The Vagabonds (28 page)

By the town offices in Eastham a van has been pulled over, and she sees it being searched; there are two boys at the side of the road, and a policeman with a flashlight peering in. The van is dark and battered and the boys are wearing sweatshirts, black, and that’s all she has the time to see before the red light changes. The patrol car’s flashing beacon both comforts and alarms her; there’s someone on the job tonight—but what sort of job is being done, what kind of peace being kept?

“And you,” she asks her brother. “Will it change the way you spend your time?”

“My time? For me it isn’t time but place. It’s should I move to Saratoga . . .”

“And?”

“And the truth is I really don’t know.”

There’s another storm system coming, the weatherman has warned them on the evening news: a true nor’easter sliding up the coast. Next week could be a doozie, folks, a lollapalooza like ’78, and by Monday morning we’ll see. It’s snow or maybe freezing rain and sleet or just plain rain or maybe a little—make that a
lot,
folks—of each. Mother Nature hasn’t finished with us is what this storm is saying; not by a long shot, not yet.

“It’s hard to process, isn’t it,” Joanna says, “to know how much has changed.”

He nods. They drive past Consider the Lilies and the flea market and movie theater; it’s eleven-fifteen and the arc lights are on, and the plowed sides of the parking lots are head-high and forbidding. This car, for example, says David, you could trade it in. Or keep it for Leah, she’ll be driving soon, and get yourself a gussied-up version, a brand-new Legacy Outback wagon, compliments of L.L. Bean. With fancy leather seats—he pats her knee—and a CD player and optional GPS, the whole nine yards.

“You’re joking,” says Joanna, and he tells her not a bit.

“What’s GPS?” she asks him, and he says, “Global Positioning System,” it means you know just where you are and how to get to where you’re going and you can’t get lost. The whole nine yards, he says again, and she says I think that’s how much dirt they need to fill a grave.

For a mile there is silence between them, no traffic on the road. The curio shops and lobster shacks and seasonal motels have closed; there are ropes across the unplowed entrance drives and signs saying “Come Back in June.”

“What do you think about Harry?” she asks.

“Is this a change of subject?”

“No. Well, yes.” A truck appears, its headlights bright, a string of little yellow lights above it at the roofline, and they meet and pass each other and the road grows dark again. Trusty-Rusty roars and clatters over frost heaves; she cracks her window open and hears the high-pitched wind. “I know you’ve only just met him, only just now had the chance to meet, but I do want your opinion.”

“Why?”

“Because I value it.” Inside the car, in the dim interior together, it’s easier to talk. “So much is changing, David . . .”

“Yes.” He clears his throat. “And I’m grateful that you asked, but it’s too early, isn’t it, for me to
have
an opinion. And it’s
your
call, anyhow . . .”

She has watched him watching Harry and knows what David thinks. “You’re telling me, aren’t you, I ought to do better. You find him—what would Mom say—vulgar?”

“Touché. I want the very best for you. I want you not to settle, I
hate
to think you’re settling . . .”

“
A boy like that,
” Joanna sings, then trails off to silence again. She turns the heater to high. Now they are passing Cumberland Farms and the Liquor Locker and gas stations that signal the entrance to Wellfleet. At the sign for the town center she turns left; they’re almost home, she’s almost at the Bay View Inn, and Leah will join them after the opening night party.

“She
was
good, wasn’t she?”

“Spectacular,” he says.

“She’s not sixteen. It isn’t learner permit time.”

“It will be soon enough. Just let her keep the car.”

Joanna pulls into her driveway and parks beside his rented Taurus and Harry’s bright blue Firebird, and they get out together and shut their doors at precisely the same instant so it sounds as though a single door is being closed. She thinks about those black children in Eastham, hands at their sides, affecting nonchalance, while their van was being searched. She thinks about her daughter and the painted flush on Leah’s cheek and the delight she took in curtain calls, the quick reprise of her dance number while the audience whistled and clapped. They were
standing
for her, on their feet, the whole auditorium clapping because Leah stole the show . . .

“A Legacy Outback,” she says. “I suppose it’s the right thing to buy. With a legacy, I mean.”

