Last Resort

by Alison Lurie

  In his second version the Copper Beech was destroyed by hostile human forces: air pollution, acid rain, and a damaged root system due to the digging of trenches for pipes across the campus, a nuisance that was constantly occurring at Convers College. Wilkie had also considered having the Copper Beech chopped down to make room for some hideous new building or parking structure; but this was not only painful to contemplate but most unlikely, considering the symbolic status of the real tree on the Convers campus.

  The third possibility was for the Copper Beech to be the victim of natural disaster. Wilkie had contemplated and rejected having his vegetable hero struck by lightning: according to some authorities, beeches actually attract lightning far less often than other trees. He had also ruled out the idea of a tornado—unlikely in northern New England. Instead, the great tree would fall dramatically (perhaps melodramatically?) in a great hurricane.

  Wilkie had been aware almost from the beginning that in a sense this book was his own story: the king of the forest fallen. The real Copper Beech, after all, was the most notable tree at Convers College, and was often (like Wilkie Walker) pictured in its catalogue and alumni magazine. He recoiled from the prospect of its ugly, slow, and undignified death as he did from his own. If he were to carry out the symbolic parallel, a sudden tragic accident would be most appropriate. On the other hand, this meant giving up the chance of making a final telling attack on ecological stupidity and vandalism.

  The other thing that still held Wilkie back was that there was nobody in Key West for his wife to turn to afterward in her grief and confusion. Molly Hopkins and her friends were all too old and shaky to be depended on for practical help, and when Wilkie was gone there ought to be someone both competent and kind for Jenny to lean on. Often he had been on the verge of asking Molly if she knew of anyone like that in town, but he hadn’t been able to invent a plausible reason for the inquiry. And probably Molly wouldn’t know anyone anyhow. Her circle of acquaintances resembled a retirement home: everyone in it that he’d met so far was old, and many of them were visibly sick and dying. Others, no doubt, were invisibly sick and dying, like him.

  Wilkie had had a horror of retirement homes; he had sworn to himself that he would never enter one. But in coming to Key West, he now realized, he had done exactly that. For younger people the island might be a holiday destination, or offer seasonal employment. For the old it was nothing more than a tropical version of Skytop, the awful upmarket “elder community” that had recently appeared on a hill near Convers. Its name alone disgusted him. No doubt it had been chosen to subliminally suggest that all its residents would go to heaven—most unlikely, in Wilkie’s opinion, when he considered some of those whom he knew.

  A similar calculated cynicism appeared to underlie the financial arrangements of Skytop, disguised in mealy-mouthed good-think language. When you entered the “community” you purchased an apartment or town house for an exorbitant price, almost twice what it would cost on the open market. Then you paid a monthly maintenance fee which was double the standard rent for a similar dwelling unit anywhere else. After you became unable to “live independently,” you moved into a hospital wing that was part of the complex, and your apartment or house was resold. You and your heirs received nothing.

  Essentially, therefore, the proprietors of Skytop were gambling that you would become disabled or die quite soon; the longer you lived and occupied your apartment—or a room in the hospital wing—the less profit for them. Not a safe proposition for residents, one would think. Wilkie Walker did not envisage a concealed staff policy of euthanasia, but wouldn’t there be, sometimes at least, an unconscious bias in that direction?

  Several retired professors of Wilkie’s acquaintance had moved into Skytop, and when visiting them he had been appalled by their blind complacence as well as their increasing self-centeredness. It was clear to him that though Skytop resembled an upmarket motel, it had deeper parallels to an expensive internment camp. If you lived there, you couldn’t help but be aware that every so often one of the inmates would be taken away to die slowly in what was euphemistically called a “nursing facility.” You wouldn’t know when your turn was coming, but the longer you stayed, the more likely it would become that you would be chosen. And of course eventually everyone would be chosen.

