MARK IS arranging terrier pillows in the back when the door chime jingles. A smartly dressed couple comes into the store, a parrot-faced blonde with a hard leather purse at her armpit and a neat man in clear Lucite eyeglasses—gay, or German. They exchange smiling nods with Harris, who is bent at the window over a vintage watering can display.
Abandoning the pillows, Mark retreats farther back to a box of new inventory. A cache of rubbery, handmade insects. Harris has made a case for their playfulness, their novelty, for the arthropod silhouette’s outpacing the antler and the owl. Each piece is lovingly painted, some in iridescent shades of blue and green that to Harris are reminiscent of Fabergé. The insects were supposedly created as part of some larger installation that was gunned down by the town, and Harris is hopeful that their notoriety will appeal to customers. The people here love a conversation piece, a flash of rebellion on their own terms. Mark lifts a smooth-domed beetle from the box, Aegean blue, its underside so realistically ridged that he shudders.
After the statutory period of quiet browsing, Harris straightens himself in the window and addresses the customers in a creamy baritone.
“That’s a nineteenth-century Russian sleigh bed,” he says, stepping toward the couple with a shuffle in his gait that means his knees are hurting again.
The blonde exclaims in delight, and the dance begins: Harris’s lavish descriptions and the customers’ musical declarations, as if each object were hand-curated just for them.
“Oh, yes, I knew you’d find that. It’s a Zapotec blackware olla pot. We were in Oaxaca last year, but didn’t have enough room in our suitcases to bring back everything we wanted.”
Here in the store, lined with wood wainscoting like an aged oak cask, objects from around the globe radiate casual exoticism. Harris’s offhand way of cataloging them is designed to flatter, presuming the customers’ shared worldliness. Oaxaca—naturally. He won’t mention the security guards at the hotel. He won’t mention the beggars on the street, the women with their snaking braids and smudged children. He won’t mention the way he’d haggled with the vendor in his oversized sun hat, Mark cringing at his side; the way he’d gallantly conceded the last few pesos before tucking the rest back into the money belt under his shirt.
Oaxaca had been a turning point for Mark. Coming up the jet bridge at Newark behind Harris and his engorged suitcase, he’d felt that he was walking against a reverse magnetic current. The car service had picked them up and squired them back into this softest pocket of the continent, this deepest pouch of forgetfulness. They had closed the door of their house, unloaded their bags, and re-canopied themselves in the safe tarpaulin of their lives.
Since then, Mark has suffered from a dissonant feeling, something like the antipathy of adolescence. He remembers the first time he’d been nettled like this: during a childhood trip to Jamaica, when his family had driven through a shantytown, past cornrowed, bright-uniformed children walking barefoot on the side of the road—and his mother had locked the car doors.
“Oh yes, my partner and I discovered this beauty on our trip to Brittany in ’95,” Harris is saying, stroking the top of a cherry demilune table.
He pronounces “my partner” without any meaningful beat. Mark does not look up from the box of insects. Harris is in his tangerine polo shirt today, the one he thinks makes him look preppy and straight, but which has become conspicuously tight across his belly. It seems impossible that he hasn’t noticed this, and yet there is no kind way to point it out.
While they are triangulating the demilune table, Mark slips out the back door for a cigarette. He feels an urge to call Camille, to hear her sardonic voice, something salted to neutralize the gush of self-congratulation in the showroom.
He calls, tells her about the box of bugs, plays up the bitchiness for her benefit.
“Oh, I remember those,” Camille sings. “This old man glued them all over his neighbor’s house. It was supposed to be an avant-garde installation but it turned into a big scandal. People said it was bringing down property values.”
“Of course. Well, at least they’re on consignment.” Mark pulls on his American Spirit, the mellow varietal, a half-stride toward quitting.
“Are you smoking?”
Mark exhales. “God, you people. So what?”
“Just asking. Go ahead if you want.”
Camille had been the first to leave the city. Mark and Harris followed later the same year—in the midst of the Wall Street encampments, the haphazard arrests—and joined her in the same cosmically quaint town an hour north on the train line. What incredible fortune, they agreed, that life should have washed them on this same high rock together. They would throw scandalous parties, now on ambrosial back patios rather than spongy rooftops, more Gatsby than Bright Lights. Then Camille gave birth, got divorced. Mark and Harris had never really liked her husband and toasted her freedom with a bottle of Cristal, but frolicsome times had not followed. Instead, over the course of the past year, Camille seems to have pulled away, succumbing to the plague of insecurity that besets all single women alike. Her foray into Internet dating has become something heavy, secretive. She no longer calls Mark with stories that make him laugh until he wheezes.
