Frederick put the pictures back into the box. There were hordes more, but he didn’t want to look at them. He heard the wind start up about the eaves of the house, the sound of a shingle flapping up and down. He shut his eyes, and he was Kim, in the old Kipling book, resting at the top of the world. He longed for his boyhood with such intensity that he feared he might hyperventilate. His heart beat fiercely. What if he died, there in the attic? Who would find him? Would Walter Muller come looking for him, a chocolate cake in one hand, a pan of fudge in the other? Frederick opened his eyes, almost expecting to see Chandra appear before him, so intensely had he tried to conjure her up. But all he saw through the round attic window were the tops of the outdoor trees swaying back and forth. All he heard were the drops of rain that had started a steady beating upon the roof.
His composure regained and the image of Chandra diminished, the next box he opened said Christmas cards. There they all were, souvenirs from holidays gone by. Why she had saved them, he’d never know. Especially since it had turned out that she didn’t even want them anymore. He found the last card Polly had ever sent, in 1983, the Christmas before she died. Inside, there were three school pictures. Polly had written on the backs of each: Vanessa, age 6; Jason, age 7; Charles, age 10. Frederick looked at the faces of his nephews and his niece. When was the last time he’d seen them? This was Christmas of 1983. They’d be nine years older now, young adults. How had they managed without Polly? Had their father, Percy Hillstrip, ever remarried? He slipped the three pictures out of the card and fitted them into his wallet.
The other holiday cards were from more ancient friends who one year sent a final Christmas card to Frederick and Chandra Stone, that couple they used to know up in Portland, Maine. He wondered if Chandra had sent cards back, with pictures inside of the two of them, aging, a pair of bright balloons deflating with time. He had not been good at things like occasion cards, considering them a business venture that benefited only Hallmark and its ilk. A lot of men were like that, though. His father never signed a card. That had always been his mother’s job. And Frederick remembered cards from aunts and uncles, years of greetings, always in the aunts’ handwriting: Best of luck from Aunt Minnie and Uncle Bob. Happy Birthday from Aunt Trudy and Uncle Stan. Could his uncles even write? Had they perhaps been expelled from kindergarten—little Stone boys that they were, little rocks—never learning to take pen to paper? Had Chandra, and Aunt Minnie, and Aunt Trudy, and Thelma Stone minded this sole job of communication? Well, what now did it matter if Frederick had been damned excellent at it? Where had it gotten Chandra? How had it elevated Karen Foster? Was the whole world singing Aunt Minnie’s praises these days? Canonizing Aunt Trudy?
He opened the cardboard box that had College Correspondence written on the lid. Inside were the letters from his father, addressed to Frederick at his Boston address. Dr. Stone had written letters, perhaps afraid that Mrs. Stone would make them too friendly if this task were left to her. No need to send the boy a lilac-scented envelope or a heartwarming platitude scribbled at the bottom of a note. The letters had averaged about six a year for the four years he was at college. None were more than a paragraph long. Some contained an occasional clipping, a neighbor’s son becoming a hero in Vietnam, another winning a medical scholarship, one studying at the Sorbonne, successes blossoming up and down the street. Looking through the letters quickly, Frederick saw that they all read much alike, with a brief line that Thelma was finding the weather a bit too warm or too cold, then a general reminder to keep one’s nose to the university grindstone. Unlike the letters from home received by his classmates, there was never a twenty-dollar bill clinging to the stationery. Well, so what? It had taught him cool, firm independence, an ability to stand on one’s own two feet. It had taught him all of that, indeed, and it was perhaps that very lesson that had cost him his marriage.
He dug deeper into the box in order to find the love letters from Chandra. I can’t wait for the wedding, she’d written in the first letter he opened. Joyce told Mom that our plans are crazy and Mom seems to feel cheated out of the church thing, but Jenny and Bob think it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever heard. They had stopped off at the courthouse to get married, just the two of them. Then they’d taken the Bluenose ferry from Portland to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, had spent the night at a tiny motel in Yarmouth, and then taken the eight-hour ferry back the next morning. It had been a perfectly sixties notion of the ideal honeymoon. Or had it been? Had the honeymoon night meant as much to Chandra as it had to him? He had felt swelled with pride—a near physical sensation—that she was his wife. It wasn’t that they hadn’t made love before. It’s that they had promised to join their lives together forever and, because of that, the lovemaking had been even more charged. He wondered now what that honeymoon night had meant to Chandra, and wished that he could ask her. Had she closed her eyes and thought of Woodstock? Who the hell were Jenny and Bob? Dear Sweetie, Rain coming down here today, reminding me of you and how much I love you and always will, the next letter declared. He couldn’t read on. She had been writing from Portland on a rainy day, and now, all these years later, he was in Portland reading the letter again on a rainy day. He had known that time was a prankster. But he had no idea until now how vicious the bastard could be.
