Jonathan Dee - Palladio

There wasn’t a great deal of work to do just then. One Friday, with Osbourne’s permission, John left early and drove down to Hilton Head to spend a weekend with his parents. It was September, and the air smelled like cherries as he drove with the top down in the darkness toward his mother and stepfather’s development. He got lost, briefly, inside the main gates, before finding the right condo; he had been there only two or three times before. The last time had been with Rebecca. When he walked in the unlocked door he saw his stepfather, Buzz, in pajamas and bathrobe, reading in a chair inside a circle of lamplight. Buzz smiled and closed his book. “Your mother couldn’t wait up,” he said. He hovered, beneficently, until John had his bag moved into the guest bedroom; then he announced he was going up to bed himself.

After Buzz was gone and his door closed, John reemerged from the guest bedroom and paced through the house in the darkness. The place had been redecorated again; there was nothing in view now that he recognized from his childhood home. Nothing, even, from the post-Buzz years; so it didn’t have to do with considerations of that sort, an effort not to haunt her new husband with relics from the life of the first one. Perhaps even in their seventies they wanted to feel that everything was before them — they didn’t feel comforted, but rather threatened, by objects which reminded them of all the years that now loomed behind them. It all seemed worth sorting out to John only because of the nagging sense of failure he had begun to feel every time he entered his own apartment back in Charlottesville. The rented room, the haphazard furniture, the books still in boxes, the neighbors who weren’t really neighbors. It didn’t seem to him the way a man now in his thirties ought to be living — no connection to anybody, no sense of personal history.

Not much else happened of note on his weekend visit. In the morning his mother made biscuits with sausage gravy, just as she used to do on weekends when he was a teenager, and then while he ate she talked to Buzz across the table about how much she missed Rebecca, what a wonderful girl she was, would it be too awkward now if she tried to stay in touch. John played a ritual round of golf with Buzz and two of his friends — he never touched a golf club except on these visits home, a fact which never seemed to register with Buzz — and John did not begrudge the three old men their undisguised pleasure as a boy their sons’ age struggled to keep up with them in this pseudo-physical contest.

Back at his apartment a message from Elaine warned him of a meeting Osbourne had called for first thing Monday morning. “New client,” Mal said, as a few of them were still finding their seats. “This one is national. Four TV spots, three thirties and a sixty, and two print campaigns, one one-page and one for an eight-page insert.”

He sat and stared at them for a minute as they drank their coffee.

“That’s it,” he said finally. “Meeting’s over. Go, get to work.”

They looked at one another. “Who’s the client?” Elaine said.

Osbourne scratched his chin. “As you know,” he said, “in the end I wasn’t entirely thrilled with the First National campaign. I’ve been spending a lot of time these past weeks thinking about why that is. I believe the answer is that as talented as all of you are, certain ideas are so deeply ingrained in you that it’s going to take some sort of shock to root them out. I’m not just talking to those of you with a background in advertising, either. I’m talking about certain very elemental, cultural ideas. We need to find a new approach to get around those dead ideas.”

Another silence ensued.

“So,” Elaine said finally, “then, I’m guessing you’re not going to tell us who the client is.”

“Correct. Nor am I going to tell you anything about what sort of business the client is or isn’t in. I do not want advertising. There are no reference points for you. Any inspiration here has to come from somewhere inside of you. Four TV spots, nine pages of full-color print, but we don’t need it all in one shot. Give me the keynote, the starting point. Don’t worry about budget. All the questions you’re going to ask me when I stop talking? Don’t ask them. You have until the twenty-seventh of October. Amaze me.”

JOHN AND MOLLY got to the San Francisco airport and discovered her flight had been delayed an hour; so they had a couple of drinks in the tiny, unenclosed bar nearest her gate, followed by a standing makeout session which had the other passengers staring. At the Albany airport, there was no one there to meet her, only a line of four taxis just outside the door to the baggage claim; the driver of the second said he would take her to Ulster for twenty-five dollars. The eight hours in between, except for the quick change at La Guardia, was time airborne, time nowhere: it gave the slowly sobering Molly a different sense of time entirely, the ways in which it passes and the ways in which it can fold back upon itself again or collapse unexpectedly. It was like flying backwards in her own mind. Even so, she was not anxious for that flight to end.

John had wanted to come with her, but she said no. The less there was to deal with, the better, and Kay’s reaction to something as unprecedented as a new boyfriend was too hard to calculate. It was dark when the taxi decelerated off the thruway, too dark to start picking out landmarks, but once they got to the center of Ulster, where the traffic light was, Molly became reoriented and she started feeling each turn of the steering wheel deep in her body. The lights in the house at Bull’s Head were blazing. Unseen, Molly walked up the path and opened the front door. Everything was instantly itself again, after more than a year. Kay was not in the kitchen, nor in the living room. Molly did not call out. She caught herself walking almost on tiptoe, not wanting to be heard. The one conspicuous thing about the house was that it was immaculately clean.

“Mom?” Molly called finally.

Every upstairs light was on, and the doors to all the rooms, including hers and Richard’s, were standing open. As Molly passed her parents’ bedroom, she saw her mother’s feet, in high heels, on the bed. Knocking softly on the wide-open door, Molly stuck her head inside.

Kay was asleep on top of the bedspread, her hands folded on her stomach. She wore one of her best dresses, deep blue with a thin white stripe above the hem, stockings, a string of pearls, and full makeup, as if she were getting ready to go out somewhere. A kind of chill went through Molly and, without really thinking about it, she walked furtively over to her mother’s side of the bed to satisfy herself that Kay was still breathing. Just as she was sure she had seen her mother’s ribcage go up and down, Kay’s eyes fluttered slightly and she woke up.

Mother and daughter, their faces inches apart, pulled back in fright. A second or two passed in silence; then Kay laughed and put her hand to her chest. “My, you scared me!” she said, sitting up, touching her hair. “I must have dozed off.”

She embraced Molly, without hesitation but not especially warmly either, as if they had seen each other just a few hours ago. Then she patted Molly’s shoulders and looked past her, around the room, as if trying to remember something. Her eyes seemed to Molly unusually bright.

“Were you going out somewhere?” Molly asked.

Kay looked once more around the overlit room.

“It’s just that you’re so dressed up,” Molly said.

“Thank you!” said Kay.

They went downstairs, where Kay insisted on finding Molly something to eat. Molly nibbled listlessly on a tuna sandwich while her mother stood leaning against the counter, arms crossed, and stared at her.