Good Trouble. Joseph O’Neill
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hill, an enormous hovering gray cloud. This outlandish hydroatmospheric pileup, which is surely not unknown to science, leaves me at a terminological and informational loss that’s only intensified when I look at the bay itself, where the migrant and moody skylight, together with the action of the wind and current, I suppose, and maybe differences in the water’s depth and salinity, constantly pattern and texture and streak the aquatic surface. It’s unpredictable and beautiful. Sometimes the bay, usually blue or gray, is thoroughly brown, other times it has Caribbean swirls of aquamarine or is colorlessly pale, and invariably there are areas where the water is ruffled, and there are smooth or smoother areas of water, and areas that are relatively dark and light, and dull and brilliant, and so forth, ever more complexly. There must be some field of learning that can help me to better appreciate these phenomena.
“The Salty Rose,” Chris says. “For the Lunenburg whaling years.”
“Not bad at all,” I say.
This is one of our favorite running jokes: Chris suggests titles for the memoirs that I am not writing about the lives that we have not led. In this subjunctive world we are adventurers, spies, honorary consuls, nomads, millionaires. The Hammocks of Chilmark describes our summers on the Vineyard. Our Corfu stint is the subject of a trilogy: The Owl in the Jasmine; A Pamplemousse for the Captain; and Who Shall Water the Bougainvillea?
We have never set foot on Corfu or Martha’s Vineyard. Other than a four-year spell in Athens, Ohio, our thirty-one-year-old marriage and thirty-two-year teaching careers, and almost all of our vacations, have unfolded in and around the schools and streets of New York, New York. Jack Bail claims to have been in my class at Athens High, which is confounding. I have a pretty good recall of those Athens kids.
“Goddamn it.”
Chris: “Leg-bug?”
I pick it off my ankle and, because these lentil-sized spider-like little fuckers are tough, I crush and recrush it between the bottom of my glass and my armrest. I call them leg-bugs because these last couple of weeks every time I’ve set foot outdoors I’ve caught them crawling up my legs—to what end, I don’t know; they’re up to no good, you can bet—and because I can’t entomologically identify them. They’re certainly maddening. Often my shin prickles when there’s nothing there.
“Here they are,” Chris says.
Our guests have arrived simultaneously, in two cars. Fran and Ed get out of their red pickup and Jack Bail gets out of his rented Hyundai. There’s no sign of his Chris.
Dispensing with the steps, Jack Bail strides directly onto the deck. He’s extraordinarily tall, maybe six foot six. Has he grown?
“Adirondack chairs,” Jack Bail says. “Of course.”
As the young visitor who has gone to great lengths, Jack Bail is the object of solicitousness. There’s no way around this: once Jack Bail has traveled all the way from New York, he must be received with proportionate hospitality. “Jack first,” Fran says, when I try to pour her a glass of wine. “He deserves it, after his voyage.”
“The flight was great,” Jack Bail says. “Newark airport—less so.” Ed says, “You might want to think about the Trusted Traveler program. Might speed things along.” “I am a Trusted Traveler,” Jack Bail says. “It did me no good. Not at Newark.” “What happens if you’re a Trusted Traveler?” Chris says. Ed says, “You don’t have to take your shoes off.” We all laugh. Jack Bail exclaims, “They made me take my shoes off!” We all laugh again. Ed asks Jack Bail, “Which program you with? NEXUS?” “Global Entry,” Jack Bail says. Looking at Fran, Ed says, “That’s what I’m all about. Global entry.” That gets the biggest, or the politest, laugh of all.
Soon we’re eating grilled haddock, asparagus, and field greens. “Delicious,” Jack Bail is the first to say. “Thank you, Jack,” Chris says, with what seems like real gratitude. Jack Bail inspects the ocean, parts of which are ruddy and other parts dark blue. “That’s some view, Doc,” Jack Bail says. “Well, it’s not Hudson Heights,” I say. “I thought you lived in Manhattan?” Fran says. “Hudson Heights is in Manhattan,” I say. Ed says, “‘Doc,’ eh? You’re a dark horse.” “That’s what they called me,” I declare heartily. I didn’t invent the custom of recognizing a teacher’s academic title. Ed continues, “How about you, Jack? You a doc, too?” Jack laughs. “No way, man. I’m just a CPA.” “‘Just’?” Fran says, as if outraged. “You must be very proud of this young man,” she tells me, and this is a tiny bit infuriating, because I don’t like to receive instruction on how I ought to feel. How proud I am or am not of Jack Bail is for me to decide. “Certainly,” I say, Mr. Very Hearty all over again. Fran says, “How was he in the classroom? A rascal, I’ll bet.” I make a sort of ho-ho-ho, and Jack Bail says to Fran, “Hey, don’t blow my cover!” He adds, “Doc was a great teacher.” I say, “Well, we’ve come a long way from Ohio,” and Ed says, “We’ve all come a long way, eh?” and he tells Jack Bail that he’s from B.C. but that Fran is a Maritimer and Maritimer women always return home eventually and you’d have to be crazy to stand in the way of a Maritimer woman.
Fran says very attentively, “Your wife can’t be with us, Jack?”
“No, Chris is not able to come,” Jack Bail says.
“Maybe next time,” Fran says. Chris somehow catches my eye without looking at me and somehow rolls her eyes without rolling them. Or so I imagine.
“Unfortunately we’re currently separated,” Jack Bail says.
This gives everyone pause. “I’m sorry to hear that,” Ed says. Jack Bail says, “Yep, it’s not an ideal situation.”
Now Chris gets up and says, “We have assorted berries, and we have—chocolate cake. Jack’s favorite.”
“Do you have children, Jack?” Fran asks, which is surely a question whose answer she can figure out by herself. “We don’t,” Jack Bail says. “A couple of years back, we tried. You know, the IVF thing. Didn’t work out.” I’m refreshing the tableware at this point. Jack Bail says, “As a matter of fact, I just got this letter from the clinic demanding nine hundred dollars for my sperm.”
This silences even the Joyces.
Jack Bail continues, “So three years ago, as part of the whole process, we froze sperm. Yeah, so anyway, we go through the whole thing, an ordeal I guess you could call it, and this and that happens, and we forget all about the frozen sperm. Now here’s this invoice for nine hundred bucks because they’ve stored it all this time—or so they say. I call them up. I speak to a lady. The lady says they’ve sent letters every year informing me that they’re holding my sample. Letters? I don’t remember any letters. But first things first, right? Destroy it, I tell her. Get rid of it right away. She tells me that they can’t do that. First they need a notarized semen disposition statement.”
“OK, here we go,” Chris says. “Jack’s cake. And berries for anyone who might be interested.”
“Now, I know their game,” Jack Bail says. “I know what’s going to happen. I’m going to mail them the notarized statement and they’re going to say they never got it. And they’re going to make me go to a notary all over again and they’re going to make me mail them another statement and they’re going to drag this thing out. And every extra day they store it, they’re going to charge more, pro rata. See? They’re literally holding my sperm hostage.”
“Corporations,” Ed says. “Fran, doesn’t that—”
“Exactly,” Jack Bail says. “It’s not that the employees are evildoers. It’s the corporate systems. When it comes to receiving mail they don’t want to get, mail that reduces their profits, their systems are chaotic. When it comes to billing you, their systems are never chaotic. And I mean: retaining my genetic material without my consent? It’s insanely wrong. So—do you ever do this?—I tell her I’m an attorney and that I’ve got a bunch of hungry young associates who’ll be all over this shakedown like