The Laments (31 page)

Julia tried to introduce herself, but Dorothy avoided her, so Julia lingered by the door, welcoming visitors while checking her watch in anticipation of Howard’s appearance.

Brautigan’s daughter, Shelly, a willowy fourteen-year-old with braces, soon arrived. But Carey refused to hand out presents until Julia’s children appeared. That wasn’t until six-fifteen, over an hour later.

“Sorry, darling,” Howard apologized. He wore his yellowed cricket jersey and paint-spattered jeans. The twins wore sweaty P.E. shirts from school; their hair was wild, their noses runny. Howard chuckled at the sight of them. “Couldn’t find them anywhere!”

“Howard Lament! We were beginning to think you didn’t exist,” said Carey Bristol.

“Ah,” Howard said, giving Julia a surly nod. “So much for wishful thinking.”

Julia blushed deeply. It was the first time in their marriage that Howard had slighted her in public.

“This is Carey Bristol, Mike Brautigan, and Emil DeVaux,” she said.

Howard shook hands with them. “You fellows probably know my wife better than I do these days!” he joked. Julia put her hand to one temple in embarrassment.

“You’re a lucky man, Howard,” said Brautigan.

“Why’s that?” Howard replied. “She hasn’t sold a house in months.”

“Neither have I,” replied Brautigan. “But you’re married to a fine lady.”

Ignoring the compliment, Howard surveyed the office disapprovingly, as if the very walls were responsible for his entrenchment. While Emil DeVaux presented the boys with wrapped boxes, Julia steered Howard away for a quick word.

“What’s wrong with you?” she whispered, the lines of her forehead crosshatched with shame.

“What could be wrong?” replied Howard.

“I’m
disgrace
d
!” said Julia. “How
dare
you speak about me that way!”

When he saw the tears in her eyes, an expression of contrition spread over Howard’s face.

“Julia, please forgive me—” he began.

But his apology was interrupted by the twins.

“Mum, look what
we’ve
got!” cried Marcus. The boys were holding air rifles.

“Jesus Christ,” murmured Julia, and she spun around to Emil with all the bottled-up anger she had intended for her husband.

“You gave my children
guns
?”

Emil, for once in the year, actually had a merry smile on his face.

“Yeah.” His eyes darted over to the boys. “Why? Do they
have
guns?”

“Emil, I left Africa to get my children
away
from bloody weapons! How dare you?”

Julia took the rifles away from the boys and handed them back to Emil, whose mustache drooped, his brief Christmas cheer shattered.

HOWARD HAD WALLPAPERED
the bathroom with the free historical maps that came with the back issues of
National Geographic
. Madagascar lay above the sink. Antarctica could be found just above the toilet-paper dispenser. As Will lay in the tub, he memorized the twists and turns of the Amazon. Marcus became an expert on Virginia geography because the toothbrush holder lay on Chincoteague Island. Howard placed a map of Australia at eye level so that when he shaved, he could memorize the southeast coast; he chanted the towns like a mantra: “Ulladulla,” “Gerringong,” “Kiama,” “Wollongong,” “Bulli.”

That last week before Christmas, the Laments were unable to summon any yuletide cheer. Julia and Howard lay in bed, back to back, frozen in place and far apart.

“Julia?”

“Oh God, Howard, please don’t mention Australia again.”

After a pause, Howard nudged closer to her.

“What about New Zealand?”

“Oh, Howard!” cried Julia. “We can’t go
anywhere
. I’m paying for groceries with a credit card. We can’t even afford to buy the boys presents.”

After a silence, Howard looked at her. “You talk to me these days as if I were a fool.”

Julia was too angry to apologize. As she lay in bed, she thought of Howard when they had first met at the Water Works. He seemed so brilliant and knowledgeable then, and all at once she felt terribly ashamed of herself.

ON A STARK AND UNGENEROUS
Christmas Day, the sunlight was absent, the temperature low, and a biting wind stole the peal of bells that announced the holiday service at Queenstown Presbyterian Church. Julia gave the boys presents from the Presbyterian thrift shop, a barren storefront several windows down from the laundromat. She and Howard had agreed not to exchange gifts, but at the last minute she found him a woolen scarf that reminded her of the style he wore to the Ludlow Water Works on frosty African mornings.

