“Mr. Mushroom, you got poor people skills,” RuAngela said.
And it was true, Ferkie kept rising up into the conversation like something growing on a stump. Jim and RuAngela bantered with a kind of expertise—old-line cultural insults I didn’t quite get, homo vs. hetero insults that I did, tried to incorporate whatever the clueless Ferkie thought to interject, such as “RuAngela, you are obviously a man.” You always remembered why he hadn’t lasted as a college prof: he was made to be the guy on the water-tank target at the county fair, three throws for a buck.
E.T. took no notice of anyone but pondered, pondered, always something cooking in his head. He roused himself and quietly put together a second small course at lightning speed, five or six unfamiliar types of mushrooms Ferkie had spied at seventy miles per hour roadside on his trip down from a mushroom conference in Canada: distinct textures, individual flavors, various colors, all sorts of culinary possibility, like they’d been auditioned and hired and only awaited their parts. Ferkie brightened at the flavors E.T. had coaxed forth, softened with each bite.
And then, he announced, it was time to forage.
No amount of coaxing could get Etienne out in the woods. He stayed in Jim’s kitchen to experiment, and of course RuAngela stayed with him, platform pumps unsuitable for hard hiking.
The rest of us climbed into Ferkie’s creaky old Mercedes diesel, and after a series of wrong turns on a maze of back roads behind the inn, drove up an impossible dirt track that ended at a pond-sized puddle in the midst of a vast tract of public land.
Ferkie leapt out, distributed collection bags, and without a word lurched into the dense Berkshire forest, his trajectory like a rocket gone wrong, abrupt swerves and curlicues, all but a rail of smoke out his butt. Emily had no trouble keeping up, even as the terrain grew steep, but Jim and I fell behind, unsettling speed through the underbrush, especially given the several bottles of wine we’d downed with lunch. The two of them stopped over a specimen while Jim and I, puffing, caught up to them. “Clitopilus prunulus,” Ferkie told us. “Known as sweetbread mushrooms, easily confused with Clitocybe dealbata, which is poisonous, not deadly, but fucking weird, causes sweating and heavy salivation, also tunnel vision.”
“You’ve tried it, of course . . .” Riverkeeper said, ardent hippie hater.
“Just a bite, well cooked. And it was worth it: delicious. Fishy, sticky.”
“You suffered symptoms?” Emily said.
“Tunnel vision, for sure. And auditory hallucinations. Like mosquitoes and springs popping, and my mother’s voice: Ferkie, Ferkie. But that turned out to be real. I was still in high school, Buffalo, New York.”
We kept marching. Ferkie collected small amounts of this and that inedible for the sake of some paper he was writing, announcing the names: ribbed pluteus, blushing false truffle, candlesnuff fungus. We hiked down into a small, heavily shaded gorge, mushrooms galore, now that I had eyes for them. One grouping was all bright red with white spots.
“Like a roomful of sore throats,” said Jim.
“Fly agaric,” Ferkie said. He didn’t pluck a specimen but lay on the ground and put his tongue to the toadstool, sat there savoring the taste. “These are seriously toxic,” he said dreamily. “Tastes like. Like wind.”
“So this is how poets die,” Jim said.
Ferkie got to his feet, indifferent. He said, “Nah, nothing serious. Not like some. Eat that, you might puke a little. Maybe a little worse if you ate ’em raw.”
And like that, dozens of species, till we came upon an enormous log lying covered with pale sheaves: oyster mushrooms, as any chef could see. We filled two large collection bags, then a third, heavy, the excitement of acquisition.
“You assholes pay twenty bucks a pound,” Ferkie said.
Oh, Emily’s giggle. I couldn’t recall her giggling at all.
We struggled back down the mountain to the car—Ferkie knew exactly where it was in the seemingly endless woods—then straight back to a patch of blue chanterelles he’d spotted, striated little trumpets completely hidden from my eye even when he pointed, like ballet costumes.
When Riverkeeper finally saw them, he said, “Now, these, I gotta say, look poisonous.”
“There’s no poisonous look,” Ferkie said. “Some of the most dangerous ones look very tempting. Some of the most delicious look fecal and foul.”
