Think Of a Number (2010) (8 page)

BOOK: Think Of a Number (2010)
10.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Of course, among these colorfully weird elements there were interspersed plenty of opportunities for tourists to spend money: stores and eateries whose names and decor were only a little outrageous and whose wares were tailored to the upscale visitors who liked to imagine they were exploring the cultural edge.

The loose web of roads radiating out from Peony’s business district led to money. Real-estate prices had doubled and tripled after 9/11, when New Yorkers of substantial means and galloping paranoia were captivated by the fantasy of a rural sanctuary. Homes in the hills surrounding the village grew in size and number, the SUVs morphed from Blazers and Broncos into Hummers and Land Rovers,
and the people who came for country weekends wore what Ralph Lauren told them people in the country wore.

Hunters, firemen, and teachers gave way to lawyers, investment bankers, and women of a certain age whose divorce settlements financed their cultural activities, skin treatments, and mind-expanding involvements with gurus of this and that. In fact, Gurney suspected that the local population’s appetite for guru-based solutions to life’s problems may have persuaded Mark Mellery to set up shop there.

He turned off the county highway just before the village center, following his Google directions onto Filchers Brook Road—which snaked up a wooded hillside. This brought him eventually to a roadside wall of native slate, laid nearly four feet high. The wall ran parallel to the road, set back about ten feet, for at least a quarter of a mile. The setback was thick with pale blue asters. Halfway along the stretch of wall, there were two formal openings about fifty feet apart, the entrance and exit of a circular drive. Affixed to the wall at the first of these openings was a discreet bronze sign:
MELLERY INSTITUTE FOR SPIRITUAL RENEWAL
.

Turning in to the driveway brought the aesthetic of the place into sharper focus. Everywhere Gurney looked, he was given an impression of unplanned perfection. Beside the gravel drive, autumn flowers seemed to grow in haphazard freedom. Yet he was sure this casual image, not unlike Mellery’s, received careful tending. As in many haunts of the low-profile rich, the note intoned was one of meticulous informality, nature as it ought to be, with no wilting bloom left unpruned. Following the driveway brought Gurney’s car to the front of a large Georgian manor house, as gently groomed as the gardens.

Standing in front of the house and eyeing him with interest was an imperious man with a ginger beard. Gurney rolled down his window and asked where the parking area might be found. The man replied with a plummy British accent that he should follow the drive to its end.

Unfortunately, this led Gurney out through the other opening in the stone wall onto Filchers Brook Road. He drove back around
through the entrance and followed the drive again to the front of the house, where the tall Englishman again regarded him with interest.

“The end of the drive took me to the public road,” said Gurney. “Did I miss something?”

“What a bloody fool I am!” the man cried with exaggerated chagrin that seemed in conflict with his natural bearing. “I think I know everything, but most of the time I’m wrong!”

Gurney had an inkling he might be in the presence of a madman. He also at that point noticed a second figure in the scene. Standing back in the shadow of a giant rhododendron, watching them intently, was a dark, stocky man who looked as if he might be waiting for a
Sopranos
audition.

“Ah,” cried the Englishman, pointing with enthusiasm farther along the drive, “there’s your answer! Sarah will take you under her protective wing. She’s the one for you!” Saying this with high theatricality, he turned and strode off, followed at some distance by the comic-book gangster.

Gurney drove on to where a woman stood by the driveway, solicitude writ large on her pudgy face. Her voice exuded empathy.

“Dear me, dear me, we’ve got you driving around in circles. That’s not a nice way to welcome you.” The level of concern in her eyes was alarming. “Let me take your car for you. Then you can go right into the house.”

“That’s not necessary. Could you just tell me where the parking area is?”

“Of course! Just follow me. I’ll make sure you don’t get lost this time.” Her tone made the task seem more daunting than one would imagine it to be.

She waved to Gurney to follow her. It was an expansive wave, as though she were commanding a caravan. In her other hand, at her side, she carried a closed umbrella. Her deliberate pace conveyed a concern that Gurney might lose sight of her. Reaching a break in the shrubbery, she stepped to the side, pointing Gurney into a narrow offshoot of the driveway that passed through the bushes. As he came abreast of her, she thrust the umbrella toward his open window.

