Or maybe I thought I could drift back in time and change it all: I would cut my hair at seventeen, play the complete senior year as per boyhood plan, win the season for coach and father, fail to meet Sylphide, never get interested in Emily, meet the love of my life at Princeton, someone frisky and solid named Cookie or Weezie, a subtle beauty with no interest in dance, a business major, more than likely, invite our four parents up for football games, a regular career of wholesome dates and good grades, better luck in the pro draft, a team I could actually start for, marry the college sweetheart, two children leaping from her loins, a girl, a boy. And after my big career I’d announce games on NBC and model fancy underwear, never so much as peek into a restaurant kitchen. Or, while we were using the Way-Back Machine, I could recede a little further, to a particular morning during high-school days, and padlock Dad’s briefcase to the cast-iron porch railing, or further yet, and keep Kate from taking a job at the High Side so she’d never meet Dabney.
My condo in Miami sold immediately, nice profit, such were the times. I closed it up, loaded the latest Volvo wagon and spent one final night in Kate’s stripped bed. Next morning, my last scheduled bodywork session with Benedikta, who acted as if I were just one more long-term client coming to termination. And maybe I was. Anyway, our clothes securely fastened, we assessed where I’d come in three years of treatment—a long, long way in her estimation, less in mine—and I wrote her a check, shook her hand good-bye, her boundaries suddenly like blast walls around a third-world embassy. In the parking lot I leaned my head on the Volvo steering wheel till once again thoughts began to enter my brain.
And then it was the long road to Connecticut, mile by mile, afternoon by evening by night by morning and repeat, six diners, two motels. The old family house when I finally arrived felt very different after Florida. Dry, for one thing. Dusty, for another. Also drafty, very cold.
Alone for a couple of winter months in the little place, I kept myself busy painting the walls and fixing the plumbing and scrubbing madly, brought down all the old possessions from the attic where I’d stuffed them. Within a week I was sleeping in my old bed under my old model planes on their old threads and thumbtacks, and Mom’s blender was back in place in the kitchen. I hung all the old prints of paintings, all the old photos, placed the grandfather clock, filled the kitchen cabinets with the kind of stuff I recalled: plenty canned goods, a year’s supply of paper towels. For a while I slept a lot, didn’t know what to do with myself when awake. But gradually my mood improved, my spirits rising along with the length of the days.
You really had to get on to the next thing, and what better place to start than home?
10
Kate and Jack returned from Ibiza—a three-month honeymoon!—and were my only contacts with the world, weekly dinners at their house, the two of them on some new plane that seemed to involve even more constant sex than before, or anyway more showers. Jack returned my honeymoon check after I asked why it hadn’t been deposited. Pulling me out into their driveway, as angry as I’ve ever seen him, he said, “You can get us something concrete. A piece of furniture, if you like. Something real. Something we can use. We need outdoor stuff. Nothing symbolic. Kate doesn’t do well with symbolic.”
I didn’t understand, not a glimmer, and said so.
And Jack, terse and unyielding, said, “David, you don’t need to understand.”
I brought them a teak deck set. I bought them an enormous, striped umbrella. I bought them a barbecue kettle. I cooked for them out there. I never brought or mentioned alcohol of any kind. I avoided the symbolic, didn’t talk in abstractions, still puzzled as to the problem. Jack slowly softened up, let me sail with them on his boat, a Concordia yawl called Deep Song, which he claimed he’d named for Kate before he ever met her, romantic guy.
Come fall, I cooked for them in their house. I cooked for them a lot. I bought them a couch and sat with them upon it as fall came in, no football. But I was forbidden alone time with Kate. Not expressly. It just didn’t happen—Jack was always there, and I mean always.
I stayed in Westport, always alone, supposedly developing a business plan, some sort of consulting. Maybe something to do with wine, which I knew well by then, and furnished for myself without limits. A restaurant seemed out of the question—with wine, at least, someone else had done all the hardest work. Across the pond the High Side was dark. Dad’s rowboat was still on the shore. I sometimes got in it under moonlight, rowed back and forth. I ran, ten and fifteen miles a day. My physique was the one thing I still had from the former life. I joined a very expensive gym, where occasionally people recognized me, made inane conversation. I didn’t mind. Inane was fine with me. I could work out endlessly, discuss Miami football endlessly.
