The Reserve (5 page)

“And her father’s paintings? The Heldons? Were they beautiful, too?”

“Not really. Little altars,” he said. “Altars to nature. Not nature itself.”

She nodded and looked away. “Nature itself” was what Jordan painted and drew. He rarely made pictures of scenery, however, and never without evidence of the dynamic presence of human beings. To Jordan, history and politics and economics were all parts of nature. Sex, work, play: it didn’t matter. To him, human beings were no less a part of the natural world than the mountains and lakes and skies that enveloped them.

“What’s on your program today?” he asked.

“I want to walk,” she said. “And work in the garden. And I want to think, Jordan. I need some fresh thoughts. You know what I mean?”

He didn’t answer. He did know what she meant. Her thoughts—and his, too—were growing old fast. Something big was coming their way. Something uninvited and unwanted was silently approaching them. Something unavoidable. And though they didn’t know what it was, they both knew it was coming. The boys had finished their breakfast and stood at the soapstone sink rinsing their dishes under the pump. Jordan told them to meet him at the car as soon as they were done and got up from the table. He called the dogs and, without touching his wife or saying anything more to her, went outside.

I
T WAS A COOL, CLOUDLESS MORNING, THE AIR SO DRY IT FELT
like all the moisture had been wrung from it—what Jordan enjoyed calling a perfect Adirondack day, referring not to the season or the temperature, but to the brilliant light. Winter or summer, on days like this, under a cobalt blue sky, everything in his sight was sharply detailed, as if etched with acid, making him feel he could see and touch each and every leaf on each and every tree, every patch of lichen on every rock, every boulder glistening in the stream. He drove the Ford over Balsam Hill and down the long slope to the grassy pastures of Tunbridge below, and his vision felt microscopic. Who needs the forest, when you can see the individual leaves of the individual trees? he said to himself. Who needs the mountains, when you can see the very rocks that make them? In light this clear and bright, it was all there, the entire universe, no matter where in it he looked.

Now that he was out of the house and away from Alicia’s hard gaze and driving to town in the rowdy company of his sons and the dogs, he felt exhilarated—he felt restored to himself. He told the boys to crank down the rear windows and let the dogs put their heads in the wind. They were Irish setters, littermates he’d bought as pups three years ago from a breeder of champion show dogs in Saratoga Springs. The boys had been begging for a dog for months, and one spring night when he came back from a week in the city, he showed up at the door with a pair of dark red male puppies in his arms, which, during the solitary three-hour train ride north from Saratoga Springs, he’d named himself. They were to be called Dayga and Gogan, named after two of his favorite artists, Degas and Gauguin, he explained to his sons.

He pulled in at Shay’s, the combined general store and post
office at the center of the village, and went inside, followed by his sons, who ran to examine the jars of penny candy.

“Good morning, Darby,” Jordan said. “You’ve got a package from France for me?”

The man behind the counter was both storekeeper and postmaster, a balding, middle-aged man with a face pointed like a fox’s and a blotched, rust-colored complexion to match. He nodded and cast a cold glance at the boys, as if to urge the father to keep a suspicious eye on them while he was away from the candy counter, then ambled into the little room at the back of the cluttered store where the mail got sorted and distributed. He lugged the carton up to the counter and set it in front of Jordan and had him sign for it. “What’ve you got in there? French cheese?” Darby asked.

“Art supplies.”

“Americans must make good art supplies, I’d think.”

“They do. Just not as good as the French.” Jordan slid a dime across the glass and said, “Give ’em each a nickel’s worth of what they want.”

“Gum balls! The red ones! Make mine all red ones!” Bear said.

“What about you?” Darby said to Wolf.

“Half licorice sticks and half gum balls. Any color.”

“That’s four for a penny, y’ know,” Darby said. “Ten cents worth of candy. That’s quite a lot for just two kids.”

“It’ll last a while, I guess,” Jordan said.

The storekeeper bagged the candy slowly, as if reluctant to sell it, and passed the sacks to the boys. Without looking at Jordan, he said, “Heard you flew that seaplane of yours into the Second Lake last night.”

“You did?” Jordan said. “Well, news gets around fast, I guess.”

