‘Can I have the address where it was found?’
‘Okay, if you think it might help you remember something useful, I’ll check in my notebook and tell you the exact address,’ she says.
When she gets out she stoops to examine the big dent on the Oldsmobile’s front right fender. She crouches, running her fingers again and again over the chipped paintwork with the deftness of a woman running her fingers over a lover.
‘Did your father ever mention this?’
‘No.’
‘It looks pretty fresh,’ she comments. ‘But forensic didn’t have anything interesting to say about it.’ She straightens. The sun feels oppressive today. The weight of its heat seems to pin me to the drive. The leaves around the porch hang helplessly. When I duck into shade it brings little relief.
‘I sure wish we had more information, Lucy,’ the woman says. ‘There are so many questions about this case. Over the next few days I’ll be interviewing everyone who knew your father well. I’m hoping people will start remembering things they’ve forgotten. You and Jane especially.’
I don’t know why I blush at her words. In order to hide this, I squint up at the sun, which has just stalked me through a gap in the trees.
‘I mean,’ she continues, ‘for example, my colleague Michael Rougemont has this amazing memory. He can recall small details from cases over thirty years ago. So it really frustrates him when other people forget everything.’
I know my face is red. It feels as though it is swelling in the sun.
‘For instance, Lucy, you and Jane both say you can’t remember a thing about your brother’s death.’
I swallow. ‘I was very young…’
‘Sure, but the loss of a sibling has a huge impact on a family. I’d expect one or two images to have survived. And I’d expect considerably more than that from Jane.’
‘Larry would say we’ve buried the trauma.’
‘Sure he would. Sure. And that would explain why you don’t remember anything, not one thing, why you don’t even remember your brother when he was alive.’
I say, slowly, shakily: ‘I remember that I loved him. That’s all.’
Her voice is gentle now. ‘Didn’t anybody ever talk about it in your family?’
‘Never.’
‘I mean, when your son died, didn’t your father talk about it then?’
‘Not directly. It was referred to as a loss and Scott and I always knew he had a special understanding. But Daddy never discussed it.’
‘And you never asked him?’
‘Oh no, I couldn’t possibly have asked him.’
‘Did you ever ask Jane?’
‘We just never have talked about it.’
She sighs. ‘Do you even know how the child died?’
‘Oh yes.’ I am prompt. ‘I know that. In an accident.’
She waits for me to say more and then sighs again.
‘Do you have any idea where that accident took place?’
I shake my head.
‘At Big Brim beach. He drowned there. You really didn’t know that?’
I stare at her.
‘Oh, Lucy,’ she murmurs and her tone is at once intimate and despairing.
15
Scott arrives before Larry and Jane. He’s pleased to see the Oldsmobile back in its usual place.
‘You’re here, the old car’s here, I can kid myself that things are going back the way they used to be,’ he says when we’re sitting out on the deck. The view glimmers at us but we only half absorb it, as though it’s a flickering TV with the sound turned down.
‘Larry doesn’t approve of that,’ I remind him.
‘Of course, things haven’t been the same since you went and now they can’t ever be the same because Eric’s gone. But is it so bad to make-believe for a few moments?’
I smile at him.
He tells me how his book went into a new edition, how he was even interviewed about it on TV.
‘I saw you,’ I say.
‘You saw me on TV?’
I nod but he is quick. ‘So you switched right off.’
I look at him until he finally lifts his big head and looks back at me. I say: ‘No, Scott, I didn’t switch off.’
When we hear an engine we go around the house to the barn. Larry and Jane have arrived and Larry is first out of the car. He wears a shirt the colour of shallow water which is stretched tight over his body, emphasizing his swelling waist. Above it, around his ribs and arms, there is the pinched look of an old man. When Daddy went swimming I didn’t like to look at the hollows in his torso or his thin arms or the ring of extra flesh which hung limply around his belly. And now I see Larry climbing out of the car and I’m mad at him for reminding me of Daddy and of ageing. He’s just about old enough to be my father but when he married Jane he opted into our generation and now this body, age hollowing and plucking at it, belly bulging, is a betrayal.
