The Road to Wellville

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  If he was tentative—there went his hat again, damn it, and he only just caught it this time—Irene seemed oblivious. She was utterly serene, a soft smile of anticipation on her lips, ready to yield herself up to the moment, spontaneous and free, ready for anything—Goguac Lake today and Peterskill tomorrow. What a woman. What a jewel of a woman. But she seemed to be saying something to him as he helped her from the car and fumbled to hand her her parasol without letting go of his hat. She had to repeat herself, the wind playing tricks with his ears: “Would you mind bringing the hamper along, Mr. Lightbody?”

  The hamper. Yes, of course. And she was practical, too. Couldn’t very well have a picnic without a wicker basket chock-full of Sanitarium goodies—bean-paste sandwiches, endive salad and Graham-grit cookies—and some fine foamy kumyss and grape juice to wash it all down. But what a beautiful dress, what a beautiful fit. He’d have to ask her about that. Lovely material. Really.

  The driver, a scrawny antediluvian man with white hair and mustaches, was fussing over the hamper in the front seat. “I can manage it myself,” Will said, taking it from him over his protestations, “no problem at all, really, thank you.” Cradling the basket, Will stood there at attention while Irene gave the driver instructions to be back for them by five-thirty, adding, with a wink for Will, that she wouldn’t want her prize patient to miss his dinner. And then they were off, down the path to the dock where the rental boats bobbed and jerked at their tethers like living things and the wind-driven waves threw foam at the shore. It was a rich and intimate moment, almost domestic, and he wanted to slip his arm through hers, the most natural thing in the world, but he found he didn’t have an arm to spare, what with the hamper in one hand and the other clamped firmly to his head, so he let it pass. Regretfully.

  The dockhand insisted on Will’s getting into the boat first, something about counterbalancing the lady’s weight, and Will, at a loss, crouched low over the edge of the dock and set a foot down in the rearing depths of the boat. As soon as his foot touched the planking the thing plunged away from him, only to fly back up as he planted his weight and snatched the other foot from the dock. There was an uneasy moment, poised between the wet and the dry, and just when he thought he’d achieved equilibrium, he felt himself going over backward and threw out both arms like a tightrope walker. Miraculously, he recovered himself, falling heavily athwart the seat as the waves, black-lipped and ugly, snapped and snarled beneath him. He was dry and unhurt and spared the embarrassment of an unplanned dip, but unfortunately the straw boater chose that moment to permanently part company with his head, sailing out over the chop like a discus and vanishing in a trough a hundred yards out. He hardly noticed. Bareheaded, his hair whipped by the breeze till it stung his eyes, he snatched frantically at the oars, thinking to steady the craft for Irene—and he might have succeeded, too, if he hadn’t been facing in the wrong direction.

  At any rate, he swung round at the dockhand’s instigation and found himself facing Irene, who’d somehow managed to slip into her seat without setting up so much as a ripple. They were practically knee-to-knee, an arrangement he found both romantic and nautically satisfying. “Bracing, isn’t it?” he said, showing her all his teeth, and then the dockhand pushed them off with a bamboo pole and they were out on the lake, boating.

  It didn’t go well at first, not at all how he’d envisioned it. He fought with the oars, which seemed somehow to have grown absurdly in length since the boat had left the dock, great long recalcitrant logs lost in the depths until suddenly and without warning they emerged to shower poor Nurse Graves with foam and flecks of pondweed. And he couldn’t quite get them synchronized, either—he’d pull on one only to find the other lagging at the surface, and then when he went for that one the boat swung perversely the other way, pulling the first oar out of his hand. They went round in circles for a good fifteen minutes before Will, with Irene’s help and instruction, began to get the hang of it. By then, the wind had taken them and the shore was a distant memory.

  But Irene was a good sport about it—he couldn’t fault her there. She seemed watchful, content, full of some deep inner joy that filled him with hope—was she so happy just to be with him, was that it?—and she was patient with him even when the odd sneezing fit came over him and he had to drop the oars and press a handkerchief to his face. “You seem happy today,” he said, the oars finally at rest, the boat drifting before the wind. “Happier than usual, I mean—not that you’re not happy or that you don’t look happy every day, I just mean that today, you, uh, well—” and he gave it up with a shrug. “You know what I mean.”

