Night of Fire and Snow

by Alfred Coppel

  He heard the siren on the highway.

  Someone had seen them go down or had seen the fire.

  He rubbed snow on Tom’s cheeks and Tom opened his eyes and looked at him and then turned away his eyes with his face as still and pale as the death of friendship. Miguel closed his eyes and let go of consciousness. He could hear the wind sighing and voices at a great distance and he tried to burrow deeper into himself to find some tiny spot of warmth to get away from the bonecracking cold. Why did you have to say what you did, Tom? he wondered, filled with a cobalt grief, why did you have to say those things?

  SEVENTEEN

  Through the curtain of uneasy sleep filtered the insistent voices of flight. The tremblings of the airframe spoke to him, the tiny creakings and whisperings accused.

  Miguel stirred restlessly in his seat. It was an accident an accident accident—

  Like hell.

  “Mr. Rinehart?”

  He opened his eyes and saw the shiny winged badge on the stewardess’s cap. The junior stewardess.

  “You’re a nervous sleeper,” she said.

  He looked around, trying to orient himself. The airplane was empty. The cabin lights were on, the cabin door stood open. He could hear voices outside. The stilled engines creaked and ticked as hot metal cooled. A cold wind blew in out of the gray morning. He thought of what he must do and he was filled with a kind of dread.

  He shook himself and reached for a cigarette, then he remembered he could not smoke here.

  “Are we—“ He went hoarse with sleep still in his throat and she finished for him.

  “San Francisco,” she said cheerily. “End of the line.”

  BOOK TWO — San Francisco

  EIGHTEEN

  Miguel checked into the Mark and asked the clerk to arrange a car rental for him. Then he went to his room and showered and changed. From his window he could see the city spread out, as though for inspection, under the lead-colored cover of low clouds.

  Seeing it so depressed him. It didn’t match the picture he had been carrying in his mind and he felt lonelier and more displaced than ever.

  Somewhere, he thought, to the west, past the rise of hills beyond Van Ness, beyond the forest green of Golden Gate Park and facing the ocean, was Alaine’s new house in Seacliff. He had never seen the place but, knowing Allie, he could guess that it would be smart and tasteful—a kind of gembox of a place.

  He took the French music box from his luggage and set it on the dresser. That would be the last and most painful chore-delivering the box to his daughter. Dorrie would have grown inches. Alaine had sent a picture to Rome but it hadn’t arrived in time so he had no idea of what Dorrie looked like now without her pigtails. And he had to remember that she would have forgotten him. He had to be prepared for that.

  The thought of actually knocking on Alaine’s door and walking into her house after all this time was almost frightening. He wondered if he could possibly call and make arrangements to see Dorrie downtown—

  He looked at himself in the mirror and said, “You goddam coward.”

  He finished dressing and went down into the lobby. The place looked different. The furniture was rearranged someway and the whole effect was alien to him. He asked the clerk at the desk about it.

  “Yes, sir,” the man said. “The place was completely redone by Dorothy Draper about four years ago.”

  Miguel felt a stab of annoyance. Of course he remembered that. He hadn’t been away that long. But still the whole effect was not the familiar one he had expected.

  “I must have remembered it differently,” Miguel said. He cashed another of his travelers’ checks at the cashier’s window and paid the deposit required for the car rental. The whole business was rather more complicated than he had expected. But finally he was told the car would be waiting for him in the garage when he was ready for it.

  He bought a paper and noted briefly that a French nurse who had been at Dien Bien Phu was visiting the city, that Inge Borkh was singing Salomé at the Opera House, and that the Golden Gate Bridge directors were considering lowering the tolls.

  The Chronicle in his hands made him feel a little more at home and he walked into the nearly empty Lochinvar Room and ordered breakfast.

  In the early morning quiet he could hear the shave-and-a-haircut-six-bits bell of the cable car climbing the Powell Street hill. He half-smiled to himself. That was something you didn’t hear in Paris or Rome or anywhere else for that matter. It was a sound you carried inside your head, forgotten but always waiting to be remembered, if you were from the Bay Area.

