“He’s out getting a big U-Haul trailer attached to our car. He should be back any minute now. So. How’s Laurie? And Tina?”
“They’re fine. And the house is fine. I was working on it when you called.”
Dorsey gazes at him. He feels the full intelligent force of her attention sweeping over him. “You’ll never leave Five Oaks, will you? You’ll always stay in that house. Always and forever.”
“I will never leave Five Oaks,” Hugh says, reciting it like a pledge of allegiance. “I will always stay in that house. Always and forever.”
Dorsey nods.
“You always go,” Hugh tells her. “I always stay. That’s my job. Then, every once or so often, I come to patch things up.” He reaches down for an unclaimed cookie on the kitchen table. As he bites into it, he feels the presence of someone else in the room.
At that moment Dorsey says, “Well, look who’s here!”
Simon stands in the doorway, smiling like a poster of a man standing in a hallway. He is wearing sunglasses; a Venice, California, T-shirt; cut-off denim shorts; and sandals. The sunglasses are ultradark, and Hugh can’t see the man’s eyes. Simon’s hair seems to have streaks of some blonding agent in it, and it curls, Hugh thinks, for effect, as if it had been interfered with in some way. The hair isn’t artificial, but something about it is fussy and photographic. He looks two-dimensional, all flat surfaces. He smiles in Hugh’s direction, but the smile is ironic, refrigerated. Seeing it, Hugh feels himself mocked. He’s never seen a smile like that in Five Oaks and hopes he won’t. He looks again at Simon’s sunglasses and can only see himself—unsure, tentative—reflected there.
“Hugh, this is Simon. Simon, meet my brother.”
Simon walks forward, his arm extended dramatically, and Hugh knows instantly that this is a parody of a handshake, this British-style pump. “How do you do?” Hugh says, and then realizes that his mouth is still full of the cookie he has been eating and that some of the crumbs have sprayed out onto Simon’s T-shirt, and he knows that of course Simon has seen it happen, he’s that kind of person.
“How do you do?” Simon asks, as if it were a real question, his voice overripe with sincerity. “Welcome,” he says, in a bus-tour voice, “to California, home of avocado pears and passion fruit.”
Hugh cannot remember disliking anyone—man, woman, or child—as much on first sight as he dislikes this man. “Yes,” he says, before realizing that his agreement is attached to no question. His fears of looking stupid flare up again. “Dorsey said you were out getting a trailer. Did you find one?”
“Did I!” Hugh sees Simon’s eyebrows lifting up behind the dark glasses. “They were everywhere. No matter where I stopped, there they were! I had to fight them off. They’re very aggressive, those U-Hauls. Did you know,” and here his voice slithers down to a whisper, “that they follow you around?”
Hugh stares at him. The face in the glasses stares back. Dorsey is watching both men carefully.
“I got the biggest one they had, the behemoth model. Of course, it may pull off the trailer hitch, but then we’ll have an adventure, won’t we? Stuck in Death Valley with nothing to eat but cactus. Oh, no, we don’t go through Death Valley. We go through Sacramento and then Reno. I mean, that’s almost Death Valley, isn’t it? Do we go through the Donner Pass? I hope you have a good appetite. We’re so lucky”—he claps his hands together once—“that you came here to help us drive across the country.” He looks down at Hugh’s legs. “Where did you get those pants?”
“In Five Oaks.”
“Is that virgin polyester?”
“Simon!” Dorsey says. “Cut it out.”
“I’m just nervous,” he says. “You know how I chatter when I get nervous.” He approaches the playpen and looks down at Noah. “How’s Baby Leroy?”
“He’s been okay.”
Simon takes off his dark glasses, fastidiously placing them on the kitchen table. Then he reaches down to pick up Noah, making a finger signal to him first. Vaguely astonished, Hugh sees Simon lift up Noah with ease and confidence, and he also sees Noah’s happiness in Simon’s company. Simon puts his index finger into Noah’s hand, and the boy closes his fingers around it.
“My God,” Hugh says.
Simon smiles quickly. Pride and something equally severe are in his face. “Imagine me,” he says. “A daddy.”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t mean …,” Simon says, looking at Dorsey. “Didn’t you …?” he asks.
