A Sudden Light: A Novel (47 page)

He was swarthy and wind kissed, and his eyes shot beams of light at you when he turned them on beneath his long lashes and dark brow. He was wearing open-toed leather sandals, which was not allowed on the deck. He was wearing trim shorts that exposed his muscular legs. Again, not allowed. His arms were filled with an understated power—not thick and bulky, but with every muscle vibrating beneath smooth, tanned skin. They all gathered around him. You didn’t know why—was he somebody famous? Why would the members allow such a flouting of the rules? They pulled up chairs, the metal feet scraping the deck, ten of them, twelve. Then more came, and they pulled tables together to accommodate their numbers—strictly against the rules. You went to the bar over and over again to retrieve gins with tonic. How many runs did you deliver? And pretzels and peanuts and cocktail mixes, members arguing over who would buy him his next drink. Each time you placed a cold drink before him, he smiled at you with his eyes until you had been reduced to a puddle yourself. You were captivated, entranced. You had to have him, as did all the others, the board members and committee members and senior members in good standing.

“Who is he?” you asked one of your co-workers as she gazed at him from a distance.

“They call him Jones,” she said.

“What does he do?” you asked.

“Me, if I have anything to say about it,” your co-worker said.

She had no idea who she was up against.

It was an accident, you say when you tell the story. There are no accidents, Dad, the onetime superstud says. You came around the corner with your tray of drinks and ran right smack into him, soaking him in
gin. The chairman of the board swiftly and severely reprimanded you, but Jones cut him off.

“Please don’t do that,” he said. “It was my fault; I was looking down. I hope I didn’t injure the young lady. Please. There should be no crying over spilled gin.”

Someone laughed at his joke, and the tension was defused. The chairman gave you the key to his office and told Jones where the guest clothes were, the ones he kept in case someone showed up without the proper attire, or tripped and fell off the dock, as sometimes happened. As you unlocked the door to let him inside, he placed his hand on your shoulder.

“I would like to take you sailing,” he said.

“I would love to go sailing with you, Mr. Jones,” you replied.

“Sunset, then?”

You had to scramble to get someone to cover the rest of your shift. You waited for him on the dock, and he led you to an exquisite wooden sailboat. You’d never seen something so beautiful. He gave you a thick sweater because you had worn a light dress to impress him with your girlishness. He warned you it would get cold on the water. And you sailed with him out onto Narragansett Bay as the falling sun set the sky ablaze.

“Is this your boat?” you asked him.

“No,” he replied. “I built it. The owner let me take it out as a favor.”

“No offense intended, Mr. Jones, but I don’t know what it is you do. Build boats? Are you famous?”

“I have a bit of a reputation,” he said, modestly omitting that his rapidly spreading reputation was in having a unique and special touch with the creation of wooden sailboats, such that the fabulously wealthy patroness Greta von Tiehl, granddaughter of the founder of the yacht club at which you worked, had commissioned one of his hulls. Which was what the fuss was about.

He turned the boat in to the wind and let the sails luff, and they made a loud clapping sound. He sat down next to you and touched your face
with his rough fingers, but the roughness felt good to you; it felt like home.

“Are you enjoying our sail?” he asked.

“I am enjoying it, Mr. Jones,” you replied. “But I wish I knew your given name. You’ve only been introduced as Mr. Jones.”

“You know my given name already,” he said. “You know everything about me already.”

He kissed you, and you kissed him, and the sail clapped as if in applause.

And you, my dear mother, were in love.

I
don’t know how long Grandpa and I stood there watching. Five minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour. I don’t know, because I was numb. In the distance, I could hear sirens. A neighbor must have seen the smoke and flames; a neighbor must have called. The sirens were getting closer. I heard a loud boom, something exploding. Part of the roof collapsed, shooting sparks high into the air. Some of those sparks settled on and ignited other parts of the shake roof. More fire. A hot summer: no rain, and a wooden firetrap of a house. It wasn’t long until a wall collapsed, and then more fell in on itself. The fire trucks arrived, but the firefighters seemed baffled by the rage of flames with which they were confronted; they had no tools to fight such an inferno. Forest-fire helicopters would have been of little use; thimbles of water thrown on a volcano by tiny men with tiny buckets.

