Tactfully, she seemed not to notice the haste with which Lee Roy Sears swallowed down one of his white capsules, as soon as a waiter poured ice water into his glass.
Nor did she allow herself to be annoyed by his nervous mannerisms, as he read, or tried to read, the menu; shifting his shoulders inside his jacket, and peering from beneath his heavy eyebrows, as if anxious that he was being watched. Again, he compulsively straightened his plates, his cutlery, his water glass; he fussed interminably with his chair, moving it in tight little jerks close to the table, so that, finally, he was squeezed uncomfortably against the edge of the table, his narrow shoulders ramrod straight. Gina supposed he had not been in a restaurant for thirteen years—had not been in a woman’s company, perhaps, for thirteen years. She was sympathetic, she wasn’t about to judge. Her heart opened to this poor, sad, deprived man, a cast-off, a veteran, a victim; even, of all injustices, an American Indian, repudiated, it seemed, by his own people. She said, laying a hand on his arm, her pink-polished nails startling against the cheap fabric of his jacket, “Lee Roy, order anything you like, please!—this is a celebration.”
He said, in his nasal, high-pitched voice, “Uh—maybe you could order for me, Mrs. O’Meara?”
It was to be a strained hour, Gina O’Meara’s lunch with Lee Roy Sears, in The Café.
Gina chattered and asked questions; Lee Roy answered in monosyllables, or not at all. He continued to fuss with his plates, his chair. He drank several glasses of water in succession, as if he were burning with fever, or in the grip of a manic attack. He alternated between gobbling his food and not eating it at all—laying his knife and fork chastely across his plate, and waiting. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. His darkly bright eyes, the eyes of a nocturnal animal who has ventured into the light, fastened themselves helplessly upon Gina O’Meara, who basked in such attention even as, with a part of her mind, she found it a bit unnerving.
She managed to extract from Lee Roy Sears the fact that, before he’d arrived in Putnam, his suitcase had been stolen from him in the New York Port Authority: thus he’d badly needed the clothes and other items Gina had bought for him. (Surely he needed more?—socks, underwear, toiletries, that sort of thing. Gina made a mental note.) She learned too, though clearly he did not want to expand upon it, that he’d been wounded at a place called Phu Cuong. (Of which Gina had never heard, though she nodded sympathetically, as if the very sound of the words evoked a common cause.) She learned that, though he’d been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death for a crime he had not committed, though, in prison for thirteen years, he’d been abused, beaten, humiliated, forced at times to eat filthy food crawling with beetles, he did not harbor any bitterness—why, none at all.
Because he had his art.
Because he had his God-given talent.
Because he knew his destiny.
Because he believed in God. A God Who exacted justice from man, in the end.
Gina, wide-eyed, sipping white wine, murmured breathily, “Oh yes, oh yes! That’s so.”
Lee Roy Sears took up his fork again, and chewed, and swallowed, and ate hungrily, even as Gina, who never ordered anything other than light salads for lunch, and rarely finished these, picked about in the leafy greens on her plate. She was feeling—ah, what was she feeling? That delicious, innocent elation that comes of sipping white wine on a near-empty stomach, in the tiniest, most measured of sips?
She noted that Lee Roy Sears’s hands were shaking, more visibly now than when they’d first sat down. Impulsively she said, “Have a little of my wine, Lee Roy, please!—no one will see.”
Lee Roy looked up at her, startled. “Uh—no thanks, Mrs. O’Meara.”
“Oh, don’t be silly, this is a celebration, come on.”
“Thank you, but—”
“They say—I mean Michael says—I mean I’ve heard him say—in brain research—they’ve discovered there’s a sort of mechanism in the left brain that makes up theories, stories—you know, reasons things happen the way they do, and why we do things we do—and so,” Gina said, gaily, giddily, scarcely knowing what she said except that Lee Roy Sears had again laid his fork down across his plate, and was sitting ramrod straight, listening, with the most intensity she’d ever seen in any man, “and so, we might as well just say, let’s do what we want to do, and make up the reason later!”
Lee Roy Sears was shaking his head, saying, embarrassed, “Well, uh—it isn’t just the parole violation, it’s this medication I take—”
Gina pushed her wine glass in Lee Roy Sears’s direction, with a sly conspiratorial smile. “It’s just dry white wine, very low in calories,” she said, giggling.
