The Tell (9 page)

“No, I don't. Things are going to be fine.”

As he spoke, the rain started and the gallery took on an eager glow. A wet gust blew in and with it a group of seven middle-school boys from one of the afternoon classes. Black, Hispanic, white, they wore smoothly buttoned shirts or spotless white tees over loose shorts. They looked scrubbed. They clustered around the tallest boy, who at thirteen was already a man, with thick, defensive shoulders and a hand quick to fly to his crotch. Mira jostled and joked with them. She was completely at ease as she led each boy to his piece of artwork so Owen could take pictures. They posed themselves, a hip thrust out, a tilt to the head, a gesture with the hands. “Just be normal,” Mira laughed. These boys made her happy.

Their wet sneakers sang a chorus of pride across the floor. Cory, skinny, short, pale brown skin, with a lopsided smile and ears that stuck way out, bent to hug his hideous clay pot. He stuck his head in its monstrous mouth, yelling echoes into it until Mira told him to cut it out or he'd get stuck. Cory charmed her; he was one of her special ones. When others began to arrive, Mira went into her fundraiser mode, part solicitousness, part intimacy, always a hand on someone's arm. She corralled people without their noticing and then looked them straight in the eye to disarm them. Occasionally, she glanced toward the street to take the measure of the weather.

Out in front, white water churned in the gutters. The Point Street Bridge, all but its single smeary light at the top of the span, had disappeared in the cascade. Windshield wipers berated the rain. People shook themselves off in the foyer. Owen took raincoats and umbrellas and mopped the floor. Humidity clung to the skin and weighed down clothes. A few tough old birds from the assisted-living facility, dressed in pastels, came in looking bewildered. If they recognized the model they'd sketched, they didn't show it. They were more interested in the groups of roving kids who kept checking the bid sheets and moved around like schools of fish. One old man touched Cory's head as he darted by, as if to suggest there was nothing to getting old—it just happened when you weren't watching. The room was filling up with noise and body heat.

Some people in the gallery—annual donors—had been friends of Mira's parents, and they exuded a sense of belonging anywhere, but already they gave away an intention to leave early. They flinched at the noise. Owen had been introduced to them before—lawyers, watercolorists, urologists, all part of a rosy, good-postured elite. Mira was smooth and deferential with them and played the part of William and Cecelia Thrasher's daughter. Their orphan girl. She knew that many of her parents' friends, especially the women, were uneasy around her, though they'd known her forever. There was nothing mysterious about the speed of the car her parents had been in, or the tree they'd hit, or the deadly impact made to bark and body, but she struck them as evidence of tragedy's random fall. Mira was bad luck. Owen crossed the crowded room and put his hand around her waist.

“For these kids, these people. Well, enrichment is essential,” a man was saying. “We can't quantify the effects, but we all have to support
that
. Or else—”

“—we know what will happen then,” his wife said, with curious brightness. She squeezed her shiny black purse against her ribs. What exactly do you imagine happening, Owen wanted to ask. His face was locked in a stiff smile.

A mist of patience hung on Mira's upper lip as she waited through the meaningless talk and then led the couple to look at the drawings on the far wall. She didn't see the point in challenging people like this, or calling them on what they really meant, or backing them into saying something they'd regret. Best to nod and look receptive, she'd told Owen; it didn't cost her anything this way, and might even get her some money. Ellie Cotton, who was imperious and horsey, with arms loaded up with gold and jade bracelets, waylaid Mira and wagged a finger as she talked. This was the woman Mira had once seen her father eating out on his couch at work. She'd described for Owen her father's pants puddled at his feet, his head bobbing at Ellie's crotch, while Ellie still had her green espadrilles on, and her underpants dangled on an ankle. Mira had stayed long enough to see her father slide up the woman's body like an alligator slithering onto the sunny shore. Ellie always gave a donation to Brindle as hush money, Mira said, though there was no one left to keep the secret from.

Mike Levi, who had taught at Spruance until he went into the lucrative college prep and tutoring business that Owen worked for several nights a week, arrived with his wife, Faye. He shook off the rain like a wet dog. Walter Brazil, a man Owen was friendly with from the pool at the Y, arrived looking uncomfortable out of the water and his Speedo. A few teachers from Spruance—including Mrs. Tevas with her librarian's gravitas—showed up. The gallery was filled with friends they hadn't seen in months, and the party was celebratory in spite of the weather. Owen replenished the ice, set out more cups, and emptied another bag of pretzels.

