“So you miss them?”
“Like crazy. All the time. All the time.” He said it as though it was still hard for him to believe. “I mean, you’d think after a while it’d become easier, but . . .” He shook his head. “ . . . you want a beer. or something?” He made a halfhearted little laugh. “I got a joint.”
“You still smoke?”
“Not like I used to. But, you know, when things are boring I like to tune out. Then I don’t think about things too much. I mean, it could break your heart . . .”
They wandered down to the bottom of the yard. There, at Neil’s instigation they clambered over the low wall onto a strip of land which had been used as a dumping ground for vehicles, including an old school bus. It was all delightfully furtive, which made the mild high Rachel got when she took a hit of Neil’s joint all the more fun.
“Ah, that’s better,” Neil said. “I should have done this before I came. I don’t like these shindigs anymore. Not on my own.” He took his third drag on the reefer and passed it back to Rachel. “In fact, you know what?”
“What?”
“I don’t like much anymore. I’m going to end up like my Dad. Did you meet my Dad?”
“Everrett.”
“You remember.”
“Of course I remember,” Rachel said, with a little laugh.
“Everrett Hancock Wilkens.”
“Hancock?”
“Hey, don’t knock it. Hancock’s my middle name too.”
She repeated the name, through mounting laughter. The syllables suddenly seemed funny as hell. “Does anybody ever call you Hancock?’ she giggled.
“Only my Mom,” he said, dissolving into laughter himself. “I always knew I was in trouble when I was a kid ’cause I’d hear her yelling—”
They yelled together—“Hancock”—then in perfect synchronicity glanced guiltily back toward the yard, where several heads had turned in their direction.
“We’re making fools of ourselves,” Rachel said, attempting to suppress her laughter.
“That’s the story of my life,” Neil said. There was hurt behind the remark, despite his offhand manner. “But I’m past caring.”
By sheer force of will Rachel wiped the smirk off her face. “I’m sorry things turned out the way they did,” she said; then lost her composure completely, and began laughing so hard she was doubled up.
“What’s so funny?” Neil wanted to know.
“Hancock,” she said again. “It’s such a silly name.” She wiped the tears away from her eyes. “Oh Lord,” she said, “I’m sorry. You were saying . . .”
“Never mind,” Neil said. “It wasn’t anything important.” He was still grinning; but there was something else in his look.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he replied. “I was only thinking . . .”
She suddenly knew what he was going to say, and willed him not to spoil the moment by doing so. But she failed.
“ . . . what an idiot I was . . .”
“Neil.”
“ . . . giving you up . . .”
“Neil, let’s not . . . no, please let me. I might never get another chance to tell you what’s in my head . . .”
“Are you sure we shouldn’t just have another smoke?”
“I’ve thought about you such a lot over the years.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
“It’s true,” he said. “I’ve had so many regrets in my life. So many things I wished I’d done differently; wished I’d done right. And you’re at the top of the list, Rachel. The number of times I’ve seen you in a magazine, or on the television, and thought: she could have been with me. I could have made her so happy.” He looked directly into her eyes. “You know that, don’t you?” he said. “I could have made you so happy.”
“We took different paths, Neil,” she said.
“Not just different. Wrong.”
“I don’t think—”
“Not you. I’m not talking about you. God knows, you made a smart move marrying Geary. No. I’m talking about my screwups.” He shook his head, and she realized that there were sudden tears in his eyes.
“Oh, Neil—”
“Don’t mind me. It’s just the fucking pot.”
“Do you want to go back to the party?”
“Not particularly.”
“I think we should. They’ll be wondering where we got to.”
“I don’t care. I don’t even fucking like ’em. Any of ’em.”
“I thought you said you were a small-town boy at heart,” Rachel countered.
“I don’t know what I am,” Neil confessed. “I used to know . . .” His gaze lost its focus; he stared off between the rusted vehicles into the darkness. “I had such dreams, Rachel . . .”
“You can still have them.”
“No,” he said. “It’s too late. You have to seize the moment. If you don’t seize the moment suddenly it’s passed, and it doesn’t come again. You get one chance. And I missed mine.” He returned his gaze to her. “You were that chance,” he said.
“That’s sweet, but—”
“You don’t have to tell me, I know. You never loved me, so it wouldn’t have worked anyway. But I still think about you, Rachel. Never stopped thinking about you. And I swear I could have made you love me. And if I had . . .” He smiled, so sadly. “If I had everything would have been different.”
She got a little lecture from Deanne the morning after the barbecue. What was she thinking, going off like that, with Neil Wilkens, of all people, Neil Wilkens? That kind of thing might be all right in New York, but this was a small community, and you just didn’t behave like that. Rachel felt as though she were being chastised like an errant child, and told Deanne to keep her opinions to herself. Besides, what the hell was wrong with Neil Wilkens?
“He’s practically an alcoholic,” Deanne said. “And he got violent with his wife.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Well it’s true,” Deanne said. “So really, Rachel, you’d be better off staying away from him.”
“I wasn’t intending to—”
“You can’t just waltz in here—”
“Wait—”
“—as if you owned the place—”
“What are you talking about?”