“I thought we weren’t exchanging gifts,” said Howard.

“Yes,” said Julia, “but then I saw this, and I couldn’t resist.”

Howard blinked. “But I didn’t get anything for you because you said
not
to!
You
made the rule.”

“It doesn’t matter, darling,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting anything from you.”

But, of course, she had been. And because Howard gave her nothing, Julia felt unloved; and because Julia gave him something, Howard felt like a fool, again.

Julius received a sweater. He picked it up as if it were a skinned cat.

“This isn’t new!” he cried. “It smells!”

“It’s
like
new,” insisted Julia. “As good as new.”

“But I wanted something
new
for Christmas,” he protested. “Are we that broke?”

“Of course not, Julius. We just can’t afford
new
things right now,” explained his mother.

Julius jammed his teeth together. “I got an
old
bike for my birthday, and an
old
radio last Christmas.
I wanted something new this time
.” He turned to Julia. “Mum, you said when we moved that we wouldn’t be poor!”

Howard rose to Julia’s defense. “Stop complaining—at least you got
something
. There are children on the other side of the world who don’t get much more than a banana for Christmas!”

“At least bananas are
new,
Dad,” said Julius with contempt. “Nobody gives someone an
old
banana, do they?”

When no one rebuked Julius for speaking to him with such disrespect, Howard went down to the basement to sulk, only to emerge for the family dinner, which was held that evening at a diner on Route 99. The holiday platter included two slices of overcooked turkey, a splash of gravy, a mound of mashed potato, and flaccid green beans. Christmas carols like “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” and “Silent Night” played on the radio with numbing repetition. The windows had been sprayed with fake snow, even though there was snow on the ground.

New Year’s Eve passed without celebration in the Lament house, though they each made a resolution. Julia vowed that she would sell more houses, and that they would never have a Christmas like this again. Howard resolved that he would never again act the handyman. Marcus and Julius swore to be rich when they grew up, and Will’s resolution was to defy Calvin, to trade his cowardice for a stronger conscience, and, in doing so, win Dawn’s affection.

FRIEDA CAME TO THE
final Thursday women’s meeting of the year with her arm in a cast.

“I have to be more understanding of Stevie,” she confessed. “He doesn’t like me working. And my going out on Thursday nights makes him even more frustrated. He gets violent because he’s
insecure
.”

“Jesus, honey,” said Avé. “The man is sick. When are you going to get the point and walk out?”

Frieda refused everyone’s offers of help.

Avé grew exasperated. “Frieda, you’re not stupid. How many broken arms does he have to give you before you get the message?”

“I think Frieda’s very brave,” said Julia. “It’s much easier to walk away from a man than to cope with his problems. Frieda is a loyal wife, and I respect that.” She shared a rallying smile with Frieda until Phyllis spoke.

“Personally, I have no problem with loyalty, but there’s a big difference between a husband whose problem is depression and one who breaks your arm for looking at him the wrong way.”

The Matron’s Files

They gave Mrs. Pritchard a delightful send-off at the hospital in Salisbury: a table full of her favorite deviled ham sandwiches, some rosé, and a little chocolate cake with almond flakes topped with a single candle. Somebody had even thought to make the balloons green, white, and red because she was beginning her retirement with a trip to Italy. The director wanted to smooth things over, because even if they were glad to see her go, she had given Mercy Hospital forty good years.

But whenever people asked what Mrs. Pritchard was going to do with herself, she gave the same bitter reply:

“I have had a rich and fulfilling career; all I want is to stay.”

As matron of the obstetrics ward, Mrs. Pritchard had always been a model of order. Thousands of babies had passed through the system, and she had the file cabinets to prove it—banks of them, with alphabetically ordered names, and color-coded labels according to sex (blue and pink) and destination, that is, natural parents, foster care, or adoption (labeled in purple, orange, or turquoise, respectively). Give her a name or date and she could tell you size, weight, all the particulars of the parents, and, if the baby was an orphan, where he went, and to what institution. Any name.