A man in a drenched army jacket shuffled his way around the edges of the gallery. His head was pushed forward, but he wasn't adept at going unnoticed. He pulled at the snaky coils of his dirty beard. The room contracted in his presence. Talk slowed, the hum lowered, shoulders rose. You didn't have to see menace to know it had joined the party. It brought its own weather system. As Owen watched, Mira left a circle of friends and walked over to the man whose fists rested like grenades in his jacket. Owen wanted to call her back, but he didn't. His mouth was dry, and the base of his skull ached with holding himself in control. Finally, the man skittered away from Mira and, on his way out, bumped into Lusk, the boy mayor, who had just arrived and was pushing the rain through his hair.

Lusk smiled diplomatically, as always. Mira hooked her arm through the mayor's as she led him into the room. Though he was a few years older than Mira, the two of them had played doctor and naked patient when they were kids and their parents were drinking cocktails together downstairs. Lusk likely thought of this every time he saw Mira. She did—Owen could see it in her pinking cheeks now. It was funny to him how this old game would always connect the two of them, and how decades later, it could still spark some jealousy in him. Owen knew that his understanding of Mira's past, her lovers, the shape of her life before he met her, would always be slightly off.

Mira had only a few minutes with Lusk to make her pitch for city support. He could make things happen—this was Providence after all, and nothing got done by going through the obvious or correct channels—but he gave her a look of no promise tonight. The city was broke, the state and the country worse. Mira's frustration was a resolute horizon that appeared across her forehead. Lusk scratched his neck. A young girl pressed between them and pulled Lusk over to her drawing. He gave the room a dazzling smile, arm around the kid, then made a dash for the door and his waiting aide who already held out an opened umbrella. For a moment, Mira froze, watching Lusk—and maybe Brindle's future—skitter away into the rain. Owen checked the bid sheets; he wasn't happy to see how few entries there were. If Mira knew this already, she wasn't going to show it. Owen entered his own bid for each of the kids' pieces; he didn't want any one of them to go home dejected, unwanted.

The noise in the room fell and the humidity seemed to drop as Wilton appeared at the gallery entrance in a voluminous white shirt and pants. He'd wafted in like some cloud the storm had whipped up, and people turned to look at him, their faces lifted to the meteorological wonder. It was true about actors and politicians, Wilton and Lusk: they had a shine unlike anyone else, and you couldn't fake that magnetism, that radiance. They made entrances where other people simply came in. But Owen considered how the man in the army jacket had changed the room's weather, too, for a minute. Wilton waved at Owen to help him with something outside. He had a cab idling in front, with platters of food in the backseat and trunk. There were shrimp, fussy sandwiches speared with toothpicks made to look like paint brushes, strawberries dipped in chocolate, blueberry tarts, wedges of cheese to take the place of the wilting pretzels. Joy came out to help and smiled shyly when Wilton said something to her, his mouth close to her ear.

“This is amazing,” Mira said, looking at the bounty spread across the table. The room began to surge toward it. Any minute, the frenzy would begin. “You didn't have to do this, Wilton.”

“Feed the people, and they shall give,” he said, and found an empty spot of wall to pose himself against, slightly damp white against white. “Isn't that what they say?”

When Mira went to stand next to him, black against white, something shifted. To Owen, it was as though the light had become thinner, or his eyesight worse. The affinity between Wilton and Mira was not about sex or romance, he knew, but something much less ephemeral, something both imperceptible and obvious. Their young friendship had the oldest roots. But why and how it had happened like this he didn't know. He stood back, afraid in a way to get closer and learn what kept others out. Soon, a semicircle had formed in front of them. Many people recognized Wilton. Wet shoes were suddenly easier to stand around in because of Wilton's charm, his bounding talk about Brindle, his wheedling for donations and bids. Ellie Cotton watched with regal distance and distaste, but she watched anyway, a lowering chin a sign of her thaw. For all those who said television was a black hole that spit out shit and trivia, who claimed there was nothing worthwhile on, who spoke with condescension about those who did watch, there were always more people who recognized Wilton. Watching television had become a private sin; they'd been secret viewers—Edward had once caught Owen in front of the television slack-jawed—but they gave up their secret now. Wilton caused a spike of laughter; looking over his admirer's heads, he winked at Owen, then Joy, who blushed.

