Jennifer Haigh

by Condition

  How very strange, to see him sitting on the terrace as though he'd never left, as though it were his rightful place. Why on earth had he come? Last month on the phone she had sensed his loneliness, his hunger for information about the children. He hadn't spoken to any of them since Christmas.

  Who, then, had told him about the trip to the Cape?

  Among other things, his arrival complicated the sleeping arrangements. She'd planned to give Billy the Captain's Quarters, but when Frank had placed his jacket there, she hadn't demurred. It was a violation of protocol— certainly he was no longer head of the household—but she remembered, would never forget, how he'd always wanted to sleep in that room. She could put Billy in the Lilac Room, but then where would Gwen sleep? On the porch with Sabrina? Paulette, herself, adored the sleeping porch, but Gwen might find the suggestion insulting, as though Paulette were treating her like a little girl.

  Leave it to Frank, she thought, to cause problems between her and Gwen.

  "I didn't know Grandpa was coming," Sabrina said.

  Paulette looked up, startled. The child had read her thoughts, something Billy used to do.

  "I didn't either," she admitted."I suppose he wanted to see your dad, and Uncle Billy and Aunt Gwen. And you, of course."

  "And you," Sabrina added.

  Paulette did not respond to this.

  "My mom has a boyfriend," Sabrina said.

  Paulette, cracking eggs for the frittata, dropped a yolk on the floor.

  "Ian likes him, but I don't. He never talks, and he has tattoos. I hate tattoos," she added, as though this were the central issue. "Especially on guys."

  "You've met this person?" said Paulette.

  "A couple of times. He took us to play minigolf, which I don't like at all." She was a child of strong convictions. "And he was there once when I came home from school."

  "Does your father know about this?" Paulette asked, her voice trembling a little.

  "He does now. I think they're getting a divorce. I wasn't supposed to tell you. Is this okay?" Sabrina asked, showing her the salad.

  "It looks wonderful," said Paulette, impulsively kissing her."Darling, you're a wonder. I'm so glad you're here."

  They carried the plates out to the terrace, where Scott was mixing drinks; somebody—he or Frank—had stocked the bar. After some protest Paulette let him make her a weak gin and tonic.

  "Be careful with that stuff, missy," Frank said, smiling slyly. "Scott, did I ever tell you about the time your mother tried to drink a martini?"

  Paulette flushed."Frank, for heaven's sake."

  "We were at some joint in Philly with Wall and Tricia James. I had to carry her to the car."

  "Grandma!" Sabrina said, laughing.

  "It was terribly embarrassing," Paulette said, flushing. "I felt so sophisticated drinking from that beautiful glass. Then dinner was over, and I realized that I couldn't stand."

  "We made quite an exit," said Frank.

  Paulette joined in the laughter. It was oddly pleasurable to be laughed at. Her family—a part of it, anyway—was together at the Captain's House. Tomorrow Gwen and Billy would arrive, and her birthday would be complete. Except for Ian, of course. In principle she wanted to see her grandson, though in actual fact she was a bit relieved. Perhaps by next summer he'd have outgrown his obstreperous stage.

  Penny she did not miss in the least.

  She watched Scott across the table. He looked tired, which was not surprising. He was losing hair and weight; he seemed to be caving in on himself. For years she had wished him free of that dreadful girl, but she'd never considered the pain this might cause him. Certainly she had not wished for this.

  Scott woke to the smell of breakfast. A cool breeze riffled the striped curtains in the Whistling Room. Had the windows whistled last night? He'd been too plastered to notice. After his mother and Sabrina went to bed, he and the old man had stayed up for hours, knocking back G and Ts on the terrace.

  Had this really happened? Had he stayed up half the night getting loaded with his father?

  He sat up in bed holding his head. Frank had taken over as bartender, and offered him another and another and another. Though he hadn't needed much convincing. Given recent events, he felt entitled.

  All at once he remembered the mess he'd left back in Gatwick.

