Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  Pierce laughed. “I thought you’d never ask.” He paused for a moment, fingers to his forehead, making sure he could remember correctly. “Get this—they’re the Feminist Society for the New Age of Cosmological Holism, FSNACH for short, or Fem-Snach among Miriam’s detractors, and she has many.”

  I broke into laughter, joining Pierce, who enjoyed imparting this morsel of local history. As our guffaws waned, I wiped a nascent tear from the corner of my eye and, thinking of something, frowned. “There’s something I don’t understand, Doug. The group you’ve described sounds liberal to the core. Why pick on me? I should think they’d count gay rights among the causes they’ve loaded on their bandwagon.”

  “Oh, they do,” he assured me. “To a degree.”

  I stared at him blankly. “What am I missing here?”

  Pierce leaned forward, elbows on desk. With a blank expression, he explained, “It is widely rumored that Miriam herself is a lesbian.” My eyes widened with interest. He continued. “She apparently views this … ‘choice’ as the logical and ultimate extension of feminism. On the other hand, she views male homosexuality as wholly abhorrent.”

  Stunned, I wasn’t sure what to say next. Pierce saved me the trouble: “Fortunately, her rhetoric is worse than her bite. These threats”—he wagged a handful of the letters—“are empty words. Miriam loves a good battle, and she uses rhetoric as a weapon, but I seriously doubt that she’d stoop to violence. These letters make oblique warnings of physical harm to you, your home, and your new business, but Miriam’s a peacenik, remember. Assault is not her style.”

  I leaned close to him over the desk, asking, “What about her followers? A charismatic leader, she could lure her faithful into taking action of their own”—I tapped the pile of letters with my index finger—“then wash her hands of it, claiming she was misinterpreted by overzealous disciples.”

  “Mark,” said Pierce, raising his hands in a calming gesture (I noted that he wore no wedding ring), “I know these people, and I don’t think you’re in danger. Nonetheless, I’ll have a talk with Miriam and forewarn her against any mischief. Also, there’s a woman in the department who’s had a passing interest in Fem-Snach. She still goes to some of the weekly meetings, and I’ll ask her to keep her ear to the rail for me. Most important, you’ve got the law solidly on your side. Do you realize that Wisconsin was the first state in the union to enact statewide gay-rights legislation? Further, we’ve got a hate-crimes provision that takes a very dim view of gay bashing. And in Dumont County”—he smiled—“the citizens have elected a sheriff who is determined to see that our community’s most prominent new resident is safely, happily at home here.”

  The conversation lapsed for a moment, and I shook my head, amazed—and highly grateful—to find Pierce so reassuring and concerned. His words had produced their intended effect, and I let myself relax. Standing, I picked up my coffee cup, walked to the fire, and turned back to face him. “Thanks, Doug.” I grinned, asking him, “Are you accepting checks for your next election?”

  “That’s a ways off.” He grinned back at me. “But I’ll remember the offer.”

  I crossed from the fireplace to the front window and looked out toward the quiet town. Snow-dusted lawns stretched down Prairie Street beneath black-branched elms, reminding me how I’d wished for snow when I first arrived for my boyhood visit and found the town still green. Still gazing through the glass, I said to Pierce, “I’m not generally a sentimental sort, but I do sense that I have roots here, and I look forward to being, as you say, ‘safely, happily at home’ in Dumont.” I turned to face him. “But it takes a while to settle in—not just the house and the job, but I need to reconnect with my family here. So this afternoon, it’s Christmas with the Quatrains.”

  “What’s left of them,” Pierce reminded me with no intended sarcasm.

  Indeed, the family had shrunk considerably since I was nine, when I met them. Uncle Edwin had died nearly three years ago, when I inherited the house, and his wife, Peggy, had died many years earlier. Hazel had long been widowed. And my oldest cousin, Mark Quatrain, my fantasy cousin had …

  Pierce continued. “Of course there’s new blood now. Have you met Suzanne Quatrain’s son yet?”

  “No, but Suzanne is bringing Thad to the house for Christmas dinner this afternoon, along with her brother Joey. I haven’t seen my cousins in over thirty years—we were all kids then. Are you aware that I’m Thad’s guardian?”

