by JoeAnn Hart
“If you only knew what Phoebe did this week, you wouldn’t be so tolerant,” she said. “She could have ruined my dinner with her theatrics.”
“I do know.” He rested his head against her toque, like a pillow. “I saw her and Gerard partaking of a fruitless demonstration out on the course yesterday. They’re not still there, are they?”
Vita hugged her copper bowl to her body. “You’ll never guess.” She looked up. “The two of them have run off to Arizona to open a New Agey spa with grand-mama. And Phoebe is threatening to cook.”
Dr. Nicastro sat up and shuddered. “That’s horrible.” They were both silent for a moment, contemplating the dry, totalitarian menu that Phoebe would produce. “It’ll be grim pickings, but maybe the clients will think it’s part of the treatment. And as for Gerard and Phoebe, all I can say is, there’s a lid for every pot.”
Vita stuck her finger in the bowl to test for stiffness. “I have a hard time believing Gerard has changed so much.”
“Maybe he’s just expanded without changing shape, like a sponge. At any rate, he seemed quite in love. That’s transformative enough.”
“Here.” Vita held her finger up to his lips.
“For me?”
She nodded and placed the dollop elegantly on his tongue. He closed his eyes, rolling the froth around his taste organ. “Egg whites, superfine sugar, a pinch of tartar, vanilla.” He opened his eyes and smacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth a couple of times. “A teardrop or two of salt?”
Vita gasped. He had such a sensitive palate!
He took her by the chin, her perfectly formed chin, as smooth as a mango. “You made this for my health, didn’t you?”
She waved his question away. “It’s good for your heart.” She held up the bowl with two hands. “And the copper helps hold the cream’s shape.”
“Really?” He dipped a finger in and held the dab of white up for inspection, then put it near her mouth. “How does that work?” he whispered. The light from the windows gleamed gold, highlighting his knuckles and creases, reflecting softly off his nails. He might have been the hand model for God in the Sistine Chapel.
“It’s chemistry.” She clamped her mouth on his finger, then pulled back, smearing her lips. He leaned over and kissed them.
They sat quietly, nose to nose, listening to the rumble of noise and polite applause from the tent. The speeches were finished.
“It’s over,” she said dreamily after swallowing. “You missed dessert.”
He pulled her closer, which made the stone seat sink deeper on one side. “No I didn’t.”
She sighed. “I can’t stay. I’ve got to oversee the kitchen cleanup.”
A saxophone played a few notes and the piano tinkled as the band warmed up. Frank stood and reached for Vita’s hand. “Would you care to dance?”
She stared at the window well of the kitchen and thought she saw figures hurry away. Her staff could see to their own mopping and scrubbing. “I would.” She placed the bowl on the bench, reached one hand up to his shoulder, and with the other took his hand. He bent to smell her fingers and moaned at all the food she’d touched that day, the geese, the livers, the onions and mushrooms, the lemons and stock. The cream. “Darling,” he whispered, “you didn’t wear latex to-night.”
She put her finger to his mouth. “Sssh. The Department of Health has ears everywhere.”
He kissed her fingers and tasted. . .blood.
“I forgot!” He released her, patted the pockets of his tuxedo, and pulled out a bandage, still in the shape of a ring. He took her hand and slipped it back onto her injured finger. “I believe this is yours.”
Vita turned red. “Oh, no, where did you find this?”
He took her in his arms for dancing again. “In the fig.”
“Sorry.” When she pressed herself against the great slab of his stomach, he belched. “I hope you didn’t do that at the dinner table,” she said.
“Not only that, but I licked the table,” he said with great pride. He kissed her on the forehead, pushing her toque back on her head with his nose.
She laughed. “Your nose is cold.”
“A sign of a healthy animal, and that’s all I am, Vita. You could scoop up a better man than me in a place like this. I’ve got as much breeding as a house-fly, and I’ve been known to eat peas with my knife.”
“That’s okay.” She pressed her head against him. “A good wine will hold its flavor no matter how crude the cup.”
They slowly fox-trotted along the cracked brick paths to a melody popular when the garden was young. Frank’s heart was inches from Vita’s ear, and she thought of the geese, and their insides, and all the vital organs protected under the ribs. She remembered the layers of fat she had to tear off the goose hearts, fat formed from the cornmeal. She might have killed them with food as easily as she had done them in with the knife. “We have to get you back in shape,” she said.
“I went to my doctor yesterday.”
“This sounds like the beginning of a joke.”
“It is. After I weighed in, the doctor told me, ‘Your body might be a temple, but your congregation is far too large.’”
Vita gave his circumference a squeeze. “You need someone like me to control the crowds.”
“Better yet,” he said, “be my priestess.”
They danced past the fountain. Vita could not wait to get it flowing again. “Tell me, Frank, from the beginning, how much you loved the dinner.” They swung around the sundial. “I want to hear everything. I want to live it through you.”
He looked at her in the soft light, her pupils black as picholine olives, her cheeks rosy as ham, her lips a mysterious sea creature, whose edibility was waiting to be discovered by some adventurous gourmand, like him. He kissed her lightly. “I could eat you up.”
