The Mt. Monadnock Blues

by Larry Duberstein

  When the cookies were gone, they crowded together, Tim in the middle, Billy and Cindy pressing in from either side. The three of them sat there—paralyzed, really—as their favorite show ended and the next one, whatever it was, began.

  Monty was obsessive—or compulsive. Tim was never sure of the difference. Montgomery Hergesheimer was organized, that’s the way he would have described himself. Whatever he read, whatever he ate (or intended to eat), whatever he had gleaned of his genealogy or for that matter his dog’s genealogy (along with dates of vaccinations) went into his computer and stayed there. Monty had a pension plan in his twenties and a portfolio of dummy stocks long before he had a dollar to invest. So Tim should not have been surprised that Monty did indeed have a lawyer. It wasn’t that they needed a lawyer, it was that Monty was Monty.

  It was from Attorney Phil Jellinghaus that Tim learned just how far he was from resuming his own life. He had arrived at the lawyer’s door without premonition. There were matters to discuss, Jellinghaus had said, which made sense. There must be. Then, right off the bat (as though awarding a prize) he hit Tim with this business about a Will and Tim’s being designated guardian of the children. What exactly did that mean?

  “That Billy and Cindy are yours, in effect. Yours to raise now. You are in loco parentis.”

  “Like, forever?”

  “Well, yes,” said Jellinghaus with some amusement. “In the sense that any parent has them forever. Hopefully it starts tailing off by the time they turn eighteen.”

  “But that’s ten years.” The lawyer nodded; his round friendly face wore a look of perpetual amusement, reinforced by the jug ears. “I’ll be fifty years old in ten years!”

  “Hey, so will I. Though this fifty-in-ten idea is just math to me. I’m still getting used to being forty.”

  “I’m not,” said Tim. And rethinking the postulate, he was tempted to point out he would not likely be fifty in ten years, he would likely be dead. So here was a mistake that required correction.

  “Of course,” said Jellinghaus, squeezing a rubber ball, “our youngest is fourteen. He should be launched into the world a lot sooner than either of yours.”

  “You look awful,” said Ellie, when Tim came downstairs after calling his mother that night.

  “Not an easy conversation.” Which it wasn’t, to be sure. But if Tim looked awful (and he did not doubt it a bit), it probably had more to do with his conversation with Jellinghaus earlier. He had yet to report on his disturbing new title, and he did not do so now. Instead he said, “And I’m worried about Cindy.”

  “Well, of course.”

  “The change, I mean. You didn’t notice the change in her?”

  “I guess not,” said Ellie, taken aback. Tim had been gone all day and the only change she had noticed was in him.

  “She didn’t say a single word at dinner.”

  “She ate a ton, though. And really, dinner lasted all of six minutes.”

  “She’s like a little zombie, she’s inert or something. I picked her up and it was like lifting a bag of sand.”

  “To me, she seemed lively all day. We went to the river to walk. She took my hand; she talked a lot, actually.”

  “About what? Do you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. A lot of it was what we saw—you know, the mountain laurel, nature stuff. And camp. She’s concerned that only half her camp labels are sewn on.”

  “You see? That’s so crazy. Jill was getting her clothes ready—socks, underwear—and now Jill’s dead and Cindy says her labels need sewing?”

  “Maybe there is a slight disconnect. But it’s not necessarily such a bad thing. She does have to cope.”

  “But how am I supposed to respond to it? Here I’m paying attention, so I can give her what she needs—”

  “So give her the labels. Start sewing. Camp opens on Tuesday, you know.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think they’ll give Jilly back her money.”

  “You’re saying they shouldn’t go?”

  “To camp? I never dreamed they would go.”

  “It might be worth considering. Especially if your Mom seems okay…”

  Okay? Not exactly, though Anne had subsided in the last day or so. At first she had alternated between getting on “the next plane north” and Tim getting them all on the next plane south. Tim convinced her he needed time—Lord did he!—to handle the layers of official business. But he would have to convince her anew every day.

