Orient

by Christopher Bollen

  When Beth was young, Sarakit Herrig—new both to Orient and the United States—had been warm and friendly to her, if difficult to understand. These days, though, Sarakit seemed to treat her as just another nuisance, a younger version of her mother waiting for the opportunity to inflict more turmoil on the village. Maybe she thought Beth would last only a few months before Gail returned, reprising her role as the archenemy of the historical board.

  Beth entered the kitchen, searching for some decorative detail or home improvement to compliment Sarakit on. Unfortunately, the kitchen was an American landslide of easy-grabs and hard-to-throw-outs. The peeling yellow laminate counters were cluttered with Solo cups, Hefty sandwich bags, loose batteries, Pottery Barn catalogs, and crayons. It was the kind of headache that might induce the aspirin of divorce. Sarakit went to the faucet and poured a glass of water.

  “Nhean and Ronald were both sick this morning, so I let them stay home from school. They seem to have magically gotten better.” Sarakit checked the clock on the oven. “Ted should be home any minute. He always comes home on his lunch period.”

  “I’m actually here to see you,” she said. Uninvited into any particular corner of the kitchen, Beth leaned neutrally against the counter. “I was in Greenport this morning and I saw your sign for winter hours.”

  “I still work even though I’m home,” Sarakit said matter-of-factly.

  “It amazes me that you can balance travel and real estate. You’d think one would be a full-time job.”

  “Both are full-time jobs,” she said, shrugging, as if hard work were merely a condition of life. “The travel business has mostly gone online. I finally broke down and got my Realtor license in the spring. Someone has to pay the bills.” Sarakit rested the glass on her stomach and watched Beth the way an older woman with kids watches a younger one without any, with a mix of curiosity and vindication. “I don’t have it as easy as you do. You’ve got a husband making a lot of money. I’ve dealt with my share of artists from the city looking for weekend homes out here. I know what they’re making these days. I suppose you’ve heard about Ted.”

  Beth blinked. Sarakit did not. “They’ve decided to terminate his position at Sycamore at the end of the year. How’s that for twenty years of teaching in our community school system?” She gulped her water and turned to refill the glass. “How’s that for committing your life to educating the children of Orient? And you know what gets me? They don’t cut art or music. They cut geography.” Sarakit practically bit the water. “So I’d say it’s a good time to transition. Who’s going to travel to Thailand when they don’t even know how to find it on a map? The escalating land values out here are the only thing helping us keep this house, and it’s better that I do it than some agent from the Hamptons who doesn’t know the first thing about this side of the bay.”

  Beth nodded, although she wanted to point out that her own children seemed like they might want to make their futures in art or music.

  “Nhean, get in here this instant!” The little boy skidded down the hall in his socks. He had removed his sneakers, but not his tiara. At least Sarakit didn’t seem to have any problem about her son’s choice of accessories. Beth decided that allowance was reason enough to like her. “Did you leave the bread out? How many times do I have to ask you to keep it in the fridge? It attracts ants.”

  Nhean danced toward the loaf on the counter and threw it in the refrigerator. Sarakit smeared a wet kitchen rag over his mouth. “Remember, Fang has soccer practice tonight,” she said to Nhean, although she looked at Beth. “Fang is our oldest. He’s almost fifteen.”

  Fang was adopted from China, Beth remembered. She wondered why Sarakit and Ted had decided to adopt: Was she unable to have children? Had she purposely decided only to adopt boys from her region of the world?

  “Did you find the adoption process difficult?” she asked.

  Sarakit stared at her apoplectically, as if Beth had just suggested they try on each other’s underwear. “Nhean, go watch television. Where’s that cold that kept you up all night?” Nhean sprinted toward his cartoons. “Please don’t mention adoption in front of the kids.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Beth gasped, springing from the counter. “I thought they knew.”

