The Royal Family (40 page)

She was a tall, pleasant-looking person with long reddish-blonde hair. She remembered Irene as wearing round glasses which made her look old, with her hair up. Irene had never liked to do anything with John. Celia suffered few doubts that she was prettier and more agreeable than Irene.

She had enrolled in the paralegal course less out of any interest in John’s profession than to prove to both John and herself that she was not one of those hapless easy girls who wait around by telephones. Another thing she did to fill the time was keep lists, the latest of which went:

apologize to CCK
apologize to Dean and Stacey
call Ellen to link template to Dean
get Sandy out of the loop?
finish first memo to Jerry
call John
and ask him The Question
set up tutorial

When Irene died, she began to suffer from terrible nightly headaches which impaired her studies, so she ended them. She believed that she had a great deal to reproach John for; however, now was not the time to air her grudges, but to deposit them in her mental vault where they could earn compound interest. It had become her intention to marry John even though she had no faith that he or any man could be “right” for her. When she thought of him, she thought of compatibility, security, stylishness. Sometimes she thought of having a baby. All these supposed motives helped to conceal that brutishly simple craving for companionship which draws widowers to street whores, crowds to dictators, monks to God.

I can’t believe that Cardinal O’Connor, her brother Donald was saying on the phone. I detest that Cardinal O’Connor. He’s exerting control and that’s what I hate in religion. If you really look at him he’s a revolutionary. He wants to throw out ideas to change people and he wants to tell people how to do things. Give the mother the ultimate choice.

Just a second, Donny, she said. There’s a call on my other line. I think it’s John.

Well, what do you think about what I said?

Just a minute, Donny. I’ll be right back. Hello?

You’re busy, said John.

Are you coming over?

No fear of that for at least two hours, he said. Can you wait up?

I was going to make dinner for you. I guess I can eat alone . . .

Well, you’d better get back to your other call, he said. Who is it?

It’s my brother.

Tell him I can’t stand the ties he wears. Tell him I’ll take him to Donatello’s and show him how it’s done.

Oh, good grief, said Celia. See you.

Goodbye, said John.

John?

What?

Is something wrong?

I’m so
glad
that everybody keeps asking me that, said John, hanging up, positively grinding the phone into its cradle like some accolyte of mortar and pestle . . .

Rapp’s already fifty-seven. I don’t know what he’s going to do when he retires. Me, I’m counting the days, Mr. Singer had said to John that afternoon, scratching his baldness. —Three hundred eighty-nine.

I’m sorry, said John. Three hundred eighty-nine what?

Days,
John.

John’s watch gleamed on his wrist at the edge of the white tablecloth. He raised his frosted mug of Sierra Nevada in a sort of toast and said: Well, Mr. Singer, we all have to reach that final deadline someday.

Ever the sentimentalist, John. Tell me this: Do you enjoy these private lunches?

Of course. By the way, the Brady contracts are almost ready for you to look at.

What do you mean,
almost
ready?

They’ll be ready on Thursday, unless Brady makes more changes.

Good, good. Brady’s definitely a live one. I know you take him out often on our nickel. Roland
lives
for private lunches, by the way. At least so he tells me. Mondays, lunch with Roland. Thursdays, lunch with John. See? I have it all here, right in my palmtop. It’s got a built-in deadline alarm, too. Does Roland confide in you?

I pretty much stick to my work, John replied. It’s no good getting confided in.

Do you feel as if you’re somehow in
competition
with Roland, John?

Well, you made me full partner. You didn’t make him full partner yet. I guess when you do, I’ll have to compete with him. For the time being, I ignore him.

You know, John, I really like you. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because you’re such an unreconstructed sonofabitch. You just don’t care. You’re a hard young man, and hard men get things done. Do you know who Heydrich was?

World War II was before my time, said John. I’m a know-nothing.

Come
on,
young John. Don’t let me down. What was Heydrich’s first name?

Reinhard. Do you want me to back-burner the tobacco deal so we can wrap up Brady? I have to tell you that he may insist on more changes.

What’s a meteope, John?

A rectangular slab above the architrave of a Doric temple. Can I go now?

