The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  So now Faith is leaving this afternoon, a full day early. Which seems both inevitable and slightly tragic. On the one hand, Faith tells herself, it is maybe better this way: Jean Pierre, who has gone fishing with one of the Eintopfs, probably wants nothing more to do with her—he is, after all, a Frenchman. He probably sleeps with women once a month, if not more often. But on the other hand, what if this means she will never see him again, that she will never be kissed again, that she will always wonder what might have happened if she had stayed? But then she is a terrible person for even thinking about this. Where are her values? Her sense of moral priority? Her own ten-year-old son may be wandering around in the backwoods of Concord, or worse, on his way to California or Las Vegas or wherever it is runaways go! This is what is important. Jean Pierre’s hands and brown shoulders, his dry lips and unbashful stare, are not the only things of consequence, not the only things that are real.

  Faith tries to shake off the thought of these and begins packing, folding her T-shirts slowly, smoothing them, creasing at the sides, stacking them neatly, just as stern Mrs. Graves taught her to when she was a little girl. She is being careful, holding herself calmly, thinking in a firm, reassuring voice that sounds surprisingly like Lucy’s. It isn’t working, though—she is shaky with nervousness and excitement. Nauseous, even, her fingers trembling a little, her sweat giving off an acrid, wastelike smell. She has been jolted by so many waves of adrenaline this morning that it feels like she is on drugs—or what she imagines being on drugs would be. She has never actually tried “drugs”—the word conjures up an image of little brightly colored pills—pink, lavender, robin’s-egg blue.

  The feeling started when she woke up this morning to an unpleasant thrumming sound that turned out to be a bad red wine headache, and a hump under the yellow daisy print sheets that turned out to be Jean Pierre.

  She sat frozen at the edge of the bed, trying to think what a person does when waking up beside a near-stranger, what a person says or thinks, whether she takes her clothes and gets dressed in the bathroom or whether she lies back down, shuts her eyes, and—and what? Pretends to sleep and waits for her bed mate to tiptoe out? But then Jean Pierre rolled toward her under the sheets, put one hand on her arm just above the sharp point of her elbow, thumb pointing upward, warm and firm against the slim bone. And he was smiling—not sarcastically, or foolishly, just, well, in a way that answered her question for her—made her lie obediently back down. She resurrects this smile, this pressure of warm hand against her flesh, as she packs up her toilet kit, removes her towel and Lucy’s froofy bathing suit from the laundry line. Jean Pierre has a birthmark like a pale coffee stain below his collarbone, and a certain roundness to his body, a compact, yet substantial grace that reminds her of one of those Volkswagen Beetle cars. Remembering the way his knuckles felt grazing her neck, sweeping a half circle out toward her shoulder and then back, stopping just above her heart, she can thrill the skin above her collarbone on command. Through the whole lunatic morning of preparations and assurances, of efforts and missteps, she has felt, under everything, the whirring, trembling, cartwheeling motion of near-cellular change.

  Faith drops hold of the zipper she has been tugging at and sits down on the edge of the bed. Her underwear doesn’t fit into the suitcase and she has forgotten the green slicker hanging in the closet. Which means she will have to refold the T-shirts, restuff the shoes. She is just packing, she tells herself. It has such a simple, concise sound to it. A basic activity, like breathing, eating, taking a bath. For a moment her heart slows to its normal patter in her chest. It is all so silly—the excitement, the worry, the theater of it all. As if Jean Pierre would even care if she stayed or left! As if her presence in Concord would make one iota of difference to Caroline or Eliot. She is a failure as a mother—as a divorcée, even. She doesn’t even know how to conduct an ordinary one-night stand.

  Jean Pierre’s copper bracelet and package of Marlboros are lying on her bedside table, archaeological evidence of the persistence of that time into this. Faith stares at her underwear, now scattered around her little suitcase on wheels, marketed as “The Smuggler,” which suddenly makes sense to her—it has a smug look to it, too small, too precise, too convenient for her life. What made her think she could own a bag like this? Now she will have to start packing all over again to make room for the forgotten slicker.

