Middle Age (26 page)

She leaned on her husband Owen’s arm only because her stylish high-heeled shoes sank into the soil. Augusta was the only person smiling in Adam Berendt’s garden and her smile was porcelain-perfect, adamant.

Even as she swiped at her brilliant smudged eyes she continued to smile as if for Adam’s sake, at this ceremony in honor of Adam. Her fingers curled into Roger’s hand and squeezed, hard. She leaned close, perfumey and bo-somy, to murmur in Roger’s ear, “Roger! Thank you
so much
for arranging this. Only
you
have really taken charge, in this disaster. How happy Adam would be, wouldn’t he, if he could see us! Adam loved his Salthill friends,
we were all he had
.” This pronouncement, which seemed dismaying to Roger, was clearly a joyous pronouncement to Augusta. Roger was
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reminded of the nude photos of the voluptuous Mrs. Cutler inscribed to Adam, the lush mammalian body on the sofa, dreamy but masklike face offering itself to be kissed. Unless Marina had taken them away, or destroyed them, which seemed unlikely, these photos were probably still in Adam’s studio amid the cache of adoring women, and it seemed to Roger that Augusta knew this, and knew that he knew, she looked at him so pointedly, with that mysterious smile. Whispering, “It isn’t really over, is it?—with Adam, I mean. Our love.”)

Adam’s weedy garden! It was beyond the old stone house, marked off by a five-foot wire fence Adam had himself erected; in his practical mode, Adam was one to get things done, and capably. But he’d never been a fastidious gardener, and now his garden was overgrown with weeds. In a promiscuous tumult it seemed to be celebrating his absence. The very air was thicker here, more moist. Clouds of gnats drifted against your mouth, caught in your eyelashes. There were monarch butterflies with wide puls-ing wings, and other varieties of flying insects glittering like tiny gems in the air. And bees making their way from one ripe blossom to another, especially thick amid the pale yellow tomato blossoms, bent upon the task of spreading pollen. There came mosquitoes out of the tall grasses above the river, drawn by the scent of living blood, and gently these frail creatures, hardly more than line drawings by, say, Saul Steinberg, alighted upon their victims’ bare skin; Roger absentmindedly crushed a mosquito against his forehead, his fingers came away stippled with blood. He saw a mosquito hovering near Marina Troy’s neck and daringly brushed it away and Marina, white-lipped, frowning, took no notice.
I love you
.
Can’t you forgive
.

For an occasion of such gravity, Marina wasn’t very well groomed. She wore a shapeless black sheath that drooped to mid-calf, shimmering fabric that clung to her slender hips and thighs with static electricity; you could see, if you chose to look, the impress of her pelvic bones; her legs were very pale, and bare. Tangled dull-red hair falling down her back. The sight of this hair, its imagined rich rank scent aroused Roger’s senses, even as he carried the urn into the garden, he saw himself as Marina’s lover shutting his fist in that hair, pressing his mouth against the white neck beneath the hair, licking the clammy skin, except the thought was repugnant, Roger Cavanagh who was fastidiously groomed, clean-shaven and his hair recently trimmed, like his friend Lionel Hoffmann, like his friend Owen Cutler, like his friend Avery Archer—
Roger Cavanagh was one of
these men
.

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Spreading human ashes, raking them into the soil: not so easy a task as Adam had imagined. (But Adam hadn’t imagined any of this, really. Roger was pissed at Adam, setting these wheels in motion.) Before you can rake ashes into the soil you have to dig up the soil, you have to tear out weeds, and plenty of weeds there were in Adam’s garden, among the tomato plants, among the sweet-corn stalks, among the pole beans, the bush beans, the zucchini and squash vines; dominating over the remains of the lettuce, now bolted and gone luridly to seed like exposed genitals. Everywhere in the garden were dandelions, thistles grown knee-high, a stringy-nasty bastard of a vine with tiny golden flowers that, when you tugged at it, as Roger had done, cut into your hands like wire. Marina had tried to help but wasn’t very effectual, swinging a hoe, so vacant-eyed, clumsy.

