A Marriage Made at Woodstock (12 page)

“There were some funny things happened in vet school,” he said, abandoning the ducks for a time. Frederick knew what was coming. And that Herbert thought entertaining the girls would hold them to him. Herbert Stone had always believed that strangers longed to gather at his feet with cries of “Tell us more!” when it came to his college days.

“Please don't do the leg story,” said Frederick, knowing it would jog Herbert's memory.

“I remember the time somebody from the medical college put a human leg in the case where a horse's leg was supposed to be,” Herbert said, and grinned. “But we went right along with the joke and dissected the thing anyway!” He laughed. Frederick felt contentment as he watched the emotionless faces before him. No matter how hard his brother tried, tales of severed limbs at vet school could never rival Jeffrey Dahmer's refrigerator joke. The girls exchanged a cautious look.

“But I suppose you had to be there,” Herbert added.

“You probably also had to be in vet school,” said Frederick.

“Well, listen,” Valerie said. She was gathering up her lighter and cigarettes, stuffing them into her lunch-pail purse. “We better go. I got a test tomorrow.”

“I got a test, too,” said Sarah.

“What in?” Frederick asked. The booze had lessened his original disapproval of them. They
were
cute, in that poodle kind of way. And that they thought he was a criminal lawyer had amused him once he'd had the third scotch. Let Chandra call it hubris, he no longer cared. “I was pretty good in English literature. Even English history.” He thought of his old cramming days at BU.

“Ah, come on, girls,” Herbert said. “The night is young.” Sarah was now standing, sucking the last of the piña colada up through the straw in her glass.

“They should go study,” said Frederick. “English history is loaded with wars and dates. Those English love a good battle. Where else to wear all that armor?”

“English history?” Sarah asked.

“All you need to know about English history is the year 1066,” Herbert said. He was giving Frederick sharp looks and Frederick was pretending he didn't notice. “Before that, there were just a lot of barbarians running around killing other barbarians who were running around. As a matter of fact, it was a lot like that
after
1066, too. So sit and enjoy the night.”

Sarah had finished with the sucking sound and so put the glass down. Valerie was now twirling her hair about her finger and looking indecisive.

“But what about 1215?” Frederick asked Herbert. “When King John signed the Magna Carta at Runnymede?” Now,
there
was an Iron John for consideration.

“Freddy, enough,” said Herbert.

“King who?” asked Valerie.

Herbert turned his attention upon the girls.

“How about we go someplace that's got good music and a great big dance floor?” he asked.

“Then there's the English Civil War,” said Frederick.

“Are you fucking crazy?” Herbert whispered.

Frederick looked to the college girls for support, especially to Valerie, the
smartest
of the two.

“But what if their test tomorrow is in English history?” he asked. “You girls are interested in historical facts, aren't you?”

“Not really,” said Valerie. She thrust out her hip. Frederick noticed that she was wearing burgundy tights beneath a short skirt. He wondered if Maid Marian had ever downed a Dirty Mother.

“Freddy,” said Herbert, “shut the fuck up.”

“What about the Hundred Years' War?” Frederick asked. “That one was a long bastard.”

“We got a test on facial shapes tomorrow,” Sarah said. “Cosmetology college is a lot tougher than I thought it would be.”

Herbert raked some fingers through his hair. He pulled at his
Starry Night
tie. Stars imploded.

“Facial shapes?” Frederick asked. The scotch had turned on him and now all he felt was maudlin. He wondered just what she'd study for her test. The contours of anxious faces passing her window? Would she dissect the madding crowd, some faces circular, some square, some diamond-shaped? Chandra's face was an oval, a soft Japanese petal. Elliptical, like the orbit of the earth as it journeys around its sun. Frederick put his own face in his hands so no one would see him cry.

“His wife just left him,” Hebert said to the girls. “Can you see why?”

