by David Gates
She crept up the flagstone walk, smelling the metallic, bloodlike stink of the boxwoods. A white envelope was taped to the door, with WELCOME! in girlish handwriting. Paige pulled it free: empty. The key must still be hidden underneath the bronze turtle. How offensive was it that Abigail was bidding her welcome? Then again, Paige had never lived in this house. She’d have to consider this when she was straight. And when might that be?
In the morning she did just a single bump, since here she was in the healthy countryside. But what if in doing just the left nostril she’d activated only the left brain? If she could remember whether that was the rational side or the emotive-intuitive, she could monitor herself for a possible imbalance. She went out to the kitchen for water, saw a strip of duct tape across the sink like the international NO and stepped out onto the porch, where she found Abigail sitting sidesaddle in one of the Adirondack chairs. A hot autumn day, trees already past the peak, wasps crawling on the posts where the sunlight hit. In daylight Paige could see that the boxwoods had suckers sticking up. Must “topiary” and “topology” not have the same root? Something to do with surfaces?
“Hi, welcome.” Abigail stood up. Bare feet, piggies painted pink. “Let me get you some coffee. How do you take it?”
“I often wonder,” Paige said. “Actually, I can get it.”
“No, no, sit.”
Paige watched her go: dirty heels, rising to show white insteps. You couldn’t not look at her ass. Abigail played tennis, yes, but this had to be gym related. She was four years older than Paige.
She set a mug on the arm of Paige’s chair. “Charles is still sleeping. I think he was up most of the night. At some point I got up to go to the bathroom, and he was in there with his laptop. I don’t ask anymore.” The coffee tasted foul because of that salty chemical shit still in the back of her throat, but actually pretty great. “I didn’t hear any of this. I thought you guys were like early to bed, early to rise.”
“Well, sort of yes and no,” Abigail said.
Paige had never been able to discern whether or not this woman was stupid. She did have a Ph.D. On the other hand, Charles Eckhaus had chaired her committee. “So what’s up with the sink?”
“Oh, it’s such a pain. Charles called the plumber a week ago, they were coming right over—this is what it’s like up here.”
“So you still miss the city.”
“Yeah, no shit.” Abigail started to cry. “Oh God. Too early in the fucking day for this.” She got up and went inside, a hand before her like a blind person. Paige heard a door shut somewhere. Probably that bathroom off the kitchen. Two people and three bathrooms: What could he have been thinking? Right, well, if you knew that.
—
Back in the study, Paige checked the Wordsworth poem—it was “ ‘O mercy!’ to myself I cried”—and felt a headache sneaking in. She got up to look for aspirin and met her father coming down the stairs: black shorts and a regrettable white alligator shirt, his calves still muscled. He hugged her, then took a step back, his hands cupping her shoulders. “Terrific.”
“Looking good yourself,” she said. Well, he did have a tan.
“Actually,” he said—and she knew what was coming—“there’s this extremely horrifying portrait of me up in the attic.” She tried to give him a smile; her mouth did something but her eyebrows wouldn’t go up.
She followed him out onto the porch. She didn’t want to do the exact same scene over again, though she couldn’t not sit down in her same chair.
“You sleep all right, kitten?” He coughed.
“Fine,” she said. “It’s so quiet up here.”
“It is that,” he said. And as if to demonstrate.
Paige listened awhile. Then she said, “Did Abigail go back to bed?”
“Yep.” He coughed again. A barking cough. “I don’t think she got much sleep.”
“She was telling me you didn’t get much sleep.”
“Aha,” he said. “And how did she know? You see the pathology. Well, ‘pathology’ is too strong a word.” Coughed again.
“How long have you had that?”
“What, the cough? Dah—not worth discussing. Now, how are you?”
“Oh. You know.”
“Mm,” he said. “I’m not quite getting a reading here.”
“No, I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just nice to be away, you know. From all of it.”
“All of it, eh?” he said. “No, you certainly won’t find that here. So what shall we do to amuse you?”
