Cool's Ridge

by Perrin, Ursula;

  “Hmmm?” my mother said, looking at me over her bifocals. She’d been writing a letter. She glanced down and signed it in an impatient hand, and then, as if to make up for the signature’s carelessness, she scrolled a flourish at the end, like a runaway Bach fugue that ends with a trumpet blast. “There!” she pronounced, folded the letter and tucked it into its envelope.

  “You had some business?” I said doggedly.

  “Oh yes!” she said brightly. “That.” She dropped the letter into the wicker basket, and sighed. I looked up over her fence, the wire fence that was painted a dark green and was covered with a dead rambler rosebush. Past the fence gaped the scruffy back lawn of the Kensington Arms, a five-story brick apartment building. On every floor, in precisely the same window as the one above, hung an air conditioner. The rooftop was crenellated to resemble a castle. “You see, I’ve changed my will. I don’t own much, but since the divorce the house has been in my name. I’ve got a few bonds, some stocks. That’s not a fortune, but it’s all going to you. For some time now, the last five years, I’ve been putting money into a trust for John. I would like you to administer this trust when I die.”

  “I’m going to be in charge of John’s money?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, gee …”

  “Somebody has to do it.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better if Daddy did it?”

  Her face twisted. “Daddy did it? You’re kidding, aren’t you? He has no interest in John.”

  “Ma, that’s just not true.”

  “Elizabeth. Grow up. Your father went AWOL some time ago.”

  “He cares about John. Just because he’s remarried …”

  “They’re going to have a baby, Elizabeth. This old man, sixty-three years old, instead of a grandchild, he’s going to have a baby. How much do you think he cares about John? He doesn’t give a hoot about John. Out of sight, out of mind. When we talk, as occasionally we unfortunately must, he gets all nervous if I mention his son.”

  “Maybe he feels bad.”

  “I should hope so.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. A baby. My father was going to have another baby.

  “When, uh …”

  “The baby? November. Silly old goat. What’s wrong with the man anyway? Can’t he count?”

  “You mean … they didn’t plan, uh …”

  “No. I mean count as in 63 plus 18 equals 81. He’ll be 81 when the kid is a freshman in college. Good luck. She’s no spring chicken either. But! It’s hardly my business. I’m not going to be here much longer.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Oh boy.”

  “Yes, Liz, it’s true and don’t deny it. Which brings me back to the point. A further point. You remember Leonard’s Aunt Louise?”

  “Yes.”

  “You remember how we agreed, you and I, that she had a rare intelligence? And a kind of empathy … well. It seemed to me you liked her as much as I did.” I nodded. “You see, she’s given up most of her practice. She’s working in a psychiatric clinic in Queens, in a large hospital. A well-known hospital. They’re doing all sorts of new things with psychotropic drugs and schizophrenia. Louise said that she had an enlightenment. She suddenly saw”—my mother’s face took on a light, too—“she saw that everything that she’d done with some kinds of cases was all wrong. You remember how we used to laugh? We’d take Johnny in for ‘family therapy’ and they’d grill us? What had we done to him? How had we made him crazy?” She smiled mockingly. “But now there’s a fabulous doctor there, a Doctor Small, and he’s having good results, wonderful results—he’s trying all sorts of new drugs instead of the Freudian claptrap. He’s treating mental illnesses as if they were real diseases with biological causes, just like other diseases. As of yesterday, John has agreed to go to this clinic. Currently, of course, he’s still at Greystone. He’s supposed to be discharged tomorrow, but I said I wouldn’t take him home and they can’t release him until they find a place for him. So the plan is that he will go to the clinic, and the clinic will keep him until he’s much, much better. And now, Liz, we come to the sticking point. I am going to die, and your father won’t, I know he won’t, take John in when that happens. So I want you to think this over. I’ll leave you this house and everything but John’s trust fund, if, when they discharge John from the clinic, you will take him in. You and uh, Skip. I mean, it won’t be forever, just until he gets on his feet. I know” and there it was again, her face bathed in that radiant light—“I know he can be better. Will you do it?”

