George nodded.
And you did the noble thing?
Tried to.
And now you’re—
Stuck?
Your word, not mine. Well? Are you?
It’s one way to put it.
Being stuck has its benefits, DeBeers said encouragingly. Raising your daughter, for one. Having a home, stability. Love. He met George’s eyes. Not things to take for granted, as it turns out.
George nodded like a chastised schoolboy.
When you come right down to it, there are few things in this world as important.
I’ll drink to that.
Not to sound sanctimonious.
No, no, George insisted. You make a good point.
It’s hard to see what’s good, what’s right, when you’re in the middle of it.
—
THE RIVER MOVED like a great conveyor belt, but you couldn’t compare it to the ocean. Growing up on the Sound, with its compelling current and trickery, had made George a capable sailor. His cousin, Henri, had taught him on an old Blue Jay, an endearing little wooden boat yet clumsy to launch from the rocky shore. Henri was French, the son of his mother’s sister, five years older than George, thin, anxious, philosophical. George tried to read his books, Rimbaud a predictable favorite; even then he’d suspected Henri was gay. George followed him around like a caddy, carrying his easel, watching him paint boats and lobster pots, filling up sketchbooks and journals. In return, Henri gave him cigarettes and talked to him about art. Then, when George was thirteen, Henri drowned in a boating accident. After the funeral, with relatives crowded in the living room of his aunt and uncle’s house, George went up to Henri’s room and stole his journal. He would read it late at night, after his parents had gone to bed, its pages filled with the torment and chaos of lust. A week or so before leaving for college he destroyed it, ripping it to pieces and shoving it into a trash can outside a McDonald’s, amid half-eaten hamburgers and ketchup-splattered napkins.
The theft had stayed with him; he often thought of it during his darkest moments. It seemed to have been a defining moment in his life. Not one he was proud of.
They had another drink as the sun turned red.
Red sky at night, Floyd said.
To our delight, he said, and clinked his glass against Floyd’s. Cheers.
They drank without talking. Across the river, the commuter train flashed behind the trees. They sat there watching it. When it had finally gone, Floyd asked if he’d had a chance to read the Swedenborg.
Some of it, he said. I haven’t gotten very far yet. To him, Swedenborg’s account of heaven and hell read like an awful drugstore novel. As a result, his opinion of DeBeers was rapidly diminishing. I don’t know, Floyd. Heaven and hell, angels, that stuff’s kind of a stretch for me.
So you thought he was a raving lunatic?
I’m a pretty literal guy, Floyd. It’s something to think about, though, he said, wanting to at least sound interested.
We’re obsessed in this culture with endings, with results, Floyd said. Grades, scores, awards. Colleges, jobs, cars. Possessions—tangible symbols. Most people are uncomfortable with abstract ideas, he said, finishing his drink. It’s almost ironic that so many of us have faith.
People think it keeps them safe, George said. They don’t want to die alone.
Death is our collective obsession.
What about sex and money?
Money’s overrated. Sex is fear and hope.
Hope? For what?
Love, of course. Redemption. Floyd smiled. Love is light, love is balance. It’s a unicycle. Death is easier. Death is absolute. People say death’s the great unknown—not so. We know death. We know it when we see it. When we smell it. We court death all our lives. Drugs, alcohol, food. It’s all around us. We champion it. At the supermarket; those blazing headlines about overdoses, suicides. Everyday tragedies. The posters of dead people we hang on our walls—Marilyn, James Dean, even Jesus. Floyd shrugged. Swedenborg takes us beyond death. Heaven and hell and, yes, angels, too—what he calls the hidden things of heaven and hell—
He ushered me within the secret things, George said, quoting The Inferno.
Obviously, Swedenborg read Dante. I don’t know if you’ve read Frank Sewall’s essay on it?
No, George said. But Dante and Giotto were good friends. It’s likely Dante saw and reflected on The Last Judgment. Have you been to Padua?
