The Man of the House

by Stephen McCauley

  I reached down and switched on the radio. All Things Considered was on, a translator speaking over the barking of dogs and distant gunfire somewhere in the strife-torn world. We had another ten miles or so before we got to Agnes’s, and there was always the possibility I’d find a topic for dinner conversation at the last minute.

  Agnes lived eight miles over the New Hampshire border, about forty-five minutes from Boston—actually, half an hour if, unlike her, you were capable of driving at the speed limit. She was closer to the center of downtown than many of the city’s suburbs, but because she had a New Hampshire address, she insisted upon claiming that she lived “in the country.” “It’s lonely up here in the country.” “It’s not as easy as you’d think, raising a teenager in the country.”

  Her “country” residence was a town house in a development called WestWoods. I found the name of the place a constant irritant. Where were the woods? Any trees within miles of the development had long since been chopped down to make room for the endless strips of shopping malls and factory outlets and condo clusters. And west of what, exactly? There didn’t appear to be a companion development called EastWoods.

  Within minutes of the exit, I was trapped in a confusing maze of on-ramps and cloverleafs and garish neon signs pointing to fast-food restaurants, budget motels, and car dealerships. It was hard to know what to make of this place. It wasn’t a city and it wasn’t a suburb and it certainly wasn’t rural. Although the population density was probably second only to Calcutta, you never saw humans in the open air here, unless they were riding in a convertible with the top down. There were no sidewalks, no parks, and only an occasional patch of grass, usually with an enormous sign planted in it. If, for reasons that were hard to imagine, someone wanted to walk from his condo to one of the gargantuan discount drugstores, let’s say, he’d either be mowed down in traffic or be asphyxiated from exhaust fumes.

  This was a world of vast parking lots connected to one another by roads that, due to congestion, often looked like vast parking lots. Every motel, restaurant, pet shop, and cinema was part of a national chain, giving the whole area a surreal atmosphere of being everywhere in general and nowhere in particular. Once in a great while, you’d come upon a shabby luncheonette or a dimly lit variety store, establishments that might as well have been archaeological finds from some ancient lost culture.

  “Do you know where her place is?” Marcus asked. He was hunched over the dash, peering out the windshield.

  “I’m having a little trouble seeing.” There didn’t really seem to be day or night here, just a perpetual pink-and-purple twilight created by the spotlights in the parking lots and the flashing neon. “Look for a movie marquee done up like a sign for an Adirondack lodge.”

  There it was, glowing in the distance: “WestWoods.” And underneath that, in lowercase letters: “a place to live.” Insipid, yes, but I suppose it gave the residents some help in figuring out what the hell they were doing there.

  I made the turn and headed up the winding drive. WestWoods was perched atop a hill, or, more likely, a pile of dirt left by some nearby construction project.

  “She’s in number fifty-seven,” I told Marcus.

  It was bad enough that the developer had built over three hundred identical units, but most of the residents had individualized their homes in exactly the same way. Above virtually every door was a flag printed with an autumnal tree. In winter, the flags had snowmen, in February, valentine hearts, in spring, baskets of flowers, and so on down through the whole cavalcade of seasons and holidays.

  Although the residents lived in intimate proximity, no one seemed to know anyone else. I’d visited Agnes one summer afternoon and spent a few hours sitting around the complex’s over-chlorinated swimming pool. Nearly a hundred people were stretched out on lawn chairs in identical Lycra bathing suits, smearing themselves with the same brand of sunscreen, all reading the same paperback novel and ignoring one another. My impression was that suspicion, envy, fear, and bottled-up rage at the world in general kept socializing down to a bare minimum.

  I PARKED THE CAR IN THE VISITORS’ LOT, AND Marcus and I trudged up the steep drive. Agnes was waiting at the top of her steps, wearing an expression of indignant bewilderment. “Why did you leave the car out there? There’s a spot right in front,” she said.

  “I forgot about that.”

  “Oh, Clyde. Now everyone’s probably calling the police, saying two strange men are walking the grounds.”

