Creature Discomforts

by Susan Conant

  “It does, you know,” said Quint, eyeing Wally and Opal.

  At the clambake, I remembered, Opal’s hairdo—the long brown-and-gray hair swept into a ponytail on the crown of her head—had looked jarringly childish on a woman in her mid fifties or so. Now the ponytail seemed no more than a sensible way to keep her hair from interfering as she cut brush on a stone trail. She wore jeans, a faded blue sweatshirt, rough pigskin gloves, wool socks, and hiking boots. The sensible work clothes, combined with the exercise-induced pinkness of her face, made her look prettier than she’d appeared the previous evening. A pair of loppers hung from her right hand.

  “Quint! Why are you looking at me like that?” Opal demanded. “To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never even eaten a health food supplement in my life. The whole idea that I would get swept up into some pyramid scheme to distribute food supplements is preposterous.”

  “Food supplements have nothing to do with it,” Quint said. “Forget food supplements. That was just an example. The content is immaterial.”

  “I should hope so,” Wally said pompously. “You won’t catch any of us selling any of those powders. Or cookies! Do we look like Girl Scouts?” He guffawed. No one else did. At the clambake, poking at the coals and rocks and, as Gabrielle had phrased it, murdering lobsters, Wally had been in his element. Today, he stood out as the only physically unfit person on the trail crew. His round, almost hairless head dripped with sweat; his face was deep red and squishy looking, like a baked apple. His yellow polo shirt was soaked, and his big, soft gut poured over the waistband of a pair of khaki shorts. His bare arms and legs were as puny as most of the saplings that lay in the brush pile.

  “The point Effie was beginning to make,” Quint continued, “was about pyramid schemes. In this case, the content isn’t food supplements. It’s land grabbing and property development.”

  “Exactly who are you accusing of land grabbing?” Opal shrieked, incensed. “That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!” She pointed the loppers at Quint. “Every piece of property Wally and I have acquired we have bought in a perfectly legal, ethical way, and we are far and away the most responsible developers on this island. Land grabbing! I don’t like the sound of that one bit, Quint!”

  “Land grabbing.” Gabrielle repeated it, as if practicing a foreign word. “Land grabbing. I’m not sure I know what it means.” She looked down at the bichon in her arms almost as if she expected Molly to explain the term.

  Effie hastened to supply a definition. “It means rushing in to snatch up land from people who don’t understand what it’s really worth or what you intend to do with it.” After only a moment’s hesitation, she added, with victory in her voice, “Like Wally and Opal moving in to grab Norman Axelrod’s land so they can desecrate it with awful condominiums that will pollute the Beamon Reservation!”

  Opal opened her mouth, but Wally spoke first. “Land grabbing suggests deliberate misrepresentation about the purpose the land is being bought for. In case no one here realizes it, some of the worst offenders in that regard are conservation groups.”

  “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Effie charged. “How could anyone not want land to be preserved?”

  “Conservation groups,” Wally informed her, “do not, contrary to popular opinion, hold on to all the land they buy. Among other things, they resell it to the government, which can then sell it again, or they sell it directly or indirectly to developers, and that’s a fact. Furthermore, some property owners want their land developed.”

  “Norman Axelrod, for example,” Opal supplied.

  “Obviously,” Effie countered, “Norman was no friend of environmentalism, but he wasn’t about to sell out to you and Wally while he was alive, was he?” Before Wally or Opal could respond to the veiled accusation, Effie unveiled it. “Quint and I have discussed the matter at length. We cannot believe that Norman climbed up Dorr just because he felt like it. We think he was deliberately led up there.”

  “Not led,” Quint corrected. “Lured.”

  “Thank you,” his wife commented. “Lured. And we do not think that on his own he would’ve gone anywhere he was likely to fall. And the question we keep coming back to is, Qui bono?”

  “For Christ’s sake,” my father bellowed, “speak English!”

  Rowdy’s and Kimi’s ears went up: Does he mean us?

  “You wait and see,” Effie warned. “With Norman Axelrod dead, Wally and Opal are going to find some way to get their dirty hands on his property. They’ll murder every living thing on it, just the way they got their hands on Norman Axelrod!”

