The Weight of Nothing Page 4

  That summer, Niles moved onto campus. Several months went by when he and his father didn’t speak. He finished his first semester at the university, and just as P. Kelly decided things had gone on long enough and sought to reconcile the situation, convincing himself that Niles’ undergraduate studies were immaterial in the long run and a graduate program in business was still to come, he made arrangements to reinstate financial assistance to the boy only to discover things by then had gone from bad to worse.

  At the campus bookstore, at the start of second semester, while buying Thales of Miletus in paperback along with a fresh supply of notebooks and pens, Niles stood in the cashier line with a young woman purchasing Robert Coover and John Hawkes for a class on postmodern literature. Typically reserved around pretty girls, he couldn’t resist and wound up commenting on the books in her stack, hoping to impress her and going so far as to mention having read Hawkes last summer, recalling a line from Death, Sleep, and the Traveler. “The sleep of reason produces demons, but I love my sleep.”

  Jeana corrected him, smiling in that disabling way she had. “But I love my demons,” she said.

  The phone rang as I was sitting at my piano, and reaching toward the table, I hoped as always it might be Liz but then I heard the voice of Dr. Freidrich’s secretary reminding me of today’s meeting. I waited a minute, then headed outside, covering the familiar walk to the School of Art in fifteen minutes. As a musician, which is to say given the gift I was born with and as my mother taught me early on, in light of all the conflict my playing piano caused, I could not come in any purposeful way to make music my career; this though I love piano and can scarcely go a day without sitting down to practice and perform. Instead, I turned to Art as a solution to my otherwise vague sense of career.

  My first exposure to the Moderns came in the days just after my mother’s death when, sitting in my Aunt Germaine’s front room, I was kept company by a print of Jean Dubuffet’s Corps de Dame. The work was a peculiar piece all done up in startling shades of violet and blue and pink, the bloated figure of a woman with the most beautifully grotesque arms expanding slenderly outward through a backdrop of pale purple sea. I stood in front of the print, fascinated by its strange appeal, hoping at any minute the woman might scoop me up in a warm embrace. (When Aunt Germaine discovered my preoccupation she took the painting down, thus guaranteeing my interest in Art forever.) In my classes, having studied on my own before entering the university, covering most of the Moderns, Bauhaus and Dada, Cubists, Impressionists and Abstract Expressionists, Picasso and Morris Louis, Gorky and Avery, Klee and Pollack, Diebenkorn, Bacon, and Miró, I could explain the subtle variances and influences in pieces as diverse as Jean-Paul Riopelle’s Encounter and Jules Olitski’s Feast, and simultaneously impress and infuriate professors with opinions often in conflict with their own. The work I turned in was first-rate however, and earned high marks on all projects, papers, and exams. Despite my minor ambition in ever actually pursuing a career, I moved through the challenges of academia with a snakelike charm.

  The School of Art is an antiquated, box-shaped building with six long cement steps leading up to an unadorned arch. A flat inlay of off-yellow tiles worn smooth as glass ran through the halls and inside a series of moderately sized classrooms, studios, and offices stationed in random sequence up and down the four separate floors. In the basement was a minor auditorium for showing films and slides, a storage area and library where research documents and manuscripts were housed. Built in 1919, the brick building was the third oldest structure on campus, tucked between the new Engineering annex, the Department of Social Humanities (SHsshh for short), and the east wing of the Graduate Library.

  I walked across State Street and sat outside on one of the wooden benches, watching absently as groups of students hurried off in different directions. I thought about my upcoming meeting, wondering as always what would happen if I failed to show, and debated heading over to the Music School and looking for Liz. The possibility of doing precisely this unsettled me however, and anxious, I distracted myself by going through the contents of my backpack. Inside were none of the promised chapters for my dissertation but rather the following: a deck of cards and cigarettes, one harmonica and two plastic lighters, Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, three new reviews of recent gallery shows and exhibitions, a pack of gum and pad of paper, six pens, two pencils, one Hi-Liter, a transistor radio, a pocket watch, composition paper and Kleenex, a small blue phone book, and 97 cents in loose change.

