The Cadence of Grass (2 page)

“How on earth does a speedboat fly into the
second story
of a condominium?”

“I don’t know,” Paul said as though genuinely puzzled. Actually, he was staring at the old Harry Winston choker bedecking Mrs. Whitelaw’s bosom, wondering how it would fare in a death tax appraisal. All of them thought Mrs. Whitelaw had finished her venture in analogies, but in this they were not correct.

“According to the same issue of the
Chronicle,
a chicken, a pet, escapes its hutch in Greeley, Colorado, and walks forty miles to the other side of Denver through traffic, strip malls, gas stations, parking lots, followed everywhere by rumors and news reports. At one point they had a helicopter looking for this chicken, and the owner, an older gal, a waitress, trudged and rode and followed the rumor trail until
fate
brought this chicken to bay in the parking lot of Blockbuster Video! There—and this just makes me want to bawl—it was reunited with the old waitress. Who was no dope, because before she even fed that worn-out bird which I saw on TV and which looked like a piece of rag, before she’d even given this poor broken little thing a dish of water, she sold the film rights to Hollywood! No
wonder
my husband was ready to go!”

“Still, Mrs. Whitelaw,” said Paul, who had rarely been this mentally bankrupt, “there’s so much to be thankful for.”

“Oh, Paul,”
said Natalie with contempt and pity as Mrs. Whitelaw belly laughed and pulled a handkerchief from her reticule with which to undampen her eyes.

Evelyn, looking on, recalled feeling that Paul Crusoe had never really been ready for this family. This sort of customary byplay between Paul and the sisters was nothing new and not nearly as resonant as it would become after Jim Whitelaw’s will was read. For now, they lived on in a fool’s paradise, brought together as a family by the apparently complete lack of feeling for the deceased.

Earlier, at the funeral itself, Mrs. Whitelaw, seated next to Paul during the long and tiresome service, wanted to know a few things about him; sotto voce, like a conspirator, she seemed not to be thinking about her husband at all.

“Were you a Boy Scout, Paul?”

“No.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered when you were young, of course, but the Boy Scouts are in hot water with the queers. It was in the
Chronicle
. Can you tell me briefly, Paul, why your marriage to Evelyn failed so suddenly? And be sure to make it brief.”

“It wasn’t sud—”

“It was the lack of children, wasn’t it?”

“Actually, we—”

“I have no right to make these sorts of guesses, Paul. Other people’s lives, even your own children’s, are a com
plete
mystery.”

“Actually, we bo—”

“What’s that?”

“We bored each other!”

“Don’t raise your voice to me, Paul. Do you need money?”

“Not yours.”

“Whatever could you mean by that?” Mrs. Whitelaw turned her attention to the service. “Isn’t there going to be some sort of music?”

“I have no idea.”

Paul’s mother, Dr. Edith Crusoe, a Westernist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, chose this moment for a quiet arrival. She was not to stay for long. Indeed, she remained in her mackintosh, whose wide lapels rose around her ears as she sat quizzically regarding the coffin, her face lively and discontented. She murmured something that caused Alice Whitelaw to smile in modest gratitude, nodded rather formally to her son and snubbed Evelyn entirely.

Evelyn understood that had Dr. Crusoe not found something thematic in the funeral, something emblematic about low rainfall, say, she wouldn’t have come at all. Evelyn surmised that as her father had owned a bottling plant Dr. Crusoe may have viewed him as an oligarch of moisture hoarding, and she imagined the passage wherein the descendants of mammoth hunters are bludgeoned into an ecological black hole by waves of coercive white men on horseback wielding Coca-Cola bottles. Partisan hyperbole had made Dr. Crusoe not just a professor but a public intellectual in the Northern Rockies, but Evelyn’s views of her were unreasonable. She had never married and Paul was her only child. When the priest began to speak of the deceased and the meaning of his life, Dr. Crusoe rose sharply to her feet and departed, the crown of her head barely visible above the lapels of her coat.

The priest addressed his remarks to the coffin. Having not listened to anything until now, Paul and Mrs. Whitelaw found this completely baffling. Evelyn was discomfited to recognize in the sermon whole passages from that year’s
Farmers’ Almanac
.

“I see where they’ve made another movie about the
Titanic
,” said Mrs. Whitelaw.

“That’s right,” Paul said, his eyes widening.

“What can they possibly add?”

“This time it floats,” he said wearily.

“Oh, Paul, I find your humor rather extreme.”

“Pay attention to your husband’s funeral,” he snapped. Mrs. Whitelaw looked at him, then suddenly crumpled and began sniveling into her handkerchief.

“This is what it feels like to be doomed,” she said miserably.

“Oh, Mrs. Whitelaw, I’m so sorry.”

“You will look after me, won’t you, Paul?” Later he would wonder if her remark contained some premonition.

“Yes, Mrs. Whitelaw.”

“I was doing so well, so detached—”

“Yes.”

“Remarkably well, in view of circumstances. Now it is all falling, falling, falling, falling.” Knowing that it would be only a short time before Mrs. Whitelaw was on the muscle again, Paul attempted to hold and comfort her, a dismal exercise. “What a shame we’re losing you to our family, Paul. I’m glad Jim wasn’t quite aware of it, he was so enfeebled toward the end, always with a hat on his head.
Never
wore a hat during his life unless it was dangerously cold out, but at the end it was always these awful red watch caps. He looked homeless. Perhaps when people reach that point they
are
homeless, aren’t they, Paul? Are they finished up there?”

