The Monsters of Templeton (33 page)

And then I thought about just giving up. Letting the Lump grow bigger and bigger until my belly imposed itself on the world. Letting Ezekiel Felcher woo me over and awakening one day in a small colonial house in the cheaper section of Templeton with three babies and a de facto husband who was an excellent barbecuer, who invited our friends over for beery parties every other week, who convinced me to join the bowling team. I would open up a non-baseball-related store on Main Street, and it would be filled with such beautiful things that our family would do fine in a comfortable middle-class way. When my mother passed, we would move into Averell Cottage, and replace the broken pool with a nicer tiled model. My children would go to good, medium-range colleges--Bates, Skidmore, Boston College--and find jobs with good companies. When I was old and Zeke retired, I would be so harassed that I would begin again to read as voraciously as I had before I returned to Templeton. I would go into my dotage a scholar again, with no hope of making any more of a mark on the world than my three relatively successful children.

Though there was a little bit of comfort in this projection, the very idea made my skin feel as if a horde of ants were slowly chewing their way out of it.

I cut across the Otesaga grounds and down over the neighbors' vast lakefront lawns. My head was down as I reached our yard, with its calf-high grass, and started up the hill, past my mother's exploding vegetable garden. Past the raspberry patch. Past my ancient flaking wooden swing set, thinking about nothing in particular. It was only when I reached my grandmother's perennial beds, now overgrown with Vi's lush sensibility, that I looked up.

And then I stopped short. I saw first the tealights sputtering around the pool-cum-frog pond, the three kickboards filled with guttering candles on the scummy surface like small islands afire. Only after that did I see the table under the linden, a circle of white where the candle's light illuminated the tablecloth. Then three shadows sitting at the table. There was a discordant plucking sound, and I stopped and watched under the old lilac tree, wondering what I had stumbled upon. Reverend Milky turning romantic, a little nighttime nookie? The return of one of Vi's Gaia ceremonies from that time in my youth?

Then I heard Vi's voice clearly among the murmur of voices. The wind rose and flicked the candlelight over the other two faces, and I saw Peter Lieder strumming a violin with his thumb, and Ezekiel Felcher staring straight up at the night sky through the linden branches.

"Where the heck is she, Ms. Upton?" said Peter, and he gave an impatient little twang on the strings of his instrument.

"Knowing Willie, she could be anywhere," said my mother. "She's a nut."

They laughed a little at this, all of them, together. I grew a little angry, then, and stepping out of the lilacs, I said, "I'm here." They spun around toward me, clearly having thought I would have come in by the plate glass door of the seventies wing, and Peter Lieder leapt up so quickly that his chair tipped over backward. Vi stood, and the candlelight made her fallen face look somehow tight in the shadows, lovely. Felcher came over to me as Peter began to play his violin and he took me by the hand and led me to the table. It was laden with cheeses and salads, breads and wine, and I sat with my back to the house, looking out at the tarry sweep of the lake, and Felcher pulled from beneath his chair a great bouquet of my mother's lavender. I sat, struck dumb, as the violin stopped, and in the new silence, the frogs twirped and the Hawaiian music back at the country club floated gently across the water.

"Now someone tell me what's going on," I said.

Felcher leaned forward and said, "We felt bad for the other night, Willie, 'cause you've been having a hard time and somehow we just made it harder. We just felt bad for you, me and Pete. So when I called today to try to say sorry again and your mother picked up, I had a little chat with her and she suggested we do something like this for you. Pete here and your mom made a nice dinner and Pete's going to play some music after we eat, and we're going to all just have a nice, quiet night, and maybe, if we have enough wine, do a little swimming in the lake."

"This is so romantic," said Vi, her voice already rich with wine.

"This is so not romantic," Felcher said. "We're just being friendly."

"I'm speechless," I said.

"That's what we were gunning for," said Peter warmly.

"No," I said. "You did this out of pity for me? Out of pity, for God's sakes?"

"Uh-oh," said Vi. "You've touched her pride. Dangerous thing to do."

