Blissful day the fourth in the City of Roses. We bought the Sunday Seattle Times and The Sunday Oregonian at the Magazine Emporium on Broadway. We went to bed in the late afternoon, and when I woke I heard rain, heavily, in the courtyard of the Casablanca. As before, Jamie was sitting up against pillows with an exaggerated straight face, peering over the top of her glasses, but this time with a pencil pressed against her lower lip while she worked on a crossword. “You’re good,” I said, and she immediately replied, “I could use a clipboard and a lab coat.”
Into this Eden some gloom was interjected when I read on the page of Seattle Times obituaries about the death of John William’s grandmother. “Dorothy Worthington, 77, Granddaughter of City Founder.” Among the stories about the dead that day, hers led, and it began with “Heiress to a considerable fortune, Dorothy Best Worthington was well known in Seattle for her collection of antiquities and for her lifelong devotion to the Cornish School.”
Mrs. Worthington was the daughter of Lydia Strong Post—whose father, Hiram Post, was a member of the Denny Party—and of Henry Carter Best, founder of Seattle’s Best Trust and Savings Bank.
Traveling to the Near East on numerous occasions, Mrs. Worthington gradually amassed what is widely considered the city’s most significant private collection of antiquities. A patron not only of the Cornish School but of Northwest painters, Mrs. Worthington was a leading light in Seattle’s art community for many years.
“She liked to travel in the grand style,” said her assistant, Lucy Hatch. “She was a dedicated amateur Hellenist who was generous in sharing her collection with the public.”
Mrs. Worthington, a woman of many talents, died at her Madison Park home August 29 of kidney failure. She was 77.
Besides her interest in antiquities and Northwest art, Mrs. Worthington was a devoted and knowledgeable gardener. During World War II she funded the removal of Himalayan rhododendrons to the Pacific Northwest for cultivation and research.
She also made numerous gifts to the Cornish School and was instrumental in inspiring other benefactors. “Our music program in particular is indebted to Dorothy Worthington,” said Phyllis Wood, a fund-raiser for Cornish. “In recent years she came to every recital and was a gracious and welcome presence.”
Born Dorothy Post Best in Seattle in 1897, Mrs. Worthington attended Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. In 1922, she married Cyrus Worthington, president of Worthington Timber from 1932 to 1967. With her husband and daughter she lived for many years in Madison Park and in a second home in the Highlands, where her antiquities were often on display.
Family and friends remember Mrs. Worthington as erudite and serious, but also capable of humor. “Dorothy had written instructions for the annual installation of the family Christmas tree,” recalls Lucy Hatch. “Yet she was able to laugh one year when it tipped over during a Yule party.”
In her later years, Mrs. Worthington took up the piano. According to Ms. Hatch, she read avidly during prolonged sessions of kidney dialysis over the final nine months of her life.
Mrs. Worthington is survived by her only child, Virginia Barry, of Taos and Seattle, and by one grandchild, John William Barry. She was preceded in death by her husband, Cyrus, in 1971.
A graveside memorial will be held at…
This all struck a chord with me because in the winter of ’73 I’d helped John William move a piano for Dorothy Worthington. One afternoon, we went to her home in Madison Park, a mansion better suited, I thought, to a plantation in the South, because it had tall columns and a widow’s walk. Inside, the furniture looked monumental, with shells, eagles, and leaves for touches, and the foyer smelled like tarnish paste. It was dark in there, and drafty even with the radiators percolating. We were led by Mrs. Worthington’s assistant—a woman with a lustrous silver pageboy, in jeans—into a conservatory: white wicker, a small television, and a view of rhododendron bushes seized by frost. There was also a space heater on wheels, and a folded-back TV Guide. After ten or fifteen minutes, Mrs. Worthington shuffled in, announced, “The punctual piano-movers have arrived on shed-ule,” and kissed John William on both cheeks. There was lipstick on her teeth. She wore a cardigan cable-stitch sweater and brandished a glass-handled cane. She had a man’s jaw and looked a little pop-eyed, plain like Eleanor Roosevelt but with the rimless glasses of Harry Truman. “Tell me,” she said, sitting down in a wicker rocker. “How are you enjoying the Lakeside School?”
