Circles of Confusion (3 page)

"A lot of companies are really predicated on a single man. What would happen to the Turner empire if Ted were killed in a car accident, or to Microsoft if Bill Gates became an alcoholic? Companies are finally starting to realize they need to take steps to insure against such a huge loss." Evan shook his head. "Accurate rating is going to be a nightmare, though. It's going to have to be completely individualized." Claire could see he was secretly looking forward to being alone with his risk tables and expensive multifunction calculator.

"It seems like a lot of those maverick CEO types like dangerous sports. Racing. Helicopter skiing. Hang gliding." Claire tried to picture the nebbishy king of Microsoft behind the wheel of a rocketlike car. "Well, maybe not Bill Gates."

"He's the smart one. If those other guys really looked at the statistics they'd know they should stick to something safer, like golf." As an afterthought he added, "Just as long as they stay off the course when it's raining."

Evan had probably been a worrier even as a child, but his job as an insurance adjuster had only heightened his continual calculations of risk. He refused to go canoeing because statistics showed that spending six minutes in a canoe cut fifteen minutes off one's expected life span. Smoking just two cigarettes cut nine minutes, as Evan had pointed out to a complete stranger who lit up behind them at a sidewalk cafe. But even avoiding risks brought with it its own agonizing set of risks. Take the advice for reducing the risk of catching colds: frequent handwashing. Yet handwashing itself was a risky activity, because most soaps contained potentially carcinogenic cosmetic additives.

Evan worried about everything. Earthquakes. X rays. Pesticide residues on his food. How close he lived to the now-decommissioned Trojan nuclear plant. Whether a sneeze heralded the beginning of a cold, which might turn into antibiotic-resistant double pneumonia and drag him inexorably down to death.

So many things were outside his control that Evan tended to be obsessive about those that were. He took a brightly colored handful of vitamins each morning. His diet consisted almost entirely of organically grown fruits and vegetables. He exercised six days a week. (Evan had met Claire at the health club when, after mentally estimating the strength of the three other people in the room, he had asked her to spot him on free weights.) He was the only person she knew who had electric socket covers even though he didn't have children. He didn't even have any friends who had children.

The same cautious appraisal that now sometimes drove Claire up the wall had been what had originally attracted her to him in the first place. It had been months before he even ventured to kiss her goodnight after a date. She had welcomed the contrast to other men she had known. Dates where you went out to dinner and a movie? Goodnight kisses? Up until Evan, most men she met seemed to want to skip all that and just move in with her.

To Claire, Evan represented steadiness, steadfastness. He had plans, a future all mapped out. He would never vanish the way her father had before she was even born. He would never lie to her. So what if he were honest to the point of being blunt? He would always have a job, a good job that paid well. And Evan had chosen her. Knowing how he calculated and weighed everything meant that he had also found her worthy.

She studied him as he carefully piloted the Volvo down the far right-hand lane, only reluctantly moving into the middle lane to pass the slowest of motor homes. Because it absorbed all his concentration, driving with Evan gave Claire the luxury of observing him. She liked watching his thickly lashed large hazel eyes as they flicked back and forth from his rearview mirror to the lane ahead of him and then to each sideview mirror, as regular as a metronome. His eyes redeemed Evan from the ranks of the ordinary. Everything else about him was unremarkable—he was neither fat nor thin, his hair was somewhere between brown and blond, he was tall enough that Claire could wear medium heels.

Today he wore a moss green sweater, a birthday present from Claire that brought out the gray-green cast of his eyes. It wasn't unknown for Evan, left to his own devices, to wear white socks with his dress shoes. Secretly, Claire liked this flaw in him, with its inherent proof that he wasn't perfect. At the same time, she also knew that he didn't see it as a flaw at all. Evan resented dressing up. It seemed very impractical. Why should he spend good money simply to make an impression? Couldn't people admire his mind and how well it worked?

The sign ahead read Medford—20 miles. "Get out that lawyer's fax and tell me which exit I should take," Evan said.

