Famous Builder (9 page)

“Let’s get a look.”

Together the four of us walk across Mrs. Fox’s stones and stand right up to the Sendrows’ picture window, cupping our hands around our eyes. Inside, there’s a rocking chair with roosters stenciled across its back, a gold braided rug over the pink speckled floor. No front-loading washer, no pastel refrigerator/freezer. I can see why such beach-house minimalism might bother Mrs. Fox, but I don’t mind, if only because I like the Sendrow daughters with their sassy blond hair. These girls are wild. More than once Mrs. Fox has caught them sneaking their boyfriends in through the bedroom windows. In a few years I’ll pick up the
Courier Post
to find out that Pam Sendrow has been arrested for the possession and distribution of LSD, a fact that will thrill my imagination for days.

“How can they live with themselves?” mutters Mrs. Fox.

My mother says nothing. She knows very well that our own house isn’t much better.

“I mean, is this a fishing shack?”

We walk back to our respective houses. My mother seems largely unfazed by this latest demonstration of Mrs. Fox’s belief that we’re living in a slum. “Mmmm,” she says. “Mmmm.” If only to indicate that she hasn’t nodded off. She’s tired, I can see it in the shadows beneath her eyes. We’ve been wearing her out. And late to marriage (she’s thirty-eight when I’m born, but it’s not till I’m twenty that I learn she’s ten years older than I’d thought), she must be struggling silently with something. Having this kind of time on your hands can be a little dangerous, can swallow you whole, but she’s grateful to be in a place that so much resembles Stone Harbor, twenty miles to the south, where as a girl she was happiest.

“What’s the matter, Mommy?” I step into the living room one afternoon, hand clutching my elbow, afraid that it’s something I’ve done. If I’d only been a better child she wouldn’t feel this way.

She’s lying on the rattan sofa, left arm crooked over her forehead. Wavelets of light reflect off the lagoon, shimmer above her on the gold-flecked walls. I stare at her elbow, its intriguing roughness, so unlike my tender brown skin. Is this what happens when your elbows get old?

“I’m down in the dumps,” she says with a sad, apologetic smile.

“It’s okay, Mommy.” I sit beside her on the floor and peck her inside the wrist.

***

Someone who does get along with Mrs. Fox is my aunt Goldie, my uncle Francie’s wife. Aunt Goldie is tall, slender, and exotic, with a deep whispery voice. In the broadest of terms she bears a vague resemblance to Jackie Onassis. Someone at the electric company, where she works, has pointed this out in the cafeteria, and she’s played it up ever since, teasing out her dark hair to give it extra volume and wearing huge round glasses that hide half her face. I adore Aunt Goldie. Not only is she my godmother, but she takes a naughty glee in my imitations of Uncle John, her brother-in-law, a red-faced, always smiling, sweet-natured man who speaks from a small wet spot at the back of his throat. In addition, she likes the way I play the piano. Hearing me perform “Aquarius” from the rock musical
Hair
(in which there are reportedly many nude scenes), she virtually shivers with pleasure, pressing her fingertips to her collarbone to say
unh.

And she’s pretty good at mimicry herself. One Thanksgiving we walk into her house in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, suburbs to see that she’s modeled her living room on our Cherry Hill house, right down to the sculpted gold carpet, the burgundy sofa, and the Queen Anne highbacks. A serious student of style, Goldie is always looking for the newest, the brightest, the best. Once, driving Bobby, Michael, and me to Atlantic City, Aunt Goldie spots a carriage house on Ventnor Avenue with green-and-white-striped awnings, geraniums in the window boxes, and a painted wooden carousel horse on the front porch. Without warning, she slams on the brakes, turns before oncoming traffic, parks, then breezes up the front walk. The door opens. She tells the owners “I
love
your house.” Such enthusiasm earns her a tour of the place while my brothers and I sit for an hour in the sweltering car.

But there’s a darker side to Aunt Goldie, a side which I find both irresistible and a bit threatening. She’s prone to excessive emotional outbursts that might come out of nowhere. Within my father’s extended family, she’s known as “sensitive.” During one Easter dinner, she gets up from the table and throws herself facedown on the bed after Aunt Myra asks whether there’s dressing on the salad. (There is, of course, but it’s subtle. A tangerine vinaigrette.) On another occasion she nearly faints in her kitchen when one of my cousins remarks on the frequent roar of jet planes overhead, the way they shudder the dishes in the china closet. (After all, Goldie and Francie live across the highway from the Allentown-Bethlehem airport’s newest runway, but we don’t talk about that.)

