The Monsters of Templeton

by Lauren Groff

  “This is so romantic,” said Vi, her voice already rich with wine.

  “This is so not romantic,” Felcher said. “We’re just being friendly.”

  “I’m speechless,” I said.

  “That’s what we were gunning for,” said Peter warmly.

  “No,” I said. “You did this out of pity for me? Out of pity, for God’s sakes?”

  “Uh-oh,” said Vi. “You’ve touched her pride. Dangerous thing to do.”

  “Vivienne,” I said. “Shut up.”

  There was a long silence then, and my mother began sawing into the baguette. Then Felcher said, dropping the hick accent, his voice tight with anger, “You know what? We just wanted to do something nice for you, Willie, but if you’re going to be like that, fuck it. I mean, obviously you’re having a hard time. You come back to Templeton all skinny and exhausted-looking, with this trucked-up story about finishing your PhD, when you’re an archaeologist, for Christ’s sakes. You don’t come to Templeton to spend every single day in the Historical Library when your PhD is in archaeology. It just doesn’t add up. And I haven’t seen you in the however many years we graduated from high school, and all you got is abuse for me. ‘I don’t want to be seen leaving the Bold with you, Ezekiel.’ ‘I’m surprised you can string together a coherent sentence, Ezekiel.’ ‘You’re not good enough for me, Ezekiel.’ Well, fuck you, Willie Upton. I am too.”

  He stood then but sat back down, heavily in his chair. And there was another long silence, and Vi began pouring wine into the glasses, and Felcher screwed up his mouth like a little boy and I perversely wanted to reach over and touch his twisted pretty lips, but before I did, Peter gave a sigh and said, “We just did this because we like you, Willie, and because you’re not happy, and we want you to be happy.”

  Somehow, this chipped away at the rest of the ice. In the dim light, Vi’s face gleamed, pleased. Everyone save me began eating. I felt smaller and smaller as my mother complimented Peter on his foie gras blinis with fig compote, and Peter complimented her back on the crab-stuffed artichokes and Felcher talked about the superiority of Chilean zinfandels in comparison to their cabernets, and found tobacco and black currant in the one we were drinking and Peter said that one of the frogs in the chirruping pool had a devastatingly pitch-perfect A-flat.

  And then Clarissa’s favorite pun rose up: Show me a piano falling down a mine shaft and I’ll show you a flat miner, and, with the mere thought of Clarissa, I couldn’t bear myself anymore. I said, in a very small voice, “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s that, Queenie?” said Felcher. “Couldn’t hear you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I have a very bad temper. Thank you for tonight. I’m a jerk.”

  “Good,” said Felcher, smiling at me now, and I saw him as a whole for the first time since the Bold, and saw that he looked good. He was thinner already and well shaven, and in a nice button-down shirt with cuff links. He was letting his hair grow longer, and it hid some of his overlong forehead, especially in the half-dark of the table. He held up his glass, and said, “Then, to Willie.”

  “To Willie,” said Peter, a nervous finger smoothing down his mustache.

  “To Willie,” said my mother. “May she find what she needs.” She sent me a kiss through the candle flame so, for a long moment, the light flickered and wobbled and danced.

  ONE BY ONE, the tealights dipped themselves out, and a frog must have been curious about the blazing kickboard because he leapt on it and tipped it and the candles hissed out in the murky water. By the time my mother fetched the little pots of crème brûlée from the kitchen and began to torch them at the table, the only light was the blue flame in her hand and the citronella that threw rings on the tablecloth. Our eyes had gotten used to the dark.

  While Vi torched away, I at last explained my quest for my father to Peter and Felcher. “And so I’ve backed all the way to Jacob Franklin Temple, looking at his books to see if he has any mistresses or anything. Hazel Pomeroy says there’s nothing else available, so I have to try to pick stuff out of his fiction. It’s all pretty far-fetched.”

  Peter, wine-silly, was giggling the whole way through the explanation because he found Vi’s commune alibi to be “sheer genius.” Felcher was leaning back in his chair, looking at me inscrutably.

