Skull Session

  "So, what—your aunt wants you to fix up the place now? What's the matter with it?"

  "Last spring she moved to San Francisco. Since she's been gone, the house has apparently been vandalized, and she needs someone to spruce it back up."

  "Paul, this sounds great! You're perfect for the job!" She ripped a piece from the loaf of French bread and swabbed her plate with it. "It sure wouldn't hurt to have some money coming in, would it?"

  "No, it would not exactly hurt," Paul agreed.

  But for all the enthusiasm he felt for the memories of Highwood, there was something unpleasant in the recollections. Out of Lia's sight, under the table, one hand or the other had been ticcing constantly, the uneasiness telegraphing itself to his muscles without conscious intent.

  Paul punched his mother's number and visualized the old black dial phone ringing on the desk in her apartment. He couldn't hope that she hadn't been drinking, only that she hadn't been drinking heavily. She had taken Ben's death hard, entering a protracted mourning accompanied by fairly serious and tenacious alcoholism. Twenty-nine years later, neither the drinking nor the mourning had ended.

  Now she was seventy, a plump woman of medium height, her hair mostly gray, lines of bitterness and disappointment in her face. Only rarely, in the right light, could you catch a glimpse of the insouciant, funny, gregarious journalist and young mother that the old photos showed.

  "Paulie," she said. "Well. To what do I owe the honor?" A stock reproach. The exaggerated precision of her speech suggested this was one of her heavier nights.

  "Profuse apologies and a spirit of repentance, okay, Ma? How're

  things in Philly?"

  "Things in Philly have a distinctly autumnal cast. It's November. What month is it there?"

  "We've finally got the cold weather. It was global warming until Friday."

  "I take it you're calling about Vivien—Kay told me she'd called.

  What did you two cook up?"

  "I haven't talked to Vivien yet. Kay said maybe I should talk to you first—I mean, I hardly know Vivien, and now I'm supposed to call her up. Kay said she's squirrely. I can't remember."

  Aster laughed. " 'Squirrely'? Vivien's not squirrely, she's nuts. Cracked. Always has been. Runs in the family."

  "How so?"

  "A woman would have to be cracked to live alone in that house all those years." She sounded irritated at his obtuseness. "Living up on that hill. Every time there was a storm, some tree branch would fall and bring down the power lines. Then in winter—plowing three quarters of a mile uphill. Ask Dempsey how many times he went up there to fix pipes that had frozen because the lines went down and the furnaces quit."

  "We used to have a great time up there," Paul reminded her.

  "Sure we did. It's a nice spot. It's a gorgeous house." She seemed about to qualify her comments but appeared to run out of criticisms. She paused, and through the receiver Paul heard the clink of ice in a glass.

  "So Ma—how much are you drinking nowadays?"

  "As much as I like."

  "I thought you said you were going to cut back. I thought the doctor advised you."

  "I have cut back. But I make an exception in November."

  "I just want you to take care of yourself," he told her.

  "This is how I take care of myself."

  They were both quiet for a moment. "Anyway," Paul began again, "Kay is worried Vivien will be difficult to work with."

  "Oh, she'll be difficult. I wouldn't do it, Paulie. Wouldn't give her the satisfaction of having a Skoglund working for her. But I know you won't listen to me. So I guess whether it's more of a headache than it's worth depends on what the job is and what you get out of it."

  "Right now a regular paycheck would be worth quite a bit to me."

  "Just make sure you charge her an arm and both legs—she can afford it," Aster growled. "Vivien. We used to ask her: Why live alone up there? She never set foot in the woods. But she'd rather be miserable up there for decades than ever give up the place. Oh, hell," she said dejectedly. There was something in her tone, something in her relationship with her half sister, that Paul couldn't place.

  "We don't have to talk about it now—"

  "Just keep it businesslike, Paulie. Keep your medical history and Mark's and your divorce to yourself. And for Christ's sake, don't go talking about me. She'll give you the interested gaze, the insightful questions, a little flattery—but all the time she's collecting. Keeping files on you."

  "What I don't understand is what happened between you two. When I was a kid, you were pretty close. What changed?"

