by Holly LeCraw
Of course she had felt betrayed, aghast, but she had kept it to herself. Whether she stayed silent out of fear or pride she wasn’t sure. Before long, she sensed that the affair was something to do only with Cecil, some mad frenzy he had to spin out like a planet cut loose from its orbit, lost to the order it had always followed. She knew she had only to wait and she knew, too, that when Cecil returned to her he might be different, on an altered path, and maybe she would be too, but she couldn’t face that until she knew what she was dealing with.
She had loved her life, that was the truth. She did not stop herself from thinking in the past tense, but neither did she commit to it. Anything could change, anything, even now. She had always known that of course but never before had she bumped up against this strange fear of the future—and then she realized they had come to her house.
Shirley was dropping her off. That had been the plan. But now her friend said, “I’ll come in with you. Wasn’t there a robbery somewhere last week? Wasn’t it nearby?” Betsy waved her hand dismissively. “It looks dark,” Shirley said.
“No, no. I think I left the back light on,” Betsy said. “Don’t worry. The solitude is nice. I admit it.” (This was the line she had been taking with herself.)
“I’ll just watch you go in—”
“No, no!” Things had not changed so much that she would inconvenience someone. Betsy stood resolute in the driveway and waved until the car pulled away. She felt the house empty behind her. The fear was still there, looming, and now that she was alone she could turn and stare it down. She walked to the back door. She had not left the light on after all.
As she fumbled with her key in the dark, she reflected that for a while she’d been waiting for something to happen. She was so fortunate, there had been so few sadnesses in her life, few inconveniences even. When she began to suspect Cecil it was the first shoe dropping, and she could not shake the notion that she deserved it: she had not had her share of pain. At times the idea of his infidelity didn’t seem like a crime against her or their family or a moral issue at all (she told herself) but instead like a small pestilence, an act of nature, a minute slice of the horrors one could read about in a newspaper on any given day.
But as she entered the dark back hall and then her empty kitchen, wondering where Cecil really was and whom he was really with, her calm practicality finally failed her, she felt her heart finally rend, and she gave a little cry.
So what happened next simply seemed like more of the same, the other shoe, a thundering of shoes, a blossoming in her chest that felt like a great weight stamping down upon her. The man came around the corner and she knew immediately that whatever she might say would make no difference. If I had not cried out. He was so angry: what had she done? She did not even have time to ask. She heard Boston, the Cape, in his voice: how could that be? Her surprise now was so utter, so total, that it felt like the complete absence of surprise, she was wiped clean, she would believe anything. She had been thinking something about Cecil, it did not matter. In these strange few endless seconds her vision became one of a craggy landscape of peaks and valleys, and clarity such as she had never known, the air thin, becoming nonexistent. She felt herself reaching out but she was not sure her arms were moving. She searched for Cecil, for her children, but she was suspended on points, the land below her was sere and brown, they were not there. Still she reached, she sent herself out to them, her horror and now her own anger became fierce and enormous, no no no, her main duty no, her main duty, her only, not to leave. She pushed herself through pain and made herself an arrow pointing to him, to her children, and with the last of her strength shot herself through the sky, arcing against the stars, but she had not realized she was forever split from herself and instead of reaching them she was going away, although raging and determined she was diffusing, she was becoming enormous and everywhere. I love you I love you she thought, she was. Oh oh oh so this is what it is.
I
In late September, Anthony called to say he had business in New York and would be driving through nearby. He asked Marcella if she would like to have dinner.
She hesitated, then, to be civil, said yes.
She hung up not at all sure she should have agreed. She had seen him a few weeks before, when he had taken Toni to school and she had met them there with some of Toni’s things. She had not been able to meet his gaze; she had been afraid there would be questions in it, or answers, and she had not been prepared for either. She had determinedly kept the conversation light, but whenever her eyes had skated across his face she had felt he was looking at her with particular intensity.
He was due at seven. A little before six, she went to the beach. The day had been gray, and the light would last for less than an hour; the parking lot was deserted. Down at the beach the tide was low, and with the wide expanse of empty sand the light seemed brighter—a flat, colorless light. A wintry cold blew in sharp and hard from the water, and she raised the hood of her jacket and began walking with the wind behind her. It pushed her along. Her way back would be harder, she knew, but beginning in this direction was her routine, and she would not alter it.
With the hood around her ears the world was muffled, and in the quiet she was aware of her body, the grinding of the sand under her feet, her muscles stretching. She thought of the first time at this beach with Jed, how hot it had been, how crowded; how she had longed to touch him, how she had felt she was only body. She waited to miss him, but she had had these same thoughts so many times by now, walking in this direction past these landmarks under this sky, that they felt like part of the beach. The thoughts and the sadness were landmarks themselves. She was used to them, and she knew if they altered, it would be at an almost imperceptible pace.
She had begun to think of moving, although not to get away from memories of Jed. No, that would be a loss. But at some point, she would have to leave the cottage that was, she now saw, her way station. And she would also leave the coast. The sea was journeys, it was wandering, and someday soon she wanted to look out instead at old, old earth, earth soaked with the histories of others, earth that was home. It was time.