  Since her revelation Penny had seemed strangely calm and contented, as though a vexing problem had been solved. She was cheerful and pleasant. She showed a renewed—perhaps unprecedented—interest in housekeeping: vacuuming behind the furniture, cooking actual dinners instead of picking up a bucket of chicken from the supermarket deli. Most astonishingly, she stopped watching television. Scott slept in the basement under a comforter that smelled of mushrooms, but he woke to a clean, quiet house. In many respects, his domestic life was much improved. Had Penny discovered the secret to successful marriage? Was it as simple as having an affair with your brother?

  She had ceased, abruptly, to nag him. For years they'd played a kind of tug-of-war. Now Penny had simply dropped the rope. She moseyed through the day in a trance of contentment, a quiet bovine happiness that reminded Scott of their pot-smoking days, Penny slow and sweet and infinitely accepting, asking no more of life than what was immediately before her. Nothing could shake her composure.

  Well, almost nothing.

  One night after the kids were in bed, lulled by her apparent calm, Scott made an admission. For years Penny had been his confessor.

  Over the years she'd absolved him of a thousand failures, had listened, posed questions, doled out penance. After each clownish pratfall, he'd found comfort in her. Now, despite her recent betrayal, he needed her more than ever. His guilt was a parasite, feeding on his blood. He could rationalize blowing Ian's tuition money—boarding school would have been a mistake anyway, or so Scott had convinced himself. It was his sister's face that haunted him, Gwen in St. Raphael: her dreamy smile, her radiant happiness. When he thought of what he had destroyed, he was nearly sick.

  "You did what?" Penny said.

  "The twenty thousand dollars. I gave it to Gwen's boyfriend. I bribed him, Pen. To leave my sister alone."

  "Jesus, Scotty!" She looked at him in openmouthed horror."Why the fuck would you do something like that?"Then her brow cleared.

  "Of course. I get it. You wanted to score points with your mother. And if you had to ruin Gwen's life—well, no big deal."

  After his disclosure a pall settled over the household. Penny would not absolve him; she wouldn't even meet his eyes. His wife—who'd been boinking, who continued to boink her stepbrother—found Scott's actions repugnant. Gnarly, even. And in his heart, he had to agree.

  His other disgraces seemed tame by comparison. The day after his drug test, he'd arrived at Ruxton to find his desk already emptied, its contents packed into sturdy corrugated boxes. Jordan Funk got up from his desk, his face somber.

  O'Kane left this for you. He handed Scott a sealed envelope.

  Scott stuffed it into his pocket.

  You idiot, Jordan said, shaking his head. You should have told me you were getting p-piss-tested. I could have, you know, helped you out.

  He helped Scott carry the boxes out to his car, his girlish arms trembling with the strain. When the car was loaded, Jordan stood back, arms crossed.

  I guess that's it, said Scott.

  This is such bullshit. Jordan's face was flushed, his eyes blazing.

  Scott had seen a similar look on Ian's face, just before he flew into a sobbing rage that would send blocks or Power Rangers flying. Jesus Christ, Scott thought. Is he going to cry?

  Thanks for the hand, said Scott. You saved me an extra trip.

  There was an awkward pause.

  What are you going to do? Jordan asked.

  Scott shrugged. I know a guy who does carpentry in Massachusetts. He needs a helper for the summer.

  Again Jordan looked ready to cry.

  Hey, it's not so bad, Scott said, thumping Jordan's skinny sh
oulder.

  I kind of like it.

  Jordan looked unconvinced. Scott watched him as he drove away, his arm raised in a limp wave.

  He remembered, now, describing the scene to his father: Jordan standing at the curb, Aaron Savitz's Beamer pulling into the parking lot, the fat fuck recognizing him just in time to flip him the bird. Frank had laughed at this, manly gin-fueled laughter. Now, sitting in bed with a raging hangover, Scott marveled at this fact. He couldn't recall the last time, any time, he'd made his father laugh.

  He'd been stunned, last night, to find his parents on the porch of the Captain's House, in what could have been either a friendly hug or a passionate clinch. Scott wasn't sure which would have surprised him more. He'd noticed, then, the new Saab convertible parked at the end of the driveway. Dad's Nobel Prize. In that moment a feeling had gripped him, half forgotten from childhood. He wanted to rush his father, head down like a billy goat; to charge and pummel and wrestle him to the ground, not in anger but in the purest delight. His father had returned.

