Special Topics in Calamity Physics (46 page)

A week or two later, on a Tuesday evening I was sprawled across my bed, trudging through the battlefields of
Henry V
for AP English when I heard a car. Immediately, I went to the window and, peering through the curtains, watched a white sedan slink down the driveway like a punished animal, coming to a timid halt by the front door.

Dad wasn't home. He'd left an hour before to go have dinner at Tijuana, a Mexican restaurant, with Professor Arnie Sanderson who taught Intro to Drama and History of the World Theater. "A sad young man," said Dad, "with funny little moles all over his face like enduring chicken pox." Dad said he wouldn't be home until eleven o'clock.

The headlights switched off. The engine died with a bloated belch. After a moment of stillness, the driver's door opened and a pillarlike white leg fell out of the car, then another. (This entrance of hers, at first glance, seemed to be an attempt to act out some red-carpet fantasy, yet when the woman came into full view, I realized it was nothing but the sheer challenge of maneuvering in what she wore: a tight white jacket doing its best to bind her waist, a white skirt like plastic wrap around a bouquet of stocky flowers, white stockings, exceedingly high white heels. She was a giant cookie dipped in icing.)

The woman closed the door, and, somewhat hilariously, set about trying to lock the doors, having a hard time finding the keyhole in the dark, then the correct key. Adjusting her skirt (a movement akin to twisting a pillowcase around a pillow), she turned and tried
not
to make a sound as she boosted herself up onto our porch, her swollen hair—a citrus yellow color—shuddering over her head like a loose lamp shade. She didn't ring the bell, but stood for a moment at the door, an index finger in her front teeth (the actor about to enter, suddenly uncertain of his first line). She shaded her eyes, bent to the left and looked in the window of our dining room.

I knew who she was, of course. There'd been a series of anonymous phone calls just prior to our departure for Paris (my "Hello?" was met with silence, then the hiccup of hanging up), and another less than a week ago. Swarms of June Bugs before her had shown up like this, out of the blue, in as many moods, conditions, and colors as a box of Crayola crayons (Brokenheart Burnt Umber, Seriously Pissed Cerulean, etc.).

They all had to see Dad again, wanted to pin him down, corner, cajole (in Zula Pierce's case, maim) him, make a Final Appeal. They approached this doomed confrontation with the weightiness of appearing in federal court, tucking their hair behind their ears, sporting no-nonsense suits, pumps, perfume and conservative brass earrings. June Bug Jenna Parks even toted an unwieldy leather briefcase for
her
final showdown, which she primly rested on her knees, opened with the clichéd bite of all briefcase openings and, not wasting any time, returned to Dad a bar napkin on which he'd written, in happier days, " 'A woman's face with Nature's own hand painted / Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion.' " They always made sure to add sexy punctuation to this expert appearance (crimson mouth, complex lingerie under a faintly transparent blouse) to tempt Dad, hint at what he was missing.

If he was home, he ushered them into the den in the manner of a cardiologist about to deliver bad news to a heart patient. Before closing the door, however, he'd ask me (Dad the all-knowing doctor, me the flighty nurse) to prepare a tray of Earl Gray tea.

"Cream and sugar," he'd say with a wink—a suggestion that made an unlikely smile sprout on the June Bug's bleak face.

After I put on the kettle, I'd return to the closed door in order to eavesdrop on her deposition. No, she couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, couldn't touch or even look at another man ("Not even Pierce Brosnan and I used to think he was wonderful," Connie Madison Parker confessed). Dad would speak-something muffled, inaudible —and then the door would open and the June Bug emerged from the courtroom. Her blouse was untucked, her hair full of static and, in the most disastrous part of this metamorphosis, her face, before, so meticulously made up, now, a Rorschach test.

She fled to her car, a little frown between her eyebrows like pleated fabric, and then she drove away in her Acura or Dodge Neon, as Dad, all resigned and weary sighs, settled comfortably into his reading chair with the Earl Gray tea I'd fixed for him (as he'd planned all along) to tackle another lecture on Third-World Mediation, another tome on Principles of Revolt.

