‘And did you see the baby at all?’
‘A little way out, flung around by the movement of the water. He was face down as though he was swimming but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t moving at all by then.’
‘Why didn’t Mother swim to him? Why didn’t she try to get to him somehow? Anyhow?’
‘Daddy did. He tried for ages but Nicky was right out of sight and Daddy had to give up when the currents nearly pulled him under. We all knew by then that it was way too late.’
‘But why didn’t Mother get in the water the moment she realized that Nicky had gone?’ I demand loudly. The steep valley side throws my words back at me. Gone, gone, gone.
I see that Jane is crying silently.
‘Luce, I’ve never told anyone this. I never even discussed it with Daddy, but I think he knew it too.’
I wait, while she fights with her tears.
‘I suspect… I’ve always suspected… that Mother may have drowned her baby.’
The heat pins me to my rock. I can feel the small crags and craters digging into my skin but I am powerless to move. It has been here for hundreds, thousands, perhaps millions of years and it took many more millions to form. It was created by elements relentless as today’s sun, expanding it, contracting it, washing against it, chipping it, sculpting it. A lizard peeks out from underneath the rock, moves a few feet and then stops. It is motionless in the dust as though the heat pins it, too, to the earth’s surface. Its dry, scaly skin is timeless, its way of life is timeless, its primitive thoughts are timeless. In the intense heat I don’t know where the lizard and the rock and Lucy end or begin. We are all made from the same elements, and so is the dirt that lines the valley floor.
‘Nicky was a problem for Mother,’ says Jane. Her voice is a monotone. ‘You and I had been easy babies but Nicky cried and cried. He was so cute. I mean, when he was asleep or playing he was adorable. But mostly he was yelling. Mother couldn’t stop him so she ended up by empathizing with him and crying a lot herself. She loved him so much but she couldn’t cope and Daddy had to cook all the meals and take time off to help with the baby and the whole house was tense. Mother was highly voluble but, Luce, I’ve always hoped, I’ve preferred to believe, that she didn’t plan on drowning her baby. That would have been real calculating. No, I prefer to think it was more like a split-second decision not to save him.’
I am crying too now. I can feel the tears making hot lines through my dusty face.
‘Don’t judge her too harshly, Lucy. I know you won’t. I know you’ll understand.’
‘I won’t judge her,’ I sob. ‘How can I?’
Jane gets up and walks across the soft dirt of the valley floor. She puts an arm around me. ‘I guess you must know just how she felt. Because, although she was responsible for his death, she really loved that baby.’
I howl. Like an animal, like a wolf. The valley side echoes my cry until Jane and I are surrounded by a whole pack of wolves.
I remember how, when I had Stevie, love seemed to spill out of me, slopping everywhere, in quantities not previously experienced. You share, said Aunt Zina, your mother’s great capacity to love, and it seems to me now that my love for Stevie had all the unpredictability and force of some terrifying flash flood. But I was awash with a love to which Stevie seemed indifferent. He was dissatisfied with my inadequate attempts to feed him and nurture him and he showed his dissatisfaction continually. He cried and cried and, because he felt like a part of me, his wails seemed to express some great sadness inside me, some pain I didn’t even know was there. He was expelling my misery for all the world to hear. And, when I pulled back the blanket and knew from his special stillness that he was dead, wasn’t my first reaction, before the shock, before the suffering, simply relief that there was silence at last?
I say: ‘It was my fault Stevie died, Jane. It was all my fault.’
When he was dead, when the police had gone and the woman in dark clothes had taken him away, I slept. I slept for twenty-four hours.
‘Shhhhhhhh,’ says Jane as I sob on to her shoulder. ‘Shhhhhh. I know. Shhhhhhhh now.’ She hushes me softly like a baby. ‘It’s all over now, Luce. Nicky’s dead. Stevie’s dead. We can put it all behind us.’
When I look up, I say: ‘Mother got sick right after Nicky died. I understand now. Her grief was compounded by guilt.’
Jane nods. ‘Probably we went to Arizona too soon after his death. I think it was only a week or two later.’
