скачать книгу бесплатно
“We all make sacrifices,” Winn went on, “but they expect everyone to praise theirs all the time. This army thing seems excessive. Why not the navy? Why not the air force? Coast guard? No, the Fenns have to make a show out of humility. Teddy should have gone to West Point if he wanted to go this route.”
“I don’t think this was the plan from the beginning. Not that I know anything, apparently.”
“I don’t see why he has to be a grunt like his father.”
“Wasn’t Jack drafted?”
“Yes, but he handled it in a very odd way. He could have deferred. Men like Greyson have it figured out. Greyson gives up the little things, little luxuries. He doesn’t overdo it. He’ll be good for Daphne that way.”
“I don’t think being selectively cheap is the same thing as enlisting.”
“So you’re on the Fenns’ side now?”
“I wish you hadn’t mentioned Teddy.”
“I was being polite. Better to hear the news from Jack, anyway. Now you won’t be caught off guard.”
“You can’t go around asking about Teddy like he’s just another person, Dad.”
“He is just another person, Livia. He should be, anyway.”
“Well, he’s not!”
“Ah,” Winn said, “here we are.”
In his opinion, the finest houses on the island were marked by dented mailboxes and rutted driveways. Only a chimney or maybe a widow’s walk should be visible from the road. Jack Fenn’s house, however, was a blatant, dazzling Oz set against the blue horizon of Waskeke Sound. Privet plants wrapped in burlap stood in wooden boxes at regular intervals along the road like blindfolded prisoners, holes already dug and waiting for them in the rich-looking soil. After a few years, they would merge into a hedge and provide a semblance of privacy, but the driveway was needlessly wide, a blinding avenue of broken quahog shells that unspooled in a graceful S curve up to the house, where one offshoot led to a garage and the other to the front door, making a loop around a flagpole. To one side of the house, confined by an infant hedge of its own and a cage of dark green chain-link, a mountain of red clay waited to be spread and rolled into a tennis court. Yet another nascent hedge encircled an empty, freshly poured swimming pool and the wooden bones of a pool house.
Winn turned in between two glossy black post lanterns, crunching on the shells. The flagpole at the top of the driveway was the nautical style, a yardarm across a mast, and stood in an oval of dirt. No flags were flying, but the cords were ready, their clips dinging against the metal pole, waiting to hoist the colors when the Fenns were in residence. The windows still bore the manufacturer’s decals. Part of the ground floor had been covered with new, lemony shingles, stark against the tar paper. Two years might pass before they faded to the desirable gray, and until then the house would be a bright imposition on the subtle landscape. The beginnings of a yard—paving stones, sacks of cement, a heap of mulch—loitered in the broad expanse of dirt that would one day be a lawn. Tarpaulins covered bales of shingles on one side of the driveway. The roof was a steep landscape of peaks, dormers, and gables, all sheathed in new cedar shake that shone in the sun. Brick chimneys crowned with terra-cotta pots pointed at the sky. Above the whole mess presided the bright copper sails of the three-masted clipper ship Fenn had chosen for his weather vane. Winn’s weather vane was a man alone in a rowboat.
“Anyway,” Livia said, “Greyson’s sacrifices are completely superficial. They’re not any kind of real loss. They’re just symbolic of loss. You know, like giving up chocolate for Lent or rending garments or something. At least what Teddy’s doing is genuinely hard.”
“Would you look at the size of this place,” said Winn. “I’m surprised. Jack comes from a fine old family. This is … it’s showy.”
Construction debris was strewn around: rolls of wire, crumpled wrappers, twine, tape, pipes, buckets crusted with cements and sealants. Two beige portable toilets stood a discreet distance away. “The house is poorly designed,” he said, pointing up through the windshield. “It must be a swamp up on that roof after a big rain. You see? I can pick out at least two spots where water will pool. They’ll have leaks. They probably already do. Shake is tricky. If you don’t cover the nail holes properly, you get leaks.”
“Fine,” said Livia. “The Fenns have made a mockery of roofs. They join the army just to bug you, and they design their houses to really get under your skin.”
“You disagree?”
“I don’t want Jack Fenn to drive up and find us sitting here staring at his house.”
