Second Nature (21 page)

“Look, Robin, if you’re going to argue, you’re going to have to do it with a dead man. Old Dick’s lawyer called me, not the other way around. It turns out he made me his executor.”

“He never would have done that.”

“But he did,” Roy said. “Go figure.”

Actually, Roy hadn’t been very surprised when the attorney phoned him. Years ago, when Connor was a baby and they’d all gone over to Old Dick’s for dinner, the old man had taken Roy aside.

“You’re in the business,” Old Dick had said. “Take a look at this.”

He went through his desk and pulled out a Dade County police report that was more than fifteen years old.

“Robin’s father,” Old Dick had said—an odd choice of words, since the suicide the report covered was also his son.

Roy had looked the report over carefully, then handed it back. As far as he could tell, there’d been no foul play; it seemed a simple enough report, one he could have filled out in under ten minutes if he’d been assigned the case.

“I think about it every day,” Old Dick had said. “But of course that’s what they want you to do when they’re gone. Wonder why.” Old Dick returned the file to his desk drawer. “So what’s your opinion?” he had asked Roy. “Why would he do it?”

Roy felt extremely uncomfortable, not only because he now knew details Robin had been spared—that her father had shot himself on a Tuesday, for example, that he hadn’t even bothered to leave a note—but also because Old Dick, who Roy knew despised him, was now looking to him for an answer.

“I don’t have all the facts,” Roy had begun.

“Come on. Come on,” Old Dick had insisted. “Your best guess.”

“He was miserable,” Roy finally ventured.

“You’re absolutely right,” Old Dick had agreed after some consideration. “He was.”

It had taken all this time for Roy to figure out why Old Dick had turned to him on such a private matter. He hadn’t understood until the attorney’s call on the evening of the old man’s death.

“Looks like he trusted me,” Roy told Robin.

“Just goes to show how anyone can make a mistake,” Robin said.

Kay honked her horn; the mourners would be arriving at her house before she had time to set out the buffet.

“Go on,” Robin called to Kay. “I’ll walk.”

The gravediggers were still at work, cursing the sleet. Old Dick would have been pleased to know he’d managed to cause one last hard time.

“I never thought he’d go,” Robin said. “Remember when he poured a pitcher of ice on your head?”

When Robin was sixteen and they still lived in the big house, she always refused to have sex with Roy there. Even when he begged and swore there were so many rooms—the attic, for instance, the little pantry Ginny never bothered with, the all-but-forgotten guest room on the third floor, used for nothing more than storing an old sewing machine—they’d never be found, Robin couldn’t bring herself to do it right there, in the house. She would sneak out her window, climbing down the arbor meant for wisteria. Roy would wait for her, near the kitchen door, shifting his weight from foot to foot, clapping his hands together when it was especially cold, hidden, they assumed, from sight. Old Dick had found out soon enough—how, they never knew—and he stationed himself at an upstairs window with the ice water. Although they had never discussed it, Robin had always been certain she’d heard him laughing when Roy, drenched and freezing, yowled like a cat caught by the tail.

“I guess he liked your new boyfriend a whole lot better than he ever liked me,” Roy said. He sounded calm, but the muscles in his jaw betrayed him; they pulsed the way they always did when he was upset. “He left him the rest of his estate. Nothing for Connor or for Stuart. Nothing for you.”

“There was nothing to leave,” Robin said.

“The carriage house. And enough cash to cover the taxes for the next few years. He used his mattress as a bank. I slit it open last night. No wonder he had trouble sleeping. It was the lumpiest mattress I’ve ever seen.”

“And I’ll bet you’ve seen lots,” Robin said before she could stop herself.

“Robin.” Roy shook his head and looked up at the sky; the sleet had let up, but the air was iron-gray and cold. Some things, Roy figured, still had to be paid for long after they were found to be worthless. “The cash is in an escrow account. But you and Stuart have a perfect right to the carriage house if you want to contest the will. Old Dick had it drawn up last month, and believe me, no one in town will vouch for his sanity.”

Robin turned to walk down the path that led to the cemetery gates. She was wearing black high heels, which made navigating on the ice difficult; she raised her arms for balance, like an acrobat.

“It doesn’t bother you?” Roy said. He had come up beside her, but he kept his hands in his pockets to make certain he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and grab her. “You don’t feel like you’ve been cheated?”