  If you didn’t die at once, you would be brought back to your luxurious cell terrified and exhausted and damaged, and everyone would be formally nice to you, the way people were nice to Molly’s friend Kenneth Foster after he got out of the hospital last week. But the men and women in white coats would come for you again, and again. Finally you would not return.

  A little later there would be a tasteful memorial service, with flowers and music and speeches and a printed program. After that, to judge from Wilkie’s visits to Skytop, you would be forgotten quite soon. In a few months nobody would even mention you; new prisoners would have arrived to fill the luxurious cells.

  Anything but that, he thought; anything. His accidental drowning would be hard for Jenny and the children, but the shock and pain would pass, and they would remember him always as strong, vigorous, productive, and competent—not as a weak, whiny, damaged invalid. And for this memory to be intact, he must swim out to sea for the last time soon. He would have no trouble doing this: his hip hardly bothered him at all here, no doubt due to the warm weather. But more and more often the sudden sharp pains in his lower bowel came at night, and twice since they’d been in Key West he had seen splashes of fresh blood on the flowered “bathroom tissue”—a horrifying watery red.

  He must not swim too far out, since it would be best that his body should be found, to end all speculation that he had vanished on purpose or been murdered. And, irrational as that might be, he did not want to lie on the ocean floor, nibbled disgustingly by fishes. He wanted to be buried in the plot he had bought in the Convers graveyard, under a granite stone and a towering fir, not far from the grave of his old friend Howard Hopkins.

  Possibly, before this, there would be an autopsy. If so, the coroner might find the cancer Wilkie knew was there; but of course no one would realize that he had been aware of it. The most that might happen would be that someone—the Episcopal minister in Convers, for instance, at the memorial service—might speak of God’s providence in sparing Professor Walker a drawn-out, painful death.

  It must be soon. Already, Wilkie realized bitterly, he had ceased to be reliably competent in one important area; soon, no doubt, he would lose his sexual drive completely. In his mind he heard a voice that had been silent in the world for nearly sixty years: the voice of his Scottish immigrant grandfather, Matthew Wilkie, after whom he had been named. The words were ones he had heard many times in his childhood, whenever—always reluctantly—he had to leave his grandparents’ farm and take the bus back to the city. But now they had a darker reverberation. “Willie-Boy,” his grandfather’s voice said, “it’s time to go.”

  If no appropriate friend turned up by the end of January, he decided, Jenny would just have to depend on the children. Neither of them was ideal for this role, but together they might approximate the ideal: Ellen would be competent, and Billy would be sympathetic and kind.

  And of course back in Convers there would be many friends to step in and support Jenny. They would help her to go on with what was left of her life, and gradually to take on the many responsibilities and duties she would have as Wilkie Walker’s widow and literary executor. With the help of his lawyer and literary agent, she would manage. She had an orderly mind: she knew where everything was filed and which articles he would want reprinted. She would say the right things to the right newspapers and fend off predatory journalists. She would refuse all access to that illiterate, bossy woman from Indiana who wanted to write his “inspiring life’s story”; she would work closely and efficiently with the professor in Maine whom Wilkie had already chosen as his official biographer. She would know instinctively which papers this young man should see and which should be held back.

/>   About Jenny’s grasp of their personal finances he was less certain. Some years ago, when he first began to plan for retirement, Wilkie had tried to speak to her about their future. Since she was a woman, and twenty-four years younger than he, he had explained, the statistical odds were that he would predecease her by thirty-one years. Jenny didn’t want to hear about it. “Don’t talk like that! You’re going to live forever,” she had insisted, her voice becoming shaky. When he said that they had to discuss these things sometime, she’d cried, “Oh, but not now!” and made an excuse to leave the room.

  Practically speaking, he ought to raise the subject again, to talk with Jenny about investments and annuities. But that was unsafe now, since it would suggest that he had foreseen—or worse, planned—his death.

  The county beach would be best, Wilkie thought. He would leave from there on February 1. This would give him time to decide about his last chapter and prepare a final draft. There was no reason to hang around after that. There was nothing for him to do here in Key West, nothing for him any more in this world.

