Redemption Mountain

by FitzGerald, Gerry

  Charlie got out of the car and sat on a wrought-iron bench that was part of the front garden and faced the house. A magnificent old English cottage-style home, with every conceivable amenity and feature for gracious country living, the four-page brochure had begun. Built twenty years ago to look two hundred years old, the house was much bigger than it appeared from the outside. An architectural deception, Charlie knew, due to the long sloping roof descending to the first floor and the oversize fenestration throughout. The latticed windows were large, and the front entryway was wide, with large oak double doors. Even the truncated cupolas poking through the slate roof on the second floor were larger than the overall scale of the home made them seem.

  And the inside of the house wasn’t small, Charlie recalled, with four bedrooms, two family rooms, a library, and a study. The interior definitely wasn’t two hundred years old, either, with its Viking kitchen, Jacuzzi in the master suite, and state-of-the-art sound system.

  Charlie strolled down the long driveway to the rear of the house to look at the real features of the property—pages three and four of the brochure. Between the curving driveway and a large enclosed porch with green-and-white-striped awnings was another perfectly coiffed lawn, garden, and patio area. Crossing the driveway, Charlie walked down a wide, gently sloping stone stairway to the pool. Beyond the pool was a pool house with attached tiki bar worthy of any Caribbean resort, and on the far side, a tennis court surfaced in dark blue, surrounded on three sides by closely planted evergreens.

  He walked up a curving gravel path to the stable at the end of the garage. Next to it there was a half-acre riding area, now overgrown. The stable doors were open, and Charlie could smell the rich aroma of old hay. There were no horses, but he knew that would be their next discussion if they were to live here.

  Charlie leaned back against the sun-baked fence of the corral and let the warmth soothe his back, aching from the morning hockey game. He looked up at the house and the garden patio and down at the pool and tennis court. He could see why this had become Ellen’s dream home. It fit perfectly with Ellen’s need for status and social power. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt her campaign to become the first woman president of Hickory Hills Country Club.

  But Charlie knew that the home was about more than status, gracious country living, and the Hickory Hills crowd. He knew it the first time they looked at the property. He saw it in Ellen’s eyes, how they came alive when she moved around the grounds. This was where Ellen grew up. The life she was born to. Smaller certainly than the estate in East Greenwich, Rhode Island, with its expansive colonial farmhouse, acres of meadows and woods, stables, and the barn with the loft apartment where they had first made love, the summer after his junior year at Michigan, the night they met in the bar in Newport. Three months before the federal prosecutor indicted her father, Augie D’Angelo, and it all disappeared. Charlie knew that the house was as much about vindication as it was about stepping up to the next level of Westchester society. And that would make it all harder.

  Charlie disliked the opulence of the house and what would become their lifestyle in this neighborhood. It was everything he was trying to escape. And it was wasteful, moving into a bigger home now that Scott and Jennifer were out of the house. He knew they could afford it, even though it was stupid money. But it was a huge, irrevocable step in a direction he didn’t want to go.

  He drove back out to the main road and headed north toward the country club. Seeing the house again reminded Charlie of his larger problem, the problem that had been festering for three months, since the Thursday before Easter, when he received the call in his office in the city from his friend Dave Marchetti. The call about Ellen’s affair.

  “So, Linda’s got a big mouth anyway,” Dave began. “But the other night she gets all lathered up on vodka tonics and…” Linda Marchetti was Ellen Burden’s best friend. “I hate to … but I’d want to know, Charlie.” Marchetti hesitated. “Name’s Morgan, Phil Morgan. Used to be a member of the club, few years ago. Played in our group on Saturdays. Maybe you remember him.” Charlie didn’t. “Quit the club, then quit golf, I heard. Too bad—he was, like, a three handicap. Made his money on Wall Street, a pile of it. Retired and started a foundation to build schools in Africa. Mostly all his money.” Marchetti paused again. “Ellen was on his board a few years ago.” Charlie vaguely recalled Ellen serving for a short time on the board of an outfit dealing with African children. “Lost his wife to cancer last year,” Marchetti said softly. There was a long silence between them until Marchetti spoke again. “Linda tells me it only lasted a month. Over before it started.”

