A Sudden Light: A Novel (29 page)

Richard returned with a tray of glasses, a pitcher of lemonade, and a bottle of vodka. We took a break and he poured us drinks; I was slightly disappointed when he didn’t pour vodka into my lemonade, but I was only a kid, after all, so I understood. Grandpa Samuel began to talk about Isobel. How she could dance. How he met her after his father had donated so much money to the university, after they had named buildings after his father, and though he had already received a superlative education in the nation’s most elite colleges, Grandpa Samuel still liked wandering about the university campus, sitting in on classes and learning things, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and thinking great thoughts. No one ever bothered him during his self-directed postgraduate education. People knew who he was. Other students talked about him, but they rarely talked
to
him. He read the books that were assigned for the classes he sat in on. While he didn’t participate in class discussions, he turned in assigned essays with the other students, and the essays would be returned to him without grades, but with notes and comments. And that’s how he spent his twenties, because he had little else to do. The army wouldn’t take him because of his missing fingers, so he was passed over by World War II. His father wouldn’t hire him because Abraham thought of his son as an incompetent dolt. What else was there to do but smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and learn things? He was the grandson of Elijah Riddell, after all. The son of Abraham Riddell. He didn’t need anything but that.

“And then he met Mother,” Serena said.

“It was a time,” Grandpa whispered almost inaudibly.

“What happened then?” I asked.

“She wanted to dance in New York, didn’t she, Daddy? So Daddy and
Mother moved to New York City. Mother was a wonderful dancer, but in New York . . . well, only the best of the best need apply. And while influence takes many forms, Grandpa Abe wouldn’t make that donation, would he, Daddy? Grandpa Abe wouldn’t make the financial investment necessary to secure Mother’s acceptance to an academy and ensure her position in a company of note.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“The subjective nature of truth once again rears its ugly head,” Serena replied. “Daddy thought it was because Grandpa Abe disapproved of Mother specifically, and the arts in general. We learned later that Grandpa Abe really didn’t have any money left that wasn’t borrowed, and so there was no money to give. Nevertheless, the result is what people live with, not the cause. After a year of frustration, they moved back here. But they moved back as a married couple, and then Grandpa Abe couldn’t deny Mother, could he?”

“We got married in Tarrytown,” Grandpa Samuel said. “We took a train. The justice of the peace married us and then we walked out to see the river.”

“It was a beautiful fall day,” Serena said.

“It was a time.”

We all fell into our own thoughts, which were different because we were all different people. But I knew we all pictured our own versions of Grandpa Samuel and Isobel, freshly married, walking along the banks of the Hudson River.

“When they moved back here,” Serena said, “Grandpa Abe was furious. He gave Daddy a job counting logs, if you can believe that, and he made Daddy and Mother live in the cottage. Have you seen the cottage?”

I thought a moment and it occurred to me that I
had
seen the cottage. In fact, I’d been inside.

“They lived there?”

“They did. For a long time. They weren’t allowed in the main house. Not until Mother told Grandpa Abe she was pregnant with your father.”

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Why was Grandpa Abe so mean?”

“He wasn’t mean, Trevor,” Serena said. “He was filled with hatred. That’s different. Just because you’re filled with hatred doesn’t mean you’re mean.”

“No?” I wondered.

“No. If he had been mean, he would have driven them apart. He would have sent Grandpa Samuel off to work in the forests of Montana or Oregon, somewhere where Mother couldn’t have followed him. He would have made her wait for him for years, until her youth faltered. He would have intercepted their letters to feed their growing doubt. He would have used all of his influence to destroy their love. If he had been mean, Trevor, he would have crushed their hearts but left them alive to forever feel the pain he had inflicted, the remnants of their broken hearts clenched tightly in their bloody fists.”

When she finished, silence rushed in to fill the void of her words.

“Are you a writer?” I asked after a time.

“Undiscovered!” she chirped. She stood up quickly. “That’s enough of our break, I think!”

A new album had to be found, new music. Serena put on a smoky jazz record, slower paced, not nearly as crazy as the polka music, or whatever it was she was using to kill the rest of us. A woman was singing, and she had a mesmerizing voice, low and throaty.

