Gift of the Golden Mountain (43 page)

     After that Dan had nothing to say. It was easy enough to get lost in the crowd that day. About a dozen or so of Kit's relatives and a few old family friends drove out from Los Angeles for Christmas dinner. The day was warm and bright, there was rack of lamb as well as turkey, and French as well as California wines. It was an elegant meal, elegantly served on long tables set up on a wide expanse of lawn shaded by the great oak and pepper trees.

     Israel went into Santa Monica to pick up Aunt Cadie, who is well into her nineties, and sharp as a tack. I have wanted to meet her forever. She was close to Kit's mother, and had such wonderful
stories to tell about the ranch in the old days that I was quite absorbed for the best part of the afternoon. Thus, I missed the small scene that ended with Dan abruptly leaving, driving too fast down the lane, leaving a dust cloud and a very angry father in his wake.

     Emilie described it to me later. "Philip was furious with the boy, I don't know why. I could tell that Karin was trying to work things out between them. I feel badly for her—I suppose because I know a little bit how Philip feels. Sometimes, when Annie is being obnoxious we get into it, and Phinney tries to be the peacemaker. Sometimes I am furious with him, it feels as if he is betraying me. It takes us a long time to work it out, but Phinney has helped me see that Annie has a right to be Annie. I hope Karin can do that for Philip and Dan."

     These days between Christmas and New Year's have been sunny and warm. Emilie and I sat in the yard under the old pepper tree, our arms bare, and peeled apples for the pies as the others moved about us, small groups going this way and that.

     One morning Kit and May, Phinney and the twins saddled up and went off for a long ride into the mountains. When they returned in the afternoon even Phinney, for once, was at a loss for words. Later that day Amos sought me out to tell me, in that quiet way of his so touched with awe, "Aunt Kit took us to the top of this ridge, to a place that looked out over all of the Pacific—it was just . . . vast. And peaceful, and that was all there was: us, and the grasses blowing in the wind, and the ocean. I think I've never felt so . . ."—he frowned, groping for the right word, then shrugged and grinned—"large . . . and small, at the same time."

While this has been a joyous time, it has also been a time of revelations. Of glimpses, impressions, fast takes. Karin and Philip are too polite to each other. I know they quarreled when Dan left, and
they have not made up, though they do a good job of hiding it. It is times like these—watching a couple contend with the tensions between them, at the same time hiding it from the rest of us—that make me glad I didn't marry again. But I am wrong, of course. Dan needs Karin, and so does Thea. Pity the poor child who connects with neither parent, and praise God Emilie and I were good for each other. Yet I know, and it saddens me, that Emilie is not close to her daughter. I know Annie needs her dad.

     
Glimpses, impressions, fast takes
, caught over these past few days from my perch on the verandah: May and Karin, carrying the long tables back into the house, one on either side. May stumbles, tumbles, swears. Karin moves to help her up. May takes the offered hand but gives her a hard tug and Karin goes sprawling too. The two lie flat on their backs on the grassy lawn, laughing.

     Impressions: Philip and Phinney in the library, examining the volumes. Philip leaning against the big desk, slowing turning the pages of an old book; Phinney on a ladder, reading the titles out loud from the top shelves. Revelation! They are the same, these two, of an age, Eastern educations, a certain attachment to the New England tradition, to the classics. They have the same stance, move with the same certain stiffness of the joints. The difference is in execution: Philip is what Phinney might have become, or the other way around. Philip followed the marked path, doing what was expected of him: the ancient discipline, the distinguished career. Phinney rejected that course in favor of a hardware store and a community, of hearth and home and an active life as husband, father, friend. Roaming the woods, reading, discovering; Philip may have read
The Golden Bowl
, Phinney can quote long passages from it. Phinney's ambitions parted company with Philip's—when? The war had something to do with it, that is what Em thinks. Philip is trying to understand, I'm certain of it. He is watching Phinney; he pretends to read the book, but really he is watching Phinney.

