Page 13

Palm Springs

November 9, 2022

Smoke Tree Ranch was less than half a mile from Le Desert as the crow flies. I decided to walk there, which wasn’t the best idea because, by design, the entrance is not well advertised. The big-box stores that front Palm Canyon Drive act as a shield. It was hard to imagine that such rarefied wealth could sit behind the parking lot of a Petco, World Market, and Chipotle. I had the sense that many longtime residents of Palm Springs might not have any idea that Smoke Tree Ranch even existed. Judging from the barracks-like buildings and the guard at the entrance, it seemed more like a military base than a retreat, as if something clandestine were going on inside.

There was no way to walk around the giant redwood swinging gate. The man in the booth with what looked like a sheriff’s badge on his chest seemed confused when I approached, as though I were the first creature to enter on two legs instead of in a car, like walking through the McDonald’s drive-through. “I’m here to have lunch with Melody Underwood,” I said. He asked for my name and my ID and began tapping into his computer. A car pulled up behind me, so close I could almost feel the bumper on my legs.

“Go on in,” he said reluctantly, as skeptical as a TSA agent. With the touch of a button, the gate swung open. All I could see spread out in front of me was desert.

“Stay to the right,” he said. It was the day after the election, and I interpreted this as both the route to follow and a political directive.

I walked and walked, feeling apprehensive about seeing Melody again for the first time in over three decades. Basil said their relationship had markedly improved since he was young. She’d been so slow to embrace his sexuality that he felt he had to marry me to get out from under her. Did I hold a grudge after all these years? I thought that was all behind us—until now.

The roads were not paved; they were made of gravel, and instead of curbs they were marked by stones. A tiny cyclone of wind picked up from out of nowhere and pushed dirt under my sunglasses, causing my eyes to feel as if they’d been sandblasted. I tried to pull up a map on my phone, but the entire ranch was grayed out on Google Maps. The sun was so bright that I could hardly see my screen, anyway. There was no grass, and the tamarisk trees Hobie had told Grant and me about were tall and planted in rows. They looked as if they’d been there forever.

At last, I saw signs for Ranch and Colony Road, and I passed a few simple-looking one-story board-and-batten homes with split-shake roofs. I saw perfectly maintained tennis courts behind the pro shop; they were empty, and so, too, was the pool, dazzling and elegant, with yellow sun curtains hanging over the eaves of the pavilion. Polly had trained me to think of wealth as slick and shiny; loud and ostentatious. Limos, golden toilets, Russian hookers. This couldn’t be more different. Here, wealth was quiet, anonymous. Old money didn’t have to try so hard; at Smoke Tree Ranch, it almost didn’t try at all.

I came upon the main building, painted brown and shaped like an L. I walked inside and saw the dining room straight ahead, the lounge and library off to the side. In between was the reception desk, where they sold golf gear emblazoned with the ranch’s initials in a logo that resembled a Chinese character.

With the beamed ceilings, stone fireplace, knotty-pine walls, and fine upholstery, the space was cozy and elegant; everything seemed both new and used. Once again, my mid-century ideas of Palm Springs were challenged. The atmosphere was not spare and minimalist; it was at once rustic and luxurious—tanned leather and thick silk curtains, BBQ on fine china. The ranch was meant to envelop you, an institution devoted to the fun you could have outside your usual life.

I walked to the front desk. Two young men exuding an air of entitlement breezed through the lobby in their dress whites. “Hi!” I said. “Where are you from?” This was my new Palm Springs conversation starter.

They seemed confused by my question. “We’re Colonists.”

I paused, feeling both stupid for not knowing what a Colonist was and surprised anyone would ever say that word aloud, and with pride. “I’m sorry, you’re—what?”

They looked at each other and rolled their eyes. “You have a nice day,” they said, flicking on their sunglasses. Off they went.

Someone tapped me on the shoulder. “Boo!”

I turned and there she was, Melody. That’s when I did the unthinkable: I reached in for a hug, and the older woman froze. It was like hugging a lamppost. I backed away, feeling stupid.

“Why did those men say they were Colonists?” I asked.

