Eight
Over the weekend, the snow vanished except in shadows and on the north sides of hills. She was hunting for clean hiking socks when a knock thudded on the sliding glass door: Quinn Morrow in a red-and-black wool shirt. “I was hoping you hadn’t gone out yet.”
Coming in, he handed her a long, thin white package, Bac written on it in ballpoint scrawl. “From our hog,” he said. “Had it smoked out in Fountain Springs. It’ll wreck you for that store-bought stuff.”
“So nice of you,” she said, and briefly considered inviting him and Caleb for dinner. But she had little to cook in the house.
“I was just heading out,” she said, pointing to her hiking boots by the door. “Or I’d offer you coffee.”
“That’s okay. I’m heading out myself.”
He’s too solitary and grumpy, Cress thought, to want company.
“You guys knock off early,” she said.
“We work six to two or three,” he said. “Sometimes we go back to it after dark. No point in being up here if you can’t enjoy the country. I’ve been meaning to ask—I see you come down into the meadows. Is there a trail?”
* * *
They switchbacked down through young pines and snow patches to the top of the first meadow, green-gold in the pale fall sunlight. “This was my secret spot as a kid,” she said. “It looks like a place where fairies frolic, until you try to walk across and find out it’s a stinky bog.”
Quinn, too, had come to the mountains constantly as a child. His grandparents and two uncles had cabins on Noah Mountain, along the North Fork of the Hapsaw. (“Maybe six, seven miles from here as the crow flies, but forty-some by car,” he said.) He’d run in a clutch of cousins and neighbor boys. The men took them hunting and fishing, and every weekend included a music night, when half the mountain was at the house picking and singing.
“You never wanted to stay home in Seal Beach?”
He turned with such a shocked, sharp look, Cress stopped in her tracks. “Who said I was from Seal Beach?”
“You did. At poker night.”
His face relaxed. “Oh, that’s right.”
And no. He’d only wanted to be on Noah Mountain. His friends were all there, and also everything he loved to do—hunting, fishing, exploring. Intermittently, his family moved to the ten acres his father inherited. Today his whole family lived in the area. His mom and siblings. Quinn was the oldest. Nine years after him came Caleb, and nine years after him came their sister, Rosie, who lived in Sawyer with a husband and new baby.
“Big gaps,” said Cress.
“Same with my kids,” he said. “Annette’s seventeen and Evan’s eight.”
“Funny how those patterns come down through a family,” Cress said, and calculated. “Does this mean we’ll be welcoming a new little Morrow next year?”
“Hope not,” he said. “I’ve changed enough diapers for one lifetime.”
“And Caleb’s kids? Same gaps?”
“Two years apart. More like their mom’s side.”
They had come around on the fire road to the far side of the first meadow and now passed through a small woodlot to the second. “I haven’t officially met Caleb’s wife,” said Cress.
“Candy?” Quinn’s face went hard.
He’d spent a lot of time with Candy, he told Cress, when Caleb first brought her home. Noah Mountain was too quiet for her. She was a town girl, always afraid she was missing out on life. Whenever Quinn ran to Sawyer or Sparkville, she had to come along. He’d try to slip away undetected, and there she was, Oh, Quinn, cain’t I run down the hill with you? People started saying, Who’s Quinn’s new girl? He didn’t mind her at first, he told Cress. She liked to laugh.
“Not so crazy about her anymore?”
“Not so much, no.” Quinn gazed off into the woods.
“Well, maybe it won’t last. The marriage, I mean.”
“Morrows mate for life.”
“And you? How long’s it been?”
“Twenty-one years so far.”
“Your wife is very pretty.”
“Prom Queen,” he said. “And Homecoming.”
“You knew her then?”
“All through high school.”
In the second meadow, the old log cabin, shuttered as usual, sat in the thin, yellowing light. “Perfect, isn’t it?” said Cress.
“I’d like to put something like that up on Noah Mountain,” said Quinn.
“I wish my parents were building something more like it for the new place. But Rick Garsh sold ’em his bill of goods, I guess.”
