The Drowning House (37 page)

We drove that way for about a mile, the jeep and the truck so close they almost touched. Finally the driver had enough and pulled past me. Then, just in front of my right tire it seemed, a rusted barrel appeared, bouncing in the road. I jerked the wheel to the left and the jeep swung into the truck’s black side. There was a drawn-out scraping noise and I stopped, hard.

What happened next did not seem real. I saw the driver of the truck open his door and approach. I knew from the way he walked
that he was carrying something heavy in his hand. Then he raised his arm and I saw the tire iron. The glass in front of me shattered and fell into the car, on me, on the seat, between my legs, and onto the floor.

I sat for a moment, stunned, disbelieving, as the truck accelerated loudly and drove off, the two dogs leaning out and grinning. That was when the rain came all at once, falling in a hard slant through the vanished windshield.

When I reached the Carraday house, all the first-floor lights were on. Through the rain and waving branches, the great rooms appeared warm and festive. I struggled out of the jeep, bits of shattered glass still clinging to me. Instead of my usual route to the kitchen, I went to the front door. I wanted to be noticed. I rang the bell, but no one answered. When I opened the door with the key Will had given me, I heard voices and laughter.

I went through to the drawing room. Will was there, standing by the fireplace, under the portrait of Stella, with some men I didn’t know. They were holding drinks in their hands. They turned together and saw me.

What did I expect? I don’t know, exactly. I know I wanted, childishly, to tell my story, to be comforted. Will glanced at me, at my wet clothes, laughed easily and said, “Well, look at you. How about a glass of wine? Or would you like something stronger? You can take it upstairs.”

I stood still, waiting for him to see that I wasn’t just wet. I shivered. A puddle formed around me, water and occasional bits of glass that dripped onto the polished floor. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I hugged myself and said, “I was …” Then I stopped. I was about to say, “I was in an accident.” But there had been nothing accidental about it. Should I say, “I was attacked”? I opened my mouth, but couldn’t form the words. Finally I managed to say, “Something happened to the car.”

“Which car?” Will asked.

“The jeep.”

“Otis can take care of it in the morning.” Will turned away and
spoke softly to one of the men. It was clear he didn’t intend to include me in the conversation.

Had he been talking business before I appeared? I believe now that he had, that he and the men there with him had arrived at some kind of agreement and were celebrating. He was reluctant to break the mood, to lose the goodwill he had created.

I grew up in a doctor’s house, and I think sometimes that love and sorrow and anger are like illnesses. We can’t anticipate their arrival, we can’t escape our portion. Love is a summer rash, hot on the skin. Sorrow the constant ache of a broken rib. Anger a contagion, passed on in an instant of contact. When Will turned his back, anger rushed through me, a gift from the anonymous stranger in the truck.

When Will approached, smiling, and held out a glass, I knocked it out of his hand. The heavy crystal landed on the carpet and rolled and the ice cubes scattered on the floor.

Will’s jaw clenched. He looked over my shoulder. There was some movement of the men standing behind him. Feet shuffling, murmurs as they dispersed. After a while I heard the front door open. The sound of wind and rain. The door closing again.

Will and I were alone. My gaze never left his. I watched him until my own face was stiff with effort. I recalled our meeting four weeks before. I hadn’t seen then the pouches under his eyes, the deep lines on either side of his mouth. Unsmiling, he looked tired and old, and I wondered if he minded. Time would be the thing he couldn’t buy or win over.

Even then, it all could have gone differently. If he hadn’t said, with some impatience, “What’s wrong with you?” I had been asked that question, had asked it of myself, all my life. Now I thought I knew, and I told him. I described how the man I believed to be my father had treated me. The years I had spent crouching and hiding. The nights I’d lain awake, frightened, waiting. I flung the words at him and saw him wince. I wanted to hurt him, to know that I could. Finally I ran out of breath.

He covered his eyes with one hand. Then he rubbed his forehead,
as though the thoughts he was having pained him. His eyes met mine again and he said, “I’m so sorry.” It seemed to require no effort.

“That’s all?”

“Clare, I don’t know what else to say. It was terrible, I understand. But you’re all right now, thank God.”

I studied his face. I saw mild distress and something that might have been compunction. I thought of Frankie with Eleanor, the way she had pursued and cornered her.

Will turned and picked up the glass from the floor and began to reach for the ice cubes. I know I enjoyed the sight of him bent over. I thought how uncharacteristic it was for him to be cleaning up. But it wasn’t enough.

I heard the door again and someone moving in the hall.

I said, “Remember when we talked about Colonel Moody? About his system? You have one too. But yours is different. Explain to me how it works. You do a good thing here and it cancels the ugly thing you did over there? Is that it? So it all balances out. And in the end you get what you want. Is that right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re kind to Mary Liz, which makes it okay for you to sleep with my mother. You help Island people with money, which makes it okay to ruin the beach.”

“Clare, you’re hurt, I understand—”

I shook my head. “You’re my father,” I said. “And you never acknowledged me. What I want to know is this: What was the thing you did that made that all right? I’d like you to tell me. I’d like to understand what I’m worth to you.”

“If I’d had any idea what was happening,” he said. “You must believe I’m … appalled.” From the way he said it, I understood that he was rendering judgment on someone else. As if what had happened to me had nothing to do with him.

“You had a grandchild,” I said. “And you never even saw her. Doesn’t that matter to you?”

“I had photos,” he said. “Your wonderful photos. Your mother shared them with me.”

The phone rang in another room and went on ringing. I realized Faline wasn’t there. Will must have sent everyone away so that he could have the house to himself. So that he could have the conversation I’d interrupted without anyone to witness it. “Excuse me,” he said. “I need to answer that.” He left the room.

