The Center of the World (4 page)

These cogitations led me back in due course (after a pleasant detour around your thighs and bottom) to Turner’s remark about the truth that lies between a woman’s legs. I have, as you know, only a theoretical knowledge of that location, but, thinking of you and what hangs between
your
legs, I half understand what Turner meant. When we are in each other’s arms, David, I am, at least, aware of all that matters.

I woke just before dawn and went to the window, which overlooks the park. Earth, trees, grass, and water had been molded by Capability Brown as if all God’s materials were putty in his hands. The result was Nature made more perfect than Nature itself. In the half light I could see the pond, silver gray against the darker gray of the grass. I could make out some ducks or geese. There were deer bending down at the water’s edge. The hills beyond were black against the lightening sky, while the distant patchwork of cultivated fields was still invisible. As I stood there in my dressing gown, I could see the world begin to take on the colors of day, gray giving way to various shades of somber green. The sky behind the hills glowed with the faintest traces of rose as the fiery disk of the sun began to appear.

The sound of an opening door attracted my attention and I looked down. A figure dressed in black stepped quickly across
the terrace. Turner, for it was he, has a queer stiff-legged trot, but he made his way with remarkable speed across the field and up the hill on my right. He held his hat onto his head with one hand while the other clutched a large portfolio which contained, I assumed, his drawing materials. When he reached the top he sat down on the bench and began to work. As I watched, the sun crested the hill and its image appeared in the glassy water. My words cannot do justice to the scene, and I was curious what Turner’s chalk and pen would make of it.

I got dressed as rapidly as I could. It promised to be a beautiful morning and I wished to take up my lord’s offer to accompany him as he went out for deer. There had been conversation the night before of the need to cull the herd. His Lordship had said it was “not the usual way of things” and that it might interest me. Before tendering the invitation he had asked me a number of sharp questions. I had told him that I could not shoot and had no desire to do so, but that I could ride tolerably well. My father, though a poor clergyman, had been, through the kindness of his friends, a keen hunter and had taught me to ride. That was enough for Egremont, who said, “Come along then. It will be good for a young puppy like you to take a bit of air.” He said we would ride to the shooting grounds by a roundabout way so that I might get some exercise and taste the flavor of the neighborhood. “You will do well,” he said. “Just stay out of the way when the game appears.” I wish to God I had listened.

When I arrived at the stables, Mr. Hobb, the master of the stables, introduced me to my mount. He apologized for the quality of the beast, but said she was “a good-tempered old
creature who knew her business well enough.” I am no great judge of horseflesh, but I could see at once that in all his years of riding my father had never sat on so fine a horse. But such is the way of things at Petworth.

The morning lived up to its promise, one of September’s gifts. We were a party of about five, with Egremont taking the lead, a number of servants bringing up the rear, and a cart following. In spite of his years, His Lordship took what seemed a young man’s delight in showing us how to ride. At one point we came to a low hedge that bounded a meadow. There was an easy path around, but Egremont, after glancing back at the rest of us, took the hedge with graceful confidence. I tried to remember what I knew about riding, but in truth the horse knew more than enough for both of us and I cleared the barrier with no bad outcome beyond a delicious pounding in my heart. It was a glorious morning to be alive.

We rode on for about half an hour, sometimes at a gallop, sometimes at a walk, as Egremont pointed out some of the beauties of his English Paradise. Petworth Park is notable for the variety of its scenery: woods and forest, streams and ponds, glens and meadows and fields. Much of the park looks as cultivated as a city kitchen garden, but then you turn a corner and see a forest as wild and free as the farthest reaches of Canada. I half wished that the shooting would be put off for another day so that I could enjoy the riding uninterrupted.

At length we arrived at the edge of what I was later told was the greatest stretch of forest on the estate. Towering trees that must have been planted at the time of the current lord’s
father’s father’s father came to the edge of a delightful and uncultivated meadow. Wildflowers of yellow and white dotted the soft green grass.

Egremont and the others who had come to participate in the sport dismounted as their guns were brought forward. The shooters lined themselves up along the edge of the meadow, but I stayed on my horse to get a good view of the scene. Behind me the servants waited. Egremont pulled a watch from his pocket and studied it for a moment. At length he gave a signal and a gun behind me was fired into the air. We were all very still. After about a quarter of an hour we could hear the faint sound of human voices shouting in the distance. The sound grew louder and louder as a party of Egremont’s tenants approached. Soon I could hear the faint thundering, if you will allow the phrase, of the frightened deer as they fled toward us and their doom. Egremont and the others brought their guns to their shoulders. Excitement visible on their faces, they glanced toward the forest and then at each other. The sound of the hoof beats grew louder and then louder still, until all at once fifteen or twenty of the park’s famous deer exploded into the meadow. Egremont was the first to fire, and then there was a fusillade as the others followed suit. I watched in horror as first one, then a second, and then a third of the speeding creatures crumpled to the ground, their motion carrying them forward as they died. The shots continued, more deer fell, until a cloud of gun smoke hung like a curtain between me and the meadow.

I turned my eyes away from the slaughter and toward the edge of the wood, where I saw one of God’s great creatures, an
enormous stag, almost twice the size of his murdered cousins, standing just off the verge of the forest. For a moment, the stag’s eyes met mine and, I hardly know how to say this, I felt a flash of more than human sympathy as the noble animal seemed to be trying to decide which way to flee in order to save its life.

