Agorafabulous! (15 page)

I knew instantly that I had committed an unforgivable sin. Frightened, I apologized over and over as I bent down to pick up the larger shards with my bare hands. It was going in the trash anyway, but Edgar’s face was red with the kind of rage one might reserve for an insubordinate servant who purposely smashes the entire contents of the cherished family china cabinet.

“I’m so sorry, Edgar,” I said again. “It was an accident. I’m really, really sorry.”

He was so angry that the bristles of his mustache trembled with rage.

“YOU COULD HAVE BLINDED ME!” he screamed, loud enough for the sanitation workers at the dump to peer at us from twenty yards away. “I could be BLIND now! And it would be your fault, and we would sue you, do you know that? We would sue you, and your family would never be able to pay for you to go back to college! I am not paying you to BLIND ME!” He got right in my face, like a badass Southern California high school
chola
girl spoiling for a fight.

“YOU COULD HAVE BLINDED ME!” he screamed again. “What the hell is wrong with you? Are you a fucking idiot?”

For a moment, some of my old spunk flared up, and I nearly glared at him.

“Actually, Edgar, I could have blinded both of us,” I said. “I was standing here too. It. Was. An. Accident.”

I thought he was going to hit me.

“Get in the car,” he said through gritted teeth. “And do not speak to me for the rest of the day. I will drive us back and then you will drive home.”

Whatever fightin’ Irish or scrappin’ Sicilian spirit I’d summoned quickly dissipated as I sat in the passenger seat and contemplated getting fired. This gig was my chance to show people—my parents, my friends, Dr. Morrison, myself—that I was capable of holding down a job just like a real adult. Having this job meant that I was getting better, that I had a future outside of my parents’ house, that I might even be able to make it back to finish my college degree one day. This job meant I wasn’t a loser anymore, or at least not as big a loser as I’d been when I was afraid to leave my one-room apartment. How would I explain the loss of my job in a way that wouldn’t make me sound like a completely incompetent fool?

Edgar unloaded the rest of the crap on his own and then got into the car. He stared straight ahead as we drove the twenty minutes back to the Blessed Sanctuary. When we parked outside the main house, he turned to me and said simply, “I will see you here at the usual time tomorrow.” Then he went into the mudroom.

I had prepared myself to be fired right on the spot, so I was a bit confused. Did he want me to return the next day just so he could fire me? If he didn’t get rid of me, would a letter still go in my permanent file? Would Stevie Nicks be notified, and if so, would this preclude my attendance at all future Fleetwood Mac reunion concerts?

The next day, I walked with great trepidation through the mudroom and into the kitchen. There I found Edgar with a bright smile on his face. The table was set with a pitcher of milk, a jar of honey, a bowl of raisins, and a pot of tea. Two matching breakfast bowls sat beside two matching teacups.

“Sara!” he exclaimed when I entered, clapping his hands and grinning. “We have so much to do today! Come, eat up! We need our strength for the tasks ahead. Can you believe it’s only two weeks until the annual conference?” Warily, I sank into a chair. He ladled a steaming pile of oatmeal into my bowl and handed me a spoon.

“I slow-cook it, the way it’s meant to be done,” he told me as he poured me a cup of tea. “Steel-cut Irish oats. Only takes thirty minutes on the stove. I don’t know why people can’t be bothered with it. I find it meditative. Chop wood, carry water, make oatmeal!” He laughed a high-pitched, tinkling laugh. I realized then that while I hadn’t heard Edgar laugh often, I’d never heard him laugh in the same way twice. Something about that really freaked me out.

Soon enough, I was too busy to worry much about Edgar’s laughter. Edgar was preoccupied with the logistical preparations of getting three guest speakers to the Blessed Sanctuary from points all over the country. He also had to figure out how much food to buy for the two hundred donors who would come to the conference for learning and worship. He gave me a list of tasks and basically left me to my own devices for the next two weeks. Early spring was upon us, so I had some weeding to do. I also had to sweep, vacuum, dust, mop, shine, alphabetize, iron, polish, and fold all manner of things in the main house, the contemplation house, and the sweat lodge. I finally got inside the sweat lodge, which proved rather annoying to clean because I had to individually dust all the nooks and crannies of every sacred ritual object (and there were hundreds of them). The mystical thrill of holding a genuine sacred eagle feather really fades when you have to clean forty of those fuckers in an hour.

