Man in The Woods (29 page)

“I can’t believe you remembered all that stuff about Chantal,” Sonny says, taking the cup from her.

“It’s my job. I was going to ask you if I could use it sometime.”

“I think she’s got Lyme disease. She’s achy and tired. You know she’s always in the garden and at night the deer come to feed there, too. There’s a lot of Lyme around.”

“So I hear,” Kate says.

Sonny takes a long drink of coffee, and then with exaggerated caution sets the cup down. “I better go,” he says.

“You’re still pretty hammered, Sonny.”

“I’m mostly just tired.”

“Why not call home? Tell Chantal where you are and take a little nap. When was your last drink?”

“Top of your driveway.”

Kate laughs, surprising them both. “Okay. Well maybe a big nap.”

“I thought maybe we could pray together.”

His eyes, once drowning in vodka-infused anguish, take on a sudden keenness, and it seems to Kate that he has an instinct that something has changed in her.

“Sonny, I’m sorry. I can’t help you there. Let’s just find you a place to crash for a couple of hours. You want me to call Chantal for you?”

“I better do it. She’s not going to want to hear your voice.”

“Oh no.”

“I had to tell her.”

“Oh Sonny. That was really not nice.”

Sonny lifts his chin, purses his lips, like a captain deciding to go down with his ship, though in his case the ship is someone else’s heartbreak and actually he is not really on board.

In the front of the house, Paul sits with his sister and Bernard, listening, with his hands folded between his knees and his head down. Bernard is telling him about what the INS seems to be focusing on in their investigation.

“They are now saying Cessez-Feu was a meeting place for Phalangists,” Bernard says, his normally careful, tranquil voice now curdled with contempt.

“What is Cessez-Feu again?” Paul asks.

“My club in Beirut.”

“It means cease-fire,” Annabelle says, as if that alone should exonerate her husband.

“And what’s a Phalangist?” Paul asks. “I’m sorry, but I’m just a simple carpenter.”

“They’re a Christian party in Lebanon, with its share of bad elements,” Bernard says. “I had nothing to do with them. They call themselves Social Democrats, they call themselves Kataeb, in the end they stay true to their origins, which is with the fascists of Spain and Italy. The man who brought these ideas to Lebanon was Pierre Gemayel, who was a family friend, though not a close one, and now that’s being used against me.”

“They were all Maronites,” says Annabelle. “So of course they knew each other. All the well-off Christian families knew each other. It’s so ridiculous. Listen, Paul. I don’t know what to tell you. They’re talking about kicking Bernard out of the country.”

“I don’t excuse the behavior of the Phalangists,” Bernard says. The sun pours through the windows behind him and the thick old glass bends the light so that it touches the back of Bernard’s head pinkishly and pale greenishly. He sits next to Annabelle and he pats her hand with the steadiness of a metronome as he speaks. “They committed unforgivable atrocities in the name of the Blessed Virgin. During the Civil War they were very bad.”

“Wow, religious fanatics doing bad things,” Annabelle says. “Stop the presses.”

“But why is the government bothering you right now?”

“We don’t know,” says Bernard. “It seems to be coming out of nowhere.”

“Bernard,” Annabelle says, giving his name a cautionary curl.

“Well perhaps you would prefer to make the explanations,” Bernard says.

“His wife,” Annabelle says. “We think she contacted someone at State or some other agency. The Beauty Queen’s in and out of the U.S. all the time.”

“You must not call her that,” Bernard says.

“Wait a second,” Paul says. “You’re Bernard’s wife.”

Annabelle waggles her hand back and forth. “It seems Bernard forgot to get divorced from his first wife, the well-named Reem. But, yes, I am his wife and yes we did get married—but now there’s a question of its validity. So we’re fucked.”

“I have not seen Reem for thirteen years,” Bernard says. “That we are still married is a fantasia.”

Paul has not noticed before how delicate Bernard is—or perhaps fear has shrunk him in some way. His bright yellow short-sleeved shirt is three sizes too big; when he shrugs his shoulders they seem no larger than tennis balls. He wears white linen slacks and gray slippers without socks, revealing slender ankles.

“The point is what are we going to do about it?” Annabelle says. “We need a lawyer.”

“Oh, that’s too bad,” says Paul.

