The Broom of the System (22 page)

ROBERT GERBER: Here it is.

PATRICE LAVACHE: But that’s a Lone Ranger decoder ring!

ROBERT GERBER: Surprise!

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: Where is the monstrously expensive ring I’ve purchased?

ROBERT GERBER: I lost my head. I gave it to Paquita, to my little Amazon flower. A madness, last night, in the fulgent bath of the Midwestern moon. The night air, spring in Cleveland. And she in return ... oh Paquita, my little Amazon flower!

MR. LAVACHE: So that’s where that came from.

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN in: This is beyond unforgivable.

ROBERT GERBER: “O, first she gave me whiskey, then she gave me grass...”

MRS. LENORE BEADSMAN: God damn it.

MINISTER: Ahem. Most dearly beloved, we are ... sight of God ... union, spiritual ... speak now or ...

Miss LaVache ... lovely vows ... commit ...

Mr. Beadsman ... forever ...?

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: Of course I do.

MINISTER: I now pronounce you man and wife. You may kiss the bride.

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: Come here, Patrice. Are you ready to be kissed?

PATRICE BEADSMAN: Yes.

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: Good.

ROBERT GERBER: Yay!

MRS. LENORE BEADSMAN: About time.

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: We’re going to be late for the reception. Please go to the car immediately, Patrice.

ROBERT GERBER: Hell of a deal, guy. Congratulations.

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: You bastard. You wore a panty to my wedding, and I had to use a ring out of a box of Ralston. I’ll get even with you in corporate struggle.

ROBERT GERBER: Oh, yeah?

STONECIPHER BEADSMAN III: Damn fine ceremony, Father. Rewards will accrue. I must go. Goodbye, everyone!

EVERYONE: Goodbye!

MRS. LENORE BEADSMAN: Officious little pissant.

“... that at this point who Bloomfield chooses to spend his time with is of less than no concern to me. Bloemker. Dolls might be the very best thing for him, nervous little moth of a man, always scratching at his beard, makes me itchy. Obstat, sit down, you’re getting on my nerves. Other item, yes. Disturbing, too, so brace. Your brother is apparently temporarily missing. John. John is, missing, in Chicago. Just wait. What would have been the point of telling you right away? It would have served no purpose. I found out just this morning, just two hours ago. Beal called me from Chicago. Seems there was a lecture John had wanted to go to, so he called a taxi from his office. A friend talked to him immediately before he called the taxi, but that’s the last.... No, not at the lecture. Apparently not seen since. Now, really. I am inclined to think John simply elected to drop out of sight for a while. He’s dropped before, God knows. Holiday Inn, anywhere, what difference would it make? I could call Steve Holiday, yes, but that’s not the point, that was just an example. Calm down. I’m also inclined to suspect that it is not impossible that John is somehow privy to, maybe even involved in, Gramma Lenore’s whole little adventure. No, not really. But he’s always been against the Company, we both know that, and there was the constant doting. His sentiments, her sentiments. It’s not inconceivable. No, I called Wisconsin, not a peep, and your mother is in a not-well period right now. Even more not-well. No, but just not in a position to be useful to anyone. So wait. What could I do? I’m prepared to give him a few weeks, and if he still hasn’t turned up, at least to teach his classes, to begin worrying in earnest. Yes, his colleagues did call the police. No, I’ve not called Clarice, who knows which of her ... places she’s at today. I did call Al in here, and I told Al, and he’ll tell Clarice. Alvin is part of the family, too, Lenore. Stonecipher is not reachable, as I’ve said. Stonecipher, no doubt following your personal lead, has opted not to have a telephone. The best and brightest of my children cannot be reached by me. Interpret that in whatever way you wish. Obstat, if you want another nut, take one, do not play with the jar. Go see Clarice if you wish; obviously your sister can be seen by you. Discuss whatever you wish. No? I’m ignoring everything you imply. Go to her. I am also now going to ask you for a favor. Go to Stonecipher and speak to him and see if he has been communicated with in any way. By either of them. Very possibly, I think. You’ll have to see him personally. It’s now become clear that he represents the future of the family, of the Company, that it is he on whom the mantle of power and control will devolve. Gramma Lenore knows this, she has been a witness to, if not even more likely a cause of, John’s default and then your default. All the tests for nothing. No, I never see irony, Lenore. Irony is a meaningless word to me. The point here is that Stonecipher must and will know that he is connected to this family, which is to say the Company. Not at all. Go, see him, autumn in New England. Take a vacation from your vacation, some time off from your time off. Tell him what obtains here, including the story of Gramma Lenore, et cetera, and be told of any and all involvement on his part. No. That’s ridiculous. You cannot possibly be fired for taking one or two days off for a family emergency. Who? Peahen? No. I am prepared to allow you, to insist that you take the Company jet, to minimize the time factor. A friend could be taken along. You see what you can do. In the next three or four days. Yes. I am prepared to wait and do more or less ... nothing. My worry is present but manageable. Do this for me. Help the family, Lenore. See what you can do about getting off. Obstat, perhaps you’d better be getting back to the lab. I ... heavens, I have a tennis date. Did you bus over? I more than understand. I’ve always hated your car, as you should recall vividly. Did I or did I not try to give you a car? But no. Let Foamwhistle drive you back. Oh come now ... Foamwhistle, come in here at once. Think about what I’ve said. Please be in touch. Foamwhistle, drive Lenore to Erieview Plaza. Pardon me? What do you mean Pupik refuses to be in the same room with Goggins? Get me Pupik. You two may go free. Please call me soon. Hello, Pupik?”

