All Our Yesterdays (25 page)

Tom’s face had a nice tennis tan. It was hard to tell if it might have flushed a little under the tan. His eyes stayed steady.

“I’ve never given you trouble, Gus.”

“And I’ve never given you trouble, Tommy.”

“All that we’ve done together. I’ve been cooperative. I’ve helped make you … very comfortable.”

“Chris’s going to take this offer and you’re going to support him,” Gus said.

“My child has a stake in this too,” Tom said.

“Not my problem,” Gus said.

They sat silently. Neither ate. Across the harbor an
American Airlines 767 sloped in over the Fargo Building, lowered gently over the harbor, and landed silently.

“Cabot wants the Senate,” Tom said.

“You want it,” Gus said.

“Same thing.”

“And maybe you can buy it for him,” Gus said. “Don’t matter to me.”

“Chris will be a roadblock,” Tom said.

Gus stared at Tom without speaking.

“But it’s a free country,” Tom said.

Gus stayed quiet, the weight of his gaze on Tom Winslow.

“I won’t stand in his way,” Tom said.

“In fact you’ll urge him on,” Gus said.

“I said I won’t oppose him.”

“He won’t do it if he thinks it will cause trouble for Grace’s family,” Gus said. “You’ll have to urge him to do it.”

“Sure,” Tom said. “I’ll urge him.”

The waiter came, and asked if they were through. They said yes, and the waiter took away both plates and brought them coffee. Out beyond the harbor, the sky was bright blue, and the water mirrored its color, so that it was hard to tell where the horizon was.

“We’re all right, then?” Tom said.

“Us? Sure, Tommy, we’re dandy.”

“And our, ah, special relationship continues?”

Gus smiled at him over his coffee cup.

“Till death do us part, Tommy.”

A
t their big house in Beverly Farms, the Winslows had a party for Chris Sheridan, to celebrate his appointment. That was the spin they were going to put on it. Cooperation beyond family, beyond affiliation, to rid the city of its current plague. They even invited Debbie McBride, Gus noticed, still in a wheelchair, but recovering, thanks-be-to-Gawd, cute and plucky in her Girl Scout uniform, wheeled about by her mother. Mrs. McBride was pale, with fat thighs. In her flowered dress with puffy sleeves and a low scooped neck, she looked like a character from
Fantasia
, Parnell Flaherty was not there.

Gus stood near a six-foot black marble fireplace nursing a tall Scotch and soda watching Peggy flounce about among the rich people, screeching with laughter at everything said, clutching her bourbon in both hands. She drank bourbon on the rocks only. Not through a highly developed taste preference, but because it was the only thing she knew the name of. Even with bourbon if someone gave her a brand-name choice she would be puzzled and Gus would have to specify for her. Peggy was wearing a heavy white brocaded dress with a blue scarf over her shoulders and bright blue shoes. She looked, Gus realized, a bit like Debbie’s proud mother. Only older, and fatter. She had the mannerisms of a junior high school girl, titillated by a rich swirl of events she didn’t understand.
She was flirty and provocative, which Gus mused was not easy while crammed into a steel-stayed corset.

A young woman from the caterer, in tight black pants and a white shirt, came by, and offered Gus an endive leaf with sour cream and a dab of salmon roe. Gus shook his head and the young woman passed on. Gus looked thoughtfully at her tight young backside. He drank some Scotch.

Laura Winslow, Tommy’s wife, said, “You’re not eating, Gus.”

Gus smiled at her.

“This isn’t Paddy chow, Laura,” he said. “I’m waiting for the boiled potatoes.”

Gus liked Laura Winslow. She was tall and genuine with short hair, strong forearms, and a good tan. Her eyes were wide apart, and there was always the implication of amusement in them. She was said to be a good tennis player, and she always seemed to him a lot smarter than her husband. Gus could never figure out why she’d married a twerp like Tommy Winslow, though now and then he felt a hint of resignation in her that seemed like his.

“How do you think Chris feels about this party?” Laura said.

Gus shrugged. “We don’t always talk about stuff, Laura.”

“You value restraint, Gus. So does Chris.”

Gus nodded.

“I was a little worried that we were kind of putting him on the spot,” Laura said.

“He could have said no.”