  She held her smile for a long moment, her face a perfect oval beneath the brim of her hat, a strand of hair caught in the corner of her mouth. “Yes,” she said finally, in her whisper of a voice, appending a little sigh of contentment to the end of it. “You’re very observant, Mr. Lightbody—or Will, I should say. It seems absurd to be so formal with you. You’re my patient, sure—you always will be—but you’re my friend, too. I’ve felt that for some time now, and on my lips you may be Mr. Lightbody, but in my heart”—she lowered her eyes—”you’re Will.”

  Will couldn’t help himself. Her words made his blood quicken and he knew that as long as he had her he’d never again need the Heidelberg Belt or Eleanor’s encouragement or anything else. The boat sank beneath them, rocked back up again. A pair of geese skimmed the surface with a short sharp cry and settled down in a fan of spray. “It’s very kind of you to say that, Irene—it means an awful lot to me,” he said, and he could feel his heart pounding. This was it, this was the moment he’d been waiting for. “You’re very sweet, you are, and you know how I feel about you, how I’ve felt since the beginning—”

  She cut him off with a gesture. Their knees were touching. The wind took her hair. Her eyes glowed. He remembered the day they’d had their debate over Dr. Kellogg and his methods and the look of reverence and surrender that had come into her eyes at the mere mention of the man’s name. That was how she looked now, but this time it wasn’t Dr. Kellogg who’d inspired her, oh no—but would she leave the San, could he ever convince her? He hadn’t thought of that, it could be a real obstacle, and yet he knew he could win her over, he knew it—

  But what was she saying?

  “I wanted you to be the first to know.”

  The waves beat at the bow. Will felt his stomach sink. “Know what?”

  She held it an instant, and there it was, the sun, the breeze, the glory of the sky that existed only to frame her, to show her off, envelop her in all her ripe rich beauty and the poignancy of the moment: “I’m getting married.”

  “Married?” The word burst from his lips in a verbal eructation, autonomous, barely formed. “What do you mean?” he asked stupidly.

  She was holding up a finger now, the ring finger of her left hand, and he saw a ring in place there, a little thing with a minuscule stone, so small it was hardly there at all—but how could he have missed it? How could he have been so misguided? So stupid? So self-involved? Suddenly, in a flash, he saw it all as clearly as if it were written out for him: the childhood sweetheart, the yokel, the bumpkin, chickens scratching in the yard, her breasts pendulous with milk, feet splayed, figure ruined, her face seamed and rucked and creased till it looked like a dried-up mud puddle…. How could he have been so blind?

  The pucker of the lips, a little moue. “His name’s Tommy Reardon.”

  Will couldn’t speak. Tommy Reardon. What had he been thinking, what was wrong with him? She was getting married. Getting married. And he’d never even suspected, never guessed she had a life outside the San … oh, the waste of it, the waste.

  The boat rocked, the wind blew. What about me, he wanted to shout, what about Peterskill and my father and my stomach and Dick the wirehaired terrier? She was merciless, that’s what she was, thoughtless, toying with him all along. He stared bitterly at her. What was she, anyway? An ignorant farm girl, too broad in the beam and too big in the chest, a woman w
ho worshiped the little charlatan who’d ruined his life—and what did that say about her? She was a follower, a gizzardite, a nurse. But he’d loved her, he had—oh, how he’d loved her—and the hurt and bitterness twisted inside him. He covered his face with the handkerchief.

  “Will?” she said gently, and he hated the sound of his own name on her lips—why couldn’t she call him ‘Mr. Lightbody’? He was a paying customer, wasn’t he? “Will? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

  The question seemed to hover over him, as big and bloated as a balloon, and he never answered it. Suddenly he thought of Eleanor, Eleanor with her quack doctor, with Badger and Virginia Cranehill and all the rest, baptized in nudism, free love, vegetarian ecstasy, and a kind of panic seized him even as the fire roared back to life in his deepest gut. In that moment, that dismal hopeless itchy-eyed wave-driven abyss of a moment, he understood that he loved Eleanor more than anything in the world. Eleanor, only Eleanor.

