Alison realizes that this is it. The moment. She is about to learn why they were asked here.
“Where is your bathroom?” she asks.
Startled, Linda coughs, licks her lips. A small smile arranges itself. She points to the stairs.
“Second door on the left.”
In the kitchen, Edward drops the plates on the counter. For a moment he is disoriented enough to mistake the sound for a flying object, and he ducks. His brain stays where it was, though, and the room doubles. He blinks hard. When his vision is restored, the face of Harlan looms.
“I got a lot of good friends,” Harlan says.
“Not me,” Edward replies. He’s trying to be funny, but suddenly this doesn’t seem funny at all. Perhaps because it is true.
“People in law enforcement, people in the courts,” the judge goes on, ignoring the interruption. “One particular friend of mine is located in Cambridge, Mass.”
“Never heard of it.” Harlan is very close, leaning right over him, giving off an odor. It’s the smell of mentholated salve. Has he got arthritis? Edward feels sorry for the older man, sorry for the life he’s leading here on the lake, in the house, with the wife. He’s sorry for having come to dinner. The fajitas are a bitter ball inside him.
“Sure you have. You’ve been there.”
“Have I?” says Edward.
“Yes, you have. You were there between the years of 1981 and 1987. You went to college there. Remember that?”
“Sheesh,” Edward tells him. “I sure don’t know. Do you think I could help myself to a glass of water?” Was it really that long ago? He still has dreams about college, in which important mail is waiting for him in his campus mailbox and he can’t remember the combination.
Incredibly, Harlan moves even closer. “You had yourself a little business there, didn’t you, Eddie?”
“I was an English major.”
“You were in sales and distribution.”
“Nah.”
“Unfortunately your little business came to the attention of the Harvard administration. You were spared prosecution in exchange for your permanent absence from the campus. After that you got yourself enrolled at Tufts and slunk outta there a couple years later. Is this refreshing your memory?”
“You bet it’s refreshing. I don’t even need that water anymore.”
Harlan attempts a grin, but the corners of his mouth don’t seem to be cooperating. “Keep cracking those jokes, pothead,” he whispers, and the whispers clatter around the gleaming disinfected kitchen. Behind Harlan, on the counter, Edward spies the takeout boxes from Taco Treat. Two of them, then four, then eight. Then just one. Oh dear. “Seems that your records with the agency lacked this important information. I took the liberty of updating them for you.”
“The agency?”
“The adoption agency.”
Something is welling up inside Edward, something acid and explosive, first in his churning stomach, then in his esophagus, then in his throat. How dare this man judge me, he thinks—but then again, that’s what judges do. They make judgments! And then it’s out of him and all over the room: hot laughter, cracking the air. Judgments! He falls against the counter, tears pouring from his eyes. Harlan has taken a step back. He’s put on his workaday face, the one he must wear as he pretends to listen carefully to all the evidence. Edward is gasping for breath.
“What the hell?” Harlan says.
Edward pounds the counter, hurting his hand. It feels great! He can’t seem to speak, but what would he say? The picnic, the Breeces, this house, it’s all so fucking funny! Maybe he and Alison should give up on the sex and do this at night instead, get drunk and tell jokes.
But Harlan doesn’t seem to get it, and he doesn’t seem to like not getting it. He sets himself in a bearish crouch, and his lip curls under, and the fuzzy panhandle rears back. Yikes!
Edward finds himself on the floor, his legs splayed on the terra-cotta quarry tile, his back against the cabinets. Hey, how’d he get down here? The cabinets are light blue, with red lizards stenciled on them. The whole right side of his face seems to be throbbing, yet giggles are still coming out of him, like hiccups, involuntary and annoying. Harlan has cured Edward’s indecision. There will be no adoption.
“You son of a bitch,” Edward hears. And then he is yanked to his feet and flung through the kitchen door.
“You can find your own coat, asshole,” shouts the judge.
Alison’s feet are silent in the carpeted hallway. It’s different up here, the walls are bare. When she shows a house, the upstairs hallways are always like this: hollow-core doors, shag carpeting, a life-swallowing softness. This is where she always loses the buyer, right here, as her enthusiasm leaves her.
