A Paradise for Fools Read online

  “A plain man carries a simple chip,” would be Fred’s motto. He found a bag of Cape Cod chips and caused the deli counter to slap together a turkey sandwich that was less healthily pretentious than what the sandwichista had in mind.

  Next question: wine?

  “You’re kidding, right? She’s going back to work, she’s got at most forty-five minutes, I might as well turn up in a stretch limo while I’m at it, carrying a hundred long-stemmed roses.”

  Fred stepped into the Starbucks next door and purchased two black coffees and a handful of fixings.

  ***

  “Three blocks, there’s grass,” Molly said, meeting him five minutes late.

  “We’ll sit on your paper in case it’s…well, more like five. Maybe six blocks. I’ll grab coffee on the way.”

  Fred held up his paper Starbuck’s bag.

  Molly said, “As long as it’s not iced.” Fred shook his head. He hadn’t thought of ice on this hot day. Well, good. That was a piece of luck.

  Molly started walking, fast, in the direction of the river. The capacious black bag she carried over her shoulder did not even try to be leather. It was hard cloth, waterproof, and closed with a fat zip and a clasp that did not pretend to be a brand name logo. “Most of the time it’s dull enough,” Molly said.

  “Weather so nice, you expect more people on the street,” Fred said.

  “This part of town, they’ve gone home to Omaha,” Molly said, “If it’s students, which is most of who lives nearby. Or if they’re local, families, getting older now, they’re already in Nantucket.”

  “What’s dull?”

  Molly dodged in front of a bus it might have been more prudent to dodge behind, and Fred stuck with her.

  “What people want,” Molly said. “In general. More of the obvious.”

  “At the reference desk,” Fred guessed. “In the big world, what people want could be your money or your life.”

  “Which can also be dull,” Molly said. “If it gets repetitive.”

  In five minutes they reached the grassy margin between the river and the big roadway that had been named Memorial Drive in honor of someone whose identity was concealed by this one-size-fits-all monument with cars on it. Molly took Fred’s paper from under his arm, opened and dismantled it and spread doubled pages out across a shady patch of grass under what might prove to be a cherry tree.

  “Unless you’d rather a bench,” she said. “But lined up side by side like that, with the traffic behind you, you can’t spread out and besides, it feels like church, and you’re in the sun. The sun isn’t my friend. You mind?”

  Molly had made an island five feet square. Fred slipped off his loafers and sat on a corner of it, choosing a half-page ad for Smylie’s Used Trucks and Equipment. Cheap and Dependable. Folks keep coming back. Try us, even if you didn’t think you want a truck. Fred said, “It’s perfect, as long as I don’t get mayo on an article I want to read.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Molly knelt and lowered herself with graceful frankness to the sitting position forced on women by their skirts. “Coffee,” she demanded. “The river runs right to left,” she observed, as Fred laid out the contents of the Starbucks bag.

  “Or, you could say, downhill,” Fred said.

  “What I was going to remark,” Molly said, “this prejudice I have, caused by the amount of reading I do, or have to do, or would do anyway—I see anything moving in a line, maybe it’s traffic, or the river, my intuition is to expect it to go left to right, like the words on the page.”

  “Except the words don’t move,” Fred said. “You do. Your eyes do. Left to right. If you’re from the West.” Molly opened two packets and poured sugar into her coffee, disregarding the pink envelopes of the substitute brand Starbucks had a deal with. She paid no attention to the containers of cream. She stirred. “And stirring’s clockwise. At least in the northern hemisphere.”

  “If you’re right-handed,” Fred pointed out. He hauled out his sandwich and the chips, tore the bag open and spread its mouth invitingly toward his companion.

  Molly unzipped her bag and rooted in it, pulling out a waxed sandwich bag that held a half sandwich on dark bread, and another bag in which were carrot and celery sticks, along with half moons of red and green pepper. “Tuna,” Molly said. She reached for a chip and ate it, musing, “I noticed today, I was preoccupied, the way we train our children, so much time in school, eyes on the page, left-right, top to bottom, at least for me, I think I got an instinct trained into me that substitutes such a learned behavior, the pattern that we get from reading, for real observation of natural law.” She ate another chip.

