The Woman in Oil Fields (13 page)

Robert brushed his nose with the back of his hand. Frederick patted his arm. “Okay. Thanks for the warning, Robbie. I appreciate it.”

______

They took the rented Dodge into the cool night air, past shopping malls, construction cranes, chapels.
“I
can't get over how religious Texas is,” Frederick said. “I'd forgotten, completely. Look at the steeples! And down in the cellars, Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists stirring vats of potato salad. Hundreds of believers mixing the vile yellow stuff to sling at unrepentant sinners. We'd best arm ourselves, Robbie. They're bound to come after us.”

Blow after blow of his usual wit – as if his sincerity in the room had been a joke. I might as well stay Mr. Smith, Robert thought. He felt no bonds with the man here beside him or the mighty Becker name.

“When I was your age, Robbie, this very spot was an occasion of sin for me.” Frederick pulled off the highway, to a dark gravel patch on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. “One night I stole my father's Buick and a bottle of sour mash and went for a joyride. It ended right here. There wasn't a freeway then, just a dirt road by the stream. I back-ended another happy drunk. Ruined the front fender. My father never forgave me.”

He got out and headed for the bayou. Robert followed. Frederick sat beneath a large live oak and began to remove his shoes and socks. “The other fellow and I lay here for an hour or so, laughing about the accident, sharing our whiskey. It was a cool night like tonight but we barely felt it, dipped our feet in the shallows – ah! – and watched the moon, big and yellow, sail above the trees.”

Robert listened to his father splash the water, scanned the tires and busted chairs that broke the surface of the stream. He found the candy bar wrapper in his pocket and quietly dropped it on the ground.

“Join me?” Frederick said

Robert shook his head.

“You're an awfully sober young man, you know that? Do you smoke or drink, Robbie?”

“No.”

“That's good, I suppose. Healthy.” He wiggled his toes. “Don't you ever get tired of being good?”

Always riding me, Robert thought. How do I get
inside
this man, past all the layers of irony?

Frederick sighed and stretched his arms. “This is a nice, shady place in the daytime. Your mother and I used to come here.”

“Really?” Robert sat. “She won't let you make up with her?”

“No, no. Too
many
sins.” Frederick said nothing for a minute. Frogs chirped in the reeds. When he did speak, he almost whispered. “In those days, when your mom and I were courting, this whole area was quite romantic. Bluebonnets. Tall grass. It's tragic, what people have done to it. What's that sticking out of the mud over there?”

“Looks like an air-conditioner,” Robert said.

Frederick shook his head. “Ruthie and I watched sunsets here, a million years ago. Silly kids. Well.” He reached for his socks. “Best to let it all go.”

Touched by his father's nostalgia, Robert searched the weeds for his candy wrapper. “The city should clean this place,” he said, attempting to imagine a shining blue bayou, his father and mother holding hands beneath swelling Gulf Coast clouds.

“A guy like Rauschenberg would know what to do with this stuff. He'd haul it all out and make something with it. If we knew how to look, Robbie, we'd see endless possibilities in this wonderful, wretched stream. I envy sculptors. They can redeem the most useless junk.” Frederick laughed and clapped Robert's back. “Sin and redemption, eh?” He frowned. “Why are you so quiet?”

Robert shook his head.

“Raymond?”

“No.”

“Is it your mother?”

“Not really.”

Frederick stood and stroked his beard. “I see. You came over tonight to talk about your work, didn't you?”

Robert lost his mental portrait of his fresh young parents. “Yes.”

“You feel the assignment's too hard?”

“I don't know what I feel. Maybe.” He followed his father back to the car.

“None of us ever learn enough about what we're doing, Robbie.” Frederick threw his boots onto the slick back seat. “Not even Picasso or Matisse. But don't worry.” He turned the key. The engine coughed. “I know how the story ends.”

______

It was after eleven when Frederick dropped him off at Ruth's house. Robert invited him in but Frederick said no. As he pulled away he waved and gave a weak smile. Ruth was still up, stirring stew. She'd already made three pots, with ham and carrots and peas. “It's late. I was starting to worry,” she said. When Robert told her where they'd gone, she cursed Frederick for dragging him out in the cold. Then she smiled, remembering the spot. “It
was
a special place.”

