By Appointment Only
I forgot to breathe and drove past Alexander without a word. I pulled into the driveway, searching the windows for signs of activity. There were none, and the garage was empty. I pulled in, noting that Gib’s golf clubs were still leaning against the wall, but Luke’s three sets and their expensive stand were gone.
Alexander followed me into the garage and held my door open as I slid out. He leaned down to lightly kiss my cheek, and I absently patted him on his waist. I needed to see the house.
Luke hadn’t turned the air-conditioning off when he’d left, and my arms broke out in goose bumps when I entered through the laundry room off the garage. I adjusted the thermostat a few degrees as I entered the kitchen, where everything appeared intact. My cookbooks were still neatly lined up, the blue Kitchen-Aid mixer stood where it had since Luke had given it to me.
I trailed my fingers along the island’s marble top on my way into the living room. The big plasma TV was gone. As were the leather sofas, the coffee table, both end tables, and the surround sound system. He’d left all the plants—thirsting for water—and window treatments, as well as the art on the walls. No. There were some empty spots. The O’Keeffes. He’d taken those, of course.
Alexander whistled under his breath. “I take it you weren’t expecting this,” he said.
“Not exactly,” I replied, walking through the living room to the sunporch. The patio set was gone, but the wrought-iron tables I’d used for the orchids had been left behind. The grill was gone. I reentered the house through the dining room doors. The table, chairs, and china cabinet were gone. The china itself was stacked in the middle of the room, positioned directly underneath the chandelier.
The rest of the house told a similar tale. The boys’ rooms were untouched, as was one guest room, but every other room had been stripped of its major components.
The master bedroom furniture was gone, with the exception of the box spring, mattress, and comforter set. My clothes had been piled against the wall. Luke’s side of the closet was empty. Everything of his in the bathroom was gone.
Alexander stood in the doorway of the bedroom and watched as I threw myself onto the mattress and stared, dry-eyed, up at the tray ceiling. Luke had left the fan. He probably hadn’t known how to disconnect it. Alexander sat down next to me, making me roll slightly toward him like a rag doll.
Thank God I hadn’t brought either of the boys. Alexander rubbed my shoulder, and I finally sat up and let my breath out like a leaky tire.
“Well, looks like this is it,” I said.
“What about the for sale sign?” Alexander asked. In the shock of my denuded house, I’d almost forgotten about that.
“This is my house,” I said, getting to my feet. I marched down the stairs, out the front door, and yanked the sign out of the lawn, leaving two gaping holes. I left the sign in the garage and pulled out one of the information packets for the agent’s phone number, intending to call him immediately, but I changed my mind and called Angie instead.
We’d planned to have drinks after the performance, and when I couldn’t reach her in person I just left a message confirming our appointment. I couldn’t get the agent’s lockbox off our front door, so I had to leave it, risking potential buyers showing up at any time.
I scrawled a note and taped it to the door: This house is not for sale. I am the rightful owner, and you do not have permission to enter. Constance Sykes Wilder.
Alexander helped me drag the rug out of the Escalade; we left it in the middle of the living room. I didn’t bother bringing anything else in. I transferred my music, violin, and clothes to Alexander’s car, and we went to his apartment to get ready. I took my rings off, as I always did, but this time I knew I would not be putting them back on. I rode to the library in silence, obsessively running the pad of my thumb across the dents in my ring finger until it was painful.
Hannah was already playing Waldteufel to warm up when we arrived, and as we joined her she kept glancing at me, concentrating on me just long enough to lag behind, making Alexander furious. He finally stopped playing and waited for her to notice.
“Hannah,” he snapped. “Come on, could you concentrate, please?”
“Are you okay, Connie?” she asked, ignoring him.
“I’m fine,” I assured her. “Really. I just want to help Alexander get through tonight. I’ll catch you up afterward.”
She didn’t look convinced, but we got through the warmup, and when the director knocked on the door we were ready. The auditorium was filled to capacity, the lights low. As we walked onto the stage, silence fell before polite applause broke out. We nodded to the audience and got settled, breaking into Tartini perfectly.
