The Good Neighbor (44 page)

Ellen and Lucia worked together in their mother ’s bedroom, first sweeping out the corners and shooing an invisible amount of dust into the hallway, then getting on their hands and knees to scrub the floor with soap and water. Eventually, Lucia got around to opening the closet that had held their mother ’s few dresses. It had been years since she’d had occasion to go in there, and she was given a turn by the headless dressmaker ’s dummy that greeted her mutely, like some forgotten guest who had wandered in there long ago.

“I’m burning this old thing,” she declared firmly. “It’s always given me the fantods.”

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Ellen agreed with her. They cleared the closet of a number of items that nobody had any use for, now that Marly was gone, and carried them out behind the barn, where Hamish set fire to them with a sense of grim satisfaction. Then the two sisters went back upstairs to finish their work. Only then did Lucia spy the door to the hidey-hole, which had been concealed behind a pile of boxes.

“Goodness, I’d all but forgotten about that place!” she ex claimed. “It’s been ages since I was down there.”

“Nor me,” Ellen said—quickly. “I wonder if I could still fit in.”

“Oh, no, Lucia,” said Ellen, ushering her out of the closet and firmly closing the door. “You and I are much too plump to be crawling around down there. Why, what if we got stuck? The boys would have to tear the house down just to get us out!”

Self-consciously, Lucia placed her hands on her waist and smoothed her dress.

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m as fat as a house, ever since Lincoln was born.”

The childless Ellen colored to her forehead; she had deserved that, she thought.

“Well,” she said, “at least you have a reason to be fat.”

Thus satisfied at having drawn this small amount of blood from each other, the sisters left Marly’s bedroom, closing and locking the door firmly behind them.

❚ ❚ ❚

It would be some months before Lucia and her husband would fi nally allow themselves to move in there, now that Adencourt was theirs, and then the closet would once again be crammed full of boxes of scraps and cast-off items. The passage to the hidey-hole was closed off to little Lincoln as he took his first steps in the liv ing room, then graduated to climbing stairs, then to exploring the empty bedrooms on the second floor. Lincoln believed that he had

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a host of invisible playmates who made their residences there, and whom he was accustomed to visit on a daily basis, chattering away to them in a made-up tongue. He would often attempt to introduce his parents to these playmates, and would be frustrated by the fact that they couldn’t see them; to him they were as real as anything else, and most important, they kept him from grow ing lonely. But by the time he grew into a tall, lanky boy, even Lin coln had ceased to be aware of the presence of the spirits of his five aunts and uncles, none of whom had lived on earth as long as he had, and who were therefore unequipped to trail him into the mysterious reaches of adolescence, and beyond.

This was why neither Lincoln nor any of his descendants was to discover the diary that Marly had kept secret from everyone, but which Ellen had stumbled upon the night that she rose from bed and rummaged, grief-stricken, through her mother ’s posses sions, inhaling the lingering scent of her body on her bedclothes, fingering her meager collection of jewelry, pilfering the butterfly pin that Marly had woven from Henry’s long blond hair, finally discovering the journal at the bottom of a steamer trunk, hidden by a pile of undergarments. Here, finally, she had found a place where she could record her confession of what she had done, hop ing to feel relief at finally unburdening herself of her terrible se cret; hoping also—in vain—that she would find some solace in writing it in the same book her mother had written, in her child ish, uneducated hand, as if it were a chronicle of just another household tragedy.

When she had finished her confession, she crawled agonizingly down through the darkness into the hidey-hole, nearly becoming stuck several terrifying times. There, in the place she had not vis ited in more than twenty years, she deposited the artifacts of her guilt, among the rag dolls that she herself had left down there years earlier and forgotten about, as well as the empty bottle of the poison that had consumed her father as he consumed it—an other item she had stolen so she could examine it, in an effort to

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understand. It was her greatest hope, as well as her fear, that the diary would one day be discovered by someone who had it in them to understand the reasons why that thing had happened, and who possessed, perhaps, the ability to see through the veil that ordinarily conceals the lives of those who live in the same place at different times from one another ’s view; someone who could—by some miraculous chance, through some generous way of seeing through time—see poor Ellen as she really was, and for give her.

Part Four
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The Turkey of Bliss

T
hey rode along in near-total silence for the first hour, Michael humming some inane tune to himself, Coltrane sitting in the back

with his legs splayed out to either side, and the old man in the passenger seat with his hands folded quietly in his lap, as though he were still in handcuffs. He’d brought what he said were all his earthly possessions. They fit into a clear plastic bag, which he kept tightly between his feet, as if afraid someone was going to steal them. The countryside of upstate New York flowed rapidly by. With all green gone from the earth now, neither Colt nor Michael saw anything in the scenery worth looking at; this was the season of dying, when the world went into lockdown. But the former prisoner preoccupied himself with staring out the window. “Beau tiful,” he kept whispering to himself. “Beautiful.”

After an hour of this, Colt felt it incumbent on himself to make some other form of conversation.

“You feeling all right?” he asked. The old man half turned in his seat.

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“Say something?” he asked. His voice was as scratchy as sand paper.

