Life Among Giants

by Bill Roorbach

  Just a couple of weeks to go. The town had approved us, though not unanimously—one of the selectmen had gone to high school with Dad and recalled him at the public hearing as a “one-man crime wave.” Luckily, the others weren’t in favor of visiting the sins of the father upon the son. Our twenty-one tables had come, a hundred chairs in transit. Ferkie the mushroom man would bring wild fungi on Mondays starting the day I was back. The produce was coming from four farms local, one bigger distributor, also our own garden, which had had a fine first summer.

  The pasta flours were coming down from Canada with the pasta chef, Colodo Doncorlo, a tiny older woman who barely spoke English. No reason we couldn’t fit Kate in, if it would help her.

  Okay, I was back to Kate. Also, the rice wine was gone. I climbed the stairs unsteadily, performed my ablutions, fell into bed and tried for sleep. Midnight, two o’clock, four o’clock, four-thirty, five, each ghost returning for her hour: Emily, Kate, Mom. And of course Perdhomme and Kaiser, and my completely vincible dad. So sleep didn’t come, didn’t come, didn’t come, something rapping at my bedroom window, dreamcraft no doubt, even as distinct as it was: tap-tap, tap-da-tap, impossible rhythm, second floor, must be hail, that kind of night, that trippy, tricky Japanese wine. So to the kitchen for the big glass of water. I ate a banana, then a nice pear, stood staring, listening, eventually pulled out a couple of pounds of dried, mixed-species wild mushrooms Ferkie had provided as samples. I’d sneaked them from the restaurant’s incipient pantry days before, didn’t want my partners shutting me down too completely. I could rest when I was dead. As my mother used to say.

  Ferkie had dried the fungi in a homemade sun-and-wind system of his own invention, and it was true, they were unusually fragrant and whole. My plan was to make a kind of flour out of them, something you could use to make pure-mushroom pastas, perhaps, or mushroom breads. I got the mortar and pestle out, broke the mushrooms down, went to work experimenting with rare powders.

  Tap-tap at the patio doors, more sleet, lively images of Emily after she’d ditched her parents on the way to Ancestor’s Day in Korea, the way the pants she’d borrowed from Kate’s closet fit her: baggy, gaping, plenty of room for a hand. Why contemplate the difference between love and lust? Emily Bright loved me, and love for her was inextricably a physical thing. She lived for the moment, and my moments with her had been fine. I hadn’t been as lucky as Kate, hadn’t found grown-up romance before the cataclysm.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Outside I stood barefoot in the soggy snow, the precipitation having simply stopped, cloud cover breaking into a chill pink dawn, the world still as an egg in a nest. I don’t know how long it took me to notice the footprints, someone in misshapen bare feet, nearly a child’s prints. No, stocking feet, toes indistinct, the wrinkles of fabric evident, that kind of packing snow, a one-way trail. What creature was this? I ventured out into the night hugging my pajamas around me, followed the elfin prints, leaving my own more monstrous ones, painfully barefoot. Hurrying, I followed the sprite’s trail down to the pond and along its partly frozen shore. At the dam end whoever it was had made an incredibly long leap over the boggy, half-frozen brook, a leap I couldn’t hope to make, even with a stride like mine. I landed in the icy water running, then sprinting, nearly falling, catching my balance and trotting as fast as I could on the impressionable snow up the great lawns of the High Side, followed the trail to an ornate hatchway cut into one of the large carriage doors of the poolhouse.

  This was the only building on the premises I hadn’t been allowed to see in the weeks I’d hung around the High Side during the run-up to Children of War: “Something must be private,” as Sylphide had told me disingenuously. I gathered even then that it was a place Dabney had used, just the look on her face, the fade in her voice. To call it a poolhouse was correct in that it housed the pumps and heaters and equipment for the maintenance of the two enormous old-fashioned pools, but the building was another of the Chlorine Baron’s fantasies, a half-size replica of the carriage house at Balmoral, the queen’s residence in Scotland, twelve carriage bays with mini-grand doors, two dozen horse stalls just big enough for the legendary teams of miniature horses the bogus Baron had affected. Anyone who’d read the big Life magazine story on Dabney in the early sixties knew that. I stood there freezing in the snow a long moment, then—no other choice but frostbite—quietly tried the hatch, found it open.

