At the Water's Edge

by Sara Gruen

  At noon, the housemaid knocked gently on the door, then opened it a crack.

  "I'm sorry, Emily. I'm not feeling up to breakfast," I said, my voice muffled by the pillow.

  "I've brought Alka-Seltzer and gingersnaps," she replied, which made my stomach twist again. It meant that not only had we wakened the entire house when we returned, but also that our condition had been obvious.

  "Put it on the table," I said, rolling to face the opposite wall. I didn't want her to see me. I'd fallen into bed without even removing my makeup, as evidenced by the streaks of mascara on my pillowcase. "Thank you, Emily."

  "Of course, Mrs. Hyde."

  She stayed longer than I expected, and when she left, I saw that she'd taken the dress, shoes, and mink with her.

  The telephone rang sporadically throughout the day. With each call, my mother-in-law's voice became a little more resolute until finally it was brittle and hard. I shrank further under the covers with every conversation.

  At nearly six thirty, Ellis staggered into my room. He was still in his pajamas. His robe was open, its sash dragging on the floor behind him.

  "Dear God, what a night," he said, scrubbing his eyes with his fists. "I'm a bit green about the gills. I could use an eye-opener. How about you?"

  I suppressed a retch.

  "Are you all right?" he asked, coming closer. His face was drawn, and there were dark semicircles beneath his eyes. I didn't even want to know how I looked--Ellis had at least made it into his pajamas; I was still in my slip.

  "Not really," I said. "Look what Emily brought on my breakfast tray."

  He glanced over and guffawed.

  "It's not funny," I said. "It means they're all gossiping about us in the kitchen. And I lost your mother's hair comb."

  "Oh," he said vaguely.

  "Ellis, I lost the hair comb."

  When the gravity of this sank in, he sat on the edge of the bed and the last of his color drained.

  "What am I going to do?" I said, curling into a ball.

  He took a deep breath and thought. After a few seconds, he slapped his thighs with resolve and said, "Well. You'll have to telephone the Pews and tell them to be on the lookout, that's all."

  "I was going to. But I can't."

  "Why not?"

  "For one thing, I can't get near the telephone. Your mother's been on it all day. God only knows what she's heard. And anyway, I can't call Mrs. Pew. I can't face her, not even over the telephone."

  "Why?"

  "Because we were tight! We rolled around in the street!"

  "Everyone was tight."

  "Yes, but not like us," I said miserably. I sat up and cradled my head in my hands. "I don't even remember leaving. Do you?"

  "Not really." He got up and walked to my dressing table. "When did you get this?" he asked, picking up the cork.

  "I haven't a clue," I replied.

  On the main floor, the telephone rang yet again, and I cowered. Ellis came back to the bed and took my hand. This time, when Pemberton fetched my mother-in-law, her footsteps were brisk and she spoke in punctuated bursts. After a few minutes, she went silent again, and the silence was ominous, rolling through the house like waves of poisonous gas.

  Ellis looked at my clock. "She'll come up to dress for dinner in a few minutes. You can call then."

  "Come with me?" I whispered, clutching his hand.

  "Of course," he said. "Do you want one of your heart pills?"

  "No, I'll be all right," I said.

  "Do you mind if I...?" He let the question trail off.

  "Of course not. Help yourself."

  At ten to seven, forty minutes before we were expected in the drawing room for cocktails, we crept downstairs, both of us in our robes, glancing nervously at each other and hiding behind corners until we ascertained that nobody was around. I felt like a child sneaking down to eavesdrop on a party for grown-ups.

  I telephoned Mrs. Pew and sheepishly asked if she would please keep an eye out for my hair comb. After a slight pause, she said curtly that yes, she would. As she had told me last night.

  When I hung up, I turned wordlessly to Ellis, who pulled me into his arms.

  "Hush, my darling," he said, pressing my head to his chest. "This too shall pass."