Roger, who had absolutely no patience for outdoor work, was the one who’d cleared a patch of soil near the tomato plants, before the others arrived, but now that they were here, naturally they had opinions, Beatrice Avery was saying how, last time she’d visited this garden, in Adam’s company, in June, Adam had been particularly proud of the sunflowers, look how tall the sunflowers were growing, taller than any man, ruddy-faced, blazing-yellow, let’s spread Adam’s ashes beneath the sunflowers at the back of the garden, but Roger cut off the woman’s proposal, before someone else could chime in, God damn it was too weedy there. He wasn’t doing any more weeding, hoeing, and raking in this God-damned garden, now or ever.

This quieted Beatrice Avery, and anyone else who’d had a new idea.

Roger thought
Fuck you all, if you don’t like my attitude
. He was sweating, conscious of a sick churning sensation in his gut as awkwardly he held the urn, turning it sideways, and Marina pressed near, breathing quickly, as if Adam’s very spirit were present, and his dignity at risk, Marina murmured,

“Let me do it, please
let me do it
.” Roger would recall afterward that she had not called him
Roger,
she had called him nothing at all as if he’d had no identity to her. Almost forcibly Marina took the heavy urn from Roger, and with misgivings, Roger relinquished it, and suddenly it slipped from Marina’s fingers and fell heavily to the ground, and on all sides there were indrawn breaths—“Oh!” Roger cursed under his breath, or maybe not under his breath, “Fuck it,” and, face burning, squatted above the urn and dumped the ashes out of the God-damned thing, not very ceremoniously, simply lifting the bottom of the urn and shaking the ashes, bone chunks and powdery grit, out onto the soil.
How’d I deal with this absolutely freaky
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thing,
Roger would afterward recall,
I pretended it wasn’t me doing it and
what came out, wasn’t anything human
.

Solemnly they hoed and raked this residue of a human being into the soil. It took some time, for it was more than simply an idea, it involved actual hoeing, raking, patience, concentration. Overhead an enormous airliner passed with excruciating slowness, both the air and the ground vibrated, it was maddening, yet had to be endured. Some twenty of their Salthill friends were witnesses, mostly silent and solemn and only just Augusta Cutler broke into unexpected tears, but just possibly these were tears of ecstasy, the moment was for her a moment of sacred consummation with Adam Berendt, who could tell? Roger’s concentration was on not sneezing but he began sneezing anyway—“Excuse me! God
damn
.”

Following the ceremony everyone quickly departed. Except Marina Troy lingered, kneeling amid the fresh-tilled soil. “Marina, you’d better come with me,” Roger said in his severe-lawyer manner, but Marina scarcely acknowledged him. He knew, if he touched her, the force of that touch would strike him in the groin, sharp as a knife blade, halfway he wanted this sensation, but no, he was a man of reason and wanted nothing to do with it, or with the woman. She wasn’t even attractive! If he wanted to be involved with a woman, he much preferred a beautiful woman, a woman like Abigail Des Pres. He hurried to his car, eager to escape.

Spreading Adam’s ashes had been strangely exhausting. And being in Marina Troy’s company was strangely exhausting. His sexual being had been nullified by that woman, she seemed utterly unaware how she’d insulted him in his masculinity, why was he drawn to her again?

“I’m not. Adam, you had the right idea:
don’t get involved
.”

The last glimpse he’d had of Marina Troy she was kneeling in the garden, a small figure nearly obscured by vegetation, bright-winged butterflies fluttering above her head.

Since that time he’d seen Marina only infrequently in Salthill, at a distance; out of tact and resignation he stayed away from Salthill Bookstore, and never called her. He would never! Except, one evening in early September, returning from an engagement with a woman he knew in Manhattan, with whom sometimes, as if to keep up a fading acquaintance, he slept, there he was dialing Marina Troy’s home number, intending to leave a short, neutral message, “Marina? It’s Roger. I’d like to see you, O.K.?”—

but the phone rang and rang in the shingleboard colonial on North Pearl Street, unanswered. Next day Roger entered the Salthill Bookstore to

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learn, from a woman he’d never seen before, who introduced herself as manager of the store, that Miss Troy was “away.” Astonished, Roger asked, away where?—but the woman shook her head gravely and only just repeated, “Away.”

“But for how long?”

“For”—the woman hesitated— “a year.”

“A
year?
Did you say—
a year?
”

Roger was more than astonished, he was beginning to be enraged.

