The Other (16 page)

“Yes,” said John William.

“Very hard, very nice oak floors.”

“I recall.”

“When were you there?”

“Christmas. Three weeks ago.”

Mrs. Worthington said, “Oh dear.”

We moved her piano. She only wanted it rotated, really, so that while playing she was closer to the radiator.

In the conservatory once more, we each drank a glass of water. Lucy joined us for this restorative, and I was made to divulge that I lived in North Seattle and attended Roosevelt. “The Teddies,” said Mrs. Worthington. “But how, then, did you boys meet?”

John William, with his forefingers, trapped his forelocks behind his ears. “Not everyone I know goes to Lakeside,” he told her.

“Of course not,” replied Mrs. Worthington.

“Countryman’s not a sellout,” John William said. “He wants to be a writer—a novelist.”

Lucy seemed interested in this piece of news and turned in my direction. Since she looked intelligent and fit nicely in her jeans, I found her gaze embarrassing and tried not to redden, which made it happen. Lucy said Gary Snyder had grown up in Lake City, and Mary McCarthy had grown up in Madrona; also, that Alice B. Toklas had attended Seattle University at the turn of the century. Mrs. Worthington added that the vaudeville impresario Alexander Pantages had once lived around the corner. We finished our water and looked at the Ambrose Patterson in the next room—it was called
Rocky Landscape
—at the Tobey murals—which to me looked like scribbling—and finally at the Clayton Price, which Mrs. Worthington said had “a scumbled surface and somber, earthy tones.” Then, at the door, she took John William’s hand in her own and said, “Tell me, how is your mother doing?”

“She’s in Taos.”

“You’re fending for yourself?”

“Always.”

“You’re not in need?”

“I’m not in need.”

“Do you hear from her?”

“No.”

Mrs. Worthington’s fingers twisted around her cane handle. “Oh dear,” she said. “Oh, Virginia.”

She kissed John William’s cheek. She patted his head. My friend put his arms, for a moment, around his grandmother. “Never you mind,” she said. “None of it’s your fault, love—none of it.”

“I feel like it is.”

“Tsk,” said Mrs. Worthington. “There, now.”

John William and I went to the curb and got in the Impala. “Sorry,” he said to me, while waving to his grandmother.

“We moved her piano two inches.”

“I’ve met Lucy a hundred times—two hundred times.”

“Dahling,” I said. “You
must
see the Clayton Price.”

“My grandfather cut down all the trees in five counties,” John William replied, “so my grandmother could buy all those finger-paintings.”

I
STAYED TOO LONG
in Portland. The “9/4” deadline named on John William’s postcard came and went without my noticing. In fact, I was parked at a rest stop between Portland and Seattle, on my way home, when I remembered it, and I only remembered it because the postcard fell into my lap when I pulled the visor down so I could take a nap without the sun in my eyes.
COUNTRYMAN—AT BADEN-BADEN THROUGH 9/4 THEN GOIN’ TO GET EJUKATID. GET OUT HERE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. BLOOD, SIMON MAGUS
. It was 9/5, and John William was at Reed.

I had two weeks before my own classes started, so I bought a one-ton stakebed from my uncle Lynn for $200, in the full knowledge that its steering was perilously loose, and went to work cutting firewood with his son Keith, the diabetic. At first, something gyroscopic seemed to govern that truck; driving it was like maneuvering a bumper car, a lot of fruitless overcompensating and futile swings of the wheel against emptiness. With a load of wood on board, this uncorralled skating was slightly less deranged; even so, I decided to replace the steering box myself, salvaging a used one from a wrecking yard and installing it via guesswork, but this turned out to be a mistake, because after that you needed the shoulders of an Atlas to budge the wheel, and had to lift yourself off the seat and throw your weight left or right while pushing and pulling, with muscular zeal, just to change lanes. I felt safer at this end of the steering spectrum, though, and with a less dedicated effort could hold a straight line on the road.