  He suddenly thought, not without some shock, that he hadn’t once given Nora space in his mind since the airplane touched down at International Airport. And then all the rest of it came crowding in on him and he lost what peace of mind his surroundings had begun to build in him.

  He looked at his watch. Ten of nine. First he would see Essie.

  He pondered calling the convent first, but decided against it. He didn’t want to take a chance on Esther not wanting to see him. The whole idea left a bitter taste in his mouth but he knew he had to try and see his sister. Not for her sake, he admitted. For his own.

  He finished breakfast slowly and without appetite, thinking of Anson and Esther and the past. We’re the only Rineharts left, he thought. Esther and Luis and me. We still owe each other and ourselves the love and loyalty of a family.

  But he faced the prospect of Essie with dread. For he knew that love and loyalty among the Rineharts was a he.

  He drove down California Street to Van Ness through the thickening traffic. Overhead, the gray overcast was showing signs of breaking. Shafts of brightness leaked through the clouds, striking spears of light from store windows and the shiny cable-car tracks.

  He drove carefully in the rented Ford sedan. The car felt huge and unwieldy and the other cars on the street seemed monstrous to him after the plain smallness of European machines.

  He missed the big Lombard Street turnoff to the bridge and had to drive on out to Bay Street and then along Marina Boulevard past the St. Francis Yacht Club and the Palace of Fine Arts.

  Seeing the cruisers and sailboats moored in the basin brought a nostalgic memory of the Nereid and old Morgan. He wondered if the Nereid were still afloat somewhere. He had heard that she had foundered in the Golden Gate sometime in 1940, but he had never had confirmation of the story. He would be sorry to think that the Nereid wasn’t still sailing. And with Morgan still at the helm, too; calm and impassive as a rock—

  God, how the memories had possessed him these last few days. Was there ever an end? Yes, there must be. And seeing Essie was the first step, a beginning. What was it Olinder had said? Lay the ghosts? Miguel smiled and thought: a new experience. Laying ghosts.

  He drove through the toll gate onto the great, single span of the Golden Gate Bridge. What a magnificent piece of work that was. You felt it each time you trusted your life to the tons of swinging steel and ferroconcrete arching high over the rushing waters of the narrows. A beautiful death wish in cable and flying tower. Through the years it drew suicides like a piper. And there was a kind of thanatoid suspension for everyone who drove out onto the span. It made you think of the Bridge of San Luis Rey. If it should fall—If. Who would spill down into the Gate with you? And why? A random sampling of humanity, or a selected few who needed to die and lacked the courage to squeeze a trigger or turn on the gas?

  But the bridge didn’t fall. It wouldn’t ever unless men destroyed it. It would exist to the end of time, the perfect stasis of death in life.

  He topped the gentle curving rise of the span and started down toward the Marin side. He thought of the days without number he had driven this route during the war. The times with Alaine, and with Tom, and with Nora, too—

  He turned off at Corte Madera and drove into the hills. The sun was out now and the warmth made the inside of the Ford smell musty and impersonal, like a hotel room. The road wound deeper into the pressing green of the hill
s. He passed a new supermarket and the beginnings of a housing development and then at last he rounded a bend and saw the wrought-iron gates of the Convent of the Holy Name.

  He was sorry now that he had come empty-handed. It would have been better to have some little thing for Essie—anything, really—some one thing to put in her hands and say, “It’s for you, hermanita.” But there was nothing and it was too late now.

  He parked on the gravel drive in front of the big brick building. What did they call it in a convent, anyway? The place where you sat politely and chatted across the rim of two separate worlds?

  He could see nuns walking or sitting in pairs in the gardens, their heads bending under the weight and warmth of the starched coifs. He walked to the door and pulled on the old-fashioned bell cord.

  Presently the door opened and a nun, her face strangely pale to his eyes, looked at him enquiringly.

  “My name is Miguel Rinehart, Sister,” he said. Tm looking for Sister Cecilia.”

