Ed King Read online

  And now, on the cubes, came one image atop another, kaleidoscopic, fleeting, discombobulating, dissociative—jetports, monorails, the Acropolis, a mushroom cloud—before, again, that pathetic cellared family, this time with JFK exhorting them, and all other Americans, in his Boston-brahmin brogue, to build a brighter world through technology.

  The hallucinatory journey through apocalypse ended, and Diane said only, “That was fab.”

  “That was a nightmare,” countered Walter. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Outside, he felt reassured by the real world, and so, clearly, did his kids. They all breathed happily the June carnival air, pregnant as it was with cooking grease and promise. In the Food Pavilion, it was Orange Juliuses all around—the kids and Diane sucking away at jointed double straws while he, having bolted his Extra Large, ate a corn dog. Just let it happen, he told himself when Tina implored him for a Belgian waffle—be carefree and magnanimous, stay with the pointed humor (“How about the Girls of the Galaxy exhibit?”), and tease them all often, with easy tenderness. There were solid points to be earned, he felt sure, by riding the fine line between paternalism and friendship, between daddy and a nice guy with cash.

  “Girls of the Galaxy?” Diane asked.

  “According to the fair guide, they pose naked for Polaroids.”

  “Including Earth girls?”

  “Especially Earth girls.”

  “That wouldn’t do in England. Not at all.”

  Walter shrugged as if Girls of the Galaxy was just old hat in his world. “My, what do you call it, bonny lass,” he said, “you’re not in England anymore.”

  Diane separated her lips from her straws. “Bonny’s Scottish,” she said, looking into her drink. “In England, you might try stunning.”

  “Stunning, then.”

  “Or comely would do—I would accept that.”

  They moved along until the kids got tired. It was time to go home, but, because he wanted to—it was the only thing he was really interested in at the fair—they visited the World of Science building and its Probability Exhibit. Here, in a glass box, thousands of pennies dropped mechanically down a chute and were shunted thereafter past equidistant dividers so as to demonstrate the inexorability of a bell curve. As the coins fell in essential randomness, they inevitably built up a standard normal distribution (“A Gaussian distribution,” he told the kids and Diane), which never varied and was a fixed law of nature; the pennies made a perfectly symmetrical hill, the formation of which could be relied on. He admired this so much he got effusive about it and explained, to Diane, what a bell curve was, and in language he hoped didn’t sound too actuarial delineated the “central limit theorem” associated with what they were witnessing. “Put it this way,” he said, moving closer to her. “The sum of variables at work among those pennies follows a unique attractor distribution.”

  “How interesting,” she shot back, mirthful at his expense, and mimicking his enthusiasm while flipping her ponytail absentmindedly. “An attractor distribution.”

  They were now six hours into their relationship, and already it was more than he could take.

  Walter had needed no more than a year of marriage to get to where he’d felt the odds were decent that he could predict what his wife, Lydia, would say. When the McGuire Sisters were on Ed Sullivan: “Phyllis has gained weight”; when he asked what she needed from the A&P: “Nothing”; when he kissed her in the bathroom: “I have to get dressed now”; when he said “Good night”: “I hope so.” Walter was pretty certain he could see inside her brain, so he was caught off guard one Monday morning when he was unable to rouse Lydia. It unfolded that she needed hospitalization following an overdose of prescription sleeping pills he hadn’t even known she’d been taking. A psychiatrist said she must now have complete rest from household responsibilities and duties.

