Five Fortunes (5 page)

“We met her in the hot tub. There was a Governor Knox in Idaho when I was growing up. Hunt Knox. I think she must be a daughter.”

Carter slapped the table lightly and leaned back in her chair.

“You do know her?” Amy asked.

“Now I do. She’s Laura Lopez. She was married to Roberto Lopez.”

Amy said, “Oh god. Poor woman—no wonder she looks so sad.”

She looked down the long pool toward Laurie, who was, as a matter of fact, smiling at something Rusty Haines was saying to her.

“Who’s Roberto Lopez?” asked Jill.

“Oh, honey—you know. He was that famous tennis star, he’s Mexican. I think he went into politics. He used to be on television, he had that fabulous smile? He advertised some soft drink. He was killed in a plane crash.”

“About six months ago,” Carter said.

Jill, saddened, turned to look at Laurie.

“And they had a lot of children…”

“Five,” said Carter. She remembered all about it now.

C
arter Bond and Rae Strouse found seats together at Monday lunch. The ladies were served outside at big shaded tables, in a walled garden bright with annuals. Only The Movie Star and her sidekick stayed behind in their chaise longues by the pool and had their lunch brought to them on trays.

The flower beds in the walled garden were perfectly clean of weeds, tidy and well watered, and yet, as Rae remarked, you never saw anyone working in them, as if the sight of actual manual labor being performed outside the window might compromise your pleasure in hopping and sweating. But when did they do the work?

At night?

Rusty Haines joined Carter and Rae, along with her daughter Carol. Carter had liked Rusty enormously from the moment she began turning the wrong way more than Carter in dance class. They had spent an hour learning the weight machines in the gym together, and Carter now knew that Rusty was a third-grade teacher, retired, and the reason she wore that dashing head scarf was that she was recovering from brain surgery. The daughter, Carol, was a Beverly Hills attorney. She wore a large diamond on her right hand, but there was never mention of a husband. She must be a hell of an attorney, Carter thought, to be able to take such expensive care of her mother.

Carol had a blissful expression on her face and some sort of oil in her hair. She sat chewing happily on a salad.

“What have you been up to this morning?” Rae asked her.

“I just had a face treatment,” she said and sighed.

32

Five Fortunes / 33

“Who do you have?”

“Inga.”

“She’s wonderful, I had her last year.”

“Does anyone have Solange?” Carol asked.

“I do,” said Rusty.

“My massage woman told me Solange reads palms, but she’s not supposed to let anybody know.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. But I’d love to have my palm read!” said Carol.

“I don’t think I would,” said Carter.

“They never tell you stuff you shouldn’t know.” Carol had made a specialty of psychics. In her time she had had her tarot cards read, had a Chinese guru in Marin throw her I Ching, had her astrological chart done annually, and spent a good deal of money at a numero-logist’s.

“Which is best?” Rae asked.

“I don’t think it matters, it’s about talent.” Carol uncrossed her endless legs and turned her chair so she faced the sun.

“And what have you learned?” asked Carter. She had dealt with a lot of psychics, almost all of them bunco artists. But there were bunco doctors and lawyers too, after all. That didn’t prove there weren’t any real ones…suddenly she could picture herself uttering such a sentence to DeeAnne. DeeAnne, sleek and glossy, with her long purple nails, would rock back in her orthopedic chair and hoot,

“
What
did they put in the water out there?”

“No, seriously,” Carol was saying, “there’s a center of spiritual energy, just about thirty miles from here. There are only seven in the world. The Indians knew all about them. So did the Egyptians, there’s one where they built the pyramids. I’m going to ask her to do a private reading for me.”

“Honey,” said Rusty, “you need some sunblock.”

“What’s next?” Carter asked the group.

“I’ve got my massage,” Rae announced with satisfaction.

Carol consulted the schedule pinned to her bag.

“I’ve got herbal wrap,” she said.

“So do I,” said Carter. “What the hell is it?”

34 / Beth Gutcheon

“Follow me,” said Carol. She started off to the bathhouse, and Carter lumbered after her.

