The Incident

  ‘You two are going to have some gorgeous children,’ Margaret Walker, his third-grade teacher told him. She was still teaching and still driving her 1954 Chevy Bel Air, but it had barely twenty thousand miles on it. He was amused at how many used-car buyers were waiting in the wings for that car. It was a standard part of a car salesman’s pitch to tell a prospective buyer that it had been owned by a spinster school teacher. ‘Don’t wait too long to start a family,’ Margaret warned. ‘I’m not going to teach until my dying day.’

  He was buoyed by this Hollywood movie future: a beautiful woman, a new successful business and the start of his own family. The flow of images took him far above the stream of dark doubt that trickled just below his conscience and challenged his motives. It was all going too well now for any defeat or disappointment to challenge them. His mother was resigned to the inevitability of having Victoria Myers as her daughter-in-law, and he was growing closer and closer to Victoria’s parents, especially her father, who in his quiet, subtle way had good fatherly advice, especially about business. Bart actually fantasized that when and if Lester Myers got tired of his school business manager position, he would come to work for him in his expanding foreign car dealership.

  For many reasons, complicated and not so complicated, his own father offered to do anything Bart needed to help make the wedding and the marriage successful. He was at his side for every detail of planning for the new foreign car dealership and not simply because it was part of what he had created. He was sincerely interested in making it all fruitful for Bart. In the past, he was capable of quickly dismissing a suggestion Bart might make for the business, but now he stepped back to ponder any idea. His worst reaction was ‘Well, it’s worth a try. Good thinking.’

  Bart hadn’t needed Victoria to put the idea in his mind that his father was buying off his silence and loyalty. He hated that the suspicion plagued him almost any time his father gave him a compliment or offered something, but it was impossible to get away from it. Someday, he hoped, his father would take him into his confidence and confess, and perhaps even ask his advice. Right now, that was just a fantasy.

  But his father raised the suspicion to a new height when he called him into the office soon after the marriage invitations had gone out.

  ‘I have an opportunity to get something,’ he began, ‘and I think it would make a sensible wedding present for you two. You guys might not like it and you might think it’s presumptuous of your mother and me to offer it, but I thought I’d run it past you.’

  Bart sat. ‘I’m all ears, Dad.’

  ‘Without going into the whys and wherefores, Bill Jackson owes me a few favors.’

  ‘The sheriff?’

  ‘Yeah, he resigned less than a month ago and is moving on. He’s remarrying, in fact. You might recall his wife died about a year ago. He hooked up with Nancy Hickman, whose husband died three years ago down in Florida. She sold her house up here and has been living with Bill. They’re moving to her place in Boca Raton.’

  ‘OK,’ Bart said, still not understanding where his father was going with all this.

  ‘Well, Bill’s going to put his house up for sale. It’s that sprawling ranch just outside of Monticello on Berne Road. Got nearly three acres with it and it’s only five years old. Tip-top shape.’

  Bart smiled. He finally sensed where his father was going. ‘And?’

  ‘I thought I’d buy it for you guys. If you like it, that is. You can’t take that beautiful bride of yours to live in that bachelor pad. Bill’s house is move-in ready, but you guys can redo carpets and repaint if you think it’s necessary. Every appliance is top of the range. He won’t put it on the market if he knows my interest. It’s far from a distress sale, but he’s damn happy to get it sold ASAP and I can practically steal it. In short, it’s a great business decision, but also a great wedding gift, I hope. You can take Victoria over to see it anytime you want, but you might want to do it tomorrow,’ he added.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Dad. That’s very generous. I know the house, of course. I can’t imagine Victoria not being pleased about it. I’ll call her and see about tomorrow, late morning.’

  His father slapped the desk just the way he always did when he had made a decision about a sale price on a car or a new piece of equipment. Bart used to think he was more like a judge in a courtroom declaring a case closed.

  ‘Let me know and I’ll get it going,’ he said.

