I missed Polly. There was no Jane. I was a fool.

At half past three yesterday I left the office, saying truly I felt ill and meant to rest up in the country till Monday. The afternoon was airless; I’d left my car back at the cottage: I motored O.J. out from Slip #2 and downriver to its Todds Point dock. As I left the Howell Point day beacon to starboard, I saw the Original Floating Theatre II chugging out of the Tred Avon into the Choptank, en route from Oxford to Cambridge for the weekend (unlike the original Original, the replica is self-propelled). I kept my eyes on it, not to glimpse a certain red buoy to port, the sight of which just then would have undone me. Docked, I took a swim (no sea nettles yet) and lingered on deck for cocktails; even made dinner aboard, to put off entering this cottage too crowded with ghosts. Over the last of the wine, by the light of citronella candles in the cockpit (but there are no mosquitoes yet either, to speak of), I read the Evening Sun and wondered how the prospecting was in Florida.

The phone fetched me in just after dusk, when the swifts had given way to the swallows and the swallows to the bats. It’s me, she said: Jane.

I replied: I resist the obvious reply.

What? O.

Say that again, please.

What? She was in Dorset Heights. Might she stop by at the office tomorrow?

She didn’t sound entirely official. I took a breath, and a chance. Here I am at the cottage, I said: why not make Tomorrow Now?

She couldn’t, possibly, much as she’d like to see the place again. She had a dozen things to do before bedtime. Didn’t I have a minute tomorrow?

Another chance: I’m in Baltimore tomorrow till three, I lied; then I plan to drive straight back here for the weekend. Will you meet me here at six for dinner, or shall I pick you up and fetch you out? Grilled rockfish with fennel and rémoulade, a house specialty.

She hesitated; my heart and history likewise.

Well… okay. She’d drive out. Make it six-thirty? Bye.

No matter that her hesitation, I was quite confident, had to do with the logistics of her business day and not the implications of revisiting me in situ where the world began. She was coming!

Is coming, Dad, and your antique son is going bananas in anticipation. Since breakfast I’ve been at it, a superannuated Jay Gatsby awaiting his Daisy’s visit: the maid fetched in to reclean the place she cleaned only Tuesday, the gardener to trim the beds he wasn’t to bother with till Thursday next and prune every dead blossom from the tea roses and climbers. Osborn Jones cleaned out, swabbed down, and Bristol fashion, just in case. Anchovy paste, chervil, and capers at the ready for the sauce, fennel and lemon and brandy for the fish. No Pouilly-Fuissé available, alas, but a perfectly okay little Chablis from of all places western Maryland, and champagne in the fridge just in case. Roses mixed with cuttings from the last of the azaleas on the screened porch, in the living room, in the bedroom. Fresh sheets, of course, just etc. Everybody out by four; an anxious eye on the thunderheads piling up across the Bay, where I’m supposed to be returning from Baltimore; nothing further to be done but wait and keep some hold on my heart. Hence this letter.

But the telephone! Haifa dozen times it’s rung already, the last two since the maid left (who loyally reported me not at home), and I can’t answer lest I betray my childish fib. It’s Jane, canceling our date at Lord Tarzan’s jealous insistence. It’s the Muse of History, calling to explain what happened to 11 R. It’s Jane, wondering whether I’m bespoken for the rest of the weekend. It’s you, suggesting I just phone you instead of writing these asinine letters. It’s Jane.

If it rings again, I’ll not be able not to answer. How goes it with you, Dad? And did you ever, even at twenty-nine, have these Scott Fitzgerald moments, these—

Excuse me: the phone.

T.

T: Jacob Horner to Jacob Horner. Der Wiedertraum under way.

6/19/69

TO:

Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

FROM:

Jacob Horner, Remobilization Farm, Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada

To Pier Angeli, Charles Coburn, Edgar Degas, James I, Wallis Warfield Simpson Windsor: happy birthday. Emperor Maximilian of Mexico has been executed by the Juarez party. Israeli warplanes used napalm today on Jordanian-Iraqi artillery positions while police battled students in Ann Arbor. Representatives of seven northeastern American colonies are meeting in Albany with sachems of the Six Nations to plan campaigns against New France. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg have been electrocuted at Sing Sing, and Texas has been annexed by the Union. The U.S.S. Kearsarge has defeated the C.S.S. Alabama off Cherbourg. The Duke of Wellington and Benjamin Constant are dining in Paris with Mme de Staël in celebration of yesterday’s Allied victory at Waterloo: it is Day 97 of the Hundred Days.

And your Drama, Der Wiedertraum, is under way. Starring “Saint Joseph” as Joe Morgan, “Bibi” as Rennie Morgan, and “yourself,” in a sense, as the Interloping Jacob Horner. Reluctant cameo appearances by the Doctor as Himself. Also featuring “Pocahontas” as the Sexually Exploited High School English Teacher Peggy Rankin (a bit of miscasting) and “M. Casteene” as President Schott of Wicomico Teachers College. With a supporting cast of dozens: draft refugees and their girl friends — those willing to regroom themselves — in the role of Wicomico College freshmen of 1953; the patients as the Patients. Still wanting are actresses for the bit parts of Mrs. Dockey, the Mannish Head Nurse, and Shirley Stickles, Dr. Schott’s Waspish Secretary, who misinformed you as to the date of your Job Interview in 1953 and would not acknowledge her error when you Presented yourself in her office on July 20, Petrarch’s birthday and a day early. Ideal roles, either of those, for Pocahontas; but she demands a bigger piece of the action. Produced by Saint Joe. Directed, more or less, by Casteene. Increasingly frowned upon by the Doctor, who fears things will get out of hand. Followed with intermittent interest and filmed in part by Mr. Reg Prinz for possible incorporation into his film in progress, which, it turns out, is not entirely about the War of 1812. Script adapted from the novel adapted from your Scriptotherapeutic narrative adapted from the events leading to Rennie Morgan’s death from aspiration of vomitus in course of illicit surgical abortion October 25, 1953. Road not to end that way this time, on Producer’s orders, or else.

There is no rush to fill the vacant roles, inasmuch as your Drama, like soap opera, is being reenacted in real time. Hence Prinz’s and Ambrose Mensch’s interest, depite the cast’s including Mensch’s ex-mistress and ex-wife and Prinz’s current mistress. On June 1, Trinity Sunday, as the Fenians began their invasion of Ontario from Black Rock and Captain Lawrence aboard the Chesapeake enjoined his crew not to give up the ship and President Madison read his 2nd War Message to the U.S. Congress, the Doctor once again prescribed in the Progress and Advice Room that you Enter the Teaching Profession as therapy for your Seizures of Immobility.

“There must be a rigid discipline,” he quoted himself from the script, “or else it will be merely an occupation, not an occupational therapy. There must be a body of laws… Tell them you will teach grammar. English grammar… You will teach prescriptive grammar. Now really, Horner: is that your Idea of Plausible Dialogue?”

The next scene will not occur until July 19, a full month hence, when Generalissimo Franco will take Cadiz, Cordova, Granada, Huelva, and Seville while the German army begins its retreat from Belgium and you Leave Baltimore for the Eastern Shore to Look for a Room in Wicomico and Prepare yourself for the Interview which you Innocently Believe to be scheduled for the following day.