* * *
Our plane was to land, Dwarfmann-time, at 4:26; perhaps it did. The sun wasn’t up yet, I know that much, and I felt bleary from too much food and too little sleep. And from the change in climate; New York had been chilly, becoming cold, but San Juan was warm and humid. The wool sweater I habitually wear beneath my robe in the wintertime had become an instrument of torture, hot and scratchy and confining.
The Razas were met by several platoons of relatives, and after much shouting and smiling and shaking of my hand they all straggled away together, a portable crowd scene. They offered me several lifts, but I knew they would be going now in the opposite direction from the town I wanted, and I refused to permit them to go twenty miles out of their way.
After I’d shaved and brushed my teeth in the airport men’s room, and removed that heavy sweater, I began to feel more human again, but coffee in the coffee shop nearby caused a relapse. A pleasant girl at an information counter gave me a map of the island, on which she marked with a red Flair pen the route to Loiza Aldea. “Will you be driving a rental car, Father?”
“Brother,” I said. “No, I’ll be walking.”
“But it’s twenty miles!”
“There’s no hurry about my getting there. Thank you for the map.”
Twelve
The house could not be seen until you were almost upon it, coming around the curving dirt road through the heavy jungle underbrush. And when first seen, it was far from impressive, a squat, one-story-high, flat-roofed structure with gray stucco walls and small louvered windows. It was neat enough, and so was the bit of lawn and garden hacked out of the jungle all about it, but I suppose I’d been expecting a fairy castle. This was simply a small blunt house tucked into a fold in the coastline, with the Atlantic Ocean just in front, nibbling modestly at a small white sand beach.
I was very hot and very tired, and I’m sure my face was sweaty and dusty, but now that I was here I very much wanted to get this interview over and done with. No, the truth is, I didn’t want to face Eileen at all. I shrank from it so completely that the only possible method was to leap forward, shove myself into the scene and hope for the best.
The dirt road, having approached the house from the side, now skirted around to the front. I followed it, glancing at the ocean with some longing—I would have enjoyed lolling in that cool-looking water for half an hour or so, clothing and all—and then I went up the cement steps to the tile-floored small front porch. Humming sounds from the air-conditioner rumps sticking out of two windows suggested that someone was at home. The front door consisted mainly of frosted glass louvers, tightly shut. There was no bell, so I knocked on the metal part of the door.
I had to knock twice more before I got any response, and then it was a sleepy male voice that called through the louvers, “Who is it?”
Raising my own voice to something just under a shout, I said, “I’m looking for Eileen Flattery.”
“And who are you?” The door remained firmly shut.
“Brother Benedict.”
“You’re what?”
“Tell her it’s Brother Benedict.”
The louvers cranked open, and a puffy face squinted out at me. “Good Christ,” it said. The louvers cranked shut again, and for quite some time nothing at all occurred. During that interval, I had much leisure to consider whether or not the puffy face was another “young man” of Eileen’s, and to decide it couldn’t possibly be. Couldn’t possibly.
I was gazing seaward, trying not to think how hot and uncomfortable (and apprehensive) I was, when the louvers abruptly cranked open again. I spun back, but too late. There was a quick after-image of startled eyes peering out, but the louvers were already folding shut once more, like something in a Busby Berkeley musical number.
Had that been Eileen? Possibly, but I couldn’t be sure, and when a minute later the entire door opened, revealing a dim wicker-bedecked interior and releasing a fall of tomblike air, the person who gestured gracelessly at me to enter, while saying, “Come on in,” was puffy-face again.
“Thank you.” Stepping from one tile pattern to another, I entered the house, with its cold dead air and its gauzy gray illumination, and my perspiration-soaked robe immediately froze solid.
Puffy-face closed the door and extended a puffy hand to me. Since he was wearing nothing but an open white terrycloth jacket, a skimpy red bathing suit and pink rubber shower clogs, I could see that he was puffy all over, a tall young man who had gone completely to seed twenty years ahead of schedule. “The name’s McGadgett,” he claimed. “Neal McGadgett.”
“Brother Benedict,” I repeated, and accepted the handshake. Within the puffiness, his hand was strong.
“Eileen’ll be out in a minute,” he said. He seemed neither hostile nor friendly, but merely cloaking impersonal curiosity. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Coke?”
I was beginning to shiver inside my cold robe. “Coffee would be fine,” I said. “If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“No trouble,” he said, with a shrug. “Sit down.” And he went away through an arched doorway in the far end of the room, calling out, “Sheila! One more coffee!” Then he leaned back into the room: “How do you take it?”
I told him regular, he bellowed the information to Sheila, and I was left alone. Settling myself into the nearest wicker chair, trying to keep the colder and wetter parts of my robe from touching my body, I looked around at a large bare-looking room which seemed to have been furnished more for low-maintenance functionalism than for either personal style or general appearance. Airline posters were tacked to the walls, there were no personal knickknacks on the small tables scattered among the wicker chairs, and the air-conditioner covering me with its icy breath had a blunt gray-metal facade. So this must be a rented house, rather than a place owned by Eileen or one of her friends. I don’t know why that should have made any difference, but for some reason it increased my discomfort to know I would be meeting with her in a Travelers’ way-station rather than a home; anyone’s home.
