Waveland (24 page)

“That's good,” he said. “You want to set up an office in town or something?”

She shook her head. “Not really. That's not the problem, anyway.”

There it was. As clear a statement as she could have made.
That's not the problem, anyway
. Meaning there
was
a problem. He figured he'd go straight at it. No reason to try to dodge the bullet at this late date.

“What, then? You wish you hadn't sold the house? I suppose we should have waited. You know, set things up and tried 'em out before eliminating the support system.”

“Not it,” she said. “Worse.”

“Okay,” he said. He decided to wait for her.

“It's just that there're things you don't quite know, and before we get too comfortable I want to clear the air.” She stood again and went back to the railing, looking out.

“You're not leaving?” he said.

She turned around, the wind pushing her T-shirt against her chest, bits of hair going around her head like tiny Japanese string kites. “I wasn't planning on it,” she said.

“Well, what then?” he said.

“Okay. Here goes. You know all that stuff with me and Bo? In the paper? The cops, the arrest, all that?”

“Yes. I know all that.”

She scratched her forehead with her fingertips, pushed her hair around a little, had an argument with the wind. Finally she said, “Well, they could have something.”

He looked at her for a long time, seeing her against the sky, against the deck railing, the water, seeing her hair blow, and he didn't move. When he caught up with himself he was staring at her knees. He said, “Really.” It was a question, and it wasn't.

She didn't move. She just watched him, her face poised, composed, artificial, like a replica of herself.

Vaughn shook his head slightly, an inch in either direction, then stopped that, looked back at her, carefully, at her eyes. She stood at the deck railing maybe seven feet away with the dark sky behind her, and all the sounds out there were suddenly distinct—the screech of seagulls, the light lap of the water on the sand, the white noise of the wind, the pipes jumping under the beach house as the dishwasher went through its cycle.
All that stuff with me and Bo
.

He finally looked away, rubbed his eyes, felt the wind
slipping by. He could feel blood pulsing in his neck. Greta was staring at him now, her gaze level, flat. A cold stare. She wasn't pleading, she wasn't even asking. She was just waiting, waiting for the message.

After another minute or two he pushed himself up out of the deck chair. “Well,” he said finally. “You look good out here in the open. You're a good woman. I'd like you to stay with me, if you wouldn't mind.”

He crossed the deck and put his arms around her waist and she put her arms around his shoulders and they stood like that for a few minutes, each looking at the other as if looking in a mirror. Then he looked away for a minute, and back at her, and then her eyes softened and lowered.

One afternoon in March Newton and Gail showed up in a Chrysler Crossfire, which was a two-seater not-quite-sports car they'd rented. Vaughn invited them in, offered them a drink, and then the four of them were sitting around in the living room when Gail told Vaughn and Greta that she and Newton were on their way to China to pick up a Chinese child they'd arranged to adopt.

“We have to get her and get it all done before May,” Gail said. “They've got new rules on adoption over there. After May you're going to have to be a lot younger than we are.”

“And prettier, too,” Newton said.

Vaughn laughed politely and nodded, as if he knew what Gail was talking about. “So you're stopping off here on your way to China,” he said.

“I just had to get some things, make some arrangements,” Gail said. “You know.”

“This is a great place,” Newton said, waving at the room.

“Thanks,” Greta said. “We did some of the work ourselves.”

“She did,” Vaughn said. “I supervised.”

He was surprised by the idea of Gail and Newton adopting a Chinese child, but both of them looked so relaxed and excited that some of it rubbed off on him. He asked a few questions, had trouble following the answers because it seemed an enormously complicated process, and they'd apparently been at it awhile. Gail talked about what they were planning, how they'd set up Newton's house for the child, how old the child was, and where in China they were going to get her. She was sort of like the best Gail, kind of enthusiastic and involved and irrepressible, happy. Newton was friendly and calm in a way that seemed fresh, as if their time together, and their plans, suited him perfectly. And the mood was catching. What was so odd was that Vaughn felt none of the stress or threat or demand or sadness that had characterized the last act of their marriage. It was as if he was talking to genuine old friends, as if Newton, for years his envied and almost despised sibling, was now, suddenly, his dear younger brother again. Vaughn felt pleased for them, so much so that he was almost giddy.

When they were leaving, Vaughn hugged Gail, and it was the first time he'd hugged her with any feeling in a very long time. He took in her scent and enjoyed the warmth of her against him. He whispered, “I am so pleased for you.” She grinned and pulled away, whispering her thank-you.

