All Things Cease to Appear Page 23

  —

  THE NEXT TIME George came to see her, he apologized for acting weird. You’re just so beautiful, he said. It’s disarming.

  She wasn’t, though. Not really. Not in the classic sense. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  He looked down at his hands like a guilty man. You’ve got me all fucked up. I can’t think straight.

  Thinking is overrated, she said, and kissed him.

  —

  SHE HADN’T LIED about everything, only some things.

  She hadn’t told him she was rich. Or that she was only nineteen. Or that she wasn’t using birth control. Or that her father was one of the most famous attorneys in New York. Or that she’d dropped out of UCLA or—ahem—been asked to leave. The real reason she’d come up here was because Astrid, her mother’s girlfriend, who was Dutch and like a Jack Russell terrier, always wagging her little tail, was moving into the apartment now that her mother had decided she was gay.

  Ironically, the only person she wanted was her mother, but she couldn’t bring herself to dial the number and utter the words: Mom, it’s me, Willis.

  She had grown up on horses, and Mr. Henderson had hired her out of the goodness of his heart to ride for all the rich people who pretended they didn’t have time but were really just scared. Scared of falling, of breaking something and ending up in a wheelchair shitting themselves. She already knew she wanted to be a poet and would write late at night in her little room, at the table with the little yellow lamp, and the screen a mosaic of gypsy moths, and it was a splendid summer until she met George Clare, because her life changed after that and she didn’t even know who she was anymore, the girl down deep whose voice had gone quiet, who’d gone off somewhere to hide like something that needed to die. She had studied psychology and taken classes in criminal behavior and she knew things about George Clare that nobody else did and it scared the shit out of her. He was another one of her many bad mistakes.

  Her father had taught her about the system. How it could be manipulated. He said it all came down to perception. When he was defending someone—a creep, usually—he’d hole up in his office for days, reviewing the case and its allegations, the evidence, the photographs, looking for what he called a way in. He told her you had to get into the mind of the defendant. To see things through his eyes. Sometimes it could be some tiny thing, some bogus distraction or implacable truth that shed a fresh uncertainty on the claims against him. Whatever it was, he usually found it.

  Unforeseen tragedies were a big business in the city, so her father was loaded. He didn’t wait in line for things. They’d open the ropes for him at clubs, where he’d walk right in like some eminence. His clients and their families took care of him. Back when she was little, her parents would entertain them. Thanksgiving, Christmas. They could be nice, too. Some of them gave her presents. They seemed like normal people.

  Once, her father caught her in his office, going through his things. Willis, who’d been named after her grandfather, a judge on the federal court, had started to cry. How can you do this? How can you save these people?

  Saving people is for God, he’d told her. What I do is uphold the law—nothing more, nothing less.

  He had a special mirror, she thought, that made what he was doing look good.

  —

  THEY SAID she could work in the barn with the babies. She had to feed some with a bottle. It was so loud in there, you couldn’t believe how loud, and the babies wanted all of her attention and looked up at her with sorry furry eyes until she felt her heart breaking. It occurred to Willis that babies needed their mommas, and she thought that for those young sheep life had suddenly become terrible. Their mommas had been taken away from them and the mommas’ milk was turning into cheese instead of filling their babies’ bellies. She wasn’t much interested in farming but liked working with animals and liked being out of doors. Her mother had shipped her off here. Make it work, she’d said, kind of bitchy. Because I’m out of ideas.

  Once, she saw her mother and Astrid making love. It was incredibly weird, mostly because it was her mother being sexual, vulnerable, expressing herself. Because Astrid was skinny, inaccessible, even a little grim, and Willis couldn’t understand what they saw in each other. She concluded that what connected them was dissatisfaction with how fucked up the world was, how doomed they all were.

