by Garth Stein
“Master Ben’s body has been laid out in the parlor, sir,” Mr. Thomas said. “As you have requested.”
“Stop the clock, Mr. Thomas. Remove the pendulum. It is important to mark the moment of my son’s death, so others will know.”
Mr. Thomas left the room and passed directly in front of me without taking notice. He proceeded down the hall, opened the door to the grandfather clock, stopped the pendulum from swinging, and lifted the weight from its hook. I approached the clock; the hands said six-fifteen.
“I’ll try, Ben,” I said out loud. “I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try.”
Mr. Thomas closed the door to the grandfather clock and returned to the study to attend to Elijah.
“It is all we can hope for,” he said as he passed me, and I wasn’t sure if he had spoken those words in response to me or to Elijah. Or if Mr. Thomas had even spoken the words at all.
* * *
When I awoke from my dream in the middle of the night—or from Ben’s haunting, I should say—I found a letter in my hand. The letter he had handed me. It was real.
I opened the yellowed envelope and removed the sheaf of paper that was inside. The handwriting was a neat, looping cursive. At the top of the page, the embossed name Elijah Riddell had been crossed out with a pen swipe. The date was March 5, 1916.
To My Future Heir,
If you are reading this letter, you are alive, and I congratulate you on your achievement. If you are reading this letter, your father—my son, Abraham Riddell—is dead, and for that, I express my deepest regret. Though Abraham and I didn’t see eye to eye very often, I did care for him in my own way.
I also cared for my first son, Benjamin. It is because of a promise I made to him that I am writing to you now. The attorneys who have presented you with this letter will describe to you the details. My objective in leaving this letter for you is to express the sentiment properly.
When he was alive, I promised Benjamin that, when Riddell House was no longer useful, it would be returned to untamed and wild nature forever. It was to be his legacy. It was to be my legacy as well, I suppose. A small jewel preserved, which could one day be held up against the mountain of jewels I have destroyed in the name of progress. No matter the justification, a promise is a promise and I vowed to uphold it, while also providing for the rest of my family.
Abraham, your father, became fixated on developing The North Estate. I don’t know why he held on to the idea so tightly, but he would not unclench his jaws. He threatened me. He cajoled me. He cursed me. He cited my refusal as proof that my love for him was not as pure as it was for Benjamin. His claim was not untrue—Abraham has always been a fool and a laggard and a squanderer of fortunes—but that is not why I have held fast to my promise.
When I was a younger man, I would have dismissed my obligation to the deceased, even if he were my son. “What good is a promise to a dead man?” I would have protested. I would have been happy to bequeath this property to my living son upon my death, as is custom. But something very special has happened in recent weeks that has changed my mind entirely. Benjamin, my deceased son, has returned to me.
Oh, do not be afraid! He is not a phantom or specter who instills fear! He is my son, as gentle as ever. He visits me in my study. He sits with me and comforts me. And, most of all, his presence has convinced me that I have nothing to fear from my imminent demise.
Now that I have seen him in his spirit form—and I am convinced it is him!—I can say only that I truly believe in the afterlife. And I believe that a promise to a dead man is as substantial as any promissory note one might sign in the flesh.
In order to prevent Abraham from breaking my promise by exploiting The North Estate for profit, I have formed a trust that will hold my estate after I die. The trust will be dissolved after Abraham’s death. Should he have no heirs, the estate will immediately be turned over to the city and dedicated as parkland. Should he have heirs—you presumably—the estate will be yours. I welcome you to live here as long as you like, and your heirs as well. I ask only that you carry forward my promise: when you or your heirs leave this place, either by attrition or volition, I beg you to allow it to return to Nature, as my son Benjamin wanted.
I cannot compel you to do so, but I implore you to look into your soul and carry forth this most important mission.
I am not proud of everything I have done in my life. In fact, there is a great deal of which I am ashamed. I have tried to reconcile my offenses since Benjamin’s death, for his death, while tragic, taught me a very important lesson: no man is beyond redemption as long as he acts in redeemable ways.
