The Road to Wellville (68 page)

Will couldn’t help himself. Her words made his blood quicken and he knew that as long as he had her he’d never again need the Heidelberg Belt or Eleanor’s encouragement or anything else. The boat sank beneath them, rocked back up again. A pair of geese skimmed the surface with a short sharp cry and settled down in a fan of spray. “It’s very kind of you to say that, Irene—it means an awful lot to me,” he said, and he could feel his heart pounding. This was it, this was the moment he’d been waiting for. “You’re very sweet, you are, and you know how I feel about you, how I’ve felt since the beginning—”

She cut him off with a gesture. Their knees were touching. The wind took her hair. Her eyes glowed. He remembered the day they’d had their debate over Dr. Kellogg and his methods and the look of reverence and surrender that had come into her eyes at the mere mention of the man’s name. That was how she looked now, but this time it wasn’t Dr.
Kellogg who’d inspired her, oh no—but would she leave the San, could he ever convince her? He hadn’t thought of that, it could be a real obstacle, and yet he knew he could win her over, he knew it—

But what was she saying?

“I wanted you to be the first to know.”

The waves beat at the bow. Will felt his stomach sink. “Know what?”

She held it an instant, and there it was, the sun, the breeze, the glory of the sky that existed only to frame her, to show her off, envelop her in all her ripe rich beauty and the poignancy of the moment: “I’m getting married.”

“Married?” The word burst from his lips in a verbal eructation, autonomous, barely formed. “What do you mean?” he asked stupidly.

She was holding up a finger now, the ring finger of her left hand, and he saw a ring in place there, a little thing with a minuscule stone, so small it was hardly there at all—but how could he have missed it? How could he have been so misguided? So stupid? So self-involved? Suddenly, in a flash, he saw it all as clearly as if it were written out for him: the childhood sweetheart, the yokel, the bumpkin, chickens scratching in the yard, her breasts pendulous with milk, feet splayed, figure ruined, her face seamed and rucked and creased till it looked like a dried-up mud puddle…. How could he have been so blind?

The pucker of the lips, a little moue. “His name’s Tommy Reardon.”

Will couldn’t speak. Tommy Reardon. What had he been thinking, what was wrong with him? She was getting married.
Getting married
. And he’d never even suspected, never guessed she had a life outside the San … oh, the waste of it, the waste.

The boat rocked, the wind blew. What about me, he wanted to shout, what about Peterskill and my father and my stomach and Dick the wirehaired terrier? She was merciless, that’s what she was, thoughtless, toying with him all along. He stared bitterly at her. What was she, anyway? An ignorant farm girl, too broad in the beam and too big in the chest, a woman who worshiped the little charlatan who’d ruined his life—and what did that say about her? She was a follower, a gizzardite, a nurse. But he’d loved her, he had—oh, how he’d loved her—and the hurt and bitterness twisted inside him. He covered his face with the handkerchief
.

“Will?” she said gently, and he hated the sound of his own name on her lips—why couldn’t she call him ‘Mr. Lightbody’? He was a paying customer, wasn’t he? “Will? Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

The question seemed to hover over him, as big and bloated as a balloon, and he never answered it. Suddenly he thought of Eleanor, Eleanor with her quack doctor, with Badger and Virginia Cranehill and all the rest, baptized in nudism, free love, vegetarian ecstasy, and a kind of panic seized him even as the fire roared back to life in his deepest gut. In that moment, that dismal hopeless itchy-eyed wave-driven abyss of a moment, he understood that he loved Eleanor more than anything in the world. Eleanor, only Eleanor.

   
Chapter 8   

I
t felt odd to be sitting in a darkened room at eleven-thirty in the morning watching a bunch of matrons parade around a stage spouting out health-food slogans. Extremely odd. And uncomfortable. For Charlie Ossining it was a form of torture one step removed from the application of hot irons to the soles of the feet. Couldn’t they at least have gotten someone halfway attractive up there? Or under sixty, at any rate? Where was Eleanor Lightbody when they needed her? He wouldn’t have minded seeing her up there under the lights, sashaying across the stage and declaiming her lines about putrid flesh and demon rum as if she meant them. These others were strictly amateurs—and not much to look at, either.