“Bernard has been given the name of a very good immigration attorney,” Annabelle says. “Most of the people practicing immigration law are just a bunch of kids or old lefties. But this guy—his name is Hodding Wainwright—has had years of State Department experience and he’s supposed to know everyone you need to know to get this horrible mess straightened out.”

“It’s strange how the law seems to be completely asleep,” Paul says, “and then suddenly one day it just opens its eyes and grabs you.”

“It was not my intention to be here under false pretenses,” Bernard says. “Now they are going to be making a picture of me as a religious extremist, when all I am is a simple man who owned a bar in a troubled city. How was I to conduct myself? To refuse service to my Maronite clients? At Cessez-Feu when you walked in the door you were welcome.”

“They’re going to come after me at the post office, too, I can guarantee you,” Annabelle says. “A federal employee implicated in a green card marriage? That will really be something.”

“So this lawyer,” Paul says. He clears his throat and the sound of it rouses Shep, who has been relaxing on the cool, roast beef–colored bricks in front of the hearth. The dog picks himself up rather carefully and hobbles over to Paul and collapses onto the floor again with a long, low groan.

“Yes,” Annabelle says. “He can help. At least we think he can.”

“Is he expensive?” Paul asks, because in this instant he has realized that is why Annabelle and Bernard are here: they need to borrow money.

“Very,” says Annabelle. “We might find a lawyer to do it out of the goodness of his heart, but it won’t be Hodding Wainwright.”

“The dog is looking at me with unusual interest,” Bernard says.

“I think he knows your family ate someone from his family,” Annabelle says.

“We did nothing of the kind. It was discussed and rejected.”

“I can pony up,” Paul says. “I want you two to stay.”

“Oh Paul,” Annabelle says. “I love you, I really do.” She stops, considers what she has said, and decides to amend it. “Not for the money, but I just do. I always have.”

“How much do you need?” Paul asks.

“We’re not sure,” Annabelle says. “Maybe ten thousand dollars. For the retainer. We have some of it, but frankly our savings are depleted. How much can you spare?”

“I can spare whatever I have,” Paul says. He feels a rush of joy and it is so alive and so energizing that it is all he can do to remain seated and not rush upstairs and bring down the two shoe boxes in the back of his clothes closet, both of which are filled with fifty-and hundred-dollar bills. He remembers counting the cash before closing the boxes; there was three thousand dollars in each box, rubber-banded and then covered with pigeon-pink-and-gray slate roofing tiles rescued from a demolished Lutheran church, not to conceal the money but merely to keep it flat.

Sunday continues to be a day of unexpected visitors. Cheryl arrives to have words with Evangeline, and ends up staying, playing with Ruby while Evangeline runs the lathe. The painter Hunter DeMille, whose lighthouse Paul has been working on, arrives in his Aston-Martin spontaneously stopping by after a visit to the Sunday farmer’s market in Leyden, though the later he stays the more clear it becomes he has not completely given up on the idea of buying Shep and presenting the dog to his seven-year-old son, Cooper. The last time DeMille attempted to buy Shep off of Paul he had begun by offering five hundred dollars and finally worked himself up to the incomprehensible sum of ten thousand, and the coincidence of that being what Bernard’s lawyer needs drones like a honey-drunk bee around and around Paul’s mind as DeMille wanders nonchalantly through Paul’s workshop.

Hunter is unaware that Evangeline has not said one word to him, nor does the tall, brooding painter notice her scornful glances. After having spent years admiring his work and studying him in her art history classes at the college, she has not forgiven him for disillusioning her with his presumptuous behavior regarding Paul’s dog, though Cheryl seems not to have heard anything about this little skirmish of wills and, no stranger to art history herself, cannot take her eyes off of DeMille. Shep is hobbling along with them but barely lifting his head, not even when Ruby tempts him with little pieces of cookie, which she has brought out to the workshop despite the rule not to. Paul is showing DeMille some long curls of charcoal-gray bark stripped from a plum-cherry tree, bark which Paul plans to dry, lacquer, and cut into small squares to use as inlay, which he will work into the edge of a countertop, along with the greenish nubby bark of a possum wood. Suddenly, DeMille whirls on Evangeline and looks frankly at her, in an openly appraising way, up and down, his eyes resting on this feature or that. “I’d like to paint you,” he announces. “I’m doing a series called ‘Ten Triptychs in a Semiclassical Mode,’ and I want you in them.”