And: “You’ve paid your debt to society, what the hell.”
“I’m afraid I can’t see you after all this afternoon,” Gina O’Meara was saying into the telephone receiver, her voice husky with regret, “—something has come up. I’m so sorry.”
The man’s voice at the other end of the line, deep, husky too, had that edge of abrasiveness to it that, these past few weeks, Gina had come to anticipate. It made her uneasy, it frightened her a bit.
Made her smile.
Saying quickly, “—a friend, a friend of Michael’s actually, a favor I seem to have to do for him, yes it’s a him, no he’s no one you know, I didn’t anticipate how long it would take—” She paused, and listened. She nodded. Frowned. “—Oh yes, darling, I know you’re leaving for Tokyo in the morning, I know we won’t see each other for a week—two weeks? Oh!—”
A group of men was passing by, one of them raised a hand in greeting, and Gina pursed her lips in a kissy sort of smile, and waved back: Jack Trimmer with some businessmen.
“—Oh but I do, you must know that I do, it’s just that life is so complicated, and—I have more shopping to do this afternoon, and I have to pick up the boys at school, and—”
Gina had taken her gold compact out of her purse in order to inspect her lipstick, her mascara, the condition of her face powder: she was so skillfully made up, with a fine, reliable foundation, and a feathery-light loose powder, she looked, to the undiscerning eye at least, scarcely made up at all.
And much, much younger than her age.
Not that Gina O’Meara dwelled upon age. You are as old as you look, it’s as simple as that.
Yes but she needed lipstick, so she applied it. Frowning, listening to the voice at the other end of the line. “—Oh that’s unfair!—that’s cruel!—‘deliberately’?—now, ‘deliberately’?—are you accusing me? I don’t do anything deliberately!—” Seeing with a tiny thrill of satisfaction that her tube of lipstick was nearly depleted, which meant she was obliged to drop by Hélène’s Cosmetics after they left The Café. And next door to Hélène’s was Henri Bendel’s.
Certainly Lee Roy Sears wouldn’t mind, the man was so sweet.
It was time to hang up the phone but how to hang up, the voice at the other end was so unexpectedly emotional, so demanding, odd how others’ emotions, especially over the phone, can leave us so unmoved, “—yes I do—I do feel the same way—but—life right now is so complicated—I’d like to say yes, but—I can’t—I mean I can’t promise—Oh! what! how dare you!”
And if, after Henri Bendel’s, she dropped in at Bergdorf’s (not drop in so much as cross through: the parking lot was on the other side of the store), if she was five minutes late picking up the twins, would it matter?—it would not. When Mommy’s late you play in the playground.
Supervision at the Riverside School was absolutely reliable: children were never allowed to leave if they hadn’t an adult to take them home.
“—I don’t see how you can say that, in fact you hardly know me at all—you only think you do! Just like my husband!”
Sighing, pouting. Listening. As her gaze drifted to the interior of the restaurant, the familiar setting of hanging plants and hardwood floors and attractively dressed patrons and waiters in white uniforms, that pleasant buzzing-bustle, and, in a corner, Lee Roy
Sears with his very dark, Indian-black hair, sitting alone and brooding.
At least, at this distance, it looked as if he were brooding.
At the other end of the line the voice droned on. Gina, the most gracious of women, was forced to interrupt, saying, with sudden vehemence, “—If that’s how you feel, then—goodbye!”
Tears brimming dangerously in her eyes, her heels staccato on the floor, Gina returned to the table; as incensed as if she’d truly felt the emotions she’d simulated. There, Lee Roy Sears was sitting staring at her as she approached, his face flushed too, damp mouth ajar. He’d drained not only Gina’s glass of wine but the carafe as well.
“Let’s go!” Gina exclaimed. “It’s a lovely, lovely day!”
