Cage's Bend Read online

  Indirectly Cage was responsible for my first sexual experience. When I was fourteen, I met him over Mardi Gras in Pensacola, where we stayed in a house with some of his college friends. We were deep-sea fishing on his friend’s boat. One night a girl named Katy took me to a bar and we shot tequila. She had long curly hair and huge breasts and a really sweet smile and I could hardly believe it when she started kissing me at the bar after last call. We got in her car and she stuck her hand down my pants, the first time a girl had touched me there. I gathered up courage and unzipped her jeans and in a matter of seconds I was looking right at that object of long speculation. I’d only seen them in magazines. I didn’t know what to do, so I started lapping it, my head bobbing up and down like a puppy. Suddenly she came to her senses and pushed me away. She hardly said a word to me for the rest of the week. Remembering Katy always makes me wince with humiliation and lust.

  I was never close to my other brother, Nick, who was eleven months younger than Cage. He was always nice to me but we never did much together. He thought of me as his annoying little brother, a pest, not as a comrade. Nick was in grad school at Berkeley. He wanted to be an ecologist. In July it will be two years since his car crash on the Golden Gate Bridge late at night. A drunk nailed him head-on in the wrong lane. They both died. I wanted to sue the guy’s insurance company but Mom and Dad said, We’re not that kind of people. No one should profit from this tragedy. I had just turned seventeen. Mom and Dad were out of town on a spiritual retreat and Cage was the one who found out first. He went out and got Nick’s ashes. He told me that the reports said Nick was over the limit, too, though it obviously wasn’t his fault. Still, we never told Mom or Pop.

  Nick crashed two months after my parents moved from Baton Rouge to Memphis, where Dad was consecrated the Episcopal bishop of Tennessee. It was the last move after six different cities. Dad’s first church was a tiny one in Thebes, the farming town outside Nashville where Mom comes from. Cage was born there. Nick came along when Dad was a chaplain at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Then the family moved back to Tennessee, Knoxville, and I was born in Bristol. We moved to Roanoke, Virginia, before I could walk and then to a big church in Baton Rouge a few years later. Mama told me that Nick, who’d been alienated in Roanoke, came out of his shell and became as popular as Cage. Nick surpassed him academically, though he never beat Cage running. They were competitive and they were as close as two brothers could be. Nick quietly looked up to fast-talking, quick-witted Cage. To Nick, Cage was a romantic hero.

  Nick’s death sent Mom into a tailspin. Except for attending the small early Sunday morning service, she dropped out of all the church activities. She dropped all her charitable work. She dropped the workshops she did in inner-city schools for the botanical garden, giving children their first opportunity to grow a plant. One by one, she dropped out of everything and spent more and more time in her own garden. I’d stayed on in Baton Rouge as planned to finish my senior year at Louisiana Episcopal, living at my best friend’s home in our old neighborhood, so I didn’t witness much of this, but Dad told me that for a time she was sleeping through the days and gardening at night. Then, after about a year and a half, she reentered society, took up where she left off, and was as active as ever.

  When Nick died, Cage was at Vanderbilt two semesters short of an M.B.A. and a law degree, a tough year-round program. He was making mainly Bs and a few As. The next semester he logged all Cs and at Christmas he announced that he was taking some time off, going to Mexico for a couple of months and then up to Nantucket, where a friend from Sewanee was going to renovate his parents’ house. By the end of the summer a dozen homeowners had asked him if he would shut up their houses and open them up in spring, repairing anything that had been damaged during the winter storms. In late August he was still promising Mom and Dad that he was going back to Vanderbilt for his last semester. Then, when school was about to start, with twelve grand in the bank from Nantucket, Cage flew to Memphis and announced he was on his way to Mexico for the winter to write a novel. Mom and Dad were furious that he would jeopardize his degrees and Mom demanded that he pay them back for some of the school costs instead of heading off to surf and smoke pot. The next day Cage caught the train to New Orleans and spent the night at a hotel in the Quarter, took me out to get drunk on hurricanes before he caught a plane for Cancún. That was the last time I saw him.

  The single-engine prop plane from Boston flies through so much rain and fog that I don’t glimpse the ocean until we’re almost to the island. Cage isn’t in the arrivals area. I check the restaurant and then wander outside and stare at the parking lot, which is empty except for an old, rusty Bronco.

