Family Night (10 page)

“That’s not my point. I look at these pictures. It makes me crazy.”

Margaret walked past Cam and saw the old clock, its worn numerals. She opened the glass, tapping the ornate minute hand with her fingertip.

“I feel crazy,” Cam said, turning to Tracy. Margaret couldn’t watch her brother. He was falling apart. She went down the hall and waited in Elizabeth’s bathroom. She turned on the faucets so she wouldn’t hear the men talking. Margaret twisted her hands beneath the flow, but the water was too silky and quiet. Against the hushing vowel sound of the tap, she heard Tracy’s voice. He was painting a picture with broad strokes, outlining a plan for Cam.

“The thing is, we are borne by the mother but without the father,” Tracy said.

Cam said nothing.

“In utero, you have no introduction to the father, no heartbeat, no paternal body heat, no placental message or exchange. Nothing for nine months. The father never fits into the
Structure of the Unconscious
. You’re alone in a
Maternal Abyss
. Then the day arrives, you’re pitched into a Lucite bassinet. If the father doesn’t step forward, that’s that. Usually, the mother creates a myth: ‘Your daddy died in a war.’ ‘Your daddy is an angel in heaven.’ Elizabeth was uncooperative, don’t you think? I mean, up until now, what did you have? Some newspaper clippings? These Arrow Collar ads aren’t holding up. It’s probably acid paper, you know; it’s disintegrating even as we stand here yapping.”

“Who’s yapping? It’s you running off at the mouth,” Cam said.

“So—listen to me, then. You’re in that Maternal Abyss until you do something about it. Don’t you see the opportunity here?” Tracy said. “You have your sister in Wilmington, just like you want. She’s ready, if you say the word. We’ll get in the car, find Lewis, and complete our survey. It’s up to you to make the countdown.”

“Margaret won’t like it.”

“We can work on her. There’s time, we have a big forty-eight-hour window.”

Margaret waited until she heard her brother’s car. She looked out to the street and saw the taillights flicker
when he caught the speed bump too hard. Then the car was gone. She went into the kitchen, but she didn’t find Tracy. The house was too quiet. She turned back to the kitchen sink and dotted the stainless with Comet. The broom closet door creaked lightly, falling open. Tracy stepped out of the dark. Margaret took a breath. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”

“You disappoint me, Margaret,” Tracy said. “Cam was
reaching out
, and you disappeared.”

“Cam didn’t want me to see him fall apart like that. Besides, I heard you telling him something crazy. What are you trying to pull off?”

Tracy had his back against a door frame, scratching his shoulders against the molding. “It’s a bore, really. Cam’s thing. It’s always the same note, your basic middle C on the piano:
bong, bong, bong
, but the tune never happens—”

“What are you talking about? Are you talking about music?”

She rinsed the sink and wondered what to do next. The big cast-iron pan showed a ring of rust where she hadn’t finished drying it. She told Tracy she was going out to take a walk. He came over and tucked her wrist behind her back. “Me too. I’m taking a walk in Wilmington, with you.”

“I want to go by myself,” she said.

“You can’t go out there alone. It’s the old neighborhood.”

She twisted against him, trying to escape a streak of pain. “All right,” she told him. “You’re invited.”

On the street, she showed him the houses and told
him the names of the families. “They’re all engineers for Du Pont,” she said.

“I could write about their chemical compounds, pigments, plastics, whatever it is, just as well as the next fellow.”

“Richard was saying that the new thing is stain-release fibers,” she said. She was relieved to talk about this. The night had a peculiar density; the surfaces looked furred by the odd moonlight. The shrubs seemed waffled and grotesque, and she wanted to turn around and go back.

They entered a park with a small amphitheater, several old magnolias, and a mammoth apple tree in the middle of the sloping lawn. The tree had an incredible circumference; the branches opened out and turned down at the edges, making a scalloped canopy, like the dark awnings at funeral sites. They stooped low and crawled under the foliage until they could stand erect inside, encircled by the branches. Tracy jumped into the roomy hollow where the tree forked. He pulled Margaret up beside him.

