The Condition

by Jennifer Haigh

  At long last, she reached the turnoff. The cool shade of the No Name Road soothed her like a poultice. She felt herself in sympathetic company, the tall trees for whom twenty-two years was a trifle. I’m back, she told them. I’m back.

  On the No Name Road Frank had taught her to drive. It was early March, the house still closed for the season. They’d driven down from Boston on a false spring day: hot sunshine, an evening chill, an early dark. Paulette had made a decision she’d confided to no one, not even Tricia Boone. She and Frank would become lovers in the Captain’s House. But first, the driving. That afternoon, coasting down the No Name Road, he had surrendered the wheel of his old Chevy. Gently now. Let out the clutch. Each time, for emphasis, he had touched her. This was more distracting than helpful, the warmth and weight of his hand on her thigh.

  She rolled down her window. A seagull squawked in the distance. The air smelled of sweet ocean, a special thing. As a little girl she’d identified a half dozen ways the sea could smell, briny or fishy or sandy or green. A few times each summer, for reasons she couldn’t explain, the breeze smelled of molasses, dark and sweet.

  She was remembering the six ocean smells when a remarkable thing happened. A car whizzed past her, a convertible with its top down, a bald man at the wheel. A moment later a second car followed, a Range Rover with a kayak strapped to its roof.

  Cars on the No Name Road!

  Who were these people?

  Then, as the road curved, she saw the houses. Two of them, built close together, high on the ridge. The places were immense, twice as large as the Captain’s House. Their brand-new clapboards glowed yellow in the afternoon sun.

  TO HER relief the lane had not been paved. Paulette parked in front. The familiar dry rasp of tires on gravel filled her with pleasure. Oh yes, she thought, closing her eyes. I’m here.

  She got out of the car, taking an armload of groceries. It would take several trips to unload the rest. Had it always been such a chore to unpack the car? No, it hadn’t. Not with a sister, three children, and occasionally even a husband to help.

  She stood there a moment, staring at the front of the house, the three diamond-shaped windows above the entryway. Roy, Martine, and Paulette.

  Billy, Scott, and Gwen.

  The key was under the doormat, as the leasing agent had promised. Paulette turned it in the lock.

  Her heart fluttered.

  As she stepped over the threshold of the Captain’s House, as she set down her groceries and rushed from room to room, as she took inventory of each rug and curtain and stick of furniture, inhaling deeply each closet and hallway, checking the smell against the unarticulated but remarkably specific memory deep in her limbic brain, there was one person in the world who’d predicted what emotion would flush her cheeks and tremble her hands, one person who’d prefigured her steps precisely from front door to kitchen to Cook’s Corner, up the staircase to Fanny’s Room and the Whistling Room and finally the sleeping porch of her girlhood, where she would drop to her knees beside a bed and kneel there a long while as if praying.

  This premonition—immediate, acute, dead accurate and profoundly discomfiting—had gripped Billy the moment his mother invited him to Truro. He’d felt ill-equipped to assist at Paulette’s upcoming nervous breakdown. He was barely managing his own.

  THE HOUSE had changed.

  Paulette had expected this, of course. Before the sale her brother had plundered anything he imagined valuable: an antique spittoon in the entryway, a couple of amateurish watercolors (Roy had no eye for art) hanging in the stairwell. Everything else he’d sold along with the house. The place had always been furnished with odds and ends, comfortable castoffs: worn sofas, low and square, in the sitting room; faded canvas rugs terminally encrusted with sand. Naturally the new owners, a Portuguese couple from Rhode Island, would make adjustments. Still, she was shocked by the new furniture, overstuffed sofas and chairs in a bright nautical stripe. They seemed much too large for the room.

  Upstairs the situation was more dire. In all four bedrooms—the Captain’s Quarters, the Lilac Room, the Whistling Room, and Fanny’s—the wood floors had been covered with carpet, the sturdy synthetic kind found in public buildings and roadside motels, chosen by people who wouldn’t have to live with it. Paulette knelt in the corner of the Lilac Room and examined the edge of the carpet, firmly tacked to the floor. Professionally installed: the Medeiroses had gone to some expense.

