See You in Paradise (5 page)

But this morning, when he was sitting in the breakfast nook, looking out at the suburban street and the elementary school and the cafeteria workers ineptly parallel parking at the curb, he suddenly found it difficult to see. He didn’t know what it was at first, a darkening, a fluttering, and for a moment he thought he was having a heart attack. Just for a moment! And thinking he was having a heart attack made his heart stand briefly, horrifyingly still, so that he seemed to be having another one. Then his focus shifted, and he saw that the bird feeder hanging from the eaves, suspended in the center of the window, was bristling with nuthatches. There had to have been twenty, flapping madly about the six seed-choked holes, and Edward laughed and instantly relaxed. Not a heart attack! Nuthatches!

They’ve got the dome light on and Alison is trying to read the map. “There’s supposed to be a secondhand clothing place … and then a bridge … wait, two bridges, take the first left after the second bridge, not the left after the first … and then go 2.3 miles …” The map is absurdly, counterproductively detailed, so that if they miss a single landmark they’ll be eating roasted possum off the end of a stick in the woods tonight. Still, somehow, they manage to find the place. The Breeces’ driveway is a couple of ruts that snake through a half-reclaimed farm field and plunge into an untrimmed copse of box elders. And beyond the treeline: Taliesin. Or something like that. Massive, slabbed, lit like a pumpkin; you can see everything inside—the furniture and art and a gigantic fireplace—and right through the back windows onto the lake and the blazing sunset reflected there. Alison suppresses a wave of hatred for the rival real-estate agency that sold it: she could have bought a baby on the black market with that commission.

They park in a gravel lot the size of a tennis court. Theirs is the only car. It is Linda who comes to the door, looking awfully tall without Harlan. She leads them inside.

Harlan’s in front of the fire (as they’ve got the AC pumping pretty hard in here) with a drink in his hand. A mesquite smell fills the room. “Harlan, dear,” his wife calls out, and he theatrically snaps to attention and a grin spreads across his face, a wide face for such a thin guy. Edward notes a bear rug. Wow!

“Welcome, welcome!” says Harlan. He sets down the drink on a coffee table made of petrified wood and throws his arms wide.

“Howdy, pardner,” Edward says, and imagines he sees a flicker of irritation on the judge’s face. They shake hands. This time Harlan uses his free hand to seize Edward’s forearm, so Edward does the same. For a moment the two men are locked in a Boy Scout Death Grip. It is Harlan who lets go. Edward notices Linda and Alison attempting to greet one another. Al is a handshaker, and he just bets Linda is a kisser. The two stare nodding at one another from a distance of several feet.

“What’s your poison, Ed?”

“Does hizzoner drink tequila?” Edward says impulsively.

“Hell yes.”

Linda is talking about their failed foster-child experiment. Alison listens with alarm. It is a sermon, really, a testimonial, delivered with the strained alacrity of an introductory economics lecture. There is no room for question or comment.

“He was the sweetest little boy, a little black boy,” she says. “His momma was hooked on the drugs, and he never had no daddy to speak of. His daddy wasn’t ever around—well, I suppose it could have been anyone. His momma went to prison because of picking up drugs at somebody’s house with the little boy in the back seat. And well, Harlan and I saw him and we thought, He’s the one. He had the sweetest kinky hair and his skin was so smooth and dark. Well.

“We brought him back to the ranch and gave him all the advantages, don’t you know. He had a nanny of his own kind who was just as sweet as a biscuit, and we gave him riding lessons and Harlan took him out on the little golf course we used to have, just four holes. This was in the days before black boys played golf. And he went to a wonderful little school we found for him outside of Dallas, with children from all different races, they had the Mexicans and the Chinese and the Indians and all that. Well, we thought it would be just perfect. Except he had some trouble with reading, and they found out there was something wrong with his eyes, and also his ears, which explained why he didn’t seem to be listening to what we were saying to him sometimes. If you ask me, it was the drugs, the drugs his momma took when he was in her belly. And then poor Angeline, that’s the colored girl who was his nanny, she had to go back to Trinidad to take care of her momma, and the next one we got was a Mexican, name of Armada—”

“Amara,” Harlan says, staring hard into his tequila. Alison can’t help but notice that Edward’s glass is empty and that his eyes are casting about for the bottle. There it is, right in front of Harlan. She watches as Edward leans right past him and grabs it around the neck.

“Of course,” Linda goes on. It occurs to Alison that the Breeces cannot possibly have any friends here. She wonders why they left Texas at all, how Harlan managed to get appointed a judge in Lake County. Edward keeps drinking. She nudges him to let him know that she considers this unwise, and Harlan, raising his eyebrows in a flirtatious manner, seems to notice.

When the story peters out, they eat. It is DIY, black-bean-and-chicken fajitas. The salsa is out of a jar, a local store brand. The tortillas are cold and clammy and the chicken has had every last drop of moisture cooked out of it. It is a cursory dinner, clearly not the intended focus of the evening. Alison begins to wonder, with some concern, what the real focus is.

