The Mt. Monadnock Blues Read online

  Then suddenly he was weeping.

  It began with a crooked smile, when he found three unrelated Jacksons in a single issue of Newsweek. There was Michael with some plastic surgery, and Glenda the British actress, and then Alan, a hot new country-and-western singer. The Jackson Three! As tears leached through, as he felt them coming faster, Tim allowed he must be seriously overtired. Then the tears were flowing through his arms and legs, through his chest, as if tears had replaced his blood.

  A loud animal sound he was hearing turned out to be himself, sobbing. He rushed outside for the sake of the children, got inside the car for the sake of the neighbors; then he rolled up the windows and let himself go. Not that he had much choice.

  It hurt to cry this hard. It strained the muscles of his face and kept exploding in his chest and throat as he sat shivering in the airtight Honda. At times the tears reverted back to laughter, or got caught halfway between, in a sort of hiccup. Slowly the laughter prevailed, and Tim giggled at the possibility that someone could mistake him for a pack of hyenas and come out shooting.

  Not hyenas, coyotes. There were coyotes in these hills, hyenas were in Africa, their laughter making tracks and trails through the jungle. No shots rang out, no lights came on. He was alone and the street stayed quiet; the emotion was tapering off. Giddiness still threatened. He recalled the Jackson Three and then the three Alans, in that same magazine—Alan Jackson, Alan Greenspan, and Woody Allen, whose real name was Alan Something. Tim sat tight, ticking like a clock, holding the line against giddiness.

  But he knew this was a nervous breakdown. He had cracked.

  Tim could cry. He cried in movies and he cried at funerals. Still, he handled emotion well—too well for Karl Trickett’s taste. He never lost control. He had somehow arranged his interior furniture so as to preclude the possibility, though maybe (given what he had witnessed in his mother and in Jilly’s kids) such self-control was genetic.

  So this was new; way beyond control. And now, as he stood outside, the lone inhabitant of a world of moonlight on lawns, of moonlight on a million white clapboards, he saw Jill and Monty waving from the front door. Saw them distinctly, in sharp focus, precisely where he had seen them last, a month ago.

  Tim stared at the doorway until they were gone. Panned back across the yard to the garage to make certain they had not simply moved around on him. He circled the cedar tree, rustled the clump of quince, until he was satisfied.

  He was better. It was going to be okay. The ticking within him had spread into a soft general noiseless hum, like a painless toothache, a dose of Novocaine, by the time he got into bed.

  And there was life after nervous breakdowns. Next morning, with Billy and Cindy still upstairs, Tim received his first field report from Bannon’s Queer Army of the Republic.

  “Get ready for this,” said Peter Clippinger, sounding as excited as a kid at the county fair. “Your sister was married. Six days ago. In Maryland.”

  “I don’t get it, Peter. Who did she marry?”

  “Earl Sanderson. The point is they were never married before, either of them, ever. To each other, or to anyone else.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Their witnesses—you’ll like this—were a Mr. and Mrs. Garth Gaylord of Gideon Township, Maryland.”

  “They lied?”

  “Indeed. They have been living a lie for lo these many years. But you’ve got them now.”

  This revelation served to bolster Tim throughout the day. It would slide from his consciousness, then slip back in with a delicate flavor. But the day had a flavor of its own. Tim’s breakdown seemed to be complete (or completed) and it left him feeling almost buoyant, as shock therapy was said to do.

  The children took good care of him. Maybe they knew he had a few screws loose and maybe they were campaigning to stay here in Jaffrey, but they were good company all day. Tim had shaped a firm little speech on the subject of seatbelts and backseats, which he never had to give, because they were way ahead of him, in full compliance. Billy had such unselfish instincts—he noticed whatever needed noticing—and he set the tone.

  Out on Gilmore Pond, Tim recalled their earliest excursions (Camp Bannon, back then), voyages that always began with Jill’s many admonitions and concluded with her relief upon seeing them alive at the close of day. To assuage her fears, they plied only the tamest bodies of water that summer. It was possible to drown on Norway Pond but you had to be trying awfully hard.

