Family Night (9 page)

“Another Donzi. It’s secondhand, but it’s a deep-vee Classic with a 350 King Cobra.”

Margaret said, “It’s a good time to look at boats. Midsummer, prices come down, don’t you think? Everyone worries they’ll be stuck at the end of the season.”

“The divorce,” Richard said. “It might seem frivolous at this point in time to purchase a speedboat.”

“Life goes on, doesn’t it?” Margaret told her father. She turned to Cam. “I loved your old boat.”

Cam shifted in his chair: crossed his ankle over one knee, then crossed his legs the other way. He let Margaret defend him, and soon the matter was settled. She would drive with him to see the speedboat and they would visit Jane afterward. Elizabeth went into the house to fire up the Jenn-Air and Richard took Laurence around to the garden to look for cucumbers the right
size for the salad. When Margaret was alone with Cam, she asked him, “What happened tonight with Darcy?”

“She didn’t want Laurence coming over here.”

Margaret dropped her shoulders, rested her elbows on her knees. “Do you have any lovers?” she asked Cam. It was a surprise question. She didn’t even understand what made her say it.

“That’s not how it happened,” Cam told her. “It wasn’t a third party.”

“No, I wasn’t saying that. I just thought it might help you to have someone else. It would help you to see things clearly.”

“How can that help? I’d just have another thing to worry about.”

“There’s no one?” Margaret said.

“A girl at the courthouse. A social worker trying to help me keep Laurence. She’s interesting. She has some interesting cases.”

“Are you her case?” Margaret was laughing.

“She gives me background on the legal stuff. The lawyer charges too much per hour to do my tutoring.”

“I see, this girl is
tutoring
you? A social worker?”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Maybe Darcy is making it hard because she doesn’t really want the divorce.”

“You’re wrong. She wants it. We all want it.”

Delaware summers are heavy; moisture builds in vapor tiers. At evening, these wet curtains intersect and sink over the lawn. Laurence had wet grass clippings up to his knees, and his bare feet were black from exploring the rich garden. “I’ll hose him down,” Margaret said, and she pulled Laurence by the elbow. She twisted open the tap and they followed the hose to its end at the driveway. She let the child drink from its rusty nozzle and she liked the scent of its ferrous splash on the hot asphalt. When Laurence was rinsed, she sent him into the kitchen. She was hosing her bare feet when a Diamond cab pulled into the drive; its headlights illuminated the spray as she rotated her ankle. She tried to see who was getting out. It was Tracy.

He stood beside the cab and put a stack of papers on the roof as he paid the driver. He was making good on his promise to canvas the local papers. Tracy couldn’t walk down a street without inserting quarters in those corner stands that pull open like oven doors.

She dropped the hose and watched it shudder left and right before it fell. “You’re absolutely too early,” she said, but she walked up to embrace him. Tracy gripped her and didn’t let go even when she wanted to take her weight back on her own legs.

“I took the train after your train,” he said.

“You must have,” she said.

“Aren’t you glad to see me? Bitch?” He was smiling. “Miss Irresistible. Spicedrop. Little Red Hot,” he said.

Her eyes were large, shiny with a glycerin of tears. “Sure. I’m glad.” She couldn’t look at him.

She heard the back door and she turned around. Cam was standing in the darkness of the garage, giving her time to sort it out on her own. And yet, there was something about his slumped posture; it looked too wistful or insulted. She couldn’t think of that now. She told Tracy about the picture. “It’s like a piece of flypaper. It just dangles from the chandelier.”

He studied her face as if it might show him, reveal to him, what her words meant. She often spoke in non sequiturs when she was disturbed, but this time he couldn’t decipher it. He looked away from her face.

“Cameron. My man,” Tracy said, walking over to her brother, who leaned against the trunk of Elizabeth’s Mustang. They shook hands.

Cam said, “Just in time for chow. They’re slopping the trough.”

“This monkey house needs another monkey,” Tracy said.

“Why the hell not?” Cam said.

“Coolsville,” Tracy said.

Margaret cringed at their exchange and went inside to explain Tracy’s arrival. Her legs were trembling and she leaned back against the GE. She told Elizabeth, “I guess Tracy missed me. He’s been working hard. He needed a break.” She didn’t sound convinced by her explanation.

Her father came in. “Tracy’s here for some R&R, is that right?”

Margaret said, “He can have my lambchop.”

