He laughed. “What’s to thank me for? Hooking up the stereo?”
“No”—I kissed him—“for being here for me, and for understanding why I needed to make this move, and for going along with the whole crazy plan, and for never once doubting that I love you in spite of my own insecurities, and for loving me in spite of…”
“Okay,” he said, “I’ve got the idea.” And we kissed again, seriously.
Involved as I was with Neil, I didn’t much notice who else was doing what with whom, but the room was swept into the schmaltz, accompanied by gentle laughter, tings of crystal, and the syncopated measures of something Cole Porter.
Then I noticed Parker standing beside us, as if waiting with a dance card to cut in. Uh-oh. I braced myself and turned to him with an uncertain smile, letting him make the first move.
“Mark,” he said, thrusting forth his hand, “happy New Year. And thanks a million for the opportunity to work with you at the Register. I’ve told you before: this is all I’ve ever wanted.” He gave my hand a hearty shake.
And that was it. I reciprocated with similar sentiments; then he turned to Neil. They exchanged greetings, a handshake, and a hug—Neil got a hug, and I found myself feeling slighted, even while recognizing the irony of my reaction. Maybe Parker had been attuned to my reluctance to get chummier that night, and I decided that I should give him credit for his discretion.
Everyone took turns greeting each other, even Thad, who surprised me with his ability to be sociable, almost charming. Perhaps it was the effect of good champagne, which he appeared to enjoy, but did not guzzle. I lifted my own glass and touched it to his. “Happy New Year, Thad. I know these are really rough times for you, and I know I can’t begin to console you on the loss of your mother, but the worst is behind you now. Things are bound to improve.” I touched his shoulder.
He gave me a wan smile and a tepid nod, as if to say he appreciated my words, however predictable. But he didn’t want to talk about the murder. He said, “Thanks for the champagne, Mark. And for borrowing me your car.”
“Lending me your car,” I reproved gently.
“Yeah. Lending.” He looked me in the eye. “You’ve been decent.”
Quite a compliment, considering how far we’d come in a week. He seemed to be getting used to the idea of Neil-and-me, so I suggested, “Why don’t we go for a run sometime this weekend—with Neil—the three of us?”
He looked at me as if I were nuts. “It’s cold!” he said through a laugh. Then he added, “I’m not much of a runner.”
“One way to learn,” I told him.
“Maybe.” He smiled again, this time with a measure of warmth. “We’ll see.”
Turning to greet Glee Savage, I saw that Parker had beat me to her. This ought to be good, I told myself, wondering if Parker was prepared to fend off the amorous advances that Glee was surely entertaining. Glee told him, “Happy New…”
“Don’t speak,” he said to her, his voice a low, melodramatic purr. Then, to my rank astonishment, he swept her into a theatrical embrace and planted a big sloppy kiss squarely on her lips.
She was no less surprised than I was. Regaining her equilibrium, she spoke over Parker’s shoulder to me: “If this guy’s gay, I’m confused—not complaining, mind you, just confused.”
Before I could comment, Parker told her, intending for me to hear as well, “It’s a simple matter of ‘transference,’ Glee. You have no way of knowing whose mouth, in the skewed depths of my imagination, was really pressed to mine.” He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped a greasy red smear from his lips.
She laughed at this, as did Neil, who had caught it all. I managed a chortle myself, but was left with an uncomfortable inkling regarding the object of Parker’s ‘transference.’ Thad had also witnessed this exchange, and he appeared quietly disturbed by it. I presumed he was previously unaware of Parker’s sexual status. Was he now troubled by the notion of spending the weekend under the same roof with three gay men?
After the big moment of midnight had passed and we had finished our ritual of toasts and warm wishes, we eventually settled into chairs and sofas near the fire, engaged in quiet conversation, shifting topics at will, finishing the coffee, pouring more champagne. Hazel rose unsteadily, saying, “I’ll just clear the coffee service—less to do later.”
