Sweet Water (24 page)

W
hen I got home that night the first thing I noticed was my grandmother’s car. I recognized it immediately: the mint-green siding, the white roof, the tires that looked like they’d never been used. The house was dark. I called for Blue. I was sure I’d heard him barking.

It had been another slow night at the Blue Moon, and they’d let me go a little early. I had been happy to leave. One of the clay figures was finished, and the next day I planned to assemble it outside. On the drive home I thought about how the pieces would look: a triangle of women, with faces and hands of clocks and trees and flowers, feet poised, skirts blowing, arms outstretched, as if dancing together in the field. I imagined the movement between them as continuous, each one reaching toward the others, their backs to the rest of the world.

As I got out of the car my mood of preoccupation vanished. “Blue?” I yelled.
“Clyde?”
I ran up the steps to the porch and opened the front door. Blue came barreling out, barking and leaping. I stroked his back to calm him and hurried inside, flipping the light switch in the hall. The door to the basement was wide open. I turned left into the living room and switched on a lamp. In the darkened far corner, pieces of broken glass sparkled like jewels. The night’s clouds had dissipated; moonlight gave surfaces a bluish sheen.

“Clyde?” As I headed to the back of the room, my voice seemed to echo in the empty house. I went to the cabinet and looked down at the broken glass, then glanced to the right.

What I saw made me gasp. The dining room looked like a slaughtering army had been through it. The floor was covered with a terrible carnage of hands and eyes and feet. I surveyed the mess in horror, my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. I took a few dazed steps and picked up a curved piece of clay, the outer side smooth, the inside rough—part of what had been the back of a head. Scrabbling through the rubble, my frantic fingers searched for a piece that might be whole, but found only jagged lips, a flared nostril, the curve of a shoulder. I rose shakily, rubbing soft, silky clay dust between my fingers.

Suddenly, through the window, I smelled smoke. I looked outside and saw the hunched figure of my grandmother. Her face, twisted toward me, was feverish and stricken in the warm light of a small fire.

I turned and ran to the kitchen and out the back door, Blue at my heels. “Clyde! What are you
doing?”
I shouted.

“Stay away from me!” she rasped. She coughed, bending double. In a dark, oversize sweatshirt and bright sneakers, she looked like a wizened child in the feeble glow from the fire.

“Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed my sculptures! You’ve destroyed
everything!”
She shrank from me, but I grabbed her arm. “What were you
thinking?”

“Let go!”

I dropped her arm.
“Are you totally insane?”
I screamed.

Her eyes met mine. “You’re a liar,” she said. “I knew you had it. If you hadn’t lied to me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to come looking for it.”

I looked down at the smoldering mess. Gray smoke was rising from it in a steady stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was the box. “Oh,
Jesus.”
I took the waitress apron from around my waist and threw it over the top, then crouched down, squelching the fire. “I
didn’t
have it. I didn’t start looking until you told me about it! You’re the one who gave me the idea.”

“No!” she said.
“No!”
She reached for the box, but I pushed her away, guarding it fiercely.

Lifting the apron, I poked through the charred, smoking papers and singed my fingers on the metal lock of the diary. I turned the book over quickly; the leather cover was scorched, but the fire hadn’t burned through.

“Give that to me!”

I ignored her.

“Give that to me!”

I stood up slowly. “I’ve already read it, Clyde.”

“It’s none of your business!”

“Of course it is. It’s my mother’s diary, for God’s sake!”

She snatched the diary from my hands and pressed it to her chest, looking at me steadily. “You can’t prove anything. Just because Ellen said what she did doesn’t make it the truth. There are things you can’t understand, things that happened a long time ago—”

“You were afraid I was going to find out what really happened, weren’t you?”

She stepped back. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”

“That you killed Bryce Davies—”

“Shut your mouth.”

“And then Amory found out and he ran off the road in revenge. Is that what happened?”

“Shut your mouth,
” she said. “That’s not what happened!”

“What happened, then?”