“Marcella.”
She did not believe anyone could be speaking to her, and kept walking. It had been her own mind—sneaking away, looking for Jed, maybe, wishing he were here, calling for her.
“Marcella!”
And she turned. “Anthony?”
He had been walking fast; he was breathing hard. As he slowed, he put his hands in his pockets. She was so surprised she could think of nothing to say. They stared at each other, his chest heaving, until she had to look away, look down. “You’re going to ruin your shoes,” she blurted.
“I hope not.” He looked down too, at his feet, as if surprised. He was still dressed for work, in a suit and tie, and wearing leather dress oxfords. “I suppose I should take them off,” he said, and knelt down.
“You’re early,” Marcella said.
His head was bent; he didn’t look up. “I wanted to beat the traffic,” he said.
“I didn’t know you knew where this beach was.” She almost said my beach.
He finished rolling up his trousers and stood, shoes in one hand. “I just went toward the ocean,” he said, with a small smile. “You weren’t at the house, and I thought you might be here. And I saw your car.” He paused, and seemed about to take a step backward. “Do you mind if I walk with you?”
“No. No, of course not.”
They walked in silence for several minutes. Inside her hood, she couldn’t see him unless she turned her head. She could even pretend she was still alone. But one must be polite. “It was nice of you to call,” she began, but even as she spoke her heart clenched and she drew in her breath. “Is something wrong with Toni? Is that why you’re here?” Stupid! Of course!
“No, no. Everything is fine,” he said, and just as quickly she relaxed. She risked a look at him, expecting impatience or even scorn, but instead he was smiling at her ruefully. She found hers
elf smiling back. It was unavoidable, this understanding they had, thinking always of their child.
They passed an American flag on a mast in front of a large gray-shingled house. The shutters on the house were closed for the season. The flag rippled in the wind. “Did Toni tell you she was in another play?” Anthony said.
“Yes.”
“I think she has a little talent.”
“She doesn’t mind the spotlight,” Marcella said.
“It’s true. We’ve always known that,” Anthony said, and laughed. “She’ll be with that same redheaded boy. Now, he might go places.”
“Yes,” Marcella said again. They walked for several minutes in silence. She could not remember what she had chitchatted about, the last time she had seen him. She could not even remember how to do it now. The beach was too huge and empty to let her dissemble. “We should turn around,” she said. “It’s going to get dark soon. And you will get cold, with no coat.”
“I’m not cold,” he said, but she turned without looking at him, and he followed.
There was a line of indigo at the horizon. Now the wind was in their faces, solid and biting. Even in her jacket she shivered. “There’s the first star,” Anthony said.
She said, “Why are you here?”
She could feel that he wanted her to stop and look at him, but she kept going, her eyes fixed ahead. He said, “I thought it would be nice to—”
“It is not my business to forgive you or not,” she said. She had to speak above the wind. “If that’s why.”
She was walking fast, and he was keeping up. “I know,” he said.
They passed three sailboats in a row, shackles dinging rhythmically against the empty masts. It was a sound of departures, of endings. They passed the flag; now the wind was making it heave and snap. “You know that I should tell him,” she said, and suddenly Jed was there with her. The memory was so clear she could almost believe that he would be waiting for her atop the next dune. She wanted to say his name over and over, not to invoke him or to taunt Anthony but to keep feeling this way, so alive, aware. “It is the only thing he wants,” she said. “To know who killed his mother.”
“You haven’t—”
“I haven’t spoken to him in weeks,” she said. “I haven’t spoken to him since August.” The truth of this hit her harder than the wind and he was no longer with her at all, but instead gone, gone. She stopped and turned, finally looking at Anthony head-on, and repeated, “Why are you here?”
Just as she herself felt uncommonly alert, Anthony, too, looked weirdly vivid, here on the wrong beach. In the rapidly dying light his face seemed drained of color but its outlines were sharper. His eyes were dark and his hair was ruffled by the wind. “I wanted to talk to someone,” he said.
“To someone?” He didn’t answer. It seemed to her that he had never stood before her so passively, almost obediently. “To me?”
Slowly, he nodded. “You are the only one,” he said. “The only one.”
Her eyes began to sting. “I have to tell him. I want to tell him—”
“I’m sorry, Marcellina, I’m sorry—”
“—but I don’t know what is brave anymore.”
“Marcella,” Anthony said. “They wouldn’t have killed Betsy. I have thought and thought, I have remembered everything.” His voice was faster now, urgent. “There was no misunderstanding, it was crystal-clear—do you hear me? They were going to—use a gun, for—” He faltered. He still couldn’t say Cecil’s name. “But Betsy was—it was, not a gun—”
“Stop it,” Marcella hissed. “That is why you came here? To give these excuses?”
“No,” he said. “No.” His eyes no longer burned at her. “I don’t want to give excuses. I don’t have any.”
