CHAPTER 16
Sheldon digs in the hard frozen ground
ON A HOT SUMMER AFTERNOON in Chicago—not two years ago. Ro came up beside me in the basement gallery of the Art Institute, in one of those reliably lonely rooms containing colonial furniture. Funny how it happened. We just ran into each other. He was in town giving a speech. I was there—on a rare trip away from my island—at the insistence of my niece—for a wedding. Ro and Shelly, we picked up where time had left us. As though we had just seen each other that morning in the dining hall or crossing the courtyard.
Stone & Schell—a little worse for wear—we ambled through the folk art rooms. We passed before a hand-carved coffin; a wooden doll; a miniature winterscape. We paused at a painting of Eve and her grinning serpent. Ro laughed. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. He wanted to get a drink. He knew a place. And so we left the museum. We found a taxi, and he directed the driver to a Clark Street bistro just about to get too trendy for its own good. On that August afternoon the place was empty. Roman and I walked in and sat down. The lone busboy setting tables for dinner came over and said they weren’t serving for a while. Roman said that we just wanted some booze. Could we get some booze?
The busboy brought us gin and ice.
Roman drank. He wiped his brow.
“Sheldon Schell,” he said. “The shipwrecked life must agree with you. You haven’t changed. You still look like a fucking lunatic.”
He told me that he was having an affair with his sons’ au pair.
His sons were named Julian and Chester. He called them Jules and Chet. One was a natural athlete. The other wore very thick eyeglasses. He didn’t say the au pair’s name. Only that she had inspired him to write his latest book.
He always knew how to get to me.
He told me about the girl.
Roman, in an elegant two-button summer suit, drew me into his latest drama. I had no taste for gin, but I drank. The busboy refilled our glasses. I heard a radio playing in the kitchen. Roman’s white shirt was rumpled. He wore a necktie, slightly loosened, of light green silk.The line of his oyster-colored jacket suited his broad bulk. His fair hair was clipped short and the recession of his hairline gave his brow a high, sort of holy glow. His affair had inspired him to write a torrid faux tell-all about a suburban scandal.
He knew what his readers wanted. They were his, after all. They had moved out of cities; they were denizens of the cul-de-sac, and they didn’t want to feel ashamed of it. They didn’t want to apologize for their minivans or playdates, for their dashed dreams or catalog shopping. Forty was the new twenty. His readers were responsible fathers and caring mothers. They carted kids to soccer practice; to Sunday school; to animated movies at the Cineplex. They were concerned about rising crime; gangs, drugs; about toxins, terrorism, junk food, and TV shows with content unsuitable for children; about internet predators, obesity, and kiddy porn. They were moral moms and high-minded dads, sure; but once, not too long ago, they had been kids themselves: young and wild and high, fucking strangers in the unisex bathrooms of downtown dance clubs. He knew. Roman knew! He was one of them. He had been one of them. He had seen it for himself. Don’t you remember?
Didn’t I remember?
He leaned forward. The table shook.
Roman was a frantic drunk. His cheeks burned.
He picked up and drank—that is, he tried to drink—from his empty glass.
“Fuck it,” he said.
He looked around. He saw that we were no longer alone.
Waiters moved from table to table. The place was just opening for dinner.
A girl came by and lighted the candles on our table. Ro touched her arm and said something funny. A piano player took on a summertime song.
You’re the tops.
You’re the Colosseum.
A waiter came by.
We ordered.
Ro wanted wine.
The gin glasses were whisked away.
Roman talked about places that he had been and things he had done.
The waiter brought our food on large white plates. Roman’s wife, Dibby, had him off red meat. He was supposed to be watching his cholesterol. He was on a low-sodium macrobiotic diet. He belonged to an athletic club. He worked out. He did yoga and Pilates. In his home, he lamented, his favorite things—cigars, whiskey, cream—were verboten. Roman cut into his rare oeuf au cheval. He salted his pomme frites. That night he really enjoyed himself. He ate. He drank. We sat for a long time. He said that his wife wanted to fire the au pair. Oh well, they would find another girl; wouldn’t they? He would find another girl. He buttered his pain de campagne. He talked about Pru. He sighed. It was still a helluva thing, even after all these years, about Pru. He told me that he had once made a pass at her. Did I forgive him?
The platter-like plates; the knives and forks and spoons; the big round-bellied wineglasses: everything set upon the table seemed suddenly—ridiculously—an oversized prop, a sight gag for our out-of-date comedy routine.
Roman confessed.
He was not happy.
Or was he just telling me what I wanted to hear?
Just when I most needed to hear it?
“I have one last story in me,” he said.
