Still Life with Monkey

by Katharine Weber

  “I’m hardly going to see this house.”

  “I’ve already been thinking about how we can make the trip to Maine. I’m sure we could figure it out. We’d bring along one of the PCAs. The Cavendishes would pay for everything. They’re rich.”

  “We’re rich too.”

  “Not Cavendish rich.”

  “I know you want me to want this, Laura. I get it.”

  “I want this! I want to see this house. And you’re an architect, so where’s your architect’s ego? You know you want this too! Isn’t there some little part of you that wants to see this house built?”

  Duncan sighed. He so didn’t want to want this. Ottoline shifted in her kitchen cage, waking from a nap, and peeped at him. “Okay. I’m not objecting. That’s the best I can do right now.”

  Two weeks later, when winter had returned, it was again a Saturday when the McCarthy children came to call again, this time accompanied by their mother. She wanted to speak with Laura and Duncan, she said to Laura.

  “Can the children come in and play with your monkey? Just for a little visit,” Irene Jackson said, as she ushered the boys in the door. Scout trailed behind them. Duncan was in the kitchen, just finishing a late breakfast, and he chewed the last bite of a correctly-prepared toasted English muffin as her distinctly disagreeable voice carried through the house. He told Ottoline it was time for a time-out in her cage before she would be allowed to see what was going on. Ottoline rarely met strangers, and though she had liked the McCarthy children, her response was unpredictable.

  “They can’t actually play with her, no, that wouldn’t be a good idea, but here, let me get them something to do,” offered Laura. “Kids, here are some markers, and look, here are some number two pencils, and some of Duncan’s graph paper. Let’s clear off the coffee table so you have a lot of room. Why don’t you guys draw something?”

  “I’m going to draw a dovecote,” Jackson announced confidently as he knelt at the coffee table and began to sketch an approximation of a hexagon.

  “What, a little bird outfit?” his mother asked. “I don’t know what ideas they get from those reality fashion shows.”

  “Number two pencils” Bailey chortled. “She said number two. Shit pencils!”

  “Shit pencils,” murmured Scout around her thumb.

  “Don’t teach your sister curse words!” scolded their mother. “So where’s this monkey the boys told me about?” she asked, guardedly scanning the living room, as if she expected a wild creature to jump out at her.

  Up close, she was startlingly older than Laura had thought from glimpses of her comings and goings across the street. And those Infomercials with her husband, with his big mustache and sideburns, must have been shot a decade ago. He was balder and clean-shaven now, Laura had noticed when she watched him as he came and went across the street. As she often did when she observed people and their children, Laura wondered if the Jackson children had been conceived naturally, or if there had been interventions, or maybe they were adopted. They didn’t resemble either parent particularly, though it was hard to tell what Irene might have once looked like. She was wearing a black velour tracksuit, and even though it was a rainy Saturday morning, she wore makeup and shiny gold earrings that would surely attract Ottoline’s curiosity.

  “Did you have a good birthday last Saturday?” Duncan asked Bailey as he rolled into the living room. Bailey was kneeling at the coffee table beside his brother, both of them drawing intently. He nodded vigorously without looking up.

  “I apologize for only staying a few minutes,” Duncan said. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

  “Oh, were you there? I didn’t come downstairs until it was time for the cake,” Irene said. “I was working on a brief. And Ingie had it all under control. I’m Irene,” she added unnecessarily. She held out her right hand to Duncan, though she had neither introduced herself nor offered a hand to Laura at the door, but then as Duncan started to extend his braced left hand, she switched to offer her own left hand. People were often flustered by Duncan’s unavailable right hand.

  “I missed the cake,” Duncan said.

  “Is it Ingie’s day off today?” Laura asked.

  “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Irene said in a confiding tone. “Can we go in another room?”

  Ottoline shrieked like a parrot at Irene as they entered the kitchen. Irene jumped back with her own little shriek. Ottoline scrambled up onto the sleeping shelf in her cage, where she bounced up and down, her ears flattened, her mouth open, staring at Irene while shrieking hoo-hoo-hoo, her pretend-stricken distress sound.

