“The Beatles used to call their girlfriends ‘birds,’ ” Frank said. “I remember John Lennon introducing his girlfriend as ‘me bird.’ ”
“Me bird …”
“Yes.”
“Frank, what in the fuck are you talking about?”
“You said you studied birds for your trip and ended up kind of a bird yourself.”
“Oh, I get it. I don’t really remember the sixties.”
It was warm and dark when they left the restaurant. It seemed easy, not needing a decision, to walk into the neighborhoods that spread to the north behind Main Street. Between streets there would be an unpaved road that divided the backs of two rows of houses, an alley where people had their garbage cans, rowboats, woodpiles, and where their windows looked out unguarded onto this cheerful lack of arrangement. Frank heard the sound of a stringed instrument and was drawn toward it as they walked. He saw the window and crept to its light, gesturing to Lucy to follow. From a few feet, he gripped Lucy’s arm and felt safe looking in. A man in a white undershirt was playing a cello, drops of sweat on his forehead as he stared grimly at the music stand. Next to him, in a plastic bassinet, a baby watched its own waving fists. It was an empty room with a wooden floor, and for furniture only the chair the musician sat on. Frank couldn’t make out the source of light and there wasn’t a shadow anywhere.
When they got back to the alley, Lucy said, “That scared me.”
Frank gave her a comradely squeeze to reassure her. “An original scene, wouldn’t you say?”
They walked a short distance into a shadow and began to kiss. They kissed for a while and he slid her arm down until her hand was between his legs. He held her buttocks from behind and worked her dress up until he could get his hands into her panties. The globes of flesh felt cool. He stood back from her so that he could get his hand in front and his fingers inside. She stood in the alley and moaned, moving against his hand as it grew slippery.
He led her into a garage. There was an old Buick parked inside and he opened its back door. God, it was just like his own Buick. Lucy hesitated, then sat on the end of the back seat, then slid back. He took his pants down and his cock was straight out into the air as he reached inside to lift her foot over the front seat. She undid her blouse and pulled it apart so her breasts stood up white in the faint light. She bit the side of her hand and watched him as he entered. She lost caution and tried to come before he did. Big tendons on the inside of her thighs stuck into his hips and her feet were on the roof. He wanted to make sounds as he felt the spurts loosening into her but kept quiet. “I’ll turn over if you stay hard,” she said. He said “Okay” experimentally, and stood outside the car where he could make out the pale curve of her rear. He felt crazy bafflement as phrases went through his mind, like “travel agent” and “Old World charm.” So, that part of it didn’t work out.
Frank regretted that Lucy had such a time getting out of the car gracefully, the white awkwardness of her buttocks emerging from the door, her right foot pedaling toward the ground. Unable to pull up his pants because he was standing on his own cuffs, Frank did little better. A couple of creeps, he thought.
They went on down the alley to where it opened up into a small park. Lucy was silently weeping. He could reach up in the dark and feel the cold, drizzling tears. There was not one thing he could say or had any right to say. Tears began to pour from his own eyes. What was this? He took Lucy into his arms in such a way that she could feel these tears of his, until a kind of easy solitude let them laugh rueful snot bubbles from their noses. Pretty soon they were laughing. At first they tried to laugh quietly. Then Frank tried loud laughter. So did Lucy. They began to guffaw like two people in an opera. It was literally, “HA, HA, HA!” They were bellowing. They were having fun at last.
Frank walked Lucy to her car. It was parked a block behind Main Street and he could read the names of the old businesses: grocers, hardware merchants, even a blacksmith. The stores in front had long since become something else: florists, clothiers, boutiques, office supplies.
“What is this?” he asked her.
“A Toyota Corolla.”
“Is it any good?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. Well, Frank —”
“Lucy.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.”
“Nice big laugh there at the end.”
“You can say that again,” said Frank.
“Nice big laugh there at the end.”
“Good, Lucy.”
“I’ll see you at the office.”
“See you at the office.”
28
Frank liked to think he occupied some middle ground between his father and his grandfather. His father had been an Eagle Scout and a good scholar. He had also had a fanatical desire to better himself financially, a personal pride in the score, not unlike the athlete bent on achieving a four-minute mile, a thousand-yard season. Frank’s grandfather was a dour farmer who rarely said much but seemed to take in everything with his great stern eyes. When Frank’s father had first made money to any degree, he took Frank, then nine years old, and his father to the country club for dinner. He made everyone eat a lobster. He drank far too much and stuffed crumpled bills into the waitress’s hand. Frank’s grandfather watched this in silence, then finally boomed out over the lobster shells, “If you can’t drink any better than that, Bill, you had better not drink at all.”
The whole country club heard it. Frank saw his father’s sudden, startling vulnerability, saw both his face and his pride fall at one time and understood the astonishing power of deflation fathers have over their sons. In a way, it made Frank happy not to have a son, on the slim chance he could ever accidentally use this terrible weapon, this atom bomb. He was having the opposite problem with his daughter: he daren’t say a word against the one with the nose ring for fear of receiving a good lecture. Or the head of the citizens’ group, who wished to save Montana for Montanans. He could only learn to feel something was missing from his life, not having a nose ring of his own, a butterfly tattooed on his butt.
On Monday he did not go to work at all. This had almost never happened before. And instead of asking Eileen to hold the fort, he called early in the morning and told her to take the day off too.
She was delighted and said she would go to Helena to watch minor league baseball. “Thank you, Mr. Copenhaver. I’ll be there bright and early tomorrow morning.”
“As you wish, Eileen.”
“Can I ask where you’re going?”
“I’m looking for a mental health professional within comfortable driving distance.”
There was a long pause and then Eileen said in beefy, almost British tones, “I’m going to take a chance here, Mr. Copenhaver, and assume that you are serious. I’m going to tell you that I think that that is a very good idea. I hope you realize that it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”