Fortunate Lives

by Robb Forman Dew

  Slade Road wound flat through sweeping acreage that had once been farmed by the original Slades, the builders of the Howellses’ house in the late 1700s or the early 1800s. Eventually the Slades had given up farming and established a grocery store on Carriage Street where they had brought their vegetables to sell. Two large estates had been built on the farmland in the 1880s by prosperous owners of the woolen mills that had sprung up in nearby Bradford. The main houses loomed large across the road from one another, and the estate that had been built on the land adjacent to the old Slade farmhouse had become a sort of neighborhood all its own, with the clever renovation and habitation over the years of the carriage house, the two barns, the stables, and several other outbuildings.

  Slade Road had been paved long ago and sidewalks laid out along the verges, but it retained the unpopulated feeling of a country lane. The chestnut trees that had once canopied the length of the road had all died off, but there were still, here and there, a few towering, ancient spruce and hemlock from the forests that had flourished long before any of the land had been cleared and settled. There were also huge walnut trees, oaks, maples, grand embattled elms, and other relatively short-lived trees like birch and soft maple. And there were still stretches of virgin forest, a swath of which ran along the section of Slade Road that dwindled off into a gravel track not far beyond Martin’s house. These lush stands of deep woods were unheralded because of the fear that once they were widely known they would inevitably be widely abused.

  As Martin made his way in the damp, gentle air up the hill that led to the town green and toward the campus, he could not understand how it was that he had not even been able to ensure David’s happiness in a place such as this. There was undoubtedly the same proportion of villains and fools in West Bradford as there was anywhere else, but, nevertheless, the image of David’s face turned to him in pale, outraged misery struck him as an unreasonable occurrence in the benevolent air, the placid landscape.

  Arlie Davidson approached from the other direction with his corgi, who was immediately alert with interest in Duchess. The two men stopped and spoke about the warm weather while their dogs inspected each other peaceably, and then they parted company, continuing on their separate ways. Martin crossed Route 7 and skirted the green, planted lushly with flowers, and waited for traffic to ebb so he could cross again at the intersection of Route 7 and Route 2. It was a dangerous intersection that needed a traffic light, but many of the townspeople believed that any traffic light in their small town would spoil the idea of village life. The obtuseness of this notion always astounded and enraged Martin. He had agonized over the terrible possibilities of an accident when, at age seven or eight, his children began to ride their bikes to Carriage Street or to friends’ houses, having to thread their way through this very spot where too many cars came barreling through town on the state highway, which was known as State Street for the several miles where it bisected the town.

  After managing to make his way across, he entered the campus. He didn’t have any particular destination in mind, and he wasn’t in a hurry. He and Duchess walked downhill, avoiding afternoon joggers and passing under the beautiful elm in front of the college president’s house. Martin regarded the tree critically, but it seemed to be holding its own against disease. He turned into the cordoned-off drive next to the Congregational church. The West Bradford Theater had reserved the space for parking for whatever play they were doing this evening. He and Duchess climbed the Lapham Hall steps, known as Lapham Beach by the students because, with the first hint of spring, they lounged against the columns of the Roman Revival building, wearing shorts and sandals even if it was only fifty degrees. Now that the students were gone, however, there was no one about, and Martin sat down on the top step, bracing his back against a column, and Duchess settled down beside him.

  He could not disengage himself from the image of David in the garden, so filled with pain. Martin knew that he was partly responsible for that pain. It occurred to him for the first time that his resolution not to interfere in his son’s life was more a convenient way to avoid unpleasantness than an act of restraint or generosity. Advising him would have been an unpleasant task; David would have resented the intrusion, but Martin could have tried to warn him. After all, he was David’s father. Why hadn’t he attempted to protect his own son from any vulnerability he might have had to Netta?

