A Sudden Light: A Novel (46 page)

My father stared at her for a long time. It felt like minutes, but it couldn’t have been; it was time counted in breaths.

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” he said finally. “I’m sorry, Serena, but that’s not happening.”

Something swept across her face. Fatigue or resignation or the realization that the endgame was not going to tip in her favor; that it was time to lay down her king and accept her defeat.

“You should get some sleep,” my father said. “We all should get some sleep.”

She didn’t respond, so my father shrugged and glanced at me. He tipped his head toward the door and we retreated.

“If you leave me now,” Serena said, sounding so weary from the night’s events—from her life’s events—that my father and I stopped. “If you leave me now,” she repeated, “I will hurt myself. I will hurt myself until I die. And I will suffer, Brother Jones. I will make it take a very long time. I will make it horrible, so when you find me, you will know I have suffered. You will not have prevented my suffering like you did with Mother. You will feel my agony when you see my dead body. If you leave me now, Brother Jones, I will gouge my suffering into your soul so you will carry the scar forever, and you will never be free of me.”

“Serena, don’t say that.”

“It is the truth, Brother Jones,” she said, looking at him clearly. “I promise you.”

My father closed his eyes and nodded to himself, as if to agree that he knew she would do it. She would do exactly that.

“Go on,” he said to me. “Put Grandpa to bed in my room tonight. He
doesn’t need to see Serena like this. It’s nearly four; both of you go to sleep. I’ll stay here with Serena and make sure she’s safe.”

I nodded as my father joined Serena on the couch. He put his arm around her shoulders, and she folded into him as he stroked her hair.

“Is there anything else I can do?” I asked.

“No,” my father said. “Do what I’ve told you. She’ll be fine once she falls asleep; we can get her help tomorrow.”

So I left them there on the couch and I did what I was told: I helped my grandfather get to bed, and then I fell asleep myself; the sky was already transforming into the palest shade of blue a person could possibly imagine.

A
knocking on my door jarred me awake. It was just past 5:00
A.M
., so I had gotten less than an hour of sleep. I felt nauseous and drugged with fatigue. It was already light outside, since Seattle was practically in the Arctic Circle and the sun never set. And still the knocking at my door continued.

I rousted myself from the bed and opened the door. Grandpa Samuel stood in the hallway looking disheveled. He was wearing his old-man pajamas and slippers, and his hair was out of an Albert Einstein poster. He smelled slightly of a campfire. I wondered briefly if I should be concerned about his personal hygiene.

“Go back to sleep, Grandpa,” I said.

“Isobel is dancing again!” he whispered loudly at me.

But how could that be?

I listened. It was true. Footsteps and music. What was Serena thinking?

I led Grandpa Samuel upstairs to the ballroom, and there she was—
Serena—dancing in great, graceful circles around the room in the thin morning twilight.

I started to say something, I began to intervene, but Grandpa Samuel put his hand on my elbow to stop me. He held his finger to his lips and whispered, “It was a time.”

So beautiful. She really was everything from every dream a man has had about a beautiful woman dancing. Perfect. And so we watched and we watched. I pulled over folding chairs so we could sit and watch her mesmerizing dancing as the room brightened. It was as if time had stopped altogether. And yet there was time, for the music played, the song ended, another song began. And when the record side ended, she turned it over and started dancing again. She knew we were watching her. She enjoyed being watched. She was wearing a different dress. Dark and velvety and heavy. It seemed too hot for the summer weather. She reached for the needle of the phonograph, placed it on the record, and began to dance again. I saw beads of perspiration on her brow, and it occurred to me how hot it was in the ballroom. I was sweating as well. And I noticed the smell of a campfire coming off Grandpa Samuel, so I leaned over and sniffed near his hair.

“Are those the same clothes you wore at the campfire the other night?” I whispered.

“What?”

“You smell like a campfire.”

“It was a time,” he said proudly, turning his attention back to Serena.

I felt uncomfortably hot, so I got up and crossed the dance floor, giving Serena a wide berth. I opened one of the windows facing the meadow. Cool air immediately rushed at me, and it felt good on my face. I opened another, and a third.

