A Marriage Made at Woodstock (29 page)

“Jesus,” he said. “Jesus.” He closed his eyes, wishing that he would forget, minutes from now, that he had ever seen such a thing. He hoped that he would never think of it again, not on any of those sunny days that he would be driving past the windows of Radnor Laboratory. He prayed that as he lived out the rest of his life, days when he would be hurrying to the post office, the laundry, the library, that he would never think of what might be taking place inside those gray walls, inside where so few people would ever see. He was not made for truth such as this. He was not cut from Chandra's magnanimous cloth. He had to forget the ugly facts about the world while he was forced to live in it.

“Look at the positive side,” Chandra said, and he opened his eyes again to what was taking place. She had covered the cat once more with the blanket. All Frederick could see now was the round pink head, a baby being born, and the big yellow eyes of conscience staring up at him. “You'll never be allergic to this one. Its hair follicles have been destroyed forever.” She put the bundle in the van woman's arms, the last one to be loaded.

“Let's get out of here,” Chandra said. Frederick touched her arm. He couldn't stop himself. He even knew the ramifications of doing such a thing. She would think, even in the midst of this grief, both animal and human, he is thinking of himself. And that would be true. For he was.

“Chandra, honey,” he said. She had crawled into the back of the van and was about to pull the door shut, but this stopped her. She turned toward him, her face tensing.

“I can't seem to shake this thing,” he told her. “I still love you.”

“But
I
don't love
you
, Freddy,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

He didn't want to listen to what she'd just said. It was the first time she'd actually told him this, his greatest fear. As the van pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared down the street, he stood in the back lot of Radnor Laboratory feeling very much like a person left behind in an old place, while everyone else rushed off to a new place. The Animal Coalition had left him behind as if he was some kind of bad penny. But then, he'd never turned up to help them out before, had he? Lights had begun to burst on, one at a time, in the back rooms of the laboratory, and Frederick knew that it was only a matter of seconds before the
theft
would be discovered. He knew that Herbert would be gone by now. He would walk to Ellsboro Street. He needed time anyway to sort through the remnants of his old life, to consider the life that lay ahead, a life in which he would forever be labeled
a
divorced
person
. There would be much news about the removal of the animals, he was certain. Chandra and the others would be labeled extremists, and maybe they were. But he saw their actions as commendable, no
heroic
. He admired their unwavering notion of the world as a place that can be changed, because it was a belief he wished he held, but didn't. How could he think of world peace, about a brotherhood for all mankind, when the remnants of his own family were lying like exploded shrapnel on the battlefields of the sixties? He wanted to tell this to Chandra. He wanted to say, “Honey, listen, I'm not such a bad guy.” But there was a fact large as a mountain rising before his face. There was the truth, like some groundhog sticking its head up out of a hole and seeing its shadow. “But
I
don't love
you
,” she'd said. His eyes watered quickly, tears of sympathy for himself, for the task which lay ahead, for the transition, the obstacle, the hurdle placed there in his middle age by his wife. If it had been another man, if it had been a
Robbie
, there would still be hope. Frederick would consider it an infatuation and wait until it passed. But it wasn't an infatuation. “I don't love you, Freddy.”

• • •

At the park he paused to stare out over the water as waves nipped at the strand. He felt as though he were in the ending to a novel, one where the protagonist is left standing with a satchel in his hand, Kenny Perkins signaling to the reader that there will be a sequel. But this was real life. As real as the lights that were shimmering on Peak's Island, electricity coursing from one home to another, electrical families tied together with a single invention. He thought about a warm dinner at Will's Restaurant, an inch of some cognac to put enough fire into him for the ferry ride back. Maybe some pale woman would be on the boat, a tourist, her purse strap slung over her shoulder, the ocean wind lifting the wide skirt of her dress, lifting her hair, lifting his spirits. An extremely pale woman, in the light of Arthur Bowen's advice about His and Her tans. And they would lock eyes, knowing that they'd been thrown together for the sheer sake of circumstance, knowing that their meeting would be as meaningless but necessary as pollination. He would invite her to dinner at Will's. “It's named for their son,” he'd tell her, an air of importance in his knowing this. “A little blond boy. I have no children myself.” A woman on the ferry boat. What had ever happened to Richard Hamel?
They
were
on
the
ferry
boat, get it? Master Bator and his boyfriend, holding hands, honest to Christ, I think they might have even kissed.
And on the return ride he would take this pale woman into his arms, this woman with the warm dinner in her belly, with a trickle of cognac in her veins, and he would shelter her from the breezes, shelter himself in the smell of her breath, the soft bounce of her real breasts, the sweet curve of her thighs.

