Summertime

by Elizabeth Rigbey

  ‘Morning, Lucy,’ says Kirsty MacFarlane. ‘I came to check that the car came home all right.’

  ‘I think someone’s been inside,’ I tell her. ‘There are lights on. Here and in the den.’

  ‘Maybe Jane?’ she suggests, but we are passing the living-room now and I have halted in the doorway.

  ‘The sliding doors! They’re open!’

  She looks at me and then walks purposefully across the room. She moves silently, like a big cat. A space about two feet wide gapes between the doors. Through it, I can feel a breeze, very slight, from the deck. The drapes tremble.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t leave them open yesterday?’ she asks, examining the catch. ‘There’s no sign that this has been forced.’

  I watch the drapes drift slowly like something helpless in water.

  ‘Well, pretty sure…’ It seems a while since I’ve been sure about anything. I remember unlocking the sliding doors and crossing the deck when the detective arrived. I try to recall locking them before I left but all I remember is the prickling sensation in my neck when I felt someone was watching me out in the yard and how, as I sat on the deck later, a tow truck crawled across the valley beneath me.

  The detective checks the front door too but there is no sign that this has been forced either.

  ‘Daddy’s keys… is it possible that whoever…’ I look around the dark hallway for other, better words. ‘Whoever was with him at the end…’

  She nods.

  ‘Yes, that’s a possibility. I suggested to your sister that she change the locks as soon as she could. Have you taken a look around to see if anything’s missing?’ she asks.

  ‘I just arrived.’

  ‘Let’s do it.’

  First we glance into the den. It looks just how it looked yesterday but the detective pauses.

  ‘I don’t think I left things exactly this way,’ she says, going in and surveying the piles of papers on Daddy’s desk. She rearranges one of them. ‘But maybe you or your sister have taken a look at this stuff? Or Scott, since he’s executor?’

  ‘I didn’t look at it. And no one else said they were coming here.’

  She is speaking quickly now, frowning. ‘I’m almost sure I left the will and the insurance policy right on the top here. I thought they’d be the first things you guys would need to see, when you felt ready to deal with things.’

  ‘Have they gone?’ I ask, staring at her.

  ‘No, but they’re underneath the bank statements and some letters from your father’s mutual fund.’

  Downstairs everything seems normal. The kitchen is tidy. The coffee cups which the detective and I drank from yesterday are where I left them by the kitchen sink.

  She goes upstairs. Like the rest of the place, it is a repository of the past. The rooms are mostly used as closets. There are boxes stacked everywhere, in rooms and hallways. So now that Daddy is dead the closets must be cleared and the boxes opened and it will be like unleashing smells from bottles which have been closed tightly for years.

  Kirsty says: ‘You sure have a lot to sort out here.’

  I agree with her. Looking in boxes and drawers and closets. Throwing things out. Giving them away. Making decisions. Selling the house. Dispersing Daddy’s life. Our family’s past will be scattered across thrift shops and junkyards and rock shops like a meteor shower. Someone else will drive Daddy’s car, his clothes will be worn by strangers and his books will be read by other people, perhaps even people who turn down the corners of pages or break the spines.

  At the top of the stairs, she opens the nearest door. The bathroom. Daddy’s soap in an onyx holder. His razor. His toothbrushes, two of them. Toothpaste sticking to the handles, bristles bent outwards or falling inwards like a crowd of drunks.

  At the bedroom door I try to say something, some routine pleasantry, but my words disappear. They give way as suddenly as ice cracks. Kirsty watches me. Her eyes look black in the dark hallway. Finally she says: ‘Want me to go first?’

  ‘No.’

  But my hand still does not move. All my life, I was taught to knock on my parents’ door before entering. Have the old rules changed now that Daddy’s dead and Mother never leaves the clinic? All the rules, all of them? Don’t I need to scrape my feet on the hall rug when it’s raining or take a shower in the morning or say please pass the salt instead of reaching for it or ask: ‘Can I help you?’ if someone frail, blind or confused is trying to cross a street? I close my eyes and walk right in.

