Lapham Rising (8 page)

“That is fantastic!”

“Marvelous!”

“Brilliant!”

“Hurray!”

“Hear! Hear!” from the Englishman.

Dickie Weeke, “the adman with clout,” a galoot with a mind like a dead battery, went so far as to say he intended to buy a hundred copies of the set’s first printing. Chip (Chip) Cheroo, the cultural critic whose ingenuity in the torture of prose was not to be laughed at, thundered “Ditto!” And Bobo de Pleasure, the “conservative columnist with a liberal flair,” whose own popular
Let’s Get Ahead by Agreeing with All Sides!
had just been reissued, said, “I agree with all sides.” Everyone howled.

There soon followed a chorus from each of the tables, consisting of the word
great
. Everything spoken of was great. People who looked great were great and were doing great things. They also were about to embark on new projects that were in themselves great. At this point I decided to down my second glass of the Jefferson Margaux, which, though it had no taste, nonetheless packed a punch. Just as I was dunking a tournedos into my paella, I caught sight of Chloe at the table for the Perfects. She was giving me the fish eye, as if expecting trouble. Then she turned to Mrs. Bitterman, who was mouthing the word
great
.

After the choir of greatness came a cascade of monologues on topics including the local traffic, the local vegetable and fruit produce, the work one was having done on one’s kitchen by locals, and the surprising quality of the local theater. The monologues were followed by laughter, which came in ripples, snorts, hiccups, grunts, gurgles, heehaws, and whinnies. This preceded much chattering and happy screaming, followed by more monologues, followed by whooping and whispering, then tweets and twangs, then nuzzles and side splits, then by more monologues and a moist, ripe belch.

Just when I thought things could not get any more delightful, Mr. Bitterman had a “great idea.” Everyone at every table was to stand and tell the others what new great thing he or she was up to.

Vandersnook reported that his likeness was about to appear on a two-cent stamp in Barbados. He said the Barbadian government had originally offered the one-cent, but he had held out and refused to accept anything under two. Everybody clapped and expressed awe at his courage.

Eely Moray, the TV host, was also seated at the Perfect table. A former door-to-door Bible salesman, he wore a red blazer with brass buttons, a boutonniere, and money-green slacks. Eely told the throng that he was giving up television to found his own church based on the teachings of Joseph Campbell. Those who did not comment on how timely his decision was, said it was the bravest thing they had ever heard.

Ben Brio, the garden critic with orchidaceous hair, to whom every weed was a flower and every flower a weed, stood next to deliver the long-awaited news that he had resolved to pull together a collection of his petunia reviews under the title
Brio
. Many guests thought it a daring step. He took the opportunity to thank all the assembled for their too-kind remarks on his first collection,
Luminous
.

Yet more forthcoming books were announced. Truss Inert, the public-relations guru, was hard at work on a groundbreaking study to be called
In Defense of Plagiarists
. This too was regarded as brave. Mack Flecknoe, the fleshy Welsh historian, stood to present his latest,
Harrison: The Only President
Without a Hagiography
. Parkyer Carsir, the gossip publisher, was just getting started on a memoir whose working title was
Will I Ever Get a Seat at the Table?
In response, Mr. Bitterman rose to say, “Well, you’ll always have a seat at
our
table, Parkyer.” Others chimed in, “You bet!” I recognized Carsir’s voice as the one I had heard earlier outside, browbeating Jack.

So it went, round and round. One person said he was planning to take a trip to Belgium in the fall; another was thinking about changing her name to Penny; a third had just become a vegan. All announcements were greeted with equally high enthusiasm. For some reason, the old bat with a cause at my table brought down the house when she said that her effort to protect wheels worldwide had to date raised ten million dollars in donations. And Mr. Jefferson apologized for his wine again, but everyone said it was great anyway.

By now I had guzzled my third glass and was feeling dizzy and queasy to the point of full-blown sickness. The wide-board floors began to morph into the ground level of an abattoir, where bulls and cows and a calf or two were seated at round tables mooing and moaning and kicking up small clouds of dust with their hooves. Smoke plumed from their wide nostrils, which were dilated with fear. Their eyes were bloodshot. I wanted to save the creatures from the farmer in
charge of the abattoir, who, scythe in hand, was about to run amok among the animals and slice them to ribbons. But two things stood in my way: I was smashed. And I was the farmer.

Then finally it was my turn to speak. I gulped down my fourth Margaux and decided that I would be more visible and more effective if I stood on the table. In my upward climb I stepped on Pill’s wrist and kicked a thick wedge of Key lime pie into the lap of Pasty Williams. Then I told our crowd what I was up to.