He went on home to find a note taped to the screen door of his Victorian house. It was from Doris Bowen.
Please
don't try to contact me
, the note pleaded.
It's over between us.
She had signed it
Mrs. Arthur Bowen
.

“You flatter yourself, Doris,” Frederick said, letting himself into the dark kitchen.

He slept a deep sleep that night, waking only once before dawn and then returning to the blanket of dreams that wrapped itself around him. Faces came and went. Even Chandra's stepfather, Joe, turned up in his soiled apron to say hello, a can of charcoal lighter fluid clutched in one hand, a platter of steaks leaking blood in the other. Lillian's red lips pounced out of dark corners, the corners of Radnor Laboratory, the lips of authority. “Get a haircut, dear,” the lips told him. He saw Mr. Bator's cherubic face peering out of the teachers' room at Portland High. “The toe bone connected to the foot bone,” Mr. Bator sang, snapping his fingers. “The foot bone connected to the ankle bone.” Joyce appeared, her finger wagging like a dog's tail, oscillating. “You're in denial, mister.” She disappeared, followed by Reginald's Conestoga, rolling toward some lesson in history, a loaf of garlic bread protruding from its flap. Doris Bowen suddenly emerged from the montage. “Why don't we take a walk down by the pond?” Doris asked again. And now came the old faces, the faces of pain: “The world stinks,” said his mother, scattering lavender petals to the winds. His father, austere and solemn, cleared his throat. “You missed a free education in Vietnam, Frederick. And do you know why? Because you're spineless.” And then Mr. Bator again, always Mr. Bator, following in the angry aftermath of Dr. Philip Stone's words, sweeping up the carnage as he had done for Frederick all through high school. “Invertebrates are animals without a backbone or a spinal column,” Mr. Bator said. “Invertebrates are spineless, but you, Freddy, you are an excellent example of a
vertebrate
.” And Polly, lastly, Polly. It pained him to see her again, full-flesh, vital, because he had never really known her in life. He had only considered the outline of her, the contour, the silhouette. Now here she was, her face glowing and pink, her eyes alive. “I was never college material, Freddy,” she told him. “Why can't Daddy understand that? I have a life now. I have a husband. I have my children.” Had she ever talked to him about such things? At some family function? He couldn't remember. And if she did, what had he replied? “We're all fodder to the Great Man, dear sister. What
kind
of fodder doesn't matter.” Had he said anything at all to Polly in her time of need? Probably not. They had been a tongueless, earless, eyeless family.
Invertebrates
, those soft-bodied animals with hard outer skeletons, bumping against one another in the dark.

It seemed as though he waited weeks for her to appear. But in dreams, time is even more the prankster. They say it all happens in a second. And you believe that. And then some further study is done on sleep, and the experts change their minds and state that a dream takes as long to occur as it takes the dreamer to dream the events. It didn't matter, because it seemed he waited weeks for Chandra Kimball to slip into the drama, to claim her own pound of his flesh. But she didn't show. She was obviously off somewhere, involved in the betterment of mankind. Of animalkind. She was simply not there. It was as if some naughty computer elf had gone into the hard disk of his mind and wiped out everything in the file titled
Chandra
. She herself did not appear, but she was kind enough to send a proxy. There was the bald, bleached cat, its round head straining upward for a stroking hand, its piteous meows pummeling his ears, its incessant tongue lolling about in its wet mouth.

“Put it out of its misery,” Frederick murmured. “It's dying anyway.” He awoke in a burst of sweat. It trickled from his forehead, his neck, his chest. It swam in his eyes. His hand reached out toward the green puddle of light, toward the clock humming away in the darkness. It was four thirty. He sank back into the pillows. It occurred to him that he had no reason to get out of bed early, to get out of bed at ten o'clock, to get out of bed at all. No reason. Oh, yes, he had promised himself to return Mrs. Muller's cookie sheet that day, but otherwise he may as well stay put. His body was now basking in the coolness that comes with perspired sweat, the sickly odor of panic. One didn't have to be a poet to catch the metaphorical message of the dream.