  “Oh, knock it off,” Laura said to her crossly, while respecting her judgment.

  “The boys told me about how she can do things on command,” Irene said, sitting down at the table and hoisting Scout, who had followed her, into her lap. “Very impressive!”

  Laura stood with her arms folded, leaning against the fridge. She wasn’t in the mood to offer coffee. Something about Irene made her enjoy being just a little rude.

  Duncan had positioned himself beside Ottoline’s cage.

  “Do you have her trained to clean the house for you?” Irene asked, looking at Ottoline appraisingly.

  “Hardly!” Laura tried not to laugh. “Monkey helpers do smaller-scale, more personal things, like fetch a phone or a television remote, or turn on a light, or put in a CD.”

  “Could she put your makeup on for you?”

  Duncan burst out laughing, a rare sound that made Laura happy and grateful to Irene. (But she still wasn’t going to offer her coffee.) “I am sure she would love to have the opportunity,” he said, his laughter trailing off into coughing. “If you let her, if she didn’t eat your lipstick first, but the results would probably make you look a lot like that clown you hired for the birthday party.”

  “Clown!” crowed Scout, who had been staring fixedly at Ottoline, who had been staring right back at her. Scout jammed a thumb into her mouth, and Ottoline immediately stuck a long hairy thumb into her own mouth and sucked on it loudly. Laura struggled to keep a straight face. She didn’t dare meet Duncan’s eye.

  “I fired Ingie yesterday,” Irene said abruptly. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What happened?” Laura asked.

  “I don’t have proof, but I am pretty sure she was trying to seduce my husband,” Irene said in a confiding tone. “I’m not going to go into details, but I just didn’t trust her, and I didn’t think she was a good influence over the children.”

  “So where is she now? Does she have to leave the country?” Duncan asked. “Wasn’t she on a work visa tied to this job?”

  “She’s on her way back to Scandinavia is all I know,” Irene said with a triumphant little laugh. “That’s the end of that.”

  “But where is she from? I assumed she was Swedish,” said Laura. “With a name like Ingie. What was that short for? Ingeborg? Ingrid?”

  “Ingie!” exclaimed Scout, struggling in her mother’s grasp, looking around the room expectantly.

  “I don’t remember. We just called her Ingie. She’s from Scandinavia,” said Irene, somewhat defensively, clamping down on Scout. “She has to go back to Scandinavia.”

  “Scandinavia is not a country,” Duncan said in the quiet, even tone he used when dealing with an idiot. Uh-oh, thought Laura. “It’s a region.”

  “Is she from Norway, or Sweden? Is she Danish?” Laura asked. “Did she ever talk about her family?” Laura pictured the Ingie family, all white blond and wearing primary color knitwear, plagued by their löss problem. She scratched her suddenly itchy head. In her cage, Ottoline scratched her own tufted head in mimicry of Laura, peeping and chortling and tilting her head. Sometimes Ottoline cracked herself up.

  “Like I said, they told us at the agency that she was from Scandinavia,” Irene repeated. “We prefer them to South Americans. The Icelandic ones are best. They’re always very clean, even if they do have ridiculous names.”

  Laura and Duncan co
uld hardly look at each other. What law school could she possibly have attended? Her nice clever children must take after their father. Or the series of au pairs who had raised them.

  The sound of the television emanated from the living room. A football game. Did the McCarthy boys actually care about football? No, now the station had changed to something with a laugh track.

  Seeing Laura and Duncan exchange glances, Irene said, “I let them watch whatever they want when I need them to stay quiet, especially right now, when we’re between au pairs.”

  “How many au pairs have your kids known?” Laura asked. “Did they get to say goodbye to Ingie?”

  “I know you judge me,” Irene shot back, “but you don’t have children. You have no idea what it’s like.”

  “That is true,” Laura said quietly, holding Irene’s gaze for a long moment until Irene looked away.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I just wanted to ask you, since I get the feeling you’re home all the time, I mean, I noticed your new handicapped parking spot, that must be so convenient, always being able to park in those handicapped spots, so did you ever see anything?”

