Read Online Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll by Paul Monette - Free Book Online Page B
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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They were all rich already, and Mrs. Carroll had come to understand they would bulldoze her land and make subdivisions of it before she was quite cold. So she took the land away. The new will turned the estate over to the public, subject to a hundred controls. And a group of trustees that the will created was empowered to tenant the house with high-minded sorts, the Audubon Society, say, or the Sierra Club. One catch. She hadn't signed it yet.
Mr. Farley was appointed to arrive before the middle of July, just as the sun was beginning to warm the waters off Block Island, where he would soon undergo his summer vacation—taking a second sweet sherry before dinner and frying his fish in a pan. Mr. Farley, a conservationist in all things, had to applaud Mrs. Carroll's impulse to keep the land wild. But he was troubled by her contention that her children were neither as faithful nor as pure of heart as a single tree seen from her bedroom window, though she thought them a good deal more witless. Family conservation was Mr. Farley's business. Between the two, he was more concerned about the waste of Tony Carroll than he was about the elm and chestnut groves a buyer might uproot. Mrs. Carroll had expected a fight from Mr. Farley, a plea to reconsider. But she planned to wield her pen like a sword and have done with it. Mr. Farley, she knew, was a man who lived by saying he had done what he could.
Apparently, Phidias thought it would be simple. He and David finished burying Mrs. Carroll in the late afternoon, and he didn't even pause at the grave when it was done. They trekked back up into the woods. Phidias let David lead the donkey on ahead, and for a while he followed a few paces behind, his head bent. But he caught up with David before they came in sight of the house again. When they were home, sitting over a drink in the library, David was made to understand that the issue of the will had become a crisis. They had very little time to see what they could do. How ingenuously he said it I don't know, but Phidias said that Madeleine would have to do nothing more than impersonate Mrs. Carroll for an hour or two. Mrs. Carroll had been notoriously moody with Mr. Farley, so Phidias figured that the tone could be sullen and the script limited. What they needed was a convincingly alive Beth Carroll, propped up with pillows and of impeccably sound mind, and a round of signatures for all of Mr. Farley's dotted lines.
David had to think about it. That was all right, Phidias said. They would talk about it again on Friday. Madeleine would not even be in Boston until then, and Phidias had work to do meanwhile in the milk business. Tactically, that is the most clever thing Phidias did, to leave David alone for three days. When David said he had to think about something, he meant that he needed some psychic space in which he could stop thinking altogether. As soon as Phidias left, David repaired to the tower, rolled half a dozen joints, and spent the next several hours watching the sun go down, mooning like a princess in a fairy tale. He dragged out of bed at noon on Wednesday and took two aspirins and a Valium on his way to the shower, washing them down with an Alka Seltzer. He ate standing in front of the open refrigerator. In the library, he curled up and read National Geographic, cover to cover. When he went out in the afternoon, he found the gardener sleeping under the pear tree in the field behind the house. They had sex there. Not one word passed between them.
"When I came here," David said to me, "I stopped being anxious for the first time since I left Miami. This house was all I needed. It was as if I was getting the house ready to be really lived in again. Mrs. Carroll had pulled back into her bedroom. The rest of the place didn't exist anymore until I came. Then it became my project. But all this week, I don't know, I couldn't seem to make contact with the house. I dropped things. I broke the table next to my bed. You know?"
David
Mr. Farley was appointed to arrive before the middle of July, just as the sun was beginning to warm the waters off Block Island, where he would soon undergo his summer vacation—taking a second sweet sherry before dinner and frying his fish in a pan. Mr. Farley, a conservationist in all things, had to applaud Mrs. Carroll's impulse to keep the land wild. But he was troubled by her contention that her children were neither as faithful nor as pure of heart as a single tree seen from her bedroom window, though she thought them a good deal more witless. Family conservation was Mr. Farley's business. Between the two, he was more concerned about the waste of Tony Carroll than he was about the elm and chestnut groves a buyer might uproot. Mrs. Carroll had expected a fight from Mr. Farley, a plea to reconsider. But she planned to wield her pen like a sword and have done with it. Mr. Farley, she knew, was a man who lived by saying he had done what he could.
Apparently, Phidias thought it would be simple. He and David finished burying Mrs. Carroll in the late afternoon, and he didn't even pause at the grave when it was done. They trekked back up into the woods. Phidias let David lead the donkey on ahead, and for a while he followed a few paces behind, his head bent. But he caught up with David before they came in sight of the house again. When they were home, sitting over a drink in the library, David was made to understand that the issue of the will had become a crisis. They had very little time to see what they could do. How ingenuously he said it I don't know, but Phidias said that Madeleine would have to do nothing more than impersonate Mrs. Carroll for an hour or two. Mrs. Carroll had been notoriously moody with Mr. Farley, so Phidias figured that the tone could be sullen and the script limited. What they needed was a convincingly alive Beth Carroll, propped up with pillows and of impeccably sound mind, and a round of signatures for all of Mr. Farley's dotted lines.
David had to think about it. That was all right, Phidias said. They would talk about it again on Friday. Madeleine would not even be in Boston until then, and Phidias had work to do meanwhile in the milk business. Tactically, that is the most clever thing Phidias did, to leave David alone for three days. When David said he had to think about something, he meant that he needed some psychic space in which he could stop thinking altogether. As soon as Phidias left, David repaired to the tower, rolled half a dozen joints, and spent the next several hours watching the sun go down, mooning like a princess in a fairy tale. He dragged out of bed at noon on Wednesday and took two aspirins and a Valium on his way to the shower, washing them down with an Alka Seltzer. He ate standing in front of the open refrigerator. In the library, he curled up and read National Geographic, cover to cover. When he went out in the afternoon, he found the gardener sleeping under the pear tree in the field behind the house. They had sex there. Not one word passed between them.
"When I came here," David said to me, "I stopped being anxious for the first time since I left Miami. This house was all I needed. It was as if I was getting the house ready to be really lived in again. Mrs. Carroll had pulled back into her bedroom. The rest of the place didn't exist anymore until I came. Then it became my project. But all this week, I don't know, I couldn't seem to make contact with the house. I dropped things. I broke the table next to my bed. You know?"
David
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