Life Among Giants (34 page)

“Say my name,” I said.

“I am told we have six days,” she said, arriving in this world from whatever world it was she lived in, both hands on my chest, legs straddling my hips, back bowed such that our abs brushed, her eyes intent on mine, scent of the same shampoo I'd used in the bucolic bathroom, but faint jasmine, too, and hot pheromones, the storm coming in around us. I felt myself falling into her world, the world she'd once told me I couldn't inhabit.

“My name,” I said.

“Six days,” she murmured. “
Th
at is what I am told.”

“Told by whom?” I said.

She said something in Norwegian,
litten
something.

“Translate?”

“Mm. Little folk.”

“My name,” I said again.

“Firfisle,” she said emphatically as she absorbed me, the ethereal made physical, never a body I loved more than that one or a body more completely given, none more completely taken. “Firfisle-mine.”

T
H
E
C
HLORINE
B
ARON'S
poolhouse was endlessly fascinating, mysterious, his fantasy all brought up to date via Percy Haverstock's fortune, every little geyser and mudpot working perfectly, miniature everything, room after room, first quality and perfectly restored, from the upholstery to the cuckoo clocks.

“Nice,
ja?
Not so shabby as when it was Dabney's lair. He and his dear friends hanging up on the miniature furniture like swollen lords.”

“Hanging out,” I corrected despite myself. We were lying on a bearskin that I'd only slowly realized was real. “Kate said Pete Townshend. And Eric Burdon once. And John Lennon all the time.”

“Oik,
ja,
the British invasion, all of them. Along with Kate. Very cozy.”

“I'm sorry.”

“No-no. I knew anything about this.”

“You mean nothing?”

“Nothing about this with Kate. Lots of girls out here with those boys, always girls, girls. Your Sylphide is turning her eyes away—I had no interest in their secrets. Kate is with Linsey, that is all I knew, taking perfect care of Linsey. I prized her, Lizano. She never bothers me. I have no idea of her and Dab.
Th
e one what bothers me is Brady.”

“Dabney's brother?”

“More like a disease.”

“
Th
e jailbird, right? Brady Rattner? With the beard and the sunglasses and all the motorcycle gear and the huge poof of hair?”

“Oh, that photo, of course. I guess everyone knows it. It's the only one they ever use.
Th
at was the legend he makes for himself. But Brady was only in borstal, like reform school, for maybe a half year. He is stealing lumber or something.”

“And he was a stunt man, I remember.”

“No-no, just more of his rubbish. He drove racecars a while with Dab's money, and then he crashes one on a public way drunk. Several weeks in lockup.
Th
at was all. Before Dabney bails him out. By the time he turns up here, he is shaved and haircut and suits like a businessman, very handsome rilly, with his workman swagger. He is happy in his skin, that one. He is sleeping with the upstairs girl, the downstairs girl, the girls from the ballet. And sleeping with Desmond, too, and with our own Vlad. He sniffs around your Katy always. She showed him her backhand at a dinner for President Nixon once. Oik, a real satisfying smash to the face, Brady with his fingers walking up her little skirt there in back of everyone. She is breaking his nose, beautiful, Secret Service guys escorting him out. Another time Dabney is on the road—is with Kate—and here is Brady slipping into
my
bed, just about
has
me before I wake enough to understand. I
bant
him from the house, completely and forever.”

“Banned.”

“Yes,
bant.
But Dabney is patient with him like with everyone, his little jealous brother, who wants to be business manager. Our worst time together, Dabney and me, very tense time. I don't know how much money we spent on Brady. Always with his schemes. Songs for Dabney to write, foolish business deals. Dabney makes him come apologize to me, so un-sincere, you can imagine, hoo, hoo, hoo. I am hating him more than ever after. I double bant him: no more in the house, not ever. And Dabney sick of him, too, by then. So he connects Brady up with your father, two dogs with one leash. Is why I am telling you all this.
Th
ey got along pretty good, too. Dabney giving them mother-goose chases, days away sometimes. Just so he could have his hours with Kate, I understand now, so your father would not know. I am traveling, traveling, Dabney is traveling. And so it is your poppa and Brady, Brady and your poppa.”

