Out of the Blue (17 page)

I vowed not to talk about it until we actually sat down to eat. The fire was crackling, the sandwiches were lying in wait, and I had found a bottle of seltzer in the cupboard. I poured us both a glass. He sat, took a swallow, and said, “You two sure got cozy in a hurry.” There was an edge to his voice.

“Huh?” I said. Clever, but I was tired and not tracking well.

“Never mind,” he said.

“What the fuck, Joe?” I said. Now
I
was feeling edgy.

“You sound just like your mother.”

I ignored that. “Did you not want me to meet him?”

He shrugged and took a giant bite of his sandwich so he wouldn’t have to answer.

“First of all,” I went on, “it didn’t take you long to get chummy with my mother. She probably knows a hell of a lot more about you than I do. Second, what’s the story between you and Gus?”

“No story.”

“You act like he’s a stranger.”

“We just don’t have much in common, that’s all,” he said mildly. “How’s your sandwich? It’s a new place, some couple from Boston. They spell mozzarella wrong but their intentions are honorable.”

So here was an interesting situation. Clearly, Joe had been laboring under a misapprehension, a skewed family myth. For years he’d been brainwashed to believe that he was Celeste’s clone when in fact he was nothing like her. Does one tamper with such basic psychic stuff or is it wiser to keep one’s mouth shut, particularly when one will soon be out of the picture anyway?

“You’re exactly like your father, Joe,” I said. So much for self-restraint. “And what’s more, you’re not even remotely like Celeste.”

He stopped in mid-chew. “Well, that was quick. Instant psychoanalysis.”

“I’ll bet she’s been doing it forever, just like at dinner, all that expounding about how you two are identical. Joe, you’re not even from the same planet.”

“Hey. Anna. Go easy, will you? You just got here. You don’t know these people.”

“Well, I know
you,
and it pisses me off. I like your father. A lot. And he’s crazy about
you.”

Joe dropped his sandwich on his plate and got up. “All he ever does is lock himself away so he can play with his toys. He doesn’t participate.”

“I doubt that he feels welcomed.” I could imagine Celeste trying to dude him up for cocktail parties. “Why don’t you try visiting him on his territory?”

“You know, for somebody who has a rotten relationship with her own father, you’ve got a lot of moxie starting in on me.”

“Moxie?”
For some reason, the expression struck me funny. Coming out of Joe’s mouth, it seemed totally incongruous. I started laughing, and then so did Joe.

“That’s why I’ve got such a big mouth,” I said, getting up to loop my arm through his. “To let the moxie out.”

We were quiet for a moment. Then he said, “So how do you think I’m like him?”

“Can we sit back down and eat if I tell you?”

First he stoked the fire. It was a real healthy blaze. I imagined it cauterizing the misconceptions stretched like cobwebs across Joe’s mind.

I listed the qualities I’d noticed in Gus Malone: the conversational economy, the body type, the movements of his hands, the sensitivity and generosity, and finally the creativity, the need to build something, make something.

The phone rang. Joe didn’t reach for it, but I can’t tolerate an unanswered phone. I picked up the receiver and was rewarded by a female voice. “Hi, is Joe there?”

“Right here.”

I handed it to him and he half growled hello. “Sorry,” he went on. “I’m in the middle of something … Yes … Sure … Yeah, great… I will. ’Bye.” He looked a little odd when he hung up. “I don’t see why that makes us similar,” he said.

Not on your life, I thought. I mean, there are priorities. “Who was that?” As if I didn’t half know.

“Lola Falcon.”

“What kind of phony name is that anyway?” I asked. No, I didn’t. I just waited until Joe decided what to tell me.

“She’s looking forward to meeting you tomorrow night.”

“That’s it?”

“And just that she wants to see me for lunch next week to discuss a new venture she’s involved in.”

“How nice,” I said, as my back teeth ground together. This was good: a reality check. Did I think his life wasn’t going to continue when I stepped aside? I guess I’d just never considered the probability that he’d wind up with her.

