“Hey, Susan? How’s it going? This is Herb. Oh, fine, fine. A little skirmish with the ex-wife now and then, a little unfriendly fire, but fine. And you? You still in that photography course?” Frederick would kill him slowly. “You coming down to the China Boat tonight? Well, if I can ever get free of my crazy brother, I’ll try to catch you there. Huh? A month today. He’s taking it very well, same as I did, same as Dustin Hoffman in Kramer Versus Kramer.”
Up in his canopy of maple leaves, Frederick decided that he would sauté each of Herbert’s testicles in wine and garlic butter, and then serve them up to Maggie Stone on a silver platter. Couldn’t he at least put up his blasted window? Waiting long enough to satisfy himself that Herbert wasn’t going to phone up Charles Schwab and invest a quarter, Frederick shimmied out the limb, mowing down maple leaves as he went. Now, to let himself drop as noiselessly as possible onto the roof.
No one seemed to be in the room, which was a bedroom. The bed was unmade—this caused an emotional flutter—and was scattered with male clothing. But there were no people in the untidy room. Frederick was kneeling before the window, waiting, when he heard a distinct toot emerge from the Chrysler, followed by a second. Honk twice if you see anyone…especially the police. He felt a panic coming on. He was already in trouble with the law over those traffic tickets. And then, what if it was Chandra? What would she say if she caught him like this? His legs felt frozen but they still catapulted him toward the edge of the veranda. But he misjudged the slant of the thing, the slope. Weren’t there a zillion rules roofers were taught? Yes, there were. Two zillion, maybe, and he had learned them all well. Even squirrels probably know the biggest rule: You don’t go up on any roof when it’s been raining. And you certainly don’t run on a wet roof. Tree frogs, with their excellent suction cups, probably know this rain rule. Spider-Man would know it. And there were lots of other rules. Work from the top down when removing an old roof. Stay away from power lines. Keep your work area clean of debris. Wear gloves when working with metal. Plenty of safeguards. But nowhere in his collective memory of Roof Rules could Frederick recall: Never even go near a roof if you’ve been driven there by Herbert D. Stone, DVM.
The shrub that tried desperately to break his fall was simply not bushy enough, but it did seem to be sprouting some kind of thorn. As Frederick felt it flatten beneath his falling weight, he had to wonder why people planted such insubstantial plants. The doughnut he carried in his shirt pocket, one he had grabbed in his kitchen when he went home for the mask and gloves, had probably worked better toward breaking his fall. The shrub smelled distinctly of talcum, even baby powder. He bounced to the side of the house, his breath dislodging in a great whoomph from his lungs. As he lay there waiting for air to return to his lungs, his first consideration was for the gutters of the house. From his ground-level view, they appeared to be copper. What was Robbie’s last name? Rockefeller? His second consideration was one of relief that Mr. Bator had not bothered to elaborate on the ankle—the tibia, the fibula, the astragalus—because Frederick was quite sure that his own was broken.
“Sorry,” he heard Herbert whisper loudly from the edge of the lawn. “I didn’t mean to honk.”
Frederick knew then why he had brought the rope. He had brought it to hang Herbert Stone from the maple tree.
• • •
The roof scene necessitated the emergency room scene. As he sat next to Herbert in the waiting room, Frederick tried to concentrate on things more acceptable to society than fratricide. He could call the IRS and tell them the truth about Herbert Stone’s cash payments received from clients. He could offer Maggie Stone the same information. It was Herbert’s own mistake that he had shared this surreptitious fact with Frederick. Or he could sneak into the ladies’ room at the China Boat and write the alliterative words: Herbert Has Herpes, Halitosis, and Hair Lice on the wall. Herpes was in everyone’s vocabulary, but Herbert’s kindergartners would think halitosis some incurable disease, and the squeamish addition of lice would probably dissuade even prostitutes. Or Frederick could hang a sign around some dog’s neck—I USED TO BE A CAT UNTIL DR. HERBERT STONE OPERATED ON ME—and then parade the creature up and down the street in front of Herbert’s clinic. There were almost as many choices as there were rules for roof safety. Frederick was oscillating between the IRS and the dog when a brusque young woman came out to announce that it would be some time before a doctor would be available to look at his swollen ankle.
