The Dark House (36 page)

T
hey went into the Burger King on 102, hardly Rollins' favorite, but the only restaurant still open at this hour. He needed to eat something, to fill himself up. He was famished, but also hollow. He didn't mind being among some regular people, either, who might make him feel less like a freak.

When Rollins returned with their food, he found Marj engrossed in some papers that she had taken from the strongbox, which lay open on the table before her. Marj dug out a few of the french fries and popped them in her mouth while Rollins spread out a napkin on the table to create a kind of placemat for himself, unwrapped his burger, and took a bite. It wasn't nearly as bad as he expected.

“You might want to take a look at this one, Rolo.”

Rollins set down his burger and wiped his hands with a napkin. She
handed him a neatly folded carbon copy of a typed letter that Neely had written to
Aunt Jane
. It was dated December 19, 1969.

“That's just before he left,” Rollins told her. Just after Christmas: The Christmas tree was still up, its lights twinkling.

“Yeah? Well, this is why.”

He returned his gaze to the letter. Rollins pictured Cornelia typing away through the night; the letter seemed to be written by someone made sleepless by memory and anguish. He thought of his mother, donning her spectacles to read it. At her small, antique desk in the library, overlooking the garden. Alone. She was always alone, always set apart somehow, like a portrait inside a frame.

So the letter began. It ran three pages, single-spaced. As he read, his fingertips pinning the sheets to the tabletop, he had the sensation of plunging into it, of immersing himself, so that he could visualize the affair that Neely described as if he had actually been there, watching.

 

He could see how it began:

 

She's in the drawing room, reading a book of poems by Elizabeth Bishop. It's nearly midnight. The children are in bed. Father breezes in from a party, headed for the stairs. Mother had been sick, unable to attend. So he is alone as he sees Neely there in the green chair before the fireplace; she's lit by the warm light of the table lamp. She is wearing a bright shirt from India that brings out the color of her eyes and hair. Father comes to the doorway, stops. He looks at her without speaking. She doesn't notice at first, then looks up. “Hi,” she says. Cheerful as always. “Hi,” he says back. Softly. Then he turns and leaves the room.

 

Later:

 

A Saturday morning. She's in her bedroom in the back of the house, sleeping, when there's a knock at the door. She wakes, rolls over, says, “Come in.”
Father enters slowly, apologizing. She says, “No, it's fine.” But she pulls the sheet up. He says he's brought her something. He's hesitant, like a child. He says he'd like to give it to her. She says, “How nice.” He brings out a small package that he has concealed behind his back. He comes to her bed, and he hands her the package. It's wrapped in red paper, with a silver ribbon. She hunches up onto her elbows, the sheet up tight to her armpits. “Really—for me?” she says. He nods. She takes the gift from him. “Aren't you going to open it?” he asks. She raises herself up onto her headboard. The bedsheet slips down to her waist. Her nightie is thin; it barely covers her. She undoes the wrapping, she opens the box. She finds—a gold necklace. She melts, it's so beautiful. He says, “I thought of you when I saw it. Try it on.” She takes it out of the felt-lined box, brings it around her neck, but has trouble with the clasp. “Here, let me,” he says. Their hands touch as he takes the necklace from her. She swings her back around to him, lifts up her hair. He pauses, savoring the moment, then affixes the clasp. “There,” he says. “Turn, let me see you.” He steps around to see her better. “Glorious,” he says. She climbs out of bed, goes to look at herself in the mirror over the dresser. He watches her admire herself. She is stunned by the beauty of the necklace. Still wearing it, she extends her arms to him, gives him a hug. “Thank you, Uncle Henry.” “You're certainly welcome,” he replies, smiling like never before. She turns her back to him again and lifts her hair, and he undoes the necklace and replaces it in the box. “Don't tell anyone this came from me, all right?” he says, handing it to her. “I'd like it to be our secret.”

 

And so it began. Before she knew it, she was involved. She was on the hook. He had asked, and she had said yes. So that a week later, when he first came into her room at night, when the whole house was asleep and moonlight slanted in under the window shade, she let him enter. She let him remove his clothes and slide into her bed beside her. She let him lift up her nightie, whisper words to her she never expected to hear from him. Amid the confusion and the fear that first time, there was an element of pleasure for her. It had been her first time. Father had gone slowly, lovingly. She continued to seek that pleasure, but, as their encounters continued, she had more and more trouble finding it amid her growing revulsion. Eventually, the revulsion was all there
was. That was all she felt their last time together in the Brookline house, the night Stephanie died.