  Some tourists parked nearby and began unpacking baskets of food and bottles of wine, and a young woman approached Lapham Hall with several collapsed webbed lounge chairs clasped awkwardly in one hand. Clearly the group was planning to picnic on the steps before the play. They were joking and calling back and forth to each other, and Martin thought they were probably recent graduates come back for a visit. He was in no mood to chat with them if they happened to recognize him. He rose, leading Duchess along behind him, and headed off toward his office.

  Vic’s car was in the parking lot; and for a moment Martin was undecided about meeting him, but then he thought it might be a relief to talk to Vic. It was Vic who had tried to alert him to David’s interest in Netta in the first place. When Martin made his way downstairs and caught a glimpse of Owen in the anteroom, he veered off to Vic’s office, ignoring Owen altogether.

  Before Martin even sat down, Vic got up and closed the door. “I just tried to phone you. I stopped by for a minute to get some stuff to take home for the weekend, and Owen was here. I think he’s been here all afternoon.” Vic was anxious, running his hand through his hair, and Martin was puzzled. “I don’t know what we should do,” he said to Martin. “Owen is really fucked up on something. Or maybe he’s drunk, but I don’t think so. He’s been talking a mile a minute. I swear to God, Martin, I don’t want to deal with this anymore!”

  Vic paced the length of his office and back. “He’s driving me crazy. Maybe I should call his father. I don’t have any idea what he might have taken. You think I should call Larry? I’ll tell you the truth, I’m not going to deal with this shit anymore, Martin! You’ve made all of us put up with him. Helen checks with me now before she’ll even mail the letters Owen leaves for her. He’s gotten away with murder all summer!”

  Martin felt the hair on his arms and the back of his neck prickle. He was suddenly so filled with adrenaline that, when he turned around to open Vic’s door, he felt stiff-legged, as though all his movements were slowed down. He approached Owen, whose chair was tilted back. His legs rested on his desk across a welter of jumbled manuscripts and carefully lettered, self-addressed, return envelopes, which had been enclosed with each one but were now probably hopelessly separated.

  “Hey, Martin. I’ve been wanting to talk to you.” Owen’s voice was drawn out, the vowels elongated, the consonants soft and blunted. “A great story, here.” He gestured toward the papers and attempted to swing his legs off the desk and sit upright, but the flex chair rolled backward a fraction. “Whoa! Whoa!” he said, reaching for the edge of the desk to catch himself. Martin was around the side of the desk and upon him in an instant, slamming the chair as far back on its spring as it would go. Owen’s arms flailed desperately in an attempt to keep his balance.

  Martin hovered over him, one hand clamping Owen’s shoulder and the other grasping the back of his chair. “I saw what you did to Netta. Do you have any idea… do you know what you’ve done to David? You pathetic son of a bitch!” His voice rose, and he was bending over, shouting directly into Owen’s face. “Netta should have left you alone. You never would have done anything to hurt yourself. But oh, God! Oh, God! I would be glad if you were dead. I would be so glad if you were dead! I could kill you!” He slammed the back of Owen’s chair against the wall. “God damn you! You stupid, fucking son of a bitch. I could kill you!”

  Martin’s expression was a grimace of pure fury, and Owen was wild-eyed. “Hey, hey! What…” Martin shook him by the front of his shirt. “You’re not worth shit! You’re fucking well not worth shit! And Toby is dead! He is absolutely dead!” Martin’s face was in
ches from Owen’s, whose mouth had gone slack, who was by now terrified. Vic had hold of Martin’s shoulders and was yelling at him to stop, but Martin was wound as tight as a knot.

  “You’re left, you pathetic little shit. Only you…” and Martin, gasping for breath, released his hold on Owen’s shirt and clasped his arm across his own midsection, bending forward in sudden pain so that the top of his head grazed Owen’s chin, and Owen remained pinned backward in the office chair, with Martin leaning on him now, a dead weight.

  Vic wrenched Martin backward away from Owen, whose chair snapped forward and who remained sitting there, stunned. Martin was bent over, his face red, pulling in great drafts of air.

