An Old Faithful Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  “Then, of course, there’s the obvious pairing—that of George and Phyllis, husband and wife.”

  “You certainly don’t consider that particularly abnormal.”

  “No, Phyllis, I don’t. And I don’t necessarily consider the closeness between a mother and her youngest son abnormal. But in this case I do.…”

  “You must have been listening to that stupid Irving Cockburn. His understanding of the theories of Freud is highly limited, to say the least.”

  “I wouldn’t disagree with you there. And I did not appreciate you giving him leave to get involved with this. The man is a pest,” Susan added. “But that’s not what we’re talking about now. Now we’re talking about a mother who intentionally keeps her son from being close to anyone else.…”

  “Now, that is ridiculous.…”

  “Who keeps him tied to her through lies and deceptions.”

  “That’s insulting—”

  “You’re talking about the job for Randy.” Darcy spoke up, interrupting his mother. “I wonder about that. It seemed so strange that she wouldn’t know that the job was on the West Coast.”

  “I swear to you—”

  “I don’t know if your mother actually did know that. I do suspect that she was aware of the environment at that particular agency and that Randy was more likely to meet someone else. I don’t think your mother liked Randy; she probably thought—”

  “He wasn’t good enough for you,” Phyllis finished as Susan was going to, glaring at her.

  “Of course not; you wanted to keep him to yourself, didn’t you? The way you always kept him to yourself—even when that meant keeping him from a relationship with his own father. A mother who told her son that his father had never wanted him to be born. A mother who insisted that the child was wrenched from her at a young age—when, in fact, he was only sent to nursery school at the normal age that many middle-class children go. A mother who was always there between father and son, interpreting the behavior of the man to the child in a manner that would convince the boy that he was being rejected. A really evil thing to do.” She shouldn’t have said it, but she was tired of the havoc this woman constantly wrought, the way she went through her own family like a destructive whirlwind.

  Phyllis Ericksen flung herself up so quickly that the metal chair she was sitting on flipped over, banging against a washing machine. Bananas awoke with a jerk, screaming as only a startled baby can. Dillon knocked over the pile of sheets as Phyllis rushed out the door.

  “It’s okay. There are rangers stationed out there who will stop her,” Marnie said, running to the door to prevent anyone from following her.

  “Maybe I should leave.…” Beth offered.

  “Please don’t.” Jon reached out to her. “I’d like you to stay here with me. I need you.”

  Beth sat down immediately. “You didn’t … ?” She couldn’t force herself to ask the question.

  “No, he didn’t kill anyone; the only murderer is Phyllis Ericksen,” Susan said.

  “Mother? That’s impossible!” Charlotte spoke up for the first time. “My mother would never kill anybody—would she?” she asked, turning to her sister.

  “I … I don’t know. It …” Jane couldn’t seem to think straight.

  “Why don’t we listen to what Susan has to say.” Carlton repeated his suggestion.

  “Your mother has been lying since … well, for a long time,” Susan began. “She desperately wanted to get Randy away from Darcy. Randy, in her mind, was simply not good enough for Darcy. When I asked her about Randy, she said that he was a ‘perfectly nice, ordinary person’—and the key is ordinary. I don’t think your mother ever wanted what is ordinary for you,” Susan said to Darcy.

  “No, she always wanted me to be special. All my life she’s told me how unique I am, how creative, how sensitive, how perfect. I’ve often felt like some sort of freak flower that she raised in a hothouse and is afraid to let loose in the world—like I’ll wilt or something.… I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “When your mother visited you in New York, she tried to stay involved in your life, decorating your apartment, finding Randy a new job. I don’t know if she was aware that that job was in California, but she did know the agency had no problem with employing homosexuals—maybe she just thought Randy would meet someone else. When he didn’t take that job, I think she decided that this reunion was in order. I think the entire purpose of this reunion was to break up you and Randy. She just didn’t want you to have a serious relationship with anyone; she wanted to keep you for herself. So she played a lot of games with other people’s lives. You see, your father didn’t convince Randy to play that stupid joke with the dummy—your mother did. Think of it,” she continued, having finally gotten everyone’s attention. “Your father hated practical jokes of any kind, and he had a tremendous respect for the environment. He would never have encouraged something like that. And remember, Randy wasn’t considered to be the perpetrator of that prank because no one knew that he could ski—no one except Phyllis, who had known him before this trip. My guess is that the subject came up in New York, and Phyllis began to plot. Randy probably wasn’t very hard to convince to do something like that, he—”

  “He wanted so much to be accepted, to be part of a family.” Darcy spoke in a strangled whisper. “I can see it happening like that.”

  “And then, when she overheard us talking in the Visitor’s Center, she interrupted and announced that she knew George had instigated the whole thing. She told those lies about your father to protect herself.…”

  “You’re saying that she killed Randy, aren’t you?” Charlotte said.

  “And Father found out somehow, so she killed him,” Jane finished.

  FORTY-FOUR

  “It’s true.” Susan looked around the room. “Do you all really want to hear this?”

