The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Except that one summer. The summer we came up here together and she went with him to Quebec.”

  “How in the world did you find out about that? She thought she covered her tracks so well.”

  “Not well enough,” Susannah said.

  “Try to see it from their point of view. He was dying and he knew it. They wanted to be together that one last time.”

  Susannah looked down at her coffee. “Can you tell me how it started?” she asked.

  “He first met her at one of their parties—the big Fourth of July party, I think. Then he began writing these love poems and sending them to her at the paper. He signed them I. N. Vayne. Obvious. But touching too. She didn’t know who had written them—at least not at first. Then she remembered talking to him at the party and she put it all together. She was flattered. But of course she was not available for anything other than friendship. So she called him from her office, to invite him to lunch to tell him, all very proper and professional.”

  “So what happened?” She withdrew her hand from where it rested under Lynda’s.

  “She found herself very drawn to him. As he was to her. He kept calling, and they would run into each other around town. One night his wife was away visiting a cousin somewhere, and your father was at a conference in Boston. Dave invited her to dinner. She knew it was a bad idea, but she told herself she could rein it in and that nothing would happen.”

  “I guess she was wrong.” Susannah could hear the bitterness in her tone.

  “Don’t judge her too harshly,” Lynda said. “She loved your father. She just never counted on meeting someone like Dave. They were soul mates, those two. And as dear a man as your father was, I think you know that wasn’t a way to describe what he was to your mother.”

  Susannah said nothing. She had been seeking this confirmation ever since she’d returned to the house in January; now that she had it, why was she so angry? And it still didn’t add up. If Dave had been her ‘soul mate’—a mawkish, sentimental term that really should have been stricken from the language—then why had she up and left him? She didn’t buy that it was because of her father; if Claire had been thinking about her father, she never would have embarked on the affair in the first place.

  Lynda glanced at the watch on her caramel-colored wrist. “Look at the time! I’m sorry, but I’ve got to get going. It’s after one and my plane leaves at quarter to four.” She stood and started gathering her things—a fuzzy black capelike garment, an embroidered fabric bag covered in tiny winking mirrors.

  “You still haven’t told me when it started,” Susannah said.

  “1976? 1977?” Lynda slipped into the cape and added a white hat with a black tassel at the top. “I think. I can’t be too sure—it was so long ago.” She came around the table to stand close to Susannah. “Don’t blame the messenger, sweetie. You came here looking for this. That’s why you were so eager to see me. So it’s not fair to be angry at me for giving you what you wanted, is it?”

  “Nothing’s fair,” said Susannah. “Did you just figure that out?” She was being hateful but she didn’t care. She was shaking as she went in search of her car, paid, and got in, shaking despite her parka, her own hat—sans tassel; she left that sort of thing to her daughter—and her scarf. She had wanted to know, hadn’t she? Well, now she did. And did she feel any better, any closer to the elusive, beautiful mother she had never quite understood, or to the steadfast but perpetually perplexed man who had been her father? No, she did not.

  Navigating her way through the unfamiliar Boston streets with the help of the minivan’s GPS, Susannah tried not only to make some sense of what she’d learned, but also of what her life would be like going forward. Not that any of this would change the externals—kids, writing, little brown house on the pond. But inside—inside everything was rearranged like in a kaleidoscope: the pieces the same, the configuration entirely new.

  As she threaded her way back to the highway, the minivan’s pistons firing, its wheels turning, her mind stayed stubbornly stuck in its own muddy rut. The dates—something about the dates was off. Lynda had not known exactly when her mother and Dave Renfew had first been together. But Susannah had been born in 1978 and she suspected that her mother’s connection to Dave might have started before her birth; the poems she’d found were from the late 1970s.

  Then it became clear to her, and the menacing, shadowy thing that had been only dimly apprehended moved right into the glare. It was the date, the date that was out of step with the sequence she had been so carefully establishing. Her birthday was in April; nine months earlier, in August, her father had been away, invited to some economics convention at Oxford. She knew because it had been one of the high points of his professional life and he talked about it often. Her mother had not gone with him. “Spend a month with all those economists? Really?” she had said when the subject had come up. “One is quite enough.” And she’d plant a little kiss on her father’s head, if he was sitting, or his hand if he was not. It was a joke, harmless and lighthearted. Except that it was not. That month when Warren was gone was the month she had been conceived. Only he had not been the one who had been responsible. She’d always heard the story about her being born several weeks in advance of her due date. But she had been a big baby, over eight pounds. What preemie was eight pounds? No, she wasn’t premature. She was full term—and the illegitimate daughter of another man.

  So focused was Susannah on this even more startling revelation that she did not see the car ahead slowing down until she was practically on top of it; she slammed on the brakes only seconds before she would have hit the bumper. The car behind her screeched to a stop and various heads popped out of various car windows.

  “What the hell—?”

  “Where do you think—?”

  “What in God’s name are you—?”

  Sorry, sorry, sorry, she muttered to everyone, to no one, to herself. Lynda. Lynda would know. Susannah looked at the clock on the dashboard. It was two o’clock. Lynda’s flight left at three forty-five. Would she have time to get to Logan before Lynda boarded the plane? She didn’t know, but she sure as hell was going to try.

