Primitive People (16 page)

Simone said, “Let me see it,” and George dolorously complied, producing from his pack a crumpled envelope, dusted with crumbs. Though Rosemary’s name was typed on the unsealed note, it never occurred to Simone not to open and read it.

The letter was from George’s teacher, informing Mrs. Porter that George had burst into tears for no reason during quiet reading time. Rosemary was encouraged to feel free to call the school and set up an appointment with the staff psychologist, in whose opinion George might be showing signs of subclinical depression. Would Rosemary please sign the note and send it back with her child?

“Could you forge Mom’s signature?” George asked.

Simone said, “Your mother will find out. You had better tell her.” In fact, it wasn’t clear at all that forgery wouldn’t work. But Simone wanted Rosemary to see the note, she wanted adult help with this.

Adult help from Rosemary? What had Simone been thinking? When Rosemary read the note, the adult bat was what she resembled, flapping and swooping around the room while emitting high sonic shrieks. “What’s
this
about?” she demanded of George. “I thought we were
through
with this.”

George said, “It’s about a lot of things.” He waited a few beats, studying his mother. “I hated that magician—”

“Look what I drew!” Maisie unfolded a thick sheet of yellow paper on which she’d drawn leopards and tigers in advanced states of rigor mortis. “It’s called
Jungle Graveyard.”
She grinned expectantly at Rosemary. Simone wondered: Was she protecting George or competing with him for attention?

Rosemary said, “I’m sure that drawing is the most creative
objet
to see the light of day in that school. Psychologists! Imagine if they’d turned their dirty little minds loose on Hieronymus Bosch! They’d have loved to treat Van Gogh right out of artistic existence. It’s amazing how much better medical care Van Gogh’s gotten after his death. Every week some doctor comes up with a new diagnosis.”

Only then did Rosemary turn to George and say, “Are we still on
that?
That absurd magician? I thought we settled that at the wedding after you kids finished sulking. George, you are becoming a genuine obsessive. How many years do you plan to spend bent out of shape over nothing? You are not going to try and convince a sentient adult, your mother, that you cried at school because your mom was drafted as a magic show volunteer and you, a grownup boy of ten, are still fried about it.

“Anyway, we should be thankful that your teacher noticed. Eight bomb scares a week in the senior high, cocaine at junior-high lunch, two dozen major safety violations in the first-grade classroom—and with all that, they have nothing to do but pay attention to minor fluctuations in my children’s moods.”

But gradually, Simone began to realize that “minor fluctuations” hardly described the children’s steady decline. Helplessly Simone watched them slide back into the troughs of distraction and grief she liked to think she’d rescued them from during the three months she’d been with them.

The children were hiding something; their eyes no longer met hers. They’d stopped arguing and chattering and mostly stayed in their rooms. George switched off the Eskimo tape when anyone came near and, instead of asking Simone to tuck him into bed, turned on his radio and listened to the comforting, inexorable countdown of the top ten hits. Maisie seemed much too enervated to even think about climbing a doorway.

One night Simone heard mumbling from the children’s bathroom and tiptoed near and heard George, whispering in the dark, “Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary. Bloody Mary.”

Could all this have been the magician’s fault, as George halfheartedly claimed? Or had something disturbing occurred during their weekend with their father? Either explanation seemed preferable to the more personal one Simone imagined: she had worked some small magic on the children, and the spell had worn off. That was what had happened with Joseph—for the first few weeks Simone lived with him he’d quit drinking and chasing women. How flattering to imagine that you could bring about permanent change when, in fact, if your influence worked at all, it was only for a second, a brief float in the buoying sea of warm self-satisfaction before the person’s true nature rolled in again and slammed you back into the beach.

It was insane for Simone to suppose she could make the children happy. All this was George and Maisie’s drama, Simone was only watching. This was the children’s entire lives and only a part of hers, though it was dizzying to contemplate what the rest of her life might be, exactly.

Simone wanted to say to someone: I am worried about George and Maisie. But there was no one she could tell. No one would understand. Rosemary was too volatile, the subject was too explosive. Nor could she consult Geoffrey in case it was somehow his fault; if not, it would only make him blame Rosemary more.

