To Sail Beyond the Sunset (45 page)

“Oh, dear! I’ve talked business too long. Come to bed, George, and let me try to make it up to you.”

He did and we cuddled, but the essential miracle did not take place. At last I said, “Shall I apply a little direct magic? Or would you rather rest?”

“Maureen, what is it you want from Harriman Industries? You have not done this just to perplex me.”

“Of course not, George. I want to be elected a director of Harriman Industries, the holding company. Later on you will need me on the board of some of the corporations being held by it. However, I will continue to decide how to time prophecies…as timing is everything.”

“A director. There are no women on the board.”

“There will be when you nominate me and I am elected.”

“Maureen, please! All directors are major stockholders.”

“How much stock does it take to be eligible?”

“One share complies with the rules. But company policy calls for major ownership. In the holding company or any of its subsidiaries.”

“How much? Shares. No, dollar value by the market; the various corporate shares are not all the same value per share. Not any, I should say.”

“Uh, Mr. Harriman and I think a director should own, or acquire soon after election, at least half a million in market value of shares. It fixes his attention on what he is voting on.”

“George, on Monday at the close of market my summed up position in all of your companies was $872,039.81—I can bring that up to an even million in a few days if it would help to smooth the way.”

George’s eyebrows went way up. “Maureen, I didn’t know that you owned any of our stock. I should have spotted your name in connection with any large block.”

“I use dummies. Some in Zurich, some in Canada, some in New York. I can get it all into my own name if there is any reason to.”

“We’ll need some intelligences filed with us, at least. Maureen, am I free to tell Mr. Harriman about your envelopes? Your prophecies?”

“How would he feel about them?”

“I’m not sure. He and I have been in business together since the twenties…but I don’t know him. He’s a plunger… I’m a plough horse.”

“Well, let’s keep it a bedroom secret for now. Perhaps you will want to open the next envelope in his presence. Or perhaps not. George, if the public, particularly the Street, got hold of the idea that you were making business decisions on the advice of a soothsayer, it might damage Harriman Industries, might it not?”

“I think you’re right. All right, bedroom secret.” He suddenly smiled. “But if I said that I consulted an astrologer, half of those knotheads would consider it ‘scientific.’”

“And now let’s drop it, and let me see if I can get our plough horse interested in ploughing me. George, do all the men in your family have oversize penises?”

“Not that I know of and I think you are trying to flatter me.”

“Well, it seems big to me. Hey! It’s getting bigger!”

Serpent’s Tooth

My problems for the next ten years were Princess Polly, Priscilla, Donald, George Strong…and a curious metaphysical problem I still don’t know how to resolve—or how I should have resolved it, although I have talked it over in depth with my husband and friend Dr. Jubal Harshaw and with some of the finest mathematico-manipulative cosmologists in any universe, starting with Elizabeth “Slipstick Libby” Long. It involves the age-old pseudo-paradox of free will and predestination.

Free will is a fact, while you are living it. And predestination is a fact when you look at any sequence from outside.

But in World-as-Myth neither “free will” nor “predestination” have meaning. Each is semantically null. If we are simply patterns of fictions put together by fabulists, then one may as well speak of “free will” for pieces in a chess game. After the game is history and the chessmen have been placed back in the box, does the Red Queen lose sleep moaning “Oh, I should never have taken that pawn!”

Ridiculous.

I am not an assemblage of fictions. I was not created by a fabulist. I am a human woman, daughter of human parents, and mother of seventeen boys and girls in my first life and mother of still more in my first rejuvenation. If I am controlled by destiny, then that destiny lies in my genes…not in the broodings of some near-sighted introvert hunched over a roboscriber.

The trouble was that there came a time as we neared the end of the decade that I realized that Theodore had told me about a tragedy that possibly could be prevented. Or could it? Could I use my free will to break the golden chains of predestination? Could I use my foreknowledge that something was going to happen to cause it not to happen?

Let’s turn it upside down—If I keep something from happening, how could I have foreknowledge of something that never happened?

Don’t try to sort that out; you’ll bite your own tail.

Is it ever possible to avoid an appointment in Samarra?

