The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (9 page)

She tossed the dishcloth into the sink and turned on me, still sniffling in the corner. “What I don’t understand is what has gotten into you? What in God’s name is wrong with you, Riddle? Why are you crying?”

“I don’t know.”

“Leave her alone,” my father said, encouraging me to sit down at the table. “All those horses. It’s a hell of a thing that’s happened.”

“Is that what this is about?” my mother asked, staring at me, incredulous as I pulled up a chair and sat down, head bowed, shoulders slumped. “So is this your idea of a proper response to a challenging situation? Emotional collapse every time you break a nail?”

Her scorn was lacerating. I straightened up and wiped my eyes.

“I
T’S NO ACCIDENT THAT
Greer rhymes with sneer,” my father said, offering up mild humor as comfort as my mother vanished into a puff of cigarette smoke, rematerializing seconds later in the living room. We watched her from the safety of the kitchen, poking around the magazine rack, looking for something to shred. He patted me on the shoulder. “I’ve got a few appearances to put in today.” He paused, mindful all of a sudden of what lay ahead. “Jesus, if I have to watch one more overweight Rotarian eat with his mouth open and spray minced chicken on my tie, I’ll pray to go blind. Goddamn campaigning. I swear, I look at these assembled herds and it’s like a convergence of ketchup bottles. I’ll be glad when the election’s over.”

Me, too. Camp was always traveling. When he was home he was on the phone or planning to be. I tried to think of the last time I had heard him singing around the house. He kissed the top of my head and headed for the stairs—I could hear his familiar two-step bound.

I sat alone in the kitchen just long enough to pull myself together. Wandering into the living room, I curled into an armchair and watched as my mother, appearing thoughtful, stood at the window in profile, looking out over the dunes and the ocean.

“So what was that little performance of yours really all about?” she asked me. “Did something happen that you’re not telling me about?”

“No.”

She turned to face me. “Are you sure about that?”

“Yes,” I said, chewing on my thumb.

“Stop mangling your fingernails. You look like a farmhand.” She paused. “Listen, Riddle, if Gula is bothering you . . .”

I stopped gnawing. “What do you mean?”

“Do I need to spell it out for you?” She clapped her hands as if she were trying to jolt me out of a deep sleep. “Time to grow up. You know perfectly well what I’m asking you.”

“No! Oh, my God . . .”

“Calm down. Fine. That’s good. I just don’t want you to be one of those neurotic little ninnies that goes along with God-knows-what in silence, too silly to come forward. If any man so much as . . .” She was looking around the room as if she were searching for a weapon. “You scream bloody murder, do you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you,” I said, my anxiety giving way to annoyance.

She crossed her arms and tilted her head provocatively, staring me down. It took all of five seconds for me to avert my gaze. She lifted her chin and relaxed her stance a little. “Let me tell you something, Riddle. When I was your age my parents threw a huge garden party. I got bored and sought refuge in the library. There was a man alone in there. A business associate of my father’s. I began to leave. He started to chat me up. Offered me a sip of his drink, if you can imagine anything so patently ridiculous. Well, I’m sure you’re able to guess where this is going. He tried to kiss me. He put his hand on my breast.”

I flinched but remained rapt. “Jesus.”

“Oh, don’t you worry. I picked up the nearest vase and smashed it over his head and then I brought the house down with my screaming. I can still see the water and the blood running down his forehead. He was covered in long stems of freesia.”

She was rapturous remembering.

“What did he do?”

“What could he do? It was a silent movie. No one needed to say a word; the visuals were powerful enough to convict him. My only regret is that I didn’t murder him when I had the chance.” She sat down on the sofa and clicked her cigarette lighter with so much ferocity, I thought for a moment that she would ignite.

“Weren’t you upset? Wasn’t it . . . ?” I searched for the right word. “Traumatic?”

She looked at me, disbelief degenerating into pity. “Traumatic? That,” she said, spitting out the word as if it were a tooth knocked out in a street fight, “will be the day.”

“Not everyone is like you,” I said weakly. The more I thought about it, the more I realized there was no one like Greer Foley. Her only living counterparts wore stripes, ate a side of raw beef for breakfast and worked for Ringling Brothers.

“You think I was born this way?” she said.

“Yes, I do.” Greer was an act of God, of that I was certain. What else could explain this woman?

“You’re wrong. Give me some credit, will you? I decided when I was very young that I didn’t want to be a mouse in a world of cats. You’d be surprised what you can accomplish when you make up your mind. I’ll tell you a little secret.” She leaned forward. “I enjoyed it. Splitting his head open with that vase. I loved every moment of it.” She took a long drag on her cigarette. “There’s something to be said for violence. To tell you the truth, I think I’ve been looking for an excuse to smack someone else ever since.”

Her eyes were so blue that the sky and the ocean seemed pigeon-gray by comparison.

“I hate to break it to you,” I said, “but that isn’t a secret to anyone.”

Chapter Eight

A
ROUND EIGHT O’CLOCK THE SAME EVENING THE PHONE RANG.
A Molotov cocktail tossed through an open window into the living room where we sat could not have generated a more outraged response from my mother, who viewed the most banal domestic intrusion as an act of hostility.