Yes, we went one summer, the whole town was strung with lights. It’s a miraculous fresco.
This kind of stuff, George said, this pageantry of reckoning—it’s been embedded in our unconscious since the beginning of time. And nothing’s changed. People are still afraid of going to hell.
But don’t you think there’s more to it than that? Floyd said. I think it’s more about love than fear—the light of the Lord. We’re unusual beings because we have a soul that never dies. Swedenborg opens the portal to the spirit world. His account confirms the Lord’s promise: Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.
And if you don’t believe?
You’re one of the doomed.
George raised his glass. So be it. I plan to make the most of it.
Telling Floyd that he thought the Bible was the greatest piece of propaganda ever written wouldn’t be wise, he realized. As George himself defined life, well, nothing really mattered in the end. You could do whatever you wanted and no bolts of lightning would strike. You have a start date and a finish date. Period. Congratulations, you’re dead.
In my mind, he said diplomatically, I guess death is final. They put you in the ground and that’s it. The End. Worms and all the rest of it. No gates, no angels. No devil, either. Your guy Swedenborg had a big imagination. If he were living now he’d be making movies. He’d be a rich man.
Perhaps, Floyd said.
George shook the ice around in his glass and finished his drink. He was already a little drunk. He wanted another but thought better of it. Somehow we make the false assumption that, just because we’re human, we can make everything better, even death.
Let me ask you this. If you did believe it—that heaven and hell exist, that God is real—would you change?
Would I change? What an absurd question, he thought. You mean would I become a better person?
Yes.
I don’t know, George admitted. He looked out at the water, the great expanse of emptiness. Bad things could add up in a life, he thought. They could slowly, slowly disfigure you. Maybe, he said finally. Maybe I would.
Floyd nodded. One has to wonder, do we even deserve heaven, any of us?
The sun was down, the water dark, the wind cool. You could see the moon rising and a scattering of stars. They finished their drinks and came about. That’s a nice tailwind, Floyd said. We’ll get home quick. Nothing better than an evening sail, don’t you think?
Won’t be too many more, George said. Getting cold already.
One or two more. You’re welcome to join me.
Thanks, I’d like that. She’s a solid boat.
—
IT WAS DARK when he stepped into the house. You’re late, Catherine said. Did you forget?
He had. Give me a minute to change.
Are you all right?
Why wouldn’t I be?
You’re pale.
It was windy on the boat.
Do you want me to cancel?
I’m fine.
She left him alone and went back into the kitchen to tend to Franny, who was sitting with Cole Hale at the table, having supper.
George clumped up the stairs like a man burdened by formalities. Being nice to people all day took it out of you. Now he was tired. He took off his clothes and got into the shower and considered jerking off, then heard her on the stairs. Once she’d caught him in the act—truly weird. He turned off the water and opened the shower curtain. She was standing at the mirror in her bra and panties, doing her face.
He grabbed a towel and dried off, watchin
g her. Without meaning to, he found himself comparing her body to his lover’s. You could stand to put on a few pounds, he told her.
She screwed the top of the mascara into the bottom and he wondered if she’d heard him.
In the bedroom, she opened the closet and confronted her wardrobe: seven or eight dresses that were all the same pattern that she’d made herself out of various fabrics. He supposed he should be proud of her for sewing her own clothes. Like her mother, she was penurious to a fault.
He pulled on the same khaki trousers he’d worn that day, a clean tennis jersey and a blue blazer that was getting worn around the cuffs. He didn’t think anybody would notice.
She chose a dress, a lavender paisley, and slipped it over her head, shifting her hips from side to side as she pulled it down, then snapped a wide belt around her waist and pushed her feet into sandals.
You look nice, he said once they had started downstairs, conscious that Cole was in earshot. George was aware that he and Catherine had an influence on the boy—representing a different picture of married life than his parents likely had—and he wanted Cole to know that there were certain rules of etiquette, certain customs, that reasonable people needed to perpetuate. He based this presumption on his own childhood, when his parents would emerge from their bedroom dressed for dinner and his father would say something nice to his mother just for his benefit, so George wouldn’t think he was a monster.
