River Under the Road

by Scott Spencer

  “I know,” Grace said. “We’re going to have to crawl home.”

  “David’s over there practicing his hand-eye coordination. He can drive us home.”

  “It’s awful. It’s like that box is eating his soul.”

  “What do you think it’s worth?”

  “His soul?”

  “Ha. No, your painting.”

  “Sold,” said Patty, and he drew his imaginary circle around Davis’s head.

  “Now what the hell do I do?” Davis said. The complaint was jokey, meant to amuse, but everyone there knew he could not afford a painting.

  “You bought it, Piers,” a voice said, in mock admonishment. “Now it’s yours.”

  “Yes,” said Davis, “the rules of the game. Well, I’ll tell you what I am going to do.” He sprang up to the platform and took possession of Grace’s painting. He frowned at it, nodding sagely, as if fully qualified to estimate its worth. Pierpont’s great-aunt had had her portrait done by Sargent, and since then the Davis family all considered themselves somehow on the inside track when it came to the arts, especially painting. “I am going to re-auction this very interesting piece, done by one of our terrific neighbors, a local artist.”

  “I can’t watch this,” Grace said, shaking her head. “They’re treating it like a joke.”

  “He’s broke,” said Thaddeus. “He can’t pay for it.”

  “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Let me bid. Please.”

  “No!” Her face reddened. She looked murderous. He had never felt frightened of her before.

  She turned quickly, and cut a winding path through the standing crowd. Instinctually, Thaddeus followed behind. He saw her for a moment with a cold, appraising eye. Her body had lost some of its youthfulness. Not so much as his—he was a thickening wreck of a man! But Grace? Somehow it had once seemed possible that she would avoid the horns of time with a few deft matador moves. But now—it seemed to have happened all at once—those jeans were tighter than she might have wanted them to be. It may have been the weather, it may have been the light, but it seemed as if her once-shining hair had lost some of its luster. And her legs had lost their gamine quality. He had of course always known that one day it would happen. Well, welcome to that day. He remembered thinking it on their wedding day at Kip’s old loft. Her mother had had a difficult time pulling off her boots, and when she did Thaddeus had noted with just the merest trace of alarm the size of her calves. They were massive and muscular, they put you in mind of hard work, muddy fields, East German athletes turning around and around in circles before heaving the shot put. Maureen sensed his eyes on her and she turned toward him, smiled, and even made a kind of pose.

  Davis was capering back and forth holding Grace’s painting aloft, while Patty scowled at him. “All right, fellow custodians of all that is good and gracious, let’s get some real money out here. If we’re going to stop them from turning our river into a factory, we’re going to have to dig deep. Let’s start the bidding at one thousand.”

  “Pierpont,” a laughing voice called out. “It’s your baby, you rock it.”

  “Five thousand,” Thaddeus called, and without waiting another moment he turned and walked quickly across the room, and was just able to catch up to Grace and follow her out.

  “Hey,” he said. “Hey hey hey.” It was as if he were trying to calm a horse.

  “Oh, just get me out of here,” Grace said. “This is humiliating.”

  “We’re already out of there, baby,” Thaddeus said. They stood in the house’s central hall, with its compass-mosaic floor.

  “Are you insane? I told you not to bid.” They were both swaying, far drunker than they realized.

  “I want that painting. You shouldn’t have donated it. Not that one.”

  “Sold to the bidder at five thousand,” Burton Patty declared from a distance, without gratitude or pleasure, like a lock snapping shot. There was a smattering of applause.

  “Oh please. Let’s just get out of here.”

  “I’m sorry. I was—”

  “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care. Go get your son. There’s no way in hell I’m walking back into that room.”

  “Let’s get Emma first,” Thaddeus said. “It’ll take a while.”

  “I’ll do it. You get David.”

  “No, let’s both. She is my child, right?”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Everything. Fuck it. Sorry sorry sorry. It’s the pink ladies talking.”

