Cool's Ridge

by Perrin, Ursula;

  But Lord, he could get to you. Broody giant. Conceited ape.

  And what about me? I’ve always prided myself on a large measure of independence, something maybe partly genetic (I think more from my mother than my father, she is the natural rebel-iconoclast), but a trait that surely my parents encouraged. I can remember my father laughing and saying to my grandfather, “By God, Liz has a ramrod for a spine and a skull so thick you’d think it was made out of pure black walnut.”

  “She’s a tough one,” my grandfather said, giving me a wink. “I wouldn’t want to tangle with her.”

  It was nonsense. In fact, often, I’m an awful coward. I hate arguments and confrontations and I’m not as physically brave as I’d like to be, but I know these things about myself and I try to work against them. I challenge people on principle, not out of inclination. What made me physically brave was how ashamed I was of my cowardice. When I started showing horses I’d have to go to the bathroom fifty-two times before I even got the horse tacked up. But I loved Eventing. I had a wonderful horse, a gelding named Alexander the Great who was mild-mannered but gutsy. He would just go. I loved the closeness of that big, warm, living, breathing animal who smelled of honey and liverwurst and whose gallop was a wingspan short of flying. I know exactly why the repressed word-chary English like horses. You get on a horse, you use your seat, your legs, and your hands and there’s no need of words. It is you, the human animal, and that other animal, bonded together, a lamination, so to speak, in which everything is felt and done without overt expression, a communication without words.

  Which is really what in a funny way I think I’ve got with Leonard, while with Skip there are words of course but his words often seem slightly canted, nothing as heavy-handed as irony, only a subtle tilt so that you hear him say one thing, but you feel something else. A simple declarative sentence makes me glance up: I’ve caught a whiff of scorn or hostility’s muffled thud. “What?” he’ll say. I give him a look. He says I make these things up. I think he learned double-speak when he was a kid.

  When Skip was three, Amelia divorced her first husband, Harding Feffer. They were living in Atlanta then. Harding was an insurance agent, pleasant, handsome, not terribly industrious, and to pick up a few extra dollars a week Amelia worked part-time as a secretary for the Chamber of Commerce. One night, the Chamber called and asked if she had a formal gown she could slip on. They were in a pinch. There was an important Builders’ Convention in town and two of the hostesses had the flu. Cocktails, dinner and a hundred dollars. There was also George Loomis. She noticed him right away and how she got to talk to him was this—she picked up a drink and walked toward his table just as two men came by from the opposite direction. “Oops! Oh goo’ness me, ah am jes desperately sorry, sir. Oh look, it’s all ovah your jacket, how could ah be so clumsy?”

  An intense love affair followed, but George Loomis surprised her. He didn’t just leap at the bait; it took months for him to even utter the word “divorce” and then his eyes got all teary, and he had to blow his nose into a big white handkerchief. He had two kids, he liked his wife. Amelia gambled. She went on ahead and dumped Harding, got a full-time job with the Chamber of Commerce, and sent her son back home to Mississippi to live with her sister Melly, who had a one-year-old and not much else to do except watch babies. Melly and her husband were good parents, even though, in Amelia’s opinion, you could only see them as religious nuts, givin’ up pretty little St. Mary’s Episcopal Church for a jerry-built clapboard buildin’ on the wrong side of town full of Born Again Christians, which, in Amelia’s opinion, was only one step up from consortin’ with the nigras, all that singin’ and shoutin’ and Praise Be to God, you might as well belong to a Gospel (Hallelujah) church. Seemed like they had little Skip prayin’ every ten minutes. Then Melly got pregnant again and couldn’t keep Skip anymore, so Wanda Lee, Amelia’s youngest sister, took him in. She wadn’t one teeny bit religious; all she liked to do was shop and watch TV. She’d always been real low-key anyhow. She loved little Skip to death, called him her little man, but Biff, her husband, didn’t much care for the little boy. Who ended up takin’ Skip but his poor Grandma? She had diabetes so bad, but got up every morning, anyhow, to clean her house and tend to things. When she died, Skip went back to Aunt Melly’s.