“Because they are! And so am I. It’s what original owners and their descendants call themselves. I’m sure that’s a word that rings alarm bells among the professor class in the same way that the word socialist rings bells around here. Anyway, welcome, Kimberly. It’s good to see you again after all these years.”

Was it? Or was Melody just being polite? I reminded myself that she was no longer my mother-in-law, and I was no longer in my early twenties. The ground between us had shifted. If she didn’t like me, it didn’t matter, so why did it feel as if it did?

She wore a crisp white shirt with a blue sweater tied around her shoulders, a pair of tan slacks, and orange suede driving loafers with a gold chain across the toes. Basil had inherited his looks and his style from his mother. They were both tall and willowy, although Melody was noticeably shorter now, and she appeared gaunt, as though she’d been freeze-dried. While Basil was incredibly pale, Melody was tan. Not a fresh tan, but a lifetime accumulation of tans that never had a chance to fade.

“I was worried I wouldn’t recognize you, but you still look the same,” I said.

“Ha! Don’t try to flatter me, I’ve got a mirror. You’ve also grown older. You’re prettier than I remembered. Much prettier, actually. You’re one of those women who gets better with age in the way some men do, like Vandyke. That man even looked good on his deathbed.”

“I’m sorry about—”

Melody cut me off. She was eyeing me carefully. “You’ve got those broad square shoulders and a long neck. The neck, in my opinion, is the actual key to beauty. Just look at Angelica Huston. I used to dress her, you know, when she was one of the Halstonettes. You, too, are an unconventional beauty. You and Angie share the quality of jolie laide. ”

She turned on her heel and led me into the library. “We could have met at that burger place in the mall out there or had drinks at the Parker, but I wanted you to see the place I love best. In my opinion—and I have many—this is the beating heart of Smoke Tree Ranch.”

“Thanks again for inviting me here.” Then I blurted out, “When I saw the big fence, I thought it could be a prison.”

“It’s the opposite of a prison, really. The exact inverse. From here, you see, it’s the rest of the world that’s a prison. We engage in a more gracious way of living that I fear is in danger of extinction. Cowboy chic, we call it.” She gestured at the fireplace. “This is where I learned that style emerges from contrast. Here the women are expected to be both cowgirls and ladies, and the men are both dude and dandy. We don’t try to impress each other. It goes against the Smoke Tree Ranch way of life. As founder Maziebelle Markham famously said, ‘Most who have come here have been everyplace, they’ve seen everything, and they’ve done most things. This is what they do after that.’” Melody cupped her mouth with one hand and said, as if telling me a secret (I’d forgotten this little tic of hers to speak in asides), “We repeat this congratulatory little phrase to ourselves ad nauseam.”

She tugged on her Italian gold earring and stared at me as though she expected me to say something. Even though I’d known Basil since I was sixteen, she and I had never spent much time together.

“This property is huge.”

“It is. Almost four hundred acres.”

“It’s like the real desert here, I mean what I thought the desert should look like. I guess I’m surprised it’s so preserved and ecologically friendly considering it’s so…” There I was, blabbing because I was uncomfortable. I couldn’t stop myself. “Republican.”

Melody frowned with displeasure. I remembered that she’d always been a keen observer of decorum and felt it was in bad taste to bring up politics in a social setting. “ Eisenhower Republicans, my dear.”

Above us was a framed black-and-white photo of Dwight D. Eisenhower himself. I imagined him winking at Melody. In it, he was sitting in front of the same patterned curtains (made by Hobie’s dad?) that hung in the room we now stood in. “We’ve had some diversity of opinion over the years. Stuart there”—Melody tapped the man in the photo talking with the former president—“now, he was a Democrat, and he caught all kinds of hell for it. These days, a few of us have fallen off the edge in either direction, including myself.”

I couldn’t help but wonder which way she’d fallen, but I didn’t dare ask.

She continued, “What I wouldn’t give to experience this place for the first time! I’ve been coming my whole life; Daddy said I was even conceived here, and so, too, was Basil, even though he disavows himself of Smoke Tree, insisting on living over there with the heathens.” She pointed in the direction of Le Desert. “That place is crazier than a bag of nails. What a hodgepodge of ruffians and misfits. I don’t know what he finds appealing about a bunch of old people obsessing about barking dogs and the timing of the automatic sprinklers.”