“My father was here that much?”

“
Ja.
Right in this poolhouse here. Your father was very polite, something sweet about him, but so desperate.
Th
e way he carries himself! Like a bag of laundry! Always begging Dabney to invest. And Dabney lets him manage some large sum of money. Because of Kate, of course. And the money is lost some complicated way. I will never forget it: Freddy is throwing him out, right down the High Side stairs. Your poppa, he isn't fighting back, but Brady, he will not leave—somehow he is in this, too—he is arguing and shouts and tries to punch Dabney and sweet Dab is giving the okay, and so Freddy beats Brady like an egg and thrown him down the stairs after your poppa, those big stone stairs. And you know Nicholas, he's back in five minutes, begging on his knee. And of course, because of Kate, he is forgive. Brady, no. Dr. Chun drives Brady to the hospital—pretty bad, bloody and broken—and Brady never come back. Never saw him again. Poof.”

“Your own brother-in-law!”

“My own beast, you mean.” She rubbed her shoulder, ran a finger along the worst of the many scars left from failed surgeries. “
Ja,
oik. Bad times.” She disentangled herself from me, rose from the bearskin rug, padded naked to one of the several little kitchens, found a big orange there, peeled it busily, broke it, dropped a section on my chest as she passed back by—silhouette in firelight—floated on down the skinny corridor and through the closet into what had become our bedroom. “No more talk,” she said. “It is ruining my mood.”

T
H
E HEAD OF
the High Side housekeepers discreetly dropped off exquisite meals. Maybe a housekeeper had done the same for Kate and Dabney. I kept thinking of them trysting there, thinking of the night the guy crashed his car, my poor sister.
Th
e things we didn't know about her. Kate and Sylphide waiting up together for news, Kate come to the dancer's room in tears, maybe Desmond the one with the heart to let her know: Dabney missing, still missing, then found. No need for Kate to confess to any affair—it was plain from the brand of tears: she was in love. And poor Sylphide, the death and the betrayal, all at once.

Th
e dancer and I used the whole suite, all the eight or nine little bedrooms, all the grottoes and virtual hot springs, the waterfall rainforests, the warmed towels in endless supply. We abandoned our clothing within a day and a half, all those little fireplaces blazing. False afternoon by pretend evening her feet came unknotted, her blisters less angry. My sore knees came quiet, my stiff hands loose.

We dropped the subject of my sister, my father. We dropped the subject of Dabney, of his awful brother, all of it. Restaurant Firfisle was not a subject, ceased to exist. Dance was not a subject, football, no. Tenke was a physical person, a great studier of bodies, absently compared the length of our hands, the circumferences of our wrists, the mobility of her joints, mine, not in passing but for hours, even during lovemaking, of which we didn't tire.

I found my pants one night while she slept (I had only the clothes I'd been wearing when I arrived, not that it mattered, washed and folded repeatedly whenever I wasn't looking), retrieved the speckled stone from its place in a front pocket, kept it in my hand through a very long kiss and then through an extended, indolent lovemaking session. When she dozed next, nowhere else to put it, I placed the greenish heart gently in the hollow between her clavicles, the small, smooth stone like a necklace without a chain, admired my work, and fell asleep myself, her belly as a pillow. When I woke she was watching me closely, night or day, who could tell? Not a word about the stone, not another word, more lovemaking, no stone to be found.

One of the last false afternoons I said I didn't want ever to part, and shortly she disappeared—slipped into one of the baths, no other door but the one wide open, and then just didn't come out. When I looked she was missing, vanished. My one wave of anger, which was in fact fear.
Th
en a tiny voice calling. From where?
Th
e back of the glacier-themed shower, secret door like moving an iceberg, a hidden room behind, like a bunkhouse at a summer camp. I ducked in, puzzled, and from a top bunk she leapt upon me frontally, trusted my hands, held my ribs with her thighs, moist contact.

