Lunar Park (17 page)

And then talk turned to Buckley, which was really the only reason the four couples were sitting at the round table below the dimmed lights in the austere and barren dining room in the Allen home—all of our kids attended the school. We were reminded that it was parent/teacher night tomorrow, and would we be there? Oh yes, Jayne and I assured the table, we would. (I shuddered at what the consequences would have been if I had said, “Under no circumstances are we attending the Buckley parent/teacher thing.”) The conversation leaned toward the shallow endowment, the deep denial, the value distinctions, the grand connections, that large donation, the right circumstances—big and personal topics that demanded specifics and examples but there was just enough anonymity hovering over them to make everyone feel comfortable. I had never been to a dinner party where all talk revolved around children and since I was basically the new dad I couldn’t grasp the emotional undertow and anxiety pulsing below the casual chatter—and there was something off about the obsession with their children that bordered on the fanatical. It wasn’t that they weren’t concerned about their kids, but they wanted something back, they wanted a return on their investment—this need was almost religious. It was exhausting to listen to and it was all so corrupt because it wasn’t making for happier children. What happened to just wanting your kids to be content and cool? What happened to telling them the world sucks? What happened to getting slapped around a little? These parents were scientists and were no longer raising their kids instinctually—everyone had read a book or watched a video or skimmed the Net to figure out what to do. I actually heard the word “portal” used as a metaphor for “nursery school” (courtesy of Sheila Huntington) and there were five-year-olds with bodyguards (Adam Gardner’s daughter). There were kids experiencing dizzy spells due to the pressure of elementary school and who were in alternative therapies, and there were ten-year-old boys with eating disorders caused by unrealistic body images. There were waiting lists filled with the names of nine-year-olds for acupuncture sessions with Dr. Wolper. I found out that one of the children in Robby’s class had drunk a small bottle of Clorox. And then it was: cutting the pasta from the school lunch program, and the nutritionist who catered the bar mitzvah, and the Pilates class for two-year-olds, the sixth-grader who needed the sports bra, the little boy who tugged at his mother in the upscale supermarket and asked, “Does this have carbs in it?” A conversation began about the connection between wheezing and dairy products. After that: a bogus debate about echinacea. The concussions, the snakebite, the neck brace, the need for bulletproof classroom windows—it all kept coming, things that to me seemed futuristic and pointless and hollow. But Jayne was nodding in agreement and listening thoughtfully and making helpful comments and I suddenly realized that the more famous Jayne became—and the more people expected from her—the more she seemed like a politician. When Nadine gripped my arm and asked me what my feelings were about a topic I hadn’t been following I offered vague generalities about the despair in book publishing. When this didn’t get any kind of reaction from the table, I understood then that what I wanted was to be accepted. So why wasn’t I volunteering at computer classes? Why wasn’t I coaching the tennis team? Nadine saved me by mentioning the hopeful rumor that one of the missing boys had been spotted on Cape Cod, before excusing herself from the table to check on Ashton again—which she did, by my count, seven times during that dinner. I started reaching for the sangria with a frequency that caused Jayne to move the pitcher away from me after I had filled my glass to its rim. “But what will happen when my drink needs replenishing?” I asked in a robot’s voice and everyone laughed, though I wasn’t aware I had made a joke. I kept glancing over at Mitchell, who was staring at Jayne with his dull carnal gaze while she uselessly explained something to him, his only response a constant panting. It took three hours for dinner to complete itself.