“Take it!” she cried.

He stopped, nonplussed.

“You know what they say about mountain weather,” she explained.

“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He continued past her into the parking area, a place that looked able to accommodate twice the cars currently there, which Gurney numbered at sixteen. The neat rectangular space was nestled amid the ubiquitous flowers and shrubs. A lofty copper beech at the far end separated the parking area from a three-story red barn, its color vivid in the slanting sunlight.

He chose a space between two gargantuan SUVs. While he was parking, he became aware of a woman watching the process from behind a low bed of dahlias. When he got out of the car, he smiled politely at her—a dainty violet of a woman, small-boned and delicate of feature, with an old-fashioned look about her. If she were an actress, thought Gurney, she’d be a natural to play Emily Dickinson in
The Belle of Amherst
.

“I wonder if you could tell me where I might find Mark—” But the violet interrupted him with her own question.

“Who the fuck said you could park there?”

Chapter 11
A unique ministry

F
rom the parking area, Gurney followed a cobblestone pathway around the Georgian mansion, which he guessed would be used as the institute’s business office and lecture center, to a smaller Georgian house about five hundred feet behind it. A small gold-lettered sign by the path read
PRIVATE RESIDENCE
.

Mark Mellery opened the door before Gurney knocked. He wore the same sort of costly-casual attire he’d worn on his visit to Walnut Crossing. Against the background of the institute’s architecture and landscape, the apparel lent him a squire-like aura.

“Good to see you, Davey!”

Gurney stepped into a spacious chestnut-floored entry hall furnished with antiques, and Mellery led the way to a comfortable study toward the rear of the house. A blaze crackling softly in the fireplace perfumed the room with a hint of cherry smoke.

Two wing chairs stood opposite each other to the right and left of the fireplace and, with the sofa that faced the hearth, formed a U-shaped sitting area. When they were settled in the chairs, Mellery asked whether he’d had any trouble finding his way around the property. Gurney recounted the three peculiar conversations he’d had, and Mellery explained that the three individuals were guests of the institute and their behavior constituted part of their self-discovery therapy.

“In the course of his or her stay,” Mellery explained, “each guest plays ten different roles. One day he might be the Mistake Maker—that sounds like the role Worth Partridge, the British chap, was playing when you came upon him. Another day he might be the Helper—that’s the role Sarah, who wanted to park your car, was playing. Another role is the Confronter. The last lady you encountered sounds like she was playing that part with extra relish.”

“What’s the point?”

Mellery smiled. “People act out certain roles in their lives. The content of the roles—the scripts, if you will—is consistent and predictable, although generally unconscious and rarely seen as a matter of choice.” He was warming to his subject, despite the fact he must have spoken these explanatory sentences hundreds of times. “What we do here is simple, although many of our guests consider it profound. We make them aware of the roles they unconsciously play, what the benefits and costs of those roles are, and how they affect others. Once our guests see their patterns of behavior in the light of day, we help them see that each pattern is a choice. They can retain or discard it. Then—this is the most important part—we provide them a program of action to replace damaging patterns with healthier ones.”

The man’s anxiety, Gurney noted, receded as he spoke. The subject had put an evangelical brightness in his eyes.

“By the way, all this might sound familiar to you.
Pattern, choice
, and
change
are the three most overused words in the whole shabby world of self-help. But our guests tell us that what we do here is different—the heart of it is different. Just the other day, one of them said to me, ‘This is the most perfect place on earth.’”

Gurney tried to keep skepticism out of his voice. “The therapeutic experience you provide must be very powerful.”

“Some find it so.”

“I’ve heard that some powerful therapies are quite confrontational.”

“Not here,” said Mellery. “Our approach is soft and welcoming.
Our favorite pronoun is
we
, not
you
. We speak about
our
failings and fears and limitations. We never point at anyone and accuse
them
of anything. We believe that accusations are more likely to strengthen the walls of denial than to break them down. After you look through one of my books, you’ll understand the philosophy better.”

