Halcyon, p.15
Halcyon, page 15
Each word I wrote had come to feel like a cent dropped on the attendant’s counter to benefit the redheaded boy. He knew about my course on the Civil War, though he had never taken it and never would. His father had already taught him the history; he had taught it to him on the battlefield itself. What did the boy need my class for? History for him wasn’t a subject in school but an inheritance. He wanted to see the Virginia Monument preserved not because it was part of history but because it was part of him. How often had I heard it said that America is not a blood-and-soil nation, but a nation founded on an ideal. Was this true for the redheaded boy? At Gettysburg his family’s blood was, literally, in the soil.
I was at a loss for answers. Because something existed in the past, did that give it the right to exist in the present…?
There was the girl, too. I had felt so certain about her. Did she wind up as I had imagined, drunk or stoned on a dorm room futon? Perhaps that’s what she had wanted, and I was guilty of presumption. I had thought to tell her how to be.
How could I write about the centrality of compromise in American life if I didn’t have sufficient answers to even these most basic questions in my own life? For nearly two weeks, I isolated myself in the guest cottage and dutifully tried to find answers through my work but made little headway. It proved a welcome relief when, unexpectedly, Boose arrived on my doorstep. It was midmorning and I’d already taken two breaks when I invited her inside to join me for a third. I poured us both some tea. When she asked about my work, I told her only that it was progressing. When I asked about her mother and the disease, she used that same word, “progressing,” and explained the favor she’d come to ask. Mary had an appointment in Philadelphia at the hospital with Dr. Shields later that week. Boose and her father would take her. The appointment, however, conflicted with a pre-existing visit they’d scheduled with a house appraiser. When I asked the purpose of the appraisal (“Are your parents planning to sell?”), she explained that before the preliminary hearing with the judge, her father had to provide a net-worth statement, which needed to include Halcyon’s value. “It’s just that it’s very difficult to book these appraisers…and this appointment in Philadelphia was kind of last minute…Doug and Bobby would help but they aren’t sure when they can come down…”
The strain in her voice was obvious. Her life had become a balancing act of commitments. “It’s no problem,” I said, and topped off her cup of tea.
She raised a smile, but it soon crumbled. “Do you think we’ll lose the house?”
“Of course not.” My answer was reflexive: I really didn’t know.
She looked at me as if gauging the sincerity of my response. “My father used to say once you got in front of a judge that every case was a coin toss. Imagine that, an entire system of justice based on coin tosses. What if we lose? I can’t imagine my family without Halcyon. My father bought this house before he’d even met my mother. They’ve never lived anywhere else. For years, I tried to escape this place. I never wanted to come back, and when I did come to visit I never wanted to stay in the main house. I would insist on having my space in this guest cottage. That used to upset my mother. Looking back that seems very childish of me. The adult decision would’ve been to sleep in my old room. Odd, isn’t it, when the most adult thing a person can do is sleep in the room where they were a child.”
* * *
—
Two days later I found myself standing outside the door of Boose’s childhood room. I had let the appraiser in that morning and was offering him a cursory tour. The house was a mess. Unlike some appraisals, in which a family typically wants a high value assessed to their home, it was obvious that the Ablesons wanted the value depressed. As such, a pile of muddy boots were scattered in the entry, the kitchen sink was half-filled with dishes, where someone had taken a nap a blanket was bunched in the corner of the living room sofa, and as I entered Boose’s room it came as no surprise to find her suitcase in its center with an explosion of her dirty clothes strewn in a radius that covered the desk, its chair, and even the headboard above the bed.
The appraiser, with clipboard in hand and tape measure holstered on his belt, maintained the strictest of poker faces as we progressed room to room. His controlled demeanor reminded me of a mortician; he was also similarly grim and dressed mostly in black as if to vanish his presence, and as he opened and closed doors, checked the functionality of everything from the HVAC system to faucets to electric outlets, his long tapered fingers moved with a spidery precision. I tried to grant him his space as he worked, at first installing myself downstairs in the kitchen, but each time he discovered some deficiency, say, an improperly metered light fixture or a closet not quite built to code, he would summon me as he logged it in his notes. Perhaps he did this so I might show the Ablesons; still, I mildly resented each shortcoming he assessed within Halcyon. Eventually, to avoid the trips across the house, I chose to wait in the hallway outside whatever room he’d entered.
“Who did you say lives in this room?” asked the appraiser, stepping into the second-story hallway where I was waiting.
“Their daughter,” I answered.
“And how old is she?”
“Late twenties.”
Through the break in the door, I again glimpsed the familiar explosion of clothes. “Late twenties?” he repeated and then took up his pen, clicked its end, jotted something on his clipboard, and returned to Boose’s room. In fastidiousness she was not so much a woman as a girl, and I wondered how the appraiser might factor this observation into the value of the house. He had made a note of it, after all.
