Creature Discomforts

by Susan Conant

  As I accompanied Gabrielle across the lawn, toward the ocean, she overwhelmed me with human names. A few minutes later, when we joined the other guests, Gabrielle performed cheerful introductions and reintroductions. As I’ve explained, the human names didn’t stick. Consequently, I’ll call by name only the people I got to know later in the evening or saw subsequently: Opal and Wally; Quint and Effie; Gabrielle, of course; and Malcolm Fairley, who hadn’t yet shown up. At least a dozen other adults, plus a gaggle of children, were sitting, standing, or, in the case of the children, cavorting around on the wet rock-and-pebble beach created by the fall of the tide. But I have leaped ahead of myself. I must take care, I find, not to inflict my disorientation on others.

  Gabrielle’s house, I should first mention, faced the ocean. A wide, generous porch ran across the front; it was a definite porch, a roofed veranda. Steps ran down to a front lawn punctuated with a few tall pines, their lower limbs removed to open up the view, which was ungodly spectacular: blue-green ocean, lobster buoys, barren islets that would vanish when the tide rose, and in the distance, tree-covered islands, the line of the mainland, and white-sailed boats. As the lawn crept toward the ocean, it gave way to great stretches of smooth rock. The coast of Mount Desert Island has those tremendous cliffs you see in pictures of Acadia National Park: Otter Cliffs, lots of others. This was a gentle stretch of shoreline. It was easy to find natural staircases that started as dry rock and became damp and barnacle-covered near the seaweed, tide pools, and stones of the beach. Here, directly in front of Gabrielle’s house, the rocks ran out into the water to form a point that probably had a name. Beamon Point? To the left, low cliffs rose to pine forest. To the right of the rocky point, the shore abruptly cut inward to form a large cove.

  A prominent sign demarcated the boundary between Gabrielle’s property and the grounds of the Beamon Reservation. The land directly in front of the house was private property; the Beamon Reservation began only a short distance to the right. In style, the rustic sign was identical to the one by the reservation parking lot, but this one limited itself to the words Beamon Reservation. Beyond the sign, on what was clearly conservation land, Gabrielle’s guests were engaged in a blatant, if merry, demonstration of how to break the regulations so conspicuously posted elsewhere. As Gabrielle and the dogs and I picked our way down to the shore, I could see that, for a start, the food was being cooked in genuine clambake fashion. Adjusting layers of seaweed and poking at hot stones with a stick was a man with a small, round head, a large, round middle, and puny limbs. His nearly hairless head and circular face were evenly tan, and he wore a yellow sweatshirt. Picture a little apricot atop a big golden apple.

  We’ll get back to Wally Swan, as the lobster murderer proved to be. I’d evidently met him and his wife, Opal, before. I didn’t remember them. Back to the rules of the Beamon Reservation. No campfires and no picnicking allowed. No alcoholic beverages. Soon after we reached the guests clustered near the clambake, Gabrielle offered me a drink from a giant cooler that held soft drinks, small bottles of Poland Springs water, cans of beer, and two recorked bottles of white wine.

  “Or if you like,” Gabrielle added, “someone will run up to the house and get you a real drink. It’s no trouble. Gin?”

  In the manner of people at parties, Wally, Opal, and most of the other adults had drinks of one kind or another. I felt a little embarrassed about refusing something real, as Gabrielle phrased it. “Maybe later,” I lied politely. “At the moment, I’m just thirsty.” Memory! It’s bizarre. It is possible, I assure you, for the mind to hide the name of your ailment while retaining the warning that if you suffer from whatever-it-is, you mustn’t drink.

  “All that hiking,” Gabrielle remarked. “Speaking of thirst, where has my wine gone to? Didn’t I leave it…?”

  “Sorry about that,” said a woman seated in a low folding beach chair. “One of the dogs knocked it over.”

  “Opal,” Gabrielle said, “you remember Holly.” With a coy smile she added, “My hero’s daughter. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

  Although Opal looked about fifty-five, her gray-streaked brown hair was pulled into a ponytail smack on top of her head and cascaded halfway down her back. Except for the juvenile hairdo, her appearance was unremarkable. Her skin was neither light nor dark, her features were moderately small and moderately attractive, her eyes were a medium hazel, and her makeup was unobtrusively flattering. She wore a heavy navy blue sweater and tan corduroy slacks. I wondered whether her character, too, had a jarringly childish element. The question struck me as comfortingly intelligent. Then I realized I’d forgotten the ponytailed woman’s name. I did, however, have the sense not to ask how my father, whoever he was, had become Gabrielle’s hero; the tale was obviously one I should know. I tried to smile comprehendingly. I probably simpered.