“It’s great,” said John William.
“Dexter Strong, you know, was a good friend of your grandfather’s.”
John William scratched his head.
“We knew Bob Adams, too.”
“I don’t know Bob Adams.”
“Bob Adams was headmaster,” said Mrs. Worthington. “You’re looking so virile these days, John William, with your wonderful, poetic head of hair.”
To me, she sounded like Katharine Hepburn—like somebody from the horsy set as it might have existed before color television. The tremulous tone of her patter was benign and scary at the same time. I noticed that her shoes were orthopedic, and that she kept her chin tilted, as she spoke, to good advantage. Her gaze was aggressive, and her cane could have been a prop. John William said, “This is Neil Countryman. He’s moved a lot of pianos in his time, and I thought he might be useful.”
Mrs. Worthington smiled. “Neil Countryman,” she said. “I like the sound of that. Are you interested in painting?”
“Yes.”
“Behind me here, in the next room, is an Ambrose Patterson worth a little of your time.”
I’d thought she meant house painting. I’d thought she might have had a job for me painting a room or a wall. “Okay,” I said.
“There are also some wonderful Tobey murals in the house, and a Clayton Price which you’ll see when, I suppose the phrase is, we tackle the piano. Are you Punctual Petes ready to tackle the piano?”
We made a long, slow trip behind her through dark rooms. Around a corner, the silver-haired assistant was waiting for us, standing with her hands clasped in the doorway of a study where a fire burned. “Lucy,” said Mrs. Worthington, “Lucy, this is Neil Countryman. Don’t you think ‘Countryman’ is a wonderful name?”
“I do think so.”
“And my grandson, John William.”
“Hail,” said Lucy.
We traveled on—Lucy, as it turned out, was just acknowledging our passing, and returned to her desk work and fire. Then we came to what I think you would call a drawing room. That’s of course an antiquated term, “drawing room,” but it wasn’t hard to imagine that here, in the past, the Worthingtons had entertained guests. Now this drawing room was a music studio smelling humidly of Turkish rugs. It was lined with books, and it housed a few of Mrs. Worthington’s antiquities—for example, a fragment of a black jar, a jug, and a bronze warrior on horseback. To me it felt cryptlike, with its drawn shades and ancient knickknacks. “Your adversary,” said Mrs. Worthington, meaning her piano. “And you thought this would be easy.”
It was a Bösendorfer grand with an ebony finish. For a moment we stood admiring its strings and hammers; then John William, unsolicited, swung a rod out of the way and closed the top. “Where to?” he said.
“Darling,” said Mrs. Worthington.
She called our attention to some rug scraps on the piano bench by prodding them with the rubber tip of her cane. “Look down,” she said. “Those are some very unfortunate fir floorboards Grandfather Cyrus coerced me into in 1957. So I asked Lucy to bring up four scraps. The idea is that one of you strong young men will carefully lift a corner of the piano, and the other will slip a scrap under the wheel. You will notice that my scraps have a top and a bottom. I want the soft side down, of course. We’ll coddle these floorboards.” She tapped an orthopedic shoe, as if in a test. “I have Palladian furnishings,” she said. “Strong, solid pieces. Underneath some of my carpets, there’s damage. Men who worry their hair about, to hide their bald spots—I’
m like that with my Douglas-fir floors. Do you remember the Highlands?”
“Yes,” said John William.
“Very hard, very nice oak floors.”
“I recall.”
“When were you there?”
“Christmas. Three weeks ago.”
Mrs. Worthington said, “Oh dear.”
We moved her piano. She only wanted it rotated, really, so that while playing she was closer to the radiator.
In the conservatory once more, we each drank a glass of water. Lucy joined us for this restorative, and I was made to divulge that I lived in North Seattle and attended Roosevelt. “The Teddies,” said Mrs. Worthington. “But how, then, did you boys meet?”
John William, with his forefingers, trapped his forelocks behind his ears. “Not everyone I know goes to Lakeside,” he told her.
