Mortal Memory (19 page)

“Dottie.”

She turned quickly, as if surprised by the sound of her name in his mouth, unsure of the context in which he'd used it, already gathering her red housedress around herself more tightly:

“Dottie.”

My mother had already turned all the way around to face him before he spoke to her again. She didn't answer him, but only stood, very still, as if waiting for his next word.

My father added nothing else for a moment, and I remember he looked regretful that he'd called her name at all. Still, he had started something which he could not help but finish:

“You forgot to take your book, Dottie.”

And with that, he picked it up and hurled it toward her violently, its pages flapping hysterically in the air until it struck my mother in the chest and fluttered to the floor.

My mother stared at him, stricken, and my father seemed to collapse beneath her broken, helpless gaze. His face was ashen, as if mortified by what he'd done. He stood up, walked over to where the book lay lifelessly on the floor, retrieved it, and handed it to my mother:

“I'm sorry, Dottie.”

She took it from him, retreated into the living room, and slumped down in her accustomed position. The book lay in her lap. She made no effort to read it that night. Instead, she remained in her chair, the yellow lamplight flooding over her, her eyes fixed on the small painting that hung on the opposite wall.

I gave Rebecca a penetrating look as the thought struck me.

“She knew it was coming,” I said. “From that moment, I think, she knew he was going to kill us.”

Rebecca didn't question this. She jotted a note in her black book and looked back up.

“What was Laura's reaction to what your father did?” she asked.

I remembered the look on her face in great detail. She had been sitting across from me, so that the book had flown between us as it hurled toward my mother. Laura's eyes had followed it briefly, then shot over to my father. What I saw in them astonished me.

“It was admiration,” I told Rebecca. “Laura looked at my father as if he'd done something gallant, like he was some kind of knight in shining armor.” I released a sharp, ironic chuckle. “All he'd done was throw a book at a helpless woman,” I said. That's not exactly Sir Lancelot, is it?”

Then why did Laura look at him that way?”

“I don't know.”

She didn't seem to believe me. “Are you sure you don't know?”

“What are you getting at, Rebecca?”

Before she could answer, I already knew. It had undoubtedly been admiration that I'd seen in my sister's eyes, but I hadn't guessed the nature of what it was she admired until that moment.

“Action,” I said. “She admired him for actually doing something. It was hostile, and it was cruel, but at least it was
something. “

It was perhaps the same thing Quentin had admired not long before he died, muttering about how my father had “taken it by the balls.” I thought about it a little while longer, remembering the softness in my sister's eyes, the love she had for my father, the small, almost undetectable smile that had quivered on her lips as she'd glanced over at him that night. It led me to the final moment of my narrative.

“That wasn't all my father did that night,” I said.

Rebecca looked at me thoughtfully. I knew that she could hear the slight strain that had suddenly entered my voice as I began:

“It was much later that night, and …”

I'd already been in bed for several hours when I heard someone moving softly in the adjoining room. I crawled out of bed, walked to the door, and opened it. In the darkness, I could see Laura as she headed stealthily toward the back porch, through its creaking screen door and out into the yard. Her posture was different than I'd ever seen it, slightly crouched, as if she were trying to make herself smaller, less easily seen.

I followed her as far as the back porch, then stood, staring through the gray metal web of the screen. I could see my sister as she made her way across the wet grass, the white folds of her nightgown rippling softly in the wind that came toward her from the sea. In that same wind, her long hair lifted like a black wave, falling softly to her shoulders and down her back.

I remember that I pressed my face into the screen, as if trying to pass through it bodilessly, like a ghost, and float out toward the tall green reeds into which she had wholly disappeared.

I stood for a long time by the screen, half expecting Laura to reemerge from the sea grass, perhaps with a shell in her hand, or some article she'd forgotten to retrieve from the beach earlier in the day.

But she didn't come back, and so, after a moment, I drew away from the screen and turned back toward the house.