  She exhaled slowly. "That's family for you. Skeletons in the closet— you might as well get used to it, let 'em lie. You may find yourself with your own skeletons one day, and then you'll understand."

  Paul found Lia upstairs, reading in bed, Kellerman's Radical Pedagogy propped open on a pillow across her legs. She glanced up and made room for him next to her. "Not a good call, I take it," she said.

  "How can you tell?"

  "You come through the door with your chin first when she's made it difficult for you. You stump as you walk—like a chastened but defiant kid."

  "It's just when she's been drinking. She lets herself go in November because that's the month my father died. She's not . . . graceful when she's drunk."

  Lia pulled him and he toppled backward, head on her pillowed stomach. She stroked his head, waiting for him to spill.

  "It's the classic psychology of the suicide survivor," Paul went on.

  " Tt's my fault. I failed him.' We all feel it a little. But Aster really seems to blame herself."

  "Have you ever asked her about it? Why Ben did it?"

  "Sure—she looks stricken, then changes the subject. Or tells me something like, T wish I knew, Paulie. Then maybe I could live with myself.' "

  "But it's no one s fault but Ben's. Ultimately, we're all responsible for ourselves."

  "Of course." Paul allowed himself a little tic, snapping himself in the temple with one finger. "I don't really have a problem with it. I just sometimes worry about my mother. You know."

  "What did she say about the project?"

  "Wildly enthusiastic and supportive. No—basically she said that Vivien will be a pain in the ass and I shouldn't do it. Also that she's got lots of bucks and that I could make out pretty well."

  She yanked his head around so she could bore her gaze, that diamond drill, into his eyes. "Paul, your luck is changing. Don't you get it? Things are going to go well for you. For us." She bent to kiss him. "Let's go down there and look it over. You could use a job for a while. Get the bill collectors off your back." She kissed him again. "Go call your aunt." "Right Okay." He heaved himself off the bed and slumped out of the room.

  "Hello, Paulie!" Vivien said. "Well. Your sister said I might expect your call." Her voice was clear, each word spoken with clipped precision. "I've hardly spoken to you since you were a little boy."

  "No—it's probably been thirty years since we've seen each other, Vivien."

  "Tell me, Paulie Skoglund, how are you? Who are you? Catch me up. Of course, I've heard bits and pieces from Kay."

  He hesitated, remembering Aster's warning. "Well, there isn't that much to tell. I was a self-employed carpenter and furniture maker for twelve years. Three years ago I went back to school for a master's in education. Married, divorced. Now I'm with a woman I met at Dartmouth."

  "Education! Well—a noble calling. And your health is good? You're happy?"

  "Yes, I'm very happy."

  "I take it you've recovered from those neurological problems you had when you were a boy?"

  "The early stuff went away. The Tourette's is still with me. But I've learned to live with it. Not a major problem."

  "That's good. I remember how hard Ben used to work with you. He was such a devoted father. And now you're a father yourself. I understand you have a son—is he a good boy? Healthy? None of those troubles you had?"

  He hedg
ed: "There is a genetic factor, an inherited predisposition, but Mark hasn't shown any symptoms." Not of Tourette's anyway.

  Mark's condition wasn't anybody's business but his parents'—he'd be damned if he was going to elaborate for the sake of Vivien's morbid curiosity.

  "Well, I'm sure the family is very glad." Vivien's voice had a smile in it, as if his hesitation had revealed something to her.

  "What about you? I'm amazed to hear you're in San Francisco."

  "No more than myself, I assure you. Every day I am astonished to find myself here. I'm living in a hotel now, a lovely suite. Everything is so convenient, after Highwood. It's quite delightful, Paulie. Or perhaps you'd like me to call you Paul, now that you're grown up?"

  "Either one. Family calls me Paulie, everyone else Paul."

  "Which leaves me to decide just how 'family' you and I are. You're very clever. Tell me—do you take after your mother or your father? Did you get the Skoglund nose?"

  "After my mother, I guess." She'd turned the questions around again, revealing nothing of herself. He felt the familiar pressure building. He camouflaged a bark by turning it into a cough.

