* * *
Their bedroom is at the other end of the basement from the firing range, down the long narrow hallway past the furnace room. They used to sleep in a pair of airy rooms upstairs—girls in one, boys in the other—but Father decided this was safer, all of them together in the windowless cellar where the apples are stored every year. The bushels from the latest harvest tumble up against the makeshift bunkbeds, and the aroma of overripe fruit clings to the children’s clothes, skin, hair.
The thing about smells is you don’t notice them after a while. Your brain adjusts, masks them out. But then you leave the room, get a change of air, and as you return it hits you, how cloying a scent can be. Natalie hates the sweet-rot odor of the overripe fruit. She wishes Father would change his mind and let them sleep upstairs.
He can tell she’s upset. He looks at her in that knowing way of his as he takes the ice from her. “Problem?” he asks.
She’s tempted to tell him about what happened in the kitchen, but only for a moment. Father can’t abide tattling, or whining for that matter. Besides, what would she tell him, that she was asking her mother about Daddy? How do you talk to your second father about your first without hurting him? Father deserves better than that from her. And so, come to think of it, does her mother. A feeling of shame steals over her.
“Just the apples, Father,” she says. “The smell makes me sick.”
“Me, too.” He gently positions the ice pack on Jason’s knee. “How’s that?” he asks him.
“OK, I guess.” Jason’s voice is weak.
“Good. You’ll be fine.”
Natalie wonders how he can be so sure. The color hasn’t returned to Jason’s face. and sweat is beading in tiny droplets on his forehead. When she gives him a motherly peck on the cheek on the way to her bunk, his skin is cold, his jaw clenched.
But Father seems unconcerned. “All right. kids,” he says, clapping his hands, “how about a story?”
The children sit up in their beds and cheer, and Father, as always, acts disappointed. “I guess not really?”
This time their cheer is louder. Sometimes Father will lead them through this routine four or five times, each time demanding more noise, more affirmation. But not today. Today, he’s content with putting them through it just once.
“What would you like to hear?”
They start calling out suggestions while he comments happily on each one. Natalie plops down on her thin mattress and leans back against the wall. The rough-hewn wood presses into her skin, solid and certain. She knows how it will turn out: he’ll tell them how smart they are for thinking of so many stories, then choose whichever one he felt like telling in the first place. This is just a game. Part of the naptime ritual.
Stephanie clambers down from the upper bunk and curls up in her lap. “Sorry I yelled before,” Natalie says.
“It’s OK, “ her sister answers. although not convincingly. She’s wants Natalie to know she’s still hurt, but she also wants to be held.
‘‘I’ll make it up to you.” Natalie says, nuzzling her hair. “Promise.”
“Then it’s settled.” Father announces loudly. “Night-night, Bright Light it is.”
The children applaud even though they’ve heard his riff on a popular children’s bedtime story a hundred times, probably more. It is never the same twice, and always a way for him to tell them where they stand from the day just ending, which could be either fun or terrible, depending on the day. Despite that, at least it’s a story, some time with Father, a chance to forget about the men. And besides, it would be unthinkable to challenge his selection.
“In the big old room smelling of what?” he begins in a rich, warm voice that fills the cellar.
“Apples!” several of the children cry at once.
“Apples, indeed.” He pauses, thinking. “In the big old room smelling of apples, there were bushels and barrels and somebody’s Snapple.” He picks up an empty bottle from the floor and the children giggle. “There were children from Venus and children from Mars, children from space playing wigged-out guitars.”
His eyes rove over them as he speaks, each line seemingly directed at someone. He seems to be enjoying himself. “The children all waited to hear what would happen. Outside there were men who wouldn’t stop tappin’.” He makes a face as if to scare them and they laugh.
“There were places to hide but nowhere to run.” He stops and smiles at that, seemingly happy with the line. “There was no view of the stars, no view of the sun. But no one was scared, no one did worry, ‘cause everyone knew these men they would scurry. And whatever they did wouldn’t matter at all, because on these precious kids’ heads no trouble would fall.”
He pauses again, looking around for inspiration.
“There was a mop and a vacuum and even a broom, and a light in the ceiling that looked like—what?” he asked them, because this line was more familiar.
“The moon!” Stephanie exclaims.
Father flashes her a broad grin. “Wonderful. Do you children have any idea how much I love you, how precious you are to me?”
His gaze lands on Natalie, and her heart fills with guilt. What a good father he is. All that love, and how does she repay it? By letting her mind wander longingly back to another place, another father. By tormenting her mother with irrelevant memories.
And doing it in front of Uncle Rumer and Aunt Yvonne. What was she thinking?
“Yes, Father,” she assures him through dry lips.
“I hope so. It matters, it really does.” He checks his watch like he’s waiting for something and continues with the story.
Natalie doesn’t hear it. She’s wondering how she could have let this happen, what got into her, to demean Father’s love as she has. He is the one standing by them, telling them stories, giving them bedtime kisses. Not the man she used to call Daddy. Her mother was right: where is that man now? It was hurtful and mean of Natalie to invoke his memory, to suggest that he could do something to help them, and now that she has, Father will find out. Her mother will tell him, and he’ll think Natalie lied—that she doesn’t really appreciate him, the depth of his love.
