Lydia Millet - Ghost Lights

When he ventured out again the guests were gathering around the table, pulling chairs out, organizing. Susan was standing near the head of the table — the dark angle of her black sweater, the rusty, autumnal orange of her slacks. He recalled how they clung to the backs of her thighs, which had always had a nice slim curve of muscle. . it shocked him to think of someone else clutching at them. He was still shocked, when he thought about it — as though surfaces were falsehoods and the vigor inside them, which could never be seen, had a purpose to it, a purpose that was slyly hostile or at least secretive.

It could take a while for the dinner guests to get settled at the table, since several of them were in wheelchairs. The shifting of chairs, the discussion of positions. . he shrank back past the doorjamb. He could not show Susan he did not wish to sit beside her. On the other hand, he did not wish to sit beside her. It was too soon and too public. He would hang back until others seemed to make the choice for him.

Casey was still in the kitchen; he could help her bring the food in. A pretext. But he would keep hidden till the last moment, even from her, in case the whole crowd had not taken their seats yet.

Lingering in the hallway next to the kitchen, he heard Casey talking to someone and hung back again: the food was not ready. There would be nothing to occupy him. He did not want to hover awkwardly; he would hide here, safely unseen.

He glanced down and picked a framed photograph from a bookshelf, to be doing something in case someone saw him. It was Casey with Stern’s dog, when the dog still had four legs. Must have been taken by Stern, thought Hal, when the two of them were spending time. . Casey was sitting on the beach in her chair, smiling, and the dog was standing up, her front paws on Casey’s knees. Mostly the dog was featured: you could barely make the person out behind her. Casey did not like pictures of herself.

Nancy was in the kitchen with his daughter. From his hidden position against the wall he could see one of Nancy’s bony shoulders and part of the back of her chair; its netting contained knitting needles and several large, bright skeins of yarn — red, orange, yellow, pink and purple.

A garment fashioned of those colors could only be an abomination.

“You told them tele marketing ?” asked Nancy in a stage whisper, and then chortled.

“What else? They know it’s a phone job.”

“But I mean what if they ask you about it? The timeshare thing?”

“I have a spiel. I once actually did try selling timeshares, for like three days. It was hell on earth, I’m not even kidding.”

“And this isn’t?”

“You know what? I kind of like it. I do. Maybe it’s still the novelty, but I like it, Nance. That’s my dirty secret.”

“You slut !”

“I’m a ho. Hand me the oven mitt, would you?”

“I’ll take the rice. I can get it.”

“You sure it’s not too heavy?”

He could not enter the kitchen at all now. He could not present himself. He was falling apart. He crept back to the bathroom. Familiar refuge.

Did she mean what he thought? He tried to recall what she had said on the telephone yesterday, not knowing he was there: “What can I do for you,” or words to that effect. But the tone had been sultry. He shivered.

1-900. Phone sex.

This was his family. Susan on the carpet. Casey in the chair. Doing that.

He breathed deeply in and out for a minute, bent over the sink and splashed cold water on his face. When he straightened he reached for a washcloth and then stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. He had once possessed a certain angular handsomeness, or at least he had been told this once or twice — a lean, affable appeal. Then again, most people received compliments on their appearances now and then, even those most egregiously victimized by genetics. It was standard. If he allowed for the margin of error created by social niceties, he would have to guess he was average-looking.

His eyes were blue but it seemed to him now they had faded, were more and more watery. He half-expected himself to start crying just looking into them — he was on the brink of tears already. Did he look like this all the time? He saw the parallel horizontal lines on his forehead, deeply etched, and thought the eyes disappeared beneath them. He had a full head of hair, small mercies. But he looked unremarkable.

He disappeared, he thought, against any background; he blended, he faded in.

How she and Susan must see him: an old man. But he was not old. He was only fifty.

“Daddy? Are you OK in there?”

“Yeah. Headache is all. Be out in a minute.”

“There’s ibuprofen in the first cabinet. Also acetaminophen with codeine.”

“Thank you, sweetie.”

The phone-sex men probably called her that. And far worse.

•

At the table, where he was seated between her and the four-eyes named Addison, topics of conversation included Rwanda and a dead rock star in Portland. Or Seattle. Some rainy city. Casey had played a few songs for him once by the rock star in question. There was something to it, something genuinely interesting in the tone, he had thought at the time — he never liked to be dismissive of Casey’s taste in music, about which she was painfully sincere and impassioned — but the vocal track was a problem for him. Frankly the guy sang like he was trying to force a B.M.

He was distant, nursing his beer, vision grown hazy. He did not attend closely to the chitchat. Something about the angle of a shotgun and whether the dead rock star had in fact been murdered by his rock-star wife, who was widely disliked as a loudmouth attention-seeker though as far as Hal could tell this was her legitimate job description. Then someone said primly that the shotgun angle was not dinner talk, was it now.

Across from him Sal ate his soup quickly and noisily — it was spicy — and wiped his running nose on his sleeve. Hal averted his eyes at this revolting display. The man was rudimentary. Nor was he well-liked, it seemed, by Casey’s other friends: most of them avoided even looking at him, much less stooping to conversation. Even for Casey, he was a departure. It was difficult to imagine them together. Little affection seemed to pass between them. Luckily.

During the main course, yellow curry with rice, Hal noticed Susan and Casey were talking in lowered voices about the visit to Angela Stern — a good, safe subject for them, he decided, as Susan would probably not choose to discuss other elements of her workday with her daughter, such as fucking the paralegal on the office floor.

“. . they give an opinion?” asked Casey. “I mean what does it mean, I mean, did they analyze the boat or anything?”

“Analyze it?”

“Forensics. Were there blood traces?”

“You been watching too much TV, babe,” said Sal.

“I don’t think so, honey,” said Susan, compounding Sal’s offense against Casey with her own patronizing tone. “I mean first of all it’s a small village in Central America. They’re poor. And they just got hit by a tornado.”

“Hurricane,” mumbled Hal, correcting. “Different. Very.”

An image came to him: an old motorboat, paint peeling, beached on the sand, listing. Seagulls cawing and swooping. He saw the silver braids of a river delta fan out in brown sand far beneath him, as though he were high up in the air. Susan had mentioned a tropical rainforest — that when Stern disappeared he had been headed upriver into the jungle.

Mistah Kurtz, he dead .

He could barely stand to hear Susan talking, he had to admit it. Every word had a tinge of disingenuousness, as though she could say nothing that was honest.