     Fast takes: Amos sitting on the barnyard fence, working to
untie a knot. Thea standing nearby, her coltish young body swaying tentatively, ready to jump back, move away, skittish. She watches him. He does not discourage her.

     In a few hours now this holiday will be over. I can hear Josepha in the kitchen, rattling pans. Israel will be up soon to make the first trip to the airport. I wish I could hold them all here, together, but that of course is the impossible dream. Enough that I have had this time with them, this perfect Christmas.

SHE READ THE directions on the package:
Plant September-February, one inch deep and space eight inches apart in a sunny or part shade location. Blooms in spring, produces many double flowers up to five inches across.
Perfect, she thought, for the space along the edge of the back patio. She loved renunculus, their gaudy color, the layered petals that looked so much like crepe paper, but most of all she loved the long, elegant stem that seemed too fragile to hold the perfect big blossom.

     She probed in the newly turned earth with her fingers and set the first bulb. She fell into the rhythm of planting, humming, and probing and setting the bulbs, shifting slightly as she moved along the patio edge, aware of the sun on her back and the soft, warm sound of the breeze as it rattled the dry leaves of the sycamore tree. She would have to go in early to shower and clean her hands. They had tickets for the symphony tonight, she should probably start putting things away now, but she couldn't. The garden had become her favorite place. Philip teased her about it, but he was pleased, she knew, that she had become so absorbed in what he called "the
flower art." She wondered if he understood that it was an escape of sorts, a place where she needn't think, where she could wear jeans and get dirt on her hands and sometimes her face, where she could feel more like the Karin she used to be.

     "Karin," he called to her.

     She sat back on her heels and turned to the door. "Time got away from me," she called back. "I've only a few more renunculus to plant."

     "You're fine on time," he said, "I'm home early." He took off his jacket and hung it with precision on the back of a lawn chair, then he stretched out on the chaise, his hands behind his head.

     "Hard day?" she asked.

     "Not so much hard as disquieting," he answered. "Have you ever met Dr. Offenbach? He's an emeritus professor in the department, I suppose he must be in his mid-eighties."

     She shook her head and continued her probing in the earth, setting the bulbs as she listened.

     "No, I suppose you wouldn't have met him . . . since we haven't been to the kind of department functions he would still be invited to. He asked me today why we have been 'keeping ourselves aloof.'"

     "And that bothers you?"

     "No," he said, squinting and pinching the place between his eyes. "What bothers me is that here is this fine old man who has always been the soul of civility. Suit, immaculate white shirt, bow tie trademark. He was a fine scientist in his day. He's collected any number of awards over the years and he deserved them all. He has always been the sort of man you just naturally respect. Except that lately he's been turning up on campus wearing an aloha shirt with blazing purple orchids on it, and a head full of what he calls new ideas. He says he has had this surge of new energy, that he's just brimming over with projects—but it's all crackpot stuff. And he wants to talk about it—for hours, to anybody who will listen. And that's not even the worst of it—his wife died last year, and he's started to ask some of the secretaries to go out to lunch with him.
His standard line seems to be, 'You have such beautiful, soulful eyes.'"

     "He's fighting it," Karin said, taking comfort in the soft, damp earth on her fingertips.

     "Fighting what?" Philip asked.

     "Old age. Impotence. Time."

     Philip sighed. "I guess. His mind is going, maybe he knows it . . . that would be frightening as hell. How do you know . . ." He stopped, pinched his eyes again, sighed. "I'm not sure how to handle this. It's so damned sad."

     "Gently," Karen told him, rising and stretching. "You handle it very gently. As you said yourself, he's earned it."

     Philip frowned.

     "Another headache?" Karin asked, carefully.

     He didn't answer, but lay his head back and closed his eyes.

     "Let me get you some iced tea, then you can rest before the symphony."

     "I forgot! The symphony . . ." he started to get up.

     "Please Philip, don't get up. Maybe we should skip it this time," she added, hopefully. "I know the Brauns would love to take our tickets."