RUD14ME

The place where Aunt Cady had lived and died was tucked on the edge of a vast parking lot for a brand-new shopping mall. The trailer park was sheltered by a huge spreading oak, the turning leaves a welcome antidote of color to the black acres of macadam. Fast food places bordered the edges of the shopping mall's parking lot. Burritos Now! was the closest, standing only a half-dozen yards away. Every night, Aunt Cady must have gone to sleep listening to the sound of cars pulling away from the drive-up window of the turquoise-and-adobe-colored plastic box.

Claire had arranged to meet the lawyer in front of the trailer. A tall young man was already walking toward them, hand outstretched, as they climbed out of the Volvo. He looked more like a teenager than a lawyer, with limbs as loose and floppy as a handful of rubber bands.

"Claire Montrose? Justin Schmitz, your aunt's attorney. I appreciate your coming down on such short notice." He shook both their hands as they introduced themselves. The cuffs of his too-short navy blue suit exposed the scuffed heels of his black shoes.

Evan went straight to the point. "My understanding is that Claire inherits her aunt's entire estate. Is there anything in addition to this trailer home and its contents?"

"That's about it, I'm afraid. What little money she had in her accounts went for her cremation." He turned to Claire. "Hie terms of her will stipulate that I am to pay all her bills, close her checking and savings accounts, sell this trailer and then transfer the net proceeds to you. But I'm afraid the total won't amount to more than a

few hundred dollars. Two thousand at the outside."

She found herself apologizing. "That's okay. Really, I hardly knew her. I'm surprised she left me anything."

Evan looked at his watch. "Well, we might as well get started." He held out his hand for the key.

"Wait a minute." Claire turned to Justin. "Tell me something about my great-aunt. What was she like?"

"I'm afraid I only met her once. Last year she fell and broke her hip. When she was discharged from the hospital, she came to see me."

"Why did she choose you?"

Although she hadn't meant to sound critical, the base of Justin Schmitz's throat flushed. "I run a little ad in the Yellow Pages. I charge a flat fee for the basics—wills, prenups, divorces, that sort of thing. Your great-aunt was very definite. She said she wanted a will and a neutral executor so that no one in your family would end up having to decide what to do with her possessions."

Claire didn't tell him that her relatives were legendary for dying intestate, leaving the survivors to assuage their grief by tussling over the dear departed's earthly belongings. The morning of Grandma Montrose's funeral, for example, Claire had stood on Grandma's lawn and watched as relatives scuttled out of the house with their arms full of afghans and antimacassars, TV trays and old 78 records. Uncle John hit Uncle Chester in the jaw as they fought over possession of a color TV set. Cousin Bucky scurried past, clutching a battered plastic AM radio. Claire's mother had not been immune to the fever of acquisition, managing to lay claim to a huge old KitchenAid mixer and a little doll designed to sit on the back of a toilet. The doll's red skirt, crocheted by Grandma, hid an extra roll of toilet paper. Claire didn't remember seeing Aunt Cady there, but perhaps she had sat in her car, watching her relations scurry over her sister- in-law's property like bugs over roadkill, and vowed it would never happen to her.

Evan waited until the lawyer had gotten into his rusting Chrysler K car before he put the key in the trailer door. The key turned, but the door refused to yield until he pushed on it with his shoulder. With a lurch and a squeal, they were in.

"Oh, my God."

Evan's normally matter-of-fact voice was filled with something like awe. A tiny path wound from the door back into the recesses of the trailer. On either side of this narrow opening were piled magazines, books, newspapers and odds and ends, in some places as high as their waists. The air was thick with dust and the smells of ancient cooking. One swift glance was enough to tell Claire that while Aunt Cady had saved everything, she had kept nothing of value.

Claire looked at Evan's face for his reaction. He was allergic to dust and hated disorder. But she had to give him credit. He didn't say a word, just went to the trunk of his car, where he retrieved a small suitcase and a stack of flattened boxes. As always, Evan had come prepared. Before they even got started, he stood just inside the closed trailer door and changed into his oldest, grubbiest clothes (which, being Evan's, weren't old or grubby at all). He settled a dust mask over his nose, offered her a second one, and then they went to work.

