by Nancy Thayer
“What you are telling us,” Reynolds said, “is that if we asked for it, you could reimburse us, the fund, in the amount of around one hundred thousand dollars.”
Ron smiled at Reynolds without a trace of displeasure. “Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying. Would you like to go down to my office now?”
“Oh, well,” Gary said, “I don’t think that’s necessary. Now that we understand—we were afraid the center wouldn’t get built, Ron, because of shortage of funds. A hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money for a town this size. I don’t think we could raise it again if we had to. We just want to be sure the job’s going to be done as promised, for the amount you bid.”
“It will be,” Ron said.
“Are you bonded?” Reynolds asked.
“No,” Ron said. “I’m not. A payment and performance bond is legally required only if the contractor is doing public work, for the federal or state government or the township. It’s expensive, and in this case, unnecessary.”
“That’s one of the reasons we decided to form a private charitable organization,” Gary reminded Reynolds, now totally on Ron’s side. “In order to cut through all the bureaucratic red tape and hassle. If we’d gone public, we would have had to put the job out to bidders and accepted the lowest bid. As it is, we all wanted Ron for the job, and from what I’ve heard, the quality of construction and materials is excellent.”
“And it will continue to be,” Ron said. “I’m sorry you were concerned with this money issue. I’ve never dealt with such a large sum of money before, you know, though I have built some rather expensive houses—houses approaching the cost of the building. But it seemed a waste to me not to have the money accruing more interest in the money markets. Believe me, we’ll use every penny of the interest in finishing the center off right.” He smiled at the men and leaned back in his chair.
“I’m still not quite clear on this,” Reynolds said. “It seems to me that either you have accidentally made repeated mistakes in ordering materials, in which case you have been incompetent, or you’ve purposely made those mistakes in order to put the refunded money into money market funds. In which case you’ve been devious.”
There was a long and uncomfortable silence in the room then, and the four men stared at the fire rather than at one another. The only sound was the expletive gasp of a giant log which finally buckled under the heat of the fire; it rolled against the andirons, sighed, and burst into flames.
“Well,” Ron said at last, still keeping his voice light, “those are harsh words. I haven’t meant to be either incompetent or devious. I think if you look at the building itself—”
“The point is,” Reynolds persisted, “this is supposed to be a group effort, based on mutual trust. I’m finding it difficult to understand how you could take it upon yourself to handle this much money in this way without discussing it with the other members of the rec center committee. It seems to me that you might have mentioned it to Gary, since he is a lawyer, and one of the five members of the committee, and your close friend. Since so much of this is being handled so casually, I’m surprised you didn’t casually clear it with him.”
“Look,” Ron said, cornered into anger, “I don’t have time to casually do anything these days. I’ve been working eighteen hours a day, six days a week for months now, trying to get the rec center built, trying to get it built right. I’ve got three crews of seven men each working under me to supervise, and that building is going up beautifully; it looks good, it is solid, it’s the best piece of work you’ll find in the state of Massachusetts. I don’t have time to fiddle around with all the little nitpicking details of paperwork, and to be quite honest, chatting with the Big Five members of the board is the last thing on my mind. But you might not be able to understand what I’m saying, Reynolds, since you’re a college professor. How many hours a week do you actually have to be physically at work? Nine? Twelve? You’ve got more leisure time to worry about the niceties, the proprieties, than I do—”
“Well, now,” Peter intervened, leaning forward, “you’ve got a valid point there, Ron. A lot of this misunderstanding is probably due to the fact that we’ve somehow let you shoulder too much of the burden. You shouldn’t have to be worried about the financial aspect of it; your function is with the actual building itself, and we are all in agreement, I’m sure, that you are doing a fine, first-class job of that. What we need to work out is some way to provide you with more assistance as far as the paperwork goes.”
“Yes,” Gary said eagerly. “Of course. Peter’s absolutely right. You know, much of this is my fault. I should have set it up more carefully.”
“I think we all should get together tomorrow morning,” Reynolds said. “We can meet at Ron’s office. He can give us a check for the amount he had put into the money market funds, and we can call a meeting of the five members of the board to decide what to do with the money from that point on. It might be that we’ll want to do exactly what Ron has chosen to do, to put it into money market funds. But I think handling that money should clearly be the prerogative of the board.”
“You’re right,” Gary said. “Absolutely right, of course, Reynolds.”
“It will make things a lot easier for you, Ron,” Peter said.
“And in the morning we can also discuss possible ways to make all the paperwork side of the building easier for you too, Ron,” Gary said.
“All right,” Ron said. “That’s fine. Fine. What time shall we meet?”
They agreed to meet at ten o’clock, and then, disguising sighs of relief, they all rose and made ready to depart. They carried brandy snifters to the pine table, gathered up their coats and hats, cleared their throats.
“Does anyone know how Wilbur Wilson is?” Gary asked, more to change the subject and the atmosphere than out of a need for information.
“I called just before I came,” Peter replied. “They said his condition is good, and he’s resting comfortably.”
“Well, thank God for that,” Reynolds said. “What a day this has been.” He turned to Ron and held out his hand. “Ron, I’ll say good night. I’m sorry to interrupt your Sunday evening this way.”