A quick visit to Hélène’s, and Henri Bendel’s; across the street then to Bergdorf’s; and, since it was so close, Xavier’s Men’s Clothing, for some Calvin Klein underwear, for Lee Roy Sears. And a Dior necktie, midnight blue silk. (To replace that hideous mud-green thing he insisted upon wearing.) You would think that by this time of the afternoon Lee Roy would be more relaxed, but no, poor man, to Gina’s bemused exasperation he stood self-conscious, stricken, and mute, face oily with sweat, as Gina chatted with salesmen and -women. She introduced him as an artist-friend of hers and her husband’s—“In fact, Lee Roy is artist-in-residence at the Dumont Center. He’s primarily a sculptor.”
So stiff and forbidding was Lee Roy Sears, none of the sales-clerks proffered to shake his hand.
They must have made an odd pair, Gina O’Meara with Lee Roy Sears in tow, making the rounds of the better Mount Orion stores that day. Gina was in her element, glowing with pleasure. In such stores, as in similar stores in New York City, Gina was known by name; if not precisely by name, then by her species. She was the exemplary American woman shopper, not enormously wealthy, but well-to-do; educated, but not so educated as to cripple her enthusiasm; no longer, at the age of thirty-five (or was it thirty-six?), young, but strikingly young-looking; and fashionably thin. And how Gina put her trust in a litany of names, as her ancestors might have put theirs in a litany of saints’ names: Gucci, Dior, Calvin Klein, Bill Blass, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix, Princess Marcella Borghese, Lancôme, Estée Lauder … she was an avid subscriber to, if not an assiduous reader of, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Town & Country, House & Garden; her favorite novelist was Tom Wolfe.
As she told a dazed, punchy Lee Roy Sears, she’d long ago vowed not to be a vain, neurotic, self-absorbed woman, like so many; even when she was feeling a bit melancholy, she did her best to disguise it.
By this time they’d finished their shopping and were headed back to Gina’s car. Lee Roy Sears was carrying most of Gina’s purchases and limping badly, as if, though he had not uttered a word of complaint, his handsome new Italian shoes were hurting his feet.
Gina chattered on, reflectively, as if thinking aloud, “—I have a sort of negative model in my mother-in-law, of how I don’t want to be, ever. I think of Michael’s mother as ‘the other Mrs. O’Meara’: she’s an attractive woman for her age, she’s financially secure, her two grown-up children love her, yet there’s something wrong with her. I’m sure she drinks too much; there’s some hurt, or wound, or old trauma in her life, a sort of bleak shadow over her life. Brrrr!” Gina said, shuddering. “I surely don’t want to be like that!”
Lee Roy Sears made a grunting sound, of sympathy, or assent, but had nothing further to contribute on that subject. He was watching Gina O’Meara in a wistful, sidelong way, head tilted, eyes doggily bright in their sockets.
“Gina?—wait!”
They were crossing Laurel Street, Gina briskly in the lead, her ashy-pale hair flashing like a helmet, Lee Roy Sears limping gamely behind, when a man’s voice sounded: deep, baritone, just perceptibly accusing: and Gina turned, already smiling, and saw not the man she’d half expected to see, but another man: Marvin Bruns.
Marvin Bruns in a navy blazer with gold buttons, a sort of raffish nautical look, and his handsome slightly flushed face, wideset quizzical eyes—he was out of breath, having hurried after Gina from a gallery up the street. (The Laurel Gallery, Inc., was one of a number of upscale Mount Orion properties with which Marvin Bruns was in some way associated, as owner, or co-owner, or investor; as creditor or debtor.) He shook Gina’s hand in greeting, and held it; smiled hard at her, and slowly; glancing indifferently, rather coolly, at the odd-looking stranger who stood a few feet off staring at him with the prickly, agitated air of a dog undecided whether to be cowering or belligerent.
Gina knew that Marvin wanted very much to speak to her in private; thus, mischievously, she introduced the two men, bemused by the sudden tension between them.
As if they were rivals?—but for whom?
Marvin managed a tight, disdainful smile, but pointedly did not offer to shake hands. “—‘Sears’? Yes, Clyde Somerset was telling some of us about you. I believe it was you?—going to teach a course at the Dumont Center?”
So flatly stated, the parolee’s miraculous position, and the dignity that accrued to it, was revealed as not much, after all. At least Marvin Bruns with his curl of a smile and his cold shrewd assessing eyes did not appear to think so.