She and David walk up to the porch. On Holbrook Avenue the Connolly house has lights on in the cupola, but no one else appears awake and there is darkness everywhere—made darker somehow by the snow, its iridescent gleaming. In Wellfleet there are homes called Morning Glory, The Moorings, Nevadun, but she named her house for the view of the bay, and Joanna is proud of the welcoming sign. There are grapes festooning the
B,V,
and
I
so the emblem is spirited, festive, and as soon as it gets warm enough she’ll retouch the purple cluster where the paint has chipped.

At the kitchen table Harry is sitting by himself, eating pretzels, drinking beer. He works at the post office counter from Monday to Saturday noontime, and mostly he waits until Saturday night to get drunk. But tonight he has the television on and is watching a show about hookers, thin girls and fat girls in Miami parading up and down the street and getting into cars. It’s reality TV, a documentary, with close-ups of the girls, their teeth, and when they go down on their customers the camera goes out of focus but the sound stays on. Then they talk about their pimps and johns and how hot it gets in the Florida summer, and when she and David join him Harry lifts the Remote and clicks
Mute.

“Hey,” he says. “How goes it?”

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” says Joanna.

“How
goes
it?”

“Terrific,” says David.

“Do we need to watch this?” she asks.

“I’ve been having a party, see, my own private show.” Harry has been smoking, drinking, and the air smells rank. “All by my lonesome with pizza and beer and this whore called Chiquita who gets off on whips. What you can get on cable now . . .”

“How dainty,” says Joanna.

“And then they do these interviews. They ask the guys which girls they like—fat ones, thin ones, young ones—and what way they like it best . . .”

“Do we
need
to hear this?”

“Speaking of dainty,” he tells her. “This kitchen is a mess. I’m a little lubricated, maybe, but this kitchen is a mess.” He sweeps his arm out widely, encompassing the beer bottles and the cardboard box of pizza and the
Cape Codder
on the floor and the litter box and empty overturned cat-food tins and cigarette butts and unwashed dishes in the sink.

“
Your
mess,” she tells him.

He peers at her, then David. “Right . . .”

“I’m not your housecleaner, mister.”

“Who said you were?” he asks the ceiling. “Me?”

Embarrassed by the room’s squalor, angry at the stench of it, Joanna retreats to the door by the porch. “I just yesterday quit doing laundry. Towels and sheets. There’s no more laundry service here.”

“And what’s
that
supposed to mean?”

Mungo Park, her cat, is hiding. “It means it’s not your house.”

Harry repeats this in a high whine, mockingly: “
It means it’s not your house.
What else is new . . .” Then he clicks on the sound again, and one of the girls is leaning in the passenger window of a Cadillac convertible and saying, what you want is my little white mouth on your big black cock; it’s raining, baby, let me in and I’ll do whatever you want.

The driver opens the passenger door. The camera pans to the car’s windshield wipers, their slapping back-and-forth, their rhythmic beat, and Joanna crosses over and hits the
Power
button and shuts the TV off.

“Hey,” Harry says, “that was my
show
!”

“And as long as we’re discussing it there’s something else you need to know. I’m out of this business as of March first. Which means you’re out of here also.”

He stares at her. “Say that again . . .”

“You heard me the first time. March first.”

“Wrong. I’m out of here tomorrow, bitch.” He pushes back from the table and stands. “Why wait? First thing in the morning I’m history.”

“That’s it,” Joanna says. “Exactly.”

“This dump. This shit-hole.” He pulls out a handkerchief and rubs his face and drops his bottle of Budweiser to the floor. It tilts, spills, foams.

“Why wait till tomorrow?” David asks. “If that’s the way you feel . . .”

“Hey, smart-ass,” Harry turns on him, “just because you’re her kid brother don’t mean you get to tell me”—he breaks off, befuddled, blowing his nose—“don’t mean how it’s your business. You show up for a goddam day, an
afternoon,
and all of a sudden—”

“Listen,” David says. “You wouldn’t want to stay. I mean, really.”

He has moved to Harry’s side—younger, stronger, bigger—and is ready for a fight; Joanna sees this, sees her brother with his arms out, loose, and remembers his karate and thrills for an instant to think she’s being protected. Then she thinks of
West Side Story
and how children die in knife-fights and how Harry can be sweet, and says, “Look, Leah’s coming back; let’s just forget this, both of you, and in the morning you can pack.”

