Westlake, Donald E - Novel 50 (12 page)

 
          
Sunshine
bleaches the world. I sit beneath it, the white light making haloes and auras
and ghosts and spirits in my vision. “I introduced Mom and Dad to all my
industry friends," I tell my interviewer, “and they fit right in."

 
          
The
concept of the living room in the
Malibu
house was casual living with plenty of room
to entertain friends. In an open central fireplace built on a platform of white
brick, a cozy fire crackled. Comfortable furniture of canvas and wood, easily
maintained and quite weatherproof, stood back out of the way so that the forty
people at the party could flow around the fireplace and in and out of the broad
doorways leading to the sunstruck deck. A good third of the partygoers wore
famous names and famous faces, and most of the rest were their associates:
wives, agents, boyfriends, attorneys. Uniformed staff passed discreetly through
the crowd with canapes and drinks.

 
          
To one side of it all stood Jack, viewing the scene with sweaty
pride.
He watched his mom, in the same print dress and gray cardigan as
before, move around the room, buttonholing people, clutching their elbows,
showing them photograph after photograph, her victims all being distracted but
polite. He watched his dad, in a far corner, seated with his back to the crowd,
watching “Bowling for

 
          
Dollars" on a large, elaborate console TV.
He watched
Buddy perched on the back of a sofa, drink in hand, easy and aggressive smile
on face, chatting up a pretty girl in a summer dress.

 
          
Dad
leaned forward and unceremoniously shoved at the hip of a male partygoer who
had drifted backward partway between Dad and the TV set. The partygoer looked
around in surprise, saw what he’d done, apologized, and moved away.

 
          
Mom,
her hands full of snapshots, pursued a distinguished older gentleman—the only
man there in a suit— out onto the deck under the sun.

 
          
Buddy
rose from the sofa, took the pretty girl by the elbow, and walked her over to
Dad and the TV set. "Dad Pine,’’ he said, "I’d like you to meet—’’

 
          
With
a warning cough, not really a groan or a snarl, Dad said, "Bud-dy.’’

 
          
"Dad
Pine,’’ Buddy said easily, unintimidated, "that’s the commercial. Come on,
I want you to meet a very nice girl. Annie, this is Jack’s father.’’

 
          
"Hi,’’
said the pretty girl to the back of Dad’s head.

 
          
Dad
swiveled around, still irritable, and looked past Buddy at the pretty girl. He
reacted with surprise, and then with pleasure, and popped to his feet. Smiling
at the pretty girl, he reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a full set
of false teeth. Still smiling at the pretty girl, he inserted these teeth into
his mouth, wiped his right hand on his pants to dry it somewhat, and extended
it toward her, now flashing a smile full of gleaming teeth. "Nice to know
you,’’ he said.

 
          
Glazed,
the pretty girl said, "You, too." Reluctantly, she shook Dad’s hand.

 
          
The
sun is in my eyes. The sun is in my eyes. How can I see with the sun in my eyes?

           
“I don't know," I say, to that
gray vagueness where my interviewer was wont to reside. “I don't know, I just
don't know. Maybe Mom and Dad and me, maybe the truth is we'd all grown apart
just a little bit. Just a little too far apart, somehow."

 
          
The
kitchen of the
Malibu
house was very modern, in white Formica and stainless steel. At the
butcher-block central island sat Hoskins, in his butler's tuxedo, obediently
looking at photos being shown to him by Mom. Jack entered the room, unwary,
then
saw what was going on and tried to reverse his field
and slide back on out of there. But it was too late; Mom had seen him. Looking
up, waving a handful of photos at him, she said, “Come here, Sonny. Cousin
Gertrude sent more pictures."

 
          
“That's
nice," Jack said, from the doorway. “You and Hoskins—"

           
“I want you to see these pictures,
Sonny," Mom insisted.

           
Reluctantly, Jack crossed the room,
stood beside Hoskins, and looked down at the pictures.

           
“Here's Edwina on her sled,"
Mom said. “Cute?"

           
“Cute," said Jack.

           
“Here's Mabel's Doberman pinscher
with its new collar on," Mom said. “Isn't that adorable?"

           
“Adorable," said Jack.

           
"Here's Mrs. Wallace's new
refrigerator," Mom said.

           
"Mom," said Jack, "I
don't even
know
Mrs. Wallace."

           
Suddenly furious, Mom turned hot,
enraged eyes on Jack and snarled at him through gritted teeth: "You don't
have to know Mrs. Wallace to look at her new
refrigerator
."

