Entry 16
By Steven Paul Lansky
"Rigo and His Wife Afraid "
Banking stories will probably never make headlines. I had an idea that I could save money by opening an account without a fee in another state if I used a minor as the principal owner of the money. I called Rigo from the bank in downtown Burlington and told him that I wanted to open an account with his daughter. I talked to Rigo from the bank with the check in the banker’s hand, and Rigo refused to give me his daughter’s Social Security number.
I pumped myself up and decided to open a smaller account for myself, leave the little girl’s name on the account with mine, and deal with her father later. I could add to the account with a transfer from a distance in a week when I could sit in my own living room and think things over a little more safely. But, the banker said it would cost five dollars a month to keep it open if the balance fell under five hundred dollars. I left the bank dejected.
Later that day I talked to Rigo’s wife on the bus. Through synchronicity I met her on the bus from downtown Burlington to the university area. She had her bicycle on the bus’s bike rack. We exited together. While she walked her bike up the hill, and I paced her, I explained, “Urban Rat (Urban Rat was the painter I used to be married to.) and I had a small sum in a shared account left over from our time together, and to atone for the “sins of the father” I’d like to open an account in Katie’s name and be custodian.”
“It’s tainted money,” she said.
I said, “OK,” and turned and walked away leaving her in mid-sentence.
Rigo had rejected my staying with them this visit when we had talked on the phone before I left Cincinnati. He had invited me, learned from Dad of my medicine change, and detected a change in me by the emails I had sent about Alias Grace, the Margaret Atwood novel I was reading. This historical novel was set in Toronto, upstate New York, and the surrounding region. A psychiatrist in the novel had traveled by train to Kingston, Ontario in the 1850s to visit a girl who was incarcerated in the Penitentiary there. The girl had taken a ferry from Toronto across Lake Ontario when she and her companion were escaping the law earlier in time but later in the novel. An alleged murderess, the girl in the story had changed her name to relocate from Canada to New York State after serving her time. I wanted to meet Margaret Atwood in Toronto. As Rigo caught wind of this his attitude toward me worsened. I had started to share, via email, some of my ideas about the novel; I was researching novel writing, and looking at patterns of behavior and events trying to uncover connections between science and craft. There was a waitress at a Cincinnati bistro near my home that I suspected was a relocated felon. It was one of those things. I had watched her mannerisms, studied her northern accent, and surreptitiously surveyed her green tattoos, but I let on to no one. Keeping such suspicions inside burned in a small flame.
I was uncovering real life situations that outdid the novel by Atwood, yet I had no confidant. The trip was a forced thing. I felt myself reluctantly pulled, like I had been to New York. Risk attracted me, and the girls in Cincinnati were also increasing the edge. I heard a call, I believed it came from above. Rigo offered to buy out my ticket so that I wouldn’t have to come. I was sure he didn’t want me to see what he was up to. I believed he was out of work. He claimed he worked for a pharmaceutical company doing statistical research from home. He called it telecommuting. At the time, I was convinced that the other reason he was rejecting me was Dad’s communication with him about me. We had planned to sail together on his boat.
“I never want to set foot on that fucking boat,” I said.
He didn’t bristle. He listened. Before he had lobbied for canceling the visit, I had ordered a lute off the Internet with instructions to have it shipped to Rigo’s. We had had a joke some years ago about “the loot.” I had suggested that he might make a lute. He had built a wooden boat and was bragging about his carpentry skills. Rigo had never tried to build an instrument. My plan was to meet the lute, impress my niece with it, and then travel back without using my flight, rather by train through Canada. I wanted to visit Montreal in summer, trace my way to Toronto, through Belleville and then Chicago. I figured just having a lute and being able to play it a little would help my reputation as a poet and make it more likely that I could get a job as a university professor. I had talked to some of my colleagues at the university about possibly meeting Margaret Atwood. All in all I was convinced I was becoming an increasingly responsible and competent educator and writer.
I believed the tune up in Trenton State Hospital was all I had needed and was not aware that I needed to be back on haldol. I had not seen much of my psychiatrist. My appointments were infrequent because they were through my student health services and my home is forty miles from the university. I told myself there wasn’t much he could do now, anyway. I had one visit with him after Trenton and he listened to my explanation that the problem involved absorption and sedation. The look on his face, quizzical concern, his head turned partly away, “You’ve been through something,” he said. “Geodon does not have as much sedative effect as haldol, so it is better to take it in the morning, rather than at bedtime. In Trenton the doctor had me taking it twenty minutes after breakfast, so that the food would help with absorption.”
This was in the research literature I had read. But, my psychiatrist said nothing about it. He was from Eastern Europe, spoke with an accent and was also on dialysis, consequently he looked frail.
