It seems to me that if a novel isn’t about a man and a woman then it ought to be about why it’s not about a man and a woman. I’ve come to this conclusion rather slowly over the years.

Still, the thought irritates me. It’s a little too pat. Wasn’t this just the kind of thing Chekhov liked to say?

Appropriately, this was what played in my mind as I drove up interstate 93 toward Lebanon on Tuesday. I was trying to come to an understanding of the character I had created for Izaac Andrews without insinuating my own experience into the situation…No, that’s too strong. Insinuation is fine. You have to write what you know. What I did not want was for the situation in my own life to blind my understanding of what might have happened to Izaac. He was becoming a much more sympathetic character than I had originally imagined him to be.

I gave up the morning hours when I normally write so that I could drive to New Hampshire, but I couldn’t help myself. Sibelius was in the CD player and Chekhov was on my brain. Kind of a win-lose situation. I’d rather be thinking about Kipling or Twain but they seldom explored the dynamic between men and women. Yeats perhaps. Yeats was good at asking such questions, but he never had any answers. Maybe that’s why he stuck to poetry. It seemed to me there was no way for me to write a novel about the murder of Mary Andrews without understanding the relationship with her father Izaac, and as much as I preferred their company, Mr. Twain and Mr. Kipling were not about to offer me any secrets. Maybe Mr. Trollope. But more likely I needed Mr. Chekhov.

I had called Gary the day before. With Thanksgiving coming I figured to get this trip out of the way as soon as possible. The message on his answering machine sounded like it was about worn out. You could tell it was one of the old tape models. At least I had warned him I was coming.

He called back about ten minutes later.

“John?”

“Hello Gary.”

“John. Is that you? Sonavabitch! How are you?”

“Okay. You?”

“Never better. Great. I’m happy for the first time in my life, John. You should try it at least once before you die. It’s that good.”

“I hear you. You sound good.”

There was a brief silence then where we both were thinking how to proceed. I had already bet my money on the fact that he had guessed my purpose and was going to make me tell him.

He didn’t beat around the old bush, “So what made you call right out of the blue?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“What about?”

“Zoe.”

“I don’t want to talk about Zoe, John. If you want to talk about the price of rice in Canton, I’m your man, John. You know I like to talk to you. But not about Zoe.”

So then it was a matter of my approach. He would be ahead of me the whole way, so there was no point in being discreet or indirect.

“That’s not like you, Gary. You were always the one for plain truth. I’ve thought about calling you before, you know, but I have a suspicion you’ve never thought once about calling me. You walked away five years ago, Gary. I haven’t heard a peep out of you in five years. What’s up with that?”

I wondered what he was thinking then. He speaks quickly and seldom hesitates. He hesitated again.

“It’s a new life, John. I have a new life. I just cut the ropes. That’s all. I cut all of them at one time because I knew it was the only way. And it worked.”

I told him, “Well, I guess you should have left the country Gary. New Hampshire isn’t far enough.”

“I’m not trying to hide, John. Zoe knows where I am. I’m close enough so the kids could visit if they wanted to. That was the plan. They seldom do. Todd was up a couple of times. Sally never bothered. What do you think’s up with that? Heh? You think dear Zoe might be responsible for that?”

I answered the question as best I could.

“I don’t think so. I think the kids feel betrayed. I’ve talked to Sally. You hurt her pretty bad.”

That got a silent break. He had to give that more than the easy dismissal.

“I think of her. I’ve called. She won’t come to the phone anymore, so I stopped.”

“She says she wrote you.”

“Once. One letter. I wrote her back.”

“I saw your letter, Gary.”

He jumped on the words, “What’s that all about? Why are you looking at my private letters?”

“Because Sally showed it to me. She came around to my place one evening and talked to me. She’s a good kid.”

That was something he did not know and it caught him off-guard.

“Sally? By herself? She’s only sixteen. What did she come about? Is she having a problem with Zoe?”

“She wanted to talk about you.”

He was still off balance.

“I should call her.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Why. I’m her father. I have a right to call.”

I drew the picture. “After five years, that may be a little shaky. Why don’t you write her a letter that’s longer than a paragraph. 33 words. She’s counted them. She’d written the number in the margin like a teacher’s mark.”