  “Christ, Martin! Are you all right? Martin?” Vic was horrified, and Martin made an odd keening sound in the back of his throat as he at last managed to exhale. He straightened a little and put his hands out to ward Vic off, and then he was sobbing, leaning against the wall, bracing himself against the spasm of sobs that overtook him.

  Vic had one hand on Martin’s shoulder. He felt Martin heave forward slightly and then arch back against the wall in convulsive weeping. Vic looked away from his friend long enough to say to Owen, “Get out! Get out!” And Owen fled, his feet ringing on the metal stairs.

  “Martin? Are you okay?” Martin had grown calmer, but he was still crying, and Vic watched cautiously as Martin made his way around the desk and collapsed in Owen’s chair.

  Martin looked up and made a sort of grimace of apology. “I’m sorry, Vic. I’m so sorry.”

  Vic waved his hand in dismissal. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I’m all right. I don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m sorry, Vic. I don’t know what happened. I can’t believe…”

  “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter,” Vic said, “as long as you’re okay.” And when Martin nodded, Vic turned the light off in his own office and left him alone.

  Martin sat on in Owen’s chair, and Duchess recovered enough of her courage to slink in and lie down next to him on the floor. The light that filtered in through the small line of basement windows deepened into a dusky gray and then faded altogether, until only the arched desk lamp illuminated the room, but Martin was too tired to get up and go home.

  He did not believe an honorable man would have behaved as he had just behaved. It pained him to have abandoned all that he deeply believed was decent to the one person in the world whom he finally understood that he despised. Not hating Owen had been the only action left for him to exercise on Toby’s behalf. The notion of only remembering his second child was horrible to Martin. It would be as painful to him as looking through old photographs, which only emphasized the loss of the tangible person each time he held before him a flat, brittle approximation of the image of the boy his son had been.

  Martin had never let go of the idea of a continuing association with Toby, and oddly enough it was Owen’s existence in the world that had granted Martin the sweet encumbrance of that connection. He recognized that he had at last relinquished it. Martin was forty-five years old, and he felt terrifyingly disburdened. His father was dead, and his mother was failing. His oldest son was an adult, his daughter was growing increasingly aloof, and he and Dinah would soon be all that the other had left. It was too much weight to lose, all that.

  He was afraid to be stripped so lean, to be attenuated, thinned, and chilled in the encroaching solitude. Martin sagged back against the chair, exhausted, as the determined tension of holding on to Toby dissipated. There was nothing left at the moment but sorrow and ashy regret.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SLADE ROAD

  THE FIRST FEW DAYS in September hung over the northern Berkshires warm and humid and slightly hazy in the valleys. It was stale weather by now, wearing to the spirit. In the Howells household all the windows were wide open day and night, but the atmosphere was so still that there scarcely seemed to be an exchange of air. It was eerily tropical, with the calls of birds harsh and jarring among the quiet leaves. Even with the window fans on through the night, the interior temperature scarcely dropped by morning. The communal mood was subdued.

  The heat was a little less fierce than it had been in late August, but still, almost everyone in town had given up the effort of putting together cool summer meals of pretty salads or chilled soups. Grocery shoppers crowded the supermarket deli or stood chatting at Duke’s Market while waiting in line to pick up his special “broasted” chicken—which was battered, deep-fried, and then baked, and was good at room temperature. Fancies, a catering business and upscale takeout, sold over seven pounds of mousse de canard, a silky pâté, at $3.49 a quarter pound in only two days, while across the street at Minuteman Pizza business was almost at a standstill. No one wanted hot food.

