The Land of Steady Habits: A Novel (23 page)

“Preston?”

“It’s ludicrous.”

“Well, was he?”

Helene looked at him. “Jesus, Tommy, are you serious?”

“I mean, it’s not so out of the question, is it?”

“He doesn’t even
know
Charlie. He’s almost twice his age—what would they even have to talk about?”

Tommy looked at her.

“I don’t want to think about that. I just need to be sure he stays away from here. Will you call him and tell him that?”

“That he can’t come home? On Christmas Eve?”

Helene stared at him expectantly. Tommy had tied an apron over his shirt and rolled up his sleeves in preparation for his kitchen duties, and for the first time in a while she saw in him the kid who had gamely pretended to be a horse along with Samantha Ashby and her bossy friends, trotting in circles around the backyard and neighing, because it was easier than saying no. “Okay,” he said.

It wasn’t until she looked away that she noticed someone was listening in the doorway.

“Sophie,” she said.

“Mitchell says we need more wine.”

His father’s rental was wide open and no one was there. It was furnished with the sort of run-down camp furniture that was unexpectedly light, and a sandy linoleum floor that hadn’t been cleaned since the previous summer. He sat down on a love seat and listened to the wind whip through the seams around the windows. His father had yet to get the turtle a tank, a fact he figured out by watching the creature in the middle of the living room work his way across the linoleum to the kitchen.

When his father came home, it seemed almost as though he had expected Preston to be there. Despite his father’s semivagrant appearance (Preston knew the look of someone who had been sleeping in his clothes), he was happy and light in a way Preston couldn’t remember him—jazzed about something and going on and on about it in bewildering detail, as though Preston had been present for the debate that had been raging over the past thirty-six hours in his father’s brain.

“Not to mention the tax incentives, which essentially offset the restoration cost if it’s amortized over fifteen years. Fifteen years! That’s
nothing.
The government’s
giving
money away so people will take on projects like this. And I told them that. I told them it doesn’t matter if the foundation’s crumbling, it’ll be cost-effective no matter how you cut it. It’s not like this takes much expertise in finance. It’s just practical—and it’s the right thing to do!”

“Dad.”

His father looked up.

“What are you talking about?”

His father took him outside to a trail and down to a clearing. He pointed at a dilapidated old building across the water. “I’m talking about that.”

“You
bought
that?”

“They were going to destroy it, Preston.
Destroy
it. These assholes don’t know the first thing about history.”

“With what money?”

His father glared at him.

“It’s not an unreasonable question, Dad.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I do. We all do.”

“The house in Connecticut is your mother’s problem. She can deal with that money hole. It’s her rich boyfriend’s problem.”

“Do they know that?”

“Yes,” said his father. “Yes,” he repeated, a little less sure.

Preston held up the envelope. “Is that what this is?”

Anders took it. He looked over the documents inside. “Yes,” he said, refastening the brads and handing it back to him. “This needs to go to your mother.”

“Dad,” said Preston. “What’re you doing up here?”

“I already told you but clearly you weren’t listening.”

“Come back with me. Give this to Mom yourself.”

“Did you not hear me?” He gestured across to the inn. “I’ve got things to do.”

“It’s Christmas Eve. You’re up here alone.”

“I have permits to get, I need to talk to an architect—”

“What is
wrong
with you?” said Preston. “You always do this. You get lost in these private battles that no one else can see and then you wonder why no one understands you. Do you really think this inn
matters?
Do you really think if you preserve that building
anyone
will care?”

“Of course they’ll care! They’ll all care! It’s a living piece of history and I saved it, goddamn it. I
saved
it!”

Preston took a deep breath. When his father started yelling, it was usually the end of the conversation.

“Well,” he said, seeing his father’s flushed face. “As long as it makes you feel better.”

He was halfway up the trail when his father stopped him. “Wait,” he said. He had run up behind him and was catching his breath. “You drove all the way up here for that?”

“I was worried about you.”

His father looked him in the eye.

“I can’t go back there.”

“Just give them their gifts.”

“It’s my fault,” his father said. That boy is gone and it’s all my fault.”

