Bree Vandermast wears a dotted violet sundress over a black T-shirt. You rarely see her in a dress or skirt. Never shorts. So this is fairly “awesome” as the kids say. Like Lee Lynn, Bree wears dark Settlement-made socks and Settlement-made sandals.
Both Bree and Lee Lynn smell good. Lee Lynn has that peculiar scent of Settlement soap and salves, green and prickly, like a walking tree or swamp. And Bree, smelling strong of that commercial talc she shares with her father’s part-time girlfriend, Kaye, and the soap in the tub dish used by them all, brothers, father, and Kaye, though along with a bit of cigarette smell, hers and theirs.
Bree’s ripply ropy red hair, brushed hard to its full glory, still does its job of protecting half her face, that side where Gordon is driving, though the breeze from the open truck window plays with it quite a bit. She rides, leaning just a little into the door, with her hands in her lap.
Lee Lynn rides in the middle with both long slender arms stretched out along the back of the seat, one arm behind Bree’s shoulders, the other behind Gordon.
As the city buildings begin to thicken, traffic slows.
In the car behind them is Whitney, now age sixteen, equipped with her driver’s permit, driving a Settlement car loaded with passengers bound for various other Portland errands and adventures. So Whitney is not afraid of risk? A full load of passengers is illegal with a driving permit. Is she risky? Or stupid? How do you untangle the consequences of the outside world through Settlement eyes? That ultimate naïveté, where rebellion is accepted and applauded as so darn cute.
Lee Lynn’s high siren voice speaks to Bree. “Now, one of the people you’ll be seeing is Peter Laskov, who runs the People and Politics course. According to Claire, he’s really great. He said you’re welcomed to sit in on any of his classes but that the one you decided on is the best one to start with . . . although I noticed it’s an intro course . . . and I think you’re wasting your time with intros. Maybe he’ll get the picture after you guys talk . . .”
As Lee Lynn speaks the word talk, Gordon glances past her at Bree and pictures no talk, just giggles. When does she ever talk?
Lee Lynn adds, “He’ll be in his office at 10:15, so we’ll yak with him first, then, ’bout the time Gordon gets back from his furniture wheeling and dealing, we’ll be catching up with Catherine Downey, Claire’s friend in the—”
“Catherine Court Downey,” Gordon interrupts.
“Catherine Court Downey, yes.” Lee Lynn glances at Gordon, knows that he’s being sarcastic about Claire’s outspokenly feminist friend, whom he has much poorly concealed contempt for, though they have never met. She goes on, “Catherine is interim chairman of the art department until—”
“Chairperson,” Gordon corrects her.
Lee Lynn’s fingers along the top of the seat give the back of Gordon’s neck a squeeze. “Quit remodeling my words.”
Eyes still on the street of traffic ahead, he leans her way and speaks in a husky way against her snowy ear. “It could save your life.”
Lee Lynn sighs. “Anyway, Bree, these are all people Claire knows well, so you can feel right at home.”
Bree, raising her face fully from its curtain of thick hair, says softly, “What courses did Whitney finally pick?”
“Pre-engineering stuff. And one that sounds interesting, something about ‘architecture as defining space.’ And then her second physics course, which, as far as I’m concerned, sounds uninteresting. Like death by dull. I think when people get too much of that stuff, they start to sound like they’ve been drinking hot plaster.”
Bree giggles and her large strange eyes move over Lee Lynn admiringly.
Lee Lynn says, “There was this other physics-like course Whitney wanted, but she’s still yakking with Gerald about it. She tell you about Gerald? That guy in the department she’s so fond of.”
Bree says, “Yep.”
Lee Lynn has glanced at Gordon. She sees the first signs of middle age there on the back of his neck, middle age and exposure to sun, two crisscross seams like weathering on wood, only on him it is soft, nothing like wood. And nothing yet like the deep “cracks” that come next, his fortieth birthday just around the bend. He makes no comment on this new development of the oldest Settlement-born girl being fond of the young university professor, added to the other new development of the Nebraskan boyfriend, Jordan Langzatel, who visits on Sundays now.
