Read Online Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll by Paul Monette - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Paul Monette
Tags: Fiction, General, Gay, Swindlers and Swindling, Inheritance and succession, Los Angeles (Calif.), Gay Men, Motion Picture Actors and Actresses, Older women
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passage so in touch with the lay of the land above the sea that death seemed incidental to it.
Mrs. Carroll was a southern girl who married a rock-face New England man of property, a reader of books and a dealer in ideas. She never took to the weather, but she had chosen to lie in a scrubby hill field deep in the middle of her land whose beauty left her mute as it changed its slight colors from month to month. She liked the conceit of a homemade coffin too. It signified to her that her final act would pose a stark and lawless version of the human question, a journey to the earth like a lost scene out of Faulkner. Phidias appreciated the lady rather than the conceit, and thus he brought to the event a heart kept innocent in homage to her. Nothing he said was a way of saying something else. His gestures were never self-conscious. "Well," he said as they brought the cart out of the woods and the donkey stopped, unwilling to walk in the sun, "didn't she pick the perfect place to hide? This is the place," he continued, spreading his arms to indicate the breadth of it, "where we first came to be alone. Thirty, thirty-five years ago. We used to ride up here on horseback. She decided to come here for good at the end of the winter. 'No one will ever think to look for me there,' she said."
Phidias talked about the near past and the far past without regard for the fear of lost time. The very thing David wanted to learn. So when they arrived in the shelter of low bushes in the center of the field and started to prepare the ground, David began to talk about himself. They were not pressed for time. Phidias had already made two trips out here during the spring and had dug down three feet. Mrs. Carroll had wanted some assurance that it could be done, that the soil didn't end on a plate of granite six inches below the surface. "Go dig me half a grave, Phidias," she said, "and find out if it's all skin and bones." But the land was deep enough to hold her. So they worked their way down. Phidias loosened the earth with a pick while David shoveled.
He told Phidias he was gay, then talked about Neil for a while, but he found that he had to go back to the years he spent with me to find the real beginning. I don't know how Madeleine's name came up so soon. But when David talks about the past, he does another nervous thing people do on television. He tells you everything. He backgrounds the relationships and draws little maps of the scenery and gives resumes of all the major characters. Phidias, who had so many plans to make that day, stayed one step ahead of the burial scene. He knew he needed an actress, and Madeleine was the only actress he had ever known. When he learned that David had a connection to her, however circuitous, he listened closely to discover how likely it was that David and I would do something together. He figured he could take care of Madeleine himself, once he had succeeded in getting her onto the property. This is my reconstruction of what was going on. David's reconstruction was at some points so naive that I realized he didn't know about Madeleine and Mrs. Carroll at all. In David's view, Madeleine had merely been a famous houseguest there a generation ago. She was taking a break from the rigors of her fame. By the same token, Phidias and Mrs. Carroll were a pair out of D. H. Lawrence, the rude farmer and the lilac duchess. Phidias seemed much less rustic to me.
The problem was this: Mrs. Carroll, who persisted all year in predicting that this was to be her final summer, had been working on a will with Mr. Farley for several weeks. She had never revealed a southern passion for testaments before. She had lived for years following Mr. Carroll's lead, dividing her assets equally between John and Cicely and little Tony. She was an indifferent mother who developed a working disdain for the children only in the last years. But there were no King Lear scenes to speak of, no threats of disinheritance and no petulant bequests.
Mrs. Carroll was a southern girl who married a rock-face New England man of property, a reader of books and a dealer in ideas. She never took to the weather, but she had chosen to lie in a scrubby hill field deep in the middle of her land whose beauty left her mute as it changed its slight colors from month to month. She liked the conceit of a homemade coffin too. It signified to her that her final act would pose a stark and lawless version of the human question, a journey to the earth like a lost scene out of Faulkner. Phidias appreciated the lady rather than the conceit, and thus he brought to the event a heart kept innocent in homage to her. Nothing he said was a way of saying something else. His gestures were never self-conscious. "Well," he said as they brought the cart out of the woods and the donkey stopped, unwilling to walk in the sun, "didn't she pick the perfect place to hide? This is the place," he continued, spreading his arms to indicate the breadth of it, "where we first came to be alone. Thirty, thirty-five years ago. We used to ride up here on horseback. She decided to come here for good at the end of the winter. 'No one will ever think to look for me there,' she said."
Phidias talked about the near past and the far past without regard for the fear of lost time. The very thing David wanted to learn. So when they arrived in the shelter of low bushes in the center of the field and started to prepare the ground, David began to talk about himself. They were not pressed for time. Phidias had already made two trips out here during the spring and had dug down three feet. Mrs. Carroll had wanted some assurance that it could be done, that the soil didn't end on a plate of granite six inches below the surface. "Go dig me half a grave, Phidias," she said, "and find out if it's all skin and bones." But the land was deep enough to hold her. So they worked their way down. Phidias loosened the earth with a pick while David shoveled.
He told Phidias he was gay, then talked about Neil for a while, but he found that he had to go back to the years he spent with me to find the real beginning. I don't know how Madeleine's name came up so soon. But when David talks about the past, he does another nervous thing people do on television. He tells you everything. He backgrounds the relationships and draws little maps of the scenery and gives resumes of all the major characters. Phidias, who had so many plans to make that day, stayed one step ahead of the burial scene. He knew he needed an actress, and Madeleine was the only actress he had ever known. When he learned that David had a connection to her, however circuitous, he listened closely to discover how likely it was that David and I would do something together. He figured he could take care of Madeleine himself, once he had succeeded in getting her onto the property. This is my reconstruction of what was going on. David's reconstruction was at some points so naive that I realized he didn't know about Madeleine and Mrs. Carroll at all. In David's view, Madeleine had merely been a famous houseguest there a generation ago. She was taking a break from the rigors of her fame. By the same token, Phidias and Mrs. Carroll were a pair out of D. H. Lawrence, the rude farmer and the lilac duchess. Phidias seemed much less rustic to me.
The problem was this: Mrs. Carroll, who persisted all year in predicting that this was to be her final summer, had been working on a will with Mr. Farley for several weeks. She had never revealed a southern passion for testaments before. She had lived for years following Mr. Carroll's lead, dividing her assets equally between John and Cicely and little Tony. She was an indifferent mother who developed a working disdain for the children only in the last years. But there were no King Lear scenes to speak of, no threats of disinheritance and no petulant bequests.
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