Harris appears in the doorway. Mark hangs up, stubs his cigarette.
“Come in,” Harris stage-whispers, “I want to introduce you to these people.”
“Why?”
“Oh, just come in.”
Inside, the customers are smiling expectantly.
“Mark, this is Gretchen and Caspar Von Mauren.”
Gretchen. Not what Mark would have guessed.
“They just bought one of those gorgeous old homes on Cannonfield and are looking for a designer.”
“It’s a bit of a mess right now,” Gretchen says in a voice that is surprisingly deep. “But we have big renovation plans. Harris tells us this is something you do?”
Immediately, Mark feels exposed. Most likely he is the same age as these people, but inside he is still a boy, a student.
“Yes,” he says as casually as he can, “and I especially enjoy working with historic homes.”
“How serendipitous!” the woman pronounces, glancing at her gay German husband. “I’m so glad we came in today. You never know who you’ll meet. Well, Mark, could we ask you to come by one day and have a look?”
Mark glances at Harris, who is smiling paternally at him.
“Of course. Which house is it?”
“Four-thirty Cannonfield.”
Mark pretends to think, pulls out his phone, pretends to check his calendar.
“They’re taking the olla pot and the demilune table. They put cash down on the spot.”
“That’s great.”
“I had a feeling when they walked in. You know how sometimes you can just tell? I knew by the guy’s shirt, the French cuffs, that he was all business. And the way the woman’s eyes scanned around, quick like an eagle. She’s had practice.”
“Like an eagle sighting its prey.”
“What? Why do you always have to mock everyone?”
“Who’s mocking? I just didn’t see anything so special about them. Also, I drove by the house. It’s a disaster.”
“So what? You don’t have to deal with the outside.”
Mark doesn’t answer. It’s true that he hasn’t been hired for a big project in years. In a recession, even the eternal clamor for interior design is muted. Only high-end firms with physical showrooms can expect to thrive. So he’s been spending more time at the store, helping with bookkeeping and inventory.
“It’s perfect timing,” Harris continues. “You’ll probably finish up by next summer, just in time to go somewhere. We still need to do Africa. I was thinking Tanzania.” Harris pauses. “While we’re there, maybe we could go on a safari.”
Mark’s lips tighten. A safari will mean staying in a luxury lodge, surrounded by primitive villages with no access to clean water. It will mean dropping enough money to feed one of those villages for a year, in exchange for the indulgence of looking at wild animals that would prefer not to be looked at. He has no interest in feeling like a descended extraterrestrial again, touching ground just long enough to take something.
“I don’t mind going to Tanzania,” he pronounces carefully, “but only if we can stay in a village and do something useful.”
“Oh, honey.” Harris stares for a moment, smiling, as if at a child who has said something amusing. “You’re not serious, are you?”
Mark is quiet. It is at times like these when he feels their age difference most sharply, feels a returning undertow of regret like a soft tug in his gut. It is at these moments, unbalanced and vulnerable, that Seth sweeps back to him in a flood, like a mythical ocean creature. No future there, no destination. It would have been like riding a sea horse, dipping and diving and drowning, over and over. He was in Nairobi, last Mark heard. He was in Cairo, Marrakesh, Damascus. It’s been fifteen years. The choices that had seemed fungible, reversible, whimsical fifteen years ago have finally cemented. Time goes in only one direction; a hackneyed truth, but suddenly as dense as iron. Their bodies, young and beautiful as they were then, will never again be seen on this earth.
Mark looks at Harris, large and able. His autumn-brown eyes give the warmth of a thousand hearth fires.
“We used to talk about it, you know,” Mark reminds him quietly. “We used to talk about how important it was to give back. You agreed that maybe we could join a volunteer service someday.”
“Someday we could still do that.”
“But why not now?” Mark bleats. “Why not rent out the house and go away for a while?”
“When you say volunteer service, do you mean like the Peace Corps?”
Mark lets a beat pass. “Yes, like that. Now that we’re married, we can apply as a couple.”
“Oh, sweetheart, you know we can’t do that now. Not with the store.”