“What now?” She tossed her arms into the air and looked heavenward. Greer was in the daily habit of demanding answers from God, treating Him as if He were a henpecked husband. Lurching theatrically from the sofa, she stalked into the library and picked up the receiver. The sound of her voice radiated into the living room. Camp looked over at me and groaned when he realized it was Gin. I got up and headed after her into the library where I found her listening intently—the rarity of her silence enough to make me wonder what was going on.

“Oh, honestly Gin, how would I know? No, I’m quite sure Riddle doesn’t know him.” She tapped her foot as she listened. “Well, of course, if something’s happened, it’s awful but I think you’re being a bit premature.” Taut with consternation, she held up her hand to enforce my silence, shushing me as Dorothy and Madge came careening around the corner, mad to see me, panting, whining, nails clicking on the hardwood. Kneeling down to meet them, I glanced up and saw Vera bringing up the rear. I covered my eyes with her long velvet ears.

A cheer rang out from the living room. Camp was watching the televised replay of an earlier boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Chuvalo. He leapt to his feet, pumping his fists, shouting and exultant when Chuvalo landed a right cross. The dogs wagged their tails in bewildered acknowledgment, Hilary rushing over to take his empty spot in the armchair.

“Camp, please, I can’t hear.” My mother’s voice stamped the ground in a fit of impatience. “Say that again, Gin.”

He ignored her. “Riddle, come here. You have got to see this.”

I stood up and headed back, dogs trailing behind me. He turned up the volume on the TV and then, deferring to Hilary, sat down on the sofa, the roar of the crowd filling the room, an incongruous accompaniment.

“Camp!” my mother called out.

“Did you see that, Jimmy? Fantastic. Unbelievable. What a fight! Jesus!”

“Oh, dear. Oh, no, well, let’s hope not.” My mother said the same things over and over, a baleful chant, its effect so unsettling I slid down onto the sofa, the world around me tilting in ominous new directions.

“Camp! It’s about Michael Devlin. Something has happened.”

But the TV was too loud, his preoccupation was too great, his willful indifference to my mother’s dramatics too ritualistically enforced. The crowds were cheering and my father was now sitting on the edge of the coffee table, leaning forward, and elbows on his knees, engrossed.

“Bam!” He was up on his feet. Jumping side to side. Boxer’s stance. Throwing fists. One. Two. “Jab. Jab. Right cross. Uppercut.” He was simulating each move. “Bam! Look at that guy Chuvalo. Boom! Boom! Boom! He just plants himself and takes it and then he gives it back. Slug. Slug. Slug. None of this sweet science nonsense.”

He was standing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. I could see the sun dropping in the charcoal-blue sky; orange and red, it hovered just beneath the top of the tree line as Camp continued to battle his invisible foe.

“You’re awfully quiet,” my father said, glancing sideways, breathing heavily, still absorbed in the fight.

“Mom is talking to Gin about Michael Devlin. I think something’s wrong.”

“Camp!”

He looked over his shoulder, expressionless, and then he turned his attention back to the TV screen.

“Give me a minute,” he said so quietly she couldn’t possibly have heard him.

A few moments later, my mother joined us in the living room, lacquered in composure, shimmering with the kind of bleak wintry poise that strikes fear in every living heart.

“Anything interesting on TV?” she asked, sitting down in the armchair across from where I lay on the sofa.

“Just the fight,” I said, searching her face for information, for explanation. Her seeming indifference was bewildering, though a familiar tactic. There was obviously something wrong. Why did she always feel the need to be strategic?

“I said, ‘interesting,’ ” she editorialized as she got up to change the channel. She stopped to watch a special news story that flashed across the screen, attracting her attention.

“What was all that with Gin?” my father asked, resigned to playing his part in the protracted unveiling of what she knew.

She paused, pretending distraction and staring at the TV screen, visibly working to put emotional distance between herself and the phone conversation. “Oh, earlier this evening, Gin’s mother Mirabel called, wanting to know if he knew anything about where Michael Devlin’s younger son Charlie was. She thought maybe one of his riding pupils might have said something. You know how Mirabel loves to feel important by insinuating herself into these things.”

“Is he missing?” Camp asked.

“I assume. Gin was a little vague, short on facts as usual. He asked me if we had heard anything about him. Why would I know anything about the whereabouts of a teenage boy? The assumption is that he’s holed up somewhere with friends and Michael is trying to track him down. Gin was speculating that he’s run away. Can you imagine? Who in their right mind would run away from all that? He was just back home for the summer from Georgetown Prep. He disappeared last weekend, apparently,” my mother said offhandedly, as if she and Gin had been discussing the rising cost of grain. The screen filled with the stark, static shot of a little girl running naked down a bleak road in Vietnam surrounded by fleeing villagers.

“Charming world we live in.” She nodded toward the image on the TV screen as my father urged her to be quiet. Camp always would choose the universal over the personal. Greer could have announced that I had vanished in a puff of smoke and he would have waited until Walter Cronkite signed off before reacting.

