Michael Malone

by Dingley Falls

  "All right," she said, "Let's go soon."

  "Oh, Beanie, you can't imagine how relieved I am to hear you make the sensible decision. We'll go as soon as possible. June can take over the Bicentennial Festival. We'll fly to London, see some plays, oh, the opera, the National Gallery. We'll, oh, my, yes, I know.

  We'll go to the Lake Country. Not London. You'll like it there, Grasmere, Windermere, it's so beautiful, and a lot to do outdoors.

  Should we ask Evelyn?"

  Beanie watched the cardinal whir off the iron rooster atop the weather vane.

  "Do you think it would hurt her feelings if we didn't? I guess it would. All right."

  "She gets so lonely. Now you leave all the arrangements to me.

  I'm very good at this sort of thing."

  "I'm going back to New York today. I'll tell you where to call me about the flight and all."

  Mrs. Canopy put down the tray she had filled with dishes. "Is that wise?"

  "I couldn't leave without seeing him again."

  Mrs. Canopy examined her friend's face quizzically. "I guess I never felt that way," she confessed. "I suppose I might as well say even that I wasn't really what you'd call 'in love' with Vincent. Of course, I loved him. He was a wonderful man. Didn't you think so, Beanie?"

  Beanie came to hug Tracy; only fleetingly though, for she was sensitive to her friend's discomfort with physical affection. "I liked him a lot. I liked his laugh."

  "Yes. He was a sanguine person. I think he was probably happy, by nature.... Well, never mind. Here, now let me do these dishes."

  "Tracy, just for three weeks. I mean, you stay as long as you like, and Evelyn, but I want to come back in three weeks. And the other thing, when we go, I'm going to ask you not to try to talk to me about what I've done, I mean, try to make me change my mind. Because I won't, and you have to understand that."

  Tracy took off her glasses. "Why, Beanie dear, of course. Of course it will be all right with me, whatever you do. Well, not if you stabbed someone to death or became a political terrorist." She laughed. Beanie didn't. It was one of the limits on their love that Beanie never joked. Tracy knew, however, that Beanie would not turn her away, even if she had murdered someone. Jokes were easier to come by.

  For the rest of the morning, while Mrs. Canopy wrote some letters to her artists, Beanie had, as she put it, puttered around. She was regluing some loose tiles in the upstairs bathroom when someone knocked at the front door. It was Priss Ransom. She had telephoned earlier that morning with news of Joy Strummer, but Tracy had neither told Priss that Beanie was there, nor told Beanie about the tragic accident at the Ransoms' pool party. She had not understood Lance's involvement in the incident (his letter to his mother lay this minute in her mailbox) and had decided that Beanie had enough to upset her already without being told.

  Priss was in what Beanie called her "too much" mood. "Get me some coffee and a vial of morphine, will you, Tracy? I'm at my wits' end.

  It's been a g.d. nightmare. And then, Ernest! After keeping me up all night, so full of twitches and heaves I thought I was going to have to put him in a hospital, this morning he's merrily off on his jog, and merrily off to his bank, leaving me behind as frazzled as Lady Macbeth in a straitjacket." Mrs. Ransom sank carefully into the bent cane rocker.

  "I can just imagine." Tracy nodded.

  "I doubt it." Priss had picked up a thin book on the coffee table, a selection sent from one of the innumerable literary clubs to which Mrs. Canopy belonged. Dangerous Constancy was described as an "anthology of erotic verse by the best of the new New York women poets, frankly celebrating the pleasures of passionate promiscuity."

  Priss stared at the cover of bright-colored vulvas; her mind wandered, and as if conjured by her thoughts, Beanie appeared, clomping down the stairs, a hammer in her hand.

  "Tracy? I think I've fixed…Oh. Prissie. Hi."

  "What in h. are you doing here?"

  Tracy hurried back from the kitchen. "Yes. Here's Beanie! She's staying with me. She came back to talk with Winslow."

  Mrs. Ransom twisted around in the chair to look at Mrs. Abernathy. "Thank God. You've come to your senses. Where did you leave that ridiculous little man?"

  "Do you mean Richard?"

  "Was that his name?"

