The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  At the corner of the Concord Turnpike Eliot finds the second leg of the bike path, which is dirt almost all the way to Lexington—it runs along the road here, obscured from it by a stand of thick pine trees. A shape in the moonlight a bulk in the dark—he recites the words to himself as encouragement, because it is dark here, beyond the reach of streetlights. He can see only the outlines of his arms and legs, the bulge of the backpack in front of him. Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead/ In their night-encampment on the hill/ Wrapped in silence so deep and still/ That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread/ The watchful night-wind, as it went/ Creeping along from tent to tent. He recites bits of the poem to himself and feels the rush of wind through the trees, against his skin, against his eyes, his hair, the insides of his elbows. A moment only he feels the spell/ Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread,/ Of lonely belfry and the dead.

  It is nearly midnight when Eliot reaches the place where the trail merges with 2A. Blacksmith is hot and sweaty and turns skittish at the feel of the pavement under his feet. “It’s okay,” Eliot says, patting his neck, and his voice sounds strange to him—inconsequential compared to the suddenly loud clanging of Blacksmith’s hooves on the tar. It has taken him longer to get here than he imagined—a full hour, which means the whole trip will be longer than he thought. It is only a quarter of a mile until the trail picks up again on the other side of the road, but there is no sidewalk and not much of a shoulder. He keeps Blacksmith close to the wall of trees along the right. It is just a short way, he reminds himself, no more than a quarter of an inch on the map.

  A van rounds the curve ahead of them, and its headlights frighten Blacksmith, who yanks his neck to the side, nearly tearing the reins from Eliot’s grasp. The van itself hurtles forward, seeing them only at the last minute and swerving with a dramatic screech of tires to the other side of the road. For a moment its headlights cut a swath of light through the forest Eliot and Blacksmith have emerged from. It looks like a terrifying mess of twisted branches and dead leaves, a confusing and impossible wilderness to have come through. A shape in the moonlight a bulk in the dark, Eliot thinks, but the words have lost their inspirational quality. He feels like a vibrant, frightened collection of edges and nerves and bones now, not something strong and solid and bulky, belonging to night. Beneath him Blacksmith feels altogether separate; Eliot’s hands seem to be losing their effect on the reins. Another car flies past them and also swerves at the last minute, screeching its tires and leaving a trail of loud music behind. Blacksmith snorts and looks back toward Eliot with a wild eye.

  “It’s okay,” Eliot says aloud and reaches forward to put a hand on the horse’s twitching shoulder. “Just a little farther.”

  But he feels suddenly less convinced that he can actually reach Roxbury from Concord, that Rosita’s world rests on the same solid ground, in the same state, on the same continent and planet, as his. Of course, he knows it does; he understands logically how each street connects to the next. He has even re-created the whole web in papier-mâché. But now that they are out of the woods and on the paved road, there seems to be something wrong with the equation—some lack of correlation to the physical world.

  Eliot is aware, only faintly, of the hum of an engine behind him, when there is a tremendous blast, like a gunshot, that issues from its belly. Blacksmith half rears and then shoots off with a stuttering heft of muscles become suddenly fluid, a body determined by grace. And they are sailing over the pavement, past the squat gray houses that have begun to spring up along the road and shiny dark humps of cars parked in driveways, past the modest yards and gas grills and darkened windows with their blissful, quiet safety. Past rows of carefully planted flowers and street signs and spindly, staked saplings like little deer. As he rides, Eliot has the strange, euphoric feeling that he has become Roberto. Become a boy who is missing—a boy who belongs to a world between this one and that of the dead. A boy who has been, for all intents and purposes, forgotten, but still exists, still struggles to mean something in the world. All around him Eliot can feel time opening up and shrugging back the cloak of darkness, softening its shoulders to make room. He can feel it like a wind passing through him, collecting pieces of his anger and sorrow and disappointment and scattering them through the darkness like so many dandelion seeds.

