We Are Gathered Page 7

  After a few more weeks, the girl’s father came and got her. I wasn’t there when it happened. Ida told me a stout man in a blue Lincoln had arrived and rung the doorbell. Ida opened the door, and he introduced himself politely. He asked where his daughter was. Ida led him to the television room, where he asked if they could have some time alone. A few minutes later, he emerged, with his daughter following meekly behind him. They left everything, all her clothes, all the baby clothes, the soft blue blankets with ABCs and teddy bears stitched in. After they left, Ida went to find Eddie. He was in the backyard by the pool, drinking a beer and lying back on a lounge chair. Ida was not sure he knew what had happened. She told him, and he said, with his eyes closed, “I know.”

  So Eddie has another child out there somewhere, which means I have another grandchild. I never asked him if he heard from that girl, if she had a boy or a girl. Ida used to wonder about it sometimes, but I would say, What does it matter? Josh has given you three beautiful grandchildren to love—you think something about that one would be special? It’s just another kid, you can love one, you can love a hundred, it’s all the same. They grow up and leave you. They don’t stay babies. When she would moan about it, I would flip on the television, find a show, and point to a girl. There, there she is. Now are you happy?

  I only really lost my temper with Eddie once, though there were hundreds of times when he brought me close. He got drunk at his own bar mitzvah and vomited on the dance floor. He skipped school and forged his mother’s signature on the excuses. Once, when the neighbors were out of town, he and some friends climbed their fence, swam in their pool, and then attempted to take their car for a joyride. They rolled it out of the driveway in neutral but were unable to get it started. When I came home from work, it was sitting perpendicular in the middle of the road. I’m sure there are other things he did that were concealed from me by his mother or his brother. Josh’s only transgressions came in defense of Eddie. He remained protective of him all his life, even as Eddie grew bigger and stronger than his older brother. Josh looks like Ida, wiry and wide-eyed and fragile. This is appealing in a woman but not in a man, and he dated little in high school. His date for the senior prom, I learned years later, was arranged by Eddie.

  I returned from the office late one night to find Eddie and Ida engaged in a minor argument. I could hear their discussion when I walked in the kitchen door, but as soon as they heard the door slam, they clammed up. I followed their voices into the living room. They both glanced guiltily at me and then away. Ida was wearing a short white tennis skirt and a white polo shirt. She must have just returned from the courts because there was a narrow pencil line of sweat down the center of her back. “What’s going on?” I asked into the air.

  “Nothing,” Eddie said.

  Ida looked at him and then at the front lawn. I saw the red lawn mower there and a single lane of cut grass.

  “Why didn’t you finish cutting the grass?” I asked.

  “I’m going to do it tomorrow,” Eddie said. He jammed his hands in his pockets.

  “Do it now,” I said. I turned to walk back into the kitchen. I could smell my dinner there, and I was hungry. Ida followed me, and after I sat down at the table, she delivered a tinfoil-wrapped plate. She unveiled a neat partitioning of chicken and potatoes and green beans. I stared at the food. Steam was rising off the plate. I waited for the sound of the lawn mower starting. It did not come. I tilted my head. I heard Ida suck in her breath. A moment later, I heard the garage door lifting and a car starting. I pushed back from the table and ran out to the garage just in time to see Eddie backing out of the driveway in Ida’s white station wagon. I ran after him; I know he saw me. I was still holding my napkin and waving it in the air. It must have looked like I was trying to surrender. The station wagon screeched as Eddie peeled away.

  I don’t know why it was just too much to bear that night. I refused to eat my dinner, and Ida wrapped it up in the same foil and put it in the refrigerator. I was determined to stay awake until Eddie came home. Ida took a shower and came downstairs in her bathrobe, the same one that would later show up on Caroline. It was pink velour with a hood. She smelled of apples and baby oil, and when she touched my neck, her skin was moist and a little slippery. “Aren’t you tired?” she asked me.

  “No,” I responded truthfully.

