The Man of the House

by Stephen McCauley

  “I guess not,” I said feebly.

  “Ready to go?”

  I pointed to Ben through the window and explained that he was coming with us. “I hope you don’t mind,” I said.

  “I don’t see why I would.” She had a coat folded over her arm, a fuzzy item the exact lapis lazuli shade of her muffler and her eye shadow.

  “It’s slightly complicated,” I said. “The thing is, he doesn’t really get along with Roger, either. In fact, I don’t like to mention his name in front of him. He thinks the apartment is for me, if you see what I mean.”

  “Well, really, Clyde, I don’t care who the apartment is for or who he is. I made an agreement to show it to you, and that’s what I intend to do. I suppose he’s your ‘nephew’?”

  “I suppose so,” I said.

  The apartment was in a brick building a short distance outside Harvard Square. I frequently walked past it when I was heading to The Learning Place and more than once had admired the shady courtyard that led down to the front entrance. We walked up five flights from the lobby, a climb that left Otis and me winded but seemed to revive my nephew and my real estate agent. “No elevator?” I puffed.

  Taff looked over her shoulder at me as we ascended. “None of that, thank God. Noisy and always breaking down, people getting stuck in the hateful things for hours at a time. Anyway, if there were one, the rent would probably be double what it is.”

  The apartment was a one-bedroom, but considering the size of the bedroom, the definition was more technical than practical. Taff, Ben, Otis, and I peered into the tiny, dark room from the entry hall. High on one wall, there was a window the size of a place mat, and dishwater-colored light was leaking through. Taff shuddered. “Isn’t it charming? You could do a lot with a room like this, Clyde.”

  She didn’t need to convince me. Although it was smaller than my own bedroom, the high ceiling made it seem roomier and considerably less claustrophobic. And there didn’t appear to be any water stains on the walls.

  “But here’s the main attraction,” Taff said, leading us into the living room. She noisily hoisted up a set of Venetian blinds, and the room was flooded with sunlight. “This view is priceless. The Cambridge Common down here, Harvard Square over there. There’s even a smudge of the river from this angle. You might want to make this the bedroom, and use the other for your study.”

  “When is it available?” I asked.

  “January. So you’ll have to let me know soon.”

  When I went in to check on the kitchen, I heard Ben ask her if they allowed dogs in the building.

  “I don’t think so.” The shade dropped loudly. “Now, are you going to be living here, too?”

  I ambled around the rooms, trying to imagine what Roger—or my father, at least—would think of them, weighing the pros and cons from a variety of aesthetic and financial angles. But since I had no idea what kind of furniture, if any, Roger owned, or what kind of income, if any, he had, I found myself picturing my own ragtag collection of sofas and chairs and functional, ugly bureaus tucked into the corners and my own ragtag life lived in the solid rooms.

  “You’re an expert on apartments,” I said to Ben as we walked back to the house. “What did you think of it?”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “More crowded than what you have now.”

  “In some ways. But it would be just one person, don’t forget.”

  He mulled this over in silence as we crossed Mass Ave and entered the grounds of the Harvard Law School. “She’s not sure they allow dogs,” he said.

  “Well. . .”

  “Are you mad at Marcus?”

  “No, no. Nothing like that,” I said. “The truth is, it’s not definite I’m moving. I’ve been looking around, that’s all.” The truth was, acting the part of apartment hunter had made me think that it might be possible to take some action, if not right away, at least at some time before I entered a nursing home. For a few minutes there in the compact kitchen, it seemed not only possible but desirable.

  “Are you mad at me?”

  I turned to look at him, but he was staring off at a group of students gathered in a circle, smoking cigarettes outside one of the libraries. “No! Of course not, sweetheart.” And then, immediately regretting the “sweetheart,” I tried to chew it up and swallow it in a fit of coughing. I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and blew my nose needlessly. “Why would you think that?” I asked gruffly.

  “I don’t know. You’re not around much anymore.”

  “You think I’m avoiding you, is that it?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’m just happy you’re spending more time with Marcus, that’s all.”

  “Because he’s my father, you mean?”

  He stopped at a spindly, trussed-up tree that had been planted the previous spring. Otis lifted his leg and gazed up at us, looking for approval. Ben had put the question so simply and honestly, I didn’t see any alternative but to answer with equal simplicity and honesty.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose that is why.”

  “But what does that have to do with it?”

  “I figured you had enough going on at the moment, enough things you have to sort out.”

  “It’s not like he’s even told me or anything.”

  “He will. He’s waiting.”

  He nodded and looked down at his dog. “What’s he waiting for?”

  “Oh. He’s tangled up in a lot of unfinished business at the moment.” So far as I could tell, Marcus had been tangled up in uncompleted projects, unfinished business, and unsettled relationships since birth. But it wouldn’t do to get too critical of him, especially with his offspring. “It’s a big adjustment for him, the idea of having a son. He’s only known for a couple of months.”

  “I guess it’s a bigger adjustment than for me, since I’ve always known I had a father, even if I didn’t know who he was.”

