Father of the Rain (12 page)

It’s the happiest game of tennis I’ve ever seen.

Patrick and Elyse come out and join me in the chairs. It gets colder and we have to run in for hats and mittens, though Frank and Garvey have unbuttoned their shirts.

After a long time, we are called in for Thanksgiving dinner.

Catherine is wearing a silky lavender shirt cinched over her short skirt by a gold chain belt. She hasn’t done up very many buttons on the shirt and I can see the lace of her bra just beneath the four heavy necklaces on her freckled chest.

She doesn’t bother with hellos or a Happy Thanksgiving to me or Garvey. She says, “I need plates, now” to me, and, “Will you open these fucking bottles of wine?” to Garvey. She’s holding a carving knife and already talking with her eyes closed.

But Garvey, who often kills my mother’s bad moods with kindness, isn’t going to let her get away with that. “Don’t I get to kiss the bride first?” he says, opening his arms.

Catherine puts the knife down hard on the counter but then gives up a small smile.

Even though there is only one less person than we normally have for Thanksgiving, it feels like a sparse gathering. My mother always said a prayer, but Catherine just starts cutting into her meat.

“Ahem.” My father, from the other end of the table, looks at her in pretend sternness. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”

“Oh, yes.” She looks up at the ceiling. “Thanks for nothing, Lord. Next time you cook the goddamn turkey.”

My father loves it. “You’s a funny one,” he says.

She kisses the air in his direction noisily.

He puts out two hands and squeezes, like he’s squeezing her boobs.

Garvey raises one eyebrow at me from across the table, and I have to look down in my lap to keep from laughing.

“So.” My father turns to Garvey. “Classes good?”

“Yup.”

“What’re you taking?” It seems less out of curiosity than to get Garvey to prove he’s actually going to college.

“Calculus, Middle English, Psych, Anatomy.”

“Anatomy? You find out where your dick is yet?”

“Jesus, Dad. You’ve got little kids here.” He turns to Elyse who is finger painting with gravy on the table. “How old are you?”

Without stopping to look up, she says, “None of your beeswax.”

“I’m just asking if you’ve found out where your dick is.”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Garvey says, and then he seems to make a decision. He turns to Catherine. “What was Nassau like?”

She doesn’t look at him either. “Hot.”

“I have some friends who lived there for a couple years. They said there’s a grotto out on the north side of the island with all these sea lions and then there’s this funky bar where—”

She waves those things away. “We didn’t see any of that stuff. We just stayed at the resort.”

“They must have had some good-looking tennis courts down there.”

Catherine nods.

Garvey pours himself another glass of wine. He’s the only one drinking it. “What do you wear when you play tennis?” he asks her. “I mean, are women switching over to shorts or do they still have to wear skirts?”

“I like wearing skirts.”

“You have more freedom of movement, don’t you? Maybe that’s why Billy Jean King beat Bobby Riggs.”

“That was a setup,” Catherine says.

“You think it was rigged?”

“No pun intended,” I say. No one hears me.

“Of course it was rigged,” my father says. “He could have beaten her with his left toe if he’d wanted to.”

“So why didn’t he?’

“Because he got a hell of a lot more money for losing.”

“He let himself be a laughingstock for a couple of grand?”

“More than that.”

“Where are you getting your information, Dad, from Don Finch?”

My father laughs in spite of himself. Everyone at the table does. Even Elyse knows Don Finch is the worst player at the club and the most hilarious to watch. There’s a story that he once played a whole set without making contact with the ball once.

“You know who I saw at the club the other day? Gus Barlow.”

“Gus Barlow,” Garvey says. “Shit. How is he?” Gus was a classmate of Garvey’s at Ashing Academy.

“He’s good.” I can tell my father is going somewhere with this. So can Garvey. “He’s a good kid.” My father puts down his fork and knife slowly. “You know, if you cleaned yourself up a bit we could go over there for a meal this weekend.”

Garvey shakes his head. “My buffet days at the clubhouse are definitely over.”

“Yeah? You’re done with the club. Too good for the club now, I guess.” He picks up his silverware again then points them at Garvey. “How does your mother feel about the way you look?”

“She hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Well I can tell you that when she lived in this house she would never have let you come to the Thanksgiving table looking like that. Never.”

