can never see himself in mirrors? Well, that’s you, son—that’s all of us. We trip across this earth, work and love and raise families and fight for what we think’s right, and the whole time we’re absolutely invisible. When we’re gone, there’s no record we were ever even here.”
For years I thought of that as the day my father began shrinking.
Now, years later, I remember it as one time among many that he was able momentarily to rise out of the drudge of his own life and offer an example—to give me sanction, as it were—that in my own something more might be possible.
It’s a terrible thing, that I could ever have forgotten these moments, or failed to understand them.
Oddly connected in my thoughts with all this as I Mazdaed into pure Faulknerland, Oxford, Tupelo, was a night Clare and I met, early on in our friendship, at a Maple Street pizzeria and went on to the Maple Leaf for klezmer music, impossibly joyful in its minor keys, clarinet beseeching and shrieking, stolid bass and accordion plodding on, half East Europe’s jews dying in its choruses.
Here’s what I think in higher flights of fancy. Once there existed beings, a race, a species (call it what you will) who truly belonged to this world. Then at some point, for whatever reason, they moved on, and we moved into their places. We go on trying to occupy those places, day after endless day. But we’ll always remain strangers here, all of us. And for all our efforts, whatever dissimulations we attempt, we’ll never quite fit.
Chapter Fourteen
L IGHTS CAME UP BEHIND ME NOT too far outside Greenville —for all I know, the two young men who’d been enjoying their roast beef specials at The Finer Diner.
They, the lights, winked into being far back in my mirror, pinned in the distance at first, believably neons or traffic lights, or one of those blinking roadside barriers. But then they rushed in to close the gap, like something falling out of the sky, and suddenly were there behind me, filling mirror and road.
I pulled over and watched the one in shotgun position climb out and make his careful, by-the-book way toward me. Once years ago I’d made the mistake of stepping out of my car to meet a state policeman halfway and found myself suddenly face-down on the asphalt shoulder with a knee in my back. So now I sat very still, not even reaching for my wallet, watching him come toward me in the rearview, walk out of it, reappear in the wing mirror, then at the window.
He had to be midtwenties at least but looked all of sixteen, with a close-trimmed mustache, discount-store mirror shades, black goat-ropers. Coming abreast and bending down, he removed the glasses in a quick left-to-right sweep, releasing startling green eyes.
“License and registration, sir? Proof of insurance?”
I probably imagined the slight pause and emphasis on sir.
I reached slowly into the glove compartment for the car’s papers, handed him those (in a leatherette wallet) along with my license and rental agreement. He studied them all carefully, looking from the picture on my license up to me and down again. Walked behind the car to check plates against the numbers listed.
“Would you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Griffin?”
He went back to the squad and passed documents across the sill. Waited. Exchanged a few words, straightened, came back toward me: rearview, side mirror, window.
“We apologize for holding you up, sir. You know a Lieutenant Walsh? NOPD?”
I nodded.
“He says thanks. Called headquarters here and asked us to stop you and tell you that. Said you’d be coming through in a Sears rental, gave us the plate number. Said just to tell you thanks, he wouldn’t forget it—you’d know what he meant.”
I smiled. Years ago when things were at their worst, Don was the one who stuck by me. First he, then Vicky, had made it possible for me to go on, helped me find long-lost Lew in brambles of remorse and inaction.
And Verne. How much of what I’ve
For years I thought of that as the day my father began shrinking.
Now, years later, I remember it as one time among many that he was able momentarily to rise out of the drudge of his own life and offer an example—to give me sanction, as it were—that in my own something more might be possible.
It’s a terrible thing, that I could ever have forgotten these moments, or failed to understand them.
Oddly connected in my thoughts with all this as I Mazdaed into pure Faulknerland, Oxford, Tupelo, was a night Clare and I met, early on in our friendship, at a Maple Street pizzeria and went on to the Maple Leaf for klezmer music, impossibly joyful in its minor keys, clarinet beseeching and shrieking, stolid bass and accordion plodding on, half East Europe’s jews dying in its choruses.
Here’s what I think in higher flights of fancy. Once there existed beings, a race, a species (call it what you will) who truly belonged to this world. Then at some point, for whatever reason, they moved on, and we moved into their places. We go on trying to occupy those places, day after endless day. But we’ll always remain strangers here, all of us. And for all our efforts, whatever dissimulations we attempt, we’ll never quite fit.
Chapter Fourteen
L IGHTS CAME UP BEHIND ME NOT too far outside Greenville —for all I know, the two young men who’d been enjoying their roast beef specials at The Finer Diner.
They, the lights, winked into being far back in my mirror, pinned in the distance at first, believably neons or traffic lights, or one of those blinking roadside barriers. But then they rushed in to close the gap, like something falling out of the sky, and suddenly were there behind me, filling mirror and road.
I pulled over and watched the one in shotgun position climb out and make his careful, by-the-book way toward me. Once years ago I’d made the mistake of stepping out of my car to meet a state policeman halfway and found myself suddenly face-down on the asphalt shoulder with a knee in my back. So now I sat very still, not even reaching for my wallet, watching him come toward me in the rearview, walk out of it, reappear in the wing mirror, then at the window.
He had to be midtwenties at least but looked all of sixteen, with a close-trimmed mustache, discount-store mirror shades, black goat-ropers. Coming abreast and bending down, he removed the glasses in a quick left-to-right sweep, releasing startling green eyes.
“License and registration, sir? Proof of insurance?”
I probably imagined the slight pause and emphasis on sir.
I reached slowly into the glove compartment for the car’s papers, handed him those (in a leatherette wallet) along with my license and rental agreement. He studied them all carefully, looking from the picture on my license up to me and down again. Walked behind the car to check plates against the numbers listed.
“Would you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Griffin?”
He went back to the squad and passed documents across the sill. Waited. Exchanged a few words, straightened, came back toward me: rearview, side mirror, window.
“We apologize for holding you up, sir. You know a Lieutenant Walsh? NOPD?”
I nodded.
“He says thanks. Called headquarters here and asked us to stop you and tell you that. Said you’d be coming through in a Sears rental, gave us the plate number. Said just to tell you thanks, he wouldn’t forget it—you’d know what he meant.”
I smiled. Years ago when things were at their worst, Don was the one who stuck by me. First he, then Vicky, had made it possible for me to go on, helped me find long-lost Lew in brambles of remorse and inaction.
And Verne. How much of what I’ve
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