My Life Among the Apes (14 page)

AT THE HOUSE, TONI LENT him a girl’s bicycle and he rode it back to Wellfleet. He went into the hundred-and-fifty year-old hardware store, looked at the dories turned into flower boxes and set along the sidewalks, gazed up at the First Congregational Church with the clock in its steeple and a bell that rang on ship’s time. He found a used book store, a little corner place with racks of paperbacks and piles of old sailing magazines. On a low shelf were seven copies of
Moby-Dick
. He chose a small, thick hardcover with woodcuts by Rockwell Kent. It had an inscription inside:
To Mattie who has harpooned my heart Christmas 1959
.

He went into a café for lunch and began to read the novel. But soon he had to stop. An increasing agitation came over him and he felt an unbearable panic, his heart thrashing in his chest.

Don’t
, he said to himself,
just don’t
. He needed to be here and nowhere else. Slowly his heart subsided.

He rode to the nearest beach. People were swimming, laughing, and splashing each other. Little kids with sand on their bellies carried buckets. Shoes in hand, he walked in the cold water. Then he lay down in the afternoon sun and read
Moby-Dick.
When it was time, he rode back to the house, got the car, and drove to pick up Nadia, desperately impatient to see her.

IT WAS NADIA WHO recognized the man in the photographs on a side table. “Didn’t we see him in a movie?” she said.

Jeffrey recognized him, too; a Hollywood actor who usually played the estranged son or the boyfriend cheating on the heroine. Or else the rich snob who gets what he deserves. Because of something a little sinister in his good looks. At breakfast, Toni confirmed that he was her son, the “wonderful boy” who often said he was going to visit but rarely made it. “He’s supposed to come any time. He’s shooting some television miniseries in Boston. But those shoots are awful, they keep the actors working day and night.”

Driving to the workshop, Jeffrey said that it felt surreal to speak of someone they’d seen only on screen as if he were an ordinary person. “This is Cape Cod,” Nadia said. “Everyone here knows somebody famous.”

EVERY DAY HE GOT ON the bike. He saw the handsome houses in Brewster that had been built by wealthy sea captains, the lighthouse at Chatham, the Marconi wireless station. He watched boats unloading oysters. He walked along beaches that touched the ocean or Nantucket Sound or Cape Cod Bay. He read
Moby-Dick,
which so belonged to this place and the surrounding sea that he was sure he’d never be able to separate the memory of them.

And every day he waited with an intense desire for the time when he could pick up Nadia. Sometimes he went a half hour early, to see her work. He watched her sculpt the seat with a tool called a gutter adze, which looked like a short pick-axe with a curving blade. He watched her turn ing one of the legs on the lathe while pointing out to him the various carved elements by their names: wafer, vase, ring, neck. He came even earlier one afternoon to watch her steam and bend the top of the chair back.

She was always hot and tired, fine wood dust clinging to her sweaty skin. He brought bathing suits and towels and they would drive to Longneck Beach, on the ocean side. Holding hands, they ran screaming into the water. The cold was a delirious punch knocking the breath out of him.

BERNIE TOLD HER to take a day off. They drove up to Provincetown where, while having breakfast in a Portuguese bakery on Commercial Street, he first saw two men kiss. On the wharf they bought tickets for a battered boat called the
Ranger
. There were about twenty passengers already aboard. The captain, a young man with an earring, used a microphone to tell them about the ocean environment and the history of whaling. But he became quiet for long stretches and they had nothing to do but look out at the endless water. With the engines cut, they drifted in the waves. The surface broke and two grey-blue forms leapt up, their bodies twisting in the air. Humpbacks. Disappearing for a minute or two, they rose again calmly, blowing fine spray. Then they dove, leaving two spots, exactly their shape, on the surface.

Jeffrey drove home in the dark, Nadia leaning sleepily against him. They slipped into the house, he leading, and crept up to their bedroom. Slowly undressing her, he kissed her mouth, her arms, her breasts, her belly, her cunt. She pulled him towards her. The headboard began to thump against the wall; they’d forgotten again to pull the bed away.

She pushed him over, put herself on top, sat almost upright, making small squeals with each forward motion. He tried to keep his mind clear, to think only of her. Light ning suddenly turned the windows silver; thunder shook the room. They heard the downpour, a battering on the roof above. They pulled away from one another and Nadia led him to the window where they stood naked, watching the storm. He had never seen one so violent.

The storm subsiding, they finished their lovemaking, and soon were sleep.

ANOTHER SPECIAL TOOL NADIA USED reamed the sockets for the legs, tapering them to fit snugly. The legs needed to splay out at the proper angle. The strength and durability of the chair depended on a web of tensions holding every thing firm.