“I’ll grant you a couple of superficial similarities,” Joe was saying. “But I don’t see why you say my father and I are creatively alike.”

I took a breath. I’d see Lola Falcon soon enough and there’d be something repulsive about her to give me comfort. Maybe she’d have her hair sprayed into curls you could hang your coat off. Joe hated hair spray. That’s probably why he broke up with her.

“Okay,” I said. “Your photography. Even the business. You both love airplanes. Making them.”

“My mother’s responsible for the charter. Dad bowed out of it as soon as we bought a plane with plastic seats. It was the same thing with the club. Once he disapproved of something, he wrote the whole enterprise off and never showed up there again. He’s very dogmatic.”

Or maybe uncompromising, I was thinking, which is not necessarily a bad thing. “I don’t know anything about the club, but as far as airplanes are concerned, it’s a passion with him. Planes represent a certain integrity that he can’t betray. Celeste may be a wonderful businesswoman, but she wouldn’t care if you sold washing machines as long as you made money. It’s you and Gus who love airplanes.” I gestured at the photographs on the wall, almost all of them of aircraft.

“Planes are what I know about, that’s all,” Joe said. But he leaned his chair back on two legs and locked his hands behind his head. It’s a habit he has when he’s ruminating over something.

“Have you ever tipped over backward?” I asked him.

“Once,” he said, but didn’t elaborate. “I’m trying not to be defensive.”

“Of whom?”

“I don’t know. Me. My mother. It seems like a radical idea.”

“Could you just live with it a little?” Give Gus a chance, I wanted to say. But amazingly, I kept quiet. I figured I’d laid enough on him for now. And furthermore, I had to leave the room in a hurry. Leaking again. I’d planned to wear an expensive dress on New Year’s Eve. Was I supposed to ask Joe to buy me diapers?

Fortunately, Joe was deep in thought. I admired how he processed information, even when it was unpleasant or difficult. He was a problem solver, whereas I was strictly from the hand-wringing school.

Joe went back to the office after lunch and I slept most of the day, buttressed with minipads and dreaming of Chopin and George Sand. Talk about a dysfunctional pair. There was a moment in my dream when Sand said, “Play our song, Fred,” and Chopin obligingly sat down and rattled off an etudé. Joe and I didn’t have a song and now it was too late. That seemed tragic.

When I woke up it was dark and I was late with my vitamin C. Ascorbic acid, in my experience, requires simultaneous food or you wind up with a wicked bellyache. I checked out our leftover lunch, which I’d been too tired to tidy up. The bread had curled up on the edges and the mayonnaise glowed with botulism. There was nothing left in the fridge except half a lime. I knew I had to find something in a hurry so I crept down the stairway to Celeste’s house—funny, I didn’t think of it as Gus’s—and headed for the kitchen.

Then I heard the music, a Chopin nocturne. It was so lovely that I forgot all about food and went to search out the CD player. I wanted that recording. In the doorway to the living room, I stopped short. Celeste was at the piano, in near darkness, playing from memory. It had been her sweet, sad sounds that had floated up through the walls and into my dreams. I stood there listening for a while but she never saw me. Sometimes when I get to thinking I’m pretty damn clever, a moment like this comes along to remind me that I don’t have a clue.

The next morning, New Year’s Eve day, Joe left to fly people to their party destinations around the state. I didn’t mind because I just wanted to lie around. I felt a peculiar ache, as if someone had tied a band around my head and was squeezing tight. I popped some Tylenol and at eleven o’clock I finally managed to make myself some coffee. I was curled up in front of the TV watching
Roman Holiday
and getting ready for a good cry when the telephone rang. I hoped it was Ma. I missed her, and had actually restrained myself from calling her by remembering that I was twenty-nine years old. But it was Gus Malone.

“You busy?” he asked.

“Just being lazy,” I said.

“I’ve got something to show you. Want some help getting down here?”

“No, but can you give me half an hour?”

“Yup,” he said, and hung up.