“Clever Trevor,” Serena said, dancing toward me.

I looked up and was surprised by how close she was.

“That will only make it end sooner,” she said.

“But it’s hot in here.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “it is hot. Sit down and let me dance for you.”

She led me back to my chair, and I sat. She resumed her dance. For several songs, Grandpa Samuel and I watched her. But I was fidgety. I couldn’t help feeling that something was terribly wrong with the whole situation. And the smell. I sniffed again.

“I smell something burning,” I said to Grandpa Samuel. “Are you sure you didn’t light a fire at the fire pit or something?”

He shook his head, still smiling.

I got up and wandered over to the doors to the ballroom. The smell was more distinct. Something
was
burning. I reached for the doorknob; Serena stopped dancing abruptly.

“Oh, Trevor,” she said impatiently. “You’re really doing everything wrong. If you want the moment to continue, you can’t do these things. You know the principles of building a campfire. You can’t say I haven’t educated you.”

I looked back at her.

“What did you do?” I asked.

And then I understood. I knew what she had done.

“Fire,” I croaked, but my throat was too dry to make a sound.

“Fire!” Serena cried mockingly. “Fire!”

“Where’s my dad?” I asked.

I opened the ballroom doors, and a blast of hot air knocked me backward, like the wash of a jet engine. The vestibule was filled with dark smoke. I could hear the snapping and popping of dry wood being consumed by the roaring flames beneath me. I heard a pounding on the stairs growing louder and louder, and then my father appeared through the smoke. He pushed me inside the ballroom and shut the door.

He was covered with soot and char. He pressed his palms into his eyes.

“I can’t see!” he cried.

He pulled his hands away and blinked hard, seeming to get his bearings.

“It’s insane down there,” he shouted. “The whole place is on fire. We have to get out of here.”

I thought about possible routes; which stairs were the safest? Ah! The shaft. The dumbwaiter. I ran to the closet and opened the doors.

“If she didn’t start it in the basement,” I said, “this will get us down there, and then we can get out the cellar doors in the butcher shop.”

“But you nailed it shut.”

“I used brads. We can bust it open.”

So that’s what we did. My father kicked at the hatch door until he splintered it and could tear it away from the shaft.

“Come on,” he called to Serena and Grandpa Samuel. “Let’s go!”

Grandpa Samuel obediently responded; Serena moved back to the ballroom doors.

“Grandpa first,” my father said, pushing Grandpa Samuel toward the shaft. “Go down as fast as you can, Dad, then wait for Trevor.”

He helped Grandpa climb through the opening. Grandpa Samuel started down the ladder. When he had cleared the rungs, I climbed in after him.

“Where’s Serena?” I asked.

My father noticed her by the doors and called out to her: “Serena! Let’s go!”

She hesitated a moment, then opened the ballroom doors and ran off down the corridor into the burning house.

“What the hell?” my father yelled. “Serena! Where are you going? We have to get out of here!”

Time stopped for a moment as my father glanced after Serena.

“Dad! Come on!”

“Follow Grandpa down,” my father commanded. “I’ll be right behind you. We have to get out of the house and into the meadow. Go, quick!”

I went down, and he followed me. Down, into the hot bowels of the house. We could hear the fire raging around us. Quickly we descended until we emerged in the basement, which was warm and moist and dark. Grandpa stood waiting for us, quaking with fear. My father moved quickly to the cellar doors—he knew this place, for sure. He pushed the
heavy metal doors open—the ones I couldn’t get open by myself—and cool air rushed in. I helped Grandpa Samuel up the steps, and then I followed. My father stayed behind in the house.

“Come on,” I called into the basement.

“She’s my sister,” he said, partially hidden in the shadows. “I promised her I would save her.”

“Dad—”

“I have to try. Don’t you understand? I raised her.”

“Dad, she doesn’t want to survive this.”

“I have to—”

“We’ve come this far! We can’t go any farther!”

“She’s my sister,” he repeated. “I love you, Trevor, but please understand that I have to try. If I don’t find her right away, I’ll come back. I’ll meet you in the meadow.”