“I like it so far.”

She smiled. “Of course you do. Basil loves it, too, even though he’s hardly ever there. You two have always been of like minds.”

I stopped to admire a massive gold-framed painting of a cluster of palm trees set against the vast desert landscape.

“That’s right, you’re an artist. You’re looking at a painting by John Hilton. In my opinion, his paintings are simple, almost cartoonlike. I prefer Gordon Coutts.” She pointed at a pair of gorgeous, smoky pastels featuring dreamy desert landscapes. There was one with a cowboy leading his horses, and another with a settler warming himself by a fire in front of a covered stagecoach. “See the shadow on that mountain in the distance? That was his trademark blue. Once you see a Coutts, you find yourself searching for that magical shade of smoky indigo everywhere you look. You won’t find it on a Pantone chart or anywhere else but here in the desert when the light is just so. Which reminds me, do you still paint?”

“Not really.” I was embarrassed to talk about my interests—they seemed impractical, fanciful.

“Our tastes diverge, but I must admit that Basil has an eye. He thought you were good. I’ll bet you just needed more practice.”

“I don’t know about that. I’ve been too busy with life to focus on art. I was thinking I could get back into it while I’m here now that I have some time.”

“Oh, you must! These days, most people don’t care to capture the world beyond taking photos to post online to show what they’ve eaten or where they’ve been.”

She shuffled over to the framed black-and-white photos of visiting presidents, square dances, pool parties, an old water tower, groups of men on horseback. They harkened to better, more simple times. “See there? That’s Walt Disney, our most celebrated Colonist. That’s our logo on his bolo tie. He called this his ‘laughing place,’ isn’t that wonderful? He sold his first home here to start Disneyland, a personal sacrifice that certainly paid off. That’s how we achieved dreams in the old days. Now you just sell short. He bought another home on the property, of course. Here he is at a gymkhana.”

“Gymkhana?”

“It’s like a rodeo with timed events. We’d race horses around barrels in the elimination heats. Oh, we had the most fun!”

Practically every photo on the wall had a horse in it.

She tapped another photo of men in cowboy hats and little scarf ties. “Here’s Walt heading out to the trails with the Rancheros, and that’s Daddy on Darby, his horse. You’d think Walt was the only person of note to call Smoke Tree Ranch his home, but he is not the only celebrated Colonist. I’ve proposed we update some of the photo dis plays, and at least one, so help me, will be of my husband. He looked so very handsome in his Stetson.”

I tried again. “I’m sorry about Vandyke. I heard—”

She waved her hand to dismiss my sympathies. Her skinny arm was covered in a thick stack of vintage melamine bracelets. “Did Basil tell you what killed his father?”

“Was it Parkinson’s?”

“Nothing so pedestrian. He suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakob syndrome. It’s a disease linked to people who eat their ancestors.”

“Wow.” What does one say?

“Leave it to Vandyke, dramatic to the end! His diagnosis, terrible as it was, positively thrilled him. This was where he wanted to die. We came for the winter last year, as usual, but then we stayed through spring and summer, and I watched as his mind became a fun-house mirror. Everything changed shape. He hallucinated that I was an ant one day, a giant the next. Small and then large. It would have been worse the other way around, don’t you think?”

I hadn’t remembered Melody being quite this chatty. She seemed desperate to have someone to talk to.

“I’ll tell you, it was very lonely in the offseason with nobody around to carry on with. Just me and the sagebrush and poor, miserable Vandyke. I can see why the town empties out in May. At night the heat isn’t so bad, but it plays tricks on you during the day when you become the frog in the boiling water. He hopped out of the proverbial pot on the hottest day of the summer. It was a hundred and eleven degrees when he passed. Even with that impossible heat, I simply couldn’t go back to Los Angeles, or anywhere. Most of my friends were in Montana or the Hamptons—if you can live here, you can live anywhere. Me? I simply lack the desire to leave. I may stay here until I die, too. Who knows.” She led me back to the reception desk. “We have much to discuss. Oh, Davey!” She waved at the manager. “We’re ready to sit. By the window, please.”

