by Greg Johnson
“He wasn’t from… England?” Abby murmured.
Now Valerie was leaning over, peering into her eyes. “Abby, why do you keep saying that? Thom said no, his boyfriend wasn’t from England. What does that matter?”
Connie made a smacking noise; he must have slapped his forehead. “But you know what? He told me he was doing a Shakespeare play last fall out in Marietta, that little theater on the town square. He rattled off a few lines for me in his British accent. You must have talked to him that night, too. Did you, Abby?”
You know how we actors are. We have lots of names.
She let her eyes fall shut, knowing the others were watching her; she took a deep breath. She resolved not to think any more and to focus all her energy on keeping her composure.
When she opened her eyes, the other three were peering at her. She smiled at them vaguely.
Connie tried to make a joke. “Dottie, you’re not in Kansas anymore!”
Valerie laughed; even Thom was smiling. Abby was smiling, too.
“Yes,” she said, “I think the drinks got to me. I feel better now.”
“You’re sure?” Thom asked. “You looked so strange there for a minute.”
“Yes,” Abby said. “I’m sure.”
Connie let out his breath, relieved. “You were in la-la-land for a minute there, Abby,” he said gently. “‘He wasn’t from… England? He wasn’t from… England?’”
Abby covered her eyes, as though embarrassed. The others kept kidding her, gently. The phrase He wasn’t from… England? was to become a private joke among the four of them, whenever one was suspected of having had too much to drink.
They decided to have a quick dinner at the hotel, despite Connie’s two sets of reservations. Later they would say it was a fortunate thing, too, for halfway through the meal Connie’s name—Mr. Lefcourt!—came over the P.A. system. If Mr. Lefcourt was here, he had an important phone call.
Connie rushed off, then returned to the table looking pale and unhappy.
The caller had been Warren; Connie’s stepmother had died, and his father wanted him to fly home to Oklahoma City right away. Connie was able to get a reservation for six-thirty the next morning, so they said their goodbyes to him after dinner, and the next morning around eleven Abby, Thom, and Valerie left for Atlanta as originally planned. Their vacation was over and Abby, gazing mindlessly out the small blurry window of the plane, supposed that her life was over, too.
Chapter 8
Spring arrived in a yellow haze. Through the last days of March, the pine pollen swirled visibly through the air, and each morning Thom Sadler woke to find that its yellow dust, the color of egg yolks, had drifted against his exterior window sills, the white wooden railing around his front stoop, the windshield of his car. In early spring Thom kept a rag and bottle of Windex in his glove-box; he couldn’t stand to drive any distance squinting through jaundiced glass, so he sprayed the windshield each morning before leaving for work. The effort winded him. After closing the glove box, he would sit there, catch his breath, then start the ignition with a hard twist of his fingers. So many things he once did thoughtlessly now took concentration and deliberate effort. Slowly, he navigated each day as if struggling through an element denser and more combative than ordinary time, ordinary air.
Ever since that stupid car wreck in February, which he refused to discuss with anyone—not even Abby—and which he tried to avoid thinking about, he hadn’t felt quite the same. In whimsical moments he liked to think the ass-covering lies he’d told that day, and so fluently, had damaged his soul; somehow the weakness had spread through his body, enfeebling him. He had rammed the Suburban with its hateful bumper sticker so hard that the driver, a teenage girl who had borrowed her father’s car for the day, had lain in the front seat, convulsing.