Claire followed Evan's lead, working methodically and in near silence. She was amazed at the sheer variety of what they unearthed and then quickly discarded. The living-dining room area alone yielded dozens of snow globes, a tiny vase in the shape of a lady's boot, sheet music from the forties and a two-inch-long plastic vial of gray ash labeled "Mr. St. Helens, May 18, 1980." Everything wore a thick fur of dust, and even beneath his mask, Evan was soon snuffling.

While a few things—like the snow globe collection—were set aside for Goodwill, nearly everything went into the brown Dumpsters that sat in the middle of the trailer park. When the Dumpsters filled up, Evan neatly stacked boxes beside them.

Next to the worn armchair was a clock radio. Impulsively, Claire pressed the ON button. Classical music filled the trailer, and they worked to the sprightly sounds of a harpsichord until Evan unplugged the radio, wrapped the cord around it, and put it in the Goodwill box. Then they both carried the armchair to the Dumpster.

It was clear that Aunt Cady had continued in the love of reading she had talked to Claire about nearly twenty years before. In addition to the towers of magazines and yellowing newspapers, there were stacks of hardbound and paperback books, some dating back fifty years. A few were hard-boiled private eye novels of the type that Claire had seen for sale behind glass in Multnomah. She found one of these books—The Corpse Wore Black—under a pile of National Geographies. On the cover a red-haired beauty, very much alive, stared out at the reader through kohl-rimmed eyes. She wore an artist's salacious interpretation of widow's weeds, cut low and tight to show off breasts shaped like artillery shells. Claire placed it in the box of things she planned to take home, along with A Mind for Murder, Death in a Dark Place, and A Debt to the Dead. Maybe she could sell them to one of the antique stores in her neighborhood.

In the early afternoon, Claire took a break to use the tiny bathroom. While she washed her hands, she studied the snapshots tucked in the frame of the mirror. With a small shock, she recognized one as her own senior high school photo. It was traditional for seniors to go to a studio to pose for portraits, but there hadn't been any extra money from the welfare check for that. Claire's earnings from her nearly full-time job at Pietro's Pizza were being carefully portioned out to keep the electric and gas companies at bay. So instead of posing under an artificial tree or against the backdrop of a muraled sunset, Claire offered a tentative smile against the blank wall of every school picture.

She compared the photo with her reflected face. It was depressing that she hadn't changed much. More than fifteen years later, and she still had the same flyaway curls, the same pale skin—only now a few laugh lines framed her mouth. A part of her had always hoped that someday she would figure out how to make herself look glamorous, how to tame back her hair into a sleek chignon (a word she had read but had no idea how to pronounce). But she had only gotten older with nothing to show for it. With a little shock, she realized that if she pulled her hair back tight and lost twenty pounds, she might look something like Aunt Cady.

Claire took down her own photo and then began to pull the other photos from around the mirror's frame. Here was another school portrait, this one of Suzy at sixteen, the last year she went to school, taken just before she moved out of the house and in with her motorcycle-riding boyfriend. Underneath a wing of hair made brassy by an overlong application of Sun-In, her gaze was wary, sidelong. Next in the circle of photos was a picture of a slim young woman with her head thrown back, caught in mid-laugh. She wore a Jackie Kennedy-ish outfit, complete with a pink pillbox hat. Claire looked closer. It was her mother, back in an age before teenagers tried so hard to set themselves apart from adults. Mom had given birth to Claire when she was just sixteen, seduced and abandoned by a man she had met in line at the movies who had dropped her two weeks later. Claire had always pictured some lecher sweet-talking a blank-faced child, but in this yellowing photo, her mom looked more adult and sure of herself than Claire did now.

The last two photos in the mirror frame were cracked black-and- whites of a man with movie-handsome good looks, his blond hair cut short as fur. In one formal photo he posed in a military uniform, chest out, teeth gleaming, cap set at just the perfect angle. Next to that photo a snapshot showed the same man standing hipshot, his arm draped casually around a young Aunt Cady's shoulder. Her face was lit by a smile that completely transformed it, turning her sharp- edged features into beauty. In neither photo did the man smile. Instead he lifted his chin like a challenge. His eyes must have been pale blue, hut in the old black-and-white photos they glowed like quicksilver.