The Land of Steady Habits: A Novel (24 page)

The table had fallen into silence and he couldn’t think of anything that would ease them until Sophie finally spoke. “He admired you,” she said, still looking at Anders.

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“I could never figure it out,” she added and Anders chuckled. It seemed like a joke, an honest joke, but she wasn’t smiling.

“I mean, why you? What’s so much more
acceptable
about you?” She took a sip of wine. “And then I realized,” she said. “You’re the fucked-up one.” She shook her head. “You’re the one who threw everything away.”

Mitchell drained the rest of his wine. “Sophie, leave the guy alone.”

“No,” she said. “Mitchell. I won’t. I want to know some things. I have some
questions.
How could it be that our child looked up to him and hated us, and his child is still alive?”

Anders looked down at his empty plate and the place card in front of it that Helene had made for Preston. Wherever his son had gone, it was starting to feel like a very wise decision.

“I’m asking you a question,” said Sophie. “Tell me. Please. How does that make any sense?”

Outside, the sleet had turned to rain, big wet drops he could feel on his scalp, and Preston, of course, was still without a coat. He did have the keys to the Escalade, a dry escape pod with the plush leather seats and clean neutral carpet of an executive suite. He turned on the car, listened to the smooth purr of its engine, and appreciated the distance it put between him and Mitchell Ashby’s scattershot rage.

He waited in the dark SUV long enough to get it good and toasty, and he was wondering when his dad would emerge when he noticed the smell. It was uric and vaguely maritime and coming from the foot well in the backseat. He could not believe, when he punched on the overhead light, that their forgetting the turtle in the freezing car had been the sole cause of its death. According to his father, it hadn’t been eating recently, or moving around much, for that matter, and he wondered if it had been afflicted by some sort of illness before they had even gotten it. But still, the little guy looked so sad on the carpeted floor, all limp arms and closed eyes, that he picked it up and held it in his lap.

Still his father didn’t come, and soon the smell from the turtle was overpowering. He could feel it clinging to the interior of the car and to his clothes and skin, so he opened the door and brought it with him into the rain. The disposal of a turtle body in the cover of night should have been no big deal. Preston took it over to the dark edge of the property and got down on his knees to dig a hole in the dirt with his fingers. But it was like trying to claw through concrete. He tried with a stick and with a rock, and when he was good and soaked and shivering from the cold, he carried the turtle around to the back door, where just inside, he knew, there was a closetful of driveway salt and fertilizer and a spade his mother used to plant her begonias. The door, though, was locked and his brief, frustrated rattle was enough for Donny to come over and flip on the floodlights, then squint at him standing in the rain.

“Donny, please.”

He opened the door.

“You gotta leave.”

“Yeah, well, I kind of have a situation here.”

Donny looked down at the turtle.

“The hell is that?”

“It’s really cold out here, is what it is, so if you don’t mind, Donny.”

“Is it
dead?
”

Preston didn’t respond. He had started to shiver and his sneakers were soaked through to his socks. “Yes,” he said finally. “It is, all right? It’s dead.”

Donny shook his head. “Goddamn,” he said and stepped outside to the landing. “Where the hell did it come from?”

“It’s a long story,” said Preston.

Donny opened the top of the garbage can. “It stinks. Put it in there.”

Preston looked down at the creature. He was still limp and smooth, his little eyes closed.

“I need to talk to my dad.”

“Ah, Jesus,” said Donny. “Just give it to me.”

Preston pushed past him and into the house. It was hot inside and eerily quiet. The CD had ended and no one had bothered to change it. In the kitchen, the turkey was carved and sitting untouched on the counter beside the tray of yams he had made and a squash casserole that had gone cold. He left the turtle on the counter and walked through the swinging door to retrieve his father.

“Dad,” he said. It reeked of cigar in there. Everyone was sitting—his brother and his mother and his father beside the Ashbys, all bathed in candlelight at a table set with the family silver and his mother’s china and a pitcher of ice water sweating on its trivet—and were it not for the silence, it would have all seemed entirely normal. There were place cards written in his mother’s careful cursive and a dessert fork laid horizontally in front of each setting and a felt-lined coaster for the bottle of wine that was inscribed
Un repas sans vin est un jour sans soleil.
“Dad,” he said again, and Mitchell Ashby got out of his chair.

