The Drowning House (34 page)

A FEW MILES FROM HARRIET KINKAID
’
S HOUSE
, but remote in every other sense, was the neighborhood that adjoined the Island’s oldest cemetery, the place where, according to Will, Stella was buried.

Nothing grew around the small shotgun houses, no children played in front of them. Even in the heat of summer, the windows were shuttered and barred. Loud music thudded from the open doors.

In the gas station parking lot on the corner, a girl in shorts and a halter top waited near the pay phone. She strolled back and forth, her face expressionless. A pickup with a skull-and-crossbones decal circled the block and returned. The driver pulled in. They spoke briefly, he reached out to hand her something, and she climbed up into the truck.

I stopped in front of the entrance to the cemetery. A hundred years ago, this was where Galveston’s elite had constructed miniature versions of their impressive residences. As the area declined, those with a choice had gone elsewhere. The dead and their memorials remained. A sign stuck in the ground said
NO LOITERING
. Where the grass grew long, it was carpeted with brilliant yellow daisies.

I had no idea where to look for the Carraday family, where to find Stella’s grave. So I walked among the grieving figures, mostly women, that marked the larger monuments. The ground under them had shifted, and they leaned this way and that like commuters watching for different trains. There were angels too, their sloping, folded wings mottled with dark gray lichen.

It was well before noon, but the sun beat on my neck and back. I
knew my hair wouldn’t keep me from burning. I pulled at my shirt and felt sweat running down my sides. A grove of mature oaks clustered at the opposite side of the cemetery, and I made my way toward it. I hoped the Carraday monument might be under one of them.

I was halfway there when I saw someone sitting on the steps of a big pink marble mausoleum. The solid breadth of his shoulders and the relaxed way he sat, his legs splayed, contrasted pleasantly with the narrow, fretful stone figures. He was scratching the chin of a low-slung, brown mongrel. I realized I was glad to see Ty. As I approached, he raised the hand that wasn’t busy with the dog and smiled.

“This might be what you’re looking for.” He stood and above his head, on the lintel, I saw
CARRADAY
in block letters. Behind him, set between marble panels, was a pair of bronze doors decorated with grillwork. The whole arrangement made me think of the elevator in an old-fashioned department store, the kind that was built as a sort of temple to commerce.

“Are there first names?” I asked.

“On the other side.”

“Will said there was a stone. I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Maybe he was embarrassed. It’s awfully pink. But even if it wasn’t, would you want it?”

I shook my head. I remembered a story I had heard about a successful investor who spent a fortune while he and his wife were still alive to build an elaborate monument more than twelve feet high. By the time they both died, within a few weeks of each other, he’d lost most of his money, Island society had turned its back on them, and the only one who attended the funeral was the stonemason.

The dog grinned up hopefully. When it was clear that no more attention was forthcoming, he retreated to the cool earth at the foot of one of the oaks.

Ty said, “I’ve been looking for you. I followed you from town. I’m parked over there.” He indicated the far side of the cemetery. “I wanted you to see me first, to know I was here. After the boat, I didn’t know what else to do. I called. I left messages.”

“I know you did. But I—”

“You don’t have to explain.” Ty shifted his weight, and I sensed his discomfort. He said, “There’s something I think you ought to know.”

“What?” I smiled, but Ty’s face remained serious. He was not dressed for the office, he was wearing shorts and a polo shirt, and I wondered why. He’d made a point of saying he wasn’t in Galveston for a vacation.

“After we talked at the ice-cream parlor, I got curious. I looked at some things closely, for the first time.” Ty took a deep breath and exhaled hard. “I couldn’t tell you that night on the boat, not with Will there. You know how he made his money?”

“He inherited it, mostly.”

“He inherited a modest savings-and-loan and some land. It would have been enough for most people. But Will is ambitious. His real success has come from financing development. Real estate development. Some off the Island, some on. Not one house at a time. Big stuff.”

My throat tightened. I remembered Mary Liz saying,
The tourists want condos
.

Ty looked away, as if he didn’t want to see my reaction, but he went on talking. “It didn’t hurt that he married Mary Liz Smith. The Smith brothers discovered the South Sooner Field. Big oil. So he’s had plenty to work with.”

I nodded. I knew how Mary Liz had been raised, the way she’d lived. I’d just never thought much about what it must have cost. “Are you saying the bank hasn’t made money?”

“No, it has. That is, it did. The old way was pretty straightforward. Borrow money at three percent, loan it at six, hit the golf course by three. Or the boat dock. Will’s not a golfer, of course.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you were the one who made me pay attention to how things are here. I could say I didn’t know. Probably it would be more accurate to say I wasn’t looking for what I didn’t want to see.” He paused and regarded me thoughtfully. “This may not be easy for you to hear. I can stop anytime you want.”

A man rode past on a rusted bike. The route through the cemetery
must have been his regular shortcut. One of his tires rasped softly against a bent fender. I watched as he went by.

“Go on,” I said.

“Real estate was booming in other places. People here wanted to get in on the action. Will helped them.”

“Is there something wrong with that?”

“I guess it depends on what you do. And how you do it.” Ty looked away over the clustered obelisks. “I don’t know the whole story. I couldn’t go into the details, not without being noticed.” He grimaced, and I realized that it had been hard for him to give up the prospect of the burgeoning career that had brought him to Galveston. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I like Will. How could anyone not like him? He made me feel so appreciated. So this is the part that’s embarrassing to admit. I got to thinking how smart I must be. For him to have—”

“Singled you out?”

“Exactly.”