It never snowed in southern Connecticut on Christmas Eve, though sometimes it rained, and now, looking through the windshield, they saw sleet had started to fall. Compared to the white dusting on the lawns of Maine, this was gray and grim, and it made the high windows on their kitchen seem like a warm beacon of light.

“Only an hour and a half late,” his son said.

“There are a lot of cars here. Aren’t there a lot of cars?”

“Don’t worry,” said Preston, climbing out of the Escalade. “You know all these people.”

“I thought you said it was family only,” he said.

Preston closed the car door behind him.

“Hey,” Anders called. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Bring the stuff,” said his son, heading to the house.

On the way down, Preston had promised him a quiet family affair, with gifts under the tree and the grandkids watching Claymation specials on TV and a turkey that Tommy had spent the week brining. They would all exchange gifts, he said, a simple ritual, nothing more to it, and spend the evening together as they always had, sipping wine beneath a sound track of carols. They had stopped at the drugstore and bought what wrapping paper was left and then spent a frantic half hour at Anders’s condo wrapping the presents, and now, in Anders’s lap, there was a laundry basket filled with objects that were wrapped in shiny unseasonable paper. It was quite a pile, and maybe a tad embarrassing—a concern he had raised repeatedly with his son and that Preston had assured him was unfounded and overthought. “It’s Christmas,” he had said. “This is what you’re supposed to do.”

He was right, of course, and under normal circumstances Anders would have taken great pleasure in this display of generosity, might even have hauled them over in a laundry sack and ho-ho-ho’d his way through distributing them, a pleasant thought that vanished along with his confidence as soon as the front door opened. Tommy’s wife, Lisa, was standing there.

“Anders?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“I was—did Preston go in this way?”

“Preston’s not here,” she said and looked at the laundry basket. “What
is
all that?” Lisa had always looked down on Anders, particularly after the divorce, but her usual polite condescension turned, with a stifled laugh, to something much more sinister.

“Ho-ho-ho,” he said.

“Oh, those are—oh! Hang on,” she said, and she went back into the house.

A few moments later Tommy came out in a tie and an apron, his hair frozen with the tracks of his comb.

“Dad?” he said. “What’re you doing here?” He was holding a long narrow carving knife.

“Preston brought me. I mean, Jesus, Tom, he said it was just
family
—”

“Shh,” said Tommy, stepping toward him. “Keep your voice down.” Anders’s arms were getting tired. Tommy looked at the basket and sighed. “Okay, follow me.”

They walked past the dining room, where he could hear more than a few voices mumbling their way through a conversation, and into the bright modern lights of the kitchen.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Helene, looking at Anders. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Merry Christmas,” said Preston.

She had sequestered him on a stool on the other side of the room, her arms crossed in front of her, and she appeared to have been lecturing him quietly.

“He can’t be here,” she said to Tommy.

“Mom, just hang on a second,” said Preston.

“You,”
she said, turning around, “don’t get a say.
You
can’t be here either.”

Anders looked at Preston. “What the hell happened?”

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I thought—”

“What is all that?” said Helene.

Anders looked down at the pile of things in the basket. They seemed suddenly cheap, a mound of Mylar sutured with tape.

“They’re gifts,” said Anders. “I thought we were going to exchange.”

Helene let out a tiny amused huff.

“But you know what, forget it,” he said. “I just wanted to give you this.”

He had fixed an adhesive bow to the envelope.

“What is this?”

“It’s a gift, I guess. Or not really. You can open it later.”

Helene unfastened the brads and tore open the envelope. “Is this—” She looked up. Her face had softened.

Anders shrugged. “Tell Donny he has a deal.”

For a moment he thought she might run over and hug him, either that or fling it back at him in disgust—it was often hard to tell the two moods apart. And before he could decipher which one it was, the door to the dining room swung open.

Donny was standing there with two empty wine bottles, the table of people beyond him sitting in silence. “Oh,” he said, and the door swung shut behind him.

“I need some fucking
help
in there.” He held up the two bottles. “It’s like a silent drinking contest.”

