The Laments, page 17
HOWARD’S NEW OFFICES were in one of many newly built research parks on the edge of Route 1—one of New Jersey’s arterial highways—a cluttered four-lane strip divided by concrete, with incessant traffic lights, fast-food outlets, and automotive franchises. A passing sign pointed to Princeton. The university buildings poked through the trees to the west, school of F. Scott Fitzgerald in his youth and Einstein in his old age. On either side, country roads branched off into woodlands, which were hastily being razed to situate housing developments for the growing workforce. The cachet of Princeton guaranteed that every developer name his tract after it; hence Academy Manor, College Fields, even Einstein Cottages.
The Laments had found a house in University Hills, a development that was actually flat. The house was a sprawling split-level with eight white pillars and a false brick façade, a winding driveway, two-car garage, central air, and baseboard heating. Every other house in the development was identical, except for its mailbox. Americans appeared to enjoy individuality only in this respect—the boxes were painted to resemble turkeys, eagles, ducks, trains, barns, or cartoon creatures.
Howard loved the jet-stream shower and the toilet that flushed without a chorus of knocking pipes; Julia liked the dishwasher, the sprayer nozzle in the sink, and the vast refrigerator. Instead of three channels there were seven, some running all night long; the twins learned to talk like Americans in a matter of weeks. Their new diet depended on infusions of Bazooka gum, Twinkies, and Big Macs. And they rejoiced at these new things, for America was strange and wonderful and they were free to roam as never before and utterly consumed with their own company.
Will, however, was grieving.
Every night he dreamt of a tunnel with Sally at the other end beckoning to him. Behind her lay a faint rainbow and his conker tree. In his dreams, he heard a soft rainfall that smelled of lemon lozenges. As he climbed through this tunnel, he noticed familiar sights embedded in the earthen walls: the Midnight Chinaman’s jubilant and wicked smile, Ruth clutching her tin vanity box, Buck Quinn riding a chariot drawn by his howling Ridgeback; the Windsor Castle’s captain borne across the waves on mermaids with breasts cupped in bright plastic scallop shells; Ayers dancing in Hitler’s trousers, and Digley summoning spirits with Goebbels the cat on his shoulder. Before Will’s lips reached Sally’s, however, his dream was always interrupted by his alarm clock, and the jarring fanfare of the AM radio station with its unfamiliar accents.
He was back to square one: a foreigner again.
“What are you so upset about?” asked his mother.
“I hate moving.”
“But you’re a Lament. The Laments have always traveled. All of them except your grandfather, that is.”
“Perhaps I’m more like him.”
“Impossible,” said Julia.
“Why?”
Julia hesitated, knowing she had to protect him from the truth. “Because he just sat in his armchair all day.”
Will frowned. “Why?”
“Daddy said he had a weak heart.”
“Who am I like? I don’t look like you or Daddy or the twins. Who am I like?”
“Darling, it’s not important who you look like,” said Julia, embracing her son.
“But you look like your mother,” came the distressed reply.
“Darling, you’re terribly special; you’re a very lucky person, a traveler, an explorer, a citizen of the world! You’re a Lament, do you understand?”
Will was puzzled by his mother’s answer because, though it was emphatic, it lacked consolation. To be a Lament was to be a perpetual stranger.
Where Is Chapman Fay?
On his first day at work, Howard was told that the man who had invited him to America could not be found.
“You mean he’s late?”
“Not exactly,” explained his secretary. “He’s missing at sea.”
CHAPMAN FAY WAS the visionary leader of Fay/Bernhardt, a company that built specialized devices for NASA, the military, and medicine. What were these devices? Future technologies, explained the company literature. By all accounts, Chapman Fay was a genius. A high school graduate at fifteen, he earned a doctorate in chemical engineering at twenty. By twenty-five, he had amassed three more doctorates, in Chinese mythology, quantum physics, and pre-Columbian art. At the age of thirty-two he was running a think tank for Ethical Utopians in Napa Valley, by thirty-eight he had plans to build a rocket ship to carry them to Mars. Fay/Bernhardt was founded to build this ship, but after shortfalls in funding, Chapman Fay changed his goal. He decided it was better to save the world before leaving it, and he proceeded to invent a few devices that were designed to do just that.
