The Beginners (13 page)
Authors: Rebecca Wolff
Jack’s project was multimedia, multidimensional. He’d taken photographs, written text to accompany them, and constructed with great pains the balsa-wood-and-cardboard-and-papier-mâché model resting now, collecting authentic local dust, atop the low bookcase in his room, complete with tiny little houses and automobiles, even tractors, even minuscule citizens making their way from point to point, on dusty roads. Even dust. A teensy but legible signpost pointing the way up out of the valley, to higher ground, to Wick. Cherry and I had crouched in front of the model and regarded the little towns, the lost towns, with the native disinterest of the native. But Jack was “a real history buff,” his teacher said that day, shaking my father’s hand, watching as Jack ascended the platform to have his own hand shaken, degree conferred with honors. I glanced into the face of my mother, leaning across Cherry to get a good look. She smiled into my eyes, even beamed, a motherly light, but I thought I could detect across her own eyes a shadow of dissatisfaction—that which colored her world, and was part of every story she ever told—the part she couldn’t tell, the part left out: that which she really wanted. She was shortchanged; she had not chosen exactly this life, this town, she had certainly hoped for more; and now her firstborn son, so bright, so full of the same promise that yet brimmed in her, had neglected to apply to colleges, had chosen instead to “stick around for a while.” Another mother might have welcomed this. I for one was thrilled. I could not imagine our house without Jack.
Later we walked around the commencement grounds, my parents greeting other happy parents, Jack signing yearbooks and others signing his, high fives and exclamations of joy all around. My mother kept her arm around my shoulders as we strolled and I remember thinking, with wonder, that one day I would be in Jack’s place, and would have a choice to make. I couldn’t imagine, then, how anyone could choose to leave the warmth of that embrace, so palpable in the sunny afternoon. There was a lot I couldn’t imagine. In certain areas I perhaps overcompensated.
15.
N
o one answered my knock at the Motherwells’, so I just went in. The living room was empty. I went to the kitchen, expecting to find Raquel, but found no one. A plate of crumbs—Raquel knew how to make toast—sat on the round table, aside from which there was no sign that anyone had been there in the last decade.
o one answered my knock at the Motherwells’, so I just went in. The living room was empty. I went to the kitchen, expecting to find Raquel, but found no one. A plate of crumbs—Raquel knew how to make toast—sat on the round table, aside from which there was no sign that anyone had been there in the last decade.
I went down the hall and put my foot cautiously on the first step of the staircase; I couldn’t decide if I ought to be very, very quiet, as was my wont, or instead do the unexpected—announce myself. Aside from in conversation, and the occasional meal, Raquel and Theo seemed to spend most of their time catching up on sleep. When had they missed all these hours? And sure enough, as I ascended to the landing I saw that they lay curled up together on the pallet in Theo’s study, a book splayed, cracked wide open, its spine broken, on the floor next to them. They did not move at all as I continued up the stairs and then stood in the doorway for a moment, and this seemed odd. I focused my attention minutely on the movements of their chests, on their breath. I did not believe that they were really asleep. Did I spy the shallow rhythm of a feigned unconsciousness? Had they set me a trap of some sort?
Nevertheless, after standing there for a few moments I found, to my surprise, that I felt quite drowsy: a paralyzed, lids-propped-open, already-asleep kind of drowsy. The door to their bedroom was half open, and a cozy glow from the bedside lamp illuminated the tangle of blankets and sheets on their bed. As I approached I saw that a small book with gilt-edged pages lay open on Raquel’s pillow—where I might lay my head—and I sat down on the edge of the bed and picked it up.
As soon as I came to a total comprehension of what I saw—the scratchy handwriting, the dated entries—I put it down again, like it was a hot pan and I without a potholder.
Then I thought of them lying quietly—sleeping, or silently, though pointedly, caressing one another, or simply waiting—in the next room, and knew that it was desirable that I should read what lay on the pillow.
The diary began at the time of their arrival in Wick, and had been kept with extreme inconsistency thereafter.
May 13th
Theo has instructed me to keep this diary, a journal of our stolen year here together, and so I will do what I can with what I have: this perfect tool, a pen; this ideal receptacle, with its little lock and key. If he were my flesh and blood he could not know me any better. Does he want to know me better?
