Too Near the Edge (20 page)

“Here, I brought some towels,” Sharon said
handing him a brown striped dish towel. “How did you find out about
this job?”

“A friend of mine told them I had lived in
Los Amigos—the humanistic cooperative community in Mexico. That
interested them because they want to teach kids to continually ask
themselves, ‘How can I help?’ rather than ‘What can I get?’”

“That sounds like a great idea, Joel,” Sharon
said. She looked impressed. “I’d love to have Nathan go to a school
like that someday. If I could ever afford a private school. Do you
think you have a good chance for the job?”

“Well they like that I’ve taught skiing and
been a river guide because part of the teaching will involve
challenging the students to work together in difficult outdoor
adventures. And they like that I’m into meditation and yoga,
because they also want a contemplative piece. So I think I have a
reasonable chance. It doesn’t pay very well, but I’m used to living
poor.”

“So, how do you teach a group of today’s high
school students to focus more on giving than getting?” I asked. “It
can’t be easy, especially when most of them will come from well-off
families if they can afford private school tuition.”

“At Los Amigos, the idea is that if you
change the environment so cooperative behavior is reinforced more
than competitive behavior, people will change the way they behave.
In other words, if people have learned to compete, they can also
learn to cooperate—if we set up an atmosphere where cooperation and
teamwork are rewarded most.”

“That sounds kind of idealistic, don’t you
think?” We all looked up to see Erik standing behind us.
“Cooperation may sound good, but it doesn’t pay the bills,” he went
on.

“Erik!” Sharon jumped up to face him. “This
is Joel, Nathan’s birth father. He was just telling us about a new
school in Boulder where he might get a job. Um, Joel, this is our
good friend Erik.”

Joel stood to meet Erik, leaving me alone on
the blanket looking up at all of them. They seemed a little tense,
so I said, “How about you all join me down here, have some
watermelon, and watch Nathan play soccer. I’m thinking that’s why
we’re here.”

They loosened up a little, sat down, and at
least pretended to be interested in the soccer game. Erik grabbed a
piece of watermelon, but as soon as he finished it, he started up
again. “In my nutrition business, I have to stay one step ahead of
the competition if I want the big bucks. And by doing that, I can
give a lot of other people the chance to make some money too.” He
turned toward Joel. “Maybe Nathan has shown you the herb plants I
gave him to grow. He’ll be able to sell those back to the company
for thousands of dollars once the roots get big enough. I think
that will help him more than teaching him some naïve ideas about
cooperation.”

“We can all help Nathan in different ways,”
Joel said. “I expect he’ll learn a few things from growing the
herbs.”

“I’ve been here helping Sharon and Nathan
ever since Adam died,” Erik said. “What have you ever done for
him?”

Sharon looked stunned and more than a little
upset at Erik’s attack. Fortunately, the game ended just then, and
we all went out onto the field to meet the kids. Nathan ran
straight to Joel yelling, “Did you see me? Did you see me?” Joel
gave him a big hug and whispered something in his ear.

“Hey, Nathan—you’re the champ!” Erik easily
lifted him over to where he stood and turned on the charm with his
engaging smile. “Guess what? I have a big surprise for you, and we
need to go pick it up right away.”

“Cool!” Nathan said. “What is it?”

“If I told you, it wouldn’t be a surprise,”
Erik said. “Let’s get your mom and go pick it up.”

“Can we, Mom?” Nathan had lost all interest
in Joel who watched silently from the background.

Sharon agreed she and Nathan would go with
Erik and pick up her car later. I felt kind of bad for Joel, but
couldn’t really say anything. Maybe to save face, Joel said he had
to meet someone. I needed to be somewhere as well. We all went off
to our cars a little awkwardly and headed off in different
directions.

I went north on Broadway over to Canyon to
stop at Liquor Mart for a bottle of wine. I had arranged to get
together with Holly that evening, ostensibly to look at her latest
work. She had volunteered to fix a spicy Asian shrimp and noodle
salad if I would bring some wine. As I drove, I thought it wasn’t
too surprising Erik and Joel did not hit it off, since they both
seemed to have designs on Sharon. And I could see Sharon was
conflicted about her relationships with these guys. I had concerns
about both of them, but I figured after all her years of dealing
with her father, Sharon could manage whatever those two came up
with.

