The Widower's Tale (60 page)

Robert arrived near the end of July. His parents drove him up with a suitcase, two boxes of books, and a toolbox: surely less than they'd ferried to his dorm room when he started college. No one gave voice to such a comparison. We were awkward and polite, even bumbling, as I showed everyone to the room that would be Robert's. Douglas bumped his head on the ceiling at the top of the stairs; Trudy kept up an obsequious patter of praise for the architectural details throughout the house, though they were paltry and wanted repair. Much of the charm we see in such houses is but a legacy of the builder's necessary thrift.

The conditions of Robert's suspended sentence were many, and I intended to make sure that we followed them to the letter. He was not to venture beyond a fifty-mile radius of Vigil Harbor outside the company of myself or one of his parents; for at least a year, he was not to leave the state of Massachusetts, nor to set foot in Matlock, Ledgely, or Lothian. He was to have no Internet access except under my supervision. He was to report three times a week to work on the reconstruction of a public school that had burned in a town fifteen minutes away. As he no longer owned a car, I would drive him. I would drive him as well to meetings with his parole officer.

In addition to the judge's conditions, I determined a set of my own, largely related to housekeeping chores and shopping. Most necessary goods were available within a mile: groceries, pharmaceuticals, hardware, cold cash, as well as just about anything nautical in nature, from oars and life jackets to bracelets made of seashells. Come September, Robert would take two courses at a nearby state college. He chose courses in social work.

I also informed him that, along with Celestino, he was to build me another magnificent tree house, this time with grown-ups in mind. "I will pay you both, but in return," I said, "if this magnificent tree house, in this very visible location, inspires requests for further such projects--and I just bet you it will--then you will accept those commissions and share the profits with me."

"Granddad, I can't imagine--"

"And you will never argue with me when I am suffering a rare bout of optimism," I said, "or when I am telling you what's good for you.
My
imagination, for the time being, will be the boss of yours."

Gratifyingly, Robert looked as near happiness as I'd seen him in months.

I thought of the way he'd always looked--satisfied, confident, if just a little wolfish--in the company of that girlfriend he had for a while. Assuming that she would never last, I'd paid her no special attention. Now, though my assumption had clearly proved true (could one blame such a young woman for fleeing trouble this deep?), I felt guilty in retrospect. Angry as I'd been toward Robert, I was sorry to see his life stripped of so many pleasures at once.

Celestino had been living with me, already, for several weeks. I had given him the second-best bedroom. (Mine, the best and largest, looked out on the katsura tree.) He might have slipped through our hands if Ira hadn't searched the Hispanic neighborhood of Lothian. It turned out that Celestino shopped at a greengrocer run by a Mexican family whose daughters were once Ira's pupils. Oh, the invisible webs of the cosmos.

At first, understandably, Celestino's agreement to live with me was a matter of desperation, though he tried to hide his fear behind a facade of courtesy and diligence. Quite happily, I made use of his easy strength to put my new house in order. We spent most of our first days together engaged in physical work, which left us little breath or energy for conversation. But in the evenings, I compelled him to sit down at the kitchen table and let me cook for us. I tried not to interrogate him, yet I would need to know this young man if he was to continue sharing my roof. Whenever the phone rang, he would stare at it as if it were rigged with explosives.

He'd been with me a week when I'd had enough of the servile cheer he wore, and not well, as camouflage. I handed him his cheese omelet, accepted his gratitude, sat down across from him, and said, "You know, I do feel virtuous for taking you in. I do. If there were a heaven, I'd be racking up the brownie points."

His expression tipped toward alarm. He sat still, hands in his lap.

"But," I said, "if there's one thing I've learned this past year, it's the truth of that old cliche, about no good deed going unpunished. You know it?" I did not care if he did, and he did not react. "So, Celestino, think me an angel, or a sucker, or an old man pining for company--none of which I am, by the way. Think what you want, but do me a favor."

We stared at each other until he said, "Yes. I will."

I shook my head. "Don't ever agree to a favor till you know what it is."

This time his smile was genuine.

"So this is what I'd like from you. Act like you belong here. Because then, eventually, you will."

