All of this was true. The fishermen Rob Lewis and Heck Sanderson among them would show up in cold grey April when the course was in poor shape, their faces and conversations severe. At that time of year they scoffed openly at golf, as inferior to fishing as a test, exercise and demonstration of intelligence, dexterity and skill. They said they stooped to golf themselves only because the other golfers made the nobler sport imprudent, lamenting their enforced neglect of a fine natural resource.
The considerable number and reasonable size of the fish that Lewis and Sanderson and the others caught from the two watercourses annually caused a small stir among Grey Hills golfing purists who saw them on cold weekends when they used the club for lunch and drinks and wistful conversation about great golf days soon to come. Finding the fishing outfits and the behavior of the people in them laughable, they had assumed that people who looked funny could not possibly catch fish. But the anglers had a point when they lamented the summer inaccessibility of the streams. They had plenty of fish, and members caught a good many.
There were some mature brown trout in the river, the largest of them one or two three-pounders were caught each year and immediately declared lunkers fattened by ten-inch rainbows stocked by the State Department of Fisheries and Wildlife each spring. The department estimated the cost of each hatchery trout at $1.50. Many of them perished soon after arrival, before fishing season opened, those that eluded the big wild browns caught and eaten by hawks, fishers and otters that had learned to gather in the shadow of Mount Wolf upstream of the club as soon as the state truck went back out to the paved road.
The successful anglers were proud in the clubhouse when they returned with their creels and found someone who would incautiously ask to see their catches. They regularly had several good-sized trout to show.
After the kitchen staff had cleaned and grilled the fish, the fishing members would eat them in the dining room with much boastfulness about their flavor and many foamy dark-beer toasts to each other's prowess.
They owed their fish to Hilliard. In 1975 when he was still a power broker in the House, one quiet afternoon in March he had idly fallen into reflecting about the previous Sunday afternoon and evening he had spent at Grey Hills, first at a quarrelsome meeting of the membership committee and then over dinner with Merrion. The night before he and Mercy had gone to a dinner party at Walter and Diane Fox's home on Pynchon Hill in Canterbury. Even though Merrion was also almost always there, at Walter's invitation, it was one of Mercy's favorite ways to spend an evening out.
"I don't know whether you noticed it," Hilliard said to Merrion, cutting his cold roast beef, 'but when you suggested last night to Walter that he should join here, he just about laughed in your face. I don't think it was because he doesn't like you, or thought you were making fun of him. I think when you said you'd propose him and I'd second, he didn't believe you think anyone we sponsored would get in."
"I guess I didn't get it," Merrion said, eating lobster salad. "I thought he just wasn't interested. Too rich for his blood, I assumed.
Walter's fairly cheap, you know. "Throws nickels around like manhole covers," as Dad used to say."
"That wasn't what he said," Hilliard said. "What he did was laugh and shake his head and say: "I dunno, Amby. I don't think those folks're used to you yet, never mind bringing in your friends." He especially mentioned Warren Corey's name, and Rob Lewis's. I think what he meant is that someone's said something makes him think we may be members, but we don't belong yet, and maybe never will. We didn't get in on our charm. Everyone knows we bought our way in the club was desperate for money; we happened to have some, or you did; they held their noses and let us in. But they still resent the fact that they had to do it, and have to live with us now. That was what Walter was saying to you. In doesn't mean we've been accepted."
Merrion shrugged. "Fuck 'em," he said, spearing claw meat, "I like it here. I think it's a very nice place. Excellent golf course, very well run; I don't have to wait to tee off. Decent food and they serve a big drink. Expensive but I got the money; so, what? Me being here bothers someone else, that's their problem."
"Yeah," Hilliard said, 'but I was very conscious of it today at the meeting. What people said, how they acted, whenever a name would come up: I watched them to see how they'd react. I decided I think Walter's got something there. These bastards may like our money all right, but they're not very keen about us."