Pan-Europa had been interested in one of Chapman Fay’s inventions, a chemical that forced spilled oil to congeal into an iridescent goop on the surface of water so that it could be extracted easily. The procedure was called the Rapi-Flux system; at Howard’s recommendation, Pan-Europa bought the gear from Fay/Bernhardt for its rescue tankers. Howard supervised the testing of the system in a saltwater tank near Southampton with a team of beefy merchant marines with bullnecks, their faces flushed from a life of hard drinking and rough North Sea weather. Halfway through the test, a slight man with brilliant blue eyes and a shock of white hair bound in a ponytail entered the facility, dressed in an avocado Nehru jacket. The marines may have sniggered about his outfit and his hair, but the moment he issued orders, they responded without hesitation.
After the exercise, Chapman took everybody to lunch at a local pub. It was there, over a pint of Watney’s, that Howard told him about his plans for the Sahara, and the artificial heart he’d been thinking about ever since his father died. As he rose to leave, Chapman pumped Howard’s hand and, instead of saying good-bye, offered him a job.
“You’re a man of ideas,” said Chapman Fay. “Come work for me in America.”
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE’S MISSING AT SEA?”
“His yacht lost radio contact about five days ago. Don’t worry, Mr. Fay is a genius. He’ll show up,” said the secretary.
Howard was assigned a room twice the size of his Denham office. It was paneled in mahogany, with one glass wall that offered a view of a Japanese garden of weeping cherries, a pool of koi, and a stately blue heron. He spent the first two days putting tabs on his binders and filling out the forms needed for his medical coverage and retirement fund. On the third day, he began to fret.
Fay/Bernhardt occupied a large building carefully designed for privacy and singular focus; it was impossible to see anyone else working. People went about their business without a lot of talk in the corridors. Perhaps, conceded Howard, this is the atmosphere of a place where brilliant ideas are hatched, but it was isolating, too. There was no one to talk to until one day he ran into Chapman’s partner, Dick Bernhardt, a ruddy fellow with laughing eyes, who wore a Moroccan djellaba in the office.
“What should I be doing until Chapman returns?” asked Howard.
“Relax,” said Dick. “If Chapman hired you, there must have been a reason. Chapman will take care of you, don’t you worry. Have you tried our cafeteria? The chef comes from a restaurant in Brittany, four stars in the Michelin Guide.”
“HOW IS THE NEW JOB?” asked Julia.
“The cafeteria is extraordinary,” Howard replied. “And you should see my office.”
“But the work?” she asked. “How is your work?”
“Not bad,” said Howard, thinking it premature to admit his dilemma. He was being paid more than he had ever earned in his life. For doing nothing.
The Himmels
Julia looked forward to the start of school in a few weeks, when the boys would be out of the house and she could look for work. Until then, she spent her time getting organized—buying clothes for the boys; lamps, blinds, and bedside tables for the extra bedrooms in their enormous new house. One morning she was greeted at the door by a woman with an eager smile and a basket of chocolate chip cookies.
“Hi! I’m Abby Gallagher,” she said, gesturing toward her house. “Number Thirty-three, with the pear tree and the beautiful green lawn.”
Julia followed Abby’s glance and found herself instantly envious of the woman’s casual pride. She remembered her roses in Albo, and it seemed possible that she and Abby already had something in common.
“It is a beautiful lawn,” agreed Julia.
When Julia invited her in, Abby inspected the kitchen appliances while explaining that she had two sons about Will’s age. Then she ran her fingers over the parquet floor in the dining room.
“Walnut,” she sighed. “We wanted walnut; they gave us pine. Where are you from? You sound English!”
“No, I’m from South Africa,” Julia replied. Then, in a breathless ramble, she ticked off the other countries she’d lived in and the difficulties of starting up in a new culture, and topped it off with an earnest wish to see all of America because it was a culture that had assimilated its races the way, she feared, South Africa never would.
Abby looked confused. “South Africa.” She blinked. “You don’t look African.”