He drank.
“It’s the story of a brother and a sister,” he said.
“An old story,” I said.
“Ancient,” he said.
“People want the old stories. Don’t they?” I said.
“Who gives a fuck what people want?” he said.
The wine bottle sat between us on the table.
The girl came by and refilled our glasses.
The place was busy now.
And the girl turned away from us.
She moved on to the next table.
He watched her go.
It saddened him, to watch her go.
He lifted his glass.
“All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall outlast our days.”
He broke off.
He looked down at his plate.
He looked at me.
He set his glass on the white tablecloth.
He picked up, one in each hand, his fork and knife.
And just like that: Ro, the nihilist, was gone.
Gone also, his phantom unhappiness.
He grinned.
And he began to essay forth on the merits of corn-fed Kobe beef.
He and his wife were just back from Japan. He talked about the cartoon crazy fashions of teenagers in Tokyo.
He ordered for dessert gâteau au chocolat.
It grew late and the restaurant filled up.
Soon we left.
Outside as we stood awaiting a taxi, a couple of girls in summer dresses walked by. As they passed us, Roman threw his hands up toward the sky and said with stentorian inflection, “What a piece of work is man!” Then, off-balance, he stumbled; he bent over and vomited on the sidewalk. A taxi arrived, and we went back to his hotel. He wanted me to come up for one last drink. “Amontillado?” I said. He laughed. “Have I done you so many injuries, poor Fortunato?” he asked. In his room we drank. And we spoke of the ruined past and great fallen Babylon. Oh that sweet mysterious harlot! He sputtered to a halt in midsentence. He was sitting on the bed. He fell back across the bed. He passed out—in his two-button oyster suit and white shirt, now untucked; with his chocolatestained necktie of watered silk; his wristwatch indefatigably counting his hours and collecting seconds; his two-tone cap-toe oxfords unlaced; one shoe fell from his foot to the floor—he sprawled on his back like a king in the days of a declining empire.
Somewhere his assassination was being planned.
He gave his speech the next night.
The wedding for which I had come to town was canceled. And I went home, back to my island.
One morning soon after—when I turned on the television—there was stone-sober Roman on a talk show pro
moting his new book, a based-on-a-true-story account of a suburban scandal. It was picked up by a popular national nonfiction book club. And later developed into a ratings-grabbing miniseries. Roman opened up about his marriage; he talked about how fatherhood had changed his priorities. At the end of the segment, the interviewer, a dowager in a leather skirt, put her hand on Roman’s knee. She asked with a skull-tightened smile, “Is there anything better than a true story?”
She said that she couldn’t wait to read the book.
I almost felt sorry for him.
I almost forgot—
Roman was my friend and rival and enemy and conspirator.
Roman Stone was a devoted husband and father. He was bright and occasionally brilliant: a best-selling author; an authority; an expert; a household name; a standard-bearer; attention-getter and roundtable-discussion-opinion-giver. He was respected and beloved.
He was murdered.
And he deserved it.
I will say something that is neither deep nor grave. It needs nonetheless to be said. Pru convinced me of the truth that sometimes beauty comes from hate. Pru was big on Pound and Eliot. She forgave them their sins. Because of what they had given to her. For verse and rhymes like candy. She forgave them even their hatred of her. She couldn’t stop herself from forgiving them.
I must go back to that summer afternoon in the museum when I ran into Ro.
When we walked by Eve and the snake.
When we ambled artlessly through the gallery.
He was in town to give a speech.
I was there for the wedding of my niece.
Eloise’s only child. A spectacular girl called Susu.
Susu was tall and long-limbed. Her eyes were green, her hair black. Just out of college. She had studied the classics. She had had no contact with her father, but Susu, to her mother’s chagrin, had kept his name. El had married again, to Louis Sarasine, the celebrity defense attorney, whose philosophical, legal, and perhaps immoral specialty was the questioning of the nature of the crime by discrediting the memory of the victim. He called himself a memory expert. Can one be such a thing? Well, memory is a poppy-rich field; for the Sarasines lived the good life.
Eloise and Sarasine planned a black-tie white-cake wedding only to have Susu see, or perhaps imagine, a shadow on her dress. And this the girl took as grave symbolism foretelling (her word) that the marriage was ill-fated. Her fiancé was the son of a prominent family. I never met him. I heard that he was heartbroken.
The evening after Ro and I sat in the restaurant—
Eloise was having the groom’s family over for a détente of sorts. There was a commotion about—gifts and guests and caterers. I didn’t have a moment alone with El. This was the reason that I had left the solitude of my island: to see her. So between the ringing phone and Sarasine’s concerns over whether the iced Absolut would hold out—I made my escape. I was on the street, when Susu—running barefoot—carrying her shoes—caught up with me.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
I told her that I was going to the movies.
