I say: ‘I don’t remember my brother. I don’t recall anything about his death.’
Aunt Zina looks up and stares at me fiercely.
‘Nothing?’
‘No.’
‘Come now, Lucia, you were small but so was I,’ Sasha points out, ‘and even I remember this cataclysmic event.’
Aunt Zina says: ‘Sashinka, you and Lucia were both four. How can you remember more than she?’
‘Everybody crying. Aunt Zoya sitting where you are sitting now and saying: “My poor dear Tanya,” over and over. Grandma inconsolable. Lucy, I believe your brother gave me my first childish glimpse of death, no, perhaps not of death but grief.’
A terrible catastrophe, accident. Everywhere, toska. The whole family crying, Grandma overwhelmed by grief, rushing to Mother. The glassy surface of our lives shattered, maybe for ever, by the death of a baby boy.
I say, with a huskiness in my voice as though I just crawled up into some dusty attic: ‘I don’t even know his name.’
‘Americans called him Nicky but we didn’t,’ says Aunt Zina. ‘He was Kolya to us.’
‘Kolya? Kolya.’ I want to say it over and over. Its blush is familiar but its face is shy. ‘Kolya,’ I repeat, as though the name might lead me directly to the memory. But the face has turned away.
‘Kolya is a common diminutive of Nicolai,’ explains Sasha. ‘Does the name Nicky, Kolya, sound at all familiar, Lucia?’
‘I don’t think so…’ My throat clenches. It tries to censor my words. I could never ask this question if Daddy were still alive or if Jane were in the room. I say: ‘What exactly did happen when the baby died?’
Sasha and Aunt Zina exchange looks.
‘Well,’ says Sasha, ‘have you discovered the interesting coincidence that father and son both died at the same place?’
‘Yes. I took it as just another indication that Daddy’s killer knew him well. If he knew the baby died there, he probably thought Big Brim was a credible place to stage a suicide.’
‘Indeed,’ nods Sasha.
‘Although,’ I add, ‘it could just be an extraordinary coincidence.’
They exchange looks again.
‘Coincidences do happen,’ agrees Sasha.
‘Oh yes, I have seen many coincidences,’ Aunt Zina is quick to concur. ‘Indeed, a long life teaches how common coincidence can be.’
There is silence. I persist: ‘So… what exactly happened at Big Brim beach?’
‘Tanya set the baby down too close to the water’s edge, thinking perhaps that the light and movement might amuse him. She heard the crash…’ Aunt Zina’s arms are expressive. They are the whole Pacific Ocean. ‘… Of a large wave, a huge wave, a wave without precedent that day. When she turned, she saw her son dragged from the shore as the wave receded. She waded straight into the water but he was already in the deep and beyond her reach. He was soon pulled down beneath the surface.’
I stare at Aunt Zina. The great wave, the massive body of ocean water, the helplessness of a baby pushed this way and that and finally under the water.
‘But she could have swum in…’
‘Tanya was the weakest of swimmers,’ states Aunt Zina.
I remember how Adam Holler said that Mother saved me in the pool. ‘But she could –’
Sasha looks at me over his half-moon glasses and raises his eyebrows. Aunt Zina cuts through my protests. ‘She would have been quite incapable of saving him.’
‘So… she saw her baby die?’
‘He returned to the surface several times but finally he disappeared for good.’
‘She saw him die,’ I repeat. ‘After all those other things that she’d seen.’
Aunt Zina’s head nods vigorously. ‘Yes, yes, she saw him die.’
‘The body,’ adds Sasha, ‘was never found.’
Aunt Zina asks: ‘Is it any wonder that she went mad?’
As I lie in Grandma’s bed, seeing the dust circling like a shoal of tiny silver fish each time the room is lit by headlights, sleep doesn’t come. I think of a baby, tossed by the great ocean and finally swallowed by it and I think of Stevie, lying in his blue crib, and after a while the two babies are one.
33
The next morning I move fast through the city. It seems a long time since I used to walk to work like these people, my eyes fixed right in front of me, my mind fixed on the day ahead.