“Look. John. This is none of your business.”

“How do you figure that?”

“I don’t want you interfering in this.”

“Gary. Sally came to me. She needed someone to talk to. But you know, in her heart she’s hoping that I’ll talk to you. She’s looking for some way to get through to you. And now I have this.” I was sitting at the table in my room when he called back. The papers were right there in an envelope in front of me. “Zoe gave me some papers she wants me to give you. She didn’t want to embarrass you by having a local Sheriff do it. You have to give her credit for that. I thought I’d drive up there tomorrow and get it done.”

He was answering loudly before I had finished.

“A subpoena! A fucking subpoena! You want to drive up here and serve me with papers? What? You’re working for the court now, John?”

“No. As a favor for Zoe.”

“Is that why Sally came to talk with you? Are you hanging around Zoe now? Is that it? You got lonely after Mary Ellen dumped you and you’re bumping Zoe?”

I kept my own voice on the level.

“That’s not like you Gary. You said you were happy for the first time in your life. That was not the remark of a happy man.”

“Well?”

I could see how it might matter to his interpretation of things. He deserved an answer.

“No. She’s a friend, Gary. I met Zoe the day after I met you. Remember? The greatest double-date in history. Just because you walked away, doesn’t mean the rest of the world stops.”

He took a breath on that. His voice dropped. “Sorry…I’m sorry…That was stupid. You’re right. Beneath this happy shell is the same old Gary…But I prefer the shell.”

Gary Apple was a pre-med student at B.U. when I met him. Despite discovering Chekhov in high school, and showing a considerable talent in several high school plays, he’d decided to become a doctor, just like his dad. It seemed like a good idea at the time, I suppose. Gary is a deeply compassionate fellow, but doctoring was not to be. And money doesn’t interest him. His own dad had made that possible.

He had married Zoe on an impulse. I guess it takes two impulses. But in his case I think he just wanted to be taken seriously. Zoe takes everything seriously. Even the weather. And his father wouldn’t talk to him when he turned his back on medical school. All that became one of the keys to our friendship. We would talk about our fathers. We would talk about our wives. We could talk about the dynamics of the human condition. Naturally, Chekhov had a lot more to say about fathers, and women and wives than Kipling, so Gary did most of the talking.

It was in pre-med that Gary got into research on mental disorders and brain functioning and from there he had drifted into computer science. He got his Ph.D. at M.I.T in three years. He’s that smart. For his thesis he wrote a software program that duplicated specific brain functions and enabled doctors to identify where a patient’s brain was misfiring.

At that point he took a teaching job at M.I.T.
Zoe was pregnant and settling down was the responsible thing to do. That was the 1980’s.

Our friendship was based on a common disrespect for authority in the beginning, I think. I didn’t like Chekhov and he didn’t like Kipling, so literature didn’t play much of a part. But I liked to give him my stories to read. He was never kind. I needed that. And for his own reasons, he was always willing to read them. I didn’t question my good fortune. A keen-eyed critic is hard to find.

All that came to an end for the first time when I re-enlisted in the army. Gary is what I would call a violent pacifist. The friendship was not the same after I got back, but we saw each other often. As it happened, Mary Ellen and Zoe got along better than we did at that time.

He lives up a mountain road now on land that faces southwest to a turn in the Connecticut River overlooking neat rectangular fields. The river is dark at the center and gray with ice at the edges. The umber of fencing and uncut weeds edged the borders of the fields through a blank white tablet of recent snow. Vermont highlands, darkened with leafless trees, walled the river at the far side. It’s a sweet spot. There was no name on the mailbox at the gate. Just the number. The gate was closed and I had to get out to open it.

About 200 yards of icy gravel got me beyond a row of cedars and there was the house and Gary too, as well as a yellow Labrador retriever, standing outside waiting for me.

It’s a log cabin with the difference being that it has two narrow floors running along the edge of a steep rise. I could tell that every window in the place had a view of the valley.

A smaller pick-up, a bright red Ford Ranger, was parked alongside Gary’s old Suburban. That was the same thing he was riding when I last saw him. I figured the other truck looked like it might belong to someone else.

He was smiling, at least. He took off his glove to shake my hand.

