Summertime

by Elizabeth Rigbey

  ‘Swimming.’

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘At Joe Zacarro’s.’

  ‘I’m kind of dirty to swim in his pool,’ I say, but Jane is reassuring. ‘The chlorine will take care of that, Luce.’

  I am weak now after my efforts in the child’s grave and I stumble up the Zacarro drive, leaning heavily on Jane. When I stagger a little against the foliage one of the plants releases the sickly-sweet odour I know as the. smell of melancholy.

  ‘Boy, that stuff’s strong,’ says Jane.

  She pulls me through the side gate and I can see the pool, looking like a black rectangle of polished obsidian.

  She sits me down at the edge of the water and shows me something, a small black box.

  ‘Are you okay, Lucy?’ she asks kindly.

  ‘Yes. Thank you, Jane.’

  ‘I hope this doesn’t hurt too much. It wasn’t clear from the literature.’

  ‘I guess it’s my turn.’

  ‘It’s been your turn a lot of times before but you always came bouching back.’

  ‘Yes, when you pushed me in the canyon all I did was break an arm. And in the swimming-pool Mother jumped right in and saved me.’

  ‘There were other times, too. But after Nicky went, Mother guarded you like a jewel. She hardly let you out of her sight.’ Jane sighs and I feel her sadness. ‘It hasn’t been easy for me, Lucy, none of it. You already know this: I’m a very special person.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ I agree. ‘You’ve always been very special to me.’

  ‘Mother and Daddy knew that. They understood. They handled me with care. They worked hard to give me the right kind of encouragement, the right environment where I could flourish. Then it all changed when you came along. They were besotted with you.’

  Jane’s face curls in disgust. I’ve never seen her look this way.

  ‘Then there was Nicky. It was too much. When he started sitting up and grabbing things and making sounds which would turn into words one day I knew it was time to stop. I’ve never regretted it. I just regret what I found out today. That Daddy betrayed me. He went off and adored some baby in secret and now the baby’s grown and has his own baby. I wish I could have dealt with them today.’

  ‘You pretended to be Joni Rimbaldi,’ I tell her tonelessly. ‘But when you got to Tigertail you must have backed off.’

  ‘Police in the parking lots. No uniforms but you can tell anyway.’ She shrugs. ‘I’ll try some other time.’

  I shiver.

  ‘Are you cold, Luce?’ she asks, looking right at me now, sounding concerned.

  ‘Just a little.’

  ‘I can help you with that.’ She leans over and picks up the box.

  ‘Lindy knew what happened to Nicky,’ I whisper.

  Jane smiles. ‘She wasn’t bright. I mean, it was almost too easy to tell her I knew this great hiding place.’

  I am shaking now. My teeth are chattering.

  ‘Jane… I wish you hadn’t hurt Stevie.’

  ‘Oh, but I didn’t hurt him. I just helped him to go. He really didn’t suffer. He hardly struggled.’

  ‘Did Daddy struggle?’

  ‘No, he sort of knew it had to happen and he sort of accepted it. I warned him that he was spending too much time with those ridiculous old men…’

  ‘You mean Joe Zacarro? And Mr Holler?’

  ‘He was talking to them too much. I didn’t like to think what he might say. When people get older and closer to senility their tongues get as loose as their bladders. I warned Daddy and he didn’t listen but he wasn’t surprised when I said it was time for him to go. He didn’t struggle. Like you. Maybe he knew how nice it would be. I hope it’s nice for you, Lucy.’

  She touches my neck with the box and pain explodes through my body like a bolt of lightning, a pain that blinds thought, a pain that cancels movement. There are sparks before my eyes, fire falls from my fingertips, my face is cracking from the power of the explosion within. I topple backwards but Jane catches me before my head hits the paving.

  ‘We don’t want any bruises.’ She lays me flat at the poolside. I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can see Jane only through a veil of sparks. When the fireworks subside a little I see that the face isn’t Jane’s face. It belongs to someone else. Thinner, the eyes unnaturally bright, the mouth twisting itself into new lines.

