by Gian Sardar
As she did when she was little, Abby takes the ring and goes to the bathroom. Light switches flicked on, a washcloth over the drain. The black velvet box is stiff to open, but immediately the diamond’s facets inhale the light in an explosion of brilliance. Close to two and a half carats, a G if Abby had to guess. Almost no inclusions, though she’d need her loop to verify. The flashes are stunning, bursts of violet, gold, green, and magenta.
The last time she was here she’d not known to do this, but now—having seen how many people tuck receipts under the velvet lining, the spot she herself chooses for her snippets of histories—she carefully wedges out the velvet cushion of the box.
And there it is.
Its presence is almost upsetting. All these years, unread, unthought of. A little piece of smooth paper, folded and resistant to coming undone, tight with its own secret. When finally it’s opened, her heart is racing because it’s not a receipt, she sees, it’s a note. Just three lines written in graceful, precise, cursive.
Dearest Edith,
Right the wrong.
With love, always.
Abby flips it over, but the other side is blank—there’s no name signed. What does that mean? Right the wrong? She’d always known it as her grandmother’s engagement ring, a painful reminder kept sequestered from sight after her grandfather left, but now she wonders. Right the wrong. Run away with me? A suitor, perhaps, a man who’d pined away in the distance, waiting for the right time. But then Edith had insisted it not be worn until she passed. What did that mean? The ring too meaningful to part with, but too painful to hold.
She goes to find her mother, but the bedroom door is shut, the light off. Dorothy falls asleep easily, deeply, and enviably. You were having a bad dream, a saying uttered by TV moms throughout history, sitting on edges of beds. Never the case for Abby, who’d have to journey down a long, dark hall for comfort, her mother not having registered a thing.
In her room, torn between needing to sleep and wishing to stay awake, she places the black box on the nightstand, where it’s barely a silhouette in the darkness. So much she doesn’t know about her grandmother. For all these years her job, her passion, has been capturing other families’ stories, efforts at sending bits of them into the future through notes and gathered tales, and yet this whole time she’s not known the truth of her own, and never even thought to wonder. Had her grandmother spoken about another man? Someone who died, perhaps, a tragic story that twisted into the dream that’s never let Abby go? Or perhaps there was someone before her grandfather. Perhaps her grandfather had written these words to convince her grandmother to leave? An original love, abandoned.
Across the street, a car starts. But what’s odd, Abby understands moments later, is that she never heard a door close. Not a front door, not a car door. And that’s what makes her heart begin to race. Nobody got in; they were already there.
Ridiculous. Late-night theatrics, she knows. She’d just not heard the door earlier. Her mind was elsewhere.
Now she tries not to think, to replace anxious thoughts with images—rubies, emeralds, diamonds, old mine or asscher cuts, the grace and mystery of all her favorite pieces, a parade of beauty. The weight of sleep pulls her. It takes a while, but at last she lets go.
Immediately, it seems, she’s there, in the meadow, as if the dream had been lurking. The table is set for two and the crystal chandelier shivers on the oak tree’s branch, sky gray with an impending storm. Shards of rainbows from the prisms flash across the white porcelain, and a wind begins to whistle in the leaves.
Dead center on her plate is a cluster of white chrysanthemums. She’s reaching for the flowers when she feels something stuck in her teeth, and spots a toothpick alongside the knife. But it breaks, splinters in her mouth. Fragments scrape her tongue. She spits them out, but it’s not wood. It’s bone. Bone from the tip of a finger. In one heave she retches out a flood of red, and it’s the sound of her teeth hitting the plate that wakes her. One by one, they clink against the porcelain.
8
Then
EACH MORNING, before going to her studio—really just one of the bedrooms, not used for children but for her pots and glazes and clay—Claire goes to the kitchen, the only place there are more than just fleeting footsteps, more than just aches or creaks in the wood or the distant sigh of a door. She can’t be alone with her thoughts, her suspicions, and the kitchen is where even early in the morning there’s life, sounds, voices, movements. Standing anywhere else in the house you could almost imagine you were alone in the neighborhood, the last vestige of residency, the only holdout in the face of vacation cottages or countries of cobblestones. Summer swipes half the neighborhood away, allowing them to trickle back in late August, children tanned and taller.
If it hadn’t been for William’s schedule, for the fact that he couldn’t go and thus they’d be separated even longer, Claire would have liked to disappear as well, and even has the place in mind, one waiting and her own. Her family cottage, part of a cluster of cottages scattered along the edge of a lake, separated by pebble paths and wooden railings. Purchased when her mother was just learning to spend the money her father was just learning to make. The price of friendship, Claire’s father had said, as the other cottages were bought by Charlotte’s new friends, women with high voices and pointed gazes.
Brown clapboard with a screened-in porch. There wasn’t much to it, and its simplicity was what Claire loved. Sometimes they’d bring Ada Hadley, Claire’s best friend who lived down the street and would eventually become absorbed into marriage and children and a life that took her away and across the country. Still, Claire’s times with her at the cabin comprise some of her fondest memories, even just the two of them on the porch, reading side by side until the night set in and they were forced to angle their books toward the moon’s light. Back then, life was easy. Cries of loons carved into the evenings, the water more green than blue. All the families there were missing heads of households, fathers who sometimes made weekend trips but mostly stayed away, content to leave the older boys to take charge, the servants to help out, and the women to gossip. And the wives, they were fine with this. Different rules applied and they had one another, were united in their abandonment.