Mark doesn’t answer. He doesn’t mention that he’s begun filling out their applications for next year. He is hopeful that his architecture degree and sustainable design training might make him an attractive candidate. Perhaps there is a need in some far-flung outpost for environmentally responsible interiors. He imagines himself wearing a bandanna in an equatorial African village, reflooring huts with cork, lining walls with hemp board. As for Harris, his art history degree won’t count for much, but with some volunteer experience at home and language training, he might make an adequate English teacher.
“I’m not saying we should never do it,” Harris continues. “But there’s plenty of time. We’re still getting settled here, the store’s just taking off.” He pauses, then adds, “And your business is starting to blossom.”
Mark nods his head, does not argue. On the Peace Corps website, there is a whole section detailing the strain on romantic relationships for volunteers who serve without their partners. Twenty-seven months is a long time. There are many scenarios to consider before one partner should embark without the other, many eventualities to discuss before sending in a solo application.
When he and Harris were first in love, they sometimes played a game called “Deal Breaker.” What degree of sin or betrayal would make the other leave?
“What if I kissed your brother?” Mark would ask.
“What if I put up Laura Ashley drapes?” Harris would counter, laughing.
“What if I wanted a threesome with a woman?”
“What if I wore whale-print golf pants?”
It has been a long time since they’ve played “Deal Breaker.” There is a comfortable formality to their evenings now, the two of them reading in bed, a stack of books and magazines upon each nightstand, a sense that every waking moment must be squeezed for gain of further information. Mark can’t help but contrast this with their first helium weeks together, holed up in Harris’s Bond Street apartment, lightened by the exertion of talk and sex, when he wondered if he would ever read a book again.
Harris accompanies Mark on his consultation visit with the Von Maurens. Together, they drive away from the dollhouse center of town, through softer acres with gated residences hidden in the trees. It’s true that Mark loves the aesthetic refinement of this area. He loves the exquisitely restored farmhouses, the expensive masonry that makes new stone walls appear old, the blanketed show horses. He can’t help but thrill to the effortless elegance of the weathered barns, the convertible sports cars—to his sheer proximity to this most rarefied class, peppered with private film stars, financiers, icons of fashion and design. There is an aphrodisiac in this aura of informal exclusivity that is absent from the city and its brassy rivalry.
They pull up to number 430, a flat-faced white saltbox with an ugly blue tarp on the roof. The Ezekiel Slater house, according to the plaque at the side of the door, built in 1740. The date alone, Mark admits, gives him a frisson. He has never worked on anything predating the Victorian era.
Gretchen opens the plank door before he and Harris can knock, her jeweled ears and neck discordant in the rustic doorframe.
She pulls them inside and begins talking. “The elderly woman who lived here didn’t do anything to the house. I don’t think anything’s been changed for forty years.” She clips over the wood floor in snakeskin pumps. “Anyway, we interviewed designers in the city, but none of them had a feeling for the history. They wanted to do everything new. Then we had a problem with the roof, as you can see, and the historical commission got involved. So now we’re in the middle of a big exterior restoration in keeping with their guidelines. Of course that won’t affect what we do to the interior.”
Mark nods. “But you’ll want to be sensitive, regardless.”
“Of course,” Gretchen chimes. “Anyway, let me show you what we’re thinking, then you let us know if you can make it work.”
She turns away, and Mark rolls his eyes at Harris, who smirks. They follow her up the narrow staircase, its steps groaning with age. Harris trails behind, his knee joints blasted by late-stage Lyme disease. Probably picked up in the garden during their first weeks in the house, before they’d learned to wear kneesocks.
Caspar Von Mauren appears silently at the top of the staircase, an apparition in white linen. The attic would become his home office. The walls separating the two smaller bedrooms would vanish to create a master suite, and the third bedroom would become a his-and-hers bath. The kitchen pantry would morph into a powder room, and the kitchen itself would grow a glassed-in sunroom.
“The front has to stay the same, I know that. We wouldn’t want to change that.” Gretchen looks at her husband, as if for confirmation. “And I’m already picturing some of the things from the store in here. The barn-door table right here in the dining room, with the Windsor chairs around it. Also, I’d love to enlarge some of the windows in the back, get some more light in here.”
Mark makes notes on his little pad with a metal pen. He fills pages. If these people are serious about their plans, the job will take a good year.
At home, Harris opens a ’93 Dom.
Mark shakes his head. “It’s not official yet.”
“Oh, you know it is. Cheers, and kudos to me for matchmaking.”
“Thank you.”
“Come on, let’s take this to the patio.”
