Jennifer Haigh (12 page)

Gil Pyle could fix things.

Of the Battle Road reenactors—the lawyers and schoolteachers and history buffs—Pyle alone looked convincing in his costume. He was a lean, wiry man, with a scruffy blond beard and work-scarred hands. In his breeches and rough coat, he seemed battered by the long Colonial winters, but determined to endure.
He's a miracle worker
, said Barbara Marsh next door, who'd hired him to redo her clapboards. The Marshes' house was even older than Paulette's; without Pyle's repeated interventions, Barbara claimed, it would long ago have crumbled to the ground.

Paulette had hired him to save her kitchen, the floor that listed alarmingly downward; more and more, she felt as though she were cooking in the galley of a boat. The job would take a few weeks, Pyle told her, a month at the outside. The prospect alarmed her. She dreaded the disruption, the inevitable noise and dust. The presence of a stranger in her house.

Pyle's truck had arrived each morning at dawn. Paulette dragged herself out of bed, muzzy and disoriented, to open the back door—her hair disheveled, her unmoisturized face puffy from sleep. She would marvel, later, that she'd allowed him to see her in this condition, but at the time she'd been too groggy to care. She went back to bed, but Pyle's boots were loud, his radio audible through the floorboards. When she appeared later, dressed and groomed, he called her into the kitchen often, handed her a tape measure or instructed her to hold a board in place.
My helper quit on me
, he explained.
I need an extra pair of hands.

She stood there awkwardly, watching Pyle heft and hammer. His plaid shirts were frayed at the cuffs and spattered with paint. She remembered how, as a teenager, her son Scott had bought brand-new dungarees with designer holes in the knees, a look she deplored. But Gil Pyle's clothing was battered by work, and this made its condition honorable. Made it, even, attractive.

As he worked, Pyle asked questions. How long had she lived in the house? From whom had she bought it? Did she know what year it was built? Paulette did know, naturally; she told him about Josiah Hobhouse, the Concord abolitionists, the Hobhouse descendants who'd inhabited the place ever since.
You know your stuff
, Pyle said, and asked more questions. She found herself talking about her childhood home in Newton, the long-lost Drew properties in Truro and New Bedford. Talking, for some reason, about the Mount Washington Glass Company, the exquisite urns and pitchers she'd purchased; the elusive other pieces—the Scroddleware and Hall—she coveted but had yet to find.

Let's see them
, Pyle said, a request that astonished her.
Not now, but when I'm done.
And at four o'clock, when he'd finished for the day, they sat on the floor of the back bedroom as Paulette took vases and pitchers from their boxes.

You could use some shelves in here
, Pyle said.
I could line the floor with cork, in case you drop something. To cushion the fall.

I never drop anything
, she said seriously. She hadn't meant to be coquettish, but Pyle broke into a grin.

I'll bet you don't
, he said.

His concern for her treasures touched her profoundly. She wouldn't have expected a man like Pyle to care about antiques. In this way they were startlingly similar: they saw value in the past, in what had come before. Pyle spoke lovingly of the houses he'd restored, the vast cottages in Newport, the summer places on the Vineyard and the Cape. He'd spent years in the Army and had traveled widely in Germany, Belgium, France especially.
To see the churches
, he said.
I like the way they're built.

Then it was Paulette's turn to ask questions. She learned that Pyle had backpacked through Vietnam and Thailand, slept on Turkish beaches, driven a dilapidated Jeep around the horn of Africa. It dawned on her then, how much of the world she would never see, how many places were off-limits to a solitary woman. The thought filled her with sadness.
Not necessarily
, Pyle said when she expressed this.
You just need someone to travel with.

He worked at her house through the summer: the kitchen, the cork flooring, the shelves. His tools and scrap lumber took up residence in her backyard, terminally covered with a layer of sawdust.

Then, in September, he told her he'd be leaving in two weeks: he spent winters in Florida, he explained, to be near his children. The boys' mother was a woman he'd never married, a woman he described fondly:
Sharon's terrific. We're still close.

