The Testing of Luther Albright Read online

  “No,” I said finally. “I didn’t think of anything.”

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE FIRST, OF COURSE. OUR BEDROOM smelled of damp grass and my nose was cold, and so my first thought was not of the newspaper, but of the sewer gas. But it didn’t take long to remember. I put on a sweatshirt and went outside.

  Ms. de Silva got front-page placement, and the headline was worse than I’d imagined: “Earthquake Risk: Dam Failure Could Flood Sacramento.” The Bee is a decent paper, but they fall prey to the same temptations other papers do. They printed a bar graph showing the size of earthquakes in California over the last one hundred years. The November earthquake was a 6.8. The El Centro earthquake of 1940, which had killed nine people and caused six million dollars in damage, had been a 7.1. The 1906, which was the most famous earthquake in history and may have killed as many as three thousand, was an 8.3. And to the right of these, a bar showing a 7.8 earthquake labeled, “Magnitude that would rupture North Fork Dam, flooding most of Sacramento County.” The editors made no effort to point out that an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 is actually ten times larger than a 6.8, or that the epicenter would have to be within twenty-five miles of the dam to have this ominous effect, almost inconceivable given the fault patterns in the area. More irritating still was a box to the left of the article titled, “What You Can Do to Protect Your Family,” and a list, including purchasing flood insurance, stocking up on emergency supplies, and writing to your local legislators urging more stringent safety requirements. Of course, Ms. de Silva fanned these flames with quotes from uninformed people. Mothers and fathers said, “Terrifying” and “How do things like this get approved?” The mayor, who has virtually no influence over state politics or interactions with the Department of Water Resources but was facing stiff reelection competition said, “I will take any measure to protect the safety of the citizens of Sacramento.”

  As I read, I kept bracing myself. I imagined Belsky would have offered to talk to her only as an unnamed employee—a quote implying serious danger or embarrassment to the Department—but the only comment from within our division was from Leonard Berkman, and Ms. de Silva twisted it to her purposes: “In the face of scrutiny, criticism, and fear,” she wrote, “the DWR would comment only in vague terms through a professional spokesperson who said: ‘A very likely outcome of the investigation is greater confidence that North Fork is one of the safest dams in the country.’ In the meantime, the citizens of Sacramento will have to hope that the aftershocks are over.”

  Liz snorted at the amateur melodrama and tabloid partiality of this line, as I’d hoped she would, and kissed me on the crown of my head as she read it over my shoulder, but Elliot merely set it down when he finished, and it was somehow more disturbing to me that instead of challenging me with a question he merely returned to reading Road & Track. At the time I attributed my anxiety to a worry that he was biding his time for a surprise attack of some kind, but the feeling I had was more hollow than that. It’s as if briefly some stunted part of me understood that the testing he’d been doing was at least a sign of interest, or a sign that he had higher expectations for me, and that this resignation, or indifference, or both, while less obviously hostile, was a lesser kind of love.

  The reactions from my coworkers were more gratifying. On my desk that morning was a white-frosted Danish like the ones I often saw Elena eating with a knife and fork at her desk. Leonard stopped me in the men’s room to laugh about the way Sylvia de Silva had called him for comment from a pay phone at an A&P at five-thirty and told him there was no time to research his answers. When I went to the lobby to buy a can of soda, I returned to find a stainless steel spaghetti strainer on my chair with a note attached in Belsky’s cramped hand: “Safety of Dams asked me to collect any early models you might have constructed of North Fork. I hear there’s one that looks something like this,” a typical dig, but one laced with some empathy nonetheless. At noon, Ken Gonzales stopped by my office to ask me out to lunch. I told him I planned to eat at my desk, and he rapped twice on my doorjamb and said he hoped I wasn’t letting the article get to me.

  When lunchtime came, though, I went not to the deli downstairs, but instead to a store on Sunrise Boulevard whose sequined aquamarine marquee had burned itself into my memory in the sharp five o’clock afterlight of thousands of commutes home. I wish I could describe or even remember the exact quality of the feeling that overcame me when I did such things. It was not a strong drive or a panic or even a despair. It was a blankness, a kind of hollow nothing that must have been conjured through force of some will but over time had become like a reflex. Sometimes a generalized sadness or a quick flare of self-loathing would rise, but it never lasted very long. The salesman descended on me at the door with an assault of questions and a gambler’s hand of glossy brochures, but the truth was any model would do, as long as it could be delivered that afternoon.

