CHAPTER TWELVE
Al argued, reasoned, begged and blustered, but Sharon remained adamant. She was going to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with her father and brother in Phoenix, and her husband was coming with her whether he wanted to or not.
He most certainly didn't want to, but there came a point where victory came at too high a cost, and when Sharon refused to sleep with him because the matter hadn't been settled, he had capitulated to her demands. So it was that he loaded two suitcases and a garment bag into the trunk of the 'Vette on Friday afternoon, and walked Chester over to the Penja trailer.
Celestina had just arrived home, and was giving Stevie his bread and milk. The boy looked uncommonly wan and tired, but his mother had the same fresh buoyancy that she had displayed ever since getting the new job. The work at the dry-cleaner's obviously suited her, and Al imagined it probably paid better than the one at the bakery. The pantries and the ancient refrigerator always seemed well-stocked now, and he thought that Celestina was wearing a new dress—cheap, but new. Al was glad. There was nothing quite as magical as a new garment when you were used to wearing strangers' cast-offs.
Celestina greeted him with a smile. "Ah, Señor Calavicci!" she said. "You are going?"
"Uh, yeah, any minute now," Al said. "I really appreciate this."
"It is nothing. He is friend for Esteban. Esteban, you see Chester is here!"
"Chethter," Stevie mumbled, chewing lazily.
"School wearing you out, sport?" Al asked, patting the boy's shoulder.
"Sí, he is always tired now," Celestina said. "I think they work too hard, play too hard. Ah, but he sleeps so well. He is a good boy."
"Yeah, I know. He's a very good boy. Aren't you, Stevie?"
The child was occupied with his milk and didn't seem to hear. Al lifted Chester so that their faces were level, and nuzzled his snout briefly. "Now, you be a good boy, too," he instructed. "We'll be back in a couple of days."
"You have a good journey," Celestina said. "It is always good to see family. Carlos's brother comes to see us at Christmas, such a kind man. He brings letters."
"Yeah," Al said. "That'll be nice."
It had taken him a long time to figure out the story behind Stevie's absentee father. Celestina was a citizen, the daughter of poor migrant workers who had had the great good fortune of being born in California at the height of the peach season. Her lover, Carlos Emilias, had immigrated illegally. Not understanding the laws, Celestina had not applied for a marriage licence, but settled for a service at a travelling mission. They had lived happily enough for years, until they decided to move to the city in search of better work. Stevie had been only four when someone reported his father. Without the education or legal savvy required to combat the U.S. immigration officials, Carlos had been deported. Since then, Celestina had lived alone with their son, trying to earn enough money to prove that Carlos had well-established friends in America so that her husband in the eyes of God if not the law could make the crossing legally.
Celestina took the bag full of Chester's paraphernalia, and Al set the dog on the floor. He immediately began to explore his surroundings. "Anyway, thanks," Al said. He gave Celestina a quick, fraternal peck on the cheek and moved to squat next to Stevie. "Hey, sport, how 'bout a hug?" he said.
Stevie smiled at him through an enormous yawn and draped his short little arms around Al's neck, leaning heavily against him as the adult squeezed his chest. Al backed off and patted his arm fondly. "Happy Thanksgiving," he said.
" 'Ppy Thankthgivin'," Stevie mumbled, lifting his bread back to his mouth.
Al took his leave, wandering back up the street to his own home, where Sharon was emerging from the house. She was wearing her skin-tight blue jeans and a peasant blouse with an enormous pattern in several shades of pink. She was tying a chiffon scarf as a headband.
"Well, hello, gorgeous!" Al said, pausing to take in the full effect. Then he dashed up the lawn, seized her around the waist and swung her down onto the grass, kissing and snuffling and laughing.
"You're bad!" she exclaimed, batting the back of his head with one hand while groping his back with the other.
"And you're beautiful!" he told her.
"I still say we should take my van. There's more leg room."
Al backed off a little, still holding her around her supple waist. He shook his head. "No way," he said. "We're taking my car. I'm not parading around Santa Fe in that four-wheeled LSD flashback."
"Ooh, so I embarrass you!" she crowed, toying with his hair.
"Extravagantly," he affirmed, pulling her back against him and navigating them both towards the passenger door. He opened it and deposited her in her seat. "Besides, we can go faster in this baby."
