All Things Cease to Appear (39 page)

The room had a smell that was different. Her perfume, he guessed. And the damp shower smell. Under that was something else, something he couldn’t name.

Like his mother, she slept on the side near the door. There was a small jar of pills on the nightstand. He grasped the container and read the label, but didn’t know what to make of it. On a cocktail napkin she’d done a drawing of the Virgin Mary where her blue sheath turned into a river. It was pretty neat. On the other side was a list.
Things I Need:
leeks, milk, butter, Ajax, shoe polish, call Justine!

Sweating like a thief, he moved over to the bureau, opened the top drawer and ran his fingers through her underthings, the silk like water. The straps, the cups of her bra. He pushed his hand down his pants. After he finished, he went into the bathroom to wash his hands and dried them on her towel. For some reason he felt justified. Then he sat on the edge of the tub, trying to breathe.

Later, when Franny woke up, he gave her a snack. She said she wanted to color, so he put out her crayons and a fresh sheet of paper on the kitchen table. Then he grabbed his pack and took out his English homework. They worked together without speaking. For her age, she was a pretty good artist. He figured she took after her mother in that. She was drawing a picture of the house, he realized, with black shutters and smoke curling out of the chimney. Then she added a woman with long blond hair. At first he thought it was Catherine. But as the drawing progressed he saw the jumble of pink that looked like a sweater, and the green square that was a skirt. He saw the blue eyes with long rays for lashes. In place of the mouth was a black hole.

Who’s that, Franny?

And she wrote out a name in four bold letters:
E L L A.

When Mrs. Clare came in and saw the picture she stood there a minute with her hands on her hips. Her back was turned and he couldn’t see her face. He wondered what she would do. Blinking like she’d eaten something spicy, she held it up. What a beautiful drawing, she said. Then she taped it on the refrigerator and went upstairs.

—

IT WAS MR. CLARE
who drove him home. Cole noticed he hadn’t shaved and his skin looked oily, his eyes glassy. He’d loosened his necktie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt and rolled up his sleeves. There was a joint in the ashtray, and he took a deep drag, coughed a little and then handed it to Cole. He didn’t feel like it but could tell Mr. Clare wanted him to, and refusing his boss was hard. The warm smoke rushed through him and he grinned, embarrassed.

Mr. Clare watched him closely, a look of satisfaction on his face. You have a girlfriend?

There’s this one girl.

Women, he said. They’re frustrating creatures. Don’t ever expect to get what you want, let alone what you need.

Cole hadn’t given either much thought.

When in doubt, consult the masters. He pulled a book off the back seat and handed it to him. You want to learn about women, take a look at those. That’s Courbet. I’ve marked the page.

Okay.

Take it with you.

The book was heavy on his legs. His fingers traced the edges of the binding, the cloth fabric of the cover. His hands were sweaty. Mr. Clare abruptly lowered the top and they drove in the wind, saying nothing. Cole could see the moon coming up. The sky was a little purple.

His uncle’s house was empty, and he remembered that Eddy was taking Rainer back to the doctor’s and Vida had gone along. He went up to the attic, opened the book to the marked page and was astonished. It was a painting of a woman—below the waist. Her legs were splayed and you could see right down to her butt, below a black mound of hair and her dark slit. The painting was called
The Origin of the World.
Though he knew the birth canal was around there, he wondered why the artist had called it that. He didn’t like the painting and he didn’t like that Mr. Clare had given it to him, and he closed the book and shoved it under his bed. He realized he was very stoned and a little out of his mind and he hated Mr. Clare for making him feel like this, and for the weird thing that was suddenly between them.

He didn’t go back to the farm for a few days. He couldn’t seem to leave his room. Eddy brought soup and toast up on a tray and read him comics and told him dirty jokes. Rainer even hauled himself up the stairs and put his heavy hand on his forehead. You got a fever, boy.

He’ll be all right, Eddy said.

The days passed slowly and he was glad to be left alone. He watched the window shades flutter and the sunlight move across the walls. He could feel himself transforming. He was thin and white, his hands were too big, his legs and feet too long. He couldn’t control his thoughts and had jags when he cried like a girl.

A few days later Mrs. Clare showed up at his uncle’s, standing there on the porch with a plate of cookies when he got downstairs.

Franny misses you.

I’ve been sick, he said.

Here, I made you these.

He took the cookies and thanked her and watched her drive away, then went back to bed. He figured if he slept some more he’d wake up and everything would be normal again, like it was before his mother had gone, before those strange people had moved into his house.

Part 3

Things Heard and Seen

1

THE WEATHER
turned grim those last weeks of November, and the sky was an oppressive gray. Snow piled up on the glass table and metal chairs on the patio. The narrow road remained as pristine as cake frosting, save for the intermittent tracks of deer and rabbits, and no lights burned in the great houses of Chosen. Only rugged locals and country folk stayed on. She was one of them now.

They drove to Connecticut for Thanksgiving. Her in-laws had a cocktail party for close friends, the women in bright dresses with matching pumps, the men in plaid pants and blazers. They were heavy smokers; the living room filled with a gauzy haze. Through the large picture window she could see the water, the beach flat and bare. She would have liked to go out there into the fresh air, away from these people, but they’d think it was rude. His parents were intimidating. Under her grosgrain hairband, his mother would look at Catherine like she was nowhere near good enough. This shouldn’t surprise her, though; George did the same thing.

