Gibbon's Decline and Fall

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Coming,” she called, brushing her hands together and turning her back on the sheep.…

  … the sheep, which became amorphous, like a cloud, like a rising pillar of mist, fading, tenuous, expiring on the air with a whisper of sound, like an echo of a door closing in some far-off place. Carolyn, unseeing, stopped suddenly, rubbing her brow fretfully, as though at some elusive but shocking thought, then shook her head and trudged up the hill toward her daughter.

  Stace came toward her, huge glasses making an owl face in the last of the dusk, threw her arms around Carolyn, and squeezed. Carolyn carefully extricated herself, getting the sore arm out of reach.

  “Lord, Mother, you look like a witch. Or a Norn, or something.”

  “I just washed my hair,” Carolyn confessed, running a hand down the flowing gray tresses. “I didn’t want to braid it while it was wet.”

  “And you were drying it in the barn?”

  “There’s a lamb.…” Her voice trailed off as she turned, peering back down the hill. Something. One of those elusive ideas that disappears before one can grasp it. A minnow thought, glinting, then gone.

  “Now your hair smells like sheep,” Stace said firmly, bringing Carolyn’s attention back to the moment.

  “It doesn’t, really. It’s my jeans.” She looked ruefully at the sodden knees. “Let’s go in. I’ll change.”

  They went through the side door into the mudroom, where Carolyn shuffled off her sandals before leading the way past the kitchen and pantry into the small one-time maid’s room she’d been using for a bedroom since Hal had attempted to scale the woodpile and broken his leg in the process. During the lengthy, complicated healing process he had slept restlessly, getting up and down several times in the night, tiptoeing ponderously, tripping over his feet or the crutches because he didn’t want to waken her with the lights. She’d moved herself into the little room so he could get up and down all he liked without worrying about waking her. He had been sleeping better as a result, the healing was progressing, and she was looking forward to their reunion. The temporary room was merely utilitarian, though the bookshelves held a few of her favorite photographs: Stace as a baby, toddler, child, adolescent; Hal and his boys, her stepsons, at various times in their lives; her friends in the Decline and Fall Club, when they were young and when they weren’t so young.

  “Where’s Dad?” Stace asked, seating herself in the wicker rocker.

  Carolyn answered from the bathroom door. “Your uncle Tim picked him up and took him down to Albuquerque. He’ll spend a night with his brother and have X rays in the morning. He’ll be back tomorrow afternoon.”

  “How’s his leg doing?”

  “For a man of his age, as well as can be expected. Actually, he is better. He’s almost quit being grouchy.”

  “Dad? I didn’t know he was ever grouchy.”

  Carolyn went into the bathroom and shut the door. Hal’s grouchiness was unusual. Carolyn could remember his being so only twice in almost forty years. The first time had been her senior year in college, Christmas of sixty-two, when he’d called her, told her he had to tell her something important, and she’d agreed to meet him for supper.

  The first thing he told her was that his wife had died. She still squirmed with discomfort when she remembered how hard it had been not to seem pleased at that news. She’d bitten her tongue in the effort. “I’m sorry,” she’d said at last, evoking a sympathetic image of Hal’s wife, making herself mean it. She was sorry. She had liked Hal’s wife. Envied, but liked.

  It was he who had smiled, rather ruefully. “I loved her dearly, Carolyn. She wasn’t sick, she wasn’t weak, she had an aneurysm no one knew about, it burst and she died. Just like that. And I got angry and yelled, and grieved, and did all the things people do, and when I got over it and started thinking about female company again, I remembered you.…”

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “Well, I asked Albert.”

  And that was when he’d become definitely grouchy, when he’d taken her hand firmly in his own, leaned across the table, and told her what vicious, unforgivable thing Albert had done. Yes, Hal had been grouchy, but no more so than Carolyn.

  “Is he a total fool?” she had half screamed, making other diners look up and stare.

  “Yes,” Hal had said softly, making a shushing gesture. “And I’m so glad you decided not to marry Albert.”

  He could have been no gladder than she! She stripped off the dirty jeans and draped them across the laundry hamper, washed off the worst of the barn dirt, and wrapped herself in a soft, shabby old robe before returning to the bedroom to sit before the mirror. The robe was brown hopsacking, and her hair streamed across it in a gray mane, affirming Stace’s opinion. She did look like a witch.