“Rick Garsh.” Quinn let the name hang there.
“Yeah, well, my dad’s giving him a real run for his money.”
She told Quinn about her father picking up the nails and saying, “This represents real money. Just lying on the ground.”
“Hell, I’d hammer out nails for thirty bucks an hour,” said Quinn. “If that’s what he wanted.”
The fire road crossed Spearmint Creek, then followed it. They walked in silence now, side by side. Quinn, in his distinctive way, placed one foot directly in front of the other: it was a hunter’s walk, a silent, controlled prowl. When not talking, Quinn pulled into himself; she felt his withdrawal like a receding wave. She’d always been good with quiet men, she knew when and how to draw them out. “Tell me about your daughter,” she said. “What’s she like?”
“Annette? She’s a great girl,” he said. Captain of her water polo team, and not because she was such a good player—she wasn’t. But she was bighearted, enthusiastic, and so encouraging, she really fired up the team. She was graduating in May and had her sights set on either Fresno or Davis for college. She already had lists of pros ’n’ cons. Smiling, Quinn showed a discolored incisor. “Now, if I could just get Sylvia to go back to school, find something she wants to do…” He glanced at Cress. “I was thinking you could talk to her.”
“Me?” Cress said.
“Do her good to see what some people do with their lives.”
“Like loaf in the mountains when they should be writing?”
“Yes, but we’ve been living in these parts so long,” he said, “the place has had its way with us. We’re turning into hicks.”
* * *
Cress had walked almost to the lodge for Family Night when Quinn’s truck drew up alongside her. He rolled down his window, and she saw Sylvia in the cab, sitting flush up against him, the way couples did in high school. “Lift?”
“Need the exercise,” she said, not wanting to intrude in such a small space. “I’ll meet you down there.”
They sat in a booth as they had in the cab, close, pressed together. Cute, Cress thought, given those twenty-one years. She slid in across from them.
“Quinn says you’re writing a book.” Sylvia’s voice was soft and childishly sweet. “What’s it about?”
Cress checked the floor for DeeDee, or anyone else who could bring her a drink. “It’s more like a long term paper,” she said. “On the economics of art. How artwork accrues value in the marketplace.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Not so much as one might hope.”
Soft, dark curls framed Sylvia Morrow’s face. Orange lace edged the neck of her peach-colored T-shirt. She was so petite and soft-spoken, Cress began to feel oversized and brash.
Don and Donna and Brian and Franny had their usual table by the fireplace. They waved to her, and Cress regretted having committed herself to this subdued marital pair, the twinge of resentment familiar: one more time, she couldn’t be with her friends. She wished that Caleb and his loud, laughing wife would join them—they would have livened things up—but they were back at the trailer. Stayin’ in, Quinn said.
“I hear you work downtown,” Cress said.
“Just at Harvey’s.” Sylvia Morrow kept her movements close to her body, as if she were confined to a small area or trying to take up as little space as possible. Keeping her elbow by her ribs, she dipped her head to push
her hair off her face. “And I really like it,” she said. “Despite what the grouch here thinks.” Her hand darted up then and gave Quinn’s hat a playful downward tug.
Displeasure darkened his features. He turned away, corrected the tilt of the brim.
Cold, Cress thought, and a little mean. She spoke cheerfully to counter his moodiness. “I sent myself through grad school waitressing,” she said. “I was a waitress till I moved up here. And unless I finish this project lickety-split”—she couldn’t bring herself to say “dissertation” to Sylvia—“I’ll be one again. Nothing’s wrong with restaurant work. Just the tedium. And the physical exhaustion. The customers. Oh, and all the idiots you have to work with.”
Quinn, still canted away, laughed low and grabbed the end of the table.
Sylvia said, “Oh, but the people I work with are really nice. And our customers are, too—”
Quinn stood. “You girls want anything?” he said, already moving toward the bar.
