The Rope Walk

by Carrie Brown

  Alice was speechless. She clutched the books close to her chest, her elbows held in tightly along her sides, so as not to brush against anything. The air smelled terrible—like maybe something had died somewhere in the heaps of stuff. She tried to breathe through her mouth.

  Ahead of her, Wally turned a corner in the hall and descended a half flight of stairs. The walls on either side were hung thickly with framed photographs. Alice tried to see the faces in the portraits, but the images were obscured behind a layer of dust. Wally shifted the rug on his shoulder again and opened a set of double glass doors. The sharp scent of lemon furniture oil cut through the stale air. Though more of the same stacks lined the walls, a long mahogany dining table was completely clear, glowing with fresh polish; it looked as if the occupants of a recent feast had vanished, along with their dishes, into thin air. Wally dropped the rug from his shoulder and pushed it out of the way with his foot against the far wall, near a window seat piled with what looked like folded blankets and coats. The heavy drapes at the window were gray, nearly colorless, though once they'd had some sort of pattern on them, Alice saw. Wally turned around to face Alice. She could hear, from somewhere distant in the house, her brothers’ voices, the thud of their footsteps. Miss Fitzgerald was nowhere in sight.

  “It didn't used to be like this,” Wally said after a minute, staring around the room. “It was always kind of cluttered, but …” He looked back at Alice. He regarded her for a minute and then gave her a rueful smile. “You'll catch a fly in there,” he said.

  Alice closed her mouth.

  “Come on,” he said. “He's back here. There are a couple of rooms that are pretty much just his stuff now. They're okay.”

  The first room into which Kenneth Fitzgerald had been installed was at the end of the house. It was long and lined with bookshelves under a low ceiling. A small fireplace beneath a thick mantelpiece that appeared to have been made out of a single, massive timber stood at one end of the room. Alice knew enough about old houses to guess that this might have been a summer kitchen once. A set of French doors in the middle of the room opened out onto a flagstone terrace, and beyond the terrace, an overgrown expanse of lawn, the long, silvery grass stirring in the breeze, stretched to the edge of the woods. The floorboards inside had been recently mopped and polished; Alice could smell the lemon polish again. A large round pedestal table stacked with books had been pushed into the center of the room, and several armchairs, their red leather seats shiny with age, arranged around it. Near the table was a heavy settee with a faded green velvet slipcover and a fur throw. Several tall boxes that, because of their shape, Alice thought must contain paintings leaned against the bookshelves. On the floor by the French doors, where bees buzzed in from the garden, stood a tall glass vase of enormous white and purple irises, their heads heavy and their scent overripe and sweet. Near the flowers, a white rag lay on the floor as if it had been thrown down in surrender.

  Alice looked up and saw herself and Wally reflected in an oval gold-framed mirror at the end of the room over the fireplace; their figures were tiny, like two people hesitating at the mouth of a cave.

  At that moment, Miss Fitzgerald bustled into the room from the terrace outside, carrying a mop and an empty bucket. Instinctively, Alice drew near to Wally. Miss Fitzgerald's apron was the sort Elizabeth would have laughed at, all French frills and a big bow behind. She moved busily past them.

  “I've just mopped,” she said briskly, as if she cleaned and mopped all the time. “Don't track anything on the floor in here.” She did not meet their eyes as she hurried past them.

  Alice did not know where to look. When Miss Fitzgerald had left the room, Alice glanced up at Wally.

  He puffed out his cheeks. “Has Archie ever said anything about this, Alice?” he asked quietly. “About the house being like this?”

  Alice shook her head. But how would someone have described it, anyway?

  Wally rubbed his forehead. “Either she's completely crazy and can't see what a mess this place is, or she's so mortified she can't let on that she sees it… because that would mean that we're seeing it, too. I don't know what Kenneth must have said to her to get her to call this morning and ask for help.” He looked down at Alice, who was still clutching her books. “Alice,” he said quietly. “This is really strange.”

  Alice looked away from him and gazed around the room. The sense of cleanliness and order here, the glimpse through the French doors of the overgrown stretch of lawn beyond the terrace, the feeling of fresh air in the room, the sounds of the birds, the vase of flowers—even if they were, oddly, on the floor— all these were a relief after the horrible clutter of the rooms they had just passed through. It was as though this room had been enchanted, or perhaps spared the terrible enchantment that had fallen over the rest of the house.

