Second Nature

  “People think they have privacy, but really, if you know how to tap into the right networks, you can pretty much get any file you want.”

  Stephen figured he was stuck with Matthew; he nodded to the next bush.

  “Oh,” Matthew said, pleased. “Sure.”

  He brought the honeysuckle over, and together they fitted it into the hole; then Matthew stood back as Stephen filled the dirt back in. It was an easy enough job, but on the last shovelful of earth, Stephen felt the metal hit against something. Puzzled, he stopped and crouched down.

  “What is it?” Matthew said.

  Stephen put his hands into the dirt. Above them the sky was perfectly blue.

  “Oh, brother.” Matthew came closer.

  A red-and-white cat had been buried in the dirt; its coat was matted, its jaws locked.

  “That’s the Simons’ cat,” Matthew said. “Reggie.”

  Stephen stood up and shoveled the corpse into the earth beside the honeysuckle. “It’s as good a place as any.”

  “Right,” Matthew said, backing away.

  Stephen realized that he could no longer hear the women talking. They had gone inside, and his rhythm was broken.

  “I guess you don’t need me bothering you,” Matthew said.

  “No bother,” Stephen said, because that was the sort of thing men said when they didn’t mean it. He turned to finish his work, so intent that he didn’t hear Matthew go back inside, he didn’t notice that there were fresh blisters on his hands, or that he was hearing the women’s voices anyway, somewhere inside his head.

  He knew Robin had stopped locking his door at night. Sleep was impossible; every sound jarred him. He heard everything. Not just the wind and the rain and the house settling, but Connor sneaking out, long past midnight. Connor always went out the side door and closed it carefully behind him. He carried his sneakers under his arm and shoved them on when he got into the yard. From his window, Stephen could see the radiant look on the boy’s face as he bent down to tie his laces.

  He knew what Connor was doing, because once he had seen the girl waiting, under the streetlight, at the end of Mansfield Terrace. She had that same luminous look, weightless and ignited. Even when they disappeared together, down the dark street, they left a pool of light behind them. And so it seemed to Stephen that everyone knew the secret he’d wanted to ask the old man about, even Connor, who was only a boy. What was this, this light that burned inside you, this thing that made you feel as though you couldn’t get enough air? He knew what loyalty was, it was what made you stay together and protect each other and share when there wasn’t enough for yourself.

  But this was different, this seemed as if it could kill you if you weren’t careful. Stephen had to be careful, and he was careful all the time. He judged himself harshly. She’d forgotten the lock, that was all; anything more was simply in his own mind. There were nights when he moved the oak dresser in front of his door. He took the old black coat out of the closet and wrapped himself up, but he was much too hot to wear it. He began to burn on the coolest evenings, and the heat went up, into his head, until he thought he might explode. He believed he must be crazy or under the influence of some terrible ailment that boiled his blood, and there was no one to tell him that falling in love would make any sensible man feel exactly the same.

  FIVE

  EACH AUGUST, STUART placed his alarm clock in a dresser drawer and slept until the white-hot sunlight woke him. He wore the same clothes for as long as he liked, and didn’t bother to shave. This, the most beautiful month of the year, stretched out before him endlessly, with days that lasted achingly long, and nights that were purple and rich. For the whole month he didn’t work; he didn’t set foot in the hospital. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his patients, but he needed to think about simple things: Bluefish and watering cans. Fresh peaches, sliced thin. Egrets, feasting on minnows and crabs.

  This year, however, Stuart’s thoughts were not simple, and August brought no comfort. He had meant it when he told Kay he didn’t want the house. He’d had enough of the island to last him a lifetime; he was forty-two years old and the shop-keepers still treated him like a little boy, discreetly suggesting bargain goods the way they had after Old Dick went broke. But now, facing a summer in Manhattan, he felt waves of panic. If he’d been his own patient, he would have recommended a strong antidepressant and intensive therapy. As it was, he watched TV around the clock and found himself growing addicted to game shows and news programs. He’d planned to rent a house out in Sag Harbor, but somehow he’d never gotten around to it. And then one night, early in August, he woke up suddenly from a deep sleep and he knew that he wanted to go home. He packed an overnight bag, which was really all he needed, and took the Long Island Rail Road to the familiar stop. He walked briskly past the willows and over the bridge, then went to Kay and begged her to take him back.