  SEQUANA’S PREVIOUS OWNERS HAD USED this second-floor room as an office, where the various accounts were settled, ledger books kept in order and stored. Though Marino’s contractor had instructed the painters to scent the paint with vanilla, the room retained the old tobacco smell, the green and the black of it, the leaf and the creosote left behind by the stogies and cheroots and corncob pipes puffed on and chewed as household accounts were settled, and meager wages were dispensed. Those deep low wet rumbling coughs were still in the air, the tap of a twiddled fountain pen striking the old unlovely desk, the horror house creak of the swivel chair tilting back. Now the room was full of Marino’s possessions—his vintage posters announcing appearances by Howlin’ Wolf and Roosevelt Sykes at long-defunct Chicago clubs; the photographs he had taken of old people on the Nevksy Prospekt; the gaudily painted ostrich eggs notched precariously on their wooden stands; the queen-size bed with a kind of faux-Storyville frame; the bedspread that appeared to be fur, dyed in black-and-white stripes.

  Emma slept on her back, her arms and legs flung wide, her lips in a dainty pout. Her thin brown hair stuck to her forehead—she often perspired while sleeping. Grace had dressed her in a little plaid dress, red-and-black tights, patent leather party shoes. Her belly rose and fell with her deep breaths—the belly Grace had expected her to lose once she was walking, the belly that got just a little bit rounder and larger every month, her intractable belly, her pink and downy belly full of the foods Grace allowed.

  How a little girl whose diet consisted mainly of vegetables and poached fish could not only fail to lose weight but was actually still gaining weight was a mystery.

  Grace and Thaddeus were at extreme odds over the campaign to slim down their daughter. Thaddeus found Grace’s hectoring unbearable, and more than once he had stormed away from the dining table rather than listen to another word of his wife’s admonitions. His credibility in matters pertaining to the children was not particularly high. They both knew he hated to say no to the kids about anything. They both knew he basically thought that the very fact of them was so pleasing, so miraculous, such a blessing, such a privilege, such a run of good fortune in a universe that could—and often did—take everything away in an instant, that matters of discipline were almost completely ignored, or, really, simply left to Grace. All Daddy focused on was letting the kids know at every turn how profoundly and unconditionally loved they were. Easy to say this with an overnight bag in your hand. Easy to say with a limo waiting on the driveway. Easy to say with your scalp smelling of the fancy shampoo you brought home from the Royal Excelsior Palace Please Let Us Kiss Your Ass Hotel, or wherever the hell you’d spent the past few nights. And anyhow, what was the virtue of unconditional love? It was a slogan that certainly had curb appeal—but when it led to your son retreating into a haze of snottiness and silence, a world in which his most vital relationships were with poorly drawn characters nuking each other in boxes of light, or it led to a life of obesity, a life of loneliness followed by diabetes, might not love be of more value if it came with a few goddamn conditions?

  THADDEUS HOVERED AT THE BEDSIDE and looked down at the child. Her chin, her wispy eyebrows, her oval face, the way her hair curled, all the genetic markers that had once reminded him of himself, or of his mother or father or grandparents, seemed to have disappeared. He did not see Jennings in her, but . . . it remained possible. Conceivable, his mind punned. Why not turn toward Grace right now and confront her with his s
uspicions? Why hint?

  Grace was bent over the bed. She was awakening the child in the gentlest manner possible. She placed but one finger on her shoulder and tapped—if you were performing CPR on a mouse you would use more force.

  “Let her sleep,” Thaddeus whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing.” He would not mention his conversation with Muriel. If Grace had secrets he would not unearth them. It was more complicated than his simply not wanting to know. It was a matter of respect, autonomy. It was also not wanting to destroy the fabric into which the secrets were woven. He could not get to the truth without dismantling whatever structure of lies, evasions, and denials she had constructed in order to conceal it. It would all be destroyed. Sometimes you just had to accept not knowing. The archaeologists finding ancient papyrus scrolls in Pompeii could not open them without having them turn to dust. Inside the scrolls might lurk undiscovered plays by Sophocles or further histories of Suetonius, but they remained unread and preserved.

