Life Among Giants (6 page)

“I have to have this,” I said.

Dwight accepted the Kennedy half-dollar I carried for good luck.

I sat near Emily at lunch, opened my hard-won copy of
Rolling Stone.
And Emily noticed; you couldn't miss that cover shot of Sylphide. And you certainly couldn't miss me, pointing my toes as I read. Oh, Emily noticed and stood and picked up her dance bag and walked right past me and out the great doors to the bus loop where her mother waited to take her to the train station and the 12:41 to New York.

Emily had no need of me, no need of any of us.

I
N THOSE DAYS,
my mother was always off at tennis, the kitchen bulletin board papered deeply with schedules and tourney dates and lesson times, not the slightest letup since Kate had left.

One fine Saturday, Dad and I raked leaves, the first weekend he'd been home for six weeks. Apparently, things were going better at work.
Th
is, I simply intuited—it's not like we talked about our troubles.
Th
e poor guy had been putting in seven-day weeks, twelve- and fourteen-hour days, home on the late train to sleep, out on the early train, working his lips, chewing his nails. And something odd had happened. I'd driven him to the station Friday so as to have the car—dashed fantasies of driving off to Compo Beach for a walk with Emily—and he'd left his crappy replacement briefcase in the car, a cardboard thing already coming to pieces. When I returned with it, I spotted him climbing into the wrong train, opposite direction from New York.

I leaned on my rake, smelled the brisk air, felt the fall sunshine, couldn't help it: I thought about football.
Th
e team would be on the bus to Greenwich for a game they'd probably win—Greenwich was weak in those years. But then again, who did Staples have for a quarterback? No one but that scrawny Fielding kid, who'd gotten his chance from my abdication. If he won, he'd be a hero. Me, I was raking leaves. Dad made a show of pulling on his beloved work boots, his one connection with an identity he'd never had: paint-splashed, steel-toed, oil-proof soles, the leather worn and supple, lovingly waxed, the rawhide laces double-knotted, absurdly high heels.

“So where'd you go yesterday?” I said lightly.

“Yesterday what?”

“Yesterday morning. Without your briefcase. I came back to give it to you and you were getting on the New Haven train.”

He laughed. And then he laughed more: busted. “I'll let you in on a secret,” he said. “But don't you tell your mom. I was going to see a lady.”

“Dad!”

“Not like you think, bud. I just had to do a little job for Mr. Perdhomme up in Bridgeport. Wooing a client, you know. Perdhomme knows where his bread is buttered. I practically gave the woman a massage. One of the Fricks, you bet she came around.”

And before I could formulate the next question—Dad obviously lying—he gave me a shove, retrieved his rake, shouted, “Last man to the Butt cooks dinner!”
Th
e old stakes with rakes. He ran comically and took the little west side of our modest lawn, leaving me with the big east side, reversing the advantage of my childhood, and we set to, herding leaves like a couple of overcranked toys, real competition. He pressed his advantage, wasn't a dad who was going to let you win. He was stout on top, slim on the bottom, legs like a heron's, forty-four years old, stamina of a goat.
Th
e Butt was a massive round boulder down at the edge of the pond, cracked down the middle from all the fires we'd had there, from leaves to marshmallows to Kate's troop of Girl Scouts, the ones who'd named it.
Th
e physical exercise broke the gloomy mood. My father laughed and shouted taunts.

As we came around the house—scratch, scratch, scratch with the rakes—I saw three large men in black clothes striding purposefully down the High Side lawn toward the dam end of the pond. When they saw I'd noticed them they visibly hurried, splashed heedlessly through the little brook and high cattails.
Th
ey were coming to see
us.

I said, “Dad?”

Th
e biggest guy broke from the others and jogged to put himself between us and the house. He stuffed his hand in the pocket of his sweatshirt, showed the grip of a black gun. My hands began to shake. Why were armed men coming from
Sylphide's
? Why were armed men coming
at all
? A gray-haired guy, clearly in charge, stepped up calmly. My father pulled himself up to his full five ten—or maybe in his work boots it was six feet—thrust himself into the guy's face. “State your business, Freddy.”