The reason Lenore Beadsman’s red toy car had a spidery network of scratches in the paint on the right side was that by the driveway of the home of Alvin and Clarice Spaniard, in Cleveland Heights, lived a large, hostile brown shrub, bristling with really thorny branches. The bush hung out practically halfway across the drive, and scratched hell out of whatever or whoever came up. “Scritch,” was the noise Lenore heard as the thorns squeaked in their metal grooves in the side of her car, or rather “Scriiiiitch,” a sound like fingernails on aluminum siding, a tooth-shiver for Lenore.

The only other thing even remotely irritating about the Spaniard home was the fact that the front doorknob was right in the middle of the door, rather than over on the right or left side, where door-knobs really should be, and so the door never seemed to swing open so much as just fall back, when someone opened it. There was also the very incidental fact that the house had a funny smell about it, on the inside, as if something not quite right were growing on the underside of some of the carpets in some of the rooms.

But it was on the whole a very nice home, a two-story brick home with a huge elaborate antenna on the roof, a home in which lived Alvin Spaniard, Clarice Spaniard, Stonecipher Spaniard, and Spatula Spaniard (the latter named for Ruth Spatula Spaniard, Alvin Spaniard’s mother).

Alvin Spaniard, Vice President of Advertising in Charge of Gauging Product-Perception, Stonecipheco Baby Food Products, opened the door to Lenore’s ring and stepped nimbly aside as the door seemed to fall back at him, and asked Lenore in, calling to Clarice and the kids that Lenore was here. Alvin immediately offered Lenore gin.

“No thank you,” Lenore said. “Gin makes me cough.”

Alvin Spaniard liked gin a lot. Lenore asked for a seltzer-and-lime. “You do know it’s family theater night,” Alvin said quietly as they moved in the direction of the living room.

“Clarice told me on the phone. I really need to talk to her, though. I sort of hoped I could grab her during intermission or something.”

In the living room, under hanging Mexican Aztec woven tapestries featuring suns and bird-gods with their heads at angles inappropriate with respect to their necks, Stonecipher, who was five, and Spatula, who was four, were playing Chutes and Ladders with Clarice, who was twenty-six, and who was only ostensibly playing Chutes and Ladders, while really watching an Olympic recap on television, in preparation for family theater, with a gin-and-tonic. It was quarter of eight.

“Hey guys, here’s Aunt Lenore to play Chutes and Ladders with you;” said Clarice. She winked at Lenore.

“Super,” said Lenore.

Chutes and Ladders was perhaps the most sadistic board game ever invented. Adults loathed the game; children loved it. The universe thus dictated that an adult invariably got snookered into playing the game with a child. Certain rolls of the dice entitled you to certain movements on the board, some of which movements entitled you to move up ladders toward the base of the golden ladder at the top of the board (the climbing of which ladder represented the ultimate telos and reward-in-itself of the whole game). Moving up ladders was desirable because it saved time and spins and tiresome movements on the board, square by square. Except there were chutes. Certain rolls of the dice got you into board positions where you fell into chutes and slid ass-over-teakettle all the way down to the bottom of the board, where the whole process started all over again. The chances of falling into chutes increased as you climbed more ladders and got higher and higher. A long and tedious climb up ladder after ladder until the End was in sight was usually nixed by a plummet down one of the seven chutes whose mouths yawned near the base of the golden ladder at the top. The children found this sudden dashing of hopes and return to the recreational drawing board unbelievably fun. The game made Lenore feel like throwing its board at the wall.

“Super,” said Lenore.

“Here’s that seltzer,” said Alvin.

“Frozen pea?” asked Clarice.

“Thanks.”

“Treat you right around here or what?”

Spatula accused Stoney of sneakily moving his game piece—a laughing little plastic Buddha of a baby with a pencil-sharpening hole in its head, given out by the gross at Stonecipheco stockholder meetings—from a position in which a chute-fall was imminent to a position in which a ladder-climb was imminent. There ensued unpleasantness, while Lenore ate some frozen peas. Clarice soothed Spatula while Alvin worked on the vertical hold of the giant-screen television.

Order was restored, and the vertical hold was looking good. Alvin rubbed his hands together.

“So how’s CabanaTan?” Lenore asked Clarice over her drink. Clarice owned and managed five Cleveland franchises of a tanning-parlor chain called CabanaTan. She had bought in originally by selling the Stonecipheco stock she’d gotten for a graduation present, something which had pissed Lenore and Clarice’s father off, a lot, at first, but he had calmed down when Clarice married Alvin Spaniard, whom Stonecipher Beadsman liked, and respected, and whose father had been at Stonecipheco all his life, too, and things were especially good now that Clarice, who obviously worked, and Alvin, who obviously also worked, had made an arrangement whereby they left the children during the day in the care of Nancy Malig, at the Beadsman home in Shaker Heights, the same Nancy Malig who had been Lenore and Clarice’s governess when they were children.

“CabanaTan is thriving,” Clarice said. “It’s been a cloudy summer, you know, and people feel the need to supplement. We’re gearing up for the fall rush. There’s always a fall rush, as people start losing the summer tan and get tense. We should have most of Cleveland roasting nicely by November.”

“And Misty Schwartz?”

“Can’t talk about it. Legal stuff. Other than Schwartz problems, it looks like a banner fall coming up.”

“Terrif.”

“And how about you? How’s the switchboard? How’s the bird?” Clarice asked. Lenore saw that Alvin was holding Spatula high over his head in the center of the living room, while Spatula laughed and kicked her legs.

“Sort of need to talk to you, for a bit, if we could break away, here, maybe Chutes and Ladders later...”

“Family theater in ten minutes, is the thing.”

“Maybe after, then, we could just sort of ...”