Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

  “Excuse me for just a moment,” said Gerard, standing with shaking knees. “I want to tell Barry where the Citra-Solv is.”

  Gerard caught up with Barry outside the back door, and they looked at each other in disbelief. Forbes, just beginning to exhibit the black markings of his adult coloring, beeped.

  “Don’t look at him like that, boss.”

  “What are you doing consorting with the enemy, Barry?”

  Barry took a breath, inflating himself to his full height. “Maybe it’s time to open our hearts to our enemy. We must embrace them, get to know them. There’s too much hate in the world as it is.” He stroked Forbes’s head. “Besides, it’s your fault. You’re the one who made me addle those eggs in May. He thought I was his mom, so I had to take him. Was hoping to keep him a secret, but this is for the best. No more lies.”

  Gerard steadied himself by holding on to the cold metal banister and stared out at the Dumpster, where crows lethargically picked at the morning’s offering from the kitchen.

  “I’ve got to go back inside,” Gerard said slowly. “When I’m done, you and I are going to have a very long talk about your bird.”

  “Forbes.” Barry stroked the top of the gosling’s head and gave it a little peck with his nose. “His name is Forbes. He took a fancy to the magazine I used to line his box.” Barry and the gosling both looked up at Gerard, their eyes bright with moisture.

  “I’m sure if you check the Manual,” said Gerard, turning away, “you will find that employee pets are disallowed on Club premises.”

  “He was born here,” said Barry defiantly. “The Club is more his than ours.”

  Gerard paused but did not answer.

  “Boss, please. When there’s not too many of them, they can trim the grass and fertilize it at the same time. Maybe we should think about ducks too, because they’ll eat the bugs. Did you know that a dozen ducks can pick a small orchard clean of plum curculio in an hour? You shake the branches, and the bugs fall.. . .”

  “We don’t have plums.” Gerard was tempted to add “you idiot” to the sentence but restrained himself. “We have a golf course. The best golf course in New England. And I intend for it to stay that way.”

  “I never meant for him to follow me into your office. Little de-vil musta flew out the window. Flew. Isn’t that something?”

  Gerard tapped the banister. Would he be forced to fire a valued employee over a goose? Or would that be playing into the birds’ hands? He closed his eyes tight. “Just don’t let me see him in this club-house again.” He opened the door slowly, poised at the gates of hell, then entered, letting the door sweep closed behind him.

  When Gerard skulked back into his office, Bellows raised his head stiffly and blinked. “Somethin’ wrong?” he asked.

  “No, no, he’s getting right on it.” Gerard put his smile back on a second too late.

  “Now wha’ about the geese?” Bellows looked at him with one eye.

  Gerard checked himself in the mirror before speaking and calmed his features. “I was wondering, Mr. Bellows, if maybe, do we have the right to, if you understand what I’m saying, dispose of the geese?”

  Bellows snorted. “There’s a short season in the beginning of September, longer one in the winter.” He sat up straight. “Not sure what the bag is, though. But we could get a few of the boys from the Hunt Club and have a go at them.”

  “What about now?” asked Gerard. “We’re allowed to kill all the rats we want, year-round. The geese are just as dirty and spread disease. They interfere with our livelihood. They alter game results and create stress for our members. Tell me, Mr. Bellows, do you think some sort of permit might be had for a special reduction in the numbers?”

  Bellows thought, or at least looked as though he thought. “You’ve got a point. Let me ask around. Could be quite a bit of fun, eh?”

  He stood up, his eyebrows lightening their heavy load for a moment, and shook Gerard’s clammy hand.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Unplayable Lie

  HEY, MRS. LAMBERT.” Scott Volpe hung the NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY sign on the gate. “Got to go tidy the locker rooms now that the kids have split, but I can stay if you’d feel, um, safer.”

