God in Concord

by Jane Langton

  Concord was one of the best-run suburbs west of Boston. Dozens of public-spirited citizens devoted their spare time to serving the town without pay, attending endless meetings, submitting themselves to continuous public scrutiny and criticism.

  “It’s democracy in action,” people said when they approved of a decision made by one of the boards.

  “Throw them all out,” they said, when they didn’t.

  It was a good system, everybody agreed, and on the whole it worked well.

  Jack was especially lucky in the hearings he attended. Not only did he have the shrewd advice of Mimi Pink, he had the keen insider’s information supplied by Hope Fry. Best of all, he had the good fortune to follow in the footsteps of the finance committee, which had preceded him and prepared the ground.

  FinCom had all the appalling figures at their fingertips. They knew how perilous the town’s financial condition really was. Like all the other small municipalities in Massachusetts, Concord had been abandoned by the commonwealth, which had reneged disastrously on its promise of local aid.

  “You’ve got to cut at least ten percent from the budget passed at the spring town meeting,” FinCom said to each of the boards. “We’re sorry, but we won’t approve anything less drastic.”

  “Look, we can always raise taxes a little bit,” said one or another anguished member of the personnel board or the public works commission or the school committee.

  “Impossible,” said FinCom. “We can’t ask the elderly or the unemployed or the young to pay any more, and we certainly can’t add to the burden of the hardworking professionals who are already paying through the nose. You’ve got to cut. You’ve got to cut until you bleed.”

  One by one the committees came before the judgment seat to plead. FinCom treated them all the same way. They were cruel but fair. Again and again they raised their glittering scythes and slashed the dewy, hopeful grass.

  “Look here,” said FinCom to the library committee, “why don’t you impose a six-month moratorium on the purchase of new books? I mean, you’ve got a whole lot of books already, right? I’ll bet you’ve got a million books.”

  The director of the library was scandalized. “Not buy new books? Not buy new books? What’s a library for? We can’t stop buying books!”

  “Well, take your choice,” said FinCom heartlessly. “It’s either books or staff members.”

  So in the end a couple of librarians were thrown to the wolves.

  FinCom had another money-saving suggestion for the public works commission. “Why not forget about potholes next spring? Just let ’em go. It’ll be hard on people’s suspension systems, but, what the hell, you’ve got to cut somewhere. If we have an open winter, you’ll be okay.”

  “Not repair potholes?” exclaimed the chairwoman of Public Works. “You don’t know what you’re saying. If we don’t do simple maintenance on our forty-two miles of public ways this year, we’ll have forty-two miles of major reconstruction in years to come. You don’t really mean it.”

  It was the same story in every department of town government. The modernization of the light plant was canceled. The acceptance of new streets was denied. The new telephone system for the high school was postponed. Even the expansion of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery was rejected.

  “So what are we going to do with the deceased?” snarled the cemetery committee. “Take them to the dump?”

  Everybody was angry. The atmosphere in the Town House was one of testiness and rancor, exacerbated by news of still more million-dollar deficits in the commonwealth, grimly reported by the Boston Globe.

  For Jack Markey it was all to the good. When his turn came, each of the town boards was in a softened-up condition, ready to clutch at any straw. Some of them caved in reluctantly, some stroked their chins and postponed judgment, some were delighted from the start.

  The chairwoman of the Concord Housing Authority was one of the latter. She was a tough-minded down-to-earth woman who had been fighting for low-income housing in Concord for years. She was suspicious of easy excuses based on mere aesthetics or on the town’s historic heritage. The hard fact was that the Concord Housing Authority needed more housing. Their waiting list was pathetically long.

  She looked over Jack’s plans for the condominiums at Walden Green with a practiced eye.

  “Three units of low-income rentals,” said Jack, getting down to brass tacks. “Seven moderate income.”

  “Ten low. We don’t give a damn about moderate-income housing. Those people can take care of themselves.”

  Jack didn’t promise anything, but he could see that the woman was on his side.

  Refuse Disposal was a pushover, too, although the chairperson seemed doubtful at first. He looked at Jack solemnly. “In case you don’t know it already, trash disposal is a serious matter in this town. Well, it’s a serious matter all over the place.” The man was in earnest. He wasn’t fooling.

