Waveland

by Frederick Barthelme

  20

  Seeing Newton brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. Whatever the truth, Vaughn had counted his brother as their parents' favorite. Parents pretend they love their children equally, care about them equally; but as a child you always know. And don't parents always prefer the youngest? It was unpleasant, but Vaughn knew all children went through it, got used to it eventually, got enough of the affection, the support, the nurture to get by. But he had never quite forgotten.

  Newton was a hero in grade school. He was a hero in high school. He was a hero when he went off to college. He was everybody's favorite. He was funny and good-looking. He was charming. Their mother used to hug him endlessly, as if she took every opportunity. Their father liked taking Newton into the den for serious conversations, discussions of politics, religion, morality, and Newton was always ready to do that, always able and willing to do that. He liked discussing things with their father man-to-man. Vaughn would wake up late on the weekend and go by that part of the house, and there they'd be, sitting in the two chairs talking, looking out the window at the backyard, the pristine backyard, talking man-to-man.

  Vaughn had a few opportunities, of course, but he was a kid with less to say than his younger brother; he was less forthcoming than Newton, less brilliant, less charming. He was not such a success in school, had fewer friends, and the friends he did have were much less welcome at the house. In fact, Vaughn's friends were mostly losers of one kind or another. And Vaughn was fat as a kid. He wore “Husky” jeans and khakis. His mother had to take him to a special store to get these jeans. And they weren't the right jeans, because the makers of the right jeans wouldn't stoop to making “Husky” jeans. Vaughn was taller, but he had a bad complexion, whereas Newton did not. Vaughn's hair stuck out in spikes that he tried putting hair tonic on to get under control, without much success. Vaughn's hair jiggled when he walked. Newton's hair was smooth and graceful.

  So having Newton jet in for the crisis with Gail was not fun. Having Newton stay at the house, set himself up in the fourth bedroom, walk through the place and look at the house Vaughn had bought some years before, appraise it in a way, was not so comfortable. Newton would notice things about the house—the construction, the finishes, the upkeep—that he did not think so well of, and he would mention these things in an offhand, purportedly helpful, but nevertheless demeaning way. And Newton would look at Greta, as if somehow Greta was part of the problem, or as if she didn't measure up.

  That first night after Newton arrived, they went to eat at the Thai restaurant. Vaughn and Gail had been to this restaurant once, years before. It had been wiped out by the hurricane, but was relocated almost immediately in a strip shopping center in the space previously occupied by the Oreck vacuum cleaner store. Vaughn and Greta carefully avoided the Thai restaurant, but Newton wanted Thai, and Gail had told him there was a wonderfully authentic little Thai place in town, so they ended up there. In their section of the coast a lot of college kids and some of the professors ate the food there, which was one reason Vaughn disliked the place. Another was that there were always ants in a trail along the wainscoting. The lighting was too bright, the food was soggy and stained and badly presented, and the place itself was in sore need of attention. It was altogether discouraging, like eating in an Oreck store in a desolate strip shopping center.

  Newton and Gail pored over the menu and Gail gave him detailed descriptions of each dish. She let on that she and Tony often used the Thai restaurant as a rendezvous. “I figured Vaughn wouldn't look for us here,” she said.

  They were sitting at a yellow linoleum-topped table with almost-matching chairs covered in yellow plastic. They were in the middle of the small aisle between two rows of booths. Along the wainscot next to the booths on the west wall, the parade of ants was in full flower, running from the back of the restaurant toward the front. Vaughn elbowed Greta and raised his head in the direction of the ant line. She glanced and made a face to tell him to shut up. When it was her turn to order, she said, “Why don't you order for me, Gail? I haven't eaten much Thai.”

  Whereupon Gail and Newton discussed at some length what Greta might and might not like.

  “Maybe I should have something not so good,” Greta said.

  Vaughn ordered noodles and the cow pea salad, a dish he'd read about in a newspaper article years before. The four of them were way too close together at this table. The table was small. There was barely enough room for a napkin dispenser and a little flower. They hunched around this little table prepared for conversation as they waited for their food, but the conversation was slow in coming. It mostly fell to Gail and Newton to catch up. She asked a lot of questions about his business, his late wife, his life in the Great Northwest. Newton was lonely, but he was fond of where he lived and felt fortunate to have moved there before it was popular and sought after.

