Mission to America

by Walter Kirn

  “Most mothers miss those,” I ventured.

  “She may have nursed too long. Four years is too long. I made a great mistake there. I'd like to see her settled soon, with children, but here she still is, no plans, no life, no structure. Maybe that will be your job.”

  “What?”

  “The structure.”

  We returned to the subject of reflexology. Helen believed that the feet control the body and tried to convince me of her theory by instructing me to remove my shoes and socks, pressing her thumbtips into my big toes, and asking me to monitor my heart rate, which she claimed to be able to influence through touch. It did slow down some after a few minutes, but I attributed this change to the valerian tea she'd made me drink after I'd confessed to feeling anxious about the coming evening. Little Eff's plans seemed needlessly elaborate: a two-hour drive to Aspen, dinner, dancing, and—he'd sworn me to silence about this part, explaining that his date, a woman named Hadley, had accused him once of lacking spontaneity and therefore deserved to be taken by surprise—a wee-hours ride back to Snowshoe in a helicopter, which would deposit us atop a glacier for a sunrise catered champagne breakfast.

  “If the fellow's a friend of the Huckster,” Helen said, responding to my description of the big night, “he overdoes things out of insecurity. They're little boys, that crowd. Big toys, small minds, and—let's be blunt here; anatomy is destiny—even smaller ding-a-lings.” She formed a caliper with a thumb and index finger, holding them a couple of inches apart and then closing the gap by half, to maybe one inch. “I'm speaking literally,” Helen said. “I've had these men on my table many a time.”

  I didn't like this line of talk. I never had. It was the utmost in False Comparison.

  “Fortunately,” Helen said, “that's not a complex you'll ever suffer from personally. According to my daughter. Well, good for both of you.”

  Private. What a very private girl. As far as snuggling teddy bears, not people.

  “What was the Huckster's friend's name again?” asked Helen.

  “Errol Effingham Jr.”

  “The buffalo family?”

  “They have a wolf pack, too.”

  “A colleague of mine—she does Swedish and deep tissue—worked on his father a few years back, I think. Pockmarked buttocks. Suffers from colitis. My friend said he fancied himself a sage, a thinker. He gave her a pamphlet he'd written. On wizards, was it?”

  “The Keepers?”

  “I don't remember—some made-up silliness. My friend said the thing was unreadable, illiterate, but I've heard that about your Book of Mormon, too.”

  “I'm not a Mormon. I'm an AFA. An Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostle.”

  “Well, there's good in all of it,” she said.

  “I'd like to think so. I don't know.”

  “I don't know, either; it's something you're meant to say these days. Whatever you are, though, my daughter seems to like it, so I like it, too. She's my cuddly angel pie. Wounded inside, I suppose, but aren't we all? My grandfather used to take me for naked swims and check between my legs for chiggers afterward, but I still achieved healthy intimacy in marriage, so, honestly, what great harm could it have done? I think we exaggerate these matters now. Still, this obsession of Betsy's with dress, with clothing—it's a reaction to something, obviously.”

  “Or it could be an anticipation.”

  “Interesting.”

  “People react to the future, not just the past,” I said.

  “This is why she likes you, isn't it? A man of ideas. In a clean white shirt.”

  I thanked her for what I gathered was a compliment and delved into the Matic and the Thonic, Preexistence, Perfection, and the rest of it, aware as I spoke of a glimmer in the air that usually preceded a bad cold or an incapacitating headache. Helen opened the teapot and held the teabag by the paper tag clipped to its string, dunking it a few times to strengthen the brew. She emptied the pot into our mugs, which advertised Hair We Go!, a local beauty shop. I could tell I'd lost her interest. I abandoned my lecture and looked around for something that might inspire a fresh topic, but the large, undivided room held little more than Helen's massage table, a stained blue sofa, and an oddly shaped structure about five feet tall made up of carpet-covered arms and platforms, on the highest of which an orange cat was sleeping. There were three or four paintings, but of scenes so neutral—a moonlit sailing ship and so on—that the moment I took my eyes from them I completely forgot what they depicted.

