by Condition
It was too late to change his mind.
He said the words he'd rehearsed, and waited. After a stunned moment, his father had shaken Sri's hand.
How ironic, how unsettling, how flat-out astonishing that it was Frank who saved the day, who sent Paulette down to the beach with Sabrina and a very strong Bloody Mary, who asked Sri a series of polite, then interested, then rabidly fascinated questions about his work.
Jesus, his father. Standing in the doorway to the kitchen, Billy watched the scene unfolding in the living room. His father sat opposite Sri on the hideous new couch (stripes?), in rapt attention. Sri's eloquence on the subject of gene-expression patterns seemed to have eclipsed the fact that he had sodomized Frank's son. A casual observer would have said that Frank was in denial, but Billy knew that the truth was more exotic. He'd understood for years that something was wrong with his father, some basic human quality missing. (The way he'd treated Paulette. Remember? The way he'd treated Gwen.) Now, suddenly, Frank's odd detachment looked for all the world like virtue.
The old man was not incapable of love. He simply reserved his love for the natural world, the subtle mysteries that governed it. It was a type of love that did not lead to happy marriages, or successful parenting; yet it was a sublime thing, beyond the capacity of most humans: to love what had nothing to do with oneself.
And yet.
Watching his father nodding, smiling, laughing in hearty approval, Billy remembered the wretched Thanksgiving Lauren McGregor had suffered in Concord, his father's warmth and welcome, the intuitive way he had put her at ease. Now he offered Sri the same kindness.
His father was kind.
Billy didn't get loaded in the afternoon, not normally. Not ever. But he was in Truro; he was an adult now; and at the Captain's House, adults drank. Cocktails at five, earlier on weekends. Those golden summers of his childhood: it had somehow never occurred to him that his grandfather and Mamie and Roy and Martine, probably even his mother, had spent them half in the bag. How else, really, could you spend an entire summer with your family? There was wisdom in the old ways, he reflected, improvising a second pitcher of Bloodies. A different sort of System.
He took the pitcher out to the front porch, where his brother was waiting. It was a spot where nobody ever sat because it offered only a view of the road. For Billy this was its appeal. He liked having his car in plain sight, his keys jangling in his pocket. There was comfort in knowing he could get behind the wheel at any moment and roar down the No Name Road, heading toward the highway.
"What's Dad doing here?" he asked Scott.
"He was here when I pulled in last night. He and Mom were on the porch." Scott hesitated."They might have been kissing."
"Mom and Dad?" Billy flinched. On a day when it seemed nothing could shock him, this did."Are you sure?"
"No," Scott admitted. "And they seem totally normal together.
Which itself is abnormal." He held out his empty glass.
"Where did he sleep?" Billy demanded.
"Captain's Quarters. Mom slept in Fanny's Room."
Billy filled their glasses. He waited for Scott to speak. When he could wait no longer, he took a long gulp of his Bloody Mary. He was about to discuss his sex life with his brother. Some distant, sober part of him was stunned and horrified.
"Seriously, man," he said finally. "All these years, you never had a clue?"
"Nope," said Scott.
"How is that possible?"
Scott shrugged."You had girlfriends. Lauren."
Lauren?
"That was fifteen years ago," Billy said, a bit testily."I haven't had a girlfriend since Reagan was president. That didn't throw up any red flags?"
"Shit. I didn't realize it was that long ago." Scott reached into his pocket for a pack of Camels.
"You are not," Billy said firmly."Don't even think about lighting a cigarette." He could scarcely breathe as it was.
The whole situation was breathtaking. He was dazzled by his brother's self-absorption, his unapologetic thoughtlessness. For twenty years Billy had agonized, monitored his behavior, censored every conversation. Packing for family gatherings (is this shirt too gay?) had triggered cluster headaches. How misguided, how laughable to think that anybody was paying attention. He could have preened around the Christmas tree in a feather boa for all his brother would have noticed.
You'd think Scotty was running General Motors or brokering peace in the Middle East, he was so preoccupied with his own affairs. But being a fuckup took focus, Billy realized. You couldn't make such a royal mess of your life simply by letting things happen. You had to work at it.
