Gift of the Golden Mountain

by Shirley Streshinsky

  "May," he said, giving her a small kiss on the cheek as if they were old friends, "and Karin Rolofsen," he added, taking her hand.

  There was an awkward moment then, when no one said anything. May thought it strange, that the charming Philip Ward should be at a loss for words.

  "Thank you for letting me come tonight," Karin managed, a flush spreading on her neck.

  "Thank you for wanting to come," Philip answered, regaining his composure.

  May's name card was at Philip Ward's right at dinner, Karin was at the opposite end of the table, between a political correspondent on his way to Vietnam and the curator of the Asian art collection at the de Young Museum. By the time the lobster bisque was cleared, the correspondent was making pronouncements about the war to his end of the table, with the exception of Karin and the curator, who were having their own quiet conversation.

  Philip scanned the table and, satisfied with the way the talk was going, said to May: "I thought Karin might enjoy talking to Byron—she is an art major, isn't she?"

  "You certainly do your research," May laughed.

  "Old habit," he grinned, slightly embarrassed. "That really is all I know about her."

  "What else would you like to know?"

  "Oh, everything," he answered lightly, touching her arm as if to convince her of his sincerity, even as he turned to answer another guest's question.

  When they moved to the living room for coffee, Philip skillfully negotiated the seating so that Karin was at his side.

  May slipped into a chair next to Marge Fromberg. "What's new on the academic gossip circuit?" she asked in a teasing tone.

  Marge laughed and lowered her voice. "Well, for a while there at dinner the money was on you—but I'm afraid it's shifted to your friend."

  "Is it a burning question in the department?"

  "Maybe not burning," she answered, "more like smoldering. I have to admit the man has good taste . . . if only she wasn't so confoundedly . . ." Marge raised her eyebrows archly.

  "Young?" May filled in.

  "Yes," she made a show of sighing. "Both of you. Young and beautiful and bright. An unbeatable combination."

  "Move immediately," the voice boomed out over the speaker of a patrol car cruising downtown Berkeley, "You are in violation of the governor's declaration of emergency."

  "Our movie star governor thinks Berkeley is a war zone," Sam said as he slouched in the van, tired and angry at having been shoved and pushed by both demonstrators and police. "Thanks for giving me a lift—a couple of minutes more and I think they would have loaded photographers onto the bus for Santa Rita. Jesus! Mass arrests, this is insane."

  Real insanity was reported every night on the evening news, up close and in color: TV taught us about Apbia mountain— "Hamburger Hill"—where North Vietnamese defenders rolled hand grenades down on the advancing American paratroopers as they crawled to take the summit of the 3,000-foot peak. "Sure we want the hill," a twenty-year old Specialist 4 from Oakland said on camera, "we want it because we can't get the hell out of here until we get it."

  May ran into Marge on the sidewalk outside the Co-op Pharmacy. They stood together for a few moments, watching the National Guard trucks pass in some sort of review, on their way, someone said, to the encampment. An older woman came to stand next to Marge and in a heavy East European accent repeated, over and over again, "Is turrble, turrble, here to see."

  "This is terrible," Marge said, "like a bad dream. I'm supposed to go to a piano club tea but under the circumstances that seems surreal. Or this does, I'm not sure which. Do you have time for a quick cup of coffee?"

  "I've been wanting to call you," May told her when they were seated at the counter. "I need to ask you about something—I'm hoping you won't mind."

  "Let me guess," Marge smiled. "It has to do with our mutual friends—who, I hear from the grapevine, are seeing quite a lot of each other."

  May nodded. "They are—Karin is in what another of our friends says is a state of acute dazzlement. She can't believe he could be interested in her. But really, what I wanted to talk to you about is Philip's wife, Ariel—what she was like."

  "Why would you ask me?"

  "Because when I met you at the cocktail party that day, several of the other women had some rather biting comments to make about her. One of them said that in the end, you were the only friend she had left. So I thought you could tell me something about her."

  "Are you asking for your friend, for Karin? Because if you are, I'm afraid I'll have to give you the proper line."