“Of course not,” replied Mrs. Worthington.
“Countryman’s not a sellout,” John William said. “He wants to be a writer—a novelist.”
Lucy seemed interested in this piece of news and turned in my direction. Since she looked intelligent and fit nicely in her jeans, I found her gaze embarrassing and tried not to redden, which made it happen. Lucy said Gary Snyder had grown up in Lake City, and Mary McCarthy had grown up in Madrona; also, that Alice B. Toklas had attended Seattle University at the turn of the century. Mrs. Worthington added that the vaudeville impresario Alexander Pantages had once lived around the corner. We finished our water and looked at the Ambrose Patterson in the next room—it was called Rocky Landscape—at the Tobey murals—which to me looked like scribbling—and finally at the Clayton Price, which Mrs. Worthington said had “a scumbled surface and somber, earthy tones.” Then, at the door, she took John William’s hand in her own and said, “Tell me, how is your mother doing?”
“She’s in Taos.”
“You’re fending for yourself?”
“Always.”
“You’re not in need?”
“I’m not in need.”
“Do you hear from her?”
“No.”
Mrs. Worthington’s fingers twisted around her cane handle. “Oh dear,” she said. “Oh, Virginia.”
She kissed John William’s cheek. She patted his head. My friend put his arms, for a moment, around his grandmother. “Never you mind,” she said. “None of it’s your fault, love—none of it.”
“I feel like it is.”
“Tsk,” said Mrs. Worthington. “There, now.”
John William and I went to the curb and got in the Impala. “Sorry,” he said to me, while waving to his grandmother.
“We moved her piano two inches.”
“I’ve met Lucy a hundred times—two hundred times.”
“Dahling,” I said. “You must see the Clayton Price.”
“My grandfather cut down all the trees in five counties,” John William replied, “so my grandmother could buy all those finger-paintings.”
I STAYED TOO LONG in Portland. The “9/4” deadline named on John William’s postcard came and went without my noticing. In fact, I was parked at a rest stop between Portland and Seattle, on my way home, when I remembered it, and I only remembered it because the postcard fell into my lap when I pulled the visor down so I could take a nap without the sun in my eyes. COUNTRYMAN—AT BADEN-BADEN THROUGH 9/4 THEN GOIN’ TO GET EJUKATID. GET OUT HERE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. BLOOD, SIMON MAGUS. It was 9/5, and John William was at Reed.
I had two weeks before my own classes started, so I bought a one-ton stakebed from my uncle Lynn for $200, in the full knowledge that its steering was perilously loose, and went to work cutting firewood with his son Keith, the diabetic. At first, something gyroscopic seemed to govern that truck; driving it was like maneuvering a bumper car, a lot of fruitless overcompensating and futile swings of the wheel against emptiness. With a load of wood on board, this uncorralled skating was slightly less deranged; even so, I decided to replace the steering box myself, salvaging a used one from a wrecking yard and installing it via guesswork, but this turned out to be a mistake, because after that you needed the shoulders of an Atlas to budge the wheel, and had to lift yourself off the seat and throw your weight left or right while pushing and pulling, with muscular zeal, just to change lanes. I felt safer at this end of the steering spectrum, though, and with a less dedicated effort could hold a straight line on the road.
Keith and I flailed away at alders no one wanted near Monroe, in woods where a subdivision was supposed to materialize, as we were told by Uncle Lynn, who said he knew the developer. We ran a pair of heavy, whining Homelites, wore greasy chaps and silver hard hats, and skidded logs with the stakebed and a rusty cable. Keith had to stop often and eat brownies or Rice Krispie treats. One morning, he nicked his boot open with his Homelite—you could see not only the wound in the leather but the scored surface of the steel toe underneath. Mostly, Keith liked to sit on a log with a radio on and a joint between his fingers. It’s hard to say which was more tiring, cutting firewood or driving the stakebed, but fortunately Keith enjoyed battling my botched steering-box job so he could grimace theatrically while excoriating my mechanical abilities. I let him.