  But to return to rule breaking—no pets allowed—Gabrielle’s drink could have been knocked over by any of the three dogs, Pacer, Demi, and Isaac, who were enjoying the illegal freedom of the Beamon Reservation. I can’t remember Demi’s owners, but Pacer was Wally and Opal’s. Isaac, an apricot mini poodle, was now in Gabrielle’s care; he had apparently belonged to the late Norman Axelrod. Pacer was a golden retriever, Demi a black Lab. Pacer “bunny-hopped,” as it’s called; he ran like a kangaroo. His whole hind end rocked and rolled like a boat on a rough sea. Classic signs! Some deep social reflex kept me from asking Opal whether she realized that her dog probably had hip dysplasia. Had I been myself, I’d surely have blurted out the question.

  No swimming. All three dogs were drenched. No berry picking! Stay on marked trails! Twin red-haired boys of five or six appeared from the woods bearing saucepans they’d used, or maybe just intended to use, in gathering berries. No ball playing! A red-haired couple joined the twins in a game of catch. Since the only wildlife in sight consisted of gulls, there were no seals for anyone to feed or approach, and there were no bicycles or strollers being pushed and no boats being launched. No one was toting a gun. In other words, not every regulation was being broken. Even so! A clambake alone, never mind everything else! On conservation land! I kept my mouth shut about that, too.

  By now, I was sitting quietly on a reasonably dry rock near most of the other people, which is to say, close to the clambake. Rowdy and Kimi, having spent who knew how much time tearing around on their own on Dorr Mountain, were models of canine good citizenship, especially when I patted my cheese-packed pockets. Big, flashy, friendly creatures that they were, they attracted considerable attention. Since it was apparent to me, the recent victim of a head trauma, that my dogs were content to roll onto their backs and accept the adulation of strangers, it should have been equally apparent to people whose brains hadn’t just been run through a food processor. But it wasn’t. No, no! My poor leashed dogs became the object of group sympathy: Don’t they ever get to be free? Just look at those precious faces! Oh, they’re just dying to play with the other dogs! And so forth, all of which palaver the dogs regarded as verbal liver treats and gobbled up. Alaskan malamutes don’t merely have big brown eyes, but use them. If I’d been in my normal state of consciousness, I’d have explained that malamutes operate on the principle that if it could be dinner, it is dinner. Fish corpses and decomposing crabs deposited by the receding tide: dinner. Your lobster, my lobster, everyone else’s lobster, all the clams, corn, and potatoes? The hot stones? The seaweed? Maybe even the coals and embers? Dinner. I’d have given examples of objects devoured in their entirety by Alaskan malamutes: leather jackets, zippers and all, songbirds caught on the wing.

  Malcolm Fairley’s arrival spared me the need to explain. He didn’t deliberately rescue me; he just happened to turn up at the crucial moment. Still, I felt grateful. Even if I hadn’t, I’d have liked him the second I saw him, in part because everything about him, from his Yankee jaw to his plaid flannel shirt to his wholesome, weathered face, looked solid and familiar. Although I did not, of course, remember the man, it was instantly apparent to me that I
knew men like him. Trusted them, too. Consequently, I felt doubly grateful to Malcolm Fairley. Without so much as uttering a word, he’d not only saved me from an awkward little situation, but had softened my edgy feeling of groping in an alien world. Although he was late for a celebration in his honor, no one seemed to feel annoyed or slighted. If he’d been three or four hours late, everyone would probably have been delighted that he’d arrived. Perhaps I can best convey Malcolm Fairley’s impact by noting his dramatic effect on the canine guests. As soon as he appeared, Pacer, Demi, and Isaac dashed toward him, tails and bodies wagging in undisguised delight. Even Molly wriggled out of Gabrielle’s arms to join the scramble. Rowdy and Kimi jumped to their feet, pointed their noses toward him, and burst into the characteristic malamute greeting, that prolonged, human-sounding woo-woo-woo. Human inhibitions being what they are, the rest of us didn’t go flying toward Fairley or sing aloud for joy. Those who’d been lounging sat up. Eyes brightened. We radiated a collective, doglike happiness. Malcolm Fairley was one of our own. Now that he’d arrived, our pack was complete. We miss him, Ann had written. I could see why. So far, his headstrong, difficult streak was unapparent.

