Summertime

by Elizabeth Rigbey

  ‘Probably nothing to do with his death and everything to do with the Pacific Ocean.’

  The Pacific Ocean roars and spits at us. On my next breath, I inhale salt.

  ‘Mr Rougemont, yesterday you said you knew Daddy way back when he had a tow truck. How did you know him?’

  He pauses and when he speaks he speaks carefully.

  ‘I met him when your brother died.’

  I turn to look at his battered old face.

  ‘When my brother died?’

  ‘I was the investigating officer.’

  The ocean’s percussion crashes beneath us.

  ‘Why were you investigating?’

  ‘A baby dies, it’s usual. For instance, when your baby died, Kirsty investigated.’

  ‘It’s an incredible coincidence,’ I say, ‘that you two are both working on Daddy’s case too.’ He doesn’t reply and I realize that it isn’t a coincidence.

  ‘Of course, you have no memory of your brother’s death,’ he tells me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Although it did seem to me yesterday that your memory was starting to work.’

  ‘I don’t remember anything at all about my brother. Except that he existed and I loved him.’

  ‘I’ve. been wondering if you can remember something much more recent. Can we get into your car?’

  It feels good to shut out the breeze, the spray and the crash of the rocks. I sit behind the wheel. Rougemont adjusts the passenger seat for his long legs. He places his hands on his knees. Then he asks me when I last saw my father.

  ‘Oh, your colleague already asked me that,’ I say but he does not apologize or withdraw the question.

  ‘I told her that he visited me once in New York, probably about two and a half years ago. But we spoke often.’

  ‘When was the last time you saw him in California, Lucy?’

  ‘Just before I left. Almost three years ago.’

  I drove over to Daddy’s house to tell him I was leaving. I didn’t telephone first, I just arrived and that made my heart thud as I rattled up the drive. I sometimes wondered what Daddy did when I wasn’t around. When I found him in oily overalls, his face red with sun and effort, happy under the old tractor, I felt relief scoop my whole body up like a warm hand. He wheeled himself out from under the machine, got up very slowly, and greeted me with pleasure. He had the relaxed detachment of someone who has been deep in concentration.

  We took our coffee out to the deck and sat in silence, watching the view as though it might move, although the valley was still as a reptile. Even the trucks which crossed it on the straight road moved sluggishly. A sudden breeze made the leaves overhead busy. Daddy planted those trees and for some years he had been concerned that they were too close to the foundations of the house. Now he looked up as though he was surprised by them and hadn’t seen them almost every day for more than thirty years. He said: ‘When you put a little sapling in the ground you can’t ever imagine it getting this big. It’s sort of like kids. All the evidence is that kids grow up, it’s a fact of biology and evolution, fossils tell us, history tells us, our eyes tell us that kids grow up. But when they’re small, you just can’t believe that your own are ever going to become adults. You’re not bringing a kid into the world, you’re bringing an adult. It’s one hell of a responsibility.’

  ‘You’re thinking about your father now,’ Michael Rougemont informs me. His voice makes me start. ‘What are you thinking?’

  So I tell him about planting the trees too close to the house and thinking your kids can never grow up.

  ‘Is that what he said when you told him you were leaving California?’

  ‘No… I told him a little later. He didn’t challenge my decision. I didn’t ask for his permission but he gave it to me anyway.’

  Rougemont asks quietly: ‘Was it hard saying goodbye?’

  ‘Yes, it was hard.’ I don’t tell him how Daddy cried.

  ‘But,’ continues the detective, ‘you said goodbye. And, except for that brief time in New York, you didn’t want to go through the pain of saying it again. So when you came to California last weekend, maybe that’s why you didn’t tell anyone you were here.’

  His words burn my ears. I hear him say: ‘You were here in San Francisco last weekend. Right, Lucy? You flew out Sunday night. Shortly before your father died.’

  I am hot. I wind down a window. Immediately the car is filled by the sound of the sea.

  His voice softer, Michael Rougemont says: ‘It’s all right. I’m not going to tell them. Your sister, your husband, I’m not going to say anything.’

  I do not reply.

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell Kirsty? Why did you lie to us?’

  I do not break my silence.