A door in the side wall suddenly opened and Eileen walked out, barefoot and wearing a pale blue knee-length robe. She gave me a brooding troubled look, then turned away to close the door behind her, and when she faced me again she’d shifted to the old amused expression. But I didn’t believe it.
Walking toward me, she said, “Well. Fancy meeting you here.”
I got to my feet, unable to decide whether my face wanted to smile or to be solemn. I left it to its own devices, so I suppose it looked seasick, which is the way I felt. “I’m as surprised as you are,” I said.
“Sit down, sit down. Are they getting us coffee?”
“I think so, yes.”
We sat in wicker chairs at right angles to one another, and she said, “I thought you people didn’t believe in travel.”
“Only when necessary,” I said.
“Is this trip necessary?” She grinned but it was still the mask.
“You told me you could help us save the monastery,” I reminded her.
“Did I?” With half a grin still clinging to her lips she faced me for a few seconds, then looked away.
“That’s why I’m here,” I said.
Her eyes snapped back to mine, and she leaned forward, suddenly intense, and suddenly very angry. “Butter wouldn’t melt in your goddam mouth, would it?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You’ve got the hots for me, you son of a bitch, and you know it.”
“Yes,” I said.
“What?”
“I said yes.”
“Yes? That’s all, just yes?”
“I haven’t been able to think straight since I met you,” I said. “But that isn’t—”
“You mean you love me?” She thrust that out as fiercely as if it were a javelin.
“Love you? I think I am you,” I said. “Some broken-off piece of you, trying to get home.”
“You’re crazy,” she said. “Look at you, dressed in that robe, talking t
o me like that. You’re a monk.”
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I told her.
“Then why don’t you get out of my life?”
“Don’t you think I want to?” We were arguing all at once, we were glaring fiercely at one another, and yet I could feel an inane smile trembling about my lips, straining to reveal itself. Although I was hugely angry, enraged at this stupid girl for turning me into such a bewildered silly wreck, I knew somehow it wasn’t really anger I felt at all. My brain was full of dammed-up emotions, contradictory and embarrassing and even frightening, and anger was simply the only way to let them all out.
And it was the same with Eileen. I could see that and sense it, the same relieved smile struggling to show itself on her lips, and (God help me) I rejoiced in the knowledge. Rejoiced angrily, of course.
She was saying, “You’re lousing up my life, do you know that?”
“Well,” I said, “you’re doing the same thing to me. And I was happy in my life.”
She ducked her head, the better to glare at me. “Meaning what?”
“Meaning you were unhappy,” I told her. “Any fool could see that.”
“Is that what you came down here for, to tell me I’m unhappy?” The joy of anger had drained out of her now, and she seemed on the brink of angry tears.
“No,” I said, “I didn’t want—”
“What are you here for anyway? Who asked for you?”
“The monas—”
“Oh, shut up about that stupid monastery!”
“All right,” I said, and grabbed the lapel of her robe to yank her close, and when McGadgett came in to announce breakfast the girl in the blue bathrobe was being kissed by the runaway monk.
* * *
The tall and irritable blonde wielding the spatula in the kitchen was introduced as Sheila Foney, “Neal’s girl.” Neal’s girl; meaning that Neal was not Eileen’s young man. And while there were four places set for breakfast, one of them had a certain indefinable air of afterthought to it, and I wasn’t at all surprised when that one turned out to be my place. So there were no occupants of the house other than these three, Eileen and Neal and Neal’s girl, and I was a fourth wheel, not a fifth.
That had suddenly become very important to me. Instinctively and self-protectively I recoiled from contemplation of what that kissing scene in the living room had actually meant, and remained for as long as I could at the level of bewildered delight: happy that I had kissed her, happy that she had no boyfriend here. There was no possible way to think about my future, so I wallowed in the pleasures of the present.
Neal’s girl, Sheila Foney, was in a mood as foul as mine was fair, though it seemed mostly a personality trait and not directed at anyone present. She stamped around like somebody who’s just been insulted by a bus driver, and she was far too caught up in the grievances of her own life to take much notice of a robed and cowled monk abruptly at her table. McGadgett, on the other hand, ignored his girlfriend’s grouchiness and thought Eileen and me both very humorous. While he shoveled in great quantities of scrambled egg, fried sausage and toasted English muffin, he kept giving us sidelong smirks of confederacy, as though we were all conspirators together.
As for Eileen, she seemed mainly embarrassed. She avoided my gaze most of the time, acting calm and unruffled, as though determined to maintain her dignity in the face of some silly humiliation, but when perchance our eyes did meet she blushed and became suddenly flustered and awkward and at the same time soft, as though she were melting from within.
Myself, I was freezing from without. Breakfast was eaten in a large tile-and-plaster-and-Formica combination kitchen-dining room equipped with its own chill-breathing air-conditioner, and my wet robe was just getting clammier and clammier no matter how much hot food I put in my stomach. Halfway through the meal I started to sneeze.
It apparently gave Eileen an excuse to look at me. “What’s the matter? You’re shivering!”
