Whatever Lola Wants (2 page)

“Who's he?”

“Heard him on the radio. It's a collection of lectures he gave, about catastrophes stupid people cause.” Milton laughed. “I thought, Now that's Tessa's kind of reading.”

She nodded, a small drop of her head. How about a guide for avoiding fiascos in the first place? “Thank you, my dear.” She reached out her arms.

He bent to receive the hug. He was a large man with a barrel ribcage and a breadth of shoulder. Water-combed white hair scraggled down his nape and over his plaid collar, linting dandruff. A lined forehead and gruff black eyebrows softened to round cheeks, a thin mottled beard trimmed at the sides extending his small chin halfway to his open-necked plaid shirt. Theresa kissed his fingers.

They spent the late morning outside. He walked behind her along trails converted for the chair. New snow was coming, the radio had announced, a late-season storm, twelve-plus wet inches predicted on a thousand-mile front. And after the storm, real spring? The sap flowing again, the new pale green. How many more springs will Tessa live to see, and how many for him? It was a late spring when he'd met Theresa, she radiant and elegant, so strong, and she'd loved him instantly. Of all the men she could have had, why me? The wonders of the world.

“I feel the storm on my skin,” Theresa said. She took his hand and gently squeezed it.

The afternoon she spent in her study, reading her new book. The disaster specialist Carney described twelve catastrophes and explained how this devastation in Alberta need not have happened, how that calamity in São Paolo could have been avoided. For a too-often-corrupt society gone wrong, no good purging the symptoms. You have to doctor the whole disease.

Theresa couldn't agree more. Helping a single person here, another there, rescuing them one by one, believing you can correct systemic mayhem piecemeal, what a dump of swan shit. Milton often thought like that, that personal acts of decency could save people, that endless charity could improve people. Hundreds, thousands of hours to save a toe here, an earlobe there. And yet, thankfully, helping only her was precisely what Milton had done.

She studied the face on the back cover. Handsome fellow, C. Carney, around fifty. Wavy hair, solid chin. The beginnings of an idea played about in Theresa's mind. More reading, and Theresa decided. The first flecks of snow whisked down.

Later, before the fluttering fire, Milton poured cognac into their glasses. Outside, fat snow swirled. She spoke at the amber liquid. “To C. Carney.”

It gave Milton a sentimental satisfaction to see her so involved, a glimpse of how she'd once been. “Glad you're liking the book,” he said.

•

“I'm glad, too,” I said, so quietly I didn't think the words came out aloud.

“Why?” asked Lola.

I smiled, and shrugged.

She slanted her head and again examined my face. “Ted? Can you really see all that down there?”

It continues to amaze me, that Gods have become so separated from the down below. Blind to it, so to speak. “Yes,” I said, “I see it pretty clearly.”

“You aren't just making it up?”

The ever-repeated question. Curious to hear it being asked up here. “Which would you prefer?”

She remained silent for a couple of seconds. “I—don't know.” She stared down. Saw nothing. “Tell me some more.”

“Okay. There's John Cochan. From the landholding to the east.”

•

2.

That equinox afternoon John Cochan
drove to the cemetery. I watched him stop the car, his Silver Cloud, twenty feet from the tombstone. He stared through the windscreen out to sheets of whipping snow. Leaving the engine on, he got out, walked past other headstones to the gravesite. He tried to come every second or third day, had over the many months. Not coming would be betrayal. Crystals stung his face, a couple of inches of white already on the ground. He'd not bothered with overshoes.

In his work John Cochan's basic instinct, survival on the highest level, depended on speed. His primary purpose, immense success, demanded it. Both survival and success had been the reason for his five-day foray to Lexington, a suburb of Boston, base of Intraterra, headquarters for the
US
side of operations and parent company of Terramac, the city Cochan's vision would build here in northern Vermont. His junior partner for Terramac, Cal Fenton, had been in the midst of setting up an unfriendly putsch down in Lexington; fatal mistake for Cal Fenton. From Lexington, Cochan had set in action the scheme to eliminate Fenton, a distant end-run winding through Intraterra's Canadian headquarters, Montreal home to the corporation's legal mazes. Fenton didn't know fish about Montreal. Last night Cochan had caught the late Boston-to-Burlington flight, then back to Richmond by car. The commercial plane took longer but he preferred it to an Intraterra chopper. By midnight Fenton had become history.