That was when I saw my father.

He was sitting motionlessly in the far corner of the porch, his long legs folded under the metal chair, his light blue eyes oddly luminous in the darkness. In the eerie stillness, he looked like a serpent sunning itself on a stone, but entirely inverted, drawing warmth and comfort from the darkness.

He didn't speak to me at first, but merely let his eyes drift over to me, hold for a moment, then leap back to their original position, peering out at the wall of gently waving reeds. Then he spoke:

“Go back to bed, Stevie.”

“Where's Laura going?”

“Go back to bed.”

His eyes returned to me, and I felt myself shrink back, moving away from him cautiously and fearfully, as if he were coming toward me with a knife.

Within seconds I was back in my room, but I couldn't sleep. My mind latched on to Laura, to her white gown billowing in the breeze, and I remember feeling frightened for her somehow. Normally, the fear would have come from the simple knowledge that she was out in the darkness alone. But that wasn't the origin of my dread. It was him. It was the feeling that he was going to go after her, stalk her in the reeds, do something unimaginable.

I looked at Rebecca, shaken suddenly by my own unexpected insight. “So I was really the one who knew all along that he was going to kill us,” I told her. “I was the one who sensed it. Not my mother or Jamie or Laura.”

Rebecca's face was very still. “Go on,” she said.

And so I did, relating the story in as much detail as I could recall, reliving it.

After a time I walked back to the porch, although very stealthily, intending only to peer surreptitiously around the corner of the door to assure myself that my father was still there, that he hadn't followed my sister into the reeds.

But he was gone, the chair empty, a cigarette butt still smoldering in the little ashtray he kept beside it. I knew that he hadn't returned to the bedroom he shared with my mother. I don't know how I knew this, but it was as clear to me as if I'd seen him disappear into the tall grass or heard the creak of the screen door as it closed behind him. I knew, absolutely, that he'd decided to go after my sister.

I stood, frozen on the porch, poised between the warmth of my childhood bed and the darkness beyond the house. I don't know what I thought, if I thought anything at all. Perhaps I was already beyond thought, already operating at a more primitive level, sensing the storm that was building within my father the way an animal lifts its face to the air and senses danger in the bush.

“What did you do?” Rebecca asked.

“I went after my father.”

A curious expression rose in Rebecca's face. “You weren't thinking of it as going after Laura?”

“No.”

And it was true. Even as I opened the screen door and stepped out onto the wet lawn, I knew absolutely that I was pursuing my father rather than moving to protect my sister, that my intent, shadowy and vaguely understood, was to join him in the tall grass, commit myself to whatever it was he had committed to the moment he'd crushed the cigarette butt into the ashtray beside his chair and headed out into the night.

The grass was tall and still wet with rain, and the blades, as they pressed my arms and legs, felt very cool and damp. The ground was soft, and I could feel my feet sink into it slightly with each step. The reeds had parted as my father had moved through them, leaving a wide trail for me to follow, already crouching as I went forward, moving slowly and secretly, as if I already had much to hide.

The trail led down the hill toward the sea. I could hear the waves tumbling not far away, but I couldn't see them until the clouds parted suddenly and a broad expanse of light fell over the beach. It was then that I glimpsed my father's head, saw his tangled black hair and sharp, angular face just for an instant before he sank down, squatting over the wet earth. I could tell by the motionlessness of the grass that he'd stopped, and for a moment, I stopped as well and stood, sinking imperceptibly into the rain-soaked ground.

For a little while I listened intently, my head cocked like some primordial creature. I could hear only the waves as they tumbled toward shore a few yards away and the wind as it swept through the reeds that surrounded me.

I don't know exactly when I began to move forward again, or why, or what I was thinking as I did so. I remember only the sudden desire to penetrate more deeply into the green wall and the inability to draw back once I'd begun to move again.

