As Edgar stood outside in Kevin’s jacket, Kevin’s hat, and Kevin’s gloves, he looked up at the stars and hardly felt the cold. When he turned and walked back into the shed, he examined things more carefully. He noticed the small folding table and the splintery schoolhouse chair. The table was bare except for a coffee mug filled with pens, but just above it was a tiny shelf crammed with notebooks. Most of them (twenty-two, to be exact) were blue; three were red. All were labeled. The red ones said Golden City, and were numbered; the blue notebooks had only dates.
Edgar pulled down a red one. He didn’t worry that he was betraying Conrad’s trust. When Conrad had given him the shed key, he’d said, everything you need. No doubt he’d meant the food—but Edgar felt it was within his rights to look further.
He peeled back the cover of Golden City #1 and read the first few sentences. A man in a jungle was running toward some ruins. He seemed to be in some kind of danger—maybe someone was chasing him; it wasn’t exactly clear. There were so many words it was hard to find the story. Also, there were a lot of cross-outs. Edgar skipped ahead, only to find more long sentences, by the end of which he could barely remember where he’d started.
If this was the book Conrad was writing, it didn’t seem to be very good. By the time Edgar returned Golden City #1 to the shelf, he had no interest in volume #2. He reached, instead, for one of the blue notebooks. He half expected to find the man in the jungle again, and was startled to find someone else.
Kevin, the notebook said, was born today. 8 lbs, 6 oz. I’m so happy I can’t sleep. Black hair, brown eyes. Perfect. When I called Dad he said, welcome to the club.
Edgar stopped, walked in a circle. He took off Kevin’s hat and threw it on the ground. When he pulled another blue notebook off the shelf, it was with genuine hope that he chose the one labeled with the year of his own birth.
But, again, it was Kevin. He was five years old.
Kev and I went to Hammonton and picked blueberries. He fed half of them to Jack.
From across the yard came the faint cry of the cuckoo clock inside the cabin.
Sara didn’t think there was enough for a pie, so she fixed a cobbler. Afterwards Kevin refused to wash his face. It was still blue when we put him to bed.
Edgar grimaced. Maybe he’d seen enough. His hands were shaking. And the cuckoo clock had said it was ten—well past his bedtime.
Still, he longed to see his own name—even just once. He pulled down six more notebooks and sat at the table. The light was terrible. It had been easier to read standing in the center of the room, under the hanging bulb. Edgar thought to bring the notebooks into the cabin—but then he saw the lantern and the box of matches.
When the room was glowing, he opened a blue notebook dated just a few months prior—but most of it was hard to understand. Some of the words seemed like gibberish. Mullica. Shamong.
On the last page, though, was a numbered list—and though it was hard to make out what the items were (the entries were often illegible), beside each item was a clearly printed name in parentheses. Sometimes the name was Sara; sometimes it was Edgar. As for the things to which each person was attached—even when the boy could decipher them, they made no sense.
Chase (Edgar)
Fidelity (Sara)
Wells (Edgar)
The boy had hoped for more. Somewhere, surely, Conrad must have explained what the two of them were doing in the woods, and why it was necessary they stay.
A blue notebook from two years prior offered somewhat better penmanship—though here Edgar would have wished it otherwise.
A hunting accident
The three words underlined at the top of the page, like the title of a story.
A hunting accident. Is that correct? I suspect you’re watching me as I write this, so I won’t lie.
Here, the words began to slant, crossing the blue line as if dipping under water. Edgar felt the octopus ink seep into his belly.
When you asked to go out, I told you to leave me alone, let me work for an hour.
When you asked again ten minutes later, I said we’d go the next day and you said there is no next day, Dad, it’s the last day of season.
I said, stop whining, and you made a face just like your mother.
I remember thinking, why did I have a child?
And then I said, fine, get your coat.
It was the end of the page.
Edgar hesitated—and then turned it.
59
Confession
Edgar followed Conrad and Kevin into the forest. It was late afternoon and the light wasn’t good—but Edgar saw everything. Conrad leading the way, and Kevin, in his brown coat, a few steps behind.
