Fool (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Frederick Dillen

  Of course Peterpotter would have come.

  And just like that, Barnaby could taste his own bile, could smell already coming off of himself the murky, electrical fury that he had never known in his life until eighteen months before.

  Because Peterpotter had somehow been able to drive a dagger right up to the hilt in Barnaby’s back. Peter fucking Potter. When Barnaby could have known, should have known. Had known.

  The fury now twisted itself so gnawingly in Barnaby’s stomach, that Barnaby began to perspire as if he were afraid.

  From beside, still too loud, the judge said, “You’ve disgraced yourself, haven’t you, Mr. Griswold?”

  Barnaby took a breath. He knew enough to do that.

  He forced the fury back under.

  This was another play entirely. An apology was contrition, and Barnaby summoned that and thought about making things easier and more entertaining for everyone. That was Barnaby’s true nature and most persuasive gift. He turned to the judge with a wan, contrite smile. He turned out to the room again and let his eyes skim over the audience once more. He actually took in the faces, and he was surprised to see that he didn’t recognize any of them except for his assassin Peterpotter. But who else had he known in Oklahoma City besides the real crooks, the go-go guru and his lieutenants? Those assholes would be keeping a low profile if they were still in town. A few of them, quite rightly, had had to take their profiles in fact to jail, though not for the length of sentence they deserved.

  But contrition and charm. Those were the notes to be struck. Barnaby shrugged for his audience and said, as to his having disgraced himself, “Well…”

  “Shut up,” the judge shouted from beside him, and Barnaby was so startled he almost fell back into his witness chair, which he well knew would have been a mistake. If it hadn’t been for the strength and agility recently gained in the gym, he would have fallen, like it or not. He righted himself and tried to think of his happy times on the stationary bicycle. He stood straight and tall and he turned to the judge.

  And despite his best efforts, the fury, for Peterpotter and for everything else, twisted up out of him. He would not shut up. He would not be spoken to in that sort of language or in that tone of voice.

  But before Barnaby could make those things clear, the judge said loudly, “We’re going to begin again, Griswold.” And the judge went on too loudly and too quickly for Barnaby to interrupt. “This is an unusual and informal process here, which means that everyone in this room except for you can do damn near as they please. You will do exactly as I say. The court has been pressed into accepting an apology from you instead of putting you in prison where you belong, but the court is going to see to it that your apology is the real thing. I’m going to see to it. You are either going to leave this room as humbled and as shamed as any man can be, or we are going to go ahead with your trial, because nothing has been signed yet that says you’re free. Is that clear?”

  It was not clear, because Barnaby had absolutely understood that really it was all signed and sealed, but he wasn’t going to question anything now. He’d had the long moment of the judge’s delivery to cool down. Common sense would prevail. He said, “Yes, sir.”

  “Address me as Your Honor. From now on, I’m going to expect you to respond to every statement made in this room as though you are personally responsible for ruining the lives of everyone here. I expect to see you mortified. Because you are responsible, aren’t you? You ruined these lives, didn’t you?”

  Fine, then. If that was the way it was going to be. Barnaby bowed his head in what he supposed to be a posture of penitence, and he said, “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Griswold,” the shout again. “Tell it to these people before you. And show them the respect they deserve. Look them in the eye when you speak to them.”

  Barnaby looked out into the faces and let them look into his face. Was he actually frightened in this tasteless, yellow, little room that should never have had anything to do with his life? He said, “Yes.”

  “Yes, what?” came the shout.

  It was shame Barnaby felt. He was ashamed to be shouted at like this in front of these people who watched him as if all they’d ever wanted was to see Barnaby Griswold yelled at. He said to them, “I ruined your lives.”

  “And?” came the shout.

  “And I’m sorry,” Barnaby said to them, and his voice sounded to himself oddly as if he meant it.

  “Louder.”

  “I’m sorry,” Barnaby said to them more loudly and just as oddly.

