Vandal Love

by D. Y. Bechard

  Isa had the impression that he’d only just considered sharing this and might not have. She thought of everything she’d never told anyone.

  I was raised by relatives, he said. I’m still in contact with them.

  He seemed to be hovering about his words. He cleared his throat. Mostly, I remember my mother’s tattoos. She’d let me copy them on paper. I remember when I learned I had a soul. I pictured it like a tattoo of blue light under my skin.

  Isa wanted to tell him about Jude but instead she spoke of her mother. I don’t know anything about her, she said. My father wouldn’t—won’t discuss her. The only thing that he told me was that she was … something else.

  Another race?

  No … No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think she was dark French, perhaps.

  Bart was watching her. She’d sensed the shift in his interest, this, too, like a memory of Jude, a sort of atmospheric pressure.

  When I was a girl, she said, I used to try to understand what a mother was. I would stand at the mirror and I thought that if I looked long enough, her part of the reflection would stand out and I might see her.

  Wind carried rain across the roof in a slow pulse.

  Why didn’t you know your father? she finally asked.

  Bart remained silent a moment longer. My mother left him when I was born. I saw him just once, in the street when I was with my stepfather. We were Christmas shopping, and a gigantic homeless man started following us. A few days later, for what seemed like no reason, we moved to North Dakota. It took me years to find out that the man had been my father.

  Bart cleared his throat and forced a cough. Diamondstone, he said, once told me that only pain seems real because human love can’t last. The only power greater than suffering is God’s love.

  Oh, she said … How did your mother die?

  She died when I was nine …

  He paused for so long that she realized he wasn’t going to add to what he’d already said. He looked about. I should go.

  Now?

  The rain had lulled. It was as if they were coming back to themselves, their voices returning to these big, tired bodies propped unevenly against the wall.

  I take walks, he said, but never this long. The others will notice.

  He stood and went to the door. Can I see you tomorrow?

  Again? she said with pleasure though she’d meant, Of course, and she said it now. Yes. Of course. I’d like that. I’ll bring more food.

  For a while after he’d gone, the stables felt empty. Then, little by little, the usual gravities exerted themselves, the horses and the stalls they occupied beyond the wooden partitions.

  She pushed herself up. Her body felt old. Outside she was surprised that so many lights were on at the house. Levon never stayed up this late. As she was climbing the steps, she saw him in the living room. She stopped. He was seated across from someone else, and though it was obvious, the black, the pale complexion and white hair, it took her a moment to realize. Diamondstone held his hat on his lap. He was looking out at her, smiling as if she was expected.

  Isa, Levon called when she opened the front door. Please come in here. I want to introduce you to a gentleman who has been telling me the most fascinating things.

  Virginia

  May 1993

  When Bart arrived that evening, Isa expected him to know everything. The previous night Levon and Diamondstone had stayed up talking long after she’d gone to sleep, and all the next day Levon had sought her out to tell her bits of their magnificent discussion—Magnificent, he’d repeated, a truly magnificent connection. A profound meeting of two minds.

  He said that Diamondstone had recognized him as a recluse and a seeker of the truth. He explained Diamondstone’s various outlandish interpretations of the man at the creek. Isa wanted to cry, not because of the absurdity of all this but because of how pathetic their lives were —Levon’s loneliness, his desire to speak to another, to anyone.

  And us? she asked, feigning ignorance about Diamondstone. Did he ask about us?

  No. Why? He simply wanted to discuss God’s mission on earth and the many ways He sends His messages.

  Fantastic, Isa later repeated to herself at the wheel of her car, even while composing the dinner that she wasn’t sure would be consumed—Fantastic, she hissed, this being her replacement for Magnificent. At some point in Bart’s listing of his travels, he’d told her that he’d loved everything about Louisiana, especially the cuisine, and so she drove forty minutes to find a Cajun restaurant, where she ordered a survey of the menu: jambalaya, dirty rice, beignettes and alligator piquant, seafood gumbo and crabs Lafitte along with two gallons of crawfish boiled with corn on the cob and small tender potatoes red with spices. Fantastic, she told the boy at the counter when he offered to carry the boxes to her car, though she didn’t believe Bart would arrive to help her eat it.

