The Gazebo: A Novel (17 page)

Pleasure was for other people, I assumed. Pleasure was for Harper. And she did experience a great deal of pleasure, at least from the little I glimpsed of her. Mostly, as the years passed and she went from a young, white–hot prodigy in the art world boom years of the 1980s to a figure of lasting prominence, I heard about her goings–on from my proud but bewildered parents. After they died, I heard about her from Aunt Leatrice, and from reading about Harper in the tabloids, which I would buy at the tobacco shop downtown. There she would be in some gossip column: “Who was the dark–haired man in Armani sharing a plate of mahi–mahi with painter HARPER MALLORY at the Ozone Club last night?” Or else I would see an announcement of one of her art shows in the
New York Times
. “Harper Mallory: Recent Works” it would say, though I was never invited to the openings.

She was rich and famous, and I had a modest life on a small scale, like most people. My job as head librarian at the Longwood Falls
Library gave me a great deal of responsibility, and I took pride in what I did. Libraries were of course fully automated by now, and had been plagued by cutbacks, but there was still a lot of work to be done planning various programs. But sometimes, as I walked through all that wooded silence, I just wanted to scream. Where was
my
chance at something wonderful? Where was
my
dark–haired man,
my
big career,
my
beautiful children? Where was
my
life?

After my parents died within a year of each other—my mother first, of a long struggle with cancer, then my grieving father of an unexpected heart attack—I made the decision to move back into the white frame house where I’d grown up. Harper didn’t care; her lawyers weren’t concerned with the money that might be generated from the potential sale of the house. One of her paintings, those large canvases with the haunted, slightly surreal faces of men and women on them, would have fetched as big a price as the house would have. We saw each other briefly at our parents’ funerals; after the reception and some awkward moments of forced conversation, she was gone in the shiny
black Town Car that had brought her.

That was over a decade earlier. Now my sister and I were thirty–six. Harper had settled into a life of wealth and fame that would be hers forever. Then, three years ago, my sister’s marriage ended, and Carlo, a distracted, older man without much time to give his children, had moved back to Milan, where he remarried and had a baby with his new wife. Nick turned seven, and Doe turned eight. It was said by my aunt that Doe was Harper’s favorite, because she reminded her of herself.

On the morning after my niece was killed, I nervously picked up the telephone and dialed the house in Stone Point. The phone number was written in my address book, though I had never once called it. After so many years, it would have been difficult to imagine what to say to Harper under any circumstances; under these circumstances, it was impossible, so I didn’t even try. Instead, I found myself listening to the phone ring and ring, and thinking about the echo it must be making inside that house—that mansion, really, with its tumble of rooms and picture windows looking out toward the Long Island Sound, where the fog
swirled and Connecticut was a vague mirage in the middle distance. Finally a man answered.

“Mallory residence,” he said quietly. “How may I help you?” My sister had never changed her name when she married Carlo. She’d already become famous by then under the name Harper Mallory, and even if she hadn’t, I couldn’t really see her parting with such a crucial piece of her identity.

“I’d like to speak to Ms. Mallory,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” the man went on. “She’s not speaking to anyone.”

“This is her sister,” I tried.

But that didn’t move him. “As I said, she’s not speaking to anyone,” he said, his voice slightly firmer now, the way he’d obviously been trained when he came to work for Harper.

“I need to know about the funeral,” I stammered. “I’m going to come, of course.” I paused, then added, rather absurdly, “I’d like to help her. If there’s anything I can do …”

There was an uncomfortable silence, and then the man said, “The funeral is to be tomorrow. The Old Stone Point Church at noon.”

“Thank you,” I said. Then, impulsively, I added, “Is she all right?” I knew it was a ridiculous question. How could my sister possibly be all right? The servant didn’t even try to answer, but bypassed the question entirely.

“At noon, then,” he repeated, and then he quietly said good–bye.

