What Binds Us (6 page)

“You’re kidding.”

“Come and see.”

Matthew’s suite of rooms was in the west wing. He slid apart a pair of massive pocket doors. Inside were pale exquisite rooms filled with sunlight spilling through bare mullioned windows set deep in the stone walls. Twenty feet above us a gilt and polychrome ceiling—an azure sky with gold stars—soared. He opened the door to another room, which held a pair of mahogany sleigh beds, covered with antique Hermes horse blankets.

“This is your room,” he said. “Your bathroom and dressing room are right through there. Breakfast is in half an hour,” he added, disappearing back through the adjoining door. “By the way, there’s another door that leads directly into the hall.”

By the time Dondi came back, some four weeks later, three weeks longer than he’d said he’d be gone, Matthew and I had grown close. He came down to the beach where we were swimming. “Hey,” Dondi called by way of greeting. “When did you learn how to swim?”

He’d tried to teach me to swim in St. Croix, but I’d been a bad student, unable to relax, to let him guide me. “You don’t trust me,” he’d accused. “It’s a big ocean,” I’d defended. My fear of water was greater than my trust in him. At the time, he’d seemed bereft.

“Matthew taught me,” I answered, moving toward the shore as Matthew surfaced beside me.

“The prodigal returns!” Matthew exclaimed, grinning, looking from his brother to me. Something in our friendship paused, then expanded to include Dondi. “It’s almost tea time. We’d better go in and change.”

“I trust you’ve been enjoying tea,” Dondi said to me.

“He missed the first day!”

“An act of high treason! Did Mrs. Whyte have you flogged?”

***

Tea was served in the downstairs drawing room, with walls painted a deep olive-green. Islands of white overstuffed furniture floated over an immense sea-green carpet. Mrs. Whyte was borne up on a white sofa like a cloud. She poured tea from the teapot that had left the continent aboard the Mayflower into a delicate Limoges cup.

Mrs. Whyte was…
different
, a riddle without an answer. We didn’t see much of her. She appeared everyday at four o’clock, like a miracle. And at every meal to orchestrate our elaborate repasts, like an overly busy choreographer. She always seemed distracted, as if whatever the three of us were up to didn’t warrant her full attention. Other things seemed to occupy her attention more fully. I’d catch glimpses of her in the corridors. Her secretary trailed her everywhere, a sheaf of loose-leaf papers covered with scrawled chaotic notes clutched in busy fingers. Mrs. Whyte clipped out brief orders and questions: Those flowers need to be changed. Has anyone polished the silver today? What time is the committee meeting?

At the portable bar a maid had wheeled in with the teacart, Dondi mixed what he called a Mambo Martini—vodka with a splash of pineapple juice over ice with a corkscrew of jalapeno pepper and a slice of pineapple. He was the most glamorous man I’d ever met.

Around his mother, Dondi was different. His voice grew deep. His manner of speech changed, was completely without artifice. His movements were girdled, carefully modulated and without flamboyance.

Every morning Colin drove into his office in Manhattan. Every afternoon at precisely five minutes of four his Lamborghini Diablo could be heard roaring up the drive. Two minutes later he would be standing beside his mother, immaculate in a tailored summer suit.

“He always looks so clean,” I commented once.

“It’s not that he’s clean,” Matthew mused. “I don’t think dirt sticks to him.”

Mr. Whyte appeared in the doorway, shadowed by his nurse. Marquis nodded at us politely and discreetly stepped to the window, his back to the room. Dondi drifted over to Marquis and they had a quiet conversation. Matthew watched them with amusement for a moment then went over to where his father sat. He gestured for me to sit beside Mr. Whyte. He, himself, sat on the floor by his father’s legs, leaning an arm on his knees and pressing his back against the sofa.

Mr. Whyte reached over and ruffled his hair, smiling at his son with benevolent affection. “Are you close to your parents?” he asked me.

“Not as close as I’d like to be. I think I’d be closer if I was older. Or younger. Right now I’m afraid of disappointing them. So I keep my distance.”

“Why should you disappoint them?”

I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I was afraid my personal truth, the fact of who,
what
I was would disappoint them. Instead, I said, “I think they’d rather I had more ambition. They want me to be a doctor or a lawyer, rather than a writer. They feel I should plan to do more with my life.”

