All Things Cease to Appear

  It seemed to George that she’d found a new cause in his wife, and as they walked toward the brightly lit house she draped her arm around her like a wing.

  Bram refilled their glasses. How are you liking the college? Justine told me about your work. Now you’re living it.

  I know. I’m reminded of that every time I step outside. Just this—he motioned to the distant mountains, the splattering of stars in the darkening sky, the black trees around the silvery pond—this is classic Hudson River School.

  I took art history back in the day. Used to fall asleep. Sorry.

  My students—they always nod off during the slide presentations.

  Bram smiled. Don’t take it personally.

  I turn on the lights and it’s like: welcome back to the planet. They’re blinking and stretching. Yawning.

  Seriously, do you grade down for that?

  George laughed. I should.

  My mother was a painter, though nobody thought much of her work.

  That’s too bad.

  She used to drag me to the Whitney. I used to complain. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it had an effect on me. I suppose it made me more perceptive.

  How so?

  In the way I saw the world. You see the colors. The light. The faces. He lit a cigarette and looked at George. Can you imagine the world without art? Can you imagine the world without Matisse?

  No, actually. Especially without Matisse.

  It’s our cultural sustenance. We’d be completely uncivilized without it.

  George nodded, and he did agree.

  Do you ever notice people in museums? When they look at the paintings? They tilt their heads. They stand back. They get lost in the colors. It doesn’t matter what they’re looking at—a landscape, a chicken yard, a cathedral. The mind sort of drifts in this state of bliss, detachment….

  Transcendence, George said, not without irony.

  They leave their bodies, Bram said, and they’re inside the painting.

  Just like we are now, George said, spreading his arms like a chef at the bounty before them.

  They sat there pondering it all for a moment. It’s pretty fucking cosmic, Bram said.

  George refilled their glasses. Here’s the pedestrian method, museum not required.

  Ah, yes. But there’s only one way to achieve true transcendence. Bram nodded toward the women. They were in the kitchen, billowing a cloth over the table.

  This is true, George said, but it wasn’t his wife he had in mind. He was remembering the swell of Willis’s hips, her warm, giving mouth. Just seconds before he’d come he would somehow leave the world, caught in a state of in-between that was neither physical nor spiritual, a freedom of being.

  It was, he mused, totally Swedenborgian.

  Again they looked at the house. Justine was setting out the plates while Catherine lit the candles.

  I’d be lost without Justine, Bram admitted.

  Yes, Justine’s great. You’re a lucky man.

  —

  THEY HAD DINNER inside at a warped gate-leg table, the wet dogs lying around at their feet, stinking of the pond. The candlelight gave the room a soft, nineteenth-century glow. We make everything ourselves, Bram said, bringing over a salad.

  Our garden’s fabulous. I don’t even go to the market anymore. Well, rarely. Justine served George a plate of lasagna. We even grow our own pot.

  He looked at her; she wasn’t kidding. Now, that I’d like to try.

  George, Catherine protested.

  As a matter of fact…Bram took the top off the cookie jar and retrieved a joint.

  Catherine sat there pouting, but kept up the pretense of enjoying herself. Bram lit the joint and passed it to George and he sucked it in, looking straight into Catherine’s eyes, relishing her schoolmarm reproach. Feeling the buzz almost immediately, he gasped a laugh. You’ve got to try this.

  No, thank you.

  Out of solidarity, perhaps, Justine refrained.

  He was suddenly ravenous. This looks delicious.

  Please, Justine said, gesturing for him to eat. Catherine picked at her food, wary of the calories, he knew. George made up for it with two helpings. For dessert there was rice pudding and blackberries. Justine, he said, you’ve outdone yourself. This was incredible.

  Justine flushed. He held her, kissed her. She was warm, motherly. He could feel her breasts against his chest. Bram didn’t mind, he just sat there with a sleepy grin. Let’s go look at the moon again, Justine said.

