Here’s the paradox of serious travel: you go far away to a foreign place and are alienated by culture shock; but after a while, months rather than years, it wears off. Then all is smooth in your life until you return to your hometown and are hit hard, stunned anew. There is no recovering from it. The culture shock of arriving home never leaves you—you long to escape it, to go away again soon. This became the pattern of my working life.
That staggering blow, that longing, was unknown to Frank, who took a few casual vacations yet never left home. Because of that, he didn’t know me, nor had he ever experienced the upsetting visits that were routine for me. I saw all this in terms of the fractures in geology, the kind of mineral cleavage that split crystals, or the deformation that separated fine-grained rock, but cleavage all the same. I was separated, yet I kept going home as often as I could, for the love of my wife and son.
What unsettled me was the geology of Littleford itself, the softness, the mushiness of its foundation, the apparent absence of bedrock. Littleford had been built on a riverbank—Boston downstream, at the mouth of the river; mud and pudding stone upstream beneath the town, a scattering of pillow lava showing in the woods and suspended under the town in a thick gray stew of splintery-weathered, sugary-textured gneiss. Glacial drift had deposited a layer of shifted gravel on top of the deep-down bedrock—more properly a conglomerate known as mudstone—the bedrock so deep that Littleford floated above it, on a slush of pebbly sediment.
No mineral had ever been seriously searched for within a radius of a hundred miles of Littleford. Massachusetts was a state without a mine, with no shafts or tunnels, no subterranean life, hardly any mineral glitter except for dull roseate chunks of rhodonite, the state gem—though “gem” conveys the wrong impression. Rhodonite is a pinky purplish crystal that is never cut or polished or faceted. Vita would have been insulted to be given a lump of the stuff, she would have first taken it to be a stale chunk of Christmas candy, and then recognized it as the sort of clutter she’d seen ornamenting the broken gravel glowing in a rubious mass with the sprinkling of fish turds like chocolate jimmies at the bottom of a home aquarium.
As for Cape Cod, where I’d rescued Frank that summer afternoon, and where we sometimes still vacationed, the whole of it was a great soft length of dampness and stunted trees, beyond the bedrock outcrop—no exposed rock, just a terminal moraine, a vast and featureless set of dunes, shoved southeasterly and formed by a glacier, leaving it crooked, a bended arm of shifting sand.
No wonder I got culture shock at home, no wonder I longed for multicolored cliffs and ravines, and the bedrock in the solitude of far-off places. I maintained my silence about the emeralds we were mining in Zambia. Moyo and I valued our ability as pioneering prospectors to work in secrecy. The gem dealers in Jo’burg were persistent in asking, but we refused to reveal the source of the stones.
Had these dealers sent spies they would have found no more than a Zambian village of mud huts, flyblown slit-trench latrines, cassava gardens, and maize fields. And maybe a glimpse of a single mzungu—me, in a tin-roof shack—but nothing more. Moyo had admitted me as a partner, but no one else. I owed him my loyalty and discretion, because we both knew that in time the word would get out, and a rush to dig would begin—tunnels, open-pits, blasting, all the resources of the Copperbelt brought in to mine the much more profitable gemstones. We worked urgently, knowing that our days of seclusion were numbered.
Seeking understanding, hoping for a smile, I described to Vita the oddness of my life in the field—far away from Littleford, in an alien culture, the obstacles, the nuisances, the occasional rewards. I’d talked in this way since we’d met. I needed her to know who I was and what I’d seen, but I did not tell her everything: it was important that I distract her from my geology, the jewels, the bargaining, the money.
What I related came under the heading “travelers’ tales,” which satisfied her and seemed harmless enough. She often asked me to tell her of abuses I’d witnessed—stories of child labor or human trafficking that she could report to her agency. I had no information of this kind. And I’d grown so accustomed to the oddities, I needed to think hard about what I’d seen that might interest her. My African stories produced another unexpected episode in my life with Frank.
As a local boy in porous, gossip-prone Littleford, someone rumored to have done well, I was hailed at the supermarket and the post office and drugstore and greeted with the grateful bonhomie accorded to a prodigal son, because when someone from Littleford left town, they seldom returned.
You could live anywhere, I was told, and here you are.
I never mentioned my hometown culture shock; I accepted the praise for my not having turned my back on the town. But not all these people were well-wishers.
Trouble is, some said, you’re never here.
But Frank, they were quick to add, was always in town, a benefactor, in his prominent office in Littleford Square, loyal to the town, which apparently, as a part-timer, I wasn’t.
“One thing about your brother Frank,” Sal Ugolino said, “he stayed with us, he’s wicked involved in the community, he really cares. He could have been a huge deal in Boston or New York, but did he go? No—he still shoots pool at Joe’s.”