  Anne’s inertia helped. In the years since Rex had died, she had hunkered down completely, had not spent a single night away from Berline. And she hadn’t told a soul about Jill. Hadn’t gone to town, or anywhere, in days. Any impulse to act was quickly vitiated by the utter uselessness of action—and by the sheer distance. New Hampshire, which Anne had never seen, seemed strange and very far away.

  “Maybe I should ask the shrink,” Tim said, a little bitterly. “Maybe she’ll say camp is ‘the normalcy thing.’”

  “Well it is that. The kids both think it’s …The Plan. And you know how Billy is.”

  “I do. The world ends in nuclear holocaust, but he goes off to summer camp the next day, because it’s The Plan.”

  “You could ask them.”

  “Ask the Hergies?”

  “Yes. Ask what they want to do. At the very least, it might get them to open up in general.”

  “Sure, Ell, fine. We’ll ask them.”

  “You will ask them,” she corrected him. Ellie was tired of his carping tone and tired of playing Pseudomom; tired of being taken for granted in the role. She did not expect Tim to notice her difficulties in the midst of all this, but he surprised her, snapping out of his funk.

  “You want to hear my idea for a new sitcom? A truly clueless gay guy raises two perfectly normal children. Uncle Knows Best, maybe—or no, Unk Knows Nothing. That’s it.”

  “Sounds promising, Tim. But please don’t save out a part for me.”

  “Look, Ell, I guess I’ve been clueless about you, too. I know this isn’t exactly the way you expected your week to be.”

  “Not exactly. But it’s fine.”

  He tried to take her hands, but Ellie put up her stop sign: both hands chest high, palms out. To keep Tim from mounting a phony apology, also to keep herself from sliding any deeper into self-pity. They were switching roles, and she was becoming the bitchy one now.

  “This is probably the worst time to mention South Carolina…”

  Ellie looked at him with milder disgust than she felt.

  “I know, you’re worried about Saturday. This would be later.”

  Up came the hands again, the stop sign. “Tim, I’m sorry, but I am not going to South Carolina with you. I can’t.”

  “We’ll talk about it,” he said, before she could foreclose the option entirely. But she closed it anyway.

  “No, Tim. We won’t talk about it—or we already did. But I will cover for you at the office, however long it takes.”

  Friday started and ended with J.J. Mulhern. J.J. (James Joseph, Tim had asked and been told) was the director of Mulhern’s Funeral Home in Keene. White haired, in a crisp black suit, he spoke a language so formal and polite that the subject matter could seem quotidian—as indeed it was, for him. A laminated placard reading “All Major Credit Cards Are Welcome” made it clear to Tim exactly how quotidian.

  “You would be surprised, Mr. Bannon, at how reasonably we can ship the remains to anywhere in the world.”

  The remains, however, would require no shipping. Monty was an only child, whose parents were both dead. His ashes would go with Jill’s to Berline, to be scattered or interred there. Such decisions were yet unmade as Tim moved numbly (as numbly as he could manage) through this week of awful chores and he was at his absolute numbest with Mulhern. Luckily, the man was decent, because to streamline these grim arrangements Tim would have signed on any dotted line slid across the table—and slid his major credit card right back the other way, pending what Attorney Je
llinghaus termed ‘disbursement.’

  For Jellinghaus had reassured Tim about money. “My fees will come out of the estate. So you’ll see an accounting, but never a bill.”

  All this painlessness. Mulhern and Jellinghaus both meant well, but it was Lt. Moss who faced up to the reality of pain when he handed over the contents of the car and the decedents’ clothing. This was stark, and Tim took a sickening shot to the heart as he held the mundane concrete trivia in his hands. Monty had bought raffle tickets for a 4th of July fundraiser; Jill had made a list of phone numbers for dishwasher repairmen.

  Moss grabbed Tim’s shoulders to steady him, plumbed him up like a fencepost and looked him in the eye until Tim could work his way back. (That night Moss would tell his wife he felt like a referee checking the eyes of a reeling prizefighter: “Not that I had the option of stopping it on a TKO.”)

  Goldsmith (four p.m.) was the one functionary who Tim believed might help him. All the others were wedded to past and present, whereas Goldsmith understood there would be a future. “What will your plans be?” she asked, and Tim noted the precision of her phrasing. Not what are your plans, but what will your plans be. Among other things, she was aware that he had not made any yet.