If only enthusiasm meant anything to the State of New York. If only the sprawl and scatter of lived life was worth anything: then their house, their home, would be all the application they needed. But it was all too easy to see it through the eyes of the agency. The basement full of nail-riddled scrap lumber. The tangle of extension cords behind the sofa. The champagne stain on the living-room ceiling. All of it screaming unfit.
But this! Alison cannot compete with this. A blameless, immaculate hallway, erased of all evidence. As if in cahoots with her heart, her bladder grows heavier.
The second door on the left. There it is, the only one open. A dim light shines from inside. She can hear voices in the kitchen, Harlan’s and Edward’s, exchanging confidences. It’s so easy for men, she thinks, so hard for women. Men of any class have football and fishing to discuss; women have nothing. Or worse, they have children. Or worse still, no children.
She enters the bathroom and sees a bed. Obviously she’s made a mistake. She peeks out into the hall: second door on the left. No, it was no mistake. She’s exactly where Linda wants her. The bedroom walls are painted bright blue and red, and there is a small desk with a colorful computer on it, and there is a boom box and shelves stacked with comic books. The wallpaper is patterned with cartoon characters. There’s a Buffalo Bills throw rug.
Instinct tells her to leave immediately, to grab Edward’s arm and yank him out of the house. But she still has to pee. She spins and walks stiffly into the hall. She tries each door until she finds the real bathroom, a dimly lit fun house of globe lights and gilt mirrors.
Then she happens to glance down the stairs and sees the back of Linda’s head, the tight, ugly coif, and she changes her mind.
She goes back into the boy’s room. There is a Knicks trash can in the corner by the desk. She pulls it out a little and looks down into it, at the pale, blurred oval at the bottom, her face.
Can she do it? That is, physically? There is only one way to find out. It was hot enough today for her not to have worn panty hose, and that makes it easier.
Crouched over the can, she is amazed at the loudness of it, like rain on a corrugated tin roof.
He’s drunk, she drives. They aren’t fighting; that will happen later. What they’re doing now is thinking. Alison is thinking, To hell with adoption. Give me the drugs. If I get pregnant with eight babies, they can kill six. It’s worth it to me. I will populate the world with bold, honest, sloppy people like myself. And if Edward can’t deliver, I will use another man’s sperm, from a lab. She is amazed that she can remember the doctor’s phone number: if she had to, she could pull over at a convenience store and leave a message with the answering service. She feels fecund and powerful and reckless and correct in everything. Every thought is gilded, and sharp as a dagger.
Meanwhile, Edward is having a fantasy. He and Alison have gone back to college. They live in a dorm, with roommates who never go out: for Edward, a brooding bicyclist who always leaves sweaty towels lying around; for Alison, an angry feminist with tangled hair. How hard it is to be together, and how sweet. They meet in dark and lonely places for whispers and for sex: an abandoned carrel in the engineering library, the woods behind the physical plant, a supply closet in the business school. They talk about wh
at it will be like someday when they’re married and have a house of their own: a place all to themselves, where they’ll never be bothered by other people. They’ll make love in every room. They’ll confess their deepest secrets, or better yet, they won’t have any.
Edward is asleep when they get home. Poor Edward, lolling half-conscious in the passenger seat, reminds Alison of a mannequin. No, a dummy: a marriage-test dummy, with a heart-shaped target on his chest where he keeps getting pounded. She unbuckles his seat belt and shakes him, but he refuses to wake. All he will do is quietly moan. So she leaves him there, in the car. Later on, showered, cold-creamed, nightgowned, she’ll lie in their bed not sleeping, her fingers on her belly, waiting for the sound of the door.
See You in Paradise
Brant Call was a pretty nice guy. He lived in a small rented house on a quiet street in the town where he went to college. He always shoveled his walk when it snowed and he always said hi to passing neighbors, and though he was young (he’d graduated only a couple years before) he acted like he was thirty-seven, and everybody liked him for it.
