Man in The Woods (10 page)

Though Leyden was a small town, with fewer than five thousand full-time residents, he never once ran into Roberta, not at the supermarket with the sawdust on the floor and the smell of freezer burn in the air, nor the post office with its WPA mural of Indians and settlers sharing sheaves of wheat and bushels of corn, not at the gas stop nor the little park. He thought it was possible that Roberta at one time or another had caught a glimpse of him and quickly changed course, to spare them both the embarrassment. Yet even this much thought about Roberta, and where she might be and what she might do, was infrequent.

Paul knew how to stave off an unwanted thought, how to deprive it of attention so that it died of neglect. Back then, for instance, he hadn’t thought of finding his father in that walk-up railroad flat in over a year, and when it did come back to him again it was as if the whole thing had happened to someone else, except that it hadn’t, but nevertheless it perplexed and fascinated him, how things you thought would kick your ass forever and ever can over time lose their power.

Beautiful girls, lost to time.

Men lost to their own violence, or the violence of others.

Today, walking quickly from his truck to the school, Paul has an inkling that he has arrived late for today’s assembly, and when he mounts the whitewashed stone steps to the front entrance and sees no one milling about he feels a sour twist of self-reproach. He had had every intention of being there a few minutes before the hour so that he could sit close to the front where Ruby could see him, especially since she had already voiced her disappointment over her mother’s not being able to come today. But, alas, it wasn’t to be. A combination of not looking at the clock, talking to Evangeline, and getting lost in his computer had all conspired to make it so he was walking into the school a full half hour after the assembly had begun.

In the entrance foyer, where once the Norrises’ butler admitted visitors, a store-bought maple desk has been set up in the sloping space between the two main stairways—one that curves off to the east side of the house, the other to the west. A gaudy chandelier, some of its flame-shaped bulbs burned out, creaks back and forth in the breeze Paul brings in with him. A male teacher sits at the desk, British in his features, with blue eyes, soft sandy hair. He puts down the
New York Times
. “May I help you?” he asks. Paul doesn’t have the mild, tidy appearance of most of the Windsor Day parents, who are for the most part lawyers and doctors, landowners, drivers of expensive automobiles—in other words, Paul’s clients.

“I’m here for the assembly,” he explains. The teacher cocks his head curiously, not wishing to be impolite by asking any further questions but clearly waiting for some clarification. “Ruby Ellis?” Paul says.

The teacher brightens, rises from his chair. “Oh, yes, well I think you’re in luck. Ruby’s class hasn’t had their turn yet. Come, I’ll show you in.” The teacher leads Paul through the corridor, every few steps looking back at him over his shoulder and smiling encouragingly. What had once been the main floor of the Norris house has been divided up into classrooms, a science lab, a language lab, a music room, an art room.

“Here we are,” the teacher says, in his kind voice, opening the doors to what was once the Norrises’ ballroom, a cavernous French-windowed room that many years ago Paul had helped to paint, and though the slate-blue walls are sorely in need of freshening up and the eggshell ceiling is water-stained, he is glad to see his old work still exists—nineteen gallons of Benjamin Moore Shaker Afternoon, straight out of the can.

The ballroom/auditorium has a stage built out of indifferent material, the plywood of it peeking out from where the gray indoor/outdoor carpeting has worn away. A huge handmade calendar hangs in the middle of the stage, and the rest of the wall is decorated with clocks, watches, sundials, egg timers, hourglasses, and above that is a blue-and-white banner that says windsor day countdown to y2k! Facing the stage are a hundred or so folding chairs, nearly all of them occupied. Paul’s memories of school are of a world of women, but there are quite a few men with white or gray hair, men on their second families, determined, this time, not to miss events in the lives of their children. Right now a small boy with shoulder-length hair plays a guitar that is almost as large as he is and sings “Stairway to Heaven” in a plaintive, unstable voice.

