Thaddeus’s glass: empty as the day it was born. But a third bottle of Barolo appeared; he lifted it for them to behold, and devoted himself to the hard labor of peeling off the foil capsule encasing the cork and of twisting the corkscrew into the center of the cork, followed by the grunting pull of the cork itself.
“Your face is red,” Grace observed.
“We need a wine steward,” Thaddeus said. He wiped the top of the bottle with his napkin, and reached across the table to fill Muriel’s glass. Breast-feed your child right now, he thought, I put a spell on you.
“Did you really go to that naked restaurant?” Muriel asked.
Filling Jennings’s glass, Thaddeus answered, “It’s a sex club. A consenting adults swingers’ club. They serve food to get around some legal ordinances. Somehow pastrami makes it all kosher.” He finessed filling Grace’s glass without having to make eye contact with her. “But, yes, we went. Once. Once. And I suppose it could be argued that it was the worst thing we ever did.”
“This might be a close second,” Grace said.
“The point is, we survived it,” Thaddeus said.
“My buddy Larry says what does not destroy you makes you stronger,” Jennings said.
“Exactly!” Thaddeus exclaimed. He hadn’t meant to, but he clapped his hands, excited that Jennings had more or less quoted Nietzsche. Maybe they would be friends after all!
“The reality is,” Grace said, “that what doesn’t destroy you actually makes you weaker. You get worn out. Pain and misfortune wear you out. Lies wear you out. Hurt feelings wear you out. They kill you by degrees.”
Muriel slipped her hand into her blouse and brought her hand out again and touched it with the tip of her tongue, evidently testing for milk.
“I knew if I didn’t get out of Bakersfield I was doomed,” she said. She peered over at the bassinet, satisfied herself that Jewel was still asleep. “Everyone I ever wanted to like me figured me for a narc.”
“Because of her father,” Jennings said.
“Yeah. Super Cop. People hated me because of him, and he hated me because of me.”
“How could anyone ever hate you?” Thaddeus asked.
“He thought I was a hippie. He really did not like hippies. Once when I was in second grade I found a little orange, one-eyed kitten and I brought it home and Dad said only hippies kept cats, but if I wanted a dog he’d get me one. Then he put me and the cat—I called him Toastie, because he was the color of toast—he put us in his squad car and made me show him right where I found Toastie and I had to put him on the side of the road, right there. He whooped out his siren the whole way, I guess to show me it was some big official business or something.”
“I loved hippies when I was a little girl,” Grace said. “I thought they were magical, like fairies or brownies.”
“Yeah, hash brownies,” Thaddeus said. “To hash brownies!” He raised his glass.
“What kind of wine is this?” Grace asked, squinting at the label. “I’m blotto.”
“It hails from Piedmont,” Hat said. “Good rocky soil, strong sun. Your predecessors the Boyetts visited Piedmont, you might be interested to know. They had good friends there. They all took a hot air balloon ride, though if I were to do such a thing my first choice would be France. I have never trusted the Italians. They know pleasure but they are imprecise. Now the French. The French were the pioneers of hot air balloons. Monsieur . . .” Hat opened his mouth but no sound came out. He shook his head, and his face briefly colored.
Muriel clutched her breasts. “Uh-oh, my boobies feel like they’re going to explode.”
“These kids are going to get plastered,” Grace said.
“I happen to know something about our refrigerator that nobody else knows,” Thaddeus said, feeling so expansive he felt he might actually be increasing in size—the helium of his own high spirits filled his chest.
“Oh good,” Grace said. “I was hoping we’d be playing guessing games about our refrigerator.”
“A bottle of Veuve Clicquot!” Thaddeus said, undeterred. He was silent for a moment. “Oh Jesus,” he said, starting to laugh. “That was actually quite guessable.” His words struggled not to drown in the roiling sea of laughter.
A silence descended. And in the silence, they heard Laura’s heavy footsteps passing over them.
Thaddeus caught the expression on Muriel’s face. “Oh please, don’t worry yourself over these things. So maybe Jennings taught her to drive. Or something. You know? Something? But what can we expect out of life? It’s always a mess. Look at me and Grace going to Nero’s Fiddle.”