  “Are you lost?” says a deep bass voice from the doorway behind. Startled, I turn around expecting to see a big black guy.

  Cage gives me that wide, winning smile that girls always fall for. I hardly recognize him. The last time, he still resembled the clones at Vanderbilt with their short hair and oxford cloth shirts and pleated khakis. Now he looks like Indiana Jones. He has a deep tan and long, sun-bleached hair. He’s wearing an earring, a leather jacket, faded blue jeans, and suede cowboy boots. He hugs me and claps me on the back. “Welcome to Nantucket.”

  “Damn, Cage, you look . . . different.”

  “I am.” He winks. “And it looks like you’ve been burning the candle at both ends.”

  “Well, I’m just glad school’s out for the summer.”

  “School’s out forever.” Cage strums a couple of chords in the air, then picks up one of my duffel bags and starts for the Bronco. “A girl gave me some acid yesterday. We tripped on the beach. I had some kind of memory vision. You were in it. Just a punk in your St. James uniform standing along the edge of the LSU course with Mom and Dad at the cross-country championship senior year.” Cage talks rapidly, crossing the parking lot with long strides. “I typed it out last night when I was coming down. You should check it out. It’s not bad. I wasn’t tripping any longer, I just had so much energy I couldn’t sleep. I was like Jack Kerouac banging along on my old Royal. You know what Capote said about Kerouac? That’s not writing. It’s typing.” Cage laughs and runs his hand through his hair.

  “Remember the first time I did shrooms?” I say, trying to connect. “We were hiking in the Smokies. I was fifteen. Nick was worried I would trip first with the kid who’d transferred to Episcopal from L.A., Buzz Vanderpost, and freak out, so we decided to do them together. At the last moment you changed your mind. You didn’t ever want me to trip. And you and Nick started fighting by the campfire. I was afraid one of you was going to get burned.”

  “In the end we gave you such a small dose you didn’t get off.” Cage snorts, lifting the rear door of the truck open. He throws the duffel in the back, walks around to the driver side. “That was back when we suffered from the romantic delusion that psychedelics could reveal inner truth. And we listened to rock lyrics like they were poetry. Imagine looking for truth from a drug-addled pop singer.” Cage climbs in the car and rests his head on the steering wheel for a moment, then turns and looks at me, and he has tears sliding down his cheeks. “I miss him, Harper. Two years now and not a single fucking day goes by when I don’t mourn him.”

  “Y’all were close.” A miserable little laugh catches in my throat. “Like brothers.”

  “Irish twins.” He starts the car. “That’s what we were—two brothers born within a year.”

  The island is still cold in May. Driving from the airport toward town, we pass heath moors and cranberry bogs. The Algonquin Indians, Cage says, believed the island was made by Mashop, a mythical giant so large he could only sleep comfortably along the shore of Cape Cod. One night, restless and irritable from sand in his moccasins, he kicked one of them off. It landed not so far offshore and became Martha’s Vineyard. Later in the night he kicked the other moccasin harder and it formed Natockete, “the far-off place.”

  The town’s deserted, so we park right in front of a seafood place on the edge of the harbor.
A dark-haired hostess about my age recognizes Cage when we stroll in, her blue eyes lighting up like candles.

  “Charlotte, I want you to meet my little brother, just arrived from Sin City, you know, the Big Easy, Nah Ahlens.” Cage drapes his arm over my shoulder. “He was working as a stripper on Bourbon Street, pulling in more money than a Nantucket plumber. His name’s Harper. He’s kinda shy.”

  Charlotte laughs. My cheeks feel hot. I mumble, “Hi.”

  “You can call him Long Schlong John. That’s his trade name.”

  “Shut up, Cage.” I elbow him in the ribs.

  “You in college down there?” Charlotte presses two menus to her chest and leads us to a booth. “What’s your major?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Whatcha going to do with that?” She sets the menus on the table.

  “Strip, I guess,” I say, sitting down.

  “Bring him to our next party.” She smiles at Cage, touching his arm for a second. The moment she’s gone, another waitress, red-haired this time and with an Irish lilt, slams down two glasses of water, puts her hands on her hips, and says, “What happened to you, Cage? I waited three hours at the Chicken Shack.”

