by Maria Flook
“Is that right?” Tracy said, “His wife used vanilla for cologne? She smelled like cookies—”
“I still like Merv,” she said, her voice firm.
“Dinner theater is out!” Cam told her.
“He had some famous songs, you know standard numbers,” she said.
“Are you still at it?”
“We have to eat somewhere,” she said.
Margaret read the grid on the city map and found the block where Lewis’s apartment should be. After making some wrong turns, they asked directions. Then they found the right area and patrolled the neighborhood in the Duster. It was pretty bad, there was trash lofting over the sidewalks, the cars were double-parked where some action was happening and Cam had to wait. Yet, some of the buildings had green canvas awnings, a few of the storefronts showed pretty marquees.
“Looks druggy around here,” Tracy said.
“Who is that?” Cam said. They saw an older man walking down the sidewalk with three French poodles in a triple harness. The dogs were grey at the muzzle. “He looks kind of dapper.”
“A dandy,” Margaret said. “His dogs are ready for social security.”
“That’s not him,” Cam said.
Then they found the building, THE GREGORY HOTEL written in red and white tile above the front entrance. A dirty square of Astroturf covered the sidewalk before the big glass doors. One door had strapping tape following a crack.
“It’s not world-class,” Cam said.
“No, but it’s charming, it’s Art Deco,” Tracy said. There were two waist-high urns, one at either side of the entrance. The urns showed some salmon-colored geraniums. Cam told them they should find a motel near the Gregory, he’d be in and out in no time. They could relax, watch Johnny Carson. They’d drive back to Wilmington the next day.
“Sounds good,” Tracy said. “Maybe we’ll go find that cemetery tomorrow.”
Margaret said her head was aching, they almost got sucked up in a twister, and Tracy better shut up about visiting any graves. Tracy said that it wasn’t a real twister. “You have cancer of the imagination,” he told Margaret.
“It was a funnel cloud,” Cam said, taking Margaret’s side of it.
A funnel cloud. Did a funnel cloud pour its contents, those wet sheets, the water white as muslin? Or did it siphon the world upward? This was a question for the science column. Whatever the answer, it was just another detail she found strangely telling. It was true, wasn’t it? The past few days were crazy, revolving. The world was spinning, the horizon bulging, expanding beyond human perception. How was she supposed to keep free of these spirals? Sometimes she hyperventilated, she felt her heart palpitating, the palpitations increasing for moments at a time, then diminishing—until she couldn’t verify if her heart was beating at all.
“I can’t feel my heart beating,” she said to Tracy.
Tracy said, “You aren’t supposed to feel your own heart beating. It’s when you notice it pumping that something is wrong. You’re confusing a symptom with a strength.”
She told him, “It doesn’t have anything to do with the heart, anyway. Does it? Let’s be straight. It’s the mind. It’s the mind playing tricks on the body. That’s what I hate!”
…
They rented two rooms that connected if they unlocked a set of doors. The rooms were identical, with heavy maroon drapes and carpeting. Cam showed Margaret the setup and she told him what she thought of it. “It’s a fucking mortuary,” she said, but she had her shoes off already and he knew she wasn’t going to make him find another place. The hotel was cleaning up after some conventioneers, but their rooms were ready and Margaret walked through the first one right into the other, deciding which side she liked better. Laurence turned on the television and found “The Muppets.” Thank God for these Muppets, Margaret thought. She watched the show for a moment, attracted to the cloth puppets, their felt eyes and pilled cheeks.
“What’s that sound?” Tracy said.
“It’s that marble fountain out in the hall,” Margaret told him. “It’s noisy.”
“Like something’s frying. That spattering.”
They went to see the fountain with Laurence. It was a tall display of miniature Greek statuary and descending trays, shaped like grape leaves, made of marbleized plastic. The water fell, level by level, to a scalloped trough on the floor, and circulated back. Tight, bouncing drops sounded like a paradiddle on a snare drum. It mimicked, then directed everyone’s tension. “Shit, it makes a racket.” Tracy said. “Smell the chlorine?”