We followed Davey around the long wooden tables with their tall-back chairs. “In my day, you’d come running when you heard the dinner bells. You’d grab a napkin and they’d score your clothespin.” She pointed at the wall of clothespins with Colonists’ names marked with the number of times they’d dined.

Melody waved at a pair of men reading The Wall Street Journal, her bracelets jangling. “Mornin’, dudes,” she said in a faux-Western accent.

They looked over the tops of their newspapers. “Mornin’ to you, Mel.”

We sat at a table on the far side of the room next to a window with a gorgeous view of the mountains. She dramatically pulled out her napkin and snapped it in the air before setting it on her lap. “Those fellas thought I was really something in my day. Now I can tell they think I’m a sad, desperate, old widow—there’s a word that puts years on you, wi-dow. But I’ll let you in on something. It’s terrible to lose a spouse, it really is, but now I can get together with friends without worrying how the husbands will get along. Not everyone liked Vandyke, you know. You probably didn’t.”

“I—”

“He didn’t like you, my dear, but don’t take it personally. He didn’t like anyone who didn’t attend boarding school or winter in Bermuda, and there’s no reason you should have liked him. I’m sure Basil told you that he made our son’s life very difficult because of his sex-u-ality. ” She said the word as though she’d just learned what it meant and she could finally say it aloud.

“I honestly didn’t know Vandyke all that well.”

“A lot of the time, I didn’t either. But he got better in old age. That happens. The hospice nurse said people die the way they live. Not Vandyke. He became very confused and very kind. So, tell me about your husband—Grant, right? Basil says he’s a professor. What’s he up to while you’re here at the wax museum with me?”

“He’s not my husband. He’s my partner.”

Melody rolled her eyes at that word. “ Partner. Oh, I hate that. A partner is someone you work with.”

In truth, I hated the word, too, because it always raised eyebrows. It seemed to shave something off the emotion and commitment in a relationship.

“Tell me, why not get married? What’s the big deal? I have friends who’ve tied the knot to four, five, six miserable men, and they just keep running to the altar like the priest is handing out pills. As Zsa Zsa said, she was a personal friend, ‘A girl must marry for love and keep marrying until she finds it.’”

“Well, you have something to do with that.”

“Me?” She put her hand on her chest.

“We didn’t marry at first because of my prenup.”

She seemed confused.

“Don’t you remember?” I was taken aback; this legal contract had dictated my life, and she didn’t seem to know of or care about it. “After Basil and I broke up, I could only collect the alimony if I remained unmarried.”

“That was all Vandyke’s idea, I’m sure. I vaguely recall him working something up with his lawyers. Tell me”—she put her elbows on the table as if we were two old friends gossiping—“how much did you get?”

I felt so greedy. I hated talking about money with Melody because it was hers. “Fifty thousand a year for ten years.”

She seemed shocked. “That’s all? That’s what some women collect in a month. You let that pittance stand in your way?”

“It was a lot to me, Melody. It was… it was my house. It allowed me to continue working in the nonprofit sector.”

She waved this away as though it were of no consequence. “You should have just asked us for a payout. Are you telling me that even after the alimony ran out you still didn’t marry Grant?”

“We talked about it, but we never did. I think we will now, though. He needs my insurance.”

“Insurance. Listen to you, Kim. That’s no reason to tie the knot. There’s more to this story, I suspect. Does he cheat on you?”

“No. We promised we’d always be honest with each other no matter what. I’m not worried.”

She cocked her head, confused. “Then what’s the problem? Is there someone you’ve been pining for?”

“No, there’s no one else.”

“Maybe there should be. Nobody needs to know. I certainly won’t say a word. If you’re having second thoughts about Grant, just take a little advice: If his nail beds are purple, hang on. He doesn’t have much time left.”

I almost spit out my lemonade. Why did I feel inclined to share with Melody one of the most private, painful details of my life? “Grant can crack under pressure.”

“Most men do. Vandyke would fly out of the house at the slightest provocation.”

“That’s what Grant does. Sometimes when he’s too stressed-out or upset, he leaves me. It’s only happened a few times, but I’m always afraid he’ll leave for good.”

“He comes back?”

“He does.”

