The Harder They Come

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Well, yes, she was Sara, and she didn’t like the scrutiny she was getting here, wondering in that moment just exactly what Sten had told her, not to mention Cindy Burnside and whoever else. She held it all in, taking the limp hand in hers before exchanging a quick look with Sten to gauge his reaction before saying, “Nice to meet you.” And then, in extenuation—of what, she wasn’t sure: moving in with their son, occupying a house that was in escrow, having a barky unkempt Rasta dog, being alive and drawing breath—she added, “I was just cooking.”

  Carolee dropped her hand and let her smile fade and come back again, as if it were battery-operated. “Nice to meet you too,” she said, and now she looked to Sten, “—finally.” The dog was sniffing at her bare legs, her toenails newly done, in a shade of red just this side of orange, and she turned back round to ask, “Is Adam here?”

  “No, he’s out,” Sara said, and she should have left it there, but didn’t. “In the woods?” She shrugged, let her eyes fly up, her smile complicit. “You know Adam.”

  Carolee wouldn’t give an inch. She just stood there staring into her eyes, cold as anything. “Yes, I know Adam,” she said, and the way she said it was like a sword that plunged right in and worked its way out the other side. “He is my son, after all.”

  Check, she was thinking, and she was staring right back and just as hard. You’re the mother and I’m nothing, just some random fuck, isn’t that it? She almost said something else she would have regretted—this woman was a friend of Cindy Burnside, after all, and she could spread her poison far and wide and no doubting it—but instead dropped her eyes. “Listen, I’ve got plenty—I mean, I was expecting a friend, and Adam, of course—and if you want to stay for dinner that would be great, I mean, we’d be honored . . .”

  “Sounds good,” Sten said, “but we really just stopped by for a couple minutes. I was thinking I’d hang that door and Carolee wanted to go through some of her mother’s things—”

  Without another word, without even bothering to glance at her or even pretend she’d picked up on the invitation, Carolee just brushed right by her, passed through the gap in the wall and went on across the yard and into the house to leave her standing there with Sten, who looked—what was it?—pained. The sun glinted in his hair. He was wearing Ray-Bans, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the rest of his face seemed to shrink away, the Amazing Shrinking Man, now you see him, now you don’t. This was hard for him. It was hard for her too.

  “Really,” she said, “I’m making chicken cordon bleu—it’d be no trouble.”

  “No,” he said, letting one hand rise and fall, “we can’t stay. I brought a couple of boxes—” And here he stepped over to the car, flipped open the rear hatch and raised them in evidence, eight or ten new cardboard boxes, folded flat. “Most of the junk’s going into the dumpster, but there are things she’s sentimental about, though Christ knows where we’re going to put it all.” He let out a laugh. “You’re supposed to be scaling down at my age.”

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding, as if she could know. “But how about a drink? You’ll have a drink at least?” She smiled. “I’ve got wine open. And I make a killer margarita.”

  For the next half hour she tried to stay out of the way as Carolee stomped in and out of the house clutching boxes stuffed with odds and ends and Sten tinkered with the door to get it flush, looking in odd moments like Adam, but she didn’t want to go there. Like father, like son. Though she couldn’t feature Adam hanging a door or changing a washer or anything like that. He was more the outdoors type, and here it came to her with the force of revelation: more the horticultural type, more the grower, the pot farmer, and why else would he be so secretive out there in the woods all day every day? She tried to picture it, the spiky-leafed plants, a whole field of them nodding in a gentle breeze and Adam hauling water up from some creek, working his muscles under the blaze of the sun. It was time he let her in on the secret. Time he trusted her. And showed it.