  Kay wasn’t about to agree to a reconciliation, but she did agree to let him stay on the third floor, which had once been his office and had its own entrance and a small kitchen and bathroom. He felt like getting down on his knees right there on the front porch and begging for forgiveness. What had happened between them, he still wasn’t sure. At first, he thought it was because they hadn’t had children, but the truth was, he’d grown dull and taken her for granted and now it was too late. As he carried his overnight bag around to the side of the house, Kay took his arm.

  “One thing you should know,” she said. “I’m dating.”

  He had never loved anyone but Kay, he saw that now. How had he managed to lose her?

  “Well, that’s good,” Stuart said.

  He would like to see some aging beau try to cross his path. My God, the way he was feeling, he might just be there waiting for her date with a pitchfork or an axe. Kay had taken a step back to study him.

  “Really,” Stuart insisted. “You’ve made a healthy adjustment.”

  Like the desperate man he was he went to her, intending to loop his arms around her. There must be hope for them, otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to maintain a friendship. But Kay held up her hand, as if directing traffic, to keep him away.

  “Stuart,” she said. “It’s over.”

  “I know that,” Stuart told her. “Of course it is.”

  He went upstairs to what had once been his office and was now a musty storage area, then stretched out full on the floor and wept. Kay went into her kitchen, which she had just painted pale pink—she was, in fact, currently dating the painter, a large-boned Russian who loved to dance and who fixed potato-and-onion soup—and immediately phoned Robin.

  “Your brother’s here having a nervous breakdown,” Kay announced. “Or maybe it’s a midlife crisis. I’m not really sure what the difference is.”

  “You let him move back in?” Robin asked. She herself had been avoiding talking to Stuart, since it wasn’t quite as easy to lie to him as she’d imagined.

  “He’s up on the third floor. Let’s face it. He has nothing. He’s been at the hospital for fifteen years, and not one patient has ever improved. He has no social life. I don’t think he even knows how to talk to a woman. He certainly never talked to me. So I’m letting him stay, but just for August,” Kay said. “And I’m not taking full responsibility.”

  Which meant, of course, that Robin had to. She went over that afternoon, with a bag of groceries and the prescription for Prozac that Kay had ordered refilled at the pharmacy. She found the door to the third floor unlocked; bats had been nesting in the rafters and bits of plaster were sprinkled about.

  “Get off the floor,” Robin told her brother. “I brought Entenmann’s chocolate doughnuts.”

  “This is clearly a generational pattern,” Stuart said thoughtfully when he joined her at the dusty table. “Inability to maintain intimacy. It’s no accident that both of our marriages broke up.”

  “Oh, really?” Robin said. She had her hair tied up with a shoelace and she wore old shorts and a white T-shirt that was smudged with d
irt, and just for a second she wondered if she should have paid more attention to her appearance. Roy was the sort of man who liked women to wear short black dresses and high heels; he didn’t see any good reason for a woman to wear underwear, unless it was something tiny and made out of lace.

  “Gee whiz.” Robin grabbed a doughnut. “And I thought my problem was Roy’s ability to be intimate with dozens of people.”

  “You don’t know that,” Stuart said. “I’ll grant you the one affair, but the rest was probably all for show. Narcissists prefer bragging about who they’re fucking to actually doing it. They might have to relate to somebody once they’re in bed.”

  “The trouble with you is, you’re giving Kay too much power,” Robin said, veering away from any explanation of her own failed marriage. “Your happiness depends on you.”

  “Self-help,” Stuart said tiredly. “Spare me.” He opened the bottle of Prozac and gulped one down. “See?” he said. “I’ll bet Kay had this filled for me.” When Robin shrugged, Stuart grinned broadly. “She still cares.”

  “You’ve got bats in the attic,” Robin said.

  “That I do,” Stuart said. He tapped his head. “Right in here.”

  “Go to a bar,” Robin suggested. “Go fishing.”

  “Nothing interests me,” Stuart said. “It’s the first sign of depression.”