Cochan should have driven to the cemetery right from the airport. But he'd felt thoroughly drained. He could have come first thing this morning. But the calls from Montreal began at seven-ten.

He stood by the stone. He took off his glove and brushed a rim of flakes from the granite. He bent over, careful not to step on the snow over the casket under the soil. With one finger he cleared tiny white drifts from the inset letters. And from the dates. 1994–2002. He subtracted, as ever, the first date from the second, as if to take life from death. His eyes filled.

If he hadn't brought Benjie to Vermont it wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't bought the farmhouse, made it their home, all would be different. If he'd moved them into Richmond a year ago …Simple as that.

Not simple, Johnnie, Priscilla would say. Nothing is simple. And she was right.

Right, wrong, what's the difference?

Four months back they'd left the farm behind, no way to go on living there. They had a house in town now, on the Common, a large house. Benjie would have loved it. Johnnie came back to the house last night, to Priscilla, to Deirdre, Benjie's first sister, to Melissa, his second, not yet two. For an hour last night, one relieving hour, Priscilla had loved him as of old.

He stood, stroked the stone, squeezed his eyes shut.

Back in the Rolls he sat in silence, engine running also silent. He slid his fingertips along the steering wheel's gleaming wood. He loved this motor car. Not as one loves, say, a woman, even a good friend, all quirks and demands, but as one loves what is smooth, dependable, ongoing. The engine of the Rolls was the finest integration of mechanical parts he had ever let his eyes delight in, his fingers caress, his mind comprehend. Its balance of space and function, its power, soothed weariness away.

But no soothing his despair. Not from the gravesite, nor from last night's dream. A dream from the pit of dreams, a thick dark dream passing beyond forests to flat stretch-scapes beside a wall of water. From the distance, muffled by the roaring wall, surely he'd heard Benjie's call, help me …At first far off, then closer, close by, the wall thin as breath. Help me, Daddy …help …If a way could be found, whatever way in the universe, Johnnie would embrace it. He had cried out, “Benjie, where are you? Ben—?” Far away, dim in the wet dark …help …“Where? Where!”

Priscilla had awakened him, stroked his arm, his shoulder. “Johnnie.”

He grabbed her wrist. “Why'd you do that, I'll never find him, I'll—”

“It's no good.”

He squeezed hard. “Damn it, damn!”

“Shhh. You'll wake the girls—”

He slumped his face into the pillow.

Priscilla whispered, “Johnnie.” Three-four-six times. She stroked his hair. He lay motionless. She drew his head, no resistance, to her breast. Her eyes filled, and flooded over.

He lay back flat, staring at the ceiling. The moon floated across the skylight. Soon she drifted back to sleep. Somewhere he'd find the dream again. But the worst of it, and so his anger, was she'd said it right, what good—?

He turned the car about and drove from the gravesite. By the cemetery gates he stopped.

For four years the purpose of his life had been Terramac City. Terramac, conceived for Benjie, for Benjie's generation. Terramac would be dedicated to Benjie the day of its completion. An electronic city, a city in harmony. The city of the future, a manageable and managed environment. A whole and integrated city.

An econovum: first projected, soon to be real. If it's crazy to dream, call me mad.

A few had laughed. At first. Funny guy, that John. And what's an econovum, anyway?

Funny to think life otherwise? Conceive an environment free of pollutants, of stink and damp? Free of pests, human and insect? Yes, he would create the consummate environment.

But the econovum question was one he enjoyed. Econovum, born out of a meeting with Sven Zimberg and Edgar Latier, Columbia and the University of Toronto respectively. Three dozen years back they had built influential careers by evolving what the world came to call ecological thinking and strategizing. Publicly funded research was their game, private-sector consulting their scheme.

John Cochan had outlined his dream. “I'll finance young scholars. They'll invent ecologies managed from the bottom up and the top down.”

Latier puffed his dead pipe. “How d'you mean, managed?”

“An environment nothing gets into except what we bring to it. A pristine environment, built right.”