Yeah, he has not failed to consider that Whitney will probably leave the Settlement. Either on the arm of one of these square-jawed quenchless men, or the big “C.” Career. Worse than quenchless. Can all of this be blamed on fossil energy? Big industrialism? Food shortages? Polluted water? TV? Fast travel? It goes around and around, the philosopher’s brain struggling like an upside-down bug on a hard floor, trying to square up the muddle, trying to shore up the fort’s walls.
Bree is saying, “Yeah, I remember she said she might do two physics courses, but there was something, a problem with doing that . . . like it came on a Friday. Cars are all tied up on Fridays.”
Lee Lynn says, “Michelle is going to just hang out with Claire this year, help her teach history. She loves it. Like you do. You both are a couple of little history shmisteries.”
“Yeah,” says Bree, her smoker’s voice low and rough.
“And probably I’m just repeating Claire on all this, but none of these courses you take are for credit. You have to have a high school diploma for that,” Lee Lynn reminds her. “If you want to do a GED, I think you might have to be sixteen. I’m not sure. But it all has to be done just so, to please the institutional machine.” She glances at Gordon, grades and diplomas being a touchy subject with him. But strangely, he seems not to have noticed this reference now. He has the sun visor down, face in shadow, but across the chest of his work shirt and both arms, the morning sun, light of the east, lies insoluble and fantastic, like sudden déjà vu, while his eyes just follow some guy crossing the street, a guy with a bright-colored shirt and shaved head. He touches the brakes of the truck over and over, easing along with the traffic, a slow river of clutter and lives.
Lee Lynn continues, “Anyway, then we meet everyone in the cafeteria. Claire, too. She’s got Chris Butler and the Crocker boy with her today helping her move some artifacts. So there’ll be a gang.”
“Nice,” says Bree.
Gordon brakes at a light. He leans on his elbow with one hand dangling out the window, grooming his mustache with the other, distractedly. He likes to peer down into other cars, sizing people up, guessing stuff about them, smiling at those who glance his way, his left boot heel hard on the clutch pedal, his right heel hard on the brake.
Then they are rolling along again, all in silence, the Settlement car behind them filled with smiles and waves whenever Lee Lynn or Bree look back through the cab’s gun racks and spotty glass. Lee Lynn keeps glancing at Bree. Something is on Lee Lynn’s mind besides college.
Lee Lynn drops her arm from the seat back and pats Bree’s folded hands. She speaks Bree’s name.
“Yuh?” Bree looks at her.
“How’s everyone at home? At your house, where you live? How are the men?”
Gordon glances over at Lee Lynn, or rather at the blaze of light that is the sun on the lap and chest of her orange dress. Then he looks back at the congested avenue.
Bree says, “Fine. Doin’ good.”
Lee Lynn says quickly, “Good. Good.” Now Lee Lynn is doing something with her mouth, a small mouth for so long a jaw and chin, and what she is doing with her lips and teeth seems to come from desperately working over much cumbersome indecision. “What’s your father like? I’ve never met him.”
Bree giggles. “Old fart. Funny ideas. Sometimes he’s a total nut.”
Lee Lynn stares intently at Bree’s profile. She works her mouth around some more, feels the back of her own long lovely neck for renegade hairs, then strokes the sleeve of Bree’s black T-shirt, the shirt Lee Lynn made just for Bree, finished yesterday morning, just in time
for this special day. “Well, if you ever need to have a woman-to-woman talk about anything, if you ever have any secrets you don’t want passed on, I’m at your service. Okay?”
Gordon seems not to hear any of this. They are passing the old Department of Human Services building . . . two glass doors on their left across the wide street . . . he has his eyes narrowed on the yellow brick front, the sidewalk, fifteen-minute parking signs, no-parking signs, now a Harley passing in a tumble of deep sound, now a truck . . . tractor trailer . . . hauling milk. Now more cars. The yellow building is gone, only a crabbed yellow blotch shivering in the side mirror.
Bree’s voice. “Same here. I’m good with secrets. If you ever have any to spill.” She laughs, a light yet deep laugh.
Two spots of heat and worry blister on Lee Lynn’s snowy face. She sighs a tiny sigh.
University of Southern Maine.