  —

  HER FAVORITE HORSE was Athena, the biggest mare, black with white socks. They’d ride out together across the field. They’d climb the trails up to the ridge and look down on the old Hale farm. She’d go at dusk, when the lights were coming on. Sometimes she’d tie off Athena and walk down the hill on foot through the tall grass, the sweet lavender. When she got close to the house her legs would quiver a little and her cheeks got hot, the same buzz she’d get when she stole things. You could hear them through the windows, the clatter of dishes, Franny climbing up into her chair and banging on the table with her baby spoon. She was a cute little girl. Patiently waiting for her mother to wake up and give her what she wanted.

  Like a panther, she cased the house, just seeing if she would get caught—knowing she wouldn’t. Walking past the windows with their wavering shades, the colored bottles on the sideboard turning the dining room into an aquarium, the back-and-forth trilling of the window fan, the wind tousling the crystals on the chandelier. A house that made music. Their footsteps on the creaky floors. The teapot, the thwack of the refrigerator. The little girl making noise.

  He had told her things about his wife, personal things. In bed she’d just lie there, like a shovel you used to bury something dead. But she was a good mother. He said he’d hear her crying sometimes when she thought he was asleep. That she was a painter but wasn’t very good at it. Painting by numbers, was how he put it. She was Catholic, his wife. They had different ideas. He wasn’t attracted to her anymore. My wife is cold, he said. She doesn’t like having sex.

  —

  THEY’D KISS for hours. Look what you do to me, he’d say.

  But it wasn’t love. She knew that. It was something else.

  —

  WITH EDDY it was love. What they called True Love. She could feel it with him. He was the first person she’d ever said it to, even though she wasn’t sure she meant it. And he didn’t even touch her. I’m just getting to know you, he told her. We don’t have to rush.

  She liked just walking around with him. He was taller, bigger. Sometimes he wore this black felt hat. She kind of liked it. He’d pull out a harmonica, play her something. His fingertips were hard and round, like the buds of new flowers. They’d walk down to the creek and pitch rocks. Or he’d come find her at the barn and she’d let him hold a lamb and feed it with the bottle and he was tender with it and she could feel herself giving up inside, because she didn’t want to love him so much. He was like a brother. He’d never hurt her. She could trust him. He didn’t make her do anything.

  But George was altogether different, and it was a dirty, awful love that made her crazy. The mean kind she thought she deserved. Sometimes he’d show up during the day, when everybody was out working. It would be so quiet. She’d hear his footsteps coming up the stairs. Take off your clothes, he’d say, and slowly pull down the shades. Or sometimes it was the middle of the night. What did you tell your wife? she’d ask. She thinks I’m in my study. I’m writing a book. She thinks I’m working. An interloper, he always came on foot, a couple of miles from his house. She’d say no, but he was good at talking her into it. He knew how to convince her. He was smart, eloquent. The things he told her made sense. You and me, we’re a lot alike. We require certain things.

  They would drink a little bourbon. That fire in her throat. He would talk about art and stuff like that, mostly how people needed beauty in their lives and that’s why he needed her. Because you’re so beautiful, he’d whisper in a creepy, greeting-card voice, the kind at Christmas with sparkles on them. He’d complain how people were so fake and putting on fronts all the time and how his wife wa
s just a stranger to him and sometimes he’d wake up and look across the pillow and not even know who she was. He said he wanted to go away and maybe even leave the country and live someplace like Italy, in a villa, where nobody knew him.

  Show me, he’d say, and she would open her legs and he’d run his fingertips over her like velvety rain and before she knew it he’d be inside her.

  She was just trying to get her head clear and stay off her mother’s Valium and grow up. She’d been doing really well until he came along.

  This one day he brought scissors and said, I want to do something. What? she said, a little afraid. He said, Your hair, with a freaky look on his face. She just sat there waiting and you could hear the rain blasting down and rushing through the gutters and she shrugged and laughed and said, What? And he said, Come here. He wanted to hold her down and he touched her a little. He ran his hands through her hair. I want you, he said, like a boy. Then he put his hand between her legs. For me, he whispered.

