Starting Over Read Free

business and bought a working farm in New Hampshire. They had sent out a mimeographed newsletter to their old friends in New York, reporting how happy they were and explaining they were “into crop rotation.”
    When Potter graduated from college in ’58, nobody did that stuff; at least nobody you knew, nobody who had a good education and a chance of making it in business or the arts or professions. Only the weirdos, the copouts and dropouts who couldn’t cut it anyway left the mainstream of American opportunity, spurned the golden current of success, and really meant it. But now, if you left a good job in a leading law firm and went to northern Vermont to tap maple sugar, you were sort of envied. At least you weren’t scorned. The truth was, as far as Potter could figure it, nobody gave a shit anymore. There was something nice about that. But it was also a little bit scary, as if in the middle of a game you were playing the rules had been changed, or just forgotten about, and you had to pretty much make things up as you went along and pretend you knew what the hell you were doing. On top of that, Potter was uncomfortably aware that for him a good part of the game was already over. He had just turned thirty-four. That was pretty near the halfway mark, or maybe even way past it, the way he was boozing. Time to shit or get off the pot if you were going to make a new move, really start over. And what better time than now, the first year of a new decade? The Seventies. Stretching ahead, as yet only four months soiled.
    â€œYou don’t have any children,” Marva Bertelsen said. “You’re free to do anything you want.”
    Potter took a swallow of Drambuie. It was sticky, like his mind felt. “The hitch is,” he said, “I have to want to do something.”
    He looked to Max, hoping for an answer, a direction, hoping he might say “Go west, young man,” or “Take up the plough,” and Potter would do it. But Max only sipped at his espresso, looking knowledgeable but inscrutable.
    Potter met Max in the Service, when they both were stationed at the Navy Department in Washington. Potter as a yeoman typist, Max in the psychiatric division. Max was a shrink, and though Potter never saw him on a professional basis, he kind of adopted him as a father. Max was only three years older than Potter but seemed a lot more than that, maybe because he was so goddamn calm and in control all the time. When Potter met him, Max had recently finished his training analysis, and he seemed to be one of the few people Potter knew for whom that process had “worked.” There was something comforting about the result, but also something Potter found a little bit scary. It was something in Max’s calm, unruffleable demeanor; as if some wire had been unhooked, the one that connected you with anger and frivolity and unpredictable thought and action. Max smiled a lot, but seldom if ever laughed. When something struck him especially funny he would smile and say, “That’s very funny.”
    â€œThose guys in the magazine article,” Potter said, “the article I was telling you about—they all seemed to have some burning desire to do some particular thing they’d never been able to do—but I can’t think of anything like that. Becoming a lobster fisherman or something. You know.”
    â€œWhat about—your acting?” Marva asked brightly.
    â€œCome on Marva, that’s over,” Potter said forcefully. “Done. Dead. Buried. Gone.”
    â€œOK, I just thought.”
    â€œWhat about teaching?” Max asked.
    â€œTeaching what? ”
    â€œWhat you know about—the theatre. Even public relations.”
    â€œWho the hell wants to know about that? ”
    â€œYou might be surprised,” Max said with a smile.
    â€œDon’t worry, Phil,” Marva said, “Max knows everyone .”
    Potter didn’t doubt