I was going to tell her about Joe Sullivan, but decided against it. I did bring up my chat with Ivor Fleming, but she said she’d never heard of him. Neither had Gabe.
“I also met Jonathan’s brother, Butch, and his wife.”
Appolonia covered her reaction by dropping her eyes to her lap.
“Ridiculous man, I’m sorry.”
“Not a lot in common, the two of them. Butch and Jonathan.”
“The closest I ever came to arguing with Jonathan was over Arthur. That’s his real name. I never understood why Jonathan was so protective when all he received in return was ridicule and neglect.”
“So not a lot of family get-togethers.”
“Jonathan wanted to have him here for dinner, but I discouraged it. Too much for me. Imagine being in the company of a man who built his entire life in diametric opposition to all that I loved in his brother.”
“Did as well though, financially. Tough to make it in the art game.”
“No lack of brilliance in the Eldridge family. Only a difference in application.”
Gabe had been listening attentively through all this, on the lookout for another sudden change in course. I asked him what he thought to get him back into the conversation.
“Never met the man. Jonathan retained me to help institutionalize their mother. That’s how I came to know Appolonia,” he added, looking over at her. She smiled a crooked little smile, but didn’t return his look. “But I hear he goes in for society parties. Sounds like fun.”
Appolonia gave a sound of contempt, subtle, but clear enough to make Gabe wish he’d kept his mouth shut.
“Artists and petty celebrities, people like Arthur, are kept around as court jesters,” she said. “Given all the trappings of acceptance, but in reality they’re little more than house pets. Jonathan could have steered him away from all that, but he couldn’t be bothered with brotherly advice.”
Growing up, all I had was an older sister who might have looked after me when I was little, I don’t remember. We got along okay. There was rarely conflict or competition. We operated in separate orbits, unified only—along with our mother—in the common determination to stay clear of my father’s random expulsions of noxious rage.
“The mother’s still around,” I said, as the recollection came to me. “In a home somewhere.”
“Somewhere being here,” said Appolonia. “The Sisters of Mercy home in Riverhead. But not terribly relevant to your inquiry, either, if you’ll forgive me, since she’s completely gone over to mental illness.”
I knew the place. It was where my own mother died from Alzheimer’s. Maybe they were roomies for a while. Mrs. Eldridge might have been the one who always stopped me in the hall to ask where she was and how she got there. Perplexed, but graciously polite every time. I would give her the best answer I could, which would satisfy her till the next time she saw me, when we’d do the whole thing all over again.
“It was always terrible for Jonathan to see her that way. I never met her, of course, but he’d try to give me an idea of what she used to be like. He said she often confused him with Arthur, which naturally irritated me no end. Arthur was his father’s name, too, which didn’t help. It’s too cruel.”
When I told her about my mother’s Alzheimer’s I wasn’t trying to make a sympathetic connection, but that was the effect.
“Then you understand,” she said softly.
Gabe spared us his own family history, thank God. My mood, always at risk around Appolonia, was sinking badly under the increasing heft of the conversation. I couldn’t take much more.
“I think we’ve bothered you enough for one day,” I told her, making a move to get out of my chair. Gabe looked at me as if to say, speak for yourself, pal.
“I said it wasn’t a bother,” said Appolonia, “but I won’t keep you.”
“I have a few things I should probably go over with you after Sam leaves,” said Gabe, with a touch more officiousness than probably intended.
“Of course. And I have something to add before you go, if it’s all right,” she said to me.
I was partway out of the living room by this time, and about to give everyone an inane little wave before bolting for the door.
“Sure.”
“I met Jonathan a year after my parents died. Were killed, actually, in a private plane en route to Martha’s Vineyard, just like the young Kennedy son years later. A socially adroit departure, don’t you think?”
I thought of my father in the men’s room at the back of the bar in the Bronx, dying on the floor while his killers brushed off their polyester slacks and straightened their ties in the grungy mirror.
“I don’t think they care on the other side.”
“I was never a particularly courageous person, protected as I was, but to all appearances normal enough. Out and around in the world. Took the Green Line to the market, skied, once even rode a Ferris wheel. My circle considered me vivacious.”
She pointed her index finger straight into the side of her head.
“Something switched off up here the instant I saw those two policemen at our front door, never to switch on again. If I find it hard to discuss my parents, I’m sorry. You seem to want to know everything, so there you have it. I’ll leave the determination of relevance to you.”
After the chilly atmosphere of Appolonia’s house the air outside felt luxuriously thick with heat and humidity. Eddie was glad to see me, and seemed no worse for the wait.
I decided to spend the rest of the day and evening sitting in the one Adirondack chair not stained with Sullivan’s blood, drinking vodka and letting Eddie retrieve tennis balls out of the bay. During that whole time nobody tried to punch me, lie to me, enthrall me or disrupt my powers of perception with clever illusions, so I guess I made the right decision.
SIXTEEN
AMANDA CALLED UP to me when I was just about to muscle a four-by-eight sheet of half-inch plywood up onto the rafters of the addition. All I could do was grunt back until the thing was laid down and tacked in place.
“Shouldn’t you get some help?” she yelled.
“And miss all the exercise?”
“Sometimes doing everything yourself isn’t manly, it’s pigheaded.”
The sun was almost directly overhead, so despite her sunglasses she had to shield her eyes when looking up. She wore a pair of denim shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers.
“So come on up and help.”
“Me? I’m not a carpenter.”
“Hands and back is all you need.”
She was right. There’s no simple way to handle a four-by-eight sheet of anything by yourself, especially plywood, especially suspended on ladders and scaffolding. Having her help made it possible to lay up one full side of subroof, from eave to ridge. The effort cost her a few splinters, while demonstrating the superior exercise value of genuine labor over the simulated health-club variety. As compensation I fed her beer from my dwindling stock of Burton’s fancy imports and let her back-nail the subroof with a power nailer.
“So, does this mean the end of the hammer?” she asked.
“Gone the way of Peter, Paul and Mary.”
“It’s fun.”
“Just don’t aim it at anything unless you intend to shoot.”
We worked until the daylight started to draw long hard shadows across the grass and the sun threatened the horizon with another evening of fireworks. I think she would have kept going despite her exhaustion—asserting her own version of manly pigheadedness—but quickly took my suggestion that we advance the construction schedule to the drinks-on-the-lawn phase.
We took what I guess you’d call an enhanced shower together in the outdoor stall. The experience was
