Bea blows out the candle and they all go to bed, with a quarter inch of Scotch still in the bottle.
“Why are they getting divorced?” Robert whispers to Penelope in bed.
They are in a twin bed, narrower than he remembers twin beds being, lying under a brown-and-white quilt.
“I’m not really sure,” she says. “She said that he was getting crazier.”
“They both seem crazy.”
“Bea told me that he gave some of their savings to a Japanese woman who lives with a man he works with, so she can open a gift shop.”
“Oh,” he says.
“I wish we had another cigarette.”
“Is that all he did?” he asks. “Gave money away?”
“He drinks a lot,” Penelope says.
“So does she. She drinks straight from the bottle.” Before dinner Bea had tipped the bottle to her lips too quickly and the liquor ran down her chin. Matthew called her disgusting.
“I think he’s nastier than she is,” Penelope says.
“Move over a little,” he says. “This bed must be narrower than a twin bed.”
“I
He unbends his knees, lies straight in the bed. He is too uncomfortable to sleep. His ears are still ringing from so many hours on the road.
“Here we are in Colorado,” he says. “Tomorrow we’ll have to drive around and see it before it’s all under snow.”
The next afternoon he borrows a tablet and walks around outside, looking for something to draw. There are bare patches in the snow—patches of brown grass. Bea and Matthew’s house is modern, with a sundeck across the back and glass doors across the front. For some reason the house seems out of place; it looks Eastern. There are no other houses nearby. Very little land has been cleared; the lawn is narrow, and the woods come close. It is cold, and there is a wind in the trees. Through the woods, in front of the house, distant snow-covered mountains are visible. The air is very clear, and the colors are too bright, like a Maxfield Parrish painting. No one would believe the colors if he painted them. Instead he begins to draw some old fence posts, partially rotted away. But then he stops. Leave it to Andrew Wyeth. He dusts away a light layer of snow and sits on the hood of his car. He takes the pencil out of his pocket again and writes in the sketchbook: “We are at Bea and Matthew’s. They sit all day. Penelope sits. She seems to be waiting. This is happening in Colorado. I want to see the state, but Bea and Matthew have already seen it, and Penelope says that she cannot face one more minute in the car. The car needs new spark plugs. I will never be a painter. I am not a writer.”
Zero wanders up behind him, and he tears off the piece of sketch paper and crumples it into a ball, throws it in the air. Zero’s eyes light up. They play ball with the piece of paper—he throws it high, and Zero waits for it and jumps. Finally the paper gets too soggy to handle. Zero walks away, then sits and scratches.
Behind the house is a ruined birdhouse, and some strings hang from a branch, with bits of suet tied on. The strings stir in the wind. “Push me in the swing,” he remembers Penelope saying. Johnny was lying in the grass, talking to himself. Robert tried to dance with Cyril, but Cyril wouldn’t. Cyril was more stoned than any of them, but showing better sense. “Push me,” she said. She sat on the swing and he pushed. She weighed very little—hardly enough to drag the swing down. It took off fast and went high. She was laughing—not because she was having fun, but laughing at him. That’s what he thought, but he was stoned. She was just laughing. Fortunately, the swing had slowed when she jumped. She didn’t even roll down the hill. Cyril, looking at her arm, which had been cut on a rock, was almost in tears. She had landed on her side. They thought her arm was broken at first. Johnny was asleep, and he slept through the whole thing. Robert carried her into the house. Cyril, following, detoured to kick Johnny. That was the beginning of the end.
He walks to the car and opens the door and rummages through the ashtray, looking for the joint they had started to smoke just before they found Bea and Matthew’s house. He has trouble getting it out because his fingers are numb from the cold. He finally gets it and lights it, and drags on it walking back to the tree with the birdhouse in it. He leans against the tree.
Dan had called him the day before they left New Haven and said that Penelope would kill him. He asked Dan what he meant. “She’ll wear you down, she’ll wear you out, she’ll kill you,” Dan said.
He feels the tree snapping and jumps away. He looks and sees that everything is okay. The tree is still there, the strings hanging down from the branch. “I’m going to jump!” Penelope had called, laughing. Now he laughs, too—not at her, but because here he is, leaning against a tree in Colorado, blown away. He tries speaking, to hear what his speech sounds like. “Blown away,” he says. He has trouble getting his mouth into position after speaking.