  “What good will it do to read to him?” Wally appeared to have posed the question rhetorically. He gazed around the room. “But maybe Archie is right, that it will be a kindness.” He stopped once more, and then, seeming to remember that Alice stood there beside him, he squatted down in front of her. “Are you afraid?”

  Alice shook her head, but Wally's question had unnerved her.

  “There's nothing to be afraid of,” Wally said. “He's just like anybody else. Only now he's sick. And that's not his fault. Do you understand that?”

  Again, Alice nodded, though she wasn't sure what Wally meant.

  “He's out on the terrace, in the sun,” Wally said. “Come on.”

  Kenneth Fitzgerald was sitting with his back to them at the edge of the terrace on a black metalwork chaise longue heavy with fancy scrolling. He wore a battered straw hat on his head and in his lap he held what looked to Alice like an open sketchbook. When Alice and Wally stepped outside onto the terrace, he closed the book and turned around in the chaise longue.

  Alice could not prevent her sharp intake of breath, an audible gasp, at the sight of his face. Her heart seemed to have leapt up into her throat.

  One of Mr. Fitzgerald's eyelids had been hitched open and pinned to the jutting brow bone with a narrow X of white bandage tape. The eyeball, unmasked, stared out at her, horrifying and malevolent. And yet the other eye was sad and blue, small and rather lost-looking in his face; it was as if one side of his face wanted to terrify her, while the other side asked for her forgiveness and her pity.

  “Word of the day,” he said. “Rara avis. As in, Alice. Thank you for coming.”

  Wally put a hand on Alice's shoulder.

  “A rare or unique person or thing. Rara avis.” Mr. Fitzgerald began to try to raise himself from the chair.

  Wally moved forward to offer his arm, but Mr. Fitzgerald waved him off. “I have something—” he said breathlessly, struggling to his feet, his hands on a cane. “Something inside, for Alice.”

  Alice could smell him from where she stood, a bitter smell, like burnt leaves. She wondered if it was the medicine he had to take. It wasn't his clothes; his white shirt had been starched and pressed, and his trousers were creased and clean. But his feet were bare, and they were horrible, Alice noticed suddenly, recoiling: they were purple, bulging, with thick dark nails that snaked over the end of his toes. He stood shakily. Alice looked away from him and swallowed hard. And then she saw, just beyond the terrace, Theo's head emerge at the top of the tall grass. His face was still streaked with dirt. He caught sight of her and beckoned madly with one hand. He must have crawled across the lawn through the grass on his hands and knees.

  Wally stepped backward, drawing Alice against him, to allow Mr. Fitzgerald through the doors and back into the shade of the big room. Alice glanced quickly over her shoulder at the grass again, but Theo had ducked down out of sight. She allowed Wally to steer her back inside.

  Mr. Fitzgerald was leaning over a box on the floor, one hand gripping the bookcase; with his cane he poked around inside the box. “Goddamn it,” he said. “I can't find anything. I'm afraid it will have to wait.” He straightened up and glanced a
t them, his face a lopsided mask of horror and appeal. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a handkerchief, and touched it to his mouth. “You've seen the house, Alice,” he said. “This is what happens to the sick. We lose all our dignity when we can longer protect our secrets. I should have done something about it long ago. I knew it was like this, didn't I?”

  Alice didn't know what to say. She felt embarrassed for all of them—Mr. Fitzgerald for looking so terrible, his sister for having her house like this, herself and Wally for having to see it.

  “Your great big enormous brothers have been an enormous help,” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “I'm very grateful to them.”

  Wally murmured something indistinct, a protest, Alice thought. She wanted to turn around and see if Theo was still hiding in the grass, but she didn't dare look. Mr. Fitzgerald came toward the table in the center of the room, leaning on his cane, and took a seat. He beckoned Alice to join him. “You've brought books.” He held out a hand. “Your father said you read very well.”

  Alice approached the table.

