The Hazards of Good Breeding

by Jessica Shattuck

  Faith is glad to have a task now—something specific, since there is nothing else she can do. She has called the police and the fire department, who refuse to look for Eliot until he has been missing for twenty-four hours. She has even braved calling her sons in Colorado and telling them calmly that Eliot seems to be missing, that she just wanted to tell them, she was sure it would be all right, not to worry. And she has gotten Caroline water and aspirin, made her lie down, told her everything will be fine. They have discussed all the possible normal things Eliot could be doing—remember this morning when he wandered off and came back? Or the time, when he was five, that he hid behind the water fountain? They have not discussed where Jack is now. They have not discussed the fact that this woman, possibly maimed or even dead, was pregnant. They have not discussed the dogs, who have been locked up in the garage. But all the same, there is the long-dormant feeling of closeness between them.

  Inside the house, Faith can see Jean Pierre trotting around the kitchen, opening cupboards, pouring water, stirring something on the stove. God knows what he can be putting together from the bare cupboards of her ex-husband’s house. “You have had no dinner,” he gaped at Caroline’s admission. “But you must eat something, with no food in your stomach you can feel no hope.” Faith is awed by his sweet, oblivious bustling. He drove the whole way from the Wilford Inn without demanding explanations or asking nosy questions and never once made her feel stupid or hysterical or out of place.

  As Faith watches, he looks up and glances out the window, but can’t see her out here in the dark. He has put on one of her old aprons and tuned the ancient radio to a classical station, which sends lovely sweet strains of music out into the night. In forty minutes he has dismissed the oppressive, fierce solemnity of the house that Faith couldn’t vanquish in twenty years. He has made the kitchen a place to create in, the house look like someone’s home. Out in the darkness, Faith feels a swell of gratitude—he is so innocently clueless, so refreshingly out of this world. And he is casting his eyes out across the lawn to see her, Faith Dunlap, scrabbling around in the cold grass on her hands and knees. It makes her feel strong and vindicated—it is as if, in a way, she has finally transcended Jack, even here on his own turf. The blood and the dogs and the ambulance—it was so strange, as Caroline told her, Faith had the feeling she already knew. It is as if all these years she was waiting for it to happen, for Jack’s own fierceness to turn on him.

  There is a movement at the head of the driveway, a crunch of gravel that, for a moment, Faith thinks must be Jack. But then there is the white nose of a police car rounding the driveway. Faith is not sure whether to be relieved or even more terrified. She stays frozen, kneeling upright, one hand clutched in a fist against her chest. If it is something terrible, she wants to stay here in the darkness deflecting the blow like a lightning rod. But then the car comes to a stop at the end of the driveway and Faith feels herself scrabbling to her feet, almost losing her balance, and there is her son! Her dear sweet child climbing out of the backseat with his awkward, cautious way of moving, standing up and walking across the drive.

  “Eliot,” she calls, starting toward him. Her knees ache and the ball of her hand smarts from where she has been leaning on it, but she doesn’t notice, doesn’t even think of this as she runs. In the darkness, she can see him look up, startled, and then alter his course, walk cautiously toward her. He looks tiny and fragile and strange—his thin legs shine in the moonlight and he is covered with dirt—he seems to be wearing something outlandish but oddly familiar. “Eliot,” she says again, and she has almost reached him. There is a cut under his eye and dried dirt all over the side of his face. He looks older, more like Jack, she realizes suddenly. “Oh, El—” she says, falling to her knees to wrap her arms around him. “We didn’t know where you were.”

  Eliot stops just beyond her grasp. “I lost Blacksmith,” he says.

  “You lost . . . ?”

  “I lost him.”

  “Oh, Eliot,” she says—straining forward to draw him to her. She does not know what he is talking about—Blacksmith? Her old horse? But she knows, with unusual certainty, what she needs to do. “It’s all right,” she says, wrapping her arms around him, around this little body that was once part of hers. He smells of mud and sweat and horses and something else, acrid and sweet like burnt sugar or vegetables. “It’s all right,” she repeats, and as she presses him to her the frail rig of his bones and stiff clutch of his muscles give way, slowly, against her. She can feel his body relax, allow her to reclaim it. And she hugs him fiercely, rocking slightly, just a little bit, back and forth.