  "Now, Priss, please." Tracy handed her the cup of coffee and shook her head surreptitiously. But Beanie walked around her to say to Priss, "You know his name is Richard. And I haven't left him anywhere."

  "Oh?"

  "I'm going back today."

  "I see. And what does, is it Winslow, have to say about this remarkable news?"

  Beanie opened her mouth, then slowly closed it. Ever since her childhood, the more hurt she felt, the less she could think of any words with which to say so. Tracy patted her arm. "Why, isn't that really a private…I don't think our Beanie…"

  "I don't think our Beanie thinks. Now, do you?"

  "Priss!"

  "If she had thought, just a teensy bit, I don't believe she would have behaved quite the way she has. Oh, put that g.d. hammer down, Beanie. You look like someone on a billboard stuck on top of a Russian factory. If she had thought, I don't believe she would have raised a son who has behaved the way he has either."

  "What?" Beanie stuttered. "Has Arthur upset Emerald?"

  "Arthur? There's nothing the matter with Arthur. Except his posture and his conversation. I'm talking about Lance. I'm talking about your son who brought a barely pubescent girl whom nobody ever heard of to our home, then merrily wanders off while she drowns in our swimming pool. And all he can think of to do about it is break his hand boxing with the hood of his g.d. car."

  The hammer thudded on the rug.

  "Really, Priss, I must insist." Tracy's cheeks were red as stop signs and signaled, in fact, exactly that. "Beanie, I didn't know Lance was involved, or I would have have told you."

  "Where is he?" whispered Beanie.

  "Qui sait? No one's seen him; certainly not the Strummers, whom Ernest and I went to call on just now, under the impression that someone should offer them some explanation since they were not even aware that their child had been invited to our party. Just as I was not aware of it. Apparently, she sneaked out of her room." Priss lit a cigarette and took one of Tracy's pots for an ashtray.

  Beanie tugged at Tracy's hands. "The girl's dead? Strummers?

  They have a girl? She died?"

  Neither Beanie nor her friends knew the Strummers personally or socially. They knew the name. Priss had no idea, for example, that the Strummers' son, Bobby, had, four summers ago, taken her daughter Kate's virginity on her couch at the lake house. Their spheres didn't mingle.

  Beanie ran toward the kitchen door. "I've got to find Lance and talk to him."

  Through a stream of her smoke Mrs. Ransom called after Beanie.

  "My dear, I'd say you were about thirty years too late."

  "Oh, now, no." Tracy flushed scarlet. "Really, no. You can't talk to Beanie like that. You mustn't come in my house and be so cruel!

  What's the matter with you, Priss? Really, no."

  The kitchen door slammed shut. Mrs. Ransom stood so quickly that the rocker flipped over behind her. Infuriated by the awkwardness, she jerked it up as she spoke. "And who in h. do you think you are to talk to me like that? I told that gallumphing imbecile the truth. You know it's the truth as well as I. So who in hell are you?"

  Mrs. Canopy's square jaw jutted up, trembling at the cool, handsome face of her college idol. "Her friend," she said.

  Mrs. Ransom blinked once, then smiled. "Thanks for the clarification, Tracy." She stubbed out her cigarette in the pot. "A bientôt, or should I say adieu? " She walked into the front hall. "Don't bother to show me the door, unless of course Beanie's moved it to a new location."

  Alone, Tracy ran into her bathroom and sat down, shaking, on the porcelain head of Fidel Castro. She burst into tears. What had gone wrong with her world? What was everyone coming to? After thirty years she had l
ost Priss. But she couldn't allow her to talk so cruelly of Beanie. Undoubtedly the poor Strummer girl's drowning had driven Priss to the point where she didn't know what she said.

  "And here I sit, excited about other people's tragedies as if they were plays. Even looking forward to going to England, and having somebody to travel with, when it will probably break Winslow's heart. He may think I took Beanie's side against him. I suppose I did. But what should I do? It's her life, isn't it? And here, worst of all, I think I'm almost jealous of Beanie. Here she is, with children and a husband and now this man, too. Of course, she's so unhappy to have to hurt anybody, and I have a perfectly fine life, and friends. There's no reason to be envious. I suppose I should apologize to Priss. Oh, Vincent, Vincent, I wish I had you here to talk to sometimes. Sometimes I'm afraid I get a little lonely. Not that I have any right."