  “You disgust me, Griswold,” the judge said, and Barnaby kept looking at the people who’d come to witness him. And they witnessed. They watched his shame. “As a man of the law, I find your carpetbagging, flimflam hustling to be repugnant. But as a human being, my feelings are much more powerful. You are sickening, Griswold. Before you are dentists, doctors, musicians, a high school principal, representatives of a wheat growers cooperative, one automobile dealer and the children of another automobile dealer, a men’s clothier, a tanning-salon operator, a breeder of quarter horses, and any number of restaurateurs and attorneys. All of these people are respectable members of the community and most of them have families, and you robbed them all of all they had. And not everyone is here. We couldn’t fit everyone in here if we wanted to. You have been a foul rot in Oklahoma City, Griswold. A disease. Do you understand that?”

  Barnaby nodded and said, “Yes,” out to his audience.

  Thank God his father was dead. Thank God it was Oklahoma City, so he could not even imagine his father’s ghost in the audience. Jesus. Was he going to weep?

  Out in the audience, Peterpotter stood up, and Barnaby’s rightful fury was nowhere.

  “Your Honor,” Peterpotter said.

  “All right,” the judge said. “Go ahead, Potter.”

  And Peterpotter raised his arm and pointed his finger at Barnaby. “You,” Peterpotter said, and instead of vibrating with outrage, Barnaby shied as if in fear, as if Peterpotter were aiming a gun instead of a finger. “You,” Peterpotter shouted, “killed TJ Baker. God damn you.”

  “No need to swear, Potter,” the judge said.

  “Did you know TJ was dead?” Peterpotter shouted.

  Actually, Barnaby had heard that. A heart attack, naturally.

  “Well he is,” Peterpotter shouted, “and you killed him.”

  Barnaby felt this at least could be responded to, and he said with shameful mildness, “Actually,…”

  “Griswold,” the judge shouted. “Shut up.”

  And with that Barnaby was in fact crying. Not because of TJ or anything Peterpotter could say, but because Barnaby Griswold didn’t like to be shouted at. He whispered through his tears, to himself, not to them, “I didn’t.”

  And the judge shouted, “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” Barnaby said out loud to Peterpotter.

  “Sorry isn’t good enough,” Peterpotter shouted. “You came down here from New York like you were so much better than the rest of us, and you let us think you were a friend, and then you ran away with everybody’s money. And TJ was older than the rest of us. He couldn’t take it. You pretended you were such a big shot in your restaurant up there, and then you stole everything he and his family ever made, as if you just naturally deserved to end up with it, and he looked at what you’d done and he couldn’t go on. He died. These are his sons, right here.” Peterpotter finally brought back his arm and his pointing finger so he could put his hand out over the heads of two very large young men seated next to where he stood. “Tell these boys that you’re sorry, and see if that makes them feel any better. See if they care about your Yankee tone of voice and all your eastern friends who don’t give any more of a damn about Oklahoma than you do.”

  Barnaby stood and looked at the large young men and looked at Peterpotter and looked at everyone else. He could not even be amazed at always having thought he was liked. He only was sorry. He didn’t believe he was sorry enough to weep, but he did weep
, and all of them watched him, his father too, dressed in a suit for work, and everyone was glad about the weeping.

  Barnaby Griswold had won his big match, and there was no one to see. No one who cared.

  No friends. No daughters. Certainly not Win.

  Not his mother even in any condition.

  Not even the ghost of his father.

  The applause died, and people were on their feet and starting off to get ready for the last party of the summer, and none of the faces, some of whom he’d known all his life, were more than acquaintances. A child ran back up the lawn with Barnaby’s racket and met a family going down the lawn the other way and tossed the racket toward the court and went away. Barnaby turned around to search the shadows beyond the far corner of the court, through his rope fence and under the smaller of the copper beeches, to where he prayed his beautiful girl waited with forgiveness of his appalling nature.

  She was not there. He spun to search all around the court, and she was not anywhere. He had cheated and lost her.

