Men and Dogs (22 page)

“God, that’s awful,” Palmer says. “Wasn’t he the one who—”

“Yeah. He got fired a few years after because some other boys told on him. That old, tired lion’s ass licker.”

As horrific as it is, Palmer can’t help but smile at the old habit of profanity.

“Don’t worry,” Shawn continues. “I never let him do anything. I would have reported him, but . . .”

“God.”

“Yeah. It’s all right. It was actually sort of funny.”

“It doesn’t sound funny.”

Shawn gives a hollow laugh, then goes quiet again. “I guess not. Anyway. I always wondered if you were in the same boat.”

“No.”

“Really screwed me up for a while.”

“Shawn. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear this.”

Shawn shakes his head and puts another piece of wood in the saw.

“Wait, but why didn’t you tell anyone?” Palmer yells to be heard.

“I couldn’t,” Shawn yells back. “He said he’d tell. You know, because of what he saw.”

“What he saw?”

Shawn shrugs.

“What did he see?” Palmer asks slowly.

Shawn’s mouth works itself into a shape resembling a sideways semicolon.

“He saw something?” Palmer says again.

Shawn turns off the saw now and puts his hand on his hip. “You know what he saw, asshole.”

Palmer shakes his head.

“Through the window?” Shawn says. “That day after the game?”

There have been several instances, as Palmer has grown older,
when he has been certain that time is folding like a bedsheet. For example, when his mother mentioned in passing that she’d been married to DeWitt for twenty years. Palmer couldn’t believe it. Had it been that long? It seemed no more distant than the previous Christmas. He was so determined that she retrieved the marriage license out of her files to show him. It was the same now: the soccer game happened years ago, but he could swear it was last week. That’s how clearly he remembers it.

“Sure, I’m sure. That gecko-dicked platypus-fucker was after me for the rest of school. Why?”

“I just—thought it was someone else,” Palmer says, placing his hand over his face, processing the information.

“Nope. It was Coach, all right. It wasn’t—well—he must have taken it easy on you, what with your dad and all. I mean,
let’s face it, who’s gonna go after you with something like that going on?”

“You’re right,” Palmer says, opening his eyes again. “Who?”

The wood is done. Palmer pays the bill, and together they tie the larger pieces to the top of the car. Palmer admits to Shawn that he knows nothing about making furniture, so Shawn explains how to sand everything, what stain to use, and the basics of joinery. As he goes on, though, Palmer drifts farther and farther away from the project. He can actually feel his interest disappearing, like sand trickling through the fingers of a cupped hand.

“Well,” Shawn says, “good running into you.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I should—”

“Wait, Shawn. I haven’t really asked you about yourself. Are you all right? I’m just . . . pretty shocked about all of this.”

“I’m fine, Palmer.”

“And you—you had a wife?”

“Yeah.” Shawn looks toward the building nervously. “It didn’t work out.”

“And are you—”

“I don’t even know. After that Coach thing, you know. I went off it.”

“I’m sorry. It must have sucked.”

“It did.”

Palmer is quiet for a moment. “Do you blame me?”

Shawn nods. “I did for a while. But it wasn’t you. It’s just what happened.”

Palmer rubs his thumb over the grain of the wood.

“You know,” he says, “all this time I thought it was my dad in the window. I thought he saw us and got upset and then went out in his boat.”

“Excuse me?”

“I always heard your dad was a really cool guy. Everyone on Atlantic Street talked about him like a martyr.”

“Well, sure. He did a lot of great things.”

“Right. So I doubt seeing his son doing his natural thing would’ve set him off like that. I mean, come on. He was your dad.”

“Well. It was all a long time ago.”

Shawn tightens the rope around the wood once more. “Palmer, I’m not even that good of a dad, but if I saw my kid fooling around,
I’d just tell him to quit and move on, you know?”

“Yeah.”

“You can’t blame a kid.”

Palmer nods. “OK, well. Thanks again.” They shake hands and say good-bye. As Palmer drives away, he takes one last glance in the rearview mirror; Shawn is back at the saw, scowling up in concentration, dwarfed by the huge stacks of wood.

That night, Palmer looks up Shawn Cohen in the phone book. There are two listed in Charleston County. He takes down the numbers and then calls from his blocked landline. Shawn answers on Palmer’s first try. A television is blaring in the background.
Palmer immediately hangs up.

22
Hannah Tries Again

“Birth begins at conception!” she screeches. “Obama is surrounded by a terrorist circle!”

Hannah is throwing candy wrappers at the woman’s pixilated face when she realizes the annoying, repetitive sound interrupting her target practice is her mother.

“I’m just really busy. We have a big shipment to deal with.”

