She went on, “So maybe ‘X. Arybdis’ is really ‘Ch. Arybdis’? Or maybe ‘Charybdis’? Isn’t that something in Greek mythology?”
“Yes, it is,” he said, as much to himself as to her. “Between Scylla and Charybdis …”
“Like ‘between a rock and a hard place’?”
He nodded. “Something like that.”
“Which is which?”
He seemed not to hear the question, his mind racing now through the Charybdis implications, juggling the possibilities.
“Hmm?” He realized she’d asked him something.
“Scylla and Charybdis,” she said. “The rock and the hard place. Which is which?”
“It’s not a direct translation, just an approximation of the meaning. Scylla and Charybdis were actual navigational perils in the Strait of Messina. Ships had to navigate between them and tended to be destroyed in the process. In mythology, they were personalized into demons of destruction.”
“When you say navigational perils … like what?”
“Scylla was the name for a jagged outcropping of rocks that ships were battered against until they sank.”
When he didn’t immediately continue, she persisted, “And Charybdis?”
He cleared his throat. Something about the idea of Charybdis seemed especially disturbing. “Charybdis was a whirlpool. A very powerful whirlpool. Once a man was caught in it, he could never get out. It sucked him down and tore him to pieces.” He recalled with unsettling clarity an illustration he’d seen ages ago in an edition of the Odyssey, showing a sailor trapped in the violent eddy, his face contorted in horror.
Again came the screech from the woods.
“Come on,” said Madeleine. “Let’s get up to the house. It’s going to rain any minute.”
He stood still, lost in his racing thoughts.
“Come on,” she urged. “Before we get soaked.”
He followed her to her car, and they drove up slowly through the pasture to the house.
Before they got out, he turned to her and asked, “You don’t think of every x you see as a possible ch, do you?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why …?”
“Because ‘Arybdis’ sounded Greek.”
“Right. Of course.”
She looked across the front seat at him, her expression, abetted by the clouded night, unreadable.
After a while she said, with a small smile in her voice, “You never stop thinking, do you?”
Then, as she had promised, the rain began.
Chapter 9
No such person
After being stalled for several hours at the periphery of the mountains, a steep cold front swept through the area, bringing lashings of wind and rain. In the morning the ground was covered with leaves and the air was charged with the intense smells of autumn. Water droplets on the pasture grass fractured the sun into crimson sparks.
As Gurney walked to his car, the assault on his senses awakened something from his childhood, when the sweet smell of grass was the smell of peace and security. Then it was gone—erased by his plans for the day.
He was heading for the Institute for Spiritual Renewal. If Mark Mellery was going to resist getting the police involved, Gurney wanted to argue that decision with him face-to-face. It wasn’t that he intended to wash his own hands of the matter. In fact, the more he pondered it, the more curious he was about his old classmate’s prominent place in the world and how it might relate to who and what were now threatening him. As long as he was careful about boundaries, Gurney imagined there would be room in the investigation for both himself and the local police.
He’d called Mellery to let him know he was coming. It was a perfect morning for a drive through the mountains. The route to Peony took him first through Walnut Crossing, which, like many Catskill villages, had grown up in the nineteenth century around an intersection of locally important roads. The intersection, with diminished importance, remained. The eponymous nut tree, along with the region’s prosperity, was long gone. But the depressed economy, serious as it was, had a picturesque appearance—weathered barns and silos, rusted plows and hay wagons, abandoned hill pastures overgrown with fading goldenrod. The road from Walnut Crossing that led eventually to Peony wound its way through a postcard river valley where a handful of old farms were searching for innovative ways to survive. Abelard’s was one of these. Squeezed between the village of Dillweed and the nearby river, it was devoted to the organic cultivation of “Pesticide-Free Veggies,” which were then sold at Abelard’s General Store, along with fresh breads, Catskill cheeses, and very good coffee—coffee that Gurney felt an urgent need for as he pulled in to one of the little dirt parking spaces in front of the store’s sagging front porch.
Inside the door of the high-ceilinged space, against the right wall, stood a steaming array of coffeepots, which Gurney headed for. He filled a sixteen-ounce container, smiling at the rich aroma—better than Starbucks at half the price.
Unfortunately, the thought of Starbucks brought with it the image of a certain kind of young, successful Starbucks customer, and that immediately brought Kyle to mind, along with a little mental wince. It was his standard reaction. He suspected that it arose from a frustrated desire for a son who thought a smart cop was worth looking up to, a son more interested in seeking his guidance than Kyle was. Kyle—unteachable and untouchable in that absurdly expensive Porsche that his absurdly high Wall Street income had paid for at the absurdly young age of twenty-four. Still, he did owe the young man a return phone call, even if all the kid wanted to talk about was his latest Rolex or Aspen ski trip.
Gurney paid for his coffee and returned to his car. As he was thinking about the prospective call, his phone rang. He disliked coincidences and was relieved to discover that it was not Kyle but Mark Mellery.
“I just got today’s mail. I called you at home, but you’d gone out. Madeleine gave me your cell number. I hope you don’t mind me calling.”