It was always a tiny detail that made me feel guilty: the dirty grosgrain bow barely hanging on to the front of Lorraine Connelly's left high heel, or Willa Johnson's ruby triangle of polyester blazer; caught in the car door, it flapped in terror as she sped down the driveway not bothering to check for oncoming traffic before making the left onto Sandpiper Circle. Not that I hoped Dad would permanently keep one. It was an irksome thought, watching
On the Waterfront
with a woman who smelled like apricot potpourri from a restaurant bathroom (Dad and I rewinding our favorite scene, the glove scene, ten sometimes twelve times as the June Bug crossed and uncrossed her legs in huffy annoyance), or listening to Dad explain his latest lecture concepts (Transformationism, Starbuckization) to a woman who did forceful, newscaster "Uh-huh uh-huhs," even when she didn't understand a word.

Still, I couldn't help but feel ashamed when they cried (an empathy I wasn't entirely sure they deserved; apart from a few flat questions about boys or my mother, none of them ever talked to me, eyeing me as if I were a few grams of plutonium, unsure if I was radioactive or benign).

Obviously it wasn't fantastic what Dad was doing, making perfectly realistic women act like—well, as if they were determined to resurrect old story lines of
Guiding Light—but
I did wonder if it was entirely his fault. Dad never lied about the fact he'd already logged his one Great Love. And everyone knew
one
was the maximum of Great Loves a person could stumble upon in a lifetime, though some gluttonous people refused to accept it, mistakenly muttering on about seconds and thirds. Everyone was quick to hate the heartbreaker, the Casanova, the libertine, completely overlooking the fact that
some
libertines were completely candid about what they wanted (excitement between lectures) and if it was all so appalling why did everyone keep flying onto their porches? Why didn't they spiral off into the summer night, expiring with peace and poise in the soft shadows of the tulip trees?

If Dad wasn't home when a June Bug unexpectedly materialized, I was to follow his specific instructions: under no circumstances should I allow her into the house. "Smile and tell her to hold on to that fabulous human quality which, unfortunately, people no longer have the slightest sense
of—pride.
No, there was never anything wrong with Mr. Darcy. You may also elucidate that the saying is true: it
will
all feel better in the morning. And if she still insists, which is likely—some of them have dispositions of pit bulls with bones—you'll have to let drop the word
police.
That's all you need to say,
poelease,
and with any luck she'll fly from the house —if my prayers are answered, from our lives—like a chaste soul out of hell."

Now I was tiptoeing downstairs, more than a little nervous (it wasn't easy being Dad's Human Resource) and just as I reached the front door, she rang the bell. I looked through the peephole, but she'd turned to look over her shoulder at the yard. With a deep breath, I switched on the porch light and

opened the door. "Howdy," she said. I froze. Standing in front of me was Eva Brewster, Evita Perôn. "Nice to see you," she said. "Where is he?" I couldn't speak. She grimaced, burped "ha," and pushed both the door and me to the side as she walked inside.
"Gareth, honey, I'm home!"
she shouted, her face upturned as if expecting Dad to materialize from the ceiling.

I was so shocked, I could only stand and stare. "Kitty," I realized, had been a pet name, which she'd doubtlessly had at some point in her life and resurrected so they'd have a secret. I should have known—at the very least
thought
about it. They'd had them before. Sherry Piths had been Fuzz. Cassie Bermondsey had been both Lil' and Squirts. Zula Pierce had been Midnight Magic. Dad found it humorous when they had catchy names that tripped off the tongue, and his smile, when saying this name, she probably mistook for Love, or, if not Love, some seed of Caring, which would eventually grow into the massive vine of Affection. It might be a nickname her father gave her when she was six or her Secret Hollywood Name (the name she
should
have been called, the one that would have been her passport to the Paramount lot).

"You going to speak? Where is he?" "At dinner," I said, swallowing, "with a-a colleague." "Uh-huh. Which one?" "Professor Arnie Sanderson." "Right.
Sure."
She made another sulky noise, crossed her arms so her jacket winced,

and continued down the hall to the library. Dimly, I followed. She sauntered over to Dad's legal pads neatly stacked on the wooden table by the bookshelves. She grabbed one, ruffling the pages.