Just about any name.

When she began work at the hospital in Salisbury, she had been a young nurse with a head of rich auburn hair and a complexion as fair as that of any Irish girl raised in County Kerry. Though the lines of her eyes looked more brittle now, she was still a handsome woman—the late Mr. Pritchard had always said so. When she turned sixty-five she had no intention of retiring, but to her dismay, a replacement was hired without her knowledge.

Her successor was a colored woman named Beauty Harrison. Beauty! The audacity of the names Africans chose. Mrs. Pritchard protested in a letter to the director, ten pages long and single-spaced. As she tried to explain, even if Beauty Harrison turned out to be a first-rate matron, many patients and staff wouldn’t take easily to a colored superior all of a sudden. Then there was the matter of Mrs. Pritchard’s filing system. It couldn’t be entrusted to just anyone. Blacks and whites think differently. File differently. The director responded by urging Mrs. Pritchard to begin her retirement a month earlier than planned.

Mrs. Pritchard’s second letter to the director clarified her motives in twelve single-spaced pages. She wasn’t being racist; she merely judged people by virtue of forty years’ professional experience. Furthermore, she judged others by no more exacting a standard than she applied to herself. Indeed, her files included seven devoted to the deadly sins. For every five chocolate bars she ate, she placed one wrapper in the Gluttony file. The Envy file was full of those letters from her sister, who, God knows, had been handed
her
life on a silver platter. Lust had been vacant for a long time, as had Sloth. And Pride? Well, wasn’t she entitled to a little pride after devoting her life to mothers and children? As for Greed, she lived modestly, and she reserved her Wrath for inferiors only.

But the director was firm. “It’s time to let go, Mrs. Pritchard,” he cooed. “It’s time to move on with your life.”

“This hospital is my life!” she insisted, “and I won’t see its standards go down!”

“I’m glad you see it that way,” replied the director with a steady glance. “We don’t want any mistakes, any names lost, any files misplaced, do we?”

“Of course not,” replied Mrs. Pritchard. Then uncertainty clouded her features. Files
had
been misplaced. She couldn’t remember the exact details, but the embarrassment she felt over the matter was still palpable. Had it been a month ago? Or just a week? Critical papers, lost. Amazingly, they had turned up in the trunk of her car. What a relief it was to have found them. And then she realized with solemn dismay that her retirement had nothing to do with her age at all; it was her memory that was at fault.

“What will I do now?” she wondered out loud.

“Mrs. Pritchard, aren’t there things you’ve always wanted to do? Places you’ve wished to go?”

She remembered the walks she had taken with her late husband, Venable Pritchard, a large man advised by his cardiologist to exercise or face an early demise. Each night they strolled through town after dinner while he wheezed and sputtered like a teakettle. As they trudged past the storefronts of the business district, the exhausted Mr. Pritchard would catch his breath near a travel-agency window with its tantalizing posters of foreign vistas.

“Look, Alice!” he said between gasps, pointing to one such vision. “
That’s
the Ponte Vecchio! That famous bridge in Florence! The bridge of lovers!

“Oh, Alice,” he continued, “there’s no more romantic spot in the world! Did you know that five hundred years ago lovers leaped from it hand in hand to guarantee they would spend eternity together!”

His stories became more and more fantastic.

“In 1943, the heroes of the anti-Fascist resistance were caught on the bridge in a cross fire,” he gasped, “and shed their blood on the cobblestones, which, to this day, remain a rusty red! Widows and widowers frequently find the ghosts of their loved ones pacing the bridge, trapped in a limbo above the river, unable to cross onto terra firma. Darling,” Mr. Pritchard vowed, “I’ll take you there if it’s the
last
thing I do!”

Alas, his heart was no match for his imagination. The last thing Venable Pritchard did was to die in his sleep beside his wife in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia.

