The Widower's Tale (53 page)

Like Poppy, like me, Sarah was an only child. And Rico--I assumed he would follow suit. Did we possess a built-in homing device, we onlies (or "singulars," as we're dubbed at E & F)? I'd always heard that we are supposedly drawn to mates from large, chaotic, rambunctious families, where every gathering incubates a drama or two, where alliances shift as readily as clouds.

The night I made up my mind began like a scene from a novel I might love. Imagine this: Moon or no, the sky is dark as a bog. A storm rages, and wind flings rain against the clapboards of a very old house. Inside, the solitary occupant reads his book. Grateful for shelter, he hears windowpanes shudder in their mullions, water cascade from drainpipes, gusts of air whistle through the dryer vent. He tries not to personify the storm, not to see it as a spiteful spirit seeking entry through shingles, sills, and cracks in the stones that support the foundation beneath the stalwart floors.

He leaps at the sound of the front door latch, its urgent rattle.

He sets down the book and goes to the nearest window. A car is parked out front, but the rain is so fierce, the darkness so greedy, that he cannot begin to guess whose car it might be. Now the knocker strikes the door.

He is no coward, has nothing to fear; he unbolts the door and opens it....

"Jesus, Dad, since when do you lock it?" shouted Trudy, pushing past me out of the squall. She stood on the rug in the foyer, her raincoat dripping.

"Since the wind blows it open," I answered. "One more thing that needs fixing around here."

"Jesus Christ, Dad." She continued to stand there, just staring at me. Was her face wet from the downpour, or had she been crying?

Belatedly, I felt the terror of her presence. It was only nine o'clock, but Trudy never arrived unannounced. To get her to Matlock at all required a major occasion.

Or an emergency.

"Not Robert," I said.

She looked at me impatiently. "Robert? What about Robert?"

"Robert's all right?" Or Sarah--was it Sarah that had brought her here?

Trudy tore off her raincoat as if it were covered with bees. She threw it on the bench. "So I happened to talk to Todd this evening, and he happened to mention that you're selling the house. Selling the house? Is that true?"

"Come in, would you?" I returned to the living room, magnanimous with relief. "I could light a fire. Make tea."

"Don't. Don't do anything. Just sit down and tell me what's going on."

I sat on the couch. Trudy sat across from me. She pushed wet hair away from her forehead.

"You seem perturbed, daughter."

"Dad, I am more than perturbed. I'm pissed. You're leading a life completely apart from the rest of us these days, making huge choices without consulting anyone."

"In case you forgot, I'm used to making huge choices. All on my own!"

"Come on, Dad. Selling the house?"

"That's one huge choice, yes, and one to which I don't believe Todd was privy. But never mind. What other choices of mine are enraging you?"

"I could go into a whole context here, but I won't. Some of this I am not ready to discuss. But Dad, the house?"

"Yes. The house. It's too large for me, as you know--"

"Any larger than it's been for the past twenty years?"

"And it's now surrounded by litters of human puppies and their extended families, a whole community I never--"

"Community is good for you, Dad. I didn't like that decision at first, the whole crazy nursery-school invasion, but Douglas convinced me it's a good thing for you to be surrounded by other people. Have your privacy at the center of it all--have the best of both worlds, that's how Douglas put it."

"How nice to know you and Douglas approve of my life," I said. "But didn't the two of you urge me, for years, to move somewhere more 'practical'?"

"Dad, I gave up on that long ago."

I heard the shade on the window in Poppy's dressing room, directly above us, snapping against the casement.

"Are you worried about where I'll go, is that it?"

Trudy didn't answer. That's when I had a hunch that this was as much about her mother as it was about me.

"I came to believe we'd always have this house," she said. "I realized I was wrong to ever wish that you would leave."

"And if I died here? Would you and Douglas move in? Is that it?"

She leaned back in the armchair and closed her eyes. "I don't see that, no. But the idea of you, anywhere else ..."

