She led Terence up onto the veranda, where a supply of ornaments was stacked, covered by a tarpaulin. (Terence noted wryly that the veranda creaked and sagged beneath their weight. When Holly Mae drew the tarpaulin aside, there was a scuttling as of black-shelled beetles fleeing the light.) “You wouldn’t think girls so young would’ve made these, would you? Aren’t they cute!” Holly Mae exclaimed. Terence picked out a fluorescent-pink flamingo with a cracked beak and a stag with a point of his antlers missing, reasoning that no other customer would want these. How vulgar they were, and yet, how charming! When Terence took out his wallet, and asked Holly Mae how much he owed her, she seemed embarrassed. “Why, Dr. Greene, I don’t know—I think the girls were asking five dollars apiece?”
“Five dollars! Surely you’re mistaken?” It saddened Terence to think of the girls working so hard, for so little reward. His daughters would never have done so.
Over Holly Mae’s protestations, Terence paid her forty dollars for the ornaments. He then carried them to his car, placed them in the back seat, and drove away—waving goodbye with childlike ardor to his new friend, as she stood, bulky in her overalls, her straw hat rakish on her brassy dyed curls, waving good-bye to him.
Buster too was Terence Greene’s new friend. The dog yipped, whined, and barked, trotting alongside his car, like an escort, until Terence’s speed carried him away. This time, Buster did not slip beneath the car’s wheels.
Afterward, Terence could not comprehend what he had done.
Am I mad? Am I sick?
Never in his entire professional career, going back to the early years as a teaching assistant at Harvard, had Terence Greene called in sick, falsely; never would he have wished to do so. And yet, that day, he’d done it—and why?
In pursuit of Justice, still?
Hettie’s boy. Pray God he doesn’t take after the father.
Terence decided he would not return to 33 Holyoak Street, but he would certainly honor his promise to Holly Mae Loomis about paying for a lawyer: It infuriated him, as a citizen of liberal convictions, that any municipal bureaucracy should so mistreat an old, poorly educated woman and her family.
If needed, he could explain the situation to Phyllis.
“It seemed the least I could do, under the circumstances.”
“It is a loan. I expect to be repaid.”
Before returning to Queenston, Terence stopped at the Mercer Shopping Mall, on Route 1, to get rid of the lawn ornaments in a dumpster behind a pizzeria—these, he could never explain to Phyllis.
That evening, at home, in the garage, irritably cleaning his hands with a rag soaked in kerosene. For how to explain, should anyone in the family ask, how he’d gotten fluorescent-pink paint on his fingers, in his office in Manhattan?
Poor old fella!
The following weekend, there was a conference in New Haven—“The Crisis in the Humanities”—in which Terence Greene, as the Executive Director of the Feinemann Foundation, was scheduled to participate; instead, Terence spent most of Saturday in Trenton.
How this came about, he could never quite comprehend. Even before circumstances swerved deliriously beyond his control, he could not have explained.
He’d fully intended to drive to New Haven. He wanted to drive to New Haven. Instead, turning onto Route 1, off the Queenston Pike, he found that he was driving south, toward Trenton; and not north, to the Turnpike that would take him to New Haven. Hereby summoned.
As, in June, a steady stream of traffic bore him southward. Past the fast-food restaurants, the car dealerships, Mercer Mall, Quaker Bridge Mall, Lawrenceville Shopping Center. Again, it was a balmy, slightly overcast September day. As he neared Trenton, he began to taste grit in the air; his eyes stung, but just mildly. He saw the familiar outer wall—grimy, gray, forbidding as an etching of a prison in a child’s picture book—of Trenton State Prison, and realized that it had become, for him, a landmark: He would exit at Mott Street, in a mile, and take Mott over to Holyoak.
This time, Terence wasn’t going to drive to the end of Holyoak, but only as far as the Chimney Point Shopping Center.
It was a small, undistinguished gathering of stores, with a working-class character. A Kmart, a video shop, a laundromat, South China Restaurant, Howard’s Bargain Shoes, Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium, Discount Drugs, West Trenton Beer & Wine. Two stores stood empty, FOR RENT signs in their windows. Because the day was Saturday, the shopping center was fairly busy; the other day, when, impulsively, Terence had dropped by, fewer than one-quarter of the parking spaces had been taken.