“Nonsense,” I told her, rising to escort her back to the heavily upholstered wing chair she had occupied. “We’ll all pitch in later. We’d rather have you here with us.” Others echoed these sentiments, and she resumed her seat. Firelight glinted from the lenses of her glasses as her eyes followed my hands, reaching to pour more champagne for her.
The party was winding down. The music ended, and Neil didn’t bother to play something else. Sated by the meal and warmed by the fire, we all just shared each other’s company, talking. We spoke of the severe weather setting in. We spoke of my plans for the Register. We spoke of the long-distance relationship that Neil and I would have to adjust to. And, of course, our discussion kept veering back to the murder. But the mention of Suzanne seemed to agitate Joey, so we tried to avoid that topic.
Safe ground, I assumed, was the more distant past, and since New Year’s Eve (now early New Year’s morning) makes a fitting occasion for reminiscences, I invited all present to share their memories. I volunteered none of my own. Since arriving in Dumont before Christmas, I’d been constantly absorbed in boyhood recollections of the house and the family that had lived there. So the others took turns airing the past.
Neil told a bit about his early career in architecture, but he insisted, “Life did not begin for me until the night I met Mark,” when we were introduced by our lawyer friend, Roxanne Exner. He moved his career from Phoenix to Chicago in order to be with me, and he would gladly endure the inconvenience of our new arrangement if it would ensure my future happiness. This was a story I knew well.
Parker didn’t want to say much, and I realized I knew little more about his past than the employment history that was listed on his résumé. He grew up in Wisconsin, came of age during Vietnam, and came out before Stonewall. “Those were ugly times, for society as a whole and for gays in particular,” he told us. He didn’t really get his life in order till he got serious about his journalism career. He worked a lot of jobs, “searching for something, finally finding it here in Dumont.”
Glee’s experience was entirely different, though she grew up when Parker did. As a woman, Glee had known no personal threat from the atrocity of Vietnam, and as a heterosexual, she wouldn’t know the significance of Stonewall till she read about it years later. As for her career, it was focused from the start. She had worked at only one paper, the Register. “That may strike some as a lack of ambition,” she told us, “but all these years I have shared a single passion with Barret Logan—we’ve understood that the Register is not just another small-town rag, and we’ve lived to put that paper on a par with any other in the state.”
Hazel said she’d never had ambitions for a career, and she offered no apologies. “In my day, there was pride in making a house a home.” It was more than enough to keep a woman busy, and the satisfaction of raising a family well was ample reward for the effort. Her only regret was that she and her husband Hank had never had children. “We tried,” she told us, her candor induced by the champagne, “but it just never happened.” The Quatrain kids had filled that gap, though, and she always thought of them as her family.
Joey told her that she was part of all his best memories. Then he turned to me. “Hazel’s always been around, but one of the best times was when you came to visit us, Mark. We were good friends, weren’t we? And I showed you the upstairs, and I let you use my typewriter. You were nice then, and you still are. Those were nice times, when I was little. People didn’t treat me funny, like they do now. They’d at least listen to me.” He got up with his empty champagne glass and ambled toward the cocktail cart.
Thad told him, “I listen to you, Uncle Joey. And you’re one
of the few people who always take me seriously, too. Grandpa Edwin always listened, but he’s been dead three years now, and I miss him. Otherwise, I don’t have any old stories. I’m only sixteen—there’s not that much to remember. I never even met my dad, so I sure don’t remember him.” Thad turned to me. “What did you say his name was? Like, Austin Reece?”
I nodded.
“Then I’m not a Quatrain, am I? I mean, not really.”
Unprepared for such a question, I stammered, “Well, sure you are, Thad. Half your blood is Quatrain, only it’s on your mother’s side instead of your father’s. We’re alike that way—my mother was a Quatrain. But you actually carry the family name. It’s on your driver’s license, right?”
“Yeah.” He laughed, feeling better about it. He pulled a ratty nylon kid’s wallet out of his hip pocket and checked, just to make sure.
Hazel assured him, “You’re every inch a Quatrain in my book, and it’s a good thing, too. The family was never very large. It needed new blood. You’re the last of the line, Thad.”