  “You’re damned right,” agreed Jack, who knew a lot about the subject already. His employer, Jefferson Grandison, was into waste removal in a big way. It was the coming thing, and Grandison knew it. From his lofty perch in the Grandison Building he stretched out his hand not only to create, but to bear away that which had been created. (Jesus, thought Jack, remembering Lot Seventeen.)

  “You need a really good transfer station,” he told the chairman. “What if we provide you with the equipment?” And then he listed one succulent item after another—a compactor to reduce volume, a complete recycling center with hydraulic lifts, a trammer mill to turn used building materials into wood chips, even an on-site chemist.

  The chairman was impressed in spite of himself. “We’re putting in a compactor ourselves, just as an experiment,” he said. “But those other things, my God, they’re so expensive. How can your people afford it?”

  “Oh, we hope to make enough from the leasing of our shopping mall and the rental of the condo units to get a substantial return on our investment. And of course we have a vested interest in keeping the intersection of Route Two and Route One Twenty-six as well landscaped as possible. Right now, with that big hole in the ground, it’s … well, let’s just say it’s not very attractive.”

  “It sure isn’t very attractive. And it’s an insult to Henry Thoreau, the whole damned thing. I just happen to be a Thoreau nut myself. Look here, I’ll tell you the truth. I hate what you’re doing, but I don’t know how else the town of Concord can afford a transfer station.”

  The next board on the list was tricky, very tricky. Jack approached the natural resources commission cautiously. They were a hard-nosed conservation-minded bunch of people with an affection for swamps, bogs, and thistly wildernesses. But they could find no fault with Jack Markey’s plan. The percolation tests had been superb. The thirsty subsoil of the high school site gulped down surface water through thick layers of gravel and sand.

  Jack brought forward his hard facts truthfully. The buildings would occupy one hundred thousand square feet, he said, with an effluent of ten thousand gallons a day. And then he talked knowledgeably about wetland buffer zones, catchment basins, and sewage. The entire board leaned forward and pricked up its ears when Jack offered to extend the town’s sewer pipes all the way from the county courthouse to Route 2. What a boon that would be!

  But his ace in the hole was Titcomb’s Bog. Titcomb’s Bog would be bought by Grandison Enterprises and given to the town as a free gift. “Titcomb’s Bog,” said Jack triumphantly, “sacred to the memory of Henry Thoreau.”

  “I fear not,” said the chairperson of the natural resources commission. “You’re wrong there, friend. Henry Thoreau never wrote a word about Titcomb’s Bog. But I admit we’d be pleased to see it in conservation.”

  The planning board was the last on Hope’s list. It was too important, she said, to be approached head on. So Jack made an appointment for a Saturday morning visit with its chairman, Roger Bland, at his home on Musketaquid Road.

  Roger’s house was an impressive dwelling, quite new
, overlooking the Concord River beside the Nashawtuc bridge. A little pale gray horse looked inquisitively at Jack from a field beside the house and whinnied at him, as if to warn its master. Jack couldn’t help thinking at once of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the book of Revelation—“And I saw, and behold a white horse; and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him; and he went forth conquering.”

  Marjorie Bland opened the door, wearing an apron over her peach-colored turtleneck and lavender trousers. “Oh, come right in,” she said gaily, waving a potholder. “Roger will be right down.”

  And there he was, coming down the stairs, Roger Bland the country squire, in old khakis and a plaid shirt. Jack could see him sitting high on the white horse, going forth to conquer.

  “Let’s go in here,” said Roger, leading the way into his study. It was a rich warm room with an Oriental rug, a computer, and shelves full of books. If Homer Kelly had been there, he would have snorted at the books, which were not like those belonging to Charlotte Harris in her mobile home at Pond View. Roger had inherited his library from an elderly aunt, whose taste had run to Gene Stratton Porter, Faith Baldwin, and Ethel M. Dell.

  But Jack didn’t know anything about books, and he was impressed. “What do you use the computer for?”

  “Investments,” said Roger. “I have a direct line to my broker. I’ve got this software program that sends me information. You know, the daily performance of the Dow, all kinds of stuff. It’s kind of a hobby of mine.”

