“But you see?”says Julia.“That was exactly our thinking.”
“You’re doing fine,”says Carl.“You always have.From the very beginning.I hope you realize what a blessing it was for your mother and I to have a son whom we trusted, who did the right things, who kept out oftrouble, and who was never a danger to himself or to others.Believe me.You may think ofyour mother and me as living in a bell jar, but we see what other people have gone through with their children.Drugs and homosexuality being just the most lurid examples.The great luxury you afforded us was that we never needed to doubt your basic stability.It was such a reliefto know that no matter what, you were always going to be just fine.Your head was always screwed on right.”
“Well, that’s really incredibly moving, Dad,”Daniel says, gathering up the photographs, closing the folder, handing it back to his father.“Maybe you better hang on to these, okay?Who knows? I might disappoint you after all, and you wouldn’t want any ofthis fine furniture falling into the wrong hands.”
Throughout that day he taps his feet beneath his desk while he pretends to listen to clients, and then in court he keeps one hand clenched in his pocket while he enters a plea ofnot guilty in a criminal mischiefcase.
Thoughts ofIris have completely eclipsed any reflections he might have had over being cut out ofhis parents’will.All he can think ofis getting out ofhis office and driving past her house.He likes to see where she lives, the house, its reality pleases him.There is something at once sacred and pornographic, knowing she is in there.Today is Friday, a particularly im-portant day to drive by.It is the day that Hampton, her husband, returns from the city for his weekend at home.The sunset looks like melted ver-milion, the houses and trees are drawn in black ink.He navigates his car down Juniper Street, listening to DinahWashington sing“What a Differ-ence a Day Makes”on the car stereo, and it strikes him that all his life he has been in love with black women— DinahWashington, Billie Holiday, IrmaThomas, IvieAnderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.
Juniper Street is only four blocks long, lined on both sides by singlefamily houses, some with a will toward grandness, others compact Dutch dollhouses, tight little structures painted brown or yellow, with churchy windows and bronze plaques over the doorway announcing the year oftheir construction.As he rolls closer to Iris’s house, he turns off the music, slows to practically a stop.Her house is white clapboard, with a small porch, red shutters, a quartet ofmaple trees on the front lawn.
The windows are dark, they hold a faint reflection ofthe sunset.Iris’s car is not in the driveway, and Daniel, no stranger to her comings and go-ings, in fact having more knowledge ofthem than he would ever admit to anyone else, realizes she has left for the train station to pick up Hamp-ton, whose train is coming in at6:05.Daniel can hardly bear to think of this—imagining her on the platform peering into the windows ofthe train as it pulls in, trying to see ifit’s him, or him, or him, and then there he is, the conquering hero, home from a week ofshuffling expensive pa-per, with his Hugo Boss suit and shaved head, his Mark Cross leather satchel, his Burberry raincoat draped over his shoulders like a cape, here comes the Count ofVenture Capital, and now the inevitable kiss, the child between them, symbol oftheir unbreakable bond, the little wink over Nelson’s head, a promise ofa fuller, more intimate reunion later on: by now Daniel’s mind is a scorpion stinging itselfto death.
He resists speeding over to the train station and instead drives home, out six miles east oftown to Red Schoolhouse Road.It’s Kate’s house, her down payment, but surely his halfofthe monthly mortgage entitles him to feelings ofownership.It is a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old farmhouse, calm and elegant like Kate herself, with French doors, an im-mense fireplace, ten acres, the remains ofa barn.The dark gray night has healed over the gash ofthe sunset;a wind is coming offthe river.When he pulls into the driveway, he sees an old winter-ravaged Dodge parked next to Kate’s impeccableToyota, and when he lets himself in he sees Ruby in the living room, sitting on the sofa with her baby-sitter.
“Look, Daniel! I have a baby-sitter!”Ruby cries out, with incongruous elation.
The sitter is a high school girl named Mercy.Daniel figures Ruby’s joy must mean she has extracted a promise from Mercy to let her watch TV.He chats with the two girls for a minute, and then goes upstairs to find out where he is going tonight, since as far as he knew there was no plan in place.
He finds Kate in their bedroom, a dark-green room with odd angles, wide plank floors, a Persian rug.She is putting on lipstick and keeping an eye on the portableTV, which has become indispensable to her.The sound is offand she continually checks the set—sometimes in the mir-ror, sometimes turning around to face it—in order to see ifthere’s any-thing on the news about O.J.Simpson, who for the past several months has been on trial for the murder ofhis ex-wife.
“Any news?”asks Daniel, just to be polite.
”Nothing, same old, same old.”
“What ifhe’s innocent, Kate?”
“Yeah, right.”
“You got a sitter for Ruby?”
“You said you wished we went out more.So.Presto!We’re going out.”
“Great.Where we going?”
“Iris Davenport called this afternoon.”She glances at Daniel to see his reaction in the mirror.Nothing.She’s impressed.He’s standing up well to this.“She was trying to arrange something or other for the children.I’m sort ofsurprised she didn’t arrange it with you, that seems to be the way these things get done around here.But, anyhow, she mentioned that she and her husband were going to a concert tonight and the next thing I knew I had volunteered us to go along with them.”She turns toward Daniel, puts her hand against her throat.“Is that all right? And dinner after?”
“I thought you don’t like eating with strangers,”Daniel says, struggling to keep it casual.“I thought you don’t like watching them put food in their mouths.”
Kate’s attention is momentarily seized by something on theTV screen, but it’s another black athlete, walking over a pulsating green landscape oflittle hills with a golfclub over his shoulder.TigerWoods.
How can there be no O.J.news today? Like millions ofothers, Kate has become obsessed with the case—with not only the defendant but the lawyers, the judge, the DNA experts.Stalled on her novel, unable to touch it, often unable even to think about it, she has become facile as a journalist and lately she’s been writing about the case, and since the jury is sequestered and she is not being paid for her objectivity, she has been having no trouble in clamoring for Simpson’s conviction.
“I thought you’d be happy I made these plans,”Kate says.“You mention her constantly.I figured it was time we got to know them, another couple, like actual grown-ups.”
“I mention her constantly?”
“I don’t know, probably not.I’m not trying to give you a hard time.
I’m trying to make you happy.”With rich, shining brown hair, smooth skin, and the scent ofperfume on her, she glides to Daniel’s side.She would like to put her arms around him, but it might seem she was forc-ing the issue.
“You do
“I don’t really know him.”
“Do you like her?”
“Iris?”
She gives him a look.Ofcourse Iris, who else are they talking about?
”Yes,”he says.“Sure.Why not? She’s Ruby’s best friend’s mother.
That’s got to be worth something.And she’s nice.She’s funny.”
“Tell me something funny she’s said.It’ll whet my appetite for an evening ofunbridled hilarity.”
“Okay.”He takes a deep breath.“Last spring—”
“Last spring?You have to go
“Actually, it was the summer.She got a mosquito bite, and I guess she was scratching it and scratching it.”His eyes shift away from Kate’s;he realizes he is talking himself into a hole.“And she turned the bite into a sore, you know how that happens.And so she took a pen and wrote‘ouch ouch ouch ouch’in a circle all around the bite.”
“That’s it? She wrote ouch on her arm?”
“You know what, Kate? I think we should call them and say we can’t make it.”
She wouldn’t mind doing just that, but she’s already set her course.
“Nonsense,”she says.She holds her pearls out to him and he comes be-hind her to fasten them.In her scoop- necked dress, Kate’s collarbones look as sturdy as handlebars.
