The Walnut Door Page 19
* * *
—
SHE fumbled at the dials and caught a random part of Patton on the late show. The vast scale of the world seen through this window—the huge, endearing malevolence of George C. Scott, the terrain of a great war under a sky as encompassing as what a fish sees with eyes on the sides of its head—was weirdly reduced on the tiny screen of her Sony to a kind of peddler’s sample of the whole truth. Huge and minuscule, the visible idea seemed to be that you could have life both ways. She felt confirmed in her sense of General Patton as a dangerous backlot bully, but she also saw in this swaggering puppet on her eight-inch viewer a person who might be construed as the right kind of red-blooded American, a true hero of the collective unconscious. Elaine was haunted as she watched by a memory of Scott as another kind of military man-General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove—and that sense of double exposure was immediately reinforced by the hemorrhoid-ointment commercial (“reduces stinging and itching in seconds”) coming right on top of footage of exploding shells and tanks in flames. As she punched the off-knob she wondered: Could George C. Scott play Macaboy? He was a great actor, Scott. Could he catch the both ways of Macaboy? She remembered saying out loud in the recent past, “You were bound to have a reaction.”
* * *
—
A CROWD running down a field off to the left, throwing heavy objects. She runs over, sensing that someone has been killed by the rocks thrown by the young people there. The rocks are half buried, grass has grown up around them. Elaine persuades the young people to help, turning up the stones. They find charred bones. A young man with a large airlines bag puts the bones in it as they are found. A pelvis is recognized. “That’s old George C,” the bagman says. Elaine, still kneeling by the stones, asked who did “it.” A blond man in a coverall with some lettering on the back says he did. Then everyone is involved in pursuit. Elaine catches the blond man; holds him by the shoulders; and asks him: “Do you have an attorney? Do you? Do you? There has been a homicide. Do you understand? There has been a homicide.” She shakes him.
Later money is being changed—four hands with dollar bills. From one of them the bill is taken, and two Kennedy half dollars are given in exchange.
For some reason this transaction is terrifying, and Elaine turns and runs all the way up to consciousness.
* * *
—
SHE slept till past noon. She awoke with a sense of levitation. Still in bed she stretched, and her feet seemed to float far, far from her upraised hands; her whole length shuddered in comfort. She remembered the dream; she did not usually keep her dreams. This one did not scare her now. Parts of it seemed comical.
She soared out of bed and fixed coffee.
* * *
—
ABOUT three o’clock. A series of quick knocks.
Elaine scurried into her bedroom—hadn’t expected him until evening—comb crackling in her hair—more banging—skidded to the door and pulled it open and flew into waiting arms.
Of Mary Calovatto.
“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Calovatto said, pushing Elaine out of the hug. “How adorable! You missed me!”
Deep tan slicked with unguents to a Naugahyde finish. A bonnet and curlers.
Elaine whirled to face the door. “Just a minute,” she said. “Tell me something. Did you turn this little button before you knocked?”
“What are you accusing me of? I don’t fool around with people’s hardware. You little bitch, you trying to say I was trying to pull a sneak?” She was off and running. “You don’t have nothing—nothing!—that I’d pull a sneak for. I wouldn’t sneeze at the hippie junk you got. Those flat-ass spoons. I don’t like coming back from a first-class-accommodation holiday in the Caribbean islands and being accused of a two-bit break-in. I’m going to get Giulio out here—”
“Hold on,” Elaine said, darting in at the door. “Be right back.”
“Don’t you try to call no cops,” she heard over her shoulder. “Come back here! A person makes a friendly visit…” Elaine lost the rest to the shouting in her head.
She slipped and fell as she banked on the turn around the end of her bed. She crawled on her hands and knees, like a person dying of thirst in the desert, to the side table and plucked the phone off its cradle and banged the receiver to her ear.
Yes, there was a dial tone.
She stood up, hung up. She walked at a hostess pace to the door and said, “I apologize, Mary. I’ve been jumpy. I’ve been having my period, and Justy—”
Mary Calovatto softened. “I knew that booger would give you conniptions.”
“Come in and have some coffee.”
“Oh, honey, I can’t drink that tiger pee you make. Come in my kitchen.”
“I have to stay here,” Elaine said. “I’m waiting for a call.”
“All right, I’ll come in for just a second.”
