As she came back down the hallway, Mr. Clinch’s door was closing. She stopped and knocked on it.
“Yes?” came his faint voice.
“Mr. Clinch, can you open the door? It’s me, Fiona Range. I’ve got something for you.”
“Oh! Oh dear, what is that now?” he said from inside, fumbling anxiously with chains and bolts. He opened the door and peered out.
“Something you’ve been looking for. There,” she said as she grabbed his crotch with a good, hard squeeze. “It must be so boring to always have to do it yourself.”
She had to be careful. She squinted, turning the locket slowly under the light. The thin gold clasp was fragile, its tiny hook so worn it barely clicked. She had been opening it all night to look at the miniature faces. She closed it again now, gently. It felt cold against her skin. She eased against the pillows and circled her thumb over the engraving as if for some message from the women who had worn it before, the women she had never known. Earlier, she had painstakingly pried out the brittle pictures, disappointed to find nothing hidden behind them, not an address, phone number, or secret wish for her daughter’s happiness. She couldn’t believe Patrick had merely found the locket in his house. She had called him a little while ago to see if her mother might have asked him to give it to her someday when she was old enough to understand.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he had said, sounding cranky and half asleep.
“Why she left. I mean why she had to, or—”
“Look. I told you, didn’t I? I just found it, that’s all.”
“I know, but how did it—”
“That’s it! I don’t want to talk about it anymore! You woke me up!” He had slammed down the phone.
She reached up and turned out the light. She held on to the locket with her eyes wide in the dark. This ache inside wasn’t loneliness or even regret, but a profound disappointment in herself. She had been right to send Rudy away. The red numbers glowed on the clock. Eleven-fifteen. He had left five hours ago. Maybe he was on his way back to New York. She rolled over and lay with her back to the clock. She was glad he hadn’t called. It would be easier, better for everyone if he left Dearborn. He shouldn’t have hounded Elizabeth by following her here. Love didn’t make anything simple. By putting a false glow on pain it allowed terrible cruelties to be committed, then overlooked or excused. Never again, she vowed, turning onto her stomach and pulling the pillow over her head. The locket dug into her breastbone. If she was lucky she’d never have to see him again, and no one would know.
“Oh God,” she moaned, flinging the pillow at the wall. Her life was filled with men she couldn’t bear the sight of. Maybe she should leave. She could start over somewhere else. It wasn’t just time she had wasted, but so much of herself. All that spent energy and nothing to show for it, nothing, nothing at all, not even friends were left. Thank God she had come to her senses with Rudy. If she hadn’t her family would have abandoned her forever. She sat up and turned on the light. She opened the locket. The picture of her mother looked like herself at three or four. The opposite face resembled Ginny as a child.
“Yes. Yes,” she whispered as she touched the slender hinge joining the sisters’ oval images. What had been the point of her struggle all these years? For the life of her now she could not recall. It had taken Patrick to bring her to this. Because this is what lasts, she thought, searching her mother’s miniature face, then her aunt’s. Yes. Once this is right, the rest will follow and be resolved. Her pursuit had been not just of Patrick, but of the very thing she held in her hand, its tangled knots and deeply clenched roots continuing to sustain her. She closed the locket. Her grievances seemed puny and selfish compared to her family’s great patience and kindnesses through the years.
The phone rang, and she leaped across the bed, then caught herself. Hand poised, she waited until the fourth ring before answering.
It was Rudy. “Did I wake you up?”
“Yes,” she lied, yawning.
He had just left Elizabeth, and he needed to talk to her. Now, if he could.
“It’s too late.”
“I won’t stay long. It’s important.” He sounded upset.
“What is it? Tell me now.”
“I’d rather come over if it’s all right.”
She closed her eyes. “No,” she made herself say. “It’s not all right. If it can’t wait till morning, you’ll have to tell me over the phone.”
“I’m coming over.”
