by Lia Matera
And I hadn’t. How could I have made a mistake? I know mushrooms, really know them.
I felt like jumping off a cliff.
James tried hard to make me feel better, but I could see how upset he was, underneath. I ended up crying all over him.
I fell asleep around dawn, with James yawning and telling me about a cruise to Alaska, a cruise he very much wanted to take if he could just persuade Karen to travel so far from Macy’s and Nordstrom.
I woke up a few hours later to find James asleep in my sprung easy chair. I tiptoed out of the house (maybe “shack” is a better word), put on my boots, and drove out to the woods. It’s the only place I feel at home.
The mushrooms were beautiful, tomato-red with puffy white “warts.” They were in a clearing by themselves, the center of attention, fresh and perfect, without a single bug in their gills, without a trace of decay. Yet I looked at them and felt afraid, afraid of what they might do to me. I reminded myself that people had been eating them for thousands of years. And I’d never heard of any fatalities (except in a British mystery novel).
I was doing it myself—letting phobia overcome what I knew to be true about the mushroom.
I forced myself to kneel in the duff before the great god Soma. At the base of one mushroom, a stunned fly skittered in the wind, attracted and then drugged by the fungus.
I snapped the broad caps off their stipes.
When I got home, James was gone. Just as well.
I sliced the fly agaric and spent an hour trying to copy the method of ingestion described by the ancient Aryans in the Rg Vedas. I swallowed the yogurty mess. It tasted like moldy leaves.
For half an hour nothing happened, except that I was scared: scared of the mushroom and scared of Robin Peterson’s ghost.
And then I was on the floor, supine and sweating. The ceiling swirled. For years I’d studied mushrooms, hunted them, examined them under microscopes, cooked them, served them, eaten them, arranged them, lectured about them, and photographed them. Now I saw myself as part of a continuum. I saw reindeer butt each other in savage contest for the fungus, I saw Aryan priests drink Soma milk, I saw bearded Siberians leap and stagger and laugh, I saw flower children peel the red skin off the cap and roll it into cigarettes.
And then I saw myself:
A cool, misty morning, me with my raincoat on, my basket on the ground beside me. There were two dozen mushrooms in it already, some very young with veils covering their white gills, some with broad caps and gills dusted with brown spores.
I looked up. The wet branches of a live oak spread like gnarled arms against the white of the sky. Birds chattered somewhere in the tree, calling scree scree scree.
I looked back down. There were several mushrooms on the duff. Destroying angels, their caps so similar to the woodland agaricus that only the saclike volva at the base of the stipe proclaimed them to be deadly.
I looked at the mushrooms in my basket. I inhaled the cold air. I listened to the scree of birds overhead, to the rustling of squirrels and the distant thud of falling pinecones. Life was good.
I dug in the duff. There were two young mushrooms there, caps snow white, round and small with partial veils and strong, crisp stipes. I dug carefully, recognizing the danger.
One was a destroying angel and one was a woodland agaricus. Strands of mycelia hung from the base of one, and I pinched them off. The other was covered with a saclike volva. I tossed that mushroom. Tossed it and then noticed a purple stain on its volva, like a bit of oozy ink.
It wasn’t uncommon to find an aberrant mushroom, a mushroom harboring some unusual parasite or staining some uncharacteristic shade. I enjoyed finding the aberrations, they were part of the fun of hunting.
I picked up the destroying angel and sloughed off the stained volva. The ooze had not touched the stipe. Probably something in the ground, nothing to do with the mushroom itself. I tossed it aside again.
From the branches overhead, the scree scree scree of birds grew frantic. I looked up in time to see a small cloud of them swooping down. They seemed to be diving for me. I fell out of my squat and onto my back. As the birds pulled up and flew away, I saw a flash of white under their wings. I’d have to ask Don what kind they were.
I stood up, pulling twigs out of my hair and flicking soggy duff off my raincoat.
I bent to pick up my basket. Time to go to the museum.
I reached out to pick up the young woodland agaricus I’d just found.
Robin Peterson’s icy hand closed over mine as I picked up the wrong mushroom.
A pounding on my front door dragged me out of a stuporous sleep. Someone was shouting my name.
I sat up. My furniture was all rearranged, pulled to the middle of the room. Why the hell had I done that?
I crawled on hands and knees to the front door, using the knob to pull myself to my feet.
It was Don Herlihy. He looked ashen, ill. He said, “Did you hear about Karen yet? Karen Ransome?”
“Oh my God.” I’d handed James’s wife a Dixie cup of what I thought was woodland agaricus. Handed it to her with a boastful word and a proud smile.
“She’s dead, Lucy. James was away, I guess, for most of the night. And no one told Karen about going to the hospital to get checked. By the time James got home and found her, she was too far gone.”
“James was over here,” I heard myself say. “It’s my fault Karen didn’t get help in time.”
Don said, “No, Lucy,” but he didn’t come in.
There was a receipt sticking out of his shirt pocket. I could see Community Hospital’s logo. He’d been to the hospital to get tested. I had no right to feel hurt, but I did.
“Come in, Lucy,” James said. “I’ve been worrying about you.”
