Jerome disappointed Matthew as he disappointed everyone, lapsing into booze and dope as if to spite or even kill Matthew’s overbearing devotion. Matthew told himself that Jerome’s destructive compulsions were a result of not being able to express his affection for Matthew. A bug in the theory was that Jerome saw no value in not getting what he wanted. This had come bitterly clear the day they shot the whales last September. That’s when Jerome began to plot a last drug deal to raise Robby’s bail, to postulate first Lois, then Anna, as solutions to his sorrow — all with the implicit assumption that Matthew was strictly an encumbrance. Robby’s crime had seemed to invite such postulations of change, a turning point beyond which the rules would be different. Matthew hated change. He’d arranged his whole life against it out of fear it would strand him alone.
Preemptively then, anticipating the future, Matthew had taken the desperate action of changing before anyone else did. He hadn’t confided his illness to Jerome; he’d seized on the stranger Willoughby Claire to bear that burden and all others. From the start, he’d made more of Willoughby’s noble heart than he had evidence for. But he’d trusted in simple fairness. He had cancer, for God’s sake! Would fate really welsh on the skimpy solace of granting him one loyal friend? If only he’d deteriorated in a swift poignant slide, their parting might have been, as it were, happy. Remission messed everything up.
As Matthew’s cancer had progressed through the winter, it gained a quality of unreality like that of Matthew and Willoughby’s relationship, that is, of a fleeting, far-fetched experiment with nothing long-term at risk. But an early-spring shrinkage of his largest tumor threw Matthew into hopefulness and Willoughby into worry. The belief that he alone was responsible for Jerome’s death and, now, for Matthew’s life, had fueled Willoughby’s penititential endeavor of faithfulness; the presumption that Matthew was terminal had promised a finish line, a release from that penance. The onset of a feasible miracle of total recovery brought reality down like an anvil.
Matthew clung tighter than ever, as if Willoughby were the very breeze sailing him through to wellness. Meanwhile the thought kept crossing Willoughby’s mind that he wanted Matthew to disappear, wanted, before too long, to leave Penscot knowing he’d stood by him to the end. With remission, however, a crazy gleam of an actual future together burned in Matthew’s eyes. Willoughby had counted on nature to end the fantasy. He wanted out of here, wanted to run and keep running and feel tragic in peace. Nature wasn’t cooperating.
Matthew dove fervently into alternative health treatments. Among the island’s New Age contingent were many purveyors of its therapies, people about whom the worst you could say was that they weren’t consciously charlatans, the masseuse, the macrobiotic nutritionist, and the holistic counselor all whole-hearted believers. Matthew’s apartment became a daily salon of bluejeaned therapists. They were good company. They became companions to Matthew, taking some pressure off Willoughby, which was why Matthew, like any good miserable saint, had hired them in the first place.
From the moment he’d received his bleak prognosis, Matthew’s hope had been to cram a lifetime’s passion into his last months of life. He’d got his wish in a way, experiencing the soaring ego and grim comedown that desire deals like playing cards. The problem was, he’d experienced these feelings alone, his beloved (for that’s what Willoughby was to him) remaining remote as a photograph, an image developed in private darkness.
It shamed him to cling to Willoughby. His dream of rare communion was mocked by the tricks they’d descended to, the duel of qualified need. So Matthew had gritted his teeth and granted Willoughby “space” in hopes he would then easier consent to capture. Matthew endured his fool therapists wishing all the while that it was Willoughby massaging his pressure points, Willoughby preparing his herb tea and seaweed. The travesty of having to make these sacrifices plus suffer disease brought him to new lows. The voice in his head that for months had been muted grew clear in the hours Willoughby wasn’t around; like the indistinct ache in his ribs and back, it pulsed at the edge of perception: “It’s coming. It’s near. It’s yours.” His therapists couldn’t silence it. It took the sound of Willoughby’s tread up the stairs, his hand on the doorknob and a moment later on Matthew’s brow to make it go away. It was no way to live, drowning between draughts of air. This martyrdom of one man to the other, and not Matthew’s dream of Willoughby one day lying down beside him skin to skin because he, Willoughby, wanted it, was what was perverse in their relationship. No way to live — but the only way left him, it seemed.
