by Condition
He did not share these insights with his parents.
Only now, sitting in the first-class cabin of a Boeing 747 heading southward, did he experience the exhilaration that came from having a true mission. He was a man transformed. He drained his champagne glass, wolfed down the complimentary Brie and strawberries. His mother had paid for a seat in coach, but a flirty gate agent had upgraded him with a sly smile. Such a thing had never happened to him before, and Scott took it as a harbinger of good fortune to come.
He sat staring out the window, his hand folded inside Great Expectations, which he'd recently assigned to his juniors. Scott hadn't yet read the final two chapters; but he understood, now, that this wasn't due to laziness; he was hampered by a medical condition. He put Dickens aside and took a flashy paperback from his rucksack. It was Man of Action, by Dashiell Blodgett, a brash Australian who'd climbed Everest and K2 (where he'd lost a toe to frostbite) and now stalked, with his camera, the most dangerous big game in the world, in a wildly popular cable television program aired around the globe. Man of Action was a narrative of Blodgett's adventures—ice climbing and cave diving, traveling the perimeter of Africa by motorcycle. Really, though, it was a meditation on man's true nature, his need for risk and conquest.
Today's man, Blodgett wrote, lives in a state of full-body impotence. He's been castrated by comfort. The softness of modern life has ruined him.
Hear, hear, Scott thought.
Blodgett had cowritten the book with his wife, Pepper, a stunning blonde who accompanied him on his adventures. A photo of the two occupied the entire back cover. In it Blodgett squatted in some rugged rocky landscape, holding open the jaws of a crocodile, his sleeves rolled back to expose his beefy forearms. Pepper leaned over him, grasping his shoulders, her breasts crushed against his back, her long blond hair brushing his neck. Blodgett grinned triumphantly, the very picture of masculine conquest.
Scott had bought the book a week before, on a Saturday afternoon, shortly after receiving his orders. That morning he had borrowed Penny's van—the Golf was ailing—and set off at first light, his nerves twinkling with adrenaline and exhaustion. He'd been up late with Penny discussing strategy. Just be direct, Penny had advised. She's his grandmother, for Christ's sake. It can't hurt to ask.
He thought, It sure as shit can.
He thought, Sister, you have no idea.
Cowed, craven, he had hoped to make the mortifying request by phone. Mom, you've always been so concerned with the kids' education (she had, after all, given them books for Christmas). And Fairhope is a wonderful school. I knew you'd want to help.
He held the words ready in his mouth—like some hated food, liver or Brussels sprouts, turning to an acrid poo on his tongue. But his mother had cut him off. She was glad he'd called; there was a matter they needed to discuss. Could he come to Concord that Saturday?
We'll have a chat, she said. Just the two of us.
He'd rolled into Horsham Road at eight in the morning and sat in the familiar kitchen, eating a plate of eggs Benedict. The kitchen, its sounds and smells, brought back memories long forgotten, the summers home from Pearse, when he dragged his lazy teenage carcass out of bed each morning to find his favorite breakfast in the works. His father and Billy were gone by then, and it was Paulette who'd greeted him at the train station like a returning hero and cooked his favorite dinner, prime rib and Yorkshire pudding, to welcome him home. She'd asked a hundred questions about his friends and classes and listened in rapt attention to the lies he told. She'd had hopes for him then. Her confidence was a burden, not heavy but unwieldy, like a huge empty box he'd have to carry until he could fill it. All these years later, the box teemed with failures, regrets heavy as hammers. He was staggering under its weight.
He ate slowly, savoring the breakfast, dreading the conversation that would follow. Finally Paulette took his empty plate, and he could hang fire no longer. You always taught us the value of education, he began, consciously including his siblings; Billy, especially, was a saint you could invoke when praying for favors. And now there's a situation with Ian—She raised a hand as if to stop him. The gesture was startling. His mother never talked with her hands.
The boy needs help; I can see that. Simple as weather, an obvious fact. But first things first, dear. Your sister is in serious trouble.
It took him a moment to understand. His whole life his mother had buried him in blessings, done for him until he was, truly, done for.
Now, for the first time, she needed something from him.
