Too Much Too Soon

by Jacqueline Briskin

  Deciding to meet them at the tenth hole and lure Gideon from the course, she drove to the club, hurrying to the tenth tee. From this height she could see beyond the dogleg and formidable sand traps. On the green a thickset figure knelt to line up a putt while a bag-laden caddie and a slender form waited. Raising her hand against the brightness, she ascertained that the twosome was indeed Gideon and Alexander before telling the starter that she wanted to catch up with her husband and son. “Sure thing, Mrs. Talbott, go right ahead. I’ll see nobody hits into you.”

  By now they were striding toward the next tee. She waved violently to attract their attention, but they were too far away to notice. Seabirds passed overhead in an uneven V. Her cleats dug into the spongy grass and the moisture seeped into her shoes as she descended the dip. Hurrying uphill past the wind-shaped Monterey pines where her third shot often unfortunately landed, she saw them again.

  They were walking close together, Alexander’s pale, bright hair near the bill of Gideon’s cap. A fear without focus washed through Crystal. She began to trot. A foursome of women on the next fairway turned their colorful hats to watch as she charged along, clubless, caddieless.

  Alexander was gripping Gideon’s arm.

  Gideon pulled away, brandishing his iron. Suddenly he dropped the club, swiveling in a half circle, taking two uncertain steps in her direction. His face was white, dazed. He was less than a hundred feet away, but she was positive he did not see her.

  Throwing both hands forward as if instinctively to break his fall, he toppled to the emerald-wet grass.

  “Gideon!” Crystal screamed. “Gideon!” She raced toward him, her bare knees rising and falling like pistons.

  The caddie had dropped the bags, rushing to squat over Gideon. Alexander appeared a frozen onlooker. He did not see her until she almost stumbled over the bags.

  “Mom?” he said, his adolescent voice cracking. “Mom, what are you doing here?”

  His voice was no more significant than the gulls cawing above them. She dropped to her knees.

  Gideon’s face was hideously askew. Both eyes were closed.

  “What happened?” she panted, bending close to him. “Gideon, your heart?”

  The left eye opened and stared up at her. There was a ravaged horror in the brief Cyclops look before the lid came down.

  Alexander was also kneeling beside Gideon. “Get a doctor!” she shouted.

  But the caddie was already far up the fairway, racing toward the big, white colonial clubhouse.

  * * *

  The Carmel living room, fifty feet long, forty-two feet wide, was further enlarged by the panorama of golf course and Pacific. The upholstery was a stiff cream-colored brocade, the marble tabletops bore burdens of enormous ashtrays precisely where the decorator, Baynie McHugh, had first set them. It was a room intended only for large galas and possibly because of this onerous formality the patient’s family had gathered here.

  Crystal clasped a sodden handkerchief. With her swollen eyes, lipstick worn away, short, powder blue golf skirt and grass-stained, dimpled knees, she looked a frightened, exquisite little girl dragged from her games to be dealt some as yet unknown but vicious punishment. Near her Gid slumped, his big, boyishly grubby hands dangling between his knees. Pulling a fresh Kleenex from the pack, he blew his nose. Alexander stood by the wall of glass, the sun casting a shimmering path across his hair and highlighting the pale down on his upper lip. There was an alertness about his immobility, something reminiscent of a watchful, half-grown leopard—or Curt. Langley was pouring himself a drink from a Waterford decanter hung with a silver label embossed Scotch: his rather petulant lips were set in an expression of righteous satisfaction. (But how could he resist a minor gloat at being in excellent health while that common brother-in-law/son-in-law who thought only of money, money, money, was beset by one medical disaster after another?)

  Four doctors—three had been flown in by the Talbott corporate plane from San Francisco—were upstairs in Gideon’s room. Mitchell had also contacted London, Houston, New York, and additional specialists, one a renowned vascular surgeon, would arrive tomorrow.

  The most recent report from the medical team was that Gideon’s condition was “extremely grave.” Beyond that they knew he had suffered, in layman’s terms, a stroke.

  Gid went to the lucite wastebasket. His new handful of wet tissue thumped onto the heap he had deposited earlier. His expression baffled and unhappy, he said, “I just don’t understand what caused the stroke.”