"Ummm," Merrion said, nodding and chewing. When he'd swallowed he said: "You prolly oughta stop goin' to dinner at the Foxes' house, is what I think. They're a bad influence on you. First you think Diane's trynah break up your marriage, giving Mercy dangerous notions, and now you're tellin' me what Walter said got you so edgy you're lookin' for insults today. You're becomin' a little hoopy, looking for conspiracies. You and fuckin' Jim Garrison. Next thing I know, I'll be in the audience, you're the speaker; I'm prolly dozin', waiting for the finish when I jump up from my chair, kick off the standing ovation and all of a sudden I'll be hearing you tell the people it was Nixon who killed Kennedy.
"And anyway, if they are bigoted, whaddaya gonna do about it call in the IRA to blow up the swimming pool?"
"Oh no, much worsen that," Hilliard said. "I'm going to do is think of something I can do that'll make these bastards beholden. Something for them that they either never thought of doing or if they had, they couldn't've made it happen. But I'm not gonna tell 'em, right off, who did this wonderful thing. I'm gonna sit back and watch 'til they've gotten attached to it. Then I tell 'em they owe it to me, and if they want to keep it, they'd better kiss my ass.
"And I never said I think Diane Fox's a bad influence on Mercy or that she's trying to break up my marriage where the hell did you get that idea?"
"It's obvious," Merrion said, finishing his lobster and dabbing his lips with the napkin. "You're paranoid about Diane. Many times I've heard you say you think Mercy's spending too much time with Diane; she gets all her ideas from Diane. One of them's that you're fucking around, which you are, and that's why Diane worries you. Meaning you think Diane's got it in for you."
"Well," Hilliard said, "I'll admit I'd like it better if Mercy had other friends, too."
Mercy had served on the Hampton Pond Community Service Center board of directors that had given Diane Crouse Whitney her first salaried job in counselling in 1970, when she got her master's in social work from UMass. They had taken to each other instantly. "Now I think I finally understand how you and Amby became friends so fast," Mercy said to Hilliard, the night she met Diane. She was standing by the front-hall closet of the house on Ridge Road in Holyoke, whipping off her tan trench-coat and paisley scarf, swirling them like a matador's cape to put them on a hanger.
"I feel like I've known this kid we had in tonight for years and years and years. She's only twenty-seven, which I know we thought was pretty old then, back when we were, but now it seems pretty young." She leaned against the frame of the hall doorway in her camel-colored short wool dress belted with red leather at the waist, her arms folded. He sat in his easy chair in the living room watching TV.
"Especially for family counselling. She's in the process of setting up a private practice, she told me afterwards. I held up a bit outside so I could talk to her a bit more; she told me Walter Fox's already showed her two offices in Hampton Pond. In that she'll be able pretty much to specialize in therapy for adolescents, young adults. She says she's just a grown-up kid herself, but one of the luckier ones. She made the dumb mistakes and did the stupid stunts that get kids in trouble, but came through them pretty much intact. Lots of kids don't, and those're the ones she can help.
"In the job we're offering, she wont be able to do that, concentrate on one age group. The referrals the center will get from the clinics and social agencies, the court will be people from every age group. She'd have to find a way to deal with all of them. A lot of the people needing help're going to be in their forties and fifties parents who're screwing up because they grew up in troubl
ed families; husbands and wives who aren't getting along; substance abusers. And elderly people; there's a real need for bereavement counselling. Her age could be a handicap. People tend to resist telling their problems and taking advice from someone who's younger than they are.
"So if we give her the job, will she be able to cope? She's confident she can, of course, but how can we be sure? She's just gotten her degree; her judgments can't be all that empirically informed; how does she know what she can do? What basis does she have? How can we be sure?"
"That's easy," Hilliard said, nursing a Lowenbrau and watching Karl Maiden and Michael Douglas wrap up another case on The Streets of San Francisco, 'you can't."