“You really need to shut it down, Thaddeus,” Grace said.
“Agreed. I have to get past the idea that I don’t exist if I am not talking or fucking or making money. And I need to go to the refrigerator.” He pointed at it. It was ten steps away, though to him, for the moment, perspective tromboned. “And get the lovely bottle of Voovarama.”
“I don’t think we need any more booze,” Grace said, as the refrigerator swung open. “We’ve got two nursing mothers, and you’re acting insane.”
But Thaddeus was already twisting the cork out of the bottle. A low pop followed by a curl of vapor rising from the bottle’s mouth. He filled their glasses, saying ooops each time because the glasses each held a residue of red wine.
“It’s such a pleasure having you guys here,” Grace said, lifting her glass. A kind of undifferentiated desire swarmed her senses. Color rose from the hollow of her throat, delicate pale pink, the inside of a dog’s ear.
“Good to be here,” Jennings said.
“Different from what I thought,” admitted Muriel. “In a good way,” she added.
“To our friendship,” Thaddeus said. He pinged the rim of his glass against Jennings’s. “And to you, Hat. Who knows this place inside and out. Like no one else. And you, Miss California,” he said to Muriel. “Drink deeply!”
“I can’t have any more,” Muriel said. “My mother boozed when she was nursing me and I think that’s why I could never learn math.”
“Fuck math,” Thaddeus almost shouted—at the last instant he lowered his voice, like a tall man ducking his head before knocking himself silly on a low beam. “Anyhow, I think we better get to the main event before the babies wake up.”
“Let’s bring out the dessert first,” Grace said.
“We don’t have a dessert,” Thaddeus said. “We’re having tomorrow’s hangovers for dessert. So listen. Hat? Guys? We never expected to be living like this, in a house like this, with land, and everything else. Until recently, we were living in a small apartment.”
Grace looked down at her hands. It was happening, the dreaded thing. It was no longer something they were going to argue about on and on. It was simply going to be put out there in the world. She wondered for a moment if she had married a fool.
“We don’t know if I’m a flash in the pan,” Thaddeus was saying. “I’m talking about my career. This whole crazy business I’m in.”
The phrase turned Grace’s stomach—this whole crazy business. His career talk embarrassed her. And it diminished her, too, put her in a place she had never wanted to be. What happened to being artists? Living for art and each other? What had happened to the people who wanted something more than to live in a big house and pour expensive wine? She saw it all in a flash, the life before her, the paunchy, jokey husband, the pitiful little punch line of a wife in her home studio making art no one saw.
“So you write what the actors do and say?” Muriel said. She rarely went to the movies, but like most people she was willing to be dazzled by them, and enjoyed hearing about the crazy rich people living unimaginable lives, with their freaky little dogs and their diets and love affairs.
Did Thaddeus even hear her? “Was Hostages better than anything else I’d ever written?” he was saying. “No. I can say that without any hesitation. And it wasn’t the worst thing, either. So much of it is luck, dumb luck. I never even wanted to write scree
nplays. I wanted to write books. But I guess I don’t have the . . . concentration. Maybe the talent. So right now, I guess I’m on a roll.” He shook his hand briskly, as if shooting craps. “I’m getting work based on Hostages, but this is what I know—most people end up wiping out. So the thing is, we’re here now. But,” he added, with an embarrassed laugh, “we don’t know what the future holds. And that’s a cliché, by the way. A writer told you that.”
“Okay, Thaddeus. Please. Don’t talk about your career.” Grace regretted the sharpness in her voice. She tried to recoup. “It’s not like I’m selling paintings or anything,” Grace said, in a confidential tone. “Financially, it’s all on Thaddeus. It’s all kind of nuts. We basically don’t know what the fuck we’re doing.”
Muriel reached for Jennings’s hand, seeking reassurance. But Jennings was sitting back in his seat, his hands folded over his stomach, his gaze on the ceiling.