AFTER THEIR LATE AFTERNOON SWIMS, they would go to a restaurant in Wellfleet or another nearby town and eat crabs, or scallops, or big bowls of chowder. Towards the end of the week Toni conveyed a dinner invitation from her friends Mona and Lucy, who managed a gallery in Provincetown where she showed her work. They owned a small but perfect Cape house with a postcard view of the ocean. The other guests were artists and writers who lived nearby. They expressed pleasure at having “young people” in their company. A giant pot was boiling on the stove, ready to accept the lobsters. On the long table were corn on the cob, heaps of coleslaw, and many bottles of wine. The talk was loud and punctuated by shrieks of laughter. Nadia spoke to a man who made sculptures out of objects found on the beach; Jeffrey talked to a woman who did pen-and-ink drawings of shells and seagulls and children’s toys left in the sand. Every few months she bundled up a package of them and put them in the mail to
The New Yorker
. The editor chose four or five to use as spot drawings, break ing up the columns of type. “They always choose the worst ones.”

Toni got notably drunk and began to sing in Dutch. At two in the morning they helped her to the car. Jeffrey didn’t know how to drive stick-shift, so Nadia took them home along the backroads. As they pulled up to the house, they saw a convertible parked at the side. Someone was sitting in a porch chair with a beer in his hand. When he stood up, Jeffrey recognized him as the son in all the photographs.

Toni opened the jeep door and fell out. She climbed onto the porch and put her big arms around her son. He had a winning laugh and was, if anything, better-looking in person than in the movies.

Jeffrey himself had drunk too much and felt the bed swim beneath him. Sometimes the voices of Toni and her son drifted upstairs. She sounded as if she might be crying. Nadia curled herself around him and he closed his eyes.

In the morning, the convertible was already gone. Toni did not come down for breakfast.

IT TOOK NADIA AN ENTIRE day to assemble the sack-back: inserting the arm posts, drilling the sockets for the narrow spindles that would fan out to form the back, getting the stresses to play against one another. Now it was a true chair, the parts forming an elegant whole yet still marked with the signs of handwork. The next day, she wet the wood to raise the grain for the final laborious sanding, followed by the traditional method of painting with a mixture of white lead, turpentine, linseed oil, and pigment. It did not have the thickness of modern paint and the mustard colour was pleasingly uneven. Over time, Bernie said, the rubbing of arms and rear-ends would bring out more subtleties.

SHE HAD THE AFTERNOON OFF while the paint dried. They drove through shady towns until they began to pass the motels and fast-food stops that marked the entrance to Hyannis. Continuing straight to the dock, they parked the car to board the ferry.

The ride would take a couple of hours, the ferry sway ing gently in the choppy water. On the deck they drank coffee and read their books. Despite the secure feeling of the wide ferry, he felt rising in him an unaccountable fear of drowning. It became hard to breathe. There came to mind a moment long forgotten, when as a child he had walked far out onto the sand of a Florida beach and been caught by a fast incoming tide. He had tried to struggle back through the waves, but they kept pushing him off his feet, forcing water into his mouth. Struggling harder, head plunging again below the surface, he knew that he was going to die. And then he felt his mother’s strong arms around him.

Nantucket Island hove into view. He and Nadia and the other floppy-hatted, camera-toting tourists were disgorged into the village. Cobblestone streets, white-plank churches; it was almost too charming. Nadia took his arm and steered them away from the crowds. After only a couple of blocks they found themselves alone. She began to tell him how much she had learned over the week, not just the specific tasks needed but a whole approach, a way of thinking about work and life.

He said, “So what are you going to do? Is there some technical college for woodworking you can go to? Or a furniture maker back home for a longer apprenticeship?”

“I’m not going to do anything. I mean, I’m going to go to chiropractic college.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a dream. Bernie is respected, even famous in his field. But he still can’t make enough to properly support himself. If Sadie hadn’t come into some family money, they never would have survived. He’s got no pension, a crappy health insurance plan. I know that the romance would wear off. Maybe in two years, maybe in five. Bernie told me that, too. He says he’s glad that I came, to remind him why he wanted to do this in the first place. Jeffrey, I want a house one day. I want to have kids. There’s so much that I can learn from this week, I don’t regret a moment of it. Even if it’s the only chair I ever make. Ah, you look so disap pointed. It really is okay. It’s more than that. I feel great — about everything. Hey, look.”

Pulling him close, she led them through the tilting, wrought-iron gate of a small cemetery. In the tall grass stood rows of thin headstones, white and flaking. He both tried and refused to understand what she was feeling, even as he looked at the simple carvings in the stone — a skull, a cross, a willow tree. The word
Sailor
was chiselled after some of the names and underneath,
Lost at Sea
.