That was a knock on me. I’d abandoned them by pursuing my business elsewhere, my perverse choice of a mining career. It didn’t matter much to these tribal townies that I’d bought a house here and was putting my son through Littleford schools. I had a life elsewhere, and what was worse, an obscure life, something to do with rocks.
“Frank makes us proud,” the brothers Alex and Leo Alberti said.
Frank had a way of advertising his concerns for the workingman. It didn’t seem to matter that Frank got a third of the payout in personal injury suits—the client got a whopping two-thirds. As a benefactor, Frank was also a self-promoter, and an explainer. He was proof that Littleford produced good citizens and success stories; anyone who became successful elsewhere was seen as disloyal. I didn’t object. I smiled at their odd pomposities, as they lectured me, criticizing me by praising Frank.
And who were they? Old high school buddies, former girlfriends, the fixtures in Littleford, the dentist, the chiropractor, the family doctor, the cobbler, the pharmacist. Many I had known since I was a child. They’d married in the town, they still lived and worked there; many were politicians, a number of them were cops.
The mayor, Dante Zangara, made a point of praising Frank to me. He had a small-town politician’s habit of being conspicuous, strolling through town on summer days, greeting people, and he always signaled when he saw me.
“What I love about Frank,” Dante said, “is he’s very humble—a simple guy.”
These were qualities Frank utterly lacked—humility, simplicity; but the mayor vouched for him.
What this meant was that Frank hadn’t left Littleford, as I had, and that he gave money to Dante’s mayoral campaign. Frank donated books to the library. He supported the Little League. I had done none of these things.
“That client he had with black lung,” Chicky Malatesta said. “Frank was a godsend. If I ever need a lawyer, I’ll call Frank.”
“He’s beautiful to your mother,” Ginny Spatola said.
Philanthropic, caring, generous, social—Frank was everything I was not. And the next subject they were likely to touch upon was how prosperous Frank had become, a hometown boy who had not forsaken his birthplace. The fact that he had the means to leave, and yet stayed, was a reassurance to those who’d dreamed of leaving yet didn’t risk it, or couldn’t afford it.
I said, “Littleford’s a great place to raise kids,” which was what they wanted to hear, and I was sincere, hand on heart.
I didn’t mention Frank, but they did, because they saw the Bad Angel brothers as a matching pair, and brotherhood as an ideal. They didn’t know me well enough to understand how different we were, Frank and I. We had nothing in common, no beliefs, no pleasures, not even the same language. I tried to be specific and scientific, but Frank preferred bluff and hyperbole, loving in this fashion, at this juncture, in point of fact, and prioritize. And the legal terms he was addicted to, due process, de facto, prima facie, and all the ambiguous rest of it, onus probandi, subrogation, and litigation risk.
I’m crafting a response was Frank’s mantra.
He was important in Littleford, a town that had once been a small community on a riverbank but now sprawled, its suburbs overtaking the woods I’d once hiked with Mel Yurick, in pursuit of solitude and merit badges. But the core of Littleford was still tiny and tribal in the way it regarded outsiders or new arrivals, appearing to accept them, yet in fierce whispers that shocked me still regarding them as unwelcome, the waves of Hispanics, Vietnamese, Indians, and a scattering of Africans, none of whom figured in the orbit of Frank and his friends.
All the more reason I was praised for returning. And as though intending to compliment me, the old-timers—high school buddies, friends of the family, shop owners in Littleford Square, the usual politicians—all of them said they thought the world of Frank.
I listened to these people, because in one part of my mind there was always a tug of doubt, a feeling that I’d been unfair to Frank, exaggerated his intrusiveness, overstated his faults, resented his legalistic fussiness (Define what you mean by presumption), and this doubt was bolstered by Vita’s view of him as a good guy, reliable, more than competent—expert, her adviser and protector, a helpful uncle to Gabe, now in junior high school.
Smacking his lips with certainty, Harry O’Brien, of O’Brien’s Plumbing Supplies, where I happened to be buying a showerhead—Harry, from Frank’s class at Littleford High—reached and put his hand on my arm to detain me, saying, “Frank was in here the other day—feller’s full of stories, God love him.”
“That’s always been true.”
“But they’re getting better.”
I became attentive, to encourage him.
Harry said, “That old woman he met—can’t remember where it was, exactly—she had these kids with her, couple of boys, little girl—amazing.”
“What was amazing?”
“She was pimping them out.”
“Frank told you that?”
“Yes, all the gory details.”
It was not an experience of Frank’s, it was mine, in India, on a backstreet of Mumbai, where I’d arrived on my way to Madikeri, in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, the first of our ruby mines.
The woman, the children in tow, had accosted me at a café—“Where you from? Buy me a cup of tea!” I was seated at an outside table, drinking coffee, dazed by the long flight, and was so blindsided by the woman, I said, “Take a seat.” They all joined me, laughing, as I called the waiter. They ordered tea, a plate of samosas, and juice. The children ate hungrily, as the woman pestered me with questions. Where was I going? What was I doing? Dodging the questions, I found myself looking at the young girl.