I enjoy the morning’s early freshness. Soon the city will swell and bubble but right now it is possible to move quickly, unimpeded by heat. I feel alert. I notice hanging skirt hems and broken earrings and, above me, the depth of blue in the sky. The smell wafting from the breakfast diners is so intense it feels as though I’m actually eating. At a sidewalk café I note that each table is taken by a solitary diner. I watch a small group of white gulls swooping down to one man, who stamps his foot and waves his hand until the gulls soar away again, gliding first through the people then high above their heads. For a minute I feel some part of me is soaring over the sidewalk and the buildings as high as the birds. I can see myself far below, moving fast down the street, the diners reading their newspapers at the tables.
Finally I reach the library. It is huge like a cathedral. It feels cold and cool air seems to bounce from its walls. I ask an assistant for help and a few minutes later the newspapers I have requested appear on the desk in front of me.
I open the first and turn each page respectfully, with a big sweep of my arm. I had expected the tone and typography of my childhood years to be subdued, like an elderly relative. Now I am surprised at the robust headlines.
Initially I allow myself to be distracted by articles which interest me, then I turn the pages faster and the news flashes by me like a time machine.
My grandmother’s letter of condolence was dated June first. I don’t expect to find a report of my brother’s death until May thirty-first. June first is also a possibility. When I reach June second and there has been no mention of the accident, I lose hope. I give June third and fourth a cursory scan. Maybe the death on the coast of a small baby wasn’t considered newsworthy. Then, on the front page of June fifth, I see it: Baby Drowned By Freak Wave.
I bend over the story. It says: ‘Eight month old Nicholas Schaffer was swept out to sea at Big Brim beach yesterday by a freak wave.’
The death occurred at 10.10 a.m. Mrs Tatiana Schaffer had been playing with her two daughters, leaving her baby son at the shoreline, when a large wave carried him away. Mrs Schaffer was a non-swimmer. She had, nevertheless, assisted by others, attempted unsuccessfully to reach the child. Coastguards had later joined in the search for the body, which had still not been found. Dr Schaffer, a university lecturer, was absent at the time of the death fetching sweaters from the family’s car across the dunes. No one else saw the wave carry the baby away, although there are quotes from someone who watched Mother’s floundering, unsuccessful rescue attempt.
‘Dr and Mrs Shaffer are being interviewed by police,’ the article concludes. ‘Detective Rougemont declined to comment on the case.’
In the next newspaper, I read: Police Warn Parents To Watch Out For Waves. The article repeats the story of Nicholas’s death, stating the date again as June fourth.
‘Police today warned parents that no child should be left unattended at the shoreline, however quiet the ocean seems. Nicholas’s body still has not been recovered. Local fisherman Kurt Langheim commented: “Big Brim’s a death trap but the bodies are nearly always picked up down the coast at Retribution Bay. Maybe this one’s just too small for that.”
‘The baby’s father, Dr Eric Schaffer, is a college lecturer in geology and geophysics. Mrs Tatiana Schaffer was today still suffering from shock. Her husband confirmed that she is under sedation. The police issued a warning about beach safety but declined to make any other comment on the case.’
I walk back to my car and find the sun is already bouncing off the hood. The steering-wheel feels hot and hard like something baked in the oven.
> When I bump up Daddy’s drive I see Jane standing at the top. She is opening the barn door, reaching for the high bolts, her body elongated like an exclamation mark. I feel bad that she has been alone and vulnerable at the house and apologize for arriving so late.
She is forgiving. ‘It’s too hot to feel scared today,’ she says. ‘And the geologists from the U will be here any minute. I hope they’re expecting this many rocks.’
Her hair shines metallically in the sun. The round rocks in the drive look like bubbles in the boiling cauldron of the day.
We walk inside the barn and linger at the door, seeing black, waiting for our eyes to accommodate the darkness.
I say: ‘Jane. There’s something I don’t understand.’
She laughs. ‘Only one thing?’
‘Jane…’ It is dark in the barn but not cool. My mouth feels salty dry. ‘I’ve been learning about…’ This is difficult. ‘… Our brother. His death.’