Curiosity helped to distract me from my discomfort, though in addition my balance seemed compromised. The room was tipped like it was in that Fred Astaire movie where he dances on the walls and ceilings. And since I wasn’t quite as nimble as Fred, I had to grab furniture all the way to the bathroom.

But the icy air outside shocked my headache into submission and seemed to level the horizon out again. By the time I reached the barn, I was feeling alert and excited. Even the latch on the door pleased me. There’s nothing more frustrating than a doorknob when your fingers won’t work. I let myself in and headed for Gus’s workshop. He was bending over an odd contraption that looked like crutches with slats on the bottom. He gave me a nod and checked to see what I was wearing on my feet.

“Those’ll work,” he said. “Nice day for skiing. Want to give it a whirl?”

I realized now that the slats were in fact cross-country skis with runners attached on both sides. I must have looked dubious.

“Planes have stabilizers,” he said. “Why shouldn’t you?” He secured one last screw and we went outside. I followed him past the barn, where a snow-covered track bordered the meadow. We stopped at the edge and Gus helped me slip my snow boots into the straps. My heart was beating so hard I could barely hear his instructions.

“Just lean your weight on one foot and then the other,” he was telling me. “Don’t go anywhere yet.” As
if,
I thought. Once I’d gotten my balance, more or less, Gus did a preflight check. “Try sliding your right foot,” he suggested finally. “Just an inch or two.”

I took a breath and did it, teetering, but the odd-looking aluminum crutches were adroitly positioned to support me. I slid the left foot. Same thing. Then both again, this time a little farther. I felt totally secure. Wow. I grinned at Gus but he was focused on the process, what worked, what didn’t, though as far as I was concerned, this thing already deserved to be enshrined alongside the other two greatest inventions of the twentieth century—contact lenses and tampons.

I worked my way along the edge of the meadow, and after a quarter of a mile or so was proficient enough to make my strides a little longer. At the end of the track there was a gentle slope. Gus stood beside me at the top of it.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Oh, I think definitely,” I said, and gave a shove. Granted, it wasn’t much of a hill, but it was enough to give me some momentum, enough to make the cold air slip past my face and to make me sway just a little, right, then left—
Rain-drops-keep-fall-ing-on-my-head…

I tipped over at the bottom and Gus came running, but I was happy to just sit there in the snow laughing like a lunatic. Gus stood grinning down at me. With the snow reflecting light onto his face, I got a vision of what Joe was going to look like in a couple of decades. I’ve never stopped being grateful for that image.

When we got back to the barn I asked Gus if he was coming to the New Year’s Eve party.

“No,” he said, and started tinkering with the skis.

“How come?” I knew it was nervy of me to ask, but I would have liked him to be there, given the formidable alliance of Lola Falcon and Celeste.

“Don’t have much use for the club.” He twisted one of the crutches. “There. That’ll work better next time.” He looked up and said, “I’ll take you home.”

On the way up to the house I asked him how many hours it took him to build the skis.

“A few,” which I took to mean, Don’t ask. At the bottom of the steps I told him I could make it the rest of the way. He turned to go but I put my hand on his arm.

“Gus,” I said. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

But he gave me that dismissive wave and trudged off down the driveway. I knew he’d be tinkering with his new invention until he was satisfied. As far as I was concerned, it was absolutely perfect.

I wished Ma had been there to see me fly up those steps. My adventure on the skis had pumped me so full of adrenaline I was ready to tackle the giant slalom. How far was it to Lake Placid, anyhow? It should be just down the road.

And so I proceeded to slip into one of those delicious but idiotic states of denial that happen every now and then. I was strong, almost like the old days. I’d been in remission for such a long time I was obviously healed. Some people with MS go for years without a relapse. By the time it struck again, they would have a cure. Hell, they were closing in fast. The ABC drugs—Avonex, Betaseron, and Copaxone—were a giant step forward. All they had to do was beef them up a little and iron out the side effects. Etcetera, etcetera. I was on a delirious internal rant. When Joe came in, I nearly toppled him over.

