Fallen Land (19 page)

“When you and your dad started hunting, you were a natural. But you didn’t really like it. I know you didn’t enjoy it.” His mother unlocked the china cabinet to adjust the position of a porcelain cow.

“What the hell are you talking about, mama? Of course I enjoyed it. I loved those hunting trips.”

“But it wasn’t your best subject. Your
best
subject was art. You take after me that way, not your dad.”

“Hunting isn’t a
subject
.”

His mother did not seem to hear what he said. “You come from a long, long line of artists and builders. You just didn’t know it. I never told you enough about all that.” As she picked up one of Paul’s carvings, a wooden cow he’d made for her from a piece of the cleared poplar wood, he knew what she was going to say, the way she would lapse into reveries of a great lineage, distant cloud people, ancient places, vast cities and temples, a legacy of building that was his greatest inheritance,
the skill in your fingers, chiquito
. When she put the cow in his hands he was surprised at the intricacy of his own carving, the way the staring glass eyes and wooden flanks looked real. “What kind of cow you say this is, Pablo?”

“Greek Shorthorn.”

“That’s right. Rare breed.”

He used to make all kinds of fine little things for his mother. In the den are his duck decoys: mallard, canvasback, even a Canada goose, each so detailed it looks like it might turn to snap off a finger with its varnished wooden beak.

Dolores returned the cow to the bottom shelf of the cabinet, closing the doors and locking them with the key she has always kept on a silver chain round her neck. “You shoulda been an artist I think,” she said. “You have so much talent.”

“Can we stop talking about me?”

She ignored him and from a drawer in her sideboard pulled out a folder of Paul’s childhood drawings. Most of the earliest ones were traced from magazines: fighter jets and soldiers in action, fantasy monsters and cyborgs. But as she continued to page through the sheets of paper, Paul noticed a shift in subject matter to precise drawings of houses. All the houses he drew as a boy were larger and more elegant than any of the humble places they ever lived. “You were always drawing your dream house. You always said you were gonna build me a house all my own, you know, where I could live alone.”

“Yeah, I know, mama. Maybe some day I will.”

B
Y THE END
OF EACH
day’s vagabond walking, always eating the sandwiches he makes for himself and carries in a backpack, buying nothing if he can avoid it with the money he has left from the sale of the truck, he tramps back westward along Poplar Road, pausing at wet intersections, waiting for lights to change, risking his life even when the light is in his favor because drivers ignore signals, as he himself once ignored them, distracted by the radio or a call from his wife or racing in the urge simply to be back home.

Half a block before Dolores Woods he steps into the forest, hidden within the shaw and picking his way through the brake, tensing his body into the coyote crouch that carries him back to his burrow.

At night, in the bunker, he eats bowls of pasta and sits in silence, concentrating on the hum and heat of the lights above him until he switches them off and tries to sleep. In the darkness he is oppressed by the sounds of the house: water running through pipes, plugs pushing into sockets, music and telephone calls and shouting from one room to another, the television and dishwasher and washing machine and dryer, the air conditioners and dehumidifiers and hot water heaters and chest freezer, or the sounds of the woman at her bench in the basement workshop: the piercing screams and queer frequencies that pitch and roll, the juddering drill that shakes the foundations of the house, all those noises condensing, drawn into the pantry, through the hatch, exploding into his cell.

Then, after the house finally goes silent, there are other sounds as well, rising up beneath the bunker, coming from deep below in the earth, scrambling, scuffling noises that flutter and dodge through the dense mixture of silt, sand, and clay, moving closer, drilling toward the bunker, and then turning, scrambling around and alongside the walls of Paul’s burrow, a horrible clawing, scuttling, snuffling noise, sharpened nails scratching against the lead lining. The first night it happened he thought he was imagining it, believing the next morning it was a dream, but when it happened again the next night, and has gone on happening every night thereafter, growing louder and louder each time, he knows it is real. Something ancient and angry is there, in the soil that surrounds him, clawing at the walls of his burrow, trying to get in.

O
N A
T
UESDAY MORNING
IN
early October Paul pushes his way out of the bunker, through the pantry, and crawls up the stairs into the kitchen, sniffing the air. The house has changed: it no longer smells like his family, or even himself. Instead it smells like those other people, other food, oils, body scents, cleaning products, ways of living. Its aroma is sharp and chemical and his nose is adjusting to this new odor, thinking of ways to eradicate it, when he sees a ghost in the next room. He sidles across the kitchen to the china cupboard and peers through to find the dining room furniture all pushed together, draped with thick white drop cloths while a heavier piece of canvas covers the floor. At first he cannot process what he sees, why the space looks so different, and then he realizes that the walls have been stripped to their plaster, all of his wallpaper removed. He and Amanda chose it together, a pattern of ivy that dated from the mid-nineteenth century, cost a hundred and fifty dollars a roll, and took a full day to hang in the dining room alone. But that is only the beginning of the defacement. The intricately painted crown molding has been removed and in its place is curved, concave white coving, which has also been plastered into the room’s vertical corners, eliminating any semblance of angles, so the whole space feels like the interior of a hollowed-out marshmallow.