  “First I need to figure out where they’ll live.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bannon. That’s what I meant by my question.”

  “Don’t misunderstand, or judge me harshly for saying this, Ms. Goldsmith, but everyone assumes Billy and Cindy will be with me. And to me, that doesn’t seem possible.”

  “It’s not easy, I appreciate that.”

  Goldsmith displayed the smile that was not a smile. Her hands were amazingly still, at rest atop her thighs. All of her was still, in fact; she was a painting of herself.

  “My life—” Tim started. “Or lifestyle?—”

  “You are single. Unattached?”

  “Single, unattached, forty.…”

  Did they have gay people in New Hampshire? Did Olivia Goldsmith know any of them? (Hadn’t he heard something teasing in her inquisition, a subliminal invitation to confess all?)

  “And Jill never discussed this with you. The guardianship.”

  “She did, once. But it presupposed this unthinkable situation, so it was hardly a discussion. It was more like a joke. I never dreamed there was anything official, down on paper.”

  “A joke, Mr. Bannon?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Is it?”

  Oh she was shrinking him now, wangling it out of him, and Tim chose to let her have it. If he wanted some truth from her, he would have to give some up to her. But how much?

  That he was gay, obviously. That therefore he was facing a death sentence, or presumed he was, even if he expended much of his best energy pretending he wasn’t. That he suffered from The Blues! For how could he be the loco parentis of anyone when he had to travel great distances on a regular basis? Yes, his life was on hold. And the Summertime Blues, which he knew from Oldies 103 to be incurable, were so far manageable. But late September in Ireland—the Donegal Blues—that was non-negotiable.

  Meanwhile they were locked in a staredown. “You know, don’t you,” said Tim, finally.

  “I might,” said Goldsmith, extending one hand as though to accept his confession in a neat package.

  “That I’m gay.”

  “All right.”

  “All right? Meaning—?”

  “If you have concerns about privacy, Mr. Bannon, you can be sure this conversation is confidential.”

  “Sometimes I do and sometimes I don’t. It’s mostly about my mother when I do. Which seems awfully stupid when you consider that I’m forty years old.”

  “So you keep telling me,” she smiled.

  “You’d be obsessed, too, if you were a forty-year-old gay man.”

  Tim could feel himself going abrasive, but Goldsmith continued to make such riveted and empathetic eye contact he wondered if she might be coming out herself. Not only knew some, was one. He dared to ask.

  “Myself, no. Many good friends are. Mostly women—though not all.”

  “That’s, I don’t know…heartening, in a way.”

  “We aren’t cave-dwellers here. It’s really quite civilized. And a nice area for raising children.”

  “Well, thanks for the recommendation. In Boston, shrinks don’t make recommendations, they just sit and listen.”

  “If you wish to become a patient, Mr. Bannon, I’ll be happy to sit and listen. For now I’d like to get back to the question of guardianship. Would I be right in assuming your sister Erica is the alternative you have in mind?”

  “No, you would not be right and no, Erica is not an alternative.”

  “She and her husband, Mr.…Sanderson. Do they have children?”

  “Not a one.”

  “You say that so emphatically, as if the very idea was preposterous. Are they very much older?”

  “Erica is thirty-eight. Earl, I’m guessing forty-five, but a very young forty-five. I’d put his mental age at about twelve.”

  “Ah.”

  “Believe me, it’s not an accident Jill named me guardian. Yes, Ric is married and solvent and lives just over the hill here—your whole damned normalcy thing. Except they aren’t normal.”

  “Neither are you. By our society’s harsh standards.”

  “Point taken. Neither am I.”

  “So what is it about Erica that gives you such pause? Or perhaps it’s hard to say.”

  “Not hard at all.”

  She was good, was Goldsmith; no cave-dweller she. She had flushed him from the closet so easily, maybe it was unwise to throw open every door and window. And maybe it was hard to say (in a concise way that fit the little boxes of a questionnaire) precisely what was wrong with Earl Sanderson. Hard to convey how Earl recoiled from touching Billy last Christmas, for fear the boy might carry a poisonous mote from having hugged Tim first.