“Time for coffee?”

“Sure.”

“Eggs? I’ve got fresh eggs. I’ve got sausage made by a fellow down the road. Milly bakes all our bread. Best bread I ever had.”

I was nodding at his every word. I said, “Milly?”

He smiled.

“I can’t live alone, John. You know me. I’m not that kind of animal.”

At that moment I had what is often called these days ‘an epiphany.’ Something greater than a simple realization or a discovery. I think I understood something. This often happens to me in conjunction with food. Or beer.

The kitchen was located at one end of the house with windows on three sides. There was a twelve foot ceiling, and a round metal chimney at the center growing out of a wide copper hood. The one room was about three or four times the size of my whole apartment. I sat at a trestle table by the largest window on the river side and watched him cook.

He says, “I had my oatmeal this morning about six. We’ll call this lunch.”

He seemed to be pleased at the chance to cook up the meal. He asked me about my kids as his hands played across a gas griddle. I’ve seen him do this over a grill in the back yard of the house in Newton during family get-togethers. My Matty and his Sally are still buddies, even though they live miles apart. I’ve paid the bill for the texting. They even went to the same summer camp.

I stepped badly with my first question, “Where’s your wife?”

With her truck outside, I assumed she’d be there. I was assuming too much, of course.

He did not even look up from his work at the stove.

“We’re not married, John. We’re like…what? Private contractors. Milly is the daughter of an old hippie down in Claremont. She got tired of waking up with a buzz every morning and left home when she was sixteen. She was working weekends at a diner in Littleton back when I was looking for this place. She sold me my chickens about a month after I set my trailer up on the ridge behind here.” He pointed out the window at the far side, up a rising field, snow whitened, and stubbled with the remains of a corn crop. “Then she decided to stick around to collect the eggs. We get along. But she thought she’d leave us alone given the subject matter. She does what she wants.”

And then I stepped wrong again, “Where do you work?”

He looked up at me for that one. “I don’t. I play. I do what I want.”

“Very nice.”

“Yes. Very nice.”

That caused a bit of quiet while I studied the room and the view and made the rather obvious assessment that this was all, indeed, very nice. And clearly a lot of work by itself.

He set two oversized plates down at the long table, along with two mugs of black coffee and pulled up his own chair close so that we were only a couple of feet apart.

“You know, I think I’m becoming a philosopher, John.” He smiled at his pronouncement. “You probably remember my disparaging of philosophers.”

I repeated it pretty much word for word from memory. “Idiots who think their assholes are singularities.”

He laughed at hearing his own joke retold.

“Right. Well, I’ve gone over to the dark side, you might say. But what I‘m playing with up here is trying to understand what the hell is happening to civilization. You know–as in: is all this shit necessary?”

I figured Gary was trying to push the conversation into something he could manage. He’s smarter than I am. I’ve always known that much. But he doesn’t digest his knowledge very well.

The sausage was incredible. The bread was fantastic. Whatever argument he wanted to have, he’d already won.

I said, “Yeah. I think it’s necessary. You can’t just keep consuming without producing a certain amount of shit.”

This did not seem like an appropriate subject matter over such good food.

He says, “No. Listen. You know this. Philosophy—real philosophy–grows from a ‘love of knowledge.’ Right? But most ‘philosophies’ discourage the pursuit of knowledge in favor of perfecting ‘systems.’ Systems. We’re talking a set of theories here, or methods that simplify the categorization of knowledge or keep what’s learned within certain proscribed bounds. Pretty typical of this, are systems that use math as the key. I know you never liked math. We’ve had that conversation. But you’ll like this.” He had both hands in the air now. “The love of math is really an appreciation for the clean hard edges of the numbers and the absolute finish. The sum. The reproducible result, whether it’s useful or not. The sum becomes the goal. A philosophical theory put forward without the ‘proof’ of a sturdy mathematical equation is not even considered a serious challenge…And that, as you well know, is not much different than most theology. A Moslem philosopher has no interest in the work of his Christian counterpart any more than a mathematician has for a…novelist. And with mathematicians, the effort to acquire knowledge—to comprehend the world about us–has long since been abandoned for the pursuit of confirmation–a translation of every aspect of existence into numbers similar to the reduction of data down to simple 0’s and 1’s for computation. And, as you already know too well, what occurs then is little more than a census—an accounting of the angels on the head of the pin.”