  "I'm only asking for me."

  Marge considered for a long moment, "The proper line would have been: Ariel was handsome and bright and talented. She and Philip had what appeared to be a good marriage—I say 'appeared' only because I am convinced that no one can tell, from the outside, which marriage is 'good' and which is not. I sometimes felt that their life together was planned, almost blueprinted, and I think that Philip, was the architect."

  "Did you like her?"

  "No, I suppose not," she answered deliberately. "But I didn't dislike her, either. There was no . . . peace . . . in her. I think she would have been terrified to find herself with an empty afternoon."

  Marge moved to allow a girl with a large backpack to squeeze by before going on: "I get the feeling that Philip is ready to get on with his life. I hope he finds someone who can make him happy. My turn now to ask you some questions. Do you think that someone might be your friend Karin? And do you approve of him?"

  Marge had been honest, and now May felt she had to be, though it made her uncomfortable. "I'm not sure if I approve of him for Karin," she began. "He is charming, no doubt, but his life seems somehow contrived—the carefully choreographed parties, the English tailors, the 'cultured life.' But what I think really doesn't make any difference, because I do believe that Karin and he might get together. She is quite enchanted with him—I know that sounds like an old-fashioned word, but in this case it is exactly right. I assume he is just as taken with her because of the amount of attention he pays and the time they are spending together. I was curious to see if Karin was anything at all like Ariel. From what you say, she isn't. Any objections I might have as far as Philip is concerned are really a matter of style, anyway. I assume the substance is there."

  "Yes," Marge said, "under all that mannered charm and cultivated gentility and raging ambition breathes a reasonable, decent man. And a troubled father."

  "That was my next question," May said.

  "Karin must be a very good friend," Marge commented, and went on: "Thea is just fine. Rather quiet, self-contained and very self-sufficient. Ariel left her to her own devices quite a lot—when Thea was nine, she was taking the bus by herself to ballet lessons in San Francisco. She and Philip are close, I believe. Certainly closer than Daniel and he."

  "Daniel is a problem?"

  "Sixteen-year-old boys often are," Marge said. "I've got three boys, and I know. But Daniel is having a worse time than most."

  "How?"

  "He ran away the first time when he was thirteen. Philip had to fly to Philadelphia to collect him. After that it was a series of schools, and a series of trips to various places to haul him home. Once he got as far as Alaska, and had signed onto a fishing boat. I think Philip was rather proud of him for managing that, though of course he'd never admit it. But mainly, the two are at loggerheads, they never spoke the same language and Ariel either couldn't or wouldn't translate for them. Whenever Daniel would take off, Ariel would manage to have to make a long trip in the opposite direction. I remember she was involved with some gourmet food fair in New Orleans when Daniel had his Alaskan adventure. Ariel's funeral was the most poignant reminder of how a child and parent can manage to miss connections. Daniel was terribly distressed . . . he sobbed uncontrollably and Philip couldn't seem to go to him, I had the feeling he was embarrassed. Thea was the one who comforted her brother. Anyway, Daniel's going to a private school near Bishop which is strong on survival skills
, outdoors things, and he seems to be doing well, cross your fingers."

  "I get the feeling you like the kid."

  She laughed. "I do—I suppose I've had some practice in seeing the good, sweet boy underneath the surly exterior. Boys are very good at surly exteriors." Suddenly intense, she asked, "Why is it that we don't expect plumbers' sons to follow in their father's footsteps, but we expect professors' sons to? If Daniel finishes high school, he will have accomplished something. I'm not sure Philip will look at it that way. So if Philip does marry again, I hope he marries someone who can be Daniel's ally."

  Karin was not to go to the cottage for the Friday night that found Eli and Israel and Hayes discussing Black Power. That weekend she drove to Bishop with Philip, to meet Daniel and become his ally.

  ELEVEN

  A GIRL WHO called herself Sunshine and who cleaned my cottage on Wednesdays told me she had been an Indian rain dancer in another incarnation, and I was tempted to believe her. She moved with meticulous grace and infinite patience, whether polishing my old and worn silver or reaching high to waft cobwebs out of the corners.