But here he was, in the Grand Parlor of the Sanitarium, in the very camp of the enemy, suffering, and all because Mrs. Hookstratten willed it. She sat beside him now, her spectacles shining, as absorbed as if she were watching Sarah Bernhardt and David Warfield go at it. She’d invited him for the day’s festivities, beginning with the play and then a private luncheon, to be followed by the rest of the San’s holiday program—marching bands, picnic supper, fireworks and he didn’t know what else—and the invitation had been anything but casual. She’d insisted. Demanded. Required his presence. And he didn’t dare demur, because she’d offered an inducement far sweeter than mere duty: money
. Hard cash. The wherewithal to save his neck and set him back on the road to financial well-being, prosperity, the making of his first million and more, much more. He was going to be a tycoon yet. Oh, yes. Oh, yes, indeed.

What it amounted to was this: Mrs. Hookstratten was doubling her investment. And why? Because she believed in him, because he was her boy, her own boy, and because he’d used all his powers of persuasion on her, talking till his larynx ached and the spittle went dry in his throat.
It’s a wise investment, rock-solid
, he assured her the day after the tour of the spurious factory,
and I know you’re already one of our biggest investors, but the fact is we need capital to expand
. He’d given her figures, invented but plausible, and explained how the giants like Kellogg and Post were squeezing him, and she was sympathetic and clearly reassured by the sight of the factory, but she held back, cautious and hesitant, and wouldn’t give him a commitment. He kept after her. If he’d made himself scarce prior to the factory visit, now he was invariably at her side. They lunched and dined and breakfasted and he took her on rides in the country and walks in the park, all the while pleading his case. And now, finally, she’d come round: today, at the luncheon, she was to present him with a check for an additional seven thousand five hundred dollars.

Seven thousand five hundred dollars! The amount jolted him, made his blood rush—he’d hardly had the nerve to name a figure, and yet when it had come down to it, he found his lips moving.
How much do you need? she’d asked. Seven thousand five hundred dollars
, he’d answered without hesitation, naming a sum that was large but not impossible, hoping for half that and willing to bargain down if he had to—Bender had taught him well. Of course, the name “Per-Fo” had to go and the real manufacturing plant would be a good deal more modest than the fictive one, but he’d explain all that later. Much later.

For now, though, he was a guest of the Sanitarium once again. His whiskers had grown in and he was parting his hair in the center and wearing a pair of spectacles he didn’t need fitted with lenses as clear as windowpanes, and he was confident—reasonably confident, anyway—that the little martinet who ran the place wouldn’t recognize him. Still, as he watched the square-shouldered old lady in the greasepaint mustaches
agonize over the fatal luncheon of the play’s title—oysters and sparkling wine, ironically enough—he couldn’t help stealing a glance over his shoulder from time to time.

If he felt vaguely uneasy, Mrs. Hookstratten was no comfort. She seemed strangely distant, as if there were a wall between them, and when she laughed at the rare comic interlude the play provided, the laugh seemed to catch in her throat. Then, too, when she’d greeted him that morning her smile had seemed unsteady and there was something about the way she held herself, the way she looked at him, that he didn’t like. Was she suspicious? Had she by some ugly mischance driven past the factory and discovered its true colors? Had she been talking to people? There
was
the matter of George Kellogg—he’d nearly brought the whole thing down that night in the rain, piss drunk and stinking of it, cadging change and making pointed comments beneath the umbrella—but Charlie had explained all that to her, painstakingly and at length. (They’d been deceived by the fellow, that was all, taken in, swayed by his name and the philanthropic mission to which his father had devoted himself—until they discovered his weakness for the bottle. Well, he and his associates had discussed the matter and felt they simply couldn’t condone that sort of behavior and they’d resolved to drop the Kellogg name—it would be “Per-Fo” hereafter, plain and simple. And didn’t she prefer it that way? After all, the public would be depending on them to lead the way in scientific eating, to set an example, and, sad to say, there was no place for a tosspot in their ranks—honesty was the best policy, wasn’t it?)

Still, there was something wrong. He could feel it in the air the way he might have felt a dip in the barometer before an electrical storm. He felt it as the blocky woman in the greasepaint mustaches collapsed into her plate, done in by oysters and drink, felt it as the audience clapped their approval and the actors took their bow and the hour of Mrs. Hookstratten’s luncheon drew near. The square-shouldered woman descended from the stage and he offered his congratulations in a daze, all the while keeping his eyes on his benefactress, trying to read her, fathom her, pin it down: what was wrong here?

Nothing, he told himself, nothing at all. He had to get a grip on himself. He was just anxious because of the check, that was all. Mrs.
Hookstratten would never do anything to hurt him—no matter what she knew or what he’d done. He was her project, her great experiment, more a son to her than the one she’d given birth to. She wouldn’t have invited him if she were suspicious, wouldn’t have offered the check if anything had changed between them. Would she?