Shallow Graves

8

Meg Torrens, mixing fresh dill weed into sour cream, heard her husband upstairs, moving slowly.

Keith Torrens liked to dress for dinner.

He'd be laying out his clothes on the bed. He'd picked that up from some episode of Masterpiece Theater. Almost anybody else in Cleary mentioned that they are going to dress for dinner, it'd make them sound like an idiot. Or it'd be a joke about changing out of sweats. But Keith was a natural at that kind of formality. Meg found it charming. He was moody some and quiet. But he was a scientist. He was brilliant. His mind was different from everybody else's.

Meg liked smart men.

She liked formal men.

She liked successful men.

And Keith was that. She'd never met anyone so devoted to his own business as her husband. He'd always wanted one, a business of his own. Keith the dreamer. Even as head of research and development at Sandberg Pharmaceutical outside of Poughkeepsie (not a job to shake a stick at, she'd reminded him on the dozens of occasions when he wanted impetuously to quit), he'd obsessed about being an entrepreneur.

At first he hadn't been sure how to go about it. First, he'd considered a consulting firm. But that smacked of laid-off middle management. Then he considered for-hire research laboratory. But that was pretty much for losers and academics and-more troublesome-it wouldn't give Keith the income he wanted as badly as he wanted his name on a corporate office.

Then one day, two years ago, he came home and announced he was going to do it.

"Do it?" Meg had asked uneasily.

"I'm quitting."

"We've been through this a dozen times," she'd reminded.

"Dale's got cash."

Keith's friend from Sandberg and his intended business partner.

"How much cash?" Meg had inquired.

"Enough."

And she knew there was no deterring him.

So with a $185,000 mortgage, a son destined for MIT and a wife who in a good year made twelve thousand in commissions, Keith took the plunge.

In a whirlwind of eighty-hour weeks, Keith, Dale and their lawyer bought their way out of stiff noncompete contracts with Sandberg, and opened a company.

It hurt her some that he wouldn't let her in on the deal. Not that she wanted to have anything to do with the technical part, of course: setting up the factory, the financing, hiring employees.

She knew she wasn't smart in those ways. But Meg thought she was a pretty good broker and when Keith bought property through another realtor it really stung. Why, one night she'd even taken a phone message from the bastard, a competitor.

Another broker!

"Honey," she'd said, "that's what I do for a living. Why didn't you ask me?"

And he'd looked at her, surprised, and then forlorn. She could see that he hadn't even thought about using her. He'd confessed that he'd blown it. He'd apologized, looking miserable. Like a boy who'd forgotten Mother's Day. Oozing contrition. She'd smiled and forgiven him.

Brilliant. But sometimes he just didn't think. That was so peculiar. How could that be?

Sam wheeled through the kitchen. "Hey, Mom, you know why the dinosaurs went extinct? An asteroid crashed into the earth and this poison gas killed them all." He sniffed the dip. "Yuck." He vanished.

Did that really happen? How could all the animals on an entire planet get killed at once? Did we have to start over again in evolution? Maybe civilization would be millions of years more advanced if not for a single asteroid…

Meg filled the dip bowl and set out crackers like flower petals on the plate. She finished setting the table and wandered through the downstairs rooms.

She'd decorated the house herself. Laura Ashley wallpaper-tiny flowers like an airbrushed spray of blue. A three-inch border of burgundy paper around the walls, below carved molding. Braided rugs. Most of the antiques had been bought on a single occasion, at an auction in Vermont. Country rustic some of them, painted and distressed, and a lot of Victorian. (And a whorehouse of a bathroom, she kept thinking. Gotta change that.) Dried flowers, wreaths, vases and doilies were everywhere. On the living room walls were photographs from the 1800s, mounted on sepia paper. She'd bought them in a local antique store for a dollar each and mounted them in old frames. She sometimes told visitors they were her ancestors and made up elaborate stories about them.

Meg dimmed the lights in the sconces and stood looking for a moment at the romantic ambience. She shook her head. She turned the lights back full and trotted up the stairs.

Keith was sitting on the bed, putting a shine on his shoes. Now he examined the loafers like a diamond cutter.

Until she began to undress. One glossy shoe dropped in his hand. He was grinning.

"Hey, boy," Meg said, "we got a guest in twenty minutes. Get that thought out of your mind."

He dropped his shoes, stepped into them, kissed her chastely. Left the bedroom. Meg tossed her clothes onto the hamper, slipped into her robe.

Do Do a Do…

She stepped into the bathroom.

