by David Gates
Four months ago they’d flown down for the funeral and seen her dead body—Holly’s first. She’d always heard that they looked fake and waxy, but she found it oddly not-disturbing. Maybe it was good that her first one was somebody she truly hadn’t known. Like practicing up for her mother. Who’s only sixty-three, but nevertheless. Holly’s father is sixty-six, living in Vancouver with his second family. (The younger boy’s now twelve.) She has no plans to attend that funeral, however many years away it might be.
When they went through his mother’s stuff, Seth told his father the same thing he’s saying now, about taking the wheelchair to the Salvation Army. Instead, he’d shipped it up to New York, then made sure it was in the van for the move to South Norwalk. He wanted it as a guilty reminder of his father’s selfless devotion, she assumed, which he was secretly afraid he himself wouldn’t rise to, if and when. But now it’s shaded into punk grotesque: Seth uses it as a footstool, a TV tray, and at the head of the table at dinners when they’re short a chair. Holly once said it made them seem like awful people. Seth said, “To whom?”
Seth’s official reason for still smoking weed is that he doesn’t want to, quote, go native, meaning end up one more suit on the train. (He in fact does wear a suit to work.) He wants them to, quote, live nicely, in a big house where family can come visit (kids, of course, in the back of his mind), but at the same time he doesn’t want to get less crazy. So he’ll smoke up before he goes for a run, and he’s found a dentist in Danbury who still gives gas; last week he had a dope-and-classic-movie marathon: The Godfather; Godfather II and Psycho. While the magazine he edits and publishes is basically a trade journal, it’s designed by a guy who used to be at Spin, and he commissions pieces from name writers. He’s told T. Coraghessan Boyle’s agent that he’d take fifteen hundred words on anything in any way related to marketing just to have Boyle’s picture on the contributors’ page—which Holly suspects is why he’s never heard back. Before they left the city, Seth bought a secondhand Ford Explorer and put in furry speakers so big they take up most of the wayback; now he’s got his eye on this particular sports car that Mazda makes, which looks completely European but costs like half. Holly, meanwhile, is trying to get less crazy. When he asked what kind of car she wanted—up here you really need two—she chose the top-rated Saturn. A dark green Saturn.
With all this company, she can’t be crazy. Her sister, his father tomorrow, then, after he goes back to Florida, her mother comes in for Christmas. (Seth and Holly have agreed it would be just too weird to throw the two of them together.) And in between they’ve got his old college roommate coming up for a weekend with wife and kids. Seth even said something about maybe asking Holly’s dad and stepmom sometime, but Holly cut that one off. He wants everybody, it seems, to admire their new home. It’s a white-clapboard, black-shuttered house—“Classic Connecticut,” the Coldwell Banker brochure called it, “with today’s amenities.” Built in 1849, four upstairs bedrooms, new half-bath off the master bedroom, new kitchen with slate countertops and a Jenn-Air range with six burners. And since it was in South Norwalk rather than Westport, Seth thought they could actually swing it, even though Holly’s income—she freelanced restoring rare books and documents—could be unpredictable. There’s a big old maple tree he thinks they could save if somebody cut out the dead limbs and fertilized, and a garden out back. Their first day there, after Seth drove to the train, Holly put on work gloves and raked brown vines into a pile beneath the eight-over-eight windows. In each window, she could picture a black-suited old Yankee merchant or minister, the long-dead owners of this fine, severe house, looking down at her. She worked for half an hour, then took a shower and drove in to Manhattan. To fuck her lover. Harsh as that sounds.
All during the house-hunting, the mortgage application, the closing, even the move, she’d managed to spend an afternoon or two a week with Mitchell, then go home to her husband. And for another few weeks, until she decided the whole thing was too crazy, she’d drive into the city after morning rush hour, then back up to Connecticut before the afternoon rush began, to wait for her husband in their strange new house. Holly was prettier than her lover was handsome—Mitchell was getting bald and potsy, though in a cute way—so he’d had to put up with her having a husband and everything that involved: being kept on short notice, not being able to phone, having to wear a condom in addition to her putting in the diaphragm. When they played rough, she made him be careful about scratches; but she was allowed to mark him because he had nobody to hide stuff from. (That she knew about.) Finally, he’d had to put up with being told it was too crazy. What almost made them even was Holly’s need to feel like shit.
