Winner of the National Book Award: A Novel of Fame, Honor, and Really Bad Weather

by Jincy Willett

Guy, who looked like a lacquered chicken pox victim—Hilda had gone insane with Off—stood gazing at Conrad with what had to be simple hatred, suffering having burned away his pretensions, and said nothing, and Hilda opened her mouth, clearly about to say, “Of course we’re giving up, I’ve got to get him home, he’s in agony,” and then closed it again.

  “Hell, no,” said Tim, without conviction, and a muted grumble of assent arose from the rest, even the DeVilbisses.

  “He’s right,” said Anna. “We’re almost there. Look!” She pointed up and over the trees to the south, where an osprey appeared, briefly, and glided out of sight. She ran ahead of Conrad, followed by everybody else, leaving Abigail and me standing dumbstruck with astonishment and chagrin.

  “What the hell?!?” we said.

  I picked up one of the shopping bags, and, together, we brought up the rear.

  Anna and I walked across the footbridge to the far side of the swamp, where Conrad had suggested we have our picnic. Everyone else took the long way, the dike path, rather than chance the bridge, which, while not rickety, consisted only of two-by-ten boards laid across the water on simple posts, with a single thick wire railing. It isn’t the least bit dangerous—even if you fall off, the water is only up to your hips—but they seemed determined not to risk even the slightest chance of enjoying the occasion.

  There were three pairs of ospreys nesting in the poles above the bridge, and we stopped and studied all three nests, and listened to the warning cries of the males, out hunting for baby food, but not letting us out of their sight for a moment. The male osprey is much smaller than his mate. Their cries are heartbreaking, like the cries of hawks and eagles, lonely and hopeful. And like the other large predators, they do not flock together. Luckily for us.

  We stopped and stood, wordless, and waited out a changing of the guard, the male returning to nestle, the female soaring out to hunt. We stopped long enough for the day’s mischief to get underway. Anna glanced across the water. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Something’s up.”

  From our perspective the group was smaller than the osprey nest, but we could clearly see that they had formed a circle, with the largest of their number captive at its center, like children playing Little Sally Saucer. I saw a large group of domestic ducks do this once, by Johnson’s Pond when Anna was little, and then another duck came into the circle, grabbed the duck that was It by the back of the neck, and proceeded, apparently, to strangle it. Anna screamed and I ran into the quacking circle, stomping and yelling “Stop it! Stop it!” And only when I got up close to the grappling pair did I realize they were mating. Wild ducks, I explained to Anna (Abigail laughing uproariously all the while), do not behave like this. Although prenuptial rituals can be quite lovely, the act itself is never gorgeous, at least not with the higher orders—Cecropia moths being another story—but the ugliness of those white ducks had, I was sure, something to do with their domestication, their centuries of familiarity with us.

  We hurried toward the ominous circle of humans. I think now of Frank Calef and the night of the ice circle, and I wonder if even on this humiliating day she didn’t, at some level, enjoy all the attention. She certainly didn’t act as though she did. When we got close enough to hear snatches of conversation Abigail was cursing out Tansy Wasserman, repeatedly calling her a name that sounded weirdly like “prune-eater.” “You prune-eater!” she cried, sticking her face right in Tansy’s. “You ugly silly dried-up prune-eater!” This was, in fact, what she was saying. Even more strangely, Tansy, having made peace with her ticks, was not taking umbrage, was instead stroking my sister’s shoulder and nodding in rhythm with Abigail’s imprecations, as though in utter accord.

  Across the circle from Tansy, behind Abigail’s back, the DeVilbisses quivered, white with terror, having more sense than Tansy Wasserman, but still they stood fast, even as Abigail whirled to attack. “Fuck your concern. Fuck your friendship. Fuck you!”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. No one heard me.

  “It’s no use,” said Conrad Lowe.

  “We will care for you,” said Tansy, “no matter what you say, no matter what you do.”

  Tim Paine stared at Tansy and said nothing. He seemed to be wondering how he got involved in the whole mess. He’s the real thing, I think, a genuine alcoholic.

  “Just hear us out,” ventured Guy.

  “I’ve heard enough,” said Abigail, “you pompous asshole.”

  Hilda waved me over. “It’s an intervention,” she whispered, and when I failed to respond to her news flash, “We’re confronting Abigail.”