  Inside, something of a barn, slightly warmer than the night. I looked in each stall, each bay, dancing from foot to foot. One of the miniature carriages was still there, a beautifully made thing, tiny lamps, small wheels, gilt frame, leather seats, all kid-size, no one inside. At the back of the building I found a wet sock on the bottom step of a set of otherwise unpromising stairs, climbed them to another door. Which creaked open to reveal a splendid drawing room, everything a little too small, certainly too small for me, decor unchanged from the 1920s. Shivering, I spied another sock in its own puddle under an archway. I ducked through and into an elegant little living room, looked into a scaled-down kitchen, a formal dining room huge even in half-size, pair of soggy blue jeans on the floor in front of an open door. Which led into a hallway along which were several little bedrooms decked out as for the children of royalty: canopy beds, candelabra, bathrooms, sink rooms, toilet rooms. The Chlorine Baron had been a Napoleon, under five feet tall, I’d read, and a famous lover of plumbing, human or porcelain.

  A dozen small doors to try. Nothing. At the end of the hall, I spied a tiny pair of green-striped tap-pants, scrunched where they’d been shed in front of an open closet door, shelves of neatly folded sheets and towels, a lot of towels, perhaps hundreds, puzzling shaft of light. I knew enough about the High Side by then to venture in. Of course the back wall was a door. I pushed through into a grand little bedroom, found my snow fairy asleep under a neat sheet and quilt in the oddly small double bed. She breathed emphatically, not quite snoring, curled up on herself like a forest fawn, no pretending. I leaned close, kissed her pocked cheek, forever the smell of jasmine about her. The bed had been made up for two, the pillow beside hers so inviting, the guest-side covers still folded back. Her naked shoulders rose and fell. She snuffled, pulled her hands up in front of her face. The light came from a bathroom, like sunlight through the flung door. I felt my heart in my chest, pushed the ingenious false panel closed, checked the ornate lock on the real door to the room (it was snapped tight), stepped over a wet gray T-shirt and into the bathroom lights, bright and hot and yellow as the sun. I could wait for her to wake.

  The bathroom was not one room but several, in the style of the Baron, a kind of porcelain landscape, grottoes and glens. Toiletries were laid out on a bench as if for an expected guest—toothbrush, comb, razor, towels, soap, shampoo and conditioners, everything I needed to get ready for bed. I pulled off my wet trousers, hoped that in my weariness I was reading the situation correctly, stripped out of my shirt and underclothes. The bathtub was a kind of fjord with high walls. The sun, an enormous heat lamp in the ceiling, seemed to go behind a cloud. What if at home I’d slept soundly, hadn’t noticed her footprints in the snow? What seemed a fanciful rockslide turned out to be a stile to climb into the tub; what seemed a great carved vine supported by snakes was a railing to hold. Had that been she tapping at my windows? I turned the heads of a pair of matched oxen, and the water came plummeting off several shelves that made waterfalls, quickly growing very hot. She must have been given a ride by Chun, then run home. My own thawing feet felt scalded. I plucked at the oxen, pulled at the wheels of their cart, but the diverter for the shower turned out to be the head of the drover, who, if he looked to the left, released a dozen spouts from the mouths of all the various creatures around him, and rain—an absolute tropical downpour—dozens of nozzles hidden in the clouds painted in the ceiling tiles, quickly warming. The sunlamp came in and out as if clouds were passing. I washed, rinsed luxuriantly. When I turned the water off, the sun reappeared, as if after a storm. I climbed out, wrapped my
self in the heavy bathrobe I hadn’t noticed till that moment, brushed my hair down over my shoulders with the Baron’s golden brush. As I finished scrubbing my teeth, the artificial sun blazed.

  Back in the warm bedroom, Sylphide had rolled onto her side, pulling the covers with her—she’d invaded my half of the elfin bed, leaving only an alley of mattress pressed up against the wall. Clean and warm, timid but tumid, too big to be a real lizard, and feeling as though I were following instructions, I slithered up onto the high old bed from its foot, crunch of horsehair beneath me, delicate unfolding of sheet and quilt, gradually assumed my narrow allotment, on the way inspecting her skin from ankles to forehead minutely. Finally her face was at my clavicle, my ear on the pillow that had awaited me, my feet hanging off the other end. Her breath was warm. I passed a hand through the air around her head, passed it closer, stroked her soft hair. She stretched, pushing a muscular leg between my thighs, then further between, lifted her arm across my ribs, continued her untroubled breathing. I put my own arm over her, spanned her night-warmed butt with my hand, slowly pulled her hips into mine, using all my strength to make it easeful, gentle.