  ‘What did you do here last weekend, Lucy?’

  A slab of sunlight slants in through the windshield on to my lap. I watch the car’s clock slowly change figures.

  ‘Lucy, if you were here last weekend it won’t take me long to find out what you did and where you went and who you saw. Save me a day and just tell me because I need to know.’

  But when I shake my head and the silence has stretched on longer than any silence should, then Michael Rougemont opens the car door.

  ‘Okay,’ he says amiably. ‘If you won’t help me, I’d better get to work.’

  21

  As soon as I am back in Daddy’s den I dial New York. I’m calling Mittex. Not only is Jay Kent in his office today but his secretary has clearly been told to put any call from me right through to him.

  ‘Lucy! Good to hear from you!’ he says and I am surprised by my own reaction, the way my heart thumps as though it just jumped out on me from a doorway.

  ‘I tried to call you,’ he tells me, ‘but I got some woman I couldn’t understand…’

  ‘My Aunt Zina.’

  ‘Does she speak English?’

  I realize for the first time how heavily accented Aunt Zina’s speech must be. I never noticed Mother’s accent either and when kids at school told me my mother talked funny I was baffled.

  I tell him: ‘She couldn’t understand you. She said you sounded like a machine-gun.’

  Kent likes that and he laughs his machine-gun laugh. ‘How are you, Lucy?’

  ‘I’m okay. Have you started organizing those proposals for Gregory Hifeld?’

  He groans. ‘I thought you weren’t working for a week or two.’

  ‘What did you think of Gregory Hifeld?’

  ‘Lucy, he didn’t like me. But I admired him a lot. Unfortunately, he’s retiring and you’re offering us George.’

  ‘But maybe as a pilot…’

  More rapid gunfire as Kent laughs. ‘You’re smart, Lucy. It’s one of the first things I noticed about you, it’s one of the reasons I wanted you. I wanted that smartness. But I’m not sure even you can turn this deal around.’

  I hear my own voice, strained, echoing back to me as though there’s a large empty space out there. ‘Thinking Toys is a good company, Kent. You need it, and the price is fair.’

  ‘The old man isn’t going to sell to us. He didn’t like our attitude. He wants to play Santa to his little elves. He doesn’t want mean ol’ Mittex waving balance sheets around in Toy-land. But I don’t want to talk about any of this, Lucy. I want to talk about you. Have you found out what happened to your father?’

  ‘Well, yes…’ I pause. I consider not telling but Kent’s waiting and finally I say: ‘It was homicide.’

  There is a silence.

  ‘Homicide?’ And for the first time his voice loses its certainty.

  ‘That’s what the police say.’

  More silence. If Kent ever stopped to think about it, he assumed I came from a nice waspish community and a nice churchgoing family like his own. He didn’t guess I had aunts who speak incomprehensible English or the kind of father who gets himself killed.

  ‘I thought your dad was a prof…’

  ‘He was.’

 
; ‘But do you have any idea… have the police…?’

  ‘No, Kent, but this morning something happened.’

  ‘To you?’

  ‘To you and me.’

  Another silence. He knows what’s coming next but he’s waiting for me to speak, hoping he’s wrong.

  ‘A detective told me that he’s found out about last weekend.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Last weekend. Someone knows.’

  He is cautious. ‘How much does he know?’

  ‘At the moment, just that I was here.’

  Kent’s voice rises. ‘Oh, he’ll find out. These guys find things out.’

  ‘He says that by the end of today he’s going to know where I was and who I saw and what I did…’

  ‘Oh for Chrissake, Lucy!’ I hear his anger, his fear. ‘Oh for Chrissake!’ He is close to shouting. He is thinking about his mother and the church she is devoted to back in Virginia and the way he was brought up to behave and the way he did behave and it seems to Kent now that his connection with the strange, bleak Lucy Schaffer has led him into just the kind of mess his mother might have anticipated.

  ‘What did you tell him?’ he snaps.

  ‘Nothing. When they interviewed me I said I was home all weekend.’

  His volume rises again. ‘You’ve lied to the police! You’ve made a false statement! Shit, Lucy.’

  ‘I’m trying to keep you out of it, Kent, that’s why.’