For years they went to the cottage, until one summer Claire’s older sister complained. No longer did Virginia wish to be whisked away to the great outdoors. She was too old to spend time identifying birdcalls or canoeing along the edges of the lake in search of freshwater mussels. Reading on the porch was dull. One of Charlotte’s friends had the same problem with her daughter—a boyfriend, the woman said, that’s why I think she wants to stay home. And that was the end. The children grew up. Life was no longer easy.
For her wedding, her parents gave her the cottage. No one had been there in years, but Claire saw herself, now an adult, with William, sitting on the screened porch, watching the silver glint of fish on a line or the reflection of trees that laced the water’s edge. But they’ve never gone. It’s too far, he says. There’s a lake across the street. And in truth she knows the memories are the appeal—the cottage itself is nothing spectacular—and they’re her memories, not his. Sometimes she pictures it as it would be today, swallowed by the woods, lost in vines and leaves, and wonders if all of them have gone that way, a whole cluster of abandoned memories, water lapping against an empty shore.
Claire’s been sitting at the kitchen table for about five minutes when Ketty enters, spots her, and without asking places a plate of scones, butter, and jam before her. Breakfast. Barely seven AM, but Ketty knows the routine. She lights the burner under the teakettle, picks a fork from a jumble of silverware, and starts to polish.
“It’s so empty without him,” Claire says to Ketty, whose furious polishing slows at the first sign of conversation, despite the fact that she’s heard this countless times before. “If I didn’t come in here I’d go for days without seeing anyone.”
&n
bsp; Ketty nods, her polishing now slowed to a crawl, her movements like the measured working of a violin’s bow. “This house, maybe it just needs little feet.”
Claire tears off a large chunk of scone. They’re buttery—Ketty uses a lot of butter when she bakes—and yet still Claire slices off a soft pat, then slathers the chunk and takes a bite, trying to savor. She loves butter. It’s something her mother never used to let them have—the honey will do just fine—and she’s glad that Ketty’s now at the stove, turning off the burner.
“Yes,” Claire says, “but with him gone so much.” A pause. And perhaps with another woman. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“A baby does not notice.”
“No, but I would. It wouldn’t be fair to me.”
She’s snapped her response, and Ketty goes silent as she pours the tea. Claire feels bad, but the truth is, she doesn’t want a baby. She’s never wanted one and it’s her greatest fear that she never will. Other people have that need to mother, that urge and instinct. But Claire never has. Even when her sister, Virginia, unveiled her last baby, the crowd of women who’d gathered became all arms, reaching, wanting to touch, to hold, cooing and crying and caught up in something that completely evaded Claire. She stood far back, hoping no one would hand her the baby. And then when he was—your new nephew, look at those eyes—she didn’t know what to do. She held him stiffly and studied him, knowing any second he would start screeching and his cries would identify her as the failure she was.
At times she wonders if there’s a gene missing, but then worries the problem wouldn’t be a missing gene, but rather a faulty one that if passed down could tarnish the Ballantines forever. William, though, William wants children. At some point she’ll face this, she’ll have to—that relentless clock has been ticking for a while. And this house, the estate, it can’t end here. The Ballantine name would be snuffed out, a flame done in by tired fingertips.
After the second scone, she takes the plate and the third scone to the trash bin and scrapes her knife to make some noise. The scone is still in her hand, hidden at her side, as she tells Ketty she’s going out. Once she’s in the living room she takes a huge bite, and then another. Does Ketty know she does this? She must, or she would stop giving her three, if she thought the third was being wasted. Best not to dwell. Ketty is the help. The only one who matters is William, whose mind may only have room for someone else.
—
It’s a fifteen-minute drive to her parents’ house in Loring Park, the three-story Tudor they moved into long ago. A high brick wall seemingly holds up their lawn and house, and a tall gate ascends above that. Trees are numerous and thick. A blockade, Claire has always thought. A stout defense. In the driveway, she parks the car next to her mother’s—never used, always gleaming—and sees a curtain on the second floor flutter. The warning has been sounded.
Right as she reaches to the bell, the door swings open. The angle at which her mother tilts her head always conveys a sense of guarded apprehension. “Did I forget to write something down? You’ve just missed breakfast.” Her hand is still on the doorknob.
“May I come in?”
“Virginia came by yesterday and it was exhausting. Best to set something for next week, get you all in and out on one afternoon.”
Charlotte starts to close the door, but Claire pushes it back. “I won’t be more than a few minutes.”
“And then what’s the point of that?”
“You’d rather I stayed longer?”
“I’d rather you attended to your own husband.”
In one swift motion, Claire pushes the door back completely. Their shoulders collide as Claire strides past.
“Claire,” her mother says angrily.
“I have a right to see him.” Now she’s in the foyer, listening for sounds, trying to determine which direction she should take.
