“Fuck!—it really is your old man!” Studs said, impressed.
Kim, reckless and sullen by now, defiant—the wind in her hair, two quick cans of beer, several drags from a joint that tasted like burning cat hairs—stood, arms folded, leaning against the front of the Camaro where her father could easily see her, if he chose: But, though it seemed to Kim that Daddy was smiling at her, he did not apparently see her. Daddy looked right through me.
And she was carrying, so conspicuously, the beautiful silk purse he’d given her, scarlet, green, purple, gold—roses, lilies, starburst designs in velvet, and sequins, a bag so striking that even Studs had noticed it, approvingly.
After Kim’s father drove away, Studs suggested they check in Birds ’N’ Beasts to see exactly what he’d bought. The store, like most stores at the mall, was open until 9 P.M.
So they went inside, Studs in the lead, the more curious, inquisitive, asking questions of the salesclerk Kim would never have asked. “That old guy who was just in here—what kind of cage did he buy? How much did it cost?” Studs had a habit of standing at his full height as if at attention; he was only an inch or so taller than Kim, but seemed, in her adoring eyes, much taller. And how handsome he was, despite his mottled skin and narrow, squinty, damp eyes that turned pink as a rabbit’s from smoking dope!—his greased dark hair skimmed back, and worn in a tiny tail, “spic-style” he called it, a narrow moustache now on his short upper lip, the gold studs in his ear and the gold ring through his nose glinting shrewdly. Those times he’d done it to her sort of against her will and not using a condom—Kim had forgiven him, in the very process of it.
But, God!—if Mommy and Daddy knew!
So Studs Schrieber learned that Terence Greene, who, like several other Queenston daddies, always looked at him as if wishing him dead, had bought a $300 brass parrot cage, of all weird things. “Since when do you guys own a fucking parrot?” he laughed.
Kim, nervous, giggly, but feeling relieved now, and, as they left the store, ready for another joint, said, “Maybe Daddy will be getting us one, for Christmas. Maybe it’s a surprise!”
But seeing, afterward, in her mind’s eye, her father: that smile of his, that look of a man who’s happy.
And seeming to know, with adolescent resignation, It has nothing to do with us.
Can it be I, who does such things?
It was a consequence of Tuffi’s death, one September afternoon shortly after the Greenes returned from Nantucket.
Terence had been on a stepladder clumsily repairing a broken gutter at the rear of the house, trying not to think of the disagreeable meeting he’d had with a panel of fellowship judges at the Foundation the previous day, when, suddenly, there was Phyllis tugging impatiently at his trouser leg, saying she’d been calling him, and calling him—“Terry, for God’s sake! Tuffi needs to be taken to the vet. Can you hurry?”
Terence did hurry, to discover, to his horror, the poor dog writhing and squealing on the utility room floor, amid a powerful stench of bowels and vomit. The poor creature had been visibly ailing for months—the vet had diagnosed progressive liver failure, for which there was little remedy—and so this was no surprise, exactly; but it was a shock, and a piteous sight. Cindy stood in the doorway, hands to her face, eyes widened—“Oh Daddy! Do something! Tuffi’s in pain!” And there was Aaron hovering in the kitchen, with a stricken expression (for Tuffi had been, since puppyhood, at least nominally, Aaron’s pet), tennis racket in hand—“Jesus, what a time for this! I have to leave! Christ!”
Terence squatted beside the convulsing animal. He saw that Tuffi’s eyes were yellowed, no doubt from jaundice; his muzzle was frothy with saliva. Gingerly, Terence touched the dog, hoping he wouldn’t bite, or claw—“Tuffi, poor boy! We’ll do what we can.”
Phyllis, and Cindy, and Aaron were deeply sympathetic with the dog’s ordeal; but made no offer to ride along with Terence to take him to the vet. Had Terence not spoken sharply to his son, Aaron would not even have helped him carry the dog to his car. “Gee, Dad,” Aaron said, in his nasal, whining voice, “—I’m late already, and I just changed my clothes.”
Terence settled Tuffi in the back seat of the car, atop some scattered newspapers. The poor dog was so weak, there seemed no need to put him in his carrying case.