  By then Liz had had long experience with my surprise purchases, and even as distracted as she was those days, I suppose there was a strong enough plea implicit in the pattern to get her attention. She tried to give me what I wanted. That evening, although it was only sixty degrees, she met me in the driveway wearing a sarong from a trip to Mexico over her sky-blue tank suit. She had set up dinner at our garden table and a boom box playing Spanish music on the brown, new-smelling vinyl cover of the hot tub. She sashayed to me and bumped her hip against mine.

  “How long have you been planning this?” she said.

  I shrugged and smiled.

  “Fifteen jets!” she said. “He can invite half his class from school.”

  She threw a shawl over her shoulders against the chill and served sangria to all three of us and did not raise her eyebrows when Elliot poured himself more. I had several topics in reserve, but she did not let the subject stray from our new acquisition. She floated half-a-dozen ideas for parties around the hot tub, and Elliot entertained these gracefully, with a kind of eye rolling and smiling that from a teenager reveals a grudging affection.

  Over slices of pound cake, finally, I shared my coworkers’ reactions to the article with my wife and son. Liz lifted the lid for a dip in the hot tub, but of course the water inside was still very cold, and to salvage some of the spirit she’d intended, she led us across the lawn and slipped off her shoes to stand ankle-deep on the top step of our pool. She goaded me along with easy questions and lighthearted comments, and abandoned her plate to eat the slice of cake from her hand. Elliot was quiet. He sat on the copingstones with his feet next to Liz’s in the water and passed pieces of cake between his lips at those moments when he might have been expected to weigh in with a comment of his own, leaving Liz to construct a lean-to of comfort without the support of his ease and humor. The sun kept setting, until the pool was dark above their feet, their ankles disappearing beneath the glassy surface, and I wished I had set the underwater light on a timer that matched the earlier nightfall of the new season, a task I had somehow let slip, despite my vigilance.

  5 The Book

  IN FEBRUARY OF THAT YEAR, THE WEATHER CHANGED. THE RAINS subsided. The fog burned off and temperatures reached a record eighty degrees. At first people were wary, but in the second week of this, some removed the covers from their swimming pools. Drugstores displayed sunscreen near the cash registers, picnic blankets dotted Capitol Park, and, one afternoon, my wife knocked at my office door in a yellow sundress with a Thermos full of lemonade and a sack of sandwiches from the barbecue restaurant. She pulled one of my guest chairs around to my side of the desk, reached into the bag, and handed me a warm, damp bundle of waxed paper. “Happy heat wave!” she said, and she kissed me on the cheek.

  Although I have come to think this was just an uncomplicated romantic gesture—a reaction to the same foretaste of loss I myself was feeling—at the time, I was instantly suspicious. Ms. de Silva’s article, of course, had not been the last mention in the paper about my dam. The following day there had been an impassioned editorial, and from this, two camps had q
uickly emerged: those who felt it was a large waste of money to consider structural modifications, and those who feared the dam would fail and wash away our city during the next tremor. Sometimes Liz read these articles and letters aloud at breakfast with a mocking tone, but with her new daytime hours she was often in too much of a hurry to mention them at all, and it is at least some sign of feeling on my part that I was conflicted about this. Occasionally I registered it as a loss (although more out of nostalgia than out of an understanding that something important was changing). But more frequently I vacillated between relief at the waning of her sympathetic scrutiny and worry that the silence was merely some kind of passive-aggressive technique she had devised in the dead time between calls at the Crisis Center.

  I think I knew even then that there was something destructive about my suspicion, and I tried to dispel it as I chewed, but each time I focused my attention successfully on what she was saying—about the tenderness of the brisket, or the jets in the new hot tub, or a profile she’d read on Sally Ride—a wave of bitter astonishment invaded my thoughts. How did we get here? I was struggling with this when Belsky waved at us through the hall window. He opened the door and held up a can of Sprite. “Well, well. Lookee here. I had intended this for my partner in crime, but I’d much rather give it to a lady,” he said. “Nice haircut, by the way. A whole new you.”

