Double Happiness (7 page)

And the painting. That strange blob on the wall reminded him of why it was good to be doing what he was doing. What people got famous for these days. Fame used to mean something. But the artist wife wasn't rich and she wasn't pretty, and apparently, Lucy whispered, she was having a rough time getting pregnant. Good thing she has her art, Lucy laughed, but only a little because Edith's conception hadn't been all that easy.

Fuck, Lucy.

What?

You know what.

But she doesn't, and he doesn't either, entirely. Though he suspects this is a big problem and needs to get a hold of Fatty
right away for damage control. Just wrap it up. Don't break it whatever you do.

Me? Break it?

Yes, you, Miss Two Left Hands. Just put it down. Find me the phone.

That painting, that blob, was worth twenty thousand at least. He'd attended the wife's last opening, when things were still cordial, when she wore a support stocking as a dress and refused to speak English. He remembered all the nonsense about the
personal
painting, something too intimate to be sold. That small blue mess had required safekeeping from all the waving checkbooks. And sure enough there it was in Lucy's unreliable grasp. Maybe if Philip left right away, he could return it to the office wall before anyone was the wiser. Lucy! Wake up! Go, go, go!

All the happy flush gone, Lucy sets the painting down then slinks out into the long grass following Gunner's trail. He notices her posture isn't all it once was and that makes him sad on top of everything else.

Daddy, what's Mummy doing?

She's getting the phone, princess.

The phone is in the pond?

Yes, darling, that's where Gunner put it.

Oh, Gunner.

Umm. Let me see you. Did you sleep in those sunglasses? Philip thinks the left side stem looks bent. Edith's crumpled dress, the haywire sunglasses, her high blonde braids frayed like rope. Sweetie, what have you done with yourself?

Maybe Mummy needs some help? Edith sticks out a shockingly filthy finger, as if she, too, has been raiding the Hendersons's garbage. She plunges this brownish finger behind the tilted lens of Philip's sunglasses and rubs vigorously.

Stop! Stop!

The finger freezes. Her whole body freezes in its gentle collapse against the door frame. Philip takes a moment to observe: if she continues this way she'll end up like her mother, stooped and prone to excess.

Give me your hand, he says, and feels good about the tone: light, but in command. He'll have her dimpled fist away from the infection and dipped in something antibacterial in no time. He'll fix her hair and her dress while he's at it. But just as he's lifting himself out of the captain's chair, Edith shrieks, finger ricocheting away from her—now Philip can see—
pustulant
eye. His three-hundred-dollar sunglasses fly into the gravel.

Mummy's drowning! Mummy's drowning! Edith is hysterical. She leaps off the porch, lands in the white gravel with a crunch, and speeds through the long grass, off into the low azalea to the Hendersons's fetid pond. Philip hears the crackle, of course, of his sunglasses beneath her foot. Why even bother to look.

He makes his way, casually, behind her. Freaking out; his
girls are on constant high alert. And he is just their slave boy, following along to do their dirty work, to clean up the daily mess: emotionally, mentally (Lucy could barely get through
Chicken Soup for the Soul
without his exegesis), physically—here he comes—and spiritually, his taming influence was evanescent and constant. The Hendersons's pond was two feet deep. The frogs couldn't get enough depth to spawn.

Sweetheart, he calls. Honey bun, he sings out tiredly, Mummy's fine. He kicks aside the azalea and makes the turn on the path to the pond. Love bug? His forward foot snags, catches him in a tangle of cattails, and there, just ahead, is Lucy facedown in the water and motionless.

Oh my god, oh my god, and if he could run he certainly would. He thinks, many times, a stuck and flickering reel in his tired head, I'm coming. But it is Edith who pounces on her mother, straddles Lucy's back like a tiny fierce boxer, yanks her mother's head, nose, and mouth above the surface, and slams her fist hard between the shoulder blades to strike out the suffocating water.

And in this way, hair held in her daughter's fist, neck arched, Lucy chokes on the first renewed breath. She heaves and chokes. Edith lets go. Lucy's head lurches forward into the water again. Face under, with some strength somewhere, she tries to shake her daughter off her back. But Edith presses a cheek down hard against her mother's in tandem. If Lucy insists on drowning, Edith is going to too.