I noticed my father shift slightly when he heard the music, growing more tense than he’d been.

Serena turned to him and held out her hand, but he didn’t take it. He stared at her and shook his head slowly.

“I can’t do this,” he said. “I can’t do it. It’s not right.”

But Serena didn’t yield. Ten paces apart, they were in a standoff I didn’t understand.

“I’m ready for another go,” Richard piped in, but Serena held up her hand to stop him.

“It’s okay to have feelings, Brother Jones,” she said. “It’s okay to remember.”

She went to him and took his hands and began to dance with him. He danced, but it wasn’t the same as before.

“I don’t get it,” I whispered to Grandpa Samuel. “Who’s singing?”

“Billie Holiday,” he replied. “Isobel’s favorite.”

Oh, I realized. They were delving into highly charged territory.

They danced, just the two of them, as the song ended and another began. And then another. Grandpa Samuel was fixated on them with a look of adulation, as if he couldn’t imagine a more wonderful scene. Richard kept checking his watch. Finally, after the third dance, Richard stood up and cleared his throat. Serena and my father stopped dancing, though the music kept playing. My father looked over at Richard, but Serena kept her eyes on her dance partner.

“I have an early meeting,” Richard announced.

“When will I see you again, my love?” Serena asked, still not looking at him.

“I’d like to come by tomorrow to have that meeting with Brother Jones.”

“I’m sure that will be fine,” Serena replied, her eyes still fixed on my father, which I found kind of weird. “Drive safely,” she said.

Richard winced, perhaps wondering if he should continue the conversation; however, he thought better of it and simply said, “Good night, my love,” and left.

Still, Serena and my father didn’t move. It was like they were made of wax. We heard Richard descend the stairs, and the front door open and close. He was gone.

The music stopped. The record was over and the platter spun without making any music.

“Put on another,” Serena said to my father.

He walked toward the record player, but stopped before he reached it.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he said. “You’re not Mom. She’s not here.”

She said nothing for a moment. Then she spoke: “Clever Trevor.”

“Yes, Simply Serena?”

“Be a darling and put Grandpa Samuel to bed for me, will you? He knows what to do, but he’ll try to get away without doing it. Make him brush his teeth and use the toilet. Get him a glass of water from the kitchenette. And make him put on his pajamas; if you don’t tell him to do it, he’ll climb into bed with his clothes on and then he’ll wake up in the middle of the night, crying and confused. Can you do that for me, Trevor?”

“Yes, I can.”

“Be firm, Trevor,” she said. “But be gentle also. People will respond to you if they understand the strength of your resolve but they believe you will be gentle with them.”

“Yes, Aunt Serena.”

I led Grandpa Samuel out of the ballroom; as we left, I looked back. Serena had gone to my father. She had pulled his head onto her shoulder. He appeared to be sobbing.

*  *  *

Grandpa Samuel’s room was small and smelled like an old person. The lone window had no curtain to open or close, but a thick blanket had been nailed over it. I wondered why, in a house with so many bedrooms, some of them quite opulent, Grandpa Samuel lived in a teeny room in the back. It was almost like a cell. There was a sink in the corner and a medicine chest. Nothing was put away; clean clothes were folded and stacked on the dresser and the easy chair. The closet door was open, and the closet was crammed with old tweed sport coats.

“Brush your teeth,” I said, and he did.

“Put on your pajamas,” I said, and he did.

“Go pee,” I said, and he nodded. He walked over to the small sink in the corner and turned on the faucet; he pulled out his old-man dick and started peeing in the sink. I didn’t want to startle him so I didn’t say anything until he had finished.

“Couldn’t you have done that in the toilet?” I asked.

“It wakes up Serena,” he said. “I use the sink. That doesn’t wake her up.”

I didn’t explain to him that Serena wasn’t there to wake up. She was upstairs, slow-dancing with her brother.

Grandpa Samuel climbed into his bed, which was almost a kid bed. A single bed that made him look big. He pulled the covers up to his chin and looked at me. With his hair all splayed out on his pillow like that, he almost looked cute.

