They get to their feet. Adams crouches, ready to tackle. The man is not tall, quick, or imposing. His shoulders are small and smooth beneath the padded suit.
“Pam?”
She loosens her hair and it falls around her face. “Yes.”
“All along …” he asks, astonished. They haven’t spoken since returning, on separate flights, from Pennsylvania.
“Yes.” She is breathing heavily, brushing wet leaves from her arm.
After thirty seconds he recovers his voice. “Are you crazy?”
“Of course.”
She’s mocking him, answering every question in the affirmative. He changes his approach. “Will you tell me what you’re doing?”
“Yes.” She smiles, loosens her tie, but says nothing.
Adams turns to look at his house, the kitchen light, the drawn curtains.
“Oh no no no.” Pamela laughs. “Not a voyeur, Sam. You know me better than that.” She removes her heavy coat. “I’m the Man of the Year, the nuclear threat, a lead pipe, a piston. I’m the Terror of the Prairie, the thundering hooves of unperceived radio waves.”
She’s not drunk. Her eyes are clear and sober. She’s putting him on for reasons he can’t imagine.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Is the performance over? What the hell have you been doing out here?”
“That’s right,” she says. “It’s a performance, Sam.” She rolls up her sleeves. “How long did we live in this house together?”
“Seven years,” he says.
“And married for fifteen?”
“Do you want to come inside? Can we talk about this like we’re not two crazy people?”
“I like it out here. Country of my Fathers. I am Zorah, protectress of the men with no heart.” She laughs.
“Cut it out. What are you doing?”
“I’m making you uncomfortable?”
“You’re acting like an idiot.”
“Remember, Sam, art is imitation. The first time you saw me out here, you thought I was a burglar or a pervert, didn’t you?”
“I thought you were a guy I knew at work. I didn’t know what to think.”
“Street theater’s risky. If you stage a holdup on a sidewalk, people’ll call the police unless you signal them it’s all an act. Art telegraphs its intentions. When it doesn’t, it ceases to be art. Or ceases to be perceived as art, which amounts to the same thing. Why didn’t you call the police on me?”
“I tried. It’s not their jurisdiction.”
She’s greatly amused by that.
“Is that what you call this? Street theater?”
“The Song of the Lorelei, the Poisoned Lozenge, the Terrible Awakening of the Lycanthrope, his wolflike skin, the wrenching echo of his cry across flat country. I must say you disappointed me, Sam. We had one good chase, but that’s all.”
He looks at her as though he’s not seeing her.
“You know the best thing about this house?” she says, absently wrapping the red tie around her hand. “The floor space between the built-in shelves in the living room. Too large to ignore but too small for furniture. You could fill them with wastebaskets, but who needs six wastebaskets in a living room?”
“Come inside, Pam. I’ll make you some coffee.”
“I used to imagine Alan was sitting in one of those spaces — I swept them every day — or lying on a shelf watching TV with us in the evenings. I never wanted a dead child, Sam. It’s hard to know what to do with them.” Mist collects in her hair.
“We have two living children,” Adams says. “Where are they?”
“Playing with friends.”
He rubs the moisture from his face. “You scared the hell out of me. Didn’t you think about that?”
“How old would Alan be?”
“I don’t know. Fourteen, I think. Come inside.”
“I don’t live here anymore.”
“I’m inviting you in. Will you stop this silly game?”
“I know you won’t understand this, Sam, but standing here has given me a wealth of knowledge about the differences between art and life. Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray’s Monument to de Sade, Florence Henri’s Self-Portrait, the formal creation of stillness through stable structures — ”
“Will you come inside?”
“This is important. Jung speaks of container and contained in marital relationships; conversely, in art, the image and the frame — ”
“Then get out of my yard.”
“But I am the Hook and the Eye, Collar Bone Stew-”
“Let’s get the kids. Where are they?” “Mother of Hope Unborn.”
Dear Sam,
Austin is beautiful in the summer. Mimosa and crepe myrtle. Honeysuckle and roses. The Colorado River is full and near-naked students lounge around the drag in front of the university.
Come see it.
Jack is in California in June, visiting his folks. I can’t promise you anything but I do want to see you. Any chance?
Let me know. Use the univ. address. Got to run.
Love,
Carol
P.S. You got my map?
It is now late April. Adams and Otto are sitting at Adams’ stone table, north of Deerbridge Road. Early evening. The roof of the dome glistens in the sun.
“Pam and the kids are coming out here on Sunday,” Adams says. “I thought we’d have a picnic.”
“You want me to disappear for a while?”
“No. She wants to see you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“She’s making a real effort to be fair.”
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Otto sips his beer. “In that case, can I invite someone?”
“Sure.”
“What if I give ol’ Rosa a call? She’s a crazy old woman,” he’s quick to add, “but you got to admit, she keeps the conversation hopping.”
“She does that.”
“Just to break the ice, you know, in case Pammy’s got a bug up her ass.”
“I understand.”
“She won’t be wearing a suit, will she?”
“She hasn’t mentioned that. Our conversations have been very standard, making plans for the kids.”
“Still got a thing for you?”
“I don’t know,” Adams says. “No. The years we spent together, maybe.”
Otto tosses his bottle into a pile of dirt at the foot of the dome. “Can you draw me some kind of map that shows how funny this country is? I mean, even the smart ones like you and Pammy are crazy.”
Adams nods. “It’s a failure, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“The country.”
“I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
“Gloriously full. Poisoned, fat, and hungry. A history of odd loves, spurious fights. Rooms that emit high piercing noises just behind the walls. For the next sixty seconds. This is only a test.”
“Where do you get all this stuff? Like that shit you were trying to tell me the other night. About Reason?”
“It’s working itself out in the universe.”
Otto pulls another beer from the Styrofoam cooler beneath the table. “It ain’t got a snowball’s chance in hell,” he tells Adams.
Adams says, “We’ll see.”
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