  And then it hit him: Ian. This is how Ian feels.

  Now, lying in bed in the Whistling Room, he thought of all the times, exhausted and fed up and demoralized by his day at Ruxton, he had pushed his son away. I can do better, he thought. He had no interest in climbing mountains like that ass Dashiell Blodgett; he would not cure cancer or become wealthy or save anybody's life. But with Penny's help, he had made two entire people, something neither Gwen nor Billy had managed. He was Ian and Sabrina's father. Perhaps this was mission enough.

  It had cut him when, at the last minute, Ian refused to come to the Cape. He wants to go climbing, Penny had explained. You know how he gets. Ian was an obsessive kid; a few times a year he chose a new object for his fixation—the skateboard, the Power Rangers—and pursued it with alarming enthusiasm. Now that his uncle Benji had introduced him to rock climbing, they would be inseparable all summer, or at least for a few weeks.

  What can I do? Penny shouted over the neighbor's lawn mower.

  She was standing barefoot in the driveway, watching Scott pack the Golf. Just go, and have a good time with Sabrina. Ian will snap out of it eventually. You know he loves you, Scotty. This is just a phase he's going through.

  And what about you? Scott slammed shut his hatchback. Is Uncle Benji a phase for you too?

  Penny ignored his sarcastic tone. We belong together.

  Are you kidding? Next door the mower stopped; Scott lowered his voice. He's your stepbrother, for God's sake.

  He's my best friend.

  Scott flinched, thinking how, in the early days, Penny had called him "my partner in crime." Now Benji was her best friend. It was the cruelest thing she'd ever said.

  He thinks I'm smart, Scotty. He likes the way I dress. He doesn't care if I watch TV. You still don't get it, she said, seeing his blank look. He loves me exactly the way I am.

  I love you! Scott exploded. Eleven years, Pen! You don't think I love you? Are you—he nearly said "retarded." Are you crazy?

  Penny sighed. Yes, fine, crazy. And I can't cook and I don't read the newspaper and I like the wrong things and say the wrong things and I have no idea why you ever wanted me in the first place and if I hadn't gotten pregnant you'd have bailed ten years ago. Am I right? She didn't expect an answer; she was only pausing for breath. I'd be some girl you picked up out West when you were young and stupid. You wouldn't even remember my name.

  Scott opened his mouth to speak.

  I guess you love me, she said, but, you know, why? I'm not a Drew. I didn't go to Pearse. I can't talk to your mother.

  My mother? Scott blinked. Jesus, Penny. For the hundredth time: my family doesn't hate you.

  Maybe not, she allowed. Maybe they just don't understand why you married me. I don't blame them. For a long time, I didn't get it either.

  Scott stared at her, his heart loud. He and Penny had never been known for subtlety. It seemed strangely appropriate that the final aching moments of their marriage happened in the front yard, with a UPS truck idling in the street.

  You think you're a loser, and I make you feel better. You need somebody to look down on. That's why you're always lecturing me. It makes you feel smart.

  Scott flushed. After eleven years of listening to him pontificate, Penny had finally schooled him.

  Benji makes me feel good. And you, basically, make me feel like shit.

  The lawn mower resumed.

  Penny, no. He felt suddenly shaky, flooded with panic. That's not right. I never meant to— He groped for words. I need you, Pen. Don't leave me.

  Penny was not a crier. Her clear blue eyes were perfectly dry.

  Don't worry, Scotty, she said. You'll be just fine.

  Scott dressed and went downstairs.

  "Well, good morning! It is still morning, isn't it?' His mother kissed his cheek, took a swipe at his uncombed hair.

  "Have a seat, son." His father had already been to town, picked up the Globe and the Times. He sat at the table parsing them into piles: front page, national, local, arts. Sabrina sat beside him braiding friendship bracelets, breakfast half eaten on her plate.

  "Coffee?" Scott asked.

  His father chuckled. "I've had a whole pot, myself. Didn't much help."

  "Where is everybody?" He'd resolved to talk to Gwen alone, at the first opportunity. To grovel, if necessary, for her forgiveness. He had no dignity left to lose.