She didn’t want to go to the movies.
I remember just what she said.
“I don’t want to watch other people doing things. I want to do something.”
And then I recalled Ro’s lecture.
I told her that my old college roommate was giving a lecture.
She was wearing a black dress, for the party. She knelt on the sidewalk and put on her high-heel sandals. She was wearing her large diamond engagement ring.
We caught a taxi.
The lecture was about to start.
The house lights had already dimmed.
We slipped in—and sat in the back row just as Ro was taking the podium.
He was as charming as ever. He was wry and incisive.
He talked of mythology and television.
After the lecture there was a reception.
Susu grabbed my hand.
“Do you really know him?” she asked.
“Who?” I asked.
“Him,” she whispered.
She tilted her head. And lifted just slightly one bare shoulder.
And there was Ro standing by a table heaped up with copies of his books.
He had a pen in one hand and a drink in the other.
Susu reached for a chocolate wafer.
“I love these,” she said.
And she took a bite.
“Can I—may I meet him?” she asked.
It didn’t occur to me—
What a stupid thing it would be—
To introduce Susu Zigouiller, green-eyed ingénue, to Roman Stone, lothario.
I did it. I took her arm. I maneuvered around the girls carrying trays of hors d’oeuvres; through the line of waiting fans clutching copies of Ro’s books.
I brought Susu to Roman.
I saw him look at her.
He looked at her.
He took in her black dress, her young face, her diamond ring.
He seemed to take and take and not stop taking.
“This is—” I told him.
She gave him her hand.
Susu leaned close. He spoke into her ear.
The room was hot and the hum of the crowd was rising up into a less-than-literate roar. A woman tapped me on the shoulder and gave a reproving look. I had cut in line.
Aging academics, readers, critics, girls in slacks, their longsuffering boyfriends—
The crowd pushed.
Susu pushed her dark hair from her face—
There were other people waiting to talk to Roman Stone, author.
He had a stack of books to sign.
I should have taken Susu to the movies that evening.
We were about to leave; Ro got up from his table.
And he called out to me—
“Hold up a minute,” he said. “I wanted to give this to you—”
And he gave me a book.
Susu took it from me as we walked outside into the night.
“Here Comes Everyone,” she said.
She shrugged her bare shoulders and handed the book back to me.
And that—unless you count television—and the grinning ghostly faces in old photographs—is the last time that I saw Roman Stone.
2.
Zigouiller said that whatever he told her now she mustn’t hold it against him. Even though she had every right to. She mustn’t. Did she understand?
3.
What do I know about Roman Stone that no one else knows?
4.
Zigouiller said, “Just listen.”
Eloise closed her eyes.
5.
The story—it was dark and terrifying, as stories told on New Year’s Eve in old houses should be—held us captivated around the fire. We had only just arrived that morning. And winter had followed. Snow fell upon the orchard; fell upon the frozen pond and the fields; was falling white upon the woods, which surrounded us. As the bare branches of trees scratched at the windows, we sat together that night, warm and drunk with good fortune. Roman took charge; it was his father’s house. Ro stood before the grate, prodding the flames with an iron poker. Wren on the sofa finished off the bottle of Bordeaux. There was a blonde girl sitting beside her. I had taken up refuge near the bookshelves, the better to study the dusty leather-bound volumes. Eloise, wrapped in a blanket, sat upon the hearthstones. There were five of us. I, sitting a bit aside from the others, was lost in the ghost story and jarred strangely awake by its conclusion. It has been only with time; it is only now as I look back that I shudder in a different kind of horror.
The house stood lonely and remote. What possessed Roman’s father to keep a house in faraway and desolate South Dakota? Milton Stone had places like this all over the country; houses on unpaved roads; retreats where should the whim or will take him, should necessity strike; should the market bottom out or his latest wife scandalize him; he could hide out for a while. I had expected a rustic cabin; or a clapboard hun
ting lodge—and so was pleased to see the rambling Victorian farmhouse. The caretaker had arranged for everything; and upon our arrival we found the kitchen was well-stocked. Wood was stacked by the fireplace. Candles cast shadows from the wall sconces. There were four-poster beds and claw-footed bathtubs. The girls were charmed. Eloise remarked upon the faded floral wallpaper. I went from room to room in suspect—no, vigilant—exploration. Roman plundered the wine cellar where he discovered a store of aged whiskey. At night we sat before the fire. And it is difficult to recall—whose idea had it been to tell ghost stories?
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