That’s what Hannah has told them she is doing. Work. Jon came to get me on track with the business, she replied to her parents’
curious inquiries, and now I have an “incredible” amount to do. It’s surprising to her, how easy it is not to say anything about the divorce or the bankruptcy. She doesn’t tell them the first day, then the second. Now it’s been more than a week,
and it’s just too awkward to bring up. Maybe I won’t mention it at all, she muses. If I ignore my divorce, will it just go away?

“But I didn’t agree to—”

“How about dinner tomorrow? At Fish, maybe?”

Hannah considers this bribe. She does love dinner with wine at a good restaurant, but she is skeptical of her mother’s motives.
“Sure, I think I can make it.”

“We’ll go.” Hannah sighs. “Tomorrow.”

“All right. I’ll make the reservation. Also, please bathe before coming downstairs. Your stench is creating a fly problem.”

Hannah shuffles into her room and takes her position back in front of the television. She falls into a lace of light sleep during the segment about purging, then wakes to the sound of DeWitt’s reverberating voice.

“BANANA!” he booms.

“Hi.”

“It’s like the Batcave in here!” he says cheerfully, ripping open the curtains. “Lord Almighty! What a view! Aren’t you a lucky girl!”

“Extremely.”

“You look like a vampire, Louisiana! You know we like our girls tan in the South, right? Tan, blond, and buxom!”

“Guess I should make an appointment with the plastic surgeon.”

“Oh, you’ve got a fine figure.”

“Gross.” Hannah squints into the light. Dust particles move frenetically in the sun.

“Especially for your age. Only the slightest signs that you’re gettin’ on.”

“What do you mean, signs?”

“Hey, why don’t you come out with me to the plantation?”

Hannah shakes her head. “No, that’s OK.”

“C’mon. I’ve got some errands to run out there. Need the company. You can earn your keep.”

She tries to think of an excuse. Work? No, she can’t face work. She shrugs, puts on her shoes, and follows him out to his behemoth truck. As soon as they pull away, she regrets her mistake. It’s a long ride to River House, DeWitt’s plantation.
Last week, when she went out there with Jon, the ride was light and easy, full of shared jokes. Now in the car with her stepfather,
she can actually feel the precious moments of her life dripping away. They kill the hour by listening to Kenny Rogers on the cassette player. DeWitt sings every word, despite her protests. But on the return trip, after his forty-five minutes of “work”—Hannah spent the time communing with the goats at the petting zoo—he seems to feel the need to bond, because he leans over and switches the radio off.

“No more Kenny?”

“Are you always so relentlessly cheerful?”

“Why not? I’m wealthy and healthy.”

“For now.”

“Also, think the wife puts happy pills in my food. Hey, you need anything from Costco?”

Daisy was the one to turn DeWitt on to Costco. Ever since the store opened, she’s been shopping for the family there as if the Apocalypse is nigh. Now DeWitt isn’t allowed to get groceries anywhere else, even though he could afford to buy the entire inventory of Whole Foods.

“No.”

“’Cause I’m thinking of going to Costco on the way home.”

“OK.”

“They have great meat there.”

“All right.”

Another minute of silence.

Hannah nods absently, trying to resist an irrepressible urge to nap. She looks out the window at the trees. The pines seem dissatisfied, as if longing for proper seasons.

“So, how’s it going? The plantation and everything?”

Although DeWitt’s main source of income is the interest generated by his inheritance, he also sells admission to tours of
River House. However, as he leaves most of the running of River House to his managers, his main job, as far as Hannah can tell, is to walk around the property once a week and have lunch at the restaurant.

“Good, good. African Alley really boosted ticket sales. That was a good call on your part. People love it.”

Hannah nods. African Alley is River House’s “replica” of a slave community built after a tantrum Hannah threw on her one
visit home for Christmas during college, when she denounced DeWitt as a racist. (She had just completed a course at Stanford entitled The Culture of American White Supremacy: Then and Now.) Unfortunately, instead of hiring a historian to oversee the development of the project, DeWitt, when complying with Hannah’s request, used an interior decorator. The result, Hannah fears,
is not a little misleading to impressionable young minds: the stockades were skipped in favor of a boiled-peanut demonstration,
and instead of lectures on slavery, reenactors in period dress lounge in cute cabins, singing spirituals and hoeing cabbage and serving fragrant corn pone. It’s not that it’s not attractive, but it has little to do with reality. It’s so cozy, one might imagine Hobbits happily curling up in African Alley for a nap.

“Glad to hear it.”

DeWitt glances longingly at the bird tapes resting near the stereo. “So? Any last plans while you’re here?”

“I thought I might go see Virginia, but I probably won’t.”

“How come?”

“I’ve seen enough people.”

“She’d love to see you. I know her, you know. I know that she likes you.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“But if you don’t want to . . .”

“I don’t, really.”

“Though maybe by seeing her you’ll wrap some things up.”

Hannah adjusts the air vent so it’s not blowing in her face. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Bobana, it seems like you’re on a bit of a search.”

“What?”