  I rooted around inside my bag, searching for nothing in particular, waiting for the moment I felt ready enough to go off to my meeting. An old plastic bookmark with a picture of Robert Motherwell on the front caught my eye and I pulled it out. The marker was a gift from Niles, given to me recently when I stopped by to see him at Ebertine Books. We met almost five years ago when Niles audited a class I was teaching on the Postmoderns. At the time, he was looking for a bit of constructive diversion from his studies in Philosophy, and wrote his final paper on the artist Alberto Burri, an Italian army doctor captured and sent to a Texas prison camp in 1944 where he began painting works of abstract expressionism composed of old sacks and rags he said reminded him of the bloodied bandages he saw too much of during the war. About Burri’s art Niles wrote: “His use of personal materials grounds his work with an intimacy unique to the time, and in this way makes his canvases at one with the universe’s most irrepressible forces.”

  We became friendly and spoke often after class. I was only a few years older, and despite my status as Niles’ instructor, the initial formality between us immediately broke down. We met for drinks and late-night conversation, and at some point Niles introduced me to Jeana. In the short time I knew her, she came across as bright, sincere, and vibrant, devoid of vanity and pretention, dauntless as an ancient force of nature, and very much in love with Niles. The three of us got together for lunch, for cheap dinners, and to check out the clubs around town. On nights I played piano at Dungee’s, they sometimes came and listened to me perform. I enjoyed their company, was happy for Niles, and devastated the day Jeana died.

  I went with Niles to her funeral—Jeana’s family lived in Chicago—and in doing so, our friendship acquired a sense of permanence. Late the following summer, I mentioned my plan to take a bus trip to Chicago and check out a new Rothko retrospective and Niles said he’d like to come along. We rented a room at the Landmark Motel, and hungry from our trip, decided to get something to eat. Niles showered first and changed his clothes, putting on a pair of pressed slacks, shined shoes, and clean dress shirt. It was the first time since the funeral that I saw him in anything other than jeans, and when he said, “There’s a stop I’d like to make first,” I wasn’t surprised and agreed to go with him.

  We took a cab across town. The cemetery was surrounded by black iron fencing, the tall gate open as we drove through. A thin woman in a white dress, her blonde hair done in a series of French braids, moved between a row of headstones, managing to push a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. The evening was cool. A small plane flew overhead. Niles knelt beside Jeana’s plot for several minutes as I hung back by the cab. A half hour later we were sitting inside a restaurant across the street from our motel. Much of our meal went by in silence and we returned to our room shortly after midnight. I stayed up a bit to read, but at some point fell asleep, and when I woke later to turn off the light, I saw Niles walking from his bed across the room toward the window.

  In the time since Jeana’s death, Niles had suffered all the more classic bouts of depression. He lost his appetite, was distracted and sullen, had a tendency to disappear on long walks, and once flew to Florida, and later New Jersey, for three days without saying a word. He wore darker clothes, long-sleeved T-shirts and jeans winter and summer, was disinclined to look at other women, and turned an unsightly shade of grey whenever something unexpected reminded him of what he’d lost. Even with this however, I was never overly concerned. He remained in school, kept his job at Ebertine Books,
resumed his focus on his studies and other outside interests, and seemed to be making the nесessary adjustment. As such, I’d no reason to feel alarmed as I watched him move past me in a pair of baggy blue pajamas, his curled hair stacked atop his head, his hands slack and hanging down at his sides. He walked in a flat, uneven shuffle, his bare feet dragging softly across the floor as he went to stand and stare out the window.

  I said his name, studied his features in profile against the mix of shadow and moonlight, whispered again “Niles?” and finally understanding the situation, got up and positioned myself behind his shoulders, tapping left and right in order to guide him back to bed. No sooner did I return to my own bed than Niles was up and walking the same as before. I waved at him this time, causing him to stop suddenly and say, “Sorry. Did I wake you?”