  But he’s shouting loudly now and doesn’t hear. ‘Lucy, they’re going to get you and that means they’ll find their way to me. Shit, Lucy, shit, this could blow everything.’

  ‘But what can I do? Now I’ve lied I can’t change my story.’

  ‘Nothing.’ He breathes heavily. ‘You can’t do anything. Just sit tight and don’t say anything if you can help it. I have to go now.’

  Kent puts down the phone. He puts it down so hard that it misses its cradle and I hear it bounce on the desk before he catches it and slams it down again. There is electronic groaning on the line.

  When I put down the phone the house feels sticky and silent. No one else is here today. Scott offered to help but I told him to stay on campus because everything in the den is under control. Larry and Jane have also gone to their offices. They have now removed any rocks or other items which look valuable and are close to completing arrangements for the funeral.

  ‘You should be safe enough by yourself here in the daytime now we have the new keys,’ Larry told me. ‘Just be sure to lock the door.’

  The key the locksmith gave me felt more youthful than Daddy’s key, shinier and plumper. I followed Larry’s advice but right from the moment I walked in I knew that the house was too hot to remain closed. The walls have started to inhale the day’s heat with more stamina than they exhale it at night.

  I fling open the sliding doors to the deck and a hot breeze, like breath, blows right in. Outside the sun is strong and frisky as a freshman and the leaves shake a welcome at me. My eye searches from habit for all the valley’s familiar landmarks.

  When we were kids, we used to flip through the railings on to the deck at one end, where the sloping ground and the deck almost meet. I recall the liberation of self-propulsion then the thud of wood underfoot when you made a perfect landing. Now that there is no one here to see me, I scramble down to the slope, reach for the railing and take my feet off the ground. Hanging, which used to be painless, seems to pull my arms from their sockets. I swing myself once, twice and then flip on to the deck with a practised movement. My body is hurled into its own trajectory, I feel the strength of its arc, and then I am landing squarely on both feet. Satisfaction. The whole manoeuvre has taken a couple of seconds and my body’s memory of it was perfect. I wonder how it is possible to be unaware of remembering something so well.

  I go back to the den and call Jim Finnigan.

  ‘Lucy, oh gosh, Lucy, I was just thinking about you. How’re things, how’re you feeling?’

  He is loud and fast, he is New York.

  ‘It’s good to hear you, Jim.’

  ‘Life’s pretty bad, huh? When’s the funeral?’

  ‘Not until Tuesday.’

  Jim probably has his lowest desk drawer pulled out and his feet resting on it. Or they’re on the garbage can, maybe inside the garbage can. The phone is wedged between his ear and his shoulder by rows of thick jowels.

  ‘Well, don’t hurry back.’

  ‘Ahem, Jim. You just said the wrong thing. You’re supposed to tell me you can’t manage without me.’

  ‘Well, I can. So take your time.’

  ‘I was planning on returning by the end of next week.’

  ‘That’s fine, stay longer if you need to.’

  ‘What about Hifeld–Mittex?’

  ‘Not good. But don’t worry about that. So stay where you are. I’m doing whatever needs to be done.’ Despite his words I hear that his voice is bumping along the bottom of some riverbed now.

  He says: ‘Lucy, the police contacted me yesterday. About you.’ Bump, scrape, the riverbed is rocky.

  ‘What did they want?’

  ‘Oh…’ he exhales so loudly it’s almost a sigh. ‘Some guy’s flying out here to talk to me.’

  ‘A guy? What’s his name?’

  ‘Er…’ The rustle of paper. ‘Rougemont? Does that ring a bell?’

  ‘He’s coming to New York?’

  ‘On the weekend. He’ll be in the office on Monday. I have to produce a schedule of the hours you spent here in the ten days before your father’s death. That kind of stuff.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Jim hesitates. His voice rasps a little. ‘Lucy… was your father really killed?’

  ‘The police think so.’

  ‘That’s terrible. Do you have any idea who would –?’

  ‘There just isn’t anyone, Jim. Daddy was a nice guy who never would have given anyone a reason to hurt him.’

  ‘Do people always need reasons?’

