A Stranger's House (23 page)

Quietly he said, “But I think I know what you're thinking about. Or at least were.”

I said, “What?”

“Martin and me. Probably how we met. How we know each other.”

I said, “You're right,” and I made no smile, no move, only stood leaning against the counter. I was not patronizing him. I wanted to know, but at the same time I wondered how much truth he might give. So far he'd told us two different stories of his parents, neither one of which was true, according to Mr. Clark's lawyer. But what made me think that Mr. Blaisdell, that fat old man with the deep leather chair, was telling the truth himself? I did not know what to
believe. I only knew that I wanted to hear whatever Grady had to say. “Tell me,” I said.

He paused, let his shoulders fall, all the while his hand still clutching his elbow. “It has to do with this house, I guess,” he started, and then he looked up, out one of the windows to my right. He wasn't looking at me.

I looked to the window, too, not so much to see what was out there, though what I saw was beautiful: a cut-glass sky, the hill behind the house rising up into it, some trees bare, some with the dull russets and coppers and cadmiums of the last few leaves yet to fall, green pines mixed through.

A cloud passed overhead, and those trees and leaves and the room went dark, the air almost imperceptibly gone cooler, yet the sky out there above the hill still so blue I thought I might have been able to see stars if I stared at it long and hard enough.

No, I looked out the window just as he had so that he wouldn't feel my eyes on him, wouldn't feel embarrassed at having a thirty-year-old woman watch him here in this kitchen,
his
kitchen, while he told of his retarded friend. I wanted, too, to see what he saw out that window, wanted him to know I wasn't sorry for him, there clutching his elbow.

The cloud passed, the room and forest and hill bathed in light again, and I ran my hands up and down my arms. I had goose-bumps now.

“Keep going,” I said. Wind from somewhere swayed the branches of the pines. From beneath us I heard a soft tapping on wood.

“He was a friend of my daddy's,” he said. “They always knew each other. Martin, he was born over in Worthington, just another mile or so on down the road. You know where that sugar house is over there? Bourne's Sugar House? The one down at the bottom of the ravine.”

I said, “No,” and closed my eyes. Something in his voice made me
want
to know where he was talking about, made me want to see that sugar house, but I could not, and so I stood with my face toward that window, my eyes closed. I listened.

“Well,” he said. He paused. “Well, there's this house over there, just a cabin, beat out now. That's where he was born. And my daddy was born in this house.”

He stopped, and it was then I caught the lie, if it was that: Mr. Blaisdell had said it was Grady's
mother
who was born here, the child of Mr. and Mrs. Clark. He'd said that, I remembered, but still I didn't know whether to believe him, the lawyer, or not. I didn't know what to think. And so, for now, it was Grady's
father
who was born here. My worrying over this detail would not stop anything, and the best I could do would be to let him go on, make my judgments, if any, later.

“They both grew up together,” he went on, “and they played a lot together, all the time. Mainly over here, too, because Martin's family didn't care at all for my daddy's family. My grandfather, the man you're buying this place from, had a feud going on forever. It had to do with my grandfather accidentally killing one of Martin's uncles or something by running him over. My grandfather was the first man this far back from Northampton to have a car, and he was the first one in this county to kill somebody with a car.” He breathed out what might have been a small laugh. “That same car. His claim to fame.”

I said nothing.

“So my daddy and Martin grew up together, and like I said, most of the time was spent over here, and most of the time was spent without my grandfather knowing any of it, him working at a bank in Northampton. In town. Gone all day. Gone all day every day, killing himself with his job. A job worrying about money, so that my daddy and Martin were always around my grandmother. My Grandma Clark.”

He stopped and swallowed hard. “She was,” he said, his voice a little quieter now, “she was a good woman. She loved my daddy. And she loved Martin, too. I think she loved Martin more than his own daddy or mother did. Because of how much time Martin spent over here. He ate over here. He played over here. Sometimes he even slept over here, slept up in that room, the smaller one upstairs, with my daddy, my grandma knowing about it all along, even helping Martin sneak upstairs after my grandfather had already gone to bed. Martin slept over a lot in the summer. Here, or they camped out up in those woods. They were friends.”