  “We came to his ball. He keeled over,” Alexander said. “Shall I go over it again? I mean, maybe some of those present can’t understand English.”

  Gid went back to his chair, his forehead crunched as if he were fighting tears.

  “Alexander, that’s enough,” Crystal said sharply, for once siding with her older son against the younger. “There’s plenty to upset us without you being clever.”

  “Haven’t I explained often enough? Everybody knows what happened. Do you all have to keep hacking at me? What do you think, that I caused the damn stroke?”

  “We don’t mean it that way, my lad,” Langley soothed. “We’re concerned.”

  “Nobody cares whether I’m shook.”

  “Oh, Alexander,” Crystal sighed. “Of course we care.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I’d give anything if you hadn’t been there when it happened,” she said.

  Alexander stalked across the room and into the hall. They heard him open a door—probably to the den—and slam it shut.

  Langley splashed more scotch into his iceless tumbler. “A thing like this is hard on a lad his age. You can’t imagine how keen he is on helping his father. Plans on going into Talbott’s.”

  “Yes, both of us do,” Gid said. “We talk about it a lot.”

  “Alexander’s already boning up.” Langley gulped at his drink. “Crystal, he begged me not to mention this, but he’s been asking about everything from petroleum finds to business rivals.”

  Crystal felt abruptly cut off from oxygen, as if the warm, ruddy air had been drained from the inhospitable room. So that’s what they’ve been huddling about, the two of them, Curt Ivory.

  Slow footsteps descended the staircase. Crystal turned pale, and they all stood, watching the hall. Mitchell came down the stairs like an old man, narrow shoulders hunched, one hand clenched hard on the banister, feet coming together on each step. Alexander had emerged into the hall. Nobody spoke as Mitchell crossed the white carpet to where Crystal stood.

  “Mrs. Talbott,” he said, and then fell silent, his protrudent tooth glinting.

  “Is he . . . . Is . . . is he . . .?” Crystal faltered, discovering she could not utter any of the dread words of finality that had been haunting her thoughts these past hours.

  He shook his head. “No. But the doctors think you ought to come up.”

  “And the boys?” she quavered.

  Mitchell shook his head. “Just you.”

  “We belong, too,” Alexander repudiated.

  “Alexander,” Gid said, tears streaming down his cheeks, his mouth even in grief showing that surprising sweetness, “Mom’s the one he really wants.”

  Crystal had gone limp, and she felt incapable of movement. Mitchell gently took the crook of her arm. Her mind jumped grotesquely: she saw her father in his rented finery leading her down the rose-swagged aisle of Grace Cathedral toward marriage. Now Mitchell was leading her up this Carmel staircase toward widowhood.

  She had anticipated a funereal darkness in Gideon’s room: instead afternoon sun striped through the open slats of the shutters. A cloth-paneled screen sheltered the high electric hospital bed—Gideon had slept in one since his coronary. Mitchell released her. Ignoring the somber whispers of physicians, feeling disembodied, she slipped toward the screen.

  Gideon’s thick, veined hands rested lax on the monogrammed silk blanket cover. The colorless flesh of his face sagged back from the broad nose, which was pinched at the nos
trils; his deeply shadowed eyes were closed. He’s dead, Crystal thought. He died after they sent for me, and not one of them’s noticed.

  “Gideon,” she whispered urgently. “Gideon.”

  The right side of his face hung slack in its wrinkles, but the left side contorted with what appeared unendurable effort. Slowly the eyelid raised and he squinted up at her. The earth-colored sclera, dulled iris, lusterless pupil gave the impression that an electric terminal had been doused behind the eye.

  He’s not dead, but he’s dying, dying, Crystal thought, and in the ravagement of the moment her face actually went numb. “Oh, Gideon,” she blurted. “I begged you only to play nine holes.”

  The eye blinked. And to her surprise, watered. Gideon weeping? Her spouse’s emotions were formed of hardest rock. Sitting on the chair, she bent close. His fetid breath did not repulse her. “After this, darling, I’m going to play with you. That way I’ll be sure you get off when you should.”

  The left side of his mouth worked and a strange, pinging rumble emerged.

  “Shh,” she murmured tenderly. “Plenty of time to argue about it later.”

  He made the sound again, and she knew he was trying to say Alexander.