  About his business he said, “Oh, there's hardly anything left to do. We did so well with the company that I'm pretty much out of the loop now. I have a few small projects, but other than that, I'm afraid I don't do much.”

  He seemed strangely overstuffed. His shirt was too small, his trousers, too. Both were wrinkled, but he was not a grunge guy, he was a tucked-in guy, so the wrinkles gave the impression of being well-planned. His shirt was madras. Strange, Vaughn thought. He hadn't seen a madras shirt in some time, though he was aware madras had made it back into style a few years before. Gail had told him.

  As he sat across the table from Newton, what he was thinking was: Maybe he'll just explode right here.

  It wasn't that he was fat, but he was burly. Like he'd gained a lot of weight and it hadn't settled in his stomach or his backside. It was all-over weight. It was in his arms, ankles, thighs, cheeks, temples, neck, and shoulders. It was as if he had taken Newton from ten years ago and made a second skin an inch or so thick and carefully sewn it on him, in the style of that guy in the movie. He was a Hefty bag, Vaughn's brother.

  “So what's all this stuff you guys are going through down here?” Newton said. “Vaughn's been filling me in, but it sounds crazy.”

  “It is a little crazy,” Gail said.

  “Nothing much,” Vaughn said. “There was some messy business with this guy and she asked us to move over, and we came over,” he said. “Like I told you.”

  “He's talking about Tony,” Gail said.

  “Right. Gail's been dating him, and he got a little out of hand,” Vaughn said. “Like I told you, he was at the house the other night. He's not exactly covered in contrition, but he wasn't unbearable.”

  “That's news,” Gail said. “You liked him?”

  “I didn't mind him,” he said. “He came in and we talked. He wasn't that bad, I mean, apart from, you know—”

  “Amazing,” she said.

  “Anyway, things are getting back on track.”

  “He's leaving out a lot,” Gail said.

  “I am leaving out a lot,” Vaughn said. “I thought Newton might appreciate that.”

  “Don't start,” Gail said.

  “We don't need to involve Newton in our problems, Gail,” Vaughn said.

  “That's why he's here,” she said.

  “That's why I'm here,” Newton said.

  At this point Greta sort of touched Vaughn's arm in a way that he liked a lot. She touched his forearm on the table, sort of patted it—just once or twice. She turned and said to Newton, “Why are you here? I know I'm not family, but I don't quite get it.”

  “Gail and I go way back,” Newton said.

  “I've heard that,” Greta said.

  “We had a sort of friendship,” Newton said.

  “And that's why you're here to help out with Gail and Vaughn?” Greta said.

  “And Tony. And you,” Newton said.

  “And me?” Greta said. “Huh. Feature that. I made the team.”

  That produced nervous strain, visible on two of the four faces. Then food arrived, so trouble was sidestepped. The food was stringy and peculiar, and Gail and
Newton loved it. Vaughn put some of his on Greta's plate while no one was watching. Greta put the food back on his plate while everyone was watching. Gail waved at them as if they were children. She and Newton carried on a conversation about his life in the Great Northwest and their life together before she and Vaughn met. There wasn't much of a story there. Vaughn didn't think their relationship, or his subsequent marriage to Gail, seemed too odd at the time, though now it seemed odder. Gail and Newton were better suited for each other than he and Gail. By the time Katrina hit, his marriage had long since looked like a basket of maladies. They'd had good times in the early going, but recent years were something less than satisfying—too much distance, too many differences. And when his life felt that way he always wondered about other people—in the stores, in their very clean cars, walking together in their heavily-starched clothing: Were they content with each other, or was the only contentedness they'd ever had what they'd had in their first years together?

