Mortal Memory (14 page)

I smiled.

“All you can ask, right?” Carl added. “To give it a good try.”

“I suppose so.”

“It's the same for life,” Carl said. “You can't do more than give it a good try.”

I nodded softly, letting my eyes drift away, hoping that with that gesture I could avoid giving Carl any further encouragement toward sharing his philosophy. In the past few years, as old age had overtaken him, he'd become increasingly homespun and folksy, dotting his conversation with empty truisms that annoyed Marie, but which Amelia seemed hardly to notice.

“I wouldn't say Amy was at a professional level,” Carl went on. “But she was pretty good.” He pulled a red handkerchief from the back pocket of his trousers and began to wipe his face, his eyes drifting over the room.

It was a room that Amelia dominated entirely, pictures of her lined up on top of the piano or hanging from the walls, all of them taken much earlier, in the days of her youthful glory. She'd been her father's favorite, and probably her mother's, too, and she'd grown up beneath the gaze of a thousand desperately admiring eyes. From that spawning pool of frantically beseeching men, she'd selected a factory worker named Carl. It had been a choice which had baffled, disturbed, and finally embittered her parents. In the end, they'd entirely rejected Carl, an experience he'd never forgotten. “My wife's parents froze me out,” he told me that first weekend when Marie brought me to his home. “My wife was so pretty, you see. They thought that was her ticket to a brighter future, you know? Then, poor thing, she got tied up with me.”

It was precisely that brighter future that seemed to shine from the photographs which cluttered and overwhelmed the room, all of them taken during Amelia's glory days, first as a little girl in her father's arms, later as an adolescent growing toward a stunning womanhood, and finally as a young woman posing by the lake on that single, breathless day her beauty reached its frail, already fading peak.

I drew my eyes away from that last picture and toward the woman herself as Amelia suddenly came back into the room. She was carrying a large picnic basket, and Marie and Peter were standing just behind her, both of them holding a few lightweight folding chairs.

“We thought we'd go on a picnic,” Amelia said. Her eyes swept over to Carl. “What do you think, hon? Just a short walk over to the spring?”

Carl nodded. “Yeah. I'm up for that,” he said, already pulling himself to his feet.

I looked at Marie. She was smiling at Carl with great cheerfulness and affection, which were still on her face when she turned to me.

“Okay with you, Steve?” she asked.

“Sure.”

The spring was small, and it flowed in gentle curves through a glade of trees. It was no more than a short walk from the house, but Carl's pace was slow and halting, so it was almost twenty minutes later when we reached the shady embankment Amelia had already designated for the picnic.

By that time it was early afternoon, the sun still high and very bright in a cloudless blue. Amelia and Marie spread a large checkered cloth over the grass and began to take the various sandwich meats and breads out of the basket. Peter opened the folding chairs and after a while we were all seated comfortably by the water.

“It's pretty here, don't you think?” Amelia asked, though to no one in particular.

Marie nodded, her eyes on me. “Dad and I used to fish in this little stream.”

Carl chuckled. “You never caught anything though, did you, Marie?”

Marie shook her head. “How could I? All I had was that little plastic pole, remember? The one you bought at the dime store downtown?”

“He bought you that for Christmas one year,” Amelia added, “and you had to wait several months for the ice to break before you could use it.” She glanced at Carl. “I told you it would drive her crazy giving her a thing like that in the winter, a thing she couldn't play with right away.”

Carl laughed again as he glanced toward Marie. “It did just about drive you crazy, too,” he said. “We went fishing the first day the ice broke up.” He shivered. “It was cold as hell.”

In my mind, I could see them by the little spring, the winter thaw barely a few days old, a snowy border on both sides of the stream, the trees bare and creaking in the frozen breeze as they dipped their hooks into the icy, Ashless water.

“You really kept at it, though,” Carl said to Marie admiringly. “We must have stayed out here a couple hours. You just wouldn't go back in.” He looked at Amelia. “How old was she that year, Amy?”

