by Mary Cable
Later, I was to remember that rather curious remark. Now, we were close to the ranch house, and a pickup truck outside suggested that someone was at home. I glanced at Vincent’s face and found that it looked more adult than at any time since we had met. Adult and determined.
“Here we are,” I said. “How do you want to do this?”
He said firmly, “I’ve got a plan. You go in and see if he’s there and if he’ll see me. If he won’t, I’ll just go on in anyway.”
“Okay,” I said. “But give me some time.”
“Ten minutes. Then I’m coming in.”
I opened the unlocked screen door and let myself into a cluttered entryway, full of coats and boots. It led directly into a big living room, and there I saw David, his back to me, sitting at a rolltop desk. I knocked and he looked around and saw me and jumped to his feet, obviously shocked.
“Sorry if I startled you,” 1 said.
“My God, Alex, I don’t believe it. What in the world - ?”
“I have to talk to you.”
“Come on in.” He walked toward me slowly. Then he held out his hands and I took them. Then he kissed me on each cheek.
“I don’t believe it,” he said again. He led me toward chairs and a sofa in front of a big stone fireplace. “Would you like a drink?”
“Thanks, but I have to drive back to Santa Fe. This is a short visit.”
“I guess you’re here to lecture me about my custody suit, but whatever mean things you are about to say, I’m glad you came. I want you to know that right now.”
One part of my mind was telling me that there was a lot of gray in his dark hair and that he looked tired and his eyes were sad, but that he was still a man whom I found remarkably attractive. Another part was urging me to get on at once with my mission.
“David,” I said, “someone is with me, waiting in the car. He wants very, very much to see you. Vincent Costanza.”
Right away he backed off from me, shaking his head. “You know I don’t want to see him, Alex.”
“But he wants to see you so badly. Just this once, just for a couple of minutes, David. Suppose you had never met your father! Come on, try to put yourself in the boy’s place.”
“He should put himself in my place.”
“Why should he? Did he start this?”
For the first time, David smiled slightly. “No, he didn’t,” he said. “I’m the one. I fell in love with you.”
I must have looked shaken, because I had not expected that, or anything else about the two of us. Or had I? Had I even been hoping for it?
“We have so many things to say to each other,” he said. “Sit down and let’s talk,”
“It wouldn’t be a good idea. It’s Vincent I want you to talk to.”
“Suppose I go outside and just say hello to him. Then can we talk?”
“For a couple of minutes.”
“For an hour. I’ll send him down to the corral to see the horses.”
“Half an hour,” I said, with misgivings. “But go and see Vincent right now.”
I waited, sitting on Bishy’s Bostonian-looking slipcovered sofa and holding a cat that jumped up in my lap. I felt like an intruder in Bishy’s house, but at the same time I noticed, and took pleasure in disliking, the pattern she had chosen for her slipcovers. It was a print showing women in hoop- skirts and bonnets, chatting with gentlemen in high collars. The people appeared every eight inches or so and between them were trails of ribbons and bowknots. Sentimental. Affected. Just like Bishy, I thought.
After less than ten minutes, I saw Vincent drive past the window in my car, and David returned to the house. He looked grim.
I said, “What happened?”
David said, “If you’d known what he really wanted to do, I don’t think you would have brought him here. He just wanted to tell me what a son-of-a-bitch I am.”
“That’s all? I’m sorry.”
“Mostly he just stared at me. I said I hoped he understood why I didn’t want to meet him - that it was of course nothing I have against him, just that both our lives will work better without the other one. Then I told him I needed to talk family business with you and why didn’t he go down to the corral and watch the guys break in the colt. And then he called me a son of a bitch and a cop-out.” David went over to the bar and poured himself a tot of whiskey, which he tossed off neat. “Don’t worry, I’m not a drunk - not yet - but I wouldn’t mind about six more of those. And do you know why? Because Vincent is right.”
I said, “Vincent thinks you didn’t want him, but he doesn’t know you never had a chance to want him. Or not want him.”
