The Thanatos Syndrome

L.B.J. back at the ranch, in his Texas hat, smiling, big-nosed, pressing the flesh.

2. ELLEN LOST OUT in Fresno. Cut off from Van Dorn and heavy sodium, she got eliminated in Mixed Doubles and came limping home.
    We were all glad to see her. She wouldn’t talk to anybody but Hudeen. They exchanged a few murmured syllables which no one else could understand.
    The children, out of school, stood around either picking at each other or moony and cross as children are when something is wrong. But Chandra is good with them, playing six-hour games of Monopoly. Between times they’re on the floor in front of the stereo-V, as motionless as battlefield casualties, eyes glazed: back to six hours of Scooby Doo and He-Man.
    My practice is almost nil. People are either not depressed, anxious, or guilty, or if they are, they’re not seeing me.
    I begin dropping by the Little Napoleon and having a friendly shooter of Early Times with Leroy Ledbetter.
    Ellen is puzzled, distant, and mostly silent. At night we lie in our convent beds watching Carson without laughing and reruns of M*A*S*H and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
    What to do?
    Leroy makes his usual suggestion, after one of his all-but-invisible knockings-back of a shot glass as part of the motion of wiping the bar and leaning over to tell me.
    â€œWhy don’t y’all take my Bluebird and go down to Disney World? Y’all will like it. There is something for all ages.”
    I thank him as usual, hardly listening, since Disney World is the last place on earth I would choose to go.
    But as I look at the moony, fretful children and puzzled silent Ellen lying in the silvery glare of the tube watching cockney Robin Leach and Carson and Hawkeye between her toes with exactly the same dreamy, unfocused expression, the thought occurs to me: Why not?
    As it turns out, it is a splendid idea, and Leroy is right: Disney World is for all ages.
    We find ourselves in the Bluebird parked in Fort Wilderness Resort next to the Magic Kingdom. Fort Wilderness is a pleasant wooded campground with hookups for motor homes. Our campsite is on Jack Rabbit Run.
    The Bluebird is a marvel. It cost Leroy over a hundred thousand dollars secondhand, and he’s spent another ten on it. He lives in a room over the Little Napoleon. It is like giving me his house.
    We go spinning along the Gulf Coast in the fine October light as easily as driving a Corvette, but sitting high and silent as astronauts. The children are enchanted. They spend days exploring the shiplike craft, opening bunks, taking showers, folding out tables and dinettes, working the sound system and control panel and the map locator, which shows us as a bright dot creeping along I-75.
    The four-speaker stereo picks up the Pastoral symphony. We’re a boat humming along Beethoven’s brook. I would be happy, but Ellen, in the co-pilot seat, is still abstracted, brows knitted in puzzlement. I take a nip of Early Times both in celebration and for worry.
    Ellen gets better the second night out in a KOA campground in the pine barrens.
    While I’m hooking up, figuring out where the plugs go, Ellen disappears.
    Oh, my God. But the kids are not worried. They’ve already found the playground. Neighbors come ambling over, offering a beer, inspecting the Bluebird. They think Meg and Tom are my grandchildren. They show me pictures of theirs. The American road is designed for children and grandparents. Oh, my God, where is Ellen? Have a drink. I have a drink, three drinks. Nobody else is worried. Neighbors assure me she has gone to the commissary.
    She has. She’s back with groceries. No more Big Macs and Popeyes chicken.
    Now in the violet October light after sunset, the air fragrant with briquet and mesquite smoke perfumed by lighter fluid, there is Ellen at the tiny galley cooking red beans and rice, not my favorite boudin sausage but Jimmy Dean sausage and—humming!
    I do not dare signify to her that anything is different, let alone approach her from the rear, as I used to. Instead, in celebration and gratitude I step outside in the violet dusk and take three nips like a country man.
    We sleep aft in a kind of observation bedroom—Meg has discovered how to slide back the roof, making a bubble under the stars—the kids amidships in complex fold-out astronaut pods. The bed is king-size, bigger than Sears Best. I am having bouts of nervousness and so take a nip for each bout. To keep the key