  “Hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Do you want to watch television?” She stepped forward and punched on the TV. Her robe was tied tightly around her waist, and it showed the top curves of her hips. She turned the dial, announcing the programs to me. I let her go on for a while before I said, “I didn’t say I wanted to watch television.” She turned around to face me with the TV glowing behind her.

  “Albert,” she said. “He’s young.”

  “I know,” I said. “I was young once too.”

  She scrutinized me. She obviously did not expect that response. “Would you like to come to bed?” she asked. It was early, so I assumed that was an invitation to make love, though I am not sure. In sixty years of marriage, Ida never once initiated sex.

  “No,” I said. I was staring at her midsection. “I’m going to wait for him.”

  Ida took a hesitant step forward and tried to smile. “I’m sure anything you have to say can wait until morning.”

  “I don’t think it can,” I said in a monotone.

  Ida puttered around in the kitchen for a while. She checked on me once more when she was done and announced that she was going to sleep. I nodded and remembered to say “Good night.” I was not even sure Eddie would be coming home that night. As far as I knew, he had never spent a whole night away, but it was certainly not beyond him. After the eleven o’clock news, I turned off the television and turned on the front lights. They revealed the abandoned lawn mower, its silver handle jutting up and the body hunched forward like a dog sniffing the ground. I stepped out into the front yard. Little bugs were swarming around the floodlight; I could smell the freshly cut grass, what little of it there was. I crossed over to the lawn mower and seized its handle. I pushed it into the garage, and standing there in the space where Ida’s car was supposed to be, smelling oil and paint thinner, I felt something shift and yaw in me, the beginning of a new kind of anger: furious and consuming. It filled my whole body until it pressed against the back of my eyes and made my fingers and toes throb. I balled up my fist to hit something, but there was nothing to hit. I let my fist fall into my empty hand. I went back to the living room and waited. At 2 a.m., Eddie came home.

  The living room filled with the light from the high beams, spotlighting some of Ida’s little possessions: a brass clock, a crystal candy dish, a small porcelain ballerina. They all looked pathetic and embarrassed in the harsh light. Eddie parked in the driveway. He was probably avoiding the noise of the garage door opening, hoping not to wake me. I stood at the front window and watched him trudge up the driveway. He trailed his large feet behind him as if they were flippers. His shoulders were hunched and his hands were sunk so deep in his pockets that it looked as if he could scratch his knees. He stopped to look at the house for a minute. I had turned off the light in the living room, and I am certain he could not have seen me, but it seemed as if he were staring at exactly the spot where I stood. He fixed me with a look of scorn and derision, then shifted his shoulders, one at a time, back into place and walked upright to the house.

  When he walked in the front door, I was standing there in the full light of the hallway, waiting for him. I knew I would have to speak first, but I enjoyed holding him there for a minute, with the door still open behind him and moths and silver gnats streaming over his shoulder into Ida’s neat and orderly house. He would have to push past me to get inside, and part of me wanted to wait and see if he had the guts to try that, but I could not hold out after storing my anger all night.

  “You deliberately disobeyed me,” I said.

  Eddie locked his eyes with mine. There were pink pimples on his cheeks, and they dis
gusted me. I waited for him to respond. The house settled in creaks and sighs behind me, and I could almost hear Ida asleep upstairs, a light whistle of breath.

  “I’ll cut the lawn tomorrow,” he said.

  “No,” I said. “You’ll do it now.” I stepped forward to give him a light push out the door.

  “The fuck I will,” he said. He said that after my hands had risen to give him the light push. By the time I made contact, those words had unleashed my anger, and I shoved him hard with both hands out the door. He stumbled backward but managed to stay balanced. Then I saw the silver car keys flash in his hands. He darted away from me, and taunted, “I’m leaving and I’m never coming back,” but he moved too slowly. I was not going to let him get away again, and I sprung out of the doorway and grabbed him around the neck and turned him to face me. He was surprised, and instead of the defiant look he’d worn a moment ago, he had that stupid baby-drool face, hurt and uncomprehending, as if he had just arrived at this confrontation, not provoked it.

