the trip to wilmington
gary pool
It’s been almost two weeks now since Samantha took her leave without even so much as a single word. She’s gone to stay with her daughter in Wilmington. I know this because for a month, prior to her sudden disappearance, she could talk of little else besides going to Wilmington to take care of the baby for the second half of the summer while Margot attends classes at the university in Newark.
How very strange Samantha’s become, since the grandchildren began arriving a few years ago. They’re the entire focus of her existence now. One no longer talks of movies or politics or books with Samantha, or even shares local gossip, for that matter. In fact, it can hardly be said that one has a conversation with her at all. You simply receive news of the children, often the same news several times over. If the world is going to hell in a hand-basket it’s no particular concern of hers.
Being childless means that I am simply not facing up to “reality”, as she puts it, not cheerfully shouldering the relentless burden of the human race. “Come on, Sam, lighten up,” I told her. “I’m just doing my part to curb the population explosion. Besides, not everyone was meant to procreate.” That didn’t go down awfully well, but then, by her own admission, Samantha makes up “reality” as she goes along. So, she has to expect to take a few lumps now and then. That’s just what happens when realities clash.
In any case, if it hadn’t been for her most recent reality clash with Renaldo, none of this present trouble would have happened in the first place. She’s never liked Renaldo much, always sort of resented our friendship. Even though he’s been around for over ten years now, Samantha still views him as something of an interloper. She’s insanely jealous. But then she feels the same way about Margot’s husband, really, though she would never admit it. That’s because Margot and John are married and Sam’s bound to respect the institution, if not the man. Renaldo thinks it’ s because he’s a foreigner that Samantha doesn’t like him. I don’t know. He may be right. There is that rather jingoist side to Sam’s nature.
Sam used to be open to everything and everybody, back in the old days, before the advent of the grandchildren convinced her that conformity was a lot easier to explain and therefore the best of all possible examples to present to the kids. When I first met her she was always on the lookout for anything that was different, interesting, exciting, and especially, fun. Why, I remember Samantha when she had not the least compunction about employing a pair of binoculars to ogle a handsome young man through his bedroom window across the courtyard from the balcony of my
apartment. She was a lot more fun before she started taking herself, and everything else, so damn seriously. Now, the mere mention of anything remotely sexual makes her cringe and too much exposed human flesh is liable to bring about a flare-up of indignant moral hysteria. Maybe its simply the times in which we live. Everybody seems kind of off balance these days.
Imagine, all this fuss because she thinks Renaldo sent her that silly catalogue, the one with the semi-naked men in lounging pajamas and sexy underwear. Why, a few short years ago she would have found it simply too charming for words. It’s a tempest in a teapot, if you ask me. She did ask me, as a matter of fact, and I told her just that. “It’s a tempest in a teapot, Sam,” says I. “Where’s your sense of humor? Can’t you see the fun? The least you can do is just forget it. Toss it in the trash if it bothers you that much.”
“But, what about the postman?” she indignantly complained. “It wasn’t even in a plain brown wrapper.”
“You talk as if we’ re dealing with something really disgusting here, like hard-core pornography.”
“Well, what else would you call page after page of young men wearing nothing but those little silk marble bags, and standing around in suggestive poses always leaning on each other?”
“Beats me, hon. A catalogue?” I replied.
“Don’t be so cheeky,” she fumed. “But then I suppose you’d defend Renaldo no matter what.”
“Renaldo is my friend,” I said. “Besides, he claims he had nothing to do with it.”
“And you believe him.”
“Of course I believe him,” I willingly admitted.
“Well,” she huffed. “I’m glad to know where your loyalties lie.”
And that’s the reason she left town for the rest of the summer without so much as a forwarding address.
Sam hates Wilmington, especially in the summertime. It’s hot and humid, and the apartment has no air-conditioning. She doesn’t like Margot’s cooking and John, having served his conjugal function by assisting in the production of little Katherine, she now finds something of a nuisance. To be near that baby, however, she will suffer all this and so much more. Her devotion is like a suitor’s.
Once, when we were much younger, Samantha and I took a trip to Florida. We rented a little cottage on the beach (in those days it was still possible to get near a Florida beach without owning it) and spent two weeks doing nothing but relaxing, taking the sun, talking and generally enjoying ourselves. Sam was still married to her first husband at the time, a cheerless, abusive man who often drank too much. He never liked me much and the feeling was pretty mutual. He didn’t accompany us to Florida, and it was Sam’s first real taste of freedom in almost ten years of marital hell. We had a glorious time and, though it would still take a few months to accomplish, I know it was then that she decided to divorce. She still longs for Florida sometimes, but has only been back once. It’s not the same there any more.