Deanne looked up from her cleaning, her face flushed. “Oh you know damn well.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t.”
“Embarrassing me.”
“What? When was this?”
“Last night! Leaving me with all these people asking where you’d gone. What was I supposed to say? Oh she’s off somewhere flirting with Neil Wilkens like a fifteen-year-old—”
“I was not.”
“I saw you! We all saw you, giggling like a schoolgirl. It was very embarrassing.”
“Well I’m sorry,” Rachel said coolly. “I won’t embarrass you any longer.”
She went back to her mother’s house, and packed. She wept while she packed. A little out of anger at the way Deanne had talked to her; but more out of a strange confusion of feelings. Maybe Neil Wilkens had beaten his wife. But, Lord, she’d liked him, in a way she couldn’t entirely explain. Was it that she half-believed she belonged here? That the girl who’d been enamored of Neil all those years ago had not entirely disappeared, but was still inside her, trembling in expectation of a first kiss, her hopes for perfect love still intact? And now she was weeping, that girl, out of sorrow that her Neil and she had taken separate roads?
How perfectly ridiculous all this was; and how predictable. She went to the bathroom, washed her tear-stained face, and gave herself a talking to. This whole trip had been a mistake. She should have stayed in New York and faced what was going on between herself and Mitch head-on.
On the other hand, perhaps it was healthy to have been reminded that she was now an exile. She would no longer be able to entertain sentimental thoughts of returning to her roots; she had to be ready to move on down the road
she’d chosen. She would go back, she decided, and talk everything out with Mitch. She had nothing to lose from being honest. And if they decided they were mismatched, then she’d explain that she wanted a divorce, and they’d begin proceedings. Maybe she’d get some advice from Margie about what she was worth on the ex-wife market. After that? Well, she’d have to see. The only thing she knew for certain was that she wouldn’t be coming back to live in Dansky. Whatever she was at heart (and right now she didn’t have a clue) she was absolutely certain she was no longer a small-town girl.
She left that day, despite her mother’s protests. “Stay another night or two at least,” Sherrie said. “You’ve come all this way.”
“I really need to get back.”
“It’s Neil Wilkens, isn’t it?”
“It’s nothing to do with Neil Wilkens.”
“Did he make a pass at you?”
“No, Mom.”
“Because if he did—”
“Mom, he was a perfect gentleman.”
“That man doesn’t know the meaning of the word gentleman.” She stared at Rachel fiercely. “A hundred Neil Wilkens aren’t worth one Mitchell Geary.”
The observation stayed with her, and on the long drive back to New York she found herself idly musing on the two men, like a princess in a storybook weighing the relative merits of her suitors. One handsome and rich and boring; one balding and beer-bellied but still capable of making her laugh. They were in every way different, except in this: they were both sad men. When she brought their faces to mind they were sad faces, defeated faces. She knew where the source of Neil’s defeat lay: he’d told her himself. But why was Mitch, with all the gifts history and genetics had showered upon him, ultimately just as sorrowful? It was a mystery to her, and the more she thought about the mystery the more it seemed there could be no healing the wound between them until she’d solved it.
PART FOUR
The Prodigal’s Tide
I
Last night I had a visit from Marietta. She brought me some cocaine, which she said she’d acquired in Miami and was of the very best quality. She also brought me a bottle of Benedictine, along with instructions on how to dissolve the drug in the liquor, so as to make, she promised, a potent concoction. It was time we went out adventuring together, she said; and this would put me in the perfect mood. I told her I couldn’t go anywhere. There were too many ideas in my head; threads of my story which I had to keep from becoming knotted up.
“You’ll work better after a little play,” she pointed out.
“I’m sure you’re right, but I’m still going to say no.”
“What’s the real reason?’ she demanded.
“Well,” I said, “the fact is . . . I’m about to start writing about Galilee. And I’m afraid if I stop now—before I face the challenge—I may not want to start again.”
“I don’t understand why,” Marietta remarked. “I would have thought it would be something wonderful to write about him.”
“Well I find the prospect intimidating.”
“Why?”
“He’s been so many people in his life. He’s done so much. I’m afraid I won’t capture him. He’ll just become a cluster of contradictions.”
“Then maybe that’s what he is,” she remarked, sensibly enough.
“People will still think the error’s mine,” I protested.
“Oh Eddie, it’s only a book.”
“It is not . . . only a book It’s my book. And it’s a chance to tell something nobody else has ever told.”
“All right, all right,” she said, showing her palms in surrender, “don’t get yourself stirred up. I’m sure it’s going to be brilliant. There.”
“I don’t want to hear that. You’ll make me self-conscious.”
“Oh Lord. Well then what can I say?”
“Absolutely nothing. You can just leave me to get on with it.”
