Jane smiles apologetically.
‘You’ve imagined that.’
‘No, I see it so clearly!’
‘Lucy, we didn’t let you see the body, not even wrapped up in a blanket. And Daddy buried him when it was dark, after you were asleep.’
‘But I remember! Daddy was carrying the blanket down the steps…’
‘Sure you remember. You remember the way you imagined it.’
Rougemont said: it’s easy to confuse what actually happened with things you’ve been told and things you’ve dreamed. It’s good, real good, that you recognize how unreliable memory is.
I look past Jane out of the window. Once you had a clear view along the drive from Jane’s room and mine but now the trees have grown so close that their thin fingers almost tap on the glass.
‘I guess you’re right,’ I say. Nickel Dog’s death was no memory but a tapestry I wove from recent events. It was a blooming of buried dog and crying mother from seeds dropped by Rougemont. It was an acknowledgement of the previously forgotten information that Daddy once owned a tow truck. It was a small dirge for my long ago friendship with Lindy Zacarro. It had the colour and texture of memory but it was impure. It was nothing more than a fabrication.
Scott is in the barn now. When I step off the porch and out from under the trees the sun ambushes me. I push my way through its light and heat slowly, as though I’m walking through water.
The barn is big and red like barns in story-books. That pleased me when I was a kid although when the door opened it became a huge cavern which swallowed sound and was impenetrable to light, and that scared me.
Scott has bolted the small door from the inside. I bang with my foot.
‘Who’s there?’ he yells. He sounds nervous. When he unlocks it I stare into the barn’s great blackness.
‘Bolt it behind you,’ he instructs me. I can hear his words retreating with him into the body of the barn.
‘Scott, where are you?’
‘Right here!’
‘I can’t see a thing… why don’t you turn the light on?’
‘I have! It’s just the sun outside’s so bright you have to wait for your eyes to adjust.’
The tractor is the first thing to materialize. Daddy spent hours underneath it, smelling of oil, spanners clanging, until eventually there would be the sound of a loud, rumbling motor as though the whole barn was just about to drive away.
‘Oh boy,’ I say, shaking my head as gradually everything else appears. Outdoor stuff like sacks and machines and logs and lumber, Daddy stuff like tools and nails. Old bed frames, machines, or parts of machines, planks and squares of wood and wheels. Boxes, some labelled with rock names. Scott is surrounded by them. When I hand him the drink I see he is dusty and wet with sweat. He gulps it greedily.
‘I can’t believe you still get mad about Robert Joseph after all this time,’ I say. He doesn’t stop drinking but he grimaces at me over the top of the glass.
‘I mean, you go off to France with Brigitte and you still get mad about some boyfriend who I haven’t seen since I was eighteen. For heaven’s sake.’
He puts down the empty glass and gasps for air. ‘It was the strange way it ended with that Robert guy,’ he says. ‘Inconclusively. You never were able to slam the door shut on the way you felt about him.’
‘I haven’t thought about Robert for years and years.’
He shrugs and bends over a box. ‘Then why did you fish out the report of his wedding?’
I pick up the glass and mutter something about sorting through Daddy’s desk, finding all kinds of things. My words seem to get lost in the barn’s vast, gloomy interior.
‘Whenever we made love,’ says Scott, ‘it was like you weren’t really there. Not all of you.’
I am surprised and hurt. I look at him and I can see him clearly now. His face is shining with sweat.
‘But I thought you enjoyed it! I thought it was good!’ I protest. ‘I mean…’ I add honestly. ‘Before Stevie was born.’ Afterwards, there was almost no sex.
Scott’s voice softens a little. ‘Luce, we had great sex but not the greatest. Because a small part of you just wasn’t there.’
I think of lying in the downtown hotel with Kent, crying silently into the dark while he slept. I think of the line, smooth as red ink, which followed his razor across my thigh. When Kent and I had sex, neither of us was there.
I say: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Sure you do, Luce. There was always something missing. And Robert Joseph had it. You gave it to him years ago and you never asked for it back. That’s why I still get mad about him.’
