Whatever Lola Wants

by George Szanto

  The door opened. Carney remained still, holding her cool hand.

  A man’s voice spoke by his ear. “You have to leave, sir.”

  Carney felt a pressure on his arm, pulling him to the door. He yanked his arm away. “Just another few seconds, please.” He leaned over Julie, saw her eyes again for the first time in thirty years. Too dark to truly tell, but he thought he saw the same fine sweet blue. Her eyelids didn’t blink, she stared only at the ceiling. He placed a light kiss on her forehead, a cool forehead. He whispered, “Goodbye.” He turned and let the man’s hand guide him from the room.

  He drove home, to the farmhouse. She’s right. I am a selfish selfish man.

  He had to speak about Julie. To Bobbie? But he said nothing to Bobbie. It took him five days to call Charlie, who sat with him while they wasted themselves with a bottle of bourbon. Carney cried, furious at himself. Charlie had little to say, except that it had hit Julie out of nowhere. Almost exactly four years ago. An auto-immune attack, the body’s own defence system assailing the joints, new blood vessels swelling the joints, stiff and crippled joints. Six months from onset to no longer being able to walk. None of the therapies worked. And she’d been deteriorating from then on. She’d tried to starve herself to death, but they fed her intravenously. And she’d made Charlie promise not to tell Carney where she was.

  2.

  John Cochan strode up the one-time nave at precisely 8:37 near the end of June, just as he did on most mornings when in Richmond. Setting Intraterra North’s headquarters in the old church made him part of the community, an insider. No room dividers here, every aspect of Terramac connected with the others. Halfway up the walls ran a walkway from which little offices enclosed in plexiglass jutted out, a kind of shelving for desks and their people. The ground floor was an open space, work tables, surfaces cluttered with electronic gear. People conferred, yet the room stayed calm, thanks to sound-deadening walls and a buffered ceiling.

  At the far end five steps led up to the old chancel. The stage with plexiglass facade was separated from the hall and divided into two offices, each with a large wooden desk, surveying the technological ground floor. His own office on the right, Aristide Boce’s on the left. Boce usually spent two-three days at Intraterra’s Montreal headquarters.

  At precisely 9:10, as most mornings, the phone rang. Yakahama Stevenson calling from Terramac City. Vice-President for Planning, Stevenson preferred on-site work. A week ago, amidst the thunder of a dozen machines, after months of measurement and a marathon calculation stint at his computer, Yak had insisted that a third of a mile below ground in the darkness under nature’s roof, there had to be a truly huge chamber. His reckoning estimated it as much as half a modest mall long and the height of a cathedral. But how did it lie, this space carved out long ago by the roar of mighty water tearing through sandstone, leaving the surrounding granite bare? Two years ago Yak and Johnnie had hypothesized such a river once ran deep under ground, now a remnant of its prehistoric volume, rising to the surface as cool springs, perhaps feeding Lake Champlain or silently seeping into the bed of the Sabrevois River.

  So Yak over the last week had taken responsibility from Harry Clark, Chief of Architecture, for setting, late in the evenings, half a dozen small blasts deep below, down where only the most trusted Intraterra employees went, a secret kept from the hundreds of aboveground workers; though rumors did arise. The charges were laid by Clark’s first-rate demolitions man, Jake “Bang” Steele. The last two little detonations had established the area, empirically testing Yak’s equations. Now on the phone excitement filled Yak’s voice: “I think we found it, Handyman.”

  “How big?”

  “Not clear yet. But pretty damn big. We’ll know tonight.”

  “Good.” Johnnie smiled. “Go-o-o-o-d. See you tonight.” Just where would they blast? Not by the little curving passage, please not there.

  •

  I just caught a glimpse of Lola, drifting in the eternal infinite realm, our eir. She didn’t look my way. Doesn’t she care anymore? I keep saying to myself, You’re an Immortal, she’s a God, how can all this matter so to you?

  Anger. Fear of loss. Untenable to feel like this. Damn!

  •

  3.

  With scribbled directions to Magnussen Grange, fly rod, cello, and hard-hat in the trunk, Carney eased his Jaguar toward Burlington, into and out of Richmond, a couple of sharp-curved miles to a covered bridge across a burbling stream, Gambade Brook. East along country roads to a white gate.