And Brant liked that everybody liked him. When somebody told him how much they liked one or another of his good qualities, he reacted by striving to enhance that quality, so as to become nicer still. Nobody ever pointed out his bad qualities—which included gullibility, impatience, and a creeping smugness—because they thought it might upset him, and in this they were right. In Brant’s world, people did not point out others’ bad qualities. He grew up in the suburbs, hauled old ladies’ trash cans to the curb, and was named after a beach in New Jersey. He was not introspective. It didn’t occur to him that being universally liked might be a bad thing, or even illusory.
He still worked at the college he’d attended, as managing editor of the alumni magazine of the business school. The year Brant started working there, the magazine had been rated one of the top five business school alumni magazines in America, and he took pride in this honor, though he didn’t have much to do with it. He referred to the magazine as “we,” as in, “We gotta up our donations this year,” and occasionally when he did this the person he was speaking to became confused and had to ask whom he meant by “we.” He said this very thing once to a woman about whom the magazine was running an article, and the woman tilted her head, smiled microscopically, tucked a blond lock behind a pink ear, and said, “We you, or we who do you mean?”
The woman was named Cynthia Peck. She was a senior at the college and her father owned one of the fifty largest corporations in America. The article was to be a rich-heiress’s-eye view of the business school, in which Cynthia would be portrayed as being in training to assume her rightful position (as Leyton Peck’s only child) at the helm of Peck, Inc. Brant had volunteered to write it himself because he hoped to secure a big honking donation for the magazine, and the editor-in-chief agreed because he thought Brant’s niceness might actually cause this to happen. And so, at the end of an hour-long interview, during which it became clear that Cynthia Peck was not going to be at the helm of anything complicated in the near future, he made the comment about having to up the donations. And when she said, “We you, or we who do you mean?,” he said, “We me, or I mean we us. The magazine. I was wondering if you, or rather your company—or I mean your dad’s company, might consider donating some, you know, money, so we can go on doing what we’re doing in terms of work, which is being one of the top five business school alumni magazines in America.”
Cynthia Peck’s tiny smile became a slightly larger smile, and then a kind of smirk, and when the lock of hair fell over her eye again she didn’t move it. Instead she peered around it, discreetly licked her lips, and said, “Are you trying to ask me out?”
Brant almost said no. Instead, he tried to blush, and found that, to his surprise, his face was already hot and his head already half-turned away, and he said, “Well …”
“Well what?”
“Well, I guess I am. You want to go out?”
“Be more specific.”
“To dinner?”
“More specific.”
“My place?”
“Try again.”
“A restaurant.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Seven Sisters?” he said, because this was the only place in town anybody could conceivably take the daughter of one of the richest men in America, a Frenchy sort of sit-down place up on the hill with turrets and flags and prices that could make your hair stand on end. And indeed, the name made her sit up straight and nod her head in congratulations, and she said, “When?” and he said, “Uh, tonight?” and she said, “Friday,” and he said, “Friday.” He asked if he should pick her up around eight and she said eight thirty, and he asked if she wanted to go anywhere afterward and she said We’ll see. Then she handed him a little card with her name, address, and phone number printed on it, and walked out the office door.
Later on, the editor-in-chief asked him how it went and would they be getting the money, and Brant, in response to both questions, said “I have no idea.”
Looking at her over dinner, Brant realized that he found Cynthia pretty attractive, though she was generally known on campus as “The General’s Horse” because of her bulky frame and equine features: a broad nose, an elongated face, and wide-set eyes. But her face was open and expressive, if not entirely intelligent, and she had nice hair, a sexy walk, and a terrific bosom, the exposed cleft of which, invitingly peeping out from behind two unbuttoned folds of silk, he tried the entire evening to keep his eyes off of. They talked about the college, about roommates they’d had, about New Jersey, where both of them had grown up (vastly different New Jerseys, sure, but they both used to drive an hour to visit the same mall). In fact they got on just great, and after dinner they went back to her place and made out for the better part of an hour, and Brant got to stick his hand down her bra and the back of her underpants.
