Fallow Park Today

by Joseph Glenn

  “But she can be trusted?” He was on his original track, and there was increased alarm in his voice.

  “Certainly,” she answered without a pause. “Of that I’m certain. She doesn’t have that much to tell anyway, nothing they won’t have surmised or pieced together themselves. I’m just worried about how they’ll treat her when she tries to establish that she had nothing to do with any of this. Their tactics may stay within the requirements of the Constitution, but that does give them some leeway. I think you hit it: she’s going to have a rough time.” She took the bottle from him. So much for internal resolve. She satisfied herself that a couple of ounces scarcely counted as more than a topping off of her previous drink.

  “I can’t think of any way to spare her any of it.”

  “And there’s just no way to get her out now. Nor any way for us to try and duplicate this scheme again. Add to that, it’s certain they’ll be watching her—scrutinizing her—very closely from this point on.”

  He nodded. “Any contact with visitors will be supervised; all correspondences will be studied—not merely inspected, but photocopied and filed away. Even her interactions with other people in the park will be observed. Any friends or associates will also come under surveillance—”

  “She doesn’t seem to have any. Maybe because she transferred to this park so recently.”

  “Well, she isn’t likely to make too many; she’ll be something of an untouchable. Most of her neighbors and other acquaintances will get the message to keep away from her.”

  “I wonder if they’d go so far as to bug her room or monitor every little action. Would they hide a camera in her unit?”

  “I don’t know how far their paranoia goes,” Jack said. “But it will be impossible, even pointless, to try to have any contact with her after we’re gone.”

  “I’m afraid she’ll be sorry we ever crossed paths,” Meredith noted. “A pity, and just when we were getting along so well.”

  Meredith downed the last of her brandy and handed Jack her empty cup. “I expect I’ve had enough of this. Enough to sleep, anyway.” She added: “I wonder what sort of nightmares I’ll have.”

  “Nothing like the horror when you wake up in the morning and realize what’s in store.”

  She took on a haughty affect, as close to Makepeace snapping at his staff as she could summon up: “Be a dear and toss this out, won’t you?” She smiled and let go of her imperious act: “I know, I’m not your boss. You’re the ring leader here. Just wanted to keep you in character, you understand. You still have to play the role of the dutiful assistant tomorrow for one more day.”

  At the door, but before she opened it and anyone in the hallway could hear her, she whispered: “We’ve got to get her out.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Friday morning brought as much fear and dread as Meredith had anticipated. She knew it would not be one of those mornings where she would awake with less anxiety than when she had retired, full of a sense of purpose and a resolve that propels her to say, “Okay, it’s today. Let’s just get it over with.” She could not discern how much of her groggy, unfocused head she should blame on the late-night brandy and how much was attributable to an insufficient amount of sleep. She wanted nothing more than to snap the snooze button on the clock.

  She knew she could not. What limited determination she could find compelled her out of bed and forced her to throw herself together. This was no more than a comb-over of an assignment; she planned on the full scrub, primp, and full-blown makeover in the late afternoon in preparation for “The Big Show.” The day of rehearsals would be no more than tedious; she had no emotional investment in the show’s quality or reception. It was the two stops she had to make before showing up for rehearsals that were causing her anxiety and a sinking feeling in her empty stomach—where her breakfast belonged. Breakfast would have to wait until lunchtime; there was some urgency to the meetings.

  She looked about the room before exiting. She quickly ascertained that everything was in place for the shower and change she would make this afternoon. The dress was still hanging in the closet. The shoes and accessories were laid out on a dresser. Everything else was packed. She took a look at the bed but resisted any feelings of sentiment.

  These early morning visits, once completed, left her stressed and still struggling with a degree of irritability. She should have been elated: both meetings went as well as she hoped they would.