  But instead, she takes one of Jean Pierre’s cigarettes out of the crinkly aluminum wrapping and lights it with a match from beside the kerosene lamp. The first puff makes her cough spasmodically, but it gets better. She has forgotten about the exhilarating rush a cigarette can give. She hasn’t smoked since—God—since she was pregnant with Caroline; since she was a baby, really, another person altogether. It makes her feel hardened and worldly to be leaning, now, against the windowsill, blowing smoke out over the quiet heathery slope down to the sea. Here she is, smoking her lover’s—the word makes her smile sheepishly, but sends a thrill up over her neck as well—her lover’s cigarettes, ashing into his abandoned glass of water beside her bed.

  When Faith comes downstairs with her suitcase, Jean Pierre is sitting on the porch looking out over the water through his binoculars. His actual presence is incongruous to the one she has created for him over the last two hours in her mind. He looks shorter and paler than she remembered. The binoculars make him less manly.

  “Aha,” he says, putting the binoculars down on the bench. He stands up and takes the suitcase from where she has deposited it at her feet. “So heavy,” he exclaims. “You should have called for help.”

  “It’s not so bad,” Faith says, following him around the corner down the steps to the lawn, which he is crossing to bring her suitcase to the dock. She feels shy and suddenly embarrassed. Only ten minutes ago she was using the term lover to describe him in her mind. It makes her feel slightly disgusted.

  On the dock, there is another suitcase and a bag of golf clubs, blue and gold with an Air France sticker peeling off along the side. “What—?” Faith begins. “Whose suitcases are these?”

  “Mine.” Jean Pierre drops hers beside them.

  “You’re leaving?” Faith asks stupidly.

  “I will drive you,” Jean Pierre says.

  “You don’t have to do that—” Faith says. “I was going to take the bus—”

  “But it is better in the car, no? Not so much worry.” Out here, in the sunlight, Jean Pierre looks bigger and browner again.

  “It’s your vacation, though—you —”

  “Shh.” Jean Pierre takes Faith’s hand and lifts it to his lips. “I would like to.”

  “Oh.” She feels that rush through her insides at the pressure of his touch, the reminder that the human body is ninety percent water. It occurs to her it might be dangerous, all this bodily excitement—she is forty-five, after all, no longer a teenager.

  “Okay?” Jean Pierre says. “I will tell Pete you are ready.”

  The good-byes are awkward, of course. Lucy seems to have alluded to some sort of “situation” and several of the Eintopfs give Faith especially firm hand presses and breathe vaguely reassuring platitudes into her ear.

  Rock Coughlin has wound himself up into a state of near-panic with guilt or sorrow or concern, or some combination of all three. “Can I get you anything else, Faith? Water for the road? Aspirin? Another sweater?” He hovers in the background, darting forward every so often with a new query, looking pale and overwrought and strangely like Julia Child. “So long, Farewell, Auf wiedersehen, Good-by-yiy,” four of the Eintopfs serenade her from the porch railing as she and Pete and Jean Pierre cross the lawn to the Boston Whaler. Even Lucy looks vaguely embarrassed by this maudlin display.

  On the boat, Pete is cheerful as always and assures Faith that when she gets to Concord, Eliot will be sitting at the kitchen table “chomping on a Big Mac like a clown.” His own son, Conor, disappeared one time and it turned out he had hitched a ride into New York to see the Schwarzenegger movie Lucy had forbade hi
m from going to—all 45 miles from Greenwich into the city with some balding, off-duty Greyhound driver named Honey. Pete delivers all this as a consolation—Conor and he still “josh” each other over Honey. But for the first time this morning Faith actually pictures Eliot dislodged in the world, standing erect and startlingly pale-haired at the edge of some wide and intimidating highway, in full view of strangers with opaque intentions. It has not actually, in all this commotion, seemed possible that he could be anywhere other than out walking or at a friend’s house or involved in any of the dozens of harmless possibilities Lucy and the Eintopfs have presented her with. Now she imagines him in a bus station that smells of old cigarette smoke, beside a fat man with big hands and a gold necklace that spells out HONEY.

