The Condition Read online

  The family he’d married into seemed glamorous by comparison. They had attended the best schools, traveled widely; in youth they’d been cherished and guided and subsidized in ways Frank had not. He didn’t resent these distinctions. On the contrary: he wanted to be absorbed by the Drews, to become like them. He was prepared to love Roy and Martine, old Everett and Mamie, the army of blue-eyed cousins converging in Truro every summer (Drew cousins only: no one invited or even spoke of Mamie’s tribe, the ragtag Broussards). But Frank—from a part of the world where people pronounced their r’s—wasn’t a Drew and never would be; if he’d had any illusions on that score, they’d been shattered long ago. Now Frank counted himself lucky to be free of the family neuroses, which seemed congenital: Paulette’s prudery, Martine’s bitterness, Roy’s laziness and self-importance; their unconscious sense of entitlement and absurd reverence for the Drew name, which no longer meant a thing to the rest of the world, if it ever had. To Frank, who was smarter and more industrious, who’d busted his ass for every break he’d ever gotten, the success of a guy like Roy Drew was insulting.

  The horn sounded. Dieseling loudly, the boat approached the dock. Frank rose and waited; there was no sense in fighting the disorderly mass of humanity scrambling to disembark. Finally he stepped onto the gangplank and spotted Paulette waving from the crowd.

  “Frank! Over here!” She wore a navy blue dress that fit close at her waist. Her bare arms were white as milk. Several heads turned to look at her. This happened often, and still excited him. My wife, he thought proudly. My wife.

  “Hi,” he said, scooping her into his arms. She smelled of the outdoors, sea air and Coppertone. “Where are the offspring?”

  “I told Martine we’d meet them at the beach.”

  “I have a better idea.” Frank kissed her long on the mouth. “Let’s go somewhere.”

  “Don’t be silly.” She stepped back, smoothing the dress over her hips. “Everybody’s waiting for us. Scotty’s out of his mind. Daddy, Daddy. It’s all I’ve been hearing for days.”

  She handed him the keys to the wagon. Frank always drove when they were together; he hadn’t been her passenger in years, not since the hair-raising spring when he’d taught her to drive. It was an arrangement they both preferred. Sitting in the passenger seat, he made Paulette nervous, and the feeling was mutual. Her style was to roar down the highway like an ambulance driver, slamming on the brakes at every yellow light. A year before, to his horror, she had totaled his brand-new Saab 97, a car Frank loved in a way he would never love another. He forgave her immediately, grateful she wasn’t hurt; but the car’s demise still haunted him. He would drive it occasionally for the rest of his life, in dreams.

  On the road to Truro she filled him in on the week’s events. Martine had taken the children fishing; next week, winds permitting, Roy had promised a sail to the Vineyard in the Mamie Broussard. There had been a few squabbles between Charlotte and Scotty, who’d been even more rambunctious than he was at home. It was a complaint Frank was tired of hearing. What do you expect? he wanted to say. For God’s sake, he’s a boy.

  “What about his diet?” he asked instead. “Are you watching his sugar intake?”

  They turned down the dusty lane that led to the Captain’s House—an outstanding example of shingle-style architecture and, in Frank’s mind, a monument to the financial ineptitude of his father-in-law. A century ago, the Drews had been one of the wealthiest families in America, thanks to one ancestor who’d amassed a whaling fortune. The old captain had helped build the railroad from Taunton to Providence and had owned property—waterfront acreage on Martha’s Vineyard, a grand house on Beacon Hill—that was now worth millions. A small fortune for each of them, if his descendants had simply hung on to it; but Paulette’s father, born into money, seemed constitutionally unable to earn any himself. Everett Drew had sold off the family assets one by one, pissing away the proceeds with a series of disastrous investments. Now that Ev had retired to Florida, his law firm was in the hands of Paulette’s brother, Roy, a guy less principled than his father and, in Frank’s opinion, even less competent. The house in Truro was the last significant Drew asset. Within a few years, Frank imagined, it would slip through Roy’s fingers.

  They got out of the car and climbed the stairs to the front porch, where Roy Drew sat smoking a cigarette. He was a tall, spindly fellow with a receding hairline and a long, aquiline nose. An aristocratic nose, Frank thought, suitable for looking down.