He touched her on the small of her back, and then they kissed again.
Off in the muffled distance, in the basement kitchen of the old building, the phone on the wall rang and rang. The staff giggled, and no one picked up for Vita’s mother.
Chapter Forty-one
Ball at Rest
H URRYING TO MEET CHARLES, Madeline stayed in the deep rough so as not to be seen from the terrace. She brushed up against evergreens as she walked, releasing their piney scent. No matter the outcome of their meeting, it was almost over now, what-ever it was. As she was about to disappear around the bend, she took one last look. The tent glowed, and in the darkness, it hung in the air like a ghostly shadow of the club-house. Sparks rose like stars from the chimney, burning brightly against the black sky before disappearing forever.
In spite of herself, she felt a twinge of sadness. So many milestones in her life had taken place in that old ruin, with its timbered facade and cracked stucco. She and Charles had gotten married here, under a five-pole tent such as that one. She remembered the first time she came to the Club, as a nervous bride-to-be with her mother, to discuss the wedding plans. Her mother, dressed in an ankle-length skirt and peasant shirt, lobbied for a ceremony in some daisy field back in California, but what did she know about weddings? She’d never even had one herself. It had seemed to Madeline, back then, that her mother was insufficiently grateful that the Lamberts offered to foot the bill—as long as the wedding was at the Club. “The shakier the institution, the more elaborate the ritual,” her mother declared, a comment that thankfully flew right over Charles’s parents’ heads. At the end of the day, when it was just the two of them, her mother had cried and wondered where she had gone wrong, that her own daughter would want to get married in a place like this, would want this life. Madeline had just laughed. What was there not to like about “this life”? And here she was leaving it, returning to her mother, because as wacky as she was, she would ask no questions and pass no judgment. Something Madeline hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
The band was playing an old Dorsey tune, heavy on the horns, light on the melody. The terrace was almost empty. Those with will
ing partners were on the dance floor in the tent. There were just a few smokers huddled by the door, and a young couple was sitting alone on the fieldstone wall. Madeline smiled. Even at this distance, she could not mistake Nina and Eliot, their heads resting together in great tenderness, looking up at the stars, with all of life and nature on their side. Madeline tilted her neck. It was mystifying. Billions of stars burned through the darkness, waltzing in space, yet with the right tools and knowledge, it was possible to navigate the world with only two.
She turned away and quickened her pace, crushing dry needles beneath her feet. A final, haunting echo of laughter burst from the Club, following her, then died out.
Coming from the other direction, Charles drove the lawn tractor toward Plateau, the small engine straining up the hill with its heavy load. He was so happy with his sculpture. He’d done everything he’d set out to do, even if some patches were a little rough. You have to break some eggs to make an omelet, after all. He envisioned his next project, and the one after that—and with each attempt he believed he would come closer to closing the gap between the image in his head and its physical manifestation. He had limitations—he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, not a blowtorch in his hand, after all—but even within his wall of skin, he might be able to sometimes soar. This sculpture, coarse as it was, still managed to encompass a great deal of emotion—excitement and heartache, weariness and joy. Who’d have thought it was possible for an object to do all that, when most of the people he knew didn’t have that range?
He spotted his dear Madeline at the meeting place, prompt as always, with the distant security light of the pool house casting her in silhouette. Her arms were folded; she was obviously troubled. He giggled to himself—she would be so surprised! She must think him crazy to want to meet out here. He shouted over the sound of the panting four-horse power of the engine. “Madeline, look what I made for you! For us!”
Madeline squinted in the dark. She recognized the voice and the lawn tractor, but what was that. . .thing? She bent, and she ducked, trying to see what it was her husband dragged behind him, not believing her eyes. She reached a hand out, grasping for support, trying to steady herself on air.
Charles had built a giant goose. A big messy thing assembled from old golf clubs and garbage. Forks for feathers. Spoon plumage. Golf balls for. . .balls. The bird tilted forward, stretching its neck toward some unseen finish line. The neck was its most prominent feature, eight feet in length, a double helix of clubs, twisting and narrowing to the head, which—seared on the bottom of an enamel gratin pan—had a human face. A face not unlike Charles’s, but with an unearthly serenity.
This is what he’d spent the summer building? This is what he’d given up his family, his job, and his old life for? Their marriage?
Charles killed the engine and jumped off the tractor as excited as a little boy. “Isn’t it great? Can you believe it?” He began to unhook the chain, releasing his creation to the world. He kicked two brakes into place and pointed to the wheels behind its webbed feet. “Stability and flexibility. I wanted the Club to be able to move it from one trouble spot to another.”
Madeline was dumb with astonishment. The Club would most certainly want to move it around; they’d want to move it right out the front gates. She watched with deep concern as Charles placed the coiled chain on the lawn mower seat and grabbed the searchlight hanging on the back. He lit up the bird from beak to tail, as if better lighting was going to change the way she saw it. The beam glinted off the cutlery, some of it marked with the Club’s insignia. Madeline recognized the golf clubs as Charles’s own, his precious Callaways, all twisted and warped.
“I made it for you,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I’d like it installed here, in memory of the goose I killed.”