  He still felt shaken from seeing Julie. That such a beautiful human being had been reduced to deadened skin and swollen joints, this was a great sorrow. For the world. For himself. A tragedy for Julie.

  Milton Magnussen’s phone call had carried the weight of fear and concern. The Terramac project was daily becoming more visible, more outrageous, helicopters battering the air overhead, busloads of workers down from Quebec, massive deliveries. Theresa on her own had filed for an injunction to keep Cochan from continuing. Intraterra immediately slapped a lawsuit on her, the requested injunction was turned down, the suit stood in place. More worrying, half a month ago Cochan had made an offer to buy the Magnussen land, all of it, for $10 million; if the offer was accepted he would drop the lawsuit as well. Of course they’d refused. Then last week they received a second offer, a sharp formal letter, the price now $9 million. And no mention of the lawsuit.

  So. Could C. Carney come out to the Grange? Despite what he might assume, Theresa admired Carney’s work. She’d read about the lead decontamination camp he’d set up in Idaho, and seen Red Adair on TV calling Carney the best there was, and heard on the radio about the coal-mine fire in West Virginia. In what sounded like a well-timed afterthought Milton let Carney know that Gambade Brook, where it flowed through Magnussen land, held some first-class trout and these days pretty much nobody fished there.

  •

  Lola’s back! Here at my side! She says nothing of where she’s been. Her eyes, though turned my way, seem trance-like. But she’s listening again. Her smile, small as it is, propels me. I’ve caught her up on the down below.

  •

  Beyond the gate Carney saw a large white-clapboard house, windows trimmed in green, a wrap-around porch, solar roof-panels. He turned in and parked on rough grass beside a brown van. He walked up a ramp to the porch. His shin, still strapped, ached not at all, despite the hot and humid July afternoon. He knocked.

  Dr. Theresa Bonneherbe Magnussen unlocked the screen. “Glad you made it, Carney.” She set her chair in reverse, pulled the door open, and held it in place with the chair wheel. A solid handshake. A woman about thirty appeared behind the chair. “Feasie, this is Carney. Carney, Feodora. We alone get to call her Feasie.”

  Feodora stuck out her hand. “Welcome.” She stood tall and well-rounded, as by country living and solid eating. “Come in.”

  The screen door slammed and Carney entered Magnussen Grange. Pleasantly cool inside, out of the midsummer sun. Polite questions about the drive. Years ago, Theresa explained, Milton had moulded the old farmhouse to fit her needs and wishes—colonial furniture, many bookshelves still overflowing, shiny long-plank oak floors. The ramps between rooms on different levels were new and removable. After the stroke they’d moved to a smaller house outside Burlington. But she’d be staying at the Grange tonight. Milton too. Feodora offered cold sweet cider.

  “Thanks.” Today, Carney noted, Theresa wore her hair in a single long white braid.

  “Don’t let her get riled, Mr. Carney. These days she blows up at a bird flying the wrong way. I’ll be right back.” Feodora left.

  Carney said, “Impressive library.”

  “Only the rag-ends here, storage, reference, two more rooms upstairs, a lot already in the new place. This is the realm of my previous life. It’s too scattered, can’t ever find things I need. Last week I tried to track down what Augustine used for contraception, took me two days.” She nodded, chuckling at her reference, whatever
it was. “Sit down, sit down—no, not there, here!”

  “Theresa. Some calm, please.” Feodora set a tray with a jug and three glasses on a little table. “You know better.”

  “I am calm, dammit.” She nodded at Carney. “Though sometimes I need to get mad.”

  Feodora poured. “Avoid that, Theresa.” She handed her mother, then Carney, a glass.

  Carney sipped. “Delicious.”

  “Last year’s.” Theresa gestured to the back window. “Great trees. Season’s late this year, apples’re scrawny. Perfidious acid rain.”

  “Ti-Jean says he’ll fertilize different this fall.” Feodora spoke in serene phrases, as if designing a tone to soothe her mother’s vexations.

  “He’s smart, Ti-Jean.” She glanced over to her daughter. “You’ll have to forgive Feodora, she’s got a one-track mind about my health. Like Milton. He brought me back. From the stroke. They’re both wonderful but they all think I’ll live forever.”