A rainstorm had been battering away at the windows. Frederick woke up disoriented. He
did
used to live with Lorraine Kimball, aka Chandra Kimball-Stone,
didn't he
? Had he really spent more than two decades of his life with a woman who now seemed like a ghost, a haunting creature glimpsed on horseback at the edge of a gnarled orchard? A mysterious woman clad only in black who always disappeared when approached? Or was that in another life he'd lived? He slid his legs out of bed and sat up. Outside, a blanket of wind swept across the yard. He could hear it in the trees, against the windows, rain beating on the roof. He stared at his bedside clock. It was past nine. As a matter of fact, it was twenty minutes to ten. There was a time when he'd be freshly shaved, cup of coffee in hand, and at his computer by seven o'clock sharp. Now Walter Muller had been hard at work at his city desk for over an hour, and Frederick was just rising. Surely he couldn't have dropped so far away from his neatly scheduled life in less than two weeks.

“A week and six days,” he said. Would it turn into mindless, mechanical years of staring out his office window? Would it become like some awful Turkish prison sentence for American tourists caught with a single joint of marijuana? Mornings when just a bowl of soup or a piece of bread would be the highlight of his life? He ran his day's schedule in his mind. Not only did the IRS want a complete copy of Down East Medical Group's payroll taxes for the previous year, they wanted a breakdown of Dr. David Horowitz's entertainment deductions. This meant that Frederick would have to pick through all the receipts and not just whip out a computer printout. If Chandra chose to disrupt the course of her own life, so be it. But he would not let her disrupt his. The best thing he could do, until she returned, would be to continue with his schedule as usual, a set of rules and guidelines to keep him on a steady pace. The only thing different was that the martini lunch was now a fixture in his life. It made the day so much more agreeable. And oh, yes, he was beginning to appreciate a later lunch at Panama Red's. He had stopped by there twice that week, not because it had always been Chandra's favorite restaurant—a no-meat, no-dairy-products place—but because he, too, enjoyed the menu there. And while it was too inconsequential to even think about, it just so happened he had not seen his estranged wife there. Not that it mattered anyway, and besides, the rest of his usual schedule was virtually untouched. Except for the martinis, and sleeping on the office settee instead of in the marital bed. And the tiny fact that the bottom of his hair, now over 4.5 millimeters longer since Chandra left, was beginning to disappear below the top of his shirt collar. Other than these minutiae, he was the picture of consistency. Tuesday had always been grocery shopping day and it would continue to be grocery shopping day.

After Frederick had a shower, and then some coffee for breakfast, he got out his pencil and pad and began his usual inventory of the house. It was difficult to ignore the empty spaces where Chandra's things had once been. But no need to put tampons on the list now. Besides, there were still two of the large, forty-unit boxes lounging on the bottom shelf of the linen closet, even though Frederick had learned from
Consumer
Reports
that superabsorbent tampons may create a healthy environment for the bacteria that causes toxic shock syndrome. But Chandra seemed more concerned with toxins in the outer environment. Nudging the tampon boxes with his pencil, he felt resentment that he had bought them in the first place. He hoped her period began in the middle of some protest march, miles from any drugstore. Let Robbie solve
that
dilemma.

• • •

Frederick eased his station wagon into an empty space in front of the grocery store. He felt his pulse quicken as he spotted Doris Bowen's blue Mercedes sitting seductively in the next row. Why
did
the woman do her own shopping? Never mind. His unmailed letter to Arthur Bowen Developers had been lying on his desk since Chandra left. Maybe that was fate. Maybe it would be best to simply give the letter to Doris. Frederick decided to play the hand and then see what might
develop
.

Inside the store he worked his way past the fresh vegetables, putting items into his cart and checking them off his computerized list as he went. He spotted Mrs. Paroni and quickly swung down the aisle of laundry detergents, even though the only
L
on his list had been lettuce. He was in no mood for Mrs. Paroni's jabber. Arthur Bowen's bored wife was another matter. As he rounded frozen foods and headed down through cereals, he saw her. She was dressed in her usual white, a shorts and halter outfit which emphasized a rear that had most likely done some hard time on a treadmill. Some things you can't buy. She was staring at the boxes, a little wrinkle of puzzlement between the tweezed arches of her eyebrows.