Paul takes an empty seat next to a woman named Joyce Drazen, here with her husband, Leonard Fahey, with whom she runs a mail-order business in antique maps and globes. Their daughter, Nina, is a junior, and Joyce has already tried to enlist Kate in the plan to help Nina get into Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, though
help
might not be the correct word, since Nina herself has said she would rather attend a nearby state university, where her best friend has already been accepted. Joyce, convinced that Nina’s talent as a writer will be her ticket to the college of her mother’s choice, and convinced as well that all Kate has to do is read Nina’s work and she will write a glowing letter of recommendation, has recently appeared without warning, bearing some of Nina’s schoolwork—an essay about the
Dred Scott
decision, another about penguins.

Paul has his own relationship with Joyce and Leonard, dating back several years to when they hired him to repair a maple globe, thirty inches in diameter, made in Vietnam and consisting of over a thousand pieces. The oceans alone were made of nearly seven hundred wedges of wafer-thin wood, all fitted together in a jigsaw pattern, the continents a rainbow variety of bright colors, the lettering in gold, as were the longitude and latitude lines. Joyce and Leonard had bought the globe from a library in the Adirondacks, and it had arrived with a piece of France missing and severe cracks in Australia. Other dealers in wooden works of art and antiquities had told them that Paul Phillips was the man to see about putting the globe into saleable condition, and though there were some hard feelings when Paul completed the job in three months rather than the agreed-upon three weeks, his restoration was clearly impeccable. He had, in fact, done more work than the agreement called for, discovering that half of Alaska was made of mahogany rather than maple and replacing the discordant piece without ever mentioning it to Joyce or Leonard.

Now they want a screened porch, they want to replace their windows, they want to rescue an old barn at the back of their property, which is slowly collapsing in a long, splintery sigh of defeat, but so far Paul has not been able to schedule them in. Joyce makes a comic frown and wags her finger at him as he takes the seat next to her.

Normally, Paul reacts to her jokey scolding with a smiling sheepishness, but today he feels an impulse to grab her finger and tell her—tell them both—that if they ever want him to work on their house again they had best back off and wait their turn, and this sudden sour spurt of temper is so unexpected and yet so stark and clear that he feels bewildered. It is like catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror you didn’t know was there.

“Our junior class is full of amazingly talented young men and women,” Sam Robbins, the eleventh-grade English teacher, says. He has a cap of gray curls, a cardigan and bow tie, and, judging by the cheers that greet his appearance onstage, he’s a great favorite among the students. “We have a magician and juggler in our midst, some fantastic musicians, visual artists who I predict will be showing in the great museums of the world within ten years, and some amazing writers. One of our writers—Nina Drazen-Fahey—is going to read a poem. She tells me it’s about what will happen in our world when our computers all have nervous breakdowns. On a personal note, I’d like to add that if the computers break down it will be all right with me. As Picasso once said, ‘Computers are completely uninteresting—all they can do is give answers.’”

Robbins raises his chin, as if to stem a surge of outrage, but there is only a bit of laughter, and a general shifting of weight and shuffling of papers. “Well, as I said, this is just my minority opinion. And so let’s bring up Nina, okay? Nina?”

Joyce and Leonard’s sturdy-looking daughter mounts the steps to the stage with the dignity of a martyr, accompanied by only a light sprinkling of applause. Her parents beam proudly, though their love seems to include some apprehensiveness, as if they fear Nina’s life will not be easy. Joyce applauds emphatically, while Leonard, who is holding a video camera to his eye now, must content himself with clapping his left hand against his thigh.

Paul looks at his hands resting in his lap, and then covers them with his jacket, as if they were shameful things.

Nina takes a few moments to adjust the microphone to a comfortable height, and gently clears her throat and begins, holding the page upon which her poem is written down at her side. Her voice is unexpectedly forceful.

Hey, hey Y2K

How many lives have you ruined today?

Town and village, crossroads and junction

All laid low by computer malfunction

IBM and Gateway

Apple and Dell

All flashing and crashing

A cyberspace hell

Who would have guessed it?

Who would have known?

My knees are knocking

My mind is blown.

Leonard extends his free hand in Joyce’s direction and she rubs her palm over his, in a silent celebration of their daughter.

If you’re thinking of flying

I beg you: hesitate

Without computers

How will your plane navigate?

If you’re thinking of money

Well I don’t want to cause you stress