  “Please, Agnes.” She had on a little white scarf tied jauntily around her neck, a red jersey, an immaculately white pair of shorts, red socks, and gleaming white sneakers. The alternating bands of red and white made her thin body look like a candy cane come to life.

  “Well, there have been some break-ins recently. Even out here. I suppose I’ll get blamed if anyone’s car gets stolen tonight. I’m so glad you could come, Marcus!”

  She extended her hand to Marcus just as he was stepping in to embrace her, and their bodies collided in a clumsy exchange that made them both stiffen.

  Physical awkwardness can be winning in some people, but in the case of Agnes, I found it heartbreaking, as I did most things concerning her. At a dinner party she’d thrown years earlier, she’d attempted an affected curtsy in greeting a guest and ended up twisting her ankle. Afraid of spoiling the evening, she sat through the entire meal in excruciating pain, then called an ambulance as soon as the last guest had departed. It was the kind of catastrophe I was always expecting with my sister.

  Agnes and I embraced awkwardly. I could feel the delicate bones in her back through the thin material of her jersey. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating slightly with pent-up nervous energy. I held her for a moment, wishing I could calm the motor running inside her, but I was quickly overcome by the scent of her perfume. Summer Meadow: honeydew and cloying lilies, with the harsh chemical undertones of insect repellent.

  “I like your hair,” Marcus said, as Agnes led us into the town house. “It was much longer the last time I was here.” His slight drawl had become more pronounced in a decidedly forced way: “Ah lahk your hair.”

  “I thought it was time for a change,” Agnes said. She flung out her hand. “So I had it all chopped off.” Agnes was always asserting that it was “time for a change” or that some action or event had transformed her life; on the whole, though, her life seemed remarkably, depressingly steady. “Take a seat, and I’ll get you something to drink.”

  “Nothing for me,” Marcus said. He sat down on the edge of the sofa and clasped his hands nervously. “I’ve had a rough afternoon. I think I just need to . . .” His voice trailed off.

  Agnes stood perched, waiting for him to finish the sentence. When he didn’t, she looked at me for help. The best I could do was shrug.

  “It sounds like you need a drink,” Agnes finally said. “What about you, Clyde?”

  “I’ll have a diet Coke.”

  “A diet Coke? You guys! I opened a bottle of wine for you.” She stomped her foot in mock outrage, a particularly ineffective gesture considering the ultra white sneakers.

  “All right,” I said, “we’ll try the wine.”

  “You’ll probably hate it. I know Marcus is a connoisseur.”

  “Only of coffee,” Marcus said.

  He was trying to be charming, but Agnes’s face fell. “All I have is instant,” she said. “I wish you’d told me, Clyde. And Marcus has had a bad afternoon. You’ll have to tell me about it, Marcus, once we get rid of Clyde.”

  I paced around the living room, suddenly unnerved at the sight of Agnes’s furniture. Everything in the room—the chairs, sofa, end tables, magazine racks, lamps, and bookcases, even the mirrors and picture frames—was spindly wicker. Everything was fragile, uncomfortable, and determinedly light; it made me want to cry.

  Five years earlier, Agnes’s husband, a ridiculous person named Davis, had left her, announcing that he had to “find himself.” He’d actually used those words. As he’d explaine
d it to me, “I went from being a perfect son and perfect student to being a perfect husband and father. Now I need to find myself and figure out who I am.” I’d listened in astonishment, torn between anger and embarrassment at this inversion of early-women’s-lib jargon. The whole rant smelled of budget psychotherapy. Among other things, his claims of perfection were entirely gratuitous. As for finding out who he was, the process turned out to involve nothing more soul-searching than moving into a garish singles complex built around a health club, going on a lot of ski weekends in Montreal, and ignoring the impediments of his former, perfect incarnation—his ex-wife and daughter, for example.