  ‘I’ve tried to make life better for you. I’ve tried to look after you. You’re not a strong person. Like I said, you’re ordinary. I know how hard it’s been for you. Now I’m going to release you. I’m going to set you free from all the things which worry you and which give you bad dreams and which make your heart start to bang first thing in the morning before you’re even awake enough to think about them. Those deals in New York which you kid yourself are so important. Hurtful, unkind words. Rejections. Disappointments. Wanting things desperately which you couldn’t have. That crazy mother of ours, hissing and snarling and yelling. Scott’s reproaches. Larry’s put-downs. Clingy Russians. All the sadness, Luce. I mean, the losses, and there are so many. From when we’re tiny, life just feels like a series of blows and pain and losses, isn’t that right? It’s thanks to me Stevie was spared all that. I’m sure that deep down you’re grateful, Luce. You’ve been through it all once yourself, you didn’t want to suffer again watching him go through it too. All the things you thought mattered so much, I’m going to release you from them now. I think it will feel real good.’

  Above us I see the stars. Their timescale is beyond anything I can imagine. My short lifespan is insignificant in their universe, too small even to be measured.

  ‘I’ll be real sad when you’re gone, the way I was real sad when Daddy went and Stevie and Nicky. But, Luce, I want you to know that, more than any of them, I love you.’

  I’d like to thank her but my mouth won’t open and anyway, my body is already plunging through the air. She has thrown me so forcefully that I feel my arms and legs scatter like a doll’s. I hear an immense splash, foam flies up towards the stars and then I am enveloped by cold water. I sink down, down to the bottom of the pool, water fills my nose and my mouth and my ears and I wait to experience death.

  I think of Scott standing with his hands in the pockets of his jeans, shoulders hunched, looking wistfully out to sea at Needle Bay. The sudden appearance of the first toothless grin on Stevie’s soft face. Sasha, pouring a whisky and rocking with ridiculous high-pitched giggles as he talks about his colleagues. Aunt Zina twisting her wrist to right and left as blini batter slides over the hot pan. Daddy, rolling himself out from under the tractor, with a look of tranquil concentration, his hands blackened by oil. Jane, crying on the deck at night, her eyes two pinpoints of light. Larry, eating a peanut cookie and pointing apologetically to his paunch. Ricky, pulling Jordan’s small body to him when he talked about Daddy. Mother’s arms wrapping themselves tenderly around me. I feel a moment of loss, loss so acute it may even be mourning, and then the water is both inside and outside me and consciousness begins to ebb away. Yes, it is sad to leave but my body is submitting now to a pleasurable, almost supernatural, relaxation: life isn’t being taken from me, I am giving it willingly, joyfully. Jane is right that death is sweet.

  40

  I am lying on a couch, wrapped in some kind of a robe, covered in a rough blanket that tickles my legs when I move. I don’t move. I don’t open my eyes. I listen to the voices. There are a few muttering softly nearby but outside the voices are loud, mostly male, and sometimes they call to each other. A woman seems to be speaking some other language on a crackling radio somewhere.

  I open my eyes to admit a slither of light. The colours change constantly like some kind of Christmas display. Red, blue and then white. Once, I don’t remember when, Daddy’s house was lit this way, in red, blue and then white and it wasn’t pretty, it was eerie and unpleasant.

  I open my eyes a little more and I see Lindy Zacarro. I wonder for a moment if I’m dead after all but there is a frame around her face, and she
is riding a horse that is first red, then blue, then white. So I am still at Joe’s and his may be one of the loud voices outside.

  ‘Lucy…’ says someone, without expression. ‘Lucy, you’re opening your eyes.’

  Adam Holler. I recognize the way he speaks, blanched of tone or passion, but he’s invisible. If I moved my head I could probably see him but I don’t want to move.

  ‘Thanks, Mr Holler, I’d like to talk to her if she’s receptive now,’ says someone else. A woman, young, her voice even because she’s spent years editing her emotions from it like a poker player. I don’t know any poker players but I recognize this voice. I can’t recall the name of its owner.

  ‘It’s Kirsty.’ She moves into my line of vision and leans over me and her brown eyes search mine curiously. So the lights aren’t Christmas, they’re a police car. It must be standing on the asphalt right outside Joe’s living-room.

  Kirsty says: ‘The paramedics are pretty sure they don’t need to take you in to hospital. They’re just waiting for a doctor to confirm that.’

  I look at her without curiosity.

  ‘Do you know what happened?’ she asks.