  Thinking of that, he regarded Newton, who was a widower and who had been living alone for a couple of years, and his own ex-wife, Gail, who seemed very interested in her conversation with his brother. They probably had searing and wonderful memories of that month they were together so many years ago. And so, as Vaughn thought about it there at the Thai joint, which was called Yum Yum, it suddenly didn't seem altogether odd that Newton would come thousands of miles across the country to Gail's rescue now, so many years later. For the first time recognizing the possible virtues of Newton's visit, Vaughn fetched up his chopsticks and started to enjoy himself, pursuing his noodles with a fierce new vigor. He smiled and nodded when others looked his way. He made little noises of appreciation, pointing at the food. He reached for Greta's hand and gave it a resolute squeeze.

  21

  Three days later on Saturday morning Vaughn woke up to find Gail at the door of his room, knocking discreetly. She was dressed and made up and on her way out to the store or something. She looked nervous and fidgeted with her fingers.

  “How are you?” she said, peeking in the room to see if Greta was there. She wasn't, as it happened.

  “I'm kind of sleepy,” he said. “Time is it?”

  “Almost nine,” she said. “Listen, uh, I wanted to thank you for everything, for all these years, and for this thing, coming over here and all that. It really is kind of you to interrupt everything and move in and look after me.”

  “Sure,” he said. “My pleasure. Are you—”

  “Going away,” Gail said. “I'm going with Newton out to his place, just for a kind of a look-see, you know? I mean, the way he talks about it sounds so great, and he wants to go back, so I thought I'd go with.”

  “Oh,” Vaughn said.

  “I'm just taking a break from everything,” she said. “Clearing the air, standing back, taking a look at the big picture, that kind of thing.”

  “Big picture,” he said. “How about Tony?”

  She looked positively adolescent, twisting herself around there in the hallway. “Well, you know, I don't care that much about Tony, really, all things considered. I didn't see him as a long-termer.”

  Vaughn nodded. He was sleepy and his hair was dervished up and he just kept nodding at her. He said, “Okay. When are you coming back?”

  “I don't know. Could be right away, could be longer—we haven't decided. I'm just playing things by ear. I always wanted to see the Great Northwest.”

  Then she was backing away down the hall. She said, “You guys should stay here if you want. Keep the place warm. Not a problem. Invite Eddie if you want. We're just about packed. We'll be pulling out any minute.”

  “It's short notice, isn't it?” he said.

  She turned and grinned. “Yeah, I guess so. You don't mind, do you?”

  Well, he did mind. But then again, this was Gail, mercurial Gail. She was able to move in a big hurry. Gail had called Newton, after all. Maybe Vaughn wasn't the first to imagine the possibilities.

  “I don't like him,” Greta said, when he got her up and they went downstairs to wave good-bye as Newton and Gail headed out of the driveway. “I didn't like him the minute I laid eyes on him.”

  “He's fine,” he said. “Wave.”

  “He's a snot-nosed somebody,” she said, waving at the car. “He's real proud of himself. Far prouder than he need be.”

  “He's done very well,” he said.

  “He's a snot,” she said.

  “He came all the way down here to get Gail,” Vaughn said.

  “I know that,” Greta said. “So gallant. Couldn't she have sort of flown up there on her own? You don't care about her going off with him now?”

  “It's odd,” Vaughn said. “It's very odd. But it's a load off. At least for the moment.”

  “That's what you think of her—a load?”

  “Quit it,” he said. “I love her, but you've been around her awhile, what do you think?”

  “I think she's a load, but that's me. I never was in love with her.”

  “No, you got it right,” he said. “I don't imagine it's over, though.”

  “She's going to call and e-mail and have other problems and she's going to need to talk to you about them,” she said.

  “Right,” he said.

  “And she's going to get together with Newton, and they're going to live together. Something like that?” she said.

  “Could be. Kind of looked that way, didn't it?”

  “Looked like they were made for each other,” Greta said.

  “I thought the same thing,” he said.

