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
“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
“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
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, despite 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.
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.”
