Circles of Confusion Read online

  "That's not fair! Who said you could ride shotgun all the way to Medford? Mom! It's not fair! Make Claire give me that seat!" Susie's voice held a whine that only a twelve-year-old was capable of. Her hair, carefully hot-rollered that morning in frank imitation of Farrah Fawcett, was already beginning to lose some of its bounce.

  "Your sister's right, Claire. You should trade seats with her. Besides, you haven't even looked out the window once. I'd be surprised if you even knew where we were."

  Claire didn't bother replying. Rhett had just asked Scarlett to dance, scandalizing the entire populace because Scarlett was a widow in mourning. Still reading, she picked up the book and got into the back seat. Susie used her new proximity to the radio to begin to hunt for a station that played rock and roll, and soon the interminable strains of "Stairway to Heaven" filled the car.

  By the time they took the exit for Medford, the stunning heat of southern Oregon had sucked the energy from their bones. Portland and Medford lay at opposite ends of the state, and they had exchanged their lush, green and frequently wet city for a town cradled by tawny hills and capped by a hard, hot blue sky. As they drove down Jackson Street, the electronic temperature sign on the Far West Bank sign read 106 degrees. Once in Hawthorn Park, Claire kissed her grandmother's wrinkled cheek, trying not to inhale the scent of Virginia Slims. She nodded hello at the uncles, aunts and cousins clustered around Grandma's camper, with its not so secretly stashed keg. As soon as she could, Claire took shelter under an oak tree several hundred yards away. All around her, knots of people were barbecuing or playing Frisbee, but Claire was once again in the world of Rhett and Scarlett.

  "Claire, dear, is that you?"

  Reluctantly, Claire tore her gaze from the page. Her mom's Aunt Cady stood over her, a tentative smile on her face. Despite the heat, there was a faded cardigan over her bony shoulders. Her straight back and the prominent wings of her collarbone gave the impression that Aunt Cady had left the coat hanger in the sweater.

  "Hi, Aunt Cady." All Claire knew about her was that she had been dead Grandpa Montrose's sister, that she had never married, and that she had had something to do with World War II, a million years ago.

  "What are you reading?"

  Claire turned the cover of the library book toward her.

  "Gone With the Wind. I loved that book." She smoothed the back of her dress—the dress another thing that set her apart from the rest of Claire's relatives—and then settled down beside Claire. "I read it when it first came out. I was just about your age, and I had to hide it from my mother."

  This was a brush with ancient history. When it first came out? Claire had looked at the copyright date, which was 1935. "Why did you have to hide it from your mom?"

  "It might seem quaint to you, but even though I was nineteen she didn't think it was appropriate for an unmarried girl to be reading about a woman who is involved with man after man. She hadn't read it herself, of course."

  "I love to read. I wish I could read all the time."

  A garbled shout made them both look up. Cousin Bucky, clearly having paid a few too many visits to Grandma's hidden keg, had just fallen down in the parking lot. Uncle John, who insisted on cutting his son's hair so short that sleepy-eyed Bucky resembled a confused but amiable badger, looked on indulgently as Bucky attempted to stand. Boys would be boys.

  Claire exchanged a glance with the older woman. Her great-aunt's eyes were a washed blue, deep-set in a pale, narrow face. Aunt Cady reached out to tap Claire's book. "Reading is wonderful. But you have to be careful it doesn't become a substitute for real life." Her voice dropped to a near-whisper, as if she were speaking more to herself. "I wish I had learned that lesson when I was your age."

  People were always telling Claire that she read too much, but it seemed better than the alternative. Did her great-aunt mean that instead of reading a book about made-up people living a long time ago, Claire should be with people her own age? She looked again at her relatives in the parking lot. Her cousins were willing to hang out with the adults as long as the beer held out. Claire felt alien around other teenagers, with their conversations about smoking pot, drinking and streaking. Susie was more than happy to try to fit in. Claire saw that Bucky now had his arm looped around her shoulders. It looked as if he needed her for balance, but Susie's face had lit up as she experienced her first brush with romance.