"That's an odd idea, isn't it? But odd is the flavor of my life these days. As Robert would say, I've decided to roll with it. The oddness."

"Dad, please don't get all clever on me now. Please."

I removed the screen from the hearth. "Let me get this going," I said. It had been unusually cold all day, and for the first time in weeks, I'd laid wood for a fire. But then, looking for newsprint to twist beneath the logs, I'd been distracted by the
Grange
. The police log had contained nothing juicy in ages; what caught my eye was a page of houses for sale. I'd abandoned the thought of a fire and, instead, combed the real estate listings, trying to ascertain if Fougere's offer was profligate or stingy. I was completely out of touch with the financial realities of Matlock, the "value" of living in my privileged town, my enclave, yet I resisted the notion of hiring an appraiser. I was finished with strangers poking my heirlooms, stroking banisters, peering into cupboards.

Lighting the fire gave me time to think. Trudy let me go about my routine. Once the kindling caught (ignited by Matlock's latest brides and christened babies, sacrificial victims all), I returned to the couch.

"Do you remember the night your mom died?" My heart felt like one of the panes of antique glass in the windows, under assault from the storm.

Trudy's face registered fear, which gave me a certain degree of petty consolation: my ironclad daughter turned fragile.

"I assume you've never forgotten the way you heard what you thought was a voice, sent me out into the night like the good girl you were."

"Dad, we don't need to talk about this."

"I suppose we don't
want
to."

"I didn't blame it on you, if that's what you think. Or maybe I did at first, but I understood later ..."

"How much later? Can I ask you that?"

"Aunt Helena wouldn't let us blame you one bit. And she was right."

I poked at the fire, though it didn't need my help to burn.

"She should have been a mother, Helena."

"Yes," said Trudy. "For a while there, she was kind of our mother. Clover once said that even though she liked Uncle Norval, she had a fantasy that he would die and you would marry Helena."

"Not a bad fantasy," I said. "But I would never put up with goats."

Trudy didn't laugh. "I thought Mom was pregnant when she died."

My lungs seemed to shrink. "What do you mean?"

"I heard a conversation. That week, I think. Or the week before. On the phone. I don't know who she was talking to. She said she loved the idea of having a son. But another daughter, she said--another daughter would be fine, too. She thought three children would fill this house perfectly. She said she sometimes felt as if someone else was waiting to be. Like the opposite of a ghost. That's what she said."

I waited for Trudy to tell me that Helena, or someone else, had set her straight. She said, "So I thought that, thought she was pregnant, for years. I thought about the conversation I'd heard--"

"Did you hear her
say
she was pregnant?"

"No, and I knew it; I mean, I knew that I didn't know for sure. I didn't even tell Clover. No one. After the funeral, when everybody was standing around talking about Mom, I listened to see if anyone said anything about it. But they didn't."

What if she
had
been pregnant? What if the argument we'd had before the party that night had trumped her telling me this? What if Poppy had been so angry, through the whole party--during which she drank, but didn't everyone drink through pregnancies then?--so angry at me for my boorishness about Clover and her looming sexuality ... what if she'd been so angry that she'd drowned from rage? The sheer
weight
of rage, fueled not just by liquor but by all those volatile hormones?

"Dad, are you okay?"

I shook my head violently. "What is it with everything being judged as 'okay'? Of course I am not 'okay.' Are you 'okay'? Is okayness what made you drive through the tempest to scold me as if I were your child, not your father? Your father whom you fit into your busy doctor schedule now and then? Your father from whom you hide important details like the cockamamie insurance schemes of the woman he thought
he
might screw up the courage to marry? Doctor-patient privilege my ass."

"I'm sorry, Dad. Dad? Oh God."

"Go home," I said. "Please go home."

Trudy moved to the couch. "Dad! I didn't mean to upset you by this--"

"I'm the one who brought it all up, right?"