Or so Conrad thought.
When the gunshot came, Edgar immediately closed the notebook. He began to rock his body back and forth. Inside the blue notebook, Kevin was lying on the ground, bleeding.
It was terrible. Still, Edgar wanted to look again.
I brushed my teeth!
You were already gone, wrapped in a blanket. I brushed them three times before I carried you into the truck.
I’d had two drinks.
Edgar found it hard to breathe. Kevin was wrapped in a blanket while Conrad cleaned his teeth.
As if it were part of the same story, Edgar saw the bottle of vodka his mother kept in the freezer. When she drank it she became someone else—her limp more pronounced and her voice deeper, her aim unsteady. She could barely get a key into a door, or a cigarette into her mouth.
I said I was sober. I was sober by the time they questioned me.
I still want to blame you for wandering away, for sneaking ahead. You said you’d seen a large buck by the pond, you were anxious to get there. I wasn’t thinking about the buck or the pond. Do you know what I was thinking about? I was thinking about my book. It wasn’t two scotches that killed you. It was a fucking book. A piece of shit not worth a single strand of your hair. Why didn’t I keep a lock of it? One day they’ll be able to remake people and I won’t have any of your body.
I go back with you every day, to the pond. I live there now. That moment you died.
The moment I killed you.
Edgar closed the notebook, and his mouth opened as wide as a puff adder’s. The sound, too, was not unlike the muted hiss of a snake. It came from deep inside the boy’s throat—as violent as anger or terror, though it was neither of these things.
It was grief.
Edgar looked toward the food and tugged at his hair. Surely Conrad wouldn’t hurt someone again. He only wanted to hurt himself.
Edgar’s body trembled as his hand lurched out to push away the notebooks. When he realized that he’d pushed the lantern, too, he watched, paralyzed, as it crashed to the table—the clear liquid pooling across the surface, and the modest lick of flame summoning a blinding flash. Edgar stood, knocking over the chair. He backed away until his body was pressed against the twelve shelves of food.
The lantern, as if moved by an unseen hand, continued to roll across the table. When it fell and shattered, the lamp oil that had dripped to the ground ignited, and a line of fire was written across the room, blocking the door.
Edgar leapt forward to grab the notebooks, but the heat stopped him. He slid to the floor, the foul-smelling smoke above him like storm clouds. He held his breath, which made his next intake of air more desperate. Smoke entered his mouth. The door and the wall around it trembled in monstrously gleaming fur.
When the wooden shelf above the table gave out, the remaining notebooks fell with a whomping crash into the flames. Black moths of ash flew into Edgar’s eyes.
When he called for help, it wasn’t to Conrad. There were faces in the smoke. He searched for her among them. He knew she was close because of the scent. When he took a deep breath, it filled him with a mind-altering heat.
Then, through the flaming doorway, he saw her crossing the yard.
His grandmother was so skinny she looked like a skeleton. When she stepped into th
e shed, the boy reached out his arms. And when she lifted him, she was not herself. She was half naked, with a hairy chest and a beard.
Edgar closed his eyes—and as he and the man passed through fire, his skin felt stung as if by hornets. Inside his head, darkness flashed white. Then they were outside in the wet air. They were on the ground.
The man was breathing heavily, moving his hands over the boy’s clothing, patting it down as if looking for something. Jack had run out of the cabin and was barking at the flames. The man was already moving back toward the fire. Edgar tried to speak, but only coughed.
The shed was wavering; it appeared more liquid than solid, almost transparent. Conrad’s form was visible inside the flames. Edgar’s eyes were blighted by light and smoke. Someone was screaming.
Yet, despite the chaos and the vile odor of burnt hair, there remained a subtle undercurrent of the beloved—powder and flowers and sweat.
Edgar took a deep breath, and ran back into the shed.
60
Spring
Bearberry, leatherleaf, staggerbush; the blueberries and the huckleberries, the sparkleberries and the top-hat dwarfs; golden heather, bird’s-foot—they were all in bloom. All white, as are the first flowers of spring. Delicate flags of surrender, brave poppers risking a late frost. The blossoms seemed whitest at dusk. The early crocuses of course were pink, but you couldn’t see them unless you were clever and thought to look under the fallen leaves of scrub oak.