  “Will you call me Kenneth?” he said. His voice had a pleading quality. “My mother called my father Mr. Fitzgerald. That was how they addressed each other—Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald, even in their nightclothes, I suspect.” He stopped abruptly, as if he'd said something in front of Alice that he shouldn't have. “And I shall call you, Alice—not Miss MacCauley. That's all right?”

  Alice nodded.

  He reached up and touched the X of white tape at his brow. He looked at Wally. “Can I trouble you, Wallace, to make the trip to the kitchen and ask Sidonnie—she's my cook, and pray, don't offend her; I've had to lure her here from New York at an exorbitant rate—if she'd be kind enough to bring us something to drink? Lemonade? Or would you rather an iced coffee?” He turned to Alice.

  Alice had never had coffee in her life. “Iced coffee,” she said, and saw Wally raise his eyebrows at her.

  Why had she done that? She didn't even like the smell of coffee. She looked away, down at the books she still held, her cheeks burning.

  “And for yourself and the others,” Mr. Fitzgerald called after Wally. “Anything you'd like.”

  When Wally had gone, a silence fell in the room. Alice felt the heat of the flush on her neck and face. She was afraid to look at Mr. Fitzgerald—at Kenneth; could she call him that?—and his terrifying eye. She stared down at her own hands.

  After a moment, he spoke. “My mother—my Alice,” he began, and when he said her name, Alice glanced up. His bad eye was watering fiercely. He reached with a handkerchief to mop clumsily, almost brutally, at his face. “My mother read aloud to me when I was a child, everything from the Bible to Dickens to Kipling to Shakespeare. It changed my life, I'm sure of it. And I find it a comfort now. Thank you for coming to oblige me in this way.”

  Alice did not know what to say. She was aware of the quiet in the room, the swooning perfume of the irises, the buzzing drone of the bees drifting in and out of the French doors. It was strange to think of this man, this ruined old man, as a little boy, being read to by his mother.

  “I've brought some Shakespeare,” she said at last. She put the books on the table and pushed them toward him.

  He lifted the books one at a time and inspected them. “And you can read Shakespeare aloud, can you? Well, you are your father's daughter … and here's Chekhov, one of my favorites. Excellent. I knew you'd choose well. And what's this?” He smiled, tapping the journal of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis, the book Theo had selected.

  “Do you know?” Mr. Fitzgerald said. “This contains one of my favorite accounts, that of the bear who takes ten bullets, five to the lungs and one to the heart, one to the shoulder, one to the leg, and two to his lights, and who yet manages to swim across a river, bellowing with fury, and chase off his attackers. That was in the Thwaites edition, but I suppose it's in here. I would like to hear it again. Courage, eh?” He clapped his hand to his chest and smiled, but it was such a terrible smile—so angry, Alice realized after a moment—that she looked down at her hands again. He stacked the volumes on the table, his hands trembling.

  “Is your friend,” he said then carefully, not looking at her, “afraid of snakes, by any chance?”

  Alice felt her jaw drop, and the blush flame over her neck and face again, as if someone had touched a match to her skin. He'd seen Theo out there in the grass.

  “Perhaps he'd like to come in and join us before he's frightened to death by one of those garter snakes that so loves a neglected lawn.” Mr. Fitzgerald tapped his fingers on the book and then glanced over at her. “It's all right, Alice,” he said after a moment. “You can call him in. He was the very picture of stealth and it was only an accident that I happened to see him. Hope nearly doused him with her mop water.”

  Alice stood up.

  Quickly, Mr. Fitzgerald reached out and caught her arm. His fingers felt dry as paper. “Alice,” he said, “he's appointed himself your guardian, your hero. I envy him.” He dropped her arm. “I wouldn't have you—either of you—afraid of me, you know. “

  Alice looked down at him in consternation. “Okay,” she said. She couldn't think what else to say. She meant to apologize for Theo lurking in the grass, for Mr. Fitzgerald's sickness, and his horrible eye, taped open like that. For his awful sister and the state of the house. And also, she realized, for something else, something that felt like both an admission of her innocence, her ignorance—she did not understand everything that she had seen this morning—and a plea; she did not want to know as much as he seemed her to want to know of his life, the sad, adult errors of his life, everything that had gone wrong, or been neglected, or pushed aside.

