That the girl was emotionally disturbed was fairly obvious. Even a blue collar, working stiff with no college education could sense her distress. The waitress returned with her drinks. “Why me?” Bart asked.
Holly shrugged. Since breaking the ice, she seemed less agitated. More to the point, all of the willowy young girl’s anxiety had been conveniently transferred over to Bartholomew Schroeder. “I had a feeling about you from when we boarded the ferry back in Falmouth.”
“A feeling?”
“You came to the island unaccompanied. Each day I see you roam the beach alone, and in the late afternoon, you sit over by the landing staring out to sea like a true believer, a mystic.”
“I believe in central heating and keeping cool during the dog days of August.”
That his wife of forty years died a year ago to the day he wouldn’t tell her. Three days earlier, Bart drove across the Bourne Bridge to Falmouth where he parked his car and took the shuttle to Woods Hole. He was a man on the run from memories, loneliness and profound grief. The mourning process had continued unabated through the previous year. Bart Schroeder had come to the island of Martha’s Vineyard to find solace; instead he got Holly Heatherton, a mentally unbalanced, first year piano major at the New England Conservatory of Music.
During her freshman year at college, something had gone haywire. Reclusive by nature, Holly made few friends. A psychiatrist prescribed adapin for anxiety, but then she got depressed. Really depressed. The young girl didn’t bother to complete the semester., taking a medical leave of absence.
"I'm not totally whacked out." There was a subtle loosening, a relaxation in her tone. "It’s not like I’m going to swill a bottle of sleeping pills or rat poison.”
“Or slash your wrists,” Bart interjected.
She grinned sheepishly. “I just prefer being alone more than with people." She ran an index finger around the rim of her coffee cup.
The waitress brought the girl’s eggs. "Do you have many friends?" Mr. Schroeder asked.
"No, not particularly."
"On occasion, you must meet someone pleasant or interesting?"
"Yes, of course, but most people ..." She seemed to lose interest in the topic. "Does that make me crazy?"
Mr. Schroeder smiled. Her candor was a bit unnerving. "No, certainly not."
Holly gestured with her eyes in the direction of two elderly women seated at the far end of the dining room. One was short with frizzy blonde hair and bowling pin legs, the other bean pole skinny. “Stay away from those bitches,” she counseled.
Bart stared at the women. He had seen them traipsing about the town. “Why? Are they dangerous?”
“They were sitting out on the porch last night when you returned from your walk. The fat one leaned closer to skinny Minnie and sniggered, ‘There goes Bartleby, the Scribner.’”
“You’re losing me.”
Holly placed a sliver of salmon on her tongue and washed it down with a swig of coffee. She slathered her toast with globs of jelly from a small crock. “Bartleby was a fictional character in a Herman Melville story. He became distraught and completely withdrew from society. When anyone tried to talk to him or get him to do anything, Bartleby repeated the same five words over and over again.”
“Which were?”
“I would prefer not to.” The girl flicked a strand of dark hair away from her eyes. “Having mental issues myself, I resent it when other people act that way.”
Mental issues. Yes, Bartholomew Schroeder had been living in something of a hermetically-sealed vacuum, a numb existence for the past twelve months. He ignored friends, let his membership at the golf club lapse and avoided Sunday Mass at Our Lady of Perpetual Devotion. “So what happened to Bartleby a k a Bartholomew the Plumber?”
“Oh, he went nuts. Totally bonkers.” She was nibbling on the last of the toast. “The medical authorities locked him away in the loony bin.”
Bart chuckled good-naturedly. “I’ve got my pension and social security so hopefully that will cushion the blow.” He glanced distractedly at his plate. The cheese had congeals, stuck to the flaked salmon like mortar on chimney brick. Not a very appetizing sight. “You said something about a dream?”
Holly’s eyes brightened and she leaned forward across the table. “As I approached, you put your fishing rod aside and said, ‘Holly Heatherton, I have a message for you.’” She stared intently at the older man as though this latest tidbit of information might jog his flawed memory.