  “They do know, but they don’t need to be reminded that everyone else does,” Sarakit said. “To answer your question, I took children from overcrowded orphanages that counted every rice grain in a bowl. It wasn’t difficult. It was a duty. And no matter how they’ve been treated in Orient, by other families who only want to see reflections of themselves in their kids, all my boys have run circles around their classmates in grades and talent.” She drank her water down, and in those five seconds Beth wished she could withdraw the adoption question. Luckily, she didn’t have to. “I’m very busy, Beth. I’ve got a showing today at three. And as you can imagine, with everything that’s been going on lately, no one in their right mind wants to buy a house in Orient. I’ve got more calls in the last week from people who want to sell than I’ve had in the whole six months since I started Pearl Farms. You wouldn’t believe what some of your neighbors think their houses are worth.”

  “Mike Gilburn’s looking,” Beth ventured. “He told me he tried to buy a fixer-upper on the Sound from you a few months back.”

  Sarakit winced at the reminder of a lost sale. “That was before I knew we’d need a police presence in the village. It looks like I can kiss those city buyers good-bye.” She shook her head futilely. “First the travel business goes bust, now it’s real estate. That mutant on the beach was poison enough. But now, with the fire . . .”

  “Are you the one selling Magdalena’s house?” Beth wondered if the pant-suited woman she’d seen opening her neighbor’s cottage was a Pearl Farms agent.

  Sarakit closed her eyes, and for a moment her features lost their pinched severity. Beth had inherited her mother’s annoying habit of applying imaginary makeup to women’s faces, painting them up and pushing them back out into the world, as if a fascist cosmetics counter existed deep in the department store of her mind. But Sarakit Herrig was beautiful without a drop of makeup.

  “Pearl Farms is handling that property, yes,” Sarakit said patiently.

  “Magdalena willed me her armoire and grandfather clock. I promise to come get them before you start showing the place. Cole Drake told me they’re still in there.”

  Sarakit looked genuinely surprised. She tapped her nails on the counter, then swept a few crumbs into her palm.

  “Well, that’s Lena’s right. Personally, whatever’s in that will I take with a grain of salt.” Beth leaned forward over a box of Hefty CinchSaks, imploring Sarakit to explain. “Cole Drake tricked her into removing the transfer of her property to OHB in her will. He convinced her that it would be easier taxwise if she waited until the trust received full nonprofit status. And she listened to him. In her last days, she listened to him. Outrageous.” Sarakit’s lips jutted. “A complete lie manufactured by a greedy lawyer who’s making a profit on the sale. Cole’s always hated the board because it has an ethic beyond the bottom line. And because we chose Arthur Cleaver for our counsel instead of him. Pure spite. Magdalena would have wanted that property preserved. Everyone knows that.”

  “So Cole Drake is an enemy of the board?”

  “Uh, yeah,” Sarakit said. She opened a drawer and started sorting silverware, seizing a chore to validate the time-suck of a conversation.

  “Was Jeff Trader an enemy of the board, too? He and Magdalena were friends. I always thought it was strange they died right after each other.” Beth let the point settle in for a second. Sarakit scraped a bit of residue off a fork tine. “You know, Jeff warned Magdalena about OHB. She told me that a few days before she died. Maybe that’s why she changed her will.”

  “Warned her? Jeff Trader?” Sarakit laughed as she dropped the fork in the drawer. “Jeff was probably saying that to distract her while he robbed her purse. He used to do repairs for us. He’d stand in this ki
tchen and ask me all kinds of ridiculous questions. But, yeah, he wasn’t on OHB’s side. Which is a shame, because we would have given him money for the development rights to his land. Think of all the alcohol he could have bought.” With that, she slammed the drawer with her hip.

  The front door opened and Nhean and Ronald rushed to greet their father, rattling off a list of toys they’d just seen on TV. Ted carried a nylon briefcase into the kitchen, dropping it into one of the chairs. His orange hair was an unruly spray of hen wings. The skin around his eyes was blotchy, as if he’d taken the five-minute drive from the school to cry for the Muldoons, or for his early retirement, or for his wife, who might divorce a husband who was no longer providing a stable paycheck. He smiled at Beth, straightening his hair with his freckled fingers.

  “To what do we owe this visit?” he asked. “Did Sarakit offer you tea?”