“What’s the problem?”
“My check came back. The guy who has the post-office box in Wycherly where I sent the $289.87 check to Arybdis—he sent it back to me with a note saying there’s nobody there by that name, that I must have gotten the address wrong. But I checked it again. It was the right box number. Davey? Are you there?”
“I’m here. Just trying to make sense of that.”
“Let me read you the note. ‘I found the enclosed piece of mail in my post-office box. There must be a mistake in the address. There is no one here named X. Arybdis.’ And it’s signed ‘Gregory Dermott.’ The letterhead on the notepaper says ‘GD Security Systems,’ and there’s an address and phone number in Wycherly.”
Gurney was about to explain that it was now almost certain that X. Arybdis was not a real name but a curious play on the name of a mythological whirlpool, a whirlpool that tore its victims to pieces, but he decided that the issue was already disturbing enough. The revelation of this extra twist could wait until he got to the institute. He told Mellery he’d be there in an hour.
What the hell was going on? It made no sense. What could be the purpose of demanding a specific amount of money, having the check made out to an obscure mythological name, and then having it sent to the wrong address in the likelihood that it would be returned to the sender? Why such a complex and seemingly pointless preamble to the nasty poems that followed?
The baffling aspects of the case were increasing, and so was Gurney’s interest.
Chapter 10
The perfect place
Peony was a town twice removed from the history it sought to reflect. Adjacent to Woodstock, it pretended to the same tie-dyed, psychedelic, rock-concert past—while Woodstock in turn nourished its own ersatz aura through its name association with the pot-fogged concert that had actually been held fifty miles away on a farm in Bethel. Peony’s image was the product of smoke and mirrors, and upon this chimerical foundation had risen predictable commercial structures—New Age bookstores, tarot pa
rlors, Wiccan and Druidical emporia, tattoo shops, performance-art spaces, vegan restaurants—a center of gravity for flower children approaching senility, Deadheads in old Volkswagen buses, and mad eclectics swathed in everything from leathers to feathers.
Of course, among these colorfully weird elements there were interspersed plenty of opportunities for tourists to spend money: stores and eateries whose names and decor were only a little outrageous and whose wares were tailored to the upscale visitors who liked to imagine they were exploring the cultural edge.
The loose web of roads radiating out from Peony’s business district led to money. Real-estate prices had doubled and tripled after 9/11, when New Yorkers of substantial means and galloping paranoia were captivated by the fantasy of a rural sanctuary. Homes in the hills surrounding the village grew in size and number, the SUVs morphed from Blazers and Broncos into Hummers and Land Rovers, and the people who came for country weekends wore what Ralph Lauren told them people in the country wore.
Hunters, firemen, and teachers gave way to lawyers, investment bankers, and women of a certain age whose divorce settlements financed their cultural activities, skin treatments, and mind-expanding involvements with gurus of this and that. In fact, Gurney suspected that the local population’s appetite for guru-based solutions to life’s problems may have persuaded Mark Mellery to set up shop there.
He turned off the county highway just before the village center, following his Google directions onto Filchers Brook Road—which snaked up a wooded hillside. This brought him eventually to a roadside wall of native slate, laid nearly four feet high. The wall ran parallel to the road, set back about ten feet, for at least a quarter of a mile. The setback was thick with pale blue asters. Halfway along the stretch of wall, there were two formal openings about fifty feet apart, the entrance and exit of a circular drive. Affixed to the wall at the first of these openings was a discreet bronze sign: MELLERY INSTITUTE FOR SPIRITUAL RENEWAL.
Turning in to the driveway brought the aesthetic of the place into sharper focus. Everywhere Gurney looked, he was given an impression of unplanned perfection. Beside the gravel drive, autumn flowers seemed to grow in haphazard freedom. Yet he was sure this casual image, not unlike Mellery’s, received careful tending. As in many haunts of the low-profile rich, the note intoned was one of meticulous informality, nature as it ought to be, with no wilting bloom left unpruned. Following the driveway brought Gurney’s car to the front of a large Georgian manor house, as gently groomed as the gardens.
Standing in front of the house and eyeing him with interest was an imperious man with a ginger beard. Gurney rolled down his window and asked where the parking area might be found. The man replied with a plummy British accent that he should follow the drive to its end.
Unfortunately, this led Gurney out through the other opening in the stone wall onto Filchers Brook Road. He drove back around through the entrance and followed the drive again to the front of the house, where the tall Englishman again regarded him with interest.
“The end of the drive took me to the public road,” said Gurney. “Did I miss something?”
“What a bloody fool I am!” the man cried with exaggerated chagrin that seemed in conflict with his natural bearing. “I think I know everything, but most of the time I’m wrong!”
Gurney had an inkling he might be in the presence of a madman. He also at that point noticed a second figure in the scene. Standing back in the shadow of a giant rhododendron, watching them intently, was a dark, stocky man who looked as if he might be waiting for a Sopranos audition.