Bernard and Kate are on the patio, reading the Sunday papers, while Annabelle rests on the sofa, gathering her strength before the ride home. Sonny Briggs’s wife, Chantal, arrives, dressed as if for a beauty contest at a county fair, in cut-off jeans and the tails of her checkered shirt tied off at the navel, wearing high-heeled sandals and plenty of lipstick. For moral support, she has arrived with her friend Wendy Moots, who has two coincidental connections to the people already gathered at Kate’s house—she is a nurse at Windsor County, working the same floor that Annabelle was on after the accident, and she is the sister of Liza Moots, the housekeeper-astrologist-potter whose paralyzing fear of dogs Paul and Shep have helped her to conquer. Chantal seems uncertain as to what attitude to strike in the odd situation in which she finds herself, and her demeanor veers unpredictably from iciness to abashment. She asks where she might find her
husband
, giving the word a weightiness it can barely support, and then she goes upstairs to the guest room where Sonny sleeps. Wendy Moots, in the meanwhile, is treating Shep, about whom she has apparently heard a great deal, as if he were a long-lost relative or perhaps a celebrity. “It’s you, I can’t believe it’s you,” she says, squatting down on her powerful haunches and getting face to face with the dog, who seems to have perked up considerably, stimulated by the promising rush of human activity.

As the afternoon arrives, they are all eleven of them seated at a long table on the patio in the full, glorious sunlight with the deep, spicy smell of someone’s newly mowed field perfuming the light breeze and no sounds except those of human voices and the mysterious telegraphy of the few birds and squirrels who continue to forage despite the midday heat. Paul has chosen a dozen Brandywine tomatoes from the little garden he maintains behind his workshop, along with several stalks of purple basil, and he’s made a salad of it with the mozzarella Hunter DeMille had in his car along with his other groceries—the cheese has practically liquefied in the heat but its near ruination has brought out its hidden milky and nutty flavors, and in combination with the moist, warm tomatoes and the wild astringency of the basil, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a few chopped cloves of garlic, the salad is devoured by everyone with exclamations of amazement.

A languid sort of merriness prevails as the meal is consumed in the August heat. Toasts are proposed to summer and to the tomatoes and Sonny stands with tears streaming down his face and raises his cup of sparkling water and makes a toast to Chantal, who looks at her husband with adoration and the supreme human kindness of forgiveness. All through the lunch, Paul and Kate exchange helpless but happy looks, and Paul tries to communicate with his eyes alone that he is anxious to return to the conversation they were having before their Sunday took its unexpected turn.

But that time doesn’t come until nearly evening, with the sky still blue but seeming to wither and the heat suddenly inescapable. Their visitors have at long last left and Kate has taken a nap, falling into unconsciousness as if she has spent the afternoon drinking wine. Paul and Ruby have put the dishes in the dishwasher and done their usual half-assed job of straightening up, and now they sit on the sofa in the front of the house while Ruby reads aloud from the newest installment of the Harry Potter saga, and Paul does his best to stay engaged. Somewhere along the way, Paul succumbs to Shep’s imploring stare and pats the cushion, inviting Shep to sit next to him. As he drifts in and out of listening to Ruby, Paul is overcome by a wave of melancholy.
Someday
, he thinks,
this will all be gone.
Ruby’s childhood, for all its troubles, seems so delicate and fleeting, and that will be gone, as will the velvet nights of August and the summer itself. This house that he has arrived in as if purely by chance—what law of the universe will keep him here? These bricks, the wood, the glass in the windows, the smell of the air, the deep, snoozing breaths of the great brown dog, the love he has been given, everything feels impermanent, and everything
is
impermanent. It is the mute, sorrowing knowledge of summer’s end, the knowledge that comes when you are listening to the guileless piping of a child’s voice, the knowledge of a man who knows that everything changes without warning, a man who sometimes looks at his own hands and shudders at the sight of them.

It is dark by eight-thirty. The coyotes, who normally don’t begin their revels until midnight, are already yipping and yodeling and howling. The owls are hooting and the bullfrogs have begun their chorus of moans. The cicadas have arrived and their innumerable cries fill the air like a vast electrical disturbance. Ruby falls asleep on the sofa and Paul carries her up to her bed. When he comes down, Kate is in front of the empty hearth, wrapped in a blanket, her hair chaotic from what must have been a fitful nap.