  But not imperceptible: her green eyes opened, very serious. Who was this?

  Well, it was I.

  She looked pleased with the results of her plan, not at all surprised to see me. “I am dreaming,” she mewled, stretching—each limb, every finger, all her toes, her neck, her back, all the muscle groups, but in that instance working against another body, my own, thorough and languid, in the process pulling herself up and upon me like I was a mountain and she was weather.

  “Say my name,” I said.

  “I am told we have six days,” she said, arriving in this world from whatever world it was she lived in, both hands on my chest, legs straddling my hips, back bowed such that our abs brushed, her eyes intent on mine, scent of the same shampoo I’d used in the bucolic bathroom, but faint jasmine, too, and hot pheromones, the storm coming in around us. I felt myself falling into her world, the world she’d once told me I couldn’t inhabit.

  “My name,” I said.

  “Six days,” she murmured. “That is what I am told.”

  “Told by whom?” I said.

  She said something in Norwegian, litten something.

  “Translate?”

  “Mm. Little folk.”

  “My name,” I said again.

  “Firfisle,” she said emphatically as she absorbed me, the ethereal made physical, never a body I loved more than that one or a body more completely given, none more completely taken. “Firfisle-mine.”

  THE CHLORINE BARON’S poolhouse was endlessly fascinating, mysterious, his fantasy all brought up to date via Percy Haverstock’s fortune, every little geyser and mudpot working perfectly, miniature everything, room after room, first quality and perfectly restored, from the upholstery to the cuckoo clocks.

  “Nice, ja? Not so shabby as when it was Dabney’s lair. He and his dear friends hanging up on the miniature furniture like swollen lords.”

  “Hanging out,” I corrected despite myself. We were lying on a bearskin that I’d only slowly realized was real. “Kate said Pete Townshend. And Eric Burdon once. And John Lennon all the time.”

  “Oik, ja, the British invasion, all of them. Along with Kate. Very cozy.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No-no. I knew anything about this.”

  “You mean nothing?”

  “Nothing about this with Kate. Lots of girls out here with those boys, always girls, girls. Your Sylphide is turning her eyes away—I had no interest in their secrets. Kate is with Linsey, that is all I knew, taking perfect care of Linsey. I prized her, Lizano. She never bothers me. I have no idea of her and Dab. The one what bothers me is Brady.”

  “Dabney’s brother?”

  “More like a disease.”

  “The jailbird, right? Brady Rattner? With the beard and the sunglasses and all the motorcycle gear and the huge poof of hair?”

  “Oh, that photo, of course. I guess everyone knows it. It’s the only one they ever use. That was the legend he makes for himself. But Brady was only in borstal, like reform school, for maybe a half year. He is stealing lumber or something.”

  “And he was a stunt man, I remember.”

  “No-no, just more of his rubbish. He drove racecars a while with Dab’s money, and then he crashes one on a public way drunk. Several weeks in lockup. That was all. Before Dabney bails him out. By the time he turns up here, he is shaved and haircut and suits like a businessman, very handsome rilly, with his workman swagger. He is happy in his skin, that one. He is sleeping with the upstairs girl, the downstairs girl, the girls from the ballet. And sleeping with Desmond, too, and with our own Vlad. He sniffs around your Katy always. She showed him her backhand at a dinner for President Nixon once. Oik, a real satisfying smash to the face, Brady with his fingers walking up her little skirt there in back of everyone. She is breaking his nose, beautiful, Secret Service guys escorting him out. Another time Dabney is on the road—is with Kate—and here is Brady slipping into my bed, just about has me before I wake enough to understand. I bant him from the house, completely and forever.”

  “Banned.”