"Penny knew," said Scott. "She always said you were gay. It used to piss me off."
"Penny?" In a family of bright people, Billy would have tagged his sister-in-law as the dullard. Yet only she had seen the obvious.
"Where is Penny?" he asked. Until now he hadn't noticed her absence.
"She didn't come." Scott drank long from his glass."She's leaving me. She's having an affair with her stepbrother."
How to respond to a revelation of this type? Billy stared for a long moment at the ground.
"Quality," he said finally.
He allowed Scott to tell him the whole story: the stepfamily in Idaho, the chat room, finding the two of them in Sabrina's bedroom.
Somewhere in the middle—the camping in Yellowstone, the paisley tattoos—Scott scrabbled in his pocket for a cigarette. This time Billy didn't say a word.
He listened. He forced himself to take it all in, the myriad ragged, deeply unsettling details. This was his brother's life, the little brother his System had kept him from knowing. He understood, then, that the System had outlived its usefulness. For years it had served as a kind of container, a way of organizing his love and anger and weird loyalty, his unpredictable and overpowering tenderness for the four people who had always known him, his mother and father and Scotty and Gwen.
At Mamie's Beach the tide was going out. The lowest of the clouds had parted, revealing a white disk of sun.
Paulette and Sabrina made a slow tour, stopping to pick up a perfect shell, a bit of colored glass. Paulette walked slowly, pleasantly wobbly from the strong drink. Sabrina ran ahead, gleefully barefoot in the soft sand. For no good reason Paulette missed her sister. Martine had loved whizzing along the shoreline in her kayak. As a girl she'd pored over the framed nautical map hanging in the entryway of the house. There's Pamet Harbor! she would exclaim, pointing. Mamie's Beach. Full-Moon Cove.
How do you know? Paulette demanded, to which Martine simply shrugged.
You just look, and figure it out.
Paulette had tried this, but the correspondences eluded her. The formations on the map looked nothing like the sandy beaches and inlets she saw before her. In her mind they were entirely different things.
They had spoken two days ago, in honor of Paulette's birthday.
Martine, as always, had asked after the children, and for the first time in years, Paulette had confided in her sister. Billy's so distant lately. He's always in a hurry. I'm lucky if he calls once a week. Martine—Paulette ought to have expected this—had been inadequately sympathetic. Cut him some slack, will you? You're not his only concern. You have no idea what else is going on in his life. Paulette wondered, now, if Martine knew something she hadn't. Yet as far as she knew, Billy hadn't spoken with his aunt in years.
Martine had always been smarter about these things, more worldly, more sophisticated. Years ago, when Gwen and Billy were babies, Martine had shown up at the Captain's House with a friend from New York, an art director—whatever that was—at the agency where she worked.
His name was Anthony—pronounced in the British way, with a hard T—a good-looking man with sandy hair cut long in the front, so that he was always brushing it from his eyes. They had all assumed Anthony was Martine's boyfriend; but it was Paulette he followed around the house while Martine sailed or golfed, Paulette he joined at the piano in the afternoon while the children were nappi
ng. He seemed smitten with her, a startling development. Exhausted by her last pregnancy, she felt worn and homely. No one had been smitten with her in ages. She wished Frank were there to see it. (Though, being Frank, he probably wouldn't have noticed. He had always been immune to jealousy. Further evidence that he had never loved her enough.)
Martine, to her surprise, was not upset by Anthony's defection.
I'm glad you two had fun, she told Paulette after they dropped him at the ferry terminal. Then, seeing Paulette's confusion: For God's sake, he's not my boyfriend. He's queer, you know. Anthony was, to Paulette's knowledge, the first homosexual she'd ever met. Martine knew a great many, apparently, in New York; she was the first person of Paulette's acquaintance to use the word gay. Had she known about Billy all along? Probably, Paulette realized. Billy hadn't needed to tell her. Martine had simply looked, and figured it out.
Why didn't I see it? Paulette marveled. Heavens, what is the matter with me?
