Grandview, p.2
Grandview, page 2
“Okay,” Heather said, “I don’t know that game, but you can show me, can’t you?” Maisie again nodded, while Teddy spread his hands and performed a little dance. “Put your sticks in the fire so the stuff burns off. There you go. Come with me. Let’s wash our hands, and check on Roisin.”
The children hop-walked behind her, licking their fingers, without looking back to their parents.
After a few minutes in silence, Esme cleared her throat. “I want to ask you a question, Sean, and I want you to tell me the truth. Please ... tell the truth.”
“I will,” Sean said, expecting to assure her of whatever she wished.
“How many of these ... do you have? Have you had?”
Sean felt his heart beating. Of course, there had been a few other girls before Stephanie. Quickly, he weighed his options. How much does she know? he wondered. If she knows about the other girls, she’ll never forgive me for lying to her now. She’s testing me. He examined Esme’s slender face. Framed by her shoulder-length, raven-black hair, it was almost beautiful again in the dim firelight. No, he thought, there’s no way she could know. The texting thing was a fluke. But anything I reveal tonight will be forgiven. Later it might not be so. He resolved to make a clean start.
Mournfully, he said, “There have been others.” She shuddered, turning further away from him, and he thought, So she hadn’t known after all. “But not for a long time,” he added, reaching out to take her hand. She recoiled from him and stood up.
“Don’t touch me!” she hissed, baring her teeth. Her dark eyes shone by the firelight. “You don’t get to touch me, not now.” She smoothed her loose-fitting shift, and said with more control, “You will not touch me, unless I ask you.”
“I’m sorry, Esme. I don’t want it to be like this.”
“And yet it is. It is like this, Sean.”
“Esme, you know I love you—”
Esme laughed ruefully. “You say you love many things, but I’m not sure you know what you mean. Do you know my father told me that before we were married?”
Sean, who considered himself on excellent terms with his father-in-law, was perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“He said you were a nice man but not a loving man. You have no real love.” She sat back down farther away.
“C’mon, Esme. You can’t believe I don’t love you and the kids. If I don’t love you, why would I still be here? Why wouldn’t I just leave?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, he realized his mistake. His wife’s face, at once full of anger and pain, melted into a vacuous expression he had never before seen. She straightened herself slowly, staring past the fire into the darkness beyond.
“Why don’t you, Sean?” Her voice was terrifyingly soft and hyper articulate, her tone thick. “Tell me. Why don’t you leave?”
He parted his lips in order to say, “Because I love you,” but she turned away and walked into the house.
Some time later, the fire but embers, the patio door slid open. Heather materialized by degrees, seating herself next to Sean on the wicker chaise. She ran her long fingers through his hair, over his shoulders, and down his arm to take his hand, which she kissed. In the dwindling light, his cheek shone, iridescent with tears.
“Come on,” she whispered gently. “I made you a little encampment in the study.” He allowed himself to be lead by the hand into his study through the side entrance.
Inside it was warm and mostly silent but for the tick-tocking of the old wall clock. A sofa had been prepared for sleeping with sheets and a light blanket. Next to the makeshift bed, a tray of shortbread cookies and tea sat ready.
“I’m proud of you, okay?” Heather said as they sat down together on the couch. “You told her the truth. That’s a start.” She poured two cups of tea and handed one to her brother. “It’s going to be very hard for a while, but it will get better. You need to give her time.”
“I’m not sure,” Sean said, taking a cookie. “She’s so upset.”
“Yes, she’s upset, idiot,” Heather said. “Think of what she saw. Wasn’t she a virgin when you got married? And now she has to come to terms with the fact that her husband’s been coming home with whore all over him?”
“She’s not a whore, Heather.”
“Whoa, there. You’re not going to defend that girl right now, are you?” Heather held up a hand, silencing his reply while taking a cookie for herself. “Sean, look. You need to take stock of your situation right now and realize what’s going on. If Esme, or me, or anyone else wants to call that girl a whore, you just nod. Do you get that? You’re this close to losing Esme and everything else. You want to be in court, with some judge deciding when you get to see your kids, so you can defend the honor of some home-wrecking slut from your gym?”
