Bigfoot Dreams Page 5

  When six-year-old Teddy Fedders’s friends asked him to bring his Howdy Doody doll out to play, little did the Michigan tot suspect that his beloved puppet would become the latest victim in a wave of violence aimed against America’s best-loved dummy.

  In a schoolyard not far from his posh Bloomfield Hills home, little Teddy watched in anguish as the marionette—a legacy from his Dad, killed in a car crash three years before—was tied to a stake and doused with gasoline and burned.

  When Teddy’s Mom, Ariella Fedders, 29, pressed charges, she learned that this apparently isolated incident was actually the latest in a Howdy Doody crime wave culminating in last spring’s raid on a Cleveland DJ’s collection of Howdy memorabilia. Nationwide, collectors are fearing for the safety of their Howdy Doody holdings. There is some concern that news of this bizarre violence may be spreading via the same kiddie rumor underground responsible for last year’s whisper campaign alleging the presence of rat hairs in Burger King products.

  Where did this story come from? Vera watched Howdy Doody as a kid, but was never much of a fan. Nor does she associate him, as some do, with all the sweetness of childhood, with those last precious moments of afternoon TV before Mom called you for dinner.

  Rather than pursue this, Vera drifts off till she catches herself staring into the trash basket at the letter from the ultrasound victim in West Myra, Illinois. Then she rolls in more paper and types: HOUSEWIFE CHARGES ASTRAL RAPE.

  In a ground-breaking criminal suit, an Illinois housewife has charged a neighborhood man with assaulting her via astral projection.

  Anything would be better than knowing where this story came from. Vera’s considering another trip to the coffee room when the red light on her telephone blinks on.

  “Okay,” says Carmen. “They’re here.”

  THE TABLEAU IN SHAEFER’S office reminds Vera of moments at parties when conversation dies and you look around and see nothing but other groups who’ve just run out of things to say. All four men—Dan Esposito at Frank Shaefer’s desk, Shaefer standing in the far corner, the two lawyers seated at opposite ends of the chapped Naugahyde couch—look slightly stunned, motionless except for the younger lawyer, whose knees pump as he dandles his briefcase in his lap.

  Vera aims her thin little “Hi” at Dan Esposito, whose tan, handsome, slightly hangdog face is the easiest to look at. Tilted back in his chair, he seems at once weary and wholly at ease; if he were driving a truck, one elbow would be out the window.

  “Vera,” he says. “Come in.”

  Once at an office Christmas party, Vera drank too much punch and found herself standing very close to Dan Esposito, who had himself drunk enough to want to tell her about the camping trips he takes with his wife every fall, out into what he called the heartland to see if This Week was keeping in touch. As he spoke, Vera pictured a misty campground beside some Idaho lake. Gazing into the water, Mrs. Esposito is shredding a cigarette filter and wishing they’d gone to Europe like the Shaefers, while Dan sits in a lawn chair with his sleeves rolled up, his fine hands over his eyes, straining to hear what the folks in the camper next door are saying about UFO sightings and life after death.

  “Vera, you know Mr. Goldblum,” says Dan, and though Vera has no memory of the bald, gnomish man who rises to greet her, she nods and attempts a smile.

  “And this is Mr. Goldblum’s partner. Leonard Villanova, Vera Perl.” The younger lawyer unfolds himself from the couch and walks towards Vera with steps that seem rather too small for his age and height. His hand is soft and damp, and Vera can hardly mumble hello for trying not to laugh at the thought that this is the kind of guy who makes you think the Victorians were right about excessive masturbation showing up in your face. “Pleased to meet you,” says Leonard, a good ten seconds after it’s appropriate, then backs up and sits down.

  Vera would like to sit, too, but short of wedging herself between the lawyers, there’s no way. Furnished in dentist’s-waiting-room chic, Shaefer’s office makes no concession to comfort or beauty, not unless you count the prodigious collection of monkeys covering their eyes, ears, mouths, and nearly every inch of shelf space. At their first interview, when Vera complimented him on it—and really, you had to say something—he’d spoken with great reverence of how Gandhi received thousands of similar statues from admirers all over the world. Surely there’s some hidden meaning beyond the obvious irony in the editor of This Week amassing these symbols of perfect discretion and tact, but for the life of her, Vera can’t think what it is.