“Put me to work? You want me to finish your hedge for you?”
“Ah. Thereby hangs a tale. I was merrily trimming away with the hedge trimmer—before cocktails, I’ll have you know—and I somehow managed to cut through the cord. You’d think one would see an orange cord. I assume this is why they make them orange. I’m just not a country boy, kitten.” Cough.
“Well, I could splice the cord,” Paige said. “You have electrical tape?”
“Alas,” he said. “But there’s a True Value in town.” He looked skyward. “God knows I’ve tried to find it. Well? Don’t we laugh?”
In the room where she’d slept, she got her car keys out of her jacket and considered: she’d meant to do the supposedly necessary this morning and had forgotten. But having to face her father afterward—no. When she came back to the porch, he stood up, stretched and coughed, and she followed him down between the boxwoods, then to her car.
“Now in the city,” he said, “we’d be sitting somewhere reading the Times and drinking Bloody Marys.”
“Do you ever think about moving back?”
“Well, of course Abigail would do it in a heartbeat.” Cough. “For all I know, I’m just hanging on here because she hates it.”
She opened the passenger door for him, then got behind the wheel. Another cough. “Did I tell you I bought this Eminem record? CD, I should say.”
“Why on earth?” She was having trouble getting into reverse.
“I’m quite taken with it. He just vents. And he’s not without self-irony, you know.”
“Lucky him,” she said. Damn this thing. There.
“Abigail, of course, loathes it with all her middlebrow soul.”
She stopped at the end of the drive and looked both ways.
“Watch for people coming around that curve,” he said. “I always feel safer at night. At least you can see the lights. Does it sound to you as if everything I’m saying is a metaphor?”
She popped the clutch and got them safely out there. “Don’t go by me. I’m sort of having echoes myself.”
“Echoes! Excellent. Well, this is a grim subject for a beautiful day.” He coughed. “May I open your sunroof?” He pointed upward with his thumb and started fiddling with the catch.
“So why did you marry somebody you think has a middlebrow soul?”
“You’ve heard of oral sex, yes?” he said. “Big deal in my day.” The sunroof slid open, and she thought she felt the warm air in the car whoosh up and back.
“Ah,” he said. “Delightful.” He stuck a hand up through the roof and wiggled his fingers.
“So where do I go?” she said.
“Just go straight at the light,” he said. “There I go again. Stop! Stop!”
She hit the brake. “What?”
“No, no, I meant me. So listen, what would you say to getting me out of here?” She looked at him. “Quite serious. Well, you know. Quasi.”
She pulled up in front of the hardware store and cut the engine. “How badly are you not getting along?”
“Get me out of here and I’ll tell you everything.” He coughed. He was tapping his knee with his index finger, fast, like a telegrapher. He’d trimmed his white beard so nicely, shaving his neck below the beard line and the upper part of his cheeks. She pitied the way his glasses cut into his temple, bit into the bridge of his nose. He was still a beautiful man. Objectively.
“You should see a doctor about that cough,” she said.
; “I have. Shall I come in with you so you can keep an eye on me?”
“No, I’m not that into drama,” Paige said. “Otherwise I’d still be in the city.”
“Oh?” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
She looked for electrical tape with the electrical stuff—silly girl—and found it instead over with the tape. Had this been her hardware store, she would have put a portion of her inventory of electrical tape in each place. Cross-referencing.
Back in the car, she closed her eyes for a second just to slow things down, though she wasn’t crazy about the light show going on in there. She heard her father cough, then say, “Are you going to take me seriously? What I asked you?”
“Daddy,” she said. “I mean—come on. Am I supposed to abduct you or something?” She started the engine. “Where would we go?”
“That’s the spirit. You just carry on as the dutiful daughter and listen for your cue.”
“Why are you being so cloak-and-dagger-y?”
“You’ll enjoy it,” he said. “The intrigue. I know a little something about my girl.”
