Whatever Lola Wants (22 page)

Trust him. When he comes to you, trust him.

How'll I know?

You'll recognize him.

Carney laughed a little. He'd have to be tall.

Good. And?

Dark hair. Widow's peak. Thin face.

Good. We can stop there.

Okay.

C.C., meet Mot. Behind her a man, dark hair, widow's peak, thin face. Mot, this is C.C.

Mot nodded Carney's way.

Hello, said Carney. He heard a bell ringing.

I have to leave now, said Julie. And added, with a twinkle, But then, I was never here.

Julie, don't, please don't—

The bell. She stepped close to his side, set her hand on his shoulder, kissed his lips. He tasted her breath, and her lipstick. The bell rang. He squeezed his eyelids close together. She mustn't go. No longer any pressure from her kiss, and the scent of her had vanished.

He opened his eyes. No Julie, no Mot. Only early morning light. And the ringing phone. He threw off the sheet and blanket. He grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

“Carney. Please. I need you.”

“Bobbie, what's going on? Are you okay?”

“No. It's Ricardo. He was hit by a car. He's dead.”

“Oh Bobbie, oh god—”

Jogging along the roadway just after sunrise with Rumples their dog. A drunk driver swerved, smashed into Ricardo from behind, and his life ended. Carney got up, pulled on his pants, his shirt. Slowly. As in a dream.

Five

1.

RAPT
, the Richmond Alliance to
Preserve Tomorrow, invited John Cochan to address them, 8:00
PM
, September 13, 2000, the Community Hall, open to the public, to explain Terramac. Among
RAPT
's members, Theresa and Milton Magnussen.

At home, all Theresa's comments about Terramac were variants of: What's at stake here is nothing less than a total change in how life gets lived in Merrimac County. Hell, all northern Vermont and a chunk of Quebec for icing!

To which Milton would respond with some version of: Let's hear Cochan out.

So among eight dozen others Theresa and Milton filed through the hall's lower doorway into the Games Room. They sat on wooden folding chairs borrowed from the Bridge Club. Up front, on risers a couple of feet high, the lawyer Dalton Zikorsky chatted with John Cochan. Six minutes after eight, above the murmur of chat and gossip, Milton said, “Dalton. Can we get this thing started?”

Dalton grinned. “Waiting for the stragglers, Milton. There's some not so prompt as you.”

“Because you're letting them get away with it, Dalt. We wait at this end, we get kept here longer at the other.”

Dalton shrugged, stood, held his hand up for quiet, and introduced the evening's guest. “John Cochan. Our new neighbor.” Mild applause.

For twenty minutes John Cochan spoke of the future of northern Vermont, Terramac his context. He would be building, from the ground up, the community of tomorrow—homes, recreation quarters, centers for production and development of information and communication systems, in short, a small electronic city. Elegant shopping neighborhoods, planned in every detail according to exhaustively researched standards for preserving, in fact enhancing, the environment the project would stand at the center of. It'd be a great improvement on the present. Terramac wasn't being built on virgin land, no old- or even second-growth forest around here. In fact, the site of this new city, the one-time Fortier Farm, had been despoiled long ago, over-grazing, over-logging, the standing water unsafe for drinking, over-fertilization, high fecal coliform count. “But change is going on all around. See how Burlington's grown in the last twenty years, a bustling healthy little city. And why? Because its people planned right.”

Dalton Zikorsky spoke for the Alliance's largest faction: “You see, Mr. Cochan, we're opposed in principle to this kind of development, condos and so on. We're coping with the old pollution, we're keeping it from spreading. But with a dozen new kinds of pollution, well, the impact on a community can be murder.”

“I'd never let that happen.” John shook his head. “You'll have the chance to examine the safeguards and securities that'll be in place for Terramac, every detail of them.”

“But, see, these kinds of projects get to be environmentally degrading in and of themselves.”

John Cochan smiled. “Tell me, what is it you want for Terramac?”

Ira Allen broke in. “What Dalt says is right. We've been here a long time, our families and all. We like it like it is.”

“But, my friend, tomorrow will never be like yesterday. Change happens, it's coming all the time. Why not plan for it?”