  The following year they graduated to larger lakes (none resembling Lake Huron, to be sure) and evolved into a crackerjack crew. While Jill could never relax entirely (“I’m their mother,” was her excuse) her worries were increasingly pro forma. There had been the incident with the bats at twilight, and a time or two when they got caught in the rain, but even Jill could not call that danger.

  No sign of danger today, and no stress, as they swam and paddled and gathered blueberries. Twice they voted to stay out “another half-hour” simply because there was nothing better in their world. And later, when they had to pack for Boston, Tim was as sorry to leave as Billy and Cindy. Summer in the Monadnocks felt like unfinished business.

  Just before they left, Tim called Erica with a question—and with the hope of tightening their connection. Of course he had to go through Earl, due to the natural perversity of things. “It’s Tim. Looking for my sister.”

  “Wellsir, you are looking in the right place. But how’s my buddy Bill doing?”

  “He doesn’t wish to fish, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Sure he does.”

  “Oh, hey. Congratulations—” Tim arrested himself like Dr. Strangelove, one hand clutching his own voicebox. It would be unwise (idiotic?) to give away Peter’s find before checking with Dee Barnes.

  “Congratulations? On?”

  “Well. I just assumed you landed a ten-pound bass yesterday.”

  “Oh my yes, the fish were jumping.”

  “And the cotton was high?”

  Tim burned to smack him with it (Mr. and Mrs. Garth Fucking Gaylord!) and yet how much sweeter to smack him before the hardass judge. He could see Earl fancydancing around it—“True, your Honor, we did get hitched up ten days ago technically, but.…” It would be more like sixteen days by then. Still, if sixteen days made behavior good as gold, Tim could grab a piece of the action too. (Shucks, your Honor, sixteen days ago in Gideon Fucking Township I went straight, completely eradicating my flamingly perverted past.)

  Now, while Earl fetched him Erica, Tim labored to regain the spirit behind this overture. Yesterday (before he blew it) they had managed to bypass two decades of bad history and vault back to high school, or childhood. To a pre-sexual time when he and Ric were pals. There was a year or two (Jilly suddenly older and Ric still a kid, no tight Levi’s on her yet) when they had been closest.

  “What?” said Erica now, warily. Not close.

  “I’ll tell you what, very specifically. I have got to know what Sibby is short for.”

  “Why?”

  “I know, and I have always known, but I’m having this mental block, remembering, and it’s driving me crazy.”

  “Maybe you just are crazy,” she laughed. “What does it even matter?”

  “It doesn’t matter matter, it’s just frustrating.”

  “Sebastian. Sebastian Hall Hopkins the Third.”

  “Yes! Thank you! And he would say it exactly that way, when he picked up the telephone.”

  “He would for a fact. But when did you ever call him?”

  “Only every time Mom made me call. Looking for her bad girl.”

  “Looking for me at Sibby’s house? Fat chance.”

  “You were there, plenty of times.”

  “Only when they weren’t. Sebastian Hall Hopkins the Second, and Katy Mae. That’s what I called his mom—she was so damned southern, in her gingham dresses.”

  Erica felt a connection to the past, too, partly from the recent visit home and partly to do with seeing Tim. It
was a different past, however, and had little to do with her brother. Erica was fixed on the memory of Sibby and herself undressing one another at the tank that first time, the moon full and shockingly clear as they alternated swigs of pilfered wine with a piece-by-piece unveiling of the gifts they had brought one another. A memory of their flesh coming together on the old cotton quilt.…

  Tim’s mental snapshot showed Erica alone. She was sweet sixteen, her hair in curlers as she stood over the ironing board in her motheaten colordrained nightgown, ironing the beejesus out of those equally paperthin jeans.

  “Sebastian,” he said. “I can’t believe I forgot that.”