  It was a tired and short-tempered Meredith St. Claire who walked out of the main stage of the Anissa Culligan Performing Arts Center at eleven-fifteen that Friday morning. She had been on her feet for most of the morning rehearsal, walking through the rehearsal for this evening’s show. Meredith was required to do little more for the performance than show up. The purpose of the event was to showcase some of the local talent residing at Fallow Park. But as the master of ceremonies, she had to make various entrances and exits, and stand and smile while each performing did his or her eight-minute bit. The review, touted around the park as a vaudeville-style variety show, was supposed to be an evening of “world class” entertainment, but it was instead shaping up like a high school talent show.

  Meredith stood at the side of the stage and looked out on the empty theater. The camera crew was already setting up for the evening’s show and would presumably catch some of the rehearsals, including the dress rehearsal after lunch.

  In addition to Sybil, who had stuck to her guns and performed a carefully edited monologue culled from several O’Neill plays, there were several other actors performing solo and ensemble pieces. An aged opera singer who had once sung at the New York Metropolitan Opera sang an aria from Rigoletto. A former pop star, now over eighty and confined to a wheelchair, sang his signature song, “I’ll Be Waiting with Bells and Roses.”

  The comedians who might have saved the day quit after every other joke in their act was ruled “too off-color,” which Meredith understood was code for too political. The park representatives pointed out that this, after all, was the Federal Government. They could not, and would not, sanction smut or porn. But all the complaints, the censorship exerted by the park representatives, seemed most clearly designed to prevent any statements against the park. Any humor at the park’s expense was decidedly out of the question.

  There was much eye rolling as the objections mounted.

  The most vocal of the representatives, a woman known only as Sally, a petite but surprisingly overbearing character who repeatedly told the documentarians that she reported only to Dr. Makepeace, had previously stayed under everyone’s radar. She had been present all week, but had been a largely non-descript and only marginally involved participant until today. Meredith recalled her on the sidelines during the hospital shoot, and was fairly certain she had been one of the gushing fans on the staff who rushed her five million years ago when the troop first arrived at the Administration Building on Monday in the Administration Building’s lobby. Was that only four days ago? If her recollection was correct, this was the one who had said, “Oh, Ms. St. Claire, I’ve loved you from afar ever since Pots of Luck.” She had been so innocuous up to this point, but had apparently been lying in wait.

  The woman’s constant intrusions brought the rehearsals to frequent stand-stills. These shouting matches between her and the performers were often taken off stage, or sometimes out into the orchestra section of the hall, but as everyone was awaiting the outcomes of these disputes, and no one had much else to do but listen, all present could hear each conversation.

  “But Sally,” Del Carroll would object after the woman had axed an entire sketch. “You’re cutting the show by almost twenty percent.”

  “Mr. Carroll,” she would reply, “You had ample time to submit the contents of the show—were encouraged to do so weeks ago—but you failed to do that. It’s not my fault that I’m only now learning about the contents of your little program.”

  A dispute arose over the costumes of some of the male dancers, former Broadway gypsies wh
o still owned (and could still squeeze into) their form-fitting dance attire.

  “Much too provocative,” Sally bitched to the director.

  “Nothing of the sort, Sally,” he responded. “Standard gear for a classically trained dancer. It’s important to appreciate what the dancer is accomplishing.”

  “It panders to the lowest, the most prurient, of interests,” she snapped. The statement dripped with the frustration of someone who found it fantastic that she should have to explain herself. “Don’t you realize all of this is being filmed by these TV people? That’s the only reason we’re putting on this little entertainment. When the television show airs, we don’t want millions of people to get the impression the people of Fallow Park—the male population, anyway—just sit around and watch displays like this—half naked men making sexually suggestive gyrations—all the time.”

  As these tiffs continued to plague the late morning rehearsals, Del Carroll’s effectiveness over his collection of volunteer performers began to wane. Austin Green, however, was able to capture hours of footage. He told Meredith during one of these lengthy arguments they already had enough filmed of “the Big Show” for his purposes.

