The Reserve Page 6

  “WON’T BE NO SIGN OR MAILBOX THERE,” THE OLD FELLOW said, pumping gas into the tan Packard sedan. He was a scrawny man in his late sixties in coveralls, with a plum-size lump of tobacco in his cheek and stumped brown teeth. “Every time he puts one up, somebody comes along and knocks it down.”

  “Why is that?” Vanessa Cole asked him. A light rain had begun to fall. She stepped away from the car and stood under the gas station canopy and watched the old man pump gas.

  The man shrugged and looked the Packard over bumper to bumper and pursed his lips as if about to whistle. Nice-looking vehicle. Nice-looking girl, too. “Can’t say. ’Course, there’s some folks that claims he’s a Red. You know, a Commie.”

  “And is he?” She reached into her purse to pay for the gas.

  “Could be. I keep out of it. Could be he’s only what you call abnormal, if you know what I mean. Friend of yours?” he asked and winked at her.

  “Aren’t you the flirt,” she said. Funny old man, she thought. She paid him and lay a gloved hand on his shoulder in a friendly way and gazed deeply into his wide-open eyes, startling and pleasing him. She thanked him for the directions and walked slowly around the front of the car and got in, letting him watch her.

  By the time she’d driven the four and a half miles north on Route 19 as instructed by the funny man at the filling station, the rain was falling steadily in cold, wind-driven waves. Through flapping windshield wipers she caught sight of the red farmhouse and horse barn he’d said to look for and pulled off the road. She bumped onto the dirt lane that passed by the farm and drove through the adjacent field where a blue sprawl of chicory spread from the lane into the field. A few hundred yards beyond the farm, she crossed the river on a narrow wooden bridge and entered the woods. After a few seconds the rain briefly let up, and from the car she could see fresh chanterelles glowing like nuggets among the sodden leaves.

  Then the rain resumed, and she had a hard time seeing where she was going. The lane wound uphill a ways, first through oak and maple trees, then through spruce and old red pines. After a while it dipped back toward the river again, ending at a large, two-story, cedar-shingled house situated on a rise in a hemlock grove. It overlooked an oxbow loop where the river slowed and widened into an eddy the size of a large mill pond. She parked as close to the front door as she could, removed her gloves, and dashed from the car up the wide stone steps and onto the front porch. She shook the raindrops from her hair and knocked on the door.

  Carefully tended flowers decorated the yard—perennials and rose-and lilac bushes and pale-faced hydrangeas and thriving herb gardens. There was a two-bay garage at the side of the house and down by the eddy in the river a building that looked like a boathouse and must be where he keeps his airplane, she thought. On the flood plain beyond the boathouse she noticed a large vegetable garden protected by a head-high deer fence. The house and outbuildings and grounds impressed her. It was clearly the center of a serious, hardworking country life. She assumed the large structure with the skylights at the back of the house was his studio. Smoke curled from a stovepipe chimney and light glowed from inside. She knew he was there—the famous artist ensconced in his skylit studio, working alone through the cold, gray afternoon making pictures—and was eager to see the man in his natural element.

  But first Vanessa Cole wanted to present herself to the woman of the house. She had learned the woman’s name while in Manhattan these weeks since her father’s funeral, but little else, for the artist’s wife was rarely seen in New York. Vanessa was curious about her—she wondered what the woman looked like, her age, her personal style. She wondered what kind of woman held on to a man like Jordan Groves. Or if indeed it could be done at all.

  The door came unlatched and opened in. A very tall woman, taller even than Vanessa and a few years older, stood behind the screened door. A country woman, she seemed, and strikingly attractive, with pale blue eyes and silken, straight blond hair cut shoulder length. Her plaid flannel shirt was open at the throat, with the sleeves rolled above her elbows, and her arms and face and neck had a gardener’s tan, not a sunbather’s. A pair of Irish setters paced restlessly in the shadows behind her.

  Vanessa said, “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m Vanessa Von Heidenstamm.”

  “How do you do,” Alicia said simply.

  Vanessa hesitated, expecting the woman to invite her inside. Finally she asked, “Are you Mrs. Groves?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was hoping to speak with your husband. We met…he came out to my parents’ camp a few weeks ago. On the Fourth—”

  “Yes. I know that. He told me,” Alicia said. Then added, “I’m sorry about your father.”