           
Jack
nodded,
his skin paler around the eyes. He bent his head to look at Mrs. Wallace's
refrigerator.

 
 
          
M
y hand is in front of my eyes because
of that sunlight, that sunlight pressing down on me, like looking up through
water at the sky and seeing only white, the waves moving,
the
whiteness glaring on my eyeballs.

 
          
"Mr.
Pine?"

 
          
"Yes
yes yes," I say. "I'm all right. I'm here. I know what's going on.
You are interviewing me. I am telling you my story. I am telling you about Mom
and Dad, and how after a while Buddy and I decided maybe it would be better if
we moved away from the beach for a while."

 
          
The
living room without its party, without the fire crackling cozily in the central
fireplace, seemed larger and more impersonal. Moving through this space as
though it were truly large, a vast
desert,
was a
Guatemalan maid, slowly and ineptly dusting. Dust motes in the air followed her
lazily from place to place.

 
          
Mom
entered, in a vicious mood, clutching handfuls of snapshots. “Where's my Jack?”
she demanded, glowering at the maid. “Where's my Sonny Boy?”

 
          
“Gone
away,” the maid told her.

 
          
“Gone
away?” Mom glared so hard she looked as though she wanted to bite the maid's
nose off. “Gone where?” “
Topanga
Canyon
,” the maid said.

           
Mom blinked. She looked around. She
said, “With Buddy? When's he coming back?”

 
          
“He
no comin' back,” the maid said.

 
          
Mom
rose on the balls of her feet, red splotches appearing on her cheeks. “What?
What the hell do you know?”

           
“They no comin' back,” the maid
repeated. All of the unfairness of her life was summed up in those words.

           
Mom
squinted
her eyes down to little slits and thrust her jaw at the maid. “Who
are
you, anyway?” she wanted to know.

 
          
The
maid curtsied; dust motes ebbed and flowed all about her. “I am Constanza,” she
said. “I'm an illegal, so I gotta stay in the job.”

 
          
Mom
said, “You mean, Hoskins is gone, too?”

 
          
“Oh,
sure,” Constanza said.
“He no illegal.
He can quit any
damn time. He
say
so.”

 
          
“Dammit
to hell and back,” Mom said. “I wanted to show him these new pictures.”

 
          
“Well,
he
gone,
” Constanza said, and sighed.

 
          
Mom
studied the maid,
then
thrust photos at her, saying,
“Here,
you
can look at them.” Shoving
a picture into Constanza's hands, she said, “This is the twins with their rock
polisher. Don't they look alike? Bet you can't tell which one is Bobby.”

 
          
Constanza
dropped her dust rag on a chair and considered the photo. She pointed. “That
one,” she said.

 
          
Impressed,
Mom said, “Pretty good! Come on, sit down here. Let's take a look at these.”

 
          
Mom
and the Guatemalan maid sat side by side on a sofa that faced the sea. They did
not look out. They bent their heads together over the pictures, one by one.

 
          
All this light, this light, this glaring light.
I can't even
look up anymore. I have to talk to my interviewer's gray shins. I sit
tailor-fashion, legs folded in front of me, knees rising winglike on both
sides. I lean forward over this nest of legs, and I pull my brows down low over
my eyes because of all that sunlight, and I tell my interviewer's shins, “Mom and
Dad were happy there at the beach. It wouldn't have been fair to take them away
to the ranch."

 
          
“Did
they ever see the ranch at all?"

 
          
“Oh, no.
I didn't see any point in confusing them." I
touch my fingers to my forehead, and something is cold. Which is it that's
cold? Is it my fingers, or is it my forehead? Shouldn't a person
know
these things? Shouldn't a person
be able to tell
these things about his
own fucking body?

 
          
I
am atremble with rage. I can feel it. I know it's bad for me. I am not supposed
to feel great emotions, not the large emotions; they are all very bad for me. I
can
perform
them, none better, but I
am not supposed to
experience
them.

           
I take a deep breath, full of
splinters and broken glass. I exhale dark, foul, noxious vapors. My hand
(possibly cold) moves down from my forehead (possibly cold) to my lap (oh, most
definitely cold).

 
          
“The
ranch," my interviewer says.

 
          
“The ranch.
Yes. The ranch was good for me then. I found
peace." I lift my head, ignoring the harsh glare, my own face gleaming and
shining. I smile, my light brighter than the sun. “I also found God," I
say.

 
          
It’s
wild, rough country,
Topanga
Canyon
, tumbled and brown, its high-shouldered
hills brushed with lacy pine, deep damp crevasses choked with ferns. The canyon
is many canyons, snaking and slicing and filigreeing through the hills. The
two-lane twisty road climbs up from the sea at Malibu, north and east into the
dusty hills lying just next door to Los Angeles but on the map of time a
millennium away.

