp his arms around Justin’s neck, bringing his own head down where he could lean over Justin’s and put his face close. “I’ll bother you, you fucking asshole!”

Bill was there, pulling on Paul. Paul wedged a leg around Justin’s legs. Justin butted Paul with his head and Paul screamed and Bill yelled, “Let go,” and pulled Paul’s legs out from under him. The cottage shook like it had been hit by a falling tree. Acid burned in Veblen’s throat.

Marion took Justin to the couch. “You didn’t understand,” she was whispering. “You didn’t, did you?” Her cheeks were reddened by a pattern of broken vessels Veblen had never noticed. “You’re a good boy. A very, very, very good boy.”

Bill said, “I’m sorry, Veblen. Everything is fine and now we’ll move on and forget about this.”

She doubted everything was fine with Paul.

“What just happened?” she whispered to him, in the kitchen.

“Later,” he said apologetically, and shortly, as with plucky volunteers at a hospital, it became the job of the Vreeland family to levitate the mood above the threshold of the damned. When Veblen served dinner, Paul and Marion were overly impressed with the pork tenders, and Justin shoveled them in, and Bill made no cutting remarks about pharmaceutical companies. All joviality; no brutality. A conspiracy of sorts.

After dinner, as Paul, Bill, and Justin caught the last quarter of a college basketball game on Veblen’s little TV, Marion settled on the couch and opened up a box she’d brought full of Paul’s baby pictures. “Here he is at about six months,” she said, offering Veblen a snapshot of a doughy slab on a blanket. “And this is his first birthday.”

“Come on, man, play ball!” yelled Bill. He stomped his feet. The cottage rattled.

Veblen, to her dismay, was laboring to perceive the baby form of Paul as cute. She found him blockish and sour in appearance, and a jolt of alarm coursed through her while she went through the photos with Marion. Things improved when Paul reached twelve — now she could see the man in him, the shoulders filled out, the glint of humor in his eyes. But then — what was this? This Paul-boy had a pot belly and wore bizarre striped velvet pants—

“He went through a phase,” remarked Marion. “We used to call him Mr. Fancy Pants.”

Wasn’t it vital to think your betrothed had been an adorable child? What if they had a baby like him, sour and grim? When she couldn’t stand one more image of the little blob, she jumped up and offered to make tea, then grabbed the barely full garbage bag and went out with it, what Linus always did when he needed a break.

In the cool air of evening by the bins, she drew some deep breaths and watched a lappet moth bat against the window, and saw Marion, Bill, Justin, and Paul congregating in her small house. Through the glass she saw gestures of familiarity as they huddled over the pictures. Marion placed a hand on Paul’s shoulder. Justin leaned on Bill. Bill talked to his boys, and for that moment, listening to their father, they sat as brothers absorbed in the family lore. What did she know about families, and how they ran? About siblings, and how they pounded each other, but loved? The normal give-and-take of family life hadn’t been hers to witness. Next to the organ pipe cactus near the window, she could faintly hear the sound of the beetle burrowing into the cactus flesh, while a shower of dried needles and leaves came down from the rain gutter. Over her head stood the outlandishly upright squirrel, three young ones abreast. Their heads seemed to glow in the darkness.

“Oh my gosh,” she whispered. “Are those your children?”

The squirrel quipped and chattered, and if you didn’t know better you might think you were in range of a Perfect Squirrel Call, registered trademark no. 348205, a black tubular device of about four inches in length, which Veblen had been sent as a girl by her pilot grandfather, Woodrow, nothing to do with hunting, but for the magic of summoning squirrels. (Of course, she’d wondered why it was called “perfect” and what it was actually saying in the language of squirrels, and looked up the patent once to find out who thought they knew all this.) But she’d cherished it along with a few other odd gadgets he’d handed down to her, such as his old pilot’s plotter and his flight calculator. “That’s been high-grade, classic humor, bothering Paul the way you have,” she said to the squirrel. “Chaplinesque. But really, enough is enough.”

The sky was deeply black that night, scratched with silver. An attack of happiness came over her, that she’d assembled this crew, however imperfect, in her domain. Ragged scraps had always proved under her auspices to sprout new things fresh and worthy. She saw Paul look expectantly at the screen door, depending on her return.

“This is your last chance. Stop making so much noise if you want Paul to stay.”

She returned inside, heart bucking. She was superstitious about making ultimatums. If he made noise again, she’d have to take it as a sign.

She served the Vreelands strawberry shortcake, with tender buttery biscuits, tart berries, and hand-whipped cream. Plates were scraped and licked. And then good-byes and good-nights were set in motion, with every permutation of hug and talk of plans bandied about before the car rolled away and vanished from sight.

Paul turned and kissed her. “I owe you,” he muttered. “My neck is so tight I think I’m going to puke.”

“I don’t understand, what happened?”

Paul swallowed. “Don’t you know?”

“What?”

He groaned softly. “I thought you knew.”

She shook her head.

She followed him back to her bedroom, a paper bag in the corner, with a pink pair of panties wadded up inside.

“That’s my underwear.”

Paul looked sick. “I know it! This is what he does. At people’s houses. Didn’t you understand?”

“Oh!” she said, suddenly seeing.

“Sorry!” Paul was anguished.

Veblen started to groan.

“It’s incredibly humiliating.”

“Ew.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know. But I’m bringing it into your life.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, starting to laugh helplessly.

“Stop laughing,” he said, shaking his head. “Now do you get it? Do you understand why I get so uptight?”

“A guy has needs.” To weigh the sincerity of her reassurances, she reflected on a future with a brother-in-law who stole off with women’s underwear and masturbated in back rooms. It felt — not the greatest, but not a deal killer. It could be viewed as utterly human, privacy turned inside out, a common urge, no shame attached.

“It’s a complete lack of impulse control, a common feature of his condition.”

“Hmm. Has this happened before?”

“Fuck yes. Imagine this. At my piano teacher’s house during a recital.”

Veblen squeezed his arm. “Sorry.”

“It’s the distorted sibling rivalry he feels with me. It’s more than his condition.”

“Maybe you remind him — of what he’s missing?”

“No, it’s an unconscious desire to kill me,” Paul said. “And I have to go along with it or else I’m a jerk!” He was shaking.

“No, you’re not.”

“You know what I think, Veb? We should move to another continent.”

“I could get into that.”

“Forget having the wedding at Cloris’s house. Not with him around.”

“Mmmm,” she said, not wanting to sound too happy about it.

“I’ll drug him the day of the wedding,” Paul said.

She thought of telling Paul the squirrel had a family, but didn’t want to trigger any further controversies for the night.

He took her hands.

“Are you going to throw me away?”

“No!” she said.

He waltzed her through the room until they collided with a bookcase, which released, like a fortune-telling booth at an arcade, a single volume onto the floor. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.

“Help!” Paul said.

Veblen laughed and shoved it back onto the shelf.

Then they cleaned up the remains of the dinner, the ravaged lemon wedges, the strawberry calyxes strewn on the tiles, the parsley stalks wilted by the sink, a dry mushroom cap upended on the floor. Hard grains of rice had spilled and Veblen swept them, absorbed with thoughts of deep, lasting relationships to come. She wouldn’t run from Paul and his brother’s kinks. She would have squirrel friends on the side! She would become like Bill and Marion’s daughter, and she would take care of them until the day they died.

(But why was she thinking about taking care of them until the day they died? Would that keep her out of thrift stores and mental institutions? Why wasn’t she thinking about all the fun things she’d do with Paul? Was she merely attracted to burdens?)