"I doubt that," Sharon said. "German engineering…"
"And the 'Vette is an aerodynamic bundle of sheer horsepower," Al said, bracing himself against the side in an attempt to swing in as he used to. His arms trembled and his left shoulder ground painfully. With a gasp, he drew that arm to his chest.
"You okay?" Sharon asked.
"Fine, just fine," Al said, massaging the sore joint. He opened the door and slid in beside her, leaning over the gearshift to kiss the crest of her cheekbone. "Just dandy."
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMIt was a sunny day, but seasonably cool—perfect for a drive in the desert. The miles to Phoenix zipped by in a rush of wind and speed. With his left arm resting nonchalantly on the side of the car, his right hand at twelve o'clock on the steering wheel, one foot on the gas, the other dormant beside the clutch, and Sharon stroking his side and his thigh in a very contented way, Al was happier than he had been for a long time. The wind seemed to blow away the weariness and the stress, and with every yard that took them further from Starbright his problems, too, seemed far more distant and unimportant. The fact that Eleese had yet to turn in her report, the countless hours of revising and summarizing that lay ahead, the day-to-day quibbles that weren't going to take a holiday just for the Committee, a rash of resignations that would necessitate a complete overhaul of access codes and passwords—all these flew away, no more real than the ghostly fingers moving through his hair.
At last they reached the city limits, and Sharon switched into navigator mode. They would be staying with her brother the accountant, his wife, and their two teenage kids. Her father lived in a nursing home, and had for years. He was suffering the early stages of Alzheimer's—not yet so far gone that he had forgotten his loved ones, but still oddly displaced. Out of time, as it were, and easily confused. Rich would be picking him up on Saturday, and he, too, would stay over through Monday.
The street was about what one would expect from a well-to-do accountant and stockbroker. The houses were new, in the neo-Tudor style that had sprung up like a rash in recent years, or else a more ethnic look, with arches and large windows and almost-flat roves. Some were urbane, with bright siding and colored shingles. Most had sculpted bushes and tiny, scrawny trees that might one day amount to something. One had a rock garden in place of a front lawn, cacti and desert flowers popping up amid the pea gravel.
Richard Quinn and his family had a sturdy-looking brown house with a large bay window. Al parked on the curb, and hurried around to open the passenger door for Sharon. Most women loved that, though of course you had to be careful with the feminists, who were about as likely to kick you in sensitive places as to thank you for your consideration. Sharon was big on freedom of thought and the expression of women's sexuality, but she still loved to be treated like the Homecoming queen she once had been. She smiled graciously as he moved around to retrieve their baggage from the trunk, and moved up the sidewalk to the door. She rang the bell and stood tapping her foot until the door opened and a girl pushed open the screen.
"Oh, hey, Aunt Sharon," she said boredly, twirling a tendril of hair around her index finger. Then she looked past the woman, and her face lit up like a neon sign—which given the shear quantity of makeup she wore was not an entirely inapt simile. "Hey, gnarly car!" she cried, bolting past Sharon and across the lawn to eye the car. "Oh, man, it's hot!"
Al chuckled. "Glad you like it. You must be Clara, right?"
"That's my name, spare me the nutcracker jokes," she said. "Who are you, and what are you wearing?"
Al looked down at his zoot suit, and then at the girl's Spandex leggings, terry cloth miniskirt, and tummy-tickling blouse, none of which were the same color. "Same thing you're wearing," he said. "My own style. I'm Al."
"So how come you married Aunt Sharon?" Clara griped, turning back to stroke the side of the car. "People her age shouldn't get married. It's gross."
"Well, honey, you sure know how to make a man feel young," Al muttered, turning towards the house. Sharon held the door for him as he moved into the tiled foyer and deposited their luggage next to a rack of shoes.
"Do me a favor and don't flirt with my niece!" she hissed.
"Who's flirting?" Al asked. "I was just trying to be friendly."
"Yeah, well, don't flirt with her."
Al took hold of her chin and kissed her. "Baby, she's thirteen. She's way, way too young for me. I like my women… experienced."
Sharon frowned, and Al wondered how she could possibly have taken offence at anything he'd just said. He didn't have time to question her, though, because a woman came through from the living room.
"Sharon, hello!" she gushed, giving her sister-in-law a hug. "And you must be Albert!"