“We got cases a lot more serious coming in,” she said. Frederick had no doubt that this was true. More important problems than his own abounded. Maybe Hannah would turn up with her liver in her hands. Or her spleen flapping about her neck. Frederick almost wished he had a case of something more serious. His ankle disagreed with him by sending off a volley of electrifying throbs.
“I mean, I’m really sorry,” he tuned in to hear Herbert say. He had not spoken a word to Herbert on the drive to the emergency clinic, but he had been forced to listen to the same infernal excuse, again and again. He stared at a framed murky print, pink and yellow and green watercolors, which hung on the wall over the receptionist’s head. He hoped the artist was under the scalpel at that very moment. This was definitely a more serious case, this assault upon the art world.
“I can explain, if you’ll just listen,” Herbert was saying. “I dropped my cigarette, which was lit, onto the floor. And when I leaned forward to pick it up, I accidentally touched off the horn. Then, when I found the cigarette, I grabbed the burning end by accident. So that made me jump and when I did, I hit the horn again.”
The philosophy of time bears heavily on men’s emotions, Mr. Bator said suddenly.
“Shut up!” Frederick shouted at Mr. Bator. “I’m sick of you!”
“I beg your pardon?” Herbert asked.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Frederick said.
“Well, who were you talking to? I think you owe me an apology.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Frederick said again.
“So were you talking to her?” Herbert pointed to the receptionist. This was when Frederick realized she’d been staring at them. “Were you, Freddy? Were you talking to her?” The receptionist waited.
“I’m sorry,” Frederick told her. His ankle pounded mercilessly. He mustn’t anger this woman or she’d be taking cases of babies with diaper rash ahead of him. He waved his hand to emphasize. At least it was still functioning. “I wasn’t talking to you. I’ve been under a lot of stress lately.”
“His wife dumped him,” Herbert said.
“Herbert, please.”
“It’s been a month and he still hasn’t called a lawyer.”
“Herbert!”
“Do you want to know how he hurt his ankle?”
“HERBERT, SHUT THE HELL UP!”
“See?” Herbert said. “I knew you were talking to me.”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Well, who else here is named Herbert?”
“I was talking to you just now,” Frederick said. “But I wasn’t talking to you a minute ago.”
“Don’t insult my intelligence,” said Herbert.
Frederick inhaled deeply and then exhaled. It was good to have the old vacuum bags sucking again. His ankle pounded away above his foot, which was now numb. He couldn’t help himself, so he said it.
“What intelligence?” he asked.
“That’s it,” Herbert said, and stood up. “I, for one, have had enough. First, I had to watch you make a fool out of yourself in front of that geisha. Then I’m good enough to drive you over to Bobbin Road so that you can crawl up on the roof and peer through a window, like some Patti Page dog. Next, I’m kind enough—yes, kind—to rush you down here to the emergency room because you stupidly fell off said roof!”
“I fell off said roof because you HONKED that the cops were coming!” Frederick shouted. The receptionist cleared her thro
at. “How the hell did I know you were merely TRYING TO SMOKE A CIGARETTE?!”
“Is there a full moon tonight?” he heard the receptionist ask someone.
“Call a cab, pal,” said Herbert. “I’m gone.” He headed for the exit door.
“Good riddance!” Frederick shouted after him. “Because I don’t care!”
He felt the freedom of not caring. My God, but wasn’t that what his whole generation had stood for, when they were packing the ends of rifles with spindly assed daisies? Wasn’t this a bona fide do your own thing feeling? And yet he was having his first awakening at age forty-four, like some pale and confused soldier who’d been hiding out in the Philippine jungle, unaware that World War II ended forty years earlier. Unaware of so many things. He’d been a virgin, hadn’t he, a hymenal membrane blocking the way to his true emotions? He’d been a pretender when he grew his hair long, before the disapproving eyes of Dr. Philip Stone, and wore those flapping flare-legged pants which gave so much freedom to his calf muscles. He’d never really felt the euphoria of pure freedom until now. It was a joyous event. Herbert pirouetted at the door and came back.
“He really is under a lot of stress,” he heard Herbert whisper to the receptionist. She seemed in the act of phoning someone. But Frederick truly didn’t care. He didn’t care if there might be folks in the operating room who could hear him. They could take his words with them to meet their makers. Not only do men regret the past, they also fear the future, Mr. Bator said now, because the flow of time seems to be sweeping them toward their deaths, as swimmers are swept toward a waterfall.