  “Roy! You made it.” Paulette embraced her brother. “We were starting to worry.”

  Roy offered Frank his hand. “You had the right idea taking the ferry, my friend. Traffic was murder. Welcome.”

  Frank smiled grimly. The welcome rankled. It was Roy’s way of reminding him who would inherit the house in a few years. Paulette had always been her father’s favorite, but Roy was the only son—and in the Drew family, tradition always trumped sentiment. Already Roy had benefited unfairly, making partner in the firm at the puppyish age of thirty. Since Ev’s retirement, Roy had handled his parents’ finances; their assets, Frank imagined, were being siphoned off at a discreet rate into Roy’s personal bank account—to cover the new Mercedes, the endless maintenance on his boat. By the time the old man finally died, his will wouldn’t much matter. Roy would already have socked away most of the take.

  Roy offered him a cigarette. “No thanks,” said Frank. Better cut back on those things, he thought. Hang around long enough to enjoy my wife’s inheritance.

  “How’s the lawyering?” he asked briskly.

  “What can I say? We’re having a great year.” Roy leaned back in his chair, stretching out his hairy legs. He wore runner’s shorts, cut to the upper thigh. Nothing uglier than a man’s legs, Frank thought.

  “Glad to hear it,” he said, clapping Roy’s shoulder. “Good for you.” His duty done, he followed Paulette into the kitchen, where Roy’s skeletal wife was packing a picnic basket. “Hi, Anne,” he said, kissing her cheek. Like her husband, she reeked of cigarette smoke. “Where are the kids?”

  “Martine took them to the beach.” Anne had wrapped half a dozen sandwiches in waxed paper. “I’m heading there right now.”

  “Where’s Mimi?” Paulette asked.

  “Oh, she met up with a girlfriend from school. Her parents have a place on the Vineyard.” Anne returned the cold cuts to the fridge.

  “Oh, that’s too bad.” Paulette turned to Frank, beaming. “Mimi is growing into a delightful young woman. I’m sorry you missed her.”

  “Me too,” Frank said, though he hadn’t seen Roy’s kids in years, and in truth, had never been able to keep their names straight. He thought of the empty house, the quiet front bedroom: a rare opportunity to get his wife alone at the Cape.

  “I’ll go get my bathing suit,” Paulette said.

  Frank watched her climb the stairs. “We’ll meet you over there,” he told Anne. “No sense waiting around for us.”

  At the bedroom door he waited a moment. Hard years of marriage had taught him that timing was key. If he waited until she’d undressed, a yes was much more likely. He opened the door.

  “Frank!” Paulette stood in the center of the room, naked as a newborn. She was about to step into her swimsuit. “Someone could be in the hallway. You really should knock.”

  “Nobody’s there.” He went to her and pulled her close, before she could cover herself. He felt the tension in her shoulders: a no was still possible.

  “Anne and Roy are waiting downstairs.”

  “Don’t worry. I said we’d meet them later.”

  She relaxed in his arms then, the signal he’d been waiting for. “I did miss you,” she said in a small voice, as though it were an admission of guilt.

  “Let me look at you.” They always made love in the dark; it was a rare thing to see her naked in daylight: her tiny nipples, the lush dark hair.

  He laid her down on the bed, a little roughly. “I thought about this all week.”

&n
bsp; FRANK FOLLOWED his wife an endless mile up the beach, loaded down with an Igloo cooler, an umbrella and two beach chairs. His feet sank into the soft sand. Tomorrow morning—he knew this from experience—he’d have a powerful backache.

  “How about here?” he suggested, dropping the cooler in the sand.

  Paulette shaded her eyes. “No. Over there.” She pointed to a pink umbrella far in the distance. Like all the Drews, she had firm convictions about what constituted a suitable location for lounging on the beach. She’d make him tramp through the hot sand for fifteen or twenty minutes, then choose a spot that, to Frank’s eye, was indistinguishable from any other.

  They trudged onward. Sweat dripped down Frank’s forehead and into his eyes. A small plane buzzed overhead, trailing a lettered banner: SULLY’S CLAM SHACK BEST CHOWDA ON THE CAPE.