  But when he did, he never so much as mentioned Diamondstone. At first she was suspicious. She didn’t trust Diamondstone and wondered how Bart could not know about the previous evening’s visit with Levon. As they ate, their conversation progressed from where it had left off. He talked about his family, and she found herself reluctantly trusting him and soon telling what little she could about her own just so he would continue. Despite herself, she liked his stories, how on his lips English became an old language, filled with sighs and long pauses. He described the close-knit clan, the holiday gatherings, the quiet childhood. He’d told her he was twenty-six, but he seemed older.

  They still want me to move back, he said. That’s how they are. And maybe I will, later.

  He explained how, when he was a boy, he’d believed that he and his parents had moved away because of his mother’s tattoos. His stepfather had been an accountant, an overly conventional man who’d mysteriously married Bart’s mother when, after a year in Boston, she’d returned home with dozens of tattoos and a newborn. Among Bart’s earliest memories were the frequent requests that she dress differently. Skimpy tops showed a black Tinkerbell on her breast, barbed wire on her arms, a heart of melting ice in blood-red flowers on one shoulder.

  My stepfather didn’t complain so much when it was winter, because she wore a lot of clothes, but … Bart paused, gazing at the dark stable rafters.

  There was … she had a tattoo on her wrist. It was the one my stepfather really hated. It was just black writing, but it said Barthélemy. That was my father’s name. I thought it was mine.

  Isa knew that if she told him about Levon or Jude he would understand. But the history that she’d explained the previous night meant nothing—colonization and settlements, wars and capitulations. None of it touched her life: the overshadowing Church that would proclaim divine mission, that Québec was to maintain the true Catholicism otherwise lost in France—agrarian society and work the vessels of preservation. Still she found herself again talking about how the French-Canadians ended up in New England. He, in turn, described summer festivals and singers who came from up north, the snippets of a language he’d heard from his grandparents.

  I haven’t been to my mother’s grave since she died, he said suddenly. Isa was growing used to this, the way he switched subjects. She tried to decipher the paths that his emotions took.

  I always thought about going back, but I never did, even when I was in Lewiston. It was as if I couldn’t. I can’t explain it.

  Is that where you’re from? Lewiston? She knew the name from the history books. It had been important though the details eluded her.

  Yes, he said. She realized she’d interrupted.

  After a brief silence, he again began to speak of the winter when he and his stepfather had seen the homeless man, how they’d packed and moved. A week later, in North Dakota, while his stepfather was at work with the car, his mother walked to the store for bread and never came back.

  He paused, distracted as if seeking through what he’d said. He told Isa he’d spent nights trying to remember, to close his eyes and see the homeless man, the shabby green
military coat with latches like curtain hooks, the hems curled like fallen leaves. His relatives had claimed to know nothing about him. Bart could never quite recapture the face, the wet, breathless mouth with the moustache growing into it, the hard, dark eyes. During his travels, he’d studied the homeless men he’d met.

  Telling all this, he repeated details often. He spoke with such clarity and immediacy of emotion that everything seemed recent: the loaded U-Haul, the drive west, nights in cheap motels. Hours after Bart’s mother had walked to the store for bread, his stepfather had returned home pale and stricken. He ignored Bart’s questions and closed himself in the bedroom with the phone. Only in Maine did Bart’s grandfather tell him what had happened—that she’d been hit by a snowplow. Before that there was the silent drive: fields lost beneath snow, cities distant in updrafts of mist. Strangely these were the details Bart couldn’t leave off—an earth that repeated with the mauled ridges where the interstate ran through, towering signs of Exxon and Citgo, fast-food restaurants and warehouses on bypasses. It was burned in his memory though he could recall no names, only emptiness, repetition, that nothing could be still in the rushing country, the weaving chains of tail lights, blue plains sinking along the dark curve of distance.

