A Sudden Light: A Novel (34 page)

“Do you know what ‘emasculation’ means?” Serena asked.

“It’s when you’re no longer a man.”

“Hmm,” she agreed, nodding. “Euphemistically. If you can imagine a man emasculated in front of his family. So everyone could see. So his children could watch, and his wife could watch as his manhood was taken from him. You can imagine, the level of . . .”

“Humiliation,” I said.

“Your word, not mine. But it’s a good word.”

“Devastation.”

“Another good word.”

I remember that my father didn’t cry when he told us we were losing our house, but he was close. My mother shook her head quickly and stood up to make some tea. That’s what she did when she was upset. She made tea. They never really fought that much, even when things weren’t going well between them. But they fought that night. The night my father told us there was no more hope that we could stay in the farmhouse,
my parents fought loudly. They were fighting about me. The next morning, at breakfast, my mom made me bacon and eggs over easy and toast, even though she almost never made breakfast.

“Your grandfather in Seattle is ill,” she said, setting down the plate. “You’ll need to visit him with Dad.”

“What about you?” I asked.

She shook her head slightly and looked away.

“I’m not part of that equation,” she said.

So typically my mother. So clinical.

Serena cleared her throat to get my attention.

“Mother and Daddy could have sold The North Estate for a lot of money the day the trust was dissolved, but they didn’t. I don’t know why; considering Daddy’s condition, we may never know. Still, there were enough assets left from the trust to keep us in shoes and rain jackets for a time. Maybe that’s why they didn’t sell the house immediately; they thought there was time. But the limousines were gone, as were the staff, the groundskeepers, the pool, the tennis court, and the dream that the funicular on the cliff would one day be repaired.”

“You had a house, and money for food,” I said. “I mean, you didn’t have nothing.”

“But we could have had so much more!” she blurted out, seeming to lose control for a moment, though she quickly regained it.

“It wasn’t as horrible as it could have been,” she said after a moment. “But the stress of the ordeal broke Daddy. He began drinking heavily, as I’ve already told you. He was frustrated and depressed. He would sit in the barn by himself drinking. We hardly ever saw him. Mother grew ill. Her illness worsened so quickly, and then she died. Daddy sent Brother Jones away. And Daddy has continued to refuse to sell the property. And now we are here.”

Serena got up from her leather chair and walked to the back wall of the study. Over an oaken credenza hung a dark oil painting in a gilded frame; she removed it from the wall. Behind it was a safe.

“Why do they always hide safes behind paintings?” I asked.

“This was put here before it became clichéd to do so,” she said. “A cliché is a cliché because it’s true. You know that, Trevor.”

She spun the safe dial this way and that, entering the combination, and then she turned the lever and opened the vault door. She reached in and removed an expandable file folder and a small booklet. She returned to the desk and set them down before me.

“These are the papers that explain in detail everything I just told you,” she said, placing her hand on the file packet. “It includes the original will and the trust documents. All of it.”

“Why are you showing them to me?”

“Because I trust you. If something were to happen to me, you must follow through and redeem your legacy. You must sell this land for as much as you can get, because it is your inheritance, and you deserve it.”

“What about Ben and Elijah and what they wanted for the land?” I asked.

“They’re dead,” she said. “What good is a promise between dead men?”

I perked up at her apparent contradiction.

“But you believe in spirits,” I said. “You talked about the ghost in the secret stairway. So if you believe in spirits, then promises between the dead people, and between the dead and the living, would be just as binding as promises between the living. Isn’t that right?”

She stiffened.

“Dead people are removed from time,” she said after a moment, “and therefore forget the urgency of temporal life. Unlike me. Who knows what might happen next?”

“What are you afraid will happen next?” I asked.

She fell silent and blinked at me several times—I like to think, appreciative of my rhetorical acumen. She sighed and tapped the file before her.

“Mother died of ALS,” she said. “There is a genetic component to it. It’s not common, but one can be tested for the gene, so one might know.”

She stopped abruptly and raised her eyebrows.

