The View from Mount Joy

  I looked at my watch—it was almost eight o’clock. I took a last gulp of coffee, shuddering as it went down, left the waitress a big tip, and went out to track Kristi down.

  It was very likely that she had already left town, but if she was staying the night, she was probably staying at the Windemere, the fanciest hotel in Des Moines. I got back on the freeway and headed toward downtown.

  The guy at the front desk was not going to be much help.

  “Could you please tell me if Kristi Casey is staying here?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, “I could not tell you that. Our client list is confidential.”

  His hands were folded on top of a two-day-old New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle, one I had already done.

  I leaned over the counter, turning my head to better see the puzzle.

  “Hugh and Cary,” I said.

  “What?” said the clerk.

  “Nine down. ‘A couple of wishes.’ In this case, they mean Grants. So the answer is Hugh and Cary.”

  The clerk lifted his hands and looked at the puzzle.

  “Oh,” he said, nodding. “I get it.” He penciled in the answer. “I’m kind of new to these. My girlfriend says people who do crossword puzzles tend to be go-getters, and she likes go-getters.”

  “Who doesn’t?” I offered.

  The clerk looked at his co-worker at the end of the desk and said in a low voice, “I really can’t tell you anything about Miss Casey. She doesn’t want her privacy disturbed.”

  “I understand that perfectly,” I said, taking out my wallet. I withdrew a twenty and pushed it toward him. He looked at the bill and then at me.

  “All I’m asking is that you call her room and tell her Joe Andreson is down in the lobby and would like to see her.”

  He pressed his thin lips together and his wispy mustache sagged. Slowly he pinched the corner of the bill and slid it off the counter before punching a number on his telephone.

  “Yes, Miss Kristi, ah, Miss Casey, this is the front desk,” he said, his professional hotel voice cracking a little. “There’s a gentleman here, a Mr. Joe Anderson—”

  “Andreson,” I corrected.

  “An-dray-son, who would…Oh, all right. Thank you, Miss Casey.”

  He hung up the phone and stood taller, the way a private will when an officer passes by. “She said to send you right up. Room eight-ten.”

  I knew Jenny and the kids were having dinner at her sister Jody’s house, but I called her on my cell phone on the way up and left a message that I didn’t know when I’d be home, but it would probably be late.

  “Joe Andreson, as I live and breathe,” said Kristi, opening the door and welcoming me with a big hard hug. “Jesus Christ, it’s good to see you.”

  Laughing, I let myself be pulled into her suite.

  “Didn’t you just break a commandant?”

  “I didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” said Kristi, not missing a beat. “I said ‘Jesus Christ.’” She stopped in the middle of the room and, still holding my hands, swung my arms out and back again, as if we were about to begin a minuet.

  “Joe, you look great. A little grayer than when I last saw you, but no paunch—that’s good. I’ll bet you’re still your college weight.”

  I couldn’t help but be flattered, even as I knew Kristi used flattery the way a spider uses its silk—there was always a plan in mind.

  “Give or take five pounds,” I said. “And look at you. I can’t believe you’re forty-four.”

  “Don’t you dare tell anyone,” she said, putting a finger to her lips. “I stopped counting at thirty-three, and I expect the world to do the same.” She walked to the bar, and I was afforded a pleasant backside view. More enjoyable to me than the slim curves underneath her dressing gown, however, was watching her walk—still the same light-footed, shoulders-back gait she’d had strolling the halls of Ole Bull High.

  “What’re you drinking? I’m having a rum and Diet Coke.”

  “Fine with me,” I said, looking at my watch.

  “It’s eight fifty-three,” said Kristi, as if she’d caught me doing something I shouldn’t be doing. “Still early enough for this to be a completely respectable meeting.”

  “It is a completely respectable meeting,” I said, taken aback.