  Cage just sits there smiling at her until her tight-set mouth breaks into a grin.

  “Molly, sweet Molly, my leprechaun Molly, I told you I might get hung up finishing off that job ’fore the owners arrived today. This, by the by, is my little brother, Harper.”

  “Fair family resemblance.” She studies him, then me. “You a naughty lad like your brother?”

  “He’s not naughty,” Cage answers for me. “He’s nice.”

  “Won’t be for long under your evil influence. So what’s your fancy tonight?”

  Cage tilts his head and narrows his eyes.

  “From the menu.”

  As she walks toward the kitchen, Cage says, “You’re in for an exciting summer. A southern accent breaks a lot of north Atlantic ice.”

  “Yeah, with you as my wingman, I might—”

  For a moment Cage looks as if his eyes are tearing up. He takes a deep breath. His voice sounds far away: “What do you remember most about Nick?”

  I stare at the small candle burning in an orange glass on the center of the table. “I try not to think about him but I did on the plane today. He wasn’t outgoing like you. He was serious, quiet, and when he spoke, it made you pause. He was the star of the family. I struggled to make Bs and he was at the top of his class. I was always jealous. What do you remember?”

  Molly sets down two mugs of beer, gives Cage a hard look, shaking her head, then walks off without a word.

  “The way he used to quote poetry.” Cage takes a big swallow.

  “Yeah.” I laugh. “He told me poetry was the best way to get in a girl’s pants. He also said that there’s a special place in hell for guys who use great poetry to seduce innocent girls.”

  “Then that’s where you’ll find Nick,” Cage says.

  “Remember that time outside Giamanco’s in Baton Rouge? You said something about Claudia Parlange, remember her? Nick hit you in the face and the next moment y’all were rolling around on the parking lot. Dad whisked Mom and me into the car and drove off. We left you slugging it out. You had to walk home.”

  “Brothers will fight. Law of nature. But brothers ought to always back each other up, that’s what Granddad used to tell us. Even over women.” Cage sticks his hand across the table. His grip is strong, a carpenter’s.

  “I’ll stick by you, Cage,” I say finally.

  “There was this French guy at Sewanee named Gilles du Chambure. He was a big, handsome rugby player who’d gone to a fancy school in England. He was the most dashing and sophisticated guy any of us southern boys had ever seen. I used to type papers for him.” Cage is telling this to Robert Wirth, a Wall Street guy with a huge house on the beach where Cage is building a new deck. “Every girl fell for Gilles before he even opened his mouth. Then, when they heard the accent, they just about started taking off their clothes in the middle of the pub. I used to take him rock climbing and he was about the best friend I had. After college I’d get an occasional postcard from London and then Hong Kong. He was that kind of guy.”

  Smiling and nodding, Wirth opens another bottle of beer. Cage shoots his empty bottle across the deck into a trash can and takes the fresh one.

  “So, summer after my second year in law school, Nick gets us both jobs with the forest service in Montana. We’re out cutting trails and fire lines. There’s one pretty girl at the headquarters named Caroline whom I’m flirting with every time we’re in Missoula, and she’s promising to catch a supply truck to our camp when she gets a week break toward the end of the summer. I’m marking off the days on a calendar like a prisoner.” Cage shakes his head. “The idea of her arrival is the only thing that keeps me going through August. You know, it’s a funny thing what deprivation will do. A girl who’d hardly turn your head on Nantucket starts to look like a goddess out in the mountains.”

  “I hear you.” Wirth laughs.

  “About two days before she’s coming, I twist my ankle so badly I can’t walk. I just sit in a camp chair and read and dream about Caroline.” Cage stretches out on his back along a large wooden table. “The night before she’s due I can’t sleep, so the next day I’m napping when she calls out my name and I look up and she’s standing there in the door of the tent, a vision of beauty.” Cage lifts his neck and visors his forehead with one hand like he’s peering through into glare. “‘Come here, Caroline, and give me a hug. I can’t stand up.’” He props himself up on one elbow. “‘God, you’re a sight for sore eyes.’ She comes over and kneels by my cot and gives me a hug. I’m thinking, Hallelujah, praise the Lord, the two-backed beast will be sleeping in this tent tonight. Then I look over her shoulder and who do I see standing in the doorway of the tent with a big, guilty smile on his face?”