  “With what?”

  “Her, um, body.”

  Abigail was crying with rage. I gave up on Hilda and demanded a coherent explanation from her husband.

  “Her weight, Dorcas,” Guy said, his mouth even prissier than usual. “We’re all worried about her heart. I’m sure you are too.”

  I stepped into the circle and stood by my sister’s shaking body. I still didn’t understand. Of course I tried at first to take their meaning literally, but rejected out of hand the possibility that any civilized group, even this one, was capable of such behavior. The only thing I could figure was that everyone was uncomfortable and out of sorts and spontaneously took it out on Abigail. “You are all,” I said, “acting like children. Go home. There”—I pointed at the westward path—“is the way back to the lot. Take it. You don’t belong here.”

  Tim raised his hand. “It wasn’t our idea, Dorcas. It was Conrad’s idea.”

  I could readily believe this, even without knowing what he was talking about, the atmosphere being so foul, my lovely day in shambles.

  “Shut up, Tim,” said Conrad.

  “And what idea,” I asked him, “was that?”

  Tim paused. “Diabetes?”

  “What?”

  “Heart trouble,” said Tansy.

  Guy cleared his throat. “Not to mention circulatory difficulties.”

  “Your sister is at risk.” Conrad regarded me mildly, as though we were chatting about the weather. “And I don’t want to lose her. I’ve tried gentle persuasion, but it hasn’t worked.”

  Your sister is at risk. This, from him, was as obviously true as the rest of his speech, whatever it was about, was obviously false. I turned to look at Abigail, and she was staring at him, her face pale and wet. She was suffering, betrayed, and her look of naked hurt blocked out the rest of us. She was alone with him, trying to understand what he wanted from her. And what he wanted, I saw then for the first time, was to destroy her utterly. She was indeed at risk.

  “Jeez,” said Tim, “I didn’t know it was going to be this bad.”

  “It seems cruel,” said Hilda, “because—”

  “—because it is,” said Tim. “We don’t have any right to do this.”

  “We have,” said Tansy, “the duty to do it.”

  “Because we love her,” said Hilda.

  “Well, I hope nobody ever loves me that much,” Anna muttered. She seemed to understand the scene.

  I was still confused. Clearly they’d all been doing something bad to Abigail—if it was Conrad’s idea, it had to be bad—and yet the only thing I could imagine “confronting” her with was the awfulness of her married state. Anna stepped into the circle and attempted to comfort her mother, who paid her no attention. Abigail had stopped crying, and color was coming back to her face, but she didn’t take her eyes from Conrad.

  Conrad stared back, the two of them perfectly intimate, the rest of us not there. “I told you,” he said. “We had a deal.”

  “Have,” said Abigail.

  “Had. I found your little stash.”

  Abigail caught her breath, blinked, rallied. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “That makes two of us,” I said. “Stash?”

  “You had enough stowed away to gag Judy fucking Garland.”

  Abigail raised her head and attempted an imperious tone. “I see. Well, for your information, that
‘little stash’ was for Halloween.”

  Now I was truly confounded, for it seemed, from the few clues I was allowed, that my sister was supposed to be some sort of dope fiend. This made absolutely no sense. Abigail could drink any man—any woman, except me—under the table, and we were both too old for marijuana.

  “Planning ahead, were you? For the kiddies?”

  “Abigail! What is he talking about?” Were they selling dope to children?

  “Believe what you want to. And I’ll thank you to stay out of my underwear drawer. I don’t fumble around in your—”

  “Gotcha!” Conrad grinned evilly.

  “Will someone please answer me.”

  “I never went near your underwear drawer, sweetmeat. I wouldn’t be likely to, would I, unless I were going into the parachute business.”

  Abigail swore, vilely, and stamped her foot, and hung her great wretched head.

  Conrad now addressed me, with his usual gross intimacy. “Stashed behind the bathroom bowl,” he whispered. “Like The Godfather.”

  I gaped at the man, who had obviously gone insane, along with everyone else, me included. I don’t know what upset me more, my sister at bay or myself ignored. Which is more humiliating? To twist in a baleful spotlight? To flail and wail, invisible? In despair I turned to Anna. “Please tell me what this means,” I said.