“No,” she says. “He didn’t notice. Maybe I covered it up.” She holds out her left hand toward her brother. Her wedding ring, with its small diamond, glitters at him; Simon holds his own hand out: another ring. “We waited,” she says, “until you came out here. We wanted to tell you in person.”
Hugh sits in the kitchen chair, the room at once in a state of evaporation. Outside on the street a car honks twice, and to Hugh the two sounds make a celebratory blaring scrawl in the air. He lifts his head, finds a window, and gazes out. Here in California the leaves on the trees have altered shapes, he thinks: more tropical, the inflated geometries of jungle flowers. He wonders how much change he has in his pants pocket: is it fifty cents, or much less?
Dorsey’s voice swims to him through the thickening air. “Well, areyougoing tocongratulateus?”
He catches himself breathing through his mouth, small shallow breaths. Less than fifty cents, he thinks; much less. More like thirty cents, not even enough for a bus token. “Of course,” he says, remembering to smile. “Congratulations. To you both.”
“I think he’s shocked,” Dorsey says to Simon.
“I do take a bit of getting used to,” Simon’s voice says, rising out of the floor of the kitchen.
“It’s … I wasn’t expecting.”
“No, of course not.” Dorsey takes her brother by the elbow, brings him to a standing state, and pilots him through the boxes of packed pots and pans out the back door, into the yard. Hugh looks up: the birds are singing unusual songs, with twisting funneled notes. The backyard itself is a miniature, with a tiny two-row vegetable garden, bordered by a fence on one side of an alley. On the branches of a small eucalyptus someone has attached several tiny bells that tinkle absently every few seconds. In front of Dorsey and Hugh a rusting chair lies on its side, and Dorsey stands it up and puts her brother in front of it.
“There,” she says. “Sit down.”
He does. She stands behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders and says that Simon is a good man—he’ll see that soon—a man of real tenderness. She repeats the word so he’ll be sure to register it: “tenderness.” Hugh can’t remember when he’s ever heard that word spoken before at home. It’s the sort of word you hear in old, sentimental songs. No one uses it in conversation, not in Five Oaks.
Dorsey’s hands rub Hugh’s shoulders. She’s picked up this trick from Simon; Hugh knows without asking. Instantly his mind holds onto an image of Simon standing behind Dorsey, massaging her shoulders. His mind’s eye sees the calm on his sister’s face. There it is.
“He’s a little strange,” she says, her hands keeping up their work. “You’ll find that he—”
Hugh brings his palm up into the air, a flag, holding it steadily until she stops talking; at the same time he shakes his head back and forth. “You don’t have to explain anything.” Then, to prove that he understands and to put an end to her justifications, he says, “You sit in the kitchen. Simon rubs your shoulders. You learned this from him. He rubs your shoulders and there’s this thing he does with his fingers just behind your ears. I can see him doing it. I can imagine it.” Instantly she stops her hand motions, and Hugh knows he’s right. She is listening now. “No one ever did this for you until you met him.” He turns in the chair to look at her. “So you see? I do understand.”
“Yes.”
“Congratulations,” he says, gazing toward a wisteria, wondering what it’s called. He won’t ask. He won’t play that game.
“Tha
nk you.”
That evening Dorsey, Simon, and Hugh load the trailer with the baby furniture, the books, the kitchen articles, and Dorsey’s file cabinets and computer materials. Dorsey explains that they’ve had a real estate agent in Buffalo find them a rental house near a school for the deaf, in case … Well. They have a photograph. Would Hugh like to see the house they’re moving to? No. He’s been a fool often enough, long enough, not to fall for this trick. “No,” he says, “I want to see it in person.” Carrying a load of Dorsey’s clothes down the stairs, Hugh passes Simon going up, and he says, “Where’s your stuff, Simon? All this is Dorsey’s.”
“I don’t have any stuff,” Simon shouts back. “A suitcase of clothes. That’s it.”
At the bottom of the stairs, Hugh turns around, his heart pounding from the weight he carries, and he stares at the slender man with the television face gazing down at him from the landing with that mocking smile and the dark glasses that seem permanently attached to his head. “No books? No anything?” Hugh asks.