Small grassy lawn with only a few big trees. A few. No Ivy League shade here. Some cement rectangular things to sit on. Rectangular shadows made by buildings, and other shadows shaped like the shrubs they are laid out next to. Nothing much here is old or awesome. The architecture here was hatched out in glass and plastic and uniform brick from those recent and current eras of soulless pragmatism, efficiency, and cheesy-is-next-to-godliness resignation. A lot of oil-splotched gray tar. And cars, cars, cars.
As Gordon walks through the parking lots, which are connected by sets of cement steps, he glimpses people staring at him. Not in the old way. Not in the way he has always drawn attention, with his size and his bearing and his penetrating pale eyes and that other thing, solicitousness. No, this is a new way. It hasn’t been hard to deduce how there’s a tidal wave of whispers and grunts behind the scenes, all those who call Ivy and the agencies and cops, plus all those agencies and cops, and reporters who receive the calls and a lively thicket of gossipers between. Such as Catherine, Claire’s friend. Chatty Cathy. Or is Gordon just being paranoid? Maybe Ivy Morelli had exaggerated all the complaints anyway.
Nobody frowns at him or hurls an ugly remark. It’s just those open-faced WOW looks and some people nudging an acquaintance to whisper. With some, he smiles, nods. With others, he feels struck with small terrors. He hates being alone away from home, from the Settlement, from Egypt, from his responsibilities, yes, but also from that space and place where he has earned prominence. Here, he is nobody, just a husk of matter, which infamy or fame add only illusion to. The knowledge that some of his family awaits in the cafeteria is a desperately good feeling. But then he feels ashamed that this is so.
Woman is home. Man is world, right?
So they used to say.
Think of the thousands upon thousands of men and women alike, who hold the world in the palm of their hand.
Guillaume St. Onge. Without the greatness of his land, woods, and fields, without the community of his kin, without his work of wielding the seasons, sun, and tuber, Settlement laws and justice, savagery and tenderness, what is he?
And yes, yeah, in some way, infamy feels good. It’s better than desolation. And in the end, Gordon really does hold all people dear. So he really is very distinctly and utterly two men. Or perhaps a sort of Minotaur, piteous, cursed to live his life part cordial man, part pawing-hoofed nerved-up beast.
The serving section of the newish Campus Center cafeteria is about to close for the day. It is quiet but for small muffled clatters beyond the kitchen doors. A lot of abandoned-looking mocha-colored plastic chairs under giant flags hung like banners from the crisscrossing conduit and otherwise useless space above, auditorium high. Babylon flashes into Gordon’s ever-so-sensate heart and mind. A few people stand around, several chunky twenty-year-old guys in oversized flappy knee pants, oversized flappy T-shirts, and white golf caps. All too young-looking to be college men.
Nobody is sitting with trays except the Settlement group, which has a couple of tables together near the rows of royal blue “please recycle” bins, within view of the cash register and the woman who works the cash register, who, yes, keeps glancing at Gordon.
Between the tall windows are early 1900s photographic portraits of formally dressed New England men and women of African heritage. An exhibit arranged by Black Studies students, this explained on a pedestal sign.
Gordon gets right to the job of eating, digging into a huge slimy pile of American chop suey, tearing into a buttered roll, slurping his milk. Little milk cartons. Four little milk cartons all opened and ready to go on the table beside his tray.
Claire appears at the end of the table looking quite nice in one of what she calls her “adjunct outfits:” mid-calf length smocked gray dress and flat shoes. Her sleek graying (just at the temples) black hair is done up in a loose bun, a piece of embroidered Tyrolean cloth, very Swiss-looking, knotted around it. She seems, as ever, in charge, more chairman or dean than adjunct, willing slaves hovering. Chris and C.C. from the Settlement group and two freshman students, introduced as Jake and Sam, are taking orders about leaving three brown paper bundles with security and three with the mailing room. Chris (Samantha’s brother) was born with “thin skin” and is plastered with scabby sores throughout his patchy light brown hair, on his face, stick arms, hands, and all over his delicate bearing.
