I thought I would be filled with guilt and remorse when I saw Susan, but strangely enough, I still didn’t care. I asked, “Were you looking for me, or just out riding?”
It must have been my tone of voice that kept her from a smart-aleck reply. She said, “I was looking for you.”
“Well, now that you’ve found me, you can leave. I want to be alone.”
“All right.’’ She began reining Zanzibar around and asked over her shoulder, “Will you come to eleven-o’clock service with us?”
“If I do, I’ll drive my own car to church.”
“All right. I’ll see you later.’’ She rode off, and Zanzibar broke wind. If I’d had my shotgun, I would have filled his ass with buckshot.
Well, I thought, that was easy. I felt good. I began walking, loosening my muscles, then I jogged for a while, sucking in the cool morning air. What a beautiful dawn it was, and what a beautiful thing it was to be up with the sun and running through the ground mist, getting high on beta blockers and endorphins or something. I spent an hour cavorting, I guess you’d call it, gamboling about the acreage, with no goal or reason except that it felt good.
I climbed a big linden tree at the rear edge of the property that overlooks The Creek Country Club. What a magnificent view. I stayed in the tree awhile, reliving this exquisite pleasure of childhood. With great reluctance I got down from the tree, then began jogging again. At about what I guessed was nine
A
.
M
., I was physically exhausted but as mentally alert as I’d been in a long time. I didn’t even have a hangover. I pushed myself toward the line of white pine that separated the Stanhope property from Alhambra, sweat pouring from my body and carrying the toxins out with it.
I ran through Alhambra’s overgrown horse pasture, my heart pounding and my legs wanting to buckle and drop me to the earth. But I went on through the cherry grove and reached the classical garden where Susan and I had enacted our sexual drama.
I collapsed on a marble bench and looked around. The imposing statue of Neptune still stood at the end of the mosaic reflecting pool, but there was now a bronze trident in his clenched fist. “Look at that. . . .’’ I saw, too, that the four fish sculptures were spouting water from their mouths and the water was collecting in a giant marble seashell, then spilling over into the newly cleaned reflecting pool. “I’ll be damned. . . .”
I stood and staggered over to the fountain, which had not worked in over twenty years. I dropped to my knees and washed my face in the seashell, then lapped up the cold water. “Ahh . . . nice going, Frank.”
I gargled a mouthful of water and spit it up in a plume, in imitation of the stone fish. “Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle.”
I heard a noise and turned. Not thirty feet away, on the path that led from the house, stood a woman in a flowery dress and pink hat, with a white shawl over her shoulders. She saw me and stopped dead in her tracks. I could imagine the picture I presented, slobbering around the fountain with a filthy warm-up suit and tangled hair. I spat out a mouthful of water and said, “Hello.”
She turned and began walking quickly away, then looked back to see what I was up to. She was a woman in her mid-forties, full-figured, with blond hair that, even at this distance, looked bleached. Her makeup was not subtle, and I thought the purple eye shadow and hot-pink lip gloss might have been leftover Easter-egg dyes. Even in her Easter frock and bonnet she looked a little cheap and brassy. But she was well put together. I’m not a tit man, and my preference is for lithe, well-scrubbed, all-American types, like Susan. But having spent the morning alternating between atavistic and adolescent behavior, I was in the right mood to find something crudely sexual in this woman’s primitive paint job, with her big breasts and buttocks. In some vague way she reminded me of the Venus statue in the love temple.
She was still glancing over her shoulder as she put distance between us. I thought I should identify myself so she wouldn’t be frightened, but if she was part of the Bellarosa clan, it might be best if we didn’t meet under these circumstances. I was about to stand and walk away, which is what an uninteresting attorney and gentleman would have done. But, recalling my recent success with Susan, I got on all fours and growled.
The woman broke into a run, losing her high heels.
