Part 26 (1/2)

”Nothing,” I tell him. ”I just want to look for a second.”

From where I've stopped we can see our old brown house raising its chimney among a riot of junipers. Three dormered windows catch the light that will soon slip away behind the mountains, and the ivy that has grown unchecked for decades flutters, the leaves showing their silver undersides. The house has stood for more than a century without giving in to the landscape. No vines have snaked their way through the masonry, no underground lake has increased its boundaries by seeping into the foundation. Although I usually sing it to tease Clare, now I sing the Woodstock song to Jonathan, with a half-serious att.i.tude that is all the pleasanter for being only half. ”We are stardust, we are golden, and we've got to get ourselves back to the garden.” He listens to a few bars, and joins in.

At dinner, we talk about the restaurant and the baby. Lately our lives are devoted to the actual-we worry over Rebecca's cough and the delivery of our used-but-refurbished walk-in refrigerator. I am beginning to understand the true difference between youth and age. Young people have time to make plans and think of new ideas. Older people need their whole energy to keep up with what's already been set in motion.

”I don't like Dr. Gla.s.s,” Clare says. She is sitting beside Rebecca's high chair, spooning vanilla pudding into Rebecca's mouth. Between each bite Rebecca looks suspiciously at the spoon, double-checking the contents. She has inherited my appet.i.te but has also inherited Clare's skepticism. She is both hungry and watchful.

”Why not?” I ask.

”Well, he's a hippie hippie . And he can't be more than thirty-five. I'd just rather take Rebecca to an old fart. You know, somebody in sensible shoes who got your mother and all her sisters and brothers through things like smallpox and polio when they were kids. When Gla.s.s tells me not to worry about these coughing fits I keep thinking, 'I'm being told this by a man in Birkenstocks.'” . And he can't be more than thirty-five. I'd just rather take Rebecca to an old fart. You know, somebody in sensible shoes who got your mother and all her sisters and brothers through things like smallpox and polio when they were kids. When Gla.s.s tells me not to worry about these coughing fits I keep thinking, 'I'm being told this by a man in Birkenstocks.'”

”I agree,” Jonathan says. ”Gla.s.s does Tai Chi. I'd rather find somebody who plays golf.”

”Gla.s.s seems okay to me,” I say. ”I mean, I like him. You can talk to him.”

Jonathan says, ”I suppose what it really gets down to is, you want your baby's doctor to be some sort of fatherly type. You know? Someone who seems unaffected by trends.”

”Amen,” Clare says. ”Tomorrow I'm going out looking for a new pediatrician.”

”I really think Gla.s.s is fine,” I say.

Clare holds a spoonful of pudding an inch from Rebecca's open mouth. ”I want to try someone else,” she says. ”I'm nervous about Gla.s.s, I think he's too easygoing. Okay?”

”Well. Okay,” I say.

”Okay.” She slips the spoon into Rebecca's mouth with smooth, practiced accuracy. Clare is turning herself into the Mom character from our Henderson days. We don't talk about the Hendersons anymore, maybe because the difference between our actual lives and their hypothetical ones has shrunk below the measuring point.

Later, after we've put Rebecca to bed, we watch television together. It's what there is to do at night, with a baby, in the country. We lie on the queen-size bed, surrounded by corn chips and beer and Diet c.o.ke. The upstairs bedrooms are snug and dark. Their ceilings follow the curve of the roof. The last owners-the ones who did the downstairs in eagle wallpaper and Spanish-style cabinetry-must have run out of money at the stairwell. Up here the shabbiness has more patina. The wallpaper in this room swarms with faded carnivorous-looking flowers, and the venetian blinds dangle from frayed cords the color of strong tea. Clare flips around the channels. We have cable here, a powerful magnet that sucks down each invisible impulse pa.s.sing overhead. Along with the normal stations we get strip shows from New York, Mexican soap operas, j.a.panese women gleefully demonstrating inventions so complex that only other inventions can fully appreciate them. Occasionally we tune in a hesitant, snowy channel that is almost frightening-it looks like men and women walking, just walking, through an empty field. It could be a transmission we've picked up by mistake, something from a world we aren't meant to see.