He feels dizzy, bends at the knee, pulls himself upright again as his heart propels him into the hall, a vein in his neck throbbing. The entire space is painted a luminous eggshell white, all the way up to the second floor; the floorboards have been painted white as well, the stairs, even the banister and railings, all of it coated in white. Everything everywhere is glistening, blinding, the crown molding and baseboards stripped away and replaced with the same coving that has been installed in the dining room. They’ve done it to the living room and den, too: a whiteout that makes the space feel much larger than it is. The walls merge seamlessly into one another, as well as the ceilings and floors. He doubles over, drops to his knees, heaves out a clear viscous fluid onto the whitewashed boards. His head throbs and he has the illusion of being suspended over a void. Only the windows, gazing out over the yard and the neighborhood beyond, give any sense of scale or context, since even the furniture is upholstered in white fabric with white arms and legs; there is a set of white lacquered end tables, a matching coffee table, a white area rug. The couches have white throw pillows. Books lined up on the built-in shelves in the den provide the only color. Paul can’t remember what his own books looked like on those shelves—books he never read, whose place in the house was always purely decorative. Unlike the books owned by these new people, with their bright paper covers, his own books were old, some with leather bindings, because the decorator who acquired them on Paul’s behalf said that a library
should evoke age
. There were at least two sets of encyclopedias, several Bibles, hymnbooks, a dictionary, but whatever else there might have been, he can no longer say. Nor does he care. Books will not make him money, they will not restore his home or feed him; books are unnecessary things.

Upstairs the windows and doors have sharp angles but everything else looks like nowhere he recognizes, the whiteness and softened edges turning the whole house into an operating room or science lab.

What a fool he was to leave! If he had been at home he might have halted the defacement. He would have emerged from the bunker howling, gun loaded, cocked, finger on the trigger, and escorted the workers to the door, marching them off the property.

Not his! Still his! Always his!

They have peeled away and painted over all his careful decisions, whitewashing the history of his wife and sons as they once lived here, the marks on a closet door recording the growth of Carson and Ajax subsumed by whiteness. His shout stretches into a wail, a scream, echoing around this warren of melting white rhomboid bubbles.

He is back in the kitchen when the front door opens and two men enter, whispering to each other. The painters, he supposes, as he slips down the stairs to the basement, listening as the men move through the house. There are two unmistakable clicks. These men are not painters. One of them goes upstairs while the other circles through the living room and den, back to the hall, into the dining room, through to the kitchen. As soon as Paul reaches the basement he takes quick silent steps to the back of the pantry, drops to the floor, slides under the shelf and through the hatch, drawing it closed behind him. Minutes pass and Paul cracks open the hatch, peeking into the basement as the door to the pantry is suddenly filled with the form of the man: he wears a uniform and holds a gun, cocked at shoulder height.

After several minutes of poking around, the man heads back upstairs, calling out, “All clear.” The other man answers from higher up in the house and then, quick as they came, they are gone, locking and slamming the front door behind them.

T
here was a call-out today,” Nathaniel says. The three of them are eating in the kitchen because the dining room is still covered in drop cloths. “They phoned me at the office.”

“You mean the alarm went off?” Julia says.

“The guys came out but they couldn’t find anything. They think it must have been something falling over, from the painters, or the fan blowing the curtains when it came on. They suggested we turn it off when we go out.”

Julia puts down her fork and knife, leaning her elbows on the breakfast bar where they have pulled up three stools. “You don’t think we should be worried, honey?”

“They said everything was locked and there was no sign of anyone trying to force the doors or windows. They didn’t find anything suspicious. Nothing.”

“But if there
was
something suspicious they would find it, wouldn’t they?” Copley asks. He speaks so little that when he does it comes as a surprise. Nathaniel worries he and Julia forget from time to time that Copley is even present, saying things in the boy’s hearing they should not. Copley, though, shows no sign of worry. His brow is smooth, his voice regular. He is so self-contained and equilibrated that Nathaniel wants to shake his son, to tell him it is worth being a little worried because security systems are imperfect and there could be an intruder in the future even if there wasn’t one today.

“Of course they would have found it. They’re professionals,” Nathaniel says. “And if someone did get in, they’d come to”—he struggles to locate the word for what he imagines the guards might do—“they’d come to help us.”