  “Take good care of my Faith, John John.” Pete claps Jean Pierre on the shoulder with a wink. “And you tell that boy of hers to regardez s’il vous plait!”

  When Pete is gone, Jean Pierre sets off to reclaim his rented Oldsmobile from the parking lot and Faith finds herself alone for what feels like the first time in days—weeks, even—which is ridiculous, of course. She was just alone, up in her room packing, but in retrospect it feels as if there was a great deal of shouting up there—as if there were at least five other people carrying on a stressful, high-stakes argument. Waiting here at the end of this dock, it feels quiet for the first time. In this new calm, Faith fishes out Eliot’s map stowed in the inside pocket of her Filofax at the bottom of her cavernous handbag. The delicate lines of streets and driveways, the thicker, darker spine of the Charles River, stare back at her like one of those drawings that can be seen two ways—a goblet or two faces in conversation, a young woman with a hat or an old hag. Try as she might, she can only see the surface of this, though, the roads and hills, not the outline of some truth beneath. She drags the luggage all the way to the other end of the dock where there is a small cluster of pay phones, but there is no answer at 23 Memorial Road, just Jack’s curt recorded message on the machine.

  ROCK HAS SPENT THE MORNING having his teeth cleaned by a large, sphinxlike woman wearing a full surgical uniform, complete with a clear plastic visor, who pried at his gums in utter silence. A disturbing, no-frills experience of hygiene at its most torturous. Where was the cheery small talk and reassuring use of euphemisms like “the easy chair” and “Mr. Slurpee”? The experience has had the effect of making Rock feel hyperaware of what is really occurring—he has paid someone to use sharp metal instruments to scrape out an intimate cavity of his body. This has only added to the general feeling of unease building in him since his run-in with Denise yesterday. Was all that shit about Jack Dunlap having a baby true? And if so, is it his responsibility to tell Caroline? In his mind, Rock has already covered the pros and cons of broaching the subject with her at least three hundred times. If it isn’t true, he will have needlessly upset her and taken part in spreading ridiculous sensational rumors cooked up by a bitter ex-litigator with too much time on her hands. But if it is true, she should know, shouldn’t she? Especially since it sheds a new light on Mr. Moviemaker’s interest in her—didn’t Don say the guy had “a few good rumors to follow up on”? Jesus Christ. Rock pounds his forehead. His brain is like a fucking broken record.

  Rock parks in front of Don Hammond’s and climbs out of the car. He does not want to head back to the “duplex” anytime soon, because if he does, he will have to confront Denise. He has managed, thus far, to avoid her since yesterday, and would like to keep this up as long as possible; that way there will be no opportunities for her to offer some half-assed apology or awkward, unfair rationalization of her behavior. Besides, he has something he would like to ask Don.

  Don is home, to Rock’s relief, and is even listening to an old Leonard Cohen LP, which, Rock has learned, incongruously indicates he is in excellent spirits. “An eskimo showed me a movie,” Don sings by way of greeting in an exaggerated imitation of Leonard’s sorrowful voice. Rock unwraps the sandwiches he has brought—roast beef for himself and green pepper and cheese for Don, who is a vegetarian and lays into his with half-starved relish.

  “The geometer?” Rock asks politely. “She’s gone?”

  “Hmm?” Don grunts blankly. “Oh, right. Finite.”

  Rock leans back in his chair, which shrieks under him. “So, you know how we were talking about Stephan—Wendel, whatever?”

  Don nods through his vigorous chewing.

  “How he told you there were some good rumors or something he was following up on? Did he say what they were? Or, you know, what he meant by ‘follow up on’?”

  Don cocks his head to the side and looks at Rock inquiringly. “Why?”

  “I don’t know—I was just thinking he might be after something specific—something I might know about and . . . It’s a long story.”

  “Something about you?”

