Preston Falls

by David Gates

  “Yess!” says Roger.

  “Oh God,” says Mel.

  “Uh-oh, gender gap,” Champ says. “Some kind of gap. Okay, you can look through, we got Alanis What’s-her-ass, we got Green Day, Green Bay, whatever the hell. My animal companion keeps me up on all this crap.”

  “Yeah, guess what he’d be listening to if I let him.” Tina, holding an imaginary mike, sings, “Sometoms it’s hord, tuh be a wum-mun.”

  “She lies,” says Champ.

  “Could we have Alanis?” says Mel.

  Roger pretends to vomit. And they all troop through the dining room, into the kitchen and out the door, like a happy family.

  Willis goes back into the kitchen, and Jean looks up from chopping. “I take it you think he’s all right to drive.”

  “What, because someone’s in a decent mood they’re not fit to be behind the wheel?”

  “He’s been drinking,” she says. “On top of whatever else he does.” She cuts the stem out of a green pepper. The horn honks.

  “He’s had a can of beer, for Christ’s sake.” Willis looks out the window and waves. “Now. What can I do?”

  “It would help if you put the chicken and the vegetables on the skewers.” With the knife, she pushes chunks of the pepper into the pile of other vegetables on the cutting board.

  “Ah. So I take it we’re shishking.”

  “The chicken’s in a bowl in the refrigerator,” she says. “Don’t throw out the marinade, please?”

  “Using it to baste?” See? He knows. “Yes,” she says.

  He takes out the earthenware bowl with the blue rings. She’s been marinating the chicken in her usual pink goop: raspberry Dannon Light plus whatever else. “Hey, the old Lost Frank,” he says. “So. Where did the skewers get to?”

  “They’re on the counter,” she says.

  “Ah,” he says. “What do you know. If they’d been a snake, dot dot dot.”

  He gets down the oblong white platter, then washes his hands at the sink again (more Lemon Joy) to show he’s oh so careful about contamination. Under cover of the running water he chants, in Nigga With Attitude voice, “Mah ahdentity bah itself causes vahlence.” Then glances over his shoulder. She couldn’t have heard him anyway; she’s in the dining room, folding paper napkins into triangles.

  He takes a skewer in his right hand and with his left thumb and forefinger picks the first chunk of translucent chicken out of the goop. Meat that light shines through: does that fucking nail it or what? Fit emblem for Man! For are we not all of us meat that light shines through? And is it not meet that we should be meat? He holds it up and runs the skewer right through the son of a bitch—zow! Take that, you fuck.

  He turns around and there’s Jean, pinching three water glasses in each hand. She takes them into the dining room; he skewers a square of green pepper, then a piece of whatever this other thing is.

  A peal of thunder: a sharp crack widening and deepening into a kaboom that rattles the windows.

  Rathbone comes scuttling into the kitchen, tail between his legs, and Willis strokes his head; poor bastard’s trembling. Then in comes Jean. “Oh my God,” she says. “They’re out in that car with the top down.”

  “I assume Curtis has the sense to put his top up in a thunderstorm,” he says. “Anyhow, a car’s supposedly the safest place to be.”

  “Yes. Thank you. I’m aware of that.”

  “Okay, fine,” he says. “I’m going to go try to get the fucking grill under cover.”

  He opens the screen door and stares at the sky: dark now all the way down to the horizon. There’s this weird hush, then another rolling thunderclap. He goes out to the hibachi—the flames have died and the briquets are white at the edges—picks it up by the wooden handles and starts for the open doorway of the woodshed. A breeze comes up, leaves rustle overhead, and a raindrop hits the charcoal with a hiss and a wisp of smoke. He makes it underneath the woodshed roof just as the heavens open and the rain comes roaring down. Faster than he would’ve thought possible, a plinky tune starts up where something’s wrong with the gutter.

  Thunderclap.

