by Jeffrey Lent
He said, “Are you all right?”
“Unh-unh,” she said. “But finish your story.” She didn’t look at him.
He nudged her shoulder with his and said, “I’m coming up to the last part anyway.”
She was silent.
Forty or fifty feet out a trout jumped, a twisting slippery vision that seemed more etch against eye than fish. The rings spread the water surface. Hewitt said, “What happened was one October afternoon of my senior year of high school I was out riding around with some guys, you know, farting around. Dad had come up here after lunch for what would be the last fishing of the year. Another week and the rowboats would be taken from the water and locked away in the boathouse for the winter. The afternoon went on and suddenly it was late, about five o’clock. My mother drove up here. But she didn’t even get out of the car. Out there in the middle of the lake was a boat upside down. The sheriff took her home and sat with her until I got in. The first thing she told me was he died quick, doing something he loved. Then said, which I didn’t understand then but did a few hours later, how fitting it was he died in water. Because his fear, his great fear was that he was destined to die by fire.”
Hewitt raised an arm and said, “Right out there somewhere. A heart attack and fell out of the boat.”
Jessica stood. She walked out to the end of the dock, looking into or across the water. She rocked back and forth, toes and heels rising and falling. Then swiveled on one heel and came to stand before Hewitt, her face grim, a hidden tremble. She said, “We need to go back to the house. I got something to show you.”
Hewitt nodded, trying to sort this curt response when she stepped away, walking off the dock. She didn’t look back and he quit watching her but heard the Volkswagen door shut.
Still he sat and waited and watched the old man pull at the oars, the dripping water slashes of light when the oars lifted. Hewitt had no interest in explaining himself, his presence there. So he rose and slowly walked to the car. A man not furtive but deliberate.
DRIVING THE TWENTY miles home she spoke only once. “Are you a member of that place?”
He slid his eyes and face in exaggerated slow motion toward her. “I haven’t been asked.”
At the house she went out of the car fast and he followed, her head-up, eyes-front march something not seen before—the opposite of her brooding absorbed pacing but also unlike her movements easy and natural on other days. Once inside the house she turned to him and took his hand and without a word led him into the red room, bright with sunlight that left some of the paintings vivid and others almost as if receding back into themselves. The tricks of light.
She pointed high to one painting, intentionally placed at the top of the descending series on that wall. Hewitt sharpened a bit. It was a piece rendered in ochres and deathly deep unlikely blues and almost stale muddy reds, a scene of dockworkers lounging in exhaustion on a wharf or pier, the suggestion of a building along one side as a depth of unfathomable endless endeavor. The men, three of them, were collapsed, two in shadow of the building with their legs sprawled before them, the third likewise but against a great coil of rope or cable, unclear because the blues of the coils were echoed in the man’s face and naked torso. As if he were sinking into the coil or perhaps the coil was collecting him. It was a painting of the exhaustion of never-ending loading and unloading, of life repeating itself without hope or brightness day after day. It was, as far as Hewitt knew, untitled, but the bottom right corner, under the edge of the wharf plank where the color deepened into blue near black were the unmistakable initials and the date 1946.
She turned and said, “I like this one best. But why’s it here? Why this and nothing else from his early life?”
Hewitt sat on the arm of one of the deep leather chairs and said, “That painting is the only one that survives from before he lost his first family. And all his other work up till then. The only reason it’s here at all is the summer before the fire he came up with his family for a visit. And he brought this painting and left it here. That next spring was the fire. I only found that painting after he died. It was wrapped and boxed in the basement.”
Jessica was standing over him, her head nodding as if taking it all in or maybe waiting for him to finish. She leaned toward him and said, “You wait right here.”
He heard her sprint up the stairs and then there was quiet before a more measured descent. She came back into the room and without speaking handed him a manila envelope, maybe eight by ten and old-fashioned with rubber wafers on the flap and a string wrapped around them to keep it closed. He held it and said, “What’s this?”
“Open it.”
She stood watching as he unwrapped the string from the disk, pulled up the flap and reached inside. What he found were a pair of photographs. He took them out and shuffled back and forth between them and then let each settle, faceup in his hands. One was a photograph of a painting—a different view of the same dockworkers high on this wall. Even reduced to a photograph there was no mistake.
The other was a black and white formal photograph. Gazing up from the glossy paper were his father’s eyes, his father’s face. A young man in his early twenties. Hewitt had never seen this version of his father. It was a vision from the void. The young man in the picture was awkward with a thatch of blond hair falling over his broad tall forehead. He wore a jacket of tight small dark tweed. His mouth and eyes held a full smile. Pulled close against him, tall herself but straining up toward him, was a young woman with dark hair in bangs and pulled back behind her ears, the side of her face turned her lips open, her eyes glittering in the camera’s flash. She had a lovely long neck, accentuated by the pose.
And tugged in tight between them was a serious wide-eyed dark-haired little girl, her head tilted just so, looking at her father as if the camera wasn’t there.