• • •
Even then I had not told her everything. Yes, I was fearful of the subject that lay before me—of Galilee—and was nervous that if I once lost the flow of my story I would not find it easy to return to it with the prospect of his appearance looming. But I was more fearful still of accompanying Marietta out beyond the perimeters of the house; of going back into the world after so many years. I was afraid, I suppose, of finding whatever lay out there now so overwhelming that I’d be like a lost child. I’d weep, I’d shake, I’d wet my pants. God knows, ridiculous as all these thoughts must seem to you, who live out there in the midst of things and presumably take all you see and experience for granted, they were very real concerns to me. I had been, you must remember, a kind of willing prisoner of L’Enfant for so long that I had become like a man who has passed the bulk of his life in a tiny cell, and when he is released—though he has dreamed of the open sky for decades—cowers at the sight of it, in terror of being unconcealed by his prison walls.
In short, Marietta left me in a foul mood, feeling as though there was no comfort anywhere tonight. If I stayed, I faced Galilee. If I went, I faced the world. (Which implies, now I read it back, that Galilee is all the world is not, and vice versa. Unintentionally, I may have said something true about him there.)
As much to put off the moment when I had to return to the text I decided to experiment with the makings of the aphrodisiac Marietta had left me. Just as she had instructed, I poured out a measure of Benedictine into a cordial glass, and then, opening the little bag of cocaine, some of which was powdery, some of which was lumpen, I selected a sizeable nugget and dropped it into the liquor, stirring it around with my pen. It didn’t entirely dissolve; the result was a slightly cloudy liquor. I toasted my text, there on the desk before me, and downed the mixture. It burned my throat, and I instantly thought I’d made an error. I sat down, my eyes watering. I could feel the track of the liquor all the way down my esophagus, or so I imagined, then seeping over the wall of my stomach, still burning.
“Marietta . . .” I growled. Why did I ever listen to a word that damn dyke said? She was a liability. But I’d no sooner uttered her name than the drug began to take its effect. I felt a welcome enlivening of my limbs; and a kind of brightening of my thoughts, a quickening.
I got up from my desk, feeling a rush of strength in my lower limbs. I needed to get out of my room for a while, out into the balmy evening. I needed to stride awhile beneath the chestnut trees; fill my head with the scents of dusk. Then I could come back to my desk refreshed, ready to tackle the task of Galilee.
II
Before I went I mixed myself another cordial glass to brimming, with a somewhat larger pebble of cocaine dissolved therein. Rather than drink it down then and there I took it with me, down the stairs and out, via a side door, onto the lawn. It was a beautiful evening—calm and sweet. The mosquitoes were out in force, but the coke and brandy had rendered me indifferent to their assaults. I wandered through the trees to the place where the cultivation of the grounds is relinquished to the glorious disorder of the swamp. The honeyed smells of garden flowers give way here to ranker scents: to the mingled fragrances of rot and stagnancy.
My eyes gradually became better accustomed to the starlight and by the glitter of those distant suns I was able to see some considerable distance between the trees. I watched the alligators on the banks, or moving through the laval waters; I watched the bats passing overhead, weaving their way between the branches in great multitudes.
Please realize that the pleasure I took in all this—the night animals, the rotted trees, the general miasma—had nothing to do with the cocaine. I have always enjoyed sights and species that the common throng would think of as unsavory, even signs of evil. Some of this enjoyment is aesthetic; but part comes out of the kinship I feel with unprettified nature, being as I am, a good example of same. I smell more rank than sweet, I look more degenerate than newly budded.
So, anyway; there I was, wandering at the edge of the lawn, surveying the swamp before me, and taking no little pleasure in the sight. I
had carried my cordial glass down thus far without sipping a drop from it (sometimes the best of a drug—as with so much else—lies not in the consumption, but in the anticipation of the consumption). Now I took a mouthful, and swallowed it down. It was quite considerably stronger than the first draught. Even as it slid down my throat I seemed to feel my body responding to its presence: the same agitation in my limbs as I’d felt before, the same quickening of my thoughts. I’ve heard it said that this quickening is purely an illusion; that all the cocaine is doing is tricking the mind into believing it’s performing mental gymnastics, when all it’s doing is tripping over itself. I beg to differ. I’ve enjoyed some fine intellectual sport riding the white powder, and I’ve come away from the exercise with ruminations that stood the test of straight study.
But tonight I could not have had an intellectual exchange with someone if my life had depended upon it. Perhaps it was the potent mixture of cocaine and Benedictine; perhaps it was the fact of being out here in the wilderness alone; perhaps it was simply a readiness in me, but I found myself aroused. My head throbbed pleasantly, my heart beat hard in my breast, as though preparing itself for something, and my cock, which, excepting the visit from Cesaria, had been quiescent for several months, had risen up in my baggy pants, and was nuzzling at my fly in the hope of release.
My desire had no object, let me say; real or imagined. Marietta’s concoction had simply given my body a wake-up call, and its first thoughts, now that it was awake, were sexual. I laughed out loud, perfectly happy with my lot at that moment; not desiring anything more than what I had: the stars, the swamp, the glass in my hand; my heart, and a hard-on. All lovely; and laughable.
Maybe I should return to the desk now, I thought, while I was still in such a positive frame of mind, if I was brave, and wrote on through my doubts, I could perhaps get the beginnings of Galilee on the page—his skeleton, so to speak—before the confidence the cocaine bestowed passed. I could flesh it out later. What mattered was to begin. And of course if I needed a little more courage along the way, I could always mix another glass of the concoction.