The façade of Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium was glass and simulated bamboo, both in need of a good scrubbing. Glass beads sagged in a giant cobweb behind the plate glass window and there were numerous hand-lettered little signs: EXOTIC GIFTS GALORE, SUMMER SALE, “THE CRAFT OF BEAUTY,” YOUR FORTUNE TOLD. The other day, Terence had several times approached the store without going in; he’d glanced in the dark window, seen only his own reflection, and retreated. Today, he did not glance into the window at all, but entered the store as if he were an ordinary customer for wasn’t that what he was? A bell clanged tinnily overhead and a powerful odor of incense and mildew wafted toward him.
The interior of the store was narrow, like a tunnel; crowded with displays of clothing, jewelry, works of art, and ornamentation; dim-lit, as in a dream where one’s vision is unaccountably blurred. Yet Terence saw at once that she was there—behind a counter to the left, where a canopy and curtains of some gauzy material provided a sort of stage setting, as for a puppet show. Across the top of the canopy were the letters, in sparkling sequins, THE CRAFT OF BEAUTY.
At once, Terence’s stomach clenched; a black mist passed before his eyes.
It isn’t too late to flee.
Unfortunately—or perhaps fortunately!—Ava-Rose Renfrew had customers. Several teenaged girls in jeans, trying on earrings, necklaces. One girl, with a dark, dusky skin, held out her arm to Ava-Rose, who appeared to be reading her palm. Terence was surprised that there was so much good-natured chatter and giggling. He would have thought that telling a fortune was a serious business.
Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium was crammed with cheap, colorful, “exotic” merchandise. Terence drifted about, a bit nervously, intent upon appearing like a customer. (He hoped to overhear the girl’s fortune being told, but the female voices were not quite audible. Among them, he believed he could hear hers.) Wicker furniture, and things made of brass, and bamboo; India-imported fabrics, some of them very striking, threaded with gold; candles—so many; candleholders; heavily decorated satin cushions; beads, shawls, saris, clay figurines (some quite grotesque, multiheaded and -armed: Hindu deities?); mirrors. Terence found himself staring, at first without much comprehension, at his own image in a long skinny mirror framed in cheap stamped brass. The poor lighting made his face look battered, all shadows and dents. A beak of a nose, prissy mouth. And so hopeful, yearning! Kim and Cindy had teased him mercilessly the other day about combing his hair to cover his bald spot, which he’d been doing unconsciously, but it did not appear now that he had any hair at all, only vague wisps of something pale and synthetic as angel hair. Poor old fella.
“Hi! I’m Tamar! May I be of assistance?”
A short, busty woman of about thirty-five, in a crimson sari that showed fatty ridges of flesh at her waist, had materialized before Terence, smiling forcibly. She had short, curly black hair like a boy’s; but there was nothing childlike about her square jaws and dark, ribald eyes. Even as she smiled, her gaze dropped to consider Terence’s shoes, which were expensive, and nicely polished, but utterly conventional American-men’s shoes; nor did his sharply creased trousers, and his gray checked gabardine coat from The Queenston Men’s Shop, seem to impress. Terence said politely, “I’m just looking, thanks.”
“Looking for what?”
A sly glance in the direction of Ava-Rose Renfrew’s part of the shop as if she knew.
Terence said, avoiding the woman’s eyes, “Well
—a present, maybe.”
“Yes? For who?”
“A—woman.”
“Yes? What kind of a woman?”
Tamar’s voice was distinctly New Jersey. Does she know, but how could she know, don’t be absurd.
“What do you mean, what kind of a woman?” Terence asked, annoyed.
“Young, old—wife, mother, girlfriend—is it a surprise kind of thing?” Tamar seemed bemused by her customer’s awkwardness.
Terence, his heart beating rapidly, with a quick rising anger that startled him, fingered a floor-length dress, or robe—it was made of a cheap maroon fabric, “on sale” for thirty-five dollars. He tried to imagine Phyllis wearing such a thing, and the vision went blank.
“Or maybe you want your palm read?”—Tamar seemed on the brink of laughter.
Terence blushed. He was examining brocaded jackets, skimpy see-through blouses, wraps that looked as if they were made of hemp. He pretended he had not heard Tamar, or had not understood. Many men must come in here, is that what she is saying? As if struck by the artistry of a ceramic deity—frog face, lewd protruding lips, a conical hat—Terence picked the thing up, surprised at its weight.