“Of course I don’t want that,” he said. “I just don’t want Steph to get caught up in this. She’s just a nice, poor girl. We got carried away.”
“She got caught up in this when she started sleeping with a married man and mocking your wife by name. Do you remember that part? Poor Esme could hardly repeat it ... comparing their bodies, saying Esme wouldn’t look right wearing the stuff she had on? I’m not kidding, if she was here right now I’d rip her hair out.”
Sean put down his cookie and tea, grasping her meaning. “My God, thinking about it like that, how terrible. Oh, Esme, poor honey.”
“Indeed,” Heather said, “but don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. You know I can’t stand that.”
“I mean it. I forgot she said that, didn’t she?”
For Sean, Esme’s experience was becoming more real by the minute. His thoughts had been centered on the possible consequences of his actions; divorce, separation, child support, and losing freedom of movement within his own house. Now for the first time he felt also a faint, sweet pain on Esme’s behalf. She was such a nice wife and had been at one time so beautiful. For her to have seen those horrible words and then his own crude affirmations in reply—how that must have hurt her. My sweet wife, he thought, sipping his tea, I’ll make it up to you. You’ll never see anything like that again.
“Do you think there’s any hope? Really? I just want to get past this.”
“Yes, Sean. There is hope.” Heather took Sean’s half-empty tea cup from his hand and helped him to lie down, covering him neatly. “Starting tomorrow, I want you to wake up early with nothing else on your mind except showing Esme that you’re sorry and that you love her. And don’t worry about that girl getting ‘caught up’ in anything, whatever that means. Forget her.”
“I will. I swear.”
“You’d better. And call in sick or whatever you need to do to be here for your family, and watch the kids while Esme and I go to breakfast and talk. I promise you we’ll work this out. Just don’t say anything stupid for five minutes, if you can.”
“I’m so glad you came down, Heather. There’s no one else in the world that could get through to her right now,” he said, crying softly on his pillow. “I don’t know what I’d do without you here.”
“Well, my little Glow Worm,” Heather said, turning out the light, “I think you’d be looking for an apartment.”
Chapter 3: Reconciliation
Sean woke up hours too early. What had awoken him, he couldn’t tell. It had not been a sound, but a presence. Something was near him. Not the dog, he thought, the dog is long dead. What is it? And for that matter, where? The air feels wet. I’m probably sick. What horrible timing to be sick today. His thoughts were befuddled, asymmetrical. Yes, I must be sick. I should go back to sleep.
He lay still a while in vain. With each passing second, he became more aware of a pressing sensation from all sides. The air was not quiet. There was a hidden thing. He limited his own breathing, flaring his nostrils, and tried to be silent so that he could listen. There was a sound. It was synchronized with his own breathing, but tucked underneath. The quieter he was, the clearer he heard the deep, sonorous respiration of someone who was not himself and yet mirrored his patterns perfectly. Sheer, visceral terror gripped his heart. God, he prayed, dear God, I am talking to you. Help me. Help me to move. Gathering his courage, fighting the instinct to cover his head, he turned over.
At first he saw nothing. The room was as it should be, but also different in a way he could not place. It was still and dark and as he had left it. And yet, almost imperceptibly, it was moving. Through the window of his grandfather’s old Regulator, he could see the pendulum swinging back and forth, as it had done throughout his life, and yet it made no sound. The mechanism inside that clock was loud enough that Esme had begged him to remove the clock from the dining room—where he had first placed it—to here in his study. Certainly then he was dreaming. For one fleeting instant, he was more interested than afraid.
Then he saw her.
The room, for all its familiarity, was not a room. These were his belongings, but not in substance. Everything was moist, respirating, on the grandest scale, everything together, swelling, receding. These were limbs, appendages, leading up straight into her face.