For a lover, she’d chosen the curator who’d been giving her most of her restoration work for the past couple of years. So since the beginning of October, she’s made less than a thousand dollars. Something else Seth doesn’t know.
These last few days she’s been trying to read Madame Bovary, a book she somehow missed in college. To drive home the where-adultery-ultimately-gets-you idea, though it’s also part of her self-improvement scheme, along with learning about opera and getting serious about cooking. The beginning seems to be about the husband as a schoolboy, so it looks like it could take forever to get to the marriage and then the affair, but she means to stick with it. And now that she’s going to stop smoking weed, that should help her concentration. She’s figured one thing out: the reason she goes deeper into her this-is-not-me space with her husband than she did with her lover is that she didn’t lie to her lover. Or didn’t lie as much to her lover. But the lover, not the husband, had to wear the condom, so didn’t that mean it was the lover who was more distant? And sure enough, she’s given up the lover and stayed with the husband. So at least that part hangs together.
With her morning headache, Holly does a lousy job of fixing breakfast for everybody. She slices the grapefruits in half, but can’t face getting in there with the knife and cutting the sections free. Nor does she use any of the six burners to cook them eggs, bacon, pancakes or even this great Irish oatmeal she bought. Her one big, bountiful effort is to fill the peacock-feather pitcher with milk and set out bowls and boxes of cereal: they’ve got their choice of Spoon Size Shredded Wheat or raspberry granola. When she goes to get coffee cups, Seth has come back from the store with the Sunday Times and he’s taking down juice glasses. She huffs out a big breath at him: he’s in her way. That was a shitty position he put her in last night.
She pours their coffee, then tries squeezing the ball of her thumb with the other thumb and forefinger, which is supposed to get rid of a headache. Without asking if anyone minds, she’s sneaked the Jane Eaglen CD into the kitchen boom box; it’s the first one, the Bellini-Wagner recital, which she likes better than the second one, the Mozart-Strauss, because it’s more extreme, though maybe not the thing for a headache. Holly’s still trying to come up with a formulation for Jane Eaglen. So far she’s figured out that Leontyne Price is steely and powerful, that Victoria de los Angeles is sweet-toned and smooth, that Montserrat Caballé is exquisitely controlled and that Luisa Tetrazzini, with all that birdy-sounding stuff, is virtually unlistenable. In some other life she’d be able to set forth these opinions in conversation. Though so far Seth is putting up with her opera phase on principle: the principle that any and all music must be put up with, just as she put up with his dancehall-reggae phase. What is it with men and music? Mitchell’s opera collection is so huge she’d wondered at first if he was straight. He was the one who’d put her onto Montserrat Caballé, calling her attention to Caballé’s pianissimo, which suggested that he liked his women to be exquisitely controlled. And Holly became that for him, within the context of being a total outlaw. The word adulteress makes her think of wild tresses. A dress, ripped from bare shoulders. It also makes her think of the word actress.
As Jane Eaglen shrills out “Hojotoho!” Holly watches Seth mangling his grapefruit. What a bad, bad wife she is. But the granola’s a hit: she’s the on
ly taker on the Shredded Wheat. On her first full day of being thirty-two, she doesn’t want to start putting on weight.
After breakfast, Seth goes upstairs to do some work, and Holly drives Tenley and her friend to the station in the Explorer. It creeps her out to have anybody else in the Saturn after she’s used it to go commit adultery. Her official excuse is that the car’s a mess; she keeps it that way by chucking napkins, McDonald’s bags and Diet Coke cans on the passenger-side floor. She’s even tried to think of a plausible-sounding reason to trade in a two-month-old car. In which her husband just had a twelve-CD changer installed.
“I still feel like I’m buzzed,” Tenley says. “You guys always get that wasted? I was so wrecked last night, I went to the bathroom and I couldn’t, like, remember how to pee?”
“Wow, really?” says the boyfriend.
“It’s sort of Seth’s hobby,” Holly says. “Like rock climbing.”
“But what about you?”