Sylvia spoke rapidly in his absence. “I don’t know why he acts like my job’s so awful. Have you been to Harvey’s? It’s not fancy, but the food’s delish and everybody’s friendly. Old Harvey was a grump, but he’s been dead for years, and it’s Mrs. Harvey who’s made it a success. She’s always there in a blue dress. She has a hundred blue dresses—she’s famous for them.”
“Blue dresses?” What Cress really wanted to say was Adult voice, please!
“Not like dressy ones. It’s just a coffee shop. But we grind our own hamburger, and a woman comes in twice a week to make our pies.”
Cress marveled at Sylvia’s use of we and our. “I love pie.”
“Stop by! The next time you’re in Sparkville. I’ll buy you a slice.”
At the bar, in his leather outfit and battered hat, Quinn leaned on one elbow and surveyed the room like a lone gunslinger, new to town.
“His work has been so slow,” Sylvia said softly. “I’ve helped out, I really have, even if he won’t admit it. He’s embarrassed he can’t carry us. It’s not his fault nobody’s building. If I was smart like you, I’d go to nursing school or get a teaching credential, but I can’t take tests. I get too nervous, and my hand shakes too much to write. Even the driver’s test. I like Harvey’s. I hope you come in.”
Cress promised: on her next run to town, she’d stop by for pie.
Quinn came toward them with two brimming draft beers, one Coke.
“I can’t drink,” Sylvia said. “My Indian blood. Half a beer puts me out.”
“Half a beer, we’ll be pulling her up from under the table,” said Quinn.
The buffet opened and they filled their plates with pork chops and sauerkraut. After they finished eating, Cress refused a ride home and stayed to hear Donna sing.
* * *
He’d stolen Sylvia from a letterman, a linebacker, a senior—when he was a lowly sophomore, no less. He’d wooed her away—better care, he said, had done the trick. Her mom had just died, and her dad, a Nez Perce Indian, was sweet when sober, but a nasty drunk. So Quinn moved Sylvia in with his family, where she stayed even as he went to U.C.L.A. and lived in the dorms. They married over Christmas break his freshman year. It was too late to get into married-student housing so Quinn left school then, after that one quarter, thinking that he’d make some money so they could rent a little place together near campus. “But that spring all of us, the whole family, moved up to the mountains for good.” His parents lived on the property; he and Sylvia rented a little house on Sand Creek Road. He worked with his father and brother, often down south.
Quinn and Cress were wending their way through a manzanita thicket, the round little leaves beaded with fat drops of snowmelt. Quinn batted them as they walked, sending bright sprays into the air. Cress had to hang back or be soaked.
“You never went back to college?”
“I took night courses. Sparkville Community College. Still do. Spanish. Welding. Shakespeare. Structural engineering.”
“Ever take an econ course?”
“Should I?”
“I’m the wrong person to ask.”
* * *
“Now, you tell me something,” he said. “I talk too much around you. It’s your turn.”
She told him how she’d lost momentum in Pasadena, working crappy jobs and hanging out with friends at Braithway Court. How she’d come here hoping to get work done.
“But then you made all new friends.” He turned and cocked an eyebrow: Am I right? “You’d make friends wherever you go.”
They turned east and crossed Spearmint Creek, and stayed on the fire road so they could walk abreast as they talked.
She’d tell him something else, too, she said, but he couldn’t use it against her. It would sound like a rationalization, and maybe it was. Her father thought so. But she’d come to hate economics. She’d stopped believing in it, she’d lost her faith. She now considered economics a pseudoscience, much closer to theology than to math.
He wasn’t a bad listener. He slowed and frowned—in concentration, she was fairly sure, not disapproval.
“All economists, Keynesian or libertarian,” she went on, “believe that the market economy works like a machine powered by self-interest. They believe it can be diagrammed and understood mathematically. But that’s so demonstratively not true! It’s more like a huge, sensitive, infinitely complex organic system subject to many more influences and interferences than self-interest alone. Of course, saying this in grad school is like announcing you’re an atheist in a seminary!
