The Laments (41 page)

Suddenly, all the isolation and misery of these last years seemed to engulf Howard. He excused himself and went into the men’s room, waited for his chest to stop heaving and the sobs to work their way out of his throat. Then he threw up. It was a while before he could compose himself enough to come out.

“You okay?” asked Bill when he finally emerged.

“Fine, fine,” said Howard faintly, but in earnest.

“Better now? Good,” said his new friend, smiling. “So, tell me, what are you doing with yourself now that Fay’s gone—what a loss to humanity. . . . Tell me, what’s life like after Chapman Fay?”

Cautiously, Howard admitted the sad details of the past few years. Bill listened, and gently placed the prototype on the counter.

“What a goddamn world it is,” he said, finally.

On the jukebox, Sinatra sang “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning” as their drinks were refilled. Bill gulped down his shot and gave Howard a guilty smile.

“Look, Howard, I have a confession to make. I was laid off myself fifteen months ago.”

He raised his palms in anticipation of Howard’s reassessment.

“Forgive me,” he said. “But if you tell strangers you’re out of a job in a bar, you look like God’s loser. But I’m not, Howard, I’m not a loser any more than you are. We’re gonna get through this, buddy. Everybody gets a second shot. This is
America,
goddammit. The land of opportunity. Right? Howard, between you and me, I think we could
make
something of this device.”

“Really?” said Howard, his tone shifting slightly.

But Bill Ferris didn’t notice. He just kept talking. And Howard was reminded of the man who had recruited him for Dutch Oil, or perhaps the one from the mines in Albo. Men with plans. Men who feed off the dreams of the idealist. He silently cursed himself for believing, for a second, that his redemption lay in a dusty, run-down bar.

Suddenly, Howard rose and threw on his coat.

“You’re leaving?”

“I’m afraid so,” Howard replied. “I’m late to pick up my sons.” This wasn’t exactly true. He had forty-five minutes, but he knew he’d be happier with his sons than listening to Bill Ferris weave a fantasy.

The snow was up to Howard’s knees as he plodded to the Buick. Ferris called from across the parking lot.

“Howard! You left
this,
buddy!”

Howard turned to see the familiar object made of dull white plastic. A narrow band of steel caught the light.

“Oh, it’s yours—keep it,” he called, impatient to get back on the road. He slammed his door and put the key in the ignition, but the motor turned over once and the Buick fell silent.

CALVIN THOUGHT HE RECOGNIZED
the figure walking by the side of Pye Hollow Road. It was waving at him.
Goddamn Roy
. His red-eyed mare replicated into a stampede of wretched creatures, their fiery hooves smashing against the walls of his skull, crying for vengeance, and Calvin swerved toward his victim.

Reaching down to pick up a sled, the figure paused, taking stock of the merciless speed of the vehicle, and issued an open-mouthed cry. The impact itself seemed almost gentle as he slowly tumbled over the hood and struck the windshield, shattering the glass and rolling away into the darkness.

Now the mares shrieked into Calvin’s ears, urging escape, and he complied. All he wanted was to get these awful beasts out of his head. What had they made him do? He jammed his foot on the accelerator, and the car did a fishtail in the snow as it picked up speed, until the event seemed blessedly far behind him.

Suddenly a second figure appeared between Calvin’s headlights, this one shielding his eyes from the oncoming light with a hand glinting in the moonlight, imploring him to stop. Calvin closed his eyes. There was a soft thump as this obstacle fell. The road curved, but Calvin preferred not to see. The car spun into a ditch on its side. He finally opened his eyes when he felt the flames creeping up his legs.

Rose’s Moment

Rose would later remark on the odd way that tragedy seemed to strike those around her—Adam Clare’s suicide, the lost Lament baby, and now the twins.

“A dark angel seems forever perched on my shoulder,” she confessed to Julia. “I don’t enjoy being the survivor of so much suffering, but perhaps it’s God’s way of getting me to finally make myself useful.”

That was certainly how she conducted herself that evening, for when Cleo appeared at the door, her face aglow, Rose invited her in, fixed her a mug of hot chocolate, and entertained her with stories of poor hotel service in Athens. When the telephone rang, Rose spoke briefly and tactfully, and replaced the receiver.

