“Because prosecuting attorneys in Trenton think that Queenston residents are too ‘liberal’—that is, intelligent and fair-minded; and defense attorneys think we’re too ‘conservative’—that is, too smart to be manipulated by their rhetoric and tricks.” Phyllis smiled at Terence, with an air of knowing something about him unknown to Terence himself. “They want average Americans on juries, darling. Or sub-average. Not you.”
Terence persisted, “But I am an average American. In my heart.”
Phyllis frowned at him, as if his remarks were beginning to offend. “Don’t be perverse, of course you’re not.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be forty-four years old—”
“Now what has that got to do with it?” Phyllis was thirteen months older than Terence, and in recent years had become sensitive about remarks related to age.
“—and not once have I been called for jury duty. I happen to think it would be an interesting experience.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Phyllis said, as if she’d indulged Terence long enough. “Even if you were named a juror, which isn’t likely, the trial would be dismal and depressing—probably drug-related. Trenton is such a depressed city, you’d come away miserable. You’re so susceptible to—atmospheres, moods. Believe me, darling, I know you.” Phyllis was trying to speak lightly, but her appeal was uncharacteristically urgent. She even leaned against him, and kissed his cheek. “Don’t I?”
“I suppose so, yes.”
Terence sighed, like a child cheated of an adventure.
And now, dusk. And now, the outer life.
Cocktails at the Hendries’?—dinner at the Montgomerys’? Unless it was the other way around.
In Queenston, all seasons were social seasons. Another sort of music, not a carnival music exactly but festive, distracting, continually played. You could not blame a woman like Phyllis for always listening for it, smiling in anticipation of a ringing telephone, an invitation. Yes, you see, we’re loved, we exist! We’ve been invited.
In affluent Queenston, Terence C. Greene endured two overlapping identities. One was that of the husband of Phyllis Greene, whom everyone knew and liked, or in any case admired; the other was that of the executive director of the Feinemann Foundation, about which they read occasionally in The New York Times. It wasn’t clear what Terence did, except oversee the granting of more than $8 million yearly to American museums, theaters, dance troupes, individual artists. The Greenes’ friends and neighbors were lawyers, stockbrokers, bankers, business executives, developers, speculators, and here and there someone associated with the “arts”—all with comfortable incomes.
Hettie’s boy, among them. As if he were one of them.
In fact, it was Phyllis’s income from inherited investments and cash gifts from her parents that made the Greenes’ social position in Queenston possible. It was the result of a generous cash wedding gift—“To help you young people get started”—that they’d been able to buy the six-bedroom Neo-Georgian colonial on Juniper Way, Timberlane Estates.
“—You really shouldn’t have interfered, Terry. Of course I don’t know what the circumstances were, but she says you forced food on her. And now—”
There was an air of hurt and accusation in Phyllis’s voice which she tried to disguise with exasperated laughter. Terence, absentmindedly selecting a necktie from the many ties hanging in his closet, murmured a chastened assent.
“—one of her binges, the poor child. All she ate!—I stopped her from telling me, it was too sad. At least she doesn’t make herself vomit, like these bulimic teenaged girls you hear about. If that comes next—!”
Terence frowned at himself in the bureau mirror. In certain lights, his face, his very head, looked carved. A wooden man, an upright animated doll. Inside the eyes, an unknowable life.
“Because,” Phyllis was saying, angry, hurt, “—we have the same features, skin coloring, body type. She blames me.”
Without pausing in her monologue, Phyllis came to take away the gray-striped necktie Terence was holding, and handed him, in its place, a sleek navy blue silk tie, a recent purchase of hers. Unquestioning, Terence knotted it about his neck.
The tie was beautiful, and, oddly, he was a handsome man. The lean, angular face, the nostrils wide and dark like cavities, the pebbly-green eyes with their look of sweetly confused expectation—somehow, his unpromising features added up. And he smiled a good deal, even through a look of pain.
Phyllis murmured, “And Kim!—I swear, she’s trying to break my heart. She used to be so sweet, she was my little girl, remember?—and now!—since that damned slumber party at Suzi Ryan’s when I caught her in a lie I simply can’t trust her.”