“Six,” Amelia answered, almost wistfully. “She was six years old.”

I looked over at Peter, remembered him at six years old, a little boy with reddish cheeks and gleaming eyes. It was the year I'd taken him to the state fair in Danbury, taken pictures of him as he was led about on a small, spotted pony, fed him hot dogs and cotton candy until he'd finally puked behind a huge green circus tent.

I laughed suddenly at the thought of it.

Marie looked at me, a smile playing on her lips. “What are you laughing about, Steve?”

“I was just remembering the first time we took Peter to the Danbury Fair.”

I could see the whole day playing through Marie's memory, sweet, almost delectable, even down to the last unsavory moment. “He threw up,” she said, “behind this big tent.”

Peter grimaced. “I did?”

Carl waved his hand. “Everybody throws up,” he said. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his face upward slightly, as if trying to get some sun.

“Careful there, hon,” Amelia warned. “Don't tip back too far.”

Carl waved his hand as he leaned back a bit farther. “A man's got to take a risk, right, Steve?” he said as he pressed himself back farther, Amelia watching him steadily, growing tense until he bolted forward suddenly and caught her eyes in his.

“Scared you, didn't I?” he joked.

Amelia's face relaxed. “He's always trying to get at me,” she said, her eyes now on me. She began a story about some other occasion when Carl had “gotten her,” as she put it, then followed with another.

While she spoke, I felt my mind drift away, drift along the shaded stream, as if skating lightly across the glassy surface of the water. I could hear Amelia's voice, as well as the laughter of the others as she continued with her tale. I heard names and places, dates, weather reports, ages. I could even feel the overall warmth of the moment we were all sharing, its calmness, pleasure, and serenity.

And yet, I could also feel myself moving away from it, down the softly winding stream, its twin banks gliding smoothly along either side, as if I were being carried on a small canoe. Overhead, I could see the flow of the trees as they passed above me, flowing like another stream, this one suspended surreally above my head. Slowly, almost without my realizing it, the stream became a sleek blue road, winding through a maze of suburban streets, neat lines of houses flowing past on both sides, until, in the distance, I could see the mock Tudor house at 417 McDonald Drive. It was silent, and not at all threatening, and as I continued to drift toward it in my mind, I could feel a grave attraction for it, an excitement at drawing near it, as if it were a place of assignation.

A burst of laughter brought me back, loud and wrenching as a sudden gunshot. I blinked quickly and stared around me. Everyone was laughing—Marie, Peter, Carl. Everyone but Amelia, who, as I noticed, was staring directly toward me with steady, evaluating eyes.

“Where were you, Steve?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don't know.”

She didn't seem to believe me. Her eyes remained very still, her face framed by the swirling circular maelstrom of her old straw hat. “Just in some other world, I guess,” she said, in a strangely cool and brooding voice.

I nodded, but added nothing else.

Amelia returned her attention to the others. Carl was telling some story about Marie as a little girl, and a few feet away Peter was listening very attentively, as if surprised by the fact that his mother had ever been a child.

I listened attentively too, though from time to time my eye would return to the spring, follow a leaf as it flowed through the dappled shade until it disappeared around the nearest bend.

Toward the end of the afternoon, we repacked the picnic basket, gathered up the folding chairs, and returned to the house. Carl and Amelia walked in the lead, arm in arm, chatting quietly on the way. I could not make out any of what they were saying to each other, but from the quiet glances they exchanged it seemed one of those intimate, deeply familiar conversations one sometimes sees in older people, the sense of completedness, of everything having passed the trial stage.

Marie walked along beside me, her arm in mine, her head pressed lightly against my shoulder. She seemed contented, happy with how the day had gone, with the choices she'd made in her life so far, with me as her husband, with Peter as her son. It was the kind of satisfaction that seemed complete in itself, rather than the product of a thinly disguised resignation.

As we neared the house, Peter shot ahead, running through the tall grass, his blond hair glistening in the sunlight. I felt Marie press her head more firmly against my shoulder.