—
When they came up the driveway, there was Abigail sitting on the porch again. This day didn’t seem to be, like, progressing. In the garage, Paige took down the hedge clipper and the severed cord, found a sheetrock knife among the tools and brought everything back to the porch.
“And I’ve learned that his real name is Marshall Mathers,” her father was saying. He had a glass in his hand; a glass for her sat on the arm of her chair. “Apparently no relation to the Beaver.”
Paige picked up her glass and tasted: vodka tonic.
“He’s become quite the authority,” Abigail said. She reached into her glass, fished out the lime slice and bit out the inside part without even wincing.
“Hardly that,” her father said. “Shall I get you a little more, dear?” Cough. “You look like you’re still able to sit up straight.”
“Appearances are deceiving. But I don’t have to tell you that.” She stood up. “Does anybody care for some lunch? We have, let me see. We have lunch meat.”
“I don’t believe Paige understands your humor, dear. Why don’t you let me do this.”
“I am fine.” Abigail went to the door. “You can carry on with the tutorial.” She turned to Paige. “You don’t know how refreshing it is. Marry an aging poet and they throw in a young person to sweeten the deal.”
Paige put down her glass and watched a gray squirrel creeping on the flagstones, in little freeze-frame movements. She heard the screen door close. “This is what it’s like?” she said.
“Give or take.”
“So why do you not leave?” She picked up the severed plug end of the cord and started slicing plastic away from one of the ragged copper wires.
“And who takes care of me when I get cancer?”
“Your doctor,” she said. “You’re not planning to give yourself cancer, I hope.”
“Give myself cancer? How sixties. What’s that line? ‘Canker is a disease of plants, cancer one of animals.’ ” He coughed again.
Paige got an inch of copper bared on a red-clad wire and started on the matching red wire in the other part of the cord.
Abigail opened the door. “The bread has mold,” she said. “It’s horrible. I’ve got to go into town.”
“Why don’t we just all go to the Cup and Saucer?” he said. “You’ll be amused, kitten. They’ve got a blackboard with the pies du jour. Oh, sweetheart? I meant to tell you, after lunch? Paige would like me to drive down to the city with her to visit Ken. In the hospital.”
Paige stopped carving at the wire.
“And who is Ken?” Abigail said.
“Old, old friend of mine and Catherine’s. I’ve told you about Ken. He and his wife used to watch Paige—their daughter went to Saint Ann’s, too. At any rate, Paige tells me he’s in Sloan Kettering. And I gather he’s not doing well.”
“Oh, of course,” Abigail said. “Any friend of yours and Catherine’s. I’m sorry the man’s ill. Were you asking my permission?”
“Sweetheart—”
“Were you?” she said to Paige. “Christ, you both disgust me. Oh, and thank you for the gracious invitation. But I think I’ll just eat shit.”
—
“Daddy,” Paige said as she drove them toward town. “Next time brief me a little?”
“Next time? You’re a worse pessimist than I am. No, your silence was golden. I love you very dearly, kitten, but you are not the world’s best liar. Remember the time you took a puff off my cigarette and tried to—”
“I was four years old.”
“You said, ‘The wind did it.’ ”
“I know, Daddy. I remember.” This might, in fact, be Paige’s earliest memory. Sun on the stoop, Remsen Street, early spring, forsythia. He’d put his cigarette down on the edge of the brownstone step; it sat there, smoke streaming up from where the ash met the paper. She’d thought it was a clever lie: You sucked air through a cigarette, so why couldn’t the wind have gone through on its own? For a four-year-old, wasn’t this a lie of genius?
She said, “I’m glad you gave up smoking.”
“Well. I’m glad you’re glad.” He coughed.
She checked her mirror: there was a car behind them, so close she couldn’t see its grille.
“I’m just going to let this asshole go by.” She slowed down, pulled over, heard her tires crushing fallen leaves; the car roared past and she gave it the finger.