Later, much later, when the square of sky over Daddy’s den has turned pink and then pale blue and then deepened to black, I stretch and yawn. The house is still because the others are all out in the barn now, organizing hundreds of rock boxes. They even had to move the tractor to make more space. It started first time, roaring lustily as Larry drove it outside and parked it by the barn and when he switched off it sounded reluctant, like a dog who really wanted to take a walk.
I straighten the desk. In one corner is Wedding News where it has lain haphazardly just as it was left this morning. I hope everyone has noticed that it has been untouched by me all day. Since they are outside, I take one last glance at it. The bride’s antique lace. Robert’s hand, just visible on her shoulder. And then, something from further down the page leaps out at me. Marcello. The name I have been looking for is right here. When Seymour first gave it to me there was a familiarity about it: I’d read it here, in the list of guests at Robert’s wedding. B. Marcello.
Someone walks right past the open door of the den. I hope they didn’t see me looking at Wedding News. I put it hastily away. I thumb through the phone book but none of the Marcellos is a B. A possibility occurs to me that makes my heart beat faster. I could drive down into the valley to the Joseph house. I could ask Mrs Joseph about B. Marcello. Maybe she’ll even have heard of the Marcello Trust.
I go out to the deck. A big insect flies right past me on some private route home. I know it only from the displacement of the air, the buzz of its wings. I look across the long, dark ocean that is the valley. A couple of car lights. A few farmhouses.
A rustle close by makes me jump nervously. Then I see that Jane is already here, sitting on a wooden chair with her feet up on the railings.
‘It sure is a warm night,’ she says. ‘I mean, it would be a warm night in the summertime. In March, it’s ridiculous.’
I sit down next to her and we stare out into the darkness.
‘I wish you could stay here a while after the funeral and help with everything,’ she says.
‘I can stay until the end of next week. But no longer, Jane. There’s this deal and I’m losing it fast…’
‘Sure,’ she says quickly, quietly. ‘Of course, Luce. It was selfish of me to ask. It’s just I’m tired and when I’m tired I allow myself to get overwhelmed by all there is to do.’
Her voice is helpless, sad. ‘No, I’m being selfish, not you,’ I say. ‘I’ll try to come back real soon.’
‘But what about your deal?’
I shrug. ‘I’ve probably already lost it. And there’ll be other deals.’
I see the lights of an airplane flashing. I cannot hear the drone of its engine as it begins its high journey across the valley.
‘Do you remember the time Lindy Zacarro and I walked right out into the valley?’ I ask Jane. ‘Right to the Sturmer Orchards?’
‘Boy, I was worried, you were gone so long.’
‘I was real good friends with Lindy. Except at the end. I had some kind of argument with her and she died before we could make it up. So I always felt real guilty.’
‘Why did you argue?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Probably something to do with Mother,’ says Jane. ‘I mean, Lindy always wanted to play here.’
I nod. ‘Mother made almost any friendship impossible b
ecause you never knew what she was going to do. Even when she was between breaks you never knew what she was going to do.’
There were times during vacations, and sometimes they lasted for a week or two before our participation collapsed and we were alone again, when we roamed the hillside with the other kids, building camps and declaring war. Lindy, Davis and Carter Zacarro. The Carmichaels. Phyllis Schneck. The Dimoto triplets. Jim Bob Holler and sometimes his big brother, the Spelmanns, Miranda and Michael. But we always had to pull out of the group as soon as they indicated they wanted to come to our house. Then once, they did. All of them, maybe twelve or thirteen kids. Mother produced a big jug of Kool-Aid and set out some cupcakes but the Kool-Aid was undiluted and the cupcakes were just dough. All the kids sat there without saying a word. Then when she left the room, they started laughing. I didn’t know whether to laugh with them or maintain an embarrassed but loyal silence.
‘And when she was just sinking down into psychosis again,’ adds Jane, ‘we knew exactly what she’d do. That time all the local kids came by and Mother was feeling real bad and we were sort of creeping around the hallways…’
‘Oh, I remember creeping.’ Don’t wake Mother, don’t annoy Mother, don’t upset that delicate, intricate mechanism that is her mind because the smallest pressure can have the most terrifying, cataclysmic consequences.
