Last Resort

by Alison Lurie

  But though Wilkie was so strange with her, so disconnected, he seemed to be getting back in touch with the rest of the world. He had started reading his correspondence and accepting invitations to write articles, to lecture and attend conferences and serve on panels—and now without any of the concern about fees and travel expenses he had irritably voiced last fall. “It doesn’t signify, darling. I can afford it, after all,” he said when Jenny pointed out that the letter about the symposium in Washington didn’t mention airfare.

  Wilkie had also agreed to last night’s dinner party; and during most of it he had been affable and animated. He was full of ideas and opinions—some almost extravagantly upbeat, as with his extended praise of Molly’s deceased husband; others sardonically downbeat, as when describing the future of the northeastern woodlands. But soon after ten, when they were sitting over brandy and decaf, he lapsed into a preoccupied silence that caused their guests to rise and say that they must be getting home.

  Wilkie continued to spend most of the day in his study, but now Jenny knew he was working, since on Monday morning he’d sent her to the library for books. It was a bizarre selection, however, even a disturbing one. The volumes on the diseases of plants, animals, and humans, and those on death and dying, presumably meant that The Copper Beech would be a tragedy, a warning to the world; that its last chapter would expand to mention many other losses and extinctions. But what explained the books on the Gulf Stream and ocean currents, or those on wills and copyright law?

  She would find out soon, because yesterday, just before their guests arrived, Wilkie had revealed that The Copper Beech was almost finished. There were a couple of changes he still had to make, he said, but in a few days the manuscript should be ready for her. “Oh, that’s wonderful news!” Jenny had cried out, and kissed him impulsively, almost laughing with joy and relief. He had not kissed her back.

  It’s not that he’s angry with me, she tried to tell herself as she scraped dried seafood bisque off Alvin’s expensive and hideous green and orange art-deco crockery. It’s just that he’s been working so hard, even harder than usual. After all, he’s been finishing a great book—perhaps his greatest book. Probably that was why he’d been so strange and distant. That was why, for weeks, his silence and absence had weighed on her like stone, and why whenever she moved nearer in bed he had shifted away.

  But now, perhaps, all this was over. Last night Wilkie had embraced her eagerly and almost rushed her into the bedroom. Breathing hard with pleasure and anticipation, Jenny had helped him peel off her chiffon party dress printed with pale-brown leaves and ferns; she had tousled his hair as he bent to kiss her breasts, rubbed against him, done all the private, affectionate things she had been longing to do for weeks.

  In the end, as had sometimes happened in the last few years, her pleasure had been more complete than his. No doubt the gin and wine and brandy Wilkie had drunk, the lateness of the hour, and the labor of finishing his book were responsible. And this morning, when he’d looked so cross and hardly spoken to her, he was probably just hungover. But none of that was important, Jenny told herself. The important thing was that they had made love again, and that The Copper Beech was almost finished.

  And once it was finished there would be so much for her to do: the final draft to edit; notes and quotations to go over; illustrations to find; captions to write; correspondence with Wilkie’s agent, editor, and lecture agent—Their life together would begin again; it would be full and satisfying again.

  They’d been through a difficult time, Jenny admitted that to herself now. Their daughter, Ellen, had probably been right: Wilkie had been depressed, or at least very preoccupied. And Billy had been right too: it had been good for Wilkie to come to Key West. And for her too. The excuse she’d used had turned out to be true: she hadn’t had a cold since they arrived. Besides, she’d made an interesting new acquaintance.

  No, not an acquaintance, Jenny thought: Lee Weiss was already a friend. It was surprising, because Lee was so different from her other friends, but Jenny was starting to like her as well as or maybe even better than most of the women she knew in Convers. It was a different kind of relationship than any she had at home though, because it had nothing to do with her being Mrs. Wilkie Walker. Lee, in fact, didn’t seem very interested in Wilkie, probably because she didn’t care about nature and the environment. Really, if you were honest about it, you’d have to say that Lee was an anti-environmentalist, the first one Jenny had met in years. There were lots of them around, of course, but naturally the Walkers didn’t see much of them.