Margaret said, “I ran away from home and hid in this tree. I waited until dark so Elizabeth would worry.”

“You were seeking the proper effects even back then? The world was a prop for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You had to utilize these great abstract powers like day and night to call attention to yourself.”

“Jesus, did I do that?”

“You and your brother. Sleepwalking through Siberia. Absolutely no self-awareness.”

She looked at Tracy; she was unwilling to argue about it.

A white tomcat moved toward them. Its coat looked thick and mirrory in the moonlight, like suds. They watched it walk to the trunk of the tree, tail lifted; then it jumped up to the first gnarl and used its claws to go higher. It kept climbing above them until they could no longer see it.

“It must be his hangout,” Tracy said, and he pulled Margaret down from her perch. The ground was damp, littered with tiny green knobs, misshapen fruit that had fallen before ripening. Tracy’s body was familiar, its angles, its nervous zones. He held her and then he pushed her off. She looked at the dirt. She saw a white scrap, a piece of paper with someone’s gas mileage written on it. The figures were followed by question marks and exclamation points. Tracy stepped up to her again, rubbed the heel of his hand against her eye socket, a slight pressure that made her see dots and flashes. This pleased her. His hand smelled of tree bark and chlorophyll.

She heard the white cat crying, making his inquiries from a great height. “It’s gone up too high,” Margaret said. “It wants to get down.”

Tracy didn’t answer. Margaret circled the tree trunk and turned around. She saw the apple branches waving open and snapping closed again. Tracy was gone. She called his name. Nothing. She fingered the papery leaves and found her way outside the dense switches. She couldn’t see Tracy anywhere on the big lawn. The giant magnolias had a leathery severity in the night. Without illumination, the colorless ruled, the deep encircled the pale. She walked toward home, stopping once or twice to turn around and shout Tracy’s name. She knew he
was going to jump out from behind something. It was just a matter of
when
it would happen. She studied the shaggy hemlocks, the long bulwarks of forsythia where Tracy could be crouching. Her tri-octave, full-diaphragmatic scream was what he was after. He wanted her throat to tear with one harsh syllable. He once told her, “All fear is self-inflicted. We carry it around, concealed on our persons, like a little shiv. We use it against ourselves. We have only ourselves to blame.”

Panic loosened her gait and she walked down the street in a loose zigzag like a drunken woman. Then she broke into a run. There he was, standing in the center of the black asphalt. Tracy was holding the tomcat in the crook of his arm, but the animal’s hind legs were pumping, its ears were flattened back. She stumbled into her lover and lost her ability to stand up. She felt her words form and stray from her lips; she was whimpering. Even as the cat struggled, she rested her face against its white fur. She heard something—a taut snarl evolving from its gut and surfacing at full volume, as if one central cry escaped from all three of them.

T
hey were sitting three abreast in the front seat of the car. It was a first-edition powder-blue Plymouth Duster. “This is a magazine specimen. It’s mint,” Cam was telling Tracy. Cam had bought the car years ago for Darcy’s birthday. It was the maiden Duster 340, the high-performance model. He was telling them everything. “A two-door—it’s more aerodynamic. It’s a V8 with four-barrel carburetion, high-flow cylinder heads.” He brushed his hand around the three-spoked steering wheel, the chrome
horn ring, thin as a wrist bangle. “Today it’s horn
pads
; they don’t make chrome horn rings like this anymore,” Cam said.

“That’s probably true.” Tracy looked pretty tickled. Margaret worried that Tracy might start to laugh or make remarks. Cam’s enthusiasm could have a peculiar effect on Tracy.

“Mags with chrome nuts. Wire wheel covers, fourteen-inchers. Check them out when we stop.”

“Oh, sure,” Margaret said.

Cam said, “No kidding, Margaret, this Duster is more than just a souped-up Valiant; it’s a little hot. Don’t you think it’s hot?”

“It’s a real piece of Americana,” Tracy said.