He looked up at her from his driver’s license, mystified. “What does that mean, ‘last of the line’?”
She explained, “Later, someday, if you have children of your own, they’ll be Quatrains and carry on the family name. But if you don’t have children, you’ll be the last—the end of the line—at least in these parts.”
He still didn’t grasp it. “Why?”
Patiently, Hazel told him, “Your grandpa Edwin had two sisters, but no brothers, so he was once the last of the Quatrains. But then he had three children—your mother, your uncle Joey, and your older uncle Mark, who died long before you were born. Your uncles never had babies, but Suzanne had you, and she gave you the family name. So now you’re the last of the Quatrains, Thad, because you were Suzie’s only baby.”
Tucking away his wallet, Thad nodded, impressed with his new-learned status.
The rest of us grinned or chuckled—the innocence of youth.
But Joey stumbled toward us from the cocktail cart, wagging the empty glass. “Wait a minute,” he said. “What about Suzie’s other baby, first one, when she took the trip?”
Bombshell. “Joey!” yelled Hazel, starting to rise from her chair. Then she sat back. Though flustered, she told him calmly, “I think you’re confused.”
“No, I’m not,” he told her, trying to stand straight and defiant, but finding it difficult to stand at all. To the rest of us, he said, “See what I mean? People treat me funny. They don’t listen to me.”
“Joey dear,” said Hazel, leaning toward him, “we’re listening to you. But please, don’t say anything more.”
“Why not? It happened, didn’t it? In high school. Suzie was having a baby. But then she went away. And when she came back, the baby was gone, and I wasn’t supposed to talk about it. And you’re still trying to tell me not to talk about it. Why, Hazel?”
By now, Hazel’s head was buried in her hands. She wept drunkenly, unable to answer him. The rest of us didn’t move—hell, we could barely breathe. A log popped and sparked. Clearing my throat, I said, “Hazel? What’s he talking about?”
She looked up at me with teary eyes through smeared glasses. Removing them, she attempted to shine the lenses with the lacy cuff of her sleeve, but abandoned the project as hopeless. Her hands fell to her lap, and she stared blankly toward the center of the room. There she sat—the living, aging, nearly blind repository of Quatrain family secrets, the guardian of a closet door that had just been kicked open by Joey.
I heard a rustle at my side. It was Glee digging in her purse, pulling out her steno pad, ready for some shorthand. I shook my head. With a roomful of tantalized listeners, we would not be apt to forget details of the revelations to come.
I prompted, “Hazel? Tell us what happened.”
“When Suzie was a junior in high school,” she began mechanically, as if she had long rehearsed a monologue that she knew she would one day recite, “she got pregnant during Christmas vacation. There weren’t many options in those days. Bringing the baby to term was unthinkable—abhorrent—and abortion wasn’t legal here then. So Suzie’s mother Peggy took her to New York that spring. It was legal. Suzie was fine. But everything was different when she came back. She had missed a big, important dance at school. Her attitude changed. She was different toward men. And she never set foot in Saint Cecille’s again.” Hazel fell silent.
“I knew it,” Glee said under her breath, more to herself than to anyone.
Neil told me, “Our theory was correct.”
Parker added, “It all fits.”
“Mom had an abortion?” Thad mumbled.
I told him gently, “Try not to judge her. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision. Single motherhood wasn’t as common then—”
Fiercely, Hazel interrupted, “It was an easy decision. I told you: Suzie couldn’t have that baby. It was unthinkable. Abhorrent.”
Uh-oh. I suggested, “Why don’t you tell us the rest, Hazel?”
She looked from face to face, then smiled bitterly, as if to say, All right, you asked for it. With her tongue pasty in her mouth, she said, “Suzanne Quatrain had an abortion because she had been raped. It happened here, under this very roof, upstairs in the attic great room where she was killed last week. Thirty years ago, she was raped in that same room—on Christmas morning! And the man who raped her, the devil who impregnated her was her very own brother, Mark Quatrain, home on vacation from his senior year of college!”
