by Nancy Mauro
A man enters the kitchen on the back end of his own sentence. His words are muffled by the double-paned glass but Lily picks up the rearing lilt of a question mark. His mouth moves over the sentence with a kind of presumption used to deliver definite articles: dates and times and capital cities. A woman comes away from the refrigerator, several jars in her hand. Lily hadn’t seen her tucked behind the door. She is saying yes, her mouth and lips a dainty chisel in her jaw. There’s a sense of transaction in her sloped walk across the room—but real or imagined? Lily tries to peg the ritual between these two but she worries that in taking her eyes off one she might miss a vital gesture from the other. Why the kitchen? The man stands in front of the glass cabinet. He is the type of handsome found behind a news anchor desk. Lily can tell his corporate predilection by the angled haircut, golf shirt, the casual shamble reserved for weekends. From a sheltered position beside the hutch, he pulls out a wooden high chair.
Lily has a sudden vision of her old professor in Italy, explaining Brunelleschi’s discovery of linear perspective, how the manipulation of proportion and placement could fool the eye into creating believable distance. As the man drags the high chair toward the table, she sees that Brunelleschi was wrong. According to theory, while man and chair approach the plane of the canvas, they should both increase in size, their proportions maintained. However, it seems to Lily that the ratio between them changes. Yes, something is changing, an incongruity as they draw closer. Though it’s not a formula issue. The formula itself is not corrupt. It’s one of the variables, the high chair. It’s enormous. Large enough that, after placing it by the table, the man is able to climb in and seat himself comfortably.
This is Lloyd’s surprise then. His homemade bouquet of cheer. Lily turns to acknowledge his superior punch line, but in the twilight his skin and clothes have blended into the weathered cedar pickets.
The woman unscrews the jars of baby food, one pea green pot and another apricot. She ties a bib around the man’s neck. Lily admires the way her fingernails are pared straight across and unvarnished, as though color and shape may be considered an unacceptable eccentricity by the trade. She dips into the green jar and begins to feed him. The man opens his mouth to accept the spoon and then follows this with a puckering motion. Several times she toggles the handle to dislodge the utensil. Lily is thrilled and nauseated. She watches as the spoon is coaxed from his mouth with a murmur of coos and the guppy-mouthed persuasion of baby talk. So much time, she thinks, has been wasted on white-collar peculations. As bankers and doctors are investigated, casino swindlers led away in cuffs, all this televised evangelism rising, they have missed out on these realities. What sorts of beasts humans are; it’s dizzying to realize how little or how much it takes to make one happy. As the woman turns to recharge the spoon, the green pea mouthful is regurgitated. A slick trail of creamed vegetable bubbles down the infant-man’s shadowed chin. The woman tuts and frowns and, using the edge of the spoon to scrape the mess from his face, feeds it back to him.
With fingers once again stuck to the moist sill Lily begins to feel that she’s really peering over her own brick wall. How close-minded of her to think that she knew it all. That she’d seen enough and could be surprised by nothing. What else has she missed out on? What has gone neglected under her own nose, in her own home, between herself and Duncan? Yes, especially between herself and Duncan. If not for the set of bones, if not for Lloyd, would she ever see beyond her own sense of probity?
By the time Lloyd starts whistling for Lily’s return, darkness has settled in. The woman has untied the bib and taken a seat at the kitchen table. Her blouse is undone. The man leaves the high chair and climbs over her lap so that together they form an unwieldy pietà. His slick head is bent, his mouth sucking at her breast with an urgency that Lily recognizes. It’s the need to recapture something that’s been lost, that someone has denied or taken away. And it seems to her that Lloyd wasn’t that far off after all, the peeps are privy to all hard and soft humiliations. The peeps are set to inherit the earth.
“Leave the dead,” Duncan orders as they push into the plague-blackened swale of a village.
But Kooch has turned around. “He’s my partner,” he says of Lee-tower, who’s on the ground, entangled in the vacuum cleaner. “I’m going back for him.”