  “He wants to come up, and so does Gid.” One of the remaining strands of his hair fell over his ear, and she smoothed it back. “Tomorrow, when you’re not so tired.”

  The wetness oozed onto bruise-colored flesh. Another series of facial spasms brought forth a word. “I . . . vry . . .?”

  Hot guilt flooded through her and she could control neither her start nor her blush. He knows. In this corrosive moment denials never occurred to her. She could not dishonor this, the solemnest hour of both their lives, with petty prevarication.

  Resting her forearms on the pillow so his livid, ugly face filled her vision, she murmured, “Once, darling. It happened once. At that Chinese party in San Rafael. Ever since I’ve hated him even more. There’s never been any other time, Gideon—or anyone else. You’ve made me very, very happy.”

  His lips twisted. It flashed through her mind how desperate was her need to be absolved by him—but talk about your hopeless causes. When had Gideon, that soul of Puritanical rectitude, ever forgiven a carnal misstep? Holding her breath, she awaited his dying castigations.

  But he was whispering tortuously. “Lo—ove . . . me?”

  Yes, she thought in bemused wonder. I do love him.

  Her love was composed of threads of numerous other emotions: she respected and admired him, she enjoyed his company, she was grateful for the luxuries he provided, she was proud of him and proud that he had introduced her to royal kings and financial princes, and if their relationship had circumnavigated sexual bliss and romantic love, well, she was sensible enough to know that these existed only in disputed and ephemeral mists.

  She gripped his cold hand. “Oh, darling, what a question. Of course I love you.”

  “Me . . . you . . . .”

  Forgiveness.

  The diminished brown eye closed and Crystal rested her head on the pillow so that their cheeks touched, the faraway roar of the Pacific lulling her. Somebody attempted to draw her from the chair.

  She braced herself like steel and shrugged off the hands. Bending to kiss Gideon’s dry, foul-smelling mouth, she felt a faint, returning pressure. “I’ve loved you very much, and I always will,” she whispered, and knew she had spoken the truth.

  Then she was pulled with forcible gentleness beyond the screen. She could hear two doctors whispering to her, she couldn’t hear their words, yet somehow knew they were telling her it wouldn’t be much longer. “No,” she cried. No, no, no.

  Her anguish was no longer contained within her but filled the sickroom, like poison gas. Racked with sobs, she ran blindly into their shared dressing room, standing shuddering and gasping with her forehead pressed against Gideon’s door for maybe five minutes, devoid of thought or physical sensation, consumed by her singleminded sense of irrevocable loss.

  39

  When her physical upheaval lessened, Crystal peered around as if unsure of where, exactly, she was. Gradually her tear-blurred attention focused on the beige patterned wool scarf that Gideon had draped over his wooden valet. In her grief the scarf seemed significant evidence of her husband’s rock-ribbed loyalty—she had bought it for him in the Haymarket Burberry’s a minimum of a dozen years earlier.

  She carried it along with three fresh handkerchiefs into her bedroom. Unable to stop crying, she sprawled on the quilted bedspread and held the scarf to her face for tenuous comfort. The cashmere gave off odors of wet wool and Gideon.

  Darkness fell, the temperature dropped. She shivered in her lightweight golf outfit, yet didn’t move to turn up the thermostat.

  The door opened. Lights clicked on.

  Alexander.

  It was only too clear to her what Alexander had been communicating to Gideon on the tenth and eleventh fairways. Rage, near blinding and sudden and swift, savaged her.

  Mindless of everything including the nearby sickroom, she shouted, “Get out!” Never had she yelled at her son—or anyone else—in this intimidating roar.

  His composed expression dissolved into shock. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

  “The sight of you makes me sick!”

  He came in, shutting the door behind him, staring at her.

  “You viper!” She was on her feet, slashing the scarf ineffectually at his face. “You told him! You told him what you wormed out of me. I hate you! I despise you! You are not my son.” Her voice, low now, was yet more bloodcurdling.

  “Jesus . . . .”

  “You got me to that party so you could feed me drugs and find out—”

  “Mom . . . .”

  “He’s never been taken in. He’s known all along that behind the brilliance and the charm you’re rotten to the core. Sneaky. Dishonest. He warned me about you, but I refused to listen.”