  “Here,” Paulette said finally. “This is perfect.”

  Frank spiked the umbrella viciously into the sand. He despised the beach. The sun was unkind to his freckled skin; while the Drews basked, he reddened, perspired, longed for a drink. Bring a book, Paulette suggested. Take a nap. But reading in the sun made his head ache, and Frank hadn’t napped since he was in diapers. Instead he sat for hours doing nothing. The inactivity caused him almost physical anguish. Why Paulette insisted on torturing him this way—what satisfaction she got out of keeping him trapped, idle and bored out of his mind—he would never understand.

  He opened the beach chairs and settled them under the umbrella. His objections went beyond boredom. It was the ocean itself he hated, its droning eternality. It puts everything in perspective, Paulette sometimes said, and that was Frank’s point precisely. He didn’t want to be reminded of his own insignificance, the brevity of his life, the pettiness of his concerns. What kind of lunatic wanted to think about that?

  He stretched out under the umbrella and shaded his eyes from the sun.

  “Hey there!” a familiar voice called. “We’re over here.”

  His sister-in-law Martine jogged toward them, her compact body fit and sexless in a no-nonsense blue suit. Frank rose to greet her. He couldn’t think of another woman whose near nakedness affected him so little.

  Paulette sat up on the blanket and waved to Scotty and Gwen, wet and blue lipped under a striped umbrella, wrapped in beach towels. She shaded her eyes. “Where’s Billy?”

  “He rode into Provincetown on his bike,” said Martine. “That’s okay, right?”

  Paulette frowned. “There’s quite a bit of traffic on that highway. Frank, do you think he’ll be all right?”

  “Don’t be silly. The kid can handle himself.”

  “Daddy!” Gwen called, running toward him. Another, taller girl followed behind.

  “Hi, baby!” he called. “How’s the water?”

  “Cold!” She grasped him around the waist. Her head was wet against his shirt front. “Do you like my new bathing suit?”

  “I love it.” He scooped her into his arms. On her the purple bikini was adorable, the top placed roughly where breasts would be. Half of it had gone slightly askew, revealing one pink nipple. He tugged it gingerly back into place.

  “Darling, you’re burning.” Paulette reached into her bag for a tube of zinc oxide. “Put this on your nose.”

  “I could use some of that too,” said Frank. The poor kid had inherited his complexion. He took the tube from Paulette’s hand, put a dab on his own nose and rubbed it onto Gwen’s. She giggled, delighted.

  “Hi, Uncle Frank,” said the other girl, who had joined them.

  “Hi there.” Frank bent to kiss her cheek. “I thought you went to the Vineyard.”

  “That was Mimi,” said the girl. “Her and her stupid friend.”

  “Oh, Charlotte.” The younger one, then; she was Gwen’s age. He eyed the two standing side by side. Like Gwen, Charlotte wore a bikini, but she had small breasts to fill hers. Her shoulder was level with the top of Gwen’s head.

  “I’m freezing,” said Gwen, her teeth chattering. “Daddy, we’re going to lie down on our towel.”

  He watched them climb the dune, Gwen’s sturdy legs pumping. “That’s Charlotte?” he said to his wife, whose nose was buried in Willa Cather. “She’s twelve? Like Gwen?”

  “Charlotte’s three months younger. She’ll be thirteen in December.” Paulette turned a page.

  The wind shifted, a sudden chill. Frank knew, could never again unknow, that something was terribly wrong.

  Traffic was brisk on the road to Provincetown. Billy rode carefully, keeping an eye on his rearview mirror. He was a responsible cyclist; he kept to the right and always signaled before he turned. Most drivers gave him wide berth, but there was the occasional hoser who roared up behind him and leaned on the horn or flashed the headlights. He was beginning to understand that life was full of such people—the aggressive, the crude. Once in a while they paid for their bad behavior, but usually not. Mostly they took over companies, dominated sport’s teams, ran for president. Hosers basically owned the world.

  It was the kind of thing his aunt Martine was always saying. No good deed goes unpunished. And: The freaks shall inherit the earth. He’d begun to see that it was true. The past soccer season had kicked the crap out of him. Coach Dick—his actual name—had humiliated him practice after practice. He had a losing season, and you’re his scapegoat, Billy’s father had told him, rather unhelpfully. Never be a scapegoat.

