The Trespassers (5 page)

Inside Halcyon House. Sometimes she could hardly believe it had happened. But now that it was over and done with and nothing terrible had happened she was extremely glad she’d opened that window and climbed in. Because now she would always have all those great memory-pictures to add to her Halcyon House daydreams.

As she sat there on the porch that evening, it occurred to Neely that the summer was getting off to a good start. The fog had disappeared, she and Mimi had made some interesting plans, and down on Highway One what seemed to be a record number of summer tourists were already pouring up and down the coast.

That was good, too, because that meant lots of business for the Sea Mist Motel, and that meant less money problems for the Bradford family, at least for a while. People who lived on the coast usually got awfully sick of summer tourists, but that particular evening Neely even felt good about all the BMWs and Jeep Cherokees tooling up and down Highway One. But, as it happened, it was the very next morning that one of the summer tourists ran over Robinson.

Robinson was, or had been, a cat. A tall, gray, sad-eyed cat, and out of all Grub’s pets probably the one he loved the most. He had been named Robinson because of a framed photo Dad had of his favorite poet, Robinson Jeffers. Grub seemed to think his cat and Robinson Jeffers looked a lot alike.

Neely had been in the kitchen getting a snack that morning when Dad came in the back door carrying a cardboard box. One look at Dad’s face told her something was terribly wrong. But before she could even ask what had happened, Grub came into the kitchen too.

“Dad?” Grub asked immediately, and then winced as if he were expecting something to smash into his face.

“Grubbie,” Dad said. “It’s Robinson. He’s—he’s been hit by à car. I’m afraid he’s dead, son.”

Grub’s head jerked around away from Dad and the box, but then he looked back at it out of the corners of his eyes. He just stood there like that for a while, staring sideways at the box and taking long shaky breaths. Then, in a high, tight voice, he said, “Is Robinson...in there?” When Dad nodded Grub shook his head and kept shaking it. “No,” he kept saying. “No. He’s not dead. He’s not. Maybe he’s just unconscious. Dad, couldn’t he just be unconscious?”

“No, Grabble.” Dad’s voice sounded almost as close to tears as Grab’s. “No. He’s dead, son.”

Then Grab turned around and ran. The door of his room slammed, and Neely, who had started to run after him, heard the key turn in the lock. When she knocked and rattled the doorknob there was no answer.

G
RUB STAYED IN HIS ROOM ALL DAY AND WOULDN’T LET
anyone come in. Mom and Dad took turns trying to talk to him through the door, but he wouldn’t answer except to say he was all right. Neely tried, too, several times, and all he would say was, “Go away, Neely.”

Finally, after making some plans and gathering up the things she would need, she went back and knocked on his door again and said, “Grub, I’m going to have a funeral for Robinson. I have the stuff all ready to make him this big, beautiful tombstone with his picture on it, but I can’t decide where to dig the grave. Do you think you could come help me pick a good place?”

There was a long moment of silence and then the sound of the key turning in the lock. The door opened slowly. Grub’s eyes were red and his thick dark eyelashes were stuck together in long pointy clumps. He turned away, hiding his face.

“Neely,” he said. “Don’t have the funeral today. Wait till tomorrow. I’ll help with it tomorrow—if he’s...

Neely caught her breath, fighting a sharp ache in the center of her chest. It hurt so much, she wanted to curl up around it in a tight knot, but she knew that wouldn’t make it any better. The pain was from knowing Grub still hadn’t given up hoping that Robinson wasn’t really dead.

For a moment she couldn’t say anything and even when she could speak she couldn’t make herself say what ought to be said. She couldn’t tell Grub there wasn’t the slightest chance that Robinson was still alive. Instead she just said, “All right. I won’t have the funeral until tomorrow then. We can have it tomorrow. Okay?”

Before she left the room, she hugged him while he stood stiff and still with his face turned away from her. Out in the hall she leaned against the wall and wished she’d said a lot of things she hadn’t. She wished she’d told him to stop hoping that Robinson was still alive because he wasn’t, and to go on pretending that he might be was just dragging out the pain. She stood there for quite a while wondering if she should go back in and tell him it was hopeless, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Finally she decided to ask Dad what he thought she should do.