 
          
The
people of
Topanga
Canyon
are loners, oddballs, dropouts, believers
in alternatives. They are not fierce pioneers, the progenitors of capitalists,
but gentle solitaries, aware of the fragility of all things in the fragility of
themselves. They do not pound deep foundations into the earth's
skin,
do not thrust steel erections at the indifferent sky.
Their houses are modest, set apart from one another, colored in earth tones of
orange and brown and green. Unpainted rail fences enclose their horses: yes,
they have horses. Their driveways are likelier to be of gravel or dirt than
glittering blacktop. They grow eggplant and tomatoes and marijuana. Their lives
are so in tune with their environment, they blend in so well with their
terrain, that they are barely noticeable in their bivouacs up the steep sides
of the many canyon walls. Only their television reception dishes stand out,
amazingly, looking in this setting like UFOs from outer space. (They believe in
UFOs.)

 
          
The
horse Jack rode up the firm tan trail from his house toward the peak of the
hill was a frisky roan, high- stepping, flaring its eyes and chewing its bit as
though auditioning for a portrait with Napoleon. The man and horse following
just behind him up the trail were both of a very different order, the horse
being a placid and thick-bodied speckled gray, its rider a comfortable and
stocky and prosperous-looking man of fifty-something in a minister's black suit
and white collar. He was hatless, his thinning gray hair disordered from its usual
wavy exactitude.

 
          
Jack
reined to a stop at the crest of the hill. Broken land stretched out before
him, with very few signs of human habitation. Behind them, down the hill, was
Jack's own ranch house, a low structure of dull red brick with wood- shingled
roof, blending into its location, watched over by sentinels of tall pine.

 
          
When
the second man reined in beside him, Jack turned on him a face lit with a
beatific smile. Gesturing broadly, he said, “Isn't this great, Reverend
Cornbraker?''

 
          
Rev.
Elwood Cornbraker nodded slowly in judicious agreement, accepting the
compliment to God's landscaping on God's behalf. “It is truly magnificent,
John,'' he said, and gentled his gentle horse with a pat on the side of its
neck.

 
          
Jack
half stood in the saddle, raising his arms upward toward the empyrean, gazing
out at the wild and tumbled land. “What a place for a temple!" he cried.
“Reverend, we could buy some of that land over there next to mine, that ridge
there with the yellow flowers on it—"

 
          
Reverend
Cornbraker quietly but firmly interrupted, with a friendly and forgiving smile,
saying, “God's true temple is in our hearts, John."

 
          
Humble,
dropping back down onto the saddle, folding his hands on the pommel and turning
to bow his head toward the reverend, Jack said, “Oh, I know that, Reverend
Cornbraker. You've made me understand so much that I didn't understand
before."

 
          
The
reverend made a small gesture of his right hand, as though he were giving
absolution. "I know you mean well, John," he said, “but we don't need
to erect a temple to our Maker here in
Topanga
Canyon
. The testimony of our lives is the true
manner of our attracting His attention. Our little chapel over in
Pasadena
is
,
I'm sure, good
enough for God.
Modest enough for God."

 
          
“Oh,
that's a wonderful chapel, Reverend," Jack told him, with fervent
conviction. “That's a
cathedral

 
          
Modestly,
Reverend Cornbraker permitted a pleased smile to crease his well-fed features.
“God and I thank you, John," he said. “You needn't spend your life's
earnings on temples. God doesn't need that from you. All you must do is
continue
to tithe to the church."

 
          
“Oh,
sure
, Reverend," Jack said. “You
know I'll do that. In fact, I've got a check for you right now back at the
ranch.
Ten percent of a salary payment that just came in.
I've got it all set and waiting for you."

 
          
But
the reverend didn't need such reassurances. He gracefully waved that away, then
had to gentle his horse once more as he said, “That's fine, John.
Just fine.
God thanks you for your faith and confidence in
Him."

 
          
“And
the commercial I shot? How's that doing?"

 
          
The
reverend smiled in such a way as to show that he disapproved of the terminology
but would not make a point of it. Having made that point, he said, “The
television message you were
so
good as to film for us
has been very . . . productive."

 
          
“I’m
glad," Jack said. He sat atop his spirited mount, gazing away at the hills
and canyons that were already God's temple. “It's good to be alive!" he
cried, and the landscape gave the echo back.

 
          
“Yes,
it is, John," the Reverend Cornbraker said.