“Diarrhea,” Valerie says.
The little girl stares imperturbably at the cars passing on the street, as if this were just one more thing that has happened in her life.
“If you throw any more wild parties for your artist friends, I’m going to fight for custody,” he announces with some degree of pleasure.
Pamela, stunned, lifts her glass of Riesling. “I don’t think we should use the children to spy on each other.”
“Who’s spying. Toby felt bad and he let it out, that’s all.”
“So what are you telling me, Sam? I can’t have people over?”
“I’m not in a position to tell you — ”
“You’re certainly not.”
“But I won’t have the children exposed to anything before they’re ready.”
“Unfit mother, is that it?”
“It’s the crowd you’re in with. Painters with their flies open — ”
“Don’t say another word, Sam. If you’ve got some horrible stereotyped image of artists, that’s your problem, not mine. You don’t know my friends. It’s pretty damned impertinent of you to pass judgment.”
“I know what Toby told me.”
“He’s a child. He doesn’t understand — ”
“That’s my point.” He gets up, leaving money for the bill.
“Don’t walk out on me, Sam. This is not some goddamn movie where you can pull a stunt like that.”
“Don’t raise your voice to me.”
“Here, take your money,” she says, “I can pay for my own.”
Elgin Creek is at its deepest in the area that Carter wants mapped. No one knows who owns the land. The county’s contesting the claims of three families.
Adams puts his work aside for the afternoon, drives out to Deerbridge Road. He parks the car on a flat grassy spot next to a dirt path, gets out, slides down a brambly slope to the creek. Mimosa fuzz circles slowly in the air. He can hear the water but cannot see it through the bushy weeds. Finally he clears a path to the bank. The creek is green. Low. Swirling wild-flowers and pebbles. Adams slaps mosquitoes from his neck, dabs his face with a handkerchief.
Absurd to worry about water control here.
A broken bottle of ink on the floor beneath his drafting table.
Deidre stands in the kitchen doorway.
“What happened?” he asks.
“It broke.”
“I can see that. How?”
“I don’t know.”
For the first time in years he feels like spanking his child. “Did you break it?” he says.
“No.”
Her first direct answer.
“Did Toby break it?”
She withdraws into the kitchen. Toby is sitting at the table, reading the morning paper. “There’s an article on Mom’s show.”
“Did you break my bottle of ink?”
Toby looks at Deidre.
“I want you to stop using Deidre as a shield.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I don’t care who broke the ink. But if you’ve got your sister covering for you, I’m going to be very upset. Now, what’s it going to be?”
Toby stares at the paper.
“Grown-ups admit their mistakes.”
“Oh, yeah? Toby stands behind his chair. “Do you admit you made a mistake when you let Mom leave?”
“I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” Adams says. He turns to Deidre. “Did he tell you to lie for him?”
She glances at Toby.
“It’s all right, honey. You can tell me.”
She lifts her fingers to her lips. “He told me never get him in trouble.”
“Do you know how to make toast and eggs,” he asks. She nods. “All right, start the toast and eggs while I have a talk with your brother. I’ll be in to help you in a minute.” He leads Toby to the back porch. A cool spring morning. A wisp of fog in the air.
“I’m disappointed in you, Toby.”
“I don’t want to hear this shit.”
“Well, you’re going to. What bothers me is the way you treat your sister. If you want to hate your mother and me, that’s fine. We’re big people, we can take it. But you’re bigger and stronger than Deidre, you know? I love you both, but so help me, Toby, if you frighten her or intimidate her in any way, you’re going to wish you had a different father. Do you understand?”
Toby nods, his face bright red.
“Now let’s eat some breakfast.”
Adams tells Pamela he’s going to stop paying for Toby’s visits to the doctor. “But he’s getting better.”
“He’s getting subtler. He’ll outgrow this phase or he won’t, but the doctor’s not going to make a bit of difference.”
“Sam, I don’t know how to handle him.”
“Neither do I. It’s time we learned.”
Rosa’s sitting in the cemetery beneath a cotton-wood tree. As Adams walks by on his way home from the library, she offers him an egg salad sandwich.
“Do you often picnic in the graveyard,” he asks.
“Why not? It’s pleasant, quiet. I’ve also got some Ruffles and a can of Tab.”
He takes some potato chips.
“What’d you think about the other night?”
“It was interesting. I don’t believe in past lives, though.”
“The experience is what’s important. Do you know Greek plays? Remember the Oracle at Delphi? The Greeks really believed she had divine power. Then some scholar comes along and says, ‘Nah, it was a crazy old woman inhaling sulfur fumes from a crack in the earth.’ The fumes changed her voice, see, so it sounded like some other being had taken hold of her. And she was eating hallucinogens from the plants, which made her sound mystical. I say, what the hell’s the difference? The experience is the same.”
“There’s a big difference,” Adams says. “It’s important to know where you stand.”
“Ahhh.” Rosa waves her hand. “How’re your kids?”
“Fine. They really enjoyed having their fortunes told.”
“Your little boy’s got a lot of hostility, you know?” “Yes.”
“Was he born in a leap year?”
Adams is astonished.
“Saw it right away. He’s not at home with himself. He tries to keep up but he’s like a slow watch. His sense of timing’s been off from the start. He wants to be older than he is, and it crushes him that he’s so far behind.”
“I wish it were as simple as that.”
“Believe me.”
“Maybe I do.”
“More chips?”
“No thanks.”
“Well, drop by sometime. The dead don’t say all that much.”
Jordan is back at work, conciliatory, cheerful, refreshed. He insists on treating Adams to lunch. Jill comes along. She was questioned this morning about the missing money, as was Adams a week earlier. Routine, the accountant says, we’re checking everybody. Jordan forgets his wallet and Adams ends up spending forty-three dollars.
Carter tells him, “Things’ll calm down once this latest deal goes through. Ever been to Greenland?”
“No.”
“I don’t know if we can swing it, but Comtex has some interests up there. Word has it they’re dissatisfied with the base maps Tobin and Muldrow have given them. Want their own, firsthand. Would you like me to check into it for you?”
“Wonderful, yes.”
Adams waiting for the kids. Pamela reading into a tape recorder (“I have to prepare a lecture on art and politics for this little gallery downtown”) a passage from Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Colour: “‘White water is inconceivable.’ That means we cannot describe (e.g. paint) how something white and clear would look, and that means: we don’t know what description, portrayal these words demand of us.”