  “Oh,” she said. “Well. Thanks.” She touched herself at the nape, but looked at the carpet. She was always a little uncomfortable when other men flirted with her in front of me, but her discomfort when Belsky did it seemed to be growing stronger. I tried to assure myself that this was because she shared my dislike of him, and not because she felt it would be a blow to my ego to see that a man who had built rapport so easily with our son could do so with her as well.

  He popped a can open and handed it to her. He licked a drop of Sprite from his finger and leaned on the edge of my desk, facing her. “Your son is a great kid.”

  “He really enjoys Tim.”

  “Polite, personable, great laugh.”

  “It’s sweet of you and Joyce to host him so often.”

  “All that and a great mother too.” He shook his head. Then he turned a little to look at me. “I just came by to get any notes on tests you didn’t submit to the files.”

  “You asked me for those last week.”

  “Did I?” he said, scratching his head.

  “Three times, in fact.” I laughed to diffuse the irritation I felt. “Once in a memo, once in the middle of a staff meeting, and once in line at the cafeteria toaster. I gave you everything I have.”

  “You only did fifteen core samples?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Come on.” He looked at Liz. “Does that sound right to you? Fifteen core samples. I think he’s hiding something.”

  I said, “I think you stopped by to see my wife.”

  Both of them looked at me. Belsky raised his eyebrows, but he was caught short, I think, by the truth of it. Liz’s eyes moved minutely around my face, for clues.

  I picked up the Sprite he had given Liz and sipped it. I had been too harsh, I thought. He was just a coarse man, and he meant me no harm. The interest he had taken in my son was at my request, and for whatever reason even seemed to be good for him. I said, “I can sympathize with the impulse, but I’d like her all to myself.”

  “I don’t blame you,” he said, and stood up. “But we’re having a party Saturday—a barbecue if the weather holds. Maybe you could share her then—bring Elliot and join us.”

  Liz did not wait for me to hesitate on this.

  “We’d love to,” she said.

  As he walked out, Elena poked her head in to remind me that I had a meeting, and by lingering in the room to pull files as Liz gathered her things, she robbed me of any chance to joke with my wife about what had just happened. I expected her to mention Belsky’s visit as soon as we were alone in the bedroom that night, and when she didn’t, a dread began to build inside me. I waited to see what she would do, and listened with wonder as she talked about the strange heat wave, and the way it was bringing out buds on the China plum, keeping up the conversation when it flagged, and all the while leaving the topic glinting in the corner of the bedroom untouched.

  It is ironic that Howard chose the following morning to visit my office unannounced. He laid a trembling hand on my guest chair and raised his eyebrows, his request for an invitation to sit. He was an engineer who had been promoted into a position that was almost entirely interpersonal in nature, and, over the years, he had adapted himself to it as best he could. He always began impromptu encounters with a series of social questions that through tireless repetition in the halls and elevators had formed the unlikely foundation of his popularity. In the context of his power, his awkwardness was somehow endearing.

  Predictably, he picked up the photograph on my desk. “Beautiful family,” he said, as if looking at it for the first time.

  “Thank you.”

  He set the picture down. “How’s Liz?”

  “Great,” I said. “She’s working at the Crisis Center now.”

  “Crisis Center, eh?” His eyes strayed to his notepad. He looked up again. “And that house of yours?”

  “Terrific.”

  “Built it from scratch yourself, didn’t you?”

  “I did.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Thanks.”

  He looked at his paper again. “Well, Luther. You’ve probably heard Don’s retiring.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry for the Department, but happy for him. I’m sure Lorraine will like seeing more of him.”

  He smiled, but a muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth. My response had interrupted his rhythm. He glanced at his notepad and pressed on. “And I just want you to know that the way this investigation is going had a lot to do with our decision on filling his post.”

  He sat back in his chair, relieved to have finally set the meeting on its irrevocable course. The air conditioner ticked on, and I felt a pulse in my stomach, like a tiny hand tapping. I cocked my head slightly to encourage elaboration, but he said nothing. I said, “I’m not sure I understand.”

  He trilled his shaking fingers on the plastic chair arm, smiling slightly, hopeful that I meant this rhetorically—that he would not have to begin again. “Sure you do.”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Come on, Luther.” He was looking at his notepad, eager to move forward to his next point.

