Shorecliff (27 page)

Afterward I remembered those evenings with a painful pleasure. They held none of the sun-washed brightness of Shorecliff’s days, none of the excitement of setting out for Condor’s cottage or swimming at the beach, but they captured the coziness of living in a house with ten other children, and that closeness was one of the things I treasured most about our summer at Shorecliff. I never felt it anywhere else or with any other people. My cousins alone created this warm world, to which I undeniably belonged, privy even to the splendor of poker until midnight.

The number of night games declined dramatically after my father’s visit, since the Ybarras were the predominant driving force behind them, and they stopped altogether after Aunt Edie’s birthday. For five or six nights we filed gloomily into our respective bedrooms without any evening entertainment at all, so I was surprised when my suggestion of a game of Piggy met with enthusiasm.

“Why not?” said Tom, hurling himself onto Isabella’s bed. “There’s nothing else to do in this godforsaken place.” He mused for a moment and then added, “Let’s make this the best game of Piggy we’ve ever played. Are you up for it?” He looked at Isabella.

Francesca was absent, and Yvette, of course, was not welcome in any room that held Tom. But the rest of us were there, and we agreed to his challenge. Charlie was chosen as a reliable if uninspired farmer. Tom and Fisher were always so excited at the prospect of being pigs that they refused to be the first farmer. As for me, I was such an incompetent farmer that I was never called upon to be anything but a pig—infrequently caught, I’m proud to say, but only because I was often forgotten in the pursuit of a more exciting quarry.

Isabella and I ran downstairs to inform the adults that a Piggy game was about to commence. They were surprised, considering the recent upheaval, but it was clear from their faces that they were pleased; Piggy was a safely innocent activity. We then scurried through the house, turning off lights, and returned to Isabella’s bedroom. Before going up the last flight of stairs, I hesitated outside Francesca’s door and finally knocked.

“Who is it?” she said. I could barely make out the words.

“Richard,” I called back after a moment. I poked my head in.

She was reading in bed. “What do you want?” she asked.

“We’re playing Piggy. Do you want to play?”

“Oh. No, thanks.”

“Okay.” I closed the door and leaned against it for a moment. Speaking with Francesca gave me a horrible sense of inadequacy. I felt as if I were so far from being able to please her that the mere sight of me filled her with disappointment.

On returning to Isabella’s room, I regained my anticipation for the coming game. Tom was giving the pigs a brief lecture before we dispersed. Charlie was sitting on the spare bed pretending not to listen. Finally he counted down from ten, and the house was filled with silent pigs scampering to their favorite hiding places. The kitchen served as our pigpen. Because Shorecliff had no back staircase, restricting the pigs’ movement considerably, we were allowed to use the kitchen’s screen door as an escape route, provided we immediately circled around to the front door and came back into the house.

The life of a pig, if you were not in full stealth mode, was often boring. It was tempting, indeed wise, to remain in one well-
considered
hiding place and while away the time. I frequently wedged myself into a corner only to discover half an hour later that I had been daydreaming and forgotten the game completely. To forestall this piggy ennui, Tom encouraged each pig to pick a destination and try to reach it without getting caught. It was a pointless exercise as far as the aim of the game was concerned, but it kept the pigs entertained.

That night, however, I wanted some time to gloat over the success of my suggestion. To the sound of Charlie’s voice counting down from ten, I raced down the stairs and crawled noisily into the closet where we had found the bocce balls at the beginning of the summer. There I settled myself on a pile of moldy tennis rackets and replayed the last quarter hour to myself. Within five minutes Charlie found me. I went to the kitchen and was surprised to find that I had not been Charlie’s first victim: Isabella was already there. We bellowed, “Piggy wants a signal!” a few times, and Isabella added, “Piggy
needs
a signal!” for good measure. Then we sat down to wait. A few minutes later Pamela appeared at one of the kitchen windows and turned a flashlight on and off while waving. Isabella and I scooted through the screen door, and while she ran around the corner of the house to parley with Pamela, I circled to the front door and reentered the game.