  ‘I guess not if they’re crazy. Did Rougemont ask you anything else over the phone?’

  ‘He wanted to know how you spent the weekend. You said you were visiting friends and I told him so. I hope that’s okay.’

  I don’t like Jim’s anxiety, the suggestion, half a suggestion, that I might be hiding things from the police.

  ‘Sure, sure. I already told them too.’

  ‘He also wants to talk to Fatima.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Lucy, he’s asked for the tapes of your telephone calls for the last two weeks.’

  I am silent, first with shock, then because I am thinking. Wondering what I said to Kent or he said to me over the company phone.

  ‘Lucy?’

  It is normal and accepted for the bank to record calls. I assume no one ever listens to them unless there’s a contract dispute or a suspicion of espionage. I wonder who keeps the tapes and who decides if they should be heard.

  ‘Hey, are you there?’

  ‘What did you tell him, Jim?’

  ‘I said no because the tapes contain sensitive banking information. He persisted. I had to refer it up in the end.’

  ‘How far up?’

  ‘I have a feeling it may have got as far as Semper.’

  ‘Semper! Oh, shit, Jim. This could bring my career to an abrupt halt.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s like…’ Jim swallows. ‘Well, it’s like you’re some kind of a suspect.’ He adds hastily: ‘I’m sure you’re not. But it sort of looks that way when the police start asking questions and checking on your movements. It’s probably not a big career booster.’

  ‘Will Semper give them the tapes?’

  ‘He shouldn’t do that without telling you first. But if you have a lawyer who –’

  ‘Jim, I don’t need a lawyer, I haven’t done anything wrong.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Don’t say more, since this call is being recorded.’

  ‘There’s nothing in the tape the police shouldn’t hear,’ I insist. ‘It’s just kind o
f a… an intrusion. A violation. That’s all.’

  ‘Yeah. This is awful, Lucy.’ He swallows again. ‘But at least you don’t have to worry about Hifeld. Just leave Gregory to me. You forget about us and spend this sad time with your family.’

  I want to shout: my job is my family. But I don’t. I know it’s true of most of us at the bank, even Jim, but it’s something we prefer not to acknowledge out loud and on tape.

  I try to call Jay Kent again but his secretary has obviously now been instructed to intercept me. Humiliated, I wrap myself in the smallprint of Daddy’s life, his files, his letters, his financial statements, his Medicare records. Occasionally there is the flutter of drapes in the living-room, otherwise nothing breaks the house’s thin membrane of silence.

  I slide open the desk drawer and guiltily, as though it’s a slab of chocolate, withdraw the newspaper cuttings. Wedding News is on the top. The groom is a doctor. The bridesmaids wore yellow.

  After the car crash I was sent home swiftly from hospital. I spent the long summer months waiting for Robert to call. And even if he hadn’t called, he could have written. He didn’t. I hoped maybe his mother would contact me. But she didn’t either. I could only find one explanation for this. Robert and his family must blame me for the crash. He was after all stretching one arm across to me when it should have been on the steering-wheel. Had I encouraged or, worse, demanded this near-fatal attention? His silence seemed to suggest that I had and in my heart I have always believed the accident to be at least partly and probably wholly my fault. At the end of the long summer, Robert’s summer, we both went our different ways to different colleges. When, later, someone told me Robert kept his leg but had a terrible limp and wouldn’t play sports again, I felt more remorse than compassion.

  I am immersed in these thoughts when I become aware that I am not alone.

  I know someone is here not because they make any noise but by a sensation of movement. The movement is at the door of the den and I don’t see it, I feel it. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and I leap to my feet. The doorway is empty and the door still but I perceive that a reorganization has taken place in the air’s molecules. Someone stood there, or at least passed by, just a few seconds ago.

  I get to the deck fast. My nerve ends are sizzling and my mouth is dry as I lean over the railings. The sun glares. Leaves shift uncomfortably in the breeze. Otherwise, the hillside is motionless. Beyond, the valley bakes like a hard, brown loaf. I wait, holding my loud breath. Then I go back inside the house and search every room downstairs and, although the door was locked, I go out to the porch. The barn, the car, the drive. Nothing moves. Nothing changes.