The Reserve (11 page)

“If I like.”

“Yes, yes, if you like.”

Her mother continued to pat Vanessa’s hand. “It’s for the best, dear. Don’t you agree?”

Vanessa pulled her hand away, leaving her mother to pat the arm of the chair. She felt like an animal with its leg in a steel trap and no way to free itself without amputating the limb. The mother, the lawyer, and the doctor had feigned calm solicitude and reason, and now, with barely disguised vigilance, they watched Vanessa examine her trap and test its strength. She knew what they wanted and expected from her. They were waiting for Vanessa to erupt in furious opposition, to snap and howl at them and keep them at bay, while she yanked at the caught limb, tore at it, clawed and then chewed on it, so that finally, to save Vanessa from herself, they would be obliged to wrestle her to the floor and stick her with a needle and medicate her. It would make her pliant and predictable. And it would make their case. They could say they had no choice. She was clearly a danger to herself and others. “Yes, Mother, I agree,” she said. “Whatever you want, whatever Daddy would have wanted, it’s for the best. Whatever Dr. Theobold and Dr. Teutonic Pipe here and Whitney Mr. Brodbent Esquire, and all those trustworthy old men at U. S. Trust, whatever they want is for the best. Best for
whom
, though?”

“Why, for you, darling.”

“All right, Mother.” She stood up and walked to the conference table. “All right. As. You. Wish. Where do I sign?”

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, AT THEIR HOUSE IN
T
UXEDO
P
ARK,
Vanessa and her mother were packing Vanessa’s trunk, when suddenly Vanessa left her mother alone in the bedroom. She went downstairs and into the basement laundry room, where she untied the laundress’s clothesline and cut it into four pieces. When she returned to the bedroom, her mother was bent over the bed carefully folding sweaters. Her back was to Vanessa, and she was humming “A Fine Romance.” Vanessa came up behind her and grabbed her by the wrists and wrenched her arms back and quickly tied them at the wrists and elbows. Too shocked and confused to cry out or even protest, her mother merely stared at her. She opened her mouth and inhaled deeply.

“Don’t say a word. Just listen.”

Her mother said, “Vanessa! What are you
doing
?”

Vanessa wrapped a nylon stocking around the older woman’s mouth and knotted it. “I told you not to say a word,” she said. Evelyn Cole shook her head from side to side, like a horse trying to spit the bit. “We’re going for a drive together, Mother. The
Hindenburg
will have to leave without me. Instead, we’re driving up to the Second Lake and scattering Daddy’s ashes there. It’s what he would have wanted,” she said and slammed the half-filled trunk shut. “Not this.”

Later in the week, when Vanessa did not show up in Parkhurst, New Jersey, for the departure of the
Hindenburg
, Dr. Reichold was not particularly disappointed. He was not fond of Vanessa personally and had not looked forward to spending thirty hours in close company with her, even on the
Hindenburg
. Nor, unlike most men, was he sexually attracted to her, as he preferred young blond male athletes and regretted having to miss the Berlin Olympic Games for this. But thanks to Mrs. Cole he had his
return ticket to Frankfurt already paid for and in hand. He would simply report that Mrs. Cole had decided at the last minute not to commit her daughter, and Dr. Theobold would, as usual, stroke his beard and shrug and say, “In order to be helped, people must first come to me, Otto. I cannot go to them.”

Vanessa was well aware that she had done a terrible, probably irreversible thing. But she had done terrible, irreversible things in the past, and the consequences had not been fatal or even life-threatening. In time they had merely become part of her biography, episodes in the ongoing story of Vanessa Cole, which she later embroidered and elaborated upon, making of it a shifting, regularly revised tale filled with surprises and contradictions that shocked, amused, and perplexed those who heard it. From Vanessa’s perspective, this was the desired effect. Since hers was a story of ongoing beginnings, it was the best she could hope for. There were no necessary middles or inevitable endings to her life’s story. She wasn’t like other people, and she knew it. She hadn’t chosen this plight, exactly; it seemed to have been thrust upon her. It was as if her personal and public past and future were not real, as if her past could be constantly altered and her future indefinitely postponed. She was free to start her life over, again and again—daily, if she wished—but by the same token she had no alternative.