“It’s a ridiculous house. I’m telling you. Look at that roof. Millions of dollars just to have leaks.”
“Dad, people like living by the ocean. Why shouldn’t they have a nice house if they want?”
“So you think people should have everything they want even if what they want is an ostentatious eyesore?”
“I don’t think it’s an eyesore.”
“This house is an eyesore.”
“I don’t know—to each his own. We could have built a house like this if we wanted to, right? It’s just not our style.”
Leaning forward with his chest pressed to the steering wheel, craning to see the roof, Winn was gratified by Livia’s use of “our,” that she was including herself in his aesthetic of quality, longevity, and simplicity. Since their childhood he had told his daughters he was going to give away all his money before he died, and they should make or marry their own if money was what they wanted. Better that than letting them feel the same disappointment he had after his parents died, when he discovered his inheritance was little more than untenable expectations. He had done well enough, but he was thankful for the way a certain degree of gentle dilapidation could be made to suggest old wealth. Shabbiness of necessity was easily disguised as modesty and thrift. Not that having a simple, hard-won summer-house instead of this castle by the sea would qualify him as shabby by most standards.
“Right?” Livia persisted. “We just do things differently. You aren’t a fancy house kind of guy.”
“What do they need such a big house for?” he said. “Is Teddy going to have a thousand children?”
Livia drew the Duffs’ flowers up onto her lap. “That’s the last thing I want to think about, assuming he lives long enough to have children.”
“Don’t be dramatic. He’ll be fine. Anyway, the girl’s not going to have any.”
“I can’t even wrap my head around … what if I was his only chance?”
The premise, simple enough on its surface, gave way beneath Winn’s consideration, dropping him into a feminine thicket of improbable hypotheses and garbled cause and effect. He clapped her knee. “Now, listen. I don’t want you thinking this army business has anything to do with you.” He drove around the oval and back down the driveway. Livia was obscured by pink and orange flowers and curls of green, leafy things, a tiger in the grass.
“What if Teddy and I get back together?” she said.
“I don’t think that’s very likely.”
“Thanks a lot!”
“Do you think you’re going to get back together?”
“I don’t know. I’m just saying.” She pulled the vase even closer to herself. “What would you have done if I had been born like Meg Fenn?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I would have gotten used to it.”
“Really?”
“I think when something like that happens you rise to the occasion.” In truth, Winn could not imagine holding the hand of his grown daughter as she bellowed beside a pyramid of tomatoes.
“If Daphne had been born like that, would you have had another child?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Would you have wished you had never had children?”
“This is a silly conversation.”
At the Enderby, Livia jumped out with the flowers and took them inside. When she returned, she looked naked without her portable jungle, and the car felt empty.
After he’d parked in front of the house, Winn said, “Tell your mother I’ll be in in a minute.” Livia took two of the grocery bags and went inside, and Winn walked along the driveway past the garage and down a path shaded by trees and padded with a russet layer of pine needles. Unseen birds burst into a chorus of jabbering laughter as he passed. He paused beside his garden, peering through the deer fence in consternation. Dominique had chosen the right word: sad. The plants were all smaller than they should have been and drooped on rubbery stems: dwarfish melons, bloodless tomatoes, cucumbers that had not come up at all. There were some acceptable-looking green beans, but he saw no sign of the chervil or hyssop he had requested. Mint, which would grow in the crater left by a nuclear blast, was the only thing flourishing. The idea occurred to him that the caretakers could be sabotaging his little agricultural oasis, mistreating the soil or planting in adverse weather conditions. Poking his fingers through the fence, he rubbed a few leaves of mint together and walked away, farther into the trees. He held his fingers to his nose and sniffed the weed’s sharp, sweet smell.