The night before, when Roy went to the carriage house to collect the money hidden in the mattress, he and Stephen had been careful to avoid each other. But as he was leaving, Roy couldn’t hold himself back.

“This place is yours now,” he’d told Stephen. “Looks like you got everything you wanted. Congratulations.”

Now, as he walked beside Robin, Roy still couldn’t let it go. “Is it fair that it all goes to a stranger?” he asked her.

“You don’t understand anything,” Robin said.

She wished the weather were better; it was much harder leaving someone behind when the ground was so cold. She’d begun to think ridiculous things: that she should have left a blanket, that someone should have stayed, just so Old Dick wouldn’t be all alone.

“Explain it,” Roy said. There was something different in his voice, which made Robin turn to him. “Go on,” Roy said. “Explain it to me.”

The fact was, Robin admired Old Dick’s honesty. Why should he bother with niceties after he was dead, when he’d never bothered before? He did what he wanted, always. When she was younger, Robin would have ascribed this to pure selfishness, but now she wasn’t so sure. Who, after all, had made his bed and washed his sheets, cooked his supper and shaved him every morning? Who had sat beside him at the very last moment?

“I can’t explain it,” Robin said. “Not to you.”

They had reached the cemetery gates, which opened out to the road. The gates were wrought-iron, ordered from a blacksmith in Albany.

“Well, I feel cheated,” Roy said. “I was supposed to get you.”

After that, there was nothing left to say. They walked down Cemetery Road as the twilight turned the ice blue. Once, Roy almost reached out when Robin slipped on the road, but he thought better of it. She didn’t want that, and he knew it. Walking beside her, on the way to Kay’s, he thought that some loose talk he’d heard in a bar once really was true, in spite of its dubious source. The first person you fucked had a hold on you forever. The first person you fell in love with, you could never escape. If it turned out this was the same person, you were done for, and that was what had happened to him.

“You’re not coming in for supper?” Robin asked when Roy stopped at Kay’s driveway. The house was already full of people Old Dick had despised; Kay had ordered platters of cold cuts and good scotch, the kind Old Dick would have appreciated. “Are you sick?” Robin asked when she saw the look on Roy’s face.

“You didn’t deny it when I called him your boyfriend,” Roy said.

“I’m not fighting with you,” Robin said. She was shivering in her light spring coat. She was much too tired for this. “Not today.”

“Don’t expect me to make it easy for you,” Roy told her. “That’s all I’m saying.”

“Are you threatening me?” Robin said. “Because that’s what it sounds like, Roy.”

“No, I’m not. That is not what I’m doing.” He really looked at her now. “And you know it.”

What he was doing was actually a hundred times worse. He was telling her that he loved her, something he hadn’t mentioned and may not even have known when they were married. She used to whisper it to him sometimes, while he was fucking her, and he had to turn off his mind every time she did that. For some reason that declaration had seemed like a curse to him back then; he couldn’t even hear it spoken aloud.

“Forget it, Roy,” Robin said. She wrapped her coat around herself. “You can’t do this to me. I’m not going to feel guilty about wanting more than we could ever have. Those days are over.”

Inside, Lydia was watching from the window as Roy threw his hands up in defeat. He’d left his car parked at the cemetery just to accompany Robin to Kay’s, and now he’d have to make that long walk back alone.

“Your parents are fighting,” Lydia said to Connor.

“That’s what they do,” Connor said. “They’re real good at it.”

“We would never be like that,” Lydia told him.

“No,” Connor agreed, in love both with her and with her certainty. “Never.”

Kay’s house was so crowded it wasn’t easy to find space to stand. There was the librarian, Sofia Peters, eating salami and rye. There was Fred, from the diner, all dressed up in a black suit he hadn’t worn for fifteen years, and George Tenney, with the Doctor and a group of men who had gathered around the scotch to toast Old Dick’s memory, again and again. Robin went straight to the kitchen, where she poured herself a cup of hot coffee.

“A madhouse,” Stuart said as he came up beside Robin so he could collect more wineglasses from the cabinet. “Kay made the potato salad. Without bacon. You should try it.”

Robin was still wearing her coat, but that didn’t keep her from shivering. “I didn’t think I’d feel this way,” she admitted.

“Come on.” Stuart left the glasses for a moment so he could put one arm around her. “He had a great life. He did exactly as he pleased.”