  “How’s your average?” said Jack, daring a jocular intimacy.

  “Pretty good, if I do say so myself.”

  They sat down, and Jack put his roll of maps on the coffee table. Roger knew what Jack had come for, and he spoke bluntly. “You understand, there’ll be a lot of opposition to your proposal. A shopping mall across from Walden Pond! Wait till you lock horns with the Thoreau types.”

  “Oh, I know about the Thoreau types.” Jack grinned engagingly. “But I think they may change their tune when they hear what we have to offer.” He unrolled one of his maps. “We understand the Burroughs farm on Monument Street is for sale. What if we were to buy it and deed it to the town of Concord for conservation?”

  Roger whistled, trying not to show his pleasure. Who cared what happened to a dusty woods right next to a noisy highway, compared with the preservation of a twenty-five-acre farm on the most beautiful street in town?

  Outwardly he was careful to remain noncommittal. He gave Jack neither encouragement nor discouragement. But after Jack took his leave, Roger stood dreamily in the hall, thinking about the Burroughs farm and the figures his visitor had tossed off into the air, the amount of money that would flow into the town treasury in taxes every year from Walden Green. “Even suppose,” Roger murmured to himself, “that it’s only half what he said. Even suppose—”

  “What, dear?” shouted Marjorie from the kitchen, where she was bustling about, whipping up a casserole of coq au vin for a dinner party, pouring in a dash of cognac and touching it courageously with a match. Whoosh, went the cognac, blazing up, and Marjorie uttered a little shriek. Oh, cooking was such fun!

  21

  YOU HAVE BEEN ELECTED CHAIRMAN

  OF THE BOARD.

  Chance card, Monopoly

  Mimi Pink was thinking big. “What we need,” she said to her assistant in the Porcelain Parlor, “is an organization of retailers. All our own people.”

  “Well,” said Bonnie Glover, “there’s, you know, the Concord Chamber of Commerce.”

  Mimi laughed scornfully. “The Chamber of Commerce, what good is that? A lot of old-fashioned people stuffing themselves with pancakes and sausage once a month at the Colonial Inn. No imagination. No creativity. No, we need our own team, our own elite corps.”

  “Oh, fabulous,” murmured Bonnie Glover. “Fabulous” was Bonnie’s noncommittal way of saying “Hmmm.”

  They pondered over names for the new organization. “Coalition of Concord Shops?” suggested Mimi.

  “Fantastic,” said Bonnie automatically.

  But Mimi shot it down herself. The word coalition implied equality among the participants, and that was out, because as the owner of all the shops, Mimi herself must be more equal than the rest.

  In the end she came up with Consortium of Concord Boutiques.

  “Awesome,” said Bonnie, clapping her hands, sensing that this was Mimi’s choice, this was it.

  “The Consortium for short,” said Mimi.

  The first meeting of the Consortium of Concord Boutiques was called for July 17 in the Porcelain Parlor immediately after closing hours.

  “The meeting will come to order,” said Mimi, smiling at her audience, enjoying the way they had all adopted a Mimi Pink look.

  Bonnie Glover was the best clone. Bonnie was extremely pretty in her own right, and she had made the most of her endowments. But the others, too, were good demonstrations of the Pink style. Narrow skirts rode high over black nylon knees. That year the fashion was for big football shoulders, and Mimi’s were wider than anybody’s. There was hardly room along the rows of folding chairs for the bundles of shoulder padding crowded together side by side. Everyone’s hair had been blown into fluffy exaggerated shapes like Mimi’s and sprayed with a glistening coating. Fingernails were silver, scarlet, baby pink. All Mimi’s people were drenched in scent from the Parfumerie. Swooning fragrances blended in an olfactory mishmash.

  Reverently they listened as Mimi held forth. “I’ve got people begging me for space right now, with the darlingest ideas. Potpourris Unlimited has been after me for a year. And Loving Hearts—you know, those specialty shops that sell heart-shaped things—they want a shop here, too, and there’s a new little chain, Ladybugs, exclusive knitwear with the ladybug emblem. I’m dickering for more space. And I’m hiring the interior designer for Hyatt Hotels.”

