Last Resort

by Alison Lurie

  “Well,” Wilkie sighed again. “If you feel you must.”

  “Yes; I do,” she said.

  As she sat in the auditorium on Stock Island, recalling this exchange, a peculiar feeling came over Jenny. It was as if for most of her adult life she had been leaning against a heavy stone wall that both imprisoned and supported her. Suddenly, almost by accident, she had given the wall a shove, and the stones had crumbled and fallen, leaving a gaping hole. Had the wall been that weak all along? Or was it only recently that it had become vulnerable—only since Wilkie had come back from the hospital as a different, weaker person?

  Maybe it was true what Lee had said, when Jenny told her how strange she felt, how frightened even, by the way Wilkie had stopped being in charge and knowing what was right. “I worry,” Jenny had said. “I mean, suppose he gets sick again, and can’t make up his mind about anything, or starts forgetting things, what will I do?”

  “You’ll take care of him,” Lee had said. “It’s what you’ve been doing all along anyhow, isn’t it?”

  After a final word from the moderator, the four hundred members of the audience burst into applause; some even rose to their feet, still clapping. Then, rather slowly, for many of them were past retirement age, they began to make their way to the exits.

  One of the first to emerge into the wide sunny lobby was Barbie Mumpson, in new pink denim jeans and a T-shirt bearing the idealized image of a smiling manatee. Dodging other members of the audience, she made a rush for a table piled with identical T-shirts and related pro-manatee and pro-dolphin propaganda and merchandise.

  “Everything okay, Liz?” she said to a woman at the adjoining display of books.

  “Sure. Here’s your cash box.”

  “Hey, thanks. It was great of you to watch my stuff. I would’ve just died if I couldn’t hear this session.”

  “How’d it go?”

  “Oh, they were wonderful.” Barbie gave a gasp of enthusiasm that caused the manatee on her T-shirt to rise and fall as if slowly swimming across her breasts. “Specially Professor Walker.”

  The lobby was filling fast; customers began to approach Barbie’s table, inquiring about sizes and prices. Meanwhile the speakers were taking their places at another table, preparing to sign copies of books purchased from Liz. Lines were already forming, the longest one in front of Wilkie Walker.

  Among the crowd pressing toward the exit, Molly Hopkins stood out by reason of her lean height and a new white straw hat trimmed with white silk gardenias. Limping slightly, she moved toward the doors, greeting and being greeted by friends and acquaintances. One of them was Barbie’s aunt Dorrie, to whom Molly offered a ride back to Key West.

  “No, thank you.” Dorrie smiled. “Perry’s picking me up.” Blinking as they emerged into the midday sun, she put on her own new hat. It was green like the old one, but stiff instead of floppy, having been constructed from strips of palm leaf by a sidewalk merchant. “But maybe Barbie would like a lift.”

  “No; she and the other manatee people will be here all day,” Molly said. “I believe they’re bringing in sandwiches.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “And are you still enjoying Key West?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s such a beautiful place. And I feel so good here, so full of energy, I hardly ever need a nap even. I’m so happy I can’t believe it, really. Happier than I ever thought I’d be again in this world, thank God.” Dorrie gazed gratefully up into the pale, hot sky.

  “I’ve found this wonderful church,” she continued. “They’re so understanding and accepting, not like back home. You know what the minister there said Sunday? He said that sometimes God doesn’t seem to take very good care of boys like Perry in this world, but he’s always watching over them, and when it’s time he welcomes them into heaven. Wasn’t that nice?”

  “Very nice,” Molly agreed, adding silently, If you believe it. “And are you planning to stay for a while?”

  “Oh yes,” Dorrie said. “As long as Perry needs me. Though we’re thinking of going to Europe in May or June; I’ve never been, you know. We might sign up for this tour of English gardens Perry read about; it sounds really exciting. Oh, there he is now.” Dorrie waved, then scampered toward the Greenfire truck.