  “No,” said Pierce with a chortle, “I’m not.” Rising from his chair, he refilled his coffee cup. “You’ve never even met him—and Thad’s sixteen now.”

  “I know,” I told him, scratching my head at the unlikeliness of the situation, “but I didn’t even know Thad existed till ten years ago.”

  “Care to share the story?” he asked, hoisting the pot, offering more coffee.

  Crossing to the desk, I extended my cup, which Pierce filled. I told him, “It was a busy afternoon at the Journal—I think there was a Chicago election in the works—when I answered the phone at my desk, and out of the blue, it was Suzanne. I couldn’t even figure out who she was at first. I mean, the last time I’d seen her was when I visited Dumont one Christmas as a boy. I was nine then, she was fourteen, and we spent no time together that week, except at family meals.”

  I sipped some coffee while gathering my thoughts, then continued. “So there we were on the phone, all grown up, virtual strangers, and she gave me the pertinent update on life in Dumont. In a nutshell: She was working her way up the executive ladder at her father’s business, Quatro Press, serving as executive vice president. She’d had a baby, but never married. Her son, Thad, had turned six, and she recognized that it was time to make out a will, for his sake. Then bang, the question: Would I consent to be named as Thad’s guardian? She could tell by my stammering that I was stunned, so she went on to assure me that it was a meaningless provision, that it would only take effect if she died before he reached adulthood, that she was in perfect health, and so on.

  “When I could finally muster sufficient wits to speak, I said, ‘I’m enormously flattered, Suzanne. But why me?’ She explained that the boy’s only closer relatives were her own father, Edwin, who was already too old to serve as the boy’s father, and her brother Joey, who was mildly retarded and would not be fit to look after the boy. This last bit of news intrigued me, as I could vividly remember Joey’s goofy behavior when he was ten—I’d been too young to realize that he was obviously handicapped by some sort of learning disability. So Suzanne and I discussed Joey’s condition briefly, until something else occurred to me. I asked her, ‘Hey, what about your brother Mark? Couldn’t he look after Thad?’”

  My storytelling stopped short as my eyes met Sheriff Pierce’s. He strolled toward the fire, already knowing what I had learned on the phone from Suzanne. What he couldn’t imagine, though, was that my own thoughts were again overpowered by the unshakable memories, images, and dreams of my handsome older cousin—dreams that, for thirty-three years, had lived within me.

  “‘Mark is dead,’ Suzanne told me, her voice a dull buzz over the phone. I literally jerked the receiver away from my ear as if it had bit me. Then, catching my breath, I asked, ‘How? When?’”

  Sheriff Pierce picked up the dialogue, answering for Suzanne, “Mark Quatrain died in Vietnam thirty years ago.”

  I nodded, feeling the same sense of loss as when I’d learned of Mark’s fate on the phone. “Did you know him, Doug?”

  Pierce nodded. “He was several years older than me, but everyone knew Mark Quatrain, or at least of him. Oldest son of the richest man in town. Star athlete in swimming and track. Top student in high school. Then he majored in English at college, but he was never the nerdy bookworm type. Everyone was amazed that he was so well-balanced with both academics and sports. Good-looking guy, too.”

  “I remember that.” Pierce couldn’t possibly fathom the extent of my understatement. With a wistful shrug, I dismissed the memory of Mark Quatra
in. “Anyway,” I told Pierce, “I reluctantly consented on the phone that day, and that’s how I came to be Thad’s guardian, if only on paper. Before hanging up, Suzanne and I agreed that we really ought to get to know each other better, but the years quickly passed, with no further contact other than Christmas cards from her, New Year’s cards from me.”

  Pierce gave me a quizzical look, so I explained, “I’m not religious.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, finished his coffee, and set the cup on the mantel.

  “Nor am I straight, which the whole world seems to know by now. And that makes me wonder if Suzanne has had any second thoughts about naming me her son’s guardian—her phone call was years before I came out.”

  Pierce suggested the obvious: “Ask her. You’ll see her this afternoon.”

  “In spite of their French Catholic heritage, the Quatrains have always struck me as a liberal-minded clan, but I ought to at least give her the opportunity to back out of the agreement gracefully if she wants to. It’s not as if I’d feel slighted—like I said, I’ve never even met the kid.”