Jane swings around to me so that the ends of her hair bounce against her face.
‘How come?’
‘Well, Sasha translated this letter last night. From Grandma to mother, saying how sorry she was about the baby’s death. And… it made me start asking questions.’
She raises her eyebrows.
‘Like what?’
‘It doesn’t make sense, Jane. The story of how the baby died doesn’t fit the facts.’
She studies me carefully in the diminishing darkness. The intense sunlight doesn’t fall in here but I am aware of its heat, its light, right behind me.
‘What facts?’ she asks at last.
I start to tell her how Mother and Daddy took all three of us to Big Brim beach one day when there is the scrape of muffler on rock and the moan of an engine. The geologists have arrived.
‘I’ll get them started,’ Jane says, ‘then we should talk about this.’ And suddenly it seems urgent that we discuss our brother, as though our great silence has collapsed beneath the weight of its accumulated years.
The geologists emerge slowly from their car in the sticky heat. One of them reminds me of Daddy, tall and kind-faced. The other is bearded and wants to tells us how much Daddy taught him and how Daddy loaned him the money for a field trip when he was an impoverished grad student.
‘There is no charge for this evaluation,’ he says, ‘strictly no charge. I’m one of many people who has good reason to be grateful to Professor Schaffer and I want to pay my dues.’
I fetch them cold drinks while Jane leads them into the barn and explains how Larry and Scott have organized Daddy’s vast and unruly rock collection. They’re still talking when I take them their drinks. I wander around to the deck to wait for Jane, picking up a few napkins from yesterday’s lunch which the caterers missed.
A heat haze still lingers over the valley. Soon the sun will burst through it like a fist. When the heat gets this intense it sits, lazy as a fat man, over the valley, and only a violent storm can drive it away.
Overhead the big, round leaves hang, limp as wet cloths, although they are dry. Below me the valley drops and stretches like the ocean although it is land, brown and parched.
Jane appears at my side.
‘Okay, they’re busy, they have a big jug of water, and they don’t need us. Let’s go, Lucy.’
I follow her back through the house and across the porch and the sound of the screen door banging and our feet clattering on the wood could be a sound from any time in our lives. We cross the yard and pick our way through the Holler orchard. Light and heat pour down on us, thick as water, so that walking feels like swimming.
‘Where are we going?’ I ask, although I am already consumed by the journey and don’t much care.
‘Down to the valley where no one can overhear us. Remember that old trail we used to take?’
I remember the trail because I walked up it the day before Daddy died. The heatwave has dried the dirt and made the bushes limp since then. In a couple of places I think I can see my own footsteps. Jane picks her way down the overgrown path, holding her arms clear of the leaves, her hips and long, slim legs swinging with the terrain. Small clouds of powdery red dirt circle every foot.
We skirt the trees in the Schneck orchard knowingly like animals. The dirt fills our shoes. We duck under low branches, and then cross the Spelmann lot, brown and uncared-for at these outer reaches. Back up around the houses we see flowers, unnaturally green lawns, hissing sprinklers.
Suddenly, we’re at the bottom of the hill. We’re in the valley. It is still, eerily still, as though someone cast a spell on it. The earth is scorched. The sun dominates and there can be no refuge in sprinklers or pools or air-conditioning. It sears into the trees, the ground, the rocks, everything here must submit to its rule.
‘Let’s sit,’ suggests Jane. There are rocks nestled into the base of the hillside. The rocks are hot but they are shaded from the sun’s cruelty by a slanting tree which I think has always listed. We sit, taking a little relief from the light, smothered still by heat.
‘Okay,’ says Jane. ‘I’m ready. Tell me the facts about Nicky’s death.’
I am amazed to hear his name used with such casual familiarity. I thought Jane, like me, had forgotten all about him.
I sweat. I am breathless as though I am still walking through the swelling air. I tell her the story of that trip to Big Brim beach when I was four and she was seven. How Daddy went back for sweaters when the freak wave came and Mother was unable to save the baby.
She nods.
‘That’s it,’ she says. ‘That’s pretty much how it was.’
‘You remember?’