“Vajradhara—one of His aspects,” Tamar said, now solemnly.
“Really!” Terence stared at the slitted, smug, blind eyes. He did not believe he’d ever seen, close up, anything quite so ugly.
“You interested in Tantric yoga, mister?”
“Tantric—? Oh yes: yoga.” For a dizzy moment, Terence had thought the annoying woman had said “yogurt.” He said, “No, not really,” and then, hearing how his flippant reply echoed his son Aaron’s habit of speech, he said, “Well, yes—I’m interested in everything.”
“Tantric Buddhism is the way of enlightenment through bliss,” Tamar said. She stood near to Terence; her scent was musky, like slightly fermented olives. Her fingernails, tapping on the ceramic deity’s head, were sharp and red-polished. “This is Vajradhara in blissful union with a Karmamudrā—they are in a sacred state of Dharmamudrā. Y’see?” She tilted the thing, and, to his astonishment, and embarrassment, Terence realized that there were two figures depicted, two ecstatic frog-faces, copulating. The female figure was twisted beneath the male, head upside-down. “We’re having a sale right now, it’s marked down thirty percent—only $29.98.”
Terence said, backing off, “Well! Very nice. But not, I think, for me.”
Tamar fussily settled the figurine back in place, with a reproachful glance at Terence.
Terence turned irritably away. He saw, to his disappointment, that those damned girls were still hanging about The Craft of Beauty. Ava-Rose Renfrew was laughing with them, like a girl herself: The dusky-skinned girl, whose hair was braided in intricate cornrows, had taken a thin strand of Ava-Rose’s fair, crinkly hair, and was showing how to braid it.
“This woman you’re getting a present for, mister—what size is she?” Tamar, at Terence’s elbow, was not to be discouraged.
“What size? I—”
“My size, like; or, her size—?”
Tamar meant Ava-Rose Renfrew: tall, willowy, long-limbed.
“I—really don’t know,” Terence said, suddenly confused. “I have to—put a coin in the meter. I’ll be back.”
Terence walked out of the store, blindly. Behind him he heard tinkly female laughter, and Tamar’s strong voice calling after, “Thank you, mister! Come back, soon!”
Outside, walking swiftly to his car, Terence realized there were no parking meters here, of course. What a fool, poor old fella.
He got in, drove off, but only to circle aimlessly about the Chimney Point Shopping Center. Then he turned onto Holyoak, drove a block or two, and stopped at Abbott’s Ice Cream where he had a cup of coffee and a single scoop of vanilla ice cream that melted, seemingly with the heat of Terence’s breath, in a paper liner set inside a plastic bowl. The cold sweetness, the sudden sugar-rush, hurt his tongue yet how delicious, you can’t deny.
And then—Terence Greene astonished himself by returning, not to Queenston, but to the Chimney Point Shopping Center.
Was he a fool?—his face felt aglow, as if windburnt, as, another time, he pushed open the door to dim-lit Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium. He winced at the tinny sound of the bell overhead.
God damn! For another customer was having her palm read beneath the gauzy canopy of The Craft of Beauty.
Terence found it difficult not to stare, in frank disappointment. She took no notice of him, tracing her forefinger across a woman’s upturned palm, speaking in a low, earnest voice. (That voice! Why, he’d virtually forgotten it.) The customer was a woman of about Phyllis’s age, sturdy-hipped in polyester slacks, head bowed over her own hand as it was held in the fortune-teller’s.
And where was sharp-eyed Tamar?—thank God, at the rear of the store. She was on the telephone, smoking a cigarette, taking no notice of her awkward customer’s return.
Terence feigned an interest in a waist-high folding screen, ebony splotched with gilt elephants. It was quite attractive, really—on sale for $69.98. Peering at it, he maneuvered himself into a position only a few feet from Ava-Rose Renfrew; he was closer still to the woman in the polyester slacks. How different their voices, alternating as in a duet—the woman’s voice high-pitched and faintly whining; Ava-Rose’s a deep contralto, scratchy, like a caress that leaves you startled.
“What I want to know is, will I ever be happy?”
“You will—see this wavy line here? You are.”
“Are what?”
“You are happy. Now.”