  Robin went to the refrigerator and began putting the groceries away. She found an ancient bunch of broccoli forgotten from Stuart’s last visit and, holding her nose, tossed it in the trash. Between Stuart and her grandfather, she could easily wind up as a full-time caretaker if she didn’t watch out. Already she was thinking of what she needed to bring to Stuart next time: sponges and paper towels, coffee and a new mop. She might have been angry, if only Stuart didn’t look so pathetic.

  He was, and always had been, the best keeper of secrets Robin had ever known, far better than Michelle, whose expression always betrayed her, leading her straight into honesty, whether she wanted to go there or not. All through their childhood, Stuart had kept his mouth shut; a hundred times their grandfather had questioned him about Robin’s bad behavior and a hundred times he had stared right back at the old man with his hazy expression while he knew fully well who had tied the sheets together to sneak out the window and who had shattered the stained-glass panels by slamming the door too hard. She had never once repaid him with anything more than a grin, and now, perhaps, it was time.

  “I’ve got something that would interest you,” Robin said.

  “Oh, I doubt that,” Stuart muttered.

  “I’ve been wanting to tell you for weeks, but I couldn’t. I shouldn’t even tell you now.”

  “You’re making me anxious,” Stuart said. He reached for another doughnut, but Robin stopped him.

  “Remember when you killed my parakeet?” she asked.

  “Not that again.” Stuart moaned.

  “You insisted you knew the best way to catch him, and you broke his neck.”

  “Are you still holding me responsible for the death of that damned bird? I was ten years old. The door to his cage was faulty. Is this memory supposed to cheer me up?”

  “I’m just reminding you. You don’t always know the best way to do everything.”

  “All right, I killed your parakeet. Now can I have my doughnut?”

  Robin grabbed her brother’s arm. “I’m serious,” she said.

  “You certainly are,” Stuart agreed.

  “Come to dinner tonight,” Robin said. “But you have to promise you’ll keep it secret once you know.”

  “What are we? Six years old?” Stuart laughed. But when he looked at his sister’s solemn face something happened. Although it seemed impossible, he felt a tiny sting of interest.

  “Well, all right,” Stuart said, doubtful as he was. “You have my word.”

  He arrived at the back door at seven-thirty, carrying a six-pack of dark German beer. Robin was waiting for him, and she quickly drew him inside. She had changed into white slacks and a clean T-shirt, and her hair was still wet from the shower.

  “I think Kay may be sneaking out on a date tonight,” Stuart said worriedly. “So this better be good.”

  “Oh, shut up and come in,” Robin said.

  “The perfect hostess,” Stuart said.

  There was marinara sauce heating on the back burner, and the pasta, already poured into the colander, had grown stringy and cold. Robin hadn’t been able to concentrate on the meal because she and Connor had argued. What was the point in telling Stuart? That’s what Connor wanted to know. Why tell anyone at all? Because he’s my brother, Robin had shouted, because we can trust him. She had stopped at that, just shy of the real truth: Because he needs this.

  “I probably should have gone over to see the old man,” Stuart said, uncapping a bottle of beer. “But I didn’t have the heart to listen to him rant and rave. And Ginny, with her cane, clomping about, dusting. I need quite a bit more Prozac before I’m ready for that.”

  “Actually, Grandpa’s been having a visitor every day,” Robin said. “It’s cheered him up.”

  “How much are you paying this visitor?” Stuart asked.

  “Nothing,” Robin said.

  “Oh, come on. No one in his right mind would spend time with Old Dick.”

  “Not that you’re projecting your own feelings,” Robin said.

  “All right,” Stuart allowed, as he put the rest of the beer in the refrigerator. “A masochist might enjoy it.”

  “Stephen likes going over to the carriage house. He reads to Old Dick.”

  “God bless him,” Stuart said. “He must be an idiot.”

  At the counter, where Robin was cutting up cucumbers, the knife slipped and she sliced a patch of skin off her thumb.

  “Jesus,” Stuart said when he saw the blood in the sink.