“I suppose he could have,” Laura said. “But that would have put him rather on the spot too.”

“The whole deal puts him on the spot,” Gus said. “He didn’t want to be there, he could have walked.”

“He says you supported him.”

Gus nodded again.

“Tommy supported him too,” Laura said.

“Decent,” Gus said.

Laura looked at Gus without comment. Then she said, “Yes.”

In front of them, Peggy was dancing. She held her electric-blue scarf stretched out across her chest while she swayed to seductive music that only she heard. She dipped low in front of a tall man in a yellow linen blazer, and dropped the scarf to reveal fat white cleavage. She slowly drew the scarf across the cleavage while she gazed up at the man with her eyes half closed. Then she twirled across the room and danced for a shorter man with a dark tan and white hair.

Gus and Laura watched her.

“Yvonne De Carlo,” Gus said without inflection.

Laura smiled and moved off to talk to another guest. Gus took a mushroom cap off a serving tray and ate it. The mushroom cap had been filled with spinach and broiled. He went to the bar and got his drink refilled and stood near the bar. His son came over carrying a bottle of Catamount beer. Chris always drank beer, almost always from the bottle, and always the local beer.

Across the room Peggy had spread the scarf across her shoulders and was looking back over her shoulder at the white-haired man with the tan. She twitched her hips. He said something and she shrieked again with laughter, and twirled away from him.

“Ma’s doing the dance of the seven veils again,” Chris said.

Gus nodded.

“Doesn’t that bother you?” Chris said.

Gus took in some air and let it out.

“She’s having a nice time,” he said.

“Yeah, but everyone else thinks she’s an asshole.”

Gus looked around the room.

“What’s one more?” Gus said.

“See there you go again, closing off.”

Gus shrugged.

“You want me to say your mother’s an asshole, Chris?”

“I want you to say what you feel.”

Gus stared at the cold fireplace across the room. He took a pull at his drink, carefully, not too much. He didn’t want to get drunk at his son’s party.

“Chris,” he said, “mostly I don’t know what I feel. And mostly, I guess, I don’t want to.”

“It’s no way to live,” Chris said.

“I know,” Gus said.

A
s the gate locked automatically behind him, he felt the thickening pressure he always felt when he came to the house, a commingling of surreptitiousness, excitement, desire, safety, and guilt. He parked the car amid the unrestrained bushes and got out.

She greeted him at the door as he’d taught her to. Arms around his neck, kissing him on tiptoe, one foot off the ground, toe pointed backwards. He was very precise about this. She had ribbons in her hair. She wore one of the little flowered pinafores he’d bought her, with white ankle socks and saddle shoes. Her make up was careful and extensive. Lip gloss, blusher, green eye shadow, mascara. She wore a lot of expensive perfume.

When they were through kissing at the door, she took his hand and led him into the living room. It was the same room it had been for forty years, updated with a vast television screen on the wall to the left. There was a frantic music video playing on the screen. He shut it off. Compact discs and videotapes were scattered on the floor. A box of pink tissues sat on the table. But the boy’s books were still there in the bookcase, the Daisy air rifle still stood in the corner. He squatted by the big fireplace and lit the fire that was already laid there. She went to the kitchen and made him a martini as he had taught her, and brought it to him, and sat on the arm of the big chair and stroked
his hair, the way he insisted, while he drank his martini, and stared into the moving fire. When he finished his martini he began to fondle her, and after that, they went to the bedroom.

C
hris sat across from Cabot Winslow in the dining room of the Harvest Restaurant in Harvard Square. Grace sat between them. It was late in the lunch hour and the dining room was nearly empty.

Chris studied his menu. He felt the wringing tension in his solar plexus when he was with Grace. He wondered if Cabot knew. Cabot was so flat that, if he knew or not would have little effect on his behavior.

“This is complicated for us,” Grace said. “I thought we ought to talk, just the three of us, and sort everything out.”

“No problem, Grapes,” Cabot said. “Chris and I will just each go about our business. I’ll run for the Senate. The Chris-man will clean up the city.”