The butterflies, too, were beginning. Pine Elfin, Mourning Cloak, Hessel’s Hairstreak in the white cedar swamps. The birds were not yet here in mass, though the pine warblers and some gray catbirds rustled about, making their nests. Chuck-Will’s-Widow had been crying for weeks. It was April. The wood frog and the peepers had renewed their chant at the end of March. Fowler’s toads were just coming to life out of the mud. Spring was here, though sometimes only in spirit. Winter lingered, especially in the mornings, leaving a thin footprint of ice or breathing out its death in chilly vampire-castle fog. The bog asphodel had come up but was too sluggish to bloom. The public lakes were restocked with trout—brook, brown, and rainbow. They darted, dazed, in the frigid depths.
It would be weeks yet—months—before life was free of all danger. Still, even on the coldest mornings, people went out without sufficient clothing. It was a cold that humans could survive. It excited them. They knew it was not the kind of cold that killed. Enthusiasts prowled the Barrens, hoping to spot an early colony of white-fringed orchids. Under the pine needles, the lady slippers were stirring, and in the ashy ground where the shed had been, dandelions thrived, bringing the snails.
May
61
Carnation
On a Tuesday afternoon, at the Ferryfield Municipal Court, Lucille Wilhemina Fini (née Bubko) married Ronald David Salvatore. She did not take his name. She’d told him, weeks before, that she couldn’t afford the extra syllables—and the butcher, though disappointed, did not insist. He understood that, even though he loved this woman and she, it seemed, loved him, there were certain things she’d never give him. At 4:15 the couple entered the courthouse holding hands and went straight to the second floor, room 17. The civil ceremony was brief, performed without fuss by County Clerk Lanny Ho, a diminutive man with a large birthmark on his left cheek that everyone later agreed looked exactly like an Oscar statuette. Lucy wore a pale green shift dress she’d found in Florence’s closet. Though simple in design, it was pretty, with a band of darker green at the hem, and on the sleeves a delicate iridescent embroidery suggesting fairy wings. The choice, Lucy convinced herself, was not sentimental, merely practical; the shift dress was roomy and did a fair job of covering her mounded belly.
Of course, the baby was no secret to anyone that mattered. And they did matter, even Lucy had to admit. All these months, everyone had been so kind. Still, Lucy would have preferred not to have seen them at the courthouse. She’d wanted it to be just the two of them—and by necessity Ron’s sister Izzy, who was the witness. But the butcher had called a few people, and then word got around. On Tuesday afternoon Mr. Ho’s smallish office bustled with the breath of twenty-six people, many of them aged.
The Schlips, of course, were there, wearing nearly identical brown suits of spring wool (Netty’s was a bit more scalloped at the collar). The moth damage was minor, but duly noted by Honey Fasinga, who’d come to the courthouse sporting the same dress she’d worn to Florence’s wake—black crepe silk, with a pink butterfly bow at the waist, and on the shoulders the designer’s signature embroidery. Honey immediately noticed that the bride was wearing a sister creation—though it was clearly a lesser beast from a later period, something Florence must have made for herself after she’d run to fat. Honey was accompanied by Dominic Sparra, a man she would not categorically refuse should he ask one day for her own hand in marriage. She had no idea what Dominic was waiting for; he was a good ten years older, could croak at any moment. She was extremely fond of him. Though somewhat arthritic, he’d proved to be a flexible man, bending to Honey’s tastes sexually and sartorially. Today, she’d put him in blue seersucker and tawny calfskin loafers.
A few of Ron’s cousins were present; two aunts, one uncle—all quite beefy. Lucy’s former employer, Celeste, stole attention in her island bangles and op-art headscarf (Honey approved). Mary Hefti would not have stood sweating in a polyester pants suit had it not been for Toni-Ann’s fit of begging the day before. The girl was sullen, though, during the ceremony, often thinking about Edgar, her own husband, with whom she shared so many secrets. It was Mr. Ho’s voice, rather high-pitched, with gently popping consonants like bursting bubbles, that eventually brought a smile to Toni-Ann’s face. “And the ’Cademy ’Ward goes to … Mr. Lanny Ho!” she kept saying on the ride home, using the registration card from the glove compartment as the secret envelope.