“Thinking of changing your breakfast food?” Frederick asked as he wheeled up beside her. He immediately wished he'd said something wittier, sensuous even.

“Actually, that's just what I'm doing,” Doris Bowen said. “Arthur thinks he needs a high-fiber cereal, that if he keeps his bowels moving regularly he'll stay healthy. I suppose a man his age worries about pleasing the little mistresses.” She smiled mischievously. Frederick did his best to appear nonchalant, pretending to read the ingredients list on a Fiber One box. But it had unnerved him to hear Arthur Bowen's dirty laundry flapping about in the wind. He cleared his throat.

“This is one of the highest in fiber, but to be truthful,” Frederick said, and they were most definitely
being
truthful
, “it's a lot like eating a bowl of hay.” Doris moved closer to him, looking down at the box.

“Good,” she said. “I like the notion of Arthur eating hay.” Her cool fingers lifted the box from his hands. He could smell her scent, a sweet, expensive fragrance that caused an involuntary tingle in his loins. The smell of
money
. “So tell me,” Doris continued. “What do
you
like to eat for breakfast?”

Frederick pictured her across the breakfast table from him, the untanned portion of her breasts showing through the gauzy material of some silky designer gown. He imagined Chandra walking in to catch him there, Doris in the act of feeding him strawberries, or maybe ringing for the butler to come and peel them a grape or two.

“Actually, I mix the Fiber One with this,” Frederick said, hoping his voice didn't sound too shrill. He took down another box, a different brand. “I find it makes a very palatable combination. By the way,” he added, “speaking of Arthur, I was wondering if you might know who does his accounting?” He felt his face flush, and hoped it wasn't turning too red. Doris's smile seemed to fade a bit.

“Why?” she asked. Frederick stared at the number of calories in a single bowl of Oat Bran, a little thinking time. He mustn't appear too anxious.

“That's what I do for a living,” he said finally, as if just remembering her there. “I'm an accountant. I wouldn't mind having your husband as a client.” Doris flashed him a knowing smile.

“You sly devil. You're wanting me to put in a good word for you, aren't you?”

“I wrote him a letter about it,” Frederick said. “But I haven't mailed it yet. I thought maybe you'd tell me the best way to approach him.”

“The best way to approach Arthur is to prove that you can save him some money,” said Doris. “What did you say in your letter?” She was turning sexy again, giving him those warm eyes, leaning on her cart just enough to show a bit of cleavage. Frederick relaxed. He'd have been fine all along if it hadn't been for the blushing, a curse he'd borne since grammar school—Fred the Red—a red flush that appeared at the most inopportune times. He later learned in Mr. Bator's biology class that it was just a special aspect of skin pigmentation, a temporary enlarging of the blood vessels set off by nervousness and provoked physiologically. Chandra, however, said it was provoked by money and the talk thereof.

“I listed my credentials,” he said. “And clients who will recommend me, et cetera, et cetera.” He saw a mischievous smile pull at the corners of Doris's mouth. He heard Chandra, that constant goddess of his conscience, whisper her little uncertainties into his ear. He
was
doing this for the business, and only the business, wasn't he? One did have to be aggressive today, in this belligerent world. He wished Chandra would get up from her perpetual spot on his shoulder and go sit somewhere else, maybe in the tofu section. Besides, what business was it of hers if he flirted with Doris, now that Robbie was in the picture, now that Chandra was holed up elsewhere?

“Are you doing anything special for lunch?” Doris wondered. She arched one of her magnificent brows. Frederick felt his blood vessels enlarge even more.

“I got a date with my mother-in-law,” he said. He expected her to inquire about this. A mother-in-law, after all, suggested that one was
married
. But she seemed undeterred. She dug down into her white purse for a card. Frederick reached for the pen in his shirt pocket—a top-rated Parker Place Vendome fountain pen, fifty bucks, which, according to
Consumer
Reports
, wrote smoothly, didn't spatter, and could take some hard knocks. Doris accepted the pen and jotted down a date and time.