Her father put another setting on the table. His face looked very still. He was avoiding the little banner on the chandelier.

“Can’t we take this down for dinner?” She addressed her father.

“Your mother wants it there. She knows what she’s doing,” he said.

“I can’t believe it. You’re going to let her keep this thing here?” She looked at her father.

“It’s your mother’s desire.”

“But it’s disgusting. You know it’s ridiculous.”

“It’s not ridiculous. A religious belief is a serious thing,” he told her.

Elizabeth walked through. “What’s the matter, Margaret, why does it upset
you
so much?”

Margaret stared at the chandelier; its dusty prisms and glass beads refracted the light. She let her eyes lose focus until the rainbow aura swelled, the lamps wobbled. Then a timer went off in the kitchen and she went to get it, letting the buzzer rage until, at last, she clicked it off.

Tracy was seated at one end of the table, Richard across from him at the head. The others had to pass plates up and down while Richard and Tracy could remain kingly. Tracy was effervescent at the slightest sign of tension in a room. He could handle relatives, huffy landlords, employers who have reached a plateau of disbelief and who might be ready to lower the boom. He displayed an elegance of feeling the same way children can; he mastered an innocent inflection despite whatever unseemly
dialogue might occur. Margaret was relieved when he took over the dinner conversation. He was talking to Elizabeth, explaining his views on the American shopping mall. He was going to title his article “The Mailing of America.” There was too much land being gouged,
mauled
. Then, he admitted, he
loved
malls; there couldn’t be enough of them as far as he was concerned. This befuddled Elizabeth. Wasn’t this a contrast of feeling? she asked him.

Margaret passed a bowl of cucumber salad to her left. The bowl was beautiful, washed-out Canton, and the paper-thin discs of green against the blue dish were soothing. “Oh, what about the eggplant?” she asked Elizabeth. She didn’t see it on the table.

“That’s for the freezer. I’m freezing that for the winter,” Elizabeth said.

“I see,” Margaret said. The talk was losing its boundaries.

Tracy was saying, “I write about pop culture. Real pop culture, not the Andy Warhol thing. I mean Mom and Pop Culture. Shopping malls, diners, bowl-o-ramas.”

Margaret thought that her father bristled at the mention of Andy Warhol. Margaret used to watch Warhol’s group on the old Merv Griffin show. She ate dinner by herself and wheeled the portable TV right up to the kitchen table. Elizabeth would say, “You take such small portions.” Margaret would say, “It’s nothing against you.” Griffin invited drunks and drug addicts from Manhattan: The drunks were always talking about Sardi’s, and the young models and rockers were joking
about “snow” and “horse.” Ultra Violet, Viva, Edie Sedgwick—these women had intrigued her. Gnatty Warhol actors mingled with enigmas like Monty Rock the Third, Selma Diamond, Toti Fields, and Arthur Treacher, who lurched forward in his seat as if suffering horrible cramps. Then, Twiggy sits down, pinching the hem of her miniskirt, and Merv says, “Fashions change. The world is changing.”

“So, this is new?” Toti Fields asks. “I’ve seen everything.” She leaned forward and looked straight into the camera. “Nothing comes down the pike that surprises me.”

Margaret welcomed the memory. She had loved the way these lost souls gathered and began acting too familiar, like maiden aunts and cousins.

Tracy was interested in going to see the boat with Cam. He asked if they could test-drive it.

“You don’t drive a boat, you sail it,” Elizabeth said.

“A speedboat. Does it use gas? Does it have a steering wheel?” Tracy asked.

“It doesn’t actually have a sail.” Margaret sided with Tracy.

“I surrender,” Elizabeth said, “but if you’re going to see your sister, you can take her one of these.” She went over to the sideboard and freed a sheet of paper from under the silver service. She gave it to Margaret. It was a form of some kind.

“What’s this?” Margaret said.

“It’s an affidavit. We need two signatures from our children. Just to prove we’ve informed the family. Cam won’t do it.”

“They want to leave their bodies to science,” Cam said.

“When we pass away, we want to give our remains to an institution,” her father said.

“Really?”

“One final selfish gesture,” Cam told Margaret.

Elizabeth said, “It’s the opposite. Even Father Cullen told me it was generous.”

“Sure, what does he care? You’re already excommunicated. You aren’t with the flock. You don’t take the sacraments,” Cam said.