To avoid keeping her mother bound and gagged during the long journey north to the Reserve, Vanessa convinced her—although it was untrue—that she had a gun in her purse, the same nickel-plated .38 she had been carrying at the Carlyle back when she wanted to shoot Count No-Count. She told her mother that if she tried to escape or called for help, Vanessa would shoot herself in the head immediately. “If you wish to be responsible for my death, Mother, if you wish to see me murdered before your
very eyes and in effect by your hand, then all you have to do is give the guy at the toll booth a signal or whisper something to the man pumping gas or say a word to anyone at the Tamarack Club,” she declared. “I won’t hesitate for a second to blow my brains out in front of everybody, believe me,” she said, and her mother did believe her.

Later, when she had her mother ensconced at the camp, she would not feel she had to bind and gag the woman—except when she left to chase down the artist Jordan Groves at his home in Petersburg and, of course, the following day, when he flew his seaplane to the Second Lake with Dr. Cole’s ashes and briefly visited the camp afterward and Vanessa almost succeeded in seducing him. She bound and gagged her then. “You can have the run of the camp as long as we’re here alone,” she said. “But you can’t go outside, Mother. And if someone comes up the lake in a boat or a hiker or someone from another camp stops by for a friendly chat, I’ll do all the talking. Otherwise, I’ll have to tie you up and lock you in the bedroom again and keep you there.”

Vanessa’s plan was not a plan; it was closer to a wild desire than a strategy. She wanted simply to avoid being institutionalized again, and she wanted somehow to regain control of the very large trust funds left to her by her grandparents and father that she had so placidly, so stupidly, placed in the hands of her mother, Mr. Brodhead, and U. S. Trust. She believed that the first of these desires would be satisfied if she did not willingly go to Zurich and her mother were kept from committing her elsewhere. The second would be satisfied only when her mother died of natural causes, highly unlikely at her age, or removed herself, Mr. Brodhead, and U. S. Trust as executors, also highly unlikely. Especially now. Vanessa’s ultimate wish was that, until her mother died, no one except Vanessa herself would be allowed to see the
woman or speak with her. For the time being, then, and for as long as possible, the two of them would stay here at the camp, not exactly unknown to the world, but in relative isolation and very difficult of access. After that…well, she’d figure out what to do when she actually had to do it.

Rangeview, at the Second Tamarack Lake, was located as far from other people as Vanessa could presently imagine, but to stay there for more than a few days she needed supplies—fresh and tinned food, kerosene for the lamps, cigarettes, and liquor—and someone to deliver it on a regular basis. She thought first of the artist and his seaplane, but realized at once that he would refuse to help her, at least for now. Then she remembered Hubert St. Germain, the local guide who for decades had been attached as caretaker to Dr. Cole’s camp. Every July first, before the arrival of the Coles, Hubert opened the camp, stocked the larders, cut the firewood, and made the seasonal repairs to the roof and chimneys, tightened wind-loosened windowpanes and replaced torn screens, fixing whatever the hard Adirondack winter had broken. Vanessa liked and trusted Hubert St. Germain. He was very good looking, she thought, and shy and kept a discreet distance from his employers. You barely knew he’d been there, until you noticed a high stack of freshly cut firewood or saw that the broken steps to the deck had been replaced or opened the kitchen cupboard and realized that it had been restocked with oatmeal, soups, flour, sugar, and tinned beef, and in the icebox a large chunk of ice from the Tunbridge icehouse and a half-dozen freshly caught trout and a chilled bottle of Alsatian wine.

She would have to get to Hubert somehow; she would have to induce him to make weekly deliveries without having to come inside or hang around the camp, without having to see or speak with her mother.

“I’m sorry, Mother, but I’m going to lock you in the bedroom again.” They were seated at the kitchen table eating a breakfast of canned pork and beans. After two nights and one full day, it was the last of their food. “It’s going to be for four or five hours this time, so eat up. And you’d better use the bathroom before I leave.”

“You won’t tie my hands and feet and cover my mouth again, will you? Please don’t. Please. It’s an awful thing to do, Vanessa. Just awful,” her mother said and began to cry quietly.

“I know. And I hate doing it. But, Mother…,” she said and paused. “I can’t trust you, Mother. I just can’t. If I don’t keep you here, I know you’ll get the men in white coats to carry me off to the loony bin. It’s that simple. It really is. If Daddy were alive…well, if he were here, none of this would be necessary, that’s all.” She pushed her chair back and stood. “Ready?”

“I’m an old woman, Vanessa. Please don’t do this. And I’m not well, you know that.”