The beach was still empty. There were no lights in the houses. She felt a sob rising in her throat, a bolus of love and grief for Betsy, for Cecil, for Jed and Callie and Toni and herself, and for Anthony. He was so close, a foot away, standing stiff and helpless. Waiting. Perhaps he had always been that way. “Oh, caro,” she said. “I have caught you in this.”
“And I have caught you.”
“We are all caught,” she whispered, and she reached out and touched his cheek. His hand came up and covered hers. He nodded, his own eyes wet, and she was surprised again, that they understood each other.
II
It was several weeks after Labor Day, and Callie and Jed were sitting in the living room reading in front of the fire. It was evening; Jamie and Grace were asleep. “I guess it gets cold this early in Connecticut?” said Jed. He thought of Marcella, alone, in front of a fire. But then he made himself stop. Callie was talking. “What?”
“I said, sometimes. Sometimes it’s this cold in September.” There was a pause, and Jed hoped she was not going to question, again, the need to go home. But she said instead, “Are you sure you want to come back with us? Don’t you have to work eventually?”
“Eventually. But yes, I’m sure.”
“You’re keeping tabs on me,” Callie said, looking at him with her new expression—resigned, a little ironic. Jed could see it, sometimes, through the haze of her drugs. Jed wasn’t sure if Billy saw, or understood, this look—Billy was a bag of nerves, and he was the one who had asked Jed to go back to Greenwich with them, finally, the following week, and stay for a while. But to Jed, there seemed to be something newly calm at Callie’s center, and he did not believe it was because of psychopharmaceuticals. She seemed to have shed some dark weight.
That did not mean he wasn’t still afraid.
And that, he told himself, was the reason he was still here. It was true that he could not forget how close Marcella was, and how she would be even closer when he went back with Callie. But he knew, too, that he would feel her, out there, in the world, no matter how close or far away she was. Day by day, the urge to give in and jump into his car was lessening, although it was possible that that would never go away entirely either.
Callie had stretched to her full length on the sofa. “I still say we could winterize the house,” she said, but it was an old and halfhearted argument, and he didn’t answer. He watched as her eyes traveled thoughtfully around the living room. He had put it all back together, and the only thing different was the china missing from the hutch—big blue willowware platters that had come with the house. In their place he had put some of the regular everyday plates, and he thought now that Callie’s gaze lingered there a moment. Then her eyes came back to his, and grew sympathetic. “What’s with you?”
“Oh, nothing. Tired.”
“Marcie?”
“Maybe. Sort of.”
“It’s been a while now, Jeddy.” Her voice softened. “Maybe this one didn’t have to end.”
He was surprised to feel a swell of anger. Don’t even suggest it. Don’t let me consider it—and then, just as quickly, the anger subsided. Instead he wanted to say, I loved her, I loved her, I think I still do. Callie was looking at him encouragingly, but what he really noticed was that though there were circles under her eyes, her gaze was clear. She was really listening, she would really hear what he had to say. If he said it. “Jed?”
“I’m sure,” he said finally. “It wasn’t—designed for longevity.” He got up and turned his back to her to put more wood on the fire. He tossed in a log and it crunched onto the coals with a shower of sparks. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the edge of a piece of loose bark began to glow, and then burst into flame. “I’m sorry I left every weekend, Cal. I’m sorry I kept escaping.”
Callie humphed. “I don’t blame you.”
What if he told her? He never stopped considering this possibility. In his mind he saw the old, valiant Callie, not this new fragile one he had to guard. She would be appalled—scathing, furious—but it wouldn’t matter. He would say to her, Now we know. Now we know for sure.
That what?
That Dad didn’t do it.
And Callie would say, I already knew that.
&
nbsp; He thought of Grace and Jamie, peaceful in their beds. He wondered if he would ever be like Callie—resting after a long day with children, surrounded by the thick contentment of their sleep. What would he tell them about their grandparents? What would he say to Jamie and Grace, about these people so obviously missing?
He would say, There are some things we will never know.
The quiet stretched. The only sound was the gentle crackling of the fire. Then Callie said, in a new, tentative voice, “Jed?”
He turned around. “Yep.”
“Tell me again about the furniture.”
“Again?” he said, not impatiently.
She flicked her eyes at him, then away again. “Yes. Please.”
“You pushed it all against Grace’s door,” he said. He went back to his armchair and sat down.
“How?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“All of it,” she said. It was not a question; she was like a child who has heard a story a hundred times, whose fear that there might not be a happy ending is purely for show. “All the furniture,” she repeated.
He nodded. “The sofa and the chest. The hutch.” He laughed. “Some other stuff.”
“All the china broke,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry about that. That stuff was probably antique. Valuable.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I pushed the furniture against Grace’s door,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “No one could get in.”
“I couldn’t get in.”
“Right.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. He stole a look at her. She was smiling, just barely, into the fire.
Then, at the far end of the house, they heard crying begin, insistent but not desperate. Callie glanced at her watch. “Right on schedule,” she said.