  “I was about to,” Sarakit said as she took the loaf of bread out of the refrigerator. Tea would require five minutes to boil the water, thirty seconds to find the bag and unwrap it, and ten minutes for Beth to sip it. Tea was not forthcoming.

  “No need,” Beth replied. “I’m actually here because you asked me a question at the funeral, and I want to apologize for not answering.” For the first time, Sarakit looked at her with interest. She stopped untying the bread bag. “You were right, Mrs. Herrig, I was standing with Pam and Mills on their front lawn that afternoon.” Sarakit glanced at Ted when she mentioned Mills’s name. “And, yes, Pam was upset. Tommy and Mills had become friends, and Pam didn’t approve because she thought Tommy was too impressionable to hang out with a kid from the city. She got it into her head that he was some sort of juvenile delinquent. But I’ve become close with Mills, and I can tell you he isn’t like that. He’s very honest, and thoughtful, and—”

  “Drugs,” Ted interrupted. “We heard from others that he was a drug addict.”

  Beth shook her head. “Not the case. He came to a party at my house, and he wouldn’t even touch the liquor.”

  “You invited a minor to a party serving liquor?” Sarakit shot a look at Ted. See. I told you. Just like her mother.

  “All I want to say is that, with everything going on, it would be easy to get the wrong impression. The three of us know what Orient can be like. And once one person wrongly accuses an innocent kid of something as awful as arson”—she looked at Sarakit—“his reputation is basically ruined. Soon everyone suspects him, and then there’s no end to it.”

  Ted waited out the speech like a teacher enduring a student’s botched recitation of history, nodding thoughtfully, raising a finger only when she finished.

  “Beth,” he said, “I made a vow to Bryan that I’d take care of his children if anything were to happen.” His eyes grew starry under the track lighting. “And I can’t even do that now, because the two boys who would have needed us were killed. But I do know that Pam was a wonderful mother. And if she had a problem with your young friend, it wasn’t for nothing. I’m not saying he had anything to do with the fire. But it’s something the police should consider. Just as they’re considering everyone else who knew the Muldoons. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  That was fair. Sort of. But Beth knew the flaw in that logic. Mills wouldn’t be considered the same way she would be considered, or Ted, or Sarakit.

  “He didn’t do it,” she said. “I’m telling you, Mills had nothing to do with the fire.”

  Sarakit took a step toward her. “Those detectives came into our house,” she wailed, “and had the audacity to ask us where we were the night of the fire.” She tapped her chest. “We, who have been close friends of the Muldoons for twenty years. And we were forced to tell Mike Gilburn that we were in bed when we heard the sirens, and I reached over and held Ted’s hand and told him it was nothing. Nothing, because I could never have imagined, I could never have known—” She turned to the sink, her fists bracing the counter. “And if we have to be asked those kinds of questions, I don’t see why he shouldn’t have to be.”

  Ted walked over to his wife and hugged her from behind.

  “We couldn’t have known,” he whispered. “And we couldn’t have done anything, even if we had rushed over.” He glanced at Beth. “We won’t set foot on Youngs Road. Neither of us can handle seeing the remains of that house. It’s too much. I was supposed to take care of Tommy and Theo, as well as Lisa.”

  Sarakit wiped her eyes, fought off her husband’s arms, and walked into the hallway without looking back at Beth. Ted stood at the counter, peering out the window. Beth looked past him and saw his hunting bow lying on the patio table, broken in half.

  Beth stepped out of the kitchen. She found Sarakit standing by the front door, waving it open.

  “Lisa’s coming to dinner tonight,” Sarakit said. “Think about what she’s going through.”

  “Did you see Lisa in Orient the last few weeks?” Beth asked. “Before the fire?”

  Sarakit snorted, as if realizing she’d been entertaining an idiot.

