“You know what happened the last time I did that.”
“I’ll be careful. I promise.” The gate hung open and she picked her way among the debris. The steps and part of the porch were intact. Oh, Lawrence, I did destroy what you had. Oh, my
love, I’m so sorry. She started up the steps, coming instantly under the spell of the house when Ty called to her.
“Elise! You promised. You can’t go in there. It’s dangerous.” Something released her, broke the connection, and she turned and went back to the truck. She laid her head on Ty’s shoulder and cried great racking sobs. “How could he do this? Oh, Ty.” She looked up at him then with such pleading that he pressed his lips to hers, softly, tenderly, and she gave herself to him for just a moment before she stiffened and pushed him away.
“I’m sorry, Elise. I’m not trying to take advantage of a situation.”
She didn’t say anything, and he drove her home in silence. He walked her to her door and apologized again.
She pressed her fingers to his mouth. “I’m grateful you came for me. I think you understand more than anyone.”
“Maybe I should come in.”
She looked toward the door. “No, better not. This is my battle.”
19
Margaret and Edwin were in his study. Elise stood in the door and spit words sharp as darts. “Are you proud of yourself, Edwin?”
Margaret stood up. “Elise, whatever has gotten into you?”
“Why don’t you ask your husband? Ask him who burned the Myers’ house?”
“What! Edwin?”
Elise sobbed, “And I obeyed you. I didn’t go there. But you did, you and a box of matches.”
“Elise! How dare you talk to your father that way?”
“He isn’t my father. He never has been. He’s the scoundrel. Deny that you’re responsible. Deny it!”
“I don’t have to deny anything. How can you believe I’d do something like that?”
“One way or the other, you got the place condemned.”
“In the heat of an argument we all make threats, Elise.”
“But you followed through. I stayed away! I STAYED AWAY!”
She pressed her hands against her temples. “You’ve destroyed everything I’ve ever loved, starting when I was three years old!”
“Shut up! Both of you!” Margaret raked her fingers through her hair. “This has gone on long enough. I haven’t been the best mother in the world, Elise, but God, how I’ve tried, and I’m sick of you accusing Edwin of all that’s wrong in your life. We’re settling old scores here and now. I won’t have you blaming him for things he’s too much of a gentleman to tell you himself.”
She turned and faced Elise and said in her coldest voice, “Edwin did not kill Gene. Gene killed himself. Yes, Gene and Edwin played golf every Saturday afternoon. At least that’s what I thought. I saw no reason to question it until one Saturday Edwin returned to the house alone. At first I thought something had happened, that there’d been an accident.” Margaret looked at Edwin, and his face crumpled.
“That long-ago Saturday, darling. You were frantic,” he said, his eyes never leaving her face. “You came to the door and kept looking around the yard, looking for Gene. ‘Where’s Gene? Is he okay? Has there been an accident?’ Once there, facing you, my resolve nearly vanished.” He walked to the window and looked out, his hands in his pockets. “I had trouble saying what I’d come to tell you.” His voice trailed off, and he swallowed hard. “All these years, and I still . . .”
Margaret sighed and took up the thread of the story. “You see, Elise, they hadn’t been playing golf after all. Every Saturday Edwin drove Gene to another woman’s house. Edwin went to the golf course alone. Gene had been having an affair for nearly a year.”
Edwin stared at the window, seeing his own reflection, and went on, “God, I hated myself for being party to that, but I didn’t hate myself enough not to do it. Gene and I had been friends since we were kids. We were like brothers. I felt like I owed him my life. That’s no lie. In many ways I did owe him my life.
“I practically lived at his house when we were growing up. My dad was the town drunk, and my mother worked in the lunchroom at school. She always smelled like cafeteria slop. I didn’t blame her. It’s just the way things were. I thought Gene had the ideal life with his fancy house and rich parents. I wanted to be Gene. I never understood what he saw in me though.” He hesitated a moment. “It must have been my loyalty. That was something he thought he could count on. I didn’t know how much that meant to him until I wanted to go to law school and couldn’t afford it.
