Vandal Love (11 page)

No.

Did … did your parents really freeze to death?

No, he said and glanced off. Then they just stood, not quite looking at each other.

How long have you been … with the reverend? she asked.

A year or so, he told her and moved his lips as if to say more.

Isn’t it sort of dishonest to pretend you’re a mute French orphan giant or whatever, just to make money?

I am a giant. Besides, it’s for a good cause.

She tried to think of something else to say, but the way he faced off conveyed no interest. She was afraid he was going to leave. Are you hungry? she asked. Regardless, she herself was, insomnia and adrenaline being powerful aperitives.

Barthélemy, she said.

Bart, he corrected. You can call me Bart. Yeah, I’m hungry. I mean, I guess I’d eat something if you did.

Will you wait here? I’m going into the house. I’ll be back in a few minutes. We can eat in the stables.

Inside she felt giddy, as if she might any second burst into laughter, though she was terrified. From the pantry she took two family-size bags of corn chips, three jars of salsa and three cans of meat ravioli. From the fridge, half a block of smoked Italian cheese and a crispy baguette spread with congealed garlic butter. As quietly as possible,
she put it all in a grocery bag. She added a pan of tiramisu, Parmesan and a two-litre bottle of root beer. On the way out she snatched a bag of chocolate-covered coffee beans.

Crossing the yard she began to feel ridiculous with so much, but half an hour later she wondered if she should return to the kitchen, only a little root beer remaining. The tack room had a hot plate, and she’d heated the ravioli. She was surprised at how easily they fell into conversation as they began to eat.

Where are you from? she asked.

Maine. Originally from Maine.

She waited for a question from him, but when none was forthcoming, she told him that she’d studied Maine’s history for part of her graduate research.

Do you read a lot? he asked.

She smiled. Any excuse is good.

What are your favourite books?

Nervously she named a few, trying to think of something that wasn’t a classic.

Oh, he said. I used to like Thomas Wolfe and Kerouac. I’ve only had the Bible for a while now.

Watching him eat, swiftly, unconsciously, his gaze abstracted, she thought of Jude, but unlike Jude he talked almost dreamily. In the light of the single lamp, she studied his heavy features. He seemed too docile for his size. His hair was roughly cut, and she wanted to touch the sharp, clumsy angles made by the scissors and feel them against her hand.

He didn’t quite tell what he’d done in his life so
much as enumerate his journeys and the books he’d read. It seemed he’d been everywhere, and getting lost in the names of places he repeated himself, as if he’d travelled the same routes many times. He rambled, and she considered that, having to pretend he was mute, he’d stored up years of conversation.

In turn she told him about her studies, the history she’d carefully reconstructed. It always surprised her how easily she described events that hadn’t touched on her life though had no doubt affected the arrival of Bart’s family in the U.S., which she told him. She said that the French population of Québec would be double what it was if it weren’t for the emigration. She didn’t say that she’d never been there.

In the quiet of the stables, horses shifted in the stalls or nickered softly. She’d paused a long time, not able to mention Jude by name, afraid that somehow all this would lead back to having to talk about Levon.

Bart cleared his throat. In a subdued voice he said that he also liked to read about history. He told her that his mother had given him books about the Roman Empire and ancient Egypt when he was a boy, and how he’d believed those places still existed far away.

Are you close to your mother? Isa asked.

He didn’t speak at first. Sometimes, he said, I think I read just to know what a person can become. I probably don’t really understand what I’m reading. I just think about what it means to me. It’s like I’ll have to read it all over again later, when I know more.

She wasn’t sure what to say. They sat against the wall.
The digression had surprised her. She looked over. He held his clenched fists in his lap.

Yes, I’ve thought that before, she told him, and she considered how the simple perceptions from the mouths of strong men sound like poetry.

Sometime in the night Bart said he needed to go before his absence was noticed, and she invited him to come again the next evening.

He looked at her and hesitated. Okay, he said, but not so late.