  Maybe I’ve overstated the subtlety of the human greetings. Gabrielle Beamon didn’t pound across the rocks toward Fairley and certainly didn’t mimic the dogs by hurling herself to the rocks at his feet, and she didn’t carol a chorus of woo-woo-woos. Still, it’s fair to say that as Gabrielle hurried toward him, the ruffles of her shirt caught the salty air like the sails of a boat catching a fresh breeze. When she reached him, he transferred his right hand from Demi’s smooth black head to Gabrielle’s shoulder and kissed her on the cheek. I was startled. Malcolm Fairley had struck me as the kind of male Yankee whose typical object of public affection is a Labrador retriever.

  Gabrielle didn’t seem to share my surprise. After returning his kiss, she stated the obvious: “You’re here!” That extraordinary voice of hers, at once mellow and husky, made the banality sound warm, genuine, and wildly seductive.

  “Anita offers her apologies,” Fairley said, “and Steve’s. They should be here in time for dessert.”

  Nature had designed Gabrielle for talking about romance. “So! We get to meet the boyfriend,” she said with satisfaction. “Serious?”

  Fairley just smiled and nodded. I’d already heard enough, though. His voice had hit my gut like a mallet pounding a gong. Although it was far less distinctive than Gabrielle’s, I’d recognized it instantly. It was the voice I’d heard during those fleeting, dreamlike moments of half-awakening. The man who’d promised anonymity to his quiet companion? The man who’d talked of death? Malcolm Fairley. I’d have known that voice anywhere.

  Chapter Seven

  “I’M CURIOUS about the Pine Tree Foundation.” I ripped a leg from my lobster’s body.

  Effie O’Brian’s response was a bit snippy. “I would’ve assumed Norman Axelrod’d talked you to death on the subject.”

  Her husband, Quint, called her on the slip. “Effie, find another expression, if you don’t mind.”

  Quint O’ Brian, I’d managed to discover, was Gabrielle Beamon’s nephew. Although he and Effie looked barely old enough to be out of high school, they’d graduated from Oberlin three years earlier, married soon after that, traveled in Europe, and then settled in as the caretakers of the Beamon Reservation. Because of Effie’s chattiness, I hadn’t had to ask many questions, and those I’d asked had been vague enough to hide my ignorance. Quint and Effie’s house, she told me, was on the private road to the right of the reservation parking lot, opposite the road to the guest cottage and main house; I remembered seeing it on Gabrielle’s map. Effie used one room as a pottery and weaving studio. Quint, she informed me, was a cabinetmaker. The couple shared a homespun look. Effie’s long, dark hair was French-braided. She wore layers of flowing cotton garments. On her feet were Birkenstock sandals over thick woolen socks. Quint had cherubic blond curls and was dressed in jeans and a multicolored woolen jacket that looked Guatemalan or Peruvian, but may have been handcrafted by his wife. Without actually looking like the Campbell Kids, the O’ Brians radiated a New Age version of red-and-white soupy wholesomeness. Effie was at that very moment pouring steaming vegetable soup from a thermos into a small pottery bowl. She’s already told me, with a censorious look in her husband’s direction, that as a vegetarian, she didn’t eat lobster or clams.

  “Quint,” she’d explained, “is a pesco-ovo-lacto-vegetarian, meaning that he eats fish. And eggs. And milk.”

  “Meaning,” Quint had expanded, “that to a purist like Effie, I’m not a vegetarian at all.”

  They’d locked eyes and burst into laughter.

  “We have an ongoing purer-than-thou competition going here,” Quint told me. “Pardon us. We’re obnoxious.”