  Much more slowly, for in spite of the warm weather her knee was stiff and sore today, Molly limped toward her car. She would drive straight home, she decided. Then she’d take two pain tablets, lie down, and skip this afternoon’s session, “Ecology and Economy,” which didn’t sound like much fun anyhow.

  If she felt up to it when she woke from her nap, she would go back to the drawing of two squirrels she’d started yesterday—one of the two dozen she’d promised for Wilkie Walker’s new book. It was exactly the sort of job Molly liked; the only problem was that she never knew how long she would be able to work before her hand and arm began to hurt too much, or her head to throb from eyestrain.

  The real question was, would she be able to finish the assignment and get it right, or was she too old, too ill, too near death? She remembered what Jacko had said on a very hot day last week when together they had dug up a shade-blighted vermillion and pink bougainvillea and replanted it in a sunnier spot. Afterward both of them were sweaty and exhausted. “It was awful there in the sun,” she had remarked as they drank seltzer under the shade of her gumbo limbo tree. “I felt so dizzy and weak, as if I was dying. Well, of course in a way I am dying.” She laughed unhappily.

  “Yeah,” Jacko had said suddenly. “If you look at it that way, you’re dying and I’m dying. But at the moment, we’re alive. So are we living or are we dying, or both?”

  “I don’t know,” Molly had confessed.

  “The way I figure it, everyone is living, everyone is dying.”

  That was true, she thought. But at least they had moved the bougainvillea. It would flourish and flower splendidly this year, and for years to come, long after she and Jacko were gone.

  In fact Molly was less often exhausted now, because two weeks ago Barbie Mumpson had moved into her spare bedroom, and in exchange for room and board she was now doing much of Molly’s cleaning, laundry, and shopping. Barbie had also repaired two broken screens, fixed the downstairs toilet, and replaced the burned-out bulbs in the outdoor lights. Watching her carry the stepladder across the deck, Molly remembered how once that sort of thing had been easy for her too; how she had wondered why old people moved so slowly.

  When she agreed to take Barbie in, Molly had assumed that she’d have to hear more about her unhappy marriage and helpless self-doubt. But in fact Glory Green and the other dolphin and manatee people seemed to have taken over most of this task. They had also provided a lawyer to handle Barbie’s divorce from her husband, Wild Bob Hickock.

  “I felt just awful about it at first,” Barbie had declared. “But Glory and Stewart, that’s my lawyer, think it’s for the best really. I mean Bob and I weren’t ever exactly suited to each other. For instance he never really liked animals, except his own dogs.”

  As might have been expected, Barbie’s mother was vehemently opposed to the divorce. For several days she’d assaulted Molly’s house with phone calls, some of which had reduced her daughter to noisy tears. But presently, on the advice of the manatee people, Barbie had refused to speak to Myra Mumpson.

  “Glory says, when Mom calls, I should ask you to please just tell her I’m not here. She says talking to angry people is counterproductive and bad for the soul. And she says they’ve all noticed that after I’ve been on the phone with Mom I’m too upset for hours to be any use to anybody or anything.”

  As a result of this policy, for the next few days Molly had found herself having daily conversations with Myra Mumpson. At first these conversations had been very unpleasant. Myra had accused her (sometimes with justice) of lying about Barbie’s whereabouts. She had dwelt upon the thanklessness of all her relatives, on the ditsiness of her sister Dorrie, and on Barbie’s immaturity and incapacity for success in what Myra referred t
o as “the real world.”

  The last time she phoned, though, Myra had been more concerned with her own situation. She had confided to Molly that she’d decided to run for state representative in the Republican primary. “At my age, can you believe that?” Myra gave a hoarse giggle. “But the other candidate is a complete washout as a speaker, plus he’s pro-choice. He hasn’t a chance in this district. So I thought, why not? I feel it’s what God’s directing me to do now. And besides it’ll get my mind off the mess my poor silly daughter is making of her life, right?”

  But she’s not, Molly had thought but not said. As far as I can tell, her life is less of a mess now, and so is mine.

