Shorecliff (15 page)

Delia, Delia, Tom, Fisher, and I spread out through the woods and found nothing. Lorelei moved rapidly toward the lawn surrounding Shorecliff. She didn’t call Barnavelt’s name or crouch down as if she were an outlaw. She whisked through the trees, making less sound than any of us, as if she knew exactly where she was going. When she reached the edge of the trees she stopped. That was the last I saw of her before I veered off to another portion of the woods. Delia Robierre said she saw her taking a few steps forward onto the grass, her head turning this way and that. And Lorelei herself told us about seeing Barnavelt sitting as dogs sit, on his hind legs, his tongue out, panting. He was so little that in the uncut grass he was nearly hidden; but his ears were sticking straight up, and that’s what gave him away.

None of us was really surprised when Lorelei came back with him in her arms, but it was hard not to feel crestfallen, as if we had somehow let the family honor down. We watched her lower the fox into his box and give him a final pat, and each of us imagined doing the same thing.

Then she stood up and told us what he had looked like when she found him, and she had such a lovely, shy smile on her face that we forgave her. “He was just sitting there, waiting for us,” she said. She used “us” out of politeness. It was clear that none of the Hatfields would ever have found him. “He knew we would come, and there he was, with his pointy ears just showing above the grass. When I came to pick him up, he looked right at me, as if he were expecting me. He didn’t try to run away at all. I think he was playing a game.” She beamed at us. None of us, with the possible exception of Tom, had ever heard her say so much at once.

One of the Delias, I think Delia Ybarra, said, “Maybe he wanted to be free.” But we didn’t pay any attention to her. It was so obvious that no fox would want to be free when he could be rescued by Lorelei.

I thought for a moment of her dealings with Tom and tried to feel angry at their secret intimacy, but I couldn’t call up any disapproval. Lorelei was an amazing girl and a fox-catcher. Tom was lucky to have her. All of us were.

Unfortunately his possession of her carried ramifications well beyond the simple issue of loyalty to the rest of us. A week after Barnavelt’s short-lived escape, when I had become almost accustomed to the idea of Tom’s nightly visits to Lorelei, several of the older cousins and I were sitting in Isabella’s room. A desultory card game was in progress, but for the most part they were all just chatting. It was one of those evenings in which everyone seemed full of wit, and with much delighted laughter the cousins were tossing around ideas for shocking Aunt Edie. I drank in the innuendo, more desperate to learn than I ever was in school. Every night with the cousins was an education, even when, as on this night, their love of absurdity outweighed their inclination to pursue scandal with any seriousness.

Yvette appeared in the doorway in the midst of one of Francesca’s most outrageous and comical descriptions—it involved an elaborately staged series of silhouettes for Aunt Edie to catch sight of through Shorecliff’s windows as she took her morning walk. The words were almost unintelligible because Francesca, watching Isabella’s disbelieving face, was laughing so hard as she spoke. But Yvette deciphered the gist and raised her eyebrows.

“Who would it be?” she said. “You, Francesca? Charlie? Don’t you ever get bored with your own jokes?”

“If you’re in a bad mood, don’t stick around,” said Tom.

“I’m not in a bad mood. I just don’t see why Francesca wastes her time teasing Charlie and making things up when there’s a much better story right here in this room.” She stared at Tom. I don’t know why she picked that night for a fight. Maybe she had been sitting in her room, listening to the laughter from down the hall, working herself into a fury. At any rate, her intention was unmistakable. Tom, who had been lolling on the floor, slowly rose to his feet.

“What do you mean by that?” he asked.

The comic atmosphere died. We all stared, even Francesca, who—I was proud to remind myself—knew less than I did about the secret tensions between Tom and Yvette. Or perhaps that was only wishful thinking on my part. The older cousins rarely missed a trick, and in retrospect it seems unlikely that Francesca or Philip or any of them would have failed to notice Yvette’s infatuation.

“Well?” he said, when Yvette didn’t respond. He took a step closer to her. “Well? Aren’t you going to explain? They don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Of course they do,” she said, tossing her head. “Everyone knows. It’s obvious. The aunts know too.”

For a brief second Tom was startled. “They do? Why—did you tell them?” Then he looked at her face, and his eyes narrowed. “You’re lying. They don’t know. You just think everyone knows because you can’t stop thinking about it, can you? I bet you imagine it.”

