Getting new mexico, p.10
Getting New Mexico, page 10
He noticed the sign above an end display of men’s lace-up work boots: “Leather Uppers. Soles Manmade. $39.95.”
Was that a reasonable price? Boots might be the best choice for his new occupation, so Schuyler hunted for his correct size, then tried them on. He walked up and down the aisle, surprised at the weight of the boots on his feet. A far cry from Ferragamo loafers. For a moment he struggled against the force of the inevitable, then resigned himself to the fact that, for him, the era of high-ticket suits and even more expensive footwear was as dead as a dinosaur. Even more surprising, he realized he didn’t much care. Good riddance.
No matter how well-shod he’d been, it had never stopped him from acting like a louse.
Standing in the checkout line, Schuyler again recalled his fumbling attempt to cheat the clerk at a Goodwill store in New York before his appointment with the Amit Chatterjee family. He shifted his stance, aware of the abdominal gurgling so often a precursor to an IBS episode. Uh-oh. He needed to get the hell out of Walmart. Before locking his car and heading into the store he’d glanced at his gas gauge and decided to top off the tank in Santa Fe before driving back to Nambé. His next stop would be the Chevron station farther north on Cerrillos Avenue. He could use the restroom there.
A niggling possibility troubled Schuyler. He couldn’t quite see the connection, not yet. It was dim at best. But could the increased frequency of these intestinal attacks be linked to memories of his past regrettable behavior? Could recalling those shameful incidents trigger a colonic impulse to rid himself of a load of shit?
No way.
More likely, the temptation of this “new age style” line of thought was only a nonproductive pile of pseudo-psychological crap.
CHAPTER 11
The Dog
Bang. Bang.
Holy hell. There it was again. The loud thumps put an end to Schuyler’s dream. Why was someone pounding on the back door? He forced his eyelids open and glanced at the clock. Six a.m. Just like yesterday. And the day before. His best sleep was always between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. and the clamor had jarred him out of the joyous vision of an intimate moment with Ms. Anita Chatterjee.
Hauling his stiff body out of bed, he struggled into the jeans he’d dropped on the floor at midnight and pulled on a T-shirt. He padded barefoot out of his new bedroom—he had moved into the second wing of the house—through the sitting room and kitchen, through the living room, and down the hall to the back door, hand-combing his hair as he hurried along.
Through the door window he recognized his visitor. It was Tom Jannssen, the man he’d had breakfast with last Saturday, a week ago today. Schuyler opened the door a few inches.
“Hey, man.” Jannssen’s bulk blocked the morning light.
“Good morning,” responded Schuyler, clearing his throat and frowning. His visitor was holding a rope tied to the collar of a scruffy looking animal. “It’s six a.m.”
“I brought you your dog,” Lone Goose said as he offered the rope to Schuyler.
“No.” Schuyler shook his head vigorously. “It’s not mine. I don’t own a dog. I don’t want a dog.”
“Yes, you do.”
“Why?”
The dog sat down, mouth open, tongue out, panting in time with the rhythm of its thumping tail, looking for all the world like it was smiling. Did dogs smile?
“A dog discourages snakes, coyotes. A dog will keep cats from using your garden as a litter box.”
“I don’t have a garden.”
“You might change your mind. You never know.”
“What kind of dog is this?” The smiling animal was black-and-white, its shaggy coat matted with dirt and bits of twig.
“We’re not sure. Some kind of shepherd mix.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My mother and me. The dog showed up at my mom’s place. She has three dogs of her own. Maybe four.”
“So you’re sticking me with this mutt?” growled Schuyler. “Instead of taking it to a shelter?”
“You’ll thank me. Just wait.”
“Is it male or female?” The rope was now in Schuyler’s hand.
“Female. Do I smell coffee?” Jannssen asked with a straight face.
“No. Uh, not yet. I just woke up.”
“You should ask me in.”
“Yeah. Right.” Clementine’s protocol of politeness took command. “I should.” With a sigh of resignation, Schuyler stepped back and opened the door wider. “Is she fixed?”