The name—
Sharon
—affected Paulette strangely. She took offense. Suddenly Gil Pyle's past seemed crowded with women, the ex-wives and girlfriends he mentioned casually, frequently, as though Paulette were an army pal or a drinking buddy. Wrinkled, sexless, all but irrelevant. A former woman, neutered by age.

"What's the matter?" Pyle asked, sensing her upset. And to her surprise, he took her hands in his.

In that moment a door opened, and Paulette glimpsed what lay behind it. She might have said anything, done anything; she might easily have walked through. Instead reason overcame her. Gil Pyle was a drifter, rootless, nearly homeless; he lived outdoors, in his truck, on other people's floors and couches. And he was only a few years older than her son Billy. Gil Pyle was
young.

"Not a thing," she said briskly, meeting his eyes."I appreciate the notice. I assume you'll finish building the shelves before you go?"

"Sure." Pyle frowned, blinked, released her hands. Abruptly the door closed.

Now months had passed, with no word from him. She had no reason to expect otherwise. Yet when panic squeezed her heart and choked her throat, it was Gil Pyle's hands she remembered. Why this should be, Paulette did not know.

In Cambridge, snow blanketed the sidewalk. Frank drove in second gear. Whether because of the snow or the holiday, the streets were nearly empty. A single car passed his, its headlights bright. Judging by the sky, it could have been midnight, or three in the morning. His watch said 5:15.

At certain times in his life, he had loved the early dark. When he and Paulette were newlyweds, it had simply meant more nighttime; when he came home from the lab they went directly to bed. More recently, he'd come home to find the windows bright, music blasting, Deena Maddux barefoot in the kitchen, singing and cooking dinner.

Without her he found the dark evenings depressing, his few entertainments—TV, reading, booze—inadequate distractions. Most nights he fled the house to meet Margit for a movie. But he had seen everything playing at the Kendall. And Margit was on a plane to Stockholm, to spend Christmas with her children.

He drove slowly through Harvard Square. He considered ducking into the Harvard Book Store to warm himself, spend half an hour browsing through the used books downstairs. But the store, when he passed it, was closed, security lights glowing in the windows. Out of Town News was shuttered, its corrugated doors pulled shut. The Harvard Coop was dark; so were the cafés, the trendy clothing stores with unisex mannequins in the windows. A feeling of panic washed over him. For the next thirty-six hours, all his usual haunts would be closed. There was nowhere to go but home.

He parked on the street opposite his house, eyeing the dark windows, the front steps buried in snow. Last winter, he'd been fined twice by the city of Cambridge for failing to clear the sidewalk. He climbed the stairs and turned his key in the lock. Since Deena's departure, the living room had become an extension of his office. Books overflowed the shelves; he'd begun stacking them on end tables, the floor, the stairs. There were piles of scientific journals, notebooks, and manuscript pages; a year's worth of
Time
and
Newsweek
, and the dull, edifying magazines—
The Economist, Atlantic Monthly
—he subscribed to but did not read.

He flicked on a lamp and moved a pile of journals from his favorite chair. On top, a battered copy of
Endocrinology—
he'd subscribed for years, ever since Gwen was diagnosed. Oh, hell: He'd meant to find out—delicately, of course—whether she was seeing a doctor, taking the all-important estrogen. Neil Windsor was right. Estrogen was crucial for preserving bone density, for heart health. Not to mention the unmentionables: to keep vaginal tissue healthy, elastic and lubricated.

Was this a part of her body Gwen even thought about? His daughter was thirty-four years old, yet to his knowledge, she'd never had a boyfriend.

Was it possible that she was still a virgin?

Was it possible that she was not?

Both scenarios were hard to imagine—in fact, equally so. Yet one of them, necessarily, was true.

For a time, when Gwen was in her teens, he'd been closely involved in her treatment. He'd had her enrolled in a clinical trial of oxandrolone, an anabolic steroid they hoped would stimulate growth.

