Sympathy Between Humans

by Jodi Compton

  Below us, Colm took Liam down with a hard tackle. Marlinchen appeared to watch, but I doubted she was really seeing it.

  “There’s more.” I said. “This birth certificate is all the paper there is on Jacob. He never registered for school. There’s no death certificate. No adoption papers. He just drops off the grid. Because he was in Minnesota.”

  “So you’ve got a piece of paper. It doesn’t prove anything,” Marlinchen said. Then her eyes lit with a new idea. “Did it occur to you that maybe Jacob was the one who died young? Maybe our aunt Brigitte let him drown or something. She was always drunk, or stoned-”

  “Don’t do that,” I said, shaking my head. “Don’t let your father think for you all your life. You never met your aunt Brigitte, but you never questioned your father’s account of her. You’re more willing to think ill of her, a stranger, than of your father, whom you saw firsthand hurting Aidan physically and psychologically.”

  Despite all her denial, the truth of these words hit home, and she was silent.

  “I’m not saying your father is a monster,” I said. “He made a mistake, probably in haste, in the hospital parking lot, and it snowballed and ruined his life. By the time he realized that guilt and grief were destroying your mother from the inside out, it was too late to fix it. Imagine how it would have looked to the world, months or years later: burying his own son in an unmarked grave on his own land? Taking someone else’s child and erasing his identity? Hugh’s esteem and career might have survived his son’s accidental death, but his behavior after that crossed all moral and legal lines.”

  I wondered if I’d spoken too frankly; but honesty was overdue here. The Hennessys’ world had been short on it for too long.

  The boys were still playing below us. If they’d noticed my presence, they hadn’t read the body language. They probably thought Marlinchen and I were having a civil conversation.

  “Your father’s guilt, first over Aidan and then your mother, ate him up inside. Literally, in a way.” I didn’t need to remind Marlinchen of her father’s ulcer. “Did you ever wonder why the photo of your mother and Aidan bothered your father so much?” I asked her. “It was the real Aidan, at age two. Jacob didn’t know it, but your father did. It incensed him to have to see it every time he looked in that bedroom. It reminded him of how his plan worked out. Your mother never recovered from her guilt over it. She died of it, either by accident-” I cut myself off.

  Too late. Outrage was heating Marlinchen’s delicate skin. “Or what, on purpose? Are you suggesting she killed herself?”

  I was, but of course it was too much for Marlinchen to handle at this point. “No,” I said quickly, appeasing her. “No, I’m not saying that.”

  Still too late. “I think you should leave now,” she said.

  “Think what you asked me to do, when we first met,” I said, getting desperate. “You asked me to find your brother. That’s what I’m trying to do. You’re the legal head of the household now. If you won’t let me talk to your father, give me permission to dig under the tree and look for your brother. Like you wanted.”

  “My brothers,” she said, pointing, “are all home. My father is home and getting better. We’re coming together and healing our wounds. That’s hard for someone like you to watch.”

  “Someone like me?” I repeated.

  “You were kicked out of your home by your father and raised by a virtual stranger. You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be part of a real family.”

  “I’m sorry?” I said, though I’d heard her clearly.

  But if Marlinchen saw that she’d stung me, she didn’t ease up. “That’s why you can’t accept that we’re happy now,” she went on. “You’d rather my brother be dead, my mother a suicide, and my father in prison.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “Go away,” she snapped. “I’m tired of your morbid mind and your sick theories.”

  There was nothing left for me to do here. She wasn’t going to cool off. I headed down the steps.

  “Don’t come back.” Marlinchen threw the words after me. “I’ll call the cops if you come around here again.”

  I wanted to say, I can come back with a warrant, but the truth was, I probably couldn’t. I didn’t have enough hard evidence. Besides, sometimes you have to relinquish the last word. I understood the root of Marlinchen’s anger. It was fear. If she hadn’t heard a glimmer of truth in my words, they wouldn’t have poured acid onto a vulnerable spot in her mind. Stiff-limbed, I climbed into my car and headed down the drive.