  They went back out onto the patio. Stars like a pincushion. He could feel Catherine watching him. That was her problem; she’d chosen to exclude herself from the evening activity. With purpose, they smoked some more, drank some more. He couldn’t say he minded how he felt. Didn’t mind it at all. This time Justine took the joint. He was conscious of his outline, a border of energy. He pictured his own sootlike spirit, the black pulp of his soul.

  Are you able to drive? his wife asked as they were leaving.

  Yes, dear, able as ever.

  The road was empty. It was very black and the night was even blacker. The car was loud. Bram had given him another joint. He would smoke it later, he decided. When he was alone.

  That’s the best thing about living out here, he shouted.

  What is?

  No cops.

  She grunted. None that you can see.

  Just for fun, he pushed down the accelerator. They were doing seventy, eighty.

  George, please!

  Please what? He put his hand on her thigh.

  Don’t, she said, pushing it away. Slow down.

  But he liked the feel of the car, the wind in his hair. Would you relax for once? It’s fun.

  It’s not fun.

  God, you’re so—

  I’m not listening, George.

  Dull.

  The adjective brought tears to her eyes. Just take me home.

  Hey, now, he said, touching her thigh. Hey.

  Don’t.

  What’s wrong with you? What’s going on?

  She glared at him. Nothing. I don’t want to be touched.

  Oh, like that’s a surprise. He left his hand where it was. She tried to push him away, but he was stronger.

  Get off, George. Let me out. I want to get out!

  Abruptly he pulled over to the side of the road. Fine, get out. You can walk home for all I care.

  She opened the door and got out and slammed it shut. A dark road, no lights, no houses. Just empty land, a whole sea of it. He watched her walking along the shoulder like some itinerant Gypsy and pulled ahead, rolling alongside her.

  Come on, this is stupid. Get in the car, Catherine.

  She kept walking.

  Catherine, get in the fucking car.

  She ignored him.

  God—I’m getting tired of this.

  She spun around. Well, I’m pretty damned tired of you.

  Oh, that was good. You’re finally opening your mouth. Let me show you where to put it.

  Two smart people. We should have known better.

  Should have known what?

  We can’t do this, George.

  What are you talking about?

  We don’t belong together. You know we don’t.

  He sat there shaking his head.

  You don’t love me. It’s so obvious. She had begun to cry. I gave up everything for you.

  That makes two of us.

  He jerked into gear and drove off, watching her image shrink away in his rearview mirror. Screw her, he thought, and drove fast down the empty road. Yes, they’d had some rotten luck. Yes, he was an asshole. Yes, she was shallow and naïve. But, still, they were doing it—raising Franny together—and it wasn’t true he didn’t love her; part of him did. She was the mother of his child; of course he did!

  He reeled the car around and raced back to her. Get the fuck in.

  She kept walking.

  Look, I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for fucking everything up. It felt good to say
it even though it wasn’t the truth. It was her fault just as much as his. She’d gotten what she deserved and he had the class not to remind her. Hey, did you hear what I said? Catherine!

  You think I’m stupid?

  What?

  She shook her head. There’s no point even talking to you.

  You’re being ridiculous.

  She was crying, mascara running down her cheeks. We’ve built this spectacular lie, she said.

  You’re drunk. That’s what’s going on here. You shouldn’t drink—don’t you know that?—someone like you.

  What? Like what?

  So sensitive, so vulnerable, right? So easily tarnished. I’ve fucking ruined you?

  He jerked into park and got out and grabbed her and she fought him and slapped him and he hit her back. She coiled away from him, and he saw blood. I’m sorry, he said. Here, let me— He pulled on her dress and it ripped.

  Don’t, George. Just leave me alone. You’ve done enough.

  She got into the car. He looked up and down the road. There was nobody around. He scanned the darkness, thick as velvet, and saw a pair of yellow eyes. A lone deer standing in the field their only witness.

