Whatever Lola Wants (57 page)

Milton said, “You feeling okay, Mr. Cochan?”

“Bang, set the remote.”

“Look, Mr. Cochan, I think we shouldn't—”

“Set it.”

Bang Steele turned to his boss. “Harry?”

Harold Clark stared at the playing lights.

John Cochan whispered, “Do it!”

From the passage they'd come along, Milton heard a shout.

Clark nodded.

Milton saw Theresa staring at Clark. He watched Steele type a series of numbers and tap the Enter key. He saw the hands on two of the dials leap, one the whole way, one a few degrees. He swung around—“Theresa! Tessa!!”

Her chair was rushing down the ramp into the bright cavern. It picked up speed, lurched ahead, on the flat now, her pole brandished high, her voice intoning sounds, words, impossible to make out what.

“Get back here, you fool!” Clark, the architect.

Milton leapt after the speeding chair—“Tessa!”—but one of them had him around the waist, another grabbed his shoulder—

“Lola!” I had
to make them stop. “Don't! Please go back!”

“You're here!” She grinned at me. Then her pleasure turned to taunt. “So come along for the ride!”

What's the shouting, Lola?

Keep your eye on the steerin', Theresa— Lola reached behind Theresa and pulled off her hair clip. Here, Theresa, chew on this. Lola handed her a greenish pastille. Chew on this.

What is it? Theresa took it.

Powdered bloodstone. For strength.

Theresa chewed. Time for one more fine special thing.

“Lola! For heaven's sake, and eternity's!”

“Come with us!”

I could do no more than watch.

Sarah and Carney
reached the platform. Everywhere hands and faces in confusion, a dozen feet cavorting on a tiny stage. Beyond, below, the wheelchair rushed through a chamber lit up like a hundred Christmas trees. Sarah grabbed a man hanging on to Milton, the three struggled together, Sarah's fist caught the side of the man's head, he let go, turned on her, Milton grabbed him—

Cochan recognized Carney. Someone he'd met. A man who'd lied to him.

Yak stared at Carney. “It's going to blow.”

“What?”

He pointed, beyond Theresa, to the far wall. Carney shot down the ramp after Theresa, Theresa all aglow in ten thousand lights. Her hair had come loose, a sea of white cloud behind her head. Carney heard a hollow voice yell from behind—“less than a minute”—and he pumped his feet like a crazy man but the chair was too powerful. For a second he thought he saw a white-gold demon riding with the chair—

Cochan shouted, “Abort, you ass! Abort! Abort!”

Clark's head quivered. “I can't, once it's set—”

Come on, Theresa, faster! To the wall, tolerate nothing! This is it, this is us, now!

“Lola! Come back!”

You and me, Theresa, push, there's the white circle, grab the thing!

Here we go, Lola!

You should see them back there, all frozen in place, icicles among the stalactites, so funny! No, don't look, faster!

—embracing hope upon the fields of danger, the ancient gods rejoice, and death no stranger!

Reach out, Theresa, the pole, the circle, you got it! Hold on, off off off we go, a splendid grand abandon!

Here we go, Lola, down the middle, hahahahahahaha!

Carney heard a voice shrieking, “Off! Off! Off! Off! Off!” And Sarah's shout, “Carney! Too late!”

He didn't hear, ran on. I couldn't help myself, I flew off after him, caught up and tackled him. He crashed to the ground. Now how did I do that?

Theresa reached the far wall, she'd turned her chair, her pole thrust high, the tip grasping some kind of package, speeding now to the right, the chasm, and Carney heard Theresa's laughter, the whole chamber filled with laughter, a life in laughter, laughter from the glistening stalactites, laughter far huger than Theresa's voice could produce, laughter from the spew of sparkling fountains, echoes of laughter, laughter in spasms, laughter from the flume, the walls laughing, the ceiling and far beyond the ceiling laughter, laughter, roars of laughter, the chair lunged forward— Carney bellowed, “Theresa! No!”

I screamed, “Lola! No!”