“What the hell do you know?” Frederick yelled at his old teacher. “You’re a closet homosexual. That’s what’s wrong with you!”
Herbert and the receptionist stared. For a second, Frederick again feared losing his place in line. His ankle burst forth with a new supply of pain. He wished some endorphins would kick in. Herbert walked back over to him and stood looking down.
“You always thought you were a peg above me, didn’t you?” Herbert asked. His face seemed about to explode. “The poet. A real ladies’ man. Well, let’s clear the air right now, Freddy.”
Frederick shook his head. “I was talking to Mr. Bator,” he said, but Herbert wasn’t listening.
“I’m gonna tell you what’s wrong with me, little brother, whether you want to hear it or not. One day I’m trying to figure out what it was they threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge in ‘Ode to Billy Joe.’ The next day I’m up to my ass in mud in the Mekong Delta, tap-dancing across a mine field. One day I’m trying to figure out whether John is the Walrus, or Paul is the Walrus. The next day I’m dragging a dying man I’ve never seen before in my life out of a rice paddy, his guts trailing behind. But you never went to Vietnam, did you, Freddy? You went to Woodstock. You were up to your ankles in mud in upstate New York. You’re probably still suffering from posttraumatic syndrome. One of the stages might have collapsed. You could have caught your bell-bottoms on some raspberry bushes. Well, let me tell you something, you conscientious asshole. You’re not the walking wounded, so don’t flatter yourself. Chandra should’ve left you years ago.”
That said, Herbert walked to the exit door and disappeared into the night outside.
A door to the waiting room opened just then and a nurse with a smile on her face beckoned with a hand.
“Mr. Stone,” she said. “The doctor will see you now.”
Hitching himself up onto his ankle, Frederick stood. So this was his just reward, after forty-four years of minding his own business? This was what the gods would deliver him to, as a penance for his so-called hubris? He thought of Hephaestus, once married to Venus—another heartless bitch—and how he was tossed off Mount Olympus by a jealous Zeus, thus breaking his leg and leaving him crippled. Feeling a kinship to the bandy-legged bugger, Frederick gritted his teeth and took a first step. There were worse things than a permanent limp.
“Be careful of this one, Margaret,” he heard the receptionist whisper as he hobbled down the corridor.
Ten
It was almost ten o’clock when Frederick awoke to the sounds of neighborhood children playing a game of street baseball at the end of the cul-de-sac. His neck felt cramped, his legs shriveled things. Sleeping on a settee did not offer the most advantageous positions for the body. This type of settee was commonly referred to as a daybed—a misnomer, the bed part—a thing that even Shakespeare was familiar with, for it was on just such a piece of furniture that Malvolio announces, in Twelfth Night, that he has “left Olivia sleeping.” Frederick doubted that Olivia slept well; no wonder she was such a mournful creature. Had Shakespeare ever nodded off on a daybed? After all, the piece originated in his century. Did he rush home from plague-filled London, smelling of booze and women, only to have Anne Hathaway-Shakespeare banish him to the settee? Probably. Extraneare.
After replaying his messages, most of them from disgruntled clients, Frederick made a pot of coffee and stood waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sunshine coming in through the kitchen window. It had been a full week, seven god-awful days since the disastrous episodes at Bobbin Road and the emergency clinic. It had become almost impossible for him to sleep at night, what with a painful ankle, not to mention the shortcomings of the settee. As a result, he had been falling asleep at dawn, physical exhaustion winning out over mental stress. And he’d been sleeping soundly past noon. The only reason he had risen earlier this day was a message he had heard come in on his answering machine, just past ten o’clock, while he lay on the settee hoping to sleep again but listening instead to the children shout things like “Good pitch, Sarah!” Or “Run, Jacob!” He had been trying to recall just when summer vacation would end in those parts, when the school bell would sound as loudly as the Pied Piper’s horn and lure all the little progeny back inside those thick, soundproof walls.
“It’s me, Freddy,” he had heard Herbert Stone say. “It’s time we had a talk.”
