Tiny Little Thing (25 page)

Tiny,
he said again, more loudly, but the house remained silent.

He had no choice.

He flung away the covers and launched his feet to the floor. The boards were cold and hard against his skin. At the window, the curtains were still open, the bottom sash still raised. The ocean breeze had turned positively chilly, more suited to the beginning of April than the third week of May. In another week, the houses along the shore would be filling up, the businesses would open their shuttered fronts. The beach outside his house and his cousins’ houses would, by the end of June, have witnessed football games and swimming races, sailing competitions and fishing matches. Always competition. They were always winners and losers in his family.

At this moment, though, while a pink sun struggled to rise above the heavy gray horizon, the beach contained only a single tiny figure, wrapped in a blanket, smoking a cigarette, facing the ocean. The breeze moved her tousled dark hair. She stood at the edge of the ragged wet lines marking the reach of the surf, so that when the white foam washed toward her, it sometimes found her toes and sometimes not quite.

I am in love with you,
he thought, and then, an instant later, the more permanent, the more certain
I love you.

For an instant, he contemplated crouching down and shouting the words from the open wedge of the window. But of course you didn’t spoil the moment like that. You didn’t wreck her serenity with a brash display. Anyway, she probably couldn’t even understand him, while the surf crashed in her ears.

So he stood a moment or two longer, leaning against the window frame, marveling at her. Marveling that he’d found her, that she wanted him, too. In the growing pink light, he saw the dissolution of his own doubts, the emergence of a truth, whole and clean. He saw, in cinematic detail, the infinity laid out before them: two weeks of honeymoon bliss, crossing the country in his car with the top down, staying in motels and campsites and eating at roadside diners and coffee shops, making love to rattle the heavens, to make the angels weep. A year of hell, writing back and forth, exchanging photographs, while a ball of virtuous longing took up residence in the pit of his stomach. Then homecoming, reunion, a house in San Diego near the ocean. Small but pretty. Her ballet studio, his photography. Kids, friends, family. Christmas Eves. A couple weeks back east every summer, maybe, or as long as they both could stand.

Mornings like this, poised in the dawn, in which he would make her coffee and bring it down to the beach, where she’d be waiting for him, and they would stand there wrapped in a shared blanket, drinking coffee, not saying anything. Waiting for the wondrous day.

He turned from the window, found his undershirt and trousers, and headed downstairs to tell her.

I
drive with the top up, because that’s what you do when you’re sneaking out of the family compound under the suspicious eyes of your in-laws.

I can’t find my keys,
I told Caspian. That was true, if a little misleading. Actually, the keys to my Cadillac have gone missing from the drawer in the pantry where I always place them after a drive,
always,
and I suspect I’d be wasting my time if I tried to look for them.

Half an hour along the highway, I’m glad the top is up, because the usual afternoon thunderclouds arrive early, all black and towering, and five miles out of Plymouth the first fat drops fall
kersplat
on the windshield, scattering the dust. Après them, the deluge.

There’s nothing like the clamor of a downpour on the raised canvas top of a convertible. You feel as if your head is stuck inside a dwarves’ mountain mine, an incessant rolling clatter, like metal on stone. You think it’s the end of the world, possibly. How could the sky release that much water and survive? But eventually the decibels climb back down, the horizon swallows the clouds. The sun comes out, mollified, just as you pull the car up to the curb outside your husband’s campaign office on Boylston Street.

“Mrs. Hardcastle!” Josephine is surprised to see me. So surprised, in fact, that her confident young face actually fills with color. “We thought you were at the Cape.”

“I’m sure you did.” In ten precise tugs, one for each finger, I take off one white cotton summer driving glove and then the other. My pocketbook is hooked over my elbow. “I was looking for my husband.”

“Frank— Mr. Hardcastle’s giving a speech in Cambridge this afternoon.”

“Will he be back here before returning to his hotel?”

She looks down at her desk and shuffles through a paper or two. “I’m not sure. Scott’s with him; he has the schedule.”

“Really? He didn’t ask you to accompany him?”

A pair of young women at the back of the office raise their heads to stare at us. Josephine’s cheeks take on a little more raspberry. “He asked me to stay in the office this time. It’s not a big speech.”

“I see. May I take a look at Scott’s desk? Perhaps he’s left a copy of the schedule there.”

“Right over there by the window, Mrs. Hardcastle.”

Frank’s campaign headquarters are carefully plain, a bureau of the people. The walls are decorated with campaign memorabilia and cheap American flag bunting. There are no private offices, except for a large meeting room at the back, and the battered brown furniture is all secondhand. A massive Xerox machine fills a space in the corner, next to the storeroom. Scott’s desk sits in the opposite corner, overlooking the Boston Public Library, immaculately organized. There is a leather blotter, a silver cup for pens and pencils, a plastic telephone in avocado green, a ceramic ashtray, empty metal in and out trays. A cubby at the end contains a few stacks of paper, a notepad, a manila folder labeled
PRESS
RELEASES
, another labeled
DAILY
BRIEFINGS
, and another labeled
SCHEDULES
. I open that one.
WEDNESDAY
,
JULY
25
TH
, 1966
,
announces the paper on the top of the stack.