They disappeared over the edge. The tiniest tickle of a laugh, silver, mixing with, faraway, a hoarse, Off, off …

And the blast. A wall of air hit Carney. He might have flown fifteen feet. He landed in water, on his shoulder, he heard it crunch. Since I have no earthly substance, the explosion didn't bother me. Then Sarah and Milton were next to Carney, pulling him from a fountain, sopping wet, standing, dragging him away, up the ramp, to the platform.

John Cochan stared at the chamber. I remember his eyes, wide, white, their focus far beyond the wall.

A voice said, “Holy shit.” An arm pointed.

Rising from the chasm, a spurt, a single narrow spume.

Someone said, “Harry?”

Another voice: “I don't know.”

Then a second spurt, and another, it became a shaft of water a yard thick. And the roar. A highway of water, spewing, churning, flooding— Over the chasm's edge a curve of water, more, pumping— Waves.

The chamber went black. “It's a short!” Sarah grabbed Carney, pulled Milton, dragged him, shoved toward the golf carts and the light.

Behind them a voice: “Johnnie, come on, come on!”

Johnnie's head nodded. Yes, he stood at the pinnacle. Below him, water fell everywhere, rose, fell again, dark diamonds of water. Playing among the diamonds, Benjie.

Why, boy?

How far down, Daddy?

Why did you ride the waterchute?

To save you, Daddy.

You saved me?

No, Daddy.

AUTUMN EQUINOX

2003

I can't say the explosion
finished Theresa. A sense of her lingers in the down below, in the water and on the sunbeams. No, she's not been seen up here in the eternal infinite realm.

They pulled Carney out, and Cochan. Sarah forced Milton to help drag Carney off. Milton had been ready to wade out and follow his wife.

Carney blamed himself for tripping up while chasing Theresa. But he wouldn't take her choice of death away from her, not for the world. He prized Theresa's wild laughter.

Terramac is gone. The explosion measured 3.1 Richter, not that violent but it built on itself. Belowground it tore into the wall of ancient rock, its shock waves shot miles along schists and striations, its force brought fragile crust crashing down, leaving rifts and two immense crevices. The caverns are flooded. A damage control team from the University of Vermont—not including Carney and Co.—has hypothesized the greatest harm was caused when the blast's reverberations tore a hole under the Sabrevois River, draining near a third of its flow down to Terramac depth. Then the hole plugged up, no adequate theories as to why or how. But for nearly two days the river did in effect run backward. A new sea, dark and silent, lies below the shorn square miles of the old Fortier Farm, under the Magnussen land as well. The water level has settled, forever or for now, no way of telling, its highest point 1,180 feet below ground. Part of Ginette Seymour's inheritance.

Aboveground, structural damage has made even the near-complete condos unsafe. They will be dynamited. Summerclime, like Underland, all done with.

Handy Johnnie Cochan is gone as well, from Vermont anyway. He's resigned as head of Intraterra and lives now in the Caribbean, on an island with a high hill in the middle. He's bought a big house. He climbs the hill each morning. From there he can see in all directions, 360 degrees of perspective. If he'd taken Benjie camping that one time, would it have made a difference? But events that don't take place cannot be understood.

Johnnie's friend Yak feels great compassion—the Handyman lost his son, his wife, and Deirdre and Melissa, as well as the majesty of Terramac, all in one year. But there's a shade of enmity there too—why, why that one last cavern?

Insurance will cover some of the Terramac disaster. How much?

“We'll never find out,” Ti-Jean muttered. “It's not a public company.”

Or, as Feasie said, “Hell is paved with happy clams.”

The Sheriff of the county, Henry Nottingham, has launched a campaign for private and government money to reseed the scraped area with conifers, birch, and maple. This will take a while, both the raising of funds and the regrowth of trees. How the new ecology there will compare with the old is hard to predict.

Milton wouldn't leave the Grange. When Carney, arm in a sling, shoulder set but the pain still bad, saw Milton a few days after the explosion, he looked years older. His kids had convinced him, he said, that Theresa had been fully aware of her actions. Talking to him this way, Leasie, Feasie, Sarah, and Karl softened their own loss.