I hit every note, my violin stayed in tune, Hannah kept up; by the time we’d moved on to Beethoven my only thoughts were of the music. My phrasing turned liquid, my fingers moving of their own accord, my bow arm lifting and falling, bringing first the frog to the bridge and then the tip, again and again and again, each note pushing bits of my life out of my mind, as if they were closing doors on the empty rooms of my house.
Hannah escaped to the bathroom at intermission to avoid Alexander’s chatter, so he talked to me while he tuned, throwing my routine off. We were all touchy at intermission, full of music looking for an outlet, building up pressure, ready for the steam valve of the second set. Alexander used talk to relieve his nerves, and I was used to it. But tonight I couldn’t stand it, and I envied Hannah hiding in the bathroom.
“More wine?” he asked.
“Huh-uh,” I muttered, shaking my head, willing him to be quiet.
“Wiley’s out there, I saw him,” he said. Jason Wiley was the orchestra personnel manager he was hoping to impress.
“Hmmm.”
“David’s here too. Did you see who he’s with?”
“No.”
“Bethy Simmons, that skanky pianist. You think they’re actually dat—”
“Alexander, please.” I turned away from him with a sigh.
“Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.” He went back to tuning his cello. “But really—”
“You’ve got to let me be for a few minutes, Alex,” I said, walking out the door with my violin tucked under my arm, my tuning fork and bow gripped in my hand, nearly running into Luke, who’d been about to knock on the door.
“What on earth are you doing here?” I asked. The sight of him, here, in this world, threw me off. I involuntarily took a step back. He looked like hell, his forehead shining with sweat and a three-day stubble turning his face into the dispirited, haggard face of his father. It looked as though he hadn’t washed his hair, and his clothes—clothes I’d never seen before—were rumpled and gave off the odor of alcohol. I heard Alexander gasp and put his bow down.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing? I just got a call from the agent saying he couldn’t bring somebody in to look at the house.” He swept his hand across his brow and into his hair, his signature gesture of stress.
“How dare you,” I said through clenched teeth, pointing at him with my bow, not thinking. He grabbed it, hard, and I gasped as he wrenched it out of my hand. He held it captive, like a hostage, which indeed it was. I watched as he ran his greasy, sweaty palm up the length of its hairs. He knew exactly what he was doing. I held my hand out—it was ruined for the night but much too expensive to relinquish—but he ignored it. I felt Alexander behind me.
“Please give me back my bow,” I said. “You’ve already got all the furniture.”
“You’re the one who left the house, Connie,” he said with a shrug, clumsily flipping the bow in the air and catching it by the other end. “Your lawyer should have coached you better.”
“Luke—” Alexander started, but Luke didn’t let him finish.
“Back off, faggot,” he said, jabbing the bow at him. I heard Alexander gasp and felt my knees weaken. Luke had never been a bigot, but he was unpredictable when he was drinking. He didn’t drink often, and the memory of his b
roken-down father kept him sober but for a few episodes a year. And he hated himself on those occasions, knowing how his behavior—loving one moment, surly the next, and then suddenly asleep wherever he landed—would affect his children.
“Luke,” I said, “I don’t mind about the furniture. Everything will be added up in the end, and you picked most of it out anyway. You’re obviously upset and you’ve been drink—”
“Oh, please,” he sneered. “Don’t start the Saint Constance act with me.”
“Is that why you’re with her?” I asked, unable to let it go, unable to resist jabbing him back. “She’s willing to let you turn into your father? What a bargain she’s getting. Expensive furniture and a drunk.”
“I’m not a drunk,” he said, emphasizing each word with another poke of my bow. “I just went out with a client for a few drinks, something Deanna understands.”
“That’s great, Luke. Now please, we can talk about this after the performance. Let’s be adults about this. Let’s be fair. May I have my bow back? Please?”
Alexander had backed off, but I heard him on the phone in the dressing room.