He took a breath. I took the opportunity. “And as I’ve said to you before, why bother?”

Gary shook is head with a quick impatience. “But I’ve been thinking about knowledge in a different way now. Like pieces of genetic code. All a matter of sequences and context. Not O’s and 1’s but some more flexible combination like A, U, G, C. Sequences that work together–”

“You’re losing me Gary. I think you should have stayed at M.I.T.”

He looked up from an empty plate. “It’s a very comfortable life, you know. Very secure. Bought and paid for. The University is the ultimate womb.”

I asked, “Is that why you left?”

He nodded, “Yes. Born again you might say.”

“And life is good.”

“Better than good. I’ve actually felt moments of happiness. Glee. Ecstasy. And the sex is better too.”

I threw my next question out just to redirect things a bit. “Don’t you think you ought to be more involved in the world.”

“I am. Totally.”

“But you walked away from a good life by most standards. You walked away from your family. From your friends.”

He smiled a moment and looked at me as if I should be smarter than that.

He said, “Friendships are like love affairs, really. More than people seem to think. You start off with a certain infatuation. You like the sound of a voice. A mannerism. You start paying attention. What you see strikes some primordial chord. You know? You like the person. It’s like our different standards of beauty. It’s not so easy as saying we get it from our parents. I’ve met your mother, John, remember? She was nothing like Mary Ellen. I met your father. He was a lot like you, but he didn’t like me from the first. Remember. Anyway. You struck me as an interesting guy. At least that. And something else. I always knew where you were. No guessing. And then—“ he stopped and looked at me hard enough to make his words stick. “And then you re-enlisted. I couldn’t believe it. I still can’t believe it. I understand why you did it the first time. But what kind of idiot would re-enlist?”

I stepped right into that, “Those were your exact words, you know. ‘What kind of idiot would re-enlist.’ Do you remember what I answered?”

He didn’t have to think about it. “Yes I do. You said, ‘This kind.’ And I could never take you seriously after that. I’ll give Mary Ellen that much. She tried to stick with you after that. Zoe wouldn’t have given me that kind of slack. You know. It made no sense. It was like I couldn’t trust you after that. And you weren’t the same then anyway. By the time I finally walked away, John, our friendship was a long time over.”

I nodded at that, “I know. That was why I didn’t try to contact you. Zoe said you were having your mid-life crisis. I had my own to worry about. But basically, what it came down to for me was the simple realization that my answer meant nothing to you. You had no idea who I was, and you didn’t really care, so any pretense of friendship was false.”

He nodded as if we were in obvious agreement. It seemed to me he had been thinking about this very thing. At least rethinking it since my phone call the day before.

“True enough…” He sat back in his chair and scanned the room around us. “See this, John. I built this with my own hands. Every post. Every beam. I cut the trees down right back there on the side of that hill where the sheep are now. You can still see the stumps in the snow if you look. I lived in a trailer for two years while the wood dried. I designed it. Everything here except for Milly’s curtains and Milly’s underwear on the line by the fireplace in the living room is mine. It doesn’t get any better than this. Do you think Zoe would have made it through one black fly season up here? Heh? No. Because you don’t really know her either. But I do.”

This was a subtle attack. I was willing to argue this out. “Maybe. Maybe not. But she’s a friend. You don’t have to know it all to be a friend.”

He shook his head at me like I was a fool. “Women don’t make good friends John. Maybe to another women, but not to a guy. They do things you can’t begin to fathom. Mary-Ellen should have taught you that much. You used to say she was your friend. Remember. But she never understood what you were about.”

I came back with the easy punch. “No. You’re right. But then, some of my friends didn’t do a lot better on that score.” It wasn’t necessary.

“Right. Well, I was mistaken. I thought I did. I made assumptions. I thought you were after something more in life than a job.”

This was vintage Gary. His elitist disdain for manual labor was an old issue. He might have rethought all that while building this house. But somehow, in his own mind, he could separate the labor of others from his own sense of sweat.