They sit at the wrought-iron bistro table and drink. Here it is, their home. Their dream house, a restored Victorian in a neighborhood of restored Victorians, a perfect row of painted ladies. Theirs is yellow with sage trim, a pink-iced porch ceiling. They are bookended by other marzipan confections; their flowering backyard abuts other flowering yards. Their quarter acre is bordered by a lattice-top fence flush with hydrangea bushes and honeysuckle vines. Even the name of their road—Mercy—suits this particular kind of American paradise, this miniature encapsulation of English gardenhood. This is what had appealed to them, this manageable, modest utopia, this antithesis of trashy sprawl. It pains Mark to think that he has outgrown it so quickly.
It will take over a week to prepare an estimate for the Von Maurens. Mark sits in the garden each day with his laptop, staring at the bed of snapdragons Harris has planted. His head fills with fuzz, and his breath becomes shallow. Allergies, he wants to believe.
Three days later, he has not even finished an estimate for the kitchen. Harris returns from the store at six, like any commuting husband, portly and hungry, the king of his castle.
“The Von Maurens came in today. I told them how excited you are about the project.” He grins. “They put a deposit on the Windsor chairs. When I mentioned that the woodworker lives in town, they flipped. They want him to carve their initials into the chair combs. These people love to support their local craftsmen, you know.”
“And underpaid Mexicans, too.”
“Mark, I looked them up today. Do you know who these people are?”
“Um, no?”
“Gretchen is a rubber heiress. Her father is a Texas tire baron. And Caspar is an actual baron. From Liechtenstein.”
“Ha. I knew he was German.”
“No, Liechtensteinien.”
“Oh, please.”
“I’m going to invite them for drinks.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Why, Harris? What do we want with these people?”
“Honey, you need to think like a businessman. These people are top rung. They’re all over the gala pages. Your design could wind up in Town & Country.”
“God forbid.”
“Oh my God, when did you become such a snob?”
Mark opens his mouth but does not answer. It would be overly hostile to remind Harris that they’d come to this place with an understanding, a quiet contract, a shared touch of irony. They’d come as a pair of anthropologists to masquerade among the natives, or so Mark had thought, to mirror their culture and borrow from its abundance. They were not supposed to adopt it; they were not supposed to blend.
Harris opens a Bordeaux Blanc while the Von Maurens rave about the house and everything in it. Gretchen touches the objects on the tables, picks them up, turns them in her hands. She taps the Ghost chair with a fingernail and lowers herself finally into one of the antique fauteuils, letting her fingers splay upon the saffron Bergamo upholstery. She points to the flokati ottoman that rests like a sheepdog at her feet.
“Mark’s design,” Harris trumpets.
Through the avid eyes of visitors, Mark can’t help but be pleased with their home. They have achieved an impeccable mix of new and old, sleek and textured, Mark’s eye for classic symmetry counterbalancing Harris’s more exuberant tastes. Mark has had to hold him back from too much Jonathan Adler, tempting as it is. Already, he regrets rubber-stamping the eight-by-ten Union Jack rug in the living room. It dominates, limits their options. Also, he would like to sell the third-rate Hirst spin painting that they’d bought at the height of the market, but which has lost its dimension over the years and become a flat thing.
As the swooning continues, Mark becomes resentful. Perhaps he should take their fixation on decor as a compliment to his designer’s eye, but it is edging into a presumption that he and Harris have no other interests. He tries to change the topic of conversation to something political, global. It occurs to him that a Liechtenstein baron might have something to say about the EU crisis.
“The whole endeavor was misguided from the start,” Caspar responds without expression or gesture.
“I just have to say I love your window seat there.” Gretchen points. “Is that original to the house?”
Harris opens a second bottle of wine, a third. He is glowing. This is not what Mark had pictured when he’d pictured the parties they’d have. The baron seems to be relaxing a bit, leaning back in his fauteuil. Gretchen keeps touching Harris’s arm as they talk, as if she is hungry for something.
Harris is now cherub pink. He leans in, and in a breathlessly intimate voice says, “So, tell me. Are you two youngsters thinking of having a family?”
Mark stares at him. During the bubble of silence that follows, he feels himself levitate slightly.
At last, Gretchen smiles serenely. “Not until the house is done.”
Harris leans back, showcasing his jolly belly, and glances at Mark with a look that says, How nice for them.
A flame lashes Mark’s insides. “We’ve talked about joining the Peace Corps,” he pronounces.
The baron does not appear to have heard. Gretchen’s eyes widen. “Oh,” she intones in her deep-sea voice. “That’s so admirable. I have so much respect for people who do that kind of thing. I can’t even imagine.”