‘What a terrible vacation for her.’
Jane takes my hand and holds it fiercely in hers. She says: ‘Luce, do you ever think about death?’
‘I think about it a lot.’
‘Are you scared of it?’
I sniff. ‘Yes.’
‘Sometimes I think it must be sort of wonderful. All the dumb things you worry about, the headlong chase for happiness, the suffering even wealth can’t prevent, the knowledge that the second half of your life can only be a decline… I’ve watched people die and, no matter how much they dreaded death, they always seem to sink into it with a kind of relief. Like when you get into bed at the end of a real tiring day. When they finally slip away they look so grateful it’s all over. I’m telling you this because I want you to know, it really wasn’t so bad for Stevie. It wasn’t so bad for Nicky.’
I feel grateful to her. Her kindness is like the sun. I thank her. I stand up. Rows of big fruit trees stretch away from us to the misty horizon. Each one is different. The branches fall differently. The trunks curve differently. Every bark has a different patina. The dirt beneath the trees is furrowed into deep, uncrossable waves and, like the sea, it is thick with life.
Knowing that, now Daddy is dead, we only have each other in the world and that we alone are guardians of our family’s past, Jane and I lean on one another as we begin our ascent. The sun dries our faces as we stumble back up the trail, around houses, across overgrown lots, through the orchard. The effort of climbing erases all thought until we get to Daddy’s yard and then I become aware that I am dirty all over. The clouds of earth have settled on me like a mass of butterflies. It is inside my shoes, it clings to my legs and I can taste it in my mouth.
‘We should shower,’ says Jane hoarsely.
I gesture for her to shower first and while she is gone I stand hanging over the deck, looking down on the place we just left. It looks different from up here. Its vastness is well ordered. The trees are identical, evenly spaced, symmetrically shaped and mirrored by short, neat, shadows. The dirt looks flat, its furrows uniform.
I retreat to the house. Upstairs. I pass Daddy’s bedroom, Jane’s, my own, until I reach the pastel blue room at the end of the hallway which Kirsty said must have been my brother’s. I sit down on a dusty box and try to remember. I try to remember anything about Nicky. His tears, his face asleep, his death at Big Brim beach. But there is nothing. Every time I reach out for him, I find Stevie’s small, white body.
Outside, the sunken garden is so still it looks like a photograph of itself, so motionless it seems to be holding its breath.
I sit down by Daddy’s headstone. I think of the terrible burden he carried, the terrible burden of his knowledge.
‘Hi, Lucy.’
I turn and see the bony features of Michael Rougemont. His grey eyes survey me sadly. Followed by Kirsty, he steps down into the sunken garden and sits near me in dappled shade.
‘You okay?’ Rougemont asks. He surveys my tear-stained face, my dirt-red hair.
‘You look like you’ve been mud wrestling,’ says Kirsty.
‘I just took a walk down to the valley.’
‘Oh, you must like it down there,’ says Rougemont. ‘You went the day before your father died. I had Forensic analyse the dirt on those shoes and they said you’d been in the valley as well as this yard.’
I sigh. ‘I parked in the valley, that’s all.’
‘Why did you come here that day?’ asks Kirsty. I look at their faces. Rougemont’s battered like Aunt Zina’
s copy of Pushkin. Kirsty’s lit suddenly as a branch overhead bends aside for the sun. It filters the colour from her eyes and gives them a new penetration.
‘I wanted to see Daddy. But the circumstances weren’t right for a big reunion. I looked in through the sliding doors on the deck. He was in his chair. Then I went back down to the valley. Then I returned to town. I was probably here at about one-thirty.’
‘Uh-huh,’ says Rougemont. His head bounces. ‘Thank you for telling us that, Lucy.’
I look at his strange face. The stretched mouth, the big nose. For the first time I recognize his sharp intelligence. When he investigated Nicky’s death, did he suspect the truth?
I say: ‘I’m sorry I lied to you.’
‘When you lie,’ Rougemont says, ‘it’s generally to protect someone else, not yourself.’