  Her fingers felt clumsy and inept as she punched a new destination into the GPS. Thank God for that soothing, robotic voice; nothing human could have calmed her as well. Soon she’d turned away from the center of the city, in the direction of the airport. She drove as fast as the speed limit allowed, tempted to exceed it but not daring, because if she was pulled over, that would only squander precious minutes.

  It was twenty-five to three when she reached Logan. But she hadn’t counted on the fact that there were several terminals; how would she know which was the right one? She scanned the names of the airlines on the sign overhead: Air China, Adria Airways, Aegean, Aer Lingus, Aeroflot, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Aeroméxico. Lynda was returning to Tulum. Aeroméxico would be the logical place to start. After a couple of wasted loops, Susannah located the parking lot and sprinted toward what she hoped was the correct terminal, nearly slipping on a patch of ice and righting herself only at the very last second.

  Inside was the busy hive of people embarked on their journeys—backpacks and suitcases, dogs in carriers, rolling carts piled high with luggage. The families, the babies, the lovers, the businessmen, the frail old ladies with walkers, the men in wheelchairs—they were all here, all with somewhere to go, somewhere to be.

  Susannah saw the long line of people waiting to have their bags opened and IDs inspected. Lynda would have been on that line and passed through security by now. Susannah realized that without a ticket, she would not be allowed to follow her beyond the gate. God, but she was an idiot—she was so desperate to talk to her again that hadn’t thought of that until this very minute. Panic and disappointment churned inside her. Still, she had to try. Pulling out her phone, she called Lynda. “I have to see you,” she said.

  “What are you talk
ing about?” Lynda said. “Where are you?”

  “I’m at the airport. Are you flying Aeroméxico?”

  “Yes, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  Thank God she’d gotten at least that right. “I’m in the terminal. But I can’t get past security—I don’t have a ticket.”

  “Susannah, you’re not making any sense. Are you sure you’re okay?” She sounded a little annoyed. “Why did you come here?”

  “You know why I’m here.” There was a silence, so she went on. “I don’t want to do this on the phone. Please come back out and talk to me.”

  “But I’ll have to go through security all over again. There isn’t enough time.”

  “He was my father, wasn’t he?” Susannah blurted out. “Dave Renfew was my father.” When Lynda didn’t respond, she added, “Please tell me. I deserve to know.”

  “He was,” Lynda said finally. “And you do deserve to know.” The annoyance was gone from her voice, replaced by something softer and kinder. “Your mother was never able to get pregnant when she was married to Warren. It didn’t bother her all that much; she wasn’t sure she wanted children. Then she found out she was carrying Dave’s child and it changed everything. She might have even left your father at that point. But she knew Dave would never leave Alice. If she had his child, though, she would know that a piece of him would be with her—always.”

  “His child—you mean me,” Susannah said.

  “Yes, you,” said Lynda. “But she couldn’t raise you with him so nearby; it would have been too painful for her. It was just dumb luck that the offer from Rutgers came when it did. Your mother urged your father to take it. And he did.”

  “Did he know?” She didn’t even know that she’d started crying; she registered the wetness on her face as having come from some other source.

  “Your mother never told him. Whether he guessed . . .”

  No, Susannah thought. He believed I was his—I know he did. “Why didn’t you tell me back at the museum?” She was aware that someone was looking her strangely, and she moved away to avoid the scrutiny.

  Lynda sighed audibly into the phone. “I saw no reason to volunteer the information. I didn’t want to violate your mother’s confidence. Or to hurt you. But now that you’ve asked, I can’t lie.”

  “Dave Renfew—did he know?”

  “Not until that summer in the 1990s when you came back. Your mother told him when they went away together.”

  “I barely remember meeting him that summer. It was only in passing.”

  “He remembered,” Lynda said. “And he told your mother that nothing could have made him happier.”

  Maybe one day that thought would be a comfort to her. But today was not that day. “I guess that’s it,” Susannah said. She couldn’t bring herself to add Thank you, so she simply said good-bye. Then she left the terminal, found her car, and began the drive home.

  Daddy, you loved me, didn’t you? I know I loved you. And she did. Dozens of memories began a ferocious clamoring for her attention: Warren patiently teaching her to dive off the board at the municipal pool where he’d also taught her to swim. The pancakes he’d made, with faces composed of whipped cream, raisins, and sliced bananas. The way he’d always keep a bag of M&M’s or a Heath bar—her two favorites—in his pockets for her to find. She thought too of all those books of his she’d found in the attic. She hadn’t so much as looked at them, but she would look at them as soon as she got back—she’d take out every single one, caress the covers and the spines, kiss the pages that he’d touched and read—

  Her phone was ringing; she could hear it from inside her purse. But she was driving, so she let it go to voice mail. The ringing stopped; good. She would see who called later. But then it started again, and once again she did not pick up. The traffic had gotten worse, slowing to a crawl. There must be something clogging things up—construction or an accident. She crept along, made more and more anxious by the delay. Then the traffic just stopped. After twenty or so extremely tense minutes during which she went absolutely nowhere, she saw several policemen threading their way through the cars. One was speaking through a megaphone, so she opened her window to hear him.

