The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  “There’s someone I want you to meet,” Pete says, flinging his arm out toward a man taking spastic swings at the ball with a putter. “John John—what are you doing with that toothpick back there? Get over here!” Pete barks. The man grins and tosses his club after Pete’s iron and walks toward them. He is wearing what looks like a safari outfit—a beige fishing hat and short-sleeved beige oxford shirt and khakis. He has olive skin and an almost pretty face, flat as an Eskimo’s.

  “Faith, this is Lucy’s cousin Jean Pierre—flew all the way from France just to meet you.”

  The delicate balloon of Faith’s confidence, which has been floating along on the breeze of Lucy’s comfortable certainty, bumps and sags, punctured by the terrifying possibility that, in fact, they have lured her here to set her up—to force her into the desperate and intimidating world of adult dating. And with a Frenchman! A man who probably believes in mistresses and puts garlic in his eggs.

  “No, no—stop it, Pete,” Lucy says. “Jean Pierre is visiting on his way to California.” Behind Jean Pierre’s back, Lucy is rolling her eyes, lifting her hands in helplessness. “We didn’t even know he would be here.”

  “An unexpected vis-i-tor.” Jean Pierre bows slightly, extending his hand. The word sounds scientific the way he says it, like an extinct species.

  “Nice to meet you,” Faith says. “I’m sorry I don’t speak French.” She takes care to speak loudly and slowly.

  “No problems.” Jean Pierre smiles. “I speak English.”

  “And I can always parlez,” Pete says, at which both he and Jean Pierre laugh.

  “Well—parlez away,” Lucy says.

  Faith lifts a hand in a tentative wave.

  Once they have rounded the bend and are again on one of the soft cool paths through the trees, Faith pulls out the paper she has been nervously folding and unfolding in her jacket pocket and unfolds it, idly, as they are walking—something for her anxious fingers to do. Lucy is talking about the golf tournament she and Pete just played in—Marvin Dobbs and Cee Cee McCormac, did Faith remember them from the old days? Faith’s eyes meet the words Property of Eliot Dunlap—Do Not Open!!!!! in careful, elongated script on the inside fold of the paper. The sight of her son’s handwriting gives Faith a start. There is a skull and crossbones below the letters—slightly shaky, as if drawn with great care. What is this? And why is it in her pocket? He must have stuck it in when he borrowed her jacket after the play. Carefully she unfolds it with a flutter in her stomach, half expecting some tirade against her, or frightening confession of self-hatred. But what it is, is almost more surprising—a xeroxed map of Concord and Lexington with a route outlined in black running through it. What does it mean for such a simple thing to be marked with such dire threats?

  “. . . it was that paddle tennis court with the broken fence, wasn’t it?” Lucy is saying. The needles hiss gently beneath their feet.

  “I’m sorry,” Faith says. “I just . . .”

  Lucy turns around and looks back at Faith quizzically. “Are you okay, Faithey?”

  “Oh, yes, I just . . .” suddenly Faith realizes she does not want to share her discovery. “I forgot my bathing suit,” she says, holding the paper down at the bottom of her pocket as if, left to its own devices, it might spring out into the air between them. The blood has rushed to her face and her heart is beating quite fast.

  “Hmm.” Lucy frowns. She has reminded Faith about her swimsuit at the end of every phone conversation they have had for the last two weeks. “I have an extra one—it’ll be a little big, but it should do the trick,” she says.

  What a stupid lie it was—now, after all that careful searching for an appropriate new suit, she will have to wear one of Lucy’s! But it is only a brief thought, barely registered over the clatter in her mind set off by the piece of paper. Which is probably silly. He is just a little boy coming up with silly boy-pranks. But somehow this is not convincing to her. What sort of route is her son tracing? After all, what sort of mother has she been?