Etienne called monthly. I’d invested twenty thousand dollars of my savings with him, and he’d started a proto-vegan restaurant called Health Spot back in Mobile, a clientele of weight lifters and elderly women, all while his mother lay sick in her tiny house. Month five, she died. Month six, he met a man and fell in love, first time in years. RuAngela, no last name, who, like all of E.T.’s serious boyfriends, was a masculine cross-dresser, five-o’clock shadow, sassy skirts. Month seven, and RuAngela was running the Health Spot dining room, doing the books. Month eight, and they’d made their rent out of revenues for the first time. No dividends as yet. Month nine, they had a fire-code violation and had to spend some money, or there would have been a disbursement for me. Might have been nice, too, as I’d gotten no payment from Lionel and Carter on Floridiana. Month ten, and a call from RuAngela, whom I’d come to love and trust: could I invest just a couple thousand more? Like twenty thousand more?
Of course I could, of course. It was only money, and more was coming once Floridiana got settled. Also, Etienne was my only real friend.
I MISSED THE Cuban beat, the bikinis on the street. In Westport, I wasn’t going to let myself be anyone’s most eligible bachelor, made no attempt to meet women. Our old neighbor, Mrs. Paumgartner, had passed away a few years back, and in her place was a Catholic priest who seemed to be shacking up with his housekeeper, an immensity who walked in front of their kitchen windows in her bra and big panties, gave him hugs and squeezes out in the driveway. Westport was completing the generations-long conversion from fishing and farming village to suburb, a place where most of the money was made elsewhere, where beautiful housewives had nothing whatever to do, the old cow-path streets jammed with aggressive drivers in gigantic tanks flipping you the finger for driving too slowly. I’d forgotten the sea smell, the huge estates along the water. I avoided the road that went by Staples High, hated the sight of the train station. I avoided old acquaintances. I was still the kid whose parents had been murdered, though on any given day I could forget.
The town thought of itself as artsy, but it was too expensive for any real art scene. The restaurants were meat and potatoes, attached to threadbare inns. The one exception was Che Guevera’s Attic, lively and alcoholic, the Mexican food an unfortunate afterthought, and where but Westport would Che Guevara be imagined to have had any sort of attic?
One night as summer was fading the old rotary phone in the kitchen rang. It was Etienne, crying so hard that RuAngela had to get on. They’d lost the Health Spot. I guess I don’t mind saying that I thought of my money first, managed not to blurt anything about it. “I’m sorry,” I said instead.
“I saw it coming, Mr. Hochmeyer, saw it coming a mile away, tried to protect him, you know, but it got so bad I just pulled the plug. If we’d paid bills one more month, we would have lost everything. My house, Mr. Hochmeyer, it’s mortgaged to the roof tiles, all so these people could eat the best food they ever ate.”
ONE DAY IN late September that year I took a long run, all the way down to Compo Beach, a rare public strand, stone breakwater and tennis courts, not much to explore there except memory, and no one around, couple of furtive teenagers at a picnic table, sweet aroma of pot in the air. Even their boom-box music took me back: Led Ze
ppelin. I wanted to tell them that I’d met Jimmy Page, sat at a table with Robert Plant. I wanted to tell them the famous dancer Emily Bright had sat right there on that very bench, and not so many years before—perhaps about the time they were born, think of that.
Jogging homeward along the water I spotted a large rectangular building for sale, an undistinguished wooden structure all alone on the shore side of the road, shuttered and forlorn.
Slowly, I realized it was Trompetta’s, which had been a pretty good little Italian restaurant in its day, nothing but a dive by the time I was in high school, one of Dad’s hangouts, at least before it was shut down by the state.