“Joe, it’s going to be okay,” I said after planting a marathon kiss on him. “I take back everything I said. Do you still want me?”

“What have you been smoking?” he wanted to know. But the smile lines were back, if warily.

“I’ve been skiing with your dad.”

“Excuse me?”

“He built me some skis. I skied down a hill. It was a molehill, but it wasn’t flat. It was definitely not flat. God, Joe, I haven’t felt this good in five years.”

He took me by the hand and drew me over to the couch. The fire was dead but I couldn’t have cared less. “I think you’d better calm down.”

“Our future was just snatched from the jaws of death and you expect me to be calm?”

Joe got up and poured himself a stiff one. He raised the bottle by way of inquiry.

“Sure, it’s New Year’s,” I said.

Then he came and sat down. His face was still red from the cold. “The fact that you went skiing means we can stay together,” Joe said slowly.

“I know it sounds crazy, but don’t you see? It’s a symbol. I’m not going to be some horrid shut-in burden. We can have a life.” He still didn’t look cheery enough to suit me. “Do you want me back, Joe?” I asked. Suddenly I was afraid he’d already let me go, that it was too late.

“Look, Anna, you should know me well enough to understand I wasn’t going to give you up without a fight.”

“You seemed so stoic,” I said. Almost passive, even. I should have known better. You don’t get into
Crain’s
by being a wimp.

“I hoped that if you came up here with me, you’d get some perspective.”

“Well, you were right. That’s exactly right. I’ve got perspective.” I knew I might be raving a bit, but it felt so good to regain my confidence in the future. “You know,” I went on, “it’s possible I could never have another attack.”

His face darkened a little but I ignored it. I didn’t feel like being gloomy. “Really,” I went on. “Something’s lifted. Physiologically. It’s quite remarkable.”

“I’m glad.”

His smile was strictly a lip job now. The eyes remained sober.

I got up without gripping the arm of the couch. “You’ll get used to it, Joe. As for tonight, look out. I’m in a partying mood. Are we seeing your old fishing buddy Steve?”

“He’ll be there.”

“Excuse me. I’m going to make myself into a simply stunning example of New York womanhood.”

I had brought a silk dress, black with silver threads and three pairs of shoes with heels of varying heights. I figured I could leave the decision to the last moment, allowing the condition of my muscles to choose. Even in my towering stilettos, my legs felt strong, no twitches. I watched Joe put on his tuxedo. It was a pleasure to watch him move around the room with that loose-limbed style. I’d had trouble imagining him in formal attire, but he looked breathtaking in his tuxedo with that pale hair curling over the collar.

“To the manor born,” I said. He gave me a look. “The aristocratic you,” I explained.

He smiled at me and offered his arm.

In the car I asked Joe why his father didn’t like the club. “I’m surprised he even mentioned it,” Joe said.

“Well, he didn’t elaborate.”

“When I was a kid, my father was instrumental in building the place,” Joe said. “North Lockville needed someplace for families to hang out. A pool, a small golf course, a tennis court. With access for everyone in the area.”

We drove up a steep rise and suddenly the entire valley was spread out below us with the lights of the little towns sprinkled into the distance like stars in the galaxy. “Dad was concerned about the water table. He rigged up a system to use water from the creek. I guess it was pretty innovative. Engineers from around the country still come to look at it.”

“Wouldn’t you think he’d be proud of it?”

“Well, the place changed, and Dad didn’t approve. At first, everybody used the club, from the sanitation workers to the corporate types. I have some great memories of those years, games in the pool and Halloween parties. It was a terrific place for kids.”

“So what happened?” The car hit an icy patch. I could feel the rear end fishtail, but Joe gave the wheel a twist and we caught the road again.

“Some of the wealthy people decided they wanted a more exclusive atmosphere. They got themselves a majority on the board, raised the dues, and gave it a new name—Highgate. Started keeping people out if they weren’t the right sort. That’s when Dad quit showing up.”