Ron’s hesitation was only a heartbeat long; then he held out his hand and smiled. “Not at all. I’m sorry to cause you all such concern. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He ushered the three men to the door and saw them out into the night. It had begun to rain, a fine, steady, fat rain that made plopping sounds on the leaves and walks. The men hurried to their cars. Peter had come alone in his car, and Gary had ridden with Reynolds. The headlights flared as the rain distorted the circles of light into stars. It had grown even colder, so cold that Ron stopped to wonder if it might snow. Certainly it was almost sleeting now.
He shut the door. His heart was pounding so that the blood drummed in his ears. He had to lean against the wall. Then he walked back to the family room and poured himself another brandy. He pulled his chair close to the fire and sat there, staring at it, sipping the brandy, thinking; and he could not get warm.
Leigh spent most of the afternoon and early evening at the Southmark hospital. She had gone in order to give Mandy and Michael some time alone, and also to help Norma Wilson in some way, perhaps only by showing up, by letting her know she cared. But the pale green waiting room off the intensive care ward had been so packed with people that in the end it was almost like going to a party. The social atmosphere was heightened by the good news that Wilbur had regained consciousness several times and had been quite lucid. He was said to be in good condition and resting well. The people crowded into the little room had a feeling of reprieve—maybe this was not to be a tragic day after all—and it made them overcome with a sense of gaiety and good fortune. They were pleased with themselves for being there. Leigh talked with Norma awhile, but spent most of her time chatting with others, catching up on old news and the latest developments in people’s lives. She sipped lukewarm coffee from a paper cup as happily as if it were scotch
, and when she finally left the hospital, she had a bit of a buzz on from all the caffeine.
Just before she left, she called home to alert Mandy to the fact that she would be arriving soon, and to say she’d pick up a pizza on the way: What kind of pizza would they like? When she arrived back at the house at seven o’clock, she carried an extra-large extra-cheese deluxe pizza in a limp cardboard box.
As if trying to prove that she had had nothing much else to do, Mandy had cleaned up the kitchen after lunch and laid out clean place settings for dinner. The children—for that was how Leigh thought of them, in spite of the fact that they were both taller than she and had probably been spending the afternoon in bed—ate with such gusto that Leigh wished she had thought to buy two pizzas. She didn’t have much food in the house—with Mandy off at college, she kept a sparsely stocked kitchen—but after they had finished the pizza and a salad, Leigh went into the living room and got the big brass bowl that was piled high with fresh pecans, walnuts, filberts, almonds, Brazil nuts, all still in the shell, brought it back into the kitchen, and put it in the center of the table. They sat passing the nutcracker around, munching nuts, sipping wine.
“Mom,” Mandy said, “uh—we’ve got something we want to tell you. Talk with you about, I mean.”
We, Leigh thought. Well, well. “All right,” she said.
Michael worked away at cracking a Brazil nut as if his life depended on it.
“Michael and I are in love,” Mandy said. “We want to get married.”
Leigh flinched, as if she had been hit in the stomach. The news hit her there, she could physically feel the blow. “Isn’t this awfully sudden?” she finally said.
“Mom, I’ve known Michael for years, and I’ve been—seeing—him all summer,” Mandy said. “I thought when I went off to college that we’d forget about each other. But we can’t.”
Leigh studied her daughter, a pretty girl, full of promise, lithe and quick, with her nerves running eagerly just under the surface of her skin. She was easily moved, easily awed; Mandy always had been swept off her feet by even the most ordinary things in life. Still, she was no fool. She was learning to channel her private ecstasies into art, and she had never yet made a stupid decision because of emotional blindness. Leigh had high hopes for her daughter. Mandy could be somebody. And be happy, too—Mandy seemed to be one of those rare individuals who was capable of having both prizes. So she had to take what her daughter was saying seriously.
In the past few years she and Mandy had gotten into the habit of trusting each other. Perhaps it was because there were only the two of them alone in the house. Mandy’s father came to visit, or sent for Mandy, now and then, but his interest was slight. He was a busy man, and his love was really only a form of cordiality. It had been difficult for Mandy to come to terms with this, and for a while she had blamed her mother, and for a while she had hated both parents, but that was long ago, when she was just entering her teens. She had worked it all through, and for three or four years now, Leigh and Mandy had had an ease in their relationship that stemmed from mutual respect. Leigh didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to frighten Mandy away with arbitrary grown-up rules. She knew how skittish young people were—she could remember her own youth. And it was more than a pose, a ruse: Leigh did have faith in her daughter’s judgment and intuition. If Mandy thought it would be good for her to marry this boy Michael, then very probably it would be. But still—they were so young! She could not help but think that they needed some kind of protection at this age, even from themselves.
Leigh turned her gaze to Michael, who had gotten the Brazil nut open and was now digging the meat out. He was a handsome boy. Leigh would have to give Mandy an A for taste. If he was nothing else at all, he was certainly handsome, even beautiful, with vivid coloring and good bones. Thick black hair. But was he at all intelligent? Did he have a sense of humor? Integrity? Common sense?
“Michael, how old are you?” she asked.
