The House (12 page)

Why have you brought Edward home
? The question hung in the chambers of Anna’s mind.

The priest asked, “Is there anything you’d like to say to him?’ “There’s a lot I could say. I don’t know if it would be the right thing. He is dying.”

Father Richard became thoughtful. He then said, “There’s a group of Proverbs, African. They go like this. `Death needs a strong heart. The goat says, Nobody willingly walks to his own death. If one could know where death resided, one would never stop there.’’

A lump formed in Anna’s throat against the priest’s recitation of truths that knew no denial.

“`Death does not sound a trumpet. When death holds something in its grip, life cannot take it away. Death is one ditch you cannot jump. Whatever you love, death also loves. Lie down and die. You will see who really loves you.”

At that, Anna gasped and caught her lips. She began to cry.?

Chapter 14

Anna arrived back home to find Edward lying upon the chaise on the patio. He was reading. “Where are the children?” she asked.

“Theo, Linda, and Brad went to the grocery store. Seems they’re preparing a special meal tonight.”

I did that last night, Anna thought. “And Serine?”

“She’s upstairs packing. Says she has court tomorrow.” Edward didn’t look up from his magazine.

“She just got here two days ago, and late at that. I need to speak with her.” Anna turned to leave.

“Let her be.” Despite his quasi-scolding last evening and yesterday morning, Edward appeared content to let Serine leave in what Anna considered a huff. His eyes remained glued to the magazine.

“I don’t know how you can be so cavalier about this,” Anna quipped.

“What do you want me to do?” He lowered the magazine and laid it upon the table beside him. “Tell her she can’t go back to work because her father is dying of cancer?”

“I would think she might see the need to spend a little more time here with you. I’m not saying she has to quit her job.” She considered Serine’s berating, and then Father Richard’s missive.
If you wanted a clean break, why have you brought Edward home, even 1f it is to die?
She took in Edward reclining on the chaise, the table to his right, and the pool on the left. He resumed reading his magazine. The title on the cover read
Tricycle
. It was written in gold. Below it stood a Buddhist nun with a shaven head. She appeared to chide Anna toward compassion. What was it that had drawn him to marry her and then wander from one woman to another every five or six years? Anna labored to understand Edward.

“What did they have that I didn’t?” The words eased from her lips. Again, he lowered the magazine, this time upon his lap. “Stella, Esther, and the others,” Anna said. “What did they give you that I couldn’t?”

Edward appeared to have stopped breathing, time was holding its own, marching to a beat outside of their hearts, and ticking toward an uncertain eternity held in the net of their mortality. He parted his lips and was about to speak when a crowd of voices rounded the corner of the house. Linda, Theo, and Brad stepped onto the patio. A fourth, unknown man came with them.

“Mom, Dad, look who we found,” Theo said. He approached Anna standing by the patio table next to the chaise where Edward lay stretched. “Serine’s fiancé.”

Theo had told Anna that the person who gave Serine an engagement ring was named Grant. None of the children, nor Anna, had met him. Grant was the district attorney who had interviewed and hired Serine. She had spent half the meal listing the attributes of Grant Seifert, D.A. “There’s a lot I can learn from him,” Serine had said after two months on the job. “He’s got some great ideas about the law and how to prosecute criminals. Whatever he shares will serve me well.”

Anna extended her hand to the young man standing beside Theo. “Pleased to meet you.”

The young man shook Anna’s hand. His blue eyes sparkled. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Manning.”

“I’ll go let Serine know you’re here,” Linda said as she left. Brad lifted the groceries and followed her inside.

Theo introduced the young man to Edward.

“So you’re with the D.A.’s office?” Edward sat forward as he laid the magazine on the table.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied.

Donning a fresh tan, the young white man wore old, faded jeans and a shirt of similar quality. He could pass for a college freshman. Intuition and thirty years of living with Edward Manning told Anna that this young man was not a district attorney, but instead a person who had decided to wake up. A fiery sensation started in Anna’s stomach and sank into her pelvis. This young man was not Grant Siefert.

“Would you like something to drink?” Anna asked. “Tea, soda, water?”

“Water would be fine,” the young man said.

“Have a seat,” Theo invited the young man.

“And have some lunch with us,” Edward said.

“So, is Serine around?” the young man asked. He remained standing.

“She’s packing.” Anna returned to the patio with a tray bearing four glasses of ice, a carafe of water, and a pitcher of tea. “Seems as though she has court tomorrow.” She sat the tray on the table, then eyed Edward.

“That’s right.” The young man pocketed his hands. He was pretending and posing as Grant, exactly as Anna had done with the receptionist after following Bryce to Hammond Hospital.

Edward lifted the magazine and resumed reading.

“So, Serine told you she was coming up here?” Anna asked.

“I was with her when you called,” the young man said to Anna. He glanced at Edward absorbed in the words of the magazine. Anna wanted to rip the circular from his hand. A charade rooted in Serine’s misbehavior was occurring before their eyes and Edward acted oblivious.

“I wanted to come with her,” the young man said to Anna. “I told her she should take some time off, and that I would drive her. She said she’d be okay, that she needed a day or so alone.” The sparkle in his blue eyes dimmed with what appeared a sadness of knowing his own loss. “I was worried about her.”

Anna was certain that Serine had spent much time speaking about, if not criticizing, her to the young man. Anna concluded the young man’s visit had been as much an expedition to clarify facts about Serine’s family or perhaps about Anna. Maybe it had been to discover who Serine truly was and what she was up to.

Serine’s face went from placid dispassion to complete disdain and mortification as she passed through the entryway of the sliding glass door and onto the patio. Serine rushed toward the young man who was standing beside Anna.

