by Jonathan Dee
“I have some new business,” the old woman said, “if everyone else is quite through.” Karen took the cap off her pen again, flexing her fingers, disappointed but also curious.
“I have decided to retire from the board,” Mrs. Elliot said, her hand still floating slowly back down toward her lap. “Effective immediately. I wanted to wait until the end of the meeting so as not to disrupt.”
There was a confused pause. “But why?” Mr. Peck finally asked, in a tone of genuine concern.
“I have the cancer,” Mrs. Elliot said. “I don’t care to discuss what kind.”
Karen did not know whether any of these people ever saw or spoke to one another apart from this one day every year. That still added up to something, since she knew that at least three of the current board members had served for more than twenty years. Mr. Peck looked absolutely stricken. For a moment the dark-paneled room took on a quality that stirred and conveyed all the bad news that had ever been delivered there.
“Please let the minutes reflect,” Mr. Peck said hoarsely, without once looking at Karen, “the board’s unanimous resolution thanking Deirdre Elliot for her years of devoted service, and expressing our confident prayers for her speedy and complete recovery.”
“Yes, well,” said Mrs. Elliot. “Thank you for that. Now the new business, obviously, is the appointment of my successor.”
“I don’t think there’s any need to be in a hurry about that,” Ms. van Aswegen said with great feeling, but a look from Mrs. Elliot silenced her.
“I would like my replacement to be female,” she said, without elaboration. “With that in mind, I think there is an obvious candidate right here in town.”
She paused a few seconds until everyone, Karen included, understood she was talking about Rachel Hadi. The prospect was approved in principle; Karen could tell the others were enthusiastic about it but didn’t want to appear so, out of respect for Mrs. Elliot, even though she was the one somewhat impatiently moving the whole plan forward. “Now, I don’t know her personally,” the old lady said, “but someone here must.”
Yet no one did. They all looked at one another sheepishly. Not even the New York contingent seemed able to claim a social acquaintance with her; “different generation,” Mr. Peck said with a rueful frown. Karen almost raised her own hand—they’d met, they’d spoken, their kids went to the same school—but she had a sense this would not be embraced as a solution to their etiquette problem. In the absence of a more socially graceful option, Ms. van Aswegen said she would make the inquiry herself, discreetly, on the board’s behalf. The meeting was adjourned. Mr. Peck slowly walked Mrs. Elliot to the portico, her arm through his, to wait for her car.
Karen went to the fridge and unpacked her lunch at her desk. Her window faced the grounds, not the parking lot, so she couldn’t see everyone depart, but in another half hour or so the huge house behind her was silent. From her desk she could watch one or two of the board members strolling the lightly roped garden paths, reading the brochures, folding and stuffing them in their back pockets. She’d rewritten parts of that brochure herself. It was a sunny day, one of the first ones. Some of the flower beds were still under tarps.
Back in October, Haley’s fifth-grade class had come to Caldwell House for a picnic. Haley had visited her mother’s office before, and she remembered where its window was; so she waved at it when the line of kids passed by, but they had agreed in advance she would not come inside the mansion that day, nor would Karen go out. Too embarrassing. Karen ached for Haley nearly all the time these days. She didn’t seem to have many friends anymore. There was no good way to talk about it because even bringing it up would seem cruel. Not that Haley seemed outwardly unhappy or anxious; she was self-sustaining in the way she had always been. She talked less, though. It was the dawn of the middle-school years, the age of self-consciousness, for girls especially, and it was hard for Karen to watch her only child learning to keep her inmost thoughts to herself.
A week after the board meeting—with the house still closed for the season, and a deep chill in every room that made it seem colder inside than out—Karen was asked to accompany Ms. van Aswegen and Rachel Hadi on a tour of Caldwell House. The director was beside herself with nerves. She’d asked Karen along mostly in case her mind went blank and she forgot some detail about the history of the house. When Karen appeared in the office doorway with her overcoat on, her boss practically hissed at her. “Suck it up,” she said. “We are trying to impress somebody here. We don’t want her to think we are in some kind of ruin.”
It’s not like she’s looking to buy the place, Karen thought. Or maybe that was somehow the plan? Anyway, fine, she left her coat in her nice warm cubicle and made sure at least there was coffee for everyone. Rachel Hadi showed up on time, in her black SUV, and she walked across the gravel of the parking lot without so much as a jacket on; she was a slight woman, though very fit, but she did not seem to acknowledge the weather at all. “I know you,” she said to Karen. Not in an especially friendly way: more like miffed that she couldn’t remember from where. She was carrying a tote bag from Asana, which was some kind of high-end meditation center or spiritual retreat in Stockbridge. It was right smack in the center of everything but Karen didn’t know anyone who had even seen the inside of it.
“This is Karen Firth,” Ms. van Aswegen said, “she’s my assistant here. So I thought we’d begin with the house and then move out briefly to the gardens, is that all right?” Karen noticed, not for the first time, that something about the house itself seemed to make people more formal, more obsequious, yet also ruder. The director was normally pretty nice to her.