I heard children crying somewhere in the upstairs of James’s house, and I heard the calm voice of an adult woman. James wore jeans and cashmere. His skin looked like candle wax, he was so pale. His hair stood up in rumpled waves against a backdrop of oak paneling.
I followed him inside. I followed him through the living room, through the formal dining room, through the hall, and back into a kitchen bigger than my whole house. There was a sweater slung across the tile counter. Mary Clardy’s. It was her voice I’d heard, her voice consoling the children.
“I’m most comfortable in this room,” James said, running a listless hand over the tile. “In fact, it probably seems gruesome, but now that everyone’s finally gone, I was going to chop some stuff for stir-fry.”
“If it relaxes you.” How many times had I watched James slice mushrooms and debone chicken? My friend, how kind of him to let me into his kitchen.
“It’s awful, but I’m hungry. I just—” He looked at me with bright eyes. “Have a meal with me, would you, Lucy? Make me feel like I’m not being abnormal?”
I couldn’t imagine forcing food down my throat. “If you want me to. If you’re really not—” Not mad at me.
He turned and began collecting things: A wok, some ginger, calamari in a plastic bag, oyster mushrooms, supermarket agaricus, bok choy, sesame oil.
I watched him set up the wok, heat the oil, toss in the ginger, then the bok choy. What I saw was my own hand reaching out for that one fatal mushroom, the one on the duff.
Such a small mushroom, such a small destroying angel to kill two healthy—
It was like a knife in my gut: A small mushroom. A very small mushroom to have killed two healthy people.
The smallest fatal dose on record was two cubic centimeters, the size of a modest cap.
I watched James slice the oyster mushrooms and the supermarket mushrooms. And I remembered him wiping a cap and handing it to me at the Fungus Fair. I’d been slicing woodland agaricus into the skillet, right before serving Robin Peterson. Right after serving Karen Ransome.
James looked at me, his head cocked. Si
ghing, he tossed handful of sliced mushrooms into the wok.
He could have it all now. Karen’s wealth. Mary’s love.
From that perspective, it was convenient he’d spent the night supporting and consoling me. Convenient he didn’t tell his wife to watch for signs of mushroom poisoning, that he wasn’t home to notice her symptoms and rush her to the hospital.
I watched James reach into a cupboard and pull out two dishes and two wine glasses. He handed the glasses to me.
We’d done this many times over the last eight years. I’d set the breakfast-nook table a hundred times. A hundred times we’d discussed museum business over stir-fry or bagels or mulligatawny soup, with Karen passed out drunk upstairs.
I pulled placemats out of a hutch, pulled a bottle of Chardonnay off the wine rack, pulled chopsticks out of the drawer. My back was to James. I was afraid—horrified by the suspicion I suddenly harbored.
He brought two steaming bowls of stir-fry to the table. He set one at my usual place. “No oyster sauce in that one,” he said. “I know you hate the stuff.”
I know how much destroying angel it takes to kill two people. I know that if I did make a mistake, it involved only one mushroom, the one with the stained volva. I know that if I did make a mistake, only one person would be dead now, not two.
I picked up my chopsticks and glanced down at the bowl. Sesame oil sizzled on a bed of mushrooms, calamari, and vegetables.
I unfolded my linen napkin while James uncorked the wine.
I looked around the room. The wainscoting was golden oak, the walls were papered a rich green, the floor was tiled in glossy terra-cotta. The breakfast nook windows faced a koi pond ringed with willows.
I remembered Don Herlihy saying, “I wish I had a rich wife.”
And I was suddenly sure: I did not see the spirit of Robin Peterson in my psychotropic vision. I did not see the truth, I saw my own fear. My worst nightmare.
I would not have picked up the wrong mushroom. Even if I had, I’d have noticed something, something a little odd about the sloughed stipe when I examined the mushrooms later. And I did examine them. Very carefully. I always do.
No, it wasn’t my mistake. Relief momentarily blurred my vision, like film melting in a projector.
Then I focused on James.
James. He had watched Karen eat the woodland agaricus. She’d been drinking again, neglecting the children. So unlike Mary Clardy.
He would serve Karen destroying angels at home, later. He would be rid of her. He would rescue his children from her incompetent care without depriving them of her big house. And it would look like an accident. An honest mistake. Especially if someone else at the fair got sick too.
After Karen left the museum, James handed me a mushroom cap to slice and serve. A destroying angel from the museum display. He wouldn’t have known so small a quantity could kill. Two cubic centimeters—only a mushroom expert would know that.
Now James said, “Eat it while it’s hot, Lucy. There’s comfort in food.” He attacked his stir-fry like he needed comfort badly.
But he was doing better than me. He had a big house and two nice kids and somebody to love him. What did I have?
I used to think I had two friends, maybe not much else, but two best friends.
Don Herlihy, and he was leaving.
And James Ransome. How many canoe trips had we taken together? How many exhibits had we set up?
I thought James cared about me. How could he ruin my reputation—my life—just to arrange things so they suited him better?
I poked at the contents of my bowl.
Even if I told people, they wouldn’t believe me. They’d consider it a rank excuse, a cheap shot, an attempt to pass the buck. And I couldn’t prove anything anyway. Even if I wanted to orphan James’s kids, I couldn’t prove anything.
