“He suspects quite a lot. Ho! You’re a hero, son. A god!”
There was a ruckus at his end. His voice sounded different. “I’m on my knees now, Philip. I’m kissing the phone. I’ve placed the phone on the floor and I’m kissing the phone …”
I looked forward to work the next day.
It passed in a blur. Secretaries, lawyers, and trustees applauded when I entered the office. Relatives sent flowers and witty telegrams. Stalls Rayburn took me to lunch at his club, introducing me around as “the man who saw it coming.” A sober gathering, most of the club members had been financially creamed yesterday and were still in shock. I calmed them with my opinion that our nation, our system, our way of life, ultimately would prevail. Recession would come sooner or later, sure, but thanks to the shakeout of October 19th, it would be less than what we deserved. They raised their glasses to me. I’ve joined several of their companies’ boards since then, and there’s been a push to get me into politics.
I’m head trustee at Stalls Associates now. My annual salary is $200,000. Last year this was augmented with a $1 million bonus. The trustees know they must increase this in the future, if they want to keep me happy.
Our worth has exploded under my regime. We’ve made Forbes magazine’s list of the wealthiest families in America two years running. Our investment strategies have become an art form for me, a means of self-expression. The vision I express is of precarious refuge. Money says it best.
30
When I got home from work that Tuesday evening, the day after the market crash, I noticed the cook’s and housekeeper’s cars were gone and an old MG was parked out front. I found Mother at the dining table tickling the skin of a clear soup with a silver spoon. I took my usual seat at the far end of the table, where a place setting had been laid as if for a banquet. Candelabras blazed between us. I heard sounds in the pantry. Mother wore a party dress. “Have some wine, dear.”
I filled my glass.
“Forgive me for starting. We waited and waited.”
“It was a busy day.”
“Fulfilling, I hope.”
“I made us all a lot of money. I won’t complain.”
“I hope you’re tithing for church and charity. It benefits others, and ourselves as well.”
“It’s tough since tax reform.”
Mother’s white hair looked blond in the candlelight. For a scary instant I saw her as I’m sure Father had seen her when both were young: an elegant, uncomplicated girl who would be pleasant company. She said to me, “You’ll do what’s best, I know.”
Such chat, on nights we dined together, was typical. Yet this evening’s formality had a stagy air, fashioned toward some end. I resolved to let it happen; a sense of welcome anticipation was too rare in me to question. Candlelight glinted off my silverware like moonlight off moving water. In the curve of my teaspoon my reflected image was flipped upside down. The distortion told the truth.
There was a clatter in the pantry. Down with the spoon, up with the wineglass. When Doris Zuppa swept through the swinging door she seemed born of the red pool I drank from. She set a soup bowl before me. Her reflection on the surface of the broth was golden; on the silverware, pale peach. The reflections moved in unison as she touched my shoulder. “Doris! Well!”
“Hello, Philip.”
“Doris is here,” Mother said.
Doris’s hand rested at the base of my neck. Every nerve in my body aligned toward it like millions of Muslims toward Mecca.
“Your mother permitted me to make you both dinner. You’re late.”
“He had a busy day,” Mother explained.
“I’m sure. Saving Stallses from themselves.”
“And how was your day, Doris?” In her prime, Mother could subsist for days on cocktail chatter. The table, the candles, young people at hand—she’d found her bygone paradise.
“My day, Mrs. Halsey? A nice young man died in front of me. Then I had lunch.” Stung, Mother returned to eating her soup. I’d turned at Doris’s reference:
“Lyle?”
“No, just a drug addict from Roxbury.” She looked across at my mother, exhaustion in her voice. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Halsey. It’s just that so many die.”
“I’m gonna go see Lyle tomorrow,” I said.
“His condition is not dire, if that’s your worry. He’s much better now than when you saw him.”
I was defensive. “I’ll go. I want to go. I just couldn’t make it over there today.” I felt Doris’s fingers clamp my neck imperceptibly, as if to let me know she could squeeze much harder if she chose.
“I know he’d like to see you. He was expecting you all day. You did promise you’d come. You should keep your promises.”
“I plan to. From now on.”
“All your promises …” I felt her breath in my ear. My spine actually tingled.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Doris kissed my bald spot—a gesture so intimate, so brazen and yet demure, that I squirmed with instant arousal. I looked up at her. Her expression was both stony and creamy. It held challenge and sufferance and, I didn’t imagine it, utterly inappropriate lust. I closed my eyes in grateful bliss, having found the perfect woman for me.
31
We’re married now. The gossip it caused among my cousins was offset by relief that I wasn’t completely alien to realms of human sentiment. As for Doe’s family, the sour pill of her hasty remarriage doubtless was sweetened by the material fortunes of the match she’d made. Her former in-laws cursed us, however. I confess I’m bothered by this.
