It’s a little hard for me to do the steep stairs with my cane, but the tour is nice enough, and I think about how I haven’t done anything like this in years—how once upon a time I would have been thrilled to be in Mark Twain’s home.
Mark Twain!
The father of American literature!
And I would have schemed ways to get my students here too.
In the gift shop, Portia buys us matching little white pins with cartoons of Mark Twain’s face in profile. She pins hers on her white jean jacket, adding to her collection of rock groups, Sylvia Plath, and my favorite, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
I allow her to pin Mark Twain to my own jacket, right over my heart. “You know, Hemingway said that ‘All American literature comes from—’”
“‘—one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since.’”
“You know that quote?”
“Learned it in your class,” she says. “And it’s on the T-shirt behind you.”
I turn around and see that she’s quite correct.
She says, “Your pin looks cool.”
I look down at Mark Twain displayed on my chest like a military medal, and I have to admit the former English teacher hiding deep within does think it’s “cool,” but I don’t tell Portia that because I don’t want to let on that it was a pleasurable experience—and I sure as hell don’t want to get her hopes up.
“I still have no desire to teach, let alone live,” I say. “Nothing’s changed.”
“This is just day one,” she says, far too cockily. “You ready to go?”
“Well, while we’re here, we might as well see Harriet Beecher Stowe’s house too, don’t you think? It’s right next door, after all.”
“Isn’t Uncle Tom’s Cabin considered racist now?” she asks. “It’s super uncool to call a black person an Uncle Tom. That’s worse than the N-word, right?”
“I have no idea,” I say as I cane my way toward the museum. But for some reason it’s closed today, which disappoints me greatly, and so we get back in the car and continue driving south.
“Aren’t you glad you didn’t kill yourself yesterday?” she says to me.
“Because I got to see Mark Twain’s home?” I say, thinking how silly that seems. How can seeing the home of one of your favorite authors help you answer the first question?
“No,” she says, and then laughs mischievously. “Because now we’re wearing matching Mark Twain buttons. That’s pretty killer, right?”
It takes me a second to realize that she is serious—that she thinks wearing the same button is actually a significant gesture that implies or maybe even proves in her mind that we have made some sort of meaningful connection. This is the logic of an eleven-year-old girl—the equivalent of buying one of those cheap heart necklaces that breaks in two so that each friend can wear a jagged-edged half and yet the pieces can be put back together to form this phrase:
Best Friends Forever!
“I’m afraid it’s going to take more than a button—albeit a ‘cool’ and ‘killer’ one—to save me, Ms. Kane. I wish it were that easy, but it’s not.”
“Okay,” she says, but when I look over, she’s smiling from ear to ear.
“You like that we are wearing matching pins—why does this mean something to you?”
“I don’t know—you’ll probably be mad at me if I tell you, anyway.”
“Now you have to tell me!”
She pulls back onto I-84 South, speeds up, and says, “When I was in your class, I used to pretend you were my father, because I never had one—and if I got to pick, I would have wanted a father exactly like you. I used to fantasize about you taking me places like the Mark Twain House and teaching me about great writers, the way other fathers might teach their sons about baseball players at the ballpark. And now we’ve been to the home of a famous writer together. It’s kind of like a childhood dream come true for me.”
“So that little pit stop was for you and not me, Ms. Kane?”
“It was for us. Both of us.”
“Why aren’t you married?” I ask—out of the blue, I admit. “You are a smart, attractive woman. So why are you driving around with your fat old crippled former English teacher instead of doing something productive with an age-appropriate life partner? Why aren’t you with a family of your own?”
“I am married—legally, anyway. To an asshole named Ken Humes. He cheated on me with a teenager. I caught him just a month ago. And this was after he treated me like shit for years, cheating on me many times, belittling my ambitions too. But catching him in the act, actually seeing him fuck a teenager, led to my getting on a plane home, which is where I met your mother, remember? Ken’s moral low point started this whole chain of events.”
I can hear the pain in her voice.
“Well, he’s a fool to let you go,” I say, almost reflexively, knowing that it’s a mistake to offer her kindness. She will amplify it to mythical proportions until I can no longer possibly live up to her expectations, even if I try, which I am not about to.
“Was that a positive remark from Mr. Suicide? Mr. Gloom-and-Doom?” she says, beginning already with the amplification.
I do my best to redirect her emotions back to a safe place by saying, “Your husband let you down.”
“He did.”