Flesh and Blood (10 page)

“Bix,” Dina said. “What's the matter with you?”

“Don't touch me,” Bix said. “I don't want you touching me.”

“You all right, Billy?” she asked. Her knee pressed against his. He shoved her knee away.

“I'm fine,” he said. “Leave me alone.”

The quiet sealed itself, but as long as the pain throbbed in him he was somewhere. The radio played on. Billy held his jaw in his hand and put his boots out the window. His heart was pounding with a love so awful it made him giddy and a little faint. The car sped along and Billy watched the tree limbs flash by. He felt Dina's perfume working itself into his skin. Bix drove in silence and Billy ran his fingertips tenderly along his jawbone, fondling the injury as if it belonged to someone else, someone he adored. The car hurled itself into the growing somewhere. He believed he could drive all night.

When he got home a pale, tentative light was seeping down the stairwell. He walked as lightly as he could in his boots but they were made for noise. That was the point of them.

“Billy?” His mother's voice drifted down with the light. He paused on the landing, sucking air between his teeth.

“Yeah, Ma.”
Let me get to my room. All I want, all I need, is quiet and darkness.
He got to the top of the stairs and halfway down the hall but his mother came out of her room and caught him with her anxious smile. She was puffy and radiant in a rose-colored bathrobe.

“It's late,” she said.

“I know. I know it's late.”

He stood in his boots and his leather jacket, not looking at her. He knew he smelled of vodka and cow manure. He knew he had blood on his face.

“Look at you,” she said. “What have you been doing?”

“Nothing,” he said. He wanted a mother like Bix's, who carried a cocktail from room to room. Who didn't need anything but Rents and Scotch and her own bitter, wised-up personality.

“What happened to your forehead?” she asked. “Did you hurt yourself?”

“No. I'm totally fine. I'm going to bed.”

She tried to touch his forehead but he took a heavy-heeled step away from her. She managed to catch his sleeve. His lungs tightened and he pulled in air through his clenched teeth, striving for a full breath. Lately he'd been suffering these attacks of breathlessness, though he hadn't told anyone about them. He suspected he had lung cancer.

“This is no way for a Harvard man to act,” his mother said with whispered cheerfulness.

“I'm not a Harvard man, Ma.”

“You will be in September, Billy. Do you know how special you are? Do you know how much is going to happen to you?”

“Maybe I don't want to go to Harvard after all,” he said.

“Don't be ridiculous. After all that work.”

“I haven't even told anybody about it. I mean, Bix and Larry and everybody. They don't even know.”

She put her face closer to his. She smelled of powder and sleep and something else, a vague but insinuating sweetness that frightened him. “Bix and Larry,” she said. “I want you to watch yourself with them. Do you hear me? Bix and Larry are basically nothing but juvenile delinquents.”

“Yeah. Well, that's what I like about 'em.”

“Honey,” his mother said, and her voice took on deeper, more harshly whispered urgency. “What's wrong with you? What's going on?”

“Nothing's wrong,” he said evenly. “I'm tired. I need to go to sleep.”

“You're not the same,” she said. “You're not the same boy. I don't know who you are these days.”

He wanted to put his hands in her hair, to grab hold and tell her—what? A new world was coming, and she would have to stay home. He stood briefly in a transport of love and fury, surrounded by dim unbreathable air, wanting to touch her for what felt like the last time.

“Right,” he said. “I'm somebody else. I'm already gone.”

1970/
Constantine had been specific—no interruptions, not for any reason. Not when he was with Bob Nupp. Nupp, obese in a red-striped shirt, was the trickiest of the county inspectors. You had to tickle Nupp; you had to make talk. You had to woo him like a girl, flatter him, and then slip him the money the way a schoolboy might drop his hand onto a girl's breast, with suave and showy indifference. It was a performance, and if you lost momentum at a crucial point you could lose Nupp completely. Constantine had seen it happen. Nupp lived in a sluggish agony of mixed feelings, and if the meeting got interrupted he was capable of heaving his burdened frame up out of his chair, going off empty-handed, and showing up the next morning, sharp-eyed and wheezing, to look over the work and start issuing citations.

