All Things Cease to Appear (20 page)

To George, happiness was an obscure emotion. True joy, as it was imagined in great books, was more incomprehensible still. He could recall, as a boy, wandering around his father’s showrooms, trying out all the different couches and chairs, putting his feet up on the coffee tables. Each living room had a fancy name: French Provincial, Urban Oasis, Classic Country, Rustic Comfort. One day, he asked his mother why they didn’t have the same furniture at home. Their store, she told him, didn’t carry that sort of furniture. When he asked why not, she said, Our stores cater to ordinary people, not people like us.

If he was a liar, then Catherine was the perfect match. She chose to deny his true nature just as his own mother did, contriving logical excuses for illogical acts, or reasonable grounds for unreasonable behavior, sometimes even blaming themselves for his failures. Poor George! He was overtired, overworked, overpressured—he just needs rest, to be left alone! And George never failed to exploit their misunderstanding.

His wife had married some imaginary version of himself, a better-mannered, more affable fellow, a devoted husband and father. So, too, did their marriage satisfy an unspoken contract with their parents. For Catherine, the pregnancy and subsequent wedding had elevated her from the bottom ranks of the middle class, with its rage and energy, to a status of complacency so often misconstrued as comfort. For him, he’d taken a wife, as all men should, who had the good looks that attracted polite attention, who was smart enough to make dinner conversation, who kept an orderly house.

They had done what was expected. Both of them had.

—

HE DROVE HOME
on desolate back roads. He couldn’t resist the exhilaration of speed, the wind in his hair, the sense of freedom—in these parts cops being rare. The usual obstacles were heavy trucks or dawdling pickups, the men easing home slowly from work, tossing empty beer cans out the windows. But just now there wasn’t a soul in sight. It was late in the afternoon, an indecisive hour that painted the road with trickery. Driving recklessly, well over the limit, he stared as if defying his own destiny into the horizon, where at the moment light and dark and land and sky were perfectly balanced, what Inness would call an ideal composition, a vague and conniving frontier where all
things
cease to appear.

2

THE FIRST TIME
he saw her was at the sheep farm, jumping off the back of somebody’s pickup truck. This was in September. He’d gone out for a run. His wife had asked him to stop by the farm on his way home to buy yogurt and cheese, which they sold to neighbors and tourists out of a cooler in a wood hut, using the honor system and a cigar box where you were supposed to put your money. The girl apparently worked there. George watched as they unloaded some sheep and herded them into the pasture. She was just a girl, really. Dark hair like his mother and pale skin and a mean grin that curled up out of her like a charmed snake, and he knew even before she said anything that he would come to know her and that the knowing would be ruinous.

Hey, she said. I’m Willis.

She lived with the other hands behind the inn in a boardinghouse, a long, barnlike structure with a plank porch along the front and a line of windows up top. When the sunlight was full on the yellow window shades it resembled something Hopper would have painted in his early career—the setting with an almost nostalgic appeal, a rustic simplicity. Later that week, out for a run at dusk, he saw her again, crossing the field from the farm to the house with her colt legs, slump-shouldered, looking down with intensity, her hands in her pockets, the sun a warm glow as it began to sink behind the trees. He could hear a radio playing in somebody’s window. He watched her disappear inside and moments later saw curtains sliding across a window on the second floor, a light coming on. It was getting cool. He walked down the road, great fields spread out on either side. Dark pines swished in the wind like women in hoop skirts. A passing pickup had its headlights pulled on.

The house was bright. His wife baking a pie. Yellow apples quartered in a bowl, browning. Borrowed cookbooks on the table. Catherine in an apron with her hair up in a knot. No longer a city girl, she’d suddenly become domestic. She rolled out the dough, her arms bare, thin, in a sleeveless white blouse. Looking at her now, he felt warmth, even desire. He wondered why he didn’t love her more.

He kissed her and she brushed him off. You’re cold.

It smells like fall, he said. I’ll make a fire.

