“What happened to Stuart?” Evelyn asked. “I thought he was going to give us sensible advice.”
Natalie presently went home, locking the front door behind her. Evelyn lingered outside to watch the northern lights, which hung in tapestries, stripes to the horizon, gradually growing slender as the ribs of an umbrella. She had to smile. She’d never seen Stuart so lovable.
The following day, after Natalie had filed for divorce, Evelyn went to see him. He was alone in the house. “Stuart, what is to become of you?”
“Well, Evelyn…”
“Really, I’d like to know.”
“I see this as… as a chance…”
“To do what?” she prompted. “To go home?”
“I thought I was home. Maybe I’ll just adopt a baby.”
“As a single man, Stuart, I’m not sure you could.”
“Oh I bet you could, sure. There are older ones, ones no one wants.”
“Is this practical?”
“No, of course it’s not.”
“But you don’t care?”
“I do. Oh, sure…”
Evelyn found his lassitude unsettling. As they spoke, Stuart rearranged empty pots on the stove and fixedly observed his backyard from the kitchen window.
“I can’t believe how fast they go through that feed,” he said. “It’s a terrible winter.”
A gust of wind kept obscuring the view with flying snow. A paper wrapper passed airborne toward the alley, somehow as full of expression as a ghost.
Stuart gazed at Evelyn, trying to say something. Finally, it came. “I think we learned one thing from last year’s Stanley Cup. You can’t second-guess the referees and have a game anybody wants to watch. Waiting for overhead cameras to tell us if we can celebrate, why, no fan wants that.” Stuart’s looked so close to losing it entirely that Evelyn tried to move him to a happier note. “Well, the playoffs are a long way away.”
“Never count out the Maple Leafs,” he cautioned her. She chose not to tell him of her manic desire to become a cheerleader for the Calgary Flames, because she wasn’t sure hockey teams even had cheerleaders.
“The expansion teams are hardly the whole story.”
“Stuart, are you all right?”
“No.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“I’d really like to be available to you as your friend forever.”
“Yes.”
“You know that I’ve always liked you, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Stuart was a man in front of a firing squad.
“I won’t make you talk. We can continue this when… when—”
“When I’ve absorbed my situation,” he said with sudden clarity.
“That’s right,” said Evelyn, oddly desperate to confirm his discovery. Stuart would absorb things and they would go on from there. He would take in the idea that his dedication of a serious portion of his life to someone he loyally loved was now to be canceled by divorce, and that he must begin to plan how he would get on with his life.
This feeble concept was barely enough to allow Evelyn out the door; his eager nodding was about to break her heart. Stuart had indeed hit bottom, but it would be amazing to watch how far he would bounce.
“We have to deal with one of Daddy’s lawyers again, Melvin Blaylock. Why can’t we get one of the nice ones? Remember the nice one with the breath mints? This Blaylock was always against us.”
“Exactly,” said Evelyn. “So fuck him.”
“I’m there,” Natalie nodded emphatically. “When’s this shit supposed to go down?”
“At three o’clock. But which one is Blaylock? Is he the one with the pointed teeth?”
“No, that’s Larry Crowley. This one has wiry hair.”
“Long earlobes with creases?”
“No, that’s Calvin Banning. This one is just wiry hair, no neck and a wet lower lip.”
“Of course.”
Neither knew why Melvin Blaylock wanted to see them, but they feared bad news. Seated in the conference room at Valley National Bank, they were doodling on complimentary pads. Natalie was making a picture of Melvin Blaylock from memory, and it was surprisingly accurate. Evelyn’s horse was a juvenile silhouette.
The only surprisingly thing about Melvin Blaylock, looking as he always had in gloomy worsted, his bald pate allowing wrinkles of insincere surprise to travel all the way to the back of his head, was that he was accompanied by Stuart who, through size and vitality, seemed comparatively glamorous. Because of his dramatic black turtleneck sweater, the central heating was giving him a red face. He still had his blond hair in bangs, and the big watch that gave time and tide for both hemispheres was fastened outside the sleeve of the sweater.
“Which of you are we meeting with?” asked Natalie, exhibiting extreme wariness at the sight of her vigorous husband.
“You’re meeting with Stuart,” Blaylock said, closing the door. “Can I get anybody anything?”
“Then why,” Evelyn said, “are you here?”
“Stuart wants to keep the record straight, and—” he lit up the pause with his smile “—he has hired me to represent him. You’re here to preview the impact on the estate. That’s a courtesy for which you can thank Stuart.”
It was hard to believe that Stuart had called this meeting. Having deployed papers in front of himself, he looked, for the first time since entering the room, at Natalie. “I told Mel here that nothing you say is true, and Mel told me that if we go to trial we don’t want somebody else controlling the dialogue, that we want a level playing field. Isn’t that how you put it, Mel, level playing field?”
“Just like that, Stu.”
Natalie made an exaggerated slump into her chair and breathed out through pursed lips while allowing her raised eyebrows to drop. Evelyn went back to work on the horse. Melvin Blaylock was thinking how the opening rounds of a divorce were like the first bowel movement after Thanksgiving, awful and unforeseen. But it was great having an irate client, since reasonable ones turn you into a bureaucrat. Stuart’s opening salvo was gratifying, though Melvin was glad no extrafamilial witnesses were present, as a large percentage of them would’ve concluded that Stuart was ready for the booby hatch. He’d need to clip his wings if this thing ended up in court. Also, the sweater would have to go; all you could see were those blond bangs.
Stuart was ready. “It started with a dance, the way you moved your pelvis like a breeding polar bear. I went for it. I slaved for your dad, that goddamned cannibal. I couldn’t do what he wanted, not and go on believing I was still a human being. Then I got a pile of wood and bricks and pipes and wires and concrete and shingles and I built a house.” He showed them his hands. “I built a house and moved a whore in. Then I moved in with the whore. The old man beat me up on the job, and the whore sold me out every way she knew how. My answer was to work harder so my father-in-law could screw me over and lavish opportunities on Paul. Evelyn, did I ever tell you who I think Paul is?”
Evelyn shook her head infinitesimally.
“Well, let me tell you now, Evelyn, because you’re a good person, maybe not quite on the planet but a good person anyway, and you should know: Paul is the Antichrist.”
“Ah,” said Evelyn. This was one she hadn’t thought of.
“That’s strong,” mused Natalie.
“I wanted a baby, but you wondered how you’d look in a bathing suit. That’s understandable, but you didn’t want to go swimming. Natalie, when I get done with you, I’m adopting a houseload of little kids from Bulgaria, where they let you have as many as you want, and I’m raising them to college age on your money.”