They move on to Armagnac. The Von Maurens inhabit the pair of fauteuils like extensions of the damask itself. Mark rarely sits on these himself, for fear of flattening the cushions, taxing the bowed legs. His love for them is jealous. And yet he could sell them, he thinks. He should sell them, sell everything in the room, escort these guests away, divest himself.
The next morning, Mark confronts Harris. “I can’t believe you asked if they want to have children.”
“I don’t think that’s too intrusive, do you? People ask all the time. People ask us.” He looks meaningfully at Mark.
“What if they’re infertile? What if they’ve tried and can’t?”
“Like I said, people ask us all the time. And we obviously can’t conceive children. There are other ways to have a family you know.”
Mark is silent.
“I really think we should talk to Camille.”
“I’ve already said I don’t want to do that.”
“Well, what do you want to do?”
Again, Mark is silent. Harris knows that Mark has never wanted children. Part of the relief of coming out at eighteen was knowing that he would never be expected to anchor himself that way. He’d be released from conventional latches; free to travel, sleep with whomever he wanted, reinvent himself infinitely. That was the upside of losing popular approval. But then, like piercings and tattoos, gay culture had insinuated itself in the mainstream, and all at once, same-sex marriage had become legal. This, despite years of activism, had taken Mark by surprise—and had coincided with the deepening of his relationship with Harris.
“We have so much to offer. A stable home environment, a great town, financial security. It would be a shame to keep it all to ourselves.”
He is trotting out the practical argument, but his eyes tell a different story. Mark has seen the way Harris melts over infants. It was amusing, at first, the way he behaved like a woman overtaken by maternal hormones. Now, it makes Mark’s groin turn cold.
“What you want is a baby,” Mark says. “But you’re forgetting that they’re only babies for five minutes, then they’re snotty teenagers and have to go to college. Do you know how much college is going to cost in eighteen years?”
“What else would we do with that money?”
“Are you serious?” Mark goes quiet. He does not have the strength to continue this argument. If Harris can’t think of a better way to spend—what? two hundred thousand dollars?—then they are truly ill matched.
The larger truth is that Mark is not interested in the kind of sentimental living, the relentless diminution, that parenting imposes. A child would drain all of their energy, all of their resources—both of which could be better spent on bigger issues. How could a man he loves bear witness to this ruptured, calamitous world without taking action? Their circumstances are perfect. They are two men in good health, somewhat young. The house can be rented, the store leased and reopened at a later date. There is no excuse not to go, not to make their best years count.
He thinks of Seth, sandaled and dusty in some medina. The thought makes him hate himself. To any observer, he has dwelled too long in pampered comfort to peel off the caul of materialism. He has terminally softened.
After a long moment, Harris says, “I know what you’re thinking. That we should devote ourselves to saving the world.” There is no sarcasm in his voice. “But the way I see it, having a child, or adopting one, would be a way to do that. It would be a meaningful contribution. It’s no small effort, committing ourselves to a human being who needs us.”
Mark is suddenly tired. It is too early in the morning to discuss this. He ends the conversation with a kiss to Harris’s stubbled cheek, a stroke to the sleeve of his robe. Harris returns the kiss, his brown eyes softening, turning liquid with hope.
On Monday, Mark completes an estimate for the full scope of services. He will supervise the renovation and work with the clients to select furnishings, cabinetry, appliances, lighting. To justify postponing his own travels to the Third World, he is compelled to furtively raise his prices by 10 percent across the board. He pulls in his breath and types in the total—$342,000—plus contingency fees for special purchases.
The packet, printed on heavy stock, easily weighs two pounds. Rather than e-mailing it, he drives to Cannonfield Road and places the parcel into the mailbox. His logo, MARK TILLY DESIGNS, in lowercase Courier, dwells in the bottom corner of the envelope like a centipede.
Gretchen Von Mauren calls the same afternoon. Only indignation could prompt such a call, Mark thinks. She is offended by his audacity.
“Hello, Mrs. Von Mauren,” he says, his voice lowering involuntarily.
“Mark, I’ve looked over the estimate. I’d like you to throw it out.”
He drops onto the Ghost chair. “My apologies, Mrs. Von Mauren. Perhaps I should have spoken with you in more depth about what you and your husband hope to achieve.”