  “Congratulations, asshole,” Kopus said grudgingly but earnestly, and Barnaby looked at Kopus. It was Kopus who was Barnaby’s friend. Barnaby shook his damp, furry hand.

  As Winott Cup champion, Barnaby Griswold walked home along the Point lanes by himself.

  He had dedicated himself to his cup with such obsessive commitment that he had come to know the very sun would shine if he won. Yet suddenly it was late in the day and the sun was going down. And just as suddenly, he remembered apologizing two years ago.

  From the moment he had left that courtroom, he had meant to forget about his apology, and he’d succeeded. Two years, after all. Of course he’d forgotten.

  Why should he feel sorry?

  With his championship racket under his arm, he walked into the barny, ramshackle house that had been the Griswold summer place since Barnaby’s grandfather and great-grandfather had floated it across the harbor from town at the end of the last century. It was going to seed like every summer place, sloughing dampness and salt through the most recent wallpaper that Barnaby himself had helped to paste up as a teenager.

  But now it was both more and less than a summerhouse for Barnaby; it was his only house, and it was that only for another few days. One day. Labor Day.

  That he got to stay as long as that was Win’s one great bow to compassion, to the tournament, to history, to every Griswold whose summer ghost still trod the Point during the warm weather months.

  Was it possible that Barnaby had managed not to confront his deadline until the day before it fell? There had been the tournament, and that focus had had to be maintained, but was tomorrow actually the last day? Even for a procrastinator of Barnaby’s ilk, such a thing was astonishing. Twenty-four hours left with a roof over his head.

  He went upstairs and looked at the pile of his real life on what had been Win’s shore bureau. There were transfer papers on the house, going through Win to the girls so that it would stay in Griswold history. There were final papers on the divorce, and with them the number for the cellular phone that Win had thrown off Duane’s boat when she ended their last conversation. (And, no mistaking it: the final papers said, Out after Labor Day.) Lastly, of course, there was official notice, now the judgment was paid in full, that Barnaby’s suspension from the securities business would conclude on the first of the year.

  So the bureau did hold some promise. The chance of gainful employment was not far off, for one thing.

  And the girls would retain membership in the Winott Point Tennis Association; that came with the house. They might not care right now about ever being in the house again, much less playing in the tournament or going to an annual meeting in the old Winott boat hut, but with time they would see the value of all that. Eventually they would know to keep the house and the membership for their own children, even if their father never saw Winott Point again.

  Well, not never. Not never ever.

  Certainly not never ever if he made a bundle as soon as his suspension was up, right after the first of the year. Who cared that he’d already been away almost four years? That he was forty-six and starting over? What did it matter that instead of keeping up his connections and his presence, that instead of making as many calls as was legal as often as was legal, he had made no calls whatever for years?

  It didn’t matter a bit, because instead of making calls, he had made himself into a championship tennis player. Barnaby’s livelihood was all about confidence, and he shuddered to think how much confidence a championship under his belt would give him when he went back out on the street. If anybody imagined they could forget about Barnaby Griswold, they were going to be surprised in four months’ time.

  Barnaby himself was still surprised that Win could want to be on a boat, seasick presumably, for several months. With someone named Duane, no less. There was surprise too that she could go out of touch from the girls for that long. Though now, the girls had a trustee to dole out tuition and they attacked anyone with more advice than money anyhow. They attacked Barnaby if he even thought of coming near.

  It should have been more surprising, just when her mother’s long sequence of small strokes had begun to pick up frequency, that Win could leave the world until the first of the year. But of course Win was hoping for Ada to have the big stroke while Win herself was gone and beyond reach. Which was how Ada would prefer it too, no doubt. Was there even a safety net anywhere, besides himself, the ex-son-in-law? Was there something auspicious in Win returning to dry land and Barnaby returning to the securities business on the same day? Barnaby believed that good news lived even more in coincidence than in most other places. But no. He tried to wish Win and Duane well on whatever was their course.