  "Well, you're lucky. Your mother's a very handsome woman. How I envied her figure—those nice delicate bones. And me built like a Morgan horse."

  It was true. Vivien was one of those disconcertingly large women, nearly six feet tall, like the women you saw in photos of the more obscure branches of the British royal family—the large-boned, patrician, fox-hunting type, that tribe of lady big-game hunters, aviatrixes, Channel swimmers. Even as a child, he'd noticed how dissimilar the half sisters were, in size as well as temperament. He hadn't been surprised when his mother explained that they had had different mothers.

  "Anyway—" he said.

  "Time for business? Very well. I take it Kay has explained my predicament."

  "She said the house had been broken into and that there was some vandalism, yes."

  "The Lewisboro police called me. I understand there are windows broken, and perhaps some things taken." For the first time, her voice showed signs of sincere concern. "And I left everything I own at the house. You see, my California adventure was just going to be a vacation. Then I fell in love with it here, and I simply haven't had the time or energy it takes to go pack the place up."

  "So why not have Dempsey do it?"

  "Among other reasons, dear Dempsey is too old. Also, I'd feel better if a family member helped me with this." She paused and then continued as if choosing her words carefully: "You see, Paulie, I did leave everything there. My family photos, papers, financial records. Private things. And valuable things, as you may recall. Obviously, I need someone I can . . . trust to help me. People one can trust seem to be in increasingly scarce supply."

  Paul went back upstairs. On the surface, the conversation with Vivien had gone well. She'd been more than receptive to his working on the place and hadn't blinked at his fee. He'd agreed to go down on Wednesday, when Lia had the day off, so the whole deal could commence almost immediately.

  He'd get eighteen an hour just to look the place over and for any repairs she agreed to based on his estimates. The idea of pulling in eighteen bucks an hour for a while was very agreeable.

  And yet Vivien gave him the creeps: the intrusive questions, the amused, ironic tone, as if she already knew the answers to every question. Bringing up his childhood neurological problems, fishing for something on Mark.

  Or maybe he was just tired, a little down after talking to Aster, being unnecessarily negative. Bad habit, time to change it.

  The lights were off upstairs. Turning into the dark bedroom, he could just make out Lia, the white bedspread vaguely outlining the rise pf her hips. It smelled good where Lia was: the scent of fresh laundry, sweet sweat, a faint pastiche of perfumes and smells from the mysterious alchemical pharmacy of cosmetics on her bureau.

  He took off his clothes and slipped into bed beside her, avoiding touching her with his chilled skin. But she put one hand out behind her and pulled him up tightly against her, the top of his feet against her soles, his knees in the crook of hers, chest to back, every possible inch of skin contact attained. Her heat seemed to scald him.

  His dark mood evaporated. Lia's presence was sweet, silky, luminous. Balm that soothed the jagged, ticcish energy the day had stirred up. He smiled into her hair. Life hath its rewards, and none greater than this. Sleep came over him almost instantly, as if he'd caught it from her unconscious body.

  5

  THEIR FIRST STOP IN WESTCHESTER was Dempsey's. Paul had forgotten exactly where Highwood was, and the old man had agreed to come along to show them, look over the lodge, offer his perspective on any repairs it might need.

  Turning into the familiar driveway, Paul found he couldn't enumerate all things Dempsey Corrigan was to him. More than father figure, more than friend. At seventy-two, Dempsey was living proof that you could make your own way in life, making no concessions to conventions or passing trends. He'd fought in World War II and afterward spent several years as a professional boxer. In 1949 he'd settled in Lewisboro, where he'd supported himself doing odd jobs, carpentering, museum-quality furniture restoration, all the while pursuing his real love—painting brilliant abstract canvases—and caring nothing for his lack of commercial success. An animated and tireless raconteur, a vehement gesturer. A gruff, gentle, skeptical, funny, joyful man. It was no wonder he'd been Ben's closest friend.