  Then the door was hung and Sten had a margarita in his hand, which Carolee, looking daggers, had refused, and she had no choice but to put the potatoes in to bake though she wished they would just leave before Christabel showed. Or Adam. Adam could waltz in any minute now—it was close to five and his internal clock would be ticking—and who knew what kind of reaction he was going to have? As like as not, he’d just jump right back over the wall and disappear. Like at the pizza place. They were having a nice discussion, even if Adam was a bit rocked on that ale and the hits of rum he kept sneaking from the canteen, and she was explaining Redemption Theory to him, how Roger Elvick had uncovered the whole fraud the government was perpetuating by issuing birth certificates so they could use every baby born as collateral for the loans the Federal Reserve gave the government after they went off the gold standard and how they’d put him away in some mental hospital and given him electroshock just for telling the truth to people, when she looked up and saw Sten standing there in the crowd by the bar with the blond woman she’d assumed was Carolee, and that was the end of that.

  Adam had let out a low hiss of a curse, then turned his head to look and cursed again. Before she could think he was up and out the door and she had no choice but to follow him. Thing was, she couldn’t find him. He wasn’t in the car. And she sat there and waited for half an hour or more, till after Sten and his wife had left and gone up the block and around the corner to where they must have parked their own car, and then she drove around for another hour, going up and down the back streets that went ghostly in the fog. She saw cats. A coyote. A couple of drunks stumbling home. But no Adam. Finally, she’d given up and gone back to the house—which had to be fifteen miles from town, but what else could she do? When she woke in the morning, he was there beside her, curled up in the fetal position.

  Now, trying to make small talk with Sten while dodging his wife and sipping her own margarita—she’d made a pitcher, frozen limeade, triple sec, tequila and the juice of a couple limes for the extra kick—she heard the crunch of tires on the gravel out front, which would have been Christabel. Finally. She was almost an hour late, typical of her, but why couldn’t she have been a little later, just this once?

  They were on the porch, sitting at the redwood picnic table and talking about the glories of nature. Sten swirled the dregs of his drink around the bottom of the glass and showed every indication of wanting to get out of there but Carolee was still rattling things around in the house. You could smell the potatoes now, which meant it was time to put the cordon bleu on. “How you like staying out here in the woods?” he was asking in a general way, trying to be kind. “You are staying here now, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” she said, appending a little laugh, as if to say it was as much a surprise to her as to him. “Just temporarily. For a few days, I mean. Till I sort things out with my landlady.”

  “Peaceful, isn’t it? Seen any deer? Coyotes?”

  She was distracted, picturing Carolee trotting out to her car with an armload of things and encountering Christabel before she could introduce her, but she wasn’t going to let it show. “One coyote,” she said, looking past Sten to the new metal door, which had been propped open with a rock. “He comes by like every night, or so far, anyway, at eight-thirty or so, right on schedule,” she said, but then she broke off and gave him her richest smile. “That’ll be my friend, Christabel?” And then, maybe because she wanted his approval or at least a little acknowledgment of common ground—two educators, three—she added, “She’s a teacher’s aide.”

  16.

  CHRISTABEL WAS WEARING HER black jeans, heels and a red spandex top that displayed her figure to good advantage, the sort of outfit she wore when they were going bar-hopping, which was a little puzzling because they weren’t going bar-hopping tonight, as Sara had made abundantly clear, or at least thought she had. They were going to have a homey night, drinking and laughing and eating a nice meal, and they were going to sit out here on the porch and feed the mosquitoes because Adam wou
ld definitely be more comfortable out of doors with a new person to deal with—if he stuck around, that is, and there was no guarantee of that. And while he likely wouldn’t be too thrilled to see Christabel there, whether on the porch or in the house or anywhere else, he was going to have to get used to it because she wasn’t about to give up her whole life however far this thing went. Plus—and she’d be the first to admit it—she wanted to show him off. If Christabel was jealous over the phone, just wait till she got a look at him.