  “I guess we need to.” Carlton appeared to have become head of the family, speaking for the rest of them.

  “We’ll take anything you say about us with a grain of salt,” Jane added sarcastically.

  Susan chose to ignore her. “The first thing that struck me about your family is that you all actually came to this reunion. Five adults with lives of their own dropped everything and came at the bidding of their parents—despite the fact that some of you (here she looked at Jane and Charlotte) were complaining almost as soon as you got to the park. If you didn’t want to come, why were you all here? It became apparent that your parents had a tremendous hold over you all. When Joyce spoke with me on the snowcoach ride into the park, she referred to everyone, from Carlton down to Darcy, as ‘the kids.’ And I suppose, in some ways, particularly when it came to your parents, there was a fair amount of immaturity in the family. And, like Dr. Cockburn, I’m afraid I tend to blame it on your mother.

  “You know, everyone says that, as a child, Darcy was too attached to his mother, too dependent on her. But no one seems to blame Phyllis for that. It’s as though the family expected that the child would be wise enough to do the right thing, but not the mother. There’s no information that she did anything except encourage an unhealthy closeness between the two of them. To the extent that she told Darcy that his father had never wanted him to be born—just about the cruelest thing she could ever do to her son. And the relationship between Darcy and his father was the stuff bad movies are made of. The image of the little boy refusing to play soccer because his father cheered him on is more than a little strange, to say the least. Who thought it was appropriate for a child to decide these things for himself? Who allowed this to happen? Phyllis. And maybe, in some ways, the rest of the family.

  “I think that poor Darcy, sitting in the warming hut, having confessed to a murder that he hadn’t committed, is sort of a symbol of everything here. For years this family’s failures and weaknesses fell down to Darcy, a boy who was described as looking like an angel. Everyone protected him; everyone thought of him as vulnerable. But when tragedy struck, Darcy volunteered to sacrifice himself for the r
est of you. He’s stronger than you think—he’s probably stronger than he thinks.” Susan smiled at him and then continued.

  “So, you see, things were really set up for this trip. Phyllis was in control of the situation without anyone knowing it. She had already manipulated Randy into doing something that was bound to outrage George. And she was on hand at all times to give everyone the idea that George was in control of everyone in the family. She told me that she had quit skiing when her husband was hurt, giving me the initial impression of a rather sweet, subservient wife. But, in fact, the opposite was true. I think, and this is only a guess, that she was forever pushing to add to the tension that was increasing almost hourly from the minute everyone arrived here. You all said that Phyllis wanted the family together—to ski together, to eat dinner together, to attend evening shows together. Carlton told me he thought that the trip would be bearable because there was plenty to do here—that the family wouldn’t be forced to be together constantly. And I think he had a point. But the evidence is that Phyllis was constantly gathering the family together—and that was putting extra pressure on what was already a situation of great stress to everyone here.

  “Carlton was drinking for the first time in many years. Joyce was worried about him and, probably, the effect this was having on her children. Jane, Charlotte, and Darcy were meeting late at night for anguished conferences. And Jon was pulling away from Beth, leaving her wondering about the seriousness of their relationship. And so the murders occurred in what was already a terribly tense situation. The resulting pandemonium was no surprise. And no one asked the logical question. Why was your father waiting behind Old Faithful?

  “Waiting? He had skied …” Jane looked from Susan to her sister as what was being said struck her. “He wasn’t wearing skis!”

  “No. He walked around the geyser; he didn’t ski there like everyone else. He wasn’t trying to get exercise, he had a purpose.”

  “He was meeting someone,” Charlotte whispered.

  “He wasn’t meeting one of us,” Jon said. “We were all with someone else.”

  “He was meeting Mother. She was alone, skiing faster than anyone else,” Darcy said, starting to cry. “And she was meeting him to kill him.”

  “Grandmother killed Grandfather?” The adolescent voice broke in the middle of the sentence.

  “C.J.!” Joyce cried out, seeing the horrified face of her son. He had apparently entered the room without anyone noticing.

  “I saw her. She just talked to me,” the boy continued, staring straight ahead at the center of the table. “There were some rangers with her, but she told them that she had an emergency—that she had to help someone in the family. They let her come over to me. She said … she said she loved me.…” He raised his head to face his parents. “She said good-bye, and then she just walked out into the snow.…”

  Marnie rushed out the door, Dillon close behind, slowing down only to pat C.J. on the shoulder as he passed. Joyce and Carlton hurried to their son’s side. The rest of the family sat still, stunned by what had just happened.

  “She couldn’t stand being arrested and … and everything,” Jane said.

  Susan and Kathleen exchanged looks. “Then this might be for the best,” Kathleen suggested, running her lips across the head of her again-sleeping baby. “I think I’d better put Ban into bed.” She turned to Darcy. “Maybe you want company skiing back to your building?”

  “We’ll join you.” Jane got up quickly. She paused to look back at Susan. “Unless you’d like to tell us some more insulting things about our family?”