  Meanwhile, he rooted through the closet for the pair of red trousers that he’d wear to drink from the Winott Cup, his championship trousers. So what if he only had twenty-four hours? He had to muster a little enthusiasm for Christ sake.

  And muster it he did. What a pleasure it was to dress for royal occasions when one was the center of the occasion. A champion. He’d always known that about himself, and he had been right to earn the title.

  Yet when he pulled them free of their hanger and brought them out of the closet, Barnaby had no heart for championship trousers.

  Now he’d won and he didn’t care, and if he didn’t care, who did? Or rather he did care, but what was he going to do now?

  No. That was not the way a champion thought. Who cared about how broke he was when it was only until the first of the year? The ball would drop in Times Square, somebody would kiss him (somebody, surely), and he would walk downtown and be himself as he always had been—“Remember Barnaby Griswold?”—and the money would come back in as fast as it had gone out. If you lived at the shore and understood tides, this was perfectly clear.

  Barnaby had no worries about the first of the year.

  The priority was what to do tomorrow.

  After the party tonight, if he slept late tomorrow, he would have one afternoon in which to do his laundry and pack something. He’d end up leaving home in the dark. God Almighty. Homeless and no kidding. Barnaby Griswold.

  Out the bedroom window on the harbor side of the house, the wormy fruit in the old apple tree waited to fall.

  Inside, Barnaby stood in his jockstrap with his sweat-salted shirt dried to a board around his new, more or less muscled chest, and looked at his red pants. Was he going to put them on without taking a shower for Christ sake? Was he going to go to the party and try making a pass at one of the available thrice-divorced of his own generation when they knew he’d flushed his life down the toilet?

  The hell with the God damned pants.

  He walked down the hall to his youngest daughter’s room and went to the window, his own window as a boy, and stared beyond the brackish little pond toward the cove and the great rock and the twilight ocean. He looked down to where he had set up the croquet wickets on the back lawn in the beginning of summer. He had never played and never put th
e wickets away.

  He closed his eyes and was even sorry that he had not, with or without a shower, put on his red linen pants. They would have cheered him. He kept his eyes closed and smelled, even in summer and with the windows open, the mold of the house, the old horsehair plaster under the wallpaper holding the shore damp and giving allergies to soulless people like Win who didn’t belong in the house anyhow. He could also smell the breath of low tide, of rot at the edge of the sea, coming in the window. Lovely low tide. He hoped someday when he was done and gone, when the maggots had finished with him and his own stink had run its course, that he could come back as part of low tide.

  He opened his eyes and turned to the room’s stained little mirror. He was not actually weeping, and of course he couldn’t weep while he watched himself (could he? no), but there was no denying that he was red in the face. Was this what he had looked like at the apology? He contorted his face into a mask of anguish to go with all his redness. Good God. No wonder they’d stared.

  But that was then. He’d moved on since then. He’d hurled himself with his astonishing, monkish discipline into the quest for the Winott Cup, and he’d won.

  If he gave a damn about redemption and expiation (if he even knew the difference), if he were actually guilty of anything (which he wasn’t; selling short was no crime), he would have assumed as a matter of course that winning the cup wiped clean any and all slates to do with those things, the spiritual slates he supposed you would call them.

  Was there something about the apology he had neglected? Was it possible more was being asked of him than he had already gone through?

  More was being asked, and it had to be spiritual more if there were such a sense all over again of remorse and guilt and shame and fear, such a wish for expiation and redemption, whatever they meant. If there were such a spasm of clenching in his stomach. Was this what his mother’s stomach had felt like for the last thirty years of her life?

  He turned back to the window and looked down at his croquet set. Win’s and the girls’ croquet set now. He looked out over the pond to the cove and the rock, and beyond to the great horizon of the ocean. He breathed in the riches of low tide, also Win’s and the girls’ now, emphatically not his own, and he was weeping for real.