I had been hanging toward the back as I was instructed to do, but I must have unconsciously urged my horse toward the edge of the wood. I looked away from the stag and saw that Egremont had seen it as well and was reloading his piece. When this was accomplished he took aim. I cried out in alarm, for although I was more than twenty paces from the stag, I was uncomfortably close to Egremont’s line of fire. Quicker than thought itself, the stag turned and disappeared into the darkness of the forest. I heard the sound of its hooves as it clambered into the shadows at the same time that I heard the blast of Egremont’s gun. He missed his mark and threw the gun to the ground in fury. He turned to me, his face disfigured with anger and contempt. Even though I was seated on a horse and looking down at him, Egremont appeared to rise above me in his rage. He showered down a stream of invective unlike anything I have ever heard before. At length his anger began to subside and his face to return to its normal color (for he had turned an alarming shade of crimson), but he said, in conclusion, that I ought to be ashamed of myself for I was “a disgraceful young sodomite.”

I cannot recall all the insults he heaped on me, but that last phrase is indelibly etched in my memory. A sense of shame and humiliation enveloped me like a dark cloak as I sat there
waiting for the party to remount and head back toward the house. None of my companions, who had laughed and joked with me as we made our way across the fields, would now meet my eyes. I rode along behind them, looking, I suppose, like a man whose very spine had been stolen from him.

I knew that it was impossible for me to stay at Petworth any longer. I resolved to leave as soon as I could.

 
I THREW STUFF
in the dumpster for another hour, but Mossbacher’s visit had taken the edge off my ambition. One point four million dollars. That seemed like a lot of money.

It was lunchtime. Susan would be around Albany. I made a sandwich with a thick layer of ham, some salami, a lot of cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and good olive oil. Taking a bottle of beer out of the refrigerator, I paused for a moment, feeling guilty, and then grabbed a second. I thought of my father being pretty well shit-faced by four in the afternoon, but then I remembered that I was on vacation and that there was nobody around to tell me what to do. I read someplace that married men lived longer than unmarried ones because their wives were always telling them to eat less and see the doctor more. It hardly seemed worth it.

Plopping myself down on the Adirondack chair, I settled the plate on my lap and looked out over the water. This was where I used to sit with my parents when I was happy. I took
a sip of beer. The morning had started out damp and overcast, but the cloud cover had been carried away to the north. There were just a few white clouds in the blue sky. It was so pretty that it looked like a cheap postcard.

This was the afternoon of July 6, 2003, the day before everything changed for me. The last time I had been alone at the lake had been just six weeks after the attack on the World Trade Center. On that October weekend the trees were bare and a bone-chilling rain was falling so hard that I couldn’t see across the lake. Everyone was still in a daze and trying to wake up to the new world. My father, who had only four months to live, had called from Florida and told me that I needed to drive to the lake house immediately and find a manila envelope that was hidden in his bedroom. “Don’t open it,” he said. “I want you to send it to me insured and registered mail. The best kind of mail there is. Spare no expense. And if you think you have better things to do, I have better people to leave the house to.” There was, apparently, a set of cousins somewhere who hadn’t disappointed him as much as I had.

I asked him what was in the envelope.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” he said. “But let me give you a hint. I want you to insure it for ten thousand dollars. You got anything worth insuring for ten thousand dollars? That’s my point.” I knew he was half senile and about to die, and yet I was still as afraid of him as I had ever been. I was fifty years old and still waiting for him to say he loved me.

I drove up through the cold rain and found the envelope where he had said it would be, buried under old pajama
bottoms and a few
Playboy
magazines from the seventies. It was sealed at both ends with duct tape. My father had printed the words
CONFIDENTIAL: DO NOT OPEN UNDER PENALTY OF THE LAW
in block letters on both sides. I drove to town the next day and dropped it off at the post office. When we were cleaning out the apartment in Miami after his death, I found it unopened. It contained telephone bills from around the time of my parents’ divorce. Some of the numbers were circled or underlined.

It was a good sandwich and plenty of beer, but I don’t recall enjoying either. I remember I was still hungry when I was done. I am not as hungry anymore.

The Mossbachers waved as they took the powerboat out of their boathouse, and I waved back. Jeffrey was driving while Rita helped their two children into life jackets. I didn’t care for Rita much, but I had to admit that she looked good in a bikini, even at a distance. I wondered how much Jeffrey had paid for her boobs. I realized that what he said about “closing the loop” and it being “fitting” that the old property be brought together again was a lot of crap. My house was nothing but a teardown as far as he was concerned. Their boat took off with a roar, the inflatable raft following in its wake and the Mossbacher children screaming with pleasure.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working in the barn and watched with satisfaction as the dumpster filled with the detritus of my father’s past. Every time I tossed an object into the dumpster I got a kick out of thinking how upset he would be. I found a box of drinking glasses decorated with the Sinclair gas company’s green dinosaur logo and smashed them one by one,
remembering my father coming home from work and handing one to my mother. “It’s no wonder there are so many poor people. They get some other gas when they could go to Sinclair and get something useful without spending an extra penny.” It was only later that I realized that the glasses had a kind of retro appeal and would have fetched a good price on eBay. The fucking guy was always right. He was always right.

As I worked I allowed myself to fantasize about what I would do if I could afford to keep the place. With a little work I could turn the barn into a study. I thought about where I would put a desk and some bookshelves to hold that box of books and those notebooks that were up in the attic in Princeton. I could turn those two chapters I had completed into a modest article or two. My dreams that day were also modest: if I could only publish one article I might be able to lay some of the old ghosts to rest. It was really pretty pathetic.