“Kimberly, haven’t you ever just wanted to get in the car and keep driving? We all feel that way. Perhaps it’s you who needs the space, you who needs to run on occasion to clear your head. Speaking from my own experience, I will say that there’s an upside to feelings of ambivalence in a relationship. It gives you room to fall in love again and again. Falling in love is the best feeling in the world, and I intend to feel it a few more times.”

She picked up her phone. “Should we invite him to join us? I’d like to meet this partner of yours. I’m a terrific judge of character.”

“He’s out hiking with a guy named Hobie.”

“Hobie? Oh dear. Watch out for him. He’s a cat in a rocking-chair store. He stops by from time to time to check in on me. He brings me flowers, offers to take me places. I suspect he’s after my money and he thinks I’m too stupid to know it. I think he’s a walker.”

“A walker?”

“Oh, there are plenty of those in Palm Springs. A handsome man who ingratiates himself with rich, lonely old widows like me so we won’t have to go to events alone.” She leaned in and whispered, “Between us, I suspect Hobie is a gigolo. How else can he afford the HOA dues selling his jewelry to tourists at the street fair on Thursday nights?”

I wanted to learn more about Hobie, but she changed the subject, pointing at my nylon cross-body purse on my chest. “Do me a favor, Kimberly, and take that thing off. I don’t care to look at it.”

I slipped out of it, suddenly hating it for its comfort and light weight, practical qualities I’d valued before. I set it against the back of the empty chair, where it hung like a dead cat.

“You don’t want to walk around Palm Springs looking like a terrorist who’s about to blow herself up in a crowded marketplace. Let’s buy you a nicer one, or tell you what, you can have one of mine—I don’t need bags the way I used to. I have some original Birkins. I’ll just give one to you.”

“It’s okay, I don’t really need—”

“And I have boxes and boxes of sandals I bought in Capri. I’ll bet they’d fit you. Many have never been worn. And, please, will you let me take you to Galen to get a haircut? Nothing says ‘I give up’ like a woman your age with a ponytail.”

But Melody was right, I had given up on my hair, starting during the pandemic. It was fun at first, like a science experiment, to see how my color grew out. I figured I’d cut it all someday for Locks of Love, or to celebrate some sort of important achievement or milestone, but it was easy to pull it back when I exercised. I started braiding it, and it hung like a rope on my back. Grant would pull on it as if he were ringing a church bell and sing, “Ding-dong!” Sometimes, when it got too heavy, I’d hack off a few inches with the same scissors I used to debone chicken.

“I’d love to dress you, too, but you’re not there yet.”

“I’m okay, I’m—”

She reached across the table to put her hand on my arm and looked into my eyes. “Do you have any idea how much money some of the most beautiful women in the world used to pay me for my services? But we’ll wait until you’re ready for a makeover. What a woman wears on the outside reflects who she is on the inside.”

“I have a pretty good sense of who I am,” I said, feeling brave. This was the most I’d ever stuck up for myself in front of her.

She smiled weakly. “Nobody knows who they are at your age. You’re in a transition, and so, too, am I. A very different transition, but a transition all the same. I’m not being critical, you know. I’m being helpful. This was my occupation, one that started right here in Palm Springs when I was a little girl and met Lady Slim Keith herself, back when she was married to Howard Hawks.”

I had no idea who any of those people were, and she could tell.

“She was the most stylish woman in all the world, and he was a director of note. Ever heard of Scarface ? Hawks died after tripping over his dog at his home in Las Palmas. That’s the way to go, nice and fast. My poor Vandyke should have been so lucky. He’d always wanted a dog and I said no.”

A server came by and filled our glasses with water. “Pour us some martinis, Rosie. Citadelle. Extra dry. No ice chips. And we’ll have the scallops in cream sauce.”

I wasn’t accustomed to someone ordering for me, but I didn’t dare say anything. The drinks arrived almost instantly. I could have thrown back my cocktail in a single gulp, but I sipped like a lady, thinking this would be my new drink the next time I went out. I was growing pleasantly drunk, happy to hear Melody serenade me about Sinclair Chassis, the Detroit company her grandfather had started, and how he’d come to learn about Smoke Tree after the Lindbergh kidnapping, when the ranch was meant to be a place where well-to-do families, most from the Midwest, could feel safe, without worrying their children would be stolen.

