A Patchwork Planet Page 18

  Not till later, at least, when everything was over.

  And then it said, What was that all about?

  Which Martine was probably wondering too, because already she was twisting away from me, rustling among the sheets and then rising to cross the room. A light flickered on—just the dim fluorescent light on the back of her ancient cook-stove. It showed her facing me, head tilted, clutching a bedspread around her with thin bare arms. She still had her socks on. Crumpled black ankle socks. Little white pipe-cleaner shins.

  “Oh, Lord,” I said.

  Her head came out of its tilt, and she said, “Well. I guess you want to get going.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, and I reached for my clothes. Martine turned and went off toward what must have been the bathroom, with the bedspread making a hoarse sound as it followed her across the floor planks.

  I did call out a goodbye when I left, but she didn’t answer.

  Back when Natalie and I were still married—at the very tail end of our marriage, when things had started falling apart—I happened to be knocked down by a car after an evening class. Ended up spending several hours in the emergency room while they checked me out, but all I had was a few scrapes and bruises.

  When I finally got home, about midnight, there was Natalie in her bathrobe, walking the baby. The apartment was dark except for one shaded lamp, and Natalie reminded me of some pious old painting—her robe a long, flowing bell, her head bent low, her face in shadows. She didn’t speak until I was standing squarely in front of her, and then she raised her eyes to mine and said, “It’s nothing to me anymore if you choose to stay out carousing. But how about your daughter, wondering all this time where you are? Didn’t you at least give any thought to your daughter?”

  Except my daughter was sound asleep and obviously hadn’t noticed my absence.

  I looked, into Natalie’s eyes—reproachful black ovals, absorbing the glow from the lamp without sending back one gleam. I said, “No, I didn’t, since you ask. I was having too good a time.” Then I went off to bed. I fell into bed, still wearing my clothes, like someone exhausted by drink and fast women.

  Every now and then, I think I might have an inkling why Ditty Nolan stopped leaving her house. It may have had something to do with those years spent tending her mother. “If you make me stay home for so long, just watch: I’ll stay at home forever,” she said.

  “If you think I’m such a villain, just watch: I’ll act worse than you ever dreamed of,” I said. I said it during my teens. I said it toward the end of my marriage. And I said it that whole nasty Monday, which seemed, now that I looked back, to have lasted about a month.

  Back at my place, I found two more messages from Sophia and another from Mrs. Dibble. Sophia’s voice was patient, without the least hint of annoyance, which made me feel terrible. Mrs. Dibble was all business. “I want you to call, Barnaby, as soon as you get in. I don’t care how late it is. Use my home number.”

  So I called. What the hell. If she wanted to fire me, let’s get it over with.

  It wasn’t even ten o’clock, but she must have been in bed, because she answered so immediately, in that super-alert tone people use when they don’t want to let on you’ve wakened them. “Yes!” she said.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  “Barnaby.”

  A pause, a kind of shuffling noise. She must be sitting up and rearranging her pillows. “Here are your assignments for tomorrow,” she said. “Mrs. Cartwright wants you to help her buy a birthday present for her niece. Mrs. Rodney needs her mower taken in for maintenance. Miss Simmons would like a window shade hung. Mr. Shank has asked for—”

  “Wait,” I told her. “Is this all in one day?”

  “Yes,” she said, and there was something unsteady in her voice—a bubble of laughter. “Package mailed for Mr. Shank, fireplace cleaned at the Brents’—”

  “Fireplace?” I said. It was August. We were going through a heat wave.

  The laughter grew more noticeable. “Plants moved for Mrs. Binney from the dining room to the living room—”

  Mrs. Binney raised African violets, none of them over six inches tall. There was no reason on earth she should need my help to move them.

  “Mrs. Portland wants you daily all next week,” Mrs. Dibble said. “She’s thinking of rearranging every stick of furniture she owns. The Winstons have requested—”

  “What’s going on here?” I asked.

  “I believe they must be trying to make a point, dear heart.”