  Susan didn’t even bother to reply, turning and pulling on the cord that controlled the curtain that hung over the window behind her. She stared out into the blizzard. She heard the door close, and sighed. She could use some time alone. Time to think about the Ericksens. Time to think about Phyllis …

  “Why didn’t you tell us the complete truth?”

  Susan spun around at the voice.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “We didn’t mean to scare you.” Beth elaborated on Jon’s apology.

  “We just wondered if you thought that Mother was going to confess or if she really was going to let Darcy be convicted of the murders.”

  “I’m afraid the latter,” Susan answered slowly.

  “But why?” Beth asked. “Why do you think that?” Jon was silent, staring at the floor.

  “After George was killed, Phyllis clung to Darcy. Everyone mentioned it. I think she assumed that it was the last time they were going to be able to spend together. But it was something that happened earlier that is the most convincing.

  “When Phyllis first talked to me about Darcy, she told me that he was going to spend next year in Europe,” Susan started. “She definitely sounded sad about it. I thought it was a natural reaction—that she was very close to him and she would miss him. But Darcy told me that she had made reservations to join him as soon as she heard that he was going. So that wasn’t the reason she was sad.” Susan stared into two puzzled faces. She was going to have to explain further. “You see, she knew that he was going to be disappointed, that he wasn’t going to go.…”

  “For God’s sake, why not?” Jon asked, the strain of the day showing.

  “Because she planned all along to let him take the fall for this, didn’t she?” Beth asked, horrified. “She was going to let him be convicted of the murder.”

  “I think so.” Susan nodded. “She was getting desperate. She trashed her room as though she was a crazy person—as though she was out of control. I think the pain of what she had to do to survive finally got to her. She may have started to crack when she tried to kill C.J. You see, she did to C.J. what she had been doing to Darcy for years: She told him that she approved of what he was doing, and then she sent his grandfather to tell him something else. But C.J. hadn’t grown up in a family where this happened all the time; he would have protested eventually, and then the whole thing would be out in the open. She had to kill him. We’re just lucky that she didn’t hit him hard enough—or that teenage boys have more lives than a cat.

  “I just hope Darcy never realizes exactly what happened.…”

  “You’re right,” Jon stated. “We’ll never tell anyone, will we?” He put his arm around Beth, pulling her close to him.

  “No. Never.” The girl smiled up at him.

  Susan turned back to the window. “I think that’s Marnie out there. And she’s alone.”

  “Mother couldn’t live without her family, and none of us could really be her family again after this,” Jon said quietly.

  Beth tightened her grip around his waist. “If she killed herself …”

  He nodded at what she didn’t say. “It’s for the best.”

  They went to get the news about Phyllis Ericksen together.

  FORTY-FIVE

  “Where is Mother?”

  “I told you that I don’t know!” Chad yelled to Chrissy, squinting into the sunlight. During the night, the storm had ended, and hotel guests had stirred in their sleep, not knowing that they were disturbed by the calm following the violent winds. And this morning the sun gleamed off waves of fresh snow. Everyone found being outside irresistible, and everyone was smiling. Except Chad. “Why do you keep asking me the same question?” he asked, skiing up to his sister. “If I knew where she is, I’d tell you!”

  “Well, I’ve been looking and looking and I can’t find her. The Ericksens are leaving the park.…”

  “You told me that,” he reminded her. “And I know they want to say good-bye to her, but I don’t know where she is!”

  “Well, this vacation certainly hasn’t improved your disposition,” Chrissy said with sisterly sarcasm, turning and skiing off quickly.

  “Or your skiing ability!” he called out as she fell.

  She chose to ignore him.

  “Are you plaguing your sister again?” Chad’s father appeared behind him.

  “She keeps asking me where Mom is,” he explained
.

  “Your mother’s over at Old Faithful. Why is Chrissy looking for her?”

  “C.J.’s parents are leaving. They didn’t want to leave the park without talking to her.”

  “That’s okay. Jon found her awhile ago, and she went back to the lodge for a few minutes. She wanted to talk with them, too.” He pushed off on his skis, Chad at his side. “C.J. and Heather seem to be taking this pretty well, I thought,” he added. “I mean, it’s awful to find out that your grandmother is a murderer, and then when she went and killed herself last night … Well, that’s a lot for kids to deal with,” he said, wondering about his own children’s reaction to this tragedy.

  “You know, they weren’t really all that close to their grandparents—having spent so much of their lives in Europe and all,” Chad explained. “I guess that turned out to be best,” he added, thinking of the expression he had seen on Darcy’s face.

  “I guess you’re right. It’s been a pretty strange vacation, hasn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Say, Dad, do you think C.J. and I could get together again sometime? Like maybe I could go along with you on one of your business trips to L. A.? He says it’s really cool out there.”

  “It’s an idea.” Jed smiled at his son, pleased at the boy’s resilience.

  “Hey! There’s Mom!” the boy cried out, pointing to the lone figure standing and watching Old Faithful puff steam into the air.