I recalled a party I had been taken to as a child. I knew no one, and I spent my time sitting under the dining-room table unraveling a crepe-paper ball I had been given as a favor. My fingers were sticky and clumsy, and the dining room was dark, but I persisted. Slowly I unwrapped the pink wrinkled layers to find at the heart of the thing a single plastic bead. Despair came over me as, holding it in my hand, I realized this was all there was.

I looked around the Carradays’ drawing room, at the heavy chairs, the tall mirrors that reflected the same things over and over—multiple images receding into the depths of the old glass. I went out to the hall.

I smelled her perfume before I saw Eleanor standing in the shadow of the stairs. Her eyes glittered. Her shirt was partly untucked, and her damp hair hung in an untidy mass below her ears. There were long, watery streaks on her skirt. It was not like her to get caught in the rain.

“Oh those blue eyes,” she said. “And you so observant. But you were busy with other things. With Patrick. With the camera.” She made an attempt to smooth the front of her shirt and her hand left a wet smudge. “That was his idea.”

“I know.”

“You wanted to learn something. And you have. You understand now how he is. You can chase after him, but it won’t change anything. You will never get what you want. What you need. Because …” She stopped, her eyes unfocused, and she seemed to withdraw into herself. I could hear her breathing. Her hand went over and over the same smudged place on the front of her shirt.

“You have no idea what I need.”

Eleanor paid no attention. When she spoke, it was to finish her sentence. “Because that’s the way he is. He says come and you come.
Happily.” She smiled, but her mouth twisted. “He says wait, and you tell yourself it’s only for a month, six months, a year. I believed him! There has always been a reason to wait. But our time, my time, never comes. What good is the money if it doesn’t …” She looked around the entry hall. “I hate this house.”

Eleanor’s hand grasped the fabric of her shirt and worked it back and forth. She said, “You give up one thing. Then another. You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. Your interests, your friends.” Finally her gaze rested on me. “You give up your children. Because he says it’s for the best.”

“He never said that.”

She looked at me and shook her head. “Time goes by. You find yourself in a room full of people. Always so many people. But you’re alone.” She shook her head again and the mass of her hair slid onto her shoulders. “They love that sureness of his, the way it makes them feel.
You
know. But he shouldn’t be so sure.”

I started up the stairs, my own hand on the banister, but Eleanor spun and caught my wrist and held me there. I could feel her trembling. Her face close to mine, she said, “You like to listen. Are you listening now? Look at me. Is this what you want your life to be? You think you have a choice. And maybe, for a little while, you do. But that won’t last.” Her eyes were suddenly wide and bright with unshed tears.

I don’t know what made me respond then the way I did. Was it just for the pleasure of seeing her react? I’d like to think I was beyond that kind of reprisal. Then why?

I was already wondering when the rain would let up enough for me to drive to the mainland. Trying to remember if I still had a map in the car. Did I tell myself that I could wait until the morning to tell her I was leaving? So that she could suffer a little in the meantime? A few hours. Surely it was nothing compared to what she had done. “I don’t feel sorry for you,” I said. I wrenched my arm away, and Eleanor flinched as if I’d hit her.

On the landing I stopped. “I’m his daughter. He cares about me,” I said. I felt no shame at my lie. If what I said wasn’t true, it should have
been. “We’ve been talking about Italy. About visiting the gardens.” Buoyed by a strange sense of rectitude, I climbed up the big staircase and left Eleanor standing by herself.

From the landing I looked down. She was still grasping the stair rail. But her head was bent. A comb slid from her hair and bounced across the polished floor. No light came through the stained-glass window.

I
’
VE TRIED TO RECALL WHAT HAPPENED
later that night, after the rain stopped. I stayed in Stella’s room, gathering my things. I was exhausted, but too on edge to lie down. Someone left a plate of cold food outside my door. When finally I crept into the bed and slept, it was like stepping into a pool. Not a bright sparkling pool with a concrete edge, but the kind with a rocky rim and a black bottom you can’t see. I remember nothing.

There must have been a noise, like a car backfiring, except that it came from the garage, not the street. Did I hear it and half wake? Would it have mattered if I had gone down?

I imagine how the alcove in the tack room looked the next morning, its austere calm disturbed by the night’s events. I see the blue spread rumpled, pulled from the bed, the round table tipped on its side. Sometimes I see bits of broken china, flowers, leaves and stems and petals, water and blood on the stone floor. I know there was blood. Maybe that was all there was, after the first unbearable explosion of sound. A stain spreading across the floor, dust motes spinning.

I have to imagine it because I don’t know. When I crossed the lawn to the garage, Faline was waiting, planted in the grass like a column. Her face was ashy. She shook her head. She stepped in front of me and took hold of my shoulders and held me with her strong, wiry fingers, and leaned down so that her forehead rested against mine. Her voice was just above a whisper. “No, baby,” she said, “you can’t go in there now. Your daddy been shot.”

Chapter 34

I NEVER ASKED, BUT I BELIEVE
that my grandmother saw each of her quilts before she ever picked up her scissors. That the arrangement present in her mind was something she could count on and return to. Watching in silence as she cut and pieced and finally hand-stitched the many-colored shapes, I was always surprised when the design announced itself.

That was her gift, the certainty of her vision, the way she saw her own modest life and its purpose laid out, whole and entire, like fabric on a frame. I don’t believe she ever looked back or felt regret.

I live now in a place where the sky is never really blue, where I can go in any direction and feel myself surrounded by buildings. The slanting light is manageable. I don’t miss the moments of sudden sun blindness, the hot wind on my neck. I prefer not to see into the distance.