Thirteen, his father was thinking, a pisherke,...
Thirteen, his father was thinking, a pisherke, and you waved good-bye to the family? What was the matter? Was something the matter with them? What the hell were you waving good-bye to your family for at thirteen? No wonder you're shicker now
But what he said was "That's all right, let it all outWhy not? You're among friends Unsavory as the job must have seemed to him, it had to be done, and so he removed the glass from her one hand, discarded for her the freshly lit cigarette in the other, and took her into his arms, which was perhaps all she had been asking for all along
"I see where I have to be a father again," he said to her softly, and she could say nothing, she could only weep and let herself be rocked by the Swede's father, whom, on the one other occasion she had met him in her life--when, some fifteen years back, they had gone to picnic on the Orcutts' lawn for Fourth of July--she had tried to interest in skeet shooting, yet another of those diversions that had long defied Lou Levov's Jewish comprehensionFor "fun" pulling a trigger and shooting with a gun
That was the day when, on the way back home, they'd passed a handmade sign on the road by the Congregational church that said "Tent Sale" and Merry had begged the Swede, in her fervent way, to stop and buy one for her
If Jessie could cry on his father's shoulder over waving good-bye to her family at the age of thirteen, about being shipped off alone at thirteen with nothing but a horse, why shouldn't that memory of his--"Daddy, stop, they're selling t-t-t-tents!"--bring the Swede to the edge of tears gucci clearance about his daughter the Jain when she was six?
Figuring that Orcutt ought to know what was happening to Jessie and needing time to collect himself, feeling suddenly the full weight of the situation he was so strenuously working to obliterate from his thinking at least until the guests went home--the situation he was in as the father of a daughter who had killed not just one person more or less accidentally but, in the name of truth and justice, three more people quite indifferently, a daughter who, having repudiated everything she had ever learned from him and her mother, had now gone on to disown virtually the whole of civilized existence, beginning with cleanliness and ending with reason--the Swede left his father temporarily to tend alone to Jessie and went around, by way of the back of the house, to the rear kitchen door to get OrcuttThrough the door's glass panes he could see a stack of papers on the table, a new batch of Orcutt's drawings, probably of the troublesome link, and then, by the sink, he saw Orcutt himself
Orcutt had on his raspberry-colored linen pants and, hanging clear of the pants, a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt decorated with a colorful array of tropical flora best described in a word favored by Sylvia Levov for everything distasteful to her in wearing apparel: "loud Dawn maintained that the outfit was just part of that superconfident Orcutt facade by which, as a young newcomer to Old Rimrock, she had once been so ridiculously intimidatedAccording to Dawn's interpretation--which, when she told it to him, struck the Swede as not without a tinge black chanel quilted still of the old resentment--the message of the Hawaiian summer shirts was simply this: I am William Orcutt III and I can wear what other people around here wouldn't dare to wear"The grander you believe you are in the great world of Morris County," said Dawn, "the more flamboyant you think you can beThe Hawaiian shirt," she said, smiling her mocking smile, "is Wasp extremism--Wasp motleyThat's what I've learned living out here--even the William Orcutt the Thirds have their little pale moments of exuberance
Just the year before, the Swede's father had made a similar observation"I've noticed this about the rich goyim in the summertimeComes the summer, and these reserved, correct people wear the most incredible costumes The Swede had laughed"It's a form of privilege," he said, repeating Dawn's line"Is it?" asked Lou Levov, laughing along with him"Maybe it is," Lou concluded"Still, I got to hand it to this goy: you have to have guts to wear those pants and those shirts
Certainly, seeing Orcutt dressed like that down in the village, a burly guy, big and substantial-looking, you would not have imagined--if you were the Swede--his paintings having that rubbed-out look as their distinctive featureA person as unsophisticated about abstract art as the Swede was said to be by Dawn might easily have imagined the guy who went everywhere in those shirts as painting pictures like the famous one of Firpo knocking Dempsey out of the ring in the second round at the old Polo GroundsBut then artistic creation obviously was not achieved in any way or for any of the reasons Swede Levov could chanel classic flap understandAccording to the Swede's interpretation, all of the guy's effervescence seemed rather to go into wearing those shirts--all his flamboyance, his boldness, his defiance, and perhaps, too, his disappointment and his despair
Well, perhaps not all, the Swede discovered as he stood peering in through the kitchen door from the big granite step outsideWhy he hadn't just opened the door and gone straight ahead into his own kitchen to say that Jessie was in serious need of her husband was because of the way that Orcutt was leaning over Dawn while Dawn was leaning over the sink, shucking the cornIn the first instant it looked to the Swede--despite the fact that Dawn needed no such instruction--as though Orcutt were showing Dawn how to shuck corn, bending over her from behind and, with his hands on hers, helping her get the knack of cleanly removing the husk and the silkBut if he was only helping her learn to shuck corn, why, beneath the florid expanse of Hawaiian shirt, were his hips and his buttocks moving like that? Why was his cheek pressed against hers like that? And why was Dawn saying--if the Swede was correctly reading her lips--"Not here, not here? Why not shuck the corn here? The kitchen was as good a place as anyNo, it took a moment to figure out that, one, they were not merely shucking corn together and, two, not all of the effervescence, flamboyance, boldness, defiance, disappointment, and despair nibbling at the edges of the old-line durability was necessarily sated by wearing those shirts
So this was why she was always losing her patience with Orcutt--to gucci indy bag put me off the track! Making cracks about his bloodlessness, his breeding, his empty warmth, putting him down like that whenever we are about to get into bedSure she talks that way--she has to, she's in love with himThe unfaithfulness to the house was never unfaithfulness to the house--it was unfaithfulness"The poor wife doesn't drink for no reasonAlways holding everything backSo busy being so polite," Dawn said, "so Princeton," Dawn said, "so unerringHe works so hard to be one-dimensionalLiving completely off what they once wereThe man is simply not there half the time
Well, Orcutt was there now, right thereWhat the Swede believed he'd seen, before quickly turning back to the terrace and the steak on the fire, was Orcutt putting himself exactly where he intended to be, while telling Dawn exactly where he was"There! There! There! There!" And he did not appear to be holding anything back
At dinner--outdoors, on the back terrace, with darkness coming on so gradually that the evening seemed to the Swede stalled, stopped, suspended, provoking in him a distressing sense of nothing more to follow, of nothing ever to happen again, of having entered a coffin carved out of time from which he would never be extricated--there were also the Umanoffs, Marcia and Barry, and the Salzmans, Sheila and ShellyOnly a few hours had passed since the Swede learned that it was Sheila Salzman, the speech therapist, who had hidden Merry after the bombingThe Salzmans had not told himAnd if only they had--called when she showed up there, done their duty to him thenHe could not complete the chloe paddington handbag thou