  When he was seven his mother came and got him. She’d married George Loomis; they lived in a big house in Washington, D.C. Skip had a room of his own and a lot of toys. There was an indoor swimming pool. He had a bicycle, he went to a private school, he went to dance classes. Skip did very well in school. George formally adopted him.

  Once Amelia got out for me her pictures of Skip, taken when he was just a little boy down in Mississippi. He’s four or five and he stands somewhat apart from Melly and her family. His cousins are grinning at the camera and their heads are tipped together. Skip stands in the shadow. He seems to be smiling, but his eyes have a squeezed-up look.

  When I first saw the picture it seemed to me so sad. This is a trite phrase but it is how I felt—my heart went out to him. I thought, Okay. Now I know about that. I thought, I’ll just be there. I will always be there and after a while he’ll know that and he’ll accept me. He’ll come to depend on me and trust me.

  I don’t know where I got this idea.

  Perhaps from my work with horses.

  I typed out my story and laid it on Leonard’s desk. It was five to eight and I was hungry; the awful stench at the Knacker Farm had driven my lunchtime appetite away but now the human animal’s stomach began to grumble and growl, registering its protest.

  I wanted to see my father and yet I didn’t. For one thing, I wasn’t up to hearing the latest awful news on my brother. And there was another reason I didn’t want to see my father: I didn’t feel like telling him about Skip, at least not tonight.

  The Farm had had a party for us on Sunday night and we danced and drank and later Skip and I took a sleeping bag up to the top of the ridge. I woke up early on Monday morning just as the sun was rising. There was mist on the mountain that morning and at a certain moment the sun’s rays suffused it, turning everything around us a fluffy and radiant pink, like piles of cotton candy. I felt enormously happy. I thought, This is it! Cloud nine! We’re going to be married!

  Immediately, the future assumed a shape for me. Instead of a formless and onerous gray mass it became as concrete and inviting as a child’s painting, a colorful landscape with a little yellow road that went up and down over checkered farm fields, toward a sun which peeped winking from behind green lollipop trees. Now that we were “official,” we would learn to know each other, our relationship would change and deepen and grow. We weren’t just casual lovers anymore, we were serious.

  Skip woke up groaning. I touched his cheek. He coughed and asked, “What time is it?”

  I said, “It’s just sunrise. Do you want to sleep some more?”

  He said, “No, I’ve got to get up. I’m going down to Washington.”

  I was amazed. “You are? For how long?”

  “Not sure. Probably through the Fourth.”

  “But you said we’d have next weekend together.”

  “Look, something’s come up. I have to talk to Amelia and George.”

  “About what?”

  “Hey. I can’t tell you right now, okay?” And then he said jokingly, “So this is what it’s going to be like. Every time I leave the house I’ll have to file a report.”

  “No, but why didn’t you say something last night?”

  “Maybe I knew you’d get upset and I didn’t want to ruin the evening. Or maybe I just this minute decided.”

  He left at eight. With my arms folded tight I stood watching his gray sedan go down the road. Anger. Later it fizzled. I thought, Maybe he’s right. What’s wrong with me? Am I over-possessive? Insecure? What? Anger was followed by confusion, exhaustion, apathy and then a lingering headache.

  I got up to comb my hair. I saw in the darkroom mirror that I still looked tired. There wer
e blue patches under my eyes as if I’d been chain-smoking. The room was full of the smell of developing fluid and Shauna’s prints were clipped onto cords strung around the walls. The smell reminded me of the fire and the acidic odor of burning creosote. Shauna had hung the photo of the charred skeletal barn right across from the toilet, so one had plenty of time to examine it. How ghastly it was, and depressing. Before I’d left the Knackers’ farm that afternoon, I’d seen Erroll in the house staring out of a window. He’d looked pale and scared, and as soon as he saw me he dropped the curtain and moved away.

