David Flusfeder - The Pagan House

‘We thought we were going to die,’ Edgar said.

Warren’s eyebrows rose. ‘Oh?’

‘The plane went into a dive and kept going and it looked like we were going to crash and everyone thought we were going to die. The big plane. Jumbo jet. The one we came from London on.’

‘Wow. A near-death experience. That’s the sort of thing that changes a person,’ said Warren.

‘Yes. I think so too,’ said Edgar.

Warren had kind eyes. He was very well shaved and his skin was smooth. He drove carefully, without show. ‘We’re coming off the thruway now,’ he said. ‘That was the interstate. We’re on three sixty-five now. Not far to go.’

‘What’s that?’

Edgar pointed to what looked like an artwork from one of Jeffrey’s magazines. By the side of the road, surrounding a dark wooden shack, four large men in shorts and T-shirts sat impassively on garden chairs with guns on their laps.

‘That’s the bingo hall. It’s run by the Onyatakas, the local Indian tribe. It’s pretty small-potatoes stuff, cleaners going there to gamble their money, welfare checks. It’s a sad state of affairs. They want to build a casino but no one thinks the Governor will let them.’

‘Does my dad know about that?’

‘I don’t know, Eddie. I couldn’t say.’

‘Is he at the house?’

‘Uh, not yet, I think he might have been delayed a couple of days, but I’m sure you’ll enjoy your time with us.’

Monica stirred and yawned and stretched. Her leather jacket that she had been using as a pillow creaked. ‘God, I needed that sleep. Where are we?’

‘We’ve just come off the interstate.’

‘There’s a bingo hall. It’s run by Indians. They carry guns,’ Edgar said.

‘You’re not meant to call them Indians. Isn’t it First Nation or Native Americans or something?’ said his mother.

‘This tribe calls itself Indians so it’s okay,’ Warren said, and winked to Edgar. ‘We’re on the road to Onyataka.’

They drove through small towns, past fire stations and sports fields and boxy suburbs where everything was green and white and red, as if people here lived in a perpetual Christmas.

‘Where are you from, Warren?’ asked Mon.

‘I’m from Ireland, more or less Dublin but not quite. But people out here, I might as well be from South Africa or Australia or the moon.’

‘We weren’t actually expecting to be met by anyone.’ In her habitual arrogance she had awarded herself the right to speak for Edgar. How could someone so supposedly close to him not see the change in him? ‘Are you a neighbour of Fay’s?’

‘No actually, I live there. With her. In the house.’

‘Oh?’ said Mon in her suspicious tone, her voice going thin and accusing. Edgar hoped Warren hadn’t noticed the rudeness.

‘Has she not said? I’ve been there some time. Help out a bit you know. Muck in. She’s a lovely lady.’

‘Yes. She is.’

‘And I know how fond she is of you. Of both of you,’ he added.

Mon did not like to be flattered. Edgar knew this, Warren clearly did not. They drove on in silence, into the town of Onyataka ( Onyataka welcomes careful drivers! ), and Edgar started to pay attention. This was a bigger place than he had been expecting, there were theaters here and a cinema, the expected fire station, the unexpected sex shop; a drunk stumbled into a boarded-up store window but kept his beer can steady throughout in its brown-paper bag, and a pet shop, a video store, and— Onyataka hopes you come back soon! —they were out of town again.

‘I thought …’ Edgar said.

‘What’s that, Eddie?’

‘That we were, that my grandmother, lived in Onyataka.’

‘It’s the nearest town, for postal purposes that’s where we are, but actually we live a few miles along, in Vail. The towns of Creek and Vail. You’ll see in a few minutes.’

Creek, which announced itself to be the smallest city in New York State, welcomed careful drivers no less than Onyataka. It was met by Edgar through half-closed eyes. This was not how he had intended to arrive, sleepily unalert; he forced himself to notice things—a restaurant, a factory, a pizza parlour, a gas station, an office-supplies store, white wooden houses whose front gardens, or yards , he supposed, were open to the pavement where bicycles lay down—

‘There’s a farmer’s market out back there on Thursdays,’ said Warren.

‘That’s good,’ said Mon.

—a video store was neighbour to a doctor’s office and a bookshop, none of which looked open; an impeccably healthy gang of teenagers in jeans and grey sweatshirts lounged in a corner of a baseball field.

‘You’ll like it here, Eddie. There’s lots of life. Kids and trees and parks and so forth. Do you play soccer?’

‘Not really.’

‘Of course he does,’ Mon said. ‘God, it’s so long since I’ve been here and the place hasn’t changed a bit. Time just stands still, doesn’t it? Isn’t that the Company headquarters? That’s where your grandfather worked.’

They passed an ornate, low-slung stone building topped by turrets, which looked as if the architect hadn’t been able to decide whether to build a castle or a bungalow so had invented some unworkable compromise between the two.

‘Did my dad work there as well?’

Mon didn’t say anything. She scoffed silently, as she usually did when her ex-husband was mentioned in the same sentence as money or work.

‘I don’t know, Eddie. He might have had a holiday job there when he was young. Most everybody here has worked for the company at some time. It’s a company town.’

‘Company town,’ Mon repeated, in a sort of wistful voice, and Edgar could tell she had been smitten with the same sour nostalgia or sentimentality that connected to those moments in London when she stayed up late looking at old photographs, playing records and drinking bourbon.

‘It’s got a very interesting history, the company. Creek was where the workers lived, the managers lived in Vail. It all grew out of the Onyataka Association. Nineteenth century. But you must know all about it, Monica, through Mike, Perfectionism, free love, Utopia.’

‘Mike didn’t go in for history tours. And I don’t think Perfectionism would ever have been one of his interests.’

Warren laughed politely to indicate that he had noticed a joke had been made.

‘And here we are. Here’s the house now.’

‘I’ve always liked it. Look, Edward.’

Edgar looked. He too liked the house, very much. It could be drawn very simply, as two intersecting triangles with a horizontal line at the top for the roof. Blue-painted wood with white shutters and weird little carved heads whenever a pipe went into or popped out of the wall, weathervane and TV aerial and a chimney behind each of the gables, it accorded to his idea of what a house should look like. It was the house he had tried to draw when he was a young child. It was the house he furnished when they played their game.

Warren opened the screen door for them. The front door had been left hospitably ajar. They walked along the hallway, past a curving staircase, black and white photographs on green-papered walls, to the kitchen, where an old lady was in the unsteady process of rising from a chair.

‘Fay!’

His grandmother, whom Mon confused with a kiss on both her cheeks, was grandmotherly small and white-haired, in a blue print dress.

‘If I remember you, Monica, you’d like a cup of tea after your trip.’

Her voice was clear and youthful, her face a rivery marvel of lines, which shifted and twisted and showed new tributaries when Mon said how well Fay was looking. Her eyes were blue, like Edgar’s.

Edgar made up for the confusion his mother had wrought with a candid smile and an English gentleman’s firm handshake.