  It was there, kneeling in the corner of the Lilac Room, that she made a more troubling discovery. The sign had been removed from the door.

  She crossed the hall to Fanny’s Room. Its door had been repainted, the nail hole filled. The same had been done to the Captain’s Quarters, the Sleeping Porch, and the Whistling Room.

  All the signs were gone.

  Paulette stretched out on the bed in the Whistling Room and cried as she hadn’t in years, not even during her divorce. She had forgotten how pleasurable crying could be. She cried for Roy and Martine, and poor Anne; for her dead parents; for Grandmother Drew and Aunt Grace and Tess and Doro; for Fanny Porter, whose room had been decommissioned and poorly carpeted and now resembled an overdecorated suite at a grubby bed-and-breakfast. She cried for generations of Drews and their summer friends, the sandaled guests who’d watched the sunset from their terrace. The lumpen tribe who’d surrendered the Cape to all takers, who had themselves scattered to unfortunate places like Taos and Tucson. Foolishly, carelessly, they’d let go of everything that mattered, including each other. They’d forgotten the life that had been.

  Paulette cried this way for several minutes, until she began to feel rather silly. She had never known Fanny Porter, after all; the woman wasn’t a relative, just a schoolmate who’d latched on to Grandmother Drew at Wellesley and come to the Cape summer after summer until the whole family had doubtless gotten sick of her.

  It was a bit shameless, when you thought about it.

  So forget Fanny Porter. And—it came to her in a wave—forget Roy and Martine. Her brother was the bandit who’d sold the house in the first place. And Martine—why pretend otherwise?—had always been a pill. The others Paulette could legitimately cry over. She’d been fond of her aunts and grandmother, and of course her poor parents.

  Though her father, if he were alive, would be ninety-seven years old, hardly in any shape to climb the stairs to the Captain’s Quarters. He would be moldering in a nursing home somewhere.

  Which would probably have similar carpeting.

  Paulette laughed at this thought, long enough that laughter too began to feel strange. It wasn’t good to be left alone too long with one’s own emotions; it wasn’t healthy or attractive. She wished Gwen would arrive.

  At that moment she heard a car turn down the lane, its tires crunching the gravel.

  She rose, smoothed her hair, examined her face in the small wood-framed mirror. Here was another reason adults shouldn’t indulge in tears. Her children had looked beautiful after crying, their soft cheeks rinsed clean and hopeful, their delicate skins flushed like fruit. On adults, especially aged adults, the effects were less fetching. She looked as though she’d been taking chemotherapy.

  There was a knock at the front door. A male voice called, “Hello!”

  She hurried downstairs. The rooms had grown dark; someone less familiar with the layout would have taken a nasty fall on the stairs. She flicked on a light.

  “Frank,” she said.

  He stood on the front step, a bouquet of daisies—daisies?—in one hand.

  “Honey, what’s the matter?” He looked alarmed, which puzzled her. Then she remembered that her eyelids were swollen like blisters.

  What are you doing here? she could have said. Who told you we’d be here?

  “They took down the signs,” she said instead.

  He threw open the door and took her in his arms.

  It wasn’t precisely what she wanted. Her years of wanting him—his touch, his presence, his sorrow for the pain he’d caused�
��were long past. Even as a young man, strong and vital, he’d been unable to give her what she needed. Now he seemed tired and diminished, while her needs had only expanded, grown dense and gnarled, like the roots of an ancient tree. Yet here he was, as large and vividly out of place as the new striped sofas. The screen door was open, insects swarming the overhead light. But she had learned this much: you took life where you met it, even in an open doorway. You took it, and held on.

  They were clutching each other like this, rather embarrassingly, when another car rolled into the driveway and crunched to a halt.

  “Who on earth is that?” Paulette murmured, stepping back from him, thinking of a time her mother had caught them kissing in this very spot. Of course Frank wouldn’t remember such a thing. For this she was grateful.