“How old is his youngest? Fourteen, maybe fifteen?” My mother was talking to herself.

“Jesus, turn that up,” my father said as the screen boiled over with still photos of smoke and ash and burning flesh, a village on fire.

“His eldest boy, Harry, what would he be now? Eighteen? Nineteen? He’s at Yale, or so Gin says. I saw Harry in Provincetown at the horse show not long ago, the image of his father at the same age. Not a bad rider.”

Now I was intrigued. Not bad was as good as it gets from Greer. Harry Devlin must have been a centaur.

“Goddamn it,” my father said, shaking his head, concentrating on what was happening on TV.

My mother sighed and rolled her eyes. “Oh, Camp, how many wars do you intend to fight? What has it to do with you?” She walked over to the sofa. I reluctantly made a spot for her next to me.

“Wonder who the younger boy looks like?” she asked. “Let’s hope for his sake it’s not his mother.”

Camp finally looked away from the news story and frowned over at her.

“For Christ’s sake, Greer, the poor woman has been dead for a decade.”

“Well, of course, I’m sorry.”

My father hooted as my mother pursued the point she was born to make.

“But what does that have to do with her face? Believe me, Riddle, in Polly Devlin’s case, decomposition would be an improvement.” Her remark produced a weird round of enthusiasm from the dogs, their tails banging on the wood floor.

“What a fiasco,” my father said, turning his focus back to the TV.

“Poor Michael,” my mother said, surprising me with her sympathy. “He must be worried, thinking about all the possibilities. I can’t imagine.”

“You can imagine,” my father snapped, finger thrust forcibly forward. My mother and I were jolted from our private thoughts by the violence of his response. “You can imagine anything. Anyone is capable of anything. Do you hear me? And by the way, how about a little perspective? Starving children being burnt alive and we’re supposed to wring our hands over some spoiled rich kid like the Devlin brat just because he can’t be bothered to call home?”

I nodded, too timid to speak, feeling pulverized by the rogue elephant of male rage. For once my mother had nothing smart to say. My father churned from the room, glass ornaments trembling in his wake. His feet were loud on the stairs. I jumped when the door to his bedroom slammed shut. Moments later I heard the bludgeoning sound of him on the phone, talking about the incident in Trang Bang. Animated speech, angry, pounding out each point as if he were trying to break something into pieces, killing it with the blunt force of his point of view.

M
Y FATHER WAS PASSIONATE
about being right. To him, being right was a thing of violence and covered vast territory: moral, factual, ethical, social, philosophical. His certitude ran bloodred; his belief in himself was starkly anatomical. You could smell the rawness of it. His confidence was an athlete. Lift the lid, look inside his head, and you’d see goalposts and a megaphone.

I worshipped my father. So, why was I listening to him and thinking about Gula, so soft-spoken, so watchful and self-editing? I could feel myself shrinking under the enormity of their separate angers even as I hated myself for indulging such a hideous comparison. I blinked and swallowed, the events of Sunday acquiring new life in the wake of my father’s rampage.

Anyone is capable of anything.

Camp might as well have been talking about me.

L
ATER THAT NIGHT, THE
house in darkness, I was in bed unable to sleep when I heard a sharp noise coming from the kitchen. Glass shattering. Sitting up, rigid, I struggled to understand what I was hearing. The old pipes rattled in the walls. Water ran from the faucet.

Slowly, I crept from my bed, navigating past my parents’ room where my father slept on, seemingly oblivious, then through the library, and into the dining room where I watched from my concealed position behind the half-closed door as my mother bent down to pick up something—a wine glass—that lay broken on the floor.

She was washing the crystal, head bowed at the sink—goblets, glasses, bowls, candlestick holders, the stuff of inheritance and commemoration—everything spread across the counter, each piece simultaneously special and banal. Whenever she was really upset, my mother washed the crystal. Holding a wine glass up to the light, contemplative but purposeful, she inspected it, then shone it with a white cloth, vision turned inward, as if she were polishing a dim memory.

What could be so awful that it would drive my mother to plunge her arms up to her elbows in dirty dishwater?

The windows rattled, tree branches banging against the glass. Storms always catch me by surprise. I grew up next to the Atlantic Ocean and yet I’m no good at charting the weather. It seems I never correctly anticipate what’s incoming.

The washing and drying done, the crystal put away in the cabinet, its luster restored, my mother stared out at the night from the window over the sink. After a few moments she straightened her hair, rearranged her nightgown, tied her cashmere robe at the waist and clicked off the light. She walked through the kitchen door and out into the hallway.

“Hello, Dorothy,” she said reaching down to pet her favorite. It was with a shocked sense of self-recognition that I watched my mother behave as if everything was fine. Apparently, she and I had more in common than I knew.

Outside an animal cried out, a deer, maybe, or a rabbit, something dying, something ending, saying goodbye, a piercing shriek. The cormorants flew off in a single startled motion—the cormorant clock, shuddering in the wind, tolling in its tomblike way, hollow flap of wings marking the hour.