Terence hurriedly climbed into the car, started the ignition. The sight of his son standing in the driveway, tall and solidly built, handsome in his tennis whites, clearly impatient for Terence to drive away, and yet simulating a look of grief, loss, pain, infuriated him. “Why the hell don’t you put that racket down, and come along with me?” Terence asked. “You might be of some use for once.”
“Aw shit, Dad—”
Terence clenched his jaws, hearing the familiar profanity. So familiar! “Don’t you care for poor Tuffi, at least? Your own dog?”
“Sure I do, but—I’m late already for where I’m going.”
“This might be the last time you see him alive. Don’t you give a damn about that?”
“Jesus, Dad—”
Now Phyllis intervened, as, so often, in such circumstances, she did. She had been peering in at Tuffi, making cooing sounds, as if such sounds might comfort the dog in agony; now she turned sharply back to Terence. “Let Aaron alone, Terry! There’s hardly any point in two people going to the vet, and you know it.”
Terence’s face was burning. “No, no point. Sorry!”
So Terence, shaken and disgusted, drove the dying dog to the animal hospital by himself. He spoke to Tuffi, hoping to quiet the dog; he was thinking of the poor sweet creature as a puppy, years ago—and of his children, years ago. Aaron as a young boy. Aaron as a baby.
There was, at this time, an unresolved issue between Terence and Aaron, and this too blocked by Phyllis: The previous Christmas, Aaron had asked for, and received, some expensive skiing equipment (Phyllis had made the purchases, but Terence seemed to know the cost had been well above $500); he’d taken it off to Dartmouth, where, supposedly, it had been stolen. But Terence had the suspicion (having heard that one of Aaron’s friends had sold similar merchandise, and reported it stolen) that in fact Aaron had simply sold the skiing equipment and pocketed the money. Of course, Terence could hardly prove this. Phyllis had accused him of not loving their son, and Aaron had been furious—“That guy’s sick, Mom!”
At the animal hospital, it was discovered that Tuffi’s liver had so deteriorated, and his kidneys and heart were so weakened, there was no choice but to put him to sleep.
“No choice!” Terence’s voice cracked. “Well. I see. Of course.”
The vet, a young woman assistant, and Terence held the feebly struggling dog down on the examining table, as the vet injected lethal serum into an artery in the dog’s neck. Dying, Tuffi looked up at Terence with his frightened, discolored eyes, as if awaiting a command. He whimpered, but no longer thrashed about. “Tuffi, poor dear Tuffi, we love you, Tuffi,” Terence said, in sudden fear himself of the horror of what was happening.
“It will only take a minute,” the vet said softly.
Terence stroked Tuffi’s coarse fur, and gripped the dog tight in anticipation of a violent death spasm that never came.
Instead, the dog’s muscles relaxed; he grew limp, simply as if falling asleep; the terror in his eyes clouded, but his eyes remained open, glassy in death. Terence whispered, “Wait, no—Doctor?—I’ve changed my mind—”
The vet had been giving Tuffi his shots and treating him for most of his life, and had come to know Terence. He now laid a consoling hand on Terence’s arm. “I know, it’s hard. But you made the right decision, Dr. Greene.”
Dr. Greene!—why did people call him that, when he knew himself so confused, so ineffectual, so at a loss? And, now at this time, so stricken with grief?
Terence tried to make his voice steady. “Did I? Thank you. There’s that, at least.”
Terence chose to bring Tuffi back home for burial, not to have him cremated at the hospital, as, he gathe
red, most other pet owners did with their deceased pets. The young woman assistant helped him wrap the body in newspaper, rather tenderly, Terence thought; in his grief-weakened state, her kindness provoked tears. Wiping at his face roughly, Terence said, “He was such a sweet-natured, loving dog. I always felt I didn’t love him enough. The children—” But he did not want to be accusatory. He did not want to sound like a disappointed, complaining suburban father. “—loved him, of course. When they were younger.”
Terence paused, not knowing what he was saying. Tuffi was now wrapped up in newspaper, his glassy eyes hidden. In death, he would be heavier than he’d been in life. Terence said, his voice cracking, “Damn it, Tuffi was only twelve years old!—that isn’t enough of a life.”
The young woman in her soiled smock and blue jeans smiled up at Terence unexpectedly. “Gee!—I know I’d feel real lucky at the end, Dr. Greene, if somebody loved me like you love him.”
