Q: A Novel (11 page)

“Then how about a quick stop in Rhinebeck?”

Q brightens at the mere thought of it. I take her cue and make a quick change of course onto Route 199. The road is almost empty and we make it to the town in fifteen minutes. I find a spot on Market Street and park our red Corolla. By this time, Q is bouncing with anticipation. She says, “I’m going to run to the bathroom then check in and say ‘Hi’ at the market. It’ll just take a second. I’ll meet you at Irregular’s in half an hour.” Irregular’s is a quirky record, book, and toffee store that Q knows I like.

I say, “Sure,” but I know it’ll take Q a lot longer than thirty minutes. For organic gardeners, the farmer’s market is like a convention, and Q, manager of the most improbable and successful urban garden on the East Coast, is nothing less than a celebrity at these gatherings. And now she is the sympathetic victim of a gross act of corporate greed. Her appearance will set the market a-twitter. She’ll be lucky to break away in two hours. I know she knows this, and she knows I know she knows this, but it’s fine with me. I have lots to think about.

I get myself a cup of coffee, wander through one of the flower shops, then make my way to Irregular’s. Two hours is potentially a long time to kill in a record store, but Irregular’s is exceptionally engaging. The owner, Oscar, has a devious streak and arranges the records to form little puzzles. The book section has a large collection of occult literature. And then there’s the toffee.

Toffee can only be made
well in cold weather. When it’s warm or humid, the sugar does not caramelize properly. True connoisseurs will only eat toffee made within one month of the winter solstice. This happens to be the occasion for the ancient feast of Yule, practiced by the pagan Germanic peoples of northern Europe until missionaries superimposed Christian themes on the traditional burning of logs, decorating of trees, and eating of ham. Before children began eating candies as an homage to the Bethlehem Shepherd, they ate them to honor the Nordic god Freyr, bestower of peace and pleasure.

The solstice is also the anniversary of the publication of the
Necronomicon
, the definitive volume of the occult canon, a history of the Old Ones and the means to summon them. The Old Ones were a giant alien species who practiced black magic, built cities all across prehistoric Earth, and occasionally interbred with human females. They were ultimately banished to Antarctica and destroyed by the shoggoths, a slave race of their own creation. The
Necronomicon
tells humans how to get back in touch. Historians have not conclusively established the Old Ones’ fondness for toffee, but this is doubtless only a matter of time.

The confluence of optimal timing for devil worship and toffee makes holiday season the busiest time of year at Irregular’s. When I enter, the store is packed. At the door, Oscar remembers who I am and greets me warmly. He offers a sample of almond caramel toffee and mischievously points to the wall behind him. Four album covers are on display:

The Best of Grandmaster Flash

Abbey Road

Slowhand

De Stijl

“White lines,” I say quickly.

“Very good,” he says, flipping me another piece of toffee. “The rest won’t be so easy, though. We have some really good ones for you today. I hope you have some time.”

“Long enough,” I say playfully, and head off for mental battle. In the record section, I quickly see that Oscar is right. The other ones aren’t nearly as obvious as the first. It takes me ten minutes to identify the link between:

We’re an American Band

Get On Up and Dance (by the Quad City DJs)

Teaser and the Firecat

The Monkees

I mutter song titles to myself, finally arriving upon “Peace Train,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” and “Come On Ride the Train.” “Funky railroads,” I say finally. The third puzzle, however, stymies me completely. The four albums are:

Signals

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Nevermind

My Generation

I have been perusing them for fifteen minutes when a gentleman behind me whispers, “They are all bands that continued after the original drummer left.”

“Keith Moon didn’t leave. He died.”

“But he replaced Doug Sandom.”

“Wow,” I say. “I had
no
idea Rush had a drummer before Peart.”

“Really,” says the gentleman. “I could have sworn you knew that.”

Confused, I turn around and see, to my further astonishment, that it is my long lost friend, me.

“Why don’t we take
a walk?” I-60 suggests.

“Sure,” I say. On our way out the door, I ask Oscar to keep an eye open for Q, and tell her that I went for a walk and will meet her back here at the store.

“Absolutely,” says Oscar. “I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for
her
.”