Don't Do a Don't…

In the shower, her hair protected under a translucent shower cap printed with somber seagulls (a Christmas present from Sam), Meg felt the stinging water and wondered about the Don'ts for this evening.

It became a private joke, Meg's and Keith's, after she'd told him about a movie she'd seen in high school hygiene class. "Don't Do a Don't, and Do Do a Do" was the theme of the film, which warned about sexual risks in such delicate euphemisms that nobody could figure out exactly what the Don'ts were.

She decided that tonight's Don'ts were: Don't talk about the movie, about his friend's death, about Hollywood…

Which made her wonder why she'd invited him in the first place.

When she got out of the shower she heard the comforting sound of her husband flipping through the Moebius strip of TV channels downstairs.

She laid out a black angora sweater with a star in pearls above her left breast and black slacks with a razor crease. She sat at her dressing table. She spread the heavy foundation powder over her face and began working with blue eyeshadow. Her hand paused.

What's so Cleary about me?

Five years, not ten, Mr Pellam.

Bzzzt.

Meg walked into the bathroom and cleaned off the makeup with Ponds. From the back of the toilet, she pulled a recent Vogue magazine and began flipping through it.

"Hiya," John Pellam said.

In her heart, Meg knew that every man from Hollywood believed fidelity to one's wife was an idea so odd it could be a headline in the National Enquirer. But Pellam's weak handshake and chaste cheek kiss told her she may have found an exception.

His eyes, however, did a complicated reconnaissance of her face and she almost laughed as he tried to figure out exactly what was different about her. She could tell he decided it was the French braid of her hair.

Keith did the same scan and said, "New sweater, darling. Looks super." He'd given it to her two Christmases ago.

Pellam was wearing black jeans and a gray shirt, buttoned at the neck, without a tie, and a black sports jacket.

He was smiling steadily, looking around the house and talking to Keith. She heard her husband say, "You look like you're recovering pretty well from your little run-in with my wife, excuse the expression. Ought to be a town ordinance. Everybody else's got to wear crash helmets when Meg drives…"

"All right, buddy boy," she said, offering a wry smile, "you want to talk fenders? You want to talk body work."

Keith rolled his eyes. Said, "Okay, sometimes I run into things, true."

"You found the place okay?" she asked Pellam.

"Perfect directions."

Keith was looking out the door. "Oh, a Winnebago?" He stepped out on the porch.

"Home sweet home." To Meg, Pellam said, "Brought you a present." He handed her a small, flat bag. "Oh, yeah," he said. He added to it a paper-wrapped bottle, which turned out to be one of her favorite merlots.

Meg looked at the small bag. "What's this?"

Pellam shrugged.

She opened it and began to laugh. "Honey!" she called to Keith. Pellam cracked a grin. She held up a bumper sticker: So many pedestrians. So little time.

Keith laughed hard. "That's a good one, sir. That's very good." He said, "Come on. I'll show you around."

Meg glanced up the stairs. A small face was looking through the newel posts at the landing.

"Sam, come on down here."

Her son jumped down the stairs.

He walked right up to Pellam and stuck out his hand. "How do you do?"

Megan felt a burst of pride.

Pellam smiled-maybe at the formality and at the firm shake. Meg knew that childless men and women tended to think of kids as, more or less, pets. Meg had worked hard with her son. He was polite and direct. Meg said, "Meet my son, Sam. Sam, this is Mr Pellam."

Keith said, "Come on upstairs. Sam, we'll postpone your homework long enough so you can show Mr Pellam your room."

"Yeah!" the boy said in a high voice.

The male contingent of the dinner party vanished upstairs.

Meg walked into the kitchen and poured glasses of Pellam's wine for the three of them. She sipped hers and stared at the Winnebago. Should she join them or not?

No, something told her to stay here.

Ten minutes later the creak of footsteps had worked their way back to the top of the stairs. Pellam's camper was next on the tour itinerary. Sam started to burst out the door but Keith made sure he was wearing his jacket. Meg offered wine to the men. Pellam took his, nodded at her with a smile. Keith glanced at the glass but shook his head. "I'll have some later." He was a hard liquor drinker mostly. Scotch.

"Mom, I showed Mr Pellam the computer, then my burglar alarm and my metal detector…"

Pellam said, "He made it himself. I can't believe it."

Sam said, "Dad helped."

"But not much," Keith said.

They all moved toward the door. Keith said to Meg, "We're getting a Winnebago tour."

She said, "Dinner's ready."