  Zagoriski’s body was cooling on a slab in Nashua, New Hampshire.

  The river was active with small boats, shells, and canoes. This bank was filled with people picnicking, reading, sunning. Though there were a few couples, most were solitary. A young woman careened past them on a bicycle, narrowly missing Molly’s edge of the newspaper island. She chose a spot in the sun glare, laid the bike on its side, pulled a yellow towel out of a knapsack that she shrugged off in almost the same motion that relieved her of the short orange dress, leaving her in a green bikini bottom. She lay on her front to bake.

  “Thus we refute Afghanistan,” Molly said. “She’s probably got half an hour, like me. Doesn’t want to waste any of it. Speaking of natural law, and law, and the question whether law and nature ever belong in the same sentence. Well, my question anyway.”

  Fred said, “Stepping off the sidewalk in London, you’re much worse off.”

  Molly paused a moment before shaking her head. “I’ve fallen off somehow,” she said.

  “If your instinct is to expect traffic from the left,” Fred said. “Like words on the page. London traffic is ready to do you in. Also Ireland, Japan. You’re in trouble.”

  Molly pulled the half sandwich from its wrapper, pried it open and inserted five chips, closed it, said, “Feel free,” slipping the bag of cut vegetables in his direction. “How was Nashua?”

  “In real estate terms,” Fred said, unwrapping his sandwich, “I would describe it as in process. Kind of a wasteland. I kept thinking of an old friend of mine. Much older man. Dead long since. Professor of classics finally, though he’d done other things. He’d been in what he called ‘The War.’ January ’44, with the 143rd Regiment of the II corps, 36th Division, crossing the Rapido south of Monte Casino, and so on, in that assault. You’re sure?” Molly’s nod gave him additional permission to raid her vegetables. “The whole area was already blasted apart by the Germans, then blasted again by Allied bombs, then blasted by both sides during the assault. He told me, all he could think, for days, looking out across this wreck of phenomenal landscape—he couldn’t get out of his head the music, Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze. Hell, there probably were sheep there—I never asked him—nonbelligerent sheep, poking around in what was left, trying to pick up a meal.”

  “Not much in the way of fences to prevent them,” Molly said. “Not after all that. Paradise in a way. Until they stepped wrong and blew up. Your business went OK, then. In Nashua. Or, since you’re talking about all this wreckage, maybe not so much?”

  Fred said, “I’m about where I started, I guess. Maybe a step or two back. I don’t think I’m making progress.”

  Molly said, “My job, do you know how we measure progress?”

  Two boys with a Frisbee started working through the crowd, using the sedentary people on the bank as interesting obstacles, shouting and laughing.

  Fred said, “Aside from the paycheck, whatever you have that sounds like tenure, the retirement points, all that?”

  “All that aside,” Molly said, shaking her head. She turned the mouth of the bag of chips toward Fred and shoved it gently toward him.

  Fred said, “Aside from finding what you’re looking
for? I guess I don’t. How do you measure progress?”

  “I’m supposed to recommend something,” Molly said. “For the efficiency people. It sure beats me. What I think. Or what I wonder. Does certain music wear a channel in your brain, which your thoughts and observations are happy to fall into as they come, like reading left to right and top to bottom?”

  Fred said, “Now maybe I’ve fallen off.”

  “Your friend. Standing in all that dangerous ruin, and haunted by the Bach music that is almost a guarantee of eternal peace.”

  “Peace with menaces,” Fred said.

  They went without speaking for a short while. Fred worked at his sandwich. Molly had made short work of hers and now dawdled over the chips and vegetables.

  “Sometimes,” Molly said, “I amuse myself by trying to figure out the trajectory from A to B.”

  “Can a straight line be a trajectory?”