The women cleared the table and went into the kitchen to prepare dessert while the men sauntered outside to the pool area to smoke cigars, but Mark Huntington had brought four prerolled joints, and before I realized what was happening we started lighting up. I wasn’t a pot fan but I was surprised at and grateful for its arrival: it was going to take forever to get through the rest of the evening—the sorbet with fresh fruit and the lingering goodbyes and the dreary promises of another dinner—and without getting stoned, falling into bed seemed impossibly distant. After the first toke I collapsed onto one of the chaise longues that were set in some particular and artful arrangement around the large yard, which unlike ours sat off to the side of the house instead of the back, and the night was dark and warm and the light from the pool shadowed the men’s features in a ghostly phosphorous blue. From where I was slumped on the chaise I was facing the side of our house, and while taking deep drags off the joint I squinted my eyes and studied it. I could see through the French doors into the media room, where Robby was still lying on the floor in front of the TV and Sarah was still sitting on Wendy’s lap as the babysitter read her the story about those stranded boys on that lost island, and above them was the darkened master bedroom. And surrounding everything was the great peeling wall. Yesterday morning, up close, the patches on the wall hadn’t seemed as large as they looked from this angle. The entire wall was now almost entirely covered with pink stucco, with only small patches of the original lily white paint remaining. A new wall had been uncovered—it had
taken over
—and this was alarming enough to spread a chill through me (because it was a warning of some kind, right?) and after I was handed another joint and took a heavy toke, I hazily thought,
How . . . strange . . .
and then my thoughts drifted away to Aimee Light and I felt a faint pang of lust followed by disappointment, the usual combo. The silhouettes of the women could be seen in the kitchen and their voices, distant and muffled, were a gentle backdrop to the men’s conversation. The men were trim with flat stomachs, their hair expensively colored, their faces smooth and unlined, so none of us looked our age, which I supposed, while yawning on the chaise, was a good thing. We were all a little detached and had a tendency to snicker, and I really didn’t know any of them—everyone was still a brief first impression. I was looking at a weather vane on the Allens’ roof when Mitchell asked me with an actual aura of concern and not the overlay of malice I had braced myself for, “So what brought you out to this part of the world, Bret?” I was drowsy and scanning the dark field behind our neighbors’ house.

I aimed for the right note of detachment, and snickered. “Well, she read too many magazine articles about how children raised in fatherless homes are more likely to become adolescent delinquents. And voilà. Here I am.” I sighed and had another toke. An enormous cloud was billowing across the moon. There were no stars.

A chorus of grim chuckles were followed by even more snickering. And then it was back to the children.

“So he’s taking methylphenidate”—Adam pronounced it effortlessly—“even though it really hasn’t been approved for kids under six,” and then he went on about Hanson’s and Kane’s attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, which naturally led the conversation to the 7.5 milligrams of Ritalin administered three times a day, and the pediatrician who discouraged having a television set in the kid’s bedroom, and
Monsters, Inc.
—so old school—and Mark Huntington had hired an essay writer for his son, who’d pleaded with him that he didn’t need one. And then the talk turned to the missing boys, a lunatic, a recent bombing in New Orleans, another pile of corpses, a group of tourists machine-gunned outside the Bellagio in Vegas. The marijuana—which was pretty strong—had turned our speech into thick parodies of drug talk.

“Have you ever tried the deaf-daddy routine?”

I wasn’t asked this, but I sat up, intrigued, and said, “No, what is it?”

“When he starts whining just pretend you don’t understand what he’s saying.” This was Mitchell.

“What happens?”

“He gets so annoyed he simply gives up.”

“How many hours did you spend on Google to get that info, Mitch?”

“It sounds excruciating,” Adam sighed. “Why not just give him what he wants?”

“I’ve tried that. It does not work, my friend.”

“Why not?” someone asked, even though we all knew the answer.

“Because they always want more” was Mark Huntington’s response.

“Hell,” Mitchell said with a shrug, inhaling, “they’re my kids.”

“We play hide-and-get-lost,” Adam Gardner said after a long silence. He was also sprawled on a chaise, his arms crossed, staring up at the starless sky.

“How do you play that?”

“Kane is ‘it’ and has to count to a hundred and seventy.”

“And then?”

“I drive over to the Loew’s Multiplex and catch a matinee.”

“Does he care?” Adam was asked. “I mean—that he can’t find you?”

Gardner shrugged. “Probably not. Just goes and sits in front of the computer. Stares into that damn thing all day long.” Gardner pondered something. “Eventually he finds me.”

“It’s a whole different world,” Huntington murmured. “They’ve developed an entirely new set of skills that sets us way apart.”

“They know how to handle visual information.” Gardner shrugged. “Big fucking deal. I, for one, am not impressed.”

