“That was a stupid decision you made,” his father said.
Frederick balled his fists, fingernails digging into his palm, but didn’t say anything. His father had a dazed look, one he would continue to develop, as if his eyes had turned inward. A look that would stay on his face even after he died, from a heart attack, less than two years later.
Ezra’s sedan proceeded slowly up the city’s artery, along the arm of the coast, and the memory of his father’s death made Grant realize that he’d forgotten to take his blood pressure pills. It’d have to wait until he got back.
But fuck it. By God, what a night! He took a tin of cherry chew from his back pocket and popped a pinch into his lower lip. He rarely chewed anymore but this was vacation, baby. He laid his right hand across the back of the seat.
Ezra peered through the rearview mirror.
“Want a dip?” Hudson asked.
Ezra didn’t respond. Grant noticed that his hands were at ten and two on the wheel. Who drove like that? “Yeah, you’re not the type,” Grant rolled down the window and spit. “You grew up stuffing nihilistic moaners into your DVD player and flipping through highbrow books you didn’t understand in hopes they’d give you the cultural currency you couldn’t create on your own. You took deep drags on unfiltered cigarettes and had trouble keeping your bangs out of your eyes and ended your sentences with man. I made serious money from terrible films because your type conflates confusion with depth.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“You sure about that?” They stopped at a red light and a slim guy with a severely undercut flop of hair, walking barefoot in ripped highwater jeans held in place by enormous brass belt buckle, plus a western shirt and a bowtie, crossed the street. “I bet that outfit means something.”
Ezra remained silent.
“C’mon! I know, I know, I have a gun, and I fucked up your tryst, but at least humor me by engaging in some conversation. I’m bored.” Grant chuckled and patted him on the shoulder. Finally, he could smell on Ezra, along with the tequila, the faintest pinesap whiff of fear.
Ezra said nothing.
“Seriously though. Do you know what I read for kicks? Celebrity memoirs. The ones that moralize about how to get ahead in life by describing their author’s own rise. You’ve got to agree, there’s nothing funnier than hearing a rich person try to explain how they got their money and then justify why they still have it.”
Ezra looked out the window and wiped something from his ear. “So what?”
“What do you mean, so what?”
“You have a gun to my head and you’re telling me about celebrity memoirs. I could give a shit what people do with their money and why.”
“Am I getting a rise out of you?”
Ezra rolled his shoulders.
“Listen up,” Grant said. “Every rich person, without fail, tries to pass the buck. Whether it be to God, principles, luck, or victimhood, no one really wants to admit that their wealth is theirs because they’re choosing to hoard it. It’s so much more convenient to believe you’ve been chosen, so much easier to justify keeping the money if you’ve been deemed special by something beyond you and your coughing and shitting and pissing and body odor.”
Ezra said nothing.
“Your body odor, by the way,” said Grant, “is cheap tequila and fear.”
“What about philanthropists? Taking care of your family?”
“Philanthropists fly jets, Ezra. Philanthropists sway elections. Philanthropists give money because they fear villagers, pitchforks, and ultimately, the guillotine. And families? Ever stop to think about which families consistently hold positions of power in both public and private? Ever research the bloodlines of the elite?”
“You should write a celebrity memoir.”
“So should you. One Week with Sybil! It might sell a few dozen copies.” Grant spit out the window again. He could smell something rotting, along with the ocean. “I’m waiting,” he continued, “for the day someone writes a memoir and never even implies a word about deserving or not deserving anything. That’ll be a worthwhile read. Are you curious why? Of course you are, you have a gun to your head! Well, first, I’ve never met another rich person who is comfortable, deep down, with being rich. Half the reason all these tycoons have houses and yachts so big they need staffs is so they can justify paying people to be around them all the time. They can’t stand to be alone with their guilt.”
“. . . and your residence is so modest?”
