The Oregon Experiment (42 page)

“What’s so exciting, Mom?” Trinity said.

She released him. “The church,” she said. “It’s Scanlon who got Ron to lay off.” She squeezed his hand, the look in her eyes loving and grateful, sparkling with tears. It was one he hadn’t gotten from Naomi in months. From his mother, yes—creepily. But not his wife. “And there’s more,” she said. “He’s selling me the Skcubrats building.”

Scanlon grinned. “No,” he said, though he already knew. He’d driven a hard bargain with Ron.

“Yes!” And again she threw her body against his.

“We’re having smoothies,” Trinity said.

Sequoia looked at him directly. “For you?” Her lips held the “you.”

Scanlon nodded, Trinity swung the door shut, and they followed her to the kitchen, where she lifted the blender with both hands and poured the last few swallows into a clean glass.

Sequoia took her own glass, still half full, and poured it into Scanlon’s. “You deserve all of it,” she said. With a pink mustache, Trinity sat up in a chair, her little hands wrapped around her glass, and watched the adults like they were a puppet show.

“How did you ever?” Sequoia asked.

He’d anticipated this moment: “If I told you I’d have to kill you.”

Trinity gasped.

“A joke,” Sequoia reassured her. “Something people say.”

Trinity smiled knowingly. “An expression.”

“Tell me,” Sequoia persisted.

He ducked again. “I gave him a little something in return. Department related. Small to me, big to him.”

“You’re really not going to tell me?”

He shook his head.

Trinity was licking out the inside of her glass. “Can we still have a soak?” she asked.

“Let’s do it,” Sequoia said, and Trinity was already yanking a beach towel from the pegs by the back door. “You?” she asked Scanlon.

He swallowed hard as Trinity’s bare butt shot out to the deck.

“It’ll be a quick one,” Sequoia said, “in case you have to get back. Trinity’s up too late again, and I’m exhausted from all the meetings.” Her face brightened. “It’s looking good with the oystermen, though.”

As she tugged at the belt of her robe, Scanlon stood frozen in place, stabbed in the heart by the painful irony that he’d made his deal with Ron for exactly this reason: to please Sequoia and see her smile, to keep her from sleeping with that prick, and to get inside her robe.

But he clenched his teeth, reminding himself of his love for his wife and baby, and said, “The reason I came over. I got a letter from the Feds today.” And he told her every detail.

“That’s great!” she said when he’d finished, her robe flapping open as she hugged him again.

“You don’t get it.” Scanlon pulled away. “This is the first step toward prosecution. For these crimes, Sequoia, they can put you away forever.”

She was having none of it. “They’ve noticed us. The movement’s a genuine threat. And all because of you.”

He couldn’t bring himself to say they’d always be a
movement
, that secession itself was completely implausible. “It’s not worth going to prison for. Think about Trinity.”

“There’s too many of us to put in prison. Since you were on TV, we’ve recruited over two thousand members. We’re doing this, Scanlon.”

No. No, they weren’t. But when she dropped her robe to the floor and reached for his hand, he followed her onto the deck, where lanterns alight with votives ringed the trunk of the redwood. Trinity was submerged to her chin. Stars were out, silhouetting the sage and laurels, the expansive succulents, the trellis-topped fence. Sequoia sank into the dark water. He stood there with his toes curling down over the edge of the tub. “What if elves could toot?” Trinity said.

“Then their toots would smell like candy canes,” Sequoia replied. “What if turtles had no shells?”

“They’d wear helmets and elbow pads,” Trinity said.

Scanlon set his glasses on the bench and got in.

“What if boobs could fly?” Trinity asked.

Sequoia took a deep breath. “Then milk would spill from the clouds.”

Trinity looked up at the stars, as content as any human being Scanlon had ever seen, then rested her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“You’re tired, aren’t you, chicken?” Sequoia said.

“No,” Trinity chirped.

Sequoia smiled at him across the water, across the length of her naked body and his. “Thank you,” she told him again, maybe only mouthing the words. He wasn’t sure. “I’m so grateful.”

Trinity pawed at her breasts. “Mommy milk,” she said. Baby talk.

“Why don’t we have some in bed. Do you want to say goodnight to Scanlon?” But the child didn’t budge.

“Are your chicken pox all gone?” Scanlon asked her.

“Like six months ago,” Trinity told him. Ancient history.

