Every time he spoke my father’s name, my eyes blurred, and seeing this he shook his head sadly, and after a time, he took his leave. For the first time in his life, I think, he may have been frightened of me.
FOUR
With Cynthia’s arrival at Leo’s house, with his wife moving into that house, and with his own house up for sale, Rudy had been suddenly thrust into hell. And if one did not believe in hell one had only to look at Rudy, see his eyes and his frayed windbreaker, and realize that in his pocket he carried a ticket stub to a room at the YMCA.
He could not stand for this. He would not and live. Yet he waited for Gladys to help him, and hung about his father-in-law’s back yard, watching Cynthia eat cinnamon buns and coming and going in the Cadillac.
He had paid a terrible price for his infatuation. This is all he thought of now. Some days he would go up to the Pits’ and wait for Mathew to talk to him. He would stand on the hill in back of their house and see the window of the room where he had had sex with Cynthia that fateful night. The window was often open, and darkness lay within.
When he was a child he was so frightened of failure and people. Now, too late, he realized his fear of life had crippled him. He might have done anything in his life, even have been a great man, and he had done nothing. When a child he had prayed to be safe, to be happy, to be loved. And now too late he realized that he had been given what he had prayed for. By the time he was twenty-one he had been safe and happy and loved. But it wasn’t enough for him. And did he give anything in return? No. He had not been kind to Elly because of conceit and lust. He had not been good to Gladys because of greed. And he had not loved because of fear.
What had Leo McVicer ever done to him but say, “No, this won’t do — you will not use me just because you married my child — I will not be fooled!” Rudy could not hate the old man for doing what he did.
Could he not even take his own life? This thought was often fleeting in his mind. No — he could not. But then, why not? What was the point of this — for eventually all his actions would be known. Still he had to stay alive. He would get money somehow and go away, to the place he had always wanted to go — Australia.
Rudy knew he would break under questioning. No escape hatch was in fact opened to him, except the truth. And the truth was that he had assaulted my mother and had had an affair lasting some seven years with Cynthia. That he had become a coward because of this — not in spite of this. That this type of weakness turned against a man and made a woman mean.
That because of cowardice he had relied upon Mathew Pit, as a friend and an adviser. And Mathew had robbed a house, and sabotaged a bridge. That the sabotaging of the bridge had cast Sydney Henderson into hell — but now, after all this time, after years, the man was about to be resurrected, and Rudy himself was cast into hell. And if one did not believe in hell, well, one had only to look at him.
The only time he had spoken to Constable Delano, at a party the summer before, he kept his eyes lowered. John Delano spoke to him kindly, even light-heartedly, but Rudy could not relax. And Delano whispered:
“The death of a boy is a terrible burden to place on an innocent man — you know that, Mr. Bellanger.”
And Rudy felt his nose starting to run, and his eyes water. He was not more than a millisecond away from saying “I did it” when Delano changed the subject completely and asked after Gladys’s heath.
Yet there was one solution. He had a child, Teresa. And he would go to Leo and claim this child in front of Cynthia. Perhaps in doing this, he could still save himself!
Rudy crept into his father-in-law’s house by the same door he had taken the hour he had accosted my mother. He did this the Wednesday Mathew came to visit me.
He knew there would be no marina. The day after the Knights of Columbus meeting everything in his life had simply stopped. That was the day Leo had phoned Gladys, told her what he had suspected, and without Rudy being allowed to explain, to speak or say a thing, the marriage was over and he was no longer allowed on the property.
However, for Cynthia Pit it was all a natural progression in her life. She had had Danny Sheppard when she was a teenager and he was a big talker; then she had Rudy when she was a woman and he was the manager of his wife’s store and had plans for a grand marina. Now she was the caregiver for a woman whose rich father was enamoured of her and had asked for her hand in marriage. She had not done a thing toward this end, it had just happened, as if it had all been preordained. Nor did she ever consider that she had betrayed almost everyone to gain this position.
Rudy waited for her in the very room my own mother had been interrogated in so long ago, hat in hand, staring at the carpet. When Cynthia finally came to see him, her beauty as wanton as ever, he said he wanted to speak to Leo. She told him it was impossible. He stammered and tried to think. Then he told her he still had plans to do something. That he would someday have a bar, with VLT machines, and it would cater mainly to younger kids.
“What does that sound like?” he asked her, his lips trembling and his hand shaking as he touched her face.
“It sounds just like you,” Cynthia said coolly. “Everyone already has that — besides, I don’t like those gambling machines, they hook young mothers with little children.”
“I took care of Leo’s business for years — I want something out of it,” Rudy said. “I want to see him — to tell him — about — us!”
“Oh — well, I’ve been talking to your father-in-law about you, Rudy — and — well, let’s say I have a different opinion of you,” she said with a great air of disappointment.
“But he stoled my idea —” Rudy said loudly. “Leo stoled my idea for a marina.” He slapped his hat on his leg.