  “Funny I was just about to ask you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Where are you going now?”

  “To the bathroom,” he looked at me a moment. “What do you mean now?”

  “You were sleepwalking.”

  “Was I?” I watched him as he went and sat in the chair.

  “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “You do this often?”

  “Occasionally. Where did you find me?”

  “By the window.”

  “What was I doing?”

  “Standing and staring outside.”

  Niles glanced down at his hands. “It’s nothing,” he repeated. “I’m a poor sleeper, that’s all.”

  “Lots of people are poor sleepers. Not everyone takes a stroll around the room.”

  “Somnambulism’s a funny thing.”

  “Are you telling me this is some sort of affliction you have?”

  He pulled at his pajama sleeve. “It’s a condition I’m apparently predisposed to experience.”

  “Meaning something has to trigger it.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “It would take too long to explain.”

  “Is it neurological or psychological?”

  “That depends.”

  “Jeana?”

  “It isn’t that simple.”

  “You’re here in Chicago. We went to the cemetery. There has to be a certain amount of anxiety.”

  Again, “It’s more complicated. There’s more to it than that.”

  “More than what? What do you mean?” I waited then, half expecting Niles to launch into a philosophical treatment on the subject, comparing his somnambulism to a quixotic quest in which his pacing through the darkened hours was a hunt for lost love transformed into ghosts, but he surprised me yet again, and standing, removed his pajama top, exposing a series of welts and bruises, punctures and scars and burns, old and new avulsions covering the surface of both arms and the whole of his belly and chest. I stared at his torn and fractured flesh, discolored in various shades of red and pink and brown as if gnawed by the hot fangs of some savage beast, and jumping up, I grabbed hold of Niles’ wrists, turned his arms over, and then finding his eyes screamed louder and louder still, “Christ, Niles! Shit! What the hell! What is all this? Jesus! What the fuck is going on?”

  Love is this. With Niles and Jeana, the conversation at the campus bookstore led to coffee and later a movie. They fell into dating, took a summer class together—a seminar on Parmenides—and found jobs working within a block of one another downtown, Niles at Ebertine Books and Jeana at the Hungry Heart Café. When told his son had a girlfriend, P. Kelly assumed nothing more serious than a bit of hand-holding in the balcony of the Main Theater. Still, he was curious and summoned Niles to his office where he asked about the relationship. Niles’ answer was more than his father expected as he confessed then to being in love.

  “At your age?” P. Kelly could not decide whether to laugh or lament his son’s innocence, yet thinking perhaps the girl might get Niles to see that a man seriously smitten could not fritter away his education at the expense of a career, he reacted to the news with instruction to bring the girl around.

  A dinner was arranged for Saturday. P. Kelly sat at the head of the table in his enormous dining room where his son and girlfriend were served swordfish and pasta by two young women in tight black dresses and shiny white shoes. Forewarned of the elder Kelly’s tendency to be confrontational, Jeana remained composed and fielded all questions deftly as Niles’ father pried her for information about herself, challenged her views on politics and business while dismissing her interest in philosophy as a “hobby at best.” He assumed an imperious and irrepressible tone, was dissenting when their conversation turned to the writings of Jeremy Bentham who, as a social empiricist, championed a utilitarian ethic P. Kelly refused to countenance. “Cries for the common good are the lament of the weak,” he said. “The vanguard of those who haven’t the grit to prosper in a free-market system. I for one am convinced the concept of every man for himself is the single most significant factor in making America great. Why should I entertain utilitarian ideals when history shows it’s always the work of the few which contributes most to the social fabric? Why shouldn’t the greatest achievers draw the largest benefit?”

  Jeana smiled in that offsetting way of hers, and extending her arms slowly in order to take in the size of the room, allowed her gaze to fall back on P. Kelly as she said, “And what is the largest benefit? This?”