  The beach west of Waveland was never developed, not before the hurricane, and not after. The land out there was marshy and mostly unused. One night about a week after Gail left, Vaughn and Greta drove out that way and found an abandoned beach house up on creosoted twelve-by-twelve wood pilings across the highway from the water. There wasn't another building for half a mile toward town, and west there wasn't anything at all except a shrimp-packing house that had been swamped by Katrina and the remnants of a casino that had failed out there where the highway dead-ended. They got out the flashlight and went up the stairs, sat on the deck of this beach house, which was a little delicate, being as most of the deck was gone and what was left was rotting and dotted with holes you could fall through. The rest of the place was equally torn up. There wasn't much of a roof, no glass, the doors were gone, and it didn't smell so good. They were outside, sitting with their backs to the front wall, watching the moon rise in the east. Small boats passed going east to west. Fishing, Vaughn presumed, running with as few lights as possible. Along the horizon in the distance there were gold lights on oil rigs. The sky was lit up with stars.

  He pointed and said, “If you don't look at them you can see them flash.”

  “That's what they're there for,” Greta said. “They're stars.”

  “Amen,” he said.

  “So, like, to summarize,” she said, “you failed your family—your mother and father and your brother—and now you've failed your wife. Your brother had to come in and successfully sweep her away, and so you've failed again. Is that about the size of it—you're sort of a failure birth to death? A cry in the darkness kind of thing?”

  “Not exactly a cry,” he said. “A whimper?” she said. “A foul noise?” “Something,” he said. “You've got something there.” They didn't say anything for a few minutes and felt the breeze as it climbed over them. The moon was streaking up the water.

  “You know what I think about your father? I think he loved you. I think he probably did the best he could, and he was probably hurt in the end, but I think he never stopped loving you. If he knew you at all.” “I don't know. How would you know that, anyway?” “You listen,” she said. “When people talk. And you read what they're saying, and you back out all their opinions, you try to figure what they're angry about, and worried about, and you add or subtract that from the picture they're giving you, and then you maybe get another picture from somebody else, and you paste that in, and then
you get a report from somebody else about the person you got the first picture from, and that changes things a little, and after a while you get a pretty good idea about the person everybody else is talking about.” “Huh,” Vaughn said.

  “He forgives you,” she said. “That's what I get. He loved you and he wanted to be better than he was.” “He would forgive,” Vaughn said. “That was him all over.” Each day after Gail's sudden departure with his brother, Vaughn felt a little better, a little cleaner, a little more relieved and comfortable. He was still surprised, too, but mostly he felt unlatched from a responsibility that he hadn't really wanted in the first place. Some kind of ease had settled on him and replaced everything that had been getting at him since the night of his birthday dinner at the Palomino Restaurant or maybe before that, maybe even since the divorce. Maybe even before that. When you live with a woman for a long time, after a while you make a lot of excuses for what you don't feel, but unless you're a fool you don't believe the woman is at fault. It's that the world changes beneath your feet. Things go slow at first and the change is so small that it's almost imperceptible, and you pay it no mind. And then later, years later, the change seems huge and it seems to have occurred overnight. Suddenly you aren't the person you were. And then, where once you thought not wanting what you used to want was punishment, suddenly you think it may be a blessing.

  And things stand still.

  You watch the moon reflected on the swarming gulf water, and you think, That's enough. That's all I want. I just want to sit on this broken-down deck on this night in this cool weather with this breeze blowing over me and watch this moon lift into the sky—remarkably oval, remarkably pearly, remarkably aloft. And you want to think this in just these words, and you know the words aren't right, they aren't even close, and that doesn't matter. The deal is that it's just the moon in the sky reflected on the gulf, the water hissing and receding, and you're in the middle of it, and you're just a small part, an unimportant part, but a part nonetheless. Your job is to be there so the moon can hit something when it shines at the earth. You are something to hit. And that's the way it is for the rest of the world, too. What people say and what they think, who they are, what they think about you, what they ask of you, what you want, what you give them does not matter. It's that way for everything—the sounds of the night, the breeze on the back of your hand, on your knee, the shoe hanging off your foot, the pressure of the plastic chair against your elbow or your forearm, the sound of the light waves falling on the beach, the twinkle of the lights on the oil platforms offshore, the smells, and all the stars in the sky, the shadows that crawl past—you're something to hit. You're a receiver. You're an antenna.