  Chapter 8

  The Fatal

  Luncheon

  It felt odd to be sitting in a darkened room at eleven-thirty in the morning watching a bunch of matrons parade around a stage spouting out health-food slogans. Extremely odd. And uncomfortable. For Charlie Ossining it was a form of torture one step removed from the application of hot irons to the soles of the feet. Couldn’t they at least have gotten someone halfway attractive up there? Or under sixty, at any rate? Where was Eleanor Lightbody when they needed her? He wouldn’t have minded seeing her up there under the lights, sashaying across the stage and declaiming her lines about putrid flesh and demon rum as if she meant them. These others were strictly amateurs—and not much to look at, either.

  But here he was, in the Grand Parlor of the Sanitarium, in the very camp of the enemy, suffering, and all because Mrs. Hookstratten willed it. She sat beside him now, her spectacles shining, as absorbed as if she were watching Sarah Bernhardt and David Warfield go at it. She’d invited him for the day’s festivities, beginning with the play and then a private luncheon, to be followed by the rest of the San’s holiday program—marching bands, picnic supper, fireworks and he didn’t know what else—and the invitation had been anything but casual. She’d insisted. Demanded. Required his presence. And he didn’t dare demur, because she’d offered an inducement far sweeter than mere duty: money. Hard cash. The wherewithal to save his neck and set him back on the road to financial well-being, prosperity, the making of his first million and more, much more. He was going to be a tycoon yet. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed.

  What it amounted to was this: Mrs. Hookstratten was doubling her investment. And why? Because she believed in him, because he was her boy, her own boy, and because he’d used all his powers of persuasion on her, talking till his larynx ached and the spittle went dry in his throat. It’s a wise investment, rock-solid, he assured her the day after the tour of the spurious factory, and I know you’re already one of our biggest investors, but the fact is we need capital to expand. He’d given her figures, invented but plausible, and explained how the giants like Kellogg and Post were squeezing him, and she was sympathetic and clearly reassured by the sight of the factory, but she held back, cautious and hesitant, and wouldn’t give him a commitment. He kept after her. If he’d made himself scarce prior to the factory visit, now he was invariably at her side. They lunched and dined and breakfasted and he took her on rides in the country and walks in the park, all the while pleading his case. And now, finally, she’d come round: today, at the luncheon, she was to present him with a check for an additional seven thousand five hundred dollars.

  Seven thousand five hundred dollars! The amount jolted him, made his blood rush—he’d hardly had the nerve to name a figure, and yet when it had come down to it, he found his lips moving. How much do you need? she’d asked. Seven thousand five hundred dollars, he’d answered without hesitation, naming a sum that was large but not impossible, hoping for half that and willing to bargain down if he had to—Bender had taught him well. Of course, the name “Per-Fo” had to go and the real manufacturing plant would be a good deal more modest than the fictive one, but he’d explain all that later. Much later.

  For now, though, he was a guest of the Sanitarium once again. His whiskers had grown in and he was parting his hair in the center and wearing a pair of spectacles he didn’t need fitted with lenses as clear as windowpanes, and he was confident—reasonably confident, anyway—that the little martinet who ran the place wouldn’t recognize him. Still, as he watched the square-shouldered old lady in the greasepaint mustaches agonize over the fatal luncheon of the play’s title—oysters and sparkling wine, ironically enough—he couldn’t help stealing a glance over his shoulder from time to time.

