Addled Read online

  Copyright © 2007 by JoeAnn Hart

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Little, Brown and Company

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  The Little, Brown and Company name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: May 2007

  ISBN: 978-0-316-00568-5

  Contents

  Copyright

  The Stance

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For Gordon

  And the wind shall say: “Here were decent godless people:

  Their only monument the asphalt road

  And a thousand lost golf balls.”

  —T.S. ELIOT, The Rock

  The Stance

  Pearls clicked on knotted strands as a tidy cluster of women gathered outside the library, nodding to the one with the ebony cane. Then they dispersed, off on their assigned tasks. After a brief interval, two of them returned, cooing to an inebriated young man in a dinner jacket hanging between them; then they continued on to a third-floor guest room to put him to bed. Another, with the practiced mannerisms of a museum guide, led a leather-skirted lady up the back way. The sound of stilettos echoed down the marbled halls, then stopped abruptly as the professional closed the door firmly behind her. The other women smoothed the wrinkles from their silk outfits and stood back, waiting.

  The one with the cane removed a stethoscope from her clutch and placed the business end of the instrument on an exposed water pipe in the hall, listening for signs of life in Room #13. She smiled grimly and gave the nod. The women swept smoothly into action, the rapid clacking of their heels fading away down the stairs, then rising again. This time, they had a fresh young thing in their midst, excited about the game the women seemed to be playing. Where were they going? She laughed in anticipation, until one of the women put her finger to her lips.

  Chapter One

  The Angle of Approach

  IT WAS a perfect lie. Charles Lambert handled his 3-iron as reverently as a divining rod, its finely calibrated balance sending a golden hum to his brain. The fairway lay open at his feet, presenting no obstacles between him and Plateau, the elevated green of Hole #14—200 yards away, still well within his capabilities. Still. Up at the club-house, he heard fabric slap and cables clank as Old Glory fought the morning breeze, and he made a mental calculation to correct for the wind. If only he could freeze it all, these precious moments before the club made contact with the ball, when anything was possible.

  He could even win. He was playing a decent game in spite of not getting out on the course nearly enough that spring. Freedom at the office had been sorely curtailed, what with one corporate scandal and SEC investigation after another. Here it was, the Fourth of July weekend, and he wasn’t even tan yet—not naturally so, at any rate. He’d had to borrow bronzing gel from Madeline’s bag of tricks for these ambered arms, making him feel like the vigorous youth he was not so long ago. Indeed, his muscles were still firm, his wrists supple and pronated, his hands—properly V-clasped firmly around the staff—as strong as ever. In a nod to authenticity, he’d even kept the bronzer off his left hand where a golf glove would have blocked the sun.

  He looked down at the dimpled ball, then back up at the broad fairway. To the right, the wall of vegetation that straddled his backyard threw a purple shadow on the course. When he was a boy, he used to play over there, knocking acorns around with a stick—looking over the gate. How proud he was the first time his father brought him along for a game. He was no taller than a golf bag and yet he’d felt like one of the men, a hunter of balls, a conquering hero. But hunters and heroes did not, as a rule, wear bronzing gel, did they? When had vanity replaced his old self-assurance, his self-mastery—his self? Why was it that when his father turned silver at the temples he’d been called distinguished, but when his own chestnut hair lost its depth he was simply growing old? It wasn’t fair to change the rules like that. Slings of flesh—jowls—had begun to round off his chin, once so pointed and cleft. His entire infrastructure was aging. After the game, he had to go see his dentist about a cracked tooth.

  He tried to focus, reaching back to a lifetime of lessons: straight arm, bent knee, head down, eye on the ball. Or inner eye on the ball, as Steeve from the Buddha Ball Clinic would say—the double e’s in his name like hooded eyes—enigmatically adding that “the hole and the ball have been one throughout eternity.” If that were the case, Charles sniffed, then what was the point of going through the motions? And “be the ball” was nothing more than what Chevy Chase said in Caddyshack, a movie Steeve claimed never to have seen. What sort of golf pro was that?

  But the three days and twelve hundred dollars were not entirely wasted. He did grasp the concept about forging a connection between hand, mind, and club, and the importance of keeping the head still—mentally, not just physically—to make room for abundance in his shot. But stillness eluded him. Steeve told him that it could not be sought, and the best he could do was prepare himself to receive it.

  “How do I do that?” Charles had asked.

  “You must find your own path,” Steeve had said, with what Charles felt was a spiritual smirk. “No one can tell you. Be natural. Let it go to let it in.”

  “Of what?” Charles had been exasperated. “What do I let go of?”

  “Striving. Trying so hard.” Steeve had stroked his severely clipped beard and studied Charles. “And if you can’t let go, try loosening your grip.”

  Finally, some decent golf advice.