Whitney places her blue tray on the table beside Gordon’s, slides her book bag off her shoulder, and grins, flushing. A bouncy, athletic-looking girl, wearing shorts and green leafy print Settlement-made T-shirt, hair in a slithery golden ponytail that flashes as she dips her head to kiss Gordon’s cheek above the ragged edge of his beard. And then she kisses the top of Bree’s head, which Bree accepts without any giggles, just a nice sigh. “Michelle izzz laaaayte,” Whitney tells them in a tattly nah-nah voice. On her tray is a pita bread sandwich and three milks.
Lee Lynn’s tray is on the table next to Bree’s, but no Lee Lynn.
Whitney sits. “How was the tour?” she asks Bree.
“Good,” says Bree happily, raising a spoonful of very bland-looking tabbouleh to her normal, in fact lovely, mouth. Her face squinches. So the tabbouleh is not as bland as it looks.
“The chairperson had a problem,” says Gordon around noisy gulps of his chop suey. He has tomato sauce on his beard for too many disgusting moments before he jabs a napkin to it.
“She was sick or something,” explains Bree. “Left us a note on the door.”
Gordon’s milk cartons are all drained quickly. He reaches for one of Whitney’s. She watches this theft intently but says nothing. He smiles into her eyes. He tells her, “Bree talks to you friendly-like. And she talks to Lee Lynn friendly-like. She talks to everybody but me.”
Whitney looks back and forth between Bree’s ruined but noble face and Gordon’s striking but pouting face. Then she laughs a little spluttery, through-the-teeth laugh just as there is a burst of kitchen clatter from the double doors opening beyond the cash register.
Gordon says, “For me Bree only giggles, never speaks nice. She talks to me like the automated lady on the telephone who says to hang up and dial again. She talks to me like someone in New York telling you how much to pay them for getting on the subway.”
Throughout this long complaint of Gordon’s, Bree has giggled happily. She now covers her mouth apologetically.
Whitney says matter-of-factly, “Don’t blame Bree. She’s just having trouble getting used to the company of King Kong.”
Now Bree laughs a real laugh, deep and hearty.
Gordon narrows his eyes at Whitney. “That’s not the first time I’ve been insulted with that comparison.”
Whitney rests her sandal on Gordon’s work boot, a thing she’s done since she was little. It is a loving thing, which he does to all the kids and she especially has taken it to heart and returned it. She says, “No, not compared to King Kong. You just are King Kong. The only one. You been around.” Now she whispers to Bree, “Something’s going on with Catherine . . . in her life . . . you know . . . Catherine . . . Professor Downey. Marriage stuff.” She enounces these l
ast two words with a lot of teeth and bottom lip.
The boys hustle off to do more tasks and Claire comes back to the table and says, “I already ate.” She pulls up a chair next to Bree and fingers Bree’s hair. “Howzit goin’, sweetie? This place got any appeal for you? Ready to take the plunge?” Her extra tenderness is, of course, in no small way affected by her knowledge of “the Book.” Her steely glasses gleam with motherish authority, her huge breasts and small dimpled hands signify at the moment more power than any man’s muscle.
Bree nods. “Peter was nice. And political.”
Claire laughs. “Of course! Political.”
Gordon frowns. He looks at Bree with one of his blinking, squinting-of-one-eye befuddled expressions. “You talked to this Peter guy?”
Bree says softly, “Yes, sir, I did.”
Now Whitney giggles. “Yes, sir.”
Gordon wiggles fingers to get Claire’s attention. “Word has it that the chairperson is having personal troubles.” He smiles thinly. “She canceled on our Bree. With a note. On her door.”
Claire gets a stricken look. “Uh-oh. It’s been coming on.”
“Where’s Lee Lynn? I thought she was here,” Whitney says, opening one of her remaining milks.
“Ladies’ room,” Bree tells her.
“Persons’ room,” Gordon corrects, eyes twinkling, yet another one of his dumb “jokes” inspired by all Claire has, in earnest, told him about Catherine.
Whitney snorts disgustedly. “Gordon, you’re so cute.” She again pats his foot with her foot.
Claire scans the near-empty cafeteria and doorway, over to the puffy-chair-filled lounge, then looks down at her own hands, gives her silver wedding ring a little spin. “This could be really bad . . . about Catherine. It’s been brewing. Not just her husband. Actually, I’m not sure exactly what it is. I’m real worried about her. I might go over to Luther Bonney Hall and look for her in a minute.”
Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves Page 34