  I said, “But so many have been investigated.”

  “None like yours.”

  The pulse in my stomach quickened. I said, “If you’re going to start letting the press dictate your promotions, I don’t think you’ll be happy with the results.”

  I took a Kleenex from the box on my desk and wiped my forehead. There was no use now trying to conceal my agitation. I did not look at him directly, but I could tell he was holding very still. When I looked up, he looked down at his notes to afford me an awkward privacy.

  “Excuse me,” I said.

  “Well, no, that’s—”

  “I didn’t mean to lose my temper.”

  “Oh, well…”

  He picked up my photograph, lost in his routine, and then set it down clattering on my desktop. He ran a palm across his pant leg. “You’re not tracking me here, Luther. That’s the thing.” He skimmed his pant leg again and then settled his hands on the chair arms. “You’ve impressed us with the way you’re taking the investigation. Most of the guys lose their cool at least once anyway, and then Robert is no picnic to work with. Plus all that business in the papers.”

  I must have looked confused, because at this point he laughed. He said, “We’d like you to take Don’s post.”

  Although my failures of intuition that month were numerous, in a way the next one strikes me as the most pathetic. I was incredibly excited, as if there was some kind of magic in my news. I bought a bottle of champagne on the way home in anticipation of the ease it
would rekindle among us, but in the end the moment of telling my wife and son about my promotion was not all that different from the one three weeks earlier when I had told them about the call from the reporter, with forced exclamations of pride from Liz and a silence from Elliot that could have expressed either indifference or judgment. And although the evening before she had neatly avoided it, that night in bed Liz introduced the topic of Belsky’s party with an analytical relish that showed me she had been thinking about it all along. She wanted to know if I’d seen Robert since Krepps talked to me about my promotion, and I told her I had not. Robert and Joyce would probably feel a little threatened, she said, and she recommended we try to ease this as best we could. Especially in light of their difficult marriage because things like this can add to the strain. “We could bring up how nice their house is,” she suggested. “I’ll bet the fact that they can afford such an expensive house is a big point of pride with a guy like him. Talking about it might make them feel less awkward.” I conceded that this was true, but as she talked, I could not shake the idea that her work at the Crisis Center had made her cagey enough to architect an entire conversation about how to ease Belsky’s competitive feelings simply in order to assuage my own.

  Although of course I agreed with her, already my thoughts were turning to the party with an eagerness that in retrospect seems foolish. It had been over two months now since he had taken Elliot water-skiing, and since then Elliot’s attachment to his family had grown until he spent almost as many waking hours underneath their roof as he did under ours.

  Liz said, “And if he’s insensitive to Joyce, we have to build her up somehow. Maybe he does it out of feelings of inadequacy,” and again I felt that rise of suspicion. I pictured a pale-fingered social worker reading to a class of volunteers from a textbook, Liz nodding, taking notes.

  THAT MY SON WAS QUIET IN THE CAR ON THE WAY TO THE barbecue should not have seemed a rebuke in the context of the recent changes, but as we glided along the wide sapling-lined streets of the Sunrise Villas, I felt my palms begin to sweat on the wheel. When Elliot was eight, the parents of boys at his school had entered a sort of birthday party arms race. He went to events at which he rode in a real fire engine, swam with dolphins, and bounced in someone’s backyard in an inflatable room the size of a one-car garage. He came back from each glassy-eyed with sugar and an awe for the fathers of these boys that had me worrying about his own birthday party seven months in advance. At a certain point, without really examining the implications of what I was doing, I began to interview purveyors of entertainment. I met with a juggler who worked a heavy measure of realistic self-injury gags into his routine, a falconer with trained birds of prey he taught children to call to their mitted arms with scraps of raw beef, and finally a magician. Each time, I took them to our yard where Liz couldn’t hear us because I was vaguely embarrassed by the overseriousness of my project, and near the trunk of our elm tree, I asked them to tell me about their routines. The juggler and the falconer both gave me a businesslike description of services, breaking their programs down into increments of time, and specifying exactly how each of the children would get to participate. But the magician simply told me he’d bring equipment for all thirty of his most popular tricks and do ten he chose based on the vague measure of “audience response.” I asked him what he meant.