  “This is not a visiting day, Mr. Rinehart,” the nun said with that faintly reproachful unctuousness of ecclesiastics.

  “I am Sister Cecilia’s brother,” he said. ‘Tm sure if you would speak to the Mother Superior—I have been out of the country for a long while and I haven’t much time.”

  “Please come in,” the nun said, and opened the door wider. He followed her through a dark, hushed corridor into a large reception room comfortably furnished and lit by the morning sun coming through a row of tall French doors facing an inner

  “If you will wait here I will see if Mother Superior can see you, Mr. Rinehart.”

  “Thank you, Sister,” Miguel said.

  He watched her go, listening to the dry rustle of her habit.

  He looked about him—at the Rouault Crucifixion dominating the far wall and the copies of Fra Filippo Lippi in smaller array opposite the windows. Mother Superior’s taste in painting was excellent. The Annunciation was particularly good.

  He was standing before it when the Mother Superior came in.

  “You admire it, Mr. Rinehart?” she asked, smiling.

  “I’ve always liked Lippi’s work, Reverend Mother.”

  She noted the form of address and moved as if to bless him but he said quickly, “I was hoping to see my sister.”

  “Please sit down,” she said.

  Miguel waited until she had taken a chair and then sat down. “It is possible,” he said, “that my sister might prefer not to see me. If that’s the case, I’ll go.”

  She inclined her head regretfully and said, “Sister Cecilia is no longer with us, Mr. Rinehart.”

  Miguel felt a cold chill, as if the dark had moved a little closer. “No longer here? I don’t think I understand. Surely she hasn’t—”

  “No, oh, no,” the Mother Superior said. “She has left this cloister for another.”

  Miguel was completely perplexed.

  “Sister Cecilia,” the Mother Superior said, “is a strange person, Mr. Rinehart. But devout. She thought our regimen here too undemanding.” The old nun shrugged. “It was between her and God to know. I did not presume to advise her. She is now a Discalced Carmelite.”

  Miguel tried to remember what he knew of that order and it was very little.

  “They are vowed to silence,” the Mother Superior said proudly, “and are the most cloistered of the orders in Christ.”

  “Where is her nunnery, Mother?”

  “In Kentucky, Mr. Rinehart. But I would make no attempt to see her. She could not speak to you if you did.”

  “I see,” Miguel said. And after a time, he said, “How long ago, Mother?”

  “She left in December of last year.”

  Even before he had gone to Europe. Essie had slipped even farther away and he had not known it.

  He stood up and said, “Thank you for your time, Reverend Mother.”

  The old nun saw him to the door and as he stepped outside, she put a hand upon his sleeve and said softly, “Be proud of her, Mr. Rinehart. We are.” And it seemed to Miguel that there was a look of sad compassion on the wrinkled, waxen face.

  “I shall pray for you, my son,” the old nun said.

  “Thank you,” Miguel said thoughtfully. Then he turned and walked slowly down the worn brick steps to his car.

  NINETEEN

  Miguel drove back to San Francisco, but he didn’t stop in the city. He stayed on 19th Avenue and headed straight south onto El Camino Real. His hands were shaking on the wheel and he wanted to stop and have a drink but it was too early and he knew that if he did he would try to hide inside the bottle until there was nothing left to do but crawl back and apologize to Nora.

  I’ll be triply goddamned first, he thought. If I go back and when I go back it won’t be because I didn’t have the guts to find out if there is any other way. Miguel Rinehart, horse’s ass nonpareil, is trying to grow up. Jesus God, wasn’t that a laugh, though?

  The King’s Highway, through San Bruno, Burlingame, San Mateo, Belmont, San Carlos, Redwood City—he wondered if Stanford men (men! babies, infants mewling and puking!) were still beating the bushes of Redwood City for townies. Of course, naturally. Some things couldn’t change. He remembered how Lawt Higby always used to carry a mattress in the tonneau of his Olds convertible whenever he went on a date with a town girl. Lawt was always a rounding son of a bitch. Miguel had never liked him. Such trifles were the building blocks of greatness among your fellow men. He wondered what had happened to Lawt. And Julian Trowbridge. By now they must have become pillars of society with memberships in the Guardsmen and the Bohemian Club and pretty wives in the Junior League. Success came to everyone, eventually, if they were smart and conformed by living according to the great American dream. Julie and Lawt and that slob Ayula and of course, the Love Goddess.

