Bleeding Heart (7 page)

I was up at his house most days after he gave me the job. I worked alongside Peter Welling and his crew the week they tore up and rebuilt Mackenzie’s hillside. It was the beginning of May, but a late-spring rain had washed through the region the day before. The property looked buried in mud, though I could see the new contours forming behind the metal pilings that Peter’s crew was jackhammering into the muck.

“Tell me this is all part of the plan,” Mackenzie said, materializing next to me on the top of the rise. I was wearing mud-splattered rubber boots and a hooded slicker. He was carrying an oversized black umbrella, which he held over both of us as we looked down on the earthmovers crawling up the hill.

“It’s all part of the plan,” I assured him. “Don’t worry. This is definitely the before shot.”

“Well, I suppose it’s too late to start second-guessing you now. I don’t go in for that sort of thing anyway. What’s done is done.” I glanced up at him. His usually animated face looked a little slack.

“We’re building a garden here,” I told him. “I think maybe this time
you
need to lighten up.”

“You’re right!” he said with a quick bark of a laugh. “Bad day on the market. But the sun will come out tomorrow, right?”

“I hope so. I’m expecting a couple of tons of Vermont blue slate to be delivered. Those trucks have got to make it up the driveway.”

“I was talking metaphorically, Alice. But I kind of like your literal response. Is that how you always handle bad news? You just roll up your sleeves and get practical?”

Though I felt the question was a little personal, I thought I heard genuine interest in his tone.

“I’ve never thought about it in quite that way. But, yes, of course, hard work is good therapy.”

“Which explains, I guess, why Green Acres is doing so well. It’s your way of coping with what happened?”

“No, not at all! I really love what I do,” I told him. “It has nothing to do with my husband.”

“If you say so,” he replied, his gaze moving back over his ravaged hillside. “I guess I’m more of a cause-and-effect kind of person.”

After that, whenever he was in residence, he made a point of coming out and finding me at the end of the day. If the weather was decent, he invited me up for a drink on the deck to watch the sunset. I got more confident and relaxed as the groundwork for the gardens began taking shape below us. And as I grew more comfortable in his presence, I found myself challenging him about fracking and what his multibillion-dollar corporation was doing to the land.

“Natural gas burns cleaner than any other form of fuel,” he told me during one such discussion, “releasing less CO
2
into the atmosphere. As far as I’m concerned, it’s win-win: cheaper energy that’s actually better for the planet.”

“You know perfectly well that fracking’s an environmental
disaster! The methane that’s released from all those natural gas wells you’ve been drilling is more than a hundred times more powerful a greenhouse gas than CO
₂
.” I’d been reading up on the subject and was a lot better informed on the issues than when we’d first met.

“And I think you’ve been drinking that clean-energy Kool-Aid, Alice. It’s ridiculous how gullible you liberal bleeding hearts can be! Do you want to know who’s behind a lot of the antifracking press you take on such faith? Rich, entitled people who don’t want their beautiful country estates disturbed by poor neighbors who are hoping to lease their land and keep their farms going.”

“Good luck with that after their groundwater gets poisoned!”

I think we both looked forward to these arguments. He had a quick mind and a deep understanding of his business. Did he actually believe in what he was saying? I don’t know. I sensed he liked to conduct these sparring sessions with me because in fact he was a little lonely. There was something isolated about him—just as there was with me. We’d both seen too much of the world for our own good. He would bring up the subject of Richard from time to time, and I tried my best to take it in stride. I didn’t want him to see what a hard time I still had with the whole thing.

“You never know about people, do you?” he said at one point when we’d been talking about my husband.

“No, you don’t,” I replied, though I’d once thought I could know. I would have sworn on my life that I’d been in a happy, loving marriage. For the first time in quite a while I felt my heart contract with pain, and I didn’t like the feeling.

“So how do you deal with it?”

“You can’t,” I said, looking up from my drink to meet his gaze. “Some things never get resolved. You have to just learn to put them behind you and move on.”

“Oh, Alice,” he said, shaking his head. “Who do you think
you’re kidding? You’re never going to be able to put something like that behind you.”

I
decided to wait to tell Gwen about Mackenzie’s charitable foundation until most of the construction work on the property had been completed. I needed to be absolutely sure that Mackenzie was pleased with how things were progressing before getting my friend’s hopes up. I also wasn’t ready to deal with her reaction. I knew she would want to meet Mackenzie—and pitch him—and I had to put my own concerns first. But I was aware that only a trickle of contributions for the Bridgewater House capital campaign had come in over the winter and spring—and that Gwen was feeling pretty low.