  Wally was now sweating with rage. “That,” he shouted at her, “is libel!”

  “Isn’t it slander?” Gabrielle asked innocently. “I always have a hard time remembering which is which.”

  “If something is true,” Effie informed her, “then it isn’t either one. So what Quint and I would like to know,” she said, turning to face Wally and Opal, “is just exactly where the two of you were when Norman Axelrod supposedly fell.”

  “This is absurd,” said Gabrielle, the peacemaker. “Effie, we have known…”

  “Anita!” Wally demanded. “Anita, Opal and I have just been libeled…” He broke off. “Slandered. Which is it?”

  “Slandered.” Anita looked disheveled and hot. A scratch on her right hand was oozing blood. She raised the hand to her mouth and, with odd sensuousness, licked the wound. “If it’s spoken, it’s slander.”

  “Well, in that case,” Wally said vehemently, “Opal and I are suing for slander. This woman, Effie O’Brian, has just damaged our reputation in the presence of witnesses. Not only in the presence of ordinary witnesses! In the presence of our attorney! Anita, aren’t you an officer of the court? Well, you heard her! And we are suing!”

  As if to underscore the power of the threat, Wally bent to retrieve a crowbar that lay at his feet. It occurred to me that if Buck was, in fact, carrying a handgun, at least he wasn’t the only armed person in the group. A hatchet rested near Malcolm Fairley’s feet, and Steve held a pair of loppers heavier than Opal’s. Lightweight pruning shears dangled from Anita Fairley’s left hand. Now she tightened her grip on them, transferred them to her injured right hand, and ran her left hand idly through her lovely blond hair.

  Malcolm, her father, was staring at her. He had the kind of solid-looking New England face and Yankee jaw that seem designed by Nature and trained by Nurture to reveal almost no emotion. The only visible change was in the color of his weathered skin: The tan drained away, leaving him white and haggard. Then red splotches surfaced on his cheeks. Facing his daughter, he asked quietly, “Anita, can this statement be true?”

  “Am I an officer of the court?” she replied. She was expressionless.

  “Wally,” said Malcolm, his voice cold with shock, “has referred to the presence of his attorney.” He waited. Anita said nothing. “You,” Malcolm told her, “are the only attorney present.”

  “My practice is my own business.” Anita’s face was sullen. Impatiently, she brushed invisible dirt or dog hair off her pants. “There’s such a thing as client confidentiality, you know.”

  “My daughter,” Malcolm said incredulously, “is representing developers?” It was almost as if a mist had magically appeared to surround him as he spoke words of private horror to himself. “Property developers? Here on this island? My daughter? The Pine Tree Foundation’s attorney? Impossible.”

  Opal glared at her husband. She spoke softly, but her voice quivered. “Wally, how could you be so stupid!”

  With what struck me as genuine obliviousness to Malcolm Fairley’s shock at the revelation of Anita’s betrayal, Wally ignored his wife. He directed himself to Malcolm. “Let’s get something straight here. No one has done anything in the least bit fishy. Swan and Swan is the most environmentally responsible corporation in the state of Maine, and—”

  “Hah!” Effie interjected.

  “And Opal and I personally are committed to the preservatio
n of the natural environment where, it just so happens, we live. Why else would we be out here sweating in the woods, for Christ’s sake? Opal can speak for herself, but I, for one, am not standing around listening to slurs and digs. There’s never been any reason why Anita shouldn’t represent us, and I never have liked this keep-it-quiet attitude on her part or on yours, either, Opal. It’s insulting. You’d think we were criminals.”

  “You said it, Wally,” Effie told him. “I didn’t. And there certainly are about a million reasons why everyone here but you is reeling at the news that Anita represents you, and the main one is conflict of interest. A lawyer can’t represent an organization dedicated to saving the environment from developers and at the same time represent the developers! That’s conflict of interest! Never mind that everyone who knows Malcolm understands his total dedication to conservation, given which, he would hardly want his daughter acting for the enemy, would he? Would he, Anita?”

  “Leave me out of this,” Anita said.

  “How?” Quint asked. “How are we supposed to leave you out of it when you put yourself in the middle? If you wanted to stay out of it, you could’ve declined to work for developers. And if you and Wally and Opal all thought that it was ethical and aboveboard for you to represent Swan and Swan at the same time you were representing the Pine Tree Foundation, why keep it a big secret?”