Margaret gave Laurence a penny, but he missed the fountain and the penny rolled down the hall along the dirty baseboard. There goes one wish, she thought. “No, don’t get that one, the floor’s too dusty,” she told the boy. She gave him a new penny.
Tracy rested on one of the double beds. He looked at the ceiling. Margaret thought of Tracy crushing the water jug against her face. She remembered Tina listing the herbs for Tracy; Margaret could still hear her sister’s clean enunciation. These incidents had frightened her, but she hated it when Tracy ignored her. No matter what happened, his silence was what unnerved her. He made it clear that she was banished from his kingdom, his wordless reign. His silence seemed to manipulate every dust mote, every swirl of sunlight until she couldn’t stand it. Margaret went over to the bed and climbed onto Tracy, full length. Her toes pushed off the insteps of his feet and she balanced herself, the small hill of her pelvis, against him. She kissed his mouth, ready to accept the rich greeting she expected, his breath accelerating, but he rolled her off of him.
Cam walked in from the other bedroom. His eyes were narrowed, as if he had been walking into some floodlights.
“It’s set,” he said. “We’re going over there. We’re all going over there for some kind of dinner.”
“You called the Arrow Collar? You actually spoke to him right now? You don’t waste a second,” Tracy said.
“Dinner?” Margaret asked him. “That’s bizarre. Dinner after all these years? Not me. I can’t go over there.”
Cam said, “I told him I was his son who he had never met. I said, Lewis Goddard? This is your son, Cameron. He didn’t know what I was talking about.”
“He drew a blank?” Tracy said.
“Dead at the end of the line. Then I gave him her name.”
“My name?” Margaret said.
Cam looked at her. “No. Elizabeth. I said that name.”
“Did he know who you were talking about?”
“Absolutely.”
Cam was showering in one of the bathrooms and Tracy went down to find the Chicago Tribune and the Sun-Times. Margaret put Laurence in the bathtub on the other side from Cam, and she gave him her plastic hairbrush with the hollow handle and one of her flip-flops so he could float them in the water. Then she went and sat down on one of the beds. She called the hotel operator and placed a call, but her daughter still wasn’t home. Perhaps they were riding the cabin cruiser or they’d driven to the harbor to see the new Baltimore Aquarium. She asked for another number in Wilmington. She was calling Elizabeth, but it was Darcy who answered the phone. Margaret recognized her sister-in-law’s voice, and the shock of it kept her words back for a moment; then she said, “Darcy, this is Margaret.”
“Where in the hell is my son?” Darcy said.
“He’s fine. That’s why I called. To tell Elizabeth not to worry.”
“My son has been kidnapped, do you realize that? Do you know you’re an accomplice? An accessory?”
Margaret said, “Shit, am I Patty Hearst? Am I? I’m his aunt, for Christ’s sake! It’s this thing with Cam’s father, you know, it’s finally getting going—”
“Cam is breaking the law, he’s stole my child and took him across state lines, you tell him that. Tell him he’s across state lines.”
“Look, we’re driving back soon.”
“He’s out of Delaware, and that’s his big mistake, that’s a federal mistake.” Darcy kept telling Margaret about these s
tate lines as if the offense, the violation, was against these boundaries and had little to do with the unity of their family.
Darcy went on, “You aren’t here to pick up your daughter. What kind of person are you?”
“Celeste doesn’t come back until Sunday,” Margaret said. “What day is it?”
Darcy told Margaret that Phil was delivering Celeste that afternoon. “Elizabeth doesn’t know what to do with her until you get back. Phil is pretty burned up to hear you drove to Chicago. He agrees that it’s irresponsible. He says it’s just another example.”
Margaret wanted to ask Darcy why Celeste was coming home early, but she didn’t continue. She was afraid to ask. Maybe her daughter couldn’t wait the weekend, she was disconsolate. Perhaps she’d had some kind of an accident, some stitches or something. A wave of helplessness rocked Margaret onto her feet and she jerked the phone from the table and pressed it hard against her waist. She thought of the distance between herself and her daughter, a thousand miles like a sea of glue.