“Your life is
your
life. It’s a gift from God. You don’t have to
do
anything with it. Just live it. God doesn’t care how. The only thing you don’t have the right to do is waste it by letting other people tell you how to live. That would be a rudeness to God. Believe me, I know.”

“Marquis,” Mrs. Whyte commanded, “can’t you do anything with him? He’s getting overexcited.”

Marquis turned around. “What would you like me to do?”

“I don’t know. Sedate him or something.”

“Why? Because he’s feeling? Or because he’s remembering?”

They were arguing about Mr. Whyte as if he wasn’t there.

“Poor Lot’s wife,” Geo muttered, shuffling his feet. “She has such an inconvenient husband.”

“Marquis! Do something!” Mrs. Whyte seemed to be losing her composure.

Colin reached a restraining hand toward her. His hand stopped just before contact was made and remained frozen in the air.

“Come, Geo,” Marquis said. “Let’s go upstairs.”

“I don’t want to go upstairs,” Mr. Whyte said emphatically. He looked imploringly at Matthew.

“Mrs. Whyte,” Matthew began.

Mrs. Whyte stared at him. He stared back, a challenge in his eyes. She held his gaze. He blinked. And lost the battle.

He rose to his feet in a startlingly fluid movement. “Come on, Dad. Let’s go for a ride to the village. I’ll buy you an ice cream.”

“But I haven’t had my tea yet.”

“That’s okay. Wouldn’t you rather have ice cream than old stale tea, anyway?”

“Can Thomas-Edward come too?”

“Sure. If he wants.”

“I don’t want Marquis to go though,” he whispered.

“Okay. We’ll sneak out.”

The three of us climbed into Matthew’s Jeep and drove too fast into the village, where we had ice cream cones and fed the gulls along the wharf. When we got back, a maid informed us that Dondi had left for Fire Island, would be back in a few days.

Matthew looked at me. I shrugged.

***

The next morning, when I knocked on his door, he told me to come in. “I’m in here,” he called.

I followed his voice to his bathroom. His bathroom was a blizzard of white marble and clouds of steam. Balls of black soap lay in cobalt dishes. His scent was on the perfumed air. He stood under the shower. I could see his naked silhouette behind the etched glass screen by Rene Lalique. My erection was almost instantaneous. I was only wearing swimming trunks and didn’t know what to do.

“I overslept,” he offered. “I’ll be out in a minute. Hand me that towel.”

Idly I wondered what would happen if I dropped my trunks and stepped in the shower with him. I reached for a large white towel that hung on a heated brass rack.

***

Matthew and I had just stepped inside from the beach when we heard it: a shrill cry that ripped the fabric of silence, a fissure running under the construct of our conversation, causing it to collapse. The noise was pure, unadulterated terror. It seemed to come from everywhere at once.

It was Matthew, more familiar with the house, who identified the source. Jumping to his feet, he careened across the room and skidded to a halt at a pair of doors. Twisting their serpentine handles, he slid them apart.

I ran up behind him, looking over his shoulder into a high ceilinged room. Pale sunlight filtered in through half-open shutters. The walls were lined with glass-fronted cabinets holding leather bound books; the gilt lettering on their spines gleamed dully. The room smelled of paper and tobacco and leather.

Mr. Whyte sat, knees drawn up to his chin in a high-backed leather chair behind a leather-topped partner’s desk. Tears ran down his face, his lips quivered with a murmured prayer.

“Dad?” Matthew called. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

I stood rooted at the threshold, afraid to enter, afraid to leave.

“Dad,” Matthew repeated. “What is it?”

He turned fear-glazed, wet eyes on his son. “He’s here,” he said in a dead voice.

“Who? Who’s here?”

“Reggie! And he’s still mad at me. He still hasn’t forgiven me.”

“Where?”

“Will you talk to him? Tell him how very sorry I am? How much I miss him?”

“Yes, Dad,” Matthew answered. “Just, tell me where he is.”

“He’s over there, by the window. Can’t you see him?”

Matthew looked around the opulent room. Beneath the veneer of calm, his eyes were desperate. His eyes locked on the corner of the room by the window. “Reggie,” Matthew began firmly, loud enough for Geo to hear. “Now listen to me,” he barked. “Geo is sorry. He is. Say you forgive him.”

Marquis touched my waist as he edged past me, making me jump. “Is everything all right?”