  “Yes, bant. But Dabney is patient with him like with everyone, his little jealous brother, who wants to be business manager. Our worst time together, Dabney and me, very tense time. I don’t know how much money we spent on Brady. Always with his schemes. Songs for Dabney to write, foolish business deals. Dabney makes him come apologize to me, so un-sincere, you can imagine, hoo, hoo, hoo. I am hating him more than ever after. I double bant him: no more in the house, not ever. And Dabney sick of him, too, by then. So he connects Brady up with your father, two dogs with one leash. Is why I am telling you all this. They got along pretty good, too. Dabney giving them mother-goose chases, days away sometimes. Just so he could have his hours with Kate, I understand now, so your father would not know. I am traveling, traveling, Dabney is traveling. And so it is your poppa and Brady, Brady and your poppa.”

  “My father was here that much?”

  “Ja. Right in this poolhouse here. Your father was very polite, something sweet about him, but so desperate. The way he carries himself! Like a bag of laundry! Always begging Dabney to invest. And Dabney lets him manage some large sum of money. Because of Kate, of course. And the money is lost some complicated way. I will never forget it: Freddy is throwing him out, right down the High Side stairs. Your poppa, he isn’t fighting back, but Brady, he will not leave—somehow he is in this, too—he is arguing and shouts and tries to punch Dabney and sweet Dab is giving the okay, and so Freddy beats Brady like an egg and thrown him down the stairs after your poppa, those big stone stairs. And you know Nicholas, he’s back in five minutes, begging on his knee. And of course, because of Kate, he is forgive. Brady, no. Dr. Chun drives Brady to the hospital—pretty bad, bloody and broken—and Brady never come back. Never saw him again. Poof.”

  “Your own brother-in-law!”

  “My own beast, you mean.” She rubbed her shoulder, ran a finger along the worst of the many scars left from failed surgeries. “Ja, oik. Bad times.” She disentangled herself from me, rose from the bearskin rug, padded naked to one of the several little kitchens, found a big orange there, peeled it busily, broke it, dropped a section on my chest as she passed back by—silhouette in firelight—floated on down the skinny corridor and through the closet into what had become our bedroom. “No more talk,” she said. “It is ruining my mood.”

  THE HEAD OF the High Side housekeepers discreetly dropped off exquisite meals. Maybe a housekeeper had done the same for Kate and Dabney. I kept thinking of them trysting there, thinking of the night the guy crashed his car, my poor sister. The things we didn’t know about her. Kate and Sylphide waiting up together for news, Kate come to the dancer’s room in tears, maybe Desmond the one with the heart to let her know: Dabney missing, still missing, then found. No need for Kate to confess to any affair—it was plain from t
he brand of tears: she was in love. And poor Sylphide, the death and the betrayal, all at once.

  The dancer and I used the whole suite, all the eight or nine little bedrooms, all the grottoes and virtual hot springs, the waterfall rainforests, the warmed towels in endless supply. We abandoned our clothing within a day and a half, all those little fireplaces blazing. False afternoon by pretend evening her feet came unknotted, her blisters less angry. My sore knees came quiet, my stiff hands loose.

  We dropped the subject of my sister, my father. We dropped the subject of Dabney, of his awful brother, all of it. Restaurant Firfisle was not a subject, ceased to exist. Dance was not a subject, football, no. Tenke was a physical person, a great studier of bodies, absently compared the length of our hands, the circumferences of our wrists, the mobility of her joints, mine, not in passing but for hours, even during lovemaking, of which we didn’t tire.

  I found my pants one night while she slept (I had only the clothes I’d been wearing when I arrived, not that it mattered, washed and folded repeatedly whenever I wasn’t looking), retrieved the speckled stone from its place in a front pocket, kept it in my hand through a very long kiss and then through an extended, indolent lovemaking session. When she dozed next, nowhere else to put it, I placed the greenish heart gently in the hollow between her clavicles, the small, smooth stone like a necklace without a chain, admired my work, and fell asleep myself, her belly as a pillow. When I woke she was watching me closely, night or day, who could tell? Not a word about the stone, not another word, more lovemaking, no stone to be found.

  One of the last false afternoons I said I didn’t want ever to part, and shortly she disappeared—slipped into one of the baths, no other door but the one wide open, and then just didn’t come out. When I looked she was missing, vanished. My one wave of anger, which was in fact fear. Then a tiny voice calling. From where? The back of the glacier-themed shower, secret door like moving an iceberg, a hidden room behind, like a bunkhouse at a summer camp. I ducked in, puzzled, and from a top bunk she leapt upon me frontally, trusted my hands, held my ribs with her thighs, moist contact.