  —

  THE BOY HAD fallen asleep on the couch. Franny had gone to bed without trouble, he said, watching Catherine hurry upstairs like some glistening animal, holding together her dress, her hand over her eye. George paid him a little extra. There’s a lot more of this coming, you play your cards right. Come on, I’ll run you home.

  The boy folded the bills into his wallet and put it in his pocket. Although his wife criticized him for being callous and insensitive, George could be magnanimous when he wanted to be, and he admired the boy’s loyalty, the fact that he always showed up on time, even a little early. Reliable people were hard to come by these days. He knew he could trust Cole to do what he was told. He felt, well, that, in some strange way, Cole Hale was a version of himself.

  Nice car, Mr. Clare.

  It’s Italian.

  With the windows down, he drove a little faster than he should. He could tell the boy liked it. On impulse, he took out the joint and lit it. You want some of this?

  Cole glanced at the joint, shook his head.

  Come on, you don’t have to do that. He pushed his hand over. Take it.

  I don’t know, Mr. Clare.

  George decided that the boy was just being polite. Go on.

  Hesitantly, Cole took the joint and toked. He coughed.

  That wasn’t so hard, was it?

  Cole allowed a brief smile. It would be the first of many secrets, George thought.

  The boy lived with his uncle on Division Street, in a narrow row house. He pulled up to the curb.

  The door opened and a man came out, to stand on the porch with his hands on his hips, his expression sharp as a Doberman’s.

  That’s my uncle.

  Good night, now.

  ’Night.

  George waved, but the uncle didn’t wave back, and once the boy climbed up the stairs his uncle gripped his shoulder and ushered him inside. The door shut and the lights went off.

  When he got home George went into his study and opened the bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch, his father’s gift for getting his doctorate; of course he’d kept his academic status to himself. He brooded about the university, those assholes in the department. Warren fucking Shelby. Ultimately, they hadn’t offered him a position; that was fine with him. George was perfectly happy up here in the boondocks, where nobody second-guessed his expertise. They could take their department and shove it up their ass, that’s what they could do. New York could go fuck itself.

  He’d had a good time with the Sokolovs. They were different from anybody he knew in the city—grad students who acted like they were in some theater troupe, indulging in a sort of predictable malaise, and his so-called colleagues in Art History, those manipulators. He’d grown tired of all the gossipy eruptions, the leveraging for status. The Saginaw position had saved him from that. He’d lost his faith in the ordinary, in the things that bound them as people, and staggered out of that time warp like an astronaut returning to earth.

  His wife was lying on the very edge of the mattress, turned away, her shoulder blades jutting out from the white sheet.

  It would be good of you to forgive me, he said to her back. You know I didn’t mean it.

  George. But that’s all she said.

  You know I’d never hurt you.

  You hurt me all the time.

  He stared down at his hands. For some reason he was thinking of how his mother would cry whenever he did something wrong, then beg him to behave himself. At an early age he’d become efficient at misleading them, manipulating their sympathies. I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t think it’s accurate.

  Are you cheating on me, George?

  Of course not.

  She studied him carefully. Can I trust you?

  Yes. Of course you can trust me.

  Why are you always so late?

  I’m just starting out over there, he told her. I have to put my time in, pay my dues.

  She turned and looked at him, tentatively, as if the consequences of meeting his eyes might be damaging, then turned away again, dissatisfied, and closed her eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, her body tense, unyielding. It made no difference to him. She was upset and he would comfort her.

  I’d be lost without you, he told her. Try not to forget that.

  The Secret Language of Women

  YOU NEVER WANT the ones who are willing to love you. This was something her mother had told her once. And Willis decided it was true. Because she knew that anyone willing to love her had to be pretty fucking desperate.