He walked until he could no longer see the house, and then he looped back, coming to the edge of a dense clump of trees and brush and spotting, through the branches, Agatha sunning herself on the grass near the house. She was lying on a blue and white towel, and he recognized her polka-dotted bikini as the one from his study. She must have gone in there to retrieve it. Perhaps she had left him something else, a hair clip or a scarf. The afternoon sun was dropping lower in the sky, and a serrated front of tree shade advanced across the grass toward her bare toes. Daphne came out the French doors from the kitchen and crossed the deck and then the lawn, carrying a towel. She wore a black bikini, her huge, naked belly protruding brazenly between the two halves. Piper followed, turning to shut the doors behind her and giving Winn a view of wishbone thighs and a derriere so nonexistent that the blue fabric of her bathing suit hung in flaccid wrinkles. As Daphne shook out her towel, Agatha reached up and patted the side of her bare leg in a friendly way. Piper settled crossed-legged on the grass, her face obscured by massive sunglasses like ski goggles. Daphne eased herself down so her feet were facing Winn and the hummock of her pregnancy hid the top half of her body. Her shadow, humped like a camel, drew a smooth, dark curve over Agatha’s flat stomach and golden hipbones.
Watching them, he became aware of the elasticity of his lungs, the hard ridges of tree roots pressing into his feet, the muscular, rippling action of swallowing. His heart raced with stealth and vitality. That was another man’s house, another man’s daughter and her friends. He was a stranger, a prowler, a hunter, a wood dweller excluded from their world. The girls’ obliviousness transformed them, although he couldn’t pinpoint how. He couldn’t decide if they seemed more innocent when left to themselves, or more unabashedly sensual. Or were they unreal, like mermaids caught basking on a rock? They were only sitting—but there was something about them. Daphne, distorted by pregnancy, could not be reconciled with the little girl he remembered. Piper sat erect and unmoving, a sphinx. Agatha was lying on her back with her knees bent, and she moved her legs in a slow rhythm, bumping her thighs together and then letting them fall apart. A narrow strip of polka-dotted material concealed her crotch, and it tightened and slackened as she moved her legs, lifting slightly.
Close in his ear, a voice said, “Boo!”
Three · Seating Arrangements (#ulink_8b60bbc1-d35c-549f-91ee-4e80cba6f1e7)
Biddy stood with her hands on the edge of the kitchen table, leaning over a slew of guest lists, place cards, and seating charts. She felt like a general planning an offensive. Beside her, Dominique, faithful aide-de-camp, mirrored her posture.
“What if,” Dominique said, switching two cards, “we move these like this. Situation neutralized.”
“No,” said Biddy, “because then I’ve got exes sitting at the same table. Here.” She touched the paper.
“They wouldn’t be okay?”
“It’s not ideal.”
Dominique tapped her lips with one long finger and considered. Biddy, seized by affection, patted her on the back. She missed Dominique, especially during the holidays, when she had been a household fixture all through high school and college, Cairo being so far away. Dominique had been the sort of worldly kid who sought out the company of adults and who, at fourteen, had considered herself all grown up. When she stayed with the Van Meters, she behaved more like Daphne’s indulgent aunt than her friend and spent most of her time helping Winn in the kitchen and running errands with Biddy while Livia, little duckling, followed wherever she went and Daphne lay indolently in front of the television. Agatha had spent a few holidays with them, too, but her presence was less comfortable. Biddy was always finding cigarette butts in the flower beds and catching Winn staring and waking up to the sound of Agatha laughing and drunkenly thumping the walls while the others shushed her and tried to convey her to bed. Once Biddy had gotten up and flipped on the light at the top of the stairs, surprising them—Daphne, Dominique, Livia, and Agatha—like a family of possums in the sudden brightness. Agatha was lying on her side and inexplicably clinging to the balusters while Dominique worked to pry her fingers loose and Livia and Daphne grasped her ankles to keep her from kicking.
“What if,” Dominique said, pointing at the seating chart, “we move him to the leftovers table?”
“Yes,” said Biddy. “Perfect. But I feel bad calling them leftovers.”
Dominique pushed the place card across the table with the authority of a croupier. “Le mélange, then.” She stood back and looked at Biddy, her long eyebrows kinked and her long, sad mouth pulled quizzically to one side. “How are you? I mean—really.”
Biddy was so surprised by the question that her eyes began to water. “I’m fine,” she said, fussing with the cards to indicate the unimportance of her tears. “I’m great. I’m so happy for Daphne—I want everything to go well.”
“Of course you do,” said Dominique. “This is an insane amount of work. You’re handling it like a champ.”