When that proved unsuccessful, he got her started on estrogen. They'd waited until she was sixteen—the eleventh hour—to give the oxandrolone time to work; once a girl started estrogen, gains in height were impossible. They had gambled and lost. The steroid had had no effect.

The decision haunted him. He had kept up with the literature; he knew that the protocols had changed. Now estrogen was started earlier, at twelve or thirteen. This helped build bone density in the early teens, a crucial moment in skeletal development. Had they done Gwen a disservice by waiting so long? Had they endangered her tiny bones? He imagined his daughter many years hence, hunched and fragile from osteoporosis. Had his decision put her in jeopardy? It was too terrible to contemplate. And Frank would by dead by then. He would never know.

He set aside the
Endocrinology
and tossed another stack of magazines into the recycling bin—since Deena's departure, it had taken up residence in the middle of the living room. Early estrogen had other benefits. It improved social maturation, which had clearly been delayed in Gwen's case. She'd been a child at sixteen: unnaturally attached to her mother, afraid of the entire world. Paulette had aggravated the problem by treating Gwen according to her size, not her age, a common mistake. The estrogen hadn't changed her much physically, not in any visible way. It was her attitude that changed. Frank had never seen a more cogent illustration of the power of endocrinology.

Not immediately, but slowly, Gwen seemed to take charge of her life: changing schools, moving far away from Concord, demanding that Frank teach her to drive.

What a transformation, the estrogenization of the brain.

In the kitchen he opened a bottle of wine—a cheap red, not bad for the money. A wine rack in the corner held the good Cabernet he saved for company. He'd discovered the Cab at a wine tasting with Rabbi Kleinman, and had bought the case to impress her. Now, with a lonely Christmas looming, he was glad he had.

Screw it
, he thought, recorking the cheap stuff.
It's Christmas Eve.

He opened a bottle of the Cab.

In the living room he flipped through a wire bin of DVDs, looking for something to watch. Many were gifts from Deena or Margit, who shared his taste for Bergman. What about
Hour of the Wolf
? He read the helpful summary on the back of its case.
Troubled artist Johan (Max von Sydow) is haunted by past memories.

Er, perhaps not.

Autumn Sonata
?
Wild Strawberries
?
Scenes from a Marriage
?

Dear God, no.

In the end he settled in with the television. It sat on a low table in the corner, where, if a family lived there, a Christmas tree would likely go. The thought did not depress him. He'd never had much use for Christmas. Maybe at first, when the kids were small. But as they grew older, Paulette's insistence on tradition irritated him: the cloying carols, the Drew family ornaments, most of them ugly, all more trouble than they were worth. When Christmas was over, it was Frank who had to take down the tree, while Paulette wrapped the goddamn things in layer upon layer of newspaper. One year, when she was pregnant with Scott, he'd had to put away the ornaments himself. Hanging over his shoulder, she had instructed him endlessly: so persnickety, so picayune, that he had lost his temper. What would she do if the house caught fire? he demanded. Save the goddamn ornaments? Then maybe, if she had a chance, come back for Billy and Gwen?

He drained his glass, came back from the kitchen with the rest of the bottle. He hadn't eaten, and wine always hit him on an empty stomach. He felt a little drunk, and he intended to get drunker still.

Seeing Paulette had unnerved him. She looked younger, somehow, than the last time he'd seen her, while he had aged dramatically. Back then—three years ago?—he'd been with Deena, and felt full of youthful vigor. When Paulette invited him to Concord to welcome Scott back from California, he had brought Deena along. It wasn't Frank's idea.

Deena had been clamoring for years to meet his family, and he'd run out of excuses. Predictably, the evening went badly. Deena pouted for days afterward. And Paulette hadn't spoken to him since.

He'd believed at first that divorce would end his marriage. Later he understood that it wasn't so simple. For twenty years he and Paulette had lived a few towns apart, their lives running on separate tracks that had, when the kids were younger, occasionally intersected. At holidays and birthdays and graduations, Frank's presence was sometimes required, sometimes forbidden, seemingly at Paulette's whim.