It was Willoughby who unwittingly initiated their liberation. On the eve of a major checkup with Matthew’s mainland oncologist, Willoughby for the first time declined to accompany him. Had to look for a job, he said; he could no longer bear to be supported, kept, by Matthew. “And we both know you’re out of the woods. Am I really necessary any more?”
Matthew was stunned. Against all good sense, he’d fantasized that his and Willoughby’s hopes were one — of long lives spent in sacred friendship. Bitterness rose in him together with shame as he considered the condescension with which Willoughby clearly regarded him. It had been no different with Jerome, Matthew realized. Jerome too, to escape Matthew’s affection, had hardened his heart with contempt.
Matthew departed Penscot alone, returning two days later. At dinner that evening he told everyone — Willoughby, Lois, Robby, and Brendan — that the doctors had pronounced him virtually cured. “Nothing short of a miracle, they said.” They stood and hugged him one by one, Willoughby, Matthew observed icily, the most overjoyed of all.
Thirty-Five
Lois passed on to Matthew Mr. Winston’s request that he paint the right-hand arborvitae tree outside the Winstons’ solarium. She explained that the old man was fixated on it, that he considered it hallowed. Matthew accepted the job out of morbid curiosity, to see over the precipice; he knew Brendan had been found dangling there, and that Jerome had died just a few feet away. Yet the first time he sketched the tree he didn’t feel the queasy pangs he’d expected. The site was like a sunlit cemetery in its strangely equable sadness. As at a battlefield turned to a tourist attraction, the awful things that had happened here seemed almost a blessing, a part of the pageant that we, the beneficiaries of living now and not then, should get down on our knees and appreciate. Bundled against the sea breeze at his easel each day, he tried to convey in his rendering of the tree and its surroundings that even this could be beautiful someday.
One afternoon someone tiptoed up behind him and touched his shoulder. “Willoughby?” Matthew turned and nearly fainted when he saw it was Brendan Cochran. “My God, boy! Don’t ever do that!”
Brendan’s face reddened. “Gladda see you too, Matthew.”
For a moment their estrangement stretched and growled before wearily lying back down. Each was moved by the other’s appearance.
Matthew looked thin and gray, as suited to the scene as the weathered gazebo at the bluff’s edge. Brendan too was thin, with a long faint furrow down one cheek, and was half a head taller than when anyone had last noticed. Matthew took the boy’s hand. “I’m sorry. How are you?” It had been weeks since they’d last spoken more than hello.
“I’m all right. I heard you been workin’ out here.”
“It’s peaceful. And the Winstons are nice. They make me feel young and vibrant.”
The boy didn’t smile. His senses had begun uneasily to sharpen, absorbing his surroundings bit by bit, the ocean out there, the arborvitae near at hand. Only when his eyes fixed on Matthew’s sketchpad did Brendan fully recognize where he was. “You’re drawin’ the bush?”
Matthew was evasive. “It’s part of the view, is all.”
He watched silently as Brendan moved away from him. The boy’s gaze flicked up to the widow’s walk, whose railing on this side was snapped in two and dangling awkwardly. The breeze ruffled his hair. Matthew saw him swallow and felt his own throat
catch in sympathy. He dropped his forced patter and admitted, “I can’t make it better for you. I can’t say one good thing about it.”
“I never really remembered. I know I fell.” Brendan approached the righthand tree, its evergreen fragrance like the smell of sawed wood. He touched a bough with his fingers. “Was it this one?”
“I believe so.”