I walked her around the whole crazy place a half hour, she steering me with her hips, her feet clenching, her mouth at my neck, love bruises to take home with me in the dozens, a carnal tour of the Chlorine Baron's strange legacy, till I fell with her onto a beautiful miniature psychiatrist's couch done in soft leather, pumping at her furiously, not my style, not at all, the one time she didn't giggle when she came, or
went,
as she would put it.

18

Our first trial run at Firfisle was on a Saturday evening in late October, nuts. We'd been inviting contractors for months, set up a full schedule of reservations, all these familiar faces and their families and friends. RuAngela acted as hostess in a sassy pink dress and nail extensions. Our wait staff amounted to two failed soap actors Etienne had found someplace, lovely manners and jocky good looks, no experience, panicky. In the kitchen it was only Etienne and I, also a dour but talented dessert girl who would have to double as salad person, peeving her mightily. No line cooks, as yet: Etienne and I were it, prepping right up against the opening bell. We had no signage and no exterior lights, so RuAngela carved a couple of pumpkins and put them in the street-side windows. And here came the guests, all in a crowd, better than ghosts, but still . . .

Total collapse, a boisterous party with free food, no more than that, everything breaking down. We'd forgotten screws in two of the tables during set-up and they fell over, drinks, flowers and all.
Th
e pared-down menu went out in frenzied bursts, my tricky culinary-school ticket system as useless as Etienne had warned. And the toolbox crowd drank a
lot.
Outside, Olulenu parked the cars too tight, forgetting that people wouldn't leave in the order they'd arrived, like working a Rubik's Cube to extricate them.

Some measure of the general confusion was my fault: I couldn't get Sylphide out of my head, a cinema's worth of images, great performances, scene after scene, a very sad ending. I'd awakened the last morning of my vacation and found my dancer missing, found one of the maids cleaning up, a squirrelly older gal called Maria, who crossed herself at the sight of me naked, no English at all, not a trace. She clucked when I tried Spanish—presented my clothing washed and folded, umpteenth time. For the first time in days I dressed, then, increasingly anxious, searched all the secret alcoves, but this was no game: my lover was gone. I let myself out, marched down the muddy lawn bereft and shoeless, leapt the brook. At home I dressed for work, work my one salvation.

Etienne was alone in the restaurant, of course, early as it was. Hugs in the kitchen, happy greetings. It wasn't till noon that I found the speckled stone, a rough heart sitting square in the center of my butcher-block workstation. No way I would have missed it, impossible.

“Not me, bro,” Etienne kept saying.

Neither of us had seen a thing, not so much as a shadow.

T
H
E
F
IRFISLE TEAM
regrouped and the next dry run went a couple of light years better, and a lot less eventful. Our guests were people we'd met in the community, people who'd go forth for us, we hoped, like Dwight Leonard, like my dentist, like the priest from Mrs. Paum's house, and a score or so of acquaintances Etienne and RuAngela had made, including the entertainment editor from the local paper, long and skinny and hurried, definitely not an eater.

Eight o'clock and my sister arrived, a mere hour late, Jack on her arm. We'd reserved the best of the window tables for them, moonlight on wavecrests and slow-strobing lighthouse—
all clear, all clear
—and the green and the red running lights of commercial boats and the buoy lights blinking out there and the green light at the end of our cracked seawall, the view as dramatic as I'd dreamed. I stepped out to greet them—more practice, really, the calm chef in the midst of a maelstrom.

“Just gorgeous,” Jack said.

“How about a Bloody Mary,” said Kate sharply. She looked very thin, or maybe it was the dark velvet dress, purple or black you couldn't tell, her eyes alight, every man in the place focused upon her.

“Maybe a Virgin?” I said.

“It hardly matters,” said Kate. “Just stuff it with fucking vegetables.”

“Absolutely gorgeous,” Jack repeated, looking all around.