“This evening,” I said, “this very evening, I am going home to give myself an enema. And it will be great.”

Not waiting for the applause, I began to sing, “The Greatest Love of All,” gesticulating lavishly in an attempt to get others to join in. Only Mr. Jefferson’s new bride obliged. She sang quite well.

To divert attention from me, Mrs. Bitterman hurriedly summoned the cook from the kitchen to receive the plaudits of the guests for preparing such a great dinner. The poor woman blinked furiously as she entered the room, looking like a prisoner who had just been released from solitary confinement into the light. She was tobacco-colored, with glossy brown hair and a very pretty, if terrified, face. To divert attention from
her
, I jumped down from the table, grabbed the male Bitterman, and gave him a long, hard kiss on the mouth. Two kisses, actually: “One for the surf, and one for the turf!”

Chloe rose from her chair like a sergeant reporting for duty. “That’s it,” she said. “We’re going home.” As she pushed me toward the door, the Bittermans assured her that everyone understood how I was, and that she mustn’t worry about my spoiling the party, and that she, for one, would be welcome in their home at any time, night or day. On our way out, I heard two “Isn’t he awful?”s and one “Beyond the pale.”

In the driveway, I told Jack the party had been all he’d said it would be, and I gave him a twenty-dollar bill. Chloe said nothing on the ride back to Noman. I said nothing myself, as I was trying to work out a matter that had been troubling me all night.

At last we pulled up at the creek. “You just have to do it, don’t you?” she said. “You have to spout off.”

“That’s it!” I said. “Whales! She was talking about saving the whales!” Then I heaved up the Margaux, the surf and the turf, mostly on Chloe, I’m afraid.

Not long afterward, she announced her departure from our household. Something about a last straw.

A
t 2:34, the sun no longer equivocates, and has dulled to the color of grade-school glue. The clouds gloom over in the preliminary stages of a rampart, and the day takes on the bleak appeal of a mule, part solemn, part mule. It is a hue I am generally fond of, but now I consider how the inevitable rainstorm may affect the operation of the Da Vinci. Yet it must have rained in the fourth century
B.C.
too, don’t you think? And it’s a stolid machine, much more substantial, more structurally austere, than I had ever imagined. When I seek to admire it, it looks away as if to say: You made me, now lay off.

In truth, I had no idea how big and heavy the parts would be, not that the bulk would have deterred me. Sir Ralph’s plans, which saw the Da Vinci as a toy involving a Ping-Pong ball, gave specifications in inches. I, possessing a different and grander vision, transposed Sir Ralph’s measurements
into feet, including the ballistic calculations, which were originally drawn up in meters. The three FedEx packages contained everything from the hinged catch and the winding roller to the massive plates, all ten to twelve times the recommended size.

“Señor Moment!” The bullhorn amplifies every word into a threat. “A question, señor.”

“No, José, it isn’t Cinco de Mayo yet. But soon. Nine months. You can start preparing the explosives.”

“Tell me, Señor. What does that
H
stand for on your horn?”

“It stands for José.”

I go to the dock and crawl under the tarp. I am way ahead of schedule. Except for setting and attaching the torsion spring, the project is down to a very few minor touches. I check the ropes. I check the wheels, the mortises for the uprights, the winch crossbar, the mallet, the leg of the catch. I check the pine ball in the tub.

Now to the hill, zip in my stride, ready at last to hook up the horsehair. I feel a surge of satisfaction grading into calm. A shudder of the kind of joy I experienced once in a rare while when I still was writing. What the piano player feels—what Blossom Dearie feels accompanying herself when her voice and fingers meet where they are supposed to—“Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?” What the carpenter feels—even the car
penters working on Lapham’s—when tongue-and-groove groove. Not pride, exactly. More like control.
Veni, vidi, vici
. Conception, preparation, execution. For one bright-eyed, evanescent moment, control of one’s work and of one’s art and of one’s life.

“I placed a jar in Tennessee, /And round it was upon a hill, / It made the slovenly wilderness…” What the
fuck
?

WHAT THE FUCK?

Merely telling you that the Mason jar lies empty on its side, with the horsehair gone, all of it gone, cannot begin to convey my horror and panic at this moment. Neither do I need to ponder the calamity, to attribute it to an accident, or to some natural disaster, or to voodoo, or to divine intervention in the hubris of mortals. Nothing is divine about this theft.

“Hector!”

“What?!” he asks with false innocence, running back to the dock. I go after him.

“What did you do with it?” I loom over him, as if that mattered.

“With what?”