  I was quiet a moment. Then I said, “How did they find out?”

  “How do they find out anything? Not from me, I promise.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “They love you, Barnaby,” Mrs. Dibble told me, and now the laughter had faded. She was using a solemn, treasuring tone that embarrassed me. “It hasn’t escaped their notice how you’ve cared for them all these years.”

  “So,” I said. “You’re not firing me?”

  “Firing you!”

  “Well, I know I didn’t return a few of your phone calls—”

  “Barnaby. I would never fire you. Did you really think I would? You’re my very best worker! I tell everybody that! ‘Barnaby’s going to end up owning this company,’ I say. ‘You just watch: when I’m old and decrepit, it’s Barnaby who’ll buy me out.’”

  “Who’ll what?” I said.

  “Oh, well, just on the installment plan or something. If only I could afford it, I’d give it to you for free! It means a lot to me to see a good man take it over.”

  I swallowed.

  “But why are we discussing this now?” Mrs. Dibble asked. “For now, we have to think how you’re going to manage all these assignments.”

  I said, “I’ll find a way, Mrs. Dibble. You just leave it to me.”

  After I hung up, I sat there a minute, pressing my hands very tightly between my knees.

  Then I phoned Sophia. I told her I was sorry. “I should have called before,” I said. “I did get your messages. I’ve just … been in this mood, you know? I didn’t feel all that sociable.”

  She said, “I understand. I understand perfectly. You don’t have to explain.”

  “But I owe you an apology,” I said. “Really. I ask your forgiveness.”

  “Of course I forgive you!”

  Did it count if she didn’t realize what she was forgiving me for?

  Then she wanted to know if she should come over. But I thought if she came she would realize for certain, and so I said no. I said I was tired; I said I needed a shower. She didn’t push it. She just said, “All right, sweetie. You get a good night’s rest,” and we arranged to meet the next day. I told her I was taking her out to dinner—someplace romantic.

  I’d meant it when I said I was tired, but even so, I had trouble sleeping once I went to bed. I felt filled with determination. I was just about vibrating with all my plans for tomorrow.

  I had to get hold of that price book. I had to sell my car and pay off my debt to my parents. And this was in addition to all those jobs for Rent-a-Back, because I couldn’t let my clients down. They trusted me.

  It began to seem that I really might have moved on in life.

  “IT’S ‘WEATHERED and rusted,’ ” Len told me.

  “It’s ‘fully drivable,’ ” I told him.

  “It’s an ‘amateur restoration,’ ” he told me.

  We were quoting from The Collector’s Automobile Prices— the inside cover, where they explained their grading system. We were snatching the book from each other, to read aloud the phrases that supported our positions. I maintained my car qualified as Good, but Len was holding out for Poor. Secretly, I’d have been happy to settle for Adequate—the category between the two. But first I planned to put up a fight.

  “If you took this to a dealer,” Len told me, “he’d laugh in your face.”

  “Maybe I should take it to a dealer,” I said, pretending to think it over.

  A dealer would likely fi
nd about fifty things wrong with it besides what Len had already found. I knew Len was my best shot. And my bluff must have worked, because Len jumped in fast with, “Of course, no dealer would have your interests at heart the way I do.”

  “Or your interests the way I do,” I told him. “That’s why I’m giving you first refusal. You and I go back so far.”

  But I might have overdone it there. Len squinted at me suspiciously.

  The place where I’d finally tracked him down was the Brittany Heights housing development—a series of treeless, shrubless hills out in Baltimore County. For all the snide remarks I’d made about Len’s line of work, I had never actually visited any of his projects. This one was kind of eerie. Dotted about on the rolling greens, with no visible streets or driveways leading up to them and no signs of life anywhere around them, were these brand-new pastel stucco castles. They had turrets and battlements and arched front doors. The model, which we were standing in front of, flew a triangular banner from its crenellated roof. We might have strayed into a neighborhood of miniature kingdoms, all within sound of the Beltway.