Smiling a pink self-satisfed smile, leaning forward, Mr. Singer said: You know, Rapp and Singer have kept the same offices since ’67. That was when they still had cobalt at Walter Reed Hospital. I guess they mainly use electricity now. Sometimes cesium. I’m going through all that again with my sister. In ’67 it was my wife. You have a brother, don’t you, John? What would you do if your brother were in intensive care, waiting to die?

Pull the plug, said John. And I’m going to back-burner those tobacco people.

Mr. Singer had a trick—actually less than unique—of staring wide-eyed through his glasses into his interlocutor’s face and repeatedly addressing him by his first name, possibly because some book on business sincerity had advised it decades ago, or simply in
order to retain the name in his memory. —Well, John, he’d say, it certainly was a tremendous disappointment about Reginald. He won’t be coming back. —I don’t suppose so, said John. —Mr. Singer leaned forward and took a deep breath, and John knew that the next word he would hear would be his own name.

John, he inquired, what does your brother do?

He’s a snoop.

A lot of attorneys don’t want to say after the Nader stuff that they’re using private eyes. But you have to do it, of course. Can you recommend him, John? We’d use him on your say-so.

My brother? Hell, I don’t know.

You said you’d pull the plug on him—hee, hee! Oh, yes, now I remember that he let us down that warehouse job. I’d forgotten about that. Or was he sick? Didn’t you tell me he was sick? Say something, John.

You were talking about cancer, Mr. Singer.

Cesium is what they use these days. At least that’s what they tell me. You’ve never had cancer in your family, have you, John?

Not yet, Mr. Singer. But there’s always a first time.

In my case, it’ll be the third time, if we count my wife. Of course a wife is not a blood relative.

John, of course, had no idea that just then Mr. Singer was remembering his young wife’s lonely moments before the mirror, searching for her first wrinkle, wanting not to find it, hoping that when it came her husband would say that it didn’t matter. Mr. Singer had caught her in front of the mirror almost every day when she was Irene’s age.

So you were diagnosed? said John, squeezing his napkin in his lap. Well, I’m very sorry to hear that. And your parents?

Auto accident. Are your parents still alive?

Yes, said John, knowing that by the rules of discourse Mr. Singer, by virtue of his unsolicited confession, was now entitled to pick and poke through John’s private life as he pleased.

You know, John, sometimes it helps to talk about these things. You understand why Rapp’s not here today?

Doctor’s appointment, said John, who knew everything.

When he heard my news, he got a scare. He went in for a checkup. They’re probably giving him the sigmoidoscope treatment even as we—

Raspberry venison and spicy mussel salad, said the waiter. Enjoy your meal, gentlemen.

He’s new, said Mr. Singer. John, is our waiter new?

I don’t think so. His face looks very familiar.

And how’s life, John?

Fine.

I know it’s a painful subject.

Nothing compared to the sigmoidoscope treatment, said John, and Mr. Singer laughed and from the first steaming blue shell-tomb extracted with little silver pincers the occupant, which he dipped in butter and laid softly upon a bed of noodles.

John, I’m going to ask Roland to help you with Brady.

Is that a vote of no confidence?

Not at all, not at all. But you and Roland need to learn to work together—

Ah, thought John to himself. That means that he wants to make Roland full partner. Of course Rapp might not agree. I wonder if I should go along with this or make waves . . .

Do you object?

All right. I object.

Then I won’t ask him. You see, I’m actually trying to help.

Noted and appreciated, said John through his teeth.

How are your in-laws coping?

They’re not really on my wavelength. We don’t keep in contact.

Ah. And how’s your mother?

Fine. Better, actually . . .

Why don’t you and your brother get on? Mr. Singer suddenly inquired.

Well, do you remember when I came to work with my left hand in a bandage? He slammed a car door on my hand.

And it wasn’t an accident?

Nope. Hank doesn’t commit accidents; he commits crimes.

Well, too bad we’re not in the personal injury business, said Mr. Singer with a wink, trying to be upbeat, although with John that was sometimes difficult.