“Put it out of its misery,” he said to the clock, to those green numbers that were recording the unintelligible passage of time. “Put it out of its misery.”

I've seen the way men look at you

When they think I don't see,

And it hurts to have them think

That you're that kind…

—Gary Puckett & the Union Gap

Autumn came quickly to southern Maine, or so it seemed to Frederick Stone. But perhaps that was only because the universe had finally gotten his attention. The universe had taught him to pay heed. The Fates themselves had kneed him in the genitals numerous times, blackened both his eyes, stomped on his toes. He regarded them with great respect these days, usually referring to them as Ms. Clotho, Ms. Atropos, Ms. Lachesis. If they had been real women, he would never,
never
, open a door for them. He would never order for them in a restaurant. Providence help him if one of them should catch him ogling her retreating ass. He was a new man. He knew some important stuff. He knew that the Fates were three tough broads.

His hair now grown long enough that he could put it in a ponytail, Frederick sat out on the steps of the house on Ellsboro Street and watched the leaves of the red maple scuttle across the lawn in bursts of wind. The FOR SALE sign had tilted during the night, but no matter. The young couple who came by the week before with Eddy Walsh had made an acceptable offer and was now awaiting approval on their loan from the bank. Now the smell of harvest rose up into the bluing sky. The squirrels on Ellsboro Street were looking bushier, their fur fluffing itself, thickening for the winter cold. The birds had begun their journey equatorward, some flying by night across the spectacle of moon, some relying on the sun for orientation. They had built up enormous fat reserves to fuel them, and now the birds were skipping town. Once, from the window of his car, he had noticed the sky black with migrating hawks. At least he thought they were hawks. Whatever they were, they were going somewhere he wasn't.

He looked at his watch. It was nine thirty. He would need to be at Cain's Corner Grocery by ten o'clock. Mr. Cain had had the HELP WANTED sign in the window only ten minutes, or so he said, when Frederick ambled in a month earlier, looking for a jar of olives. It seemed a perfect opportunity to put to work what Frederick had always considered his enormous marketing talent. So he himself pulled the sign down, tape ripping from the window, and began his duties by urging the archaic Mr. Cain to order soy milk, tofu hot dogs, a selection of coffee beans, a few items to interest the Yuppie homeowners in the area. “Coffee comes from a
bean
?” Mr. Cain had asked. But it was already working. In just one week Frederick had jotted down several other products that shoppers had inquired about—the Sunday
New
York
Times
, stuffed grape leaves, veggie egg rolls, Perrier, couscous—all sales boosters for a tiny grocery in a neighborhood of Boomers. During his second week, he and Mr. Cain had leaned upon the counter, two men hovering above their elbows, and discussed the expansion of the store to include a small café. It would be nothing more than a few round tables and a handful of chairs. But it would bring in a nice bit of money over a year's time. They would offer several varieties of coffee, the brews of which could be sampled depending upon the special of the day. “It'll be a good place for folks to come and read the newspaper,” Frederick had noted. “A gathering place for a morning cup of coffee.” By the end of his third week, he had convinced Mr. Cain to expand the tiny selection of wines.

The growth of the store meant more than just dollars for Mr. Cain's coffers, or a paycheck raise for Frederick. He saw himself as a kind of affable proprietor, waving from the storefront window to passersby, listening with a patient nod of his head to family problems, setting a fine example for neighborhood youngsters. He would be the Andy Taylor of Portland, solving problems daily with his homespun advice. He wanted, in his loneliness, to gather people about him as though there would be a safety in their numbers. He wanted a thick, breathing blanket of warm-blooded mammals, vertebrates, to serve as a buffer to the cold, as the squirrels were thickening their own coats for winter. True, Chandra would have said that it was his notion of himself as some kind of all-knowing god, his full larder of
hubris
that motivated him. And maybe she would be right. But then, she was out rescuing rain forests, and animals, and badly named human beings. Was his job any less heroic? It was, after all, the job he had set out to achieve early on, the day he found an accounting degree in his hand instead of his first published book of poems. It was what he had told the artsy crowd who hung out at those university wine-and-cheese clusters. He, Frederick Stone, would help the small-business man. Now, in his forties, he realized he didn't have to go to Asia, or Central America, or more than four blocks from his house in order to resuscitate the dream. Cain's Corner Grocery was a modest beginning, but at least he now knew that the sixties, with its great vision, was still in him and still alive.