  Bart rose. ‘Thanks. I will.’ He reached out to shake his father’s hand. It felt weird, as if he had just bought a car from him. His father shook it but looked away quickly.

  Bart was walking on air when he left and went to his office to call Victoria. He assured her that he had no idea why the ex-sheriff would owe his father any favors, but stressed that his father, despite all or any of his faults, had an eagle’s eye when it came to a business opportunity.

  He could hear the excitement in her voice. ‘Our own home? So soon?’

  ‘Without a mortgage,’ he added. ‘Tell your father that. He might know the house, too.’

  ‘I’m speechless.’

  ‘Just as long as you have the strength to say, “I do,”’ he told her.

  After they hung up, he buzzed his father and told him to set up the visit. It looked as if nothing could bother him for the rest of this day or the next week – in fact, the next year! There wasn’t a work complaint, an unexpected new cost or a dissatisfied customer whom he couldn’t placate and satisfy. He was sailing on a sea of happiness and joy like no other sea in the universe.

  Until an unexpected call came an hour later.

  ‘Congratulations, Mr Groom Man,’ he said. ‘Funny thing. I didn’t get an invitation.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Bart asked.

  ‘I’m closin’ at nine,’ Marvin Hacker said. ‘Meet me in the body shop. Come in the rear entrance. We’ve got some talkin’ to do.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to say to you,’ he replied. ‘I thought you got the idea when you waited for me in my apartment parking lot.’

  ‘It’s not what you got to say to me now. I thought you was just havin’ a good time. Engaged? Yer a nervy bastard, Stonefield – even worse than yer father. It’s what I got to say to you or to your fiancée. We’re sort of old friends. I feel I got to speak up.’

  Bart didn’t respond. His throat seemed to close up.

  ‘Your ass in my place, nine o’clock,’ Hacker concluded and hung up before Bart could recuperate enough to speak.

  The click was more like a gunshot that sent a bullet right at his heart. When he saddled the phone in the cradle, he trembled as he stood up. He felt as if someone had just struck him across both shins. The surge of sharp fear that traveled up his spine wasn’t any less severe. He was actually having trouble breathing and had to close his eyes and suck in air like someone about to go underwater. It didn’t stop the trembling. He waited, his hand on his desk. The sound of an air gun loosening tire wheel nuts suddenly turned the pits and lifts out there into a warzone. He hesitated and looked at his watch. Nine o’clock was another eleven hours. How would he get through them?

  He fell back on his desk chair. He thought about going straight away, but realized any confrontation in the daytime, in front of witnesses, was not a good idea. The intercom on his phone lit. His father was calling back.

  ‘All set for eleven tomorrow,’ he said. ‘How are you doing there? I’ve got Cliff Andersen at the site of the new dealership in an hour with some new thoughts. We can meet him and then go to lunch at O’Heenies. I’m in the mood for one of their fat roast beef sandwiches on rye.’

  The very idea of that bloody sandwich nauseated him.

  ‘Sure,’ he said. Show one sign of anything wrong and a wall could come tumbling down.

  He gathered his strength, concentrated on what was being done at the service center, checked on two things that were left over from the day before, left orders for some cleanup and joined his father in the show area.

  As so
on as they left for Monticello, his father was more talkative than usual, or else he was talking more because Bart was quieter than normal.

  ‘I’m glad Victoria is excited about the house possibility. Your mother and I have been to parties there. You’ll have three bedrooms, so you can set up a nursery pretty quick. Of course, I’m too young to be a grandfather,’ he joked. When Bart didn’t respond, he quickly added, ‘I’m kidding.’

  ‘I know, Dad.’

  His father suddenly looked suspicious. ‘You know, that was a clever answer Victoria gave your mother when she asked her if she was pregnant, but it wasn’t a no.’

  ‘She’s not pregnant. I’m not marrying her because I’m forced to,’ he said, perhaps a lot more adamantly than he had intended, or maybe he did intend it. It wouldn’t be the first time that he had that argument with himself.