  I blink.

  ‘Do you understand what happened?’ she repeats, a little louder this time. She looks tired. Pieces of hair have levered themselves out of place.

  I don’t much want to speak but Jane brought me up to be polite so I make an enormous effort. This isn’t easy. Something’s been rearranging my lungs and clawing at the inside of my throat. I make an odd, strangled noise.

  ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘I realize it’s hard for you.’

  I try again. I’m trying to tell her that Jane will be here soon but the words sound like a braying donkey. She furrows her brow with incomprehension and then I try once more and this time the strange, cracking noises that come from my throat approximate to words. She looks up and I know she is looking at someone. Adam Holler? Or is there a third, silent person in the room?

  ‘I guess,’ she says sadly, ‘you don’t recall why you’re here.’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. She waits while I croak slowly: ‘It was my turn to die. Jane was helping me.’

  She glances again at the silent person.

  I explain: ‘Nicky, Lindy Zacarro, my Stevie, Daddy… of course it had to be my turn.’

  ’You knew?’ says another voice. Reedy, unmistakable. Lucy, you knew about your sister all along? And you pretended you didn’t?’

  ‘No, Mr Rougemont.’ I sort of wish he’d move closer so I can see him. I’ve never liked looking at him much but right now I want to see him. Obligingly, he moves into view and I feel a surprising rush of affection for the long, rambling mouth and immense nose, for this shadow of a man. I say: ‘I finally worked it out, too late. Then I realized that I’d known it all along.’

  ‘I guess I knew it all along too,’ he says sadly, ‘but we couldn’t do a damn thing about it. Except keep watching her until she tried again.’

  ‘Where is Jane?’ I feel a sudden rush of concern for her.

  Rougemont’s voice sounds strained. ‘They’ve taken her now, Lucy.’

  I don’t like the way he says that. I don’t like the finality of it.

  ‘Taken her where? Mr Rougemont, she’s a very special person…’

  His grey eyes study me but he does not reply. There is a voice at the door. Kirsty disappears and Rougemont straightens with difficulty. There is a whispered discussion in some other part of the room. I hear cars backing and turning in the drive. The coloured lights which have been shining through my eyelids disappear suddenly. A couple of shouts. The woman’s voice on the radio. More voices, loud, female, excited, heavily accented. My Russian aunts, speaking simultaneously to a police officer and arguing among themselves. With them are Sasha and Scott, sounding reasonable but persistent. Joe Zacarro roars: ‘It’s my goddamn house for God’s sake. It was my goddamn pool! I’ve been real cooperative with you guys, me ‘n’ Adam helped you stake out the whole goddamn street, and now you won’t even let me into my own porch to get one of my own beers out of my own goddamn fridge. I mean, I’ll only take a quick peek at her and say hi, that’s all I’ll do.’ His voice is drowned by a crescendo of aunts.

  I smile and close my eyes. I feel as though someone just threw an extra blanket over me.

  When I next look around, Adam Holler is standing right by me. He leans as far towards me as his stiff back will allow. He is without dark glasses. He watches me with his colourless eyes.

  ‘Lucy,’ he whispers. There is a new urgency in his voice, a pain. ‘Will you tell me how it felt?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Dying. How did it feel to die?’

  I whisper back. ‘Did I die?’

  ‘Sure. Joe and the police officer brought you back, don’t you remember? You were dead, Lucy. The police went right after you into the water but Jane started to run and she was so fast and strong, they had to catch her then restrain her. So it must have taken longer than they thought to get you out. You were probably dead for a minute. How did it feel? Will you tell me?’

  I sigh.

  His pale skin pinkens a little.

  He says: ‘Lucy, do you remember Jim Bob?’ The boy’s name seems to leap out of him, a name thought of but perhaps unspoken for years.

  I say: ‘Sure I do.’ Adam Holler’s own goal seems doubly hideous now. A death, a child’s death and an unnatural one right in the next house. But Jim Bob’s was not a death caused by Jane but by someone who loved him and has suffered every day since.

  ‘Oh, Mr Holler, you want to know what he felt when he died. Right?’

  I see small prisms of light at the corner of his eyes and realize that these are colourless tears.