”A hundred and twenty stations and there's still nothing to watch,” Clare says.

”Nothing on TV tonight, let's f.u.c.k,” Jonathan says.

Clare looks at him with her brows arched and her eyes dark. ”You two f.u.c.k,” she says.

Jonathan jumps on her and simulates frantic, rabbit-like copulation. ”Oh baby oh baby oh baby,” he moans.

”Off,” she says. ”Get off me. Really. Go jump on Bobby.”

”Ooh baby,” Jonathan says.

”Bobby, make him stop,” she says.

I shrug, powerless. ”I'll scream,” she says. ”I'll call the police.”

”And tell them what?” Jonathan asks.

”That I'm being held prisoner in this house by two men. That they lured me here for purposes of breeding, and force me to live in a perpetual 1969.”

”You've done the breeding,” Jonathan says. ”If that were your only purpose here, we'd be through with you by now.”

”The baby still needs milk, doesn't she?” Clare says. ”And the house needs a momma. Doesn't it?”

Jonathan pauses a moment, considering. ”Naw,” he says. ”You're free to go.” He rolls off of her and picks up the remote-control box. ”Let's see if there's anything good coming in from Jupiter tonight.”

”If I go,” Clare says, ”I'm taking the kid.”

”Oh no you're not,” he answers. Then he remembers to adjust his voice. ”She's everybody's,” he says more gently.

Clare leans back, c.o.c.ks her head in my direction. ”Bobby?”

”Uh-huh?”

”I'd like to know the secret of your imperturbable calm. Here we are in the middle of a highly peculiar and unorthodox arrangement, in a house that could fall down around us at any moment, Jonathan and I are bickering over possession of my child-”

”Our child,” Jonathan says. ”Really, Clare, you've got to stop with this child,” Jonathan says. ”Really, Clare, you've got to stop with this yours yours business.” business.”

”Over possession of our baby,” she says, ”and you just sit here like Dagwood b.u.mstead. Sometimes I think you're you're what's coming in from Jupiter.” what's coming in from Jupiter.”

”I guess I am,” I say. ”I mean, none of this seems all that strange to me.”

She looks up at the ceiling, her eyes dilated to black disks. ”I should have known,” she says. ”I should have figured it out the first moment I saw you, with blow-dried hair and Calvin Klein jeans. And then you could switch practically overnight to East Village hip. It's so funny. It turns out Jonathan and I are the conservative ones. We're the ones who need to look in the mirror and know what we're going to see from day to day. You can just do anything, can't you?”

”No,” I tell her. ”I can't just do anything.”

”Name me something. Name something you wouldn't do.”

”Um, well, I wouldn't be alone. I haven't been, you know, by myself since I was a kid.”

”That's it,” she says. ”You're a company man, aren't you? You mirror everybody's desires. Oh, why didn't I think of this before? When you lived with Jonathan's parents you were a nice Ohio boy, when you lived in the East Village you were cool, and now that we live in the country you're this sweet sort of hippie-dad figure. You just give people whatever they want. Don't you?”

”I don't know,” I say.

There are things I can't tell her, things I wouldn't know how to say. I am part of the living and part of the dead. I am living for more people than just myself.

”Oh, Clare,” Jonathan says from the foot of the bed. ”What are you all of a sudden, some sort of Nancy Drew of the psyche? Do you really think you can sum Bobby up in a sentence like that?”

”You go sentence by sentence in this life,” she says.

I reach over and stroke Clare's hair. I try to kiss her troubled lips.

”Boys, boys,” she says, pulling away from my kiss. ”What a perverse crew we are. What a deeply weird bunch.”

”We're really, you know, not much weirder than any family,” I say. ”At least we love each other. Didn't you say that first?”

”Maybe I did. About a thousand years ago.”

I look into her scared, aging face. I think I know what frightens Clare-a certain ability to invent our own futures has been lost. Now we are following a plan that got made in a haphazard way along a highway in Pennsylvania. Now the good things are the predictable ones, and surprises mean bad news.