  But even Anna ignored me. She stepped in front of her mother and stared Conrad in the face. “Why don’t you leave her alone,” she said, in an even voice, with a hint of genuine curiosity in it.

  Conrad blinked at the upstart, momentarily confused by her unscripted entrance. I think he had always dealt with Anna by not dealing with her, by pretending she didn’t exist (which was easy, as she lived with me, and Abigail, not being any sort of worrier, probably didn’t mention her much). Anna didn’t fit into his schemes. Which was odd, really, given his own mythological childhood. He saw her as neither ally nor enemy. Even now she just blocked his way, like a spring sapling on a narrow path, and I watched him debate whether to go around her or cut her down. He chose prudence. Luckily for him.

  He turned away from Anna and Abigail, and addressed his merry band. “Heath bars!” he proclaimed, spreading his arms like an evangelist on a roll. This was rather like his performance at the Rational Tap, except that now he wasn’t drunk. “A ten-pack of Charleston Chews! Giant slabs of Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut!”

  The crowd gasped. Wasserman shook her head in exaggerated disbelief, her face a billboard of pity and disgust.

  “Wait a minute,” I said.

  “Stuck on the back of the toilet tank!”

  “How?” asked Tim.

  “Duct tape!”

  “Hold it just a minute. See here. Do you mean this whole thing is about—”

  From Abigail came a low growl that threatened to rise up into a shriek, which it did. “I hope you all fuck yourselves blind and die!”

  “We know you don’t mean that,” said Hilda.

  “—food???”

  Hilda looked at me as though I was crazy. “Of course it’s about food, Dorcas. Weren’t you listening?”

  I took a long breath. “And he put you up to this. Didn’t he?”

  “It’s not a question of putting up to,” said the articulate Tansy. “We were all of us concerned about Abby.”

  “No we weren’t,” said Tim, softly.

  “And why,” I asked them all, “did you imagine you had the right to do this thing?”

  “It’s not a question of right,” said Guy. “It’s a question of duty.”

  “No it’s not,” said Tim. “I’m sorry, ladies. I’m really and truly sorry.”

  Conrad said nothing. He regarded me with exaggerated insouciance. Perhaps, I thought, I had him worried.

  “Guy,” I said, “do you know what’s wrong with you?”

  “Now, Dorcas,” said Hilda.

  “Hilda. Do you know what’s the matter with you?”

  Tansy actually reached for me, to touch me.

  “Tansy! Do you know what your problem is?”

  “I know,” she said, “that you’re having certain feelings right now.”

  “Would you all like to know what’s wrong with each and every one of you?” Silence. “Well, answer me.”

  Guy cleared his throat. “Dorcas—”

  “Answer my question.”

  “Well,” he said, “I guess you could say I’m—”

  “I could say a lot of things. The point is, I won’t. The point is that I would never, ever, even in the shadow of the gallows, look another adult in the eye and tell him what’s wrong with him.” I was breathing hard now, and advancing on Guy. “This is what we do to children. We are not children. We are grown people. We are fully formed. We are each of us responsible for and to ourselves. We have a social contract. We treat one another with the respect owed to equals. We see one another’s faults and we keep our own counsel.” Hilda put a protective arm around her terrorized husband and opened her mouth to speak. “We do not presume,” I spat, “to improve our friends. Decent people do not take such burdens upon themselves. We are supposed to be decent people. We are all, against the evidence of this sorry day”—and now I was shouting, my voice as deep as I could make it—“mature adults!”

  The right side of Guy’s openmouthed face disappeared behind a great magical glob of what I first took to be osprey shit, so that I immediately looked up, searching for the great soaring deus ex machina, and I missed seeing the same excellent thing happen to Hilda’s caftanned bosom. “Look out!” yelled Tim. I continued scanning the skies (again, everybody but me caught on immediately; it seems that on this day I was doomed to be colossally obtuse), until Hilda shrieked, “No, Abigail, no!” and I looked down just in time to see a milk-white comet streak past my shoulder, as though fired from behind, and strike Guy’s face again, this time square on his open mouth.

  It had of course been fired from behind, by my sister, who now yelled at me to “duck!” Amazingly, instead of stupidly seeking out pintails and mergansers, I took her meaning right away, and I dropped and turned, and there was Abigail rising up with two fistfuls of potato salad, both of which she zinged with great accuracy at Tansy Wasserman’s crotch.