  I went back out to the office and wandered around under the fluorescent lights waiting for my father to appear. Erroll looked a little like John—same height, same build. After John got sick he lost weight. He stopped eating regular food which he said was “not blessed,” and “partook” of other foods. What foods he would eat varied from day to day. Once last summer I drove down to be with my parents for the weekend. We were sitting on the concrete patio eating hamburgers when John appeared. His dark hair was parted in the middle and greasily hung to his shoulders. He had a full curly beard which had little things in it—crumbs, twigs, a long gold thread. He was so thin that his bones moved like dowels inside his skin and he had to lower himself carefully onto a chair. My mother put down her hamburger, her eyes filled with tears. My father said, “Want something to eat?” John said, “Some hae meat and can nae eat.” My father said angrily, “Eat or leave, we’re trying to survive here.” My mother said, “Oh Calvin …” My father got up, dumped the contents of his paper plate—half a hamburger, baked beans, cole slaw—into a pot full of geraniums. He marched into the house. The door slammed. My mother said, “Would you like some cole slaw, John?” John said calmly, “Why is father so angry?” My mother said, “He’s not angry, he’s worried about you.” John left without eating and half an hour after he’d gone my parents started a violent fight.

  I got in my car and drove back to Massachusetts.

  2.

  Puzzlingly, my father arrived looking hale and hearty, full of enthusiasm for the day he had spent driving around and drinking in scenery. What a good idea, Punkin’, moving out here with a bunch of compatible people. Say. How is Skip?

  Oh … fine.

  Good … good. Ready to chow down?

  Yup!

  He drove and talked, I pondered. Was he manic or was this garrulousness planned, a verbal defense as cunning and unassailable as a wall made of foam peanuts? Well, so what? I wasn’t up to any large truths, either. Still, shouldn’t a man in the midst of extricating himself from a marriage of thirty-four years be somewhat more subdued? I felt offended for my mother that he was so ebullient, unless it was all an act. Yeah, it definitely sounded like fake cheer, and indeed as we headed west out of Stanton he gradually wound down and fell into what struck me as a glum silence.

  A few miles outside of town we passed a small white country church that stood on its weedy knoll as if pasted against the pink and mauve-streaked sky. The church was abandoned. Bats swooped in and out of the square belfry, its long windows were covered with plywood, and one shutter fell at an angle like a broken wing. I thought of my mother, but didn’t know why—my father had been the churchgoer in the family. When we were little he used to enforce Sunday School. He’d drive us there and then, with a kid in each hand, walk us right in.

  I said, “Dad, do you still go to church?”

  He said, “Of course I still go to church, but I don’t attend in Comstock, I drive out to Oldfields. You remember that Presbyterian Church on Route 522?”

  “You go all the way out there? Out where Granddaddy and Grandma used to live?”

  “As a matter of fact, in three days I’ll be moving there myself.”

  “You’re moving to Oldfields? But what about your office and the hospital?”

  “It’s only a forty-minute drive, on a good day.”

  “How about a bad day?”

  “Then it’s a bit longer.”

  “How strange.”

  He said, gently, “Does it seem strange? But why? The area’s full of memories for me. Pleasant associations.”

  “Maybe that’s why. That’s all in the past, isn’t it?”

  “You’re afraid I’m going to get stuck in the past?”

  “I’m afraid you’ll move out there because of those pleasant memories and find it lonely.”

  “Why, Lizzie,” he said, his voice sounding rich and surprised. “How kind of you to worry about me. But listen, nothing’s irrevocable. If it doesn’t work out … well, I’ll try someplace else.” He smiled at me and took his hand off the steering wheel to squeeze my hand just as a large van veered toward us, raking us with its headlights. “Idiot,” he muttered, leaning forward to squint into the twilight. After a moment, he said wistfully, “You probably don’t realize this about me, but I’ve always wanted to live in the country. Well, now’s the time to do it. I’m getting older, life is going by at a great clip. No, it’s not just memories. ‘Don’t live in the past. Deal with the present.’ Which one of those shrinks we saw kept saying that?”

  “It wasn’t Dr. Walker.”

  “No. He was the one you called a ‘P.F.’” We both smiled at the recollection. Like some of the psychiatrists John had seen, Dr. Walker had been intent on dealing with my brother’s craziness through an analysis of our family relationships. He was certain that in one way or another, “wholly unconsciously,” all of us had conspired to drive John mad. One day in a fit of anger I had called him a “perverted Freudian.” He’d frowned and nodded and said, “All right. Let’s be clear about this. Are you saying that I’m a pervert? Or are you saying that I’m not a classical analyst?” He was so serious. On the way out his door my mother said wearily, “God, aren’t they all just nuts?”