"I understand," he said.

"Yes. But do you know what I
mean?"

I watched him consider me in a different light. At last he said, "I think I do."

"I suspect it won't be easy for you, will it?"

"No, but I will try it. I believe I have to."

"You do. Or we will both go out of our minds, I promise you that."

That was when, in our limited male fashion, we began to have real conversations, to shoulder open the heavy door between our lives. He began to surprise me, and I began to make him laugh.

Anthony told me he knew nothing about immigration law; judging from what he'd read--and from the xenophobic climate of the times--he couldn't imagine finding a way to redeem Celestino's residency status. But when Ira had worried that Tommy Loud would think of Celestino in connection with the fire, Anthony laughed. "Now there's a no-brainer. Name the guy as a suspect and risk turning the searchlight on your army of underpaid soldiers? I don't
think
so. That raid this spring on the kosher meat plant in Iowa? All Guatemalans, by the way."

Not until Ira and I sat down with Celestino, in Ira and Anthony's living room, did he tell us that he already had the name of a lawyer who might be able to help him. This was the fellow who arrived in Vigil Harbor the week Celestino moved in. He was skinny and bald, what remained of his gray hair grown painfully long and gathered in a most unsavory pigtail. He wore bulky shoes that made his feet look like paws and carried a canvas briefcase stained with coffee. "We live in a seriously paranoid, seriously fucked-up country," he informed me almost as soon as he walked through the door. "That's why I do what I do. My rayzon dettrah."

He met for an hour with Celestino, and then he called me downstairs. He described to both of us the long, delicate negotiations he'd begin on Celestino's behalf. He guaranteed no happy outcomes. "Batten down the hatches. Keep your heads low and your powder dry," he told us. "At least no one's actively searching for you. You're lucky there." My idea of sponsorship for Celestino's renewed education might work, but that, too, would take time. In the worst case, Celestino would have to return to Guatemala and start a longer process from that point. "We're talking years," warned Rayzon Dettra.

"If I go back, it is not the
very
worst thing," said Celestino. "But I would like to stay."

I understood that we would be seeing a good deal of this lawyer for some time to come. And even though he assured me that I need not worry about going bankrupt paying his fees--"You won't find me knocking back Captain Morgan at that swanky yacht club across your harbor"--I wondered if there might be a tree house in his future.

"Would you by any chance have a fine old tree in your yard?" I asked him as I saw him out the door.

He looked concerned, not amused. "You're crazier than me, man. I live in a walk-up in Somerville."

Another of my despotically arbitrary conditions was that both Robert and Celestino learn conversational French. The first morning that all three of us were to share breakfast as cohabitants, I went out for scones. I was waiting in line at my new favorite bakery, gazing at a bulletin board covered with notices about boats for sale, apartments for rent, music lessons, financial advice ... when an artfully handwritten page caught my eye:
Parlez-vous francais? Mais pourquoi pas?
I laughed. For a modest price, one Mlle. Madeleine Parquet convened twice-weekly groups at the community center.

I found Celestino and Robert standing in the yard with their coffee, staring up at the tree. I called out from the porch,
"Parlez-vous francais?"

They turned around. Robert frowned. "Granddad?"

"Mais pourquoi pas, mes jeunes amis?"

Celestino said,
"Je parle un peu."
This would have stunned me had he not told me about the Lartigues.

"Tres bien. En fait, superbe!"
I exclaimed. According to Poppy, my accent isn't half bad.

Last month, I bartered my weary Toyota for a used pickup truck. Robert had given me a condition of his own: they would build the tree house entirely from salvage. So now the three of us crowd together in our vehicle to comb beaches for driftwood and old rope, to search back roads for cast-off furniture and deadwood culled by storms. Robert calls construction companies and cajoles them into letting us haul off their scraps. Sometimes, driving through Ipswich or Gloucester on our scavenger hunts, we stop for fried clams or fish and chips. None of us aimed to live this life, but it offers us certain rewards.

My new pal Daphne is a well-placed informant. We hit a bonanza when she gave me a tip that an old barn was being taken down behind a house she'd sold. Robert, Celestino, and I were there before the demolition crew.