  Was she reading his thoughts somehow? Grace suddenly grasped his shoulders and turned him by forty-five degrees until they were facing and she kissed him hard and full on the mouth, or reasonably close to full on the mouth because they were out of practice with each other and they were impaired. Their minds slid and stumbled through the wreckage of gin and grenadine, and of course he had to spoil it, he could feel himself going too far even as he tried to keep himself in check. He reached between her legs, his stiffened fingers insistent, invasive, and yet strangely resigned to defeat, like doomed soldiers storming a barricade. She intercepted his hand and squeezed his fingers until they relaxed. He yielded to her, and she placed his pacified palm at her center, and moved herself ever so much closer to him to increase the contact.

  “Slow,” she said. “Gentle.”

  Though he was no longer able to see her, Thaddeus sensed that Emma had awakened. Her eyes were open, she was watching them. Yet he continued to kiss Grace, his mouth open and yearning, insane with desire. Let the kid watch, what’s the harm? This is life at its best. There is nothing better than this.

  “You’re everything to me,” he said to his wife.

  “Mom? I hungry,” said Emma from the bed. “Is there snacks?” She patted her belly, rather hard, as if she were thumping a melon to check for ripeness.

  THEY WERE FERRIED BACK TO the pasture that had been designated as the parking area. The golf cart’s feeble headlights were no match for the darkness. The boy driving them smelled of cigarettes and cold wind. He wore a Buffalo Bills souvenir jacket. Little bits of frost stuck to the ends of his hair. There was something odd in his manner. He seemed angry or nervous. Something. Maybe, Thaddeus thought, he was just cold.

  “We the first to leave?” Thaddeus asked.

  Silence. Thaddeus waited. Finally, the boy said, “Pretty much.” He snapped the lights of the cart off and on again, four times.

  “Well, I bet it’ll wrap up pretty soon,” Thaddeus said, and then it occurred to him that the kid might want the party to go on until dawn. How have I managed to forget the concept of hourly wages? he wondered.

  “I’ll bet it’s quite a party in there,” the boy said.

  “It’s all right. The drinks were strong.” He heard scuffling in the backseat and Grace’s stern voice. All she had to do was say his name and David settled down.

  “I heard they were trying to stop the cement plant from being built,” the boy said. He was driving very slowly, still fiddling with the lights.

  “Yeah. It could screw up the river.”

  “Gee,” the boy said. It was hard to tell if his tone was sarcastic.

  As they approached the pasture/parking area, they heard engines revving high—a convoy was leaving in a hurry. Suddenly, high beams were bearing down on them. First one pickup truck and then another and after that a third came barreling past them, barely able to squeeze by on the narrow access road leading from the pasture, yet making no effort to slow down. Thaddeus could smell the fumes of burning fuel, and the rumble of engines buzzed at the marrow of his bones. The oversize tires lifted up fans of pebbled snow, and a spray of it came into the golf cart. Emma screamed in dismay, while David remained stoic, his hand at his throat, a look of disdain on his face.

  Thaddeus turned. The rear lights of the last truck burned through the night and beneath them was the bumper sticker he’d seen at the Lord’s Fellowship parking area—the line of cartoon penguins wearing red bow ties: Puttin’ on the Ritz.

  “Who was that?” Thaddeus asked, but the boy only shrugged. There was only a bit of moonlight, not enough to really see the cars. The boy drove the golf cart slowly through the pasture, waiting to be told to stop.

  “I think we were farther back,” Thaddeus said. “We were one of the last to arrive.” A moment later he added, “And first to leave.”

  Grace wrapped her arms around Emma and raked her fingers through the child’s hair, taking out clumps of dirty snow. David saw an opening and took it—he grabbed his Game Boy out of his mother’s coat pocket.

  The windshield of somebody’s old Jaguar was extravagantly cracked, a spiderweb that spanned practically the whole expanse of the windshield. “Oh fuck,” Thaddeus said, too softly for the children to hear, he hoped. Next to the Jaguar was a new Mercedes, and in case there were any lingering doubts about what the people in those fleeing pickup trucks were up to, the windshield of this car was similarly cracked, in fact this one was even worse. A chunk of cement lay on the hood.