She looked around desperately. “It was an accident. She dove in and—and the whirlpool sucked her down, and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t do anything!” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “He jumped to conclusions. It was what he wanted to believe. And I was so mad about everything that happened before, I didn’t want to try to make him think different, and then—and then that night … Just leave me
alone!”
she sobbed. “I don’t have to tell you
anything!
” She turned, hugging the diary, and stumbled away from me, out into the field.

“Stop, Clyde!” I shouted. “Don’t go—”

She screamed, and then I heard a sickening thud. I ran to where she was lying sprawled over a shallow pit, groaning and holding her side.

“Are you all right? Can you move?” I knelt beside her. She tried to get up but cried out in pain. “Are you okay? I’m calling an ambulance.”

“No,” she whimpered.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

“No, no!” She winced. “Don’t leave.”

“Clyde—”

“No.” Her voice was barely audible.

I hesitated. Blue had followed me and was pawing at the edge of the hole. I noticed a glint and saw that her glasses had fallen off. I cleaned them and put them back on her face as gently as I could.

“Look,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anybody any of this.”

“No, no, no,” she moaned, grasping my wrist.

“Clyde, I have to get help.”

She dug her fingers into my flesh. Her hand was cold.

I looked at her soft, frail form, her halo of snowy hair, her clenched hand. “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Why did you destroy my sculptures?”

“I thought … I thought you’d hidden the diary in there.”

“Why didn’t you just ask me?”

“I didn’t think you’d tell me the truth.”

I shook my head slowly. “Oh, Clyde. Whatever happened, that diary doesn’t prove anything.”

She tightened her grip, and I felt a shudder run through her body.

“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you did anything.”

“But I did,” she said. “I did.”

I pried her fingers loose and clasped them.

“I was so upset, all I wanted was for him to hurt like I did—and then Ellen—”

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it was. Don’t you see? I let him think I did it. I
wanted
him to think it. And—oh, God—then—”

I sat very still.

“My words killed your mother, Cassandra. If I’d kept quiet he wouldn’t have gotten drunk that night, he wouldn’t have been driving that car. And just to see that look on his face when he thought I was capable of it—I was so glad.” She was sobbing again, her body quivering, her mouth twisted in a grimace. “I was so, so glad.”

I looked up into the sky. The moon was large and pale, and pinprick stars were beginning to appear. I looked all around us—at the grasses swaying in the light wind, at the fields stretching out to the edges of darkness, at the sturdy white house and the single light inside.

When I turned back to Clyde, she had stopped crying. For a moment the only sound was her breathing, heavy and labored. She clutched my hand tightly. “Oh, Cassandra,” she said. “There are so many stories I could tell you—”

“I’m here,” I said softly. “I’m listening.”

    In the hospital waiting room I called Horace from a pay phone. He didn’t ask any questions; he just said gruffly that he’d be right there and would call the others.

I picked up a magazine reflexively and found a seat, looking around at the drawn faces of the few other visitors, yellow-gray under the humming fluorescent lights. I glanced at the clock; it was one in the
morning.
The hospital smelled of anything but human beings: new
carpeting,
old
Venetian
blinds, liquid
cleanser.
Over by the nurses’ station two orderlies were joking and leafing through baby pictures. Their laughter evaporated quickly in the antiseptic air.

Elaine blew through the emergency room entrance first, with
Larry right behind her. “Where is she?” she demanded, walking straight toward me.

I dropped the magazine. “They won’t let me in yet,” I said, standing up.

“What happened?”

“She fell.”

“Where?”

“At my house.” I flinched slightly at her incredulity. “Well, actually, behind the house, in the field.”

“In the
field?”

“Yes, Elaine.” I looked at Larry. “Hi.”

“H’lo, Cassandra.” His face was expressionless.

Without makeup, Elaine looked surprisingly old. She was wearing a floral scarf around her hair and a faded pink sweatsuit. There was a greasy spot of cold cream on her neck.

“In the field?” she repeated impatiently.

“Yes. In the field.”

“Well. Are you going to tell me what she was doing there, or am I going to have to guess?”

“I think Clyde might want to tell you herself.”

