Peaceable Kingdom

by Francine Prose

  I said, “There was one year when Holly was small, I don’t think Buzzy was born yet; my wife used to say the two people she hated most in the world were Richard Nixon and Cookie the Clown.” Marian laughed, but I got flustered, quoting Beth, bringing in the kids. I felt I had ruined everything.

  And that, more or less, was that. We said goodbye, we shook hands. But I couldn’t get her off my mind. I would walk down the street, staring at strangers’ faces, wondering how many perfectly normal people were right at that moment obsessed with someone they hardly knew and had chosen almost at random to fix on with what, for want of a better word, you might as well call love. I felt like John Hinckley. I thought: It would be easier to shoot the President than to call her. But finally I called. We met for lunch. She said that my calling had made her so happy she was sure she’d be run over by a car on the way to meet me.

  I couldn’t tell Beth. Of course she knew something was wrong. I knew she was suffering, but couldn’t explain—that was the hardest part. I kept asking, Is it me? In fact, I had never been so present. I had time and patience for everything—unraveling the children’s shoelaces, settling their fights. I actually talked to the children, though I can’t now recall about what.

  One day I persuaded Buzzy to watch Cookie the Clown with me. He had, as I said, outgrown it. But he was so surprised I asked, he agreed at once. Cookie was touring an underground mushroom mine. The millions of fat white mushrooms waiting to be picked were a lovely sight, though not, I imagine, to the women who worked there, day after day in the dark. One of the workers told Cookie that each mushroom was different, like snow-flakes. “Like people,” Cookie said, and she said, “Very much like people.” “Buzzy,” I said, “mushrooms are nothing like people.”

  Beth said her problems had nothing to do with me. She felt that her sense of the world had gone sour—curdled, she said, like milk. She woke me in the middle of the night to talk—in a hot, dry, panicky voice. Some guy on the street had looked at her a second too long and she’d thought he was going to kill her. She began to hate going out. I said, Talk to someone. Someone who isn’t me.

  I have to admit I was grateful at first, glad even for Doug’s dental jewelry and Guatemalan poncho. I thought: They’ll talk more about jaguar rites, less about me. Even when it struck me that my wife was telling him secrets she didn’t tell me, I thought: Well, I deserve it.

  Maybe I will never know why Beth decided to get pregnant. At the time I didn’t ask; now I no longer can. I am sure it was a choice—we had been married fourteen years; both Holly and Buzzy were planned. For all I know, it was Doug’s idea. Maybe Beth thought it would fix things, restore what had gone bad, like those cookbook tricks for fixing the spoiled hollandaise, the overthickened gravy.

  And it did, it worked. As soon as Beth told me—as soon as it really sank in—images began streaming through my mind, pictures from our lives. One image stayed with me: when Buzzy was tiny, someone gave us a beanbag chair. Beth used to scoop him out a little hollow in the chair, and the two of them would lie there watching MTV. She’d said the videos were the perfect length for her and Buzzy’s attention span. It’s always the most trivial things that call us back to ourselves—never what you might expect. When I thought of that—Beth and Buzzy watching MTV—everything that had happened since seemed to dissolve, and I understood that my life with Beth and the children was my real life, and everything else was a dream.

  That same night, I told Beth about Marian. I promised it was over. I called Marian and met her for lunch and told her Beth was pregnant—that was the reason I gave. At first Marian couldn’t see what difference it made; I couldn’t really explain. Finally she smiled and said she’d learned her lesson from me. From now on, she was sticking to guys in clown noses and size-15 checkered shoes. That was my moment of sharpest regret; because, even then, we could still joke around. At home, nothing was funny.

  That wasn’t completely true. For that short time Beth was pregnant, something lightened; we could laugh about getting it right this time, or getting a child with all Buzzy’s and Holly’s worst faults. Then came the miscarriage. After that, we sat in Doug’s office. I joked about Murph. I was the only one laughing.

  When the traffic lets up, I say into my rearview mirror, “Nancy and Ronald Reagan go into a restaurant. Nancy says, ‘I’ll have the meat and potatoes.’ And for the vegetable?’ says the waiter. And Nancy says, ‘He’ll have the meat and potatoes, too.’”