I know he’s lying. “The horsehair. Where did you put it?”

He tries to salute. “We have a situation here, General. I’ll call the War Room.”

“Where is it, dammit?”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? A grown man stomping around searching for the hair of a horse? Wouldn’t you much prefer the hair of the dog?” I hate it when he chortles.

“Cough it up,” I tell him.

“I’m not a cat.”

“You didn’t eat it! Tell me you didn’t eat it.”

“I didn’t eat it.”

I stare at him. “You did. You
did
eat it. Horsehair. Why?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ll eat anything, as you surely are aware by now. But if you must know, I’m trying to save you from yourself. What you have in mind will mess up everything for both of us. It’s true, I do think we could do a lot better around here, but all in all I happen to like my life the way it is. I’m a conservative, remember.”

“How’d you do it?” I ask him, stifling a rage.

“Do what?”

“Get into the jar. How’d you unscrew the top?”

“I prayed it open.” He chuckles again.

If a dropkick would bring back the horsehair, he would be dog-paddling in the creek right now. Now that he’s mentioned it, though, perhaps I
could
use the hair of this dog in place of the horse’s. I’d gladly try, but his hair would be too short. Then again, Sir Ralph’s instructions noted that when the ancients had no horsehair available, they used the ten
dons of any proximate animal. I look Hector over from nose to tail. He bellows, “Oh, what a friend we have in Jesus.”

What to do? Months of effort and meticulous planning down the gullet of a cur.
Bang bang bang bang bang
. Is Lapham’s house laughing at me?

The bullhorn calls again, “Señor March! We’ve been talking about you. You seem upset today. Very nervous. More than usual.”

“Thank you for your concern, José.”

“We theenk you need an activity. Something to keep you busy.” Several of the carpenters are looking my way, grinning and nodding in agreement. Their interest in me seems to be growing anthropological. “Maybe you should have a hobby. Maybe you need a woman, señor! But you have to improve your appearance.”

“Is that possible?” I wave and head for the house as if I knew what I was doing.

“You definitely need a new shirt, and new shoes. Every-theeing! Even so, we theenk it would take a very patient woman to be with you.”

“Did you have someone in mind?” I am about to go inside.

“We were theenking of Señora Polite.”

“I’m sure you were.”

“But maybe she would be too much woman for a man your age.”

Too much for a man of any age, I theenk. And then I think of something else. A vision comes to me in the form of a long, thick, swishy, tail-like braid of hair.

“Is that you, Wrinkles?” she gasps into her end of the phone. “Well! Ah do believe this is the very first time Ah have received a call from your distinguished self.”

“It’s your lucky day, Chittlins. You have something I want.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit late for that?” she says. “Late for
you
, Ah mean.”

“I want your hair. I want you to cut off that braid of yours and give it to me.”

“And why on earth should Ah do that?” she asks. “Ah cannot think for what sick and perverse purpose you could possibly desire mah extra-long, extra-thick, world-class braid of hair.”

“I need it. Just leave it at that.” I know she won’t.

“Are you going to hang yourself? Give me an incentive.”

“Never mind why I want it. I’ll pay you for it. Plenty. And it will grow back soon. You stand only to profit from this transaction, Kathy.”

“Ah worry when you address me by mah Christian name instead of the usual insult, Harry. Ah worry, and yet mah interest is piqued. What do you call plenty?” She is beginning to speak in the short, orgasmic breaths that accompany the sale of a house.

“Athousand dollars,” I tell her.

“Ah don’t clear mah throat for a thousand dollars.” I picture a closed-mouth, cocky smile.

“Five thousand, then.” I need to get the deal done.

A sigh of mocking pity seeps through the receiver. “Let me bring you into the twentieth century—or the twenty-first, to be technical about it, my hermit crab.”

A chill invades me as I realize that it is she and not I who ought to be addressing the Chautauquans. Like Lapham, Kathy
is
the twentieth century. The two of them ought to be together. They should be wed at once by the Reverend I. Love Everyone in Saint No Offense Church with Hector as their ringbearer. It would be the event of the season. Her wedding gift to him: a morocco-bound volume of
The Collected Aphms
, at long last. His to her: a cash register twenty feet high and twenty wide, on which she could hop from key to key dressed as an adjustable-rate mortgage. On their wedding night, they could dance to Hootie and the Blowfish and watch
Survivor
. He could say: “I want
her
to win.” And she: “I want
him
.”