  Carney looked at her. “Milton did a great job.”

  Feodora smiled and shook her head. “Theresa wasn’t about to let go.”

  “The donkey-doctors gave up on me. Chemicals to send me into gaga-space, turn my brain circuitry soggy.”

  “Enough.” Feodora lay her hand on her mother’s arm. “We’re here, and it’s a quiet day.”

  Theresa nodded. “Some good trout in the stream. Did Milton say? Wish I could show you. Wonderful place, this Grange.”

  Carney smiled. “I’d like to try.” Something easing about Feodora’s care of Theresa.

  Feodora said, “You’ll catch.”

  “We rebuilt the place. Ten-twelve years back.” Theresa looked around the room. “How long ago, Fease?”

  “Theresa and Milton lived here a long time, they’re still moving out. We live here now, Ti-Jean and me.” She smiled. “Milton and Theresa’re staying a couple of days.” She glanced gently at Theresa. “They sleep on the couch down here now, Theresa can’t really get up the stairs. They rewired it, replumbed it, insulated it, drywalled it. 1979, 1980.”

  Carney nodded in sympathy, recalling his own version of gutting and restoring.

  “That long ago. Huh! Milton did a lot of it himself. The kids helped, have to give them that. And now we got that monkey-dump Cochan down the road.”

  Feodora scowled gently, then turned to Carney. “We’re pleased you’ll take another look at what Cochan’s doing. Real lucky Theresa read your book.”

  “A lucky coincidence.”

  “Coincidence?” Theresa hunched toward Carney. “You believe in coincidence?”

  “Don’t you?”

  She shook her head. “Over the long haul we create our coincidences. They’re not out there waiting for us.”

  Carney sipped his cider. “Have you been out to the Terramac site?”

  “Me? He’d never let me in.” She shook her head. “You go. Find a way to stop him. Make that happen. Nothing happens if we don’t make it happen.” Theresa Magnussen lifted her glass and sipped. “You put yourself in a certain place. Where you want to be, need to be. Wouldn’t work for me with Cochan. But I am in the right place sometimes. If once in a while it’s also the right time, I’ve got myself to thank. Not some coincidence.”

  “So me being here isn’t a coincidence.”

  She snorted. “I read your book, I wrote you. Milton called you. Whatever it takes to lead us, yes and to confine us, we create that for ourselves, we choose it. We call it happenstance. And do we think this is wonderful? Course not. We step away, we say, ‘Just a coincidence.’ We take no responsibility. Even for our hopes.”

  “And if by some chance you hadn’t read my book?”

  “That’d be impossible. You wrote it for me. Thank you. There’s a harmony to the strings of chance, friend Carney.”

  Carney laughed. “The strings of chance?”

  “Most of us, we let the chance slip by, we even push it away. And then it’s too late.”

  And how does her family deal with this woman of the impatient opinions? Carney turned to Feodora. “You were going to tell me about Terramac.”

  Theresa answered. “Handy Johnnie owns the county.” She shook her head. “A slime.”

  “Theresa. Please!” Feodora spoke sharply. Theresa shrugged, but nodded. Feodora said to Carney, “Some say he’s our grand benefactor, others that he’s destroying everything here.”

  “I’ll go see what’s going on there now. But if he’s playing by the rules—”

  “He makes his own rules,” Theresa growled. “A slug who’s oozed his way up from south of the line. Lexington.”

  “Lexington?”

  “You know. Cochan Pharmaceuticals. He sold it off. Remember the lawsuits? Birth defects. The buyer-boys ended up with pill bottles full of dynamite.” Though she spoke softly her cheeks had gone mottled. “Deserved it, the bastards.”

  Feodora crouched beside the chair. “Want one of your soothants?”

  Theresa nodded.

  Feodora said to Carney, “Please, you won’t talk to her till I get back?”

  “Fease, I’m not unrelaxed, I’m only trying—”

  “Mother. Please.”

  “Yes, Feodora.” White blotched her reddened face.