“No, no. That’s not what I mean. What I want you to do is throw out the numbers, don’t worry about the money, don’t worry about completion dates. There is no budget, there is no timeline. We want this house to be a showstopper. Believe me, I wouldn’t be talking to you if I didn’t trust your instincts.”
Mark’s eyes rest on the Hirst over the mantel, a citrus vortex with an empty center.
“Well, I don’t know what to say. Thank you, Gretchen, for the vote of confidence.”
“So you’ll draft a master plan for us?”
“Yes, yes.” He has a nauseous feeling from looking at the painting. “I’ll have to come over to take another look before I can start.”
“Come tomorrow.”
He begins to hand-draft the interior elevations. It is already August. They’ll have to skip Provincetown this year. Truth be told, they’ve both tired of the high-season flamboyance, the flapping colors, the vibrating sexual energy. They are no different from other middle-aged couples, perhaps, in obeying this instinct to slow down and turn inward.
Harris announces that he will need to hire someone at the store while Mark is working on the project. “I’ll put an ad in the paper. Unless we know someone?”
Mark calls Camille.
“I don’t think I’d be good at customer service,” she says, “but I do know someone you might like.”
The woman comes in for an interview. Madeleine, a transplant from Charles Street, near their old apartment. She doesn’t have knowledge of vintage decor, but is attractive and poised.
“She might take away some of the gayness,” Harris quips. “I didn’t see a wedding ring, did you? She must be single, or maybe divorced?”
“Maybe she’s a lesbian.”
“Camille would have mentioned that.”
This is it, then. Mark smiles sadly. It’s good that Harris will have the help he needs, he tells himself, a kind face in the morning, someone to admire his rubber insects, maybe keep one on her desk like a pet. It will make it easier to leave.
Finally, in late September, Mark sits in the ancient kitchen of the Ezekiel Slater house and shows Gretchen Von Mauren the plan view, the walls of windows in the sunroom. She thumbs through them, nodding.
“And green design.” She taps him lightly on the arm. “I’d like to hear your ideas for green design. Ways to incorporate environmentally sustainable materials, renewable wood and bamboo, et cetera. While retaining the colonial flavor of the house, of course.”
“I’ll put some examples into a portfolio. Then we can go through it together and start putting in orders.”
“We really want a blend of the old and the new,” Gretchen says, gesturing a circle, “and light. Lots of light.”
“Do you want to enlarge the windows even further?”
“Mmm . . .” She trails off, as if staring through the kitchen wall. Her hair is glossy, cut in a carefully serrated fringe. When she looks back at Mark, there is a girlish snap in her eyes. “My cousin just married his boyfriend, you know. I think it’s so wonderful that people are finally coming around. People should be free to love whoever they want.”
Mark smiles uncertainly. “Absolutely.” Gretchen holds his gaze for an uncomfortable moment. He shifts in his chair and pats the pages in front of him. “Okay, so larger windows? I’ll revise the drawings and have them back to you by next week.”
“Oh. Next week?”
“I can try for Friday, but I can’t guarantee it.”
Driving back into town, a shark-gray Lexus follows too close to his bumper, and Mark feels his neck muscles tense. He sees the pouf-haired form of a woman driver and has an overwhelming urge to flip her the bird. Instead, he takes a long breath and pumps the brakes. The Lexus recedes behind him. It would be so easy to become a misanthrope, he thinks, to judge others by their Barbour jackets, their piano-key teeth. These are people with their own heartaches, he scolds himself, their own generosities.
Coming into the store, he finds Harris squatting on his haunches, singing with a little girl. The new shop assistant, Madeleine, stands beside them, beaming. Harris is going bananas, making hand gestures to accompany “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The child is giggling, twirling her skirt. When Harris glances at Mark, his eyes are ablaze.
Mark hesitates. “She’s adorable,” he offers.
“Harris asked me to bring her in,” Madeleine apologizes.
This is the first time she has given them a glimpse of her personal life. Mark shoots a look at Harris, but he is blind to the message, distracted by his prolonged eye-lock with the child.
In their tradition of imagining the hidden lives of others, they have mused for weeks about their inscrutable shop assistant. She is always pleasant, but with the air of someone with a secret, they’ve concluded. According to Camille, her husband had been a coworker of Camille’s own ex-husband in Manhattan, but underwent a radical change after moving to the suburbs. She delivered this information in a breathy voice, but when pressed for more, demurred. Madeleine doesn’t like to talk about it. It’s been a challenge for her.
