“Their party sounds better than ours,” Thaddeus said.
Grace turned toward him, placing her hands on his chest so he wouldn’t think she wanted to be kissed. “Do you think Hat’s okay?”
“He danced. So, I guess.”
“What if he sues us?”
“Let him. We’re insured.”
“We’re insured. Wow. You really did it, didn’t you? Now we’re the kind of people who have to be insured.” She relaxed her hands, allowing them to slide down his body. She clasped him from behind and pressed him closer to her.
“This kid is already getting in our way,” Thaddeus said.
“It’s only going to get worse.” She made the sign of the cross on his ass, and then slapped it. “It was really nice of Kosoff to send that singer to play for you.”
“For us.”
“Oh please. He doesn’t even know my name. For now there is no ‘us.’ It’s Thaddeus Kaufman and his pregnant wife.”
“Grace . . .”
“No, no, it’s fine. Who knows? Maybe it’ll get me to work twice as hard. I’m not too good in getting my stuff out there. I have such a horrible fear of rejection. You have so much self-confidence. And people like you so much. I don’t go into things thinking I’m going to be liked. Actually it’s the opposite.”
“I don’t care who likes me, as long as you do.”
“Look at how much Kosoff likes you and what it’s brought us.”
He held her closer; he could feel the child moving inside her, or at least he imagined he could. “I think I got fired,” he whispered into her scalp.
She looked up at him. It was too dark to see her face, but judging by the sound of her voice he guessed she was smiling. “Rilly? Rilly and truly?”
“Yes. It happens. It’s how it works.”
She took him by the hand and led him to the mattress on the floor. “It was hard for you to say that, wasn’t it? About Kosoff.”
“I don’t ever want there to be secrets.”
She rolled onto her stomach, licked her fingers and wet herself. Sometimes she could be so unromantic about sex, but her frankness was in itself a kind of blunt glamour. He entered her gently, easing himself in as if hardly wanting to be noticed. She was on her knees, her breasts were fuller than they had ever been. She backed into him, encouraging him to let himself go. She closed her eyes and was surprised by what was there lurking in her own mind: an image of Jennings sitting alone, covering his eyes.
“Are you all right?” Thaddeus asked.
She made a noncommittal sound.
He asked the question of the flailing, the lost, and the doomed. “What are you thinking about?” he whispered.
Chapter 7
Stained Glass
FEBRUARY 9, 1981
HAT: Stratton residence.
GRACE: Hello, Mr. Stratton. It’s Grace. (After a silence) At the . . . house?
HAT: Oh hello. Is everything all right?
GRACE: Well, Thaddeus and I want to have a little dinner party and we were wondering if you and your family could join us on Monday.
HAT: (After a silence) Well, you know we have an infant on our hands. It might be difficult for the mother to go out in the evening. You know how those things are.
GRACE: It’s just going to be a family party. Of course the babies will be there. Can you make it at seven o’clock?
PUSHING THE BUTTON TO A DOORBELL THAT WAS NOT working, snow on their collars and snow in their hair and snow clinging to their eyelashes, Hat, Jennings, and Muriel waited on Orkney’s front porch, their smiles in place. Hat had done everything he could to impress them with the importance and rarity of an invitation to the big house; he had been successful in communicating the evening’s importance to Muriel, and even Jennings, with a lifetime of resistance to his father’s ideas behind him, had succumbed to Hat’s nervous excitement. Muriel held Jewel, swaddled to the point of mummification, beneath her ankle-length down-filled coat. This would be Muriel’s first time inside the mansion, inside any mansion. And it was a mansion, despite her husband and her father-in-law never saying the word. They called it either the Big House or Over There.
“Are you sure it’s tonight?” she asked.
Hat wobbled the doorbell button around in its casing. “There’s your problem,” he proclaimed.
Suddenly, the front door opened. Light and warmth and fragrance poured out of the house like music.
“I saw your silhouettes through the glass!” Thaddeus exclaimed. “How long have you been out there? Come in, come in, come in.”