  Pierce raised his brows, puckering a silent whistle. “Don’t judge him too quickly, Mark. Okay?”

  That was ominous. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Pierce hesitated. “Let’s just say that Thad has had something of a troubled childhood. No serious scrapes with the law, but he’s been going through something of a rebellious stage lately. On the positive side, I’ve heard that he’s highly intelligent and a good student when he applies himself. Being raised by a single mom may be politically correct for the times, but let’s face it—it’s not the perfect setup, regardless of the family’s wealth.”

  Nodding my accord, I asked, “Thad carries the Quatrain name, right? What happened to the father?”

  “His name was Austin Reece. I’m not really sure what happened to him, except that he left town before the baby was born.”

  “Cold feet about marriage, huh?”

  “Hardly.” Pierce stepped close to me, continuing, “Suzanne jilted him. Apparently Reece presumed they were headed for the altar, but the rumor has always been that Suzanne just wanted to make a baby with him. So he left town—some say in anger, others in despair. In any event, he hasn’t been back since.”

  I laughed. “This is starting to sound like a soap opera.”

  Pierce checked over both shoulders, as though someone might be listening. “There’s more.”

  “Christ.” I gestured that we should both sit again at the desk. Leaning toward each other over the blotter, I asked a silent Well?

  He cleared his throat. “This is no longer official business.”

  “No”—I grinned—“this is gossip. Let’s have it.”

  He leaned even closer. “The story comes full circle. We’re back to Miriam Westerman. Leading up to the time when Suzanne had her baby, she went through a period when she embraced radical feminism and—you guessed it—joined Fem-Snach. For a while, Suzanne and Miriam were really close, although there was never any suggestion that the two of them got ‘romantically’ involved. Rather, they were sisters in a cause, women making it on their own in a man’s world. In those days, the group had socialist leanings and was something of a commune, so when one of their members gave birth, the baby was claimed as a child of the Society.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Uh-oh.”

  “Right. Suzanne has always had an independent streak, which fed her interest in feminism, but she drew the line at sharing her child. Suzanne named the boy Thad, but Miriam always insisted on calling him something else, some goofy name. So that was the beginning of the end between Suzanne and Fem-Snach.”

  “The beginning?” I asked. “What did it take to cinch the rift?”

  “The green movement, environmentalism. By the time Suzanne had the baby, she had started on her way toward the executive suite at Quatro Press. It’s her family business, and she loves it, and she’s always taken enormous pride in the management skills she’s exhibited there. However, as far as Miriam Westerman is concerned, Quatro is ‘big business,’ and in her eyes, that’s bad. She’s been relentless over the years in campaigning for impossible pollution standards, and while the printing business is a relatively clean industry in the first place, that didn’t stop her from having Quatro hounded by the EPA at every turn—biodegradable inks, aqueous coatings, scrap recycling, you name it.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “And Suzanne didn’t like that.”

  “God, no. It came to a head when Miriam led a protest march of Fem-Snachers on Quatro property and Suzanne herself phoned my office to have the woman bodily removed from the premises. Miriam resisted, of course, and spent the night in jail, a martyr to her cause.”

  “Whew. Sounds like open warfare between them.”

  Pierce leaned back in his chair. “Philosophically, yes, they were through with each other, and Suzanne completely distanced herself from Fem-Snach. Tactically, however, the war was over. Deadlocked by each other’s strength, Suzanne and Miriam simply lapsed into a long period of truce—or denial. Neither woman will even acknowledge the other’s existence.”

  Pondering all this, I began to form a picture of my cousin Suzanne that was altogether different from the lingering memory of a blithe little girl I’d met only once. The prospect of that afternoon’s family dinner now filled me with even greater curiosity—and a jot of apprehension. I told Pierce, “I can’t thank you enough, Doug.”

  Sensing that our meeting was over, he stood, asking, “For what?”

  I stood, too. “For spending your Christmas morning horsing around with this nonsense.” I gestured toward the pile of hate mail, then added, “I also appreciate the scoop on the Quatrains.”

