Hare in March (17 page)

At the time, Robert was involved in another speculative project. With the help of some money “borrowed” from Brown & Forbes, his employers, and the $7000 he would have paid Mother Franklin against the loan, he played with some oil stocks until he eventually realized triple his investment. He then paid back Brown & Forbes and Mother Franklin. There was enough left to buy Margaret an emerald ring. Margaret was very proud of him, very relieved to see that he had learned his lesson and was applying himself so well at Brown & Forbes as to have received “a substantial bonus.” Mother Franklin, never a fan of Robert’s, was bravely disappointed. Her disappointment continued as Robert’s success prevailed. A big chance here … a big chance there … and in between (sometimes two and three years went by without a gamble) Robert simply worked at what he was best at, manipulating money—for himself when he saw the opportunity, for his employers as a livelihood.

As they drove through Somerville, New Jersey, Robert only half-listened to Margaret’s reasons for not inviting John Hark to
this
party. His plans for the future were so sketchy as to be practically nonexistent. He had never been to Brazil, and he spoke no Portuguese. He had only one contact in Brazil, a man named Bud Wilde, whom he had not seen for six years. Wilde ran a chain of laundromats in São Paulo. Robert knew very little more than that. This information had been scribbled across a Christmas card Robert had received last year from Wilde. There was the address and the telephone number, and a haphazard invitation to Robert to look Wilde up if he were ever down that way. Robert would look him up; beyond that, he could not carry his thoughts that evening.

For a moment, during the first part of their drive, he had pretended to himself that nothing had changed. He had told Margaret calmly about the trip he would have to take to Winston-Salem, about the directorship, and a few details of the merger plan. Then she talked and he listened. Listened, and predicted to himself that she would say just the sort of thing she did say. First, the new things they needed. A new car. A new freezer. All new solarium furniture. And—there was always one item he could
not
predict—a new tree for the west lawn. Then, the trip. The trip would come after the announcement that Robert was a vice-president. There was the Orient and there was Africa, or they could simply go to Nassau again. Right now, though, the party the day after Robert returned. Not a buffet again, no matter how many guests they invited. Margaret wanted a sit-down dinner. Robert became so caught up in his little game of pretense that he could see himself at the party. He was wearing his new light-tan shantung suit, crossing the lawn where Margaret needed a new tree, carrying a drink to someone. He was saying “Thank you” in response to someone’s “Nice party, Robert.” That had been his life, in a nutshell, for the past twenty-one years. Margaret said something, and he could see it in his mind’s eye; then, before he knew it, the image had already come about, and he saw it on the screen of his memory.

“… so if
he
comes,” Margaret was saying now, “you just won’t be able to have a fourth drink. Don’t imagine you can sneak one without John Hark noticing it!”

There was that flat, emphatic note to her voice that told Robert she would take time out to reach into her bag for a cigarette. She never lit a cigarette when she was making a point, not Margaret. Margaret knew what she was about; Margaret had definite ideas. Robert turned his head away from the road and looked at her very carefully, taking her in with a certain wonder. He saw her in profile, the pale blue chiffon scarf whipping her cheeks in the wind, the creamy beige crêpe dress hugging her body; at the indentation of her bosom, the large gold necklace he had bought her at Jay Thorpe—her cool, soft features familiar, all of them—familiar as his own. Still, an enigmatic sensation filled Robert Bowser when he looked at his wife. He had been married to her for over two decades, yet he could predict only her performance, the same way he could predict the performance of an adding machine, or the Lincoln, or the sump pump at their house. In no way could he predict what Margaret was thinking, or whether she could stray as far from their lives as he so often did in his thoughts.

“There’s a fifty-mile limit on this road,” Margaret said then. “You’re not nervous, are you? It’s all over now, Robert.”

“I wasn’t nervous. You mean about the directorship?” “Yes.”

“I wasn’t nervous about it.”

“There’s always a let-down after a build-up of anticipation. It’s very common. You’re probably a little depressed.”

“Am I?” He wondered if that were true, that he was depressed. The truth was, he decided, he felt nothing.

“Very common,” said Margaret. “A natural feeling.”

“Do you have it ever?”

“Everyone does, of course. I just wish you’d slow down. You’re driving too fast and we’ll get a ticket.”

Robert smiled to himself at her threatening him with the law.

Margaret said, “I don’t blame you for driving fast through this part of the trip, though. I wonder how people live like this. I suppose they don’t even know the difference. They’re too caught up with basics—making a living, paying for the television set, raising children they can ill afford—basics. Slow down, please, Robert. Why don’t we just exclude John Hark? We’ll invite him another time.”

It was a wretched landscape, full of paint-peeling diners and dilapidated houses built too close to the road; Tastee-Freeze stands, discount houses, oil drums for garbage, gas stations and billboards. There was a dump somewhere nearby, a stench from it, and smoke that hung over the area like a tired haze of hopelessness. Still, many, many times when Robert drove this route he felt not a repugnance like Margaret’s, but a fascination—a wonder—and oddly, something akin to desire—not for any one thing, certainly not for
any one
—but for another way of being. There was a house along this route, somewhere very near where they were, a particular house that always happened to Robert. That was the only way he could think to put it. It “happened” to him. He was watching for it now.

