So, dropping to the grass—an unnecessary move, since the group by the rattletrap was absorbed by the problem at hand—I slithered toward them, soaking myself in dew. The wind was blowing toward me over the dune grass, and I could hear their voices from relatively far away.
“Then we came back here,” Charlie was saying.
“But don’t tell anyone!” Francesca added. “It was a shambles, but at least we got out and back with none of the aunts noticing.”
“What about the other kids?” asked Philip.
“No, it’s better if they don’t hear about it either. You know they can never keep their mouths shut.” As she was talking Francesca was struggling with the thing in her hands, but now she stopped and looked at Philip while the match in Charlie’s hand guttered and blew out. “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked. She had been so distracted that she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary in Philip’s sprinting up to them from the direction of the woods.
“It’s been a crazy night,” he replied. “Isabella went nuts, along with everybody else. Now she’s run off somewhere, and we’re trying to find her.”
“Well, don’t tell her, whatever you do,” said Francesca.
That was enough for me. In my new role of Isabella’s knight in striped pajamas, I was indignant at anyone dismissing her, and when the dismissals came from Francesca and Philip they seemed a thousand times more cutting. I had been surprised by their discussion, but I was no longer curious about where Charlie and Francesca had gone. At the mention of her name, my thoughts returned to Isabella. I realized I had an opportunity to prove in one fell swoop both that I cared about her and that the others—Philip included—did not. I would find her and bring her back with me to the rattletrap; she would be impressed by my knowledge and initiative, and together we would confront these older cousins who spoke about her as if she were nothing but a nuisance.
As I slithered back, my pajama top hiking up to my armpits, I formed a new plan for hunting her down: I would run along the edge of the woods, and sooner or later Isabella would see the lightening sky and head for open ground. I would catch her as she emerged, grab her hand—that part of the plan was very clear in my mind—and race with her to the rattletrap to display the other cousins in all their treachery.
It didn’t happen like that in reality. My plan worked perfectly in that, after five minutes of trotting beside the trees, wincing at the sodden clamminess of my pajama top against my chest, I heard hiccupping and saw Isabella’s scratched, dirty face approaching me. At the same instant, however, a shout rang out, and Tom and Delia Ybarra crashed into view twenty yards away. I didn’t have time to explain to Isabella what was happening, and I didn’t want anyone else to come with us. This was to be my demonstration of love, witnessed by Isabella alone, so I grabbed her hand as she staggered through the last of the undergrowth and forced her to start running.
“What’s going on?” she panted, trying to brush her hair out of her eyes. “Richard, stop! What are you doing?”
“I have to show you,” I said, undaunted by her attempts to slow down, gripping her hand so tightly that her fingers were crushed together. “You’ll see. Philip is over there. They’re going to keep it a secret from you—”
I’m sure I made no sense to her. I was barely making sense to myself. But somehow I imagined that if she only saw the tableau of conniving cousins by the rattletrap, she would understand everything I felt.
It was part of the satanic bad luck of that night that Francesca, even after ten minutes of grappling, still had not managed to get the cap off the rusty gasoline can they had found in the trunk of the rattletrap. She and Charlie had decided that since the can was kept there only for emergencies, the rattletrap’s tank usually being filled at Pensbottom, their trip to Portland would be ancient history by the time anyone noticed the can was nearly empty. They soon found, however, that the cap had rusted to the can’s body. Francesca insisted on trying to pry it off, and Charlie, obedient as ever, stood like an overgrown servant boy, striking match after match and holding each one close so she could see what she was doing. All through their conversation with Philip she wrestled with the cap unsuccessfully, but as I approached with Isabella, she felt the cap give way. “It’s starting to move!” she exclaimed.
Isabella’s legs were flailing ridiculously as I dragged her across the lawn. They flew out at such extreme angles that she looked like a windmill without sails. I kept her going, gasping out incoherent phrases about Philip and secrets and not caring enough. I was heedless now of anyone noticing our approach, but Francesca and Charlie were so intent on the gasoline can that they didn’t hear or see us coming. When we were about forty feet away and could begin to distinguish their shadowy shapes from the rattletrap’s silhouette, I let Isabella stumble to a halt.