  She reached for her comb. “What brought you out this way?”

  Stace answered with an untypical silence, a diffident glance at her own reflection, as though to see whether her face was clean. Stace had inherited Hal’s good looks and was always handsome so far as Carolyn was concerned, even when she was nose wriggling, lip twisting, eye slitting, as she was now. Stace flushed at Carolyn’s scrutiny and turned away, running her fingers through her short bright hair, making it stand untidily on end.

  “What?” Carolyn demanded, suddenly apprehensive.

  Stace shuddered, drew in a breath, was suddenly awash with tears.

  “Honey! Stace, love, what is it?”

  “I think maybe Luce … maybe he’s got somebody else, Mom.”

  “No! Not Luciano! I don’t believe it!”

  It wasn’t believable. If ever a man was set upon fidelity, it was Luciano Gabaldon—whether fidelity to his science, to his family, or to Stace. He was an honorable man, and if ever a man was in love with anyone, it was Luce with Stace. “I don’t believe it,” Carolyn repeated.

  “Mom, he’s gotten so funny! We used to … used to work up a storm every so often, and he hasn’t even made a move in weeks! Not weeks! And he won’t talk about it. I hint about it, he just changes the subject. Honest to God, some days I just want to give up.”

  Carolyn couldn’t stop her smile or the chuckle that came with it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Stace, even though all the romance novels would like you to believe that men exist in a state of constant tumescence, you know that’s not true. Maybe he’s having a setback with his project at Los Alamos. Men are just as distractible as females are, and God knows we’re distractible.”

  Stace sniffled, mopping at her face with the back of one hand. “Luce talks about the new containment project constantly. He goes around whistling. It’s all he can think about! He’s predicting unlimited energy from fusion within ten years!”

  Carolyn remarked dryly, “That’s what they said about fission! I hope he’ll be satisfied with less, and in my humble opinion you’ve just answered your own question. He’s preoccupied. Think of him as an artist, obsessed by a vision. He won’t let up until he makes it real. Sex will just have to take a backseat! It does, sometimes. Don’t worry about it.”

  Stace’s eyes overflowed. “Do I want to be married to some lab rat who forgets I’m even around?”

  She fled to the bathroom, drowning her sniffles in running water and muttered imprecations.

  Frowning, Carolyn took up her comb, separated her hair into plaits, and began braiding, disturbed by this evidence of unusual irritation. Ordinarily Stace had Hal’s sunny disposition. And Luce wasn’t the kind of man to risk a relationship lightly. It had to be his work obsessing him. Lifework was like that; it did obsess. Hal’s work with the Bureau had, until he’d retired; then country life had taken its place. Carolyn’s love affair with the law had. Until suddenly it hadn’t anymore.

  Lips tight, she set the memory aside. After a time Stace returned, shiny-faced.

  “I didn’t come out here to talk about Luce and me,” she said angrily as she plumped herself into the chair once more. “I didn’t come to ask advice about my personal life. I don’t w
ant advice about it. I don’t even want to think about it. What I really came for was to ask a favor.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Actually, it’s not for me.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  “Lolly Ashaler.”

  Carolyn frowned. The name was teasingly familiar. She’d heard it somewhere. Television. Morning news?

  “The baby,” Stace prodded. “In the Dumpster.”

  Oh, right. Now she remembered. “You mean the mother of the baby in the Dumpster.”

  “In a manner of speaking. You know my boss?”

  “Dr. Belmont.” The psychologist with whom Stace was serving her internship.

  “Right. She does expert-witness stuff, profiles of criminal types, omniscience in action, all that kind of thing for the district attorney’s office.…”

  Carolyn felt a momentary gulp of the spirit, an enormous hesitation, as though for one split instant the world had stopped. She made herself say the name: “For Jake Jagger?”

  “Right. El Taco Grande, himself. Rumor has it he’s going to get into politics, maybe run for governor.”