  “When Betsy moved home after college,” Helen said, as though resuming an interrupted thought, “she worked as a model for a year or two. Locally, regionally, not nationally. I'm afraid there were racy undergarments involved, at least in a few of the jobs. I found one once. Plastic, it felt like, black, with straps and buckles. I bring this up in case you've heard it elsewhere.” She fixed me with a flat, appraising look while blowing across her mug with tight, pursed lips.

  “No. Not exactly,” I said after a pause.

  “Just in case you do, though,” Helen said, “I hope you won't think she's ruined or unfit. As a potential mate, I mean. Because that's why you're here, I assume. May I assume that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because if not, I'll toss you out of here. I'm very protective. I'm fierce. A momma grizzly.”

  “I'm starting to see that.”

  “I've told her: ‘Snugglebug, you make poor choices. Your longing for a father blinds you, Cuddles. It's time for a husband, and I'm the one who picks. No more artists. No more tricky trash. I'm not going to pay another ten thousand dollars next time you need your lovely young bare fanny erased from the computers of the world.'”

  I'd finished my tea but pretended to sip it anyway. I needed time, though I didn't know for what, and I wished for some reason that my feet weren't bare, that I'd never exposed my toes to Helen's fingers. It had brought us too close too early and we were stuck now. Helen carried the teapot to the sink, rinsed it, dried it, placed it on a shelf, and turned back around to face me with crossed arms and a look that seemed both angry and beseeching. That's when I heard rumbling in the driveway and saw the glow of headlights in the curtains. I reached down for my shoes.

  “At two and a half,” said Helen, “she started biting me. She wanted off the breast. She'd had her fill. It didn't work, though, because it didn't hurt. Even when she drew blood, it didn't hurt. Love is a powerful painkiller, I guess.”

  I unrolled one of my socks and pulled it on. My feet smelled of sweat and lavender massage oil.

  “Take her,” said Helen. “Get her out of here.”

  The Suburban's rear seats were arranged to face each other across a low table equipped with sunken cup holders and a central well that held an ice bucket. Soft music streamed down from speakers in the ceiling as Little Eff uncorked a bottle of wine and held it steady, wrapped in a white towel, while the Suburban rounded another curve. The tilt of the floor and the pressure on my eardrums indicated to me that we were climbing, but the vehicle's purplish dark windows blocked my view and prevented me from estimating our speed. A tinted-glass screen concealed the driver, too, increasing my sense of detachment and dependence as well as my nervousness about a crash that I wouldn't see coming and wouldn't have time to brace for.

  Little Eff filled our wineglasses once we'd reached a straightaway and toasted “the freedom of the American road,” clinking his glass against Betsy's and then Hadley's but merely raising it when my turn came, which I felt was a slight and, possibly, bad luck. The women sat hip to hip and smiled and chatted, their legs crossed at the knees, their shoulders squared, their spines held taut and competitively erect. I suspected that before they could make friends, as Little Eff seemed so confident they would, they'd have to resolve the fundamental matter of who was prettier, and by just how much. Little Eff and I would have no say here; their contest would be private, its rules obscure, and its outcome final.

  I asked Hadley what she did, then wished I hadn't. Like Little Eff, she clearly did nothing
. Nothing I'd regard as work, at least.

  He answered for her. “She designs.”

  I sensed a request to change subjects and honored it by asking Hadley where she grew up, a question that interested me far more than my first one because, after watching her for the last few minutes, I doubted that she'd be truthful about her origins, just as I doubted that Hadley was her real name or her face was the face that she'd been born with. Everything about her seemed invented: her prolonged pronunciations of words from books that are rarely heard out loud (she'd said of the wine “It's fetching but somewhat nebulous”); the annoyed way she kept flicking hair out of her eyes that she'd put there on purpose by tossing her head; the draftsmanlike neatness of her too-straight nose, identically dimpled cheeks, and her plump, bowed lips; and even the punctual little breaths she took between her measured swallows of wine. With Hadley, nothing was casual or careless; she timed every blink, considered every sigh.