  Unfortunately, Christabel was out of sorts. She appeared there in the propped-open doorway with an exasperated look on her face, her lips pursed and her eyes beaming out all kinds of lethal rays that could have dissolved flesh and stone alike, because she’d been lost on a succession of dirt roads for the better part of the last hour and only found the place after stopping some old lady out walking her dog and having her draw a map on the back of a greasy McDonald’s bag. Sara didn’t know that, or not yet, but she shot her a frantic wave, in stride, hustling across the yard to intercept her and warn her about Sten and Carolee. Not that it was a huge deal or that she was apprenticing for the role of daughter-in-law or anything like that because Adam was strange and a week of hot sex didn’t make a relationship (though it was a damn good start and no denying it), but that the whole thing was awkward, her moving in and their happening to show up now of all times. Because this wasn’t really her house. And she didn’t really belong here.

  Before she could warn her off, Christabel was saying, “Shit, Sara, I’ve been lost for an hour and my phone kept flashing that fucking infuriating no service light—”

  “Hi,” she said, trying to smile and signal with her eyes at the same time, before turning to where Sten stood on the porch. “Sten, this is my friend I was telling you about?” Kutya surged round Christabel’s ankles, yapping out his joy as she made her introductions: “Christabel, Sten; Sten, Christabel.”

  Then they were all on the porch and Sten was taking Christabel’s hand in his own and looking down the front of her blouse the way all men did when they liked what they saw, whether they were sixteen or sixty (or seventy in this case). “Nice to meet you,” Sten said, grinning like a gargoyle. He held her hand a beat too long, his eyes going from her face to her tits and back again. “I’m Adam’s father.”

  And Christabel gave it over just like that. The frown was gone and here came the megawatt smile, the attraction mutual and all the social niceties spread out on the board. “Nice to meet you too. And I’m looking forward to meeting your son.” A pause. Was she actually licking the corner of her mouth? “Sara’s told me so much about him.” A laugh. “All about him, in fact.”

  Chitchat followed—she’d heard he was retired and he’d heard she was a teacher’s aide, and she was, at Brookside Elementary, up in Willits, Special Ed, must be a tough job, oh, yeah, it was, but rewarding, you know?—and then the screen door pushed open and Carolee was standing in the midst of them, her arms encircling the last of the boxes. Sara saw the neck of a ceramic lamp with a staved-in shade poking out of the top, along with what looked to be a sheaf of children’s drawings on paper gone yellow with age and a blue cloche hat with a pheasant’s tail feather knifing out of it.

  Carolee was sweating, though it wasn’t hot out at all—in the low seventies, if that. She’d tucked her hair behind her ears to get it out of the way and the skin at her temples glistened. She gave everybody present a sour look. “Don’t tell me,” she said, homing in on Christabel, “—not another one?”

  “Here,” Sten said, “let me take that,” at the same instant Sara heard herself say, “You need any help?”

  Carolee didn’t need any help. She was the mother and this was her mother’s house. She didn’t need any more introductions and she absolutely didn’t need to be wasting energy on social amenities or even being civil. Half a beat, then the box was in Sten’s arms and the two of them were heading down the steps and out the gate. Sten called “See you later” over his shoulder, and then they heard the slamming of the rear hatch and the two car doors, followed by the sucking whoosh of the car starting up and the stony protest of the gravel as the tires rolled on over it.

  “Well, that was nice,” Christabel said. They were both still standing there on the porch, Sara with a half-empty margarita in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, Christabel in her black heels that were already floured with dust, looking to the empty space in the cement-block wall as the aroma of the baking potatoes wafted out through the screen.

  “Yeah,” Sara agreed, hardening her voice despite the fact that for some unnameable and untouchable reason, she felt like crying. “But really, what do I care?”

  “It’s just a fling, right?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “That’s all it is.”

  The cordon bleu was done and set atop a trivet on the counter in the kitchen and she and Christabel were sitting at the table on the porch drinking the last of the margaritas preparatory to getting into the wine, when they heard a noise from inside the house, a thump, then the wheeze of a door on its hinges. “That’ll be Adam,” Sara said, feeling relieved, though she wouldn’t let it show on her face. He was late and she’d begun to worry that tonight of all nights would be the one he wouldn’t show. She’d told him she was thinking of having a friend over for dinner one night—a girlfriend, her best friend, somebody he was really going to like—and though he hadn’t reacted she couldn’t help getting the idea he wasn’t all that excited about the prospect.