  Now Frank spins toward her with a folding chair, which he snaps out like a matador flicking a cape. Above the rumpled shirt, the straining buttons, Frank Shaefer’s face is round as the moon and his blue eyes peer out of it with a baby’s astonishment. In a forties movie or a better world, Frank would live forever in some newsroom, Mr. City Desk chomping stogies and clacking out datelines on an old-fashioned Royal. Instead he’s the eighties version, forced by an early coronary to give up cigars. Vera’s always thought the heart attack had less to do with nicotine than with Frank’s conversational style—firing off questions, then answering them for you. Now she wishes he’d ask her where Solomon is so maybe she could find out.

  She and Solomon should have come in together. Waiting for him again recalls a bad party kept going by the hope that some new arrival may yet change everything. Finally they hear his cameras clanking out in the hall and turn toward the sound. Solomon lurches in and bounces around shaking hands. Then Shaefer shakes open a copy of This Week with much the same motion he’d used on the folding chair and says, “Okay, what’s the story on this?”

  FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH FLOWS IN BROOKLYN BACK YARD. Vera remembers the headline from three or four weeks back. But when Solomon passes it on to her, she rereads every word, partly for the details and partly because she knows no one will bother her till she’s finished:

  Soon after a Brooklyn brother and sis started their sidewalk lemonade biz, neighbors began claiming that the youngsters’ brand was having some surprising side effects.

  Business boomed for 8-year-old Joshua Green and his sister Megan, 6, when word spread that their 5-cents-a-glass wonder drink was curing satisfied customers of chronic ills and restoring youth and vitality throughout their Flatbush neighborhood. In an exclusive This Week interview, the children’s mom, Stephanie Green, 37, admitted that the beverage was concocted from generic lemonade mix and water.

  Dr. Martin Green, a well-known Manhattan cardiologist, lost no time in putting his kids “out of business.” But though the Greens refuse to sell samples, requests remain numerous. Daily crowds have all but ruined the front lawn and forced the unfortunate family to invest over $5,000 in additional fencing.

  As the shell-shocked Mrs. Green told This Week, “I don’t know how this happened to us. I feel like it’s all my fault.”

  Vera knows where this story came from. Sometimes Solomon gives her photos and she makes up stories to go with them. It’s a game they play, a reverse of their usual working method. The sad truth is that their collaboration has become a parody of their own dreams. For during that time they’d imagined themselves in love, they’d spoken often of working together on the perfect marriage of picture and text and all-expense-paid vacations: articles for Geo magazine on deserted Balinese beaches, lush coffee-table books on Indians of the Amazon and carnival in Venice.

  Studying the grainy reprint, Vera’s looking for what’s left of that gorgeous eight-by-ten glossy that Solomon dropped on her desk. She can still see the plastic pitcher, the miniature table and chairs, the two children in front of their Flatbush Gothic monstrosity home, and above it, the dark sky and clouds that look borrowed from Kansas. But what’s missing in reproduction are the hopeful, wide-open-for-business looks on the children’s faces; without them, Vera finds she can’t recapture the peculiar feeling that the little girl in the photo was herself as a child.

  She’d set out to write about people who weren’t like her, people who name their kids Megan and
Joshua and restore the kind of house she grew up in but which in the meantime have declined into what are euphemistically called “multi-family dwellings.” And she’d wound up writing about the fountain of youth, the only thing that could change her back into that child who’d imagined great fortunes and begun selling lemonade.

  When she looks up, everyone’s watching her and Frank Shaefer’s saying, “Dr. and Mrs. Green are suing.”

  “What Dr. and Mrs. Green?” says Vera.

  “Why don’t you tell us about it?” says Dan, the good cop on the interrogation team.

  Vera looks at Solomon. For some reason she’d had the impression he’d just been driving by and had got out and snapped the picture. But maybe not, maybe he knew these people, had told her about them, lodged their names in her brain without her remembering. Solomon’s shrugging, palms upturned; he’s bugging his eyes at her. So her impression was right. For once she’s glad Shaefer’s answering for her:

  “The Dr. and Mrs. Green who live in this house.” He pokes at the paper. “Megan and Joshua’s Mom and Dad. The well-known Manhattan cardiologist and his shell-shocked wife.”