“I’m happy—now? Me?”
“‘To inhabit bliss is to be blind.’”
“You’re reading this, in my hand?”
“‘A small vessel overflows with a small blessing.’ See how these lines converge, then break away? And fade out before they get to the edge, here? You see you are happy—as much as you can be.”
“I am? Shit!”
Ava-Rose Renfrew’s throaty voice was chiding, almost prim. “‘The soul exults in its secret glory.’ Frankly, I think you should be ashamed of yourself.”
The woman snatched her hand out of Ava-Rose’s, and laughed, a hoarse hacking laugh. “Well, what else! I mean, hell, what else could I expect!” Then, suddenly, she was crying.
Terence, deeply embarrassed at overhearing this exchange, blundered away. He collided with a precarious display of ivory trinkets and nearly knocked them all flying. And will I, will I ever be. As the woman sobbed, and Ava-Rose cooed and comforted her, having come out from behind the counter to hold the woman in her arms, Terence made his way to the rear of the store, where, with a final drag of her cigarette, Tamar was ending her telephone conversation. “Hi, mister! You made up your mind, yet?”
Terence said, “Yes, I think so. That screen over there—with the gilt elephants.”
The purchase took some minutes, during which time Terence steadfastly ignored the scene at the front of the shop. Tamar counted Terence’s change out onto the counter—he’d paid with cash—and said, with a wink, “For half price, I could throw in the Vajradhara icon—are you interested?”
Terence said, quickly, “Thank you, but no. I don’t think my wife would care for it.”
Tamar laughed. For the first time, he realized that the woman wore a tiny red bead in her fleshy left nostril.
As Terence carried the folding screen, with some difficulty, out of the shop, he saw that Ava-Rose Renfrew’s customer was preparing to leave. He was breathing hard, and felt a tingling as of anger. At his car, he fumbled with his key; dropped the screen; saw, to his surprise, that in full daylight it was distinctly less exotic than it had looked in the store. Imported from Calcutta? He did not want to consider that he’d been cheated, right now.
Poor old fella.
He shoved the screen into the rear of the car, and hurried back to Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium—seeing, to his horror, that Ava-Rose Renfrew was gone. The Craft of Beauty stood empty, a counter heaped wi
th glittering jewelry and shiny fabrics; the weeping woman too had departed.
Seeing the expression in Terence’s face, buxom little Tamar in the crimson sari did not smile in derision, but in sympathy. “If you want your palm read, mister—Ava-Rose will be back later this afternoon.”
Terence stared at the woman, not hearing. She said, “Or, like—I could do it for you?”
Terence noted that Tamar’s Bazaar & Emporium would be open until 6 P.M.
He got in his car, drove away. In a northerly direction, as if returning to Route 1, thus Queenston, but then he turned into a roadside tavern, had a quick lunch and one, or two, or three beers, pondering what to do as if he had any choice in the matter. Emerging from the tavern he was vaguely surprised to see that it was still daylight.
Despite the beers, Terence felt sober, judicial. He examined the folding screen and came to the reluctant decision that, like the lawn ornaments, he simply couldn’t bring it home to 7 Juniper Way—one or the other of his daughters might like it for her room, but Phyllis would be appalled at Terence’s bad taste in buying it, such blatantly shiny gilt elephants stamped on a fake-ebony background, and she might be suspicious.
(It crossed Terence’s mind suddenly that his Aunt Megan would have loved such a screen. For that room she’d called the parlor. To divide it from the hallway, so drafty in winter. In fact, hadn’t Aunt Megan bought a folding screen in an “Oriental” style, from Montgomery Ward, and Terence’s uncle had made her return it?)
Seeing that no one was looking, Terence dragged the screen out of the rear of his car and carried it to a dumpster behind the tavern.
The most expeditious decision, under the circumstances.
Then, he drove back to the Chimney Point Shopping Center.
Terence did not think of his behavior, at this time, as symptomatic of anything beyond itself; as one is inclined, at the onset of a fever signaling a virulent disease, to believe that the fever is only itself, thus finite, contained. He might have rationalized that, yes, he did want his fortune told, and so was returning (hadn’t Tamar so suggested?) for that purpose. Yet, parking his car a discreet distance from the tawdry little shop, he knew he was not going to enter it another time that day. Quite simply, he could not.