I watched the firefighters as they mounted an attempt, despite the odds. They were going to try, because trying was what they were
supposed to do. But they all knew already. Everyone knew. Riddell House was gone; there was nothing left to save.

Brother Jones did not escape Riddell House that morning. Nor did Sister Serena.

For a few days after the fire, I imagined that my father and Serena had escaped together. Maybe they had used a secret back staircase to exit the house. Maybe they ran away, escaped down the creek to the railroad tracks, and hopped a freighter bound for a distant land. Maybe they were dancing this very minute to old records they found at the local Goodwill in whatever town had accepted them as strangers. Maybe they would live happily ever after.

But I wasn’t allowed to cling to that fantasy for long; their remains were discovered. The investigators from the city identified them by their teeth. Even Serena, as untraveled as she was, had dental records; thus was the evidence. Thus was the proof.

Because the earth calls. The soil, the rocks, the clay. It calls to us to remind us, to make sure we remember. The earth will ultimately win. It always does. We will, all of us, end our lives here. Even the birds.

“W
hat happened after that?” Beth, my younger daughter, asks me when I’ve finished my story.

She’s sitting in the tall grass of the meadow of The North Estate Park, where we’ve come as a family to scatter the ashes of my grandfather—her great-grandfather—Samuel Riddell, who has recently passed away. Though we have spent many years in England and, later, in Connecticut, my grandfather’s final wish was to have his ashes scattered at The North Estate.

Beth, who just turned eleven years old, looks positively like an angel, all long blond hair and tanned skin, and a white, willowy dress. All blue eyes and freckles and a bit of mischief in her smile.

“Did Grandma Rachel come to collect you?” Belle, my older daughter, asks. Belle is less girlish, and more like my wife, I think. A bit more forceful, a bit more tenacious; feminine, to be sure, but with an edge.

“She stayed in England,” I say. “She sent her brother to collect me,
though I’m sure I could have handled it. She didn’t want to confront certain things, I think.”

“Is that why she walked away when you started telling the story?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Probably. I stopped trying to figure out my mother a long time ago.”

“Where is she?” Belle asks.

“She went that way,” Sophie, my wife, answers, pointing to the edge of the woods.

“If you follow the steps down into the ravine, the creek will take you out to the sound,” I explain to them. “But if you follow the path out to the bluff, there’s a gazebo that has an amazing view. If it’s still there.”

“You answered Belle’s question, but you didn’t answer mine,” Beth complains.

“I’m sorry, honey. What was your question?”

“What happened after that? What did you do after the fire?”

“We did what Ben wanted,” I said. “That’s why this is all a city park now, with the parking lot and the signs and the plaque that says
THE NORTH ESTATE
. And then Grandpa and I got on an airplane and flew to England to live with my mother. And then I grew up. And then I fell in love with your mother, and we had babies—you two. And we’ve been living happily ever after ever since.”

I pull Sophie to me so our hips bump, and I kiss her with theatrical passion so the girls think I’m kidding, but I really do mean it. I mean every bit of it. I love her so much I can hardly stand to look at her. (Sometimes I’m amazed that I can feel such feelings, but I know they exist inside of me, whether or not I am able to communicate them to those I love.)

“Gross,” Belle says, an appropriate reaction from an adolescent girl.

“What about Ben?” Beth asks, unfazed. “Is he still here?”

“No,” I say. “Grandpa and I set him free.”

“How are you so sure?” Belle asks defiantly.

“Because I saw him go. It took them a long time to put out the fire,
and what was left of the house was very hot for many days. That’s why it was so difficult to find my father’s and Serena’s remains. But the evening after the fire, as the sun was setting, I went back to the house—as close as I could get—”

“Where did you sleep, if the house burned down?” Belle asks.