  “Dad?” Scott got out of the car. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hello, dear!” Paulette approached the car. Her granddaughter was sitting in the passenger seat. Penny and Ian were nowhere to be seen.

  “Where is everybody?” she asked.

  “That’s a long story,” said Scott.

  THEY ATE dinner on the terrace, the four of them. The refrigerator was full of breakfast food, the ingredients for a frittata. Sabrina proved surprisingly helpful in the kitchen. She seemed delighted when Paulette showed her how to mix a simple vinaigrette. “I didn’t know you could make this,” she said, rather cryptically. Her hair was honey colored, neatly braided; she didn’t slouch the way so many girls seemed to. Both Scott and Penny had terrible posture. Who had taught Sabrina to stand up straight?

  Paulette glanced out the window. Scott and Frank were sitting on the porch, deep in conversation. Scott was speaking, his father nodding in agreement. This surprised her. With Frank it was usually the other way around.

  How very strange, to see him sitting on the terrace as though he’d never left, as though it were his rightful place. Why on earth had he come? Last month on the phone she had sensed his loneliness, his hunger for information about the children. He hadn’t spoken to any of them since Christmas.

  Who, then, had told him about the trip to the Cape?

  Among other things, his arrival complicated the sleeping arrangements. She’d planned to give Billy the Captain’s Quarters, but when Frank had placed his jacket there, she hadn’t demurred. It was a violation of protocol—certainly he was no longer head of the household—but she remembered, would never forget, how he’d always wanted to sleep in that room. She could put Billy in the Lilac Room, but then where would Gwen sleep? On the porch with Sabrina? Paulette, herself, adored the sleeping porch, but Gwen might find the suggestion insulting, as though Paulette were treating her like a little girl.

  Leave it to Frank, she thought, to cause problems between her and Gwen.

  “I didn’t know Grandpa was coming,” Sabrina said.

  Paulette looked up, startled. The child had read her thoughts, something Billy used to do.

  “I didn’t either,” she admitted. “I suppose he wanted to see your dad, and Uncle Billy and Aunt Gwen. And you, of course.”

  “And you,” Sabrina added.

  Paulette did not respond to this.

  “My mom has a boyfriend,” Sabrina said.

  Paulette, cracking eggs for the frittata, dropped a yolk on the floor.

  “Ian likes him, but I don’t. He never talks, and he has tattoos. I hate tattoos,” she added, as though this were the central issue. “Especially on guys.”

  “You’ve met this person?” said Paulette.

  “A couple of times. He took us to play minigolf, which I don’t like at all.” She was a child of strong convictions. “And he was there once when I came home from school.”

  “Does your father know about this?” Paulette asked, her voice trembling a little.

  “He does now. I think they’re getting a divorce. I wasn’t supposed to tell you. Is this okay?” Sabrina asked, showing her the salad.

  “It looks wonderful,” said Paulette, impulsively kissing her. “Darling, you’re a wonder. I’m so glad you’re here.”

  They carried the plates out to the terrace, where Scott was mixing drinks; somebody—he or Frank—had stocked the bar. After some protest Paulette let him make her a weak gin and tonic.

  “Be careful with that stuff, missy,” Frank said, smiling slyly. “Scott, did I ever tell you about the time your mother tried to drink a martini?”

  Paulette flushed. “Frank, for heaven’s sake.”

  “We were at some joint in Philly with Wall and Tricia James. I had to carry her to the car.”

  “Grandma!” Sabrina said, laughing.

  “It was terribly embarrassing,” Paulette said, flushing. “I felt so sophisticated drinking from that beautiful glass. Then dinner was over, and I realized that I couldn’t stand.”

  “We made quite an exit,” said Frank.

  Paulette joined in the laughter. It was oddly pleasurable to be laughed at. Her family—a part of it, anyway—was together at the Captain’s House. Tomorrow Gwen and Billy would arrive, and her birthday would be complete. Except for Ian, of course. In principle she wanted to see her grandson, though in actual fact she was a bit relieved. Perhaps by next summer he’d have outgrown his obstreperous stage.