“Not compared to yours. But your residence isn’t exactly modest, either, compared to, well, probably 98 percent of the world. But who’s counting? Oh, right. All of us—but we only count those who have more than we do. Otherwise we might feel guilty. And we might actually have to reflect on who we are, instead of all the ingenious methods we’ve found of avoiding the truth.
“But to your question: why do I live on such palatial grounds? I’m just keeping up appearances, keeping the trust of these insecure trust funders. There’s a reason you haven’t seen me much. I prefer my solitude.”
Through the rearview mirror, Grant saw Ezra roll his eyes.
“Hah! I am getting a rise out of you.”
“Hardly,” Ezra said.
“That’s fine, repress it. Let it grow in the loamy soil of your subconscious. Soon it will bloom and become a memoir. See, I don’t feel the need to apologize for my wealth. This points to the fundamental difference between that barefoot spaz with the bowtie and myself. I have no need to make a statement, no need for anyone to understand me. I have no need to share my humanity with anyone.”
“That’s funny, because you can’t seem to stop talking about yourself.”
“Touché! But ah, this isn’t sharing, Ezra. This my gift to you. A lesson—granted, it’s being given to a man who most likely won’t be around to spread it. But sharing is the last thing I want, because our shared humanity really just means our shared weakness. And once a weakness is revealed, it’s basically an invitation. Come take what I have!” Grant spit out the window.
They passed a party of some sort that was just getting started at a residence up the hill from the roadside. There were the usual security guards on the street, a few catering trucks, and a lineup of vehicles.
They veered right and cruised down a grade, past a long flat beach flanked by a few bulldozers, each waiting for daylight so they might push around sand, and then further along to a cove named after a vaudeville actor who’d long since passed. The ocean roared, and the smell of the salt water hit Grant’s nose.
That smell often brought up sentimental feelings from Grant’s childhood on the other coast, but they rarely conjured memories, so this was an exception. As they drove, he remembered a warm Friday night near the end of September on the North Atlantic Coast when he was twelve.
He’d been busy doing his homework at the dinner table, fire popping, a plate of pork loin, mashed potatoes, and seared carrots grown cold on the table, when the front door slammed open.
His father stepped in and scanned the room. “Where is she?”
His mother was out back, coaxing the hens into the henhouse for the night. Frederick hopped from his seat and made for his father. He immediately recognized the violence in his voice and knew the best way to negotiate such situations. “Can I get you a drink?”
His father pushed him into the wall, still looking around. “Don’t patronize me,” he said, breath stinking of yeast and onions. “Where is she? And don’t you dare lie.”
“Mom’s out back, putting in the hens. Been here all night. Don’t worry, I’ll go get her.”
His father paused and glared at him through his glassy eyes, one of them puffy and turning purple. He’d been in a fight already.
“She’s just outside,” Frederick continued. “Here, let me take your coat.”
He reached for it but his father slapped his hand. “I’ll deal with my own damn coat. What are you, a fucking maid? Go get her.”
Frederick hu
stled out to the back and found his mother closing the door to the henhouse. Theirs was a beautiful property, bordered by coastal spruce, with a small feeder creek running through its center. “Mom!”
“Yes, darling.”
“Dad’s home.” He hoped that the sound of his voice would be enough to let her know the situation.
She paused for a moment, and with her foot nudged the last of the Rhode Island Reds into the coop.
“He was calling for you.”
“Did you fix him a drink?”
“I tried.”
She closed the door to the henhouse tight.
“We could tell him one of the hens got out,” Frederick said, “and you’d gone chasing her.” He glanced over his shoulder.
She tousled his hair, sighed, and walked back toward the house, swinging her coat over her shoulders, as if bored.
He followed.
Later, Frederick discovered the issue. His mother had purchased an emerald-green, boatneck swing dress after the lobster season, and worn it to a fund-raiser at town hall where most everyone was gathered to mingle and celebrate the end of summer and the start of a new school year. Frederick had witnessed his father’s swoons when he saw her twirl in the living room. But a few nights later, after a few drinks, some of the cannery boys began talking about that dress, and Frederick’s father took exception. On the way home, he began to question his wife’s motives for buying such a dress.