She inhales and continues. “For your edification, Harry March, five thousand dollars these days will not suffice as a deposit to take a house off the market for a single night. On an average sale—an
average
sale, mind you—one that takes me as long as ten minutes to consummate—mah commission comes to four hundred thousand dollars. And do you know
that in order to hold that cashier’s check for four hundred thousand dollars in my delicate-as-china hand, Ah do not need to lose a single hair on mah oh-so-desirable head?”

I ought to get out more. If I knew more people, or even knew
of
more people, I would never have had to approach Ms. Southern Discomfort in the first place. Maybe I should have gone into real estate myself; imagined estate has proved to be far less practical.

The urge arrives to gather up everything Southern and dump it on her from an extreme altitude—levees, gumbo, étouffée, catalpa trees, sweating Mississippi courtrooms with redneck juries composed of men named Wayne and slowly revolving ceiling fans, cicadas, hoop skirts, mud, buckshot, whips, bayous, verandas, juleps (mint and original), hooch, “Swanee,” Big Daddy’s white suit, Big Daddy, and Big Daddy’s house—just lift it all by crane, open the claws, let it drop, and bury her forever, except for that braid.

The hour grows late. I’m sunk if she doesn’t come through. It could take me weeks to find and prepare more horsehair, and by then Lapham’s house will be open for business. The Quiogue stables can’t help me now; their horses have just had haircuts. I suppose I could look on eBay, but there’s no time for delivery even by FedEx, which anyway, I am certain, has put me on its blacklist.

What must be done must be done tonight, before tomor
row morning’s lecture to the Chautauquans. How else can I show them the way? And if I don’t show them, how will they show others? My subversion is a small gesture, to be sure, but it will make a statement, an impression. Worlds of thought and action have been moved by less, have been revolutionized by more obscure acts than mine. Believe me. Check your history. Besides, I refuse to give up now, after my bounty of headaches, backaches, earaches, toothaches (from holding the flashlight), scraped knees, bloody hands and feet, frayed nerves, heartburn, sleepless nights, and
bang-bang
days. It’s been too much fun.

“All right. How much
do
you want?”

“Why, Ah want
you
, honey.” I picture her spreading open her arms like Aimee Semple McPherson. “Ah want your house, your island, the works. And Ah’ll pay top dollar.”

“Because you can turn it around and get back twice what you give me,” I feebly suggest.

“Three times. Maybe four. You sell me your little Island of Dr. Moreau, and Ah’ll pay you enough to enable you to live out your shriveled, mean-spirited days in the comfort of the finest assisted-living facility on the East End, with plenty of dollars to spare in case you want to take a day trip to the Aus-able Chasms or catch a bus to see a revival of
Cats
. And for all that, Ah shall gladly cut off my luxurious braid of hair and hand it over to you mahself.”

“Never!” I shout into the phone.

“Harry March!” she shouts back, making my name sound like two imperatives. “You’re hurtin’ me! Never say never.” Another intake of breath. There’s a pause. Then: “Ah must say, Ah get all hot just thinkin’ what you might be planning on doing with mah hair.”

“You’d be surprised,” I tell her. “What about fifty thousand? It’s all I have.” I may be lying to her; I don’t really know. Hector says we’re rich, but he can only count to seven. I haven’t checked the Money Room in quite a while. In any case, her reply makes the effort unnecessary.

“This conversation is concluded. Sell me your island, and mah hair is yours. Your island. Your house.” She means my life. “That’s mah price, sweet pea.” She hangs up, and my heart sinks with the click.

I look down at my little white anarchist, cold as I can look.

“Thanks a lot, Hector.” He seems enthused by what he has overheard.

“
De nada
,” he says. “Well, so much for the Da Vinci.” He tries unsuccessfully to rub his front paws together. “Now you can drop the lecture too. Isn’t that good? You can’t do one without the other.”

“That’s right, rub it in.”

“But I’ve provided you with the perfect out. You can tell them your dog ate your homework.”

“You know,” I tell him as I head for my rowboat, “for a self-proclaimed born-again Christian, you practice very little charity.”

He wags his euphoric tail. “Now why don’t you just forget all this nonsense—forget Kathy’s braid, forget your crazy plot—and calm down and concentrate on little Hector, devote your remaining days to ensuring little Hector’s happiness and welfare? I’ll take you to church with me, and you’ll see the light and learn to love Jesus and America, and then you can write a best-seller about a dog who talks to God. And it’ll make us lots of money, so we can buy Lapham’s house and live in the lap of luxury. I love laps.”

“You’re very annoying, you know.”

“We’re
both
very annoying. That’s why we’re friends.”

“Are we friends?”

He gives me the Quizzical head tilt. “Of course we’re friends.”