  “Wait!” my father said, “It was Lewis, Melvin Lewis. Actually, he wasn’t bad, he was one of the better ones.”

  “Slow down, Dad, we’re here. It’s past these woods, the next right.”

  We pulled into the restaurant’s small parking area, got out, picked our way up the steppingstone path. Half hidden behind dooryard lilacs, with the orange glow of a lamp shining out into the dusk, Sonny’s farmhouse had the nostalgic appeal of a woodcutter’s cottage. I thought of what I’d heard about her—that she’d come up from “the city” with a kid to support. People said she was a good cook, but it was the hominess of the place everyone liked. (I didn’t know then that in the next few months I’d be spending a lot of evenings at Sonny’s, a home away from home, sometimes with Skip, mostly without.)

  We sat down at a table near the bar. The room was so small that when my father said, “This is nice and cozy!” the couple across the room stopped eating to turn around and stare. “Ain’t that so?” the man commented, pleasantly. They were both scrubbed and hefty and wore matching cocoa-colored pants suits. Except for the clink of silverware, they ate silently, cutting up pork chops into squares and dipping them fondue-style into a dish of applesauce.

  We studied the blackboard menu hanging on the wall. “Ah ha,” my father said, “chicken pot pie. I haven’t had that in thirty years. See anything that looks good to you?” From somewhere in the back came the ringing sound of jostled glassware. I was about to say ‘shrimp’ when the swinging doors to the kitchen flew apart, expelling a woman who shot past us with a tray full of glasses. The tray landed on the bar with a tinkle-smash.

  “Shit,” she said, in a resigned voice.

  The other couple stopped eating. “You okay, Sonny?” the man asked.

  “I’m tired, Fred, but what else is new? Just broke one, anyhow.” She looked at us. “Welcome to Sonny’s folks. This is about as exciting as it gets. We had a fire out here today and all the firemen came by for lunch. I was glad for the business but I don’t usually do lunch, so I’m pooped.”

  She was black-haired and tired-looking, so skinny she seemed swamped by her clothes, a faded Western-style shirt and a lopsided denim skirt.

  “I was a
t that fire,” I said. “The smell of burning cow took my appetite away.”

  “I’ll bet.” She sank down onto a bar stool and hooked her scuffed brown cowboy boots over a rung. “What were you there for?”

  “I was getting the story. I’m working for The Sussex Monitor. It’s a new paper in the area.”

  “No kidding. You folks live around here?”

  My father volunteered, “She does, I don’t. I’m too old for the commune thing.”

  Sonny raised her brows at me. “You’re at the old funny farm, huh? You live up there with Skip and Alice?” I looked up. “And that big guy,” she said, “Leonard, and that redhead, what’s her name. Haven’t seen any of ’em lately. They used to come by a lot when they first moved in.”

  I said, “At least you didn’t call them ‘the hippies.’”

  “People do call them that. Folks around here are pretty conservative, plus, they support the war. We’ve got a lot of boys from this area in Vietnam. Farmers’ kids always get called up first.”

  While we were ordering, there was a loud thud over our heads, as if someone had dropped a bowling ball. “My kid,” Sonny said and shrugged. She stuck her order pad in the pocket of her shirt and went off through the swinging doors. The hefty couple got up to go.

  “So you’re up at the funny farm?” the man asked. He stood a few feet away with a fan of dollar bills in his hand. He laid the bills on the bar and covered them with change. “Sonny give you the wrong impression, we’re not all against you kids. Far as I’m concerned, you can say whatsoever you want, you got your rights just like anybody else. But I do hear that nobody up there’s married and that don’t set well with us.” He looked at me over his glasses.

  “Everybody’s married but me and my boyfriend,” I said saucily.

  The woman stood waiting at the screen door. “Fred!” she said in a sharp voice. “We’ll be missing our program.” Her hair was done in tiny curls, all covered with a hair net.