“Church rules,” Elizabeth said, “like City Hall.”

Tracy said, “Why don’t you just go up there, go up the aisle with the rest and take Communion, regardless?”

Cam stared at Tracy. Then he said, “A proper burial, a monument somewhere. That would be the right thing to do. If they go that donor route, we’ll have no way to pay our respects.”

Richard began, “Respect is something—”

“You’re too cheap to buy plots. What are you pocketing? Four or five thousand?”

“A piece,” Tracy said. “The land is one thing. Then, caskets are pricey, it’s all that taffeta. If you go with bronze or brushed stainless, it skyrockets. Did you know that in the United States, cemeteries are the third most popular place for joggers? It must be thunderous.”

Margaret tried to hush him. Elizabeth and Richard were gracious but annoyed; they forgot that it was Cam who had stung them. Cam was smiling and staring at his plate.

“I’ll sign the paper,” Margaret said. The last thing
she wanted to imagine was visiting graves. “It’s Johns Hopkins?” she asked. She once knew a medical student who told her what a mess they make. Scavenger hunts through cadavers, messages scrawled with a scalpel, even love notes sewn into hearts, a clitoris removed and placed in a jar like an olive.

“It’s a very generous thing you’re doing,” Margaret told Elizabeth. “We’ll get Jane to sign the paper and then you’ll be all set, okay?”

“Wonderful,” Elizabeth said.

“What’s the difference?” Margaret said to Cam.

Cam turned in his seat to face her squarely. “Follow this,” he said. “The facts are, your mother’s dead, my father is on the lam, and now Elizabeth and Richard are off to the bone factory by their own free will. It’s a horror show.”

“You can’t stop it anyway. These papers are just formalities, like RSVPs. We don’t need you,” Elizabeth said.

Tracy went with Cam to drive Laurence back to Darcy’s house. Elizabeth and Richard had a bridge party and Margaret was left alone in the kitchen. She was glad to wash the dishes and she took her time.

She heard a car pull into the driveway, and Cam walked into the kitchen with Tracy. The men were quiet. “What’s going on with you?” she asked.

Tracy said, “We’ve been talking about the Arrow Collar Man.”

“Cam’s father?”

“We’ve been discussing the options,” Tracy said.

“The options?” she said. “Which options?”

Tracy said, “Cam should look him up. Locate the Arrow Collar. Seek and ye shall find.”

Cam went to the liquor cabinet. He unscrewed the top of the Old Crow. “Tracy’s right. He’s a hundred percent on target.”

Tracy liked this. “I’m straight as an arrow. An arrow in pursuit of an arrow; an interesting concept, right, Margaret?”

She was wiping a cast-iron pan with a dish towel. The towel came away smeared black. It was always this way. She cleaned the pan, but its blackness remained, a constant; it thrived. She didn’t mind the smudge. These recurring stains were comforting, like a wisp of menstrual blood on her sheet, a scallop of cloudy chlorophyll on the knees of her blue jeans.

Margaret told Cam, “So you’ve decided to locate your natural father like any stupid asshole on those talk shows?” She felt her hair tingle at the roots, her widow’s peak sting. She was breaking new ground. She had always sidestepped the issue.

Cam ground out his cigarette in a saucer that he cupped in the palm of his hand. “Did anyone ever tell you that you have a smart mouth?”

“Look,” she told him, “this guy must be a real prize, a total shit to begin with.” She shrugged her shoulders and waited to drop them back. Cam towered over her. He was tall. Too big to jump out of a plane when he was on tour in Korea. She always doubted that story. She wanted to ask him, “Were you really too tall to
jump from a plane? What has height got to do with falling through the sky?” but he was walking away. He went into the living room. She heard him strike a match but she could not hear it flare. Then he was back.

“Did you ever see these?” He handed her a folder of yellowed clippings. She recognized the illustrations by J. C. Leyendecker, pictures of Cam’s father. The man’s mouth was clearly Cam’s mouth, a tiny, emotional knot at the center of the upper lip above a full amber ridge. His jawline was carved, his chin sharply defined by a dark gully. It was his cleft chin that set off the shirts in the advertisements. Her gaze halted at the starched collar.

“The Arrow Collar ads? I’ve seen them. They’re great.”

“I look at these every day. It’s like I’m looking at
me
.”

“You do look a lot alike,” she told him.