She glanced at her watch and wondered if Gwen had arrived.
Climbing the stairs to the porch, Paulette heard male voices inside. She was shocked to see Frank and Srikanth holding forth on the sofa. In her ruminations about Billy and Martine, she had forgotten about them both. Frank was speaking; she listened a moment and picked out two words, transgenic and mutation. Enough to convince her that nothing significant was being discussed.
Billy's friend was handsome. She took note of his elegant profile, the delicate arch of his eyebrows, his long and graceful hands. For years Billy had been her yardstick for male beauty, the standard to which she held all men—the very young ones in magazine advertisements, the toothy actors on television—usually to their detriment. But this Srikanth had the most beautiful skin she had ever seen on a person, male or female. His dark curly hair was glossy as mink.
He seemed to sense her gaze. He looked up from his conversation and met her eyes. When Paulette smiled, he smiled back, dazzling her. He was, she realized, even handsomer than Billy. She was undeniably drunk, yet she felt confident in her perceptions.
He was possibly the handsomest man in the world.
This should not have mattered, of course. But to Paulette, it made the situation comprehensible. Her son was a homosexual, but who could blame him? The world would be rife with homosexuals if more men looked like Srikanth.
"My mother is in love with you," Billy said.
They were lying in the dark in the Bunk House, Sri in the top bunk, Billy down below, having refused the double bed in the Lilac Room. He was relieved beyond words to have the day behind him.
He had no regrets. Yet he was unprepared to sleep with Srikanth in the Lilac Room with Paulette to one side of them, Frank to the other. He would likely never be prepared for that.
"She was staring at you all through dinner. It was embarrassing."
"I think she was a little drunk," said Sri.
"She was tanked. We all were. Welcome to the family." Billy reached for the glass of water he'd placed beside the bed. "I'm going to be puffy tomorrow."
"I'll still love you," said Sri.
"You say that now."
Above them the floor creaked. Movement in the Captain's Quarters.
"My father is on the loose," said Billy. "He's coming down here to show you his grant application."
Sri chuckled.
"You think I'm joking," Billy said.
Frank lay awake a long time, thinking. He remembered a night long ago, driving back from Nantasket Beach with two girls and Neil Windsor. The night he had misread the situation entirely, convinced that Windsor was gay.
With his own son he had made the same mistake, in reverse.
A hundred times he'd questioned Billy about girlfriends. The answers were uniformly evasive. Always Billy's reticence had stung him: Why wouldn't the kid talk to him? Had he been that negligent a father? All these years later, was Billy still angry about the divorce?
Once again he had misinterpreted the data. The truth had taken him by surprise, but he was too seasoned a scientist to panic at unexpected results. This outcome defied quick interpretations—it would take Frank the rest of his life to make sense of it—but it was certainly more favorable than the one he'd predicted. Billy, though gay, did not hate him. Frank still had his son.
The bedside clock ticked loudly. On a normal Sunday night he'd be asleep by now, the better to spring awake at dawn and get an early start in the lab. Instead he lay in a strange bed in a place he'd never expected to be. The big bed in the Captain's Quarters. Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts, New England, USA.
For a dozen summers, more, he'd made grudging trips to this house—muttering and grumbling, keenly aware of all he was missing back in Cambridge. Which was . . . what?
A few long days—among thousands—spent in the lab.
Back then he'd made the trip to please Paulette. Now she no longer wanted him in Truro. And he no longer wanted to be anywhere else. Was this old age, then: the end of all wanting? In April he'd celebrated—the wrong word—his sixtieth birthday. Whatever he'd desired from life had been gotten, or not; his wishes satisfied, or not. His wants—Paulette's too—were exhausted. It was their children's turn to want. Billy wanted . . . whatever he wanted. (Best not think too much about that.) Scott wanted his freedom. And then, Gwen.
Daddy, please do this for me. Billy isn't answering his phone. There's nobody else I can ask.