  "But if reading makes you forget your real life, isn't that good? Especially if you don't like it?" The people gathered around the camper seemed only technically her family. Grandma Montrose, who had spent the years before the war traveling around the country as a "Hormel Girl," now seemed to be demonstrating one of her old routines. In the middle of the parking lot, she gyrated her narrow butt and gestured broadly, singing about the wonders of Spam in a cigarette-roughened voice. Claire's mother was laughing so hard that she had crushed her paper cup, spilling beer down her T-shirt.

  Aunt Cady had taken a while before she answered. "Maybe. But it's better to find a way to live in the world you want."

  Now Claire supposed the reason she remembered the conversation so well was that it had been one of the first times an adult had spoken to her as an equal. But had she heeded Aunt Cady's warning? Did she still live only through books? Her life was boring, even to her. Two weeks before, she had been grocery shopping when she had suddenly been seized by the desire to live dangerously. Freeing a nested shopping cart, Claire saw that someone had left behind their grocery list. With a surge of exhilaration, she had exchanged it for her own. She bought some other person's Lite beer and Velveeta, spent the week trying to make meals out of lemon yogurt, Tater Tots, hot dogs and cream of mushroom soup, while her roommate Charlie watched bemused. By the end of the week, Claire had been forced to admit that it was easier to be herself.

  Claire picked up another application—ANGI.BB—and tried not to feel depressed. She had worked for the State of Oregon for over ten years, yet she still held basically the same job. When she had first taken the position as a verifier, she had thought it suited her. She had understood and appreciated the little jokes hidden in people's vanity plate requests. Now Claire was bored by the whole thing, bored by her life, with its treadmill of work, exercise, and a standing Saturday date with Evan. Every ten minutes it seemed as if her car was thumping over the same pothole on the Marquam Bridge as she drove to work.

  ZTHSIT?

  Chapter 5"We're starting a new insurance line," Evan said. He kept his gaze steady on the road, his hands in the ten o'clock and two o'clock position on the Volvo's steering wheel. "Executive coverage."

  "Executive coverage? What's that?" Claire asked. Evan must be happy with the time they were making, because he seldom allowed himself to be distracted by conversation while he drove.

  "A lot of companies are really predicated on a single man. What would happen to the Turner empire if Ted were killed in a car accident, or to Microsoft if Bill Gates became an alcoholic? Companies are finally starting to realize they need to take steps to insure against such a huge loss." Evan shook his head. "Accurate rating is going to be a nightmare, though. It's going to have to be completely individualized." Claire could see he was secretly looking forward to being alone with his risk tables and expensive multifunction calculator.

  "It seems like a lot of those maverick CEO types like dangerous sports. Racing. Helicopter skiing. Hang gliding." Claire tried to picture the nebbishy king of Microsoft behind the wheel of a rocketlike car. "Well, maybe not Bill Gates."

  "He's the smart one. If those other guys really looked at the statistics they'd know they should stick to something safer, like golf." As an afterthought he added, "Just as long as they stay off the course when it's raining."

  Evan had probably been a worrier even as a child, but his job as an insurance adjuster had only heightened his continual calculations of risk. He refused to go canoeing because statistics showed that spending six minutes in a canoe cut fifteen minutes off one's expected life span. Smoking just two cigaret
tes cut nine minutes, as Evan had pointed out to a complete stranger who lit up behind them at a sidewalk cafe. But even avoiding risks brought with it its own agonizing set of risks. Take the advice for reducing the risk of catching colds: frequent handwashing. Yet handwashing itself was a risky activity, because most soaps contained potentially carcinogenic cosmetic additives.

  Evan worried about everything. Earthquakes. X rays. Pesticide residues on his food. How close he lived to the now-decommissioned Trojan nuclear plant. Whether a sneeze heralded the beginning of a cold, which might turn into antibiotic-resistant double pneumonia and drag him inexorably down to death.

