A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (15 page)

The afternoon’s remaining hours swiftly passed as the family and the other members of the wedding moved in their prescribed courses, as if there were a groom present. No one asked where Neal was, not even Gottschall. Viola raged when Joyce said she’d have to wait before she was allowed to hold the flowers. At the chapel the guests soon arrived. Amanda greeted them each with a cold, bony handshake, her smile as fragile as the wedding glass that had been procured from her cupboard. She mumbled to a few people that there would be a delay, but she couldn’t bear to say it more than twice. Five p.m. came without Neal. Joyce presumed all the guests knew about his absence by now. The organist worked her way down her repertoire. Amanda and Joyce took shelter in the alcove next to the dressing room, where Flora was in tears.

Amanda said, her voice tremulous, “I have never been so humiliated.”

Joyce was startled by her mother’s confession; it made her feel closer to her than she had been in years, since before she was married. Amanda appeared vulnerable now, almost under-nourished in her mother-of-the-bride suit, naked against other people’s speculation and gossip. Joyce, who had been suspended in her own state of maximum humiliation for more than a year, wondered if she was witnessing the harbinger of maternal sympathy, or at least an opportunity to provoke that sympathy. Joyce wished she could think of something to say, not only to console her mother, but also to reveal the correspondences in their situations. In the meanwhile she reached out and squeezed Amanda’s shoulder.

Several notes of Middle Eastern music sounded off within Amanda’s tiny handbag. It was Flora’s phone, given to Amanda for safekeeping. After the second bar Joyce recognized the song.

It was Afghan. Amanda withdrew the phone, frowned, and said crisply, “Yes.”

But it wasn’t Neal. Amanda had to move the device away from her ear because the caller was shouting with great excitement. The shouting was accompanied by both parties’ confusion over who was calling and who was receiving the call. “No, this is not Mrs. Weiss,” Amanda said firmly. It transpired that the man had failed to reach Neal on his cell phone and was now trying the alternate number. He was from the religious supply store in Hartford. A mask of steel descended upon Amanda’s face. She declared, “You let us down.”

“The chuppah was signed for!” the man protested, every word carrying to Joyce. “We’re closed, but it’s after sunset, so I came in to look in the book. Thirty years I’m in business and nothing like this has ever happened. The chuppah was picked up by a member of your wedding. They signed for it!”

“That’s impossible.”

“They signed for it!” he repeated.

“Well, what does it say?” her mother demanded.

“It says…scribble scribble.” He sighed heavily. “No, H something…Harriman?”

Joyce was rocked back on her heels and something seemed to fall away in her gut, as if she herself were falling. The sensation was so intense that she was virtually blinded, unable to see anything but Amanda, who could see nothing but her. Her mother’s eyes had locked on.

“I—I—didn’t! No! Can’t be!” Joyce stammered her denial, just beginning to put into sluggish gear the mental processes that would allow her to imagine how her name could have found itself in a notebook kept by the owner of a Jewish religious supply store in Hartford, Connecticut.

“Are you sure?” Amanda asked the man.

“It’s written right here. Harriman. Morris…Moishe…Marshall! There’s no one there named Marshall Harriman?”

“No,” Amanda said.

She closed the phone in a very controlled motion, but with as much force as the instrument was built to withstand. She gazed at Joyce, registering her daughter’s character in its entirety: her fecklessness, her unluckiness, her contagious shame. Then they both heard an abrupt, many-throated murmur in the chapel. The murmur was followed by a roar and then, after a moment’s pause, amused chuckles. Joyce turned away and took a step toward the chapel, trying to escape Amanda’s glare.

Neal and Joel had arrived, together carrying a folded blue awning attached to four poles: the chuppah from Queens, an hour late. Without a glance left or right the two men strode up the aisle. Joel removed some hardware from a plastic bag and the brothers, their backs to the wedding guests, quickly assembled the canopy next to Gottschall’s still-unoccupied lectern. The chuppah was a fairly simple affair, open on all sides, a Star of David embroidered on the underside of its roof. Joel and Neal exchanged terse, whispered instructions. Something needed to be forced into a socket. Neal grunted from the effort. His tuxedo seemed wrinkled. Bolts of white linen were released to cover the poles. Not knowing which music was appropriate to the raising of a chuppah, the organist had stopped halfway through “Jesus, My Only Hope.”

