Waveland (20 page)

“He didn't deserve a good job,” Newton said. “He was a creep.”

“Whoa. Big man,” Vaughn said. “He took care of you pretty well.”

“Not really. I got what I got by working around him. He was kind of a fool, I guess. Mother was pleasant, at least.”

“It's a poorer place for their absence,” Vaughn said. “Both of them.”

Newton turned to look at him. “That's what you think? Really? Not me. Our father was a sick fuck. I wanted to take pictures of him after he died so I could always prove to myself he was dead.”

“Everybody says that shit,” Vaughn said.

Newton held up his hands as if in surrender. “Well, say hello for me when you're thinking about them. I remember Mother sometimes. She could have made something of herself if she'd wanted to.”

“Prick,” Vaughn said.

“Fuck off,” Newton said.

They were far enough along in the line now that they were next to a window that opened into the back of the Krispy Kreme where the machinery was that the workers used to make the doughnuts. Some kid with a Mohawk and a scraggly goatee was in there yanking dough out of a big pan on top of a pickup-truck-sized machine that turned the dough into doughnuts. The kid looked none too clean.

“So what's going to happen here anyway?” Newton said. “I'm sure you've got this all figured out. Just tell me now so I don't make any mistakes when it comes to my turn.”

“I don't know,” Vaughn said. “She wants me to come back. I'm not coming back. She's having trouble. She's had trouble with boyfriends, and she has weird ideas about things. She thinks she's psychic or something. Like I said, she said she predicted Robert Blake's wife's death.”

“Did she?” Newton said.

“Maybe,” Vaughn said. “When did he shoot his wife?”

“Six or seven years ago,” Newton said.

“She could have,” he said. “She was paying attention then to stuff in those magazines you get at the grocery. Sometimes she reads those.”

“Tabloids,” he said.

“I guess.
Screen
and
People
—the ones that always have Brad Pitt on the cover.”

There was some trouble ahead of them up at the takeout window. The black woman in the Chrysler was arguing with the Krispy Kreme guy. They were shoving a flat box of doughnuts back and forth. Vaughn and Newton sat in line and stared. Voices were raised. Slang was used. Doughnuts flew.

Seeing Newton brought back a lot of unpleasant memories. Whatever the truth, Vaughn had counted his brother as their parents' favorite. Parents pretend they love their children equally, care about them equally; but as a child you always know. And don't parents always prefer the youngest? It was unpleasant, but Vaughn knew all children went through it, got used to it eventually, got enough of the affection, the support, the nurture to get by. But he had never quite forgotten.

Newton was a hero in grade school. He was a hero in high school. He was a hero when he went off to college. He was everybody's favorite. He was funny and good-looking. He was charming. Their mother used to hug him endlessly, as if she took every opportunity. Their father liked taking Newton into the den for serious conversations, discussions of politics, religion, morality, and Newton was always ready to do that, always able and willing to do that. He liked discussing things
with their father man-to-man. Vaughn would wake up late on the weekend and go by that part of the house, and there they'd be, sitting in the two chairs talking, looking out the window at the backyard, the pristine backyard, talking man-to-man.

Vaughn had a few opportunities, of course, but he was a kid with less to say than his younger brother; he was less forthcoming than Newton, less brilliant, less charming. He was not such a success in school, had fewer friends, and the friends he did have were much less welcome at the house. In fact, Vaughn's friends were mostly losers of one kind or another. And Vaughn was fat as a kid. He wore “Husky” jeans and khakis. His mother had to take him to a special store to get these jeans. And they weren't the right jeans, because the makers of the right jeans wouldn't stoop to making “Husky” jeans. Vaughn was taller, but he had a bad complexion, whereas Newton did not. Vaughn's hair stuck out in spikes that he tried putting hair tonic on to get under control, without much success. Vaughn's hair jiggled when he walked. Newton's hair was smooth and graceful.

So having Newton jet in for the crisis with Gail was not fun. Having Newton stay at the house, set himself up in the fourth bedroom, walk through the place and look at the house Vaughn had bought some years before, appraise it in a way, was not so comfortable. Newton would notice things about the house—the construction, the finishes, the upkeep—that he did not think so well of, and he would mention these things in an offhand, purportedly helpful, but nevertheless demeaning way. And Newton would look at Greta, as if somehow Greta was part of the problem, or as if she didn't measure up.