The North Estate is in your hands. I beg you to see to the redemption of our family.
My peace I give unto you,
Elijah Riddell
I lay in bed in the darkness. I wanted to read the letter over and over again to prove to myself that it was real. That Ben had actually given me a souvenir in a different dimension, and I had carried it with me here. The letter from Elijah to Grandpa Samuel. To My Future Heir. The letter that Grandpa Samuel had told me he’d received from the lawyers. I had it in my hands.
Had Ben taken it from Grandpa Samuel’s room? And how did Ben give it to me? I hoped to puzzle it out, but I was overcome with grogginess, and I quickly fell into a dark sleep, as if someone had pulled a sack over my head. Immediately, I began to dream. . . .
* * *
I go downstairs to the ladies’ parlor, but it isn’t a parlor. It’s been converted into a bedroom of sorts, with a large hospital bed in the center of the room. Next to the bed is a rolling medicine cabinet filled with bottles and towels and various other medical implements. The room smells of antiseptic and urine. Lying on the bed is a bedraggled figure, a corpse almost, sunken eyes, long hair scattered and thin. She labors to breathe with the help of a ventilator, which is held over her mouth and nose by an elastic band, forcing air into her lungs in a jerking motion.
“Did you ask Dad to do it?”
The question is asked by a young man, a teenager, who is perched on an ottoman with his head bowed.
The suffering woman blinks deliberately.
“He couldn’t?”
She blinks again, holding her lids closed.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll take care of you.”
They say the pain of Lou Gehrig’s disease is exquisite, brilliant, absolute, and relentless. But we all learn to live with different levels of pain; with no alternative, we cope. What breaks the will is the isolation. Or so they say.
“You’ve gotten so light,” he says softly to the woman as he adjusts her pillow. “When did you get so light?”
She says nothing because she no longer has a voice. She’s so light, she’s practically no longer there. So light, a breeze might sweep her away like a wisp of smoke.
The young man stands, and I see who it is: my father; a teenager. He goes to the woman—Isobel—and tucks her blanket around her. He leans down until his forehead touches hers and he holds there a moment before standing up.
“You have to tell me,” he says. “Blink twice, so I can see it. Blink twice so I know.”
She does. She blinks her eyes quite deliberately.
Young Jones stands erect and closes his eyes. He must be considering whether or not he has heard her correctly. Whether or not she is asking what she is asking. He must wonder if he has misunderstood everything from the beginning, if the special connection he has with his mother, his unique understanding of her condition and her needs and her desires, is actually his desires, his needs, voiced through her. He must wonder.
He leaves the room, and I follow. We go to the library, step into the room, and stop. Samuel is sitting against a bookshelf, books spilled on the floor around him. His legs are splayed before him, and in his lap is a wooden cigar box. He is cradling it, flapping the lid, lolling his head against the hard wood of the shelf behind him. He is crying. He is drunk.
“Give it to me,” Jones demands.
<
br /> “No!” Samuel cries.
“Give it to me!”
Jones snatches the box from Samuel, and Samuel cries out, reaching for the box impotently.
“Don’t take her from me!” he howls.
Jones stands over his father.
“It’s time,” he says. “If you won’t do it, I will.”
“It’s not time! It’s not time for her to go. I’m not ready!”
Jones looks at his father with contempt. He leaves the room with the cigar box, and I follow. He takes the box to his mother’s parlor room, sets it on the bed, and opens the lid. He removes a needle, which he attaches to a syringe. He holds it before his mother along with an ampoule of clear medicine. He’s asking her. . . . She blinks again, though even a blink seems painful.
“Tell me this will send you to a better place,” he says. “Tell me you will be free to go places I can’t even imagine. Tell me that, if I do this, I will see you again somewhere when you are without this disease.”