Nonchalant, I said, “What are the most dangerous?”
“Oh,” Ferkie said. “Right? For a chef, any little tummy ache out there is going to be bad news. Tunnel vision from a bowl of soup, you kidding?”
“Lizard, you could advertise the experience,” said Jim.
“But most dangerous around here is definitely Amanita phalloides, death cap, it’s called, very handsome, big shape, tasty looking, makes you want to take a bite. In fact, people who’ve survived amanitin poisoning say phalloides tastes very, very good. Drops people in the United States every season. Some years dozens. Beautiful things. I could show you hundreds of ’em right around here in a week or two. And a little later in the season, Amanita ocreata. Closely related, even stronger, called ‘destroying angel,’ which I dig, cuz they grow up with these veils like wings.”
We collected about half of the blue chanterelles, leaving enough to preserve the patch, made our way out of the woods and to the puddle we’d parked in, climbed in the car triumphant, headed back to the Inn.
Emily and I sat in the back holding bags of the delicate chanterelles in our laps, nice to get out of the misting rain, my head pressed against the ceiling, knees up in my face. Emily put her hand on my leg under the mushrooms, ran it up my jeans very gradually.
Playing it cool, I reached back over my shoulder and snagged one of the mushroom books piled on the dash under the rear window, the fattest one, Mushrooms Demystified, by someone named David Arora. The dedication caught my interest immediately:
I dedicate this book with love to my mother and father, whose admonitions to me as a teen-ager to stay away from mushrooms inspired me to get closer.
Quickly, lest Emily ask what I was doing, I looked up Amanita phalloides, then Amanita ocreata, having memorized the names, followed notations in the index to an appendix called “Mushroom Toxins,” page 892. The first entry concerned certain compounds called amatoxins, and put a spear in my gut:
“Poisoning by amatoxins is extremely serious, with a high fatality rate. It is doubly dangerous because the symptoms are delayed for as many as 24 hours after ingestion of the mushroom, by which time the toxins have been absorbed by the body.” And apparently there are various amatoxins, the very worst of which is a group called amanitins, “twenty times more lethal” than other amanita poisons, and they don’t get cooked out, don’t get destroyed by the human digestive tract. The concentration of these toxins “varies tremendously from individual mushroom to individual mushroom, but an average fatal dose is about two ounces (fresh weight) of Amanita phalloides.”
I looked out my own window, followed my own train of thought, Emily’s hand smoothing my jeans, smoothing, smoothing. And I’d return to that train of thought many late nights subsequent. But of course there was no practical way to poison Kaiser and Mr. Perdhomme. You’d simply get caught, end up in prison.
Emily’s smoothing turned to kneading, nice hands, strong person. We’d be back in our lavender sheets before long, and after whatever kind of long second nap we engineered, there’d be dinner, something luscious the genius E.T. had invented for the beehive oven, no doubt, novel uses of oyster mushrooms and blue trumpets. I read:
Amanitin poisoning usually manifests itself in four stages: (1) a latency period of as many as 24 hours after ingestion, during which time the toxin is actively working on the liver and kidneys, but the victim experiences no discomfort; (2) a period of about one day characterized by violent vomiting, bloody diarrhea, and severe abdominal cramps; (3) a period of about one day during which the victim appears to be recovering (if hospitalized, the patient is sometimes released!); (4)
a relapse, during which liver and kidney failure often leads to death.
I pictured Kaiser shitting out his innards, shitting, shitting. A slow and painful death, no known antidote, and no natural defense: kidneys can’t eliminate amanitin from the body: “The pancreas, adrenal glands, heart, lungs, muscles, intestines, and brain may be damaged.”
Well, it was only a fantasy.
Emily looked over, proffered a long, intelligent, rather solipsistic gaze, a kitty-cat deigning to sit close. “Don’t even think about it,” she said. I was startled for a blink or so, but of course she wasn’t talking about punishing Kaiser and Perdhomme. Her hand grew busier yet under the great blue orchestra of mushrooms in my lap, and suddenly her wet mouth met mine, none of the old awkward bumping, even as I let the fat book of mushrooms fall to the floor.
