“So how does it make you feel?” Chris said.
“Feels okay to me,” Gus said.
“No, I mean how do you feel? Not how does it feel?”
Gus shrugged.
“It’s one of the things you do, you know, shift the question just slightly so you can stay closed.”
“Maybe staying closed works for me,” Gus said.
Chris looked at the patches of river.
“Maybe,” Chris said.
The patches of river continued to move and stayed always the same.
“Always hard for me to talk with you, you know,” Chris said. “But it’s harder being quiet.”
Gus nodded.
“You seem to be okay with quiet,” Chris said.
“You get older, being quiet gets easier,” Gus said. “How’s Grace?”
Chris took in a long breath and let it out slowly through his nose.
“She’s a piece of work, isn’t she?”
“I like her,” Gus said. “She’s got juice. How about you. You love her?”
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “She’s, she’s got so much, what? … voltage, you know … it’s like living with a cloudburst….”
“There’s worse things,” Gus said.
Chris nodded.
“You going to marry her?”
“I don’t know. My marriage models aren’t too good, you know?”
“Yeah,” Gus said. “I do know.”
There were pigeons circling down onto the stadium floor, maybe a dozen of them. Gus watched them circle and then settle, pecking at whatever they pecked at in the grass, ordered by some sort of internal rules that Gus didn’t know. Like everybody else, Gus thought.
“How do you stand her?” Chris said. “Why don’t you ever confront her? Tell her to shut the fuck up?”
The pigeons flew off suddenly, all together. Gus leaned back and stretched his neck, turning his head slightly back and forth as if to ease a crick. He shrugged.
“She’s your mother,” he said.
“Yeah, well, don’t do me no favors.”
“She doesn’t know anything,” Gus said. “Simple stuff, like how to write a check, or when to put gas in the car, or how to get to Cambridge. The world’s a mystery to her, and all she knows how to be is a bratty, know-it-all little girl.”
Chris was sitting upright now, leaning forward with his forearms resting on his thighs.
“Do you have sex?” he said.
Gus smiled a little.
“No.”
“So what do you do?”
“For sex?”
“Yes?”
Gus smiled.
“Love is hard,” he said, “but sex is easy.”
“You have a friend.”
“Yes.”
“Does Ma know?”
“The things your mother doesn’t know,” Gus said, “placed end to end would reach Omaha.”
“I’m glad I know this,” Chris said.
Gus shrugged.
“That’s one of my problems, you know? You never stood up to her. You never said, ‘Peggy, that’s enough.’”
“Wouldn’t do much good,” Gus said. “She can’t act different. She is what she is. Just mean a fight and I always thought it wouldn’t be good for you, see your parents fight.”
“You could have left her.”
“And you? Leave you alone with her?”
Chris shrugged. They were both quiet. The pale sun was gone. Cars along both sides of the river had their lights on.
“Take Flaherty’s job,” Gus said. “I have no problem with it, and your in-laws won’t object.”
“You have a lot of influence with Tom Winslow,” Chris said. “It’s strange.”
“Known Tommy a long time,” Gus said.
They stood. Chris looked down at his father, shorter and wider than he was, at the flat red Mick face he’d looked at all his life, at the thick neck, and the arms tight in the jacket sleeves, and always the air of distance. He knew his father would walk in front of a train for him. But always still the airspace around him, that even Chris had never quite penetrated.
Four inches taller and thirty pounds lighter, the son patted his father’s shoulder for a moment, and then they walked together out of the stadium toward the parking lot.
Gus
At night the Bay Tower Room, sixty stories up, was a public restaurant. But at lunch it was a private club full of bankers and stockbrokers. Gus sat near the window with Tommy Winslow and drank some club soda. To his left the Custom House Tower gave scale to the high setting, and beyond it, across the harbor, Gus could see planes coming and going at Logan Airport. He’d worn a gun every day for nearly forty years, and he usually noticed it no more than his wallet; but he could feel its weight here among the suits. It made him smile.