She closes her eyes tightly and nods her head ever so slightly, but enough for Jones to see. Enough for him to be sure. He fills the syringe. He tears open the alcohol swab and dabs it on her arm.
“Why did I do that?” he asks her with a rough laugh. “Why did I swab your arm? Are we worried about infection?”
His laugh obscures his tears.
“I love you, Mom,” he says. “More than anything on earth.”
His hand trembles, but he overcomes his hesitation. “My peace I give unto you,” he says, and with resolve he slips the needle into her skin, pushes the plunger, and empties the syringe. He removes the needle, sets the syringe down on the table. He removes her mask and switches off the ventilator. He sits on the bed and hugs his mother. Within a minute, the pauses between her shortened breaths grow longer. Her muscles fall slack. And then—not long at all—with a final exhale, Isobel Jones Riddell is dead.
Jones gathers the medical paraphernalia and returns it to the box. He takes the box into the hall, and I follow him into the library. Samuel has passed out against the bookcase, slumped over on the floor. Jones places the cigar box behind the books. He picks up the remaining books from the floor and returns them to the shelf to obscure the cigar box. The last three volumes are the collected works of Eugene O’Neill.
When it is done, Jones stands over his unconscious father and grinds his teeth; I can see his jaw muscles bulge from across the room.
I hear a sob. I turn. Standing next to me in the doorway, an arm’s length away, is eleven-year-old Serena. Young and pretty, with her auburn hair and her white nightgown and her bare feet.
Jones hears the sob as well and looks over. He crosses quickly to us, kneels before Serena, and hugs her tightly. She cries into his shoulder, and he rocks her back and forth until she settles down.
“Go up to bed,” he says gently.
“Will I die, too?” Serena asks. “Will I die like Mother?”
“No,” Jones says, shaking his head. “You won’t die like Mom.”
“But what if I get sick?”
“Then I’ll save you.”
“What if you can’t save me?”
“I will save you,” Jones says emphatically. “I promise. Whatever happens, I will be here to save you, Serena. I will always be here to save you. No one can stop that. Not even Dad.”
“I love you, Jones.”
“I love you, Serena. Go to sleep now. I have things to take care of. Things you don’t understand. When I’m done, I’ll come upstairs and tuck you in. Okay?”
She hesitates for a moment, then she asks: “Brother Jones? Do you really promise? Cross your heart?”
And he: “I promise, Sister Serena. To the very core of my being, I promise. And there is no deeper promise than that.”
So she goes, because she has faith that Brother Jones will not let her down.
* * *
I opened my eyes. The light was seeping around the cracks in the curtains and the birds outside were chirping almost angrily; dawn was upon us.
I tucked Elijah’s letter into my notebook, went downstairs to the library, and turned on one of the reading lights; it was dim in the room, though I could see well enough. I knew the spot I was looking for exactly. I had been there before, even if it had been in a dream. I found the collection of theatrical works. I removed the three thick volumes of Eugene O’Neill’s plays, reached my hand behind the remaining books, and felt it. A cigar box.
I removed the box and took it to the oak reading table. Beneath the yellow light, afraid of what I might find, I opened it.
Inside, I found a syringe and a glass ampoule. I scrutinized the vial. The label said NEMBUTAL. The ampoule was empty.
Struck by a thought, I pinched my arm and felt the sting; I was awake.
I laughed regretfully. Who keeps such a secret for so long? Only my father.
I replaced the box and the books, tucking the secret away again for no one to find. I went upstairs, feeling more lonely than I ever had in my life. I wondered what to do next. What did my father and his torn soul need? What did I need?
I found myself outside my father’s door. I silently opened it. He stirred and turned over in bed.
“What’s going on?” he asked groggily.
“I’m afraid,” I said.
“Of what?”
He strained to focus his blurry eyes.
“I had a bad dream.”