Several times it occurred to her: Kenny knew George and Maisie. After the shooting in the woods, he was the first person Maisie thought to go see. Kenny had a neutral view of their lives, comparatively speaking.

At the wedding Kenny had invited Simone to go for a drive to Connecticut. If she took him up on it, quickly, before he forgot, she could use a long ride to another state to ask his advice about George and Maisie. Or perhaps he would only confirm what Simone secretly feared: There was nothing she could do. They were not her children.

Was Simone just seeking a reason to go visit Kenny? She had to be very clear about this—then maybe Kenny would be, too. It was impossible to tell with a man how something might be taken. She would hate her visit to be misunderstood as a sexual invitation or as an acceptance of the invitation implicit in every move Kenny made. Men made it so hard to remember who you ordinarily were. Just by asking her to meet him at a cafe Joseph had transformed her into a smiling, agreeable person who answered every question yes; and it was this changed, acquiescent Simone who woke up the next day in Joseph’s bed.

One afternoon a light bulb in the kitchen went out with an alarming pop. When Simone replaced it, Maisie asked if she could have the burnt-out bulb.

Simone said, “No, it’s dangerous.” Maisie fixed her with a look. She needed it for something—for some game or ritual, Simone sensed, that was not to be interfered with. For the first time it struck Simone that these were the children who had cut the eyes out of the family portraits upstairs. She had never thought of that as a story about George and Maisie but only as a story about what their mother had let them do.

That evening as Simone was walking past the sun porch, she found George watching Maisie bury the light bulb in a flower pot full of pebbles and dirt. Maisie said to Simone, “It was our pet. I don’t know if you can watch this.”

Simone said, “Fine, I am busy,” and hurried past the door.

The next day Simone got in the car and drove to Kenny’s salon. When Simone walked in, it took Kenny a second to cover his surprise beneath a foxlike, carnivorous interest in this tasty turn of events.

No customers were in the shop. Kenny grabbed his jacket, flipped the
CLOSED
sign over, and locked the door. “Let’s head for the border,” he said.

Soon Simone was scrunched in the passenger seat of Kenny’s tiny red car, practically scraping the blacktop as they rocketed over the roads. The engine whined like a bratty child, prohibiting grownup conversation. Kenny called out impressive facts about torsion and pickup speed while oversteering wildly and, it seemed, independently of what the car was doing.

“Look how she holds the pavement,” Kenny yelled, skidding toward the shoulder. Gravel sprayed the undercarriage. Simone shut her eyes.

“We are now approaching Connecticut,” Kenny said. “Run away with the rich and famous!”

How pretty it was, this winding lane through stubbled fields and towns smelling of woodsmoke rather than, as in Haiti, of smoldering rubber tires. You didn’t expect, as you might there, some terrifying event, roadblocks and men with machetes screaming into your car. There, memos circulated through the embassy discouraging travel to the provinces, but here you could take any route, any turn, stop at any antique store. The white siding on the old houses bordered the optimistic blue sky with a clean, geometric edge that filled you with pride in human achievement. How honestly this world winked back at you in the bright autumn sun. Simone almost felt safe to surrender herself to the landscape whipping by.

Even Kenny, intent on the road, registered Simone’s enjoyment. “Riding around in fast cars,” he said, “is every American’s birthright.”

Simone was relieved that crossing the New York border did not involve uniformed guards scrutinizing her papers. There was no way to make Kenny understand the luxury of a road without roadblocks, to explain without lecturing him and spoiling his good time. Simone felt a pang of missing Miss McCaffrey, with her insatiable appetite for trivial details of Haitian life. Here it was almost impossible for Simone to mention Haiti without feeling that she was rambling on, being boring and self-involved. Emile had said this would be the case; he’d said it would make it easier not to reveal too much. It upset her to think about Emile now, it made her feel awkward and clumsy, as if Emile had meant more to her, hurt her more than he did, or as if he were really her husband and might disapprove of her being with Kenny.

