Addled

by JoeAnn Hart

Madeline locked the secret compartment but did not move. Karen had been a friend, or at least it had seemed that way since they played tennis in summer and lunched in winter. And yet, where was Madeline when Karen was in her decline? She’d stopped calling, thinking that was how Karen wanted it, to be left alone. Or had Madeline just been sparing herself? And how inappropriate her response had been when the end mercifully came. No running over to the house with a warm casserole for the family. Instead, she’d called a caterer and had a seafood lasagna sent over, not even touching the food meant to ease the grief. She’d done everything expected of her, and yet it seemed to fall short of being human. After repositioning the false back of the cabinet, stacking the National Geographics, and shutting the door, she stood up and rubbed her knees. “Poor Roger.”

  Arietta gave the fire a prod. “At least we can be certain he’s keeping the matter to himself. Men don’t crow about being cuckolded. Give me the key.”

  “So much pain.” Madeline squinted against the smoke as she dropped the key into Arietta’s yellow palm. “And for what? With better birth control and abortion, old families dying out and new ones coming in, there are far fewer complicated engagements at the Club these days. Eliot and Nina were rare, and it wouldn’t have hurt anyone to let them slip through the net. Horse breeders cross siblings all the time.”

  Arietta stood up so abruptly she hit a brass andiron with her cane, causing a smoldering log to spark. “Madeline, don’t be a ninny,” she said. “Breeders can keep more detailed records than we possibly could. They have complete control, while we must make do with the information at hand.”

  To hide her agitation, Arietta turned to the marble mantel and gazed up at the life-sized portrait of the Club’s second president, Henry Fothergill, with a mustache the size of a beaver, dressed in hunting tweeds and leaning on a shotgun with a brace of pheasants at his booted feet. A bachelor to the end, he’d never once bred in captivity, but his name appeared in the book with impressive frequency in the years before and after 1900. Pale green eyes still popped up once in a while in a Club baby, but only Madeline and Arietta were in on the joke. Not that it was funny. He was, in fact, Arietta’s real grandfather. Her own mother knew this and more besides; if only she had access to this sort of information on Binkie when Arietta had become engaged. It was easy enough to gather Binkie’s social credentials, but impossible to detect his biological ones since Arietta had foolishly chosen from outside the Club. Not far enough outside, though. Ironically, for all the ways she and Binkie were incompatible, they must have had a rogue gene in common that caused bad blood. After a series of miscarriages, Mother quietly suggested she might have the wrong gander.

  So she reached outside the marriage bed (but within the Club this time, where Mother could give the all clear) to get her robust baby girls, and she was grateful for them. It was just monstrous bad luck that she’d had to sabotage their first romantic entanglements due to her own philandering. By the time they finally married it was too late. She had no grandchildren, and she never would.

  Binkie had them, however, not that he ever knew. In spite of their own bad chemistry, he was apparently more simpatico elsewhere. She remembered the heat of her humiliation each time his mistress of the moment entered the library looking like she’d swallowed a canary, and then proceeded to write down Binkie’s name as the father. He was so flagrantly indiscreet that his only good quality was that he made her look like a saint. In her generous moments, Arietta felt these children and their families to be her heirs. On bad days, she had nothing but the book. She turned to face Madeline. “We are a service to the community. If it weren’t for us, the Club would be swarming with imbeciles and lunatics.”

  They both flinched at the distant roar of a bullhorn, the police ordering protesters to move back and keep the road clear. Was Phoebe so sane? thought Madeline. Or Charles? She could think of more than a few members who looked as if their family tree never branched, but she was easily cowed in the face of fervor and so said nothing. Arietta took her role as lifeguard of the Club’s gene pool with great seriousness, but Madeline had no firm beliefs to lean on. She had nothing.

  Arietta settled herself back down in her chair like a ruffled hen and unscrewed the pistol handle of her cane. “There are things that must be done for the sake of future generations,” she said, dropping the key in the hollow compartment. “And they must be done without question. We must maintain the ancient vigor.”