“It's trashed now,” Robert told her. “What made it so special?”

“Oh, I don't know if it's the setting so much.” She tapped her wooden spoon on the stove. “We were young and happy … a little careless. I think you were conceived there.”

“Mom!”

She blushed. “Well, it was nice and lush and private. No freeway.”

“Dad told me.” He grinned. “So you liked him in those days?”

“Oh yes.”

Robert tasted the stew. “And now?”

“Don't be taken in by his charms, Robbie. He shook Texas off his boots and never looked back, once he left.”

“That's not true. He's flown back plenty of times.”

“He has a whole other life in New York, believe me.”

“Like what?”

“Like, he married an actress soon's he got to Manhattan. That's what. Some Broadway queen.”

Robert burned his lips on the clear, steaming broth. “You're kidding. But you were still married to him.”

Ruth shook her head. “We'd filed our divorce papers, just barely.”

“Who was she?” The peppery ham made him cough. “What was she like?”

“No idea. The marriage only lasted six months or so. I never knew what happened. All I heard was she left.” She glanced at her boy, testing the effect of her words. “I guess your father got his heart broken – his drinking got worse – but I didn't want to hear it, and he won't talk about it now.” She washed her hands. “He always
was
a sucker for aggressive women. Don't know why he hooked up with me.”

Robert stared at the worry lines on her cheeks and chin. She dried her fingers, straightened her hair. “Anyway,” she said. “It's over and done. Time for bed.” He squeezed her hand. For a moment in the flat kitchen light she looked, despite her worn face, like a sad little girl, pale as dough, waiting to be taken, shaped, gracefully held. She turned out all the lights and hugged him goodnight.

He can't imagine his father's second wife without also smelling his mother's mushrooms, carrots, potatoes simmering on her stove. This afternoon, as he walks along the stream, humming some half-remembered tune, he realizes Frederick's New York years are an empty space to him, an unmarked corner of a canvas. Robert sees his father walking in the city, working there with ease, unburdened by the doubts that paralyze
him
in his studio at home until he often wonders if he can go on.

He kicks a rusty crankshaft. Mud-sprinkles scatter tiny blue-flies through the air, stir the bayou's oily brown waves. Down below, his father floats. 0. 0.
Robbie. Save me. Lend me a hand
.

All day, people have tossed broken steam irons, croquet mallets, skillets, ax blades chipped and bent into the swirling silt. Each time a man or woman hurls an object into the water, Robert remembers a recent newspaper phrase: “Becker was simply in the right spot at the right historical moment”; “The late Frederick Becker is little more than a footnote to contemporary American painting”; “If Pollock was genuinely witty, then Becker is merely amusing.”

Other obituaries have lavishly praised Frederick's work, but the barbs are blunt steel to Robert. Cold and unforgiving, precisely aimed, like steam irons and skillets. He watches mosquitoes skim the water's thickness. Frederick drifts in tattered algae.
Robbie, don't let them bury me. It's up to you to see they get my story straight
. The ax blade shoots past his ear. A mallet slams his thin, bluing chest.

Robert shuts his mind to his father's cries. Memories are starting to rise that he knows are no good, old furies about to riddle the day. He paces the banks of the bayou, tries to concentrate on birdsong, water splash, sunlight. The melodies that have haunted him all morning. But the bubbles erupt.

It was the night of Jill's birthday. Robert and his classmates, all except Raymond, had gathered early at the sandwich shop to arrange a surprise. Robert brought party hats and bright red balloons. The waiters agreed to sing “Happy Birthday” as loudly and embarrassingly as possible when she walked in the door, but at 8:30 she still hadn't shown, and by nine everyone was restless. “Wasn't she planning to come?” someone asked. “Did anyone see her after class?”

“Yeah. She was talking to Mr. Becker.”

“Where?”

“In the parking lot, outside the studio.”

The door slid open, ringing a dwarf silver bell attached to the frame. Cool air brushed the tables and chairs. A flicker of red. A goofy grin. “Hi,” Raymond said. “I hoped you'd all still be here.” The class stared. He laughed – almost a bray. “Have you already eaten?”