  They weren’t. Or I didn’t find them so. In fact, when Wally Swan finally disinterred the lobsters, steamers, corn, and potatoes, Quint and Effie invited me to eat with them. They also went out of their way to include the Pine Tree Foundation’s secretary, a dark-haired, pixielike young woman named Tiffany, who clearly knew the other guests but had still been cast to the social periphery. Luckily for me, Tiffany took an instant liking to my dogs, who used a variety of mournful expressions, smiles, vocalizations, and similar tactics to convince her that they perceived unique and fabulous traits in her character that no one else, human or canine, had ever noticed before. Tiffany’s captivation by malamute voodoo freed me to eat dinner. With what I now see as astonishing competence, she took Kimi’s leash and assumed the task of preventing Kimi from filching the food on people’s paper plates. With a quick hand signal, she promptly got Rowdy, too, to drop to the ground in a sphinx-like pose. “Well-trained dogs,” she commented. “Stay!”

  Anyway, I was thus able to disjoint my lobster and ask a vague nonquestion about the Pine Tree Foundation for Conservation Philanthropy. For all I know, Effie’s snippy response was justified; maybe Norman Axelrod had talked me to death, so to speak, on the subject. Still, I ignored Quint’s objection to the expression about death and said, “No, not really.”

  “Well, I’m surprised to hear that,” Effie said, “because it was one of his favorite, uh, points of contention, although as you probably noticed even on short acquaintance, he had so many that it’s a wonder he didn’t, uh, prick himself to death on one of them long ago.”

  “Effie!” Quint apparently devoted himself to monitoring his wife’s figures of speech.

  “Well, it’s the truth,” Effie insisted. “He was like a bull that went through the world seeing red flags everywhere.” After taking a bite of a sandwich she’d brought with her—bean sprouts wiggling from slices of a whole-grain loaf—she swallowed, and amended the claim. “Not everywhere. Axelrod operated on the principle that if other people wanted something, or liked it, or supported it, or whatever, then no matter what it was, he was violently opposed to it. Except for his thing about celebrities. Especially Stephen King. Not that Norman stalked Stephen King. He just liked people to think they were friends.”

  “They weren’t,” Quint added. “It was just that he was a name-dropper. Norman, not Stephen King. Norman would kind of alternate between this adulation of some famous person he was pretending he knew and, on the other hand, this mean-spirited opposition to—”

  Effie interrupted. “Quint and I could never see that he had any causes he really cared about, I mean, for their own sake. His whole life was like a reaction against anything someone else gave a damn about.”

  “It wasn’t so much that, Effie,” Quint said. “He was a crank. He couldn’t just accept that a good idea was a good idea. He always had to see some dark scheme surrounding things. If something seemed good, he had a kind of compulsion to go ferreting around to find out what was bad about it.”

  “Mr. Axelrod was always writing letters to the papers,” Tiffany informed me. “And they got published, too! Like, he wanted the park to close the road to the top of Cadillac Mountain, which is li
ke maybe the most popular place in the entire park, the top of Cadillac.”

  “You see?” Effie cut in. “The tourists love it, so Axelrod wanted to close it down.”

  “Not close down the summit,” Quint clarified. “Close the road to traffic. People could still hike up. Or bike. Ski. That’s different. And it’s not such a bad idea.”

  “Oh, admittedly, Quint,” his wife said, “overuse is a tremendous problem. Three million visitors a year, and practically all of them pollute the air with their infernal combustion engines driving to the top of Cadillac and the Thunder Hole and Otter Cliffs without ever getting out of their cars. But the realistic way to address the problem is collective action, public education, raising money for conservation, like the Pine Tree Foundation, and preservation of what’s left, the way we do here. It isn’t writing crazy letters all on your own about banning cars from Cadillac.”

  “Nobody ever answered your question,” Tiffany said to me. “What the foundation does is to let people invest their money in a way that benefits the environment. The investors put their money in the foundation, and the foundation reinvests in environmental concerns and makes grants to conservation groups. And then it pays the investors back, just like a bank, only with a lot higher interest.”

  “Malcolm is the founder,” Quint said. “And C.E.O. Malcolm Fairley. You probably know that.”

  “Yes, of course,” I said as knowingly as I could. Then I turned my attention to the clams. Steamers are disgusting only if you’re used to cherrystones, littlenecks, and other kinds of quahogs. With steamers, you remove the clam from the soft shell and then peel an icky-looking membrane off the neck before dipping the clam first in clam broth, then in butter, then into your mouth. Steamers have big, squishy, creamy bellies and chewy necks. Eating steamers keeps you busy enough to explain any lack of full participation in conversation.