“Talking to the walls—”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“Hiding in the closet, mooning over old pictures. . . . Wait a cotton-pickin’ second!” The truck screeches to a stop.

“You didn’t really say ‘cotton-pickin’,’ did you?”

“Is that an orange-crowned warbler?”

“What?”

“I’ve got to spot this, honey. Hang tight.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There.” He points to a tree, but Hannah doesn’t see anything. Cursing, he begins to root through the car for his binoculars.

“You know about the closet?”

“Sure, Pollyana. It’s my house, you know. I’m a damned good snooper. Damned good. I know you and that reverend—Virginia’s kid—were back there the other day.”

He gets out of the car and peers through his field glasses.

“We were just looking at pictures.”

“I think the little bugger’s in that tree there.”

“Pictures of you and Mom in the same place, before you were married.”

“Damn it to hell! DAMN. Missed him.”

His huge shoulders slump with disappointment.

“Can’t you just put it on the list anyway?”

DeWitt sighs in exasperation. “Well, that’d be cheating, Bobana.”

“I’ll back you up.”

“Don’t you care?”

“I mean about the pictures. Don’t you care about those?”

“Hannah, there are more important things to care about than what’s gone. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“Not really.”

“Ah. Well.” He sighs and carefully puts his field glasses back in their case. His red forehead is beaded with sweat. “You got to know it to see it, lady. No! I mean, ‘Know when to hold ’em, know when to’ . . . Aw, you get it. Don’t look at me like that, Bug Eyes. All right. So. Costco?”

When they get back, safely tucked away in their respective pockets of the mansion, Hannah realizes, with great annoyance,
that about this one thing her stepfather is right. Going back to San Francisco without giving Virginia at least one last try at the truth would render this already miserable trip utterly pointless. It would be like spending years dreaming of building a rare, intricate miniature schooner, setting out all of the tiny sails and masts and glue, then just getting up and moving to another house and leaving it all on the table. Or like hearing a warbler singing in the next room and just saying, Screw it.

And so, shamed into action, Hannah showers, dresses in hole-less jeans and an ironed floral shirt, and walks slowly to Tradd
Street. When Virginia answers the door, Hannah notes that she does not look nearly as happy to see her as the last time she was here.

“Hannah,” she says, frowning. “Come in.”

The rich smell of cooking meat. Hannah looks at her watch. It’s five o’clock.

“Are you cooking dinner?”

“We just finished. The girls eat early. Join us.”

Standing on the porch, she can see the dining room through the window. The entire Meyers family is looking at her, seated around large plates of roast beef and quivering yellow mounds that Hannah remembers as Virginia’s Yorkshire pudding.

“That’s all right. I just came by to chat with you.”

“Well, come in and say hello.” She turns and walks into the house. Hannah realizes she has two choices. She can be a complete crazy woman and run away, or she can summon her manners. For once, she goes with the latter.

“Hannah.” Warren stands slowly, as if he is pressing up on something extremely heavy with the top of his head. “What are you doing here?”

“I just came by to say hi.”

“Hi,” says one of the girls.

“Missed you in church today,” Warren says.

“Oh, I don’t really go. I was just, you know.”

Jenny puts her fork down. She is staring at her plate.

“Anyway. I don’t want to keep you from your dinner. I just . . . well. Virginia? Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” Hannah has to hand it to her; if she’s at all ruffled by the fact that her son’s high school ex-girlfriend, daughter of her disappeared lover, is crashing her Sunday meal, she doesn’t show it. She takes her glass of wine from the table and gestures for Hannah to follow her to the sunporch. “Y’all finish up,” she calls back to the rest of them. Safely sequestered,
she takes her favorite position in the cushioned chair, feet tucked up under her, hugging an ugly woven cushion.

“OK, Hannah. What now?”

“So.” Hannah takes a breath. “So. About Dad.”

“Yes?”

“I take it you two had an affair?” She tries to control the anger in her voice.

Virginia gives Hannah a sympathetic look. She leans over, opens an intricately inlaid lacquered box, and extracts a crumpled pack of American Spirits.

“No, honey,” she says. “Of course not.”

“Really?”

“We had a friendship.”

“That’s it?”

Virginia lights up. “Do I have a reason to lie?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

“Don’t be snippy. Of course I don’t. We were together in high school, yes. Everybody knows that. And, yes, we were close.
Like Warren and you were close. Jesus, I thought you would eat each other alive. But you know how it’s over between you two?”

Hannah nods.

“It was the same. Long over by then.”

“What happened?”

“Well, relationships change. Grew up, fell out of it. You know the drill. We went all the way over and came back out as friends.
Your father was very helpful to me during a hard, hard time. Being alone with a son, you know. Your mother always thought we were fooling around, though. That’s because she’s crazy.”

“She’s not that crazy,” Hannah says, experiencing an uncharacteristic jolt of loyalty. She reaches over and takes a sip of
Virginia’s wine.