T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

He is at Horn & Hardart, surrounded by strangers. The boy sits across from him, head down, heels swinging, fingers fluffed with the meringue from his third slice of pie. Una’s handbag perches like a sentinel at the edge of the table. Suddenly the boy begins to grunt: hurp-hurp-hurp. The Inventor looks uncomfortable. He raises a finger to his lips — but the grunting cracks an octave and the boy pins the plate to the table, begins licking. The Inventor remonstrates. The plate rattles on the Formica. Heads turn. The Inventor stands, looking for Una. Then strides to the bank of tiny windows and stainless steel doors, fishing in his pocket for coins. Behind him the grunting increases in volume. He peers into each window until he finds a slice of lemon meringue pie, yellow sliver, brown peaks. He puts the coins in the slot, tugs at the door. It does not open. He tugs harder, taps at the glass, tries another coin. There is the slap of the boy’s plate on the tiles, and then his angry wail. A middle-aged woman, a stranger, is trying to comfort him. The Inventor’s armpits are moist. He jerks at the door, tries to spring it with his penknife. The howls at his back, the ripe flush of the woman’s face. And then, from the Ladies’ Room, Una. Like a savior. Green eyeshade, black caftan, copper anklets.

From The Life:

The Inventor’s marriage with Roxanne Needelman was never consummated. She was twenty-nine, a laboratory assistant, twice married and widowed. He was eighteen, raw, ingenuous, in the first flush of his monumental success with the stoolless cat. After a disastrous honeymoon at Olduvai Gorge the two set up separate households. Three years later the marriage was terminated. The Inventor, immersed in his work, retired to his estate in northern Westchester.

During the course of the next five years he lived and worked alone, perfecting the Autochef and laying the theoretical groundwork for expanding the minute. On the eve of his twenty-sixth birthday he began his association with Yehudi Schlaver, the German-born physicist who would be with him to the end. Two years later, on a rainy April evening, the front buzzer sounded through the umbrageous corridors of the Westchester mansion. At the door, Una Moss. She was wearing a backpack. Two tote bags lay at her feet. She had followed the Great Man’s career, saved the clippings from over fifty periodicals, and now she had come to live with him. The Inventor stood in the doorway, his brow square as the spine of a book. He pushed open the door.

Una, Schlaver, the Inventor, his son. They stand at the rail of the Dayliner, in identical London Fog overcoats. On their way to Bear Mountain, for an outing. The air like bad breath, sky black, the water thick and dun-colored. An amateur photographer, passing in a small craft, recognizes the celebrated faces and takes a snapshot: Una, eyes shaded in purple, the rock python wrapped under her chin like primordial jewelry and disappearing in the folds of her overcoat, its head visible beneath the sleeve; Schlaver, small, gray, nondescript; the Great Man, his blocklike brow, the creases like chains running deep into the hairline, the black eyes pinched behind the horn-rims, the point of the beard, lank arms, stooped back; and the boy, feet concealed in custom-built boots, ears already growing to the point and peeping like tongues from beneath the bristling hair. Waves lap, the deck rises, dips. Una, Schlaver and the boy wave. The Inventor hangs his head and disgorges the contents of his stomach.

At the dock, the boy darts ahead, repeatedly stumbling in his boots. Schlaver and Una follow, the one taking charge of the Inventor’s compass, calculator and notebooks, the other dragging a picnic basket. The Inventor, sulking, brings up the rear. It begins to drizzle.

A picnic table, prettily reflecting inverted treetops in a sheen of rainwater. The three, collars up, noses dripping, chewing stolidly. In silence. The boy, boots in hand, merrily roots among the wildflowers, nudging at the wet red earth with the bridge of his nose. “Screee-honk-honk,” he says, at intervals. The Inventor looks unutterably depressed. He stands, buckles the belt round his raincoat. “Una. I will take a short walk. I wish to be alone, and to be among the trees and mosses.” He strides off, into the black bank of pine and beech. Continues on, deep in thought. The trees look alike. He loses his way. When night falls, Una and Schlaver become alarmed. They step into the shadows of the first trees and halloo. There is no answer.

In the morning, search parties are organized. Bloodhounds, state police, Boy Scout troops, helicopters, flares. The Governor mobilizes the National Guard. The Vice President flies in. The voice of the Inventor’s mother (a wizened old woman in a babushka) is boomed through enormous loudspeakers. Woodsmen begin felling trees, burning off ground cover. The Inventor has vanished.

Forty days later, Una, who alone has refused to give up the search, is struggling down a slick and rock-strewn slope. Again, rain falls. Again, she wears the overcoat. Again, she accommodates the reptile (the head a comfort in her hand). At the base of the hill, a swamp. Her boots slosh through the clots of algae, heels tug against the suck of the mud. She looks up to flail at a spider web and there he is, squatting naked in a ring of skunk cabbage, his back dancing with mosquito and fly. The glasses are gone, the black eyes crazed and bloodshot. “Here,” she says, and holds out her hand. He looks up at her, confused, then slowly lifts his hand to hers, loses his fingers in the triangular black mouth of the snake.

From The Life:

The now infamous “Bear Mountain Sojourn” marked the decline of the Inventor’s practical humanitarian phase. He called a press conference, announced his intention of permanently retiring to his home in suburban Westchester for the purpose of undertaking his great work, a work which wbuld “spiritually edify the race of men as [his] previous work had materially edified them.” For seven years nothing was heard of him. Of course there were the usual garbage sifters and mail steamers, the reports from the Inventor’s few privileged friends, the speculations of the press. And from time to time paparazzi came up with photographs of the Great Man: brooding on the bedroom fire escape, rooting in the turf with his son, sending up frozen slashes of foam (his slick arm poised) while swimming laps in the pool. Still, he was all but lost to the public eye.

It was during the Seven Years of Silence that a nefarious innovation with enormous market potential appeared briefly in this country and in two Western European nations: a colorless, tasteless liquid, which, when combined with food or drink, reduced the ingestor to a heap of desiccated flakes. When the flakes were moistened, the desiccatee would regain his/her normal structure, totally free of side effects. Abuses of the product were legion.* And though the FDA banned its sale minutes after it was first made available commercially, it was readily obtainable on the black market and even today continues suspect in any number of unsolved kidnappings and missing-persons cases. Rumor attributed its invention to the Great Man. Schlaver read a statement denying his associate’s participation in the development of the chemical and asserting how deeply the Inventor deplored the discovery of a product so potentially pernicious. But rumor is not easily squelched, and the whole affair left a bad taste.

He is dozing in an armchair, three Furballs purring in his lap. In the hall, the sound of his son’s hoofs like a drumbeat on the linoleum. His eyes flutter open, caught in the rift between consciousness and the deeps. He stands. Gropes for his glasses. Una lies asleep on the davenport, the snake coiled round her like a meandering stream. He finds the tail. It stiffens under his fingers, then goes limp. He heaves, fireman and firehose: the coils spin to the carpet. “What’s up?” Una murmurs. He is unbuttoning her smock. The python lies on the floor, dead weight, quietly digesting its bimonthly rabbit. The Inventor climbs atop her, arching over her stiff as a mounted butterfly. “I had a dream,” he says.