So when Sandy opened the office door and put her nervous head into the room Constantine thought to himself, That's it, she's finished. He couldn't fire her now, not in front of Nupp. For now he frowned and said sharply, “Sandy, I told you. No interruptions. Did I tell you that?”

“Mr. Stassos, I'm sorry. I know. I just, well. It's the police. They said it was important.”

Constantine sucked in a breath that tasted of pine-scented air freshener and Nupp's sweat. The police. Was it Susan, who now lived outside the sphere of his protection? Was it Billy, racing with those friends of his? The world was all danger. Having children gave you a lifelong acquaintance with fear.

“Thanks, Sandy,” he said. He hesitated over the phone on his desk, glancing at Nupp. If it was bad news, he didn't want to hear it in front of this fat imbecile. Nupp had lips thick and mottled as sausages. He wore his big-collared shirts with the top three buttons open, showing the hirsute sag of his breasts as if they were rare and beautiful.

'I've got to be going, anyway,” he said. “Ill show myself out.”

Constantine nodded. “See you tomorrow morning, Bob,” he said, and with a clarity for which he would later despise himself he regretted the fact that this telephone call was going to cost him a fortune in cited violations. He would definitely fire Sandy.

He waited until Nupp had negotiated his way out of the chair and through the door. He punched the button on his phone.

“Constantine Stassos,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“Mr. Stassos?” The voice, male, was flat and measured. It might have been the voice of the telephone itself.

“Yeah. Stassos. What's up?”

“Mr. Stassos, this is officer Dan Fitzgerald. We need you to come to the Nassau County sheriffs office. As soon as possible. It's located on Old Country Road in Mineola, are you familiar with that location?”

“What is it, officer? Is one of my kids—?” He stopped. He couldn't bear to give this voice so much power over his future. Before the voice had a chance to speak again he added, “I want to talk to the man in charge there. Get me the sergeant.”

“Mr. Stassos, if you'll come down to the sheriff's office—”

“Just tell me, you son of a bitch. Tell me. Is my daughter all right?”

There was a pause, filled with the soft crackle of the phone lines. Constantine could hear the ghost of another conversation. He heard the words “whole days,” faintly, in a woman's voice.

“I don't believe she's your daughter, sir,” the voice said hesitantly. Constantine thought that for some reason they were calling him about another man's daughter, an unknown girl. Susan, he thought, in a silent prayer.

“Sir,” the voice continued, “the woman we're holding is your wife.”

He and Mary drove back from the sheriff's office in a silence that would not break. Constantine took her to the downtown street where her car was parked, and she got out of his car and into her own without a word, without a gesture of recognition. She was blank, uninhabited. Her makeup had blurred, giving her a slightly melted aspect, baleful and furious.

Constantine followed her home, keeping close behind the sloped rear end of her Dodge Dart. Not the first time, the police had said. They wouldn't arrest a respectable woman, a member of the community, if she'd just once slipped a few inexpensive items into her purse. No, Mary had been watched over a period of months. Security didn't like to make trouble. They let the first two go, then they gave her a warning.
Ma'am, I think you've made a mistake here. I'm sure you didn't mean to put that hairbrush in your bag.
When she did it again, they had her arrested.

The cops were polite, even embarrassed. This was America. If you were accomplished, if you'd made money, even the police wanted to believe in your innocence. Their embarrassment was more dreadful to Constantine than their hatred would have been. They suggested that Mary see a psychologist. He'd nodded, signed the papers, shaken the hand of the man who brought his wife to jail. What else could he have done?

Mary pulled into the driveway and he followed her. Inside the house, she stood in the kitchen holding her pocketbook in two hands and looked around with a dazzled expression, as if this familiar room had been suddenly rearranged.

“Mary,” Constantine said, behind her. She was nicely dressed, in a short dark skirt and green jacket. Constantine was surprised to find himself noticing her shape, the swell of her hips and the strong symmetry of her stockinged legs.

“Don't,” Mary said.

“Don't what?”

“I don't know. I don't want to talk. I don't have any right to ask that, do I?”

