When they lowered Clarice into her grave I was swept by regret as much for humanity as for her. But when they buried Cody I thought, “It’s Miller Time.” It wouldn’t last, though. I was lying to myself.
7
IN THE EARLY DAYS OF MY PRACTICE, I sustained an affair with an incredibly self-absorbed folksinger named Kay who left me for another man and a career in music that went nowhere. I remember an awful evening at her riverside condo, snow blowing against the double-paned picture window, when she auditioned for a New York impresario who held his head and moaned while she intoned, “I loves you, Porgy,” over the big twelve-string. Tessa was still around town and I often heard that she was furious with me for dating Kay. If she thought I went out of my way to stay out of hers, she was right — not from a simple wish for avoidance so much as a recognition of the power acquired in my youth which she still held over me, and which, considering my standing, I now thought to be unseemly. I had grown to be an independent sort, a bachelor who thrived on connubial hopelessness and the outdoors. I kept bird dogs and horses, and I went on some sort of adventure at least once a year. I felt I was much too fancy even for acquaintance with Tessa. This was a form of whistling in the dark, because whenever I saw her she wielded exactly the same authority over me as she had when I was very young.
Over the years that followed, I’d occasionally see her going about the affairs of Hoxey. As he was now old, sick, and demented and Tessa was seen as exploiting him, she had acquired a questionable reputation around town. When Hoxey died, whatever worries I might have had for her were briefly allayed, as it seemed that she must have inherited the business. Then she made an appointment to see me at the clinic. I had forgotten her physical abundance and burning vitality. Her hair piled atop her head and held there by a bright-red plastic comb seemed to represent fulminating energy. She had a white streak in her hair, which she attributed to “trauma.” She stared at me significantly.
“Henchmen of Hoxey have turned me out into the street,” she told me, “with little more than the clothes on my back.”
“Tessa, I find this very hard to picture.”
“Perhaps a few prints, a negligible watercolor or two.”
“Who exactly are these ‘henchmen’?”
“Grown daughters. I never factored them in. They arrived on the scene like Valkyries hovering over the battlefield in search of corpses to eat.”
“I’m terribly sorry.”
“At a difficult time, Doctor, I offered you companionship and sexual healing.”
“Is there anything I can do? Medication is my line, but I don’t think that is what you have in mind.”
“I’ll have to start looking for work. I hope you’ll recommend me.”
I reached for a pen, poised to join the millions who’ve made their way out of a difficult situation by providing letters of recommendation. But Tessa said, “Not now. I’ll let you know.” That, more or less, was the end of our appointment. She seemed happy with my response, taking my hand in both of hers. I suppose she was just checking to see whether I was still on her side.
Tessa went downhill fast. Within two years, she endured spells of homelessness, punctuated by temporary jobs, none of which became permanent, because of her imperious nature, her contempt for owners and bosses. She never merely left a job, she stormed off. She took over the homes where she was briefly a guest. But even as her fortunes fell, Tessa didn’t lose her rakish airs, though they began to seem almost detached from her, and just a bit automatic as she strode around town in worn-out clothes.
I was one of several who helped in small ways, but I rarely saw Tessa. I had established myself in a small-town practice that would not make me rich, though it might make me happy. Hoxey had since returned to California in powder form, leaving nothing behind him. In those years I seemed to have awakened from my own background and, without boasting, I can say that I had become somewhat less of a fool, though I was aware that my foolishness could recur at any time, like a dormant virus. I can’t say that I saw Tessa as my responsibility, nor can I claim to have quite got her out of my system.
Bob Kavanagh took me to lunch on a Thursday. Bob was a hearty, shifty fellow who would do anything for a laugh. He owned a motel in Gardiner and the movie theater here in town. During that morning’s digital prostate exam, he had deliberately farted into my examining glove, and taking me to lunch was by way of making up for his bad manners, which I had not thought funny. “How’s your sandwich?” he asked. His incongruous smile suggested that the sandwich, too, was amusing. He must have been proud of his Panama hat because he wore it all through the meal.
“It’s very good.”
He smiled; he’d made it up to me. He said, “You know how people would find things in their food, cockroaches, fingers, stuff like that?”
I answered him warily. “Yes?”
“Last week guy come in here orders a chicken potpie and there was a cell phone in it. Just imagine if someone called that number and it rang in the pie.”
“I can’t.”
The conversation rambled on until Kavanagh brought up the subject of Tessa, whom he described as a community eyesore. He wanted to get up a collection to ship her back to California. I said, “What if we ship you back to California?”
“I’m not from California. I’m from here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I thought I was onto something.”
I wanted to leave the restaurant, but I was spotted by Adrienne Wilmot and her husband, Raymond, dining alone by the bricked-up fireplace at the north end of the room. She was an attractive, actually wonderful woman, though it was mildly to her discredit that she seemed, in the absence of any other sufficient explanation, to have married for money or social standing. She’d had a couple of affairs in our town and left her lovers grateful. I say that from experience. There was really nothing wrong with Raymond, exactly; he sold high-end recreational properties to members of his far-flung society. He was known in the business as “Tightly Held” Wilmot because no matter what obscure neighborhood he was promoting, he always described it as “tightly held.” She once admitted her moderate infidelity to me but added, “I never do it to get anywhere.” Perhaps Raymond was the exception. In any event, Raymond Wilmot was making money hand over fist.
Wilmot’s face and head, his small moustache, projected a sort of gloom. I thought he looked like Edgar Allan Poe. He told me that the lovely small towns of New England where he had once lived were now “stiff with fairies fixing up houses.” He had a habit of throwing his head back, looking into space, and laughing; the effect was one of extreme condescension.
Adrienne said, “They don’t call them that anymore. You’re not keeping up, Raymond.” And Wilmot said, “Oh, very well.” To this he attached an elegant and contemptuous ennui. Wilmot knew of my family and often teased me about my breeding or sardonically complimented me on triumphing over my origins. I would always be displeased with myself for laughing at this, as I was actually quite offended.