“Something funny?” Tom asked.
Gus shook his head.
“I don’t get up here often,” he said.
“It’s okay for lunch,” Tom said. “At dinner it’s full of people from Worcester.”
The waiter brought their salads. They ate in silence. Tom ate quickly, putting too much salad per bite into his mouth. He was tall and spare with square shoulders, and a long nose. His receding gray hair was straight and long and combed smoothly back.
“Parnell Flaherty’s going to appoint my kid as a special prosecutor on these gang killings,” Gus said.
“The hell he is,” Tom said.
There was a hint of salad dressing at one corner of his mouth and he dabbed at it with his napkin.
“Parnell’s a smart fella,” Gus said. “Figure it’ll dehorn Cabot on the crime-in-the-streets thing.”
“Because of Grace,” Tom said.
“Um-hmm.”
“I don’t want him to take it,” Tom said.
Gus shrugged.
“I mean it, Gus. It will fuck up this campaign. Cabot is going to be the best senator money can buy.”
Again Gus shrugged.
“For Crissake, Gus, do you ever talk?”
The waiter cleared their salad plates, put down their entree, and retreated.
“Chris’s going to take the job,” he said.
Tom Winslow’s eyes behind the old-fashioned round black-rimmed glasses he wore were small and flat.
“I don’t like that, Gus.”
Gus put his fork down and folded his hands on the edge of the table. He leaned forward toward Tom.
“Tommy, we’ve known each other all our lives. You ever remember a time when I gave a fuck what you liked?”
Tom’s face had a nice tennis tan. It was hard to tell if it might have flushed a little under the tan. His eyes stayed steady.
“I’ve never given you trouble, Gus.”
“And I’ve never given you trouble, Tommy.”
“All that we’ve done together. I’ve been cooperative. I’ve helped make you … very comfortable.”
“Chris’s going to take this offer and you’re going to support him,” Gus said.
“My child has a stake in this too,” Tom said.
“Not my problem,” Gus said.
They sat silently. Neither ate. Across the harbor an American Airlines 767 sloped in over the Fargo Building, lowered gently over the harbor, and landed silently.
“Cabot wants the Senate,” Tom said.
“You want it,” Gus said.
“Same thing.”
“And maybe you can buy it for him,” Gus said. “Don’t matter to me.”
“Chris will be a roadblock,” Tom said.
Gus stared at Tom without speaking.
“But it’s a free country,” Tom said.
Gus stayed quiet, the weight of his gaze on Tom Winslow.
“I won’t stand in his way,” Tom said.
“In fact you’ll urge him on,” Gus said.
“I said I won’t oppose him.”
“He won’t do it if he thinks it will cause trouble for Grace’s family,” Gus said. “You’ll have to urge
him to do it.”
“Sure,” Tom said. “I’ll urge him.”
The waiter came, and asked if they were through. They said yes, and the waiter took away both plates and brought them coffee. Out beyond the harbor, the sky was bright blue, and the water mirrored its color, so that it was hard to tell where the horizon was.
“We’re all right, then?” Tom said.
“Us? Sure, Tommy, we’re dandy.”
“And our, ah, special relationship continues?”
Gus smiled at him over his coffee cup.
“Till death do us part, Tommy.”
Gus
At their big house in Beverly Farms, the Winslows had a party for Chris Sheridan, to celebrate his appointment. That was the spin they were going to put on it. Cooperation beyond family, beyond affiliation, to rid the city of its current plague. They even invited Debbie McBride, Gus noticed, still in a wheelchair, but recovering, thanks-be-to-Gawd, cute and plucky in her Girl Scout uniform, wheeled about by her mother. Mrs. McBride was pale, with fat thighs. In her flowered dress with puffy sleeves and a low scooped neck, she looked like a character from Fantasia, Parnell Flaherty was not there.
