Middle Age (34 page)

(Red-tailed hawks were plentiful in the Poconos, Marina had noticed them drifting in the sky above Mink Pond Road as if leading her onward.

This way! This way!) She listened carefully, telling herself it was nothing, of course.

It was then she pushed open the door to the back room. The door stuck just perceptibly as if it were latched shut, but the latch was loose, and did not hold. She couldn’t recall if she’d already seen this room on her quick excursion through the house. So many doors in the old stone house: one that led downstairs to the cellar, opening off the kitchen, others to closets, a storage room. But this was a door to a room Marina hadn’t noticed previously, apparently built as an addition to the rear of the house; boldly Marina pushed the door open, stepped inside, and her breath caught in her throat, for—what were these strange things?

Crude works of art, unfinished sculptures of Adam’s. This must have been his workroom, much smaller and darker than his Salthill studio.

It was cavelike and shadowy and smelled of dust, damp, and disuse. A melancholy odor. Gnarly vines grew across the windows like exposed veins. Though it was a whitish-glaring autumn day, little light came into the room. Marina switched on an overhead light, but nothing happened, of course, she hadn’t yet made arrangements for electricity to be turned on.

I am the new owner of the property at  Mink Pond Road, Damascus Crossing
.
Will you please supply me with power?

Marina entered Adam’s former workroom shyly, wondering at her good fortune. Here was something of Adam Berendt, left behind! Forgot-Middle Age: A Romance



ten even by him, it seemed. (Or had Adam deeded the house to Marina years ago, knowing she’d one day discover these?) She was fascinated to see that several of the sculptures were constructed like sculptures of Adam’s she knew, including the ambitious Laocoön, but these were hardly more than skeletal, rather like sketches. Even when completed, they would have been small-scale, coming barely to Marina’s shoulder; Adam’s completed work was often sizable, monumental. Unable to resist touching—for Marina was a sculptor, sculptors must
touch
—Marina ran her fingers over the twisted scrap metal, the sheets of brittle plastic, aluminum foil, cellophane, and shards of glass embedded in clay. How many years had it been since Adam had touched these? Dust in layers, everywhere cobwebs like powdery lace. Adam had been negligent about securing his materials, binding them together with wire, twine, or clothesline, and some materials had broken away from the construct and fallen to the floor.

“Oh, Adam. Look what you’ve done.” She could hear his voice in protest: he’d wanted, he said, the haphazard ephemeral fluidity of life; of things called
art
happening by accident, even clumsy or ironic accident, and but once. Most sculptors want permanence. Adam had thought permanence

“overrated.” And so he’d been careless, sloppy. Sometimes. For look at the condition of these pieces.

His Salthill friends had had to rescue some of Adam’s best work from him and now, ironically, these works would outlive the man.

The constructions left behind in the old stone house in the Poconos were crude and sketchy and would certainly look to an unsympathetic eye not very promising, but Marina Troy knew better! She knew how such sketches might evolve by slow, groping degrees into something very different, if the artist persevered. Sometimes, you were simply struck by lightning. Inside each construction was a vision, the artist’s vision, and this vision might even now, years later, be realized. Marina could imagine filling in certain of the pieces, determining the trajectories of curves and completing them. These abandoned sculptures of Adam Berendt’s, what were they but riddles?—precious gems obscured in sludge?

It had become late afternoon. This warm whitish day in early September. Nine weeks after Adam’s death. A day that had begun in some anxiety, in an obscure dark, but already so long ago, in so distant a place, Marina scarcely recalled. Calmly her heart was beating now. A great happiness suffused her like a light coming slowly up.

“Adam! I can finish these for you. That’s why I’m here.”



J C O

O    waning light Marina tramped through tall grasses gone to seed. Like frozen waves they were. Yet buzzing with gnats, tiny flies. She was wearing trousers, a long-sleeved shirt. Prickly vines caught at her like importunate strangers. Wild rose, hidden amid the grass. It would have to be cleared away lest it take over everything. At the front of the house was a screened-in porch made of wood painted magenta-gray, though peeling now, and the screen was rusted and pocked, and would have to be replaced. A sinewy vine resembling wisteria was pushing through the screen and would soon cover the porch and the windows. It, too, would have to be cleared away lest it take over everything.
Hello! My
name is Marina Troy and I’m the new owner of the property at  Mink
Pond Road, will you please help me
?