Sean had no words to describe what he then saw. It was the face of his wife, looming gigantic above him, architectural in scope, so weary, so utterly worn, breathing through lips like beams. Sean could not breathe, imprisoned here within Esme, the forlorn idiot god. Her enormous eyes rotated like painted cement mixers. Presently, her gaze would be upon him. He tried to scream.
Long after waking, as planned, to the gilded tones of The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise; long after coffee and whiskey, and a walk through the misted yard; long after waffles with the twins, more coffee, and the surprisingly civil departure of his wife and sister, Sean remained unsettled. Still coated in the thin, oily residue of his dream, he found it difficult to connect with the brightly sanguine environment around him. Alcohol, caffeine, Les Paul, Mary Ford, morning sunlight, each in turn failed to rid him of the sense that he might not have woken up after all. His sister’s conspiratorial winking, so like her, was perhaps too much like her to be believed. And could Esme be so merciful, standing there beside Heather, her eyes welling with kindness? Her irises, so dark, were they not a little too dark? Once, they had drawn him to her, long ago at that party in Solana Beach. But she had pupils then, he thought. I saw them ... or did I? Was I dreaming then as well?
Craving warmth, he fixed Roisin into an eating chair with some kind of vegetable purée and went out to the front balcony with a tumbler of Midleton. The dappled sunlight reached for him through the trees lining his property, immolating his face and chest in random golden bursts. Beneath him, dry stone walls of an ancient aspect disappeared into those same trees. They recalled Ireland to him, where little islands of happiness had sprung up while staying with relatives as a child. And beyond his property, the golf course existed. Normally the proximity of the golf course offended him. He liked to play there but hated seeing it always lurking behind the trees. Today, its very banality was precious to him. Few things could have broken his nightmare’s spell like white-shoed old men waddling across the green.
Behind him, he heard a knocking at the glass door. Maisie was on the other side, waving his phone. Oh no, he thought, if that’s Stephanie calling, this could be terrible. He ran to the door and thanked his daughter for the phone. A picture flashed on the screen, but it was of Robert Aiden Walsh, one of his favorite people.
“Bob Aid ... you back?”
“Yes, sir,” Robert said. “Last week. You wanna get some coffee or what?”
Good old Robert, Sean thought, he just gets right to it. “I’d love to, but I've got the kids with me. Can we hook up later?”
“Sure,” Robert said. “When’s good for you?”
“Um, probably around 7. That work for you?”
“Sounds good. Blue Ribbon?”
“Perfect. That truffle popcorn sounds about right. How was jolly old England?”
“It was ... different.”
“How so?”
“I didn’t do anything for like a few weeks,” Robert said. “I mean, I did stuff, but I did the same stuff every day. I got dialed in at Exeter and just stayed there until I left.”
“Did you see your aunt?”
“No, I don’t think she knew I was there. She lives mostly in Spain now.”
“What were you doing all that time then?” Sean asked, now genuinely interested. “I don’t remember there being much to do.”
“Just chilling at the house. I dunno, man, I mean ... I didn’t really do anything. I just kind of walked around, and went to coffee shops and stuff like that. And then I came to this new, like ... understanding.” He spoke dramatically, implying great meaning.
“You flew to England to walk around having epiphanies in coffee shops?” Sean said, amused. Here was Robert’s classic form: the capricious annihilation of carefully planned itineraries, bringing about (or resulting from) some new, higher mode of consciousness. “Hey, tell me tonight, okay? The kids are fighting inside. I better go sort them out.”
“Cool, see you later.”
They hung up, and Sean looked through the door at the twins, who were locked in desperate battle over a plush elephant. Esme loves Robert, he thought. She’ll probably insist I go hang out with him tonight. What great timing.
After settling the conflict between his children, he returned to the kitchen with the intention of pouring another whiskey. As he was opening the cabinet, the garage door began to open. Hurriedly, he began emptying the dishwasher.