Keith and I flailed away at alders no one wanted near Monroe, in woods where a subdivision was supposed to materialize, as we were told by Uncle Lynn, who said he knew the developer. We ran a pair of heavy, whining Homelites, wore greasy chaps and silver hard hats, and skidded logs with the stakebed and a rusty cable. Keith had to stop often and eat brownies or Rice Krispie treats. One morning, he nicked his boot open with his Homelite—you could see not only the wound in the leather but the scored surface of the steel toe underneath. Mostly, Keith liked to sit on a log with a radio on and a joint between his fingers. It’s hard to say which was more tiring, cutting firewood or driving the stakebed, but fortunately Keith enjoyed battling my botched steering-box job so he could grimace theatrically while excoriating my mechanical abilities. I let him.

We served, mostly, the satisfied clients of Countryman remodelers. One of my uncles would transform a couple’s bathroom and they’d be so delighted they’d call again about their kitchen, and after that it was an easy matter for Keith to work from a list he’d developed, introducing himself as a Countryman and marketing our firewood. He’d make the sale and get careful directions. I’d back the stakebed into a driveway, and we’d toss a cord out at high speed before collecting our check; or, for a little extra, we’d stack. It was fun to feel muscular in the presence of a householder standing by with his checkbook, or in the presence of any woman, or to be watched by children as if we were exotic. One day, while tossing wood into a driveway, I realized that the columns and widow’s walk next door, beyond a low boxwood hedge, were Dorothy Worthington’s, or had been Dorothy Worthington’s before she died. There was a BMW in her driveway. There was also a late-model Econoline van, and now that I was paying attention to it I saw that its sliding door was open. A few minutes later, a guy wearing coveralls emerged from the garage carrying a crate, stowed it, and went in again, and a few minutes after that a Saab pulled up to the curb and Lucy Hatch got out. She was wearing jeans and a mid-length coat, and her silver hair was longer than it had been before, but no less lustrous. Lucy peered into the van’s open sliding door and kept her head in there until the guy in coveralls reappeared with another crate. He stopped short. She spoke to him for a minute, her hands in her coat pockets. He set the crate on the flagstones, sat down in the van’s sliding-door frame, and poked a cigarette between his lips. Lucy went into the house.

I told Keith, while we tossed wood, about moving the piano. I told him how rich Dorothy Worthington had been, and this made him wince. Then I asked him if he minded sitting in the truck for a few minutes, because I wanted to go next door to get an address.

Lucy let me in. She still had on her coat. I had to remind her about the piano first, and then I had to explain myself—that I wanted to write John William at Reed—before she relented and stopped blocking the door. I followed her through the foyer, then into the living room with its monumental furniture, and past the conservatory with its white wicker chairs. We passed the Ambrose Patterson and the Tobey murals. I noticed that Lucy’s hair had a becoming inward flip at the back but was still perfectly coiffed. She said nothing, just walked with her hands in her coat pockets, until we reached the study, where a year and a half before she’d greeted John William and me from her post by the door while a fire burned behind her. Then Lucy said, “Let me dig out his info. You can have a seat.”

I said, “I’m filthy. It’s better if I stand.”

She gave me a probing once-over now. “Hey,” she said, “do I remember this right? You wanted to be a writer.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Why is that?”

“Everyone wants to be a writer.”

She moved things on her desk with elegant fingers. I said, “I read in the paper about John William’s grandma.”

“Nightmare. Here it is. I’ll write it down for you.”

While she was doing so, another woman came to the door, older than Lucy but every bit as trim, and even more classy, tanned, with a strong chin. “Are you a mover?” she asked me.

“No.”

“Then who are you?”

Lucy explained. “This is Neil Countryman, Ginnie. He’s a friend of your son’s.”

John William’s mother took me in with brazen scrutiny. I tried to take her in as well, without seeming to, and remembered her unibrow from the photo I’d seen of her with Ansel Adams, on the wall of her study. Her face was all planes. Her black—I want to say “raven”—hair was in a compact, glistening bun. She was dark-eyed, with flaring nostrils. There are women in their fifties whom young men recognize instinctively as sexually complex, and Ginnie was one of them. She made me nervous, and between her and Lucy, I didn’t want to leave right away. “I’m getting his address,” I said.