  A group of militant dog owners had congregated on the green in front of the law school library. Harvard kept putting up signs about leashing and curbing, complete with cartoon drawings of defecating canines with lines slashed across them, but the owners kept ripping them down or smearing them with feces. I was sympathetic to the cause, but the dogs were immense and as brutally aggressive as their owners. “We’d better walk around,” I told Ben. “Bullies and rogues.” We dodged a black Lab and a rottweiler doing battle over a Frisbee. “If you don’t mind me asking,” I said, “how did you figure out about Marcus?”

  “I could sort of tell,” he said, “from the way he was avoiding me.”

  “That’s the giveaway, all right. I could talk with him, if you like. Tell him you know. It might make it easier for him.”

  “I don’t think so, Clyde. I don’t want him to feel cornered into anything. The day we went to the museum, he kept telling Sheila about some old girlfriend who trapped him into letting her move in. He mentioned her three times.”

  When we got back to the house, Ben walked around the oddly shaped rooms, checking out the paneling and the cut-off closets. “The other place is nicer,” he said.

  “Yes, but it’s smaller.”

  “But it would be all yours. You wouldn’t have to share it with anyone.”

  “They might not allow dogs.”

  “You can’t decide for that reason. By January, Louise and I might be back in California.”

  I HAVEN’T HEARD FROM YOU IN WEEKS.” my father said. “What’s happening with Roger’s apartment?”

  “It’s very promising,” I said. “The real estate agent promised me there isn’t a better one in the city for that rent. She promised me she’s going to keep it for me.”

  “Too many promises, Clyde. Roger can’t live in a promise. I take it you haven’t bothered to get hold of the lease and all the rest?”

  “I haven’t had a chance.”

  “Too busy with that fake school?”

  “That must be it.”

  I’d told Taf
f that Roger would take the apartment and had even given her a deposit. I’d spent a fair amount of time fantasizing about the place, but in a guarded, furtive way, as if I were coveting my neighbor’s wife—or husband. I had to keep reminding myself the apartment was rightfully Roger’s and that I’d already told my father too much about it to claim it for myself. Besides, moving into it would mean a whole shift in identity, and I wasn’t sure I was ready for that.

  “Look, Clyde,” he said, “if you can’t get this thing moving, we’re going to have to work on it ourselves. Just give me the agent’s name, and I’ll do all the rest on my own. Not that I have the time. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate a little cooperation from you.”

  “I’ll have the whole thing settled right after Thanksgiving. I’ll send the papers up. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  “It better be right after Thanksgiving.”

  “It will. What are you doing for the holiday?”

  “Thanksgiving? What have I got to be thankful for?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Diane.”

  “Well, that must explain why we’re having dinner together. Your sister wouldn’t think of inviting me. Not this year. She’s too caught up with that goon. He was here the other night. Big, sweaty guy. She didn’t even bring him down and introduce him to me. What’s she—ashamed of me?”

  “I better get going,” I said. “I have a headache that’s about to crack my head open.”

  “I’m sick of hearing about those headaches,” he said. “Every time I talk to you, you’ve got a headache. It isn’t normal.”

  Normalcy was one point I wasn’t about to open for debate, so I accidentally tripped over the phone cord and disconnected the line.

  As instructed, I called Gordon a few days before our date to arrange a time and place. He suggested we meet at a restaurant near his gym called Yellow Fin.

  “You’ve heard of it, haven’t you?”

  “Sure, sure,” I said. “Great seafood.”

  “I’m afraid I can only stay for a drink,” he reminded me, as if I were planning to kidnap him.

  Since graduating from law school, Gordon had crossed the river into Cambridge half a dozen times at most. He used to claim he found it a pleasant, stimulating place to live, but now, even setting foot inside the city limits depressed him. Cambridge was too leafy, too genteel, too collegiate, too straight, too square. Whenever he mentioned any of this, I denied it adamantly, not because I disagreed with him, but because I knew he wasn’t criticizing the city’s character so much as my own. I’d never been to Yellow Fin, never even heard of it. It was a safe bet I’d feel totally out of place there, but I wasn’t about to suggest we meet in a dingy Cambridge watering hole where I’d fit right in.

  It is true that there’s a drab, earnest appearance people get when they’ve lived too long in a university town, a look that comes from living too much in the mind, or at least from living around people who live in the mind. Rock musicians and movie stars touring Boston often stay in Cambridge because they can walk the streets without being bothered. It’s not that Cantabrigians are cool and sophisticated; it’s just that they’re more likely to hound Edward Said or Doris Grumbach for an autograph than Sharon Stone.

  The Monday before Thanksgiving, I showed up at Yellow Fin ten minutes early. It was a gleaming place, all glass and mirrors, and unlike the restaurants Vance and I frequented, it had been designed with immense windows that made you feel as if you were dining in the middle of traffic. You could sit and watch the world go by, and more important, the world could watch you. I took a seat at one of the dime-size tables near the windows and studied my reflection in the glass, trying to get a grip on myself. My shirt, a striped thing in assorted shades of light blue, was a closeout-sale mistake, but there was nothing I could do about it now. The crowd behind me was made up of fairly young people who, judging from appearances, were used to spending money they probably didn’t have. There were several tables of gay men talking in loud groups, and five or six tables with well-heeled straight couples admiring each other through candlelight, in that brief moment of radiant beauty that heterosexuals enjoy for a few months right before they get married.