Esme and Heather entered the room to find Sean drying the rim of a measuring cup with a cloth.
“Hello,” he said quietly, with an air of sadness. Heather walked past him, pausing to give his arm a reassuring pinch, and left the room in the direction of the children. Esme stood, clutching her Fendi bag in both hands, as though hiding behind it. She is still pretty, he thought, while at the same time helplessly repelled by the faint outline of her high-waisted control panties. If we are to settle this now, and she wants to make love, how will I get around those? Fearing she may perceive his thoughts, he looked at the floor.
“Sean,” Esme said, softly, “can we please talk, just you and I?”
“Of course,” he said without lifting his eyes.
“I don’t want the kids to hear. Can we go to your study please?”
As she made her tearful speech, Sean struggled to listen. The surreality of flesh and blood Esme, here inside her erstwhile Lovecraftian god-self, made it impossible for him to give her his full attention. Naturally, Esme had chosen the study. It was the one room in which children were never allowed, and it had thick doors and heavy rugs. Still, Sean would rather have met in any other room of the house. Esme unwittingly seated herself directly beneath that portion of the ceiling that had been her mouth, and he could not help checking repeatedly for assurance of its absence. Now and then between upward glances, he nodded his agreement and said, “Yes,” or “You’re right,” or “I’m so sorry.”
“I am willing, Sean,” Esme said, dabbing at her swollen face with a tissue, “but I can’t be the only one. I can’t be alone in this.”
“You won’t be alone,” he assured her, eager to bring the conversation to a close. “I mean it. I am so, so sorry, babe.”
“I forgive you, for God’s sake. For the children’s sake. But trust is earned. I have never considered, not once, being unfaithful to you. Never. Because I love you. Only ... what you—” She started to cry, spilling tears back on to her freshly dried cheeks, unable to continue.
Well, Sean thought, it’s not exactly the same thing, is it? It isn’t as though you are some great object of desire, not anymore. Of course he did not say so but instead slid closer and drew her to himself, this time encountering no resistance. He said, “I love you, Esme. You must believe me.”
“I want to believe you,” she said, sobbing.
She burrowed into him, wetting his neck, and he held her, thinking, She has eaten something spicy, probably those chilaquiles she likes so much. What a strange choice to make, planning all the while to have this talk with me so soon afterward. As that familiar sense of mild revulsion rose within him, she took his hand and placed it on her upper thigh, inside the hem of her dress. Then, she tilted her head so that her lips rested on his neck, below his ear.
“I’m asking you to touch me,” she whispered.
To Sean’s surprise, his body began to react, preparing itself for intimacy. Excellent, he thought, now we can get this part out of the way and put a lid on the whole mess. And that, essentially, was what happened.
Chapter 4: Revelation
The sun was low when Sean arrived to find Robert seated on the patio with wine and popcorn ready. His beard had grown longer, as had his thick brown hair, which hung about his shoulders. In blue jeans and t-shirt, he reminded Sean of the young man he had met during his courtship to Esme. “Hey, bud,” Sean said, giving Robert a fist bump and taking the seat across from him. “Good to see you.”
“Good to see you too, man,” Robert said, his blue-gray eyes twinkling. He poured wine for each of them. “Got some popcorn.”
“I see that, thank you,” Sean said, taking a handful. “So what happened over there? Met some gypsy with a crystal ball or what?”
“No, it wasn’t like that. I just realized something over there, and I’m pretty sure about it. Actually I’m totally sure. But I need to talk to you and see what you think, about, like, timing and stuff.”
“Uh-oh,” Sean said, “I haven’t heard from this Robert in a while. Let me prepare.” He downed his glass of wine and poured another. “Continue.”
Robert stroked his beard a few times and then downed his own wine. When he didn’t speak immediately, Sean poured him a second glassful.
“Okay,” Robert said, shifting in his chair. “What I’m about to tell you stays between us for now.”
“Of course,” Sean assured him, thinking, What could he possibly be about to say? Has Esme asked him to confront me?
