The New Yorker Stories (36 page)

She looks very nice, really. She has a ribbon in her hair. It is cold, and she should have worn a hat, but she wanted to wear the ribbon. Milo has good taste: the dress she is wearing, which he bought for her, is a hazy purple plaid, and it sets off her hair.

“Come with me. Don’t be sad,” Milo suddenly says to Louise, pulling her by the hand. “Come with me for a minute. Come across the street to the park for just a second, and we’ll have some space to dance, and your mother and Bradley can have a nice quiet drink.”

She gets up from the table and, looking long-suffering, backs into her coat, which he is holding for her, and the two of them go out. The waitress comes to the table, and Bradley orders three Bloody Marys and a Coke, and eggs Benedict for everyone. He asks the waitress to wait awhile before she brings the food. I have hardly slept at all, and having a drink is not going to clear my head. I have to think of things to say to Louise later, on the ride home.

“He takes so many
chances
,” I say. “He pushes things so far with people. I don’t want her to turn against him.”

“No,” he says.

“Why are you going, Bradley? You’ve seen the way he acts. You know that when you get out there he’ll pull something on you. Take the job and stay here.”

Bradley is fiddling with the edge of his napkin. I study him. I don’t know who his friends are, how old he is, where he grew up, whether he believes in God, or what he usually drinks. I’m shocked that I know so little, and I reach out and touch him. He looks up.

“Don’t go,” I say quietly.

The waitress puts the glasses down quickly and leaves, embarrassed because she thinks she’s interrupted a tender moment. Bradley pats my hand on his arm. Then he says the thing that has always been between us, the thing too painful for me to envision or think about.

“I love him,” Bradley whispers.

We sit quietly until Milo and Louise come into the restaurant, swinging hands. She is pretending to be a young child, almost a baby, and I wonder for an instant if Milo and Bradley and I haven’t been playing house, too—pretending to be adults.

“Daddy’s going to give me a first-class ticket,” Louise says. “When I go to California we’re going to ride in a glass elevator to the top of the Fairman Hotel.”

“The Fairmont,” Milo says, smiling at her.

Before Louise was born, Milo used to put his ear to my stomach and say that if the baby turned out to be a girl he would put her into glass slippers instead of bootees. Now he is the prince once again. I see them in a glass elevator, not long from now, going up and up, with the people below getting smaller and smaller, until they disappear.

The Burning House

F
reddy Fox is in the kitchen with me. He has just washed and dried an avocado seed I don’t want, and he is leaning against the wall, rolling a joint. In five minutes, I will not be able to count on him. However: he started late in the day, and he has already brought in wood for the fire, gone to the store down the road for matches, and set the table. “You mean you’d know this stuff was Limoges even if you didn’t turn the plate over?” he called from the dining room. He pretended to be about to throw one of the plates into the kitchen, like a Frisbee. Sam, the dog, believed him and shot up, kicking the rug out behind him and skidding forward before he realized his error; it was like the Road Runner tricking Wile E. Coyote into going over the cliff for the millionth time. His jowls sank in disappointment.

“I see there’s a full moon,” Freddy says. “There’s just nothing that can hold a candle to nature. The moon and the stars, the tides and the sunshine—and we just don’t stop for long enough to wonder at it all. We’re so engrossed in ourselves.” He takes a very long drag on the joint. “We stand and stir the sauce in the pot instead of going to the window and gazing at the moon.”

“You don’t mean anything personal by that, I assume.”

“I love the way you pour cream in a pan. I like to come up behind you and watch the sauce bubble.”

“No, thank you,” I say. “You’re starting late in the day.”

“My responsibilities have ended. You don’t trust me to help with the cooking, and I’ve already brought in firewood and run an errand, and this very morning I exhausted myself by taking Mr. Sam jogging with me, down at Putnam Park. You’re sure you won’t?”

“No, thanks,” I say. “Not now, anyway.”

“I love it when you stand over the steam coming out of a pan and the hairs around your forehead curl into damp little curls.”

My husband, Frank Wayne, is Freddy’s half brother. Frank is an accountant. Freddy is closer to me than to Frank. Since Frank talks to Freddy more than he talks to me, however, and since Freddy is totally loyal, Freddy always knows more than I know. It pleases me that he does not know how to stir sauce; he will start talking, his mind will drift, and when next you look the sauce will be lumpy, or boiling away.

Freddy’s criticism of Frank is only implied. “What a gracious gesture to entertain his friends on the weekend,” he says.

