Mr. Walsh shrugged dramatically and smoothed his sweatshirt down over his stomach. “It could well have been that,” he said. “Either way, we don’t believe in snooping. If Margo and Carter needed help, they knew we were here.”
Chloe passed a note to Jane. She opened the folded slip of paper and showed it to Desmond. “Elder Abuse?? Common w/ Alz.”
“Are you suggesting Pauline was beating up her sister?” Jane asked.
The Walshes looked at each other. “I’m not sure you’d call it beating her up,” Mr. Walsh said. “Would you call it that, hon?”
“No, I’d say more like roughhousing. The usual sibling rivalry stuff. I doubt there was ever any bloodshed. Underneath it all, they loved each other. Deeply.”
Desmond didn’t know what to say. The last time he’d been with this hapless couple, they’d told him touching stories about Pauline Anderton and her final days. Admittedly, they’d mentioned a few scenes in restaurants, a drunken fight with a neighbor who was now dead, but nothing quite so tawdry as this. He was tempted to tell Chloe to turn off the camera, but it didn’t seem right to stop them just because they were contradicting themselves. He put down his file, popped one of the hard candies into his mouth and tried to crack it in half with his teeth. It was this portion of Anderton’s life, and the years leading up to it, that still didn’t make sense to him. If her behavior was bordering on violent, it had to mean she was unhappy—with herself, her life. Perhaps with her decision to scrap her whole career and move to this undistinguished part of the country. That was one way to make sense of it in light of what he already knew. He made a note: she wished she’d gone back to singing after her husband died.
Mrs. Walsh sighed and sipped. “We always thought Margo would be the first one to go, what with the Alzheimer’s and the cancer and the heart problems and that kidney thing.”
“Didn’t she have diabetes?” Mr. Walsh asked.
“Probably. And Paulie was strong as an ox. You never know how your life is going to change and rot. The kids are the only things that remain unchanged, innocent for eternity. That’s why I love them so. I think Pauline was jealous of them, them staying so young and her getting fatter and meaner every day. She blew up like a balloon at the end there.” Mrs. Walsh puffed out her cheeks and thrust her chest forward and seemed to expand on the sofa. “It got so she could hardly fit through doors.”
“Now wait a minute,” Desmond said. “I’ve seen pictures of her from her last years, and there’s no indication she was that fat.”
“Oh, she knew how to hide it,” Mrs. Walsh said. “I’ll give her that. She’d wear cute little sweaters so you couldn’t tell.”
Mr. Walsh nodded in agreement. “We didn’t hold any grudges against her, even after she ruined that Christmas party of ours. By the time we got back from Arizona that winter, she was dead and Margo and Carter had moved on to Florida, which was where Margo always said she wanted to live. I guess it was a good thing they took in Paulie after all because she ended up leaving them some money.”
Desmond was crunching the sour ball between his teeth, leafing through his notes. It would have been equally annoying but not nearly as humiliating if Jane hadn’t been here to listen to all these contradictions. He found the page he was looking for and scanned it quickly. “You told me,” he said, “that you were here when she died, that you went to the burial. ‘We had a good long cry at the grave site.’ That’s a direct quote.”
“Well sure, we went to the grave site. We went that summer. I can’t guarantee about the tears.”
“I definitely cried,” Mrs. Walsh said. “I cry about everything. Are you sure you don’t want a little drink to wash down that candy, Davie?”
“Now that you mention it, a drink might be nice. Jane?”
“I could use a splash of something.”
3.
When Chloe complained that the sun had started to shine into the lens of the video camera and that they’d have to rearrange the lights, Jane and Desmond went out to the backyard to get some air. It felt more humid than it had earlier in the day, as if yet another spell of summer weather was blowing in, even though it was the third week in October. Jane hated it. There were about seven days in the year when the temperature was tolerable now. There had been at least four weather disasters described as “the storm of the century” in the past six months alone. Jane took a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her skirt.
“I didn’t know you smoke,” Desmond said.
“No, neither did I. Anyway, I don’t. Not really. I hate the smell of cigarettes and the taste of them and what they do to you, but I love the matches.” It was true. She pulled out a small, green box of Rosebud wooden matches, slid it open and struck one. She loved the bright flare of light and heat. She shook out the match and put its ashy remains back in the box. She’d sneaked a cigarette from Caroline’s pack in New Hampshire, smoked it outside in the cool night air, and now she was up to three or four a day. Just what she deserved, punishment for her bad behavior, although a complicated kind of punishment, since she enjoyed the compact drama of lighting up and inhaling until the little cylinder of tobacco was used up and gone.
She turned back to Desmond, but he was staring mournfully across the Walshes’ wooden fence to the neighboring yard where a hodgepodge of plastic toys was spread out across the yellowing grass. She found those big, smooth, garish jungle gyms and tricycles and kiddie pools among the ugliest things on the planet and had felt partly relieved that Gerald had never shown a flicker of interest in any of them and was, from time to time, openly disdainful of children who did. Another part of her was worried that it might mean he was doomed to miss out on some important piece of childhood and that it was her fault: perhaps he was trying to please her by dismissing toys as “ugly” and “stupid.” This morning, Desmond had given her a book by his lover’s mother which he said she’d probably find interesting. He hadn’t elaborated on why she’d find it interesting, but it seemed to indicate he thought either she or Gerald needed help on the question of child rearing.