“I'll make a salad out of it,” I said. Didn't Jack notice Kate's moods anymore? He sat there with the most affable expression, perhaps leaving the heavy hand to me, keep the peace at home.

“A Bloody Mary, David. And just keep 'em coming till it's all one bloody mess.”

“Kate,” I said gently.

“A shot of gun on the side,” she said as if she were just making pleasant puns.

“Jack?”

He shook his head. People go crazy in increments, I thought; perhaps Jack had been lulled along and hadn't noticed. He shook his head some more, put his hand on my wrist. “
Th
is time you help me,” he said, normal tones.

“I looked up
firfisle,
” said Kate. “It took me four hours in that pretty library in Madison. You'd have thought I would have known it was fucking
Norwegian.
”

“Kate,” Jack said.

“I'll feel better with some food,” said Kate, mocking him preemptively.

He pretended not to notice, or maybe didn't notice: “You always feel better when you eat, sweetie.”

“My Bloody Mary,
Firfisle.
Or aren't you the fucking bartender?”

“Virgin,” said Jack.

“Oh, that'll never happen again,” said my sister, suddenly calm. RuAngela had slipped up behind me, took over the conversation:

“Katy, where did you
get
that dress?”

“In a dumpster,” Kate said, which wasn't true, of course, and which was really funny, at least to Ru-Ru, whose manly laugh is hilarious to everyone, even Kate, even poor Jack, anyway we laughed.

A
FEW DAYS
later, Halloween, we opened for real and put all our effort into a few brilliant dishes from the abundance around us: Etienne had harvested leeks that morning and braised them, for example, made tarts. Our grumpy dessert girl—Brie was her name, soon to be fired for the attitude—had all the greens she needed and nice tomatoes from under our hoop house, new sharp cheese from the dairy guy, E.T.'s help with a dressing.
Th
e final product looking oddly like a dessert, for which I gave her praise: sometimes that's all people want.

Th
irty covers, nine tables, very easy, perfect service, our first cash receipts.

I'd taken Kate up to McLean the morning previous. Jack couldn't do it, not again, but got in his Volvo and went to work like any old day. It might have been she'd dosed or even overdosed herself on whatever meds she hadn't been taking for however many weeks up to that point; anyway, she was awfully calm, quiet, abstracted, distant, little remorseful sighs: another failure, as she saw it, hard to take. It's only about a three-hour drive, Madison to Boston, and that's going slow, not a word to say the whole way, though I commented on the sights—the mouth of the Connecticut River at Old Saybrook and Lyme, the submarine base at Groton with a couple of nukes in port, stuff we'd loved spotting when we were kids, the big whaling ships on display at Mystic Seaport, where we had lunch.

Over lobster rolls I said something about Dad, how he'd brought us there when we were little, how he'd gotten in a tussle with a Seaport guard because we were walking up the exit ramp to the ship instead of using the stairs, which of course was Dad all over, one of those formerly funny memories, vivid, so vivid, his white shirt ironed and his face growing dark,
You can't tell Commodore Hochmeyer what to do!
And the wise ancient guard who knew how to shut him down:
Sir, is this the kind of behavior you want to teach these beautiful kids?

Kate gazed at me a long time, perfectly calm, a flag with no wind: “You think he was so ineffectual. You think he was such a poseur.”

“I didn't say that.
Th
ough he did try too hard. Socially, you know? And at business. I mean, he tried too hard to impress. He just wanted to please. And that was a strength, too. I mean as a parent he was incredibly warm and kind and loving and present. He'd do anything for us.”

“You're like the fucking Mom club. ‘Trying too hard to please.' ”

I let a couple of breaths go by, spoke calmly as I could: “Her word was for him was
inept
. Remember? I never said it. She expected everything to run on schedule and per plan. But then, that was Mom's strength. She was chilly, I agree. And she pushed him too hard, okay. She could be so critical of him, true. But she was totally practical, forceful, always with the plan and the schedule, not many hugs, but she's the one who made athletes of us, for example. Am I right? She's the one who pushed us toward elite colleges.”