‘We’d kept everything quiet and then a bunch of kids appeared on the porch yelling and shouting for us. And they rang the doorbell. They rang it so loudly that the whole house sort of shook.’
‘Like there was about to be an earthquake. In fact, there was. How did we handle it?’
‘We had to lure the kids away down the drive on some ludicrous pretext. Mother was screaming and yelling and we just edged out as if it was perfectly normal. But of course they all knew. I don’t recall them ever coming here again.’
My face feels hot. Acting normal. A desirable state and the opposite of acting Russian.
‘Where was Daddy?’
‘Out. At work. I don’t know.’
We fall silent again. I wait for the night air to cool my hot cheeks.
Jane breaks the silence. ‘Lucy…’ she says quietly. ‘I saw you reading that report of Robert Joseph’s wedding just now in the den.’
‘Jane, for Chrissake I was just looking at the names of the guests!’ I say defensively. ‘It so happens that one of them is Marcello and I’ve been looking for –’
‘Luce, don’t act Russian. Just tell me: have you read it over and over?’
The railings squeak a bit, or maybe it’s the crickets. The night is so still that I can smell the sweetness in Jane’s breath, the summery flowers of her perfume.
I sigh. ‘Maybe. It was an important relationship for me because it was the first which Mother couldn’t wreck. She was safely in the clinic by then and she was obviously going to stay there. And I guess…’ I hesitate. ‘I guess the first time you fall in love it means a lot. Actually, his whole family meant a lot.’
The Joseph oasis in the valley. Mrs Joseph, involved in her sons’ lives without ever controlling them. Laughing at their jokes. Watching them play volleyball, enjoying their small successes. Mr Joseph was older and his body stiff but he was jovial, he joshed with his sons and admired their girlfriends. I liked the way he spoke with his wife too. One of them would talk and the other would listen respectfully and then they’d change roles. I used to think: that’s how conversation should be between a husband and wife. No shouting. No indifference. No domination by either party. They took time to talk together although their home was always full of people. There was Ralph, Mrs Joseph’s brother, who lived with the family and helped in the yard. No one raised an eyebrow or even commented on his behaviour. There were Mrs Joseph’s friends. There were other kids, cousins, friends of cousins. It was hard to be alone there sometimes, despite the size of the place, but I liked that. I came from a house where it was hard to be anything but alone and the slam of the screen door always heralded the beginning or end of a spell of solitude.
After the Josephs rejected me, so emphatically, so long ago, could I really just drive down there, appear at the door, ask questions about B. Marcello and help myself to another slice of their tantalizing lives? The thought makes my heart thump again.
Jane points out: ‘He wasn’t so wonderful. He nearly killed you down in the valley.’
‘I wasn’t badly hurt.’
‘You could have been, he was. And the car was such a mess, it really scared me.’
Jane, arriving soon after Mrs Joseph and her friend, minutes before the ambulances, her eyes gleaming as though she might cry any minute, surveying my body for damage with a doctor’s cool professionalism although it was years before she qualified.
‘You didn’t show it.’
‘I had to be calm so you wouldn’t get frightened.’
I turn to her. I can see her eyes shining in the dark.
‘I owe you so much, Jane. I have a lot to thank you for. I know we both want to leave most of the past behind but it’s you I have to thank for the good things. Not just for taking care of me when I was sick or saving me in the swimming-pool. But all the other stuff. Helping me choose the right clothes. Say the right things. Get better grades. Act the right way. I don’t think Mother brought me up at all. It was all you, and I’m…’ Inexplicably and embarrassingly, my voice breaks for a moment. ‘I’m grateful to you. And especially, most of all…’ My voice cracks once more. ‘When Stevie died. How you supported me.’
So now I’ve said it. Without any preparation, without knowing I was going to say it. For years I’ve been aware that I should express acknowledgement and appreciation, that Jane long ago was entitled to expect this and may have been waiting for it. But, for reasons I don’t understand, I have withheld it from her until now.