I noticed for the first time that he was good-looking. He had soft hair with slightly too much kink in it to be curly and was just beginning to recede. Despite his obvious youth, he appeared spent; there were bags beneath his eyes and he moved with the slow deliberation of the exhausted or inebriated. His narrow hips swayed languorously as if he were a chanteuse or a cocktail waitress.

“No, everything is not fucking all right,” Matthew said. “Dad had another episode. Where were you? Aren’t you supposed to be watching him?”

“I—I—”

Dondi appeared behind Marquis like a shadow. “What’s going on?” he asked, both shadow and echo. His clothes were disheveled. He was flushed beneath his tan, as if he’d run a great distance in a short time. His mouth had a bruised look to it.

Matthew looked from one to the other. They appeared trapped by his silver-gold gaze like flies in amber.

“Reggie came back to accuse me,” Mr. Whyte cried. “But Matty talked to him. He’ll forgive me, won’t he? And then we’ll be friends again.”

“Yes, Dad. Of course.”

“I wish you wouldn’t encourage these delusions,” Marquis admonished softly.

“What was I supposed to do? He was scared to death. If you—” Glancing in my direction, Matthew cut himself off. “Can you see to him now? Please?” Then to his father, “Marquis is going to take care of you now. You’ll be fine.”

“Yes. Thank you, son.”

Matthew leaned over and thumbed the hair out of his father’s eyes then kissed his cheek.

“You’re a good boy,” his father cooed.

It had rattled me to see Matthew tumble so easily into his father’s world, to see that man in the room who was both there and not there. Matthew had to touch me twice to get me to follow him. Dondi grabbed my arm as I turned to leave. I shook off his hand. “You smell of sex,” I hissed.

“How did you do that?” I asked Matthew after a few moments.

He shrugged.

“I mean, there was no one there. He was hallucinating.”

“I don’t know. For a minute I thought I saw him—Reggie. I really don’t remember him. I was little when he died.”

“Who was he?”

“He was Geo’s best friend. He was an actor. Not a star, a B-movie actor, but an actor. He and Dad were close. He died in a car crash. Dad was with him. He obviously survived. It took him a long time to recover but once he did, he seemed fine. But apparently there was some kind of head trauma, which has only become obvious in the last few years. And he’s a lot older now so there may be early dementia thrown in. No one’s exactly sure what’s wrong, to be truthful, but they tell us it’ll probably get worse. He’ll start to forget things, people…”

“I’m so sorry. Can’t they do anything to help him?”

“Believe it or not, they have. At least now I have a father sometimes. In the beginning—in the first few years after the accident—he was barely functioning, seldom spoke.” He laughed. It was a sound without bitterness or joy. “Sometimes I think it would have been easier if he’d died. At least then I could adjust to his absence. This way is so cruel. Sometimes he is so much himself, so much the father I remember. And other times…well, other times he’s like he was today. Do you feel like going for a ride?” he asked, closing the subject.

“Sure.”

We got bikes out of the garage and rode them into the quaint Victorian village that was a gingerbread fantasy. We stopped at the old-fashioned ice-cream parlor, where we’d taken Geo and shared a banana split. After, pushing the bikes ahead of us, we walked along the wharf. His father’s mental illness and Dondi’s whoring seemed very far away. Matthew didn’t say much, and neither did I. We didn’t need words; we had each other.

***

A few days later, the three of us took the boat across the bay to West Claw. We spent the better half of the afternoon in the boat, anchored in the middle of the bay. Dondi had brought along a pitcher of martinis for himself and a cooler of beer for Matthew and I. I was stretched out on the deck and Matthew was using my stomach as a pillow. We must have dozed in the drifting boat. We woke when Dondi cried, “Shit, it’s almost four o’clock.”

In the distance, I could hear the Lamborghini’s powerful engine trumpeting Colin’s arrival. Matthew jumped up and pulled up the anchor as Dondi started the boat and pointed us toward the pier at Aurora.

We ran, laughing, up from the beach, late for tea. Sun-drunk, we burst in through the drawing room doors, the three of us together, arms about each other, Matthew and Dondi flanking me. Colin stood beside his mother’s chair, dancing attendance on her like a lovestruck suitor. He leaned down. Heads together, they shared a whisper, then burst into laughter.

Mrs. Whyte looked up suddenly and seeing us, put down her cup and clapped like a girl. “There they are,” she cried. “The sun, the earth and the moon.”

***

On the hottest day of the summer, Matthew suggested we go into New York. Dondi heartily seconded the motion.