That’s fine. My … my father doesn’t bother me when I’m in the stables. I’ll meet you here. I’ll bring better food tomorrow. But don’t let my father see you. He’s particular. Vaguely, she explained something about intolerance.

The stables were set back in the trees, the tack-room window facing the mountains, and Isa felt confident that Levon wouldn’t notice anything. They’d lived too long oblivious to each other, and ever since the stables had been built, there’d been an unspoken agreement that only she went there. The tack room had a kitchenette and a couch with a fold-out bed. It had been her refuge, its scents and familiar silence recalling the life she’d abandoned with Jude.

Isa’s lie about her father weighed on her all through the dawn and into the next day. She managed to sleep a little in the afternoon, and later she drove an hour to the built-up suburbs closer to D.C. She stopped at several restaurants and bought party-size trays of take-out
sushi, spicy Thai soups in styrofoam tubs and bags of spring rolls as well as burritos and chicken enchiladas and chili. At a bakery she chose a lemon meringue pie, a sponge cake and a half-dozen chocolate eclairs, after which she stopped at the grocery store for soda and milk. She took it all to the tack room in a feed bag.

The rest of the afternoon she sat in her office and tried to read, but she could hardly focus. What did she want from Bart? And why was he with Diamondstone? Oddly—amazingly —he hadn’t mentioned religion.

A little before eight, she went to the back of the stables and sat under the cover of trees. When he arrived, it was from the stream, on the same forest path Levon used. He appeared nervous and wiped his sweaty palms on his pant legs. Only as they ate did he fall into the mechanisms of conversation.

I can’t believe all this food, he told her.

The spiritual life must not be so … epicurean, she said.

He didn’t comment on this, but the food vanished quickly, stacks of greasy tins and styrofoam containers on the floor, fingerstreaks on icing-smeared cake cardboards. After half an hour of crunching and slurping in a general silence of suppressed belches, they both sat back and rolled their eyes and moved about to get a purchase on their innards. Bart held a two-litre of pop. He twisted the cap and let the air hiss out. He tightened it, swished it a little, let out the fizz. He took a drink.

How did you meet Diamondstone? she asked.

I was living in Louisiana, he said and swallowed. I had a guitar and amplifier and I sold them so Diamondstone could have his van repaired.

He sounded proud, she thought, like a child, but he furrowed his brow. I was thinking about everything you said about your family and my family. It’s true, you know. My mother’s name was Amy Beaulieu. It’s like you said—a lot of people in Maine have French last names.

Does your family still speak French?

Some of them. My grandparents do.

Isa wanted to say something about Jude. She wished she hadn’t lied.

Kerouac was from Maine, Bart added. I read somewhere that he spoke French before he spoke English.

The rain had started up again, its patter filling the space. Isa had the sense that she’d invented Bart. She was seeing him just then, his expressions as he spoke, lines and angles from ruddy flesh. His clothes were worn and stretched, and she could imagine them holding his shape after they’d been washed, the way Jude’s had.

Is everyone in your family as big as you are? she asked.

Some, he said. My father was. My mother was pretty big too. I remember when my growth spurts began. It hurt more than you can imagine. My mother told me that if I took a bath the pain would go away, and maybe because I believed her, it did. It got so I even thought standing in the rain would help. She’d go out with me and we’d just stand there.

Do you miss your family? Travelling like this?

He looked up. My mother’s dead. I never really knew my father. I mean, no, I never knew him.

Isa had the impression that he’d only just considered sharing this and might not have. She thought of everything she’d never told anyone.

I was raised by relatives, he said. I’m still in contact with them.

He seemed to be hovering about his words. He cleared his throat. Mostly, I remember my mother’s tattoos. She’d let me copy them on paper. I remember when I learned I had a soul. I pictured it like a tattoo of blue light under my skin.

Isa wanted to tell him about Jude but instead she spoke of her mother. I don’t know anything about her, she said. My father wouldn’t—won’t discuss her. The only thing that he told me was that she was … something else.

Another race?

No … No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think she was dark French, perhaps.

