ISSUES | fall 1992

I want, I want. It is one of the eternal themes of literature. We ahve the experience so many times, and recognize the truth so many times, you’d think we’d learn…

J. had gone to a meeting in Washington; I had begged off for once and was revelling in the quiet mornings at home, and the chance to work undisturbed on a novel I was writing. Then he telephoned to say he had forgotten to tell me that I would be getting a visit from someone named Yan Zhang, or Zhang Yan, who was coming to San Francisco, and could we put up this Yan Zhang for a couple days?

Despite himself, L’Quintis continues teaching English at the St. Michael’s School on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. For the most part he likes the place, though the students often look at him funny when he asks them to not cut in line. During his nine-year tenure he has taught a total of 548 kids the gospel according to Emerson, Rilke, and Huckleberry Finn.

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I’ve been turning them away all night. This time, three shapely girls shake tigh-skirted hips and fix me with brightening eyes, anything to get past the sliding glass door separating this raucous bar crowd from the ambassador Room. Beyond the Ambassador Room, a portrait-lined hallway leads to the Dining Entrance as well as the clean, marbled privacy of the exclusive rest rooms. It’s the rest rooms they want. This side of the dorr, the ladies room downstairs is a thirty minute wait, fifteen for the gents.

“The wheelchair was the way home.” The line is from my first book, published in 1964, when I believed I was forever done with wheelchairs. I was thirty when The Long Walk Home appeared, a husband and father, about to embark on a Fulbrightyear abroad. But the words younger men choose have a way of catching up to the realities older men must face–and if the self-consciously dramatic tone I used to describe the origins of my love affair with the wheelchair is a trifle embarrassing today, the judgement itself remains surprisingly accurate.

“El Dia De Los Muertos”
“Love at Seventeen”
“Photo, Fable, Fieldtrip”

On David Wheelock’s front walk, beside his sagging sago palm, was someone who made him feel a little dizzy. She had rung his doorbell some minutes before. Now she was leaving “Hello,” he called out.

“Dr. Wheelock,” she said, turning rapidly. “It’s me!”

“The Tension Zone”
“Clear Air Turbulence”
“Still Life: Sarasota, Florida”
“Hot Water”
“Tiptoe”
“Water House, Shakertown”
“Cautionary Tale, 3 A.M.”

I did time at Fairhope Men’s Correctional Facility in Pennsylvania. Not hard time. Time. I thought wanting something bad enough was all that it took. I thought a move or two would put me int he clear, where no one could touch me. I was young and stupid and I didn’t know anything, but by the time I realized that, it was too late.

Bradley already knew by heart the tales of the lonely angels that hovered at busty street corners and watched careless children; of angels whose tears for all the unconfessed sins of the world created the mountain streams that emptied into the oceans; and of angels that lived in upholstered charis and waited for lapsed believers to settle unsuspectingly into a suddenly renewed faith…

The morning is thick enough to stir with a spoon. The tower of waffles is cold in a puddle of congealed syrup, mark on her collarbone, which she taps distractedly with a pencil. Replying to her students’ journals occupies hours of her weekend. “Look here,” I say. “they think the universe might have arisen out of pure nothing.” From the newspaper I read:

SPECULATION MANIA said the headline of a boston newspaper in 1790. The speculative nature of Americans was widely commented upon during the early years of the Republic, both by Americans themselves and by visitors from abroad.