Vaughn and Greta walked down to the car with them, everyone shook hands and hugged again, and then Gail and Newton jumped in the roadster and sped off up the coast highway, waving over their heads.

Vaughn went out to the end of the oyster shell driveway to fetch the empty garbage can, found the lid and put it on, and wheeled the big Rubbermaid can back up the drive to its spot on the concrete pad under the house.

Then the two of them went upstairs, got fresh drinks, and sat on the deck with Monkey and Fuzzy. After a bit Greta said, “I guess you're a
colossal
failure now.”

“It's true,” he said. “Newton has succeeded yet again. Hugely.”

“I'm happy for Newton,” Greta said. “And you are, too, aren't you? I could tell. You liked him.”

“Well, I didn't
like
him, but, I mean—”

“Liked him,” she said. “You liked them both. It was visible. Everybody knew it. It was unmistakably clear.”

“Well, sure,” Vaughn said. “How could you not? They're doing great. They're fine. And this baby thing is completely wacky.”

“Not a baby,” Greta said. “A young girl. Weren't you listening?”

“Kind of,” he said.

“A lovely young girl,” Greta said.

“Wacky,” he said.

In the days that followed the weather was still and pleasant and most times both dogs seemed content to drop their heads on their paws and listen to the surf, as if they'd been doing that for a lifetime. Vaughn and Greta went about their lives in the reconstructed beach house, staying low, sticking to the shadows, as some wise coworker had once advised. Life was unmistakably quiet.

One night Vaughn had this dream: He came home to a tall Carpenter Gothic bungalow where he, apparently, lived. It was, of all places, on the seawall, the concrete buttress that
jutted out against the anger of the ocean. It was a place he had never been. In that house he found his withered father with his brother, Newton, having one of their talks in the parlor. Vaughn stopped for a few minutes to chat with them, and his father, on hearing from Vaughn some report of his recent doings, made a demeaning crack at Vaughn's expense, about which the three of them shared a chuckle. The remark wasn't terribly serious, a routine aside, and when it passed Vaughn could not call it back to mind, could only sense the hollow place where the laughter had been, and the pleasure and the pain, as his brother and father enjoyed this harmless play. So Vaughn smiled then and moved through the room and into the kitchen where he set about preparing dinner for three, working a large pot on the stove with a heavy wooden spoon, standing and stirring a dramatic soup, listening to Newton and his father chattering away in the next room like the oldest and dearest friends. Vaughn stood over the ancient cream-colored stove edged in black, stirring and listening, not quite able to make out the words, but reassured by the tone, the familiarity, the confidence and comfort of the talk, the creaks of the old chairs in the house, and the sounds of the windows shifting against their sills. Then it was quiet and he heard his father's footsteps coming in from the parlor, and then his father was right alongside him at the stove, very close, so close that he could be smelled, so close Vaughn could sense his father's thick, rubbery skin, the age on him. And then his father, a short man with bright, rimless glasses, stood on tiptoes, his mouth inches away from Vaughn's ear, and said in the smallest of whispers, “Vaughn. I'm going to go now. See you soon.”

About a month after Gail's visit they got a postcard with
a picture of Gail and Newton holding hands with a lovely Chinese child on the Great Wall. The three of them shining like all get-out, surrounded by mountaintops crested by the ribbon of the wall. They all looked so happy. Vaughn took the card into the kitchen and put it on the refrigerator with a magnet. The picture made him smile—
grin
was more like it. The child was sweet, a darling girl of maybe four or five. Newton looked more than ever like their father, looked generous yet intense. It was startling to see the resemblance, as if it had just emerged. Gail was simply radiant. The photograph filled Vaughn with pleasure. Greta came in and they stood together in the kitchen staring at the Chinese postcard of these charmed people and their new child atop the ancient wall. Vaughn turned the postcard over so Greta could read the message, scrawled in Gail's hand, on the front:
Some things are so perfect in this world. Some are so hard to arrange
. He imagined what his life with Greta might be in the future— isolated, inconsequential, apart from the world and yet in the world in a new, more immediate way, full of sensory things, a sampler of ordinary pleasures. He imagined their daily life as an endless succession of such pleasures, a river of tiny recognitions—the pleasures of toast, the pleasures of hot sunlight, of the dark scent of wet dogs, of summer nights, of the crush of sudden thunder, the warmth of winter socks, the surprise of skin indented by furniture. These weren't pleasures he had dreamed of, and it wasn't a life he had dreamed of, nor sought, nor even imagined for himself; but facing it, finally, he thought it was a life for which he was now well prepared.