“That seems to be the plan. That’s all I know.”

“But—where is Marina? She’s a friend of mine.”

The woman was young, but prim-faced and disapproving. She frowned like one entrusted with a secret that weighed upon her like a giant key on a chain around her neck. “If you’re a friend, Mr. Cavanagh, Miss Troy would have told you where she’s gone, I think.”

Roger said angrily, “Marina is more than a friend, she’s involved in Adam Berendt’s estate, she has responsibilities, she can’t just disappear for a
year
.”

But the young woman shook her head, adamant. No she would not tell Roger Cavanagh where Marina Troy was. And there was some ambiguity in her remark, some slight, subtle evasiveness in her face, that led Roger, trained to decipher the most subtle nuances of speech in any adversary, to conclude that possibly she didn’t know where Marina was, herself. “But you must be in contact with her, if you’re managing the store while she’s away?”

“Miss Troy contacts
me
. When she wants to.”

In a fury of disgust Roger left the Salthill Bookstore, the little bell trembling above the door.

Not one of their mutual friends knew where Marina had gone. Several women expressed surprise and hurt that Marina had left without saying good-bye. All shared Roger’s sense of having been betrayed. Camille Hoffmann admitted knowing that Marina was planning to be away for a year, that she’d leased her house to a tenant, but Marina had refused to tell her where she was going, or to provide a telephone number or a P.O. box.

“It’s as if everything is falling apart now, into chaos,” Camille said, with a forcefulness that surprised Roger, who’d never taken Lionel’s wife very seriously; the woman’s warm brown eyes brimmed with hurt, yet with the courage to withstand hurt, “but we won’t despair, will we? None of us.
I
certainly will not.”

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There came into the room suddenly a large wolflike dog—Adam’s Apollo. He seemed not to know Roger, he was growling menacingly, toenails clicking on the floor and hackles raised, his tawny eyes widened.

Roger hadn’t seen his friend’s dog for months and was surprised that Apollo was so healthy-looking, though lean, with something feral about his jaws. His silver-tipped fur was coarse and gnarly, yet he was a handsome dog. “Apollo! You know me.” In that instant Apollo recognized Roger, his master’s friend, and began to bark excitedly as a puppy. You could see him transformed into a puppy. Sniffing about Roger’s legs and crotch, licking his hands, an old eager friend.

Quietly Camille said, “He’s boarding with me. Until Adam returns from wherever he is—the Grecian islands, I think.”

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T  R on the hockey field!—his heart leapt with pride, Roger sighted his daughter immediately. Her fair-brown hair swinging in a ponytail, that was new. Swiftly and determinedly she was charging at the edge of the pack of girls, hockey stick at the ready. The ball, not at the moment near Robin, was struck by an opposing player, the ball flew, skidded on the field, a Ryecroft center in a green uniform snatched it away, a tall platinum-blond wide-shouldered girl, there were cheers at the sidelines, shouts of encouragement. How beautiful the girls were at this distance, most of them taller than Robin, strong-limbed, bearing their wicked hockey sticks like Amazon warriors. Roger stared, transfixed. It was hard for him to keep Robin in sight amid the confusing action, he’d arrived too late for a seat in the small three-tiered bleachers and stood at the sidelines far from the center of play. There came Robin again swinging her stick, and this time snatching the ball from a rival, her hard-muscled legs pounding as she guided the ball zigzag fashion down the field in the other direction, passed it to a teammate who seemed literally to fly with it, the ball leapt, skidded, slammed into the rivals’ net, as the desperate goalie lunged and fell. More cheers! Roger joined in, shouting. “Great play! Great!” He was hoping that Robin had caught sight of him. She’d know now that her dad was here, hadn’t let her down.

As in the past, not often but once or twice, unavoidably, for very good reasons he’d been at pains to explain, he had.

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He hadn’t been very late after all, he’d missed only the first quarter of the game. The other team was ahead by only two points. He stood with cheering Ryecroft supporters, a scattering of adults and adolescents, mostly girls. Though the Ryecroft School was now co-ed, it had been a girls’ school for a century, and had a reputation in the east as a girls’ school of the hardy second rank, attracting fewer boys, and not very good students among these; as Robin said scornfully, the girls were what boys are supposed to be, and the boys were mostly losers.