  ROCK IS SURE HE HAS STUMBLED on to something. Has actually been on to it all morning—Forester in the rhododendrons is just the final piece of evidence. There is a certain trapped way Eliot acts, a passive sneakiness that Rock knows from darker moments of his own life. He’s got something. Cigarettes, maybe, but bigger, Rock thinks. Pot, probably. Maybe even stashed away in that “project” of his. It’s a shame because he’s just the sort of kid to get fucked by that kind of thing—pensive, cynical—if he’s smoking up, it’s his own trip, not some joiner’s attempt to be cool. A few more years and he’ll be off at Holderness, popping whippets in Saturday morning study hall, stealing turpentine from the wood shop. It’s almost tragic, considering how much Caroline loves the kid. Maybe he should tell her, but there’s really nothing to be done—the master plan is in motion. Rock is a firm believer in destiny. Caroline, on the other hand, is one of those responsibility-takers. She will chastise herself for Eliot’s downfall no matter what, but the self-chastisement will reach catastrophic proportions if she has foreknowledge and a sense that she could have saved him. She’ll end up waitressing at some ski resort in Utah, practicing holistic medicine, and listening to Phish bootlegs and Mickey Hart drum solos, talking incessantly about the wisdom of the Anasazi. She will become as tentative and self-despising as her mother. For a moment this image of her—stringy-haired, stunned-looking, and wearing some blowsy South American getup—is so immediate that it blurs the contours of here and now: Caroline as clear-eyed and sharp-tongued, a girl who, even when she first wakes up, succeeds in looking somehow streamlined.

  Rock parks the car across the street from his father’s post-divorce dwelling in Brookline. He has been living here nearly a year now—since the apartment he shared with two of his friends from Wesleyan was repossessed by the landlord. A year in this place! Fucking incredible! The house itself has a crippled, incomplete feeling to Rock—a parody of a home. It is a “duplex,” according to his father, but Rock is certain the word means something more specific than Rock Sr. intends it to. Stretching haphazardly up the right side of a beautiful old Victorian that, for a short period of time, the Kennedy family lived in, it has the feeling of something left over. It is as if the “duplex” is the remainder of some intricate living space equation worked out by the Pforzheimer family, who own the main part of the house—the superfluous rooms they have lopped off like extra piecrust. That his father doesn’t see the indignity of this seems emblematic of a deeper, possibly incurable problem, which Rock cannot name but is afraid he has inherited.

  The “duplex” was decorated by a painfully shy, sad-eyed young interior decorator named Thelma, who was dating Rock Sr. at the time he moved in. Everything in the living room, dining room, and front hall—from the mirror frames to the coffee table—is made of variously stained wicker, which gives the place the feel of a moderately priced hotel winter garden. It took Rock only a few days after moving back in to recognize the brittle, twisted ropes of wicker as the manifestation of psychic distress.

  Rock drops his keys and wallet on the coffee table (wildly tangled, rust-colored wicker with a glass top) and walks around the corner. There is time for lunch and a nap before he has to meet Jimmy Sorrens. He is halfway to the kitchen when a voice assaults him from behind. “Don’t do anything embarrassing,” it says, “because I’m sitting right here.”

  Rock whirls around, knocking into a delicately positioned wicker service cart and nearly losing his balance. It is Denise, who has recently given up her partnership at a prestigious entertainment law firm in Los Angeles to become an advocate for welfare mothers and domestic workers, and is liable to be hanging around the house at odd hours—something Rock has yet to get used to. Denise has never been injured or tricked by Rock, but she speaks to him in a suspicious, sarcastic voice as if she is on to inappropriate double meanings in everything he says—as if he, Rock, cannot get away with his usual degree of nonsense with her around.

  “Denise,” Rock says. “Hi
.”

  She cocks her head to the side and gives him the kind of mincing, cut-the-crap smile Rock imagines she uses on trial witnesses to compel them into long, terrified revelations of the truth. She is not unattractive, but has a roundish face with a certain inexactness to the placement of its features that gives the constant impression she is wearing faded, sloppily applied makeup.

  “Dad home?”

  “No, he is not,” Denise says as if Rock has been asking gratuitous questions of her all day.

  “At the office?” he says, involuntarily compelled to fulfill the role she has carved out for him.

  “That’s where he usually is on Fridays, isn’t it?” she says.

  “Right,” he says.

  “Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  Rock attempts a laugh, even if it is supposed to be at his own expense. It comes out sounding like he has a frog in his throat. “All set,” he says stupidly, and backs into the kitchen.