  “All right.” This from Anna, who was, though not jumping up and down and clapping her hands, smiling at her mother with measured pride.

  “Dorcas,” Hilda pleaded now, “do something.” She was troweling glop off her husband’s blushing face. Intellectual Guy, the a priori king, was having quite a day for himself. He had somehow opened the wrong door and stumbled into real experience, and now, as nature, human and otherwise, howled about him he fumbled visibly for an appropriate reaction, but could do no better than social unease. He tried on a bemused smile, as though his thoughts were elsewhere, a ruse so inept that it was almost heroic. Picture Christ, crucified, trying to recall whether he’d turned the oven off. Potato salad splatted on his forehead and his wife squealed, but genial Guy, at that very moment, apparently remembered something terrifically funny, and just had to laugh.

  A lot of things happened in no particular order. Wasserman announced that it was “good” that Abigail was dealing so honestly with her anger, and Abigail chased her down and squished the rest of the potato salad down her bodice, and Conrad, who had been extremely quiet, told everybody to calm down, she was out of ammo now, said this in a bored drawl as if half wakened from a Sunday nap, and then someone handed her the cold roast chicken, which she ripped apart and fired, again with great accuracy, at people’s heads, bloodying Wasserman’s nose with a drumstick. Food flew everywhere, carrot curls, pickles, strawberry cheesecake, mostly toward Wasserman and the DeVilbisses, but Tim Paine got it too, tomato slices and hot pastrami, and then there was an oval of silence, like the center of a hurricane, and Abigail stood before her husband with a Tupperware bowl of peach compote in her hand and murder in her eye.

  I could see plainly, and so could he, that he had lost control, that he was in the op
en, naked, unarmed, and she hissed at him, “I’m going to kill you, you sick son of a whore.”

  Slowly, slowly, with exquisite care, he raised his hand to her, index finger extended, pointing at her nose, the fingertip coming to rest an inch from her face, and holding steady. His breathing was shallow, his body taut, he focused, expressionless, upon her eyes, as if trying to hypnotize a cobra. Abigail froze. Taking heart, he began to speak to her, softly, seducing her, perhaps, or promising retaliation, promising something anyway, it was probably all the same to those two. His deep intent fascinated me: I had never seen him work hard at anything, and now he behaved as though everything of value hung in the balance, and for him I guess it did. He was the dominant male, status was all, and if she managed to make him look foolish—if, say, she dumped the compote over his head—he would lose his crown for all time. And just when I saw that this was true, tears sprang to my sister’s eyes, washing the fight right out of them, and Anna, standing next to me, sighed and slumped.

  “Oh, well,” Anna said.

  Do it! I wanted to shout, Let him have it! Now! Do it now!

  But I am not a screamer. I am a civilized woman, not a creature of impulse, nope, not me. I willed her to be strong, that’s all, I wished it with all my heart, and so I got to watch my sister crumple up into a sodden heap. And that was that.

  After this defining moment other things happened, in no particular order and to no good end. Tim Paine, still wishing to make amends, bless his heart, lobbed a deviled egg at Conrad Lowe, which of course struck him white first and bounced away harmlessly, unacknowledged by anybody. Tansy embraced Abigail and was not disemboweled. We picked up after ourselves and trudged back to the parking lot, and on that dreary march, dear Anna, resilient as the child she still was, spotted chickadees, nuthatches, a pair of yellowthroat warblers, and an American redstart, and a swarm of yellow-jackets discovered poor mayonnaised Guy, whose whimpers still echo in my brain on hot sleepless summer nights, and Conrad made Abigail apologize, formally, to everybody, one by one.

  The phrase “window of opportunity,” not then in currency, is all too apt, and today, with dark rain lashing the roof and storm winds punching at the north wall, I recognize that one instant, when she faced him in fury, poised to annihilate but not to kill, as a tiny blue window on a sunlit world: not paradise perhaps, but lost forever anyway. I let my sister down that day. I did hand her the cold roast chicken. Surprised hell out of myself, too, when I did it. Thought it was a big deal. It wasn’t. It wasn’t nearly enough.