  “It’s nothing.” Robin held her hand under a stream of cold water when Stuart insisted. When she looked up from the sink she saw Stephen in the doorway. He was wearing the sports jacket they’d bought at Macy’s. Homer had followed him downstairs and was rubbing against his legs. Blood didn’t bother Stephen, but when he saw that Robin had cut her hand he winced, as though he’d been the one to feel the knife. He began to approach her.

  “It’s all right,” Robin told him as he came near. “I’m fine. You remember Stephen from the picnic?” she asked her brother.

  “The man who reads to the old monster.” Stuart nodded. “You have my sympathies.”

  “No, Stuart,” Robin said. “This is what I was talking about. The secret that would interest you?”

  Stuart looked at her blankly. “Yes?”

  “I took him from the hospital. He was never transferred upstate.” Stuart hadn’t even blinked. “The Wolf Man,” Robin said finally. “Don’t you see?”

  “Very amusing,” Stuart said. “In a sick kind of way.”

  “I didn’t plan to take him,” Robin said. “It just happened.”

  “No,” Stuart told her. “Not possible.”

  Stephen’s throat had become so dry that it hurt. He went to the refrigerator and got the orange juice, then took a long swallow right from the carton, the way Connor always did. Robin had asked for Stephen’s permission before telling Stuart, and of course he’d agreed. What else could he do? Even if he risked being taken back to the hospital, he couldn’t have said no to her. Not now.

  “You expect me to believe this is the Wolf Man?” Stuart asked.

  Stephen placed the carton of orange juice on the counter. “Maybe I shouldn’t be here,” he said.

  “Yes, you should be,” Robin said. She turned to Stuart. “Don’t you see? He’s not who you thought he was.”

  “You took a mentally deficient patient suffering from prolonged traumatic stress out of my ward and into your home? Is that it? Because if that’s the case, I should congratulate you on not being murdered in your sleep,” Stuart said. “Yet.”

  “Will you shut up!” Robin said. “Don’t you see
what this is? Don’t you appreciate it? He could talk all along. He chose not to. Well, now he will. He’ll talk to you, and all you have to do is agree not to discuss the case or publish before he’s gone. You can’t tell anyone.”

  Stuart sat down on a kitchen chair. The cat he had always despised rubbed against his legs, but he didn’t bother to push him away. Stephen leaned up against the counter, staring at Stuart. Stuart shook his head. Still there it was, right in front of him. The face that might easily have been set among painted gold stars on a blue ceiling was the one he could have seen months ago if only he had looked at what was beneath the hair and the beard. Homer had leapt into Stuart’s lap, but Stuart paid no attention. He no longer cared about the ruined dinner, or the beer he had planned to get drunk on. That wasn’t what he was interested in. On this glorious August evening on this glorious island he had hated for so long, he had just received a gift even he wasn’t foolish enough to turn down.

  Lydia Altero grew more generous by the day. The small feral cats, which avoided people at all costs, now came to the side door of the bakery where she was working for the summer to beg for bits of butter and saucers of cream. When customers ordered a pound of cookies, Lydia tossed in extras, free of charge: buttery moons dipped in dark chocolate, raspberry hearts, sweet macaroons. Each day business was better, and the owner of the bakery, the Russian housepainter’s sister, raised Lydia’s salary and kissed her on the cheeks. Women on diets threw caution to the wind and ordered anything Lydia recommended. The Simons’ little boys begged to be taken to the bakery after camp, and they swore that Lydia smelled like sugar frosting. Matthew Dixon, who had always loved sweets, was too tongue-tied to speak to her; instead of going into the bakery for danish and brownies, he stood on the pavement near the window hoping for the chance to watch her slice bread or brew coffee.

  Even at home, Lydia’s generosity seemed limitless. When she discovered that her little sister had borrowed her favorite white sweater, Lydia did nothing more than laugh, and when Jenny admitted she’d also taken several pairs of earrings, the dangling ones she wasn’t yet allowed to wear, Lydia declared that the earrings should now be considered a gift. She fixed café au lait for her startled father one Sunday morning and espresso on weekdays, and although she no longer spoke to her mother and could not imagine ever speaking to her again, she was gracious enough to keep her luminous eyes downcast each time her mother was in the room, even though she could have easily announced, with a single glance, that she had possession of the whole world and her mother had nothing at all.