June 7th
I’m not sure that I have the courage to go on. All these people seem to trust me: Oh, people, people; so sweet and stupid. If I had a heart to break . . .—note: possible country-song lyric.
July 28th
My question remains: Why do people bother to write legibly in their diaries. For that matter, why do they write in English? (Or Spanish, French, Polish, whatever blasted language.) Why do we not invent new languages, or at least codes that only we can decode. I suppose Michelangelo did—or was that da Vinci? (I muse, mutter, ponder to myself, getting quite into the spirit of the thing.)
AND THAT WAS TODAY’S ENTRY. I thought that I had never read anything so sad. The ink was still a little shiny; if I touched it with my finger, as I was tempted to do, I would smear it. She must have just been lying in bed, struggling to do what had been asked of her, moments before I entered the house. And then what? She had prepared the room as she wanted me to see it, and slipped into Theo’s study, where he sat working, or meditating, or whatever it was he did when he was not by Raquel’s side, and coaxed him down onto the small guest bed.
In their bedroom, just on the other side of the wall, I replaced the diary, open, on Raquel’s pillow and lay down facing it, on my side, with my head on Theo’s pillow. The pillowcase smelled faintly of hay. I reached behind me and groped for the lamp.
I WOKE to the click of the switch, the spread of light, and Raquel’s softest voice saying, “Wake up, sleepyhead. I want to show you something.”
Something else?
I thought dreamily, and I dragged myself out of a swamp of sleep and muscled up to sitting. There she was with what looked like an old hatbox in her hands. She placed it on the bed and sat down next to it, at my feet, then removed the cover to reveal a pile of photographs, perhaps fifty of them, some edged in crimped white borders, some with no borders and missing their corners, as though they had been torn out of old albums. Some looked antique; their surfaces were dull, and the images were watery and uniformly brownish, the brown of a horse’s coat.
Something else?
I thought dreamily, and I dragged myself out of a swamp of sleep and muscled up to sitting. There she was with what looked like an old hatbox in her hands. She placed it on the bed and sat down next to it, at my feet, then removed the cover to reveal a pile of photographs, perhaps fifty of them, some edged in crimped white borders, some with no borders and missing their corners, as though they had been torn out of old albums. Some looked antique; their surfaces were dull, and the images were watery and uniformly brownish, the brown of a horse’s coat.
“Here’s what I wanted to show you: this house.” The photograph she held out to me was very old indeed, and featured a family, a group of about ten people in front of a large white edifice, all posed stiffly, some standing and some sitting on straight chairs, in the manner of the earliest portraits, for which the slightest gesture or error of informality would ruin an afternoon’s effort. The house looked familiar. It was square, and the dark, possibly black trim around its windows gave it a distinctly unwelcoming air, seeming to suggest that a potential visitor might be better off out of doors, where the rigors of mortality held less sway.
Their starched black dresses and suits—they were all in mourning—and careful hairdressings looked to be of an era a century before. Their faces had been scratched out, and this struck me as both unfortunate and appropriate. Whatever gathering or event this group portrait was meant to memorialize might have been better left unrecorded.
“Do you see?” Raquel said excitedly, though she kept her voice low. “These are the descendants of the Goodes who came here after the trials in Salem. Here they stayed, and this is the house they lived in. And this is a picture of them the day after their youngest daughter—she was only eighteen, I believe, at the time of her death—was executed for a crime she didn’t commit, or at least not intentionally. The family legend has it that she and another girl were out swimming in the Shift River and Emily Goode was fooling around, showing her friend how her ancestors had been ‘tested’ for the presence of witchcraft, and she was holding her under the water just for a minute, but then the girl struggled, and her head hit a rock, and the girl died. No one was sure whether she died of the blow to her head or of water in her lungs. But Emily Goode was convicted of her murder and was hung. Even though she was well along in her pregnancy. And the family never forgave the town for this unyielding punishment, and always wore black, and did not consort with the townspeople, and kept to themselves. This is Jacob Goode, her brother.” She pointed out a tall, slender, faceless man with a round hat like a Quaker’s. “The two were thick as thieves. Separated only in death, and some say not even then. He was in training to be a minister, but on her execution day he renounced his faith. He never entered a church again.