  Madeline sat down at the window seat but dared not peek outside the velvet. “So what do we do?”

  “Don’t worry about Nina,” said Arietta. “Gwen tells me the girl knows nothing. Roger has at least that much sense.”

  “Maybe there’s nothing to know,” said Madeline. “Karen was not definite. She had only written possible in the book.”

  “She was being coy. Women know by whom they are impregnated, believe me.”

  “I wouldn’t know about such things,” murmured Madeline. Her words came out as a reproach.

  Arietta sniffed. “Madeline, don’t be such a prude. Look at the geese.” She reattached the handle and pointed her cane in the general direction of the lake. “For years they were thought to be faithful, but scientists have found that their eggs are fertilized by many different fathers. The geese might mate for life, but it has precious little to do with whom they carry on with. Nature does not intend for us to put all our eggs in one genetic basket.”

  “You can’t compare us to birds,” said Madeline. “Humans are complex. We have morals, not instincts.”

  “If that were true, then there’d be no need for divorce court, or the entire judicial system for that matter. Our instincts are geared toward survival, and monkeying around, if I may call it that, pays off in practical advantages for one’s issue. School admissions. Jobs. Summer rentals. You think these connections just happen? A certain amount of social glue must be squeezed out of the tube first.”

  Madeline stared at the dying fire. She should talk. She barely knew the tall, bearded man her mother claimed was her father. He’d offered marriage, but her mother refused, calling it a patriarchal plot to imprison women; then he died in a surfing accident when Madeline was still quite young. And she’d hardly been lily white herself. In her Santa Cruz days, casual sex was just that, as enjoyable and fleeting as going out to eat. It wasn’t until she met Charles at a concert that she realized there existed a stable universe to her disordered one. There he was, dragged along by a cousin from the university, so sweetly out of place in his clean khakis and polo shirt among the colorful rags and ripped jeans of her peers. While everyone else was swaying, dancing, and carrying on, he stood apart, unto himself, attentive and smiling. She loved him the first time she laid eyes on him. To her, with his even temper, self-assured air, and regard for tradition, Charles was security personified. She remembered the intensity of their desire and thought of Nina and Eliot. “Maybe this was the one great love of their lives and we’ve ruined it.”

  Arietta stood up and caressed the wrinkles from her skirt. “At their age, there is nothing easier than doing what nature intends. Biology will send them another grand passion soon enough. Come along. It’s time for drinks.”

  Madeline got up uneasily. It was time for something. She followed Arietta, as always, who hurried down the hall toward her gin martini. Madeline opened her mouth to tell her about the dark smudge of fingerprints on her skirt, and then decided, no.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Bogey

  OKAY, FOLKS, listen up,” said Gerard. “As of today, and until further notice, employees must park out by the service entrance.”

  A groan rose up from the group of twenty or so workers gathered in the kitchen on Sunday afternoon. Some of them sat on the counters, others on thrones of produce crates, and the rest just stood, ready to run. Many had to punch in just for this meeting, as it was supposed to be their day off. Barry was taking care of the grounds crew and caddies out in the parking lot, since Gerard didn’t want them in the club
-house with their muddy shoes, dirty clothes, and gosling.

  “You’re kidding, right, Gerard?” asked Vita. “That’s got to be a quarter mile away. What’s wrong with our parking lot?”

  Gerard cleared his throat and fumbled with the clipboard in his hands. A couple of sheets of paper floated to the floor. He could barely hold on to anything these days, not paperwork, not his job, not even his sanity. Luisa, beat from running the steam table, handed him his lost notes, and he nodded without looking at her. “Many of the members prefer not to use the front drive and parking area anymore, and there’s not enough room for all of us out back.” Neither did they care to drive past the billboard at the intersection, which had turned into some sort of guest book for the protesters, thickly scrawled with eco-graffiti. “If we forget about the environment, maybe it will go away”; “The trouble with man is man”; and “Remember, we all live downstream.”

  “Not enough room for us in our own space?” asked Sloane, who held her arms tightly around her torso. “I don’t want to walk that far late at night. It’s not safe.”