It’s not superstition, exactly. But since getting married, I’ve experienced a sense of vulnerability quite new to me, a foreboding aroused even by the hurt feelings of people I don’t know, as if their bitterness might bring down some cosmic retribution. Harmless occurrences, offhand words of criticism, resonate evilly in my mind. My fear comes in part from wondering if Doe carries the HIV virus. Years of relations with her late husband, before he was diagnosed, may have passed it to her. She’s tested negative so far, but any minor ache or pain prompts our projections of the worst.
We practice safe sex most of the time. One of the times we didn’t resulted in Doris’s pregnancy. I worry about her health and much less so about my own. But it’s the health of our coming child that stirs my deepest dread.
We know it will be a boy. I’d doubted the results of Doe’s amniocentesis, but when I saw his dick on ultrasound, hah! I’ve already cleaned out a basement closet and begun stocking it with sports equipment. To further facilitate bonding, I’ve hired a Fenway bleacher bum to teach me the rules of baseball.
While cleaning out the closet I discovered all the weather notebooks I’d compiled as a boy—years’ worth, stacked on a shelf, diagramming clouds, temperature swings, anniversaries of natural disasters, predictions for the future. It was poignant to see how much diligent effort I’d spent on something as fleeting as weather. The notebooks read like manifests of cargo ships sunk centuries ago. What treasure they once carried lay only in pointless nostalgia for those young days, like jewels, lost. Treasure like that is cursed. No good comes to men who pursue it.
One day late in Doe’s pregnancy I was lying with her on our back lawn. She’d pulled up her maternity top to expose her naked belly to the sun. I imagined our baby warm in the sunlight and felt nicely warm myself. Doe had taken temporary leave from the hospice. I volunteer there two afternoons each month, doing laundry or mopping floors. Penance: Even I’m not immune to its call. Discussing events there isn’t morbid for us, therefore. It allows us to ponder with detachment the potential sword over our heads and our child’s.
Somehow Lyle’s name came up. He’d rallied amazingly from the grim state in which I’d first found him, and had resumed his work as the hospice’s reigning Florence Nightingale. This weekend he’d gone to visit his parents, to finally tell them about his illness and himself. “He’s doing great,” Doris said. “I really thought he was going to die that day you first
visited. After you left, he got all talkative in that dreamy way some people do.” She’d been with my father when he died, and indeed was unenviously expert in how people make their exits. “One of the things Lyle talked about was you.”
“Strange to be the subject of someone’s dying words.”
“It was something to dwell on that wasn’t the future. He told me about your life in those years you were away. He called you a terrified monster, but said you were worth saving. I think he had a thing for you—maybe he still does—and in a way he passed it to me.” She laughed. “Don’t ask me what I mean.”
“I’m just glad it happened.” I’d never asked her why she’d returned to me after I’d assaulted her at the hospice. It seemed impertinent to question a miracle.
“Most of the time it’s nice when people get lucid at the end. They can make their peace or whatever.” She paused. “Your dad was different.”
“He just drifted, right?”
“No,” she said carefully. “He sharpened some. Like, when the minister visited him—”
“The minister who baptized him? He came to the house?”
“Wasn’t for long. Your dad threw him out, said he didn’t want any lies. His words: ‘No more lies.’ I felt awful, sitting there.” Doe laughed without amusement. “The poor minister was mortified.”
I sat up. “Are you gonna tell me Father called for a rabbi?”
“Nothing like that. He just looked over at me and asked, real clear, when would he get better. I told him he wouldn’t get better. I had to be honest at that point. And he started crying. Very quiet and steady, tears running down like a runny nose. He did that for a long time, sitting erect, just staring and crying, like someone watching a sad movie. Till he died.”
“Curious,” I managed to say. “I wouldn’t have pictured it that way.” I fell back in the grass. I felt composed and anxious at once. With logic that fit but which I can’t explain, Doe’s story filled me with the absolute certainty that our child would be born afflicted, that he would die young, and that somehow it would be fair. The piece that makes the puzzle clear. The nail in the coffin. Mine.
Worse, way inside of me, I wanted the tragedy to happen; wanted it to happen in order to set right my accounts. Crazy, I know. Not to mention monstrously selfish. In apology, I turned my eyes upward and spoke aloud to my son inside his mother, as if, though unborn, he could hear:
“The wind is southwest, David. I see cirrus clouds moving this way.”
“Mare’s-tails, tell him,” Doe said.
“To the east, humidity over the ocean has created layers of altostratus, indicating precipitation somewhere.”
“Tell him the forecast.”
“The forecast?” I gazed westward beyond our back trees to the sky above streets and houses I couldn’t see, the sky above, I imagined, young couples like Doe and me raising families in our American suburbs. I feared for us all, but a good weatherman never shows doubt. “Blue skies,” I said after a moment. “I see blue skies today and tomorrow.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Robert Patton
ISBN: 978-1-5040-2482-2
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