  Penny she did not miss in the least.

  She watched Scott across the table. He looked tired, which was not surprising. He was losing hair and weight; he seemed to be caving in on himself. For years she had wished him free of that dreadful girl, but she’d never considered the pain this might cause him. Certainly she had not wished for this.

  Scott woke to the smell of breakfast. A cool breeze riffled the striped curtains in the Whistling Room. Had the windows whistled last night? He’d been too plastered to notice. After his mother and Sabrina went to bed, he and the old man had stayed up for hours, knocking back G and Ts on the terrace.

  Had this really happened? Had he stayed up half the night getting loaded with his father?

  He sat up in bed holding his head. Frank had taken over as bartender, and offered him another and another and another. Though he hadn’t needed much convincing. Given recent events, he felt entitled.

  All at once he remembered the mess he’d left back in Gatwick. Since her revelation Penny had seemed strangely calm and contented, as though a vexing problem had been solved. She was cheerful and pleasant. She showed a renewed—perhaps unprecedented—interest in housekeeping: vacuuming behind the furniture, cooking actual dinners instead of picking up a bucket of chicken from the supermarket deli. Most astonishingly, she stopped watching television. Scott slept in the basement under a comforter that smelled of mushrooms, but he woke to a clean, quiet house. In many respects, his domestic life was much improved. Had Penny discovered the secret to successful marriage? Was it as simple as having an affair with your brother?

  She had ceased, abruptly, to nag him. For years they’d played a kind of tug-of-war. Now Penny had simply dropped the rope. She moseyed through the day in a trance of contentment, a quiet bovine happiness that reminded Scott of their pot-smoking days, Penny slow and sweet and infinitely accepting, asking no more of life than what was immediately before her. Nothing could shake her composure.

  Well, almost nothing.

  One night after the kids were in bed, lulled by her apparent calm, Scott made an admission. For years Penny had been his confessor. Over the years she’d absolved him of a thousand failures, had listened, posed questions, doled out penance. After each clownish pratfall, he’d found comfort in her. Now, despite her recent betrayal, he needed her more than ever. His guilt was a parasite, feeding on his blood. He could rationalize blowing Ian’s tuition money—boarding school would have been a mistake anyway, or so Scott had convinced himself. It was his sister’s face that haunted him, Gwen in St. Raphael: her dreamy smile, her radiant happiness. When he thought of what he had destroyed, he was nearly sick.

  “You did what?” Penny said.

  “The twenty thousand dollars. I gave it to Gwen
’s boyfriend. I bribed him, Pen. To leave my sister alone.”

  “Jesus, Scotty!” She looked at him in openmouthed horror. “Why the fuck would you do something like that?” Then her brow cleared. “Of course. I get it. You wanted to score points with your mother. And if you had to ruin Gwen’s life—well, no big deal.”

  After his disclosure a pall settled over the household. Penny would not absolve him; she wouldn’t even meet his eyes. His wife—who’d been boinking, who continued to boink her stepbrother—found Scott’s actions repugnant. Gnarly, even. And in his heart, he had to agree.

  His other disgraces seemed tame by comparison. The day after his drug test, he’d arrived at Ruxton to find his desk already emptied, its contents packed into sturdy corrugated boxes. Jordan Funk got up from his desk, his face somber.

  O’Kane left this for you. He handed Scott a sealed envelope.

  Scott stuffed it into his pocket.

  You idiot, Jordan said, shaking his head. You should have told me you were getting p-piss-tested. I could have, you know, helped you out.

  He helped Scott carry the boxes out to his car, his girlish arms trembling with the strain. When the car was loaded, Jordan stood back, arms crossed.

  I guess that’s it, said Scott.

  This is such bullshit. Jordan’s face was flushed, his eyes blazing. Scott had seen a similar look on Ian’s face, just before he flew into a sobbing rage that would send blocks or Power Rangers flying. Jesus Christ, Scott thought. Is he going to cry?