Life Among Giants (28 page)

Th
e guy didn't hesitate, pushed into the group, grabbed Sylphide by the arm, jerked it up behind her and cranked. She let out a cry. “Message from a friend,” he said distinctly. He pushed her to the ground, still holding her, put a foot on her back, twisted that arm hard, dragged her several feet pulling on it. Everyone around froze in horror, even backed away. Not me, not this time: I knocked several chairs over, five big steps and I was there, pushed him, caught his little hand, crushed his knuckles with a sound I could feel, jerked his arm up as he had jerked Sylphide's, broke bones in there, too. I would have finished subduing him very easily if he hadn't sprayed me with something, sprayed me straight in the face. I bellowed, went blind, and vomited.

I
WOKE PANICKED
and all alone in the attic at home, five in the morning. I'd barricaded myself up there, giddiness having given way to fear. My eyes still itched powerfully. Downstairs, I made an elaborate breakfast, couldn't eat it. I put on the TV, looking for news, found nothing but test patterns and
Th
e Modern Farmer,
left it on for company. Mom hadn't come home and hadn't called; my note was untouched. I bounded up to their room and stared at their empty bed, all I had of them. I tight-tucked the sheets and plumped the pillows and pulled the quilt up nicely, folded it back the way Mom liked. Dad had left dirty socks on the floor, Mom her nightgown on the old rocking chair. I collected it all for the laundry. I was hungry for order. In the pink dawn I went into a full-scale cleaning fit (a kid in shock, I realize now), raced through the house picking up, straightening, washing dishes, vacuuming, dusting, trying to put things right.

Th
ey'd taken Sylphide off in an ambulance. Conrad had called the police, broken Freddy's golden rule and in the process proved it: the police really weren't up to the job. Sylphide's assailant had gotten away clean. Conrad berated Freddy:
How the fuck?
But Freddy had been sprayed, too.
Th
e police came just after the ambulance—several cars of unimpressive men. “Jealous boyfriend?” one of the sergeants asked.
Th
e other asked all friendly if there was any marijuana in the house, if they could have permission to search.

“You're on the wrong track, fellas,” Freddy told them, pawing at his eyes still.

I held a wet towel over mine, courtesy of Desmond.
Th
e foundation ladies, the real power in the room, tried to give their stories, but the cops weren't particularly interested.
Th
ey'd seen worse, was the implication—these weren't life-threatening injuries. No sympathy at all, mostly just suspicion, like they'd come upon a hotbed of foreign intrigue.
Th
ey didn't lock down the house, didn't look around outside, nothing. Sylphide cried inconsolably but silently, eerily. It wasn't her shoulder she wept for, either, but her very life as a dancer, we all knew that.
Th
e medics lay her down, checked her pupils, her pulse, strapped her arm. Georges was at her side, held her good hand, patted it. And he and Conrad followed the ambulance to the hospital.

I hung around, thought I should provide some assistance somehow to someone, even though my eyes were still pouring tears from the mace, or whatever it was. But Desmond just told me to go. At the pond I discovered the rowboat missing, had to cross the brook on foot through cattails. On our side, muddy to my knees, I found the boat pulled up high on the grass.
Th
e guy who'd attacked Sylphide must have used it, then run up our lawn. Which meant that whoever it was knew the boat would be there. I sprinted to the house. Our big rotary lawnmower had been thrown through the patio sliders, rested upside down on the kitchen floor in a pile of shattered safety glass, gasoline dripping. I didn't have a single thought of danger but raced into the mess, my one thought to get the guy. I wouldn't let go this time—he could pluck my eyes out with his fingers. But the front door stood open, cool air pouring in. I trotted out to our cul-de-sac, then out to the main road, nothing. Tire tracks on the edge of our lawn, inconclusive: lots of people parked right there, our neighbor's guests and maintenance men, teenagers. Back inside, I turned the lights on to discover that the locked cover on Dad's old rolltop desk had been pried open, and the deep, deep drawers pried open, too, all of them pulled out and dumped in drifts of paper: old bills, cancelled checks, useless brochures, legal-size documents, dunning notices from every imaginable creditor (including Yale), drawings I'd made when I was five, notes Kate had written, clipped articles, file folders by the score, all methodically emptied out onto the couch and the carpet. No way to know if anything was missing, or what it might be.