"Al," he corrected, shaking hands and looking her over. She was a prime example of suburban matronhood, from her perfectly coifed but hopelessly tacky hair to her carefully manicured nails that spoke of an immigrant cleaning lady. "You must be Debra."
She nodded. "Rich isn't home from work yet, but if you'll just come this way I'll show you the guest room." She moved to the top of the stairs and hollered up them, "Luke! Luke, get down here and take your Auntie Sharon's bags!"
"No, it's okay," Al said hastily. "I've got them."
"Oh, no, he's been moping in his room since the holiday started, and he can just get down here and do a little work. LUKE!"
"No, really," Al told her, picking up the bags. "That's why Sharon married me. To do the heavy lifting."
Sharon laughed, but Debra didn't seem to approve. Al reflected that perhaps Donna Eleese wasn't the coldest fish in the state, after all.
They followed their hostess down the hallway and past what looked like a den to a room that looked like something out of a home economics textbook. Flowers and frills and flounces everywhere. The furniture was all highly polished wood of a ruddy hue. The bed was so decked out in bolsters and decorative cushions that it looked like a guy would need a spelunking permit just to find the mattress.
The overdressed windows looked out on the back yard, which looked eerily like a monument to forgotten childhood. The lawn was as perfectly manicured as the front, and the flowerbeds exquisitely tended. There was an old wooden sandbox in the back corner, and a blue swingset by the house, neither of which, Al was willing to bet, had been used for years.
Debra told them to make themselves comfortable, and left them alone. Al laid the garment bag on the bed and began to carefully transfer clothes from it to the empty closet.
"I've seen more imaginative hotel rooms," he commented dryly.
"Oh, leave her alone!" Sharon snapped. "She's a terrific housekeeper."
Al frowned at his wife, surprised to hear her defending her pedantic sister-in-law. He decided to leave well enough alone, though, as he filled empty drawers with the contents of his suitcase and arranged his shoes neatly under his side of the bed.
MWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMWMAfter about an hour of very awkward small talk, Richard came home from work. He was a stocky man, bearded, with an enormous, rumbling laugh and a caricature of a personality. He greeted Al, whom he had never seen before in his life, with a hearty smack on the back, and demanded that Sharon explain why no one had been invited to the wedding. His kissed his wife, tousled his daughter's mousy hair, and dug two beers from the fridge, asking if Al wanted to watch "the game" with him. Al accepted the invitation almost frantically, glad to be free of the duties of socializing with such a boring woman as Debra.
"The game" was college basketball. The kids' enthusiasm and raw energy and the occasional shots of the shapely co-eds on the cheerleading squads were ample compensation for the lack of professional pizzazz. By the time the two men emerged from the den supper was just being set on the table. Debra shouted up the stairs for Luke, who at last emerged.
He was a tall boy, rail thin and pallid. His hair was darker than his sister's, and he wore it long. He also wore, to Al's amazement, an assortment of clothing in white, gray and black. Several shirts layered on one another, and a tight pair of black jeans, all of which had been not-so-artfully attacked with a pair of scissors so that they hung off his lean frame at very strange angles, and showed bits of the layers beneath, to say nothing of his skin.
"Luke!" Sharon enthused, giving him an enormous hug that he didn't seem to enjoy. "How's my favorite nephew?"
"I'm your only nephew," he intoned flatly.
"And what's this new look?" Sharon asked. "I like it. Very chic."
"They're monochromatic rags," he announced, his voice still devoid of affect. "They're part of the new teenage subculture. They symbolize the bland and tattered conventions that hide the true you."
So saying, he loped over to the table and sat. The food began to make its way around the circle.
"Luke's an Existentialist," Rich announced proudly, as if nothing the boy could say or do could phase him.
"Really?" Sharon said. "What's that?"
"The world sucks," Luke said, as if that explained things.
"Pass the peas, lamebrain," Clara said.
"Darling!" Debra said. "Is that any way to talk? Try again."
Clara rolled her eyes. "Pass the peas, please, lamebrain," she said to her brother.
Debra laughed nervously. "That's better, sweetie," she said.
Al furled his lids over eyes that couldn't help rolling. The woman wasn't just as dull as a Vietnamese razor blade: she was spineless. No wonder the kid was a brat if she was allowed to run roughshod over her mother.
"So, Albert, are you an artist, too?" Debra asked delicately, her tone betraying that she was not overly fond of artists.