Thom had managed to struggle out of his car and hobble forward to see what damage he’d wrought. His air bag had inflated, preventing any serious injury, but he’d been badly shaken. His left shoulder had jammed so hard against the door it went numb. Peering through the driver’s window of the Suburban—the door was locked—he saw the young girl sprawled along the seat, quivering horribly, her mouth contorted, eyes clenched in pain, and he’d felt the blood drain from his head. He slumped against the door, his breath ragged. His stomach lunged, and that unmistakable tingling in his throat told him he was about to throw up. Then another man, from the backed-up traffic behind him, ran up and took control. It was this man (whose name he could not remember) who had helped Thom to the side of the road, had called the police and an ambulance, had even started directing traffic around the accident. The man had been young, dark-haired, anonymous-looking. He had shown up in court and, to Thorn’s astonishment, had backed up Thorn’s blatant lie that the Suburban had braked abruptly, not giving Thom enough time to stop, though he also testified that Thom had been driving too fast. Thom, as the girl’s father angrily insisted, got away with a “slap on the wrist”: a ticket for following too closely and a stern admonition from a young, harried-looking black judge. The injured girl had arrived in court looking pale, wearing a neck brace; she had suffered no permanent damage, her father admitted, but she would wear the brace for three months, and the sight of her tore at Thorn’s heart. The image of her lying in that car seat trembling, convulsing, loomed in his nightmares for months to come.
Thom agreed with her father that the punishment had been too light, though a lawyer-friend Thom called had laughed that the girl had been wearing an “insurance brace” and probably wasn’t hurt at all, that Thom shouldn’t worry. Thom hadn’t told the lawyer about the bumper sticker, or about the way his foot had seemed not his own but a mass of raging pitiless instinct when it stomped on the gas pedal. He would never tell anyone, he thought guiltily. Never.
Of course, no one had accused him of deliberately ramming the car. No one would have imagined that this polite, nice-looking young man, who had gone straight to the girl and her father and apologized, might have committed such a crime. The girl was only sixteen, a high school student, and she looked shy and fearful; she seemed even younger than her age, an innocent. The Miracle of AIDS: Turning Fruits into Vegetables. Yes, the infection in Thorn’s soul had spread to his body and brain so that he no longer felt well or thought clearly.
Maybe the punishment was about right, after all.
More than a month had passed and April was here, and Thom felt neither better nor worse. Since their vacation in Key West—which had been good for him, he supposed—he’d gotten busy again with work. The real-estate market was hotter than ever, and for the first time he’d actually begun turning away clients, referring them to younger brokers in his office. He now had few listings under $200,000, and those few sold quickly; almost everything sold quickly. Already he’d made more money this year than during all of last year, and even last year had been good. So had the year before that. Evidence of the Clinton prosperity was everywhere, though he didn’t feel quite well enough to enjoy it. He ought to think about getting out of his condo and buying a house but couldn’t imagine summoning the energy required to move, to buy furniture for a larger place, to shuttle forward into the next stage of his life the way his clients were eagerly doing. He was treading water, these days; he was maintaining. When the real estate market’s spring fever had subsided, he thought he might take Abby and Connie on another vacation. To the Caribbean, maybe, or Costa Rica. Somewhere peaceful where the days were formless and he could read and rest and not have to think.
When he wasn’t working he was usually helping Connie, who was having a rough time. There had been a predictable blowup when Connie went home for his stepmother’s funeral, and as Thom had suspected, the main thing on Connie’s father’s mind was the money. His first wife’s money. Connie’s money. The first Mrs. Lefcourt had left behind a complicated, peculiar trust that seemed almost designed, Thom thought, to keep her memory omnipresent in the lives of her widower and only son. Though Mr. Lefcourt could not touch the money or control
its disbursement, he was named as “trustee,” and along with the estate lawyer he had to co-sign (Thom could imagine with what raging disgust) Connie’s monthly checks. The checks increased in size through Connie’s twenties and thirties, and only when he turned forty would the trust dissolve and his mother’s estate become his alone. The intention, Connie’s lawyer had explained, was that Connie not depend wholly on the estate and fail to make his own way in life; it was assumed that by the time he was forty, he would be established in his own career, be married and have a family, and be able, at last, to handle his inherited wealth responsibly.