  He suspects the reason Denise is marrying his father is because he is pliant and tolerant, that because of his extreme blandness, they are able to have an elaborately choreographed sex life. He imagines there is lots of role-playing—that Denise spends her time on the StairMaster in the basement developing plans and comes upstairs to Rock Sr. with orders. This time I will be the lion tamer, she says, you’ll be the baby. According to a Cosmo article Rock read at the dentist’s, these are the two most popular American role-playing games. Rock loves reading Cosmo. In his mind he has equated the two roles into one imbalanced scenario: Denise in leather, hissing, flicking an imaginary whip—his father a pasty mass of middle-aged flesh protruding from an enormous diaper.

  Now that Rock has actually met this filmmaker friend of Denise’s she has been talking up for the last two months, he has to admit he is less convinced that she is sleeping with him. She’s too old for the guy, for one thing, and too unhip. But then . . . there is something oddly sexy about Denise, in a frightening, bloaty kind of way; she has one of those disproportionately large asses that looks downright buoyant, but her breasts are quite round and firm-looking, just the right size. Letting the thought cross his mind as he rifles through the sorry contents of the refrigerator makes Rock feel creepy. It is high time to start looking for his own place, a revelation he has had at least once a day for the last twelve months. Or else take those monks up on their invitation. He tries to conjure up a picture of getting off a plane in Tibet, some narrow runway in between two massive Himalayan peaks. It is a captivating image: Rock the adventure traveler, whittling clever objects out of yak bones or wood or whatever, developing previously unknown talents.

  He pulls out a bottle of Coke and a Tupperware canister full of garlic soup cooked by a woman Rock Sr. pays to keep his refrigerator full of low-fat, low-sodium, easily reheatable foods. Then he sneaks up the back stairs so he won’t have to face any more of Denise’s condescending remarks and settles down on his unmade, wicker-frame bed. The soup tastes like salad dressing. The room smells of old socks. Through the wall he can hear one of the Pforzheimers’ eight-year-old twins screaming for toilet paper.

  IT IS NOT EXACTLY RESPECT that is the cornerstone of Jack Dunlap’s relationship to Wheelie Barrett, although he certainly respects the man. Anyone who could play for the Bruins and weigh in at five-foot-six, 160 pounds, has a hell of a lot of balls. It is more what goes unspoken between them—the amount of small talk and boring, considerate questioning he and Wheelie do not partake in—that defines their friendship. “How’d you do this week?” Jack will ask. Wheelie is always in on at least one high-stakes sports pool per season, in which he employs complex and fascinating strategies, which are almost always successful. “How’s Quantex?” Wheelie will ask in turn. Jack supplies Wheelie with high-risk, high-return investment tips. Neither of them asks out of politeness—they share the directness that accompanies self-interest. They have never spoken of Wheelie’s son, who is in a school for deaf teenagers, of Jack’s own children, or, for that matter, of Jack’s divorce.

  Wheelie belongs to the oldest branch of the Barrett family, whose length of residency in Carlisle, Massachusetts, exceeds even that of the Dunlaps here in Concord. He is descended not only from Dr. Jonathan Wheeler Barrett, the first surgeon to use ether in Boston, but also, on his mother’s side, from Alexander Hamilton. The Wheeler Barrett homestead sits on one of the finest pieces of land in the area, in a still wild-looking corner of Carlisle. But it is owned by a fat stockbroker from Connecticut now; Wheelie and his wife live in a trailer on the edge of the property, from which his wife runs some sort of industrious but, Jack has always felt, crass pancake-mix-making business. Wheelie himself is the last of the great Wheeler Barretts, who are famous for their stubbornness, understated conviction, and laconic speech; Wheelie’s brother is a fat drunk who works the night watch shift at the Ponkatawset Club and his two sisters have moved to Rhode Island with loutish, deadbeat husbands. Wheelie carries with him the air of extinction, the whiff of inevitable endings.

  This evening he hoists his gardening shears as Jack drives in on his way back from work.

  “Right rear tire needs air,” Wheelie says by way of greeting as Jack stops and rolls down his window.

  “Hmm,” Jack says. “Caroline’s been driving.”