  “That’s not possible,” says Vera. “I made them up.”

  The silence that greets this makes Vera want to climb Shaefer’s bookcase and lean out the window toward the soothing traffic noise of Herald Square. Old Mr. Goldblum keeps bobbing his head and smiling. Perhaps he’s surprised or embarrassed; perhaps he thinks Vera’s joking. Solomon shifts his weight from one foot to the other, a process so awkward and noisy that Goldblum beckons to him and pats the couch beside him. Crossing the room, Solomon just misses Shaefer. They dodge each other like dancers in some awful modern ballet. Meanwhile Leonard Villanova has scooted forward and opened his mouth. When Shaefer stands behind him and starts talking, the moment loses its balletic aspect and takes on the aura of an equally rotten ventriloquist act.

  “Vera,” he says. “I just can’t believe the Greens’ lawyer is being retained to represent your fantasies.”

  “Then what?” Vera’s horrified by the high whine of her voice. She’s saving confusion and wonder for later. Right now all she feels is panic.

  “Listen! She had nothing to do with this!” cries Solomon, like some movie Resistance hero pleading his girlfriend’s case before the secret police.

  “It’s her byline,” says Shaefer. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “It was a Sunday afternoon,” says Solomon. “I was driving out to my sister-in-law’s. I saw the two kids and that crazy Addams-Family house and that sky. I took the shot and—”

  “Releases?” says Dan.

  “What releases?” says Solomon. “We’re talking tiny tots here. Then I printed it up and gave it to Vera and told her to write a story.”

  “Right,” says Shaefer. “Then Vera made up the names and the kids’ names and ages and even the good doc’s specialty.”

  “Right,” says Vera. That’s what she did, and the whole thing is impossible. What seems even more absurd is that they’re accusing her of something so unlikely. Hurt and angry, Vera feels—quite literally—the sting of injustice; it’s making her eyes smart. Feeling tears come on, she concentrates on drying them with the sheer heat of her will.

  Finally Leonard Villanova holds up one hand and, in a soft voice, says, “I find that hard to believe.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” says Solomon. Beside him, Mr. Goldblum winces.

  “Meanwhile,” says Shaefer, “the only thing you got wrong was the order it happened in. First the kids had their little lemonade stand. Then the issue with your story in it hit the racks. Some neighbors read it, rumors got started. The kids got swamped. Now the wife’s a basket case. The lawn’s a wreck, the phone rings twenty-four hours a day.”

  “It’s damaged Dr. Green’s practice,” says Leonard Villanova, having saved the best for last. And then they all fall silent, awestruck by a vague, nascent sense of what damage to a cardiologist’s practice might prove to be worth in court.

  “Think hard now,” says Dan Esposito. “You really didn’t know? You just saw the photo, that’s all?”

  “Yes,” says Vera. “I mean no. I didn’t know.”

  “Jesus Christ,” says Dan. “This is Kafkaesque.”

  The great writer’s name seems to have worked some magic on Mr. Goldblum, who’s suddenly gone very solemn. “I don’t get it,” he says.

  “Well, legally it’s immaterial, one way or the other,” says Leonard Villanova, speaking professionally now to Mr. Goldblum.

  “Sure it is,” says Solomon. “It’s a question of intent.”

  “Gee,” says Mr. Goldblum. “I don’t know what the precedent is; I wouldn’t want to say.”

  “What precedent?” cries Vera. “How often do you think this happens?” As Goldblum’s mild, myopic eyes crinkle in a sort of retreat, Vera regrets having said it so loud. “I’m sorry,” she says. “It’s all been a stupid mistake. But maybe it doesn’t have to go to court. Maybe we could settle. I’ll talk to the lawyer…”

  “Vera,” says Shaefer. “Shut up.” Then, to Esposito: “You know what that would be like? Remember that scene in The Godfather where the Don and Sonny go to talk to the Tataglias and Sonny says something out of turn and the whole empire goes down the dumper?”

  “Yeah,” says Esposito. “Time to go to the mattresses, boys.”

  “Anybody got a grapefruit skin?” asks Solomon. “I’ll do my Don Corleone in the tomato patch.”