In spite of everything, Connie and Thom could not help giggling as they discussed all this. By now Connie had given up even his occasional stabs at part-time jobs and no longer remarked that he hoped to “find something” soon; his mother’s estate had prospered to the degree that the monthly checks, calculated according to some complex actuarial scheme that even the lawyer didn’t seem to understand fully, had increased far beyond what his mother might have imagined thirty years ago. Thom learned for the first time that during Connie’s teenage years, when Connie and his father had begun to have serious arguments, Mr. Lefcourt had launched the first of several legal challenges against the will; but these efforts had failed. The will had been airtight, Connie boasted: every t crossed, every i dotted. So it wasn’t surprising that his recent visit home had not gone well. Connie had turned forty in March, a fact that had no doubt loomed unspoken between Connie and his father during the four stressful days Connie spent in Oklahoma City. His father had managed to control his drinking for the most part, but virtually every remark he directed at Connie had been laced with sarcasm, and since Connie was no slouch in that department either, they’d had several shouting matches, one in the funeral home parking lot within earshot of people arriving to pay Wilma Lefcourt their last respects. After the second day, Connie told Thom, he left the house and stayed in a hotel for the rest of his visit. Connie spent most of his time with the estate lawyers, discussing the transfer of assets.
“Now that your birthday’s passed, do you have to go back there? You know, to sign papers and so forth?” Thom had asked.
Connie shook his head. “No, thank God. Daddy’s lawyer—or the estate’s lawyer, I should say—said everything is in stocks, bonds, and cash, plus some jewelry in a safety deposit box. All the assets can simply be transferred into my name. And after all these years of my father signing the checks, he’s totally out of the picture once I turn forty. Not even his signature is required. He’s out in the cold.”
Thom blinked, hearing the note of triumph in Connie’s voice, then said, “It’s not surprising he’s angry, then.”
“Why should he be angry? He’s known how the trust was set up ever since I was a kid. The stock market has been like a fever chart these past few years, so there’s more money now than we’d ever imagined. I’m going to be filthy rich, and he can’t stand it.”
Thom thought a moment. “Your dad isn’t exactly poor, is he?”
“Oh, no, he’s done well enough. And poor dim Wilma left him a nice bundle too, I think. But it’s like my mother has finally made this grand, posthumous choice—me over him, you know?”
A sly little smile had come across Connie’s face. Thom glanced away, and at that moment an idea struck him.
“Connie, you said your mother left behind some jewelry?”
“Oh yes, I’ve seen it—I don’t think it’s all that much. A few rings, one or two necklaces. Probably worth fifty or a hundred thousand, but I’ll never sell it.” His voice had turned dreamy, his eyes softening. “I can remember my mother wearing every piece of that jewelry. I have pictures of her wearing it.”
“I was just thinking…was any of the jewelry from your father? You know, something he gave her?”
Connie stared at Thom. “Most of it, probably. Why?”
“Maybe it would help mend fences,” Thom said quickly, “and make him feel better if…well, if you offered him one of the rings, or whatever he wanted of the jewelry. You know, as a keepsake.”
Connie had kept staring. He blinked. He opened his mouth to speak but then seemed to think again. He nodded.
“That’s a good idea, Thom. I’ll think about that. My father and I haven’t been in the habit of… I mean, we’ve never exchanged gifts, you know. We haven’t communicated much at all. But yes, now that he’s so hot and bothered, maybe that would help.”
“It might smooth the waters, you know, take the wind out of his sails—that’s really what I meant.”
“Thom, you’re so metaphorical! But you’re right. I shouldn’t think of myself as engaged in some kind of war with him. That’s his sickness, not mine.” He was nodding eagerly. “Yes, there was this big opal ring with little diamonds around it that he gave her for an anniversary present. Frankly, it was an ugly ring, an old lady’s ring, but she wore it to please him, and I suppose I could give him that.” He’d clearly warmed to the idea. “Yes, maybe with a picture of her wearing it too.”
By then Thom had felt more, rather than less uneasy. He’d said nothing.