She was angry by this time but so tired from the run and her earlier hysterics that she didn’t have enough breath to yell at me. She only whispered, “Richard, I’m going to beat you to a pulp! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I peered at the huddled shapes by the rattletrap. Knowing how long it always took any group of cousins to come to a decision, I assumed they would still be discussing the pros and cons of telling the others about their secret expedition. In a torrent of whispering I said, “Philip is there with Charlie and Francesca, and they drove off somewhere tonight, and they’re agreeing not to tell any of us about it, but especially not you, because Philip told them you went crazy tonight—that’s what he said. Go up and listen to them, and then you’ll know what he really thinks of you!”
It astonished me later that I could have said such poisonous things to someone I loved. But I was entranced by my idea of what would happen, how I would rise in her estimation as Philip fell. And I had been so seduced by the power of knowledge that summer—no matter by what subterfuges it was gained—that I couldn’t imagine anyone not treasuring it as I did.
Isabella gave me a look that should have stopped me and said, “I’m not going to eavesdrop on them, Richard.”
“But I want you to hear!” With every word I had been pulling her forward, and we were now only twenty feet or so from the others.
With a struggle she stopped, examining me, no doubt trying to understand why I was behaving so oddly. Then she said, “Don’t worry about me, Richard. I’ll be all right. I don’t need to hear them.” She was still trying to be kind, even when she was angry.
“He is there!” I shouted, forgetting to whisper. “He’s there, and he doesn’t care about you! See for yourself!” With that I took her by the waist and shoved her toward the rattletrap as hard as I could, willing her to understand my gesture. I had forgotten how maladroit she was, how frequently she tripped over her own feet and went flying forward, her limbs tossing in all directions.
After that everything happened at once, as if each person were moving in double time. Charlie lit a match. Francesca ripped the cap off the gasoline can with a triumphant cry. And Isabella hurtled into Charlie. He stumbled forward, knocking against the can in Francesca’s arms. The gasoline splashed up, hitting Francesca in the face, and Charlie’s match plunged into the lethal spray.
Francesca dropped the can and stepped back with a shriek that still echoes in my dreams. She was ablaze in an instant. The gasoline flared up, burning her face, and her hair caught the flames almost immediately. We all saw her stand for a moment in an aureole of flame, her gorgeous black curls crackling with fire. Then she put her hands to her face and ran screaming, trying to rip the fire out of her skin.
The rest of us, illuminated by the ghastly light of Francesca burning up, were crying out in terror. I don’t know how long it was before the first aunts appeared—probably not more than a few seconds, since Francesca’s first shriek had been loud enough to wake the house. She was running in little circles, and her sleeves had caught fire, and her hands. Philip and Charlie hovered near her, frantically trying to grab on to her and being repelled each time by the flames. The si
ght was so horrible that I couldn’t keep my eyes on it. Instead I looked at Isabella. There was shock on her face and fear and—I know I saw it—horror, not only at the blaze but at me. She had realized that the nightmare was happening for no reason besides my vindictive jealousy.
In despair I turned back to Francesca, and everything became jumbled. The scene seemed like an oil painting melting into a puddle of colors, the figures running together in a hideous confusion of pain and distress. Aunts poured from the house, cousins swept out from the woods. Silhouettes, sharpening against the sunrise, swarmed around the figure that riveted our eyes, Francesca rolling on the ground, fire all over her.
Aunt Rose, the only aunt who had had the presence of mind to glance out her bedroom window before dashing down the stairs, emerged with the heavy brown parlor carpet dragging behind her. She reached Francesca in a flash, threw the rug over her, and leaped on top of the writhing bundle. Somehow she managed to roll Francesca up in the rug, difficult as that must have been: It took some time to suffocate the flames.