“There’s actually no law that says you have that right.” Charlotte crosses her arms. “Is that clay on your dress? You don’t even change when you do your crafts?”
“I wear a smock.”
“Well, it’s clearly not up to its job. Perhaps it’s not wide enough.” A pause. “I’ll never understand you, wasting the makings of a good life. In a beautiful house but locked in a little room.”
“I’m asking for five minutes and I’ll go home.” Claire hears a door shut, toward the back of the house, and heads in that direction.
“Do you know who we haven’t heard from in years?” Charlotte asks, quickly following. “Dr. Adams. Your father’s old physician.”
Claire stops as she passes the study, and though she knows her father wouldn’t be in there, hasn’t been in there for years, memories of the past compel her to peer inside. A spotless partners’ desk, a polished globe on a wood stand. Dust is not given a chance to settle and the maids know to make everything look normal should anyone drop by unannounced, even splaying a different book each week upon the upholstered arm of a wingback chair. Only once has she been here when someone dropped by, her father herded up the stairs to a room on the third floor. You just missed him, Charlotte had said, breathlessly to the visitor, a man who used to play tennis with her father.
“He called, only just minutes ago,” her mother now continues.
“Did you tell him?”
“Of course not. Don’t be ludicrous.”
“He’s a doctor.”
“It’s hard to believe you care at all about your father when all you can think of is airing his problems.”
“Dr. Adams was his doctor. It wouldn’t be gossip.” Claire hears a cupboard slam in the kitchen, and quickens her pace.
“Do not preach to me. As long as he doesn’t want to leave the property, we should thank our lucky stars he’s as happy as he is.”
The kitchen is empty. Claire goes to the window and searches the yard. There, on the far path, is her father, quickly walking toward the tennis court, white hair lit up in the sun. He stumbles and catches himself, his arm jutting out for balance, the drink in his hand shaking, red liquid spilling. At this he stops, composes himself, and studies the drink. Claire can see only the back of his head, but knows he’s smiling as he lifts the glass toward the light. A Shirley Temple. It’s the color he loves, the sound of the ice that enchants him.
“Well, the truth of the matter is that Dr. Adams and I wouldn’t have had time to talk about your father. He’d actually run into William. Last night, in Rochester.”
The way her mother said Rochester, like a distant and troublesome land, combined with the notes of joy in her voice and her earlier comment about attending to your own husband, everything holds Claire angled toward the window. She will not turn. She can’t, because if she does her mother will see her face, will see that her mind has left Minneapolis and is now in Rochester as well, picturing red lips and evenings he leaves work early. She forces a smile, hoping it’s found in her voice. “It’s always nice to know it’s a small world.”
“He says William’s doing well in Rochester.”
“Of course he is. You knew that.”
“Dr. Adams ran into him at a restaurant, with a striking young woman who apparently had something William wanted. A parcel he was interested in. Some land, though he didn’t say where. Eva Marten, that was her name. Has he mentioned her?”
Eva Marten. Claire turns from the window, the name tucked within her mind. “If there’s something you’re trying to say, either say it or leave me be.”
Her mother’s face narrows. “Avoidance of any issues in your marriage will cost this family. Think of your sister. She married well, but not well enough. I don’t have to tell you what a scandal would do to their children.”
“There is no scandal, mother. You said it yourself, he was meeting with someone whose property he wanted to buy.”
“Don’t be naive. Dr. Adams is a very intelligent man. If he sensed something was off, wh
ich he clearly did, I would wager there’s something to examine. We should be thankful he took the time out of his morning to call. That he agreed to pay William a visit.” Claire begins to speak, but Charlotte holds up her hand and continues. “As a friend. I said nothing more.”
“My marriage is my business.”
“Oh don’t be noble. I’ve done you a favor. And since you can address only what you know, you should start listening to everything, including the silences. Stop playing with your clay and start paying attention.”
—
Retired is what they say about Frederick, Claire’s father, the story they cling to. And it makes sense, as after all, he’d made a fortune from one of the most successful flour mills, and after a lifetime of working, if one has the means, why not enjoy an early retirement? But the mill, to him, does not exist, and has never existed. Neither do the past thirty-five years of his life. All those days are gone, like thousands of pages caught in the wind, lifted and carried away.
His mind is snagged in his early twenties, before the girls were born, before there was money. To him, the house they’re living in is his wife’s friend’s, and they’re simply watching it while the friend is away. Every morning he wakes and asks when the owners are coming back, giddy to learn he has another day in this place that is like nothing he has ever known. The width of the staircase is extraordinary, the size of the parlor is magical. Afternoons are spent waltzing with his wife or wading in the pond, rattling his Shirley Temples and humming tunes none of the family recognize. What began right around the time of Claire’s wedding, with little things forgotten, a face no longer remembered—his toast, a long pause her mother stood to fill—has recently steamrolled, a fast and quick descent, but Charlotte is not bothered by it at all. After all, he thinks they’re newlyweds. His heart is always on the brink of bursting. I live with a man who loves me like the day we met, Charlotte once said to Claire after she’d found a doctor in New York who’d see him. And he’s happy. It’s as simple as that.