Rudy didn’t take off his jacket. He slumped on the edge of the chair, his long bony legs looking even thinner under the wrinkled scrubs. He gestured as he spoke, pointing, now jabbing his chest with anger and regret that he hadn’t seen this coming. He should have. All the signs had certainly been present. But that’s what happens when you’re too close. Even her own parents weren’t sure what was happening. Her mother thought she had some virus that was draining her energy. She was sure a few days bed rest would get her back on her feet in time for school on Monday.
“Well, you’re the doctor. Did you tell her?”
“I said it was obvious she was deeply depressed, and that I wanted her to see someone right away. Elizabeth said she only wanted me to help her.”
“I meant my aunt!” Fiona said, unable to hide her impatience. “Did you tell her?”
“Elizabeth asked me not to. She doesn’t want to upset them.”
“God!” she groaned. “How could you just leave it at that? I mean, do you usually let your patients call their own shots?”
“She’s not my patient. That’s the problem.”
She nodded. “Your fiancée. I forgot.”
He described Elizabeth sitting in bed in her darkened room where she’d been since the party. She wouldn’t let him turn on the light. He apologized for barging in on her. He offered to come back later when she felt better, but she said she was glad he was there. They needed to talk. She said he deserved a better woman than she’d been. She begged him to forgive her. She said she’d been so confused about George that she’d misled him and ruined his life. He tried to tell her that she hadn’t ruined his life—in fact, quite the opposite, because he was happier here than he’d ever been anywhere. He had no regrets, none at all.
Elizabeth had burst into tears. “Don’t. Oh, please, don’t,” she had cried. “I’ve just been so selfish and I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” she kept sobbing into her cupped hands as she rocked back and forth, insisting she had ruined everything for everyone, and she hadn’t meant to. “In a hundred thousand years,” she had gasped, “it’s the last thing on earth I ever wanted to happen.”
Would he please, please at least believe that, that she’d never meant to hurt anyone.
Of course he knew that, he said. She wasn’t selfish, he told her, just confused and pressured, and that was his fault for pursuing a relationship she clearly hadn’t wanted. After a while, when she seemed a little calmer, he told her that he understood her unresolved feelings for George, and that it was all right.
“‘No, it’s not,’ she said. It was a terrible thing she’d done, but she wanted me to know it was over between them. She swore it was. ‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to swear to me.’
“‘Yes, I do!’ she said. ‘Because I need to know you believe me.’ She said she’d had to be sure about her feelings for George, and now she absolutely was. She said she’s going to get herself together and prove to me that I did the right thing by coming to Dearborn. ‘Elizabeth,’ I tried to tell her. ‘You didn’t make me come. I came because I wanted to. I needed to.’
“She said, ‘You came because I wasn’t honest with you.’
“‘Then let’s be honest with each other now,’ I said. ‘I am,’ she said, and she . . .”
“She told you that she loved you,” Fiona said, and he nodded. “Good.” She sighed. “Bittersweet story, happy ending. My favorite kind.” She sat across from him on the couch, both of them aware of the enormous stillness betw
een them. Outside, gusts of wind whistled, and the bare branches lashed the window.
He kept biting his lip. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But it obviously wasn’t the right time to tell her.”
“Sorry? Why be sorry? I told you, didn’t I? This is the way things have to be.” She stood up, wanting him to go.
“But they’re not going to be this way. Of course they’re not,” he said, looking up at her. “Elizabeth just needs to be thinking more clearly, that’s all.”
She laughed. “No, Rudy, you’re the one who’s not thinking too clearly. Elizabeth’s made her decision, so things should be pretty simple from here on in.”
He stood up, and she was relieved. She was tired, tired of him, tired of men, but more than anything, tired of always trying to justify her mistakes. She had blundered—terribly. They both had, but why waste a moment more on it? They both loved Elizabeth, and that was that. “So good night and goodbye.” She started to open the door.
He held it closed. “I love you. I care about Elizabeth, and right now she’s falling apart. I’m worried about her, I am. But it’s you I love, Fiona, more than I’ve ever loved anyone in my entire life.” He reached to touch her chin, but she turned her head.
