True Enough

by Stephen McCauley

  “Any day now?” Desmond asked her.

  Joyce was awkwardly trying to inch her chair closer to the table. “Two more months,” she apologized, turning down her mouth.

  Rosemary made a muffled grunt and went back to her wine.

  As Jane and her brother crossed the deck, Desmond could hear them bickering—with practiced annoyance, not real anger—about Aunt Somebody, whom he apparently didn’t phone often enough.

  “I call her when I can,” the brother said. He attempted to sit in Jane’s seat but she pointed him toward the chair opposite Desmond.

  “Well, you’d better start calling her when you can’t.” She looked around her plate and chair for her napkin, but came up with nothing. “She doesn’t even know when the baby is due.”

  “November,” Rosemary announced. She obviously had no intention to eat, and passed her napkin across the table to Jane. “Although I’m fully prepared to assist with the delivery if someone miscalculated.”

  Brian was several years younger than Jane, and Desmond found himself distracted by his handsome, silent presence on the opposite side of the table. He was recognizably Jane’s brother, but it looked as if the family features had been tested on her before being perfected for him. He was pale and gaunt, not in an unhealthy way, but as if he was troubled by profound doubt—a man of the cloth who’d devoted his life to God and then, when it was too late to switch professions, discovered he was an agnostic. His dark hair was cut in flawlessly clean lines above his ears and up around his temples. Vain, Desmond thought, taking in the gray silk shirt and the perfectly knotted green tie. Here was a man who knew how to wear clothes; Desmond’s expensive efforts at dressing up for Jane’s sake had apparently failed miserably. Brian was an architect, which perhaps explained the affected haircut and some element of fastidiousness in his erect posture.

  Joyce was a children’s book editor at one of the few remaining publishing houses in Boston. A perfect profession for her, Desmond thought, listening to her talk about an illustrated book for five-year-olds she’d just bought that day. As with a lot of people who work with or for children, there was something childlike about Joyce: her colorful, little-girl dress, her short, little-boy haircut. Rosemary was staring at Joyce as if she were trying to remember who she was. When Joyce finished describing her book purchase and apologizing for going into such detail about it (“I guess it’s not really all that interesting”), Rosemary said, “Did your publishing house bid on Dead Husband?”

  Joyce looked momentarily distressed and glanced toward Brian for help. He, however, had barely looked in her direction since they’d sat down. She confessed she had no idea: the children’s editors didn’t have much connection with the adult division. “They probably couldn’t have afforded it,” she apologized.

  “Too bad,” Rosemary said, making it clear the loss was not hers.

  The food was what food was these days: a meeting of the UN in the middle of a large dinner plate with a dusting of something green around the edges. Jane complained that this was the last time she’d use the catering school since everything they’d ever served ended up looking and tasting the same, with variations only in the inedible parts of the meal: the elaborate garnish or the plate itself. None of which, Desmond noted, prevented her from eating with immoderate enthusiasm. She leaned forward slightly as she ate, her colorful beads swinging out from her chest.

  “I think it’s delicious,” Thomas said. “Are you enjoying it, Joyce?”

  “Very much. Too much. I’ve gained forty pounds. Fortunately, it’s all baby.”

  “Not all,” Brian said, making eye contact with no one.

  Jane had apparently been waiting for just this opening. “I suppose we get to critique your body next?”

  “Oh let’s,” Rosemary said. She’d pushed her chair back from the table as the food was brought out, and, for the last ten minutes or so, had been gazing at Brian with flirtatious boredom. So far, she hadn’t even bothered to pick up her fork, concentrating all of her energy on the wine. But rather than loosening her up as it did most people, it seemed to be making everything on her body tighter. It looked to Desmond as if someone were slowly twisting her bun of hair, reeling in her skin, narrowing her eyes, and sharpening her gaze.

  “I’m fascinated by how threatened men become when women actually eat enough to sustain themselves or, God forbid, gain a pound,” Jane said. “It tells you something about their true feelings toward women. I don’t include Thomas. I gained eighty pounds when I was pregnant with Gerald, and he loved it.”