Yet how beautiful the grasses like stilled, frozen waves, and the wild rose and vines. Soon it would be autumn, deciduous leaves turning color against the unchanging pines. And overhead a sky pale as a watercolor wash of no distinct color, a faint sepia-gold shading into blue.

A phone?

She would not have a phone.

But shouldn’t she have a phone?

No.

In case of—

No.

Wasn’t it irresponsible as well as dangerous, a woman alone in this remote place, without a—

No
.

She feared Roger Cavanagh telephoning her. Between them was a shared memory like a shared flap of skin. No, no! The thought revulsed her. In weak moments she felt a dull sullen ache between her legs, waking in the night from dreams of sexual yearning in which she opened herself to the man, moaning with desire, unless he’d become any man, the beautiful supple warm body of the male to be touched, caressed, kissed, enjoined
Come to me! Oh, please
. And waking agitated, ashamed. What did a woman lacking a lover do, that was not ignoble, piteous, self-disgusting, when sexual yearning came so strong? She half believed that Roger Cavanagh must sense her feeling. Did he dream of Marina, too? Almost, they’d become lovers. It had nearly happened. But then it had not happened. A slapstick
Middle Age: A Romance



scene! Marina had a vague absurd memory—of course it was absurd!—of Adam watching the two of them as they’d grappled like drowning swimmers on the gritty floor of Adam’s studio, laughing uproariously. She knew that Roger would never forgive her for that episode, and she did not want to forgive him. How awkward they’d been, spreading and raking Adam’s ashes into his garden. When by accident he’d touched her arm, Marina had recoiled in distaste. No, no! She was not an irrational person (was this what irrational persons told themselves?) and yet she could not bear Roger Cavanagh’s touch. Yet he’d called her through the summer. She knew from mutual friends that he’d asked about her, often. Roger Cavanagh was a man, a lawyer, for whom the telephone is an automatic extension of his will; and his will, a lawyer’s will, must be consummated. She knew, and she dreaded knowing. But she’d escaped him, and would escape him. She had fled to Damascus County, Pennsylvania, to escape him.
I don’t want you,
it’s Adam I want
.
Adam I love
.

In time, she supposed he would acquire her address. She would not think about it. Her responsibilities in Salthill she’d delegated to others. A young woman named Molly Ivers was managing the bookstore in her absence and when Marina wanted to speak with Molly she would telephone her from Damascus Crossing, and she’d given Molly the number of a real estate agent in the vicinity if there was an urgent reason for them to speak.

And Molly had Marina’s post office box number in town, which she had sworn not to give out to others. And Marina had left information with relatives in Maine, in case of an emergency involving her mother. Enough, enough!

Circling the house in a distended loop, walking with difficulty through the wavy grass, Marina stumbled upon the remains of a stone well. She had a childhood dread of such deep, depthless things, like elevator shafts descending into—what? Don’t look. The drinking water for the house came from an underground spring that must have flowed into this well, but the well itself was covered with heavy planks, no longer in use. There were several outbuildings on the property: a small asphalt-sided garage, a guest cabin made of authentic-looking logs, a storage barn and a dilapi-dated shed. The garage was crammed with useless old things, rusted hand mower, cracked earthware pots, a bicycle with a flat tire. Nothing of Adam’s. The guest cabin was a single unadorned room with a braided rug faded to no-color, a pot-bellied stove covered in cobwebs, bunk beds and bare, stained mattresses. On the floor lay a boy’s laceless sneaker. And the



J C O

mummified remains of a small gray bird, a junco. In the storage barn were a tractor with flat tires, gardening equipment, boxes, and items of furniture, everything covered in cobwebs and not a thing that would seem to have belonged to Adam. The detritus of strangers’ lives that might have been fascinating to Marina if converted into art but otherwise held no interest. As Marina stood in the doorway, something behind the tractor scuttled violently away, Marina had a glimpse of a dark-furred creature blurred with speed, rather large for a raccoon but she wanted to think it must be a raccoon, nothing more dangerous. Her heart was beating with adrenaline as if she’d been running. She knew there was no reason to be afraid, she was alone here. Yet she stood in the grass, trembling.