I glanced down at her.

She was staring up at me affectionately, as if marveling at her own contentment. Then she lifted her face toward me and kissed me on the mouth. Bathed in such sweetness and familiarity, the product of such a long and enduring love, it should have been the single most thrilling kiss I had ever known.

Toward evening, Carl made a fire in the old hearth, and we all sat around it, talking quietly. Marie sat beside me on the sofa, her feet balled up beneath her, her shoulder pressed up snugly against mine. Peter slept next to her, his head resting delicately in her lap.

“Everything going okay at work, Steve?” Carl asked idly, by then puffing on the white meerschaum pipe Marie had given him the preceding Christmas.

“Yeah,” I said.

“He'll probably be made a partner soon,” Marie said.

Carl looked at her. “How about your business?”

“It's fine,” Marie told him. “I put in a bid for a job in Bridgeport last week.”

I glanced over toward Amelia. She was rocking softly in one of the chairs Carl had made, but her eyes seemed not to move at all as she stared at me.

“So I guess everything's okay, then?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yes, it is.”

I expected her to smile, or give some sign of satisfaction, but she didn't. She turned toward the fire instead, and held her eyes there, the light playing on her face in the way of old romantic movies.

We left an hour later, Peter piling groggily into the back seat while Marie and I said good-bye. Carl hugged each of us in turn, then stepped back to allow Amelia to do the same.

“Nice seeing you again,” she said easily, then glanced over at me. “Be good, Steve,” she told me in a voice that seemed stern and full of warning.

Marie sat close to me on the drive home, breathing softly as we drove through the dark countryside. Once back in Old Salsbury, we led Peter to his room, and watched, amused and smiling, as he collapsed onto his bed.

Later, in bed ourselves, Marie inched toward me, stroking me slowly. We made love sweetly and well, with that correctness of pace and expertise that only custom can attain. After that, Marie moved quietly into a restful sleep.

Toward dawn I felt her awaken slightly. She lifted her head in the early light, smiled, kissed my chest, then lowered her head down on it again and closed her eyes. While I waited for the morning, I stroked her hair.

So it was never love, as she would say to me that last night, it was never love … that was missing.

***

Marie was still sleeping in the morning when I got up and headed downstairs to my office. It was smaller than Marie's, since I'd always done most of my work at Simpson and Lowe, while Marie did most of hers at home. It contained little more than a drafting table, a large light, and a few metal filing cabinets.

I sat down at the table, pulled out the latest plans for my dream house, and began to go over the details again, searching for places where I could remove yet another enclosed area from what was already an impossibly airy and unreal space. But as I worked, I found myself increasingly unable to concentrate on the plans before me. It was as if the dream house had become, at last, pure dream, nothing more than idle whimsy, an idea for which I no longer felt any genuine conviction. It was Rebecca and her search that seemed real to me now, and I even allowed myself to hope that from time to time Rebecca might sense my presence beside her, silent, determined, armed as she was armed, with the same grisly instruments of night, the two of us equally committed to tracking down “these men,” poking at the ashes they had left behind, closing in on their distant hiding places.

I remembered the photograph she'd shown me on Friday afternoon. I saw my father standing in the open, his army cap cocked to the side. The smile on his face had seemed absolutely genuine. It had given his face an immense happiness, a joy and sense of triumph that I'd never seen before. Not in life. Not in any other photograph. That day, April 1, 1942, I realized with complete certainty, had been his finest moment.

Rebecca had already noted that my mother had to have been pregnant with Jamie by then, but it wasn't the fact of my brother's technical illegitimacy which struck me suddenly. It was something else, a curious memory of something that had happened when I was eight years old, a year or more before the murders, but which I could now recall very clearly.

It was a spring day, and my father had been doing some kind of repair work in the basement. He'd asked Laura to bring him something from the garage. Laura had gone to find it, but after several minutes, she still hadn't come back into the house, and so my father had turned to me.