“Why did you come here? I told you I’d been fine.” Anna’s youngest child bore the demeanor of guilt that Edward had worn for three decades.

“Grant’s come to see about you,” Anna said. “He was worried.”

Serine shot her mother a cool glance of horror mixed with rage. “I had to see for myself.” The boy was no fool. Anna was about to ask his real name, but then a tall, muscled figure sporting a tailored navy suit, white shirt, and red tie emerged from around the corner of the house. His stride conveyed a manner of consequence and determination.

“Grant!” Serine ran to the dark-skinned man in the suit.

Last ebbs of color drained from the face of the young white man. A horrible wave of embarrassment swept over Anna. Relieved as she was that she had not misjudged her daughter, some parts of her wished that she had.

“You told me to come around the back way,” the real Grant, tall and brown, pulled her to him and landed a light kiss on her cheek. Serine shuttled him to the far side of the pool.

The cold amazement on the face of the young unnamed man revealed that he had uncovered the very thing for which he had come hunting. Theo abandoned the fray and went inside.

Anna said to the young man, “Would you like to go inside, perhaps in the kitchen, and sit down?”

Emerging from what Anna could only imagine as the fathom less pits of whirling thoughts came the words, “Yes, I’d like that.”

Anna placed the glass of water on the kitchen table and then sat adjacent to the young man. Edward remained upon the chaise reading, and sinking further into what Anna regarded as,
that infernal magazine.

“How do you know my daughter?” Anna asked.

“We live together. Well, sometimes I spend the night with her.” He lowered his gaze to the glass of water and stared as if he was unable to make sense of what was occurring.

A bit bewildered by his motivations that she was yet to tease apart, Anna yet respected and liked the young man. It took courage to drive eight hours into the unknown to seek out the truth. “What’s your name,” she asked.

“I’m sorry. It’s Matthew.” Again, he extended his tanned, pink hand, this time less warily. Again she shook it. “My friends call me Matt.”

“I’m Anna. Always have been; always will be, Anna. At least in this lifetime.” The two laughed.

Solemnity reasserted itself in Matt’s demeanor. His body seemed to lose energy. He leaned back into his chair and attempted to straighten his shoulders.

“I love your daughter. But I don’t think it’s meant for us to be together, at least not in this lifetime.”

Anna found the qualification interesting and profound. “Why do you say that?” she asked.

Matt remained focused upon Serine and Grant on the other side of the pool. He turned and said, “You mean other than the obvious?” ?

Chapter 15

Anna felt herself slipping back in time as Matt’s gaze receded.

“You know,” Matt said, “I don’t think the unfaithful are the ones at fault. It’s people like me who won’t give up, and refuse to see the futility of our hopes. We won’t stop dreaming.” He appeared to know much about the Manning family drama. Anna’s intrigue of him deepened. “Hopes aren’t always founded on solid experiences,” he continued. “As my therapist explains, dreams compliment our waking experiences, the day-to-day reality we don’t always like or trust. Dreams don’t lie, ever.”

Once again Matt turned to the sliding glass door, and observed Serine and Grant arguing on the far side of the pool. Edward, under the awing, and seemingly oblivious, continued reading.

“I had a dream right after Serine learned her father was dying,” Matt said. “She was tending Mr. Manning in his last moments. She was crying, begging him not to die.” Feeling exposed, Anna grew anxious. The struggles of her family had spread beyond the con fines of her and her children’s emotions and were touching the lives of those on the periphery. “He died,” Matt went on describing his dream. “Serine lay on his chest, still and sad, her eyes glaring, seeing but not seeing, longing for what could have been, but never was.”

Anna lowered her eyelids.

Moments later Matt said, “I’m a painter. I do abstracts. I met Serine when she came to one of my shows. I liked the way she interpreted my paintings. Or rather that she
didn’t
. I caught her observing the centerpiece of the exhibit, the largest one in the show. I had painted the back of woman. She was nude. In the top right corner the sun was setting in the west. In the bottom left side, another sun was rising.
Life and death, side by side
. Serine stood in front of the painting, observed it for a long time. I walked over to her, and told her I was the artist. At first, she didn’t believe me.”

“That’s Serine all right. A prosecutor forever on the offensive.”

“She never said like some people, `Oh, I could tell you were the artist.’ Instead, she explained, `It reminds me how exposed I feel when I’m in love.’”

Anna’s breath grew shallow and tense.

“I fell in love with her right then. She had seen right through me. She knew how I felt when I was painting the woman. The painting was me. Every person I paint is
me
. I worked on the nude woman throughout the last stages of my mother’s breast cancer. The woman was my hurt, the living and the dying, and the loss of my mother. The two suns were the freedom I felt when she finally died.”

“When was the show where you met Serine?”

“About a year ago, late August, early September,” Matt said. “How prophetic,” Anna mused.

Twelve months earlier she had entered the throes of seeking a divorce. She had notified the children. Serine was not home when Anna had called. Anna had left a message. Days later, Serine called back saying that she didn’t know how Anna could do such a thing. The conversation had continued with Serine launching intense accusations declaring Anna’s lack of concern for the family and their needs. Serine ended the raw treatise with
,
“I’m engaged.”

Through the sliding glass door, Anna saw Serine and Grant’s argument had reach a head.

“Excuse me for a moment,” she said to Matt. Anna walked past Edward still lying on the chaise and reading, and continued to the far side of the pool. Approaching Serine and Grant, she formed a cordial smile and extended her hand to Grant.

“Hello, I’m Anna Manning,”

“Grant Seifert.” He shook her hand.

“I hope you’re making yourself at home,” Anna said, “—as much as you can.” She eyed Serine standing beside him. Grant was as much a victim of Serine’s emotional social play as Matt.