“I just basically keep him company.”
Tenley looks at her. “Yeah, I noticed.” She sighs. “Oh, well. Anyhow, you’ve got a fabulous place.” She pulls down the visor and lifts her chin to look in the mirror. “You know, the kitchen alone. God, I look like shit.” She flips the visor back up. “Carl? You didn’t hear that.” Carl’s in the backseat, drumming his fingers on Tenley’s headrest.
“Thanks,” says Holly. “It’s not really my doing, but—you know, yeah. It’s pretty great.”
“So is he after you to have kids now? Carl, could you cut that out?”
“We talk about it.”
“It just made me think, you know, choosing a house that big. And of course now that you’re—anyway. So you never told me what he got you for your birthday.”
“Oh. A CD thing for my car.” He’d also gotten her the 1935 recording of Act I of Die Walküre with Lotte Lehmann, who he’d read was the all-time greatest Sieglinde.
“What kind?” Carl says.
Tenley looks over her right shoulder. “This is girl talk.” She turns back to Holly. “Carl does have one big thing in his favor.” Holly glances in her rearview mirror; Carl’s just looking out the window. Tenley sighs. “God, I can’t believe how rich you guys are—sorry, I know how that sounds, but I’m really sort of in awe.” Tenley shares a two-bedroom in Park Slope.
“I guess I would be, too.” Holly puts her left blinker on. The station’s just up ahead, and that’ll be that. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. ‘I’m still the same person’?”
“Oh, you are, totally. I mean, nobody would ever …” Tenley looks over at Holly, shrugs.
“Right,” Holly says. “Say no more.”
“I can say no more,” Tenley says, in an Indian accent. When they were little, they must have seen Help! twenty times.
At two-thirty Seth and Holly start down for La Guardia in the Explorer, through a freezing rain. Can his father’s plane even land? She wishes it would turn tail and take him back, which she suspects is the cover-wish for her real wish.
The plane’s late because of the weather, but they’ve brought along a few sections of the Times, and she buys a cheap ballpoint to do the crossword puzzle. She’s trying to figure out “Forsterian dictum (two words)” when the flight’s finally announced and passengers start straggling in the gate. Seth and his father hug, then Van hugs Holly, mashing her breasts, his leather shoulder bag slapping against her pelvic bone. “Mmm,” he says into her ear. “So glad.”
“We are, too,” she says, and he releases her.
“Bumpy ride?” Seth says.
“Only along toward the last,” Van says. “I was able to read until we started hitting turbulence around Washington. Then I figured discretion was the better part of valor and had ’em bring me a drink. Since I was too pusillanimous to haul out my own supply. Listen, I have a gift for you two.” He pats the shoulder bag.
“A bottle of hooch,” says Seth. “How did I guess.”
“Oh, no, that I’m keeping. Like to have my little nightcap in my room. No, this is a one-of-a-kind—well, it is and it isn’t. I’ll have to give it to you when we get to your dacha. Couple things came loose, so I need to stop and get some rubber cement.”
“Hmm. Mighty mysterious,” Seth says. “Holly must have rubber cement in her workroom.”
“Hell, of course she would. Losing my marbles here. Ah, which reminds me. Guy goes to his doctor, doctor says, ‘I got some bad news. You have terminal cancer.’ Guy says, ‘Oh, no.’ Doctor says, ‘I got more bad news. You’ve also got Alzheimer’s.’ Guy says, ‘Whew, thank God. I thought you were going to tell me I had cancer or something.’ ”
“Good one,” says Seth.
“Except you’ve heard it.”
“Still good.”
Van stretches forth a hand and regards his palm as if holding what’s-his-name’s skull. “Age cannot wither nor custom stale. Speaking of which …” He gives Holly another quick hug. “You wouldn’t happen to have an older sister? A much older sister?”
“I have a younger sister—well, you met her. At the wedding.”
“I remember her well. Nearly as lovely as your lovely self. Too lovely, I’m afraid.”
“But she does have low standards,” Seth says.
“If she’s got standards of any kind, that lets her out,” says Van. “I remember when I used to have standards. It was back when Benjamin Harrison was president.”
