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His eyes were open but they couldn’t quite focus, because what was taking place was too grand for vision: his penis was the centre of it and it was almost too sensitive to touch but he couldn’t not touch it, couldn’t stop touching it, grabbing it, brutally rushing his hand up and down it, and he didn’t know if he could bear this any more but if he was going to disintegrate then so be it, and up and out it came, jerking, pulsing out of him, milking jerky fluid, spattering the seat in front of him, and this was a better feeling than anything. In his last act he has truly accomplished something. He has proved himself. He has discovered his capacity.
When the plane pulled out of its dive Edgar was still smiling, sitting legs apart, his trousers and underpants around his ankles, his elbows on the armrests. In front of him globs of jism slid down the TV screen, and the passenger beside him was holding her throat, which must have been hoarse by now as she continued to scream for cabin staff.
At the baggage carousel at Kennedy Airport he aimed to keep his mother between him and the screaming lady, who had been treated with the remaining sedatives and subsequently firmly and politely ignored.
‘What did you do to her Eddie?’ Mon asked, and Edgar looked innocent and said a shocked ‘Nothin’!’ and smiled, hoping to imply something of the infinite weirdness of the world, the bottomless peculiarity of other people. He tried to find a view out of the baggage hall but the only windows were mirrored, and he knew that there would be further to go before they were allowed into the arrivals hall, and he knew too that his father was unlikely to be there, arrangements and handovers were seldom straightforward where his father was involved, but that didn’t matter so much, the world has been changed—and when the screaming lady realized that or when the wreckage of her throat finally gave out, he might be able to hear his name being announced on an airport Tannoy or, maybe, through the next door or the next, he would see his name on a white card being held up by a benevolent chauffeur in uniform.
‘Eddie?’
‘Nuthin’!’
He felt a suspicion lingering in his mother’s mind and perhaps others’ that the fat-legged stewardess might have been a little too quick to push accusations away; but when the engines had come back into life and the plane lifted into cruising height again, there had been so much pressing upon her, reluctant doctors to gather to make repairs to bruises and breaks, tears to soothe, complimentary champagne to distribute along with a printed list of airline-approved stress counsellors through the crush of insistent lawyers intoning, ‘Compensation.’
Anyway, a compact had been silently made. Passengers who had been bandaged and patched leaned on trolleys, chewed gum noisily, laughed to show that they were ready for re-entry into their changed world. Something extraordinary had been shared and it was over and certain things were private and didn’t need to be talked about, and he was respectful of that and his mother ought to honour it too. The burly man was wearing his clothes again.
The conveyor-belt stuttered into motion, and Edgar, jaunty in his freedom, in his maleness, hiccuped the unpleasant sip of champagne back into his mouth and lifted one foot to rest on the metal lip of the carousel until a blue-uniformed airport woman shook her head and said, ‘Sir! Could you step back?’ And Edgar was so pleased to be called ‘sir’ that he did as he was told.
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By the time that Edgar, the aficionado of flight, announced that the small, jittery plane that they had taken from New York to Syracuse was coming in to land, Mon’s skin had turned yellowish white with the exertions of the day, with the effort of keeping airplanes in the sky with the power of her will.
‘It would be nice if someone was there to meet us,’ Edgar said.
‘Fay won’t be up to that kind of thing. And your father always leaves everything to the last minute. We’ll have to make our own way.’
But they were met, by a self-possessed man in pressed white jeans and blue T-shirt, who was scanning the faces of the arriving passengers. To Edgar’s great pleasure and silent promise of friendship he held up their names, correctly spelled in neat capital letters on a white card.
‘I’m Warren,’ he said. Warren had short dark hair and a lightly tanned skin and the manner of someone who did things well. He shook their hands and steered their airport trolley out towards the car-park, while others from their flight stood hapless in the arrivals hall, opening and closing their fists; and Edgar, enjoying how important he and perhaps his mother must be seeming, endeavoured to look sternly businesslike.