“It sounds as if Pauline Anderton was quite a hellion,” Jane said.
He shook his head. “What troubles me is that it contradicts so much of what they said before.”
“Don’t you often find there are several versions of the truth?”
“Yes, but usually not from the same source. And then all that nonsense about Anderton getting obese. I’ve seen pictures of her shortly before she died. I hate to think the Walshes are that unreliable.”
“Sometimes people like to perform for the camera,” Jane said. “I’ve seen it before.”
“They did take to it, didn’t they?”
In this awful glare of sunlight, Desmond looked older than she’d seen him look before. More gray in his hair, and more crepey wrinkles around the eyes. Jane put out her cigarette carefully and slipped the butt into the pack. It was so easy to offend people with cigarettes these days, it was almost refreshing. She’d have to carry a pack around as a weapon, even after she’d given up this latest bout of indulgence. “Is that all that’s troubling you?” Jane asked.
“The Walshes? Well, no.” He put on a pair of sunglasses and squinted across the yard. “In addition to everything else, Russell and I can’t seem to get our footing in dealing with each other. The last couple of times we’ve talked, I’ve had the feeling the air is leaking out of our relationship.”
“Should I press for details?”
“Please don’t. It would probably embarrass both of us.”
That was vague enough to mean anything, but if he was referring to some situation with her brother, he was right, she really didn’t care to know.
“Have you interviewed Anderton’s sister? Margo?”
Desmond shook his head. “She’s in an old-age home in Florida, with advanced Alzheimer’s. I talked with her on the phone once, but she was fairly incoherent. The last time I talked with Anderton’s daughter, she said her aunt only has a few more months.”
“No, I believed her. The daughter’s pretty straightforward. Lorna’s like her mother in that.”
“Where do we go from here?”
“You’re the executive producer. If we’ve got the money, I think we should go down to Florida and interview Lorna relatively soon. She might be able to clear some of this up. It would be good to get some shots of her collection of Anderton memorabilia.”
Their money. She shouldn’t have told Desmond the station was coming through with the seed money until they actually did, but at the time, she was so certain they would, it hadn’t seemed to matter. Given how long it was taking David Trask to come back with an answer, she’d started to wonder. Dale had already made it clear he’d be happy to invest, so she’d take him up on his offer. He was rolling in dough these days. His income and net worth had probably quadrupled since Massachusetts had chucked out rent control and handed a blank check to landlords and real estate developers. He might as well throw some of it at the arts. If she really tried, she could probably get him to set up a foundation of some kind. A very small one. She’d ask him for ten thousand, which ought to be more than enough to get the two of them plus their camera crew down to Florida.
“When would we go?” she asked.
“That would depend on Lorna’s schedule, but hopefully before Thanksgiving. I’ll talk to her. We can set a date and make the reservations.”
Jane rattled the box of matches. “Good,” she said. “I could use a vacation.”
Seventeen
The Piano Lesson
1.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do about the baby’s bedroom?” Desmond asked.
There was a long silence from the other end of the line, and then Brian said, “I’m still mulling it over.”
“It’s getting a little late, isn’t it? I thought the baby was due—”
“Any day now. That’s true. I can put something together quickly. I did most of the work on my apartment myself, all in the course of a couple of weeks, so it won’t be a problem.”
He was still mulling over where to put the baby’s bedroom in his apartment. One thing was certain, they weren’t going to put the crib in his bedroom because he wasn’t planning to take time off and couldn’t afford to have his sleep interrupted. It was amazing, really, the way Brian managed to avoid ever mentioning Joyce or any decisions that they were making as a couple or plans the two of them had ever made together. Given what had happened in Desmond’s room a couple of weeks ago, you wouldn’t expect him to go into a lengthy description of their happy marriage, but you’d think he might mess up once or twice and let the name slip out. Desmond found it hard to listen to the two-mouthed behemoths Melanie had mentioned in Morning in America before he left town, the ones who spoke exclusively in the first person plural, but there was something about Brian’s refusal to acknowledge his wife’s existence that was eerie. It must have been exhausting dodging “us” and “we” as if they were poisoned darts. The whole thing was surprisingly unbecoming.
“What does Joyce think about the baby’s room?”
“You know, Desmond, I really didn’t call to talk about the baby’s room, okay? I called because I have a little free time this afternoon around four, and I was wondering if you’d like to get together. I could drop over.”
“I have a couple of appointments here at school,” Desmond said. “And then there’s a department meeting of some kind at four.” Specifically, the kind of department meeting to which he hadn’t been invited. “So I’m afraid I won’t be home until much later in the evening.”
It sounded as if Brian’s receptionist had come into his office. There was a discussion about a client on another line, and then he said, “Well, tell them I’ll call back, I’m busy.” When the door had clicked shut, he said, “Not that I’m counting, Desmond, but this is the third time I’ve suggested we get together and the third time you haven’t been available. So frankly, as I see it, three strikes and you’re out.”
