“It better be,” says Maggie, laughing uneasily. She wonders who has been saying such things. To change the subject, she asks, “You really can’t imagine staying up here?”
“Not if Dimitri gets his job back.” Rhea looks at Maggie intently. “You knew he was fired, right?”
Maggie shakes her head. Fletcher only told her that Dimitri was in between things.
“Well, it wasn’t a surprise,” says Rhea. In a lower voice, she adds, “Did you know he got into speed?”
Maggie says she didn’t.
“He had me trying it, even,” says Rhea. “He had me trying a lot of things.” She glances back at the boys, whose attention seems focused on some unseen aquatic phenomenon. “I figured out pretty fast I wasn’t into that stuff, but Dimitri had some people in his life who were bad influences.”
“The dragon lady!” exclaims Judd, looking up at her. For a moment Rhea appears horrified. Then she gives a sigh.
“The dragon lady,” she agrees. Leaning toward Maggie, she says, “One night he came home so strung out he couldn’t remember the kids’ names. I told him that was it, no more drugs, no girls, or else. So he went cold turkey, tried Zen, spent three weeks in a field near Hartford building a geodesic dome. Fine, I thought, whatever works. But in June I spotted the tracks on his arms, and a few days later so did his boss.”
It’s Maggie’s turn to glance at Judd and Jeffrey.
“Oh, I don’t care if they hear it,” says Rhea. “They need to know their father isn’t the Almighty.”
“Are things better up here, at least?” Maggie asks, and Rhea’s overtaken by a look of gloom.
“I wanted them to be. We’ll see. He goes out a lot.” Seeing Maggie’s puzzlement, she adds, “Not in the car, just walking. He says he’s looking for the cat.”
As if she’s just remembered something, she stands and strides over to the tub, picks up a wet washcloth, and begins to wipe at Jeffrey’s neck.
“It’s cold!” he shouts, enraged and ducking. “I don’t like it!” Rhea dips the cloth into the bath, wrings it out, and reapplies it.
“It’s no fun for me either,” she mutters, scrubbing hard. In a brighter tone, she says to Maggie, “I hope you won’t mind me saying something.”
“No, of course not,” Maggie replies, still trying to wrap her brain around what Rhea has already told her.
“The problem with Fletcher,” says Rhea, “is he’s too hard-headed.”
Suddenly Maggie realizes she does mind. She wants to say as much, but Rhea doesn’t give her the chance.
“Fletcher never listens at meetings, he only talks. All that stuff about the bourgeois machinery and the repressive state apparatus—the rest of us hashed that out years ago. We were going to teach-ins when Fletcher was on his parents’ yacht every weekend. Now we’ve moved on. Hold still, I’m almost finished,” she instructs Judd. To Maggie, she says, “I know he’s trying to show his father he can run a business up here, but he’s too uptight. You know what I mean?” Maggie nods absently and Rhea smiles. “Of course you do. You’re a good listener. Fletcher could take a page from your book.”
Maggie’s still kneeling on the floor. She remains silent long enough that Rhea glances over at her.
“Rhea, I want to be your friend,” says Maggie. “If you have something to say about Fletcher, though—”
“What? I can’t hear you.” Rhea sets to work smoothing down a cockscomb of hair on Jeffrey’s head.
“I said, if you want to complain about Fletcher, you should talk with him yourself.”
As soon as Maggie speaks the words, she gathers the camera and audio recorder, then stands to go, already regretting what she’s said. But as she turns to apologize, she discovers that Rhea’s attention is fixed on the tub. Judd and Jeffrey are flexing non-existent muscles for their mother, and exuberantly she praises their physiques. When Maggie says softly that she’ll see them later, Rhea waves without even turning around.
That night, Fletcher’s mouth refuses to move in time with his voice. “Punch me,” he says a second before his lips purse. Sitting at the card table in the playroom, Maggie rewinds the film on the editing machine and cues the audiotape again. Synchronizing the sound with the images is the most difficult part. There’s equipment that can do it more efficiently, but already she feels guilty enough about the expense of all the cartridges. “Punch me,” says Fletcher, half a second too late. She rewinds once more. “Punch me,” he says. He has his shirt off and the lighting’s good enough for her to see his abdominal muscles tighten perceptibly as Pauline wallops him in the gut. It’s a solid swing, producing a short, insuppressible grunt, but one that comes too soon, just before the little fist makes contact.
“Three-thirty,” says a voice not on the soundtrack. “You should be in bed.”
Turning from the editor, Maggie sees Wale standing by the door. Against the backdrop of the lit hall, he looks naked. Then her eyes discern the white of his underwear, and she glances away. By day she’s seen him in swimsuits, but still, he must know he’s embarrassing her.
“I’ll go to bed soon,” she says. “I just want to finish this.” He doesn’t leave as she hopes, though. “Punch me,” says Fletcher on the audiotape and viewer, finally at the same time.
“You ever think your man tries too hard?” says Wale. He has come up behind her, and he bends over her shoulder to look more closely at the viewer. “You know, to compensate for all his father’s dough.” Hot air rolls along Maggie’s neck, carrying the scent of skin and sweat.
“Fletcher’s spending that dough on you and me and this place,” she says.
Wale only laughs. “Right on, defend the guy. I know you’ve got your ideas about him.” He pauses, giving her room to retaliate, but she holds back, so he adds, “Hell, you’re only up here because he is.”
She can’t help herself. “That’s bullshit.”
“You’ve got quite a mouth,” he murmurs into her ear.
She wrenches her chair around to face him, but having completed this manoeuvre, she finds her eyes level with his underwear, so she stands and folds her arms across her nightgown.
“Fletcher’s not the only one committed to this place,” she says. “Coming up here was my idea.” And then, lest he should hear some regret in this admission, she adds, “I was right, too.”
“You’re a real visionary, Auntie Maggs.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“What, a visionary?”
“No—Auntie Maggs.” It’s too late in the night for arguments. This must be payback for filming him; he’s out to lay her open in turn. Well, she won’t have it.
“You really want to live like this?” he asks. “With all the rich kids chasing after satori?”
“If you think they’re such phonies, why are you here with them?”
“Sometimes I wonder the same thing.” There’s a hardness in his voice. She studies his face to see if he’s kidding, then waves him away.
“I almost believe you. The way you treat Pauline—like you couldn’t care less.”
“Pauline,” he replies in a flat voice, “owes her life to a broken rubber.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.” Yet immediately she’s sure it’s the truth.
He moves into the circle of light from the lamp beside her, a shadow deepening across one side of his face even as the other gains texture and detail.
“Let me tell you something I’ve learned about myself,” he says. “The heart of me is a lump of selfishness. Concern for other people is just a ribbon tied around it. I wish it were otherwise, Maggie, but at the core I’m this piece of petrified shit. It’s a fact that has kept me alive, at least, and it never goes away. It’ll stick around longer than this place.”