“But although the Goode family removed itself from the goings-on of the town, they did not remove themselves from the town itself, as they had done before when faced with an injustice of this magnitude. They would not be forced out again from the place they had called home for nearly two centuries. And even much later, a hundred years later, when the towns were to be flooded to make the reservoir, the few remaining members of the family refused to evacuate their property. The officials, of course, tried to move them, but they were immovable; they just stayed where they were, even as the waters rose, and they were drowned in their home. In this house you see here. I suppose it was a final injustice, and they were ready for it.” I looked again at the photograph and seemed to see the resolve imminent in their postures, their upright bearing, the poise of their hands. They were ready at that moment to die.
“But enough of these dusty relics! Let’s go down to the water and I’ll show you proof.” Raquel’s eyes were shining with certainty and engagement and I thought,
Ah, so this is it. This is what she came here for. Proof. And I am to be her witness; her accomplice, too.
We tiptoed past the room where Theo slept, down the stairs, out the door, and down the driveway to Raquel’s car. Before I knew it we were headed toward the loop road, and around it in the deep of evening to an access road I had never noticed before, one about a quarter of the way around the circumference of the reservoir, clockwise, from Wick. This was where the town called Hammerstead lay, deep under the water. The remaining two lost towns of Shadleigh and Morrow—just to form their names with the mouth of my mind made me shiver. Did they still answer to those silent names, now that their borders were erased, their topographies washed away, their skies filled with black water? To say the names brought back all the inhabitants, the lives, and planted them there again, lost lives with eyes peering up, hopelessly, from the bottom of the darkest day anyone should ever see.
Ah, so this is it. This is what she came here for. Proof. And I am to be her witness; her accomplice, too.
We tiptoed past the room where Theo slept, down the stairs, out the door, and down the driveway to Raquel’s car. Before I knew it we were headed toward the loop road, and around it in the deep of evening to an access road I had never noticed before, one about a quarter of the way around the circumference of the reservoir, clockwise, from Wick. This was where the town called Hammerstead lay, deep under the water. The remaining two lost towns of Shadleigh and Morrow—just to form their names with the mouth of my mind made me shiver. Did they still answer to those silent names, now that their borders were erased, their topographies washed away, their skies filled with black water? To say the names brought back all the inhabitants, the lives, and planted them there again, lost lives with eyes peering up, hopelessly, from the bottom of the darkest day anyone should ever see.
“COME OUT HERE, it’s not cold. It’s like bathwater, actually.” Raquel stood knee-deep, her shorts rolled up high around her thighs. I did not remember getting out of the car or trekking down the little path to the water’s edge, but here we were, and there she was. It must have been about ten o’clock already. The sky had turned a violent blue, and the trees around the circumference of the water wore the black outlines that would soon spread and merge to make pitch blackness. “You have to come out here to see.”
I made my way slowly in. It was indeed warm, unreasonably so. I had never felt it like this before—it was almost hot. It made me want to feel it all over me, unmediated, and so I waded back to the shore and stripped down, leaving my T-shirt and shorts in a pile, and then into the water, out to where Raquel stood, arms crossed under her breasts, regarding me. “That’s good, Ginger. It will be much easier to see when you are naked.” I didn’t question her logic; I knew only that the dark water against my skin felt like a giant mother’s hand. And Raquel’s hand was on my shoulder; we were chest-deep in the water now, and so she didn’t have far to go to place her other hand heavily on my other shoulder, a grip, more than a placement, and use the full weight of her body, buoyant in the water, to land on me, behind me, and push me under, and hold me there.
WHAT DID I SEE, there, under the water.
I AWOKE, UNBREATHING, in the midst of an unsuccessful gasp, with my face pressed up against the little book with the gilt-edged pages. My throat was closed, my mouth was dry, my eyes were sandy. I sat up and filled my lungs, rubbed my hands over my eyes. In the Motherwells’ bathroom I splashed my face and dried it on a red towel. A faint tracing of Raquel’s fresh entry was printed on my damp temple. The lock had made an impression on my cheek. I moved quietly out into the hallway, then slipped past the room where they still slept, or were silent, down the stairs, and out the door. I went to go find Cherry.
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