Thank you, George, she said, then turned to the boy. We shouldn’t be too long, Cole.
He glanced at her briefly, as if he were afraid the expression on his face might reveal something—that he desperately missed his mother, perhaps, or that he was in love with Catherine for reasons he couldn’t explain. Boys like Cole grew into men who continued to fall in love for reasons that were unknown to them.
Catherine handed him a pair of socks she’d darned. All fixed. She was always doing things for him—for all of them. Sometimes George would come home and find all three Hale kids at the dinner table, eating his food with their dirty hands.
Thanks. Cole looked at George expectantly, his eyes containing a boundless despair, but George refused to feel guilty. None of what had happened to this family had anything to do with him.
He pointed at the backpack hanging from a chair. What’s that you got there?
Homework.
You’re in ninth?
Yes, sir.
I imagine you’re a pretty good student?
Average. But George doubted him. There didn’t seem to be anything average about Cole Hale.
Bye, Momma, Franny said.
Catherine leaned over and kissed the top of their daughter’s head. You go to bed when you get sleepy, all right?
She should be in bed by nine, George clarified. No later.
As they walked out, he caught Catherine rolling her eyes at the boy. In response, Cole smiled knowingly, their conspiracy intact.
It was Indian summer. The trees were yellow. He put the top down. The moon was out. They drove without talking, the wind in their hair.
Those boys, he said. Maybe we should adopt them.
It was a joke, but she wasn’t laughing.
Then she asked, Do you ever once consider my needs?
Your needs? he said, wondering where that came from. Suddenly the word was everywhere—in newspapers, on TV, spilling out of the mouths of disgruntled women everywhere, as common as dish soap. Her needs. Hey: who pays the bills? He nodded. You’re damn right I consider your needs.
But in truth he’d never really thought about it.
—
JUSTINE AND BRAM OWNED a hundred-acre farm off County Route 13. It was up a narrow road, behind a bramble of overgrown blackberry bushes, and they had a yellow farmhouse and a couple of barns. When they pulled up that evening, George took in the discreet recompenses of old money—the sprawling house, the Range Rover parked in the drive, the tarped vehicles in the barn (he’d heard one was a 1958 Aston Martin that Bram was restoring). Trust Fund Babies, Jelly Henderson had called them—and they were, unabashedly so. He pulled up and parked and they got out, greeted by two drooling Labradors. Well, hello, Catherine said as one sniffed her crotch; she was never quite so effusive when he got that close.
Come on, guys. Sorry. They’re, well, they’re pretty friendly. Welcome. Bram was holding the door open, wearing baggy khakis and a faded Lacoste shirt. George was glad he’d worn his old jacket after all. It had, he thought, a certain shabby grace.
Bram shook his hand. Come on in.
They stepped into the warm, good-smelling kitchen. Justine was taking a casserole dish out of the oven and set it down on a battered oak chopping block. She smiled, her face flushed from the heat. I made you my famous lasagna. She was wearing a tea-colored smock made of gauze and a heavy beaded necklace. On her bare feet, black nail polish and a toe ring. Whenever she moved, her bracelets jingled, and she smelled like a wet cat—that damn patchouli oil.
That looks delicious, Catherine said.
Would you like to see the house? Bram swept his arm through the air like a ballet dancer. Come, we’ll show you around. He explained that the farm had been in his family for decades, his uncle’s old hunting lodge. When we moved in, we had to get rid of all the deer heads. There was even a moose we used to hang our hats on.
I love your antiques, Catherine said, opening the glass cabinet of an old secretary crammed with cookbooks. What a great piece this is.
That was my grandma’s, Justine said. These old homes are fascinating, aren’t they? I feel as if we’re borrowers. We’re just their caretakers, don’t you think?
Catherine thinks ours is haunted, George said.