* * *

Later, Jack Henderson tells Philip he lifted up the phone without thinking, before putting on his glasses to really make sense of the scene from his second story study. He tries to link this reflex to a brief patch with the Navy SEALs after Harvard, but no one is listening. Long before Philip untangled himself, the plaintive squeal of the ambulance was getting louder, coming to them.

Now Lucy and Edith sit entwined on the Hendersons's antique rattan recliner. Lucy wears Nonnie Henderson's tennis sweater over snug pink sweat pants. And Edith is wrapped like an enormous infant in a blue down comforter. The police are long gone. And the emergency team. Lucy fainted, nothing more. She, too, has something vaguely viral, that and forgetting to eat, or sleep. She just fainted, face down, in the water.

There'd been a hammy round of applause for Edith, whose timing, it turned out, had been miraculous. Now the heroine shivers against her mother's sporty chest, while Nonnie Henderson fusses with the teapot. Philip isn't even thinking about suing over this, he still feels a clammy sweat behind the ears, between his shoulder blades, and he's pretty sure Jack Henderson won't sue, either. He seems relieved, not litigious. In fact, this might give Gunner a free ride, too. They can all start fresh as neighbors. What a good idea.

* * *

For a tiny, happy moment, amnesty and forgiveness seem to glow around the painting as well. Maybe Philip can forget he ever saw it, leave it to his partner to sort out. Who knows who goes in and out of that office? But Fatty is emphatic: Are you crazy? Take it back. Now. This minute.

Fatty's one to be talking about minutes. All afternoon and all evening Philip left messages with Jamal, who still hasn't gone back to college. (A disgrace, his mother is destroying his character.) And when Fatty finally decides to lift up the phone he can't stop yelling. You've lost your senses! Entirely! I mean completely! This is an
enormous
problem, Fatty shouts. And Philip understands.

The family never criticizes Lucy directly, but never praises her, either. Jealousy, Philip has always believed. Lucy's family came over on the
Mayflower
or some related vessel very soon after; Fatty's and Philip's papas flew over on Pan Am. But now he wonders, as he aims the Voyager through the hot sticky night down I-95. He wonders if they are right to think what they never say about Lucy.

Philip never wanted his own practice. Never wanted a partner. Never, now that he thinks about it, wanted to be an architect. Long, long ago, he did want to fuck Lucy Twitchell. And that small, simple, natural desire had led to so many half-choices guided by her mindless half-notions. Here he is, careening over the Triboro Bridge to undo, once again, some tangled mess generated by his overzealous wife. Maybe Fatty
is right. Certainly Fatty was right about one thing: the Quoin house, like nearly everything they own, is in Philip's name. Lucy can hurl her entire inheritance at it, she'll never get it.

Just before midnight, Philip circles down into the spiral entrance to the garage beneath their apartment building. He wakes Jesus, flat out in a deep snooze on a cot in the underground cubicle. Jesus, it turns out, has “sublet” Philip's private parking space. But Philip will take anything now and tosses the keys. As a goodwill gesture, he tells Jesus he won't report him, and starts the climb back up the ramp. The office is right around the corner. Something Lucy pleaded for; she wanted him close to home. What if Philip had to work nights and weekends?

But as it happened he never did work nights, or weekends either. He was fixing up the house in Quoin. He only had two hands! And early on, after the first month or so, he explained to his partner, fairly patiently, that what Philip did wasn't about
time spent
, it was about the
quality
of his input. And he got Fatty's accountant to explain the same thing.
Intellectual
property. Philip had the brains, the influence, the connections; his partner did the grunt work: designs, drawings, proposals, and such, which took a lot of time no matter how you sliced it.
And
Philip put up the larger share of the start money. Nearly three thousand dollars! To his partner's lousy two grand. And when his partner said “sweat equity,” Fatty made a good joke, said,
Let him sweat before a judge. Basically, his partner was an employee whom Philip had made the crazy mistake of treating as an equal.

It happens, Fatty had sighed, and now he'll buy you a swimming pool. Yes, it looked entirely possible that for all his pain and suffering Philip would be rewarded with the inground kidney-shaped pool he'd always dreamed of, in Quoin, Connecticut, right beneath the apple trees. Fatty was a genius, back when he could still focus.