“You can’t go back in there!” I screamed, frustrated that he wouldn’t come out of the shadows, and yet also afraid to go in after him. “You’ll die!”

“One quick look,” he said hurriedly, stepping back into the darkness. “Then I’ll meet you in the meadow.”

And he was gone.

I didn’t know what to do. Chase him down? Grab him by the ankles as he climbed the ladder in the chute? Pull on him until he fell on top of me, then hit him on the head and drag him out of the basement? I couldn’t do that. And even if I could, he would have found a way around me. Because he was committed to something—a promise he had made—and he wasn’t going to stop until he had fulfilled it, as Ben wasn’t going to stop until his promise had been fulfilled.

I took Grandpa Samuel by the elbow and guided him to the meadow until we were far enough away to feel safe.

“Where’s Jones?” he asked me.

“He went after Serena.”

“He came to save her. That’s why he came home.”

“He came home to see Isobel again,” I said.

From the meadow, the house was alive with orange flames licking up the sides of the broken windowpanes. I could hear the shattering of glass and small explosions of things bursting from the heat. Quickly the fire spread. From room to room to room. From the first floor to the second to the third. I scanned the area for my father and Serena, hoping to see them running from the burning house, but they were not to be seen. I prayed to someone—I prayed to Ben—that somehow my father and Serena would be saved. But I felt no cool breeze on my neck. I felt only the blazing heat as Riddell House burned.

O
h, Mom. How many times had you told me the story of how you fell in love with Dad? When you told it, something about you changed. Your face would relax, and your voice would soften, almost like you were feeling the emotions all over again. I liked it when you told it to me, because it made me love you. It made me love you and Dad.

But the night Riddell House burned, you weren’t there. So I had to tell the story to myself.

You were studying at Harvard—“reading,” I would say, if I wanted to sound like a Brit—working toward your Ph.D. in comparative literature. You were so smart, speaking French and Spanish in addition to English. Studying your Dickens until you knew everything there was to know about Pip and his motivations. You were quite proud of yourself, young and saucy with the perfect accent that drove men crazy, flouncing about Cambridge with the world at your feet. You’d made something of yourself despite your upbringing, all those brothers and sisters fighting
for the handful of biscuits you had to share with your weak tea. Your father read electric meters for a living, which didn’t amount to much. Your mother altered women’s clothing. You read books constantly, for which friends and relatives alike mocked you. “You’ll never amount to anything, reading all those books,” they said. “You need to learn to type!” You knew that reading would get you everywhere. It would take you around the world! And so it did.

Scholarships to the best schools. Accolades and awards. They were all shocked, weren’t they? Their crooked British grins slapped from their crooked British faces. When you came home from Oxford for the holidays, your mum sat you at the head of the table. She had you tell stories of your travels to your brother and sisters, and she made them listen to you with a silence as stony as the walls of your simple farmhouse. You smoked cigarettes and decried the narrow-mindedness of the university regents, who kept their men’s and women’s colleges separate. You teased the boys from school who used to tease you. You blew on their necks and nibbled their ears until they were reduced to quivering puddles in your hands, and then you dropped them to the packed earth and left them there to evaporate; you left them wondering when you had become so smart and so beautiful and so cruel.

You took the scholarship offer at Harvard. You taught Cervantes and Robbe-Grillet to freshmen. You labored over your dissertation. And then you realized it was all for nothing. One day, reading yet another of thousands upon thousands of blue book essays you’d graded over the years, you had an epiphany: if you had to read another essay that compared and contrasted the significance of honor and society in
Tristan
and
King Lear
, you would pluck out your own eyes! (“Out, vile jelly!”)

That summer, you took a waitressing job in Newport, Rhode Island. Your best friend’s family were members of a yacht club, and her father got you a job in the cocktail room so you would get bigger tips. Men with thick fingers patted your tight bottom, which was safely tucked into tight
white polyester slacks. Your petite figure looked good in your regulation navy-and-white skintight polo shirt, and your long neck was such a temptation with a yellow kerchief knotted around it. Your dark hair was bobbed and you had your English accent and you did quite well for yourself, didn’t you? Until it all came apart at the seams.