"But then I ask," she said, 'does it matter how old someone happens to be? I'm really not sure. Anyone who wants this little part-time job, that doesn't pay much money, is either going to be young and inexperienced, like she is, or, if they're older, they're probably going to have something wrong with them. Either no experience, because they're career-changers, getting started late in counselling or else when we check their references we find out why they left or got fired from their previous place. I think we don't have much choice."
"So do I," he said, his eyes on the screen.
"Ohhh, you're not listening to me," she said, stamping down the hallway into the kitchen. "I don't know why I even bother, telling you anything. You never pay any attention."
"I was paying attention, for Christ sake," he said, his gaze still fixed on the screen. "What is it: if I agree with you or I don't interrupt you; or I don't answer a question because you haven't asked me one I must not be listening? I haven't been paying attention7. For Christ sake, gimme a fuckin' break here."
"Stop talking to me like you talk with Amby," she said loudly. This's Thursday night and you're at home here with me. It's not Friday night and you're not down on High Street, talking big with the boys. Try showing some class for a change."
"Jesus H. Christ," Hilliard said, taking his gaze off the screen as the volume went up in a Sears tire store commercial, speaking louder so that she could hear him in the kitchen, 'first I tell you for once I've got the night off. I don't have to go anywhere." He heard the cork come out of a wine bottle. "This is good because you've got a meeting.
This'll be one night when the kids wont have a sitter. So, I'm a good daddy. I help Emmy with her math and I flog Timmy into at least starting to read Ivanhoe. Then I even make them go to bed. Now you come home and you tell me, well, the substance of it anyway, that you're very impressed with this young woman who just got her master's, and even though she hasn't got any experience and you're afraid she might have trouble dealing with older patients, might not be her cup of tea, you're still very much leaning toward the idea that she's the one that you should hire, give her the job and get it over with. So you wont have to go out to meetings anymore on Thursday nights when you'd rather stay home after dinner with your family. And anyway: no matter who you end up hiring, anyone could present problems. That you'll always have that possibility.
"Not that you came right out and actually said all that stuff, but what you didn't say I could hear anyway. It was implied." The titles began to roll for Harry'O, starring David Janssen.
She came into the living room with a goblet of white wine and sat down.
"Okay wise guy," she said, 'so I guess you were listening. You're so smart, tell me what I do now."
"Is that my good Muscadet you're drinking?" he said.
"No it's not," she said. "It's the cheap Almaden Mountain white, from the jug. Now answer my question."
"Go through the rest of the interview process," he said. "Then when it's over, turn on the charm with the other committee members and hire her."
"I don't want to go through it," she said, pouting and sipping the wine. "She's the fourth person we've interviewed now. That's six hours we've put in, listening to people tell us how much they want the job."
"You sound like Emmy with her algebra," he said. "Don't see why they make us take this. I don't like it."
Mercy tossed her hair. "I do not," she said, 'and I don't care if I do so there." He laughed. "Six others we didn't even grant interviews to, they were so obviously unqualified. We've got four more scheduled to come in. One's a for tv-six-year-old psychology Ph.D. on the staff full-time at the Knox State Hospital. His letter says he wants to set up a private practice and he's decided Hampton Pond's where he wants to do it. He's making eighteen thousand dollars a year as a senior therapist and he's only got three more years to go at Knox which he can't do and come here at the same time before he qualifies for a pension. I'm not sure I believe him. It doesn't make sense to me.
Either he's fooling himself or he's playing with us. He's not going to dump that fairly good salary now and take our little job, paying six thousand dollars a year; if all he has to do is tough it out at Knox three more years and retire. There'll be another little job around some other pretty little town three years from now; he can start his practice then.
"The others that we've said we'll talk to: there's something slightly wrong with them too. You look at the resumes and think to yourself:
"Gee, I wish that wasn't there." "I'd feel better, she didn't have that."