“You have the gene?” I asked. “You’ve been tested?”

“Mother died when she was forty years old. That will likely be my fate as well.”

“I didn’t know.”

“How could you? But you see the motivation for my actions and intentions. You understand why there is some urgency.”

“Isn’t there some kind of therapy?”

“There’s no treatment. There’s no cure. There is only death. But let’s not dwell on such talk. I have instructed my attorney to draw up my will. It will name you as my sole heir. Everything I have, everything I own, will pass directly to you when I die. Not to your father or anyone else. To you.”

“Thanks,” I said, not quite fathoming the implications of her declaration.

“I want you to have the life I never had,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I want to give it to you. But I need something in return. We call that quid pro quo. Do you know what that means?”

I shook my head.

“It’s Latin for ‘if you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.’ Do you like getting your back scratched, Trevor?”

“Sure,” I said hesitantly.

“So do I. What do you say to me scratching your back if you scratch mine?”

“It sounds kind of creepy, honestly,” I said, picturing her and my father dancing to Billie Holiday.

She laughed and stood up. She took the folder, returned it to the safe, closed the door, and spun the dial. She returned the painting to the wall.

“Then I guess we’re done here,” she said, turning back to me. “You are dismissed.”

I sat for a moment, unmoving. Promises to dead men. Lots of money. Parents falling back in love once the burden of their financial stress was lifted. My lack of life experience.

Serena didn’t move, either, she just smiled at me. Finally, she cocked her head and raised an eyebrow.

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“What do you want?”

“Oh,” she said innocently, returning to the leather chair. “So you want to play. I was under the impression . . .”

“What do you want?” I asked again.

“I want to fulfill my destiny,” she said. “I want to sell the house and land, as my grandfather instructed. And then I want to travel the world. My world has been so narrow; I want to broaden it before I die a horrible death. I’ve been a workhorse, tied to a grinding wheel, walking in circles my entire life; I want to be free of it so, when I walk, I find myself in a different land. Dickie has put together a very smart proposal, which will bring in many dollars. Your father was supposed to get Daddy to sign the power of attorney by now, but he has failed. I need you to do it.”

“Why would Grandpa Samuel sign it for me if he won’t sign it for you or Dad?”

“In our family, fathers hate and distrust their sons, but they adore and revere their grandsons. Your grandfather hates your father. He banished him from the family twenty-three long years ago, as you know. I’ve tried to soften the hatred over the years, but, apparently, it hasn’t worked. So you need to get Grandpa Samuel to do it . . . for
you
.”

“Does my father hate me?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Does he?”

I wondered if he did. Or if he didn’t outright hate me as a person, did he hate me as a concept? The fear that my father might hate me struck me as very real in that moment. Maybe he wanted to be rid of me; I was just a burden to him. I was trying to force him to stay with my mother when maybe that’s not what he wanted at all.

“What’s more important to you?” Serena asked after giving me plenty of time to worry about my relationship with my father. “Your aunt, who
is sitting before you, and the few final years of her tragically shortened life? Or a ghost? A promise to a dead man.”

“Why don’t you sell things?” I asked in a final attempt to discover a logical reason to go against Serena’s plan. “The furniture, the rare books, the silver service, the painting of Elijah. I bet someone would pay a lot of money for that; it’s history.”

“But that’s not really the point, is it?” she asked coldly. “That’s not the point at all.”

“But it’s a question,” I said firmly.

Serena smiled tightly at me and leaned forward, her elbows on the desk.

“Check the music room,” she said. “There’s a rug with nothing on it. If you look closely, you’ll see three indentations—wear marks. That’s where the Bösendorfer stood, a valuable grand piano that was purchased by Elijah Riddell in 1903. I sold it so we could have little things like food and electricity and gas for the stove. Creature comforts. Grandpa threw such a fit, I cannot describe it to you. He refused to eat for six days. Were you here for that?”

“No,” I admitted reluctantly.

