Getting New Mexico Read online

  “I also am well,” Atwater replied, then turned toward Clementine. “My dear, let me help you.” He guided her into the back seat of the Jaguar, shut the car door, then turned again to face Schuyler.

  “Son, let us understand each other from the get-go,” he said in a quieter voice. “If your mother appears at any point in the future—meaning from this moment in time, right now, as we stand here—to be at all upset by your shenanigans, you’ll hear from me. Are we clear?”

  “How dare you speak to me like that?” hissed Schuyler in the same suppressed tone, as surprised as he was outraged. “How dare you interfere in our family affairs!”

  “Act like a man, fucker, and I won’t have to. Your mother’s happiness is now my affair. Good day to you.” Atwater knocked on the car window, blew a kiss to his wife as she waved him goodbye, then headed into the house.

  Schuyler glanced toward Clementine, whose nose was pressed against the car door window. His mother looked radiant. Could he even say, blissful? Unreal. She was no doubt assuming the two men in her life had exchanged pleasantries and were thrilled to meet each other. Grimacing, he climbed into the car but abruptly raised his palm to forestall any conversation. His face felt hot to his touch and must look beet-red. It would be her fault if a blood vessel exploded.

  With a confused look, Clementine turned away from her son and addressed the chauffeur. “Please, Tim, take us to United Capital Bank.”

  Neither party in the back seat broke the weighty silence during their drive to downtown Akron.

  “How do you do, Mr. Schuyler,” exclaimed the man who scurried to meet them at the door of United Capital Bank. Clementine had introduced her son to James Matthews, the bank manager. “What a pleasure to meet you!”

  His black mood no lighter, Schuyler gave only a curt nod, ignoring the manager’s extended hand and effusive greeting. It was obvious his mother was a valued client here.

  “Well, then,” continued Matthews, unruffled and still smiling as he ushered them through the massive carved front door then into a spacious conference room, “I’ll alert Mr. Chang, our notary, that you have arrived, and he will be with you in a tick!”

  Schuyler said nothing to Clementine as they awaited the notary. He glanced around the room paneled in dark walnut and decorated with portraits of men whom he assumed to be bank owners, bank executives, or other big shots. A long rectangular table claiming the center of the thick carpet was also made of walnut, and the chairs surrounding it were upholstered in a rich, brown leather. This was no small-time bank.

  The conference room door opened, then closed with a shush over the carpet. The man who entered was tall, about Schuyler’s height, but slighter in build. The fact that he was Asian surprised Schuyler. Maybe because all the employees he’d seen so far at United Capital Bank were pasty white? Maybe because he’d been making snarky assumptions. Wrong assumptions. Par for the course.

  The newcomer offered the seated pair a skeptical smile as he hoisted a heavy briefcase onto the table. “I’m Alan Chang.” He smiled as he reached for Clementine’s hand. “How are you today, Mrs. Atwater? I’m here to help you in whatever way I can.”

  When his handshake was received in silence, and he appeared somewhat daunted by Clementine’s pursed lips, Chang proceeded to take a seat. “Mr. Schuyler, I presume?” He glanced in Schuyler’s direction as he opened his briefcase, but the rigid glower he met didn’t encourage conversation.

  “I have some documents for you to sign, sir. Let’s start with this one.” Chang extended a pen toward Schuyler, who proceeded to read the first paper.

  Puzzled, he stared at the page. Why would Clementine feel this required his notarized signature? The page stated he must attend his Uncle Harry Neville’s upcoming funeral in New York. As if he’d miss it. Of course, he’d attend Harry’s funeral. Looking for a bone to pick, he frowned at the wording. Why did it say “upcoming funeral”? After all, his uncle was still alive.

  “When will the funeral take place, Mom?” Schuyler asked in an innocent tone, directing his anger at Atwater’s crude dismissal toward his mother, hoping to irritate her. “This paper says ‘upcoming.’”

  “Don’t be an arse,” Clementine snapped. “You know Harry isn’t dead. Just be ready. And don’t skive off when the time comes!” Her brother Harry was slipping fast. After fighting prostate cancer for years, he was now in hospice, and prepared to depart this world at any moment. “I expect you to show up. You’re a bloody loser if you don’t appreciate how much you owe him.”