Bart was watching her. She’d sensed the shift in his interest, this, too, like a memory of Jude, a sort of atmospheric pressure.

When I was a girl, she said, I used to try to understand what a mother was. I would stand at the mirror and I thought that if I looked long enough, her part of the reflection would stand out and I might see her.

Wind carried rain across the roof in a slow pulse.

Why didn’t you know your father? she finally asked.

Bart remained silent a moment longer. My mother left him when I was born. I saw him just once, in the
street when I was with my stepfather. We were Christmas shopping, and a gigantic homeless man started following us. A few days later, for what seemed like no reason, we moved to North Dakota. It took me years to find out that the man had been my father.

Bart cleared his throat and forced a cough. Diamondstone, he said, once told me that only pain seems real because human love can’t last. The only power greater than suffering is God’s love.

Oh, she said … How did your mother die?

She died when I was nine …

He paused for so long that she realized he wasn’t going to add to what he’d already said. He looked about. I should go.

Now?

The rain had lulled. It was as if they were coming back to themselves, their voices returning to these big, tired bodies propped unevenly against the wall.

I take walks, he said, but never this long. The others will notice.

He stood and went to the door. Can I see you tomorrow?

Again? she said with pleasure though she’d meant, Of course, and she said it now. Yes. Of course. I’d like that. I’ll bring more food.

For a while after he’d gone, the stables felt empty. Then, little by little, the usual gravities exerted themselves, the horses and the stalls they occupied beyond the wooden partitions.

She pushed herself up. Her body felt old. Outside she
was surprised that so many lights were on at the house. Levon never stayed up this late. As she was climbing the steps, she saw him in the living room. She stopped. He was seated across from someone else, and though it was obvious, the black, the pale complexion and white hair, it took her a moment to realize. Diamondstone held his hat on his lap. He was looking out at her, smiling as if she was expected.

Isa, Levon called when she opened the front door. Please come in here. I want to introduce you to a gentleman who has been telling me the most fascinating things.

When Bart arrived that evening, Isa expected him to know everything. The previous night Levon and Diamondstone had stayed up talking long after she’d gone to sleep, and all the next day Levon had sought her out to tell her bits of their magnificent discussion—Magnificent, he’d repeated, a truly magnificent connection. A profound meeting of two minds.

He said that Diamondstone had recognized him as a recluse and a seeker of the truth. He explained Diamondstone’s various outlandish interpretations of the man at
the creek. Isa wanted to cry, not because of the absurdity of all this but because of how pathetic their lives were —Levon’s loneliness, his desire to speak to another, to anyone.

And us? she asked, feigning ignorance about Diamondstone. Did he ask about us?

No. Why? He simply wanted to discuss God’s mission on earth and the many ways He sends His messages.

Fantastic, Isa later repeated to herself at the wheel of her car, even while composing the dinner that she wasn’t sure would be consumed—Fantastic, she hissed, this being her replacement for Magnificent. At some point in Bart’s listing of his travels, he’d told her that he’d loved everything about Louisiana, especially the cuisine, and so she drove forty minutes to find a Cajun restaurant, where she ordered a survey of the menu: jambalaya, dirty rice, beignettes and alligator piquant, seafood gumbo and crabs Lafitte along with two gallons of crawfish boiled with corn on the cob and small tender potatoes red with spices. Fantastic, she told the boy at the counter when he offered to carry the boxes to her car, though she didn’t believe Bart would arrive to help her eat it.

But when he did, he never so much as mentioned Diamondstone. At first she was suspicious. She didn’t trust Diamondstone and wondered how Bart could not know about the previous evening’s visit with Levon. As they ate, their conversation progressed from where it had left off. He talked about his family, and she found herself reluctantly trusting him and soon telling what little she could about her own just so he would continue. Despite
herself, she liked his stories, how on his lips English became an old language, filled with sighs and long pauses. He described the close-knit clan, the holiday gatherings, the quiet childhood. He’d told her he was twenty-six, but he seemed older.

They still want me to move back, he said. That’s how they are. And maybe I will, later.