  Vanessa thanked her. She had caught the slight accent and wondered if it was German or Russian. Probably Russian, she thought. And probably why the locals think the artist is a Red.

  After a few seconds of silence, Alicia said, “Jordan’s in his studio. He doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s working.”

  “I understand. I’ll come back another time, then. When would be a good time?” she asked.

  Alicia looked at Vanessa Cole for a moment, as if taking her measure for the first time. Friend or foe? Neither, she decided. “The studio’s out back,” she said. “But it’s raining, so come inside. There’s a breezeway. You can get there from the kitchen without getting wet,” she said and pushed the screened door back, letting the woman into her house.

  Vanessa followed Alicia Groves into a warm, brightly lit kitchen that smelled of wood smoke and baking bread, and the dogs clattered along behind. Two blond boys, looking more like apprentice horticulturists than artists in training, sat at the long table with colored pencils and sketch pads, making careful botanical drawings of the thatch of wildflowers scattered before them. Theirs was a household guided by firm and fixed principles. Maybe the accent is German, Vanessa thought.

  Alicia opened the back door for her and pointed in the direction of the studio. “If he doesn’t wish to be disturbed, he will let you know,” she said.

  Vanessa walked along the breezeway to the windowless door of the studio and stopped there. The smell of wild thyme perfumed the air. Above the sound of the pounding rain she heard music inside—Ethel Waters, a sexy Negro singer whose plaintive voice she recognized, having heard her perform many times in uptown clubs back during Prohibition. Her ex-husband, the count, whom she liked to call Count No-Count, had been a fan of Negro music and bootleg gin, and back then so had she. Her divorce three years ago she associated with the end of Prohibition and Harlem nights and the beginning of her passion for swing and a taste for champagne. She waited for the song to end, then knocked.

  “Yeah?” Jordan called.

  “It’s me. It’s Vanessa…Vanessa Von Heidenstamm.”

  Silence. A few seconds passed, and the door swung open. A gust of dry heat from the big-bellied cast-iron stove in the corner hit her in the face. The artist wore an ink-smudged T-shirt and overalls and was smoking a cigar. He put the cigar between his lips and without a word turned away from her and went back to his bench, picked up his chisel and mallet, and continued working. He was carving into a large block of maple for a woodcut. Rain washed across the skylights overhead and drummed steadily against them. The large space of the studio was open to the roof and smelled of cigar smoke and burning wood and paint and turpentine. Vanessa inhaled deeply.

  With his back to her, the artist said, “Well, Miss Von Heidenstamm, what brings you way out here on a day like this?”

  Cabinets and counters and tool racks were neatly arranged up and down the length and width of the studio—everything orderly and squared and ready to hand. Drawings and sketches on paper were pinned to the four windowless walls and on easels and corkboards. Suspended above the workbench, paintings on canvas and board and boxes of prints had been carefully stored in a shallow loft. On a table next to the tin sink sat a hand-cranked wooden record player, one of the boxy new portable Victrolas, and racked stacks of glossy
black records. An overstuffed red leather armchair and reading lamp and a tall shelf crowded with books and magazines took up a near corner of the studio. Vanessa walked to the armchair and sat down, crossed her long legs, and lighted a cigarette.

  “My father’s ashes,” she said.

  He turned and looked at her. “Say what?”

  “In the backseat of my car there is a large ceramic jar. Chinese. Second-century BC. The Han era. The jar happens to have been one of my father’s most treasured and valuable possessions, and inside it are his cremated remains.”

  “Very interesting,” the artist said. “A little weird, though, if you want my opinion. Carting your father’s ashes around like that.”

  “Daddy was a little weird. Anyhow, that’s what brings me back up here. And brings me to you.”

  “What does?”

  “My father’s ashes,” she said. “By the way, is the town called Petersburg because you live here and you’re a Red, or do you live here because it’s called Petersburg and you’re a Red?”

  “None of the above,” he said and smiled. “It’s only a happy coincidence. Once a year I urge the town fathers to change it to Leningrad. They always vote it down.”

  “I wondered. Anyhow, I have a favor to ask.” She looked around the studio. “Do you have anything to drink? A little wine? I don’t suppose you have any champagne. I’d love a glass of champagne.”