  It shocked Walter to see Lydia in a hospital gown, haggard, without makeup, without stockings, bereft of dignity, but there was nothing to be done about it, or at least nothing he could do. She was in the hands of head doctors at this stage, who put her, he thought, through strange paces. She scribbled pictures, modeled with clay, attended daily “group sessions,” and played shuffleboard. On his visits to the ward, Walter felt out of her loop, estranged not just by virtue of her mental illness but by virtue of her therapy. He went daily, and always found her the same—drugged and incapable of speaking intimately or of explaining her problems to him. She wasn’t a zombie, but she wasn’t there, either, and he couldn’t figure out how to act around her or what her illness portended. Nor could he trace her demise backward in time to how, and why, it had happened. Out of nowhere she’d simply gone off the deep end—Lydia, who’d long been steady and forthright; Lydia, who’d taken him into her arms in the middle of the three and a half Chicago years he’d enjoyed after Iowa State. He’d thought of her, in that era, as a poor man’s Sabrina—Sabrina if half Norwegian, Midwestern, and plain-speaking—because she looked so much like the sensationally built British pinup who’d consorted with Fidel Castro. He’d married her eagerly. Then she got pregnant, and her cheesecake magnetism evaporated, never to return. Since Barry’s birth, she’d struggled with weight gain in a way that drove both of them to the brink. Lydia was always riding the diet roller-coaster, up and down, up and down, which would have been all right with Walter if she didn’t have to talk about it so much. He felt bad about his irritation when she brought up calories, but she’d become obsessed to the point of having no subject other than food. So what if she was too broad in the beam to make it as a calendar girl—was that any reason to starve yourself? After all, he’d gained weight, too, but was he going crazy about it? Didn’t she know that he loved her despite her weight problem? On she went, looking sadly in the mirror, counting calories, and buying new clothes. Lydia was so concerned about the heft of her behind, its geometry and sag, its silhouette in skirts and pants, that sometimes, in the wee hours, she jarred him from dreams because she was performing “clenches” in bed and the box spring was quaking under him from the stress of her exertions. The first time this happened he’d teased her about it, but before too long, it was troubling.

  Now she was in a mental hospital, which he should have seen on the horizon. She’d been worn down by domesticity, by multiple sinks, kids, shopping lists, and dirty underwear in the hamper. That was Walter’s theory, anyway. He thought that Lydia was resisting domesticity after four years of French with a minor in history, and two more as a good-looking single woman in Chicago with friends, dates, a downtown job, and a series—probably—of boyfriends. That made sense. After all, there were girls he missed and longed for. There were days when he didn’t want to be who he was or do what he was doing, at home or at the office. So who could blame Lydia for going off the deep end? He himself could go off the deep end. For now, though, the main thing was, Lydia’s illness was an all-out crisis. Lydia had left him juggling all the pins. It wasn’t her fault, but the pins were in the air, and Walter only had two hands.

  And that made the au pair, Diane Burroughs, a godsend. At just the right moment this dazzling girl, brimming with pluck and perpetual good humor, domestically energetic, chipper, and playful, had landed on Walter’s doorstep. What a miracle! Here was this pretty young Brit in an apron, fixing wholesome meals, making up beds, and ironing, with charm, while listening to banal pop music. Walter didn’t really know anything about her, but he wanted to know everything, right away. It was like his crushes in junior high—he felt a stomach-churning need to make on-the-prowl headway despite overwhelming trepidation. And so, when it seemed safe, he snooped among her things, starting in the bathroom she shared with the kids, where he pondered, alongside Lustre-Creme Shampoo and Junior Pursette tampons, a jar of coconut oil. He wondered about this oil, and how and why she used it. He wondered if Diane liked to—how did the English put it?—diddle. Was that their term?

  One thing he did know was that Diane liked television. Nightly, when the kids were under their laundered s
heets, tucked in with teddy bears, read to, and asleep, Diane made her way to the living room to watch, for example, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. When he called home at four-thirty, she would cheerfully tell him that she and the kids were watching American Bandstand. On Saturday mornings, wearing cotton PJs, she cuddled with Barry and Tina in front of The Alvin Show and Top Cat. Could you blame her for any of this? Did it make her less attractive? No, you couldn’t blame Diane—she didn’t lend herself to blame. Blame wouldn’t attach to her peerless young body. Walter tried to roll his eyes at her and feel superior, but that was no use, because he didn’t feel superior—he felt older, yes, but not superior. At the end of week one, after giving it careful thought, he paid Diane her right and proper tribute: a sizable cash bonus with a note confessing, “I feel lucky, Diane. You’re worth it.”

