A Marriage Made at Woodstock (27 page)

The car swung into the parking lot of the Portland Greyhound station. Frederick imagined Arthur Bowen putting him on a bus to Cleveland or someplace hellish, banning him forever from the coast of Maine. But Mr. Tam pulled the vehicle into an empty space and then turned the engine off. No one moved at first, and then the sound of crinkling paper rose up again from the front seat. Mr. Tam burped softly. The radio kept up its faint strain.

“She
did
come to my house,” Frederick finally admitted. “But that was all.” What else could he say? The photograph was so clear that he could see Walter Muller's lilac bush pushing its smelly purple face into the corner of the frame. Why hadn't he just said good-bye? Why did he have to kiss her damned hand? Chandra had said it a thousand times, hadn't she? “Hubris, Freddy. I've seen you try to impress electric-eye doors.”

“You're very photogenic,” Arthur Bowen said.

“Thank you,” said Frederick, able now to hand the photo back to Doris Bowen's husband. He waited. The last macadamia nut was ground between Arthur's molars and then all was quiet for a few seconds. Then more paper rustled in the front seat. Mr. Tam had pushed
Scan
on the radio panel because short blurps of song came and went. The
Scan
button.
Now, there was an invention that boosted mankind ahead to the future. Thanks to some genius at Sony, the human thumb would probably atrophy somewhere down the evolutionary road and eventually disappear, the important index finger becoming the opposable digit. He wished now that his hand, the one that had lifted Doris's, had atrophied, preventing the kiss.

“I merely kissed Mrs. Bowen's hand,” Frederick heard some liar say, and realized that he was blabbing again, his vocal cords vibrating with words. But why not attempt it? What proof did Arthur Bowen have that anything more occurred? Just as Frederick was finishing up this thought, proof arrived in the form of another photo. He accepted it from Arthur's hand and saw that his own was trembling again. It was another of him, from the Frederick Stone portfolio, although it might have been a work left over from a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit. Frederick stared at a most uncomplimentary shot of his own buttocks, which were beaming above the naked body of an insatiable Doris Bowen. Judging from the angle, it had been taken from outside his living room window, at his Victorian house on Ellsboro Street. And, judging from the look of rapture on Doris's face, the architecture of the house was the only thing Victorian. The focus was excellent. Where did people find such cameras? Under the sunniest of circumstances, and with his subjects as still as statues, Frederick had never taken such a professional-looking photo. He canted his head as he studied the composition. Was that a mole of some sort on his left buttock?

“You need to get yourself a tan,” Arthur Bowen said. He whirred the back window down. “You're too pale.” He whirred the window up. “Or maybe it's because my wife is so brown that you look so white.”

“Ahhh,” said Frederick. He closed his eyes. Had it been just a few weeks ago that he was living a one-dimensional, cardboard life that bordered on the comatose? Yes, it was. A small breeze could have blown his flimsy life away.

“Maybe you should start fucking pale women,” he heard Arthur suggest, followed by the sound of the back window whirring down again and then up, down and then up, Arthur Bowen's artificial diaphragm, up and down. Anxiety in motion. “Maybe you should start fucking albinos,” Arthur counseled further. Frederick heard Mr. Tam snort out a brief little laugh from the front seat. It sounded like a pig squealing. He remembered, irrationally, that he even
knew
an albino, the woman who wore those dark glasses at the library and handled delinquent books. His frightened mind raced unreasonably, images of milky, anemic women filing past, their eyes radiating pink light.
Fair-complexioned persons must be extremely wary because their skin absorbs more of the sun's rays than the skin of darker persons.
Frederick was gratified that Mr. Bator was along for the ride. At least there would be someone there to whom he could whisper the last words: “Tell Chandra to feel no guilt. I die glad that I loved her.”