  Mimi Pink was throwing the dice, throwing the dice, hopping over the less important properties on the Monopoly board, aiming for some ultimate perfection of real estate, some glorious Park Place, some supremely up-market Boardwalk with towers of alabaster.

  Everyone in the room felt part of something important. It was especially fantastic to be here in the Porcelain Parlor surrounded by the most expensive merchandise in town. The fabulous price tags on the china figures cast a spell. The track lighting was artfully arranged to shine on the glass shelves with their fragile images of bluebirds among apple blossoms and mothers cuddling babies and nubile girls with windblown skirts. In the place of honor perched a porcelain imitation of azalea twigs adorned with lifelike magenta flowers. Its price tag was seven hundred and fifty dollars.

  Across Route 2 on the south side of town, deep in the woods between Walden Pond and the Sudbury River, Homer Kelly and Ananda Singh were ankle deep in the cushiony moss covering the surface of the fourth Andromeda Pond. Above them on the hillside stood a row of oaks, vast round globes of moving leaves, nodding in the soft breeze like dreaming old men who had lost the power of speech.

  Swamp azaleas blossomed here and there. No price tags hung from their fragrant branches. They were altogether free.

  22

  Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed,

  and in such desperate enterprises?

  Walden, “Conclusion”

  In the dining room of the Colonial Inn at the far end of Monument Square, the Concord Chamber of Commerce was enjoying its monthly breakfast. “Enjoying” was perhaps not the right word. Most of them were suffering, but they ate their eggs and bacon and their pancakes and sausages with a will, forking them up hungrily while they exchanged outraged exclamations and shook their heads in bewilderment, wondering what in the hell to do.

  “It’s not fair,” complained Melanie Dew, proprietor of the lunch room that was wedged between Mimi Pink’s Porcelain Parlor and her new Bridal Boutique. “She tripled my rent overnight. I can’t possibly pay that much.” Melanie’s voice disappeared upward in a little squeak as she started to cry.
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  The others were embarrassed, but they were intensely sympathetic. There were growlings and mutterings, and then Taylor Baylor spoke up. Taylor had been heavily fined in the county courthouse for his verbal assault on Mimi Pink, and he was deeply resentful. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that Melanie is not alone. Mimi Pink is trying to force all us honest merchants out of town, people who’ve been here fifteen or twenty or thirty years. They tell me she’s dickering with that out-of-town real estate firm that owns my block. If she gets her hands on that, I might as well give up.”

  “It’s war, that’s what it is,” said Isabelle Moseley, who had a small notions shop on Walden Street. “It’s the battle of Concord all over again, only this time it’s not the minutemen and the British, it’s us and Mimi Pink. Only this time the enemy is winning.”

  Taylor Baylor stretched out his fork like a musket. “Fire, fellow soldiers, for God’s sake, fire,” he cried, quoting Major Buttrick at the North Bridge.

  Everybody laughed uneasily, and the breakfast meeting broke up.

  Taylor Baylor was too sore in spirit to go back to work in his shoe store. He stayed on at the breakfast table with the barber, Alphonso Domingo, to drink second and third cups of coffee and indulge in angry gossip about Ms. Pink.

  Therefore when Mimi took her usual morning stroll along Walden Street from one shop to another, she noticed that Alphonso Domingo’s barbershop was empty.

  She paused. The barbershop was the only remaining interruption in her row of pretty stores, a ghastly hole like a missing tooth. Mimi’s repeated offers to buy out Alphonso had been steadfastly rejected.

  The door of the shop, she noticed, was slightly ajar.

  Mimi pushed it open. “Mr. Domingo?” she said loudly.

  One of the barber chairs creaked slightly and turned a fraction of a degree. Mimi looked at herself in the big mirror. It seemed strange that an old mirror like that would have the capacity to reflect her modish silhouette, her smart hairstyle, after all those years of giving back only the reflections of Alphonso and his aging customers. Mimi winced at the sagging vinyl-covered couch, the shelves of sticky bottles, she recoiled from the dusty hair clippings on the floor, not yet swept up. What a slob the man was.