Ty’s neck and cheeks were pink, but he looked at me levelly. “I’m pretty sure the bank is going down. Not right away. But eventually. There will probably be an investigation.” He went on talking. I heard the sound of his voice rising and falling, I heard
conflict of interest
and
bank fraud
. I heard my own voice too, now and then, but faintly, like a conversation in another room. Everything around me seemed to have faded slightly, as though the light had faltered. The man on the bicycle pedaled into the distance.

Ty was still talking. He said, “When this happens, if it happens, blame will be assigned. And it will be better for everyone here if much of it can be assigned to someone who is not an Islander. Someone who doesn’t count.”

“You said, ‘If it happens.’ You’re not sure.”

“I’m as sure as I can be.”

I wiped my forehead and felt sweat on my hand. “You think Will brought you here deliberately? I don’t believe it.” But as I said it, I saw Will at the party, greeting his guests, making introductions. At the boat dock, shaking hands. Had he introduced Ty, told the others about his responsibilities, before I arrived? I wanted not to believe
it. At the same time it came to me that if what Ty said was true, Will might have introduced us with a purpose. He’d made certain we met at his party. He’d brought us together again on the boat. What exactly had he intended? Had he thought of me as a useful diversion? Something to keep Ty busy, preoccupied, while Will did whatever he had to? Once again, I knew what I’d seen and heard, but had no idea what it all meant.

Ty shrugged. “You don’t have to believe me.” Somehow his acquiescence was more convincing than any argument. “I’ve already let Will know that I’m leaving.” He paused. “Was I wrong to tell you?” he asked.

“No.” I spoke without thinking, the desire to know had been my guiding impulse for so long, it had never occurred to me that anything else might take its place. I had a sudden thought. “What about Patrick?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“Does he know? Is he—”

“I don’t think Patrick knows anything about it. Your sister’s right, he’s hardly ever there.”

This time I used the word. “So he hasn’t done anything illegal?”

When Ty didn’t immediately respond, I looked up. He said, “I can’t answer that.”

Chapter 31

SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT IT
’
S LIKE
to work only in black-and-white, like Cartier-Bresson. To forgo a whole class of images. I think about the shots of Galveston he must have considered and rejected because he knew they would only succeed in color. I wonder if some of them are still there, on the Island, waiting to be discovered.

Ty had offered no proof. I didn’t have to accept what he’d told me. I could go on as if nothing had happened. I thought of my father saying to Frankie and me,
Believe what you want
. What did I want? I wasn’t certain. In the meantime, it felt good to stand by the window, Stella’s window, holding my Leica, thinking about light and composition.

I was planning to photograph the old palms in the Carradays’ garden. To see if I could capture their moods, their postures, some waving, spirited, others bent and furtive.

I waited until the sun was low, then went out into the yard. I took a few shots of the trees, then decided their spiky shadows on the grass were more interesting at that moment than the palms themselves. I moved away, moved closer, considered using a filter. I was standing back, gazing toward the garage, when I saw that one of the doors was open.

Did I only imagine that I saw him disappear into its dark recess? Once I knew, it was obvious. He had even left me a sign telling me where to come if only I had been able to see it.

I went without hesitating to the tack room. On the round table was a bowl of roses. I could see, in the alcove, a canvas hat lying on the bed. I turned away, I didn’t want to think about Eleanor and Will
meeting there. I didn’t want to think about Will at all. Thoughts of him led too quickly to thoughts of what Ty had told me.

There were the heavy collars, the harnesses on the walls. The smell of leather. The waiting carriages. I heard the wheeze of springs, saw one of the carriages move just a little. I walked closer.

“Patrick.”

He reached out and I took his hand and stepped onto the running board. The carriage swayed, and he pulled me up. How many times had he helped me over windowsills, into cars, into any number of places where we shouldn’t have been? Always, Patrick’s strong arm was the thing I could rely on.

His hair was thinner and his body had settled. He had a little belly. The skin on his forearms was pale and ropey where he had been burned, and there was more of that pale skin along his chin. I saw and registered the changes. Still he was perfectly familiar, wholly dear.

“Hey,” he said. He was holding the silver flask, the one I had seen resting on the carriage seat my first day on the Island. “Are you scrutinizing me?”

I smiled. “I wondered if you would be the same.”

“Am I?”

“Pretty much.”

“I’m giving you my good angle,” he said. He grinned and turned his head and I could see where the scars stretched along his jaw and toward his ear.

“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “Not to me.”

He set the flask down and took my hand and placed it against his, the way he used to. “You’re pretty much the same too. At least, you haven’t grown any.” He sat back against the leather.

Patrick was never visibly drunk. He didn’t slur his words or act out. He just became more detached. I could see that he had been drinking for a while. “You remember the time we poured Mom’s bourbon down the heating vents?” he asked. “You remember how it smelled?”

I smiled. “Of course.”

“Come here,” he said, and I moved over and sat next to him.

We think we can’t bear things. We say,
I’d die if he ever
and
I couldn’t live without
. I used to say those things too and I believed them. That winter in Ohio, watching the ice form on the window in my bedroom, under the eaves of my grandmother’s house, I was waiting to die. I believed it would happen, that it was just a matter of time. I felt sorry for my grandmother, that she would be the one to find me.

I leaned my head against Patrick’s shoulder. When I began to sob, he pulled me close. “Hey,” he said.

We sat for a few minutes like that. When I quieted, he turned my face to his and deliberately wiped my eyes with one knuckle. “How was Europe?” I managed to ask.

Patrick rubbed his chin, and I had time to conjure up things I’d seen in pictures—grand boulevards, cafés, people in colorful costumes. He said, “I learned to ski. I did a lot of skiing. They have real winter there.”