Michael raised his eyes to hers, and in that instant, though he did not know it and Leigh would never have admitted it, he won the battle. His gaze was so clear and direct. It signaled: Here is a good person. There is enough animal in us still, Leigh knew, to sniff that much out in each other.
“I’m seventeen,” he said. “I’ll be eighteen in December. I’m still in high school. I’m a senior. I’m not making good grades, because I honestly find high school boring. But I’m not stupid—if you want to check my IQ test—”
Leigh burst out laughing at this, and in turn, they relaxed and smiled. “Look, you two,” Leigh said. “You’re both intelligent, I believe that. And you’re in love, I can see that. But why do you have to get married? Why don’t you just see each other on weekends and, well, write letters during the week. If you’ve really only been—seeing—each other just this summer, such a short time, you can’t know everything about each other that there is to know. You might be surprised at how much you could get to know about each other through letters—” But she could see by the glaze that began to pass over their eyes that she had lost them. She was silent for a moment.
“Mom,” Mandy said, “we want to be together. We don’t want to be separated. We don’t want to see each other just on weekends.”
“I was thinking,” Michael said. “I could come to Northampton. I could get a job there. There are lots of things I could do. I’m a good worker and I’m good with my hands. I could work in a garage, or with a builder, or with a landscape contractor like I did this summer. I could support us. Mandy and I could live in an apartment, and she could continue school. I know you don’t want her to drop out. I don’t, either.”
“But I want to sculpt, Mother!” Mandy burst out, and Leigh turned to see by her daughter’s expression that she was more terrified about this admission than she was about her love for Michael. “And Michael would help me. Carrying the heavy stuff, the materials and things.”
“Just a moment,” Leigh said, and rubbed her forehead with her hand. Was any parent ever prepared for this sort of thing? Did any human being ever feel confident about this kind of decision? So much hung in the balance. “Michael,” Leigh said, “what will your parents think about all this?”
“My father will be furious,” Michael said. “Not because of Mandy. I mean, he’d be furious no matter who I’d want to marry. And my mother—my mother will be worried. I guess she’ll be like you—convinced that we’re too young to make a serious decision like this. But, Mrs. Findly, I believe that there’s no one age when everyone gets smart. I’m sure experience improves everyone’s thinking, but I feel that some people get smart young, and some people never get smart at all, no matter how old they are.”
Leigh smiled. “Yes,” she said, musing. “I sort of believe that myself. But, Michael, don’t you want to go to college? Surely your parents want you to. I don’t see how you could both go to college and support yourself—”
“I don’t want to go to college. At least not now. I’m not interested in any of it. I—I’m tired of words. I don’t trust them. I want to work with things that are real. Of course my parents want me to go to college, but I’ve talked with them about it and told them I don’t want to.”
“Oh, God, your poor parents,” Leigh said. “They have their hands full with you.”
“They do,” Michael agreed. “You see, they think that life should be lived in a line. You’re supposed to touch certain checkpoints along the way. They want me to be on the way to someplace, and it’s always an uphill climb. Well, I can’t do that. I don’t want to go where they want me to. I—it’s like I see a whole different area of life to live in that they can’t even see. It’s hard to explain,” he conceded.
Leigh was quiet for a while, remembering. She thought she knew what Michael meant, and his words drew her sympathies. When she had been their age, she had desperately wanted to go to Paris, to “be an artist,” to live among artists—to sleep with artists. She had dreamed of living in a garret on the Left Bank, posing nude
for artists who would fall in love with her and make her famous, immortalizing her in their art. And she would turn the tables, sculpt her lovers, and become famous herself, for her art, immortalizing them. She would sit at the Deux Magots, sipping Pernod and saying witty things, and she would never marry or have children, and she would never grow old. But her parents were merely amused by her dreams, and said that of course she was not going to Paris, she was going to college. And she did go to college. Then she married, and she had a child, following that rigid line that society delineated through ambitious love of parents for their children, until the time came when she could pretend no longer, and she got divorced.
Since then, she had lived more or less as she pleased, potting, having lovers; but it was a tamer life than she had wanted for herself, and a more limited one, bounded always by the needs of her daughter. Mandy had to come first. Leigh did not regret this—Mandy was reason enough to make any life worthwhile. And Leigh knew that her early dreams had been greedy and unrealistic; it would have been most unlikely if everything she dreamed had happened. More than likely she would have been hungry, cold, and lonely in Paris; she would have gotten a venereal disease from a lover and gone home admitting her talent was a small one.
Still, why should she join with other grown-ups in this ritualistic coercion of young people onto the straight and narrow path?
Mandy was rolling a filbert back and forth on the table. Michael was just sitting, waiting.
“Look,” Leigh said, “this is a lot of news to hit me with all at once. You two have had a while to think about it. I should surely have some time. Whatever your—career choices—are, Michael, it’s something you have to work out between you and your parents. And it certainly wouldn’t be fair for me to give you my blessing and force your parents into the position of being the heavies. Look … look. If you two think you’ll be happier if you’re together, well, why do you have to get married? Marriage is so complicated. There’s so much legal stuff, so much hassle. Why don’t you two try living together for a while?”