  Christabel turned to look over her shoulder. “What is he, a ghost? I thought this”—pointing across the yard to the metal door, which still stood open—“was the only way in? Or what, has he been hiding under the bed or something?”

  She felt a tick of irritation. “Don’t be like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know: catty. Superior. And don’t you go talking down to him either.” There was another thump from inside and Kutya, who’d been lying at her feet, raised his head, moderately interested, before letting it drop again. “If you want to know, he just goes right up and over the wall—like Jackie Chan in that movie? It’s part of his training. Keeps him fit.” And then she turned her head too and called out, “Adam? Adam, you in there?”

  No response. All the sounds of the world came crowding in, the birds, the insects, the soft rush and gurgle of the river that wasn’t much more than a stream this time of year, though it kept on dutifully flowing through all its bends and pools and on down to the harbor below.

  “Training for what?” Christabel raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know, just training. He likes to keep fit.” And then she called his name again: “Adam, we’re out here.” A pause, listening: still nothing. “I thought we’d eat out on the porch tonight—”

  She was just about to get up and go in to see what he was up to—he was going to do this for her, be presentable, be cool, if she had any power over him at all, and she did, because he liked what she was giving him and he needed it too, just to get whole, to be whole and not some spooky recluse staring off into space and saying the first thing that came into his head. His grandmother used to cook for him and before that his mother. Now she was cooking for him—and no, she wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but then his mother never went to bed with him either. And here she had to laugh: At least I hope not.

  “What’s so funny?” Christabel was leaning into the table, setting her glass down over its wet imprint in the wood, then lifting it and setting it down again as if it were the most delicate operation in the world. She was looking up at her, a collusive smile on her face. She’d already heard about the sex—Sara had told her everything, in detail, because she couldn’t help herself—and now she was expecting more.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “just thinking of something, that’s all.” Then she was pushing herself up. “Let me go get him. I mean, dinner’s ready and I don’t want the meat drying out—plus, I think it’s time we poured some of that wine, don’t y
ou?”

  Christabel gave her a sloppy wide-lipped grin. “Hear, hear!”

  She was feeling it herself, two and a half margaritas on an empty stomach, as she pushed through the screen door and into the living room, with its pine paneling gone dark from half a century of smoke, the old ladies’ lamps and wood-framed pictures and the couch that was older than she was. “Adam?” she called. Another thump, a shuffling of feet, and there he was, framed in the kitchen doorway, a beer in one hand, a half-gnawed portion of cordon bleu in the other. There was a crescent-shaped smear of dirt or grease or something on his forehead just over his left eye, and the boots he was always so careful with were crusted in mud, which had in turn left the kitchen floor a mess. “Jesus,” she said, “what happened to you—you fall in a swamp or what?”

  She didn’t expect him to answer and he didn’t. He just stood there chewing, alternately lifting the chicken and the beer to his mouth.

  “Christabel’s here, I was telling you about? We’ve been drinking margaritas and I think we’re a little wrecked.” She let out a giggle, the whole room composing itself around the silhouette of him there in the doorway, pixel by pixel, as if she were watching TV, which is how she knew just how wrecked she was and knew too that she’d have to put something on her stomach tout suite. “But dinner’s ready and we’re going to eat out on the porch, so why don’t you . . .” She trailed off. “I mean, just clean up and come join us, okay?”

  He didn’t move, but that was typical and he didn’t say anything either, which was also typical. “My father,” he said after a moment.

  “Sara?” Christabel’s voice. “You in there? Need any help?”

  “In a minute,” she called over her shoulder and turned back to Adam. “What about him?”