In the sudden darkness after they had been smothered, a new sound curled up from Francesca in the rug, even more heart-wrenching than her earlier screams. She was wailing in pain, crying and keening like a dying seagull. The sound made me fall onto the ground and curl into a ball. It was too terrible to listen to, and yet I couldn’t escape it. I knew then, with a nauseating knot in my stomach, that it was my fault—completely and inescapably my fault.
I stayed huddled on the ground for who knows how long, forgotten for a time even by my mother, hearing nothing except the chaotic babble of voices above me, and through it all Francesca’s knife-like cries. I learned afterward that Aunt Rose and my mother were the only people who had kept any useful grasp on the situation. Aunt Margery was so hysterical she could hardly breathe, and Aunt Edie was near fainting. The cousins were either stunned into immobility or dissolved in tears. With a supreme effort of will, however, the two Hatfield women who had always taken charge managed to do so again now.
My mother called the Pensbottom police and explained the situation. She and Rose had decided that, unreliable though the car was, they would still be able to reach the town faster by driving in the rattletrap than by waiting for a swifter vehicle to come for Francesca. My mother called, however, so that the Pensbottom police would hold the morning train. After the long, passionate, pointless drama of her night drive to Portland, Francesca returned to the city the very next morning, wrapped in a rug, bald and burned and shouting in pain so loudly, my mother told us later, that the whole train knew of the calamity before they reached Portland.
There are two things I remember happening before the aunts carried Francesca to the car and rattled off to Pensbottom. The first was that Aunt Rose caught sight of the gasoline can sitting innocently on the grass. Peeking through my fingers, I saw her look from the can to Francesca and back again, then at the rattletrap, then back to the can. Her mind was running through the possible scenarios that could have led to Francesca’s immolation. Later, of course, she learned exactly what had happened, but I suspect, given Rose’s hawklike nature, that she glommed onto the correct explanation simply by examining those three objects—the can, the car, the rug holding Francesca—as if they were pieces of evidence at a murder trial.
Had there really been a trial, I would have been the defendant, and a jury of my family members would have pronounced me guilty. For it became clear to me, in the ensuing days, that the true source of danger at Shorecliff was not the undertow at the beach, nor the dark woods, nor the cliff itself, which lurked in so many of the aunts’ fears. No, the danger at Shorecliff was in me—I was its agent, with all my misguided hopes and worries, and it gathered itself into one irrevocable movement when I pushed Isabella into Charlie’s back.
The other thing I remember is something Delia Ybarra said. It has rung in my ears ever since. My mother had filled the rattletrap’s tank with what was left of the gasoline in the can, and Aunt Rose picked up Francesca, still invisible in the rug. She had to ignore Francesca’s screams of renewed pain as the rug pressed against raw skin, but she struggled as quickly as she could to the rattletrap, and my mother helped her lay Francesca along the backseat.
As they arranged her, Cordelia suddenly cried out, as if there had been a new catastrophe, and turned to Delia Robierre. “Burns never heal, do they?” she sobbed. “Burns never heal!” The agony in her voice, the implication of her words, the knowledge that I had destroyed her sister—the most beautiful woman I had ever known—all this put a seal on my guilt that nothing could break.
Then the car was gone, and a blanket of unearthly silence settled over Shorecliff. Still curled on the ground, I saw my cousins standing in odd positions over the lawn, stiff and isolated, staring at the ground, the sky, the woods, the house—anything but each other. For a while we must have looked like a graveyard for old statuary, or a discarded collection of mourning sculptures, for each face was distorted in a grimace of grief. I saw Yvette, who had burst out of the house with the aunts, standing bewildered and helpless, an outsider even in this final crisis. And I saw Lorelei—the first hint I got that she had played any role in the night’s events—near Tom, of course, with her hands clasped in front of her, gazing at her feet.
Eventually we all went into the house. Fisher came over and helped me stand up. He said nothing; no one was speaking. I fled to my room, too shaken even to think, and sat on my bed for endless hours until my mother came back. She brought nothing of Francesca but the burned brown rug.
