Rich Friends (14 page)

Except.

There was Beverly. He would glance across restaurant tables to see huge amber eyes remote. A standoffish expression. He would ache to put his arms around her, at the same time battling a desire to slap her until he saw marks angry-red across her cheek. It wasn't going to work this way. Never. So go climb Everest, swim the English Channel, run a four-minute mile. Find the big one.

4

Dan considered Alvena Earle's undeveloped land, in the heart of the San Fernando Valley, adjacent to the Ventura Freeway, his big one. It would be, he knew, a bargain at a million.

Alvena had no intention of selling. She lived on the property, landlady to the gray field mouse, the jackrabbit, the garter snake, as well as his quarry, the industrious gopher. She had planted trees—apricot, guava, pomegranate, avocado, evergreen, citrus, walnut, and silvery olive. She irrigated with buckets of water. She would toss handfuls of wild poppy seed, and in early spring her land would burn with color, a molten reflection of the sun.

Alvena had one living relative. A son.

Raymond Earle.

Raymond had been an obese child with the copper skin that comes from an overload of carotene. His eyes slid away when anyone looked at him. His mind worked in strange patterns. Instinctively, other children avoided him. Raymond therefore engaged in solitary vice: ignoring his mother's anathema against refined food, he would slowly consume Uno Bars (filched from Thrifty Drug) while lying on his back, hidden by rough, almost colorless wild oats. Here, Raymond would consider his classmates' failings, for each child constructing an extensive list of major defects. This endowed him with a sense of Godlike power. In their presence, though, he felt inferior. This baffled him. He, Raymond Earle, was omnipotent, so why, with the others, should he feel small, uneasy, a worm? Superimposed on rustling green overhead, he would see his schoolmates' damned souls writhing in torments, torments that he concocted from newspaper reports of the Nuremberg Trials. He would eat his swiped chocolate, dreaming away the hours.

When he was sixteen, he rose one moonlit night. Taking a box and long, stolen ham knife from under his straw pallet, he hurried to the farthest corner of the lot. From a hidden trap he took a scrawny male jackrabbit, cutting the animal's throat while he devoured a two-pound box of Awful Fresh MacFarlane chocolate-covered cherries.

The delicatessen had made Dan thirsty. He asked for water, and Alvena, going into the trumpet vine-covered shack, returned with a glass of muddy liquid. Dan eyed the green flecks suspiciously, but he was dying. Stale grapefruit peelings dashed with pepper, the taste.

“Herb tea,” Alvena said, sinking crosslegged on hard earth near his chair. “Made it for Raymond.”

“Raymond?”

“My son,” she explained.

“You have kids?”

“One. Raymond.” Alvena spent words economically.

“He doesn't live with you?”

“Got his own place. Raymond needs the tea. He's liable to hemorrhoids. Eats refined carbohydrates and meat.” Then her leathery skin frayed into a smile. “Good boy, though. Stops in after his shift Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

Dan was amused. Alvena Earle, strange grasshopper creature, proud of and worrying about her son. Dan was touched. And that always vigilant part of his brain, instinct you could call it, told him something big was about to come off.

Alvena rose, tilting her head. “Raymond,” she said. “Hear him?”

Dan heard breeze rustling the avocado branches, the Ventura Freeway. “Nope,” he said.

But within a minute between fruit trees came a short fat man stuffed into a cheap suit. Raymond was thirty but overweight, and his duckfooted walk made him appear closer to fifty.

“Dan Grossblatt,” Alvena introduced. “Raymond Earle.”

She darted through the unpainted door. Glancing after his mother, Raymond mopped his brow and asked in a muted voice, “Mr. Grossblatt, what brings you to Mother's hideaway?”

“Didn't she mention why?” Dan was pretty sure she had. Still, who can guess the confidence shared by parent and child?

Ropes protested as Raymond sank into an old-fashioned porch hammock. “Mother never says much.” He evaded the question and Dan's eyes.

“It's no secret. I'm interested in putting up a shopping center.”

“Is Mother interested?”

“What's your opinion?”

“She won't sell.”

“How do you feel about it?”

“The matter's not up to me.”

“You have been thinking, though?”

“Yes,” Raymond whispered. “In my opinion land's at an all-time high.”