Warren drove them out of Syracuse in a wood-panelled station-wagon. He was friendly and polite and informative, speaking in a not-quite-American accent. He neither ignored nor talked down to Edgar, who was allowed the privilege of the front passenger seat while Mon half dozed in the back. It was all very easy and adult and civilized, and Edgar turned to look at his mother from time to time just in case she had not noticed the disparity between this man and Jeffrey.
Edgar, more tired than he would choose to be—but after all, he had experienced much and accomplished something truly grand this day—drifted in and out of Warren’s commentary. The heat made wavery lines out of everything, the financial towers and bridges and billboards and roads, the fields of corn, the toll-booths, distant blue hills, and it all looked bigger than he was used to, which was what he had expected, but he hadn’t expected to feel smaller too.
Warren smelled of pine and lemon and cream. He looked straight ahead while he drove, both hands on the steering-wheel, the air-conditioning vent blowing the dark hairs on his arm to stand soldierly straight. Edgar cleared his throat. Warren glanced his way. Edgar had said nothing so far on this journey, just nodded every so often to show he was listening. He had to say something now, no matter how banal; he had to speak, push his voice into America.
‘We thought we were going to die,’ Edgar said.
Warren’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’
‘The plane went into a dive and kept going and it looked like we were going to crash and everyone thought we were going to die. The big plane. Jumbo jet. The one we came from London on.’
‘Wow. A near-death experience. That’s the sort of thing that changes a person,’ said Warren.
‘Yes. I think so too,’ said Edgar.
Warren had kind eyes. He was very well shaved and his skin was smooth. He drove carefully, without show. ‘We’re coming off the thruway now,’ he said. ‘That was the interstate. We’re on three sixty-five now. Not far to go.’
‘What’s that?’
Edgar pointed to what looked like an artwork from one of Jeffrey’s magazines. By the side of the road, surrounding a dark wooden shack, four large men in shorts and T-shirts sat impassively on garden chairs with guns on their laps.
‘That’s the bingo hall. It’s run by the Onyatakas, the local Indian tribe. It’s pretty small-potatoes stuff, cleaners going there to gamble their money, welfare checks. It’s a sad state of affairs. They want to build a casino but no one thinks the Governor will let them.’
‘Does my dad know about that?’
‘I don’t know, Eddie. I couldn’t say.’
‘Is he at the house?’
‘Uh, not yet, I think he might have been delayed a couple of days, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy your time with us.’
Monica stirred and yawned and stretched. Her leather jacket that she had been using as a pillow creaked. ‘God, I needed that sleep. Where are we?’
‘We’ve just come off the interstate.’
‘There’s a bingo hall. It’s run by Indians. They carry guns,’ Edgar said.
‘You’re not meant to call them Indians. Isn’t it First Nation or Native Americans or something?’ said his mother.
‘This tribe calls itself Indians so it’s okay,’ Warren said, and winked to Edgar. ‘We’re on the road to Onyataka.’
They drove through small towns, past fire stations and sports fields and boxy suburbs where everything was green and white and red, as if people here lived in a perpetual Christmas.
‘Where are you from, Warren?’ asked Mon.
‘I’m from Ireland, more or less Dublin but not quite. But people out here, I might as well be from South Africa or Australia or the moon.’
‘We weren’t actually expecting to be met by anyone.’ In her habitual arrogance she had awarded herself the right to speak for Edgar. How could someone so supposedly close to him not see the change in him? ‘Are you a neighbour of Fay’s?’
‘No actually, I live there. With her. In the house.’
‘Oh?’ said Mon in her suspicious tone, her voice going thin and accusing. Edgar hoped Warren hadn’t noticed the rudeness.
‘Has she not said? I’ve been there some time. Help out a bit you know. Muck in. She’s a lovely lady.’
‘Yes. She is.’
‘And I know how fond she is of you. Of both of you,’ he added.
