Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  "I'm sorry to hear that." She felt she had to offer him something, some knowledge to match his. "I just found this out, about my problem, a few weeks ago."

  "Ah, well, I've known for years," said the pharmacist.

  As soon as the sun went down, but not before, it began to rain on Dingley Falls. The Ransoms' first guest arrived at 7:55. Jonathan Fields escorted the rector, Father Highwick, up the walk under an umbrella. Fields himself had not been invited. In any case, he had a call to pay on Miss Ramona Dingley, an elderly shut-in imprecisely known in the town as Sammy Smalter's aunt. (They were second cousins.)

  "Tell poor, dear Ramona to keep up her spirits," the rector briefed his curate. "Don't encourage her to carry on about those flying saucers. It agitates her, I'm sure."

  The insomniac Miss Dingley, an otherwise sharp and cynical person, had for years reported UFOs to whoever would listen. She claimed to have observed these beaconing visitors descending to land somewhere north of the Rampage beyond Wild Oat Ridge.

  "Tell her I'll pop by someday soon," the pastor added. At seventy-three, Ramona Dingley was only seven years Highwick's senior, but she had aged while he had not. And now her ill health was an unbridgeable gap between them. The rector was happy only in the company of the young and the physically well-to-do.

  Once the door was opened to his superior, Jonathan Fields hurried back through the rain to St. Andrew's new black Lincoln, a gift to the church from Ernest Ransom. He wondered if Walter Saar had been asked to their party, if he were already inside there, or if he might come walking around the corner. Would he walk, would he drive? The young curate drove as slowly as he could through Elizabeth Circle to Miss Dingley's, but he saw no one along the way.

  "You see, Ernest, it did not begin to rain until the sun went down. Elijah Dingley must be quite a friend of our Lord's. They say it has never rained once on his day in a hundred years." Father Highwick had decided on this opening observation as the Ransoms' maid, Wanda Tojek, took his raincoat. He delivered the remark first to her, then to his host, who, inserting a gold cufflink, had come immediately downstairs to greet the rector in the off-mauve living room.

  "Yes, Otto lost faith this afternoon because of those clouds, but I guess heaven stays on our side. A little humid on the back nine, that's all." With this reply, Ransom took Highwick's hand and shook it in welcome, though they saw each other nearly every day.

  The evening's party was given, according to Priss Ransom's handwritten invitations, to toast the fact that there was a Dingley Falls in existence for them to have the party in. "Join us for flounder on Founder's Day," she'd said. Today was the day formally established in Dingley Falls during the Gilded Age to commemorate the fact that on May 31, 1676, Elijah Dingley (sick of wandering around lost) had sat down on what was now the town green and had refused to budge a step farther. He had dated his decision in a diary bequeathed generations later to the Yale archives, where it was periodically read by excited graduate students who chanced upon the scurrilous document—most of which consisted of detailed accounts of Elijah's sex life with his wife, Agatha; their indentured servant, Mary; and a female Indian possessed of considerable physical agility. This year's Founder's Day festivities had taken place on the green yesterday, Sunday afternoon. They had included a close drill by the Argyle Fife and Drum Corps, short speeches by civic leaders beneath the copper beech, a pantomime by the elementary school depicting Elijah's treaty with the Indians (not including his lady friend), six cannon shots, a band concert featuring Victor Herbert melodies, free balloons printed "Buy Barnum's," and a benediction by Sloan Highwick.

  "And this summer the Bicentennial Festival and a parade with the Governor's Horse Guards," said Highwick happily; he loved parades. "Imagine, Ernest. Here we are, a hundred years older than this wonderful nation itself."

  "We? I feel I may well be older, Sloan, but I can't believe you've said good-bye to your forties." Ransom smiled. "Care for a drink?"

  "Oh, perhaps a little martini. Would that be inconvenient?" proposed the rector, who invariably drank at least four before each of the many Dingley Falls dinners to which he was invited.

  Upstairs, Priss (slipping the zipper up her off-beige gown) interrupted the serene trance of her beautifully boned elder daughter, Emerald, who sat on her bed staring at the polish on her fingernails.

  "Emerald, did you tell Arthur to phone his mother?"

  Emerald combined the nod of a yes with a quick series of gentle puffs on her nails.