  Flinging the scarf onto the floor, she began to slap his cheeks, alternating sides. Had she ever hit him before? Had anyone?

  Alexander didn’t duck. He stood with his arms pressed to his sides, the same undefending yet therefore defiant posture with which he had accepted verbal punishments as a toddler. His cheeks and jaw reddened, his head swiveled from side to side with the force of her small, prettily tapered hands. Faced with punishment he had never shown fear or remorse, never apologized, instead he had retreated within himself as if the outrage of adults were a mysterious storm that would pass if he could ride it out. Gideon, exasperated, had always ended up saying there was no getting through to Alexander.

  “I’ve always loved you too much to see you for what you are,” she panted.

  “Don’t you care what a trauma this is for me?”

  “Trauma, is that all you have to say?” Suddenly her quivering legs went weak, and she sat on the low, king-size bed. “How did you get to be like this? We must have done something very wrong.”

  “Wrong?” he asked. The aloof, near smirk was gone from his reddened face, and he rubbed his knuckles across his bewildered eyes. “Mom, I don’t understand what you think is so horrible in wanting to know who my real father is.”

  “How about the way you found out?”

  “Does that make me a worthless shit? Why do you—why does everybody—get so uptight about me? Are people jealous? Is it because when I want something I plan how to get it better than other people do?”

  Cold chills of suspicion traveled down her spine. “Then you really did calculate on this stroke? You actually intended your father to have a stroke?”

  “He’s not my father.” For a second Alexander again was remote, unreachable. Then he shook his head in bemusement. “I don’t know why I told him. Maybe I just wanted to shake him. Maybe I hoped he’d drop dead. Maybe there was no reason. Must there always be a motivation?”

  “Oh, Alexander, you have no conscience, none. If you had one you never would have told him.”

  “Conscience? What does that mean?”r />
  His face was earnest, and she understood the question was an honest request for information.

  “Conscience is an interior voice. It doesn’t always stop you from being cruel or dishonest, but when you are it punishes you afterward.”

  He shrugged. “Sounds like a bummer to me.”

  “If you had one,” she said tightly, “you’d feel guilty about what’s happened.”

  “Yeah, sure. But why are you so shook up about his dying? I mean, he’s old, ugly, and you’re so great-looking. You’re not like everybody else’s mother, you’re young, young like me.”

  “I care for him,” she said. She could hear the thudding of her heart. “He means everything to me. I care.”

  He sat on the bed next to her. After a moment he mumbled, “I’m sorry.”

  Had she ever heard him say this before? She sighed, yet couldn’t stop herself from inquiring, “Sorry? Will sorry heal a stroke?”

  He turned to her, the bedside lamp glowing on his face, reddened from the slapping. His expression was intent, his tawny eyes were nakedly unguarded. “That’s not what I meant. I’m not sweating it about him, he’s old, he’d die soon anyway. It’s you. I never wanted to hurt you. Mom, by now you should’ve realized you’re the only person who’s important to me.”

  The killing rage had gone, she could feel the sweat on her body and the tingling of her palms. Nothing about the last few minutes was believable. Who charges one’s beloved son of murder? And what boy not yet fifteen tacitly pleads nolo contendere?

  “You’re all I have left,” she whispered, holding out her arms.

  Mother and son sat entwined on the edge of her king-size bed, she weeping, he with his puffed face pulled into lines of contrition.

  A few minutes before midnight, Gideon Talbott died.

  40

  Crystal, who had always cherished the belief that her brain cracked the whip over her emotions, found the incapacitation of her grief unbelievable. Mitchell, red-eyed and shaken, staged a meticulously magnificent funeral. She somnambulated through it, barely recognizing Governor Brown or Senator Murphy—and this type of large-scale function was her métier. Her esophagus closed up when she tried to eat. She slept heavily for twelve to fourteen hours, awakening in weary grogginess to imagine she heard ponderous footsteps in the adjoining bedroom. Passing Gideon’s small downstairs office, her head would tilt to catch the gravelly voice. Afternoons, she would yearn for one of his companionable, dinner-table briefing sessions on the Talbott projects. The simplest decision—whether to drink coffee or tea, which shade of pantyhose to wear—became impossible. A hundred times a day she would think, I’m not sure how to do this: better talk it over with Gideon.