And for two hours Mary Calovatto told Elaine all about everything. There wasn’t time for her to ask about Homer Plentagger; she had too much to tell. They hadn’t gone to Cinnamon Bay to screw in the talcum sand. “I didn’t need to take him there. When Giulio gets in that tropical air—look out!”
* * *
—
SHE dialed his number. No answer. Not back yet.
* * *
—
THE walnut door stood open. She walked back and forth in the living room, looking out into the hall.
* * *
—
“BOTTSY! How you doing?”
“My God, Quinlan, where’ve you been?”
“Right here.”
“I tried to call you. I needed you.”
“I was out of order. How’s old what’s his name—Pyotr Whoozevich?”
“That’s why I needed you. I’ve had a crise de mentalité.”
“A who?”
“I punted my fucking thesis.”
“All that work?”
“I’ve decided to go to business school. Can you come over, Quinlan?”
“Not right this minute.”
“I need you.”
* * *
—
“I’M sorry I was such a louse, Greenie. I’m better now.”
“Frankly, I was glad. The last thing I need—viral pneumonia. You know what I’ve got?”
“Greenie, you’re going to have a logical baby!”
“No, ma’am. I’ve got crabs.”
“You mean the Associate Professor of Linguistics and Logic gave you—?”
“Who else? You know me, Quinnie, I don’t sleep around.”
“I never had crabs. What are they exactly?”
“You have to shave down there. And put on this hideous purple stuff. You wouldn’t believe the itchery. I had a bad moment there when you said you were sorry you’d been a louse. I thought you knew. I thought the bastard must have been lipping around. I thought you were taking a dig.”
“How would I know? I’ve been—”
“Of course I’ve quit my job….”
No one ever asks a certain type of person a single question.
“Hr, Mom! What’s new?”
“Lainie. So you’re finally back from the dead.”
“I’ve been working my ass off.”
“Lainie, please. Sometimes I think you talk that way deliberately, to upset me. Your father used to do that.”
“I know. I guess I’m like him. Listen, Mom, I called to tell you some news.”
“Oh, dear. Is it bad?”
“Remember that man I told you about the last time we talked?”
“You’re not in trouble again, are you, Elaine? You’re not—?”
“He’s going to move in with me.”
“Darling child, you worry me so. Are you sure you want this?”
“You’d love him, Mom. He’s
had a short haircut. And he has lovely manners.”
* * *
—
SHE tried his number several times.
* * *
—
THE sidewalk was like a trampoline. The sun was on the lowest shelf of one of the longest days of the year. She bounced up Academy, away from the bloodstain. Two bluejays were yakking in a sycamore, and Elaine thought: No hawk for a long time now. She bounced back and into Court Street, and flying past the gap in the buildings she looked up at her window—up there a girl was shouting, “Hey, I’m locked in,” and Elaine just shrugged and bounced on. From here the window seemed rather small. She walked across the bridge over the railroad tracks and all the way past Orange and the Post Office to the Green. The world never changes—three churches, green Green grass, tall trees, geometry of paths, drunks on benches. Macaboy was a tricky character. He would play an elusive game. She would have to be strong, strong, strong. You don’t just turn a key and unlock the whole bit. Look at Bottsy Feldman and Greenhelge: what fuckups. Yes, Dad did teach me to swear, probably to annoy Mom. Now that she had a job, she ought to be able to scramble around and get a better one. When she went off to Bennington, Dad said, “Keep scrambling, sweetie.” Macaboy at least had one big edge on Greg: he could use his hands. You could survive around anyone who could make a door like that one. That door had patience in it, sweat, signs of scruple, harmony, dignity, resistance; and also something trompe l’oeil, deceptive, ominously coded and not safe. To say nothing of a ferking blatant lock installed backwards. It came through loud and clear that the dead father whom Macaboy had loved so much was a failure in the eyes of both father and son. Failure begets failure? What was she to think? Must she think of the bad features of the door as husks of seeds? What about the plateau of good feeling on which she had found herself ever since her conversion, or whatever it was? Had she got there by finding out that it is possible to scramble? Sickness, paleness of the ego, money worries, menopause, wrinkles, widow’s loneliness, the approach of the Great Cheater—later, later, alligator. Right now she had stuff to take care of. Right now she had this difficult, shifty, double-decked bastard Macaboy to scramble with—for—against. The sunlight was creamy on the marble base of the memorial flagpole as she walked past, starting homeward: it had the names of lost men on it, and places of battles. One was CHEMIN-DES-DAMES. She felt so great, and so unsure. Keep scrambling, baby.