  Then, out of the thick shadows under the linden, a figure stepped, briefly illuminated by the moon. And then Felcher’s chair had flipped over and he was on the ground, and the figure was standing akimbo over him.

  “So this is where you’re at,” a brassy voice said, and I realized with a terrible sinking feeling that this was Melanie, Felcher’s not-really-significant other. Huge, now. Platinum hair down to her tailbone. Fists as huge as hams. “I seen your truck out front. Figures you’d be here,” she hissed.

  “Mel,” said Felcher calmly from the ground. “What’s up? How’re the boys?”

  “Don’t you ‘what’s up’ me,” she said. “That’s bullshit. They’re at my mom’s.”

  “Nice to see you, Melanie,” said Peter. “Come and have some dessert with us. We made plenty of them.”

  “Shut up, you,” she said, but there was a wobble to her voice now. She had yet to look at me. “All the girls said that this bitch was back and you was with her at the Bold Dragoon, but I said, nah, he always thought she’s a total fucking snobby asshole, and he’d never even talk to her. Remember what you called her in high school? Miss-Stick-Up-Her-Ass? Cuntface. You definitely called her Cuntface, like the time she wouldn’t dance with you at the homecoming dance. Queenie Cuntface, you said then.”

  My mother, I noticed, had stopped torching the desserts and the blue flame now licked out in Melanie’s direction.

  “Mel,” I began, but didn’t finish. Because what, really, could I have said? I have no attraction to your nonsignificant other? I couldn’t, because though I wanted that to be true, it wasn’t. That there’s no way Felcher and I would ever get together? That was true, but hurtful. That in high school my friends always called you Hoochtastic-5000 and Slutty Slutkins? This was true, and I considered it briefly before my kinder side kicked in, and I said nothing.

  “You,” she said to me and for the first time turned to glare at me, her little eyes bright in her marshmallow face. “Don’t you fucking talk or you’ll get a fist in your pretty face.”

  “Mel,” said Felcher, still on the ground. “I haven’t seen you in, what, a year? So, how are things? I know you’ve been getting my child support. Cashing the checks and all that jazz. Found a job yet?”

  “It’s only been ten months since we seen each other. But whatever. Get up. Let’s go.” She stepped back so Felcher could stand. He did but righted his chair and sat down again.

  “Get up,” she shouted at him, and kicked the chair leg. Although he jerked sideways as the chair did, he didn’t move.

  Then Peter’s hand was on my shoulder and he had taken the other and was petting it. “Mel,” he said, very softly, “I think you might be mistaken. Willie and I are”—here he gave me a sweet smile—“together. Zeke’s just here as a friend.”

  “Right,” said Melanie. “As if.” But her voice had become uncertain again, and when I dared to look up, little trails were running down her cheeks, gleaming in the moonlight. Her eyes were darting among all of us, Vi to Felcher, Felcher to me, me to Peter. She pushed a hand across her face and took a step back.

  “Melanie,” said Felcher. “I am going to have some dessert now with my friends. You’ve been invited to eat some with us, if you like. If not, I’ll call you and we can talk about this later.”

  “You,” said Melanie, gasping a little, “are the father of my children.”

  “Yes,” said Felcher, “I know, honey. And the courts have established that I belong to them and not you.”

  “You have responsibilities,” she said.

  “To Joey and Nicky,” he said. “Not to you. Mel, please don’t make me get another restraining order.”

  At this, Melanie tur
ned around, and her large back seemed to quake. She turned back, staring especially hard at me, and when she walked away, I felt withered and tired, even more than I had been before dinner. My mother continued torching. Peter gave me a kiss on the cheek and his thin mustache tickled. And, as our spoons crunched through the burnt candy on the custard, Felcher said, “I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Ah,” said Vi, and her voice also sounded shaky. “It’s life. Children can make you go a little nuts.” She patted Felcher’s shoulder and said, “I know how it feels to be that poor girl. Felt it myself. But I also know you can’t force someone to love you. She’ll learn, with time.”

  We ate the rest of our desserts in a silence punctured by the pool-singing frogs. I looked up at Felcher from time to time, and when the dark look on his face softened and lightened when he caught my eye, something turned over in me, and I knew I couldn’t call him Felcher anymore.