Chris hated the way Cabot talked. He hated being called the Chris-man. He hated the way Cabot called his sister Grapes. He hated the bow ties that Cabot always wore. He often thought it would be fun to bust Cabot’s nose for him. But then he imagined Cabot down and bleeding, and he felt bad for him, and a little frightened at what he’d imagined, and he promised himself he’d never do it.

“That sounds fine, Cab, and you probably think you mean it,” Grace said. “But if he does clean up the city it’ll hurt your chances for the Senate.”

“I’m not running on Flaherty’s failures, Grapes. I
offer myself to the voters as I am. I hope to be elected on the issues.”

Christ
, Chris thought,
even to his own sister he talks like a political speech
.

“And if you’re not?” Grace said.

Cabot shrugged gracefully.

“And what about Daddy?” Grace said.

Cabot shrugged again.

Chris swallowed some beer.

“I’m sorry, I’ve put us all in this position,” he said.

Cabot shook his head and made a dismissive gesture.

“Please, Chris. No one is suggesting that.”

“I could have said no to Flaherty. I thought about it. I knew it would make things awkward for you”—he looked at his girlfriend—“and for Grace. I thought about it a lot.”

Cabot listened attentively. Polite. He was a large young man with a pale square face, and reddish hair. In a few years he’d be portly. But there was about him a gentility that served to make him more graceful than he should have been.
Breeding
, Chris thought.
Six centuries of being upper class
.

“Maybe you could share with Cab some of your thinking,” Grace said.

He looked at her. She was twirling her wineglass by the stem. Most of the wine remained untouched. Sometimes he thought he’d like her better if she drank a little … or ate too much … or tore off her clothes in the kitchen some morning and fucked him on the floor….
Six centuries of being upper class
…. He lingered at the thought of taking her on the floor. Of overpowering her and … The longer they
were apart the more implacably and angrily he wanted her.

“I needed to do something,” Chris said.

Cabot raised his eyebrows.

“Emphasis on
do
. I never
do
stuff. I just talk about stuff.”

He drank some beer from the bottle.

“You know?” he said.

Cabot looked courteously puzzled. He wasn’t, Chris knew, a very bright guy.

“You’re too hard on yourself, Chris. You are, after all, a full professor,” Cabot said, “at Harvard University. You could have been chairman of your department. Had you chosen.”

“Where I could deal with those issues of twin significance—tenure and promotion—until my teeth fell out.”

Cabot was drinking bourbon on the rocks. He sipped some. Grace put her hand on Chris’s forearm.

“You think of Gus as someone who
does
things,” Grace said.

“Sure. My father’s a cop. He investigates crime. He arrests bad guys.”

“But crime goes on,” Grace said. “And there are still as many bad guys.”

“Good point, Grapes,” Cabot said. He glanced around for the waitress.

“So what?” Chris said. “You Wasps always think it’s about results. It’s not. It’s about what you are.”

“Us Wasps?” Grace said. “As opposed to what? You Micks?”

Chris shook his head and shrugged.

“You know what I mean,” Chris said.

The waitress came and Cabot ordered another
round of drinks, although Grace’s glass was nearly full.

“No,” Grace said when the waitress left, “I don’t know what you mean. I thought you’d outgrown that poor snob affectation: ‘we-authentic-Irish-versus-you-effete-Wasps.’”

“I just meant that we come from a different upbringing. You know, ‘the rich are very different.’”

Grace smiled and looked down at the still surface of her undrunk wine.

“‘Yes, they have more money,’” she said.

The waitress came with the second round of drinks. When she left, Cabot took a sip of his and looked at Chris.

“So, you took the job, really, because you wanted to be a cop … like your father?” Cabot asked.

Chris opened his mouth, and shut it, and stared at Cabot’s blank, comfortable face.
Asshole
.

“Well,” Chris said, “it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Oh?”

“But that’s close enough,” Chris said.

He looked at his menu.

“New Zealand Venison Medallions,” he said. “I think I’ll have them.”

“Good for you,” Cabot said. “Lower in fat and cholesterol than chicken.”

Grace was quiet, looking at her two glasses of wine.

“I believe I’ll have the salmon,” Cabot said.

“Omega oils,” Chris said. “How about you, Gracie, what are you eating?”

Grace stared at her full wineglasses and didn’t answer until the waitress arrived to take the orders … then she said she’d have a salad.