David, who was standing near me, in front of the fireplace, abruptly turned his head away. “Guilt,” he said, after a pause. “I’ve had two sons and I’m drowned in guilt about both of them.”
I could think of nothing to say, no way to help him, until he added, “And guilt about you. All that happened to you.”
Quickly, I said, “I’m fine now. And Vincent will be fine. I understand about the guilt. I’m not telling you never to feel any, but give yourself a rest.”
He came over to sit beside me on the sofa. “That’s hard,” he said.
“I know.”
“Back then, a million bucks went down the drain and it was my own crazy fault. And then Mother and Dad were leaning on me to marry Bishy. But I can’t say they forced me. I was the one at the altar.”
“David,” I said. “There’s no point in going back over all that.”
“Yes, there is, because, Alex, I loved you. I truly loved you. I guess I like to think that if I’d known you were pregnant I’d have asked Bishy for a divorce and you and I would have been married. But I can’t honestly be sure.”
“It wouldn’t have happened.” I remembered what Bishy had said to me that New Year’s morning in the kitchen, and I added, “She’d have told you it wouldn’t be good for you.”
“Anyway,” David went on, “I was what Dad calls a whippersnapper. Too full of myself. Too young, too dumb. I failed you.”
“No,” I said, laying my hand gently, for an instant, on his shirtsleeve. “David, we were two young, dumb whippersnappers.”
This conversation, I thought, should be kept as light as possible, but the mood of it had changed since love had been mentioned. I wanted to say how glad I was to hear that he had truly loved me, and to tell him how overwhelmingly I had loved him, and perhaps still did. But, as usual, I was cautious and held back. After a minute, I said in a cheery tone, “But, come on, let’s not put ourselves down too much. It was a fine time, back then. We made it that way. It’s a good memory.”
“Is that all it is?”
I folded my arms, to keep from touching him again. “Tell me about your life here, David. What interests you?”
He made an effort and said, “I try to keep this ranch going, but I’m not a very good cattleman. I do some voice-overs still, but the truth is, if you don’t live in New York or L.A., they forget about you. I hate it, anyway. It makes me feel like a nonperson. I’ve been drawing lately. You remember, in college I used to draw a lot. I don’t feel like cartoons, though. Maybe things don’t strike me as very funny anymore.”
“Draw what comes.”
“Alex, I wish I could do what you want me to do about Vincent. To make you happy, if nothing else.”
“Maybe you’ll feel like it someday,” I said. “It’s not as if he were alone in the world, you know. I’d feel very sad about him, but he has loving parents and he enjoys life.”
“Does he know exactly who you are?”
“No, only you and I know that. But I’m beginning to think I’ll tell him someday.”
“Maternal instinct?”
“Maybe so. Oz thinks he’s hopeless and Lydia thinks he needs a lot of work, but I like him. He’s perceptive, too. He knows better than to be impressed with people like Lydia and Deck.”
“Good. Very promising,” David said. “Tell him I very much hope we’ll eve
ntually get to be friends. Alex, I would like to kiss you.”
I moved away from him. “Let’s be smart,” I said. “Let’s leave things alone.”
“Why? Things are bad,” he said. “Things need changing. Why do you think I went to court over the Gallegos Ranch? Because I can’t stand my life. Neither can Bishy stand hers. I wanted to get my half of the inheritance and sell it. So that Bishy and I could be divorced and get out of here.”
I was silent, nonplussed by this news.
He said, “How do you and Oz get along?”
“Okay,” I said faintly.
“When I heard, back then, that you two were together again and getting married, I felt desperate. I hoped you’d call me and tell me yourself. Didn’t you even think of calling me?”
I hesitated and then I said, “Yes, I certainly did think of it, but I wouldn’t let myself do it. Bishy was pregnant. You and I had nothing to say to each other.”