     He shook his head, "No. The Reshauers are counting on us. Besides, they're playing two of the old war-horses tonight. Beethoven's Ninth, Schubert's Unfinished, you know me—I'm a sucker for those, no taste at all."

     She tried to laugh. "That's you, no taste at all." Then, working to keep her voice even, added, "Dan is coming in tonight . . . it is his birthday, and it might be nice if we were here when he arrives."

     "You've planned a party for him tomorrow, that's enough," Philip came back, too quickly, clipping off the words.

     "I just thought . . ." she began, but stopped when he pressed his temples with the fingertips of both hands, a sign that his headache was getting worse.

     She held her own hands out, palms down. "Just look at all
the dirt under my fingernails," she said in a teasing tone of voice, meant to restore the mood. "Now that was a problem I never had before you came along."

     "I'd say that hardly offsets the problem you inherited," Philip answered glumly.

     She pulled her chair close to the chaise and would have taken his hand in hers, had hers not been caked with mud. "Philip, please . . . I wish I could make you understand that I don't consider Dan to be a problem. Not for me, anyway . . . it's the two of you who need . . ."

     "I almost forgot," Philip interrupted brusquely, "there's a letter from May in my coat pocket. It was in the mailbox here—I guess you didn't check. Why don't you read it while I close my eyes for a few minutes? You can tell me all her news while we get ready for the concert."

     Karin looked at him, bit her lip, and nodded. She felt a weight shift on her chest, press in on her. She cupped one hand under her breast, as if to relieve some pressure, knowing even as she did it that the pressure was not physical. Gingerly, not to get mud from her hands on his coat, she lifted the letter from his pocket, tore it open, and took note of the sudden rush of comfort she felt, seeing the familiar handwriting.

September 14, 1971

     Dear K,

     I'm on a Pan Am flight to Japan, the first real chance I've had to write in a thousand years. I didn't realize my postcard habit would make all of you so crazy—even Faith is after me to give her "more than twenty-six words and a picture of Mt. Fuji." And as you know, from my last 4 a.m. (your time) call from New Guinea, I'm not all that good about figuring out time differences. So here's your letter,
parts of which I expect you to share with the others.

     Under ordinary circumstances right now I would be working like mad on a sheaf of reports delivered to me a few minutes before takeoff, to be studied en route so I know exactly what I am coming into. But the Japanese are nothing if not organized. All their reports arrived in plenty of time, so I don't have to review them on the plane at the last minute. Not only that, but I'll be met by a car, my bath will have been drawn, my favorite mineral water will be waiting, nicely cooled, in my room. At the office a young man named Miko will answer my every question, and we will proceed to the field where I will find everything in perfect working order. If only I could transfer Miko to the Philippines, where I must put up with a second cousin of Imelda Marcos, who gives new dimensions to the word "inept."

     Even so, the real problem in the Philippines is not this Marcos flunky, but the fact that there is nobody at all on the project who has taken charge. I've discovered an interesting thing, working with so many different groups in so many countries—when the work is being done at all well, you can almost always trace it to one person who has taken charge. And almost never is that person the number-one man. Miko, in Japan, is in fact the assistant to the director. In New Guinea, a fifty-year-old woman clerk is the one who sets the tone, who knows where everything is, who keeps all the rest of the staff heading in the right direction. And of course she hides it all very well! My first job was to discover who these main movers were, and to spend as much time as possible with them without jeopardizing their positions. If only I didn't have to waste so much time with the "superiors." I am not cut out for diplomacy, and of course in most of these countries being a woman does not help one bit. You will be
pleased to know that I am called "the Dragon Lady" in certain quarters (echoes of Mt. Holyoke!). Did you know that Asians, for the most part, have a profound disdain for mixed races? When I challenge them on anything, I can see it in their faces—which are not at all inscrutable. There have been a few indirect complaints issued through channels, and Dr. Obregon shoots them down, which only goes to show how little they know if they think he is running this program.