  On the steps of the Ransom Bank, Miss Dingley, sitting in her wheelchair in white linen skirt, blazer, and striped tie, conversed with the bank president. "No. Poor child. Wouldn't talk to me either.

  Can't say I blame her. Hope Cecil can pull himself together and give her some strength."

  "I'm sure they'll work it out. Now, Ramona, I'm afraid—" Ernest Ransom put a foot on the first step.

  "Saw Mary Bredforet at the hardware store. She said some idiot was shooting firearms off in the green here awhile ago. Where was John Haig?"

  "A good question. It was Barnum, an accidental shot apparently."

  "The man's dangerous. I want him charged."

  "I'm afraid I'm in a bit of—"

  Miss Dingley nudged Ransom toward her with her cane. "Don't fly off. Haven't said what I came to yet."

  The banker smiled. Except for the pallid flush of a sleepless night, he looked, as always, perfectly fit and perfectly polite. "What can I do for you?"

  "Not sure." She poked her cane tip at his chest and he stepped back. "What's going on out north of the marshland near the pond?"

  A twitch flicked against his will in the corner of Ransom's mouth. "Excuse me?"

  "Your grandfather Bredforet's land."

  "What's the matter with it?"

  "Asking you, Ernie." The old woman's cold hawk eyes held his as though he were a squirrel. "There's a military base up there."

  Ransom stared at her. "There's a government compound up there.

  You let those Washington idiots come piddling up here and start building nuclear bombs? In Dingley Falls?"

  Ransom's laugh was slightly louder than was his habit. "Are you joking, Ramona? There're no missile sites anywhere around here."

  "I wouldn't have thought so."

  "It's crazy. Who told you this nonsense?"

  "People have seen it."

  "Who?"

  Ramona paused, scrutinizing his face, before she answered. "Two young people. Went in along the old Indian trail. Took them there myself."

  Ransom looped both hands through the back of his belt. He filled up his chest with air. "Now! Last time you were telling me there were flying saucers out in the marshland. Next, two kids say they see missile silos. Ramona!" He smiled indulgently.

  Miss Dingley scooted her chair back so that she would not have to tilt her head up at Ransom. "Don't patronize me, Ernie. I'm not a fool. Tell me one thing, that's all I'm interested in. Did you stop construction on that highway connector because you knew there was something up there that no highway ought to be coming close to?"

  "Good heavens, Ramona. You were one of the ones all up in arms about not wanting a major route coming close to town in the first place. Besides, don't be silly. I didn't stop the highway. Who am I? The commission in Hartford determined that—"

  She waved away his words with her cane. "And you don't know anything about the federal government setting themselves up on Sewell Bredforet's property?"

  Ransom hid his hands in the pockets of his blue blazer. His voice was kindly and tolerant. "There are no nuclear missiles out on that land, not as far as I know, and I would be flabbergasted to find out I was wrong. And if I knew, for a fact, that there was a clear danger to Dingley Falls from anything built on land I might have sold, I would not, as you seem to be accusing me, hide the fact from the town council."

  Miss Dingley tried to move out of the sun so that she could study his eyes. But they looked as they always had since he was a child—a bland, attractive gray, innocent of irony. The eyes of a plodder, but so successful a plodder that there was no visible strain. As with his golf game, he had learned to work well with, and within, his handicaps.

  No, decided Miss Dingley, she was much brighter than Ernie, craftier, more capable of subtle maneuvers. No, he was not trying to mislead her. She snapped open the purse in her lap and took out of it a yellow canister of film. "Well, then. Find out if you are wrong. My friends took these." She handed him the film. "It's your land, Ernie. You have a right to know what's happening on it, and I think you'll be surprised.

  None of my business if you sell your own property. Long as it's legitimate. Far as I can judge, nothing the federal government's up to is likely to be legitimate, but, like I say, I admit to prejudice. But you wouldn't want me putting up a burlesque house next door to your bank. And I don't want somebody putting a pile of radioactive foolishness next door to my town. Shouldn't imagine you would either."

  She turned her eyes to the statue of Elijah Dingley in the town green.

