by Robyn Carr
Roberta was steadfast at his side; I had her figured for a woman who found showing emotion difficult. It occurred to me that before long I would be standing beside her when Harry took his final rest. That combination, watching Wharton go, seeing Harry’s tears, was all that was needed to take me apart at the seams.
I must tell about the aftermath, which was enlightening and endearing for me. It is true that hardship can bring people together; in the sadness of Wharton’s death, many of us were bonded.
Had I listened only to Tom Wahl, who spoke of Wharton with scorn, I would have known only an angry, resentful, and tired old man. This was not who we buried. Wharton’s three grown sons and one daughter came home to his ranch for the final goodbye. They were a proud and formidable group. They held a buffet at their father’s ranch, which, filled with their unity and their children, became a thriving and beautiful home. Two members of Wharton’s household surprised me: Pat and Sunny were Wharton’s dogs. Now they would be placed in new homes; I couldn’t imagine why Tom had been deceitful about that.
Brevis Wilhelm Wharton was his given name. He was seventy when he died. His eldest son, Wilhelm or Will, was a forty-eight year old dentist with four grown children of his own. Wharton’s second-eldest, Mitch, was a divorced architect with adult and nearly adult children and an ex-wife with whom he was friendly; she, too, was there to see Wharton off. June, the third child, a homemaker married to an executive, was there with teenagers in tow, and Mark, the baby of the family at around forty years old, was a commercial pilot, married, with three children. Some of Wharton’s grandchildren had children. It was a noisy, close, happy family, even on this grievous occasion.
The house in which Wharton had lived alone was large, with every room standing ready for family. According to the stories I heard and the plentiful photos, the children and their children and their grandchildren gathered every summer and some winters. Wharton had not been a lonely old man, but a man with a full life, a good family, and much to be thankful for. It happened, at that time in his life, that he lived alone most of the time.
Wharton’s ranch was warm with homey touches, decorated with quality — albeit not chic — items. There were quilts, prints, ceramics, and linens that had been lovingly purchased or created by his late wife. It was not the house of a man who had no interest in such things, nor of a man who had let things deteriorate following the death of his wife.
He had had his good friends and chums, his land, his work, and his way of life. He hadn’t been the kind of man who would ever have asked me out for coffee or cake, but he was not as solitary as he had seemed.
The eulogy, given by his kids, painted a picture of a tough and compassionate father, a quiet, sensitive man of great strength. They told stories of his aid given to others, his softness toward the land and wildlife, his generosity, and his loyalty. It had never occurred to me to ask about Wharton’s family, yet the family that gathered for the funeral was well known to all the folk who attended. If Wharton’s offspring and friendships were any testament to the success of his life, he had succeeded as much as a man can.
The Wharton heirs told their Coleman friends that they had been left the acreage that Wharton ranched.
They offered to divide the livestock and plants among Wharton’s friends. The land would be sold after at least a year of considering how to sell it. They exercised uncanny wisdom in asking Wharton’s friends to think about this and write to them with their ideas so that no one would be offended, slighted, or in any way inconvenienced by the transaction.
We laid to rest a man I knew and respected more after his death than I did in his life. I was sorry for that. I was grateful to have known this Wharton at all.
People who have been close for decades seem to have few long-lasting resentments or unresolved conflicts. Wharton had few legitimate enemies; none was apparent at his funeral. His friends carried on admirably. The cafe was unnaturally quiet those first mornings, but it picked up the usual steam before many days passed. From these people I came to love, I learned one of the most profound lessons of my life. They did not have time for self-pity or duplicity. These were not done. Not used. That seemed to be why their lives worked so well. Perhaps, despite what he’d told me, Harry had been let down, stolen from, lied to — but because he lived as he lived, he wouldn’t have taken notice. Maybe every one of Harry’s days hadn’t begun with a perfect sunrise or ended with a good feeling at sunset, but because of the way he lived, he did not feel the impact of an imperfect day.
At Thanksgiving I stayed in Coleman and ate turkey at the Scully household with family, friends, and neighbors in attendance. The Scullys’ was one of a dozen invitations I received and I accepted because it was first. I was invited by many of my neighbors, none of whom could stand to see me alone. I was invited by Nicole, by Roberta, and by two clients, and I was invited to L.A. I had a loud, fun, fattening day with the Scullys.
The snow hit, the ski season began, and although we weren’t a ski town with a resort or lift, we still had skiing traffic and plenty of winter visitors. The nearest good downhill area was thirty miles away and made for an excellent day trip, and right in Coleman there was terrific cross-country skiing. I did ski, took some beginner lessons, had plenty of company from L.A. all through the season. I had Mike, Chelsea, and the girls for a busy, lovely five-day stint over Christmas school vacation.
I took a big risk on Christmas. I was afraid of what I was about to do, but forged ahead with hope: I stayed in Coleman and I stayed alone. Since losing Sheffie I had feared Christmas mornings and insulated myself by filling the day with friends. I didn’t put up a tree for the first two Christmases.