  "Where in g.d.h. could Beanie be?"

  Emerald raised her handsome eyebrows to denote her ignorance of Mrs. Abernathy's whereabouts. She added for emphasis a shrug of those fashionably thin shoulders that gratifyingly mirrored her mother's.

  "Is Kate still in the toilet?…Emerald! Is Kate still in the toilet, dear?"

  By a languid shake of her hair, which she was now ready to brush, Emerald gestured her unfamiliarity with her sister's schedule.

  On her way out, Mrs. Ransom picked up a lace slip from the floor; she put it on a pale green chair and gave it a pat—it was one of hers. "Please try not to be too long. Emerald? Try not to be too long. As usual, the rector has come early and is undoubtedly down there already, lapping up the gin like a dipsomaniacal kitten. Chang Chow or whatever she calls herself has sobbed Wanda's consommé quite soggy, and I feel like standing out in the middle of the rain howling like the call of the wild."

  Her head curved sideways into her dark, glossy curls, Emerald frowned simultaneously at her mother and a split end.

  Downstairs, Priss interrupted her imminent son-in-law, Arthur Abernathy, who stood alone in the library staring at a photograph of the infant Emerald.

  "Arthur, did you call your mother again?"

  "Yes," said the lanky, unsettled merger of Winslow Abernathy's bones and Beanie Dingley's flesh. "There was no answer."

  "Where in g.d.h. could Beanie be? Pardonne my French, Arthur dear, but I am so frazzled I feel like standing out in the middle of the rain, howling like the call of the wild."

  Standing out in the middle of the rain, somewhere in Birch Forest, Richard Rage and Arthur Abernathy's mother were making love for the sixth time in half that many hours.

  "We can't go on like this," gasped Beanie, shiny wet and naked as the day, in 1924, she was born. "It's not possible."

  "I know it's not possible. It's fucking amazing!" agreed Rage, who had never felt so undeflatable before in his life, not even with Cerise Washwillow, the majorette to whom he had given his love and virginity and with whom he had made love, sobbing, the night before she married the future pediatrician instead of the high school's senior poet, class of '55.

  Now years were sublunary and time itself had stopped for Dante and his Beatrice. They swayed, they buckled, they bent and quivered like a single oak tree storm-tossed among puny birches.

  "Fucking in the rain!" Richard exclaimed. "What a glorious feeling."

  "Oh, Richard," moaned Beanie. She was coming again.

  "Don't think."

  "I'm not thinking, I'm not thinking at all."

  "Don't."

  "I won't, I can't, nothing makes any sense."

  "Darlin'," he laughed, "there's all kinds."

  chapter 8

  Dinner at the Ransoms' was always elegantly spare, permitting the guests to study the design on their dinner plates. "Lovely china," said the very old Mary Bredforet, who had often said the same to Ernest's grandmother, her sister-in-law, fifty years ago. She smiled benignly around the circle of lyre-backed Duncan Phyfe chairs, two of which had been removed.

  "So peculiar really," said Tracy Canopy to Sidney Blossom, the librarian, who had been invited because he played the piano. "My clock radio, electric coffeepot (and coffee), pocket calculator, some personal garments, a great many toilet articles, several record albums, two assorted packs of cereals, and a rather valuable diamond brooch that belonged to Great Aunt Dixwell. I searched everywhere. All missing."

  "Like Beanie," sighed Evelyn Tr
oyes. "C'est dommage."

  "I can't imagine," Mrs. Canopy continued, "how the burglar managed to break in without disturbing a single lock."

  "What I can't imagine, Tracy," scoffed the cynical Priss, "is how that Babahaba of yours is planning to slip through Lebanese Customs with half your household belongings in her duffel bag."

  "Oh, for heaven's sake, Priss, Babaha didn't take them. She's not a thief. She's an artist."

  "Ha!" her friend concluded. "Asparagus, Walter?"

  "Has your exchange student left us then?" asked Father Highwick as he wistfully watched the wine bottle sit near his host across the wide table. "Tracy," the rector explained with inebriated liveliness to Mrs. A.A. Hayes, "is a kind soul, always taking in these foreign students who come riding around on buses to taste the feel of America. Charming girl, Baraba, though not, of course, Christian.