  “Suppose we say this,” Len suggested, slapping the book shut and handing it back. “Suppose we call it Poor, but I tack on a thousand dollars for old times’ sake.”

  The price for a Sting Ray in poor condition was forty-five hundred dollars. I shook my head.

  “Two thousand?”

  “Sorry,” I told him. I tossed my keys up, caught them, and turned to get into the car. “Never say I didn’t give you a chance,” I flung back as I slid behind the wheel.

  “Wait! Barn!” He grabbed hold of my door. “Where’re you going?”

  “Off to see the dealer,” I said.

  “What’s your rush? We’ve just barely started talking here!”

  “Well, hey,” I told him. “You snooze, you lose.” And I reached over to pull the door shut, but he wouldn’t release it.

  “Okay,” he said. He heaved a put-upon sigh. “Just for you, then: we’ll call it Adequate.”

  Adequate meant ten thousand dollars. I stopped hauling on my door.

  Between the day we settled the price and the day I turned the keys over, about two and a half weeks passed—long enough for the red tape to be taken care of—but already it seemed to me that the car wasn’t fully mine anymore. My August trip to Philly, for instance, Sophia and I made by train, because I could picture the irony of totaling on I-95 now that I had the money within my sights. And anytime I drove around town, I was more than usually aware of the salty, sun-warmed smell of the interior and the uniquely caved-in spokes of the steering wheel. I had never been a car man, never memorized all the models the way a lot of my friends had; but now I saw that a Sting Ray did have a very distinctive character. Out on the open road, it sounded like a bumblebee. Its artificial grilles and ports and vents, hinting at some barely contained explosion of power, reminded me of a boastful little kid.

  I put off telling Pop-Pop. I decided I’d tell him after the fact, so that he couldn’t keep me from going through with it.

  On the second Saturday in September—a mild, muggy morning, overcast, the kind of day when it’s hard to work up any enthusiasm—I drove to Len’s garden apartment. Martine followed behind with the truck, so that I would have a ride back. Our whole transaction took place out front at the curb—Len circling the car several times, stopping to stroke a fender in this possessive, presumptuous way that got on my nerves. He was wearing his weekend outfit of polo shirt, khakis, and yachting shoes minus the socks. I couldn’t abide how he combed his hair in an arrogant upward direction. And when he got in and started the engine, it seemed to me that he did it all wrong. That first little gnarly sound was missing; he wasn’t gradual enough. I called out, “Careful, there—”

  But Martine, lounging nearby with her hands jammed in her rear pockets, said, “Let it go, Barnaby,” and so I did.

  When we left she asked if I wanted to drive, but I lacked the heart for it. I sat slumped in the shotgun seat of the truck—our truck, for what that was worth, with its greasy vinyl upholstery and the graying white fur dice swinging from the mirror—and told Martine everything I disliked about Len Parrish. “It isn’t that I blame him for letting me take the rap alone,” I said. “He’d have done me no good coming forward; I understand that. But then to act so above it all! Tut-tutting with my mom about me; mentioning the Paul Pry business to Sophia. When he was in on it! When he was just as involved!”

  “Let it go,” Martine said again, switching her turn signal on.

  “You saw how he acted this morning. So Mr. Cool, so … like, uncaring. I introduce you and he says, ‘Uh-huh,’ and doesn’t even look at you; too busy gloating over the car. Doesn’t even glance in your direction.”

  Sneakily, I glanced at her myself. She was sitting on the cushion she used for driving, one finger tapping the wheel as she waited for the light to change. Her profile was poked forward, beaky and persistent, intent on the signal overhead.

  Martine and I had developed a new style of dealing with each other lately. We were careful not to touch, not even by accident, and we never quite let our eyes meet. Our tone of voice was casual and sporty. Like now: “So?” Martine said. “He’s a jerk. Give it a rest, Gaitlin.” And she slammed into gear and hooked a quick left turn in front of the oncoming traffic.