“It’s ironic, it’s ironic in the most fucked-up way,” Darcy was saying. “You’re out there with my kid and I’m here with yours.”
“Is Celeste there?” Margaret asked. “Let me talk to her. Put her on.”
“She’s not here, not yet,” Darcy said. “I’m telling you. She’ll be here any minute. Looking for her mother. Believe-you-me—”
The conversation became strange, undulating. Margaret lost the thread of its meaning, and she felt a threat, an ominous tenor in the other woman’s words. Just who was kidnapping who, Margaret started thinking.
“Darcy? Are you listening to me? Let’s say we switch kids for a day. I’ll take care of Laurence, and you promise to watch Celeste. Even-Steven.” Margaret waited for Darcy to answer. “I’ll bring Laurence home safe as soon as I can. You explain it to Celeste. Tell her something a kid can understand.”
“Isn’t she used to this insane stuff after living with you and that weird reporter?” Darcy said.
She heard Cam coming through the other room. “Don’t worry,” she whispered to Darcy, “Laurence is okay; he’s taking a bath right here.” Then Cam was standing there. He jerked the telephone out of her hands and slammed it down on the bed table. He picked the receiver up. Darcy was still on, Margaret could hear her voice, an insectlike murmur that stopped and started. Cam said something to his wife, he was giving her his condolences; he was acid. Then he crashed the receiver down once more.
“Stupid shit,” he said. He pushed Margaret down on the bed. “They can trace that. Did you have to do that?”
“You can’t just steal your kid and forget that his mother exists—”
“First, let me tell you something. A man doesn’t steal his own child.”
“Yes, he can. It’s against the law. Legally, I mean, somebody steals his kid if he’s not supposed to have him.”
“I’m not supposed to have my own kid? Since when did you decide this?”
Margaret looked down at her feet, she pushed one foot forward, then the other until her toe snagged on the shag carpeting. “I just mean—”
Cam turned up and back before the window, walking like someone who’s burned his hand or slammed his fingers in a drawer. He said, “Who’s asking you to pony express our plans to her? I’m the one to tell her if I’m coming home.”
“Aren’t we going back tomorrow? We’re not staying here, are we? I have to get Celeste—” She looked at her brother. They stared at one another. They both felt the same surge—they saw how their tactics regarding their offspring were turning a corner, becoming twisted. Cam’s mouth turned up on one side. It wasn’t a smile she recognized, she had never seen a smile like this. It looked ingenious and desperate all at once, like a soldier who is wearing grey suddenly recognizes his brother is wearing the blue. They could shoot one another, for what?
Laurence was calling to them. She went into the bathroom and lifted the boy from the water. She wrapped him in a towel and carried him to the chair where she had his fresh clothes. Cam tugged a jersey over Laurence’s head; the boy’s ears immediately blazed red.
Tracy came back with three newspapers. “I’ll stay here and read these while you go visit your old man,” Tracy said.
“No, we’re all going. We’re going chain gang,” Cam said.
“I don’t think we should go, we’ll distract you from your work,” Tracy said.
“No,” Cam said. “I want backups.”
“Well, all right. You talked me into it,” Tracy told him. They were grinning back and forth.
Cam took a bottle of bourbon from a paper bag and twisted the seal. He picked up the glass tumbler from the motel desk and flicked off its paper crown. “Do you want any of this?” he asked Tracy, but he didn’t include Margaret.
“I’ll take some,” Tracy said.
Cam poured two glasses of bourbon. He said, “What is it exactly, in your mind, Tracy, that I’m supposed to do now that I’m here?”
Margaret started laughing; her laughter lifted and dipped, was punctuated by rich growls low in her diaphragm, but the men weren’t smiling.
“You know what you have to do, man,” Tracy said.
“What is that?” Cam said.
“Just go introduce yourself. Go face to face. No thumbs. Identify that mystery guest. Name that tune.”
“What’s the point of it, though?”
“That’s what I’ve been saying all along,” Margaret said. She walked over and poured bourbon for herself. “I could have told you that two days ago!” she said.
