Men and Dogs (10 page)

“Seriously, Shawn,” Palmer said, “last game.”

“Fine,” Shawn said, heaving out a loud sigh. “This can be the last game, but then it has to be the Championship of the World.
Five-dollar bet.”

“Fine.” With the end in sight, Palmer showed no mercy. He beat Shawn quickly and sat up. “Done. Cough up the fiver and let’s watch TV.”

Shawn’s face reddened.

“Or not,” Palmer said, tired. “I don’t even need five dollars. Let’s just go.”

“One more game,” Shawn said.

“What—”

The answer to months of wondering. The long reach of damning dreams.

What are the faculties of a thirteen-year-old lover?

Enthusiasm, mostly, fueled by the fear of being caught. Quiet, quiet. The feel of flesh quivering oddly in the mouth—long,
firm. The terrified seconds before the fascinating, sour burst.

Theirs was not love, though. At least not the type Palmer had seen in the John Hughes movies. As in school, Shawn was the unquestioned, almost tyrannical authority figure. It made sense. He had just turned fifteen. And the imagination he drew upon in creating swearwords proved consistent in this new area; Palmer often felt molded into a new shape.

At school, nothing really changed. If anything, Shawn grew more distant in public. Palmer was still allowed to ride bikes and cruise with Ben and the others, but there were no private jokes or talks, not even a stray game of Battleship. The friendship shifted; Palmer was demoted. Still, he could count on that flickering in his window, which now meant something entirely new.

Looking back, Palmer is not certain how many times it happened. Mostly he remembers the taste of terror. A teacher had been fired for being gay just the year before. Then there was the story of the woman on Church Street who found her husband in bed with another man: she sued him for all of his money, his ancestral home, and the children, all of which he relinquished shortly before putting a shotgun in his own mouth and firing. The boys knew that being gay was a crime. It had been proven.
Getting caught would ruin them.

Shawn would take out his fear on Palmer, sometimes verbally, sometimes not. “You’ve turned me into a cat-fucking faggot.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

Often he would cry, his thin shoulders shaking. “Oh, God. We’re so fucked, Palmer. Just go home, OK?”

“But it’s three in the morning.”

In this way, many nights ended with a tiptoed sidle out the back door. Palmer spent at least three endless dawns shivering out in the Cohens’ shed, waiting until it was late enough to sneak into his own house.

It was Buzz, of all people, who noticed the change. This was surprising to Palmer; he’d never thought of his father as noticing much. He seemed to live on his own happy plane. And yet—“Palmer,” he said one night after dinner.

“Yeah.”

They’d come across each other in the front hallway. Neither expecting to see the other there. They jumped back a little, exchanging guilty glances at the coatrack.

“Where are you off to?”

“Shawn’s.”

“I’m going to the office,” Buzz said to the question Palmer didn’t ask.

“Oh.”

“Christ, you look awful. What’s that scrape on your elbow?”

“Soccer.”

His father regarded him for a moment. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“All right. I’ll let it lie. Gotta go. Patients.”

On a spring Monday shortly after, Charleston Prep’s opponent was a public school for the gifted from the north of the peninsula.
The players were mostly black, a fact that made the Charleston Prep parents wary. This was South Carolina in the mideighties,
a time when racism still coursed through the grown-ups in Palmer’s world like a river running strong but barely audible beneath the ground. The line of parents on the bleachers visibly stiffened as the players trotted onto the field. Shawn’s mother took his father’s hand.

Jogging out to the middle of the field to facilitate the kickoff, Palmer could sense Shawn behind him. The boys on the other team fought as hard as undersized gladiators. Shawn missed pass after pass. When he feebly tried to kick the ball in Palmer’s direction so that he could execute the move that had become his specialty—a graceful receive, followed by a quick, aggressive dribble right up past enemy lines—Palmer deliberately stepped away from the pass. He couldn’t say why he did it. He just did.

The locker room, after. Palmer had told his mother to go home without him. The other boys had left. It was early evening by now, almost dark, the edge of the sky a pleasant stretch of conch-shell pink. Palmer waited for Shawn for what seemed to be hours. When his thin figure entered the doorway, Palmer braced himself.

“You warthog-vagina-puke-sucking-dick-cheese-licker.”