“A message,” he repeated dully. Gurus and wise men brought messages. So did hucksters, charlatans and flimflam artists, when the price was right. Lawyers, politicians and priests favored portentous pronouncements. Bartholomew Schroeder had nothing to tell the petite, dark-haired girl. The waitress arrived with the bill. “My treat.”
As they were leaving the dining hall Bart said, ” Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you, Holly.”
Should he have used her first name? Mr. Schroeder climbed slowly to the second floor landing, lumbered into his room and locked the door behind him. For good measure he threw the security bolt.
In December two years earlier, Penelope Schroeder suffered a massive stroke. “Your wife will require round-the-clock, custodial; care,” the hospital social worker spoke in a no-nonsense, officious tone.
“Custodial,” Bart muttered. He usually associated the word with janitors and maintenance workers.
“We’re talking parenteral feeding, nasal oxygen, a Foley catheter bag to manage incontinence, infusion therapy and a host of other neurological and skilled nursing services.” The woman removed her glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t soliciting Bart’s opinion; she only wanted a signature on the discharge paperwork.
The following day, the brain damaged woman was shipped via ambulance to Shady Pines Rehabilitation Center. The two-story building offered independent living on the first floor and, for people in failing health, a fully-accredited, acute care rehabilitation center upstairs. Strange thing was, the residents on both floors looked pretty much alike. They hobbled about on canes and aluminum walkers. Some arrived in wheelchairs; more than a handful lugged bottled oxygen about in portable canisters.
“Hey, mister.“ An elderly woman in a motorized wheel chair was beckoning to Mr. Schroeder who had just arrived to visit his wife. The woman was gussied up in a floral pantsuit. The outfit was impeccably tailored with a matching scarf knotted at the neck. She wore a collection of gold bracelets and her nails were brightly enameled.
Bart approached and bent down. “The waiters served an absolutely mouthwatering cherry cobbler al a mode for lunch.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “A la mode. It’s a French expression. It means - ”
“I know what it means.”
The woman stabbed at a lever on the armrest causing the wheelchair to lurch forward banging Bart in the knee. “Go to the kitchen and speak with Alfonzo about extra servings. One for me. One for you.”
“But I don’t work here. I’m visiting my—”
“Make sure,” the woman continued, “he warms the cobbler. It never tastes right unless the ice cream softens before it’s served.”
Bart went out into the main hallway and headed off down the corridor toward the rehabilitation unit. Off to one side was the dining hall where healthier residents ate their meals. The space was arranged like a swanky restaurant with a centerpiece of fresh-cut flowers on each table. The high back chairs were covered in a maroon, floral brocade fabric.
Bart shrugged. The place reminded him of a Holiday Inn he renovated in the late sixties. Halfway down the corridor was a small reading room with hardcover books arranged neatly on shelves. A copy of Tom Sawyer in large print for the visually impaired lay on an end table. “Well, this is cozy,” he mused, “except for the fact that nobody’s here.” At the end of the hall was a spacious recreation room with a flat screen TV showing local news. A dark-skinned, Hispanic woman dressed in a white uniform was sitting on
a sofa eating an apple. A banner across the top of the television news desk read La Planetera.
Bart counted thirty doors the length of the hallway but not one solitary person. Nobody coming or going. All the doors were shut. Locked. The place was less like a hotel than a morgue. And there was a tedious sameness to everything, a benign gentility, the man found unnerving.
So where were the residents? Squirreled away in their tidy apartments? Doing what? Reading the newspaper? Watching television? Waiting to give up the ghost with neither loving family nor close friends to bless their soul’s passage to the next world?
On the wall at the end of the corridor hung a portrait of a young girl with a sun bonnet and lace shawl escorting a herd of cows down a country lane. A very safe and appropriate painting. Bart felt an evil urge to blacken a couple of the girl’s front teeth with an indelible marker and scrawl a bristly moustache over the dainty top lip for good measure. In the morning, how many of the elderly residents would appreciate the bawdy humor? A bullet to the brain.! If I ever become that debilitated, get a gun and just put me out of my misery.