“I love you,” he said out of the blue, and it surprised me that he would say it. I wondered if he knew who I was.

“I’m Trevor,” I said. “Your grandson.”

“Clever!” he beamed.

So he did know.

I turned off the light and left him to sleep. The servants’ quarters, where Grandpa Samuel and, presumably, Serena lived, had six bedroom doors adjoining a common living area, which wasn’t big but included a kitchenette and a large table, two sofas and a bunch of chairs. I guessed the servants made themselves dinner there in the old days. The kitchenette was messy and obviously well used, and, when I glanced at it, I realized I had forgotten Grandpa Samuel’s water. I opened the cupboards looking for a glass, which I found, but only after finding a cabinet stocked with about fifty cans of tomato soup and dozens of boxes of saltine crackers. I opened the small undercounter refrigerator to look for a bottle of water, but it held only cans of Folgers coffee and cartons of half-and-half. I remember thinking Riddell House was endlessly weird. I filled the glass from the sink and took it in to Grandpa Samuel, who was already asleep; I set the glass on the table behind his head.

*  *  *

As I reached the ballroom on the third floor I heard music, but I didn’t hear footsteps. I rounded the corner and reached the doorway, and I saw them. They were dancing, but barely. They were holding each other close, leaning from side to side in time to the music, so slowly. My
father’s head was tipped down, and they swayed this way and that while Billie Holiday sang to them a sad, dark song.

Serena looked over at me as they danced. She shook her head slightly, and I backed out of the room.

Strange fruit
, Billie Holiday sang. Strange fruit.

I
tried to sleep after our evening of dancing in the ballroom, but I had a rough time. It was strange to see my father weepy and vulnerable like that, holding on to Serena so tightly. Looking back on it now, I think the simplest explanation for what went on in the ballroom that night was a brother and a sister consoling each other over the death of their mother—something they hadn’t been able to do previously, because my father had been sent away. But while my father’s slow dancing with Serena seemed to be about a re-creation of his times with his mother, Serena’s motives were questionable.

As I lay in bed, I considered the possibility I was imagining what was going on at Riddell House. Serena and my father slow dancing, the ghost of Benjamin, Isobel’s footsteps at night, my demented grandfather. Maybe they were all figments of my imagination—the Great Deceiver showing off his pyrotechnical skills. Maybe
I
was a figment of my imagination. Was it possible? If so—if I’d been swallowed by my own
insanity—some rare form of adolescence-triggered schizophrenia—I remember hoping with some desperation that someone would come looking for me. I hoped someone would rescue me from my despair as I wandered the hollow corridors of my mind.

And if no one could save me—if I was too far gone—I hoped someone would at least validate my existence. I hoped someone would tell people that I’d put up a good fight. I’d tried really hard to make sense of the world. But I had only myself and what I could glean from my experiences to rely on, and that wasn’t nearly enough.

I wasn’t ready for what was to come. But then, I guess if my mother had been there—if she had been able to call me at that moment to talk for a few minutes—she probably would have said, in her matter-of-fact way: “Who
is
ready?”

Still, someone had to explain my father’s wedding ring. That was not a figment of my imagination. It was real. I slid open the drawer of my night table to look at the ring one more time before I fell into a fitful sleep.

*  *  *

He runs through the woods at full speed, branches whipping against his arms, his feet finding their own way along the uneven path as if they have eyes, as if they have a sense of where it is they are to take him. He is swollen with a euphoria the likes of which he has never known. A sense of freedom and happiness and forgiveness and acceptance and love.

He needs to tell Harry what Alice said, how she responded to his request. She understood. (Finally, someone in this world understood!) And she wouldn’t stand in his way. She was as enlightened as he thought she was, but he hadn’t had faith. Not until Harry convinced him to trust her. “If she truly loves you,” Harry said, “she won’t want to see you unhappy.” And Harry was right!

He sprints faster and feels the effort in his muscles, his lungs
breathing hard, gulping air, but with confidence and power, not for lack, not for fear. He is a living machine that digests its fuel and outputs its energy as a part of nature. He is a natural, honest man living a natural, honest life.