The next month was suffocating. Aaron went about with a severe frown. He worked all day, was silent during meals, and read each evening without responding to questions. Betty’s tone of voice had a familiar meekness to it—as if anything harder might trigger an explosion. John bluffed cheerfulness so well that Richard believed he was oblivious to his parents’ behavior.
After Aaron and Betty would retire to their bedroom, Richard would go upstairs and talk with John while he painted the plasterboards he had placed between each beam. Richard repeated the stories about his father, with John glancing down from the ladder wearing a self-conscious smile. They both knew Aaron could hear him. Richard called Aaron egotistical and said that his taunting of Naomi had destroyed her self- confidence. John disagreed very mildly but Richard would insist. “You don’t know some of the stuff that would go on. Like when we were in the Hamptons and she was hitchhiking across the country. You know Naomi, she hadn’t shaved her legs and underarms, so when she came down to dinner after a shower he said, ‘You see. A shower and a shave and you’re fine.’ ”
John nodded his head and went on painting. Richard enumerated the times Aaron had hit him, how Leo had screamed hysterically while he was doing so. Richard’s tirade shifted to his brother: how Leo had never confronted Aaron as he and Naomi had; that this had marked him for life as a compromising weakling, untrustworthy, and repellent. It was an uncontrollable vomiting that he recognized as foolish and wrong. Somewhere in the middle of his attacks on the family, he would realize that John was embarrassed and Richard would try to make it seem like a joke.
Finally John opened up. He laughed scornfully as Richard started in on his father. Richard stopped and said, “What are you laughing about?”
“Listen, it isn’t so bad between you and Aaron. You should be more cool about it. You know?” He added the question softly and saw the shock on Richard’s face. “Aaron’s a powerful man. I respect him. He doesn’t fuck around.”
“That’s true,” Richard said with exaggerated bitterness.
“He’s on my back. Not yours.”
“Oh,” Richard said knowingly. “So you do see that?”
“Are you serious? He’s livid.” John laughed, his voice rich and appealing. “He’s wacko about his own life. We all are. But he lets it out and doesn’t care what that means to the world. I like that. You just have to learn not to be overpowered by it.”
This made Richard feel lonely. He said nothing.
John bent down to dip his brush in the paint. “He can fuck himself about this work.”
Richard laughed. “He’s gone totally bananas.” He looked up at John working, puzzled by his words. “So you think I should just ignore him?”
“No, not ign—”
“No, I know you don’t mean that. You think I should be charming and mild with him.”
John smiled. “By Gawd, yessuh.”
“No matter how insulting he is?”
“No, you have to defend yourself. You got to be smooth, though.” John looked at him significantly. “You have to have some social graces. People are insane. You have to be calm with them.”
Richard kicked a piece of wood. It sounded bleak in the hushed night. “So—” he started loudly. John hushed him. “So how do I do that?”
John got down from the ladder and put his brush carefully on the rim of the paint can. He took out a cigarette. Richard saw him hesitate. “I’m serious,” Richard continued, handing him matches. “I’ve checked you out. You get along brilliantly with people. Is that conscious?”
“Oh, sure. I used to be just like you. I would rave and kid people until they were ready to kill me. But you can’t get along like that. You have to give people room. Every time some clown says something foolish you have to smile and say, ‘Really?’ ” John imitated himself perfectly. Richard was impressed. He had assumed that saying, “Really?” was an unconscious habit, and it was a stunning revelation to hear John mimic himself with an ironic smile. “You know,” he continued, “Jonas comes along and says some wacked-out thing to me and I say, ‘Really?’ and he says, ‘Yes’ and I say, ‘Big time. You’re really rollin’!’ ”
Richard forced his laughter. He shook his head from side to side in wonder. “All that stuff. You’ve got it checked out.”
“Look, people are always showing you something they’re doing and asking for your opinion. All you do is say, ‘Big time. You’re really rolling.’ ” John was looking at him with amused triumph.