‘Sorry we’re so late,’ he says. ‘We’ve been visiting your mother.’ I feel colour creeping up my neck and head like a fast-moving shadow and Larry seems to watch this with amusement.
‘How was she?’ Scott asks.
To answer, Larry and Jane wrinkle their faces as though the sun is shining in their eyes although they are standing in the kitchen lifting packages from a big brown deli bag. Of the four of us, only Larry and Jane have remembered lunch. Or maybe Scott and I just assumed they would organize it.
‘Well, she was subdued,’ says Jane at last.
‘Does she understand about Daddy?’
They look at each other and then Larry answers. ‘She seems to comprehend that something sad has happened. She may not know what that is.’
‘She fluttered a lot,’ adds Jane. ‘You remember how she sort of flutters when she gets upset?’ She waves her arms and wiggles her fingers in a half-comical gesture which I recognize at once.
I say: ‘It’s when she feels helpless.’
‘And distressed,’ Jane agrees.
‘The most she ever fluttered was when I nearly drowned at the pool that day. It was because she wanted to do something but she couldn’t, or she didn’t know how, and she just had to stand there while you saved me.’
We were at the local swimming-pool and I was learning to snorkel when I breathed water instead of air. My eyes and nose and mouth were full of water and the warm, damp passages which link them were swamped by water too. Above me the sky was more deep blue water. As I looked up I saw its infinity for the first time. I saw that blue is the colour of depth, and the depths of the sky stretch on forever and on and on. I stopped struggling. I stopped swimming. My head sagged and I submitted to the beauty of the blue pool’s infinity of water. Then, suddenly, a powerful mixture of flesh and muscle gripped me under the chin and I felt the rhythmic strength of the swimmer’s stroke as I was pulled, floating helplessly, to the edge. When I opened my eyes I was on the pool’s hard paving, kids crowded around me, Jane standing over me, pumping me, banging at me, until I threw up all the liquid and my body became solid again. I remember Jane’s serious face, wrapped in concentration, and beyond it, Mother, her blue dress flapping, her fingers flying, and beyond them both, the sky.
Larry stops taking interesting food out of the deli bag and puts an arm around Jane. He knows the story of how she saved me. He has always liked it and it pleases him again today. ‘And she’s still saving lives,’ he says. His voice is both proud and foolish.
I look at them both, standing side by side, and wonder, fleetingly, irreverently, what sort of parents they would have made. And I see Scott staring at them, at their linked arms. He is wondering why they have stayed together and why we haven’t. They are the couple who couldn’t have a baby. We are the couple who couldn’t keep a baby longer than six months.
After that the day is businesslike. We look at the will first. Daddy left everything divided equally between Jane and me. That is no surprise. Only his appointment of Scott as personal representative causes a ripple, with Scott first disb
elieving and then shocked and then pleading for my help.
‘I haven’t done personal finance in a long while…’ I protest but he yelps like a dog someone just stepped on.
‘You have to do it for me, Luce. You just have to.’
‘How long are you staying, Lucy?’ asks Larry, pointing his beard at me.
‘I have to get back right after the funeral.’ I feel a movement of disapproval, a raised hand or an arm flexed, ripple around the the group. I add: ‘Well, I certainly can’t stay past the end of next week. I have a big deal which might collapse if I’m not around.’
For a moment, I cannot look at them, then, when I realize they can’t look at me either, I steal glances at their averted faces. Finally Larry speaks, his tone serious. ‘Lucy, there’s a lot to do after a death. A lot of decisions, a lot to sort out… you can’t run off to New York and leave it all to Jane.’
I hope Jane will contradict him but she is silent.
‘Will you have time to sort out the executor stuff for me before the funeral?’ asks Scott helplessly.
‘Probably,’ I tell him. ‘If I work hard enough.’