A brief, edgy silence. Then the students rose to leave, saying it was late. Blushing, Raymond stared at the floor. “I'm sorry,” he said. “Sorry. I know I haven't been very friendly. I just hoped to accomplish something while we had him in our midst, that's all. I didn't mean to snub any of you. Honest.” His loafers creaked.

No one moved or knew what to say. A waiter who'd heard the bell emerged from the kitchen with a square of ginger cake. He began to sing the birthday song, then caught his mistake.

The place was so quiet, Robert heard pipes in the walls knocking with steam, water tapping in a sink. “Mr. Know-It-All,” one of his classmates said.

“Mr.
Style,”
said another.

Raymond shivered. Robert touched his sleeve. “Can you drop me somewhere?” he asked.

“Sure,” Raymond said. Relieved, people reached for their coats then quickly, silently left.

Raymond led Robert to his car, an old Ford Mustang. It smelled of linseed oil. Crammed into the back, sketch pads, charcoals. Stiff, used brushes, some the size of housepainter's tools. His foot twitched on the accelerator; the car hiccuped and jerked.

Robert's belly ached with Jill's absence. He'd hoped to get her alone later, maybe guide her to the bayou, hold her hand in the dark, but she had her eye on someone else.

He asked Raymond to take him to the studio; from there, he'd walk the few blocks to the Warwick.

Maybe he was wrong.

“I'm glad it's nearly over,” Raymond said. A light mist peppered the streets. He switched on his wipers. “The class, I mean. I'm exhausted.”

“Me too,” Robert said.

“Who needs him, anyway? He can't appreciate what I do. So what? It's not like he's God.” The Mustang lurched through a dull yellow light. “I mean, you cut him and he bleeds like anyone else, right?”

Robert's skin tightened and his throat went dry. Raymond gripped the wheel like a strangler. He was scowling, no longer the pathetic figure Robert had seen in the sandwich shop. He seemed, as he always did in class, malevolent, deceitful; his red hair a stain against decency and reason. Somehow, his presence made the streets chaotic and mean. The city's old grid pattern clashed with the new, north/south blocking east and west. In parks and at bus stops, people clung to each other in the rapidly cooling air, men and women, women and kids, ragged Pietàs.

“I've always trusted myself,” Raymond said, slowing for another light. The mist was twice as dense as it was a moment ago. “Never needed anyone's approval, so why start now?” His right foot stopped twitching. He reached into his coat pocket for something apparently heavy (the weapon he might've clocked Frederick with, Robert thought); his shoulders tensed. He sidled close with a grin.

Robert didn't wait to see what happened next. “Thanks,” he said, unlocking his door. “This is good.” He stumbled onto the pavement.

“Hey!” Raymond called. “Are you crazy? Watch out!”

Robert ran down the street through folds of bleak gray air. Car horns barked. A pair of headlights swung in an arc to his right, then whirled out of sight. “Asshole!” someone yelled. He sprinted against the evening's stinging wet until his whole chest burned and he saw the yellow windows of the Warwick. The doorman, dressed in red, tipped his tricorn hat but Robert hustled past him, grunting. His muddy shoes soiled the thick blue carpet.

He bounded up the stairs to Frederick's floor, half-searching for clues to Raymond's foul deed, but there were no abandoned knives. No gory gloves.

In front of his father's door he found an awful mess. He dropped, gasping, to his knees.

Two tall-stemmed glasses on a thin silver tray. Crumbs. A pale pink candle, never lit.

He groaned and got to his feet. Just go home, he thought. Leave it alone. He sidestepped the ficus and pounded on the door.

At first, no sounds came from the room. Then Frederick's voice, muffled, “Go away.”

“It's me.” Robert hit the door again. “It's Mr. Smith. I've come for my grade.”

“Robbie?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Just a minute.”

Behind the door, glass broke. Robert swayed. His lungs still ached from his run. Frederick stepped out bleeding.

“My God,” Robert said. “What –?”

“Sliced my hand on the Dewar's,” Frederick said. He wore a towel around his waist. He was musky and sweetly perfumed, a swarming, cloying smell, all at once. “Damned annoying. Waste of good Scotch.” In his wounded palm he clutched a roiling cloud of toilet paper. Blood smeared his chest. “What's so urgent? What are you doing here?”