"Vivienne," I said. "Shut up."

There was a long silence then, and my mother began sawing into the baguette. Then Felcher said, dropping the hick accent, his voice tight with anger, "You know what? We just wanted to do something nice for you, Willie, but if you're going to be like that, fuck it. I mean, obviously you're having a hard time. You come back to Templeton all skinny and exhausted-looking, with this trucked-up story about finishing your PhD, when you're an archaeologist, for Christ's sakes. You don't come to Templeton to spend every single day in the Historical Library when your PhD is in archaeology. It just doesn't add up. And I haven't seen you in the however many years we graduated from high school, and all you got is abuse for me. 'I don't want to be seen leaving the Bold with you, Ezekiel.' 'I'm surprised you can string together a coherent sentence, Ezekiel.' 'You're not good enough for me, Ezekiel.' Well, fuck you, Willie Upton. I am too."

He stood then but sat back down, heavily in his chair. And there was another long silence, and Vi began pouring wine into the glasses, and Felcher screwed up his mouth like a little boy and I perversely wanted to reach over and touch his twisted pretty lips, but before I did, Peter gave a sigh and said, "We just did this because we like you, Willie, and because you're not happy, and we want you to be happy."

Somehow, this chipped away at the rest of the ice. In the dim light, Vi's face gleamed, pleased. Everyone save me began eating. I felt smaller and smaller as my mother complimented Peter on his foie gras blinis with fig compote, and Peter complimented her back on the crab-stuffed artichokes and Felcher talked about the superiority of Chilean zinfandels in comparison to their cabernets, and found tobacco and black currant in the one we were drinking and Peter said that one of the frogs in the chirruping pool had a devastatingly pitch-perfect A-flat.

And then Clarissa's favorite pun rose up: Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I'll show you a flat miner, and, with the mere thought of Clarissa, I couldn't bear myself anymore. I said, in a very small voice, "I'm sorry."

"What's that, Queenie?" said Felcher. "Couldn't hear you."

"I'm sorry," I said. "I have a very bad temper. Thank you for tonight. I'm a jerk."

"Good," said Felcher, smiling at me now, and I saw him as a whole for the first time since the Bold, and saw that he looked good. He was thinner already and well shaven, and in a nice button-down shirt with cuff links. He was letting his hair grow longer, and it hid some of his overlong forehead, especially in the half-dark of the table. He held up his glass, and said, "Then, to Willie."

"To Willie," said Peter, a nervous finger smoothing down his mustache.

"To Willie," said my mother. "May she find what she needs." She sent me a kiss through the candle flame so, for a long moment, the light flickered and wobbled and danced.

ONE BY ONE, the tealights dipped themselves out, and a frog must have been curious about the blazing kickboard because he leapt on it and tipped it and the candles hissed out in the murky water. By the time my mother fetched the little pots of creme brulee from the kitchen and began to torch them at the table, the only light was the blue flame in her hand and the citronella that threw rings on the tablecloth. Our eyes had gotten used to the dark.

While Vi torched away, I at last explained my quest for my father to Peter and Felcher. "And so I've backed all the way to Jacob Franklin Temple, looking at his books to see if he has any mistresses or anything. Hazel Pomeroy says there's nothing else available, so I have to try to pick stuff out of his fiction. It's all pretty far-fetched."

Peter, wine-silly, was giggling the whole way through the explanation because he found Vi's commune alibi to be "sheer genius." Felcher was leaning back in his chair, looking at me inscrutably.

Then, out of the thick shadows under the linden, a figure stepped, briefly illuminated by the moon. And then Felcher's chair had flipped over and he was on the ground, and the figure was standing akimbo over him.

"So this is where you're at," a brassy voice said, and I realized with a terrible sinking feeling that this was Melanie, Felcher's not-really-significant other. Huge, now. Platinum hair down to her tailbone. Fists as huge as hams. "I seen your truck out front. Figures you'd be here," she hissed.

"Mel," said Felcher calmly from the ground. "What's up? How're the boys?"

"Don't you 'what's up' me," she said. "That's bullshit. They're at my mom's."

