The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (34 page)
I
MAY HAVE GONE TO BED CRYING, BUT I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF
my father laughing. I got dressed and crept down the stairs. Cars jammed the driveway and I could hear the steady military drum of conversation, punctuated with jokes and challenges and the sporadic gunfire of arguments and collisions of opinion.
Camp was locked away in the library with members of his campaign. I peeked in at him, but he only glanced my way briefly before ignoring me. My mother appeared from in the kitchen.
“What’s going on?” I asked her.
“Life marches on, Riddle. The campaign awaits.”
I must have looked as stunned as I felt. She put her hand on her hip and cocked her head.
“You didn’t expect him to take this lying down, did you?”
I think it wasn’t until that precise moment that it even occurred to me that Camp could fight back. It took me another minute or so to absorb what was in front of me: Greer Foley, the movie star. She wore a low-sheen, dove-gray dress with a wide, plunging neckline, cap sleeves and an A-line skirt. Her hair was smooth and loose and fell in a gentle, creamy wave to her shoulders. The effect was both demure and decadent. Behind her, I could see campaign staffers peering through the glass doors, taking a second and third look. She was hunting for her car keys.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“Out.” She didn’t look up, just kept on rooting through the top drawer of the occasional table in the hallway. “Where are those damned keys?”
That’s when it hit me. “You’re going to talk to Michael, aren’t you?”
“What I do doesn’t concern you.”
“I want to come. Let me come, I’m coming.”
She paused for a moment, expressionless, fingering the diamond buckle at her waist as she considered my request.
“All right,” she said, keys jangling in her fingers. “Hurry up.”
W
E PULLED UP TO
the front door of the Devlin house after a quiet ride together in the car. Occasionally I looked over at her but she ignored me in a way that was the pointed opposite of ignoring me. It was overcast, the whole world painted in shades of gray, as if all of nature, in deference to my mother’s color preference that day, conspired to art-direct her visit.
We got out of the car, and I looked beyond the house toward the ocean. I couldn’t separate the gray water from the gray horizon. Had my hair turned gray?
Greer straightened her shoulders and arranged the skirt of her dress before rapping on the double doors. One, two, three insistent knocks. Mrs. Maguire answered. She looked mildly taken aback when she saw us. “Yes,” she said, “may I help you?”
My mother stepped forward, which caused Mrs. Maguire to step backward. “I want to speak to Michael,” my mother said.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Maguire said, “but that’s not possible.”
My mother popped the car keys into her open bag, then clicked it shut. “What do you mean, that’s not possible?” She walked past the housekeeper and into the living room. Mortified, I trailed behind her. By now I was sure I was gray from top to bottom.
“Mom,” I pleaded. “Let’s go.”
“Mr. Devlin isn’t here, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Maguire said, her demeanor more friendly than formal.
“Then I’ll wait until he comes home.”
“You don’t understand. He left the country last night.” There was something disconcerting about the intimation of kindness in her manner.
“Left the country? Where did he go?” Greer, a bit disarmed by Mrs. Maguire’s sympathetic disposition, strained for control.
“Why, he’s in Ireland. He’s joining Miss MacNamara and her family . . .”
“Kathleen MacNamara?” my mother demanded.
“Yes, that’s right.”
I had never heard the name before, but the effect on Greer was seismic. For the briefest of seconds, her self-containment wavered. Her lips parted. There was a revealing slight inhalation of breath, her back stiffened and her head snapped backward, though you had to be paying close attention to catch it.
“Patrick MacNamara’s oldest daughter, the unmarried one, thin lips, wide . . .”
“Yes, that’s her.” Mrs. Maguire staged a merciful interruption. “Irish aristocrats, so I understand.”
“Maguire. Scottish, isn’t it? Well, take it from someone with the last name Foley, Mrs. Maguire. The term ‘Irish aristocrats’ is an oxymoron. Does Mr. Devlin intend to stay in Ireland for any length of time?”
“Yes. I believe he does.”
“In that case, I’ve already wasted enough time waiting. Come on, Riddle, let’s go.”
Once in the foyer, she paused at the door. “Mrs. Maguire, would you give Michael a message for me?” She smiled. “Would you tell him please to beware the sheerie?”
“I will let him know, Mrs. Camperdown,” Mrs. Maguire said, looking puzzled, her hand on the doorknob.
I paused just outside the door, turning around before it closed behind us. My powers of resistance failed me. “Harry?”
“Harry is still here, though he’s gone off somewhere this morning,” the housekeeper reported. “He’s leaving for Yale this weekend.” She was looking over my shoulder, seeming distracted. “Oh, Mrs. Camperdown!” she called after my mother, who paused at the open car door.