  Agnes moved into WestWoods shortly after the divorce. She’d bought all this breezy furniture as a way of proclaiming her delight at her newfound independence. “It’s time for a change, a whole new beginning,” Agnes had said, although the beginning of what had never become clear.

  “Why are you pacing?” Marcus whispered.

  “I’m restless,” I said. “This wicker makes me restless.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Look around. One match, and we’d be reduced to ash in seconds.”

  “Just sit down, will you? You’re making me nervous. And believe me, I’m nervous enough already.”

  “No whispering in there,” Agnes called out from the kitchen.

  I sat on one of the chairs. The seat was too short and the flowery cushions were too big, and I felt as if I was being thrown onto the floor.

  Agnes came in with a tray of glasses and an open bottle of wine. She set the tray down on the unsteady wicker coffee table and poured. “You were so late,” she said, “I had a taste already.”

  I took a sip of the wine; it was so chokingly sweet, the room began to spin.

  “Tell me the truth, Marcus: it’s horrible, isn’t it.”

  “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s very good. Exactly what I needed.”

  “He’s just saying that, isn’t he, Clyde?”

  “He means every word, sweetheart.” And then, because the subject couldn’t be avoided indefinitely, I said, “Where’s . . . Dad?”

  Agnes had her glass to her lips. She held up her hand until she’d taken a delicate sip. “Downstairs. I told him you wanted to talk with him.” She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin, and I immediately felt a wave of resentment toward her roll in.

  “Why did you do that? You didn’t make it sound important, did you?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t make it sound like anything, Clyde.” She was sitting sideways on the far end of the sofa, with only one leg resting on the cushions. She looked at Marcus and forced a laugh. “I hope you’re hungry, Marcus.”

  “I’m famished.” Marcus’s face was frozen in a grin that made him look like one of those handsome, distressed perfume models. Aside from an occasional game of squash, he never exercised. His stomach had no definition to speak of and his chest was concave, but he’d been blessed with wide shoulders that filled out the striped shirt and made him look naturally fit. “I met someone for lunch, but I wasn’t able to eat.”

  Agnes set down her wineglass. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I wish you’d told me, Clyde. I hope there’s enough for all of us.”

  “I’m sure there’s plenty. It smells absolutely wonderful.”

  “Well, I’m not all that hungry myself, so I won’t eat much. And Barbara probably won’t do more than nibble.”

  “Clyde mentioned she was anorexic,” Marcus commented brightly, as if praising an accomplishment.

  “That was years ago,” I said. “Around the time of the divorce.”

  Barbara had gone through a period of pushing food around on her plate for a couple of months, lost twenty pounds, and then took up shoplifting. We were all relieved when her weight returned to normal, but it seemed perfectly in character that she wasn’t able to sustain her interest in even a behavioral problem for more than sixty days.

  “Her father bought her a microwave,” Agnes said, “and she eats most of her meals in her room.”

  Once she’d headed off to the kitchen, Marcus whispered, “You don’t have to be so critical of the poor kid. She’s doing her best.”

  “I know that,” I said.

  “It’s not her fault,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “She just needs a little appreciation.” Marcus stood and poured his wine back in the bottle, then walked into the kitchen. “Ah you makin’ one of your mothah’s recipes?” His voice was sounding more like Tennessee Ernie Ford’s every second.

  The drawling mention of the disastrous cookbook was enough to propel me down the staircase to the basement, where my father had been in residence for two years. It was one of those iron structures that wind down in a tight, narrow spiral, and it always made me feel as if I was heading into the hold of a doomed submarine.

  The “ground floor,” as it was euphemistically called by the real estate developer, consisted of a two-car garage, a small bathroom, and the room that had once been Agnes’s office and was now our father’s lair. In all seasons, the basement was damp and chilly, a little like an underground cave, and it still smelled of poured concrete.

  From behind the door, I could hear the sound of a television. I braced myself and knocked softly. When there was no response, I pushed the door open. My father was sitting in a chair crammed between the wall and the bed, his eyes glued to the television screen. His face had a grim, ashen look, and despite the fact that he was clearly breathing, I felt a ripple of panic and relief at the thought that perhaps he was dead.