  Feodora left. Carney got up, looked around. Beside one bookshelf a wedding picture in black and white caught his eye. A broad man with black hair parted in the middle, heavy forehead, round face, large ears, a three-piece tweed suit, and paisley tie. And a lovely blond woman, bobbed hair an aura round her head, her tiny mouth dark, lips near to a bow, buxom, a slender waist. She wore a knee-length shirtwaist dress, light in color. Both were in their mid-twenties. She was holding his arm, looking up at his face, admiring. The young Theresa, a beauty.

  •

  “Holy shit,” I heard Lola whisper.

  I turned to her. She glowed in purple light. Her eyes held mine. She was here, she was safe, she was listening. “What a way for a God to speak,” I scolded. But I did smile.

  “She looks like I once did.” Lola shuddered a little.

  I studied her face. Memory? “Maybe a little,” I conceded.

  “What would I have come to look like over the years, I wonder.”

  “Hard to say.” Something was seriously wrong here. Gods don’t concern themselves with such questions. Had Lola lived she’d have been seventy-six this year. She died at thirty-six, resplendent as I see her now. She overdosed, they said; an accident. Her death turned out to be the second biggest news story of that year, 1963. I’d been up here four years already and had never heard so much commotion. She died in Connecticut, her big house on the Sound. It’s at the southernmost edge of my down below, just about as far as I can see.

  “Maybe something like Theresa,” she murmured. “That’d be good.”

  I stared at her. Lola and Theresa.

  “She’s kinda amazing, you know. I would’ve liked to be amazing.”

  “You were, Lola.” You still are, I said silently.

  “All that range of emotions. Way more than pleasure. I don’t even have a wisp of a memory of feeling anger and fear and those things.” She shook her head, marveling.

  •

  Theresa’s eyes had fallen closed. Her drawn-in cheeks reduced her. Carney sat.

  She’d heard him move and looked over. “Married, Carney?”

  “You should stay quiet.” He waited. “I used to be. Years ago.”

  Theresa nodded. “One of the ravages.”

  “Marriage, or its end?”

  “Forty years, Carney. Can you imagine that? Forty years of living with the same man. That’s a bond. You’ll meet him at supper.” She did sound calmer. “Children?”

  Carney cradled his glass. “Nope.” And a relief. “How many do you have?”

  Theresa seemed to think about that. “Four?”

  Carney grinned. “But you’re not sure.”

  “I’m sure I haven’t been their happiness. They came along and each in turn endured me.”


  “Feodora, and—?”

  “One son, three daughters. Sarah was first and left the house first. Later she made a rotten marriage. Anyway that’s over. The twins came next, Leonora and Feodora. Leasie and Feasie.” She grunted. “We labeled ’em the Noodles ’cause right away they grew tall, skinny too when you compare them with me and Milton. Feasie married Ti-Jean, good for her, widower, eleven years older than Feasie, raising a daughter by himself, great kid. You’ll meet Ti-Jean tomorrow. He made Fease get some meat on the bones. Leasie never married, too late now.” She shook her head. “They’re okay. And Karl, he’s the youngest, he turned Catholic, can you believe that? After the blue-ribbon atheist upbringing we gave him. And after following his so-called dream, sowing more oats than’s good for any man. And along came a couple of offspring. That he talks of.” She nodded to herself. “Two little girls. Nice kids.”

  •

  Lola’s fingers found my forearm, as if to draw me back. “Ted—”

  “Yes?” A touch from her set my bone-memories atremble.

  “I need to interrupt for a minute. I have to ask you something.” She spoke softly, as if in fear of being overheard. She found my eyes with hers, so large and green, those shafts of purple.

  I would tell her anything. Almost. “Yes?”

  “Can Gods dream?”

  “I don’t know.” A scary question. “I doubt it.”

  “I think I had a dream a little bit ago.” She smiled, pleased with herself.

  “Oh?” I spoke as lightly as my throat allowed. “About what?”

  “Myself. Me and my lover. From long ago. A very wealthy man, I knew that.”

  “Ah,” I said. “And?”

  “Nothing. I was with him. His face wasn’t clear, nor where we were. Just him and me.”

  I heard myself say, “Strange.”

  “Yes, isn’t it.” She took her fingers from my arm, dropped both her hands down to her lap, sat primly, stared ahead. “Well, I had to ask you that.” She smiled to herself.

  A memory. A dream. A lover. It took a time, relocating my story.