Rhinebeck is magnificently sylvan, and the record store abuts a forested nature preserve. I-60 and I meander down a pebbly path.

“I was worried,” I say.

“That’s sweet.”

“Where have you been?”

“Montana,” says I-60. “I have always wanted to see Montana.”

“That’s funny. I have always wanted to see Montana, too.”

“That’s a good one,” we both say simultaneously, sharing a long, hard laugh. Then we walk for a while in silence, enjoying the day.

“I am going to leave soon,” says I-60 finally.

“Tired of
début de siècle
New York?” I ask. “I can see why, the decade doesn’t even have a proper name.”

“It has nothing to do with that,” says I-60. “I need to get back soon. I forgot to water my plants.”

“I see.”

A blue jay flutters by, perches on the overhanging branch of a red spruce, then flies off to rejoin unseen friends. I-60 pays careful attention. The bird’s business seems quite important to him.

“So,” he says, when the jay has finally flown off, “if I may ask, what have you decided?”

“I think you already know what I have decided. I think you knew all along.”

“Not so, but I agree there is no other choice.”

“What I don’t understand is why it is so important now? Why can’t the decision wait?”

“Because this is the weekend you conceive QE II. Everything is symmetrical. He will also be born in the Berkshires.”

I consider the implications of this for a moment. “It would have been a lot less cruel to come before I ever met her.”

“No, that would have deprived you of the happiest moments of your life. I’m just trying to spare you the saddest.”

I nod. We turn back on the path toward Irregular’s.

“I just don’t know how to do it,” I say. “I can’t see how I can extricate myself at this point.”

“I imagine that seems daunting to you.”

“I would say impossible.”

“I get it. It must seem overwhelming. But if we’re having this conversation, it means you have thought about what I have told you and chosen the appropriate course of action. I don’t think you mean emotionally impossible—it’s emotionally difficult, but necessary. I believe you mean impossible as a practical matter. How do you do it so that she regards it as authentic and complete?”

“Right.”

“Here’s where I can help. I know something you don’t.”

“What’s that?”

I-60 leans over and whispers his great secret into my ear. I can’t say that I foresaw what he says to me, but I’m hardly surprised. It is bitter, awful news, but I react more to the practical import of what he tells me than to the offense of the substance of it. In this moment, the distasteful, hateful path of my life to come becomes clear. I-60 had it all right. I had reluctantly committed myself to his advice. The problem was simply practical. I could not imagine how I could drive her away. Now this is clear too. All I need do is share this secret with her, and she will be gone.

In this moment, I am reminded of a friend from college who learns during his sophomore year that his father has died and he has inherited the fecund family fudge factory. It is a lucrative business, and from my perspective the path of my friend’s life appears gilded. Nevertheless he appears dejected.

“This is great,” I say at the time.

“I hate fudge,” he says, and nothing else.

We arrive back
at Irregular’s.

“I guess this is it,” I say.

“This is it,” says I-60.

It seems strange to me that I don’t have anything more to say to my older self, but I don’t. I expect I-60 has had the same thought.

“I am sorry to put you through all this,” he says.

“It’s okay. I’m sure I would have done the same thing.”

“Of that I am certain.”

He shakes my hand warmly, and we look sadly into one another’s eyes, I to see what I will become, he to see what he once was.

“Good luck,” he says and begins to walk away down Main Street.

“Tell me one thing before you go,” I say.

He turns. “Anything I can.”

“Why don’t you see Montana in your own time?”

At this question, I-60 smiles.

“It’s not what it once was. Nothing is.”

And then he is gone.

From the front window
of Irregular’s, I see Q walking across the square. She is wearing a quiet, earth-colored dress, but she is aglow. Men and women stare at her from all parts of the square, though she does not notice. She stops briefly to have a word with an elderly couple, then makes her way toward me. She is carrying two pears. I am happy to see her and say so.

“Who was that you were talking to earlier, outside the store?”

“Just someone I met on the street.”

“He looks a little bit like you.”

“Funny thing.”

“I guess we should get going,” she says.

“I guess,” I say.

And so we go.