Mon did not like to be flattered. Edgar knew this, Warren clearly did not. They drove on in silence, into the town of Onyataka (Onyataka welcomes careful drivers!), and Edgar started to pay attention. This was a bigger place than he had been expecting, there were theaters here and a cinema, the expected fire station, the unexpected sex shop; a drunk stumbled into a boarded-up store window but kept his beer can steady throughout in its brown-paper bag, and a pet shop, a video store, and—Onyataka hopes you come back soon!—they were out of town again.
‘I thought …’ Edgar said.
‘What’s that, Eddie?’
‘That we were, that my grandmother, lived in Onyataka.’
‘It’s the nearest town, for postal purposes that’s where we are, but actually we live a few miles along, in Vail. The towns of Creek and Vail. You’ll see in a few minutes.’
Creek, which announced itself to be the smallest city in New York State, welcomed careful drivers no less than Onyataka. It was met by Edgar through half-closed eyes. This was not how he had intended to arrive, sleepily unalert; he forced himself to notice things—a restaurant, a factory, a pizza parlour, a gas station, an office-supplies store, white wooden houses whose front gardens, or yards, he supposed, were open to the pavement where bicycles lay down—
‘There’s a farmer’s market out back there on Thursdays,’ said Warren.
‘That’s good,’ said Mon.
—a video store was neighbour to a doctor’s office and a bookshop, none of which looked open; an impeccably healthy gang of teenagers in jeans and grey sweatshirts lounged in a corner of a baseball field.
‘You’ll like it here, Eddie. There’s lots of life. Kids and trees and parks and so forth. Do you play soccer?’
‘Not really.’
‘Of course he does,’ Mon said. ‘God, it’s so long since I’ve been here and the place hasn’t changed a bit. Time just stands still, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the Company headquarters? That’s where your grandfather worked.’
They passed an ornate, low-slung stone building topped by turrets, which looked as if the architect hadn’t been able to decide whether to build a castle or a bungalow so had invented some unworkable compromise between the two.
‘Did my dad work there as well?’
Mon didn’t say anything. She scoffed silently, as she usually did when her ex-husband was mentioned in the same sentence as money or work.
‘I don’t know, Eddie. He might have had a holiday job there when he was young. Most everybody here has worked for the company at some time. It’s a company town.’
‘Company town,’ Mon repeated, in a sort of wistful voice, and Edgar could tell she had been smitten with the same sour nostalgia or sentimentality that connected to those moments in London when she stayed up late looking at old photographs, playing records and drinking bourbon.
‘It’s got a very interesting history, the company. Creek was where the workers lived, the managers lived in Vail. It all grew out of the Onyataka Association. Nineteenth century. But you must know all about it, Monica, through Mike, Perfectionism, free love, Utopia.’
‘Mike didn’t go in for history tours. And I don’t think Perfectionism would ever have been one of his interests.’
Warren laughed politely to indicate that he had noticed a joke had been made.
‘And here we are. Here’s the house now.’
‘I’ve always liked it. Look, Edward.’
Edgar looked. He too liked the house, very much. It could be drawn very simply, as two intersecting triangles with a horizontal line at the top for the roof. Blue-painted wood with white shutters and weird little carved heads whenever a pipe went into or popped out of the wall, weathervane and TV aerial and a chimney behind each of the gables, it accorded to his idea of what a house should look like. It was the house he had tried to draw when he was a young child. It was the house he furnished when they played their game.
Warren opened the screen door for them. The front door had been left hospitably ajar. They walked along the hallway, past a curving staircase, black and white photographs on green-papered walls, to the kitchen, where an old lady was in the unsteady process of rising from a chair.
‘Fay!’
His grandmother, whom Mon confused with a kiss on both her cheeks, was grandmotherly small and white-haired, in a blue print dress.
‘If I remember you, Monica, you’d like a cup of tea after your trip.’
Her voice was clear and youthful, her face a rivery marvel of lines, which shifted and twisted and showed new tributaries when Mon said how well Fay was looking. Her eyes were blue, like Edgar’s.