“Just arrived,” Hat said. Since tumbling from the tree, he seldom went out, rarely, as he put it, ventured forth, and up until the last minute this evening he wasn’t certain he would join them tonight. But here he was, without a winter coat, just a brown wool sports jacket with large leather buttons, patches on the elbows, and birding pants made out of wool thick enough to withstand traipsing through sticker bushes, wild roses, and blackberry vines. His large ears were bright red from the cold, and the skin on his face was scrubbed so vigorously and shaved so carefully it had the sheen of glass. He held his cane over his shoulder, and a small woven basket filled with Cortland apples, their skin dark in the winter light. “This variety of apple was developed right here in New York,” he said, handing the basket to Thaddeus. “Back in 1915. Government program, one of the few that was worth the time and money.”
Accepting the basket from Hat, Thaddeus asked, “Isn’t the dinger working?”
“I’m afraid not,” Hat said, and Jennings, sensing a lengthy explanation as to why the doorbell was not in tip-top chiming condition, handed Thaddeus a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, festively sealed in its mango-colored box.
“This is great,” Thaddeus said. He held the champagne aloft, as if it were something he’d won. “My favorite.”
“It was what you served at the housewarming,” Jennings said.
“I know!” Thaddeus exclaimed, grinning, though he felt a stir of uneasiness, wondering what other extravagances Jennings had noted at that party, and what he and Hat and all their friends had said about it afterward.
“Mice is what did it,” Hat said.
“Did what?” Thaddeus asked.
“Chewed up the wires,” Hat said, his face lighting up. “That’s why your bell isn’t working. Once, Norman Vincent Peale stood on the portico for half an hour. Same thing. The field mice—the brown ones, mind you, not the gray—those critters chew the wires. Now you might want to ask me, why would a mouse want to eat wire? Well, they don’t, they don’t see it as food. What they’re doing is whittling down their teeth. All rodents do this. Left alone, the front teeth of a mouse will grow five inches in a year.”
“Sounds like some of the producers I work for in L.A.,” Thaddeus said.
“We’ll get in there and have a look,” Hat said. “If we’re lucky they did their chewing near the button. What kind of transformer do you have in there?” He noticed the look of incomprehension on Thaddeus’s face. “It’s either twelve volts or sixteen. Both perfectly safe, by the way. No one ever got shocked up fixing a doorbell. Right, son?”
“If you say so, Pop.”
“The thing is, I don’t really know what a transformer actually is, or does,” Thaddeus said, motioning them all to follow him into the library. “But it sounds like something I’d like to get into,” he said over his shoulder, with a feverishly merry smile.
As she followed Thaddeus, Muriel took in what she could of the house, struck by the beauty of the place. It reminded her of seeing a play at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, how when the curtain came up and she saw the set—it looked nothing like this, it was just a motel room and a bed—it made her gasp and her eyes fill with tears because suddenly she was in a different world. Here at Orkney, the music room was to the right with its ancient piano and old lithos of composers who looked like British judges. To the left was the library with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, its green and pink carpet, a long inlaid ta
ble, a blue vase filled with dried hydrangea, leather chairs. Along the long hall, there were ornate sconces on the walls, drawings of eggs and apples in beautiful frames, the beginnings of a staircase. As magical as it all was, it was not like the old photographs in History of a House, the privately printed book about Orkney that Hat had given to her. Where were the royal chandeliers, the pleated draperies, the footmen in breeches? In a way it was just a house, only big. And warm! She hugged the baby closer and followed the men into the library.
Buddy Klein was already there, gazing at the unlit logs in the fireplace, perched on a Queen Anne chair in such a way that reduced pressure on his lower back. His pupils were pinned: Percocet. He’d had a rough few months—financial difficulties, on top of ex-wife, estranged daughter, and sciatic nerve difficulties—and it showed. He’d put on weight, the skin under his eyes was pouchy, and his long lank hair showed streaks of gray.
“I guess I crashed your dinner party,” Buddy said, as Thaddeus led Jennings, Muriel, and Hat in. “Hat. What the hell? What’s with the cane? Now you can’t walk?”
“Evening, Buddy. I see you’re without your trusty guitar.”