“I have Dorsey,” Simon tells him, in a voice which is not his own but a mimicry of some Hollywood actor, whom Hugh can recognize but not identify. Hugh knows he’s meant to laugh, but he won’t. He does his job; he carries the clothes to the trailer.
The next day, after they return Hugh’s car to the rental agency, they begin the trip with Hugh and Simon in front, Dorsey with Noah in back. Soon after they pull out, Simon takes off his shoes and puts his feet up on the dashboard, and the action makes Hugh think of his sister displaced somehow inside this stranger’s skin. Every time Simon leans his head back, his eyes close, like a doll with weighted lids. Hugh tries to keep his own eyes on the road, and he listens to the Pontiac’s tappet noises as they climb up the hills around the bay. Approaching Sacramento, Hugh insists that they stay on Route 80, after Simon has suggested some back roads.
“No back roads,” Hugh says, gripping the steering wheel near the top.
“No roadside attractions?” Simon whines. “No stops at Mom’s Chow House? No small towns with lumpy beds and lonesome strangers?”
“No,” Hugh says. “Not any of it. I have a job to get back to.”
“Gee,” Simon says, boyishly disappointed. “Well, maybe next time we’ll stay on the back roads. No maps.”
“Fine.”
“No superhighways.”
“Suit yourself.”
Simon wants to stop for the evening in a place called Cant Read, but Hugh insists that they continue until they reach Reno. Simon’s complaining makes Dorsey laugh, and when Dorsey laughs, Noah sees his mother’s face and begins laughing himself, a sound like a flute. Just inside the Reno city limits, they stop at a yellow motel called the Cactus Court. When Hugh comes out of the office with their room keys, Simon is sitting on the Pontiac’s hood and complaining to Dorsey that the motel looks like a haven for subhumans and that self-respecting people would not register at a yellow motel that has a loudspeaker bolted to the electric sign on the office roof. The sign shows a pink-neon cactus blinking on and off every two seconds. The loudspeaker is playing Andy Williams tunes. Dorsey hands Noah over to Simon and tells him to stuff it.
Two hours later, after Noah has been bathed and Dorsey has showered, and they are sitting in Heap Big Hamburger, Simon is still complaining. There are slot machines near the restaurant’s door, bordered on both sides by cigar-store Indians holding huge plastic hamburgers. Hugh has ordered the Apache burger, and Dorsey and Simon have both ordered the Sitting Bull Special. With his mouth full, Simon tells Dorsey that they’d be having a better time, right now, if they had stopped for the night in Cant Read.
“Simon,” Dorsey says, “please stop whining.” Her eyes are heavy and she lifts her hands for the flatware and the napkin as if her fingers were weighted. “You’ve done enough. Don’t embarrass me.” She reaches out and takes his hand. “We’re in the desert, right? You can be quiet here. That’s the custom. You can play the slot machines.” She gestures toward the door. “No one ever says much in Nevada. Look.” She points at the landscape outside the window. “There’s nothing to say about that, is there?”
“It’s the home of bomb tests. You can say that,” Simon tells her.
“No no no no no no no,” Dorsey says, through her teeth. “By God, I thought you’d leave me alone on that one.”
“On what?” Hugh asks. “What’re you talking about?”
“She means …,” Simon begins to say.
“Don’t tell him what I mean.”
“I was only going to explain about—”
“—No!” she says, dropping her fork. “As if he doesn’t follow me around enough. I don’t mean you,” she says to her brother. “You know who I mean. Carlo—I’m trying to get away from him. I’m trying to … withdraw from his obsessions. All that conscience,” she says disconnectedly, and without further explanation. She takes out two jars of baby food—sweet potatoes and mashed beans—and feeds Noah his dinner before eating her own. Noah eats in his usual silence, and Hugh watches his sister making rudimentary signs toward her son. Eat: fingers together moving toward the mouth. Good: right-hand fingertips at the mouth, moving out and down. Hugh can’t take his eyes off them—his sister, her son. How, he wonders, has she ever survived her own life?
Hugh finishes his hamburger and gets up to play the slot machines. He limits himself to a five-dollar loss; when he has lost it, as he knows he will, his sister is ready to go.