“Ah,” cried the Englishman, pointing with enthusiasm farther along the drive, “there’s your answer! Sarah will take you under her protective wing. She’s the one for you!” Saying this with high theatricality, he turned and strode off, followed at some distance by the comic-book gangster.
Gurney drove on to where a woman stood by the driveway, solicitude writ large on her pudgy face. Her voice exuded empathy.
“Dear me, dear me, we’ve got you driving around in circles. That’s not a nice way to welcome you.” The level of concern in her eyes was alarming. “Let me take your car for you. Then you can go right into the house.”
“That’s not necessary. Could you just tell me where the parking area is?”
“Of course! Just follow me. I’ll make sure you don’t get lost this time.” Her tone made the task seem more daunting than one would imagine it to be.
She waved to Gurney to follow her. It was an expansive wave, as though she were commanding a caravan. In her other hand, at her side, she carried a closed umbrella. Her deliberate pace conveyed a concern that Gurney might lose sight of her. Reaching a break in the shrubbery, she stepped to the side, pointing Gurney into a narrow offshoot of the driveway that passed through the bushes. As he came abreast of her, she thrust the umbrella toward his open window.
“Take it!” she cried.
He stopped, nonplussed.
“You know what they say about mountain weather,” she explained.
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” He continued past her into the parking area, a place that looked able to accommodate twice the cars currently there, which Gurney numbered at sixteen. The neat rectangular space was nestled amid the ubiquitous flowers and shrubs. A lofty copper beech at the far end separated the parking area from a three-story red barn, its color vivid in the slanting sunlight.
He chose a space between two gargantuan SUVs. While he was parking, he became aware of a woman watching the process from behind a low bed of dahlias. When he got out of the car, he smiled politely at her—a dainty violet of a woman, small-boned and delicate of feature, with an old-fashioned look about her. If she were an actress, thought Gurney, she’d be a natural to play Emily Dickinson in The Belle of Amherst.
“I wonder if you could tell me where I might find Mark—” But the violet interrupted him with her own question.
“Who the fuck said you could park there?”
Chapter 11
A unique ministry
From the parking area, Gurney followed a cobblestone pathway around the Georgian mansion, which he guessed would be used as the institute’s business office and lecture center, to a smaller Georgian house about five hundred feet behind it. A small gold-lettered sign by the path read PRIVATE RESIDENCE.
Mark Mellery opened the door before Gurney knocked. He wore the same sort of costly-casual attire he’d worn on his visit to Walnut Crossing. Against the background of the institute’s architecture and landscape, the apparel lent him a squire-like aura.
“Good to see you, Davey!”
Gurney stepped into a spacious chestnut-floored entry hall furnished with antiques, and Mellery led the way to a comfortable study toward the rear of the house. A blaze crackling softly in the fireplace perfumed the room with a hint of cherry smoke.
Two wing chairs stood opposite each other to the right and left of the fireplace and, with the sofa that faced the hearth, formed a U-shaped sitting area. When they were settled in the chairs, Mellery asked whether he’d had any trouble finding his way around the property. Gurney recounted the three peculiar conversations he’d had, and Mellery explained that the three individuals were guests of the institute and their behavior constituted part of their self-discovery therapy.
“In the course of his or her stay,” Mellery explained, “each guest plays ten different roles. One day he might be the Mistake Maker—that sounds like the role Worth Partridge, the British chap, was playing when you came upon him. Another day he might be the Helper—that’s the role Sarah, who wanted to park your car, was playing. Another role is the Confronter. The last lady you encountered sounds like she was playing that part with extra relish.”
“What’s the point?”
Mellery smiled. “People act out certain roles in their lives. The content of the roles—the scripts, if you will—is consistent and predictable, although generally unconscious and rarely seen as a matter of choice.” He was warming to his subject, despit
e the fact he must have spoken these explanatory sentences hundreds of times. “What we do here is simple, although many of our guests consider it profound. We make them aware of the roles they unconsciously play, what the benefits and costs of those roles are, and how they affect others. Once our guests see their patterns of behavior in the light of day, we help them see that each pattern is a choice. They can retain or discard it. Then—this is the most important part—we provide them a program of action to replace damaging patterns with healthier ones.”
The man’s anxiety, Gurney noted, receded as he spoke. The subject had put an evangelical brightness in his eyes.
“By the way, all this might sound familiar to you. Pattern, choice, and change are the three most overused words in the whole shabby world of self-help. But our guests tell us that what we do here is different—the heart of it is different. Just the other day, one of them said to me, ‘This is the most perfect place on earth.’”
Gurney tried to keep skepticism out of his voice. “The therapeutic experience you provide must be very powerful.”
“Some find it so.”
“I’ve heard that some powerful therapies are quite confrontational.”
“Not here,” said Mellery. “Our approach is soft and welcoming. Our favorite pronoun is we, not you. We speak about our failings and fears and limitations. We never point at anyone and accuse them of anything. We believe that accusations are more likely to strengthen the walls of denial than to break them down. After you look through one of my books, you’ll understand the philosophy better.”
“I just thought things might occasionally happen on the ground, so to speak, that weren’t part of the philosophy.”