“Male friends,” I say.

“I didn’t mean that you’re the sort of lady who doesn’t draw the line. I most certainly did not mean that,” Freddy says. “I would even have been surprised if you had taken a toke of this deadly stuff while you were at the stove.”

“O.K.,” I say, and take the joint from him. Half of it is left when I take it. Half an inch is left after I’ve taken two drags and given it back.

“More surprised still if you’d shaken the ashes into the saucepan.”

“You’d tell people I’d done it when they’d finished eating, and I’d be embarrassed. You can do it, though. I wouldn’t be embarrassed if it was a story you told on yourself.”

“You really understand me,” Freddy says. “It’s moon-madness, but I have to shake just this little bit in the sauce. I have to do it.”

He does it.

Frank and Tucker are in the living room. Just a few minutes ago, Frank returned from getting Tucker at the train. Tucker loves to visit. To him, Fairfield County is as mysterious as Alaska. He brought with him from New York a crock of mustard, a jeroboam of champagne, cocktail napkins with a picture of a plane flying over a building on them, twenty egret feathers (“You cannot get them anymore—strictly illegal,” Tucker whispered to me), and, under his black cowboy hat with the rhinestone-studded chin strap, a toy frog that hopped when wound. Tucker owns a gallery in SoHo, and Frank keeps his books. Tucker is now stretched out in the living room, visiting with Frank, and Freddy and I are both listening.

“. . . so everything I’ve been told indicates that he lives a purely Jekyll-and-Hyde existence. He’s twenty years old, and I can see that since he’s still living at home he might not want to flaunt his gayness. When he came into the gallery, he had his hair slicked back—just with water, I got close enough to sniff—and his mother was all but holding his hand. So fresh-scrubbed. The stories I’d heard. Anyway, when I called, his father started looking for the number where he could be reached on the Vineyard—very irritated, because I didn’t know James, and if I’d just phoned James I could have found him in a flash. He’s talking to himself, looking for the number, and I say, ‘Oh, did he go to visit friends or—’ and his father interrupts and says, ‘He was going to a gay pig roast. He’s been gone since Monday.’
Just like that.
”

Freddy helps me carry the food out to the table. When we are all at the table, I mention the young artist Tucker was talking about. “Frank says his paintings are really incredible,” I say to Tucker.

“Makes Estes look like an Abstract Expressionist,” Tucker says. “I want that boy. I really want that boy.”

“You’ll get him,” Frank says. “You get everybody you go after.”

Tucker cuts a small piece of meat. He cuts it small so that he can talk while chewing. “Do I?” he says.

Freddy is smoking at the table, gazing dazedly at the moon centered in the window. “After dinner,” he says, putting the back of his hand against his forehead when he sees that I am looking at him, “we must all go to the lighthouse.”

“If only
you
painted,” Tucker says. “I’d want you.”

“You couldn’t have me,” Freddy snaps. He reconsiders. “That sounded halfhearted, didn’t it? Anybody who wants me can have me. This is the only place I can be on Saturday night where somebody isn’t hustling me.”

“Wear looser pants,” Frank says to Freddy.

“This is so much better than some bar that stinks of cigarette smoke and leather. Why do I do it?” Freddy says. “Seriously—do you think I’ll ever stop?”

“Let’s not be serious,” Tucker says.

“I keep thinking of this table as a big boat, with dishes and glasses rocking on it,” Freddy says.

He takes the bone from his plate and walks out to the kitchen, dripping sauce on the floor. He walks as though he’s on the deck of a wave-tossed ship. “Mr. Sam!” he calls, and the dog springs up from the living-room floor, where he had been sleeping; his toenails on the bare wood floor sound like a wheel spinning in gravel. “You don’t have to beg,” Freddy says. “Jesus, Sammy—I’m just giving it to you.”

“I hope there’s a bone involved,” Tucker says, rolling his eyes to Frank. He cuts another tiny piece of meat. “I hope your brother does understand why I couldn’t keep him on. He was good at what he did, but he also might say just
anything
to a customer. You have to believe me that if I hadn’t been extremely embarrassed more than once I never would have let him go.”

“He should have finished school,” Frank says, sopping up sauce on his bread. “He’ll knock around a while longer, then get tired of it and settle down to something.”

“You think I died out here?” Freddy calls. “You think I can’t hear you?”

“I’m not saying anything I wouldn’t say to your face,” Frank says.

“I’ll tell you what I wouldn’t say to your face,” Freddy says. “You’ve got a swell wife and kid and dog, and you’re a snob, and you take it all for granted.”