Gus stood near a six-foot black marble fireplace nursing a tall Scotch and soda watching Peggy flounce about among the rich people, screeching with laughter at everything said, clutching her bourbon in both hands. She drank bourbon on the rocks only. Not through a highly developed taste preference, but because it was the only thing she knew the name of. Even with bourbon if someone gave her a brand-name choice she would be puzzled and Gus would have to specify for her. Peggy was wearing a heavy white brocaded dress with a blue scarf over her shoulders and bright blue shoes. She looked, Gus realized, a bit like Debbie’s proud mother. Only older, and fatter. She had the mannerisms of a junior high school girl, titillated by a rich swirl of events she didn’t understand. She was flirty and provocative, which Gus mused was not easy while crammed into a steel-stayed corset.
A young woman from the caterer, in tight black pants and a white shirt, came by, and offered Gus an endive leaf with sour cream and a dab of salmon roe. Gus shook his head and the young woman passed on. Gus looked thoughtfully at her tight young backside. He drank some Scotch.
Laura Winslow, Tommy’s wife, said, “You’re not eating, Gus.”
Gus smiled at her.
“This isn’t Paddy chow, Laura,” he said. “I’m waiting for the boiled potatoes.”
Gus liked Laura Winslow. She was tall and genuine with short hair, strong forearms, and a good tan. Her eyes were wide apart, and there was always the implication of amusement in them. She was said to be a good tennis player, and she always seemed to him a lot smarter than her husband. Gus could never figure out why she’d married a twerp like Tommy Winslow, though now and then he felt a hint of resignation in her that seemed like his.
“How do you think Chris feels about this party?” Laura said.
Gus shrugged. “We don’t always talk about stuff, Laura.”
“You value restraint, Gus. So does Chris.”
Gus nodded.
“I was a little worried that we were kind of putting him on the spot,” Laura said.
“He could have said no.”
“I suppose he could have,” Laura said. “But that would have put him rather on the spot too.”
“The whole deal puts him on the spot,” Gus said. “He didn’t want to be there, he could have walked.”
“He says you supported him.”
Gus nodded again.
“Tommy supported him too,” Laura said.
“Decent,” Gus said.
Laura looked at Gus without comment. Then she said, “Yes.”
In front of them, Peggy was dancing. She held her electric-blue scarf stretched out across her chest while she swayed to seductive music that only she heard. She dipped low in front of a tall man in a yellow linen blazer, and dropped the scarf to reveal fat white cleavage. She slowly drew the scarf across the cleavage while she gazed up at the man with her eyes half closed. Then she twirled across the room and danced for a shorter man with a dark tan and white hair.
Gus and Laura watched her.
“Yvonne De Carlo,” Gus said without inflection.
Laura smiled and moved off to talk to another guest. Gus took a mushroom cap off a serving tray and ate it. The mushroom cap had been filled with spinach and broiled. He went to the bar and got his drink refilled and stood near the bar. His son came over carrying a bottle of Catamount beer. Chris always drank beer, almost always from the bottle, and always the local beer.
Across the room Peggy had spread the scarf across her shoulders and was looking back over her shoulder at the white-haired man with the tan. She twitched her hips. He said something and she shrieked again with laughter, and twirled away from him.
“Ma’s doing the dance of the seven veils again,” Chris said.
Gus nodded.
“Doesn’t that bother you?” Chris said.
Gus took in some air and let it out.
“She’s having a nice time,” he said.
“Yeah, but everyone else thinks she’s an asshole.”
Gus looked around the room.
“What’s one more?” Gus said.
“See there you go again, closing off.”
Gus shrugged.
“You want me to say your mother’s an asshole, Chris?”
“I want you to say what you feel.”
Gus stared at the cold fireplace across the room. He took a pull at his drink, carefully, not too much. He didn’t want to get drunk at his son’s party.
“Chris,” he said, “mostly I don’t know what I feel. And mostly, I guess, I don’t want to.”
