“There, now," Mom said, “just leave your father to his sports. We'll all go sit on the sofa and look at pictures."
“Okay, Mom Pine," Buddy said.
Jack flashed a dozen smiles toward his father's impervious profile. “See you later, Dad."
Dad ignored him. Mom hustled the two younger men out of the room and firmly shut the door. Sunshine bleached the world beyond the glass doors. Dad watched tennis.
17
Sunshine bleaches the world. I sit beneath it, the white light making haloes and auras and ghosts and spirits in my vision. “I introduced Mom and Dad to all my industry friends," I tell my interviewer, “and they fit right in."
FLASHBACK 15A
The concept of the living room in the Malibu house was casual living with plenty of room to entertain friends. In an open central fireplace built on a platform of white brick, a cozy fire crackled. Comfortable furniture of canvas and wood, easily maintained and quite weatherproof, stood back out of the way so that the forty people at the party could flow around the fireplace and in and out of the broad doorways leading to the sunstruck deck. A good third of the partygoers wore famous names and famous faces, and most of the rest were their associates: wives, agents, boyfriends, attorneys. Uniformed staff passed discreetly through the crowd with canapes and drinks.
To one side of it all stood Jack, viewing the scene with sweaty pride. He watched his mom, in the same print dress and gray cardigan as before, move around the room, buttonholing people, clutching their elbows, showing them photograph after photograph, her victims all being distracted but polite. He watched his dad, in a far corner, seated with his back to the crowd, watching “Bowling for
Dollars" on a large, elaborate console TV. He watched Buddy perched on the back of a sofa, drink in hand, easy and aggressive smile on face, chatting up a pretty girl in a summer dress.
Dad leaned forward and unceremoniously shoved at the hip of a male partygoer who had drifted backward partway between Dad and the TV set. The partygoer looked around in surprise, saw what he’d done, apologized, and moved away.
Mom, her hands full of snapshots, pursued a distinguished older gentleman—the only man there in a suit— out onto the deck under the sun.
Buddy rose from the sofa, took the pretty girl by the elbow, and walked her over to Dad and the TV set. "Dad Pine,’’ he said, "I’d like you to meet—’’
With a warning cough, not really a groan or a snarl, Dad said, "Bud-dy.’’
"Dad Pine,’’ Buddy said easily, unintimidated, "that’s the commercial. Come on, I want you to meet a very nice girl. Annie, this is Jack’s father.’’
"Hi,’’ said the pretty girl to the back of Dad’s head.
Dad swiveled around, still irritable, and looked past Buddy at the pretty girl. He reacted with surprise, and then with pleasure, and popped to his feet. Smiling at the pretty girl, he reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a full set of false teeth. Still smiling at the pretty girl, he inserted these teeth into his mouth, wiped his right hand on his pants to dry it somewhat, and extended it toward her, now flashing a smile full of gleaming teeth. "Nice to know you,’’ he said.
Glazed, the pretty girl said, "You, too." Reluctantly, she shook Dad’s hand.
18
The sun is in my eyes. The sun is in my eyes. How can I see with the sun in my eyes?
“I don't know," I say, to that gray vagueness where my interviewer was wont to reside. “I don't know, I just don't know. Maybe Mom and Dad and me, maybe the truth is we'd all grown apart just a little bit. Just a little too far apart, somehow."
FLASHBACK 15B
The kitchen of the Malibu house was very modern, in white Formica and stainless steel. At the butcher-block central island sat Hoskins, in his butler's tuxedo, obediently looking at photos being shown to him by Mom. Jack entered the room, unwary, then saw what was going on and tried to reverse his field and slide back on out of there. But it was too late; Mom had seen him. Looking up, waving a handful of photos at him, she said, “Come here, Sonny. Cousin Gertrude sent more pictures."
“That's nice," Jack said, from the doorway. “You and Hoskins—"
“I want you to see these pictures, Sonny," Mom insisted.
Reluctantly, Jack crossed the room, stood beside Hoskins, and looked down at the pictures.