  “What’s up with Makepeace?” Meredith asked him under his breath while she shared his vantage point in the aisle. “I was sure he wouldn’t miss a minute of this.”

  Austin shrugged. “He’ll be here tonight. He’ll have to be; he’s introducing you. Ms. Sally over here said she had to fill in for him today. I think something’s come up. This Sally person was very ominous about it. And you’ll notice she’s on the phone with him every five minutes. And when she isn’t talking to him, she’s talking to someone else about him: ‘Doctor Makepeace told me to inform you…,’ ‘Doctor Makepeace said you should make sure such and such is in order…’ It’s all very secretive and all very official. She’s just been full of her self-importance. I’ve stayed out of this insignificant shit she and this sloppy Del guy have been going back and forth about.”

  “I think Mr. Carroll has underestimated the extent to which the Administration is able to restrict his, uh, creative impulses.”

  “Got to appreciate the contrast, don’t you?” he asked her. “Two directors in the same theater having very different experiences. This Carroll fellow will be lucky if he pulls off this catastrophe, but I don’t see how I can lose whatever his outcome may be.”

  “You want footage of the actual program, though, don’t you?”

  “We’ll film it, of course, but we don’t need it. I just need some audience shots, some applause, some laughter.”

  When a half-hour lunch was called, Meredith grabbed her coat and headed in the opposite direction of the mess hall where everyone had been directed to eat. She lit a cigarette and walked. She had no plan but to continue walking at least until the cigarette, and possibly another, was or were finished. Four minutes later, as she ground the butt onto the snow-covered sidewalk with her shoe, she found herself in front of the library. Curious, she thought, that this had been overlooked by the documentary. Strange that it was skipped but half a day should be devoted to the central laundry facility, and a full evening at one of the theaters watching a second-run film. The washers and dryers had to be turned off for hours, resulting in a backlog of clothes that would take days to sort out. And little if any usable footage had come out of movie night. A darkened theater with a movie playing and no rights secured to film it for inclusion in this documentary opus. But for some reason the library did not make the cut. Meredith counted her cigarettes and decided to forgo a second in favor of a quick trip inside the building.

  She walked the cold corridor to the main desk. The staid, comfortable library setting, a very indoor place, prompted her to unbutton her coat. But the outdoor chill followed her into the building and made her think better of taking it off. She yanked on one end of her scarf until it was dangling in her hand. She contemplated stuffing it in a coat pocket, but instead folded it carefully in half, and in half again. She approached the counter where a transgendered woman, an “M to F,” as personal ads were worded—once—sat alone in front of a computer monitor. It was funny now to think of a time when transgendered people could pursue a romantic life—and in such a mundane way as taking out a personal ad. Meredith admonished herself for her preoccupation with the imagined advertisement. She contemplated some minor question she could ask to begin a conversation. She surmised that the woman was accessing the library’s catalogue or some other internal information, as contact with the world outside the park was closely scrutinized—to the extent that it was permitted at all. She was all but certain this computer had no communication with the worldwide web.

  The woman looked up and smiled with recognition. She had striking features with prominent cheekbones and a long, hatchet-like, but feminine, face. Her hair was long and straight, and quite full for her age. Meredith envied her that. Her hands, still hovering over the keyboard, were large, but not masculine, owing to the slender fingers and polish. It was a polish, Meredith ascertained, recently applied and free of chips. Meredith approved of her jewelry selection, only two rings, and neither too cheap, nor too gaudy, for daytime wear.

  “Why, Ms. St. Claire,” she said. “I wondered if your team would include us.” She turned the monitor away, giving Meredith the impression she wanted her to know she had her full attention. The woman looked to the entrance and then about the immediate area.

  “Oh, I’m alone,” Meredith said. “I didn’t bring the crew with me. I don’t know why they haven’t thought to include the library. Here it seems to me is a chance to show the park at its best. A library serves a clear, well-known function. It provides education and entertainment, and it survives despite all the budget cuts. I suppose it doesn’t cost very much to maintain a library.”