After dinner they drink some more, then Harlan gets up to take the plates to the kitchen. “A little thing I like to do for Linda,” he explains. “Be a man, Ed, give me a hand here.”

The two leave the room, balancing the plates in their arms. Edward is weaving dangerously. His shoulder bumps the kitchen doorway and Alison winces. She remembers the booze-soaked dinner parties they used to have, the giant vats of food, the shouted conversations during which not enough could ever seem to be said. And later, when the guests had gone, love. Their grad-student pals, with their retro eyeglasses and liter bottles of red wine, where are they now? Los Angeles, Costa Rica, Alaska. She and Edward were so smug about staying: real people stay put, they told themselves. And here they are, right where they wanted to be.

She turns back to Linda and has to stifle a gasp. The older woman has come to life: hands on her knees, she leans forward as if to impart a powerful secret. Her eyes glow orange in the firelight, her skin is flushed—and how did her neck get to be so long and muscled? She looks like … a cheetah.

Alison realizes that this is it. The moment. She is about to learn why they were asked here.

“Where is your bathroom?” she asks.

Startled, Linda coughs, licks her lips. A small smile arranges itself. She points to the stairs.

“Second door on the left.”

In the kitchen, Edward drops the plates on the counter. For a moment he is disoriented enough to mistake the sound for a flying object, and he ducks. His brain stays where it was, though, and the room doubles. He blinks hard. When his vision is restored, the face of Harlan looms.

“I got a lot of good friends,” Harlan says.

“Not me,” Edward replies. He’s trying to be funny, but suddenly this doesn’t seem funny at all. Perhaps because it is true.

“People in law enforcement, people in the courts,” the judge goes on, ignoring the interruption. “One particular friend of mine is located in Cambridge, Mass.”

“Never heard of it.” Harlan is very close, leaning right over him, giving off an odor. It’s the smell of mentholated salve. Has he got arthritis? Edward feels sorry for the older man, sorry for the life he’s leading here on the lake, in the house, with the wife. He’s sorry for having come to dinner. The fajitas are a bitter ball inside him.

“Sure you have. You’ve been there.”

“Have I?” says Edward.

“Yes, you have. You were there between the years of 1981 and 1987. You went to college there. Remember that?”

“Sheesh,” Edward tells him. “I sure don’t know. Do you think I could help myself to a glass of water?” Was it really that long ago? He still has dreams about college, in which important mail is waiting for him in his campus mailbox and he can’t remember the combination.

Incredibly, Harlan moves even closer. “You had yourself a little business there, didn’t you, Eddie?”

“I was an English major.”

“You were in sales and distribution.”

“Nah.”

“Unfortunately your little business came to the attention of the Harvard administration. You were spared prosecution in exchange for your permanent absence from the campus. After that you got yourself enrolled at Tufts and slunk outta there a couple years later. Is this refreshing your memory?”

“You bet it’s refreshing. I don’t even need that water anymore.”

Harlan attempts a grin, but the corners of his mouth don’t seem to be cooperating. “Keep cracking those jokes, pothead,” he whispers, and the whispers clatter around the gleaming disinfected kitchen. Behind Harlan, on the counter, Edward spies the takeout boxes from Taco Treat. Two of them, then four, then eight. Then just one. Oh dear. “Seems that your records with the agency lacked this important information. I took the liberty of updating them for you.”

“The agency?”

“The adoption agency.”

Something is welling up inside Edward, something acid and explosive, first in his churning stomach, then in his esophagus, then in his throat. How dare this man judge me, he thinks—but then again, that’s what judges do. They make judgments! And then it’s out of him and all over the room: hot laughter, cracking the air. Judgments! He falls against the counter, tears pouring from his eyes. Harlan has taken a step back. He’s put on his workaday face, the one he must wear as he pretends to listen carefully to all the evidence. Edward is gasping for breath.

“What the hell?” Harlan says.

Edward pounds the counter, hurting his hand. It feels great! He can’t seem to speak, but what would he say? The picnic, the Breeces, this house, it’s all so fucking funny! Maybe he and Alison should give up on the sex and do this at night instead, get drunk and tell jokes.

But Harlan doesn’t seem to get it, and he doesn’t seem to like not getting it. He sets himself in a bearish crouch, and his lip curls under, and the fuzzy panhandle rears back. Yikes!

Edward finds himself on the floor, his legs splayed on the terra-cotta quarry tile, his back against the cabinets. Hey, how’d he get down here? The cabinets are light blue, with red lizards stenciled on them. The whole right side of his face seems to be throbbing, yet giggles are still coming out of him, like hiccups, involuntary and annoying. Harlan has cured Edward’s indecision. There will be no adoption.

“You son of a bitch,” Edward hears. And then he is yanked to his feet and flung through the kitchen door.

“You can find your own coat, asshole,” shouts the judge.

Alison’s feet are silent in the carpeted hallway. It’s different up here, the walls are bare. When she shows a house, the upstairs hallways are always like this: hollow-core doors, shag carpeting, a life-swallowing softness. This is where she always loses the buyer, right here, as her enthusiasm leaves her.