Last Resort (6 page)

He had been right to come to Key West, though, Wilkie thought. It was best for bad events to take place in neutral surroundings, so that they would not contaminate a house and a town thickly silted with good memories. Besides, in Convers he was constantly threatened with interruption from ex-colleagues and ex-students, not to mention possible visits from his offspring.

Christmas with Ellen and Billy had been hard. Knowing that he wouldn’t see them again, Wilkie had forced himself to spend time with the children, to speak with them in ways that they would remember as calm and upbeat and concerned in a fatherly way with their rather uninteresting lives. He didn’t enjoy the process and—he suspected—neither did they. For one thing, though he had tried not to say much about it, they must have seen that he was depressed by their choice of professions. He had approved of Ellen’s wish to become a doctor; but why should she choose a specialty like neurology, instead of pediatrics or obstetrics, where her knowledge might some day be of use to her family and community? And now Billy had declared an interest in what he called “computer art”—in Wilkie’s opinion, an oxymoron.

Already, unless the ocean currents had brought in jellyfish, as they had today, Wilkie went swimming every afternoon to establish a routine and prepare for his tragic accident. All that remained now was to determine its optimum time and place. Late in the day would be best, he had decided, when visibility was poor and there were few other swimmers. Perhaps just after sunset when the light was dimming, the wind strong, the glass-green surf churned and choppy. It would be important to make sure that there were no boats or windsurfers near: he didn’t want to be rescued ignominiously.

As for the location, there was a choice of four places, two of which Wilkie had now ruled out. The long state beach was always thick with tourists and too shallow—he would have to wade at least a quarter of a mile before the water was over his head. The city beach was small, usually crowded, and overlooked by buildings. He was hesitating now between the two other options. At Fort Taylor there were often real waves, and occasionally a good strong undertow. But it closed at sunset, which meant he would have to swim out to sea sooner, increasing his chance of being seen and “saved.”

The county beach at the end of Reynolds Street had the advantage of being within walking distance, and there was a pier, so he could get into deep water fast. The only problem was that this pier was a favorite location for sunset watchers. Most of them left once the show was over, but a few sentimental couples sometimes lingered; he would have to wait till they’d gone, or were focused on each other.

Only two things delayed Wilkie’s departure now. Most important, he had to finish his last (perhaps his best) book,
The Copper Beech.
All that remained was deciding on the final chapter. The actual Copper Beech was still in its prime, and would probably outlive his children—and grandchildren, if any. But for dramatic and didactic purposes Wilkie Walker’s monumental biography, like all great biographies, must close with the death of its subject. There were three possible endings; they had already been roughed out and lay on his desk in three numbered folders.

In the first version of Wilkie’s final chapter the great tree suffered a lingering and pathetic death: dropping its foliage early, losing its limbs, becoming weaker and more susceptible to insects and disease. As it aged it was gradually deserted by the squirrels and chipmunks and birds that had long made it their home. Then one spring it failed to put out leaves, and stood as a mute gray skeleton among its green companions.

In his second version the Copper Beech was destroyed by hostile human forces: air pollution, acid rain, and a damaged root system due to the digging of trenches for pipes across the campus, a nuisance that was constantly occurring at Convers College. Wilkie had also considered having the Copper Beech chopped down to make room for some hideous new building or parking structure; but this was not only painful to contemplate but most unlikely, considering the symbolic status of the real tree on the Convers campus.

The third possibility was for the Copper Beech to be the victim of natural disaster. Wilkie had contemplated and rejected having his vegetable hero struck by lightning: according to some authorities, beeches actually attract lightning far less often than other trees. He had also ruled out the idea of a tornado—unlikely in northern New England. Instead, the great tree would fall dramatically (perhaps melodramatically?) in a great hurricane.