  “Dang,” said Kristi. She walked across the room, her silk robe swishing and waving in ways that Jenny’s quilted bathrobe never moved. She handed me my drink and sat next to me. “Because I was hoping we might have a nice fuck for old times’ sake.”

  I was shocked but, not wanting her to know that, tried to deke her out.

  “Is that how you talk to Johnny Priestly?”

  Kristi hooted, clapping her hands. “I gave Johnny Priestly up long ago…for Lent, in fact.” She laughed again. “Really, this is a guy so fastidious that he parts his pubic hair.”

  What can I say? She shocked me again, and this time my face must have shown it, because Kristi leaned back against the stack of ornate couch pillows and laughed.

  “Oh, Joe, I’m just messing with you. That Johnny Priestly stuff was just…rumor.” She lobbed two of the couch pillows across the room and resettled herself. “How are you, anyways? Married, I hear, with about eight kids.”

  “Three,” I said with a jagged smile. “There’s Flora—she’s a senior in high school. And Ben—he’s five. Conor is one.”

  Kristi’s sip emptied half of her glass. “You’ve been busy.”

  “And so have you. I read the thing in the paper today—how’d that painting go?”

  Kristi smirked, an expression I knew well. “Guy’s kind of a nut—not that I don’t get my share of nuts. He had me sit on this skanky old chair—he said it ‘absorbed divinity, then bounced it back at him’—and then he starts scribbling on the paper and wiping the scribbles with his fingers. It gave me the creeps, actually, and the finished picture looked like something you’d find in any kindergarten anywhere.” She tossed back the rest of her drink. “Waste of time, if you ask me. But we’ll edit it so it looks like a miracle or something.”

  Sighing, she got up and went back to the bar, where she mixed herself another drink. When she returned, robe swishing and waving, she sat at the end of the couch and, stretching out her legs, put her feet on my lap. When I pushed them off, she laughed and put them on again. I gave up the fight, knowing no matter what I did, if she wanted her feet on my lap, her feet would be on my lap.

  I kept one hand on my glass and the other I rested above my belt buckle, since there was no room on my lap. She nudged this hand with her toes, laughing.

  “Come on, Joe, don’t be so uptight. Give me a foot rub, will you?”

  Setting my drink on the marble-topped end table, I took her feet in my hands and began kneading them.

  “Oh, that feels good,” said Kristi, closing her eyes. “But you always did know how to make me feel good, Joe.”

  I dug my thumbs into the ball of her foot, hard enough to get a yelp out of her.

  “Ow! What the hell, Joe?”

  “Kristi, please, just answer me one question.”

  She took her feet off my lap and sat up at the end of the couch, her face devoid of its usual sly merriment.

  “What?”

  I drew out the moment; she wasn’t the only one who understood drama. I took a sip of my drink, then another, and then held the glass in front of me, as if its contents contained a rare wine and I was a vintner studying its complexities.

  “Joe,” she said, her voice like an ahem, “I believe you were going to ask me a question?”

  I turned to her. Even in her hotel room, she was cognizant of lighting and only had table lamps on—nothing direct, nothing overhead, so that the face I looked at was protected by softness. Still, I could see age in her face, and because she tried so hard to hide it, it seemed like it should be hidden, like it was something shameful.

  “Who are you?”

  She blanched but arranged her features quickly into an expressio
n of bemusement.

  “Well, you, Joe, more than anyone, should know that.”

  “Are you kidding me? I have no idea who you are.”

  She rose, or began to, and I knew her destination was the bar, but seeing that I knew that, she sat back down. She shook her glass and the ice cubes clattered.

  “Joe, please. It’s been so long since I’ve been around a normal person—can’t we just relax and have a little fun?”

  “What do you mean, a normal person?”

  She sat up, drawing her knees to her chest. One side of her robe dropped to the floor in soft pleats.

  “I mean someone who’s not so—” She made a face and stuck out her tongue, making a noise that sounded like bya, bya, bya.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Someone who doesn’t expect me to be so Kristi.”