I forced the broken back door, looked around inside, just a big empty space, a few of the old restaurant chairs in there, graffiti on the walls.
The next morning I called the agent listed on the broken sign.
“Yes, of course,” he said. “Let me find some paperwork here for you. That’s waterfront. No certificate, and that’s reflected in the price. You cannot live there. No one can ever live there. Food service only. Uh, so, you cannot have a beach or boat club, no dockage. Town water and septic, that’s good, one good thing. You cannot have takeaway food. It’s table service only. So like, no clam shacks. No live music. No dancing. Though you can have alcohol. Ten p.m. closing, midnight weekends. Parking lot dimensions are fixed. Signage fixed. Price is six.”
“Six what?”
“Six hundred thousand.”
I’d learned from E.T. that silence was the best negotiating tool, and I let one stand. The place had been for sale seven years.
He didn’t hold out long: “But here in this situation I’m gonna say make the lowest lowball offer you can imagine—Chase Manhattan’s not gonna be insulted. Couple hundred thousand, it’s yours.”
Long silence.
The salesman sighed heavily. “They’ll carry your mortgage,” he said. “I’ll bet they’ll take sixty grand. I’ll bet they’ll take two down. Even less. What do they care?”
And in my mind, at least, Restaurant Firfisle was born.
11
Etienne was terrified in my house the first few nights, slept on the pullout in the living room, claimed later to have made peace with the ghosts upstairs, who he didn’t think were my folks but much younger people, a beautiful young pair. And with that understanding he and RuAngela made the move. Party mode, we toured the restaurants of Fairfield County, three and four a day, little of note, then into New York City, only an hour away on the commuter train, days on end. Mornings, Etienne and I cooked and experimented, crowded into the little kitchen at Hochmeyer Haven. We laid out menu schemes, excitement growing along with what in a dance company would be called repertory. RuAngela modeled various gowns and make-up protocols, always dressing for work, but she also drew up charts, gradually put the Restaurant Firfisle concept on paper—she had a great brain for numbers, projections, percentages. In my vivid dream, salt waves washed up against the Trompetta family’s seawall throwing spray at our restaurant’s newly installed windows, our delighted guests eating and laughing, kitchen clanking and steaming like a fine old engine.
Back on earth, RuAngela worked up a lowball bid for the building and I duly submitted it: $40,500, not a chance they’d bite, but RuAngela was firm.
AFTER A COUPLE of weeks with no word from the Trompetta’s people, I drove my new partners up to see Kate and Jack in Madison. The restaurant was to be kept secret—I had Jack in mind as a possible investor, if it came to that, but we’d need to have our burner knobs all in a row before he heard or suspected anything, a perfect business plan that is, which might or might not mean our being up and running and already showing our success—we’d have to see about that. I had money enough to get the doors open, and the cash from Ma and Pa at Floridiana was on its way, no doubt, plenty to see us through. And so the story was that my friends were just visiting: not a word about living with me, not a word about real estate.
We arrived with a big box of produce. Kate hugged Etienne in the doorway, patted his face, hugged him more, touched the tattoos again. He clearly couldn’t believe how truly gorgeous she was, tested the hem of her absurdly short skirt as if to see if she was real, put his finger to the flaw of her lip, a kind of blessing. Meanwhile RuAngela in a sensible tweed skort and spangled blouse took Jack’s hands in hers, introduced herself, laid it on thick: “Your house! A church! You bought it from fucking Jesus Christ Himself!”
He recoiled, the subtlest thing, but something you didn’t miss. Certainly RuAngela didn’t miss it. She turned to hug Kate, gave Kate a long look. Jack took the chance to clutch me, pretend to kiss my cheek, whisper in my ear: “Let’s wrap this up before dinner. Before your sister extends any invitations. Three o’clock, okay?”
“Jack, fine.”
“And nothing about detectives, none of that.”
“It won’t come from me.”
“She’s been a little wired, David.” He puffed a breath, about to say something more, but RuAngela took his arm, tugged him into the living room, plunked him on the plump couch. “Everyday Joy!” she said, as if it were his secret name.