Freddy put a hand on Dad's chest. “Nick, relax. Take a breath.”

I was incredulous. “Dad! You
know
these guys?”

“
Th
ey're goons,” my father said, playing tough. You could see how it was he'd gotten his nose broken so many times, little cockerel among the roosters.

Th
e third man was the High Side chauffeur, I suddenly realized, the Chinese guy who had always dropped Linsey at school, a nervous henchman, if that's what he was, breakable as a twig.

Freddy turned to me, authoritative, not particularly scary: “You were at the High Side the other day?”

“Ixnay,” Dad said.

But I saw no need to be secretive, took a reasonable tone: “I tried to light Sylphide's stove for her.
Th
e gas was out. Oh, and I mowed the lawn. She asked me in. She was very sad, I thought.”

“She ought to be sad,” Freddy said. “She's missing some very important paintings.”

Suddenly, Dad flung his rake to the ground, wheeled hard and threw a sucker punch into the chauffeur's delicate nose, turned and bolted, his comical trot, former track star with bad knees, working hard to lift those huge boots.
Th
e surprise gave him a couple of seconds head start—no thought of me, as I would later realize—and he trundled up the lawn toward the house with the biggest guy chugging along close behind.

Freddy seemed unconcerned about either Dad's escape or the bloodied chauffeur sprawled on the ground, so I flung my rake, too, raced up the hill after Dad and his pursuer. I tackled the big guy in the middle of Mom's thorny
Schneekoppe
roses. He was soft, pillowy, way out of shape, huffed and puffed beneath me, no fight in him.

Rescued, Dad leapt across the patio and into the house, slid the big doors shut, dropped the heavy locking bar in place. I could see him as he raced to the front of the house, where no doubt he was locking that door, too. For the first time, I understood all those deadbolts: Dad's paranoid dream was coming true. And I was on the wrong side of the doors. I got to my feet—the big goon wasn't going anyplace.

Freddy strolled up the lawn, the picture of nonchalance. “
Th
e paintings,” he said. “I just want to get in your house, here, have a look around.”

Suddenly, I thought I knew what was going on. “It was a
gift,
” I said. “
Th
e
butler
brought it over. I'm happy to let you see it. I'm happy to return it, even, no big deal. I never even wanted it.”

Confused, Freddy ran a hand back through his already smooth hair, said, “
Th
e butler? You mean our houseman? Desmond? A gift? A painting?”

“A picture.”

“I'd better have a look.”

It took a good deal of pounding and yelling at the back door, but my father eventually appeared. “No guns,” he said, muffled.

Freddy yanked a big .45 out of his shirt and just dropped it on the glass patio table with a clank.

Dad raised the locking bar, slid the big glass door open.

“You leave your kid outside to fend for himself?” Freddy said.

“My kid's no kid,” Dad said.

In my closet, I kicked Dabney's album cover out of view, and pants by shirt by sweater I unburied the huge photo of Dabney Stryker-Stewart mugging with JFK.

“What the hell, Son,” my father said. I dug a little more and pulled out Sylphide's thank-you note, showed Freddy, showed Pop.

“So there it is,” Dad said almost gleefully.

“
Th
ere nothing is,” Freddy said. And then he searched the house, Dad and I tagging after him, a half hour or more of his poking under our beds and behind our dressers, looking in every drawer, opening every suitcase and trunk in the attic, inspecting every closet and cabinet. He moved old furniture out of the way in the basement, opened every box down there. He made a slow circuit of the detached garage, even checked inside the car. And then he looked again—living room, bathrooms, dining room, back in the kitchen—no sign of whatever it was he wanted.

“
Th
at lady's a fruitcake,” my father said.

“She's no fruitcake, Nick,” Freddy said. “She's a distinguished person, and she is understandably upset.”
Th
en, sharp and sudden and precise, one quick hand, he grabbed my father's collar and pinched it tight. Warning me off with the other hand, he pulled Dad's face toward his till they were nose to nose. “Nick,” he said, “If you can help me here, you best. You're hearing me? Paintings.
Th
ree. Stolen from the Stryker-Stewart collection. Not your son's beautiful photograph up there, and you fucking well know it.
Th
e lady is beside herself.”