  “It’s seldom a straight line. If, let’s say, I were plotting out a work of fiction, and Point A was the question ‘How much was the Mona Lisa worth in today’s money, back in fifteen whatever,’ and point B was a handful of yearbooks from Nashua, New Hampshire’s, Central High School, and I had to make a coherent route between them…”

  “Or figure out point C,” Fred said. “Because if there’s a credible direction, it has to carry past point B, doesn’t it? Most of us, even when we die, we at least thought we were on our way to somewhere else. Something else. And when you add to that the problem you raise, of measuring progress…”

  Molly said, “Meaning that anything eternal is menacing?”

  Fred started, “I’m not…”

  “Your phrase, peace with menaces. It’s a good phrase, I guess. But I don’t like it. It’s cynical. It’s…bitter.”

  It had been Molly, though, who brought up the image of sheep browsing the blasted pastures below the ruins of the monastery, and blowing up. But her vision was direct and natural. It was tragic. What Fred had said was arch, facile, and cute in an ugly way, where cuteness was not called for.

  Fred said, “It’s true. I’m sorry, on this pretty day.” He took a chip.

  Molly said, “I think I ate them all.”

  “Not until you get to the crumbs and salt inside the greasy envelope,” Fred said. “Please do the honors. I had what I wanted. I ate most of your vegetables. I forget about…Have you eaten enough to stay alive till supper?”

  “Most of us sheep are only doing what we can,” Molly said. “The best we can.” She was still angry. “Sheep have to eat. And there would have been lambs. At least, before…”

  She picked up the empty package and fished inside it with a licked finger. Fished again, enjoying. Her eyes flashed.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “My friend never got over it,” Fred said.

  Molly licked a last crumb from an index finger. “I shouldn’t have said bitter, maybe unhappy,” she said. “Gilly’s out. I have to get back.” When she stood her shoulder bag tipped and knocked against Fred’s cup, spilling coffee across the paper. Fred, rising to keep her company, stooped to attend to the puddle. He’d need the paper.

  He snatched paper napkins out of the Starbucks bag and began mopping.

  “That won’t do it,” Molly said. She reached into her shoulder bag and handed Fred a little T-shirt—red. A Red Sox shirt, very small. “Go ahead,” Molly said. “It’ll wash out. Then spread the paper in the sun. This heat, it’ll dry in five minutes.” Impatient, she took the little shirt out of Fred’s hand and blotted at the paper. “There.”

  “There’s a lamb,” Fred said. “I’m slow and stupid, Molly. Not wanting to be rude, I didn’t ask.”

  “Not lamb. Not a lamb, singular. The shirt is Terry’s. She’ll be seven in the fall. Sam’s ten.” Molly wrung out the shirt and draped it across her shoulder bag. “Your papers will blow away if you don’t watch them. I’ll get back to work on my own.”

  “The sun will follow us,” Fred said, starting to gather the wet newspaper’s leaves together. “I wouldn’t care except—page one took me by surprise. This is point C.” He held out the photo of Mr. Z. “A guy I talked with yesterday.”

  “Killed,” Molly said.

  “One of the sheep,” Fred said. “Or maybe. I don’t know. Maybe in sheep’s clothing. I have to look into it. If only as an interested citizen. Tell me about your children. We have six blocks.”

  Molly had already started walking as if assuming solitude. “You’re married?”

  “Never. No wife. No children, to my regret.”

  “Take a block, give me the story of your life,” Molly said.

  “Born in the Midwest in a state that starts with I. For some people that leaves out Ohio. Attended Harvard for six weeks. That makes me an alumnus when they can find me. Did things for our government here and there in the world that would get me jailed if I disclose, and I grant you, some of the things I did, or saw, or failed to do, left a bitter taste. You kindly allowed the word ‘unhappy’ as a dodge though a man doesn’t like to be called unhappy since it sounds weak. I have a house in Charlestown that I share with other people, men, mostly in transit, some not easy company. Got blown away by art when I was a student, and my present occupation is working for and with a collector in Boston. I have what passes for a car. What I don’t have, and it’s a failing in this culture, is the profit instinct.”

