In the Beauty of the Lilies (56 page)

From his face, pursed in distaste like Charles Laughton’s when mutiny loomed, this was more than Patrick had wanted to know. Marriage between men and women was an area where he was invincibly ignorant; even his parents’ he had not been privileged to witness, and then his mother and Mr. Traphagen had given themselves to art. Alma went on, in revenge because Patrick had been rather boring last night, “Oh, I know you think I’ve made a lot of my own, and I have, but Hollywood money is like snow, didn’t somebody once say? It melts. Caleb’s is
Bos
ton money. It hides, and grows. These New Englanders have really never discovered the pleasure principle. They all love Maine because it’s so uncomfortable. Caleb has a house in Brookline and a shingled place on Martha’s
Vineyard. I love it on the Vineyard. Cagney went there for years. Everybody on it thinks they’re some kind of star, so I get no attention. I go barefoot. I even go shopping barefoot.”

“You sound happy,” he said, subdued as she had wished.

“Oh, who can tell? When the ambition bug bites, happiness stops being the point. I should be happy, God knows—I think I would be, if Clark and these crazies of his weren’t such a desperate worry. Could you
pos
sibly, poor dear Patrick, drive me back to Lower Branch, or is there a Rocky Mountain taxi I could call?”

They arrived in time for the press conference that the FBI spokesman, Mr. Fred Dix, gave every eleven in the cement-block town hall, upstairs in the meeting room. He reminded her of Wayne Phillips, Sr., in front of the assembled Sunday school, looking uncomfortable and evasive and whey-faced from leading such an indoors life. Alma had not seen folding chairs like these—double, dark brown, with close-set slats on the curved seat—since Sunday school. The big room, with its industrial steel windows and an American flag drooping in the corner, was full of these chairs, but, even so, some reporters had to stand along the walls. The monotone briefing stated that the situation was basically unchanged. As per Mr. Smith’s request, two of his thirty-minute tapes on the real meaning of the whore of Babylon and related texts had been broadcast on radio stations in Gunnison, Salida, Leadville, and Glenwood Springs. Mr. Smith was still prayerfully meditating on the matter of releasing women and children. Physical access to the Temple and its grounds continued to be denied to television crews on the grounds of personal danger; on three separate occasions last week cameramen who had ventured inside the thousand-yard perimeter established by
the coördinated law-enforcement team drew rifle fire from inside the main house. An exasperated reporter shouted, “Sir, is your so-called team going to do anything at all or just hang outside the perimeter forever?”

The spokesman’s jaw lifted, a bit like the President’s when he spoke of Manuel Noriega, and he said, “This is a highly delicate and volatile situation. Jesse Smith is a pathological liar and a known killer who is holding seventeen minors and five women in there. If he wants to prove me wrong, all he has to do is come out of that compound and submit to American justice.” This was a dare, meant to reach Jesse Smith as a sound bite, and the television cameras duly rolled. To make another bite, Fred Dix went on, “The winter is our friend, not his. Every day they hold out, they have less fuel, less food, less patience. More anxiety, more friction between them. We can wait all year. We can certainly wait till the snowdrifts aren’t there to impede operations.”

“What about cutting off their electricity again?” another reporter asked.

Dix’s patience was not as endless as he suggested. “We’re trying for a peaceful resolution and full communications is the way to bring that about. The FBI, the ATF, the Colorado and county forces of law enforcement are running this operation, not the news media. Our aim is to save lives, not provide a sensational story for the public. We’re not going to let the tail wag the dog here.”