  When the waiter came to take my order, I told him I was waiting for a friend.

  “A what?” he asked.

  “A friend. I’m waiting for a friend.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”

  He was a squat, homely boy with an expensive, wedge-shaped haircut and one of those superior attitudes that come from having a lover other people desire. I often had trouble making myself heard by this kind of waiter, and worried that Gordon would arrive in the middle of a display of my social ineptitude, I practically shouted, “Martini, martini,” to try and get rid of him.

  A few minutes later, Gordon came around the street corner with his gym bag clutched in his hand and a worried, distracted expression. I’d had a couple sips of my drink, just enough to make me feel a warm flush of nostalgia creep over me at the sight of him. Although he’d transformed himself into a five-foot-six-inch Adonis in the past couple of years, he still had the flat-footed, lazy walk he’d had as a plump law student. Gordon thought nothing of working out vigorously for an afternoon, riding a stationary bicycle for half an hour and climbing a phony set of stairs for forty minutes, but he complained bitterly if he had to do any genuine exercise like walking.

  He stood by the maître d’s stand and loosened his tie, then scanned the room for a full minute, scratching his neck with upward strokes of his fingers. When he spotted me, he waved enthusiastically and sauntered across the room with his gym bag slung over his shoulder.

  “Not late, am I, pal?” he said. “I expected to see you at a table in the back.”

  “I thought I’d shock you.”

  I stood up and hugged him. It was the first time I’d seen him alone since he and Michael had moved in together, and I suppose I held him a little too close and a little too long, for I could feel him pull away—subtly, as if he’d just realized I had a head cold.

  He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit and a white shirt with thin red stripes, which, despite the fact that it was the end of the day, looked like it had just been taken out of the cleaner’s box. As he took off his jacket and draped it across the back of his chair, I couldn’t help but admire the perfect symmetry of his flaring shoulders and rounded chest, even though the whole package looked too flawless and prefab to be sexually attractive. His hair was damp and his face was rosy; either he’d just scrubbed his skin under a hot shower or had had a bracing sexual encounter—or perhaps both at once.

  When the waiter came to the table, Gordon smiled broadly, revealing the most discreet set of braces I’d ever seen. They discussed the virtues of various bottled waters for what felt like a good five minutes, while I lapped at the martini.

  “As usual,” I said when we were alone, “you look terrific.”

  “Aw, Clyde, I can always count on you for a compliment,” he said. “You’re a loyal fan.”

  “But when did you have the braces put on?” I asked. “I thought your teeth were perfect.”

  Gordon’s smile faded. “I don’t have the date on hand,” he said coldly, and glanced around the restaurant.

  I instantly realized my mistake: if I was going to be rude enough to notice, I could at least have had the sense to keep my mouth shut about it.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess what matters is that they’ll be off soon.”

  “Three years,” he said.

  “Ah. Well.” I sucked on an olive. “Good workout, sweetheart?”

  This loosened him up considerably. He launched into a long discussion of his trainer and a whole new set of exercises he was doing to balance out the development of his shoulders and his pecs, as well as a specially designed program to reduce stress on his rotator cuffs and hip joints. I sat listening, mesmerized not so much by what he was saying as by the detail with which he was describing it, and by his conviction that I would be intere
sted. He reminded me of a friend I’d had who loved to describe his solitaire hands, card by card.

  When he’d finished reliving his routine, he reached into the open neck of his shirt and flicked at his chest with his fingers, explaining as he did that he’d recently removed most of his body hair with a depilatory that had left his skin irritated and raw. “It’s been hell wearing clothes for the past couple days,” he said.

  “No kidding. Exactly how much hair have you taken off?”

  He shrugged. “Pretty much all of it. What’s the point in working out if you can’t see your progress through the fur?”

  “I’ve often wondered that myself. But I mean, you’re not trying to say you took off all your body hair, are you?”

  He smirked at me, smug and flirtatious. It was one thing for Gordon to invite a question like this, but another for me to ask it. He sat back while the waiter delivered his water.

  “When did you start drinking?” he asked.

  “Oh, Gordie, come on. I’d hardly call one drink drinking.”

  He raised his eyebrows and sipped at his water. “Whatever you say.”

  Gordon’s mother was an illustrator who’d made life miserable for everyone in his large family for decades, first by staying falling-down drunk for twenty years and then by turning self-righteously sober. Outside of the occasional weekend vodka-and-poppers binge, Gordon rarely drank or did drugs. I felt like a sloppy lush under his scrutiny. “It was a momentary lapse in judgment,” I said. “Tell me all the news, sweetheart.”

  “There’s not all that much to tell,” he said, and looked at his watch. It was obvious he was beginning to regret having agreed to spend time with me and had started to count down the minutes until he could leave. I myself was beginning to wonder why I’d suggested the get-together. It wasn’t as if I expected our dissolved relationship to spring back to life. It wasn’t as if I even wanted that. “Michael and I are going to Brazil in January.”