“I’m really sorry, Shawn.”

“I don’t know.”

He really didn’t. He didn’t know anything. He was thirteen.

Shawn gave a small whimper. Palmer remembers it striking him as pathetic. Then he drew his hand back and slapped Palmer’s face.

Palmer was stronger than Shawn. The boys had been ignoring this fact for a while now, but that evening, he showed it. Shawn’s face was a question. Palmer answered with a strike. Shawn looked at him, surprised, and Palmer hit him again. Something in
Shawn’s face bent. The nose? There was blood. They rolled over and their limbs tangled. Shawn, looking as if he were going to spit in Palmer’s face, hesitated and quickly pressed his lips on him instead. The taste was metallic.

“Sorry, I—”

“Someone was in the window.”

“What?”

“Someone’s watching in the window.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. I looked up and he went away.”

“Is he still there?”

“Come on, dude. Seriously, did you see who it was?”

But Shawn just left. Palmer waited a few minutes, then slowly ventured outside. He didn’t see anyone. The only thing to do,
it seemed, was run. Palmer didn’t know how long it took him to get home, or what time it was, or even the day. That became clear only later.

It was Monday, April 8, 1985.

Palmer snuck in the back door and put his clothes in a bag. They were smeared with mud and a bit of blood. He would wash them after everyone went to bed. When he came downstairs, his mother was reading the paper, her tan legs crossed.

“Palmer! I was worried you’d been abducted, but I figured they’d smell your sweaty clothes and bring you back.” She looked up at him. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” Palmer looked around. Something was off. “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s not with you?” she asked, confused. Even as she spoke, everything fell away. “When it got dark, I left a message with his service for him to go get you. I’m surprised you missed him, actually. He’s probably over there looking for you right now.”

After dinner, Palmer went to his room. He waited for a moment, then flipped the light switch. Two ups and a down. But there wasn’t an answer. There would never be an answer.

So this is it. The thing Palmer knows, the thing he won’t tell. It had to have been his father’s face in the window. Buzz must have witnessed the desires of his thirteen-year-old son and—disgusted? shocked?—left. Palmer often pictures the scene.
His father jogging away from the field house, in his Volvo speeding away, turning right on Broad Street toward the Boat Club,
most likely failing to signal. Perhaps there was a screech. The only thing he can’t imagine is the face of the driver. No expression, no details. Those features, forever lost.

10
What Hannah Finds

T
HE MORNING AFTER dinner at Palmer’s, Hannah wakes to the loud knocking of DeWitt’s voice from somewhere downstairs, followed by the light buzzing of her mother’s reply. The morning sun streams determinedly through the opening in the curtains. She turns and puts the pillow over her head. A few minutes of unsuccessful dozing later, she lets her hand wander between her thighs.

No. Because instead of Jon’s hand on her hip, what she finds herself imagining is another hip thirty states away. It’s Denise’s legs he draws around his back, up over his shoulders even, as he circles his pelvis forward and backward and forward again.
And as close as Hannah is—hell, she could probably get herself off to the image of Denise and Jon rolling around in her own five-hundred-count Egyptian cotton sheets—pride won’t let her finish. She takes her hand away and sits up.

“Screw you, Denise,” she says to the wall. “Get the hell out of my bed.”

“Oh! You must be on the phone.” Her mother pushes the door open.

“I—”

“Can I come in?” Daisy asks, looking around.

“Thought I’d bring you some coffee.” She perches on the end of the bed, holding a paper cup.

“Already back from conquering the town?”

“Well, I’ve been to the gym and the gardening store. That was my second trip to the Starbucks. It’s a splurge, but I can’t help it. Here, just for you.”

“Thanks.” Hannah takes it and draws away slightly.

“How’d you sleep?”

“OK. I miss my own house.”

“I bet.” She pats Hannah’s leg. “I bet you do. So? What’s on the agenda for today?”

“I don’t know. I could work a little. Make some calls.”

“Or I thought we could go to Goodwill.”

“Maybe.”

“Hannah,” her mother says, “a little break is always good, no matter what the problem. Give him a chance to miss you.”

“We’re throwing away any chance that we might reconcile.”

“Oh?” Hannah pulls the covers tighter. She has never told Daisy the exact nature of their business. “Have you talked to Jon?”