“Get a room,” Jim said happily, the very guy who had provided us with one.
I was sad when the limo came for Emily the next day, sad beyond the moment, sad and not only tired, the whole weight of everything crashing in on me.
Ancestor Days were over.
PART FIVE
Bequest
22
My folks were born in 1929. Crash babies, my father said. Mom’s family prospered a while, but by the time her memory woke, they were struggling, had to move to lesser quarters. A teen summer with an aunt on Lake Winnipesaukee convinced her that New England was the height of luxury and romance. She came east to see my father after they’d met at her best friend’s wedding, all of twenty-one years old, just done with college. If you did the math, which Kate and I dearly loved to do, Mom was already pregnant by the time she arrived in Westport. What’s more, she stayed. Nick wasn’t one to do the right thing, but he was happy to marry Barb, the most beautiful and exciting girl he’d ever known, hilarious, athletic, almost as tall as he. The guy had a small stake from his father’s death that would devolve to him when he turned twenty-one. He and his betrothed went house hunting in anticipation of the windfall, and for a lark they dressed up and told an agent at one of Westport’s premiere Realtors that they were in the market for a fine estate, funds unlimited. Among the wondrous mansions they were shown was a place called the High Side, long empty, but lovingly maintained, and they were given a tour that ended abruptly when the head broker arrived and recognized Dad. Even then the old man had a reputation.
“But I do have a castle in your size,” the broker said. And he pointed across the pond.
Dad started at Concept Credit as a file clerk. Mom gave tennis lessons at the club, started her career as a ringer, clobbering everyone in their league, Kate always along. I was born in 1953, my folks only twenty-four years old. The High Side remained unsold till Dabney bought it when I was about four, anyway, I remember the excitement at our house—there were tennis courts over there and Mom pictured herself working on serves with the famous couple. Of course, the call never came.
Dad claimed he had a degree in economics from UCLA, climbed the ladder at Concept, not even fired when he was found out: a new hire in accounting would have been in his class and not only didn’t remember him but investigated. Maybe Perdhomme liked a liar; anyway, Dad kept moving up and when the place changed its name to Dolus Investments, Dad was made a vice president, meaningless, but at home we celebrated all the same.
Mom never gave up her dream of the good life. And with Dad, the good life was always right around the corner.
A POSTCARD FROM New Zealand caught RuAngela’s attention, and she brought it to me in the kitchen at Firfisle, where once again I was fulminating about Perdhomme. And Kaiser, always Kaiser. Etienne humored me at the edges of my diatribe, but at the center, he was solidly with me: we were going ahead with Kate’s DNA plan. The trick was how to get our quarry to the restaurant, and once we got them there, how to get the tissue samples and store them according to the FBI’s “Best Practices” manual for forensic genetics. The conversations went from earnest to hilarious to hopeless to enraged, in dizzying bursts. Kate was calling daily with ideas, and even Jack was more or less on board, reading up on the legalities, making fresh contacts at the D.A.’s office in Danbury. But it all seemed unlikely at best, a dangerous tilting at windmills: we were such amateurs, didn’t even know enough to know what we needed to know.
“New Zealand,” I said, finally flipping the card to see Emily’s heavily back-slanted hand, no greeting, no sign-off:
I’ll be in New York for the gala di diva and then for a full month after, and I expect you to be my fucking boyfriend the whole fucking time!
Sylphide, by contrast, had communicated nothing at all. Perhaps she thought it unnecessary—the publicity around her grand retrospective was unavoidable, great excitement in the land. I didn’t know what I wanted. It’s not like we’d had any but the most formal contact in the five years since our poolhouse party, Daniel Tancredi always looming.
Pondering over all that one afternoon, rubbing the stone in my pocket, staring out the high window over my station in the Firfisle kitchen (October light slanting in over the whitecaps of the sound, not a sail in sight, just the familiar lighthouse out there, one container ship tall and distant), I was startled when a knock came at the delivery door, sharp little raps, certainly not Olulenu, who only gave a blunt kick or two.