  I was speechless. Numb. As if someone had hoisted me up by the scruff of my neck and dropped me into arctic water. Immersed too long, I couldn’t answer.

  My mother’s pale lips trembled. “You won’t do it?” she asked.

  By rapidly working her elbows she pushed herself up in the chaise. She didn’t touch me but her eyes held me. She said softly, her eyes stark and commanding, “Liz, listen to me. If you don’t do this, he will die. I know it. I’ve seen it. I see it every day. He will die on the street. He’ll live someplace all alone, and then forget to take his medicine. They’ll take him back to the hospital if he’s very bad. Back for a few days, out again. You know how they do. And then, one day, he’ll die. Some policeman will shoot him or hit him over the head. Or he’ll be a suicide.”

  “But what do you think this clinic can do for him?”

  “Keep him longer, work with him. Keep him well long enough so that he likes being well and likes having a life again. Having some hope.”

  “You think they can do it?”

  “Louise thinks so. She’s seen John.”

  “When did she see him?”

  “In April. I took him in. It was around Eastertime. He was having a good spell.”

  Yes, I remembered. We hadn’t seen my mother at Easter. We’d gone down to stay with the Loomises, in the midst of their crisis, to lend ‘support.’

  “So,” she said, “will you think about it?”

  I nodded. I felt exhausted. I wanted to say, No! No I won’t! “All right. I’ll think about it.”

  She sank back. She whispered, “Good.” She cleared her throat. “Well,” she said. She linked her fingers together and playfully twiddled her thumbs. Now that she didn’t work as a lawyer certain parts of her grooming routine had improved. Her nails were filed and painted, not a glaring red, of course, but a faint, sweet pink. Staring at her hands, I noticed how bare they looked. “Where’s your ring? Your emerald ring?”

  She looked amused and held out her hands. No rings. No wedding ring, no engagement diamond. No emerald ring—the one my father had given her on their tenth anniversary, September, 1948. In 1945, just out of the army, he had started his medical practice in Comstock. Three years later, he was doing well. He bought her a ring, they had bought a house. I was thirteen months old, John was on the way. “Gone,” she said gaily. “You remember Dr. Maurice Grover?”

  “You gave him your rings?”

  “Only the emerald. He was dubious about signing commitment papers for John. The ring helped clarify his thinking.” She laughed.

  “What happened to the other rings?”

  “The diamond went to a sweet young man, Officer Mackenzie of the Comstock Police Force. He was the arresting officer when they brought John in.”

  “You bribed these people?”

  “Does the end justify the means?” she asked rhetorically. “In the case of the war in Vietnam, I’d have to say no. In our case, wouldn’t you say, Why not? No one gets hurt, someone gets helped.” She sighed. “It’s a sick world. Why do we kill these poor peasants in Vietnam? Why don’t we help people who are ill? Who knows? Our society is so corrupt. There’s an egomaniac in the White House and indifference everywhere else. It’s France before the Revolution. ‘Let them eat cake!’ The world is sad. Still,” she paused, “I’ll be sorry to leave it.”

  I got up to go.

  “So soon?” My mother asked. She lay back on the chaise. Her throat looked white and exposed, as if
to a rusty blade. “We haven’t even talked about you.”

  “What’s there to say?”

  “How would I know? Is it a good sign that you have nothing to say?”

  “Of course,” I said lightly. I bent to kiss her. In the age of Aquarius and long mermaid hair, she had gotten herself a frizzy perm. A pink plastic-bow barrett sat jauntily in the grayish fuzz. But there was something I’d wanted to ask her. I’d wanted to say, Ma, is this the way marriage is? Is this the way it’s supposed to be? It was true that my husband seemed happy. He sang in the shower and weekends, hanging around the house, he told jokes and anecdotes. Like a big old-fashioned family, all of us at the Ridge were hanging out together. I had pictured my marriage somehow differently. For some time now, I had wanted to move out, have our own place, however small. Skip said, “Let’s wait.” The idea was, the longer we waited, the more money we could save. And then we could get some place really great, maybe our own farm, with paddocks, pastures, a barn for horses.

  “Would you take these to the post office for me?” my mother asked.