Terence stared at the young woman for the first time: a heart-shaped, strong-boned face with a good, healthy skin, no makeup, frank brown eyes and wiry brown hair that scintillated as with streaks of mica.
“Gee, yeah!” the young woman said, seeing the sudden look of yearning in Terence’s pale face, “—Tuffi’s a real lucky old fella!—or was.”
And he buried the dog’s body by himself, too. At the rear of their two-acre wooded lot, at the foot of a gentle slope fragrant with pine needles.
I will arise and go now. I will arise.
How strangely familiar this neighborhood, the houses run-down, derelict, yet appealing!—and, at 33 Holyoak, the ramshackle residence of the Renfrews, unchanged, except, today, in a golden-sepia flood of autumnal sunshine, the overgrown garden in the front yard was brighter with color than it had been in early summer. Someone—a big-boned stocky woman in overalls and a straw hat—was it Holly Mae Loomis?—was clipping and weeding in the garden. The sunbathing girls on the roof who had so teased Terence were gone—at least, as Terence parked his car at the curb, squinting and smiling vaguely toward the house, he saw no one.
But there was the burly, shaggy brown dog with the German shepherd’s face, dozing on the veranda.
Terence’s heart was beating hard. As it had done in his childhood, when, urged and bullied by his uncle, he’d pushed off into the cold, deep, metallic-smelling water of the stone quarry where he’d been taught to swim—that initial apprehension, quick-flashing terror, exacerbated by icy currents in the water that attacked his goose-pimpled flesh like knife blades. I am going to drown, I am helpless.
But he’d pushed off, anyway. And he’d never drowned.
It was a weekday. A few days after Tuffi had been put to sleep. Terence Greene had done something he’d never done in his entire professional life—he’d called in, pleading illness, simply to take a day off from his work.
Poor old fella!—the words rang, now mockingly, in Terence’s head.
Terence had not been to Trenton since the end of the trial, but he’d thought of it—the city, the courthouse, the trial, Chimney Point—a good deal, in the intervening weeks. Often, a ghostly female presence seemed to drift near, invisible yet unmistakable—Terence would turn his head, as if someone had called his name, or touched his sleeve. Yes? Who is it? That morning he’d woken with the urgent desire to drive back to Chimney Point; no plan, nor even any expectation of what might occur. He’d had a particularly disagreeable meeting at the Feinemann Foundation the previous day, and could not bear to return, so soon.
As soon as the trial of T. W. Binder had ended, with the verdict Terence knew to be the only just verdict, he’d made an effort to forget it. The interlude had after all been of no significance in his own professional life, and allusions to it seemed to annoy, and upset, Phyllis, for some reason Terence did not understand. (Surely it wasn’t because of the stolen Gucci case, merely?) Once Binder had been found guilty, the issue was settled. Though Terence might have been curious, he, a reader exclusively of The New York Times, had made no effort to look up Trenton newspapers to read of the trial; nor even to learn what prison sentence the judge had imposed at the sentencing.
He’d meant, too, to look up the mysterious “Ezra Wine-apple” in back issues of the Trenton Times, but he’d never gotten around to it.
For after all the issue was settled.
Yet, in times of reverie, he thought of the experience, so intense and in a way so mysterious, of that short week in June; yes, he would have to admit, of course he thought of her.
And now, today, so impulsively, here. Sitting in his car staring at that rundown house to which I feel myself so powerfully drawn.
Chimney Point
Ava-Rose Renfrew’s house. (Was she home, now? Perhaps watching him out of a second-floor window?—one of the windows with panes of glass, not plywood or strips of translucent plastic?) The building had a wry tilted look, as if bucking the waves of an invisible sea; the illusion was marked by a split, of sorts, in the roof, between the older, central part of the house, which was made of crumbling stucco, and the wood-frame wings, covered in weathered gray shingles, which had clearly been added, in stages, over a period of many years. Maybe the place had been an inn at one time; even, long ago, a stagecoach stop. For all its shabbiness and the junk on its veranda (to which had been added, since Terence’s visit in June, what appeared to be a long, rolled-up carpet), it had a quaint, “historic” look. Terence recalled that the city of Trenton was an old colonial city, where both British and Revolutionary troops had been quartered.