He heard the ragged intake of her breath. He came and stood in front of her. She was crying, though she stood straight and held her pocketbook in both hands. He could hear the effort of her breathing.

He knew he should be angry. He knew in fact that he was angry, but his anger burned somewhere outside of him. It dipped and glistened, just out of reach. All he could seem to feel was confusion and shame, as if he himself had committed a crime.

“Mary,” he said again.

“Oh, please, Constantine,” she said, and her voice was strong through her tears. “There's no conversation for us to have.”

“Cologne,” he said. “A key ring. A bar of soap.”

She nodded. “They were for Billy,” she said.

“Huh?”

“I was thinking about him when I took them. Oh, Con, I'm going to bed. I think I just need to go to bed for a while.”

“Why?” he said. “We have enough money. We could have bought that stuff. What did it cost? Ten, fifteen dollars?”

“About that, I suppose.”

“Then why?”

“I don't know.”

Constantine looked at her, and saw the girl she had been. He saw her breezy self-assurance, her hard shining indignation and the heartbreaking ease with which she had danced, conversed, sipped from a glass. He saw that now, in this kitchen, she was and was not that girl. Something had wilted and dampened, touched the hard underlayer of bone. Something erect and determined remained.

“I don't understand,” he said.

“That makes two of us,” she said. “Maybe you should scream at me and break the dishes. Maybe you should knock me down. I wonder if that might make us both feel better.”

“Mary, I—I'm sorry.”

She laughed, a sudden breathy little sound, as if she was blowing out a candle. “All these years,” she said. “And you finally feel regret—”

She stopped, and stared at him with a black emptiness he had never seen on her face before.

“I'm going to bed,” she said. “I'll talk about this in the morning, I'll do whatever I have to do, but right now all I can think about is going to bed.”

She left the room without touching him. He heard her footsteps, soft and unwavering, as she ascended the stairs.

Constantine poured himself a drink and stood in the kitchen sipping it. The ice cracked; the new teapot-shaped clock swept its face with the thin red line of its second hand. He watched the house go through its own silent life until Billy came in through the front door. Constantine heard his footsteps in the hall, the particular clatter those boots of his made on the tiles, a reckless sound, like a pony.

Billy came into the kitchen, expecting Mary. When he saw Constantine his face changed.

“Hey, Dad,” he said.

He wore a flowered shirt, purple and orange, with sleeves so full and fluttering Constantine wondered if the shirt had been made for a woman. His hair tumbled wispily down over his eyebrows, shrinking his face, and that along with his erupted skin gave him a dim-witted, oafish look.

He's a scholar, Constantine reminded himself. He's got a scholarship to Harvard.

“How ya doin', Bill?” he asked.

“Groovy.” He opened the refrigerator, peered inside, closed it again. He took an Oreo from the cookie jar, nibbled delicately along its outer edge.

“You're home early,” Billy said.

“Yeah,” Constantine answered. “I am.”

“Where's Mom? Out?”

“She went to bed. She's not feeling so good.”

“Oh.”

Constantine could not imagine what a father would say next to his son. He sipped his drink. Almost before he'd decided to, he heard himself saying, “If that damn hair gets any longer you won't be able to see.”

“I can see,” Billy told him. “I've got eyes all over my head.”

Constantine nodded. Every answer had to be smart, every movement had to mock and defy him. He knew that he loved his son—what sort of man doesn't?—but he wanted him to be different. He wanted, right now, to stand in this kitchen with his boy and talk to him about the world's elusive glory and its baffling, persistent disappointments. He wanted to wrestle with his son, to throw a football at him with all his strength.

“You borrow that shirt from your sister?” he said.

“I have to go, Dad.”

“We're talking. Are we talking here?”

“I have to go over to Dina's. Tell Mom I'm having dinner there, okay?”

“I asked you a question.”

“I know you did. It's my shirt, Dad. It's my hair and my shirt and my life.”

“Nobody said it wasn't your life. But I'm the one the principal's gonna call about the hair. And I paid for the fag shirt.”

Billy stood in the middle of the room. He stood, it seemed, in exactly the same place Mary had stood, weeping and holding her purse with both hands.