“Recognize this guy?” Arthur asked. The sharp corner of another picture pecked against Frederick's hand. He feared looking but he had no choice. The face before him did, indeed, look familiar. It was Jerry, the bag boy who'd worked the summer before at the IGA before he went off to grad school. The next picture was of Preston, another bag boy with a bad attitude, or so Frederick had thought. Apparently his attitude had suited Doris Bowen just fine. In the picture, she was standing behind her raised trunk as Preston loaded groceries into the Mercedes. Arthur handed over another photo, same scene, this time with Preston's hand holding up the trunk of the car as he kissed Doris. His other hand was bagging her ass. All this behind the raised trunk of the car Arthur Bowen had probably bought as a birthday gift. Why
does
the woman do her own shopping? Frederick had often wondered. He was shocked to see Billy Lawford, a current bag person, smiling up at him from Doris Bowen's résumé. Billy Lawford was, in Frederick's opinion, several bricks short of the proverbial load. As a matter of fact, Billy didn't even have wheels on the brick wagon. And there in another photo—good God!—was the manager of the IGA, coming out of a motel room while Doris wavered in the door, her perfect hair looking like mice were nesting in it. Frederick hadn't felt quite so foolish since Mr. Veatch, the security officer at Portland High, had yanked open the gym closet door and found him inside, his hands thrust up under Maria Pritchard's blouse, a place well traveled.

“Recognize these guys?” Arthur wondered. The pictures were of Larry, the butler, and another thin-faced man with straggly hair. Could it be Willy, the gardener? “Oh, but you never met Willy, did you? Doris found these guys at Foodline. But you might say they work for me now.” Frederick handed the group of pictures back to Arthur Bowen.

“Jimmy Swaggart isn't among these, is he?” Frederick asked.

Arthur Bowen laughed. “I like you,” Arthur said. Well, that was a start. “Let's go, Sammy.”

Mr. Tam,
Sammy
, backed the car out of its parking space and once again they rode. Frederick watched out his window as street signs flew by. He waited. He expected that his just punishment, at least in Arthur Bowen's eyes, would be a good sound beating by the two gentlemen in the front seat. He assumed that they would represent Bowen Developers much like the dueling champions of yore. So be it. Let them slap him in the face with Arthur Bowen's glove and demand that he choose his weapon. He wished they would allow him to choose spelling, since he doubted either man in the front seat would make it to two-syllable words. But Frederick knew the intellect was not at war here. He hoped the weapon of choice would be bare fists and not a baseball bat. He would take his medicine like a man. In advance, he tried to imagine his lips as puffed-up, impossible things, a missing front tooth, a broken rib or two, nasty scrapes and bruises, a grape of an eye sealed shut. He would heal. As long as he lived, he would mend. Worse things had happened to people. He could even learn to limp permanently, if he must. He had limped for a week, after all, and had managed just fine. He wondered if the two men in the front seat were waiting for
him
to initiate the confrontation. Was that how these things were officially handled? When the car finally stopped, should he lean forward and place a good wallop on the back of Mr. Tam's head? Arthur Bowen must have read his mind, another talent that can be bought, apparently, if one has enough money.

“You're not worth beating up, if that's what you're worried about,” he said.

Frederick couldn't agree more, unless that meant that he was worth killing. But surely they wouldn't kill him with witnesses about. And after all, signs indicating his neighborhood, his home turf, had begun to emerge. They weren't taking him to some lonely limestone quarry. Cain's Corner Grocery appeared in a blurb of lights and then disappeared. Bobbin Road flashed by, and then the car turned down Ellsboro Street. Frederick was about to mention that he had left his automobile at the liquor store, then decided against it. If his only punishment was walking back down there to get it, he would take it gladly.

“I'm a law-abiding man, Mr. Stone,” Arthur Bowen said. “Let's keep it that way. Stay away from my wife. And stay away from my home. Florence doesn't just cook. She keeps her eyes open. All three of them.” Frederick nodded, remembering Florence's wild, voodoo gaze.

“Tell me something, Mr. Bowen,” he asked. He couldn't help it. He needed to know. “Why do you do it? Why do you allow it to keep happening?” Arthur Bowen smiled.

“It's all in the hunt,” he said. Frederick nodded. He had no doubt that this was true. Arthur Bowen had, after all, crawled ten miles on his belly, through the Rocky Mountains and over sharp icy crags, in order to kill a two-hundred-pound sheep. If you can't put human heads up on your wall,
mounted
heads, well, what's wrong with a little collection of head shots?

“And why does a guy with your money drive around in a brown Chevy?”

“Because guys like you would notice a Rolls,” Arthur said.

