The Republic of Love (33 page)

His generosity grows prodigal late at night on the air, when he praises his loyal listeners. Where on the face of this earth is there a comparable audience, so lively, so intelligent, so open and faithful. He loves them all. He wants to stretch his arms out in the darkness and embrace them, he wants to share his good fortune, let them in on his concert of longing and behaving. Send me your requests, he says. This is your show, too. Keep those letters coming, keep those phones ringing, keep listening, and we’ll all travel through the night together.

I
T’S
M
ONDAY NIGHT AT
CHOL. It’s phone-in night. “What was the happiest moment of your life?” Tom asks his listeners. “The phones are open. Let’s hear from you.”

The first caller is a woman who says: “My happiest moment was just last year. It was February, and did I ever have the February blahs. Remember last February? Minus thirty-five degrees and wind-chill factors like you never heard of. Well, my husband and I had ourselves a week in Coral Gables, Florida. I’ll tell you, the sensation of stepping off the plane into sunshine and heat was just unbelievable. Like someone had waved a wand. I could hardly believe I was standing on the same planet. I turned to my husband and I said, ‘This is it, this is the happiest moment I’ve ever experienced.’”

“I’d like to share something with you, Tom, and all you ‘Niteline’ listeners out there,” comes a croaky young man’s voice. “I’ve just come through a pretty scary time. About six months ago I started getting a few lesions on my body, and right away I got worried. I’ve got good friends dying of AIDS. Even so, it took me a few days to get myself down to the clinic and get tested. And I tested negative. Meaning I was clear. At first I thought I’d heard wrong. I was so sure it was going to be bad news. I felt like I’d been reborn.”

“This is going to sound a bit daft,” a woman begins, “but years
ago I was in London and found out just by chance that Margot Fonteyn was going to be performing at Covent Garden. I could hardly believe it when they said there was one ticket left. Exactly one. It was as though I was fated to see Fonteyn dance. I went. It was heaven. She was amazing. On the way back to the hotel I was kind of like dancing myself. That’s what it felt like.”

“I’ve had lots of happy moments,” says a bright male voice. “I’ve been lucky. But I always think the happiest moment hasn’t happened yet. I’m talking about the queen of happy moments. The biggie. The unfathomable. The epitome of happiness. The only thing is, I worry that when it comes along I won’t recognize it. It’ll be flashing away there at the edge of my vision and I’ll be looking so hard that I’ll just let it float right by.”

T
OM AND
F
AY
, lying in bed, exchanged the curiosities and gaps in their family trees.

The mysteries came not in a roar but in sharply defined droplets, like rainwater. Fay told Tom about her young sister, Bibbi, about her turbulent adolescence, how she ran away to Newfoundland and lived for a year in a sort of New Age haze with an alcoholic cobbler who, when she decided to leave him to return home, committed suicide, hanging himself with a leather belt Bibbi herself had made for him. Pinned to his shirt was a bitter, blaming note, the contents of which Bibbi has confided to Fay and to no one else. Now she lives with a thirty-eight-year-old labor organizer named Jake Greary, an acrimonious bully, a monster of social-democratic rectitude who, nevertheless, seems to have mesmerized her. “We keep hoping she’ll leave him,” Fay said to Tom, “but after what happened in Newfoundland, she’s probably afraid to.”

All this was surprising to Tom, who by now had met Bibbi two or three times and been struck by her look of composure, her ease and candor. To Tom she had not seemed in any way oppressed or reduced to subjugation. (It was true she was beautiful, though not as beautiful as Fay believed her to be.)

Tom told Fay about his twenty-seven mothers at the University
of Manitoba, and then about his real mother, who had found herself pregnant at the age of sixteen.

“I wonder if she ever thought about having an abortion,” Fay said.

Tom didn’t know. There was a good deal he didn’t know, including who exactly his father was. But he’d long ago laid that question to rest.

“Good,” Fay said approvingly.

“She’s happy,” Tom said about his mother. “She and Mike. Her life seems to have worked out.”

“Do you think of him as a stepfather?” Fay asked.

“Well, no, more of a friend, I guess.”

“It’s funny,” Fay said, “When I first saw him, I was struck by – ” She stopped herself.

“What?”

“How much alike you looked.”

“Us? You mean Mike and me?”