“You mean when somebody asks you about your work and you sit there very still and quietly say stuff like, ‘Well it was hard work but good to do, you know? I mean the reason the chimney is so powerful is because of Michel’s work on it. It was really big time working with him.’ ”
John listened gleefully to Richard’s imitation. “You got it. Gotta be humble. You have to look peaceful and humble.”
Richard cackled. “You’re really rolling.”
“I got my wheely-deally goin’. It’s my numberino.”
Richard looked at John open mouthed, thrilled by knowing his inner life. He realized how maddeningly unreachable John had been. “But that’s so different from Naomi’s crap about honesty.” John looked puzzled and Richard went on. “I mean she doesn’t make the slightest attempt to relate to people.”
John laughed. “She just blanks out. Naomi’s in a totally different world.” He became serious and stroked his beard. “She’s very strong. Your whole family is strong. I mean she really amazes me. She’ll get upset and challenge you on everything. With massive alertness. I mean she’ll just start jumping on you with no warning.”
“I know,” Richard said, eager to discuss her. “She’s crazy. I mean I admire her, but she goes too far.”
“Well, it’s hard to take but you have to remember she means no ill. You know?” He looked at Richard with careful softness.
“Yeah, I realize that. But I have to live. I can’t let her run all over me.”
John laughed at that and turned to move the ladder. “You shouldn’t worry about that. It’s my hassle.”
Richard’s voice was drowned out by the noise of the ladder being moved. John said, “What?” as he climbed up it. Richard repeated, “Are you bummed out by her?”
There was a long silence while John thoughtfully brushed the paint on. “Well, I really needed a break from her. You know? I mean I’ve wanted for a long time to be alone on the mountain. You know?”
“You mean just to—”
“Just to get up and make some coffee, watch the land, and work on the house. Without being hassled.”
Richard knew what he meant. They’d discussed the magical power of working alone. Richard envied John’s ability to achieve such grace.
“I wanted to do that just before she got pregnant.”
“Oh. So that’s why she left.” He remembered her sudden visit to New York years ago. Betty had told him that Naomi might marry someone.
“Well, she wanted to go too.”
Slowly Richard got the implication. “So what happened?”
John cleared his throat. He spoke casually. “She came hack in like three months. You know. She had that blank look and when we were lying upstairs in the sleeping loft—it was dawn and there was a beautiful breeze—she told me. Boy, I hit the ceiling.”
“You were angry?”
“Well—I freaked out. I didn’t know how I felt.” He stopped and Richard waited tensely. “We talked about an abortion. I knew a way of getting it done near Washington. She said she’d do it and that’s when I met you.”
“So that’s what you were doing.” Richard was uncomfortable about this story. Naomi appeared to have manipulated John which he felt was both reasonable and ridiculous. “How come she didn’t have it?”
John put his brush down and looked at him. Richard thought he detected nervousness behind his quiet eyes. “Well, she never really stuck to it. All the way there we would discuss it, and finally when she was examined, they said it was too far along for them to do it. In a way that was a relief.”
“Wow,” Richard said, shaking his head at him. He walked aimlessly toward a darkened section of the attic. He remembered his amazement when one night he got into an argument with Naomi about eating meat and she ended up in tears over the slaughtering of cows. “She wouldn’t have had an abortion.”
“Yeah, that’s probably true. I mean we both knew we were taking too long to get there.”
Another silence. “You must have felt really trapped,” Richard said finally, his tone unnatural.
John made a sarcastic noise. “Jesus. I was incredibly upset. I walked around with this bomb ready to explode. I mean it’s big time having a child. You can’t fuck around, you know? There’s no room for being irresponsible.” He gently brushed the paint on. “So I’m pleased I have a chance to be alone on the mountain.”
Richard sat down and relished this moment of great drama. He felt he had the key to John’s and Naomi’s lives. They are weak people, he thought, stumbling into a permanent bond—Nana. It was such a classic from literature. As time went on, John would feel trapped and decide Naomi had fooled him into having the baby; she would feel that she had wasted her life after the child had grown up; he would think that he could have lived a gutsy bachelor life. Probably John will drink more and more as he gets older, Richard said to himself. But then why am I drinking so much? The reason had to be sinister.