“Do
THEY-HAVE-GUNS
?” The first word in the question comes out in his normal voice but by the second word Copley has distorted his tone, speaking on a frequency from outer space. They have been careful, not to say strict, about limiting his exposure to television, so Nathaniel has no idea where this kind of mimicry may have originated except at the new school. He knows they are not in the mainstream of parenting; friends in Boston regarded their resistance to media as not only old-fashioned but perhaps even unhealthy, and impossible to sustain in the longer term. The other day, however, Nathaniel found his son playing on one of Julia’s computers in the basement. When he confronted her about it she acted as though it was no big deal.
I told him he could be on it for half an hour once a day. It’s not like television,
she said.
It’s not a passive activity. He’s playing a learning game, he’s engaging. It’s not just sitting there watching something. I chose the game, Nathaniel. I know what you’re thinking, but the game is fine. It’s robins and worms and nests. What did we call it? Concentration. No guns, no killing, no violence, no gender stereotypes. Just memory exercises that happen to take place on a screen instead of the paper and cards we had as children.

“D
O-THEY?
” Copley asks again. “D
O-THE-GUARDS-HAVE-GUNS?
”

Nathaniel looks at Julia and realizes he never told her about choosing the armed response package. She puts down her fork, looks at Nathaniel, and raises her eyebrows:
Do they, Nathaniel? Do they have guns?

“
Yes, they have guns. That’s what it means to have a burglar alarm. If the alarm goes off, then the men—”

“Or women,” Julia says.

“Or women,” Nathaniel continues, “come to make sure everything is okay.”

“And what if we’re here but the alarm goes off and the men and women come with guns and they shoot us by accident?” Copley asks, his voice natural once again.

“That’s not going to happen, honey. We hire them to protect us. When we’re at home at night the alarm is set to go off only if someone breaks in from outside, not if we’re moving around inside. The guards know we’re the people they’re supposed to protect.” Julia pats Copley’s hand and Nathaniel notices his son flinch, brow wrinkling, eyebrows flexing in to meet each other.

“But
how
do they know? We haven’t
met
them. How do they know when they come to the house that we’re the ones they have to protect? Have they seen our pictures?”

“Yes, they’ve seen our pictures,” Nathaniel lies. “They know exactly what you look like, and they’ll do their best to protect you.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me, Copley?”

“Will you do your
BEST-TO-PROTECT-ME
?”

What a question to ask, what an impertinent, annoying little voice. Nathaniel has no doubt he would do everything in his power to protect his son in the way his own parents failed to protect him, either from the world, or from each other.

“Of course, Cop. You don’t have to worry about that. Your mom and I will always protect you.”

A
FTER DINNER
C
OPLEY AND
J
ULIA
retreat to the basement while Nathaniel cleans up the kitchen. For a moment he listens to his wife and son from the top of the stairs. There is nothing private about their conversation. There is no expectation of privacy. If they wanted privacy they would have closed the door. To speak with the door open is to expect one might be overheard—and, in any case, there are no secrets among the three of them except at birthdays and Christmas, and even then the secrets are far from absolute, secrets that do not have the sanctity of true secrecy. He has to believe that Julia did not mean to keep Copley’s use of her computer a secret. Secrets drive Nathaniel mad. His parents were always whispering when he and Matthew were not in the room, whispering so obviously and ostentatiously that the brothers knew secrets were being kept, and they understood, too, that secrecy was the mortar holding together their parents’ marriage despite all the infidelity and abuse. Arthur and Ruth would announce one morning they were going on vacation, alone, leaving later that day, while the boys would be staying with a neighbor for the week.
We knew you’d just ask to come with us
, his mother would say,
but this is an adult vacation
. It was not only clandestine vacations or difficulties at work or the lives of his mother’s patients, which were strictly off limits, but also the internal lives of Dr. and Dr. Noailles that went undisclosed. His grandparents on both sides had died long before Nathaniel was born and his parents never told him stories about their own childhoods. He had no sense of their worries or the nature of their relationship with each other, how they had met or even how long they had been together, whether they still loved each other as he was growing up, or if they had a different kind of bond altogether, one that allowed for both of them to stray with the knowledge of the other. For years he did not even know their ages, only their birth
days
. It would not have surprised him to discover that his mother and father had separate sordid pasts, with other spouses and other children, whole other families and genealogies, which would forever elude him. They were never physically demonstrative, never kissed or hugged in front of their sons, and only kissed or hugged their sons on special occasions. They did not talk about their pasts or share their thoughts about the future. If they were discontent with the present, these were feelings they kept to themselves. They never invited curiosity, making it clear from early in Nathaniel’s life that their own lives were no concern of their children. Before reaching adulthood, Nathaniel vowed he would never be like that with any children he might have.

“Speak in your normal voice,” he hears Julia say. There is the sound of paper being shuffled and then Copley speaks, his tone high and clear. With a voice like that, it seems perverse that the boy should ever wish to distort it.

“Just these words?” says Copley.