Such a pity it is that Renaldo didn’t know her back then. She had already stopped letting people enjoy her by the time he appeared on the scene. Middle age and two divorces had taken their toll. I guess the only thing that saved her from being consumed by bitterness was the arrival of that first grandbaby, an event which also condemned Renaldo, and me, I suppose, to a kind of limbo for people from alien realities. Now Sam has three grandchildren. Her son, David, who lives in Boston, has a boy and a girl, and Margot has a girl. They are all marvelous kids, and they are all great friends with Renaldo, even the youngest. They adore him. Renaldo comes from a huge family. He knows how to relate to kids.
After her second divorce, a ghastly and humiliating affair, Samantha announced flatly that she was never going to allow herself to say she was sorry for anything ever again as long as she lived. Sort of like Ali MacGraw in Love Story, I guess, only for vastly more complicated reasons. This fairly intractable denial of her humanity has since often placed Sam, and the rest of us, in some rather uncomfortable situations. Simply because she rejects apologizing does not mean she doesn’t do or say things she regrets. It just means she doesn’t have to admit it. The maintenance of her pride costs all of us, including Sam herself, dearly. Making up with her can often be a lengthy and excruciatingly agonizing process. For example, she will never apologize to Renaldo for screaming at him over the phone the way she did, and he feels he’s already surrendered about as much of his own pride as Sam is entitled to, over the last ten years. This is by far Samantha’s worst reality clash to date. I just don’ t think they are ever destined to live happily ever after.
My friend, Dee Dee, the radical feminist, thinks Samantha’s whole problem is men. But then Dee Dee thinks that everybody’s whole problem is with men — women’s problems with men, men’s problems with women, women’s problems with women, men’s problems with children, children’s problems with each other even men’s problems with men, etc., etc. I’m sure she’s got something there somewhere, and whatever it is, it certainly must apply to Samantha.
“Considering her two husbands alone we have to conclude that Sam’s judgment of the male character leaves a good deal to be desired,” I observed, trying on my most worldly style.
“Don’t be stupid,” Dee Dee remarked. “It has nothing to do with Samantha’s judgment. Men are brought up to exploit women. That’s all. Don’t you get it? It’s a matter of conditioning. They’ re all the same. They must be reprogrammed along with the rotten society they have spawned.”
Dee Dee believes in the strict separation of the sexes. She also led a fairly unsuccessful protest march and a boycott against the two lesbians who own the pleasant little coffee shop down the block. Dee Dee thinks the coffee shop exploits the lesbian community. I was a little confused on this particular point, especially since the only other place in the neighborhood is Spontini’s, which everybody (including the police) knows is a front for the Mafia. I didn’t let on, though. Dee Dee has a mean streak when she gets rubbed the wrong way. It’s better not to cross her sometimes. Besides, she’s bigger than I am.
I think I’ll go over to Samantha’s and make sure everything’s OK. I still have the set of keys she gave me several years ago. If I do this I’ll probably have to go by myself, since Renaldo won’t go near the place any more, and Dee Dee hates to travel, even if it’s just across town. I used to check on things regularly whenever Sam went away. I wonder who’s picking up the mail. Maybe she had the post office forward it to Wilmington. Dee Dee told me Sam boarded the cat at the animal shelter. I was always the one who took care of Waldo (as in Ralph Waldo Emerson) if Samantha had to be away. Dee Dee says Sam feels she’s lost me. I’m not quite sure I know what that means. A person isn’t exactly a ballpoint pen. How do you lose a person, anyway, and if someone loses you, how to you become found again? This is a very perplexing. I think Dee Dee made the whole thing up just to try and start an argument. She does that sometimes.
Renaldo wants to go to the lake this week end. He likes to go out there and rent a boat and spend the entire day floating around on the water. It reminds him of his country by the ocean, I think. It must be hard for him sometimes, living in this land locked place with its harsh winters and rather short summers.
Maybe two or three friends will go boating as well. It might be nice, if the weather doesn’t turn rainy. We could take a picnic, and make a fire on the beach in the evening and watch the stars come out. Samantha would enjoy that. When we went to Florida that time, she used to love to make a fire on the beach in the cool of the evening and sit there listening to the surf while the stars began to appear, one by one, above the sea.
It would be good to get away for a short holiday. I haven’t been out of town once, and the summer is already more than half gone. The days are becoming noticeably shorter. Before you know it the leaves will be flying. I’ve a feeling autumn will arrive earlier than usual this year.