  Tim had not been half an hour at his desk on Monday when Peter Clippinger checked in with a fresh report. Weeks ago, Tim had indeed appeared on four separate broadcasts of a cable station’s news loop, pontificating about Neo-Nazis. Peter, who had seen the tape, did not believe Tim came on obnoxious (or particularly el flamo), but roughly fifty thousand Bostonians had watched the interview. One of them, no doubt, was his Joe Average.

  At the moment it was academic, since Average had not called in over a week. This was July and (as an average Joe from Boston) he might be vacationing on the Cape, too cheap to make his harassing calls long distance. It was also faintly possible that Tim had done him in, had taken the fun out of it, with his phony bravado. Time would tell.

  Karl Trickett had found something too, though his opening salvo was deflationary. “It’s not a huge deal,” he said. “And, by the way, the Maryland wedding is not a huge deal either.”

  “Come on. We’ve got them committing a crime.”

  “What crime? You can see it’s not exactly assault with a deadly weapon. They come in and testify they have been good-as-wed for ten years and now, given good reason, they go ahead and make it official.”

  “They did it to get Billy and Cindy.”

  “It seems so, yes. But having a child on the way probably accounts for half the weddings since the time of Christ.”

  “On the way, huh? It’s a big old lie.”

  “True, and as such it may help offset their potshots at you. Unless they have been filing taxes jointly, though, it’s not a crime.”

  “Fine. So I was happy and now I am discouraged.”

  “We all have mood swings. Let me tell you what I came up with. Vietnam. Earl was there and damned if he wasn’t twice decorated, for whatever reasons. That’s unknowable. He was also twice discharged with honor from the Army.”

  “Karl, I was already discouraged.”

  “But. He was jailed at Fort Jackson for cheating at cards. Spent forty-eight hours in the stockade.”

  “The calaboose!”

  “It’s good, and yet the guy is forty-six and he has this one slap on the wrist—”

  “The hoosegow! The jug!”

  “Talk about mood swings. Will you settle down?”

  “He lies about his marriage, he cheats at cards? We have uncovered a pattern of dishonesty. Who would believe he doesn’t lie about water in the basement of an old farmhouse?”

  “Two instances, twenty years apart. I’m not sure that makes a very impressive pattern.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “The judge won’t be. Who among us is without sin? What this says is that Earl, among us, comes pretty damned close.”

  “What’s the point of all this digging if everything we find is so useless?”

  “Well, we are turning things up, we may turn up something better. You are right that his business reputation is worth checking. Scamming the elderly? There could be a few complaints on file.”

  “Water in the basements of the elderly! I feel his guilt.”

  “It may really be a pattern before we’re done. Anyway, I’m going to poke around up there. Scout out the courthouse, do some homework on the judge.”

  “Are you serious? Dig up dirt on the judge?”

  “Not dirt, Tim. How he reacts; how he likes material presented. Lawyers do this. Right down to researching a judge’s taste in neckties and wearing one in that style.”

  “Again I say, justice is a beautiful thing to behold.”

  “Judges are human. And a lot of them are just old hack lawyers who happen to play golf with the old hack who ends up being Governor.”

  “Listen, Karl, this is beyond the call of friendship. I’ll have it on my conscience, if you go waste your time in New Hampshire.”

  “Don’t get me started, Tim.”

  This, of course, was an old dead horse. Tim’s proud self-sufficiency (ask nothing, give nothing) versus Karl’s lament at the distance it created between the two of them.

  “All right, Karl, but at least stay at the house. Eat the English muffins in the freezer. Don’t waste your money too.”

  “The house would be fine, except I’ve decided to treat myself. There’s a B&B with private hot tub, nice views. I made reservations.”

  “You’re going with a friend.”

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly? Karl, I’m happy to hear it. You don’t need to protect my feelings.”

  “I like to think I do. You know.”

  “The main order of the day,” said Attorney Dee Barnes, motioning Tim into his chair, “is getting a firm handle on the Opposition.”