He said he wanted to take Gladys out of her father’s house, but Cynthia would not allow this. He asked again to see Leo, and again she said no, and told him that if he did not leave she would call Constable Morris, who was a good friend of hers.
“Don’t you think I don’t know what’s going on here?” he said.
Cynthia smiled. “Rudy, what are you saying?”
“I know you’re in league with them and have turned your back on me and are trying to push me out of what is rightfully mine.”
She looked at him piously. Then she picked up the phone.
“I will have to phone the police!”
“Please —” he said.
She paused and looked at him.
“You have come into this house uninvited — I hardly know you —” she said.
“What do you mean, into this house uninvited — who are you — and what do you mean, you hardly know me — how did we have a child together if you hardly know me! And if that comes out, what will Leo say to you then! And I am willing for it to all come out!” he shouted. “I will — it will all come out!”
But she remained perfectly calm — because she had told Leo and Gladys that Rudy would say all these things to discredit her.
“I just wanted things for us,” he said after a moment.
“Is that why you stole Leo’s idea?”
“What?”
“Leo’s idea for a marina — the one he helped build in Newcastle. A decent, kind, wonderful man like Mr. Leo McVicer?” She looked at him, again with the resilience of one accustomed to the fabric of lies. He had to turn away from her deceitful look. It made her look, at the moment, truly ugly.
When turning, he saw his wife’s legs as she sat in her room, holding the cane and listening to this horrible argument.
“Go — before you upset Gladys,” Cynthia said, pointing. “She is in my care now.”
“I — will not — I — I — Gladys — you know — you must know!”
Then seeing Leo in the room, he began to back away.
“Gladys?” he said once more, noticing her feet beyond the door, noticing the cane, remembering how helpless she was without him. “Gladys — you must know — you must!”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Cynthia whispered to Leo with
a forlorn smile. “This is what he’s been like for years.”
Hearing her say this Rudy yelled a half-hearted threat, pulled his boots on, and walked away from the house. He stared back over his shoulder at the frozen lane, the dark squall of embedded trees. He was terrified. How could people be so cruel to him? How could Cynthia just invent things about him? What would happen to him now? He would go to jail — and what would happen there? Nor did it matter that in any real way he had done almost nothing —
He had not walked one hundred yards when he saw Mathew Pit, waiting for him by the very tree Rudy had leaned against after he had assaulted my mother.
“How much do you think the bastard has in that house?” Mathew said. “A hundred thousand — a million or more?”
“I don’t know — I don’t.”
“Well, you know one thing — the comb-ee-na-tion to his safe. That’s one thing more than that bitch of my sister knows. Stick with me and we’ll still get out of this scrape together.”
Mathew turned his broad back on Rudy and hobbled ahead of him along the frozen road, his stomach in pain; and Rudy, crying, followed. Both soon covered in snow and shadows.
FIVE
That night as the wind howled against our house, Autumn told me that the police would arrest Connie and Mathew and Rudy. They would all be taken into custody and charged with manslaughter, perhaps on Friday, certainly no later than Monday. The whole roadway was whispering this in a gleeful clatter, as if a wicked spell against my family had been broken. There would be a string of other charges against Mathew.
“It looks like years in prison,” Autumn said. “But let’s just you and I stay out of it — for Mom and Dad’s sake, please?”
“What about Dad?” I said.
“Connie Devlin knows — but he will always await the best deal he can get — he is in a position to trade one crime off the other. He sits in his house and has the police patrol it — orders pizzas — but all that will come to an end,” Autumn said. “Just for Percy’s sake, don’t you get involved — they won’t get away — there is nowhere for any of them to go except into a jail cell in Dorchester. Remember you said everything would change for us? Please?” She reached out and squeezed my hand.
I stayed awake all that night, and all Thursday drinking. Percy was staying home from school trying to help the old dog, Scupper Pit, who was at its end and lay near our wood stove feebly wagging its tail.
I believe that the beating Percy had taken had broken something in him, so near was it to his mother’s death. He kept trying to do all the things he believed he needed to do. As if someone was watching him. Every day he tried to give me a present — sometimes it was nothing more than Father’s socks.
“Look what I got you, Lyle,” he would say, coming out from a closet.
Sometimes he phoned the Pits to ask after Teresa May, who was at the hospital in Halifax, and if he could send her a letter because he had two jokes. So I helped him write his letter. But though I had told him I would mail it, I didn’t. It sat in the little jar on the table waiting to go.
Once, listening to the radio, he phoned in to answer a quiz that would win him a hundred dollars. I still remember him standing with the phone in his hand and waiting his turn to speak. But he spoke so softly and got the answer wrong. He hung up, turned to me, and smiled.
“Oh, Lyle,” he said, “I almost got it —”
I would wake up periodically because Scupper, who lay on a mat near the stove, would begin to whine.
I finally told him I would take Scupper to the veterinarian on Friday. Autumn had to do a run-through that day of the play she had written with her drama teacher. But the more I thought of Connie Devlin the more insane I became. I was driven forward by the idea that my father’s life would be nothing if I did not act.