Not from his father, or Billy. From him.
The notion staggered him. The men of his family were titans, endowed with vital powers. His father the wizard, an alchemist curing cancer; Billy the gentleman scholar, effortlessly superior with his movie-star smile. What was left for Scott to be? His father was a genius. His brother was a prince.
In his mother's kitchen it all came clear.
Like a dream he recalled an earlier, more hopeful vision of himself. When he squealed out of Stirling College in that Pontiac Sunbird he'd imagined himself a rebel and a wanderer, rugged and fearless, living by his wits. He had longed to travel, to see the rough parts of the world. But along the way he faltered. His early life had been too easeful. He couldn't—could anybody?—claw his way out of snug Concord. Then he thought of Warren Marsh, who'd grown up next door, graduated Williams and joined the Peace Corps, the path he himself should have taken.
Another missed opportunity. Toss it, if you can lift it, into the box of regrets.
So like Columbus dispatched by the queen of Spain, he received his commission, and drove back to Gatwick with a check in his pocket: twenty thousand dollars, the otherworldly cost of fourth-grade tuition at Fairhope. In return he would do what was asked of him, and go down in his family's history as the bold savior of his sister. Even his father would have to be impressed.
No problem, Scott told Paulette. Don't worry, Mom. I'll take care of it.
He was overcome with gratitude, humbled by her faith He settled into his first-class seat. The plane was packed with students in Trinity and Wesleyan sweatshirts. A few of the boys seemed drunk already, red faced and jubilant, cranked up for a week of joyful parent-financed depravity in Lauderdale or Daytona. In their dumb happiness they reminded Scott of dogs, panting with the confidence that came from never having failed at anything. Gratefully he watched the girls, their glossed lips, their thighs in snug blue jeans, glad they drew breath in the world. Years of teaching high school had inoculated him, mostly, against the charms of the young, though he backslid briefly each September when he cast his prettiest students in riotous daydreams. These fantasies lasted a few days, a week at the outside; and ended as soon he heard the girls speak.
He understood, now, that only one woman could move him, a woman halfway around the world, who'd dispensed with the miseries of Kosovo and was now braving the war-torn deserts of the Sudan.
Last week, galvanized by his upcoming adventure, he'd typed out a brisk message on his office computer. Then, with a single click of the mouse, he'd inserted himself boldly into the universe of Jane Frayne.
He had received an automatic response: Jane was traveling in the Sudan and unreachable by e-mail. She would return to New York in April or May or June, and would respond to messages then.
Fair enough, Scott thought.
At the airport in Pointe Mathilde, he took a taxi to the Mistral Inn, where his mother's travel agent had booked him a room. Scott would have preferred to find his own lodgings, in the pleasingly random manner he and Penny had employed years ago, bedding down in the upper rooms of back-street cantinas, on the porches of near strangers, in sleeping bags by the side of the road. But the inn was small and charming, on a side street behind the Place de la Capitale; and he had no time to scrounge around looking for a hotel.
The proprietor's daughter, a shy black girl his daughter's age, led Scott to a sunny upstairs room where a warm breeze riffled the lace curtains. The high bed looked plump
and inviting. He kicked off his shoes and stretched out. The room overlooked a rear courtyard, lushly planted with flowering bushes and lemon trees. Those, at least, Scott could identify; they'd bloomed all over his old neighborhood in San Bernardino, in every yard except his own. NO LAWN MAINTENANCE, they'd been promised by the ad in the Sun; and this turned out to be true: the square lot, enclosed by a chain-link fence, had been paved over with concrete. In the front yard two trees had been spared. The squat palms were long dead, teeming with roaches; but the landlord, a dark, wizened man named Guzman, refused to cut them down.
Scott still dreamed feverishly of that house, the pea-colored carpeting, the tiny windows barricaded with air conditioners that periodically overloaded the third-world electrical wiring. The first time it happened, Guzman showed up to shake his head in disapproval, a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. When Penny explained the problem in Spanish, Guzman continued to disapprove, shaking his speckled bald head.
