Fool (Nancy Pearl's Book Lust Rediscoveries)

by Frederick Dillen

  If one had to come back for a visit from beyond the pale of want and ruin, this was the way to do it, the way a tiger would do it, magnificently.

  He nodded a special attention to Dicky Kopus, the nod of an assured superior, but not too superior since Kopus was probably the closest thing he had to a friend in the room.

  He was surprised there were quite so many of the rest of them, but more and more people retired and winterized and came year-round, and most of the rest came, as Barnaby’s family had begun doing, to have Christmas on the Point. Of course there were also a few who’d been downsized and now pretended they had figured out how to consult from the Point, and they were delighted to see someone with Barnaby’s magnitude of misfortune. Barnaby sought out all the faces and eyes, and nodded with the nobility of a deposed monarch. He breathed deeply in preparation for his speech to Childs.

  He looked to the farthest back corner, and there was Choate Winott, the senior Winott, the banker, the patriarch, not seen here, Barnaby thought, for at least five years. And now he’d come for this meeting in the hut which he lent to the association in perpetuity. What a happy surprise for Jerry Childs in his new country-privilege outfit.

  But something of a discomfort for Barnaby.

  To have to look old Winott in the eye, despite his palpable authority, was certainly not the same as having to look his own father in the eye. Choate Winott probably didn’t recognize Barnaby now, and had never met him in more than passing even in the old days. But Choate Winott had known and respected Barnaby’s father, and Barnaby’s father had returned the respect. And so Barnaby chose actually not to meet Choate Winott’s eyes.

  Beside Winott was someone with a silhouette of too much hair, a renegade offspring from the Winott compound who had been pressed into service as the old man’s driver and who had decided to survive this trial of youth by turning away from everything and staring out the window at the snow-covered pods of day sailboats pulled from the yacht club anchorage.

  As Barnaby looked past the frizz of all that hair and out the window himself, as he prepared to fire on Jerry Childs in the next breath, the sun broke through and for a moment shone weakly off the tipped hulls and the snow, and that shine of light came in through the window and turned the renegade frizz to a transparent copper halo the color of Marian’s hair.

  It wasn’t Marian’s hair. It couldn’t be Marian. But it was the same color.

  It was the color of the girl’s hair from the Winott Cup finals. That was who it was: the most recent of the thousand summer girls he had seen and loved and then forgotten about—without their ever knowing, most of them. She must have been Winott’s daughter from the not-quite-scandalous second marriage. How nice to be an important banker and to have married a younger woman before the term trophy wife came into vogue. And now a pretty young daughter in his old but still rock-solid age. If Barnaby had had a hundred million bucks, he would never have been the man Choate Winott was. Nor would anyone else in the room, which was what they were probably all thinking before Barnaby arrived to distract them, all except Jerry Childs who probably still imagined that that kind of thing rubbed off if you got close enough. As if it weren’t already too late for Childs even to be a legendary schoolboy hockey player, not to mention the rest of it.

  The sun went away and the hulls dulled, and the girl turned around into the room and looked at Barnaby.

  It was Marian.

  Marian with her hair undone.

  And Barnaby had to speak now or lose any hope of ever speaking.

  He felt as if his stomach had fallen out from inside of him. He felt as if the hut’s worn, board floor had fallen away from under the reach of his legs and feet. Marian with her hair released into a radiance around her face, Marian looking right at him with an expression of not complete surprise, as if she knew him and even knew him here. She did know him, and she was more beautiful than he had ever understood, and he held his breath. She’d known all along. He held his breath because he needed breath to speak, and he must speak and speak now.

  He turned with as simple and elegant and forceful a motion as he could manage in a circumstance when his feet were not in contact with anything, and he said to the asshole Jerry Childs, “How do you do, Jerry.”

  That took all of Barnaby’s breath, but a pause was appropriate to let Childs feel the impact of Barnaby’s presence and attention, to let Childs stew in the deserts of his assholeness.