When the food arrived, she said, “Vandyke would have ordered the scallops, and I would have said, ‘Dear, your cholesterol.’ Now I think of every time I prevented him from enjoying himself, and for what? He’s dead now. Be nice to that fellow of yours. He won’t be around forever.” She took a quick draw of breath. “Oh, here we go with the waterworks. Pardon me.” She dabbed her eyes with her napkin. “I get overcome in the strangest moments. No warning whatsoever.” She offered a wan smile that was surprisingly endearing and sweet. “This is my treat, of course.” Melody leaned in as if letting me in on another secret. “The food here is good, but it’s no Paul Bocuse. Paul was a personal friend.”

I could see that Melody was shifting into a conversational mode that made her feel more comfortable, and which had nothing to do with dialogue.

She picked up a silver spoon and fingered the logo etched into the end of it. “Look at me, trying to throw my weight around. It was once my job to be threatening, even to my clients, the very people who came to me for my services. The Hollywood A-listers don’t trust you unless they think you’ve got something on them. I apologize.”

As we ate, I prattled on about life in Madison, my job at Go Green, and Grant’s job at the college. Ours was a world she knew and clearly cared little about, so far removed from her world. She cut me off when I mentioned the girls.

Her voice slurred a bit when she said, “I’m sure they are delightful, but I find it so tedious to hear about other people’s children and all their fabulous accomplishments. You think it’s bad now, just wait. This town is filled with grandmothers.”

I found Melody’s honesty refreshing. It was so different from the polite small talk I was used to. She put her hand on top of mine.

“I felt uncomfortable about you showing up here, Kimberly. Very, very uncomfortable.”

“About me? Why?” Here I thought I had the corner on discomfort.

“What a dark time in my life you represent! You must have thought I was a monster. I wasn’t good to Basil, standing in the way of who he was. And I wasn’t good to you, either. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. I’m not asking for you to forgive me, although I’d like that. It’s just—I would like you to try to understand. It was a different time. I knew plenty of gay men from spending so much time in fashion, so of course I knew about Basil since he was a little boy, one simply knows. But I am his mother. I wanted to protect him from the stupid bigots and all the sickness. AIDS was bad everywhere, but it just gutted Palm Springs, gutted it! This was where the men came to die. It was so heartbreaking, all these wonderful, lively, whip-smart, talented, beautiful men I knew, the very best, smartest, funniest men, dropping like flies. I was terrified that even if I accepted Basil, nobody else would. I wanted him to be straight not because I cared about who he loved, but because I thought he’d be safer. You have children now, maybe you understand. I don’t think that makes me the world’s worst mother. But what it did make me was the world’s worst mother-in-law because I watched you walk down the aisle knowing full well what you didn’t—”

She paused and looked at me, then threw her napkin across the table and laughed. “But honestly, how on earth could you not have known? What straight man gets a subscription to Variety at thirteen?”

I couldn’t help myself—I laughed, too, although her comment hit a nerve. That was something I’d wondered myself all the time. If I’d been so clueless about Basil, what might I be missing about Grant? “I guess I saw what I wanted to see.”

“We’ve all been guilty of that. Basil values your friendship tremendously. You’ve been very grounding for him.”

“Everyone always says that about me, that I’m grounding. I don’t feel very grounded.”

“I’ll tell you a little secret: nobody does. I know Basil has asked you to check in on me while you’re here, make sure I have a pulse. You can probably guess that he has asked me to do the same for you. But I will say right here at the outset: You owe me nothing. I used you once. I was a regular Geppetto, manipulating you from behind the scenes. I understand if you’d prefer to never see me again. You can enjoy your martini and your scallops and go on your merry way back to the nuthouse over there. You’re off the proverbial hook.” She made a J with her skinny finger.

I could see that Melody was saying one thing, but there was a note of desperation in her voice. She was lonely. I reached across the table. “Melody, I like you. It’s okay.”

A few days later, she responded in her own way. A huge box with my name on it showed up at Basil’s door. It was filled with sketch pads, craft books, oil paints, pencils, expensive brushes I would never have splurged on myself, canvases, and gesso. Melody included a little note with a quote from the painter Robert Henri: “All real works of art look like they were done in joy.”