Kirsty nods: ‘You have to stop taking responsibility for other people, Lucy. It could be dangerous.’
I look at her in confusion.
‘Where were you on Monday night?’ she asks. ‘After dark?’
‘Monday?’ Sitting in the car watching Ricky Marcello watching Jane. ‘Oh, I just sort of drove around. Then I went back to my aunt’s.’
‘Uh-huh,’ says Rougemont.
‘I didn’t get out of the car. Not until I was back at Aunt Zina’s,’ I insist. It feels good to tell the truth, like putting your foot down when you’re sea swimming and finding sand beneath it.
Kirsty says: ‘You didn’t get out of the car. But you didn’t drive around too much.’
‘Uh-huh,’ says Rougemont. ‘You were right outside your sister’s apartment all evening.’
I blush. I am fighting tears, the tears of a small angry child who wants to stamp her foot and bang her fists. I haven’t told them about Ricky Marcello because he was Daddy’s secret but now it seems that they’ve known all along.
‘Oh, don’t misunderstand us,’ adds Rougemont. ‘We think it’s real nice of you to be so concerned for your sister’s safety. But we have some advice. Please take it, Lucy.’
‘It’s this,’ says Kirsty, carrying right on as though Rougemont just threw her the ball. ‘Leave the police work to us.’
‘Okay?’ Rougemont gives me a ghostly smile. ‘We know what we’re doing and it’s important. As you probably already realize, there’s more than one homicide involved. We’re hoping that this case will help us close a few others which have been open for a while.’
My heart slips down inside me like alcohol. I want to ask him about the other homicides but my throat is too dry. I wish I could get up right now and go to the faucet and pour cold, clear water inside me.
‘We’ll do the police work,’ continues Rougemont, ‘and you go back to New York.’
Kirsty agrees with him. ‘You’ll be safer in New York where you’re only responsible for yourself.’
They look at me. Covered in dirt and on the edge of tears. Their looks are kind.
‘Lucy, Lucy,’ says Rougemont. ‘Stop taking so much on yourself. You’ve always done it, even when you were a little girl, back in the days you used to stare at me and point at my nose. You didn’t spare my feelings much then, either.’
Beneath the dirt, I blush again.
‘No matter what questions I asked you, mostly you’d cry. I never got anywhere with you. Your sister was different. She was barely seven but she described exactly what happened when your brother died, and she was precise too. Your mother was so emotional she was incoherent. Your father had a sort of grimness about him. I recognized his internal landscape at that time, only too well. God knows my own was bleak enough. And then there was you, little Lucy. Four years old, scratching constantly at the poison ivy on your legs. You cried for your dead brother. You cried and cried and said over and over that it was all your fault. You seemed to be accepting responsibility for your whole family.’
I am silent.
‘Don’t you remember any of that?’ Kirsty asks me. ‘Not any of it?’
My head feels heavy, as though there is a thick crust around it. I say: ‘I’ve tried. I’ve tried real hard. But it won’t come back.’
When the police have left and Jane has volunteered to stay late with the geologists, I drive back to town. The air feels cooler and thinner now. Maybe the heatwave is ending at last. On the way I detour to the cemetery where Stevie is buried. I place some small, yellow flowers from Daddy’s yard on the grave and when I stoop close to the tiny headstone I have to fight a foolish urge to cradle its cold stone in my arms.
A tune thumps through my head with sudden and unexpected insistence. I pause to listen. It is a song of nursery simplicity and someone is humming it. At first I catch stray notes, then whole bars, finally a voice I recognize at once as my mother’s sings the whole song through. The words are incomprehensible, but involuntarily I lift my hands to form the fluttering bird which flies away in the last bar. The music sails through my head a few more times and then, as I walk down the hill, it sails right away. I try to capture its notes or phrases but, as suddenly as it arrived, it has departed.
34
When I get back to the apartment, Aunt Zina is out at Aunt Zoya’s and Sasha is alone in the kitchen.