  Recently, now that Barbie was apparently planning to be in Key West indefinitely, Molly had begun to think seriously of staying on longer here this year: through June, and perhaps even into July. She might be lonely after the other winter residents had left; but she was lonely everywhere these days. Everywhere the world had been gradually emptied of her friends, by death. And one day, perhaps quite soon, she too would go. But even death, Molly imagined, would be different here, easier—a kind of slow dissolving into the almost perpetual heat and moisture of Key West.

  With a somewhat fixed, but essentially satisfied smile, Wilkie Walker signed the last of the many books presented to him, and stood up. A handful of fans still lingered, hoping for a handful of personal words, repeating their praise of what he had said or written, and offering to take him to lunch. But Wilkie excused himself, saying truthfully that he had promised to eat with the other seminar members, and that he had to go now (gesturing vaguely toward the washroom). His fans, many of whom had prostate trouble, or were related to someone with this ailment, moved out of his way with apologies.

  Though he had agreed to participate in this conference only in the belief that he would be dead when it took place, Wilkie thought as he crossed the lobby, it hadn’t been bad so far. The younger people on the panel, unlike some of those he had encountered in the past, had been pleasant and even deferential. Wilkie understood what that meant: it meant that he had ceased to be a competitor, and become a kind of elder statesman. Having been out of circulation for a while had been an advantage. He and his books were too out-of-date now to be attacked: instead they were patronized or even acclaimed as historical documents.

  As a result, for the first time in years he was experiencing the rush and crush of popularity, the long lines, the ache in his wrist from signing books—all the phenomena of celebrity that had once surrounded him. What had caused this? Wilkie wondered as he stood in the washroom. Was it something he’d said? It had been a good speech, but no better than many others he’d given in the past.

  Or was it some characteristic of the audience? By definition, the conference participants were people who were willing and able to pay several hundred dollars in order to sit indoors and listen to other people talking for two days, on a sunny Florida weekend. Not ordinary tourists, therefore; not students or working men and women on holiday. This audience would have to be well off, and middle-aged or elderly—often retired. In fact, it was largely composed of old people, who had preserved their old enthusiasms, among which were Wilkie Walker and his books.

  And these people, of course, were also an endangered species—endangered by age and illness and irrelevance—but most obviously and immediately by death. When Wilkie declared that an aquatic mammal, though not productive or attractive or well adapted to its present environment, was still very valuable, interesting, and worth preserving, they naturally felt better. Because by analogy, so were they.

  As retirees, most members of this audience were by definition unattractive and unproductive. But they might in fact not be entirely useless, Wilkie thought as he zipped up his pants. Many of them were wealthy, and most of them meant well. If anything could be done for the manatee and the dolphin and the other declining species of South Florida, it might be done here.

  It wouldn’t be easy, because rich old people, as Wilkie knew from observation of himself and others, were reluctant to part with their money. Consciously or unconsciously, they often realized that only this wealth made most of them attractive—though a few, like him, might have kept a certain amount of power and influence. And there were so many competing causes: other animals and birds and plants, the arts, diseases, universities ... Not to mention, of course, the forces of agribusiness and commercial and sport fishing. It would be an uphill fight.

  But Wilkie had always liked a good fight. Some of his most agreeable memories were of arguing down smug representatives of commercial interests, or (at the other end of the political spectrum) noisy Luddites and vegetarians. If he were quick on his feet, he could often get these competing fanatics to turn on each other, while he sat calmly between them, representing the voice of reason.

  It would be interesting to see how Barbie Mumpson and her new friends got on with their campaign. He might give them the names of some of the well-to-do local fans who had crowded round him just now, pressing business cards and telephone numbers on him. He was also seriously turning over in his mind a possible article for the Atlantic about the manatee—perhaps eventually even a book.

  If he decided not to leave week after next, if he stayed through March, or perhaps even longer, Jenny could start the research now. And after all, why shouldn’t they stay on? The house was available, and according to reports the weather back in Convers was still cold, gray, and icy. And since he’d got out of the hospital he was sleeping well at night, even heavily: nine or ten hours sometimes.