I knew better than to call the police. Instead, I cleaned up, threw the damaged lawn mower back out into the lawn, swept up beads of glass, wiped up the gasoline. Fine with me if the guy returned: if the guy returned, I would kill him with my hands.

But later, after a half hour sweating it out in bed, I'd dressed again and climbed up to the attic, closed the hatch door, lined up the family bowling balls as weapons, slept fitfully with my baseball bat in hand.

At dawn, obsessively putting the kitchen right, I heard the
Bridgeport
News
hit the front stoop. I dropped the piece of plywood I'd been inexpertly fitting to the smashed patio door, raced to get the paper. Because of the local angle, they had an involved story about Dolus Investments—four columns of the front page—mostly about the accountant gunned down in his Fairfield yard. But Nicholas Hochmeyer had his place in the paper, too, a three-column photo of him climbing out of the FBI car in Danbury with a coat over his head like any thug. Money laundering, securities fraud, embezzlement, extortion, mail fraud, felony theft, felony currency manipulation, all of them tied up with conspiracy charges as well, including racketeering and accessory to murder, whoa.

Th
e actual murder indictment was another guy, someone in the Chicago office, Pervis Z. Oliver, 38, no one I'd ever heard of.
Th
ere was a side article about Dolus's ties to organized crime, as well: nothing definite. Mr. Perdhomme wasn't indicted for anything, painted himself as a dupe, but the paper had printed a large photo of him, this gentle-looking bald guy smiling sadly in a suit and striped tie. Caption:
VICTIM OR ARCHITECT?
I knew how my old man would answer that question.

Th
e median potential sentence for Dad's alleged crimes was
twenty-five years,
which the paper thought likely, given all the evidence.

I ransacked the rest of the pages, but the attack on Sylphide hadn't made it in. I tuned the kitchen radio to the all-news station, couldn't sit still: President Nixon, Cambodia, another moon shot. Nothing about Sylphide, happily, not a word. I called the Bridgeport Hospital. No information could be given over the phone. Not so much as an acknowledgement that she was there. I dressed for school, started for the bus stop. Suddenly I missed my father, missed him terribly, realized standing there at the end of our little street that there was no way I could get on the bus: by now all of Staples High would know everything.

S
ITTING ON MY
parents' narrow bed mid-morning, I called Jack Cross's office again. And after a single ring—unwanted miracle—he answered. “Well, David,” he said warmly enough.

“I need to find Katy,” I said.

“She's got tennis till ten, I think. What's up? You sound upset.”

And then I
was
upset.

Jack was quiet as I cried, just, “Okay,” and “I'm right here,” very tenderly, the first moment I loved him. When I'd subsided a little, he said, “What's going on, David?”

I told him the story, as simply as I could, the Dad story only, looking out the good patio door toward the High Side. My job with Sylphide, the attack on Sylphide, that was too much, of course, too much for Katy. Dad in prison, definitely enough. While I was talking, Jack found the item in the
New Haven Register.
He read it aloud, quite shocking, all that murder and manipulation.

“I'll find a way to tell Kate,” he said. “And then I think you should come up here.”

No way.

Suddenly I remembered the envelope from Sylphide. Jack talked logic as I tore it open: the lump in there was the speckled stone, of course. I smoothed it and smoothed it and smoothed it as Jack went on. When he finally hung up I dug once again through all the papers on Dad's desk. What was missing? New mail in a rubber band. Just more bills, all of them overdue. A notice from Westport Savings and Trust announced that our mortgage had lapsed, three missed payments: we had ten days to come up with two hundred eighty-six dollars, a fairly large figure in my experience, ten more days to pay it again, ten more days for a third payment to catch up and avoid dispossession. Nearly a thousand dollars due in a month, a vast sum.

I dialed Jack's office again: busy.

He was talking to Kate, of course.

I smoothed the speckled heart, smoothed it, smoothed it.

M
OM CALLED FROM
a phone booth at the courthouse in Danbury. Dad would go state's evidence. She explained what that meant. He was largely innocent, she said. “ ‘Largely,' ” she repeated, obviously quoting him. She sounded actually kind of upbeat, laid out all the legal maneuvers their lawyer had planned, the public defender. Guy named McBee, fat as a house, she said.
Th
ere was no money for better.
Th
ere was no money at all.