He brought the huge bundle of letters, most of them in baby-blue envelopes, down from the attic. It would take another pitcher of martinis, but he would read them all. He would remember how much she had loved him. Maybe he could find a clue in the letters as to what went wrong. But the letters were written before they were married, in those days when nothing was wrong. What was wrong in the present had to do with gin. He was out. Well, that’s why the gods had invented liquor stores. And as long as the Hormonal Harpies were not working down there as clerks, Frederick imagined he would be able to replenish his stock.
He had just turned off the car’s engine and gotten out when he noticed the ubiquitous brown car pull up beside his own in the liquor store parking lot. The passenger door opened and a man got out, a man about Frederick’s own age and height, but a stranger to him. A second stranger, this one wearing a red and green tam, leaned over from behind the steering wheel and peered out at him.
“Frederick Stone?” the first man asked. Frederick suffered a wild impulse to deny his own identity, but he could feel his head nodding. This was unfolding like a scene out of The Godfather. He imagined being whisked out to a patch of thick woods in the trunk of the brown sedan, never to see Chandra again, never to see Portland again, never to resurrect Stone Accounting. He considered for a reckless moment petitioning The Girls. But then, he’d been less than polite, a male chauvinist pig to them lately. What had he called them, aloud, just that morning? Oh yes, the Goddesses of PMS. He glanced toward the large glass window of the liquor store. If he waved his arms frantically, would the clerk see him? Probably not, considering that, from his present view of her, she was swathed in cigarette smoke.
“Mind taking a little ride?” the stranger now asked. Indignation and terror teamed up in Frederick Stone’s emotions. How dare this person infiltrate his right to come to a liquor store and purchase gin? Oh, good God, he was doing to die!
“Do I know you?” he heard his voice finally ask.
“You know my boss.” His boss, as in godfather? Frederick knew then that he had made a grievous mistake in dropping James Grossmire of Grossmire Imports just because the IRS and U.S. Customs had discovered—much to Frederick Stone’s chagrin—that many of those said imports were stuffed with a variety of illegal sundries, some of it white as snow. “His name is Arthur Bowen.” Frederick felt his feet rattling beneath him, taking him toward the brown sedan, propelling him inside the door that had opened to the backseat. Arthur Bowen himself was sitting there, a bowl of macadamia nuts on his lap. Frederick’s door was slammed shut and the sedan pulled out of the parking lot. They were almost to the end of Jefferson Street before Arthur Bowen spoke.
“
Macadamia?” he asked, extending his arm so that the bowl of nuts rode before Frederick’s face. Frederick refused with a shake of his head. What did Arthur Bowen want? The best that could happen would be if Doris had finally put in that good word for Stone Accounting after all. Now Frederick was thankful that he had let Doris see him cry. Any large firm could do with a sensitive accountant. Maybe Frederick Stone would evolve into a kind of social conscience for Bowen Developers, steering them away from acts of environmental assault, fulfilling his sixties heritage. How can one go wrong with Bambi keeping an eye on the company books? But before he had time to further consider the best that could happen, Frederick was hit with the worst.
“Have you been fucking my wife?” Arthur asked. He continued to crunch on macadamias. Frederick felt his heart slip out of his rib cage and flutter beneath his shirt, wanting desperately to escape the chest of such a stupid, imprudent man. The warm flushing of his face told him that his blood vessels had enlarged again, probably to record proportions. He wished he had the opportunity to tell Chandra that she was wrong in thinking the talk of money caused his blushing. Talk of fucking a rich man’s wife could do it, too. Especially if the rich man himself initiated the conversation.