One Friday afternoon in late May, Mackenzie arrived by helicopter just as I was getting into my car to leave. He called to me as he started down the steps from the helipad above the tennis courts, and I waited for him in front of the bank of garages.

“You should see all of this from up there!” he told me, pointing to the sky. “The place already looks amazing—like Machu Picchu, for chrissakes!” We’d planted fast-growing grass around the retaining walls and walkways, and I could imagine how the hillside
might resemble—at least from the air—that beautiful terraced city built by the Incas. His enthusiasm was infectious, though I’d come to realize that his spirits could just as easily swing the other way. He’d hinted that his moods were often market driven. Obviously he’d had a good week business-wise.

“We start putting in the trees and shrubs on Monday,” I told him.

“Fantastic!”

Gwen was waiting for me in the Green Acres office when I got back from the site. We were heading out to the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington for our usual Friday-evening dinner and a movie. I decided to finally fill her in about the Mackenzie Project as I drove the back way through Alford, the greening hills aglow in the soft light of early evening.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she said, turning toward me in the front seat.

“No, really,” I said, smiling. “It’s for real. The official mission is to save and protect endangered horticultural spaces. It’s a private charity—Mackenzie doesn’t want the whole world beating a path to his door—so you wouldn’t have found it in the standard foundation listings.”

“And however much he pays you—he donates that same amount as a matching fund for our region?”

“That’s right.”

“This is incredible! Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“Because it seemed a little too good to be true. This whole experience with Mackenzie feels like that. You wouldn’t believe how much he’s pouring into these gardens, Gwen. Next week I’ll start putting in some of the most exquisite plantings money can buy.”

“When do I meet him?” she asked, her eyes shining. “How do we do this?”

“I was thinking that it’s probably better if he doesn’t know
we’re best friends,” I told her. “It would look a little conflict-of-interesty. But the Bridgewater gardens really are the perfect fit with his charity’s mission. I thought I would just hand him one of your brochures and the capital campaign plan—and let him know that his foundation has an opportunity to do something really worthwhile right here in Woodhaven. What do you think?”

“It’s totally brilliant!” she said. “Oh, God, Alice! This could be it! This could turn everything around for me.”

Mackenzie had been in such a good mood on Friday, I decided not to wait. Gwen equipped me with a binder of printed material and a cover letter over her signature. I drove it up to Mackenzie’s house on Saturday morning.

“He’s at some hearing in town,” Eleanor told me when she answered the door. “I think he’ll be gone a while. I’d be happy to give that to him, if you want to leave it with me.”

“Thanks. I think it’s self-explanatory. But ask him to call me if he has any questions.”

I picked up my paper and muffin at the general store, and then dropped by the post office for my mail. I was climbing back into my Subaru when Tom Deaver called to me from across the parking lot.

“Alice Hyatt! Wait up a minute.”

I felt my pulse quicken. There was an eagerness to his stride that made it clear he had something he wanted to ask me. I watched him approach and thought, not for the first time, what an attractive man he was. The male of the species barely registers with me these days, so I took this opportunity to try to analyze what it was about Tom that made him seem different. He wasn’t particularly tall or broad or physically forceful, though he was pretty fit for someone who was probably hitting fifty. His dark brown hair was a little long for my taste, but his face was open and kind, his skin roughened from a lot of time spent outdoors. And there was something about the way he
moved—a kind of inner grace—that caught my attention when I saw him around town. I liked his voice, too. It was one of those melodious, self-assured baritones you often hear on public radio.

“Wind power promises to be a great alternative to fossil fuels,” he’d said during a program I’d attended at the library a few months back. Tom was an environmental writer and activist who ran the Clean Energy Consulting Cooperative. The talk, titled “The Future of Wind,” was part of a regular series the library presented promoting local experts and authors. “And we’re in the perfect position right here in Woodhaven to test its tremendous potential to dramatically change our relationship to the planet. . . .”

Tom’s proposal to mount several wind turbines on Powell Mountain had been causing a lot of local controversy. Some people were all for tapping the energy savings that wind power could generate. Others, mostly those who lived near the mountain, worried about the noise the turbines purportedly generated as well. I’d stopped by the lecture to try to get a better sense of what was involved, but Tom’s talk had run long and I’d had to leave before the Q and A session got under way. Still, I remembered feeling impressed by how impassioned and committed he was about the project. It occurred to me that, without really realizing it, I’d been giving Tom Deaver a lot of thought.