  To give him his due, Childs did not flinch before Barnaby’s imposing ghost of fortunes past. Childs had fiber. He also had Kopus in the room for proof of at least a little ascendance, and back in the corner he had old Winott for example and aspiration.

  “Hello, Mr. Griswold,” Childs said.

  Mr. Griswold. Christ. “Barnaby is fine, please.”

  “Merry Christmas to you, Barnaby,” Childs said with an invented politesse that almost really did get to Barnaby.

  It was all he could do not to shout, Don’t Merry Christmas me, you asshole. But he held himself in. He was a cop and a fireman. Truth and justice were on his side. He stared at Childs and waited.

  “Barnaby, to get right to the point, I understand that you have turned over what was always the Griswold house to your ex-wife. Unless you have another property on the Point, that would mean you are no longer a member of the tennis association.”

  “Yes,” Barnaby said. “I hope, however, that has not prevented my name from being inscribed on the cup as this past year’s winner.”

  “Your name is on the cup,” Childs said with the slightest evidence of relief.

  Relief?

  Ah. Childs thought it was over. Childs didn’t know about the deeding of the house. It was always a surprise when everyone did not know everything about the terms of a divorce, but it was an agreeable surprise in this case.

  “Good,” Barnaby said, and waited for Childs to finish his business.

  “Since you are no longer a member of the association, since your daughters and your ex-wife have never demonstrated any interest in tennis, since the house is now in your wife’s name, since your daughters have not come to assert any right to association privileges, I thought it might be best to simply take the Griswold name off the association rolls of membership. In fact I was about to move that we all vote on that as you came in just now. If your daughters were here, of course, they might argue with some reason for continuing membership. But they are not here, despite notification, which is I think fair evidence of disinterest.”

  Oh Christ, what an asshole. With the Swifts, at least you had always been able to hear the hatreds and perversions that provoked each scheme of expulsion; often you were able to get formal recountings of the specific outrage behind the hatred. The Swifts had been an entertainment, a reason to get out of the house during Christmas week without going back to work.

  “If you’d like to sit down, Barnaby, we’ll go ahead and take the vote. You won’t be able to vote yourself of course, but I’m sure we’re all happy to have you here as a visiting friend of the association.”

  Barnaby did not move to sit.

  Now was the moment, but Barnaby paused for effect. You didn’t make as many pitches as Barnaby had made without learning something of dramatic presentation.

  “Mr. Griswold? Will you sit for the association vote?”

  Barnaby drew the papers on the house from his breast pocket and turned to the rest of the room and spoke.

  “These papers will show that the Griswold house has been deeded not to my ex-wife, not to Win, but through Win to my daughters. It is still a Griswold house and will remain a Griswold house for some considerable time at the very least. I am here on my daughters’ behalf to be sure that as Griswolds they remain members of the Winott Point Tennis Association and retain the right to play in the tournament whenever they choose, regardless of whether they ever show up for these annual meetings, which were originally meant to be honored, as we all know, by every member’s absence.”

  He did not look toward Choat
e Winott. He certainly didn’t look at Marian. He didn’t let himself conceive of Marian. But he looked at the rest of them, and they looked back with wonder and delight. He was providing the best show since Asa Swift’s wife had tried to throw crazy Asa out, bodily out the door, while he was director. Barnaby smiled at them all. It was too late for a career as an actor, but it was never too late to appreciate one’s own gifts.

  He turned to Jerry Childs again.

  “If you’d like to look at these papers to be sure that I am not lying about control of the house, you are welcome to do so. If you wish to contest my right to speak on my daughters’ behalf, I am prepared to step outside with you where we can pursue that contest with our fists. Although I should warn you that I have been working out and that if I punch you in the nose it will hurt.”

  He held his posture at its loftiest. He tried with all his might to feel the floor so that he could know he wasn’t tipping over. He stared at Childs and held the papers on the house out with one hand.

