···
The basement, says Rudy sternly. Now.
After dinner. She had planned to work on the case, read more of the paperwork, but there is no arguing with him.
He is a discarder of things, he is constantly paring down. Left to himself, he would toss out most of the basement contents without a qualm, send bags of it sailing through the air to the curb. But she is a keeper, whenever he attempts to jettison things from the basement — a cracked butter dish, a rocking chair with a broken spoke — she reclaims them, collecting them from the sidewalk, the bin. This is not a game — the loss of these things is genuinely disturbing.
You do it, then, he says. Make some space.
Usually she agrees and then ignores him. Tonight, though, he is insistent, and she realizes the basement would be a welcome distraction from the affidavits, from fractured limbs and bodies.
The room is next to the furnace room, a weak light bulb, green-painted walls, a concrete floor. Quiet, dim, it seems almost underwater, a horde of objects floating in it. The flotsam and jetsam of various lives. Musty suitcases, a cracked butter dish, a hammer with a broken claw, a lamp that no longer works. What should we do with this rusty birdcage, missing a door? Put it next to the chess set, missing a rook.
You never know when you might need something, says her aunt.
Yes. You never know. How is it possible to know? Leah is convinced that the lamp can be repaired, that the butter dish can be glued, that the rook will turn up, wedged behind a cushion. That the broken hammer, the birdcage will somehow save the day, some day. And she is right, she is convinced she is right, except that she is beginning to suspect that the timeline for this is longer than she thought. Perhaps the moments when these things might turn out to be valuable are scattered over a decade or two, not this year or next year or the next. In the meantime, though, she is determined to hold on to them, to have them sit here silently in this green dimness, waiting for their hour to arrive.
They are restful, too, these things. She is standing beside the shelves where Gus keeps his tools — old coffee cans full of wrenches, clamps, boxes of finishing nails, bolts and nuts. An incurable fixer, whistling breathy non-tunes as he repairs a step, replaces a window. He has a small stock of skills, but his real virtue is patience, his willingness to keep going when — inevitably — the wood splits, the nail bends. And his tools, so unassuming, so quietly useful. Perhaps some of their restfulness will transfer to her if she stays down here for a while, keeps them company.
Rudy’s dog — a golden retriever with a white muzzle, flecks of saliva on her jaws — pads downstairs, sniffs around, and then comes over to rest her old head on Leah’s leg, looking mournful. She scratches the dog’s ears and watches her rheumy eyes close.
She can hear Malcolm upstairs, his voice comes down clearly. He is usually buoyant after the racetrack, but today he sounds sorry for himself, today he must have lost. Three-year-olds, colts and geldings, he says, disgusted.
Another good reason to stay down here.
He does have his own peculiar form of generosity, not about things — unless they are pried out of him — but about events or circumstances. As if he were distributing possibilities to other people like some kind of modern largesse, doling out prospects. Here, this set of chances is for you. Look, this possibility, this long shot is for you. Over there, these breaks, these prospects, these are for you and you.
A mismatched group, these uncles. One day, eight years old, she had looked around and realized that her family was unusual, off-kilter, lacking in certain features. Determined to shape them into something more acceptable, she did her best to impose a parallel order on them, to make them more family-like. There must be two uncles at parent interviews, no more, no less, since her aunt was too exhausted to go. Two uncles at school concerts, two uncles at dance recitals, a set of contrived parents. Why did they tolerate this, her insistence on this regime of twoness? School was a foreign country for Rudy, the rules murky at the best of times, and Gus was accustomed to following her instructions. Malcolm, though, for Malcolm, these were opportunities to practise his spurious geniality, his talent for deception.
Hello there, he would say to a teacher, already flirtatious if the teacher was a woman. If the teacher was a man, he would shake his hand in what he considered a forthright, gruff way. From there, the conversation flowed down a set of known alleyways.