  He hadn’t managed to exhaust a block, but there was no more to say. Molly walked on in silence. As they crossed a street she observed, “You’re a curator or art researcher, then. Sort of in wolf’s clothing, if I may make a personal comment. As an alumnus of Harvard, you are permitted to use their libraries for a laughably small fee. Harvard’s Widener, or the Fine Art Library…”

  “I have my card,” Fred said.

  “Harvard’s got much, much more in every way than anything we have at Cambridge Public.” She looked sideways at him. Fred refused the bait, leaving the ball in Molly’s court.

  “My block,” Molly said. “Terry finished first grade. As far as she’s concerned, she’s literate. She’s tough and gregarious. I sent the two of them to a summer camp in Cleveland. My sister’s out there. She’s a ditz with a good heart, but enough on the ball to visit them weekends or save them if they need saving. Sam’s more likely to need saving than Terry is.”

  “Their dad?” Fred prompted.

  “Decamped. We grew up in Cambridge, Ophelia and I. My mom still has her house here, the other side of Harvard Square, which I use as my official home address given the present requirements of the Cambridge City Council. It’ll blow over but for the moment it is prudent for people hired by the city to show home addresses here. I have a house with a little garden and a big mortgage in Arlington. The package fell to me in the divorce settlement.”

  “That’s a lot to walk away from,” Fred said. “Not meaning you. I’m clumsy, don’t want to trip over suggestive compliments. I mean, the children. Every morning I’d feel, if I did that, as if I was walking away from them again. No judgment, I don’t know the guy, and if he was yours…he had to be…has to be…A grown woman—people go their own ways. I know that. If it were me, though. The children? It would make a hole in my heart. I’ve done some hard things, but I don’t know if I could do that.”

  They were walking briskly enough that no pedestrians were liable either to pass them or to keep up. But fragments of their conversation must intrude on pedestrians coming in the opposite direction.

  Molly said, “Men I bump into, or that my friends introduce me to, who aren’t married, and or who don’t have children, we get down the road a certain distance—candles, wine, an entrée I could have made for a third as much, and besides I’m paying the sitter—it never fails, they reach across the table to hold my hands in the crumbs, look into my eyes, their eyes liquefy, and they say, manly as pie, ‘I could never ta
ke responsibility for bringing a child into a world like this.’”

  Fred held his peace.

  Molly said, “Men have been using that line against women since the Cro-Magnons.”

  “What’s ‘Terry’ short for, Teresa?” Fred asked. “Sorry, I got distracted.”

  “Terry’s the long and the short for Terry,” Molly said. “Believe me, it’s all she needs.” They’d come to the big crossing of Massachusetts Avenue at the Trowbridge traffic circle, where vehicles were inclined to show considerable and chaotic determination. “I didn’t see the man’s name exactly. Zagriski? The man in the paper. He’s connected to the Mona Lisa question?”

  Fred said, “That question was left over from an earlier project. Never anything I had to know, I’m—not only curious. I’m in fact genuinely pissed off when some historian or art historian announces, ‘This house or horse or barrel of lard in 1487 was sold for a mere forty pilasters.” He doesn’t know and you can’t judge what else you might have been able to buy for the same money, so he hasn’t told you a thing beyond he happened to see a reference that, when he cites it, makes him look, because he has a number, as if he knows something you don’t. It’s not research. It’s one-upmanship. It’s prancing and preening. It’s…”

  “Did you try Braudel?” Molly asked.

  Fred stopped short. “Who?”

  “I’ve gotta get back to my desk. Fernand Braudel. Three volumes. Civilization and Capitalism, 15th – 18th Century. You can get into Widener? That’s where I was going to look, but I haven’t had time to get over there.”

  Fred said, “That’s nice of you. Above and beyond. I’m not even a resident of Cambridge.”

  “I get interested too,” Molly said. “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “My friend? Oh, Zagoriski. I never met him before yesterday and I can’t say I liked him. Don’t mean to be callous. On the other hand, I can’t claim any loss.”