Terence, searching for the mate of a cuff link he held in his hand, murmured a guarded acquiescence. He knew from past experience that it was unwise to agree too readily with Phyllis when she condemned their children.
“—So completely different, hair, skin coloring, body type, she might as well be adopted. And she behaves like it!”
Terence had put the summons to jury service on his desk, downstairs in his study. He would deal with it on Monday morning. Phyllis was right, of course: He would arrange to be exempted.
“—her friends, and not us. When did it happen, was it overnight? And boys. Boys! If her phone isn’t ringing, it’s because the pack of them is here.” A pause. “Of course, she is pretty. Mother thinks she has her eyes.”
In her stocking feet, graceful, but brisk, Phyllis came to Terence, again without pausing in her speech, and reached into the drawer in which Terence was searching, to withdraw a jeweler’s box—which, opened, yielded, not the missing mate, but another pair of cuff links. These were splendid gold cuff links shaped in the initials TG, a birthday gift from Reverend and Mrs. Winston some years ago.
Terence murmured thanks, and bent to kiss Phyllis’s cheek. But she was gone.
Holding a yellow dress up against herself, frowning into the full-length mirror, “—And Aaron: Did you call him, as you promised? No? Tomorrow, then? I know he never returns calls, I must have left a dozen messages last time, but you should try. No matter what he says, I think he’s troubled about something. It’s that terrible pressure at Dartmouth, as bad as at Harvard, or Princeton—and of course they grow up so much faster than we did. He respects you, at least. You must try. He has accused me of—well, snooping! I just have to learn to remain calm. Matt Montgomery says it’s all in the tone of voice—and eye contact. With children, as with voters. Terry, are you listening? Find out what Aaron did with that four hundred dollars we sent, but don’t alienate him. It isn’t the money—I mean, not simply the money—but reassurance he needs that he’s loved.”
At this, Terence, struggling with the cuff links, made a snorting sound. Not quite laughter, not quite derision. Phyllis cast him a swift sidelong look of reproach.
“It is. You judge your son too harshly. Just because he has that air of—well, he’s combative, I know; but that doesn’t mean he isn’t sensitive, and doesn’t need our love. Ever since the skiing equipment—”
Terence, not wanting to be drawn, as into a whirlpool, into this particular subject, hastily murmured agreement.
“—So, tomorrow? Terry? Just before noon, when he’s likely to be still in bed?”
Terence murmured yes.
“—and I’ll listen in on the extension. In absolute silence.”
With a disappointed gesture, Phyllis had tossed aside the yellow dress, and was now slipping over her head a black dress that shimmered seductively over her hips, and curved out quite impressively at her breasts. Terence, watching his wife through not one but two mirrors, felt a remote stab of desire: How beautiful Phyllis was, when not looking directly at him.
“—And tonight, be sure to congratulate Matt on his speech to the Central Jersey Realtors. He really did get a standing ovation—almost! And that interview I arranged for him in the Chronicle—did you ever get around to reading it? No? Oh, Terry! Matt is a good friend, and my cli
ent, you should take some interest. I will admit his campaign got off to a rocky start, but—”
Phyllis was now speaking of her work as a publicist. (At the age of forty, she had decided to start a public relations business in Queenston—“Queenston Opportunities”—with some of the money left her by her late father.) As always when Phyllis spoke of her one-woman enterprise, her voice lifted with girlish excitement; her face seemed to lighten.
“—And mention it to Hedy too, will you?”—Hedy Montgomery was Matt Montgomery’s wife—“I’m afraid she’s becoming just a little—cool. Jealous. As if Matt and I—!”
Terence murmured yes, he certainly would.
The recession had hurt Phyllis’s business, as it had hurt many small businesses of its type, but, supported by her investment income, Phyllis had kept it afloat; even, for two or three months, without clients. It would have broken her heart, she’d said, if she’d had to give up her newly furnished office in the Village. Terence sympathized with Phyllis’s ambition to do something, to make a name for herself locally—he thought it ironic that his wife’s ambition exceeded his own.