  “What’s on the tube?” I asked.

  He shushed me and pointed to the TV with the remote control. “Look at that moron,” he said, “spinning that goddamned wheel.”

  I turned to the screen and watched as a group of hyperactive game show contestants applauded and bobbed up and down, with lights flashing on and off behind them.

  “Go ahead, fatso,” my father said, “spin the wheel.”

  The wheel stopped on a slot marked “Bankruptcy,” and my father broke into hearty laughter. “Good for him. I hope they take his house away from him.” When a commercial came on, he switched off the sound and turned to me in silence, waiting for something: a greeting, a reproach, a handshake? I never knew what was expected of me, although he always expected me to show respect by making the first move.

  I opted for the obvious and asked him how he was feeling. One thing I had to say for my father’s mysterious illness was that it gave me a conversation opener.

  “I’m feeling lousy. How do you think I’m feeling, stuck down here in this dungeon?”

  “You look well.”

  That much was true. Whatever the nature of his sickness, it didn’t seem to hurt his appearance. He’d always been a tall, solid man with wide shoulders and big features—a thick nose with a cleft in its tip, heavy brows that seemed to get lower every time I saw him, as if they were threatening to pull his whole forehead down over his eyes. He was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, and his arms looked massive, even now. His face was always imprinted with a look of disgust, the corners of his mouth pulled down and his lower lip folded over, as if he’d just stepped in dog shit. It worried me that there was no sure way to know if he wore this expression when I wasn’t in his presence.

  He grunted at me and switched on the sound again. “Why the hell should I look good? I’m half dead and I’m stuck down here listening to those two fighting day and night. I told your sister she was spoiling that girl.”

  “Barbara?”

  “Who else? Well”—he shrugged—“her father was a loser, so why should she be any different? Leaving him was the only smart thing your sister’s done.”

  “I think he left her, Dad.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake, can you blame him? Here we go.” He pointed at the TV. “I hope this moron loses his shirt.”

  For as long as I could remember, my father had been addicted to television game shows, mostly because they confirmed his belief that the h
uman race was made up of a bunch of brainless fools.

  I sat down on the edge of the unmade bed. The room was almost chilly, despite the warmth of the evening. It smelled of some combination of concrete, gasoline from the garage next door, and whiskey, probably from the half-empty glass on the bedside table. I knew I should make a stab at defending Agnes, but it was a relief to have him criticizing someone other than me.

  I think I suffered from some peculiar strain of amnesia when it came to my father. I had detailed memories of my dull childhood—school anxiety, friends who’d betrayed me, trips to the heartbreaking local zoo/death camp, fights with Agnes, books my long-suffering mother had read to us, the whole suffocatingly boring Kodachrome slide show—but when it came to my father, I couldn’t remember much about him before he’d turned bitter and scowling. From time to time, I tried to conjure up happy memories, but I invariably decided to leave well enough alone, since it was certainly possible that none existed. What I was most aware of was a vague sense of wanting something from him, but what, I didn’t know.

  The show was winding up for its splashy finale, a lot of swirling lights and a parade of automobiles and bedroom sets and hotels in Hawaii. My father shut off the sound and rotated his upper body slowly and stiffly. He reached behind him, plucked the glass off the table, and turned back to the television.

  “What’s that on your wrist?” he asked.

  I checked. “My watch?”

  “Oh. I thought it was a bracelet.”

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s one of those things you tell time with. You’re wearing one, too.”

  “Don’t get bent out of shape. I just asked.”

  Surreptitiously, I looked down at my wrist. I was wearing a gaudy gold knockoff I’d bought on the street the last time I’d been in New York. It was too big for my bony wrist, but it kept remarkably good time. I snaked my hands around the back of the chair, slipped it off, and snuck it into the pocket of my sports jacket. “Dad,” I said, hoping to call a truce, “Agnes is making dinner. Are you coming up to eat?”