  Beth says, “Martin, that’s awful.” Buzzy bursts out laughing. Holly says, “Why are you laughing? I bet you don’t even get it.”

  “Vegetable?” I say. “Ronald Reagan?”

  “I get it,” says Holly. “I think it’s really mean.”

  “Toward Reagan?” I say. “Or toward vegetables in general?”

  “I don’t know,” Holly says. “Toward both.” Holly flips back and forth about us, always so as to find fault. Sometimes I’m too soft and sometimes I lack compassion. Sometimes we’re too rich and sometimes too poor. Once, in fifth grade, Holly had to bring into school an anecdote from her very early childhood. It was a terrible moment: I couldn’t remember one. Beth came up with something for her, but Holly stayed angry at me. I remember telling her that it wasn’t a question of love or attention, but strictly a memory problem.

  Doug says the whole point of ritual is remembering. He says they fix things in time, in the mind; they work like primitive record-keeping, tying knots in string. He says, “Time is the string, rituals the knots.” That doesn’t sound right to me. Anything worth its own ritual, you would remember without one. You’d know why you buried that jaguar under the headman’s house.

  Two exits from my sister’s, I ask Beth how we should work this. Get out of the car and start digging a hole? Or wait, let Murph defrost? Sneak off on the sly? Invite everyone? Beth looks at me and blinks. The morning sun is harsh. She says, “Let’s play it by ear.”

  In the uproar of arrival, Murph is forgotten. Buzzy jumps out and races in circles around the car with his cousin Jed. Holly heads across the field to toss sticks for Peg’s dogs. My sister runs out and wraps her arms around me and squeezes. It’s been so long since anyone hugged me that way, I decide to tell Peg everything, to get her alone and confess.

  Eugene, Peg’s husband, shakes my hand. His handshake matches the rest of him—bony and a bit stiff. Eugene is a semi-famous painter with a reputation built on perfect hard-edge stripes. At least he and Beth can talk about paint. Once during each visit Eugene says you couldn’t pay him to live in Manhattan now, he gets so sick of hearing everyone talk real estate. After that, it is impossible for me to mention my work.

  When Eugene’s paintings are selling, he drinks Mexican beer. When they aren’t, it’s Genesee. Everyone knows this, and, insofar as you can kid Eugene, we kid him about it. Now Beth and I get our choice of Tecate or Sol. We drink a couple of beers, then Eugene asks Beth to come see his studio. Before I can steer the conversation toward what’s on my mind, Peg says, “I need to talk to you about Dad.” She’s seen him more recently than I, three weeks ago; on the phone, she’d said he was fine.

  Now she says, “Not exactly fine. I guess he’s okay. But listen. I went into the bathroom, and when I closed the door this thing jumped at me from the back of the door, her dressing gown, silk, good lace, very Miss Havisham. It swung out from its hook, puffed a puff of lavender, then swung back.”

  I wonder why she’s telling me this. “You think it was her ghost?”

  “Ghost?” says Peg. “I think it was her dressing gown. It’s been a year since she died.”

  “Maybe he’s wearing it,” I say, and we both start to laugh.

  “That’s disgusting,” says Peg.

  We fall silent, drinking our beer. Peg says, “You spend your life eating whole grains and nuts and you come back from a hike, take your first sip of Pepsi in thirty years, and bingo, good night, you’re dead.” There is an edge in her voice.

  I say, “How are things going?”
I hold up my Tecate can. “Looks like they’re going okay.”

  “Terrible,” she says. “Eugene is seeing someone. The thing is, it happened before, with this same woman. Two years ago.”

  “Really?” I’m horrified by how hopeful this makes me feel.

  “Really,” she says, and I understand I can’t tell her. Eugene and I should be talking, Beth commiserating with Peg. Peg says, “How are things with you?”

  “Fine,” I say, and Peg says, “Sure. Beth looks completely zombified.”

  “Oh,” I say, “you noticed. Well, the miscarriage…”

  Beth and Eugene walk in. After an uneasy silence, Beth says, “It’s wonderful. Eugene’s doing something totally new.” I think, That’s not what I hear. But Eugene isn’t thinking that. When you talk to Eugene about his work, there are no double entendres, no subtexts.

  Beth catches my eye and says, “We should get some stuff out of the car.” I know she means Murph.