It had been two and a half years and I was in a new place, becoming a new person. My friends were having Christmas parties, Christmas open houses, and there was an atmosphere of hospitality, celebration, giving. I put up not only a tree, but plentiful decorations. I damn near broke my neck stringing lights along the drainpipe on the front of my house; thankfully, Matt Dania came to my rescue.
I knew it would be my last Christmas with Harry; he was still good with the jokes, but his health was in rapid decline. His skin had a grayish pallor that was giving way to yellow, and I suspected liver involvement. He’d lost weight and his eyes were beginning to look dull. He had always had a bit of a stoop; now he stood bent. Illness was becoming a burden for him; he must have been having pain. He was seen in the cafe and at Wolf’s less and less. I admired his courage, for his sense of humor was intact; he had spark and mischief.
I shopped for a gift for him that would knock his socks off without appearing like the gift you’d give to a dying man. I finally found an Austen sculpture of a cowboy bent over a lamb, and when I brought it to him, his eyes filled with tears. Which only served to make me cry.
I held my breath through the entire season, in wait for the demons grief and memory, but they had not been invited. I went to seven parties around town; I went to four open houses. On the Sunday after Christmas I staged my own—a leftover party. I invited twenty couples to bring their leftover turkey, pie, soups, breads, and cookies — risk food poisoning and get rid of the fattening junk before the new-year diets began. I sent out my printed invitations, built a fire in the fireplace, lit candles, and played music, and my first real party was a success.
It was the best Christmas I had ever had. I felt almost disloyal to Sheffie as I thought that. I was given gifts by many—not big fancy gifts; clever, thoughtful ones from people who didn’t feel obligated. I was given tapes to listen to, books to read, wine to drink, a robe to wear around the house, a wreath for the season, homemade treats to eat, and accessories for my house. Someone made me a set of place mats and matching napkins at her own sewing machine. Another friend baked me a generous basket of cinnamon rolls. The mysterious Krumps whom Mike had known came to my leftover party and brought me a stuffed bear in a Santa suit. Better still, Brad told stories of my ex-husband’s early years at LAPD. After laughing over Mike and his anti
cs, I felt that everyone in my home both understood and accepted our strange postmarital friendship.
I noticed that Bodge and Brad spoke quietly a couple of times, and at that moment I began to believe Mike was correct: Brad was here undercover, possibly for reasons connected to the murders. He did not speak of work, past or present, with the exception of saying that he had been in law enforcement when he was a young man and found that one burns out quickly on chasing crime.
In the first three months of the year, I came to realize why Roberta would want an experienced family-law attorney. The work in small communities like this is primarily seasonal, and the economic dislocation of such income takes its toll in winter.
We filed for more separation agreements, restraining orders, divorces, and property settlements in January, February, and March than in the other nine months combined. Men out of work from November to spring; loggers laid off, construction and road-work gangs out of work, many family men on subsistence, created domestic problems in higher numbers than I’d seen before.
It’s too simple to say the men collected unemployment, sat around the house, drank beer, and began to beat their wives come January, but that seems to be what happened. Or the wives gang up on them. Either way, we kept Bodge and his boys busy with domestic battles and papers to serve.
At this time my practice of post-office and grocery-store law escalated to such proportions I didn’t want to be seen in public. I’d be pinching tomatoes and hear, “Jackie, you know what that bastard’s gone and done now?” Roberta, even with her personal problems, took this in stride better than I. I stopped going to the beauty shop altogether. And when the snow began to thaw, the craziness seemed to ebb. Men began to work again, slowly. The knowledge that some of them were going back to work seemed to give the rest of them stamina and patience.
It was as though Harry hung on through the worst legal period of the year: We lost him in March. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that he went away. There was little fanfare in his passing. His condition had deteriorated and it was becoming obvious that his pain had intensified, though he didn’t complain. No one complained much in Coleman.
The first week in March, Roberta came to the office, went through all her work, passed me a bit of it, and cleaned her desk. In her brisk and official way she said, “Harry’s not doing well. I’m going to stay home with him for a couple of weeks. I don’t believe there’s much time left. Anything you can’t handle, pass on to Matthew St. Croix or Rick Padilla,” she said, naming two other attorneys in town.
“What can I do, Roberta?” I asked.
,“Well, Harry really likes those cookies with the candies in them that you made over Christmas,” she said. “Bake him up a batch if you feel like it.”
Uncomfortable as I was with a situation like this, I dashed home, baked the cookies, and drove out to the Musettas’ first thing the next morning with a huge box. I had another lesson about how people like this cope; it appeared that despite the emotion, Harry’s death was accepted as a part of the human condition. His passing seemed a slow, easy, uncomplicated slide.
I gave him his supply of cookies and asked him how he was feeling. His pallor was dreadful, his body had grown thin; he was lying back in a deep chair with his long legs propped on a hassock and an afghan thrown over him. He had glasses half full of juice, water, and pop on the little table by his chair and held the remote control to the TV on his lap. He flipped it off when I arrived and told me he felt punk.
“Well, honey, I feel punk, but that’s to be expected. These will sure taste good, though. Tell the truth, Berta likes ‘em as much as me.”
“How’s your appetite?” I asked him.
