The Laments (36 page)

Minna’s odd remarks about Paris began to make sense to Will. He started to clap, and Minna smiled. But her smile faded as it became apparent that he was the only one applauding.

Dawn Snedecker replaced Minna at the podium. “When I’m thirty, I plan to be a shivil rightsh activisht. I will help people sheek their legal rightsh and I will sholishit shignaturesh to elect honesht politishians!”

A chorus of sniggering from the back row interrupted Dawn. She blanched, her eyes narrow with fury. Will looked back and saw Calvin, clutching his sides. Dawn pursed her lips, refused to continue, and stalked back to her seat.

Mrs. Burbell picked off four students, including Calvin, and ordered them to the vice principal’s office. Still, Dawn couldn’t be coaxed to finish her paper.

Minna watched Will squirm in sympathy.

AT LUNCH, WILL APPROACHED DAWN
as she nursed a spoonful of yogurt. She raised her eyebrows skeptically. “Dawn,” he began, “I just wanted to say that I admired your essay.”

The sun caught her hair in motes of silver and gold. When her cheeks turned red, Will smiled, not recognizing the flush of anger. The pin on her collar said
FIGHT OPPRESSION
.

“Why would a rashisht admire my eshay?”

“I’m not a racist.”

“Your friends are rashists.”

Will felt a torrent of indignation. “All my life I’ve had to get along with people who think differently. Shouldn’t what I
think
matter to you more than who I talk to?”

“It’sh what you
do
that mattersh,” sniffed Dawn. “Not what you shay!”

She rose and stuffed her yogurt into a trash bin, wiping her fingertips on a napkin, which she twisted into a knot.

“Listen, Dawn . . .”

As she walked off, Will felt his misery observed. He turned and saw Minna quickly hide behind her copy of Henry James’s
The American
.

“
WHERE’S GODDAMN CALVIN?
” said Eddie.

“He told me he was sick,” answered Will.

Because Julius had borrowed his bike, Will walked the two miles to Dutch Oil that evening, following the sun as it dissipated into a pool of gold between the poplars on Pye Hollow Road.

“What the hell is wrong with him?
Hmmmm
?
” asked Eddie.

Calvin mentioned a headache, which probably meant he had been drinking. The previous Friday he had stolen another quart of ethyl alcohol from one of the labs. An entire weekend of Dixie cup cocktails.

When Will left work that night, the darkness beyond the lot seemed as impenetrable as the depths of the quarry pool where the twins swam. Will held his breath for a few moments as he ventured past the floodlights and let his eyes adjust to the engulfing night. Soon a horizon appeared, and a sky full of stars, and he heard the applause of crickets like some vast, unseen stadium audience, while bats flew overhead in their jerky loops and spirals.

Will followed Pye Hollow Road toward home. After a quarter of a mile, he felt the grooves of the train tracks in the asphalt and saw the outlines of the crossing signs against the sky. He began to enjoy hearing his own footsteps, and became anxious when a car passed—the lights were disorienting, and the whine of its engine shattered the calm of the night as the vehicle swept past.

Minna frowned when he entered the kitchen. “What took you so long?”

“I walked home,” he replied.

Without a word, she snapped her book shut and padded off to her room. Though she would never have admitted such a thing, Minna looked forward to Will’s return, and sometimes even shadowed him between classes. She was fascinated by the odd drawings in his notebooks and his intense frown as he drew. To Minna, Will personified the brilliance and isolation of the artists she read about.

WHEN CALVIN’S HEADACHE
kept him home for a third day, Eddie could bear it no longer.

“Will, who do you know who needs a job?”

The following night Will brought Roy Biddle. Hadn’t Dawn told him that actions spoke louder than words? This would surely set her straight.

Will showed Roy how to clean the bathrooms, and found himself promoted to Calvin’s job.

“But what about when Calvin comes back?” asked Will.

“Calvin’s outta here,” snapped Eddie. “I don’t care what excuse he has. Place looks cleaner already!”

WILL HEARD HER FOOTSTEPS
behind him on the way home from school. He turned, momentarily halted by those walnut eyes. “Going home?” he asked.

“Oui,”
she replied.

They walked in silence for a minute.