Holly lives in the foothills off Mountain
Pines Road on Sugarloaf, so from Liquor Mart I drove straight west
up Boulder Canyon. Her house is only about fifteen miles from town,
and she has two acres with groves of evergreens and a great deck
with a hot tub. I think the house is the main asset she ended up
with after her divorce back in the late 1970s. She was in her
thirties then, running a boutique dress shop in Boulder while
raising three kids. She didn’t have time to take her artwork
seriously until the mid-1980s when she started studying painting
with Gramma. That’s when I met her.

The two-lane road up the narrow mountain
canyon was crowded. Gorgeous mountain scenery with fir trees,
massive granite outcroppings, and a rushing stream beside the road
attracts summer tourists looking for picnic spots, as well as
hikers and climbers. Much of the traffic that day was likely headed
farther up to Boulder Falls, where melted mountain snow provides
icy cold water that drops 66 feet into the creek.

About five miles up the canyon, I turned off
onto Sugarloaf Road and wound my way up to Holly’s place. Her house
is one of the older mountain homes, mostly dark wood and stone,
with vaulted ceilings in the large main room, which serves as both
living and dining room. After her kids were grown, she combined two
of the house’s three bedrooms into a large studio, where she spends
most of her time. That’s where we went as soon as I got there.

I’m always taken aback by the size and vivid
colors of Holly’s paintings. Most of her works are large, some as
big as four feet by six feet—while Holly herself is tiny, barely
five feet tall and maybe 90 pounds. She paints in oils with an
amazing use of color and shape. Her work is all abstracts, using
geometric shapes in various brilliant colors like turquoise,
scarlet, ochre, and lime green, offset with basic black, white and
dark brown. You’d never match her with her work if you didn’t know
it was hers. Looking at her, you’d be more likely to expect small
watercolors of English gardens.

She had some terrific new pieces since I’d
last been up to see her, and we spent an hour or so talking about
art, problems with local galleries, and exciting news about a new
internet site that brought her customers from places she’d never
even exhibited. Then she said, “Enough about the art business.
Let’s take some of that wine you brought out to the hot tub and
relax.”

Holly’s place is secluded enough to hot tub
in the buff, so we shed our clothes, grabbed some towels, the wine
bottle and glasses, and headed out to the deck. The sun sank
swiftly behind the mountains, and the hot water felt wonderful in
the cool conifer-scented evening air. We relaxed in the mountain
stillness and sipped our wine.

“How is Martha doing? Is she still painting?”
Holly asked. I ran through the latest on Gramma, trying to put as
much of a positive slant on it as possible, but Holly could sense
my uneasiness. “It sounds like you’re worried that her doctor isn’t
giving her good care.”

“I guess that’s true,” I said. “But it’s
worse than that. I’m afraid he’s doing something illegal there, and
I don’t know what to do about it. Maybe I should move Gramma
somewhere else. But Grampa picked out Shady Terrace for her because
he thought it was the best place. And the staff know her there, and
they let her paint. I don’t know where she’d do better.”

“Ah, Cleo. Martha’s had a good life. It’s too
bad she doesn’t know who she is or where she is right now, but you
can’t do anything about that. Now this doctor and whatever crooked
swindles he’s up to is another matter. Have you considered talking
to the police?”

I told her some about Pablo and our
relationship and why I was hesitant to involve the police without
more hard evidence. “He already thinks I’m flaky, and I don’t want
to make it worse,” I said. “And with my reputation right now,
they’d never take me seriously. Did you know Donald Waycroft filed
a complaint against me with the Colorado Mental Health Regulatory
Board? You know him, don’t you?”

“Oh yes, I know Donald real well,” she said
with a laugh. “He likes to push people around some. I hadn’t heard
about the complaint, but I wouldn’t take him too seriously if I
were you. Actually I haven’t seen Donald for a while. We’re in one
of our standoff phases right now.”