“You’ll find out,” answered Jannssen as he stepped into the house. Schuyler glanced down at the rope in his hand. What the hell was he going to do with a dog? Another expense. Shrugging his shoulders, he led his new companion back down the hallway and into the kitchen.
There was nothing to attach the rope to, so he dropped it onto the floor.
“Keep your eye on her. I’ll be right back.” After peeing and scrubbing his face, Schuyler headed back to the kitchen. “Does the dog have a name?”
“Mom called her Tinkerbell,” Jannssen answered.
“Tinkerbell?” Schuyler’s laugh was harsh. “This mangy mutt? Have you ever seen anything that looked less like a Tinkerbell?”
“I see your point. Call her Bella.”
“That’s still a stretch.” Schuyler caught the twitch of amusement hovering at the corner of Jannssen’s mouth just before it disappeared. “Look, man. I’m sorry I made such a big deal out of this. Thanks for the dog.”
“No worries.”
“And I’d offer you the cup of coffee, but I don’t know how the range works.”
“Got any matches?”
“Yeah. So what?” Schuyler withdrew a book of matches from his jeans pocket.
“It’s a gas range. You turn the knob like this. See? Then you light the burner with your match.” With a whoosh, and like a miracle, flames emerged beneath a stove-top burner.
“What about the oven?”
“Same thing. See this hole? Turn the oven dial a bit. Then hold your match over the hole.” Jannssen lit the oven. “Turn the dial again to whatever temperature you want.”
“I’ll be damned. I’ve never used a gas range before. Hold on and I’ll get the coffee going.” He opened a can of Folger’s and started measuring. “Sorry I can’t offer you a seat. I want to take you up on your offer of a table and chairs.”
“That’s what I figured.” Jannssen nodded. “Ellen gave me your message. The furniture is in my pickup. Let’s unload the stuff while the coffee’s perking.”
Schuyler wondered why Jannssen kept chuckling as the two of them situated the table and three chairs in the empty space meant for that purpose.
“What’s so funny?” Schuyler frowned although he was, by now, used to everyone enjoying an obscure joke at his expense. Once a butt, always a butt.
“Not much. The table and chairs sat in this same spot for years.”
“You’re saying this set belonged to Hugh Leigh.” Would he ever connect all the dots?
“Hugh Leigh and Harry Neville.”
“You knew my uncle?” Schuyler was flabbergasted. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“I was a little shaver when I met the two of them. Maybe about eight years old. They used to come to all the dances at Santa Clara Pueblo, where I lived. Harry saw a drawing I did with chalk on a paper grocery sack. He told me to keep drawing. I did. Entered local art shows. He and Hugh paid my tuition for the Pratt Institute.”
“The Pratt Institute?” Schuyler was stunned. “You?”
“Greenpoint. You know—in Brooklyn?” Jannssen clarified.
Schuyler was speechless. Of course, he knew Greenpoint. Once again his brain’s ability to function was ensnared by the tangled web of connections mysterious to him, but which every other human being he encountered in New Mexico seemed familiar with.
“Look over here.” Jannssen strolled toward a wall in the living room and gestured toward a large rectangular space a shade or two darker in color than the rest of the wall. “For years one of my paintings hung here. Look around the house. Wherever there’s a rectangle? Well, most of those are where one of my paintings hung. Hugh took them with him when he decided to move out and rent the house to you.”
“You’re an artist,” Schuyler stated the obvious.
“I got a couple of paintings hanging at MOMA. The Museum of Modern Art.”
“I know what MOMA is. Hey—wait a minute.” Schuyler shook his head. “I saw a painting of horses at a creek in my uncle’s bookstore in New York. It’s signed ‘L.G.’ That was yours?”
“L.G. Lone Goose. I already told you that.”
“What the flip. I just saw your painting a few days ago.”
“Yep. The bookstore staff is shipping it back to us. Hugh wants it for his Los Alamos house. Always one of his favorites.”
“And how did you end up with the table and three chairs if they belonged in this house to begin with? Why are there only three chairs?”