Yvette winced, and the rest of us stirred uncomfortably. “Take it easy, Tom,” Philip said. I glanced at him. He was watching Tom from the spare bed, but he was poised for motion. I could see that he was debating whether or not to break up the fight by stepping between them. The rest had similar expressions on their faces, both horrified and expectant. They were wondering if Tom was going to tear down the barrier of implication, if he was going to come right out and say something that would make it impossible to smooth things over.

Yvette’s eyes were locked on Tom’s. They were staring at each other with an intensity that, if truth be told, held no place between family members. “You’re just scared,” she said. “You’re scared every day that people will find out. That you won’t get to have her anymore. That she won’t want you anymore.”

She was obviously casting around for any remark that would sting Tom. Nevertheless, her words hit home. For the first and nearly the last time, I saw Tom lose his temper. He bridged the remaining distance between them in one stride and with his body inches from hers looked her slowly up and down. “Would you like this better?” he said. “You’re just trying to hurt me—I know that. But it won’t work. I can hurt you much more, any day. Can’t I?”

The electricity between them was palpable. The rest of us felt it, and it nailed us to our seats. Whether it was resentment or attraction or simply the excitement of possibility, it made Yvette tremble. She was breathing so quickly that her chest heaved. Tom lifted his hand. It seemed for an instant as if he were actually going to touch her, and in that moment I saw his expression falter. He had begun in anger, but a devoted admirer, even a jealous one, can be compelling. I think it was the first time he considered Yvette as a girl he could actually caress.

Isabella saved us from disaster. With a clumsy bound she stood up and slipped her arm around Yvette’s waist. “That’s okay, Yvette,” she said, tugging her away from Tom. “He doesn’t mean it. He’s just joking around.” She glared at Tom, surprise and hurt patent in her face. I can imagine that it would be disconcerting to see one’s own brother so unmistakably tempted by desire.

Yvette, freed from the magnetism of Tom’s stare, kept her eyes on the ground, and Isabella ushered her back to her room like a nurse with a patient. From the rest of the cousins came several audible sighs of relief.

“Jesus, Tom,” Philip said.

Tom looked around at us, saying nothing.

“I think—” Charlie began hesitantly. “You know, maybe we should all just—you know, tone it down. All of us, I mean.” He smiled hopefully at Tom but could not help glancing at Francesca. Fascinated as Charlie was by her, there was no frightening intensity in their flirtation. But Tom’s intimidation of Yvette had cast a shadow of risk over the rest of us. For a few moments it seemed necessary to take Francesca’s salacious teasing seriously, something no one—least of all Charlie—wanted to do. He was, I believe, genuinely innocent in his appreciation of Francesca, and she, in those early days, was simply amusing herself out of boredom. For Yvette and Tom the stakes were higher, the feelings deeper—passion and longing edged their impulses. I think Isabella felt a similar intensity, but it lacked, at first, a defined focus.

It should also be noted that Delia and Delia, without any hint of sexuality, were experiencing emotions of an equivalent power. Their immense adventure of the summer, however, was in the bond of friendship—a bond equally deep, equally magical, equally passionate, and yet how much less dangerous and destructive than the attractions and jealousies that rocketed back and forth among the older cousins!

Charlie, in his good-natured, blundering way, was trying to bring us back into the comfort of the family circle. We all appreciated his effort, especially me. I was dreading the moment, near to inevitable, when one of them would remember I was in the room and send me away.

Tom, smiling sheepishly, said, “Yeah, you’re right.” He was still standing. Awkwardness prevented him from sitting down.

“We all know just how far you’ve gone with Lorelei,” Francesca said. “In case there was any doubt on that score.”

“Pretty hard to miss at this point,” Philip said with his inimitable sneer, half mocking, half comradely.

“In fact,” Francesca said, beginning to grin, “Yvette was right, in a way—it’s too good not to be put to use. If our aim is to give Aunt Edie a heart attack, what better way than to lead her over to the Stephensons’ one morning. ‘Don’t worry, Aunt Edie,’ we’ll say, ‘we’re just going to get some jam from Old Farmer Stephenson.’ And then, when we bring her into the barn…” She dove into the story, embroidering it with her velvet voice, skirting around the details, covering up the nakedness of Tom’s emotions. In ten minutes they were all as uproarious as they had been before the fight.

The next day at the shore Tom—urged by Isabella—walked over to Yvette as she sunbathed and said, standing above her, “Will you play racquetball with us? We need a fourth player.”