No one was in the kitchen or living room or backyard, and when she finally found Dad in his study he wasn’t alone. As Neely approached the study door she began to hear voices. High, hard, angry voices, but muffled—like whispered screams. She couldn’t make out everything they were saying, but she did hear Mom say, “John! He has to face up to this, and so do you. For once in your life you have to make yourself...

There was more, but Neely didn’t quite catch it because Dad’s voice cut in. What he was saying was harder to hear, and then for a while they both seemed to be talking at once, but one time when Dad’s voice got louder she heard him say, “You’re absolutely wrong, Connie. You don’t understand Grub at all. You never have.” But then Neely accidentally bumped the door with her toe and there were shushing sounds and then silence.

She was backing away on tiptoe when the voices started up again, but more softly now. After that she could make out even less of what they were actually talking about, but she kept hearing some words over and over again. At first the things they were saying seemed to be about Grub and Robinson, but then some different words became a part of it. Words like
Willie
and
Salinas
and later others like
blame
and
fault
. At last she tiptoed down the hall and out onto the front porch. Sitting down on the steps, she stared out at the ocean.

For a while she only sat and stared and thought how just last night she had sat at the very same spot and told herself that the summer was starting out so well...And now...She sighed and let her head drop down until her forehead rested on her knees. Sitting there she began to feel a swirling sensation as if the floor was dropping out from under her. As if a strong floor that had always kept everything safe and comfortable had begun to dissolve and she was about to go floating off into empty space. Empty space, endless and dark and...Lifting her head, she opened her eyes to see if there really was darkness—and saw instead a small red Honda turning off the highway onto Hutchinson Road.

“Lucie,” she yelled, leaping to her feet. As she ran at top speed all the way down the steep, slippery driveway she went on calling, “Lucie, Lucie, Lucie.” The red Honda stopped at the beginning of the drive and Lucinda Bradford, Neely’s twenty-one-year-old sister, rolled down the window and said, “Neely, you nutcase. You’re going to break your silly—” But then she really looked at Neely and said, “What is it? Neely, for God’s sake, what’s wrong?”

Neely staggered around the car and climbed into the passenger seat. “Oh, Lucie,” she gasped when she could get enough breath to say anything. “Everything’s wrong. Robinson’s dead, and Grub’s heart is broken, and Mom and Dad are having a terrible fight. Oh, Lucie, they’re going to get a divorce. I just know they are.”

Lucie reached out and pulled her close and for several minutes Neely sobbed and gasped and dripped a steady stream of tears onto Lucie’s T-shirt. Lucie kept patting her back and saying, “Okay. Okay, Neely. It can’t be that bad,” and after a while Neely pulled away and used the bottom of her own T-shirt to sop up the rest of her tears.

Lucie smiled at her, a smile that sympathized but at the same time teased a little, like maybe saying, “Well, aren’t we being wildly dramatic today?”—which was something Lucie used to say to Neely quite a lot. Lucie, who had always been a world-class teaser, would probably find something to tease about in the middle of a war or a killer earthquake. She gave Neely another quick hug and then reached out and turned off the ignition. “Well now,” she said, “that’s better. So tell me. From the very beginning.”

S
O NEELY TOLD LUCIE
the long, sad story. All about Grub and Robinson and then about the terrible fight their parents were having in the study. When she finished, Lucie sighed and said, “Well, that’s a real downer about poor old Robinson. And poor little Grubbie. But he’ll get over it, you know. Everybody does. I had a cat that got it when I was about Grub’s age. And Aaron had a dog. A really wonderful dog.”

“I know,” Neely said. “Stooge.” Stooge had died before she was born, but she remembered hearing about him and seeing his picture in Aaron’s picture album. “But Grub is...Grub’s different.”

“True,” Lucie said. “Grub is one of a kind. The trouble with Grub is...he’s absolutely skinless.”

Neely wiped her eyes, sniffed, and frowned at Lucie. She didn’t like other people making remarks about Grub. “What do you mean, skinless?”

“You know. You know how people say that if you get hurt too easily you’re thin-skinned? Well, our Grubbie just hasn’t any skin at all.”

“Humph,” Neely grunted. “Maybe so. But it’s not just getting hurt more than other people, you know. He feels good things more too. Most of the time Grub is a lot happier than other people.”