The car pulled up to the curve in front of the Victorian house. As Frederick reached for the door handle, Arthur leaned forward and pulled something from the briefcase at his feet. Was it a gun? A tremor of fear rushed over him. Frederick sensed a trick had been played on him and he was in great danger after all. You can penetrate the CIA. You can penetrate the KKK. But there are some things you just can't penetrate and get away with it. And Doris Bowen was surely one of them. His fate would be that of the Big Five:
elephant, Cape buffalo, rhino, antelope, and leopard.
And those guys had been
innocent
.

Arthur Bowen unscrewed the cap of what looked like a silver flask. He was about to take a drink, then looked over at Frederick, as if wondering why he was still there.

“Good night, Mr. Stone,” he said.

Frederick got out of the car and shut the door. The brown Chevy tore off into the night. He waited until it cut the corner at the end of the street.

“I noticed your goddamn Chevy, too!” Frederick yelled at the taillights.

It was a week later, over a peanut butter sandwich on the screened-in porch, that he saw Chandra's picture in the newspaper, her face swimming out from a group of faces. The Animal Rights Coalition. He stared at her eyes, those light and dark dots of newspaper ink that formed her cheekbones, the tip of her nose, the lay of her lips, before he went on to read about the march gearing up against Radnor Laboratory, a facility still experimenting on animals. There had already been a stir-up the day before when a few People First advocates had pitched tents in the park across from Radnor and had started giving interviews to the press. The anti-Radnor march would be a candlelight vigil, a walking parade beginning at eight o'clock in the Alternative Grocer parking lot and ending on the sidewalk in front of Radnor Laboratory. Everyone wishing to take part was encouraged to bring a box of emergency candles so that the procession would be well lighted.

Frederick read the article with interest. The People First advocates were preparing for an all-out battle with this element who wanted to spare animals from the horrors of the lab. “If I had the choice of my wife dying,” someone named Reginald Steen was printed as saying, “or some damn baboon, you'd better believe it'd be the baboon.” Frederick wondered if Reginald's wife would chose the baboon over her husband. He had no doubt at all whose side the baboon would be on. He read on, knowing that Chandra would have to be quoted somewhere. Since the inception of the Animal Rights Coalition several years earlier, she had been at the group's vanguard. So he was not surprised when she was identified as their spokesperson. What
did
surprise him, however, was that she had gone back to using her maiden name. “We've spent over two billion tax dollars and more than thirty years on animal tests,” Chandra Kimball had told the reporter covering the story. “And we're still no closer to a cure for cancer, our number one killer. Nor are we any closer to eradicating any other major disease because tests on one species cannot be accurately applied to another species.” She was wearing a small locket, heart-shaped, lying there in the picture against her bare skin. Frederick recognized it as one he had bought for one of her birthdays, early in their marriage. She had put a picture of him in one of the heart-shaped sides, a picture of her father in the other. He wondered now what pictures were hiding in that locket, what clues to her future. “Why do you think the recipients of these baboon hearts are dying?” the paper had gone on to report Ms. Kimball as asking. “And this is not to mention the animals who are blinded, maimed, tortured, and killed by Radnor Laboratory in order to test household cleansers and cosmetics.” Frederick studied her beautiful face. She and several other activists in the shot were holding up a picture of Britches, the little monkey whose eyes had been sewn shut for studies in light deprivation at the University of California at Riverside.

Chandra was in her usual fine form. Even reading her words, Frederick could hear the lilt behind them, the way she liked to pause after a particularly vivid description, letting the picture of it settle into her listener's mind. Thankful that he could finally learn a bit about Chandra's personal life, if even from the newspaper, he read on with interest. Demonstrators on both sides had been warned by law enforcement officials that anyone breaking the law could expect a visit to the local jail.

Frederick folded the paper and put it aside. A small breeze flicked the pages over to the latest food coupons being offered by the Portland IGA. He felt relief that her image was finally taken from him, for he hadn't the heart to turn the page himself. He sat staring at the street, listening to the sounds of local children involved in an argument over chewing gum. He tried not to call her face up before his eyes, but there it was, the face of an angel. It had been nice, damn nice, to see a current picture of Ms. Kimball. He took the newspaper up again and crinkled it into a ball to be pitched into the trash. So she'd gone back to using her maiden name, had she? Well, he couldn't be too surprised, could he? That she had taken his name in the first place, even all those years ago when she still loved him, was surprise enough. He now wondered what had happened to the hyphen that had glued their names together for over twenty years. Chandra Kimball-Stone. Or was it still attached to the Kimball? He had always thought of that hyphen, used by so-called
liberated
women, as a kind of trailer hitch. If he went to divorce court, would he get custody of the hyphen? Did the hyphen eventually end up in the word
ex-husband
? Was that its fate?