  “For the very good reason,” answered Opal, with a swish of her high pony tail, “that we thought it might be misunderstood, particularly by Anita’s father. The situation was perfectly simple. Wally and I needed a good attorney. Anita is one. Furthermore, she passed her bar exams in Maine and in Massachusetts, and Swan and Swan has some interests there, too. On top of which, we know Anita. Therefore, it made perfect sense. So far as telling people, we decided to be considerate and discreet. We did not lie. Anyone who was interested could have consulted any number of public records.”

  “Why would anyone have done such a thing?” Effie demanded. “Why would Malcolm or anyone else have gone digging into records to find out that Anita was doing something that all of us thought in a million years she’d never do? Does anyone go around trying to make sure that Quint and I aren’t secret agents of the military-industrial complex? Of course not! You don’t check up on people unless you have some reason to be suspicious in the first place.”

  Quint turned unobtrusively to his aunt and asked, “Gabbi, did you know about this?”

  As if testifying in court, Gabrielle answered solemnly, “I did not.”

  Anita finally spoke up for herself. “This whole matter is being blown all out of proportion. Anyone would imagine that Wally and Opal intended to build a skyscraper in the middle of Bar Harbor or open a chemical factory and turn Northeast Harbor into Bhopal. What no one, including you, Daddy, wants to admit is that development is inevitable. Better Wally and Opal than someone else.”

  Malcolm Fairley looked so crushed that I wished Anita had said nothing. With heartbreaking bitterness, he echoed her. “Development is inevitable.” His eyes were filled with tears. “Anita, how could you have done this to me? To the Pine Tree Foundation? What if the benefactors find out? What if they discover that my daughter, the foundation’s attorney, is representing the interests of any developers? If they find out, they may immediately withdraw the support on which all our efforts rest. Didn’t you realize that the foundation must be like Caesar’s wife? It must be above reproach and seen to be above reproach. My own daughter! How could you have betrayed me?”

  “Daddy,” Anita replied unprettily, “cut the shit.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  MY FATHER STOOD APART. Except to object to Effie’s lapse into Latin, he’d said nothing. Uncharacteristically, he hadn’t even caught the eye of any of the dogs or snuck them treats from the supply he always carried in his pockets.

  Always. Buck always carried dog treats.

  That piece of trivia was as accessible to me as if my memories of my father had never vanished; all of a sudden, the memory was in its proper place again. In fiction, the recovery of the forgotten past is notably gauzy, nebulous, insubstantial. Veils lift. The victim blinks away mental cobwebs. One by one, the membranous curtains of oblivion heretofore draped over our heroine’s eyes drew apart, revealing mist-shrouded visions to her startled gaze. In real life? Wham! I collided with a rock-solid object that had gone missing and was inexplicably back where it belonged. My reaction may, of course, be idiosyncratic; not everyone’s father is a gigantic ruminant mammal. One thing to be said for Buck is that he is a solid figure in my life. Hence the collision?

  As I was starting to say, my father stood apart from the recriminations and nastiness, as did Steve Delaney, who had distanced himself by unobtrusively ascending four or five steps of the Homans Path. Malcolm Fairley, I remind you, had just accused his daughter, Anita, of betraying him, and in response, she’d told him to cut the shit.

  Once again, it was Effie who spoke up. She seemed a peculiar person to assume the role of Anita’s defender. What fitted her for it, I suppose, was her willingness to give voice to opinions that other people kept to themselves. “Anita is not the only one who’s been fraternizing with the enemy,” Effie announced.

  Gabrielle took her to task. “Effie, you have said more than enough! If you are referring to me, I want you to know that I do not believe in letting politics dictate my friendships, and that includes the politics of conservation. And if your remark is directed at Malcolm, you know perfectly well that ten minutes of hands-on experience is worth a million hours of being subjected to diatribes about the environment. If there’s anyone here who really does think globally and act locally, it’s Malcolm! He is deeply involved in efforts to save the rain forests, and we know what he does here! Furthermore, I might remind you of the old saw that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

  “Flies!” Opal flung the pair of loppers to the ground. My dogs eyed her with interest. Her arms flew upward. “Flies? So much for friendship, Gabbi! Wally and I are not flies! We have not done anything wrong, and we do not need to be caught! Gabbi, I am very hurt by that remark.”