  “She looked like a butterscotch pudding,” Thomas said.

  “I hope that’s not what we’re having for dessert,” Rosemary said.

  “We’re having cake,” Jane said, and then added quietly, “courtesy of Gerald.”

  Grudgingly, it seemed to Desmond, Jane brought up a restaurant Brian was helping to design. She mentioned it in a general way without asking him about it directly, as if she were giving him an opportunity to contribute to the conversation, should he desire to do so. “Is that the one Dale owns?” Rosemary asked, drawing out the name in a demeaning way.

  “Jane’s ex,” Thomas translated for Desmond.

  “Not owner,” Brian said. “He’s one of a dozen investors. They’re treated like anonymous blood donors; drain a few pints of plasma out of them, hand them a cookie, and send them on their way.” He dusted off the front of his shirt. “Surprisingly enough, he’s not the worst of them.”

  “I never liked Dale,” Rosemary said. “I tried to warn you against him, Jane. I told you it would end badly.”

  Jane filled her glass from a sweating pitcher of water with lemon slices floating on top. “You did, but I thought it was because you wanted him for yourself.”

  “No one has Dale for herself, that’s the whole point.”

  Desmond had the strong impression that Dale was the man he’d seen on Newbury Street the other day. Jane was sitting back in her chair nursing the cold water and fingering the neckline of her blouse. He looked toward Thomas to see how he was reacting to all this, but he was sitting with his elbow on his knee and his head propped up in his hand, listening to something Joyce was telling him about book sales in a quiet voice. This was probably the look of glazed sympathy he had when listening to students discuss their final papers. But on second glance, he wasn’t glazed at all. There was something about the way he was hunching his broad shoulders and covering up his chin and mouth with his long fingers that made Desmond think he was trying to shrink himself down to Joyce’s size, the way you might if you were talking to a small child you didn’t want to frighten. My God, Desmond thought with a shock of recognition and more than a little amusement, he’s completely infatuated.

  By the time the cake was brought out, the air had grown uncomfortably still and heavy. The Boston skyline was now barely visible through the haze; the lights rose up from the streets and buildings surrounding the whole baking city in a sick orange halo. The cake was not the aesthetic masterpiece Desmond had been expecting; the creamy flowers around its rim were sloppily done and unevenly spaced, facts that Desmond found comforting somehow, given Gerald’s age. While she was cutting through a row of pink flowers with an absurdly long knife, Jane told the assembled crowd that she and Desmond had a meeting with an executive producer at WGTB next week to discuss their project, a series of biographical documentaries. “Tell us about your new book,” she said. “It’s going to be part of the series, although we’re not sure where it will fit.”

  The whole evening had been leading up to this moment, but now that it had arrived, Desmond wasn’t sure he was up to the challenge. The shirt he’d cared for so meticulously was damp with sweat and his face felt flushed. He’d had perhaps one glass of wine too many, and on top of all that, he found himself oddly uncomfortable with handsome, wry Brian sitting across the table from him. He stalled for a few minutes by exclaiming over the cake and drinking a tall glass of water, then started off slowly, explaining that he was work
ing on a biography. “Of Pauline Anderton,” he said.

  There was a long moment of silence which Rosemary broke by saying, “I give up.”

  “I’ll bet Thomas knows,” Jane said. She wiped the knife on a damp napkin and cut off another slice. “Thomas has an encyclopedic mind.” It wasn’t the first complimentary thing she’d said about her husband this evening—she’d complimented him quite often—but this, like all the others, sounded emotionally neutral, as if she were describing the reliability of a favorite automobile, not the attributes of a man she was married to.

  Thomas mulled this over, his lips pursed, ready, it seemed, to blow out a candle. “I believe she was a singer,” he said. “And I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say she was known for falling off the stage, most notoriously at Carnegie Hall toward the end of her career.”

  “Oh goody,” Rosemary said, “a tragic drunk.”