  “Ezekiel,” I said.

  “Yes?” he said, smiling.

  “Nothing,” I said, and laughed a little. But then I thought of Primus, when we hiked together in the bright night over the tundra, his warm hand holding my own, and felt a great flip of sadness that we would never be there together again, marveling at the millions of subtle colors in the lichen. When I looked up, Felcher was still smiling at me, expectant. But I had stopped laughing, and looked away.

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT when the boys left and Vi and I washed and dried the dishes, Peter’s violin still wailing in our heads. After she rinsed the last bowl and handed it to me, Vi yawned.

  “That was nice. I can’t remember when I had a night as nice as that,” she said.

  “You mean other than the fisticuffs,” I said.

  “Can’t blame the poor girl,” said Vi and took the dry bowl from my hands and stacked it in the cupboard. “It’s clear Zeke’s in deep smit. Hopelessly smitten. Smited, in fact.”

  “Hm. He’s not really my type, Vi.”

  “True, but a little physical something with someone like Zeke could help you get over that Primus asshole. And who knows. He’s a nice guy, seems smart. He’s still drop-dead gorgeous. Maybe he’d grow on you.”

  “Ezekiel Felcher is not gorgeous, Vi. He stopped being gorgeous in 1995.”

  “Your problem, Sunshine,” she said, thumping the next bowl down, “is that you can’t see straight through your snobby little worldview. Nobody in Templeton would ever be good enough for you. If they’re in Templeton, it means they’re second rate in your little head.”

  “That is so not true,” I said.

  “It is,” she said, “so true. But I raised you to believe that. It’s my fault. I pushed you and pushed you. Made you so ambitious you’re ashamed of where you’re from. No wonder you snapped. But I have no worries, Willie. You’ll rebound. Go back, live your life in San Francisco and someday come back to Templeton.”

  I wanted to tell her that if I left there was little chance of me ever coming back to Templeton to live. But I stopped; I couldn’t break her heart. I sighed and said, “Maybe. If I ever resolve any of this father shit.”

  “How much time do you have?” she asked.

  “Six days,” I said. “Then I have to go relieve Sully. He’s not sleeping anymore. Clarissa says he’s a zombie. She says it’s not fair—he’s stealing her role as the family undead.” Vi blinked at me, startled.

  I said, “It was funnier when she said it.”

  “Six days. Well. You’ll make it,” Vi said, and flipped off the kitchen lights. She moved in the dark to the back stairwell, and I heard her heavy step as she crossed the house and closed the door of her room.

  FOR A LONG while, I stared out into the darkness at the nickel-plated lake, the heap of hills. I imagined that huge monster still alive, in the deep, swimming gently up through the water, and breaching for a breath, resting on the surface before diving deep again. I was about to head up to my little-girl room when the telephone rang. I thought of Clarissa taken unexpectedly ill, ugly visions of catheters and ambulances dancing through my head. I picked the phone up before the second ring and said “Hello” so fast it came out as a whisper.

  “Willie, girl,” a voice said, smooth and mellow, in my ear. “It’s bloody great to hear your voice.”

  It was Primus Dwyer.

  22

  Primus Dwyer: Or, The Great Buffoon

  I GASPED AND sat on the cold hardwood floor. In the darkness, the VCR light at the end of the room blinked a syncopated rhythm.

  “Willie?” said Primus. “You quite all right?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “No. It’s been a month and you haven’t called.”

  “You dear, silly girl,” he said. “I can’t very well pick and choose when I’m going to call, you know. Mobiles don’t work on the tundra, dear.”

  “Well,” I said. “I knew that.”

  There was a long silence, and I could hear the terns and gulls in the background shrieking. There was the familiar roar of a truck going by; voices; Primus was in an inhabited place, a city, perhaps. Then I heard the noise of waves, and from this I surmised that he must have found a pay phone somewhere outside, near the ocean.