Mrs. Maguire scuttled quickly down the steps and over to where my mother stood waiting. “I hate to impose, but would you mind signing this for me?” She retrieved a pen and a small black-and-white photo of my mother from her apron pocket. “You’ll think I’m silly but I’ve been carrying this around hoping you would pay another visit. I’d just about given up but here you are! I’m a huge fan of yours. I’ve seen
The Fragrant Letter
a dozen times if I’ve seen it once. You were wonderful in the role of Maude. You were so beautiful when you were young!”
There was a long pause.
“Thank you, Mrs. Maguire,” my mother said, obliging her request for a signature. “You are too kind.”
Mrs. Maguire vanished into the house, clutching her autograph. We got into the car. My mother put the key in the ignition and her hands on the steering wheel. She stared straight ahead and sighed and then she looked over at me.
Something in her eyes. It might have been her heart.
It was too much. I started to cry. Unbelievably, so did she.
Camp was right. When you start crying, you never stop.
W
E PARKED NEAR CAPE
cod light
and walked to the edge of the Truro bluffs and stared up into the early night sky, the last light of the sun appearing and disappearing behind dark thunderclouds. The whole world was black and blue and crimson. Below us the waves, stained bloodred by the encroaching sunset, rolled onto the beach.
“Why didn’t you and Michael get married?” I asked.
“I caught him in bed with the maid of honor, a couple of days before the wedding.”
Startled—my mother wasn’t in the business of giving straight answers—I stared over at her as she gathered her blowing hair into a ponytail.
“Michael Devlin?”
“Yes, Michael Devlin. He swore it was meaningless, blamed drinking, blamed her, blamed the war. He used every excuse in the book, but I wasn’t having it. I called the wedding off but he wouldn’t accept it. Phoned me round the clock. Came to see me. Bought every long-stemmed rose in the state. Begged for my forgiveness.”
“You wouldn’t forgive him.”
“Oh, no. I forgave him.”
“I don’t understand. Harry told me that his father said that you two had a fight over something minor. Things got out of hand and he got mad and called off the wedding. He said that you carried on as if everything was fine, that you went to the church knowing he wouldn’t be there but that you wanted everyone to see you as a tragic heroine, the jilted bride.”
She laughed. “Well, that’s the self-serving folklore anyway. You believed that story?” She shook her head. “I can understand why strangers would eat it up, but you’re my daughter. Didn’t it occur to you that even I am not that shallow? When I went to that church, I assure you, I fully expected him to be there. He never showed up.”
“Why would he do that? Why would he lie to Harry about it?”
“Because he’s a liar!” Greer gave me a hard look. “That’s what liars do. You don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, do you? I found him in bed with my best friend. He was horrified, not because of his moral shortcomings but because he couldn’t stand that I knew the truth about what he was really like. I knew where the body was buried, Riddle, to reference one of your father’s favorite expressions. I called him on it. So he punished me by humiliating me in front of the whole world.”
“If all that’s true, why did you continue to care for him, even after all these years?”
“He wasn’t all bad. We all have shortcomings. What is it they say? Too bad for heaven, too good for hell. You liked him, didn’t you?”
I nodded.
“The good in him was real. What can I say? Human behavior resists logic. I loved him. Not that I don’t love your father.” She opened up her hand and, looking down, traced her palm lines with her finger.
“Do you think Camp killed the little girl?”
She shifted in her seat. “Michael told me about it when he came back from overseas. So much for the infamous pact. I eventually confronted Camp and he refused to talk about it. Said it was between him and Michael. Can you imagine that I thought Michael was telling the truth? I suppose I succumbed to the obvious. Camp seemed the more likely candidate to have committed an impetuous, violent act. Of course, unlike Michael, he honored his agreement never to discuss it.”
She appeared to be deep in thought.
“Before Harry took Hanzi, I saw Gula be kind to him. He was petting him and talking to him. He gave him a biscuit. I still think about it sometimes.”
My mother looked reflective. “Sometimes I think we only imagine ourselves. The rest we conduct in secret. It’s hard sometimes, coming face-to-face with your truer nature—the part that you conceal even from yourself.” She thought for a moment and then abandoned whatever was on her mind. “Oh, well, what you lose in citizenship medals you gain in insight and self-knowledge.”
She looked out across the red ocean as the fiery sunset exploded across the horizon. “Welcome to Apostasy Island, Riddle.”
T
HE STORY BROKE THE NEXT DAY AND THE RESULTING MEDIA
madness felt like trying to keep your balance in a rock slide, all these nasty strikes and hits, sharp pokes and jabs and choking dust, the cumulative effects of a million little cuts, always feeling as if we were one boulder away from obliteration. Camp just kept digging out from under and he even managed to throw a few rocks of his own, knocking down a few targets here and there, though the momentum was against him. Predictably there were calls from inside and outside the party for him to withdraw from the race, but he wouldn’t hear of it. Camp didn’t understand the meaning of retreat.