  14

  Behind me, I can sense the woman’s movement, involuntary and sudden as the shying of a horse. She suppresses it with professional rapidity. That’s the effect the bed has, even when you’ve seen it before. It’s an impossible fairytale concoction of swaggers and loops and bows. It hangs over the whole room like a big blue castle dominating the landscape.

  ‘My mother made this bed,’ I explain. ‘Like her, it’s completely crazy.’

  Kirsty nods and I guess that she has already tried to interview Mother. I ask: ‘Did you get any sense out of her?’

  ‘Well, she did speak back. In Russian.’

  ‘In Russian! That’s a new one.’

  I look around the bedroom. It is unchanged in even the smallest detail. The same ornaments and photos on the vanity. The same swaggering blue curtains at the windows. The same big blue picture on the walls. It was Mother’s room: Daddy did nothing to make it his own, as if he expected her to get better one day and come home. Even though he must have known she wouldn’t.

  On the bureau are photos of relatives, unrecognizably youthful. There is a wedding picture of Mother and Daddy looking happy, not stiff the way most people look at their weddings. Another shows the four of us on the beach. I am perhaps two years old and Mother, laughing, holds me up to the camera while Jane leans against Daddy. Daddy is laughing too, in that way I don’t ever remember him laughing, with his head thrown back and all his teeth showing. I pick up the picture and examine it closely. It seems impossible that we were ever those people.

  The detective says: ‘You know what this bed reminds me of?’

  I turn back to her. Her tone is conversational but my body goes taut like a rubber band.

  She says: ‘Your baby’s crib.’

  I do not move at all, except that after a moment’s silence I realize my mouth is open a little. I close it.

  ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you – but maybe you already realized. We’ve met before.’

  She waits for me to speak. Finally she says: ‘It was three years ago. I mean three years on Saturday.’

  The back of my neck feels cold.

  ‘I was in the early stage of pregnancy myself,’ she continues. ‘Maybe that’s why I remember it all so well.’

  I ask quietly: ‘How’s your baby?’

  She smiles and her face softens. ‘Fine.’ Then immediately her muscles tighten and her face resumes its characteristic lack of expression.

  I cross the blue rug and sit on the bed, right on the edge, politely, as though I’m visiting someone who’s sick. I look up at the canopy and see a deep blue sky, layer after layer arching into infinity. I wonder at the confidence and ambition of the woman who made such a bed and such a room. That other Mother, who holds me, laughing, to the camera and who loved me as fiercely as any mother ever loved a child. And, said Aunt Zina, you her. Indeed, you were inseparable.

  The detective says: ‘Of course, I met your whole family that night, including your father. Isn’t that something? There aren’t many homicide victims I’ve met when they were alive. Professor Schaffer was pretty shocked by your son’s death. You all were, but I do recall his grief in particular. When we were doing, you know, all the things we had to do, your father was sitting alone there, down in the corner of your living-room, crying quietly to himself.’

  I didn’t know this. The world contracted to my own shock and grief that night. I don’t like to think of Daddy crying quietly in the living-room like an animal which has dragged its wounded body
to safety. I wish I’d found him and put my arms around him.

  ‘I’ve seen a lot of tears, enough to fill a swimming-pool, probably, or a small lake,’ Kirsty is saying. ‘There are wailers and shriekers and big sobbers and gaspers but your daddy sitting crying so quietly was one of the worst.’

  Scalded by her words, I jump to my feet. Then I am awkward. Suddenly I have too much body and I don’t know what to do with it all.

  ‘Did you buy that beautiful crib for your baby because it reminded you of this bed?’ asks the woman, watching me.

  I am surprised to hear my own voice, rusty like something which has lain unused in a barn a long time. I say: ‘I never thought about it…’

  ‘Maybe you decorated the crib that way yourself?’ Her eyes never leave me.