“Here's Edwina on her sled," Mom said. “Cute?"
“Cute," said Jack.
“Here's Mabel's Doberman pinscher with its new collar on," Mom said. “Isn't that adorable?"
“Adorable," said Jack.
"Here's Mrs. Wallace's new refrigerator," Mom said.
"Mom," said Jack, "I don't even know Mrs. Wallace."
Suddenly furious, Mom turned hot, enraged eyes on Jack and snarled at him through gritted teeth: "You don't have to know Mrs. Wallace to look at her new refrigerator."
Jack nodded, his skin paler around the eyes. He bent his head to look at Mrs. Wallace's refrigerator.
19
My hand is in front of my eyes because of that sunlight, that sunlight pressing down on me, like looking up through water at the sky and seeing only white, the waves moving, the whiteness glaring on my eyeballs.
"Mr. Pine?"
"Yes yes yes," I say. "I'm all right. I'm here. I know what's going on. You are interviewing me. I am telling you my story. I am telling you about Mom and Dad, and how after a while Buddy and I decided maybe it would be better if we moved away from the beach for a while."
FLASHBACK 15C
The living room without its party, without the fire crackling cozily in the central fireplace, seemed larger and more impersonal. Moving through this space as though it were truly large, a vast desert, was a Guatemalan maid, slowly and ineptly dusting. Dust motes in the air followed her lazily from place to place.
Mom entered, in a vicious mood, clutching handfuls of snapshots. “Where's my Jack?” she demanded, glowering at the maid. “Where's my Sonny Boy?”
“Gone away,” the maid told her.
“Gone away?” Mom glared so hard she looked as though she wanted to bite the maid's nose off. “Gone where?” “Topanga Canyon,” the maid said.
Mom blinked. She looked around. She said, “With Buddy? When's he coming back?”
“He no comin' back,” the maid said.
Mom rose on the balls of her feet, red splotches appearing on her cheeks. “What? What the hell do you know?”
“They no comin' back,” the maid repeated. All of the unfairness of her life was summed up in those words.
Mom squinted her eyes down to little slits and thrust her jaw at the maid. “Who are you, anyway?” she wanted to know.
The maid curtsied; dust motes ebbed and flowed all about her. “I am Constanza,” she said. “I'm an illegal, so I gotta stay in the job.”
Mom said, “You mean, Hoskins is gone, too?”
“Oh, sure,” Constanza said. “He no illegal. He can quit any damn time. He say so.”
“Dammit to hell and back,” Mom said. “I wanted to show him these new pictures.”
“Well, he gone,” Constanza said, and sighed.
Mom studied the maid, then thrust photos at her, saying, “Here, you can look at them.” Shoving a picture into Constanza's hands, she said, “This is the twins with their rock polisher. Don't they look alike? Bet you can't tell which one is Bobby.”
Constanza dropped her dust rag on a chair and considered the photo. She pointed. “That one,” she said.
Impressed, Mom said, “Pretty good! Come on, sit down here. Let's take a look at these.”
Mom and the Guatemalan maid sat side by side on a sofa that faced the sea. They did not look out. They bent their heads together over the pictures, one by one.
20
All this light, this light, this glaring light. I can't even look up anymore. I have to talk to my interviewer's gray shins. I sit tailor-fashion, legs folded in front of me, knees rising winglike on both sides. I lean forward over this nest of legs, and I pull m
y brows down low over my eyes because of all that sunlight, and I tell my interviewer's shins, “Mom and Dad were happy there at the beach. It wouldn't have been fair to take them away to the ranch."
“Did they ever see the ranch at all?"
“Oh, no. I didn't see any point in confusing them." I touch my fingers to my forehead, and something is cold. Which is it that's cold? Is it my fingers, or is it my forehead? Shouldn't a person know these things? Shouldn't a person be able to tell these things about his own fucking body?
I am atremble with rage. I can feel it. I know it's bad for me. I am not supposed to feel great emotions, not the large emotions; they are all very bad for me. I can perform them, none better, but I am not supposed to experience them.
