The last curve. The road flattening to a mere five percent. The lookout on the right. The long straight. The white, crenelated Summit Inn at the peak, lit from below, a ghostly wedding cake.
“And the drugs. We know you’re experimenting. And look, a little marijuana never hurt anybody, but.” Again, the conjunction without a phrase to be joined to the phrase preceding it. Abbie shook his head. Isaac pursed his lips and looked away. He pressed his forehead against the cold window.
Right at the Summit. Floating through the dark over the rolling road, the headlights hardly adequate. Neither of them spoke again. Abbie drummed impatiently on the wheel. Isaac’s breath fogged on the glass. Right on the driveway. The sharp curve, where he slid, as ever, on the gravel. Past the big tulip tree. Past the bright house, all its windows illuminated, flushing energy carelessly into the night. Why, Abbie thought, did Sarah insist on keeping every Goddamn light burning? They parked in the carport. Isaac leapt out of the car and almost ran for his own little enclave. Abbie yelled after him, “We expect you at dinner!”
Isaac didn’t answer him but slammed the door as he went into the house. And Abbie, standing beside the car with its door still open, ground his molars and took another calming breath, only he found it didn’t calm him at all, but only stoked whatever it was that burned inside him. He closed the car door so gently and slowly that it didn’t fully latch. He stared at the un-flush edge of it. He kicked it as hard as he could, leaving a huge dent and sending an appalling pain shooting into his right knee.
• • •
Neither Abbie nor Sarah said anything to Isaac when he did come over to the main house for dinner. Sarah was drinking a glass of wine in the living room. Abbie was in his usual place in the kitchen, a large glass of scotch beside him, a whole fish sprawled wetly across a big cutting board. He was scaling it angrily and haphazardly with a fillet knife. Isaac got a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sat at a chair in the dining room and stared at the table. The silence—Abbie wasn’t even listening to music—drew into a dark vapor that seeped into the room like a bad smell. Isaac felt he couldn’t bear it anymore and pulled out his phone. It buzzed as he typed. Then Abbie pounded his fist on the counter and asked him who the fuck he was talking to, and Isaac told him it was none of his fucking business, and Abbie said he paid for the phone, he paid for it, and it was Goddamn well his business; everything that went on in that house was his business. Then Isaac said, “Fuck you, I hate you, both of you, and I wish I were dead.” Then Abbie said, “Fine, kill yourself, you ungrateful, you snide little shit, you furtive little pervert, you pornographer; I can’t believe you’re my son.” Then Isaac said, “I’m not your fucking son, I’m not, I’m not, and you know it.” Then Abbie was striding across the kitchen with the knife still in his hand, maybe he’d forgotten that he had it there, maybe not, and he had grabbed Isaac by his oversized, borrowed shirt and was dragging him out of the chair. Then Sarah had run across the room and grabbed Abbie’s arm, and he let go of Isaac and pushed her away. She tripped backward and fell onto the stone floor, twisting her wrist and screaming as she caught her fall. Then Isaac had bolted across the room and out one of the glass doors onto the patio and he was running across the field toward the woods. Then Abbie came running out of the house behind him, screaming incoherently, tripping down the terraces as he pounded after the boy. Isaac went into the woods. The house was the only light and it disappeared. It was cloudy and the moon was small. He held an arm in front of him, but the branches pricked him and snapped across his face. He tripped and stumbled forward, crying now, sobbing and gasping as he ran. Abbie came through the trees behind him. Had Isaac run toward the road, maybe, he’d have gotten cleanly away; he could have run for miles and miles, and the old man never would have caught him, but he was too small and lithe to go crashing through the underbrush, and Abbie was huge and angry and came through like a monster made to crush paths through the forest. Isaac tripped for real on a root or a fallen branch. His ankle turned as he fell and when he stood to run again the pain was so intense and so searing that he fell with a sad yelp to the ground in the small clearing. Abbie burst into the clearing and tripped in the same spot and flew gracelessly onto his belly. The knife he was still carrying flew out of his hand and landed in the dirt and leaves. He hauled himself onto his knees and saw the crying boy in front of him try again to stand and again cry out, again weakly, and fall back onto the ground, and then look at the crawling madman who was nevertheless in some way or other his father, his father nearly enough. Isaac sniffed and said, “I sprained my ankle.” Then Abbie was holding him, kneeling beside him, holding him and stroking his hair and crying as well. They were both of them crying in the dimly moonlit woods. Then slowly they stopped crying, and Isaac looked at Abbie and sniffed again and snorted and very nearly laughed and asked, “Did you really think you were going to kill me with a fish knife?” And Abbie sat on the ground and said, “No, no. I don’t know. No.” Then he stood, and he stooped and helped his son onto one foot and put the boy’s other arm around his shoulder. Then they both noticed, at the edge of the clearing, huge and unafraid, silent and unmoving, a tall buck, its hard antlers like the immense branches of an ancient tree, its black eyes the night’s truest version of itself, watching them. Its mouth went in lazy circles as it chewed its cud.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t have been possible without my agent, Gail Hochman, who read the first draft and told me in the nicest possible way that it didn’t make any goddamn sense. I also have to thank my erstwhile editor, Will Menaker, who saw me through a second draft not all that much better than the first, and who, to my regret, has now gone on to pursue his own weird, creative path. Thanks to the whole team at Liveright who stepped in after Will’s departure to see this through with me until the end. Thank you, Trevor, for putting up with my giggling at my own jokes while I wrote them. And thanks to my cranky, rickety old beagle, whose incontinent need to get up at five-thirty every morning forced me out of bed and gave me a couple of hours to write every day before I ran to catch my bus.
ALSO BY JACOB BACHARACH
The Bend of the World
Copyright © 2017 by Jacob Bacharach
All rights reserved
First Edition
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Bacharach, Jacob, author.
Title: The doorposts of your house and on your gates : a novel / Jacob Bacharach.
Description: First edition. | New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W. W. Norton & Company, [2017]
Identifiers: LCCN 2016046981 | ISBN 9781631491740 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Fathers and sons—Fiction. | Single women—Fiction. |
Domestic fiction. | GSAFD: Humorous fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.A335 D66 2017 | DDC 813/.6—dc23 LC
record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016046981
ISBN 978-1-63149-175-7 (e-book)
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