She said, “You remember how Dad said the Blue 'Bu was stolen? Well, it wasn't stolen. He
sold
it.”

“He sold the Blue 'Bu?”

“Sold it to pay some bills, so he says.
Th
ere's a lot he's going to have to explain. We're all going to have to be pretty brave, honey. We're all going to have to be pretty goddamn forgiving.” She did not sound forgiving, she did not sound brave. She'd been staying at a crappy motel, constant meetings with lawyers and judges and jailors, had seen Dad twice for all of fifteen minutes, Dad at his cowed worst.

I kept meaning to tell her about the smashed window, the lawnmower, the action at Sylphide's, but the opening never quite came, the information too ambiguous, and maybe not for her. Anyway, suddenly she had to go: the public defender had just appeared, and she only had ten minutes with him, fifteen if she were lucky.

“Mom, just quick, the mortgage, it's lapsing.” I pulled out the notice, read it one more time. “What should I do?”

“No, honey, the mortgage isn't lapsing. I gave Daddy checks for that.”

“Lapsing,” I said.

Silence.
Th
en, “Honey, do you have any money in your savings account?”

Yes, I did, enough to cover two of the payments, money I'd made shoveling snow and mowing lawns from age twelve, some of it from the mowing at Sylphide's.

I thought suddenly of something I'd learned as a quarterback: praise for the team in tough circumstances. “Mom. I just want to say what a good job you're doing. You sound so calm.”

She gave a short laugh and said, “
Th
at's how you win at tennis, David.”

14

Th
e High Side was in full roar by noon the next day, music and trucks rumbling and occasional shouts clearly audible, Mr. Baker pounding his drums, guitars accompanying, maybe someone singing, the driveway full of cars, also one of those very fancy tour buses, craziness, like no one cared what had happened to the dancer, shades of the days after Dabney's death, the party going forward. I'd fallen asleep on our living-room floor, only to be awakened by the phone ringing.

I plunged to answer, but it wasn't Mom.

“Mr. Demeter?”

Our kindly principal cleared his throat, said, “Taking a another day off?”

“Well, yes.
Th
ings are a bit rough here, sir.”

“Roger that, David. We've seen the news items. Just wanted you to know you have our support.”

“
Th
ank you, sir.”

“Now David. Anything you want to tell me about your friend Nussbaum? Mark Nussbaum?”

“No. I mean, not since he didn't show up to our meeting with you.”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon, son?”

“Sir? I was at the High Side. Sylphide's place? I'm working there part-time.”

“
Th
e High Side. You were there between what hours, exactly?”

“Exactly, sir? Um, I took the bus home, and then I went right over there, like three o'clock. And I got home late, like maybe ten or eleven. Working, sir.”

“So you were there at about five, between, say, five and six?”

“Yes, sir. What's going on?”

“And are there people over there that can attest to that?”

“Yes, sir. Of course sir.”

“David, wonderful. Imagine my relief. Because Mark Nussbaum was dragged out of his car yesterday behind the science labs, driven out to the beach and severely beaten.
Th
is was early evening, after a double detention for the matter to which you just referred. He's in guarded condition at Norwalk Hospital.
Th
ey may have fractured his skull. Both hands broken, both arms, teeth broken, bruised spine. It's very serious.”

“I'm sorry, sir.”

“And because, as before, Mr. Nussbaum has placed the blame on you. Which he's done in the past, of course. I told the investigators just that. So you'll do well to get a note from someone over there at the High Side. Maybe multiple signatures?”

“Sir, there was an incident at the High Side. Right about that time.
Th
e police came.
Th
ey took my name.
Th
ey took everyone's name.”

“
Th
en we can check with the police.”

“Do you have to?
Th
e police aren't very good at this stuff.”

“Again, I know you are protecting Emily Bright's honor, and I appreciate that. Quietly, David. We'll do this very quietly. You've done nothing wrong, so your name should not be dragged through this and won't be, nor Emily's. I believe you implicitly, but I'm afraid there are others who may not. Nussbaum's parents are very powerful attorneys, and naturally they are quite concerned, quite concerned.”

“Just what I need,” I said.

“No, now, never mind. I'll run interference for you, son. It's best for everyone involved, including the students and faculty of Staples High, and probably Mark, as well, to get this cleared up as quietly as possible. In progress, son. Meanwhile, please give my best to your mother and your dad, and my best wishes in these difficult times. And let's get you back to classes as soon as possible.”