“Your chin. Your eyes. Even some of your mannerisms.”

“Really?” Tom said, and resettled himself on the mattress, stroking the back of her hand.

“Or else I imagined it,” Fay said.

T
OM’S FRIENDS REJOICE
for him, and so do Fay’s. They say such things as: “He’s perfect for you” and “She’s exactly the sort of steadying personality you need,” or sometimes, enigmatically, “Opposites attract.”

Ted Woloschuk tells Tom shyly, “I’ve prayed for you. Maeve, too.” Iris Jaffe kisses Tom on both cheeks, and Beverly Miles says, “Onward!” and Peter Knightly tapes a fond note on the door of Fay’s office: “Delighted to hear of your good news.” Jenny Waring tells Tom that she’s planning an engagement party: “I’m thinking along the lines of twenty, maybe thirty people, just close friends. A buffet, is that okay? And I want to have a few of Fay’s friends, too, and some of her family. Do you think you could get a list to me by next week?”

Fay has a theory about the general rejoicing. She seems to have a theory about everything. “It’s because people had given up on us,” she tells Tom. “Here we were, headed up the solitary path, and suddenly we’re walking hand in hand on the golden road.”

She’s noticed, she says, from her reading of fairy tales and myths, and also the inside pages of newspapers, that the greatest rejoicing occurs for those who have been elevated from the deepest ignominy, those who are abruptly, randomly saved and rewarded. Cinderella among her ashes, and the next moment she is claimed by her prince. The youngest son, deprived of his birthright, gaining a kingdom in the end. The unemployed car salesman winning the sweepstakes, the dried-out drunk writing a perfect poem, the ancient barren women of the Scriptures giving birth to prophets. For some reason people feel a need to honor those who have risen spectacularly. And they share, Fay thinks, an unconscious belief that they themselves have contributed to the rescue.

Only Fay’s godmother, Onion, reserves judgment. Shaking Tom’s hand for the first time, she said sharply, “I’ve seen you, of course, on those billboards” – an acknowledgment that brought him a stunning clout of shame. To Fay she said, her face wrinkling into a cartoon grimace, “Well, I suppose you’re old enough to know your own mind.”

T
HE PARTY
at 307 Yale begins at seven o’clock, although the guests of honor, Richard and Peggy McLeod, will not arrive until a quarter to eight. Everything is planned. More than a hundred guests stream through the front door, and most of them exclaim over the beauty of the invitations, each of which has been handmade by Bibbi to resemble a miniature photo album framed in soft leather and containing two photographs: on the left are Richard and Peggy McLeod as they looked on their wedding day forty years ago, all veiling and smiles backed by thin tree branches, and on the right is a recent snapshot taken by Clyde in their own back yard – their twin thatches of white hair giving them the look more
of brother and sister than husband and wife. They both appear remarkably youthful. Peggy McLeod is leaning toward Richard with one hand resting flat on his knee and the other lifted in a gesture of airy emphasis. Typically Peg, everyone says, just like her. The invitation reads:

S
ONYA, BRIGHT-FACED
, ebullient, exuberantly hostessy in a dress of blue silk banded with green, opens the door to arriving guests. This is a role she loves, standing in the lit doorway of her own cherished house, welcoming group after group of friends. Clyde stands nearby taking coats – the evening is cool – and ferrying them to the bedrooms on the second floor. The house fills quickly with celebratory noise, with color, a happy convivial murmur. Fay and Bibbi take turns leading guests through the hallway, into the living room, the dining room, the sunroom beyond, then out through the sliding doors to the glassed-in porch.

One month ago Tom Avery was a stranger to the McLeod family, yet here he is tonight pressed into service – in fact, given a privileged role. It is his job to present guests with a welcoming glass of wine as they enter the dining room and, at the same time, keep an eye on the sound system he has spent the afternoon installing. Fay’s nephews, Matthew and Gordon, by turns solemn and reckless, pass dishes of smoked pecans and black olives, and allow themselves to be patted on the head and even kissed.

The house, with its lit candles, its flowers, and its aggregation of social warmth, has grown rosy with heat. Tom keeps the background music mellow, some Sinatra to start with, a little Aretha Franklin. He has never attended a party like this, and now and then he stands back, observes, and feels the strangeness of it pour through him.