We returned to the house, with our third and final load, late that afternoon. We'd had nothing to eat since breakfast. While Celestino backed the truck down the alley connecting the street to our yard, Robert pulled sandwich makings out of the refrigerator. I went upstairs to use the bathroom.

The phone rang. I sat down on the chair in my bedroom and answered. "This better be good," I said. "I am dead with exhaustion."

"Percy, it's Sarah."

I looked down at my arms, blackened above the glove line. "Sarah. How are you feeling?"

"Well, I'm in pain," she said with surprising warmth. "There's no denying that. But I'm glad this part is over."

A month before, she'd had her surgery: her left breast "cleanly" removed, as she put it. I had paid her a visit in the hospital, taking a box of caramels, a bottle of hand lotion, and two good novels with happy endings (all by request). She'd been drugged, but she was glad to see me. I did not ask if I could help in her recovery; I was tired of her refusals. I knew she had others to take care of her, even aside from He Whose Name I Would No Longer Mention.

"My latest scans came back," she told me now, "and the news is good. If I were to adopt another boy, I'd have to name him Ned. This week, those are the most beautiful letters in the alphabet. No Evidence of Disease."

Just as she had shared my grief and listened to my panic after the night of Robert's arrest, I shared her happiness at this good news. I told her I was overjoyed. I was.

After a pause, she said, "How's your new life?"

"Different. No doubt about that." I told her that I was thinking of volunteering at the local library. "You could fit the place in my back pocket, but there's one thing it has that Widener never did: children. Children who have to follow rules, that is."

She laughed--politely, as if she couldn't wait to get off the phone. I made no attempt to mend the silence. Let her be the one to end our conversation. I noticed that the age spots on the backs of my hands were growing more pronounced.

Finally she said, "What I'm calling about, really, is Ira's wedding."

"Yes?" I said. "I'm going. As odd as it feels to be attending the wedding of two
fellows
, I do plan to be there."

"You don't disapprove, do you?"

"I'm told by Robert that I don't, and I'll roll with that."

In fact, my reservations about attending the ceremony, a smallish affair to be held at Rose Retreat in early October, had nothing to do with the sexual habits of the betrothed and everything to do with my anxiety about facing certain other guests. Sarah was one, but seeing her, possibly even on the arm of that conniving fellow, was not my greatest worry.

"So," she said, "what I wanted to say is that I'll be there on my own. Well, with Rico. But ... just in case ..."

I waited a bit before saying, "In case what?"

"In case it matters to you. Percy, you don't make things easy, do you?"

Laughter seemed to be the most diplomatic reply. I might have answered that I was not the culprit here when it came to making things hard. But I am getting better and better at holding my tongue. I am a man of too many words--no secret to anyone--but I am slowly learning to withhold them when it is wise. To wait rather than speak.

"I have hair again," she said. "A little. I look like Rico's GI Joe. Like I joined the marines."

"Lucky for you we live in an age of sympathy for the soldier." Again, I waited.

"Oh Percy, the world is such a strange and illogical place."

"As I believe you told me the day we met. You underestimate my memory, Sarah. And please don't tell me again how
complicated
everything is." I let my rebuke sink in for a moment. Then I said, more kindly, "I am learning to live with complications that just may rival yours."

"I want to hear all about them. I do."

"You will. But right now, one of those complications has made me a sandwich and I have simply got to eat it or I will pass out. I also have to pee rather badly."

"I'll see you at the wedding."

"You will," I said.

After eating two sandwiches, I put on my pineapple swim trunks and walked to the harbor. We were midway through September, but the Atlantic Ocean was as begrudgingly warm as it ever gets. I launched myself from my favorite rock and swam toward the lighthouse, the closest point on the other side of the harbor. The first lighthouse on the point was tended by one Ezekiel Darling, who Poppy insisted must be tangled somewhere in my bloodlines. As much as I like history, genealogy bores me, so I have never bothered to find out whether she was right, and I probably never shall. I suppose that if I'm ever invited to parties here where people care about such things, I'll be asked about the connection. One day soon, I'll dream up a story or two; why not lend myself a bit of local color?