Nice guy.

F
REDDY GAVE ME
a long, appraising look from the front doors at the High Side, said nothing: we were all feeling guilty. He wouldn't let me pass: the house was shut down. Finally Desmond appeared carrying a tray with a glass of water and a pill bottle. He said, “Mr. Hochmeyer,” very professional tones, didn't invite me in. He just went about his business, climbed the great stairs.

“How's Tenke?” I called after him.

“Come again, sir?”

“Sylphide, how is she?”

“She's resting upstairs.”

“Did they find the guy?”

Confidential, said his posture—he'd never discuss anything about his employer without express instructions. More clipped even than usual: “I'll tell her you are here.”

“We'll find him,” Freddy muttered, still standing in my way.

I kept mum about the damage at my own house. Freddy was still the goon, as far as I was concerned, and a failed one at that: when there was actual trouble, he hadn't protected the great ballerina.

Shortly Desmond was back: “Sylphide will see you.”

Freddy looked surprised, let me pass.

I bustled after Desmond up the scooped stone stairs. Desmond knocked gently at the heavy door to Sylphide's suite, opened it, let me in, let grief cross his features. “You may go in. No more pills, no matter what she says.” He turned on heel.

“Wait,” I said. “
Th
e guy trashed my house.
Th
e guy who did this to her.
Th
ey went through my father's desk. I mean, obviously there's some connection.”

Desmond turned back to me, gave me a long look up and down. “And you think your father isn't it?”

S
YLPHIDE WAS DEEP
in her bed, shoulder encased in ice packs, silk sheets pulled up to her chin and folded nicely, Desmond's work. “Lizard,” she said fondly. Her teeth were bright white, tilted very slightly sidewise as if by strong currents, something I hadn't noticed before.
Th
e layered muscles stood out on her good arm, a few freckles. Her eyes were darker than I remembered, her face more relaxed, prettier for that, add acne scars for character, that tall nose for nobility: the woman never looked the same to me twice.

Gently, I said, “Happy Halloween.”

And she said softly, “What do you mean?”

Even more softly: “Skeletons and pumpkins, trick-or-treat, all that?”

“Oh,
fie fahn,
” she said slowly, letting her eyes droop closed. “A great crowd of children are coming as ghosts last year and terrify poor Dr. Chun.” Her head was propped too high in pillows. I took one away, and she let her neck fall back—gratefully, I thought. She said: “He is exploding my shoulder, everything about it: muscles and tendons and rotator cuff.
Th
e nerve is pinched in my neck.
Th
e hand is numb.
Th
ese pills, they do not work. I'm all black and blue and green and yellow under here, swollen.”

A great drum roll from downstairs, background noise, well muffled by the walls of that lair, the heavy door.

I said, “You'll dance again.”

She murmured something fondly.

I leaned close to hear, asked her to say it again.

“Oh, you,” she breathed. “You're so very stupid.”

She wriggled slightly, adjusted the ice pack on her shoulder. Her eyes fluttered open. Her good shoulder was bare and parian pale, delicate passage of blue veins. Her lips parted slightly. She seemed to search for my thoughts, then let her eyes close again, took measured breaths, her shoulders rising and falling in the silk of her sheets just slightly. “
Th
ese
useless
pills,” she said, vexed. She brought her good hand up and out from under the sheets, inadvertently exposing a pretty, pallid breast. I tucked the sheet back up. She reached to me, patted my cheek, let her hand drop, patted my shoulder, squeezed my bicep, ran her hand down my forearm, found my fingers, twined them in hers.

“Warm,” she said, and strong as ever pulled my hand to her cheek and to her forehead, seeming to ask me to stroke her, so I did, working my fingers into her hair. “Oh,” she said. Her eyes fluttered, her jaw twitched, her breath grew ragged.

I slipped the speckled stone heart into her palm.

She closed her fingers upon it tight. “Oh, Dab,” she murmured. “Oh, Dabney, darling.”

A
T HOME, THE
rain came suddenly and very hard, cold drops like hail almost, they were so big. I started in cleaning again, wanted that house spotless. I'd hurt Sylphide's attacker—broken his arm (I'd felt it go), crushed his hand—so he must have been at our house before he went to get Sylphide. A bucket, a sponge, the top edge of every baseboard, nutty behavior. But if I could clean things up, I'd be in control.