It’s a ten-hour drive to Salt Lake City, through a vulcanized, sun-blanched landscape of sallow gold rock. Simon, now driving, is behaving better, Hugh thinks, but he notices that his brother-in-law is incorporating into his conversations a slight stutter over th sounds that Hugh has never been able to get out of his own speech in moments of stress. He has never heard himself being mimicked before, never heard his own voice coming back at him. He thinks it may not be deliberate; maybe it’s an actor’s habit. If Dorsey notices what Simon is doing, she doesn’t mention it. She is playing with Noah in back, bouncing him on her lap, having taken him out of the baby Safe-T-Seat.
“T-t-t-tell me about your parents,” Simon says, sounding like Hugh. “Tell me a story. Talk us straight through to the Utah line.”
Hugh thinks. Doors open to other doors. In these distances, everything looks so small. What’s the difference? It’s just another story. As he begins to talk, he looks out the window and sees a freight train, tiny in the distance, moving along in a direction parallel to theirs. The train’s size, its movement through the flattening ranchland, gives him a pleasurable shiver of time and its losses.
“Dorsey’s probably told you some things about them.” Simon nods. Hugh fears that Simon’s eyes will close when he nods, but they do not. “They died young. Dorsey had just started college and I was already selling cars. My father had three heart attacks, the first one on his fifty-third birthday, as he was eating his birthday cake. The third one killed him. He was reading the Sunday paper at breakfast. My mother was at the other end of the table and saw the newspaper—it was the travel section—begin to crumple and fold in on itself, and when it dropped below his face, she saw his expression. His eyes were squinting shut and his teeth were clenched.”
Simon listens, his eyes fixed on the highway. The train, miles away on Hugh’s right, seems to keep pace with the car, shimmering in the rock heat, a mirage train.
“Then my mother started to go. It was that kind of marriage, where they get so …”
“Symbiotic,” Simon suggests.
“Yeah. She couldn’t live without him. For the next two years she did things to herself, eating badly and smoking and drinking, to make sure she’d follow him soon, and she did. The house was left to me in the will. That’s where I live now.”
“Why is it,” Simon asks, “when you ask people about somebody’s life, they tell you how the person died?”
“You start with the last things first, ass-backwards, if you’re me,” Hugh says, sure of that. “You start with the period inste
ad of the capital letter. That way you’re always sure how everything ends.” He waits for Simon to cut into this statement, but he doesn’t.
“My father,” Hugh says, “sold insurance, but he loved the outdoors and said he’d prefer to live there if he could. When he was young, he wrote poetry to my mother. I still have his letters. They did that in those days, you know.” He expects Simon to nod in agreement, but it doesn’t happen. “My father was an expert woodworker and made tables and chairs and even made a violin once, a beautiful thing, which actually played. He was a fair athlete. He skated. He showed me how to skate and taught me how to play hockey, some of the tricks a boy needs in stick-handling and passing. He was complicated. Gawky and conscientious. So was my mother. They’d gone to college. Don’t believe what they tell you about small towns. They were good people. Smart. They’d traveled and talked at dinner about places they’d seen. All the great sights, Paris and London. Each night, when my father came in the house, he gave me a tap on the head with his newspaper. It was a good luck tap … a blessing. ‘Good evening, Tiger,’ he’d say to me. Then he’d tap Dorsey. ‘Evening, Cass.’ ”
“ ‘Cass’?” Simon asks.
“Short for Cassiopeia,” Dorsey says, from the backseat.
“Yes.” Hugh waits, then continues. “I don’t know how to say this. I think his talent wasn’t for woodworking or selling insurance exactly, though he loved doing that. He loved to arrive after a disaster and give people some money. He called himself ‘God’s apologist.’ But what he really lived for was loving my mother. It sounds strange. They talked to each other in the evening, and they never ran out of things to say. That’s what the long hours came to: conversation. It was what the day was for. Their talk is what I remember best about them. I remember how much they liked to eat and talk together. You don’t see that much anymore. People can’t do it. They don’t know how. They wrap up their little monologues and throw them at you, and you have to catch them, and throw them back.”
He keeps his eyes on the train, a bit closer now: a Denver and Rio Grande freight: boxcars, coal cars, flatcars loaded with some kind of green-and-orange machinery. It is getting toward evening, and the gold light gives the cars a shimmering toy distinctness.