Marvin adroitly drew Gina off to say he’d been hoping he might see her soon. He’d called several times, but she seemed never to be home, and he hadn’t wanted to leave a message on her answering machine.
Innocently, smiling, Gina inquired, “Why on earth not, Marvin?—that’s what answering machines are for.”
Marvin’s smile tightened. “I’d prefer not to, Gina dear, that’s all.”
Oblivious of Lee Roy Sears as if he were a lamp post, standing a few yards away, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and making a quiet snuffling sound, as if trying to clear clogged sinuses. Gina and Marvin chatted: laughed together: discovering, to their mutual pleasure, that they were both invited, not only to the same dinner party on Friday night, but to the same dinner party on Saturday night too. Perhaps ten minutes passed, no doubt very swiftly for Gina O’Meara and Marvin Bruns, who’d grown wonderfully animated in each other’s presence—Marvin’s handsome, slightly flushed face grew ruddier, Gina’s eyes positively glittered; then Marvin thought to ask would Gina like a drink?—Gina, and, of course, her companion?—but Gina declined, glancing worriedly at her wrist-watch.
She said, a bit agitated, “Oh God!—the boys have been waiting for me for half an hour.”
“Another time, then?” Marvin asked.
Backing away, Gina said, “Yes. Maybe.”
Marvin persisted, “Yes, or maybe—?”
Gina laughingly said goodbye, and she and Lee Roy Sears hurried off, leaving Marvin Bruns to gaze after them. At the intersection close by Gina couldn’t resist glancing back, seeing, with a tiny pang of satisfaction, that he was still standing there on the sidewalk, smiling vaguely, and stroking his chin.
Dear Marvin! There were Mount Orion women who spoke reproachfully of him, but Gina O’Meara never would. She wasn’t worried.
Since The Café and that hour of seeming intimacy, since, above all that glass or two of dry white wine, Lee Roy Sears had been behaving somewhat differently, but, in her vivacity and general cheeriness, Gina O’Meara had not noticed. She was one of those women who delights in being observed, admired, desired; one of those women who wants, not lovers, but admirers. She would have had to ponder hard to see that, unlike a mirror in which our images so irresistibly float only when we are before it, a man, an admirer, a man aroused by desire, is after all living—and may continue to see, to stare, to desire, even when the object of his interest is no longer aware of him.
Or, in fact, interested in him, in the slightest.
So, as Gina was starting the car, not the Mazda, but a handsome metallic gray Honda hatchback, she was basking in a glow (not erotic, but indeed very romantic) that had less to do with Marvin Bruns than with the idea of Marvin Bruns, and, beyond him, the idea of being admired, desired, yes
and adored, as in a Platonic realm of the spirit in which the very body is but a pretext for such supplication; so she scarcely paid any heed, nor probably even clearly heard, Lee Roy Sears timidly yet boldly clearing his throat, to say, “Mrs. O’Meara,—I—I never met anybody like you ever—I was dead and you gave me life and—”
Backing out of her parking place (damn! she’d parked at an angle, was within a fraction of an inch of scraping the lipstick red Toyota to her left), Gina was all business now, a decided frown between her perfect eyebrows, her lovely lips downturned at the corners, murmuring, as one might to a distracting child, “Oh!—isn’t that sweet of you, Lee Roy! Why, thank you.”
And the Honda hatchback was clear and aimed for the street.
Gina apologized for not having time, right now, to drop Lee Roy off at the Dumont Center—“I know you must be anxious to get back to your sculpting!”—but she was late: already swinging around to Riverside Drive, and to the Riverside School, to pick up Joel and Kenny on the playground: never more obviously twins, and identical, as now, having sighted Mommy’s car and racing to it, two small-boned blond boys with strikingly beautiful faces, the one (Joel?) in a green shirt, the other (Kenny?) in blue. How they ran, ran!—overjoyed to see Mommy at last!—slowing only when they saw, seated beside Mommy, that man.
That man Daddy had brought home with him the week before.
For a reason, but why?
Guardedly the boys climbed into the rear of the Honda hatchback as Gina leaned around, happily as always, to kiss and hug them. “You remember Mr. Sears, boys, don’t you?”
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