Immediately, as if she’d summoned it with improper thinking, a yellow New York City cab nearly ran them off the road. Kenny said, “Fucking weekenders,” though it was a Wednesday. “I see more and more city fucking cabs up here in the country. Rich scumbags miss their train at Grand Central and can’t wait two hours for the next train and go hail a fucking cab. Well, okay, here we are. Welcome to Connecticut! Free at last, free at last! Great God A’mighty, free at last! Though God only knows where I get the idea Shelly’s radar stops at the border. Besides, what am I worried about—what have we got to hide?”

“Nothing,” said Simone.

Nothing changed from state to state, but Kenny behaved as if they had crossed into a new country whose exotic customs needed explaining. He plucked his radar detector off the dashboard and, leaning across Simone, stuffed it into the glove compartment.

“Connecticut and Virginia,” he said. “The most fascist states in the nation. What I hate is how suddenly the side of the road gets so
coiffed.”

Kenny made a screeching turn into the parking lot of a rambling, mustard-colored frame barn.

“THE WALDORF HOTEL.”
Kenny read the sign. “That’s what I love about this place. Woodchuck delusions of grandeur. Relax—it’s not really a hotel, just a redneck bar. Though I guess they do have some rooms upstairs for guys too sluiced to drive home. I’ve always wanted to register at one of those cornpone inns, sign in under a phony name, and disappear forever. Especially if I had company—what do you say, Simone? Shelly wouldn’t eat here if an atom bomb hit and it was the last greasy spoon on the face of the planet.”

Inside the vast low-ceilinged bar the air was cool and dark and beery. The wood paneling was covered with license plates and animal heads. Simone studied a giant moose, its glassy eyes fixed on some distant point between melancholy and rage.

“I see you’re digging the taxidermy,” said Kenny. “This place is closer to a voodoo temple than the regulars would like to admit.”

Simone followed Kenny to a table, off by itself. On the table was a shiny checked cloth and a ruby glass oil lamp, which, when Kenny picked it up, began to flicker and sputter. “This place could blow sky-high,” he said. “Incinerated in a second. Kenny, cool out, man. You can relax. You are not with Shelly.”

Simone nodded confirmingly and found herself envying Shelly. Kenny talked about her so much—it hardly mattered what he said. There had never been a man who mentioned Simone so often.

“The down side of Connecticut is what saves it,” said Kenny. “We’re right in the middle of that manicured shit and actual humans still live here.”

The nearest other customers—a woman with a puff of downy white hair and a pastel-blue pantsuit, a grizzled old cowboy in a grommeted shirt and a bola tie—leaned over their table, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes.

“An all-purpose cheaters’ bar,” Kenny said. “Nighttime it’s guys from Torrington cruising for rural nookie. Afternoons, your geriatric lovers cheating on social security. I know that’s what I’m looking at as I approach my golden years. I’ll be lucky to get
that
much when I’m that old fart’s age.”

Simone’s smile, meant to suggest that Kenny was being too modest, accidentally signaled the waitress, who drifted over to their table and hovered there without speaking, projecting the same disconsolate rage as the moose on the wall. Kenny ordered a New England fried seafood plate and a Miller draft.

“Five minutes over the border,” he told Simone, “and they hit you with freaking New England. But deep fry is the only thing these places can halfway do.”

Simone said, “I’ll have the same.”

Kenny turned to watch the waitress walk back to the kitchen. “Bermuda shorts in November.” He shook his head. “This place is authentic.”

Kenny flipped through the panels in their private jukebox, then plugged in a quarter and sang along,
“Today I passed you on the street. And my heart fell at your feet.
Hank Williams! The guy makes me want to howl like a dog. Want to know something strange? When I’m with Shelly, there’s all this music I can’t admit I like. And when
she
plays certain stuff—like that song she had me grinding to when we were all at her house that night—I feel compelled to give her shit for saying she likes
that.
Christ, I sound like some boring chick analyzing her relationship. How about it, Simone? Want to dance?”

Simone shook her head. “No one’s dancing.”

“Of course not,” Kenny agreed. “It would be totally out of line to dance here.” But they gazed at the empty dance floor as if someone were. Kenny said, “I’ll bet they’ve got places like this in Haiti.”

Simone thought: Yes on the beery smell, no on everything else. This did not feel dangerous, like the Carrefour bar to which Inez took her and Joseph, and where Joseph had asked first Simone and then Inez to dance.