‘Sure. It was a trauma I relived a thousand times. I remember every second of it.’
‘But why did you tell the police you’d forgotten?’
‘Because Nicky’s death doesn’t have anything to do with Daddy’s. I was appalled they kept asking about it. I mean, it was a terrible, tragic thing to happen and it drove Mother literally insane. I know that in some families it’s different but in our family we found the best way of coping with it was to grieve and then to put it right behind us. That’s what Daddy did, that’s what I did. And you just forgot about the whole thing. Until now. For some reason Daddy’s death has made people talk about Nicky again. I couldn’t believe it when Larry told everyone at the funeral about him.’
I swallow and taste the orchard inside my mouth.
‘Tell me, Luce. What are these facts you’ve found that don’t fit?’
‘I guess it’s nothing,’ I say at last.
‘Please tell me. Please, Luce.’
‘I thought it looked like they staged Nicky’s death,’ I say and Jane stares at me, her mouth open a little.
‘Staged it?’ she asks softly. ‘God, Luce, what do you mean?’
‘This freak wave which is supposed to have snatched the baby away. It’s hard to imagine there could be such a thing at Big Brim beach…’ My words have been edging down a steep hill. Gradually, they gather a momentum of their own and start to tumble. ‘I mean, that place is like a lagoon. There are almost no waves. It’s not a safe beach but the danger comes from the undercurrents, not the waves. Then, this stuff about Mother not saving the baby because she couldn’t swim. Well, she could. I know she never did but Mr Holler remembers her diving into their pool to save me once: you resuscitated me but she actually pulled me to safety. Why didn’t she do the same for the baby? But the strangest thing of all is a letter Grandma wrote when Kolya, Nicky, died. In the letter she tries to comfort Mother. It’s dated June first. But, according to the newspaper reports, Nicky didn’t die until June fourth. So Grandma wrote a letter of condolence three days before the baby died. Isn’t that bizarre?’
I am out of breath and out of words. Jane has been watching me, large-eyed, her hair sticking to the sides of her face, her body tilted gracefully forward on her rock.
‘How could they have staged his death?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know. But if the baby was already d
ead, I mean if he’d died earlier in some other way, they could have pretended that he drowned at the beach to cover it up…’
She sighs.
‘You shouldn’t read too much into the date on Grandma’s letter. She could easily have got the date wrong, so could the newspaper.’
‘What about the wave? Do you remember the wave?’
‘No,’ she admits. ‘I don’t remember it. None of us saw it, although afterwards I sort of thought I remembered a crash.’
‘What do you remember, Jane?’
She pulls her body back at an oblique angle and puts the soles of her feet up on her rock. Her body looks long and lean. It is unblemished by childbearing.
‘Every detail,’ she says at last. ‘I remember the exact grade of grey in the sky. The colour of the ball we were playing with. The shirt I was wearing. Mother kicked the ball to you and then turned around and realized Nicky was gone. He’d been sitting on the sand in that dumpy, round-shouldered way small babies sit, and then he just wasn’t there any more. She screamed and we ran up to her and we all stared at the sand as though, if we stared hard enough, he’d reappear. You dropped the beachball and the little waves sort of grabbed it and soon it was bouncing around in the water. When we looked in the water for Nicky we couldn’t see him there either, just the beachball bobbing up and down. I mean, there was absolutely no sign of him. Mother started shrieking and flapping her arms like an enormous gull. She probably thought someone had taken him because she ran up and down the tideline but there was no one close enough to have done such a thing. Then I saw him. I mean, I saw his little blue hat. It wasn’t far away and the beach there shelves gently so I waded in for it. Mother rushed into the water behind me, splashing and yelling, and grabbed the hat out of my hand and then she went in still further until she was submerged waist deep and her skirt was sort of floating behind her on the surface of the water.’
There is a long silence. It sucks all the oxygen out of the air. I say: ‘Didn’t anyone help? Wasn’t there anyone on the beach who could help?’
‘There were a few people and yes, they did come to help. Not for a while, though. It turned out that they thought we were trying to get the beachball. And anyway, soon Daddy was back.’
Summertime Page 33