  The top of the little rise at the end of the Hennessy driveway afforded me a good view of the field where the boys were playing, and I paused there before pulling out onto the road. I looked back.

  Aidan, as I couldn’t stop thinking of him, stood conferring with Liam, holding the football in his hands. Exertion had raised a fine sweat on his bare chest and his face. The boys got into position, and Liam threw the ball to Aidan. Aidan caught it easily and started to run. His blond ponytail swung crazily in the afternoon sunlight as he ran. Colm, determined, raced to intercept him, but Aidan dodged easily and poured on the speed, outpacing his brother, heading for the unmarked end zone.

  The high window was empty; Hugh was not watching, and for a moment I wished he were. Maybe for the first time he’d recognize something he’d failed to see for so long.

  Hugh believed strongly in family. In his writing and his life, he’d pursued the ideals of the close-knit, loyal, and loving clan. He’d never been able to see it, but Jacob Candeleur, without a drop of Hennessy blood in him, represented the best of those ideals. From a young age, he’d had a strong instinct to protect those he loved. He’d pulled Marlinchen from the freezing waters of the lake, when she’d fallen through the ice. He’d fought with the bullies who’d picked on Liam. He’d come home from his new life in California to be with his sister and brothers.

  With Colm on his heels, Jacob gained the ground of the predetermined, invisible end zone and spiked the ball. Colm, giving up gracefully, extended his hand and gave Jacob a low five, scooped up the ball, and went to regroup with Donal.

  Jacob didn’t follow. He stood a moment, breathing hard. Then he dropped to his knees, and from there he lay down on the grass.

  There was something evocative about that action, something that stirred a recent memory.

  “Oh, God,” I said.

  I put the Nova into reverse and backed down the driveway at 40 miles per hour, skidding to a stop ten feet from the deck. Marlinchen stared at me from her place at the grill.

  “Call 911,” I yelled to her as I jumped out of the car.

  I expected some kind of resistance from her, but she looked down at the grass, where Jacob was still not moving, and her brothers were standing around him, and believed me.

  “What should I say?” Marlinchen called.

  “Cardiac arrest,” I yelled back, plunging down the slope.

  Maybe it had never occurred to Brigitte that the heart defect that killed her lover Paul, the father of her child, was hereditary. Or maybe she’d never found a way to warn the son who wasn’t supposed to know he was her son. Maybe she’d meant to, someday, but her own death had caught her unawares.

  Liam, kneeling at his cousin’s side, said, “I don’t think he’s breathing.” He sounded puzzled, like he wanted to be contradicted, wanted someone to tell him that healthy 18-year-olds didn’t just stop breathing.

  “Move,” I ordered, dropped to my knees, and rolled Jacob onto his back. I shifted the tigereye leather necklace off the hollow of his throat and laid my fingertips there. The great arteries did not pulse under my touch. I tipped Jacob’s head back, checked the airway. Clear. I closed off his nostrils, breathed for him. Pumped his chest hard enough to contuse the flesh. Breathed again.

  When the paramedics came, they asked who was going to go with Aidan, as the kids identified him, to the hospital. I opened my mouth to volunteer Marlinchen, but she shook her head. “You go, Sarah,�
� she said frantically. “Please, please, you go with him.”

  The furious defender of the Hennessy family, who’d chased me off her property, was gone. Marlinchen was a scared teenage girl again, and to her, I was Authority. She still believed I could help her brother when she couldn’t. Numbly, I climbed into the ambulance.

  I stayed with Jacob Candeleur all the way to the ER. Among the hectically laboring doctors and nurses, nobody noticed as I trailed along behind them, stood against a wall, watching their futile efforts. I was there as they called the code at 7:11 P.M. and as they dispiritedly filed out.

  The last one out, a male nurse, turned to look at me from the doorway. “You gonna notify the family?” he said.

  I nodded assent. “In a minute.”