Biddy was forced to take a tissue from the box on the counter. She never wore mascara, but she dabbed carefully nonetheless, coming up under her lashes the way she remembered her mother doing. To be seen, really looked at, the way Dominique had fixed on her, was unsettling. Her family barely noticed her, but she couldn’t blame them: she had changed so little over the years that people were never reminded to reconsider her. “It is a lot of work,” she said. “It really is.” Making the confession gave her a small thrill, and she went on, feeling her way. “And sometimes it feels like a natural conclusion to raising a daughter, that you run yourself ragged to make this one day as perfect as possible, even though, for you, the day is bittersweet because she’s leaving—I mean, she’s been living with Greyson, but somehow this is different, more official. I don’t know how those over-bearing beauty pageant mothers do it, you know, keeping track of someone else’s whole physical being: hair, clothes, makeup, all that.”
“Yeah, right?” Dominique concurred. “I think—well, I don’t know, but it seems to me the real backbreaker is being in charge of manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Not necessarily Daphne’s, just this idea floating around out there about what a wedding should be.”
Biddy squared a place card with the edge of the table. “Manifesting someone else’s idea of perfection. Hmm. That’s well put.” She wondered if the younger woman was talking about more than just the wedding. Certainly Biddy was no stranger to laboring under another person’s vision for life. Abruptly, her enjoyment of her own honesty peaked and fell away. She had wilted quickly under the spotlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “All I mean is that I don’t want anyone to be disappointed.”
“Well, sure,” Dominique said, switching to an offhand tone, “but there’s only so much you can control. Perfection is overrated, anyway. I’m all about meeting basic needs and seeing what’s left over from there.”
Laughing in embarrassment, Biddy balled up the tissue and hurried to throw it away under the sink. “But you! I want to hear about you,” she said. “You have the most interesting life. Tell me everything about Belgium.”
“Oh, it’s all right. I don’t think it’s my forever home. I just kind of live there. In a way, it could be anywhere. You should see my apartment—it’s completely barren. Every time I think about buying something, like nice sheets or something to hang on the wall or even fancy hand soap, I think, well, no, because I won’t be here for long, and it’ll be one more thing to get rid of.” She gave Biddy another searching look. “Are you sure you don’t want to take a break? You could run away for an hour somewhere. Have some time to yourself. I’d cover for you.”
“No, no,” Biddy said, shaking off the last of her tears. “I’m really fine. It’s not the amount of stuff I have to do, really, it’s—you’re so sweet to ask. I just—where is your forever home, do you think?”
Dominique’s eyebrows climbed a notch higher, but she said, “I’m not sure it exists. Not Egypt, not Belgium. Not France—that’s where my parents live now. They moved a couple of years ago. I don’t know if Daphne told you. I like New York but it exhausts me. Not Deerfield. Not Michigan.”
“That still leaves a lot of places,” Biddy said. “Maybe you’re supposed to live in the Bahamas.”
“I hope so. In a hammock.” They giggled.
“How will you find it?” Biddy asked. “Your home?” She was curious; she had never chosen where to live.
“I think probably I’ll look for a job first. But—I don’t know. In theory I could work most places. You’d think it would be fun, being able to pick more or less anywhere in the world, but when I think about the freedom I usually just end up feeling lonely. There’s nothing pulling me to any particular spot except vague preferences. And sometimes I wonder what it says about me that I can drift like this.” She gave a quick, wry roll of her eyes. “Total first-world problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, like, oh, woe is me, I’m so exhausted and alienated by my globe-trotting life of preparing expensive food.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend in Belgium? What about him?”
“I don’t think he’s permanent.” Dominique made a slow, sheepish shrug, her shoulders lingering around her ears for several seconds until she abruptly let them fall. “It’ll all sort itself out. Where do you think I should live? Where would you go?”
Biddy was caught off guard not so much by the question as by her inability to process it. She couldn’t think of a single place she might live where she had not already lived. She thought: Connecticut. Waskeke. Maine. Connecticut. Those weren’t answers for Dominique. They were shameful in their timidity, their lack of adventure. But she could not imagine living on a tropical island or in the Alps or in Rome or Sydney or Rio. She could not imagine living in Delaware. “I think you’ll know it when you find it,” she said. “I think you’ll find the perfect place. Or at least one that meets your basic needs.”