  ‘Sure. You’d tell me if she were,’ his father said, as if they really were close enough to share the most personal secrets. ‘Anyway, I like the picture window in the living room. It’s a bay window. Your mother was instantly jealous of that and harangued me day in and day out to redo our living room so we could have a bay window. I kept promising until she gave up. That’s a good technique with wives, by the way. Never argue. Pretend you agree and keep finding excuses until the whole thing thins out and disappears. I learned that from your grandfather. It’s how he handled my mother. What good are fathers if they don’t pass wisdom down to their sons, eh?’ he added with a smile as broad as Bart could recall.

  Would his getting married ironically result in he and his father becoming closer? It sounded as if he believed Bart would be more sympathetic and understanding to his own situation once he shared some of the same concerns and challenges. Like father, like son was not an expression he was fond of, however.

  ‘Victoria’s father is a pretty smart guy,’ he said, looking for a way to turn the conversation. ‘I told him some of my ideas for advertising. You know, it’s not easy to sell foreign cars in this market,’ he quickly added, ‘but he agrees that it’s a great idea now.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You know, like I discussed, emphasizing how we’re creating jobs for Americans, too, especially Americans here. It will be a higher level of clientele. More expensive foreign cars are something of a status symbol. Our ads will have to subtly suggest that.’

  ‘Right. Smart.’ He was quiet a moment. Bart thought he might be upset that his son was complimenting another father, but after another few moments he was to learn otherwise. ‘I don’t like bringing this up,’ he began again. ‘Who needs the reminder, especially now?’

  ‘Bringing up what?’

  ‘After what happened to Victoria years ago – about two days after, I think – I had this dinner meeting with the GM people in the Dugout. You remember that place, don’t you? Went out about three years ago when Charley Kaplan died. His son wasn’t interested in keeping it going.’

  ‘Yeah, I remember it. So?’

  ‘Had this dinner with a couple of executives who were laying down new regulations – suits without any real business sense. They drank too much as is the way with these guys who have expense budgets. After we finished, I was about to walk out when I glanced at the bar and saw Lester Myers by himself. He was eating at a table and looked as if he had downed a few martinis, too. There was something about him that nearly made me cry, so I excused myself, said goodnight to Mr and Mr Horse’s Ass, and went over to Lester.

  ‘I felt like I was offering sympathy for someone who died. He was glad to have my company, however. He said his wife was at some education thing. They had both left the hospital, visiting Victoria, and then gone their separate ways. I kept thinking, how do you not stay right beside each other after something like this, but from what I could gather, they both wanted to keep busy, keep their lives as normal as they could in order to keep their strength. Probably right. I mean, what was the alternative? Go home and stare at each other and cry?’

  ‘I don’t like hearing about this now, Dad.’

  ‘I know. I just remembered how this sweet Southerner, who was about as Ashley Wilkes from Gone with the Wind as any man I ever met from the South, was so lit with rage that he was carrying a thirty-eight in hopes he would somehow stumble upon those animals who had raped and beaten his daughter like that. There was no doubt in my mind he could or would do it – and, you know what, I was hoping he somehow got that opportunity.

  ‘Afterward, whenever he saw me, I think he was embarrassed that I had seen him that way. I tried to assure him that I respected him more because of it, but if there was ever a descendant of Jesus Christ, it’s someone like Lester Myers. End of story. I’ll never mention anything about it again,’ he said, raising his hand to swear.

  Bart looked out the window. Inside his chest, his heart felt as if it had twisted around itself.

  EIGHTEEN

  The most difficult thing was finding a good excuse not to see Victoria and sounding truthful. Was it true that it was more difficult to lie to people you loved? When did his father start lying to his mother? They had to have been in love once, didn’t they? Sometime along the way, distrust and an acceptance of deceit grew and settled in their marriage like so much mold on the walls of a damp basement. Could this happen between him and Victoria? Did children truly inherit their parents’ sins?