  Jenny would like it if they stayed on, she’d said so only the other day. She hated cold weather, and she had made friends here, though not always wisely. And with modern technology—fax and E-mail and an Internet connection—she could do most of the necessary editing and checking for The Copper Beech right here in Key West. Besides, it would make up to her for that stupid misunderstanding over Barbie Mumpson.

  Possibly they could return to Key West every winter from now on, Wilkie decided. Jenny would like that too. With enough advance notice, she could probably find a house she’d prefer to this one. Or they might buy a place, as many of their acquaintances had. It was a good investment, everyone said so. They might even become Florida residents the way Howard and Molly Hopkins, and the Fosters, had done, staying at least six months and a day every year in a state with no income tax. Why not, after all? His editor was almost exhaustingly enthusiastic about The Copper Beech, and the balance of his advance would cover a substantial down payment on a substantial vacation house. If the first serial rights deal his agent was now negotiating went through, they probably wouldn’t even need a mortgage.

  The ending of the book was better now, Wilkie thought. Instead of actually describing the melodramatic death of the Copper Beech in a great storm, he had cast the last chapter in the future conditional, and posited several possible futures. As a result, he had been able to include all the good passages of writing he would have otherwise regretfully had to discard.

  Beeches are long-lived, he had written: some existing specimens are known to be well over three hundred years old. Yet one day the Copper Beech, like all trees and all men, will die. It might perish prematurely: struck by disease, demolished by human stupidity, or toppled in a great storm. But if we cared for it, and were vigilant, the Copper Beech might adorn and enrich the world and us for many more years—and so might all the other endangered flora and fauna on the earth. It was probably too optimistic an ending; but if you weren’t optimistic, in his experience, there was no chance of getting people to do anything at all.

  Though only a few weeks had passed, it was hard now for Wilkie fully to recall the depressed, desperate, almost demented state he had been in before his gallstone attack—a state in which it had seemed clear that the only way out was one that would have destroyed not only his own life, but Jenny’s and possibly those of his children.

  Three times Wilkie had done his best to accomplish this destruction, and each time Fate had thwa
rted him. He pictured her still as he had in his deranged state of mind: as a dumpy, elderly version of Justice. But now, instead of sneering spitefully at his failure to do away with himself, Fate was smiling, even perhaps rather smugly.

  Later that same hot day L.D. Zimmern, the New York professor and literary critic, settled into a creaking wicker chair on the front porch of Artemis Lodge and extended his long thin legs. As usual, he was wearing an old denim work shirt and a skeptical, penetrating expression.

  “Well, Cousin Lelia,” he said. “It’s fun to see you again. What has it been, five years?”

  “I guess so,” Lee agreed.

  “You look like a real native Key Wester. One of those, what is it they call them? Some kind of clam.”

  Lee did not reply. Years ago, as a teenager, she had resolved that Lennie Zimmern would never again get a rise out of her. She pulled down her crimson embroidered mumu, wishing as she did so that she had followed her earlier impulse to change into jeans and a T-shirt before he arrived.

  “A Conch, that’s it. Yeah.” He reached for the bottle of imported beer he had brought with him. “Quite a change from Dr. Weiss, Ph.D., with her briefcase and box of Kleenex for weepy clients.”

  Again, Lee said nothing, though she thought that Lennie, on the other hand, was unchanged: still thin, dark, clever, and sour. His thick hair and close-cropped beard were grayer, his face more sardonically creased; that was all.

  “So the place suits you?”

  “I like it,” she admitted, gathering her forces. “I never expected to see you here, though.”

  “Why not? I had two perfectly good motives: curiosity and cash. Besides, it was a chance to visit my favorite little cousin Merilee in her new natural habitat.”

  In spite of her resolution, Lee winced visibly at the first utterance in many years of her silly adolescent nickname.

  “Sorry. I should have said Lelia Weissfrau.” Lennie grinned as he made this old joke, which dated from the time when Lee, on becoming a feminist, had altered her original surname from Weissmann to Weiss. With difficulty, she did not react.