  For some time, Hugh Hennessy had been hiding behind the wall of his illness and his privacy, hiding from the people he’d hurt. That ring of people just kept getting bigger. Aidan, whose death his carelessness had long ago caused. Elisabeth, whose suicide he helped bring about. Brigitte, whose child he had taken. Jacob, whose loss of identity had ultimately been fatal. In a way, even Paul Candeleur. Paul the loyal, ready fighter, who’d somehow given his son his values through blood alone, who’d never lived to see how his son’s life would go so wrong. I couldn’t believe this death didn’t hurt Paul, too, somewhere.

  33

  Marlinchen, already no stranger to adult responsibilities, learned a new set that day, the kind many people don’t have to deal with until their thirties or forties. I guided her through the process of releasing a body to a funeral home, making the necessary choices. I advised her to have all the kids, even Donal, look at Jacob’s body.

  “It makes it real,” I told her. “It’ll help them through the denial, and later they can feel like they said goodbye.”

  All the kids seemed numb. None of them cried.

  Outside, in the hospital parking lot, Marlinchen sat in the passenger seat of the Nova, stared straight ahead, and asked dully, Can you stay over tonight?

  You have to be American, I think, to understand how middle-class Americans grieve in modern times. Elsewhere, when people die unexpectedly, there is wailing, there are tears, there is recrimination; you can see it almost every day on CNN. In other places, liquor flows and the telephone doesn’t stop ringing; neighbors come by with food and consolation.

  In the Hennessy household, the wide-screen TV held court all evening. Even Liam surrendered to it, his knees drawn up against his chest, seeking comfort in the electronic opiate of modern times.

  I cooked for them, keeping it simple: spaghetti with tomato sauce, green salad. Marlinchen made up a tray for Hugh, and just before bed, she gave him a pill. “It helps him sleep,” she said, “and I don’t think I can stay awake tonight, to help him to the bathroom, or read to him if he can’t sleep.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” I said. She seemed to want my guidance on little things like that.

  Just before going upstairs, Liam went to stand at the window. He couldn’t see the place where Jacob had died, but in the black glass, he was looking in that direction.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “I just don’t fucking get it.” His sharp-boned face was pinched with something that would blossom into pain, when he stopped trying to fight it so hard and let himself feel it.

  I laid a hand on his shoulder and said nothing. Marlinchen and I hadn’t discussed what I’d told her that afternoon, about Jacob Candeleur and the real Aidan. I couldn’t begin to guess when she’d be ready to talk about it again, or to tell the other kids.

  Restless, I didn’t fall asleep right away. I was only drifting off, on the family-room couch, when the click of the French doors woke me.

  Marlinchen, outside in the moonlight, was dressed in a practical long-sleeved white T-shirt and faded jeans. In her hand was the spade Liam had used to bury Snowball. She was heading toward the magnolia tree.

  I’d had no solid evidence for that part of my theory- that Aidan was buried there- but it just seemed so clear to me. What else on the property had that look, of a monument? Why had Hugh walked down there, years ago with Marlinchen, to tell her something he’d said was important? Why were the Hennessy kids drawn to the tree, going there to talk and reflect and be still, as if called there by the whisper of the dead?

  I got up and dressed.

  Marlinchen didn’t hear me approaching, so intent was she on her work. Slight as she was, she put her body weight into every thrust of the spade, like a tiny backhoe. She was crying as she dug.

  “Marlinchen,” I said.

  She looked up, tear tracks silver in the moonlight, her face beautiful even in grief.

  “Let it go for now,” I said. “We can do this later.”

  “No,” she said, her voice wet. “You’ve been right about everything, from the very beginning. I didn’t listen.” She looked up at Hugh’s high window. “Do you think he could see me down here, if he were awake?” Without waiting for an answer, she said, “I hope he can. I hope he sees me digging out here and has a heart attack on top of his stroke. I won’t lift a finger to help him, this time.”

  “It’s not your fault,” I said.

  “No, it’s his fault,” Marlinchen said, vehement. “I’ve been protecting him for years. I didn’t tell anyone how he treated Aidan. If I’d told someone, anyone…” She trailed off and wept, but didn’t stop digging. Out on the lake, a barred owl screamed, sounding disturbingly human.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said again. “You’re hurting, and you want to be doing something right now to make things right. But it’s better, legally, if you let a technician do the digging. You could break bone hitting it with the spade, and then the evidence is damaged.”