  And then suddenly there is the glare of metal—the fender of a pickup truck headed around the curve in front of him—and the heave of Blacksmith’s body against the reins—a sort of thump beneath him, and then absolutely nothing, his body coming down into the soft embrace of air rather than Blacksmith’s firm haunches. At the same time there is an incredible confluence of sounds: the shriek of brakes and the penetrating blare of a horn, the clatter of Blacksmith’s hooves racing away, and the soft crumpling smack of metal against wood. Followed by what sounds at first like an eerie rise of wind swooping toward Eliot—a tornado of sorts, descending on him where he lies now, on his side among the dead leaves in the ditch. A tree falling, slowly at first—a slender aspen felled by the impact of stainless-steel radiator grid against its pliable trunk—and then faster with a whoosh through the snapping branches of other trees and undergrowth, hitting the earth with a dull thud.

  Then there is stillness—the dying of the truck’s engine like the moment of ending, the TV screen shrinking to a pinpoint and then off.

  But not over. Somehow, there is still the slamming of the door, a figure emerging, and the repeated, almost awed whisper, Oh God Oh my God Oh God—a large, short-haired woman, rocking herself slightly, hands clasped around her substantial waist, approaching him. Eliot can see her sneakers—dirty, marshmallowy-looking shoes and the rolled cuffs of her pants, the stunned fluttering of the aspen leaves against the dirt and underbrush beside him, as if they don’t yet know they have been upended—that already the trunk that sustains them is dead.

  There is water trickling gently through the ditch and down one side of Eliot’s neck. It is uncomfortable. This makes him sit up. Are you all right? Oh Jesus—are you—the woman is saying now. She has a wide terrified face. From this upright position, the world slips into a more ordinary focus. There is steam escaping from the hood of the pickup and the headlights are still on, shining into the sad skittery mess of blowing leaves, unnaturally green and bright in the glare. Eliot lifts himself to his knees and tentatively, pressing his hand to the ground, he pushes himself up to stand, mud running down his neck, his shoulder, his right leg. There is a cut on his knee and a pain in his right ankle, but otherwise his body feels whole. In front of him the woman’s broad face slackens and, almost as if she has been pushed from behind, she drops, right there in the road, to her knees. Oh dear Jesus, he can hear her saying. Oh sweet Jesus.

  Strapped to the front of him, he still has his backpack, now slick with mud. Staring at it, he feels a pang of some terrible unease rising through him—of what? He looks at the woman, who is asking him a question, at the pickup, at the slender trunk projecting uncannily from the radiator, and then at the dark road, the darkened yards and houses on the other side of the street. There is no Blacksmith. A dark, desperate feeling wells up in Eliot—he can feel it gathering in his stomach and seeping out into his bones. Blacksmith has disappeared. He is alone here on this road with this hysterical woman and his flyers, undistributed, miles from Roxbury, no closer to Rosita.

  18

  WALKING DOWN THE LONG HALL to the window at the end of the intensive care unit, Jack can see his own reflection on the floor beneath him—wavery and indistinct, like something a child might have drawn and then erased. He has an unfamiliar feeling in his belly—a sort of scraping that accompanies the squeak of his rubber soles on the linoleum and the whir of air-conditioning through the complex maze of air ducts overhead. It feels quiet and empty up here after the mad rush of the emergency room. No screaming parents and shouting orderlies, or stretchers being rushed around by frantic interns. No visitors, just a row of rooms with their doors open, and inside, vague forms on cots dwarf
ed by massive electronic life-support systems. Now and then a plastic drip catches the reflection of the hall light and shimmers like an airborne jellyfish. Who are these people here? Are they unconscious or lying awake and silent in the dark?

  Downstairs, Rosita is in labor. This is where the scraping in Jack’s belly comes from—something between thrill and dread. It is similar to the feeling of reckless abandon he gets taking jumps on unmarked ski trails, or skydiving—the release of embarking on complete risk. This is not remotely what he felt any of the three times Faith gave birth. He can’t remember these with great specificity—they exist in his mind in a sort of smoky blur. The twins, of course, he remembers with a certain vividness because they were the first. He went back to the darkened Park Avenue apartment he and Faith lived in, heated up onion soup and canned brown bread, and sat alone at the dining room table waiting for a phone call. This was before nervous fathers came to the hospital, strapped on surgical masks, and plunged into the childbearing process as if looking on could bring them any closer to the miracle of life. It has always struck him as foolish—the idea of pacing around, or, worse yet, going into the delivery chamber and counting or breathing or whatever it is they do these days.