“It’s no way to live,” Chris said.
“I know,” Gus said.
Tom
As the gate locked automatically behind him, he felt the thickening pressure he always felt when he came to the house, a commingling of surreptitiousness, excitement, desire, safety, and guilt. He parked the car amid the unrestrained bushes and got out.
She greeted him at the door as he’d taught her to. Arms around his neck, kissing him on tiptoe, one foot off the ground, toe pointed backwards. He was very precise about this. She had ribbons in her hair. She wore one of the little flowered pinafores he’d bought her, with white ankle socks and saddle shoes. Her make up was careful and extensive. Lip gloss, blusher, green eye shadow, mascara. She wore a lot of expensive perfume.
When they were through kissing at the door, she took his hand and led him into the living room. It was the same room it had been for forty years, updated with a vast television screen on the wall to the left. There was a frantic music video playing on the screen. He shut it off. Compact discs and videotapes were scattered on the floor. A box of pink tissues sat on the table. But the boy’s books were still there in the bookcase, the Daisy air rifle still stood in the corner. He squatted by the big fireplace and lit the fire that was already laid there. She went to the kitchen and made him a martini as he had taught her, and brought it to him, and sat on the arm of the big chair and stroked his hair, the way he insisted, while he drank his martini, and stared into the moving fire. When he finished his martini he began to fondle her, and after that, they went to the bedroom.
Chris
Chris sat across from Cabot Winslow in the dining room of the Harvest Restaurant in Harvard Square. Grace sat between them. It was late in the lunch hour and the dining room was nearly empty.
Chris studied his menu. He felt the wringing tension in his solar plexus when he was with Grace. He wondered if Cabot knew. Cabot was so flat that, if he knew or not would have little effect on his behavior.
“This is complicated for us,” Grace said. “I thought we ought to talk, just the three of us, and sort everything out.”
“No problem, Grapes,” Cabot said. “Chris and I will just each go about our business. I’ll run for the Senate. The Chris-man will clean up the city.”
Chris hated the w
ay Cabot talked. He hated being called the Chris-man. He hated the way Cabot called his sister Grapes. He hated the bow ties that Cabot always wore. He often thought it would be fun to bust Cabot’s nose for him. But then he imagined Cabot down and bleeding, and he felt bad for him, and a little frightened at what he’d imagined, and he promised himself he’d never do it.
“That sounds fine, Cab, and you probably think you mean it,” Grace said. “But if he does clean up the city it’ll hurt your chances for the Senate.”
“I’m not running on Flaherty’s failures, Grapes. I offer myself to the voters as I am. I hope to be elected on the issues.”
Christ, Chris thought, even to his own sister he talks like a political speech.
“And if you’re not?” Grace said.
Cabot shrugged gracefully.
“And what about Daddy?” Grace said.
Cabot shrugged again.
Chris swallowed some beer.
“I’m sorry, I’ve put us all in this position,” he said.
Cabot shook his head and made a dismissive gesture.
“Please, Chris. No one is suggesting that.”
“I could have said no to Flaherty. I thought about it. I knew it would make things awkward for you”—he looked at his girlfriend—“and for Grace. I thought about it a lot.”
Cabot listened attentively. Polite. He was a large young man with a pale square face, and reddish hair. In a few years he’d be portly. But there was about him a gentility that served to make him more graceful than he should have been. Breeding, Chris thought. Six centuries of being upper class.
“Maybe you could share with Cab some of your thinking,” Grace said.
He looked at her. She was twirling her wineglass by the stem. Most of the wine remained untouched. Sometimes he thought he’d like her better if she drank a little … or ate too much … or tore off her clothes in the kitchen some morning and fucked him on the floor…. Six centuries of being upper class…. He lingered at the thought of taking her on the floor. Of overpowering her and … The longer they were apart the more implacably and angrily he wanted her.
“I needed to do something,” Chris said.
All Our Yesterdays Page 20