"Honey," he said patiently, "it's a Winnebago." And a glance at Sam's face told her a cold dinner was worth it.

As they walked onto the porch Sam asked, "Hey, Mr Pellam, do you like bombs?"

"I've worked on a few."

"Huh?"

"Movies."

Meg laughed.

Sam continued, breathlessly enthusiastic. "Sometime maybe I could show you these practice bombs. They're at this junkyard. They're really neat. Mom won't let me buy one but… wow, that's so neat. Can I sit in the driver's seat?"

"You can even honk the horn," Pellam told him.

"Cool."

At the dinner table, Pellam looked out over the spread of osso bucco, mashed sweet potatoes, green bean salad, broccoli. How'd she made all this in the two hours since she'd intercepted him downtown?

Sam was in bed, Keith was serving and Pellam kept looking around him. He felt as if he'd never seen a house before.

Keith adjusted his tie and lifted his wine glass. "To my wonderful wife and her superb dinner."

The conversation meandered. Washington politics, Los Angeles smog. Pellam asked Keith what he did.

"I own a little company that makes over-the-counter products. Cough syrup, aspirin, things like that."

"He's too modest," Meg said. "Keith keeps tap dancing on Bristol-Meyer's face. It's an uphill battle but he's getting there slowly."

"It's tough for us small boys. But I like the challenge. That's what's great about growing a business. The competition."

"You a corporation?"

"Uh-huh. You have to be, with all the personal injury suits now. My single biggest overhead expense after salaries is insurance."

"You have a partner?"

Silence. Meg stirred. Pellam had asked something awkward. Keith said, "Dale Meyerhoff. We worked together at a pharmaceutical company near Poughkeepsie. He died not long ago."

"Died? Oh, I'm sorry."

"Car accident," Meg offered.

Keith said, "Last year. It was quite a shock."

Pellam realized that they'd dealt with the loss a long time ago but they were uneasy now for him-probably worried that the reference would remind him of Marty. He said, "So you do everything, hm?"

Keith said, "I had a lot of learning to do. Dale-my partner-was sales and finance. Me, I'm just a chemist basically. A scientist. A nerd, you know."

"Studio I used to work for did a film about a chemist one time."

"Really?" Keith smiled. "Usually you just see movies about cops and monsters and private eyes."

"I guess it wasn't really a chemist. It was called The Surrey Alchemist. We made it in England. It had very limited distribution over here."

"Witches and sorcerers."

"Alchemists were considered scientists at the time," Pellam said. "We did a lot of research. Turning lead into gold is called base alchemy. True alchemists practice sparygia."

He noticed Meg checking out the plates, pushing bowls toward Pellam when the helpings got too close to empty. Keith seemed fascinated with the story and wasn't eating.

"Sparygia?" Meg asked.

Pellam said, "It means extracting basic properties from things, usually plants. What an alchemist does is try to find the essence of something and that essence supposedly had powers beyond just the chemical composition of the material."

Keith said, "I remember from a scientific history course I took at MIT. What's the movie about?"

"It was based on a real story. In the late 1700s, in England, there was a rich man named James Price. He was like a lot of the wealthy then. You know, dabbling at science. Maybe he was a little more than a dabbler since he got named a Fellow of the Royal Society. He was also kind of a crank. A little bizarre. He set up a lab in his home-in Surrey, out in the country. He does all this secret work then calls a meeting of his friends and fellow scientists. He brought them into his lab, where he'd set up a display-the three basic ingredients of alchemy: mercury, nitrate and sulfur-"

Keith laughed. "Hey, you know what those are?"

Meg said, "Let him finish."

Pellam said to Keith, "What?"

"A formula for a bullet. Nitrate and sulfur are in gun-powder and fulminate of mercury's in the firing cap."

Pellam laughed. "Wish I'd known that. It would've been a nice metaphor for the flick. Anyway, Price also had some other ingredients-something secret-in covered boxes. He got this crowd together and made a grand entrance. He looked awful, though. Sick and pasty, exhausted. Then he mixed a white powder with the three basic ingredients and turned them into an ingot of silver. He did the same thing with a red powder and produced gold. The metals were tested by a metalsmith and were supposedly genuine."

"Then he sold the ingredients on late-night cable TV and made a fortune," Meg said.

Keith hushed her.

Pellam continued, "But here's the interesting part. Price kept up the alchemy and made a huge amount of gold but after a few months his health began to fail. Finally, when the Society insisted he do another experiment under observation, he agreed. Three members of the Society rode to his laboratory one morning. He invited them in, set up his chemicals and drank a cup of poison. He died right in front of them-without revealing what the powders were."