  Muslim, I believe. Worships the Koran. Fine book in its way, had it in divinity school. All to the glory of the Lord, whatever we do. Oh, thank you, Ernest, yes, just a touch more then." Ransom refilled the rector's glass.

  "Is Vassar treating you right? Kate?" asked Sidney Blossom of the girl on his left. "Is Vassar…"

  "I hate it," replied Emerald's dispirited younger sister with a glare at the air where Rage should have been sitting, trying to seduce her.

  With half their soaked clothes held next to their bodies, Rich and Beanie, after having tasted the fruit for quite a while, were finally being driven from the Garden by inclement weather. Like their original parents before them, they headed east.

  "I know you'll find a way out for us," said the poet, trustfully following his long-striding love through a pathless maze of fallen birch trees. "I've got a lousy sense of direction."

  "I've got a good one" was the reassuring answer. But suddenly Beanie stopped and came to a point. Far off, far north of Wild Oat Ridge, greenish lights vaguely loomed from where there should have been nothing but the marshlands beyond Bredforet Pond. "What in the world is that?" the native pathfinder puzzled. Had she gotten completely turned around?

  Behind her, Rage slipped on a soppy mass of moss and tumbled down a tiny ravine. "Help!" he screamed.

  Leaping from boulder to boulder, Beanie descended after him.

  With a long, strong arm she pulled her golden lover from the rising river in which he was helplessly flailing. Rescued, he immediately began to chant:

  Like some great randy she-goat

  You came bounding,

  Teats swung out, to save

  A Shelley drowning.

  "Hush, Richard, your lip's cut open." Beanie looked about her.

  "Good, this is the Rampage. And there, look, there's the highway. Can you move? Let's get out of this rain." Relieved, she helped him up.

  "It isn't raining rain," he laughed. "It's raining violets."

  "Hush, Richard."

  Coffee and after-dinner drinks at the Ransoms' were served in their living room.

  "One lump or two?" asked Priss.

  "Five," said aged William Bredforet, who was too old for moderation.

  "My dear child, is there something in your eye? It looks so inflamed." Father Highwick peered down at the pretty Asian maid, who thrust a large tray of apricot wafers into his hands, then rushed tearfully out of the room. "Heavens," he said to his host. "Your girl seems upset, Ernest."

  "Yes, I'm sorry. She's only temporary. Some B and B, Sloan?

  Here, I'll take that tray."

  "Somebody got her pregnant, that's my bet," said old Mr. Bredforet loudly. "I had an Oriental girl myself once. In Singapore.

  Limber as a rainbow trout."

  "She was a swimmer?" asked Highwick sweetly. Ransom led his Great Uncle William away with a whisper. "Now don't kid Sloan tonight."

  "I wasn't kidding," growled the roguish octogenarian. "Was he kidding?"

  Walter Saar was appraising a Louis XVI settee when Evelyn Troyes floated down on it and addressed him. "Mister Saar! Our Jonathan tells me he's been playing with your boys. And that they're coming along beautifully. You both have worked so hard. Don't you think he has real reverence for music?" She paused, posed, for a response.

  "Oh, yes, indeed; in fact, I hope to have him play on our organ someday without the boys." Saar here indulged in a game of verbal risk at Mrs. Troyes's expense. Such self-amusement was a trait he greatly disliked in himself.

  "Have you a nice one then?"

  Good God, he thought, was she playing the game too? "Small compared to the one he has at St. Andrew's, naturally, but the timbre not bad, we think." Saar knew he was drinking too much again and couldn't seem to stop himself. "Will you excuse me a second while I guzzle every drop of booze on the bar and then rape myself with the bottles?" Oh, my God, had he said that? No. There still sat Evelyn in a halo of blue hair, with a smile like Lillian Gish's. She was saying, "I don't think Ernest smokes, but Priss will have some, won't she?" What was the matter with him? Of course what he had really said was, "Will you excuse me while I borrow a cigarette from Ernest?" If he kept on, he was going to lose his job.