“But Clyde’s not here now, is she?” she said, with exaggerated politeness. “And I need to find out what happened. So why don’t you fill me in.”

As we were talking, Horace and Kathy arrived with Chester in tow, his hair sticking up unevenly and his shirt on inside out.

“Cassie!” Kathy squealed. “You poor thing!” She hugged me and then pulled back, pinning my arms to my sides. “We came as fast as humanly possible. I am so relieved to see you’re not here all alone.”

“Hello, Kathy,” Elaine said curtly. She acknowledged Horace and Chester with a nod. “Cassandra was just about to do us the favor of explaining what happened tonight.”

“Hey, y’all,” Alice said, coming in with Eric on her hip. “Is Clyde okay?”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Alice Marie.” Elaine rolled her eyes. “I cannot believe you brought that child to the hospital.”

Alice frowned. “What’d you expect me to do, Mother, leave him by himself?”

“Well, I thought perhaps your banker friend—”

“My banker friend is no longer in the picture.” Her face colored, and she cleared her throat. “You might as well all know, since I’m sure good old Bernadette will soon be spreading the joyous news far and wide. My banker friend is married.” She shifted Eric to the other hip. “Are you satisfied now, Mother?”

“Oh, Alice Marie, what a thing to say.”

Horace, who had left the group and gone to the front desk, came back and said,” We’ll be allowed to see her in a minute. A doctor’s coming out to tell us what’s going on.”

Elaine looked out me expectantly. I looked at the floor.

“I do not want to get into what we discussed this afternoon. This is not the time or the place. But I expect that when I ask you a simple question you will treat me with respect enough to answer it.” She stared at the top of my head until I looked up again. “Now, what
happened
to my mother?”

“She fell,” I said evenly. “It was dark outside, and she didn’t see the hole. I came home from work a little early, and I guess I startled her.”

“What hole? What was she doing out there at night in the first place?” Horace asked.

I looked at him, at his anxious, wrinkled brow; I looked into Kathy’s kind, sympathetic eyes and Larry’s unreadable ones. Elaine’s arms were crossed, and her lips were a thin waxen line. Alice raised her eyebrows at me and smiled. “She was looking for a … keepsake.”

Elaine leaned closer. “What do you mean?”

“Something she lost a long time ago,” I said. “She thought it might be in the house. I guess when she heard me coming she panicked and—”

“Was it there?” Elaine interrupted. “In the house?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Well, what the hell was it?” Horace said.

“I don’t—”

“What was it?”
said Elaine.

I hesitated. “It was a box. Full of letters. We … I … found it in the basement. I think Clyde knew it was in the house and she just wanted to get it back.”

“Do you know what the letters were about?” Kathy asked.

“They were … personal.”

Elaine squinted at me. “I don’t know,” she said after a moment. “Something just doesn’t seem right about this, Cassandra. Something doesn’t add up. This kind of thing didn’t happen before you came down here.”

“Now, Elaine—,” Larry said.

“No, let me finish. Mother is not the type to go running around in the dark looking for old letters. She just
isn’t.
I think there must be something you’re not telling us.”

“Come on, Elaine,” Horace said. He smiled at me apologetically. “It’s been a little bit of a shock. We’re all kind of worked up.”

“No!” Elaine said fiercely. A rash was spreading across her neck. “What kind of game are you playing, Cassandra?”

Everyone stepped back.

“I think you know,” I said.

She looked shocked. “What—”

“You’ve been living with that secret all these years too. And so have you,” I said, turning to Horace. “The problem is, it’s not really a secret. And it’s probably not even true.”

“What in the
world
are you talking about?” Elaine said.

“Clyde has lived half her life in the past. And
you
—you act like you’re helping her, protecting her, when all you’re doing is keeping her from dealing with it.” I turned to the rest of them. “When is it going to end? When it’s too late? When she’s dead? Everybody goes around whispering behind each other’s backs—”

“You’re a fine one to talk about going behind people’s backs!” Elaine broke in bitterly. “Slutting around town with my son—your own
cousin
.” She spit the word out. “The very thought makes me ill.”