Not a ripple: “Oh, ‘elite.' Oh, ‘for example.' ” And then she sang, that mocking kid's thing, two notes, one minor:
“Mom club! Mom club! Mom club!”

“Kate.”

“Like, oh,
Dad,
such a loser. Oh,
Dad,
always with the putrid decisions. Oh,
Dad,
you got me
killed
.”

“Okay, Kate.”

“But you know that boyfriend of Emily's?”

“No, Kate. Katydid. I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Commodore Hochmeyer wasn't so fucking ineffectual about
that
kid.”

“Katy, sister, eat something.”

More mocking, a kid imitating her tormentor, real echoes of our father, Jack's famous phrase: “ ‘You'll feel better when you eat.' ”

“Exactly.”

She picked up her pickle, seemed to swallow it whole, gagged a little, picked up her chips and crunched them in her teeth one by one by one, didn't touch the lobster roll, which I wrapped for the ride back. Plus now the weirdness of having the poolhouse in common, no way to talk about it. I couldn't ask about Brady Rattner, because how would I know? Brady with his hand up her skirt, Dabney buying world-class paintings for her at auction, Dad oblivious, just trying to get someone somewhere somehow to invest the big bucks so he could impress his monstrous boss. So it
was
Dad behind the pounding Mark Nussbaum took?

Whoa.

Shaking off the thought, and trying for something more honest, I said, “I hear Dad was at the High Side all the time.”

“Yes?”

“I hear he hung out in the poolhouse. All those fountains and forests and fancy toilets and stuff. Oxcarts to turn on the shower.”

“You hear this,” she said.

“And he hung with Dabney's brother sometimes, huh?”

“Oxcarts,” she said. And then she wouldn't look at me, grabbed her lobster roll back, unwrapped it, ate it in three bites. “So much you haven't told me,” she said, but not in a way that made me think she wanted to hear.

“So much,” she kept repeating as we got in the car, as we drove. “So much you haven't told me.” And then, “Firfisle.” Just that, over and over, thirty miles, forty-five, sixty: “Fir-fucking-fisle. So much you haven't said,
Lizard.
”

Th
ey greet you in the lobby, two big male nurses and a lady psychiatrist, all three of them people Kate seemed to know. You get just a few seconds to say good-bye, hug like a hockey check from Kate, no tears, never any tears from Kate.

Me, I cried in the parking lot an hour.

T
H
OSE FIRST FEW
months there were some very quiet nights at the restaurant, including a Tuesday when no one came in, not a single customer, pretty sobering.
Th
ere was an amateurish, supposedly tongue-in-cheek review in the local paper, that skinny guy we'd fed for free (“Westport's Tragic Son Makes Tofu Touchdown”), but that was it for media attention those lonely weeks and then months (and so irritating that I wrote the editor an ill-advised letter, or rant: I wasn't anybody's son and Restaurant Firfisle would never use tofu or other pre-processed foods in
anything
).
On the positive side, the slow pace meant there was plenty of time to invent new dishes. Never have restaurant employees eaten so well.

Spring and the advent of warm weather brought more people down to the waterfront, and with a little more traffic we started attracting more guests, and with some word of mouth attracting more. We had a string of busy Saturdays, and then full weekends, and then, suddenly, starting in June, we were honestly bustling four days a week, then five, then seven, never a lull. By the time Jillian Jeffries, the
Times
food critic, dined unbeknownst with her three tasting friends (two separate evenings and apparently a third evening solo), we were making and serving beautiful food consistently. I had no idea that Jeffries and Sylphide were such great friends, didn't learn that till much later (and not to any chagrin, really, Jillian being a woman of integrity; the dancer had only steered her our way).
Th
e adulatory review came out just before Memorial Day (as part of a “Summer in the Country” series of articles), and entirely because RuAngela had always expected and planned for triumph, we were more or less ready for the onslaught that ensued. By July we were booked for the rest of the summer, all the way to September 15, when, incredibly, we started operating in the black.