  “Let me put it this way. Every year Earl gets himself a new hunting dog. And every summer, when they get set to go on the road for two months, he shoots the dog.”

  “Rather than bring it along.”

  “Bring it, board it at a kennel, give it to a lonely kid. Rather than any of the above, yeah.”

  “The poor pooch must feel betrayed,” said Goldsmith, with obvious irony. Meaning to ally herself with Tim, and grant him a gentle mockery of her own tricky profession. But Tim was too worked up to catch any irony.

  “Betrayed,” he howled, with that slight and sarcastic drawl. “Psychology-wise, I’m sure you’re right. But I’m guessing what the poor pooch mostly feels is dead.”

  Tim drove back to the funeral home in what passed for rush hour traffic, a dozen vehicles in motion simultaneously. Sitting on a dumbwaiter, the two urns were more substantial than Tim expected. When Mulhern had brought up the Commingling Option (“a single container for both decedents”) Tim had assumed the issue was economic. Now he could see it in terms of portability, though the director laid that to rest with a typically gracious stroke: “I’ll walk out with you when we’re ready.”

  His next line (“Though I will need to ask for the minimum before they leave”) was uncharacteristically jarring and Tim’s doubletake was genuine. They? Leave? But that would be the decedents, of course, Jill and Monty. The director had confused Tim by granting them an active verb.

  “We understand the balance may take some time,” added Mulhern, attributing Tim’s hesitation to the financial aspect. “But policy does state we must ask for the minimum.”

  Ask? And who exactly set this policy when J.J. had his name up there on the marquee and when he was the only visible representative? Yet it was easy to make nervous fun of the grisly business Mulhern conducted; the man provided a necessary service, and presumably he had mouths to feed. Tim slid him a major credit card and then together they placed the decedents in the trunk of the Honda.

  He fully intended to hightail it straight back to Cedar Street like a good parentis, but he could n
ot get out of the blocks. As Mulhern’s back receded, Tim just sat there with the engine babbling. He paused. (The word itself occurred to him: I think I’ll pause.) Not to reflect, which seemed a terrible idea, simply to breathe: to be alone and doing absolutely nothing for one minute seemed a little brilliant.

  But the peace, the space he was desperate to create, crumbled quickly. For one thing (he reflected after all) he was not alone—his sister, his best friend on earth, was in the trunk—and for another he was perhaps more alone than he wished to be, in a larger sense. Before he could stop himself from reflecting further, he had tallied no less than eleven close friends who had died of AIDS in the last three years, and none of them even middle-aged. Even J.J. Mulhern might consider that a lot.

  It struck him that alcohol sometimes helped. Not a brilliant insight, but useful. He recalled a handsome inn, a welcoming collage of clapboards and glass, not far from the house in Jaffrey. What if he bought himself a drink or two there, took time out to breathe and even swallow. Tim voted yes, if only to get himself going from the funeral home.

  Immediately he felt lighter, disburdened; the mere prospect of alcohol helped. And it was a pleasure to drive on roads so airy and empty, flowing past summer greenery as lush as Carolina. It might be worth living here just for such easy passage, and for the parking. Everywhere you went, you pulled up to the door and parked. A person gained much more than time by means of this bounty.

  He parked at the door of the Monadnock Inn and went from the afternoon sunlight to the dark wood bar inside, where a bearded gentleman poured him a generous glass—three fingers—and disappeared into the cellar. The cozy bar (eight stools) sat at the end of a vast foyer and dining room, but Tim was the only inhabitant and gentle hornflavored jazz, music so soft it might be sifting from a room upstairs, was the only sound. Finding his smiling face among the bottles arrayed before the mirror, Tim felt a definite attachment to this place. He would never have to worry about bumping into Earl Sanderson here.

  Sane. That was the word. To sail over smooth uncluttered roads and make easeful pitstops at charming country taverns that had no attraction for Earl would make a wonderfully sane existence. No problem swallowing this bourbon. Right now his glottis (or whatever it was) was working fine.