I spent so little time with Edgar in those weeks that I might have almost forgotten how disturbingly unbalanced he was. But in case my memory had grown dim, he saw fit to remind me on the day of the big conference. At least this time his rage was mostly reserved for someone else.

My workday usually began at ten
A.M
. and ended at six
P.M
. But on the morning of the big conference, I arrived at seven
A.M
. in order help Edgar set up. When I turned onto the long driveway, I saw that the trees around the property were festooned with bright, brand-new cloth peace symbol flags fluttering in the early-spring breeze. Unlit tiki torches were set on either side of the drive. I assumed these were either a nod to some mysterious hippie-Hawaiian religious connection or else a cheap way to get the party started.

I pulled up to the house and saw Arthur puttering in the garden. This was rather unusual, as he didn’t often leave his office.

“Hey, Arthur!” I called as I got out of the car. “You ready for all these people?” He was a kind guy, and my impression of him as a sweetly befuddled ex-hippie hadn’t changed.

He looked up slowly and blinked in the dim morning light. It seemed to take him a few moments to recognize me. When he did, he smiled his gentle smile.

“Hello, Sara,” he said. “I am so glad you are here to help.” There was deep relief in his voice. I walked over to take a look at the garden.

“Shoots are finally coming up,” I said. “You’ll have fresh vegetables every day.”

He stared at one particular plant for a long time, seemingly mesmerized.

“Yes,” he said finally. “Maybe Edgar will like that.” When he said Edgar’s name, we both shivered a little.

“I guess I’d better get inside and help him out.”

“Oh yes, please, Sara.” There was that immense relief again. “He’s in . . . he’s . . .”

“Oh, I bet I know how he is.” Arthur looked at me in surprise, and I grinned at him.

I left him there, wandering peacefully among the quietest living things in the world. I felt sorry for the guy. Oh, he wasn’t exactly a henpecked husband. Edgar seemed to treat his partner with more care and dignity than he afforded most people. He capably managed the day-to-day aspects of life with Arthur. I’d seen Edgar pay the bills on time, make healthful and nutritious meals, and keep an eagle eye on his partner’s physical health and work deadlines. I don’t think Arthur was necessarily capable of managing the details on his own, and in Edgar he had an able and energetic partner. They obviously loved each other, and their mutual loyalty was evident. It might even have been a happy union, in its way. But Edgar resented Arthur, and I can’t imagine Arthur didn’t know it. And while I knew Edgar could be overwhelming one on one, I had a feeling he also wasn’t the most adept at coping with large groups of humans.

This last bit was reinforced as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. Edgar rushed about the room in a tizzy, his usually perfect hair frizzy and unkempt. I could tell he’d been up much longer than I had, and I’d risen at five thirty
A.M
.

“Good morning,” I said. “Tell me what to do.”

“It is a terrible morning, and I will gladly tell you what to do,” Edgar snapped. “I wish you had been here earlier. I should’ve had you sleep over and get up with me at three. We’re hours behind. Hours!”

It was ten after seven.

“The downstairs bathroom needs to be completely cleaned,” he said.

“In the basement? Are you letting people go down there?”

“They’ll go all over, Sara! They don’t care that this is our house, that this is our life. They think they paid to have access to everything. They’ll go in our bedroom if I don’t put up a sign. And that’s the next thing I’ll have you do. Cordon off the hallway with tape and put up a sign that says
PRIVATE QUARTERS. NO ACCESS
! Put an exclamation point at the end. No, put three. Now do the bathroom.”

I descended the stairs to the basement, glad to be out of his way. As I disposed of dead flies, dirt, and dried toothpaste, I heard his little feet pounding the floorboards overhead.

When I came upstairs thirty minutes later, he’d already put up the tape and the sign. “You took too long!” he said by way of explanation. “Now go to Arthur’s office and photocopy and fold the leaflets up there.”

He kept me busy with various tasks all morning. As with all the other work I did for him, none of it was inherently difficult or unpleasant. But as usual, everything I produced wasn’t quite up to his standards. If I folded napkins into triangles, I ought to have folded them into rectangles. If I defrosted frozen fruit in the steel bowl, I ought to have defrosted it in the ceramic bowl. If I greased a pan with olive oil, I ought to have used canola oil. The little criticisms seemed as necessary to his daily routine as the tasks he had assigned me. He inspected the basement bathroom and redid all my work. I wanted to point out that none of the guests were likely to use the shower, but kept mum as he scrubbed the grout I’d already attacked with an old toothbrush.