Do you have to do that? she said once when she was older, cross as only a ten-year-old can be. There was something suspect, something crude in these methods that even she could see.
It works, doesn’t it? he said, and he was right.
Does a child want to know how easily people can be fooled? Not this child — life was slippery enough already. Parents who had vanished without warning, one after another, without her permission, without her consent. A sleight of hand, disappearing without even a puff of smoke. All too compelling, all too convincing as a lesson in the instability of events.
No more people would disappear, no more people would evaporate into air if she had anything to do with it. She herded these men together on the sidewalk when they walked to the pub for dinner, she counted them incessantly. She pulled them back from crossing against the lights, insisted they hold handrails on stairs.
Isn’t that sweet? said a passerby once, but it was deadly serious for her. She knew that she had to exert whatever meagre control she had over events, over circumstances. How much was that? Something unknown, unclear, but she was determined to do what she could, what was possible. She knew one thing with a hectic certainty, one thing in an almost tangible way: fate could not be trusted for a minute.
Now, she looks around for something she can throw out, something to pacify Rudy. The dented flour sifter? The broken guitar? Something catches her eye — over there, a box. Her aunt’s box, sent over after she died. Something she poured over at the time, something she hasn’t opened for years.
She reaches over, pulls it out.
Inside, on top, a small portfolio. Her mother’s photographs. She begins leafing through them, tiny shocks of recognition.
A sleepy baby, a crawler gumming a key chain. A skinny four-year-old drinking from a hose, a tricycle-rider, head down, intent with effort of peddling. What was her mother thinking about when she took this picture, caught this moment? What did she mean by this shot, what was she saying? But these pictures are not talking, they offer no hints to the photographer.
Then a picture of an older woman — a mesh of lines around her kind eyes, greying ginger-brown hair — looking out steadily. The colours are strong — a wine-coloured blouse, a yellow wall behind her — but her face is so alive that it dominates the picture, her expression a mixture, warm, melancholy, sardonic.
She feels her chest ache, she holds the picture close to her, trying not to bend it.
I miss you, she says.
I know, says her aunt sadly.
But for her, Rudy would be tempted to toss this picture, the first thing to go. The aunt, they called her with particular emphasis, this tart-tongued woman with so much to say. Enumerating their child-rearing failings, a catalogue. A sleeping bag is not a blanket. A swimsuit is not a gym suit. A bowl of cereal is not dinner. They would listen to her silently, without response, sometimes glancing at Leah reproachfully, as if she had betrayed them.
Too many shadows, though, living in these photographs, waiting below the surface. The small darkroom, the trays of chemicals for developing the pictures, a drying line. The sound of her mother humming under her breath as she dipped the negatives into one bath after another, the black tongs, the burnt match smell of the fixer. So absorbed, she would only come to with a start when the girl began howling or hopping up and down.
Then she would stand with the child in front of her, both of them looking at the pictures pinned up on a line. A slender, springy woman, large eyes, short dark hair, a lilt to the way s
he moved, the way she talked. Running her hands up over the girl’s forehead, sweeping the hair back from her face, over and over. A girl who looked like her, a small edition, gawkier but still alike. More Rubin than Jarvis, she would say. And then she would go back to humming.
Fiddle dee dee, fiddle dee dee, the fly has married the bumblebee.
A photograph of her father holding her, a serious toddler. This father, smiling uncertainly, this figment of a person. So few traces of him, this man, greedy for unknown things, for experiences beyond his reach — just out of the picture frame. This Andrew Jarvis.
What did you find? she says to him. Was it worth it?
What did I have to lose? he says.
She studies the picture again, familiar, but not familiar. Were there any signs of a future departure in his clothes, in his hair? Was there anything about him that suggested a man about to bolt? I’m sorry.
More photos of the child — does she seem content, this three-year-old in overalls, standing against the front of a sofa, one arm up along the cushions? Does this naked toddler, jumping over a sprinkler in the sun, look happy? They are strangers, though, even a glimpse of their thoughts or feelings hard to see — they simply are, existing in these moments on paper. Small beings fixed in an instant.