“They have no idea how to put things in context,” Huntington again murmured, spacing out as he took another hit off a fresh joint. We still had two going now and everyone was toasted.

“They’re fragment junkies.”

“But they’re more technologically advanced than us.” Mitchell said this, but I couldn’t tell from his flat and detached tone if he was arguing with Mark.

“It’s called disruptive technology.”

I could suddenly hear Victor barking from our yard.

“Mimi doesn’t want Hanson playing Doom anymore.”

“Why not?” someone asked.

“She says it’s a game the U.S. military uses to train soldiers.” A deep sigh.

The only thing separating our property from the Allens’ was a low row of hedges, yet the houses were spaced so widely apart that any complaints about a lack of privacy were irrelevant. I could still see the children in the media room but my gaze traveled upward, and the lights in the master bedroom were now on. I double-checked, but Wendy was still sitting in the chair, holding Sarah.

Again I thought,
How . . . strange . . .
but this time the thought was laced with a low-level panic.

I was sure the lights in the master bedroom hadn’t been on before. Or had I just noticed this? I couldn’t remember.

I refocused on the house, glancing first at the media room, but then a shadow behind the window in the master bedroom caught my attention.

Just as suddenly, it was gone.

“Look, I’m not exactly a strict disciplinarian,” one of the fathers intoned, “but I make sure he takes responsibility for his mistakes.”

I shifted restlessly on the chaise, still peering at the second floor.

There was no movement. The lights were still on but there were no more shadows.

I relaxed slightly and was about to rejoin the conversation when a silhouette darted past the window. And then it reappeared, just a shadow, crouched down as if it didn’t want to be seen.

I couldn’t make out who it was, but it had the shape of a man, and it was wearing what looked like a suit.

And then it disappeared again.

Involuntarily, I looked back at Robby and the babysitter and Sarah.

But maybe it wasn’t a man, I automatically thought. Maybe it was Jayne.

Confused, I sat up and craned my neck to look behind me into the Allens’ kitchen, where Nadine and Sheila were filling bowls with raspberries and Jayne was standing at the counter pointing out something in a magazine to Mimi Gardner, both of them laughing.

I slowly reached for the cell phone in the pocket of my slacks and I hit speed dial.

I saw the exact moment that Wendy’s head bobbed up from the book she was reading to Sarah, and she carried her to the cordless phone hanging near the pool table. Wendy waited for whoever it was to leave a message.

The silhouette appeared again. It was now framed by the window and simply standing there.

It had stopped moving when it heard the phone ringing.

“Wendy, it’s Mr. Ellis, pick up,” I said into the machine.

Wendy immediately lifted the receiver to her ear, balancing Sarah in her arm.

“Hello?” she asked.

The silhouette was staring into the Allens’ yard.

“Wendy, do you have a friend over?” I asked as carefully as possible.

I swung a leg—it was tingling—off the chaise and looked back down into the media room, at the three of them there, oblivious to whoever was upstairs.

“No,” Wendy said, looking around. “No one’s here but us.”

I now stood up and was moving unsteadily toward the house, the ground wobbling beneath me. “Wendy, just get the kids out of there, okay?” I said calmly.

The silhouette continued to stand in front of the window, backlit, featureless.

I ignored the inquiries from the men behind me as to where I was going and walked along the side of the Allens’ house and unlatched a gate, and then I was on the sidewalk, where I still had a view of the second-story window through the newly planted elms that lined Elsinore Lane.

As I got closer to the house I suddenly noticed the cream-colored 450 SL parked out front at the curb.

And that’s when I saw the license plate.

“Mr. Ellis, what do you mean?” Wendy was asking me. “Get the kids out of the house? What’s wrong?”

At that instant, as if it had been listening, the silhouette turned from the window and disappeared.

I froze, unable to speak, then moved up the stone path toward the front door.

“Wendy, I’m outside the front door,” I said calmly. “Get the kids outside, now. Do it now.”

Victor kept barking from somewhere out back, and then the barks turned to howls.

I started knocking on the door rapidly until it became pounding.