  “No,” Childs said. “That won’t be necessary. If the house belongs to the girls and you want to urge continued membership on their behalf, I’m sure we can all agree to keep the Griswold name on the rolls with the girls as active members.”

  It was an easy victory, perhaps an automatic victory once he’d made it in the door, but it was a necessary victory just the same. It was a small victory by some lights, but for Barnaby every victory right now, especially this one, was important.

  Nor was he finished.

  There was a part of him that wanted to really take a swing at Childs, because Childs was not a big man even if he was ten or fifteen years younger than Barnaby.

  But that wouldn’t do any service for the girls once Barnaby was back in Oklahoma or wherever he was next year or the year after.

  No, Barnaby put the papers to the house back in his breast pocket and stepped to Childs and said, “Thank you.” He said it sincerely, and he shook Childs’s hand.

  Childs shook back and said, “You’re welcome,” but Childs was not happy. Of course he was not happy.

  So Barnaby held on to Childs’s hand and turned to face everyone else with his own free hand around Childs’s shoulders.

  “Traditionally,” Barnaby said, “the champion takes the Winott Cup home and keeps it from the time it has been engraved until the beginning of the next year’s tournament.” At this, Barnaby nodded past Childs to where the cheap silver-plate trophy stood polished but battered on a small table which also held Childs’s notes for his meeting. “I cannot know what my prospects will be in the next months and years, but circumstances are likely to keep me far away from Winott Point, and my diminished finances may not let me return at will. So instead of taking the cup home with me as is my right, I will ask Jerry Childs please to take custody of the cup in my stead. I can think of no more safe or proper repository for the cup during my unfortunate absence than in Jerry’s honorable household.”

  Why had Barnaby never seriously considered a political career? Because here was a true and viable gift.

  There was applause.

  Of course there was applause.

  They were seeing one of their own who had lost everything go nobly away. What a figure. Ruined, and walking head up, conscious to the last, out into the great, gray sea of unwashed reality, into the broth and under, beneath the surface and lost to view. Barnaby Griswold. He was moved himself.

  Beside him, Jerry Childs was close to tears at being in the center of such an event here in the Winott hut, with even Choate Winott watching. Childs held Barnaby’s hand and shook it and would not let go. For just a second Barnaby was afraid that Childs might press his perfectly combed head into the shoulder of the chesterfield because of so much emotion.

  Barnaby’s daughters were now members of the association forever, whether they liked it or not and whether they moved to Sri Lanka in the morning. And if the girls didn’t care less about tennis, and if Barnaby’s father wouldn’t have cared less, and if his mother had always hated all of it, well…Well, Barnaby cared a good deal, and he had made it right.

  Applause resounded within the Winott Point Tennis Association.

  Griswolds, his children, belonged, and always would belong.

  Ada was going to die shortly, most likely because of her heart.

  Barnaby thought of that as he and Happiness walked Ada slowly but with swagger back to the master bedroom. Barnaby had an arm around her so that his hand reached under the loose flesh of her upper arm. His fingers cradled very firmly through the thin silk of her blouse to the stretched, heavier material at the side of her brassiere which she had allowed Happiness to remount for the walk. Through that tightness of the brassiere, he could feel the bones of her rib cage, and inside of her bones, he could feel the throbbing pump of her heart.

  This was the first time in months she had walked more than a yard, and it followed all her exercise of the moments just preceding.

  He had always assumed she was going to die, and now, maybe for the first time, he hoped that she wouldn’t. He was glad to have his arm around her. He held her up to get her back to the bedroom, but he also hugged her. He liked to have her next to him.

  And so there it was.

  He did love her. Barnaby and Ada, sitting in a tree.

  They got her into the bedroom and backed her knees against the bed and sat her down and lifted her feet and swiveled her to prone.

  As her head hit the pillow, she said, “You can go now Happiness.”

  “Nighty night,” Happiness said, and floated off and closed the door. From the other side she said, “Call if you need anything.”