After the party, Mrs. Pritchard took her personal files home. Under the word
Retirement,
she discovered a number of items filed over the decades. They were all familiar to her—certainly nothing wrong with her memory
now,
thank you very much. There was a list of classics she had planned to read, a floral swatch that she had hoped to reupholster her couch with, a postcard of the Ponte Vecchio sent from Florence, and a slip of paper that said, simply,
Lament
.

Dutch Oil

True to her resolution, Julia sold two houses in February, one right after the other. Carey Bristol insisted on opening a bottle of champagne in the office to celebrate.

“You see? That’s the way houses sell,” he explained. “Nothing for weeks, then bang, bang, bang.”

The first house was a brand-new split-level, bought by a young Canadian couple named Robertson. Julia recognized the young wife’s anxious optimism; the husband was beginning his career at an electronics corporation in New Brunswick. The second sale was a modest Cape buried in the Humbertville woods; the buyer was a woman, five years older than Julia and recently divorced, setting up a new life for herself and her three daughters. Coincidentally, her name was Julia, which Julia Lament found both auspicious and unsettling.

Unfortunately, the commissions on these houses were immediately swallowed. The advances she had received from Roper over the past year had to be paid back, and there was the fine from Mr. Snedecker, and the credit card bill. The Laments were in serious debt.

When the cold-water faucet became clogged with rust and Julius was scalded during his morning shower, Howard solved the problem by lowering the temperature of the hot-water heater. With just the hot faucet on, they could have a lukewarm shower. Marcus protested that this wasn’t hot enough for him.

“We can’t afford a thousand-dollar plumbing repair,” explained Howard. “Speak to your mother about selling more houses.”

Meanwhile, Howard was convinced that Julia would soon concede the hopelessness of her career and free them to continue their journey to some better place. To prepare for this moment, he phoned Roper’s rival and invited the agent over to appraise the gray-clapboard Georgian at 33 Oak Street.

FOR MOST OF THE WINTER
a dirty, residual snow that had hardened into ice made it impossible for Will to ride his bike to school. Will loved riding his red Raleigh with its white-rimmed tires. It was a carefree vehicle compared to the fuming, temperamental machines that rattled into the school parking lot. Calvin, for example, drove a battered springtime-yellow ’65 Mustang given to him by his brother after a rollover accident.

When March offered a warm breeze and enough sun to do away with the ice, Will pumped up his tires and oiled the chain and the gears. As he passed Roy’s low-slung porch, Will recognized a voice.

“Hey, English, gimme a ride!”

True to his resolution to follow his conscience, Will slowed down. An old Rottweiler chained to the lattice released a few emphatic barks before settling into a weary heap.

“Hop on,” said Will, sliding forward. In an instant, Roy had leaped off the porch and climbed on, although he looked doubtful that Will’s offer was sincere.

“No tricks, English,” Roy muttered.

“Don’t call me English,” said Will.

“Then how about
Mr. Rhodesia,
” said Roy.

“I’m Will. Call me Will.”

Roy tossed his head. “Call you whatever I want, English!”

“Look, can we clear something up? I don’t have anything against you. Just because Calvin thinks I’m a racist doesn’t mean it’s true.”

“Everybody’s a racist,” said Roy. “Even my uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“Shit, yeah,” said Roy. “Calls me a Chinaman on account of my eyes. Probably got some Chinaman blood in me on account of my dad being from Cuba—they got plenty of Chinese down there. Other times he calls me Midnight, on account of my skin being blacker than his. Blacker than all my cousins put together. Y’know what they call this kinda black?” Roy held the back of his hand in front of Will’s face.

“What?”

“Urple.”

“Urple?”

“Ain’t that a nasty-sounding word? Urple. Worse than being a Midnight Chinaman.”

“I guess so,” Will agreed. He was puzzled by the coincidence of Roy’s nickname and the villain of his nightmares, but it seemed wiser to say nothing.

They were approaching the narrowest point on the road to school, the trestle bridge, which was paved with narrow logs. Beneath the bridge lay tracks for the commuter trains to New York and Philadelphia. It was a precarious spot for a cyclist if there were cars passing, because their weight would bend the logs and spring a cyclist off the shoulder, either into oncoming traffic or onto the tracks below. When a motor revved behind them, Will felt Roy twist to see who it was.