“And God! The endless mathematical elaborations bored me to tears. I thought I could go through the charade, jump through all the hoops—take my orals, complete my classwork—and then work on something that actually interested me for my dissertation. I thought if I figured out how artists’ work accrues value, it might help some of them shape their careers. But the whole subject was too squishy, and I had to limit limit limit myself until I was tracking just a small set of artists who were all pretty similar. I put so much time and work into research! Or rather, in trying to boil the subject down to something I could research. I spent two years just getting a handle on my topic. In the end, what I’m trying to write is so different from what I wanted to do, I don’t have the heart, or whatever, to get it done. I had to ignore so much reality to seem at all systematic. To get any kind of model. And that’s what most economists do—ignore everything that doesn’t fit their model, whatever doesn’t function as part of a machine. I don’t know. Maybe I picked the wrong subject. Art! Artists! What was I thinking? Why didn’t my advisor stop me? It’s way too late to start over. And I don’t want to be that pathetic never-finished-her-dissertation person. But even that, the prospect of being a pathetic All-but-Disser doesn’t inspire me.
“I know,” Cress pushed on before Quinn could respond. “I should just shut up and do it. Jump through the hoops, like my advisor says, so I can mount my critique from the inside.”
“Or just decide you’re never going to write it, and that’s fine,” said Quinn. “Then move on to the next thing.”
“Yeah, but what’s the next thing?”
“Don’t you want to draw or paint?”
“I’m a Sunday sketcher, at best. Even I know I’m not talented enough to make a living at it.”
Sadly, the only field she’d shown a talent for was econ, and even that was thanks to her growing up with a traumatized victim of the Great Depression. Her father’s fears and obsessions had imprinted her with thought patterns that, superficially at least, were indistinguishable from the mind-set of a trained economist: What is given up to get this? What is the true cost? Whose self-interest is going to prevail? What are the margins, the hidden costs?
Back in college, she’d relished the prospect of achievement in a largely male arena. Lady economists were scarce, scary. Even her father would be intimidated.
But the men—her classmates—wore her down, she told Quinn. She won fellowships—some, perhaps, through affirmative action. And she
published far more than anyone else in her class. Her essays, which she submitted to quarterlies and journals under the name C. A. Hartley, were praised in peer review for their clarity and readability, the writing. She was the first woman to edit The Midwest Economic Review, a coveted job among the graduate students; she chose articles and wrote the monthly editorials. Except for John Bird, not one of her male classmates congratulated her or acknowledged any of her triumphs. They ignored her, excluded her. Luckily, in her first year, there was one other woman in the program, Joan, a thirty-seven-year-old actress who was planning a second career in academia. Cress and Joan had huddled together while the men in their program formed study groups, went drinking, ate meals en masse, and threw parties without ever inviting them. She and Joan had their own study group of two, their own long nights of talking and drinking. At the end of their first year, Joan quit. “If I wanted to be around so much sexism,” she told Cress, “I would’ve stayed in Hollywood.”
In Cress’s second year, she and John Bird were assigned a project together and started dating, which somewhat lessened her isolation.
“If I had the least talent,” Cress told Quinn, “I’d be a landscape painter. I’d love to look hard at the natural world all day and make my feeble facsimile. It’s such a noble, old-fashioned profession, like writing novels. But it’s a lot harder than it looks. And totally out of vogue.”
“I’ll tell you what’s out of vogue,” said Quinn. “Fine architectural woodworking is out of vogue. Nobody wants boiserie or inlay or sculptural ornament. I haven’t had a decent job in eight, ten months now, and the last one was just a tiny plinth for the Getty.”
“You’ve had a bad year,” Cress said.
He turned with such a look of shock and anger, she stepped backward, stumbled. “I mean, with your dad and all,” she said.
His anger receded. “I guess that’s right.”
She wanted to put her hand flat on his shoulder blade to soothe and reassure him, but didn’t dare, out here when they were alone. She wouldn’t want him to get the wrong idea. The bright, chiming sound of water running over rocks in Spearmint Creek filled the silence.
Off Course Page 8