“You’re fifty-three, and you’re healthy as a horse. You’ll probably live another twenty-five years. By then
I’ll
be an old woman. Come on, I’ve got a lot to do today. We can’t live on canned beans and spring water.”

A
N HOUR LATER,
V
ANESSA HAD CROSSED THE
S
ECOND
L
AKE
and had made her way over the Carry, as the quarter-mile land bridge between the two lakes was called. She rowed the length of the First Lake, tied the guide boat at the dock, and quickly walked the gentle sloping trail back through the forest along the Tamarack River to the clubhouse, two miles away. There she went straight to the office of the manager, Russell Kendall, and entered without knocking.

He stood up abruptly, red faced, as if she had caught him doing
something illicit. “I’d appreciate it if you knocked first, Vanessa. I could be having a confidential conversation with a member, you know.”

“But you’re not.”

“No. Not at the moment.” He wished he could make this girl just go away. The mother, too. These women, Evelyn and Vanessa Cole, or whatever she called herself now, were demanding and imperious. They were like a showgirl and her stage mother, he thought, and admired the thought. He was sorry the father had died. He had rather liked Dr. Cole, a gentle, gregarious man from an old Reserve family who liked to talk about Art and Nature. A man with a philosophical turn of mind. He tipped the staff well, and at Christmas, when the Tamarack Club was closed and Russell Kendall was in Augusta and the Reserve was the furthest thing from most members’ minds, Dr. Cole always remembered to send Kendall a hundred-dollar holiday bonus, ten times a club cook’s weekly pay.

“What can I do for you, Vanessa?” he asked.

“You can tell me how to get in touch with Hubert St. Germain. I need him to bring supplies up to Rangeview. Mother and I expect to be staying for longer than we had planned.”

“Oh. How long? I thought you were here for only a few days,” he said. “What happened with your father’s…his ashes? I hope you didn’t—”

“Don’t worry,” she interrupted. “I dumped them in the Tamarack River, but way over at Wappingers Falls. Not on Reserve property. By now Daddy’s doing the backstroke in Lake Champlain, heading north to the St. Lawrence and on to the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.”

“Vanessa, please,” Kendall said. “He’s your father.”

“Was. But you’re right,” she said, suddenly shifting intent and
tone. “I’m sorry. It’s just…it’s just that Mother and I are both terribly upset by his death. Especially Mother. We’re mourning together. We’re grieving over him at the camp. The Reserve was Daddy’s most sacred place in the universe, you know. It was his true church. Somehow, even though we were forbidden by you to scatter his ashes at the Second Lake, we feel closer to him at the camp. So we’ve decided to stay for as long as his spirit lingers there. Possibly the rest of the summer. Possibly into the fall. It’s why I need to speak with Hubert St. Germain. I hope he hasn’t gone and arranged to take care of other camps and completely abandoned us. I know how popular he is, but he’s always worked for us, and Daddy was very fond of him. I’d hate to lose him…now that my father’s no longer here.” She brushed away a tear.

Kendall sat down at his desk and drew a ledger from a drawer, opened it, and went down the list of guides and their assignments. “No, Hubert’s free. He hasn’t worked since you left for New York on July fifth. At least not here at the Club or for any of the other Second Lake camps. Of course, he may have found work elsewhere by now. I mean, among the locals. Unlikely, though, given the way things are. And given the way guides are,” he added and smiled ruefully. “All the guides want is permission to hunt and fish in the Reserve, and they can’t do it unless they’re hunting or fishing for a member. Of course, they do it anyhow. In the off-season when we’re not here. Honestly, I don’t know how these people survive.”

She asked him how she could contact Hubert, but it turned out he had no telephone. Very few local people had telephones, Kendall explained. She would have to drive into the village and go to his house, which was out beyond the old Clarkson farm, a log house he’d built himself and where he lived alone, with no one but his dog for company since his wife died—a nice enough
young woman, very plain, but quite pleasant when she worked at the Club, killed a few winters ago in an automobile accident. “Most of us expected Hubert to remarry, as he hadn’t been married long and had no children. But no. He is quite the ladies’ man, if you know what I mean. At least the local ladies seem to think so, the housekeepers and kitchen help. They practically swoon when he comes around,” Kendall nattered on. He was trying to sound like an intimate female friend, an equal, but it was hard for Kendall to be more than merely polite to Vanessa Cole. “Hubert is handsome, I suppose, in a rustic way. And very quiet. But you know what they say about the quiet ones,” he said.