Chapter 19
September 28
If Saucers Attack
THE DEMOLITION MAN arrived in the morning. Lou and I went over in the launch to pick him up. We had expected the man and his wife, but we found six people waiting at the town dock. Their luggage was lined up beside them, and beside that was a pile of about a dozen large cartons that I supposed contained the supplies and gear that a demolition man would ordinarily bring along for the elimination of a dredge.
“Hey, hey, hey, it’s the Demolition Man,” Lou shouted when we neared the dock. By way of acknowledgment, the Demolition Man went into a fighter’s crouch and made the motions of throwing a few punches to the midsection. As soon as we were at the dock, Lou leaped ashore and both of them repeated the gesture, the crouch, the punches. “Hey, Peter,” he said, “this is my friend Artie, the Demolition Man.”
“Hey, Peter,” said the Demolition Man, “nice to know you. I got the whole family here, as you can see.”
He introduced me to his wife, Nancy, his son and daughter-in-law, Otto and Esther, and his granddaughter, Louise, and her girlfriend, Miranda, and then he said to me, “My buddy Hamlet, here, tells me you’ve got room for all of us.” He gave Lou a nudge, and they exchanged a wink.
“Oh, we’ve got room, Artie,” I assured him.
“Call him the Demolition Man,” said Lou. He and Artie went into their fighters’ crouches and fired volleys of simulated punches at each other’s middles. Artie’s son and daughter-in-law rolled their eyes, and his granddaughter and her friend giggled and put their heads together and exchanged a whispered secret that made them giggle again. It was probably an assessment of the lunacy of adults. The girls wore cropped tops, which, I noticed, allowed their bellies and their belly buttons and their belly button rings to show. When I suggested that they would want coats when we got onto the bay, they smiled winningly and said okay, and I felt that things were looking up.
ALBERTINE opened a letter, skimmed it, and said, quite loudly, “Oh, shit. We’re being sued.”
“Sued?” I asked. “What for?”
“Remember Mrs. Gussman from a couple of years ago?”
“Mrs. Gussman,” I said reflectively, as if I couldn’t quite manage to bring her to mind. “I’m not sure that I — ”
“Oh, come on. The tight pants? The stiletto heels?”
I furrowed my brow and said “Tight pants — stiletto heels — ”
“The widow in heat. The one who asked you to ‘fix her plumbing.’ The one who said, and I quote, ‘I’d write my memoirs if you’d give me something to remember.’”
“Oh! That Mrs. Gussman!”
“That’s right, that one.” She smiled the smile she smiles when she does not want her picture taken. “She is suing us because of the mental anguish she suffered here.”
“I did not do a thing,” I said, raising my hands, palms out in a gesture that I’ve always assumed is a universal indication of complete innocence. “Nothing at all. I gave her absolutely nothing to remember, I swear it — just the basic guest services.”
“Well, maybe you should have given her a little something more, because in her search for some memorable moments to include in her memoirs she has discovered the trauma she suffered while she was here.”
“The assistant innkeeper’s rejection of her amorous advances?”
“Not quite. According to her lawyer or lawyers, she fell into the habit of taking long walks on the beach while she was here, at the water’s edge.”
“She can’t call that — ”
She held her hand up. “Apparently, on one morning’s walk she felt the ground move beneath her.”
“I didn’t do it. Not my fault.”
“She stepped into quicksand.”
“Oh. That can happen. It has happened to me. It’s an experience rich in metaphorical potential, valuable to a memoirist. We should have charged her extra for that.”
“And now, whenever she recalls that summer, or Small’s Island, or whenever she goes to a beach or sees the sea or draws a bath or drinks a glass of water, even bottled water, she gets a sinking feeling.”
“A sinking feeling.”
“Yes. And it’s all our fault.”
“This is not a joke.”
“This is not a joke. Here’s the statement she gave to her lawyer: ‘I was sitting on my deck, with my laptop computer in my lap, trying to recollect whether it was my mother, my father, my uncle Toby, my auntie Em, or one of the neighbors who molested me when I was a child, and I had my feet up on the breakfast table, my chair tilted back on its back legs, and then suddenly a sinking feeling came over me, and I realized that I had tipped my chair back too far and I almost fell over, but I caught myself just in time. When I was upright again and sitting there catching my breath and refreshing myself with some bottled water, I realized that the sinking feeling was familiar to me, and in a flash the memory of my stay on Small’s Island came rushing back to me and I remembered walking along the water’s edge and stepping into a soft spot in the sand — I think it was quicksand — and experiencing the same sinking feeling, and now whenever I’m near sand or water I get the same sinking feeling and it has made my life a living hell.’”
“This confirms one of your convictions,” I said.
“Which one is that?”
“That nothing good ever comes in Saturday’s mail.”
[to be continued]
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