  I cough. ‘No. Jane and I bought it.’

  She is wandering around the room, studying the furniture, gazing at the blue pictures. ‘You two sisters bought the crib together? That’s fascinating. And you never noticed the similarity to your parents’ bed?’

  ‘Well no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Except the baby’s crib was a lighter blue, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, probably.’

  When I was round and still with the sense of anticipation of late pregnancy that dulls the present, Jane told me she wanted to buy the baby’s crib. Her voice was steady when she admitted that she had just about given up all hope of having children of her own now and that she wanted to be a good aunt, a special aunt, to my baby. We went to all the big stores and the expensive little ones and the more stores we visited the more elaborate our ideas became. When we saw the blue crib with all those ruffles and frills and the voile drapes we just had to have it. I looked at the price tag and hid my face. But Jane insisted. When they delivered it, I couldn’t believe we’d got caught up in such a crazy notion. All those flounces and fussy details. It just wasn’t the kind of thing either of us would buy. I wasn’t sure I even liked it. I thought of sending it back to the store but I couldn’t hurt Jane’s feelings and it became Stevie’s crib and, when everyone who saw it admired it, I came to admire it too. Then Stevie died in it and I hated it. I told them to take it away when we moved to the beach house. I never even asked where it went.

  ‘If somebody broke in last night, they certainly would have taken those silver boxes,’ says the woman, gesturing to the vanity. ‘Were there any other items of value in this room?’

  I shrug. ‘I don’t think so.’

  She holds open the door. We resume our tour of the dusty house. The detective wants to know which room was mine and which Jane’s. Both are full of old boxes now. And there is the room where Grandma slept on her occasional visits, or Daddy did when Mother was ill and needed the big bedroom all to herself.

  ‘Whose was this?’ asks the detective when, at the end of the hallway, we open the door on to a small room, painted in pale, pale blue like distant sky. It smells musty.

  ‘Daddy used it as a study before he moved his desk to the den. There are probably rocks in the boxes.’

  ‘And before that? Could it have been your brother’s room?’ she asks and for the second time this morning her words halt me and I am speechless. She adds: ‘You did have a brother, right?’

  I nod. ‘But he died when he was just a baby.’

  ‘Was this his room?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t remember him?’

  ‘I don’t remember anything about him.’

  ‘That’s surprising,’ she says, turning and leading me away. ‘You were just about old enough to remember something so dramatic.’

  I don’t ask her how she knows this. I don’t say anything. The death of my baby brother is something seldom, if ever, mentioned. When Stevie died there were references to Daddy’s loss but he made it clear that this was not a loss he wished to discuss. I hope that my silence will tell the detective all this.

  Going downstairs, she says: ‘Well, the dust up here hasn’t been disturbed for a while. If there was an intruder anywhere, he was probably in the den. But since nothing’s gone let’s just hope that you left the lights on and the doors open last night.’

  I nod despondently. Let’s just hope that. She looks at me. She’s despondent too. ‘Do you have any idea how many keys your father carried around with him? I assume the house and car keys were on the same ring?’

  I remember Rougemont’s big hands slipping around the lock of his car. His car key, his house key. How this seemed such a meagre accumulation.

  ‘Oh, Daddy clanged when he walked. I mean, car key, house key, barn key, desk key, key to the old tractor, key to Jane’s apartment, maybe the key to Scott’s house or Seymour’s house…’ I swallow. ‘And now whoever drove away with Daddy in his car last Monday morning can get into all those places.’

  We are silent. We don’t look at each other.

  Then the detective asks quietly. ‘Aren’t you glad you didn’t stay here last night?’

  ‘We’ve really got to get the locks changed soon,’ I say.

  She nods. She turns and starts to walk out to the porch. Through the screen door, beyond the porch and beyond the trees which embrace the porch, a small section of the day glimmers brightly.