Frank puts down his fork, completely exasperated. He looks at me.

“He came to work once this stoned,” Tucker says.
“Comprenez-vous?”

“You like me because you feel sorry for me,” Freddy says.

He is sitting on the concrete bench outdoors, in the area that’s a garden in the springtime. It is early April now—not quite spring. It’s very foggy out. It rained while we were eating, and now it has turned mild. I’m leaning against a tree, across from him, glad it’s so dark and misty that I can’t look down and see the damage the mud is doing to my boots.

“Who’s his girlfriend?” Freddy says.

“If I told you her name, you’d tell him I told you.”

“Slow down. What?”

“I won’t tell you, because you’ll tell him that I know.”

“He knows you know.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How did you find out?”

“He talked about her. I kept hearing her name for months, and then we went to a party at Garner’s, and she was there, and when I said something about her later he said, ‘Natalie who?’ It was much too obvious. It gave the whole thing away.”

He sighs. “I just did something very optimistic,” he says. “I came out here with Mr. Sam and he dug up a rock and I put the avocado seed in the hole and packed dirt on top of it. Don’t say it—I know: can’t grow outside, we’ll still have another snow, even if it grew, the next year’s frost would kill it.”

“He’s embarrassed,” I say. “When he’s home, he avoids me. But it’s rotten to avoid Mark, too. Six years old, and he calls up his friend Neal to hint that he wants to go over there. He doesn’t do that when we’re here alone.”

Freddy picks up a stick and pokes around in the mud with it. “I’ll bet Tucker’s after that painter personally, not because he’s the hottest thing since pancakes. That expression of his—it’s always the same. Maybe Nixon really loved his mother, but with that expression who could believe him? It’s a curse to have a face that won’t express what you mean.”

“Amy!” Tucker calls. “Telephone.”

Freddy waves goodbye to me with the muddy stick. “ ‘I am not a crook,’ ” Freddy says. “Jesus Christ.”

Sam bounds halfway toward the house with me, then turns and goes back to Freddy.

It’s Marilyn, Neal’s mother, on the phone.

“Hi,” Marilyn says. “He’s afraid to spend the night.”

“Oh, no,” I say. “He said he wouldn’t be.”

She lowers her voice. “We can try it out, but I think he’ll start crying.”

“I’ll come get him.”

“I can bring him home. You’re having a dinner party, aren’t you?”

I lower my voice. “Some party. Tucker’s here. J.D. never showed up.”

“Well,” she says. “I’m sure that what you cooked was good.”

“It’s so foggy out, Marilyn. I’ll come get Mark.”

“He can stay. I’ll be a martyr,” she says, and hangs up before I can object.

Freddy comes into the house, tracking in mud. Sam lies in the kitchen, waiting for his paws to be cleaned. “Come on,” Freddy says, hitting his hand against his thigh, having no idea what Sam is doing. Sam gets up and runs after him. They go into the small downstairs bathroom together. Sam loves to watch people urinate. Sometimes he sings, to harmonize with the sound of the urine going into the water. There are footprints and pawprints everywhere. Tucker is shrieking with laughter in the living room. “. . . he says, he says to the other one, ‘Then, dearie, have you ever played
spin
the bottle?’ ” Frank’s and Tucker’s laughter drowns out the sound of Freddy peeing in the bathroom. I turn on the water in the kitchen sink, and it drowns out all the noise. I begin to scrape the dishes. Tucker is telling another story when I turn off the water: “. . . that it was Onassis in the Anvil, and nothing would talk him out of it. They told him Onassis was dead, and he thought they were trying to make him think he was crazy. There was nothing to do but go along with him, but, God—he was trying to goad this poor old fag into fighting about Stavros Niarchos. You know—Onassis’s
enemy
. He thought it was
Onassis
. In the
Anvil
.” There is a sound of a glass breaking. Frank or Tucker puts
John Coltrane Live in Seattle
on the stereo and turns the volume down low. The bathroom door opens. Sam runs into the kitchen and begins to lap water from his dish. Freddy takes his little silver case and his rolling papers out of his shirt pocket. He puts a piece of paper on the kitchen table and is about to sprinkle grass on it, but realizes just in time that the paper has absorbed water from a puddle. He balls it up with his thumb, flicks it to the floor, puts a piece of rolling paper where the table’s dry and shakes a line of grass down it. “You smoke this,” he says to me. “I’ll do the dishes.”