“We had everything to say to each other, but - you’re right - we probably wouldn’t have said it.” Then he went on in a toneless voice, “You can’t imagine how awful I felt that summer before, when you disappeared out of New York. I asked the superintendent of that building you lived in - and the postman - and the neighbors. None of them knew where you’d gone. Then Mother told me that you’d broken the engagement and Oz didn’t know how to reach you. Alex, I never even imagined a baby.”
“Oz knew I’d gone abroad. He didn’t tell you that?”
“No. We don’t talk much, you know. Never did. There’s not a lot of brotherly love flowing between us.”
“Well, I guess that’s pretty clear.”
“Once, when we were teenagers, we were hunting together up around Chama. We’d been quarreling - we often quarreled - and he got furious. I walked on ahead. We hadn’t seen any deer yet, and I had just caught sight of a white tail. I wasn’t thinking about anything except how to get closer to it. And all of a sudden, Oz’s rifle went off and a bullet went by my head and hit a tree about eight inches away. I looked around and saw Oz standing there staring at me. He said, ‘Jesus, David, it just went off.’ And he kept saying, ‘It just went of by itself.’ And then he unloaded the rifle, and dropped all the bullets on the ground, and then he turned around and headed for where we’d left our car. I didn’t even try to follow him. I waited a while and then I walked back to Chama another way and hitched a ride to Santa Fe.”
“My God, David.”
“Now, I’m not saying he did it on purpose. I’ll never know. Maybe he doesn’t know. But after that, we stopped the stupid quarrels. We stopped being kids, and we had as little to do with each other as possible.”
“And you two never talked about it?”
“Never.”
“Poor Oz,” I said. “Before we were married, I tried to tell him about the baby - leaving you out - but he said he didn’t want to hear my secrets and he didn’t want to tell me his.”
“He doesn’t know why you went to Europe?”
“No, and let’s keep it that way.”
“Do you love him, Alex?”
I said, “I don’t think that’s your business.”
He gave me a searching look. “You’re not going to tell me how you feel about him?”
“No,” I told him, although I realized that I wanted to say volumes more. “I have to be going. Vincent just drove in, I think.”
“Don’t go. I need to tell you about the custody suit.”
I said, “That’s hardly in the forefront of my mind just now.”
“Or of mine, either. But - just to let you know - I’ve withdrawn it.”
I was surprised to note how little I cared. “How come?”
“Because it seems that Dad doesn’t have a clear title to the Gallegos Ranch, and never did. Whether he tries to give it to the Glorious Lighters or leaves it in the family, the title is so messed up that the Gallegos family may be real heirs, but I doubt they’ll take us to court. We’d all be there for the next twenty years. There are something like ninety-five Gallegos heirs.”
“So we might have been spared all this.”
“Yep. But no one knew that. I only found it out when I had the title searched.”
“I’m glad it turned out this way,” I said. “Now maybe everything can get back to normal.”
“Normal? What’s that? You mean, Ma and Pa drinking themselves into zombies? And Bishy and I looking for a way to never see each other again? Of course, I don’t know about you and Oz, but it’s possible he’s boring you to death.”
“Maybe I bore him,” I said. “I wish I could talk to Oz better. Find out what he’s feeling - what he wants-”
David looked surprised. “What he wants? What about you? What do you want?”
I stared at him, feeling very much as I had felt when Dr. Fischer asked about my epitaph: would it simply record that I had been polite and eager to please? It occurred to me that the recent extraordinary events had changed me. I rejected the epitaph. David’s question, “What do you want?” seemed exceedingly pertinent.
“You’re right,” I said. “Oz has his rights, but so do I. I need to make some decisions.”
“I hope I’ll be the first to know,” David said.
“But all I’m sure of right now is that I have to get Vincent to the airport.” And I stood up to leave.
David stood up, too, and put his arms around me. He kissed me, and we kissed each other, and I think several minutes went by.
“God,” David said softly. “I remember so much about you.”
“David, I really must go. I promise, I’ll be in touch.”
“Be in touch? That sounds pretty offhand. When? In another twenty years?”