  “I’ll try to keep from drowning.” Madeline suppressed a smile. Earlier in the summer he was asking how she wanted her burger, and now he wanted to know how much protection she needed. According to Frank—who, after being here a little more than a year, seemed to know more about the staff than she ever had—Scott had gotten his Red Cross certificate to win a girl: Holly Quilpe’s daughter, Sarah, who was apparently game for a lifeguard but not a kitchen worker. Holly would make quite a scene if she found them out, but Scott, while definitely not son-in-law material, was sweet, really. And cute in a way, especially now that his hair was shorter. Black swimming trunks were a great improvement over his old khaki uniform. He had the torso of a grown man but was not quite cooked through yet, so his body was as hairless as a Ken doll. She peered at his chest. There were two small indentations near his left nipple, like a snakebite.

  “That’s weird, huh?” Scott touched the spot. “But Gerard, he said I had to remove all body jewelry on duty. I said that’s not in the Manual, and he says he doesn’t care what it says, no nipple rings.”

  “Ah,” said Madeline, beginning to move away. “I suppose he has his reasons.”

  Scott stepped closer. “But I don’t, um, take off the ones he can’t see.” He grazed his crotch with his fingertips so quickly she thought she’d imagined it; then he unfurled his tongue, where a small golden stud glinted on its tip. He smiled and put his finger to his mouth. “Our secret,” he said, and left.

  Madeline was stunned. It looked so uncomfortable. It could chip his tooth enamel. And what was the point? Phoebe would know, but Madeline was afraid if she asked she’d only be inviting a lecture on the rights of body parts to be mutilated. She shook out her white towel as she shook her head. She didn’t want to think about Phoebe right then, or about much of anything. It’s why she preferred the pool later in the afternoon, after the children were gone but before the adults started arriving for post-work swim and sunset cocktails. At this time of day she didn’t have to talk to anyone if she didn’t want to. As if anyone would. Between Phoebe and her livestock, and Charles and his breakdown, her life had become too untidy for polite conversation. Members cracked sympathetic smiles, but there were no kind words, not even any unsolicited advice. She was apparently beyond redemption.

  As she smoothed out her towel on the lounge, someone splashed her, and she gasped. She liked the pool, but the older she got, the more she hated getting wet. To think her adolescence was spent surfing the waves.

  It was Frank Nicastro. He was panting as he leaned his arms on the tiled edge of the pool, water pouring down his face.

  “Afternoon, pet,” he said, still trying to catch his breath.

  “Look at you, swimming.” She tugged at the skirt of her bathing suit before sitting down. “Next thing we know you’ll be playing golf.”

  “I couldn’t hit a beach ball with a two-by-four.” He dog-paddled to the ladder, where he rested before climbing the steps. “I’m not a natural like Charles. What a pity he’s given it up.”

  Madeline sighed as she arranged herself on the lounge. For all the chilly berth she’d been given lately, ignoring her problems was still better than having to talk about them. It wasn’t just that Charles had left the game Saturday. That was bad enough, but she’d made matters worse by insisting they keep their dinner reservations, desperate to make their lives appear normal. But he’d barely touched his food and just played with his cutlery until all the commotion started. Then, of all things, he’d wanted to help Gerard pull Roger off Willard, to throw himself right in the middle of it. She’d never dug in her nails so deeply, getting him out the door.

  Frank lugged his carcass out of the water and with a weary posture walked to the picket fence for his towel, leaving a watery trail. He straightened
his spine as he rubbed his face, then pulled a piece of something from his nostril. “A little wet feather,” he said, and wiped it on his teal bathing trunks. Then he shook his whole body like a dog, starting at his head and ending with his toes, propelling drops in a twenty-foot radius. Madeline received the brunt of this lather and, with an exaggerated motion, wiped herself dry.

  “Mind if I sit here?” Frank had already laid his towel down on the lounge next to hers, which creaked as he dropped his full weight upon it. The olive-green skin under his eyes turned black. “My doctor tells me I have to exercise. I have to change my ‘eating habits,’ as he calls my life.”

  Madeline’s eyes went to his waistless stomach, where beads of water dimpled and pooled. He would be a handsome man if only he hadn’t been such a hungry one. “It’s not good for the heart to carry around extra weight, Frank.”