We served, mostly, the satisfied clients of Countryman remodelers. One of my uncles would transform a couple’s bathroom and they’d be so delighted they’d call again about their kitchen, and after that it was an easy matter for Keith to work from a list he’d developed, introducing himself as a Countryman and marketing our firewood. He’d make the sale and get careful directions. I’d back the stakebed into a driveway, and we’d toss a cord out at high speed before collecting our check; or, for a little extra, we’d stack. It was fun to feel muscular in the presence of a householder standing by with his checkbook, or in the presence of any woman, or to be watched by children as if we were exotic. One day, while tossing wood into a driveway, I realized that the columns and widow’s walk next door, beyond a low boxwood hedge, were Dorothy Worthington’s, or had been Dorothy Worthington’s before she died. There was a BMW in her driveway. There was also a late-model Econoline van, and now that I was paying attention to it I saw that its sliding door was open. A few minutes later, a guy wearing coveralls emerged from the garage carrying a crate, stowed it, and went in again, and a few minutes after that a Saab pulled up to the curb and Lucy Hatch got out. She was wearing jeans and a mid-length coat, and her silver hair was longer than it had been before, but no less lustrous. Lucy peered into the van’s open sliding door and kept her head in there until the guy in coveralls reappeared with another crate. He stopped short. She spoke to him for a minute, her hands in her coat pockets. He set the crate on the flagstones, sat down in the van’s sliding-door frame, and poked a cigarette between his lips. Lucy went into the house.
I told Keith, while we tossed wood, about moving the piano. I told him how rich Dorothy Worthington had been, and this made him wince. Then I asked him if he minded sitting in the truck for a few minutes, because I wanted to go next door to get an address.
Lucy let me in. She still had on her coat. I had to remind her about the piano first, and then I had to explain myself—that I wanted to write John William at Reed—before she relented and stopped blocking the door. I followed her through the foyer, then into the living room with its monumental furniture, and past the conservatory with its white wicker chairs. We passed the Ambrose Patterson and the Tobey murals. I noticed that Lucy’s hair had a becoming inward flip at the back but was still perfectly coiffed. She said nothing, just walked with her hands in her coat pockets, until we reached the study, where a year and a half before she’d greeted John William and me from her post by the door while a fire burned behind her. Then Lucy said, “Let me dig out his info. You can have a seat.”
I said, “I’m filthy. It’s better if I stand.”
She gave me a probing once-over now. “Hey,” she said, “do I remember this right? You wanted to be a writer.”
“Embarrassing.”
“Why is that?”
“Everyone
wants to be a writer.”
She moved things on her desk with elegant fingers. I said, “I read in the paper about John William’s grandma.”
“Nightmare. Here it is. I’ll write it down for you.”
While she was doing so, another woman came to the door, older than Lucy but every bit as trim, and even more classy, tanned, with a strong chin. “Are you a mover?” she asked me.
“No.”
“Then who are you?”
Lucy explained. “This is Neil Countryman, Ginnie. He’s a friend of your son’s.”
John William’s mother took me in with brazen scrutiny. I tried to take her in as well, without seeming to, and remembered her unibrow from the photo I’d seen of her with Ansel Adams, on the wall of her study. Her face was all planes. Her black—I want to say “raven”—hair was in a compact, glistening bun. She was dark-eyed, with flaring nostrils. There are women in their fifties whom young men recognize instinctively as sexually complex, and Ginnie was one of them. She made me nervous, and between her and Lucy, I didn’t want to leave right away. “I’m getting his address,” I said.
“Neil’s been here before,” added Lucy. “He helped move the piano for Dorothy.”
John William’s mother stayed in the doorway. She wore a small black sweater closed by a single button, hoop earrings, and a necklace of lacquered wooden beads. “Excuse me,” she said. “The murals, Lucy. I need you to get me the paperwork.”
Lucy said, “Ginnie, you know what I’m going to say.”
Ginnie crossed her arms. She looked at me fleetingly. Then she said, “Say it anyway.”
“You can’t take the murals,” answered Lucy.
Now Ginnie entered the room. Her gait was imperious. I stepped back and, thinking I should indicate this was none of my business, looked at the floor.
“I can too take the murals.”