Rick Moody - The Ice Storm

It was an uphill ride and they left her own house behind — on the far edge of Silver Meadow — that ramshackle place of dark brown, full of drafts and ancient hinges, the former home of Mark Staples, Republican assemblyman and Episcopal minister of New Canaan from 1871 to 1879.

And then up the hill, up the hill. Mike downshifted angrily, as though the incline were a challenge to his burgeoning manhood.

The Williamses’ place was white and squarish with columns in front. An American flag usually hung limply there, but not this afternoon. Mourning doves wailed in the backyard. The steep backyard that tumbled headlong down into the creek there. (Down where Wendy lived the creek ran right under the living room patio.) There was always wildlife strutting around Mikey’s backyard — raccoons, muskrats, and rabbits. The wildlife of the suburbs. It was practically like Mutual of Goddam Omaha back there. The Silvermine River teemed with inflatable canoes.

Mike dumped his bike on the grass by the garage door, never mind the rain. They snuck in through the porch, downstairs.

In the ritual of their congress, Wendy insisted on silence. No getting-to-know-you chatter. Some conversation was inevitable, the table-setting, the hors d’oeuvres, but a silence was more dignified. Around them, the dusty packing crates full of gum were like the faceless sentries that protected some imperial decay, like the Easter Island statues in this book the boys at school had lately been passing around, Chariots of the Gods. The Bermuda Triangle. The basement was a neglected precinct of the Williamses’ place. The Ping-Pong table sagged in the middle of the room, like a rotting sea vessel. The power tools hanging on the wall were instruments of torture. The dart board had a woman’s face, torn from a magazine, stuck upon it.

The other book everybody read at school was Go Ask. Alice.

Were Wendy to peel off the layers, the painter’s pants, the turtleneck, the toe socks, she would also have to shed the church-going, cheerleading Ivory Soap girl. She would have to reveal to Mike the depths of her complicated feelings. But this was not her gig. This was New Canaan, after all. Her idea, instead, was about putting on more roles, more deceits. On the platform at the end of the room, on the beanbag chair that faced the television set, they positioned themselves.

And Wendy began reluctantly to confide in him her instructions. They played the roles, that afternoon, of corporate managerial type and assistant. Mike was coming to her house one afternoon, one weekend afternoon, to deal with a crisis-yeah, that was it-a crisis concerning some stocks, and he needed her help. He needed her.

— And I’m just lying here, Wendy said. I’m just lying here and something’s really wrong. I’m crying, sobbing maybe, because I’m alone, because my man has gone or something, and you come in and try to comfort me.

— But—

— I’m in the middle of some really awful heartbreak. On his knees, with the clumsiness of a boy who would never appear on stage in his entire life, he mimed the adjustment of his necktie. He set down his attache case by the magazine rack. Wendy put a finger to her lips and the performance began in earnest. In the half-light.

A long afternoon was over at the office, Wendy thought, The daily political struggle was over. He brushed back her hair. Who was he and why did he understand so well how to console a woman? The loss of her husband, the estrangement of her children — she had been judged unfit — her inability to work. She had only the properties and income that the divorce settlement deeded her. Not enough to live in the style she was accustomed to.

— Baby, Mike said. Our waiting is over.

From the beanbag chair, Wendy slid to the floor. She rolled across Sandy’s battered pocket calculator. Her turtieneck rode up and the pale spotless area under her breasts was visible. She arranged it that way, just like Willie Mays arranged for his cap to fly off in pursuit of the long fly ball. Mike pinioned her — one arm under the beanbag, the other under a green leather footstool. A TV Guide with Sanford and Son on the cover was only inches from her face.

— Maybe we should turn on the television, Mike whispered, in case someone comes along.

— Don’t be silly, Wendy said.

She dragged his hand along her stomach, and he climbed up on top of her. It was a sort of desperate embrace. Stuff was going to get into her hair, bugs and crumbs, and old pieces of gum that had been stamped into the rug.

— Tell me your long-range plans, Wendy said. Tell me that you aren’t going to leave. Tell me that you aren’t like all the others. Read the awful parts of the Old Testament to me. Would you harm people for me? Would you give me your most expensive possession? Would you be on call twenty-four hours a day? Would you leave the church of your birth for me? Would you give up weekend sports activities, including touch football? Would you do my laundry, including the very personal items? Would you take responsibility for filling my prescription of birth control pills? Would you grow your hair or go to a group encounter session or visit Nepal? Would you swing?

Their hips locked together uneasily, like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. They ground themselves against one another slowly. She grazed the part of his jeans where the monstrous thing had swollen again. It looked as though it was bent uncomfortably toward his right pocket.

— Have you forgotten everything? Mike said.

— What do you mean, my darling? Wendy said.

— I gave you work for the weekend.

— I’m afraid I don’t understand the assignment. I’m going to need an extra help session.

The quiet was funereal. Wendy slowed to a stop. Mike had transformed himself entirely into the unforgiving executive of her dreams. The guy who would look after drug and alcohol procurement. She could smell it on his breath, and his tongue had a taste it never had, a medicinal taste. Her needs were going to be met. She grabbed the back of his ass. It was loose and boyish. Just bones and jeans. Nothing more. He wrestled with her as though she were a sailor’s knot he had never learned.

— C’mon, he said.

— You mean the tapes, Wendy said. You mean the tapes you wanted me to look after. You want me to fast-forward—

Mike grunted.

— C’mon—

— I’m afraid there’s been a problem. There’s a problem in processing—

— Wendy, Mike said, you gotta take off your pants.

— No way, not until I’m fifteen.

— It’s not… you can’t do it like this. You have to take off your pants.

— No way.

He caught her by the wrists again. He let go and got up on his knees. He began to fumble with his belt buckle. And then with the zipper.

— Okay, she said. Okay. I’ll touch it, but that’s as far as it goes.

Mike shoved his jeans down around his knees and lay down on her again. Goosebumps. His briefs were tangled in his pants. They reminded her of nothing so much as a diaper. Her turtleneck was still bunched up around her breasts, and he set his penis on the unnavigated terrain there, on her belly. It felt like a salamander to her. It felt like a salamander scampering across her.

Then the door at the top of the stairs opened. The light when the door opened! That splendid bad news! Wendy never knew that a door, so imperceptibly a)’ar, could promise so much. It was like the climax of a fabulous chorale. The thrashing of Mike’s salamander recaged, the unknotting and refastening of shirts and pants. Instantaneous. No soldiers anywhere were ever quicker to arms. The two of them were like some undercranked silent movie, like Keystone Cops at a laundry line.

She knew, somehow, that it was her dad who descended those stairs. Before she even heard his tiresome, methodical steps she knew it was him — the incongruity of him didn’t strike her until a long time after. By the time she could see his face she and Mike had been through all the unspoken strategies and cover-ups-they could presume he didn’t know what was going on, they could lie about it, they could tell the truth and hope for the best. Mike found a fourth option: he seized another TV Guide- Gene Ray-burn on the cover — and studied it furiously.