Frederick sat at his computer and stared at the form letter he'd begun that morning.
Dear
Blank
. He would merge the letter with his file of client names and addresses later so that each would receive a personally typed letter. Publishers Clearinghouse did it. Why not Stone Accounting?
This
is
to
sadly
inform
you
that
Stone
Accounting
& Consultation will no longer be in business as of September 1, 1992, due to personal reasons. I wish to thank all of you for the trust you once placed in me, and to assure you that if this company resumes business, you shall be notified immediately. I also wish to apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced during the past few weeks.
He reread the words. Did anyone really care that his wife had left him, if he should suddenly find himself telling them the truth?
To
be
honest
with
you, O Trusted Client, my wife, Chandra Kimball-Stone, aka Chandra Kimball, moved out of our house, out of the blue, caught me with my emotions down and, so help me, try as I may, I can't seem to get a grip on things, as my brother, Herbert Stone (who has no grip himself), assures me I must do. I'm asking, as a member of the human race to other members, hang in there with me, brother, cut me some slack, float with me until I can see dry land. I've just lost my marriage, and I don't want to lose my business, too. So, whaddya say, old bean? Is the world more full of weeping than I can understand?
Frederick sighed as he signed his original letter with a
Sincerely
yours, Frederick Stone, President, Stone Accounting & Consultation.
If he sent the personal letter, the letter of entreaty, would all those clients who once had “Desiderata” pinned to their apartment walls, would they remind him that he was “a part of the universe,” and that he “had a right to be here”? His guess was that his clients would be roasting his testicles for lunch, a new Yuppie appetizer to accompany the buffalo wings and chicken nuggets.

Stone Accounting was dead, no doubt of that. Only a handful of clients were left, and that was simply because they hadn't the time yet to find a new service. His best clients had abandoned ship at the first sign of floundering, the first news of rats on board, a madcap women-and-children-first dash to the lifeboats. Well, he had learned from all of it, hadn't he?
Hadn't he?
Wasn't that what people could expect of bad situations, that a little useful knowledge had been shoveled up among the shit and, therefore, not all was lost? But, dammit it, all he had learned was that people were capricious fly-by-nights, disloyal to the last man or woman. And he had known that
before
his downfall. It had been another of life's reruns. He needed a drink.

• • •

The crowd at the China Boat was post–happy hour and therefore dour as usual. It was past seven o'clock when Frederick arrived. He said hello to Amanda, a forty-eight-year-old divorced nurse whose T-shirt read: YOU'RE LOOKING AT A FEMALE SURVIVOR. Eddy Walsh was there, a real-estate person who drank too much tequila and wore a mood ring. Frederick had been surprised to see such an old fad still around. He would have bet money that the last mood ring in existence was now sitting in some twentieth-century pop art collection, next to Andy Warhol's soup can. But Eddy Walsh obviously took good care of his jewelry. Frederick could see that the stone on his ring was now black.
Anger
and
Stress
.

“Goddamn home buyers these days,” Eddy was saying, as Frederick found his usual stool unoccupied. “They see a crack in the ceiling, they go crazy.”

Kay Holly, the hairstylist, was at
her
regular station, the stool near the cash register and the free bowl of fish-shaped crackers. Frederick had just asked her to slide the bowl of crackers over to him when Herbert arrived. Frederick had phoned Herbert earlier and he agreed that a scotch might be the best way to end a busy day of neutering and spaying.

“I see by Eddy's ring that he's having another bad day,” said Herbert, and Frederick smiled. He was trying not to look at the clock on the wall behind the bar. Down in the belly of the China Boat, where there were no portholes, it was difficult to keep track of the time of day. Frederick hoped he'd have two, maybe three scotches as he talked to Herbert. And then he'd glance at his watch to learn that it was ten o'clock and the Animal Coalition protest would be over. But the wall clock was hanging where he could easily see it. He finally looked up. It was eight o'clock. He hated himself for looking, but there was the big hand, resting on the twelve, the little hand on the eight. He imagined them lining up then, lighting their candles, arranging their signs. He could almost see Chandra, her thick hair swept back from her face, the small gold beads shining from her earlobes, her mouth resigned as she issued orders to the group. And then they would march, like a string of worshippers in some medieval Candlemas, their voices Gregorian chants rising above the traffic. They would move in a flickering wave of light down toward Radnor Laboratory. How he envied them, the fiery pinwheel that the group embodied, the Animal Coalition, that family of men and women joined in a single purpose. Frederick decided he would not think of Chandra again, nor would he look at the clock. He ordered a second scotch.