Currently, Phyllis had her most ambitious project to date. She was managing the campaign of their friend Matt Montgomery for Queenston Township supervisor. Montgomery was a private attorney actively involved in zoning and environmental issues, a prominent Queenston resident, and how well he did in the upcoming April election—how skillfully Phyllis Greene was judged to have guided his campaign—was certain to be a matter of common knowledge, and gossip, in the area.
With sudden vehemence, as if her thoughts exactly paralleled Terence’s, Phyllis said, “I know that everyone—even my friends—even my family!—is waiting for me to fail. But I won’t give you the satisfaction.”
Terence protested at once, surely this was untrue?—unjust?—but Phyllis waved him aside. “I say no: I will not.”
How severely she was eyeing her mirrored reflection, flat-footed, brooding, with a petulant twist of her mouth. Terence saw, not for the first time precisely, but for the first time with such poignancy, that his wife, attractive, self-assured, financially independent, was yet a mysteriously disappointed woman.
She was shapely and compact, in height about five feet three (in her stocking feet, as now); with blond-streaked hair that lifted from her forehead like a bird’s crest, artfully waved and sculpted; her face was round, full, inclining to plumpness. During the day, no less than in the evening, she was elaborately made up; at night, she applied medicinal-smelling creams and oils to her face. (Had Terence ever seen his wife’s face naked, exposed?—raw?) She was particularly conscious, and critical, of her eyes, which were too small, for her taste, and required eye shadow, eyeliner, mascaras—“A lifetime disappointment.” Yet, for all this, Phyllis Greene was attractive; in fact, quite glamorous. If her moods at home with her family were mercurial (“There Mom goes again!” was a cheeky refrain of Aaron’s, for years), her mood in public was unwavering: She’d become, with years of practice, one of those supremely confident affluent suburban American women in whom The Smile has become an art.
How such women smile, and smile!—it wearied Terence Greene, just to observe.
In Phyllis, it was indeed The Radiant Smile: Erupting with such force when she entered any social gathering or public place, such a beam of joy, bounty, magnanimity toward all, its effect was one of sudden music, or laughter; of a dazzling blinding spotlight shone into dark corners, banishing all shadows. Seeing Phyllis release The Radiant Smile as they entered a crowded, festive room, and seeing how other, kindred smiles were released, in their direction, Terence felt himself blessed. I have married my salvation.
For why otherwise do we fall in love, except to be saved. By another’s love. Another’s power.
Twenty-two years ago, Phyllis Winston had been a virginal young woman, a minister’s daughter—very pretty, very assured, of that type of American girl defined as “popular” in high school—with whom penniless Terence Greene had fallen in love during the frantic summer after his graduation from college. He had been awarded a graduate fellowship to study for his Ph.D. in history, at Harvard; through his four years as an undergraduate he’d earned consistently high grades, and the admiration of his professors; but he was in debt for thousands of dollars, and desperate to repay his loans; he’d signed on to work an exhausting ten-hour shift at a “historic” resort hotel in Rockport, Massachusetts, where, that June, a gathering of Presbyterian clergymen had convened. (Rockport had been chosen because it was a dry town, and the hotel served no alcohol—as Terence belatedly discovered, nondrinkers are notoriously frugal tippers.) Among the clergymen was the kindly, avuncular Reverend Willard Winston, accompanied by his wife and daughter. How sweetly the daughter smiled at Terence Greene, the young waiter assigned to the Winstons’ table in the vast hotel dining room: Terence who was tall, attractive, deferential, and self-conscious in his white linen uniform; how nice, how generous, and how Christian of this striking young woman to speak to him, in the dining room and elsewhere, as if they were equals; even, it seemed, to seek him out with a friendly smile. That smile!
Terence, a lonely young man beset by fears of inadequacy, which no amount of academic success could quite assuage, had been astonished that Phyllis Winston, Reverend Winston’s daughter, should notice him at all. How wonderful the young woman was in her openness, her female energy. Phyllis was quick to assure Terence that, while she was a Christian of course, she wasn’t at all pious or excessively devout: Religion was a part of her life but not her life. Avidly, they’d discussed social issues of the day, civil rights, the newest books, films, art; whether God exists or whether (Terence thought himself daring, to speak of such a possibility to a minister’s daughter) we have created Him in our own image.