Her reply is delayed and when I glance across at her, despite the darkness between us, I see that tears are leaking from her eyes. ‘Oh, Lucy. Oh thank you. I mean… it sometimes seems like you don’t remember.’
‘I do remember,’ I assure her. I can feel tears making a hot, wet, thin line down my own face. ‘I know just how much I owe you. And I never thanked you. I just went away. Without saying a word.’
This is not the kind of conversation we have. Crying this way is not the kind of thing we do. We don’t look at one another but throw our words, quietly, urgently, over the railings and into the valley and when we are silent we continue to stare out across its infinite darkness, sniffing occasionally.
When Scott and Larry appear, smelling of the barn, we struggle to make our voices normal, to tow the conversation back to a landscape we can navigate, but they detect that something significant has passed between us and look at us searchingly. I watch a pair of car lights, their beam straight as the road, move sluggishly through the darkness. Suddenly it seems essential that Jane and I shoulder our weighty burden of memories together. I think, for the first time, that maybe I’ll move back to California.
27
On Sunday morning, I leave with Sasha and Aunts Zina and Zoya for Redbush clinic. I am relieved that I won’t be visiting Mother alone but Aunt Zina explains: ‘It’s not good for Tanya to have more than one visitor so we will wait while you see her’
‘But what will you do?’ I ask.
They shriek with laughter. ‘Talk!’ they cry.
Redbush is thirty minutes north of the city and in the car the aunts, who have insisted I sit in the front seat, question me about the progress we are making at Daddy’s house.
‘There’s so much to do,’ I groan.
They nod wisely. Aunt Zina leans towards me: ‘Lucia, there will be much to sort out. It takes a long time to do this after a death but it is necessary and it will perhaps be helpful to you in your grief.’
I think of the house, groaning with boxes, papers, drawers, closets. ‘It feels like a gross invasion of Daddy’s privacy.’
‘When someone dies,’ says Sasha, ‘it is hard to maintain thei
r privacy or their secrets. God, when Papa died I found the exposure of his life to the entire family unbearable. But from all this I came to know him better.’
‘From all what?’
Sasha looks in the rearview mirror at his mother for permission and somehow, with an eyelid or a nod, this is given. ‘When Mama and the sisters went through his things…’ another swift look at Aunt Zina ‘… and I still think it should have been me who did that, they discovered a number of magazines of a nature which no one would ever have dreamed might interest him. And he had debts, gambling debts, which was most astonishing in a man never known to take risks and always parsimonious with the family’s money.’
‘Uncle Pavel! Gambling debts!’
‘Are you amazed?’ cries Aunt Zina, flapping her arms in a gesture of disbelief. ‘Everyone was amazed and most of all me. I simply thank God that Mama died a year before and so knew nothing of it.’
Sasha straightens his body and assumes an expression of camel-like disgust that is so reminiscent of Grandma that we both break into giggles. Sasha’s is a strange, high-pitched squeak which makes me laugh still more. But Aunts Zoya and Zina are not amused.
‘Shame on you for joking about your dear old baba. She was a good woman who suffered much.’ Aunt Zoya looks significantly at me. ‘You, of all people, should understand this.’
I say soberly: ‘Of course. I know. Her baby died. On the train.’
‘Her suffering was great,’ confirms Aunt Zina. ‘Whenever my Pavel was annoyed by her I reminded him of this suffering.’
Sasha raises his eyebrows at me. ‘But do you see, Lucia? You have in these few minutes learned more about my father in death than you might if he were sitting in the car with us smoking his pipe. The same may be true for your own papa. You will come to know him in a different way now. Because we all have secrets, even perhaps you.’
Redbush has high walls and security cameras. It looks more like the spacious estate of some movie star than a clinic for mental illness and drink and drug rehabilitation. People on this latter programme are separated from patients like my mother and they are referred to by the uniformed staff as clients. It is possible to see them walking alone in the extensive grounds.
Summertime Page 26