“Okay, just listen,” said Theresa. “Keeping things how they've been, that's our plan. It isn't true that change has to happen everywhere.”

Cochan shook his head. “You can't stop growth. But you can organize and so control your future. I'll help with that. Terramac will be central to your growth. We'll work together.”

“No!” Theresa's whisper cut the air. “Don't you get it, Cochan? The Terramacs of the world, they pollute what we love. Our land, and our bodies too. We know that, too well.”

“If you'll just listen a minute …”

“No, you listen, that's not the half of it. These Terramacs, they destroy the soul. As they'll do here, the souls of my friends here in Merrimac County. My soul. Yours.”

“Our souls, Dr. Magnussen?” Cochan laughed lightly. “Let me just explain to you why this is different from any—”

“Different? Your Terramac shops filled to bursting, their hawkers screeching, Buy! Buy!”

“Dr. Magnussen. There's never been a Terramac before.”

“And there ain't gonna be one here now.”

A chorus of “No,” and “Right,” and a generous shaking of heads.

John Cochan practised restraint. Long ago he might have insisted, or threatened. He smiled at that image of himself. No, one day soon the Alliance's people too would bask in the successful splendor of Terramac.

The meeting ended, nothing resolved. In the weeks that followed,
RAPT
learned little more about this Intraterra North organization, a private company, family owned, its website as public as it ever got. But what to make of it, this resort? apartment co-op? multi-mall? high-tech industrial park? And why build it here? And who might live in it? And how would it be designed, and organized? And keep it out.

•

“She's real angry, that Theresa.”

“Many down there are,” I said.

“Not like her. She's something special. I wonder what it feels like, to get so angry.”

I said nothing, letting Lola follow her thought.

“You suppose she gets any pleasure, being angry?”

I considered that. “I don't think so. But I can't see very deep into her …” I shrugged.

“I bet she does,” said Lola.

•

On a Friday
in July of the fateful year 2001, late morning as usual, Theresa Bonneherbe Magnussen arrived at the nursing station. Patty the duty nurse greeted her with her normal flighty, “Hi, Theresa. The girl ready for action?” Here Theresa's doctorate was irrelevant.

She chuckled. “Sure. Got anybody old I can take advantage of?”

Patty grinned, checked the list, next step in their ritual. She'd already figured where Theresa's time would best be spent. “There's Mr. Knowles. Operated on two days ago.”

“Who's his surgeon.”

“Stubbs.”

Theresa nodded. “Didn't get it all?”

Patty shook her head. “Bits and pieces all over the place.”

“He knows, then.”

A sad laugh. “They're dripping him. His wife's been by. He's handling it better'n her.”

A sheet covered most of Mr. Knowles, a drawn face ageless in the range of the middle years, eyes closed, skinny arm, plastic tubing attached. Theresa said, “Morning, Mr. Knowles.”

Mr. Knowles lay still.

Theresa introduced herself. “May I join you?”

The man said, “Uhhm—”

Theresa pulled a chair to the bed, sat, remained silent.

The man opened one eye to a squint. He said, “D'I know …?”

Theresa shook her head. “No.”

“You—a preese?”

Theresa smiled. “No, no. I'm a woman with time to share. Like to share a bit with me?”

The man snorted. With a tad more strength it might have been a brash laugh. “Guess I—need a—a li'l, huh.”

Theresa laughed, in turn. “We all do, Mr. Knowles.” Then she talked or sat silent for an hour. Leaving, she told Patty she couldn't be in for the afternoon, had to be at a meeting.

Patty watched Theresa go. For nearly seven years she'd been sitting at the bedside of the dying. No one had ever asked why. This was not how Richmond thought of Theresa Magnussen.

Only once had Milton said, “Now you believe in helping people one at a time?”

She'd said, “I'm not healing them, not a bit. They're all dying. I'm just soothing them.”

Milton had not argued.

•

“Huh,” said Lola. “I didn't know she could be like that.”

“I didn't either. Till now.”

•

In Richmond, county
seat for Merrimac, the town hall was the hearing room. By Monday all would know, in principle and perhaps more, the future for the old Fortier Farm. The adversaries: the Richmond Alliance to Preserve Tomorrow at one end of the long table, Theresa up front, Milton slouching at her side. At the other end, Intraterra North.