“Answer number one. Harry’s cancer spread faster than anyone expected. He needed to be back East near the best docs. When Harry left, Hugh moved the best antiques to Los Alamos. He’s an analytical chemist, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Hugh sold some of the furniture, and I’m storing the rest for him in my studio. Answer number two. Hugh and Harry bought the table and four chairs at a yard sale in Santa Fe and strapped everything on top of the old Jimmy to bring it up to Nambé. They always figured as they drove home one of the chairs fell off the roof of the car, because when they got back to this house they only had three. They never bothered to go back and look for it. Three is a better number than four, you know.”
“Why didn’t Hugh return to New York with Harry?” asked Schuyler, ignoring the ubiquitous “you know.” “It seems sacrilegious, to me, to abandon your partner.”
“If that’s what you think, you don’t understand Buddhist principles.” Jannssen shook his head. “Those two had a long and wonderful life together. A loving life, a journey together as life partners. That journey ended sooner than either of them expected.” Jannssen paused, and Schuyler felt the weight of his emotion.
“Harry didn’t want Hugh to witness his day-by-day deterioration,” Jannssen continued. “They both knew it was time to part and say goodbye. Time for each of them to let go. Start the next adventure. Don’t you find there’s a bittersweet taste to aging?” He glanced over at Schuyler who was startled, knowing he was unable to answer that question. “Both Hugh and Harry were good at accepting, at yielding, at laughing at what comes next in life. End of story.”
Schuyler’s head was swimming. Oh yeah, he got the bittersweet part. More bitter than sweet, to his way of thinking. The rest of Jannssen’s explanation was more like a pile of doo-doo. New age doo-doo with a nice spin on it, but doo-doo nevertheless.
“I just don’t get it. My uncle was the most important man in my life and I never knew any of the things I’m finding out about him now. I knew none of this shit I’ve heard since moving to New Mexico.”
A surge of fecal matter gurgled through his intestines.
“Yeah.” Jannssen pulled a chair away from the table and sat down. For several minutes the two men shared a heavy silence.
“Maybe that’s why you’re here, Schuyler. To learn a few things,” Jannssen suggested. “I know all of this is news to you. I never understood why that crazy lot, the two guys and your mother, kept you in the dark. As for me, I wanted to meet you, but you had your own life and had drifted away from your family. You probably never knew Clementine invited me to spend weekends at her condo while I was at Pratt.” Jannssen’s expression as he gazed at the stupefied Schuyler was kind, empathetic, concerned. “I think your coffee’s ready, man.”
“Pour me a cup.” Schuyler swallowed hard. “I need to use the bathroom,” he called over his shoulder as he raced out of the room.
CHAPTER 12
Flashback
After the two men drank their coffee and polished off plates of scrambled eggs, Jannssen drove away leaving Bella behind. Schuyler frowned at the sorry-looking dog as she stared out the kitchen window at the back end of Jannssen’s departing truck. She looked like she’d lost her best friend. He poured himself another cup. What a sucker he was, allowing himself to get stuck with this dog. Jesus. Tom Jannssen saw him as an easy mark, as much a patsy as some of the clients Schuyler, himself, had fleeced back in the day.
Although unimpressed by his tail-thumping acquisition, he did realize she might need to pee or poop. Better outside than in. Putting on his new denim jacket, he picked up the dog’s rope leash and led her out through the bedroom door and into the smaller courtyard. When he unhooked her leash, Bella made the most of the opportunity. She leaped over the courtyard wall, squatted on the buffalo grass lawn, and did her business.
Schuyler settled down in one of the weather-stained plastic chairs, a bit wobbly under his weight, and propped his feet up on the other. His bum was soon frozen to the rigid plastic, but he felt more ill at ease with the worshipful gaze Bella fixed upon him. There was more to this woebegone mutt than met the eye. He squirmed in his chair, knowing how unworthy he was of any form of adulation. But just why did he feel uneasy? Because he had done a good deed by adopting her, or because he had in his lifetime very few other good deeds to brag about?
Bella commenced scratching her ribs with her hind foot. Was it fleas? He hoped not. Observing the mangy dog’s misery, not of its own doing, made him think about his past, so riddled with willful errors. Would she prove to be an unwelcome key inserted into the rusty padlock guarding his withered conscience? On the rare occasions that seldom-used capacity escaped its dungeon, his thoughts made a beeline for the squalid zone of shame and regret.