“You know how I feel, so would you please go? Please?” She tried to open the door again.
“Tell me how you feel. Look at me and tell me.”
“I already did.”
“Then tell me again. Look at me and tell me.” He tried to smile.
“I’m sorry, Rudy, but I don’t love you,” she said, smiling back.
Chapter 18
As Fiona came down the walk Sunday, Elizabeth’s covered windows were a jarring sight. Shades drawn in daylight had always been considered a character flaw here. Industrious people with nothing to hide raised their shades first thing every morning. What a waste of time, she thought. All that fastidious attention to detail, not only raising the shades every morning, but positioning each one precisely parallel to the third mullion so that seeing such symmetry passersby would know that this was a house where order prevailed.
In the late gray light of the chilly afternoon the house seemed as dormant as the tall leafless lilac shrubs her great-grandfather had planted by the door over a hundred years ago, some as thick as small tree trunks now. She thought his name had been Phillip. Aunt Arlene would know. She and Uncle Charles had always had a great sense of history, ancestry, roots, and belonging, which they had instilled in their children. For Fiona, however, caring had seemed futile with her own heritage such a painful confusion of dead ends and denial. She had been little interested in their dinner-table tales of a feisty great-grandmother who raised pigs and chickens and her shrewd, tobacco-chewing husband who, when denied a loan by the local bank, started his own, the Collerton Co-op, which was still doing business to this day.
Surprised to find the door locked, she rang the bell three times before anyone came.
“Fiona!” Aunt Arlene pulled her close in a grasping embrace. “What a nice surprise!” She stood back, smiling. She picked a fleck of lint from Fiona’s sleeve, then apologized for fussing. “I’m so glad you’re here. I was just thinking how right about this time on a Sunday afternoon you’d start telling us your head hurt or how much your belly ached.” Aunt Arlene laughed. “Laying the groundwork for Monday morning.”
“Except it never worked,” Fiona reminded her.
“No, because I was on to you, lady,” her aunt said, wagging her finger. “You know, just a little while ago, I said to your uncle, do you remember how noisy Sundays used to be when the children were all home? He used to complain that he couldn’t hear himself think, and I’d remind him what my mother always said, to enjoy it, because someday it’ll get so quiet, all you’ll be able to hear are your bones creaking.”
“Is that why the music’s on so loud?” Fiona shouted over the keening of an Irish ballad that spilled out of the den into the drafty hallway.
“Charles!” her aunt called through the door.
A huge log blazed in the fireplace. Besides the fire the only other light in the cozy room shone low and diffuse on Aunt Arlene’s empty chair and her hurriedly dropped needlepoint canvas. Uncle Charles dozed with his head back in his maroon leather chair and his slippered feet propped on the ottoman. His jaw sagged open. Discarded Sunday papers were fanned out around him on the floor.
“Charles, wake up. Look who’s here! Fiona just came!” Her aunt turned off the stereo.
With the abrupt silence his eyes opened wide, darting between wife and niece. His hands gripped the chair arms. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded in a hollow voice.
“Nothing. Nothing at all, dear,” Aunt Arlene said with an affectionate pat on his leg. She picked up her needlepoint and sat down. Reminding Fiona how cold the old house got late in the afternoon, she urged her to come sit close by the fire. Fiona said she would, but not right now.
“Why? Why not now?” Uncle Charles challenged with pursed lips, truculent as ever in his first minutes roused from sleep.
“Charles,” Aunt Arlene warned with a stern look over her half-glasses.
“I’m going to go up first and see how Lizzie’s doing,” Fiona said.
Her uncle said she was probably still asleep. She’d been sleeping most of the day. “That’s what she needs most right now,” he added, peering up through the flickering shadows.
“If she is, then I’ll be right back down.” It wasn’t her cousin’s sleep he didn’t want disturbed, but Elizabeth herself. He regarded Fiona now with the same vile apprehension she’d seen the other night when she’d left the party with Rudy. “I just want to see how she’s feeling. Make sure it’s not the old Sunday sickness,” she added with a laugh.
