protective doormen. Big bouquets of flowers on the coffee table and bottles of Puligny-Montrachet on ice and Italian sheets on the beds and oil paintings of Paris boulevards and towels as big as sleigh robes on heated towel racks. A green marble bathroom with a basketful of amenities (shampoo and conditioner, but also Q-tips, bath salts, three flavors of mouthwash, aspirin, Vaseline, benzocaine, iodine, oxacillin, digitalis, laxative, and six kinds of soap, milled, castile, pumice, glycerin, liquid, and brown) and every step I took was cushioned, every door opened, every need attended to, the manager on the phone—“Everything okay there, Mr. Wyler?” The editor to say “The book is in its sixth printing.” And I hopped in the limo and was whisked away to more interviews, where people fawned over me with a vengeance and I walked through a stage door and onstage and eight hundred people burst out clapping and I smiled and nodded and put my book on the lectern and read to them—read to them from my own writing! Stuff I wrote on Sturgis Avenue in St. Paul! People in Chicago and St. Louis and Dallas liked it, too!—and afterward they pumped my hand and I signed books and a lovely brunette murmured, “You’re so much younger than I expected you’d be.” The book shot to number 1 on the best-seller list. “That’s great,” said Iris. I flew home for a day. She was at the new drop-in center for single mothers in recovery.
It was a madhouse. Screeching kids and stoned daddies and the daddies’ new girlfriends and the bipolar mommies riding out the backwash of the Thorazine and some of the mommies had bad new boyfriends or girlfriends and a pretty little girl whose name tag said “LaTeisha” was being pushed on a swing by two ladies, one behind, one in front, who chatted with her and ignored each other. The one behind was the daddy’s ex-girlfriend in neon pink stretch pants and a V-neck T-shirt in which breasts the size of cantaloupes bounced around, and the one in front, his new squeeze, was skinny as a fence post. And LaTeisha’s mommy was lying on the floor, dazed from the methadone. And through the chaos strode my good wife, the goddess Iris of the Streets, Protector of the Fallen, spreading light and succor, giving hugs, blowing noses, tying shoelaces, doing good, nothing but good, in this sinful world that is rewarding her wayward husband so handsomely.
“I’m going to LA,” I said.
“Good-bye!” she cried, merrily.
“For three weeks.”
“See you in three weeks!”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” I said.
“I thought you’d never ask! ” she said.
I told her that our ship had come in. We would be rich. When I returned in three weeks, I wanted to look for a new home.
“Don’t get a big head,” she said and turned away to see how LaTeisha’s mommy was doing.
4
An American Guy
I came home after LA and the house looked so drab, so small.
Sturgis Avenue seemed junkier, meaner than ever, as if years of hard winters had knocked everything loose. Homes atilt, walks bowed, sidewalks cracked, trees bent, and a depressing clutter and mishmash—as if everyone were too busy managing their alcoholism to ever pick up a shovel or rake—Damn, this is ugly, I thought. Why not run a herd of buffalo through, hold a Black Sabbath concert? I left my suitcase on the porch and hiked up to the cathedral and walked along Summit, past the old Humphries mansion, where I will live someday though I don’t know it yet, and past Mrs. Porterfield’s rooming house porch where the young Scott Fitzgerald sat and smoked and thought about the fame that would soon descend on him, though he didn’t know it yet, and past the stone house that Frank Frisbie bought with the money from his crappy novel and the University Club and the old apartment house where Katherine lives—
Russet brick
And ravaged
Shades and
Who could look
Up and guess the
Unutterable cravings
Contained behind that
Third-story window,
O
It was a madhouse. Screeching kids and stoned daddies and the daddies’ new girlfriends and the bipolar mommies riding out the backwash of the Thorazine and some of the mommies had bad new boyfriends or girlfriends and a pretty little girl whose name tag said “LaTeisha” was being pushed on a swing by two ladies, one behind, one in front, who chatted with her and ignored each other. The one behind was the daddy’s ex-girlfriend in neon pink stretch pants and a V-neck T-shirt in which breasts the size of cantaloupes bounced around, and the one in front, his new squeeze, was skinny as a fence post. And LaTeisha’s mommy was lying on the floor, dazed from the methadone. And through the chaos strode my good wife, the goddess Iris of the Streets, Protector of the Fallen, spreading light and succor, giving hugs, blowing noses, tying shoelaces, doing good, nothing but good, in this sinful world that is rewarding her wayward husband so handsomely.
“I’m going to LA,” I said.
“Good-bye!” she cried, merrily.
“For three weeks.”
“See you in three weeks!”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” I said.
“I thought you’d never ask! ” she said.
I told her that our ship had come in. We would be rich. When I returned in three weeks, I wanted to look for a new home.
“Don’t get a big head,” she said and turned away to see how LaTeisha’s mommy was doing.
4
An American Guy
I came home after LA and the house looked so drab, so small.
Sturgis Avenue seemed junkier, meaner than ever, as if years of hard winters had knocked everything loose. Homes atilt, walks bowed, sidewalks cracked, trees bent, and a depressing clutter and mishmash—as if everyone were too busy managing their alcoholism to ever pick up a shovel or rake—Damn, this is ugly, I thought. Why not run a herd of buffalo through, hold a Black Sabbath concert? I left my suitcase on the porch and hiked up to the cathedral and walked along Summit, past the old Humphries mansion, where I will live someday though I don’t know it yet, and past Mrs. Porterfield’s rooming house porch where the young Scott Fitzgerald sat and smoked and thought about the fame that would soon descend on him, though he didn’t know it yet, and past the stone house that Frank Frisbie bought with the money from his crappy novel and the University Club and the old apartment house where Katherine lives—
Russet brick
And ravaged
Shades and
Who could look
Up and guess the
Unutterable cravings
Contained behind that
Third-story window,
O
Similar Books