The letter concluded:
I wish that none of this had happened, Aunt Jane.
It was signed, simply,
Cornelia.

Rollins held the letter a moment. The Burger King was nearly empty, except for some truckers who seemed to have come in to wash up. But Rollins was back on that cold morning when his father never came down to breakfast. Neely had typed the letter out on a manual. The lines were uneven, the periods thick dots, the angry capitals big as billboards. He could almost hear her rapping out the sentences, the keys smacking against the page. He saw, he felt her agony. He bled for her, and for himself. A marriage ended when she was done. He pictured her mother standing up from her desk, pushing in her chair, then going to speak to Father.

“Oh God,” Rollins said, sickened.

“Yeah, poor Neely. But I felt bad for your mom, too. Can you imagine getting this from your niece?”

Rollins shook his head.

“But then I found this one.” Marj waved another letter in the air. “Take a look at this.”

It was a formal invitation that Mrs. Rollins had sent to Neely two years later inviting her to the family's annual clambake at the old house in Gloucester. Marj pointed to the line written in pen at the very bottom.
And I know Henry would love to see you, too.

“What's
that
all about?” she asked Rollins.

Rollins stared at it, uncomprehending. He could see his puzzled image reflected in the picture window.

Marj picked up another note that she'd set out on the table. “Or this one?” She handed it to Rollins. It was a stiff card, with
JANE ROLLINS
engraved on it, inviting Neely to tea.
It will be just the two of us this time, I promise.

“What's that mean ‘this time'?” Marj asked. “Like, who was there last time?”

Rollins shook his head. “I don't know.”

“Or this one.” She passed him a postcard, bearing a Sargent por
trait from the Museum of Fine Arts.
Go see him,
read the card.
He needs a lift. Please. Do it for me.

“There must be five or six more in here,” Marj said, stirring the papers around inside the strongbox. “What's she doing—pimping for him?”

“Marj, please!”

“Well—what do
you
call it?”

“I don't know. I don't know what it is.”

“It's like your mom would do anything for him.”

Rollins looked at her across the table, hoping he'd see something in her eyes, on her face, that would explain everything. He was behind again, scrambling to catch up.

“To get him back,” Marj added.

“What?”
Rollins looked at her in amazement. “That's ridiculous.” After he left, she'd removed all the photographs of him at the Brookline house. His parents had not been in the same room, so far as he knew, ever since.

“Rolo, I've got a mother. She's got to know her husband came on to me. But she didn't chuck him out.”

“But my mother did chuck my father out. They got divorced. They spent forever working out the settlement.” Rollins spoke heatedly. It was too absurd!

“Okay, okay. But listen to me. None of that got started until
after
this letter.” Marj tapped it with her index finger. “And she knew all about the sex before. We figured that out, remember? That's why she slapped Neely when your sister drowned. She knew all about it. She had to. If she was going to divorce him for that, she'd have done it five years earlier. She was okay with his screwing around. Not thrilled, obviously. But okay with it. She probably figured that was his way.”

“So why'd she divorce him after the letter?”

She ate another french fry, an action that Rollins found irritating. “Maybe it was the humiliation.”

“But nobody else knew, except her and Father and Neely.”

“Neely knew
she
knew. That's what made it different. Before, your
mother could pretend that she didn't know. Once she got this letter, forget it.”

Rollins remembered how happy his mother had been to recount the story of her engagement at the Harvard Club. “Happiest day of my life,” he said idly.

“What is?”

Rollins explained that's what his mother had said about the day Henry Rollins had proposed to her. “I suppose it isn't something you'd say about a man you loathe.”

O
utside the restaurant, the night sky seemed deeper now, the stars colder, more distant. The highway was nearly silent at this hour, and as he followed Marj to the car, Rollins could hear the ringing of the high-intensity lamps that lit up the parking area. He climbed inside the Nissan. He put his key in the switch, but he left it there. “I thought the same thing as Neely.” He turned to Marj. “The other day, in the bathtub, when I was thinking about my sister. I was thinking she was
lucky,
being dead.” He looked away again. “That's when I went under.”

“So you really wanted to, like—”

“Yeah.” Rollins felt ashamed of himself. “Until I saw you. I thought you were an angel, come to save me.”

Marj turned away from him for a moment and rolled down the window. “Me? An angel? Hardly.”

He sat there for a moment, deeply glad to share his little car with her. He thought how wonderful she was to have stayed with him all this time, to see him through his ordeal, to care. The kindness seemed to radiate from her, like warmth from her skin.