“What about us?” Dad said, half-heartedly pulling against Freddy's grip. “We're not beside ourself?”

“Why doesn't she just call the police?” I said helpfully. I reached and took Freddy's hand off Dad's collar, separated the two of them.

Freddy didn't protest. His point had been made.

We all stepped outside.
Th
e big goon was standing down by the Butt picking thorns from his face while the bloodied Chinese guy impassively looked on. Freddy turned his icy gaze upon me: “Lizard, young man, here's a little advice you'll want to hold on to as you and your dad here proceed through life:
Th
e police aren't always up to the job.”

I returned the cold stare, an advantage in height of half a foot or more, felt no particular threat, looked down on him till he turned away. And that minuscule triumph is the thing I still hold on to: I had become my father's protector.

Freddy picked up his gun, aimed it vaguely at Dad. “Your shoes,” he said.

“Oh, come on,” my father said.

But there was the gun—no one was kidding—and so my father sat in one of the patio chairs, his whole frame shaking. He wouldn't cooperate beyond that, and so with my own hands I unlaced his heavy work boots, pulled them off his sweaty feet. One at a time, Freddy accepted them, held them as he might a pair of dead animals, turned and ambled down the lawn.

3

I couldn't stop thinking about how my father had locked me out of the house.
Th
e only way to make it seem okay was if you considered that he already knew Freddy and knew I'd be all right with him. But that left a lot of unsettled questions, and here I was already pretty well unsettled. I wanted to talk with Kate—she'd have some answers—but when I called her college I got nothing but a ringing phone, or worse, her suitemate Ling-Ling Po, who apparently found calls from family deeply irritating and insignificant. “You again!” And it wasn't like I could trot over to the High Side and ask the dancer what was going on. Earth-deep pounding had come from there all night, the bass lines of an endless rock 'n' roll evening: so much for needy hugs in her kitchen.

Th
at Monday morning at school moved slow as snot down Linsey's lip unto lunchtime. And it didn't get better then, Jinnie and Jimp making out severely at the tables under the cafeteria's grand windows—the unofficial football section—lots of big, obvious laughs and smooches offered for my benefit, the rest of the team ignoring my entrance pointedly. I spotted Emily, but she ignored me, too, engrossed in conversation with an art boy named Mark Nussbaum, serious stuff. I got myself to math early to watch her arrive: not so much as a glance in my direction, whispering sleek skirt, homemade sweater, that fragrance of hers not from any perfumer.

Leaving school later, seated among a lot of younger kids on the Route Fifteen bus (no more football, no more daily practice, no more rides in the Jimpy-mobile—how the mighty had fallen!), I spied her by her car with someone. Him again, Nussbaum. I had them in my sights long enough to see him kiss her, all very sober, like communion at church. She put her hand on his face, said something ardent, drank from his lips.

When I got home, dejected, I found Mom blocking the stairs, same expression as when she found my Trojans back when Jinnie was mine.
Th
e condoms were still in my drawer because I never got to use them, truth be told.

“What does this mean!” Mom said, brandishing a silver-piped envelope, which she'd already ripped open.

I grabbed it away from her, tore it further, found a fragrant note on thick parchment, beautiful handwriting in rich fountain-pen bronze: Sylphide, telling me there was much to apologize for. Her frantic accusations were an embarrassment to everyone at the High Side. Very soon, she said, she'd make it up to me with an invitation.
Th
e paper smelled of her jasmine liniment, also sweat.
Th
e language of the note, however, smelled of Desmond, the hyperarticulate butler, or houseman, or whatever you were supposed to call him. I recognized his handwriting: blocky and formal, the kind you see on blueprints.

Mother breathed and pulled herself up. She was a formidable woman, all right. People often suggested that we were similar, but I never had her edge, the steely stare, the sharpness of features, the look of a falcon plummeting to a kill: “What
accusations
?”

My heart pounded in my throat. Dad and I had managed not to tell Mom the goon story.
Th
at was the way it worked in my family—cabals.