One of the bored reporters noticed that Alma had come into the room. Like a beast with a hundred eyes and mouths and a single will, the forces of news-gathering rushed to consume her. She answered their questions one by one, taking care not to stammer and not to blink as the flashbulbs went off in their blue cascades: “I am here because I couldn’t bear
to stay away—any mother would do the same.… No, I have never met Mr. Smith or read his pamphlets. This decision was Clark’s, and I have never pried. We all have a right to a private religious life, surely.… He was baptized as a Presbyterian on North Gower Street in Hollywood.… I have talked to him just once over the phone, for three minutes, and I must say he sounded more focused and alert than I have ever heard him.… No—I would be, of course, and you would be, but he did not sound frightened.… A quiet boy, basically, interested in much the same things as other boys are. He took after my dear father, I used to think.… Theodore R. Wilmot, W, I, L, M, O, T, Basingstoke, Delaware … That’s right, the mailman, though actually he retired many years ago.… Same-sex marriages? They do now? I didn’t know this. But any denomination has to keep up with the times, I suppose, including the Presbyterians.… Yes, with the wonderfully talented Jennifer Sprague, who is going to be I am sure one of the truly creative forces in American film of the Nineteen-nineties.…
The Sharpened Knife
, based on a true story in the news … Quite grim, yes, but cathartic … Two and a half months in Greece … Not really—how could I, considering when I was born? I think one of the good effects of television has been to promote more roles for mature women; the old Hollywood gave us a very artificially heightened sense of life and beauty, and it placed a terrible burden upon everyone, actresses and audience alike.… No, there is no truth in that rumor. We are very happy, though because of our work we are not as much together as we’d like.… Goodness, no, I wouldn’t think so, though I’m not sure I know quite what you mean by ‘all-out assault.’ … Perfect confidence. I’ve had some reservations about J. Edgar Hoover but never about the FBI as a whole.… Yes, I thought
the blacklisting was disgusting, and still think so.… Well, I haven’t seen everything, being as I say on location in Europe, but I loved Andie MacDowell in
Sex, Lies, and Videotape
. For the best actor—”

Patrick stepped in front of her and said, “All right, you vultures, enough. This is a frantic mother you’re dealing with.” To Alma, in private, he said, “My God, Essie. You don’t have to answer every crappy question. Your problem is and always was you’re too damn anxious to
please
.”

She had felt sorry for these media people; they looked so exasperated and weary, so underfed and overdrunk, stuck here at this standoff and supposed to send back a story a day, a little revelation or miracle every day, to feed everybody. Why should she mind being their tidbit for the moment? She might make the network news, unless Bush invaded Panama.

Rather roughly Patrick steered her through the news personnel, who were still shouting and murmuring questions and requests for a private interview at her convenience, up front to where Fred Dix was coping with his own beseechers. Dix reached above a reporter’s shoulder to shake her hand. He said, “These are terrible circumstances, Miss DeMott, but it’s a privilege to make your acquaintance. I’ve been adoring your films since I was a kid. Just about my favorite, if I can say so, was that
Strawberry Blonde
you did with Cagney.”

She thought of telling him it had been Crosby, the one with Cagney had been Rita Hayworth, but what did it matter? She had been mulched in—what had once seemed to her absolute immortality turned out to be a slow dissolution within a confused mass of perishing images like a colorful mountain of compressed and rotting garbage. “Thank you,” she said, and since Dix was momentarily too starstruck to
continue, she added, “That was one of the most fun. Nobody makes musicals like that any more.”

“And a damn shame it is,” Dix said. “The world’d be a less violent place if they did. Tell me, Alma—if I may—what you hope to accomplish by being here?”

She didn’t know. Her agent had insisted she come. “Well, I thought m-maybe if I could see Clark face to f-face.”

“Face to face,” Dix said, something of a performer himself, of the dry macho variety. “Half the world wants to see those fools in there face to face, the investigation team foremost. Do you know”—and now he was including Patrick in his discourse, having sized him up as her protector or agent, and as a man more understanding of a man’s problems—“these various media keep telling us they’ll take us to court if we don’t let a crew approach the house at their own risk? First Amendment rights, they say. First Amendment, Second Amendment, it’s all I hear these days. And would you believe we got dozens of wackos showing up wanting to be let into the Temple so they can join up? We got food parcels pouring in from all over the country and Canada we’re supposed to take over on our choppers and drop. We got about ten different psychotics telling us Jesse Smith should be put in jail because
they’re
the real Jesus Christ, not him. Including some women—that’s a new one. The amount of human sickness a thing like this stirs up is enough to make you puke. I had to smile at that question about the same-sex marriages—I’m hardshell Baptist myself, and we’d never hold with that.”

Alma had been retaining her next line in her head throughout this long expository speech. “Mr. Dix, what can I do? I want my son to know I’m here for him.”

“He’ll see it. On the box. They’ve been dropped a couple Zeniths. Our Jesse over there’s become quite an addict, I understand.
Their electric bill comes to us, and it keeps going up. Don’t mean to be flip about life-and-death issues, but you got to see the comedy of it now and then or you’d go crazy yourself.”