All the houses in Chosen are a little haunted, Justine said, but this one has a very good vibe.
As they got the grand tour it became wildly apparent that Justine was not a devoted housekeeper. They lived in chaos. They also had quite the menagerie: dogs, cats, birds, even an iguana that lived in a wood hut the size of a telephone booth. I built it myself, Bram said. We call him Emerson.
George chuckled. Nice.
Their bedroom contained a tall armoire and a large antique bed heaped with a toppling pile of clothes, the status of which—clean or dirty—could not be determined. Towers of books on either side of the bed. A record wobbling on the turntable, the needle skipping around the label. A scattering of birdseed on the floor. A porcelain chamber pot filled with a suspiciously yellow liquid. I meant to clean up in here, Justine stated without apology.
They had drinks on a stone terrace. George was glad to be outside, away from the ruckus of the zoo. Justine brought out a tray of cheese and crackers, figs and olives. She had breasts like his grandmother, practically down to her navel. When the light filtered through her dress, he could see their shape, and her small waist. She had, he thought, the eyes of the Madonna, at least as Caravaggio had painted her, with a whore’s eyes, and long unruly hair that ran down her back. Her naked feet were large, her calves unshaven. Black tufts of hair sprouted from her armpits. As she carried out her hostess duties, replenishing drinks and crackers, he could detect the slightest odor of her sweat. Meanwhile, Bram had the look of a befuddled inventor, a man grappling with large ideas and the mechanisms of change but too isolated to share them, and perhaps he had few friends who understood them. George had known people similarly afflicted by intellect in graduate school, and they’d ended up alone, underachievers to a fault. However, Justine was happy to be his interpreter and Bram was a real sport about it, smiling and nodding with approval as if everything she said was right on the money. In fact, Justine could do the talking for all of them.
What a beautiful night, Catherine said.
Look at that moon, Justine said. You just don’t see a moon like that anywhere else.
They all looked up at it.
The moon’s brighter here, Catherine said.
I know, Justine said. We lived in the city for years.
Until we absconded, Bram added.
&nb
sp; They grinned at each other like accomplices.
We were in one life, she said, and now we’re in another.
We didn’t want to compromise anymore.
Of course, everybody thought we were crazy for moving out here.
Isn’t compromise the status quo these days? George said dryly.
It’s certainly unfortunate, Bram said. You have to be willing to be different, to be disliked even by the people you love. Half my family thinks Justine and I are crazy for living out here in the middle of nowhere. They don’t like that I married a goy. They don’t like that we don’t have kids.
You can’t let other people’s rules define you, Justine added.
Well, George said, for some reason feeling a little insulted. Being defined by others was the story of his life. He glanced at his wife.
Without rules we’d be a reckless society, she said.
We’re a reckless species, Justine argued. Always have been.
You could argue that it’s the rules that make us reckless, Bram said.
Spoken like a true anarchist, his wife confirmed with pride.
It was easy to talk theoretically when you had this much money. From George’s perspective, the Sokolovs had few responsibilities—no kids, they probably didn’t even have a mortgage. It’s easy to live without rules when you can afford to, he said.
Yes, that’s true, Bram said, unoffended. I realize we’ve been lucky. All this, he said, gesturing at the house, the fields. It’s a good life we’ve fallen into. There’s no denying we’ve been luckier than most.
A good life, George repeated, not knowing exactly what that meant. When he was a kid his parents had pushed him to be on top, to take whatever he could. Even then he’d regarded them as fierce opportunists. You make it sound so simple.
I think it is simple, Bram said. Love. Love is the main thing. Bram took his wife’s hand and squeezed it.
The gesture annoyed George. Love is all you need, he said, quoting the Beatles, and finished his drink.
These figs are amazing, he heard his wife announce, tactfully changing the subject.
Aren’t they enormous? I was just in the city, they’re from Zabar’s. Then Justine stood up. Come—let me show you your scarf. It’s almost done.