  “You live here,” I told him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  At the sound of my voice, the hurt look disappeared, replaced by malice, and he lifted his hand and slapped me on the back of my head. That was too much. I still had a hold on him, and I slapped him back and shook him hard, and then I caught a hand that was curled into a fist and I twisted it and threw it away like the worthless piece of garbage it was turning out to be. He fell then, I’m not sure how, and I found myself on top of him with my arms pinning his shoulders, the weakling. He didn’t even fight back; he opened his tender pink mouth, and bawled, “Mommy.” A square of light showed up on the dark green grass. All I was doing was holding him still, but he cried and gasped for breath and pleaded. “Don’t hurt me,” he screamed, which was ridiculous. I had no intention of hurting him. His eyes were closed, and he had long girlish lashes. His body was thinner and less substantial than I had expected it to be. It was easy to hold him there, and then I heard Ida cry, “Oh, my God, Albert.”

  I felt her hands on my shoulders, sharp birdlike claws digging into my white shirt. “Get off of him!” she shrieked.

  I was under attack, and I had an instinct to defend myself. I lifted a hand and tossed her away. Then she was in my face, her hands splayed against my nose. “Get off of him,” she screamed. “Get off of him.” One finger pressed into my eye, and a nail caught in my neck. It wasn’t that she was stronger than I; it was that something—I think it was the smell of her—brought me back to where I was: in the middle of a starless night on my front lawn with both my wife and my son turned against me. I sat back on my haunches, then let Ida push me over so I lay on my back a moment. I saw Eddie scramble away and then stop and turn back to his mother. Ida held Eddie; she was facing away from me, toward the street, but she spoke clearly, “You are an animal.”

  The car keys gleamed like dropped treasure. I picked them up, and I ran for the car. I slammed the door when I got inside, and I made the tires screech as I pulled away.

  Who has a wedding outside? A young dark-haired man in a morning suit, a man who looks like he’s never worked a day in his life, is posing for pictures with other young men. They do not seem bothered by the heat in the slightest. It must be the stroke. Everything wrong in the world is blamed on the stroke. Sweat drops into my eyes and burns. It’s an inferno under this sun. I wouldn’t be surprised if this whole place went up in flames. Again, the tragedy of not being able to move my neck. I have no warning that Eddie has returned. He says, “Dad’s getting overheated. I should take him inside.”

  Ida says, “He’s fine. Don’t make a scene. Besides, he wouldn’t miss Elizabeth’s wedding.”

  “He looks like he is going to have a stroke.”

  “He’s already had one.”

  “Elizabeth loves him,” Eddie mutters. “He was nice to her.”

  Ida picks up my hand. She whispers, “It seems like just yesterday I was the bride.” I cannot see her face, but I know the expression she is wearing: distant and dreamy, her lips barely curled into a smile, as if the beauty of whatever she is remembering is greater than joy.

  For a few days after Caroline broke her wrist, the tension between us was palpable, swampy and dense, but we were never alone. Eddie hovered around her, waiting on her hand and foot. At dinner, he cut up her food into little pieces and fed her. At night, I might see them sitting by the pool with him rubbing her back or brushing her hair. I even once found him ironing one of her dresses. He was embarrassed when I walked in, and he set the hissing iron away from him, but the pull of her was strong. I gave him an incredulous look, but he fingered the fabric of the dress and refused to meet my gaze. Finally, I said, “Can’t your mother do that?”

  “She’s shopping,” he said. “And Caroline wants to wear it now.”

  I walked away, leaving him in the laundry room with the faint smell of singed cotton and the blue scent of detergent; his perfume, I thought.

  We were not alone for days until one Saturday when Caroline dispatched Eddie to buy her some special shampoo from a store downtown and Ida went to the hairdresser. I had decided I should close the pool. It was late September, and though it was still hot, I thought closing the pool might signal to Eddie that the summer was over. I was just pacing up and down the patio when I heard Caroline slide the glass door open, and announce, somewhat conspiratorially, “It is so quiet.” I squinted up at her and the sky. Clouds were forming, dense and heavy, a late afternoon thunderstorm. We both heard the ominous rumble.