“I guess she’s just lost her marbles.”

“I think she has. I really do.” His face is bright red.

“Well good for her,” Catherine mumbles.

Garvey smiles at her. “Said the new wife, ambiguously.”

Catherine laughs loudly.

“Garvey, I gotta show you something after dinner,” Frank says.

“What?” Patrick asks.

“Shut up,” Frank says.

“Is that jade?” my brother asks, touching the chunks of stone around Catherine’s wrist.

“Jade and mother of pearl.”

My father is glaring at her. She pulls her arm away.

Garvey and I do the dishes. There is no discussion about this. Everyone else brings their plates to the sink and walks away.

“Cinderella and Cinderello, the two stepchildren left in the scullery all alone.” He feigns hunger and weariness, limply carrying the turkey platter to the counter. “Hey, I have a movie idea.” He always has movie ideas. “Oh my God, it’s going to make us millions. Okay, it’s Thanksgiving night and this old man lives in a house all alone. His children came that afternoon with the meal but now they’ve all gone home to their families. He’s been married three or four times but all his wives have left him and he’s all alone on Thanksgiving night, all doped up on tryptophan but too depressed to sleep. And then he hears this noise outside. He goes out into his yard and there’s this enormous turkey, the size of a house, gobbling at him. But the turkey has a human face, a gruesome one, like Mrs. Perth’s face. You have her this year, right? I still have nightmares about her. And this turkey has all the man’s wives tucked under its wings. They’re all naked and they all have papers for him to sign because he screwed every single one of them out of his money.”

Dad has come in to make a drink and is standing there, listening.

“Knock it off, Garvey,” he says. “I don’t want you corrupting her. She’s an innocent little girl and she doesn’t need a slob like you filling her head with bullshit.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“I’ll tell you something. Any bullshit either of you has gotten comes from your mother. Look at you. Just look at you. I tell you, I feel sorry for you with a mother like that. She left me a goddamn
note right there.” He points to the counter because the kitchen table isn’t there to point to anymore. “Right there. Wouldn’t even tell me to my face she was leaving.” I think for a moment he’s going to cry.

“She was scared you’d hit her.”

“She was right about that. I would have hit her. Cowardly bitch.”

Garvey laughs. My father joins him. My heart is racing and I scrub the scalloped sweet potato dish as hard as I can.

We leave as soon as the kitchen is clean. I mention to Dad that I’ll be back up here Saturday morning and he just shrugs, like he couldn’t care less, which is a lot better than getting yelled at.

We are late, very late, getting back to Mom’s. I can see her trying not to let it bother her, but she’s been cooking alone all day and now the dishes that she covered with tinfoil are cold and she sits down and picks up her fork without saying grace either.

“Where’s Mrs. Waverly and Cousin Morgan?” Garvey asks.

“Oh, Mom,” I remember the placecards in my dress pocket. “Look what I rescued!” I spill them onto the table. The wooden fruits clatter together.

She shakes her head at them. And then scoops them up and throws them all in the trash in the kitchen. “Sorry,” she says to me, “but they give me the willies.” And then she says to Garvey, “I thought it would be better to just have it be us this year. I’m not used to this electric oven and I didn’t know what time to invite them for because I didn’t know what time Catherine would be serving lunch up there and they never stick to a schedule anyway and I just thought it would be easier, but now I’m feeling so guilty. Who knows where they’re eating. Probably at a restaurant. And they could have kept me company while I waited for you two.” She looks sad, sadder than I’ve seen her since we moved here.

Garvey doesn’t seem to notice. He puts his fingers to his Adam’s apple. “You/didn’t/want/to/hear/Mrs./Wa/ver/ly/com/plain/a/bout/her/an/gi/na/this/year?”

“Stop it,” she says harshly. “Stop that right now.”

Garvey just laughs at her tone. I wish I could do that. “Oh my God, Mom, it’s a scene up there. Catherine’s walking around with her boobs falling out of her dress and they’re both pounding down the martinis and her kids seem kind of shell-shocked. Frank is high as a kite and little what’s-her-name is like a feral child. She’s like Helen Keller.” Garvey shuts his eyes and gropes around for my hand and when he finds it he moans and scribbles in my palm with his finger. Mom can’t help laughing.