  Maybe I should have said something. Brought things out in the open. But how would I put it, exactly? Hey, okay; so we did something stupid. You’re not going to let it change things, are you? Could we just hit the Erase button, here, and go back to the same as before?

  But I didn’t say any of that, and she went on facing straight forward. She seemed to be driving with her nose. Both hands gripped the wheel; her house key dangled from the brown leather band that was looped around one wrist. I thought of something. I said, “The key.”

  “What key?”

  “The key to the Corvette. I left it on the ring. I turned over my whole key ring, with that Chevy emblem my Pop-Pop gave me when he put the car in my name.”

  “So what? You’ll be driving a Ford now. What do you want with a Chevrolet key ring?”

  She was right. I couldn’t argue with her logic. But that emblem had been with me a very long time. The plastic surface was so yellowed and dulled, you could barely make out the two crossed flags encased beneath it. At tense moments I would run my thumb across it, the way I used to stroke the satin binding of my crib blanket. I thought of Len doing that, and it killed me.

  I must be more of a car man than I’d realized.

  On Monday evening, I dropped by my parents’ house, choosing an hour when I figured they would both be home. Sophia offered to come with me, but I had this picture in mind: me facing Mom and Dad in the entrance hall, slipping the money from Opal’s clip and saying, “Here. I just stopped by to drop this off.” And then I’d lay it on the flat of Mom’s palm and leave. Sophia wasn’t part of this picture; no offense to her. I needed to do it alone.

  But these things never work out the way you imagine. First of all, it emerged that eighty-seven one-hundred-dollar bills made a stack too thick for a money clip. I had to ask the teller to fasten one of those paper bands around the middle. And then when I got to the house, my parents did not obligingly show up together at the door. (When did they ever, in fact?) Just my mother came, carrying a cordless phone and continuing with her conversation even as she let me in. “It’s only Barnaby,” she told the phone. “Wicky,” she mouthed at me before she turned away So I couldn’t stay in the hall. I had to follow her into the living room, and settle on the couch, and wait for her to finish talking.

  “Honestly,” she told me as she punched the hang-up button. “I know I swore I would always get along with my daughters-in-law, but sometimes it’s an effort.” She turned toward the stairs and called, “Jeffrey?”

  “What?” came back dimly, moments later.

  “Your son is here.”

  “Which son?”

  “The bad one,” I called
, just to save her the trouble.

  Mom rolled her eyes at me and then came to sit in the chair to my left. She was wearing slacks and the man’s white shirt she gardened in. (I had envisioned her more dressed up, somehow. Mom in her Guilford Matron outfit, Dad in his suit. Like a dollhouse couple, hand in hand in the doorway) “How’s Sophia?” she asked.

  “She’s fine.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her with you?”

  “Oh, well …”

  “Sophia would never act the way Wicky does,” she said. “Sophia’s so considerate.” And then she sailed into this tale about the birthday party Wicky was planning for Dad. “I said, ‘We don’t want you going to any bother, Wicky,’ and she said, ‘It won’t be the least bit of bother,’ and now I know why. Because first she told me all I had to do was show up, and then she told me, well, maybe I could make my artichoke dip, and then—”

  “Whose truck is that in the driveway?” my father wanted to know. He walked into the room with a magazine suspended from one hand, his index finger marking a page. He did have his suit on still, but his tie was missing and he wore his velvet mules instead of shoes. “Red pickup,” he told me. “Did you drive that here?”

  “Yes; um …”

  “You left your lights on.”

  “Well, I’ll be going pretty soon,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t hurry off!” my mother cried. “Stay for dinner! We’re having shrimp salad. There’s lots.”

  “Thanks, but I already ate,” I said. “I just stopped by to—”

  “Already ate? Ate dinner?” she asked. She checked her watch. “It’s barely seven-thirty.”

  “Right.”

  “Goodness, Barnaby. You’re so uncivilized!”

  I looked at her. I said, “How do you figure that?”

  “We always eat at eight,” she said.