Sparta (28 page)

“Finally the broker called to us to come in. Inside was a young couple standing side by side in the hall. They were furious. Especially her. We said hello, and then they stood there glaring while we walked through the house. It had just been neatened up. It didn't feel really clean. You had a sense of things stuffed under the sofa, jammed under the mattress, crammed into closets. I didn't dare open any doors; I thought everything would fall out on top of me.”

The male in the passenger seat was using a cell phone. He was talking into it and staring straight at Conrad. The white car was coming up fast, closing the gap.

“You could feel the tension radiating from them. Each time we went past the hall, they were standing there, arms crossed, not speaking. I thought they'd just had a fight about the house. They kept cleaning it up to be shown, and then people didn't take it. It would be so insulting.”

The silver car in the middle lane was driving erratically, but Conrad thought that if he shifted suddenly into its lane, the car would drop back. There was no other way. Then he could slide over into the far-right lane, drop back himself, and slow down, leaving the white car trapped in the far-left lane.

“I kept saying, ‘Oh, how interesting,' about everything,” said Lydia. “The place was pretty awful, actually, full of cheap, trendy furniture. These awful swagged curtains. The woman was furious, her eyes all squinted up.” Lydia squinted her own eyes. “She wouldn't look at her husband.”

The white sedan drew closer, right behind him. Conrad watched it in the mirror. The two men were staring straight at Conrad. When they were ten meters away, without warning Conrad swerved abruptly into the middle lane, nosing in front of the wobbling silver sedan. It shifted wildly into the right-hand lane, nearly hitting a car in it, then veered back into the middle lane, barely under control. Conrad swerved over again into the slow lane, shoving between a green car and a pickup truck. The silver car blared its horn furiously, and the pickup truck, now behind him, did the same. Conrad straightened, speeding up, then slowing, so the driver in the pickup truck could calm down.

“Conrad!”
Lydia leaned forward, grabbing the dashboard.

He said nothing, watching the rearview mirror, checking the road ahead, and watching the white sedan. Still in the fast lane, it kept going, behind the black SUV. Conrad watched it move out of sight. Up ahead was an overpass; he focused on that.

“Conrad, what is it?” Lydia said. “Seriously, don't do that.”

“Sorry,” he said.

He was only partly here with his mother. He felt her sitting there in in her batik-print shirt, her wrinkled green pants. She was real, and he knew that what she was saying was real, but at the same time he was in another real place, where cars on the road were deadly risks, carrying this threat: the exploding bloom of darkness. The two places were not connected.

“Conrad,” Lydia said. “I mean it. Please let me drive if you have to do things like that. This is dangerous.”

He said nothing, watching the cars around them.

“Con, can we talk about this?”

His chest tightened. Talking about it was the thing he would not do. What he kept inside him was the real thing, the world he knew, carried inside his chest. Letting it out was the risk. He wouldn't talk about this, couldn't tell his mother about the suicide bombers in the small white sedans, couldn't tell her about cell phones used as detonators, couldn't tell her about IEDs thrown from overpasses. The words would make no sense here. There was no way between the worlds.

Conrad drove ahead without answering. The white car had gone on, vanishing into the long line of cars. When he saw a rest stop, he pulled off the road.

“I want to stretch a bit, Ma. You want to drive?” he said.

“Happy to,” Lydia said.

She got out of the car and stood on the pavement in the sun, smoothing her hair with both hands. Conrad went into the bushes to pee, and she climbed into the driver's seat. She put her hands on the steering wheel and flexed them, opening and closing her fingers. She'd been clenching them hard against the dashboard. She turned around to look at Murphy.

“How are you doing, my gorgeous girl?” she asked. Murphy was crouched and motionless, her pupils enormous and black. She stared back at Lydia.

“You thought that was kind of scary,” Lydia said to her. “I know. I thought so, too.”

 

14

The house and barn both faced the road, but from different places on the hillside. The barn was low, and close to the road. The house was farther back, and up the hill.

The house was eighteenth-century, small and weather-beaten. On the front, the house was only one story high, though up under the roof peak, it rose to two. The shingled sides had once been white, but the paint was peeling off and turning the walls to a shimmering gray. The lawn sloped from the house toward the barn. At the bottom was a stone retaining wall, holding back the hillside. In a gap were three wide stone steps and a rickety wooden railing.