“Mr. Compton, his dad, had bought stock in Gene’s name, and without a second thought, Gene cashed it in and gave me the money. I didn’t want to take it, but he said the damage was done once he sold the stock. He insisted I use it so we could stay together through law school. His dad was ready to kill us both, but it was too late to do anything about it. No matter how bad I felt about Margaret, I owed Gene. I owed him more than I could ever repay.”
“You see, Elise . . .”
“No, Margaret, let me tell it my way. Gene knew he’d bought and paid for me years before. I wasn’t supposed to question what he did. I begged him not to ruin his marriage, but I couldn’t reach him.” He closed his eyes and shook his head. “We’d lost something along the way. Finally I couldn’t stand it. I let him out of the car one Saturday and drove back to the house. I told your mother where he was.”
Margaret turned to Elise. “Edwin expected me to have hysterics and confront Gene and his mistress. I admit that was my first impulse, but the anger was so great, the emotion so overwhelming that it seemed too easy a way out for him.” With the retelling, Margaret grew cold and hard, her words clipped like shards of ice. “Edwin tried to comfort me, and then we comforted each other in the way Gene had taught us.”
“I loved your mother, Elise. I suppose on some level I’d always loved her, but afterwards I was sick with guilt. I knew I couldn’t see her again. I loved Gene too. The following Saturday, after I left Gene, I drove to the golf course, but I never got out of the car. I had to be with Margaret again. I couldn’t help myself. I simply couldn’t help myself,” he said, his voice choked with emotion.
Margaret interrupted, “Edwin, would you bring me a glass of wine, please?”
When he was out of the room, Margaret spoke softly to Elise. “I never wanted to hurt you with something so sordid, Elise, but you have to understand why you saw what you did that day. I knew it was wrong despite what Gene was doing. But I’d never known such pain. I didn’t think I could stand it. And then Edwin was at the door again. I’ll always believe it was pain, not desire. This was a way of settling the score with a man I thought loved me.”
Edwin returned with the wine. “And wouldn’t you know, that was the day Gene took sick and came home in a taxi.”
“And found me crying,” Elise offered. “All these years, I’ve thought I was responsible for his death, that I was the reason he found you.”
“No, he knew when he saw Edwin’s car in the drive. It was all over in that minute. Oh, Elise, this is so humiliating. Edwin and I aren’t proud of any of it. We were all betrayed. We betrayed each other. But I did love Gene. At first I blamed myself for not being a better wife, but then my love grew bitter, and I hated him as much as I had loved him. I could never talk to you about him because,” Margaret paused, realizing how much it still hurt, and said quietly, “because I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to forget.”
“I don’t think, Elise, it had anything to do with your mother. Some people can never have enough love, and Gene was one of them. It wasn’t his fault. His parents were two of the coldest goddamned people I ever knew. They weren’t young when he came along, and they never found a place for him in their lives. He told me that. His mother was indifferent and distant. She left a frost in him no woman could melt.”
“It doesn’t excuse us, Elise. But that’s why you saw what you did.” Mar
garet’s voice broke. “I didn’t know . . . I never guessed . . . Edwin and I married and tried to erase the past. But the past became a shadow that never went away.”
Elise could hardly comprehend what she’d been told, and then she began crying for Margaret and Gene, crying for the Myers and what they’d lost. Edwin took Margaret’s hand and kissed it and then left them alone. Margaret kneeled in front of Elise’s chair. “Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”
“But you married him. You married Edwin.”
She lowered her voice. “It wasn’t a big romance, Elise.” She closed her eyes. “I had to legitimize what we’d done. I felt, we felt, I guess, that we didn’t have any choice. Whatever responsibility we felt toward Gene or each other, we didn’t have any choice. We had a need, and we called it love. Maybe it was. Is. Over time love’s edges are blurred and soften into something comfortable and secure. I can’t tell you the difference between love and the fulfillment of a need. Who knows? Maybe I have both.”