Trudy sighed heavily. "So listen, Dad. I know you're mad at me about Sarah, but I can't talk about that. I really, really can't. But I have one more thing to say about Mom. And then I'll go if you want." She waited for a moment. "Okay. When I started med school, I realized that if Mom had been pregnant, it would be in the autopsy report. You saw the report, didn't you?"

"Of course not." My face was in my hands. Why, I wanted to yell at Trudy, would I have wanted to see a list of the contents of Poppy's stomach, a catalog of her scars, an inventory of organs that had failed in quick succession? But I had done my yelling.

"Dad, she wasn't pregnant. It would have said so. I went and looked. I had to know for sure. I hope that doesn't make you mad."

"Please go home," I said. "This was my fault, this horrid conversation."

Trudy squeezed my right hand and stood.

"I'll talk to you about the house another time," I said. "But I believe I'm going ahead. I'm signing the purchase-and-sale on Thursday. I'm selling it to Maurice Fougere."

I heard her surprise, a reaction that would be echoed by everyone who knew Maurice and his flair for the ultramodern. Perhaps the anticipation of this surprise figured in his delight. I could imagine him telling me that another reason for his success was
always keeping zem on zair toes
.

"Please let's talk before you do that," she said. "Please. But I'm glad we had this conversation. Aren't you?"

"I don't think so, Trudy. I really don't."

"Don't be angry at me, Dad." She stood on the foyer rug again, pulling on her raincoat. "And please tell me you'll be all right."

"I'm not angry at anyone right now," I said, though this wasn't true. Yet it was true that I felt differently, more tenderly, toward Trudy: toward my little Trudy, the daughter who'd put on fishnets for her mother's funeral, meaning no harm or disrespect. I wished that only Dr. Trudy Barnes would leave, that I could remain in the company of just that little girl.

"Dad, I'm going to call you in the morning, and I'm going to have Robert do the same," she said. "I wish--"

I opened the door. "I'll be fine. Or should I say, I'll be
okay."
I was glad of one thing: that the rain had diminished to a drizzle. "Please drive safely," I said.

20

Wait until it gets dark. There's going to be quite a show." Ira stood beneath the tree house, Anthony at his side.

"My God, sweetheart, you really built this?"

"Not without help. As you know." Ira wore black jeans, a threadbare Grateful Dead T-shirt on reluctant loan from his nostalgic Uncle Sy, and a fuchsia corduroy blazer he'd found at Lothian's funkiest thrift shop.

"Ah yes. You and those three young studs. Will
they
be here?" Anthony wore a cheap, chunky pendant, peace sign as Olympic medal--another loan from Sy, who'd tripped out at the real Woodstock--over twenty-first-century khakis and button-down shirt. ("I am not going overboard for this," he'd warned Ira.)

"I don't know," said Ira. "Robert and Turo cooked up the surprise."

After checking that his class project was looking its best in the live-auction lineup, Ira had taken Anthony for a tour of the school. Anthony had been gratifyingly amazed. He'd loved the artwork in Ira's room, the view from the window, the birch-bark album containing photographs of Ira posed with the Birches up in the tree house. "That tree house, I've got to see it!" Anthony had exclaimed, so they'd made their way back outside and through the festive obstacle course: the party tables lined up along the face of the barn, the displays of silent-auction items, the dance floor cantilevered--thanks to Maurice--against the sloping lawn. The party tables were draped in cloths tie-dyed by two Cattail moms. On each one sat a large bowl of handmade fortune cookies, each of which could be purchased for five dollars. Most contained lame-duck sixties cliches--
Feelin' groovy; Drop acid, not bombs; Power to the people--
but a few contained prize outings with teachers.
(Mr. Ira will take you to the Franklin Park Zoo!)

Staff members from My Thai were setting out their chafing dishes, members of the dad band were tuning up by the pond, and Clover was sprinting hither and yon, looking happy but hysterical. Guests would begin to arrive in fifteen minutes.