“Goddamn!” cried Roy. “It’s Calvin!”

“So?”

“Goddamn Calvin always burns rubber when he sees me. Pump those pedals, English!”

Will sped up, but Calvin slowed his yellow Mustang alongside them and rolled down his window. “Hey, Mr. Rhodesia!”

“Hey, Calvin!” said Will.

“Mr. Rhodesia,” said Calvin, “are you aware that there’s a
nigger
riding on back of your bicycle?”

“I’m giving
Roy
a ride, Calvin.”

Calvin raised his eyebrows quizzically; this didn’t compute. “How much is he paying you, Mr. Rhodesia?”

“I ain’t paying nothing,” said Roy with a furious grin.

Yards away from the trestle bridge, Will slowed down, but Calvin kept pace.

“See you at school!” shouted Will.

But Calvin wasn’t finished with Roy. “Riding on the white man’s back is gonna cost you, boy!” he shouted.

Roy muttered something.

“What’d you say?” Calvin demanded.

“I said how’s your brother, Calvin? How’s
Hopalong
? Tell him Roy says hi, all right?”

Calvin’s face crumpled, and the Mustang swerved; Will felt the front of the bike stop, jammed between tire and curb, and he and Roy went flying.

By the time Will had disentangled himself from the raspberry bushes on the embankment beside the railroad tracks, Calvin and his bicycle were nowhere to be seen. Then he looked around for Roy. There was no sign of him along the road or in the bushes.

“Hey, Roy? Roy!”

A hoarse cackle came from the raspberry bushes a yard or two farther along, and Roy crawled out backward, nursing a cut on his hand.

“You see his face?” cried Roy. “‘Hopalong’ works every time!”

“Who’s Hopalong?” asked Will.

“A nickname. Calvin’s big brother, Otis, broke into the lumberyard and stole a chainsaw about a year ago. My uncle Joe was night watchman, so he chased him. Otis runs for the railroad tracks, thinking he can get across before a train comes. But the railroad ties are wet, see, and Otis
slips
. My uncle sees that boy hopping across the tracks like a jackrabbit and—
wham
!
—the train takes his leg off, clean at the knee. So I call him Hopalong Cassidy, see? Makes Calvin crazy!”

Will listened to this story with puzzlement; he saw nothing funny about a brother losing a limb. Roy was still slapping his knees in hysterics as Will came to grips with an even more unsettling fact: his freedom, his escape, and his only joy lay at the bottom of the hill, a crumpled and unsalvageable heap.

CALVIN CAUGHT UP WITH WILL
during German class.

“I’m sorry about yer bike,” he remarked.

“Jesus, Calvin, you almost killed us.”

“Roy’s got a big mouth,” Calvin said bitterly. “Why’d you give him a ride, anyway?”

“Because I felt like it!” snapped Will.

“Herr Lament,” interrupted Mr. Steuben, “
sprechen Sie deutsch, j
a
?”

Will hadn’t realized he was shouting, but he noticed that his anger seemed to make an impression on Calvin.

“Look, I can help you get a new bike.”

“How?” replied Will.

“I work over at Dutch Oil Research. Emptying trash, polishing floors. Three hours a night. They’re always looking for people. In a month or two you’d make enough money for a new one. Easy.”

THE DUTCH OIL RESEARCH FACILITY
was about two miles from Will’s house, down a country road bordered by cornfields. Formerly the Blackwell estate, it had poplar trees along the entrance road and a redbrick mansion with a green copper roof and a cupola that overlooked all four hundred acres of the Blackwell property. Dutch Oil had turned the mansion into its executive offices, adding a circle of low brick buildings full of laboratories and engineering shops. The rolling meadow and woodland behind the big house was sold to developers, who quickly built identical ranch houses for the chemists and engineers who worked there. It was exactly the sort of place Howard might have worked, if he’d been able to get past the interview.