She was about fifteen, birdlike, with prominent teeth, very thin, with large dark eyes, and draped in a green shawl. She wore makeup—mascara, reddened lips, a child dressed as a woman, and strangely skeletal.
“You like her?” the woman said. When I didn’t reply, she said, “You can have her.”
I felt a surge of desire mingled with disgust, the shame that I was actually attracted. I stood up, gave the waiter some rupees—more than enough—and fled to my hotel. I was glad to leave the next day for Hubli, and the Ghats, and the rubies.
I told Vita the story, as an example of life in India, and also because her agency was concerned with the exploitation of children. This was the sort of trafficking Rescue/Relief investigated.
Harry was still smiling. He said, “Of course, Frank didn’t play ball. But I mean, imagine!”
Frank had appropriated my story—obviously Vita had told him. And I had other examples like this. I bumped into one of his golf partners at the post office, a man named Walter Loftus, who greeted me warmly, asked how I was doing, and added, “I see a lot of your brother.”
“Golfing?”
“Oh, yeah, up at the club, all over. Great guy, and what a raconteur.”
To provoke him, I said, “Amazing tales—that’s Frank.”
But Loftus frowned and became serious. He said, “Can I share something with you? I get worried sometimes, the chances he takes. Yet he always somehow turns them to his advantage.”
“Not sure what you mean, Walter.”
“Like the old man he found up in the Fells, stranded there. I would have walked on by, but Frank’s not like that. He saw that the man was in distress and needed help. Frank’s such a Samaritan. The guy doesn’t speak much English but he knows where he lives. Frank takes him home—turns out he’s a big man in the Mafia, somehow escaped being whacked. And his family’s so grateful they kick a lot of business Frank’s way.” Loftus sighed in admiration. “I’m sure you know the story.”
“I do know the story,” I said.
Everyone Frank knew had a story he’d told them that was derived from one I’d told Vita—bribe stories, bad hotel stories, even trivial ones, such as the convenience of raising pigeons to eat. It so happened that in Zambia, Moyo and I kept pigeons in our obscure little village, and Moyo’s cook used their little corpses in curry. Frank, it seemed, also had pigeon stories.
These were casual mentions, but I dug deeper, the sort of domestic geology I’d found to be fruitful in knowing Frank. At times I encountered reluctance—“I shouldn’t be telling you this”—and had to dig harder.
“It’s okay—Frank and I are brothers. We have no secrets.”
“It’s just that Frank was so upset that it could have ended in tragedy.”
“What could?”
“The day he saved you from drowning.”
The Frank stories, dozens of them, were not the result of a single visit home, but rather an anthology, the accumulation over a year or two, my being told in admiring tones by Frank’s friends in town, his amazing tales, ones I knew properly to be mine. It was as though he’d begun to inhabit my life, making my experiences his own. But why? He was a successful attorney, with a circle of friends, a networker before the word was coined. Why would he feel the need to tell my traveler’s tales as his own?
Aspects of the stories were so nebulous as to make them deniable as coming from me, so I resisted confronting him, knowing he’d claim they were his. There was something sad about this, too, because all tales of this kind are boasts, and the notion of a secondhand boast depressed me. As a lawyer with many personal injury victories Frank had plenty to boast about. He didn’t need my tales of pimps and bribes and pigeons.
I pitied him for claiming them as his own, since not all the stories were amazing. Many were based on my banal experiences of bumping from place to place, among strangers in distant lands; and I knew that Frank seldom left Littleford. But that mention by a mutual friend (it was Chicky Malatesta) that Frank said he’d rescued me from drowning was the limit.
“Are you trying to start trouble?” Vita said when I told her soon after—this was in the kitchen, Vita studying a cookbook, and surrounded by ingredients.
Vita had a way of turning her back on me in such a conversation, to indicate that she had no interest in pursuing a subject. Now turned away, she busied herself with the dish she planned to make, sorting the ingredients—chicken thighs, carrots, onions, a bottle of burgundy—coq au vin, I guessed.
“It didn’t happen. The opposite happened. I saved Frank.”
With her finger on the page of the recipe, her head down, Vita spoke to the open cookbook on the counter. “You heard this secondhand.”
“From a mutual friend—Chicky.”
“Hearsay.” She turned the page, preoccupied.
“You’re joking.”
“It’s inadmissible.” She tapped the page.
“You sound like him.”
Now she turned, holding an onion in one hand and a very large knife in the other, and facing me, said, “Then ask him—put it to him. ‘You’re stealing my stories.’”
“Twisting the truth,” I said. “No point. He’d just deny it.”
Now she smiled and looked at me in a pitying and exasperated way. “So why don’t you just drop it.” She placed the onion on the cutting board and began to slash at it. “Or tell your mother.”