  “Where are you?” I said, barely hearing my voice over the thrumming of my heart.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “Well, I’m at supper. Rather, I was. They think I’m using the loo right now. Jan’s been watching me nonstop since we left the site, you know, save for supper tonight, and so I took the opportunity to phone you. We’re all a bit soused, you see. Celebrating. We finished the article, Willie, we did,” he said. “We’ve submitted the paper to Nature today, and it will be reviewed before the next issue, and, with luck, appear in short order. Hooray! You’re an author, of course. I had to fight, but I did. Fight. For you.”

  “Oh. Hooray,” I said.

  “Listen, darling. I can’t be much longer, or else they will miss me. I just wanted to call to ensure you weren’t furious with me still. You can’t be. You’re too brilliant a student, and a lovely girl, you know, just lovely. I’m very much looking forward to seeing you back at school again, eh? We can maybe pick up where we left off?” His voice had dropped, become honeyed the way it did in Alaska before he laid a hand on my thigh or the small of my back. On the cold hard floor of Averell Cottage that night, I longed for the weight of that hand, the warmth of it on my skin.

  “Wait,” I said, beginning to breathe a little jaggedly. “I think my head’s exploding.”

  He gave his little bark of a laugh and said, “Why, darling?”

  I said, “I thought I was going to be kicked out of school. For trying to kill, you know. Your wife.”

  He gave his low chuckle and said, “Oh, yes, that. No, no. She’s rather jealous, that’s true, but we have calmed her and we certainly don’t have to tell her about your being around. Besides, you only have one chapter left to write for your dissertation, and then you may defend it before December, early, of course, and then you’re off to a brilliant career. With this publication, you could find a position, well, anywhere. Rather, I could find a position for you. I will, too. I heard there may be a position at Princeton. I shall make some enquiries.”

  “Princeton?” I said. “But that’s so far from California.” I took a breath. “From you.”

  “Oh, darling,” he said, and was quiet for some time. I was content, for the moment, to hear his breathing in my ear; I pictured his summer-ruddy cheek dimpling prettily. But when he spoke again, he spoke more slowly and his tenor had turned to bass. “Darling, I am so very sorry, you know. I didn’t realize. I thought you were, well, more hard-boiled than that. The stories they told of you, well. Not that you were promiscuous, but, you know. You never find yourself attached. To any one man. You’re unattached.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “Unattached. I get very attached. Who told you that?”

  “Your fellow student, John, you know. After you left. The stories I’ve heard of your debauchery. What a naughty girl you are!”

  “I’m not naughty. I�
��m not a naughty girl at all,” I said. “I just fall easily.”

  There was more silence, and then his voice came back, a little more sternly. “Oh, Willie. Had I realized. Well, I wouldn’t have even. I just didn’t realize you would have formed an attachment. Willie, I am so sorry, but we can’t, you know. Be together. Well, we can until you’re finished with your dissertation, but that’s pushing it, and then we will meet at conferences every few months. But you can’t be around me, or else my wife would grow entirely suspicious, and that cannot happen.”

  “Oh. Right,” I said.

  “I really do like you, of course, quite a bit.”

  “Sure. Of course,” I said.

  “You’re gorgeous, and, if I do say so”—here his voice lowered, became intimate—“quite a good fuck. And brilliant, of course. I have no worries for your future. None whatsoever. You can do whatever you wish to do.”

  “Hm,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “A darling girl, darling. You know it well. Listen, I have to go back before they think I’ve flushed myself down the toilet and come investigate. Ha-ha! Ta. Take care of yourself.”

  “Wait,” I said, and my voice rose in the darkness and seemed to ring against the old beams of Averell Cottage. “I have something to tell you.”

  And, like that, I found I had shoved the lever and this, right now, was the split second before the floor fell away and left me dangling by the neck.

  “Sure, darling. Anything,” he said, but I could feel his anxiety growing with every second, I could feel how much he longed to be back in the restaurant beside his wife. I imagined him there, in the sunny Alaskan night, the gulls circling his head, the streets bare and trash-blown, kicking the ground with the heels of his hiking boots.

  “Dr. Dwyer,” I said, slowly. “I am pregnant.”

  There was a very long pause, and then he said, “Oh, my. So you’re not coming back to Stanford, then, eh? Is that it? Is that what you’re telling me, that you’re going to keep it, Willie?”