  “What do you mean, see anything?” Duncan asked, knowing perfectly well what she meant. “But no, I didn’t,” he added, not waiting for her to explain.

  “Okay,” Irene got to her feet, dumping Scout onto the floor, where she slid straight to a sitting position on her rubber folding legs. “That’s really why I came over. Never mind. I thought you might—It’s just that—”

  “Nope! Didn’t see a thing!” Laura said too cheerfully, and Duncan shot her a look.

  In the living room, the boys were gazing contentedly at a Viagra commercial featuring a man on a beach lighting a bonfire.

  “Reptile dysfunction!” shouted Bailey. “What is reptile dysfunction?”

  “It’s when alligators and crocodiles have eaten too many other alligators and crocodiles,” Duncan informed them in an authoritative tone as he rolled into the room behind Laura and Irene. The boys scissored their arms wildly at each other, giant jaws devouring each other, as they roared in reptilian harmony.

  “Let’s go, boys,” Irene said wearily, dragging Scout behind her.

  “All facelifts turn people into a cat or a monkey,” Laura said, watching the children run ahead of their mother across the street (there were no cars, nor warnings about the possibility of cars) and then scamper together up the steps of their house, forever Ingie-less. “That’s what my mother always said. I think monkey.”

  “Don’t insult our beautiful brown-eyed girl,” said Duncan.

  “Poor Ingie,” said Laura. “And poor Scout especially.”

  “We owe Bailey a birthday present. Let’s give the McCarthy kids a map of the world,” said Duncan.

  FOURTEEN

  After lunch, Laura set Duncan up in the living room

  AFTER LUNCH, LAURA SET DUNCAN UP IN THE LIVING room with Rear Window, which he never tired of watching. He dozed off in his wheelchair just as Grace Kelly was delivering the accusatory note (WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH HER?) to Raymond Burr, while Thelma Ritter and Jimmy Stewart watch anxiously. The movie ended. Duncan was snoring. Ottoline was ensconced on his chest, sifting through the whiskers on his unshaved chin. When Laura woke him gently, touching his face lightly with her fingers, Ottoline batted her hand away with a bossy cheep. “Oh stop it, you imperious little primate,” Laura said crossly, and her voice woke Duncan.

  “Megan Clark from the office is here. She said she just wanted to leave this bunch of revised Steiner drawings for you to look at whenever you like, but she said she would wait to see if you want to discuss anything. Do you want to see her? She’s in the kitchen because I didn’t know if you were up for it.”

  “What time is it? Let me wake up. For a loose wreck, I see an awful lot of people these days.”

  Megan Clark had been at Corrigan & Wheeler for about a year, so Duncan barely knew her. Todd Walker had been friendly with her. She had mostly worked with Dave Halloran, who had advocated for her hiring. Megan was a graduate of the University of Oregon, her home state. Pleasant and competent, if not thrilling, she was tall and thin and wore her hair in a single long braid. She usually dressed in what Todd had explained to Duncan was a deliberately gender-neutral way. Today, along with jeans and hiking boots, she was wearing a red checked flannel shirt over a blue broadcloth button-down shirt, over a black T-shirt. Shirts over shirts over shirts had been the look of Yale architecture students for decades, and when young architects come to New Haven they usually started wearing more shirts, a style Todd had resisted.

  Duncan toggled his chair into a more upright position, and Ottoline hung on, scrambling up onto his shoulder to keep herself afloat. Then he motored across the living room into the kitchen, where Megan was sitting at the table. She smiled at Ottoline but didn’t move a muscle. Ottoline hopped down onto the kitchen table and ran right up to her.

  “Hello, monkey,” Megan said. Ottoline studied her warily and then reached down to gingerly touch the freckles on the back of her wrist, trying to lift one with her fingernail.

  “They don’t come off,” Megan said, and Ottoline scurried back across the table to Duncan, leaped onto his shoulder, and settled there with a chirp.