That pitfall must be avoided at all cost or he would be obliged, again, to reevaluate his life path and all the crap he’d dealt out to other people. Other people meaning not only complete strangers or business associates, but his nearest and dearest. His wife. His children. His mother.
Harry.
Schuyler had met his future business partner, Robert “Bert” Bradford in 1985. He and Bert were both twenty years old and frat brothers at Yale. When they graduated in 1987 Schuyler stayed in school and got his master’s degree in global finance. Bert volunteered for army service so his master’s studies would be paid for, and never failed to remind Schuyler how he’d come up the hard way. Together, they founded Bradford-Schuyler Investments LLC in 1991.
Prior to that, Schuyler was donning his undergraduate cap and gown in preparation for the graduation ceremony in 1987 when a jolt of clarity leveled him. There was no telling why this unpleasant realization hadn’t struck him before, but it did now. Reality check.
One week after receiving his bachelor’s degree, he would be marrying his sweetheart, Natalie Weston. Natalie was four months pregnant.
His relationships with women had been, and he was convinced always would be, akin to labyrinthine nightmares. Weren’t his constant attempts to outwit and deceive Clementine worthy of that description? Labyrinthine? Her relentless determination to reshape his life, and his unending resistance and petty provocations of her should have been warning enough.
Bloody hell.
Yeah. Bloody hell. Nothing better described the marriage coil than his British-born mother’s go-to phrase when faced with inescapable consequences. He’d been forced into marriage, and what had he done to deserve such a fate, just as his foot was poised on the lowest rung of the ladder to success?
“It’s a good thing I’ve never had a big appetite, Aaron,” Natalie had chortled as she cut the first slice of their wedding cake. “I won’t gain much weight during the next five months!”
From Schuyler’s perspective, her belly already looked swollen. Unable to swallow his sinking feeling of desperation, akin to that of a POW, he choked on a mouthful of chocolate ganache. He was trapped. Soon he’d be a father and Clementine was ready to throttle him. He felt her fingers squeezing his throat. Squeezing. Her frustration and fury were directed at him not because he’d gotten Natalie pregnant, but because he point-blank refused to stop seeing Janelle Pearson, his study partner since their freshman year at Yale.
From then on, his bouts of IBS became wholly unpredictable.
Soon after the June wedding, Schuyler began to demonstrate his renowned ability to disengage from any confrontation or unpleasantness he didn’t wish to face. That ability became a lifelong habit. It was Clementine, five months later, who rushed Natalie to the hospital when her water broke. Schuyler was out of town for a “job interview.” He’d felt it expedient to take Janelle with him, since her advice on structuring impressive interview responses was invaluable.
“Honey, forgive me! I’m so sorry!” His apologies to Natalie upon arriving, too late, at the hospital were profuse. “I got my timing all wrong. Rushed back as soon as I got Mom’s message. I thought you weren’t due for two weeks.” He clutched his forehead. “What was I thinking?”
Clementine snatched the massive bouquet of roses out of his grasp and thrust them toward the attending nurse. “Please put these in a vase. Don’t come back. We need privacy!”
While Clementine ripped her son up one side and down the other, berating his callous behavior, Natalie maintained a stony silence. As Schuyler hightailed it out the front door of the hospital, feeling as raw as if the hide had been scraped off his rear end, escaping the wails of an abandoned wife and a hungry infant, and charged with the task of picking up their baby crib and changing table at Sears Roebuck, he realized he’d forgotten the sex of his offspring. Already.
Natalie had told him, hadn’t she?
He’d also forgotten to take a peek at the newborn. Had forgotten to hold his—son? Daughter? As if he wasn’t already in deep shit, that day he tumbled into a hole he never climbed out of during his marriage.
Three years and another child later, with Bradford-Schuyler Investments thriving, Schuyler was unsure just who snitched to his mother. How did she find out BSI had hired Janelle Pearson as their waiting room receptionist? The day Clementine, like some reincarnated vengeance-seeking Medea, stormed their offices, pulled Ms. Pearson’s chair out from her, and kicked her out the front door remained the most odious yet awe-inspiring of all his Clementine-related memories.