Through the fall and winter, Mark draws and redraws the elevations for the Ezekiel Slater house. The Von Maurens have offered an hourly rate rather than a lump sum, which has been quickly compounding in his favor. He has been straining for ideas. Perhaps the clients will ultimately lose patience and fire him. Perhaps this is his private hope. If he were released from this job, there would be nothing holding him here. All winter, the desire to leave has been expanding in him, crowding everything else. It has begun to push against his diaphragm, constricting his lungs. The air of this beautiful place, now so cold, so oxygenated and clean—this brisk vapor of the country rich—has begun to sear his individual cilia.
He approaches Harris one last time. It is a wet night in March, in the dead space before spring. The air is so raw that it invades the living room. Mark finds Harris bending at the fireplace in his dragon robe and sheepskin moccasins, clumsily arranging kindling. From behind, he looks corpulent, effete. Mark sits quietly on the Ghost chair. When Harris turns and sees him there, he smiles broadly, but the smile dims as Mark begins to speak.
“Well, tell me then,” Harris says gently, after a moment. He drags the shaggy ottoman closer to Mark and settles onto it. “Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.” Mark hears the petulance in his own voice.
“It sounds to me like you’re down on yourself about the Von Maurens. You’re afraid they won’t like the work, and you’re coming up with a contingency plan. Am I right?”
“You know that’s not it. You know this is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.”
“Listen. How about we go volunteer somewhere for a couple of weeks so you can get it out of your system?”
Mark shakes his head. “That’s not enough. That’s not a life change.”
“I understand,” Harris says. “And it makes sense. It does. It makes sense for kids right out of college. It makes sense for retired people. But, honey, it doesn’t make sense for us.”
Mark stares at his fleshy cheeks, at the pink skin at his temple where the hair is thinning.
What if I became just like them?
What if I went away without you?
“But I’ve been thinking”—Harris touches Mark’s knee—“and I do agree that we should find a way to help others. I was thinking we could donate a share of the store’s proceeds to charity. Ten percent? You and I could pick a charity, or more than one.”
Mark listens. There is a click of satisfaction on a buried level inside him—donating to charity is a fine idea—but the rest of his being is unmoved. He stares at the hairline of his partner, his husband, and feels possessed by a single imperative.
“I’m sorry,” Mark mumbles. “It’s not enough.”
Harris takes his hands from Mark’s knee and lays them in his lap. A long moment passes. When Harris speaks again, he looks tired.
“Listen,” he says. “You can go if you want. If that’s what you really want. I’ll miss you, but I don’t want to be the one holding you back.”
Mark looks down at the Union Jack rug, that emblem of revolution and youth. A memory returns to him from their wedding night, lying naked on the sand of Race Point with a bottle of Tia Maria, beneath the stars at the tip of the land, suspended between sea and sky, spinning with the liquor and the hugeness of their future.
Harris pushes himself up slowly. There is an inward look on his face that means his knees are acting up. For an instant, Mark is ashamed. There is a soft concavity in the ottoman where Harris had been sitting. Mark listens to him go out of the room, hears the bathroom sink running.
Harris comes back into the living room, the sleeves of his dragon robe hanging limp, its silken sash taut around his middle.
“I meant to ask, have you seen the new shop where the chiropractor used to be?”
“No, what’s there now?”
“It’s a New Age thing. It’s called New Altitudes.”
“Well, that’s brave,” Mark says. They are speaking normally, as if the previous conversation hadn’t happened. “Who would open a store like that in this economy?”
“There were people in there when I went. It’s mainly books and CDs, but there are some interesting pieces, too. There’s a charango from Peru. Gorgeous. I heard the guy saying he was down there with the tribe people. I was thinking, if you don’t want Africa, maybe we can go to South America next year.”
“Who is this guy?”
“Some strange bird, all dressed up like a guru. I’ve never seen him before. He’s got plenty of charisma, though. He calls himself Apocatequil, after the Incan god of lightning.”
“Really.” Mark is surprised by a stab of jealousy.
“There were people there talking to him, a whole little cult. Apparently he’s running drum circles and healing sessions.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Mark says. “The self-absorption of these people is truly limitless.”
Harris pauses. “I’m thinking of signing up for a healing session.”
“You are? For what?”
“For the Lyme. The antibiotics aren’t working anymore, so what the hell?”
Mark is quiet. A picture comes to his mind of another man bent in front of Harris, massaging his knees. This is how it happens, he thinks. It would be foolish to imagine that Harris hasn’t felt his distance, hasn’t suffered over these cold months. This is how the script goes, the arc of every such story.