It had been a hundred and seven degrees in Sacramento at noon on Monday when Tyler passed the sidewalk of unfriendly summer school kids who kept wiping their sweaty upper lips, and he turned into his mother’s driveway, whose hedges gave off the sour-bitter smell of malathion; his mother had been having problems with scale insects, so she went to Home Masters and purchased more of that poison sometimes used to commit murders, then went to work with her pump spray can. As soon as he got out of the car, his head began to ache, he wasn’t sure whether from the malathion or simply from the heat, to which he was no longer acclimated. His T-shirt stuck to his chest and shoulders. A truck went by, clothed with grafitti as so many of them were now. There was a sour-bitter taste in his throat. All auto doors locked, his duffel bag over his shoulder, Tyler approached the front door, hating Sacramento, and rang the bell.

The front door opened almost at once, offering him air-conditioned air with a sour-bitter odor. It was John.

Has Mom been going crazy with the pesticides again? said Tyler, concealing his surprise at this apparition.

Oh, so you can smell it, too? said John. Well, don’t just let the hot air in.

Tyler stepped inside, and John closed the door, a bit too quickly, he thought, a bit too loudly. The two brothers went into the living room. John sat down on the sofa, staring down at a water glass a quarter full of Scotch. Tyler went to the kitchen and got a bottle of fizzy water from the fridge. He was still carrying his duffel bag. He walked back to the front hall and set it down behind the umbrella stand. Then he returned to the living room, where John sat holding the untasted glass.

Where’s Mom? Tyler said.

You mean you don’t even know where Mom is?

No, I guess I don’t. How are you doing, John?

Fine. Mom’s chest pains got pretty bad yesterday. I just drove her to the hospital. I
would have waited there, but she insisted that I come back here to let you in. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t have left you a note . . .

So that’s how it is, Tyler thought. He said aloud: Well, John, I’m here now, so should we go to the hospital?

It doesn’t matter now, said John vaguely, waving his hand.

Tyler inspected his brother closely. He said: John, are you drunk?

Let’s leave me out of this.

Leave you out of what? You always want to be left out, or have something left out, or—oh, forget it.

I could punch you in the face right now, John said. The glass trembled in his hand.

Tyler was so made—or had made himself—that any threat effectively depersonalized and professionalized him, lowering between himself and the world several thicknesses of bulletproof glass. He smiled mirthlessly at his brother and remained in place, watching for any indication of abrupt movement from this body which might possibly strike at him.

Oh, you goddamn coward, said John after a while.

Tyler continued to smile, saying nothing.

Now John raised the glass to his lips and gulped it. He grimaced. His shoulders slumped. Tyler, with his not inconsiderable knowledge both of his brother and of violent people, was satisfied now that there would be no open battle. There had not been for a very long time. Because alcohol makes possible the realization of certain ugly wishes which fear (politely known as reason) usually keeps locked away in the lowest iron corridors of the cerebellum, Tyler had experienced for several instants a sickening surge of dread, far surpassing the anxiety he’d felt at the news of their mother’s condition—not that he didn’t love his mother; nor was he at all, as John had intimated, a coward; but there had been a number of occasions when as children they’d bloodied one another’s noses; the antipathy between them was now so old that its causes were as lost to his knowledge as the creation of the world; he did not want to see it come out. Once while scuba diving he’d discovered within inches of him an anemone wriggling its tendrils, like any rotten apple upon whose top live and labor maggot swarms; and the sight of that actually inoffensive creature sometimes came back to him in dreams; his skull was the apple, and he did not want to feel the maggots of anger and hatred burst out. That was what he dreaded. And now, of course, Irene lay dead between them. When you swim up toward the surface of the sea you see a dimpled mirror of great sacredness; this is the goal of life and art and reason, to break through this barrier and leave the anemones once more invisible in the blue darkness; but on the other side one finds mosquitoes and weary heat; one goes to work and gets older; the anemones are still there, but they cannot come out; neither (more’s the pity) can the beautiful corals beneath the sea, or the schools of yellow fishes raining down headfirst; that was one of the reasons why Tyler continued to pursue the Queen of the Whores, because he was convinced that the secret tremendousness in which she lived would be lovely like that; and anyhow anemones inside other people’s skulls didn’t bother him; it was only his own that he feared; John’s anemones of course were Tyler’s.