“Joe, I wish you were closer with him. I wonder why not.”

There was one of those long meditative silences that meant he wasn’t offended, just thoughtful.

“I don’t know, Anna,” he answered finally. “I’ve been thinking maybe I got you up here partly to answer that question. Or at least to ask it.”

We pulled up to a two-story building with columns on either side of the door. A valet helped me out and took Joe’s keys. There were Christmas bulbs strung around the trees and bushes. Inside, the place was ablaze with lights. There was an almost celestial glow surrounding the building. I held back for a moment, gazing at it.

“That’s amazing,” I said to Joe. “How do they get that effect?”

“By flipping the light switch,” Joe said. For a photographer, I felt he was surprisingly unappreciative of visual phenomenon. It didn’t register with me at the time that there could be something sinister about that heavenly radiance.

After we got rid of our coats, Joe led me into the grand lounge which was decorated with streamers and balloons and lit with a rotating disco ball. A band was playing loud seventies music. Everyone there knew Joe. The men stopped to shake his hand, the women kissed him. People were openly curious about me. Some maybe a little hostile, especially the women, but I was a city girl, after all, and I’d usurped their local star. By the time we got to our table, Joe’s cheeks were covered with red smears. He leaned down to greet Celeste and another woman who was flashing me a killer smile, teeth clenched, cheek muscles hard as fists. “Anna, this is Barbara Falcon.”

I smiled back, noting with guilty satisfaction that Barbara’s teeth were goppy with lipstick. Mercifully, Joe sat us one empty seat away. Lola’s, I supposed. There were two more vacancies beside Celeste.

“Frank’s not here yet?” Joe asked his mother.

“They seem to have joined the Polaskis,” Celeste said.

“Eva’s family,” Joe explained, craning his neck to look for them.

“The Mortons could have sat with us after all,” Celeste complained. “It’s very thoughtless of Frank.” We all knew she meant Eva.

“Maybe we can snag Steve and Darwina. They’ve got another party but they’ll be here later. Let’s dance,” Joe said, pulling me to my feet.

I gave the women a little apologetic smile as if to say I would much prefer to chat, but what, after all, could one do with a man who can’t sit still? I’d never danced with Joe before, other than a turn around his bedroom when we were both naked and a little drunk, which was no preparation for this rowdy rendition of “Twist and Shout.” I did a little discreet shuffling but Joe grabbed me around the waist and began hot-footing it around the dance floor. He seemed to know precisely where he was going, and by God I was coming along whether I liked it or not. And I liked it. I didn’t know if I’d be breathing after five minutes but we’d sure as hell given my new high heels a workout.

I made it through “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Celebrate” before I collapsed against him. “Enough, Joe. Where did you learn to dance like that? You’re wonderful.”

“Practicing with Frank. Look, same footwork.”

Indeed, Frank flung his wife around the periphery of the floor with a similar take-no-prisoners style. Eva was red-faced and laughing. I wondered if they’d ever show up at our table.

Joe poured me a glass of wine as I tried to be ladylike about mopping my face with the table napkin. The music was too loud to permit small talk with Celeste and Barbara so I just kept smiling at them like a Stepford Wife. Joe leaned close to my ear. “Check out the hierarchy.”

I noticed that the guests at the tables close to the dance floor were opulently dressed, with lots of expensive jewelry. Farther back, polyester proliferated, as did the cheaper haircuts and some chewing gum.

“See the guy in the blue suit? He’s got a plumbing supply store. One time a bunch of us jumped off the bridge into the creek. I hit my head on a rock and would’ve drowned if Gino hadn’t pulled me out.”

There was a stir by the doorway. Guests began turning their heads as the band suddenly switched into “Whatever Lola Wants” from
Damn Yankees.
A tall blond beauty swept through the entrance. She was wearing ice-blue satin and her hair swung shiny and free to her shoulders. No fucking hair spray, excuse the French. Barbara Falcon and Celeste were beaming with pride.