A Regular Guy (35 page)

Although she was pretending to read a brochure on the table, Jane had almost burst out and asked why. It seemed the opposite. If one person had money and the other needed it, you’d think the one person would be grateful and the other would be glad to be of help. She had been thinking about that
why
ever since.

Jane remembered Minna’s family again. “Do you think the reason you’re not better friends is they’re jealous of you?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“I think they are. Because you’re rich and you have good clothes and a good car and everything. And their house was pretty small; they just had one bathroom.”

“You know, I’ve found in my life that it doesn’t really matter how many bathrooms you have. What matters is what you’re doing all day. And I think Shep probably admires a lot of what we’re doing, and once in a while he might feel a little pang, but I wouldn’t say he was jealous. I don’t think people are jealous of things that are really great.”

“Oh, I do,” Jane said. But in time, over the years, she changed her mind. She would put it another way. People didn’t envy those far above themselves. They envied their best friend or their sister, somebody they thought was just a little better, a person they felt, with a bit of luck, they could be. Probably for Bob Shepard and the people at dinner that night, Owens didn’t get thrown into the comparison at all. He wasn’t close enough. Minna’s parents seemed to like her father, but she could tell they weren’t that interested in what he did. They had their own pursuits, their books and the way they kept their house, their daughter’s wedding dress in a box over the refrigerator.

The only people who really resent him, Jane decided, are us.

Who Will Be Queen?

O
wens would look back on 1989 as the year he did one thing right: He bought the house on Mayberry Drive that later became his first home.

One of Owens’ qualities was loyalty. No matter how many appointments he missed or phone messages he didn’t return, he nonetheless considered his friends his friends. He generally blamed lapses on himself.

This loyalty extended even to objects. He had never yet sold or junked a car; when he purchased the new house, he kept the Copper King’s palace. He’d bought the estate for the land, to tear down the mansion and build a small wooden house, and he still intended to do that someday. In the meantime, he’d lend it to a friend, maybe Kaskie, who could improve the garden.

The purchase of the house was unusual, for the sellers had not known it was for sale.

Owens had decided it was time to move to Alta. He walked through the quiet streets many evenings, until he settled on the best house. Then he knocked on the front door and made an offer, before he saw
the inside. The owners had always felt a secret immodest pride in their home, and even with an offer that doubled what they deemed possible, it was three days before they accepted his bid, and then only with the stipulation of a substantial nonrefundable deposit. Owens had the reputation of an impetuous young man. Eliot Hanson quickly delivered the check.

When Olivia found out, she hit the roof. And their fight did not remain private. Guarded as he was about gossip, Owens nonetheless told quite a few people about their daily ins and outs. Olivia was so volatile that he often needed to unburden himself, and the prospect of having to catch someone up on the events of even a week when he needed comfort and buoying was exhausting. He kept a number of confidants up-to-date.

Of the people in this circle, Mary and Jane craved information most acutely; they felt it influenced their future, though it was not at all clear how. A rare alertness organized Mary’s features whenever Owens complained about Olivia. Since they’d come to Alta, Jane and Mary had heard all about Owens’ problems with Olivia, and Olivia had heard all about his problems with them. Over the past year, the triangle had finally closed, as triangles will, and Olivia and Mary and Jane now confided in each other about their frustrations with him. They talked about him like a difficult boss.

As she sat reading in her small apartment, Olivia noticed Owens’ car outside. They had not spoken for three days, although separately each of them talked of little else. Olivia had moved into an apartment in the back of an Alta house. Two chairs and a shelf of books furnished the living room. She’d hung the one woodblock print she had of her parents together, when they were her age. Only the futon and a stack of books that worked as her night table fit in the bedroom. She knew Owens loved her here in this house even more than in his own. She was supposed to be different, not like Mary, haggling for appliances. And she hadn’t wanted those things at first, but now she wasn’t sure.

She worked in a hospital. She read European novels. She’d renounced meat at thirteen. At one time, books and vegetarianism and
nursing together had formed a particular kind of life, which was also expressed by letting her hair grow under her arms. Now it was hard to tell who she really was. And when what she was coincided with what he wanted her to be, she felt suspicious of herself….

He would have to come here, that was for sure. Since she’d moved out of the Copper King’s mansion, she’d never gone back once. Susan and Stephen, as much as he, were the reason she’d left. Living with them had not worked. For one thing, Olivia’s housekeeping standards were high, from working in a hospital, and she didn’t believe they tried very hard. She found herself in the lonely mansion on her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor of the kitchen and the one bathroom they used. Olivia did this every week for the past year, never telling anyone; but on the fifty-third week, she left.

She blamed the cooks for the proclivity he would never allow in her: they were bewitched by his things. One night, when he was in Asia, she came home and found them lying on his bed, watching a movie on the big TV. They had their own television in the backhouse. She knew because he’d given it to them for Christmas. They’d had a fight over whether to sign it just “Owens” or “Owens and Olivia.” In the end, Owens had put both their names, but they thanked only him anyway.

“He said we could use his when he wasn’t here,” Stephen said, when Olivia walked in and stared. Susan didn’t even lift her head, and they didn’t leave until the movie was over. But it was her room too, the only place she belonged in that odd house.

He gave them a monthly household allowance that was more than they could easily spend, making every shopping trip an exhilaration. They had to look for things to buy. And the line between his and theirs blurred, because most of the time he wasn’t home to eat the food they’d prepared. But they were. Every month they spent it all. As Owens didn’t use the cappuccino maker or the new flour mill, Olivia couldn’t help but think they’d bought for themselves. Olivia had no allowance and paid for her groceries with her own money.