  I looked a long moment at her. “Is there any part of you that’s at all for real? Because everyone thinks you’re a big fake.”

  “Who thinks I’m a fake?” she asked coldly. “Who’s everyone?”

  “Oh, Kirk, your mom—”

  “As if Kirk and my mother even know me.”

  “You don’t give them much of an opportunity.”

  She got up from the couch, but instead of going to the bar, she went to the big window that overlooked downtown Des Moines and stood looking out of it, her arms stretched out, her hands resting on the windowsill. Granted, the lights of downtown Des Moines aren’t exactly Vegas, but still, it was a dramatic moment, especially when she turned around and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. The odds that they were summoned up by sincerity rather than thespian skills were probably about one in ten, so I crossed my arms and settled back to watch the show.

  “What do you want?” she asked, her voice rusty with the fake emotion she was trying to pass off as real. “Why did you even come here?”

  “I was curious, I guess. I have very fond memories of you, Kristi.”

  She smiled and began coming toward me, but I held up my hand.

  “Please, I’m a married man. A very happily married man. Getting a Kristi Special is not what I’m after.”

  She stood about five feet away from me, hands on her hips, nodding as if she had been convinced of something. With a final sharp nod, she sat down in a chair across from me, helping herself to a cigarette from a silver box on the table next to her.

  “Oh, you still smoke too?” I asked.

  After lighting the cigarette, she shook the match as if she were punishing it. She answered in a deep, preacherly voice. “Yes, I am still full of the vices with which the devil still tempts me.”

  When I didn’t answer she said, “Give me a break, Joe. I’ve got to have some releases. You cannot begin to imagine the stress I’m under.”

  “No, I can. I mean to have the world think you’re one way, and then in truth be totally different…that must be hard.”

  She squinted her eyes at me as she exhaled.

  “You really think you’ve got me all figured out, don’t you?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Well, then let me help you. What do you want to know, Joe? Ask me anything, anything at all.”

  Out of all the questions I had to ask Kristi, the one I blurted out was, “Why do you ignore your own mom and your own brother?”

  “I don’t ignore my mother,” she said defensively. “I call her.”

  “You missed her wedding.”

  Kristi sighed. “Joe, I don’t think you understand my obligations. I can’t be in more than one place at a time. I can’t be everything to everybody.”

  “Your own mother’s wedding’s a pretty big thing.”

  “My mother was not a mother to me when I needed her most,” she said as coolly.

  “Hmmm, I’d think someone who preaches about forgiveness would learn how to practice it.”

  She exhaled a perfect round smoke ring and watched its quivery ascent toward the ceiling. After a moment, I realized that was her answer.

  “Well, what about Kirk? He’s a great guy. My best friend, in fact.”

  She shrugged. “Sometimes I think it’s just chemistry. Something between—or not between—people that makes them unable to get along.”

  “And that lets you off the hook for not even trying to be a sister, an aunt?”

  She shrugged again and took a deep inhale of her cigarette. “Is this the kind of interview it’s going to be, Joe? You just criticizing me for not being the perfect daughter, the perfect sister?”

  “Okay,” I said, “how come you lie about the Mount Joy thing? I was with you that night, Kristi. I coined the phrase, as I recall. And—”

  Kristi laughed. “What, do you want royalties for thinking of the words ‘Mount Joy’?”

  “No, I just don’t know why you had to lie about the whole thing. You make it sound like God came to you one night when you were camping and saw the northern lights, but remember: I was with you. We were bummed about being out of dope, but then we had a great time watching the sky, and that was it.”

  “Joe, a lot of things have to be shaped for dramatic effect. People don’t want to listen to big long sagas these days, they want to listen to short, snappy stories. Stories with punch. I might fabricate the details, but the essence is there.”

  “That’s bullshit,” I said, watching as she stubbed out her cigarette. “God didn’t come to you that night. My question is, has He ever really come to you at all?”