  “Evidence!” Marlinchen laughed, a high sound not unlike the owl’s. “There’s no need for evidence. He’ll never see the inside of a courtroom. He’ll be too sick. That’s how he’ll beat this.” She laughed, bitter. “It’s his fault Aidan’s dead, it’s even his fault Mother died. But he’ll never pay.”

  She thrust again with the blade. “Nothing sticks to him. Nothing ever hurts him. Aidan’s teachers, who were supposed to be looking for abuse? They wouldn’t have recognized it if Dad had beaten Aidan right in front of the school! They brought his books to parent conferences for him to sign.” She sniffled. “I protected and defended him. I didn’t give you the information you needed, because it made him look bad.” She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a child’s gesture. “Even before that, for years, I took care of him. After Mother died, I cooked and took care of the house and the finances, all so he’d have time to write and teach and think, and do everything but be a father.”

  The wind kicked up unexpectedly, bringing a lingering scent of the afternoon’s barbecue.

  “And just when I was nearly clear of all the responsibilities, he has a stroke. It’s perfect. He’s trapped me again. He’ll get better, but never completely well. I’ll be here until I’m forty, making his meals and keeping track of his medication.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” I said.

  “Yes, it will. You don’t understand,” she said.

  The smell of smoke was stronger, and the problem was, Marlinchen hadn’t actually lit up the barbecue pit earlier.

  “Do you smell smoke?” I asked her.

  “I’ll take the bones up and show him that I know. I’ll make him look at what he’s done.” Not listening to me, she spiked the blade viciously into the earth. I turned to look up at the house. An uneven reddish light flickered in the darkness behind several windows.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  As I ran up to the house, Liam emerged onto the back deck, Donal beside him.

  “Where’s Colm?” I demanded.

  “Inside,” Liam said, his voice slightly hoarse. “Getting Dad out.”

  Hugh, I realized with a sinking heart. A goddamned invalid on the goddamned second floor of a house with a goddamned staircase.

  “We have
to get Dad out,” Donal echoed, his voice cracking.

  Behind me I heard footsteps and barely reached out in time to catch Marlinchen on her way into the house. “No way!” I told her. “You stay out here. I mean it,” I said, seeing refusal in her anxious face. “I’ll handle things.”

  The air inside the house was hot but bearable, as though someone had simply cranked up the thermostat recklessly high. But there was also a scent of smoke in it, and I felt a thrill of nerves run through my body.

  The smoke was thicker in the hallway of the second floor, where Colm was in his father’s doorway. “Come on!” he said. “Help me with Dad!”

  For a moment it was tempting; Colm was strong. But I felt the heat on my skin, growing uncomfortable, and I knew that fires get out of hand so fast, become unsurvivable without warning. I couldn’t take the chance that Colm might die because I’d decided to let him help me and we were both trying to get Hugh out when the whole room flashed over.

  “No!” I said, half yelling, even though we were standing fairly close together. “This is no time to be a hero.”

  Colm shook his head. “It’s Donal,” he said miserably. “He was smoking in the basement. He started the fire. If Dad-”

  “The firefighters will get your father down,” I said. “They have the equipment and the training.”

  I spoke with more confidence than I felt. By the time the fire crew arrived, it would probably be too late for a 170-pound invalid to be borne out of the house. Colm saw that truth in my eyes. He opened his mouth to speak again, but then succumbed to a fit of coughing.

  “This is how rescuers get killed,” I said.

  With one last, agonized glance into his father’s darkened bedroom, he nodded agreement. I put a hand between his shoulder blades and urged him toward the stairs.

  Out on the deck, much of my skin felt as though I’d been lying down on a giant skillet. It was likely that Colm felt the same way. I pushed him down in front of the spigot and turned it on, and he splashed water on his face, chest, and arms. When he moved back, I was about to do the same, when I noticed something that troubled me.