  Although it had to be the furthest thing from her mind, he couldn’t help but impose and attach suspicious motives around everything Victoria said, every question she asked when he called her to tell her he was going to cancel on their dinner. Was the reverse true about deceit: people who loved someone sensed more easily when he or she was lying? He hoped he wasn’t trying too hard to sound innocuous and causing the problem himself.

  He had told her he was meeting with some Volkswagen representatives and had to drive to Middletown. It was a half-truth. He would have to meet with them soon, and it would probably be there anyway since they were in the process of establishing a dealership in that vicinity.

  ‘This just happened? They don’t give you much notice, do they? You could have had something scheduled that you were unable to cancel. It’s not only unfair; it’s inconsiderate.’

  ‘We’re at their mercy,’ he replied, ‘especially since we need their full faith and support for the new dealership. They can choose to be choosey.’

  ‘This will be our first night apart since …’ she started to say and then said, ‘I know. After I have dinner with my parents, I’ll go to your apartment and wait for you. You can tell me all about your boring dinner,’ she added.

  A week ago, he had made a copy of his apartment key for her.

  ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll get home as soon as I can,’ he said.

  ‘It’s all right, Bart. Don’t rush back. Haven’t you heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder,’ she joked, wanting to make him feel better about it. He knew that’s why she was doing it, which only made him feel worse about lying.

  ‘Not this heart. It gets weak without you.’

  She laughed. How melodic her laugh had become; how light her voice was now. He was sure that it wasn’t simply his imagination or wishful thinking. The vulnerable young woman at the beginning of his courting had gradually grown stronger and more self-confident. She had been like a flower struggling in an attic or basement, hungry for a ray of sunshine. He flattered himself by believing he had brought that to her. He was completely the reason she had changed and blossomed. Somehow, that wasn’t arrogant of him. He justified it by thinking that it was partly because of the joy he felt in being so significant to her that he was so in love with her now.

  But it was not a one-way street. Whatever he invested in her, she returned ten-fold. It was part of her charm to be so dependent upon him. Almost all the women he had dated held on to an escape route. He sensed it. He wouldn’t be able to break their hearts by being unfaithful or falling into disinterest. Perhaps it was characteristic of all men to resent that sort of independence in the women they dated. He
couldn’t help wondering if that was a major part of why his father had drifted.

  Above all other things, love meant never being selfish. His parents both shared that unattractive characteristic. If either compromised for the other, it occurred with so heavy an air of regret and such an obvious look of suffering from the self-sacrifice that neither would find any satisfaction in getting his or her way.

  ‘Who’d a thunk Bart Stonefield would be such a romantic?’ Victoria kidded. ‘Next thing you know, you’ll be reading Shakespearean love sonnets to me.’

  ‘I’ll ask your mother for the recommended list,’ he replied and she laughed. ‘I’ll call you when I’m finished and on my way back,’ he said. He couldn’t see how he would be too late. Whatever was going down at nine o’clock wouldn’t take long.

  ‘I’ll be right beside your phone.’

  ‘Love you,’ he said.

  ‘Love you,’ she echoed.

  After he hung up, he sat for a moment to gather his strength. The best place to go for it was anger, he decided. How dare that bastard insert any threat into his flow of happiness now? He’d cut the legs out from under him as quickly as he could and that would be that.

  Forever.

  He rose and put out his office lights. No one was left at the dealership. He had told his assistant manager that he would close up. As he moved through the service area, he shut down lights, picked up and placed a forgotten wrench on the proper shelf, and then left, locking up behind him.

  The overcast sky felt ominous, not because they might have a downpour any moment, but because every shadow created by a streetlight or passing car’s headlights looked darker, deeper, a haven for ghouls. It was the sort of evening lovers of Halloween hoped to have. He chose to take an indirect route. He could have gotten there faster, but right from the start, he didn’t want to be seen. He was glad he had a black automobile. It was too generic to attract attention.