She tread around the goose-man with great care. “I like the way the forks hang down and create the illusion of feathers,” she said, not daring to ask the question that was really on her lips: What were you thinking? What-ever that was, though, it certainly made him happy. His face was radiant in the reflection of the light in his hand. But he was a little seedy, and unbrushed. He’d lost weight too, but he was more muscular and rugged, in a goofy sort of way. He was even untucked. No, it was worse than that. He was half-tucked.
But those eyes, how bright they were. He was animated, truly alive. How long had he been dead before this? And how had she not noticed? If they were as alienated from each other as all that, divorce was going to be a blessing for the both of them. “Very nice,” she said.
“Nature doesn’t fool around with being nice,” said Charles, turning toward her, flashing the beam in her face. “It all serves a purpose.”
The light blinded her and made her wonder if perhaps Charles was plotting to kill her after all. And when she was dead, everyone would ask each other how it was she hadn’t seen it coming.
Charles clicked the light off. “Sorry.”
“If it all serves a purpose,” she said, in a somewhat angry tone, which surprised her, “then what is the story with the human mask?”
He put the light down on the grass and stepped up on the back of the lawn tractor to reach the sculpture’s face, lovingly cupping the “chin” of the gratin pan with both hands. “It’s not a mask,” he said. “It’s an integral part of the whole organism—beast and god—human and animal. The ancients understood. Their gods were a tangle of limbs from all of creation. The people bowed down to statues and totems with wolf heads and human torsos, elephant trunks and human feet. In our own churches, angels have wings. Priests have to call on the power of other animals because we are just too pathetic on our own.”
Madeline tried to wipe the look of utter dismay from her face. “Have you checked with House and Grounds to make sure they want this memorial of yours?”
Charles jumped to the grass and ran his hands down the length of the bird. “It’s not just a memorial—it’ll help keep the geese off the fairways too, like a scarecrow. More important, it’ll be a reminder to the members that art can clarify, that it can be a part of daily living. You tried to tell me all this years ago, and I crushed it. Can you ever forgive me?” He paused and turned to Madeline, waiting.
She nodded vaguely, her mind very far away. It was true. She once thought seriously about all these things, art and life, death and politics, and she once talked about them too. But then one night, after a party, he accused her of sounding just like her mother, and that was the end of that.
“You see how the neck sticks out?” Charles continued. “It’s in attack mode. The fairway geese would know the posture and stay away. But the face, see how it’s not angry? Just understanding. This is part of life too—accepting the good with the bad, accepting that geese sometimes do the wrong thing—like getting in the way of a ball.”
“Humans sometimes do the wrong thing too,” Madeline said.
“We’re in luck.” He began to untie the bits of rope that secured the wings. The hot wind blew a few leaves and trash around his feet, paper cups, a Mars Bar wrapper, all the turbulence that marks the change of season. “It’s a good wind. The moment of truth.”
The truth. Madeline cringed. Charles apparently knew nothing about her almost-affair. He had not met her to ask for a divorce, but he would before the night was over. It was better this way, for him to hear it from her own lips.
“Charles, we should go back to the house. It’s getting late, and we have to talk.”
He turned to her, clasping the rope in front of him. “Do you know what I’ve called it?”
She put her hand to her throat and shook her head.
“‘Winged Defeat.’ Get it? It’s about how you have to come to an emptiness before you can fly—you can’t rise until you understand what falling is all about.”
Madeline looked again at the monstrosity. He seemed to be asking an awful lot of his art. “I see,” she said, in the same way she used to keep up her end of their conversation when he talked about his job or his game.
But no. The pedestrian lies that maintained a marriage were no longer necessary, because there was no more marriage to maintain. “Actually, Charles, I don’t see. I’d like to understand, though; I’d like to know what you were doing and thinking in the last months of our marriage. I think it will help me, later, to figure out what went so wrong.”
Charles’s mind went blank for a moment—then he felt like the scaffolding was knocked out from under him. The last months of their marriage? She did not mean the previous months, she meant the last. The final. He was too late.
He dropped the rope as he walked to her, to Madeline, his wife, and put his hands on her shoulders—how long had it been since he touched her there? Since he had touched her anywhere? She resisted when he tried to pull her to him.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I was in such a strange funk—making this seemed the only way out, the way out of me to you. And here I am. Tell me you’re here too.” He touched her face. “You, sensitive Madeline, with feelings no thicker than an eggshell.”
“Not as sensitive as all that,” she said, turning her cheek. She wished now that someone had told him what Ellen saw, to spare herself this reckoning. “I’ve done something horrible, and now I have to leave.”
“Yes! It’s time to go, for both of us.”
She looked at him so suddenly she got a kink in her neck. “Where are you going?”
“We’re going.” He covered her hand with his and massaged her neck muscles. “The West Coast somewhere. A new habitat, a fresh environment.”
“Back where I came from?”
“Yes! Where we met, where we began. Where we can begin again.” He pulled her to him, but she kept him at arm’s length. She did not want to make her confession into his collarbone. She wanted to look into his eyes and tell him the truth. If only she knew where to start. With the Smurf Pee?