The day’s program was set to begin at noon, but the guest speakers were to show up at ten
A.M
. There arrived in due course a local rabbi, a local minister, and a writer named Elizabeth. She edited the religion section of a well-regarded newspaper and made not-infrequent appearances on television to discuss the ways in which Eastern spirituality had penetrated the mainstream American consciousness. What intrigued me the most was that she was a product of the 1960s-era Blessed Sanctuary where Arthur and Edgar had fallen in love. She had lived with them, eaten with them, and worked with them for a couple of years. Her sister Mary had also stayed at the place for a time, and Edgar had wondered aloud in passing if Mary would also return for this year’s conference. It was hard for me to imagine that Edgar had existed in any form other than his current one, and I longed to hear stories of his youth from a surviving witness. Was it possible that he’d actually
mellowed
over the years?

I was out in the woods stringing extra peace symbol flags between trees when I distantly heard a car’s tires crunch over the loose gravel near the house. By the time I emerged near the back of the house, the guests were out of the car, laughing warmly and greeting Arthur.

I rounded the corner of the house and saw an attractive, hippie-chic older woman with well-maintained silver hair that shone in the midmorning sun. She wore a nicely tailored gray suit accessorized with some sort of ethnic-print lavender scarf and tasteful chunky silver jewelry, and her makeup was subtle but perfect. Her companion was similarly attired and resembled her too strongly not to be her sister.

What I found the most remarkable was Arthur, who stood chatting amiably with the two women. He wasn’t animated, exactly, but he certainly showed more energy than the slow-moving fellow I was used to watching sip tea each morning at the kitchen table.

When I got close enough, Arthur introduced me to Elizabeth and her sister Mary as “Edgar’s assistant.”

“Well, that must be quite a job,” Elizabeth said dryly.

I was shocked and sort of delighted to see Arthur laugh. I hadn’t even considered the possibility that he was capable of laughter.

“You can imagine,” he said. “Edgar works very hard.”

“Yes, of course,” Elizabeth said faintly, looking past us. Arthur and I turned around to see Edgar barreling down the front lawn at a near-run. His face wore a smile so forced it nearly qualified as a grimace.

“Elizabeth! Mary! You’re finally here!” Now Edgar was upon us, and Arthur had shrunk back into himself. He seemed to find a nearby butterfly utterly captivating.

“We were beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about us,” Edgar added, putting his hands on his hips and forcing that smile even wider.

“Oh no, are the others here already?” Mary said apologetically.

“Not yet,” Edgar said. “You’re all late!”

“So we’re first,” Elizabeth said.

“Well, yes,” Edgar conceded. He paused and then looked at me.

“Elizabeth, this is my assistant, Sara,” he announced.

“We’ve met,” I said. I caught Mary looking at me with great sympathy.

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Now Edgar, dear, did you want me to set up inside the contemplation house? Mary is here to help. She may be a businesswoman today, but she’s still got some of that Blessed Sanctuary spirit in her.” Unexpectedly, Edgar linked his arm through Elizabeth’s and led her away, chattering eighteen miles a minute about the plans for the day. The two got about ten feet toward the temple before Edgar halted and turned.

“You too, Mary!” he called. “I don’t want my personal assistant telling you stories about what a horrible boss I am!” He let loose one of his unsettling laughs. This time it took the form of a cackle. Some things are funny because they’re true. Perhaps in Edgar’s head this was one of those, but I doubt it. He was smart, but he didn’t possess sufficient self-awareness to realize that he was a tiny gay nightmare. I certainly didn’t give him any indication that I was unhappy. Twenty dollars an hour bought a lot of my tolerance. I even laughed gamely as Mary crept away.

The rabbi and the minister arrived in a car together, and they were as jolly as Elizabeth had been reserved. They wanted a tour of the grounds in order to see the improvements Edgar and Arthur had made since last year, and I took them around quickly, pointing out the expanded garden, the newly painted contemplation house, and all the new peace symbol flags. Edgar returned from the contemplation house with Elizabeth and Mary in tow. He embraced the rabbi and the minister with an enthusiasm that had been lacking in his greeting of the two women. Arthur wandered outside and immediately plunged into deep conversation with the new visitors and Edgar.