Chapter Eleven

E
ven by her lofty standards, Joan Deveril has outdone herself this year. To begin with, the dinner table is a work of art. The napery is hand-embroidered with the letters
JJQD
; each place is set with a silver service plate, three sterling silver forks, two knives, a soup spoon, a lace serviette, a pewter water goblet, and two wine glasses. In the middle of the tableau sit twin silver candlesticks, into which have been set thin, elegant candles, which, lighted, produce a pair of gentle, flickering flames. There are flowers everywhere—rhododendrons in vases on the table and the buffet and in the planters on the wall, so much lavender and red and white, and all so impossibly fresh it feels as if spring itself has been imported into the dining room.

And then the food, the food. I steal into the kitchen and breathe in deeply, in the hope of absorbing the entire meal at once. The bouquet, fresh and fulsome, nearly lifts me off my feet. Joan is there in the kitchen with Q, applying some final touches. She offers me a tour, which I eagerly accept. She takes me first to the side dishes.

“Here is a wild mushroom corn pudding with goat cheese and an herbed cream sauce,” she says, pointing. “This is winter squash stuffed with curried pork. This is a Vidalia onion casserole. Here is cranberry relish spiced with mincemeat and pecans. Here are fresh-baked sweet rolls. Here are plain sweet potatoes, just for you, just like your grandmother used to make.”

This makes my mouth water and, at the same time, warms my heart. Joan Deveril is a sweet and thoughtful woman. That she remembered this from the previous Thanksgiving, when she noticed that I had not partaken of the sweet potato casserole, topped with marshmallows not to my taste, is typical of the kindness she bestows upon people. From the first time she met me, she made me feel loved and part of her family. Q is quite clearly her father’s daughter. It is his lineage that sparks her passion and determination, the qualities that make her accomplished and compelling. But she would not be Q without the softening influence of her mother. It is this that makes her lovable and impossible to resist.

“Here,” Joan says, pointing with pride, “is an innovation for this year—a preview of leftovers—turkey risotto with artichokes, mushrooms, and Parmesan cheese.”

“And finally, the pièce de résistance.” She walks to the oven, opens the door, and reveals the giant thirty-pound fowl. “The turkey is glazed with honey, stuffed with andouille sausage, bacon, croutons, apples, dried cranberries, and pears, and has been roasting slowly, upside down, for the past sixteen hours.”

I reach to pick off a piece, and Joan playfully slaps my hand with her apron.

“Mrs. Deveril,” I say, “you are an artist. This is truly magnificent.”

She smiles. “Nothing is too good for my daughter and future son-in-law.”

Warmly, she kisses me on the cheek as she returns to her work, and I wonder yet again whether I will be able to go through with what I need to do.

We are called
to the table at three o’clock. Thanksgiving dinner at the Deverils has been known to take as long as five hours. All things considered, it is best to start early.

When we sit down, John Deveril is already holding court. He pauses to pull the chair next to his out for Q and kisses her on the cheek. Though Q and Joan and I have missed the beginning of the conversation, it is easy enough to pick up the thread. The local hardware store, Bill’s, is being bought out to make room for a new development. Bill doesn’t want it, most of the citizens don’t want it, but the Board of Selectmen in Lee have decided that it is in the best interests of the community. The dinner guests, most of whom I have met before at other Deveril family functions, are lamenting Bill’s misfortune and the store’s demise.

“Bill is a good man,” says Kristen Topper, associate director of the Tanglewood artist-in-residence program, third assistant conductor of the Boston Pops, and Joan Deveril’s longstanding partner in women’s doubles bridge tournaments. “At Tanglewood, he has been a member of the Koussevitzky Society for years.”

“Yes, yes,” says Shep Hemsley, stage manager of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. “He is always very generous to the Pillow.”

“And to the Berkshire Theatre Festival,” adds Herman Alouise, the noted local actor. During the past summer, Alouise starred, to critical acclaim, as the horse in the BTF’s production of
Equus
.

“He is a real patron of the arts,” Kristen Topper says in summary.

Each of the guests nod, save one: Myron Haines, the former third violinist, first seat, now third violinist, second seat, in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. “So we’re supposed to mourn the downfall of a hardware store because its owner gave a few thousand dollars for classical music, dance, and theater?” he asks. “Surely, you establishment types can’t all be bought off so easily.” Myron spits these last words in the direction of Kristen Topper, whom he blames in part for his demotion.