“Neil’s been here before,” added Lucy. “He helped move the piano for Dorothy.”

John William’s mother stayed in the doorway. She wore a small black sweater closed by a single button, hoop earrings, and a necklace of lacquered wooden beads. “Excuse me,” she said. “The murals, Lucy. I need you to get me the paperwork.”

Lucy said, “Ginnie, you know what I’m going to say.”

Ginnie crossed her arms. She looked at me fleetingly. Then she said, “Say it anyway.”

“You can’t take the murals,” answered Lucy.

Now Ginnie entered the room. Her gait was imperious. I stepped back and, thinking I should indicate this was none of my business, looked at the floor.

“I can too take the murals.”

“Not according to Brent.”

“Brent can call me.”

“He already called you.”

“Don’t tell me what to do, Lucy.”

“It’s not what Dorothy stipulated.”

“You’re in my house.”

“We’re in Dorothy’s house. Excuse me, Ginnie, I’ve got this address written out now.” She beckoned, and I stepped up and took it from her.

“A friend of John William’s,” observed Ginnie.

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know he had friends.”

“He has me,” I answered.

Ginnie assessed me with greater interest after that, before squeezing her hair bun, gently. The gesture was slow and made me even more nervous. She said, “How did you get here?”

“I was bringing firewood next door.”

“And how did you meet my son?”

“I met him running track.”

Her eyes narrowed, as if this answer was suspicious. “You didn’t go to Lakeside?”

“I met him at a track meet.”

“Noted,” said Ginnie. “But where is he now? He’s dropped off the map, apparently. I haven’t heard a peep from John William.”

“Me, neither.”

“For months—
silencio.
Señor Silencio.”

“Same here, but more like half a year.”

Ginnie crossed her arms and held her biceps in her lovely hands. “So what do you think of my son?” she asked.

“He’s a good guy,” I told her. “You raised him well.”

Ginnie tried not to, but she laughed at that, turning her head to one side and covering her mouth with her fist. Her hoop earrings swayed a little. She said, “Bravo,” and laughed some more.

I said, “I have to go. My partner’s waiting.”

“Of course you do,” answered Ginnie.

I scratched my cheek then, which is, in the parlance of our day, passive-aggressive. Ginnie mocked me by mimicking this gesture; no doubt she wanted me to see that I couldn’t get away with it, that she read everything, and that my resistance, however minor, was as transparent as my attraction.

“Go,” said Lucy. “Can you find your way out?”

I did.

I
WROTE
J
OHN
W
ILLIAM.
I said I’d heard about his grandmother. I explained about my firewood business and said I’d met his mother in Lucy Hatch’s study. I told him about Jamie and described my trip to Europe. I said I’d gotten his aerogrammes. I said I was sorry I didn’t get out there before it was too late—I told him getting out there hadn’t been “in the cards,” without mentioning my interlude in Portland. Finally, I asked about Reed.

I still have the two letters John William sent me from college. The first is rife with freshman mania: John William is interested in all of his classes, and, besides performing three hundred push-ups a day, five hundred sit-ups, and seventy-five chin-ups, he’s taken to late-night long-distance runs and has limited his diet to fruits and vegetables. There’s a description of the repaired mimeograph and of a zeal to change the world, or at least Reed College, by tomorrow. The urgency of this, he says, “precludes my coming home for Thanksgiving or Christmas, two drags anyway.” He doesn’t mention Cindy, nor is she mentioned in his second letter—written, I know now, on the heels of losing her. Instead, he urges me to drop everything immediately and devote myself strictly to the gnostic path. I should, he wrote, “confront the aspiration and restlessness of Neil Countryman’s dissatisfied soul,” and act on that, because “What else is there but this dream we endure, with all its miseries?” John William had tri-folded eight pages of cramped script. He wrote that there was “no good knowledge to be had in college,” and asked me which I preferred, “death and darkness or light and life?”