Edgar made up for the confusion his mother had wrought with a candid smile and an English gentleman’s firm handshake.
‘And Edward. You look so much like your father, you know. Would you like a chocolate milk, or are you too grown-up for that sort of thing?’
Delighted at being identified as looking like his father, Edgar replied that, yes, he would love a chocolate milk and, no, a straw would not be unwelcome, and after Warren had brought in their bags, he made the tea and poured Edgar a glass of chocolate milk, which Warren suggested and Edgar agreed was the perfect thing after long plane and car rides in the height of summer.
Fay took them on a tour of the house, which passed slowly, because she needed to sit and rest at least once in every room, and Edgar, unconsciously, until Mon pointed out what he was doing and made him too embarrassed to continue, would position himself behind his grandmother’s shoulder, like a servant or a guard.
Edgar had been given the sleeping porch whose ceiling and outer walls were made of glass. It jutted from the house at the back, looking over the rose garden.
‘We thought it might be fun for you to sleep here,’ Warren said.
‘Warren has moved out into Frank’s room.’
‘We’re so sorry to have put you to all this trouble.’
‘It wasn’t much of a move,’ Warren said.
‘He cleans up after himself. He’s very tidy,’ Fay said, and Mon looked meaningfully at Edgar to remind him of his house-guest responsibilities.
In the corridor, Fay sat on a chair after failing to make it quite to the picture window.
‘On a clear day you can see all the way to Onyataka Depot.’
‘Oh,’ said Mon.
‘Good,’ said Edgar.
‘You can see the Company building from the corner of the window. The Administration building, not the factory. That’s in Creek, of course. And across the way is the Mansion House. They have regular tours. I’m sure you’d find it interesting.’
‘I’m sure I would,’ said Edgar, politely unconvinced.
‘But tell me, what would you fancy doing in your time with us?’
The wording of the question intrigued Edgar in its imputation that he might operate in a world of fancy rather than necessity. It supposed an alternative Edgar, foppish, with a butterfly mind, who went where things took him, who carried a battered brown-leather suitcase covered with faded stickers of faraway countries and who might even own a unicycle that he had disciplined himself to ride. The real Edgar was driven by imperatives. Imperative number one was to further investigate his capacity the first chance he got. This was not a subject to share, except he was looking forward to a moment of companionship with his father when he might somehow imply his new state, maybe eating burgers at a lunch counter, men of the world together, two guys.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Edgar.
‘You only have to say. Supper will be in the kitchen. Warren has put out towels in your rooms. I’m so glad you’re here.’
Edgar, in the bathroom, splashing water on his hair and pulling it casually into spikes, listened to his mother and grandmother in the corridor.
‘Who is Warren?’ his mother asked. ‘How long has he been here?’
‘I don’t know where I’d be without him,’ said Fay.
When Edgar went downstairs—after lying on his bed and flirting with his capacity, which he abandoned and zipped away when he heard footsteps going past into Fay’s room next door; and after gazing out of the window and wondering what Onyataka Depot might be and whether he would be here long enough to make the acquaintance of the blonde girls strolling past, who looked so unapproachably healthy and complete; and after sneaking into his father’s old room to run a finger along the spines of the science-fiction paperbacks in the bookcase; and after looking into the Music Room to examine some of the record albums, the glowering 1970s faces—Mon and Fay and Warren were already in the kitchen. His mother was wearing a black T-shirt with red Asian script printed on it that Edgar hadn’t seen before. Her hair was hidden beneath the turban of a bath towel. A large ginger cat snored in a basket by the stove.
‘What do you think of the house?’ Warren asked.
‘It’s really nice,’ Edgar said, somewhat gruffly, because he preferred his voice to err towards brusque manliness rather than the shrill castrato it sometimes became.
‘You must be exhausted,’ said Warren. To which Mon was about to protest but stopped when she realized that he was talking to Fay, who performed her astonishing smile again.
