An Ocean Without a Shore

by Scott Spencer

  “You brought that book to me in the hospital,” I said.

  “I did?” he asked. He shook his head and smiled. “Well, how do you like that?”

  It was a short drive to Orkney, beneath gray skies. I felt the familiar nausea of suppressed desire. The clouds had massed in two distinct regions, separated by a narrow ridge of blue that bisected the sky like the part in an old-fashioned haircut. I usually found Leyden and environs rather glamorous, but the place did not show well until spring was fully present. The trees were partially bare, broken limbs dangling. A dairy farmer had turned his herd of Jerseys out onto a dark brown pasture and the cows were just milling around, swaying their Illinois-shaped heads back and forth, waiting for someone to feed them.

  “Exciting about Grace,” Thaddeus said.

  “Definitely. How did all this come about?”

  “Oh, a friend of her brother’s. They were both in the weed business together. And now they’re both retired. Liam’s avocado farm is this guy’s art gallery.”

  “Different strokes.”

  “Hyperrealism is hot. At least in Coral Gables. She’s sold quite a few of them and she’s really happy.”

  “Long overdue,” I said, feeling a tug of worry. I was as close as I was to Thaddeus—to the lot of them—in large part because he was on the skids, Orkney was on the abyss, and I was their primary source of funds. And even though it often worried and galled me that I was more needed than wanted, money secured my little lair at the edge of their lives.

  “The rest she’ll leave down there so we don’t have to worry about shipping them back here,” Thaddeus said. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel, and cleared his throat. “Jennings drove all that work down to Florida. He rented a padded truck. An art truck. He had to go down to Canal Street to pick it up. They spent three days packing it just so, with a wooden box he made for each piece. He’s so good at that kind of thing.”

  “So . . . is Jennings still down there, too?”

  “No.” He glanced at me. “You don’t really like him one little bit, do you?”

  “I don’t know him. Anyhow, we’re too old for liking and not liking.”

  “I’m not a complete fool,” he said.

  “There are worse things in the world,” I said.

  “This has been her dream ever since I’ve known her.”

  We were on Riverview Road now, gliding past the wrought-iron gates at the foot of each driveway. We were closing in on Orkney. A guy in a T-shirt and a multicolored Peruvian wool cap was replacing stones in a border wall that separated the winding macadam from the maples that lined the road. A woman with a small child sat on the ground near him, her dark blue skirt spread out around her like a blanket. Her eyes lifted and met my gaze.

  Thaddeus took the sharp right turn into Orkney’s entrance, and onto his half mile of driveway. The driveway branched off, with an auxiliary blacktop leading to the yellow house, where Jennings and his family lived. An orange and white panel truck bearing the name Windsor Asbestos Solutions was parked in front of his house. And there, suddenly, was the man himself, so stately and hypermasculine, working with his son, Henry, on replacing some spindles on the side of the front porch.

  The main house floated into view, a mash-up of architectural styles—Gothic here, Victorian there, four chimneys, a messy scatter of windows over which there were occasional stone outcroppings, everything a sudden inspiration, or perhaps an afterthought, an architectural cacophony that would have rendered Orkney virtually worthless had it not been for its location. Its pristine view of the Hudson meant Orkney was known as eclectic, just as bizarre behavior in a rich person is called eccentric.

  “There it is,” Thaddeus said. “My folly.”

  “It’s just a house, man, just a pile of stones.”

  He looked at Orkney with an expression that suggested he was seeing it with new eyes, but finally he shook his head and smiled indulgently at me, as if I’d said a poem was no good if it didn’t rhyme. Then something caught his attention. An old dark blue Subaru hatchback was parked at the side of the house.

  “Goddamnit,” Thaddeus said. “David is here.”

  “Which is a good thing, right?”

  “I wouldn’t have dragged you up here if he hadn’t already said he couldn’t come home this weekend.”

  He looked far more upset than the situation warranted.

  “Well, I’m more than happy to be here,” I said. “And it will be nice to see David.”