“Cleo dear, I think you should go home.”

Cleo groaned. “Was that my mom already?” But then she noticed Rose’s fingers shaking uncontrollably, and she picked up her coat—afraid of asking the question on her mind.

HOWARD HAD HITCHED A RIDE
with a snowplow, and he arrived on the scene as three ambulances illuminated the countryside with their flashing lights. Pye Hollow residents walked through the drifts in their slippers to see what all the fuss was about.

Howard called Rose from Central Methodist Hospital. “We’ve lost both of the twins,” he sobbed. “If only I had been here sooner!”

Julia arrived home from Frieda’s house a few minutes later. Rose greeted her at the door, but Julia, clutching her temples, almost walked right past her.

“Darling—” began Rose.

“I must go to bed, Mummy,” said Julia. “I’ve got an awful headache—”

“There has been a terrible accident, my love,” said Rose.

WILL AND MINNA’S TRAIN
was delayed because of the snow. He walked Minna to her house at about five in the morning, then hurried home to find Howard, Julia, and Rose seated in the kitchen. Will had never seen them in such repose around one another, and imagined, at first, that there had been some long overdue discussion between his parents and Rose, in which barriers had been torn down and a kind of peace had finally been established. In a way, that was exactly what had happened.

IN SUBSEQUENT DAYS
, Rose was the first up and the last to go to bed. When no one spoke, she asked questions. When Julia lost the will to work, Rose gave her a push. When Howard lost the will to rise in the morning, Rose woke him and made breakfast. And when Will stared blankly out the window, Rose encouraged him to draw.

“I can’t,” said Will.

“Draw Minna,” suggested Rose.

Will found this almost impossible to do; he was used to drawing imaginary things—the odd, the fantastic, and the grotesque. Not surprisingly, Minna looked strange and unhappy in those first sketches, reflecting Will’s obvious misery.

“Talk about something—Paris, for example,” he suggested. So Minna described the city she had never seen, and the people in it whom she had been reading about for years. Will drew the amusement in her eyes as she described Gertrude Stein’s baggy dresses; he mastered the angles of her eyebrows as she explained the bread famine, and he figured out the curve of her lips as she listed the Métro stops from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe, and her passion began to appear on the paper—or perhaps it was simply Will’s passion for Minna, because over those many hours they spent together, he began to fall deeply in love with her.

IT WASN’T AS EASY
for Julia and Howard. There were so many things to regret.

Julia blamed her own distraction. She shouldn’t have gone out on such a terrible night. It was like the barbecue: if only she hadn’t turned away for that critical moment.

Howard also blamed himself. He woke Julia to explain all the mistakes he had made that fateful evening. Taking the boys out in dangerous weather; deserting them; and, worst of all, being seduced by the praise of a stranger in a bar.

“But you couldn’t have known that they would come home early,” said Julia.

“I should never have left them,” cried Howard.

“For godsakes, Howard, it’s not your fault,” she repeated again and again, until Howard took her hand and their grief merged.

The Funeral

When Will’s brothers were buried, the eulogy was drowned out by the jeering of crows in a large cedar tree, their blue-black heads preened and oiled like the hair of swells at a prizefight. The Presbyterian minister was a short man with a high voice, who had caught the twins draping some of the cemetery stones in toilet paper a few Halloweens ago. Their punishment was to attend three of his sermons; Julia thought community service would have been far more appropriate, but she deferred to his judgment and concluded, after attending with the boys, that the man had more passion for the sound of his own voice than for God. Still, she chose him to speak at their burial.

“Better the minister you know than the minister you don’t,” she explained to Rose.

Because of the crows, Will ignored the eulogy and silently recalled his brothers’ mischievous lives: their revenge on Ajax; their near descent into the
inky black
from aboard the
Windsor Castle;
the trails they cut through the barley near a Roman ruin; Marcus, wearing Rillcock’s shiner. He remembered the suddenness with which they shed their British accents in America; Marcus’s fateful flight over the Finches’ barbecue; and Julius’s cries of ecstasy from the bathroom.