“Be fair? Fair? I don’t think it was fair of you to freeze the accounts, you bitch. And you’ve got nothing to say about the house. You don’t need all that room. I got a good agent. We’ll split the profit.”
“That’s not the point,” I said evenly. “You didn’t even talk to me about it. And my trust fund paid for that house.”
“I need . . .” Luke trailed off.
“What, Luke? What do you need?”
“That Escalade’s in my name, and I let you take it,” he said.
“Do you need money? Is that it? Maybe you should have thought of that before you stole from your own sons.”
Alexander appeared at my back again. “The police are on their way,” he said. “I suggest you give her back that bow and get out of here.”
“You asshole,” Luke said. His fist clenched around the bow, stretching the hairs, making it quiver under the strain. I quickly put my hand on his arm.
“Luke, please, give me back my bow and we’ll talk about the Escalade tomorrow.”
His stared at me, trying to focus. He was a stranger to me. An angry, volatile stranger. I wondered if I looked like a different person to him too. No longer his wife, just some woman who was trying to steal his rightfully earned money from him, preventing him from starting a new life with the woman he loved.
“If this is a trick I’m going to make your life miserable.”
“You’ve already managed that,” I said softly. It was the wrong thing to say. His jaw clenched, and then he held the bow up in front of my eyes and snapped it in half faster than I could flinch.
He dropped it on the floor, the two halves still held together by the hairs. I fell to my knees with a cry and gathered it up. He pointed a finger at Alexander but said nothing, and then turned on his heel and left, one hand trailing down the wall.
I slumped against the door frame, clutching my ruined bow, my hands trembling. Alexander pulled me into the room and shut the door before he took the bow from my hands and put his arms around me. I could feel his heart beating through his suit. I thought I might cry, but instead I just shook, and finally stepped away from him.
“Did you really call the police?” I asked. He shook his head.
“I called my house and left a message on my machine, so that if he killed me the police would know who did it.”
I had to laugh. “He wouldn’t have touched you—or me, for that matter,” I said.
“Connie, he was drunk. There’s no telling what someone is going to do when he’s drunk and pissed off, and my neck’s no thicker than that bow. Tell me you have your other one?”
I did, but it was of little comfort to me. It had been an expensive bow, my favorite, and from the way it had splintered I doubted it could be repaired. Alexander opened the door and looked around to make sure Luke was gone. Hannah appeared at the end of the hallway, checking her watch and rubbing her hands down her black skirt, working out her nerves and completely unaware of what had just happened.
“Are we ready?” she asked. I took a few deep breaths under Alexander’s watchful gaze, and then nodded. I retrieved my other bow, quickly tightened and rosined it, and we tuned together.
“I guess so,” I said.
The second half went better than I would have expected, but I played the Telemann and Danzi by rote, the music never taking me back where I needed to be to play my best. We received a fair length and decibel level of applause, and Wiley was waiting for Alexander in the corridor after our final bows. He shook hands with all of us, and complimented Alexander, saying he was looking forward to his audition before he left.
Alexander was ecstatic, Hannah was jealous, and I was exhausted. I still had a long night of divorce talk ahead of me, and I wished for it to simply be over.
Angie was waiting in the driveway of my nearly empty house when I arrived. I didn’t bother introducing her to Alexander, but rather kissed him quickly on the cheek and told him I would call him from Big Dune. Angie loomed over me—she certainly topped six feet—and I suppressed a little smile. Tall women had always intimidated Luke. We shook hands and I invited her inside, ready to begin the official decimation of my marriage.
To my surprise I slept well, and in the morning I walked through the house slowly, breathing in the familiar scents of memories and growing boys and cleaning products, of long-ago dinners and recent arguments and marriage. What it didn’t smell of was me. I loved this home, but I loved it with a family in it. Without one it felt huge and sad and somehow reproachful. Perhaps I would feel differently when I brought the boys back.