  “I resent your tone of voice.”

  “You can’t answer the question, can you?”

  Kristi cocked her eyebrow. “I never expect people who haven’t experienced grace to understand what happened to me.”

  “I experience grace every day.”

  We stared at each other, holding a duel with our eyes. Her hair—blonder now than it had been the last time I saw her—was piled on top of her head, and suddenly I became aware of something else about her that had changed.

  “Oh my God,” I said, breaking the stare to look at her chest. “You got breast implants, didn’t you?”

  Kristi gasped a little and then, because she was a fan of impertinence, she laughed.

  “Took you long enough to notice.”

  “When did you…Why?”

  She ran her hands over her silk-covered breasts and then, cupping them, gave them a little boost.

  “Do you want to see them?”

  “No!”

  She laughed again. “They’re real pretty. Not that they weren’t before—they’re just a little prettier and a little bigger now.”

  “But why?”

  “People today want women to look womanly.”

  “Size doesn’t determine femininity, just like size doesn’t determine masculinity.”

  Kristi’s smile was as sly as that of a cat burglar coming across an open back door.

  “As I recall, Joe, you don’t have to worry about your masculinity.”

  I fought hard to ignore the childish pleasure I felt at the compliment.

  “What about your abortion?” I said, switching gears. “How come you’ve lied about that?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the arm of the chair.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’re a big campaigner for Tuck Drake, Mr. ‘I don’t believe in contraceptives or in premarital or homosexual sex, and I definitely do not believe in abortions under any circumstances.’”

  “You do a good impersonation of him,” said Kristi, laughing. “But I’m not campaigning for him; he’s just been a guest on my show is all.”

  “A guest—ha. It’s like he’s your new co-host.” I shook my head; I wasn’t going to let her sidetrack me. “You’ve had lots of opportunities to tell woman who are scared and in trouble of your experience.”

  “That’s my business, Joe.”

  I shook my head. “Everybody’s business is your business, but your own business is no one else’s?”

  “Something like that. Joe, these people need guidan
ce. They need someone to tell them what to do because they can’t figure it out for themselves.”

  “Man, you’re cold.”

  “And how do you even know I ever had an abortion?”

  My mouth opened and pushed out a little sound of surprise, a little “uh.”

  “Because you told me you did! You called me up and said I might be the father—of course, you couldn’t tell for sure because you were having a high time sleeping around!”

  She lit another cigarette and extinguished the match by striking the air with it.

  “So now I’m a slut, huh?” Her cheekbones became more prominent as she sucked the cigarette. “The thing of it, Joe,” she said, smoke cloaking her words, “is that whatever I told you doesn’t mean anything. Maybe I was pregnant. Maybe I just said I was, to stir up things a little.”

  “Stir up things a little?”

  “But you’ll never know, will you, Joe? Because it’s my body and ultimately what happens to it is my business.”

  My laugh was riddled with disgust. “Despite telling callers abortion is a sin, you’ve just made quite an argument for the other side.”

  She said nothing, staring at me as she smoked.

  “So do you really believe in God, Kristi?” I asked as I stood to go. “I guess that’s what I’d like to know the most. Do you really believe?”

  “With all my heart and soul.”

  “That doesn’t really tell me anything,” I said, “because I doubt that you have either one.”

  As I walked across the suite she began to clap. “Is that your ‘Frankly, Scarlett’ line?”

  I opened the door, but before I was able to slam shut, she shouted, “Too bad Rhett Butler said it better!”

  Twenty-four

  “Papa mon Joe,” said Flora, laughing, “don’t cry. I’ll be fine!”

  “I don’t doubt that,” I said, knuckling away a tear. “It’s the rest of us I’m worried about.”

  Jenny smiled, hugging her daughter one last time. Leaving her dorm room had been harder than we thought; Flora seemed perfectly capable of cutting the apron strings that we kept trying to reel her back in with.