“They wanted us to go to a motel, but Grandpa Samuel refused to leave. He insisted on staying in the cottage. Neighbors brought us camping equipment—lanterns and a butane stove and sleeping bags—and food. We camped inside the cottage; it wasn’t that bad. Anyway, that evening I was so tired, I wanted to sleep for a week. But my father and Serena were still missing, so I couldn’t sleep. I snuck out of the cottage and went back up to the house to—I don’t know why I went, actually—to feel what it was that I had lost? As I stood there, looking at the smoldering remains of a once-magnificent house, I felt a breeze on my neck—”

“There’s always a breeze when he arrives,” Belle whispers to Beth.

“When
who
arrives?” Beth whispers back.

“When
Ben
arrives. Duh.”

“That’s right,” I say. “There’s always a breeze when Ben arrives. I looked behind me, and he was standing next to me like I’m standing next to you.”

“What did you say to him?” Beth asks.

“I told him he could go. The house was gone, and Grandpa had agreed to turn the land over to the city, and so there was no reason for him to stay any longer.”

“But your dad died,” Beth points out. “And Serena, too. Weren’t you sad?”

“I was very sad—”

I stop, surprised by the upwelling of emotions I feel at this moment. I have rationalized my father’s and Serena’s deaths for so long, they have become the stuff of legend in my mind. Their deaths were necessary, I’ve always told myself, to free me, and to free future generations of Riddells from the burden Elijah carried. It made so much sense to me, I thought I was beyond the emotion of it. But standing on the bluff and talking to
my daughters about it catches me off guard, and I have to take a moment to gather myself.

“My father promised to save Serena,” I say, finally. “He had to try. He couldn’t
not
try.”

I pause and rub my chin, wondering if my daughters can understand what I can’t fully understand. Sophie puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

“What did Ben do?” Beth asks.

“He nodded to me. He knew the debt had been settled and he could go off to find Harry, or do whatever was coming next for him. He walked across the meadow to the edge of the woods. I saw him disappear into the woods right over there. See that tall tree? That’s his tree.”

“That’s Ben’s tree?” Belle asks.

“You
climbed
it,” Beth says reverentially, which makes me smile. “To the very top!”

“And then I watched Ben climb that tree to the very top,” I tell them. “He held on up there, swaying in the breeze, for quite a while. Then he reached up with his hands and he took hold of the sky. A gust of wind came and swept him from the top of the tree, and off he flew.”

They follow my finger as I point in the direction I saw Ben depart.

“He didn’t fall?” Belle asks.

“No. He didn’t fall. He flew off into the sky until he was so small I couldn’t see him anymore; then he was gone.”

None of us speaks for a long time. Minutes, maybe. We look at the grass, we look at the trees. We look at Puget Sound and the Olympics. We wander a few feet from each other, but we still remain a unit; we stay close. We look at the sky, and at the path of Ben’s flight. In a sense, we celebrate Ben’s liberation with our silence. I like to think so, anyway.

“We should visit the graves,” I say after a time. “Up on Observatory Hill. My father and Serena and Ben and Harry are there, with my grandmother and great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, too. And then we can go down to the beach.”

“The
beach
,” Beth cries emphatically. “Finally!”

“I’ll take them to Observatory Hill,” Sophie offers. “You should go find your mother. You can meet us at the beach.”

“When are we going to scatter Grandpa Samuel’s ashes?” Beth asks.

“In a bit,” Sophie says. “After we see the gravestones.”

She gives me a kiss on the cheek.

“Go,” she says. “Find your mother and look after her.”

The three of them head off across the meadow. I watch as they cross over the footprint of where Riddell House stood twenty-three years ago. No evidence of Riddell House exists, but I can still see it. It’s still there for me.

I make my way down the path until I emerge from the brush and see the gazebo. She’s there, as I knew she would be; she’s not the beach type. But I’m curious to see that someone is with her.

She’s sitting with a man. He reaches for her hand, and she offers hers so that their fingertips just barely touch.

I’m curious for a moment, but not really. I know that man. And I know that gesture. I remember it from a motel next to a highway in New Haven.

My mother, after all this time, has been reunited with my father.

I almost laugh, but I don’t because I don’t want to give myself away. I watch them together, talking and laughing and talking more. And then she leans her head into his shoulder. And then she lifts her face and he kisses her. They are complete. They are together.