Thinking of this, Scott remembered he had a wife back in Connecticut. He picked up the bedside phone and dialed his own number; he had promised her a call. If the situation were reversed—his wife spending spring break on an island, himself stuck at home with the kids—he would have been torqued; but Penny had been excited for him. Scotty, an adventure! she'd said, the reckless girl who'd loved camping in the desert, climbing in the Sierra, diving the depths of Crater Lake, her naked body bathed in starlight. He had taken her from those wild places and locked her in a tract house in the suburbs.
The line was busy; he hung up the phone and unpacked his rucksack, a relic of earlier travels. Inside was a manila envelope, a stack of quizzes he would not grade. He tossed his few possessions—extra shirt, socks, and underwear—into bureau drawers. From a side pocket he took his razor and toothbrush. Then he felt a strange lump at the bottom of the bag. Recognition lit inside him, the briefest flicker. He unzipped an inside pocket and felt around inside it, for the tiny hole his younger self had cut. He withdrew a tiny Saran-wrapped package and a narrow wooden cylinder the size of a shell casing. It was his old friend, Smoky Joe.
He'd bought the pipe a lifetime ago, at a head shop in La Jolla. The hollow tip was sized to hold a single, tightly packed hit of weed. He'd found it useful in emergencies: stuck in freeway traffic, or on breaks at the cavernous publisher's warehouse where he'd once worked, loading bundles of magazines onto pallets that were to be moved, for no apparent reason, to another part of the building. Mostly, though, he'd used the pipe for skimming. Stealing. From the person who loved him most.
At the beginning, he and Penny had split their pot evenly. For a time the arrangement worked seamlessly. They smoked only when they were together—they were nearly always together—and their appetites were perfectly matched. Later, when they were both working, they'd smoke a bowl on the terrace after dinner; but while Penny would be satisfied for the rest of the evening, an hour later Scott was ready for more. One night he moved to roll himself something extra, a dessert joint, remembering how his mother used to fill the dinner plates: heaping portions for his brawny father, more delicate ones for herself.
Baby, I'm not ready, Penny protested.
I know, said Scott, but I am.
Thus began the Dope Wars of 1987, a period of internal conflict that tested the newly formed alliance of Scott and Penny and tore it nearly asunder. For a magical spring and summer, they had pooled their resources: Scott's leftover tuition money, the proceeds from selling Penny's VW bus, which got eight miles to the gallon and broke down twice as often as Scott's Sunbird. Paychecks from the surf shop, the warehouse, various convenience stores; Penny's share of tip jars at lunch counters and snack bars and coffee shops. Who earned what was never clear, and didn't matter. Rent was paid, gas and food bought.
Whatever remained, they spent on pot. Penny had lived this way for years, with a discipline Scott admired. Without it he'd have piddled away his paycheck on beer and cigarettes and barroom pool, pleasant nonessentials he scarcely missed. Under Penny's system they could get high every day, twice a day. And for a long time that was enough.
He'd heard for years that weed was nonaddictive, and he'd found this to be true. He could live without the high. But what he needed, truly needed, was the looseness pot afforded, the relaxed improv, the shuffle and dance. Smoking, he could glide through life's humiliating scut work, the night foreman's insults, the flat-out exhausted dread he felt at the end of the day and sometimes at the beginning, when he contemplated the endless bouncing bus ride—Penny was delivering pizzas and needed the Sunbird—the numberless mountains of pallets to be loaded, the mindless grind of machinery, the bundled magazines that came and came. He remembered with a creeping bitterness his Kap Sig buddies at Stirling, those dullards; the whole priceless bags they'd smoked away for dim-witted amusement, the obscene giggling pleasure of staring at Cheech and Chong movies and falling asleep on the floor. For Scott weed was no longer a diversion, but a necessity, the only thing that made work tolerable. And if, at the end of a back-breaking, soul-killing shift, he needed a few more tokes than his girlfriend did, why should he deny himself?
He would remember the fight forever, their first and ugliest.
Eleven contentious years later, he couldn't recall a more savage bloodletting, a more searing wound.
I'm bigger than you are, he began. Half a joint knocks you out, but I can barely feel it.
To which she had responded: You're bigger than you used to be.
