The Monsters of Templeton (34 page)

"That was nice. I can't remember when I had a night as nice as that," she said.

"You mean other than the fisticuffs," I said.

"Can't blame the poor girl," said Vi and took the dry bowl from my hands and stacked it in the cupboard. "It's clear Zeke's in deep smit. Hopelessly smitten. Smited, in fact."

"Hm. He's not really my type, Vi."

"True, but a little physical something with someone like Zeke could help you get over that Primus asshole. And who knows. He's a nice guy, seems smart. He's still drop-dead gorgeous. Maybe he'd grow on you."

"Ezekiel Felcher is not gorgeous, Vi. He stopped being gorgeous in 1995."

"Your problem, Sunshine," she said, thumping the next bowl down, "is that you can't see straight through your snobby little worldview. Nobody in Templeton would ever be good enough for you. If they're in Templeton, it means they're second rate in your little head."

"That is so not true," I said.

"It is," she said, "so true. But I raised you to believe that. It's my fault. I pushed you and pushed you. Made you so ambitious you're ashamed of where you're from. No wonder you snapped. But I have no worries, Willie. You'll rebound. Go back, live your life in San Francisco and someday come back to Templeton."

I wanted to tell her that if I left there was little chance of me ever coming back to Templeton to live. But I stopped; I couldn't break her heart. I sighed and said, "Maybe. If I ever resolve any of this father shit."

"How much time do you have?" she asked.

"Six days," I said. "Then I have to go relieve Sully. He's not sleeping anymore. Clarissa says he's a zombie. She says it's not fair--he's stealing her role as the family undead." Vi blinked at me, startled.

I said, "It was funnier when she said it."

"Six days. Well. You'll make it," Vi said, and flipped off the kitchen lights. She moved in the dark to the back stairwell, and I heard her heavy step as she crossed the house and closed the door of her room.

FOR A LONG while, I stared out into the darkness at the nickel-plated lake, the heap of hills. I imagined that huge monster still alive, in the deep, swimming gently up through the water, and breaching for a breath, resting on the surface before diving deep again. I was about to head up to my little-girl room when the telephone rang. I thought of Clarissa taken unexpectedly ill, ugly visions of catheters and ambulances dancing through my head. I picked the phone up before the second ring and said "Hello" so fast it came out as a whisper.

"Willie, girl," a voice said, smooth and mellow, in my ear. "It's bloody great to hear your voice."

It was Primus Dwyer.

Chapter
22

Primus Dwyer: Or, The Great Buffoon

I GASPED AND sat on the cold hardwood floor. In the darkness, the VCR light at the end of the room blinked a syncopated rhythm.

"Willie?" said Primus. "You quite all right?"

"Yes," I whispered. "No. It's been a month and you haven't called."

"You dear, silly girl," he said. "I can't very well pick and choose when I'm going to call, you know. Mobiles don't work on the tundra, dear."

"Well," I said. "I knew that."

There was a long silence, and I could hear the terns and gulls in the background shrieking. There was the familiar roar of a truck going by; voices; Primus was in an inhabited place, a city, perhaps. Then I heard the noise of waves, and from this I surmised that he must have found a pay phone somewhere outside, near the ocean.

"Where are you?" I said, barely hearing my voice over the thrumming of my heart.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Well, I'm at supper. Rather, I was. They think I'm using the loo right now. Jan's been watching me nonstop since we left the site, you know, save for supper tonight, and so I took the opportunity to phone you. We're all a bit soused, you see. Celebrating. We finished the article, Willie, we did," he said. "We've submitted the paper to Nature today, and it will be reviewed before the next issue, and, with luck, appear in short order. Hooray! You're an author, of course. I had to fight, but I did. Fight. For you."

"Oh. Hooray," I said.