  “My family traveled,” she answered. I detected a challenge to probe further and a warning that I might not get far if I did.

  I went ahead. “From where?”

  “You mean our base? D.C. My father worked out of D.C.”

  “For the government?”

  “One would assume. We didn't ask him.”

  “A spook,” Little Eff said. “Her father was a spy.”

  Hadley said, “He lived a life of service.”

  “Of all the places you traveled to,” I asked, “which was your favorite? Which did you like best?” I glanced at Betsy, convinced she knew the game now and shared my skepticism about Hadley. I expected a wink but got a scowl.

  “Rome,” Hadley said.

  “Why Rome?”

  “Because it's Rome.”

  “I love your jeans,” said Betsy. “I love the stitching, especially on the inseams. Vintage? New?”

  “Reconstructed vintage,” Hadley said. “There's a shop in La Jolla. I have their Web address. The owner used to costume Sharon Stone. Nina Karloff, a magical old Jewish lady. Very serene, very centered. She does tai chi. That shirt of yours, by the way—adorable.”

  Betsy thanked her. “I also love your boots.”

  It was no use now; I gave up needling Hadley. The beauty contest had ended in a draw, it seemed, and the women had formed the tight, exclusive partnership of the uncommonly tasteful and attractive. For the moment, there was no opposing team, but later on this evening, chances were, one would emerge and unity might prove crucial. Growing up in a faith ruled by women had taught me something: they face the world in pairs whenever possible. The only exception is the queen.

  I helped myself to more wine as Little Eff opened the glass screen and asked the driver to watch out for elk and deer along the highway and to turn up the headlights until we got to Aspen, even if they blinded other drivers. Something told me the driver would ignore him the moment the screen slid shut and that Little Eff knew this but felt that giving orders, however they were received, was a duty required of him by Nature—a duty I had a feeling he resented. From what I saw, he was a timid man inside who mostly just wanted to enjoy good things. But there was the name, and the money, and the position, and whether he liked it or not, they made him boss.

  Except around Hadley, it turned out. She didn't like our table at the restaurant because it stood in a cold spot by a window that Little Eff had tipped a man to seat us near.

  He'd told me I'd love the view. I did. It sparkled. It reminded me of a train set that a neighbor had built in his attic for a son with kidney problems that the Seeress had deemed incurable. The father, a plumber, sold his truck and tools to pay for the lavish miniature wonderland, whose layout, he said, was inspired by a dream he'd had. Toothpick log cabins whose chimneys leaked cotton smoke clung to the sides of papier-mâché mountains topped by snowfields of glitter-sprinkled plaster. Rows of streetlamps with firefly-size bulbs illuminated storefronts with foil windows that faced on winding pebble-cobbled sidewalks thronged with people in bright enamel coats. I felt cheated when I saw this masterpiece. I was nine and I knew that no such village existed on earth, but I wished that one did, and I longed to dwell in it. The fact that I couldn't hope to angered me, and it also angered me that the Church had lied. Because if Bluff was perfect, as I'd been taught, then why had the sick boy's father not built its replica? Why had he envisioned this other, better place?

  Now I knew. He'd been to Aspen, possibly; or somehow the All-in-One had shown him Aspen. Aspen existed—I could see it from my chair. The very same streetlamps and even the same people.

  “I'm chilled,” said Hadley. “I'm shivering. Why can't we sit by the fire? Let's try. Let's ask.”

  “I'll trade places with you. It's warmer here,” I said, reluctant to give up the view I'd waited so long for.