The side door slammed, and Livia appeared in the hallway, balancing a paper grocery bag brimming with corn on each of her hips. “Teddy joined the army,” she announced.
“Teddy Fenn?” Biddy asked.
Livia set the bags on the counter. “Teddy Fenn.”
The boy’s name, so familiar, sounded foreign to Biddy when Livia pronounced it all by itself, like the Latin name for a rare species, some kind of wetlands bear. “How do you know?”
“We ran into Jack at the market. He said Teddy just went down to some recruitment center or wherever and signed up. He’s not coming back to school. He’s not graduating. I don’t know why Jack couldn’t stop him. What kind of father would let this happen?” Biddy thought Livia sounded like her own father, though Livia would be offended to be told so. The two of them had the same wrongheaded belief in the power of parents over children. A bag of corn tipped over, and the heavy ears thumped onto the floor. Livia gazed heavenward and flapped her arms in defeat.
Biddy was relieved not to be the object of any more scrutiny. “Easy does it,” she said, approaching her daughter even though she knew her consolation would not be welcome. Since Livia could not admit defeat and accept that Teddy really was lost, she would tolerate no pity. Biddy kept waiting for her to simply get over the boy. As a toddler Livia had been inseparable from her pacifier until the day she was put down for an unwelcome nap and ripped the rubber nipple from her mouth and hurled it to the floor, never to suck on it again.
“Dad was in rare form,” Livia said after allowing Biddy a brief hug and then stepping away. “He got all, you know, forceful and cheerful, and tried to bring up the Pequod and was weird with Meg, and then, then, he goes, ‘How is Teddy?’ Like he was talking about some random acquaintance. And Jack says, ‘Oh, funny you should ask. He’s made a big decision. He’s joined the army.’ And Daddy says, ‘Well. Well, well, well, well, well.’ Like that. ‘Well, well, well, well, well.’”
“Did Jack say why?”
Livia bent to gather up the corn. “No. I’m not sure he knows.”
“Where does he go? Does he go to … boot camp?” Biddy spoke tentatively, uncertain of the expression.
“I don’t know. I have no idea where or when or how. I don’t know. Why would I know? Did he just wake up one morning and decide, Oh, none of this is really working for me? I’d like a one-way ticket to Iraq, please.”
“They’ll give him a round-trip ticket,” Dominique said. She, too, came to hug Livia, and this time Livia seemed grateful, wrapping her arms around Dominique’s strong back and hiding her face in the young woman’s shoulder. Biddy noticed a strand of corn silk on the tiles and bent to pick it up.
“He might have to come back as cargo,” Livia said, muffled. “Why can’t he just finish college?”
“Livia,” said Biddy, “I don’t want you to think this has anything to do with you.” She reached in from the outskirts of the embrace to squeeze her daughter’s shoulder.
“That’s what Daddy said.” Livia released Dominique. “But how could it not have anything to do with me?”
Because, Biddy wanted to say, Teddy didn’t fall apart after this breakup the way you did. Because Teddy’s life no longer includes you. But she could see that Livia was taking Teddy’s decision as some kind of sign, an indication that he was becoming unpredictable and erratic, possibly on the brink of a collapse that could only drive him back to her, regretful and awakened. His flight to the army was the last dying flutter of independence, his last binge of freedom before he saw the light. The army would never love him the way Livia did. “I don’t want you to hope it has something to do with you,” Biddy said.
Livia began breathing in through her nose and out through her mouth and staring off into space. The therapist she saw at school, Dr. Z, had taught her that trick: if you feel like you’re about to lose your temper, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and count to five or ten, depending on the direness of the situation. Winn hated that Livia saw a shrink. He said she should learn to grin and bear it.
“Anyway,” Livia said after five seconds, “after we saw Jack, Daddy decided we should go check on their new house.”
“The Fenns’ house?” said Biddy. “Why?”
“I think he wanted to sit there and glower at it and think about the Pequod. Not about how Teddy knocked me up and dumped me, no, no. About how unfair it is—what a great injustice it is—that there’s a club out there he can’t join.”