  He has left Rock, who drove after the ambulance with him, downstairs, outside the swinging doors to the obstetrics ward. The boy is young and foolish enough to sit there making conversation, offering words of support to nervous fathers, pacing the room, drinking coffee, and flipping through People magazine. For all his simpleminded exuberance, he is, Jack has to admit, a strangely helpful presence. His prattle about the Red Sox, the Yankees, the time his mother had appendicitis, allowed Jack to sit and stare at the institutional carpet—beige, flecked with almost indecipherable bits of turquoise. The work, it occurred to Jack, of some poor frustrated institutional psychologist who must have decided that turquoise, what—calms agitated nerves? Dulls fear?

  Jack waited only long enough to hear that Rosita would be all right; that Caesar’s jaws had left only a superficial bite wound, and that she had regained consciousness and was in fact going into labor—the baby would be five weeks early. Did he want to go in? The idea made Jack recoil. It is certainly not his place to see Rosita like this.

  The window at the end of the hallway Jack has found himself at looks out over the parking lot, onto the towering lights and incomplete rows of parked cars. There is a print hanging beside it—one of the umpteen washed-out Monet reproductions the hospital has hung on its bleak pale blue walls. Jack has always hated Monet—the soft, euphemistic edges and inexact boundaries, the blurred pastels. But he stares at this painting anyway, taking in its uneven brushstrokes, the sweep of color that changes from orange to yellow to white, the humps of haystacks like tired, shaggy animals. It is exactly right here, among these bodies suspended in between the world of the living and the dead. It makes Jack understand all those cheap prints and posters, Monet umbrellas, breakfast mugs, stationery sets, mouse pads, and tote bags he has always scoffed at. They offer such reassuring visions, miniature images of a world in which borders are unimportant, in which there is no difference between straw and earth, sky and land, life and death. There is something about this that holds him here, staring—that stops the scraping in his stomach for a moment and stills his hands in his pockets. For the first time, Jack understands this longing for such softness—feels it stirring inside him like an uneasy sleeper.

  There was a moment, looking at Rosita crumpled on the gravel, when Jack thought she was dead. Thought that in point of fact he had killed her. And it was a vast and shocking feeling like a black wall—the opposite of these vague, forgiving haystacks. She was having his baby and she was dead and he was responsible. And this was absolute and unequivocal and forever. She is not, thankfully, but he is still responsible for what becomes of her and the baby.

  Jack has no doubt that the baby is his. He has known, in fact, through all the writing of the caveats about proof of paternity in George’s letter, through all the time spent sitting outside her house, and all the hours spent working on his diorama, through even those first moments of seeing her at Colby Kesson. He can see now that he has held this knowledge, all along, like a photograph waiting for the right light to expose it. And seeing Rosita in the window of her shabby apartment, it was exposed: clear and absolute as day. He is not a man to doubt his instincts. He is the father of her child.

  After the baby is born, he will marry Rosita. He has not discussed this with her yet. There has been no appropriate moment between the cacophany of her brother-in-law’s rapid Spanish at the doorstep and the violence in his own driveway. But this is what Jack decided, sitting in his car watching her stand and look out through the plate-glass window. The notion of sending discreet yearly payments belongs to the degraded world of divorce and conditional morality, of equivocal notions of responsibility, and indulgence without consequence, profit without labor, expectation without commitment. Which is not the world of the Dunlaps.

  And there is something else that makes him sure of this decision—something Jack has no name for, but that he was reminded of, looking at Rosita fold her arms, tilt her head to profile. A kind of wonder and respect he has buried, for the last six months, under the floes of forward movement. She is a woman who can fix leaky pipes herself instead of calling a plumber; who recommends tea and extra sleep to cure Eliot’s headaches, not psychological counseling; who unflinchingly steadies a boy’s impaled and bloody arm while teaching him to count in Spanish. She is a woman unlike any other he has ever encountered.