The regular counseling sessions with my Case Manager, Carl, were not going so well. Carl told me later that he knew I needed to be back on haldol before I left. I’m not sure if he meant before I left for the New York trip, or the Vermont trip. I was oblivious. As I left Rigo’s wife, I tried to let go of the anger. My whole body ached from hiking with heavy packs. Tolerance for physical pain from exercise was much higher on Geodon than haldol. By this time I was doing regular calisthenics and walking daily with increasing vigor.
I had no desire to physically hurt Rigo but when I saw him walking toward me the concern and anguish on his face moved me. I felt like crying. I contained my anger. He met me with my box in his arms. He handed it over without a word. I carried the box on my shoulder, shifting it from side to side, and sometimes on my back, to the Lang House, a nice Bed & Breakfast where I had a room for the night.
When I had first arrived, a day before, I hiked all over town, arriving at Rigo’s, exhausted sweaty and angry, pissed in his backyard when no one answered the door, and left when Rigo arrived by car, after asking him to help me find a place to stay. He declined. His garden was full of weeds and leaf lettuce. He told me the nearest Bed & Breakfast, but the young woman clerk said there was no vacancy.
(Finding lodging in Vermont during Nationalistic Festivals is a tricky business at best. Don’t come before the fourth, because the rooms are sold out. If you come after and the holiday is mid-week, look for an expensive weekend.)
I climbed the carpeted stair, keyed my room, Fisher 204, and checked the box for damage. The carton was a little dented by the pressure of riding on my back and shoulder. I carefully ripped the clear packing tape with my strong hands, pulled out some medium-sized bubble-wrap and the case inside was fine, deep blue, with two combination locks. The locks were set at 888 and pinned with plastic tabs. The brass rim around the case makes a lot of sense, because, it is a very odd shape and if it were to ride in a cargo hold it might rub against other objects.
The abacus beads
are quiet. Geese turn north, wind
blows silent, warm air.
Black and white water on rail.
Fisher lives by his own account.
Mind goes faster. Mind
and body are nothing, not
real. Fisher’s survival
a measure of the planet’s.
Spirit’s health a chemical
renga.
Walking Burlington City is amazing. I have seen so much since my arrival by plane yesterday. I’ve been in Chittenden County around thirty-three hours. Really it wasn’t yesterday, because today is beyond what tomorrow was then. I’ve showered twice, slept three times, or was it two? Eaten one breakfast, one lunch, one dinner, and had three snacks. I imagine I’ve walked between six and nine miles, but without a pedometer, I have no accurate measure. I think I could explain the pattern I took through the town, twisting along, learning the streets, but it would probably take an hour and a half to recall it and I’m sure I’d leave out at least one detail. Most curiously, the area has a concentration of churches, different materials for roadways, and a large number of men and women walking pedigreed dogs of a broad range of breeds. I’ve seen Weimaraners, dachshunds, Rottweilers, standard poodles, blond and black Labradors, a young golden retriever, and a little shit dog guarding a car even though the driver was in it. The young male Weimaraner was nicely cut, but too small to be a hunter at this age.
I’ve only been inside one of the churches, the First Baptist, with an old stone exterior, which looks better outside than in. There are two Methodist churches, one I spotted after jumping a fence coming out of a graveyard, following a few punks who were motoring along like Rigo and I used to do when we were teenagers. The church was a small white paneled building resembling the houses around it, and could have been a dwelling at one time or another. The second Methodist church has a stone foundation, windows, and a steeple that shames everyone who cares to be shamed by church buildings, and the lawn looked good, too.
The lake today was choppy, the wind seemed to be shifting in the late afternoon with the aloft air coming from the north or northwest, while all the flags in the morning were blowing solidly from the southwest. I saw a wonderful rooster weathervane atop a church steeple and it moved as I did, as if I was followed by the wind. I don’t remember which denomination that church was, but I circumnavigated it in around thirty minutes, late in the day before I had salmon filet and sautéed green beans with Pellegrino sparkling water at a streetside table. I thought about how I might get up to the top of the tallest building in Burlington to see what I could see, perhaps across Lake Champlain. My imagination burned with that desire for awhile, but every door I tried was locked.
Today was my day. Twenty-three years ago, I had supper in a jail in Baltimore before being shipped to a city hospital for injection, cuffs, and painful masturbation, while a girl wailed in another locked cell. (An embarrassing loss of control swept my very being then.) I didn’t piss on the rubber mat in that yellow room with “CIA thugs” scratched into the paint near floor level. I was tortured. By comparison, this was a day that felt remarkably successful. My new shoes are the key to this travel experience. I remember that painful day, and the worst part was the bleeding seeping from the balls of both feet, my right foot especially. I discovered a Rolls Royce earlier that day. Today, I am without a motorcar (it’s at my mechanic’s shop in Cincinnati awaiting my call), but with my credit cards and a little persuasion I could easily rent a car and drive anywhere in the USA. I digress. The dinner was good, expensive, and competently served. I’d eat there again, but not tomorrow.