He sensed the onrush of revulsion before it hit. John and he were objectified in one terrible moment. Frightened little boys. Treating love and sexuality as if they were high school power games. Making fun of males drinking while Richard drained the Courvoisier. It was chic to be vulgar if you knew it was grossness.
Self-consciousness.
He reached for the word and could see his brother handing it to him. Leo would sneer and say, “Wood hippies! Living their self-conscious lives.”
“It’s too much to deal with,” Richard said aloud.
John looked at him in surprise and laughed. Richard said good night and left. It was the first time that he had ended the evening.
By the time John finished his work and left, Richard was resigned to the loss. He was tired of the tension between John and his parents. And the complication it created in his own relations with them couldn’t be resolved.
Richard’s work moved at a very fast rate and he was finished by June. His parents were impressed by the novel, but he took that for granted. They sent it to an agent, and his father wrote a cover letter that avoided absurdity. And then nothing. There was just waiting.
He didn’t live well. His parents urged him to go on walks—enjoy the freshness of the country. But he made the country house into an apartment: he stayed up until five or six each morning and slept through most of the day.
It was an effort to eat a dinner that was really an early lunch. He was out of synch—his parents ended the day happily while he warmed up to the fantasies and monologues of the night. And every day began with a defeat. No mail, his mother would say. Nothing for you, kiddo, was his father’s phrase. He was embarrassed by it and felt it had to end badly. Only movies finished with lucky letters that solved all.
Therefore he was excited to hear that his brother and Louise—the woman Leo had been living with for three years—were coming up. And he wasn’t displeased when his parents told him that he would have to share his room with a friend that was coming with them.
They arrived at lunch time on a brilliant sunny day. It was a shock to discover that the friend, Mark, treated him like a kid. He had become used to the assumption his family at least pretended to believe: that he was a novelist. It didn’t enrage Richard. He was even ironically pleased by it and sat back listening to the conversation, feeling his own absence. He counted at least three witticisms he would not have failed to make but that went by unsaid. When lunch was over he began to notice that his brother had an unusual air of self-importance. He trailed after them as the two young men toured the grounds, and Richard’s tolerance was strained by the fact that the only question asked of him was what the local school had been like when he went there. He labored at his answer and told an anecdote they enjoyed. But that was all. Literary and political subjects were discussed as if they were talking about sexual intercourse and he was eight years old.
In the evening it was the same. But when Richard woke up in the morning and found that Mark was up, he washed quickly so as not to miss the large morning breakfast. His parents weren’t there. He might have known that by sound alone:
Magical Mystery Tour
was being played on the hi-fi. Leo and Mark sat with their legs crossed, their knees resting against the edge of the butcher-block table. They were smoking, and the sun caught the smoke and danced with it over their heads.
“Hi, man,” his brother said with such good humor that Richard felt happy. Mark nodded at him and then he heard Louise say his name ominously. “Richard, if you want eggs here’s the pan. But Betty says that it shouldn’t be washed and left to dry because it—”
“Rusts,” Richard said with faint contempt.
Leo laughed.
“Oh, you know,” Louise said quickly. “How silly of me—you are the strange young man who lives here.” She picked up the coffeepot and shook it. “There’s coffee. But I think little Leo has eaten all de bacon.”
Richard knew he’d made her nervous and he felt bad. He and Louise had always gotten along very well. He put a hand on her arm to add to the reassurance of his words. “Thank you. Your preparations are thorough and, I feel, vital to the health of our community.” She and Leo laughed. They had always based their relationship with him on this kind of banter. Mark looked a little bewildered by the exchange, and Richard thought to himself, Oh, he’s going to be surprised every time I show intelligence. Louise announced that she was going out to read on the lawn and she left. Richard fried two eggs while Leo and Mark rustled the front and back sections of the New York
Times.
He broke both yolks when flipping them over and he told them about it proudly. Leo enjoyed his mood but Mark was stubbornly unresponsive. “So where are Mom and Dad that this rock-and-roll orgy is going on?”
Leo looked at him with ferocious appreciation. “You’re so Proustian today, man. It’s intense.”