  “There are worse things for the heart to carry around.”

  She blinked. She could never be quite sure if he was pulling her leg, so she turned the subject back on him. “You have the choice, Frank. You can lose weight and live longer, or not.”

  “Psh,” he said, picking his flawless teeth. “Why live longer if I can’t have my food? I’m only going to try because Vita’s offered to help. She’s going to make special low-fat and salt-free meals for me. She says we can do this thing together. But I don’t know.”

  The church bell in town rang a few cheerless dongs. Frank and Madeline were contemplative for a few minutes, both looking out on the golf course as the sun ratcheted a peg lower in the sky, he mourning his excellent digestion, she a normal family. The stored heat of the day rose up from the cobblestones beneath them, and a formation of eight crows flew silently above, then swooped over the baby pool, looking to see what had been left behind.

  “Tell me about your goats,” said Frank, turning over with a grunt. “I didn’t run out to see them the other night because I was in the middle of the most delectable little pigeon on my plate.”

  Madeline deflected the conversation. “I saw you with the Fishers. Such nice people.”

  “Yes, I give them dinner now and again because I’ve found that if I keep their mouths full they can’t talk about me.”

  Madeline smiled. It was too true. Hilary used to call her every few days to retail the Club’s gossip, but now Madeline was the gossip, and so Hilary had nothing to say. Madeline understood how that went. “Stop that. You know you ask them because they’re fun.”

  “I laugh, they laugh; I have more wine, they have more wine. They draw the line at belching, though. They have their limits, I’m glad to see. And Hilary confided that I’m the only one she really likes here. It would be quite the compliment, except I happen to know she tells it to everyone. Even to Stillington. Especially to Stillington, because he controls the guest list to some museum function.” Frank chuckled. “Such is the cleansing effect of art and money on a shitty personality.”

  Madeline flushed. Hilary had told her she was the only one she really liked here too. But unlike Frank, Madeline had believed her. Her silence went on long enough for Frank to come to her rescue and change the subject. Resting his fleshy cheek on one hand, he leaned in closer. “How is Charles? I heard he went AWOL from a game last week.”

  Madeline put on her sunglasses. Didn’t Frank ever just want to talk about the weather? She cringed at the memory of the call from Andrew on Saturday telling her that Charles had cracked and where to collect the pieces.

  “Do they forgive me, do you think, Madeline?” Charles asked when she showed up.

  “Andrew seemed pretty peeved on the phone—you know how he gets. I didn’t talk to Gregg or Ned.”

  “Not them,” Charles said, pointing his club at the birds around him. “The geese. For killing one of their own.”

  “Charles, it was an accident,” she said. “Forget it. Let’s go home.”

  He stood up, and she took him by the arm. “Look at the light through the pines,” he said. “It makes the trees translucent, transparent even. We can see through a great deal more than we give ourselves credit for.”

  “Charles, please. Start walking.”

  “I have an idea,” he said, turning back to look at the birds. “Let’s go to the Museum School. We can stop at the Gardner afterward.”

  Madeline agreed just to get him off the course, and so they walked home past the sand traps and through the calculated bits of wildness, and got in the Land Rover. She drove, since he was unable to, what with the Hawk Eye clasped to his chest. At the Museum School, where she’d thought they were going to an exhibit, Charles signed up for a sculpture class.

  “I want to make something,” he said when she stared at him.

  “Oh.” And in her head she thought she heard the distant ping of suede on crystal.

  Madeline took off her sunglasses and turned to Frank. “Charles didn’t go AWOL. His partners must not have understood he had an appointment to keep.”

  “A doctor’s?”

  “The Museum School, actually. He’s taking a course.” She choked on the words and put her glasses back on. All week, he’d been going to his metal sculpture class during long lunch hours. God knows what the office must think of that. Then, when he came home at night, he patted the goats before locking himself in the garage to do his homework. What ever happened to their lovely little routine of a glass of wine and a rundown of their day? She should just go to the garage and invite herself in to have a look at what he was up to, but she dared not. Talking to him these days was like walking on eggs.

