If we think of the Geary family as a single entity, then the first of the events that would transform it had already taken place: Rachel and Galilee had met. Though much of what happened in the next few days had, at least superficially, nothing to do with that meeting, it seems from a little distance that everything else was somehow precipitated by their liaison.
I don't entirely discount the possibility. Any feeling as profound (and as profoundly irrational) as the passion which moved these two has consequences; vibrations, which may begin processes utterly remote from it.
In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In its throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.
All of this was by way of preparing you for how things proceeded with the Gearys in a short space of time following Galilee's encounter with Racheclass="underline" how all at once a system that had survived and prospered for a hundred and forty years came apart at the seams in forty-eight hours.
For those who knew Cadmus Geary well the most certain sign of his sudden deterioration was sartorial. Even though he'd had bad, and sometimes extended, periods of ill health from his early eighties on, he had continued to pride himself on the way he looked. This had been a preoccupation since childhood. There's a photograph taken of him when he was barely four years old in which he presents himself like a little dandy, clearly proud of his perfectly pressed shirt and his immaculately polished shoes. He'd more than once been mistaken for a homosexual, which never troubled him. He'd laid more women that way.
Today, however, he refused his freshly laundered clothes; he wanted to stay in his pajamas, he declared. When his nurse, Celeste, gently pointed out that he'd soiled them in the night he replied that it was his shit and he liked its company. Then he demanded to be taken downstairs and put in front of the television. The nurse complied, and called in the doctor. Cadmus would have nothing to do with being examined however. He told Waxman to go away and leave him alone. Noncompliance, he warned, would result in a withdrawal of all funds made by the Geary family or any of its trusts to medical research, along with Waxman's retirement bonus.
"He still sounds like the Cadmus we all know and love," the doctor told Loretta. "Do you want me to try again?"
Loretta told him not to bother. If there was some worsening of her husband's condition she'd call. Much relieved the good doctor duly did as Cadmus had demanded and went away, leaving the old man to sit on the sofa and watch baseball. After an hour or so Loretta brought some food in: soup, half a toasted bagel and some cream cheese. He told her to set it down on the table, and he'd get to it later. Right now, he said, he wanted to watch the game.
"Are you feeling all right?" she asked him.
He didn't take his eyes off the screen, though his features showed not a flicker of interest in what was going on. "Never better," he said.
She set the tray down on the table. "Could I get you something different… maybe some fruit?"
"I've already got the shits, thank you," he said politely.
"Some chocolate pudding?"
"I'm not a child, Loretta," he said. "Though I realize it's a very long time since I proved it to you. I'm sure you're getting a good fucking from somebody-"
"Cadmus-"
"-I just hope he appreciates how much of my money you've spent getting your tits tucked and your ass tucked and that belly of yours all stapled up-"
"Stop that!"
"Did you get a pussy tuck while you were at it?" he remarked, his tone not once wavering from the lightly conversational. "You must be sloppy down there after all these years."
"Don't be disgusting," Loretta said.
"Do I take that as a yes?"
"If you don't stop this-"
"What will you do?" he said, a tiny smile coming onto his parchment lips. "Throw me over your lap and spank me? Remember how I used to do that to you, love? Remember that lacquered hairbrush you used to present me with when you were in need of a little discipline?" Loretta was having no more of this. She walked smartly to the door, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor. "Don't you ever wonder how much of it I told people about?" he said.
She stopped a yard short of the door. "You didn't," she said.
"Don't be ridiculous," he said. "Of course I told people. Just a select little group. Cecil of course. Some members of your family."
"Oh you are a filthy, disgusting old man-"
"That's it, sweet pea. Let it out. It may be your last chance."
"You never had any shame-"
"If I had I daresay I wouldn't have married you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Nobody else would have had you. Not with your reputation. I thought when I first got you naked: there isn't anywhere on this body that's still virgin territory. Every inch of it's been licked and pinched and screwed and smacked. I found that quite arousing at the time. And when people said, why her, she's a whore, she's slept with half of Washington, I used to tell them, I can still show her a few tricks she hasn't seen." He paused for a moment. Loretta was quietly weeping. "What the fuck are you ay-ing for?" Cadmus said. "When I'm dead you can tell everyone what a brute I was. You can write a book about what a dirty-minded, decadent old goat I was. I don't care. I won't be listening. I'll be too busy paying for my sins." At last, having not taken his eyes off the screen throughout this exchange, he slowly, painfully, turned his head to look back at her. "There's a special hell for people who die as rich as us," he said. "So say a few prayers for me, will you?" She looked at him blankly. "What are you thinking?"
"I was wondering… if you ever loved me."
"Oh sweet pea," he said. "Isn't it a little late to be sentimental?"
She left without another word. There was no purpose arguing with him; clearly his medication was disordering his thoughts. She'd have to talk to Waxman; perhaps the doses were too strong. She went upstairs and put on a dress she'd had made for her the previous season, but had then never been in the mood to wear. It was white, and rather plain, and when she'd first tried it on she'd thought it made her look pallid. But now, seeing herself in the mirror, she approved of its severity; and of the somewhat frigid quality it conferred.
He'd called her whore, and that wasn't just. She'd had her high times, to be sure: what he'd said about there not being a piece of her body untouched was true. But so what? She'd made the best of what God had given her; taken her pleasures where, when and with whom she could. There was nothing shameful in that. Indeed, Cadmus had been perversely proud of her wild reputation at the beginning. He'd liked nothing better than to know that their courtship was the subject of gossip and tittle-tattle. And yes, she'd succumbed to the demands of vanity several times, and gone under the knife. But again: so what? She looked ten years her own junior; fifteen in a flattering light. But she had no wish to use her beauty the way Cadmus had implied. Once she'd taken his name, she'd had one lover only besides Cadmus, and even that had barely lasted a week. It would have been nice to think she'd broken his heart, but she harbored no such illusions. He'd been immune to love, that other one. He'd sailed away when he had finished with her, and nearly broken her heart.
So out she went, dressed in white, leaving Cadmus sitting on the sofa in front of his beloved baseball. Of course, he saw none of it. He hadn't actually watched a game in months. There was something about sitting there that helped him remove his thoughts from his present condition-from its pain and humiliation-and talk himself into the past. He had work to do there; things to put in order before death took him and he found himself removed into that special hell made for the rich.