I knew that the power satellite was going to blow up, killing everybody aboard. But in 1952 no one else knew there ever would be a power satellite. In 1952 it was not even a blueprint.

What was my duty?

On Friday Dr. Rumsey told me that Priscilla was not pregnant and that she was physically old enough to be bred and that he was willing to support a delayed birth certificate, if I wanted her to have one, showing an age anywhere from thirteen to nineteen…but that in his opinion she was childish in her attitudes.

I agreed. “But I may have to phony an age of at least sixteen.”

“I see. Her brother is screwing her, isn’t he?”

I answered, “Is this room soundproofed?”

“Yes. And so is my nurse. We’ve heard everything, dear, much of it worse than a little brother-sister incest. We had a case last week—not Howards, thank God—of ‘His brother is screwing him.’ Be glad your kids are normal. With brother-sister games all that is usually needed is to see to it that she doesn’t get pregnant and that they get over it in time to marry somebody else. Which they almost always do. Haven’t you run into this before?”

“Yes. Before you took over your father’s practice. Didn’t he tell you?”

“Are you kidding? Pop treats the Hippocratic Oath as handed down from on high. How did it work out?”

“Okay in the long run, although it worried me at the time. Older sister taught younger brother and then younger brother taught still younger sister. I walked on eggs for a while, wondering whether to catch them or just to keep an eye out for trouble. But they never let it get intense; they just enjoyed it. My kids are a horny lot, all of them.”

“And you aren’t?”

“Shall I take off my panties? Or shall we finish this discussion?”

“I’m too tired. Go on.”

“Sissy. Eventually they all took the Howard shilling, and now all three couples are friendly, with, I think, occasional Westchester weekends. But they keep such things out of my sight to keep from shocking poor old strait-laced Mama. But these two don’t have that easygoing attitude. Jim, I’ve got to get that girl married.”

“Maureen, Priscilla isn’t ready to get married. The cure would be worse than the disease. You would ruin some man’s life while spoiling hers, not to mention the damage to possible children. Hmm—Priscilla told me she had just moved here from Dallas. I don’t know Marian. Hardy family—right? What sort of a person is Marian?”

“Jim, I am not an unprejudiced witness.”

“That from the woman who can always see the good side in the Devil himself tells me all I need to know. Well, Marian may have had good intentions but she did not do a good job on Priscilla. At least not good enough to risk letting her marry at fourteen no matter how mature her pelvic measurements are. Maureen, I’ll fake any age you say—but don’t let her get married so young.”

“I’ll try, dear. I’ve got a tiger by the tail. Thank you.”

He kissed me good-bye. Shortly I said, “Stop that; you said you were too tired. And you’ve got a waiting room full of patients.”

“Sissy.”

“Yup. Some other time, dear. Give my love to Velma. I want to get you both over for dinner next week to see my new house. Maybe then.”

Princess Polly took a while to accept the move. For two weeks I kept her indoors and using a sand box. Then I let her out. An hour later, not being able to find her, I drove slowly back the eight blocks to our old house. When I was almost there, I spotted her, parked quickly and called her. She stopped and listened, let me approach her, then scampered away, straight for her old home. No, her only home.

I watched in horror as she crossed diagonally at Meyer and Rockhill—two busy boulevards. She made it safely and I breathed again and went back for my car and drove to our old house, arriving as she did because I conformed to traffic rules while she did not. I let her sniff around inside an empty house for a few minutes, then picked her up and brought her home.

For the next ten days this was repeated once and sometimes twice a day. Then came a day—the day after Labor Day, I believe—when a wrecking crew arrived to clear the site. George had warned me, so that day I did not let her out; I took her there—let her go inside as usual and sniff around, then the crew arrived and started tearing the house down. Princess came running to me and I let her sit in my lap in the car, at the curb.

She watched, while the Only Home was destroyed.

Aside from fixtures, which had been removed earlier, nothing was salvaged. So they tore down that fine old nineteenth-century frame structure in only a morning. Princess Polly watched, unbelieving. When the wreckers hitched bulldozers to the north wing and pulled it down, made it suddenly rubbish, she hid her face against me and moaned.