Finally the phone rang. I leapt to answer.

“David, hello. It's your mother.” She sounded almost cheerful. “Honey, there's really no time to talk right now but I want to let you know that they'll release Daddy after court on Friday, good news. Your sister and this professor of hers will pick you up nine o'clock that morning and chauffeur you.
Th
ere's to be a hearing, okay? A formality, but fatso the public defender thinks the appearance of a loving family will be an asset—and then we're all going to go get a nice lunch and try to sort through some of the issues here. Your father won't be able to come home for a while, but.”

My father had gone state's evidence and was to be sequestered under guard in a secret location, was the gist of the rest. Mom was calling from a pay phone in the courthouse, about to enter a meeting with the federal prosecutor. So that explained the businesslike tone, the brusque good-bye.

Not a word from Kate.

Early dusk under the dense overcast, the hard rain soothing. I made myself dinner from sparse leavings: can of beans over rice, chunks of onion, heavy dusting of chili powder, first class. I scrubbed the counters after, washed the skillet and pan and dish I'd used, rinsed the bean can doubly. I had felt for a moment what to be loved by the dancer would be like, and the tumble of it suffused me. To have been mistaken for Dabney even momentarily was somehow promising, even suggestive, not as discouraging as you'd think.

Cheerful as Mom, that kind of will, I sat down to do homework, no trouble guessing the calculus assignment: chapters ten and eleven in our ponderous book. Mr. Demeter expected me at school Monday, and maybe I could talk to him, clear my name in the matter of Mark Nussbaum, for whom I felt nothing but pity.

After an hour I wandered upstairs and retrieved my private Sylphide gallery, a photo from
Life,
another from the
Times,
two from
Newsweek,
the very moving photos from
Rolling Stone
(never a ballerina on the cover before or since), finally, the art from Dabney's
Dancer,
that naked butt. I sorted through them all, but one of the photos in the
Rolling Stone
spread moved me particularly. I brought it out to my small desk, just a shot of Sylphide from the waist up looking back at the camera over her shoulder, that frank, vast gaze, her hair falling out of its bun, leotard strap off her shoulder, dangling.
Th
at fragile shoulder! To love her as Georges loved her would be very simple. But I wanted to practice purity and so concentrated only on her face. I wanted to love her chastely and not use her as others did or even to so much as think of her or any dancer that way. All that purity left me feeling beautifully light, warm in my chest. I lay on the bed and studied that face, found myself overwashed with a rarefied desire that was not lust, fell hard asleep.

H
EAVY BALLS OF
rain still crashing down—that's all it was, and branches in the wind—but then there it came again. I leapt awake and off my bed, grabbed my baseball bat, slipped along the carpeted hallway and down the stairs, peered between balusters to inspect the remaining patio door, nothing but reflection—I'd left the kitchen lights on. Still the tapping came, more insistent. I slapped at the two-way light switch, the kitchen went half-dark, and suddenly out there past the perfectly polished glass was a
person.
I gave a little shout of surprise: Emily Bright.

She staggered in as I slid the door open, left a wet trail. Her shoes—just little dance flats—were covered in thick mud; she was mud to the knees, mud in the ends of her thick braid. She swayed there regarding me, let a sheepish smile take hold, leaked sudden tears.

“Whoa,” I said.

She said, “I've done something really nuts.”

“I'll get a towel,” I said. Mom kept beach towels in the laundry room. I retrieved four, handed one to Emily, who put it immediately to her hair. I wiped the floor, laid out a towel for her to stand on, helped her out of her shoes. She put a hand on my shoulder, dripped on me. All I could think of was getting her clothes in the wash. I stood to suggest she get a hot shower, borrow some of Katy's old clothes—stood up right in her face, and she just suddenly kissed me, pressed her lips to mine, kept it coming, gasps and sobs, not wooden. In there somewhere the phone began to ring, rang twenty, thirty times. A kind of disgust overwhelmed me, the extravagant sighs and her pointed tongue, but then in a rush the feeling passed and suddenly I was in my mother's kitchen kissing the girl I loved, kissing her just as hungrily as she'd been kissing me, letting the phone ring, first time in my life, just letting it ring, knowing full well that whatever it was it was probably important, probably Mom.