  The scissors made a clicking sound near her ear. Pieces of hair fell onto her naked legs. After, with her shoulders bare, he made her let him and she cried. She could feel herself giving up. And the voice in her head came back. Jump, it said.

  —

  SHE MET UP with Eddy later. What you do to your hair?

  Don’t you like it?

  No, he said. He seemed mad. What’s wrong with you?

  I don’t know.

  I guess I can get used to it.

  They walked into town holding hands. She could see her reflection in the dark storefronts. Her hair was flat on her head in all directions. She tried to squeeze the thought of George out of her mind, the awful thing he’d done to her. It was warm there inside her skull, like something sick that could stink and fester.

  They went to Blake’s and played pinball for a while and she had a rum-and-Coke and watched Eddy’s beautiful frown as he gripped the warm machine and tapped the buttons with his long fingers. He was just a farm boy, she knew. He hadn’t been anywhere. They were different people.

  —

  IT WAS a man on the ground who saw her first. He’d run inside the building to tell Alonzo, their doorman, who’d run out and seen her, and when they looked at each other she knew he was remembering the time they’d stayed up all night in the lobby talking about Buddhism and he’d taught her namyohorengekyo and they’d sat there together, chanting and meditating, until it was dawn and she’d gone upstairs to her parents’ penthouse and snuck into bed, grateful for everything—so very grateful. And his look, even so far down on the sidewalk, was saying, Don’t do this. Pretty soon there was a crowd on the street, looking up at her, pointing, and part of her felt like an exotic bird—singular, detached, glorious. She’d climbed onto the head of a gargoyle, perusing the dark geometry of the city, her arms out, feeling the wind flame over her, tasting her fear. Then sirens, trucks. Cops. At the time she was thinking how nice it was to be apart, separate, delivered from evil—an angel. Beyond the periphery of her vision she could see them, her guides to the next world, waiting for her, solemn, parochial, patient. And the wind trying to lift her up. And the wailing sirens, and the men spilling onto the roof in their black uniforms, scattering like she was the enemy, some invader, when really she was just a girl with serious problems, and they froze as if at any moment the world would crack open, the fragile semblance of civility, and they’d all fall into a vortex of darkness, the place God makes to put people like them.

  Landscape with Farmhouse

  1

  HER HUSBAND WAS well liked. He had tennis partners, chess partners. On the weekends, he’d invite people to the house, people from the department. It was never just the two of them. He played the part of the generous host. In front of strangers, he was a convincing husband, a devoted father. People thought they were in love, building a life together. They would beam with admiration.

  For her part, she was the image of the scholar’s wife in her old kilts from college, somber turtlenecks the color of horses—bay and chestnut, dappled gray. Her skin pale as old bread. She’d pull her hair into a bun and didn’t bother with makeup. None of the Saginaw wives did. They were a conservative lot, with their dull fire-sale pumps, wool skirts, frilly high-necked blouses.

  Sometimes Justine and Bram would come. They’d bring people along, as if they’d be too bored if they came alone. Artists. Writers. They could be snobs, Catherine thought. Although the parties always got better once they showed up. The air smelling of dead leaves, of fire, they’d sit around on the terrace drinking undiluted Scotch until it got too cold, then jam around the kitchen table, eating whatever they could find—Irish cheddar in its thick wax cape, apricots, walnuts cracked from their shells, black grapes. With their thick hungry hands, the men were savage, common, and reminded her of Van Gogh’s Potato Eaters with their red faces, red from the new autumn wind. The women grazed off their husbands’ plates, smoking incessantly.

  Eventually, like some religious cult, the men would disappear into George’s study and huddle over books, argue, drink and smoke—she’d find their ashes on the floor the next day like duck droppings. She’d bring them tea, strong coffee, Cognac, cigars, knocking gently, entering the room into an abrupt silence.