  “Okay, thanks, Dave. I appreciate it,” said Charlie, anxious to get off the phone and take a deep breath and be alone. “Anything else?”

  Marchetti sighed audibly. “Charlie … he’s a very decent guy.”

  Outside Charlie’s windows, the Park Avenue traffic six floors below was heavy and slow, as it always was before a holiday. It was only Thursday, but, with tomorrow being Good Friday, the weekend had already started. It was going to be a bitch getting out of the city and back to Mamaroneck. Charlie thought about staying in one of the corporate apartments on the second floor. He’d used them more often over the past year, staying in the city overnight after an extended workday, or to get an early start on some project in the morning. The call to Ellen had become routine, most often a message left on her voice mail.

  Charlie pulled off his tie and tossed it on the chair across from him. Whether he spent the night or drove home with the traffic, he wasn’t going anywhere for a while. Right now he needed a drink and a cigar. One of Lucien Mackey’s big Cubans would be perfect.

  Charlie left his office, suddenly aware of the quiet. It was just after seven o’clock—past quitting time on the partners’ floor. The staff engineers and architects would still be working down on the fourth and fifth floors, where Charlie had worked when he first joined the firm, putting in the happiest years of his career. In the executive lounge, he went behind the bar and poured a small glass of Canadian Club. As he made his way around the massive mahogany table, he gazed at the display cases lining the interior wall, showcasing Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey’s greatest projects.

  The largest and most impressive display was also the most recent project—the first of two giant hydroelectric dams the firm was building in China. The two dams together were by far the largest project the company had ever undertaken. Charlie studied the model of the dam with its cutaway section, showing the intricate details of the massive turbines inside the huge wall of concrete and steel that would be holding back a body of water the size of Rhode Island. While Charlie sipped his whiskey and gazed enviously at the model of the dam, a germ of an idea began to form. An idea that might salvage his career—and now maybe even save his marriage.

  “Hard to believe we can build something that big, isn’t it, Charlie?” He was startled out of his thoughts by the commanding voice of Lucien Mackey and turned to find the managing general partner of Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey coming toward him around the conference table. “Working late? Saw the light on in your office. Everything all right?” Lucien extended his huge hand, as he always did. He insisted on shaking hands with everyone he came in contact with, holding on for a few seconds while locked in intense eye contact, in a sincere effort to glean some insight into his subject’s state of mind. Charlie was glad to see him. Lucien’s presence in a room was magically uplifting. He was tall, silver-haired, and, even at sixty-eight, had the physique of a linebacker.

  “Lucien, hello. Yes, I’m fine. How was China?”

  “Got back this morning. Oh Charlie, you’ve got to see it; the model doesn’t do it justice. It’s spectacular, and what beautiful people. Charlie, do you realize that the first phase of this project alone is going to bring low-cost dependable electricity to nearly a hundred million people, so they can finally stop choking on coal soot, nitrous oxide, and sulfuric acid.… You know all about it as well as anyone, I guess.” He put a hand
on Charlie’s shoulder. “Come on, Charlie, let’s go have a cigar. Not too many guys around here to have a smoke with anymore. All those kids downstairs want to do is suck on Tic Tacs and drink bottled water.”

  “As a matter of fact, I was just on my way down to your office to steal one of those Cubans,” admitted Charlie.

  “We’ll have a nice cigar together, Charlie, and you can tell me why you’re not on your way home to be with your beautiful wife for the Easter weekend.”

  Charlie always welcomed the opportunity to sit down with Lucien Mackey, and, yes, he certainly had things on his mind, things that were weighing him down, that had changed him and changed his relationship with his wife, and now it was all coming to a boil. Where should he start? How about, Why does life without children in the house feel so pointless? Or, Why does my job get more and more boring and my career feel so unfulfilling as I get wealthier and more successful? And what had become a constant theme in Charlie’s introspections, Why, as everyone I know gets wealthier and wealthier, do so many others continue down the road to poverty, losing hope of ever improving their condition in life?