  “We won’t need anything,” Ada shouted. “Go away.”

  Barnaby walked around the other side of the bed and kicked off his shoes (he had on real shoes for Christmas, for the goose) and lay down beside Ada.

  Once, he assumed, she had had a larger bed, but this bed was not a hell of a lot bigger than his cot. It was a better quality than the cot, however, and so at least it could hold them both.

  He put his arm around Ada, and rolled her to him, and she grappled an arm out around his stomach. He pulled a couple of surplus pillows out from behind their heads and tossed them off the deck and squeezed the edge of a remaining one under Ada’s neck so that her neck looked more or less aligned as it reached onto his shoulder. Her arm that was not fixed across his stomach lay like a dead wing between them, but she didn’t seem to mind. Barnaby squeezed part of the pillow under his own head and blew the scatter of hair on top of Ada’s head away from his nose so he could breathe without that kind of tickling. Had Happiness put talcum on Ada’s head? For some reason, it smelled like a baby. That was a happy barrier against Ada’s breath, but even the breath didn’t smell terrible this afternoon.

  “I can smell you,” Ada said. “You don’t smell bad. Do I smell awful?”

  “Actually,” he said, “you don’t smell bad either.”

  “Good,” she said.

  She rocked her head a bit as if she were nestling onto his arm and shoulder, and her arm and the claw of her fingers held tightly around the back of his stomach.

  “You have fat, Barnaby.”

  “I still have fat back there. The gym doesn’t get it.”

  “That’s all right. You’re not a boy anymore.”

  With her hand locked into its grip and her head settled, and when she had pedaled her feet a few times slowly, Ada was a sack of weight that Barnaby held against himself with both arms. It wasn’t altogether easy to keep a strong grip on that kind of sack, and Barnaby was glad he had the strength of his time at the gym even if he did still have a roll around his waist. He could hold her for a while.

  His cheek was against her temple, and he could feel her pulse against the edge of his lips. It seemed, under the fine, loose, polished thinness of tissue on her temple, a miraculous pulse.

  Ada said, “I never thought I would have another man in my bed.”

  “Well.”

  “But I
’m glad I did, and I’m glad it was you.”

  “Thank you,” Barnaby said. “I’m glad it was me too.”

  “Our fathers would have liked one another.”

  “I think they might have.”

  “Your father loved you very much, and my father loved me.” Through his shirtsleeve, Barnaby could feel her lips move against his shoulder as she talked.

  “And now we love each other,” he said.

  “Yes. Don’t ever forget that.”

  She let go her grip around his stomach, and Barnaby said, “I won’t forget.”

  “Barnaby.”

  “Yes, Ada.”

  “I have to lie on my back now.”

  “All right.”

  “Will you make the pillows so that your arm can stay under me?”

  “Okay.”

  “And stay beside me.”

  “If I didn’t stay beside you, I’d fall off. Where did you find such a small bed?”

  “Good,” she said, and Barnaby let her roll back onto her back, and then he tucked the pillow up so that her head looked supported.

  “Is that all right?”

  “Don’t take your arm away.”

  Then they lay like that as outside it got dark, as inside the night-lights in the sockets of Ada’s bedroom came up to brightness.

  From the living room there was the soft play of the Christmas music that Happiness had turned back on.

  “I don’t like Christmas,” Ada said. “But some of the music is good.”

  Barnaby thought about his arm, until it went so numb that he either had to pull it out or forget about it.

  In a while he looked at his watch, and Ada said, “I’m not asleep.”

  The breath of Ada’s rotting body lifted up around them like a gentle breeze carrying low tide inland.

  Barnaby must have slept in that, because he woke with a start and looked at his watch again.

  “You were sleeping,” Ada said. “You probably have to go now.”

  “I do have to go,” he said.

  “Thank you for coming to be with me.”

  “You’re welcome. I liked it.”

  “Would you ever do it again?”