"Nice to see you, Melanie," said Peter. "Come and have some dessert with us. We made plenty of them."

"Shut up, you," she said, but there was a wobble to her voice now. She had yet to look at me. "All the girls said that this bitch was back and you was with her at the Bold Dragoon, but I said, nah, he always thought she's a total fucking snobby asshole, and he'd never even talk to her. Remember what you called her in high school? Miss-Stick-Up-Her-Ass? Cuntface. You definitely called her Cuntface, like the time she wouldn't dance with you at the homecoming dance. Queenie Cuntface, you said then."

My mother, I noticed, had stopped torching the desserts and the blue flame now licked out in Melanie's direction.

"Mel," I began, but didn't finish. Because what, really, could I have said? I have no attraction to your nonsignificant other? I couldn't, because though I wanted that to be true, it wasn't. That there's no way Felcher and I would ever get together? That was true, but hurtful. That in high school my friends always called you Hoochtastic-5000 and Slutty Slutkins? This was true, and I considered it briefly before my kinder side kicked in, and I said nothing.

"You," she said to me and for the first time turned to glare at me, her little eyes bright in her marshmallow face. "Don't you fucking talk or you'll get a fist in your pretty face."

"Mel," said Felcher, still on the ground. "I haven't seen you in, what, a year? So, how are things? I know you've been getting my child support. Cashing the checks and all that jazz. Found a job yet?"

"It's only been ten months since we seen each other. But whatever. Get up. Let's go." She stepped back so Felcher could stand. He did but righted his chair and sat down again.

"Get up," she shouted at him, and kicked the chair leg. Although he jerked sideways as the chair did, he didn't move.

Then Peter's hand was on my shoulder and he had taken the other and was petting it. "Mel," he said, very softly, "I think you might be mistaken. Willie and I are"--here he gave me a sweet smile--"together. Zeke's just here as a friend."

"Right," said Melanie. "As if." But her voice had become uncertain again, and when I dared to look up, little trails were running down her cheeks, gleaming in the moonlight. Her eyes were darting among all of us, Vi to Felcher, Felcher to me, me to Peter. She pushed a hand across her face and took a step back.

"Melanie," said Felcher. "I am going to have some dessert now with my friends. You've been invited to eat some with us, if you like. If not, I'll call you and we can talk about this later."

"You," said Melanie, gasping a little, "are the father of my children."

"Yes," said Felcher, "I know, honey. And the courts have established that I belong to them and not you."

"You have responsibilities," she said.

"To Joey and Nicky," he said. "Not to you. Mel, please don't make me get another restraining order."

At this, Melanie turned around, and her large back seemed to quake. She turned back, staring especially hard at me, and when she walked away, I felt withered and tired, even more than I had been before dinner. My mother continued torching. Peter gave me a kiss on the cheek and his thin mustache tickled. And, as our spoons crunched through the burnt candy on the custard, Felcher said, "I'm so sorry about that."

"Ah," said Vi, and her voice also sounded shaky. "It's life. Children can make you go a little nuts." She patted Felcher's shoulder and said, "I know how it feels to be that poor girl. Felt it myself. But I also know you can't force someone to love you. She'll learn, with time."

We ate the rest of our desserts in a silence punctured by the pool-singing frogs. I looked up at Felcher from time to time, and when the dark look on his face softened and lightened when he caught my eye, something turned over in me, and I knew I couldn't call him Felcher anymore.

"Ezekiel," I said.

"Yes?" he said, smiling.

"Nothing," I said, and laughed a little. But then I thought of Primus, when we hiked together in the bright night over the tundra, his warm hand holding my own, and felt a great flip of sadness that we would never be there together again, marveling at the millions of subtle colors in the lichen. When I looked up, Felcher was still smiling at me, expectant. But I had stopped laughing, and looked away.

IT WAS MIDNIGHT when the boys left and Vi and I washed and dried the dishes, Peter's violin still wailing in our heads. After she rinsed the last bowl and handed it to me, Vi yawned.