I stood and wiped my mouth with my sleeve. This was fun. It did occur to me that my behavior was not in the normal range, but who am I to make psychiatric evaluations? As I walked along the edge of the reflecting pool contemplating my next move, I noticed something else new. At the far end of the long, narrow pool was a white statue. As I drew closer, I saw that it was one of those cheap plaster saints with the sky-blue niches that you see on Italians’ lawns, usually in conjunction with a pink flamingo or two.
I saw now that it was a statue of Mary, her arms cradling the infant Jesus. I found the juxtaposition of this Christian icon across the pool from the pagan god rather curious. Here was this loving woman enveloping her child, and in the same setting staring at her, as it were, was this half-naked, virile god with upraised trident, the antithesis of the Judeo-Christian God of love.
I was reminded of the first time I was in Rome and being surprised at how the two dominant strands of Italian culture—pagan and Christian—coexisted in art with no apparent contradictions. The tour guides seemed to have no theological or aesthetic problems with mixed motifs: for instance, a frieze of nubile nymphs and randy cupids adorning the same room that held a statue of
La Vergine.
The Italians, I decided then, were themselves pagan and Christian, like their art, both cruel and gentle, Roman and Catholic. It was as if the wrong religion had been grafted onto a country and a people who by temperament made good pagans and lousy Christians.
It occurred to me, too, that the same Frank Bellarosa who restored the trident to Neptune, who knew what that clenched fist needed, was also the Frank Bellarosa who felt a need to balance his world with this symbol of love and hope. This was a man who covered all his bases. Interesting.
I heard a dog barking from the direction of the mansion, and I decided to wonder about all of this while moving rapidly away from the don’s hit men. I may have been crazy, but I wasn’t stupid.
I headed in the direction of Stanhope Hall, moving as fast as I could, considering I hadn’t had anything more substantial to eat than radicchio and cheese since Saturday’s lunch. The barking dogs, two of them now, were closer.
I put on a burst of speed, crossing the tree line at full tilt. I didn’t slow up, however, figuring the dogs and the hit men, while not mounted gentry, would still surely cross into Stanhope land in hot pursuit.
I saw the shallow pond near where Susan intended to move her stable and charged into it, half wading, half walking on water, until I reached the other side. What I lacked in stalking skills, I made up for in escape and evasion techniques.
I kept running and I could hear the dogs yapping around the pond where they’d lost the scent. I had only assumed that the dogs were accompanied by men, but I wasn’t certain until now when I heard the discharge of a shotgun behind me. My legs responded instinctively and began moving faster than my heart and lungs could take. I ran out of glucose, adrenaline, endorphins, and all that and collapsed on the ground. I lay perfectly still and listened.
After a few minutes, I stood slowly and began walking softly through the brush. I intersected an old gravel road that led to the service gate on Grace Lane. I followed the road until I saw the guesthouse through newly budded cherry trees. I was pretty sure the shotgun boys wouldn’t penetrate this far into the Stanhope estate, so I took my time getting to the house. As someone once said, there’s nothing quite so satisfying as being shot at and missed. I felt terrific, on top of the world. My only regret was that I couldn’t tell this story to anyone. What I needed, I realized, were friends who would appreciate this escapade. I would have told Susan, but she wasn’t my friend anymore.
I came into the house through the rose garden and saw by the clock in the study that I had apparently misjudged the time. It was past eleven, and Susan was gone. Again, I discovered that I didn’t care. Finding out that you didn’t care about things you used to care about was all well and good, but the next step was trying to find out what you
did
care about.
I went into the kitchen and saw a note on the table. It read:
Please remember to be at your aunt’s at three.
I crumpled up the note. Screw Aunt Cornelia. I opened the refrigerator and grazed awhile, stuffing my mouth with whatever struck my fancy, leaving a mess of opened containers, wrappings, and half-eaten fruit. I grabbed a handful of blueberries, slammed the door, and went upstairs.
Primitive is one thing, but a hot shower is something else. I stripped, showered, and ate blueberries, but I didn’t shave. I dressed casually in jeans, sweatshirt, and loafers without socks and got out of the house before Susan returned.