“I asked if you were feeling all right. I overheard you saying that you were sick.”

“Oh, yes, fine, fine,” said his father. He turned forward again, but after several moments a thought occurred to him, and he turned once more and asked, “How are
you
feeling?”

Colt bobbed his head from side to side. “Could be better.”

The old man hesitated, as if afraid of transgressing some boundary. “How’d you break your arm?” he asked finally.

“Car accident.” “Bad one?” “Pretty bad.”

“Anyone else get hurt?” “No. Just me.”

The old man nodded, and after a moment he resumed looking out the window. After another interlude of several minutes, he said, “This is a nice car. I guess it wasn’t the one you had the acci dent in.”

“Nineteen seventy Camaro with a three-speed shift and a two- hundred-horsepower V-eight engine,” said Colt automatically.

His father nodded in admiration. “You’ve done well for your self.”

“Well enough.”

“I always knew you would,” said his father.

❚ ❚ ❚

Half an hour later, they were back in the city. Michael pulled up in front of the parking garage and handed the keys to the attendant. Nova Hart waited for Michael to let him out—to Colt it seemed that he was actually awaiting permission to leave the car—and then he stood clutching his plastic bag to his chest, looking nei ther to the side nor straight ahead, but down at his feet. When he

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saw Colt struggling to get out of the backseat, though, he offered him his hand, and, after a moment’s hesitation, Colt took it. The old man’s skin was cool and leathery against his, and he let go as soon as he had recovered his balance, wiping his palm quickly and secretly against his pants.

“You live by here?” Nova asked.

“It’s kind of a walk,” said Colt. The sun was below the build ings now, and there was a chill breeze, but the slight warming of the past couple of weeks had continued, and it felt more like a fall evening than a winter one. “You feel up for a walk?”

“Oh, sure,” said the old man. “I’m up for a walk.”

“Probably feels good to stretch your legs, doesn’t it?” Michael asked. He had kept silent up till now, occasionally shooting glances at Colt’s father in the car. Colt wondered if Michael saw something in him he liked; perhaps he had the idea that Nova Hart was some kind of counter-revolutionary hero, imprisoned for his beliefs. Well, maybe a talk with the old man would fix that misconception.

At that moment, Colt realized for the first time why it was he had always disliked Michael so much, perhaps even hated him. It was because he was nothing more than a Nova Hart–in–training, a younger version of his own father. More than anything, Michael reminded him of Nova as he had been thirty years ago: irresponsi ble, bumbling, selfish, a little stupid, concerned only with when the next party was and how he was going to get there. Imagine Michael with a kid, and you would have my dad, he thought. And then imagine Michael progressing to heroin. And then abandon ing everything.

“Sure does,” said Nova. “Real good.”

They fell into line on the sidewalk, Michael in front, Nova in the middle, and Colt behind. He couldn’t quite bring himself to walk next to his father. It was about a mile to the apartment, and the old man walked slowly, his gait no longer the far-stepping stride that Colt remembered struggling to keep up with, on the

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rare occasions that they had gone anywhere together. It was all he could do now to avoid stepping on his heels. The prison had given him a new set of clothes—jeans, a blue work shirt, a thin denim jacket, and a black knit cap that sat cockeyed on his head. He walked like someone who kept expecting to bump into a wall. Every hundred paces or so, it seemed, he would pause for a brief instant, almost in disbelief, before he kept going. After the third or fourth time of this, he turned, and with a sheepish smile said:

“First time in a long while I can walk more than a hundred paces in a straight line.”

“Why’s that?” Colt asked.

“That was the size of the exercise yard,” he said.

❚ ❚ ❚

Colt had by now replaced the locks on his door, and he fumbled one-handedly with the keys until Michael took them from him and let them in. Then he closed the door again and locked it, and his father stood in the living room, still clutching the bag to his chest, staring at the floor. Michael disappeared into the bath room and closed the door. A moment later they heard the sound of him urinating. The two of them were left alone for the mo ment.

“This is where you live, huh?” the old man asked. Colt nodded.

“Nice place,” said his father. “You married?” “Was,” said Colt. “We’re getting a divorce.” “Oh. Too bad. I woulda liked to meet her.”

“She doesn’t know you exist,” Colt said matter-of-factly, strug gling out of his jacket. “I told her you were dead.”

Nova nodded just as matter-of-factly, his expression changing no more than if Colt had informed him it was going to rain to morrow. “Where’s she live?” he asked. “You have any kids?”

“We bought an old country place out in Pennsylvania not too

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long ago,” Colt said. “That’s pretty much what started it all, I guess. The divorce, I mean. Didn’t know it was going to happen that way, but there you go. When I look back at it, I can see the whole thing started because of that house. Don’t know why. She’s out there now. Probably stay there.” He swallowed. “And no, we didn’t have any kids. I didn’t want them.”

His father nodded again. “What do you do, Coltrane? You still go by Coltrane?”

His father ’s use of his name surprised him. He stuttered for a moment before answering.

“Yeah, I still go by Coltrane,” he said. “What’d you think, I woulda changed my name?”