Michael Chabon

At the time I thought this foolish, an overly cinematic gesture. I was wrong. In my innocent cynicism I didn’t see that Cleveland was not trying to look tough; he just didn’t care. Which is to say, he knew what he was, and was, if not content with, at least resigned to knowing that he was an alcoholic. And an alcoholic is nothing if not sensitive to the proper time and place for his next drink; his death is one of the most carefully planned and prepared for events in the world. Cleveland simply foresaw his imminent need of another beer. An era of covert hatred and distance-keeping between him and the Bellwethers was ending, in what would probably be an unpleasant fashion, and he wanted it to end; but he would need help.

He had just popped the tab with the fingers of one hand when an elephantine, pink version of Jane Bellwether, in a big flowered dress, filled the front doorway. Mrs. Bellwether stared for an unusually long time at the severed screen door that leaned against the front of her house, as though this were all the damage she was, for the moment, capable of understanding. Dr. Bellwether’s head and left arm appeared in the shadows behind her, a garment bag slung over the arm. He spoke to us across his tremendous wife.

“We are going to prosecute,” he said, very softly, with an English accent.

Mrs. Bellwether entered her house and attempted to sink to her knees before Happy; but the dog, relaxed and regal and leisurely only moments before, shrank from her mistress’s touch and slunk off down the hall.

“What have you done to our dog?” said Mrs. Bellwether—to Cleveland, I decided.

Arthur started to say “Nothing,” but Cleveland interrupted him.

“We bashed her head with a ball-peen hammer,” he said.

Dr. Bellwether, who had stepped into the house, glanced quickly at his wife, who blushed.

“You were forbidden to enter this house,” he said, or rather I afterward realized that this is what he must have said. Each of his words was a softly falling little dollop of English mashed potatoes. This speech, the last I ever heard him utter, was apparently hard on him; he sat down on a hassock and let his wife do the rest of the talking.

“Where is Jane?” said Cleveland.

“Get out,” said Mrs. Bellwether.

Cleveland pushed past her; she fell against the fortunately empty birdcage. He ran out the front door.

“Who are you?” Mrs. Bellwether asked me.

“Art Bechstein.”

She frowned. “Arthur,” she said, “if you get out of my house right now—and take your young Hebrew friend with you—we will keep our two hundred and fifty dollars and will not call the police. That is only fair, considering the harm you have done to our house and our pet. Cleveland we will not forgive. Cleveland will pay for this.”

“Where is Jane?” Arthur said. He had drawn himself erect, in the way a drunken person will when alcohol cowardly flees in the face of whatever trouble it has caused, and he tucked in his shirt as though ready for business.

“She stayed on. She’ll be back in a few days. But not for Cleveland, she won’t.”

Cleveland came back into the house, beer in hand, wearing an ornate black felt sombrero, embroidered in silver thread, that he must have found in the Bellwethers’ car.

“Where is she?”

Mrs. Bellwether’s face lit up, and she said that Jane was dead. “It was awful, wasn’t it, Albert?” Mr. Bellwether shook his head and said something. “And here we come home in our grief, we want only to remember Jane in the peace of our own home, and what do we find? Depravity! Cruelty to animals! And you!”

Arthur started to speak, after Jane’s mother said that she had died—to deny, I suppose, the most ridiculous lie I had ever heard in my entire life, a lie made with such wild disregard for probability of success that I saw then how crazed she really was, and I saw that telling a good, simple lie was a sign of sanity; but Cleveland smirked, very briefly, and Arthur said nothing.

“Dead! No, it can’t be!” said Cleveland. “Not Jane! Oh, God, no! How—how did it happen?” He started to cry; it was beautifully done.

“Dysentery,” she said, less harshly, perhaps brought up short by the effect her lie was having on Cleveland.

“And this hat…” He was overcome, and could not speak for just the right amount of moments. “This hat is all that’s left of her isn’t it?”

“Yes. We had to burn her clothes.”

“Look, Nettie, in a minute I’ll walk out your front door, never to darken your welcome mat again. That’s a promise. I know that you hate me, and I certainly always hated you—until now—but I loved your daughter, passionately. I know you know that. And so—may I keep this sombrero?”

Here Dr. Bellwether raised a pale hand and started to speak again, but his wife overrode him and said that Cleveland might keep it.