The Croning Read online

  The building changed hands numerous times during the Depression, and again after the turmoil of the ’40s and then sat vacant until 1975 when Earlagh Teague bought it from the city for a song. The Welshman, with the assistance of a dynamo wife and five doughty sons, transformed the relic into something of a monument; a cross between fine contemporary dining and old world hostelry. Inside, it was vaulted and airy. Balconies formed a wide crescent above the oak bar and the scatter of small dining tables and booths. The darts room lay beyond an arch just off the main gallery, sporting the requisite cork targets and a set of shopworn pool tables. There, a handful of bawdy old salts and genteel ruffians congregated daily, slugging beer and laying wagers on their shooting hands or whatever sporting event might be televised on the ancient black and white.

  Miller, party of two, Don told the hostess, a mildly impatient girl with preternaturally rosy cheeks. She was new; staff came and went with regular frequency. They were escorted to a table on the northeast balcony with a lovely bay window view of the distant swath of darkening water and countryside. Tiny lights of sloops and barges bobbed on the harbor, glittered on the wooded hillsides where deep green gave way to streaks of red and gold, and approaching night.

  They ordered a bottle of wine. The waiter lighted candles in elegant wrought iron sconces. A few couples drifted in, trailing murmurs of conversation and laughter. Finely dressed seniors; the men wore oversized watches and crisp silk ties; the women were decked in stately dresses, feathered hats and pearl necklaces; and everybody’s dentures snowy white and aglow with petroleum jelly. Below, on a small dais, a white-bearded fiddler in a plaid jacket and a bowler tuned his instrument and began a Celtic jig. Michelle sipped her wine. She studied the pennants and heraldic shields, and the stained glass mosaic of Mary that reflected its colors across nearby tables.

  Don adored his wife; her radiant joy warmed him more thoroughly than the half bottle of Merlot had. At moments like these, the wrinkles and seams smoothed away, she very much resembled the baby-faced bride he’d whisked off to that quaint resort in Maui for their honeymoon. It boggled him Truman manned the Oval Office while they spent the last of their meager savings on two hedonistic weeks of sun, surf and sex.

  Dinner came and went, and most of the wine too. For dessert, the staff lugged in a six-layer chocolate cake, and, on a silver platter, the imperiously decorous headwaiter presented Michelle with a platinum chain in a mother of pearl box. Don secretly ordered the gift at Malloy Jewelers some months prior to this joyous event. Michelle dangled the chain in the candlelight, cheeks flushed, lips quivering, and burst into tears. She buried her neatly coiffed head between her forearms.

  “I’m just glad I’ve still got what it takes to make you happy after all these years,” Don said drolly. He quaffed the remainder of his glass. Michelle’s shoulders shook harder. Her answer was muffled by her arms and when Don said, “What’s that, dear?” she raised her mascara-streaked face and sobbed, “I am happy, damn it!” He considered this development and poured another glass for both of them. Silence is indeed golden, my boy, his grandfather had often muttered as a piece of advice gleaned from a long, rocky marriage to a woman vastly more temperamental than Michelle. Dear old Grandma. She’d been a case to the end, God love her.

  Michelle snatched a hanky from her purse and bolted for the ladies room. Don noted she’d taken the chain with her, which was a good sign. He hoped. Michelle didn’t cry often—she’d never been an overly emotional girl. She claimed high passion dangerous to people in her profession, especially afield. Peruvian Bushmen and New Guinea headhunters weren’t impressed by weepy foreign broads.

  Don gazed out the window, down into the parking lot, and noticed a couple of people lurking near his car. For a moment he stared, bemused, leaning sideways in his seat, the glass halfway to his lips. The parking lot was rather cramped, and populated by perhaps a dozen vehicles. The sodium lamp had fizzed to life, thus he easily discerned the dark figures on the passenger side. He hesitated, wondering if they might belong to the Studebaker parked two slots over; but no, the shadowy fellows were quite plainly crouched to get a better look at the interior, and gads! had the Firebird slightly rocked, an unmistakable precursor to the door or window being jimmied?

  “Well, good luck, mate,” said an elderly gentleman in a leisure suit and bowtie. He patted Don on the shoulder in passing. The man’s companion, a handsome woman with tall, burnished hair, smiled at Don. You pathetic lout, her cold, pitying expression seemed to say.