“Well, I hope that’s all it is,” her aunt said, plucking her needle from the brightly threaded canvas in which a blood-red rose was being stitched on white trelliswork. “Because nobody needs a break from school more than your cousin, and will you please tell her I said so.” She clipped off a fuzzy strand of red yarn, deftly knotting it. “Talk about giving one’s all,” she continued in that bright, delicate voice that had always reminded Fiona of the sunporch mobile with its tremulous glass birds, shimmering and clinking with the slightest turbulence. “It’s time Elizabeth took care of Elizabeth now!” her aunt declared, the forced gaiety not only hanging in the air, but touching every surface, leaving Fiona and Uncle Charles nowhere to look but into the sputtering flames.
Upstairs, Fiona tapped lightly on Elizabeth’s door, then opened it and peeked in. The dark air through the crack was warm and stale. “Lizzie?” she whispered.
“I’m awake,” answered the frail voice. Elizabeth sat propped against pillows.
Opening the door wider, she saw Elizabeth’s head jerk away from the hallway light.
“Please close it!”
“Hey, what’s wrong?” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m tired. I just feel so drained,” Elizabeth said.
Fiona put her hand over Elizabeth’s icy fingers. “Do you know why you feel like that?”
“No.”
She wanted to turn on the light, but Elizabeth said it bothered her eyes. She was sorry, she said, but she just felt better in the dark.
“This is better?” Fiona asked. “What was it like then when you felt worse?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said with a sob she kept trying to choke back.
“Lizzie!” Touching her, Fiona was shocked by the bony shoulder knob beneath the nightgown flannel. “Don’t cry,” she whispered, forcing herself closer to the sheeted, musky sourness. “It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right. You don’t have to cry.”
“I know,” her cousin sobbed. “I shouldn’t be. There’s not even any reason, I know, but I can’t help it.” Forearm across her face, she sank back against the pillow. “What I really need right now is to sleep. And then I’ll feel better.”
Fiona said Uncle Charles had told her tha
t she’d been sleeping all weekend. Elizabeth scoffed, with a stuffy, bubbly-nosed sound, and said she couldn’t seem to sleep for more than minutes at a time. Whenever she heard footsteps she pretended to be asleep.
“You were always so good at that!” Fiona said. “I’d start smiling or one eye would twitch, or I’d have to swallow, but you could always pull it off. You never got caught!” she said, laughing.
“I know,” Elizabeth gasped, then gave a long wrenching sob.
Fiona waited. “But you feel caught now, don’t you?” she said softly.
It took a moment for Elizabeth to catch her breath enough to reply. “I’m not feeling much of anything right now. I guess I’m just too tired.”
“It’s more than being tired, Lizzie.” She touched her hand again.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“And the longer you stay up here in the dark with the door closed the worse everything seems.”
“I just need to rest, that’s all. I’ll be all right.”
“No you won’t, because you’re not just tired, Lizzie. You’re depressed.” She paused. “Do you know why you’re depressed?” Elizabeth didn’t answer so she plowed on. “Did something happen the other night with George?” She waited. “It did, didn’t it?”
Elizabeth’s hand slid free of hers.
“You can tell me, Lizzie.” She sighed. “What? You think it was all a big secret about you and George? I knew. And now I’m sorry, but I’ll admit, that’s why I brought him to the party. I know, it was another one of my diabolical schemes you always used to accuse me of. But it just doesn’t make sense. I mean, why wouldn’t you want to be with him if you love him?”
“But I don’t! I never should have seen him again! I almost made a terrible mistake!”
“I don’t believe that.” She switched on the table lamp. Elizabeth cringed in the glare, her eyelids raw and swollen from crying. “And I don’t think you do either.” Fiona held out the hand mirror, but Elizabeth covered her face. “Look at yourself! You’re on the verge of a breakdown.”
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