Conrad pulled the car up before the barn. The big doors were open onto the shadowy dimness. Against the far wall squatted an ancient icebox; the wooden swoop of a scythe hung beside it. The rope swing was looped up to one side.

“Here we are,” he said. “Everything looks the same.”

“It always does,” Lydia said. “I don't think they've done a thing to it in twenty years. Which is kind of why I love it.”

Marshall's car was beside them, doors open, the back half full of bags. Lydia got out and opened the back door.

“How are you, my beauty?” she crooned to Murphy. “We're here, it's over.”

Conrad opened the rear door to the solid mass of bags.

Lydia said, “I'm going to take Murph up to the house, then I'll be back to help.”

“Don't worry about it,” he said. “I've got this.”

He loaded himself up, suitcase in one hand, canvas bags in the other, and headed to the house at a rapid jog. His body knew this—the three stone steps, the slope of the lawn going up to the house.

No one used the front door. It was old and solid, with a heavy brass knocker. It faced the road, but everyone came in through the side door, which opened into the kitchen. That door was relatively new, with a glass panel and a modern lock: the kitchen and the bathroom had been added in the twenties or thirties, when plumbing and electricity came in. An outside shower was on the wall beyond the door.

As he approached the house, Jenny appeared. She held the door open.

“Welcome.” She made a sweeping gesture.

“Glad to be here,” Conrad said.

The kitchen was long and meandering. In the center stood a square wooden table with a linoleum top; on the far wall was the sink, overlooking the back deck. The stove stood against the back wall; above it was a row of blue-and-white porcelain jars, labeled in French:
RIZ, SUCRE, THÉ, CAFÉ
. The smells were familiar: old dry wood, sun, a faint hint of kerosene.

The kitchen was cluttered. Bags of food stood on the counter, suitcases clustered on the floor. Marshall was looking for lightbulbs, Lydia was unpacking food. Conrad unloaded the car, and then picked up his duffel bag from under the table. He started up to his room.

As he left, Lydia called, “Con, why don't you take the blue room this year, instead of sharing with Ollie?”

Conrad had reached the living room and paused. “The guest room?”

“Well, yes.” Lydia sounded self-conscious.

Of course he got it. The guest room had a double bed, and Claire was coming up the next weekend. But the family rule had always been no cohabitation at home.

“Okay,” Conrad called back. He climbed the steep staircase slowly; the steps were so narrow he had to turn his feet sideways. This was cool, but wasn't it a little weird to have your mother publicly enable your sex life?

The guest room was off the upstairs landing. The walls were a faded blue. The room was bright with sun: a big double window faced the meadow; a dormer looked over the back. The double bed faced the window; a bureau next to it. Spindle-backed chairs stood against the walls. Filmy white curtains hung at the windows. Clean and spare, the room smelled of old plaster and wood, baking heat, and summer.

Ollie appeared in the doorway.

“You're in here? How come?”

They had always shared the room at the other end of the hall, overlooking the barn. It was long and narrow, with sloping walls, stretching from the front to the back of the house. Jenny had the middle room.

“Mom told me to take this. Claire's coming up.” Conrad waggled his eyebrows.

Ollie visibly considered making a joke about sex with Claire, then decided against it.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Mom's lifted the ban,” Conrad said. “I guess she thinks twenty-six is the age of consent.”

“The ban?”

“On us sharing rooms with our girlfriends. Or boyfriends.”

“Oh, that. She lifted it a while ago. After Jenny got out of college. Mom said she felt stupid. She gave us a lecture on taking responsibility, but she lifted the ban.”

“She
did?
She lifted it and I
missed
it?” asked Conrad. “I can't believe that.”

“You've been away, man,” Ollie said. “You missed a lot.”

“You brought girlfriends home to sleep in
your room
?”

Ollie's room was famous; Lydia called it the Boar's Den.

“Actually, no,” Ollie admitted. “It would be kind of weird.”

“Don't know why,” said Conrad. “It's Seduction City in there, all those lacrosse sticks and baseball mitts and old athletic socks. All your electronic crap.”

“Yeah,” Ollie said. “What I thought.”