“No. I looked it up on the World Wide Web.” Hannah can’t help but smile. Her mother still treats the Internet as if it is a magical force only wizards might master.

“World Wide? I take this to mean you haven’t graduated to e-mail.”

“I don’t trust it. I still won’t put any of my personal information anywhere near it. But Will turned his computer on for me. It’s quite easy, actually, this Net thing. I just typed your name into the little box, and then Jon’s, and then ‘company,’
and it came up. SweetJane. Nice name, too. Very catchy.”

“Thanks.”

“I think it’s very bold, what you are doing. Very . . . today.”

“Well, it’s mostly Jon’s idea.”

“God knows it can get boring after years of marriage. Will and I—”

“Noooooooo no no no no! Can’t do it, Mom. No.”

Oh, God, Hannah thinks. Here it is.

“We could have a party here—you know, like a Tupperware party. Charleston’s gotten very modern, actually. Did you hear Eliza
Walters is a lesbian now?”

“Shopping,” Hannah croaks, putting her coffee down and rubbing her brow. “Let’s stick to shopping.”

“I just wanted to—”

“Let me think about it. I really don’t want to see anyone, to be honest. Plus, it’s not really a Tupperware-party kind of thing. We sell units in big quantities . . . to department stores. A little party wouldn’t be worth the trouble.”

“Well, Lord—some of the things on your World Wide Web site cost over five hundred dollars! If you sell ten of them—”

“OK. All right. I’ll think about it.” Instantly, she feels guilty. “And thank you for wanting to help. It’s really very nice.”
She climbs out of bed and begins straightening the sheets.

“You’re more than welcome,” Daisy says, looking pleased. “So? Shopping?”

“No, gotta work. Maybe later.”

“Fine.” Her mother sighs. “Stay in your lazy little cesspool if you like.”

“Sorry—I don’t mean—”

“Just watch out for bedsores,” she says crisply over her shoulder.

Hannah throws off her nightgown and pulls on her jeans.
A sex-toy party? This visit just officially crossed over to the bizarre. She looks at her forehead in the mirror. Still disgusting.
What to do today? She still can’t quite face those P&L spreadsheets.

“Hannah-Tropicana!” DeWitt bellows from the doorway. He elephants in and settles at her suddenly rather vulnerable-looking vanity table. Hannah tries to hide her displeasure. It would be easier on everyone if she would just like her stepfather.
But whenever he’s around, she feels uncontrollably irritable.

DeWitt nods and crosses his mutton arms. “So, you bein’ a good girl?”

“In what sense?”

“Don’t want to go shopping with your mother?”

“Not really.”

“Busy?”

“Errands to do.”

He nods, snorts, and taps his knuckles on the table.

“Need anything? The car or something?”

“No thanks. I’ll bike.”

More knuckle tapping.

“So things are going all right for you here?”

“They’ve definitely been better.”

“Right.” He picks up an old bottle of perfume, smells it, and makes a face. A moment of awkward silence settles. Hannah flinches at the attempt at fathering.

“Did I ever tell you my theory of the keys to a good marriage?”

“You know, I was just going to shower. Do you think maybe we can talk later?”

“Good sex, good money, good talks.”

“Brilliant.”

“You gotta have at least two out of three. Don’t have those, throw in the towel.”

“OK, well, I have to—”

“Your mother and I have all three most of the time.”

“That’s lovely.”

“Even down to one, though, you’re in trouble. Only money, forget it. Only sex? That’ll last you a good six months.”

“Right.”

“Your mom and dad only had one. Maybe. They—”

It comes out more sharply than she intended. Or perhaps it’s exactly what she meant. A dart aimed squarely at his chest. DeWitt is unfazed.

“You want to come birding with me while you’re here? A lot of women like it. Might help get your mind off things.”

Despite herself, Hannah is somewhat touched by this. Not enough, however, to crawl around in the mud searching for ducks.

“Probably not. Thanks, though.”

“You need money?”

“Maybe.” She doesn’t, really, but better not to draw on Jon’s and her joint bank accounts if she doesn’t have to. Besides,
she might as well let her stepfather believe he’s accomplished something.

“All right. OK, then.” DeWitt slaps his knee, jumps up, and disappears. Hannah listens as he trots down the stairs and fumbles through a drawer; he returns a few moments later, a huge smile on his face, checkbook in hand. “Two thousand? Three?”