“You are looking at that rarest of phenomena, a man who realizes his own limitations,” said Klein, saluting.
“Buddy’s morose because Bill Haley died,” Thaddeus said, and gestured to the low, inlaid table upon which he and Grace had put out cheese and crackers, as well as a silver bowl of cashews, an open bottle of Pinot Noir, a bottle of Russian vodka with an indecipherable Cyrillic label, and a filled ice bucket topped by a pair of pewter tongs.
“I’m going to leave these right here,” Thaddeus said, placing the apples on the table. “They’ll go great with the cheese. And this . . .” He smiled fondly at the champagne. “I’m going to put it in the fridge, and we can have it with our dessert.”
“You can save it for a special occasion,” Jennings said.
“This IS a special occasion,” Thaddeus boomed, startling himself with the raucous gaiety of his voice. He lingered in the doorway, stealing glances at the staircase, hoping for Grace.
Hat, Jennings, and Muriel sat in straight-backed chairs, the men with their hands folded and hung between their knees, Muriel with the baby on her lap. She touched Jewel’s nose and the baby smiled her amazing smile. “So who’s Bill Haley again?” Muriel asked.
“One of your original purveyors of rock and roll,” Hat said, trying to keep it short. Jennings had already strongly hinted to him that Muriel was afraid to ask questions around him because his answers took so long. Hat felt an obligation to pass along whatever knowledge he had been able to accrue during his years on earth, but at least for tonight he would try to limit his responses to a sentence or two—it would actually be an interesting challenge. Aside from wanting to keep on Muriel’s good side, Hat was in pain, especially in his right hip, which throbbed day and night like a heart circulating pain instead of blood. “‘Rock Around the Clock’ was his somewhat dubious claim to fame,” he added, because it would have just been plain wrong to omit that important detail.
He heard footsteps overhead and looked up at the ceiling. It needed a good scraping and repainting.
“Ooops,” Thaddeus said. “I forgot something in the kitchen.”
“What kind of cheese is this?” Muriel said, after Thaddeus was gone, leaning forward in her chair, sniffing. The cheese, soft and moist and shot through with dark blue veins, looked like her grandmother’s feet. Feet that had terrified her as a child. Her father had always told her she’d had an overactive imagination. He made it sound like a glandular problem, like something that made you sweat, or smell. A diagnosis that held no pity and no respect. A diagnosis as hard as his voice, as undermining as his shitty little smile.
“Could be a Roquefort,” Hat said. “But I’d put it at a domestic blue—Maytag, maybe. Top of the line.”
“Want one?” Jennings asked Muriel, picking up a cracker, and the little cheese knife with its mock pearl handle.
“From the great state of Iowa,” Hat added. “The Hawkeye state.” He accepted a cheese and cracker from his son, placed it in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully. “Oh, I could get used to this,” he said.
“Guess I better wait,” Muriel said. She wrinkled her nose. She had sharp features, a hillbilly plainness, but Hat saw how his boy could find her beautiful. There was something to loving what others overlooked, like finding an Old Master at a yard sale—one of Hat’s favorite fantasies. Muriel had spun a cocoon around herself made of daydreams and marijuana. It was obvious to Hat what she saw in his son—a good-looking man who accepted her for exactly who she was and asked little from her. But why, with all the fish in the sea, Jennings had decided Muriel was the one for him, that was a riddle no less mysterious to Hat now than it was when Jennings came home with his California girl wrapped around him like a second skin.
Thaddeus was on his way back from the kitchen, carrying a platter with slices of melon wrapped in prosciutto, but stopped to watch Grace making her way down the staircase. Her progress was languid. She cradled David in one arm, notched against her hip, and had the baby’s wicker bassinet in the other.
“Is Buddy still here?” Grace silently mouthed the words.
Thaddeus nodded, and Grace shook her head.
“We’re making a huge mistake,” Grace whispered.
“It’s already settled,” murmured Thaddeus. “It’s done. And it’s the right thing. We almost killed him!”
“Huge mistake,” she repeated.
“Oh, there she is,” Buddy said, as they entered the library. “Mother of the year.”