Once the chuppah was erected Neal pulled on one of the poles to make sure that it was steady. Joel went to the seat in the first row, next to his parents. His father scowled. Neal finally turned to face the wedding guests. He grinned warmly, showing embarrassment, but the embarrassment was transparently feigned to solicit sympathy. Now that he was standing in front of the congregation, fresh-faced and handsome, he was perfectly at ease.

“Sorry for the delay, folks,” he announced, and the crowd laughed as if he had said something charmingly funny. He straightened, flexed his elbows, and smoothed his tuxedo. Even Joyce was charmed by the breezy, open-stanced way he occupied the front of the church. She stole a glance at Amanda: she was not charmed at all. She watched her imminent son-in-law, an hour late for his own wedding, with a fury that would resonate down through the decades. Neal allowed his gaze to roam leisurely among the guests, making eye contact. Many smiled in return. He extended his arms in front of his body, showing them the palms of his hands. “Traffic was
moider
!”

1.
Victor’s red-green-blue hard rubber ball shivered for several moments and then came to a complete stop.
2.
The books leaned like a frozen wave as they approached the end of the shelf.
3.
The brightest part of a lightbulb was invisible, lost in its own radiance.
4.
Victor thought Barney was a real dinosaur; at the same time he knew there was someone beneath the costume. He couldn’t put those two facts together.
5.
They flew into the World Trade Center on purpose.
6.
Her mother always rushed into the kitchen when her father came home.
7.
Rachel and Maria were adopted.
8.
Halloween was the best holiday. You were given candy for free and didn’t have to pay.
9.
When the television was shut off by the remote control, a high-pitched bug-buzzing from inside the white star was followed by a gasp and then a silence deeper than ordinary quiet. Try it again.
10.
You could see Miss Naomi’s nips when she wore her pink leotard.
10a.
Her father saw them; he looked.
11.
They should have figured out they were going to fly into the World Trade Center.
12.
Her mother couldn’t touch Snuffles.
13.
You could make your poop come out in chunks if you wanted to.
14.
The Powerpuff Girls
was her favorite show.
15.
At the new school lunch would be served in a cafeteria, without
Victor.
16.
What’s the matter, you?
17.
Once in a while her mother straightened the books, but they fell over again. Her father took some into the bedroom.
18.
At Monty’s, if there was too much sauce on your pizza, you could send it back, but Victor didn’t have a reason. He did it to prove that he could
19.
When you first bit into chewing gum the juice came out so powerfully it hurt the inside of your jaw.
20.
Yellow tugboats cruised the river searching for customers.
21.
Oops, I did it again.
22.
A bad smell that wasn’t poop meant that someone was dying somewhere in the world.

Viola said, “How do we know?”

This was the Key Food. She called it the wanting place, secretly to herself, because she recognized the desire that was manufactured and then shuddered through her whenever her mother announced, Put on your shoes, that’s where we’re going. She knew she desperately wanted a magic ring from the coin machine—she had to have one and only Victor’s misbehavior would prevent her mother from buying it for her—at the same time that she was aware she hadn’t wanted one before. Now every time they turned a lane at the front of the store, the magic rings were there, sparkling in their magic glass chambers. Her mother didn’t see them; she was staring at her list. She passed the dog food without stopping, blindly pushing Victor in the baby seat. She didn’t see what he was doing.

“Know what, honey?”

“Know.”

“What?”

They were at the dairy section. Her mother stopped to remember what she needed. It was not on the list. She took her blue milk and their white milk, not her father’s red milk. She lightly touched her hand on the orange juice and closed her eyes, listening, but not to the music that came from upstairs. She was still. The orange juice was speaking to her,
begging. She opened her eyes and placed the orange juice in the cart. Just in time. Victor looked as sweet as an angel in heaven.

“Know things.”

“What kinds of things?”

“
All
things.”

Her mother examined the butters now, deciding whether she wanted square or round. She had a slightly stooped posture, with her bare goose-bumped arms wrapped around her chest. She said, still undecided, “How do we know them? By going to school, sweetie.”

“No!”

“Yes. School is where we learn. Doesn’t Miss Naomi teach you—”

“I don’t mean school. I don’t mean learning…I mean how do we
know
?”