Despite what the family might think, it’s Aunt Goldie’s sensitivity that earns her an invitation to tour the Fox property. Mrs. Fox is different with her than she is with us. She knows she has a captive audience in Goldie, and is more sedate, almost abashed and overwhelmed by her own capacity for good taste. I peer behind the shed to watch. Fingertips are extended; every meticulous detail is commented upon in a whispered hush. The tour starts with the Coupe de Ville convertible, then progresses to the lagoon-front patio, then moves finally to the custom sliding glass door. I crawl out into the open, astral-projecting myself into those rooms, stunned by the sheer proximity of all that beauty, that longing to be more, better.

When Goldie finally returns to our house, she seems different somehow. I look around at the battered tile floors, the turquoise and chocolate brown sofa cushions, the old Zenith TV with its sad flag of aluminum foil attached to the antenna.

“How was it?” I ask.

I want her to tell me everything. I want her to say the world is not what we thought, but someplace better, where vitality and hope are indeed possible.

But she hangs her head. She seems both breathless and sick.

“Play ‘Aquarius,’ Paul,” she says.
“Please.”

And I do it over and over, if only because it seems to be the thing to set things right.

***

Before long, Bobby and I have conspired to fix up the place. We’re sick and tired of waiting for our father to do something. We’ve gone so far as to draw up little blueprints with pens we’ve purchased from Stainton’s department store. Once every two months my mother worries that we’re spending far too much time with her, that we have no playmates our age in Anchorage Point. (The average age of our neighbors must be fifty-five.) If there’s anything good to come out of this perceived predicament, it’s that we know how to entertain ourselves. Part of our imaginary development can be attributed to the fact that we’re living in an abandoned subdivision, and we can’t help but imagine how things might have been, which prompts us to come up with our own solutions. There’s an empty lot across the street, crowded with bayberry, spartina, discarded pilings, and swampy blond puddles in which tadpoles breed. I’ve built a miniature waterfront development in a secluded section. I’ve called it Ocean Harbour and have named the streets appropriately: Barkentine Drive, Clipper Cove, Spar Buoy Lane. These tiny cul-de-sacs are surrounded by intricate canals—wide as an ice-cream scooper—filled with actual puddle water in which I hope the tadpoles will navigate.

A humid and torporous morning, with low sluggish clouds and a tangy wind off the sea. Bobby and I are ready to explore the site of our lost house when we spot the Caceeses’ old signpost pulled out of the ground, lying in the trash. The skin of my arms tightens and hurts. Before Bobby and I have even expressed our shared interest, we run down the street and lug the weighty signpost back to our front yard. We get the shovels. We dig the hole. Soon enough the sign is leaning like Pisa, but we like it, at least we think we do, even though the Caceeses’ house name—Summer Place—is still spelled out upon the crossbar in cursive black letters. We shrug. We dig smaller holes around the base, into which we transplant portulacas from the lagoon side, the same portulacas that were given to us by Mrs. Fox, who disapproved of our marigolds. But something’s missing. Cedar chips! We give ourselves permission to steal some from the Remetas’ backyard. Soon we run up and down the block, carrying splintered wood within the bowls of our cupped palms. We’re intoxicated with the pleasure of creation. We pant, sweat. We take on much, much more than we can rightly handle. But our work will be worth it finally, for once we’re done, the neighbors will be sure to take notice: certainly we’ll be popular and very much loved.

My mother walks out into the front yard. She’s been taking a nap; she’s groggy, the pattern of the pillowcase still imprints her forehead.

“Surprise!” we cry.

We look up at her with delirious smiles. To our surprise, her forehead’s ridged with worry. She looks around at the piles of dirt and the tilting post with the vaguest sense of bewilderment.

“Where did you get these things?”

We tell her
down the street
, and point to the Caceeses’ yard. “Don’t you like it?”

She shakes her head hard. “Why didn’t you
ask?
”

Bobby and I squint. In our wildest dreams, we never thought she’d be anything but pleased. Maybe she doesn’t feel well. She’s had a terrible pain in her neck for months, for which she does grueling exercises that require her to strap her chin into some horrifying contraption involving pulleys and weights and a metal hook over the door.