It looked as though they were. The priest had just finished saying something and had clasped his hands. It must have been something very good about heaven for him to chance such a puckish demeanor. But no, good God; he was addressing Mrs. Whitelaw, who hadn’t heard a word he’d said. “I hope my words weren’t inadequate, Mrs. Whitelaw. I remember Jim’s opinion on long speeches all too well.”

She gazed at him as though he were a pesky employee.

“That’s not just Jim,” said Mrs. Whitelaw with sudden authority. “That’s the way the whole world feels.”

The family was obliged to meet over and over again just to understand how the estate was to be probated because the last will and testament of the deceased was a “minefield,” according to the attorney who drafted it. The daughters were so fixated on the attorney’s dramatic hairdo that they often couldn’t remember his name, but they recognized the will as pure Sunny Jim Whitelaw, attempting to bind his family to his wishes from beyond the grave. Alice was bequeathed a living from the bottling plant, of which Paul was appointed president and chief operating officer, at a handsome salary. Not a guaranteed red cent for anyone else. A provision, however, existed for the alteration of the conditions thus imposed. Should Paul and Evelyn cancel their plans for divorce, the profits of the business could be shared among all family members, or it could be sold and the proceeds divided. In any event, while it wouldn’t make any of them wealthy, a degree of comfort and security was probable if, as the obnoxious attorney suggested, they behaved themselves. Natalie’s husband, Stuart, said that the will reminded him of the Iron Maiden. Natalie called it proof of her father’s hatred and emitted penetrating howls in the chambers of the probate judge. Stuart gave her a calming shoulder rub. Evelyn exhaled and said, “Ooh, boy,” as her intention to divorce Paul was the single greatest act of defiance she had ever directed at her father. Paul had, through the confidences of Sunny Jim, known all along that if he stayed in the marriage, stayed in the family business, he could be reasonably expected to keep his trap shut. He had a copy of the will and put the cash-flow schematics in his wallet as though they were real money. Alice Whitelaw said that she felt secure and offered loans to her children. Knowing what a cheapskate she was, this provided scarce comfort to anyone; and when Paul gave her a congratulatory pat on the back, Evelyn heaved a sigh of heartfelt disgust.

The probate judge, a decent old man with snow white hair, found himself agitated by all the ill will and complication in this family. While offering them formal best wishes and the ongoing availability of his advice, he quietly and desperately hoped he never saw these people again, then darted off like a fugitive, describing the situation to the first colleague he ran into as “a chandelle off a shithouse.”

Paul had been out of prison only a little more than a year. He was still occasionally in touch with his two cell mates, who had named themselves Kahuna and Moondoggie after characters in
Gidget;
and while he had sometimes been afraid of the other prisoners, they themselves were chiefly afraid of freedom, though they experimented with it, between sentences, like a dangerous drug. He had served his time for a manslaughter conviction, years stolen from his life but economic opportunity of a kind he might not otherwise have enjoyed. Driving back from a Masons’ banquet with his father-in-law passed out on the front seat, Paul had rear-ended a motorcycle at ninety-five miles an hour, liquidating its driver. On the way home from the dilapidated county jail out from which Sunny Jim had bailed him, Paul devised a remarkable conversation.

“Why were you going so fast?” Sunny Jim asked reasonably.

“I wasn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“
You
were.”

Sunny Jim slowed down to concentrate on the talk. “I’m not following you,” he said.

“You were driving,” said Paul. “You killed the motorcyclist.”

As Sunny Jim pulled over, the hiss of pavement changed to gravel popping under the tires. He was silent.

“I dragged you over to the passenger’s side and sat at the wheel till the Highway Patrol arrived.”

Sunny Jim studied every pore on Paul’s face.

“Why would you do that?”

“Why? Because you have more to lose than me and you’re too old to go to prison, which is where I’m undoubtedly headed.”

Sunny Jim turned the engine off and let traffic flash past behind him. He seemed far away. Paul was thinking of an old country song, “Wreck on the Highway,” and its chorus, “I didn’t hear nobody pray.” This was a special moment, and Paul hoped that over the long haul it would pay like a slot machine.

“I won’t forget this, Paul,” said Sunny Jim, a faint vibration stirring his accustomed baritone. “I’ll never forget what you’ve done.”

Paul was now due for his weekly appointment with Geraldine, his parole officer. He was fascinated by the atmosphere of the office itself, which, with a stern receptionist in front and offices on either side, was somewhat like the waiting room of a dentist’s office. There were usually several parolees in attendance, including a few “short leashes” as Geraldine called them, who went to the farthest office on the right, which handled electronic monitoring and chemical castration.

He did not want to suggest to her—at all!—that he was taking advantage of the intimacy that had grown between them. Paul was well dressed, straight from work, transformed from ex-con to CEO in a matter of a few short blocks. He was on top of the situation in terms of heading off any clever remarks he might make on impulse. But she was glad to see him and greeted him with real warmth, right in front of her secretary, whom Paul had already checked out and scratched for the bench knees she so unwisely revealed below her skirt. Geraldine even held the door for him! When they sat down, she behind her desk, he in a small, disadvantageous chair so deep he felt he was gazing out over his own pelvis, she moved to the corner of her desk to make him more comfortable. Geraldine was a big-boned, good-looking girl whose slightly out-of-date teased hair put her at risk in Paul’s eyes. When he’d pointed her out to Natalie late one night, she’d said, “Baby, let’s kiss those seventies good-bye!”

“I think I can update these forms almost without talking to you.”

“Well, I haven’t been anywhere, just working.”

“But things
have
changed, Paul.”

“Yeah, and like I’m rolling in it.”

“You got a bit of training, I guess, under your former father-in-law . . . ?”

“Uh-huh, he was sure grateful I did the time.”

“Well, it looks to me that this is all a fairly happy outcome.”