Phyllis’s serene smiling attitude was most impressive: “Oh, well—faith takes care of that.”
She’d been the one to initiate their kisses. And more.
“You seem so lonely, Terence. Your eyes—you look like an orphan.”
Her words were not so blunt and condescending as they might seem but had been expressed with girlish sincerity, warmth. Terence, struck to the heart, had tried to laugh, and stammered a clumsy joke, “So that’s what I look like—an orphan. I’ve always wondered.”
In this way he fell in love. The waves of the wild Atlantic lapping, licking, crashing about his head.
If such a woman loves me, marries me—I must be worthy after all.
“—listening, Terry? Please remember.”
Terence saw that Phyllis had changed her dress another time. She was now wearing cream-colored silky pleats, a shimmering skirt of pleats, he was himself zipping her up the back, with an air of finality. Husbandly, overcome by love, Terence bent to kiss his wife on the nape of her neck. She shivered, and laughed. As if the gesture was unexpected.
Terence saw that, somehow, he’d gotten dressed as well. How it happens, how our nakedness is covered, what a mystery! He smiled to see himself such a Queenston citizen, an imposter in a gray pin-striped flannel suit that gave his lanky body a distinguished look, a suit Phyllis had selected for him at the Queenston Esquire Shoppe; his dress shirt was of starched white cotton; the gold-gleaming TG cuff links were properly in place at his wrists. And the navy blue silk tie perfectly knotted. A wooden man, a sharp-carved face, and the eyes trapped inside, alert.
Terence, giving in to vanity, in a gesture that reminded him of Aaron, preening and primping at a mirror, turned just slightly sideways, to examine what he could see of his profile. Since he’d begun swimming in earnest at a local health club, rarely less than five mornings a week, his posture had decidedly improved.
Phyllis was switching off the light, Terence followed her from the room. “—doors and windows, Terry? And the basement. And, of course, the burglar alarm. Oh, I hate that alarm. I’m afraid of it—”
Terence was already moving off, briskly. He liked to prepare the house for his departure because it was a way of prepa
ring the house for his return.
Part of his routine was to check even the windows on the second floor. Though knowing they were locked, or should have been. In theory, a canny burglar could climb up onto the garage, and make his way across the roof to the bedroom windows. Were Terence Greene a housebreaker, that was the route he would take.
But all the houses in Timberlane Estates, as generally in Queenston, were protected by burglar alarms. In theory, no house could be entered in such a way. Violated.
Terence knocked on Cindy’s shut door. The father of daughters, he knew never to open such a door uninvited. The child, though inside, did not reply at first; there was a murmur of music, voices. “Cindy-honey, it’s Daddy.” He heard a reluctant Okay, Daddy, and opened the door to poke his head inside, playful-Daddy, clown-Daddy, appealing to his eleven-year-old as if he were of her generation, and no threat. He saw that she was alone—of course, Kim, though home, would not care to keep company with her younger sister; slumped in an oversized T-shirt in front of the television set where, yet again, Dirty Dancing was in rowdy noisy full-frontal force. (Cindy owned the video. Though she often expressed contempt for those girls in her class who watched such videos repeatedly.)
“Cindy, we’re leaving now, and we should be back by midnight. Kim’s staying in, you know. Try to get to bed at a reasonable hour, will you?”
“Sure, Daddy.” Cindy barely moved her eyes from the television screen. She was puffy-eyed and sullen from (Terence gathered) an afternoon of intermittent quarreling with her mother; whether about her compulsive eating habits, or other matters, Terence was excluded from knowing.
“Promise? And tomorrow we’ll have an outing of our own. We’ll—”
Terence’s voice trailed off. He wasn’t sure what they might do the next day, Sunday. His birthday? He was of the vague impression that Phyllis had planned something.
“Sure, Daddy.”
Cindy shifted her shoulders in the slovenly T-shirt, in a negligent shrug very like an elegantly dismissive gesture of her mother’s. As if she were embarrassed of her daddy’s cheery manner, his phony smile. She sees through me Terence thought, alarmed. But what does she see?