And her mother — if she had lived, what kind of photographer would she be now? Someone who took bold, startling shots? Someone who created subtle images, enigmas for the viewer to unravel? Searching for the eye of the beholder.
Underneath the portfolio are other documents — school reports, a lifeguard certificate, an old library card, a full-length birth certificate. Full name of father: Andrew Gregory Jarvis. Full name of mother: Miriam Rubin Jarvis. Female child born alive at 2:30 a.m. And here, the motor vehicle accident report, yellowed and brittle now. How many times had she been over this spare, cryptic document, looking for clues?
Date of Accident: Unknown. Discovered October 14, 1978. Coroner’s office estimates accident occurred a day earlier, based on state of driver’s body.
Cause of Accident: Vehicle left the road, impact with a large tree.
Location of Accident: 4th Line and Side Road 15.
Damage to Vehicle(s), If Any: Extensive — see circled areas on chart.
Injuries to Person(s), If Any: Female driver killed on impact or died shortly after, child diagnosed with fractured femur.
Witnesses: None.
Other Notes: Reason why vehicle left the road unconfirmed. Driver’s blood alcohol content over the limit, allowing for alcohol from decomposition. Child found dehydrated, strapped into back seat.
The basement around her trembles.
Loud, she thinks, the only thought she has time for.
A din of crashing, splitting, falling, disintegrating. The noise is everywhere, she is lost in it. The car begins settling in jerks, each one with its own sounds. In a few minutes, the settling stops, and there is only snapping and creaking. Eventually this subsides as well, and a soft, chilly darkness sinks in. She can smell gasoline, dead vegetation. Blood on the grass, bushes, the metal door, twisted sideways. Only a few shards of glass left in the window beside her. Her leg and side are hurting, an enormous, dull pain. The seat next to her is covered in sour vomit. After a while, a long while, the only sound is the soggy drumming of the rain.
Then the basement, the bare bulb is back, and she can feel the report in her hands.
···
Jews don’t drink, says her aunt.
Manifestly untrue, but a grain — half a grain — of fact.
Then they drink less. Something to do with the genes, less tolerance.
Gus has an inarticulate spasm when she asks him about it.
She liked the sauce, he admits reluctantly. But she wasn’t a drunk.
4th Line and Side Road 15?
The two of you were up at someone’s cottage, he says. You don’t remember?
No.
Was that why her father left? The sauce. Perhaps he was unable to handle it. Perhaps he was a drinker himself. Or did her mother begin drinking because her husband left? If she was a drinker.
I don’t know, says Gus, appalled by all this talking.
···
Andrew Gregory Jarvis. This is what she knows about him — he is unfindable. He is an absence, this is his category, his fundamental trait. Missing. Not even an enigma, too insubstantial for that. Not much more than a rumour.
Gone. Untraceable. As a child, she had accepted this unquestioningly, as she had accepted the existence of gravity, of air. Later, in a new century, a century of online searches, she had plugged his name in half-heartedly, quickly deterred by the number of results. And unable to shake the rooted belief that this was futile, that he could not be found.
What would she do with him if she did find him? she thinks now. If he were no longer missing. How would this shift the sticky configurations in her life, how would it change her understanding of things, her pacts with reality?
Perhaps it would be a good thing, though, something to shake up all those moving parts. A small streak of chaos. Perhaps this is the moment for at least a glimpse of him.
Over to her desk. In a minute, there it is, unblinking on the screen — a list of Andrew Jarvises, a small paternal collection.
And now?
···
What kind of bomb do you think it will be? Nate says conversationally. A pipe bomb? A suitcase bomb? Simple enough to make one, to look it up. Saltpetre and charcoal.