“Tell them we’re out of wine.”

“We
are
out of wine,” said Donny.

“Actually,” said Anders. He held up one of his gifts, a jumbo cabernet wrapped in a reflective bag. Helene began to laugh.

“No,” she said. “Please. Put it away.”

“Come on, it’s for you.”

“Should I just serve it?” said Donny, taking the bottle.

“No, Donny, put it down.”

“Wow,”
said someone behind them.

Mitchell Ashby was standing in the doorway with an unlit cigar in his mouth. His face was a faint purple, as though the wine had filled his skull and been dyeing it from the inside out. He took the crinkly-bagged bottle and put his arm around Donny. “I had a feeling you might be hiding some people back here,” he said and pointed across the room at Preston. “Look who it is. The guy who disappeared.”

“They’re on their way out,” said Helene.

“Oh, I hope not,” said Mitchell, his wavering gaze finding Anders. “
You’ll
stay for a drink, at least.”

“You know,” Anders said, “we were actually just leaving.”

“Oh, bullshit,” said Mitchell. “It’s
Christmas.
Come here.” He went to Anders and wrapped him in a lengthy, tight hug. Anders stood there for a while, unsure of what to do, and when Mitchell pulled away, Anders could see his eyes had welled up with tears.

“Of course,” said Anders. “Of course we have time for a drink.”

Whether or not his son had known that the Ashbys would be there was now beside the point. In Maine, on that freezing trail, Preston had repeated the polite refrain of
Nobody blames you
until Anders had agreed to come down with him, a phrase that his son must have truly believed, since he would never have knowingly brought him into the belly of the beast. And when Mitchell led Anders by the arm into the dining room, pulled out a chair for him, poured him some wine, and told him again and again how truly great it was to see him—as though the years of quietly competitive shit-shooting and the recent months of disapproval had all been washed away by their tragedy—it seemed, surprisingly, that his son had been right.

“Look who I found,” said Mitchell to the others at the table. “Hiding back there in the kitchen.”

While Anders didn’t recognize the elderly man who was sitting in his former seat, or the man’s diminutive wife, or even the new pieces of modernist art, washes of color and squiggles that were hanging on the walls, it was hard to miss Sophie Ashby, who was sitting at the head of the table and staring at him like a tranquilized animal.

“What happened to the boy?” said Mitchell, looking at Helene, who was hovering in the doorway like a security guard. “He was just here.”

“He stepped out,” said Helene.

“Ah, well,” said Mitchell, lighting his cigar with a match and taking a few puffs to get it rolling. “He’ll be back. Always is. For now I want to hear about this guy.”

A haze of gray smoke settled over the table and Anders realized that Mitchell was making chitchat, an impulse he supposed he understood: make things normal. “Well,” he said. “I’m moving.”

“Again?” said Mitchell. “What is it with you, you miss the boxes or something?”

“No, um, this time it’s to Maine.”

Mitchell nodded. “Like for the summers?”

“No,” said Anders. “Like for good.”

“What do you mean,” said Mitchell. “You’re leaving us here?”

“I guess I am,” said Anders. “I’m—” It all felt so inappropriate, explaining his plans for a new life. “Figuring it out.”

Mitchell nodded, but his eyes had drifted somewhere else. “Where do you think he goes?” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Ours went to my boat,” he said. “Which is pretty good.” He smiled, almost proud. “He would hide out in my boat in the middle of winter with his punk friends. It’s clever, right? You’re invisible.”

Anders looked down at the table. There it was, the subtext of everything.

“Mitchell,” he said. “Sophie. I’m so sorry. He was an exceptional kid. He was—” He couldn’t think of what else to say. There were no words for these moments, only platitudes, only the interiors of greeting cards. This was why people cooked, he thought. This was why they brought casseroles. He remembered then about the graphic novel, the animal in space. It was still in his condo somewhere, those beautiful stark drawings. He would wrap it up and send it to them. He would summarize the ending as Charlie had explained it to him, that scientist floating out there, hearing the heartbeat of his own vessel in orbit and feeling, finally, released from his guilt.