“Just those words, in the order they appear on the page,” Julia says. “And like the other times, silently count to five between each word. But this time try using your fingers to help you count a little more slowly. One . . . Two . . . Three . . . Four . . . Five. Steady beats.”

“Are you ready?” Copley asks.

“Yes, I’m ready. Are
you
ready?”

“Ready.”

Nathaniel hears a click—a recorded sound meant to mimic the button of an old-fashioned tape deck being depressed. They have been doing this every night all week.

“Cab. Cabana. Cabbage. Cabbie. Cabin. Cabinet. Cable. Caboose. Catch.” Copley measures out the words five beats at a time. He takes directions well, learns fast, responding to commands without argument or resistance. They have never known him to have problems with discipline but already Mrs. Taylor, the guidance counselor at the Pinwheel Academy, has phoned to complain of
irregularities
in Copley’s behavior.
Nothing serious
, she said,
but enough to send up a red flag. We need to nip off the bud before it gets out of control
. Nathaniel wanted to tell the woman the expression is
to nip it in the bud
but he did not, thinking that, in a way, her version was the more accurate if more ominous one. When he asked her what the problem was, she explained that in a science period during which the students were tasked with measuring volumes of liquids, Copley drank the tap water he was supposed to measure rather than pouring it into the graduated beaker. Nathaniel asked the counselor whether Copley was allowed to explain himself.
Yes,
Mrs. Taylor said,
and it was not a satisfactory explanation. He said he was thirsty, but there are scheduled water and bathroom breaks at 10
AM
and 2
PM
, so he couldn’t have been thirsty, since the science unit began at 10:10. According to the classroom surveillance feed the incident occurred at 10:17. We regard this as the first indication not only of a failure to follow directions, but also of a tendency to lie.
When Nathaniel proposed that perhaps Copley was actually thirsty, that the water break had not allowed him enough time to drink as much water as his body needed, Mrs. Taylor suggested Nathaniel lacked a clear understanding of child health and invited him to speak with the school nurse. The school would be debiting ten dollars from Copley’s student account as punishment for failing to follow instructions in class and destruction of school materials.
What materials?
Nathaniel asked.
The water for the lesson,
the woman explained,
which your son drank
—water that would have been poured down a sink at the end of the lesson had it not been consumed by his son. As for the “lying,” Mrs. Taylor conceded this could not be proven, since any judgment would have to rely on an objective knowledge of Copley’s own internal feeling, and,
for now
, this was beyond the school’s capacity; she was prepared to let the supposed infraction pass with a fine and warning and nothing more serious.

Nathaniel hears another electronic click from the basement—a click so like his memory of the sound made by a brick-sized black tape recorder owned by his mother that it makes him shudder. Countless times as a child he was subjected to recording his thoughts and feelings, answering questions his mother posed in the name of research. He wonders if she still has those tapes. Knowing Ruth, they will first have been digitized into a longer lasting, less corruptible format, and then transcribed and analyzed. Although his mother has published several monographs and dozens of articles in the field of child psychology, Nathaniel has never had the courage to read her work, terrified of finding himself quoted, his childhood dismembered; he has little doubt she has done this, perhaps even disguising his identity with a different name, Bartholomew or Philip or John.

“
Cash
, like money,” Julia says, her voice echoing up the stairs. “I know it looks like it should be
catch
but it isn’t. Start from there.” Another click. The shiver on Nathaniel’s spine takes hold and he braces himself against the kitchen door.

“Cache,” Copley says, correctly this time. “Cashette.”

Click. “Not
cash-ette. Cash-ay
,” Julia says. Click. Why not go through the list before recording it, to save this kind of interruption?

“Cachet,” Copley continues. “Cackle. Cacophony. Cactus. Cad. Cadaver. What’s a cadaver?” Click.

“A dead body,” Julia says. “Ready to continue?”

“Ready.” Click. “Caddie. Caddy. Those two sound the same.”

Click. “Yes, they do. Ready?” Click.

Nathaniel turns on the faucet and the noise drowns out the rest of the session, which may go on for half an hour until Copley calls time and asks to go to bed. Nathaniel has suggested that Julia pay Copley something for his labors, even an hourly minimum wage, which could go into a savings account. Julia demurred, arguing that the work will benefit all of them in the long run, and Copley will profit from the success in which he has played a small but crucial part. It is not as though his voice will be used in the final product, just in the early prototype stages.

Nonetheless, and reservations about compensation aside, there is something about Julia and Copley’s nightly retreat to the basement to record the odd lists of words that unnerves Nathaniel. He appreciates the point of what is being done, the importance and value of Julia’s work for scientific and industrial progress, but he wonders why it has to be Copley and not some other child giving voice to the machine she is creating—or why a child at all and not an adult. Why not, in fact, Julia herself?
A child’s voice is reassuring
, Julia told him when he protested,
a child is non-threatening
.