Connie’s birthday in early March had come and gone with surprisingly little fanfare. Warren had wanted to throw him a dinner party, but Connie had forbidden it; he’d allowed Thom and Abby to take him to dinner at Ciboulette, his favorite restaurant, and then a group of his male friends—Thom hadn’t been able to make it—had taken him out to Swinging Richard’s for a night of acting silly with the male strippers. Connie, Thom had heard, tipped the strippers so extravagantly that they’d practically fought each other for the privilege of giving him table dances. Thom was glad that Connie had enjoyed his birthday, but he was worried about him. He was still taking too many tranquilizers and “muscle relaxants” and sleeping pills, complaining constantly of anxiety and insomnia. He insisted that already people liked him for his money—news of his inheritance traveled with electric speed among Atlanta’s gossip queens—and didn’t care about him. Thom knew Connie well enough to discount most of these complaints (Connie loved being gossiped about, he loved attention of any kind) but the pills did worry him, as did the abusive, late-night phone calls Connie still received from his drunken father (“Of course, he always calls during the one night when I manage to get into a nice, deep sleep,” Connie said), and the general formlessness of his life. Connie insisted he was in a “transitional phase” and was trying to think of a small business he might enjoy running, but for now he rose at ten or eleven, piddled around the house, spent the afternoon at the gym and the pool, then beginning around five o’clock—“my cocktail hour”—he socialized with his friends and also, Thom had gathered, with a few hustlers he’d met around town.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, but I hope you’re being safe,” Thom had told him.
“Yes, Mama,” Connie said, rolling his eyes. “First, I mummify the darling boys in Saran Wrap, and with really dubious-looking trade, I scrutinize their privates with a magnifying glass. They seem to enjoy that.”
“Seriously, Connie,” Thom said.
“I am serious!” Connie cried.
Every few days Thom vowed to stop meddling in other people’s lives and tend to his own. Look at you, he told himself in his best scolding, big-brother’s inner voice; who are you to tell other people how to live? He tried to avoid giving brotherly advice to Abby, too, since after all she was older, and smarter, and plainly resented any attempt to interfere with her life. A couple of weeks ago he’d made the mistake of offering her some money to “tide her over” until her teaching fellowship began, but she’d bristled at his assumption that she needed any help. She still had plenty of money saved, she told him; back in Philadelphia their mother had refused to accept rent or grocery money from her, so she’d spent practically nothing for the past few years. Thom shouldn’t worry about her… He’d grasped the implication of that remark and had said nothing else. Abby was right, of course; though she’d seemed not quite herself lately (she was quiet, secretive, and
also a bit irritable, which wasn’t like her) he knew that Abby was worried about him, too. These days she asked probing questions about his condition, his medications. Did he take vitamins, had he tried “alternative therapies”; did he stay on top of the research; did he really trust his doctor…? The questions dizzied Thom. He supposed he did trust his doctor—the same nice, no-nonsense woman who had treated Carter—and he simply did whatever she told him to do. He did no reading about HIV; he attended no support meetings; certainly he joined no protests, wrote no letters to politicians or drug companies. He supposed he was too passive about his illness, but the shrill activism in which some of his friends engaged simply wasn’t his style. Just doing his job and maintaining the semblance of a personal life were all he could manage.
His energy seemed to be seeping out of him, day by day. Occasionally, he felt overwarm, a bit dizzy, and would take his temperature and discover that it was 100, or even close to 101. He meant to start keeping a record, taking his temperature each day and writing it down, but he kept forgetting. He tried not to berate himself any more than was necessary or to indulge in the silly idea that this was a punishment of any kind. Didn’t everyone lose control at least once in his life? Didn’t everyone harbor at least one personal crime he had never confessed to anybody? Life meandered along through this yellow-hazy spring, and Thom sneezed, yawned, did his job, took his medicine, checked his temperature, and in general did the best he could.
One balmy morning Thom approached his car with a stack of manila file folders and bulging envelopes—he was dropping off tax records at his accountant’s office on the way to work—and after he’d maneuvered himself into the car he noticed there was almost no pollen on the windshield. Good. That was something, at least. Yet he felt winded and overwarm. He put one hand to his forehead, a habitual gesture though it hardly ever told him anything. His forehead always felt warm, even when he wasn’t running a fever. He sat there for a moment and considered going back inside to take his temperature and pop a couple of Motrin, but he was running late and this was an important day. He kept going.