Desmond preferred to think that Brian was the one who’d struck out, but that was nitpicking. “It’s too awkward,” Desmond said. “Joyce is about to deliver, I’m working with Jane . . .”
“That might be so, but I wish you’d thought of that before you invited me back to your place that day and came on so strongly.”
“I apologize, but I think this is for the best. It’s not as if I’m single either, you know.” It was reassuring to bring Russell into the conversation in some form, especially since they hadn’t spoken in five days and their last conversation had ended on a sour note. There was a knock on Desmond’s office door. “Who is it?” he called out.
“Ee rolovel.”
“Come in, Roger,” he said, happy for a legitimate distraction. “I’ll be right with you. Take a seat.”
“Yayaya. Dolemmeinerup.”
“I have a student here,” Desmond said, “so I should be hanging up.”
“I guess you should. I didn’t mean to snap at you before, it’s just that there’s a lot going on in my life right now, and it’s all starting to get a little overwhelming. But don’t worry, I won’t call again.”
“Maybe when the baby comes, you’ll fall in love with it, and everything will fit back into place.” Desmond didn’t believe it for a minute, but it was the generous and encouraging thing to say. Desmond thought he’d handled the whole call pretty well. Everything had been done with clean efficiency and without ambiguity. Maybe those sugar pills he was taking for Ambivalence had finally kicked in. It was discouraging to think he’d lost his ability to have meaningless sexual affairs, but nice to see he still knew how to end them. “Job well done,” he said aloud.
“Yayayaya. Thanyaverymuss.”
Roger Lovell. He’d forgotten about him. He was nervously fidgeting in the chair across from Desmond, grinning, adjusting his big, insect-eye glasses. Now that the weather had turned a bit cooler, he’d layered a few baggy, long-sleeved T-shirts under his usual outer layer, making him look more like a restless scarecrow than ever. Even if he hadn’t been trying to get Brian off the phone, Desmond would have been happy to see Roger. Roger had taken Desmond’s suggestion for writing more about his brother, and last week, he’d turned in a ten-page story about helping his younger sibling regain the confidence to climb trees after having fallen out of one and broken his arm. It was the most charming and sensitively written piece of Creative Nonfiction the class had yet produced.
“Yes, well, job well done, Roger. I’m proud of you, I really am.” Desmond reached out and shook the boy’s hand, a surprisingly cold thing considering how much time he spent clasping it and rolling it around. “It’s simple, clear, full of emotion, no histrionics.” He nodded toward Roger’s beat-up vinyl briefcase. “How were the written comments from the other students?”
“Kina fusing.”
“Confusing?”
“Kinda, yayayaya.”
“In what way?”
Roger snapped open the briefcase and pulled out a wad of papers, most of them smudged with food and coffee stains, many covered in comments written in absurdly large script. Desmond tried to get a glimpse into Roger’s briefcase to see what else he was carrying around. He remembered Roger telling him he was a math major, although it could have been biology. It always happened that his interest in a student’s personal life spiked if she or he turned in a coherent piece of work. Up to that point, they tended to form a pleasant blur in his mind. He saw what looked like a row of pill bottles before Roger snapped the briefcase shut.
It was hard to make out all of the long, garbled speech that followed, but it sounded as if most of the students had found the story unfocused, boring, and pointless. (What else could “poless” mean in this context?) Most shockingly of all, almost everyone had commented that they “dinna baleeit.” How was it possible that they didn’t believe this straightforward vignette when
no one had balked at perky Esther Feldman’s claims that she’d been brought up in a dark closet for the first six years of her life, or at Bill Moretti’s story about his grandmother being sold into white slavery? No one had doubted the veracity of the two students who wrote supposedly autobiographical stories about helping their parents commit suicide, one with a shotgun. Helping your brother climb a tree was the one thing they found lacking in credibility?
“You have to decide for yourself if any of this criticism rings true for you, Roger, but my advice would be to ignore it and keep writing.”
“I’mga reryeit. Maygima quawralegic.”
Desmond looked at his watch. He wasn’t going to change his mind about meeting up with Brian, but this conversation was enough to make him wish he had so little pride and so few scruples that he could. “A quadriplegic?”
“Yayayaya. Moramatic.”
Had he said romantic or dramatic? At this point, it didn’t seem to matter much. Desmond was clearly swimming against such a strong current of opinion, he was destined to drown anyway, so why not relax and enjoy the scenery as he was pulled out to sea. Roger’s generation had fact and fiction so thoroughly confused, there was no point in trying to make a distinction. Old television shows were accepted as historical documents and carefully staged and scripted media events were considered “real life” dramas. When faced with a scrap of genuine emotion, it was easier to fall back on cynicism.
“That’s an interesting idea, Roger. Unexpected. Romantic, dramatic. Excellent.”
“Yathinso?”
“Yes, I do think so. And why not do something really believable while you’re at it and make him the world’s youngest quadriplegic IV drug user with HIV, hepatitis C, and ADD.”
True Enough Page 26