The cooks made no pretense of working for the two of them. When Owens was in town, dinner waited in the refrigerator, fresh and sealed with clear plastic. They took the uneaten food back to their house in the morning, after he left for work. But when he was away for a few
days, they cleaned out the refrigerator and brought the appliances to their own kitchen. Twice, they’d taken her food by mistake.

It is common knowledge that among the minions of a rich young man, a favorite topic of conversation is the question of who will be his wife. And Susan and Stephen had bet against Olivia. She was just the leggy blonde he was using. This is how, to her horror, she believed they saw her, and she hated them for it.

She had fuel behind that fury: it was an insult she’d been fighting all her life.

Olivia was riding her bike in the warehouse district when she saw Owens’ car again. The door slammed and he hauled out two enormous garbage bags and threw them over his shoulder like a Santa.

She stopped her bike with her shoes. “What’re you doing?”

He sighed and then came back up with a very wide smile. There were things in his life he didn’t like to admit, but the relief of her was, she already knew them. “I’m throwing out my old clothes. The Goodwill box.”

“I’ll help you.” She laid her bike on the ground and picked up a bag. Moments like this, it was a matter of honor that she was exactly his height. “You can’t get Susan and Stephen to do this?”

“Well, that’s what I always used to do. But the problem was, they’d go through it all. I got sick of seeing my old clothes on everybody around there. My suits on Stephen, Susan wearing my shirts; the gardener had some too, I think. I’m pretty sure the scarecrow’s wearing my jeans. So I hauled these out myself.”

After they hurled the bags into a receptacle, he said, “Wanna get a cup of coffee?”

“I can make tea.”

She rode her bike, and he beat her there. She found him flipping through the pages of a mail order catalogue. The ceilings were so low that Owens looked like a grown man sitting in a dollhouse. “These are nice,” he said, showing her a picture of Christmas tree balls. “We should get some. For the new house, if we go ahead and move in. You know, I was thinking about maybe telling Susan and Stephen it’s time to part ways.”

“You could get a European housekeeper who’d do things you couldn’t even think of.”

“See, a lot of people have servants,” he said. “And I don’t want servants. And I have to say that with Susan and Stephen, I never felt I had servants.”

Olivia restrained a snicker. He had parasites. No wonder he didn’t feel he had servants. In fact, Susan and Stephen were from rich families. Owens attracted kids like them, at work too, who felt devoted to him in a way they could not be to their own prosperous fathers.

“There are two problems,” he went on, authoritatively. “One, I need someone to deal with my laundry.”

“That’s not hard.” Olivia shrugged. “You just have to have a lot of socks and underwear. If you have a washer-dryer, you can do it while you’re doing other things.” Since she’d moved, Olivia did her wash in a public laundromat.

“Oh, I’m not worried about jeans and tee shirts. I can do that myself, that’s no problem.” Owens avowed this carelessly, although in fact it had been nearly a decade since he’d washed his own clothes. “It’s business stuff. I spend a lot of money on suits, and there’s only that one dry cleaner that doesn’t ruin them.”

“Are you sure there’s nowhere closer?”

He sighed. “I don’t really see them much, but I have some rich friends. I guess I could call up and say, ‘Celeste, you know those four-thousand-dollar dresses you buy—now, you don’t just throw them in the wash machine, do you? I didn’t think you did.’ ”

So this is what they talk about
, Jane thought with amazement. She was listening underneath Olivia’s open screenless window. She’d seen his car and followed it, running. So many times she and her mother had wanted in, and maybe all that was going on was this. She couldn’t quite admit to herself yet that she was bored. Instead she felt a craving she knew no name for, akin to hunger.

“I always thought we could have managed by ourselves,” Olivia whispered. “And, in your new house, you should set up a room for Jane.”

There. That was something that fit, like a food. Jane loved hearing
her own name in their privacy. But that was all. She waited a long time, and it didn’t happen again.

Olivia often made ardent pleas on behalf of Jane and of Owens’ sister, Pony. This was something so ingrained in their life together that Olivia fell into a beseeching tone automatically, without even thinking whether or not she truly meant what she was saying. Tonight she felt a twinge: Does the slipper fit, or am I pushing my foot in?

Olivia wasn’t the only person who found herself urging his generosity. He heard these same speeches from his father. Almost everyone agreed that Owens should be more generous with somebody else.

“I like this place,” Owens said, looking around the tiny apartment. When she’d moved out, she did it exactly as he imagined a beautiful young woman would when she was mad at her boyfriend. She’d put up bamboo blinds and rice-paper lampshades. Her bike rested against the outside wall. No other girlfriend had inspired his enchantment. He’d been tempted to tell most of them what to do, even as they walked out on him.

He moved to the futon, lay down and crossed his arms under his head. “You know, I saw some really nice chairs yesterday. I’ll show you. I’m thinking of buying some things for our new house.”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Aw, come on, it’s our first house together.”

“But we don’t need to buy things. That’s not what matters. I don’t care about chairs,” she said, in an impassioned voice, not because she felt this so strongly but because her renunciation was a familiar step in their dialogue of forgiveness. She didn’t
know
if she cared about chairs or Christmas tree balls. She didn’t think so. But recently she’d come to understand that she wanted some of the normal things too.

“He tells the same story over and over again.” More than anyone, Mary had an unquestioned faith in his brilliance, so his lapses left her incredulous.

“Have you heard about the five guys begging him to run?” Olivia was at the bungalow because she and Owens had made up again and she regretted some confidences she’d exchanged during the days she’d been angry.