  “I did not intend to call you a fly,” Gabrielle responded, “or Wally, either. I simply meant that in general, if you want to persuade people of something, it’s more effective to be nice than it is—”

  “Who says we need to be persuaded of anything?” Opal interrupted. “What arrogance!”

  Quint said, “Opal, please do not—” “Quint,” Gabrielle told him, “leave this to me! We’re among friends here, and—”

  “Friends,” Opal insisted, “do not refer to friends as flies! Flies in the ointment, I suppose! Gabbi, I knew you were a hypocrite, but I never dreamed—”

  Quint again tried to defend his aunt. “Who is calling whom a hypocrite?” That’s a direct quote. Quint was the kind of person who, even in rage, gets the cases of his pronouns right.

  “I don’t know who you’re calling a hypocrite, you miserable little parasite, living off your aunt instead of getting a real job,” Wally charged, “but if you want my opinion, I’m sick to death of listening to this holier-than-thou horseshit about the goddamned charitable purposes of the goddamned Pine Tree Foundation, which I know goddamned well everyone else invested in for the same reason Opal and I did, except that we never said we did it for anything but profit. And Gabbi, I don’t know where you think you get off calling us flies, for Christ’s sake, and hypocrites—”

  “I didn’t!” Gabrielle protested, so vehemently that Molly’s white curls shook.

  “When,” Wally fumed, “you and your family and your guests can hardly wait for your personal nature preserve to close for the day so you can swarm all over it breaking every one of your own rules. You know, Gabbi, that’s one thing Norman Axelrod was dead right about! The whole setup is a tax dodge, and you know it’s a tax dodge and a royal opportunity for nepotism, just like Norm always said.”

  Gabrielle was regal. “Wally, you have time and again accepte
d my hospitality, my lobster, my champagne, and my friendship, not to mention my personal invitation to Opal, and incidentally to you, to invest in the Pine Tree Foundation, and now you dare to turn on me! You barbarian! I have never understood why Opal married you to begin with! Wally, in accepting hospitality and then turning on the person who offered it, you are breaking the most fundamental and ancient rule of civilized conduct. You…You lout!”

  “You see?” Effie said quietly to Quint. “They are investors, just the way we thought. This is disgusting! Greed is everywhere.”

  Wally ignored Effie. “Wrong!” he fired at Gabrielle. “The fundamental rule isn’t some crap about etiquette, for Christ’s sake, it’s Thou shalt not kill, and you knew damned well, Gabbi, and Quint, and Effie, that Norm Axelrod was systematically keeping track of what went on at your precious Beamon Reservation after hours. He was building a case against you, which was that your tax dodge was operating in violation of every legal agreement you ever made about it, and that it wasn’t a nature preserve at all. If Norm had lived, you know, he’d have put an end to this horseshit, so what I want to know is, where were the three of you when he supposedly fell? Gabbi? And you, Quint, and you, Effie, you lazy lumps of snotty granola! Where were you?”

  “Wally, shame on you!” Gabrielle’s low, husky voice was as seductive as ever even when she was furious. “You made that up. Norman was doing no such thing. He was just a tease, that’s all. He didn’t really mean it.” She gently stroked Molly’s throat.

  “He wasn’t a tease. He was a troublemaker,” Quint said.

  “Why would Norman have wanted to make trouble for me?” Gabrielle was incredulous. “We were friends! Quint, let me finish! Now, I know he could be a very difficult person, but he was like a difficult relative. A cranky uncle. The trick was just not to take him too seriously.”

  Quint’s preppie WASP vocabulary left him without the response he really needed: Oy vey! Lacking it, he said with infinite patience, “Gabbi, I’m not the first person to point out the possibility that someone took Norm Axelrod seriously enough to push him to his death. You didn’t do it, and I didn’t do it, and Effie certainly didn’t, but someone did. What you have to appreciate, Gabbi, is that Norman Axelrod had a mean streak. He actively wished people ill.”