Frederick followed his mother inside from the henhouse. He did his best to stand between them, and took as many licks as he was able to, but in the end, he was knocked unconscious. His mother didn’t get out of bed the next morning, and neither did his father. They never talked about it, and she never wore a dress again.
Grant snapped out of the memory and realized that they were now miles up the coastline. “What was I saying?” he asked.
“I don’t remember.”
No matter. No reason to think about such things, not any longer. Both were now dead and the tobacco was spicy on his tongue. A bit of ocean mist floated by the lights illuminating the empty byways. A coffee shop. A lone grocery store. Surf rentals. Tacos. They were in the capillaries of the city now, and very little blood was flowing. “Do you believe in tests, Ezra?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a simple question.”
“I guess it depends on the test.”
“Well, I’m a big believer. People get caught up in what is being tested and whether or not a particular test works a certain way, etcetera. But all tests show results, even if what they show is unintended.”
“Am I being tested right now?”
Hudson closed his eyes and laughed, shaking his head. “He asks and yet he’s a gardener.”
“Groundskeeper. And so what?”
“One moment. About that. Something’s been bothering me. What exactly is a literate, attractive, white American male doing in that job?”
“Ask your wife,” Ezra said.
“Ah, I forgot. You guys must have really connected. Shared your feelings. Had meaningful conversations. But Ezra, come on, buddy! I know that you’ve been in that job for years. And regardless, of course you’re being tested. How about I put it into terms you’ll better understand.”
They drove up a slope and down, then past a beach and a seafood joint resting merely yards past the county line—the tip of a fingernail stretched just beyond the edge of the reaching arms of the city.
“You plant three shrubs,” Grant continued. “One thrives. Needs to be constantly trimmed so it doesn’t take over space it wasn’t intended to occupy. The second does just okay. It survives but isn’t at risk of endangering any of its neighbors. The third, well, you wonder whether it will outlast winter, even with the pains you’ve taken to ensure its success. Yet, despite all this, in the end, it’s the gardener who has the power to decide who lives and who dies.”
“So you’re the gardener,” said Ezra.
“Groundskeeper,” said Grant. “And no, my friend, we’re all shrubs. I’m just trying to find out how you grow.”
“And how do you grow?”
“I’ll give you one guess,” Grant said. There was no one else on the road, and they were almost there.
SIXTEEN
The left is just past the next mile marker,” Hudson said from the back seat. “Now, Ezra, here’s where the shrub metaphor breaks down—”
Shut. The. Fuck. Up, Ezra thought. He looked in the rearview and imagined how Hudson might look robed before a podium, no different than the traveling preachers he’d seen, trying to prove—to use Grant’s words—how special they were to the rest of the world. The skin on his hand was hot from gripping the steering wheel. He wanted to pummel the guy.
“—sometimes, if you stop watering that third shrub, starve it of nutrients, even put a sack over it so it gets not the slightest bit of sun, when you finally return it to the conditions it squandered, the shrub will not just thrive, but dominate everything near it.” Grant cleared a nostril into his palm.
Ezra’s mother would have had a field day breaking apart Hudson’s simplistic justifications for how he operated in the world. He knew he needed to keep calm, but he couldn’t resist muttering, “Brave new theories of landscape management.”
Hudson laughed. “That’s the spirit! You may yet make it through the night. Now take a left at that wooden post.”
Ezra slowed the car and turned onto a dirt road weaving between thick walls of bramble and down a steep embankment to the shore. Each switchback was only just wide enough for his car. He couldn’t see further ahead than a few yards. His headlights illuminated something solid, not a gate but more of a nondescript black wall, perhaps metal, with no markings whatsoever. The moment Ezra stopped the car, the wall began to slide open.
“Veer left,” Hudson said.
Ezra drove on. Past the wall, both roads were paved with asphalt, and Ezra could make out a large building down to the right. He lost view of it as once again a cave of brambles swallowed them.