When the last people left an hour later, Owen went out to lock the front door. The rain had stopped and the city was washed and gleaming. The man in the army jacket leaned against the chain-link fence across the street, more beaten than menacing now, his face unevenly shadowed and wet. He gave Owen the finger. Without the crowd, the gallery looked exhausted, the artwork curling in the humidity. Wilton and Joy swept the hundreds of shrimp tails and strawberry stems into the garbage, while Joy used one hand to press the front of her dress to her chest. Her face was a fiery red from Wilton's predatory attention. Owen didn't know anything about the man's sex life—if he had one at all—but he knew he should not devour this soft, sweet girl like a marshmallow. One swallow and it's done. Joy looked up to catch Owen watching her, and the colors of Wilton's flattery drained from her face. Owen had snooped on her desires, spied on her romantic fantasies, and caught her admiring herself in Wilton's reflection. She crouched to pick up the balled napkins from the floor, but her dress made the movement awkward and she had to catch herself from falling forward. Owen knew he'd humiliated her in a way neither of them was ever going to forget. In a few minutes, she gathered up her things and left Brindle, but not before Wilton insisted on kissing her cheek.

Mira, who'd noticed none of this, slumped on a chair. “I'm so beat. I don't even want to deal with the bid sheets now. Tomorrow I face the truth after a cup of coffee. But not tonight.”

Owen turned away; he already knew the night's failure. He was the highest bidder on everything. He felt stupid now for having put his name down. What was the point of that?

“I just want to see one thing, one bid I'm curious about,” Wilton said. He studied the bid sheet for Cory's giant, hideous pot. “It looks like I'm the high bidder on this, thank you very much.”

“Let me see that.” Mira held out her hand and studied the paper for too long. “No, Wilton. Absolutely not. No fucking way. Forget it.”

“What do you mean ‘no'?” Wilton said.

“I mean no, as in no, you can't do this.”

“I most certainly can,” Wilton said. “I am the highest bidder, aren't I? Then it's mine. There are rules about these things, Mira, fixing the bidding, fraud, and so on. Don't make me turn you in.” He laughed. “You'll take a personal check?”

Mira handed Owen the sheet. Wilton had bid $35,000 for the pot.

“You're kidding, right?” Owen asked. Wilton shook his head.

“I'm completely serious,” Mira said. “I'm not going to accept your money. If you want to make a small donation, I won't say no. But this is too much. It's not right.”

“Who's to say what's right?” Wilton asked. “I've done nothing except take dumb money and make it smart. I want to do something meaningful in my life, something for other people for a change. I've led a very selfish existence. Let me do this. At least so I won't feel like such a slug.”

He bent to scoop up his expensive piece of pottery. At first he struggled with the thing and mumbled that maybe he'd had too much wine to stand straight so quickly. Mira begged him to be careful, and for a few steps, he was steady, the tip of his tongue on his upper lip. But then his legs folded jointlessly, he slipped and skated and whooped and righted himself. The room held its breath. Police sirens wailed down Point Street, and when Wilton looked up to see the throbbing colors pass over the glass, he took a step forward and slipped on a strawberry. The pot rose in the air. He lunged forward at an inhuman angle and his knees hit the floor with a sickening crack. His arms were outstretched as though he were catching a baby thrown out of a burning building. The pot landed in his hands with a slap. His acrobatic dive was astounding. He hadn't ever been about to let the thing smash; this was all an act. Wilton put the pot down and fussily adjusted his shirt and pants, now dirty at the knees, as though nothing had happened and no one was watching. But he had to know they were fixed on him. He was Bruno again, with that slightly melancholy, elastic face. He was comedy meeting tragedy, or just barely dodging it, and he was as surprised as anyone by what felled and befell him. It was like being in love. Humor showed no reverence for the guileless or the good-hearted. His expression suggested that everything that could be made fun of—himself included—was also true and real.