Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

  Before she could begin, the breeze whipped up from the lake, and they both stared at the sculpture, which seemed to be straining in place. The night air began to move through its many metal twists and tubes, making a sharp whistling sound. Forks started to vibrate, adding to the noise. Joints loosened up, and the wings raised a few inches with a creak, then fell against its sides with a crash. A dozen crows in a nearby oak were rudely awakened, and they flew off in a flapping, muttering huff, heading toward the relative peace of the Lamberts’ yard.

  Charles reached for Madeline’s hand, and she let him take it. “Not as graceful as I’d have liked,” he said. “I should have gone into aerodynamics, way back when. But it’s a start.”

  Madeline looked down at the ground and spoke to her black sneakers. “You might have told me what was going on. If you’d talked to me, we could have prevented a great deal of pain.” She felt stinging accusations form on her lips. It would be easy to be angry with him for keeping her in the dark, letting her flail around. But she hadn’t the energy for all that. In fact, she was happy for him and wished him well. It was too late for her to go along, though. She’d already gone too far.

  “Listen,” said Charles, and he tugged at her shirt. “Listen to the music.”

  The cutlery continued to clink, and the wind whistled through the double-helix neck like a flute, then an oboe. The wings performed their awkward lift and crash again as the wind moaned through the metal. Oommm.

  Charles and Madeline heard the geese rustling at the lake, waking up. As the whistling and clanking increased, the flock became more uncomfortable. A few started to run on land and water, suddenly and furiously alive, churning powerfully along to make speed. Charles picked up his searchlight and flicked it on in time to see them lift their feather-laden wings in unison, trying to get airborne, until finally one of them lifted its fat carcass off the earth. As if they’d been waiting for an example to be set, the others began to follow, in twos, threes, fives, flying off into the dark heavens.

  Madeline shook her head. “How do they reach the sky with those heavy bodies?”

  Charles clicked off the light. They watched the gray figures against the black night and heard the mighty chorus of wings beating and voices honking in time, communication that helped them stay together in flight. “Nature,” he said. “Instinct. An act of will.”

  “But where will they go?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and looked at her. “We’ve got to trust they’ll be all right.”

  She looked at him. It was impossible for him to have changed so dramatically. More likely, he’d just changed obsessions, from golf to art, from the office to welding. But maybe that was enough.

  In a few minutes, only a couple dozen geese remained, completely unperturbed by his metallic goose-man. Were they braver than the others? Or just plain stupid?

  “Charles,” Madeline said. Unable to complete an adulterous affair, she could at least see the divorce through. He’d hear about what she’d done with Scott sooner or later, and even if he never knew, even if they never saw each other again, she could never live with her conscience unless she came clean. It was better to suffer with the truth than prosper with a lie. He tried to kiss her, but she put her finger to his mouth. “I behaved poorly,” she said. “And I got caught. Everyone at the Club knows.. . .” She was not quite brave enough to say what it was she’d actually done. “I was drunk. I went skinny-dipping in the pool.. . .”

  He grasped her with both arms. “Remember the night of our engagement party?”

  “There’s more.” She pushed him away. “The lifeguard was there, and things got out of hand.”

  Charles looked at her carefully. “How out of hand?”

  She looked over at Oxbow. “Some touching, that’s all. It was ridiculous, and I’m mortified. To make it worse, Ellen Bruner walked in on us.” She took a deep breath and looked at him. “I’m sorry. I’m all packed. I’m just waiting for Phoebe to bring back my car.”

  He kissed her forehead, rubbing his nose through her hair. “That could be a long wait. She left us a note. Besides, I don’t care what you did, and I certainly don’t care who saw you. From now on, we start every day knowing nothing. Everything we did in the past stays there.”

  He pulled her toward him, and this time she did not resist.

  “I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said. “I was idiot enough to leave you alone all summer while I tried to sort it all out.” He let his hand run down her spine. “You know what Steeve always said, ‘You don’t have to follow one bad shot with another.’” He planted a wet kiss on her lips, opening her mouth with his tongue.

  Steeve? she wanted to ask, but at that moment, from deep within her, an ancient, dozing creature stirred and looked around, lifting its nose to the air. It tickled the insides of her ribs and gently poked at her interior organs. It touched a hot spot and she jumped.

  She pushed Charles away to take a breath. “Do you mean it? You won’t get mad later when you hear ugly rumors at the Club?”

  “You know what I say? Fuck ’em. We’re out of here in a cloud of donkey dust anyway.”

  He got on his knees and pulled her down on the grass with him, and as he began to unbutton her clothes, she felt her worries fall from her like a molting of feathers. Charles was right. Fuck ’em. She pulled his T-shirt over his head, releasing the familiar scent of his body and sending her trembling. As he grappled with her black pants, she grappled with the memory of the night before, how she had tried to summon desire, throwing herself into the arms of someone who was not prepared to catch her. You couldn’t will lust, any more than you could will yourself to fly. It was a gift from nature, whose only interest was in getting the job done.

  All the while, the goose-man continued its metallic clamoring and crashing, and it occurred to her that the members would soon wonder about the noise.

  “Wait,” she said, pulling up her pants. “We’d better go home. Gerard will probably come running down here soon to see what’s going on.” She touched his nose with the tip of her finger and felt herself blush. “And I have to get my diaphragm.”

  Charles rolled onto his stomach and looked up the hill, the light from the tent glowing dimly above the majestic oaks. “Gerard isn’t here,” he said. “The inmates are in charge of the asylum to-night. A few members might get curious, but they won’t wander off the golf path to find out.” He returned to his back and pulled her on top of him.