It was a surprise blow, stunning in its cruelty. He had fattened on meatball subs and fast food, cheap workingman's lunches. His face was round and puffy, a moony Elvis in his declining days.
You're smaller, he shot back, which was also true. I can't find your tits in the dark.
The rest of the fight was too painful to remember, though its denouement—him sleeping on the wet grass after she'd locked him out of the house—would stay with him forever. They were twenty years old, new to love's expansions and contractions, its fissures and failures. How it could leave you broke and busted on the neighbor's lawn, weeping and seeing stars.
He returned Smoky Joe to the rucksack and headed out into the broad sunshine, toward the Place de la Capitale—far, far away from Gatwick, where an onion snow was falling on his mean little house.
The Place was triangle shaped, like a New England town green; it was fronted on one side by the white stucco capitol building with its arched porticoes. Standing there, the sun warm through his shirt, Scott felt thawed back to life.
He crossed the square in the direction the innkeeper had pointed, heading, he hoped, toward the beach. The air was redolent of diesel.
A dearth of stoplights kept traffic at a standstill; taxicabs idled at intersections, clogging the winding streets. A slow parade wound through the sidewalks, tourists complaining of new-shoe blisters. Scott stared at the damp armpits of their bright new cruise wear, the shopping bags brushing their winter-white thighs. He stepped around the pedestrians, mumbling to himself. The complexity of his mission overwhelmed him. He had come to this crowded island looking for a girl, a small, silent girl who did not attract attention, who moved invisibly through crowds. A very stubborn girl who, in all likelihood, did not wish to be found. His mother had provided scant details: a guy named Rico, something about scuba diving. Other information that might have been useful—the name of Gwen's hotel, for example—Paulette simply didn't have. Ask Billy, she said, but pride had prevented him from doing this. The mission was Scott's, not his brother's. He would figure it out himself.
The road curved sharply. On the horizon Marengo Bay appeared, gleaming silver. Scott blinked. For a moment an office building seemed perched upon it—gleaming white, larger than the capitol building.
"What's that?" Scott asked the woman ahead of him, a sturdy grandmother in pink slacks. Though portly, she was surprisingly quick.
It was like chasing a car in first gear.
"That's our ship," she said proudly, as though she'd had a hand in building it."
The Star of the North."
Now the road sloped sharply downward, as though collecting this human runoff into a giant basin. The crowd flowed faster, flat feet smacking the pavement. In a final grab for tourist dollars, the street signage became more insistent. Clearance! No Duty! Cheap, Cheap, Cheap! American flags slapped the blue sky. Scott looked around, a little frantically. He felt as though he were running with the bulls at Pamplona, slow geriatric bulls with aching hooves. Still, stopping seemed dangerous. The woman behind him had already stepped twice on his sandal.
"Hey, mister," said a voice at his elbow, a black boy of about twelve."What you looking for?"
"The beach," said Scott.
"These people, they going to the ship. You come this way."
The boy headed down a narrow side street. Scott, hand on his wallet, followed behind. He was alert to scams, having fallen for most of them in Mexico years ago. But this boy was well dressed; he had not pulled at Scott's sleeve, or seemed insistent. Even now, he didn't look back or slow his pace. He seemed not to care whether Scott followed or not.
They passed fortune-tellers, a couple of barbecue joints. The air smelled of roasting meat. Scott felt his stomach squeeze. The airline Brie sat inside it like a lump of chewing gum, dense and indigestible.
He would have to eat something, and soon.
He followed the boy down another block. The street grew narrower, the faces blacker. On one corner was a small café, three tables on a rickety porch, the sort of plastic chairs sold in American drugstores for five bucks apiece. Neon signs glowed in the windows: Corona, Carib, Red Stripe. From the rafters hung a homemade banner, the clumsy block letters of a dot matrix printer. Scott squinted to make out the words: ambrosia café.
Across from the café the boy stopped, stepped backward into a doorway. He produced a plastic bag from his pocket.
Scott blinked. Was the word STONER tattooed across his forehead? Was it so easy to pick him out of a crowd? "No thanks," he said, glancing over his shoulder.