Dan's pitch to the reluctant seller. He threw his best curve. “And who knows how the hell long prices'll hold?”

“This seems like a good time to get out.”

“Why not tell your mother?”

“She doesn't listen to me. Or anyone.”

Dan chuckled. “Don't I know. I've been here six times.”

“Good. Very good. Excellent. I've certainly got to hand it to you, Mr. Grossblatt. You're persistent. No one else has ever got this far with her. You … certainly are persuasive.”

(There was something too cozy about the hesitation, as if it held an unspoken word. The evading eyes bitched Dan. But Raymond was Alvena Earle's weak spot.)

“I've broken my ass, but she hasn't given me a single opening.” Abruptly Dan stopped. Alvena was returning with another glass of herb tea and a bowl of poker-chip dried apricots.

They talked about Raymond's work, selling kitchen appliances in the Van Nuys Sears. The swing creaked, the trumpet vine's vanilla scent wafted over to them.

A siren.

Another siren. Warm air groaned with sirens. Peace was shattered. Alvena stirred on her bony rump.

“Must be an accident,” Dan said.

“Idiots on their freeways!” Alvena snapped. “Racing from nowhere to nowhere. Killing one another. That's their business. But fumes murder everyone!”

“A fact,” Dan said. Excitement suddenly was filling his brain until it seemed the convolutions must explode. His mouth was dry, his armpits wet. Many businessmen rehearse their pitch. Dan always played it by ear. When the key situation arose (and he always knew when), words came spontaneously. “Carbon monoxide destroys the lungs,” he said.

“Shreds them,” Alvena agreed. “Exhaust does it.”

“And traps cold germs,” Dan said. Alvena, he knew, considered colds the pimps for heavy disease. “People in cities have more colds.”

“Direct ratio,” Alvena agreed.

“Also, I read carbon monoxide stunts the brain.”

“Ruins the kidneys.” Alvena.

“How about genetic damage?” Dan tried to remember: had he read this in
Time
's Medicine?

“Overpowering evidence.”

“What overpowering?”

“Smaller babies. Mothers breathing polluted air.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Dan said. “However hard you try, who can stay healthy?”

The swing no longer creaked. Raymond Earle was listening intently.

Dan, feeling an idiot, pushed on. “Every day you hear of more and more cancer. The lungs, the mouth, the throat, bone marrow, breast, prostate. Colon.” He paused. “Guy I know had a colostomy yesterday. Thirty-nine, and there he is, a sack on him.”

At this, Alvena thoughtfully removed a tiger moth from her sleeve. And then Dan remembered her fear that Raymond might get piles.

“Cancer?” she asked.

“Yep. Cancer,” Dan said. “And as far as the lungs're concerned, live in this crap and you might as well smoke.”

Alvena stiffened. Raymond rubbed his thumb against his forefinger. And Dan knew he'd gone too far. His second visit Alvena had invited him to sit down and discuss the Mosaic dietary laws, and he'd relaxed, starting to light a Havana. She had turned crimson. He had figured she had suffered an internal hemorrhage, split a gut or something. Snatching the cigar from him, she had stamped it out as if she'd been killing a rattlesnake.

“Nothing's worse than smoking,” she said flatly.

Raymond stood, the hammock swinging drunkenly behind him. “Time,” he said. “Mother, I'll see you Thursday.”

Alvena held up a staying finger, popping inside.

Dan rose. “I'll go with you.”

Alvena returned with a wrinkled brown sack, shoveling in small, dark dried apricots. “Here,” she said to Raymond.

As soon as trees hid them, Raymond took from his pocket a handful of Hershey kisses. He offered them to Dan. Dan refused. Raymond peeled foil. “What's the land worth?” he asked.

“Maybe a quarter of a million.”

“I'd've guessed more.” Raymond popped chocolate into his mouth.

“It's so improbable she'll sell, I haven't checked it out.”

“What sort of shopping center? A market?”

“And a few other shops.”

“It's an excellent location,” Raymond said. He stopped walking, gazing up at green leaves, smiling as if he saw something infinitely more pleasant than moving patterns of leaves against blue sky. Then he pushed aside a knobby manzanita branch, and they emerged on the street. Behind Dan's Jaguar was parked a dusty gray Ford with a plastic hula girl in the rear window.