The spring issue of the local magazine runs a front-page profile on the shop, with a photograph of Harris and Mark flanking the big birdcage chandelier. Harris poses in a cream cashmere V-neck, arms over his chest. Mark is in plaid and jeans, leaning on a Chinese altar table. Both smiling, relaxed: men of style and success. The article is full of superlatives about Harris’s eclectic taste and social conscience. There is a box insert about the store’s contributions to global charities: International Rescue Committee, UNICEF, VillageReach.
In the weeks that follow, customer traffic surges. Harris nearly sells out of the painted insects, which he has tucked in surprising locations throughout the showroom. The birdcage chandelier also goes, and the twelve-piece Louis XVI dining set.
At home, they open the bottle of ’95 Margaux, a wedding gift. They drink, go into the bedroom. For the moment, Mark allows himself to slide back into the old ways. It is a simple pleasure to feel Harris’s hand on the small of his back, the familiar sensations returning to his body.
While Harris spends a preliminary moment in the bathroom, a feminine quirk of his, Mark undresses and waits. Perched on the bed, he opens the top drawer of Harris’s night table and hunts through handkerchiefs for the bottle of sandalwood oil. Instead, he finds a glossy booklet entitled Navigating Your Adoption Journey. A folded piece of paper falls out, a “Pre-Orientation Information Form,” with blanks filled out for each of them: their birth dates, heights, yearly incomes.
When Harris comes out of the bathroom, Mark is naked on the bed, holding the packet.
“Oh, honey, I was just curious,” Harris says preemptively. “I was just doing some preliminary reading. I wouldn’t send anything in without you.”
Mark does not respond. After a moment, Harris gently takes the packet from his hands and slides it back into the drawer. Standing there in his robe, he glances at the bed and sighs. “Do you not want to do this now?”
Mark is trembling. He can still see the logo at the top of the form, two intertwined hearts with a third, smaller heart nestled between. He can see his own name inked in block print beside the heading “Parent #2.” He cannot bring himself to look at Harris, whose dragon-print robe fills his field of vision.
Finally, the robe moves away. There is a whisper of silk upon silk as Harris lowers himself onto the trunk at the foot of the bed. After several blank moments, Mark turns his head to see Harris facing away, his back quaking.
Later, in bed, Mark lies awake. Harris’s sibilant breathing deepens and turns to full-on snoring, as often happens when he drinks. Mark usually interrupts this with a shake of his shoulder, but tonight he lets it continue. How silent the room would be without its tumbling cadence. One day, he knows, that silence will come—they will no longer be together. Sooner or later, through his own doing or through the brute force of time, of death, it will come. There is no truth more absolute than this. Perhaps it is understandable that in days of serenity the heart seeks it own friction—whether in defense against, or in ignorance of, the ultimate blow that awaits it.
For now, they are here, defiantly close beneath the blankets. Suddenly, all else drops away—the dust and sweat of Africa, that hot squall of abstractions—and this is all that matters. This man who would have a child with him, grow old with him and say good-bye.
The next afternoon, just before closing time, the door of the shop opens and a man enters with an extravagant crown of feathers on his head. The red and green feathers appear to have been borrowed from a South American macaw. His chest is weighted with a collection of intricately beaded necklaces and a string of long pointed teeth, perhaps shark or wild boar. Beneath, he wears a plain black T-shirt and jeans. Mark glances at Harris, who mouths something to him and winks.
The man comes to a halt in front of the desk where Madeleine sits. It will be interesting to see how she handles this one, Mark thinks. He watches as she puts a piece of hair behind her ear, then stands and pats down her skirt. He watches as she smiles up at the man and collects her purse.
He glances at Harris, whose eyebrows arch. For a moment, the old energy returns between them, trembling like a guitar string.
Madeleine pushes her chair in beneath the desk, and the feathered man takes her hand. She steps toward him, tall and slender, classically pretty with the neck of a ballerina. There is something of a little girl about her, Mark thinks, being picked up by her father.
“Harris, Mark”—she gestures—“this is David.”
The feathered man raises a hand to each of them in turn, as if in benediction. Then, without speaking, he touches Madeleine’s shoulder. She allows him to pull her close, pressing her cheek against the ranks of beads. As they walk toward the door together, she turns to give Mark and Harris a little wave. A strange smile flickers at her lips. The bell tinkles as they exit onto the sidewalk, colors aflame in the early spring light.