  ‘I can put your mind at rest,’ I tell him, with such enthusiasm that I almost sit up. ‘You don’t have to torture yourself over it any more. Jim Bob didn’t suffer, not one bit.’

  When I hear him shuffle out there is a voice I don’t recognize too close to my ear.

  ‘You did good there, Lucy, real good.’

  I struggle to see its owner.

  ‘Hi, sis,’ says Ricky Marcello. ‘I sneaked in through the kitchen.’

  ‘You’re sure good at sneaking,’ I tell him petulantly.

  ‘Runs in the family.’ He smiles broadly.

  ‘What are you doing here? Have you been helping the police? Working with them?’

  Tigertail Bay. The crash of a wave as Rougemont flickers along the clifftop.

  ‘Only today. There was a whole crowd of us hoping to watch whales with her.’ His face falls. ‘Maybe too many because she backed right off. Before today I thought I was on my own. I thought I was the only one worrying about you.’

  Ricky’s blue car, sliding down the freeway at nightfall, waiting outside Jane’s apartment.

  ‘You didn’t even know me.’

  ‘Not really true.’

  ‘You hated me.’

  ‘Not really true either. And…’ Ricky gives his lopsided grin. Fleetingly, eerily, he looks like Daddy. ‘And Dad loved you. So I knew I had to take care of you.’

  ‘You were taking care of me?’

  ‘Listen, you’re my goddamn sister.’

  The door opens and for a few moments the voices outside get louder.

  ‘I’m going, I’m going,’ says Ricky. ‘I was just passin’ through.’

  The door closes again and someone says: ‘Jeez, what a bunch. Are they press?’

  ‘Relatives.’

  ‘Well, they sure want to get in here.’

  He introduces himself. He says he is a doctor and then asks me the name of the president of the United States.

  I hear myself laugh at him, a strange, clear sound like water or a bell. I wonder when I last laughed. With Sasha, maybe, or Scott. I name the president and then tell the doctor: ‘I’m thinking coherently. Probably more coherently than usual.’

  Back at Aunt Zina’s I sleep a lot. I am astonished at my ability to fall asleep as soon as I feel tir
ed, sometimes right after I have woken or even while Aunt Zina is talking to me. The sleep is peaceful as pale light.

  ‘What’s the matter with me?’ I say incredulously when I wake up again in one of Aunt Zina’s armchairs and see her at my side, bent over Pushkin, her mouth moving a little as she memorizes the poetry.

  ‘You are making up for lost sleep. Not the sleep of days or weeks but the sleep of years,’ she tells me wisely.

  I can drive but mostly Scott chauffeurs me. I know Brigitte is back and I expect him to say one day that he’s busy and he can’t come but he shows up frequently, his face anxious, watching me.

  We visit Ricky in San Strana a couple of times. We sit on the porch drinking beers and trying to catch up on all the missing years. Sometimes we play with the baby. Scott likes Ricky and buys his painting of the view across the valley from Daddy’s house.

  Looking hard at it, I say: ‘Okay. I guess I’m ready to go there now.’

  We climb up the steps to the porch and unlock the door and I stand on the threshold sniffing the smell of the place, Daddy’s smell, before I walk right in.

  It is hot here. Although the faux summer is over the house retains its residue like someone anxious not to lose their suntan.

  ‘What are you going to do about it all?’ asks Scott, gesturing around him at the clutter. Nothing has gone. Larry and Jane started the upheaval but everything is still here.

  ‘I’m going to sort it out. I’ll clear it. Then I’ll sell the house.’

  ‘I thought you seemed a little offended that Jane and Larry were doing it so soon after Eric’s death. And I got the distinct impression you didn’t want to help.’

  ‘I don’t feel that way any more. Now I want to do it myself. I’m coming back to California so I can deal with it.’

  He stares at me.

  ‘You’re really coming back? You’ve decided?’

  ‘I’m not running away any more, Scott.’

  We have a small ceremony for Nicky. His remains are buried near Stevie’s. Joe Zacarro and Adam Holler ask to come and they lean on each other weeping. I understand that they are mourning at the graveside of this scarcely known, long-dead baby and crying for their own children as Scott and I cry for Stevie. Everyone has someone to cry for. Only Mother cries for Nicky. We stand looking down at his casket, our arms around one another, locked together in our grief.