“No. Sooner than that. How about next week?”
“How about tomorrow?”
“No,” I said. “We need thinking time. We’re not the same people we were twenty years ago.”
“We’re nicer,” he said.
“Promise to think,” I said, and left him.
Outside, I got into the driver’s seat of my car, beside Vincent, and we drove off. I found Vincent taciturn, and it seemed to me that he might have been crying. Not wanting to invade his privacy, I, too, was quiet. That is, until we passed the storage barn. There I nearly sent the car into the ditch as I slammed on the brakes. Written in enormous, spray-painted letters, all over the side of the barn, was this sentence: DAVID SMITHSON WHERE IS YOUR WANDERING SPERM TONIGHT?
My feelings were so seriously confused that I could think of nothing to say. I was angry, sad, outraged, sympathetic, and even, perhaps, a bit amused. But, above all, I had had enough shocks for one day.
“Well?” Vincent finally said.
“Well?” I said.
“I hate him. That’s why I bought the spray paint. 1 knew I would hate him. I’m sorry if you’re mad at me.”
I said, “Does this make you feel better?”
“I think so.”
“Well, I hope so. I’d hate to think we came all this way and that you went to all that work with the spray paint, just so you would feel worse. But Vincent! I know you think now that you hate him, but that could change. Believe me!”
He gave me a wavering smile. “If you say so,” he said. “You’re my friend.”
“Of course, I am, and don’t forget it. You’re a good guy.”
“If it hadn’t been for you, Alex,” he said, “I couldn’t have stood it here.”
Tears came to my eyes, and I thought, I’ll surely tell him someday, but this isn’t the time.
I called Oz from the little town near David’s ranch, so that he wouldn’t worry about my coming home late.
He sounded annoyed. “Where the hell are you?”
I thought of lying - of pretending that Vincent’s plane was hours late and that I was still at the airport - but it seemed to me that, at this point, the more truth the better.
“Vincent wanted to see David,” I said. “So I drove him there. Now I’m taking him to Albuquerque.�
�
Oz said, “Well, that was a dumb thing to do. I told you David didn’t want to see him.”
“But Vincent wanted to see him.”
“Alex, you’re always letting yourself be pushed around by bossy people. When are you going to learn?”
“Maybe right away,” I said.
“I certainly hope so.”
“You may not like it.”
“I’ll love it. Alex, I’ve had a hard day. If I’m asleep when you get home, don’t wake me.”
“I will if I must,” I said. It seemed an odd thing to say, but I said it.
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“No. It sounded like I will if I must.’“
“That’s right,” I said. “Bye, Oz.”
I got home before nine and Oz was still up. I had had plenty of time to think, while driving from the airport, and I now knew what I must do, although I wasn’t sure how to do it, and I feared it might take months. Or years.
I had worked out several opening gambits, but Oz forestalled them by saying, “Good news. Mother had a call from her lawyer to say that David has withdrawn his suit. So now she’s decided to change the will back so that the ranch comes to her sons. End of nightmare.”
“I’m very glad,” I said.
“Now we need to get back to normal,” he said, looking at me critically. “You’ve been behaving in a strange way, Alex. What did you mean when you said you’d wake me if you must?”
“I meant that I’d wake you if I needed to talk to you.”
“That doesn’t sound very considerate. One thing I always liked about you, you were considerate, but now you seem to be getting selfish. And, Alex, I have to say, it was very wrong of you to take that boy to see David.”
“I’m glad I did,” I said.
“He could cause a lot of trouble for David. Not to mention Bishy. He could keep bobbing up - wanting money, no doubt.”
“He won’t. I know he won’t. Give me some credit for knowing something once in a while.”
“Not when you’re wrong,” he said firmly. “But it’s done, so I’ll say no more. Now, then: what was it you wanted to talk to me about that’s so important?”
I took a deep breath. “Marriage. This marriage. Things we’ve never talked about in eighteen years.”