  “Too right, Mom,” Schuyler agreed, looking down at the document. He struggled to maintain his cool, but her barb had gone deep and hurt more than his self-esteem. It didn’t help that Alan Chang was staring at him, goggle-eyed. “But you’ll have to try harder if you want to hurt me. I have the skin of a rhino.”

  Clementine had no call to label him a loser. Schuyler knew what he was. He had turned taking advantage of other people into an art form. Besides himself and his mother, the only other person he cared for was Uncle Harry Neville. Harry had always been more a father to him than Daniel Schuyler, producer of the procreative seed, ever was. The notion he might not show up for Harry’s funeral was unthinkable.

  He swallowed hard, scribbled his signature, and slid paper number one back across the table to Chang, who affixed his seal and signature to it.

  “Thank you, Mr. Schuyler.” Chang shot a wary glance toward Clementine. Upon her curt nod to proceed, he handed a second document to Schuyler. “And don’t we have a lovely spring day today, sir?”

  Still stinging from Clementine’s angry rejoinder, Schuyler stared at the outline of her specific requirements for his bailout. Beyond an agreement to stop smoking, this piece of nonsense required, in no uncertain terms, his relocation to New Mexico—he already knew that—and his procurement of a job. But not just any job. Her terms stipulated he must find employment with Sam’s Club in Santa Fe and agree never to start another business of his own. Schuyler realized this latter article was meant to minimize his opportunities for preying upon his fellow men.

  “Are you enjoying this, Mom? Grinding that stiletto heel into my face.” His mother’s collection of Manolo Blahnik footwear was notorious.

  “Sign the paper, if you want your check each month.” She ignored the provocation.

  Schuyler shrugged his shoulders and signed. Well, why not? Clementine had guaranteed him a small monthly stipend to supplement the lower wages he would, no doubt, receive in New Mexico. She would also pay rent for six months on the house north of Santa Fe destined to be his new home. Not a bad deal.

  “Keep that job at Sam’s Club, Aaron. I’m warning you. Don’t quit. Otherwise, all bargains are off.”

  When Schuyler scribbled next to the red X, the notary’s gaze shifted from Clementine to Schuyler, then back to Clementine.

  “Um—” He squirmed in his chair as he notarized this second document. “Should I continue, Mrs. Atwater?”

  “Please do, Mr. Chang,” she said sweetly, glaring at her son.

  “Here you are, sir.” The third paper Chang urged across the table toward Schuyler concerned aspects of Clementine’s final bequest.

  This article stated Schuyler must never return to New York, the scene of his many downfalls, the one exception being his required presence at Uncle Harry’s funeral. If he failed, the trust providing for him after Clementine’s death would be nullified. Schuyler wasn’t sure this was legal since the New York City streets weren’t his mother’s private property, but there was no point in arguing. It wouldn’t hurt to humor her.

  “And I don’t want you ever to return to Akron while I’m living.” Clementine retrieved a tissue from her handbag.

  “Fat chance. Why would I do that?”

  “I mean it, Aaron,” she stated with dignity. To Alan Chang’s alarm, she swiped at the tears escaping down her cheek. “Don’t come back. My end-of-life arrangements are settled. You are welcome to attend my funeral, but I don’t expect you’ll choose
to do so.”

  Schuyler slammed his pen down on the table and pushed his chair away from the table. What a petty business. Clementine’s last sappy comment was just a further slap in the face. Reclaiming the pen, he signed the third document, his hand shaking with fury, but avoided her eye. He could never bear to see his mother cry. As he shoved the paper toward Chang he wondered what the notary was thinking. The man’s sympathies obviously lay with Clementine. Schuyler ground his teeth. Somehow, he always emerged from these encounters with a teary-eyed Clementine looking like a louse.

  “Is there anything further I might assist you with today, Mrs. Atwater?” Chang whispered to Clementine.

  She shook her head, sniffed, and again daubed at the corner of her eye. “No, thank you. How very kind. You have been a great help.”