“On your shoulders then.” Duncan shows no compassion for his Young Turks. He is clearing a path through the strewn contents of his life to the Sub-Zero refrigerator. Anne, although as formidable as a well-packed bratwurst, is in danger of losing her skirt as she follows down the hall on her hands and knees. Kooch brings up the rear with Leetower over his shoulder.
Duncan moves a laundry hamper away from the refrigerator and pries open the door. The bulb illuminates the room, burning brighter, it seems, without any soft perishables—bread, crumb-spotted butter, the hoary crowns of broccoli—to absorb it. A corked and gamy fug swells out at him despite the scant contents. He leaves the door open, passes out the rations.
Leetower is dumped on the Mexican tile in front of the dishwasher. Anne pulls herself up on the hamper and raises a can to the sour chill of refrigerator light for examination.
“Life without a woman, Duncan, does not become you.” She folds the tab back on the beer.
He is still rankled by her. Even now, the way she sandwiches one leg under the other on the laundry hamper. It’s her undeniable presumption—how she has, with her last sentence and gesture, estranged him from his wife. She needs to be taught a lesson once and for all. And that is: a good account person is an ally who provides muscle at the wrangling end of an account. End of story.
“So let’s be straight, boys.” She takes a fizzy mouthful of tinned draft. “When can I show some stuff to Upstairs?”
My God, Duncan thinks. I’m going to kill her.
Leetower opens his eyes. “What happened?” He touches his eyebrows as though to ensure they haven’t been razored away in jest.
Duncan fishes his voice out of a place of deep disbelief. “Anne, are you out of your fucking mind?”
It’s interesting, the voice that comes out is not exactly his; the entire sentence is compressed, as though spaces between characters have been kerned out. Do the boys hear the change too? Can they see him in the gloom? Duncan holds up his beer to draw their attention.
“This is the deal, all of you.” He forces a pause here although his mouth wants to run on. “I don’t want anyone touching this campaign. Especially Upstairs. If they get involved they will disfigure it. Then I will come and personally exterminate each one of you. Regardless of who the leak is.” He swings his beer in the direction of the door, some of the cold slosh dripping over his fist. “This is how we ran Tide. So you’re either in completely, or get the fuck out now.”
“We had Hawke on Tide.”
“I am Hawke.”
Leetower sits up. “I am Spartacus.”
“Shut up,” Anne says, walking over to the sink.
“Have you even seen the new scripts, McPherson?” Kooch stands at the counter beside her, running a pizza slicer over his palm. “Check it out. We’ve got Paratrooper Girl huddled in a C-119 Flying Boxcar, zooming over the rice fields with orders to destroy four tiny hamlets—suspected strongholds of the Viet Cong. Our voice-over says, ‘Boy, paratrooping sounded great back in fucking Arkansas. But waiting for the drop signal in the clouds of Quang Ngai province proves another experience entirely.’”
“Yeah, yeah,” Anne says, leaning against the sink. “Did I tell you the client wants to do a line of T-shirts next year?”
Kooch smiles. “We’ll use our little Viet Cong. Her breasts, each one barely filling the smallest of rice bowls.”
Anne clicks her fingernails against the stack of crystallized pans and casserole dishes in the sink. “You need a housefrau in here.” She turns to Duncan. “Where has your little Lily gone, huh?”
Duncan looks at Anne, who is standing in his kitchen, but he sees Lily the night they found the bone. A w
elt across her ass conjured by his own hand. She had become so much more pliant the next day; how could he ignore his place in this? For a brief moment she had flexed before him, acknowledging his power to destroy her. What is greater than this, a woman brought to genuflection?
“Let me guess,” he says to Anne. “You’d like to apply for the position?”
With her skirt still askew from the hallway crawl, the zipper hitting her at midflank, she looks at him without responding. Kooch is laughing. The happiness of the sound—of someone’s laughter in the house—persuades Duncan to continue.
“Problem is, I don’t shit where I eat.” He’s astonished to hear the words come out of his mouth but eager to see if they take. Whether she’ll bend as Lily had.
Anne has a skin of sheet metal, though. She glances around the kitchen. “You sure about that?”