  "Billy should be here any moment. As for your sister, I have no idea. The last I heard she was planning to rent a car at the airport. I expect her later today." Paulette handed him a glass of orange juice.

  "Darling, do you remember this?"

  "My lobster glass!"

  "I saved it," she explained. Years ago, before the house was put on the market, she and Martine had sorted through the old china closet.

  The mismatched dishes weren't worth keeping, but she'd made a point of nabbing the children's favorite drinking glasses: Scott's lobster, Gwen's CrisCraft. "I'm afraid I couldn't remember which one Billy liked," she admitted."A lighthouse maybe? Or was it a fish of some sort?"

  This made it even better.

  After his eggs Benedict, his grilled tomatoes, Scott lingered at the breakfast table, glancing through the papers. To his astonishment his parents did not interrogate him about work. Penny's name was not mentioned. Instead they reminisced about summers past—the time his uncle Roy capsized the Mamie Broussard; the time Martine's boyfriend, given his own room for propriety's sake, fell down the stairs and broke an ankle while sneaking out of hers. Stories Scott had forgotten, or hadn't been told in the first place—the one about Martine's boyfriend had been deemed too risqué. As the youngest he'd been a victim of censorship, sent to bed hours before the other cousins, when the sky was barely dark. He'd been keenly aware of the vacation life buzzing around him, the teenage and adult Drew life from which he was excluded: movies at the open air in Wellfleet, midnight sails, barbecues on the front lawn, the house swollen with guests. I'm missing everything, he often complained at bedtime. Be patient, his mother admonished him. Your turn will come. But by the time Scott was a teenager the house had been sold, the family dissolved. His father and brother and sister, the Drew aunts and uncles and cousins, were all gone.

  He recalled, now, that feeling of injury, outrage at the injustice.

  What a relief to sit with his parents as pleasant adults, lingering over coffee, not stewing over the myriad ways he'd disappointed them, the shamed certainty that he would never be enough. He tried to remember the last time they'd sat this way, himself and Paulette and Frank, laughing, remembering. Never, he realized. This had not happened in all his life.

  Childhood was over. What a fucking relief.

  At that moment his mother froze."Did you hear that?" she cried, springing out of her chair."Billy is here!"

  She hurried out the front door, patting her hair, Frank quick on her heels. Scott sat a moment, staring into his empty lobster glass. He rose heavily and followed them ou
t to the porch, just in time to see the car roll up the lane.

  Scott glanced at his Golf parked in the shade, the dented side panel, the rust spreading up from the undercarriage like an aggressive cancer. Go ahead, asshole, Scott thought, eyeing Billy's gleaming Mercedes. Park next to me.

  "There's somebody with him," said Frank.

  The car stopped. Billy stepped out of the car. Then his passenger, a dark-skinned man in pale linen trousers.

  Paulette shaded her eyes."Who on earth is that?"

  The two approached the porch. Then Billy stopped short.

  "Dad," he said.

  "Hello, son." Frank stepped forward, thumping Billy's shoulder.

  Paulette leaned in for a kiss. Billy seemed momentarily confused, like a wealthy tourist mobbed by gypsies in port.

  "Mom, Dad," he said, disengaging himself. "This is my partner, Srikanth."

  The dark-skinned man offered his hand.

  For three days Billy had rehearsed the words in his head. Mom, there's somebody special I'd like you to meet. This is my partner, Srikanth.

  He'd agonized over special, which made Sri sound retarded. And partner, which sounded so businesslike. But he detested the word boy friend— he was not a teenager. And lover made him want to run screaming into the street.

  Of course, partner was open to misinterpretation. For Billy this was part of its appeal. His mother was welcome to misinterpret the relationship, if she wished to. What mattered was the saying. Billy would say the words, and Sri would hear them. His family could think what they liked.

  Sri asked him one last time, as they turned off the highway to the No Name Road:"Are you sure you want to do this?"

  "Of course," Billy said.

  But a moment later he saw the Prize parked in the driveway. Then the screen door flew open and both his parents were waiting on the porch.

  "What is he doing here?" Billy said.

  He felt, but ignored, a sudden urge to hang a U-turn in the driveway, to test the Mercedes's vaunted acceleration by flooring it back to Manhattan.