Forty acres. Hers.

The vehicle in the driveway, parked near the house, a steely-gray Jeep with a military look, startled her—it was new, Marina’s new purchase, she’d decided she wanted a larger, heavier vehicle for Damascus County and had traded in her compact car for a Jeep and driving westward to Pennsylvania amid a thunderous roar of trucks and trailers she’d been grateful for the vehicle’s heft, and had come to appreciate its height. But she wasn’t yet accustomed to owning it. She wasn’t accustomed to seeing it.

“All mine?”

This property, this gift, in Damascus County! She’d told few Salthill friends about it. Roger Cavanagh had to know, but she’d never discussed it with him. Years ago when Adam had first spoken of it to Marina she’d been annoyed with him, upset, hadn’t wanted to listen because the gift, though well intentioned, was hurtful to her. She’d wanted to protest, “But Adam, I love you! Won’t you miss me? How can you send me away for a year?” The very word
Damascus
was painful to her. Now as waning sunshine in this beautiful remote place in the mountains swiped across her face and upper body like a scythe’s blade she began to wonder: Maybe Adam had intended to visit her, during that year away? Maybe he’d intended to stay with her in the old stone house? Away from Salthill-on-Hudson. The scrutiny of their friends.

Maybe she’d misunderstood.

She wished now she’d asked Adam more forcibly about the property.

Why he’d purchased it, and when he’d actually lived here. Why he’d never sold it. (But he’d owned numerous remote scattered properties. Some of these under different names.) Marina recalled Adam mentioning in passing that he’d spent weekends here—“In retreat”—when he’d been living in Nassau County, Long Island, but when Marina pressed him to inquire
Middle Age: A Romance



what he’d been doing at that time in his life, why had he been living on Long Island, Adam had shrugged and said evasively, “Nothing of monumental interest, Marina.” It was like a door shut gently but firmly in her face. He’d come to remind her of a man afflicted with amnesia who has grown contented with his condition, you dared wake such a man at your own peril.

Yet Marina bitterly regretted she hadn’t wakened Adam Berendt.

Possibly another woman had. But not Marina Troy.

All this while, distracted by her thoughts, Marina was skirting the edge of the clearing, down beyond the storage barn where the land was flatter, marshy. Beyond this, the pinewoods began again. You could see how the woods were pushing inward, always inward into the clearing, saplings, tall bushes, wild rose and briars. Always nature was pushing, and man resisting. You felt a thrill of horror, and yet of satisfaction: when man gave up this resistance, nature rushed in triumphant. If Marina didn’t prevent it, within a few years the property would be inundated by the forest, obliterated. The very driveway leading back from Mink Pond Road would be obscured. “It’s my responsibility, is it? Yes.” She felt heartened. She was confident. Adam Berendt had given her this gift for a reason, she would be equal to it.

A strong, sickening odor wafted to her. The ground was spongy underfoot. Here was scattered trash: pieces of rotted lumber, a bucket of hard-congealed tar, children’s toys, a naked and hairless rubber doll with widened glass-green eyes. Marina was disgusted, that Adam’s former tenants had littered his property like this. Half-consciously she picked up the doll. A bland blank face, but the eyes glittered like jewels. Marina pried out the eyes, dropped the doll and studied the glass eyes in the palm of her hand. A strange thing for her to have done. Already she was beginning to think like an artist, one for whom any stray object might be an inspiration: “What does it mean, I’ve found these?” But the odor was distracting. Her nostrils pinched, she felt a tinge of nausea. Her instinct was to depart quickly but instead she pushed forward through wild rose and rushes, drawn by curiosity, staring in horror at—what? The naked body of a woman with matted brown hair, sprawled lifeless, partly hidden in the grass.

No. It was an animal.

Was it? An animal, it must be a dead animal.

Marina’s eyes filled with tears of shock. Scarcely could she see. Now her heart was truly hammering in her chest.

Cautiously she crept forward, she had to determine this. Seeing to her