“Myron,” says Kristen gently, “We are lamenting the demise of Bill’s and the undue influence of the very establishment you deplore. You simply must let go of your anger. For the last time, I have nothing to do with seat assignments in the BSO.”

“So you say.”

“I work for the Pops, not the Orchestra.”

“And you’re saying that the
Boston
Pops and the
Boston
Symphony Orchestra have
nothing
to do with one another.”

“Of course they don’t.”

“You establishment types are all the same,” Myron says, as Kristen, dejected, drops her head. I recall the tarry brush my former student Jill Nordberg used to sully my reputation with Q’s colleagues and feel a deep, abiding empathy for Kristen.

Myron’s insult silences the table and there follows a prolonged and awkward pause. The only audible sounds are the ticking of the grandfather clock, and the vigorous, impatient tapping of John Deveril’s forefinger upon the dining room table. Q’s father is visibly impatient and perturbed with the dinner conversation.

It is May Fernthrop, wife of Professor Harvard Fernthrop, former chairperson of the political science department at Berkshire Community College, editor of the definitive collection of essays on the Greek statesman Aeschines, and the unfortunate victim of a peculiar case of dementia, who mercifully breaks the silence.

“Well, I don’t know about anything else, but Bill sold the professor his favorite hammer,” May says. “It had a real nice peen and a good-looking wooden handle and—what do you call that thing on the other end that you use to dislodge and extract nails?”

“I believe it’s called a claw,” says Kristen Topper.

“Oh, yes, a claw, that’s right. Well, he just loved that old claw. Anytime somebody was pulling down a barn or an old shed, he was johnny-on-the-spot with that claw of his, pulling out any and every nail he could find. Sometimes he would go out into our garage and bang nails halfway down into a two-by-four, just so he could pull them out with that claw. It was just about his favorite thing in the world to do. Isn’t that right, Professor?”

Here, Harvard Fernthrop rises from his chair, fixes his tweed Brooks Brothers jacket and bow tie, and clears his throat for what promises to be a disquisition on the merits of the claw hammer sold to him by Bill of Bill’s Hardware.

“Many years ago . . .” he says, looks around, and then sits back down. The table waits for more, but that is all.

May pats him on the hand. “He’s very good at knowing when people have asked him questions,” she says. Everyone around the table nods in understanding.

Q taps me
on the hand and whispers to me that we should help Joan in the kitchen. Minutes later, as we are preparing the main course for transport, John Deveril storms in. The lackluster quality of guests at their dinner parties has historically been a sore spot with John Deveril.

“Is this a joke?” he asks. “It’s insufferable. I have never seen such a motley crew in my entire life.”

“How do you mean, honey?”

“You’ve got the pissed-off third violinist from the BSO, a guy who plays a horse’s ass, and the stage manager for a dance festival. What the fuck does a dance company even need a stage manager for anyway?”

“He takes care of lighting and costumes.”

“They wear leotards.”

“All the same.”

“And what’s with this professor? What’s wrong with him?”

“His mind isn’t what it once was.”

“But he knows when people are talking to him?”

“Yes. The start of everything he says is directly responsive to the conversation around him. Ask him a question and he’ll begin an answer with his historical perspective. He was a classicist before he was a political scientist. He has many interesting things to say. Trouble is, he never gets around to finishing. It’s the darndest thing. The case has been documented in the
AMA Journal
.”

“And who’s the vagrant?”

John is referring to an oversized man with an unkempt beard and wild, gnarly hair who is seated at the far end of the table. I have never seen him before at a Deveril family function. He is oddly dressed and his clothes are tattered and threadbare. John is being mean, as he is wont to be, but in his defense, the man does appear to be homeless.

“You mean Tristan Handy?” Joan asks, laughing. “He is the world’s fourth-ranking authority on Kierkegaard.”

“Who knew they ranked Kierkegaard experts?” I ask no one in particular.

“Does he have a home?” John asks, ignoring me.

“Not in the traditional sense. He walks the Appalachian Trail back and forth. He’s on his way south now for the winter,” she says, smiling. “Like a beautiful migrating bird.”