She squinted up at him, shielding her eyes with one tense hand, searching his face.

“Really,” he said, and he smiled. “We do.”

It was an apology, as clear as any apology could be. Yvette stood up in a fluid, long-legged movement and said, “Okay.” She smiled back at him. “Thanks.”

They were friends again. But we had seen the confrontation between them. We had felt the waves of emotion rolling out from where they stood, as if a boulder had been thrown into a pool. Their restored friendliness was genuine on one level, but the menace of that other level—the level where true alliances are made and broken—lurked beneath their interactions from then on. It lurked beneath us all, tied together as we were.

T
oward the end of July, my mother fell into step with what was destined to be a long line of family betrayals. I was in her bedroom, visiting her in the evening as I sometimes did. She had asked me to come there especially that day, but I suspected nothing. We sat on her white bed, looking out at the yard that was glowing in the last of the sunlight, and chatted about the day’s events.

My mother liked to wear dresses that set off her figure—usually they had flowers on them, blue or green or yellow. Aunt Margery wore wide-brimmed sunhats, but my mother never wore anything on her head except when traveling, for which she always donned a maroon cloche hat. Shorecliff was good for her, in spite of the constant noise of children and their escapades, and her skin by this time had tanned to a warm brown that I loved.

I was feeling vividly and consciously happy when she said, “I have something to tell you, Richard.”

“What is it, Mother?” I asked.

“Your father called yesterday while all of you were out at Condor’s cottage. He’s going to come up for the weekend. Won’t that be nice?”

She knew I would think it was anything but nice, and I couldn’t believe she looked forward to his visit either. Theirs was not precisely an unhappy marriage—my mother would not have scrupled at divorce had my father been cruel—but she stuck by him through what seemed to me to be cruel coldness. When I was older, my mother told me my father was made of pure honor and that was why I didn’t like him. “His honor is untinged by mercy,” she told me, “or humor or understanding for human mistakes.”

“That’s not my type of honor,” I growled, then in college.

“No, but it’s a sort the world needs in some men,” she replied. I failed to see the truth of that statement, and I failed even more to understand why she would marry such a stony pillar of honor. She said that she had wanted to find the man behind the principles, but when I asked her if she’d had any luck, she dodged the question. I hope she did find the man. At any rate, I can truly say that my father has never lied, never stolen, never connived for his own gain, and never betrayed any man’s trust. It occurs to me that I should value this last trait, given the events of that summer. And I do value it. You could and still can depend on my father always to be himself. He is never absent when he says he will be present; he never startles anyone with an unexpected smile or joke. Everyone who knows him can be certain that when they speak to Richard Killing the First, they will be speaking to the same dour, thin-lipped, ironclad man they have always known.

But I would like to ask my father if he has ever burst out of his protective shell, if he has ever thrown away his high-flown morals and raced out on some shocking, thrilling adventure. Did he ever disobey his elders? Did he ever break a rule? Has his heart ever pounded? Has he ever turned red? Has he ever let out a real burst of laughter, one lasting longer than his usual humph of amusement?

I’ve never asked my father those questions. He is still alive; I could still ask him. But I know that I won’t, just as I wouldn’t and couldn’t as a child. Even then I wanted to ask my mother whether my father allowed any crack to appear in the mask he wore, if only to show her that he loved her. I worried often that he didn’t appreciate her. But I didn’t ask her that summer or ever, so I can only hope that he did.

At thirteen, my thoughts of him were permeated by fear. I knew he would never beat me, but his reprimands were worse than blows—they were so unbending, so mercilessly stern and distant, that I felt as if I were being given a glimpse of some hell where human feeling had been eradicated. When my mother told me he was coming, I was horrified. Shorecliff, my haven, was being invaded by the outside world’s most dreaded agent.

“Why is he coming?” I cried.

“Why, to see you and me and all of our family,” my mother replied. She didn’t pretend not to know why I had asked, though. “Don’t worry, Richard. Your father loves you very much”—she never ceased trying to convince me of that—“and besides, he won’t be staying long.”

My cousins weren’t excited to hear of my father’s visit either, but they were courteous about not showing it in front of me.

“Uncle Richard is coming?” Tom said with a glance at Philip, when I came into their bedroom and told them. “That’s fine. It’s just for the weekend, right?”

“We’ll survive,” Philip said, looking at me. “You will too, buddy,” he added.