  “Are the members afraid of a few kids at the gate with signs and strap-on wings?” asked Vita. “After that first day, there’s not been more than a handful of them at any one time. You know that. I’ve seen you down there.”

  “While we’re on the subject, Vita,” he said, pointing a finger at her, “do not feed the vegetarians. No more cookies.”

  Vita, with perverse pleasure, had been riding out to the gates in a golf cart every afternoon to bring the kids a plate of vegan cookies, baked without dairy or eggs, because one of them had piously informed her that no species drinks the milk or eats the reproductive products of another species. She liked to watch them try to swallow.

  “A few dry cookies aren’t going to hurt anyone,” she said.

  “We don’t want to encourage them.” The police had told him the demonstrators had a right to be on the street as long as they didn’t block the entrance, and the best thing to do was to ignore them, it would all peter out on its own. But here it was, a week later, and no petering in sight. “The bottom line is, the protests disturb the members, so they want to come in by the frontage road, which has no sidewalk and, therefore, no public space for the crazies to do their dirty work. End of story.”

  To avoid the probing snouts of cameras on Monday morning, it was Clendenning who had first parked out back. He then slithered into Gerard’s darkened office with the Boston Globe rolled up in his fist, looking like he was about to house-break a puppy.

  “I only asked Bellows about the hunting season,” Gerard had pleaded. “The legal hunting season. How could I know this would happen?”

  “The man’s as suggestible as a child when it comes to sport,” said Clendenning. “As the manager, you’re the one ultimately responsible. As to whether or not you will continue to be the manager, I’ve called a board meeting for next week. We’ll decide what to do then.”

  A soldier in the war of self-preservation, Gerard then called today’s meeting to reinforce his own authority. He might not be able to control the geese, Clendenning, or the press, but he could still control the staff.

  “That’s not fair,” said Ping, one of the waitresses and a BU pre-law student. “The check-in clock should be down there too. Otherwise, we’ll have been at the Club for twenty minutes before we even start getting paid.”

  “It’s not forever, people.” Gerard turned away from her, still annoyed that Vita hadn’t asked what Ping’s major was before she hired her. “We all have to make some sacrifice. For instance, to create space, the Dumpster will be moved behind the utility buildings. Unfortunately, it will then be visible from the fifth green. Because of this, there’s no more smoking by the Dumpster. Don’t think this doesn’t hurt me too.”

  The employees growled.

  “Wait,” said Josh, one of the kitchen help. “Does this mean we have to lug the garbage all the way out there now?”

  Luisa whispered to Pedrosa, who looked at Josh in comprehension. Pedrosa’s job was just about to get that much harder.

  “That’s right, but as I said, these measures are only until the fur stops flying. Any questions?”

  The group stared in silence.

  “Good,” he said. “While I’ve got you all here, let’s go over some other issues. Standards have been pretty shoddy lately.”

  Vita could barely suppress a smirk. It was Gerard who’d fallen below the mark, in both mood and hygiene. Not that he was a mess, but compared to his old exemplary self, he was positively ragged. One collar tip of his yellow ERCC polo shirt was up, the other down. His dark hair was spiked in the back from careless combing, and one of his pleated loafers had a smudge of green goose grease along the heel.

  “First and foremost,” he said, reading from his clipboard, “there’s the matter of cutlery. Vita tells me some pieces were missing at the last inventory.” He looked up sternly and folded his arms, dropping his pen to the floor. After he retrieved it, he eyed each one of his suspects. “Well?” he said at last. “What’s going on? Is someone assembling a hope chest, or is it just carelessness?” At this he glared at Luisa, who looked to Vita for help.

  “Gerard,” Vita said, “the waitstaff and backs have been extremely careful with the garbage all summer.” She knew that for a fact because she’d been having them paw through it for goose goodies. “If I thought it was my staff, I would have taken care of it myself.”

  “What about the caddies? Are you still letting them just walk right through here?”