  "Willie Bredforet always argued with me that I thought people who owned the land ought to give it all away, share and share alike. Always putting words in my mouth to rile me, just because I voted for Roosevelt against Hoover. Absurd, never thought such a thing. Be a fool not to believe in private property, capitalist like me. But I do think that people who own the land are responsible for it." She tapped his shoulder with the cane. "Let me know if you find out they have sneaked out there. Reprehensible. Government behaves like Italian gangsters.

  Gangsters behave like General Motors. General Motors behaves like the government. Can't tell them apart. Well, it's a question of the style of sin you're used to, ain't it?" She drove rapidly down the sidewalk, her back as straight as the trajectory of her wheelchair.

  In one slow breath Ransom refilled his chest. Then he climbed the bank steps, one hand pushing against his weak leg. Seated in his private office, he opened his fist. The roll of film fell onto the desk.

  He pressed a button and asked his secretary to place a call to a Mr. W. Derek Palter of the Department of the Interior in Washington. Irene Wright asked if she could come in. "Could you sign these first, sir?"

  They were interrupted by Mrs. Ransom, who didn't wait to be announced. She stood, sunglasses on, attired in a cream turban and a Pierre Cardin suit, with a travel bag over her shoulder.

  "Hello, dear. Thank you, Irene. I'll sign these and bring them out." The Ransoms looked at each other until the door closed. "I thought you'd be resting," he said.

  "I'm going away," she said.

  "Where?"

  "I don't know. The City. Mother's."

  "Newport?"

  "I'll take the Mercedes and leave the Saab outside for you. I feel like driving."

  "When?"

  "Now."

  "Why?"

  She sighed impatiently. "It's just been too much. One thing more and I'll snap. I have to get away for a few days."

  "But. But, this is absurd. Don't you think we ought to attend the funeral? I realize we don't know them, but we shouldn't give the impression…And Saturday, we'd planned on dinner with William and Mary, and Tracy."

  His wife gripped her arms. "I cannot, I simply cannot abide the thought of another interminable evening at that ridiculous club with the same, same ridiculous people."

  "What?"

  "I feel like I've been trapped in a g.d. novel by Somerset Maugham for thirty years!"

  "Stop it, Priss." His wife's literary allusions in personal conversation had always annoyed Ransom. He didn't read.

  All of a sudden Mrs. Ransom, quite remarkably, screamed. It was not
a loud or a long scream, nor was it accompanied by any unseemly physical behavior, but the banker was horrified, and frightened.

  "Priss. Priss. Good gosh. Hold on." He stood up behind his desk.

  "Admittedly you've been under a strain. But…"

  "For God's sake."

  "You're being silly." He waited until he saw that she was herself again, but he remained standing. "Look. Let's see. No, Sunday I have a vestry meeting." He flipped over pages of a desk calendar. "Monday, Tuesday. How about this? There's no point in your just rushing off like this, all by yourself. I'll push my vacation ahead. Tuesday, the two of us, well, Newport if you like. Or the Cape. Or how about Hilton Head, think it'd be too hot by now? But someplace restful. I suppose I could slip away for a week."

  Mrs. Ransom sat down in the chair where innumerable Dingleyans had sat to ask him favors. "Ernest, that's sweet of you, but, frankly, chatting for seven days with your golf caddy has never been particularly alluring for me. I think, and it's in no way personal, that I'd rather be by myself."

  He came around the desk, stroking his Yale college tie as if to comfort it. "Here. Sit down here. You're upset. All this miserable business last night. Just try to relax. Have you taken a pill?" She shook her head. "You ought to go home, take a Valium, lie down for a while. Where's Kate?"

  "Who knows?"

  "You two could play some golf or something. You don't seem to spend much time together, and here we've got her home for a change. Well, don't worry. Look, Priss. Priss? Look, let's open the lake house, get Wanda to go out tomorrow and fix it up, we'll spend the weekend there, how would that be? Get some sun. Then we could sit down and plan a really nice trip. What about visiting the Mortons in Bar Harbor? Go out on their sloop? You always liked Betsy."

  "They're divorced."

  "Oh. That's right. Stupid. Well, I bet I'll think of the perfect thing. Don't worry. And tonight, look, tell Wanda to make something for the girls if they're going to be there, and you and I will go to the Prim for dinner. Or the Old Towne, we haven't been there for ages. All right?"