Through the murky window of the Land Cruiser he saw, well, scenery: wilderness, snow, the wind-bent trees, a slice of the striated sky. The woods were thick on either side of the road, the spaces between pines stuffed with brush, spindly hardwoods struggling in the shade of towering hickories, an impassable landscape packed with eastern red cedars spouting billowing rolls of evergreen, one trunk spawning another, which split for another, and on and on. Even in the dead of winter the woods were as dense as a wall.
Once you had arrived on set, there was no way out. My father was to play the writer, the husband, the crank, the one with a fresh lump atop his skull to symbolize his spiritual injury.
A final spine-obliterating thud, and Jane ratcheted the brake. From the garage Bo Vornado approached the Land Cruiser, arms out, as if to embrace the vehicle itself. He moved through the world with an ease that my father imagined to be primarily the result of a healthy childhood, ruddy-cheeked, rough-and-tumble, football with brothers in the fall leaves, a hearty impertinence charming to teachers and girls alike, taking what he wanted when he wanted it, wanting for nothing. What he knew of Bo he arranged in a daisy chain that reduced the man to a manageable shape: varsity quarterback, student body president, matriculation at Harvard, Porcellian, elevation to toastmaster, reward of a desk at an investment firm. Taken under the wing of a managing director, he’d bidden his time, risen through the ranks, and, as prophesied, at the appointed hour slayed his mentor and appropriated his office and title. Then, bored by conquest, he’d struck out on his own. On principle, my father was opposed to Bo’s existence, so anodyne, so well oiled, his entire life an unobstructed downhill run through fresh powder, yet he couldn’t help liking him. Bo’s masculinity had been so perfectly forged that it shielded him from any self-analysis of whatever failings lurked within his personality. He had, indeed, been raised to be a gentleman, charming, mindful of the needs of others, deferential to his elders, a steady arm on which a woman could lean. He’d never been in danger of displaying the syrupy, overly respectful attitude perfected by those boys who kept a sharp part in their hair, learned their catechism, and masturbated compulsively; he had, instead, a musky, mysterious air, that of a ram perched atop a mountain peak surveying his territory, and when he greeted my father with a hail-fellow-well-met embrace, my father’s heart rose a little, as though they were old boarding school chums reunited after decades. There was no question in my father’s mind that it was an embrace as practiced as a well-wrought wrestling hold, one designed to transmit authority and strength. Dominion. You are within my fold now, old boy, no harm shall befall you. It worked like magic.
Bo gathered up the bags—all of them, my father noticed, plus a couple of the boxes that had been knocking around the back of the vehicle, enough to crush an ox—and led the way inside, my mother and I trailing behind. My father had held on to his Olivetti case. Somewhere, Feeney’s voice. An indistinguishable hum of words, then, Son of a bitch! rang out like a call to arms, and Bo’s tattered laughter, and my mother’s laughter—the betrayal!—and my father sensed that he, too, would have to enter the house now, the player called to stage, and so in he went, carrying the Olivetti case at his chest, braced for whatever might lie within.
Maestro! Feeney called, his mouth open wide enough to swallow my father whole, and came at him, right hand extended, palm as big as a broadaxe, a cigar smoldering in the left.
Hello, Sid, my father said.
You look like you need a scotch and a hooker, Feeney said.
Depends. You buying? my father said.
There he is, everyone! Ha ha ha! That’s the spirit! Feeney roared.
God, look at him, my father thought. Like something out of Darwin’s notebooks. That honker, the gaping mouth, those eyes bulging out like the view ports of the Nautilus—it was as though he had been conceived to consume as much of the world as possible. Extraneous elements like hair had been boiled away. His ears were pinned like shutters against the sides of his skull. He was nothing but sinew, the result of an inner engine that always ran at full capacity, burning more fuel than he had in reserve.
Feeney’s wife, Carla, was a hummingbird at his elbow. Though my father had met her plenty of times, she never failed to surprise him. He was sure he’d never seen a smaller adult woman in his life who wasn’t affected by dwarfism, an effect intensified by her apparent desire to vanish entirely behind her husband. What could explain the unfortunate combination of stature and timidity? It was too cruel a fate for the universe to have bestowed upon one person. Maybe, my father thought, silence is her weapon. Maybe the only one that works against a nuclear warhead of a man like Feeney.
Name, rank, and serial number, soldier! Feeney said. He always tried to get my father to cough up details