The third week of January Penelope Schroeder died in her sleep. A meager blessing of sorts, the woman never emerged from the coma.
God was playing a trick on Bartholomew Schroeder. A nasty, malicious prank. Struggling with his own dark night of the soul, what scintillating message could he possibly offer Holly Heatherton, musical prodigy and social malcontent? He lay down on the unmade bed and fell asleep.
At noon Bart wandered down to the bar. He needed to sit by himself in a darkened corner and think things through. Right brain, left brain. A Heinekens might lubricate the powers of reasoning.
He found a stool at the far end of the mahogany bar and ordered his drink. Tilting the glass at an angle, he poured the amber liquid. A message for Holly Heatherton. What message? Someone entered the room and Bart shifted in his seat so that his back was facing the door. He felt a moral obligation to do something for the girl, who reminded him of a frail and utterly defenseless animal caught in a snare. Holly’s life was just beginning while his was winding down. How many close friend had died in the last year alone? Nothing made any sense. If death was simply a culmination, a recapitulation of all the successes and failures of a life well lived, then he ought to be able to tell the child something. But Bartholomew Schroeder was never particularly good with words. Metal pipes, blowtorches, solder and PVC were his stock in trade.
“Retired?” The bartender, a tall, stoop-shouldered man on the front side of forty, was leaning on the bar.
Bart looked up momentarily. “Five years now.”
He nudged a plastic bowl of pretzels crusted with salt within arm’s reach. “That’s swell.” The bartender looked bored. There would be little activity in the bar until after supper. Five minutes passed without a word. “Red Sox won last night.”
“That so?”
“Five to three. Wakefield the knuckleballer got the decision.” It was a guy thing. A room full of men could stand around scratching their crotches and nursing beers. They didn’t agonize over the inevitable or suffer existential ennui tinged with spiritual angst. Rather, they nibbled pretzels and talked sports.
The bartender rubbed at a water spot with a towel and went off to service another patron. A message for Holly Heatherton. Bart Schroeder was getting nowhere fast.
Then there was that odd incident with the piano.
Bart Schroeder was heading back to his room after breakfast. As they reached the staircase, Holly Heatherton grabbed his arm. “Just a moment.” In a small sitting room off the dining hall was a baby grand piano. Holly sat down on the bench. Positioning her hands, she began to play an impressionistic passage built on fourths and odd-sounding passing tones. The music was fairly simple, an intermediate level version of the original composition. After only a few measures, she removed her hands from the keys. "Did you recognize that?"
"Debussy," Mr. Schroeder replied.
She nodded. "And this?" She offered up a jagged, dissonant theme in a percussive rhythm. The meter kept changing every third or fourth measure so that it was impossible to follow.
"Not even a clue," Mr. Schroeder said when the strange tune came to an abrupt end.
"Bartok." She launched into a third piece that was even more obscure with a series of tone clusters played in the bass as the right hand hammered out single notes in a random, vertical pattern. She played the melody through from beginning to end, including a legato interlude.
"That was a twelve-tone row by Hindemith," Holly said, turning completely around to face him. A large, egg-shaped tear glistened in the corner of either eye. She reached up and deftly wiped them away. "Very unusual, don't you think?"
"Not as accessible as the Bartok," Mr. Schroeder said, "but interesting."
"Few people appreciate Hindemith's music. It's an acquired taste." The tears had reformed but this time she let them be and they quickly multiplied, dripping down her cheeks in thick rivulets. "You do understand what I'm talking about?" Her chest - what there was of it - heaved up and down in womanly anguish.
“Yes, I understand."
“So what should I do?”
Bart Schroeder was beginning to feel edgy again. “I don’t understand the question.”
“About my miserable life?”
A young family cut through the sitting room on their way to the dining room. “Let me think about it,” Bart replied, “and I’ll get back to you.”