“Jesus,” Hewitt breathed. There they were. His father so young. The young woman exuding a graceful depth both physical and within her eyes, a long-limbed woman, willowish, self-aware. And the girl. He gazed at her. The never-known lost half sister. Back to his father. And knew he was not reading anything in but the tender wondrous pride and love fully living in his father’s face.
He looked at the young woman living and breathing before him who was neither the woman nor the child in the photograph but some singular version of both.
His voice near languid with control he said, “What is this?”
She stepped back. “Hewitt—”
He stood. “Who are you? Where did you get these?”
She was breathing hard, running without moving. She said, “I tried to tell you before. That afternoon I came back and hid out on the hill and scared you off with my gun and Walter was here, you know the night—”
“Before I get mad. Who the fuck are you? I want you to answer my question—”
“I’m trying.” She was shaking. “I knew I’d waited too long even then. I was driving back here all set to get these out and tell you and I freaked out. I’m sorry I didn’t just—”
“I get that part,” Hewitt said. “But I’ve got no idea who I’m talking to right now. Or for the last month. And you’re going to tell me. Now.”
“My name’s Jessica Kress. Everything I’ve told you about me is true. I just had a hard time getting around to this part.”
“You sure did. Jessica, what the fuck is going on?”
She made a small nervous smile. “Hey, Hewitt, as weird as this is for you, it’s pretty fucking weird for me also.”
“That could be,” said Hewitt. “But I don’t yet see how.”
THEY WALKED OUT to the garden, Hewitt carrying the envelope with the two photographs gently, artifacts from a distant star, a bit of meteorite landed in his hand. They sat on the long stone bench amid the clumps and bunches of flower color. There was a foot between them and Hewitt placed the envelope there, then turned his face toward her and waited.
Jessica said, “That woman in the picture, that’s my mother’s older sister.�
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“Is that right.”
“She was your father’s first wife. The mother of that little girl, Susan. Her name was Celeste. Celeste Willoughby. Celeste Willoughby Pearce. From Water Valley, Mississippi.”
“My father never talked about them.”
She looked him bold in the eye and said, “Susan Lydia Pearce. She was named for your grandmother.”
He paused. “You say.”
He’d heard the names Celeste and Susan from his mother. No last name for Celeste, no middle name for Susan. But the stone for his grandmother two miles down the road held the legend: LYDIA SUSAN PEARCE.
Hewitt said, “After he died we went through all his papers but there was nothing about them. Most probably destroyed in the fire. I don’t even know where they were buried, whatever remains there were. Stones put up somewhere maybe. I don’t know. Maybe it was too awful and he had them cremated and spread the ashes somewhere. New York, in the harbor. Christ, maybe even up here.”
“Or buried in the old cemetery in Water Valley.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
He was quiet a time. Then said, “Be damned.” He looked off away from her, out over the flower beds. Wondering how many times his father had brought that first family up here. Wondering if a little girl used to the confines of the city and a certain poverty of life had ever been set free here, had scampered among the flowers, climbed the low-slung apple branches, found the same hiding places Hewitt and his sister Beth with the innocence of children always assumed were theirs alone. Wondering what the young woman had thought of this place. And wanting to examine the photograph again. For a number of reasons but determined to wait.
Jessica said, “You all right?”
“I can’t say. I guess. Why don’t you tell me about them, what you know.” He looked back to her.
She said, “It’s sort of complicated.”
“She was your aunt, right?”
“Within a broad stretch of time, yes. A course I never knew her.”
“I’d guess not.”
“Hewitt, you got to give me a chance here. Okay?”
“Go ahead,” he said.
“The story was basically an example sort of deal—she was the lovely glamorous older sister who went off up North to set the world on fire and came to a bad end, which would not have happened if she’d stayed home and married well and all that.”
“I get the picture.”
“Celeste was the oldest of five and my mother was the baby. And then the other thing is my own parents were pretty much fucked-up when I came along. Matter of fact I overheard my father one evening telling my mother things seemed to be falling apart because of me, that I seemed like some sort of jinx on their marriage. Which when I’m on the street is the name I use. Because nobody uses their real names and Jinx seemed to fit. And there’s enough souls out there who hear that word and decide to put a little distance between them and me. Which is always part of what I want. You know—just leave me be.”
He laid his hand on the old brown envelope and said, “Hey Jessica?”
“Right,” she said. “I don’t know how they met, your father and Celeste. Her dream was to be a dancer. Ballet, not some sort of chorus girl. She went to New York because she wanted, and I’m quoting my mother here but without the mockery, to be a real ballerina. I admired her for that. I can’t begin to imagine doing something in front of a bunch of people. Even inside a role. Although, shit Hewitt, I realize I’ve done my share of it myself. I just never got paid.” And she laughed and Hewitt heard the nervous skitter behind the laugh and realized there was no breaking those two stories, of Celeste and of Jessica, apart. Because they were all twined together for her and with that insight came another—he too was entwined with both.
“And somehow she met my father,” he said. “While she was trying to make her own career.”