"This other woman; she's forty-eight. That's a good age for our job; young enough to talk to the kids but still mature enough to be accepted by the older patients. She's had children, boy and a girl, both grown now, off on their own, apparently doing just fine. She's been divorced. Okay, nothing wrong with that anymore, having gone through a divorce; getting so more have 'n haven't."
She paused and chewed her lower lip. "Oh, must tell you this: this Diane also asked me, very casually, just by the way, out there in the parking lot, if Walter Fox might be getting a divorce. Well, I know from you that he is, but I'm not sure she should get it from me. So I said I didn't know. I think she might have her eye on him. Little old for her, you'd think, but still…"
"Oh, I'd think Walter can still probably get it up once a month or so, he gets proper rest and eats right," Hilliard said.
"Pig," she said. "Anyway, this woman's divorced: how that gives me a small problem? It's because she's been divorced three times. Once, even twice: sure, I could understand, but is it likely this woman's had three marriages fail and every time it was the other person's fault1.
That's hard to believe. And even if that's the case, she did have that much bad luck, it would still bother me. One way or the other that has to say something about what kind of judgment she's got, picking three husbands she couldn't live with. I'm certainly not going to want to hire her. I don't think anyone else will, either. So I don't think we need to see her. We should cancel that interview.
"Am I being fair?" she said. "Probably not. This younger woman's been through a divorce, and she isn't thirty yet. Plenty of time yet for her to rack up a couple more husbands, before she turns forty-eight. Would that make a difference to me? Could be. But she isn't forty-eight yet, she's twenty-seven, and her having the one marriage now behind her doesn't cause me the same concern.
"It's the same thing with the other two," Mercy said. "Something on their resumes that says regardless of how articulate, personable and compassionate they may turn out to be when they come in, we're not going to want to hire them. One's a man who admits that he's an alcoholic. He tries to make it into an advantage.
Says he's been sober eight years he's forty-two now and he's counselled many other alcoholics who've told him he's got a special empathy for drunks. Maybe he has, but so've bartenders, and drunks aren't the only kind of patients we get. A lot of them, sure, but that's not enough, knowing how to get the boozers into AA and get themselves straightened out. I don't want him.
"The other one's another man who's also got something in his background that disturbs me: he got all his training from his church. It's one of those evangelical Protestant churches, and for all I know he's a very fine man. But what we're looking for here's a counselor, not a lay preacher, and I think if we hi
re him every priest and minister and rabbi for miles around'd be up in arms."
"ACLU probably too," Hilliard said. "Public money funding private religion paying for missionary work. Nothing like a good old little church-and-state dust-up, get everyone's bowels in an uproar. No, I think you're right about all I doubt you'll hire any of them."
"So then," she said, "I should call up the others and see if they agree that we should cancel the rest we've got scheduled? Say: "Let's hire this one we saw last night. I think she's great. She's smart and she's eager and with the alimony I assume she gets she can live on our salary. And call up the others and tell them we're sorry but we've filled the job, and we wont be talking to them."
"Rotten idea," he said. "Please don't do that." "Why?" she said.
"I'm sure it's what we should do." lYou are," he said. "The other four people on the search committee may not be. One of them may be secretly backing one of those three or four candidates you now want to brush off — or one of the others you've already seen who didn't impress you as much. Don't forget that the committee called for these statements of interest, invited and solicited those applications.
People go to infinite pains when they compose those things. Their lives and egos go on those sheets of paper. They're not going to be pleased if you now just go and dump them.
"And the instant that you try to do what you said, any member of the committee who's got a candidate's going to be dead-set against anything and everything you propose after that. No matter how great the new friend you met tonight seems to you, they'll never vote for her; you will've made her into "Mercy's candidate." Never mind how pissed-off the candidates you didn't have come in'll be, with some justification; the other people on the committee'll start hollering bloody murder.
"You're as bad's your husband, going outside the process, ramming stuff down people's throats. You're trying to railroad us; who the hell do you think you are?"
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