  “Lisa’s been away at school.” Sarakit pulled the band from her hair, releasing a drape of black that reached her elbows. When she looked at Beth again, the harshness had left her face, replaced with the first gentle expression she’d given Beth in six months.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I seem callous,” she said. “This week hasn’t been easy on us. But I can’t help wondering why you’re so determined to protect a kid from the city at the expense of the neighbors who have known you since you were a child. You need to think about what’s right for this community before there’s nothing left of it. And if you don’t want to, then maybe you’d be better off in the city.” Sarakit reached toward the end table and picked up one of her business cards. “I know your mother’s been thinking of selling. She won’t let the board buy her development rights, but I hope, when the time comes, you’ll at least support me in trying to convince the next buyers to join us. It’s simple, Beth. If you don’t like how we live out here, you don’t have to stay.” Sarakit pressed the card in her hand.

  “Gavril and I are happy in the house,” Beth replied. “We’re not interested in moving yet.”

  Sarakit sighed. “Karen Norgen told me that she’s seen your husband walking on the street late at night with some friend of his. Strangers walking the streets after midnight isn’t exactly comforting after what’s gone on. You might want to tell him that.”

  Beth accepted the cold air of the porch. She was too busy thinking of Gavril to turn around as she said goodbye.

  By the time Beth got home—late, at quarter after two—she expected to find Mills waiting at the back door. At 2:25 she called Paul’s house, but no one answered.

  She leaned on the kitchen table, her head bent and her eyes closed. Today was the day she’d hoped to resolve the fate of the mass inside her. Instead she’d gone into Greenport to photocopy a dead man’s journal and buy a birthday cake. The decision to be a mother wasn’t something you were supposed to schedule between tasks. Beth knew that what she should do was interrupt Gavril in his studio and have a talk—or the talk, since they hadn’t really talked for a week. Gavril already thought she was losing her mind—if he even found time to think of her at all, between his tarring and sculpting and all his alleged late-night walks through Orient.

  She looked out the window at the garage, just twenty feet from the house—such a small distance between them, but the kitchen door was shut and locked, and it seemed beyond her strength to open it. She was porous, and the wall was solid, and a million distractions blew through her and left her leaning on the table. How could her body possess one brain so scattered and another so willful and concentrated, so sure of its fetal course?

  She had always done her clearest thinking while she was painting. Outside her studio in Brooklyn, her mind was a radio of jumbled frequencies, one irritating song exchanged for another, and here in Orient it was the same: a birthday cake, aisle three at Dooley’s, the money-troubled Herrigs, Luz and her dinner, all sidetracking her in jumb
led succession. She had hoped that her brain would attune itself as her hands and eyes were busy painting Mills, and that the decision would arrive as uncomplicatedly as spring weather: to choose a path and take it, to say yes or no and stick to her choice.

  But so many thoughts were coursing through her brain, disrupting any chance of solid focus. What was Gavril doing walking around late at night with a friend when he should have been home in bed? Who had moved the furniture around in her living room? What was the connection between Jeff, Magdalena, and the Muldoons?

  Her thoughts were interrupted when Mills knocked on the window and opened the door, bringing the day in with him, wet and cold and reeking of fish. He had two wounds above his lip and a red scratch trailing down his left cheek.

  “Jesus,” she said, lifting up from the table. “Were you in a fight?”

  “I’m fine,” he replied, breathing heavily. “I’m sorry I’m late. You probably don’t want to paint me. I’m not looking too good.”

  “You look fine,” she said, and for no reason other than that she wanted to, she hugged him. The fish stink emanated from his coat. Mills pressed his forehead against her shoulder, and his words vibrated through her chest.

  “They found another one of those Plum mutants. Or I did. Some guys that work for Adam chased me. They were going to beat me up, and I fell onto this pile of fur and bone. Right on the beach by your friends’ house, Luz and Nathan.”

  Beth let go of him. “What do you mean they were going to beat you up?” She couldn’t open the door to speak to Gavril, but she had half a mind to confront Adam Pruitt and threaten him into leaving Mills alone.

  “You should have seen it,” he said. “It might have been on the shore for days. It had a head like a deer and long yellow nails and hooves and two spinal cords twisted together like conjoined twins, except the second head never developed. I’ve never seen anything so horrible up close. It was all mixed up. How does an animal like that even live? I can’t imagine what thing gave birth to it, or what those Plum scientists did.”