  Crossing to the door to retrieve his overcoat from the hook where I’d hung it, he told me, “I thought some background information might add a little—shall we say, spice?—to your Christmas dinner.” With a quiet laugh, he winked.

  I had the sudden urge to invite him to return later and join us all for dinner. Since he wore no wedding ring, chances were good that his day included no fatherly duties. Maybe he had nothing to do, nowhere to go.

  But I decided that these thoughts were presumptuous. While I sensed that Doug Pierce could become a valued friend in my new hometown, Christmas dinner on the day we met might be pushing things. Better to let this evolve.

  Walking with me from the den and through the front hall, he stopped near the foot of the staircase that led up to the third-floor great room. In the turns of the stair stood the tall pine that Neil and Parker had decorated. Pierce gaped at it. “It’s perfect, Mark,” he decreed. “May it bring nothing but warmth and peace to your life in Dumont.”

  Sensitive comment, coming from a cop. I liked him.

  That afternoon, the pace of things grew hectic at the house on Prairie Street. My meeting with Pierce had convinced me that I could dismiss the venom of Miriam Westerman’s minions, and I was able to concentrate instead on preparing to celebrate Christmas with friends and family—family I’d not seen since I was a boy.

  Hazel took charge of the meal once the menu was agreed to. Earlier that week, Neil had suggested goose, hoping that our dinner would be strictly traditional. However, no one else shared his enthusiasm for the idea (Roxanne claimed she might gag—and did a credible job of miming it), so roast beef was discussed, which struck everyone as too pedestrian. In a spirit of compromise, then, we settled on turkey, in spite of the fact that we’d all had our fill of it at Thanksgiving.

  The heady aroma of roasting foul filled the house as Hazel basted away in the kitchen, having chopped and clattered since dawn. By noon, everyone else was up and dressed and ready to pitch in. Parker Trent played backup to Hazel in the kitchen. Neil and Roxanne set the table and arranged flowers. Carl Creighton and I replenished the fireplaces with logs and kindling, ready for the match. By one or so, everything was in order. The Quatrains were due at two. We planned to sit down at three.

  Shortly before the Quatrain
s arrived, I was tidying the grate in the dining room when Hazel came in from the kitchen to survey the table. She seemed satisfied, turned to leave, then turned back, bug-eyed. “Mr. Manning!” she gasped, hand to chest. “Too many places have been set.”

  There were nine chairs. Counting on my fingers, I said, “There’s Neil and me, Roxanne and Carl, and Parker—five. Suzanne, Joey, and Thad Quatrain—that’s eight. And you, Hazel, make nine.”

  Her jaw sagged, as if I were out of my mind. “Mr. Manning!” she gasped again. “I couldn’t possibly dine with the family.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be silly, Hazel. You’re more a part of this family than I am. We’d love to have you at the table with us.”

  She shook her head with quick, tiny wags. “I wouldn’t think of it,” she said flatly, removing a setting from the table. “I’ll eat in the kitchen. Of course.” And she trundled out of the room, dragging a chair to the wall as she left.

  A while later, I was fussing with something at the back of the house when the doorbell rang. I checked my watch. Two o’clock—the Quatrains had arrived. From somewhere down the hall, Neil called, “Shall I get that, Mark?”

  “Thanks,” I said, rushing toward the door, “but I’d better greet them myself.” After all, Suzanne and Joey Quatrain had grown up in this house, and it wouldn’t seem right for them to find a total stranger at the door. But then, they wouldn’t recognize me either—it had been thirty-three years.

  “My God, Mark, it’s really you!” said the woman at the door as I opened it. Rushing over the threshold, leaving two men behind, she hugged me tight, effusing, “I’d know you anywhere!”

  We both laughed. “Come on, Suzanne”—I gambled that it was she, but she didn’t look at all familiar—“don’t try to tell me that I haven’t changed. I was nine.”

  She held me at arm’s length. “And I was fourteen. But you’ve become a renowned journalist, and I’ve seen your picture many times.” I remembered her as an especially pretty little girl, and now she was a beautiful, stylish, self-assured woman of forty-seven. She turned to the door and waved the others in. “Joey? Do you remember your cousin Mark?”