  Sunshine believed that certain psychic forces had converged to create, that fall of 1969, a plethora of spiders, many of which had invaded my cottage. Some were microscopic in size, but quite capable of creating gossamer constructions in all the farthest niches. It became something of a game for us, moving about the house to discover all the webs spun since Sunshine's last sweep. It was not unlike looking into a tide pool: The longer you look, the more you see.

  "Webs, webs, everywhere," Sunshine would chant as she made her way through the cottage, wielding a broom wrapped in an old T-shirt which she used to scan the ceilings and sweep away the webs, "the spiders weave in double time, web within web, no reason, no rhyme."

  Occasionally she would come upon a web that was especially beautiful and call me to come see. Once we spent the better part of an hour watching a spider on the other side of the window weave its web using two of its long front legs as knitting needles, over and under and over again. The smallest of breezes would shiver through it, setting web and weaver trembling.

  "Perhaps we should not think of them as nuisances," Sunshine said, "perhaps we should consider them works of art."

  "Perhaps, "I answered her, "you would like to come in here some day and find me caught in all their webs?"

  In fact, that last year of the decade we were caught in webs that spun round from all directions. On a bridge at Chappaquiddick, a cruel quirk of fate compromised the political future of the last of the Kennedy brothers, the family that had come to symbolize the promise of a new historic hope. Two Black Panther leaders were killed in a police raid in Chicago. In Los Angeles, the crazed followers of a madman named Charles Manson performed ritualistic murders. The world was awash in blood; the peace talks in Paris came to nothing, the killing continued in Vietnam. A forest of umbrellas sprouted in San Francisco, raised by 150,000 protesters against a drenching November rain on the day set aside to mark a moratorium of the war in Vietnam. And then the story of American atrocities in My Lai began to unfold, showing all who would look how corrupting war was, how the horror and the violence it unleashed threw its awful web around the innocent, those women and children murdered by American boys. But those boys were our sons, some only eighteen years old, and it became necessary to ask who the victims really were.

  I did not go to the Vietnam Moratorium. The heavens opened that day and the rain came down in sheets that looked like cellophane. "You will rust," Israel said, and I told him I certainly hoped he was referring to my wheelchair. So we stayed, the two of us, in the office, which had emptied for the occasion.

  Israel settled in to read the dictionary; he had embarked on a vocabulary building program. For twenty minutes each day he memorized words, and was now up to the E's. I was making some headway with a budget report when Eli came in, followed by a young man whose blackness was emphasized by his costume: tight black pants and a black turtleneck T-shirt under a black leather jacket. He sprawled in the chair next to the door, feet splayed out before him.

  "Hayes said to meet him here. I couldn't remember if he said at two or three," Eli told me with his usual slow grin, "Must have been three because it's past two and he isn't here. You know Hayes, he's a non-time dude."

  Just then a long-legged girl named Esther came running up the stairs, her hair streaming wet in her eyes and her army poncho dripping water. She did not see the legs stretched out, could not check her momentum and went sprawling. There was an ugly scraping sound and the thud of books hitting the floor.

  Israel jumped to help her, and Eli began gathering the scattered books and papers. The man who had tripped her did not move, did not even draw his legs in but sat motionless, exactly as he had been.

  It was too much for Israel. "Pick up your feet, boy," he shouted.

  "Come on Elmore, Hayes is late," Eli said, stepping between them. "Let's go."

  Elmore was smaller than either Eli or Israel, but the determined set of his body hinted of power. He stepped around Eli and leaned into Israel's face, his chin thrust forward. His words were slow and deliberate: "Listen to old Uncle Tom here . . . Uncle Tom, who you calling 'boy,' you black Tom nigger faggot?"

  Israel roared in anger, his eyes wide, the whites marked by yellow. He had lost control, I was sure of it. For an instant I believed he wanted to kill Elmore, and in the time it took for the thought to flash through my brain, I was sure he would do it.