“Is it true that this man has said anybody who wants to can leave?”

“He says that, but keep in mind he’s got those people in there hypnotized. They have no wills of their own. They’re no more likely to run away than a whipped dog from his master. Also, they’ll have to face some outstanding charges.”

Something—the image of the whipped dog—pushed tears suddenly over her lower lids. “He’s trapped!” she blurted out.

Patrick put an arm around her and said to Fred Dix, “Suppose the boy wants to reach her, how will we know?”

“Esau—that’s what he calls himself—checks in with us three, four times a day. He’s having the time of his life. Handles it all like a real pro, I must say. Where shall we tell him she’s staying?”

“Bighorn Mountain, forty-five minutes from here. Let me give you the private number.”

Dix took it but felt the need of some ceremonial remark, some acknowledgment that a goddess had descended to be among them. Essie was afraid he would try to kiss her hand. He said, “A true honor, ma’am. I guess a thing like this shows the movies weren’t exaggerating, they were telling the simple truth.”

Dear God, forgive me for my mistakes, my selfishness. Always I was seeking to do Your will, that my talent not be hidden, that my light would shine forth. Forgive me if I could have done more for Clark. Save him from this sadness, this farce. Give him back to me
as he was, helpless and so eager at my breast. Forgive me if I should have nursed him longer, as You know I had committed to
Cream Cheese and Caviar
and Newman wasn’t available later. Dear Lord, make me again the young mother I was; let me pour into him all the love his little being needed. Heal our lives and take us back and make us all perfect. Do the impossible, Lord, for him, as You have done for me. Rescue him from that terrible house. Reach down, so that none but I can see. I will not tell. Let me love You again. Amen
.

It had been so long since Alma had prayed that she fell into the vocabulary and near-nonsense of the little girl praying with Mr. Bear clutched against her face. God had been her secret then and was still. She felt Him still on her skin, though His pressure had become less passionate. She stayed in her uncle’s condo a week, surrounded by blazing-bright snow, the rumble of the lifts, and the strange red-cheeked armies of young skiers, alien and mesmerized, but her son never called—just her husband, her agent, and her father, sounding amiably addled and maddeningly passive. He even said, “It’s in the Lord’s hands,” he who hadn’t spent a minute in a church except the time she was confirmed. A great number of respectful but inexorable news reporters somehow got her number and called, and a young British producer—passed on from Shirley’s office—wondering if she might be able to tackle a British accent for a television adaption of a novel called
Memento Mori
, all about these dreadful old artistic people, very clever and amusing. “We’re hoping for Maggie Smith for the lead. You’d just mainly have to roll your eyes and look vampish.” At night, Alma tried not to keep pace with Patrick’s drinking, to save on calories, but it was hard. He had a whole life’s grievances to recite. He had known her when she was nobody, and such people were fewer and fewer:

blessed islands in this acid sea of celebrity. He deserved some attention for this, but not as much as he wanted. He had become a pathetic fame-fucker, and wanted to fuck hers, her poor old tattered fame. One night as she went into her room, from the wet kiss he gave her you would have thought he was making a pass.

The year 1990 brought an inch or two of fresh powder every night. The routines within the Temple rarely varied. The main event of January, which they all prayed over and discussed for days, was Matthew’s defection. The big, puppy-like, near-sighted Hoosier had loved his mission work—the trips to Hawaii and Australia and even Israel and Thailand, where against all the odds he had created nuclei of converts back in the Eighties—and perhaps, so outward-turned, had been simply too lonely. He crept out in the night; the sound of the police car with its escort of news vans taking him away had woken some of those within the Temple. By morning a fresh fall had erased even his tracks in the snow. He was charged, television told them, with murder, conspiracy, attempted murder, and interfering with the duties of a police officer. In his jail cell he became, for a week or so, a great favorite of the press, and, his fervor for Jesse’s Word unabated, did continue to spread the gospel. But the media have a brief attention span, and soon he sat unattended in his cell, waiting out the yawning intervals in the legal process. Jesse took a mild view of the betrayal: “Well, I guess Matt was one of those seeds that without looking it had gone and fallen on stony ground.”