Even though she does. What else does she have?
“Night-night, apples,” she hears him say. “Night-night, broom.”
He’s walking alongside the beds. With each line of the story now, he gently caresses a child’s cheek, then moves on to the next. He’s coming toward her, soon it will be her turn.
When he touches her cheek, will he feel the lie? Will he see it in her eyes, sense it in her skin?
He comes to Jason. “Night-night, nobody.” There’s no cruelty in his voice, but he seems oblivious as tears well up in the boy’s eyes. Nobody.
“Night-night, bright light,” he says, leaning over Stephanie. She laughs and wriggles with delight in Natalie’s lap.
“And Night-night to Father, who knows every slight.” He winks knowingly at Natalie, like this is some great secret they share. His rough knuckles brush lightly over her lips and rest against the tender skin at the corner of her mouth. She wants to grab his hands, beg for his forgiveness, swear her fidelity, but she’s afraid.
Then the moment is lost in the clanging of a bell. The alarm. The waiting is over.
* * *
The sounds come at them through the ceiling: muffled shouts, feet pounding across floorboards, the scattered popping of gunfire that reminds Natalie, absurdly, of popcorn in the microwave. Almost as quickly, they hear the noises from outside: the roar of strong motors, the crunching of gears, the clanking of treads, the thwokklng of a helicopter’s blades—a violent spewing of sound. And then, cutting through it all, a loudspeaker, a man’s amplified voice, sharp in its urgency, ordering them to surrender, promising they won’t be hurt.
Father leaps back and stares upward, listening, taking it ln. “Liars!” he shouts. “Liars! Do they really think I’m that much of a sucker?”
His voice is full of rage but his eyes sparkle, like they’re
filled with wonder more than fear. The children cringe in their beds, crouch low under their covers or grab for each other, their eyes wet with terror, their lips mouthing cries for mothers and fathers. They don’t have to be told what’s happening. They know.
Stephanie wraps herself around Natalie, her arms so tight around her sister’s neck they nearly choke her. “Make it stop, Natty,” she cries. “Make it stop.”
For all the world, Natalie wishes she could, but they’re trapped, waiting for their nightmare to play itself out. “Are we going to be okay, Father?” she asks.
Just then, Megan bursts into the room, tugging at the straps of a gas mask. She’s covered with soot, out of breath, and there’s a splatter of blood on her thigh. Natalie yells, “Mom!” and leaps off her bed, Stephanie still clinging to her. Her mother turns to greet them.
“Stay where you are!” Father bellows, so sharply that Natalie stops in her tracks. This isn’t the same gentle man who was reading to them moments ago—this is a man in charge, a man who doesn’t want to be crossed. “What is it?” he demands of Megan.
“They’re using gas, Father!” she cries.
“Of course they are. I said they would.”
“But what should we do?”
“Just follow the plan, like we agreed.”
This seems to trouble her, as if she was hoping for a different answer. “What about the children?”
“We’ve talked about that— I’ll tend to them. Now, get moving. You have work to do.” Megan doesn’t move. “Is there a problem?” Father demands.
“No, Father,” she says. “Of course not.” Quickly she slips her gas mask back over her face and, on her way out the door, blows her daughters a kiss. A kiss through glass and rubber. They can’t even see her lips.
As her mother disappears down the hallway, Stephanie struggles in Natalie’s arms. “Mommy!” she screams. But her mother doesn’t return, and Stephanie clutches ever more tightly at her sister, who carries her, dejectedly, back to their bunk.
In a loud, stern voice, Father calls for quiet. “Listen to me,” he shouts. “Listen to me!” He waits for the snuffling and crying to die down, but it doesn’t. “I promised you before, children, that I will never let them hurt you, and I won’t,” he says passionately. “Now, please, pay attention, we have a story to finish.”
The children are only half listening anymore. Most of them look at him, but they continue wailing.
He pulls his pistol from his belt drops the clip out into his hand and inspects it. He says goodnight to the stars, and then his eyes rove over them, stopping on each one before moving on.
Natalie wonders why finishing the story matters to him so much. What difference can it possibly make now?
Father slams the clip home, his gaze locking on Natalie as he says goodnight to the air.
It dawns on her then, what he means by not letting the men hurt them.
She watches in horror as his arm slowly begins to lift the gun in her direction. It’s just his hand at first then the barrel, then the muzzle, a tiny, malevolent cavity. “Goodnight noises, everywhere.”
The scream comes from deep within her as she lunges forward. “Father, no!”
But the shot is already no more than a ringing in her ears. The arms around her neck go slack, and she grabs at Stephanie as she falls. All she knows in that moment is the sound of her own screaming, the sensation of her body trying to heave itself inside out, and then something hard smashes into her and hurls her through empty space into darkness.
6
Voices From the Other Side
“You’re saying that’s not how it happened?”
‘‘I’m saying that’s what a frightened child thought she saw, and I understand that, I do. I mean, let’s face it, in her shoes, what would you want to believe? But no, Max, that’s not what happened.”