Brendan scuffed the grass with his foot. Winter-scraggly, but otherwise nothing was different about it; everything gets absorbed. “When I first came back here with Lois, I didn’t come outside,” he said. “I thought it’d be weirder, seein’ this. Must be somethin’ wrong with me.”
“There’s no wrong or right way to feel, Bren.”
The boy went on, unhearing. “I used to like it out here, when I was with Araby.”
“Do you hear from her?”
“I wrote her after I got her address. She hasn’t written back. She’s afraid still, that’s what Lois says. Mrs. Winston says she’s gonna invite her here this summer.”
“That’d be great.”
“It’s what I want more than anything. Whatsa matter?”
“Happy tears. For you.”
“I don’t wanna get my hopes up. I know what happens.”
“Yes get your hopes up! Beautiful things happen!”
Brendan nodded. He wasn’t surprised at Matthew crying; extreme displays were typical of him, and if nothing else it assured the boy that Matthew hadn’t changed. “So we’re friends?” he ventured.
“Were we enemies?”
“Strangers a little. Not your fault, ’cause you been sick.”
“We’re friends. I love you, Bren. Always have.”
“You stopped with your doctors?”
“I see my local doc now — to monitor my progress. And I have my therapists, of course. They still hover and flit.”
“And Willoughby, I guess.”
“Not so much.” Matthew gave a dry laugh. “He did his time.”
“He’s an okay guy,” Brendan said. “We drove here together.”
“Today? He started work at the boatyard today. That’s what he told me.”
“He was there when I got home from school.”
“Where?”
“With Lois. At home.”
A pause. “I don’t understand.”
“It fits. They’re perfect for each other — the same attitude, like nothing affects them. Don’t know what they talk about, but it must be interesting. They never stop.”
“They talk?”
“Sure. I guess after you’re in bed.”
“My God.” Pain pressed up through Matthew’s hips, boring from the inside out. He grunted stiffly and in rising jostled his easel. Brendan’s face swam before him. “Not Lois,” he mumbled. “She doesn’t deserve Willoughby. It’s not fair.”
“Matthew, whoa! Where you goin’?”
“Inside. Or is he back with her, at home?”
“He’s upstairs, I think.” Brendan waved to a second floor window in which two phantoms became faces staring down intently. An onrush of nausea staggered Matthew as his gaze locked on where Lois and Willoughby’s shoulders touched. An extended history of sexual treachery attached at once to this image, framed in the window like a private eye’s snapshot, of rapport between man and woman. Matthew saw he was cuckold and laughingstock; he saw his love was mocked. He’d ruin them. He’d bludgeon them with such truth of their shallow treacheries, they could never look at themselves again, much less at one another.
The window slid open and Willoughby leaned out.
“Hi hi,” Matthew called cheerily. “I’ve missed you.”
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“Not mine,” with a smile. “And how goes the new job?”
“I quit.”
“After one day?”
“Boatyard’s not my style. I’m a hillbilly at heart.”
“And Lois drove you here?”
“My chauffeur.”
“And your friend, I’m sure.” Matthew’s words hurt to speak them. Where was grace? Where was justice?
Willoughby turned. “Hear that? You’re my friend.”
“And you better earn it every day.”
“That you, Lo?” The wind on Matthew’s back felt like a ton; he leaned against it sweatily, lest it knock him down, leaned too on Brendan’s shoulder, cementing a last alliance whether the boy accepted it or not. His stomach churned at the effort of withholding its acid. “I should thank you for entertaining Willoughby. He’s not reliable on his own.”
“You say that about everyone,” Brendan joked beside him.
“It’s true about everyone. Except you.”
Lois leaned out the window, scrunching in comfortably next to Willoughby. “You’ve spoiled him, Matthew. The man has forgot how to earn a living. He needs someone tough to keep him out of trouble.” She was smiling. She was having fun.
Matthew saw her hand unzip Willoughby’s fly below the windowsill. He saw semen glistening on her fingers like rings she’d conned from a suitor. He saw these things and asked bashfully, “What’re you guys doing up there, anyway?”