“I don’t want him to come,” I announced. It was important that my cousins be aware of my own dislike of him. I didn’t want them to think I was on his side, in the enemy camp.

“You know what your father’s got going for him?” Philip asked.

I expected him to say something about how he never lied or never let down a client, and I said, “What?” resentfully.

“He’s really smart,” Philip said. “I’ve only spoken to him a few times, but he’s really, really smart. He’s maybe the smartest man I know. I think he’s even smarter than Uncle Cedric.” Tom threw a pillow at him, but he ignored it. “Anyway, I think that’s worth something,” he told me.

I had never thought of my father that way, but Philip was right. He was extremely intelligent—it was what made him such a successful lawyer. And though Philip was trying to be nice, he was also sincere, and that made me feel a little better.

Pamela also offered me an unexpected bit of comfort. We were dawdling in my room, and I must have hinted at how worried I was. She was looking out the window—I wasn’t sure she was even paying attention—but eventually she said without turning around, “Well, at least you never have to feel embarrassed by him. Uncle Richard never acts like an idiot.” It was a perspective on my father I had never considered—up to that time fear and resentment had pushed out any possibility of embarrassment. But like Philip’s observation, it was undeniably true.

The next two days were spent in unpleasant anticipation. My father was arriving on Friday evening. Aunt Margery, the official driver of the rattletrap, my mother, and I were all going to Pensbottom to meet him. The prospect of entering the town, scene of Francesca and Charlie’s glorious escape, enlivened me somewhat, but I found that the closer we got, the more anxious I became. I was sitting alone in the backseat. Halfway there, after some intense calculation, I said, “Mother, I’ll let you sit in the backseat with Father on the ride back, so that you can talk with him.” Mother laughed and said it was sweet of me.

The train arrived ten minutes after we reached the station. My mother insisted that we get out of the car and line up alongside it, the way Pamela and Aunt Margery had when my mother and I came. My father was the fifth person off the train. He was wearing a black, pinstriped suit, undoubtedly the one he had worn to the office, and a homburg hat. He looked distinguished and very tall. My mother came up only to his shoulder, and she wasn’t particularly short for a woman. When she saw him stepping down from the car, she ran forward with a bright smile and said, “I’m so glad to see you, Richard!” Then she put her arms around him, and he kissed her. I couldn’t analyze the emotion in that greeting because my father was approaching the car. First he said hello to Margery, and she said, “It’s nice to see you, Richard.” Then he said, “Hello, Richard. How have you been?” He never called me Junior—a mark in his favor.

“Hello, Father,” I said, swallowing. It was a terrible, awkward hello.

He ruffled my hair but didn’t smile or hug me. “You’ll have to tell me what you’ve been doing.”

“Playing with the cousins, mostly.”

“Had some fun?”

“Yes, lots.”

“Been a good boy? Been a good son to your mother?”

“Richard has been a delightful son, as he always is.” My mother smiled at me with her special smile, signifying our membership in a private, two-person club.

“Well, I’m famished,” my father said. “Let’s drive home.” I resented his calling Shorecliff home.

Thanks to my preemptive strike on the ride down, I had the comfort of Aunt Margery’s cushiony body next to mine on the ride back. Mother and Father spent nearly the whole thirty minutes mute, and Aunt Margery, usually garrulous to a fault, was cowed into silence.

When we arrived at home, the same formal greetings were handed out on all sides. My father shook hands with the other men, smiled a lips-only smile at the women, nodded at all his nieces and nephews, and considered his duty done. Aunt Rose—for once taking on the role of chef—gave him a wonderful meal that he acknowledged with conventional compliments, and then he sat back at the dinner table and engaged in shop talk with Uncle Frank and Uncle Cedric.

I was relieved to see that Uncle Kurt, though appearing to pay attention to their conversation, contributed very little and at times glanced over and winked at me. Sometimes, when I went to his room in the mornings, instead of launching into a story about his wartime adventures he would ask me for advice on some unimportant matter or probe my feelings on a certain topic. When Francesca and Charlie ran away to Pensbottom, Uncle Kurt and I had a man-to-man talk about it, weighing the pros and cons. In hindsight, it was maybe hypocritical of Uncle Kurt to indulge me in these discussions, but at the time I felt privileged and, for once, valued for my intelligence. That night I knew I would find solace in his room the next morning, when I could complain to him, in an adult manner of course, about my father’s visit.