MORNING.

9:00 coffee at American Legion (see notes)

10:45 coffee at Carpenters Local 111 (see notes)

AFTERNOON

2:15 Lunch at the Union Oyster House with Barry Gorelock

3:00 Speech at Austin Hall, Harvard Law School (arrival 2:30, see notes)

EVENING

6:00 Reception and dinner, the Harvard Club (see notes, guest list attached)

I check the clock on the wall next to the storeroom door. A quarter past three. Should I make the drive out to Cambridge? Do I have time? Frank usually sticks around after a speech, if he hasn’t got anything pressing afterward, talking in his shirtsleeves, listening. Frank’s a good listener, actually, when he wants to be. When he’s campaigning for your affection. He looks you right in the eye, like there’s nothing more fascinating or moving in the world than your little problems. It’s almost irresistible.

My gaze falls back to Scott’s desk, as if to find an answer to my dilemma. A couple of cigarette butts lie in the ashtray, interrupting the general cleanliness. Next to them is a stamp roll on a pewter dispenser, half-finished. A few stamps drag on the wooden surface of the desk, as if the coil was tugged too hard the last time it was used.

I reach out and touch the foremost stamp with one finger.

George Washington.

•   •   •

A
s a child, I hated trouble like a cat hates fleas. My sisters were always happy to take advantage of this particular weakness. When I got up in the middle of the night for a glass of milk and caught Vivian just sneaking in, reeking of cigarettes, she’d say:
I’ll tell Mums you were the one who broke her perfume bottle,
or
I’ll tell old Roby you forged Mums’s John Hancock to see that ballet with the senior class
(Mrs. Robillard was our headmistress at Nightingale-Bamford), and that was that.

But here’s the curious thing: the trouble in question didn’t have to be
my
trouble. Do you remember that time I walked in on Mums in the library with her Russian prince? Mums raised her beautiful tousled head from the sofa cushion and said,
For God’s sake, Tiny, the door was closed, you silly child, you should have knocked,
and the shame rained down on my thin shoulders.
My
fault, that I had disturbed her;
my
fault, that I had discovered her fault. If I hadn’t opened that door, everything would be fine. The tree falling in the woods, with no one to hear it. And I am always careful, now, to knock on a closed door. I am always afraid of what I might find on the other side. Whose shame might be transferred to my shoulders.

So on this lengthening July afternoon, as I race down the streets of the Back Bay in Caspian’s familiar Ford, my hands clench the steering wheel and my stomach lurches in fear. If it weren’t for the anger, I’d stop right here. I’d pull to the curb and put my face in my hands and cry and cry, shaking in every sinew, since no one is here to watch me.

Josephine has informed me that Scott lives in an apartment on Back Street, not that far from where I lived in the years before I married Frank. Providential, really. It means I don’t have to think as I flash past the familiar blocks, the friendly trees. I don’t need to count the streets, to read the signs. The Ford stops and starts and turns almost by itself, and when I find a car-sized gap on the curb around the corner, between a Chevrolet and a dirty orange ten-year-old Oldsmobile, I slide perfectly into place on the first pass.

The super doesn’t appreciate my summons. He pushes open the outer door and takes me in, smart little hat to rounded leather toe, and scratches his white cotton belly. “What’s the matter, lady? I work the goddamned night shift. I don’t need this.”

“I’m from Mr. Maynard’s office. His place of employment. It seems he’s left an important document inside his apartment this morning.”

“Why can’t he come here himself and get it? The dumb cluck.”

“Because he’s out in Cambridge on business at the moment.” My palms are damp inside my gloves; my heart is beating so hard and so fast, it’s going to splinter my ribs.
Trouble.
I’m going to get in trouble for this.

“Aw, Jesus. I’m not supposed to let you in, lady.”

“Really, sir. Do I look like some sort of criminal to you?”

The super glances at the pocketbook on my elbow, at the white gloves on my slender hands. “No, I guess not.”

“Please, then.” I melt the frigid muscles of my face into a smile. “I’d be most grateful. We really do need that paper.”

He slumps his hairy shoulders in defeat. “All right, all right. Hold on, will you?”

A hunch, that’s all it is. A hunch, based on the flimsy presence of a roll of George Washington stamps on Scott Maynard’s desk, on the ready supply of plain manila envelopes in the Vote Frank campaign office, on the frequent access of Frank’s campaign staff to our house on Newbury Street, where the precious roll of Caspian’s film might or might not have ended up. He’s young and broke—the shabbiness of this brownstone suggests
that
, at least—and when you’re young and broke, you’d maybe think blackmailing the boss’s wife is a harmlessly profitable trick, wouldn’t you? She’s not going to tell her husband, and you’re certainly not going to let those photographs out in the wide world to destroy the candidate’s career. The rich little bitch can afford a few grand, can’t she? All those pretty jewels on her neck. Young Mr. Maynard makes a little dough to keep body and soul together, and no one gets hurt, right?