  Darkness. A red glow. Carolyn had shut her eyes not to see. Would shut her ears not to hear, if she could. What was that sign Mediterranean people made, to avert the evil eye? That’s what she needed. A way of recoiling, so as not to think about Jagger! Jagger, who had married Carolyn’s friend, Helen. Jagger, who would end up killing Helen, as he may well have killed her sister Greta.

  She took a deep, calming breath.

  Stace was looking across the room, not noticing. “Anyhow, Jagger’s office sent Dr. Belmont out to the prison to check out Lolly Ashaler, and she took me along as witness and to run the tape recorder.”

  Carolyn forced Jagger’s wolf-grin image out of her mind and tried to concentrate on Lolly Ashaler. “I see.”

  Rather surprisingly, she did remember seeing: about a month ago on the evening news. It had been Channel umph. The one that touted its ability to be on the scene, and always was, ready at airtime with some talking head blurting breathless irrelevancies before a usually unidentifiable locale, indisputably there, wherever “there” was. The beginning of the Lolly Ashaler story had differed from the usual. Less persona, more cinema verité: movement, sound, an adequacy of chill light. A March afternoon left over from winter. Cops with their collars up, breaths steaming. A paved area backed by graffiti-smeared walls, the camera moving past a stained mattress and the decomposed corpse of a recliner, then on to a Dumpster gaping like an ogre’s maw to spew a paper-wrapped bloody mess and the head of a dead newborn. The head was the only phony-looking thing in the picture: waxen and doll-like.

  Uncharacteristically, the reporter had stayed out of it and let the pitiable speak for itself, but the TV station hadn’t stayed on the journalistic high ground. All the reporters had plunged at once into avid melodrama, baying on the trail, issuing updates with glittering eyes in hushed and horrified tones as the police searched for the mother. The Mother. Then the mother who had abandoned. Then the mother who had killed. The father wasn’t mentioned, an omission that Carolyn had noted at the time. All in all, a distasteful mess.

  Carolyn frowned as she started another braid. “As I recall, the girl’s so-called friends or neighbors ratted on her. Which put an end to the hoo-raw for the nonce. The circus sort of died down.”

  “Actually, it was back in the news last night.”

  “I must have missed it.”

  “You didn’t miss much. That noxious blond reporter, Bonnie something, the one with the eyes? She put a panel together, what she called a cross section of the local public.”

  Carolyn made a face. “Did they talk about sending a message?”

  “Oh, very definitely. They want to send a strong message.”

  “The media are into messages lately. Were they for public stoning? Or should she just wear a scarlet letter M?”

  “They were talking about that woman a few years back. The one who drowned her kids. Poor Lolly.”

  “What is it you want me to do for poor Lolly?”

  “Defend her,” said Stace, looking at her feet.

  Carolyn’s face went blank. She felt it sag and close, like an old door with a loose top hinge. “The court will appoint an attorney for her, Stace.”

  “Her court-appointed attorney came up to us outside the jail to talk to Belmont, very buddy-buddy and insider-like. He thinks they ought to tank her tomorrow and set her clock for the year 3000. For God’s sake, Mother, he was wearing an Army of God button.”

  Carolyn’s lips pursed, and she clenched her teeth. A part of the American Alliance, the Army of God was a national religio-political coalition, nominally Christian, which had brought under its wing most of the factions who considered themselves traditional. Certainly an Army of God stalwart would be the worst possible defender for Lolly Ashaler. In the eyes of the Army, the girl was damned for half a dozen reasons already!

  Carolyn muttered, “The girl, Lolly … she can ask for someone else.”

  Stace gestured angrily with her brush. “I know that. You know that. She’s just turned fifteen, for God’s sake. She’s so dumb she doesn’t know what’s happening, much less what her rights are.”

  “I’m retired, Stace. Three years now.” Since spending time with Hal had become more important than anything else. Or, as she occasionally accused herself, since daily confrontations with evil had become too much to bear. Which was it? Perhaps both.

  “You’re still a member of the bar. You’re still licensed to practice.”

  “You must have a reason for asking me.” She wound the finished braid into a coronet, tucking the ends between the coils.

  “I don’t want to prejudice you with my reasons. Just talk to her, all right? I told her … I told her you would.”