  “You’re keeping busy.”

  “I can still think. I can still write.”

  I dropped the letters off and drove home toward northwestern New Jersey. I didn’t rush. I took the back roads through Morris County, Sussex County. It was all still so rural—farms, dairy farms, horse farms, little villages. I wanted to live in the country. Skip and I had agreed on that. We would always live in the country and raise our children there. Not at the Ridge, of course, but perhaps nearby. I had grown attached to the rough look of the land.

  And in the year I’d lived at the farm, I’d grown used to the people: Shauna, Sal, Wayne, May, Leonard—they were more than friends, they were our family. After all, and despite many differences in temperament and background, we’d succeeded in what we set out to do. We’d created a sanctuary for each other, a community and a place of asylum.

  2.

  So. Alice was back. Like a boil or a tumor or any malevolent excrescence, her fat pumpkin-colored Beetle squatted in the parking area next to Shauna’s rust-scabbed gray Chevrolet. I got out of my Volvo, but not wanting to go right into the house, went over to the garden where Erroll was kneeling amid the squash leaves.

  “’lo, Erroll,” I said through the wire fence. He didn’t answer, but smiled shyly off into the zucchini. We had hired him to work the garden, weed, hoe, water, tasks he did well. He never talked except to himself, but lately he’d begun to smile a little, not right at you but off to one side, or down at the ground. On days he was scheduled to work he appeared exactly on the hour and gardened without interruption until his workday was over. I’d gone down once with a Coke and sandwiches. “You can take a break for lunch you know,” I’d said. “You ought to, Erroll, it’s no good working all day without something to eat and drink.”

  He had said stubbornly, “I’m a hard worker.”

  I’d said, “I know you are, but we don’t want you to get sick or faint on the job. Stop now and then, take a break, have a sip of water. We feel like slave-drivers.”

  Frowning, tightening his thin jaw and jerking down the bill of his cap as if to hide himself, he said, “I’m a hard worker.”

  One day Coral had come sashaying down the road in her tight black miniskirt and broken-sided high heels. “Oooh-hoo,” she’d yodeled, standing in the driveway looking up at the house. “Anybody there?” It was a Sunday morning; we were all there. Skip went out.

  “Hi,” he said. “Can I help?”

  I was watching from the screened porch. She batted her lashes at him; he grinned. God, Skip. You’d flirt with anyone. “I don’t know,” she said boldly, “can you? I’m Coral Knacker. I come about Erroll.”

  “Oh hi, Coral,” Skip said, laughing and showing his big white teeth, as full of charm as if she were Jackie Kennedy. “You’re Erroll’s sister-in-law. Right?”

  “Right,” she said firmly. “I unnerstand he’s working here?” She arched her black-penciled brows.

  “Sure is. We hired him as our gardener and he’s doing a great job. Why?”

  “You payin’ him, or what?”

  “Of course we’re paying him, Coral. Slavery went out with Abe Lincoln. What’s the problem?”

  “The first problem is, whatever happens, we can’t be responsible. You unnerstand that? I mean, if he has fits or somethin’ on the job, it’s not gonna be our fault.”

  “Uh huh. Why would he have fits?”

  “He just might. It could happen. The doctor said so.”

  “I see. Okay, I’ll make a note of that.”

  “And then we gotta know how much you pay him. Because at home he don’t give nothin’ at all, and there are certain expenses we have, his food and clothes and his doctor bills and such.”

  “Well I’m not sure what his salary is, I’d have to find out. Days he comes he also eats a meal here, usually dinner. We tried to get him to take lunch, but he won’t stop.”

  “You don’t need to feed ’im. I feed ’im good at home.”

  “A meal was part of the arrangement, that’s all. I’ll have to find out for you what pay he gets and let you know.”

  “You do that,” she said and turned to pick her way out of the stony drive.

  “Oh Coral?” Skip called to her. “There’s one other thing. My name’s Skip Loomis. I’m a lawyer with Glynn, Rossoff in Stanton. If you ever need a lawyer …”

  She looked over her shoulder at him, scornfully. “Whatever would I need a lawyer for?”