"Actually, no," Al said. "I'm a captain in the Navy."
Rich laughed. "Not much work for you around here, then!" he said.
"He's in charge of a top-secret government project," Sharon said, before Al could find her foot to step on it.
"Really?" Debra cooed. "I didn't realize that there was still stuff like that going on."
"Oh, there isn't, not really," Al said. "It's just some propulsion experiments. Planes and cars and stuff." He cleared his throat a little, giving Sharon the Calavicci Evil Eye. Time to change the subject. "So, Luke," he said; "Existentialism. You read Sartre?"
Something almost akin to interest flickered across the lacklustre face. "Jean-Paul Sartre. The true voice of humanity. Champion of the oppressed and the underappreciated. A god among insects. Of course I've read him."
"I always found him interesting," Al continued conversationally. "Hell is other people."
"Yeah, exactly!" Luke exclaimed. "Exactly! He's right, you know."
"I know," Al said. "Just not all other people."
Luke frowned. "Huh?"
"Well, for example, do you think Hell is Aunt Sharon?" Al asked.
"Yeah," Luke said. "Don't you?"
It was not at all the answer Al had expected. He shifted a little, uncomfortably. "No," he said. "Of course not." He glared at her. Except when she's shooting her mouth off.
"Uh… Clara, why don't you tell your Auntie about the theme you wrote last month?" Debra asked in her nasal, saccharine voice.
The meal continued excruciatingly. Luke fell into a sullen silence that Al couldn't rouse him out of, and Rich was the kind of man who obviously felt pretty strongly about food and conversation and their mutual incompatibility. That left the females, and tonight even Sharon wasn't very good company, determined as she was to play off of Debra's cues. This was a whole new side of his outspoken, lewd and entertaining wife, and one he didn't especially like.
At last the meal ended, and Luke got to his feet, announcing loudly that he had an appointment with is Atari. No one protested. Then Debra announced that she was bringing in the strawberry flan, and suddenly Al couldn't take it anymore. He got to his feet and fled the room. Sharon shouted after him, but by that time he had his hand on the front door. He ran down to the street and climbed into the Corvette. In the glove compartment there was a cigar and a silver Zippo. He lit up and reclined the seat, staring up at the neutral sky above. The smoke soothed him, and its sweet taste got rid of some of the sensation of staleness that had been growing on him since they'd arrived in this suburban nightmare. Everything that had been wrong with the 'fifties was apparently still wrong with the 'eighties, if you knew where to look.
"What the hell are you doing?" an angered voice demanded. Sharon.
"Enjoying a cigar and a little sanity," he answered.
"That was very rude! You've hurt Debbie's feelings."
"What a pity." Al exhaled enormously, enjoying the way his muscles strained to obey him. "I guess it's true that four bad apples don't ruin the whole barrel."
"Am I suppose to feel flattered?" Sharon asked scathingly. "What's your problem with them?"
"Problem?" Al said. "Oh, no problem. Except that they're exactly what would happen if Victor Frankenstein tried to combine The Twilight Zone, Leave It To Beaver and a cheap Brazilian sitcom! I mean, your niece is a monster, you're nephew's the youngest nihilist I've ever met, and Debbie, as you so affectionately call her, could give the Tin Woodsman dry rot! Rich is the best of the bunch, and even he's got a blind spot where his two misbegotten offspring are concerned!"
"I would've thought you'd like Luke," Sharon said, and Al realized with a wave of contrition that there was well-masked hurt behind the indignation.
"Well, maybe if I got to know him," he allowed. "But you'd have to work a miracle to turn Clara into someone I could have an intelligent conversation with, and Debra is a lost cause."
"Well, they're my family, and you're going to have to put up with them," Sharon said firmly.
"Says who?" Al demanded. "I could go in there, pack up my stuff, and high-tail it back home. You could take the bus on Tuesday."
"You wouldn't," she said in a low, deadly voice.
Al sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You're right. Calavicci doesn't desert his post."
The passenger door opened, and she slid in beside him. "Well, all right, then."
She started to raise the top.
"Hey! What are you doing?" Al demanded.
"I want a little privacy," Sharon said, rolling up her window.
"Privacy?" he repeated, confused.
She reclined her seat and edged closer to him, her fingers popping the buttons of his shirt and caressing his chest. "Mm-hmm."