  “Good. Tell him his parents are fine, upstanding people and he should let go of this fantasy of joining the CIA and stop using this house as his laundromat. Those three things. Okay?”

  “The upstanding part might be a bit of a reach.”

  “Oh, you’ve pulled off bigger scams than that.”

  I heard what I first thought was heavy furniture being dragged over bare floors inside the house, but it was Grace’s gray and mauve Weimaraners, their paws on the glass of the French windows, barking wildly at us, turning now and again to bark at each other.

  Chapter 16

  In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

  There was a chill inside the house. It wasn’t so cold that you’d see the vapor of your own breath, but you were certainly not in a rush to take off your jacket. The dogs circled us, gliding gracefully as if on skates. “Ignore them,” Thaddeus said.

  It was a house divided, with the Weimaraners patrolling the downstairs and a half dozen cats roaming above. With David away at college, it fell to Thaddeus to care for and protect his cats. The five-foot-high accordion gates at the bottom of the staircases were scratched to hell by the dogs’ futile attempts to scale them.

  These gates were only one aspect of the overall feeling of slippage that had overtaken Orkney. There is something vagrant and a little wild in the atmosphere of an unheated house, and this sense of dishevelment—a kind of shabbiness that seemed to have a moral dimension as well as a material one—extended to the worn-through upholstery, the pale blue paint scaling off the ceiling, the presence of low wattage bulbs in the formerly blazing lamps, and most notably in the two shopping bags filled to bursting and waiting to be schlepped to the supermarket, where a nickel would be rewarded for each empty can or bottle.

  Thaddeus waved wildly at the dogs and made noises to keep them at bay after opening the gate to the main staircase. First I went in and he came after, quickly pulling the gate closed behind us. “I know,” he said, as we climbed to the second floor, “it’s insane. But those cats are David’s inner life. And the dogs are Grace’s. Pure hatred on both sides and all the work is left to Daddy. We’re a house divided! Come on, I’ve put you in David’s room.”

  “He won’t mind?”

  “I made the room cozy for you and he doesn’t get to upend everything at the last minute.”

  That sharp juniper bush feline scent greeted us as soon as we were on the second floor landing, and one of the cats, a pale gray Persian with long whiskers and eyes as devoid of warmth as sequins on a dress, came bounding toward us, only to skid to a stop—evidently, it had been expecting someone else. I was relieved to see an electric heater in the room assigned to me—one of my favorite rooms in the house, full of odd angles, the windows offering a view of the river beyond the steep slope of the lawn.

  Thaddeus left me to unpack my bag and to rest for a few moments while he put together our dinner. Another of David’s cats came in, this one a seal point Siamese. It looked at me and made a cat sound, and I crouched down and put my hand out.

  But before I could induce the cat to come closer, David came hurrying in. “Oh, there you are,” he said to the cat.

  The cat, upon seeing David, ran under the bed, and was silent.

  “You can stay there for all I care,” David said to the cat. He folded his arms over his chest. He was dressed in a Thaddeusian outfit of jeans and a T-shirt.

  Unlike Thaddeus, whose face, when I met him, had been soft, still childlike, David’s adult face was starting to emerg
e. His cheeks were sunken, and his expression, at rest, was suspicious, as if his path through life always took him through rooms where people had been talking about him. He had Thaddeus’s dark eyes and hair, and skin that was at once pale and ruddy, like someone who has taken a long cold journey on foot and stood now at last in front of a roaring fire. Both Thaddeus and Grace had low voices—roughly in the deeper registers of a clarinet—and David’s was similar, though without the warmth of his father’s, or the rich trill of his mother’s.

  I asked him the cat’s name—Jeane Kirkpatrick—and invited him to stay and wait for the creature to emerge. David flung himself on the bed and landed with enough force to cause its slender wooden legs to tremble, but not enough to stir Jeane Kirkpatrick. Sprawled out, his hands behind his head, his T-shirt rising a bit to show the ragged path of dark hair traversing his navel, David looked too much like his father for my comfort and I turned away from him, walked to the window to take in the view. The river throbbed bright silver in the sunlight.