  Ahh, yes then. (“This!”) The father shot his son a look, incredulous and disappointed, peering out with firm denouncement as if to say, “So this is the girl I’m supposed to approve of?” (Niles, in turn, was well pleased by the accuracy of Jeana’s retort, and lifting his chin to his father’s glare, answered in his own way, “But, of course!” What a disappointment! If such nonsense had to happen—and P. Kelly was not so old as to forget the indelicate ways of the heart—he had hoped Niles would fall for a sensible coed with her studies in business, premed or pre-law, a girl who’d speak to Niles in concrete terms about the future, exorcising all ridiculous notions while opening his eyes to the necessity of securing a legitimate career. But this girl? She with her faded jeans and tousled hair, her own concentration in philosophy and papers written on George Santayana’s “animal faith” and Voltaire’s liberal mores, her ears pierced several times—and God knows what else!—this creature gave a boy like Niles courage to cling to impractical pursuits while complicating the process of eventually getting him to Kelly & Kline. What was a father to do then when his son fell hard for someone who dressed like a refugee, who parroted such ludicrous prattle regarding happiness and the journey toward contentment, who performed yoga by moonlight, went braless and barefoot, ate vegetable stir-fry in plum sauce from a white Styrofoam cup, and possessed no more insight into the real world than a six-year-old child?

  The summer before their junior year, Jeana and Niles rented an apartment together on the north side. Excited by the raw amazement of their commitment, they bought a futon and two chairs secondhand, mixed their prints and books together in the front room, hung their clothes in the closet, and set their shoes side by side at the front door. Niles phoned his father in order to pass on his new address, and while he intended nothing more than an innocent chat, their conversation quickly dissolved into dissidence as he mentioned his plan to apply for the master’s program in philosophy with the hope of teaching one day.

  “So you want to spend your life regurgitating useless blather?” P. Kelly scoffed. “You’re building a house of cards.” He was by this point convinced his son’s decision had everything to do with “that girl,” and requested again the boy come to his office where he offered his opinion unabated. “Your friend is doing you a disservice. Your affair is inappropriate and foolhardy. What exactly do you see in her? She’s not the sort of person who’s going to help you in any way. A man must be with a woman who knows her place, how to dress and smile, who understands the essence of a man’s potential and encourages him to go forward and prosper, not obstruct his vision as she is obviously doing to y
ou.”

  The office in which P. Kelly conducted his affairs was filled with antique furnishings, a mahogany desk and matching shelves, sea-blue Persian rug, plaques and pictures hung on expensive maple paneling. Niles shifted back on his heels, feeling ambushed, yet realizing how absurd it was for his father to try and lecture him about love, he clasped his hands behind his back, wondering which of the old man’s wives succeeded best in fulfilling his needs, which of the eye candy he surrounded himself with these last twenty years, the trophy figures in hip-tight dresses and makeup applied by the pound, interchangeable girls who drained off the fluids in his cock-a-doodle-do and sated his ego when propped up beside him at restaurants and parties, and somewhat nervously, he asked, “With all due respect, Father, but who’s waiting at home for you now?”

  The old man drew himself up in his chair, all mercy vanished from his face, and speaking through his teeth, he set his tone with rigid regard. “Good for you, Niles. Let’s get down to it then. I find the way you choose to live unacceptable. I had hoped you’d come to your senses by now and meet your responsibilities as a man who’s been afforded every opportunity to prosper, but I was mistaken and can no longer wait for you to see your way clear. As far as I’m concerned, a degree in philosophy is a selfish indulgence. You go on and on about munificence and philanthropy, yet you tie your hands and limit your potential by refusing to earn real money. What can you expect to do on a teacher’s salary? Don’t you see spurning me this way for no reason other than to be with a girl is itself uncharitable? Think of all those likely to be hurt by your decision.”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.”