“A week ago,” Sequoia said gently.

“I have a scar,” Trinity bragged, and held out her lip. “Right here. Just like Mommy’s scar. We’re scar partners.”

Although he couldn’t see either scar through the dark steam, he knew Sequoia’s well: the pink pencil line curving down her upper lip, a feline and sexy asymmetry. “What’s that one from?” he asked.

“I’ve had it a long time.”

“You should never hit another person,” Trinity said.

Sequoia touched her lip. “Once, another life ago, I made a monstrous mistake, and when I tried to make amends, this is what I got.” She put her arms around Trinity, hugging her tight. “There’s always a price, Scanlon, for doing the right thing.” She kissed the top of Trinity’s head. “Bedtime,” she whispered. Then, to Scanlon: “Can you wait twenty minutes?”

He nodded, a zing of ambivalence, guilt, arousal.

As she rose from the tub and wrapped a towel around Trinity, then took up her own, he closed his eyes, pretending not to be imagining, movement by movement, Sequoia toweling her soft shoulders and broad back, her throat and chest, raising her arms to reveal sparse puffs of blond hair, lifting her breasts, reaching inside her thighs. If he looked, he’d touch. He wasn’t strong enough not to.

The slow boil of panic and desperation was heating up inside him—too big now to know where to focus. He needed to keep the Oregon Experiment alive long enough to become a case study for his research, but it was insane to risk inciting the Feds. Panama’s sentence had proved that.

And Fenton’s threats were just as real: Scanlon had e-mailed him the piece on the protests, and he’d marched into his office saying, “Something you dashed off for the campus paper, or your idea of scholarship?” When Scanlon explained it was for the
Oregonian
, Fenton said, “This article better be dropped by the paperboy at my doorstep within the month, and then you better start doing some real work.” His threats produced genuine fear in Scanlon, and hearing the echo of Sam Belknap’s voice produced only shame.

He wanted a family. He wanted to make Naomi feel fulfilled, to provide Sammy with the carefree childhood he’d never had, which meant getting them back to New York before Naomi went there on her own. Which brought him back to the secessionists, and to Sequoia. She was the only person offering him support and comfort, and he wished that could continue without turning into infidelity. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but what if she realized he was more interested in a book about the movement’s failure than its success? What if she knew he’d got Fenton’s Porsche destroyed in exchange for Ron’s cooperation? She was highly principled, and principled people could behave inconveniently.

He rose from the water and sat on the deck, steam pouring off his skin. Would she even listen to his explanation? Scanlon never would have sicced Clay on the Porsche if Fenton hadn’t had it coming.

Two nights ago, a visiting speaker had come up from Pomona—“Consensus Building in the Eisenhower Cabinet,” as dreadful a topic as Scanlon could imagine—and Scanlon had arrived early to get a parking spot in the lot behind their building, not far from Fenton’s car. At the reception afterward, with a wink and a nod, he told Ron, who always walked to campus, that because of the rain he’d drive him home tonight. So the two of them walked with Fenton and the visiting speaker back across campus to Blodgett Hall. The rain was coming down hard and, even better, a good wind had stirred up. Under umbrellas, after they’d thoroughly probed every conceivable aspect of Eisenhower and consensus, Fenton told the Pomona guy, “Now, this could be the highlight of your visit.” And, when he was met with silence: “Fifty-seven Porsche Speedster. One of twelve. Original flat-four engine. Far and above what an academic deserves, but I’ve made some
nifty real estate investments. You two—” he turned to Scanlon and Ron “—should get smart in that area. This isn’t Pomona, salary-wise.”

As they rounded the corner into the parking lot, he strode a few steps ahead, excited about showing off his car and sealing his chumminess with the visitor. Then he stopped dead, with a horrible groan, and Scanlon was instantly flooded with remorse, once again a ten-year-old boy shoving a firecracker down a frog’s throat and then recoiling from the blood and tattered flesh.

Fenton ran to the car, his umbrella nose-diving to the pavement. The branch was twice the length of the Porsche and as thick as a phone pole, much bigger than it had looked up in the tree. Fenton grabbed hold of it and tried to pull it off, but there wasn’t a chance. The roof, hood, and trunk had been caved in. The running boards sat nearly on the pavement. He strained at the branch with the same futility with which he’d kept swinging his ax, weak and frustrated, at the Mr. Douglas log chop.