  “Eh?” He groped for understanding of this exchange, and then realized they thought Michelle had fled their romantic dinner due to some churlishness on his part. “Er, yes, thank you.” He quickly checked the lot again and caught not one, but four mysterious figures skulking away into the deeper shadows—and they hadn’t been crouching; they were kids. A gaggle of miscreant children, he realized. Brazen hooligans having a last bash before summer vacation came to a crashing halt and they went swept into the loving arms of the public education system. Their handiwork was everywhere these days; the downtown bus terminal vandalized with graffiti and broken windows, shattered street lamps and mangled mailboxes. Luckily, the blinking red dash light of the alarm system was sufficient to deter would-be scoundrels.

  “Honey, look who I found,” Michelle said. Her face scrubbed and cheerful in a runner-up at the beauty pageant kind of way; the chain gleamed between her breasts. She stood arm-in-arm with a matronly woman Don vaguely recognized. What was her name? He racked his brain while Michelle smiled expectantly and her friend waited with the blandly uncomfortable expression of a confirmed stoic. “You remember Celeste, don’t you, dear? We worked in Alaska on the Tlingit cultural study in ’86. Her husband’s Rudy Hannah. Rudy Hannah? Lead occupational therapist for North Thurston Public Schools.”

  “Why, of course,” Don said, not remembering anything of the sort, although it sounded right. Another example of the white gaps in his mind. Now that he was old enough to be entombed in a pyramid, everyone wrote his lapses off as incipient dementia—during middle-age his distaff students thought his stammering and stuttering to retrieve an elementary fact or quote, or his constant neglect of personal grooming, or his tendency to misplace his glasses and notes, were endearing qualities. In his prime as a spelunking, devil-may-care geologist, that stuff had made his friends and colleagues very nervous. It used to make Don nervous as well, but he’d learned to adjust. No other choice besides madness.

  As for this vaguely familiar Celeste person, he gave himself a pass. His wife was a popular lady; from Washington to Beijing, her associates were legion. “Hullo, um, Celeste. A pleasure.” He rose and pecked the woman’s hand, surreptitiously checking the window in the process. Mr. Bowtie and his big-haired wife were slamming the doors of the Studebaker. When he looked up, Michelle pretended not to be annoyed, and Celeste gave her a patently fake smile, a perfunctory gesture of civility. We both know your husband’s an ass. She might as well have rolled her eyes. Don had that effect on women. Invariably, and despite his best efforts at urbanity and charm, they sniffed out his essential oafishness, or so he’d come to believe. There were worse curses. Michelle put up with his occasional bouts of idiocy and that paid for all.

  “I asked Celeste to join us. Look, Celeste, there’s an extra chair at that table.” Before Don could open his mouth to express an opinion one way or another, they were all cozy and ordering another bottle of wine. Don listened to them chatter and considered asking where Rudy might be, and decided against it. One never knew when one might be setting foot in a bear trap. He smiled aimlessly when the cone of conversation turned his direction; otherwise his mind wandered.

  He eventually stood and walked to the landing, ostensibly to stretch his aching back. He flagged the next waiter, a tall kid named Roy Lee, according to his tag. Don requested he compliment the chef, and also, management might wish to know some local kids were scoping the parking lot.

  The waiter nodded. “Yes, thank you, sir; I’ll
relay your concerns to my supervisor.” He lowered his voice in a gesture of sincerest confidentiality and said, “One of the girls chased them out of the ladies room earlier. I guess they were vandalizing the stalls. We don’t get this sort of thing too often. Middle school pranksters, I’d wager.”

  “Heavens! You alerted the authorities, I presume…”

  “We don’t like to disturb our guests. Besides, Marie never really got a close enough look to identify them.” Roy seemed embarrassed. “I think they scared her. She won’t talk about it.”

  “Really?” Don said. “That’s despicable. Poor girl.”

  “Yeah, she’s rattled. I hope you don’t mind me saying I’d like to thrash those little punks if they threatened her.” He cracked his knuckles.

  “I understand,” Don said. “Thank you again.”

  Roy shook it off and his mask of obsequiousness snapped in place. “By all means, sir.”