  Tentatively, Isa put her hand on the muscle of his neck. He smelled of sweat. She kissed him. Her thoughts were spinning. How should this be done? It was both clumsy and too careful, and it amazed her that she’d never kissed anyone before, had married but hadn’t so much as dated, too big or lonely or unable to speak to another. Was love something she’d read about so often she’d come to believe in it? She held her face to his shoulder. She unbuttoned his shirt and moved her hand over the soft hair of his chest. She uncurled his fingers from a fist and brought them to her. They breathed against each other’s necks. She’d never considered this as it would be, the touching or how quickly it would all become automatic and strange, the weight of their bodies, layer upon layer of muscle and fat. She wanted to let herself stop thinking. His face was against her shoulder, his eyes closed. She put her fingers in his hair. Afterwards he lay next to her. The stables were strangely silent.

  They got up and in the cool dark they walked down the centre aisle. A bulb hung above a concrete slab where she washed the horses. She held the hose, chill water running to her elbow. He looked like a man from another time, his coarse features, the sideburns, the nose with its split lobe, heart-shaped. Water flashed in his hair, along his neck and shoulders. It captured the light of the bulb so that it seemed she was looking through his skin at the bright shape within.

  They returned to the tack room and lay on the mattress that she’d taken off the fold-out bed and put on the floor. She thought about where this could lead. The room seemed cavernous with the rhythm of their breathing. She closed her eyes. A breeze moved in against the humid air. She dreamed of setting out: she and Bart in dark glasses, a plaid suitcase crammed with cash.

  They stayed there until the grey pre-dawn gave the smudged window glass a battered look. She thought maybe he’d fallen asleep, but his eyes were open. He was gazing at the ceiling.

  Later they dressed and she walked with him down the pasture. The stream rushed, and they stepped through the shadows to the collapsed stone wall where Levon often waited. She thought of what Diamondstone knew and that she hadn’t truly questioned Bart’s duplicity, the evangelical show, the mute giant.

  My heart’s not in the religious stuff anymore, he said abruptly as if she’d spoken and he was simply responding. Because of the way his voice fell away, he sounded as if he might cry.

  Maybe it’s more than that, she told him.

  Somehow she knew he wouldn’t affirm this, that he wouldn’t be able to.

  Trying to think of what to say, she realized that she’d dropped her suspicions too quickly—the magic of the giant appearing, fulfilling her longings. She was already seeing this in the past. She told herself that she’d survived being Jude’s daughter, survived Levon even and her guilt, though she’d aged too quickly. Beyond the trees, the sky had begun to grow light. She thought of how you could miss the gravity of a presence.

  The next morning, not long after Levon told Isa that Diamondstone had again been there the previous evening, Diamondstone returned. She heard their insistent voices through the floor and went down to the kitchen to eavesdrop, hungry with nervousness. She composed two clubhouses with chicken fried in the bacon’s fat, tomatoes sprinkled with spices, yellow homemade mayonnaise with a pinch of cayenne whipped in. As she prepared it, she ate a wedge of cherry cheesecake from the wrapper. In the other room Diamondstone was trying to persuade Levon to join his mission.

  This could be home base, Diamondstone was saying, a camp for re-education and training young minds. I have served my years, and God has brought me here. He—He brought me to you, a man who has lived alone so long in contemplation. How can I simply leave? Was all that you have worked for so that you can spend your days alone in a house, this house? Alone, in this house on this land that God gave to you, cultivating your wisdom for no reason?

  And, Diamondstone said, and, forgive me for saying it, but I cannot help but see. With a wife who does not love you but simply lives off your wealth.