Keith, tilting back his chair, then said, "What was it, a hoax? And he had to kill himself?"

"We left it up in the air. It's tough to make movies based on true stories. You have to pamper reality."

Meg laughed at this.

Keith suddenly squinted at Pellam. "You seem real familiar."

Pellam said, "Really?"

"Were you ever famous?"

Meg said, "Keith-"

Pellam said seriously, "In my mother's eyes."

Meg laughed. Keith shook his head. "It'll come to me." He squinted again in recognition but apparently the thought vanished; he began talking about his company, new product lines. Stories only a businessman would love. Pellam nodded and ground his teeth together to squash the yawns. He was pleased that Keith wasn't a movie hound and hadn't asked for one iota of Hollywood gossip. On the other hand he was a major bore. Pellam hardly listened to a word he said-until he realized Keith was talking about someone dubbed Miss Woodstock, who knew the astrological sign, as well as a few other intimate facts, of every single man in town. Meg leaned forward and with a coy smile caught Pellam's eye. He knew what she was up to and kept his eyes on Keith until she disappeared into the kitchen of dishes.

The womenfolk gone it was time to talk about serious stuff. Keith lowered his head and asked, "Have you talked to the insurance agent? About the accident?"

"Not yet. Meg gave me his name. The doctor said he'd have a bill ready for me in a couple days. He was waiting for the X-ray lab's bill."

"If you have any problems, you come to me, okay?"

"Appreciate it."

"How long you think you'll be in town?"

"Don't really know. I-"

Meg returned. "Coffee's almost ready." She sat down.

"So tell us, you married?" Meg asked.

He'd told her. In the clinic. Maybe the question was for Keith's benefit, to show that she hadn't known. It meant a bit of intimacy existed between them. Pellam's eyes swept over her dress. The pin on above her breast. She looked a lot younger today. The makeup was better. Maybe she had to wear realtor camouflage when she was selling houses.

He realized he was staring at her and still hadn't answered the question.

"Nope," he said. "Was divorced a few years ago."

"That's right. You'd mentioned that."

Oh. A bad memory. That's all.

"There's a girl I've been dating off and on. Nothing too serious. Her name's Trudie." (Damn! He'd forgotten to call. He would tomorrow. Definitely.)

A timer bonged in the kitchen. As Meg rose Pellam glanced at the pin on her dress again. Thought of Janine's pin. And her breasts. She'd had a moon. Meg was wearing a sun.

"Dessert," Meg said, walking back in from the kitchen with a tray.

Keith said, "Meg's a whiz with desserts."

She set the tray down.

"Brownies," Pellam said.

"You like brownies?" she asked.

"Can't get enough."

The beige car pulled off the highway and into an asphalt parking lot, which was slowly turning into black gravel.

Sleepy Hollow Motor Lodge.

"Here we be," Billy said.

The twins got out of the car and Bobby snagged a big bag from the backseat. "Heinekens," he said, proud he'd bought imports in Gennie Ale country.

They inhaled deeply and Bobby said, "Fall. I love it."

Billy looked at his watch. "Late."

Bobby walked past him and opened the door. Inside was an ugly square room, too hot, too brightly lit.

Billy followed him in.

"Toasty," Billy said. He opened a window.

"Fucking hot. Heh."

Neither of them really liked the hotel that much. Cheap, plastic, tacky. It reminded them of Brooklyn, where they'd been born, or Yonkers, where they'd lived until their junior years in high school, when their father had been laid off from the Stella D'Oro bakery and had moved the family up to Dutchess County. He'd bought what he said was an antiques business, but which turned out to be-to the young twins' delight-a junkyard.

They'd finished high school. Bobby, just barely, though he was captain of the rifle team. Billy, with a B average. When their father died they inherited the family's lime-green split-level and the junkyard, which they renamed after themselves, Robert and William. They'd promised each other that they'd only marry another set of twins-which didn't make room for a lot of matrimonial material in Dutchess County-so their social life was pretty limited.

They had a few other business dealings that took them to New York every couple of weeks and they were always glad to hightail it back to their house, which happened to be in the first tract of land that Wex Ambler had ever developed in Cleary. It was a nice house. Big and filled with the things they loved-dark still life paintings of dead birds and rabbits, prints of leaping fish, carved wooden statues of horses and bears, a Franklin Mint model car collection. The twin leather recliners, Sears Best, were aimed right at a huge stereo TV. Within arm's reach of Billy's chair was a Better microwave, which was perfect for heating nachos and chili during Jeopardy or The Tonight Show.

