Five Fortunes
Authors: Beth Gutcheon
Five
Fortunes
A Novel
Beth Gutcheon
For my mother, Rosamound Richardson, who first took Joy and me to Fat Chance when we were too young to need it And for my mother-in-law, Helen Clements, who has so staunchly supported my recent research
And for the inimitable Virginia Avery—if you know her, no explanation is necessary. If you don’t, none would suffice I am very grateful to friends who have made invaluable contributions to the shaping and grooming of this manuscript: Jerri Witt, Marilyn Yalom, Bob Domrese, Karen Paget, Geri Herbert, David Field, Jeanine Ackerly, Linda Rossen, Sung Ying Cheung, Robin Clements, and Barbara Schragge. Thanks also to Penny Ysursa in the office of the Secretary of State in Boise, and to Mitchell Lester at EMILY’s List. For inspiration from fellow travelers: Alida, Fran, and Louisa, Julia Poppy, Jean, Dana, Kitty, Page, Joy, and my sisters.
As always, my heartfelt gratitude for the support of my agent, Wendy Weil, and of my editor, Diane Reverand.
Contents
1
S
tepping out to the curb in front of the Phoenix airport that November Sunday, Mrs. Albert Strouse, San Francisco matron of impressive age, was met by a welcome shock of heat.
There had been a wintry dankness in the wind at home for weeks, which along with the artificial winter of the airplane cabin had settled into her bones. She adjusted her dashing new mango-colored sunglasses and basked.
A young woman in a jacket of a familiar blue appeared beside her. “Mrs. Strouse!”
“Cassie! How are you, dear?”
“Can’t complain.” Cassie took Rae’s small suitcase and led her to the blue minivan waiting in the No Waiting zone. “You’re my last lady. Do you mind riding up front with me?”
“Delighted. I’m good with a shotgun.”
Cassie held the door while Rae hoisted herself into the front seat.
There were four other passengers already on board, none known to her. They exchanged nods of greeting with her, except for one fat one who either had jet lag or had enjoyed some cocktails on the plane and was slumped in the back with her eyes shut, looking like a failed popover.
Normally Rae Strouse loved a party. Normally Rae Strouse considered three strangers on a bus a festive gathering, but today as the van left the city behind she was just as glad to contemplate the afternoon light on the desert and let The Young behind her get on with their conversation.
1
2 / Beth Gutcheon
The Young were apparently two childhood friends, now separated by husbands and children and distance, taking a week together.
They were clucking over the guest list, looking for useful kernels of information, hoping they weren’t going to regret not going to Aruba.
New guests were always anxious about how it was going to be.
“Thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. Thirty-six. Well that’s a nice size. Group. That’s a good group,” said the dark one.
“Look, here’s that woman Glenna Leisure. She’s in
W
all the time.”
“Is she?”
“Yes, you know who she is. She’s that one who was a stewardess, she married the leveraged-buyout guy?”
“Is that the one whose co-op got so upset about her Christmas tree?”
“Exactly.”
They fell silent as the van sped along toward the violet shadows of the Mazatzal Mountains.
“Is your sister coming with you this time?” Cassie asked Rae.
“No, we’re taking a cruise later in the year. Mr. Strouse and I want to show her the Greek Isles.”
“That sounds nice,” said Cassie.
“We’re looking forward to it.”
There was another silence.
“A number of your pals from last time are back,” said Cassie. Rae nodded. She was such an old hand by now that there were almost always guests she knew from earlier visits. She liked that, but even more she liked meeting new ones. It wasn’t so easy at her age to meet new people, and it was important. The old ones kept dying.
The two friends behind her handed the guest list to the third woman, who now remarked, “Mrs. Alan Steadman…isn’t that Megan Soule?”
Even Rae turned around at that.
“Megan Soule? You’re
kidding
!”
“That’s her married name,” said the third guest. The two friends looked at her.
Five Fortunes / 3
“Megan Soule, omigod, I
love
her! She was so cute in that movie, with Robin Williams…”
“I saw her in concert once. She was incredible.”
“I’ve heard she’s a really nice person.”
“It says she’s from Aspen.”
“Well she isn’t, but they do have a house there.”
“But she lives in Malibu.”
“Don’t those friends of yours live in Malibu?”
“No, they moved.”
The little van whizzed along over the desert.
“Well, this should be fun,” said the plump blonde, sounding uncertain.
Forty minutes later the little van turned down an unmarked road winding among tall pines. It crossed an arroyo and stopped before a wooden door set in a high stucco wall. The pines cast deep shadows, and the sounds of the highway above and behind them seemed suddenly far away.
The driver rang a heavy brass bell hanging from the doorpost. It had a deep iron peal. Almost at once a young woman appeared through the carved door. Her name tag said JACKIE.
“
Hello
, Mrs. Strouse, welcome back,” she said as Rae was handed down from the van. Rae passed through into a courtyard inside the walls, the first cloister. When the little door closed behind the group they seemed suddenly wrapped in stunning silence.