  But Little Eff wasn't strong, or found no reason to be, and I ended up with my back to Aspen's nightscape, next to a massive stone chimney decorated with rotting horse collars and rusty rock picks. Colorado adored its olden days. It hung on to junk that we threw away in Bluff or salvaged for parts that might still have a use. The past hadn't died there and so it wasn't worth missing, nor were its worn-out scraps worth idolizing. For time to pass it would have to go somewhere, and where would that be? Time sits. We move, it sits. Sometimes it trembles slightly, but that's all.

  The table switch had put me beside Hadley and Little Eff with Betsy. The noisy room made it hard for them to hear us or for us to hear them, but Hadley didn't mind, it seemed—her only interest, suddenly, was me. This interest felt almost genuine, unlike the rest of her.

  “. . . what I think you may not realize yet,” she said, following an extensive interrogation about my background and my people, “is that you carry it with you, in your mien. See Errol there, and then the man behind him, the one in the collarless white linen shirt—the one with the woman whose highlights need a touch-up? See how they guard themselves, sort of leaning back, all smiles and chuckles but actually not listening because they're always scanning their perimeters? You, though, don't do that. You lay yourself wide open. Your hands, for example—I've never seen you close them. You're totally frontal, totally exposed. I could pick up my knife here and hold your eyes with mine and reach around very slowly to the side and sssttt, before you know it, slit your throat.”

  I poked my fork into a shred of quail meat glazed in a berry sauce rich with forest flavors. Softened by candlelight, Hadley's face looked natural now, broader, more liquid, less acutely organized. It soaked me up, but her words squeezed me back out.

  “I think you misinterpreted my jest,” she said. “My point was you don't understand your own appeal, the source of your own charisma. Its unprotectedness. Feel flattered, Mason.”

  “I'll try. I'm not so good at that.”

  “Then flatter me back. I'm great at it,” she said. “I'm serious. Say something wonderful. But swallow first.”

  I was chewing my quail meat and trying to make it last because there wasn't much of it. Hadley fingered the stem of her wineglass with her right hand and pressed the other one lightly against her neck as though she were checking her own pulse. Somehow the touch released a puff of perfume as dark and woodsy as my berry sauce. I still had no idea who she was, but her claims about having traveled as a youth seemed plausible now. She made such quick transitions. In the car she'd been pert and angular, at the window table sour and pushy, but here at the fireside table she swished, she flowed. Maybe she wasn't the daughter of a spy, but a spy herself.

  “You're a talented actress,” I said, “with flawless features.”

  “‘Actress' meaning ‘insincere.' ‘Flawless' meaning ‘ever-so-slightly sterile.'”

  “You said you take flattery well. I guess you don't.”

  “Only when it's wholehearted.”

  “It was,” I said.

  “Naughty. Eek! But honest. I just love it. Now don't look down at your knee, here comes my hand.”

  And then, as promised, there it was. But not on my knee. Above my kne
e. And rising. Sliding at first, but then walking like a spider.

  “If they can do it, why can't we?” said Hadley.

  I aimed my attention at Little Eff and Betsy for the first time since the appetizer course, and what I saw proved Hadley right: my jugular could be cut without my noticing. First, they had a private bottle of wine, its label older and fancier than the common bottle's and the level of fluid inside it lower. Second, they'd moved the candle and the flower vase next to their plates, which still held most of their food but also their silverware and napkins, meaning they'd finished eating a while ago. Third, no light showed between them, not a twinkle. They were optically one object. But at least their lips were moving. At least they'd refrained from progressing beyond the talking stage. If there was a fourth thing, the table blocked my view of it, but I assumed there was, and so I left, passing the dessert cart on my way and not even bothering to tell the waitress to cancel the lemon cheesecake I'd just ordered because I knew Betsy seldom ordered her own dessert but liked to eat a few bites of someone else's. At the oak double doors, which someone opened for me, I realized I was still holding my dinner fork, but I had a momentum by then and a direction: out, away, and into the great train set.