The super’s keys jingle on his hips as I follow him up the dirty steps, flight after flight. The stairwell smells of garbage and damp carpet, and the higher we climb, the warmer the air grows. By the time we reach the top floor, a rotting inferno encloses us. Not that the super seems to care. He fumbles for his keys while the sweat crawls down his neck and into the thatch of fur at the top of his back. A surge of nausea crosses my belly. I hold my hand to my mouth and breathe in the hyacinth scent of my gloves.

“The fuck,” mutters the super, and then: “Bingo.” He shakes the key free of its neighbors and sticks it in the lock. “Here you go, lady. Don’t be too long, all right? I gotta sleep.”

“I won’t disturb you, I promise. Thanks ever so much.”

The first thing I do in Scott Maynard’s apartment is open the nearest window. The air outside has freshened after the thunderstorm, and in comparison to the fetid heat at the top of the stairwell, the back alley is a spring garden. I breathe a few gusts deep into my lungs, and when the nausea recedes, I turn to lock the door and survey my surroundings.

Well, young Mr. Maynard is no Dorothy Draper, but his apartment—like his desk in the campaign office—is small and neat, containing only a scrap of a kitchenette and a square table for eating, a chest of drawers, a sofa, a bed, a few lamps. I check the chest of drawers first, but it’s all on the up and up, just tidy stacks of underwear in the top drawers and folded pajamas and shirts further down. In the tiny bathroom, there’s no room for more than a comb, a toothbrush, and a jar of Brylcreem.

I have just opened a promising cardboard box in the single closet when a voice drifts through the wall, and a familiar jingle of keys sends me scooping up my pocketbook and diving into the closet atop the shoes.

There is no knob on the inside of the closet door. I pull the barrier toward me, as close as I can, but a fine crack of light still streaks across my yellow skirt. I gather up my knees and bury my burning face between them. The shoes dig into my bottom, my pulse pounds at my temples. The edges of Scott Maynard’s three or four suits part around my hat.

He’s probably stopped here to change into one of those suits, hasn’t he? Maybe a fresh shirt, too, before tonight’s reception and dinner at the Harvard Club. In another moment, he’ll open the closet door and reach for the hangers on the rod, and his gaze will drop and find the white tip of my shoe, the length of my leg in its nude stocking.

I wait for the sound of the faucet, or the refrigerator door as he fetches a cool drink with which to refresh himself. I hope he doesn’t notice the open window behind the sofa. Men don’t notice details like that, do they?

But no such domestic noises reach my ears. Instead, I hear voices.

Frank’s voice.

•   •   •

Y
ou know those dreams, where some murderer comes into your room with a knife in his hands, and you want to scream and run away, but your limbs are frozen and your throat is frozen and you just stand there, paralyzed, watching your own murderer approach, hating your own body for betraying you like this, for failing to protect you from this elemental harm? I mean, really. Millions of years of evolution, and you can’t even run away from your own murderer?

I think I’m having one of those dreams.

“We only have an hour,” says Frank, muffled, imprecise, but still undeniably Frank through the wooden door of Scott Maynard’s closet. Through the slim crack of daylight.

Scott says something back, something I can’t quite hear because his body is perhaps turned away, or his voice is perhaps not as well-known to me as that of my husband.

Then the wet, familiar pause of a kiss.

“Oh, God,” Frank groans.

I want to close my ears at the despair in Frank’s voice, Frank’s voice as I have never heard it before, raw and anguished and alive, alive,
alive.

But I can’t close my ears. I cover them with my hands, but it’s no use. I hear the rustle of clothing, the creak of sofa springs. Someone cries out; I think it’s Scott. I take in a mouthful of linen skirt and crush it between my jaws. “Jesus,” Frank sobs softly, “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Oh, God. Oh, God.” Over and over he invokes his Savior. Scott’s voice joins him, suppressed, because you don’t want the neighbors to hear, do you? You don’t want the police barging into the middle of all this.

And then it’s over, a final cry from one, a groan from the other, a wooden rattle and a thump, collapse. I think they must be on the floor.

My teeth bite into my skirt. I can’t cry, I can’t sob. They’ll hear me if I do.

“Jesus,” Frank gasps. “Oh, Jesus.”

Scott says something back.

“I know.” Frank is crying. “I know. God help me.”

The tears fall silently down my cheeks. Not for me—I’m beyond the reach of pain, I’ve spun bang out of this universe and come to rest in some nether dimension of excruciating numbness—but for Frank. Frank, on whose immaculate surface I have skated for eight years, unable to find the hairline crack that would lead me to the world underneath. No wonder.

I can hear them panting together on the other side of the door. A desperate syncopation that slows, breath by breath, into harmony.

“You okay?” Frank asks tenderly.

Scott murmurs something.

Frank says, “God. I can’t do this anymore. It’s killing me.”