Sarah's pond filled again, a long blast of water from the spring. After half a day it ran clear. The muck tore apart and was washed away, down Gambade Brook on its way to the sea. Right away she put in two hundred trout, fingerlings. When the pond is still, in the early morning or when the sun sets and there's a hatch, ripples form as the fish come up to feed. A year from now, Carney figures, they'll be approaching keeper size. But unless the acidity goes down they'll never breed.

Bobbie's new poem
hopped out of nowhere. Or rather from somewhere but a place she'd not been to till now. Last night, going to bed, she felt the compulsion to write. Now she took a sheet of paper from the desk drawer where she'd carefully concealed it, didn't want some casual anybody to see it. Way unlike her other stuff to now, not even the nature poems. She reread it.

When I was young I wanted fame,

The world to know me by my name.

To brand each plague, ordain its cure;

I wanted to make literature.

When I was in my middle age

I tried to dazzle, page by page,

To celebrate each setting day.

I had a thing or two to say.

I'm old now and I've nearly found

The limits of my world around:

To make a little public time,

To make my poem, word by line.

Maybe she'd call it
Three Women for Robert Frost
.

A week after
the explosion, early evening, the sun going down, Sarah and Carney were sitting on the cabin's porch. They listened to water from the spring gurgling in, watched bats swoop for mosquitoes, and, in the way they'd gotten used to, kept their silence. He felt her eyes then, watching and memorizing. What more to know? he wondered. He glanced over to her.

Her face didn't change. “Hi,” she said.

“Hello,” he said. “How are you?”

She said, “Pregnant. How about you?”

•

And Lola? Why, she's come home. Getting back meant reaching for the edge, leaping up and free. And yes, the Gods can't remember ever missing her. No one missed me. And nothing's changed between us.

“Sure it has.” Lola smiles, but charming sin shines in her eyes. “I've seen their joy and fear, I've felt their juices flow.” Her right eyebrow rises, a new talent. “Yours too.”

“From now on, be discreet.”

“Here and below, there's lots of tricks to try.”

“Lola. When you meddle with mortals—”

“Me? Theresa planned it all. Anyway, leave guilt to the living. We're too far away from that world.” She thinks for a moment. “And too dead.” She shakes her head. “Proud of your boy?”

I am indeed. Except, and here's my one regret, I'll never get to hold my grandkid, not in the world's way. Though I did go down there once. We'll see.

Sarah wants to call the kid Teddy. For Theodore, or Theodora.

Think of this: my son, Carney, in his fifties, me thirty-six forever, and soon a tiny baby. With Milton and me as co-grandfathers.

Lola says, “Let's go play.”

Sometimes I shrug and say, “Why not?”

She grins. Sometimes I say I need to keep an eye on the down below, find more stories to tell her. Sometimes she grabs the hem of my robe, that lustrous magenta, and trips me off my feet.

Great thanks to those who have read one or another of the several drafts of the
Lola
manuscript and commented on it—you have greatly helped focus and clarify my intentions: Rhonda Bailey, Robert Barsky, Sandy Frances Duncan, Marie-Christine Leps, Alison Szanto, David Szanto. Thanks as well to my erstwhile publisher at Brindle & Glass, Ruth Linka, for her appreciation of
Whatever Lola Wants.
And Leah Fowler, my editor, with whom I had not worked before, was brilliant in helping me cut and pare. Thank you, Leah.

A National Magazine Award recipient and winner of the Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction, George Szanto is the author of several books of essays and half a dozen novels. His most recent novel prior to
Whatever Lola Wants
is
The Tartarus House on Crab
. A fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Szanto is the co-author (with Sandy Frances Duncan) of the Island Investigations International mystery series, which includes
Never Sleep with a Suspect on Gabriola Island
,
Always Kiss the Corpse on Whidbey Island
,
Never Hug a Mugger on Quadra Island
, and
Always Love a Villain on San Juan Island
. In 2013 he published a chronicle/memoir,
Bog Tender: Coming Home to Nature and Memory
. Please visit his website at
georgeszanto.com
.