Duncan looks at Kooch, at Leetower on the floor. The minions are suddenly silent. They’re waiting for his defining moment. He understands this; they’re waiting for proof of his hegemony.
She makes it home before the cannon fires. The sound of the blast is still startling and for a moment it distracts her from her own disappointment at finding the driveway empty. She had a feeling that Duncan wouldn’t show.
Lily wheels her bike up to the side of the house and stands below the peeling casement of her own kitchen. How much is revealed through open windows? Tonight she was the voyeur. Lloyd’s disciple. She was allowed—no, encouraged—to be un-Lilylike. The ritual feeding, the conflation of limbs and breast she witnessed in the bungalow, accompanied her home, leaving Lily to question what about her own life is made more visible in the darkness.
Backing up to the maple stump near the wall of hedges, Lily has a view into the kitchen of the historical Oster Haus where a hundred-watt bulb holds vigil over an open cereal cupboard. The room offers no salient angle or insight from down here. Either that or she lacks imagination; maybe she should just face the fact that people like her are made to look at windows, instead of into them. Isn’t the structure of a trefoil arch easier to deconstruct than anything that could happen behind it? For years she’d told herself that the study of art required the same talent present in the creation of art. Just last year her dissertation adviser wrote, With a little application, Lily, I’m confident you could become the world’s foremost expert on the pointed arch. It was an offering of knowledge, so eccentric, so niche, it made her sick with delight. It was like the theoretical stretch effect of black holes on the human physiognomy. Imagine, to lodge in your heart a theory that most people could hardly grasp by the tail feathers!
Lily sits down on the stump, anchoring her sneakers in its lichen bumper. So why has the desire slipped away? The idea was once so urgent it left thumbprints on her neck. When she first told Duncan she’d chosen the pointed arch as her dissertation topic, she watched his brow lift in the particular way of a man retreating from the whack of a ball-peen hammer. She knew by that slight contraction of muscle that she’d struck terror in his heart. He had understood. Only the gifted could afford to pursue such an obscure and extraordinary blip in the human arc of development. For days after the Declaration of the Pointed Arch, she could tell that Duncan had both admired and despised her. The way he first let her silverware clang to the table before carefully adjusting it alongside her plate. He was both terrified and bound to her. He could never leave, never leave her depths—he couldn’t hold his breath long enough to rise to the surface. Who would Duncan find to replace everything that she was? Did he think those little marketing dolls could hold concept and theory so tight to the bone? Did he think office girls understood spatial relations and linear perspective construction? Could any one of those skirts describe the double-bay vaulting system in the nave of Canterbury Cathedral?
Duncan had been impressed. For a brief moment she knew he really had admired her. History offered such a beautiful backlight; he had to shield his eyes against the dazzle of her. Isn’t that true? Although she grew reckless in his awe. She began to chase the mind long-distance, following it until she became a speck on the horizon. And he was soon weary of watching. Who could hold his hand up against the sun all that time?
A string of knuckle cracks from the backyard pulls Lily from her trough of self-pity. The single light from the kitchen cuts a feeble slit in the darkness, but by it she can see a patch of scorched hedges shudder at the rear of the house. Instinct kicks in, she slides off the tree trunk and lowers herself behind it, hoping to blend into the humped silhouette. Out back, the hedges quiver as stems of the old fencing snap apart. Someone is coming through the shrubs. For a second she considers running but knows her legs will refuse this challenge. They are disobedient, sluggish with fear. Lily squeezes her knees to her chest. Where would she run anyway? Across the road, the stand of maples might provide shelter. But it might just mean running into the arms of a waiting posse. For all she knows the men may have come to flush her out of the trees. Isn’t this what every bird dog knows? A quick, clean chase always makes for good sport.
CHAPTER 20
The Liver
In the apartment, Duncan tosses a balled rubber dish glove at Anne and says, “Get to work.”
Around him, Kooch and Leetower hold back their breath, willing to forego exhalation in case it means missing minor auditory details.
“Go ahead, get busy.”