My eyes were on the woods right then, and for a moment I thought of two young boys taking off up into them, up to the top of the hill.
I thought of them rolling out sleeping bags, a small campfire before them, sparks circling up into the night air, and I wondered what stars must look like, the millions of them, on a cool summer night in the Berkshires.

“But that's why he hates Martin to this day. Because Martin was of that family in Worthington. A trashy, poor family over in Worthington. My grandfather, of course, had to keep that in mind, being as how he was a banker. To have it known that my daddy, his son, was associating with that family—and with its retard son to boot—just didn't work. It just didn't work right for my grandfather. So, the hate. His hate for Martin, especially.”

There was more tapping now, this time right beneath me; I could feel the hard taps in my feet, the vibrations more noticeable than the sound. I opened my eyes, and the blue sky seemed even deeper, darker.

I said, “So you've known Martin all along?”

“Yep,” he said, his voice from behind me, both of us still looking out that window. “Just like I told you. An old family friend. He was in the hospital for quite a few years until, like I told you before, six years ago when they let him out.”

I turned to him. His arm was still across his chest, guarding him somehow, his hand still gripping the crook of his arm. He was looking down, and it looked as though his eyes were closed.

I said, “You don't have to answer me if you don't want to, but—”

“So we've known each other all our lives. Or at least all
my
life,” he nearly whispered, going on as though I hadn't started to say anything, on as though he were trying to avoid giving an answer to the question I was about to ask. His head remained bowed. “Nineteen years. Longer than my daddy ever knew me. Longer than my mother ever knew me. And he needs me, that's what's fine about him. My grandfather doesn't give a good goddamn for me, but Martin does. I have to see to it that he gets to work on time, that his clothes get washed, that he eats right. That his rent and utilities get paid at the right time.”

At that moment my question, the one I'd wanted to ask, paled and shriveled before me: all I'd wanted to know was what exactly was wrong with Martin, whether he'd been born as he was or if his brain functions had been dimmed by a childhood disease or trauma,
damaged in a car accident or something. A trivial, petty question, I saw, as this boy told me of the responsibilities he had, responsibilities for a life other than his own; and I knew that that concern of mine, my physiological, Neuroscience and Behavior Laboratory attitude had been conditioned into me, transforming me into some odd strain of heartless human, I thought, whose preoccupation was with how it happened instead of
how to live with it.
And I wondered how I'd ever thought I could raise a child, how I could nurture a child from birth on, when here before me was an example of what real care was, real love. A nineteen-year-old boy caring unconditionally, it seemed, for a fifty-year-old man, loving him. I felt tears well up in me, felt them brim, break, fall down my cheeks, tears that were for me, I realized, as much as they were for him. I knew truths about him he would not tell: his mother's suicide; his father missing in action, and the unresolved hope for his father's return he must have hidden away in him somewhere. Unresolved hope, hopeless hope, much like my own hope to conceive someday, to bear children, to love them.

“Hey,” I heard him say, and I opened my eyes. He was moving toward me, wavering through my tears, across this kitchen. Then he was before me, and placed a hand on each of my shoulders. I brought a hand to my eyes, blinked back those tears that still came, and gave him a feeble smile, the best I could muster. “Hey,” he said, “don't cry. You don't have to cry,” and that was all he said, in his boy's voice a certain confidence emerging, letting me know that yes, I didn't have to cry. I didn't, and he patted my left shoulder once, twice, and brought both hands down, put them at his sides, and smiled at me.

I took in a deep breath and quickly nodded, my eyes still wet, the edges of the room still shivering. “I'm okay,” I said. “I am.”

He went back to the counter, leaned against it, his palms on the edge of the Formica top. He looked out the window again, and cleared his throat. “So Martin knows this house from top to bottom, knows it better than anybody. He knows it even better than my grandfather.” He was talking now as though nothing had happened, as though I hadn't cried, as though he hadn't comforted me.