  Charlie was genuinely troubled over the polarization of the classes in America and where it would lead. The rich were getting richer much quicker than at any other time in history, and the numbers of the poor were growing, with little relief in sight. Life had been good to Charlie, but what family was going hungry because his stock portfolio had nearly doubled in value in a ridiculous three years? He wasn’t an economist, but he knew there was a connection. And he knew that he’d long been part of the winning team, the side that had the corporations and the politicians, the lawmakers and regulators, the lobbyists and the lawyers, bankers, and venture capitalists. He was on the team that made the rules, and he wasn’t sure he belonged anymore.

  No, he wouldn’t burden Lucien with his personal whining, problems with no solutions. But he would tell his boss about Ellen. He needed to talk to someone, and Lucien certainly had some experience with marital discord. When he was fifty-one, after his two children had left home for college and career, Lucien had informed his wife of thirty years that he was gay and moved out of their palatial home in Bergen County and into the apartment in Manhattan where he still resided. For many years now, Lucien’s partner was a slender, light-skinned Jamaican named Carlos Marché, the owner of an extremely successful women’s salon in the elegant first-floor retail shops of the Dietrich Delahunt & Mackey building.

  In Lucien’s office suite, they relaxed on oversize leather chairs and filled the air with billowing clouds of cigar smoke. Lucien rambled for a while about the merits of traveling first-class on international flights, while Charlie searched for the right words to describe the phone call from Marchetti.

  Ellen’s been fucking some hedge-fund guy—no, that’s not fair, that’s not how it would have been with Ellen. Charlie took a long pull on his cigar as he reflected on his marriage. Ellen has had a brief relationship with … who? An old friend she respected, who was there for her when she needed someone after her husband told her suddenly that the life they’d been working so hard for just wasn’t working out for him.…

  Charlie thought about Ellen and how it had become harder and harder to share her interests and ambitions. The last few years, with the kids gone, had been so different from the first twenty years of their marriage. They’d been gradually growing apart, developing new interests and priorities and discarding old ones, and now they were on different paths, leading away from each other. They were still husband and wife, a couple at parties, caring parents of successful children, good neighbors. They talked, though not as often as they used to, and discussed things, though not as intimately or intensely as before. They still had sex but more physical than emotional. They never fought about anything. But, more and more, life seemed to be happening to them separately. Charlie envied Ellen. She was so certain of what she wanted, so at ease with her enjoyment of life.

  Charlie knew that he had changed over the last few years. The more successful he’d become, the less certain he was about what he wanted in life. Since becoming a partner, his job had changed. Working as the OntAmex account supervisor was much more about money, influence, and connections than it was about building things. He hadn’t become an engineer to sit in meetings with lawyers and accountants.

  And he knew he missed his children—his young children, not the successful, confident young adults he now spoke with on the phone or saw on holidays and the occasional ski weekend at the house in Vermont. He missed everything about the early years of parenting—their first house, in Windsor, Connecticut, a little five-room ranch, with the huge backyard, and the flowering crab tree, and the little hill they would all roll down in the kids’ overloaded wagon, crashing in the grass at the bottom. He missed the stories—the Roald Dahl years—the vacations, the wide-eyed wonderment of so many Christmases and birthdays, and the celebration of so many excellent report cards.

  He still had vivid memories of the kids’ sports and the many teams Scott and Jennifer had played on, the T-ball, softball, baseball, and soccer games that he and Ellen had dragged their folding chairs to, and the basketball games at the rec center in the winter—pretending, along with the other adults, that they didn’t really care who won.

  “Charlie, you still with us?” Lucien’s voice got Charlie’s attention. “What’s up?”

  Charlie looked over at his friend and blew out a cloud of smoke. No, Ellen’s private life was her own. She didn’t deserve to have it discussed by two men smoking Cuban cigars, like they were debating whether the Yankees had enough starting pitching. And it wasn’t Lucien’s problem. Charlie would use his time with Lucien for another purpose.