She nudges the base of the signpost with the tip of her sneaker. The wood is soft; it yields to her pressure like balsa. At once a procession of bugs climbs upward from its damp interior core.

“Termites!” she cries.

Waterbugs
, I’m about to say, but I don’t think I should correct her now. She hasn’t been this upset since the time she asked for the paint scraper when I was all of three, and I mistakenly tossed it at her forehead. Once she recovered, she pulled down my pants and spanked me, and I ran out into the side yard, leaping and hopping at the scarlet red pain.

I feel just awful, misunderstood by the woman who I thought would always want the best for us. Doesn’t she know we want the best for her?

“You better fix this up before Daddy sees it.” And she walks back into the house to get a start on dinner.

Bobby and I begin to do what we’re told, before slowing down in the hope that Mrs. Fox will open her back door to see what we’ve done. Surely, she will appreciate our efforts. She won’t be so inscrutable. But it’s dark now, and the smell of spaghetti sauce is drifting out through our screens. A lone gull bleats like a sheep. A cricket saws inside the inner branches of the hydrangeas. With heavy hearts, we fill up the hole and drag the signpost back to where we found it.

***

Our parents have agreed to take us to the Anchorage Point Civic Association dinner. I can’t imagine anything more exciting. The prospect of attending literally changes my demeanor, and in the days leading up to the event, which I imagine to be as glamorous as the Academy Awards ceremony, I walk around with my chin held just a little high, practicing an expression of drollness.

The dinner takes place at the Bali Hai, a restaurant to which I’ve attached an enormous amount of significance, not only because we drive by it twice a day, but because it’s Mrs. Fox’s favorite restaurant. As she never cooks anything in her General Electric wall oven, she and Mr. Fox go there practically every night, reportedly ordering the same meal: chopped steak. I have no idea what chopped steak actually is, but I imagine it as rarefied and impossibly elegant until one night, when I’m discussing Mrs. Fox’s interesting habit with Bobby, my mother cries, “It’s just
hamburger
, dear.” I refuse to believe her. Every time we pass the Bali Hai—with its twenty-foot tower topped with a red flashing light—I can’t help but imagine her at her table, where she closes her eyes and brings a delicate piece of charred meat to her lips.

A crowd has already assembled inside. A pianist named Nick Nickerson plays old standards on the baby grand in the corner, and there’s Mrs. Sendrow and Mrs. Caceese, shy in their black cocktail dresses, holding martinis. I see Dr. Bruno, Mrs. Vanderslice, Jean Russo—everyone’s dressed up, cordial, and delighted with themselves, grateful to be seen. I wander away from my parents to seek out Mrs. Fox. For a moment I’m convinced that she’s not coming, that she’s stayed at home to scrub out an unexpected spot on the driveway, when I see her off to the side in an silver sequined dress. It flings shimmers all over the black walls. She holds herself apart from the crowd, but she’s also
of
us. She’s so beautiful that I swear her presence alone sets off a small explosion of bluish green light behind her.

In minutes she moves to the center of the room, where everyone grants her her space. Mr. Forte, our other next-door neighbor, asks Nick Nickerson if he could play for a moment. Nick steps aside as Mr. Forte swings his legs over the bench and cracks his knuckles with a flourish. Before he moved next to us Mr. Forte worked as a counterfeiter, for which he was sent to Allenwood Prison. But he’s a law-abiding citizen now, as far as we know, in spite of the persistent rumors we hear about mob ties. I think of him as the Philadelphia Frank Sinatra, and soon enough he launches into one of Old Blue Eyes’s favorites: “Luck Be a Lady Tonight.” Miraculously, he knows all the words. His phrasing is supple and taut, and I love it when he blows into his fist and pretends to warm imaginary dice.

At once, Mrs. Fox steps forward. Holding a tall clear cocktail, she stands beside Mr. Forte and snaps her fingers. She doesn’t sing or dance, but her sheer presence is enough for us. I love her shining platinum hair, her expression of uttermost sophistication. Her head bobs slightly with the rhythm. The flashes come more quickly, more brightly. Perhaps a photographer has stopped by to record this illustrious moment. I turn around and hope I will be caught—foxlike!—in the flashbulb’s glare. And then I have a revelation:
this
is where Mrs. Fox belongs. Not picking weeds, not scrubbing her driveway at six in the morning.