He was making many notes as I continued to escort him from one room to the next. Despite the extraneous mess, the house was in remarkably good shape. The renovation was nearing completion and the appraiser inspected aspects of that work with slight, nodding gestures of approval. We traveled the rooms in no specific order but when it came time to enter the master suite, I found myself unexpectedly hesitant. I didn’t want to see how Mary was living with her disease. Nevertheless, I led the appraiser inside.
The double doors opened up into a sitting area, sun-bright and upholstered in plush white, bracketed by a three-sided westward-facing bay window. Old magazines and books formed little towers on the end tables. Assemblages of family photos cheered the room. In them I recognized less outwardly distressed versions of the people I had come to know. On a tiered writer’s desk beneath the window sat a cluster of silver-framed ancestral photos, including that of a sepia-toned couple on their wedding day. There was also a desk set, of the traditional sort, with an ivory-handled letter opener, a clock, and a silver tray. The beams of light that poured through the window seemed to accentuate these but not other objects.
When the appraiser tried to open a set of pocket doors that connected the sitting area to the master bedroom itself, they were locked. I didn’t have the key and had no idea where it might be. I excused myself to the hallway and tried Boose on her cellphone. No luck. I then tried Ableson. Still, no luck. The appraiser was completing his notes about the sitting area when I returned. His assessment of the room hadn’t taken him long to complete, and he explained that it was essential he also examine the master bedroom. He asked if perhaps the key was in the desk by the window.
I opened a first drawer and then a second. Old papers, receipts, legal documents, loose photographs, and business cards filled them. Typically, I wasn’t one to rifle through another person’s things, but I felt this was justified. The Ablesons needed this appraisal finished, particularly before the judge’s initial inquiry. When I came to a third drawer, it was mostly empty. It contained only a single large folder and, luckily enough, a key on a green ribbon. “Try this,” I said, handing it to the appraiser.
He fondled the key as he crossed the room, slotting it into the lock and sliding the doors open. Inside was dusky. Light angled through the shut blinds of another bay window. Partially filled cups of water and plastic pill bottles littered a side table next to an adjustable hospital bed. A canvas cot made up with military precision sat on the bed’s other side. At its head rested a white pillow, at its foot a folded quilt. I imagined the nights spent here, with Ableson an arm’s length from Mary as she tried to sleep through her pain. On the room’s opposite end was a king-sized bed. Papers and clothes and books cluttered its surface. No one slept there anymore.
While the appraiser got to work, I excused myself to the sitting room. When I returned the key to the desk drawer, I again noticed the large folder. It was stuffed with yellowed newspaper clippings, the most recent of which was the story of the Lazarus mice from several months before. One by one, I worked my way backward: Ableson’s obituary; his court cases; his name listed among a dozen others in an article about judicial nominees for the Reagan administration; a legal prize named in his honor; more of his court cases; another article with his name listed among judicial nominees for the Carter administration; legal prizes he won early in his career, both as a litigator and as a student.
I came to the last and oldest story in the folder. I carefully held the brittle edges of the newspaper sheet between pinched fingers. It was an article from Stars and Stripes, which recounted in some detail the exploits of the 27th Infantry Division during the month-long battle on Saipan. Scanning the columns of text, I read place-names like “Hells Pocket,” “Purple Heart Ridge,” and “Death Valley” as well as the names of commanders like General Holland “Howlin’ Mad” Smith and the Japanese commander, General Yoshitsugu Saitō. What I couldn’t find was any mention of Ableson. The article was three pages and when I finished reading, I glanced over the inset photographs. All were taken after the battle. One was of the funeral Smith had granted his vanquished adversary Saitō, who had taken his own life; another was of the airfield, a smoldering hellscape where the Japanese had launched the largest banzai charge of the war; and then I came to a photograph of a half-dozen hollow-eyed, underfed infantrymen, their uniforms in tatters and their faces unshaven, who were listed as the surviving members of “Echo Company” which had absorbed the brunt of that suicidal charge. As individuals, these men were indistinguishable. They all possessed the same, anonymous look of stupefaction. Below the group photograph, their names were captioned. Among them, I found Captain Robert J. Ableson. But, strangely, I also found Medic James R. Shields included with these survivors.
The appraiser stepped out from the bedroom. “Ready to head downstairs?”
Catching me at the desk, with the many newspaper clippings scattered across its surface, he offered me an inquisitive little glance. I tidied up and returned the folder to its drawer. Before we left, the appraiser suggested that perhaps we should again lock the pocket doors. “Probably best to leave things as we found them.”
I told him there was no need for that.
* * *
—
Ten days later came the preliminary inquiry. The assigned judge had determined for the sake of expediency that a conference call would be sufficient. The parties to the case had assembled on a shared line. Their arguments centered on two distinct issues: first, did the workplace harassment complaint Susan Templeton had brought against Ableson fall outside the statute of limitations; second, did Ableson’s will remain a valid document despite the annulment of his death certificate and would the assets transferred to his heirs under that will remain in a protected status. Boose had been on the call along with her parents and Ginny. It was, she told me the next day, one of the most anxiety-producing experiences of her life. “The silences were terrible.” We were sitting in the kitchen of the guest cottage while I fixed her a drink. “You can’t see the opposing side, or the judge, so you have no idea what they’re thinking. All the meaning is in those silences.” She had begun to pick at the cuticles of one finger as she spoke, and I noticed her other fingers were equally raw.