“Hat, you and yours have been living in the yellow house for a long time,” Thaddeus said.
“Before me, there was a series of caretakers,” Hat said. “Some of them quite dishonest.”
“Well, it’s yours, Hat. Long story short. No rent, nothing. And when you work around here, you get paid. We’ll work that out, but the important thing is the house. Right? It’s yours. In case we end up losing this place,” Thaddeus said. “It’s not my plan. Believe me. But you never know. Hostages is going to be okay, I’m sure. But I was fired from it. Replaced, as they would have it. The fuckers, the fucking motherfucking fuckers. I’m getting first credit, but still. Here’s the thing. We want you to have the yellow house and some of the land it sits on.”
Some of the land? Grace sat up. Did Thaddeus just give the yellow house to Hat? What just happened?
Thaddeus could read her thoughts, and thought he could somehow make it all work with a smile. It had been a while since he’d felt so certain of anything.
Muriel took a small, dainty sip of her champagne during the silence that followed.
“Maybe you can’t break up the property,” Jennings said, finally. “The old families around here wrote the laws.”
Hat had not responded. Was he dazed by the largesse, or had he fallen asleep?
“Hell we can’t,” said Thaddeus. “We had a surveyor come out when we bought it. We’ll have him come back. We bring it to the zoning board and it’s done. End of story.” He took a deep breath and decided he would say what was on his mind—there were things demanding to be said, they lined up like teenagers waiting their turn to go off the diving board. “Jennings, man. You remember when you picked me up at the airport, the evening of the housewarming party?”
“Sure.”
“I can’t fucking believe I let you carry my suitcase.”
“It’s part of the job,” Jennings said, looking at his hands.
“I wasn’t raised to let other people carry my suitcase.”
“Part of the job,” Jennings repeated. “Skip it. I didn’t mind.”
Suddenly, Hat said, “Well, isn’t this something.” His eyes glistened. He dabbed the corners of his mouth with the back of his hand. “This one takes the cake.”
“I don’t see what’s happening,” Muriel said. “You’re giving your house away?”
“How is it our house?” Thaddeus said. “We don’t live there, we don’t take care of it. It’s Hat’s house. We’re just making it official. And let’s face it—we owe it, it’s the least we could do. I’m the one who wanted the fucking lights in the trees. So stupid.”
“But I’m fine,” Hat said. “A tree man knows how to fall.”
“But you should have, Pop,” Jennings said.
Jennings had wanted Hat to sue, but there was no case, no doctor’s bills, no paper trail of diagnoses and prescriptions. Grace and Thaddeus had paid for the ambulance and for the emergency room, but Hat walked out of the hospital an hour after being carted in.
“Well, you’ve got yourself a deal!” Hat said, moving his hand as if striking a gong hanging invisibly over his head. Turning to Jennings, he said, “I knew this day would come. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it.”
“He deserves it, if you want to know the truth,” Jennings said. “It’s nice of you to do it, but he’s given this place everything for—how long you been here, Pop? Fifty years?”
“No,” Hat said. “Not even close.”
“How long?”
“It’ll be forty-six in March.” He sat back in his chair and drew a deep, slow breath. It was taking him a moment to put it all together. Like most men who have earned their living by physical labor, he was years older than his actual age: physically, he was over eighty.
In his glass, a few champagne bubbles were still rising. He drained the glass in one swallow, as if it might have the same effect as pouring a little fuel into the carburetor of a stalled tractor.
“You could move in there, too,” Thaddeus said to Jennings. “We could raise our families together.”
“I suppose we could,” Jennings said, with a smile that was at best enigmatic.
Yes, there was a bit of fuck you in that. Thaddeus could hardly blame him. But perhaps this whole thing had been a ridiculous, horrible, telltale, destructive mistake. It was as if Sam and Libby, huddled against the cold, were rapping at the icy windows, their angry little knuckles hard against the frozen glass. Do not do this thing, they warned their son. What’s yours is yours.
But what about your socialist principles? he asked them.
Charity is the socialism of fools, they answered. You’re only making things worse, you’re pointing out the vast gap between you and them.