  Why had Nora given Victor Ziegler the business about Alaine, anyway? Did she really imagine that Alaine would make money troubles—good sweet Jesus, she should know better than that. Once you admitted there was nothing phony about Nora, you also had to admit she never did anything without a reason. Could she really hate Alaine so much she wanted even people who didn’t know her to think of her as a money-grubbing bitch? It was possible. When you thought about it, it was more than just possible.

  How stupid could a man be? he wondered. It had never occurred to him that Nora actually hated Alaine for being his wife.

  There was something lacking in Nora. Just what it was escaped him. Compassion, perhaps. Or maybe empathy would be a better word. What she hated was all black. And what she loved was all white.

  He looked at himself in the rear view mirror and thought: Take a bow, White Knight. The White Queen’s Knight, to be exact. And it followed that the White Queen—White, because Nora certainly loved Nora and there was no question about that—it followed that the White Queen loved her Knight. And found him just a little foolhardy. And stupid. Not very bright. You have to be patient with him, you see, because he’s brave but not very bright.

  He pounded on the steering wheel with the heel of his hands. How long, he wondered, had he known Nora felt like that?

  Goddam her beautiful little beady-eyed body. What did that leave now? If there was no place to go? He thought of the bridge arching high over the Golden Gate. Did he have that kind of courage? With an effort he forced the thought from his mind, or tried to. The idea lingered defiantly. Maria’s way. The final, genuine screw-you gesture when there was no place left to go.

  When he reached Palo Alto, he stopped at an unfamiliar shopping center where the Indian Drive-In used to be and called Becky’s number. It was listed that way now: Mrs. Becky Coulter Rinehart, Country Club Drive, Los Altos. Only it should really be Becky Coulter Rinehart fils et père—

  He almost hung up before there was an answer but suddenly Becky’s voice came through the receiver and he stood for a moment in the booth, tongue-tied and not moving.

  Finally, he said, “Becky?”

  “Yes?” The voice sounded puzzled. Didn’t
many men call dear Becky at this hour of the morning? “Yes, who is this?”

  “It’s Mike, Becky, I—”

  “Mike, I knew it—Something told me you were going to call. Something told me. Where are you now?”

  She actually sounded glad to hear him, Miguel thought with surprise.

  “I’m in Palo Alto, Becky.”

  “Are you alone? Did you come down on the train? You’re coming out, aren’t you?”

  “Yes I’m alone and no I have a car and I’ll come out if you have no objections,” Miguel said.

  “Objections! Why, Mike—I want to see you.”

  Miguel stared for a moment at the round, blind eye of the telephone dial. He hadn’t been quite prepared for this much cordiality from Becky. Their last parting had been acrimonious, to say the least.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll be out in about fifteen minutes.”

  He hung up the receiver thinking about that last parting. During the war he had done his best to see as little of Becky as possible. Even after he was transferred to Hamilton Field, only sixty miles from home, he stayed away from home.

  Alaine had tried to change that while Raoul was alive, but he had resisted her so stubbornly that she began to understand that there were things about his leaving home that he had never discussed with her. That must have hurt her, he knew, because Allie hated to be shut out.

  And then, in 1947, had come that last time at home and Alaine had been there and had seen in the viciousness of his attack on Becky that there was a sexual antagonism between son and stepmother as well as the conflicts brought on by Raoul’s death.

  They had arrived too late. Raoul was dead. And Miguel, resentfully, had told Becky, “I can’t help it. I’ve never thought of you as my father’s wife. I never will, either.”

  Becky, crying, had replied, “Believe this much of me, Mike. I loved him very much.”