“You know Hewitt, I’d bet a nickel she was going to auditions and classes, trying to figure out how to live without begging money from home and one way or another, maybe she saw a sign, maybe they just ran into each other, maybe she heard about him from some other girl, but I bet it started with her modeling for him. I know one time my mother said something about the first they heard about him was a bundle of obscene drawings of her came in the mail. It just spat out of her mouth and when I pushed she clamped shut. They weren’t obscene. She just didn’t have any clothes on is all.
“The big deal at home was they got married up there in New York City by a justice of the peace or however they do it there outside a church. And she came down home with that tall gangly Yankee with her and her belly already stretched beyond the point of being able to hide it decent. My guess is Celeste didn’t want to hide it. And she brought along this one painting of his, as if to dispel any doubt. I know she brought it because on the back of the canvas he’d written To my love, my life, my Celeste, this and all else only for you. It was hers. And I know this too: everybody thought it was strange, not anything like what anybody thought a painting should be. But still there was conflict in the judgment—after all he was from New York and an artist and what did anybody know about what that meant? I don’t know how it is here in Vermont but I always found country people pretty firm in their ideas and scared to death they’re wrong, all at once.”
“Jesus,” Hewitt said. “Good God I’d like a beer.”
“You want to get one?”
“No,” he said again. “Keep talking.”
“There isn’t a whole lot more. They went back to New York. She wouldn’t come home again. My mother always said it was because of the war and how hard it was to travel. My grandmother laughed at that and said, ‘Why would she want to come back after the way she was treated the first time?’ It was a sad laugh, Hewitt. It’s maybe why she and my mother didn’t get along that well. Shoot, I don’t know, maybe it even had something to do with why Grandma Willoughby was so kind to me. I don’t know. But she was the goodness in my life.”
“So,” Hewitt said. “Next they heard of her was after the fire? When she died?”
“Oh no. She wouldn’t come home but she sent letters about them. About the baby and how she, Celeste I mean, was still dancing. And always about your dad. How he was getting better and better, and people, important people were starting to pay attention.”
Hewitt said, “There’s more pictures? Photos of Susan?”
She was quiet a moment. Then said, “These are all I ever had. I figured you’d have some yourself.”
Hewitt said, “It’s all right. No, this is the first I’ve ever seen of her. Of either of them.”
They both sat, an enormity of silence and void spreading around them, both within the curious spiral of life.
After a time Hewitt said, “So next thing the family, the family in Mississippi knew, was about the fire. And then they were brought back to be buried there.”
“That’s right.”
“And my father was there for that? The service and the burying? Did they talk about that part? Anything about him?”
Jessica lifted a hand and placed it on her other forearm and began to scratch. She was raking her bitten nails harsh against her flesh, raising welts first white and then reddening. After a moment he reached over and lifted the damaging hand and said, “Jessica?”
Her eyes glaring anger, distress acute, she said, “Oh he came. You bet he came. What I heard my granddaddy met him at the station and told him to get right back on the train and go home. Threatened to thrash him or worse if he so much as stepped in the door of the church, the church not good enough for your father to marry in so why bother now, when it was all too late. And right then my grandmother showed up, driven down there to the station by the black man worked for them because she hadn’t yet learned to drive. Fact is I think that VW was the only car she ever owned and drove herself. Now listen, Hewitt, cause she told me this story herself. How her husband came down off the platform and ordered the man, Tate was his name, to take
her on home but she was already out and walked up to your father whom she said looked just wretched, not scared at all, as if he was walking and breathing because he had no choice. How she called for the porter to put his suitcase in the trunk of the car and led your father down and took him home. And Grandfather went uptown to the hotel and checked himself in. But Grandmother took your father home. And she said it was like everybody, not just the family but all the neighbors and the colored help was holding their breath to see what would happen. But nothing did. Grandfather stayed overnight at the hotel and next morning they all arrived at the church and Grandmother led your father right up front for the service and she and him sat on one side all alone in the pew and all the rest of the family sat on the other side. He rode out with her to the cemetery for the burying and then Tate, who was long dead when I came along, she had him drive your father not to the train for the local but all the way to Memphis so he could catch the express. She told me your father was polite as could be and would barely say two words, even that long evening they spent alone together. But yes, he was there. Oh my, he most certainly was there.”
She grew silent and was gazing away, softened now as if finally out with something waiting. Then she said, “My grandparents never forgave each other over all that. And my mama was just a little girl herself. I think she sided with Granddaddy—he was most ferocious was how I heard it. Dead before I could remember him. And like I made clear, Grandma Willoughby was kind to me ever since I could recall. She was the one when I was about ten told me about Celeste which gave my mother fits. But Grandma, I don’t know what she saw about me. But she wanted me to know that story. Which is how I ended up with the pictures. And somehow what started me thinking about your dad, trying to learn what’d become of him.”
Hewitt sat with his elbows on his knees, chin in his hands, the garden a hazed diffusion as through the layers of years and words the particular vast sorrows of his father settled out before him, within and upon him.
After a time Jessica said, “Are you angry with me?”