  He was also proof that living true to yourself helped you stay young. Though his bald head was marked by age spots, and the stubble that grizzled his cheeks was white, he lived an active life and had kept the wiry, sturdy build of the young middleweight fighter, sleek and corded, that Paul saw in the little gallery of posters and fight bills Dempsey kept.

  Dempsey's house and grounds reflected his personality completely. From the driveway, the house looked like a medieval structure, with eaves close to the earth, small windows, a mossy shingle roof sweeping up steeply. Dempsey had built it himself with rock he'd dug out of his twelve acres. Inside, the ceiling rose with the roofline to a high raftered peak, and the downhill side of the house was all glass, revealing a view of the Corrigans' land. Sculpted by the paths and terraced gardens they'd built, the hill sloped down to a stream at the bottom, a tangle of woods. It still looked like the old Westchester County, rugged and viney, that Paul greatly preferred to the other images that had overlaid it—highways, shopping centers, boutiques and antique shops in the old buildings, mushrooming developments. Now just the smell of the house—rock, concrete, woodsmoke, turpentine, garlic—gave Paul a sense of continuity with his own past. Dempsey was a point of reference, enduring. Somebody you could count on. Being somebody you could count on, Paul decided, was a good person to be.

  Paul pulled the parking brake, Lia stretched mightily. They had barely gotten out of the car when the old man emerged from his front door.

  "Welcome!" Dempsey cried, saluting them hugely with both arms—he'd never been able to resist adding a touch of ceremony to arrivals and departures. Now he wore a blue-and-white Mexican poncho, thick as a rug, and carried a gnarled walking stick. With his big head and wise-chimpanzee face, he looked like Pablo Picasso in his later years. He hugged Lia and shook Paul's hand with the rough grip of the fellow carpenter. "You want coffee, something to eat before we go up?"

  Paul checked his watch. "Nah, not for me, thanks. It's two o'clock— we should get up the hill while there's still light. I wouldn't mind saying hello to Elaine, though."

  "Not here. She's off volunteering." Elaine did almost everything: She was a superb gardener, an excellent cook, a sculptor, a substitute grade-school teacher, a fighter for various causes. "She'll be back around five, and we're planning on you two for dinner."

  Paul pointed to Dempsey's heavy stick. "Expecting trouble?"

  "I was talking to one of the Lewisboro cops. Said the place was so banged up it wasn't likely local kids. Maybe gangs from the city." Dempsey smiled reassuringly at Lia. "Not
that I think we'll encounter anyone up there. My own guess is, kids were goofing around there all summer—it'd be a great party spot. No one's going to bother now that it's cold out. I'm bringing my shillelagh because it's a long driveway and we can't drive up. At my age, I need a third leg."

  They drove for a few minutes. At two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon, there was little traffic: The trains had not yet returned the commuters to the legions of parked cars that surrounded every town in Westchester County.

  "Right on 22," Dempsey told Paul, gesturing. "So. Highwood! I'll be curious to see the old place."

  "Were you and Elaine close to Vivien?" Lia asked.

  "Not like the Skoglunds. Mainly I went up there to fix things. At some point I got sick of trying to be both friend and hireling, and referred her to another contractor. Veer left here, then right at the dam." Dempsey pointed the way. "Can't say I missed going up there, either, except maybe the occasional hand of cards with Freda. Do you remember Freda?"

  "Sure," Paul said.

  "Vivien's old mother," Dempsey explained to Lia. He shook his head. "Terrible story."

  "We must be getting close," Paul said. "This seems familiar." They had come to the rocky edge of the Lewisboro Reservoir. The road folio wed the irregular shore, overhung by large oaks that still held their leaves, now a dark ocher after the first frosts. To his surprise, his right hand reached out and drummed quickly on the dash. A little rising anxiety.

  "Just stay on the shore road. Yes, poor old Freda. You know what happened to her, don't you, Paul?"

  "I can't really remember."

  "Got hit by the train, just outside the village. Vivien came home, couldn't find Freda anywhere, went outside and called—no Freda. Then she went into town to ask the police if anyone had seen her. They had seen her, all right—spread out over sixty feet of track. She'd gone all to pieces, you might say." He turned to Lia. "I'm sorry. Not funny."