My mother read bits of the
Times
story aloud at the breakfast table as we listened. Camp, still maintaining a formal distance from me, provided animated commentary, lively as always, refusing to give in to despair.
“Listen to this,” she said, quoting an unidentified source, “‘I always knew something happened over there. I just didn’t know what it was. I assumed it was the triangle, you know, the two boys vying for Greer’s love. God help them!’ ”
She threw the paper down on the table in disgust. “Well, you don’t need to be clairvoyant to figure out who that is—the trembling print gives it away. I hope the
New York Times
has its own witness protection program, because that spineless little weasel is going to need it.”
A
FEW HOURS LATER, MY
mother confronted Gin in the middle of the pasture, where he had gone to spend time with his two Gypsy horses. I could barely keep pace with her as she hurtled across our two properties.
“How dare you? You traitorous gnat,” she said, running toward him, scattering the horses. For a second I thought Gin was going to take off, but habit triumphed and he stood, head hanging, hands wringing, awaiting his terrible fate.
“Isn’t it better that it was me rather than someone with an axe to grind? I was thinking of you, Greer, and what was best for you and your family. My family! You’re my family! I adore you. I would never do anything to hurt any of you.”
“Your family! The only family you’d be comfortable inhabiting is the Julio-Claudians,” my mother shouted at him. It occurred to me that I might have to intervene if Gin was to emerge from this in one piece. I was trying to figure out how to subdue my mother without getting myself killed in the process.
Ducking behind me, Gin gripped my shoulders with both hands, as if I were a human shield.
“Oh, Greer, I don’t care what happened in Europe during the war. I’m sure if Camp killed that little girl he had a good reason. Who knows? Maybe she was a spy.”
“Camp did not kill that little girl,” Greer said, sounding as if she meant it. My heart warmed to hear her speak up in Camp’s defense.
“Try to understand, Greer,” Gin pleaded, his head bobbing back and forth above mine. “I’m only human, after all. Call it the terrible accumulation of events—am I to ignore all of it?”
“What are you talking about?” my mother demanded.
“Well, the boys, Charlie and Harry. Camp knew that Michael had this terrible story he was planning to tell, which threatened Camp’s election to the House, and not only that but threatened to ruin him utterly and completely. What better way to stop all that than by destroying Michael? Greer, you know as well as I do that people have been killed for a lot less.”
I listened in horror. If Gin was willing to entertain the idea that Camp might be guilty of any of the allegations being leveled at him, what hope was there that he would ever be exonerated by the wider world?
“Et tu, Brute? You’ve known Camp since we were kids. You really think he is capable of killing children in cold blood? Are you suggesting that Camp murdered Charlie and shot Harry to avenge himself on Michael? You’ve gone mad,” my mother said. “I can understand the press jumping on board, and the general public, but you know better. Where did this come from?”
“I’m not accusing anyone of anything, just pointing out how easily suspicions can shift based on gossip and innuendo and damaging speculation.” Gin’s face was flushed and he appeared to be in the throes of some sort of attack. He was practically vibrating with emotion.
“There is such a thing as guilt by association. Why, even my own dear mother asked me what I have to do with all of this. My mother! I’m forced to defend myself even though I don’t have anything to hide. I didn’t shoot some little girl in France or Belgium or wherever it was,” he sneered. “God knows, I am completely ignorant as to what happened to Charlie Devlin, let alone Harry. Oh, wait, I know.” He snapped his fingers in rapid succession. “The horses. The Gypsy horses. Gin would overlook anything to get his Gypsy horses. Is that what you think?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, why do you always come back to this ridiculous line of thought? Gin, no one is accusing you of anything. You’re the only one accusing you of anything. No one other than Michael suspects anything untoward concerning the boys. He’s using the boys to bolster his vendetta against Camp. The truth in this case is something so banal it’s almost funny. Let’s face it, the Devlins were undone by all that’s ordinary. A teenage boy on a bender. An idiot hunter behaving carelessly with a gun. Murder would be an upgrade. As for Michael, well, you know Michael . . .”
“Please, Greer, let’s banish all bad thoughts,” Gin said, covering his eyes with his hands and shaking his head vigorously back and forth. “Let’s be friends. Please! You know how I hate conflict. Anyway, on to more pleasant things. I was thinking that maybe you and Riddle might like to help me work with the horses now that Harry’s not available. What do you think?”
“That I should tell you to go to hell,” my mother said.