“Then you’ll have to trust me when I tell you I can’t ‘sell things’ until we can get him out of the house. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Good. Do we have an agreement?”

After a moment, I nodded, admitting to myself that the immediate needs of the living probably did outweigh the wishes of the dead, though not necessarily in every situation.

Serena opened a desk drawer and removed a thin folder. She stood up, circled around to the front of the desk, and handed the folder to me.

“This is a power of attorney document,” she said, standing before my chair. “It needs to be signed by Grandpa Samuel. But it must be signed in the presence of a notary public.”

She then handed me a business card.

“This is the number of a mobile notary service. They guarantee to be on-site within thirty minutes of your call. His passport is in the folder as well.”

“Didn’t Dad have that?” I asked.

“I told you,” Serena replied. “He didn’t get the job done, so he’s been relieved of his duties.”

She looked at me and smiled a bit.

“I think you can do the math on this, am I right?” she asked.

I looked from her to the folder and back.

“You’d have to promise to put him in the nice place,” I said. “Kensington House. Not the bad place next to the Taco Bell.”

She laughed.

“Whatever gave you the idea I would put him in a below-average facility?” she asked. “You’ve been reading too much Eugene O’Neill.”

Eugene O’Neill? I knew he was a famous playwright, but that was all I knew.

“I’ve never read
any
Eugene O’Neill,” I said.

“One day you will, and then you will know. Nevertheless, I give you my word that Kensington House will be Grandpa Samuel’s new home. It’s a graduated facility, so, as his condition deteriorates, they can accommodate his changing needs—as you know, his brain is like an Alka-Seltzer tablet in a glass of water: it is rapidly dissolving. I am touched that you’re so concerned about his welfare, even though you hadn’t met him until two weeks ago. You have a refreshing level of empathy and compassion that is quite uncommon.”

She leaned forward and braced herself by placing her hand on my thigh; she kissed my cheek. Since I was sitting and she was standing, her cleavage was in my face again, and the scent of citrus oil filled my nose. I wondered if she really had the ALS gene, or if that was another of her tactics. Serena’s brazen manipulations.

“Everyone loves a good back scratching,” she whispered, and then
she brushed my cheek lightly with her fingers. “Sorry,” she said. “You are too cute to resist.”

I felt nothing as she went off, except that I knew I was over her. My first crush, gone already. And then my thoughts turned to the task I had been given, and whether or not it was something I could—or should—attempt to accomplish. Sure, it would be better for the living people, Grandpa Samuel included. And maybe, if I did it, I could end the Riddell cycle of a father hating his son. Maybe my father wouldn’t hate me if I delivered him his house.

M
y father had prevailed over the blackberry bushes, which were not bushes at all but snarling ropes of vicious, razor-sharp thorns that engulfed anything they came up against, swallowing trees and structures alike, evidencing the forest’s relentless desire to take back what was rightly hers. In a heroic display of his own relentless nature, my father had whipped back those vines—beaten them down with a machete, a pickax, and a shovel. He tore up the roots, and with a power washer from Aurora Rents, he blasted clean an outdoor cooking structure known as the fire pit. It was a matter of principle for him. The fire pit was a piece of his childhood that he refused to allow to be forgotten. The house could go to hell, as far as he was concerned. The fire pit was important to save.

And so, the day after I had gone to the dark side and pledged to help Serena, I helped the others carry bags of supplies down the hill and across the orchard. My father had already prepared a fire, which was truly a piece of architecture, and I was duly impressed. It was like
a ceremonial funeral pyre or something. My father had never built fires when I was growing up. We never went camping, and we didn’t have a fire pit at the farmhouse, so I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen my father build a fire outside before. But this one was magnificent—the kindling sticks and the wedges of dried wood and the crumpled newspapers beneath, all bracing each other, leaning together to form a perfect cone of combustible material.

“The design of a fire is important, Trevor,” Serena said to me as my father struck a match and lit a few corners of newspaper. “Air circulation is crucial. A fire needs to draw cold air in from the bottom to feed its insatiable hunger for fuel.”