Early on, his mother had done the calculations and saw her only child’s marriage in a new light. Poor George had done the noble thing, the Christian thing. Once, just after they were married, they’d all gone to church together. She could remember George in the back seat of his father’s Mercedes, suddenly a boy again in his too-snug suit, his tie askew, turned away from her, separate, as she tried to keep up conversation with his gardenia-fragranced mother. After mass, standing next to him in the parking lot with his parents’ doting friends, she felt self-conscious in her crummy maternity dress, her old scuffed flats; the dress she’d finally settled on at Penney’s looked cheap, and she would’ve been better off saving the money and sewing one herself. Her in-laws’ fancy church and strategic do-gooding were relentlessly off-putting. For her, religion was a quiet thing. Her faith was all her own. God was her confidant, her hope. In His eyes, she was her true self, nothing more, nothing less. She was the person George would never see.

Such things were complicated, she’d come to realize. She couldn’t discuss her faith with George, because she knew he’d mock her and make her feel stupid, and there was a certain irony to that, because faith was the very thing keeping her married to him.

—

THEIR LAUGHTER BROUGHT
her back into the room. They were telling stories about George when he was young. Making fun of him. It was something his family enjoyed doing, belittling their son for their own amusement. Of course, he couldn’t see it. Or at least pretended he didn’t. They were talking about how in high school he’d idolized his cousin Henri, who turned out to be a first-class homo, and they didn’t know what had been worse for his parents, the fact that he’d drowned or that he was gay. She watched George’s face, for once nuanced with shame, and she felt sorry that he’d grown up here with these awful, heartless people.

Henri did these extraordinary little paintings, his mother was saying. He was quite talented.

She described the small canvases he’d done the summer before his death, scenes of the shoreline—the rocky beach, a sailboat with a green hull, the lighthouse on the point, ospreys on the swamp, an abandoned shed with peeling yellow paint. A gallery had wanted to show them at the time, but apparently they’d disappeared. Though his parents had turned the house inside out, they were never found.

The next morning, they had brunch in the dining room. Catherine kept after Franny, making sure she didn’t make a mess on her mother-in-law’s new chairs. They showered her daughter with attention, but it was abrasive, sardonic, powered by her father-in-law’s stiff mimosas. Franny whined and carried on; she rubbed her eyes, pouted. They all complained she was tired—
overstimulated
was the word her mother-in-law used—and Catherine couldn’t wait to get into the car.

They left for home in the rain and for the first stretch drove along the shore. The water was gray, the sand ravaged by wind. The empty seascape made her sad.

Sorry about my folks, he said. Even he seemed glum.

It’s okay.

They can be difficult, to say the least.

It must’ve been hard growing up there.

It was, he admitted softly, and it made her regret how she treated him, always judging him, thinking the worst. She reached across the seat and took his hand and held it for a moment, and he glanced at her without emotion before turning his attention back to the road.

When they arrived he went out for a run. It was good for him, she thought, to let off steam. She let Franny watch TV and made herself a cup of tea. She went into the living room and took up her knitting. She’d been working on a sweater for Franny, with two reindeer standing in front of a deep-blue sky lit with stars. She’d found these wonderful wooden buttons. She’d give it to her for Christmas.

—

THAT MONDAY MORNING
began like any other. Franny ran into their room to wake her, climbing up on the bed to cuddle. While George showered, Catherine made the bed and picked up his dirty socks. That’s when she saw the book on his nightstand, poems by Keats with a feather holding his place to “The Human Seasons.”

Since when are you reading poetry?

What? He stood there with a towel around his waist. The running had made him stronger, lean. It’s not for you, his eyes seemed to say. Oh, that, he said. That’s just something I picked up from the library.

It’s overdue.

He was about to grab it from her but she held on to it.

I’ll take it back, she said. Franny and I are going this morning.

After breakfast, she bundled Franny up in the little camel coat and hat from her mother-in-law and tied her shoes and wiped her jelly-sticky fingers. She was glad for the quiet of the car, the certainty that her daughter was, for a few precious minutes, in one place, contentedly gazing out the window. They passed fields of cows, horses and barns, the gunmetal sky shot through with sun.

In town, she turned down School Street and pulled into the lot behind the library, hoping there’d be other children here for Franny. Usually there were, at this hour, and she’d gotten to know a few of the young mothers, mostly the wives of construction workers or men who worked at the plastics factory, though it seemed hard to talk about anything except the kids. Before getting out, she checked her appearance in the rearview mirror, an old habit. The face looking back at her, however, seemed different. She brushed her hair violently, as if to rid herself of the suspicion that something wasn’t right, that she was being deceived.

For Franny’s sake, she put on her lipstick and her happy-mommy voice, opened the door, then took her from the car seat and held her hand. With the book bag on her shoulder, they crossed the lot and nodded at the smiling women coming out. Once they got inside, she felt a little better.

Can I go, Momma?

Go ahead, sweetheart.

The room devoted to children had a splendid little dollhouse, a replica of a farmhouse not unlike their own, furnished with miniature versions of colonial pieces—four-poster beds, Chippendale dressers, even Windsor chairs. Tiny lights lit the rooms, and the table was set with plates and silverware. It could’ve occupied Franny for hours, moving the rubber family, totems of domestic bliss, from room to room. Vaguely, Catherine considered what sort of influence she and George had on Franny’s imagination. At least they pretended to love each other when their daughter was around. Maybe that was all that mattered.

With Franny transfixed, Catherine went to the circulation desk to return George’s book and pay the fine. The librarian pulled her bifocals onto her nose and frowned. There must be some mistake, she said. This book isn’t on your husband’s card.

Really?

The woman double-checked and nodded and dropped her necklaced glasses to her chest. With the same scrutiny, she studied Catherine’s drawn face, the dark smudges under her eyes, the gold band on her finger. Seeming to have decided something, she spun the ledger book around for Catherine to see. There, she said, pointing. Look for yourself.