“Right,” Robin said.

“God, he would have hated this party,” Stuart said.

In spite of herself, Robin grinned when she thought of what their grandfather could have done to this group with a few choice words. Half of these people would have already headed for the door.

“But he would have appreciated the potato salad,” Stuart said as he took the wineglasses out to the dining room.

Still, Robin couldn’t bring herself to join the crowd. Stephen had refused to come to the funeral, and she hadn’t understood why until now. Now she wondered if it was really possible to mourn between bites of potato salad. Perhaps the only thing a gathering such as this served to do was separate the living from the dead. If Lydia and Connor hadn’t come looking for her, Robin might have gone out the back door, with the hope that no one would notice.

“Did you have anything to eat?” Connor asked. “Do you want me to get you a sandwich?”

Robin shook her head no, but she loved him just for asking, and for being so awkward, and for drinking a Pepsi, rather than the beer or wine he could have had without anyone’s noticing.

“You shouldn’t be in here all by yourself,” Lydia said. She’d already retrieved her red jacket from the hall closet. She reached into the wide pocket and took out a loaf of banana bread, which she handed to Robin. “My mother,” Lydia explained. “She didn’t think you’d want to see her, but she sent this. She said when she was little she was convinced that Old Dick was a giant.”

Robin started crying right then. Lydia and Connor were both too embarrassed to look at her.

“I said something wrong,” Lydia decided.

“No,” Robin said, but she kept crying.

“I’d better stay with her,” Connor told Lydia.

“Absolutely,” Lydia agreed. She buttoned her jacket and pulled on her woolen mittens. She went to Connor and kissed him. “I’ll miss you,” she whispered.

Lydia went outside and slipped the hood of her jacket over her head. The sky had cleared to reveal a few stars, but it was even colder now. The trees were cloaked in ice, and some of the thinnest branches snapped. She had never met Connor’s great-grandfather, yet his death, she saw, would affect her anyway. It was an awful, selfish thought, but one she couldn’t get rid of. Connor’s mom would no longer be going to visit Old Dick—she had often stayed until well after midnight—and so Lydia and Connor would no longer have the house to themselves in the evenings. Where would they go to be alone together? It was too cold for Poorman’s Point, and the county had begun to bulldoze all the old fishermen’s shacks, except for the one Stuart had appropriated. Neither of them had a driver’s license yet, or use of a car, and if they checked into the one motel on the island, an inn really, run by an elderly woman named Mrs. Plant, everyone would know the news by the following morning. Desperadoes for love, that’s what they’d be, searching out privacy wherever they could find it. At least for now. Someday they’d be married and then they could do whatever they wanted. Someday her mother would have to call on the phone and make an appointment if she wanted to see her.

Lydia often managed to have her own way, but that wasn’t a crime. All this week she’d been working on her father, who was good-natured and hated the sound of an argument in his own house. Twice she’d cried in front of him; she’d confided that she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite of turkey or stuffing if Connor wasn’t invited to dinner. That was all it took, the invitation had been issued, but now Lydia worried that her mother might make a scene. Poor Connor was so nervous he planned to bring Michelle roses, although they were out of season and much too expensive. It was a long way from Kay’s house to Mansfield Terrace, and Lydia had plenty of time to think. As she reached Cemetery Road she’d already decided that if her mother said one unkind word to Connor she would never forgive her, and what’s more, she would consider running away, at least for a day or two, until she got what she wanted.

Lydia had begun to walk faster, although now and then she skidded on the sidewalk. She kept hearing that snapping sound. Once it was so close to her she imagined a branch was about to come at her from behind, but when she turned there was nothing, only the dark cold road and the black iron fence no child in town would dare to climb after twilight. She almost believed that there was a man inside the gates of the cemetery, but she knew that wasn’t possible. She was not a girl who scared easily; she wasn’t frightened by empty roads or lone crows perched on telephone wires. She went on, fighting the urge to run. Probably the funeral was what made her so uneasy; it was perfectly natural to be spooked after such an occasion. Still, when she reached the corner of Mansfield Terrace, she felt that the snapping sound was footsteps. She thought about Connor to make herself feel better; she thought about tomorrow, when he’d arrive at their door for Thanksgiving dinner, about the roses he’d be holding, the stems wrapped in green paper.