The two men face each other across a narrow wooden table. What strikes Natalie most is the apparent normalcy of it—how they make it seem like just another celebrity interview, the journalist in his snappy bowtie, his guest smiling amiably, a friendly chat about this and that. Typical media-age froth. Only in this case, the guest is wearing a bright orange prison uniform and talking about Natalie.
Max Temple, talk show host extraordinaire, is interviewing Father.
He goes by his real name now, of course: Ellsworth Ralston, scion of a great house. Wealthy parents, all the best schools; only that unfortunate little detour into armed fanaticism to mar the picture.
His hair is grayer than she remembers, and shorter, but otherwise he appears unchanged. Samson after the haircut, maybe, minus the loss of strength and confidence. The voice is the same, too. She hasn’t heard him speak in several years, and suddenly it comes rushing back to her, the way that voice could pour warmly over her, coating her in a sense of inclusion.
Deja vu with a vicious little twist.
In the chair next to hers, the county’s chief prosecutor, Simon Ballard, hits pause on the remote and tilts his head toward her. “You sure you’re okay with this?” he asks, studying her.
He has one of those rugged faces that would be more at home on the jacket of an adventure book, something set in the Himalayas or on the high seas, than in this courthouse conference room with its bare walls and its cheap, government-Issue furniture. He wants Natalie to call him Simon, and a couple of times she has caught him checking out her figure. What the hell—he’s a guy. Natalie figures him for a type: late 30s, ambitious but pretends to hate practicing law, clings to his youth by running marathons and reading Outside magazine, dreams of becoming District Attorney or something else political. Probably arrogant as hell, although he does have a pleasant enough smile. No points for that—Natalie doesn’t trust smiles.
Especially from a man who’s insisting she watch a program she deliberately avoided when it aired. Ballard is testing her—he wants to know whether his star witness can handle Ralston’s mastery at reinventing the truth.
“This aired when?” she asks disingenuously.
“Three nights ago.”
“Before?”
She doesn’t need to explain. Before means, before the news. Before yesterday morning. Before the court. in its infinite wisdom, announced that it had decided to grant Ellsworth Ralston a new trial, and just like that looped Natalie’s life back in on itself like a Mobius strip.
“Right. You really didn’t watch this?” It’s obvious he still finds this hard to believe.
Which irks her. It’s not as though her life has lacked for reminders of Ralston: the constant questions from people who figure out who she is, the occasional clips on the evening news, the photos in the tabloids, his intense eyes staring out at her from the rack at the supermarket checkout. There was the time a producer for one of the talk shows called and asked her to appear on the show, to talk about what it’s like to lose everyone you know. It was going to be her, a guy who lost his whole family in a plane crash, and a woman whose parents died in a car wreck a week after her husband succumbed to cancer. “Pure inspiration, nothing sleazy,” the producer told her. “We’re talking triumph of the spirit. This is a feel-good show—we’re going for uplifting.” Somehow the woman managed to sound sincere. Natalie took a pass.
“Why would I?” she demands. “I didn’t think I had to worry about his lies anymore.”
“Fair enough.” Ballard studies her quietly, then a moment later adds, “We do, though, you know, have to worry about his lies.”
He taps the remote and the screen comes alive again.
“You didn’t mean to shoot her?” Temple asks.
“Of course not.” Ralston leans in toward his interviewer. “Think of the situation, Max—our whole world was caving ln. The children were hysterical, and to me”—hls voice breaks and he pauses to collect himself—“those were my kids, Max, my responsibility. l was convinced that if I didn’t protect them, they’d get hurt.”
“But they got hurt anyway.”
Ralston nods somberly.
“Yes. They did. And if there was any way I could go back and change that, anything, I would.”
“But why bring out the gun?”
“To defend them. This is a nation of guns, Max, and I was part of it, a product of it. I believed in guns. I don’t anymore, but I did then. I was going to protect my children by whatever means I had at my disposal, and right then what I had was my gun. I wanted to be ready. You have to remember the circumstances, how panicked we all were. I mean, these men had been holding us hostage in our own home, and now they were attacking us with tanks—tanks! Do you have any idea, can you even imagine, what that’s like?”
“So what did happen—if you didn’t shoot the little girl deliberately?”
“It’s like I’ve always said, it was an accident. Her sister jumped up and screamed, it startled me. If she hadn’t . . . “ His voice fades, and he stares blankly over Temple’s shoulder.,
“You’re saying it’s her fault?”
“No.” Ralston seems shocked at the suggestion, but that’s obviously the seed he wants to plant. “Just that if things had happened differently—.”
“You wouldn’t have shot her?”
“The gun wouldn’t have gone off like it did, Max.”
Ballard makes an observation, something about Ralston being good. That’s the thing about lawyers: they admire a good liar. Natalie says he’s full of shit.
“You didn’t intend to pull the trigger?” Temple asks. “You weren’t aiming at her?”
“Absolutely not. I loved those children, I was trying to protect them. I don’t think I even realized what happened until I saw Stephanie dropping out of Natalie’s arms, and not really even then because of the explosion.”
Ring of Years Page 6