  --

  At seven thirty, we met at the top of the stairs. I had bathed and repaired my hair as best I could in the available time. I had also put on a touch of lipstick and rouge, since my face was so devoid of color as to be nearly transparent, and dabbed some eau de toilette behind my ears. Ellis had nicked himself shaving, and there were comb marks in his wet hair.

  "Ready?" he said.

  "Absolutely not. You?"

  "Courage, my dear," he said, offering his arm. I curled my icy fingers in the crook of his elbow.

  As Ellis and I entered the drawing room, my father-in-law, Colonel Whitney Hyde, raised his face and aimed it at the grandfather clock. He was leaning against the mantel, right next to a delicate cage hanging from an elaborate floor stand. The canary within was the color of orange sorbet, a plump, smooth ovoid with a short fan of a tail, chocolate spots for eyes, and a sweet beak. He was almost too perfect to be real, and not once had he sung during my four-year tenure in this house, even as his quarters were reduced to help him concentrate.

  My mother-in-law, Edith Stone Hyde, sat perched on the edge of a silk jacquard chair the color of a robin's egg, Louis XIV style. Her gray eyes latched onto us the moment we entered the room.

  Ellis crossed the carpet briskly and kissed her cheek. "Happy New Year, Mother," he said. "I hope you're feeling better."

  "Yes, Happy New Year," I added, stepping forward.

  She turned her gaze on me and I stopped in my tracks. Her jaw was set, her eyes unblinking. Over by the mantel, the ends of the Colonel's mustache twitched. The canary fluttered from its perch to the side of the cage and clung there, its fleshless toes and translucent claws wrapped around the bars.

  Tick, tock went the clock. I thought my knees might go out from under me.

  "Better...Hmmm...Am I feeling better..." She spoke slowly, clearly, mulling the words. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly. She drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, starting with her smallest finger and going up, twice, and then reversing the order. The rhythm was that of a horse cantering. The pause felt interminable.

  She looked suddenly up at Ellis. "Are you referring to my migraine?"

  "Of course," Ellis said emphatically. "We know how you suffer."

  "Do you? How kind of you. Both of you."

  Tick, tock.

  Ellis straightened his spine and his tie and went to the sideboard to pour drinks. Whiskeys for the men, sherries for the ladies. He delivered his mother's, then his father's, and then brought ours over.

  "Tell me, how was the party?" his mother said, gazing at the delicate crystal glass she held in her lap. Her voice was completely without inflection.

  "It was quite an event," Ellis said, too loudly, too enthusiastically. "The Pews certainly do things right. An orchestra, endless champagne, never-ending trays of delicious tidbits. You'd never know there was a war going on. She asked after you, by the way. Was very sorry to hear you weren't feeling well. And the funniest thing happened at the stroke of midnight--did you hear? People will be talking about it for years."

  The Colonel harrumphed and tossed back his whiskey. The canary jumped from one side of its cage to the other.

  "I've heard rather a lot," my mother-in-law said coldly, still staring into her glass. Her eyes shifted deliberately to me.

  The blood rose to my cheeks.

  "So, there we all were," Ellis continued bravely, "counting down to midnight, when all of a sudden there was a positively huge explosion. Well, even though we're a continent away from the action, you can imagine what we thought! We nearly--"

  "Silence!" roared the Colonel, spinning to face us. His cheeks and bulbous nose had gone purple. His jowls trembled with rage.

  I recoiled and cl
utched Ellis's arm. Even my mother-in-law jumped, although she regained her composure almost immediately.

  In our set, battles were won by sliding a dagger coolly in the back, or by the quiet turn of a screw. People crumpled under the weight of an indrawn sigh or a carefully chosen phrase. Yelling was simply not done.

  The Colonel slammed his empty glass down on the mantel. "Do you think we're fools? Do you think we haven't heard all about the real highlight of the party? What people will really be talking about for years? About your disgraceful, your depraved...your...contemptible behavior?"

  What happened next was a blur of insults and rage. Apparently we had done more than just get drunk and make fools of ourselves, and apparently Ellis's moment of temper had not been his worst misdeed. Apparently, he had also crowed loudly about our decision to go monster hunting and "show the old man up," stridently proclaiming his intentions even as Hank was using a foot to shove him into the back of the car.

