T. Boyle - The Harder They Come

She swept the bedroom, taking her time, then she vacuumed for good measure and made up the bed with fresh sheets, and then — once she felt calm again, as calm and unruffled as if she were at the tiller of a sloop cutting across a spanking sun-drenched bay — she put the dog in the car and drove on into Fort Bragg, to the cheap market there, the one the tourists didn’t know about, to pick up the boneless chicken breast and the ham and Gruyère and seasoned bread crumbs for the cordon bleu, as well as asparagus, new potatoes and two bottles of wine for her and Christabel and a six-pack of Old Stock Ale, 11.9 % ABV, for Adam, after which she stopped in at Radio Shack to get herself a new phone.

She had everything ready by four, the table set, the cordon bleu and potatoes ready to slip into the oven, the asparagus rinsed, drizzled in oil and laid out on a separate pan and the first bottle of wine (a mid-range California red, on special, but a step up from Two-Buck Chuck and certainly drinkable, especially after it sat out for a while) opened and decanted to give it some air. Adam wasn’t back yet, but he generally turned up around cocktail hour, looking to get a buzz on. She’d got into the habit of putting out potato chips or crackers and cheese or mixed nuts or something, he was that hungry, as if he hadn’t eaten all day — and maybe he hadn’t, unless he was eating the freeze-dried meals he’d got such a deal on at the Big 5. She fed Kutya so he wouldn’t be begging at the table and she’d just sat down with the three-by-five card she kept in her wallet to put some of her clients’ numbers into the new phone when she heard the sound of a car coming up the road. Expecting Christabel, she rose with a smile, tucked the phone away in the front pocket of her jeans and went out the door, across the yard and through the gap in the wall, Kutya at her heels.

But this wasn’t Christabel’s pickup rolling to a stop out front, but a Prius, a silver Prius, and for a moment she drew a blank. Then she recognized Sten’s face there behind the windshield and understood. He’d come to hang the metal door that had been sitting there all week, that was what she was thinking, but then she saw that his wife was with him — Carolee, whom she’d never met, or not formally — and began wondering if she’d have enough for two more people, and beyond that how all this was going to go down with Adam. And Christabel. Because Christabel was expecting a party, just the three of them, that was the whole point. But the doors flung open, slammed, and there they were, Kutya circling round them and barking as if they were intruders, which, in a way, they were. “No, Kutya,” she called. “No bark. Get down now.”

Carolee wore a puzzled expression — or inquisitive, maybe that was a better word — and she didn’t even seem to notice the dog, just fastened her eyes on Sara’s and tried to simulate a smile to cover herself. It was a motherly smile because she was a mother, in her sixties — Adam’s mother — though she looked younger, what with her blond hair, worn long and parted so it fell across her face. She was wearing dressy sandals, white shorts and a pink blouse with plenty of room in it. Compared with her husband she was almost a dwarf, three or four inches shorter than Sara herself, and here she came, still ignoring the dog, right on up to her to extend her hand, squint into her face and say, “You must be Sara.”

Well, yes, she was Sara, and she didn’t like the scrutiny she was getting here, wondering in that moment just exactly what Sten had told her, not to mention Cindy Burnside and whoever else. She held it all in, taking the limp hand in hers before exchanging a quick look with Sten to gauge his reaction before saying, “Nice to meet you.” And then, in extenuation — of what, she wasn’t sure: moving in with their son, occupying a house that was in escrow, having a barky unkempt Rasta dog, being alive and drawing breath — she added, “I was just cooking.”

Carolee dropped her hand and let her smile fade and come back again, as if it were battery-operated. “Nice to meet you too,” she said, and now she looked to Sten, “—finally.” The dog was sniffing at her bare legs, her toenails newly done, in a shade of red just this side of orange, and she turned back round to ask, “Is Adam here?”

“No, he’s out,” Sara said, and she should have left it there, but didn’t. “In the woods?” She shrugged, let her eyes fly up, her smile complicit. “You know Adam.”

Carolee wouldn’t give an inch. She just stood there staring into her eyes, cold as anything. “Yes, I know Adam,” she said, and the way she said it was like a sword that plunged right in and worked its way out the other side. “He is my son, after all.”

Check, she was thinking, and she was staring right back and just as hard. You’re the mother and I’m nothing, just some random fuck, isn’t that it? She almost said something else she would have regretted — this woman was a friend of Cindy Burnside, after all, and she could spread her poison far and wide and no doubting it — but instead dropped her eyes. “Listen, I’ve got plenty — I mean, I was expecting a friend, and Adam, of course — and if you want to stay for dinner that would be great, I mean, we’d be honored. .”

“Sounds good,” Sten said, “but we really just stopped by for a couple minutes. I was thinking I’d hang that door and Carolee wanted to go through some of her mother’s things—”

Without another word, without even bothering to glance at her or even pretend she’d picked up on the invitation, Carolee just brushed right by her, passed through the gap in the wall and went on across the yard and into the house to leave her standing there with Sten, who looked — what was it? — pained. The sun glinted in his hair. He was wearing Ray-Bans, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but the rest of his face seemed to shrink away, the Amazing Shrinking Man, now you see him, now you don’t. This was hard for him. It was hard for her too.

“Really,” she said, “I’m making chicken cordon bleu — it’d be no trouble.”

“No,” he said, letting one hand rise and fall, “we can’t stay. I brought a couple of boxes—” And here he stepped over to the car, flipped open the rear hatch and raised them in evidence, eight or ten new cardboard boxes, folded flat. “Most of the junk’s going into the dumpster, but there are things she’s sentimental about, though Christ knows where we’re going to put it all.” He let out a laugh. “You’re supposed to be scaling down at my age.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding, as if she could know. “But how about a drink? You’ll have a drink at least?” She smiled. “I’ve got wine open. And I make a killer margarita.”

For the next half hour she tried to stay out of the way as Carolee stomped in and out of the house clutching boxes stuffed with odds and ends and Sten tinkered with the door to get it flush, looking in odd moments like Adam, but she didn’t want to go there. Like father, like son. Though she couldn’t feature Adam hanging a door or changing a washer or anything like that. He was more the outdoors type, and here it came to her with the force of revelation: more the horticultural type, more the grower, the pot farmer, and why else would he be so secretive out there in the woods all day every day? She tried to picture it, the spiky-leafed plants, a whole field of them nodding in a gentle breeze and Adam hauling water up from some creek, working his muscles under the blaze of the sun. It was time he let her in on the secret. Time he trusted her. And showed it.

Then the door was hung and Sten had a margarita in his hand, which Carolee, looking daggers, had refused, and she had no choice but to put the potatoes in to bake though she wished they would just leave before Christabel showed. Or Adam. Adam could waltz in any minute now — it was close to five and his internal clock would be ticking — and who knew what kind of reaction he was going to have? As like as not, he’d just jump right back over the wall and disappear. Like at the pizza place. They were having a nice discussion, even if Adam was a bit rocked on that ale and the hits of rum he kept sneaking from the canteen, and she was explaining Redemption Theory to him, how Roger Elvick had uncovered the whole fraud the government was perpetuating by issuing birth certificates so they could use every baby born as collateral for the loans the Federal Reserve gave the government after they went off the gold standard and how they’d put him away in some mental hospital and given him electroshock just for telling the truth to people, when she looked up and saw Sten standing there in the crowd by the bar with the blond woman she’d assumed was Carolee, and that was the end of that.