They had reached the end of the dairy section. The ring machines lay beyond the registers. They only had to get there. Her mother stepped away from the cart. She was looking at her list and then at the entire width of the store, trying to remember. What else. But she had parked the cart by the Tylenols, almost right against the boxes. She could see Victor but she wasn’t watching what he was doing. She frowned hard, squeezing out a thought like poop. You think I’m in love. She mumbled, “About what?”

“About
things
. Everything. The world.”

“The world,” she repeated. She jerked the cart—Victor’s head bobbled; he giggled; she didn’t notice how wickedly—and wheeled it toward the registers. All the lanes were empty, but she wanted to figure out which was the best. The teenagers pretended not to care whose she chose, each staring at the back of the store. She picked the lane closest to the ring machines and started placing the groceries on the flat escalator. “Well, we see things.”

“But we see so much.”

“Right…” This register’s teenager was listening to music, but not to the music in the store. It was music somewhere else: teenager music, not what adults and small children could listen to. Pimples spilled across his chin, neck, and forehead, little red and white spots in secret designs that told the story of what he was thinking if only you knew how to read them. He made no sign of seeing her mother, but the escalator moved and he put the groceries through the EZ Pass. As she continued to lift items from the shopping cart, she said, “You learn to filter—”

“Can we get magic rings?”

“Yes.”

“And how do we know what to filter?”

“You learn. Please, not now, I’m trying to concentrate.”

Unloading the cart, her mother was very quiet and still again. Her list dropped to the floor. She clamped hard against her lips, as if she were trying to solve a puzzle, even though unloading the cart was a simple task that Viola could have performed herself if she were tall enough. The upstairs music had become enormous. I’m not so innocent. Victor squirmed and began kicking the cart. He suddenly wanted to get out.

“How?”

“From experience. Stop, Victor! Look, can we talk about this later?”

“And how do we know what we see is true?”

“We see it.”

Her mother froze, her hands above the escalator with a jar in her hands. She stared at the jar. The teenager continued beeping the groceries. Another teenager packed them. He too was listening elsewhere.

“But what if there are things we can’t see? Not
things,
but what they
mean
? You can’t see what they mean, you have to
know
them—and that means knowing other things. And how do you know how important each thing is, compared to the
others? Especially when you know two things that may be opposite. And you’re thinking about a third thing. And when we do know what something means, can we really say it all the way? Can we even say it to ourselves? That’s what I don’t understand.”

“Pimentos?” her mother cried. “I didn’t get—” She pulled a can from the cart. “Anchovies. Wait, what is this? Stop.” She ran her hands along other jars and small boxes. The teenager boy was still moving them through the EZ Pass. He held a carton of Tylenol. Its lettering was entirely different from what was printed on the Tylenol boxes they usually bought, Viola thought; she couldn’t read yet. “Stop! Please, wait, stop!”

He didn’t hear her. He didn’t know she was speaking, though he probably knew many other things.

“Stop! I don’t want these. Don’t ring them up! Stop packing!”

The teenager finally ground to a halt, like the Tin Man in the rain. His face remained slack. He didn’t look at her mother, who was searching the groceries on the other side of the EZ Pass, but kept his face forward. His eyes were like two gray coins. Viola couldn’t imagine what he was thinking, what he remembered, or what he wanted. He raised his head to the ceiling and called out:

“Void!”

They waited until the man arrived and did something to the register. Everyone watched. The teenagers unpacked the bags and her mother went through the groceries, pushing aside what she didn’t want. She tried not to look at anyone. Her face had gone red and she made little noises to herself. She whispered, “I should have known. I should have known.” And then her body shook and she began crying, sobbing hard. She dropped her face into her hands. Victor reached over the escalator, picked up a can, and threw it back into the cart. Her mother turned away and buried her head against the display of candy
and chewing gum, several packages of which Victor had already grabbed. Her shoulder blades quivered, like an angel’s wings. When it seemed as if she was finished, she started again. You could hear it over the music. Void and the teenagers stood by helplessly, horrified. They didn’t know what to do. They had never seen her at home; they had never seen her cry.

On the way out, Viola reminded her about the magic rings but she was almost running, shoving Victor’s stroller ahead of them—he was kicking at the footrest now—moving so fast Viola could hardly keep up.