“The Caldwell Trust was established in 1938, the year of Winston Caldwell’s death,” she intoned as they walked up the curving main staircase to the second floor, where it was even colder. “The house and the legendary gardens have been open to the public every year since. Prudent investment, by the board, of the interest on the original endowment has enabled us not only to maintain the grounds as they were when Mrs. Caldwell was alive but to keep them open to the public for the lowest possible admission fee.”
Rachel Hadi didn’t look at the director as she spoke, which was probably what enabled her to get through her speech so smoothly, Karen thought. They walked into the master bedroom, with its stripped, magnificently scrolled wooden bed, its two wardrobes and one spare, uncomfortable chair. “This is the master bedroom,” Ms. van Aswegen said compulsively.
Rachel stepped over the low thin rope meant to prohibit visitors from lying on the bed and ran her finger appreciatively along the wood. “I’ve heard the basic story,” she said. “They couldn’t have kids, is that it?”
“Well, it wasn’t that they couldn’t,” the director said. “This bed was the one they slept in on their honeymoon in Venice. Mr. Caldwell had it shipped here at great expense, after his wife fell ill.”
But their guest had already turned away from the bed and was heading back toward the upstairs hallway.
“Many of the flowers, too, were shipped here from Europe,” Ms. van Aswegen said, her voice a little more shrill now, at least to Karen’s ear. “Some of them, the perennials, bloom here to this day. The whole place is—well, I like to think of it as a love story.”
Rachel had paused at the small, cathedral-style window at one end of the long corridor, the window Caldwell had added so that his wife could look at her gardens, and signal instructions to the gardeners, when she was too sick to venture downstairs. Karen hung back discreetly. She was freezing. She thought of asking if anyone needed more coffee, but the silence just then seemed difficult to violate.
Rachel turned around with a genial, patient smile that seemed to fix the director where she stood. “What else do you want to show me?” Rachel said.
They toured the ground floor: the dining room with its ornately painted ceilings and impossibly long table, the modest ballroom where visitors danced and where later townspeople came to see Mrs. Caldwell’s body lying in stat
e (though the director omitted that detail), the modestly ugly offices, the old kitchen in which only a refrigerator now functioned. Something had gone wrong, though Karen was not sure where or when; she was aware of it mostly via the tremor in the director’s increasingly loud voice. Maybe it was the absence of visitors, or maybe it was the weather outside, where the daylight was already faltering even though the day itself seemed only half over, but the whole place, which Ms. van Aswegen tried so hard to portray as a sanctuary of beauty and taste and a vital part of the Berkshires’ link to its own history, just seemed redolent of death. The three women went out and shivered for a few moments on the vast rear patio, where in the old days parties of up to a hundred were entertained and which for years was rented out for wedding receptions until one unfortunate incident about a decade ago.
“Well, thank you,” Rachel said abruptly. “It was a privilege to meet you, and to have a private tour of this beautiful home.”
The director’s eyebrows soared. “Of course,” she said, “the real jewel of the place, which we have yet to tour, is the gardens.”
“Oh, sure,” Rachel said. But she didn’t move. “Listen, I don’t want to lead you on. I’ve asked around and this place seems to run pretty smoothly—you got full tax-exempt status back in 2002, is that right?”
The director smiled gamely.
“As you can imagine, I’m already somewhat overcommitted. We left our full-time home in New York but I didn’t think it would be right to abandon our charitable commitments there as well. I am so sorry to have to decline your very kind invitation, but I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone else willing to take on such a prestigious responsibility.”
The director had begun nodding about halfway through this speech and, now that it was over, seemed unable to stop. “Well, of course we thank you,” she said, “and we understand completely, of course. Karen, will you walk Mrs. Hadi to her car?”
“What?” Karen said, but it was too late, her boss had already taken Rachel Hadi’s hand in hers and released it and was disappearing through the patio door.
They watched her go. “Jesus,” Rachel said. “Do people never get said no to up here? I thought I was pretty nice about it.” She turned and stared at Karen, as if for the first time. “Firth is your name? I’ve seen you at school things, I think. Your husband’s the hunky contractor.”
“Yes,” Karen said icily. She felt a prick of loyalty, though she wasn’t quite sure to whom or what. “Our children are in the same class.”
“We should be wearing coats,” Rachel said. “It’s freezing in here. You don’t smoke by any chance, do you?”
Karen shook her head.
“Of course you don’t. Nobody around here does. Stupid question. Well, look, you really don’t have to walk me to my car, I’m sure I can—”
“No, that’s okay,” Karen said, not really in control of what she was saying. She went to the entrance hall, opened the door, and gestured through it.
The two of them walked across the parking lot, a light rain now on their faces. Karen didn’t completely dislike this woman—in person she was dominant, unafraid, much different from what Mark had led her to believe—but at the same time she had an impulse to harass her, just a little bit, by walking so conspicuously beside her, as if they were friends. They reached the car and Karen pointed to the Asana bag. “What’s that place like?” she said baldly. “I’ve always wanted to check it out, but it’s too expensive.”
Rachel stared at her. “It’s very spiritual,” she said finally. “You’d probably love it.”