  Charles waggled his club and breathed in deeply as he relaxed his hands, but then a chunk of air lodged at the base of his throat. How had a moment of peace degenerated so quickly into another opportunity for anxiety? He shifted his weight to his left foot and rotated his shoulders. At least he was tall—not shrinking yet!—and that gave him an edge. Even an inch or two made a difference in being able to assess the lay of the land. He could see, off in the distance, that old duffer Howie Amory disappear into the dogleg of #16, and over there, a stately parade of Canada geese was marching up from Oxbow Lake. The bird
s acted like they owned the place, posing in their formal attitudes, luxuriously plucking at the green turf. If they could hold a club with those feathered limbs, they’d be better than he was by the end of the summer. It used to be his fortunes that were on the rise; now it was his handicap. But a man’s game only improved in proportion to the time available to work on it, and since his fiftieth birthday he’d felt he had no time at all.

  He readjusted his grip and felt the scorecard in his pocket dig into his groin. He could sense his partners shifting uneasily as they ran out of small talk, waiting for him to take his shot. Gregg, Neddy, and Andrew, all friends and colleagues, had only a two-minute reserve of conversation, even among themselves. That is, unless they were involved in some sport so they wouldn’t have to look at one another, but only look at the ball, and discuss the ball, what the ball did, why it did it, and what could be done to either encourage it or keep it from doing it again. It could be a golf ball on Saturday morning, or it could be a baseball tuned in to the radio in an air-conditioned Land Rover. It could be a football on a home-theater screen as they fended off another sleety New England winter on tufted-leather sofas. They could even be entertained by a Day-Glo tennis ball soaring over the heads of their wives in mixed doubles. The ball made them happy, but it had to keep moving. It made them nervous when it stopped for too long, foreshadowing the inevitable day when it—and they—would stop moving altogether.

  Charles wrapped himself in a tight cocoon of concentration as he raised his club high, determined not to hesitate at the apex, hesitated anyway, and swung. The contact reverberated through his body as if he were sending a piece of himself into the universe, soaring. Up and up—the small white voyager sailed through the blue sky as through a heavenly sea, and his mind’s eye followed along, looking at the course from high above, down at the giant amoebas of putting greens, the luxurious tops of trees, the reflective gaze of water hazards, all fitting together like pieces of a master puzzle. Then the ball—and the vision—began to fall from flight, plunging down, and down again, until the pieces broke apart. Neddy gasped in an asthmatic wheeze, simultaneous with the distant squa-a-ak. A grazing Canada goose fell over in a violent gesture, then went still.

  The golfers, too shocked to laugh, stared at the inert body in the distance and waited to see if maybe it wouldn’t decide to get up and shake off the whole affair. When they realized that such was not going to be the case, they walked over in trepidation, stepping over the divot.

  Charles got there first and squatted by the goose spread in supplication on the flawless grass. He was about to touch it, until Andrew, slight and sandy, put his hand over his mouth and shook his head. Holding his 3-iron like a harpoon, Charles prodded the feathered body until it rolled over, causing the head to settle at an unnatural angle. Blood appeared at its nostrils.

  “How disgusting,” said Andrew, scrunching up his face, an act that made his Adam’s apple protrude even more.

  “Well done, Charles,” said Neddy, laughing. He lowered his fireplug of a body and tugged at a wing feather. “What a pity hunting season doesn’t open for another six months.”

  Gregg, a massive hulk of a human, bald and bubble-gum pink, got his best club out of his bag: The USGA’s Rules of Golf. “You can’t play the game without knowing the rules,” he always said. He began to pace, digging his cleats into the turf with every lumbering step as he turned the pages, searching for an answer. Andrew, abnormally upright by orders of his doctor and chiropractor, who catered to his tight, flinching spine, stepped away from the body and pulled a cell phone out of his pants pocket. Phones were forbidden on the course, but then again, as he often pointed out, so was foul language. And besides, he kept the phone on vibrate and only made outgoing calls when he had to. He dialed the grounds crew to clear away the mess.

  Charles collapsed to a one-legged kneel, using his club as a staff to balance himself. He pressed his lips together and tasted blood where his cracked tooth had rubbed at his inner flesh, and he stared at the bird. The feathers of one wing were spread open like a fan, the tip pointing up, beckoning him. The bleakness and terrible reality of existence seeped into his very being, all on this fine blue day, played upon this smooth green grass. He’d been aiming for the other side of the fairway altogether. How was one to go on with the game?

  “Is there a penalty?” asked Gregg, stabbing a finger in his book. “What do I look under?”

  “Augury,” croaked Charles.

  “There’s nothing here about that.” Gregg paced in wider and wider circles with every rotation, not looking up from the Rules. “Is a goose a natural obstruction or an outside agent?”