An hour later I was racing down the stairs, narrowly avoiding my fourth capture of the evening. The farmer was close by, so I flung myself into the phone booth. The booth was such an obvious hiding place that it had no long-term value, but it was useful as a temporary shelter if the farmer was running by in search of another pig. I liked it because if you sat on the ground and leaned against the bench inside, it felt as if you were shut up in an underground burrow, cut off from the rest of the house. Only the top half of the booth was glassed in—the bottom half and the ornate framework had been constructed out of cherry wood, and the result was an attractive fixture in the hall, as well as a convenient way station for pigs.

Lying half underneath the bench, I made sure the door was fastened and then allowed myself to relax and catch my breath. Soft footfalls padded into the hall, and through the booth’s glass windows I watched the shadow of a lone pig as it traveled across the moonlit wall. Then all was quiet. I settled in to wait until Tom, the present farmer, found me.

As it turned out, however, Tom was occupied in a battle of near misses with Isabella on the top floor, and for a long time I lay undisturbed. I was still in the booth when the uncles arrived home. Nearly asleep, I heard the latch of the front door open and saw a splash of moonlight washing over the hall ceiling. At first I thought it was a pig escaping from the pen, but then I heard the thud of heavy footsteps and a subdued male chuckle, and I realized who it was. Uncle Cedric, Uncle Frank, and Uncle Kurt crowded into the front hall, weighed down by their hunting gear. The moment passed when I could innocently present myself, and I remained in the phone booth, listening with growing apprehension to their talk, not allowing myself to breathe.

“Damn it, that was a devil of a walk,” Uncle Cedric said. His words were muffled by the clanking of boots and guns as they dropped their bags onto the floor. “Kurt, you have to stop getting in so late. These evening hikes from town are too much for me.”

“I’m sorry, Cedric,” Kurt replied. My heart thrilled when I heard his voice. I had felt starved for stories in his absence. “You know I try as hard as I can to make the early train, but waking up at five in the morning is hell. I wish there were a midday train, but there isn’t.”

That was when I first sensed something was wrong. As far as we knew, trains played no part in the uncles’ hunting trips. It sounded, moreover, as if Uncle Kurt had taken a train by himself. I tensed up, as listeners do when they hear something unexpected, and checked to make sure the phone booth’s door was fastened.

“You must have outdone yourself in Portland this time, my boy,” Frank was saying. “Normally a man like you wouldn’t think twice about waking up for a six o’clock train.”

“Well, you know.” Uncle Kurt chuckled, and there was something strange in the laugh, a bit of shame, a bit of discomfort. I recognized the sound I would have made if I had done something bad in school and were trying to laugh it off.

“I just don’t see how you couldn’t have done better than ten with my money,” Uncle Cedric said after a pause. “That was a precious fifty dollars I gave you, especially since I had to snatch it from under Rose’s nose. Where was your legendary skill?”

“I did the best I could, all right?”

“Well, it seems like a lot of trouble to go through just for ten bucks.”

“I’m content with getting sixty back for my fifty,” Uncle Frank said. “After all, it’s easy enough for us, Cedric. Give the man some slack.”

“I always keep your money in the small but safe games.” Kurt cleared his throat, and I felt even more acutely that he was experiencing some species of discomfort—regret or remorse or humiliation.

“What is it, Kurt?” Cedric asked. “Where’s your own money?”

“To tell you the truth, fellows, I lost it all. And then some.” The last phrase he added in an undertone. “With my own money I just can’t resist the big chance. After all, a dollar here and a dollar there… The long and short of it is I got myself into a high-stakes game.”

I heard an intake of breath. “Have you got anything left?” Uncle Frank asked.

“Not a cent.” False heartiness laced Kurt’s voice. “But don’t worry. A little debt never hurt anyone. I’ll win it all back soon enough. I think I’ve found a good place now—reliable and honest, which is the important thing. If I hadn’t been so distracted, I wouldn’t have lost it in the first place. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll—”

“Distracted by what?”

“Oh, well… There’s a girl involved with the place, and I—well, I got distracted. You know how it is.”

“You lost your money because you were messing around with some floozy? Exactly what kind of a place was it?” Uncle Cedric said.

“Cedric, I hear that tone of disapproval. The day has been too long for me to be told I’ve been a bad boy.”