“Drinking alone?” Bart felt a warm, slightly sweaty hand resting on his forearm. The fat blonde from breakfast had eased up on the stool next to him and was smiling garishly. A double martini with a plump olive rested on a coaster. The woman was skunk drunk. Before Bart could collect his thoughts she added, “I got a bottle of red wine up in my room, if you care to join me.”
The woman was wearing a frock that did a commendable job camouflaging the excess flesh. She tilted her head to one side and ran her tongue over her top lip, a transparently salacious gesture. The act both horrified and titillated him at the same time. She wanted to fornicate, have someone - it didn’t matter who - do obscene and unspeakable things to her morbidly obese body. Bartholomew Schroeder felt a massive erection coming on.
Throwing a bill down on the bar next to his beer, he climbed off the stool. The fat woman was staring at the grotesque bulge in his pants. Herman Melville. Bartleby the Scribner... What was that gibberish, the bizarre phrase the deranged character repeated endlessly?
“I would…”
“Yes?”
“I would prefer not to,” Bart Schroeder mumbled as he brushed past the florid woman and left the bar.
Two streets down in back of the old-fashioned Movie Theater, Bart rented a three speed bike with a straw basket draped over the handlebars. “Bike path is up by the dock. It winds all the way to Edgartown and the southernmost beaches,” the proprietor noted. “Take it slow, though, in this heat.”
Bart pedaled out to the landing and watched the afternoon ferry dock with a fresh load of tourists, then he headed out to the bike path that skirted the harbor. Up ahead, a pink burst of color from a hedge of salt spray roses edged the trail. A seagull resting on a telephone pole watched him pass with stony indifference.
The plan was to ride several miles south from Oak Bluffs to Edgartown along the winding trail dotted by sand dunes and scenic marshland. Bart walked the bike up the steeper hills and glided down effortlessly with the shift set in first gear.
A message for Holly Heatherton. Salt air and a tart, late summer breeze off the ocean accompanied the ride. Yes, this was much better than trying to sort things out in the bar, which reeked of stale cigars and flat beer.
Bartholomew Schroeder lived with his wife forty-three years and thirteen days. They raised three sons and two daughters. He understood plumbing, soldering and most mechanical contraptions. Penelope handled domestic engineering, childrearing and all matters intuitive and otherworldly. “There’s this precious slip of
a girl,” Bart addressed the monologue to his late wife, “whose life is a mess, and she wants me to set her universe back on an even keel.” He had to wait for a family of five returning from the lighthouse further down the coast to pass. The youngest daughter’s bike sported training wheels and a bell which she sounded as she glided past.
“Okay, where was I? Oh, yes, the girl expects me a retired plumber to deliver the cosmic goods and I haven’t a clue -”
“Hey, man.” A teenager with hair down to his shoulders and a goatee was waving at Bart, who braked to a halt. A paisley bandana was knotted around the youth’s neck. “Any idea where John Belushi’s buried?”
“The cemetery in Chilmark,” Bart replied.
“Where the hell’s that?”
“Fifteen miles that way.” He pointed due east.
“Way wicked cool!” The youth turned around, flung a backpack with an aluminum frame over his shoulders, and headed off down the road.
Bart rested the bike on the kickstand and leaned against a scraggily pine. Ten minutes passed. He climbed back on the three-speed and pedaled leisurely back to Oak Bluffs.
“The Heathertons, what room are they in?”
The desk clerk checked the register. “Room 301.”
Bart took the elevator to the third floor, locating the room at the far end of the hallway. “My name is Bartholomew Schroeder and I’m here to see Holly.”
“Yes, of course.” The woman stepped out on the landing and closed the door behind her. “I haven’t a clue what you said to my daughter, but she’s much calmer since breakfast.”
“I’m a plumber not a psychiatrist,” Mr. Schroeder qualified.
“Holly is even talking about returning to school in September.” The woman reached out and grabbed his hand. “That’s a good sign.”