* * *
—
“THERE you are.”
“Oh, good evening, Mzz Quinlan. Your telephone working again?”
“My telephone is working again. How come you’re home? Last time you came straight here.”
“You needed food last time.”
“That’s true. Hey, pal, just a matter of curiosity. When did you first leave this here door unlocked?”
“Uh. Let me see. Ummmm. I guess it was time before last.”
“You mean all that first trip you took to Avon when I was so hungry—”
“I think it was then.”
“You double-decked bastard. When you come over would you please bring your tools?”
“To fix the lock? Sure nuff. Pleasure. No charge.”
“When are you coming?”
“Pretty soon. I have to make a phone call.”
“Listen. I have a gorgeous idea. Do you want to hear it?”
“You are interested in a sequel?”
“That one’s gorgeous, too. But no. Mine was different.”
“Yes?”
“Why don’t you move in here with me?”
“Oh hey I like that. That’s ace. Beautiful…. I’d have to think about it a little bit. My workbenches…”
“I mean, sure, keep your shop over there. Just park your carcass here. See what I mean? You’re such a good warmer-up of restaurant food—you know, to go—I need you around the house. Bottle washer, also. Also, I have in mind—”
“I’d have to think about it.”
“Some response.”
“Jeez, thanks, Mzz Quinlan. I mean I like it. Looks like I could really buy it, see. It’s just that I have a very slow adjustment servomechanism. You know me well enough to know I’m cautious.”
“I know this: you servo perfecto.”
“Hey, I mean really. It’s a beautiful idea. I’ll think about it.”
“Don’t strain yourself. What time you reckon you’ll get here?”
“I’d guess an hour. I can’t make my call for like three-quarters of an hour. Then I’ll be over.”
“What is this big call, anyway?”
“I have this other door I have to sell.”
“And then the Stanloc bit, huh? ‘I brought you some chopsticks.’ Huh?”
“No, Mzz Quinlan, you got me utterly totally completely wrong. Listen, Elaine, that part never happened before. It was because you—”
“You just watch your ass, Macaboy.”
“I’d rather watch someone else’s I know.”
“That’s better.”
“I might bring a suitcase over while I’m at it. Some of my stuff.”
“That’s better. I’ll have the door open.”
Chapter 37
SOMETHING is not quite right about this oak door. Precisely the heaviness, the nineteenth-century Weltschmerz, that Macaboy feared and that Beethoven warned against—not (Beethoven) with cheerfulness but, rather, with a sense that only tragedy will serve—has somehow crept in. Macaboy counted on the resonance of oak for this door. Jove and Thor loved the oak tree. Indians ate acorns. When Andros demanded that the Connecticut colonists surrender their charter, they hid it in a hollow in an eight-hundred-year-old oak in Hartford. White oak, with glove-shaped leaves, some of which cling, though brown, right through the winter. Sturdy American tree. The most walked-on wood in the world; durable, workable, tight-textured. The fault does not lie with the wood. The judgment of the artisan has wavered somewhere.
Macaboy cannot unglue what he has glued.
He stops sanding. He cleans up the sawdust with his Hoover. He starts farting around with gadgetry, to pass the time—assembles a keyhole light, for which he has acquired the parts: a pencil flashlight, an automobile distributor dust cap, and a cast acrylic rod with a diameter of 250 millimeters. He boils up some water, heats the rod in it, bends it to a wide obtuse angle, fits it into the wire end of the dust cap, and sets the cap over the business end of the flashlight What a nice little dingus!—no bigger than a busted ball-point pen, to throw light into trashed keyholes and messed-up lock barrels. He winks it on. Perfect! A little beam of light which goes around a bend.
He burrows in his closet and hauls out an ancient Gladstone bag, and he opens it out on the floor. He has never learned how to pack. Folding clothing is not one of his skills. He throws stuff in.
Then it is ten o’clock, suitable time for a call in the month of June.
* * *
—
“Is this Mzz Jennifer Ceeley?”
“Speaking. Who’s this?”
“I’m calling for Safe-T Securit-E Syst-M, Incorporated. The company I represent wanted me to ask you a few questions about the security of your apartment.”
“Security? You mean like insurance?”
“I mean like your personal safety, Mzz Ceeley. Like people breaking in.”
“Oh, God, we had one of those. A woman right down the hall. Just last week.”
“Exactly. Exactly.”
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