“Hi, Tom,” I said, smiling as he came up to me.

“I just don’t believe it!” His voice was shaking.

“What?” I asked. Something was clearly wrong.

“You’re actually
working for
Graham Mackenzie?” he said.

“No, I don’t work for him—not for his company,” I said, thinking Tom must have been misinformed. “I’m just designing a garden for his new place.”

“Where the hell do you draw the line?”

“What do you mean?”

“How can you in good conscience allow yourself to have anything to do with a man like that? Someone who destroys the land for a living!”

“I . . . I’m running a business,” I began to say, but then I realized that Tom had repeated back to me almost exactly what I’d accused Mackenzie of at our first meeting. “Listen, initially I had some reservations, too. But once I got to know him better—”

“No,” Tom said, shaking his head back and forth as if he couldn’t bear to hear what I was saying. “No—not
you
, Alice. I really thought better of you. I don’t know why, but for some reason I thought you cared about the environment. I thought you had some integrity.”

“I do care,” I said, stung by his indictment. “I care very deeply. The garden I’ve created incorporates solar power and recycled materials. All my designs are—”

“What difference does any of that make? You’re still working
for
a man who stands for everything we’re
against
. I’m just stunned you don’t seem to get this.”

“You must not know him very well,” I said. I was tempted to tell him about the Mackenzie Project, but I had to remind myself that Mackenzie had made it clear he wanted to keep the foundation under wraps. “He’s really remarkably knowledgeable about landscape design.”

“Oh, is he?” Tom said, taking a step back and looking me over. “And Hitler painted watercolors!”

He turned on his heel and walked away without giving me a chance to respond. Not that I could have. He’d left me speechless.

Later, though, and in the days ahead, I thought of any number of comebacks. From the reasonable:
I try not to judge other people based on what they do for a living, but rather on how they act in their daily lives—and Mr. Mackenzie has been a perfect
gentleman
. To the downright petulant and furious:
Who made you the boss of me?
But no matter what I came up with, I knew that none of it would be convincing enough to change Tom Deaver’s mind. Or his downgraded opinion of me. And I began to realize that how he viewed me mattered more than I cared to admit.

No, not
you
, Alice
.
I really thought better of you. . . .
So he’d had me in his sights—or at least in his peripheral vision—just as I’d had him in mine.
For some reason . . . I thought you had some integrity
. And he’d liked what he’d seen. At least until now. It was interesting how our argument had suddenly brought him into sharp focus for me—and to the forefront of my mind. What I knew about him, though, could fit on a sticky note. He’d been widowed about five years ago, after his wife suffered through an almost decade-long series of cancer treatments.

“That man’s a saint,” Brigitte, our postmistress, had confided to me one Saturday right after I’d moved back to Woodhaven. Tom had just left after buying stamps in front of me in line. “Never complains. Always has something nice to say—and him with his wife living at home in hospice care for almost a year!” A few months after this encounter, Gwen told me that Tom’s wife had finally passed away.

“That’s the kind of man I want at my deathbed,” she’d said. “Apparently he held her in his arms as she breathed her last. I’m going to give him a year—then I’m going to pounce.”

Gwen hadn’t followed up on her threat, though, which was unlike her. I kidded her about it from time to time.

“He’s fair game now,” I’d told her when we saw him shopping at Guido’s with two of his teenaged children a couple of years after his wife had died.

“Yeah, he’s pretty tempting, isn’t he?” Gwen said as we watched him surreptitiously. He was wearing jeans and a battered
baseball cap. He was standing in front of the meat counter, and the butcher was laughing at something he’d said. “But there’re those four teenage kids to contend with. I think I’m going to wait until they’re out of the house.”

As far as I knew, the Deaver children were in college now, though I think I’d heard the oldest one had already married. It was only recently—around the time of Tom’s lecture at the library—that I became vaguely aware I didn’t have my eye on Tom Deaver for Gwen’s sake, but for my own. Not seriously, though. I was through with men. But theoretically, if I ever was to get involved with anyone again—which I wasn’t—I’d want him to be someone like Tom. Thoughtful. Committed to a job he really believed in. Making a difference in the world. That he looked damned good in jeans and had a voice that made my mouth go dry was definitely a plus. But I knew now that I’d clearly blown it with him before I had to worry about dealing with any of these fantasies in a real way. And when I asked myself if I would have refused to work for Mackenzie because it might have improved my chances with Tom, the answer was an unequivocal “no.”