I sat in my room brooding. I frightened myself when I saw my reflection in the mirror. And Thursday night Autumn opened the door when I was getting out of the tub. She saw the slashes all across my arms and chest from the knife I carried. It had taken me a good three years to make those marks. She gave a start, and then with a feeble smile said:
“Ah yes, Love — the death of a thousand cuts. I know it well.”
That Friday morning I woke after Autumn had gone. The wind had turned cold. A blizzard was starting and snow was seeping through the back wall. We needed a new wall, but even Autumn didn’t seem to care anymore.
I had a feeling that Connie Devlin would get away again. This blizzard on the very day Autumn had told me they were going to arrest the three of them was a trick by God, it was God’s punishment against my family. He loved Connie Devlin more than He loved me. I thought of Mathew escaping. Mathew would always escape.
In my mind’s eye I saw Devlin packing his clothes. How stupid the police were!
I would kill Devlin. It didn’t matter to me if he had killed Dad or not. Nothing mattered except to act. I would go to prison. And there I would one day kill Mathew and Rudy and Danny Sheppard.
“You want to hear a joke?” Percy asked me as I was thinking this and peeling the label off a quart of Napoleon wine.
“What,” I said.
“What do you say to a shy turtle?”
“I don’t know, Percy, I don’t know.”
“You say to a shy turtle — come out of your shell,” Percy said. He giggled, and I didn’t answer.
“I heard that joke — I heard that joke — last week,” Percy said.
His chest heaved and he coughed again. He had problems with his lungs, the smoke from our wood stove got to him. He blinked at me and tried to think of another joke but got confused. He fidgeted, trying to think of something to say. As I started for the door he tried to tell me the first joke again. Then he ran back to the dog.
It had started to snow long before I left the house.
SIX
Mathew was right. Cynthia and Leo had become engaged a short two weeks before. But in seeing him that day, Rudy had missed what was evident to others in the house; and what Cynthia wanted to keep secret as long as she could. Leo had had a stroke, and Cynthia had been put into the position of a nurse. This had happened the very night of their engagement as he opened a bottle of champagne. He stood, to get a bucket of ice, laughed about something, turned to speak, felt weak, and fell in front of her.
She got him to a chair where he shook violently. He refused to go to the hospital, and stayed mainly in his room, suspicious of everyone and angry when she made sounds or tried to help him. He kept asking for certain papers, and notes, and she was kept running trying to find them for him, frightened to death of his temper.
A week ago she telephoned Freddy Snook, asking him to come down and help. He appeared with an unsigned will, made up without clear beneficiary, telling her the old man had left no power of attorney. The estate was in limbo because Leo had that Irish suspicion of wills.
“What do you mean,” Cynthia said, lighting a cigarette and pausing just slightly to blow out the match, “power of attorney?”
“No one to take care of his bills — or handle the finances of his estate — so when it is probated it may all return to the government. I told him and he said —”
“Poor Leo,” she said. “What did he say?”
“He said he was going to give everything to — you — after you were married. He had no one else, except supposedly his other daughters; Gladys herself being so ill.” Snook said this in a way that showed how little he believed in those other daughters.
“How much would all this stuff be worth?” Cynthia asked, sniffing, and looking about with the petulant curiosity of a child.
“I don’t know — he lost a terrible amount — his mill is gone, he had to clean up the spill and pay restitution, his store is gone at a big loss, he has not received the bulk of his insurance, and he lost the construction job on the bridge because of — circumstances beyond his control — so.”
Cynthia nodded. “So — how much?” she sniffed.
“Well — he�
�d have close to 250,000 in cash in the bank — and with his property, his construction equipment — his holdings in the new marina in Newcastle — probably 2.5 to 3 million.”
Snook told her that since her claim might be contested at probate, if she had power of attorney she could at least control the funds — that is, the quarter-million dollars — and keep it away from Percy, Lyle, and Autumn, his “fraudulent” grandchildren. He was prepared to act on her behalf — so far no real grandchildren came forward. He was worried just slightly about Isabel Young, who had taken up their cause before. He said they must get Leopold to sign because he feared another will, probably tucked away in the safe upstairs.
“Then that’s what we will have to do,” she said.
It was done by wearing Leo down — because he wasn’t sure what they wanted. He was afraid of Cynthia going away and leaving Gladys. He was also terrified of going to the hospital. Cynthia, sensing this, spoke about her daughter, Teresa May, who had gone to Halifax.
“I want to stay here — I want to stay with you — but I might have to go —”
Leo looked at her and kept trying to tell her something.
Cynthia, hearing Leo struggle to speak, ran from the room and sat in the alcove on the second floor, looking over the bay, crying, her knees shaking so much she could hear them knocking together. Back in the room Fred Snook faced Leo and began to lecture him about the greed of the Hendersons — the flight of Sydney Henderson at the time of Elly’s death. It was time to sign the will, he said.
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