I packed a few suitcases, throwing in clothes for the boys as well as their CDs and video games, and by the time I was ready to pack the car I’d felt something shift in me, some reckoning and acceptance. I checked all the locks, set the air-conditioning, and hoisted a suitcase in my hand. My other hand stilled on the doorknob as I breathed in one last bit of air from the house and set off to start a new life.
I opened the door to the garage, nearly expecting a ray of light, or perhaps a soundtrack of uplifting music. Instead, what I was confronted with was an empty garage. I stared into the emptiness, willing the Escalade to appear. But it did not.
I set the suitcase down gently and opened the garage door. As it rumbled up I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that when I opened them the Escalade would have somehow materialized in the driveway. But it did not.
I went back inside to call Angie.
An eight-hour drive in a rattling rental car provides plenty of time for thought, and my head was swimming when I arrived on Big Dune. Everyone was on the beach, and I took the opportunity to grab a snack, unpack, and take a shower. When I emerged, Carson was just coming in the door. He screamed, “Mommy!” and flung himself at me.
“Hey, baby,” I cried, hugging him to me. He was followed in by Estella and Mother, and they both greeted me almost as enthusiastically as Carson had. While Carson showered, Estella and Mother followed me up to the library to hear about the weekend. Their wide-eyed shock was as comforting as their embraces.
“Where’s Gib?” I asked once their questions had been answered.
“You can’t peel him off Tate,” Mother answered. “They’re fishing down at the cut. Carson was down there with them, but I think he and Gib had words. He came back looking pretty down in the mouth.”
“I’ll have to talk to Gib,” I said with a sigh.
“Every little sibling tiff doesn’t need a talk, Connie,” Mother said.
She was probably right. Without Luke around to keep things even in our family, Carson and Gib were going to have to work out a new relationship. And as much as I might want to help, they were old enough that much of it was going to have to get worked out without me.
It was an oddly satisfying realization. It stayed my hand from buttoning my shirt for a moment, and I stared at Mother. She gave me a puzzled
smile, but I couldn’t explain it.
“Estella,” I said, “feel like walking down to the cut with me?”
“Yeah, sure,” she answered.
We walked slowly, the destination only an excuse to get out of the house with my sister. The feeling I’d had in the library was expanding in my chest, and what I’d wanted to talk about for so many years could no longer be contained. It was suddenly greater than myself, and yet, it also seemed less important than ever. I understood, and now I needed to let her know.
“You know Mother thinks we got along growing up,” I said as we walked through the surf. Estella glanced at me, and then looked out to the Gulf. She raised her hand to her temple and massaged it.
“Well, we didn’t really fight the way most sisters do,” she said. It was an answer I might have given before today, a safe, evasive answer, and I was having none of it. I stopped and put my hand on her arm to stop her too.
“No,” I said slowly. I’d rehearsed a lot of speeches over the past thirty years, but none of them was right, none of them fit now, and I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to say. “It was worse. And it wasn’t all their fault. It wasn’t. At first, maybe, yes, definitely. We were young, but later we should have made it better ourselves.”
“Connie,” Estella said, “we didn’t have a chance—”
“But we did,” I protested. “We did. Especially that summer, remember? When Daddy took Mother to Europe. I thought we were really getting closer. But we lost it, and . . . and I don’t know what happened. We just never tried to get it back. Why? Why didn’t we try?”
She shook her head and started walking again, looking down at the sand, moving fast now. I stared after her for a moment and then ran to catch up, matching her pace. “What, Estella?”
“It was my fault,” she said, her words strangling in her throat.
“But no, it wasn’t,” I said. “That’s what I’m getting at. It was our fault, because that’s what we’d done for so long, but—”
“Connie!” she shouted, stopping and turning toward me sharply enough to send a small spray of sand over my feet. “Why won’t you just say it? I almost let you drown. That was my fault. And then I couldn’t stand to look at you, I couldn’t stand to see all that forgiveness in your face. Always looking at me like that, Jesus, since we were kids. You exhausted me. I loved you, but I couldn’t live up to it.”
Catching Genius Page 27