The painting isn't big but it's heavy. Philip adjusts the frame under his arm as he rounds the corner. He fingers the backing, just to check. Maybe there really is a surveillance device. He nudges a gallery sticker. In fact, there's a museum tag, too. Couldn't off-load this pooch, he's thinking when, in his peripheral vision, he catches sight of something that makes his heart lurch. The Porsche! And worse, worse, much worse, the wife sitting in it! He can see her pointy head in the wash of light from the police cruiser pulled in right in front of her.

Philip stops. Ready to spin and bolt, but it's too late. The car door opens and she's out and shouting: You found it! Thank god! Thank god. And she's running to him, arms spread wide like she loves him. And he's paralyzed. He'll think about this later, the way his knees lock and his chest pounds like a thick, dark drum. Oh, she says, coming closer, coming to him, her hands clicking together in an odd way, as if playing small
cymbals, small cymbals of joy. He's never seen anyone so happy and he doesn't know what to do.

Was it in the trash?

She's talking to him. Her small angular face tilts up, beaming at him, smiling with square little teeth. Her hand rests on the painting under his arm, but doesn't pull. It's something they're holding together. Something they're protecting. He wonders for a brief half-second if he has some claim here, but then she says, We thought you stole it. I'm so sorry. It was someone else. It's been someone else all along.

I don't know what you're talking about.

Of course you don't. It's late. Go to bed. Go home. I'm so grateful, you'll never know. She stretches up on her small toes and kisses him, a soft delicious wetness just south of his lower lip. There's a sudden hard smell like ammonia. And then she slides the painting out of his grasp, fast and slippery, pulls it away, and he is sick with want. She's done something to him, something awful, but he doesn't know what. Has she infected him? He can't swallow. He tries and tries. Her bitter-smelling little body click-clacks away, away, away, until it's sucked up by the dark of the vestibule. The police officer eyes him slowly, then bangs the cruiser roof with a thick fist, snaps off a barking radio, and follows her inside. His building, his office, his corporation. Come back here! he cries out. Come back this minute! But everything is still and quiet. His knees release with a sudden jerk. He catches himself just before he falls all the way down. He's free to go.

O
LIVIA'S FATHER HAD BLOWN INTO THEIR LIVES, AS HER
mother liked to say, just in time for dinner. Olivia's mother was whipping together the odd stuff she'd found in the kitchen: leftover asparagus soufflé—flat, cold, but still good—toasted cheese on whole wheat toast, and lentil soup, reheated. Her mother concentrated on slicing the cheese very thin. She pulled a lighter from her pocket and lit a cigarette. Above their heads, Olivia heard the dull distant pounding of her father's shower. He always showered after the train ride from the city.

Olivia folded her homework and cleared the table. She received a quick smoky kiss from her mother for no reason. Her father came downstairs and into the kitchen, fresh and pink-faced. How's my pumpkin? he said, and kissed her, too. The sleeves of his blue sweater were pushed back to the elbows, and the dark hairs on his wrists still shimmered with dampness.

Olivia's mother had the sandwiches ready to slide under the broiler.

Oh, don't do that, said her father, let's go out. Olivia held his hand, pulling each of his long fingers in succession.

You want to go out? Her mother paused.

Sure, why not? he said. He picked a piece of cheese from one of the sandwiches and popped it into his mouth. Let's go to Nano's, get some antipasto, a little wine. Consider it training.

Her mother slipped the tray inside the oven and closed the door. If we train much more we'll never get there, she said, and laughed three notes like a doorbell. Olivia's father reached over and put his big hands around her mother's waist. He could nearly get his fingers and thumbs to touch, she was that slim. Whatever you say, boss, he said, pulling her close, crushing her blouse, kissing her hair, and winking at Olivia. In a few years, as if in odd defiance of those hands, her mother's waist would expand, pushing outward, farther and farther. Olivia would watch her mother frown in dismay, straining to zip a size-ten skirt. But for now, the winter before Rome, her mother's waist was smaller than Olivia's and getting tinier each day.