Joan’s irreverence only further stokes John’s smouldering fire. “This is because you insist on summering and vacationing here,” he growls to Joan. “The Berkshires are not an A-list location, like the Hamptons or the Vineyard.”

“It is perfectly nice here,” she says.

“If you want to attract the right sort of people to your dinner parties, you need to be in an A-list location.”

“I am perfectly happy with the people who attend our dinner parties.”

“Well, you may be, but I’m not. When was the last time we had a genuine celebrity in our house?”

“Yo-Yo Ma was here,” says Joan. “You know that.”

“Yo-Yo Ma was here once, twenty years ago, to pick up his daughter after she knocked on our door when her bicycle got a flat tire. You’ve been hanging your hat on that for two decades.”

“Gene Shalit has been here many times.”

“Gene Shalit!” John exclaims derisively. “Last year, for the Fourth of July, Barry Raymer had Tom Brokaw, David Boies, and Don DeLillo to his house for dinner.”

Barry Raymer is a friend of John Deveril’s from their college days at RPI and a highly successful investment banker. His name comes up frequently in the Deveril household, inevitably invoked by John Deveril, and generally as the ultimate measure of class. It is a well-known article of Deveril lore that following a meeting at a fraternity party, Joan Deveril, then Joan Payson and an undergraduate at SUNY Albany, went on two dates with Barry Raymer before forsaking him for her future husband.

“Barry Raymer,” Joan says, still playful. “What is your obsession with Barry Raymer?”

“My obsession is that you should have married him.” John spits these words at his wife. “Then you could have dragged him down instead of me.”

To this poisonous barb, Joan Deveril does not react. Rather she walks into the dining room to oohs and aahs, carrying her honey-glazed, andouille sausage–stuffed, upside-down turkey. It is clear, at least to me, that John and Joan have lost the capacity to hurt one another, as well as the capacity to enjoy one another. They merely coexist, bound together only by their love of Q, which is substantial, and by inertia, the most substantial force of all.

John Deveril’s slings and arrows cannot penetrate his wife, but they make an impression on me. I cannot help but think, yet again, that John Deveril is a mean and hateful man.

The meal begins
with a flurry of pass-the-whatevers and who-wants-more and this-is-the-greatest-thing-I-have-ever-tasted-in-my-life. When that initial torrent of energy has subsided and edges taken off of appetites, the conversation returns to politics and the state of the world.

“The real problem is corporations,” says Myron Haines. “Big business corporatizes and depersonalizes everything.”

There is recognition that Myron, through his slightly more tempered tone and his specific focus on big business rather than the “establishment” in general, is trying to reintegrate himself into the group. The table responds conciliatorily, embracing the thrust of his idea.

“It’s true,” says Shep Hemsley. “Everything at the Pillow is corporately sponsored.”

Herm Alouise vigorously nods his head in agreement. “I just read that a group of attorneys copyrighted the pause,” he says, his mouth full of mushroom corn pudding. “Each time someone in a play stops talking, the producers have to pay one hundred dollars to Harold Pinter’s estate.”

“Terrible,” says Shep Hemsley.

“And we’re doing Beckett this season.”

The guests murmur in horror.

“I don’t understand how they do it,” says Kristen Topper. “The question I put to the table is, how does somebody, a lawyer, a developer, whoever, just come in and dictate the rules of the game? I mean, what if Bill just says no he won’t do it? He simply refuses. What then? Who could make him sell?”

“The government could,” says John Deveril. “It’s called eminent domain.”

“But that can only be used if the government takes land for a public purpose, right?”

“No,” John says. “The government can condemn the land, take it, and resell it to whomever it wants, so long as it pays fair value to the person whose land it seizes. This is, sadly, what happened to Q’s garden. The government took it by eminent domain and sold it to a developer.”

Everyone at the table has heard the story of the demise of Q’s enchanted oasis, and the table grows quiet, except for Herm Alouise, whose chewing continues unabated. This is a near-silent tribute to Q and to John Deveril, who is obviously suffering the pain known to all parents of seeing their child disappointed. Father and daughter share their own knowing glance. I see in Q’s eyes the complete faith that she has in John. He smiles warmly, rubs her shoulder, and gently whispers, “I love you, little girl.” This gives obvious and substantial comfort to Q.