  He looks out at the rain, coming down so hard it raises a mist above the ground, and spots the boombox sitting out by the plastic chairs. He should at least unplug the orange cord in the kitchen before lightning strikes the boombox, races along the cord and nukes out everything in the house. Or is that idiotic? He turns and looks at the fucking hill of firewood blocking the door into the house. He’s nerving himself up to make a run for it, when here comes the convertible—with the top down—pulling up to the kitchen door, lights on, wipers going madly. Mel and Roger scramble over the sides of the car as Tina opens her door; the three of them dash for the house, but Champ just sits there behind the wheel. He looks in the rearview mirror, slicks back his sopping hair with both hands, then opens the door and walks through the rain over to the woodshed. “Fifty fuckin’ times I had that son of a bitch top up and down,” he says. “Switch must’ve got wet or something.”

  “It won’t go up?” says Willis.

  Champ puts index finger to temple and speed-talks: “The sum of the square root of an isosceles triangle is equal to the hypotenuse of the other two sides.” He slicks back his hair again. “Listen, how about we move some of this shit to one side so I can get the thing under cover?”

  “Try it, I guess,” says Willis. “It’s pretty big. Might get it partway in.”

  “Hey, just what the little woman says, nurk nurk nurk.”

  When they come into the kitchen, Jean’s just mopping the muddy floor where Tina and the kids came through. “That’s awful about your top,” she says to Champ. “You’re welcome to take a warm shower when Tina gets out. You just have to wait a few minutes for the hot water to build up again. It’s a little primitive up here.”

  Champ goes stiff and raises a palm. “Me like primitive. You not worry. Hey-ya hey-ya hey-ya hey-ya.”

  Jean turns to Willis. “Did you get the grill under cover?”

  He snaps her a salute.

  Champ points to the platter stacked with shish kebabs. “Us heap good plenty eat.” Rubs his stomach. “Me checkum squaw.”

  “How are the coals?” Jean says.

  “Getting there,” says Willis.

  She fetches a sigh. “How long until it’s ready to cook?”

  “Probably by the time everything’s together it should be ready.”

  “Everything is together,” she says.

  Well, who could resist? “Isn’t it pretty to think so,” he says. Then he adds, “I guess we could start bringing shit out.”

  He gallantly holds a garbage bag over her as she bears the platter to the woodshed, then drags over a cinderblock. She sets the platter on it; he takes a skewer and lays it on the grill.

  “Why don’t I do that?” she says. “You could take the platter in and wash it.”

  “How’re you going to get all this shit back to the house?”

  She looks at him. “You are going to bring the platter back here,” she says. “After you have washed it.”

  “Ah,” he says. “Silly me.” Then he stands there.

  “You have heard of salmonella? Or is this all beneath your notice?”

  “Got it.” He salutes again. “I had not been clear as to why it was that the platter had to be washed. I now understand.” He takes up the platter and stalks out into the rain.

  In the kitchen, he cracks another tallboy, takes three monster gulps and waits for the rush. The rush: dream on. But he thinks he maybe feels just the slightest little added distance from things. When he’s got the platter washed—not just rinsed, as he could’ve done with no one the wiser, but washed, with Lemon Joy—he can’t find the fucking dish towels. He flumps into the dining room like the prince of all put-upons to see if they’re in here for some reason, then glances into the living room: Champ and Tina are sprawled on the couch, her bare foot at the crotch of his jeans, his leg up to the knee under her sleeveless sundress.


  Champ looks up and sees Willis looking. “Hey,” he says. “So when’s din-din?” He looks out the window—to misdirect Willis’s gaze?—and eases his bare foot from between Tina’s thighs.

  Willis consults an imaginary wristwatch, scowls and barks, “Ten minutes, Mr. Whiteside.”

  “Can we do anything?” says Tina. She’s rubbing the sole of her foot along Champ’s fly: couple inches up, couple inches down.

  “Just make sure your hands are clean when you come to the table,” Willis says. “We like to keep it sterile around here.”

  “Sounds hot,” she says.

  Willis polishes off the rest of the tallboy, cracks another one and gulps down about half of that. And as he’s bringing the platter back out to the woodshed, son of a bitch if he doesn’t feel like he’s getting a little buzz on. This fleeting moment—a late-summer rainstorm slowly letting up, a bird’s sad little rain song, the muskiness of the country air—will never come again. So fuck it.