Julia silently admonished herself for talking too much; it had been many weeks since she had chatted with anyone other than family and salespeople.
“I’m Irish,” said Abby.
“Really?” said Julia. “Which part of Ireland are you from?”
“Cork,” Abby replied, “but that was three generations ago.”
“Ah.” Julia smiled. “So, you’re just a little bit Irish.”
Abby paused. “I celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day, if that’s what you mean. That makes me as Irish as anybody, doesn’t it?”
“Actually,” said Julia, “my family lived in Ireland a few generations ago, but I wouldn’t dare call myself Irish.”
What was left of Abby’s smile vanished.
With a desperate sense that she had blundered, Julia attempted to rescue the conversation. “But I love Irish literature,” she added. “Who are your favorites?”
Abby blinked again. “I’m actually late for a tennis game,” she said, and rose from her seat. Julia thanked her for the cookies, aware that she had made a mistake, without knowing precisely what it was. But Abby’s parting comment rankled.
“Y’know,” Abby said, nodding at the blue house next door, “you’d like the Himmels—they’re foreigners, too.”
“THEY’RE FOREIGNERS, TOO,” repeated Julia as she cut her veal into ribbons that evening.
“But she did bring you cookies,” said Howard, thinking that women judged one another far more harshly than men did.
“Perhaps,” Julia said, “but I don’t understand why an American would call herself Irish when she hasn’t been to Ireland, doesn’t read Irish authors, and probably couldn’t even find Ireland on the map!”
Howard was amused by Julia’s outrage. “Clearly, darling, you know more about the Irish than any Irishman, but isn’t the point to make friends?”
When Madge Finch brought over a fudge cake the next day, Julia was appreciative and cautious. Madge cocked her ear at Julia’s accent.
“Are you English?”
“No, South African.”
Madge confessed that she was Scottish—adding that her favorite game was golf, and did Julia know that golf originated in Scotland?
“No, really?” she said, even as she remembered Mrs. Urquhart listing every great Scottish invention, engineer, writer, and poet.
“My favorite Scotsman is Rod McKuen,” confessed Madge.
Julia imagined Mrs. Urquhart tossing in her grave.
“You really ought to meet the Himmels,” said Madge. “They’re from Germany.”
JULIA VENTED HER FRUSTRATION to Will as the twins watched a Gilligan’s Island rerun on television.
“I just don’t understand why people cling to these nationalities when they’re so obviously American!”
“Perhaps we’d like the Himmels,” he suggested.
Julia frowned. “After what the Luftwaffe did to London, I can’t quite imagine bringing them a basket of cookies!”
Will raised his eyebrows. “But you’re the one who said it was time for the English to forget about the war, Mum.”
This provoked an abashed glance from his mother.
“You’re quite right, darling,” she replied, adding skeptically, “I’m sure the Himmels are very nice Germans.”
THE HIMMELS WERE NOT as gregarious as some of the other neighbors. Though their house lay beside the Laments’, they didn’t appear at the door with gifts or questions about the parquet floor. The Himmel house glowed at night, but not a Himmel was to be seen entering or leaving during the day. Julia understood from the mailman that there were two Himmel daughters, one Will’s age, one a year older.
“Why does everyone keep saying we should meet them; we don’t know the people on the other side of our house, either,” said Julius.
“Perhaps I’ll go over and say hello one of these days,” Howard said.
“That would be a first,” remarked Julia.
ABBY GALLAGHER’S HUSBAND, Patrick, greeted Howard with a wave one morning. He ran a production line that made radios for Ford motorcars. But Abby hadn’t told the whole truth about their children; while they had two sons, Mickey and Kent, twelve and thirteen (who were never seen without their hockey sticks), there was a third son, Lionel, nineteen, an acid freak who had dropped out of Rutgers and spent his time roaming the neighborhood wearing cherry-tinted glasses and communing with the fire hydrants.
Three doors down were the Finches, from Texas, blessed with a freckled son and daughter, Wally, thirteen, and Tess, eleven. Frank Finch was a public relations man for AmGas, with a bone-cracking handshake; Madge, besides playing golf, liked Louis Prima records and always wore something plaid at their weekend barbecues.