A sort of courtship followed. Brant and Cynthia were seen around together, holding hands and smooching on benches. The magazine got its donation, and Brant asked for and received a raise. Six months went by, and graduation was coming, and Brant considered buying Cynthia an engagement ring. Ultimately he decided against it: he had to prove to her, somehow, that he didn’t want her money. The problem was, of course, that he did want her money, and this seemed wrong to him, though he was certain he would want her whether she was rich or not. Of course, her being rich was part of what made her who she was, and was the reason he met her in the first place, and so trying to extricate her wealth from his affection was pointless—and yet he tried it anyway.
In May Brant got his suit dry cleaned and went to her commencement. It took place in the football stadium. The speaker was Ellen DeGeneres. This had been a controversial choice for many reasons, but she didn’t talk about being a lesbian or about being on TV, and everyone seemed very calm and attentive. For most of the speech, Brant scanned the rows of seniors with the binoculars he’d brought along. When he finally found Cynthia, she was whispering and giggling with her friends. He watched her whisper and giggle for the rest of the ceremony.
That night her father threw a party at Seven Sisters. Brant had rented a tux, but when he arrived he realized that nobody else was wearing one. So he went home and put his suit back on and rearrived, this time late. There were ten large round tables filled with people just getting started on their glasses of wine, and one of them contained an empty chair. Next to the chair was Leyton Peck, and on his other side sat Cynthia, looking not just attractive but really pretty, her skin ruddy from the sunny commencement, her eyes subtly made-up, her lips lipsticked. She saw him and motioned him over, and he took his place next to her father.
Peck was in the middle of a story to which everyone was intently listening, their shoulders thrown forward over their plates, their faces frozen into expectant grins. Peck spoke in a cigar-roughened baritone, his hands curiously out of sight beneath the table, which Brant felt privileged to know was the result of prematurely bl
ossoming liver spots. This small bit of inside information enabled him to listen to the story with something approaching the appropriate level of attention.
“… and so I say to the guy, ‘Look, I know this task sounds boring, but the reason our company has the number one industrial coatings division in America can be summed up in two words: Quality Control. So what I need you to do is keep your eye on each patch of paint through every stage of the drying process.’ The guy nods, like he’s getting it all, so I keep on talking. ‘Drying doesn’t just happen, there are a series of crucial aridity thresholds that are passed, and during each of them any number of microscopic fissures can appear. These fissures close quickly, but they negatively impact the long-term stability of the coating. So I want you to get your face right up on there and make sure no cracks appear and disappear. If any develops, you mark it there on your patch diagram, and below each crack you detect, I want you to mark its duration, have you got that?’ Okay, sure, the guy’s nodding, nodding, it all sounds very important to him, right? So I tell him, ‘Each of these cans behind you represents a production run, I need you to test every one of them, the paint dries hard in two and a half hours, so you’ll be able to do three a day. So get to work.’”
Peck looked around the table, faintly smirking, for several seconds before he delivered the punch line. “The guy watched paint dry for two and a half months!”
Brant laughed along with everyone else, but mostly he watched Cynthia laugh. He was shocked to discover that he had never seen her laugh before (not with true abandon, anyway—giggling didn’t count), which is to say that he himself had never made her laugh. Well, why not? He was funny, right? Couldn’t he do a wide range of voices, including Old Jewish Lady, Old Black Guy, and Duck? Wasn’t he good at sneaking up on squirrels and then shouting “Booga-booga-booga?” Didn’t he own the entire run of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on DVD? He could, he was, he did! But he had never seen Cynthia like this: her hands clutching her cleavage, her mouth gulping air, her eyes wrinkled shut like a prizefighter’s. She looked … indecorous. He was loath to imagine what kind of hideous air-guitar faces he made when they were porking, but as for Cynthia, she always looked serene, sleepy, disappointingly pleased, as if there might be a hidden camera somewhere recording the moment for inclusion in some kind of X-rated home furnishings catalog. This was entirely different, this elasticized guffaw, and he didn’t much care for it. She looked like Seabiscuit, for crying out loud.
See You in Paradise Page 4