The pavé in the walking district has some interesting city names. None of them are in Vermont, and it confuses me to see all this mixed energy in a village. Bricks are imprinted with the names Pnom Penh, Bogota, and other points in far off villages. The police on mountain bicycles are interesting to watch, as they prepare for the teenagers, and gather in trios, then ride off in different directions. I don’t think they carry guns. I have yet to see anyone handcuffed like I saw in Cincinnati. Actually, I haven’t even seen an arrest. I like it that way. The last time I was arrested, the arresting officers were Amtrak employees, and they never admitted to anyone that I was arrested.
Writing about Cincinnati cops is dangerous business, they don’t like reporters, they don’t want to see a man look at a docket, and whether you are at work or play, they want you to keep your eyes shut, and not say anything to anyone about what they are doing.
Glacial movement created the hills around here. Behind the Bed & Breakfast is a carriage house. My room is so special. There are rooster and hen sculptures, boxes, paintings, even a doorstop. The furniture is classic, though the bed looks like a tortured colonial, I think it’s antique but it might be imitation, my eye is bad for this kind of thing and I don’t give a damn anyway. It is better than sleeping at Rigo’s and it’s all I could find within walking distance of all the resources I need to keep all my concerns on target, and within my own focus. There’s Internet at the library, and at a local, centrally located, twenty-four-seven, copy center. That place is further down the hill than the location where I’m writing this. I wonder what the elevation is where I sit, on this beaten olive green four poster, looking at this screen as the full moon is high in the sky. I have two night stands, a dresser, and an odd piece of furniture that is support for an ugly fake plant that probably has a microphone in it. The rug on the floor is red, pink, off-white and very pale green, and the pattern is regal as hell. The floor has been refinished, as has all the woodwork. The Lang House is a place where comfort is as important to me as the next guy. It has been here for awhile, and is well protected.
As I said, the hills around here were created by ice and stone and earth and laws that are so powerful that I’m glad I live in an age where humans decide more about earth movement than nature. Painfully, I haven’t been able to make much in terms of observations of the local flora. Tree types barely register. In my current state I haven’t the lexicon to give them life.
On the pavé the stones are being removed a few at a time to make room for the enlarging trunks. Maybe Eden will grow out of brick? There are a lot of little birds that surround me when I sit on benches in the center of the city. If I sat still, they would light, chirp and cock their little heads from side to side. Seagulls seemed to enjoy soaring, coming down between the buildings along the corridor where the trees come up from the pavé. The bricked in area seems to run north to south, or south to north, but it’s hard to tell if it’s recent brick, or if the roadway is getting younger.
The pavé is supposed to be a walking path, but a lot of cyclists use it, even though there are limits to how they can. Weaving and swerving, many end up walking their machines. I’d hate to have to ride a road like that on tubulars. I’ve only read about Paris Roubaix, but it must be brutal to be seen on cobbles for a whole day. The photographs of bloody heads are enough to keep bicycles in storage for years at a time. Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about this year’s Tour de France. According to publicity, the race starts in a day and a half. With the time difference, I think it’s actually sooner. The pre-race favorite is a year and a half younger than any of the great cyclists who have won five tours. He’s the defending champion, and the VeloNews claims he has lost weight preparing for this year’s campaign. He is a Texan. The tour route is shorter than last year and has more climbing and descending. I’ve looked over the general description of the stages on the Internet and I’m concerned that the temperature variance this year will make descents more important than ascents. The light climbers will be in trouble if they get behind the front. We’ll see, it’s only speculation on my part.
Today’s stage racers don’t ride the Classics. These are single day races that are not the endurance events that stage races are, but they usually have some extreme environmental challenge. Eddy Merckx was the best cyclist of his era in all events. That’s why Eddy Merckx will always be the greatest in my heart. The mountains in France still have glacial movement.
I think here in Vermont it’s all settled. Except the winters are cold and frigid and the lake might move the earth’s layers around the edge of the city. They say there’s a monster in the lake here, there’s even a song about it, Pete Sutherland, a New York fiddler is known for saying it’ll come back someday.
Steve,
Sorry it took so long to respond. We have been away out in western Canada and just got back yesterday. I was just reading in the paper this morning about Mordecai Richler’s death and saw that Margaret Attwood was very shaken up about it, so I do not think this is going to be a good time to contact her.
It also turns out that we are not going to be here next week. We were planning to go away for the weekend but now plan on stretching that into next week. Sorry about that. One hotel downtown that I believe is reasonable (many in Toronto are not) is the Executive Motor Hotel at 621 King Street West (416-504-7441). Also, I know there are lots of B&B’s, only I don’t know where they are but you may try www.toronto.com for listings. That site might also have a subway map.
Sorry we will miss you, but perhaps we will see you at St. Joe’s later this summer (we are heading up later in July for 2 weeks).
Regards,
Alan
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