“Temper temper,” her father said. “We’re not in any hurry. How does it go? ‘We’ll sit here like birds i’ the cage. They’ll talk and we’ll talk with ’em—who’s up, who’s down, and fire us forth like foxes.’ ” Cough. “God, I’m missing whole chunks.”
She shifted to second and pulled back onto the road. “So where are we going?”
“Well, here’s a thought,” he said. “What would you say to Cape Cod? You remember that song? Cape Cod girls they have no bones—or, rather, they have no combs. They comb their hair with codfish bones. You know, it may well be that the Indians actually did that. Must have smelled to high heaven.”
“Well, isn’t the smell the whole point?” Paige said. “Girls and fish smell? Or am I being too feminist?”
“Ah well, see now, there we come to a whole discussion that fathers and daughters probably ought not to be having,” he said. “Even in these enlightened days.”
“Daddy, you need to be back writing.”
“What, keep rearranging the bric-a-brac? No, I’ve been to the mountaintop. I’m perfectly content at this point to leave the field to Mr. Mathers.”
Just before the Thruway entrance, she pulled into a gas station and put the car in neutral. “So?” she said.
“I’m quite serious about the Cape,” he said. “And I do know someone we could impose on.”
“Who’s that?”
He coughed. “Old friend of mine. Former student, actually.”
“Somebody else who used to babysit me?”
“Now, I thought that sounded very plausible. No, you never knew this person.”
“I never knew the other person, Daddy. Ted?”
“Ken,” he said. “As in, beyond our ken. A little more than Ken but less than kind. No, this is actually a real person. Let me get out and see if I can maybe raise her on the phone.”
“Use mine?” Paige said. She reached behind his seat for her backpack.
He held up a hand. “No, we don’t want brain cancer on top of everything else.”
“So who is this real person?”
“Louisa Philips?” he said. “You’ve heard me mention her.”
“An old friend?” This was the one who’d broken up his second marriage. Okay, the one he’d used to break up his second marriage.
“Well, now she is. She’s in North Truro, I believe. With her husband. To whom I gather she’s very happily married.”
“I’m thrilled for her,” Paige said.
/> “You’re not going to have an attitude, kitten?”
“What attitude would you like me not to have?”
“Look, I promise you, kitten, it will be a mindless good time. Pleasant people? Lovely old house? The ocean? Abigail and I have stayed with them. On a couple of occasions. And it’s never been the least bit.” He opened his door and put one leg out. “You know, we don’t need to do this.”
“All my stuff’s back at the house,” Paige said. “I don’t even have a toothbrush.”
“Nor do I,” he said. “But the Lord has spoken to me of Walmarts in the wilderness.”
He walked to the pay phone and she watched him poking at the numbers as if counting heads. Why had she not understood until now that this had been a done deal?
“Well,” he said as he fastened his seat belt. “She’s there at any rate. He, apparently, is in Tokyo. Telling the boys at the Nikkei what’s what. Or that’s my understanding. She says she’d be delighted to have some company.”
“Won’t I be a third wheel?” Paige said.
“Dear heart,” he said, “you make it possible. So.” He pointed out the window. “Follow the pillar of smoke.”
“Tell me one thing, okay?” she said. “When did you really call her?”
“What do you mean, kitten? Just now.” And anybody would have believed him.
—
The map showed that there was no decent route to Cape Cod. They didn’t even hit Hartford until the sun was glaring and flashing in her rearview mirror, and at Manchester they had to choose between 44 and 6; each seemed hopeless. So 44: this dreary two-lane with the occasional white colonial. The sun went down, the morning bump had long since worn off and now, in the half dark, hearing the white noise of the road, she started having moments where she’d jerk awake realizing that she was driving.
“I need to stop and close my eyes for a minute,” she said. “That or we’re going to die.”
“Stark choices,” her father said. He coughed. “You sure you don’t want me to take over?”
“You said you weren’t used to standard anymore,” she said.
“That was a metaphor.” He coughed. “Don’t we laugh?”