  Lee was open about her opinions—her prejudices, Wilkie would have called them. When Jenny mentioned that her husband had probably done more than anybody in America to save endangered species, Lee wasn’t impressed. “The thing is,” she’d said, “I grew up in Brooklyn. The main endangered species there is Homo sapiens. And Femina sapienta even more.”

  But surely, Jenny protested, rather shocked, it was possible to care about both people and animals.

  “Maybe,” Lee said. “But that’s not usually how it works out in real life. Like for instance, suppose there’s this kind of ugly inedible fish that’s only found on the reef off Key West, and you tell me you’re trying to save it from extinction. Okay, why not, I say. But then I find out you want to ban fishing and snorkeling, the way some morons here are proposing. You do that, and half the guys who work on the charter boats will be out of a job, and that includes good friends of mine. I figure the important thing to save right now is people.”

  As Jenny heard these heretical remarks, made with smiling ease in Lee’s kitchen over a wonderful lunch of fresh shrimp and avocado salad, her mouth fell open, and she felt unable to reply.

  “You know what my mother used to say?” Lee had continued. “She said that nobody’s supposed to care as much for people they never met as for their own family and friends. And I figure that goes double for fish.”

  It was rather awful, the way I didn’t protest then, Jenny thought as she finished loading the dishwasher and poured green environmentally-friendly detergent into the plastic cup. All I said was that I couldn’t really agree with Lee, and then I let the subject float away. Why wasn’t I more forceful, more definite? If Wilkie had been there he would have been surprised, maybe even angry. He would have thought I was a coward.

  And in fact, after that Jenny had hardly mentioned Wilkie’s ideas to Lee. But it wasn’t cowardice, she told herself as she heaved another stack of food-encrusted pots into the sink. It was because I knew my arguments wouldn’t convince her of anything—not yet, anyhow. Until we know each other better, they’d only make her unfriendly, maybe even turn her away from me.

  Another thing that made Lee different from Jenny’s friends in Convers was that she not only wasn’t part of a couple but didn’t seem to mind. Lee had been married once, but the marriage hadn’t worked out or lasted very long, though she had a grown daughter in Boston. Then she’d lived with a woman for a while, but that hadn’t worked out either. Right now she didn’t seem to be involved with anyone, or want to be. She’s been unlucky in love, and now she’s given up on it, Jenny had thought when she first learned this, whereas I’ve been lucky and am married to a famous man. But Lee didn’t seem to feel unlucky or sorry for herself the way Jenny’s divorced or widowed or never-married friends in Convers did, or show any sign of envying Jenny’s life. “Finally I’m living the way I want to,” she had said.

  It was satisfying in a way to know somebody who didn’t value her more because she was married to Wilkie. Most of the time Jenny could never be absolutely sure of this. In fact, she thought, except for Lee Weiss, the only people in the world who I’m sure like me without reference to Wilkie are my parents and my children—and our cleaning lady in Convers, who really doesn’t like Wilkie at all, because of the run-ins she’s had with him over moving papers on his desk.

  It wasn’t that most people schemed or expected to profit from Jenny’s connection to Wilkie. But she�
�d noticed long ago that if she met someone on her own, quite soon they would start talking about how much they admired his work, and how they would love to meet him. And when Jenny’s new friends met Wilkie, whenever he was in the room they would look at him and not at Jenny, and they would address most of their remarks to him. If the friend was a woman, sometimes she would sit close to Wilkie and kind of coo at him in a very irritating way.

  It was restful to be with somebody who would never act like that. Lee had not said once that she’d like to meet Wilkie, and when Jenny had invited her to last night’s dinner party she had declined, giving the excuse that she had to stay at Artemis Lodge in case guests showed up.

  “Oh, that’s too bad. But maybe you can come another time,” Jenny had consoled her.