He nodded and cleared his throat. And then he did something he hadn’t done in years. In his half sleep, maybe, his walls were down and he reacted out of instinct. He lifted the sheet and held it open for me, like a tent. Like he would do when I had a nightmare when I was five. I didn’t hesitate long. I slipped across the room and into the warm bed. My father closed the sheet over me and cuddled against me, protecting me, shielding me from all that was dangerous and toxic in the world.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, wiping my nose, the tears of a child pooling in my eyes. “I’m sorry you had to do it.”
He moaned a bit; he was more asleep than not and didn’t hear my words. But he felt them, probably. Hopefully.
“I’m sorry you had to do it,” I repeated so softly I might have been the only person in the world to hear. But that didn’t matter to me in that moment. It didn’t matter at all.
– 39 –
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
I didn’t have much time. Serena would soon discover the missing documents and things would change rapidly in Riddell House.
I chose a little-used bedroom on the second floor, in the south wing, which was a more remote, almost decommissioned part of the house: the room contained only a small dresser and a single bed with a bare mattress on a metal spring frame. On the bed, I laid out my evidence: the copy of The Mountains of California and the letter from Ben to Harry which I had discovered within, my father’s wedding ring from the basement, Elijah’s diary from the secret room, Harry’s journals from the cottage, the letter from Elijah to his future heir, photocopies of the microfiche research I had done, the transcript I had made of the letter Samuel scribbled on Post-it notes when channeling Ben, and the incriminating box from behind the Eugene O’Neill plays. I also placed a key on the bed—the one that unlocked the footlocker. I knew it was dangerous to reveal such things, but I had to commit to the intervention if I had any hope of it working. I withheld the power of attorney, the tickets, and Serena’s letter, however; I would resort to the howitzer only in the most dire of situations. I arranged all the things on the bed as a sort of twisted show-and-tell, and then I went in search of my father.
I’m sure I wasn’t fully aware of the nuances of the Riddell legacy when I was fourteen; I was really going on instinct and intuition, trying to do right by Ben. Looking back now, I see clearly that the guilt of generations of Riddells was pressing down on my father with such force, it was suffocating him. And I suppose, while I might not have been able to define it this way when I was young, I did feel it in a way I couldn’t quite explain: the oppre
ssiveness of that guilt would spill over to me if I didn’t take corrective action. Our family was buried under generations of rotten leaves and fallen trees and damp earth. It would be a difficult path to redemption, but the soil was light and fertile. There was a sense of potential in the earth above our heads. A feeling of hope: we could claw our way out, if we had the will. All we needed was a seed to sprout, and a sprout to inch its way to the air; then we would all survive.
I found him in his room, taking a nap. I woke him because it was important. I led my grumbling father down the hallway to the little bedroom, and, once there, I waved my hands before the display.
“What is all this?” he asked.
I told him everything. I showed him the first Post-it I’d found, on which Grandpa Samuel had inscribed “MUIR MTNS CA”; how my mother led me to John Muir, which led to the letter inside the book. I told him about the cottage and the journals and all of it. Everything. The hand, the wedding ring in the basement, the box with the syringe. And then I told him about the secret room and Elijah’s diary. I explained that the trust papers were in the safe in Elijah’s study, as well as Serena’s will, which she was using to bribe me.
“What safe?” he asked.
“Behind the painting over the credenza,” I said. “You know. Like in the movies.”
He looked at me blankly. Obviously, this was news to him.
“Serena showed me,” I continued. “She has the ALS gene.”
His look turned sour.
“And look,” I said, finally, removing the smoking gun from my pocket: Elijah’s letter. “A letter from Elijah to a future heir. Ben gave it to me while I was sleeping, and when I woke up, I had it in my hand. Go on. Read it.”
He did. He removed the letter and read it, and then he replaced the letter in the envelope.
“Why are you doing all this?” he asked, irritated.
“You can’t sell the house to developers,” I said. “I mean, it’s in Elijah’s letter. You can’t make The North Estate into tract housing for rich people. We have to make things right.”