“Jobs pay the bills, Gary. You’re smart, but you were fortunate as well. Like the man said, if it’s a choice between being lucky or being smart, you want to be lucky. But you got both. You ought to be happier than you are. You have this,” I waved my hand at what surrounded us. “Why aren’t you happier?”

The pretense of a smile was gone, “I’m not stupid. I knew she’d want more in the end. That’s another thing about women, isn’t it. That’s the way they all are. Zoe’s been that way all her life. That’s why I set the retirement account up the way I did. I accepted that from the beginning. Zoe gets 75%. She got more than her share. Did you know that? I can’t help it if she lost her job. She should have seen that coming. I even warned her about that. And now the dividends aren’t what they used to be anyway. I told her: sell that damn house. It’s in her name. She doesn’t need to live in Newton. But she wants to be close to her friends. So there she is. And she can’t afford it. And she wants more from me.”

I made no attempt to deal with all that. I just listened.

He was angry again, the same way he had sounded on the phone. With every word he leaned closer. “Well, I’ll spend every last dime in the retirement account for the best fuckin’ lawyer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if I have to and she won’t get a damn penny more out of it. She won’t have anything. But I’ll have this. This is in a trust. I’ll eat my own tomatoes and cook on a wood stove if I have to. And if she comes for this I’ll kill whoever she sends to take it. I’ll die here. You can tell her that.”

The pacifist had spoken.

I said, “I’ll tell her. But can I have another piece of bread first? I like Milly’s bread.”

He sat back. He smiled again, “Yeah. We have plenty of bread.”

I had hung my coat over the back of the chair and I pulled the manila envelope with Zoe’s court papers from the pocket and put it out on the table. When he came back with the cutting board and the rest of the loaf, he picked the envelope up without opening it and held it in one hand silently like a piece of evidence before dropping it to the table again.

He said, “So John. What the hell have you been doing since your divorce? Is that Connie Mac’s name I see on your car door? You work for Connie now?”

I cut a slab of butter for the bread. He got up again and grabbed a bottle of honey off a shelf and set it in front of me, before cutting another piece for himself. I said, “Sort of. It’s his company. I took a partnership you might say. I’m just another guard, really. Mostly I get to sit at small desks in badly designed lobbies and ask people for their identification.”

He poured more coffee in my cup.

“Great! What a waste. John. What a fuckin’ waste! You were going to write great novels. Remember. What happened to your New Hampshire school teacher? Ely Morgan wasn’t it? What happened to Ely. You leave him in that damned cornfield?”

This surprised me. “You remember Ely?”

“Yeah. I liked Ely. I told you, all he needed—“

“Yeah. I remember. James Crockett said the same thing. Maybe you’re both right. I just wanted him to be a bit truer than that. That’s all. Why does every novel have to have a romance. What about Huckleberry Finn? Moby Dick?”

He shrugged, “Would either of those get published today? We’re in a lesser age, John. If there are enough explosions and the cars are fast enough I guess. But Mr. Chekhov would agree with Crockett. It’s all about love or it’s all about money. It’s the only way to tell the good from the bad.”

Wasn’t there a contradiction in Gary’s view of life? Or was it just the old Irish conundrum of Mr. Yeats: love was the matter, whether the woman was a muse, a succubus or a wife. Chekhov never dared such questions unless he had the answer. Like a good mathematician.

I took a writing class once. I lasted three or four sessions. Less than a month. I caught on to the instructor’s game and it made the whole exercise impossible. The son-of-a-bitch was a Chekhov geek. He knew nothing himself. Everything he said was a rip-off of the old Russian. I didn’t need to be paying $50 a week for that. I’d already read my share of Mr. Chekhov by then, courtesy of Gary Apple.

There are some days I think Chekhov is the greatest writer not named Shakespeare, and other days I believe he got what he deserved—a secondary part in a science fiction fantasy.

As it is, I debated a good bit of that over again on the ride back from New Hampshire. I wasn’t thinking about Izaak Andrews anymore. I was thinking about giving my sad Ely a wife after all. Someday. Maybe even next summer. But only after I’d figured out what happened to poor Mary Andrews. Then I would try re-writing my civil war novel. At least I could give sad Ely somebody he left behind who might offer him a sense of direction. Especially true north.