  Madeline sat up and looked at him. “How do you know Gerard’s not here? Where is Phoebe?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” He reached both hands around her. He buried his face in her neck, and she smelled like a wood fire, as if she’d been propitiating a heathen god. How very strange and enormously erotic.

  As he pressed his lips on hers, Charles felt like a mighty hunter, returning to his small circle of hide tents, his clan huddled around the protective fire in the center. They rush to the edge of light to welcome him home. He had gone far, for a very long time, his only sustenance the waterskin hanging from his shoulder, but today he drags the arrow-pierced body of a deer behind him, and his people are relieved. They will survive a little longer because he ventured out into the darkness, and back again. Children tug on his ragged vestments for his attention, and old men nod their hoary heads in approval. The women open the flaps of their tents to him.

  Such happiness. As Charles arched his back to let Madeline unzip his jeans, he thought back to what Steeve had said about becoming the ball. That was true as far as it went, but it was not nearly enough. It was only the beginning. Be the ball, by all means, but be the club, the tee, and the lowly divot too. Be the deeply rooted oak, the water rushing over stones. Be the lush grass pressing up from the wet earth. Be the goose on the wing, soaring over this tremulous existence. Be the warm, furry vole underfoot. Be aware. And be it all.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Keeping Score

  IN THE DIM LIGHT of dawn, Rosangela Silva vacuumed up the
ashes from the marble hearth, then ran a polishing cloth over the andirons. Who keeps making these fires in summer? Were these people so cold? She dragged the vacuum to the door and went to grab her bucket, when she saw a quilted bag on the windowsill. She stuck her head out in the hall and listened. The rest of the crew was still in the lounge. Okay, then, one little look. She held it open and shook it, but there was nothing much to see. All their money and they never seemed to have any. Some lotion for the fair skin, mints for the breath, a wilted flower. Lipstick with no color. She picked up the brush and pulled out hairs and held them to the light. Dark blond. She tucked a few strands in her pocket to show her friend Marianna in beauty school. She would get her to dye her hair that color and be that much closer to rich.

  She put the brush back in the bag and slung it over her shoulder. Another thing to lug around, over to Lost & Found in the office, and if that manager was in early he would give her a dirty look like she took something. And she would smile while he muttered English words she did not know, but he would never find anything missing on her watch. You had to be very careful with no green card. Hector had not been careful. She told him not to tell police about them getting hit by the expensive car. Now he was being deported to Brazil. Not her. She would keep her head down if she wanted to rise up.

  She was closing the drapes when she paused to watch rays of light fall on the course, just like in church. Um dia. One day she would not wake up in the dark to scrub toilets and empty trash, even on Sundays. She would learn the language, organize her own cleaning crew, get her own jobs, make her own money—then she would have a view like this out her own window. And she would have a car as big as a truck, a TV as big as a wall, a house as big as a mountain. A bathroom with gold faucets. Food to waste. Buckets of money. One day she would even belong to a club like this, and if not this club, then another. If not her, then her children. But it would happen, because this was America, where anything was possible.

  “Rosangela, vem!” called her boss. “Nós atrasado.”

  “Eu com,” she shouted.

  Yes, they were running late, but she didn’t come right away. She stood another moment to watch the redhead man do the flag. It was so strange to keep a goose instead of a parrot. When she got home to-night, she would look up the words to ask him his pet’s name, practice her English on him. He clipped the flag on wires, then pulled as his goose pecked at the rope like it was some snake. The flag slapped and fought its way up to the top where the golden eagle sat; then the cloth shot out and rippled in red bars and white stars against the blue, blue sky. Um dia. She adjusted the pretty bag on her shoulder, picked up her bucket of supplies, and went off to the next job.

  (Page 136)

  The Newly Revised Eden Rock Country Club Book, continued

  . . . . . . .

  Marriage, Nina Rundlett and Eliot Farnsworth, of Concord, Massachusetts, 12/31/03

  . . . . . . .

  Marriage, Phoebe Lambert1 and Gerard Wilton, of Sedona, Arizona, 2/14/04

  . . . . . . .

  Baby boy, born to Madeline Lambert, of Humboldt, California, 5/31/04

  Husband: Charles Lambert

  Biological Father: Charles Lambert (?) There was a rumor concerning the Club lifeguard, but I, Arietta Wingate, have had a talk with the young man (M. refused to cooperate), Scott Volpe, of Quincy, Massachusetts, and he insists nothing happened, but best to make note of the possibility.

  And so completes the book to this date, as dictated to Ellen Bruner by Arietta Wingate, replacing, by her memory and with new information, the Original Book, lost in an unfortunate accident, Labor Day weekend, 2003.

  Signed—Arietta Wingate

  Witnessed & Notarized by Ellen Bruner, Esq.

  Dated—7/4/04

  Acknowledgments

  Addled owes much to the Raymond Street Writers Group, whose wise council and encouragement helped me to keep the faith through the book’s many crossroads and roadblocks. Thank you to Marcie Hershman, who believed in it from the start and kicked it out of the nest at the PEN New England Discovery Awards, where it was caught by Wendy Strothman. Thank you to Reagan Arthur, who made room for it on the Little, Brown perch. Thank you to Maxine Rodburg, who started me writing; for Bennington Writing Seminars, which kept me writing; and to my family, who cheered me on—as long as it didn’t interfere with dinner.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JoeAnn Hart has an MFA from Bennington College, where she studied under Lucy Grealy. A regular contributor to the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, she lives with her family in Massachusetts. This is her first novel.

  1 Even though the Lambert family no longer belongs to the Club, it seems prudent to continue following matters, where possible, for the inevitable day when future generations return to the fold.