  The third evening in one week that Arlie Davidson, down the road from the Howellses’, brought home a box of broasted chicken and containers of cole slaw and potato salad, he put the cardboard boxes directly down on the dining room table. His wife, Miriam, began to take serving platters out of the cupboard, but Arlie discouraged her. “Don’t bother,” he said. “It won’t taste any different on a china plate.” She hesitated, but then she agreed and sat down across from him, taking up a drumstick and nibbling at it listlessly. Similarly, Dinah brought home Chinese takeout and put the wire-handled paper cartons on the kitchen counter. Sarah and David and Martin drifted in and out of the kitchen, serving themselves room-temperature sesame noodles, or beef with broccoli, and taking it out to the table on the porch or to his or her own room. Martin rolled a pancake of mushu pork and bent over the sink to eat it in order to save himself the effort of any cleanup.

  It was not hot enough to cause tempers to flare or to precipitate passionate arguments within families or among the boys who lounged in front of Minuteman Pizza in the evenings. The pervasive atmosphere that enclosed the town merely bred a sort of frazzled indifference.

  At last, a cold front that had stalled over the Great Lakes edged its way slowly eastward, bringing unusually heavy rain and thunderstorms to the Berkshires for almost three days. The skies began to clear on the evening of the third day; and by the time the sun set, it illuminated the scudding, gray-bottomed clouds that were moving toward the coast. The day before David was to leave for college, the weather turned to autumn, with a high of sixty degrees and an expected low in the forties.

  Martin had reluctantly folded down the back seat of the Volvo station wagon to allow as much space as possible to pack everything David needed for school, but leaving room enough for only the driver and one passenger. “We had all planned to drive you to Cambridge tomorrow, David. I guess I’ll take you in so I can help you unload. Are you sure you need all this stuff?”

  “Mom made out the list.” David held up a sheet of notepaper, and Dinah glanced across the top of the car and recognized her careful list from five months back. But she knew she hadn’t suggested that David take his skis. She thought about the fact that there wouldn’t be any room for her to go with them, to see David’s room, to get a picture of where he would be living, to tell him good-bye. She was queasy with apprehension. She wouldn’t get a chance to see him until Parents’ Weekend in early October. She went back into the house, where a mound of David’s possessions sat right inside the front door waiting to be taken to the car; and she carried a gooseneck lamp and a long cardboard tube containing posters, she guessed, out to the driveway and set them down on the gravel.

  Martin was wrestling with the skis, trying to fit them in over the footlocker, while David reached into the car to adjust them himself.

  “David, you can’t put them in at that angle. If I have to stop suddenly, they’ll take my head off. You’re much more likely to come home to ski.” When David didn’t respond, Martin continued to try to find a way to wedge the skis in.

  “Maybe I can borrow Sam’s ski rack. We ought to have one, anyway,” David said. Martin scowled at him, and David didn’t make any more suggestions, although he assumed an
expression of pained tolerance, which Martin was too busy to notice.

  Dinah was standing by just looking on, with her arms wrapped around herself, and when she realized there was nothing more for her to do that would be helpful, she decided to leave them alone. “It’s too chilly out here for me. I’m going inside unless you need me.”

  Martin emerged from the rear of the station wagon and stood running his eye over the items on the lawn that were yet to be packed. He didn’t seem to have heard her.

  “What is this with the damned stereo?” he asked her. “My God, his room would have to be the size of an auditorium to do the thing justice.” David had gone back to the house and was emerging with a large box that housed one of his stereo speakers in its Styrofoam womb. He had saved the original packaging. Dinah simply shrugged, but Martin was aggrieved. “You know, his roommate will probably bring his own stereo, too. It’s the new macho thing, I guess. The same way we were about our cars. A sound system. Christ.”

  “Well, at least no one can get pregnant in the back seat of it,” Dinah said, turning and making for the house, but by that time Martin had already directed his attention to some other item that needed to be fit into the back of the car.

  Dinah went inside and made reservations to have dinner that evening at their favorite restaurant. She wanted to be sure to disperse the heightened climate of exasperation that David and Martin’s packing had generated. And besides, as she watched the car slowly fill up with David’s belongings, she had decided that it was important to attempt a modest celebration to mark the beginning of his college career.