I drove us home. I did not like watching the death of that old house, either.

I took Polly back the next day. There was nothing but soil scraped bare and a basement hole where our home had been. Princess Polly would not get out of the car; I am not sure she recognized the site. She never ran away again. Sometimes gentleman friends came to call on her, but she stayed home. I think that she forgot that she had ever lived anywhere else.

But I did not forget. Never go back to a house you once lived in—not if you loved it.

I wish that Priscilla’s problems had been as easy to cope with as Polly’s. It was Friday before I saw Dr. Rumsey; Thursday we moved to our new house and any such move is exhausting, even though I used professional packers and handlers, not just their vans. It was simplified, too, by the fact that most of the furniture was not moved to our new house, but given to Good Will—I told both Good Will and the Salvation Army that a houseful of furniture, plus endless minor chattels, were to be donated to charity but they must send a truck. The Salvation Army wanted to come over and select what they wanted, but Good Will was not so fussy, so they got the plunder.

We kept only the books, some pictures, my desk and my files, clothing, some dishes and flatware, an IBM typewriter, and a few oddments. About eleven I sent Donald and Priscilla over to the new house with all salvaged food from pantry and freezer and refrigerator. “Donald, please come back for me after you unload. Priscilla, see what you can find for lunch; I think they will be loaded by noon. But don’t fix anything for which timing is critical.”

“Yes, Mother.” Those were almost the only words she spoke to me that morning. She had done whatever I told her to do but made no attempt to use initiative, whereas Donald tackled the job with imagination.

They drove away. Donald came back for me at noon, just as the crew was breaking for lunch. “We’ll have to wait,” I told him, “as they are not quite finished. What did you do with Princess?”

“I shut her into my bathroom for now, with her sand box and food. She resents it.”

“She’ll just have to put up with it for a while. Donald, what is eating on Priscilla? Last night and this morning she has been acting as if someone—me, I think—had broken her little red wagon.”

“Aw, Mother, that’s just the way she is. Doesn’t mean anything.”

“Donald, it’s not the way she is going to be, not if she stays here. I will not cater to sullenness. I have tried to give all my sons and daughters a maximum of freedom consistent with civilized behavior toward other people, especially toward their own family. But civilized behavior is required of everyone at all times. This means politeness and a cheerful demeanor, even if simulated rather than felt. No one is ever exempt from these rules, no matter how old. Do you think you can influence her? If she’s sulky, I am quite capable of telling her to leave the table…and I don’t think she would like that.”

He laughed without mirth. “I’m sure she wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, perhaps you can put it over to her. Possibly she won’t resent it from you.”

“Uh, maybe.”

“Donald, do you feel that there is anything I have said or done—or required of her—or of you—that she is justified in resenting?”

“Uh…no.”

“Be frank with me, son. This is a bad situation; it can’t go on.”

“Well…she never has liked to take orders.”

“What orders have I given that she doesn’t like?”

“Well…she was pretty upset when you told her she couldn’t come along and help decide which house we would take.”

“That was not an order. I simply told her that it was my business, not hers. And so it is.”

“Well, she didn’t like it. And she didn’t like being told that she had to be what she calls ‘poked at.’ You know.”

“Yes, a pelvic examination. That was indeed an order. An order not subject to discussion. But tell me, what did you think of my requiring her to submit to a pelvic examination? Your opinion won’t change my mind; I would just like to know what you think about it.”

“Uh, none of my business.”

“Donald.”

“Well… I guess girls have to have them. If her doctor is going to know whether she’s healthy or not. Yeah, I suppose so. But she sure didn’t like it.”

“Yes, girls do have to have them for their own protection. I don’t like them and never did and I’ve had them so many, many times that I couldn’t begin to count. But it’s just a nuisance, like getting your teeth cleaned. Necessary, so I put up with it…and Priscilla must put up with it, too, and I won’t take any nonsense out of her about it.” I sighed. “Try to make her see it. Donald, I’m going to drive you back and drop you, while they are still eating, and then I’ll turn right around and hurry back, or something will wind up in the wrong truck.”