“You shouldn’t let Daley spend too much time up there,” he says.

I flail around blindly, too, but when I open my eyes no one is laughing.

They start talking about politics, about congressional seats and public funding. They can flip into this language I don’t understand so quickly. When Garvey asks Mom about her boss, things get more interesting. Garvey has a way of sniffing out the real story. For three months, all I’ve known is that he is a lawyer named Paul Adler, and when you call his office you get a lady named Jean who is never pleased you are calling. I know that Mr. Adler is involved in politics, too, and that my mother often has to stay in town for fundraisers. But Garvey, in a matter of minutes, susses out that he is thirty-six, Harvard undergrad and law, unmarried, handsome, Jewish, and has a crush on my mother.

“I think you like this guy. I think you like him a lot more than Martin.”

“Oh, Martin.” My mother waves him off.

“You like your boss,” he says in playground singsong.

“He’s much younger than I am.”

“Five years. And look at you. You look like a coed.” It’s true. Garvey has more wrinkles around his eyes than she does.

“It’s all that grease she puts on her face at night,” I say.

“Like a bug in amber,” my brother says.

“He leaves me these little cryptic notes on my desk.”

“I can just see him. Some poor kid in jail’s life hangs in the balance, but he’s busy at his desk composing the perfect little bon mot for you. Has he made a pass at you yet?”

“No.”

“Oh c’mon. He hasn’t even kissed you yet?”

“No. On the cheek.”

“You’re lying.”

“I am lying.” She bursts out with a huge long laugh. She is happy again, and relaxed, her hands dangling off the arms of the chair, her head off to one side. She keeps laughing, her mouth wide open, her front teeth slightly bent together but still white and pretty and young.

It turns out it’s serious with this guy, Paul. Mom brings him home one Thursday night to meet me. He reminds me of a greyhound, lean and quick. He wears glasses. He notices everything.

“How do you like Ashing Academy Founded in 1903?” he asks when my mother has abandoned us to arrange the take-out on plates.

“You’ve done some research,” I say.

He tips his head toward the corner of the room. “I saw it on your bookbag.”

“I like it. I’ve never gone anywhere else so I don’t have anything to compare it to.” There’s something about him that makes you sit up straight, makes you want to say things right.

He looks at me like he’s really taking it in. “It’s funny that way, isn’t it? I’ve only worked for this one law firm, so I don’t know any better either.”

“Do you like it?” I’ve never asked a grown-up if they like what they do. I just assumed they all came home and complained about their work like my father did.

“I have a ball at work.”

I must have given him a face without knowing it because he says he’s serious; he loves his work. He tries to tug his pant cuff down closer to his shoe. He looks like he’s a tall kid pretending to be a grown-up. Then he asks me if I feel cut off from the town, going to private school, and I tell him I didn’t used to, but living down here has made me realize how few of the neighborhood kids I know. “Pauline, my babysitter, knows everyone,” I say. “It’s weird.”

“It’s not weird. It’s to be expected.”

I stand corrected, my math teacher says when someone finds a mistake on the board.

My mother puts the food on the table and calls us over.

“You are here,” she says to Paul, patting the top of the chair she usually sits in.

“Couldn’t I be over there?” he says, pointing to a side spot, next to the wall.

“No, no, you’re the guest of honor,” she says.

Paul sits but keeps looking up and flapping his hand above his head.

“What on earth are you doing?” my mother says, smiling, looking up to the ceiling, too.

“Just checking for swords hanging by hairs.”

My mother bursts out laughing but I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“They haven’t taught you about Damocles yet?”

I shake my head.

In the fourth century B.C., he tells me, there was a terrible tyrant of Syracuse named Dionysius. He was brilliant in battle and mean as a snake to everyone around him. He liked to surround himself with intellectuals like Plato, but he also liked to toy with them. Paul leans back in his seat, as if he’s telling a story about his own family. Dionysius once read some of his poetry to the famous poet Philoxenos, and when Philoxenos didn’t like it much, Dionysius had him arrested and banished to the quarries. A couple of days later, he had the poet brought back to hear some more of his poetry. Once again he asked Philoxenos what he thought, and Philoxenos whimpered, “Take me back to the quarries.”