Wilkie had been aware almost from the beginning that in a sense this book was his own story: the king of the forest fallen. The real Copper Beech, after all, was the most notable tree at Convers College, and was often (like Wilkie Walker) pictured in its catalogue and alumni magazine. He recoiled from the prospect of its ugly, slow, and undignified death as he did from his own. If he were to carry out the symbolic parallel, a sudden tragic accident would be most appropriate. On the other hand, this meant giving up the chance of making a final telling attack on ecological stupidity and vandalism.

The other thing that still held Wilkie back was that there was nobody in Key West for his wife to turn to afterward in her grief and confusion. Molly Hopkins and her friends were all too old and shaky to be depended on for practical help, and when Wilkie was gone there ought to be someone both competent and kind for Jenny to lean on. Often he had been on the verge of asking Molly if she knew of anyone like that in town, but he hadn’t been able to invent a plausible reason for the inquiry. And probably Molly wouldn’t know anyone anyhow. Her circle of acquaintances resembled a retirement home: everyone in it that he’d met so far was old, and many of them were visibly sick and dying. Others, no doubt, were invisibly sick and dying, like him.

Wilkie had had a horror of retirement homes; he had sworn to himself that he would never enter one. But in coming to Key West, he now realized, he had done exactly that. For younger people the island might be a holiday destination, or offer seasonal employment. For the old it was nothing more than a tropical version of Skytop, the awful upmarket “elder community” that had recently appeared on a hill near Convers. Its name alone disgusted him. No doubt it had been chosen to subliminally suggest that all its residents would go to heaven—most unlikely, in Wilkie’s opinion, when he considered some of those whom he knew.

A similar calculated cynicism appeared to underlie the financial arrangements of Skytop, disguised in mealy-mouthed good-think language. When you entered the “community” you purchased an apartment or town house for an exorbitant price, almost twice what it would cost on the open market. Then you paid a monthly maintenance fee which was double the standard rent for a similar dwelling unit anywhere else. After you became unable to “live independently,” you moved into a hospital wing that was part of the complex, and your apartment or house was resold. You and your heirs received nothing.

Essentially, therefore, the proprietors of Skytop were gambling that you would become disabled or die quite soon; the longer you lived and occupied your apartment—or a room in the hospital wing—the less profit for them. Not a safe proposition for residents, one would think. Wilkie Walker did not envisage a concealed staff policy of euthanasia, but wouldn’t there be, sometimes at least, an unconscious bias in that direction?

Several retired professors of Wilkie’s acquaintance had moved into Skytop, and when visiting them he had been appalled by their blind complacence as well as their increasing self-centeredness. It was clear to him that though Skytop resembled an upmarket motel, it had deeper parallels to an expensive internment camp. If you lived there, you couldn’t help but be aware that every so often one of the inmates would be taken away to die slowly in what was euphemistically called a “nursing facility.” You wouldn’t know when your turn was coming, but the longer you stayed, the more likely it would become that you would be chosen. And of course eventually everyone would be chosen.

If you didn’t die at once, you would be brought back to your luxurious cell terrified and exhausted and damaged, and everyone would be formally nice to you, the way people were nice to Molly’s friend Kenneth Foster after he got out of the hospital last week. But the men and women in white coats would come for you again, and again. Finally you would not return.

A little later there would be a tasteful memorial service, with flowers and music and speeches and a printed program. After that, to judge from Wilkie’s visits to Skytop, you would be forgotten quite soon. In a few months nobody would even mention you; new prisoners would have arrived to fill the luxurious cells.

Anything but that, he thought; anything. His accidental drowning would be hard for Jenny and the children, but the shock and pain would pass, and they would remember him always as strong, vigorous, productive, and competent—not as a weak, whiny, damaged invalid. And for this memory to be intact, he must swim out to sea for the last time soon. He would have no trouble doing this: his hip hardly bothered him at all here, no doubt due to the warm weather. But more and more often the sudden sharp pains in his lower bowel came at night, and twice since they’d been in Key West he had seen splashes of fresh blood on the flowered “bathroom tissue”—a horrifying watery red.