Frederick floundered for a few seconds, uttering such things as “Ah” and “Ahhh” as he struggled for the best answer. The truth, pure and simple—and he could thank Mr. Bator for this—was that he had not actually consummated the act. Or had he? Was ejaculation necessary these days to constitute adultery? No matter how Frederick personally looked at the incident, he felt quite certain that Doris’s husband would not view penetration as politically correct.
“No, I haven’t,” Frederick said, and quite firmly, he thought. “Your wife and I shop at the same supermarket. You might say we’re acquaintances.” He was satisfied with the business tone with which he was addressing one of the richest men in all of New England. His heart was returning to a normal beat, and the little drum in his temple stopped pounding. “I’ve enlisted her help in offering my accounting services to you, however. I am guilty of that.”
“I see,” said Arthur Bowen. He had been nodding agreeably, and this compliance encouraged Frederick to explain further.
“It was merely a business venture,” he added. Arthur Bowen reached for a brown envelope at his feet. “Mrs. Bowen was kind enough to listen to my proposal that Stone Accounting represent Bowen Developers.” Arthur was now rifling through a stack of papers and what looked like the occasional photograph. “And she was patient enough to let me pester her about it. At the IGA, of all places.” He offered up a tiny chuckle but, as Mr. Bator would know well, his diaphragm obviously didn’t move up and down sufficiently enough to stimulate the larynx. What emerged was a light squawk. “However, I’ll be doing my grocery shopping at Cain’s Corner Grocery from now on.” Why don’t you just shut up? he heard Mr. Bator suggest. “The IGA has seen the last of me.” He hoped this promise would appease Arthur Bowen, who seemed to have found the documents he was looking for. “Mr. Cain is a very nice old gentleman who is competing with such a large conglomerate that I’ve decided to give him my business.” This was what was known as prattling, and Frederick knew it. Couldn’t he shut up, as Mr. Bator had suggested? Couldn’t he just keep his lips closed tightly together, the fate he’d wished on Walter Muller all these years of living next door to him? He couldn’t. His face knew better. Fiery red now, his face knew that no way in hell did Arthur Bowen believe him. His whole body seemed to comprehend this, and told him so by trembling. What did King Arthur have in those blasted documents? Frederick knew now how poor Sir Lancelot probably felt, when cornered about Guinevere.
“See this?” Arthur asked. Frederick accepted the photo he was being handed. In it, he was on his front steps kissing Doris Bowen’s pale white hand.
“Ah,” said Frederick. “Ahhh.” He knitted his brows into a puzzling look, as if to say, “Yes, now let’s see. What was that all about?”
Arthur Bowen waited, amid the sound of macadamia nuts being crushed. Frederick crossed his legs, the metaphor painfully apparent. He tried to pass the photograph back to its owner, but his hand wouldn’t work. It dropped to his lap, the hand of a rag doll. The hand of a ghost, maybe, nothing of substance to it, just a wisp of smoke. The faint trill of radio music drifted in from the front seat. The man in the red and green tam turned occasionally to glance back, assuring himself that “the boss” was okay. One of his eyebrows seemed to be missing, the other disappearing in wild hairs under the corner of his tam. He looked like some kind of Scottish pervert. His buddy, riding shotgun, was eating something from a crinkly wrap. The smell of ground beef hung in the air.
The car swung into the parking lot of the Portland Greyhound station. Frederick imagined Arthur Bowen putting him on a bus to Cleveland or someplace hellish, banning him forever from the coast of Maine. But Mr. Tam pulled the vehicle into an empty space and then turned the engine off. No one moved at first, and then the sound of crinkling paper rose up again from the front seat. Mr. Tam burped softly. The radio kept up its faint strain.
“She did come to my house,” Frederick finally admitted. “But that was all.” What else could he say? The photograph was so clear that he could see Walter Muller’s lilac bush pushing its smelly purple face into the corner of the frame. Why hadn’t he just said good-bye? Why did he have to kiss her damned hand? Chandra had said it a thousand times, hadn’t she? “Hubris, Freddy. I’ve seen you try to impress electric-eye doors.”
“You’re very photogenic,” Arthur Bowen said.