I take a deep breath, full of splinters and broken glass. I exhale dark, foul, noxious vapors. My hand (possibly cold) moves down from my forehead (possibly cold) to my lap (oh, most definitely cold).
“The ranch," my interviewer says.
“The ranch. Yes. The ranch was good for me then. I found peace." I lift my head, ignoring the harsh glare, my own face gleaming and shining. I smile, my light brighter than the sun. “I also found God," I say.
FLASHBACK 16
It’s wild, rough country, Topanga Canyon, tumbled and brown, its high-shouldered hills brushed with lacy pine, deep damp crevasses choked with ferns. The canyon is many canyons, snaking and slicing and filigreeing through the hills. The two-lane twisty road climbs up from the sea at Malibu, north and east into the dusty hills lying just next door to Los Angeles but on the map of time a millennium away.
The people of Topanga Canyon are loners, oddballs, dropouts, believers in alternatives. They are not fierce pioneers, the progenitors of capitalists, but gentle solitaries, aware of the fragility of all things in the fragility of themselves. They do not pound deep foundations into the earth's skin, do not thrust steel erections at the indifferent sky. Their houses are modest, set apart from one another, colored in earth tones of orange and brown and green. Unpainted rail fences enclose their horses: yes, they have horses. Their driveways are likelier to be of gravel or dirt than glittering blacktop. They grow eggplant and tomatoes and marijuana. Their lives are so in tune with their environment, they blend in so well with their terrain, that they are barely noticeable in their bivouacs up the steep sides of the many canyon walls. Only their television reception dishes stand out, amazingly, looking in this setting like UFOs from outer space. (They believe in UFOs.)
The horse Jack rode up the firm tan trail from his house toward the peak of the hill was a frisky roan, high- stepping, flaring its eyes and chewing its bit as though auditioning for a portrait with Napoleon. The man and horse following just behind him up the trail were both of a very different order, the horse being a placid and thick-bodied speckled gray, its rider a comfortable and stocky and prosperous-looking man of fifty-something in a minister's black suit and white collar. He was hatless, his thinning gray hair disordered from its usual wavy exactitude.
Jack reined to a stop at the crest of the hill. Broken land stretched out before him, with very few signs of human habitation. Behind them, down the hill, was Jack's own ranch house, a low structure of dull red brick with wood- shingled roof, blending into its location, watched over by sentinels of tall pine.
When the second man reined in beside him, Jack turned on him a face lit with a beatific smile. Gesturing broadly, he said, “Isn't this great, Reverend Cornbraker?''
Rev. Elwood Cornbraker nodded slowly in judicious agreement, accepting the compliment to God's landscaping on God's behalf. “It is truly magnificent, John,'' he said, and gentled his gentle horse with a pat on the side of its neck.
Jack half stood in the saddle, raising his arms upward toward the empyrean, gazing out at the wild and tumbled land. “What a place for a temple!" he cried. “Reverend, we could buy some of that land over there next to mine, that ridge there with the yellow flowers on it—"
Reverend Cornbraker quietly but firmly interrupted, with a friendly and forgiving smile, saying, “God's true temple is in our hearts, John."
Humble, dropping back down onto the saddle, folding his hands on the pommel and turning to bow his head toward the reverend, Jack said, “Oh, I know that, Reverend Cornbraker. You've made me understand so much that I didn't understand before."
The reverend made a small gesture of his right hand, as though he were giving absolution. "I know you mean well, John," he said, “but we don't need to erect a temple to our Maker here in Topanga Canyon. The testimony of our lives is the true manner of our attracting His attention. Our little chapel over in Pasadena is, I'm sure, good enough for God. Modest enough for God."
“Oh, that's a wonderful chapel, Reverend," Jack told him, with fervent conviction. “That's a cathedral
Modestly, Reverend Cornbraker permitted a pleased smile to crease his well-fed features. “God and I thank you, John," he said. “You needn't spend your life's earnings on temples. God doesn't need that from you. All you must do is continue to tithe to the church."