Cam and Tracy didn’t acknowledge her. They were involved in a peculiar exchange. It was like pilot and copilot going through a checklist, making sure the needles rested at the appropriate angles on all the gauges. Then it was resolved. The four of them would go over there to the Gregory Hotel. Cam would have his little entourage since he said he needed somebody to flank him. “I need backups,” he said.
“We’re behind you. Your slaves to the end,” Tracy said, and he draped the newspaper he was holding over his sleeve and rolled the neck of the bottle against his arm as he poured another drink for Cam.
“Jesus, you missed your calling,” Cam said.
“What about you? Sweetheart, you could have hustled. You’re perfect for the Oldest Profession,” Tracy told him.
II
The street was smoky from chimney stacks spewing flecked clouds from basement incinerators. The soot filtered down on them as they stood outside the Gregory Hotel. Margaret had bathed and nicked her leg shaving, a row of garnets bloomed in a vertical line along her ankle. Cam gave her a new handkerchief. He had to tear its cellophane. She dabbed at her leg and folded the handkerchief so Cam could put it back in his pocket again. She had combed Laurence’s hair, parting it on one side and wetting the comb to make the strands stay in place.
“He looks like Alfalfa,” Cam said.
“Alfalfa wore his part in the middle,” Tracy said.
Their attention to Laurence continued as they took an elevator up to the sixth floor. They encouraged the boy to watch the lacy arrow rise and Laurence counted the floors. Tracy commented on the elevator; it was Art Deco.
“Art Deco, art schmecko,” Cam said, “it’s a scummy flophouse.” Margaret studied the romantic lines of paneling inlaid with strips of mirror. The ribbons of mirror were tarnished with metallic lichens. They lifted slowly in the unusual stall, as if ascending into another time, but Cam wasn’t sure of its checkpoints. Cam showed the strain of it. Margaret didn’t like riding the elevator, and she thought she could smell something burning. Like the electrical insulation was smoldering. Then the doors opened.
Looking for the right apartment number, they found the door was left open. Tracy knocked against the molding and waited. “Hello,” Tracy called into the apartment. Cam didn’t wait and walked past Tracy and Margaret. They followed him inside. The rooms were painted deep umber, the rich color accentuated by the candelabra flickering on the sideboard in the living room
. More candles on the dining table swelled and shivered with their arrival. Margaret noticed a familiar end table with lion’s head brass pulls. It was a perfect match to a table in Elizabeth’s sewing room; it must have been a pair split apart. The room had lamps with frosted glass shades, pink as sherbet, and these, added to the candlelight, gave a cabaret effect to the cramped apartment. Margaret found these cluttered rooms instantly appealing. Her head felt light as if she had already drunk too much of something, but the sensation came from the plumped upholstery, the tight satin pleats of the seat cushions. These satin pleats gave her unwholesome shivers.
The walls showed the familiar drawings of Lewis by Leyendecker. Several of the Arrow Collar ads were matted and framed. Some of these were the original Leyendecker paintings and sketches. Margaret liked the Sanforized-shrunk ads, and one for Pepperell rayon coat linings that showed Lewis being dressed by an Oriental servant. Another picture had Lewis tugging his cuff high on his ankle to reveal glossy Bostonian wing tips. Finding these pictures all together, tracking them in one whirling glance, wall to wall, was stunning. Lewis had been more handsome than she’d ever imagined. Some of the angles in the photos showed similarities to Cam, and she found herself looking back and forth between the advertisements and her brother.
“Are we vain, or what?” Tracy whispered to her.
“Be quiet,” she told him.
Lewis entered the room. He held his face high, allowing his sculpted jaw full prominence. His shoulders were still broad and level even as his physique appeared perhaps a bit slight. It was just a hint of his age; his bones might be hollowing. His face was startling, and Margaret forgot her surroundings and moved past the beautiful sconces that decorated the wall, although she had wanted to study them. Lewis lived up to his legend. Margaret had seen certain people—usually an actor or a singer—who possessed this same trait, the blessing or burden of looking always larger than life. Lewis pulled his left arm backward in an elegant motion, inviting them inside the living room, although they were well past the threshold already.