I attempted an end run, called up all my indignation: “What are you doing opening my mail?”

“I'm your mother, David Hochmeyer, and I'll open your mail when I see fit. Do not change the subject. Whose accusations?”

When you can't tell a little, tell it all, tell it at length, tell it so thoroughly you never get to the end: “You remember I mowed her lawn the other day?”

“I remember you didn't mow
ours.
”

A
FTER HER LONG
silence, almost a month since she'd left for college, a week after the incursion of the goons, Kate called collect during dinner. Dad refused charges and called her back, saving fifty precious cents.
Th
eir conversation was very brief, Dad mostly listening. Mom got on next, and after some initial bickering, she and Kate seemed to have a nice talk, Dad monitoring the call, three flips of the egg timer, nine whole minutes, note of discord at the end: Mom had asked Kate if she was seeing any boys. Kate didn't like questions like that. So, suddenly Mom was handing me the phone. I pulled it into the living room as far as I could on its wire, not far enough.

“It's good,” Kate said, no preamble. “It's like you become who you were supposed to be all along without all the static and interference. If you don't want to listen you don't have to listen.
Th
ere's no one to tell you to go to bed or wake up or eat lunch or iron your pleats, you know? I adore my English class, David. We write a paper every day. Every single day. And Greek philosophy—divine information, right?
Th
e stars are pinpricks in the outer shell of the universe. ‘Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?'
Th
e professor has us over to his house for dinner, he takes us to see movies. He's like my best friend here, I'm not kidding. And I've got tennis every morning. My coach sees things in the
minutest
detail. He's got me eating like crazy. I'm supposed to gain twenty-five pounds. It's ecstasy! Mexican food, right? It's all beans and rice and limes and hot peppers. Mom would shit! My coach, she's a health nut. ‘I eat to live.' And I'm lifting weights. I feel so fucking
solid.
You hit a thousand balls at a time, same shot over and over. You should see my serve! It's a whole different game, David, college sports.”

Our time was half used up. I didn't want to talk about football at Princeton, which is where she was leading, how football at Princeton was going to be harder than football at Staples. I said, “
Th
at guy Freddy was here from the High Side.”

Silence.
Th
en: “Yes, Daddy mentioned that.”

“Oh?” Dad had mentioned no such thing, not that I'd heard.

“What the fuck were you doing at the High Side, David?”

“Sylphide couldn't light the stove.”

“She couldn't light a Mobil station.”

“I don't know. I like her.”

“I've got news for you, brother, the whole world likes her.”

“
Th
ey took Dad's work boots.”

“Oh, Daddy and his work boots. Like he's Paul Bunyan. Listen, you fucker. Don't go over there any more.”

“Katy,” I whispered. “Tell me what's going on.”

“
Th
at's three minutes,” Dad said.

“You ask Daddy what's going on,” Kate said.

Dad started to pull on the phone cord, slowly increasing the pressure. Quickly, I said, “I've got tickets for the Yale–Princeton game. Want to come?”

“Don't you have any friends to invite?”

“I want
you,
” I said.

“
Th
ree minutes,” Dad said again.

“Fine,” said Kate. “Just don't bring Mom. And nothing's going on.”

M
Y MOTHER WATCHED
from the car as I trudged up the grand stone steps to the High Side doors carrying President Kennedy and Dabney wrapped in string and brown paper. Mortified, I pulled a braided golden cord, heard a church's worth of bells and gongs. At length, the little tottering butler answered the door.

“Ah, Caliban,” he said, craning to take me in, sniffing the air around me.

“Ariel,” I said, looking down upon him.

He nodded approval: I knew my Shakespeare. He'd basically called me a monster and I him a fairy, both true enough, no great judgment implied. Behind him, deep in the High Side bowels, I could hear lush piano music, and someone counting over it.

I said, “My mom says I have to return this picture.”

He gazed into my eyes dreamily. “Your mom,” he said.

“Says I have to return this picture?”

He accepted the package, bid me wait, padded with it off across the great foyer, disappeared down a hallway.

Th
e piano music abruptly stopped.