  A.A. Hayes, former North Carolinian and currently graying editor of the Dingley Day, couldn't seem to stop himself from drinking either. He, however, had no desire to do so. Sighting down the length of his glass, he glanced at his attractive wife, Junebug, off by herself in a corner, where she fondled a collection of Steuben glass birds. Everyone in Dingley Falls thought June Hayes to be pitifully shy, whereas her husband knew her to be pitilessly hostile to them all, himself included. He looked away when she sensed his watching her, before she could pretend to almost drop the small object in her hand. He knew she wanted to leave. Hayes wished the Abernathys were here so that he could talk with Winslow while Beanie moved quietly around the room, pruning the Ransoms' ferns and cacti. But for some reason they weren't. Turning to their son, Arthur, who was leaving the room with the exquisite Emerald Ransom on his arm, Hayes said to the junior Abernathy, Dingley Falls's first selectman, "Shouldn't I start printing up your bands, keep up the old-fashioned traditions here in our little town?" The editor strove for a Village Elder chuckle, but heard his words elide into a smirking leer.

  Fourteen years in New England, and still the expatriated southerner felt he just missed the proper tone, the decorous distance, appropriate among these socially parsimonious Yankees.

  "Truth is, we haven't exactly decided on a date yet. Officially," said Arthur, while Emerald brushed a manicured hand through her black curls so that a diamond winked out of darkness at Hayes.

  "Well, then just let me congratulate you privately. I'm sure you'll be very happy." Hayes did, indeed, consider the young couple wellsuited, for he thought them both polished into perfect vacuity. After they hurried out, he returned to the ebony liquor cabinet, where he knew his host would offer to refurbish his Scotch.

  "Refurbish your Scotch, A.A.?"

  "With pleasure. How, as they say, is the bank?"

  "These are not the best of times…as your editorials remind us."

  "No. What your last man in the White House hadn't time to impound or inflate before his stonewall caved in on him, his more genial apologist, Mr. Ford, is flummoxing nicely. No, no water."

  Hayes realized he was quoting next week's editorial and would now have to rewrite it. "Why not get a Democrat back in there?"

  "These are not the worst of times either." Ransom smiled equably and turned to speak to Tracy Canopy. Hayes finished his drink alone.

  Why had the pompous ass invited them then?

  "Where did the children go?" Mrs. Troyes asked Priss, who really wished Evelyn would not refer to a twenty-seven-year-old woman and thirty-one-year-old man as "the children."

  "I sent them over to the Abernathys'. I want Arthur to look around the house. It occurred to me that poor Beanie might be lying in a pool of blood with her head bashed in by that leftover hippie."

  "Oh, dear, I hope not! You don't think, do you..."

  "For God's sake, I was being hyperbolic. But something must h
ave happened to them. And with Winslow away in Boston. Beanie has never been particularly worldly."

  "Did you notice how heavy the air was today?"

  "What?"

  "Well, I heard something on the Today show this morning.

  Whole areas have their moods just like people. It's cosmic energy, or vibrations like weather patterns but affecting lives by biochemistry or the stars or something. Do you think there might have been terrible ozones over Dingley Falls today? Tracy's burglary. And Beanie's vanishing. And did I tell you I received the strangest letter?"

  "Evelyn. Don't be silly. No concoction from some celestial chemistry set forced Beanie to skip this party without a word of notice."

  "Well, there is a book and the man who wrote it was on the show and apparently it's doing quite well…."

  From near the french windows the Reverend Mr. Highwick's amiable voice floated toward Mrs. Ransom: "Not until I was back in my stateroom did I dare reach in my pocket. There, right there in the pocket of my dinner jacket, or rather Quince Ivoryton's which he'd very nicely lent me, right there where she must have stuffed them as we stood on deck, the duchess's jewels were wrapped in a brocade window sash. I saw that royal monogram stitched in happier times…"

  Priss clapped her hands loudly.

  "Oh, Priss," whispered Evelyn. "He's only telling it to the Bredforets, and they're both dear things, practically deaf. See how Mary's smiling?"

  "Rubbish!" yelled old Mr. Bredforet at the rector. "A duchess stuffed her hand in your pocket? Then I bet it was your jewels she was after."

  Priss clapped again. Faces obediently turned.

  "Everyone," their hostess announced. "Evelyn here has kindly agreed to sing for us. Of course you will, Evelyn, don't be silly. And Sidney," she informed Mr. Blossom, "will accompany her on the piano."

  "Splendid!" called out the rector, who had no idea he detested the very sound of Mrs. Troyes's voice.