  —

  ONE NIGHT George invited his department chair, Floyd DeBeers, and his wife, Millicent, for dinner. Catherine fussed all day to make it nice. She cooked a pot roast, only to discover when they arrived that they were vegetarians. Millicent walked with a cane. In private, DeBeers had told George that her condition was worsening. Still, her beauty was dignified, elegant. She wore a long gauze dress, overcast-gray. He had longish sideburns, a distracting mustache and an outlandish taste in clothes—bright blazers with stripes and clashing colors, awful wide ties. She wondered at first if he was color-blind.

  While George made a fire, she showed Floyd and Millicent around. She was pleased with how the house looked. The table, the flowers. The good bottle of Bordeaux. Millicent declined going up the stairs, since, she explained, they’d become difficult for her in recent weeks. When Floyd entered their bedroom he stopped abruptly, staring down at the bed.

  Is something wrong? she said.

  We’re not alone.

  What do you mean? she asked, even though she already knew the answer.

  She doesn’t mean any harm. She wants you to know that.

  She’s watching over her boys, Catherine managed.

  So you’ve seen her?

  Catherine nodded. Once. Don’t tell George, he already thinks I’m crazy.

  DeBeers nodded sympathetically. People like your husband can’t accept the abstract. It makes them uneasy. I know that about George. He’s afraid.

  Afraid?

  Yes, he said confidently, as if he were privy to some exclusive truth. But you and I, we’re open. Open to life, to all the possibilities.

  She looked at his face, his kind eyes. Should I be frightened?

  It’s nothing to worry about, he said. They’re among us. He shrugged as if he were talking about mosquitoes or mice. People don’t want to believe it, but we both know better, don’t we? He smiled at her and touched the side of her face. It was such a tender gesture she almost cried. I suppose we’re special, aren’t we, dear?

  I don’t know, she said, overcome. No one had ever called her special.

  Come, now, don’t be upset. Let’s not spoil such a lovely evening. He pulled her against his chest and hugged her. She can’t hurt you. She has her reasons for lingering. If anything, she’s grateful.

  She held on tight, clutching him like a child. Grateful?

  You’ve been good to her sons.

  Tears rolled down her cheeks and she wiped them away. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m crying.

  It’s all right. You don’t have to explain. Some of us just know things. It’s a gift and a curse that some of us have to bear.

  He smiled, studied her carefully and asked, How are things with George? Is everything okay?

  Of cou
rse, she said, embarrassed. Why wouldn’t it be?

  I know it’s hard moving up to a place like this. You’re not lonesome, are you?

  She shook her head—she wasn’t about to tell George’s boss everything.

  Your husband has his own way of doing things, that’s for sure.

  She nodded and smiled, but found the comment disturbing. She didn’t know how George behaved out in the world. There had been occasions when she’d seen him being discourteous. Once, leaving the mall, he’d barreled through the glass door without holding it open for the woman behind him; the door was heavy and swung back hard enough that the woman was hurt, and she’d called him an asshole while Catherine pretended not to know him. It was a small thing, she knew, but it said a lot about his way of doing things.

  An outburst of laughter clattered up the stairs, the result of some silly joke, she guessed. DeBeers took her arm. Let’s go join them, shall we?

  —

  WASHING THE DISHES, she reflected on the evening. Even without her roast, the meal had been good, the salad and wine to everyone’s satisfaction. They were interesting people and she especially liked Floyd. He was warm, kind. More than once she’d caught him contemplating her across the table with a fatherly sort of understanding that she’d never witnessed in her own father’s eyes.

  She let the water run a minute. She stacked the dishes in the rack, then scoured the big white sink. She wiped down the faded Formica counters stippled with cigarette burns. It saddened her to think how careless people could be. The floor needed sweeping, but it was very late and she wanted to go to bed. It could wait, she decided, and untied her apron and hung it on the hook. When she turned around George was standing in the doorway, watching her. She couldn’t tell how long he’d been there. He looked at her dully.

  George, she said.

  Come over here.