Elizabeth McCracken - The Giant's House - A Romance

A bald man walked by the table. Mr. Sweatt gestured with his coffee cup. “See that? Gimme another ten years, and that’s me.” He shivered theatrically. “That’s my fear, and afraid it’s my curse, going bald. My granddad on my mother’s side, he was bald, and they say that’s what counts. So far, I’ve been lucky.” He caught me looking at his hairline and said, “I’ve always had this high forehead. Same as it ever was, pretty sure. I keep checking.”

It was at that moment I began to like him a little better. In fact, he was going bald. I could see the shape of his skull, the shell-pink scalp, quite clearly when he crossed his arms on the table and set his face down on top, which he did every now and then, brooding or thinking. I never knew anyone else who would do that while you were talking to them. It made me want to brush his head.

“A high forehead is distinguished,” I said.

Cal was embarking on the sort of baldness that is most treacherous: the hair to the left and right of the center of his forehead was sneaking back, as if to secretly tryst behind the lock in the middle. Eventually he’d be left with a bare horseshoe path of scalp. He would notice it all of a sudden one day, and it would horrify him.

“So, more,” he said. “Tell me more.”

“What else?”

“What else is there?”

“Why don’t you answer this question for me: why are you here?”

“Well,” he said. He shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“Money?” I said.

“Oh, money ,” he said. “No. I’ll be straight with you. I’d thought maybe there was some money. But that was a later thought. I dunno. Maybe a smoke screen.”

“You must be desperate for it,” I said. “To ask that way.”

“No, what makes you think that? What do I have of Jimmy? Not a thing. A couple of letters maybe. I’m a businessman. People think that money is the hardest thing to ask for, but take my word for it: it’s the easiest. Now, you tell me, why is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“ ’Cause people can tell you no and there’s no hard feelings, or they give it to you and it’s yours to spend. You ask for anything else in this world, and what happens? The answer might be no, or the answer might be a lie, or the answer might be a can of worms you don’t want to open. Ask for a compliment, ask for love, ask for an explanation or an apology — either you don’t get it, or what you get’s counterfeit. But money: if it exists, you might get it, and it’ll be as good as the money you get anywhere else. Look,” he said. “Jimmy was my family, and I never forgot that. If I’d died before he did, who do you think would’ve gotten my money?”

“No idea.”

“Jimmy! Of course. We were each other’s closest relatives.” He dribbled some coffee down his tie. “Damn,” he said, dipping his napkin in his water glass. “I can’t eat a thing without getting it all over myself. Well, I’ll never starve. I can just boil my clothing for soup.”

“So, money’s not why you came,” I said.

“No, no. I came back because I missed my family. I mean I guess now I’ve missed my family, my wife and my son, I’ve missed that chance. But there’s still my sister and my niece, and I should probably say hello to them before it’s too late.”

“Why did you leave in the first place?” I asked.

“Ah,” he said. “The tables have turned. Okay, I’ll answer your questions. But I want you to promise me something. I want to see Jimmy’s paintings, his photographs. I asked Caroline; she said you have them all. I thought maybe I could get one. She says there’s lots.”

That stopped me. I’d had an idea Caroline wasn’t speaking to him, and I couldn’t imagine what she’d think of me, lunching with the enemy. “Yes. You and Caroline talk often?”

“Not all that often. Every year, maybe. Every year she calls me up, we chat, and then I manage to say something wrong and she decides not to talk to me. This year.… Well, this year I guess I came in person to say it. She’ll come around, but about now I’m persona non.”

I relaxed, feeling safer. This transaction had felt illegal, but maybe the Stricklands wouldn’t have to know. Did he count as a friend, as James had specified in his will? Perhaps, I thought. I could give him a picture, a small one.

“I’ll bring some to the library Monday,” I said.

“No good. I’m leaving Sunday. Can’t I come over?”

Why not, I thought. “Okay. So. Why did you leave?”

He grabbed his coat. “Let’s go,” he said.

“What? Not now.” I looked at my watch. “I have to go back to work.”

“After work?” he said. “I’ll pick you up.” He took out his wallet to get money for the check. A snapshot fell out, a pretty girl in a dress.

“Who’s this?” I picked it up. “A girlfriend?”

“Girlfriend emeritus,” he said. “Gina. Retired as girlfriend some time ago, but still retains some of the rights and privileges of the position.”

“Like her picture in your wallet.”

He shrugged and reached further into the slot in his wallet. He extracted a small stack of pictures, then dealt them onto the table like a hand of solitaire. The last two were of Mrs. Sweatt, one alone, one holding a baby James.

“I keep ’em all,” said Mr. Sweatt. He stacked up his pile of pictures, his neat exosomatic memory, and put it away.

“You haven’t answered my question,” I said. “Why did you leave?”

He smiled. “Boy, you are feisty. Okay. I left because my wife asked me impossible questions, and she never let me get away without answering. And if you want a better answer than that, you’re going to have to wait until — what, five o’clock?”

I sighed. “Five o’clock,” I said. “Sure.”

“I see Mr. Sweatt is charming you,” Astoria said to me. “He always charmed the girls.”

“Not me,” I said. “Not bloody likely.”

She smiled. “You know, he isn’t a bad guy. I know you might think he is, but Mrs. Sweatt wasn’t the easiest person to live with, plus a sick kid — a man gets scared of that sort of thing.”

“He wasn’t a sick kid,” I said.

“Peggy. He died at twenty. He was sick all his life. I’m not saying leaving was the right thing to do, I’m just saying these things aren’t black and white.”

Cal Sweatt showed up at five o’clock on the dot. “Astoria!” he said. “Glamorous as always. What’s your secret?”

“Library work,” she said. “It’s the fountain of youth.”

“This library is,” he said, smiling at me. “This library is fuller of pretty girls than Hollywood.”

“I’ll get my coat,” I said, trying to sound icy, because I didn’t want to encourage this sort of talk, especially with Astoria around. “Let’s get this over with.”

But Cal Sweatt didn’t want to get it over with. He wanted to look at every single photograph and painting.

“When did he do this one?” he asked, fingering a photograph of a thin couple in matching outfits.

I looked at it. “That one’s older, I think. He probably took that when he was fifteen or so.”

“Five years isn’t so old.”

“A fourth of his life,” I said, and Cal got quiet.

“You’re right,” he said. “What about this?”

I hadn’t been through any of this since James died. It was a snapshot of the library, nothing in the frame that would hint at the year. “I don’t know,” I said. He flipped to another picture. This one was a self-portrait, James in the bathroom mirror in the Stricklands’ house. He held the camera in one hand, squinting into it; the other disappeared out the bottom of the frame. I knew he was steadying himself on the basin, that his knees were bent so he could look in the mirror.