When they get back to the house, she starts a pot of coffee, which seems better than offering Van more to drink. Seth shows him around, carries his bags upstairs and comes back down to the kitchen alone.
“Mmm.” He sniffs the air. “Good idea.”
Holly says, “Why were you ragging on my sister?”
“Say what?”
“She has low standards?”
“I thought I was ragging on what’s-his-name.”
“That’s not how it came across. You essentially told your father she was a slut.”
Seth does that little take of his where he raises both palms and rolls his eyes upward.
“Why would you do that?” she says.
“Holly. I was talking about her sorry-ass boyfriend. Shit, I like your sister.”
“Well, be more careful what you say, okay?”
“Okay. I’m sorry, babe.” He smiles and holds his arms open. What can she do but go to him and put the side of her head against his chest? Though she didn’t appreciate hearing that he likes her sister, either.
Van comes back down with his gift: a photo album filled with old pictures, captions typed on slips of white paper that he’s rubber-cemented to the black pages. They sit on the couch, Holly between them holding it on her lap as Van points and narrates. The story of his marriage, basically, with what seem to Holly grudging glimpses of Seth: selected baby pictures and milestones in costume—Little League uniform, mortarboard, Abe Lincoln in a school play. In groom suit, gray jacket, striped pants, holding hands with Holly in her wedding gown. The last page has shots from the fortieth-anniversary party. Among displays of exploding tropical flowers, Seth’s father, as tanned and smiley as an actor, works the room. Raises a champagne glass. Feeds a forkful of cake to Seth’s mother, stonefaced in her wheelchair.
“This is great,” Seth says. “I’m glad to have this.” Holly’s impressed: it’s a good imitation of the normative reaction. Over to you, Holly.
“Thank you,” she says. “This is going to be so wonderful to have.” She rubs her index finger back and forth on the slip of paper that says OUR 40TH, SIESTA KEY, 1/8/95, and the smears ball up into springy grains of rubber. She’s managed to imply that (a) his gift is not yet wonderful, and (b) it will be wonderful only when he, too, is dead. But Van puts an arm around her back, clamps her far shoulder and gives it a squeeze, apparently to express some feeling too powerful for words. He excuses himself and goes into the downstairs bathroom, and Holly turns back to that first page. A young man and woman in bathing suits, arms around each other’s waists, wat
er and mountains behind them: LILY AND VG, SARANAC, SUMMER 1957. In 1957, Seth’s mother had looked like Winona Ryder, except that her thighs had that tubby look nobody minded back then. Van had looked like a younger, even handsomer Seth.
Holly bought lamb chops for dinner, but now that it’s stopped sleeting, Van insists on taking them out for what he calls “our first night.” Lately, he says, he’s had a jones for Mexican food. A jones, yet. So Seth calls The El Coyote—which is what it’s actually called, The El—while Holly goes upstairs to put on earrings and lipstick.
She’s looking through her jewelry box when Seth comes in and closes the door behind him. He opens his top drawer, gets out his pipe and goes kitchy-koo.
“I don’t think I should,” she says.
“Oh, come on. I need my coconspirator. I can’t do this straight.”
“I thought you were enjoying it.”
“Good,” he says. “That means he probably thinks so, too.”
After turning him down in bed last night, Holly can’t totally punk out on this. But she only takes two hits to his four or five. That little bit she should be able to handle, or there really is something wrong with her.
• • •
The El Coyote is all welcome and abundance. Somebody’s put wooden bowls of salsa and blue corn chips on their table before they even sit down; the menu calls this “Bottomless Chips and Salsa—Complimentary!” The tabletops are wooden factory spools polyurethaned to a gloss like honey.
Holly can’t imagine how Seth got them here: he must be twice as wrecked as she is, if that’s quantifiable. At one point they had to squeeze through a construction zone where the plastic mesh fencing whipped by just inches from her window and giant bulldozers, cranes and earthmovers loomed in pink light. And then all that confusion at the door when they had to stop and be looked up in a book—what seemed to Holly the kind of episode that could lead to getting arrested. She tries to recall how the Bible line goes: Thou hast preparedest for me an table set before me in the presence of mine enemies. But it would be good to stay away from thinking about enemies.