  Over the years, Desmond had grown used to the fact that most people had either never heard of Pauline Anderton or mis-remembered her in an outrageously unflattering way. Falling off stages, driving a Cadillac through a plate glass window, even, in one case, murdering a backup singer. Whatever defensiveness he’d once felt on her behalf had faded long ago. He patiently explained that while she had collapsed on stage several times late in her career, Anderton had never sung at Carnegie Hall.

  “Too bad,” Jane said. “There probably would have been great footage.”

  As Desmond was describing her early triumphs in Florida, her discovery by Walter Winchell, he felt something or someone pressing against his leg. He cleared his throat and sat up a little, but there it was again, a steady, gentle pressure that was definitely not accidental. He looked to the far end of the deck; Helen was prostrate near the railing, gazing at the skyline mournfully. So much for that possibility. The dinner table was narrow, not really suitable for six people, and earlier in the evening, he’d felt his knees brush briefly against someone’s leg several times without thinking anything of it. He glanced over at Brian, but he was staring off into the middle distance as he had been doing for the bulk of the meal.

  “I think my mother might have listened to her,” Thomas said. “She could even have some of her records stashed away somewhere, here or in Beth’s house or that friend’s cottage she goes to in June.”

  “The elderly have become one of the few remaining nomadic tribes on the planet,” Rosemary said. “It’s an interesting phenomenon. Someone should do a book on it.”

  Jane pointed a finger. “Give it a whack, Rose. You could call it The Living Dead.”

  It didn’t seem likely that Brian would be playing footsie with him under the table, his pregnant wife on one side and disapproving sister on the other, but even the possibility, however remote, made Desmond feel lightly, carelessly aroused. What was it Jane had said, Ride with it and try to have a good time? What was the point in drinking too much and risking blowing your career if you weren’t going to indulge in a bit of inebriated recklessness? He pushed back against the leg with a gentle rocking motion.

  “She asked you if she’s still living,” Thomas said.

  Desmond looked down to the other end of the table where Joyce was leaning toward him, apparently fascinated by Anderton’s life story. He pulled his leg back, felt himself blush, and said, “No. No, she died almost ten years ago. Just outside Boston.”

  “I can certainly understand coming here to die,” Rosemary said. “It’s coming here to live that I don’t understand.”

  4.

  After coffee had been served, Desmond asked for directions to the bathroom. The kitchen was clean and dark and smelled of a citrusy detergent, and the dishwasher was churning. The caterers might not have been the best cooks in the world, but they’d left the place spotless. Earlier in the day, Desmond had gone into a shop on Newbury Street that sold alternative remedies for an amazing variety of problems. He’d walked past the place dozens of times, vowing never to enter despite a fascination with the shelves of pill bottles and the scrubbed, lab-coated clerks. When he finally broke down and went in this afternoon, he’d been delighted to see that in addition to selling treatments for everything from broken bones to cancer, Healthy Living sold tablets and capsules and tinctures for Uneasiness, Insecurity, and Confusion, exactly the sorts of ills he was trying to cure. When he asked the clerk if she had anything to heighten mental clarity, she’d shown him a bottle of tiny white pills which, she assured him, had been used for centuries in Turkey. (Everything in the store seemed to have been tested in places like Romania, Albania, or a remote mountainous country known for its appalling health care.) He felt quite certain she would have been equally unruffled by a request for something to help finish your biography of Pauline Anderton. It was time for his evening dose. He opened a cabinet over the stove, but instead of glasses he saw an elaborate display of cake decorating utensils, pastry bags and assorted nipples, food coloring, and tiny spatulas. Gerald’s, no doubt. He decided to forgo the water and started chewing up a handful of pills. You can’t OD on them, the clerk had assured him, an admission of ineffectiveness if ever he’d heard one.