Onion is helping in the kitchen, making sure the caterer finds what he needs, keeping track of food and drink, and inspecting the buffet table set up in the dining room. Earlier there had been a crisis (only dimly perceived by Tom), when Onion suddenly announced she would not be attending the party, that she would be spending the evening at the hospital with Strom. It was Fay who finally persuaded her that she was needed and that Strom would be perfectly all right for a few hours on his own. Next to Muriel Brewmaster, Onion was her mother’s oldest friend. Her presence was crucial. “I don’t know what’s come over her,” Fay told Tom. “She’s been so odd these last few days.”

Everything else goes perfectly. Sonya is a born organizer, as everyone keeps saying. At precisely ten minutes to eight Richard and Peggy McLeod, believing that they have been invited by their son and daughter-in-law for a family dinner, drive up and park their car in front of the house. “Shhhhh,” Fay tells everyone in the living room, “they’re here.”

Sonya opens the front door. “Why you look all dressed up,” Peggy McLeod says.

In the other rooms there is silence, heat, anticipation. Then, from somewhere, a whistle blows: the signal. Tom puts “When the Saints Come Marching In” on the tape deck, and a minute later Richard and Peggy McLeod are standing at the entrance to the living room. “Surprise,” the assembled guests shout, sing, yell, and Tom sees Richard McLeod pass a hand over his face.

The evening ripens and swells. The lights are kept low, and the walls rise into darkness and acquire a look of watered silk. Tom is astonished at all the white heads and eager thirst. He is grateful to be kept busy, pouring wine and providing music. He plays a flutter of 1950s songs, borrowed from the CHOL archives and
from Big Bruce’s private collection, music so quirky and crimped, so full of the swells and concavities of sentimental yearning, that it seems designed for exactly this: an evening of nostalgia in an unimaginable future. A suburban house. An October night. A graceful assembly of friends.

Fay and Bibbi, passing trays of food, seem to Tom like beings from the planet of youth. Girlish, lithe. They ought to be barefoot, he thinks, and decked with flowers and amulets. “How’re you doing?” Fay says into his ear at one point in the evening. Later she says, placing the flat of her hand between his shoulder blades, “You’re doing fine.” Later still she asks, and now there is a rise of concern in her voice, “Have you seen my father? Clyde wants to start the speeches in a few minutes.”

Tom juggles his assigned duties, sips a glass of Burgundy, and keeps a close watch on the time. He’s expected at the station no later than 11:50, and meanwhile he’s been introduced to the Swedborgs, the Comings, the Scotts, the Rumfords, the Lambdas, the Skochucks, and more and more – people that Richard and Peggy McLeod have known for years, some of them all their lives. There’re Caroline somebody-or-other, Muriel Brewmaster in dusty-pink velvet, Abby Aldrich, Deborah Goldsmith in a wheelchair, Alma and Edward Hicks, Lewin and May Gables and Marianne Gables, Mark Whischer, Dr. Hazel Moore, Charles and Simmie Fair. There’re Tim Hale, the McBriens, the Lloyds, David Chin, Eric and Emily Haigh, Jim and Hjordis Lake, the Jaffes, Carl Peggs, Alison Konkol, Andrew and Mary Ballstaeder, the Levys, the Hollinghursts, Simon and Stephanie Birrell, Julie Freemantle, and on and on and on. Over a hundred names were on the guest list, says Sonya, and almost everyone was able to come. It was a good idea, after all, to hold the party on a Thursday night, since some people were still going to the lake on the weekends. Yes, Clyde says, but they would have come back anyway for an occasion like this. Ben Katz, after all, an usher at the wedding forty years ago, has come all the way from Montreal.

In addition, a few old friends have cabled their good wishes – from
France, from Hawaii, from India. Glasses are lifted. “Happy days,” a voice calls out.

Someone puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder and says, “Tom, I’d like you to meet Foxy Howe. Foxy, this is Tom Avery.”

Tom spins around and stares into the face of his ex–father-in-law.

“We’ve met,” says Foxy Howe. He does not put out his hand to be shaken, nor does he flinch or recoil. He stands solidly in place and registers across his broad, beefy, implacable face a look of hatred.

“I
WANT TO HAVE A CHILD
,” F
AY TOLD
T
OM
.