GRACE EMERGED FROM THE BATH dressed for eight hours of nonstop chastity in a flannel nightgown, her face red from scrubbing, her bangs wet, her eyes blurred by exhaustion and inebriation—and anger.
“You feel okay with what we did tonight?” he asked.
“No. Not really. You can tell them tomorrow that you were drunk, and . . . whatever.” She slipped into bed, a large California king that afforded ample opportunities for privacy. She sometimes missed the double bed back on Twenty-Third Street, with its little islands of softness and its ability to enforce at least a minimal intimacy, but not tonight, she did not miss it tonight.
“Well, I know we did the right thing,” Thaddeus said. “As the Jews say, our names will be written into the book of life.”
“So now you’re a Jew?”
“I’m always a Jew. Why do you even say that?”
“Well, tell them tomorrow you were a drunk Jew, and when Jews get juiced they get a little carried away.”
“I can’t do that. We’ve done the right thing. We don’t need to own the yellow house.”
“You’re such a good boy,” she said.
“Well, that’s not very nice.”
“And I saw you looking at her tits, Mr. Generous,” Grace said.
He shook his head, unable to come up with anything that might refute or deflect her observation.
“And if you ever mention anything about Nero’s—”
“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “I shouldn’t have. Sorry sorry sorry.”
“When you say it like that it sounds false,” she said. “Sorry sorry sorry. Like I’m supposed to feel bad for making you apologize?”
“Okay, I’m sorry about how I said I’m sorry.” Yet there was a sense of relief. Grace was leaving the yellow house behind, talking about Muriel, Nero’s.
She closed her eyes for a moment. “I can’t really figure out how we got from where we were to where we are.” She glanced at him. “Why are you smiling?”
“The way you say rilly.”
“Aren’t you tired of that?”
The corners of his mouth turned down. His face was like a Japanese mask. His expression confused her; she couldn’t discern if he was furious or overwhelmed with sadness. Maybe this was love. The thing we cannot name.
“Never. It was always you I wanted,” he said. “When you walked into Four Freedoms. The wa
y you fucked my brains out in my horrible little childhood bed. The way you held my hand when you gave birth to David, the way you squeezed my fingers I thought they were going to break.”
“Everyone does that,” Grace managed to say.
“But it was you,” he whispered. “And not just that. It’s everything you do. It’s you at the end of the evening. Just washing your face. And then you rinse with tepid water twenty times, early or late, drunk or sober, it never fails, and then you come to bed and your bangs are dark and wet. How would I ever live without that? It’s the most sublime kind of crazy. It’s this gorgeous commotion, like a flock of birds taking off right in the middle of me. Every good thing that has ever happened to me and every bad thing, too—none of it would mean anything if I couldn’t bring it to you. Nothing is real until you see it, nothing is true until you say it. You are the meaning of everything. And I know, I know I know and I know, that’s a lot to put on anyone’s shoulders, but that’s how it is. Without you I am just a series of gestures, a bunch of attitudes, and appetites. But with you it all has meaning, it’s all a part of something I believe in, a story that goes on and on. Maybe I will never write a book, but this story, I’m going to tell this story until I die.”
“I’m so mad at you,” Grace said. “I feel like smacking you.”
“Then do it, smack me.”
“Would that make you happy?”
“I’m not in it to be happy, Grace. What the fuck is happiness anyhow? It’s so stupid. Even the word happiness sounds sort of ridiculous. I don’t care about happiness. I just want to be with you.” He took a long breath and fell silent.
From the cellar, the boiler, hungry for oil, came on with a deep whoosh, shaking the house ever so slightly.
“Jesus,” Grace said.
“Vapor lock.” He toed off his shoes and lay next to Grace. He reached across the expanse of dotted Swiss duvet and took her hand. To his relief, she linked her fingers through his.
“Hey, I know it’s late, but do you mind if I read you a couple of pages of something I’m working on?” he asked.
“Tonight?” She widened her eyes, mocking horror, but feeling it, too.
River Under the Road Page 20