Rolling out of bed, Frank groped for his shirt and trousers. The floor creaked. Years ago, before they were married, he and Paulette had been assigned to separate rooms. At night they'd crept around the house as her parents slept. Frank and Paulette in love: cursing the noisy stairs, and wanting. Always privacy had eluded them. It seemed, then, that Drew relatives were around every corner—Roy and Anne on the lawn, chain-smoking and already squabbling; Aunt Doro and the other one whose name Frank could never remember, their tipsy laughter rising from the terrace. Now the house felt empty, and to his surprise this saddened him. For years he had fled the family—his own and Paulette's alike. Now, for the first time, he wanted them close.
There now. There was still something left to want.
He tiptoed down the hall, past Scott's closed door, and refilled his water glass at the bathroom sink. He peered out onto the sleeping porch: five empty twin beds, the sixth occupied by Sabrina. She looked tiny under the coverlet, and somehow forlorn, like a girl stood up at her slumber party. To his amusement, the thought made him misty. Jesus, was this his future? A weeping grandpa.
A crack of light showed beneath the door of Fanny's Room. Paulette had always liked to read in bed. At the door he paused.
The last time, yes. The summer of the bicentennial was the last time he and Paulette had shared this room. Time was no ghost; it had weight and smell and substance. Fit you like lead boots, it did. And yet those years could go in an instant. You could find yourself knocking at that same door.
"Paulette?" he whispered."Are you still awake?"
"Frank? Is that you?"
He opened the door just in time to see her hide reading glasses beneath the coverlet. She sat up in bed, her back braced by pillows.
She looked astonished to see him.
"I'm glad you're awake," he said.
"I don't sleep well anymore. Frank, what is it? Is something wrong?" The night had turned chilly; she wore a cardigan sweater over her nightgown."I can't imagine what's keeping Gwen."
He sat at the edge of the bed."I need to talk to you."
Paulette closed her eyes."Not about Billy, please."
"You're upset," he said.
"Not at all. It's his own business, as far as I'm concerned. Honestly, I can't imagine what possessed him to tell us in the first place."
She rubbed gingerly at her temples."Please. Let's not discuss it."
"Fair enough." He handed her the glass of water. "Drink this.
You're going to have a hangover tomorrow."
She took the glass.
"Actually, there's something else
I need to tell you. It's why I drove down here in the first place. I didn't mean to horn in on your vacation." He hesitated."It's about Gwen."
Paulette frowned.
"She called the other night and asked me to tell you—" He broke off."Honey, Gwen isn't coming."
She stared at him wide eyed.
"She went back to the island. Apparently she's patched things up with the guy."
Paulette listened in silence as he told her everything he knew.
"But why?" she said when he'd finished. "Why couldn't she tell me herself ?" Her voice startled him, husky with anguish. It was a voice he'd never heard before.
"I don't know," Frank admitted. "I begged her to, but she was adamant. She wouldn't say why." He reached for her hand, this woman he'd made his life with. Paulette who hadn't changed and wouldn't, perhaps couldn't; who had loved their daughter so imperfectly. Who had so imperfectly loved him.
"Paulette, I'm sorry. I know how important this was. You wanted the whole family together, and now everything—"
"Stay with me," she said.
prognosis
Winter comes late to St. Raphael. The November sun sets early.
The big ships return to the harbor. The resorts, empty during storm season, begin to fill.
At Thanksgiving, at Christmas, the tourists appear like refugees.
They are escaping the holiday, the anguished pilgrimage to the family stake. Instead they fly southward, moneyed travelers with seasonal de pression, ashamed of their pale winter hides. Gwen is glad to see them, and not just for the dollars and euros they charge to their credit cards.
She greets them kindly, with a warmth she'd never suspected she possessed. To her they are survivors of natural disasters. Her impulse is to offer cots and blankets, to bandage wounds.
There was a time, not long ago, when she wouldn't talk to strangers. That time seems remote now. Like a dream remembered, it haunts her for a moment, then quickly seems like nonsense.
Where did you come from? she asks them all. Are you here for the holidays? The two questions are enough. Travelers are lonely. They hunger to discuss themselves, to remember who they are.