I jumped into my Bronco and drove onto the old, overgrown path that once connected the guesthouse to the service road and subsequently, the service gate. These old estates had not only service entrances to the main house, but servants’ stairways so that ladies and gentlemen never met staff on the stairs, and in addition, there was a system of roads or narrow tracks for deliveries, work vehicles, and such. These places were sort of forerunners to Disneyland, where armies of workers ran around on hidden roads, through tunnels and back doors, attending to every need, making meals appear like magic, cleaning rooms, and making gardens grow, always out of sight, like little elves.
Anyway, I crossed the service road, drove along a footpath to the pond, and got out of the Bronco. I examined the footprints left in the ground, saw the paw marks at the muddy edge of the water, and found an eight-gauge shotgun cartridge that I put in my pocket. Satisfied that I hadn’t been hallucinating on beta blockers, I got back into the Bronco and proceeded down the road toward the service gate in order to avoid Susan and the Allards if they were coming home from church. The service gate, which is never used anymore, was padlocked, but like a good maintenance man, I had a ring of keys in the Bronco for every keyhole on the Stanhope estate. I opened the padlock and gates and drove out onto Grace Lane a few hundred yards from the main gate.
I headed north to avoid the Jag, which would be coming up from Locust Valley, meanwhile trying to figure out where to go. Errant husbands should have a destination, but few of them do, and they usually wander around in their cars, not wanting to go someplace where people will ask them how the missus is.
I passed the gates of Alhambra on my left and noticed two gentlemen in black suits posted at the entranceway.
I guess I was still royally ticked off about the events of the previous day, though I knew if I were to verbalize my complaints to a friend, he or she would not fully comprehend how the hayloft incident or the Bellarosa incident could have put me in high dudgeon. People never do. Of course I would say, “There’s more to it.’’ And there was, but most of that was in my head, unconnected to the physical world, and no one but a shrink would sit still for my monologue on all the injustices of life and marriage.
Anyway, I drove around awhile and wound up in Bayville, which is sort of a blue-collar town sitting on prime Long Island Sound real estate. This place is ripe for gentrification, but I think there’s a village ordinance against BMWs and health food stores.
The main industries of the small village of Bayville are fishing, boatyards, nautical stores, and the dispensing of alcohol. You wouldn’t expect to find so many gin mills in so small a place, but it’s a matter of supply and demand. Some of the places are rough, some rougher, and the roughest is a place called The Rusty Hawsehole. A hawsehole, if you care, is the hole in the bow of a ship through which the anchor cable passes. I think the bars and restaurants on Long Island are scraping the bottom of the bilge for unused nautical names, but this place
looked
like a rusty hawsehole, and it was open for Easter services. I parked the Bronco in the gravel lot between a pickup truck and four motorcycles and went inside.
A waterfront gin mill at night has a degree of local color, exuberance, and
je ne sais quoi.
But on a Sunday afternoon, Easter Sunday at that, The Rusty Hawsehole was as depressing as the anteroom to a gas chamber.
I found a stool at the bar and ordered a draft beer. The place was done up in standard nautical motif, but I wouldn’t outfit a garbage scow from the junk on the walls and ceiling. I noticed that my fellow celebrants included three men and a woman in interesting black leather motorcycle attire, a few old salts whose skin had that odd combination of sun weathering and alcohol pickling, and four young men in jeans and T-shirts playing video games and alternating between catatonia and St. Vitus’ dance. I don’t think there was a full set of teeth in the house. I was aware that the dark corners and booths held more of the damned.
I bought some bar snacks, the kind of stuff that should have warning labels, and munched away. The Seawanhaka Corinthian Yacht Club is a mile or so down the road from here, and in the summer the nautical gentry will visit places like The Rusty Hawsehole after a day of sailing. When one is safely back at one’s country club, one will casually mention the visit, thus suggesting that one is a real man. But here I was in off-season, sipping suds and eating prole food, watching the blue haze of cigarette smoke float past the bar lights.