  Eli held Israel off as he wrenched Elmore down the stairs in front of him. Hayes was just coming up. "Later, man," Eli told him as he brushed past, not even pausing.

  All of this happened in a matter of minutes, maybe two—no more. "Faith?" Hayes asked, but I was too worried about Israel to explain what had happened. He was sitting in the corner, his hands covering his face. I cleaned the nasty scrapes on Esther's knees and talked to Hayes to give Israel time to regain his composure.

  When finally the three of us were alone, I asked Hayes about Elmore.

  "I don't know him," he said, "probably he's one of the Panthers working on prison reform. I've been doing some legal work for them."

  Hayes looked at Israel, still sitting with his head in his hands. "Some of those guys have mean mouths," he told him. "I get the feeling they spend a lot of time figuring out which buttons to push."

  Israel looked up then. "He surely did get my goat," he said wearily—I had never heard Israel sound weary—"He certainly did that." He walked to the window and stood with his back to us, looking out on the rain-drenched campus, staring back at a weeping world. And then he said to Hayes, without turning around, "I don't know why you let them use you like that, those two. They aren't the answer, don't you know. They don't speak for us."

  Hayes surprised me then. He walked across the room, put his hand on Israel's shoulder, and simply stood there, without saying a word. After a while Israel sighed, "Oh, well yes," as if something had been settled.

  All that night I lay awake and tried to sort out what had happened. It was a puzzle, a perfect conundrum. Israel and the man called Elmore, Eli and Hayes. Each of them a different, terribly complicated piece of the puzzle. Along about morning I became convinced that Israel and Eli and Hayes had something to say to each other, and I wanted to hear what it was.

  "Are you sure?" Kit said when I told her I was planning to invite them to a Friday evening. "Don't you think it might be a little risky?"

  "It will be the three of them and Karin, May, you and me, that's all," I told her. "I don't want Sam, or anyone else who might throw things off. But yes, you're right, I do think it's a risk but I believe it's one that needs taking."

  May and Kit stood side by side at the kitchen sink, May washing the greens for the salad and Kit peeling an avocado. "Karin and Philip are going to Bishop this weekend to meet his son. I think she's a little nervous."

  "This sounds serious," Kit said.

  "I'm beginning to think so," May answered. "Philip's daughter,
Thea, has already announced that she wants them to marry. Karin's thinking hard about it, I know."

  "There's quite an age difference, isn't there?" Kit asked.

  May laughed. "Somehow, coming from you that surprises me. Wasn't there quite an age difference between you and your wonderful Connor?" Then she remembered: "Philip said something about knowing you—I've been meaning to ask and I keep forgetting . . . when was that?"

  Kit concentrated on slipping the knife under the hard skin of the avocado. "Let's see," she said, "just after the war, I think—a long time ago. Before he went back East to teach."

  "He would have been . . . what? In his mid-thirties then? He's about your age, actually," May said, but was interrupted by Israel's call for help from the front door. May grabbed a towel to dry her hands and went to open it for him.

  When she left I said to Kit, "I take it you and Philip didn't stay in touch."

  She had busied herself removing the crabs from their butcher paper wrappings. "No," she said, "you know how those things go . . ." and she let her voice trail off.

  Israel appeared, filling the door frame: "I saw Hayes circling the block, looking for a parking place. They'll be along in a minute. Now what can I do, Lady Faith? Shouldn't I move in here and get that crab all fixed up nice? Or would you want me to whip up some of Israel's Special Crab Dipping Sauce? Move over Lady K, make way for some fancy fingerworks here as I prepare to dazzle you with an impromptu concerto for six Dungeness crabs . . ."

  From the kitchen I could see May standing in the door, as Eli and Hayes approached; their smiles, I assumed, reflected her own. "Damned if it isn't the basketball kid," Eli said, slipping his arm easily around her for a hello hug. Then it was Hayes and May, facing each other. He put both hands on her shoulders, that's all. But until that moment I did not know how much there was between them.

  I cleared my throat.