We reacted to this news with an involuntary chorus of gasps and my-Gods, my own mind spinning at the thoroughness with which she further crushed the once-idealized fantasy of my handsome older cousin. But she wasn’t finished. “Is it any wonder,” she continued over our confused babble, “that the family threw that filthy bastard out? They never pressed charges against him—of course not, the shame was too great to be made public—but no tears were shed when he got packed off to Vietnam, and damn few tears were shed when he died there! I’m glad he got butchered. They ought to pin a medal on whoever sent him straight to hell. My only regret is what it did to his mother. Poor Peggy’s heart couldn’t take it, and she died shortly after her son did.”
Hazel had finished, leaving us in speechless, sickened disbelief.
Joey, though, was unfazed by the telling of his older brother’s crimes, unable to grasp their gravity. “Parker,” he said, rattling something at the cocktail cart, “the champagne is gone. Can you show me how to make another old-fashioned?”
New Year’s morning dawned bright and bitterly cold, but none of the household saw it. The previous night’s party broke up around two, when Glee Savage excused herself, assuring me she could safely travel the short distance home—she lived only a few blocks away, and the haze of her earlier martinis had long since cleared. The late meal, followed by Joey and Hazel’s revelations, left the rest of us feeling alert and sober by the time we turned out the lights.
Joey and Hazel didn’t fare as well. Joey had drunk far more than usual that evening, and ended up spending the night at the house, recovering. Hazel, who almost never drank, had to be tucked in by Glee before she left. We all speculated whether Hazel would even remember telling us her terrible, long-guarded secrets.
So the house was uncommonly quiet the next morning. Neil and I were the first to rise, shortly before ten. The mood was wrong for sex, and the weather was wrong for running, so we got dressed and went to the kitchen to get the coffee started. Predictably, the door to Hazel’s quarters was closed, and there were no sounds of stirring within. Parker joined us a few minutes later, also dressed for the day—flannel shirt and his usual chinos.
After a groggy round of good mornings and our first few sips of strong coffee, we began the inevitable postmortem of Hazel’s tell-all, keeping our voices low in case she was awake. Parker told us, “The abortion angle came as no surprise—everything we knew already pointed to it. But the rest really blew me away. I don’t know when I finally got to sleep.”
“Same for us,” said Neil, pausing to stifle a yawn. “Mark and I lay there talking about it till God knows when.”
I nodded wearily. We had already spent too many sleepless hours rehashing Hazel’s revelations, and I was not inclined to immerse myself in them again, at least not so early in the day. “I’m going to get the paper,” I told them.
Topping off my old Chicago Journal mug, a porcelain remnant of my former life, I excused myself and walked to the front hall. Fortunately, the Dumont Daily Register had landed right at the threshold, and it took only a second to retrieve it from the arctic air that had settled overnight beyond the door. Hefting the paper, I noted that it was an unusually slim edition, even for a Saturday, traditionally a sapless advertising day. That, combined with slow news and a holiday morning, left little to print.
I carried the paper to my den, spread it open on the partners desk, and sat down to read it, slurping from my mug. Page one was filled with inconsequential wire-service stuff, nothing of local interest—for the first time in a week, there wasn’t even mention of Suzanne’s murder. With no motivation to turn the page, I slumped back in my chair, sipped more coffee, and gazed at the room vacantly, slipping into thought. The setting reminded me of another New Year’s Day, thirty-three years earlier, the morning my boyhood trip to Dumont drew to a close.
I got up early that day to pack, and the house was quiet. Uncle Edwin and Aunt Peggy had been to a big party the night before—the party he had cleaned his tuxedo for—so I was surprised, when I came downstairs and set my suitcase in the hall, to see my uncle sitting at the big two-sided desk in his den. He was dressed really nice, as always, and was reading the morning paper—the Dumont Daily Register, it was called. I went to the doorway and said hello.
He looked up from the paper. “Good morning, Mark! Ready to head home?”
“Right after breakfast,” I told him.
He swallowed some coffee from a pretty cup that he put back on its saucer. “I’ll drive you to the bus, okay?”
Body Language Page 20