  The Steiner drawings, which Megan unrolled on the table with the salt bowl and the pepper mill weighting the two far corners, were troubling to him. Laura brought him his reading glasses to swap for the distance glasses he had been wearing to watch Rear Window. Everywhere he looked on the familiar plans, Duncan could see elisions and compromises. There was no major change, and yet all the altered details added up to a dilution and a diminishing blurring of his original intention.

  “Who’s making these changes? These were all final locked drawings months ago. This is fucking unacceptable.” Duncan didn’t mean to speak so sharply to the messenger. She was just a kid. He liked her placid demeanor with Ottoline. She was bright and calm, two qualities he valued.

  “Dave said the changes were necessary or we would be way over budget,” she said. “Plus, there were some problems with this group that has a name like the Stony Creek Alliance—”

  “The Stony Creek Coalition? Oh no, no, no, they’re trouble. I thought we were done with them. We had all the town approvals and permits we needed. They have no actual power, but some people on various town boards are afraid of them. We satisfied them last summer. I took eight of those annoying, self-righteous people on a fucking weekend site visit myself last June!”

  “There was a meeting,” Megan said, “ten days ago. They came to the office to meet with Dave Halloran and a couple of the other people on the project.”

  “Were you at this meeting?”

  “No, I wasn’t, or at least I wasn’t supposed to be,” Megan said. “I was way over on the far side of our offices, in my workspace. I was staying late to finish the presentation material for the Altschul Lake House. But you know how sound carries in the office?”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “So I could hear a lot of what they were saying.”

  “And?”

  Megan bit her lip. “I really worried about this. To be honest, it’s why I volunteered to bring you these revisions today. Dave said it could wait for your weekly pickup next Wednesday, but I really thought you ought to know about what’s going on. Right now.”

  “I appreciate that. So will you tell me what you heard?”

  “They kept using phrases like ‘protecting and maintaining the unique character, charm, and balance’ of Stony Creek and the Thimbles.” She imitated the lock-jawed patrician tones very effectively.

  “That’s their slogan.”

  “Then one of them talked about trying to get a town referendum in Branford about designating a special zone or something for Stony Creek, based on some standards they want to establish. He said they wanted to ‘reduce conflict’ by creating a review board to assist the town commissions in making the best decisions. He kept using phrases like ‘preserving th
e scale, rhythm, and architectural elements.’ He sounded like maybe he’s an architect.”

  “That was probably Roger Gallagher. He’s an unimaginative and barely competent local architect who resents outsiders coming in and getting all the work—even though he benefits. Sometimes the big out-of-town firms throw him a bone and he’s added to the project as the clerk of the works, especially since he knows his way around all the town boards and commissions. He may not have any new ideas about how to design and build, but he sure does have the skills to get shoreline projects approved.”

  Megan started to say something and then stopped.

  “Was there something else?’

  “Maybe it’s not important. This woman who looked like a Sunday school teacher kept saying they were concerned about keeping out the influence of ‘New York money.’”

  “That’s code. Do you know what that really means?”

  Megan shook her head, puzzled. “It doesn’t just mean that they don’t want rich people from New York?”

  “In my experience, Megan, when people like that talk about ‘New York’ anything, it means they’re afraid of Jews taking over, but they know they can’t just come out and say it.”

  “But the Steiners approved everything. All the changes.”

  “Really? Who met with the Steiners? Dave? I can just imagine how he sold the changes to them on the basis of cost and future good neighbor relations. Shit. Why am I only hearing about this now?”

  “They announced in the office last week that you were off the project. They told us you weren’t going to have an active role in anything from now on. Halloran said you had really tried to keep up, but you just couldn’t do the work any more. He said it was your decision not to come back.”

  Duncan pored over the drawing some more, trying to make sense of what she had just told him. What the hell. The Corrigan & Wheeler credential box on the lower right of the plans listed Dave Halloran as the lead architect, where Duncan’s name had been all along, from the first sketch of the Steiner house renovations and additions. Duncan’s name was still on the project, but moved down to the top of the list of associates and assistants making up the Corrigan & Wheeler design team on the Steiner project.