Raymond patted Dan's silver paint job. “A lot of horses,” he said. “Did Mother mention both her parents died of cancer?”

“They did?”

“Grandmother Bollenbacker died of lung cancer just a year after I was born. And Grandfather died before that. Two years—no, it was three. Cancer of the throat. They left her this land. She nursed them.”

“Which makes this health mania a lot more understandable.”

Raymond sighed a little too dolefully. “She worries about me.”

“She did mention you had hemorrhoids.”

For the first time Raymond met Dan's gaze. A fine gloss of sweat shone on the fat little man's shaved upper lip.

“Maybe I can help,” he said.

Raymond Earle made Dan itch: there had been his odd, cozy pause, there were his peculiar eyes. But this was the first progress Dan had made. And he surged with energy to possess this tree-shaded acreage. He needed it. Beverly and he needed it. This land was tangled up with their happiness.

He extricated a card from his wallet. “Call me,” he said to Raymond. “We'll have lunch. Talk.”

5

The month that Beverly's divorce became final, she had trouble sleeping. This was different from the insomnia that had troubled her a year earlier, during her futile battle to stay married to Philip. Then she had spent her wakeful nights like a test animal strapped to the table, unable to pass out despite the pain of the operation. Now she would doze immediately, only to waken in minutes, eyes open, muscles tensed. Terrified. Each night she would consider asking Dan to sleep over, then she would think, “The children.”

On this particular May night—about a week before the wedding—she jolted awake as if hit by an electrical charge, her mind alert, hopping with guilts of every variety. She stared into darkness. And saw, as she often saw, victims of the divorce lined up to accuse her. DeeDee Grossblatt (diamonds and lacquered black hair), whom she'd met only once. Michael and Vic, Dan's adopted little boys, one fat and the other skinny, both now in therapy. Then her parents, eyes dismayed, mouths pursed disapprovingly. Philip wearing his sailing jacket, his face lifted into a superior expression, picking up his children. A Sunday father. And most clearly of all, she saw her son and daughter. Sunday children. Jamie, thin arms awkwardly at his sides. Alix, fixed up to see her father with a full hour's care—and she wasn't yet twelve!

Beverly's hands were icy. She lay in dark silence and found herself composing a liturgical prayer: “Forgive me for my selfishness. Forgive me for causing unhappiness. Forgive me for ruining lives. Forgive me for indulging myself. Forgive me for being a rotten mother. How can You forgive me when I can't forgive myself?”

Pulling on her old flowered Viyella robe, she went into the hall, which was lit. Both children slept with their doors ajar. She paused at Jamie's room. Her pupils adjusted to the dimness, and she saw him sleeping on his left side, his gangly right arm flung over his forehead. She smiled, a gentle, unconscious smile. Only in dark night moments like these could Beverly admit the unusual quality of her love for her son. Sometimes the depth of this love frightened her. Yet she could not deny it. If a coat of many colors were in style, she would have dressed Jamie in one.

Slowly she walked to Alix's room. She heard the faint, asthmatic whistle. My fault, she thought. It did not enter Beverly's head that Alix had had asthma since babyhood, simply that she was suffering now and therefore it must come as a result of the divorce. Each stentorian breath reminded Beverly of her guilt. She peered through dimness at the head raised on pillows and haloed with huge, purple aluminum rollers. Awake, Alix's mouth and dark eyes were tilted with eager charm. In sleep, a sadness relaxed the open lips. Alix looked her age. Or less. A child. A lovely, deserted child. Beverly sighed.

But say you could go back to before, would you?

No.

Even though leaving Philip has brought much misery?

With Dan I no longer feel that terrible loneliness.

Ahh. A high-minded cause.

I'm not high-minded. I just seem to act. I can't help myself.

Then each time one of them—Alix, Jamie, and yes, Philip, too—suffers, you will suffer.

I know. That's what guilt does.

And while hearing this interior voice—her conscience—Beverly also was thinking with acute pleasure that in nine days she and Dan would be married. She hugged her arms over her small, pretty breasts. About the marriage she could feel no remorse, only an inexcusable joy. She was happy with Dan, in and out of bed. All his traits, even that bellicosity, delighted her. His warmth, his energy, his openness—she couldn't begin to enumerate his good qualities.