  Outside the window, five stories below Jack, there is a man walking across the circle of the streetlight toward his car. Jack turns from the painting to watch him from above—he looks so small, nothing more than an outline, really. But for the second time in the last twenty-four hours Jack is seized with an almost physical realization of the wholeness of a life outside his own—here is this man walking alone across the dark parking lot, unlocking the door of his car, pausing for a moment and looking back toward the hospital. He, too, has a life that he is the only person living. No one else will know of this moment in the parking lot, standing under the orange streetlight, just as no one will know of this moment standing at the window in the intensive care unit. Jack feels suddenly terribly, unreasonably sad for this solitary shirtsleeved figure in the darkness. How many moments like this is he taking to his grave? Fifty percent of his life? Eighty? Even ninety-nine? Jack stares out at the taillights of the car he has climbed into, which blink once and then steady, the uneven clouds of exhaust streaming up from under the bumper. In a moment, the car has backed out of the space and driven to the exit, where it pauses before entering the traffic on the street.

  “Mr. Dunlap.” Jack starts and turns to see Rock Coughlin making his way on squeaky soles down the hall. He looks wild, with his shaggy hair on end and ragged shorts and long arms—almost electric, like a charge making its way along a wire.

  “It’s a boy,” he says, when he is a few yards from Jack. “Five pounds seven ounces.”

  Five pounds seven ounces. The words have a familiar ring. This is what Caroline weighed, Jack is amazed to find himself remembering.

  “Healthy,” Rock says. He has come to a stop in front of Jack now. “Ten fingers and ten toes.”

  Jack can only stand there feeling the blood rushing through his veins. “And Rosita . . . ?” he asks finally.

  “Sleeping. Fine.”

  Jack turns back to the window—the circle of orange, the incomplete row of cars.

  “Here,” Rock says, tapping Jack’s arm with the back of his hand. He is holding something out. “I bummed these off a guy downstairs.”

  Jack takes the object Rock is holding out to him and lifts it, casting a light around his stunned brain for the word or meaning—a cigar. Because he has had a baby.

  “In honor of the occasion.” Rock produces a lighter from his back pocket. He is actually smiling. Jack looks from this oddly exuberant boy in front of him to the cigar in
his hand and then tentatively brings it to his lips. Rock reaches forward to light it, and automatically Jack breathes in the rich smoke and feels it pull back into his throat and lungs, fill his brain with a quick, heady burst of tension.

  “To beginnings,” Rock says, lifting his cigar like a wineglass.

  Jack stares at the smoke evaporating into the sterile hospital air, probably—certainly—forbidden. And he nods his head, just a slight inclination, but enough to concede.

  AT 23 MEMORIAL ROAD there is the hiss and then slam of the screen door, the screech of the porch boards, the gentle drone of cicadas—Faith feels stunned by the familiar. Here she is, a new person, and here is her old life, exactly the same.

  A strange calm has come over Faith on recognizing this. She was right, first of all—Eliot is in trouble. There is no way to explain how she knew this except that she is his mother. Watch him, she thinks, my sweet boy. Please, dear God, take care of my sweet Eliot. She is not a religious person, but the prayers crop up in her train of thought like weeds. Dear Eliot, she finds herself praying oddly to her dead brother, dear Eliot, watch over your namesake. The words comfort her. There is just the question of waiting. Thank God Jack is not here.

  Faith walks to the area to which Caroline has directed her and bends over, sweeps her hand in a tentative arc through the cold grass. It is nearly one A.M. and pitch-dark out on the front lawn. Darker than she expected away from the bright lights of the house. She squats down and then drops on all fours, pats her hands over the nubbly ground. Caroline has lost her watch here somehow in the chaos. She has described the events of the night at least twice, but Faith still has an indistinct picture of them. It is as if she is surrounded by a whole landscape that is invisible to her—full of dangerous drops and breathtaking valleys which she has to navigate by description. The dogs and the pregnant babysitter and Eliot missing—something about a photograph, the handsome moviemaker, and Rock Coughlin, Jr. And there is the “mess” Rock Coughlin, Sr., referred to, and the image of the woman dropping, as Caroline has described it, falling backward, one white sneaker bouncing upward and then down limp.