During that first evening, my cousins walked around as if they had taken a vow of silence. Normally our dinners, held at the enormous table in the dining room, were rowdy to say the least. Food fights had been known to break out, riotous arguments raged from the salad through dessert, jokes were told, secrets were revealed. Dinnertime was one of my favorite times of each day. But when my father ate with us, my cousins were replaced by lifeless replicas of themselves. They all remembered to put their napkins in their laps. They spoke when they were spoken to and not before. They were so subdued that they didn’t even smile or exchange rebellious glances. I looked at them with despair in my heart. Would the rest of the summer be like this? Would my father, with one three-day visit, kill the life of Shorecliff altogether? I felt not only horror but guilt—he was, after all, my father, and I was convinced that my cousins condemned me on account of his presence.

As soon as they had been released from the bondage of the dinner table—and Aunt Rose, in an unexpected show of compassion, exempted the two children on kitchen patrol from their duties—the cousins raced as one to the third floor. My father’s tentacles of sobriety did not reach up two flights of stairs.

I had been held longer at the table as The Son, an additional punishment, and when I finally arrived upstairs, I went immediately to Pamela. I found her and Yvette sitting on their beds, talking. The rest of us never knew what the Wight girls said to each other. They got along well and almost never quarreled, possibly because their decorum prevented them from anything but passive aggression. I respected their sisterly bond, and I also found their combined reserve hard to face. Therefore, though they both politely turned to look at me when I entered the room, I didn’t ask Pamela to come with me. I just said, “I’ve gotten away.”

“That’s good,” Pamela said.

They waited; I left. The next door to try was Isabella’s. I found not only her but also Charlie, Francesca, and Tom. They were, I assume, having a meeting about how to fight the dragon. When Isabella called for me to come in, I closed the door and stood in front of it, feeling as if I were facing a panel of judges in a courthouse. Their stares, though not accusing, seemed as intimidating as my father’s cold gaze. Finally I exclaimed, “I don’t want my father to be here!” Then I burst into tears.

Isabella leaped up and enfolded me in her gawky embrace. It was the first time she returned to her old habit of hugging me, and in the midst of my tears I thrilled at her touch. She dragged me to her bed as a sort of trophy, and as I sobbed on her bony shoulder I could feel Francesca rubbing my back. The boys patted my shoulders and told me not to worry. We Hatfields excel at empathy, though all four cousins must have known that my misery was exaggerated. My father, after all, was leaving that Sunday, and he was not deliberately attempting to spoil our fun. It would be easy to head out to Condor’s cottage or the shore the next day and avoid all contact with him. Nevertheless, they felt the magnitude of the situation as I saw it and suffered with me, and I was grateful to them for doing so.

I was also grateful that they didn’t try to comfort me by vilifying my father. Tom kept saying, “He’s really not that bad, Richard. He’s just not like the rest of us, but that’s okay. After two months with us, you’d think you’d want someone who didn’t fly off the handle about everything.”

“None of us mind that he’s here,” Isabella said, which was a blatant lie.

“And remember what Philip said,” Tom added.

“What did Philip say?” Isabella asked.

“He said that Uncle Richard was incredibly smart, which he is. Richard here ought to be proud of him. He’s one of the best lawyers in New York.”

“The main thing, Richard,” Francesca told me, “is that you love your mother, and she chose to marry your father. You have to trust her about that. We all love Aunt Caroline, and we know she’s just as smart as Uncle Richard. She wouldn’t have married him if he weren’t a great man.” Francesca’s phrasing was a little odd, but her insights were sound, and her comfort was the most effective, though their pats and hugs all helped to quiet me.

I went at last to bed sedated after an hour of crying and coddling. The next day we played our traditional morning game of croquet, and Lorelei appeared. I watched with trepidation as Tom led her up to my father, but Lorelei never lost her poise. She was wearing a blue skirt and a white blouse, and her feet were bare. “Good morning, Mr. Killing,” she said. A smile fluttered on her lips without quite coming into existence. “It’s very nice to meet you.” That was all. We returned to the game, and my father returned to his conversation with Uncle Cedric and Uncle Frank at the sidelines. Though they both took up their usual posts in lawn chairs—sagging, moldy chairs that were ragged after years of steady use—my father stood beside them, wearing clothes that would have gone unremarked in his legal office, sipping a glass of lemonade and shading his eyes to watch us play.