Nadia turned to face him. “It’s good luck to kiss in a cemetery,” she said, grabbing the sleeves of his jacket.

“And where did you hear that?”

“I’m sure that I read it in a guidebook,” she whispered.

ALL THAT WAS LEFT WAS the final rubbing with boiled linseed oil. The chair was done.

Jeffrey came for a celebratory lunch in the back garden beside Sadie’s vegetable patch. Bernie opened a bottle of “good old American champagne.” They raised their glasses to the beautiful chair, which rested nearby on the grass. They ate quiche and salad, and Nadia, who didn’t feel comfortable being the centre of attention, asked Sadie about her childhood.

“My father was a cantor at the Brooklyn Beth David Synagogue. He had a beautiful voice. But it made him too full of himself. Women were drawn to him. He ran off with a member of the choir when I was twelve. Years later, he tried to contact me but what he did to my mother I could never forgive. Now Bernie and me, we met at a sing-a-long in Washington Square Park. June 1949. His father wanted him to be a pharmacist, but Bernie had these back-to-the land ideas. We rented a farm in Upper New York State. Some farmhouse, huh, Bernie? It was falling down. That’s when you started building furniture. Thank God, because you were no farmer.”

“And you were no farmer’s wife,” he said.

“But enough,” she said, raising a second glass. “A toast to Nadia and her chair.”

“I can’t even begin to thank you both.”

“You have learned much, grasshopper,” Bernie said, rais ing his own glass. “As we like to say on the Cape,
L’chaim!
”

FOR THEIR LAST AFTERNOON THEY went to a freshwater lake off Calhoon Hollow Road. The water was warm and the bottom soft sand. They played like kids in the shallows, chasing and splashing one another. For dinner they went to a shack in Wellfleet and sat on outdoor benches, eating from baskets of fried fish and drinking beer. Afterwards they went for a walk, drove home, packed, and got ready for bed early. When he came out of the bathroom, Nadia was already asleep.

THEIR TRAVEL ALARM RANG AT six. They had a quick breakfast. Toni gave them smothering hugs. At Bernie’s, they wrapped the chair in groundsheets and tied it to the roof of the car with a foam slab underneath. Bernie and Sadie, squat as a couple of Hobbits, waved as they pulled away.

Traffic was light and before long they were off the Cape. But the rest of the drive felt long and wearying. They kept the radio on the entire way, switching to the cbc close to the border. It was late as they drove along the 401 past the first exits to Toronto. His eyes wanted to close; cars ahead seemed to blur and double. Suddenly his hands started to tremble. At the Bayview exit he took the ramp into the empty suburban streets. Slowly he drove past cul-de-sacs and crescents until he pulled into his parents’ driveway.

He turned off the ignition.

“We did it,” she said and yawned.

“I’m exhausted. But it was a great trip. Really amazing.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure. Let’s have coffee. I need to talk about something.”

“What do you need to talk about?” she asked. “Tomorrow’s better,” he said lightly.

She kept looking at him. “No,” she said. “Tell me now. Please.”

“I don’t want to tell you now.”

“You have to.”

His breathing was shallow. He felt almost faint. “I think we have to stop seeing each other.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.”

“You can’t just do that, Jeffrey. You have to tell me why.”

“I’m trying to do the right thing.”

“You have to tell me.”

“Nadia, I met somebody.”

“You met somebody? When?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“You went out with her? You slept with her?”

“No, no. I just met her, that’s all. At that birthday thing I went to for my cousin.”

“But we’ve been going out for a year. We just spent a week together.”

“I know. And it was great. I mean it. I couldn’t say any thing before — I didn’t want to spoil it.”

They sat there in the dark.

“How do you know if you’re right about something,” he said, but not as a question.

She got out of the car. By the time he came around she had pulled his suitcase from the back seat. Then she stood on the door rim and reached up to cut the ropes with a pocket knife. Tears streamed down her face but she kept cutting. He said, “Don’t, Nadia. Please don’t,” but she kept moving around the car and before the last ropes were cut the chair began to slide. She eased it down to the drive and pulled off the groundsheets.

She reached into the car and flung out his
Moby-Dick
.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he said.

“Please don’t phone me. Or contact me in any way. I really mean it.” She closed the knife and put it in the glove compartment, shut the passenger door, went around to the other side and got in.

She backed up quickly, swung around in the road, and drove off.

He stood there a long time, surrounded by the ground sheets and pieces of rope. Finally he carried the chair into the garage.