“Do you want to exclude John Hark?” said Margaret.

“So I can have a fourth drink before dinner?” A fourth, he thought, and perhaps a fifth … and he saw himself in a small cafe in Brazil. It was hot and the cool drinks tasted marvellous.

“You’ll feel a little festive when you return, Robert. Why shouldn’t you have a fourth drink? Last week when all this Baker business came up, you were having four and five before dinner. One night I counted five.”

“Were you worried?”

“Of course not! I’ve never once seen you intoxicated! You’re not a John Hark. It’s very simple.” “What is?”

“Don’t be picky, Robert. You know what I’m saying. I can’t tolerate drunkards, not John Hark’s sort. He gets very sloppy, Robert. You
never
do! It’s very simple.”

“Yes, I guess it is. Very simple.”

“Most things are,” said Margaret. “We just won’t ask him.”

It was precisely then that Robert saw the house, at the very moment Margaret made it definite that John Hark was not to attend their party.

It was a run-down, squat, two-story house, gray shingle, next to one of Route 22’s ubiquitous diners. The grass around it had not been cut in all the years Robert had been studying it. Many of the windows were broken. In front, the mailbox was damaged, so that the white container dangled off its post, upside down. In the side yard there was a rusty icebox, and on the front porch, bedsprings with a few coils popped. Perhaps this evening Robert noticed details he had not noticed before (he could not remember having seen the turned-over mailbox), but the house itself was the same and his feeling was the same. He knew the psychological name for his sensation was
déjà vu
—the feeling of having seen it before, and more—the feeling of hiving experienced it before. Lived in it? No, not that at all—experienced it was the only way he could think of it. Robert knew that the psychologists would point out that Robert had made the trip from Bucks County to New York and back countless times in the past fifteen years. He had probably seen the house, without thinking about it, for years, and only in recent years noticed it. Yet did that explain the sudden impact of shocking nostalgia that had overcome him the first time he had noticed it? And the same reaction, somewhat diluted by repetition, each time thereafter? The curious thing about it was that mixed with the nostalgia and the
déjà vu
was a sharp revulsion, a fear—a feeling that he had already experienced total degradation, and that the smell of it was in his nostrils and its taint all through him. At times he tried imagining himself living there, but he could not really visualize himself in the house. He could only wonder who would ever think to look
there
for Robert Bowser. It was before he had any reason to believe he would need a hideout. It was back in the years when he was in between risks, after he had left Brown & Forbes, and before he had become treasurer for King & Clary.

They drove beyond the house while Robert recalled those years. There had been opportunities, of course, and temptations. In Robert’s work there always were. Robert’s conceit was that he was selective and cautious—that he would not expend any energy on a project simply for the thrill of a gamble. Robert had a scorn for the petty gambler, the petty thief—the small mind whose ambition could be temporarily satiated by a lucky day at the racetrack or a successful venture through a bedroom window at night. The scorn was mixed with wonder as well—the same wonder Robert always felt when he observed people who had simply let go the rules, senselessly, flatly, and were facing the consequences. When he saw, in the tabloids, photographs of disheveled thugs who had been caught accosting their victims on city streets, in taxis, or hallways (usually with little more profit than ten or fifteen dollars), it was as though he were witness to their nakedness. He felt as though he had come across them walking around nude—a revulsion and a wonderment. What had ever made them think they could get away with it? In those years between risks, Robert asked himself that question often, and always with disgust for them, and for all get-rich-quickers. No, it took time and thought for the coup, and in the past five years, while Robert did not frame the thought exactly in his mind, part of his exhilaration was rooted in a dim awareness that he was not going for little things in a little way. No one would ever have reason—even now—to look in a house like that for Robert Bowser. That thought came to mind, and with it a strange inch of fear, and then Margaret’s voice brought him back to the present.

“I said, shall we have dinner at the Canal House when we get to New Hope, or shall I fix something from the freezer?”

Robert Bowser took hold of himself, let the past moments all go … even the near past and very pressing ones of his dilemma. He came full center to Right Now. Until Sunday night when the Varig jet left the ground, Right Now was the exigency. He must believe that and act in that belief. He was Margaret Bowser’s husband. They were driving home and trying to decide, en route, where to eat.

He said, “I’d rather eat at Chez Odette, on the way into New Hope.”

He even thought of escargots Bourguignons, saw the shells, smelled the pungent odor of the garlic sauce; saw his hands beside the plate, reaching for the silver implements for spearing and shell gripping.

The only trace of strain was the beginning of a severe headache. He could feel the pressure, as though somewhere in his brain was the minute start of a crack, prelude to a gradual crumbling, as though somewhere in the depths of his mind everything would come apart suddenly, if he could not contain the pressure.

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Copyright © 1966 by Vin Packer, Registration Renewed 1994

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This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.

eISBN 10: 1-4405-3703-8

eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-3703-5