Thanks a lot, Muriel thought.
“How’s that vodka and Percocet treating you, Buddy?” Grace said.
Thaddeus crouched before the fireplace. He was still waiting for Grace to get past her initial reluctance to have a kid, but Grace was dug in. Maybe it was being here in Leyden, maybe it was his career taking off and hers sputtering, but by now her low opinion of herself as a mother seemed to have become a kind of cornerstone to her sense of self. And the argument over whether or not to have a kid continued even after the kid was born. Thaddeus focused on making a fire. He had stacked the kindling and the wood carefully and had gone so far as to surreptitiously squirt a bit of lighter fluid onto the rolled-up newspapers to ensure a quick and easy start.
Five-month-old David was lolling about in his bassinette, less ill-contented than usual. He was dressed in beautiful cotton pajamas, decorated in a pattern of black-and-yellow clapperboards, a gift from the Canadian director Neal Kosoff. David’s reddish bare feet looked like newborn squirrels. He was long and thin; there was plenty of room in the bassinet for Jewel, and Grace encouraged Muriel to put her in.
“Lucky you,” Thaddeus said to his baby son. “I was in college before I slept with a girl.”
“I was ten,” Buddy said. “If you count cousins.”
“Don’t look at me,” Muriel said. “My father named me after a cigar.”
“That’s great,” Thaddeus said, his voice booming. “Hilarious.” Calm the fuck down, he advised himself. He picked up the wine, offering with his eyes to fill his sister’s glass, but Hannah shook her head, rose from her seat, and vanished.
“She’s not joking,” Jennings said. “Her old man loved tobacco. Like an addict. He named his son Kent, after the cigarette. Dog named Lucky.”
The conversation went elsewhere. The nibbles were nibbled upon. Wine and more wine was poured. All around the world, people were having parties, and this one was theirs. The women said their breastfed babies were going to get a hell of a buzz. All partook except for Hat, who said there were certain histamines used in vinification that caused headaches in certain individuals, and was sad to say he himself happened to be one of those people. He drank vodka, which he vastly enjoyed. “Seventy years of Red tyranny has not succeeded in destroying the Russian soul,” he said, holding up his glass as if it were a beacon of hope.
“I’ve been meaning to
ask you,” Thaddeus said. “Your name. How’d that come about?”
“Oh, well now we get into some ancient history,” Hat said. “Back when my father worked here, I often accompanied him on his daily rounds and Mrs. Livermore never paid me much mind, except one winter’s afternoon she noticed me with my father. I was shoveling the snow and my father was salting. Back then they used real salt, not the synthetic stuff they sell now. Anyhow, there was a raccoon creating a ruckus in the kitchen and they wanted to get it out of there, and for some reason Mrs. Livermore thought I was the boy for the job. She didn’t know my name so she just pointed and because I was wearing a hat she said, ‘You, Hat, can you come in here and be a hero?’ Of course I wanted to be a hero. What boy doesn’t? And I guess the name kind of stuck.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Philip. But if you called me Philip I wouldn’t even think it was me at this point,” Hat said.
The library had large four-part Palladian windows. The centers and the narrower flanking panes were white with frost, but the square tops, stained glass representations of standing beavers, glowed purple and gold in the moonlight. Beyond the windows rolled the lawns, and beyond the lawns was the river, and beyond that it hardly mattered because they were all here, the men, the women, the babies. What finer place on earth could there be? A thrumming sound rose up from the cellar, as the old boiler kicked on, sending hot water through the pipes and into the radiators. At least that’s what Thaddeus thought he was hearing. He hadn’t walked down the basement steps in a while; there were other people who kept things running now. Inside his own house, he was like a passenger on a plane hoping for the best.
Hat, accustomed to finding work orders in the facial expressions of his employers, said, “Don’t worry, we’ll get Jennings down there and make sure everything’s shipshape with your insulation. You’d be surprised what savings can be had.” He turned to Jennings. “Tomorrow?”
“Sure. What kind of insulation’s down there right now?” This to Hat: Jennings was sure Thaddeus would have no idea.
River Under the Road Page 18