Anne turns away from them. Lifts her hand, looks at her nails for a moment, as if to ensure they’re each still in place. Then she slowly reaches across the sink and turns on the faucet. Hot water jets over weeks of Duncan’s impossible crusts. His lips twitch. He gives Leetower, who is still on the kitchen floor, a meaningful glance to say, See how she obeys? Anne picks up the rubber glove, begins stretching it over her fingers. How is it possible, he wonders, that she’s become so compliant? Is it this voice? How could he not have known? Imagine, to have lived over three decades without knowing his own strength. The sound of water rushing into the sink is the musical score of his ascendancy and it fills Duncan’s desert cactus of a heart until Kooch reaches over and shuts off the tap. He is smiling at Duncan, but there’s nothing friendly or respectful in those bared teeth. Nothing but fangs. He tugs at the rubber glove on Anne’s hand and she moves toward him, begins to dry herself on his shirt. He takes her wrist, pinching his fingers around it. “Come on, McPherson,” he says, still looking at Duncan. “Let’s go join our fortunes in the bedroom.”
Leetower sits up against the dishwasher. He watches Anne follow Kooch from the kitchen. Then he rests his head back on the floor. “Duncan,” he says into the tile. “You are our next Tin God.”
But Duncan is reaching up the wall for the telephone mounted by the corkboard. He must call Lily. While he still has the voice. While he can still whistle and spit marbles at the same time. The line rings through. He’s aware that he was due upstate an hour ago. He remembers his promise to Valerie from the Historical Society, his solemn pledge to protect Lily from the seedy undercurrent of Osterhagen. Somewhere in the apartment, a door shuts and a toilet flushes.
“Get me an order of lo mein with spring rolls,” Leetower says, his eyes now shut. There is no answer at the house. Duncan hangs up before the machine kicks in. There’s no reason for her not to be home. No reason to be out this time of night in Osterhagen. He counts to twenty and dials again.
At some point during this attempt, Anne comes into the kitchen on one foot, screwing a heeled shoe onto the other. “Fucking Kooch bit me!” She snatches her bag off the floor and leaves.
Lily watches the mound of dwarf shrub cut itself free from the thicket and trot across the backyard. She has to hold her breath for a confused moment but then she’s on her feet and on the move like a woman approaching a low chopper blade. Lily runs to the back porch and ducks beside it, tracking the figure as it circles the site of Tinker’s grave. It lowers itself in a divot between hummocks and begins rasping at the dirt, sending up a spray into the grass behind it. In the denuded flower bed beneath her,
Lily finds a large, faceted rock. If only Duncan had kept his word and come home tonight. They could be digging and returning some of the tired bones to the cellar. Instead, she’s left with the Battle of the Cowshed on her hands. She bounces lightly on bent knees and, with an accuracy that was absent in her previous attempt with the running shoe, lobs the rock at the poodle.
In return, a surprised yelp as the dog rolls off the plot and away from incoming fire. She pats the ground for another rock, cursing Duncan for making her defend the homestead alone. The dog, a barbellated mass of twill, quickly reassembles on all fours. Without looking around for the source of attack it lowers its shoulders and skull in the manner of a herder avoiding a cattle hoof to the head and—she can hardly believe it—circles back to the grave. Lily looks down at the pebbles in her hand. It’s not enough. It will just return, keep returning until it’s poached something satisfying from the plot. She gets to her feet, takes a full breath, and charges into the yard. With arms apish and raised, and evacuative shrieks percussing in the night, Lily embodies what she hopes to be complete animal terror. The dog looks up, stands frozen for a moment before it turns and bolts for the barley field.
She chases after it, watching as the animal dives into the safety of the grain stalks. Lily runs as far as the edge of the grave and slumps over, hands to knees, her breath coming noisily. She remains motionless for some time, listening for the animal’s retreat. Instead hears only the putter of a diesel engine, a night train to Albany. She wonders if her airborne imprecations have reached Duncan yet? Wherever he is tonight, whatever he’s doing, may he stop a moment to gnash his teeth against the sudden, eviscerating pain of her bad juju. How many bloody animals is she going to have to take on?
