The Fall of Never (17 page)

He shook his head, looked down at his uneaten bagel and glass of milk. “I was embarrassed that I couldn’t get over it. And I was angry at myself too.”

“But you got over it.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Thanks to Kelly.” He felt himself smile. “I saw an ad posted at NYU about her project, this thing called and something about the way she advertised it piqued my interests. Something…it just made me feel invigorated to be a part of something again, a part of
We the People
that we’ve been working on,
anything.
So I figured what the hell and I went and met with her. And she was nice and pretty and maybe even a little eccentric, which I like, and just hearing her explain her ideas about the project just got me off one track and onto another. I’m listening to her, and I start realizing that she’s actually talking about
me,
that I’ve learned to overcome my own adversities…and I didn’t even realize it until that day sitting across from her at a Burger King.”

“She saved you, in a sense.”

“But it was something more. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I can see what it was now. She had secrets of her own too, and she wasn’t only talking about
me,
she was talking about
herself.
And to this day I still don’t think she knows it.”

“We all have secrets,” Nellie said and sipped her coffee. “Good,” she sighed.

He’d lost his appetite. “So my turn?”

“Turn?”

“To ask a question.”

“Oh,” said the old woman, “is that what we’re doing, now?”

“It’s a straightforward question.”

“Ask it, but eat too. Put some meat on those bones.”

Just like a grandmother,
he thought, grinning. He took a bite of his bagel, swallowed it nearly without chewing, and said, “How come you told Kelly and I that you play bridge on Wednesday nights?”

Nellie’s eyes didn’t falter. If she realized she’d been caught in a lie she didn’t let her acknowledgment register on her face. Calmly, like one about to recite a poem to a group of young children, she said, “I’m a fanatic when it comes to bridge. Love the game. Always have. My father taught me to play before he died.”

“You gave Dr. Mendes the names of the women you play bridge with at the hospital,” he said. He felt ridiculous, questioning this old woman like a detective pumping a murder suspect for information.

“We were making small talk.” Slurred the S.

“He was concerned for your well-being. He phoned the women you mentioned to him.” He suddenly realized he was walking a thin line and didn’t want to offend this sweet old woman, but he’d come too far to turn around now. Besides, there was a burgeoning curiosity within him, like the inkling of a small but potentially powerful fire, and it excited him. “None of the women you mentioned to him have ever heard of you, Nellie.”

This time, he thought he saw a spark of—well, of
something
behind those stoic gray eyes. Not taking those eyes off him, the old woman shifted her weight in her chair and adjusted her immobile left hand in her lap.

He couldn’t help but back off. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to sound accusatory, I just didn’t understand—”

“It’s all right.”

“No. It’s not my place and I apologize.”

“Don’t be silly.” She offered a warm smile. “I’m just surprised at the doctor’s…” she considered her words, “methods of extraction. I thought his small talk was genuine. I never realized he was so concerned.”

“He’s concerned for you, but he’s also concerned for himself too. Do you know what I mean?”

Again—something faltered behind her eyes. She knew, all right. But it was probably something she didn’t want to think about. And did he really have any right forcing her to, anyway? He’d offered up his story about getting shot with little protest, but it was evident that he had crossed over into territory Nellie Worthridge probably preferred remain untouched. For whatever reason.

We’ve started opening all the doors, now,
he thought.
All sorts of doors…

When she spoke, her speech came out garbled. “I’m aware that some things were said, that
I
said them to Dr. Mendes, which caused him to become quite upset. I can’t recall what I said, but I know I upset him and I am sorry for that. My mind was in another place at that time.”

“You were medicated and just suffered a stroke,” he said in her defense.

“Afterwards, I tried warming up to the man, but he couldn’t reciprocate. I’d frightened him, that was evident. But beyond that…well, there’s nothing I can do about any of that now.”

For a moment, Josh thought she was talking about something much bigger than what had transpired between her and the doctor. Something just beyond his own ability to perceive, perhaps, although old Nellie Worthridge could see it just fine.

“Kelly,” she said, snapping him back to reality.

“Kelly?” Hearing the old woman speak her name startled him.

“Is she all right?”

It occurred to him that Nellie did not know Kelly was out of town. She might have been feeling hurt Kelly hadn’t shown up at the hospital. “She’s left town for a while, went upstate. Her parents’ house, where she grew up.”

“Is everything all right?” She sounded very concerned, which bothered him for some reason. He felt like he was in the middle of an empty room, and the walls were all beginning to fall in on him at once.

“She’s fine.” And thought,
Kelly doesn’t know about your stroke and you don’t know about Kelly’s sister nearly being killed. I’m like a safety deposit box for sad little truths.

“When will she be back?”

He told her he didn’t know.

“You’ve spoken to her since she’s left?”

“No,” he said, “I haven’t.” Then, for whatever reason prompted him to do so, he said, “Do you think she’s all right?”

Nellie Worthridge only sipped her coffee, using one hand. There was a look of concern in her eyes, too obvious to be denied. It glistened there like drops of water on old boards. It was ridiculous, thinking he could find solace in the words of an old woman, particularly when she knew nothing of his concerns.
He
didn’t even know…

“I hope so,” she said finally, and with no relief. “I hope so.”

Chapter Twelve

No one noticed DeVonn Rotley was missing until well into the afternoon. When the dogs started barking.