He must not swim too far out, since it would be best that his body should be found, to end all speculation that he had vanished on purpose or been murdered. And, irrational as that might be, he did not want to lie on the ocean floor, nibbled disgustingly by fishes. He wanted to be buried in the plot he had bought in the Convers graveyard, under a granite stone and a towering fir, not far from the grave of his old friend Howard Hopkins.

Possibly, before this, there would be an autopsy. If so, the coroner might find the cancer Wilkie knew was there; but of course no one would realize that he had been aware of it. The most that might happen would be that someone—the Episcopal minister in Convers, for instance, at the memorial service—might speak of God’s providence in sparing Professor Walker a drawn-out, painful death.

It must be soon. Already, Wilkie realized bitterly, he had ceased to be reliably competent in one important area; soon, no doubt, he would lose his sexual drive completely. In his mind he heard a voice that had been silent in the world for nearly sixty years: the voice of his Scottish immigrant grandfather, Matthew Wilkie, after whom he had been named. The words were ones he had heard many times in his childhood, whenever—always reluctantly—he had to leave his grandparents’ farm and take the bus back to the city. But now they had a darker reverberation. “Willie-Boy,” his grandfather’s voice said, “it’s time to go.”

If no appropriate friend turned up by the end of January, he decided, Jenny would just have to depend on the children. Neither of them was ideal for this role, but together they might approximate the ideal: Ellen would be competent, and Billy would be sympathetic and kind.

And of course back in Convers there would be many friends to step in and support Jenny. They would help her to go on with what was left of her life, and gradually to take on the many responsibilities and duties she would have as Wilkie Walker’s widow and literary executor. With the help of his lawyer and literary agent, she would manage. She had an orderly mind: she knew where everything was filed and which articles he would want reprinted. She would say the right things to the right newspapers and fend off predatory journalists. She would refuse all access to that illiterate, bossy woman from Indiana who wanted to write his “inspiring life’s story”; she would work closely and efficiently with the professor in Maine whom Wilkie had already chosen as his official biographer. She would know instinctively which papers this young man should see and which should be held back.

About Jenny’s grasp of their personal finances he was less certain. Some years ago, when he first began to plan for retirement, Wilkie had tried to speak to her about their future. Since she was a woman, and twenty-four years younger than he, he had explained, the statistical odds were that he would predecease her by thirty-one years. Jenny didn’t want to hear about it. “Don’t talk like that! You’re going to live forever,” she had insisted, her voice becoming shaky. When he said that they had to discuss these things sometime, she’d cried, “Oh, but not now!” and made an excuse to leave the room.

Practically speaking, he ought to raise the subject again, to talk with Jenny about investments and annuities. But that was unsafe now, since it would suggest that he had foreseen—or worse, planned—his death.

The county beach would be best, Wilkie thought. He would leave from there on February 1. This would give him time to decide about his last chapter and prepare a final draft. There was no reason to hang around after that. There was nothing for him to do here in Key West, nothing for him any more in this world.

O
N THE TREE-SHADED
deck of Molly Hopkins’s Key West house, the American poet Gerald Grass, who was once a favorite student of her husband, Howard, sat drinking iced coffee. When Molly first met Gerry forty years ago he was a handsome, good-natured, sincere, likable young man who, many thought, resembled the English poet Stephen Spender. Possibly under the influence of this resemblance, Gerry had also become a poet. Now, though perhaps (as Howard would have put it) not quite on the first team, he had published widely, taught at many colleges and universities, and received his share of awards and grants. Though his blond curls were graying, he was still handsome, good-natured, sincere, and likable.

Like Jenny and Wilkie Walker, Gerry had sought Molly’s advice about housing, and as a result he and his current girlfriend were now occupying the apartment over the garage of Alvin’s house.

“The place is great,” he said in reply to her question, helping himself to another cucumber sandwich, of which he had already had more than his fair share. “I really have to thank you. I’d just about given up on Key West rentals after that last time. You remember: there were no towels, no soap, no toilet paper, no lightbulbs, nothing to eat or drink. All the landlord left us was fleas. Turned out they had three cats and two dogs.” Gerry laughed.