  She knew how to use her body to make him crazy. She used her eyes and her lips, her little-baby pout. She used her long legs, which her mother complained had gone to waste ever since she gave up ballet. She used her knees, which were kind of like upside-down teacups. She used her hips. And her head, when she tossed her hair out of her face like she gave a shit. You could make your body say one thing, while inside your head you were thinking another. That was what she liked best about being female, this ability she had to trick people.

  George. He wanted to do things to her. That’s what he told her. He had laid her out on the bed, stretching her arms over her head and pulling her legs out straight, and he stood there looking down at her. His hands were even bigger than her thighs, and when he pushed on them she felt caught and her eyes went blurry like she might cry. Then he took his hands off, like she was on fire and he’d gotten burned, and walked out. She hadn’t seen him since.

  She had called her mother that night, but when she heard her voice and pictured her in the kitchen on East Eighty-Fifth Street, something cooking in the oven, one of her hippie casseroles, and she could imagine her tragic face with every second in her brain a battle between good and evil or fair and unfair or persecuted and privileged, it got so intense and noisy in her own head that she couldn’t stand it and hung up.

  When she closed her eyes and saw George Clare, Willis felt guilt splashing in her gut, and that was what she wanted, because she was guilty of so much. And she was reckoning with it. With the simple fact of who she was. The alien offspring of Todd B. Howell, the famous criminal defense attorney with his drippy, savage clients. The heavy envelopes he’d leave on his desk, how she’d sneak into his study late at night and unwind the red string round and round and round until its yellow mouth opened and stuck out its tongue, depositions and photographs of the things people had done, very bad things, how she’d spread them out around her on the floor, messy and spectacular as birthday presents. How her father’s pudgy face looked when he talked about his clients over dinner, a kind of nauseous pride, bragging about always getting them off—like it was something sexual—because he could find the one detail nobody else would ever think of, that was his special skill. Even this guy who’d put a gun up someone’s vagina and pulled the trigger—well, he’d found so
me loophole, some tiny thing.

  Because in this world you could get away with stuff like that. You could get away with being despicable.

  That had been it for her, as much as she could take. And she’d walked out onto the terrace, standing there in the crazy wind, so hot it was like you were turned inside out, and the city just waiting, the tall gray buildings, the dark sky, the flash of lightning over the river, and she gave in to it, its routine madness, the countless windows of countless apartments in which terrible things were taking place, and she climbed up on the ledge and held out her arms. Here I am, she’d screamed into the emptiness, do what you want with me.

  —

  THEY’D PULLED HER out of school. Her mother didn’t want her going back out west in her condition. Her shrink told her it was time to come to terms—stroking his beard, adjusting his bifocals with neurotic regularity. Waiting. Waiting for her to talk about the thing with Ralph.

  She’d met him on the subway. It was an ugly name for such a good-looking man—he told her he was a model but wasn’t gay. He was tall and big-shouldered, the kind of person who had to watch his weight. He was a little older. She lied and said she was a model, too; he believed her. They lived in the same neighborhood. Like her, he was still living at home with his parents, but he’d found a place, he said, his lease started in a month. After the first times he’d tied her up, she thought about God. She wondered why He’d chosen her for this—why this person, this strange sad boy-man.

  There was no one to talk to about it with. People would think she was a freak. And the guilt, because she kind of liked it. Being captured. Held in place. You have no choice but to enjoy it, his eyes seemed to say. They had things in common. His father worked for the FBI, an intelligence analyst. Ralph had a skinny, ugly dog that would roam around anxiously while he fucked her. Then he’d untie her, watching her face, looking for something—some expression or revelation. They’d emerge from the oily arcade of his room into the living room, thick with cigar smoke, his parents watching TV, and she’d put on her nice-girl-from-a-good-family smile and he’d walk her out, standing apart from her in the elevator like they were distant acquaintances and what had just transpired between them was no more than the fulfillment of some clerical agreement of service. She didn’t know why, but he stopped calling her. The abrupt dismissal sent her spiraling deeper into isolation—her very own version of exile.