  “You never can tell. Lots of occasions come up when people need lawyers. I happen to think I’m a pretty good one.” He looked at her coolly. “I know how to explain people’s rights to them, if they need to have their rights explained.”

  She gave him a slit-eyed glare and went on down the road.

  “So long,” Skip called out heartily.

  “You think she got the message?” Sal asked when Skip came bounding back up to the porch.

  “She got it,” Skip said cheerfully. He winked at me, sat down at the trestle table, and pulled off another hunk of pecan coffee-cake, which he munched while he read The New York Times. He read, grinned and shook his head. “Bizarre,” he kept repeating. Leonard came out to the porch with his gloomy look. “Whaddaya say, Big Guy?” Skip said. “Did you read this story on John Dean?”

  I didn’t particularly want to see or talk to Alice, so instead of using the outside stairway that led to the porch I went around the house to the inconvenient “front” door. You came into a stuffy hallway no bigger than a closet. Jammed between doors to left and right was an old-fashioned coat-rack top-heavy with clothing, sweaters and rain-gear piled on parkas and winter coats. I imagined if you gave the coat-rack one big shake an entire colony of giddy moths would flutter into the dim light of the hall, like scraps of oversize confetti. On my left, next to a doorway, was a tall radiator that had quit working and which we used as our mail table. Since none of us got mail we were interested in, piles of magazines, letters, and bills would accumulate for days: I pawed through a six-inch pile of colored fliers (K Mart, A & P) while beyond the closed door I could hear Alice and Shauna talking. It seemed to me that out of this muffled conversation only one word was clear. Repeated incessantly, it kept bobbing up out of the murkiness: “Skip” … “Skip.” Skip what? I thought. I wanted to go upstairs, but a nagging and irritated curiosity propelled me toward the summer parlor. I squeezed past the bulging coat-rack and shoved open the door. Shauna and Alice were sitting in opposite corners of the wicker sofa, stiffly but intently inclined toward each other. Alice was speaking.

  “So I said, ‘the hell you will, not now you won’t.’” When she saw me she sat up straight and the cigarette she’d been smoking dropped to the floor. She glanced at me furiously before groping for it, as if I’d shot it out of her hand. Shauna, too, sat up and then sank back against the squeaking wicker, looking at me expressionlessly. She had on a sleeveless smock-like dress of dark-flowered cotton. Alice had on
white bellbottoms and a clingy red nylon shirt. I hadn’t seen her for months and I thought gloatingly, She’s gained weight.

  “Well?” Alice said rudely, “What is it? Do you want something?”

  “Oh, sorry,” I said. “Am I interrupting?”

  “You can see that you are,” she snapped.

  “It’s wonderful to have you back,” I said.

  “Get out,” she said flatly.

  “Liz?” Shauna said. “What a minute, is it your night for dinner?”

  “No, yours.”

  “Shit,” she said, “I’m pooped. Could we possibly switch?”

  “Not really,” I said. “I’m pooped, too.”

  “You had the day off,” Shauna said stonily.

  “Look,” I said, “I had to drive down to see my mother, okay? And right now, I’m going to take a bath. If you want me to, I’ll help later.”

  She shrugged. “Whatever,” she said.

  I stayed upstairs a long time, hoping that when I came down Alice would have disappeared in a puff of witch’s smoke. But an hour later, the same intense talk was going forward in the kitchen. As Shauna slowly moved back and forth from refrigerator to stove to counter, Alice talked in the same low, loud, angry voice. “Back again?” she asked me, sarcastically.

  “I live here,” I pointed out. “Need some help now?” I asked Shauna.

  Shauna was washing lettuce at the sink. “I guess we can manage, thanks,” she said, and then turned and looked at me, resting her wide wet wrists on the sink’s edge. “Oh wait a minute, Liz, there is something you can do.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Alice wants to come back,” Shauna said. She lifted the lettuce out of the colander and gently shook it.

  “You mean move back in?”

  “Right.”

  “But why?” I asked Shauna. Alice volunteered nothing. She kept her back turned, but picking up a knife, she began cutting celery into slices on the butcher’s block with smart little chops.