“You’ve read it?” he said warily.
“Honey, I’ve read it twice, who hasn’t? Etienne and I have done all the trust exercises—wonderful—every one. You changed the way we talk to one another.” And so on: I hadn’t thought about it, but singing at bedtime was a Jack suggestion in Joyful Couples, which was his newest book, and might explain my housemates’ little nightly arias in reedy voices, harmony both figurative and real, pretty nice. Taking both of Jack’s hands in hers, RuAngela carried on, perfectly sincere: she knew the books chapter and verse, really knew them. And Jack was pleased; you could actually see him relax, see him falling for her, looking in her shirt, our queen of illusions.
“Let’s cook,” Etienne said.
He and Ru-Ru and I had stopped early morning at two farms she’d been courting and taken away everything we needed for a lunchtime frittata, excellent eggs from chickens we’d had to shoo off the car, potatoes straight from the furrow, rainbow selection of peppers, a big purple cabbage, baby squashes, and herbs by the handfuls. Etienne had brought his knives along, of course, and handed me the biggest as Kate led us into the kitchen.
Immediately she lowered her voice: “David, I’ve been thinking about Dad’s briefcase.”
“A beautiful home,” E.T. said loudly, instant conspirator.
And Kate murmured: “I think I know where it is. I mean, I think I’ve worked out where it must be, given all the variables here.”
I said, “Kate, we’re not supposed to talk about this subject.”
“David, I’m not saying anything about ‘this subject,’ just the fucking briefcase, okay?”
“Kate, Daddy left that briefcase on a train.”
“Oh, bullshit, David. You know that’s not true.”
“Gorgeous kitchen,” said E.T.
“It’s true,” I said.
Kate hissed, “When did you ever believe Dad? I have the key. He gave me the key. The key to the briefcase.”
I couldn’t suppress my interest: “Okay, and where is this key?”
“The windows!” Etienne exclaimed. “The harbor out there!”
“Right here.” She tugged a necklace up from inside her shirt. “I’ve been wearing it all these years.”
Oh, sure. I knew it well. Her necklace. I’d assumed Jack had given it to her, just a little golden key on a delicate golden chain. She’d never said a word about it. RuAngela had Jack laughing in the next room, really busting a gut, a miracle. They were getting to their feet, soon to join us in the kitchen. “But wait,” I whispered. “That briefcase had a combination lock. A little row of numbers you turned, remember? Like four little wheels. We played with it all the time.”
She did remember, of course she did. “But David. Daddy gave me a key, this key. He came all the way up on the train to deliver it. He was supposed to be at work.”
“And where di
d he say the briefcase was?”
“He didn’t say. He said he’d let me know. And then, of course, they got him.”
An image came to me, our Dad sneaking down the lawn to the pond, that big manila envelope in hand. Jack was telling RuAngela something about the Bonnard. Urgent Kate pulled the necklace over her head, stuffed it into my hand, pretended to give me a kiss, laughed falsely, hissed in my ear: “David. Will you please look for the briefcase? We have to find Daddy’s briefcase, all right?”
I kept the key for two weeks or so, long enough for her to settle down, I hoped, then sent it back in a nice little box, her one real memento of the old man.
LIKE THE PAIR of worried parents they were becoming, Etienne and RuAngela had begun to irritate me, always asking if there weren’t some kind of club I could join or some kind of class I could take to meet women, maybe a victims-of-violence support group. Something like Kate had had at McLean and still attended weekly, a major undertaking for Jack, as my sister had lost her license permanently, not that he ever complained, not once. RuAngela invited single women for dinner most weekends, ostensibly as tasters for the developing menu—the hygienist from her new dentist’s office, the lady from the dress shop, the woman who ran the animal shelter, her Vietnamese manicurist—all of them really nice people, all of them very available, all of them answering to RuAngela’s fertility-goddess taste in women. Not that I wasn’t tempted, it’s just that I wasn’t particularly in the market, wasn’t in the market at all.
Life Among Giants Page 17