Th
en he was back. “Madame says she has not missed that photo, and will not, but would like in any case to replace it with something more to your liking.” And he presented me with a teak case all fitted in brass, Dabney's initials inlaid delicately on the lid, opened it ceremoniously to reveal a pair of gorgeous old binoculars, polished, shining, clearly beloved.

“Swarovski,” said the butler, “Crystal lenses, clear as night. Mr. Stryker-Stewart was a birdwatcher there for a week or two, one of his finer
enthusiasms.
We purchased these in Austria, as I recall.
Th
ousands of dollars, you'll be happy to know.
Th
ey've not been used.” He shut the fine case and handed it over, peering into the open neck of my shirt, a blush coming to his cheeks. Soulfully, the piano music resumed, then the counting.

“Whoa,” I said, weighing the wooden case in my hands.

Desmond nodded, let his gaze aspire to mine. Why couldn't Emily look at me like that? “Madame invites you to tea next Wednesday, guest of your choosing. You'll attend?”

“Oh, I couldn't,” I said.

“
Th
en the answer is yes,” he replied, finding my collarbone again. His voice went timid: “Sir, if you don't mind. Could you. Strictly as a matter of scientific interest. Would you. Make a muscle for me?”

Jinnie had forever been asking me to make muscles for her. And I'd made a few for the mirror, truth be told. I was a kid who'd worked out for years, did my pushups a hundred at a time several times a day at any odd moment the spirit moved me, one arm, fingertips, handstand, you name it: pushups. I didn't want to encourage Desmond, but seeing an advantage, said, “Tell me first why Freddy took my father's work boots.”

His eyes drifted to my hair, traced its new length. Absently, he said, “Work boots? I know nothing about Freddy's activities. And nothing about Nicholas.”

“How do you know his name, then?”

“
Th
rough Katy of course. Now, a muscle?”

I rolled my T-shirt sleeve up over my shoulder, made a show of flexing, pumped the heavy binocular box like it was a dumbbell, turned my arm this way and that.

“May I?” he said.

“My dad,” I said.

“He is not welcome here,” Desmond said quickly, “neither in person nor in conversation,” and reached up sighing to take his prize.

But I withheld it, evaded his pinching fingers, pushed my way out through the heavy doors, vaulted down the steps to my mother, realizing too late that I should've hidden the binoculars.

“Something a boy likes,” I said, opening the case at her command.

She just shrugged. Binoculars were not President Kennedy; binoculars were fine.

I
WAITED FOR
an opening to ask Emily to tea at the High Side, blurted it at lunch, stupidly in front of Mark Nussbaum. He said no for her, proprietary, the three of us sitting all awkward at their lunch table. Emily didn't protest, let him speak for her as if she weren't one of the most forceful, independent girls in school. From her brightening I could tell she wanted to go—dearly wanted to meet Sylphide. But she and Mark must have had some kind of plan: neither of them was in school on the big day, no explanation.

So much for my fantasy date.

My actual date was lurking in the driveway when I moped my way off the school bus and down our little absurd cul-de-sac. Mom had gotten her hair done—horrors—it stood up on her head spiraled and shining like some kind of blond vase. Upstairs, the model warplanes of younger days turned on their threads over my bed. I put on a church shirt, plain white (bought by the half dozen from the Big Man shop in Bridgeport: collar twenty-two inches, sleeves thirty-eight), tied my church tie around my neck (extra long), patted the dust off my custom blue jeans (waist 38, inseam 46). I reached under a blanket box, pulled out Dabney's
Dancer
album, propped the thing between doorknob and molding, gazed lovingly. If you did the math—and I had—Sylphide had been nineteen or twenty when that photo was taken.
Th
at sprite dashing off into the woods! Barely older than Emily! I opened my pants, pulled at my suddenly leaping penis, special attention to Sylphide's streaming hair, the small of her back, her rump fantastical in veils of mist. I grew tremulous in seconds. My mother said my name in the hallway—otherwise she would have caught me—said my name and burst into the room as I turned my back on her and the great ballerina and tucked myself in even while ejaculating.

“Dog
gone
it!” Mom said, highest ire.

“All ready,” I said, semen dripping copiously into my underwear.