“Ain’t bad. Ain’t bad. Jackie, you’re a young gal. Don’t be worrying about me too much. It wouldn’t do. Anyhow, just what they got on TV in the daytime is enough to make the hereafter look good.” I chuckled in spite of myself. “Berta always said she went to law school because there wasn’t anything else to do... I imagine she meant there wasn’t anything good on TV.”
I didn’t stay long; it seemed that Harry had a hard time with small talk and he looked so uncomfortable that I got ready to leave soon after I’d arrived. I bent over and kissed the top of his head and said, “Goodbye, Harry.”
He said, “I’ll see you later, honey.”
That stopped me for a moment. I knew he had meant to say that, and we both knew he wasn’t going to be around for long. I got some tears in my eyes and said, “Harry, did Roberta ever tell you that I had a child once? That he died?”
“Yeah, I sure was sorry to hear that. You’re a strong gal. That’s a tough one, losing a child.”
“Harry? Look in on him, will you?”
“You bet, honey. And I’ll tell him he’d be right proud of you.”
Despite the fact that I cried all the way back to the office, I felt a kind of glow growing within me. As I sobbed, I fantasized that Wharton and Sheffie and Harry would go fishing in heaven, as preposterous as that sounds, as far from my own spiritual beliefs as that is. I couldn’t help thinking, though, how safe and secure Sheffie would be with them.
Dr. Haynes wrote “heart failure” on Harry’s death certificate. If anyone wondered about the pills he’d collected or whether there’d been any conspiracy between Harry and Roberta, no one asked or speculated. We sent Harry off in much the same way we marked Wharton’s passing. There were tears, remembrances, embraces, and laughter.
“This town sure has changed,” Bodge said, wiping his eyes.
That I know of, no one heard a word from Tom Wahl all winter.
15
The winter had been hard. Roberta took two weeks off following Harry’s death. His passing had softened her; she was more sentimental. I remember hugging her and telling her she was tough and unbreakable; she told me we shared that. Our bond was now deeper; we had each buried loved ones and were left behind, alone. She could speak candidly about how quiet the house had become, about missing “that old fart,” about not knowing what to do with the lambs and wishing at least Wharton was still around, because he was best with animals. But she soldiered on — which is what my new friends were so good at doing.
Over the winter I had opened up about Sheffie and my loss. The story came out while picking apples with Sue Scully, while drinking a beer with the Danias, when signing a petition for a traffic light near the grade school that one of my clients brought to my office. I found that my life with Sheffie and even my grief for him was not something I wanted to hold quietly inside me. I wanted to share all of that with the valley people who were letting me know they cared about me.
The early signs of spring teased Coleman. There were a few sprouts and buds, then another snowfall. Even with fresh snow on the ground, we could feel the rush of warmth heading in our direction. In the spirit of spring cleaning, of renewal, I decided to hang wallpaper and replace old curtains with blinds. The best place to order this stuff was from a little store called Finishing Touches owned and operated by a woman named Beth Winters.
I hadn’t done much on my house through the winter. Besides buying and hanging a couple of prints, setting up twin beds in the spare room for company, and adding accessories to the bathrooms and the kitchen, I hadn’t taken on any major renovation projects. I wanted to extend and enclose that back porch. A sim room to enjoy through summer would be uplifting, yet I stalled, putting off any plans. I didn’t want another carpenter in my house. I made do with superficial improvements.
I went through books, samples, and fabrics. I was down to a few choices and having trouble with a final decision. I had a picture from a magazine that I had coupled with my fabric and color samples for my bedroom.
“Beth,” I asked, “are you a decorator?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I’m having trouble making up my mind here. Any input?”
“Would you like me to come out to the house, take a look at the room, the light, what you already have in it, and give you an opinion?”
Beth and her husband and children had come to Coleman a few years earlier; Bob Winters was an area manager for a savings and loan that had branches in several Colorado towns and cities. Traveling from town to town made for long days for Bob, and Beth’s small business kept her from boredom and loneliness.
After she looked around my house, gave me her suggestions, and I made my selections, we had a cup of coffee together and talked about the town, her kids and the schools, her husband’s job, my job, and various other ordinary stuff. It was when I went into her shop the next morning to give her a deposit on the orders and pick up my receipt that something occurred to me.
“Hey, I wonder if you ever knew that other decorator who left a couple of years ago. What was her name? Eileen something?”
Beth’s face immediately seemed to close up and she covered a look of irritation. “Elaine Broussard,” she corrected. “She was my partner.”
“Oh,” I said, stopped by her hardened expression. There was obviously ill will between them. “Where was it she went?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” she replied sourly. “It turned out that she left no forwarding address.”
I gathered that I wasn’t invited to ask anything more. And I didn’t, at that time. I’m cursed with a relentless curiosity, however. When the first of my orders came in, Beth offered to drop the blinds off at my house on her way home after she closed up her shop. The grim look on her face was gone since the ex-partner s name hadn’t come up again. She offered to have the blinds installed for me, but I was capable of doing this much. I invited her in for a glass of wine. I had no premeditated strategy to get information out of her, but once we’d drunk the first half-glass, a question slipped past my lips.