He waved a good morning to Mrs. Muller, who was backing her little Datsun out of the driveway. She had turned out to be a good neighbor, and an even better cook. Frederick had had fresh pastries all month. It was from Mrs. Muller that he got the idea for home-baked pastries at Cain's Corner Grocery. And Mr. Cain had been only too pleased to employ one of the locals in that way. Mrs. Muller tooted warmly, a little
blep
of horn.

“I'm just off to Cain's with a batch of blueberry muffins and four fruit pies,” she said from her car window. Frederick licked his lips dramatically and rubbed his belly, which made her laugh. A man was no longer living on the outskirts of humanity if he was employed at a neighborhood grocery. If he was in culinary contact with his neighbors. Perhaps he was destined to wander around the country, bringing goodwill to all he encountered. Like the bards of yore, he would come to a town, offer them entertainment, then leave for the next town. He wondered if Chandra would applaud the addition of Mrs. Muller's pastries. He prayed the Fates, who had let him know how feminist they really were, would know that Mrs. Muller herself told him she was a
Mrs.
and not a
Ms.

Frederick flung the last of his coffee, that half inch in the bottom of his cup that had grown cold, out toward the dried marigolds lining the drive. They were the same marigolds of spring that Chandra had bought at Home Depot. He had, weeks earlier, given up on the martini lunch. He decided that excessive gin was responsible for his receding hairline, the threadlike wrinkles highlighting his eyes, and certainly the middle-aged paunch which he awoke one morning horrified to discover growing like moss around his middle. He made the mistake of mentioning this to his brother. “You know what's happening to these bodies of ours, don't you, Freddy?” Herbert had asked. “Oxidation.” Frederick had stared, waiting, an action he had learned was best to use with Herbert Stone. “That's the aging process, buddy. Get used to it. We're
rusting
.” Frederick's computer calendar of important dates had been busy
that
morning, until, tired of charting and coursing his own demise, he called up the calendar and deleted the entire thing. Maybe he could beat the passage of time by ignoring it, by avoiding mirrors and reflections in store windows. Not that he didn't think himself still attractive. He did. But the threat of old age had perched like a buzzard on his shoulder. He felt the weight of the thing daily, felt it breathe, eat, and shit. Daily, it was waiting for his corpse to finally drop. Good Christ. He was
rusting
.

As he had done for the past month, Frederick left his car sitting in the drive and walked the four blocks to work. A man his age, a man old enough to have been to Woodstock, needed daily exercise. From the top of Ellsboro Street, he had a brief view of the water. It seemed as if Casco Bay had turned indigo with autumn. It lay still and cool in the distance. The anxious cries of the gulls rose up, mingled with the buzz of traffic. He saw a small red car cut the corner of Ellsboro and rush toward him. For a second, his heart raced wildly, and did so without permission from his mind,
wildly
. But it was a newer-model car than Chandra's, with a younger woman driving.

At Cain's Corner Grocery he paused before the storefront window and read the computer-generated signs he had taped there over the past month. SUNDAY
NEW YORK TIMES
NOW AVAILABLE. WE HANDLE SPECIAL ORDERS. CAIN'S CAFÉ COMING SOON! SPECIAL COFFEE BLENDS. His favorite was a personal announcement for the clientele: CAIN'S WISHES YOU A PLEASANT AUTUMN. To make this sign he had thumbed through his file of clip art and had chosen a cornucopia to decorate the upper right-hand corner.

He clocked in by writing out the time in pen. A time-card system would be too extravagant for Cain's at this point. He had imagined that the store's growth might one day demand the time card in order to keep track of the dozen or so employees he at first envisioned. But then he realized that would mean Cain's was on its way to becoming another goddamn IGA, with its Muzak, and its bright overhead lights, and its horny bag boys. Rather than turn the neighborhood grocery into a multimillion-dollar business and old Mr. Cain into a bitter and unhappy man, Frederick knew he would probably have to mosey off into the sunset one day, taking his immense marketing skills with him. He just had no idea how soon he would be moseying.

It had seemed like any other day. He had waited for certain deliveries and had chatted up the customers. He had been enormously surprised at how many of the old high school gang still lived in Portland. In his month at Cain's he had run into Ray Beal, who had been in Mr. Bator's biology class. “I have no idea what happened to him,” Ray had said when Frederick asked about the biology teacher. “Didn't you go to BU or something?” Ray had ended the conversation, looking a bit embarrassed. Funny, but Frederick didn't feel embarrassed at all. What was wrong with an honest day's work? Ray Beal must've turned into a Republican.