They have a long-standing tradition of this. False father-daughter moments smoothed over by offers of cash.

“Sure. Thanks.”

He writes out a check and leaves it on the dresser. “All right, then,” he says happily. “Good luck with those errands.”

He really isn’t that bad, Hannah thinks as she lights a large candle. I’m home for a month. Maybe I’ll work on our relationship.
Do that inner-self crap Tom kept going on about when he and Palmer visited San Francisco.

Taking hold of the lit candle, she approaches her closet. Hannah was not a neat teenager. Dresses are mixed indiscriminately with sweaters, belts, and scarves looped thoughtlessly on the throats of wire hangers. All of it colorless; it looks as if she convinced her mother to buy the Gap’s entire 1990 line of sweaters, shirts, and dresses all in dove gray. Warren once said she dressed like she didn’t want to be noticed. He was right.

Parting the clothes, she thrusts her head into Nowhere, holding the candle in front of her. It’s still too dark, so she steps back out, grabs a handful of clothes, and throws them on the ground, letting light from the bedroom fall in. The rug, which she remembers as thick and luxurious, is just a dirty old shag, while the cheap, frayed, gilded cloth that served as her “tent”
is nailed unevenly to the walls and ceiling, hanging at jagged angles to reveal in places the naked wood that she never bothered to reach. Books and magazines are heaped in careless stacks. Photos litter one pillow-strewn corner. The Coleman lamp is not by the door where she remembers it but back in the far corner. To her delight, it still works, so she pulls the clothes back over the opening to recapture the old feeling.

Like so many things in life, the room improves greatly with less light. Hannah leans back into the cushions. She used to love looking up into this gold fabric; once, she would imagine it was a circus tent. She had gone to see a small carnival with
Warren in the grim, brown outskirts of the city and had been instantly fascinated by the spangled trapeze artists. She dreamed of swinging through the air, joining them in their dented trailers, being taken by an 18 -wheeler to the next place, and the next and the next.

“I could be a carny,” Hannah told him one afternoon. They were lying together on this floor. “I could run away.”

“You’re not going anywhere.” His mouth on her ear.

Where is he now? Did Virginia tell him I’m here?

Hannah flips over to look at the boxes on the floor. In high school, Hannah went through all of the pictures in DeWitt’s basement. Already her mother’s things were mingling with Will’s, but Hannah was determined to keep her own father’s snapshots separate. One hot, sad afternoon, she sifted through them and took the ones she guessed were Buzz’s to her room and put them in these boxes; they’ve been up here for years now, unopened.

She hesitates, then opens a box and begins excavating. The ones she likes to look at are mostly of the family. Hannah, Dad,
and Palmer on the johnboat. Hannah holding up a fish. It hurts, how happy she looks. Daisy and Buzz at different social gatherings,
with friends, at beach houses, at parties. Daisy in the kitchen, laughing in a tennis outfit, her legs long and tan. Hannah’s mother has fantastic legs, and it’s clear from these photographs that she knows it. In almost every photo her legs are visible from some angle, stretched out lean and taut from beneath a tennis skirt or peeping out from the side slit of a dress.

Hannah draws the candle closer, studying each picture carefully. There is a large series she always liked from a beach party out on Sullivan’s Island. Hannah was eleven years old, the very age she was when her father left. She knows this because the party took place the week just after her eleventh birthday. It was a successful birthday in terms of presents: Hannah was given a Barbie Dream House, complete with the blond, smiling plastic dream girl herself, bedecked in a red off-the-shoulder dress and a checked apron. Palmer, too, got a gift—Atari paddle controllers—even though his birthday wasn’t for months.
This was shortly before her brother turned into an asshole, and Hannah fondly remembers her and Palmer bonding over their sudden luck. All this awesome stuff! they whispered to each other. Their parents had gotten so totally cool!

The next day it all turned out to have been a trick, when their parents announced that they were going away for the weekend.
For three nights, the children were to stay at their grandmother’s condo—a cold, grim place that reeked of broccoli and bleach. Palmer and Hannah protested, only to be given the unassailable response that “You just got a present any kid would dream of having. Are you really in a position to complain?”