  She crossed over to me, supporting her broken wrist with her good arm. The heavy cast only served to underscore how delicate the rest of her body was. She stood beside me and sucked in her breath. “It’s going to rain,” she said. A thick curtain was dragged across the sky. The bright blue pool water turned gray, and we stood together with the sky closing in around us. It was suddenly oppressively hot, recycled air, her breath, my breath. What she breathed out, I breathed in. She tilted her head, closed her eyes, parted her lips, waited. I kissed her. She pressed against me, unwinding in my arms. When the kiss ended, she dropped her head back, supported by my hands, and opened her mouth to accept a raindrop. Then she smiled at me and watched, amused, as if she was trying not to laugh, as I slivered my hand between the buttons of her dress and caressed her breasts. We went upstairs to fuck. She’s the only one I ever screwed in my own bed. I had intended to go into Josh’s old room, but she led me into the master bedroom, and we did it there. Twice more before I sent her away.

  After Caroline left Eddie, he moped. Strange as it may sound, it was probably for the best that he found out that I had screwed her, written her a check, and told her to leave. It jolted him out of his lethargy, and if fury with me was the price I had to pay to get him moving again, it was cheaper than doctors. I never intended for him to find out. It was she who called one day while I was at work, sobbing, to tell him that she was in love with me. Ridiculous. Making love to her turned out not to be as pleasurable as I had expected.

  Eddie waited until Ida had gone to bed to say anything to me. He found me in my office paying some bills, one of which I remember, oddly enough, was from Dr. Robert Goldberg for Eddie’s annual teeth cleaning. Eddie came into the office without knocking. He stood far from the desk, and said, with his eyes closed, in a flat, emotionless voice, “I know about you and Caroline.” He swallowed. “She called today and told me she’s in love with you. I hate you,” he said. “You’re lucky I love Mom more than I hate you, or I’d tell her.” He turned his face to the side, and I noticed that his jaw, like mine, formed a perfect right angle. “I’m leaving,” he said, “and I never want to see you again.” He turned and left the room. I wasn’t scared he’d tell Ida. I wasn’t angry. I was proud of him.

  Elizabeth and a blond-haired girl are standing together, arms around each other. I remember this girl; I remember she was cruel and rude. If she dropped a potato chip, she wouldn’t pick it up. She’d watch while Ida bent over to get it. This one used to come over
to our house and lie on her stomach, her bikini top undone. She has a lovely pointed chin and full lips, and with the sun behind her, I can see the outline of her breasts and thighs through her dress. If I were a younger man, I might have felt something for her, but as pretty as that girl in that dress looks, Ida was prettier by far. Every party I went to, every business affair, I would look at the wives of my friends and colleagues, and think, Ida is prettier. A man is judged by the woman with him, and Ida’s beauty made me more powerful.

  The girl briefly looks over the rows of chairs at me, then away. No one looks at me for very long anymore. Staring out like a zombie, I remind them how thin the line is between life and death. Plus, I imagine I am rather grotesque, though Ida takes pains not to let me see myself in the mirror. There is laughter at something I didn’t catch. The sun is high overhead, streaming down in braids and cones, and the yellow tulips look golden. For a moment, all the sounds in the world separate. The girl’s words break down into letters. I can hear each bird alone, the shifting of legs in chairs, the gurgle of stomachs. The girl shimmies.

  Eddie says, “Shouldn’t they have started already?”

  Ida murmurs back, “It starts when it starts, sweetheart.”

  Children go to their mothers for hugs and forgiveness and to their fathers for discipline and protection. I know everyone is talking about a new kind of father: gentle yet stern, kind yet strong. No one wants to accept that some rules are difficult and unpleasant but necessary. We live in a world of sharp delineations, and the greatest efforts of humans will not be able to change that. Everything splinters: day and night, light and dark, living and dead, heaven and hell. Efforts to change this, I cannot help believing, are motivated by weakness, by people who are afraid to face life as it is: a brutal and exhausting gallop through a desert populated by predators and parasites. I wish sometimes that this truth would have left me for a minute: though seeing the world for what it is has made me a success in business, I am aware that it has also denied me some foolish pleasures.