  Squatting on the dirt floor of the woodshed, Jean lifts a skewer and tilts her head to peek at the underside. She always worries that the vegetables will burn before the chicken’s cooked, but it always turns out okay. Except the vegetables always get a little burned. Well, fine; she’s not Martha Stewart. And nobody else, frankly, is lifting a finger. Though in fairness, Willis has been helping—here he is with the platter. Still, she’s seen about enough of that salute.

  When she finally sets the shish kebabs on the dining room table, she sees Champ and Tina on the couch in the living room. “Hey hey hey,” he says.

  “Lunch is ready,” she says. Absolutely classic: this man going Hey hey hey while she runs herself ragged. And the girlfriend, what’s her problem? Recuperating from her shower? Jean could’ve used a shower too. She steps into the hall and hears herself yell the kids’ names like a fishwife.

  Willis pokes his head in from the kitchen. “So we need two more chairs, right?”

  “If everybody intends to sit, yes.”

  “We got ’em, we got ’em,” Champ says, pulling Tina to her feet and leading her by the hand toward the kitchen.

  Willis goes to the sink and washes his hands with Lemon Joy one more time, just to be pissy, then wipes them on his jeans and brings what’s left of his beer into the dining room. He hears the kids trudging down the stairs and Mel saying, “Cut it out, Roger.”

  Champ and Tina, each carrying a chair, squeeze through the doorway. “Now the motorcade is making a sharp left on Elm,” Champ says. “We can see the President waving—”

  “Will you stop?” says Tina.

  “You can’t say Texas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.”

  “Why can’t he be into the Civil War?” says Tina.

  “Anywhere anybody likes,” says Jean. They all sit. Roger pointedly next to Champ, Mel pointedly not next to Roger. Rathbone lies down on his side in the corner, looking lonesome and defeated.

  “Good dog,” says Willis. One thing they’ve done right, at least: not feeding the dog at the table.

  “Does anybody care for lemonade?” Jean says. Willis wonders when she found time to make lemonade.

  “I’m set,” says Champ.

  “I’m fine, thanks,” says Tina. They’re both working on tallboys.

  Willis says nothing. Seems better than heaping it on.

  “Me,” says Roger.

  “Is that a yes-please?” says Jean.

  “Yeah,” says Roger.

  “Yes please,” says Mel.

  “Yes please,” says Roger in a pinchy voice.

  “Hey hey hey, and what have we here?” says Champ, rubbing his hands.

  “Roger?” says Jean. “Once more and you have a time-out.”

  “Chicken droit du seigneur,” says Willis. This jeu d’esprit just came to him.

  “Ooh la la,” says Champ.

  “Well, you told me to say yes please,” says Roger.

  “You have a time-out,” says Jean. “Go. Up to your sister’s room.”

  Roger shrugs and gets up. Mel stares down at her plate.

  When he’s trudged into the living room, heading for the stairs, Jean aims a finger-and-thumb pistol at the doorway and goes Pyew. “I’m sorry about his behavior today,” she says. Willis waits to hear her add that Roger’s not always like this, so he can say something cutting. But she leaves it at that.

  “Don’t even think about it,” says Tina. “I was a bratty kid at that age. Jean, this looks so excellent.”

  Champ looks at Tina and does zip-your-lip. Tina frowns in puzzlement.

  “Ahem,” Willis says to Champ. “You were supposed to say, ‘Why do you call it chicken droit du seigneur?’ ”

  “Anything for a giggle,” says Champ. “Okay, why?”

  “Because I get the first piece.” Willis grabs a skewer, puts it on his own plate and passes the platter to Tina.

  Champ just looks at him. “That was the punch line?”

  “Please help yourselves,” Jean says. So at least somebody got it. Then she looks over at Mel, which really pisses Willis the fuck off. It was deliberately over the kids’ heads, for Christ’s sake. And Mel’s not paying attention anyway. She’s looking over at Roger, who’s peeking around the doorway, giving her the finger.

  “Mo-ther?” Mel says.

  The way Willis feels—he’s buzzed, no question—they can all take a flying fuck. This will never be over.

  5

  When it clears up, late in the afternoon, Willis takes Champ and Tina for a walk to the top of the hill. Jean claims she’s got stuff in the house to take care of; Mel, friend of the rain forest, stays inside cultivating her boredom; Roger’s having yet another time-out, this time for calling Mel a cunt.