“I’m showing him my place of employment. For reference.”
“Yeah,” Willoughby said. “I’m thinking of hiring her.” They shared a giggle at this. They waved a last time, said they’d be down soon, then withdrew into the shadowed room like royal newlyweds.
Brendan said, “They’re so nervous, it’s funny.”
“I wonder why.”
“I think’ cause I caught ’em when I came home from school.”
“Caught them?”
“Just talking, but heavy — on the sofa. They like each other, except they’re worried what I’d think about it so they make a joke out of it. I wouldn’t care what they thought, if I was in love.”
Matthew wanted to be sick. He bent at the waist but nothing came up. Brendan held him as his body heaved; and the groans were awful, not of someone vomiting but as if he were being knifed or tortured, tissues pulling off bone. Matthew sank to his knees and spat in the dead grass. “Forgive me. I’m not well.”
“I thought the doctors said you were fine. A miracle, you said.”
Matthew looked up at Brendan and locked eyes with him for a long moment. He put one finger to his lips in the sign of a secret to keep. Quietly they gathered his gear and headed into the house. On the drive to town with Lois and Willoughby, Matthew was witty and nonchalant. Brendan sat in the backseat with him, his hand squeezed bloodless in Matthew’s grip.
That evening Matthew got Willoughby alone. He touched his fingertips to Willoughby’s chest like the gauges on a lie detector. “Do you remember at the hospital when we first went there together last fall? In the cafeteria? I said I wanted you to need something from me someday, just as I needed something from you. Anything, just to need it.”
Willoughby nodded.
“Any thoughts?”
“I’m doing okay. I’m glad you are too.”
“I wanted to reassure you, is all.”
“Reassure me?” Willoughby said.
“That what I said still holds.”
“I’m really okay. But thanks.”
Matthew hesitated. “Was it all a chore? Was it all just to patronize me in my distress.”
Willoughby hesitated. He realized these questions mattered. “I needed someone’s approval. I needed someone to forgive me.”
“For what? Tell me!”
“For everything. For being a prick.”
“I approve of you. I forgive you.”
“Doesn’t count. You like me, for some reason. Makes you blind.”
“You are so bloody stupid! I love you, you prick. And leaving aside any personal pathologies that may apply on either side, isn’t that what you needed? I k
now I needed it — too much. But didn’t you need it, too?”
“That’s what I needed.”
“Did I give it to you? Grant me that, at least.”
A pause, a nod. “Done.”
“Thank God.” Matthew then reached behind Willoughby’s neck and pulled his face down and kissed him hard on the mouth, releasing him with rough regret, like a falconer releasing a dove he knows has no chance of survival. Matthew had hoped that Willoughby would be his miracle, a flesh-and-blood blessing on the life he’d led, a life lazy, skittish, probably cowardly and probably wasted, but surely not hurtful to anyone. The hope had been irrational, bound to fail — which perhaps, Matthew realized, was the reason he’d pursued it. People never change was his bedrock belief, a lament but also a creed. He understood now, and not even too late, that he was strong enough to make it a lie.
Thirty-Six
One night Brendan had a vivid dream in which he levitated uncontrollably. People around him in the dream seemed to admire his trick of flight as he bobbed above them like a circus performer; but the sensation made him feel airsick and helpless, so he stuffed his pockets with rocks to hold him to the ground. When he described the dream to Matthew, Matthew explained matter-of-factly that Brendan’s history separated him from most people, and that they pitied him for it but slightly envied him also, his soul mysteriously elevated by anguish. “Meanwhile all you want is to be like everyone else.”
The boy asked Matthew, “Are you up there too, bein’ still sick an’ all?”
“What I’m going through is nothing exceptional. But the fact that I’ve laid it on you, as one more unfair burden, is.”
Life Between Wars Page 24