  “Handle them firmly, by all means,” said Tim, who could be giddy at times in the wake of his crackup. The legal considerations were increasingly abstract to him (what “counted” and what did not count) but he had been curious to see how Barnes would treat him. Neutrally, was his early verdict: no recoil, no warmth.

  “The Opposition is just a term for the paperwork we need to prepare. It’s our memo—in response to their Petition.”

  “You said you had a chore for me?”

  “Yes, I’d like you to chase down an affidavit of some kind on the Maryland wedding. Proof. It will save me time if you take care of that.”

  “So we can use it.”

  “Let’s just say that if we do use it, I want to be damned certain it’s unimpeachable.”

  “Can I ask you a hypothetical question?”

  “Of course.”

  “What would happen if I went straight? Today. If from this day forth, I had no gay agenda. Was cured.”

  “Are you considering such a change? Are you capable of it?”

  There had been a dustup last night when Tim tried to defend the contents of his closet, which had turned up as an unpleasant surprise in the “Petition.” It was very well to argue that men wearing dresses and pearls violated no statute, Barnes instructed, but at a custody hearing it would better serve to identify those items as costumes from amateur theatricals, which had been kept because (as was the case) the children liked playing with them.

  Tim was to rid himself immediately of any clothing that could not fit this finely spun, benignly spun description (anything in the way of lingerie, anything even negligibly flavored by sexuality—Barnes could not have been more emphatic, or frosty) and furthermore to lose any photographs which might show him decked out in such frippery. “Frippery!” he began to protest her biased word-choice, but Barnes shut him down fiercely: “Just do as I say.”

  “It’s a hypothetical,” he said now. “I stay at home making soup and watching lots of television. Would that really make me a fitter custodian in the eyes of the law?”

  Barnes disapproved with a look of exasperation: their short hour did not allow for frivolous hypotheticals. She was aware, however, that her sympathy had lapsed. “He’s not a murderer, Dee,” her husband Leon had felt compelled to remind her, after overhearing the dustup.

  “It might,” she allowed, agreeing with Leon (in absentia) to cut Tim more slack.

  “Would it make me the winner?” he persisted.

  “Look, face it, what we don’t do defines us as much as what we do in this life.”

  “Then how come old Jimmy Carter got in hot water just for lusting in his heart? Remember that one?”

  “I do. But think how much hotter the wat
er had he gone and lusted after a pretty young campaign worker in the flesh.”

  “So it’s not morality we’re talking about, it’s timidity.”

  Sympathy lapsed anew, and this time her withering glance went beyond disapproval to outright dismissal. What tripped her was Tim’s frivolity, his way of constantly shifting the crisis into games and jokes. And while this could be attributed to nerves, it could also be the case that the salesman and the little sister would make better custodians.

  “The subtext of this proceeding,” she said, electing to simply ignore his provocations, “is shaping a new life for the boy and the girl. A solid framework: home, school, friendships, activities.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You say absolutely, yet you haven’t been able to say where you would raise them. If you can’t tell me, how will you tell a judge next week?”

  “By deciding.”

  “Look, Tim, I don’t doubt you’re laughing because this makes you feel uncomfortable. But you really do have to know the answer.”

  “I’ll know it. Five weeks until school opens? A person ought to know where he’ll be living in five weeks.”

  “The court will certainly concur.”

  “I’ve thought of changing jobs,” he said, more soberly, and it was true he had. Tim thought a great deal about changing jobs. He tossed it out now, however, in an effort to regain Barnes’ approval. It hurt him that she had not yet processed the tough parts, not emerged from the fire, but it hurt even more to have lost her allegiance.

  “That may or may not work for you, personally. But as a declaration, all it does is bring you before the court essentially unemployed.”

  “It’s slim pickings up there. Part-time telemarketers. Fork-lift operator at $8.65 an hour. The only one that appealed to me was night custodian at the middle school.”

  “Nights,” she reminded him with a subarctic chill, “you are at home with the children.”