Then he almost didn't recognize Gene Nelson, from Boy Scouts. “Freddy!” Gene had shouted, beating him about the shoulders and upon the back. “How's it hanging?” At first, Frederick thought this customer was referring to one of the signs in the window. But then Gene had said, “It's Gene. Remember that Boy Scout picnic at Willard's Pond when you cut your foot?” And Frederick had been instantly cheered to see someone from the past, someone from the yellow days of childhood, someone who could give him meaning, who knew him BC,
Before
Chandra.
And then Gene had gone on to describe what had become of several of the boys. Nick Dimopoulos had married a full-blooded Italian woman who shot him in the scrotum when she caught him cheating on her.
Arrivederci, testicales.
But Nicky had married again, and now owned a car sales business in Kansas, but no, no children. “Why didn't you come to the reunion last year?” Gene had asked. “Twenty-five fucking years. Can you believe that?” Frederick had shrugged. Why
hadn't
he gone to the reunion? He could almost recall the invitation arriving in the mail. He wondered if Nicky Dimopoulos remembered prom night, when they had drunk four bottles of ouzo. “Did you hear about Richie Hamel?” Gene asked then. Jesus, but he had hated Richard Hamel. “Dead,” Gene said. “Vietnam. The class of sixty-six lost ten boys to Nam. Can you imagine that? I went down to DC last summer and traced their names off the wall so I could put them up for the reunion. Why did you say you didn't come, Freddy?” And then they'd said good-bye, and Gene was gone, back into the old high school yearbook, back to where he was the last time Frederick had seen his face. Richard Hamel, dead in Vietnam. Dead all these years that Frederick had hated him. He had even imagined looking him up one day to tell him what a mumblety-peg cheat he was. Dead in war. Richard Hamel should have been Dr. Philip Stone's son.

When the bell over the door tingled, announcing new customers, Frederick was looking down at the newspaper in front of him and thinking about Nicky Dimopoulos dodging well-aimed Italian bullets. He was also trying to keep his thoughts away from Richard Hamel, a war hero according to Gene Nelson. How could he know, with the past already rushing through him like liquid smoke, that Chandra would walk into the store? That she would appear out of an ocean-blue day to leave him more shaken, to rattle his confidence again? He couldn't know. He gave only a casual glance up from his paper to see a bearded man in the doorway. His arm was extended behind him as he led a woman inside, their hands clasped. All Frederick noticed was that the man was wearing a scarf about his neck, and it reminded him again how quickly winter was coming. His view of the woman was blocked by the gentleman, but Frederick saw red sneakers, white anklets and the hem of a denim skirt. As they disappeared down the wine aisle, he folded his newspaper and tossed it aside. From his first day of work he had decided to become the customers' best friend, to ingratiate himself, to share with them his vision for Cain's Corner Grocery. It would be a Norman Rockwell place for tourists, as well as locals. That's what tourists wanted to find when they visited Maine, wasn't it? He had even comically considered hiring some aged fisherman to sit outside in a yellow slicker, pipe in mouth as he repaired a net or maybe whittled something. By the time he straightened the sacks of potato chips and slid a bag of peanuts back onto its proper rod—customers could be so sloppy—the couple was standing in front of the small wine selection. He could see the back of the gentleman's head, full hair laced with a stately gray. He would inform them that the wine selection would be growing in leaps and bounds, in case they found it unsatisfactory on this day.

“Within the month we'll have a wider selection of French and Australian,” Frederick said as he turned down their aisle. From this new angle he could see that the man's arms were wrapped about the woman, his head tilted forward. They were kissing. Frederick smiled after the first rush of sadness, maybe even jealousy, flashed through him. The sight of a couple in love could still leave him shaken. He was about to turn away and give them their moment of affection in a corner grocery store, when he heard the distinct laugh, almost girlish.
Chandra. The Ghost of Woodstock Past.
His legs seemed to disappear beneath him. He was walking on air, walking above phantom legs, all sensation gone. And the sound of his voice must have caught up with her, too, for her face emerged from behind the man's back. They stared at each other, two people who had once been husband and wife.