“My robe’s a little wet,” I admitted. “From the walk.”
“Neal,” she said, “find something for him to wear, until we can get to the store.”
“Sure,” he said, and turned his friendly look toward me. “Now?”
“Finish breakfast first,” I told him. “It’s not that bad.” Though it was. I was feeling queasy and light-headed, and I wasn’t sure if that meant I was in love or had the flu. The symptoms seemed to be the same.
* * *
All of McGadgett’s clothing was too large and lumpish. I had become very self-conscious about my appearance all at once, so I spent a long time testing different items of clothing in front of the dresser mirror before finally settling on a pair of red boxer-style swimming trunks and a white pullover shirt that didn’t look too bad in its billowy fashion. Then I dawdled in the bedroom another two or three minutes, hesitant to show myself.
But there was no point stalling any longer. Reluctant, awkward, self-conscious, I took my nearly naked body out of the bedroom and into the living room, where Sheila Foney, wearing an astonishing pink string bikini, was irritably on the telephone, saying, “You don’t seem to realize you have certain responsibilities.” Seeing me, she told the phone, “Hold on a minute,” capped the mouthpiece with her palm, and said to me, “They’re at the beach.”
“Thank you,” I said, and hurried outside, not wanting to hear any more of her conversation.
McGadgett was out at the pocket beach in front of the house, supine beneath the sun, wearing a multicolored cousin of the swimming trunks he’d loaned me. Great dark glasses covered his eyes and much of the rest of his face, and his pinkish flesh gleamed with either suntan lotion or perspiration. Out in the water, Eileen floated on her back in the easy swell, her body trisected by narrow lavender bands of bathing suit.
The heat and humidity seemed much worse now that I’d grown used to air-conditioning. Plowing barefoot across the sand, I felt myself growing soggy again, and was already anticipating the chill the next time I would go inside. Why did people treat themselves in such a way?
McGadgett lifted his head slightly at my arrival, grinning his overly familiar grin. “Welcome to civilian life,” he said.
“Thank you. I guess I’ll…” And I gestured vaguely toward the ocean and Eileen.
“Be my guest.” And he lowered his smiling head to his beach towel again.
I removed the pullover shirt and ran into the water, which was cold but refreshing. I hadn’t swum in years, but the movements came effortlessly back to me, and I stroked steadily out to where Eileen was now treading water and watching my progress with a dubious expression on her face. “You look like everybody else,” she said, when I got there.
I couldn’t help laughing. “You mean you only love me in my uniform?”
“Maybe so,” she said, and swam away from me.
I didn’t know how to take that—I didn’t know how to take anything—so I didn’t follow her. Instead, I floated awhile as she had been doing, my closed eyes toward the sun and my mind just starting to pick experimentally at the scab of my recent experiences. Who was I now, and what was I going to do with myself?
“Listen, you.”
I opened my eyes, and she was back. Lowering my legs so I could tread water, I said, “Mm?”
She was squinting determinedly in the sunlight, as though she’d come to a firm decision to take charge. “Are you really going to hang around here with me?”
“If you want me,” I said.
“Don’t put it on me, you son of a bitch,” she said.
I said, “I mean I want to stay with you, but if you tell me to go away I’ll go away.”
That disgusted her, for some reason. “Oh, go away,” she said, and turned about as though to swim to some other part of the ocean.
“No,” I said.
She swam in a circle and came back to me, frowning. “I thought you said you’d go away if I told you to go away.”
“Only if you meant it,” I explained. “Only if you re
ally don’t want me. Bad temper doesn’t count.”
She paddled about for a minute, thinking that one over, then came back and said, “I’m bad-tempered most of the time.”
“Why?”
She glared at me. “If you’re going to be my boyfriend,” she said, “you’d better stop talking to me like some wise old priest.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I don’t feel like any wise old anything.”
“And that’s something else,” she said. “I’ll be darned if I’m going to call you Brother Benedict.”
“I agree.”
“So, what then? Ben? Benny?”
“My real name,” I said, the whole sentence being cumbersome in my mouth, “is Charles. Uh, Rowbottom.”
“Charles. What did they used to call you? Chuck? Charley?”
“Charlie,” I said.
“Which one? IE Charlie or EY Charley?”
I thought back, surprised at the question and trying to remember. Nicknames are mostly spoken, but from time to time there’d be notes…“IE,” I decided.
“Good,” she said.
“What’s the difference?”
“EY Charleys are irresponsible,” she stated, then said, “I’m getting tired out here. Let’s go in for a while.”
McGadgett had disappeared, taking his beach towel with him, leaving behind the pullover shirt and one other beach towel. “I’ll get you a towel,” Eileen said.
“I’ll get one,” I said, and started for the house, but she held up a hand like a traffic cop and said, “Wait there, I know where they are. Besides, they might be screwing in there and we don’t want to bring you along too fast.”
So she went for the towel, and I stood on the beach and thought about screwing. I had not entered the monastery at age twenty-four completely inexperienced, but ten years is a long time, and now I stood before the concept of screwing the way a small child stands before the star-filled night sky, feeling its vast mystery and its close fascination in tiny tremors behind the knees.
Brothers Keepers Page 20