  Beth turns to Peg and Eugene. “I hope this doesn’t sound crazy to you,” she says, “but Murph, Buzzy’s hamster, died, we needed somewhere to bury it, we brought it…”

  Eugene looks pleased; the spectacle of city dwellers with nowhere to bury their dead confirms him. I search his face, but there is nothing for me there, no fellow-sinner recognition.

  Peg says, “It’s not crazy at all. Just bury it deep. Remember, Martin, we had that turtle that died and we just covered it with dirt, and the cat dug it up in the middle of the night and smeared turtle guts all over Mom’s kitchen?”

  “Where was I?” I ask.

  Eugene says, “Let me get you a shovel.” Beth and I go to the car. The children are playing in the field. I open the trunk. Murph is in an opaque white plastic shopping bag; his Baggie is inside that.

  Beth says, “Would you hold Murph a second?” She reaches into the trunk, gets another white plastic bag, and takes out a small container of strawberry yogurt.

  “What’s that?” I say. “Food for the dead? An afterlife snack for Murph?”

  “It’s the baby,” she says. “The fetus. I saved it. I thought I was being crazy, but I discussed it with Doug. And he said I was right. I think we should bury it. Near Murph.”

  “You were being crazy,” I said. “You are. You’ve gone totally around the bend. You’ve got a fetus in there? Are you kidding? Remember fifteen years ago we used to laugh at people eating the placenta after hippie communal births? What’s gotten into you?”

  Beth holds up the yogurt container. All I can think of is the Pepsi can that did my stepmother in. I imagine the interior of the yogurt carton, dim light straining in through the waxy white walls, streaks of tissue and blood. Then I picture the inside of the aluminum can: pitch black, metallic, buzzing.

  Beth hands me the container. I don’t want to take it, but I can’t say no. It feels very light, it feels empty. I shake it, tentatively, tilt it back and forth. Then very slowly I open it. I look at Beth and she smiles at me, a smile I cannot read.

  There is nothing inside.

  THE SHINING PATH

  AFTER THE FUNERAL, LINDA and Toby went straight from the cemetery to La Guardia. Toby said, “One reason to take the boat to Mexico is to not have to go through Queens.” Linda didn’t know how to reply; after all, she had grown up in Queens and just buried her brother there.

  The cabdriver’s name was Hamid Ali, and he took some very weird side streets. Changing lanes, he twisted around, and his sullen glittery eyes raked the back seat like bullets. It took all Linda’s self-control not to say something to Toby that would somehow let the driver know her brother had just died; perhaps then he would hate them less. Then maybe she could ask him where Muslims believe the spirit goes immediately after death. She wasn’t religious or superstitious, but right now she wanted to know. She dreaded the thought of Greg’s spirit lurking nearby, shrieking with laughter because on the day of his actual funeral she was taking off for the Yucatan with Toby, who, Greg had always said, had guacamole for brains. If she asked Toby, he would just tell her what the Inca priests believed, and Toby wasn’t Inca, so how could he really know? Moving nearer Toby she said, “Are you sure this is okay?”

  “There is no okay or not okay,” he said. “All you have to do is get through it.”

  According to Toby, what Linda really needed was a week on top of Machu Picchu. But when they’d totaled their savings, there wasn’t nearly enough. Besides, he’d explained, Peru was dangerous now. A guerrilla group called the Shining Path was stopping tourist trains. Linda visualized this so clearly—the screeching brakes, the masked guerrillas emerging from the darkness, the chill of a gun muzzle on her scalp—that she felt certain it would happen, and was relieved when a New Age travel-agent friend of Toby’s arranged an amazingly cheap six nights and seven days on an isle off the Yucatan coast.

  Though Toby had never been to this island, he’d been almost everywhere else. Toby managed Record Bazaar; it was he who had hired Linda. He knew about all kinds of music—once, when Linda was mad at him, he filled the store with a full day of country-Western begging-and-pleading songs. But the international section was where he could usually be found, picking out CDs to play on the PA. Toby had such great taste that heavy-metal kids were often surprised to find themselves buying the expensive Moroccan joujouka imports he stacked by the cash registers.