  4

  ON THE TREE-SHADED deck of Molly Hopkins’s Key West house, the American poet Gerald Grass, who was once a favorite student of her husband, Howard, sat drinking iced coffee. When Molly first met Gerry forty years ago he was a handsome, good-natured, sincere, likable young man who, many thought, resembled the English poet Stephen Spender. Possibly under the influence of this resemblance, Gerry had also become a poet. Now, though perhaps (as Howard would have put it) not quite on the first team, he had published widely, taught at many colleges and universities, and received his share of awards and grants. Though his blond curls were graying, he was still handsome, good-natured, sincere, and likable.

  Like Jenny and Wilkie Walker, Gerry had sought Molly’s advice about housing, and as a result he and his current girlfriend were now occupying the apartment over the garage of Alvin’s house.

  “The place is great,” he said in reply to her question, helping himself to another cucumber sandwich, of which he had already had more than his fair share. “I really have to thank you. I’d just about given up on Key West rentals after that last time. You remember: there were no towels, no soap, no toilet paper, no lightbulbs, nothing to eat or drink. All the landlord left us was fleas. Turned out they had three cats and two dogs.” Gerry laughed.

  “Yes, I remember. Howard drove over with a care package for you that first night.”

  “He was so great about it. God, I miss him.”

  “Yes,” Molly said a little tightly. She liked Gerry very much, but didn’t want to break down in front of him.

  “You know, I haven’t run into you in New York lately,” Gerry remarked. “Do you ever go there now?”

  “No, I haven’t been in years,” said Molly, who had once loved the city but now hated it. For her it was a city of death. Not only had Howard died there, but most of the people she had known in New York were also gone. Other editors and art directors were running the magazines that had published her drawings; if she went into the offices where she had once gossiped and laughed and drunk too much coffee and opened her portfolio, strangers would be sitting at the desks. Strangers would be living in all her friends’ apartments, and if she knocked on their doors they would not welcome her. The last time Molly went to the city she felt as if she had got into a parallel universe in which she did not exist and perhaps had never existed.

  “I don’t like it much now,” Gerry said. “The place has become totally commercial. I’m glad we came here instead. And it was great to see the Walkers again. He’s a wonderful man, you know? And she’s a remarkable woman.” He helped himself to another chocolate meringue. “A real wife. I thought they didn’t make them anymore. Classically beautiful, well educated, intelligent, fantastic gourmet cook. And besides that, she keeps their accounts, drives the car, answers Wilkie’s letters, and does all his research. And whatever he believes, she just naturally goes along. For instance, I just found out she’s never had a fur coat, to protest animal rights.”

  “Really?” Molly, who still owned two—an ancient but beautiful Brazilian otter and a rather frivolous but amusing ocelot, both now in storage—thought back. It was true, she had never seen Jenny in fur.

  “And I would bet she’s totally faithful.” He paused, looking at Molly.

  “Yes, I should suppose so,” she agreed.

  “God, if I had a wife like her I could do anything.”

  “Unfortunately, she’s taken,” Molly said, adding ice to her glass and voice. She remembered something that Howard once said about Gerry, that the only reason he’d never made it into the first rank of American poets was that he was a copycat. If someone he admired began writing sestinas or waterskiing or keeping a travel journal of a trip to Scandinavia, Gerry wanted to do it too.

  “You know, I need someone like that,” Gerry confided. “The way it is now, my life is clogged up with errands. Sending out manuscripts, scheduling readings, phoning for plane reservations, packing and unpacking, balancing the checkbook, paying the mortgage, getting the computer fixed and the grass cut, going to the supermarket and the drugstore and the cleaners. It weighs you down.”

  “Couldn’t your girlfriend do some of those things?” Molly inquired.

  “Tiffany?” Gerry grinned. “Tiffany is worse than useless. Yesterday I was working on a new long poem, it was really going well, so I asked her to drive over to Fausto’s for milk and tea. She came back with condensed milk and powdered iced tea mix.” He laughed. “And then she said I should have gone myself if I was so goddamned fussy.”