  He’d been directed to a lavatory off the kitchen, a small room at the end of a long hallway that had obviously been a closet in the not so distant past. There was no window, but when he turned on the light, an exhaust fan in the corner of one wall came on with a whir. He pissed into the toilet loudly, chuckling over the possibility that Brian had been rubbing his leg. Clearly Brian was one of those narcissistic heterosexual men who liked to shove himself on you just so he could go home and reassure himself that someone had made a pass at him. If Desmond had tried to push it any further, Brian would undoubtedly hide behind Joyce with indignant contempt. And yet, Desmond felt his cock thickening in his hand as he mulled over the whole incident, and he gave it a few bemused tugs as he finished up. There had been a loud rumble of thunder earlier, so the dinner party would probably break up within the next ten minutes. He looked at himself in the mirror as he washed his hands. Not the light-up-the-dinner-party type, but, if Brian’s taste was any indication, not hopeless, either.

  When he opened the door, Brian was standing in the narrow wainscoted passageway a few feet from the door. He was leaning against a counter with his arms folded across his chest and his fingers wrapped around his biceps. He was smirking attractively, and Desmond felt embarrassed, as if seeing someone about whom he’d had a powerfully erotic dream.

  “Sorry I kept you waiting,” Desmond said.

  Brian shrugged. “It takes as long as it takes.”

  “Right.” He had his legs thrust out into the passageway so Desmond couldn’t get by him without elaborate contortions. “Cozy little bathroom,” he said. “Did you design it?”

  Brian laughed at this. “No one designed it. Jane stuck a toilet and a sink in a closet. She has as much aesthetic sense as a field mouse.”

  “I gather you two aren’t very close.”

  “Not in age, looks, politics, religion, or hair color. Otherwise, we’re like twins.”

  There was something so unbecoming in his languid tone and the attempt to boost himself up by running down Jane, Desmond felt the erotic charge of the moment dissipate into annoyance. He motioned toward the hallway with his chin, indicating he wanted to get by.

  Brian pulled in his legs but reached out and fingered the collar of Desmond’s shirt. “Nice material,” he said.

  “Cotton.”

  “Oh.” He dropped the collar and brushed it back into place, pushed himself away from the counter with his hands, and went into the bathroom. Before he closed the door, he said, “My office is in Cambridge. Give me a call sometime, Desmond. I’ll give you a tour of the stately homes of New England.”

  Christ, Desmond thought, what a lot of nervy bullshit that was, with his wife sitting out on the deck, seconds away from going into labor. He hated this type of cad on principle, marrying for security and acceptance while running around with men on the side. He adjusted himself in his pants and
started walking toward the kitchen. When he looked up, he saw Gerald standing at the end of the passageway glaring at him. He had a large tub of ice cream tucked under one arm and a dripping spoon in his hand. When their eyes met, Gerald stepped back into the shadows. Desmond stopped for a second and felt the blood rush from his face. Then he reassured himself the child was only six, probably hadn’t seen anything, and wouldn’t understand what had been going on even if he had.

  In the kitchen, Gerald was standing near the sink wearing a hard little pout.

  “Good ice cream?” Desmond asked, keeping his tone as cheerful as possible. When the child said nothing, Desmond tried again. “What flavor is it?”

  “I’m not supposed to eat ice cream before bed,” Gerald announced. Something in his deep voice and the tone made it sound like a proclamation of his moral superiority.

  Desmond winked at Gerald and said: “I won’t tell anyone. It’ll be our secret.”

  “I’m not supposed to keep secrets with strangers,” Gerald stated, as if Desmond had proposed something unwholesome.

  “No, of course not. Good idea. Well, you sleep tight.”

  Before Desmond had a chance to make it out of the kitchen, Gerald said, “I saw you talking to Uncle Brian.”

  Desmond stopped and turned. “I’m sure you did,” he said. “He’s a nice man, your Uncle Brian.”

  “He doesn’t like me,” Gerald said. “He called me fatty and told Jane she should put me on a diet.”

  “Oh. Well that wasn’t very nice.” In the dim kitchen light, Gerald looked a good deal smaller and more pathetic than he had a few minutes earlier. A sad kid more than anything, clumsy, shorn, and wearing a striped jersey that was stained with melted ice cream. Desmond went over to him and squatted down until he was Gerald’s height. “I think you’re the nice one, not your uncle. Do you want me to help you put away the ice cream?”