He left her alone and went out to the barn to get the ax. Someone had felled a tree and the trunk lay in pieces scattered on the ground. There were wood chips all through the dirt, and he knew that this spot had been used before for the same purpose. He set one of the logs upright and brought the ax down into it, splitting it right in half. Using the ax reinvigorated some primal urge, and he liked the exertion, the weight of the tool in his hands. When he had split enough wood he stacked it against the porch. He could feel the muscles in his arms. He had an awareness of his body, his strength. The air smelled of the earth. It was nearly dark when he was done.

The barn was two hundred years old, full of creatures and relics of the past—toilets and sinks and a broken-down tractor and wobbly metal chairs speckled with bat shit. As he placed the ax on its perch, a disruption in the rafters startled him—a barn owl making its escape.

Inside, he built a fire. The windows in the room had gone black. He stood in the dark, watching the fire, thinking about the girl. Already he wanted her; he sensed a connection.

Behind him, he heard Catherine coming up. She took his hand and they surrendered, briefly, to some fragile notion of harmony as the flames devoured the hundred-year-old wood.

—

THE NEXT AFTERNOON,
he ran into the girl at the library. He and Franny were in the foyer, returning a stack of picture books. She performed this task with great formality, intrigued by the mysterious slot in the wall that accepted the books like some hungry beast.

The girl came over and tugged on Franny’s pigtail.

His daughter giggled and said, What’s your name? I’m Franny.

Willis, she said, cradling her books under her arm and reaching out for a shake. In case you forgot.

No, I didn’t.

Her hand was small and warm. She was wearing an Elvis Costello T-shirt and cutoffs and paddock boots. Her long black hair ran down her back in serpentine ringlets.

I’m a friend of Eddy’s. When the name didn’t register, she said, Eddy Hale. He works for you.

He was the oldest of the three brothers, George now remembered. When he’d realized that the boys who were painting the house were the same boys who’d grown up in it and suffered the tragic loss of their parents, he told Eddy, She won’t want you working here if she knows, and Eddy had squinted at him, arrogantly, and said, That’s okay, Mr. Clare. If I’d bought this place, I wouldn’t want to know the owners had killed themselves, either.

George had felt they’d reached a necessary if awkward understanding, a kind of fraternal bonding. Once he and his wife were completely settled into a comfortable routine, he’d tell her. Sooner or later she was bound to find out.

Oh, that Eddy.

Yeah,
that
Eddy. Her little snarl of antagonism indicated that she knew George kept things from his wife. He wondered what else Eddy had told her.

Franny pulled on the stringy hem of Willis’s shorts. Look what I can do!

Let’s see, Franny.

They watched his daughter push another book into the slot.

Wow, you’re such a big help to your dad, aren’t you?

Franny nodded earnestly. The girl smiled at him.

For some reason his heart was pounding. I’ve seen you at the inn, he said.

It’s just a summer job—I go to UCLA. She pushed the hair out of her face. I’m taking a year off to find myself.

Are you lost?

She smiled blandly. I’m just trying to figure things out.

What things?

How I fit into all this…

This?

Life, you idiot.

Well, good luck. I hope you find whatever you’re looking for.

Thanks. She paused and seemed to reassemble herself, her stature, then looked him over agreeably. So—you come here often?

Yeah, as a matter of fact. I like the clientele.

Me, too. Most of them are dead. She shifted her books to her other arm. She was reading Keats, Blake.

I see you like the hard stuff. Nothing watered down for you.

That’s right. I take it straight.

As long as it doesn’t go to your head.

I have a very high tolerance.

They were flirting. It was fun, he thought.

She grinned and held up the Blake. I took a class on him last year.
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Do you know it?

All too well, he said, but his sarcasm was lost on her. He studied her face, her small freckled nose.

Active evil is better than passive good,
she quoted Blake.

He makes a very good point, George said. But these days evil can be pretty scary.

I know. She shuddered. There’s a lot of it in this world. She slowly raised her eyes and said, Evil is something I know about.

Are you a witch?

She grinned. What if I was?

I’d hope to catch a ride on your broom.

I’m referring to my miserable childhood.

Oh, he said gently. Okay. He waited for her to go on.