  “No,” the woman said. “I guess it’s inexpensive enough. I suppose that’s why they’ve kept it. Every member of the staff is a resident, so no cost there. Of course, it’s not like it used to be. I can remember when we got new books every month. There was a time—in my career here—when they repaired the older books when they were damaged. Still, we have a pretty decent collection. Are you interested in getting a book?”

  “No, just getting out of the cold and away from the TV people. My ‘entourage’ so to speak, but not one of my own choosing, is engaged in this extravaganza thing. I hope it’s alright if I hide out in here for a little while.”

  “Oh, please do,” the woman said with encouragement. “I think that’s what a lot of people are doing here. It’s a popular escape for a lot of us here at Fallow Park—at least those looking for solitude. It’s a serious kind of quiet, I think, ideal for the introspective type.”

  Meredith folded her scarf on the counter.

  “Just lovely,” the woman commented.

  “Thank you,” Meredith said with an embarrassed smile. It had not been her intent to draw attention to the garment.

  The woman touched the scarf and, apparently pleased with the fabric, picked it up. She read the label and said, “Paris. I know this shop. How I miss it. You’ve been there recently?”

  “Last month. A friend gave it to me while I was there.” Meredith resisted her impulse to linger over the memory. It was Jack Harbour who gave her the scarf. She had gone to Paris to finalize their plans and oversee his transformation into someone who would not be recognized when he returned to Fallow Park. She had permitted herself two weeks in Paris for the holidays followed by a return home by way of Toronto where she quietly arranged housing for herself and her boys. She wondered if Tyler and Carl would object to their collective nickname.

  She returned to the present when the librarian said: “I’m Siobhan.”

  “Hi,” Meredith said. Sensing the ensuing lull was an invitation for small talk, but a reluctance on the striking woman’s part to initiate it, Meredith ventured into chit-chat with: “How long have you worked in the library?”

  “Too long. Eleven years.”

  “And you
like it?”

  Siobhan shrugged. “My job, or life at the park? Ever since they put everyone to work (eleven years ago!) it’s been such a different place. I came here—here to the park, I mean—because I was promised an early retirement—I’m older than I look. I’m old enough to retire—an early retirement, anyway. I’m so old, I was in grad school when Pots of Luck was on. I wrote my thesis on the depiction of women’s wardrobes in pop culture and the oppressive nature of clothing as costumes. I’m afraid Lucy the Leprechaun and her skin-tight clothes took quite a beating.”

  Meredith laughed politely, but briefly. She hoped Siobhan would find another topic. She had no more Pots of Luck stories to tell and could not bear the thought of continuing to tell the same ones she had been telling since her arrival.

  “Part of the attraction of the parks back then was the comfortable retirement they played up. I feel a little embarrassed now to admit it, but I was seduced by the glitzy marketing. I bought the line they gave us: ‘a life better than you’ve ever known before.’ It was appealing because it was certainly a lifestyle well beyond my means at the time. And I have to say, in those early years when I didn’t have to work I wasn’t bored for a moment. Those were some of the best years I’ve ever had. I’m the kind of person who’s never at a loss for ways to amuse myself. Just give me the free time and leave me to my own devices. So, changing the rules on us after I had settled into a comfortable life of leisure was a real game-changer to me. It was something of a shock to the system. But, I guess if I have to work, this is as good a job as any. I like to talk to people, meet new people. I like the social side of it. It’s fun to dress up and go out into the world, even this little cloistered world. I used to have a killer wardrobe. It’s quite a challenge to maintain a decent wardrobe in this climate. We see all four seasons—some of them all too briefly—but you have to dress for the weather. The long winter is the worst part. I still have a few pieces I like. It’s nice to have a job that demands professional attire. I don’t know,” she said with some reflection, returning to Meredith’s question. “I guess this job is okay.”