  There is a round of barking and the dogs streak past the boxwood bushes down toward the golf course in the twilight. Both Jack and Wheelie follow them with their eyes. “Looks like his limp is gone,” Wheelie says, looking after Caesar. He is standing right beside the car window now.

  “It is,” Jack says. Like Jim Ridgeway, Wheelie is uncannily observant. Only, unlike Jim Ridgeway, his observations are not limited to the animal kingdom. Wheelie probably knows more about the life of the Dunlap household than any single one of its members does. He used to take the twins to Bruins games when they were teenagers and he often gives Eliot rides to school. He is also the person who drove Faith to Maclean’s after the kidney-kidnapping episode. Jack can only imagine the conversation they had on the way into Boston. Despite Wheelie’s silent, unfailingly discreet demeanor, all this gives Jack a certain cautious, occasionally awed feeling around him.

  Wheelie rocks forward on his toes slightly. “Some guy came by here asking for Caroline this morning when she was jogging.” He looks off to the side, almost as if in embarrassment.

  “Oh?”

  “Long-haired guy.”

  Jack waits to see if there is more.

  “He asked how long you lived here. How old the house was. Where your wife was.” Here Wheelie meets Jack’s eyes for a quick moment. “Some other questions.”

  “Hmm.” Jack frowns. “I’ll ask Caroline who he was.”

  Wheelie shrugs. This seems to be all he has to say on the matter.

  “All right,” Jack says.

  Wheelie nods and hefts the pair of gardening shears back up to shoulder level. There seems to be a subtext to his statement—something important that he would like to transmit without saying. A man here, looking for Caroline, asking questions.

  Jack blows on the invisible noise whistle he wears around his neck and the dogs streak out from the little wood at the far corner of the back meadow. He lifts his hand to Wheelie in a parting gesture and starts down the driveway to his two obedient dogs, who dash up the hill to greet him.

  At the top of the steps to the kitchen door, Jack stops for a moment and looks through the screen into the kitchen. Inside, he can see Eliot sitting at the kitchen counter, carefully arranging sliced bananas on a piece of bread smeared with peanut butter. Caroline is hunched over on the love seat painting her toenails a violent shade of lavender, humming along to something on the radio. There is a warm, comfortable feeling to the room that makes Jack pause on the threshold, stopped for a moment by the quiet sense of intimacy he knows will be disturbed the moment he walks in.

  “Here,” Eliot says, placing the top slice of bread on one of the sandwiches and holding it out to Caroline. Neither of them have noticed Jack o
n the other side of the screen door. He could be a kidnapper or rapist or psychopath on a serial killing rampage, just standing there waiting for the right moment to explode this delicate domesticity. The thought makes him feel huge and menacing, even to himself. He swings through the screen, which slams shut behind him. Eliot’s sandwich drops from his extended hand and lands face up on the floor.

  “Jesus,” Caroline says, looking up. “I didn’t hear the car.”

  “Hello,” Jack says, shifting his gaze to Eliot, who is stooping to pick up the sandwich he dropped, inspecting it for dirt. He is so careful and particular in a considerate, womanly way. It is, maybe, a result of the name. From the start, Jack was against “Eliot.” A name for a pansy. A bookworm. A redhead. But Faith insisted. It was her brother’s name. Her dead brother. There was no persuading her out of it. “A little dirt puts hair on your chest,” Jack says.

  Eliot looks up at him and then back at the sandwich he is blowing on. “It’s for Caroline.”

  “Hmm.” Jack loosens his necktie.

  “Dad,” Caroline says, stretching her feet with their newly painted toenails out in front of her. “Do you think I can go to Skip Krasdale’s wedding with you tomorrow, now that I’m home for it?”

  “That’s tomorrow?” Jack rifles through the mail. “I’m not going.”

  “You’re his godfather.”

  Jack shrugs.

  “You anointed him.”

  “Maybe I’ll stick my head in.”

  “I would think so.” Caroline wiggles her toes. “So do you think you could call and see if it would be okay if I went, too?” There is something rehearsed about her tone, as if she has been practicing sounding casual.

  “Sure.” Jack turns to look at her. “I didn’t realize you’d become such a fan of old Skipper.”