  Chang bowed to her, offered a stiff nod to Schuyler, gathered the documents into his briefcase, and made good his retreat. As the heavy door closed behind him, Schuyler sounded a harsh grating laugh. There was nothing his mother enjoyed more than her role of long-suffering parent. And, he had to admit, in seeking to be fair, he’d given her a lot of practice. He stood up and helped her put on her jacket. They left the bank together, in silence, and walked toward the yellow Jaguar awaiting them.

  Arrived back at the Atwater mansion, Clementine and Schuyler entered the foyer, passed through the drawing room, and returned to the library. Lost in the seething sea of his murky thoughts, reviewing all the unsaid comebacks that would have quashed his mother’s high-handed ways once and for all, Schuyler hadn’t realized Clementine was speaking to him.

  “I most often order these from Amazon,” she said. “But knowing you would be here, Aaron, I went ahead and bought these at Best Buy. This gives you a good supply.”

  Schuyler wasn’t surprised by the contents of the plastic bag she thrust at him. The cassette player-recorder, two clamshells of size D batteries, and three packs of cassette tapes inside it were the extent of Clementine Atwater’s foray into the Information Age. Oh, well. The cassette player would not only be useful on the drive to New Mexico but would replace the one he was currently using when it no longer functioned. That could be any day now.

  The plastic bag also contained two recorded tapes secured with a rubber band and these, along with the other contents of this bag, represented far more than what their physical appearance implied. A special agreement of long duration, beyond anything monetary or material, existed between Schuyler and his mother. An agreement unspoken and unwritten. An agreement based upon a mutual, deep-seated love that neither one ever verbally acknowledged to the other. Schuyler would continue listening to Clementine’s periodic tape-recorded health reports. This commitment demanded from him, in his considered opinion, an ongoing repulsive task, yet it was a duty he neither questioned nor neglected, and never hesitated to fulfill.

  Although certain of the contents of the two recorded tapes, Schuyler glanced at the writing on the tape cases. One was dated “Week of March 26.” The second advised, “Week of April 2.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” He sighed in audible disgust and, resigned to his duty, accepted the bag. Schuyler had been in the trenches of life for a long time now and was, at last, at the age of fifty-two, learning to pick his battles. A show of humility wasn’t a bad trade-off for the check he’d stuffed into his pocket.

  “I’ll review the tapes while I’m driving to Santa Fe. I’ll mail my responses back to you as soon as I locate a post office. If there is one in New Mexico.”

  Despite his best efforts to prevent it, Schuyler’s heart softened. His mother was a generous soul who’d spent most of her life lamenting her son’s chosen life path and picking up the pieces when he smacked headfirst onto the pavement of that path. She didn’t ask for much. Since her generosity included giving him a vehicle to replace the aged Ford Fiesta, he would restrain himself, and refrain from calling her a hypochondriac to her face.

  As far as he could tell, from here on out his worst problem would be the truck Clementine had chosen. The twenty-year-old Toyota pickup, almost as old as the Ford Fiesta, was parked outside the mansion’s front door.

  “Couldn’t you have bought a sedan?” he whined. “Something newer. I’ve never driven anything like this junk heap.”

  “That truck is special. You don’t appreciate it now, but someday you will. Believe me.”

  Schuyler would drive this clunker with a stick shift, no less, to New Mexico. He, a lifelong New York City resident who had only learned to drive later in life, was being forced to do this. On his first road trip. He hoped his backside would survive the ordeal.

  “Well, Aaron, what would you like to eat? Are you hungry?”

  “Huh?” Schuyler realized Clementine was offering to fix him some lunch.

  “I have cream cheese and bagels, if you want something more like breakfast.” His mother’s tone was eager. With the moment of parting now at hand she had checked her temper and quelled her hard feelings, not wishing to say goodbye to the bane of her existence.

  “Or, you could have a tuna sandwich. I chopped hard-cooked eggs into the tuna, the way you like it.” Her moist eyes pleaded with a look forlorn, yet hopeful.