Zimberg with his right pinky dug in his ear. “Environments aren't built.” He showed his teeth with pleasant disdain. “They grow.”

“That's been the practice. But now we construct.”

“A kind of condo Disneyland for humans to live in, you mean? Nothing is real?”

“No. Far more real than the odious reality we live in every day. And no rot, no pests.”

“A robot ecology, then?” A testy smile from Latier.

“For the first time, gentlemen, a fully human ecology.”

“How big?” Zimberg checked for the results of his mining.

John Cochan smiled. “A small city, nineteen-twenty thousand.”

“Can't do it.” Latier shook his head. “You want to work with—with— I've got to neologize. You're looking to create an econovum. A wholly new system.”

“An econovum? Econovism?”

“Ridiculous. No such thing.”

John smiled. “Then you're not interested?”

Latier puffed his pipe loudly, and stood. “Not my line of work.”

Zimberg rose, hitched up his jeans, shook his head. “Won't hold water.”

“Too bad, Cochan.”

No no no. Too good. Couple of academics, boots laced so tight to the past they couldn't walk into tomorrow. But they'd brought John a gift, a name to accommodate his project: Econovism. A whole splendid new thing. Of course environments get created, perfected managed environments; John had witnessed their creation. Among other places, in Idaho, sixty miles out of Boise. Thousands of acres. All for potatoes; potatoes pure and simple. No bugs. No weeds. Nothing in the soil except what the farmers put there. One hundred percent potatoes. Vaunted potatoes, potatoes indispensable for exemplary McDonald's fries the world around. Enough insecticide and the farmer held full control. Perfect potatoes. Of course Terramac was a universe light-years beyond potatoes. But the principle was similar. An environment entirely created by man the planner. When magnitude beds with quality, what grandeur is conceived.

QUALITAS ET COPIA, COPIA IN QUALITATE
: motto of Intraterra, stainless letters a gleaming crown above the portals of its Lexington headquarters, embossed in silver across the brow of its stationery, announcing with pride the achievements of the young revolutionary multibillion-dollar enterprise. John Cochan, surrounded by superb talent tried and experimental, stood tall among the upstart giants of American techno-industry.

He'd made the right choice, Merrimac County in northern Vermont, near to the Intraterra offices in Montreal, close as well to Lexington, each less than a helicopter hour away. A few miles from Richmond, the county seat, a town of fifty-five hundred souls just south of Ethan Allen's bump. Johnnie had gutted the Fortier farmhouse, and remade it: newly wired, plumbed, insulated, walled, and glazed. And because it would have been out of place to put up some eye-scathing cement and glass headquarters in rural Vermont, he bought the one-time Methodist church, a white-clapboard Revolutionary War building two minutes from Richmond Common, and transformed it into Intraterra North, the Vermont branch of his international operations. He became part of the community. High-quality talent here, good local labor. The smoothest stonemasons, the most inventive carpenters. Mohawk steelworkers, their balance fine-tuned. Ever-creative financing on both sides of the border. And bi-national insight into legal problems; though Intraterra's staff of lawyers was unsurpassed, Terramac would be further valuably served by local Richmond attorneys. And protected too by an independent Montreal law firm. Thirty months ago John had met with Leonora Magnussen, daughter of John's neighbors Milton and Theresa, licensed locally in Vermont, long practicing under Napoleonic code in Quebec, a partner there at Shaughnessy, Vitelli, Goldman, and St.-Just, specialists in cross-border law.

“And why me, Mr. Cochan?”

Behind her teak desk lady-lawyer Magnussen had sat, trim and ironic. Standing to shake hands she'd towered over Cochan by three inches. Skinny, skinny, and such a narrow face. But well-lashed clever gray eyes. He'd answered her with partial truth: “Your family's commitment to Merrimac County is longstanding. Your knowledge of property and community is complex and deeply respected— Yes, yes,” he said as she raised her hand, perhaps to protest. “I've done my homework. It's in your nature to respect the positions of all parties.”

She smiled lightly. “With some small preference for my clients.”

“Intraterra's interests are substantial. And they're not, I believe, antagonistic to those of your family.”