‘When do we want the funeral?’ asks Jane. ‘How about next Tuesday? And have we informed everyone we need to inform? C’mon, let’s get things sorted out.’ She reaches for a notebook and pen. I watch her affectionately. Jane is retreating into the detached efficiency of the clinician where she feels safest. She learned to do that in childhood when Mother made life impossible and now she uses the same professionalism every day. Dealing with bereaved relatives, or those who face bereavement, is a routine part of her work. The extraordinary is routine for Jane. Routinely she has to tell patients that they are going to die. I know that she never stalls or stands shuffling her notes or her feet at the patient’s side or avoiding the terrible truths or forgetting to use the patient’s name. She delivers the news with her usual unbending directness. She walks right into the patient’s room and asks how they are feeling and then says: ‘I’m sorry, Mr Smith. When we tried to operate we found that the cancer was far more widespread than we thought. We did what we could. But I’m sorry, very sorry, that I have to tell you this is not a fight we can possibly win. I hope you’ll agree that it’s more dignified now to give in to the disease and concentrate our efforts on maximizing your pain relief and comfort.’
Of course, different people react to this news in different ways. Some people are angry with the doctor or the disease or themselves or even with some relative who sits still with shock at the bedside. Some people don’t want to admit that they have lost the fight, and continue to demand further treatment. They are pugnacious with the doctor because they know that there’s no point being pugnacious with their illness. Some shake or cry like small, frightened children. Others display a sweetness of temperament or a quiet resignation which can anger their relatives. A few are relieved. With all these reactions, Jane is firm and commanding so when she leaves the room the patient has generally agreed to her proposed treatment. And, as she walks out, the patient always thanks her.
‘Okay,’ says Larry, adopting her businesslike tone. ‘I suggest that next we look in Eric’s diary and cancel any appointments he made. Then we need to discuss who else to inform.’
We fetch the diary. We look at each other, not wanting to make the first call. It seems Jane is about to offer when Scott surprises us. He says: ‘I’ll do it. Give me the numbers.’
We can hear him in the study, breaking the news to people. Some seem to know already but they have questions, about the police, about Daddy, about the circumstances. We hear Scott struggle to answer them, knowing that most are unanswerable.
Larry makes coffee the way he likes it, strong, so that the smell insinuates itself all over the house, burnt like molasses. He produces some big, round peanut cookies.
‘My new passion,’ he explains sheepishly. ‘I found them at this place on my way to work. I’m addicted.’
‘You’re going to have to find another route in the morning,’ Jane tells him. I think of Jim and his cinnamon buns and smile. When I bite into the dry cookie tiny crumbs of flavour explode on my tongue and all around my mouth.
‘It’s the combination of sugar, salt and nut,’ says Larry, watching me. ‘It’s irresistible.’ He looks down at his developing paunch apologetically.
I point to an entry in Daddy’s diary. ‘Daddy saw Mr Zacarro on Sunday night,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that peculiar? One of the last people to see him was Mr Zacarro.’
‘Oh, he’d gotten real pally with Mr Zacarro and Mr Holler,’ Jane tells me. She is thumbing through Daddy’s address book, making lists of names, and she doesn’t look up.
‘Daddy? And Mr Zacarro? And Mr Holler?’ They were neighbours, not friends. I haven’t seen either of them for many years and Daddy certainly never mentioned them.
‘I really didn’t like it, but what can you do?’ says Jane absently while she writes.
‘You didn’t like it?’
‘They weren’t good for Daddy. He’d stay over at the Zacarro house real late, talking and drinking beer.’
I want to question her further but right now Scott comes back in, red-eyed, red-faced.
‘Joni Rimbaldi was real shocked,’ he says. Joni was Daddy’s secretary in the geology department for many years. ‘She was just at her house by Tigertail Bay, getting her make-up on to meet Eric for lunch in town today, and I call to say, hey Joni, lunch is off, Eric’s dead and he’s not just dead he’s murdered. My God. What a call.’
‘Maybe we should phone in an hour or two. Make sure she’s okay,’ suggests Jane and we all nod. That is certainly the right thing to do.