  ‘Have you taken a look at your father’s car yet?’ she asks, when the screen door has slammed behind us.

  ‘Well… I sat in it earlier. I sort of smelled him in there.’

  She raises her eyebrows.

  ‘You smelled… who?’

  ‘Daddy. Oh, not a bad smell. A sweet sort of smell like oil and soap. When someone dies it’s hard to believe they’re gone, completely gone. You feel as if they’re still there, only they’re being elusive. You swing around quickly to catch them out of the corner of your eye and sometimes you can smell them. I opened the car and it had Daddy’s own special smell. I got right in and for a moment I felt as though he was sitting there next to me.’

  The woman watches me closely. I wait for a rapid, dismissive remark but she says: ‘I wonder… when we leave our own personal scent behind us, I wonder how long it hangs around. I mean, maybe there ought to be some scientific way of using smell to analyse when your father last sat in that car.’

  ‘Oh, he’s been in there within about forty-eight hours.’ I say this without thinking, without stopping to wonder whether a smell can linger for a day or a week or a month.

  Her look is curious. ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘I don’t know. If you try to get scientific about it then the whole thing sort of dissolves.’

  ‘Wait.’

  She gets into the Oldsmobile on the passenger side and gestures for me to climb into the driver’s seat. We slam the doors shut. At first I fold my hands on my lap like a well-behaved first-grader, then I hold the wheel as though I’m driving. We sit there, the detective and I, driving nowhere, mute, breathing silently. I close my eyes and a moment later I smell it again. The aroma is so distant that I can detect it only occasionally.

  ‘Well?’ says the woman at last. ‘What do you smell?’

  ‘It’s real faint but I do smell Daddy.’

  I look at her profile. It is aquiline, sharp. She’s watching the road ahead intently although there is no road. She says: ‘I smell fingerprint powder. It’s sort of metallic.’

  I breathe silently again. ‘No, I’m not getting that at all.’

  She says: ‘So your sense of smell seems to be saying that the decedent…’ She pauses and corrects herself. ‘That Professor Schaffer drove this car somewhere himself on Monday morning.’

  I nod.

  ‘The car was found at a place called Lowis. Do you know it?’

  ‘Not really. I’ve seen it from the freeway.’

  ‘Often?’

  ‘You pass it on the way to the San Strana valley and Scott and I used to eat at San Strana when I was pregnant.’ I craved the eggs Benedict served by a white, wooden restaurant in the heart of the valley. We’d go there for Sunday brunch and watch
the river meander by as we ate. The river carved the valley and San Strana is a fertile place, its narrow sides dotted with old houses and farmsteads, artists’ colonies, restaurants and health farms.

  ‘But you never stopped in Lowis?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘It’s just about the only place they’ve allowed any recent construction around there. The Oldsmobile was in a housing area. Big homes, pleasant, quiet. A lot of kids. Most of them never saw so many patrol cars before.’

  I imagine the fingerprint man trying to do his job inside the Oldsmobile with a dozen small faces pushed against the windows.

  ‘Did your father ever mention Lowis? Maybe he ate there or visited a friend there?’

  ‘No… We could look in his address book…’ I suggest.

  ‘I have that copied and I already looked. He didn’t seem to have any connection with Lowis and no one there remembered seeing the car before. It sort of stands out among all those new SUVs.’

  We both smile without looking at each other.

  She says: ‘Local folk differ in their opinions but most of them think that the car had been there since Monday afternoon, probably since Monday morning, and a few are claiming it was there all weekend.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone see him leave it?’

  ‘No, Lucy. No one saw a damn thing.’ Her tone is resigned. She’s a homicide detective. No one ever sees a damn thing.

  ‘But were there any fingerprints?’

  She sighs. ‘Someone took a lot of trouble to wipe the car completely clean. We managed to pick up a few old prints, a few stray fibres, but they were pretty much all your father’s. Some from Jane but you’d expect that because he drove her to your son’s grave on Saturday.’