The twins might have been a colossal burden to Will, but they had also been a critical ingredient in the formation of his character; they ignited his rage, provoked his sympathy, and stirred his courage. Though they were unmerciful to Buck Quinn’s Ridgeback and tormented the Avon Heath cat population and kicked the fight out of Howard in his depression, Will saw how their opposing natures complemented a vital alliance. The twins had inspired Will to seek companionship with Sally, Marina, Dawn, and, of course, Minna. Marcus’s gentle spirit and vulnerable condition reminded Will that life was a fragile thing, while Julius’s unquenchable lust reminded him of its limitless delights.

His reverie was broken by the sound of the crows taking off with shrieks, leaving just two on a branch to observe the burial. They shifted weight, first shaking one foot, then the other, in idle comment at the length of the proceedings.

Julia’s hair was tied loosely behind in a single black ribbon; tamed by age, a few gray strands caught the breeze. She wore a slate-colored cloak, giving her a tragic nobility discordant, in Will’s opinion, with the energetic woman who was constantly clattering about at home and never stood still for a moment. When she wept, Howard clasped her hand. He wore one of his old suits, and there was a solemn grace in his manner—he appeared more composed today, perhaps because there was no uncertainty in a funeral. Howard had always hated uncertainty. Beside him stood Rose, her face gaunt in the winter light; Frieda held her arm for support.

Cleo Pappas wept, flanked by a small cadre of teens with mullets and wispy facial hair. Carey Bristol and Emil DeVaux were there, as well as Mike Brautigan, whose handsome features and silvery hair prompted a few mourners to mistakenly compliment him on the eulogy.

When the crowd started to leave, Will noticed, the two crows in the cedar tree erupted with what sounded like laughter before taking off into the ashen sky.

Good-bye, Marcus. Good-bye, Julius
, he thought. Then he felt Minna’s hand in his, and rested his head against hers, and cried.

Dawn and Roy approached together; Dawn expressed her sympathy to Julia, while Roy rocked nervously on his heels. There were many things Will
wanted
to say to Roy—that Roy had unwittingly brought Calvin’s wrath down upon his family, that he really
was
a Midnight Chinaman, a specter who had brought death and destruction. But he never would.

What was the point?

He might just as well blame himself for bringing Roy to work at Dutch Oil. He might just as well blame Howard for taking the twins sledding. He might just as well thank Roy for diverting Dawn and allowing Minna into his life.

After the burial, Will, Rose, Julia, and Howard walked through Queenstown beneath the gaunt and cheerless oaks.

“Oh God,” said Julia finally. “What now?”

Nobody had an answer to this question. And it was taken with some relief that the sun continued its daily arc, forcing the Laments to, at least, assume a ritual of normality.

CALVIN SURVIVED
, but the lower half of his body had caught fire, thanks to the can of alcohol at his feet. He would find walking and pissing extremely uncomfortable for the rest of his life (and masturbation more trouble than it was worth). His father sued the township for not having effective barriers on the sides of the road. The settlement of a few hundred thousand dollars went toward his son’s hospital bills. Officer Tibbs noted a fact with which he was already familiar—that if Calvin had lost his testicles, they could have extracted a million dollars more.

The Weight

The blizzard over Christmas had stolen winter’s traditional punch. January was wet, dark, and grim. The relentless patter of rain kept the Laments indoors. In these dim and confining weeks, Will began to feel his mother’s hand present on his shoulder at odd moments. A gentle pressure, though it resonated more deeply on his conscience.

Remember your importance to me,
it said.
Don’t leave me. Stand by me. Only son. All I have. My one and only
.

This didn’t comfort him. Many years before, he might have felt gratified by it, but he was eighteen now, and he no longer desired her attention the way he had as a little boy. Nevertheless, the pressure was constant, and when they spoke, Will often sensed its presence under the surface.

He tried to discuss it with Rose.

“I don’t know what I can do for her,” he explained. “But the look on her face is expectant, as though I’ll do something, or explain something she needed to know.”

“Perhaps it’s something she wants to tell you,” said Rose.

“What?” replied Will.

Rose offered no answer, but her guilty expression reinforced Will’s suspicion that the matter, whatever it was, would upset him.