The Imperatores had a large family of lazy-eyed children; the eldest boy, Vinnie, was also about Will’s age, and had confronted him shortly after the moving truck departed. Though Vinnie didn’t resemble Rillcock, Will detected a similar note in the boy’s manner.
“My house is twice as big as yours,” he declared, though their houses were identical, right down to the holly bushes on either side of the front door.
Before Will could respond, Wally Finch came over to argue that everything was bigger in Texas. This provoked Will to ask whether the toilets were bigger. Wally nodded, so Will suggested that a Texan’s backside must be larger, too, or else he would fall in. This friendship lasted no longer than the one with Vinnie.
The only neighbor without a wife or family was Rusty Torino, a former TV star who now owned a retail carpet business in Trenton. As an adorable towheaded youngster, Rusty had costarred with Tiny, a Yorkshire terrier who rescued him in every episode from kidnappers, burglars, and various other villains with English accents and white spats. The ensuing years had not been kind to Rusty; at thirty, he was a stocky fellow, with abundant chest hair and a blond pompadour that was dark at the roots. Each day he plodded out to retrieve his newspaper dressed only in a black silk bathrobe, clutching a terrier identical to his original costar.
“I think he’s, y’know, funny,” explained Abby Gallagher.
Julia concluded that in Abby’s world there were two kinds of funny people, foreigners and homosexuals.
“But I do feel sorry for him,” sighed Abby on Rusty Torino’s behalf. “Nothing to look forward to but eternal damnation.”
MEANWHILE, THE HIMMELS had continued to inspire Will’s curiosity. To him, their foreignness implied a potential kinship. Their two-car garage housed two old Mercedes. One white 1959 two-door sedan with rusted wheel rims, and one powder-blue four-door coupe. Once he spotted the father, wearing a homburg, rolling out in the white car at 6:45 A.M. The garage door closed with a well-oiled hum. The next day Will set his alarm to 6:44, and a minute later the door went up; Mr. Himmel was always on time. At around ten or eleven the second car would emerge, mother in front, hair whipped into a big blond meringue, cigarette in the hand dangling from the window. The girls’ heads were usually visible in the back, always as far apart as possible. When they returned, the blue Mercedes drove into the garage, and the door rolled shut behind them. Did these girls never play? Were they prisoners? Did they yearn to escape?
Abby Gallagher’s theory was that the Himmels had inherited wealth from one of the German weapons manufacturers during the war, and while they lived a modest existence, their fortune gathered interest in a Geneva bank. “Why else would they get so uptight whenever anyone mentions World War Two?” she asked.
Three weeks before school began, Will took up a position behind a tree, armed with binoculars and a red apple for sustenance. It was a cool day with an impulsive breeze. Fast-moving clouds swept by the sun, bringing the Himmel house in and out of shade while the cicadas droned.
Finally, that faint metallic hum announced the emergence of Mrs. Himmel’s car. Smoke curled from the cigarette in her window hand, but just one silhouette was visible in the backseat.
Where was the other Himmel daughter?
Will thought he spotted a movement behind the lace curtains on the second floor. He trained his binoculars on them for fifteen minutes before giving up. Was she watching him watch her? he wondered.
At noon, frustrated, he tossed the uneaten apple onto the Himmel lawn and wandered inside for lunch.
HE FOUND THE TWINS watching TV. Julius loved the reruns of Star Trek and Bonanza; the pyromaniac in him loved the way the Bonanza ranch curled up in flames at the beginning of each episode. Marcus adored the commercials. His favorite was a soft-drink ad of a blond girl singing on a hilltop. She was beautiful and sweet, and he watched television simply to see this girl again and again.
“I want a Coke,” Marcus said to Julia at lunch.
Julia disapproved of soft drinks, not just because they were loaded with caffeine and sugar but because of the shady American merchandising that went with them. Ask for a Coke in an English restaurant and you’d get a can of it, probably lukewarm, but a can nevertheless; ask for the same thing in America and you’d get a glass of ice with a dribbling of syrup at the bottom.