“Thank you,” said Frederick, able now to hand the photo back to Doris Bowen’s husband. He waited. The last macadamia nut was ground between Arthur’s molars and then all was quiet for a few seconds. Then more paper rustled in the front seat. Mr. Tam had pushed Scan on the radio panel because short blurps of song came and went. The Scan button. Now, there was an invention that boosted mankind ahead to the future. Thanks to some genius at Sony, the human thumb would probably atrophy somewhere down the evolutionary road and eventually disappear, the important index finger becoming the opposable digit. He wished now that his hand, the one that had lifted Doris’s, had atrophied, preventing the kiss.
“I merely kissed Mrs. Bowen’s hand,” Frederick heard some liar say, and realized that he was blabbing again, his vocal cords vibrating with words. But why not attempt it? What proof did Arthur Bowen have that anything more occurred? Just as Frederick was finishing up this thought, proof arrived in the form of another photo. He accepted it from Arthur’s hand and saw that his own was trembling again. It was another of him, from the Frederick Stone portfolio, although it might have been a work left over from a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. Frederick stared at a most uncomplimentary shot of his own buttocks, which were beaming above the naked body of an insatiable Doris Bowen. Judging from the angle, it had been taken from outside his living room window, at his Victorian house on Ellsboro Street. And, judging from the look of rapture on Doris’s face, the architecture of the house was the only thing Victorian. The focus was excellent. Where did people find such cameras? Under the sunniest of circumstances, and with his subjects as still as statues, Frederick had never taken such a professional-looking photo. He canted his head as he studied the composition. Was that a mole of some sort on his left buttock?
“You need to get yourself a tan,” Arthur Bowen said. He whirred the back window down. “You’re too pale.” He whirred the window up. “Or maybe it’s because my wife is so brown that you look so white.”
“Ahhh,” said Frederick. He closed his eyes. Had it been just a few weeks ago that he was living a one-dimensional, cardboard life that bordered on the comatose? Yes, it was. A small breeze could have blown his flimsy life away.
“Maybe you should start fucking pale women,” he heard Arthur suggest, followed by the sound of the back window whirring down again and then up, down and then up, Arthur Bowen’s artificial diaphragm, up and down. An
xiety in motion. “Maybe you should start fucking albinos,” Arthur counseled further. Frederick heard Mr. Tam snort out a brief little laugh from the front seat. It sounded like a pig squealing. He remembered, irrationally, that he even knew an albino, the woman who wore those dark glasses at the library and handled delinquent books. His frightened mind raced unreasonably, images of milky, anemic women filing past, their eyes radiating pink light. Fair-complexioned persons must be extremely wary because their skin absorbs more of the sun’s rays than the skin of darker persons. Frederick was gratified that Mr. Bator was along for the ride. At least there would be someone there to whom he could whisper the last words: “Tell Chandra to feel no guilt. I die glad that I loved her.”
“Recognize this guy?” Arthur asked. The sharp corner of another picture pecked against Frederick’s hand. He feared looking but he had no choice. The face before him did, indeed, look familiar. It was Jerry, the bag boy who’d worked the summer before at the IGA before he went off to grad school. The next picture was of Preston, another bag boy with a bad attitude, or so Frederick had thought. Apparently his attitude had suited Doris Bowen just fine. In the picture, she was standing behind her raised trunk as Preston loaded groceries into the Mercedes. Arthur handed over another photo, same scene, this time with Preston’s hand holding up the trunk of the car as he kissed Doris. His other hand was bagging her ass. All this behind the raised trunk of the car Arthur Bowen had probably bought as a birthday gift. Why does the woman do her own shopping? Frederick had often wondered. He was shocked to see Billy Lawford, a current bag person, smiling up at him from Doris Bowen’s résumé. Billy Lawford was, in Frederick’s opinion, several bricks short of the proverbial load. As a matter of fact, Billy didn’t even have wheels on the brick wagon. And there in another photo—good God!—was the manager of the IGA, coming out of a motel room while Doris wavered in the door, her perfect hair looking like mice were nesting in it. Frederick hadn’t felt quite so foolish since Mr. Veatch, the security officer at Portland High, had yanked open the gym closet door and found him inside, his hands thrust up under Maria Pritchard’s blouse, a place well traveled.
A Marriage Made at Woodstock Page 24