The longest walk Elise had ever made was to her room that night. And she’d never known her head to hurt so fiercely. She reached for the prescription painkiller the doctor had given her and poured several more than the prescribed dosage of tablets in her hand before pulling her beautiful gown over her head. No pearls this time though. Her last thought was if I should die before I wake . . . and she fell into a deep, drugged sleep.
Edwin was in his study swirling bourbon in a crystal glass when Margaret found him.
“Did you do it?” she asked.
“Do what?”
“Edwin, don’t make this any harder. You know what I mean.” He drained the glass and turned to her. “Yes. But it was an accident. Oh, I went there with every intention of doing something to destroy that house, but it was weird. It was almost like a force field or a wall held me back. I took the box of matches from my pocket, but I couldn’t do it. Then I saw the stub of an old candle on the piano. God, how that bunch of sticks was still standing.” He shook his head. “There were so many trees they made it dark in there so I went to light the candle when a rat or something ran out of the piano. I swear to God it jumped at me. I dropped the candle and jumped back. I tried to stomp the fire out but it got ahead of me. I dropped the box of matches and left.”
“Oh, Edwin.”
“I tell you, it was an accident. That house wasn’t worth burning anyway. It was a wreck.”
“But, Edwin, it had been somebody’s home.”
“Don’t go sounding like Elise now. Nobody lived there. It was a place for derelicts and tramps.”
“And Elise.”
“That’s nothing for you to be proud of, Margaret.”
“I’m not proud, Edwin. I’m sad.”
“And I’m sorry. What do you want me to do, tell Elise?”
“No! Let’s forget it and try to move on. Again. With time maybe Elise will feel better and forget all this nonsense.”
THANKS TO THE MEDICINE, ELISE slept soundly for several hours but then woke suddenly in the middle of the night. She recalled accounts of people who had near-death experiences and wondered if she was near death as she watched herself get out of bed and leave the house. She couldn’t recall the long walk, but she realized she was at the Myers’. Despite the destruction, she walked up the steps and across the porch. The screen door was gone but she walked through the hall and up the stairs to Lawrence’s room. She inhaled the scent of his body as she pulled the sheet back and lay down beside him, curving her body to his back.
“What!” He turned toward her. “Elise?”
“Yes. Were you expecting someone else?”
“How . . .”
She placed her finger to his lips. “No questions, please. I’ve missed you so. I was afraid I’d never see you again. And then the fire tonight . . .”
“Elise, you don’t belong here. I’ve tried to tell you . . .” He stopped talking then, his hands cupping her breasts, his mouth devouring her.
Later he held her in his arms, stroking her hair. She spoke against the warmth of his chest. “I could live the rest of my life on tonight.”
“You may have to. For so long I wondered if you’d ever come back to me, and when you did, I knew that no matter how much we wanted it, it couldn’t be. I tried to tell you, to warn you.”
“Then why am I here?”
“Don’t you know who you were? Who I am? For you to forget, I couldn’t bear it.”
“I . . . you’re frightening me. I’m afraid to think . . .”
“Oh, my God, I have to tell you. Annelise, my love.”
“Annelise?”
“Don’t you know? We’re old souls. Annelise and Seth. We’ve always been, will always be old souls. That will never go away, but you must. This isn’t the first time we’ve said goodbye, darling.”
“Oh, I can’t leave you. I simply can’t.”
“If you won’t, then I will. For you. Goodbye, my love.”
Elise felt as though she was carried on a current of air, confident it was the medication and not death that called to her. She heard a voice from a great distance calling something. It was so faint she could hardly make it out, but borne on a breath of frigid air it seemed to call, “Seth?” Could that be? Not her voice though, surely not hers. Annelise calling Seth.