  Schuyler averted his glance. It was always like this. They might bitch and gripe at each other, ad nauseam, for hours. But, at the core of their relationship was a bond neither one would ever sever, although they tested its strength to the breaking point. The crux of that bond was the acknowledgment that they were both alive and Daniel Schuyler, husband and father, their mutual nemesis, was dead.

  Amen to that.

  “Thanks, Mom, but—no time. I’d better get a start on this fantastic great new life you’ve mapped out for me,” Schuyler answered.

  He would have liked the sandwich—she mixed up the tuna to perfection, with a touch of brine from the dill pickle bottle added in, but he always felt more comfortable with the armor of sarcasm wrapped around his heart. That rebuffed his mother, kept her in her place, and saved him the embarrassment of indulging her with the hug she longed for. The tight hug he longed to give her.

  “You could stay the night,” Clementine suggested, tugging at his jacket sleeve. “Spend some time with Stan after he finishes his golf game. Get going early tomorrow. We have seven guest rooms.”

  Spend time with Stan? Endure that old buzzard’s steely glare? Oh, yeah.

  “I’m going, Mom.”

  The sight of her tears welling up once more almost changed his mind, but even thinking about an evening of strained small talk with Atwater and his mother left Schuyler weary.

  “I appreciate what you’ve done for me,” he added in a softer tone, realizing he meant what he said. Fancy that. He wasn’t feeding her a line of bullshit. “I’ll mail your tapes back to you as soon as I get to Santa Fe. Thanks for the truck.”

  He retreated out the front door, opened the Toyota’s creaking door, and placed the envelope with his copies of the legal documents on the passenger seat. There, it joined his faithful diary and a pack of Orbit gum. When he inserted the key in the ignition the old truck jerked, then grumbled, then swayed gently from side to side. It resisted his first attempt to shift into first gear with a grind and a shriek.

  As he steered jerkily toward the estate gates, Schuyler looked back several times at Clementine standing in the open doorway of her new home, waving at him. He sometimes pitied the woman, took advantage of her at every possible opportunity, and found her prayerful devotion to Winston Churchill ridiculous.

  What the hell was wrong with him? Why did he prey upon the only human being who loved him? One of the only two human beings he loved in return. Despite his mooching and his unfilial attitude, his mother held the foremost place in his heart, and she deserved it.

  No—she deserved better.

  He glanced through the rear-view mirror as he rounded the first curve of the drive, when he entered the stand of chestnut trees, and when he reached the closed gate. As it swung open and he departed the Atwater property, he honked twi
ce and looked back for the last time.

  Clementine was still standing there. Waving.

  CHAPTER 3

  Funerals

  Schuyler spent a week on the road to New Mexico, his emotions alternating between a seething sense of wrongful mistreatment about his ejection from the civilized world, a craving for the amenities of big city life forbidden to him, an unanticipated eagerness to discover what lay ahead, and a fear that life in New Mexico would be even worse than he expected. He took frequent breaks to ease what he termed “driving compression of the old bumster.” His sore rear end. The seats of the old truck were merely boards upholstered in an old Naugahyde that had split and cracked many times over and tortured his gluteus muscles.

  He listened to Clementine’s two taped health reports, groaning as the week of April 2nd started with a familiar complaint that was almost a repetition of the tape of March 27th.

  As you know, son, I’ve never been the same since my surgery for a deviated septum two years ago. My sinus congestion wasn’t resolved then, and now may even be worse. I don’t know if it’s the move to Akron, or what. Here, there’s no breeze blowing in off the Atlantic. Since I arrived here the nasal discharge seems thicker. It’s also a darker shade of yellow. I can’t get rid of it and seem to run through a box of Kleenex every day. There’s more drainage, too. Sometimes I wake up at night coughing and can’t hawk up the mucous …

  On, the message ran. On to April third, on to the fourth, the fifth. On and on … Schuyler switched off the tape and manipulated the radio dial, searching for a local station with sounds more agreeable than his mother’s voice. Whenever he got a clear signal, whether it was AM or FM, he was forced to choose between tinny, twanging country-western tunes or strident, revival-type preaching. Abomination of abominations.