  So many things were outside his control that Evan tended to be obsessive about those that were. He took a brightly colored handful of vitamins each morning. His diet consisted almost entirely of organically grown fruits and vegetables. He exercised six days a week. (Evan had met Claire at the health club when, after mentally estimating the strength of the three other people in the room, he had asked her to spot him on free weights.) He was the only person she knew who had electric socket covers even though he didn't have children. He didn't even have any friends who had children.

  The same cautious appraisal that now sometimes drove Claire up the wall had been what had originally attracted her to him in the first place. It had been months before he even ventured to kiss her goodnight after a date. She had welcomed the contrast to other men she had known. Dates where you went out to dinner and a movie? Goodnight kisses? Up until Evan, most men she met seemed to want to skip all that and just move in with her.

  To Claire, Evan represented steadiness, steadfastness. He had plans, a future all mapped out. He would never vanish the way her father had before she was even born. He would never lie to her. So what if he were honest to the point of being blunt? He would always have a job, a good job that paid well. And Evan had chosen her. Knowing how he calculated and weighed everything meant that he had also found her worthy.

  She studied him as he carefully piloted the Volvo down the far right-hand lane, only reluctantly moving into the middle lane to pass the slowest of motor homes. Because it absorbed all his concentration, driving with Evan gave Claire the luxury of observing him. She liked watching his thickly lashed large hazel eyes as they flicked back and forth from his rearview mirror to the lane ahead of him and then to each sideview mirror, as regular as a metronome. His eyes redeemed Evan from the ranks of the ordinary. Everything else about him was unremarkable—he was neither fat nor thin, his hair was somewhere between brown and blond, he was tall enough that Claire could wear medium heels.

  Today he wore a moss green sweater, a birthday present from Claire that brought out the gray-green cast of his eyes. It wasn't unknown for Evan, left to his own devices, to wear white socks with his dress shoes. Secretly, Claire liked this flaw in him, with its inherent proof that he wasn't perfect. At the same time, she also knew that he didn't see it as a flaw at all. Evan resented dressing up. It seemed very impractical. Why should he spend good money simply to make an impression? Couldn't people admire his mind and how well it worked?

  The sign ahead read Medford—20 miles. "Get out that lawyer's fax and tell me which exit I should take," Evan said.

  RUD14ME

  Chapter 6The place where Aunt Cady had lived and died was tucked on the edge of a vast parking lot for a brand-new shopping mall. The trailer park was sheltered by a huge spreading oak, the turning leaves a welcome antidote of color to the black acres of macadam. Fast food places bordered the edges of the shopping mall's parking lot. Burritos Now! was the closest, standing only a half-dozen yards away. Every night, Aunt Cady must have gone to sleep listening to the sound of cars pulling away from the drive-up window of the turquoise-and-adobe-colored plastic box.

  Claire had arranged to meet the lawyer in front of the trailer. A tall young man was already walking toward them, hand outstretched, as they climbed out of the Volvo. He looked more like a teenager than a lawyer, with limbs as loose and floppy as a handful of rubber bands.

  "Claire Montrose? Justin Schmitz, your aunt's attorney. I appreciate your coming down on such short notice." He shook both their hands as they introduced themselves. The cuffs of his too-short navy blue suit exposed the scuffed heels of his black shoes.

  Evan went straight to the point. "My understanding is that Claire inherits her aunt's entire estate. Is there anything in addition to this trailer home and its contents?"

  "That's about it, I'm afraid. What little money she had in her accounts went for her cremation." He turned to Claire. "Hie terms of her will stipulate that I am to pay all her bills, close her checking and savings accounts, sell this trailer and then transfer the net proceeds to you. But I'm afraid the total won't amount to more than a

  few hundred dollars. Two thousand at the outside."

  She found herself apologizing. "That's okay. Really, I hardly knew her. I'm surprised she left me anything."

  Evan looked at his watch. "Well, we might as well get started." He held out his hand for the key.

  "Wait a minute." Claire turned to Justin. "Tell me something about my great-aunt. What was she like?"

  "I'm afraid I only met her once. Last year she fell and broke her hip. When she was discharged from the hospital, she came to see me."

  "Why did she choose you?"