  The Colonel and Ellis closed in on each other across the enormous silk carpet, pointing fingers and trying to outshout each other. The Colonel accused us of going out of our way to try to embarrass him, as well as being loathsome degenerates and generally useless members of society, and Ellis argued that there was nothing he could do, and for that matter the Colonel did nothing either. What exactly did his father expect him to do? Take up a trade?

  My mother-in-law sat silently, serenely, with a queerly calm look on her face. Her knees and ankles were pressed together in ladylike fashion, tilted slightly to the side. She held her unsipped sherry by the stem, her eyes widening with delight at particularly good tilts. Then, without warning, she snapped.

  The Colonel had just accused Ellis of conveniently coming down with color blindness the moment his country needed him, the cowardice of which had caused him--his father and a veteran--the greatest personal shame of his life, when Edith Stone Hyde swiveled to face her husband, bug-eyed with fury.

  "How dare you speak of my son like that!"

  To my knowledge, she had never raised her voice before in her life, and it was shocking. She continued in a strained but shrill tone that quavered with righteous indignation--Ellis could no more help being color-blind than other unfortunates could help having clubfeet, didn't he realize, and the color blindness, by the way, hadn't come from her side of the family. And speaking of genetics, she blamed her (and here she actually flung out an arm and pointed at me) for Ellis's downfall. An unbalanced harlot just like her mother.

  "Now see here! That's my wife you're talking about!" Ellis shouted.

  "She was no harlot!" the Colonel boomed.

  For two, maybe three seconds, there wasn't a sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the flapping of the canary, which had been driven to outright panic. It was a haze of pale orange, banging against the sides of its cage and sending out bursts of tiny, downy feathers.

  Ellis and I looked at each other, aghast.

  "Oh, really?" my mother-in-law said calmly. "Then what, exactly, was she, dear?"

  The Colonel moved his mouth as though to answer, but nothing came out.

  "It's all right. I always suspected. I saw the way you used to look at her," my mother-in-law continued. Her eyes burned brightly with the indignity of it all. "At least you weren't foolish enough to run off with her."

  I was almost compelled to defend the Colonel, to point out that everybody had looked at my mother that way--they couldn't help themselves--but knew better than to open my mouth.

  My mother-in-law turned suddenly to Ellis.

  "And you--I warned you. As embarrassing as it was, I probably could have tolerated it if you'd just wanted to carouse, to sow some wild oats, but no, despite all the other very suitable matches you could have made, you snuck off to marry"--she paused, pursing her lips and shaking her head quickly as she decided what to call me--"this. And I was right. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. It's positively shameful the way the two of you and that beastly Boyd fellow carry on. I despair of the grandchildren. Although, frankly, I've nearly lost hope in that regard. Perhaps it's just as well." She sighed and went calm again, smoothing her forehead and staring into the distance to revel in her victory. She'd successfully dressed down every other person in the room and thought it was now over: game, set, match.

  She was wrong. Had she looked, she'd have noticed that Ellis was turning a brilliant shade of crimson that rose from the base of his neck, spread beneath his blond hair, and went all the way to the tips of his ears.

  "Let's talk about shame, shall we?" he said quietly, ferociously. "There's absolutely nothing that I--or Maddie, or anyone else--could do to bring further shame upon this family. You"--his voice rose in a crescendo until he was shouting again, pointing his glass at his father and shaking it, sloshing whiskey onto the carpet--"shamed all of us beyond redemption the moment you faked those pictures!"

  The ensuing silence was horrifying. My mother-in-law's mouth opened into a surprised O. The small crystal glass she'd been holding slipped to the floor and shattered.

  Tick, tock went the clock.