“Have a seat!” he said, pulling out his own chair. “Join us.” Preston glanced around the table. The old folks and Lisa were looking at their plates. “Don’t worry. We won’t bite.”

Preston sat down as he had been told. Mitchell’s seat was warm from the hour he’d been occupying it. A cigar was burning on the charger plate in front of him.

“There,” said Mitchell, standing behind him. “Now we’re all here. The whole gang.”

“Mitchell,” said Helene.

“What? I don’t want him to feel like he has to hide from us.”

“He didn’t do anything,” she said.

“I know,” said Mitchell in the high-pitched voice of a good sport. “Nobody said he did.”

His mother sighed.

“Though I would like to know,” he said, “what you were doing on the railroad tracks. It seems like an odd place to be taking a stroll.”

“He was trying to get warm,” said Helene.

“Would you let the boy speak for himself?”

“I was trying to get warm,” said Preston.

“I’m sorry?” said Mitchell, leaning over. “I couldn’t hear you.”

It wasn’t until he was next to Mitchell’s face that Preston understood how drunk the man was. Mitchell smelled of wine, and his whole body swayed slightly as he waited for Preston to repeat himself. He was holding the back of his chair, Preston realized, for balance.

“I was trying to get warm,” he said again.

“See,” said Mitchell, straightening up, “I don’t believe that. Why would you walk along the frozen gravel with the wind whipping off the water when you could just—I dunno—go to a diner?”

“I was trying to clear my head.”

“Ah,” said Mitchell. “So the story changes.”

“Leave him alone,” said Helene.

“No, this is interesting. Now the story is changing. Were you getting warm or were you clearing your head?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Both!” said Mitchell. “Were you doing anything else?”

“No,” said Preston.

“I’m sorry, young man, I couldn’t hear you.”

“No,” said Preston, louder.

“The trouble with that,” said Mitchell, “is that you have a bit of a history of playing loose with the truth, don’t you?”

Preston didn’t answer.

“Don’t you?”

“I was drinking,” said Preston. “Champagne. I had stolen champagne.”

Mitchell smiled. “
There
you go,” he said. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“Mitchell,” said his mother. “That’s enough.”

“Now, why would that be enough when we’re just getting to the truth?”

“Because I was with him,” said his father. “I was with Charlie.” He was so calm. “Isn’t that what you wanted to know?”

“You were with him?”

“Yes.”

Mitchell shook his head. “Now how am I supposed to believe that?”

“Because he came over to my house in the middle of the night. With his turtle. Relic. He wanted me to watch Relic.”

At this, Mitchell was quiet.

“Did you wonder where the turtle went?”

Mitchell looked at Sophie.

“Did you even notice it was gone? Well, I have him,” Anders said.

Across the table, Sophie was shaking her head.

“No,” she said. “He wouldn’t bring you that. He wouldn’t bring you his turtle. He wouldn’t have done that.”

“Um,” said Anders. “I can show you, if you want.”

“Why would he do that?” she said. “He’s crazy about that turtle. Why would he do that?”

“I don’t really know,” said Anders. “I think he was worried about him.”

Sophie’s eyes went glassy, and immediately Anders regretted saying anything.

“Look,” he said. “I’m trying to tell you: you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“He was with
you?
” she said.

“Yes and—”

“Why didn’t you
call
us?”

It was a good question and one that he had been dreading. “I was going to,” he began. “I had the phone in my hand.”

Sophie shook her head. “It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“No,” said Anders. “It does. It matters a great deal. I should have done more. I should have called you.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Sophie again. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I’m responsible,” said Anders. “
I’m
responsible.”

Sophie kept shaking her head.

“Look, I did drugs with the kid.”

She looked up.

“When?”

“That night.” He sighed. “That same night.”

“You know what,” said Helene, taking Sophie by the elbow. “Why don’t we get some air.”