I wanted to ask why she’d ever actually
choose to spend time with him, but that was too pushy even for me.
So I said, “His daughter is a client of mine, and he’s taken
offense at the work we’re doing, so he filed this complaint saying
that I’m mentally ill and delusional, and engaging in fraudulent
practice.”

“Well, that sounds like Donald. He never does
anything half way. I’m starving. Let’s dry off and go in and eat,
and I’ll tell you all about him.”

While we were getting dressed and getting out
the food, I told her more about the Contact Project and Waycroft’s
complaint against me. She was so excited about the project that she
kept me talking about it all through dinner. But when we settled in
the living room with coffee and a plate of chocolate dipped
strawberries, I finally steered the conversation back to
Waycroft.

“The truth of it is, he’s good in bed, but a
little hard to take the rest of the time,” she said with a chuckle.
“Actually, I’ve learned to ignore a lot of his bluster. He’s all
bark, you know. He’s so sure he’s a realist who makes sensible
choices and lives his life exactly as he wants to live it—but he
has feelings just like everyone else.”

Holly put her feet up, leaned back, and
continued. “Donald’s such an ideologue. He believes that rewarding
good behavior and punishing bad is the only way to save the world.
He tries out those theories on everyone, but it hasn’t worked too
well on me. It came to a head one time when we were fighting about
something and he told me he wasn’t going to reward my bad behavior
by going along with what I wanted. Well that didn’t sit too well
with me, so I kicked his ass out of my bed and my house and told
him to find someone else to use his behavior shaping techniques on.
He’s so stuck in his reinforcement theories that I figured he’d be
punishing me with his absence for a really long time.”

She sat up, took a gulp of coffee, and gave
me a broad grin. “But here’s a surprise. He showed up the next
morning with flowers, croissants and coffee, and the sweetest
apology I’ve ever gotten from a man. Now I’m no psychologist, but
I’d say he was reinforcing my so-called bad behavior big time. We
didn’t talk about it and he’s never mentioned the incident
since.”

She shrugged and took on a more thoughtful
look. “But sometimes I get tired of his insistence that most people
are lazy, sloppy, and illogical. And that everyone needs more
structure. Then we take a break until we miss each other.”

“So, when you miss him, it’s mostly the
sex?”

She picked up a strawberry and bit in “That’s
about it. At my age, there aren’t that many good male bodies around
to hook up with. And with him, the sex is really good. In the
beginning, I thought we could have more of an intimate
relationship, but I gave up on that once I really accepted that
Donald believes introspection is bogus.”

My mind wandered briefly to my relationship
with Pablo. Was I just using him for sex? And, maybe as a source of
police department information? Was he just using me for sex? And
maybe as someone to talk about art with? No question we do have
sensational sex together. And if we were each getting what we
wanted, would that be a bad thing? Maybe I should ask Holly’s
opinion.

As if she had read my mind, she said, “I
think Donald and I have both accepted that what we have works for
us as long as neither of us wants more. And that’s fine with me. He
fills a niche in my life, I guess you could say,” she said with a
big laugh.

I got back to the purpose of my visit, nosed
around some more, and found out Waycroft’s pet peeve was the
university’s institutional review board. The board’s members review
research projects involving human subjects to ensure people aren’t
placed at undue risk. They also require that people who serve as
research subjects give un-coerced, informed consent to their
participation. Waycroft saw these requirements as a lot of stupid
rules created by bureaucrats to get in the way of his research.
Holly said he’d had some proposed projects rejected, and he’d been
having more and more trouble getting the go-ahead to continue his
ongoing projects when they were reviewed each year. He thought the
board members were harassing him out of spite, and he was pretty
bitter about it.

I also learned he was involved in several
large research projects, one of which involved travel to Mexico.
Holly didn’t know anything about the actual projects, except that
Waycroft said there was more freedom in Mexico to do the research
he needed to do.

All in all, I didn’t get anything obvious I
could use against Waycroft, but I figured I could get Elisa to
explore his problems with getting his research projects approved by
the university. Maybe there was a reason the review board members
didn’t like his work. And—as always—it was fun catching up with
Holly