How handy for the bomb-inclined, she says, but her stomach is twisting. She can see this bomb, this explosion far too clearly. A deafening boom, the walls staggering, the ceiling starting to collapse. Screams of terror, of pain. Clouds of grey-black dust swelling around her, filling her nose, her throat. Then silence.
Perhaps she should begin dropping into a synagogue as well.
But she is a rickety agnostic, an incurable doubter — unsure even about that. The idea of a god — the sense of a god — is tempting, even elating. A clue that opens up the possibility of some existential pattern, even a logic of sorts. But as soon as she begins to feel a longing for this, a hunger for transcendence, as soon as she feels some internal balance start to shift even slightly, she is assailed by a sense of implausibility, by an analytical twitch.
Doubt wisely, says Donne.
I’m surprised about Louis, says Nate. If ever there was a confirmed cynic.
Perhaps he grew up with it. Perhaps old habits are dying hard.
Not the habits of her childhood, though, one that featured a complete absence of creed. This was not a matter of conviction, but a lack of interest so absolute as to be dead air. Her uncles had forgotten about religion, and simply kept on forgetting.
And her aunt — quarrelling with her own God, despite her efforts to fill the girl with a certain strain of Jewishness. Her faith in this God was an irritable one — I have my reasons, believe me. Instead, she attempted to infuse the girl with a specific way of being, to envelop her in its stories, its smells and tastes. She taught her songs about goats or old wars, they ate grated horseradish, parsley sloshed in salt water. She showed her how to make walnut bread in round loaves, they struggled to put together a burlap hut, her aunt cursing fluently. Seders with Marvin and Ida — the neighbours — around a plate with an egg marked with black smoke and a shank bone. Dipping their fingers in syrupy wine to mark the plagues with dark red drops. (All ten — happy now?)
Baruch etah Adonai, Eloheinu melech haolam. Even the blessings she learned seemed more like chants rather than prayers. Strangely beautiful in their own way, whole things in themselves, but she was only dimly aware that they were related to some kind of deity. They had sunk into her anyway, into her ribs, her sternum — ancient ribbons of song flowing through her.
But she is godless now, now when it might be useful, even practical, to have an omnipotent g
uardian. Now with a bomb threat grinning at her, only a foot or two between them.
···
Pick a pile, she says to Nate the next day, still surrounded by the pieces of the case. He is standing in the doorway to her office, and his body seems suddenly intensely present. She has to resist the urge to touch his shoulder, run her fingers down his spine, up the back of his neck.
Not my case, he says stiffly.
What? This is not how they do it, this is not how they work. Is that resentment in his voice? Or perhaps something more complicated. Had he wanted this case?
He is a generous rival, but still a rival. He juggles these things with casual skill, and when — inevitably — they come into conflict, he simply shrugs with wry amusement. Every so often, though, she sees a glimpse of his ambition, a spike of ruthlessness.
Where does it come from? Some primeval instinct? His father? But his father is a cheese maker, he makes hard cheeses, soft cheeses, blue cheeses wrapped in chestnut leaves, sheep’s milk cheeses rubbed with rosemary.
Imagine. A father. A father and a cheese maker.
Quaint, she says.
No, says Nate. A highly technical operation. The mixture of milks, the introduction of bacteria, the heating to precise temperatures. Then the curing, the aging.
Would someone immersed in this small, exact world instill such drive in his son?
But perhaps Nate had wanted the case for its own sake, lured by the history running through it, the idea of some overdue redress.
Go ahead, take it. For a moment, she is tempted to say this — the stories are so haunting, but the evidence is so full of holes. Not only shaky hearsay, but double hearsay, anonymous hearsay, vague statements, missing archival records.
The benefits of losing the motion. Too late now.
But even as the words are almost out of her mouth, she thinks: no. No, she won’t — she can’t — give this case away, disturbing as it is. No, this case has attached itself to her now, she is stuck with it. This case fits her in a way that few of her others do.
The Singing Forest Page 7