“Not a cent of child support did I once receive,” the woman hissed. “Thirty-one stitches as a result of his birth and a gruesome convalescence.”
“Shouldn’t you have told him who his father was? He never knew.”
“An arid-lands botanist, a scofflaw, a premature ejaculator!”
“Aw gee,” she said as Dr. Crusoe lurched to her feet. Evelyn had long worried about the effect of ending Paul’s checks to his mother; she saw now that it was profound, and that earlier wailings as to the possible termination of a January research project in sun-drenched Tucson were but the tip of the iceberg.
“And may I say,” Dr. Crusoe spat, “that you have painted yourself into a very narrow corner, young woman. Belligerent self-sufficiency is on no one’s list of virtues. But perhaps, you are a pioneer.”
“I’ve had as much of you as I can stand,” Evelyn said. “I really have.” And with that she left the room. The group around the piano importuned her to return for the good times, but she pretended to be stone deaf.
The desk clerk was refilling a bowl of complimentary red-and-white mints. A television monitor revealed, in bluish light, corridors and exits and empty spaces around the laundry room, pop and ice machines; it was like an art movie, not a soul in sight, great reviews in New York. Worried, she stole back to surreptitiously observe Paul’s mother, who seemed to be explaining something quite grave to the bleary faces around the piano. Finally, the men rose to their feet, facing forward in a line, the pianist gloomily poising hands over the keyboard. Dr. Crusoe took her place at the end of the line, hands on the hips of chubby Martin Jelks, and when a vaguely Latin tune emerged from the piano, “Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White,” a primitive conga line began to snake between the Formica tables with festive grunts invoking the ghost of Perez Prado.
Out in the cold and starless night, Evelyn smiled ruefully at the old broad’s self-sufficiency. She might have deserved better luck, but Evelyn gave up immediately on trying to find the roots of Paul’s feral nature in her high spirits. Besides, Evelyn admitted, Edith was not without appeal, a good soul really.
The meeting with Edith seemed a turning point, the last straw that helped her realize that she stood in the way of her own family’s happiness. Three unhappy days later, Evelyn withdrew her suit for divorce, wearing the same clothes she’d worn in the park, slumped in a metal folding chair at the edge of the Justice of the Peace’s desk. Paul was with her, having decided to promote this as a romantic occasion. Papers were pushed toward her, she signed them and pushed them back. The Justice of the Peace, a middle-aged woman in a dark green pantsuit, hair tucked into red plastic combs, kept looking back and forth, focusing on the contrast between Paul’s dark suit, blue shirt and vivid paisley tie, and Evelyn’s crumpled costume. She must be pregnant, Justice of the Peace concluded, but at least we have a proud papa!
The next morning, house finches, magpies, two kinds of chickadees and a belligerent Canada jay awaited her. When the phone rang, she put down the bag of seed, held her bathrobe around her waist, went back inside to answer it.
“Sis,” Natalie said abruptly, “I needed to fax some papers to Mama from the state tax people. And I called Mountain Travel for a number on the cruise ship in Alaska. They sort of laughed in my face when I said the word ‘Alaska.’ In fact, they said, ‘Look out your window.’ Anyway, long story short, Mama didn’t go to Alaska.”
“What?” Evelyn was pouring hot water over her coffee grounds.
“You heard me.”
“Where is she, Nat?”
“She’s on a cruise, very sensibly, in the South Pacific.”
“I don’t believe this!”
“It’s not easy. Any thoughts?”
“Just one: How did we ever believe ‘Alaska’?”
Evelyn cut two pieces of sourdough toast diagonally, got out a jar of black Oxford marmalade and set them all on the small table in the kitchen, then sat pondering Natalie’s news until she became aware of someone at the front door. By tilting her chair back, she saw the shape of a face in the oval glass and called, “Yes?” in a particularly unwelcoming tone. These questions about what was becoming of her family and this latest anomaly about her mother were like the weights that hold divers underwater.
Thrust into the slight opening of the doorway was the cold reddened face of Dr. Randy. “Terribly sorry,” he said, face surrounded by down-filled nylon and surmounted by a tam-o’-shanter.
Evelyn said through a mouthful of toast, “You were lonely.”
“I won’t even ask if you can forgive me. I’m just sorry. I have no excuses.”
“You’re forgiven. Now close the door, it’s making a draft.”
She called Natalie back in hopes of amplifying the information, but Natalie had other interests. “Stuart and I,” she said, “have decided it was time to get on with our lives.”
“Why am I not surprised?” said Evelyn. She’d been down this road too many times. Alaska, at least, was new.
“I don’t know, Evelyn, why aren’t you?”
“We’ve heard a good bit of the preliminaries.”
“In the future,” said Natalie, “I’ll make a greater effort to hold your attention.”
This was cooling down quickly, and Evelyn thought it best to get off the phone.
Stuart, meanwhile, had heard nothing of getting on with their lives. And he wasn’t nearly as thick as Natalie or anyone else thought; it was a mistake to take his disinclination for conflict as weakness. When he declined to embrace Paul’s more dubious ventures, Paul wrongly concluded that Stuart was “plodding.”
Paul also had decided that Natalie and Stuart weren’t getting along and would at odd times intrude upon them. He did this breezily, coming into their house with beaming detachment not unlike a minister’s and often speaking of higher values no one imagined he was aware of or took seriously. Sometimes as he spoke he held both of their hands in his own, a deed that filled Natalie with such disgust. Given the details of her intimacy with him, she marveled at the perversity of these counseling sessions, whereas Stuart, sitting there at the refectory table, seemed warmed when Paul addressed him particularly. “The union of a man and a woman,” he intoned, “is smiled upon by God only to the extent that their faith in each other is unsoiled. Loyalty is God’s particular blessing upon a marriage.”
Now that his own marriage was effectively in escrow, Paul moved quickly to the trust documents themselves, which specified the conditions that permitted the sale of the company and found that a broker had already been appointed, as though Sunny Jim had reached out from beyond death to extend one final arrangement. He called the broker, C. R. Majub, at his office. Majub had at this time a beautiful British accent, lived in Atlanta and described himself as a specialist in selling companies related to packaging. It was ten years since they’d met in Las Vegas, and Paul tried strenuously to place him, certain there had been a previous meeting. Majub examined the trust document and finally stated that it was the first time he’d seen a will function as a lien. He emphasized that there was some ground for optimism, since “never was a trust that couldn’t be busted,” a hope Natalie seized upon as though it were already an accomplishment. Thinking of their possible liberation from the bottling plant, she said, “I’m excited for you, Stuart. I always thought Dad and Paul made too much of your small earnings.”
“Golly, I guess I just got used to it. I have other rewards. Maybe they’re known only to me. What was it Emerson said? ‘It’s amazing how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.’”