They left their bags and all their clothes in lockers. An attendant gave them each a heated robe. In the herbal room, two more attendants waited. A body was lying on a treatment table, wrapped up so that only its nose was showing. Carter had seen things like this at the morgue.

The attendant signaled to Carter to hand over her robe. She was beginning to get used to being naked in front of strangers, although she had spent her whole high school career trying to sneak out after basketball without taking a shower because she hated how the pretty little ones with their perky breasts pranced in and out of the sprays of water, while great, ungainly Carter stood around feeling like a horse.

She lay on her back on the cot and the attendant folded around her the fleecy flannel sheet on which she was lying. Steaming-hot towels were brought and wrapped around her, then a blanket put over it all.

“Claustrophobic?” whispered the attendant. Carter shook her head no. Later Carol explained that some people fear they are being embalmed, and start screaming.

Carter, however, loved the feeling of being cocooned. The towels smelled of spices, and she thought of mysterious herbs and occult arts, and began to picture herself as Nefertiti. The attendants were her adepts, mysterious healers privy to ancient lore. Her mind slipped its moorings and she had a vision of herself as a slug in a chrysalis, who when unwrapped would have turned to a shimmering thing of beauty. She pictured the sprite on the rock on the soda label, the White Rock girl. She imagined she would step lightly from this shroud, resembling Farrah Fawcett. From there she drifted to a happy thought of Jerry, her ex-husband, asking her to dance. And then, for the next half hour, she slept.

At the Happy Hour, Rae and Carter found each other.

“How are you holding up?” Rae asked.

“I haven’t had a cigarette in twenty-nine hours, and I still haven’t killed anybody.”

Five Fortunes / 35

“Very good! I see they got you some clothes.” Carter was now wearing a navy blue sweat suit of her own, and a new pair of aerobic shoes.

“Yes, but Jill let me keep a pair of her leg warmers.”

Carter exhibited her ankles.

“Love the color,” said Rae. Jill appeared, excited about her yoga class. She was sure that by the end of the week she would be able to stand on her head. She and Carter made for the hors d’oeuvre tray, where they were allowed one small vegetable dumpling apiece, dipped in some sort of herb chutney.

“We made it through a day. How do you feel?” Carter asked.

“Better,” said Jill.

“Me too,” said Carter.

The gong sounded. Dressed in a skintight red-knit pantsuit, the night’s Fitness Professional said, “Good evening, ladies. I’m Terri, I’m your hostess tonight…”

They moved into the dining room, chattering. Jill and Carter found seats together. Carter was pleased when Laurie chose a seat at the end of their table. Tonight they were even joined by The Movie Star’s sidekick. She didn’t say much. Somebody said she was an agent.

Over the salad they talked of food. A tiny, trim woman whom Jill had met in T’ai Chi announced that she was one of The Cloister’s success stories.

“I’m in the book,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I lost more than fifty pounds and kept it off. They keep a book.” Jill and Carter stared. Fifty pounds? She must have been wider than she was tall. Now the Success Story knew how the spa chef made everything. The secret of the oil-less dressings, the way to make fat-free chocolate mousse.

Over the salmon the talk turned to politics. This was election week.

There was a woman at the next table, someone reported, who was chief administrative officer for the mayor of New York. There was another whose brother was running to fill a congressional seat. The incumbent had gone to prison but was campaigning from his cell.

36 / Beth Gutcheon

“Wouldn’t you want to be with your family on election night?”

Jill asked.

“She gets too nervous,” said someone who knew her. “She’ll watch it on television.”

“Can we watch the returns at Saguaro?”

“Yes, but you have to remember, you’re not at home. You’re surrounded by Republicans,” said a thin dark woman.

“What a relief; I was afraid I was surrounded by Democrats,” said another.

“Speaking of television, did everyone see the news tonight?”

“No, what’s happened?” voices chorused.

“One of those commuter planes crashed in Kansas.”

“How terrible!”

“Do they know why?”

“Were many people hurt?”

“Everyone. Killed. It crashed in a rainstorm, halfway to Lawrence.

It just barely missed someone’s barn, and it killed a horse.”

“Those things scare me to death,” the Success Story said.

“I used to have to take those planes all the time,” said a small woman who hadn’t said anything before.

“Did you? Why?”