Dr. Chun. No notice of any kind, not a phone call, not a golden note, not a whiff of jasmine, not so much as a friendly smile. “You come with,” he said. “You must.”
“Oh, I must?” said I.
I introduced the good doctor to E.T., these two skinny guys who wouldn’t shake hands staring at one another. Dr. Chun liked RuAngela, though, practically licked her dress, took her hand and kissed it.
“I refuse to be shanghaied,” I said haughty.
“Slow night anyway,” E.T. replied deadpan.
“Crucial,” Dr. Chun said, a very difficult word his thoughtless employer had stuck him with. He tried again: “Crucial.”
I saw Dr. Chun to the door, pushed him out into the bright sunlight. “One hour ride,” he begged. “I bring you back. Not late.”
I just closed the door in his face.
Etienne stood there, his best Santoku knife poised.
“I think you should go,” RuAngela said, quick thinker. “Play along.”
“Get some answers,” Etienne said.
“Answers to what?” I said, afraid.
“How death feels, mon. They going to take you out.”
“Oh, stop,” said RuAngela. “This is just the break we need.”
THE NEW BUTLER, William, was deferential but not overly friendly, left me to sit alone in a plush parlor by a tumbled pile of coffee-table books. My heart hadn’t stopped pounding: once and for all, what had Perdhomme and Kaiser been doing in Westport? My thoughts went noir: I’d grill her like a portabella mushroom over wind-fired charcoal, sauce her like a quince in wine. I flipped through an enormous picture book called The Vision of Sylphide, each photo more moving than the last, decades of her work as she grew from gamine to dancer to choreographer, her increasingly calm face not always beautiful to the camera, not in any traditional way. The next book in the pile was The Great Castles of Europe. Tancredi owned a few old palaces, I knew, was revered for his restorations and conservation, and not only his money. The bottom book was called Miami Dolphins: The Decade of Greatness, a couple of photos of me in there, I knew. I’d always wondered who bought books like that, didn’t crack it.
Shortly, Tancredi himself appeared. “Old man!” he said. He, of course, was the old man, well into his eighties, older than Dr. Chun and more frail, dressed smartly in yachtsman’s blue jacket and Topsiders, bright brown eyes, that aura of power and competence, that sense that he wanted you in his court and knew how to get you there.
He shook my hand, firm grip fading, said, “We see your restaurant business is coming along smashing.”
“Smashing,” I said. “And going on five years.”
“That many,” he said, a thoroughly appealing man. He bid me follow, led
me to a decorative elevator gate, and then upwards three stories and through a cozy maze of library rooms and offices, finally back to a reading alcove with tall windows overlooking the East River, a city glory of winking lights and coursing estuarine currents and bridges and contrails in the sunset sky. The houseman trotted in behind us, handed me a bourbon on ice, left us to the view.
Still in chef’s togs, towel still in the waist of my pants, I said, “This is a magnificent house.”
“Oh, turds,” Tancredi said, upper-crusty English tones perching atop his indistinct Swiss-German accent. His skin was mottled, his eyes bright and brown behind bifocals, thick white hair combed long back over his skull. His son, a financial writer, had written an op-ed piece for the Times about him the previous June: “Best father in the world.”
He said, “Dabney Stryker-Stewart bought it, you understand, his uncommon eye, seldom single talents to make a great man. I’d say on a guess he’s realized a 10,000 percent return on investment, if only by proxy, given death. Ah, bourbon. I remember bourbon!” He put a long, speckled hand on my arm, pulled my drink up under his nose, sniffed voluptuously. And down to business: “Tenke finds you trustworthy, and aside from myself and one or two of the staff, that is a rare regard. I’m getting older, as you can see, and struggling with bladder cancer, as you cannot, and won’t be around for many more full moons.”
He gestured toward the huge bank of windows in the dim room. Across the shimmer of Queens sure enough rose a quavering and burgeoning hump of light on the horizon. It took only perhaps three minutes for the full moon to find its way completely into the belabored New York City sky, fat and orange and marked with craters.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Nice effect, no? I’ve used it before, the moon. You simply check the calendar, make your invitations accordingly. Is there such a word as auspicion?”
Life Among Giants Page 31