The roads were bad throughout the entire six–hour trip to Stone Point, and even with the snow tires on I had to drive very slowly, the wipers whooshing as they kept the front window clear of slushy rain. Aunt Leatrice sat beside me, but neither of us could bear to talk very much. When we arrived in Stone Point, the pretty church was as crowded as I’d expected, but even though there were a few art world celebrities present, no clusters of people leaned together, and no cell phones chirped. The circumstances were much too terrible for any of that, much too sad.

I looked around the church for Harper, but didn’t see her anywhere. Maybe she was among the group of women up front in those picture–frame black hats that obscured their faces, or maybe she was somewhere off in the
wings, too upset to appear in public. In any event, I had no time to find her, for the service started soon after I arrived, and my aunt and I had to quickly find seats in the back.

Suddenly, a man stood as I looked around for a place to sit, and he gestured for me and Aunt Leatrice to take his place. We didn’t exchange words, so I can’t say we actually met at that moment. I only took in the fact that he was a handsome man, freshly shaven, who looked a little uncomfortable in a suit. His name, though I didn’t know it at the time, was David Fields. He was the man I would soon fall in love with, but of course I didn’t know this either. It’s strange the way that happens: how you can come upon someone and have no idea that this person who means nothing to you will someday mean everything.

I helped Aunt Leatrice sit down and then I squeezed in beside her, nodding thanks to the man who had given us his seat, and then turning away from him. The church, a small, crumbling stone building, was inadequately heated, and I found myself shivering. When the coffin was revealed—tiny and simple, made of a polished rosewood that was almost the color of
Doe’s hair, and her mother’s—the entire congregation seemed to slump down and cry in unison. Their tears continued throughout the psalm recited by the minister, and during the eulogies given by people who included Doe’s teacher at the Craighead School, a young, stunned–looking woman, and Doe’s best friend, a little girl named Caitlin.

Caitlin, who at age eight was blonde and flushed with nervousness, stood up in front of everyone, clutching a doll to her chest. “See this doll?” said Caitlin into the microphone, her voice a trembling, hoarse whisper. “Doe gave it to me.”

I looked at the doll; it was faded and old, and wore a tattered red–checked outfit. Something about the doll seemed familiar, and after a moment a chill traveled through me as I realized this was the doll that I had given my niece when she was born.

“She said it was for being her best friend,” Caitlin continued. “It was
her
doll since she was born, but she wanted me to have it.” She paused, looking sidelong toward the coffin, then away again, then back. “I’ll always keep this doll, Doe,” she said. “And I promise to take care of her forever.”

My aunt was leaning against me. I leaned back. If I, who hadn’t known my niece at all, was feeling this distraught, I couldn’t even imagine what Harper must be going through. At the end of the service, when everyone stood, I once again looked for my sister, but still I couldn’t find her. I figured I’d soon see her back at the house, where the reception was to be held, and so I started to head out the open double doors, shepherding my aunt along beside me.

As I was about to leave, though, something caught my eye. It was the back of a woman’s head, the red hair carelessly hacked off as short as a boy’s, as though it had been done in a great hurry, with blunt shears. Something about the slope of the shoulders and the long neck looked familiar, and my first thought was that this was one of my relatives, perhaps a distant cousin who had flown in from somewhere far away. I remembered that there were a few Mallory cousins in Des Moines, Iowa. Just then, the woman turned her head and met my gaze. We looked at each other for a moment, and then I knew.

It was my sister, and she had cut off all her
hair. This utterly changed person who stood facing me in the cold winter church was practically a stranger to me, a stranger with a bad haircut and eyes that appeared as lifeless and frozen as the trees along the road I’d been traveling for hours.

They say that twins always retain some memory of the time when they were two swimmers enclosed in a warm, silent place, and that even when those twins grow up and live entirely separate lives, if something terrible happens to one twin, the other can’t help but be changed too. Harper had experienced something unbearable, and I suddenly had a glimpse of the extent of it. She seemed to have disappeared from the world, had swum away forever and been replaced by someone strange and different. And the thing was, I felt strange and different too. It was as though she and I were locked together now, and the intensity of it made me feel panicky, overwhelmed. Though she let herself be kissed by me, let herself be stiffly embraced, and politely accepted the inadequate words of sorrow that I had to offer, I knew enough to be frightened.