  “Is he back?” she can hear Caroline call from the doorway. There is a police officer now standing beside the car. Faith doesn’t look at him, but she knows he is there, waiting, leaning against the fender. “Is that you, Eliot?” comes Caroline’s voice, and from the kitchen there is the clatter of dishes and the slam of the screen door. Caroline starts across the grass toward them, barefoot, in her bathrobe, and Faith realizes the spasms passing through her are coming from Eliot, coming from her little son who is crying, really crying, for what seems like—is it possible?—the first time in her arms? “Oh, El,” she says again—Dear God, protect this child, make him happy, make him all right. “It’s all right.” And she can hear a gentle, faraway thumping, like a great creature approaching, one foot after the other—the steady beating of her own heart.

  19

  THE NEXT MORNING, Rock wakes to what sounds like a large snake hissing, almost rhythmically, somewhere off to his right. He is lying on the sofa in the Dunlaps’ butter-churn-turned-TV room. He has on the same clothes he wore yesterday and his whole face feels crusty, as if the top layers of skin have hardened and are starting to crack. He sits bolt upright and casts his eyes over the mahogany end table, magazine basket, and stiff-backed wing chair near the window. No evidence of a snake.

  Rock gets up and stretches his stiff back, reaches his arms high above his head like the yoga woman on the late-night show he watches when he can’t sleep. There is the buzz of blood in his ears and the crack of his spine, the feeling that something incredible has happened. He has had a baby. No, Jack Dunlap has had a baby. With his Colombian housekeeper. It sends a little skip of a thrill through Rock’s body.

  There is the sound again—coming from outside the window—a sort of swish and then hiss. Rock walks over and looks out. It is the Dunlaps’ gardener, clipping the boxwood bush that hugs this end of the house. In his hands, the long clippers look quite graceful, their blades parting and slicing, the slender ends of brush spraying and tumbling in little cartwheels to the ground. The man’s role strikes Rock suddenly as primeval, a quiet, omnipresent maintainer of the Dunlap property.

  Rock runs a hand through his hair, puts on his sneakers, leaves the TV room. The house is still quite dark and has the hushed silence of a dimmed theater—a place full of people making no noise. He stands for a moment at the door to the old, formal living room—yes, they are still there, one on each sofa, asleep. It was so late when he and Jack came back last night, he almost thought he had dreamed it. Faith and a Frenchman. Jean Louis? Jean Claude? Rock was too surprised to take in Caroline’s whispered explanation. They look sweet in the dim light of morning, like children, lying head to head on the two green-and-white-striped sofas. The man has a placid, innocent-looking face, like a sort of rounder, international version of Jimmy Stewart.

  Upstairs, Rock uses the bathroom, splashes water on his face, and borrows someone’s sparkly purple toothbrush. It makes him feel fresher and more presentable. Clean on the inside, as his mother used to say. Back out in the hallway, he tiptoes past Eliot’s room. The door is open and Rock can see him sprawled across his bed, one arm flung toward the wall, as if reaching for the lion cubs cavorting in the poster tacked up there, the other folded protectively across his chest. He continues down the hall and stops in front of Caroline’s room—all quiet. He will just peek in—just check and make sure she is in there. He
nudges the door a few inches open over the carpet, careful not to move too abruptly. And yes, there she is—on her side, blond hair spread across the pillow. She looks younger than she does when she is awake, her cheek round and flushed, her lips parted. As he stands looking, her eyes flutter open and come to rest on him.

  “I’m just—” he starts to whisper, feeling himself blushing.

  She sits up with a strange, slightly frantic motion and then is absolutely still, rising from the waist up out of the tangle of her Laura Ashley sheets like a perplexed, modern-day Aphrodite. “Why didn’t you say so?” she says. Her voice sounds raw and childish, pregnant with real longing.