But they were not done yet. “I need to have a talk with my mother, don't I?” he told her.

“That's what I was thinking.” She looked down at her running clothes. “But I'm not sure I'm dressed for it.”

“Don't worry. She'll be delighted.”

He pulled out onto 102 and then headed south on 93, bound for 495. Marj returned her gaze to the highway. For a long while, she rode in silence beside him as the roadside trees flew backward outside the window.

“You are being a good son, you know,” Marj said.

“What makes you—?” He stopped, sensing a brightness coming from behind. It filled his rearview mirror, and then it lit up the interior of the car, as if a sun had dawned inside it. Rollins turned, and he saw two massive headlights behind him, no more than ten feet behind him, and closing fast. Rollins hit the accelerator.

Beside him, Marj's head jerked back into her headrest. “What?”

“Behind us. Some jerk—” He glanced back again; two headlights were blazing in his rear window. The road ahead was clear, and he pushed up the speedometer to 75, then 80, then 85. The Nissan shuddered wildly, but the other car stayed with him. With its brights up, it was like a ball of light coming after them. Rollins had to move his head to keep the reflected brilliance out of his eyes. “Can you see who it is?” Rollins shouted over the roar of his engine.

“No—it's too bright.”

Rollins jerked the Nissan into the right lane, hoping to see the car go flying past, but it moved to stay behind them as if it were magnetically attached.

“It's Jeffries, got to be.”

“That
shit.”

Rollins pulled back into the middle lane, but the brightness stayed with them.

Marj whipped around, her hand shielding against the glare. “Come on, come
on.”
Rollins floored it. Road signs and mile markers flew past, but the light behind them grew ever brighter. “He's coming closer!” Marj shouted.

The Nissan's tires screamed as Rollins yanked the steering wheel to the left. But the brightness followed.

Rollins looked to his left: There was no guardrail and the roadside fell away sharply. He smashed down the accelerator, but the speedometer needle didn't budge past 85.

“He's going to ram—” Marj screamed.

A terrible thud rattled the car, snapping Rollins' head back against the headrest and jerking Marj about in her seat. The Nissan swerved. The yellow line marking the road's edge went at a crazy angle, and Rollins could see the gully beside the road open up wide below him. He yanked on the wheel, the tires screeched, the highway seemed to swerve every which way as the Nissan lurched back toward the middle lane again.

“No!” Marj screamed.

Rollins straightened out the Nissan and glanced back into the rearview. The brightness was on him tight, and there were lights up ahead. A low flat-bed truck, laboring in the center lane, dead ahead.

“Watch out!” Marj shot a hand out toward the truck.

“I see it.” Rollins flew ahead. The truck loomed up. Jeffries' lights still filled his mirror. Rollins eased off the gas as he closed on the truck. The brightness swelled behind him.

Rollins spun to the right and hit the gas to speed clear. There was a squealing of tires, and the brightness seemed to push right into the flatbed truck with a terrible crunching of metal. Behind him, Rollins could see sparks spew into the air as the long truck lurched to the right toward the Nissan. Behind it, Jeffries' dark sedan slid to the left. Rollins pulled well clear to the breakdown lane in the far right and stopped to watch in horror as the great truck skidded past, the sedan somehow pinned to the flatbed's rear. A road sign buckled and slapped down on the sedan's roof with a great clang, then another one went as the two vehicles careened along with a roar of angry tires. The two
vehicles, linked now, skidded on toward the overpass in a slow twisting motion, a death grip. The truck gave out a frantic blast of its horn as it tried to break free, and then, with an explosion of metal and glass, the sedan slammed into the concrete pillar to the left. The truck swung back to the left and was whipped around the far side of the underpass. The cab disappeared down into the gully beyond. Rollins advanced cautiously by the Audi, wrapped around the concrete wall.

“Keep on going, Rolo,” Marj said beside him. “Just leave it. He tried to kill us!”

Rollins kept on, watching. He was in the underpass when he saw a man stagger up the hill toward the road. The truck driver, presumably. Then there was an explosion, and the Audi burst into flames—a great ball of orange that leaped up all the way to the bridge above. The truck driver retreated back down into the safety of the gully as Rollins hurried by. His heart was fluttering inside his chest, and he was bathed in sweat.

“That could have been us, Rolo,” Marj said.

Once they were safely past the wrecked Audi, Marj asked Rollins to stop. He pulled over in the emergency lane. Marj unclipped her seat belt and threw her arms around Rollins. Soon, she was quaking, her tears spilling down her cheeks and onto his neck as he held her and stroked her hair.