That first night after Newton arrived, they went to eat at the
Thai restaurant. Vaughn and Gail had been to this restaurant once, years before. It had been wiped out by the hurricane, but was relocated almost immediately in a strip shopping center in the space previously occupied by the Oreck vacuum cleaner store. Vaughn and Greta carefully avoided the Thai restaurant, but Newton wanted Thai, and Gail had told him there was a wonderfully authentic little Thai place in town, so they ended up there. In their section of the coast a lot of college kids and some of the professors ate the food there, which was one reason Vaughn disliked the place. Another was that there were always ants in a trail along the wainscoting. The lighting was too bright, the food was soggy and stained and badly presented, and the place itself was in sore need of attention. It was altogether discouraging, like eating in an Oreck store in a desolate strip shopping center.

Newton and Gail pored over the menu and Gail gave him detailed descriptions of each dish. She let on that she and Tony often used the Thai restaurant as a rendezvous. “I figured Vaughn wouldn't look for us here,” she said.

They were sitting at a yellow linoleum-topped table with almost-matching chairs covered in yellow plastic. They were in the middle of the small aisle between two rows of booths. Along the wainscot next to the booths on the west wall, the parade of ants was in full flower, running from the back of the restaurant toward the front. Vaughn elbowed Greta and raised his head in the direction of the ant line. She glanced and made a face to tell him to shut up. When it was her turn to order, she said, “Why don't you order for me, Gail? I haven't eaten much Thai.”

Whereupon Gail and Newton discussed at some length what Greta might and might not like.

“Maybe I should have something not so good,” Greta said.

Vaughn ordered noodles and the cow pea salad, a dish he'd read about in a newspaper article years before. The four of them were way too close together at this table. The table was small. There was barely enough room for a napkin dispenser and a little flower. They hunched around this little table prepared for conversation as they waited for their food, but the conversation was slow in coming. It mostly fell to Gail and Newton to catch up. She asked a lot of questions about his business, his late wife, his life in the Great Northwest. Newton was lonely, but he was fond of where he lived and felt fortunate to have moved there before it was popular and sought after.

About his business he said, “Oh, there's hardly anything left to do. We did so well with the company that I'm pretty much out of the loop now. I have a few small projects, but other than that, I'm afraid I don't do much.”

He seemed strangely overstuffed. His shirt was too small, his trousers, too. Both were wrinkled, but he was not a grunge guy, he was a tucked-in guy, so the wrinkles gave the impression of being well-planned. His shirt was madras. Strange, Vaughn thought. He hadn't seen a madras shirt in some time, though he was aware madras had made it back into style a few years before. Gail had told him.

As he sat across the table from Newton, what he was thinking was: Maybe he'll just explode right here.

It wasn't that he was fat, but he was burly. Like he'd gained a lot of weight and it hadn't settled in his stomach or his backside. It was all-over weight. It was in his arms, ankles, thighs, cheeks, temples, neck, and shoulders. It was as if he had taken Newton from ten years ago and made a second skin an inch or
so thick and carefully sewn it on him, in the style of that guy in the movie. He was a Hefty bag, Vaughn's brother.

“So what's all this stuff you guys are going through down here?” Newton said. “Vaughn's been filling me in, but it sounds crazy.”

“It is a little crazy,” Gail said.

“Nothing much,” Vaughn said. “There was some messy business with this guy and she asked us to move over, and we came over,” he said. “Like I told you.”

“He's talking about Tony,” Gail said.

“Right. Gail's been dating him, and he got a little out of hand,” Vaughn said. “Like I told you, he was at the house the other night. He's not exactly covered in contrition, but he wasn't unbearable.”

“That's news,” Gail said. “You liked him?”

“I didn't mind him,” he said. “He came in and we talked. He wasn't that bad, I mean, apart from, you know—”

“Amazing,” she said.

“Anyway, things are getting back on track.”

“He's leaving out a lot,” Gail said.