16
Aftermath
We stayed at Shorecliff for some days after the accident. For me they passed as days in a prison. With the exception of the times when we gathered to hear first Charlie’s and then Uncle Kurt’s stories of the night, I spoke to no one except my mother, Lorelei, and occasionally some aunts and uncles. The older cousins, I suppose, must have conversed among themselves, but I was no longer welcome in their discussions, and I would rather have died than listen outside their doors. I kept hearing Isabella’s scornful voice saying, “I’m not going to eavesdrop on them, Richard.” My favorite hobby, the activity that had made the summer the most exciting of my life, had been condemned by the cousin I worshipped above all others.
She, moreover, refused to speak to me. One awful time in those few days I ran into her in the hallway, and instead of slinking past her, as I had before, I looked into her eyes. This took immense courage, but it was the courage of desperation. I found it physically painful not to have her affection anymore. My voice cracking, I said, “Hi, Isabella.” As she looked back at me, her face suffused with misery, I could see the vision of Francesca rising before her. I believe she tried not to blame me for what had happened, but Isabella never could control her emotions, and I had been the cause of something unbearable. So she just stared at me wordlessly and backed away, stumbling as she always did. After that I could do nothing except crouch in my room, awaiting visits from my mother, who herself was too distracted by Francesca’s plight to comfort me with more than fleeting caresses.
We went to visit Francesca at the hospital in Portland a few days after the accident. I was forced to go—had I been given a choice I would have fled to New York and never seen Francesca again. The aunts marshaled us into groups and drove us in relays to the train station. The hospital was enormous and cold and blindingly white, like the mazes they build for rats in laboratories. Suddenly I saw Aunt Margery framed in the doorway of one of the rooms—the morning after the accident she had gathered herself together and gone to Portland, and she stayed with Francesca even after Aunt Loretta arrived. I marveled at how out of place she looked in that sterile environment. When we went into the room the strangeness grew so great I almost started to cry. The creature sitting in the bed was swathed in white bandages, head and all, as if a mummy had come to the hospital for treatment. There were two black slits where the eyes should be, a tiny hole for the nose, and another black slit for the mouth. The idea that Francesca was
encased in this mummy suit was grotesque. None of us wanted to believe it.
“Come over here, children,” Aunt Margery said. “Francesca, your brother and sister and cousins are here to visit you.” Like a herd of dumb beasts we gathered around the bed, staring at the mummy and willing Francesca to appear behind us, looking as she had always looked, breathtakingly beautiful, and laughing at the mix-up.
“Say something!” Aunt Rose hissed in our ears.
There was an intolerable pause. Finally Tom cleared his throat and said, “We’re really sorry, Francesca. We’re really, really, really sorry.”
The mummy didn’t respond. It didn’t even move.
“She hasn’t been speaking,” Aunt Loretta whispered to my mother.
Somehow I had been pushed into the position nearest Francesca on the left side of the bed—the last place I wanted to be—and from my vantage point I could look up into the slits the doctors had left for her eyes. The lights above the bed were glaring, and in their shadowless light I saw that her eyelids were closed behind the slits. For some reason this filled me with terror. It occurred to me that she might be dead under all those bandages, and we would never know. The thought made my chest contract. I wanted to ask the aunts and receive the reassurance of their contemptuous answer, but I couldn’t speak. After a few minutes we were led out of the room, still acting like obedient cattle, and I was left haunted by the idea that Francesca might have departed forever while we stood talking to her corpse.
Of course she wasn’t dead. In fact, by some standards, Francesca was lucky. After months of recuperation, she returned to life—ravaged almost beyond recognition and scarred, people said, in personality as well as appearance. It was many years before she possessed anything resembling her old vivacity. But she was functional; she had survived. Miraculously, her hair grew back almost as thick and luxuriant as it had been before. That was an immense blessing, and it was a lasting relief to her family to see those familiar black curls, even if they did now tumble around a stranger’s face.
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