Two best friends. I thought of Don Herlihy shuffling on my doorstep, that hospital receipt in his pocket. After years of studying with him, working with him, he didn’t trust me. He didn’t love me.
And James. I thought he was my friend, staying with me last night. But he’d wrecked my life.
No matter what I did or said now, my career was ruined. No one would believe it wasn’t my fault. If I couldn’t convince Don, how could I convince a bunch of strangers?
I’d never be considered an “expert” again, only someone who, in her hubris, continued denying what everybody else knew: that mushrooms should be feared and shunned, regardless of who serves them.
James was slumped over his meal now, not eating. His eyelids looked painfully puffy and red.
I was surprised I didn’t feel more anger. Maybe I was too sad. Maybe I couldn’t stand to let go of my last friend.
I tasted a few slivers of mushroom. They were perfectly seasoned. James was a good cook. Mary was lucky.
Upstairs somewhere, children’s voices were raised with Mary’s in a hymn. James covered his eyes with his hands.
No, it wouldn’t do me any good to accuse James. Proof required confidence in my expertise. No one would believe me and no one would trust me, ever again. I’d never earn a living as a mycologist, ever again. I would have to put on a suit. Work in some concrete purgatory.
I couldn’t live with it. It was as simple as that: I couldn’t live with it.
Today I had experimented with Soma, something I never thought that I would do. Tonight I would experiment again. I would go home and eat the destroying angel. I would see if it really was delicious.
Do Not Resuscitate
“Do Not Resuscitate” was first published in Crimes of the Heart, ed. Carolyn G. Hart, Berkley Books, 1995.
She awakened with a prickle of dread like sharp-nailed fingers up her side. Then she closed her eyes again, closed them tight. One of her inner voices, sweet and coaxing, usually reserved for Hank, her husband of five years, chastised: Oh honey, don’t squish your face up. If Hank’s watching, he’s going to think you look like one of those dolls with dried apples for heads.
Not that Hank would think any such thing. But she always made sure he couldn’t think anything crueler than she’d already thought herself: that way, she was dejinxed, protected. No matter that she didn’t need protection.
She’d married Hank, seventy-three to her fifty-one, because he was absolutely devoted and uncritical of her, a big leathery old cowboy with a quick smile and a generous nature and, until his hard stroke three years ago, had a wonderful body for a man his age. Even with the stroke, his good conditioning and can-do attitude had brought him most of the way back. It had been a hellish few years, but except for kind of a pinched look on the left side of his face and some stiltedness in his walk, he was still her lean mean ranching machine.
Just thinking of him soothed her unattributed anxiety on this chill November morning. She reached a plump, languid arm across the bed, feeling for Hank. Nothing. She fanned the arm as if making a snow angel. How odd: the sheets were cold. Whyever would the sheets be cold?
In fact, her whole body was cold. That was the sensation she’d translated into prickling apprehension.
She realized she was uncovered. “Hank?” She could hear panic in her voice. This was too much like three years ago, when his middle-of-the-night stroke had sent him sliding off the bed, dragging the satin comforter with him.
She’d awakened then to find him on the floor, murmuring vaguely and disjointedly about having rolled off. But she could tell by the temperature of the sheets that he’d rolled off much earlier in the night. And besides, why hadn’t he gotten back up? She’d dialed 911 with trembling fingers, seeing that his right side was frozen into a fetal curve. And that he’d wet himself. And that half his face had collapsed into a slack mask.
She’d been scared to death, of course, scared of losing him. Hank was the only one in her endlessly dreary life who’d loved her right. Not that it had been perfect. Not
that she hadn’t cried rivers over his first wife, whom she couldn’t bear to hear about even for a second. Not that she hadn’t offered to let him go the time that cute neighbor was making a play for him, or the time that his ex-sister-in-law was bawling on his shoulder because her boy got shot.
Every time she saw him with a pretty woman it was torture. He was so good and so wonderful. And she wasn’t much, no indeed. Not much on looks, not much on brains, disorganized, bad with money, always buying shoes that turned out not to fit or antiques that turned out to be fakes. And she didn’t get Hank’s jokes sometimes. And she couldn’t keep track of politics even when they affected ranch business.
It was like her brother always used to say: if she was a fish, anybody would throw her back. She used to try to tag after her big brother, she loved him so. But he’d play with anybody anywhere anytime to get away from her, and he took every chance to let her know she was ugly and stupid and boring. And her parents, though they tried to give her affection, couldn’t help but love her brother better. They showed off his report cards and athletic trophies, and they laughed at his quick wit, and later when he became a magazine writer, they kept a leather scrapbook of his stories.
They’d been good folk. It wasn’t their fault they couldn’t find anything to admire in their dumbish lump of a daughter who kept living at home even into her forties without much to say for herself, bringing around one mean-tempered boyfriend after another who used her for sex with one eye out at all times for a cuter prospect.
And then, just when things seemed hopeless, she’d met Hank. A temporary secretarial agency had sent her here to this sprawling house to help him catch up on his bookkeeping and paperwork.