  “Excellent.” Frank hit her chaise with his hand, giving her a start. “We need more art and fewer doctors. Just today, I saw Nina Rundlett at the professional building, going to see some quack, and for nothing as far as I’m concerned. She’d just gotten back from Italy, and her father sent her to the medical group to get her throat swabbed.” Frank idly pulled Madeline’s beach bag toward him, tipping it to see if there wasn’t any food squirreled away.

  “For what?” Madeline asked. Any mention of Nina made her fidget. She pulled her bag from Frank and busied herself looking for something—she had not yet decided what.

  “Anthrax, smallpox, SARS,” he said, with a wave of a hand. “They’ve got it ass backward. Why put a healthy person through the anxiety of testing? If she was exposed to something, she’ll find out soon enough.”

  Nina had been exposed to more than Frank would ever know. Poor girl. Poor Eliot. Him half-naked, draped in the arms of the call girl in her merry widow. It was like one of those faded Club photos hanging in the powder room. Tableaux vivants, a Gilded Age form of fun for which the female members would spend weeks supervising the construction of elaborate sets and costumes to create a historical scene, usually some Helen of Troy fantasy or another. They would wear diaphanous gowns and pose in frozen attitudes, glorying in their self-designed perfection.

  Here they were, more than a century later, and she and Arietta had set a scene just as contrived. Wasn’t there some other way to keep people from making a mistake?

  She pulled out a lip balm and dabbed her lips as she talked. “Roger might just be keeping her busy to keep her mind off ‘the incident.’”

  Frank rolled on his back and put his hands beneath his head, exposing his furry pits to the sun. “If he wants to distract her from ‘the incident,’ as you so delicately call finding a hooker with your fiancé, then maybe he shouldn’t go around knifing her almost in-laws.”

  “Frank, don’t joke about something like that. The knifing was an accident. Besides, it was a forking.”

  “Forking, fucking, there’s no such thing as an accident either way. Took Rundlett long enough to defend his daughter’s honor.”

  Or his dead wife’s honor, thought Madeline, capping the balm. Or simply his own. Arietta confirmed that batty Gwen Rundlett had spilled the paternity beans to Roger to keep him from reuniting the couple. They had to be very careful now. He might tear the Club apart looking for the truth. “People don’t go around doin
g that sort of thing on purpose.”

  “You live such a sheltered existence, pet. In these treacherous times anyone could be hiding a weapon in the folds of his robe.”

  Madeline looked out at the hazy landscape. She didn’t feel that sheltered. She felt exposed and abandoned. If she’d made more of an effort to reach beyond the narrowly defined limits of friendships here, maybe she wouldn’t be left with just Frank to talk to. “It’s all Phoebe’s fault, with those goats.” She heard her voice break up, and she swallowed. “They created so much chaos, anything could have happened.”

  “Don’t blame the innocent creatures.”

  “I can blame them. They live in my backyard. They’ve eaten my shade garden.”

  “I’ve had goat,” he said. “Delicious. A Moroccan curry, served on enamelware as delicate as stained glass. Tiny hot peppers, sweet preserved fruits, an ancient vinegar pressed from figs. Yum.” He flipped himself over on the chaise like a heavy pancake, bottoms-up. “I don’t suppose we’d be so lucky to have Phoebe raising those goats for our culinary pleasure?”

  “Hardly.” Frank’s teal trunks had twisted when he flipped, pulling them down an inch and allowing her to see into the crack, an open advertisement for his profession. “She and her friends ‘liberated’ them from an agricultural station where they were going to be butchered. They’re rescue animals; no one can eat them.”

  “Too bad,” said Frank. “Think how plump they’ll get on the golf course grass.”

  “That won’t happen again. The fence company came this week to make a pen. Not only did Humpy insist, but so did Phoebe. She said she didn’t want the goats eating the golf course grass with all its poisons.”

  “She’s right,” he said. “What they put in their bodies we put in ours.”