Over lunch, Larry says: ‘Lucy, I guess you must agree that the house should be cleared and sold?’
I look at him.
He explains: ‘The choices are renting it or selling it. As I assume none of us is going to live in it.’
‘Sell it,’ says Jane rapidly.
‘Either way,’ Larry points out, ‘it has to be cleared.’ He speaks emphatically, as though he anticipates contradiction. Maybe Jane had warned him I might start acting Russian.
‘I know that, Larry,’ I say quietly. ‘But it’s going to be painful.’
‘There’s no alternative,’ he insists.
‘What will we do with it all?’
Jane and Larry look at each other.
‘We take what we want, we sell anything worth selling, we give a lot away and we just have to grit our teeth and junk the rest,’ says Larry. ‘And, Lucy, it may seem heartless but I think we should start real soon.’
‘No…’
‘Lucy, it’s going to take a long time and we need to use you while we have you here.’
‘When do you want to start?’
‘Tomorrow, today, immediately.’
‘I’m not sure, Larry. It feels like a… sort of betrayal.’
‘Why?’
‘Daddy accumulated all this stuff over a lifetime… we can’t just throw it away in a week…’ My voice sounds small and childish.
Scott leans forward. He says kindly: ‘It’ll take months, Luce, that’s why we have to start soon.’
‘It’ll take months,’ I say, ‘because there’s a right person and a right place for everything… I mean, some old tractor enthusiast who’ll want the old tractor. Some geologist who’ll want the rocks and love the tools. A gardener who –’
‘It would take years to dispose of everything that way,’ Jane tells me. ‘And a lot of the stuff here is junk.’
Larry nods. He is still a bull looking for a red rag. ‘The whole place is stuffed high to the roofbeams with junk,’ he insists. ‘If we start to get picky about where it goes then it never will go anywhere.’ Larry and Jane have a clean apartment which they keep free of clutter and its sister, dust. Jane doesn’t like to receive beautiful ceramics or small knickknacks as gifts. The white apartment is designed so she has nowhere to put them. I watch her as she discusses, with clinical seriousness, the disposa
l of our past. Waste and recycling department. Hostel for the homeless two blocks from the hospital always needs furniture. Vietnam Vets sometimes collect. Geology department to value the rocks. Later, as I negotiate the car around the holes in the drive, her words rattle around in my head like gravel in your shoe.
When I told Larry and Scott and Jane where I was going, Scott looked concerned, Jane shook her head but Larry only stroked his beard. ‘I understand your curiosity,’ he said.
‘The police have asked everyone in that neighbourhood about the car already,’ Jane pointed out.
‘And they didn’t find out a thing,’ added Scott.
‘Well, maybe Lucy will,’ Larry told them. ‘Let her go. She needs to feel she’s doing something.’
I was surprised by his support. I had spent the day disliking him.
There are two ways to reach Lowis. I can take a fast road west towards town and then swing north on the coastal freeway or I can drive right down into the valley and rumble across its floor, past orchards of identical fruit, feeling as though I’m going nowhere until I reach the intersection. That’s where the tow truck turned yesterday. Eventually this route leads up to Sacramento but long before that it passes by the easternmost edge of San Strana. I could take a scenic drive right through San Strana and, when I come out the other side, I’ll be in Lowis. I pause at the end of the dirt road, feeling the valley pulling me like gravity. Then I turn towards town.
It is late afternoon, a bad time to drive west. I wear sunglasses and pull down the car’s visor but still I drive into the sun with my eyelids half lowered.
Lowis is easy to find: it is the first settlement in the valley and if you want to go further into San Strana you have to drive right through it. The town is less picturesque than Cooper and some of the older places in San Strana: the ancient trees and old habitations are still here but they have been smothered by a band of expensive modern housing. I drive around until I find the address the detective gave me, a long, curving street where leggy vegetation is already beginning to hide the new houses. Behind fences I can hear small children shrieking the way they do when there is water. Maybe sprinklers, probably swimming-pools.
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