  If he felt vaguely uneasy, Mrs. Hookstratten was no comfort. She seemed strangely distant, as if there were a wall between them, and when she laughed at the rare comic interlude the play provided, the laugh seemed to catch in her throat. Then, too, when she’d greeted him that morning her smile had seemed unsteady and there was something about the way she held herself, the way she looked at him, that he didn’t like. Was she suspicious? Had she by some ugly mischance driven past the factory and discovered its true colors? Had she been talking to people? There was the matter of George Kellogg—he’d nearly brought the whole thing down that night in the rain, piss drunk and stinking of it, cadging change and making pointed comments beneath the umbrella—but Charlie had explained all that to her, painstakingly and at length. (They’d been deceived by the fellow, that was all, taken in, swayed by his name and the philanthropic mission to which his father had devoted himself—until they discovered his weakness for the bottle. Well, he and his associates had discussed the matter and felt they simply couldn’t condone that sort of behavior and they’d resolved to drop the Kellogg name—it would be “Per-Fo” hereafter, plain and simple. And didn’t she prefer it that way? After all, the public would be depending on them to lead the way in scientific eating, to set an example, and, sad to say, there was no place for a tosspot in their ranks—honesty was the best policy, wasn’t it?)

  Still, there was something wrong. He could feel it in the air the way he might have felt a dip in the barometer before an electrical storm. He felt it as the blocky woman in the greasepaint mustaches collapsed into her plate, done in by oysters and drink, felt it as the audience clapped their approval and the actors took their bow and the hour of Mrs. Hookstratten’s luncheon drew near. The square-shouldered woman descended from the stage and he offered his congratulations in a daze, all the while keeping his eyes on his benefactress, trying to read her, fathom her, pin it down: what was wrong here?

  Nothing, he told himself, nothing at all. He had to get a grip on himself. He was just anxious because of the check, that was all. Mrs. Hookstratten would never do anything to hurt him—no matter what she knew or what he’d done. He was her project, her great experiment, more a son to her than the one she’d given birth to. She wouldn’t have invited him if she were suspicious, wouldn’t have offered the check if anything had changed between them. Would she?

  They moved out into the corridor at a glacial pace, the men stiff as corpses, the women fluttering and cackling like the old hens they were. If Charlie hadn’t already felt uneasy, the fact that no one in the crowd seemed to be less than twenty years older than he didn’t help any. Still, he glad-handed this one and that, trying his level best to look as if he belonged, working the crowd as Bender might have done—you never knew. He didn’t give a damn for the Sanitarium or anything about it, but these people were all food cranks, every last one of them, and if that wasn’t a ready-made audience for Per-Fo (or whatever it was going to be called) he didn’t know what was. And they had money. Money to invest.

  He found himself discussing breakfast food as he moved up the hallway and into the lobby with this suddenly congenial group, all his vague fears dissolved in the growing awareness of what the connection could mean to him. And then he understood: this was the reason Auntie Hookstratten had arranged this little l
uncheon for him, of course it was, and if she seemed a bit distracted it was because she was anxious to see him make a good impression. He felt a sudden surge of affection for her. Where was she? There, at the head of the crowd, with the countess she’d introduced him to earlier, showing her guests into the Palm Garden, where the luncheon was to be held under the glass ceiling. She was good to him, yes she was, and he resolved to make it up to her.

  The crowd bunched up at the entrance to the garden room, most heading for the elevators to dine upstairs, a select few moving in amongst the ferns and creepers to sit at the long, linen-covered table he could make out through the doorway. Charlie lingered a moment, making his farewells to this former group and chatting amiably with the latter, no hurry, everything moving along at a sedate and leisurely pace. It was while he was standing there pumping the suety hand of an elderly gentleman from Mississippi—”Cotton’s my game, son; what’s yours?”—that he spotted Eleanor Lightbody. She was standing at the foot of the grand staircase in a white muslin dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat decorated with artificial flowers. There was a woman at her side, similarly dressed, a picnic basket in her arms and a pair of binoculars dangling from her neck. They weren’t moving, but were poised there at the banister, eyes ranging over the crowd as if they were waiting for someone. Charlie excused himself and made his way toward them.

  “Eleanor,” he said, coming up to her and taking her hand, all thought of sandwich boards and the humiliation of traipsing through the rain like an itinerant peddler banished in a stroke.