  “Say . . . ?” Rock whispers hesitantly.

  “I could have changed it.” She is still asleep, he realizes. And she looks so lovely and young and confused, with her brow fretted and her T-shirt twisted uncomfortably around her neck.

  “No, you couldn’t.” He says it firmly. Caroline keeps her eyes on him, but her face relaxes. “Go back to sleep.”

  To his surprise, she lies obediently back down and closes her eyes. Rock watches her hand clasp and unclasp against the bed just below her breast—a sweet, childish gesture. He would like to pull the sheet up over her shoulders, smooth the hair out of her face, cover her fingers with his own. He stands still for a moment, watching her face slip into the calm blankness of sleep, and then closes the door carefully behind him.

  Downstairs, Rock walks through the kitchen, which smells uncharacteristically of garlic, and opens the front door to let in fresh air. On the stoop there is a carton of blueberries and a white bag labeled EDNA’S PANCAKES. Rock looks around and sees no one. The morning is beautiful, not too hot, and the grass is still sparkling with dew. As he bends to pick up the mysterious package, there is the familiar hiss and swish sound, more distant this time. When he lifts his head, he can see the gardener rounding the hedge at the far end of the lawn. He holds the bag of mix up and the man nods and raises his clippers. He doesn’t seem surprised to see Rock, seems in fact as though he has been expecting him. Rock nods his head in what he hopes looks like a thank-you and the man continues with his clipping. The whole exchange has the oddly profound stamp of silence.

  Inside, Rock washes the blueberries and mixes the powdery batter. He has never made pancakes before. There is something nice about the mixing—the simple process of combining water, eggs, and flour, following the printed instructions. Even he, Rock, can provide some sort of nourishment. This is what he liked best at the hospital last night—doling out the squeaky Styrofoam cups of cafeteria coffee, handing out donuts, dispensing the common denominator of waiting.

  When the butter is crackling in the pan, Rock drops in, according to the directions, “half dollar”-sized dollops of bat-ter. Who the hell can even picture the size of a half dollar? Rock estimates about the diameter of a golf ball. The first few he fries up come out burnt or doughy and stick to the pan. The second batch goes better. He has two rounds on a plate in the oven by the time the first sleeper, Eliot, awakens and comes down. His bare feet pad across the linoleum and he carries with him the quiet powdery smell of a child’s sleep. “More butter,” he instructs. “And the flame should be lower.” Rock follows his instructions and does not ask him where he disappeared to last night, how he got the purple bruise on his elbow or the cut below his eye. He just stands side by side at the stove with him, flipping odd-shaped pancakes the color of sea lions.

  One by one the sleepers drift into the kitchen, with the dazed, newborn look of people who have survived a natural disaster. “There is soup,” Jean Pierre (that is the name of the French Jimmy Stewart) offers, pulling a cloudy cellophane-wrapped pot out of the refrigerator.

  “For breakfast?” Faith ventures. She looks different to Rock—younger and steadier; the wavery, infinitely flappable look about her is gone.

  “Of course,” Jean Pierre answers. “This soup is a perfect thing for starting the morning.” Rock loves it—Faith’s Frenchman offering them soup for breakfast. Eliot, who is, if possible, even quieter than usual this morning, is eyeing Jean Pierre’s fringed, ventilated leather shoes suspiciously. Caroline walks around the kitchen silently in her bare feet. She helps Rock serve the pancakes, heats the maple syrup, and clears the table, but looks as caught up in her own mind as someone surrounded by people speaking another language.

  When Jack appears in the doorway, they are all seated around the table. Rock has his hand on the jug of water they are drinking, which he sets back down with a splash. Jack’s hair is smoothed back and uncharacteristically combed and dampened, which makes it look thinner and grayer. His shirt is tucked in and his shoulders look narrow. In fact, his whole body looks compressed—in twenty-four hours he seems to have become more susceptible to the pull of gravity. Everyone stares down at their pancakes. Even Jean Pierre puts his raised spoon back into his soup.