"Listen, darling. I can't be much longer, or else they will miss me. I just wanted to call to ensure you weren't furious with me still. You can't be. You're too brilliant a student, and a lovely girl, you know, just lovely. I'm very much looking forward to seeing you back at school again, eh? We can maybe pick up where we left off?" His voice had dropped, become honeyed the way it did in Alaska before he laid a hand on my thigh or the small of my back. On the cold hard floor of Averell Cottage that night, I longed for the weight of that hand, the warmth of it on my skin.

"Wait," I said, beginning to breathe a little jaggedly. "I think my head's exploding."

He gave his little bark of a laugh and said, "Why, darling?"

I said, "I thought I was going to be kicked out of school. For trying to kill, you know. Your wife."

He gave his low chuckle and said, "Oh, yes, that. No, no. She's rather jealous, that's true, but we have calmed her and we certainly don't have to tell her about your being around. Besides, you only have one chapter left to write for your dissertation, and then you may defend it before December, early, of course, and then you're off to a brilliant career. With this publication, you could find a position, well, anywhere. Rather, I could find a position for you. I will, too. I heard there may be a position at Princeton. I shall make some enquiries."

"Princeton?" I said. "But that's so far from California." I took a breath. "From you."

"Oh, darling," he said, and was quiet for some time. I was content, for the moment, to hear his breathing in my ear; I pictured his summer-ruddy cheek dimpling prettily. But when he spoke again, he spoke more slowly and his tenor had turned to bass. "Darling, I am so very sorry, you know. I didn't realize. I thought you were, well, more hard-boiled than that. The stories they told of you, well. Not that you were promiscuous, but, you know. You never find yourself attached. To any one man. You're unattached."

"I'm not," I said. "Unattached. I get very attached. Who told you that?"

"Your fellow student, John, you know. After you left. The stories I've heard of your debauchery. What a naughty girl you are!"

"I'm not naughty. I'm not a naughty girl at all," I said. "I just fall easily."

There was more silence, and then his voice came back, a little more sternly. "Oh, Willie. Had I realized. Well, I wouldn't have even. I just didn't realize you would have formed an attachment. Willie, I am so sorry, but we can't, you know. Be together. Well, we can until you're finished with your dissertation, but that's pushing it, and then we will meet at conferences every few months. But you can't be around me, or else my wife would grow entirely suspicious, and that cannot happen."

"Oh. Right," I said.

"I really do like you, of course, quite a bit."

"Sure. Of course," I said.

"You're gorgeous, and, if I do say so"--here his voice lowered, became intimate--"quite a good fuck. And brilliant, of course. I have no worries for your future. None whatsoever. You can do whatever you wish to do."

"Hm," I said. "Thanks."

"A darling girl, darling. You know it well. Listen, I have to go back before they think I've flushed myself down the toilet and come investigate. Ha-ha! Ta. Take care of yourself."

"Wait," I said, and my voice rose in the darkness and seemed to ring against the old beams of Averell Cottage. "I have something to tell you."

And, like that, I found I had shoved the lever and this, right now, was the split second before the floor fell away and left me dangling by the neck.

"Sure, darling. Anything," he said, but I could feel his anxiety growing with every second, I could feel how much he longed to be back in the restaurant beside his wife. I imagined him there, in the sunny Alaskan night, the gulls circling his head, the streets bare and trash-blown, kicking the ground with the heels of his hiking boots.

"Dr. Dwyer," I said, slowly. "I am pregnant."

There was a very long pause, and then he said, "Oh, my. So you're not coming back to Stanford, then, eh? Is that it? Is that what you're telling me, that you're going to keep it, Willie?"

"I don't know," I said. "It all depends on you."

"Me?" he said. There was a longer pause, and then I heard the smile in his voice. "You're not saying," he said, "that I'm the father?"

"Yes, I am saying exactly that," I said.

"No, no. I cannot be."

"There is no one else. It's impossible. Nobody else."

"But you're entirely sure?"

"I've only slept with you since December," I said. "Yes, I'm fucking sure. There's no one else."