  2.

  On the way home, he said to Michelle, “What did Celeste say about Istanbul?” They’d exited the well-lit city streets and were zipping along stretches of pasture broken by hills and copses of old-growth trees. He kept his eyes glued to the road, alert for deer. Clouds crept in during supper and it was black as a mine shaft. The radio was down so low it might as well have been off. She didn’t care for music anymore unless it was tribal or certain strains of Bronze Age Korean court music.

  “Oh? She asked if I’d packed for the trip yet. She procrastinates—like you.”

  “I don’t procrastinate. She’s going too, eh?”

  “Every year, dear.” Her face was slack from too much wine, and slightly green in the eerie dashboard glow. She slurred ever so faintly when she said, “Me an’ Barbara, an’ Lynne—”

  “Lynne Victory? Oh, man alive. She’s a looker.”

  “Shaddup. Barbara an’ Lynne, and Justine French. An’ Celeste. Girls Club.”

  “I’m sure it’s a hoot.” Don took a sharp corner. Something rolled over in the trunk. A solid, ka-thump. “Probably just an excuse to get soused and watch dirty movies—if your friends are anything like mine.” He had scant idea what format these summits followed. They occurred each year a different city in a different country—last year Glasgow; the year before that Manitoba; and before that Peking; although it was frequently held in relatively unknown regions of satellite states that came and went, formed and dissipated in the shadows of their mother lands—the Soviet Union, Africa, and Yugoslavia. Anywhere there’s a party, Michelle had quipped.

  “It’s an occasion to discuss important scientific theory an’ bond socially an’ professionally. An’ for your information, we drink wine coolers an’ watch art films.” She chuckled and tilted her head back, allowing gravity to slide her around in the bucket seat like she was on a kiddy version of a tilt-a-whirl.

  “Hey, one of the waiters told me the ladies restroom was vandalized. Was it pretty bad?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “Oh,” Don said. “Roy mentioned some kids fooling around in there.”

  “Who’s Roy?” She slurred more as her head lolled.

  “The waiter I talked to. He said they vandalized the stalls.”

  “Wha—oh, that. It wasn’t much. Just some graffiti. Celeste was kinda scandalized, but you gotta laugh at these things. Tagging is what it’s called. We got gangs here too, y’know.”

  “As long as the buggers don’t tag my car.”

  She turned to regard him. “Oh, they were messing with the car?” Her eyes were owlish.

  “Eh. Everything’s in order.” He laughed and patted her hand and she nodded and closed her eyes.

  The Firebird hugged another corner on a steep grade. As Don downshifted, something in the trunk ka-thumped again. “Okay,” he muttered and pulled over where the shoulder widened in a saddle of foothills. Off the passenger side, a steep slope climbed rapidly. Farther up, near the snowline, lay a radio beacon, a ranger station and an observatory owned by a co-op of three universities and a board of wealthy private citizens. He and Michelle had driven there once; the view from the observatory encompassed the valley. He cranked the emergency brake, hit the flashers and leaned over Michelle to retrieve a flashlight from the glove compartment.

  “Huh, whazzat?” she said, plucking at his sleeve.

  “Don’t worry, sweetie. I have to check something. Just be a minute.”

  “Huh-um. Don’t get hit,” she said drowsily.

  “Righto.” He took a breath, steeling his nerves, and climbed out. There weren’t any other cars on the road. The air pressed chilly and damp and the darkness seemed vast around the feeble bubble of the Firebird’s headlights, the flashlight in Don’s hand. Treetops soughed in the grip of a high, rushing breeze that funneled through hidden creek beds and hollows. Branches crashed at some distance as the wind shook them.

  Storm coming. Don opened the trunk and shined the weak flashlight beam over the tire, the tire iron, a box of flares and a bandolier of wrenches and sockets. The culprit was the jack; it had come free of its mooring and jounced around. He sighed and secured it, casting brief glances over his shoulder to ensure another vehicle wasn’t slaloming around the corner—Saturday night and drunks cruised the highways and byways.