  Fantastic, Isa muttered, suddenly ravenous and all at once knowing that Diamondstone had overestimated his rhetoric. Levon was greedy, and despite his fanciful words, the point of his life wasn’t wisdom so much as appearance—to have what he could show, wisdom or wealth. And so, as she licked the spiced mayonnaise from her fingers and picked strips of chicken from the toasted bread, she waited for what could end only badly. It wasn’t that she underestimated Diamondstone. She feared him even. It was simply that Levon’s greed was a more tangible thing. It had the intensity of revenge, and to the people who, for decades, had called him the Mexican, a Christian living camp, in all its glory, would be ridiculous. Most likely Levon had already devised a denouement for his wealth, a disappearance or mystery. Perhaps he’d interred grand sums, pirate treasures buried around the house as on the shores of a deserted island.

  When Diamondstone finally left, Levon was not in great humour. No doubt he’d seen something he might like in the portrait Diamondstone had painted. He refused to look at Isa as he went up to his room. Perhaps he was also in agreement with Diamondstone’s assessment of her worth, though Levon was in no position to oust his one miserable companion. Still, she wasn’t convinced the story had finished. Soon enough Bart would know who Levon was. Perhaps he did already. Perhaps none of this was absurd, the meals consumed in the stables while the grand questions of life and men’s fates were determined in Levon’s living room. The mute giant might not be Bart’s only act.

  She considered what meal she would make that evening, but nothing came to mind. She found her car keys and left the house, but halfway across the driveway she heard a cough. Diamondstone was standing in the shadow of an oak, his arms crossed.

  Good afternoon, he said and glanced up past the branches at the sky. If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a word with you.

  It was odd, she thought, seeing him step close, how much larger she was, how, if she wanted, she could crush his bones simply by falling on him. It might solve many things, and what judge would find a towering, obese woman guilty of tripping—an act of God, if you will.

  Diamondstone walked with her to the car and then a little beyond, as if both were aware that they needed to put as much space between them and Levon as possible. They stopped where the graded driveway gave onto a descending pasture, beyond which was the stream and, distantly, the van parked at the end of its track of beaten grass.

  The boy tells me everything, Diamondstone said.

  The boy?

  Bart. He’s very innocent. There’s nothing I don’t know. He’s clearly in love. Nobody has ever showed interest in him before.

  What do you want?

  Diamondstone lifted his upper lip as he considered her, his teeth small and glittery.

  I want you to h
elp convince Levon. He’s a fine talker. He’ll talk all day. But he won’t give so much as a penny to the mission.

  He might not have as much as you think, she said, and as soon as she’d spoken she realized how true this could be. She hadn’t shied from luxury these last years. She’d raided every gourmet-foods store within a two-hour drive, swiping away with his credit card. She knew Levon invested a lot but he must have losses, too.

  Listen, Diamondstone said. I have no ambition to bring you to the love of God. I’ve spoken with Bart, and the educated are the last to be saved and the first to burn. But maybe your judgment will be more lenient if at least one act in your selfish life furthers the Saviour’s mission on earth.

  And if not?

  Bart will find out that you’re married.

  Okay, she said, knowing already that she had no choice. I’ll do it.

  You will? The querying tone was barely discernible, his words sounding like an order but for a faint treble. He moved a finger along the band of his hat. The day was somewhat humid, the lulling breeze a premonition of summer, but Diamondstone didn’t appear to be sweating. His skin looked cold, his sunken eyes no colour she could easily place. They gave her the impression of not having seen clearly, that she should look again. She’d never noticed that he blinked.

  She got in her car.

  Wait a minute, Diamondstone said. We haven’t discussed—

  It’s as good as done, she told him and closed the door.

  That afternoon she stopped at a Chinese restaurant and a steakhouse: sweet-and-sour pork, prawns and rice, ducks in foil, two surf-and-turf platters, lobsters and steak and buttered spuds. By the time she returned home, Levon was gone. He had a calendar of events on his office wall, and she checked it. There was a gallery opening in D.C. He’d been attending such things more and more, no doubt enjoying the aura of sophistication, and he always returned with decorative pieces—art being, he’d told her, the only truly sound investment.