“Small town.”

“How’d you hear it?”

“Bunch of fellows from town had to go up there and bring out Dr. Cole from his camp.”

“What? Why?”

“One of his friends that was staying with him, the man come all the way out in the dark by himself to get help. Lucky most of the volunteer boys was already up to the Tamarack clubhouse with the fire truck, on account of having to run the fireworks. So they got into the lake pretty quick. Not that it made much difference.”

“What the hell happened?”

“Heart attack, I guess. He was a goner by the time they got out to the camp. The daughter, Countess whatzername, they come up on her walking in from the clubhouse just when they got the old man back down from their camp. She didn’t know about her father yet, so they had to tell her. For a while there they thought they was going to have to haul her over to the hospital instead of the old man, the way she was carrying on. But like I said, he was a goner. She was the one told about you flying in,” he added. “The daughter. Claimed you set her down and left her up at Bream Pond,” he said and chuckled.

“That’s only about half right,” Jordan said.

“I expect so. Say, is she really a countess? I mean, do you get to keep the title and all after you divorce the count?”

“I don’t know,” Jordan answered. He asked Darby if Dr. Cole’s daughter and wife were still at the clubhouse, but Darby wasn’t sure. The doctor’s body had been taken over to Clarkson’s Funeral Home in Sam Dent, ten miles away, so he thought maybe they were still staying close by, either at the Moose Head Inn in Sam Dent or over here at the clubhouse. “You know, to make preparations and all, for getting the body back down to New York City. For the funeral and all. That’s where they come from, isn’t it?”

Jordan nodded without answering. He grabbed the carton and hustled the boys out of the store to the car. From town he drove south on the road to the Reserve and turned up the steep incline at the entrance to the clubhouse grounds and pulled in behind a tan Packard sedan parked in the oval driveway in front of the wide veranda. Several other cars were parked there also, all with their motors running, their cloth-capped drivers—men Jordan recognized as out-of-work local men hired for the occasion, his neighbors—loading suitcases and golf bags and specially encased, custom-made fly rods and tackle boxes or standing idly by, waiting to carry their passengers to the train at Westport. On the veranda Jordan saw Vanessa and her mother and some of the people he had met the night before. He recognized the Tinsdales and the Armstrongs, but couldn’t remember their names.

Russell Kendall, the manager of the club, a small, almost delicate-looking man wearing a seersucker suit and bow tie and white shoes, was talking to the group, with large gestures and exaggerated facial expressions, as if in a stage play. Jordan knew Kendall only vaguely, having seen him a few times at the open-house cocktail parties that people tossed at their summer homes, parties attended by nearly everyone not considered strictly local. He’d also caught him having a recreational drink alone at the bar of the Moose Head Inn in Sam Dent. Slumming, as it seemed to Jordan. He had large red lips half covered by a drooping blond mustache, and Jordan believed that he was a homosexual. Each time they met, Jordan Groves had to be freshly introduced to Kendall, which irritated the artist.

Although the artist knew that he would enjoy the clubhouse facilities of the Reserve—the tennis courts, the dining fit for a luxury cruise ship, the comfortable bar with a bartender from Ireland who made a first-class martini, the golf course, and the
hiking trails and trout-filled lakes and streams that ran through the vast holdings of the Reserve—Jordan was not a member, nor had he ever wanted to join. One night a few years ago he’d ended up drinking late at the Moose Head with a pair of members wearing dinner jackets, flush-faced fellows his age who’d undone their ties and gone into town after the club bar had closed, and they had naively offered to put him up for membership. He was a celebrity, after all. Known for being somewhat eccentric and temperamental and thought to be politically suspect, Jordan Groves was nonetheless a famous artist. He could obviously afford the fees, and he held his liquor like a gentleman. He had said, “No, thanks, fellows. I don’t want to be the first Jewish member of the Tamarack club.” His sponsors said they hadn’t realized he was Jewish. “I’d also be the first Negro member,” he added, and they saw that he was joking and knew not to press him any further on the subject. His visit to Dr. Cole’s camp yesterday was the first time that he’d actually set foot on the Reserve, and today was the first time he’d parked his car in the clubhouse driveway.

