Russell Banks - The Reserve

“What do you mean?”

“My mother…my mother wants to lock me away in a mental hospital. Where they’ll drug me. Or worse. Where they’ll give me a lobotomy or something. She’s taken my inheritance away from me. My mother wants me dead, or as good as dead!”

“She can’t want you dead. She’s your mother .”

“And that only makes it worse, Hubert. Don’t you see? When your own flesh and blood wants you locked away so she can take your money or wants you mindless or even dead, it’s so terrible that you don’t know what to do! I panicked, Hubert. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking, I was simply reacting. I just wanted to make it so she couldn’t put me into a looney bin for the rest of my life, or worse. I felt like a caged animal. I still do! She planned to ship me off to a hospital in Europe, where I was before. So I forced her to come here, to the Reserve. But I’ve only made it worse. If I let her go now, she’ll make me go into the hospital like she planned, the papers are all drawn up and signed, but now, to punish me for doing this, for forcing her to come to the Reserve and keeping her here against her will like this, she’ll let them give me a lobotomy. I know it. I just know it. Do you know what that is, Hubert? A lobotomy?”

“I heard of it, yes.” He’d read about the new form of brain surgery that doctors were performing on mentally ill people nowadays. It was in all the news, and because Dr. Carter Cole, a distinguished summer resident of the Reserve, was one of the men who had invented the procedure, even the local papers had covered it. It was being called a miracle cure. Hubert didn’t think it was the sort of thing that should be done to Vanessa Cole, though. She was strange, yes, and eccentric, and by his lights maybe even a little weird, but Vanessa Cole wasn’t what you’d call mentally ill. Mostly, she was rich and spoiled was all. Which weren’t crimes, he knew, and didn’t necessarily make you crazy. Certainly not crazy enough to warrant a lobotomy.

“So now that I’ve got control of her, I’m stuck with her. I can’t let her leave.” She laughed suddenly, a cold, mocking laugh. “If it weren’t so damned awful and she weren’t suffering, it’d be ridiculous. If the consequences for me weren’t so final, it’d be almost funny.”

Hubert was silent for a moment. “I don’t know what to say. I don’t see how I can help you, neither. Maybe the consequences aren’t so final,” he said, more a question than a statement.

“Oh, Hubert, please! Don’t be naive! I know what’s waiting for me over there. If I let her go now, my life will be over. It’s as simple as that. I’ll never see the light of day again. I’ll be locked up and brain damaged for the rest of my life.”

The guide tried to grasp the situation, get it clear in his mind. He was a problem solver, especially of other people’s problems. He knew he had to take a step back and take the thing apart as if it were a broken machine, lay all the parts out on the table, find the faulty gear or broken belt, replace it with a new one, and put the machine back together again.

The two said nothing while Hubert pondered the situation. He asked if she minded if he smoked, and she said no, and he pulled out his pack of Luckies and lighted one and smoked. Vanessa took his pack from him and lighted one for herself. Finally he said, “Maybe the first thing is to make it so she isn’t suffering like that, all tied up and gagged and all.”

“No! You’ll help her escape, and she’ll come back with the sheriff, and they’ll haul me off in a straitjacket!”

Hubert promised Vanessa that he would not help her mother escape. He just didn’t want the woman to suffer unnecessarily. Also, he pointed out, if Vanessa released her mother temporarily, so to speak, and in exchange got her to cooperate in her own confinement here at the camp, they might have a chance to make her understand why Vanessa had done this, and her mother might change her mind then about the mental hospital and the inheritance and so forth. At worst, it would buy Vanessa a little time to come up with some idea of what to do with her. “If you keep her hog-tied like that, she’s going to believe you actually are crazy. And you’re right, she’s going to want revenge.” He wasn’t urging her to free Mrs. Cole completely, he said. Just enough so the three of them could sit down and talk to one another about the situation and why Vanessa had reacted the way she had. Maybe that way a solution would come to them, he told her. “But in the process we shouldn’t hurt her in any way,” he said. “No need to keep her tied up and all. We can just keep her locked in the bedroom and bring her food there. I’ll shutter the windows so she can’t climb out.” He told her that if Vanessa wanted, since he wasn’t at the moment working for anyone else, he would bring the second load of supplies back before dark and stay here at Rangeview tonight, so they could take turns guarding her mother, while all three of them tried to come up with a resolution to this. “There’s got to be a way out of this that works for both of you.”

“You promise?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t lie, Miss Cole. And I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I think that together we can work this thing out.”

She sank down on the sofa and with her head resting in her hands stared straight ahead at the dead fireplace. “All right, then. Go ahead and untie her,” she said without looking at him. “And, please, call me Vanessa.”

Returning to the bedroom, Hubert knelt beside Mrs. Cole and undid the scarf covering her mouth. In as soothing a voice as he could manage, he said to her, “Now don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you, Mrs. Cole. I’m just trying to find a way to fix this mess. You understand, Mrs. Cole?”

She nodded and, lips trembling, asked him for water. The glass Vanessa had filled earlier was on the dresser, and Hubert retrieved it and gave it to her. She drank quickly. “Vanessa…my daughter wants to kill me, Hubert! My own daughter! She wants to kill me.”

“No, she doesn’t.”

“What does she want, then?” Her voice was dry as sandpaper.

“Well, that’s what we’re going to find out,” Hubert said, helping the woman to her feet. She staggered when he let go of her. He steadied her for a few seconds, then helped her from the chaise to the bed. He sounded and looked like a calm, rational man, but he was confused and turbulent and scared. I’m in way over my head here, he thought. I wish I could talk this thing out with Alicia. Alicia would know what I should do. She would know if what I am doing is wrong or just plain dumb. Or both. I need to think about what Alicia would do in my place, he said to himself, and then concluded that she would do exactly as he was doing, and immediately he felt better about it and plunged ahead.

WHEN ALICIA GROVES RETURNED HOME, SHE WENT STRAIGHT inside the house. Passing through the dining room on her way to the kitchen, she glanced out the French doors to the terrace with the big cleft rock in the center and beyond to the grassy bluff above the wide bend in the river. In the shade of the tall oak tree her husband was pushing Bear on the tire swing in long, swooping arcs while talking to Wolf, who stood at his side, smiling. A few feet away the two red dogs lay asleep in splotches of sunlight.

Alicia stopped by the window and lay both hands on the sill, as if to steady herself. She was sure that Vanessa Cole had already told Jordan that she had seen his wife at Hubert St. Germain’s cabin, when she was supposed to have been at the medical center in Sam Dent, probably adding a few lurid details in the telling. Had she buttoned her blouse correctly when she came out of the cabin to the deck? Had she smoothed her skirt? Alicia couldn’t remember. When you lie you forget the truth. Alicia knew that she had been seen by Jordan from the air. He had been out looking for her, obviously, flying over Hubert St. Germain’s cabin in search of his straying, lying wife, and he had found her exactly where Vanessa told him he would. And now, while he seemed to be playing contentedly with his sons, he was merely awaiting the return of his wayward wife and more lies and denials. She couldn’t put herself through that, not anymore. Regardless of the consequences, she decided, she would no longer lie to her husband.