  “I thought she was rather nice,” Molly said. “Very cute, too.”

  “Cute.” Gerry laughed again, less happily. “I’ve just about had it with cute.”

  In the sunny, cluttered kitchen of Artemis Lodge, with its long scrubbed-pine table, comfortably sagging wicker sofa, bright feminist wall posters, and hotel-size blender, Lee Weiss was unpacking groceries from the Waterfront Market. She wore a brilliant fuchsia mumu appliquèed with large purple flowers, and was humming a country-western song: “Please Help Me, I’m Falling.”

  There were five double rooms and a single in Artemis Lodge, four with private bath. From mid-December to mid-April they rented for from $100 to $150 a night, or $500 to $700 a week, continental breakfast included. During these months the guest house was almost always full. Even with taxes, insurance, laundry, cleaning, gardener, repairs, and a part-time desk clerk, Lee would have done well financially with only two-thirds occupancy. The only problem was that she kept reducing or even waiving the rent for friends or acquaintances, and sometimes for women she’d never met whom friends and acquaintances claimed were ill or in crisis and needed to be in a warm, relaxed place like Key West.

  As she stripped the cellophane from three bunches of red and orange carnations, Lee heard the slam of the screen door and then rapid footsteps. It wasn’t the tentative approach of a customer, or the guest she expected for lunch in half an hour, but someone familiar with the house, and in a hurry, almost bounding down the hall toward her: Perry Jackson.

  “Well, hi there,” she said—surprised, since it wasn’t his regular gardening day.

  “Lee, darling, I had to come over, I’ve got the craziest news.” Jacko leaned against the kitchen door frame in faded cutoff jeans and a dark-green T-shirt, assuming a pose that might have been photographed for a fashion page. He was also fashionably thin: thinner than a month ago, before he had what he described as “a dumb nothing cold”—a cold that had caused much anxiety among his friends. “You won’t believe it.”

  “Okay, I won’t.” She grinned and slammed the freezer on a quart of coconut ice cream. “Tell me anyhow.”

  “Alvin’s left me his house.”

  “Shit, really?”

  “Really. I just had a call from his lawyer in Chicago.”

  “Hey, that’s fantastic!” Lee laughed with pleasure. “You want something to drink? A beer?”

  “Beer would be gre
at.”

  “You mean the whole place?” She popped open a can, which foamed up excitedly as if in sympathy. “Or just your cottage?”

  “Everything. It was in his will, the lawyer read me part of it. ‘To Perry Jackson, the only man who ever really loved me for myself, I leave my property at 909 Hibiscus Street, Key West, Florida, and all the buildings and contents thereon.’”

  “Wow.” Lee opened a beer for herself. “You know though, that’s kind of sad. What he said.”

  “Yeah. I figure that’s how it is a lot of the time for rich people. They can’t believe anybody really likes them, specially if they’ve got nothing much else going for them.” Jacko ran one hand through his perfect dark curls.

  “I guess so,” Lee agreed, thinking that in Alvin’s case this view might have been correct. “Anyhow, it’s great.” She put a carton of milk and two of half and half into the fridge.

  “Yeah, but the truth is,” Jacko said after a moment, looking down and rotating his beer can.

  “What?”

  “The truth is, it makes me feel kind of crappy. I never loved Alvin, not the way he meant. I was impressed by him at first: I knew I was a lightweight, and he was so heavy in the world. So sure of himself, so much in control. If he wanted to go to Bermuda or somewhere, and there wasn’t a convenient flight, he’d charter a plane. I was blown over by how cool he was about things like that. And about being gay. And of course by all the sophisticated people he knew, the places he’d been. But even when we were first together he was hard to get on with sometimes, y’know what I mean?”

  “Yeah, I know,” she agreed, suppressing the impulse to say more, to use words like “self-centered,” and “crabby.”