  Vita knew that by “them” he meant Merle. She smoothed out her apron. “What about the members?” she asked. “Ask them if they’ve been helping themselves.”

  Gerard snorted. “They hardly need our silver plate.”

  “Kleptomania is about sexual thrills, not need,” she said, and the group giggled.

  “Vita, please,” he said. “I just want everyone to be on high alert on this matter. This is no time to protect your coworkers. Theft hurts us all. Next item.” He puffed out his chest as if declaiming Shakespeare. “As it says in the Employee Manual: Members and guests will be acknowledged within thirty seconds by host or hostess. People, be on your toes. If you see someone at the door, quickly alert the host or hostess on duty. Mr. Stillington says he was kept waiting at the lectern for ten minutes the other night before someone noticed him.”

  “The man lies,” said Audrey, who worked as hostess most weeknights. “He and his party were greeted and seated as soon as he arrived.”

  “Well, he must have felt ignored somehow. Let’s move on.” Gerard looked down at his list. “Next item. Don’t let the members think you’re stupid.” He looked up at his lifeless audience. “Even if you are.” Gerard laughed, alone, then continued. “As it says in the Manual, if a member asks a question, never say, ‘I do not know.’ Say, ‘I will find out.’ Got that?”

  There was a stony moment, during which Vita passed around a tray of cranberry-nut muffins. As she moved through the group, pressing food on them, she gave each a look that begged for pity and patience.

  “And remember,” Gerard said. “Make it a game to anticipate the members’ needs.”

  “What about their wants?” said Ping. “How do we tell their wants from their needs?”

  A couple of people giggled, but not Gerard. “This,” he said, slamming his clipboard on the counter, “is the Eden Rock Country Club, where the members’ wants are their needs. And we forget it at our peril.”

  And on this confusing, dismal note, the group scattered for the day, taking their muffins with them.

  “Vita,” said Gerard, when everyone was gone, “may I have a word with you?”

  She stiffened. She’d been on edge ever since her goose from God was discovered in the skiff. Fortunately, the police had not pointed a finger at her, presuming that Mr. Bellows had hidden it there. But Gerard was sometimes smarter than he looked.

  “I don’t like the food invoices I’m seeing on my desk,” he sai
d. “Let’s not forget that we’re here to buy food, fix it up, and sell it at a profit.” He waved a frenzied hand at the many stacks of boxes in the kitchen. “Cases of this, cases of that. And most of it organic, at almost twice the price. Here, I want you to take this.” He released a glossy catalog from his clipboard and handed it to her.

  “Ugh,” said Vita. “Should I serve frozen peas in the middle of August?” She had Dr. Nicastro’s diet to think of, after all, which heavily relied on fresh vegetables. And she had to consider her geese, who ate the scraps. Quality mattered, and organically grown produce was not just healthier, it was denser and more flavorful, not engorged with chemically induced water weight.

  “I don’t think you’re giving enough consideration to prepared foods,” said Gerard. “The thing about fresh ingredients is that you never know what you’re going to get. Say, for instance, you use this instant zabaglione.” He pointed to a pale pudding on the cover. “It will behave the same way every time. Consistency is crucial. If someone returns for a great dish, it must be exactly as they had it before. Eggs can be very unpredictable.”

  “Oh, Gerard,” she said, shaking her head and holding the catalog away from her. “Talk about falling standards.”

  “I’m not saying for everything,” he said. “But take today’s brunch. You were scrambling eggs for hours.” He paged through the catalog, still in Vita’s hands. “Look at this. All you have to do is add water, seal the bag, and lower it into a simmering pot until solid. Done! Just pour it into the warming pan. And all without anyone having to crack a single shell!”

  “That’s appalling.”

  “What’s the problem? It says right here, ‘one hundred percent dried egg.’ No chemicals, no added anything.”

  “You can’t remove the soul of food and expect to put it back in the same way. Something is lost.”

  “Not taste. The salesman fixed me a sample and I couldn’t tell the difference. I’m just asking you to try. It’s safer too. We won’t have to worry about anything being undercooked this way. No salmonella.”