“Summer home?” Ezra asked.
“It’s always summer.”
The car emerged from the bramble. The asphalt gave way to a geometric smattering of gray and brown stone pieces, reminiscent of the patio back at the mansion. His mind flashed for a moment to Hudson making love to Sybil. He quickly dismissed it.
“Park anywhere,” said Hudson.
Ezra pulled up against a wooden rail dividing the property from the beach, got out, and shut the door. The anger he felt toward Hudson ebbed into a dull fear. He tried to get a sense of the place, but couldn’t see much in the way of lights either up or down the beach, just a dim glow from what looked like a deck seventy-five feet up the hill behind them. The rest was cliff rock and scraggle giving way to shadowy swales of sand, peppered with beach grass shifting in the light wind.
“I own the rest of the lots on this stretch of beach.”
Ezra nodded. Meaning no one can see us. Meaning don’t think you’re going to just scream, or duck away. A brief wave of anxiety flooded through Ezra, but what he felt surging through his fingers and neck wasn’t a panic attack. This was no condition, no disorder. It was honest fear. Ezra took a few deep breaths and tamped down the feelings. Slowly he left his body and felt himself standing beside himself, as if he were a physician, taking notes, as if the fear was happening to a different body altogether. If nothing else, he’d had practice at this sort of thing. A steady calm returned.
Hudson pointed his pistol out past the railing toward the ocean. “Go on.”
“What are we doing?” But suddenly he knew. The ocean for the pool boy. A gust of wind rippled Ezra’s T-shirt. The air smelled the sweet of rotting seaweed.
“Haven’t you guessed?”
“You’re going to see what kind of shrub I am.”
“Smart man.” Grant pointed to a boat, small and plastic and shaped like a rectangle, lying upside down in dune grass. It didn’t look as though it had been used in quite some time. “Pu
ll it out to the tide line.”
The dinghy was perhaps twelve feet long and looked like the bottom half of a sedan, without the wheels. Stable, but probably at the cost of grace. Ezra dragged it by the bow along the sand toward where he could hear small waves breaking. Everything took on a larger presence. The sand sinking below his sneakers was real. The gun in Hudson’s palm. This shitty boat.
“The bay is sheltered from the swell,” said Hudson. “But I’m sure we’ll still manage to get a little wet.”
They reached the tide line. White water scuttled in. Hudson slipped off his brown loafers and Ezra removed his sneakers.
Hudson gestured slightly with the pistol. “Do me a favor and wade out a bit. Get the boat to where it’s just floating.”
The water rushed around his feet and seeped up the legs of his jeans. It was cool but not cold. Now those elaborate justifications Hudson had made on the ride over were more terrifying than absurd. Hudson was the worst kind of crazy: calculating. This was no crime of passion. This was fun. This was a stage.
Ezra pulled the boat out into the whitewash of the small waves until it became buoyant in his hands.
Hudson grabbed hold of the boat’s boxy stern. An airplane flying overhead buzzed. In his mind, for a brief moment, Ezra was brought back to the bedroom with Sybil, gazing out the window at vapor trails. Where was she now? Sleeping? He hoped so.
“You get in first,” said Hudson. “I’ll hold.”
Ezra climbed in. Just as he got situated in the bow, Hudson gave the boat a push further into the water and hopped in himself, showing athleticism not apparent in his build. The boat jockeyed beneath them, and the waves, though small, were beginning to push them sideways and back toward shore. Hudson retrieved two small aluminum-and-plastic oars from one side of the boat and slid them over. “Stuff the rings in the oar locks,” he said. “Then start rowing.”
After a few feeble attempts, Ezra managed, one small gush at a time, to propel the boat in the direction of the open ocean. Every so often a wave crested over the lip of the bow and sprayed his back, but soon he only felt slight rises and falls. The roar of breaking water retreated to a faint rush.
The Hummingbirds Page 14