  “Augury?” Neddy snorted, then stood with a groan, straightening the crease of his butter-yellow pants. “Charles, we should never have let you go to that wacky clinic this winter. Soon you’ll be playing golf and buying bonds by examining the entrails of birds.”

  “Entrails!” Andrew turned his back to the men and shouted into the phone, his hand over one ear. “You’d better hurry.”

  Charles stood up with great effort, trembling at the joints. “I can’t say we wouldn’t all do any better if we did.” He wiped his forehead with his arm, smudging his skin-deep glow, and looked up in time to see a lone crow sweep over them to inspect the carnage.

  Chapter Two

  The Lay of the Land

  GERARD WILTON traced the grain of his polished mahogany desk with the tip of his finger as he gazed out his picture window at the golf course, as plush and curvaceous as a green velvet pillow. Since 1882, Eden Rock managers had overseen the smooth running of the Club from this very desk, and he was proud to be part of that noble line, heir to this exceptional view. It was a land of no extremes, just how he—and he felt he could speak for the members in this regard—preferred life in general: the present constant and content, with the future leisurely coasting ahead from one tee to the next.

  The in-house phone trilled and the kitchen indicator light flashed red. That would be his chef, Vita, short-tempered, self-assured, and so indecently sensual that if the kitchen weren’t already in the basement, he would have to put it there, such were the sounds she made when she tasted her own cooking. But she would not be in the throes of ecstasy now. He’d left a memo on her desk last night about iceberg lettuce. Food at the Club was as recreational as the golf, so it had to be both interesting and fashionable. It was unfortunate for Vita that her boyfriend / produce supplier had just dumped her for another chef, but the members could not go to their outside worlds with head lettuce on their breath because of it. No, indeed.

  He picked up the receiver with resolve, then quickly held it away from his ear. Vita was threatening some perverse violence with canned fruit cocktail. But he knew she was just letting off steam. She would never keep such an abomination in her kitchen, and she was, underneath it all, self-controlled in the way that people who work with knives generally are.

  When the screaming died down, Gerard spoke to her with excessive, professional calm. “Vita, listen to reason. You don’t have to buy mesclun from your old boyfriend”—and he correctly put the emphasis on the clun—“but you do have to find someone else, soon. The membership can’t eat fast-food filler just because the chef is no longer bedding the greengrocer.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, with a cracked voice and a sniffle.

  “You know exactly what I’m saying,” Gerard said. “Don’t rattle the members.”

  One of the reasons Gerard had hired Vita when he arrived on the scene three years ago—aside from the fact that the previous cook had specialized in warm gray meat—was that despite her Colombian heritage, Vita had a great unpretentious American style. She favored neither the chilies and spices of her people nor the experimental puddles of yellow and purple sauces of her peers. She made halibut poached with fennel, roast lamb with rosemary polenta, and skewers of shrimp and mango. Food that was different but not unfamiliar. The members, conservative in all things, were suspic
ious of strange ingredients, but once they were conditioned to something, like mesclun, they could not be turned back easily. They could, in fact, be quite rigid.

  “There’s nothing low-life about head lettuce, Gerard.” As Vita spoke into the kitchen phone, she absently fondled a bowl of fuzzy kiwis on the stainless-steel counter in front of her. “Those old Wasps prefer it. With a little Thousand Island dressing, it brings them right back to Mother’s dear old cook. As for the others, it’s retro. A crescent of iceberg juxtaposed with a few truffle shavings puts both truffles and iceberg in a whole new context.”

  “The members don’t think food, Vita—they eat food. Don’t cook over their heads.”

  “And as far as the greengrocer goes, my private life is my business. It’s a wonder I can still have one with the hours I put into this gastro hell. I just happen to think that Utah Riley is unreliable, that’s all.” Her voice cracked again as she crushed two kiwis in her fist until juice ran green on the counter. “Everything he has is wilted and he can’t deliver.”

  “I have a few suggestions of whom to call,” Gerard said, rifling through some papers on his desk. “I think, for efficiency’s sake, instead of using a dozen specialty suppliers, it’s time to go to one of the big restaurant companies where we can get everything from toilet paper to tomatoes in one neat order.”

  “Gerard!” Vita flung the mangled kiwis into the trash. “How can you say such a thing? Good food is more about shopping than cooking. Not everyone knows where to find the perfect radish or the plumpest chicken—some people wouldn’t know a ripe avocado if they stepped in it. The only food you’re an expert on is the pickle you keep up. . .”

  “Listen, Vita, we’ll talk about this later. But in the meantime, if a farmer comes to the back door and wants to show you his zucchini, just say no. No, thank you. Do something other than iceberg for tonight, and you’d better hurry before Mr. Quilpe gets wind of this. He’ll have us paying for air shipments of baby weeds from the South of France.”