Once a week or so, when I woke up before dawn and couldn’t get back to sleep, I slipped out of bed and took the motor home for a spin. You couldn’t just leave it sitting in the driveway, the battery draining away, the tires flattening themselves against the blacktop. As the salesman told me right before I drove it off the lot, the Winnebago needed exercise, just like a person did.
I also needed the practice. The RV was only a little smaller than a school bus, and it took skill and courage to navigate it through the world. The biggest problem was making a right turn, so simple in a car. You had to swing your front end way out into oncoming traffic, and then immediately swerve back into your own lane, spinning the wheel like a maniac to straighten out. Pulling away from a curb was similarly challenging, as I’d learned on one of my early outings, when I oversteered and clipped a parking meter on Fuller Street, leaving a small but nasty gash in the metal above my right rear tire. I was upset about the damage, but Alice shrugged it off.
It was bound to happen sometime. Now you don’t have to worry about it.
She wanted to join me on my practice runs, but I never had the heart to roust her out of bed at five thirty in the morning. She’d been sleeping so deeply the past few months, as if she were repaying a debt to her body. Sometimes I just stood there and watched her breathe, thinking about the fragility of our lives, and how easily things could have been otherwise.
The streets were pretty empty at that time of the morning, no one awake except for a few dog walkers and the guy who delivered the Ledger, rolling by in his old Mazda and flinging newspapers onto the dead lawns, some of which were decorated with blinking reindeer and huge inflatable snowmen. I felt like the king of that sleepy world, perched high in my captain’s chair, driving my mobile home past all the stationary ones, like a dream where everyone was frozen in place but me.
* * *
I always took the same route on these morning drives, winding down through the hills of Poplar Ridge into the flats of Green Meadow. I drove past the high school and felt a pang in my chest as I rumbled by, a swell of premature nostalgia for the institution I’d led for so many years and would soon be leaving. It looked uncharacteristically serene in the light of dawn, a flat-roofed, two-story, pink-and-brown structure, reflected like the Taj Mahal on the surface of the small oval pond that separated the building from the road, and somehow rescued it from pure utilitarian ugliness. We needed a new high school, I understood that better than anyone, but I’d be sorry to see the old one go. So much of my life, so many of my best memories, were contained within those unassuming walls.
Beyond the soccer field, I turned onto Henley Boulevard and cruised through the residential neighborhood affectionately known as “The Ladies”—street after street with names like Carla Drive and Heather Court and Roberta Road. Kyle Dorfman’s mansion was on MaryBeth Way, and I couldn’t help slowing down and gawking like a tourist as I passed.
The house was ridiculous—three misaligned boxes stacked one on top of the other, like a section of an unsolved Rubik’s Cube—but it exerted a strange magnetism. The top story was perched so precariously on the middle one that it seemed as if a strong wind might knock it over. At the same time, the stainless steel exterior gave off an otherworldly, faintly radioactive glow, making the rest of the houses on the street look even more dull and hopeless than they already were. I couldn’t understand why Kyle would want to live like that, glorifying himself at the expense of his neighbors. He must have suffered a terrible narcissistic injury as a child; there was a hole inside of him that could never be filled, no matter how much money and adulation he shoveled in.
I felt sorry for him, I really did.
* * *
At the bottom of Henley, I turned right onto Thurman Avenue, the stretch with Home Depot and Target and the Wagon Wheel Diner, which was actually a Thai place now, though they’d kept the old name and the sign for some reason. Everyone said it was great, though I wasn’t much of a Thai guy myself. A quarter of a mile beyond the Wagon Wheel was Lost Meadow Village, a sprawling garden apartment complex at the edge of town, and another important landmark on my personal map.
Diane Blankenship lived in Unit 17, Apartment C. Whenever I drove by, I felt a powerful, almost dreamlike urge to ring her doorbell, as if it might be possible to travel back in time and pick up where we’d left off so abruptly, Diane greeting me at the door in a translucent slip, pulling me inside, her mouth on mine, her fingers already working on my belt.
I only went there four or five times, and even that was too many, because we were both well-known figures in town, and there was nothing private or secluded about Lost Meadow Village. I always took the trouble to disguise myself, but my disguise was pathetic, just a floppy Australian bush hat and a pair of blue-tinted aviator sunglasses. And I drove there in my own car, the same silver Lexus I parked every weekday in the space that said RESERVED FOR MR. WEEDE.
Of course I got recognized. On my final visit, two sophomores—Alma Chung and Elena Brenner—walked out of Unit 17 just as I was heading up the front path. The girls froze in their tracks.
Mr. Weede? Alma said. What are you doing here?
It was a very good question.
I, uh… I’m visiting my aunt… Muriel. I haven’t seen her in quite a while. She lives in Unit… 18, I believe. I think that’s the number.
I was always a good liar when I needed to be.
This is 17, Elena said. 18’s over there.
So it is. I shook my head, amused by my own incompetence.
My grandmother lives in 17, Alma informed me. Maybe she knows your aunt.
I doubt it, I said. Muriel’s kind of a shut-in.
You know who else lives here? Elena declared. Front Desk Diane.
Is that so? I said, and then caught myself. I mean, I know she lives around here, I just didn’t know which…
She’s a nice person, Alma observed. She always checks on my grandmother.
She’s very nice, I agreed. Well, it’s a pleasure to see you girls. I should, uh… my aunt’s waiting…
They nodded, and headed on their way. I started in the direction of Unit 18, in case they were watching, which of course they were, because kids are always watching. Elena called out, Nice hat, Mr. Weede! and I gave them a friendly wave without turning around.
* * *
I don’t know what I was thinking in those days, how I imagined I’d get away with it.
I guess I wasn’t thinking at all.
Or maybe I wanted to get caught.
To burn it all down.
The only way I can explain it is to say that I was a little crazy back then, a little desperate. I was in my late fifties, bored with my marriage and frustrated with my job. Yes, I was Principal, but that was the last stop on the train. There was nowhere to go after that except out to pasture.
It wasn’t enough. Not even close.
Also, I was getting old. I could feel the early warnings. Little aches and mysterious tingles. Afternoon catnaps at my desk. Trouble putting my socks on. On top of that, my dick had begun letting me down, which was the greatest betrayal of all. Alice told me it didn’t matter to her, and I knew she was telling the truth. But it mattered to me.
It mattered a lot—more than I’d like to admit—so I spoke to my doctor, and at least that problem got fixed. I don’t know what men did back before the medication. Did they just give up, say goodbye to all that? Because that really wasn’t an option for me.