  Sometimes, in the late evening, he listened hopefully—and pathetically—for the pad of her slim, slippered feet in the hallway, louder as she emerged from the children’s bathroom and headed in his direction. Always, at the last, she turned left instead of right, shut the door behind her with a thoughtfully quiet click, and made the muffled, unextraordinary noises that went with arranging herself for sleep. At that point he liked both to listen and to imagine, conjuring scenarios involving coconut oil and Diane Burroughs in … a pink chiffon baby-doll with spaghetti straps? No. Her innocent white cotton underwear? Yes. If her box spring made the slightest noise, he ran with that and felt his heart jump a little—maybe she’d finally surrendered to desire … maybe, in a moment … But he knew this was ridiculous. Besides, he couldn’t sleep with all this yearning, with the guilt and fantasizing and the laughing at himself. “I’m a fool,” he thought, “thirty-four and a fool. The truth is, I’m lying here in a T-shirt and boxers, pining for a girl who watches cartoons and sings along to the Billboard Top 40.”

  When Diane took the kids to a park one Sunday, he looked around, delicately, in her bedroom. On the desk was a letter she’d written on ruled school paper: “Dear Club,” it began, followed by “Hey cheeky Jimmie take a puff for the au pair. On the up side I’ve had a trip to the World’s Fair.” Walter skimmed ahead to ferret out “Club,” which he took to be one of those silly English nicknames, in this case probably for a buck-toothed beau whose real name was Rupert or Lionel or Percy. Farther along, though, after evaluating evidence like “In answer to your question, I haven’t kept in touch with John or Mum, or with anyone in Essex, for that matter,” he surmised that Club was Diane’s brother. And that was good, because a brother was no impediment to his chances.

  Even though no one was in the house, Walter found himself being very quiet as he opened Diane’s drawers. There were high-waisted panties and white camisoles, but what he liked best, and lingered over, was the mocha bathing suit with the long back zipper, a bust of tulip petals, a modesty panel draping its crotch, and leg openings in the style of a boy’s briefs. Walter sniffed it—chlorine—and fondled its hook-and-eye closures. He pressed on the plastic bone between the cups, ran his fingers along the perforated lining, and caressed the metal slides of the shoulder straps before, in a pique of shame, arranging the bathing suit to approximate how he’d found it. After pausing to steal a look in the closet, he admonished himself and fled.

  On the last Friday in June, Walter took the kids and Diane (with the blessing of Lydia’s therapist, who assured Walter that there was no reason not to do it) for a three-day weekend on San Juan Island, where he owned a cabin with a sagging roof that was admittedly a money pit and a burden. Between the southern exposure and the steady sea wind, there was no way to keep up with the leaks, stave the drafts, or preserve the rotting windows that, in the best scenario, would be painted with a heavy preservative annually. This was not to mention the weeds between the pavers, the sluggish septic system, the well needing deeper excavation, the failing foundation, and the potholed drive. From the moment they bought the place, Lydia had encouraged Walter to think of its rusticity as charming and to let go of his urge to make it perfect, but he viewed a day not spent on chores as a day hastening the demise of their investment. There was no way he could let the place disintegrate, and as a result, only some of his island time was spent in a deck chair with a beer; otherwise, it was trips to the hardware store and unending, halfhearted puttering. This weekend, though, there was the stimulating consolation of Diane in her mocha bathing suit, cavorting with his kids on the beach.

  On Saturday afternoon, Diane helped him paint the picket fence and pulled weeds out of Lydia’s perennial beds. Lydia wasn’t much of a gardener; every spring she planted a box of bulbs that by June lay under a morass. Diane took care of that cheerfully, wearing jeans she’d scissored into shorts, a baby-blue T-shirt printed DEWEY WEBER SURFBOARDS, and Keds without socks. At five, she disappeared into the bathroom, to emerge eventually with her hair combed wet, in a plaid sundress, barefoot. Walter, in the striped polo he reserved for painting, unshaved, sunburned, and smoking a cheap cigar—a look he could only hope had a manly summer charm—watched her from his post at the barbecue while she leaned on the porch railing and gazed at the water. “I ought to shave and change,” he thought.