Phyllis would wince at such a place!—the rotting picket fence, the comical lawn ornaments, the cluttered veranda, the interrupted painting of the shutters (which were, still, a bright robin’s-egg blue downstairs, and gray-weathered upstairs)—the Christmas lights never taken down. That overgrown, weedy garden of seven-foot thistles and diseased hollyhocks, amid the roses. Worse yet, the old slate roof and the rusting gutters in which, in lurid bright-green patches, moss grew, like the mange.
Beyond the house was a no-man’s-land—a vacant field, an alley or access road, scrub trees, dilapidated outbuildings. Then, a railroad track, on raised ground; in the near distance, perhaps a half-mile away, the broad winking Delaware River. The sky was a hazy blue, given a just-perceptible sepia cast by air pollutants from Trenton industry, and this sky, contrasted with the mottled slate roof of the Renfrew house, seemed curiously near, and flat, with the effect as of a Cézanne painting in which all surfaces appear equivalent—the expression, not of surfaces, in fact, but of underlying, mysteriously interlocked structures.
“H’lo, mister! Looking for somebody?”
Taken by surprise, Terence saw that the old woman had pushed her way through vegetation, to stand peering at him over the picket fence; despite her soiled, mannish clothes, and the floppy straw hat, he recognized Ava-Rose Renfrew’s aunt Holly Mae Loomis at once. Her smile was wide and sunny, but there was an edge of suspicion to her voice.
Terence got out of his car, feeling very self-conscious. He said, quickly, “Why, thank you, no, not exactly. I—”
“You aren’t”—squinting at him near-sightedly, and worriedly,—“that Doctor So-and-So, from the Health Department? Eh?”
“Why, no—”
“Oh, Lord! I know—you’re that lawyer from the Transit Company, eh?”
“No,” Terence said, smiling, “—are you expecting these men?”
“I am not expecting any of them,” the woman said, with an indignant, feminine toss of her head. “They are not welcome here.”
On the veranda, the big dog stirred; roused itself into prickly consciousness; came trotting in Terence’s direction, hackles raised, beginning to growl. With a gesture of the clipping shears she held in her hand, the woman said, “Hush, Buster! Not just yet!”
Terence’s face was very warm. Over the dog’s excited barking he said, “What a lovely garden you have—”
The woman scolded the dog—“Buster, hush! Buster Keaton.” Then, to Terence, “He don’t mean
no harm, he’s just cautious of strangers.” She raised the brim of her ragged straw hat, exposing crisp brassy-dyed curls at her forehead. Her eyes, near-lashless with age, were a clear amber-green, shiny as glass. Terence wondered if she would recall him from the courtroom—or from the Mill Hill Tavern. “You sure you ain’t a lawyer, mister?—you sound like one.”
“No, truly,” Terence laughed, “—I am not a lawyer.”
“So what are you, then?”
Terence smiled, feeling a bit foolish. “A friend.”
“Eh? Say what?”
“I believe I have the advantage of knowing you, Mrs. Loomis? Holly Mae Loomis? I mean—knowing your name. And that of your niece, Ava-Rose Renfrew?”
“Ava-Rose?” the woman interrupted. “You want to see her?”
“Why, no, I—”
“You wouldn’t be the manager of that shoe store by Tamar’s Bazaar, would you?—that’s always pestering my niece for a date?”
“No—”
“Or who’s-it—the ‘reverend’ from her church?”
“No. I was one of the jurors at the trial, in June—when that man, T. W. Binder, was found guilty of assaulting Ava-Rose Renfrew.”
Immediately, Holly Mae Loomis’s face was transformed. She smiled incredulously. “Oh my, oh my! Mister—uh—Fore-man?”
How swiftly the mantle of authority, however illusory, put him in good stead with her.
“My name is Terence Greene. I was just in the neighborhood, and thought I’d stop in to say—”
A fawning, crafty look—or was it an old-womanly, intimidated look—passed swiftly across Holly Mae Loomis’s ruddy face. She said, with an exclamatory laugh, “Oh! my! what an honor! I never—!” Clumsily, as the dog yipped and thumped his stubby tail, she drew off her soiled gardening glove, to shake hands with Terence. Her grip was dry and vigorous, and her hand felt calloused. Almost coquettishly, she said, “I know—it’s Dr. Greene, eh? If you’re not a lawyer—?”
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