‘Mama has left enough here for at least ten people,’ he says, ladling food on to my plate. ‘And I have already eaten half of it.’
‘I’m not real hungry, thanks Sash.’
‘In our family, as you very well know, Lucia, that is considered a pitifully inadequate excuse for refusing food.’
When I am silent he looks at me closely. I showered at Daddy’s but had no change of clothes and the orchard’s dirt still clings to them. ‘Something’s happened. What is it?’
I put my head in my hands.
‘Lucia?’
I look at him. His kind, broad Russian face, his thinning hair, his blue eyes, full of concern. A good man.
I say: ‘The police investigating Daddy’s death say that there’s more than one homicide involved.’
He passes me the plate of food and fills another for himself. He sits down and picks up his fork.
‘That doesn’t surprise me. Did the police reveal anything about the other deaths?’
‘Just that they happened years back. Sasha, I think they mean Nicky. I think they mean Stevie.’
Sasha stares at me. ‘Your brother? And your son?’
‘It can’t be a coincidence they’ve hauled in old Michael Rougemont. He investigated Nicky’s drowning all those years ago. And they’re using Kirsty because she was there after Stevie died.’
‘Lucia, neither can be regarded as homicide.’
‘I think they know the truth.’
‘Which is?’
‘That Mother was responsible for Nicky’s death. And that I was responsible for Stevie’s.’
Sasha puts down his fork and pushes his food away.
‘Lucia, now what is this madness?’
I pause. ‘The madness of motherhood.’
‘Lucia.’
‘Motherhood isn’t the way it looks in TV commercials. It’s an awful, awful mix of great love and hatred. The love I experienced for my son was beyond anything I’ve known or knew how to deal with. And in return he was demanding and selfish and unforgiving. Babies never take their mother’s needs into account and everything she gives they seem to swallow up and then demand more. You can’t control them and you can’t control your life and sometimes you hate them for it.’
‘And so you kill them? For heaven’s sake, Lucia.’
‘There were times when I wished Stevie dead. That’s enough.’
‘Your Stevie died tragically but not unnaturally. There are many SIDS deaths each year and his was one of them. No one is responsible. May I suggest that, until you can talk about him more easily and even tell the story of his death to a complete stranger on a park bench, you will not overcome your grief?’
‘I don’t want to sit in parks talking about Stevie!’
‘We all need to tell stories. Stories frame ev
ents. Once we massage life’s traumas into a narrative form they become less destructive. The fact of Nicky’s death may provoke uncontrollable emotions but the story of how he drowned at Big Brim at least offers us a way of working through them.’
I consider this. ‘Like the story of Grandma’s baby on the train?’
‘Precisely. That story has certainly played its part in the family’s grieving process. Even though it is untrue.’
I stare at him. He picks up his fork again and scoops up a mouthful of food.
‘If you’re interested, I’ll tell you what actually happened.’
I nod for him to continue and he finishes his mouthful and then reorganizes his broad body in the chair.
‘First you should understand that one of the advantages of emigrating is that you can hope to be a reptile, a snake perhaps. You plan to shed your skin and leave it behind. Well, I happen to believe that you can never leave it completely behind, that it bobs up to the surface sooner or later like something from a shipwreck. However, many emigrants try. Maybe you know this. Maybe, when you exiled yourself to New York, you took advantage of your isolation in that big city to reinvent your past.’
‘No.’
‘Not at all?’
‘I just sort of cancelled it.’
‘You never even talked about it?’
I shake my head.
‘That’s one way. But when our family, Grandpa, Grandma and their daughters, came here, they chose to, shall we say, reinterpret their history.’
‘You mean…’
‘I mean not everything they have told you is true.’
‘But, the apartment in Moscow, and the games they played and the story about their papa forgetting his hat. Did they invent that?’
‘It’s hard to tell how much is invented. The one about your mother witnessing an assassination in the forest is, curiously enough, probably true: the old man was certainly NKVD and he was ruthless enough to organize the murder of his best friend if he had to.’
‘I can hardly remember him.’
Summertime Page 34