  Wirth guesses, “Nick?”

  “Nah, it was someone I hadn’t seen for years.”

  “It was Gilles.” I laugh. “Fucking Gilles du Chambure.”

  “Under normal circumstances I would have been jumping off the cot to give Gilles a hug. But all I can manage, knowing that I’ll be awake again, listening to the two-backed beast moaning from a spare tent, is, ‘Oh, hey. Great to see you, um, guy.’”

  I look at Cage with unabashed admiration. He’s obviously Mr. Popularity on the island. From the lumber stores to the inner circles, everyone’s charmed by him. And while Wirth spits out a mouthful of beer, laughing at another of Cage’s stories, I think this guy—my big brother—really has it all wired.

  The Green of the Garden of Eden

  1960

  An hour before daylight on an April Sunday, Margaret Madeline Cage Rutledge screamed and jerked her hands against leather restraints. From the time she was too small to remember, the conversation among the women in her clan had led her to believe that this would be the most painful moment in her life, more agony than any man would ever experience. It was worse than she expected. And it was only beginning, though it had been going on for hours. A clock on the wall over the door showed 4:28. Each time she glanced over, the hands seemed to be moving backward. She wished that dawn would end the darkness. She wasn’t sure which was worse, the contractions or Mrs. Hennessey sticking her hand inside her every ten minutes. Two hours and her womb had not dilated even a half inch. She pictured a melon, a tiny hole in the depression where the stem had been. Her womb, woven with bundles of powerful fibers, a perfect egg of muscle, was pulling itself open in infinitesimal fractions, drawing up along the floating plates of the fetus’s soft skull.

  “Where’s the goddamn doctor?” Margaret yelled when the pain seemed about to kill her. It was the first time in her life that she had broken that commandment, and in her mind she was safe because she had deliberately thought it in a lowercase g. The door beneath the clock opened. Wearing nurse whites and hat, Mrs. Hennessey came inside, shut the door softly, crossed the room, took Marg
aret by the hand, looked at her sternly. “Dr. Trout will be here soon, honey. Now you just try to relax. You’re going to be fine.”

  Suddenly Margaret’s womb was still and her eyes flicked to the clock: 4:29. The nurse wiped the sweat off her brow. Breathlessly Margaret whispered, “Please undo these straps.”

  “They’re for your own good.” Mrs. Hennessey reminded Margaret of her mean-spirited fourth-grade math teacher.

  “Beg your pardon?” Margaret panted, trying to catch her breath. “I feel strapped to a table in the Spanish Inquisition.”

  “You don’t want to scratch yourself or the baby,” Mrs. Hennessey said. “Why, they’ve used restraints at Thebes County General since before I started.”

  “Since Oedipus was king,” Margaret muttered, watching the red second hand sweeping again at normal speed. Mrs. Hennessey put her thumb and two forefingers on Margaret’s wrist.

  At 4:31 Margaret bellowed. Her uterine muscles were like fingers clawing the edge of a door, straining to open it against an overwhelming force. She screamed from fury as well as pain—the tail of an eight-month-long comet of fury. Margaret had been cross from the moment the doctor confirmed her fear, which was a few weeks after she lost her virginity. A honeymoon baby. Possibly conceived even that first night of their marriage. Margaret was angry because she and Frank had taken precautions. Of course they wanted children. But not nine months after they were married. Margaret had goals. She had just graduated from the University of Tennessee, had done very well, particularly in English. She wanted at least a master’s degree. She wanted to teach literature at a high school or college. Back in her hometown, Margaret was proud of her handsome husband from Memphis, proud to be the rector’s wife. She wanted to become a leader of the women at the new mission church. She wanted to help Frank convert select Methodists and Baptists of Thebes into Episcopalians. She wanted to reach out to the poor and to the oppressed colored community. She wanted to help Frank climb from a congregation of two hundred in her farm town to a parish of thousands in Nashville or Louisville or Atlanta, climb all the way to the bishop of Tennessee. Through the year of their engagement, when it was difficult not to succumb to the great passion, the palpable temptation, Margaret planned the first three years of her coming marriage. She wanted to wait at least that long before devoting herself to raising babies. She shouted, “Where in Christ’s name is Dr. Trout?”