  Carolyn wanted to say no. Not. Not go up against cock-o’-the-walk Jagger, with his prancy feet and his rooster stance and his dead eyes. Jagger, who was married to her friend, Helen, and how was Helen managing to survive? Or was she? God help her. Carolyn ground her teeth audibly.

  “Mom?”

  “Stace, if Jagger is prosecuting, I’d be the worst person to defend her. I lost the Wilson case to Jagger. I blame myself for what happened to Greta Wilson.” She blamed herself for believing in decency, for being blind to how far some people were willing to go to win. She blamed herself for leading Greta Wilson like a lamb to the slaughter.

  “Her sister Helen didn’t blame you, Mom. Her folks didn’t blame you.”

  No, Helen hadn’t blamed her. But, then, Helen had been married to Jagger long enough to know what he was like. If only she had told her sister Greta, or if she’d told Carolyn!

  Reading the line of her mother’s tightened jaw, Stace fell silent, and Carolyn turned back to her mirror, retrieving a handful of tortoiseshell hairpins in trembling fingers and anchoring her hair, one pin for each slow, calculated breath.

  “Great-grandma’s hairpins,” said Stace, changing the subject, letting the matter cool. “When did you start using those?”

  Carolyn paused, one hairpin halfway in. When had she? “I guess it was when I looked in the mirror and saw my grandmother’s face.” The non-Crespin grandma. The fondly remembered grandma.

  “Well, still, Mom—tortoiseshell?” Her tone was a reproof.

  Carolyn shook her head. “The turtle responsible for these pins is a long time dead. My not using the pins won’t bring turtles back.”

  Stace replied doubtfully, “I suppose that’s true. Like ivory piano keys. It doesn’t bring back elephants to junk all pianos.” She stood up, thrusting her hands into the shallow pockets of her jacket, thereby dislodging several envelopes that spilled to the floor as she scrambled to recover them. “I forgot. I stopped at your mailbox for your mail.”

  Carolyn frowned, holding out her hand. “Mail? On Sunday?”

  “Mom, it’s Monday.”

  “Is it?” Of course it was, if Stace said so. Lord, she was getting senile. W
hat was it Faye used to call it? Halfheimer’s Disease, or CRS—Can’t Remember Shit. She was forgetting all kinds of things. People’s names. Places she’d been.

  “There’s a letter from Louisiana, from Sister Agnes.”

  “Her RSVP, probably,” murmured Carolyn, sorting out the envelopes and ripping the smallest one open with her nail file. The brief note bore no pious superscription and the fewest possible words.

  Dear Carolyn, it seems ages since I’ve seen you all! Tell Ophy I am bringing oysters for all of us, especially for her, and for you. Love, Aggie. Enclosed with the invitation was a printed leaflet extolling the virtues of the contaminant-free and succulent oysters, ranch grown at the Abbey of St. Clare. Carolyn was a pig when it came to oysters. Ophy loved them, but there hadn’t been any edible on the East Coast for several years and might not be ever again.

  Stace asked curiously, “So Aggie is coming this year? She missed last year, didn’t she?”

  “She did. The abbess, Reverend Mother Elias, had died at age ninety something, and until a new one was elected, none of the sisters could get permission to do anything or go anywhere.”

  Stace leaned across her mother’s shoulder to look at the framed photograph on the dressing table: the DFC, camping it up in costume, outside the kitchen door. “How long ago was this?”

  “Your dad took that picture when I hosted the 1994 meeting. Six years ago.”

  “Why are you all dressed up like that?”

  Carolyn laughed. “We’d just remodeled the kitchen, and Sophy insisted we should have a dedication. She said the kitchen was as close as people in our culture ever got to the sacred hearth, so we ought to dedicate it as holy ground.”

  Stace, still peering at the photo, said, “That explains the drums, rattles, and panpipes, I guess. Why feathers?”

  Carolyn cocked her head, remembering Sophy’s explanation. “Symbolic, I think. Birds build nests. Humans build homes.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Actually, it was rather fun. We did some chanting in what Sophy said was her native tongue. We did some drumming, Sophy burned incense and sprinkled the room with attar of this and essence of that, and we planted some herbs in a special container on the kitchen windowsill. Sophy brought the soil and the pot and the seeds, all blessed, she said. I never asked by whom.”