“You haven't asked me about Maggie,” Herbert said.

“That's because it's none of my business,” said Frederick.

“Well,” said Herbert. “I just want you to know, I mean in case Maggie and I do get back together, that she likes you. You should just forget what I said when I told you she didn't. I was angry, talking off the top of my head. She likes you. She really does.” Frederick smiled. Talk of getting back together with Maggie. What next would he hear from Herbert Stone? He could feel the clock's hands pulling at his eyes like elongated magnets. Had they reached the corner of Berry Place, where the little flower shop stood? Was the candlelight illuminating her face, tracing those magnificent cheekbones? Should he even care, at this point in their separation, if the Domino's Pizza boy careened out into the street and knocked her down? He would care. He would care very much, and this was what bothered him so. When would it end? Was he destined to chase her forever, the way Arthur Bowen, one of the richest men in New England, was forever spying on his own crazy wife?

“Maggie even told me last night that she thinks you've changed a lot since your separation.” Herbert was still apologizing. Frederick reached for a fresh bowl of the fish-shaped crackers and popped a handful into his mouth. The cracker bodies broke easily between his teeth, fragile bones. He washed the mouthful down with scotch and then pushed the bowl away. Why did they have to shape crackers like fish? He imagined Jesus with a bowl of fish crackers, standing before the hungry multitude. He hoped the multitude was vegetarian.

“Maggie likes you a lot,” Herbert was still saying, a record going round and round, unable to stop. He wished he'd never phoned Herbert. It was a time to be alone, at the park maybe, where visitors fed the seagulls and then sat upon benches that look out to sea.

“Maggie had every right to dislike me,” Frederick said. “So quit with the apologies, okay, Herb? And watch yourself this time around. Don't make the same mistakes you made last time. She's a good woman.” Was that the clock he could hear ticking? Or was it his heart beating, his own broken heart? Or could it be that Eddy Walsh was wearing a pacemaker? Eddy had already spoken long and in medical depth at previous happy hours in the past about the two heart attacks that had kept him out of the Million Sales Club. It was now eight thirty. They must certainly be in front of Radnor. She would be floating before the crowd like a radiant Joan of Arc, her hair wild, her hand raised in leadership. What was she wearing? Had that awful man, the one who wanted to give his wife a baboon's heart if she ever needed it—
Here, honey, a little something for Mother's Day
—had he shouted angry words at Chandra? Thrown an animal-rights flier in her face? Was she in any danger from the madding crowd?

Frederick could stand it no longer. He dug cash out of his pocket and tossed a twenty onto the bar. A credit card would take too much time.

“Hey,” said Herbert. “You haven't finished your scotch. Where are you going? You got that crazy look in your eye.”

“There's something I have to do,” said Frederick. He accepted change from the bartender and then left her a generous tip. Herbert finished the last of his drink and put his empty glass on the bar.

“You don't have someone's roof in mind, do you, Freddy?” he asked. “Because, with that crazy look in your eye, I have to come with you.”

• • •

The street in front of Radnor Laboratory was littered with picket signs waving above bodies as Herbert edged the Chrysler up to the curb and shut the engine off. Frederick could hear the ruckus without getting out of the car. But out on the sidewalk it was deafening. The People First advocates were not even putting people in their own group first. None of them seemed willing to let any individual speak. Their angry faces blended into a swirl. Frederick had seen this anger, from his days of watching Sally and Geraldo. He'd seen the KKK twist their faces in ignorance and hatred. He'd seen advocates of war shaking their fists above their heads and demanding that the USA blast the hell out of Iraq, the cradle of civilization, a country they couldn't even find on the map. A half million people would eventually die. But this was more evidence of what Frederick had been saying all along to Chandra. “You can't get people to feel emotion for animals when they don't even feel it for other human beings.”