Kelly had slept a restless sleep the night before and awoke late in the afternoon, groggy and with a sore neck. She would have probably slept longer too, if it wasn’t for the incessant barking coming from the rear of the house. The sound yanked her from sleep and she sat up like a bolt, running her fingers through her matted hair. She leaned over the edge of the bed and peered out the window (noticing that her window, like Becky’s, was now cracked open, though she couldn’t remember if it had been that way when she’d gone to sleep last night). Yes, there were dogs barking. An entire platoon of them, by the sound. Faintly, in the distance, someone was calling DeVonn Rotley’s name. It was her father—and there was some semblance of his long-gone intensity in his voice this morning. After some time, she saw Glenda hurry around the front of the house lugging a sack of dog food on her hip.

Kelly looked at the clock on the nightstand and saw that it was well after lunch time. She quickly dressed, unlocked her bedroom door (it was locked all night, she convinced herself, so how could anyone get in to crack open her window?), and slipped out into the upstairs hallway. Jiggling the knob on Becky’s bedroom door, she found it unlocked and poked her head inside. The room was quiet, the window shut. Very much like a porcelain doll, Becky Kellow rested with her bruised and sleeping head on a silk pillow.

Downstairs, she found her mother in the dining room, leafing through thick catalogues of flowers and sipping cognac. Some pastries had been set along the dining room table. Without looking up, her mother said, “I thought you would never wake. And locking your bedroom door—is that something you’ve become accustomed to from living in the city?”

“What’s that noise?”

“Those filthy hounds from hell,” her mother growled. “I don’t know where in the world Rotley’s disappeared to, but if someone doesn’t feed those dogs and shut them up quick, I’m going to go out there with your father’s hunting rifle and make peace with nature.”

Glenda swooped into the dining room from the kitchen entranceway, anxious to collect the uneaten pastries from the table. She saw Kelly standing disheveled in the doorway and smiled. “Looks like someone let the Baby out,” the woman chirped. “I’ve left some breakfast in the kitchen for you, dear. I’m afraid it’s cold now, but if you give me just a minute I can heat something up for you, after I take care of your sister.”

“I’m not hungry.” She went to the dining room windows, peered out. “You have dogs?”

“Your
father
has dogs,” her mother said quickly. Her voice was sharp, like she’d just been poked in the rear with a hot iron. “The man spends half his life butchering wildlife, and the other half collecting them in cages at the rear of the compound. He puzzles me, that man.”

“They should quiet down soon enough,” Glenda said. “I just came from feeding them.”

“That’s Rotley’s job. They’re his dogs, really.”

“I know, Mrs. Kellow.”

“Where is he, anyhow?”

“Don’t know,” Glenda said, filling her arms with pastries. Kelly went to her and took some of the load from her arms, followed her into the kitchen.

Helping the housekeeper put the food away, Kelly said, “Are you close with Becky?”

“Becky’s a lovely girl.” She seemed saddened just thinking about her. “I try to be close. We get along nicely. Not like us, though.”

“I remember,” Kelly said. “You were good to me. I never thanked you for that.”

“Oh, honey…”

“Really. You raised me, not them.”

“Your parents were busy people, dear.”

“No, they were just
rich
people, and that allowed them to keep busy. Growing up, I sometimes thought they forgot they even had a daughter.”

Glenda replaced a tray in the refrigerator, shaking her head. “Now, honey, you know that’s not true—”

“I know,” she said, “but it still felt that way sometimes.” She thought about her mother sitting at the dining room table, flipping absently through a gardening brochure. And then her father, standing in the middle of his once great purple room that was purple no more. He was almost a nonentity—back then, and even more so now, it seemed. It was the house, she thought, consuming them just like it had tried to consume her as a child.

This house had nothing to do with what happened to me,
she thought, although she still couldn’t be certain. It was just a gut feeling. The memories of her childhood were like slices of Swiss cheese—riddled with holes and inconsistencies.
It was something else, something I still can’t remember.

“You were the one who wanted to keep me here,” she said then, as if suddenly remembering. But she’d at least known this part all along. “They sent me to that institution but you tried to get me to stay. Thank you.”

Glenda was now leaning over the kitchen sink, staring out the window at the hedgerow in the yard. The windowpane was covered in a film of frost. “Don’t be hard on them,” she told Kelly. “They did what they thought was right. They only wanted what was best for you. You can’t keep hating them for that, darling.”

“Well,” Kelly said, putting a hand on the woman’s back. “Thank you nonetheless.”

It was cold outside, and Kelly hugged herself tightly about the shoulders as she crossed around to the rear of the house. She saw her father standing beside the large pen that housed DeVonn Rotley’s collection of Dobermans. His back was to her, and he stood staring down the valley into the immense swell of trees. She came up behind him, uncertain as to what she should say (or even if she should say anything at all), and stood watching him in silence for several moments. She thought of the painting of the giant kneeling down by the river. Despite his imposing size, her father no longer seemed like a giant, crouching or otherwise. Rather, his form evoked in her images of downed power lines, of aged cattle strewn without method or purpose about some green pasture, lost and forgotten. With the passage of so many years, and like magic, he’d somehow managed to regress in age, as if his physical self was desperate to return to its youth. She watched him, and when he sighed, he did so with a great heaving roll of his broad shoulders.

Yes,
she thought,
he looks like a child.

He turned. Her presence startled him. Some of the dogs behind the fence looked up at them.

“Sorry,” she said.

His complexion was sallow and pasty. His eyes looked too small, pushed too deep inside his head. “I was thinking of your sister.”

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Becky would come out here, would scoot down this hill when she was younger. In the snow, she’d slide down on a sled or even without one, on her belly. Just laughing. I used to watch her from the window.” His eyes grew distant. “It snows every winter. You can almost count on it. Every year, every winter, like nature’s promise.”

“She’s going to be all right,” she told him, not really knowing whether or not that was true.