  He did. At nine-thirty, Diane put the kids to sleep in the cabin’s single bedroom. The plan was for her to bunk with Tina in the musty, soft queen-size bed that was Lydia’s before he married her; Barry would sleep beside them on a narrow camp cot. Walter was to repair to the sleeping loft, with its spiderwebs, heat, and nocturnally active houseflies, but since this prospect had no appeal, he settled on the couch instead, his feet up and a beer beside him, to read The Sand Pebbles.

  Then, around ten, Diane slipped out of the bedroom. Her hair, he noticed, was a little awry, probably from pressing against a pillow. She still wore the plaid dress, now wrinkled across the thighs. Without asking his permission, she went to the front door and propped it open with one of Barry’s rubber beach boots. “Warm in here,” she explained.

  “Fortunately, we don’t have mosquitoes,” he replied.

  “I’ll shut it again if you want me to—do you? Whatever you want. It’s your cottage.”

  He put down his book and said, “Diane, come on, now, it’s not what I want, it’s what you want. If it’s the night air you want, then, by all means, let’s have the door open wide.”

  Diane smiled and raised her eyebrows suggestively. “What I want? Is it, really? In that case, let’s play a game.”

  Walter swung his feet to the floor and, taking up his beer, feigned confidence. “Which game is that?” he asked.

  “Life,” said Diane, pointing toward the cabin’s shelf of tattered board games. “That’s one I know how to play.”

  Together, they set up Life on the kitchen table. She accepted his offer of a bottle of Dr Pepper and, when he told her to pick first, selected the red car; he took the green. Off they went, following the track past mountains, trees, and buildings until, at the first junction, Diane chose the College route. In the name of competition, he teased her by saying, “College isn’t automatically or always the right path. It might seem like it is, but let me tell you, it isn’t.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I’m older than you.”

  “How old exactly?”

  “Old enough to know you shouldn’t go to college without giving it some thought.”

  “Well,” said Diane, and spun the wheel, “I’ve done that already. The thinking.”

  “That’s fine,” replied Walter, “but look where you’ve landed. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go with my Collect card and take half your windfall. Pay up.”

  Diane wagged a finger at him. “Keep your hair on,” she said. “I’ve got an Exemption card I haven’t played yet.”

  He bought insurance, she bought none, and eventually, his long-term approach proved superior. But just when he thought he had her on the ropes, Diane landed on the Lucky Day square. With twenty thousand dollars newly in hand, she opted for the game’s penultimate gamble: lose all of it or, in one
spin of the wheel, turn it into the lead-seizing sum of three hundred thousand. “Don’t do it,” he warned. “The odds are four to one against you.”

  “Just get the number strip,” she answered.

  When she’d lost the twenty thousand, she took a pull from her Dr Pepper and said, “Your turn, Walter. At least I tried.”

  Had she called him Walter before? “Walter” was a good sign. “Walter” meant he was getting somewhere. Yes, there was a definite warming trend. “You did try,” he said. “And now you’re broke.”

  Eventually, he retired as a Millionaire, and Diane, behind, risked it all on one spin, hoping to vault past him and become a Tycoon. Instead, she finished Bankrupt, then plucked up her car in a feisty capitulation. “Congratulations,” he said. “Another round?”

  “No,” she answered. “You only get one go at Life. I went to college, got married, got a job, had kids, bought a house, bought a car, bought two cars—what more could I want?”

  Was this code for ridicule? A condemnation of his choices? “Great,” said Walter. “Now, not at all meaning to lead you astray—but could I offer you more than just a soft drink?”

  “I’ll have what you’re having. A pint.”

  “You mean a beer.”

  “If you want to call that a beer, yes, thank you—I’ll have an American beer, please, served from an American can.”

  He got her a beer. They went outside and sat on the stoop, where they listened to waves degrade the beach and gazed at the Big Dipper. Walter admired how Diane brought her knees together to prevent stray glimpses of her panties. What great legs she had, he observed, with just the right girlish taper. “You knock a beer back fast,” he said. “I bet you had a good senior year.”