  “This whole paper’s about to do a Don Corleone in the tomato patch,” says Frank. “You know what a cardiologist makes an hour?”

  “Maybe if I went to Brooklyn and spoke to the Greens?” Vera offers desperately.

  “I don’t think that would be advisable,” says Leonard Villanova at the same instant Frank Shaefer says, “I’d like to see you convince them you just dreamed them up. I’d like to see them buy that.”

  By now it’s occurred to Vera that talking to a lawyer who’s suing you might be like talking to a lover about to leave: some conversations cannot be brought to mutually satisfying conclusions. There’s no possibility of forgiveness, no chance that the whole thing will turn out to be some simple misunderstanding. Realizing this makes Vera so helpless and angry she’s up and out the door even as Leonard is standing with his briefcase at genital level and mumbling something about being in touch.

  Solomon catches up with her in the hall and drags her into her office. “Jesus,” he says. “What was that about?”

  For the second time that day, Vera leans against Solomon’s chest. The curve of his collarbone, the softness of his cotton shirt, are so sustaining and familiar she feels like they’ve been married thirty years. “I don’t know,” she says. “And that’s the truth.”

  “I believe you,” he says. “Just tell me this. You didn’t go out there and look for the house, maybe talk to those people…”

  “Why would I do that?” says Vera. “I don’t go out on stories. It’s not exactly Eyewitness News around here.”

  “All right,” says Solomon. “You made the names up out of nowhere.”

  “Not exactly nowhere. Half the white kids in Brooklyn are named Megan and Joshua.”

  “And their mommies and daddies are all named Martin and Stephanie? You should have put the family dog in there.”

  “You figure it out,” Vera says. “The dog’s named Sam. He’s a golden retriever. They had him long before Megan and Josh. Ten years ago, they used to tie a red bandanna around his neck.”

  Solomon moves her out where he can see her. “Take it easy,” he says. “You’re getting all worked up. Look, it’s just one of those nutty coincidences that happen all the time. All the time. Like in ’Nam, you’d be walking through the jungle, you’d think ‘snake’ or ‘body’ and within a couple minutes you’d see a snake or a corpse. You couldn’t have seen it; you were too far away. You just knew. And it’s not ESP. ESP’s bullshit. ESP’s some scientist paying you three-ten an hour to sit in a padded ce
ll and stare at picture postcards.”

  “Then what is it?” says Vera.

  “Search me,” says Solomon. “Feelers, maybe. Little antennae twitching all the time. Just like the bats have sonar. They don’t know it’s sonar; it took humans to come along and tell them what they’re putting out. So maybe we need some higher form of life to tell us what we’re bouncing off cobras and dead Viet Cong.”

  “And Brooklyn families?”

  “Why not? Who says feelers don’t work in Brooklyn?”

  “I wish mine worked better,” says Vera. “I wish they’d warned me that story would cost us our jobs.” Vera stops short, struck by a vision of herself and Solomon as the tabloid Adam and Eve who’ve just done the one thing their grumpy but loving father forbade. “I’ll bet Frank and Dan have already offered to fire us if those people drop charges. Didn’t that cross your mind?”

  “Not once,” says Solomon. “Who’s going to go for that? What if somebody gave you a choice between a half million and some reporter’s scalp? Nobody’s going to pass up all that dough just to see us hang. My guess is they’ll settle out of court for every penny the paper’s got. Then we’ll get canned.”

  “Great,” Vera says.

  “Consider it a favor,” says Solomon. “I don’t want to be stabbing nuns when I’m Mavis’s age.”

  “I was thinking the same thing this morning,” says Vera, but right now she’s thinking of another morning, at Solomon’s place, of making coffee in that coffin-sized kitchen where everything—the walls, the artificial light, the coffee—looked watery and gray. She remembers Solomon kissing her, then stopping in midkiss to complain about having to go in to work and airbrush hair onto a child’s face for WEREWOLF BOY BITES BULLET. And that was when she knew: if it had been love, that buzzing fluorescent bulb would have shone like the sun. Perhaps it was always a question of what Solomon calls feelers; they picked up each other’s discontents.

  “Remember our bet?” says Solomon.