Scanlon allowed himself a glance at Ron, who radiated a monkish elation, a serenity he’d never seen. Not particularly happy, not even smiling, he was rubbing his belly, deeply at peace.

Fenton turned to the three men watching him. “It’s all your fault!” he spit.

Scanlon bit his lower lip in a sudden panic: Fenton’s revenge would be absolute. And as he came at them, his finger pointed like a gun, Scanlon was already forming the words to explain to Naomi that he’d lost his job.

“I didn’t even want you for this lecture.” Fenton thrust his finger in the visitor’s face. “It was boring! I paid you way too fucking much. It—” Fenton was howling, out of his mind. “It was
shit
!”

In the hot tub, Scanlon’s heart raced. He wasn’t proud of what he’d orchestrated, but what could he say? More good than harm came of it. Maybe Sequoia
would
understand. He knew she believed it was justifiable to break a law to prevent a greater moral violation, that since nuclear weapons violate international law, it was proper to break a nation’s laws to prevent their deployment. Sequoia would get her neighborhood center
and
the café. And Ron planned to retire at the end of the semester. He gave Scanlon a long hug in his office this morning and said he no longer had any reason to teach, that everything he’d hoped to accomplish at the university had finally been done. He’d enrolled in a twelve-week course in Reno to run craps tables and had already lined up a job at Five Feathers Casino, west of Eugene. Scanlon would never again return to his own
office with a cup of coffee to find Ron splayed in the chair across from his desk, waiting to suck up hours of his day.

The bathroom window went dark. Sitting out here under the redwood tree, Scanlon had lost track of time, but it wouldn’t be long until Sequoia stepped naked across the deck and joined him in the hot water. An affair with Sequoia—an affair with strict parameters. He thought of the boost it would give him to do the very things his family needed from him. Compromises would have to be made for the greater good. Everybody wins, as Geoff would say.

A
lthough she didn’t eat it, Naomi found the smell of bacon pleasing. But a sizzling ham was the blubbery-sweet, braised-flesh wafting of cannibalism and semen. Sammy seemed to like it, though, and had been all giggles since Joey’d slung the chunk of pig in the oven. On the couch in the living room Naomi raised Sequoia’s hand-thrown coffee mug to her lips and sipped mint tea.

“Merry Christmas,” Joey sang, when Scanlon emerged from the bedroom in sweat pants and a T-shirt, his bedhead worse than normal.

“Jesus!” Naomi blurted. “It’s not Christmas.”

Scanlon and his mother looked at her like she was a stranger.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “I thought I was talking to myself.”

Scanlon leaned over the couch to kiss the top of Sammy’s head, and then went to the kitchen, where she heard him pour a cup of coffee. “Morning, Ma.”

Joey clanked down a spoon. “No sign of the love boat,” she said.

“Maybe they went out for breakfast.”

“That RV’s got more kitchen than my condo. Not to mention a waterbed. Seems like they could fry their own eggs.”

When Scanlon had come to bed last night, he reeked of her hot tub,
but nothing else. He hadn’t showered. He’d made advances—a leg over hers, lips at her ear, a hand crowding Sammy on her chest—but finally backed off.

She waited until he fell asleep and investigated more closely
—his
smell alone at his crotch, crushed dandelions and rain vapors rising from a hot sidewalk. On all fours with her head under the covers, she wept at the smell; she wept because he hadn’t slept with Sequoia, but also because she’d perceived the faintest trace of almonds. Of Sammy. Of course. Sammy had inherited the almond scent, and she’d just unearthed its source. But now the stink of ham intruded on her reverie, and she shuddered as the olfactory sentiment dissolved.

At the kitchen counter, she refilled Sequoia’s mug from the teapot and glanced at Scanlon sitting beside his mother, dunking coffee cake in his coffee and sucking at the drippings. Joey licked glaze from her fingers, leaning into her son and remarking from the corner of her mouth, “Waterbeds.” She shook her head knowingly, conspiratorially. “No good for sex.”

Naomi returned to the living room with her tea. Sammy awoke, and they gazed into each other’s eyes as she took his hot body into her hands and laid wet kisses over every inch of his face—rapid, over-puckered, and popping like champagne corks.
Fish-kisses
. She blew a raspberry on his stomach, lipped the fat on his arms as if she were biting, then brought him to her breast.