Fiona Range
Page 47
“He was crazy, Fiona,” he insisted, his face so close there was no snow or trees, only the blue vastness of those eyes. “I tried to help. I always did, but he hated me.”
“Of course he did! It was your secret balancing his.”
“My secret? My God, Fiona! You don’t believe anything he said, do you? He was out of his mind. He just killed a man!”
“But he was telling the truth. I know he was.”
“No!”
“He told me the truth, but you can’t. You’re a liar. You’ve always been a liar. Every day, everything that happened, every moment between us, it was all a lie!”
“Fiona, listen. I need your help. Please. We can do this. Please! I beg you,” he groaned.
“We can do what? Keep on living this lie?” Her hair stood on end. “What will you do when I tell the truth? Will you call me a liar?”
“Fiona, listen to me. I’ll always take care of you. I promise.”
“Always?” She couldn’t help smiling. “The way you took care of Patrick?”
“Please, Fiona, it’s not just me. Think of your aunt Arlene.”
“Did she know?” she asked, pointing toward the quarry. “Well did she?”
“No, not about that.”
“No, she knew. Oh, maybe she never knew for sure, because she never wanted to, but in her way she knew. She had to. She knew my mother was dead.”
“No! No, I swear she didn’t. How can you say that? She’s been so good to you.”
“Really? Then what the hell was she thinking every time I called you uncle? Was she thinking of me and how apart, how different I always felt from everyone?”
He closed his eyes and seemed to shudder. “This will destroy her. Do you understand? It’ll be the end of everything.”
“It already is.”
“No! No, don’t you see? No one has to know but us. Please, Fiona. I’ve tried to be a good man. I’ve tried. My God, you know I have. I never shirked my responsibility. I did the right thing. I raised you and took care of you.”
“Isn’t that wonderful! You raised me!”
“I was good to you. I was!” His voice broke.
She stared at him. He actually believed it. “But Uncle Charles, don’t you see? It was all bullshit, just bullshit. That’s all it ever was.”
“But not anymore. We’ll get through this. I promise. We will!” He tried to hug her, but she pushed him away.
“We will?”
“Yes, as long as we’re honest with each other.”
“No. As long as I’m your screwup niece, right? Crazy Fiona, always trying to tear the wonderful Hollis family apart? The slut? Oh, she’s just like her mother, isn’t she? And poor Judge Hollis. He’s such a good man, such a goddamn good man, you son of a bitch, you.” She hit his chest. “You’re my father. My father! Tell me you’re my father! Tell me!”
He shook his head.
“Why can’t you say it? Why?”
His mouth opened and closed. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he finally gasped.
“But it was me who’s paid the price all these years. Not you. Me!”
He covered his face with his hands. His shoulders quaked, but he made no sound at all. There was nothing she could do, nothing she felt like doing. Nothing but watch him grow smaller and weak. His spine curved, bending him so far forward that for the rest of his days he could not see the sky, just the ground, and only that shadowed portion nearest him.
The world would know that he was her father. Patrick’s body would be located the following spring. Though it would take a few days more, the old rusted car would be dredged up in a creaking disgorgement of mud as the enormous crane swung it onto dry ground. And just as Patrick had said, there in its trunk would be the remains of a young woman with raggedy bleached hair, a once blue shoebox, and thousands of dollars in cash. But all the rest would be their secret, a bond forever inextricable as it is with flesh and blood.
Chapter 22
He has been with her mother, so when his eyes open on Fiona’s picture he is startled, then angry to find himself awake again, still here, trapped among the living. This is his hell, this long, helpless wait for the end. The hallway floorboards creak and his breath catches. He watches the door with the same trepidation and need he felt for the child he couldn’t risk loving. It is only the wind. Soon another winter will be hard upon them, and here he sits propped against pillows. Dust grows on the wheelchair in the corner. There is nowhere he wants to go. He does not miss the court. Travel is difficult and he is easily confused. Green Mountains, Rocky Mountains, what’s the difference? He has seen more than his share of mountains, oceans, grand houses, gardens, and museums. His universe is now this cluttered room that used to be the den. On cold, wet days the unused fireplace gives off an acrid stench. There is a constant grayness to the light. His grandchildren fidget in his wretched presence. He watches television, mostly the news, but he knows it’s bullshit, all bullshit. The nurse reads the paper to him every morning. His mind wanders and he dozes fitfully, dreaming of his children. Their forgiveness is painful. He squirms when they insist on his virtue. He knows the sterile portrait it was, how skilled his careful rendering of morality and grace, instead of real goodness with its raw, awkward beauty born of struggle and pain. Fiona watches, silent because she knows. She knew long before she sat beside him in teary anger and triumph, staring at each sibling, when he said, “I am Fiona’s father.”
The police got to the house first that day, so the minute he and Fiona came through the door Arlene knew. But then, she has always known more than needed be told. Everything is different between them. There is no need for pretense. Duty and her inexhaustible kindness sustain him now. Love had been her journey and destination, but since Natalie it has all been aftermath, a silent struggle to maintain this delicate mechanism that neither dares probe too deeply. With that fatal error in judgment his good life ended, and deceit began, the first lie to his wife being that he had never stopped loving her, the second being that he had never loved her sister, had never found, sought, invented opportunities to be alone with her, the next being that it had been purely physical, a brief affair that began with her loneliness and her pursuit of him when Patrick went away. In truth it had begun years before, when she was fourteen and already a woman whose wild beauty and impulsive energy made a weak man’s tired wife seem even plainer. In the end when he would not leave Arlene, Natalie told her sister everything.
The last lie is safe with Fiona. She will never destroy her aunt with the revelation that for all those years he knew Natalie lay curled in the trunk, that he knew and did nothing, until that moment on the ledge with Patrick’s swaying plea—Come on, help me, Charlie. This is your chance. Your last chance. Help me one more time—when he finally did. He stepped forward and held out his arm because the good a man does, like the sorrow in his heart, has to count for something—if not honor, then for some shred of redemption, he was begging Patrick, but the words were as futile against the wind as the falling snow.
Arlene opens the door. His body stiffens with indignation. The nurse is here. She will bathe him and change the bag, the bullshit, all the bullshit. Arlene ignores his squirming. She must be so tired of it all. He certainly is. The nurse says she ran into Elizabeth and George downtown last night at the Merchants’ Bazaar. Their little boys are such gentlemen. Arlene smiles. She leans down and repeats it to make sure he’s heard.
He wishes he could be as proud as she is, as good and as grateful, but how can he when it’s all bullshit. It’s all been such bullshit.
“Charles,” Arlene scolds. “Mrs. Cooper doesn’t need to hear that kind of language.”
“Sorry,” his loathsome tongue finally manages to say.
“I know you are.” Arlene sighs, wiping the corner of his mouth with a tissue.
Speaking over his head, the nurse asks when Fiona’s due.
“Fiona?” he struggles to ask, but they continue talking. “Coming?”
&nb
sp; “No, Charles. The baby. Mrs. Cooper asked when Fiona and Rudy’s baby’s due.”
He tries to hear the rest. His brain throbs with the effort, then his eyes close heavily in the glow of Natalie’s trusting young face.