  “Pancakes?” Jack says, and clears his throat, which springs the kitchen into action. Faith makes a garbled, apologetic introduction—they were on their way back, she had a feeling, Eliot gone, and Caroline alone, the police, it was so late—and Caroline jumps up to get a chair from the dining room. Rock fills a plate with the last pancakes. Jack listens to Faith earnestly, unblinking; he looks like a man trying to remember Bernoulli’s Principle or the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He nods at the end of her explanation, vaguely, impartially, as if he has heard maybe three words out of two hundred. Then he slices into his stack of pancakes and makes no more effort to break through the silence.

  “So, is the girl—will she go home from the hospital soon?” Faith asks.

  Eliot looks up with surprise. “What girl?” The poor kid has no idea, Rock realizes; he was asleep when they came home last night.

  Jack places his knife and fork on the side of his plate and fixes his stare on his little son, who does not look away. “Rosita.”

  Eliot’s face pales and then pinkens—seems literally to stretch with incredulity. “She’s in the hospital?” he whispers. Caroline begins coughing uncontrollably, extravagantly, even.

  “She’s fine.” Jack clears his throat. “She is going to come back and live with us here. With the baby.”

  From outside there is the swish of the clippers, and Brutus thumps into a new position behind the mudroom grate. Rock feels the table spread between them like a vast and shiny ocean, imagines each of them his or her own landmass with its small supply of soup and pancakes and water; with its own language and terrain and natural resources, its own peculiar breed of new and ancient conflicts, folklore and misunderstanding, with its own method of mining iron ore, distilling hops, nurturing hope, and interpreting data, with its own extinct native peoples and thriving breeds of feathered scavengers, weeds, and urbanized wildlife, with its own hampering inefficiencies, corruptions, beachfuls of evolutionary detritus and industrial waste.

  “She has a baby?” Eliot asks.

  “A boy,” Jack says. “Whose last name”—he clears his throat here—“will be Dunlap.” It is like a tremor over the water—something that crashes with its own unique sound and meaning, at the same time, on each of their ears. Jack looks around the table as if in challenge.

  “It’s a good name,” Faith says bravely into the clamoring silence, and Jean Pierre picks up his spoon.

  20

  THE DRIVE TO LOGAN AIRPORT is not a particularly nice one from Concord—first Route 2 and then 60 and then 93. Faith sits in the front seat of Jean Pierre’s little white rental car in silence. There is an unreal quality to the bubble they are enclosed in—the gray Pleather seats, the clean floor mats, the flimsy black plastic dashboard. It feels like part of a stage set, a car someone would drive on a third-rate TV show. Faith herself feels like an actress, someone pretending to lead a dramatic, chaotic life. Does Jean Pierre think he has just seen a slice of her everyday existence? Does he think she has a depraved family? Does he think she was a terrible wife? The usual questions play through her brain, but only at low volume, as if actually th
ey emanate from a distant, uninterested source, or are, in fact, intended for someone else.

  She glances over at Jean Pierre, who is sitting up very straight beside her. His hands grip the steering wheel firmly, elbows tensed and almost straight. Faith has never driven with a man who looks so ill at ease behind the wheel. It gives her a tender feeling toward him.

  “Your husband,” he says, keeping his eyes on the highway, “will be happy with this woman?”

  “My ex-husband,” Faith corrects, without blushing. “I don’t know.” Outside the window, the Citgo sign triangle lights up and then blinks into a smaller version of itself. “I have no idea.” It feels as though she is talking about a stranger, someone even further removed from her than the Jack she was married to. He is now having a baby with another woman. She tries to remember what the girl looks like—she met her once. She had brown skin and a round face; she was slim. Faith can’t remember now if she was pretty.

  “He will marry her? It is the American way, to get married if there is a child, is it not? If there is intercourse, no matter if there is love?”

  “Well, I guess—I don’t know,” Faith says. “Maybe he loves her.”

  Jean Pierre glances over at her. “You think?”