A perfect home for two boys on their own.

Exactly what this dingy hotel was not.

Billy expressed this sentiment, as he stepped on a silverfish in the bathroom.

His brother shrugged. "We don't have much choice. Can't do this at home."

"Don't mean I have to like it here."

Bobby shrugged in reluctant agreement. Then sat down on the bed and opened two beers. The twins drained them. Billy turned the TV on, grumbling that the remote was broken.

In five minutes there was a knock on the door.

Billy opened it. Ned, the boy from the pancake breakfast, stood there, in jeans, a T-shirt and a varsity football jacket.

"Ned, hey, how you doing? Come on in."

"Hey, guys, what's up?"

"Nothing yet," Bobby laughed, beating Billy to the punch by a millisecond.

Ned frowned, not getting what seemed to be a joke. "Kinda hot in here," he said.

"Yeah, a little. Funny weather."

"Hey, totally fine place here. Totally." Ned looked around.

The twins exchanged wry glances as Ned studied the brown and orange shag, the laminated brown furniture, the prints of flowers bolted to the wall. Looked like he was examining the grand ballroom of a Fifth Avenue hotel.

They cracked open more beers and turned on a rerun of the Bill Cosby show.

Bobby said, "He's stupid in this one. Cosby, I mean. He just mugs for the camera and counts his money. I liked him better in I Spy. That was some real acting."

"I never saw it," the boy said.

"On before your time. These two CIA guys. White guy, he was Robert Cummings-"

"Gulp," Billy corrected.

"Robert Gulp. Right. And Bill Cosby. Man, it was a good program. They knew some real shit karate."

"Course, this show's got Lisa Bonet," Bobby pointed out.

Billy called, "Hey, Ned, would you get a hard-on kissing Lisa Bonet?"

"I get a hard-on looking at Lisa Bonet."

"Hot as hell in here," Billy said. He took off his shirt and wiped sweat from his face with it. Underneath he wore a sleeveless T-shirt. "Hey, Ned, you're one strong dude. See if you can turn the heat down."

The boy pulled off his red and white jacket and dropped it on the bed. He wrestled with the radiator knob for five minutes until he was crimson-faced from the effort.

"Damn, it's frozen."

"Aw, forget it," Bobby said. "We'll just sweat." He unbuttoned his shirt to his navel-no tee underneath-and flapped it to cool himself. The twins dropped into the room's two chairs. Ned started to sit on the floor but Billy said, "Naw, take the place of honor." He nodded at the bed and Ned flopped onto the spongy mattress. Bobby handed him another beer. They watched TV for a half hour.

Bobby said, "Hey, you want to try something?"

Ned said, "I guess. I don't know."

Bobby pulled an envelope out of his pocket, a small manilla envelope. He rattled it. "Surprise."

"What's that?" the boy asked.

He opened the envelope and showed the contents to the boy.

"The hell's that?"

Inside were two dozen bits that looked like rock candy.

"It's sweet," Bobby said.

Billy gently shook the envelope until three or four spilled into the boy's hand. He lifted them and smelled.

"Don't smell like much."

"Yep."

"We're gonna eat fucking candy?"

"Sure, why not?"

Billy and Bobby each took one. The boy lifted his palm to his lips but they touched his wrist. Billy on the right, Bobby on the left. "Uh-uh. Just one at a time."

"Huh?"

"Just one."

The boy dropped the others back into the envelope. Then lifted the single crystal to his mouth. He ate it slowly.

"It is sweet. It's-" He stopped speaking. His eyes went wide then suddenly his lids drooped. "Man," he whispered. "This is totally fresh. Man." He brushed at his ears as if they were clogged, a dumb grin on his face. "What the fuck is this?" His words faded into a giggle. "Man. Excellent."

They knew what was happening-how the soft cotton was expanding into the crevices of his mind, the warmth, the coming feeling starting at the fingertips and flowing along the skin like a woman laying slowly, slowly down on your body, dissolving into a warm liquid, flowing, melting…

"You happy?" Bobby asked.

The boy giggled. "Man." He opened his mouth and inhaled as if he were tasting air.

Billy caught his brother's eye and a slight nod passed between them. Bobby closed up the envelope and slipped it into the boy's jeans pocket, where his hand lingered for a long moment.