  “I’ve taken your room,” I said to him. “I’m sorry. Your father insisted.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not staying overnight anyhow.”

  “He wanted me to have a river view. Will you look at that river?” I said. “No wonder so many artists have painted it.”

  “Fucking artists,” David said. “The scum of the earth.”

  “Really,” I said, turning, smiling. “Scum of the earth? That’s a new one on me.”

  “The most despicable people in my school go around calling themselves artists. These people have got their heads so far up their own asses it’s a wonder they can breathe.”

  There was no reason for David to be saying these things to good old Uncle Kip except to gauge my reaction, but then I realized he was serious. His lips were pressed tightly together and his eyes were blazing with that most intransigent sort of conviction, the kind that comes from personal injury. I should have seen it coming, the collateral damage of it—both his parents had dreamt of being Artists, with that telltale capital A, and the failure of it, the heartbreak, the bitterness, and the suspicion that a great party was taking place to which they had pointedly not been invited seeped poison into their daily lives.

  “Your mother’s a good artist, David,” I said. “You know that, I hope.”

  “You think so?” He stretched himself in a way that he might have learned from observing his cats. I wondered for a moment if he was flirting with me—not out of desire but to test his power. “I always thought you thought her stuff sucked. From the expression on your face when she talked about her stupid paintings.”

  “I actually own some of her work,” I said.

  “Owning it isn’t the same as putting it up on your wall,” he said.

  He had me there.

  “She’s ridiculous,” David said, “my whole family is. My dad’s parents, stupid Communists, hating their own country? My mom’s mother comes here and does nothing but drink and we don’t even know where Mom’s father is.” He slapped himself on the chest. “Thanks, Mom and Dad, thanks for the legacy.”

  He rolled out of the bed and peered under it in search of the cat. He extended his arm and somehow caught the thing. It yowled in protest as he dragged it across the floor, and only quieted down when David cradled it in his arms and stroked the top of its head with his chin. “Out of their gourds. Both of them. They gave away that whole house to the Stratton clan, a house I could have lived in myself if I wanted to. Not that I ever would, but maybe I would. I don’t know. And it’s not like we’re rich. Not anymore. My father saw to that. He threw away his career and now all he does is worry about money. It’s pretty weird, don’t you think, when your own parents act like they’re on drugs or something. Like the real world isn’t enough, those two have to live in make-believe.”

  “What about the idea that art is more real than anything else?” I offered, and he looked at me as if we were old pals and he knew I was kidding.

  “Are you into cats?” he asked me.

  “A gay man has to be careful about pets,” I said. “Cliché avoidance and all that.”

  “I always thought you might be gay,” David said.

  “Really? That’s interesting. What made you think that?”

  “I don’t know. That you take good care of yourself? That you’re funny? Maybe just the way you’re looking at me right now.”

  “David. What the fuck? I’m not looking at you weird.”

  “I didn’t say it was weird. If you must know, I like it.”

  “I guess for your generation it’s a lot different,” I said. “People can be whatever they are.”

  He put the cat on the floor and looked at me with a frankness I found completely unnerving. He sensed my unease and smiled. He moved in my direction. Stopped. Gave me a moment to wonder what he was up to. And moved still closer.

  “Would it be okay if I hugged you?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, thinking that if I answered casually it might not flip our relationship into the realm of transgression. I could be just an honorary uncle giving my honorary nephew an honorary hug. What was the emotional value of a hug anyhow? Golfers hugged their caddies, Formula One drivers hugged their sponsors from Valvoline, celebrants at Episcopalian mass hugged whoever happened to be seated next to them. And kisses? Social life since 1980 had been raining kisses, one cheek, two cheeks, sometimes on the lips. By now, a handshake was an affront.