"Oh, Willie," said Primus Dwyer heaving out a sigh. "But, you see, it cannot be me. I had a vasectomy many, many years ago, my poor darling. My wife, she never wanted children. I have a sperm count of zero, darling. It cannot be me. It must be someone else."

"There is no one else," I said, in a whisper.

"There must be," he said.

"No," I said.

"I'm sure if you thought of it, you'd come up with someone. At a party or something, you know. Might have slipped your mind. Now, Willie, I really must go. I shall try to call again. In the meantime, I expect to see you in my office on the first day of school. Will you be fine, darling? Oh, I am sure you will. You're a tough cookie, as they say. A biscotti! Ha. All right, then. Good-bye, darling."

"Slipped my mind?" I said, but there was already the click, and he was gone. I took a deep breath. "Slipped my mind?" I said again into the long silence, into the nothing, into the great, terrible, dark nothing buzzing in my ear.

FOR A LONG time, I sat there, tempted to call Clarissa. But every time I lifted the phone off the hook, I had an image of her little body, in bed, exhausted. I couldn't do it. I climbed the dark stairs and went to my room.

And even though I felt emptied, even though I wanted to weep into my pillow until it was soaked through and gnash my teeth, even though the old ghost was there, in a sweet and tender lilac, I crawled into bed, and opened a book I had brought with me and began to read Jacob's purplish prose. The writing seemed like the books that held it; crumbly and antique and bearing the stink of centuries. Still, it was compelling. His voice was smooth and kind, and once in a while an observation would ring so true it vibrated like flicked crystal.

That night, Jacob Franklin Temple sang me a lullabye in his queer and convoluted syntax. The ghost ringed around me tighter, squeezing the air in me closer, throbbing me calm. Thus comforted, thus spun back centuries before my wounded heart, I fell asleep sometime before dawn.

THE DINING ROOM was lit like a lantern by the midmorning light when I heard the voices, the urgency in them. I awoke with a start and was out of my bed before I knew what I was doing, and had already started down the stairs when I heard my mother and Reverend Milky arguing. I stopped at the edge of the ancient Persian rug in the dining room to eavesdrop. My mother's coffee cake was sending out warm feelers into the air, but there was no happiness in the house, not then. When my mother's voice rose, I moved crab-wise toward the corner cabinet.

As I listened, I picked up the little horse toy from the dining table and held it absently in my hands. My gut had started to cramp again, and I studied the horse to take my mind off the jabs of pain.

My mother's voice was touched with acid as she said, "John, I notice you don't have any children. So, really, you don't know what you're talking about. So, really, we should change the subject, shouldn't we."

"Oh, Vivienne," said Reverend Milky. "Nothing is gained by running away from this subject. It is dire that we try to save your daught..."

"...right," said my mother, "but a whole lot is gained by running away from other subjects, like the one I keep bringing up with you but you don't want to hear. Like, for example, why you can't seem to muster up the slightest interest in..."

"...Vivienne," came Milky's voice, and the oleaginous outline to his voice was gone now. "Don't begin this again. I am a man of the Word, and my own word, and I cannot until we're married. I've offered a million times. If you'd only agree to..."

"...as you know, John, I don't believe in..."

"...I understand, though I have to say it's a real slap in the face. I don't understand what's so terribly wrong with me that you don't want to marr..."

"...and I don't see what the problem is, John--it's just a little skin and a few fluids, and..."

"...well, I don't see how, then, we're going to solve this little impasse, Vivienne. Sex before marriage is a sin, and as a Christian, you should know this. I love you, but not enough to damn my everlasting soul. Besides, how would I be able to lead my flock if I were not to adhere to the rules I preach?"

My mother sucked in her breath sharply, and let it out with a hiss. "Then I," said Vi, "don't see why we are in a relationship at all, John."

There was a very long silence, and the beam of light dug into the cabinet, catching a bowl of ruby glass and igniting it so it seemed to explode. The silence lasted until the beam moved into an indigo vase and blasted petals of color onto the far wall.