by adamtrask » Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:13 pm
Part IV
Life in Barnstable quickly became a blur. Between caring for his mother, leaving his lavish social life in Boston and attempting to forge a new one in Cape Cod, Maxwell dug deeper into his books and his writing than ever before. He still drank like he was throwing his Beacon Hill parties, but less often with others around. His idea of a party now was drinking while reading the poetry of TS Eliot, and then, in the young morning light, bellowing along with his favorite opera records, waking his wife. Marilyn, always gentle with her husband, simply came to his study and put him to bed, though she knew he would embark on the same journey tomorrow, and if not then, the next day.
His mother died without fanfare in 1997, and though he was sorry he felt this way, he didn’t feel particularly sad. It was a quiet and peaceful death, and really, Maxwell thought, about all you could ask for in death. He had a quiet and small funeral for Margaret Titcomb. And thus he was the true master of the house. Although he had not known that he craved this arrangement, he was suddenly very aware how happy this new seclusion made him, giddy even.
The late Barnstable years were happy for Maxwell in the way that only those monied and without work can know. Although his drinking problem continued to grow as he aged, his money and stature meant that no one would ever call him out, and he did not have any obligation to leave unfulfilled. Marilyn seemed unhappy once in awhile, he noticed, but she still put him to bed quietly in the early morning hours and let him sleep until noon, when he would immediately pour himself a sherry and shut himself in his study to read poetry. He published a review once a month in the Boston Globe, an arrangement that paid him but a pittance, but gave him the satisfaction of knowing that he was still a force in the literary scene in his beloved Boston. Some weekends he traveled to the city to attend various galas thrown by the Boston elite, and he always came home to Marilyn sunken and hurting from the non-stop revelry. But he was here now, he had finally found a way to relive those memories of infancy.
It was January of 2014 when Marilyn passed, and Maxwell didn’t know how to handle the pressure of her death. He fell apart and immediately began to drink himself helpless, and two of his old Boston friends came to the Barnstable estate to help him with funerary arrangements. He didn’t remember the funeral, but he was told it was a beautiful event at the large Catholic church in Barnstable, after which a group of Marilyn’s closest friends gathered to throw her ashes into the ocean. Maxwell did not attend that second part of the funeral, instead alternating between sleep and large gulps of expensive scotch on the maroon couch in his study. Counter to the protests of his closest Boston friends, he locked the doors to the estate, and Maxwell wasn’t seen for a week.
After that, he only left the house to purchase food and liquor. As the year came to a close, he developed a cough that would not go away, no matter what kind of syrup or lozenge he tried. After a few weeks of fighting a losing battle, he went to the doctor, and he was diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. The only way for the cough to go away was for Maxwell to move somewhere drier than his native Barnstable, perhaps Arizona, he had suggested.
And like that, Maxwell sold all but his most important belongings, and he bought a large manor sight-unseen in a new development in Arizona called Rajada View Estates. He left the sale of the Barnstable home to his lawyer, arranged to have his few possessions shipped southwest, and booked a train to the desert.
In January of 2015, Maxwell boarded an Amtrak with a small weekender bag, found a seat, and pulled out a volume of TS Eliot poetry. His next destination would be the desert, a place he had never in his life imagined living, the hot emptiness, the vast, lonely expanses… Rajada.
Last edited by
adamtrask on Thu Feb 18, 2016 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Stuntman wrote:The party's over and we're just the people who are too drunk to drive home and everyone is fighting over who gets to sleep on the couch.