  And so I embraced him. Here was a knock-off of the original object of desire that I had spent years searching for in rent boys, in porn reels, in passersby. Yet I was careful not to presume any desire greater than a desire for comfort on David’s part. I even did that thing that people do to drain the emotion from an embrace—I pat-pat-patted him on the back. But he would not allow me to put a veneer of nonchalance or innocence on the embrace. He held me tighter and moved his hips and then reached up to put his hands on either side of my pale and astonished face so that he might kiss me.

  But none of this happened. There was not a confession, I did not make that remark about gay men and cats. There was not a touch, and there was certainly not a kiss. It did not take place and it never will, would, or could. Please discount and dispose of everything I have said after Are you into cats?

  What really happened was this. The cat ran back under the bed. I asked David how school was. He said it was fine. I asked him if he’d decided what to major in, and he said he was studying international relations. And then we heard Thaddeus calling up, telling us dinner was ready.

  Did Dante ever mention this, Your Honor? Here is what unrequited love feels like: no matter how many times you strain to swallow, your mouth is always full.

  Chapter 17

  Dinner

  Emma was waiting at the kitchen table, with her hands folded and her head down, like a defendant waiting to be called to the stand. Thaddeus was at the stove, shaking a long-handled skillet; sizzling vegetables and tofu released their calm, virtuous aroma.

  “Hey there, Emma,” I said. “I’m starving. How about you?”

  Thaddeus turned, looked at me with slight alarm.

  But of course: I had wandered into forbidden territory. Emma’s weight! Emma was a little heavy, and I might not have noted it had Thaddeus not told me that it was a subject of not only disagreement between him and Grace, but a flash point, a subject they shouted about, stalking out of rooms, giving each other cold shoulders and permafrost stares. This from Thaddeus’s point of view, but even if he was shading the story to put himself in the best possible light, the cherry-picked facts as he presented them suggested an ongoing battle between a child and her mother over food, one that was not only ill advised but could conceivably lead to a lifetime of eating disorders.

  From the age of four on, Emma was weighed every single Sunday morning. The results were fixed to the door of the refrigerator by a magnet in the shape of a ballerina. At mealtime, her portions were radically smaller than David’s, and often her meal was something co
mpletely different from what everyone else was having. Even if she had a little school friend at the table, and the dinner was, say, a roasted chicken, Emma was served steamed vegetables and a small piece of fish. If dessert was served, Emma was given an apple, and sometimes the apple was diced to conceal the fact that it was really half an apple, the other half tithed to the Church of Slender Children.

  All of this was done under the highly dubious banner of Tough Love. Grace believed—and this wasn’t a belief she kept to herself—that she was saving Emma’s life, staving off diabetes, heart attacks, and cancer. She was saving her from being socially ostracized. She was saving her from lovelessness. She was saving her from developing what Grace called a Fat Personality, which I suppose meant some form of compensatory jolliness. She was saving her from unemployment and/or lower wages, too, according to the statistics she lobbed at Thaddeus. And as Grace’s mission to slim her daughter down to the dimensions of a fetching little upper-middle-class girl continued to fail, her frustration intensified, and the frustration resulted in a kind of paranoia, the kind that afflicts tyrants who begin to suspect there are traitors and secret deals afoot. It was like the Red Scare at Orkney—Grace suspected subversion everywhere.

  And so after that remark about starving, I could hardly believe something so idiotic had come out of my mouth and I tried to bury my embarrassment in an avalanche of chatter, seating myself next to Emma and asking her all the inane questions you nervously ask a fifteen-year-old girl. How’s school? Looking forward to summer? What are you listening to, what are you reading?

  “So,” I asked her, “do you have any ideas about what you’d like to do when you grow up? Or is grow up a stupid concept?”

  “I’d like to be a marriage counselor,” she said.

  “Really?”

  “I think so. I think I’d be good at it.”

  Thaddeus cackled merrily and Emma looked anxiously at me. “Dad told me to say that,” she pleaded.