  “It gives me a headache. I’ve got rum. Want a taste of old Havana?”

  She smiled brightly and like a child nodded yes, and he pulled a bottle and two shot glasses from a cabinet above the sink and poured.

  “Salud,” he said and drank.

  “Salud.” She drained her glass and set it on the floor, beside the chair. “I heard about your brawl at the Club. You must be a little crazy,” she said.

  “I don’t take lightly to insults. Not from twits like Kendall. Not from beautiful women, either.”

  “Neither do I, Mr. Groves. I assume you’re referring to me, but I don’t recall insulting you. Quite the opposite. In any case, I’m quick to forgive and quick to forget. What about you?”

  He didn’t answer. He refilled their glasses, then walked to the Victrola, cranked the handle a half-dozen turns, and placed a record on the spindle. The music was fast and pleasant, a quartet of black men singing and a single guitar.

  Vanessa listened for a moment, unsmiling. “That’s real cute,” she said sarcastically. “What is it?”

  “The song? It’s called ‘My Old Man.’ By some guys named the Spirits of Rhythm. It’s a group I heard at a Harlem joint a couple of years ago. You don’t remember cutting me cold at the Club that day?” The Spirits of Rhythm sang in the background, “My old man, he’s livin’ in a garbage can. Put a bottle of gin there an’ he’ll get in there…My old man, he’s only doin’ the best he can….”

  “So I gather you’re not quick to forgive and forget. What if I said I’m sorry?”

  “Quick to forgive. Apology accepted. Very slow to forget, however.”

  She said she was afraid of that, which was why she had been reluctant to come to him. But she felt she had no choice. He was the only person who could help her.

  “You don’t strike me as a girl who needs help from anybody. Least of all from me.”

  “My father wanted his ashes up here in the Adirondacks. In the Reserve. He wanted them scattered in the Second Lake. He was practically religious about it.”

  “Fine. Do it. What’s the problem?”

  “I can’t,” she said. “Not without help.” Russell Kendall, the manager of the Reserve, had informed her that it was against the rules to inter a body on Reserve land. By the same token it was equally against the rules to scatter the ashes of a deceased member in any of the lakes or streams in the Reserve.

  Jordan asked her why she didn’t carry her old man’s ashes up to the Second Lake in that Chinese jar and not tell anyone and just row out to the middle of the lake and empty the jar.

  “Impossible,” she said. Mr. Kendall had warned her against trying exactly that and had alerted the warden at the gate to check her belongings for Dr. Cole’s ashes if she tried to hike up to the lake and take out one of the guide boats. “The manager dislikes me only a little less than he dislikes you. But my grandfather was one of the founders, so all he can do is harass me. He can’t kick me off the place. We’re shareholders, members. When Mother and I went into the Reserve to go up to Rangeview yesterday afternoon, he and the warden stopped us at the gate and went through our pack baskets and even our purses. Like we were suspected smugglers and they were customs officers. It was a total humiliation for Mother. Luckily, we were only on sort of a reconnaissance mission, and we’d left the ashes in the car, or Kendall probably would have locked Daddy in the clubhouse safe.”

  Jordan laughed. “So what do you want me to do?”

  “I want you to fly me and Daddy to the Second Lake in your airplane. When you fly low over the water, I’ll do what Daddy expected me to do. That’s all.”

  “Nope,” Jordan said. “Can’t do it.”

  “Why not?” she asked. Then, pointing at the record player, “Look, I get the joke. Do we have to hear that song?”

  “What do you want to hear?” He lifted the record off the spindle and slipped it into its paper jacket and reracked it.

  “I want to hear you say you’ll help me do right by my father. I’ll pay you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “I know, money’s no object. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “I’ll give you one of those James Heldon paintings you seem to like so much.”

  “I don’t like them, actually,” he said. “No, that’s not quite true. There were two or three there that I admired. And I can get a Heldon on my own, thanks. But it doesn’t matter, I can’t help you.”

  “You mean ‘won’t.’ Why not?” She stood and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder. “I think you’re more afraid of me than angry. Besides, that morning at the Club all I did was tell you the truth. That’s not so bad, is it? You don’t have to be afraid of me, Jordan Groves. I won’t hurt you.”

  “Miss Von Heidenstamm…or is it Countess?”

  “Miss.”