There was a silence. Then Cedric said, “You’re right. I worry about you, but in the end it’s none of my business. A man your age has the right to do what he wants.”

“I wish I knew why you’ve been staying cooped up here all summer—” Uncle Frank began.

Uncle Kurt cut him off. “We’ve been over this before, Frank. There are the kids to think about, and the fact that I like being at Shorecliff, and the importance of my work and how much I get done here. But the main point is that if I weren’t here the girls would want to know why. They’d find out somehow—you know how they are. And can you imagine Rose condoning all this? Certainly not. She’d remember Eberhardt. She’d compare me with Loretta. She’d run the whole gamut of accusation, and Margery and Caroline would back her up.”

“Where are they all, anyway?” Frank said. “I thought they’d stay up to tell us how late it is.”

“The real truth is you’re ashamed,” Cedric broke in. “And I am too, God knows. I wish I’d never gone along with it.”

“No more sermons, I said!”

I had been shivering for a good while, and now I felt as if I were about to cry. My heart was pounding so loudly I was sure it would rattle the bench of the phone booth, but the uncles continued talking until their conversation dwindled into the mundane, and eventually they plodded upstairs. As they went, a scattering of pigs emerged from the upper floors. I discovered later that I had been the only pig on the first floor and thus the only person close enough to hear their conversation. Bedroom lights flicked on, and Tom, peering down from the third floor and seeing the uncles, bellowed that the game was over and tore down to greet them.

I emerged from the phone booth, trying not to listen as Uncle Kurt described the deer that got away. Cedric and Frank were loaded down with rabbits and pheasants, and when I got upstairs I found that Uncle Kurt was holding a bag of game too. I didn’t speak, even when Kurt smiled at me and said hello. The other cousins ignored me. I went to my mother, who had come out of her bedroom in her wonderful yellow nightgown, and told her I was very tired and wanted to go to bed right away. My face must have matched my words, for she felt my forehead and agreed that sleep was the best solution. Accordingly, I retired to the third floor and sat on my bed.

A huge choice now presented itself to me. In a few seconds, I had learned that Uncle Kurt, my hero, my upright soldier, spent his time away from Shorecliff at a gambling house in Portland in the company of loose women—“messing around with floozies,” in Cedric’s unforgettable words. At the time, of course, I didn’t know the term “floozy,” but I had recently gained a remarkable perspicuity about the influence of sex, and I had a good idea of what Uncle Kurt meant when he spoke about being distracted by a girl. The image I had created of Tom and Lorelei writhing in a field reappeared in my mind, only now Uncle Kurt was writhing with her, and the scene transformed into a red room with lots of tables, gilt chairs, and a glittering chandelier, and Lorelei became a woman with dark hair and blue eye shadow. I didn’t know what a gambling house looked like, but I borrowed freely from hotel lobbies I had seen—these being the most decadent places I had ever visited.

What crushed me, though, was not the gaudy cheapness of gambling halls and their denizens—as I say, I knew almost nothing about them—but the fact that I had heard in Kurt’s words his creeping shame. My uncle Kurt was someone who always told the truth; he was never afraid, and so he never had to lie. Yet here he was, lying to everyone, sneaking around because he was too embarrassed to tell us what he was really doing. That was what broke my heart.

Just thinking about him made it hard for me to breathe. I sat and heaved like a landed fish for about fifteen minutes, but the looming choice refused to leave my mind. The burden of knowledge was crushing me, and I knew that if I shared it, the weight would lessen. Yet by eavesdropping and overhearing Kurt’s secret, devastating though it was, I had acquired an obligation not to betray him. I had been so outraged by Yvette’s betrayal of Tom and Lorelei that I had vowed, while still quivering at the makeshift birthday table, never to be guilty of such treachery. Now, only a few days later, I was faced with the same temptation.

The truth was that on one level I wanted to tell simply because it would be such an astonishing revelation. I had just chanced upon what was easily the greatest remaining family secret, which would unseat one of the most adored Hatfields from his throne of virtue. How could I resist being the bearer of such stunning news? I imagined the shock on the cousins’ faces, the eagerness with which they would listen, the insistence with which they would ask for details. I knew I held in my hand a ticket for almost unlimited attention.