“I just thought things might occasionally happen on the ground, so to speak, that weren’t part of the philosophy.”

“What we say is what we do.”

“No confrontations at all?”

“Why do you belabor the point?”

“I was wondering if you’d ever kicked anyone hard enough in the balls to make him want to kick you back.”

“Our approach rarely makes anyone angry. Besides, whoever my pen pal is, he’s from a part of my life long before the institute.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

A confused frown appeared on Mellery’s face. “He’s fixated on my drinking days, something I did drunk, so it has to be before I founded the institute.”

“On the other hand, it could be someone involved with you in the present who read about your drinking in your books and wants to scare you.”

As Mellery’s gaze wandered through a new array of possibilities, a young woman entered. She had intelligent green eyes and red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“Sorry to intrude. I thought you might want to see your phone messages.”

She handed Mellery a small pile of pink message notes. His surprised expression gave Gurney the sense that he was not often interrupted this way.

“At least,” she said, raising an eyebrow significantly, “you might want to look at the one on top.”

Mellery read it twice, then bent forward and handed the message form across the table to Gurney, who also read it twice.

On the “To” line was written: Mr. Mellery.

On the “From” line was written: X. Arybdis.

In the space allocated to “Message” were the following lines of verse:

Of all the truths
you can’t remember
,
here are the truest two:
Every act demands its price
.
And every price comes due
.
I’ll call tonight to promise you
I’ll see you in November
or, if not, in December
.

Gurney asked the young woman if she herself had taken the message. She glanced at Mellery.

He said, “I’m sorry, I should have introduced you. Sue, this is an old and good friend of mine, Dave Gurney. Dave, meet my wonderful assistant, Susan MacNeil.”

“Nice to meet you, Susan.”

She smiled politely and said, “Yes, I was the one who took the message.”

“Man or woman?”

She hesitated. “Odd you should ask. My first impression was a man. A man with a high voice. Then I wasn’t sure. The voice changed.”

“How?”

“At first it sounded like a man trying to sound like a woman. Then I got the idea that it might be a woman trying to sound like a man. There was something unnatural about it, something forced.”

“Interesting,” said Gurney. “One more thing—did you write down everything this person said?”

She hesitated. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“It looks to me,” he said, holding up the pink slip, “like this message was dictated to you carefully, even the line breaks.”

“That’s right.”

“So he must have told you that the arrangement of the lines was important, that you should write them exactly as he dictated them.”

“Oh, I see. Yes, he did tell me where to start each new line.”

“Was anything else said that’s not actually written here?”

“Well … yes, he did say one other thing. Before he hung up, he asked if I worked at the institute directly for Mr. Mellery. I said yes, I did. Then he said, ‘You might want to look at new job opportunities. I’ve heard that spiritual renewal is a dying industry.’ He laughed. He seemed to think it was very funny. Then he told me to make sure Mr. Mellery got the message right away. That’s why I brought it over from the office.” She shot a worried look at Mellery. “I hope that was okay.”

“Absolutely,” said Mellery, imitating a man in control of a situation.

“Susan, I notice you refer to the caller as ‘he,’” said Gurney. “Does that mean that you’re pretty sure it was a man?”

“I think so.”

“Did he give any indication what time tonight he planned to call?”

“No.”

“Is there anything else you remember, anything at all, no matter how trivial?”

Her brow furrowed a little. “I got a sort of creepy feeling—a feeling that he wasn’t very nice.”

“He sounded angry? Tough? Threatening?”

“No, not that. He was polite, but …”

Gurney waited while she searched for the right words.

“Maybe too polite. Maybe it was the odd voice. I can’t say for sure what gave me the feeling. He scared me.”

After she left to go back to her office in the main building, Mellery stared at the floor between his feet.

BOOK: Think Of a Number (2010)
10.07Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Stand Of Honor by Williams, Cathryn
Layers by Sigal Ehrlich
Dirty Chick by Antonia Murphy
Cheddar Off Dead by Julia Buckley
04 Naked Games by Anne Rainey
Boundary Waters by William Kent Krueger