“That's how he knows this place, knows its weaknesses,” he said, and stopped, the expression on his face changing to one of deep
thought, his eyebrows knit, mouth pursed. He said, “But the thing of it is, is that he knows how to fix things, too. House things. That's how come he can look at all these things in the house and sort of troubleshoot it. I figured it out, too. I've read some things.”

He was changing again, not back into that pseudo-adult, but into an excited, animated teenager, the opposite of the sullen boy a few moments before. He was charged now, and his fingers on the edge of the Formica began tapping.

I said, “What have you read?”

“Oh,” he said, “some books, and I've read about these people, these retarded people like Martin. I saw them on TV a couple of times, too. There's this one guy, he's blind and retarded, much worse off than Martin, and he can hear a song once and then sit down at a piano and make this beautiful music, play that piano and sing that song just like the record. I've heard him sing, on '60 Minutes.'”

I nodded. I knew what he was leading up to: Martin's being an idiot savant. He was probably right, though I'd only read case histories in textbooks, stories of mentally disturbed and retarded men and women with prodigious talents in only one certain area, whether it be sculpting or music or mathematics. Martin's outward signs seemed true enough, too: when he was working he was doing nothing else, staring at the marble as it jogged right or left of its true path across the floor; pressing his ear to wood and tapping it, his eyes half-closed; that trancelike state.

“It's what's called an idiot savant,” Grady said, “but that name they give it I hate. It's a stupid name. I mean the idiot part. Martin's no idiot. Not by a long shot he isn't. You can give him a piece of wood and some nails and a hammer and saw, show him a mahogany dresser, and I'll be damned if he won't sit down and do his best to make one out of what you gave him.” He was looking off now, not at the window or floor, but just off into the space of the kitchen. “So he knows this house, and he knows how to fix things. I think this place is going to be fixed up fine. If you use him. Us.”

I took a deep breath, nodded. “I've read about them, too, savants. But what I've read is that they have to have some sort of example, something they can imitate—”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, and slowly shook his head. “Martin learned all this stuff he knows from the first job he got when he was main
streamed. He got a job as a gofer for this contractor, a guy who specialized in refurbishing. Martin starts out by just handing up pieces of lumber to these guys, and by making sure they've got plenty of nails at hand, while all this time he's watching these guys, until one day, when the contractor and his crew are working on a house over on Massasoit in town, one day Martin stops the boss and shows him that there's two or three rotten clapboards that he's missed picking out, and things just go straight to hell from there. Martin ends up losing his job because in a month or so after that little incident on Massasoit, Martin's now laying in parquet floors better than the guys who're doing it professionally. So Martin gets the boot, and he gets on at Friendly's.”

He paused a moment, laughing a little to himself. “So,” he said. “I guess I lied to you.”

I took a quick breath. I said, “What?”

“About Friendly's. Martin's got the world's record for that Friendly's. He's been on there for longer than I have. I'm not the record holder there. He is.” He shrugged. “So I guess I lied to you.”

I breathed out, and smiled. I said, “That's nothing.”

“I'll bet, too, you're wondering how I know all this. I mean all about Martin and that job, right?” He looked at me. His fingertips on the Formica had stopped drumming.

“I imagine he told you. That, or you asked.”

“I watched,” he said, staring at me, waiting, I knew, for some reaction from me.

I said nothing, and only gave him my same smile.

He turned and got that thoughtful look on his face again, staring off. “I watched it all. Nobody knew about it. Not even Martin. My grandfather, he found out Martin was getting out of the hospital, and he forbid me to see him. He forbid me outright to see Martin. Like he could do that. But there was no way that old bastard could stop me from seeing. No way. So that's when I started cutting school, to go see him work for these guys. I'd ride my bike, ride it all over hell and back, just riding. There was no way I wasn't going to watch Martin, see who he was. I wanted to see him. I could only remember a little about him, from when I was a kid, before my grandfather had him put—”