  On the path, sunbeams slant with false cheer through the dripping trees. At last, breathing hard, they stand in wet grass on the hilltop and look across at other hilltops. “Shit, it’s already fall up here,” Champ says.

  “Hey, this is the North Country, bro,” Willis says, meaning he’s man enough to take it. In fact, he’s been trying not to notice the few red leaves.

  Back at the house, Champ and Tina go upstairs and Willis gets a start on stacking that wood. When they come down, an hour later, Champ tries to tinker with his top, gives up and insists on taking them out to dinner, to celebrate Willis’s quote liberation.

  Jean’s not thrilled, but she’s also not thrilled at the prospect of getting a dinner together for these people she just got a big lunch together for. She calls the Bjorks to ask if that invitation to swim still holds and if it could possibly be stretched so the kids could stay for dinner. Jean is never this pushy, but the Bjorks owe them one: last summer the Willises took the Bjork kids overnight so Arthur and Katherine could go to a resort on Lake Champlain for a twenty-four-hour Marriage Intensive.

  The Bjorks live on 82nd between Central Park and Columbus; God knows why they chose Preston Falls for a weekend place. Though their house is great: a big old two-and-a-half-story Federal on Watson Road. White clapboards, dark-green shutters, red barn, pond with a dock and a sandy beach—your basic $750,000 country retreat, which they probably got for like one seventy-five because it’s in Preston Falls. He’s a something at ABC and Jean’s forgotten what she does. Lawyer? They put up with the Willises because otherwise it’s down to the locals, whom Katherine calls “a bit rough-hewn.” Jean knows what she means. Once, at an auction, Mel befriended a pretty, grubby little girl who called her father “fart-face” and got smacked across the mouth by her three-hundred-pound mother, whose sloppy arms were as big around as the child’s waist. Sorry, but Jean has zero regard for these people.

  Willis herds everybody into the Cherokee: Jean shotgun, Mel in back between Champ and Tina. Roger refuses to sit on his mother’s lap and share her seat belt but climbs over everybody into the wayback, where of course he starts whining about getting carsick. (The dirt roads are in washboard mode, because the town can’t afford to grade.) At the Bjorks’, the kids disappear and the adults do their da
nce. Stay for a drink? Gee, wish we could. Willis notices that Arthur Bjork’s got this fucking cap on: P inside a star, from some old Negro League team. (He recognizes it because he once priced these caps himself.) Watching him and Champ together might be fun, but only in retrospect.

  “Why don’t I go in back with Tina,” Jean tells Champ. “Be a little more room for your legs.”

  “No-no-no-no-no,” says Champ. “Plenty of room. Fuckin’ Taj Mahal back here.”

  “Taj Mahal?” says Tina.

  “Really, do take the front,” Jean says. “I never get to ride in back.”

  “Well, if that’s your dream.”

  “Yes, that’s my dream,” she says.

  For the next two hours they drive around Vermont and New York State, looking for a place Champ thinks has the right vibe: nothing log, nothing steakhousey, nothing too seventies (by which he seems to mean big windows with plants) and nothing that calls itself an “inn.” And no Mexican. He tells Willis about a document that says a George Bush of the CIA briefed the FBI about something the day after Kennedy was shot; the CIA claims this was a different George Bush, but researchers managed to track down that George Bush and he says it wasn’t him. Willis catches bits of what Jean’s talking about back there with Tina: shit about kids and school, how lucky she is that her sister will be around while Willis is away. But he knows she must be ready to jump out of her fucking skin; Jean hates just aimlessly driving.

  At last Willis remembers this place called the Old Tuscany, on the access road to one of the big ski areas on the other side of Manchester. He and Jean ate there once and it was okay. Pretentious enough to be camp: maybe that’s the vibe. He pulls over onto a sandy shoulder—“What are we doing?” Jean says—and makes a U-turn. Champ tries to find a Christian station, but Willis heads that off and gets Hot Country, which Jean dislikes but will usually sit still for.

  “Isn’t that a new awning?” says Willis, when they finally get to the entrance. White canvas with gold trim and a lion rampant.

  “I wouldn’t know,” says Jean.