“I inherited an oil company, and I had to get to my wells.”

It was at around this point in dinner that Laurie Lopez got up quietly and left the room.

T
uesday morning Laurie was standing by herself in Saguaro, looking hollow-eyed in the early light. She held a cup of something hot, and seemed not to hear the burble of conversation around her. Amy and Jill were talking about the Five-Mile Mountain Hike.

Carter arrived bleary-eyed and made for the coffee.

“Did you sleep?” asked Annette, the woman from dinner with the oil wells.

“Like a rock,” said Carter.

After stretching, Carter and Annette struck out together and were joined by the one whose brother was running for Congress. Her name was Courtney, and she could be heard reporting that her mother had ordered her to stay out of the way since the day she’d fainted during a family photo op. “I get
ter
rible stage fright,” she cried, apparently rather proud. This was a frailty of long standing.

She had thrown up in kindergarten at the Mothers’ Coffee while portraying a fringed gentian.

Lagging behind them, Rae walked silently, close to Laurie. Laurie looked ineffably sad, as if everything in the world reminded her of things she couldn’t bear.

“I don’t suppose it would help if I gave you a hug, would it?” Rae said.

Laurie shook her head and marched on, but Rae soon saw that she

37

38 / Beth Gutcheon

was crying. They were climbing toward a ridge through a grove of lemon trees but below them they could see for miles along the dry valley floor. The earth under their feet was baked hard, and hikers could be thrown off stride by pebbles and hard balls of clay earth that rolled beneath their feet like marbles.

Rae handed Laurie a pack of tissues she carried in her waist pack.

“I’m sorry. I guess I miss my mother.” Laurie blew her nose. She was trying to make a joke, but her voice was pinched and high, as if her normal range of emotions had been crushed and squeezed into this weak treble register.

“I’ve got more tissues.”

“Thanks, I think I’m okay.” She sniffled, trying to turn to something light. “What else do you have in there?”

“Well, let’s see,” said Rae, and began to root around. “A needle and thread, cough drops…some Bufferin…here’s a bar of soap from the Santa Barbara Biltmore. A little Stolichnaya in case of snake-bite…” She held up a tiny airline bottle of vodka. Laurie smiled.

“I should just stay in my room till I get over this,” Laurie said.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Rae. “It’s always better to see the sky.”

They climbed on toward the ridge for a minute or two.

“I lost my husband,” Laurie said.

“I know how you feel.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. I lost mine too, when I was about your age.”

Laurie looked at her quickly.

“It was a long time ago, but you never forget,” said Rae.

“No. People say I will, that it will fade.”

“Oh, bull,” said Rae.

“How did you…was your husband sick?”

“No, car crash. It was late at night, and the roads were wet.

Somehow the car flipped over. There were no seat belts then, of course…. It was hot. The windows were open. His head was cut off.”

Laurie winced. After a while she said, “Roberto was in a plane.

The engine failed.”

Five Fortunes / 39

“I had two small children,” said Rae.

Laurie nodded. “I have children.”

“Young ones?”

Laurie nodded again.

“How many?”

“Five,” Laurie said in the high voice that wasn’t hers.

“Good heavens! No wonder you’re worn out!”

“It’s not—I have a lot of help.”

“I’m glad to hear it, but still…”

“I’m very lucky,” Laurie said. “My father, and my brother and sister-in-law—we all live close together.”

“And cousins?”

Laurie nodded.

“That was always a dream of mine, a big family of kids all tumbling up together. How many cousins? How old?”

They were on the ridge. They stopped to appreciate the scene spread below them. Then Laurie turned toward the path where Carter and her companions were climbing, and slowly started to walk again. Rae moved along with her.

“Mine are…seventeen, that’s Carlos, then Anna, she’s fifteen, then Cara, she’s thirteen, and the twins are ten. They have four cousins, three girls and a boy.”

“And you’re in the same building, or…? On the same block?”

“We live on a ranch. The houses aren’t so close in distance, but the kids can ride their bikes or ride horses.”

“It sounds like paradise. Where is this?”

“Hailey, Idaho. Near Ketchum.”

“I know Ketchum. My son, Walter, has a house there.”