  “Sure, maybe,” Lee had replied, and somehow at that moment it became clear that she had absolutely no desire to meet Wilkie Walker. She doesn’t care anything about him, she’s my friend, all mine, Jenny had caught herself thinking childishly. And considering Lee’s opinions about environmentalism, it was maybe just as well that they should never meet.

  It was always fun to see Lee. She knew so many amazing stories about Key West: its history, and the crazy characters who had once lived here, or still did. The Last Resort, Lee said people called the place. Not just because it was at the end of the Keys, but because it was where you went when other places hadn’t worked out.

  Lee had been a therapist before she bought Artemis Lodge. “Yeah. Certified Ph.D. in counseling,” she had admitted. “But I burned out after a couple of years. I finally realized that I could spend the rest of my life sitting in a box in Brooklyn Heights all day long, forty hours a week, with a different unhappy person coming into the box every hour. And most of them I couldn’t really help because they were stuck in some destructive New York job or life situation, the same way I was. Besides, sooner or later most of them came down with transference. They began to project and thought they were in love with me, or they hated me, or I was their mother.

  “I started to feel like a big waterlogged sponge. Not the kind you buy at Fausto’s, but the ones divers bring in here, dripping with weepy saltwater and gritty sand. When I came to Key West for a week’s vacation that first winter I thought, hey, this is what all those poor schmucks need: a little light and sun and air. Then I thought, hell, that’s what I need too.”

  Having been a therapist came in useful, Lee said, when neighbors or guests got difficult. “It’s simple,” she had explained. “All you do is, you just repeat the last thing they said, and it makes them think you’re sympathetic and sort of defuses the situation.”

  Because Lee had been a therapist and didn’t want to meet Wilkie, Jenny felt she could talk about him without being disloyal. She hadn’t said much yet, just a bit about the way he’d been for the last few months and that she was worried. “Yeah,” Lee had commented. “It sounds like there’s something on his mind.”

  It was easy to talk to Lee about anything. She was interested in things Wilkie naturally wasn’t, even before he got so strange: novels and art, cooking and decorating and sewing and crafts. Lee had a big loom set up in her bedroom, and she had catalogs and patterns for all sorts of things you could make in a warm climate with cotton and silk and rayon chenille yarns. She’d taken Jenny to a shop on Duval that carried these yarns, and lent her a pattern for a sweater.

  Besides, Lee was so attractive; it was pleasant just to look at her. That shouldn’t make a difference in how you felt about people, but it did. It was lovely to watch someone who moved so gracefully, and had such glowing butterscotch tanned skin and such thick, shiny dark hair, with red sparks in it when she sat in the sun on her wide front porch.

  “Hi there.”

  Jenny glanced up from the pot she was scouring. In the open doorway to the patio stood Tiffany (Tiff), the current girlfriend of the poet Gerald Grass, whom she and Wilkie had known slightly for years. They often met at official events, and she’d heard him read at a couple of pro-environment rallies where Wilkie had spoken—except it wasn’t reading really, it was more like chanting. The last time, Gerry had accompanied his chanting on Indian drums decorated with beads and feathers. He was sometimes interviewed about poetry and social protest on television and by newspapers and magazines, and shown in photos with folk singers and rock stars.

  In general, Wilkie approved of Gerry. He might be a little naïve and theatrical, but his heart was in the right place. Jenny, however, could not quite forget that ten years ago he had left his wife, whom she really liked, replacing her with a series of younger and younger women.

  Since last week Gerry and Tiff had been renting the apartment over the garage in the compound, and they had been at last night’s dinner party.

  “Oh, hello.” Jenny turned off the faucet. She was not especially pleased to see Tiff, who appeared to her as pretty in an obvious California-blonde way and amiably uninteresting. At the party she had hardly spoken, but she had drunk a lot of very good Chardonnay.

  “Hey, that was a really great lemon cheesecake you served last night,” Tiff said. “Where’d it come from?”

  “Well, here, I guess,” Jenny admitted. “I made it.”

  “Really? God, I could never do anything like that.” She gave an almost teenage giggle. “I figured it must be from one of those fancy food catalogs. I mean it was that good.”