  Although she hadn't meant to sound critical, the base of Justin Schmitz's throat flushed. "I run a little ad in the Yellow Pages. I charge a flat fee for the basics—wills, prenups, divorces, that sort of thing. Your great-aunt was very definite. She said she wanted a will and a neutral executor so that no one in your family would end up having to decide what to do with her possessions."

  Claire didn't tell him that her relatives were legendary for dying intestate, leaving the survivors to assuage their grief by tussling over the dear departed's earthly belongings. The morning of Grandma Montrose's funeral, for example, Claire had stood on Grandma's lawn and watched as relatives scuttled out of the house with their arms full of afghans and antimacassars, TV trays and old 78 records. Uncle John hit Uncle Chester in the jaw as they fought over possession of a color TV set. Cousin Bucky scurried past, clutching a battered plastic AM radio. Claire's mother had not been immune to the fever of acquisition, managing to lay claim to a huge old KitchenAid mixer and a little doll designed to sit on the back of a toilet. The doll's red skirt, crocheted by Grandma, hid an extra roll of toilet paper. Claire didn't remember seeing Aunt Cady there, but perhaps she had sat in her car, watching her relations scurry over her sister- in-law's property like bugs over roadkill, and vowed it would never happen to her.

  Evan waited until the lawyer had gotten into his rusting Chrysler K car before he put the key in the trailer door. The key turned, but the door refused to yield until he pushed on it with his shoulder. With a lurch and a squeal, they were in.

  "Oh, my God."

  Evan's normally matter-of-fact voice was filled with something like awe. A tiny path wound from the door back into the recesses of the trailer. On either side of this narrow opening were piled magazines, books, newspapers and odds and ends, in some places as high as their waists. The air was thick with dust and the smells of ancient cooking. One swift glance was enough to tell Claire that while Aunt Cady had saved everything, she had kept nothing of value.

  Claire looked at Evan's face for his reaction. He was allergic to dust and hated disorder. But she had to give him credit. He didn't say a word, just went to the trunk of his car, where he retrieved a small suitcase and a stack of flattened boxes. As always, Evan had come prepared. Before they even got started, he stood just inside the closed trailer door and changed into his oldest, grubbiest clothes (which, being Evan's, weren't old or grubby at all). He settled a dust mask over his nose, offered her a second one, and then they went to work.

  Claire followed Evan's lead, working methodically and in near silence. She was amazed at the sheer variety of what they unearthed and then quickly discarded. The living-dining room area alone yielded doze
ns of snow globes, a tiny vase in the shape of a lady's boot, sheet music from the forties and a two-inch-long plastic vial of gray ash labeled "Mr. St. Helens, May 18, 1980." Everything wore a thick fur of dust, and even beneath his mask, Evan was soon snuffling.

  While a few things—like the snow globe collection—were set aside for Goodwill, nearly everything went into the brown Dumpsters that sat in the middle of the trailer park. When the Dumpsters filled up, Evan neatly stacked boxes beside them.

  Next to the worn armchair was a clock radio. Impulsively, Claire pressed the ON button. Classical music filled the trailer, and they worked to the sprightly sounds of a harpsichord until Evan unplugged the radio, wrapped the cord around it, and put it in the Goodwill box. Then they both carried the armchair to the Dumpster.

  It was clear that Aunt Cady had continued in the love of reading she had talked to Claire about nearly twenty years before. In addition to the towers of magazines and yellowing newspapers, there were stacks of hardbound and paperback books, some dating back fifty years. A few were hard-boiled private eye novels of the type that Claire had seen for sale behind glass in Multnomah. She found one of these books—The Corpse Wore Black—under a pile of National Geographies. On the cover a red-haired beauty, very much alive, stared out at the reader through kohl-rimmed eyes. She wore an artist's salacious interpretation of widow's weeds, cut low and tight to show off breasts shaped like artillery shells. Claire placed it in the box of things she planned to take home, along with A Mind for Murder, Death in a Dark Place, and A Debt to the Dead. Maybe she could sell them to one of the antique stores in her neighborhood.