“I am leaving out a lot,” Vaughn said. “I thought Newton might appreciate that.”

“Don't start,” Gail said.

“We don't need to involve Newton in our problems, Gail,” Vaughn said.

“That's why he's here,” she said.

“That's why I'm here,” Newton said.

At this point Greta sort of touched Vaughn's arm in a way that he liked a lot. She touched his forearm on the table, sort of patted it—just once or twice. She turned and said to Newton,
“Why
are
you here? I know I'm not family, but I don't quite get it.”

“Gail and I go way back,” Newton said.

“I've heard that,” Greta said.

“We had a sort of friendship,” Newton said.

“And that's why you're here to help out with Gail and Vaughn?” Greta said.

“And Tony. And you,” Newton said.

“And me?” Greta said. “Huh. Feature that. I made the team.”

That produced nervous strain, visible on two of the four faces. Then food arrived, so trouble was sidestepped. The food was stringy and peculiar, and Gail and Newton loved it. Vaughn put some of his on Greta's plate while no one was watching. Greta put the food back on his plate while everyone was watching. Gail waved at them as if they were children. She and Newton carried on a conversation about his life in the Great Northwest and their life together before she and Vaughn met. There wasn't much of a story there. Vaughn didn't think their relationship, or his subsequent marriage to Gail, seemed too odd at the time, though now it seemed odder. Gail and Newton were better suited for each other than he and Gail. By the time Katrina hit, his marriage had long since looked like a basket of maladies. They'd had good times in the early going, but recent years were something less than satisfying—too much distance, too many differences. And when his life felt that way he always wondered about other people—in the stores, in their very clean cars, walking together in their heavily-starched clothing: Were they content with each other, or was the only contentedness they'd ever had what they'd had in their first years together?

Thinking of that, he regarded Newton, who was a widower and who had been living alone for a couple of years, and his own ex-wife, Gail, who seemed very interested in her conversation with his brother. They probably had searing and wonderful memories of that month they were together so many years ago. And so, as Vaughn thought about it there at the Thai joint, which was called Yum Yum, it suddenly didn't seem altogether odd that Newton would come thousands of miles across the country to Gail's rescue now, so many years later. For the first time recognizing the possible virtues of Newton's visit, Vaughn fetched up his chopsticks and started to enjoy himself, pursuing his noodles with a fierce new vigor. He smiled and nodded when others looked his way. He made little noises of appreciation, pointing at the food. He reached for Greta's hand and gave it a resolute squeeze.

Three days later on Saturday morning Vaughn woke up to find Gail at the door of his room, knocking discreetly. She was dressed and made up and on her way out to the store or something. She looked nervous and fidgeted with her fingers.

“How are you?” she said, peeking in the room to see if Greta was there. She wasn't, as it happened.

“I'm kind of sleepy,” he said. “Time is it?”

“Almost nine,” she said. “Listen, uh, I wanted to thank you for everything, for all these years, and for this thing, coming over here and all that. It really is kind of you to interrupt everything and move in and look after me.”

“Sure,” he said. “My pleasure. Are you—”

“Going away,” Gail said. “I'm going with Newton out to his place, just for a kind of a look-see, you know? I mean, the
way he talks about it sounds so great, and he wants to go back, so I thought I'd go with.”

“Oh,” Vaughn said.

“I'm just taking a break from everything,” she said. “Clearing the air, standing back, taking a look at the big picture, that kind of thing.”

“Big picture,” he said. “How about Tony?”

She looked positively adolescent, twisting herself around there in the hallway. “Well, you know, I don't care that much about Tony, really, all things considered. I didn't see him as a long-termer.”

Vaughn nodded. He was sleepy and his hair was dervished up and he just kept nodding at her. He said, “Okay. When are you coming back?”

“I don't know. Could be right away, could be longer—we haven't decided. I'm just playing things by ear. I always wanted to see the Great Northwest.”

Then she was backing away down the hall. She said, “You guys should stay here if you want. Keep the place warm. Not a problem. Invite Eddie if you want. We're just about packed. We'll be pulling out any minute.”

“It's short notice, isn't it?” he said.