I walked slowly, very silently, as if stalking a prey almost as cunning as myself. I remember shifting to the right somewhat, because I didn't want to come upon my father. I'd glimpsed his position in a wedge of light, and I carefully edged myself away from him as I continued to slink forward through the reeds.

I didn't stop until I heard a shifting in the grass, the slow, rhythmic friction of blades rubbing softly against other blades. As I continued forward, I could hear someone breathing, then two people breathing in short, quick spasms.

I stopped and peered out, gently drawing away the curtain of reeds that blocked my vision. That was when I saw her.

“Laura,” Rebecca whispered.

“Yes.”

At first my sister's body appeared to me in a blur of white and black, her long hair shifting back and forth over her naked shoulders. She seemed to be rising and falling on a completely separate cushion of pale flesh. I could only partially see the body beneath her, the one which shuddered violently each time my sister rose and fell above it. It came to me only as a headless ghost, white against the dark ground, moaning softly each time my sister lifted the lower part of her body then eased herself down upon him again.

I could see his slightly hairy thighs, the nest of dark hair into which they disappeared, and finally the long pale shaft that seemed to pierce and then withdraw itself from the body of my sister.

It was 1959, I was nine years old, and so I'm sure I didn't know what was happening there in front of me. Still, I knew that it was something powerful, occult, primitive, and at last profoundly private. I felt the need to withdraw, to sink back into the reeds and return to my bed, but something held me there, and for a moment, I continued to watch, shamed perhaps, but also mesmerized by the spectacle before me.

I don't know how long I watched, but I do remember that during that time the idea that my father could be anywhere near such a scene completely left me. I remained fixed on the two bodies, as if dazzled by the continually building intensity of their motions, the rising force and deep needfulness I could hear in their breathing.

Suddenly, my sister arched her back and released a long, luxurious sigh. She shook her head, and her dark hair brushed back and forth along the lower quarters of her naked back. Then she fell forward in a spent, exhausted motion, the wall of her flesh suddenly collapsing so that I could see the green reeds beyond her, and deep within those reeds, my father's pale blue eyes, motionless and vaguely hooded, with nothing at all in them of the voyeur's seamy lust, but only staring toward mine in an instant of unspeakable collusion.

For a few seconds, we continued to stare frozenly at each other while Laura and Teddy hurriedly dressed themselves, took a final, strangely passionless kiss, then rushed away, Laura moving up toward our cottage, Teddy toward his.

Once both of them were out of sight my father stood up and started walking back to the cottage. I trailed after him, just a few feet behind. He didn't look back at me. Perhaps he was too ashamed. I will never know.

Rebecca peered at me unbelievingly. “You mean that he never said anything to you about that night?” she asked.

“No.”

“Did he seem different after that?”

“Yes, but not toward me,” I answered. “Only toward Laura.”

Rebecca's pen remained motionless above the still nearly blank pad. She'd taken very few notes, but I knew she'd absorbed every bit of my story, every nuance and detail.

“How did he change toward Laura?” she asked.

“He got even closer to her,” I answered. I considered it a moment, trying to find precisely the right word. “He became … more tender.”

For the first time Rebecca looked vaguely alarmed, as if the word had caught her by surprise.

Still, it was undoubtedly the right word to describe the change that came over the relationship between Laura and my father during the few weeks before he killed her.

They were very tender with each other after that night on the beach,” I said. They'd always been very close, but they got even closer for a while.” I did a quick calculation in my head. “My sister had seventy-nine days to live.”

The starkness of the number, the brevity of my sister's life, shook me slightly, but only slightly, not with the disoriented unease I'd experienced in the restaurant days before.

Still, Rebecca noticed the reaction. “This is hard, I know,” she said.

Her eyes were very soft when she said it, and I knew that I wanted to touch her, and that everything about such a grave desire seemed right to me at that moment, while everything that stood in the way of its completion, the whole vast structure of fidelity and restraint, seemed profoundly wrong.