He shut off the motor and sat there for a few seconds and watched Vanessa. She was in a group of perhaps ten people, but he saw no one else. She wore a calf-length black skirt and a dark gray silk blouse with billowing sleeves and over her broad shoulders a black crocheted shawl, and she looked even more beautiful to Jordan today than when he’d seen her yesterday in the fading, late-afternoon sunlight standing alone by the shore of the Second Lake. She had on bright red, almost scarlet lipstick, and mascara, and though she was pale and her face full of sorrow, she was luminous to him, enveloped by a light that seemed to emanate from inside her. He did not think that he had ever seen a woman with a visible field of light surrounding her like that, a gleaming halo wrapped around her entire body.

He told the boys to wait for him and got out of the car and walked toward the veranda. As he approached the group, the people ceased speaking and looked at him, and then, except for Vanessa, abruptly turned away. Russell Kendall took Evelyn Cole gently by the arm and led her along the veranda toward the steps at the far end of the long, open structure, past the Adirondack chairs and wicker settees and gliders, and the others followed, although Vanessa did not. She waited with a puzzled expression on her face, as if Jordan Groves were only a vaguely remembered acquaintance approaching.

He said to her, “I just now heard about your father. I want to say I’m sorry.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

“What?”

“Say that you’re sorry.”

“I’m sorry. I am.”

He was filled with an unfamiliar longing. He wanted to reach up and touch her and realized that not once yesterday had he actually touched her skin. Though she had whispered in his ear, their cheeks had not brushed. He remembered extending his hand to help her when she stepped from the water to the airplane, and a few seconds later, when she got into the cockpit, reaching again to assist her, but she had ignored his offers and not even their fingertips had touched. He had only
seen
and
heard
her.

“Yes, well, you have much to be sorry for,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. She knew without looking that at the far end of the veranda her mother and Mr. Kendall and the others had turned and were watching her. She could see over Jordan’s shoulder that even the drivers were watching her. She decided not to slap him, although she wanted to, and he deserved it. But a slap would not create a scene so much as end one. No one could
hear them, but everyone could see them, and she didn’t want the scene to end just yet.

“Yes, you’re right,” he said. “I do. I do have much to be sorry for. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking.”

“I’m afraid that I do.”

“Then tell me, please,” he said, and meant it. He wanted to know what he had been thinking last night when he’d left her up there at Bream Pond, and he believed her, believed that she knew what he had been thinking.

“You wanted to make love to me. And couldn’t.”

He inhaled sharply. She stepped down from the veranda and walked toward him, and as she swept past he smelled her perfume, the faint odor of a rose. He had seen her and heard her, and now he had smelled her. But he still hadn’t touched her. “Wait,” he said and reached out and took her left hand into his.

“Excuse me,” she said, “but I have to leave. I have to arrange for my father’s funeral.”

She tried to pull her hand free. He wouldn’t release it. He held it tightly, but carefully, as if her hand were a small, captured bird, terrified and fragile, struggling to escape his powerful grip without injuring itself. He felt the delicate bones and tendons turning beneath the cool, smooth skin of her hand.

“You may be right,” he said. “About what I was thinking.”

She looked up at him. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. Does it?”

“Yes, it matters. A lot. It matters to me.”

He could not help himself, and meant no disrespect or mockery: he lifted her hand to his lips and kissed it lightly and released the bird into the air.

For a split second Vanessa glared at him, as if he had indeed mocked her. Then she turned and quickly strode toward the tan sedan parked in front of his Ford. She called her mother sharply
to come along and got into the rear seat of the car. The driver—a man Jordan knew, Ben Kernhold, who had once owned a now defunct machine shop over in Tamarack Forks and had made polished aluminum picture frames for him—closed the car door, cast a quick glance at Jordan, and went around to the other side, where he waited for Vanessa’s mother. One by one, Evelyn Cole and the others came down the far steps of the veranda and got into their vehicles.

Slowly, like a cortege, the vehicles pulled out of the clubhouse driveway in a line and departed. Jordan stood by his car and watched them go over the hill and down, until they had disappeared from sight. Finally, he turned and, startled, saw that the manager of the club, Russell Kendall, was standing next to him.