  He smiled up at her, the eye watering freely, as if a river of tears ran down his face. “Go. Call him in,” he said.

  Alice ran out to the terrace. The sun was directly overhead, and the day had grown hot; a breeze ran over the grass, ruffling it like the surface of the sea. Theo was nowhere in sight.

  “Theo.” She called him in a stage whisper. “Theo!”

  Fifteen feet away, his head popped up out of the grass. He looked like a tawny little lion cub, stripes on his nose.

  “He's seen you,” she said, from the edge of the terrace. “He wants you to come inside.”

  Theo's surprise, she thought, mirrored her own. His jaw hung open.

  Slowly, Theo stood up all the way and then began struggling toward her through the grass as if he were plying deep water, his arms doing the crawl. “How'd he see me? His sister almost dumped a bucket of water on my head. Is he mad?”

  “He's not mad at us,” Alice said. “He just wants—he just wants us to read to him. His eyes—there's something wrong with his eyes.” She thought about how to prepare Theo for the sight of Mr. Fitzgerald's face, but then she realized that Theo had already seen him.

  “Yeah,” Theo said, as if she'd said the most obvious thing in the world. “It's disgusting. What's wrong with them?” With one finger he lifted up his eyelid in a grotesque way and then let it drop. “You know what? I know a boy who can turn his eyelids inside out.”

  He climbed up onto the terrace. He was barefoot; she wondered where his shoes had gone. She was aware of Mr. Fitzgerald waiting in the room behind them. She was aware of everything she had seen that morning: Miss Fitzgerald's desperation, the cluttered, filthy house, even Mr. Fitzgerald's own effort with her and with Wally, his watering eye, his horrible feet—in the face of Theo, standing there panting and dirty in front of her, all of it seemed to shiver a little and break up, like an image reflected in a pool of water. Suddenly Alice wanted to hug him.

  “I'm really, really hungry,” Theo said. “Do you think they have anything to eat?”

  Wally returned with a tray of glasses of iced coffee and a plate of buttered raisin bread. The other boys trailed in, sweating and dirty. Hesitantly, Alice took a sip of her coffee and immediately added milk and two heaping teaspoons of sugar to the glass. She thought she could manage to drink it down if
it were sweet enough. Theo took three pieces of raisin bread, unashamedly stacking them on his palm, but he refused the coffee, pulling a face. With his mouth full, he motioned to Alice to take another piece of bread and pass it to him. She helped herself quietly to another piece and passed it to him under the table.

  In the silence, Alice watched James and Wally exchange a glance. No one seemed to know what to say.

  It was Eli who finally broke the silence, speaking in his quiet, matter-of-fact way.

  “The lawn mower needs to be repaired, Mr. Fitzgerald,” he said, setting his empty glass back on the tray. “I took it down to Wilson's and left it there, if that's all right. It probably just needs to be cleaned. I'll pick it up tomorrow and come back to do the lawn.” He cleared his throat. “I cleared out the side yard some, but there's more that can be done there. The irises need to be thinned when they're done. The lilacs are beautiful; they're old ones.”

  Mr. Fitzgerald, nodding vigorously, seemed eager to agree to anything. “My mother planted those lilacs,” he said. “I'm grateful for anything you can do. I'm afraid my sister … I'm afraid it's all been—neglected. Shocking. You must just tell me …”

  It was Tad and Harry who asked the question none of the rest of them had been willing or able to ask.

  “Your sister seems to maybe want to go through some of this stuff before we take it out,” Tad said.

  “She seems kind of upset with us,” Harry said.

  For a moment Mr. Fitzgerald didn't reply. Alice wondered if he hadn't heard somehow; his attention seemed to be drifting. Then he said, “I told her I wouldn't disturb her bedroom. She's safe in there. But the rest …” He waved a hand. “All of it …Well, it must go, mustn't it?” But he didn't mean it as a question. He put one hand up over his bad eye, as if the light were hurting it; the other eye gazed out the French doors. With the staring eye invisible behind his hand, he seemed diminished somehow, Alice thought, ordinary, just a sick old man. A sick old man who'd come home to a crazy house.