Despite the heat John Cochan wore a white shirt and a scarlet tie. His black eyes studied the faces, shiny, bearded, tanned, down near Dr. Magnussen. His mind weighed their possible positions this afternoon, the effect of them. No, he wasn't worried. Nine months since he'd brought up Terramac with them, months filled with the hard work of a first-class team.

At mid-table and separating the groups hovered County Commissioner Charlie Seed, broad, tall, amiable, called Chick. And three Associate Commissioners.

John Cochan smiled a greeting at Chick. Chick nodded in return. Johnnie and Chick had spent a lot of time over the winter and spring in projection, conversation and the pleasure of each others' dinner tables. Their wives got along too. The decision was pretty much in place, and Cochan had no fears. Well, almost none.

Perched on a stool at his right, the place of honor as designated by Johnnie, sat Benjie Cochan, nearly seven years old. Johnnie whispered to the boy, “Later on I'll give you some papers to hand to the lawyer.” Benjie nodded. He felt proud when his father asked him to do things like this. Seeing the two, some of the hundred-plus onlookers seated along the wall and in rows from table to door smiled, a father and a son, good friends.

On John's left sat Terence Connaught, lawyer for Intraterra North, brought in from Burlington, more or less a local man. Beside Connaught, the two Intraterra vice-presidents assigned to Terramac, Yakahama Stevenson,
VP
Planning, wiry, clear-eyed, and Aristide Boce,
VP
Financial, stout, a broad and bristly mustache.

Among the spectators, flame-haired Priscilla Cochan, filled to bursting with the future Melissa. The ladies of Richmond liked Priscilla. She was available for teas and bridge, for driving the old people to the supermarket, to dental appointments. Her new baby would be a real child of Richmond. Priscilla paved many pathways for Johnnie, clear little lanes toward Terramac.

Theresa, loose white mane flowing down her back, listened as Dalton Zikorsky, Chair of
RAPT
, whispered at her ear, Dalt confident that the future Cochan was striving to cast them all into would never come about. She wished she felt Dalt's certainty.
RAPT
dealt in details and legalisms; Terramac was fueled by obsession and zeal, what Cochan called Herculean vision. More a Medusa's glare, thought Theresa.

The overflow crowd, involved observers all, represented a gamut of often informed opinion: on the one hand, hope-filled desire that Terramac would bring abundance, new employment prospects, a solid tax base for the town and farms around, better schools, a new ambulance; on the other, leave the county as it is, low-density rural and small-town living, clean air, no malls, condos, or resort hotels near Richmond. Why d'you think we stay here, moved here in the first place?

Lawyer Connaught presented the Terramac proposal, clarified Terramac's place among the many contributions John Cochan had made elsewhere. Cochan would bring to northern Vermont a small but resplendent community for the third millennium.

More than once Theresa hissed with anger. Leonora squeezed her shoulder, Milton her hand.

RAPT
responded to Connaught and Cochan with tactics designed to show so many problems, make so many environmental demands that Terramac would be shelved. County services were unprepared to handle the influx. New pollution from cars, garbage disposal for thousands of new homes and offices? And Terramac's golf course would bleed herbicides and pesticides into Fortier Creek and the Sabrevois River, this was in the nature of golf courses.

Zikorsky argued on: Excavation at the edge of the Laurentian Shield, a major fault line, would destabilize the geology, multiplying the danger of earthquakes. The old striated rock, blasted into a jumble at Terramac, could become a conduit to shock waves shuddering through Merrimac County.

Theresa, all attention, shuddered also. Half the hall shuddered with her.

Excavation would alter the underground river systems, destroy the water table. Little Lake Stevens, fed by springs, could disappear, and the impact on Lake Champlain was unknown. Here in Zikorsky's hand a geological survey showing how the tunnelling of construction could cause major drainage. The flooding of low-lying parts of Merrimac County was too likely.

Beside Benjie, his father smiled. Benjie knew why. Johnnie had told Benjie water was very important for Terramac, clean water, crucial. Water would make Terramac possible. He glanced up again to show he knew this. But his father was making notes on a piece of paper.