  “Lucien, I’ve been thinking about going outside, about building something. Being an engineer again.”

  Lucien Mackey leaned back in his chair and smiled. “Happens to all of us, Charlie. But you’re pretty damn important to the company right where you are. OntAmex is a huge account, and you’re the one who makes it happen.”

  “OntAmex isn’t going anywhere, Lucien. It doesn’t need me anymore.”

  Lucien raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It’s your bonus, Charlie. We’ll give it some thought. Maybe we can find a good project for you.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Natty used the downhill run to South County Road as her warm-up, jogging easily until she turned east toward Old Red Bone. Then she picked up the pace. Her first two miles were always her fastest, then slower for the steep climb up to Main Street and around the long tail of the mountain that would bring her back down to the top of Oakes Hollow. Today she planned to take a detour, which would add about a mile to her regular five-mile circuit.

  Natty Oakes loved to run, and she loved to run fast and hard. When she got her wind and her rhythm just right, she felt as if she could run forever. After a while she’d enter a runner’s trance, conscious of every muscle and joint, feeling the inside of her rib cage as her lungs expanded and contracted, the blood and oxygen coursing through her body. The trance would clear her mind and allow her to enter a fantasy world far away from West Virginia.

  Today, Natty couldn’t daydream. She didn’t want to miss the turnoff on the north side of the road halfway to Red Bone. She was surprised to see a pickup coming toward her. It was unusual to find anyone out this early. The truck slowed down and made a right-hand turn onto the road Natty was looking for.

  She followed it down the narrow road, which, like most of the local roads in McDowell County, was cracked and rutted from years of use by overloaded coal trucks. There was no sign of the pickup, but it could only be going to one place, which made Natty uneasy. This was the road to the new electric-generating plant being built by OntAmex Energy. It was the biggest construction project in McDowell County’s history.

  Two years earlier, Natty, Buck, the kids, and the rest of the Oakes clan, along with several hundred other residents of Red Bone and surrounding towns, came down this road one Saturday in late June for a p
ublic picnic and a rare visit by the governor. A joint announcement was to be made with officials of the OntAmex Energy Company regarding a project that would have a monumental impact on the future of McDowell County. It was a show that the people of Red Bone would long remember and a day that Natty Oakes would never forget.

  The picnic took place at the site of the new plant, a two-hundred-acre plateau hidden from view by a ring of heavily wooded hills. The site had been a surface mine, leveled down to the bedrock in the early seventies. The celebration was scheduled to start at noon, and it was obvious that an army of people had been working since early morning to get the site ready. Two large trucks were parked off to the side of the field, behind a stack of cargo boxes from a Charleston catering company. A huge three-masted circus tent had been set up to shelter several long buffet tables filled with food of an endless variety.

  Behind the tent was a battery of aluminum-framed charcoal stoves, manned by several dozen white-clad cooks. Half chickens and pork chops, along with hamburgers, hot dogs, and sausages, covered the smoking grills. At each end of the tent was a complete bar and a large cooler filled with ice and bottles of several types of Molson beer. It was a mystery why only Molson was on hand, but it was ice-cold and there was plenty of it, so no one complained. Uniformed bartenders mixed and poured, while some obviously imported waitresses circulated to take drink orders. It only took a little while for the Oakes brothers and the rest of the crowd to get comfortable with the idea that the drinks were actually free.

  The show really got started when a man from a public relations firm in Charleston mounted a stage at one end of the field and started talking over a huge loudspeaker system. He welcomed everyone and made a little speech about what a great day it was for McDowell County and how some very important people would soon be dropping by. He was still talking when he was drowned out by a deafening roar coming straight toward them through the woods. The ungodly noise sent the adults out of the tent and the children jumping around in circles, wide-eyed with both fright and glee. The PR man yelled something over the microphone and pointed up in the air. Suddenly four helicopters appeared just over the treetops. One after the other they flew over the tent and banked into a sharp left turn before landing, one by one, in a roped-off area at one side of the clearing.