  How do I do that? Billy had demanded.

  You’ll figure it out, his father said.

  Billy hadn’t figured it out. He had waited it out. As of June first, Pilgrims Country Day was officially behind him. In the fall he would go to boarding school in New Hampshire, where the coaches would not be hosers. He’d been promised this by his uncle Roy, who had gone to Pearse a hundred years ago and probably didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Billy turned off the highway and down the beach road, past a row of tiny cottages. Last night they had gone into Provincetown together, Billy, his mother, and Gwen. Scotty hadn’t been allowed to come because, according to their mother, he’d behaved abominably all day. As far as Billy could tell, that meant picking at his dinner, making rude noises at the table, and teasing Charlotte, who, in Billy’s opinion, deserved it. Charlotte had turned into a giant pain in the ass. He felt sorry for Scotty, but was glad to be away from him. This year Scotty had the top bunk, where he snored and thrashed and mumbled in his sleep, waking Billy ten times a night. Billy hated sharing a bedroom. And his brother was only nine, a little kid.

  In Provincetown they’d had ice cream, Billy a chocolate cone with jimmies, Gwen a strawberry frappé. Then their mother led them into a shop called Outer Limits. In the windows were beach towels, T-shirts, bathing suits. A tie-dyed hammock hung from the ceiling.

  We’ll be a few minutes, his mother had told him. You can look around. Just don’t leave the store.

  Billy had walked around the shop. At the cash register, under glass, was an assortment of strange pipes, one of which cost twenty dollars. There were earrings, shell necklaces, rings that changed color depending on your mood. In the back he found racks of postcards. The National Seashore, the Provincetown lighthouse, whales, lobsters, girls in bikinis. An entire rack was devoted to pictures of men in uniform: policeman, fireman, soldier in camouflage. Billy took one of the cards and slipped it into his pocket.

  He had stolen for a long time. Little things only—comic books, pocket knives, things he didn’t really want. At the drugstore in Concord, he’d stolen four tubes of Crazy Glue. Why, he didn’t exactly know.

  He looked over his shoulder. To his horror, a clerk was coming toward him. He had never been caught before, and he wondered what the clerk would do. As always when he was nervous, he had an immediate urge to pee.

  Hi, said the clerk. He reminded Billy of a pirate. His head was wrapped in a blue bandanna. He wore a tiny hoop earring in his right ear.

  What are you doing here? The clerk’s tone was friendly, not at all menacing. He didn�
�t see me, Billy thought, confused.

  My sister is getting a bathing suit.

  The clerk perched on the corner of a low display case. Are you staying in Ptown?

  Our house is in Truro, Billy said.

  The clerk nodded toward a bicycle leaning against the display window. Is that your bike? Or did you drive?

  My mom drove us. I’m only fourteen.

  Oh. The clerk stood, glancing over his shoulder. I thought you were older.

  Is there a bathroom here? Billy asked.

  Not for customers. There’s a public one on Commercial Street.

  Okay. Billy glanced back at the changing rooms. If a lady comes out, tell her I’ll be right back.

  The bathroom was dark and smelled terrible, bleach and dampness and other things he didn’t want to think about. Billy remembered his mother’s advice to touch nothing but himself. He had read a great deal about microorganisms. The average toilet was home to billions of viruses, parasites, bacteria. To Billy they were like the dastardly super-villains Batman fought on TV. He imagined them masked, in flashy costumes. Evil Salmonella. Shit-loving Escherichia, the dirtiest organism imaginable: the very definition of filth.

  He stood at the urinal and did his business. Zipping up, he heard a noise coming from one of the stalls.

  The door of the stall was trembling, as if something were banging against it. Billy looked down at the floor. There were two pairs of boots in the stall, standing toe to toe. The door continued to shudder. When it stopped, Billy turned and fled.

  He told nobody what he had seen. Who was there to tell? His cousin Mimi was older and knew more than he did; but when he saw her back at the house, sneaking a cigarette on the porch, he found himself unable to speak. For one thing, what exactly had he seen?