Some of the folks in room 17 were people Lucy had first encountered only after Florence’s death. They weren’t exactly friends now, but they certainly couldn’t be called strangers. Mr. Wong from the fish store, Mrs. Collucci from the bakery. The peddler, the cobbler, the Fortunato brothers who sharpened knives. And though there was no poetry to the ceremony, no music, no banks of flowers or references to God and eternity, everyone, at some point or another, cried—even if sometimes these tears fell only inward, a private weather like post-nasal drip.
Lucy could hear them sniffling behind her, but refused to follow them there. She gripped Ron’s hand and held her mouth in a pose of rigid determination, wishing to appear intrepid. She carried no bouquet. The only flower present was a white carnation pinned to her pale green dress. The modest corsage had been a gift from the butcher. He would have preferred to have given his bride a flaming orchid or a red velvet rose but, knowing how adamant she was about keeping things simple, he settled on the small white flower. It was a nothing flower, but honest—its aroma not so much sweet as clean. When Lucy had first leaned down to sniff it, all she could smell was the Chanel Nº 5 she’d patted between her breasts. An indulgence, stolen like the dress, shaken from a bottle blackened by fire.
Honey was disappointed that no rings were exchanged. She’d rather hoped for an appearance by Florence’s diamond—the one she’d helped Edgar filch from the coffin. The theft was not, Honey would be the first to admit, her most shining moment. She would have liked to have seen some good come of the crime.
Lucy, though, had specifically requested that there be no rings. (“We’ll do it later,” she’d demurred to Ron—meaning, essentially, never.) On the subject of everlasting promises she wished to be conservative, recalling that the wedding bands from her first marriage lay underwater—Frank’s at Shepherd’s Junction, and her own at the bottom of the Hudson River, where she’d chucked it two months later.
It was a history so savagely carved on Lucy’s existence that it reduced room 17 to a mere suggestion of reality. She floated through the afternoon on the edge of hallucination. The ceremony (certificate number SB–32287) was d
one by 4:30, and ended, like all good beginnings, with a kiss. Afterwards, Mr. Ho clapped his tiny hands and smiled prodigiously, as if he’d just watched two tigers leap through a flaming hoop. Toni-Ann, taking her cue, clapped along. Mary Hefti whacked the girl’s back, but by then it was too late. The whole room had burst into applause—humble in its restraint, respectful, the sound as mournful as unexpected rain. At least to Lucy’s ears. She turned and smiled at all of them.
The first person she approached was Anita Lester, dressed in nurse scrubs. “I just came on break,” the woman said, and Lucy said, “How nice”—and then she found herself touching her belly, asking Anita if she’d consider coming to the house when it was time. “Looks soon,” said Anita, swallowing, and Lucy said, “About a month.” She knew Ron would want her in a hospital, but she’d work on him. “What do you say?” asked Lucy, and Anita (who’d delivered Edgar at home, and who could not imagine delivering this new baby in the same house), scratched her arm and said, “Of course. I’d be happy to.”
Lucy kissed Anita’s hand and then quickly excused herself. There were others with whom she needed to speak. Unbelievably people were thrusting envelopes at her. Ron intercepted them, stuffing his pockets. The bride briefly closed her eyes: how had this turned into an Italian wedding? Of course it wasn’t just the Italians throwing money around. Henry and Netty gave an envelope, Mr. Wong, Celeste. The woman in the ball gown was coming close, and Lucy asked Ron to please deal with her. “I’ll take care of the two by the door,” Lucy offered in return. Ron looked up and saw to whom she was referring. He wished her luck.
A man and a woman lingered just outside room 17 like timid party crashers, though both had been invited—or at least not barred from coming. The two people were separate issues, but fate had stood them side by side. Lucy’s father rubbing shoulders with Detective Mann.
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