“Shit. I can't believe I missed out on that,” said Conrad again.

“Well, you did. But now you're catching up, and I don't know what I'm going to do with all that empty space,” said Ollie. “It'll be a big stadium in there with just one person.”

“Why don't you just leave your shit all over the place?” suggested Conrad. “Strew stuff around. Filth the place up. That'll make it homey.”

“I know what I can do,” Ollie said, and jiggled his eyebrows.

He went on down the hall.

Conrad moved to the window. He could see the water tower at the far side of the meadow, a blue-gray cylinder with its slanting hat. The meadow was dry and pale: it was August. The grass shifted mildly in the wind. It made a dry rustling sound.

Beneath him was his parents' bedroom. They were unpacking, and the murmur of their voices came up through the floor: there had been no insulation in the eighteenth century. He wondered who'd built this little farmhouse, the barn with its wooden floor, its narrow haylofts. The one stall. Horse or cow? Ox? Farming here must have been hard: sandy soil, long, brutal winters, the only heat from the fireplaces downstairs.

He started unpacking. The floor creaked as he walked back and forth, the soft pine yielding under his weight. He wondered if his parents would hear him when he did push-ups and crunches. Mountain climbers. Had sex with Claire.

*   *   *

The whole point of the Cape was the beach.

They set off in the morning and stayed for the day, coming back salty and sandy, sun-stunned, silent. There were several beaches to choose from: the closest was West Dennis, sheltered and south-facing, with mild surf. Nauset was distant and more challenging, set on the eastern edge of the Cape, on the Atlantic. Huge pounding waves rolled straight in from the ocean.

The day after their arrival the Farrells went to West Dennis, with its flat shoreline and low waves. When they got there, the big parking lot was nearly full, and they had to park in the farthest line of spaces. They carried their things in over the dunes, walking slowly across the hot sand.

The beach was dotted with encampments. Each family claimed its territory, setting up umbrellas and flinging down towels. Small children sat with buckets and pails, building structurally unsound castles. The Farrells walked past the crowds, farther up the beach to a stretch that was relatively empty. Ollie went first, carrying the furled umbrella. He reached an open area and turned to the others.

“Okay?” he called.

Marshall waved; Lydia shouted,
“Yes!”

Ollie drove the stake end of the umbrella deep into the sand with a swift, triumphant stroke, as though he were claiming the continent for the queen. When the others reached him, he was cranking the creaking handle, spreading the faded green-and-white-striped cloth in tiny jerks, making shade. Jenny set down the aluminum beach chairs and began to struggle with their rusted joints. “Owie, owie, owie,” she whispered, her feet scalded by the hot sand. They set about establishing their own colony, spreading out the faded towels, getting out drinks and books, hats and sunscreen.

When they were settled, Ollie pulled off his T-shirt.

“Hi-yah!” he yelled, and ran toward the water. He exploded into the flat green surge, kicking up droplets of flying white foam. He ran deeper, the water slowing his strides. Waist-deep, he made a low, wallowing dive, plunging into the surf. Coming up, he turned to the others, now gleaming, water cascading down his face. “Come on!” he yelled.

Lydia and Marshall stayed, but the others followed, splashing into the cold green soup of the Atlantic. Jenny ran straight in with a thundering rush, her arms raised, kicking her feet high and wide. Conrad ran behind her, blinking against the spray. He felt exposed out here. He struggled through the knee-deep water, plowing into it. As soon as he could, he dove.

He swam underwater, moving away from the others. He kicked hard, pulling himself through the water with big strokes, sliding through the green underworld until he was alone. He came up to breathe and went back down. He kicked, slowed and drifted, stopped. Hanging motionless, he felt himself rocked, felt the movement of the waves overhead. Below him the light shattered, flickering into soft trapezoids on the sandy bottom. An underwater plant, deep neon green in the murky light, shifted in the rocking current, its long tendrils loose and weightless. Shafts of light slanted through the aqueous dusk. He kicked on and on, moving through the silent weed caverns, leaving everything behind. He surfaced to breathe, gasping for a moment and filling his lungs, then plunged down again, immersing himself in something larger than him, something vast and unknowable, an element more intense but more forgiving than air. This was what he needed, this deep green silence.