“Oh!” said the blonde. “So quiet…”
It took a moment to become aware that it was not silent at all, but filled with a subtle singing of crickets, of water playing somewhere nearby, of birds, of moving branches. This courtyard was built around a stone pool whose surface reflected trees towering around it.
Inside, the reception hall was airy and light, built in a style that suggested the Southwest missions, but with rather more amenities.
The ladies sank into large leather chairs and were brought herb tea.
A small woman in a loose belted robe like a monk’s cassock brought Rae
4 / Beth Gutcheon
a pair of sandals. She asked each of the new ladies her shoe size.
Jackie appeared with a clipboard and settled on a footstool beside Rae.
“How is Mr. Strouse?”
“About the same,” Rae said. “Thank you for asking.”
“You’re in A-twelve again. Is there anything you need? Do you want to put anything in the safe?”
“I left my tiara at home,” said Rae.
“Just as well.”
Jackie moved on to the plump blonde, and Rae got herself out of her chair and went out. Her room lay down an outdoor path and through a second open courtyard. Here was an herb garden full of lavender and sage and other aromatics. She entered a third cloister formed around a koi pond.
Rae’s usual room was on the east side of the cloister. The door was unlocked, of course. Inside, her little suitcase had been delivered and her raincoat hung in the closet. The dresser was already stocked with clean T-shirts and leggings and shorts and sweatclothes, all in her size. Rae closed the door behind her, creating the first complete solitude she had known for more months than she could bear to think of.
O
n a redwood bench in the bathhouse, Amy Burrows sat wrapped in a huge white towel and watched her teenaged daughter Jill endure the misery of standing in bra and underpants to be weighed and measured. Several other new arrivals were undressing nearby, chatting and wandering in and out of the shower and steam rooms. The attendant, a friendly little thing in a white nylon pantsuit, slid the small cylindrical counterweight all the way to the left on the top bar of the scale, and then with a shake of her head, moved the large weight up to 150. She slid the small weight to the right again and started ooching it up, as if expressing her faith that surely it would balance in just another pound or two. 160. 170.
180…
She can’t be over 180, Amy thought. The cylinder finally stopped at 182 ½.
Jill stepped off the scale and seized her terry-cloth robe. The attendant wrote the facts in a folder with Jill’s name on it. It seemed to Jill that the folder should have a different name: “Jill Burrows’s Body,” maybe, since it seemed to her so remote from her essential self. Essential Jill and Physical Jill should be seen to exist independently. Strangers would have to see big fat Physical Jill as she looked from the outside, because if they didn’t she might be hit by a bus.
But for people who knew her as a person, Physical Jill should shimmer away like a hologram and they would see, and she could be, Real Jill, the person.
5
6 / Beth Gutcheon
“How are you holding up, lovey?” Amy asked. “Are you wanting a nap?”
Jill shook her head and wrapped her arms around her upper body in an unconscious gesture she’d developed, as if her innocent flesh needed to be protected.
“Do you want to soak in the hot tub? It’s great for jet lag.”
Jill shrugged. She pushed her feet into the sandals she’d been given on arrival. Her mother was leading the way toward a room that seemed to be a cone of light. Jill followed, thinking that what she really wanted was her own room, her computer, and about ten Mrs. Fields Double Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies.
They’d been here for an hour and, except for the instructors, there wasn’t one other person in this place who was under forty. As often happened to her, Jill suddenly saw an image of what she and her mother must look like, as if she were standing quite apart from them both, watching her life as a camera would. She saw her slim and barefoot mother as a sylph or naiad, a pretty woman draped in white cloth tripping along leading Jill, her pet cow, by a ring in her nose.
Laura Lopez sat in the Japanese bath with her eyes closed, feeling the jets of water pulse against the small of her back. She hoped the people attached to the feet clacking toward her wouldn’t be wanting to chat. She’d come straight here to the bathhouse when she’d arrived and had spent most of the afternoon immersed in heat. She’d been so numb, and tense and cold and heartsick, that it seemed that all the steam and hot water in the world couldn’t soak it out of her. She knew one simple thing: she liked this room, and she hadn’t expected to like anything for about the next twenty years.
The room was mostly glass, a sort of dome, and open to the sky.
Did it ever rain here? Probably not. It was the desert. The whole building smelled of eucalyptus, a wonderful clean, spicy smell that made her think of Indian healing rituals. Not that she knew much about Indians. Native Americans. Except for the ones who appeared before her in court, and they were usually in need of healing them-Five Fortunes / 7
selves. In the local paper, when their arraignments were listed in the police blotter, it gave the tribe too. Mary Wells, Blackfoot, driving unregistered vehicle and DUI. That was rude, wasn’t it?
Other women had come and gone. Some slipped into the hot pool in silence, soaked, and then left. Some, shy, wore bathing suits.