“I know,” Lucie said. “And he will be again. Like I said, he’ll get over Robinson. But now, about this thing with Mom and Dad.”

“I know.” Neely sighed. “They’re going to get a divorce. I just know they are. They were saying awful things to each other.”

Lucie grinned. “No, they aren’t going to get a divorce, Neely baby. Dad and Mom are crazy about each other. They’re just very different and that’s why they love each other, but it’s why they fight too. You’ve heard them fighting before, haven’t you? And they haven’t gotten a divorce yet.”

“Well, little fights, maybe. But not like this one. Not nearly as bad as this one.”

“Well, maybe not,” Lucie said. “But I’ve certainly heard some bad ones before. In fact I think they used to fight more when Aaron and Julie and I were at home. Maybe we drove them to it. The three of us must have been a lot harder to live with than you and Grub. You’ve always been such a...well, such a solid-citizen type, and Grub...well, Grub is Grub.”

Neely frowned. She didn’t quite like the way Lucie said
solid citizen
, like it was something amusing, or maybe a little bit boring. But she’d think about that later. “What did they fight about then?” she asked. “When you were little?”

“Probably pretty much the same kinds of things they were fighting about today. You said you heard them saying something about
Willie
and the
Salinas property
? You know what that’s about, don’t you?”

“Well,” Neely said. “Sort of.” Willie probably referred to Dad’s cousin, William Logan. She’d didn’t know Willie very well because Mom didn’t seem to like him very much. So even though Willie and his wife, Brenda, lived in the Salinas valley, which wasn’t all that far away, there’d never been much visiting back and forth. “I know Mom doesn’t like Willie very much because she thinks the land in the valley ought to belong to us instead of to him,” Neely said.

“You got it,” Lucie said. “But do you know why?”

“Not really.”

“Well, what happened was that when Dad was away living in Berkeley, at the university at first and then with Mom after they were married, Willie came here and lived with Grandpa and helped out with the motel and the Salinas farm, and then after Grandpa died Willie claimed that he’d been promised the Salinas valley land. But the thing is, Grandpa’s will didn’t say so. The will left everything to Dad except for a few thousand dollars to Willie. So legally Dad could have kept the property. But he didn’t because Willie didn’t have zip, not a red cent, and Dad did inherit this place and the motel. And Willie
had
lived with Grandpa and helped him out for so long. But Mom thought we should have had the farm, too, and now that it’s making a lot of money it really bugs her that Willie has it all. Especially now with Aaron in medical school and me in college and you and Grub still to educate.” Lucie shrugged and sighed and then she laughed. “The thing is, Mom loves Dad for being a softhearted old cream puff, but sometimes she hates him for it too.”

Neely couldn’t help grinning, too, even though she was still sniffing and sobbing a little. “I know,” she said. “Like how mad she got when he tried to get her to be the one to fire Angie.” Angie had been a maid at the motel who kept stealing lipsticks and eye shadow from the guests. “I mean, Dad just couldn’t do it even after he’d caught Angie red-handed.”

“Right,” Lucie said. “Red-handed and red-lipped too. That’s Dad all right. He’s just too softhearted for his own good.”

“Then you don’t think they’re going to get a divorce?” Neely asked.

“Nope. Never. Believe me, Neely. Connie and John Bradford are not getting a divorce. Not now, not ever,” She got a Kleenex out of her purse and gave it to Neely, turned on the ignition, and drove on up the driveway to the house.

Watching Lucie gun the car up the steep graveled driveway and then maneuver skillfully into the narrow space between the garage and the oak tree, Neely suddenly felt a lot better. Lucie was so sure and certain about everything, maybe she was right about Mom and Dad too.

At dinner that night everything did seem pretty much okay. Lucie talked about her summer job at the university and her latest boyfriend, and Mom got out the new pictures of Julie and Ted’s baby and talked about how sad it was that Julie and Ted and her only grandchild lived so far away. Everyone talked a lot except Grub, but at least he was there at the table.

Grub had come out of his room just before dinner, and during the meal he even listened to Neely’s plans for Robinson’s funeral and said okay. He looked pretty much all right. The red was almost gone from his eyes and his eyelashes were dry and furry again. The rest of the family seemed to think he was entirely back to normal.