  “No, no—nothing to do with me personally.”

  Don frowns and puts down his sandwich. “I don’t know—I wasn’t really listening. He likes to ‘uncover things’—whatever.” He looks hard at Rock. “It’s not worth your time, man. Getting caught up in Wendel’s bullshit. Is that what you came over to ask me?”

  “Kind of . . .” There is a pause. “But also, actually . . .” Rock shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “Would you mind—would it be all right if I just parked it here this afternoon and you can do whatever you’re doing? I’ll just sit and read or whatever. I just can’t go home right now because of this thing—because of my father’s fiancée or whatever.” It occurs to Rock as he is speaking that he has not actually brought a book with him and the whole request sounds pathetic.

  “Sure,” Don says without hesitation. But he narrows his eyes and stares at Rock with an unapologetically evaluative expression. Then he breaks into a fit of loud, almost raucous laughter. “Look at you!”

  Rock smiles good-naturedly and waits for Don to finish laughing. But Don keeps on until the smile on Rock’s face begins to feel completely foolish.

  “What did I tell you yesterday?” Don says. “You got to get out of your father’s house—here you are, worrying about Wendel’s movie and your father’s fiancée—that’s no way to live your life.”

  “I know.” Rock crumples the greasy white paper in which the roast beef was wrapped into a ball and brings it over to the garbage.

  There is a loud floor-scraping, rustling sound behind him and when he turns Don has left the room. Rock wanders over to the kitchen window and stares out.

  “Here,” Don’s voice comes from behind him.

  Rock turns around and Don is holding out two books and a piece of paper. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Rock reads upside down. The other is a grubby, well-thumbed guidebook.

  “Peruse this. And this”—Don extends the paper—“is the address and fax number.”

  “Of . . . ?”

  “The monastery.”

  “They have a fax machine?” Rock accepts the two books reluctantly.

  “Sure.” Don shrugs. “They’re not Druids.”

  Rock can see himself suddenly in Don’s eyes. A grown man, fleeing from his father’s house—no, scratch that, his father’s duplex—to avoid a woman not that much older than himself whom his father is marrying, who has already had a career and is starting a new one, while he himself has been toiling away at a bullshit New Age organic farm, only to be laid off and have nothing better to do than show up here at Don’s at a time of day when most people are working, or at least running errands, or being, in some way, useful.

  “Listen.” Don lifts a backpack from one of the kitchen chairs and there is a pungent waft of garlic. “I think all that other shit—your Dad’s fiancée and whatever you’re worrying about Wendel’s movie—you have to get out of it. It’s screwing with your karma.”

  Rock considers this.

  “I’m going to the lab. Read that. You can hang out here as long as you want—if you need a place to crash, no problem.”

  “Thanks,” Rock says to the sound of Don’s foots
teps on the stairs. The thought that his karma has been screwed with actually does seem possible. Isn’t there some almost physical revulsion that sweeps over him lately at the thought of Denise and his father’s upcoming marriage? Doesn’t he find himself adopting their passive sort of joylessness around the house? Calling tomatoes to-mah-toes and taking care not to scuff the carpeting on the stairs or leave crumbs in the butter? Is that a sign of his disintegrating karma?

  Rock stretches his feet out and leans back on the rickety chair and opens the guidebook. There is a picture of a beautiful white building jutting from a brown hillside. It is, actually, quite breathtaking. He imagines himself there, looking out over the valley below: What the hell would be in it? Rice fields, maybe—or, yes, he turns the page, grazing cattle: the pretty reddish brown kind with long graceful horns. Exotic Tibetan mountain cattle. If he lived there, he could probably help herd them—just walk around all day in the tall grass à la Holden Caulfield, herding cattle. He can’t picture exactly what this would entail. A lot of shooing or something—it’s not exactly a very manly business. And he’d probably be shat on by all these monks for being new and American and totally ignorant of all things spiritual. And sick from drinking hot yak butter with no Maalox handy. But still. Still, there is something that makes him keep turning the pages.