"Ms. Brewster—?" "Eva." "Eva." I took few steps closer. She was approximately six inches taller

than me and sturdy as a silo. "I-I'm sorry, but I don't know if you should be here. I have homework." She threw her head back and laughed (see "Shark Death Cry,"
Birds and Beasts,
Barde, 1973, p. 244). "Oh, come
on,"
she said looking at me, flinging the legal pad to the floor. "One of these days you're going to have to lighten up. Though with
him,
yeah, I got you —it's a tall order. I'm sure I'm not the only one he keeps in a constant state of terror." She moved past me, out of the library, down the hall toward the kitchen, affecting the air of a real estate agent inspecting the wallpaper, rugs, doorjambs and ventilation in order to determine a price the market could bear. I understood now: she was drunk. But she was a concealed drunk. She'd vigorously zipped up most of the drunkenness so it was scarcely visible, only in her eyes, which weren't red, but swollen (and a little bit sluggish when they blinked), also in her walk, which was slow and forced, as if she had to organize every step or she'd topple like a FOR SALE sign. Every now and then, too, a word jammed in her mouth and began to slide back into her throat until she said something else and it coughed out.

"Just taking a teensy-weensy look around," she muttered, trailing her chubby, manicured hand along the kitchen counter. She pressed PLAY on the answering machine ("You have no new messages.") and squinted at June Bug Dorthea Driser's ugly cross-stitch quotations hanging in rows along the wall by the telephone ("Love Thy Neighbor," "To Thine Own Self Be True").

"You knew about me, didn't you?" she asked. I nodded. "Because he was weird that way. All the secrets and lies. Remove one

from the ceiling and the whole thing collapses on top of you. Nearly kills you. He lies about everything—even 'Nice to see you,' and 'Take
care.'
" She tilted her head, thinking. "Any idea how you get to be a man like that? What happened to him? Did his mother drop him on his head? Was he the nerd who wore an ugly brace on his leg and everyone beat him to a pulp at lunchtime—?"

She was opening the door leading down to Dad's study. "—If you could shed some light on that it'd be great, because I, for one,

am pretty
confounded —
" "Ms. Brewster—?" "—keeps me awake at night—" She was clunking down the stairs. "I-I think my dad would prefer that you wait up here." She ignored me, walking the rest of the way down. I heard her fumble

with the switch to the overhead lights, then yank the chain of Dad's green desk lamp. I hurried after her. When I entered the study she was, as I both expected and feared, inspecting the six butterfly and moth cases. Her nose was almost touching the glass of the third case from the window and a small cloud had formed over the female
Euchloron megaera,
the Verdant Sphinx Moth. It wasn't her fault she was drawn to them; they were the most riveting things in the room. Not that Lepidoptera displayed in Ricker cases was a unusual thing ("Let's Make a Deal" Lupine told Dad and me they were a dime a dozen at estate sales, and could be purchased on the street in New York City for "forty big ones") but many of these specimens were exotics, rarely seen outside of a textbook. Apart from the three Cassius Blues (which looked quite dreary in comparison to the Paris Peacock just next to them—three wan orphans standing beside Rita Hayworth), my mother had purchased the others from butterfly farms in South America, Africa and Asia (all of them supposedly humane, allowing the insects a full life and natural death before collection; "You should have heard her on the phone drilling them about the living conditions," Dad said. "You'd have thought we were adopting a child."). The Cairns Birdwing

(4.8 in.), the Madagascan Sunset Moth (3.4 in.) were so luminescent, they looked as if they weren't real, but crafted by Nicholas and Alexandra's legendary toymaker, Sacha Lurin Kuznetsov. With the most dazzling materials at his fingertips—velvet, silks, furs—he could craft chinchilla teddy bears, 24-carat dollhouses in his sleep (see
Imperial
Indulgence,
Lipnokov, 1965).

"What is this stuff?" asked Eva, moving to examine the fourth box, jutting out her chin.

"Just some bugs." I was standing
right
behind her. Gray lint balls pimpled the sides of her white wool jacket. A strand of her sulphur orange hair swerved into a ? on her left shoulder. If we'd been in a film noir it would've been the moment I jammed a pistol into her back through the pocket of my trench coat and said, through teeth: "Make a funny move and I'll blow you from here to next Tuesday."