  --

  This is the story as I'd heard it:

  In May 1933, an article appeared in a Scottish newspaper that made headlines around the world. A businessman (university-educated, the reporter was careful to point out) and his wife were motoring along the newly built A82 on the north side of Loch Ness when they spotted a whale-size animal thrashing in otherwise perfectly calm water. Letters to the editor followed describing similar incidents, and the journalist himself, who happened to be a water bailiff, claimed to have personally seen the "Kelpie" no fewer than sixteen times. Another couple reported that something "resembling a prehistoric monster" had slithered across the road in front of their vehicle with a sheep in its mouth. A rash of other sightings followed, sparking a worldwide craze.

  The Colonel, who had been fascinated since boyhood by cryptozoology, and sea serpents in particular, came down with a full-blown case of "Nessie Mania." He followed the stories with increasing restlessness, clipping newspaper articles and making sketches based on the descriptions therein. He had retired from the military, and idleness did not suit him. He'd largely filled the void with big game hunting in Africa, but by then he found it unsatisfying. His trophy room was run of the mill. Who didn't have a zebra skin hanging on the wall, a mounted rhinoceros head, or an elephant foot umbrella stand? Even the posed, snarling lion was passe.

  When the first published photograph of the monster, taken by a man named Hugh Gray, was denounced by skeptics as being the blurred image of a swimming dog, the Colonel was so incensed he announced he was going to Scotland to prove the monster's existence personally.

  He prevailed upon the hospitality of his second cousin, the Laird of Craig Gairbh, whose estate was near the shores of the loch, and in a matter of weeks had taken multiple photographs that showed the curved neck and head of a sea serpent emerging from the water.

  The pictures were published to widespread acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, and the Colonel's triumphant return to the United States was marked with great fanfare. Reporters flocked to the house, stories ran in all the major newspapers, and he was generally regarded as a hero. He took to wearing estate tweeds around town, which made him instantly recognizable as the celebrity he was, and joked, in a faux British accent, that his only regret was not being able to mount the head in his trophy room, explaining that since Scotland Yard itself had requested he not harm the beast, it would have been in bad form to do so. The height of the frenzy was when he appeared in a newsreel that played before It Happened One Night, the biggest movie of the year.

  Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun. It wasn't long before the Daily Mail published an article suggesting that the size of the wake was wrong and making the scandalous accusation that the Colonel had photographed a floating model. Next came allegations of photographic trickery--so-called experts claimed the photographs had been touched up and then rephotographed, citing slightly different a
ngles and shadows, variations in the reflections. Because the Colonel had processed his own film, he was unable to defend himself.

  The Colonel swore by the veracity of his photos and expressed outrage that his honor was being called into question precisely because he'd been honorable enough to defer to the request from Scotland Yard. If he'd just gone ahead and shot the beast--and he'd brought his elephant rifle with him for that very purpose--no one would be able to deny his claims.

  The final nail in the coffin of public opinion was when Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been on safari with the Colonel several times, arrived at the loch with a cadre of reporters declaring that he was going to prove once and for all that the monster existed, and then promptly falsified monster tracks using an ashtray made from the foot of a hippo--a hippo that the Colonel himself had taken down in Rhodesia.

  Reporters and their impudent questions were no longer welcome. The Colonel gave up his tweeds and his accent. The sketches and newspaper clippings, so carefully glued into Moroccan leather scrapbooks, disappeared. By the time I came into Ellis's life, the subject was taboo, and preserving the Colonel's dignity paramount.

  Of course, what was taboo to the rest of the world was anything but to our little trio, especially when the Colonel was acting particularly accusatory about Ellis's inability to serve.

  It was Hank who came up with the idea of us finding the monster ourselves. It was a brilliant mechanism for blowing off steam that allowed Ellis to poke merciless fun at the Colonel, imagine himself triumphing where his father had failed, while simultaneously proving that he was as red-blooded as any man at the Front. It was a harmless fantasy, a whimsy we trotted out and embellished regularly, usually at the end of a long night of drinking, but never within anyone else's earshot--at least, not before the New Year's Eve party.

  --

  Ellis swallowed loudly beside me. My mother-in-law remained frozen to her seat, her fingers and mouth still open, the crystal sherry glass in shards at her feet.