This was good news, Frederick now thought as he edged two slices of bread into the toaster. He had been unable for a full week to get Herbert to speak to him. A long, limping week. Not even on the Fourth of July would Herbert answer his phone, so Frederick had watched the fireworks alone from his front porch, before he retreated into the privacy of the house. He had even hobbled into the China Boat twice, the new addition of his cane tapping noisily upon the wooden floor—coming through the foyer, he had sounded like a peg-legged old tar—but Herbert was conspicuously absent. He had left messages with Herbert’s receptionist, the one with the Chihuahua voice, but to no avail. He had managed to catch Herbert on his car phone a few times, in the early evenings, when he knew the clinic had just closed. But each time, Herbert had simply disconnected the call when he heard Frederick’s voice.
The Whores of Destiny had gone out of their way to ensure that it would be a long, difficult week for Frederick Stone. Hoping to thwart their destructive plans as much as possible, he had avoided the IGA on Tuesday. The last thing he needed was to have little Mrs. Paroni run over his sore ankle with her grocery cart. Or, worse yet, to get it lodged against the ashtray in the backseat of Doris Bowen’s blue Mercedes, his Fruit of the Looms dangling about his good ankle. He had really been avoiding Doris, the ankle being a terrific excuse. He hoped she hadn’t waited too long for him in the parking lot, and couldn’t help feeling a little masculine pride. But his mind was still firmly on Bowen Developers. So he had taken the time to drop Doris a quick note on Wednesday. Recovering from an injury. Will see you again soon.
Besides, with Chandra gone, it was no longer necessary to visit the large IGA every Tuesday. The folks at American Express were probably most happy to see his life change thusly, because lunch at Panama Red’s and the token vegetarian dinner at the China Boat were now firm rituals. His stack of credit card receipts was growing daily, and faster than the average human hair. He rarely opened the refrigerator door for anything but soy milk for his
coffee, or olives, gin, and vermouth for his martinis. The refrigerator was beginning to smell strongly of onion. When he ran out of bread for his late-night sandwich, he found it convenient to drop by Cain’s Corner Grocery. It was nice to see Mr. Cain again, the old man who kept pictures of his grandchildren on the wall behind the cash register. Guilty at having abandoned a tiny family business—he had once planned to help businessmen in Central America, after all—Frederick usually went on to buy a jar of strawberry jam, an apple, the current Newsweek, as a measure of good faith. Perhaps, between Mr. Cain and the Alternative Grocer, he would never need to go back to the monstrous IGA, with its artificial lights and all that annoying Muzak.
It had been a bad week for Stone Accounting, too. Complaints were starting to come in from a few clients that he had not filed their monthly taxes on time. Patti’s Poodle Parlor, his newest client, had gone so far as to drop him. Fury had been the prevalent emotion at Patti’s when he turned up on Thursday with the payroll checks, instead of on Wednesday. If he hadn’t been limping, apparently already injured by another unhappy client, he had no doubt that the staff would have assaulted him. How could one day make such a difference in people’s lives? “This isn’t some little shoestring business,” Patti had shouted at him. “We need someone we can depend on.” Frederick had to admit that an institution that offered such important services to the world as canine toenail clipping had to be careful who handled its accounts. And he reminded himself, as he eased past irate toenail clippists and enraged fur groomists, that one or two massive accounts in the ballpark of Bowen Developers would set him up nicely. He would no longer need a myriad of shoestring—yes, Patti, shoestring—businesses scattered about the Portland area.
It had also been a painful week regarding his ankle, which had been sprained but was not broken. He had stretched a ligament, one of the many that connected various bones in the ankle area. There had been some swelling and tenderness, but no local bleeding. The doctor had simply strapped the ankle with an elastic bandage to relieve tension, and then sent him home with a prescription for pain pills. He had also promised to submerge the thing daily in hot water. And he was to stay off it until the tenderness had passed. All things he could have done himself, if he had only known that his ankle was not broken. And he should have realized this. After all, fate had dealt him a hand of mediocrity, a life centered squarely between Greek tragedy and the mundane. Had he been able to admit this to himself, he would have been spared the embarrassment of the emergency clinic and the horrible rift that had occurred with Herbert. A month ago, he wouldn’t have given a hoot about extraneare-ing Herbert Stone. But he was now beginning to see Herbert as one of those vanes encircling the pinwheel. True, it was a sorry pinwheel, just Herbert and him flapping in the wind, with no central stick. But it was better than revolving in the wind all alone.
A Marriage Made at Woodstock Page 15