Sophie wrenched her arm away. “No,” she said and she looked up at Anders. “You want to tell me about my son? You know nothing. The things I could tell you about
your
life. The things
I
know.”

“Sophie,” said Helene. “Let’s not do this.”

“Your wife was screwing Fred Flintstone.” She pointed down the table at Donny, who was standing in the doorway. “Him,” she said. “You know that? For years.”

The tone of the whole thing, all that petulance combined with the ridiculous nickname, was almost enough to make him laugh, but as he glanced around the table at all those averted eyes, at Donny’s empty face and Helene’s ashen one, he could see that no one else had found it amusing.

“What?” he said and focused on Helene. He smiled. “Is she serious?” But still no one at the table would meet his eye.

“Dad,” said Preston. He had stood and was trying to get Anders to do the same. “Come on.” Anders let his son lead him out of the room, which was suddenly terribly hot, and into the glare of the kitchen.

“Was she serious?” Anders said, but Preston was looking for something.

“Where did it—” he said and then he was charging out the back door to the garbage cans.

Anders followed. “Preston, please,” he said as his son opened both cans. “Was that true?”

His son sighed. “I’m sorry we came here.”

“What does that mean?” he said. “Yes? Are you saying
yes?
”

His son reached into one of the garbage cans and pulled out the limp body of a turtle.

Anders examined the creature for a brief, sad second. “What,” he said, running his hand along its shell.

“It was like this, Dad. We didn’t do anything, I mean, clearly it was sick—”

Anders carried the creature by its shell back into the kitchen and through the swinging door. Everyone was still sitting in a stunned sort of quiet when he dropped it onto Sophie Ashby’s plate. “There you go,” he said.

Even before she yelped and jumped out of her seat and the whole room went to pieces, Anders knew that it would seem as though he had finally come completely undone. He put his arms in the air to try to quiet them, to take control of the room and tell them, especially his wife, whom he had failed, and the Ashbys, whose grief he could never ease, that he was sorry, but before he could speak a heavy object fell from the ceiling and landed on the back of his head.

In moments of crisis, it’s important to recognize how much your body knows, considering how little your mind does. The weave of the dining-room rug was rough as burlap against his cheek, and someone somewhere was yelling—shrieking, really—and his neck was wet. When he opened his eyes it seemed as though a hundred cameras had just snapped a hundred pictures, their halos blooming, and when he managed to roll himself over, what came into focus above him was Mitchell Ashby holding a candlestick like a billy club.

The candlestick fell to the floor with a clatter and Mitchell was kneeling over him, his fat cigar burning in his mouth, holding Anders’s wrists to the floor with all of his body weight. Someone was still shouting, going apeshit, really, but Mitchell had the same tender look on his face that he’d had when he found Anders alone on the porch at his party, a concerned little grimace that made Anders feel both pitied and loved.

Mitchell burned him directly on the forehead, searing a wound so round and deep, it extinguished the cigar completely.

To hear Anders howl must have been disturbing to the others, but for Helene it was a relief. There was a moment, a terrible moment right after the sound of candlestick-on-head—a high, muted
tink
she’d never forget—when Anders had dropped to the floor so hard and fast she could only conclude he’d been murdered. Which was probably why she had started yelling, and it was definitely why she now found herself pushing Donny’s arms out of her way and running to her ex-husband, who was clutching his head, and explaining to him at a regrettable volume that he was okay, that everything was okay, that she was there.

He had a concussion; that much was clear, because he was confused and kept asking questions—“Where am I?
Your
house? Why did you say
your
house? Moved? Where would I move? Why?”—and then, after nodding and going quiet, apparently satisfied with the answers, he’d start asking again, the same questions over and over: “Where am I?”

She got him out of the room and up the stairs, where she helped him out of his bloody clothes and into the bathtub. She was able to pick through his hair and find the source of the bleeding, a wound that had swollen into a bump and could be tended with a washrag. The bath was warm and Anders seemed comfortable, which was a good start, and after a while, his questions faded away, and he just sat there like a little kid, leaning forward so she could wash his neck.