“You know what I think about, Valentine’s Day, I think about old Al Capone and that massacre of his. That theme party he put together in a garage in, where was it, Chicago? Not roses and hearts and balloons. I mean, I’m just a guy who works at the PO who thinks maybe his landlady will treat him decent if he’s nice, and always pays the rent on time—well, don’t I, haven’t I always?—and your baby brother condescends to visit us from, where is it, Berkeley, and suddenly I’m out on my ear, my ass, not good enough, and what I want to say is don’t come begging for it, lady, when he’s out of town again . . .”

“I won’t,” Joanna says.

“Because in the morning I’m off to Aunt Gracie’s. I’ve got a standing offer there.” He winks at David leeringly. “A standing lying-down offer, you see. Complete with water view.”

“Fine,” David says. “I’ll help you pack.”

“Capone’s. Speaking about Al Capone. That restaurant out on Route 6, you know, the Sheraton, well, I bet someone’s got a party there, I bet they’re celebrating loud and clear,
bang, bang
”—he aims his finger at Joanna—“and got you in their plans for the garage. Capone the bone. It’s what we
mean
by entertainment, not some shitty little musical with pom-poms and the high school band and some teenybopper who calls herself Art. You jump out of the cake and go rat-a-tat-tat or you get in the car with me, baby . . .”

“You’re drunk,” she says. “You’re disgusting.”

“Fuck off,” he tells Joanna. “Both of you. Your daughter too, you stuck-up cunt. Your little Miss—” and that’s when David hits him, twice, doing something rapid with his hand and elbow, and kicking Harry’s ankles free with a side-sweep of his own left leg, and the man falls to the floor. He falls in a clattering pratfall, a noisy spread-eagled half-comic collapse. “Oh shit, oh
shit,
my nose is broke.”

“He’ll be all right,” David says.

“It broke, it’s
bleeding,
” Harry cries.

“All over my freshly mopped floor,” says Joanna. “I told you I wouldn’t clean up.”

Harry builds himself back to his feet. He smooths his hair, he feels his nose, he looks for an instant as though he might fight but watches David watching him and collects his cigarettes and stalks out of the kitchen. “I’m out of here,” he announces. “Go fuck yourselves, all right?”

“Good-night,” says David.

“Good-bye,” says Joanna. “Sleep tight.”

She is astonished by how quick this was, how quick this
is
—her brother’s physical ferocity, his elbow in her lodger’s face—
ex
-lodger,
ex
-lover, she reminds herself—and how in the morning she’ll take down the sign and not be a B&B. That was pretty impressive, she says to David, do you do this often, and he smiles and shakes his head. Then for half an hour the two of them do clean the room—washing and mopping and taking out trash. Upstairs they hear Harry muttering, moving about in the hallway and flushing the toilet and slamming his door; did you hurt him very much, she asks, and he says, I promise, no, I mostly hurt his pride. Mungo Park appears and rubs at her ankles purringly. Joanna hugs him, feeds him, lets him out, and while she’s standing on the porch she sees the headlights of a car, dipping and bobbing and making its way to her own plowed drive. Leah-Artemisia gets out of the back, laughing and waving good-night to her friends, and skips up the steps to the porch. Her daughter has come home.

In the morning the sun ascends brightly and the harbor glistens; the tide is low, the trees are motionless and there’s the sort of windless calm that heralds a clear day. It’s Saturday morning and Leah sleeps in, but Harry is wearing his postal clerk uniform and has his bags ready to go: two suitcases, a cardboard box, a plastic Pan Am flight bag and pants and coats on wire hangers and the six-packs of ale and beer and cans of soup and tuna fish that had been his contribution to the pantry.

“Do you want coffee?” she asks.

His eye is swollen, blue and black. He keeps his face averted.

“No hard feelings?” asks Joanna, and he shakes his head. “Does that mean yes?” she presses him. “Or no?”

He is filling the Firebird’s trunk, his dignity shored up by silence. His cheek and nose are red.

“You can stay, if you want to, till March first.” She watches from the porch. “You’re paid till then . . .”

“One more load,” he says, “I’m outta here . . .” and brushes past her where she stands. Then he emerges from the kitchen with the radio and blue plastic flight bag and his green parka; these he lays on the backseat. Then he slams the car’s trunk shut. His masculine ego is wounded, she knows, and he wants to get away as fast as possible, but she cannot keep from teasing him, a little, sipping her mug of hot coffee and resting her toe on the railing and smiling down from the porch. “Be seeing you,” Joanna says, and waves. He gets in the car and drives off.