THIS WAS HOW
it was now: too much happening too fast, and no one would explain. Viola had to pay attention, but that wasn’t enough. She had to make connections and draw inferences.

She knew her understanding was limited. You could identify what lay in front of you, but what it meant was invisible. You could never be sure that you had sufficient data. A person went around in her own shell, defined by what she didn’t know. Victor’s shell was a small, babyish toddler one, defined by his most elemental babyish toddler needs; Viola could see it from the outside, because hers was more capacious, and her parents’ much more so—but limited still. Language failed: you could never know enough words to express everything you knew, and even what you knew was a microscopic fraction of what there was, and even this doesn’t completely express the idea.

Something was going on. Comprehending it required more thought and a full review of what she knew.
1.
The lady doctor with the fingernails.
2.
Her boyfriend, the lawyer.
3.
Her mother watching TV on the couch after she and Victor went to bed.

4.
Her father hiding in the bedroom.
5.
Why her mother couldn’t touch Snuffles.
6.
A fight about the tent at Aunt Flora’s wedding.
7.
Her mother was made very angry when they were out somewhere—a restaurant, say—and Victor kicked off his
shoes.
8.
Her mother eating alone. If only Viola could stand away from these facts for a moment and quiet the commotion that swirled around her, she would be able to view the situation in its entirety. She would view her own shell.

Doing so would be like watching television, which also comprised a universe of information; the
television
was a shell, so big you could watch only a single channel at a time, or perhaps two or three. Her favorite shows were
The Powerpuff Girls
and
Dexter
and her hatred of the purple dinosaur was calibrated to the precise degree that Victor loved him. Every night after
Dexter
her mother turned on the News while she made dinner. Viola believed that teachers at her new school next year would look like the News. She paid attention. She didn’t understand everything the News said. No one did. The News spoke about their lives in secret, like the teenager’s pimples. The News could leak: her father’s pants had ripped at the World Trade Center and the hospital had put stitches in his forehead. The News leaked all over the world.

One evening while her father was out, after the News, her mother argued over the phone about the purplish, long-fluted vase she kept empty in the Dark Corner of the apartment. She said that it was an ugly antique. Somebody was trying to take it away. She wasn’t going to let him; she wasn’t going to let him take anything. The person on the phone contradicted her, evidently. But if she said the vase was ugly, why wouldn’t she let someone take it away? Viola loved the vase. It was a vase a princess would place in her private chambers and fill with eternally blooming magic flowers. Then her mother said she would call back tomorrow from the office and she sat by the phone a long while, staring through the living room window but not seeing the city at all—closed up blind within her shell. Viola watched from the couch, pretending to draw. When her mother finally rose she saw that Victor had knocked over the kitchen garbage pail and kicked through the mess, scattering it.

Her wordless cry was like ice and, also, a bolt of electricity. Her hand sprang from her side and struck Victor hard on the upper part of his arm. He fell right to the floor into the trash.

This was good for Viola, good beyond words. She desperately wished that her mother would do it again, immediately. Victor was on the floor, his legs splayed, his head down among rinds and coffee grounds. His mouth was open. His eyes were wide. And then he began howling, his sobs without any sort of arc toward cessation, as if the force and surprise of the blow were still current. Her mother must have hurt him. Now Viola recalled her friends at preschool, Rachel and Maria and the mystery of their being adopted, their pasts of evil stepmothers and punishing orphanages. They must have been hit like this all the time.

Her father came home. He opened the door fast as if someone had been pushing against it and stomped in. His face was hard and dark and somehow cloaked by itself: you couldn’t see his face even though you were looking right at it. His face had turned into a secret about itself. Victor was still wailing. As if in a trance, as if controlled by aliens or monster robots or Dexter, her father went to his room without speaking.

Now that it had been established how easy it was for Victor to be hit, Viola watched him more closely. From once being no more than an annoyance, his misbehavior had grown in ambition until it was a danger to them all. He threw to the floor every glass, jar, and dish he could get his hands on. He spilled cleaning fluids from containers under the kitchen sink. He wasted expensive paper, scribbling. But she knew she couldn’t simply report each mischief: her parents would stop listening. She had to be patient.