  On Linda’s first day at work, Toby led her through the imports section, past the Greek singers with the Buddy Holly glasses, the colored photos of belly dancers, past the polka bands and the paintings of balalaika players, and put on a CD called Music from the Andes. The flute sounded like someone breathing raggedly in your ear. Toby leaned very close and told her that once, in the Andes, he lay awake in his sleeping bag picking out bats with his flashlight, and the next day he overheard some Shirley MacLaine types saying they’d seen the sacred fire birds of the Incas. Later, after they began living together, Linda heard Toby tell this to other people. He had been to Machu Picchu three times.

  At the airport Toby grabbed Linda and rushed to the head of the line. The attendant—who could see that their plane wasn’t leaving for hours—glared at them, but checked them in anyhow. Linda knew this was wrong, yet laughed and felt proud of Toby, prouder still when he looked so relaxed while the security guards X-rayed their baggage. Linda fully expected the screen to show the guns and grenades that of course they didn’t have.

  The last time Linda flew—to her grandmother’s funeral in Miami—she was too young to be nervous. But now fear came easily as they boarded the plane. She felt that if she smiled and was appreciative, the plane wouldn’t crash, so she thanked the man who checked her boarding pass so profusely that he gave her a funny look. “He thinks you’re a hijacker,” Toby said.

  When the liquor cart came around, Toby bought them each two tequilas. He seemed put out at the cost of the drinks, and complained so loudly that Linda hoped no one heard. In the row behind them, three college girls were painting their fingernails on the tray tables. They giggled and fluttered their coral-tipped fingers as if Linda were a restless child peeking at them through the seats.

  La Hacienda del Sol was a clump of thatched adobe huts and one larger hut separated from the beach by a wide patch of oily scrub vegetation. Toby said, “Is this a joke? I thought I was through with this. I thought I’d stayed at my last hippie hammock joint. I’m going to kill Zack. When we get back to the city I’m putting out a contract on him.”

  A slight, morose-looking man came out of the central building and tipped his straw cowboy hat with an ironic smile—a gesture spoiled somewhat by the way his hat had bunched up his hair so it wound around his head like a turban.

  “I am Señor Ramón,” he said. “Your host. From where are you coming?”

  “Nueva York,” said Toby.

  “Ah, yes,” said Señor Ramón. “New York. I took fifteen credits toward my master’s at Columbia.”

  “What in?” asked Toby, but Señor Ramón had picked up their luggage and set off t
oward a tiny hut. Inside, the walls were painted a milky poster-paint blue.

  “Very cheery,” Toby said, but after Señor Ramón left, Toby said, “Hacienda del Soil.” When Linda didn’t answer, Toby said, “Well, I’ve stayed in worse.” After a moment he added: “The Señor looks like he could be pretty bizarre.” Bizarre, from Toby, was a term of great approval. It was how he described almost every place he had been.

  The bathroom floor was cement, with water pooled in the low spots. Linda got out her flip-flops and went in to take a shower, but Toby stopped her. “Why shower with the ocean outside?” he said. Linda put on her two-piece suit, Toby a pair of trunks in which he looked more vulnerable than he did naked. Linda, too, felt exposed—they’d never seen each other in swimsuits. They put on T-shirts and jeans. “Take your purse,” Toby said, and handed her his traveler’s checks, passport, and a frayed hotel towel.

  In front of the largest hut was a thatched ramada and a Coke machine. Half hidden in the dappled light, Señor Ramón sat reading. He looked up and waved them over, asked if they were going swimming and told them about a quiet cove down the beach.

  “What’s the shark situation?” Toby said, laughing.

  Señor Ramón laughed, too. “They visit from time to time,” he said. “No problem.”

  Toby set off with Linda trailing several steps behind. It was a pace they often fell into in the city. There was a privacy in it Linda liked. They passed some tall empty-looking hotels, then a fishing village. Some women called out to them in Spanish. Toby smiled and waved, but the wind from the ocean was blowing, and Linda forgot to ask if he understood what they’d said. Linda found a beautiful shell—pearly, striped yellow and pink. She picked it up and held it, but when she saw identical shells everywhere, it no longer seemed worth keeping.

  The water was a transparent pale green, slightly rippled by waves. Linda stared at it a long time, then waded in up to her ankles. “It’s cold,” she said, though it wasn’t. “Let me think about this for a while.”