“Seriously, are you going to Paris?”

“Of course I am.”

“So what you said in class was true?”

She seemed offended. “Of
course
it was true. I’m going to get a job in a café, and eventually have my own. Perhaps I’ll have a bookstore, like Sylvia Beach, and hold soirées and accept paintings as payment from penniless artists—and in a few years they’ll all be priceless.”

“Why Paris?” asked Will.

“My father was from Paris.”

“Your father? Steve Grecco?”

“No”—Minna shivered—“
Steve
is the guy my mother married ten years ago. My father was a Frenchman; he died before he could marry my mother. I have his eyes,” explained Minna. “Nobody else in my mother’s family has my eyes.”

This touched Will. “Nobody has my eyes, either,” he said.

Minna studied his features. “Did anyone ever tell you that you look French?” she asked. “You have those sad French eyes, like Yves Montand. Perhaps you’re adopted. You should come visit me, and sell your pictures in Montmartre, where the artists live. Who knows, maybe you’d find your real parents.”

They passed the wrought-iron fence of the graveyard.

Unsettled by Minna’s words, Will changed the subject by explaining his theory that the Daughters of the American Revolution were really ghosts.

“Oh, I don’t believe in ghosts.” Minna laughed.

“But what about the flowers that never die?” said Will.

“Show me a flower that doesn’t die,” she said.

Will led her along the paths of the graveyard, pointing out the eroded stones of the heroes with their perfect flower arrangements. Though Minna scoffed at his theory, she slipped her hand into his and drew him farther into the cemetery, where the stones were brown and flaking and a giant cedar swayed in the wind. When they reached the brick wall at the back of the cemetery, they stopped and leaned against it. A cloud darkened the gravestones, and raindrops began falling.

“We’d better go,” he said.

But Minna didn’t move.

Will wiped a raindrop off her cheek and she turned slightly, closing her eyes. He kissed her, and she returned the kiss, biting his lip with that suggested lustful impatience. She reached down to his crotch and felt for the bulge in his pants and began kneading it. He felt for her breasts, but she steered his hand down to her waist, and tucked his fingers in the tight space between her jeans and her underwear. Suddenly her waist button snapped off.

“Sorry,” he murmured, but she bit his lip gently, as if to silence him, and continued steering his hand down until he could feel the cleft between her legs through her panties. And she groaned.

THEY WERE WALKING OUT
of the cemetery when he asked, “Did I do something wrong?”

“Of course not,” she said with a hungry smile. “I just think we’d have more fun where we’re going, in a real bed.”

“Where?”

“Your basement,” she said. “Remember that old brass bed your father has stashed there?” Will slowed down, and Minna noted his hesitation, so she smiled reassuringly. “Look, it’s
my
first time, too.”

“It’s not that,” he said.

Her smile faded. “What is it, then?”

He paused. They stood at the hatchway to the cellar, Minna’s fingers entwined in his.

“I wasn’t thinking of her before, but now I am, and I feel terrible.”

“Who?
Who
!
”

“Dawn.”

Minna wound up and slapped him on the cheek.

“Ow!” he cried. “That hurt! What was that for?”

But Minna had already stamped into the house.

ON FRIDAY, CALVIN SHOWED UP
. He had a long excuse about having the flu and throwing up fifteen times. Said it was probably the chemicals he had to breathe at Dutch Oil that made him sick and mentioned that his father had talked about a lawsuit against the company. Eddie suddenly changed his mind about firing Calvin and assigned him to the other side of the complex, known as Building B. There was a whole different pecking order in Building B; the maintenance workers were mostly women from Guyana.

“Building B?” Calvin balked. “I’m not working with niggers!”

“You’ll work where I tell you to work, Calvin! Tell that to your lawyer,
hm
m
!” snorted Eddie.

As Calvin followed Eddie, he leveled a glance at Will. “Hey, Rhodesia, don’t expect a ride home from me today or ever. You almost cost me my job, bringing in Roy.”

Will and Roy walked home together. Roy hated the darkness, and insisted on walking along the road, in the path of traffic, rather than up on the embankment, as Will suggested.

“Probably goddamn bear traps up there, English!” he said.