  His giant shadow spread on the white gravel and the asphalt. He gasped then at the face in the brush that overhung the ditch at the perimeter of his light. The face was flat and misshapen as something from a dream, with a cruel black mouth and black eyes, a shark’s eyes, but horribly askew. Don shined his beam directly at the spot and an eddy of cool, damp breeze caught dead leaves and swirled them to pieces. It swept bare the crosscut of a large chunk of slate. Alkaline drainage dribbled across its face and congealed in inkblots.

  My lord, getting jumpy in our old age, aren’t we? I shouldn’t have let those hooligans spook me so easily. He preferred to blame this latest startle on the rational after-effects of worry for his beloved car, the knowledge his best years were long gone and he and Michelle were vulnerable even to rowdy kids acting with malice aforethought.

  However, the snapping branches, the moaning wind, the absolute impenetrability of the darkness oppressed and intimidated him. Incipient nyctophobia; he’d self-diagnosed by plugging the symptoms into Web MD. Unlike his darling wife, he wasn’t cut out for wilderness expeditions anymore; not after dark. Even the prospect of pitching an overnight tent at one of the nearby parks unnerved him. In the latter stages of his career he performed his vocation from the safety of an office, a lab, or the infrequent daytrip. His youthful postings to remote research camps gradually became a source of major anxiety; occasions to be endured as a necessary evil. He enjoyed the country as far as that went, just so long as when night fell he could flip the switch and have lights go on.

  Don raised his eyes to the seam between the hinges of the trunk and the rear window. This revealed a sliver of the interior of the car, faintly illuminated by the radio dial. Michelle had twisted in her seat and swung her head toward his activities. She was silhouetted and thus utterly inscrutable. The wind pushed the trees around again; handfuls of twigs pinged the canvas; a dust devil skated circles in the road. Glad to shut the trunk, he hurriedly retreated into the shelter of the car. “All fixed,” he said as he buckled in. Michelle didn’t reply. She slumped, fast asleep; a trace of drool glistened at the corner of her mouth. Don dabbed it with his sleeve, mildly perplexed at how he’d so clearly, yet mistakenly, saw her gazing at him moments before. His brain was apparently deliquescing.

  He rolled onto the road. From the trunk: ka-thump! “Hang it.” Don stamped the accelerator.

  3.

  Come the dawn, the sky threatened and fumed, but no storm descended upon them. The radio girl said be ready, folks, it’s only a matter of time.

  The Millers’ home was located in the bucolic and slightly depressed Waddell Valley, a shallow, crooked notch in the heavily forested Black Hills a few miles from the state capital. A potholed country blacktop wound past quiet farms where cattle and hor
ses lazily grazed in the few fields and pastures not lost to creeping wilderness. Michelle inherited the Olympia residence in 1963 from her aunts Yvonne and Gretchen, who’d lost their husbands in the First World War and later moved to New Hampshire to spend their declining years with the eastern branch of the Mock family. The ladies bequeathed Michelle most of their possessions—nearly a century’s worth—and to this day, the Millers had yet to replace the original antique furniture, paintings and knick-knacks, much less sort through the troves in the attic, the huge, labyrinthine cellar, or the barn loft.

  The building was a yellow and white three-story farmhouse with two large additions (one being a half-tower of ivy-twined brick that rose a solid story above the roof peak) and a stone chimney running up the side. It sat on a hill at the end of a dirt lane and at night theirs were the only lighted windows in the area. Twin magnolias loomed in the backyard near the barn he’d repainted and converted into a garage and workshop. The trees were monsters, studded by thick, mossy knurls and scaled in tough bark that reminded him of ossified crocodile hide.

  As a boy, Kurt drove Don batty by climbing into the uppermost branches and swinging like his idol Tarzan. He’d recently discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard and for the next few months there was hell to pay. Kurt only quit his brachiating hijinks after Don vowed to cut the trees down and make a complete set of dining room furniture. Kurt had been, and still was, a monumental pain in the ass compared to his sweet sister. Michelle snorted and shook her head when she heard Don talk about Holly as if she were God’s own angel. Dream on, bucko; she’s her mother’s child, Michelle would say with a cryptic arch to her brow before resuming her absorption of raw data in the form of moth-eaten journals, blood-stained logbooks and typewritten reports stacked knee-high to a giraffe in the study. The “keep out, if you know what’s good for you” room.