She edged out into traffic and was gone almost before Karen realized she was still standing there watching. She went back inside and put her coat and gloves on; van Aswegen had apparently already left. It was true that Caldwell House didn’t really need money. Maybe it was more about wanting the whole operation to be taken seriously, to be seen, from above, as socially worthwhile. In any event, Karen and her boss never spoke of that afternoon again—to each other, at least—not even a week later, when a check arrived in the mail, signed not by Rachel but by the First Selectman himself, for twenty-five thousand dollars, payable to the Friends of Caldwell House.
IS EVERYBODY HAPPY?—
POSTED 07/05/2005 AT 12:49 A.M.
There was an old jazz bandleader named Ted Lewis who was famous for saying that. He was a huge star at one time—there was a movie made about him. He wore a battered old top hat onstage. He called himself the “High-Hatted Tragedian of Song.” He was just an okay clarinet player, and he couldn’t really sing that well either, but people loved him, partly because he wasn’t afraid to be as corny as hell. All through the Depression, he would play these hard-luck tunes—he once had a #1 hit with a song called “In a Shanty in Old Shanty Town”—and onstage, between numbers, or sometimes even during numbers, he would turn to the audience with a big smile and shout,
“Is Everybody Happy?”
This line has been going through my head non-stop. I think about it when I walk up and down Main Street in Howland; I think about it when I stop in at Daisy’s for a coffee; I think about it when I drive around the county for my work, and see the Berkshire range looking so green and inviting, just as it probably looked a hundred or two hundred years ago. And I think about it when I open up my annual property tax bill. I think yours probably looks about the same as mine, if you live in Howland anyway. It’s smaller. Money that I worked hard to earn stays in my pocket where it belongs. I spend that money in town, and it boosts the local economy, and everybody’s better off—that simple, simple truth that tax-and-spend liberals have to jam their fingers really deep into their ears not to hear.
And I ask myself: Is everybody happy?
The answer seems to be yes, but I wonder. Let’s not forget what’s making it all possible. We have basically allowed ourselves to return to colonial times: we serve at the pleasure of King Philip. King Philip pays for the shortfall in the school budget, he pays for the shortfall in road maintenance, he pays for the shortfall in the recreation budget. I don’t think the town of Howland necessarily runs any better—or even has less government, really—than it did before we elected him King. I just think we don’t notice it as much, because we don’t have to pay for it ourselves anymore. We’ve sold it to him. We’ve sold him the town.
And if we’ve sold it to him, then it’s his to do with as he wants, right?
Maybe he doesn’t want anything. Maybe he truly is a good guy, with all of our best interests at heart. I mean, billionaire hedge fund operators are famous for having the little guy’s best interests at heart, right?
That was sarcasm, in case you missed it.
My point is: what looks from the outside like it might be some kind of libertarian paradise is actually the ultimate nanny state. Don’t believe me? The scuttlebutt already is that King Philip is planning to impose a town curfew, one that would override the state law that forbids bars from serving drinks after 2 A.M. So what, you say. I don’t even hang out in bars, what do I care? Well, ask yourself what your recourse will be if he decides to extend that curfew to all citizens of Howland. Because he could do it. He controls everything here now. Not because he took power, but because we gave it to him.
Remember, Citizens: When it comes to government, taxation is not the enemy.
Dependency is the enemy!
—PC Barnum
Comments (6):
—First!
—Jeez you libertarian assholes are never satisfied. This sounds like Ayn Rand’s wet dream?
—I don’t know PC…he cut taxes…everything’s running smoothly…not sure what you’re complaining about
—have you seen this douchebag in his sweater vest tho? Eating by himslf in the diner every day? rotflmao
—Meet hot singles in your area!: [link]
—I totally agree, PC. I love this whole mindset about how billionaires are morally incorruptible! How the F do you think they got to be billionaires? Quid pro quo, baby!
&n
bsp; —You keep telling it like it is, PC! We here out in Colorado are following your every word!
RAILROAD DAYS A FULL-STEAM SUCCESS!
Unseasonable Weather Leads to Crowds
Greater Than Expected
BY ABIGAIL BOGERT
Howland’s local commerce received a huge pre-season boost from the first annual Railroad Days Celebration last weekend. A spokesperson for the Board of Selectmen said the event was a great success and will certainly be repeated next year.
The revival of Railroad Days, a Howland tradition through the 1950s, was conceived by Andrew Durning, who owns Mountain Range Sporting Goods on Melville Road. “This area has a lot of history that even longtime residents don’t know about,” he said. “I thought we should celebrate that. At the same time, I thought it might be a nice way to give some locally owned businesses a lift, during what’s usually a down period between Labor Day and the ski season.”
At the old depot building, which runs behind the parking lots on the west side of Route 41, local volunteer re-enactors took children (of all ages) on a ride to the siding and back in a genuine, refurbished steam engine. The old Berkshire railroad ceased service to Howland in 1977; the late First Selectman Marty Solomon saved the depot itself from teardown in 1995 and oversaw its conversion into an indoor mini-mall. Staffers in the Depot shops wore historically accurate 19th-century garb while at work. The attention to detail, courtesy of Corinne Butler and her staff at the Berkshire Historical Society, was remarkable!