When I know you better I’ll fill you in.

You’ve whet my appetite. He smiled and she smiled back, their unspoken arrangement somehow confirmed.

In any case, you can’t have one without the other, she said, flipping her hair off her shoulder. Good without evil, I mean.

We’ll make a fine pair, then.

Well, I hope you’re not too good.

That would be anticlimactic, he agreed.

Tell me about your friends. She nodded at their bag of books.
Goodnight Moon
’s your favorite—right, Franny?

Franny nodded, pushing another book into the slot.

What about you?

Most of what I read isn’t available here, he said.

Are you a snob?

No, but I read a lot of nonfiction, journals, books about art. I’m an art historian. I teach at Saginaw.

Oh, she said, then yawned. Is it boring?

Boring? He shrugged, a little insulted. No, it isn’t.

I couldn’t get past the Jesus paintings. All those virgins and angels. She glanced out the window. Anyway, I should go. I’m meeting someone. Bye, Franny.

She leaned over and shook his daughter’s hand, granting him a look down her shirt. See you around, Professor.

Yes, he said. I hope so.

George watched as she went outside, the wind blowing her around. She put her books into the basket of her bicycle and rode off.

Daddy. Franny tugged on his jacket. Daddy! I want books!

You do, do you? Let’s go see what we can find.

3

THE TENNIS CLUB,
Black Lawn, was an exclusive little haven off County Route 13, down a potted dirt lane overrun with honeysuckle bushes and wild turkeys—he always tried to hit one as he barreled down the lane, scratching up his car. They squabbled into the bushes like fine old ladies, overdressed for the occasion. It was one of the few clubs in the United States that still maintained grass courts, even though the clay were more popular. Tennis whites were required, of course. Alongside the courts were wood huts painted a murky, campsite green, and an unheated pool that overlooked the distant Catskills, its surface littered with pine needles. Nobody swam here except for the Swedish wife of a shipping magnate who spoke no English and traversed the pool prettily in her plug-white bathing cap, and the dogs that ran wild around the property, some four hundred acres. The clubhouse, with its porches and awnings, once the home of genuine aristocrats, was slightly run-down, giving the place a kind of seedy appeal. It had a cozy little bar where they’d drink after a game. The pro, a craggy, sun-bleached guy named Tom Braden, had gotten him into games on the weekends; before noon, the courts were reserved for men. George’s partner—Giles Henderson, whom people called Jelly—was heavy and fierce even in his seventies, with cropped white hair and shrewd, relentless eyes, a surprisingly agile player for a man that size. Four years ago, he’d cashed in his Wall Street life and bought the inn down the road with his second wife, Karen (pronounced
Car-in,
naturally). The inn was an historic landmark that overlooked acres of pasture. They’d also started a sheep farm and were known for their lamb dinners. When you drove by at night you’d see candles burning in the outside lights, just as they had been in the 1800s, when this was a stagecoach stop on the Albany route.

George and Jelly played against two challenging opponents: Bram Sokolov, who identified himself as a farmer, and a retired cardiologist named Bob Twitchell whom everybody called Doc. George was a good player. Tennis had, after all, kept him from getting thrown out of Williams; he hadn’t been much of a student, but he was skilled on the court and for a while had been nationally ranked. He and Sokolov were around the same age and easily became friends.

One Sunday, just before dusk, an old green Range Rover pulled into their driveway. It was Bram and his wife—Justine, George remembered suddenly. She was an adjunct professor at Saginaw, a weaver, and they’d met on the day he interviewed. Out of his tennis whites, Bram was just shy of disheveled in baggy trousers, a worn T-shirt and old Stan Smiths. Justine was built like a Courbet peasant, with heavy features and the sort of confidence that comes from working with your hands.

They came up onto the porch. Bram was holding two loaves of bread, carrying one long baguette like a rifle, the other football-shaped loaf tucked under his arm.

Well, hello, George said. Welcome.

Good things come in pairs, Bram said. You know Justine.

Of course. He took her warm hand. It’s good to see you.

Likewise, she said, smiling. We thought we’d just stop by.