Will assured him that bear traps had been outlawed at least half a century ago. Still, Roy refused to leave the road, even when Calvin’s Mustang swept past, horn wailing, spraying them with gravel.

MINNA DIDN’T SPEAK TO WILL
for three days. Meanwhile, Will gave Dawn a birthday present, a paperback entitled
Steal This Book,
by Abbie Hoffman. It was a radical’s guerrilla handbook, chock-full of advice on how to avoid being disabled by tear gas at a street protest, disrupt a city’s phone system, and mix Molotov cocktails. Will thought she’d be flattered.

Dawn sent him a note on Day-Glo-pink heart-shaped paper.

Will,

Thank you for your present, but I cannot condone any of the actions suggested in that book. I am donating it to the Presbyterian fall rummage sale, so that less fortunate people can benefit from your generosity. It was very just of you to help Roy get a job.

Peace on Earth,

Dawn

November brought more rain, and with it a flooded cellar. The hot-water heater lost its flame, and all seven occupants of the Lament household were treated to cold showers one Saturday morning. Howard enlisted Julius to help him remove the water and dig a hole for a sump pump.

The two of them worked side by side for hours, arguing the entire time. Howard took issue with Julius’s habit of overfilling the buckets, then spilling half the contents as he staggered up the stairs.

“We’d get much more done if you filled the buckets halfway,” remarked Howard.

“We’d get more done if you stopped talking,” shot back Julius.

To their credit, they cleared the cellar floor and built a small concrete tub for the pump. But a piercing moment came as they were rearranging the furniture. Julius found an item covered with sawdust, about the size of a large Idaho potato.

“What’s this?”

“Put that down,” commanded Howard.

Julius ignored his father and blew off the dust to reveal a translucent white device with smooth contours and a ribbon of steel around its equator.

“What is it?”

“Didn’t you hear me? Put it down!”

“C’mon, Dad. What’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a heart. Something I designed when I worked at Fay/Bernhardt, in the months while I was waiting . . .”

Julius giggled. “You’re kidding. A heart?
You
designed a heart?” For Howard, the disbelief on his son’s face was the final indignity.

“Give me that and go!” shouted Howard, his hand outstretched. Julius returned the item and sauntered out of the basement. Howard waited for the cellar door to shut before sitting on the brass bed. Then a sob burst from his chest, and he bent over, clutching the item in his hands.

“
WHERE’S YOUR FATHER?
” asked Julia when she found Julius, freshly showered, watching TV with his toes pressed against the screen.

He shrugged. “Probably in the cellar.”

“How long ago did you finish?”

Hearing that it had been several hours ago, Julia ventured down to the basement, but there was no sign of Howard, just the rearranged items from his trash rescues and the pungent odor of freshly dug clay. Then she heard the uneasy rattle of the car in the driveway as she rushed back up the cellar stairs.

Emerging from the hatch, she saw the Buick idling in the driveway, blue smoke billowing from its exhaust, its single occupant illuminated by the faint dashboard lights.

“What’s wrong?” asked Will, who had heard her anxious footsteps.

Julia peered at the car, her features rigid and pale. “It’s your father, Will. He’s been missing for hours, and I just had the most awful feeling . . .”

“I’ll bring him in,” Will offered, venturing toward the car.

But Julia replied sharply. “No, Will!” And she insisted that he go into the house. “I’ll get him,” she said.

THE CAR HAD AN UNEASY RHYTHM
, as if one piston weren’t firing properly—like an irregular heartbeat. It reminded Howard of his weak-spirited father and the stroke that had killed him in his armchair. He turned the artificial heart in his hand as he sat nestled behind the wheel of the Buick, shaded from the moonlight by a curtain of thick pines. Perhaps he had meant to repair his own feeble heart with his invention, rather than cure his father’s disease. If so, then the device was a dud. He had lost his resolve, his pluck, and his passion. When he heard footsteps coming across the gravel, he stuffed the disappointing relic into his jacket pocket.

JULIA GENTLY OPENED THE DOOR
. Her husband opened his eyes without looking at her.

“Come, darling,” she said. “We need to talk.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“Howard, please. Aren’t you cold out here?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re shivering. Why don’t you have a warmer coat on?”

“Because I was going to kill myself.”