“Here,” she said. He wondered again why Doris Bowen, wife to all those developing millions, was still shopping among the hoi polloi, still interested in mortals. Frederick accepted the card. “I won't see you here next Tuesday because I'll be out of town. But I'm back the following Thursday. Give me a call. We'll have lunch. And we'll see what we can do about your problem.”

“I'm a vegetarian,” he said.

“Then we'll eat vegetables,” she told him. “Maybe even hay.”

“No dairy,” he added.

“No problem,” said Doris. She turned and pushed her shopping cart down the aisle. Frederick stared after her, enthralled by the sweet curve of the thighs, the provocative sound of high heels clicking like coins upon the tiled floor.

“Oh, Doris,” he called out. She stopped and looked back over her shoulder at him.

“Yes?”

“May I have my pen back?”

• • •

Panama Red's seemed to have even more brass pots with tall ferns growing out of them. Lillian was waiting for him at the front door. She looked rather energized for a dried-up prune. At least that's what Frederick had been calling her for more than twenty years.

“Frederick, dear,” Lillian said, kissing the air near his left cheek. Frederick was thankful for this. As usual, Lillian's lips were brilliantly red. He had always mentioned his mother-in-law's abuse of lipstick to Chandra. “She looks like a carp that's bleeding from the mouth,” was Frederick's previous description of Lillian. He had even written a little singsong:
Oh, Lill-i-an's lips are ver-mil-ion.

“You look lovely as always, Lillian,” he said now.

They followed the hostess toward a glassed-in section of the restaurant.

“Two in the arboretum!” she shouted, signaling a waiter. Frederick glanced around the room. A
Ficus
benjamina
clung to life in one corner, a grassy Hawaiian-looking growth in another corner. Two scrawny ferns hung from ceiling pots. Chandra needed to get down to Panama Red's. The arboretum appeared to be in more peril than the tropical rain forest. And speaking of
Ficus
benjaminas
—he recognized the tree as such because his wife had obviously given him custody of hers, which she called Mike.
Mike, the
Ficus benjamina
.
Frederick had decided to give Chandra another week. If she didn't come home, Mike was toothpicks. He pulled Lillian's chair out for her and waited until she hovered above it.

“Thank you, dear,” said Lillian, gripping the chair's seat with one hand. Frederick wondered if she thought he might pull it away at the last minute. But she settled down with her back to the door, her view that of the busy street beyond the restaurant's bay window.

“My, my,” she said, “but the lunch traffic just gets bigger and noisier.” She deposited her purse on the table before them—a nice old-fashioned clasp purse, unlike the lunch bucket that Valerie had been packing—and then reached for her napkin. Frederick felt some strange reassurance in the sensible purse. And in Lillian's words. “I can remember another Portland, another time,” she said wistfully. “It's all that Yuppie riffraff from out of state. Maine is such a quaint notion to them that they spoil our quaintness by moving here.” Yuppie riffraff. Wondering what Lillian would call boat people, Frederick signaled for the waiter. Beads jangled dramatically as some diner sought out the restrooms. The waiter finally appeared, looking impertinent that he had actually been summoned by a lowly customer. Judging by the arch of his eyebrow, one might think he had been up to his ass in neurosurgery in the kitchen. He took their order with a cool impatience. Lillian had decided immediately upon the house Chardonnay, so Frederick ordered her a glass. His mother-in-law—and this had been much to his wife's dismay—was of “the lady will have this” and “the lady will have that” generation.

When the wine arrived, Frederick raised his glass and smiled at her.

“To family,” said Frederick. “It's good to see you again, Lillian.”

“Yes, well,” said Lillian. “I must tell you that Joe thinks I should stay out of it. He says that you never invited me to lunch
before
Chandra left.” Frederick nodded.

“I've been remiss,” he said. “You tell Joe that for me, okay?” He thought of his stepfather-in-law, a short-legged, short-armed dachshund of a man who still officiated at family barbecues in his skivvies, wearing a T-shirt with the suggestion BUY AMERICAN OR MOVE YOUR BUTT TO JAPAN. And smoking the most foul of cigars. “Tell Joe he's one hundred percent right,” Frederick added.