“As a matter of fact, you didn't pay for it,” he said. “I bought it with my own money. That's why I work at Kroeger's, so I don't need to accept any more from you than I absolutely have to.”

“Calm down,” Constantine said. “No need to get all hot and bothered here.”

“You didn't pay for this shirt,” Billy said, “but listen. I'm going to give it to you anyway. This'll cancel out one shirt you bought for me when I was still too young to make my own money. How's that sound to you?”

He began unbuttoning the shirt, revealing with each button a wider V of skinny, blue-white flesh.

“Bill. For Christ's sake.”

He stripped off the shirt and held it out to Constantine. His bare chest was skeletal, luminous, dotted here and there with livid red pustules. How could a young boy, on the verge of manhood, look so sick and elderly?

“Take it,” he said.

“Stop,” Constantine told him. “Stop this.”

Billy dropped the shirt to the floor. “How about the boots?” he said. “These were expensive. These ought to cancel out two or three pairs you bought me in the fifth grade.”

He raised one thin leg and struggled out of an ankle-high brown boot. As he was pulling it off he nearly lost his balance, and Constantine couldn't help laughing. For the first time in memory he pitied and admired his son. His son had rage and a shrill potency.

“Bill,” he said affectionately. “Billy.” As his son worked the boot free Constantine reached out to tousle his overgrown hair. Maybe they'd have a drink together. Billy was seventeen, old enough for a little bourbon at home.

At the touch of Constantine's hand, Billy jumped back as if he'd been stung with an electric wire. “Don't,” he said, flinching.

Constantine realized Billy had thought he was about to be hit.

“Bill,” he smiled. “C'mon, calm down.” He held out his hand, palm up—a gesture of penury, of harmless intentions.

But Billy, ashamed of having flinched, took another two steps back. He still wore one boot, which clopped loudly on the floor.

“I'm going to pay you back,” he said. “For everything. For every single thing you ever gave me.”

“You're acting crazy,” Constantine said.

Billy turned and strode, single-booted, off-balance, back to the front door.

“Don't talk to me that way,” Constantine said sharply, but he made no move to follow. He hadn't the heart right now. He heard the door opening and closing. Then he heard the sound of his son's single boot heel striking the door, hard. Now Constantine was ready to fight. He ran to the door but when he got there and opened it all he found was the other empty boot, lying on its side on the stoop.

The house was quiet. Pipes and ducts made their soft, efficient sounds. Kitchen appliances droned. Mary was upstairs sleeping, dreaming her dreams. A thief, a repeat offender; a woman who'd sat silently in the fluorescence of the sheriff's office with her makeup bleeding onto her pale, mortified skin. Billy was gone to his friends, half naked. As Constantine poured himself another drink he thought of Susan, brave and clever and forgiving, moving with smooth-limbed certainty into a future that held only better and better news. What had happened didn't matter. It was only a couple of times, drunk; a small thing. It was only kisses and hugs. It was love, that's all. He thought of calling Susan but knew his pride would not recover from the memory of a half-drunken conversation with his own daughter in which he begged for forgiveness. He'd be old one day. He had to be careful about the past he made for himself.

Billy's shirt lay in a bright heap on the floor. Constantine bent over, hearing the faint crackings of his stiff knees, and picked it up. It was light as smoke, made of some gauzy fabric. Thumbnail-sized orange poppies and trumpet-shaped purple flowers bloomed on a field of black. Constantine lifted the shirt to his face, inhaled its odor. It smelled like his son—his sweet cologne and deodorant, a hint of the wintergreen candies he chewed for his breath. Billy was obsessed with the idea that he smelled bad, and Constantine understood his boyish terror. He himself had chewed anise, doused himself in scent, scrubbed his teeth three times a day. What thoughts of Billy's so terrified him that he drenched himself in perfume, scalded his flesh with showers that steamed windows all over the house? What thoughts? Constantine dropped the shirt back on the floor. Then, because he was a family man, because he had love for his son shot through with hatred, he picked it up again and draped it carefully across the back of a kitchen chair.