  “. . . three-car pileup a thousand yards ahead . . . making every effort to reroute traffic . . .”

  A three-car pileup could mean a serious delay; it might be hours before she got home again. She reached for her phone to play the messages:

  Hello, Mom? Are you there? It’s me, Jack. Mom, something terrible is happening! There’s a fire at Alice’s house. Cally is there. So are a bunch of her friends. Someone called the fire department and I can hear the sirens. I want to go over there but I’m really scared. Are you there, Mom? If you’re there, please, please, please pick up.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Susannah saw the smoke before she even got to Eastwood. The dark gray coils hung heavily in the sky, stubbornly refusing to dissipate or disperse. Although she would have liked to floor it and speed along these curving country roads at 110 miles per hour—or even better, teleport to her destination—she drove only as fast as seemed sane until she was turning up the road that led to Alice’s house. A shiny red truck with the words EASTWOOD AUXILIARY FIREFIGHTERS blocked her access, so she stopped the car, flung the seat belt aside, and rushed the rest of the way on foot.

  The side of the house closest to the road seemed intact, mint green paint fresh as ever, but as she drew closer she saw the devastation wrought by the fire—the other side was blackened and blistered and the windows ravaged, their panes reduced to mounds of shards that glittered in the soot-covered snow. Fortunately, the fire had not spread beyond the house; across the meadow, the barn that housed Jester was untouched. Someone should go check on him, she thought. Make sure he was okay.

  A knot of firemen, faces smeared and grimy, was standing nearby. One of them turned to her. “You can’t go any further, ma’am. It’s not safe.”

  “My daughter.” Those were not words she spoke; they were prayers. “She was inside.”

  “No one’s left inside,” he said. “We got everyone out. Alive.”

  “Are you sure?” He nodded and something in her gave way; she sank down to the blackened snow.

  “Hey, are you all right?”

  Susannah allowed him to pick her up, and once she was on her feet again, she leaned on his arm for support. “Was anyone hurt?”

  “Not seriously. The kids are all at the hospital now—being treated for smoke inhalation, I guess. Mrs. Renfew fell and broke something, I think. We got her out of here on a stretcher. But she’ll be fine.”

  “Oh,” said Susannah. The relief rocked over her in waves. Not seriously, not seriously, not seriously. Then the rest of his words sank in. Mrs. Renfew. Alice. What had she broken? Who was with her? She should go to her. But she had to find her children first. Where were they?

  Before she could ask, she saw someone come out of the house, yellow suit bright against his blackened face. In his arms, he carried the limp body of a dog—Emma! Susannah broke away from the fireman she was still leaning on. Maybe the dog could still be saved. She walked up to the fireman who was now setting Emma gently down, and when he turned to face her, she recognized the blue eyes shining out from all that grime. They belonged to Corbin Bailey. Corbin had been in there, with the smoke and the flames. He could have been hurt. Killed. The thought was intolerable to her.

  “What are you—?”

  “Did you see—?”

  They spoke over each other and then both stopped. “You first,” he said, and set the dog down at his feet.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m part of the auxiliary fire force. I’ve been doing it for about ten years.”

  “He”—Susannah pointed to the fireman she had first approached—“said that everyone got out and everyone is okay.”

  “That’s t
rue—all accounted for. Your kids are fine—I made sure of that.”

  “If everyone was okay, why did you go back in?”

  “Alice was frantic about the horse and the dog. The horse is fine. But the dog . . . I went back in to look for her. I found her in a closet upstairs.”

  “Is she . . . ?” Susannah couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  He inclined his head, the slightest of nods. “The smoke got her.”

  “You put yourself in danger to save her.” Again, Susannah felt sickened at the thought of his entering a burning building; she put her hand to her mouth until the urge to retch had passed.

  “That’s what I signed on for,” he said. “I just wish I had found her sooner.”

  Kneeling, Susannah stroked the animal’s head. Even in death, she looked dignified.

  And what about Alice? She didn’t know yet. Who would be the one to tell her?

  Susannah stood up, suddenly propelled by anxiety. Her palm was smeared with black and she tried vainly to wipe it off. Her phone was still somewhere in the car, along with her bag. But calling was no good anyway. She had to find them—Alice, Jack, Calista—and see for herself that they were still alive, still breathing. She turned to the dog one last time—and then she crumpled in on herself, sobbing. Emma. Charlie. Her mother’s secret, her father’s sadness. No, not her father. Her father had been Dave Renfew. The sobbing intensified.

  “Hey.” Corbin was right behind her. He pivoted her body around so that her face rested on his chest as she cried. “It’s all right. Everyone’s all right.”

  “Not Emma!” she wailed. “Not Charlie!” And not me, she wanted to say. I’m not all right. I don’t even know who I am anymore.

  “No. Not Emma. Not Charlie. But you’re okay. And your kids—they’re okay too. I’ll take you to see them. You’ll feel better.”

  “But what about Alice? Who’s going to tell her about Emma?”

  “I can do that if you want me to.”