Without opening her eyes, she patted the bed with her hand, searching for Lawrence. Her hand sank into the mattress and she opened her eyes and screamed. She was in Lawrence’s bedroom, but it was a room filled with moonlight and decay. The mattress was little more than gossamer and dust. The floor was wet and slimy, and his books were green with mold and years of neglect. She stepped into her shoes and made her way to the hall. A full moon provided light, and she looked down to see the shell of a piano in what was left of the living room. She walked down the stairs to the remains of the kitchen. The only thing left of that bright, warm room was Mrs. Myers’ cast-iron cook stove, covered with ashes and decades of rust.
“Mrs. Myers? Mrs. Myers?” She knew no one would answer, but she had to say his name. “Lawrence? Oh, Lawrence.” And then more quietly, “Seth?” Her voice broke then, and she couldn’t bear to stay there any longer. She picked her way through the ashes and made the long walk home. The sun hadn’t come up when she let herself in the house and tiptoed up the stairs. She went to bed then and slept without dreaming.
Margaret came to her room before leaving for work. She stared at the floor. “Elise, what happened to your bedroom slippers? They’re black! That’s what’s on the stairs. It’s from your slippers! What have you done?”
Elise rubbed her eyes and sat up in bed.
“And your gown! Look at your beautiful gown!”
Elise looked down at the moldering decay her mother saw. “It’s death, Mom. That’s what you see on my gown. Death.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Elise. You went to that house, didn’t you? You went back to the Myers’.”
Elise stared straight ahead, not answering.
“I hoped we could come to some kind of understanding, Elise, but I don’t know how to reach you anymore.”
As Margaret turned to leave the room, Elise said softly, “You never did.”
20
There was a ringing in Elise’s head that wouldn’t go away, and for several days she sat on the porch and stared into space. Ty and Peyton came by to see if she was okay, but she found it difficult to talk.
“I knew it would be hard on you, hon.” Peyton had been sitting with Elise for nearly an hour. “You’ve had a lot to bear and then with the fire and all, well . . .” He stood up. “When you feel like talking, let me know. I always have time for you, you know that.”
Elise looked at him then. She said only one word. “Karma.” Peyton felt the hair prickle on the back of his neck. He kissed her cheek. “It’ll work out, darlin’. You’ll see.”
Thanksgiving came and went in a blur. It was nearly Christmas, and Elise hadn’t even looked at their tree. She wrapped an afghan around her and sat on the porch, defiant
of the weather, but she smiled when she saw Ty’s truck. He came walking up the steps carrying a box with a big green bow on it. He laid it at Elise’s feet and lifted the lid. Inside was a small red puppy.
“Oh!” Tears slid down Elise’s face as she took the puppy in her arms and pressed him to her heart. “He’s so dear, Ty.”
“Well, I knew you’d prefer a hound, but this was the best I could do on short notice. His mama’s a cairn terrier named Toto, and his papa’s a traveling salesman from a good neighborhood.”
Elise couldn’t stop crying, but she refused to let go of the puppy. Ty ran out to his truck and came back with a box of tissues. “Here, baby, let it all out. Get it out of your system once and for all.”
“Ty, you always seem to know what to do.”
“It comes naturally when you love somebody.”
Elise stared into his eyes a moment and then looked away. “I suppose Mom will let me keep the puppy.”
“If she won’t, I’ll keep it ’til you have a place of your own.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“You know I would.”
“Does he have a name?”
“No more than my company does. That’s your department, remember?”
“I’ve never named a dog before.”
“You’ve never named a company either. There’s always a first time.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “He looks like a Rusty to me.”
“And my company?”
“That seems so important. So permanent. I can never think of anything that’s just right.”
“We’ll let that one go for now then. Can you and Rusty get along without me? I’ve got some Puppy Chow in the truck, but that’s it. He’ll keep you busy, you know.”
“We’ll be fine, won’t we, Rusty?” She kissed the puppy’s nose and then stood up and kissed Ty on the cheek. He turned slowly until his lips were on hers, and she didn’t pull away. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears as he stumbled down the steps and walked to his truck.
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