Boose explained the argument opposing counsel had made to the judge, which she insisted was “the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.” According to their logic, no statute of limitations should exist on the harassment claim because of the ongoing trauma suffered by both Susan and Janet Templeton. When the judge asked Janet if this theory of “ongoing trauma” accurately represented her experience, she responded by launching into an aria of her troubles. From her academic struggles to her personal struggles, every setback and defeat germinated in the moment she had witnessed O’Toole hit her mother. However, the judge had pointed out to an exercised Janet Templeton that it was her mother who was filing the complaint, not her. The judge asked Susan Templeton the same question. She at first faltered. Reflexively, she mentioned how Ableson had hired her when no one else would have. His heart was, she said, “in the right place.” The judge grew impatient and again asked about the enduring impact of Ableson’s actions. Janet interjected. She rattled off the many ways Ableson continued to interfere in her mother’s life. “What do you mean by interfere?” the judge wanted to know. Janet Templeton explained Ableson’s meddling with the Virginia Monument petition, how he’d seen to its invalidation. The judge seemed surprised, asking Susan Templeton whether this was true. “It is,” she said. This was met with another ambiguous silence.
“After that,” said Boose, “the judge determined the complaint fell within the statute of limitations due to an enduring pattern of harassment.”
“What about your father’s will?” I asked. “Can you and your brothers keep your inheritance?”
Boose rubbed the side of her head. “It’s still under review. We should find out next month.”
“And Halcyon?”
“The appraisal came back high,” she said. “Too high. Seems my parents made a mistake by renovating the place. It’s now worth more than ever. The Templetons will also come after that. The house is in my mother’s name. What type of people would run a dying woman out of her home?”
I didn’t have an answer, so instead asked after her mother’s health.
“Stop by tomorrow morning if you can. My father’s going to be on legal calls. You’ll have her all to yourself. It’s important you see her.”
Shortly thereafter Boose left. That evening and all through the night, I wondered why it was “important” that I see her mother. Boose could have said it’d be “nice for you to see her” or that “she’d like to see you” but instead she had used that specific word, “important,” and it left me feeling certain that—whether I liked it or not—I continued to have a role to play for the Ableson family.
* * *
—
The low sun was still filtering its light through the branches of the trees and onto the path of dirt and brittle asphalt as I walked up to the main house the following morning. Earlier, I had prepared myself breakfast but only had a bite, pitching a plate’s worth of scrambled eggs into the trash. I increasingly felt a sense of foreboding about whatever it was Mary had to tell me. When Halcyon’s white portico came into view Boose stood there beneath it. She was leaning her shoulder against one of the freshly painted columns. Cupped in her hand was a steaming mug of tea. I wondered whether she had come out here to enjoy it, or whether she’d come out to intercept me; either way, she ushered us into the foyer, where I noticed several suitcases.
“My brothers are back,” she said. Then, as if on cue, I heard Doug’s and Bobby’s voices blending with Ableson’s from down a long corridor. Each was talking over the other and it sounded as if the three of them were on a conference call. I imagined they were strategizing with Ginny about their next move. Boose escorted me upstairs, to the master suite. When we stepped inside, I noticed that the room was cleaner than it’d been several days before when I’d walked through with the appraiser. The books and magazines on the side tables had been put away. The desk beneath the bay window didn’t have a single object on its surface. The pocket doors leading to the master bedroom remained shut and inserted in the lock was the key with the green ribbon.
Boose slid open the doors and announced me in an amplified voice. She then gave me an encouraging nod before stepping backward out of the room. Mary sat reclined in the hospital bed by the window. A blanket covered her legs, but from the waist up she’d dressed in a white blouse that must have once fit but now swallowed her emaciated body. Someone had neatly arranged her medications in rows on the side table and tidied up the many half-filled cups of water and replaced them with a drinking bottle she could sip from. The only other item on the side table was a compact. Mary was impeccably made up and I suspected this was done for my benefit. Still, she hardly acknowledged me. Her eyes tracked absently out the window, to her garden below, the only portion of the renovation that remained incomplete.
I announced myself with a “Good morning.”
She turned toward me, saying my name in a voice that sounded as though it needed a drink of water. “Come closer,” she added. Tentatively, I approached her bed, and when I got to an arm’s length she tugged my shirt with some effort so that I was bent over her, craning my neck upward, but looking out the window from the same vantage she did. “You see that row of flower beds?” Our heads were side by side. Her breath smelled faintly sour like dead flowers and it was the flowers that interested her. “Those buds there, can you see them?”