Margaret liked the car. It had a split-back bench seat with a folding center armrest. She could sit high on the little knob of the armrest or push the armrest in between the seats and ride the usual way. She liked sitting high on that cushioned perch, her arms resting across each seat. She could pluck at Cam’s collar tab, or finger Tracy’s hair at the back of his neck. Cam drove into the parking lot of a big Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“Watch this,” he said.

“I don’t see anything,” Margaret said.

“Just wait a minute,” Cam said.

They circled the restaurant and came out on the other side of the building. The far side had a metallicized plate-glass window, like a bronzed mirror, and she saw them reflected, the Duster a dreamy golden image. Margaret watched the smooth lines of the car, its swept-back roof and ventless windows. Its powder-blue aura like cue chalk.

“What a great idea,” Tracy said, “people buying buckets of chicken just so they can see their cars on that fantasy screen. Go through again.”

Cam steered around the restaurant once more.

“Ultra neon,” Tracy said, as they cruised past the window.

“It’s really nice,” Margaret said. “I like the decal on the fender, that little cyclone.”

“It’s a tumbleweed,” Tracy said. “We’re tumbling tumbleweeds.”

“No, that’s a cyclone, isn’t it?” Margaret said.

“Dust devil,” Cam said.

Cam drove onto the highway. The car had power, a steady acceleration, a lilting forward propulsion. Tracy said, “Great car. People think it’s a nice middle-of-the-road vehicle; that’s its secret. It looks benign, but it’s peopled by love-starved maniacs!”

Margaret didn’t disagree with this, but she looked at Cam to see if he allowed himself to be included. He was smiling. Maybe just happy to be in the Duster. She liked the surroundings—the vinyl seats glazed and plumped, the dashboard that gleamed with chrome inlays. Margaret punched the radio buttons.

“Oh Christ, it’s WMAR,” Tracy said.

“WMAR?” Cam was asking. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s Radio Margaret, we’re sunk if she’s at the controls.”

“You each get one veto, that’s all.” She turned up the volume when she found something.

They stopped for ice and she spilled it over the asphalt as they filled the cooler. An ice cube on the asphalt is a beautiful sight, Margaret thought. It floated
on a river of its own making and quickly flattened, disappeared into that speckled dark. Cam arranged cans in the ice and tapped the lid until it fit.

“Do you have to drink beer to buy a speedboat?” Tracy asked. “I’m going to try to get us a Nehi.”

“A Nehi soda?” Margaret said. “Are you crazy?”

“I thought this was a nostalgia cruise, a little side trip to jog the memory. These roadside stands have everything—”

“We’re not going on any psycho side trips. We’re here to look at a boat,” Margaret said. Tracy went into the Quick Stop and came out with three Philadelphia Phillies sun visors.

“It’s going to scorch us,” he said to Cam, who didn’t want to wear the visor. “Okay, suit yourself. Doctors will start shaving little bumps from your face. Old salts always end up like that.”

Margaret took her visor and let it slip down over her nose. “It’s too big.”

“Too big? I’ve never heard you complain,” Tracy said.

“Tracy is always making references to his dick.”

“I’d hate to be trapped in your mind,” Cam told Tracy.

“It’s cramped, but it’s rent controlled. Give me the hat,” Tracy said. He worked to tighten the plastic band.

Then they were driving. Margaret watched the road for a moment and shut her eyes, letting the feeling swell, increase, that pleasure of sitting between two men. She knew there was a bit of something, a swirl of vanity
and greed, which she had to monitor. She couldn’t be dreaming these things. She looked at her brother. He was very appealing to look at, and she studied him without feeling self-conscious; perhaps because their intimacy was tested over years, it was proved. She knew his profile, its crooked jog when it met the cleft of his chin. His eyes were hazel with gold flecks, the color of light tea, almost translucent, but the pupils were always oversized, making him look on the edge of alarm. His eyelashes weren’t unnaturally long, but they grew dense at their roots and shaded a thin line along his lids as if they had been penciled. It was odd for a man to have such accentuated eyes. Tracy was looking at
her
looking at Cam, so she knew she was dreaming too long.