  “Wait, slow down,” Thaddeus said.

  “Whoa,” David said, his voice riding a wave of admiration. “Look, Mom.” He stood up in the back of the cart.

  One car after the other stood in the darkness, windshields smashed. At last, after twenty or so cars, the destruction had stopped. Most likely the vandals had heard the electric whine of the golf cart approaching, or the rustle of the wheels moving over the frost. Or maybe they just got tired.

  Thaddeus and Grace’s own car was parked outside the arc of destruction.

  “You better get back there and tell Mr. Marino what’s happened out here,” Thaddeus said. “Okay? I mean Pete. Right? Tell Pete.” Maybe the whole problem was that some people got called Mister, and some got called by their first names, and there were some who didn’t even get that—the Whiteys, the Shorties, the Sparkys, and the Hats.

  Thaddeus took Emma from Grace and the little girl fit herself into him like a puzzle piece. How could she not be his daughter?

  “We got lucky,” Grace said. She dug into the pocket of her turquoise wool coat and brought out the keys.

  “My guess is that people from Party One paid a little visit to the people from Party Two.” Thaddeus wondered if the people in the fleeing trucks had recognized Grace’s car and deliberately left it untouched.

  “I’m sorry I got upset back in there,” she said, putting Emma in her car seat. “I realize you were trying to be nice. About my painting.”

  “I wanted the painting,” Thaddeus said.

  Grace glanced at him, and decided to let it pass.

  “Cold!” the little girl cried out. She flutter-kicked her legs but it was mainly symbolic. She had already learned it was hopeless to protest.

  Grace was having a hard time fastening the snaps on the car seat. “Suck your stomach in,” she said.

  David had gotten in on the other side of the car. His face had a primordial glow, illuminated by dull silver light as the Game Boy slowly powered on.

  “In, Emma. Stomach in!”

  Thaddeus put a hand on Grace’s shoulder and she stepped quickly to one side. “You want to do it? Be my guest.”

  “Okay,” he said. He thought about adding, After all, she is my daughter, but that would be ridiculous. He stepped closer to the car so he could deal with the child seat. It was his bailiwick anyhow, the car seat. However, there seemed to be something a little balky in the snaps. Dear Britax, Thank you for making the best and most expensive car seat in the world. Too b
ad the snaps don’t fucking snap. His hands were shaking. He was tense and he was cold. And now there was something slimy, wet, and cold on his feet.

  He looked down. There was a small crack in the ground, a few inches from the car. Something dark and viscous was bubbling out and slowly spreading.

  “Oh shit,” said Grace. “Our shoes.” She made a defeated sound and covered her eyes with her hand. “Such a waste.”

  “It smells like sulfur.” Thaddeus jumped back. “Did you hear that?”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I heard the crack getting wider. Like a ticking. A stretching.”

  “Those shoes were my favorite,” Grace said. She slid behind the wheel, turned the ignition.

  “We should get out of here,” Thaddeus said. He finally snapped the buckle to Emma’s car seat, and he slammed the door.

  “Yes. Well, do you notice that you’re the only one not in the car?”

  Before he knew what he was doing, he grabbed the lapel of her coat and would have lifted her off the seat had she not been belted in. “Everything you say hurts my feelings,” he said to her through clenched teeth. He held her for another few moments and let go. He walked through the headlights to the passenger side. There was pounding between his ears, as if his brain had become a second heart.

  Grace rearranged herself on the seat, holding on to the steering wheel as she shifted her weight. She didn’t look frightened. She didn’t even look upset. She seemed satisfied, as if right before her eyes her husband had suddenly become the person she had always suspected he was.

  Chapter 11

  Mimosa Sunday

  JULY 18, 1989

  * * *

  EPSTEIN PICTURES

  It’s His Birthday

  Arlene Epstein & Bruce Hollander Request the Pleasure of Your Company

  To Celebrate Craig Epstein on his “27th Year to Heaven”

  2____ Briarcrest Drive, Beverly Hills

  * * *