“Greer, you are the most awful woman. And look how you’ve upset Jimmy with your nonsense.”
Something inside me gave way, as if I was a levee under assault from the waves and the wind and could take no more. I was shivering and crying, tears running down my face. My fingertips tingled. My mouth was dry and I had the sensation I was outside myself looking on. I couldn’t catch my breath. My chest felt as if it was going to explode, as everything around me began to spin.
Panicking, I reached out for my mother, seizing her arm to steady myself. She looked at me, a mixture of disbelief and concern on her face. “Good heavens, what’s wrong with you? If I didn’t know better, I’d think the two of you were in this together. What were you and Gin doing the day that Charlie Devlin disappeared?”
“Stop it! Stop it!” I wailed. “It’s not a joke. It’s not something to make fun about. What will it take for you to stop acting?”
“Riddle,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders. “You’re going to tell me what’s wrong and you’re going to tell me right now!”
I broke free of her, dashed across the pasture and continued running for home, Gin and my mother watching, mouths agape, as Boomslang and Oma ran alongside me. Graceful and high-spirited, manes and tails dragging on the ground like mythological creatures, they galloped in circles around me.
Running on ahead of me, they stopped at the far end of the fence, where they pawed the ground and tossed their heads and waited. I stared into their unknowable blue eyes.
Gin got what he most desired. He got his Gypsy horses. Gin wanted nothing more than to be left alone with his secrets and his dead kittens under glass, his movie star and those beautiful otherworldly horses.
I reached out to pet Boomslang. My fingers got tangled in the cottony web of his mane. Gin’s dream had come true, and I wondered, not for the last time, at what cost?
D
OROTHY AND THE OTHER
three dogs leapt up to greet me as I entered the house, gaily trailing behind me, their nails clicking against the floorboards as I raced ahead of them and up the stairs leading to my room. The bedroom door slammed shut with so much force that the framed black-and-white family photographs on the wall fell to the floor. One, two, three bangs, and the sound of glass breaking.
I
T WAS LATE AT
night before I finally came back downstairs. My mother, opting for avoidance rather than confrontation, had gone to bed. I got myself a bowl of cereal and then sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the newspaper.
“Camperdown’s Campaign in Shambles! Murderous Allegations and Mayhem in Massachusetts!” the headlines screamed, the articles populated with references to movie stars and American princes and heirs to fortunes, racehorses and private schools and labor disputes and left wings and right wings, betrayals and accidental shootings.
My father stared back at me from the front page. My mother. Michael Devlin. Charlie Devlin. Harry. I touched Harry’s cheek with my hand. It might have been a personal photo album: “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” The only one missing was me.
I turned the page. There was a story about the Israeli athletes killed at the Olympics. A nameless man in a hood stood on the balcony of the athletes’ residence.
M
Y DAD AND I
were speaking, though not in any way that mattered. He was lying on the floor in the living room, stretched on his back surrounded by the dogs. The TV was on, the volume turned low. The lights were dim. Outside the wind was blowing. He was softly singing “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Dorothy licking his cheek. He was staring up at the ceiling, making a triangle with his fingers, holding it aloft over his head.
“Camp, you’re singing,” I said.
“You caught me,” he said.
The distance between us evaporated as I turned up the sound on the set and walked over to the sofa. Camp got up from the floor and joined me, sitting in his favorite leather chair in front of the fireplace. I used the remote control to change channels as I stared at the screen.
Charlie Devlin’s image abruptly flashed across the monitor. It was so familiar by now it made my teeth ache. His hair a livid imprint, his eyes an amber light. He was all the colors of the woods.
I listened to a woman with pastel lips, serious intentions and limited insights, who had never even met him, speculate about what had happened to him.
Murder or misadventure? She wanted to know, wanted to unravel the mystery, wanted answers. He was there one moment and then he was gone. Disappeared into the night. Now, she said, his grieving father, Michael Devlin, was calling for his death and disappearance to be reexamined in light of the recent revelations concerning Camp and himself.
She listed the possibilities: It was fame. It was money. It was youthful folly. It was carelessness. It was the evil that men do. It was late. I wanted to reach out and grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she knew: It was Gula. It was Gin. It was Michael. It was Camp. It was Greer. All with good reasons for doing what they did. I shut my eyes. It was me.
I looked over at Camp. He sighed and glanced downward and noticed a single strand of hair on the sleeve of his sweater, and as the woman on TV continued to speculate, her voice occupying an empty place somewhere vaguely in the background, my father held the strand of hair lightly between his fingers and up to his lips and, at the first veiled opportunity, gently blew it into the atmosphere, watching it disappear into the twilight air, lost to sight among the shadows, forever vanished, watched it evanesce in a world that hung on an amber thread.