“Oh, sure, Reverend," Jack said. “You know I'll do that. In fact, I've got a check for you right now back at the ranch. Ten percent of a salary payment that just came in. I've got it all set and waiting for you."
But the reverend didn't need such reassurances. He gracefully waved that away, then had to gentle his horse once more as he said, “That's fine, John. Just fine. God thanks you for your faith and confidence in Him."
“And the commercial I shot? How's that doing?"
The reverend smiled in such a way as to show that he disapproved of the terminology but would not make a point of it. Having made that point, he said, “The television message you were so good as to film for us has been very . . . productive."
“I’m glad," Jack said. He sat atop his spirited mount, gazing away at the hills and canyons that were already God's temple. “It's good to be alive!" he cried, and the landscape gave the echo back.
“Yes, it is, John," the Reverend Cornbraker said.
21
I can see with my forehead.
Is this a new thing? Does this exist in the annals of science? Am I the first of a new breed?
I can see with my forehead. The glare became so bright, the sheen of the sun so fierce, that now I've closed my eyes, and still I can see all that light, bright white light, see it beating on my forehead, ramming its way through the skull and into my brain. I am seeing the light. With my forehead.
Which of my doctors could I tell this to? One that won't steal the credit, of course. I want this phenomenon named for me, doc, not for you.
"Mr. Pine?"
Oh. Him. My forehead sees him, a dark gray lump at two o'clock high; my interviewer. "I'm here," I promise him.
"You were telling me about the Rev. Elwood Cornbraker."
"Ah, yes." My eyes open briefly, but that's an error; I snap them shut again. I'll keep watch with my forehead. "Life was good with Reverend Cornbraker, good and full and sweet. All at once there was purpose to my existence. I gave him a tenth of my income; that's tithing. That wasn't much, was it? After agents, managers, alimony, child support, attorneys, accountants, taxes, that left me a good three or four percent of my income for myself to spend any way I pleased. That's not such a bad deal, is it? Is it?"
"I guess not," the interviewer says, but I can hear in his voice he's not so sure.
"Well, I didn't think it was a bad deal," I say. "I was happy with the reverend. I was at peace with myself. All my nightmares went away, my old guilts—"
"Which old guilts, Mr. Pine?"
"—just seemed to disappear. I was washed clean, in the blood of the Lamb."
"Which old guilts were those, Mr. Pine?"
Persistent son of a bitch. What kind of fucking deferential interviewer is this anyway? Why don't I just tell him to go shove his bail-point up his ass and get out of here, the interview's over? Why don't I just—
No. Not a good idea to make the press suspicious. You never
know what they'll come up with.
"Which particular old guilts were you talking about, Mr. Pine?"
My forehead gives him a crafty look. "All my old guilts," I tell him. "They just faded away. For a little while, I was at peace with myself. I was content. It was such a strange feeling, that. But good. I'd been working too hard, piling up the money, the pictures, the credits, working in three bad pictures for every good one, and Reverend Cornbraker was the one who told me I didn't have to do that. He's the one who told me working compulsively like that was a way of running away from something that scared me, but that I didn't have to be scared anymore. I could take my time."
"And did you?"
"Most of my people didn't like it." My forehead smiles, remembering. (My forehead can smile, too, and frown if necessary.) "Agents," I say. "Managers. Even Buddy. They all liked, me working, it meant more money for everybody. Reverend Cornbraker was the one who gave me permission to slow down, and I did, and then it lasted just a little while.”
“And then it came to an end.”
My forehead gives him a rueful look. “Sure did. I know Buddy meant well with what he did, but sometimes, even now, I find myself wishing I'd never learned the truth.”
FLASHBACK 16A
The living room of the ranch stretched across the entire front of the place so that in three directions, through the six-over-six windows flanked by red and white check curtains, the views were of wild and tumbled hills, tall pines, thick untamed underbrush, and high triangles of pale blue sky. Not one artifact of man was visible out there, as though the ranch were a trapper's cabin high in the Rockies in a silent movie. Except in color, of course.
Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 Page 8