  “Thank you,” Jenny said, smiling to take the edge off her tone of voice, which reflected the belief that her cheesecake was probably better and certainly fresher than any catalog cheesecake.

  “Gerry would love it if I could cook like that. But I can’t do anything except kiddie food. You know, like hamburgers and spaghetti,” Tiff added, taking Jenny’s smile as an invitation to enter and perch on one of Alvin’s chrome and yellow plastic kitchen stools. “And even then sometimes I burn stuff. But what I say is, if he wants a chef, he should hire one, right?”

  “I guess so,” Jenny agreed neutrally.

  “You can’t have everything, I tell him. He says sometimes he took up with me for my looks, but I think it was really to get his taxes done for free.” She giggled.

  “You do Gerry’s taxes?” Jenny asked, surprised.

  “Sure. I can do anybody’s taxes. I’m a CPA.”

  “Really.” Jenny looked at Tiff again: her tight red scoopneck T-shirt, tight white shorts, and gold frizz of hair.

  “Except now I’m on vacation, so don’t ask me anything.”

  “I won’t,” Jenny said, drawing back.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that like it sounded. It’s just that usually everybody I know is after me for free advice this time of year. And it gets worse in March and April. I mean, it would be all right if I was still working, then I could just tell them to call me at the office.”

  “Mm-hm,” Jenny murmured vaguely. She turned on the water again; then, realizing that this seemed unfriendly, turned it off. In the resulting awkward silence she remembered Lee’s technique. “You would tell them to call you at the office,” she therefore repeated experimentally.

  “Yeah. Except after I moved in with him last year Gerry made me quit my job. He said he couldn’t stand to share me with a computer. He has to have my full attention, he says.” This last sentence came out heavily charged with negative feeling.

  “He has to have your full attention,” Jenny murmured, glancing again at Tiff and trying to see her as an appropriate companion for an established American poet in his fifties. It occurred to her that if there was anyone less suited to this role than a domestically incompetent sexpot, it was a domestically incompetent CPA.

  “Yeah. I thought that was so great once, when I met him at this party in L.A. The kind of film people that were there, the guys I mean, all they ever want to do is talk about themselves. And if they look at you they never focus above your tits, you get to expect that.”

  “You expect that, in Los Angeles,” Jenny prompted sympathetically, remembering early experiences of her own. Lee wa
s right, she thought; her technique works.

  “Yeah. But Gerry was different. He was just as handsome as any of the actors there, but he looked right into my eyes; I thought that was so great. Only now I feel kind of surrounded.”

  “You feel—” Jenny paused and swallowed the rest of the repeat as it occurred to her that after all she was not Tiffany’s therapist.

  “But that’s how men are, y’know. The more important they think they are, the more of your time they demand. I mean, look at you, right? Like Mrs. Hopkins said, your husband is a full-time job for you.”

  “Mf.” This time, Jenny’s murmur was not an assent. She recognized Tiff’s tone; it was that of a standard-issue feminist. She would have recognized it sooner if Tiff had been dressed or spoken differently.

  Now and then over the years, especially after the children were in school full time, many well-meaning and ill-meaning people had tried to suggest that Jenny was sacrificing a possible career to the demands of a chauvinist pig male. They lectured her, they lent her books, they invited her to join groups of women who got together to complain about their husbands. Jenny had been to one of these groups, where she had discovered that in some cases there was much to complain of, and also that when she herself didn’t complain, the other women thought she was silently boasting.

  Theoretically, as a modern, enlightened person, Jenny supported the women’s movement, and occasionally had been persuaded to send a check to NOW. But in fact feminism had done nothing for her except make her chosen life seem peculiar and estrange her from her friends. She could agree with them that there was no reason why most men shouldn’t help with household tasks and child care. But Wilkie Walker was not most men: he was unique, irreplaceable. The work they did together might change, had changed, the world. Jenny didn’t want to be forced to abandon this work in favor of some theoretical “career.”