The Hazards of Good Breeding (23 page)

16

E
LIOT IS NOT AFRAID
of bears,
or burglars, derelicts, rabid dogs, ghosts, goblins, Halloween masks, anything you might see in a horror movie. He is not afraid of traffic or heights or snakes or enclosed spaces. He is not like Caroline, whose fears have a certain adaptable logic. In the house alone at night she is afraid of rustling sounds and creaking floorboards; on the ski slopes she is afraid of loose bindings and ice patches and rogue snowmobiles. And he is not like his mother, whose fears spring from unpredictable shifts in her internal weather.

Eliot is afraid of guerrillas. He is afraid of men who come out of the jungle with machetes and machine guns, men who are not afraid to terrorize innocent people in the name of justice, who think nothing of taking a small boy away from his mother to learn to fight and be strong and hard and angry. Men like those who took Roberto.

But they will not come
here,
Rosita would say when Eliot locked the doors or tensed at the sound of unfamiliar wheels on the driveway. Not to this country, or to this neighborhood. This is a protected place, a place of
nice
people. Rosita trusts in greenery, in quiet streets and brand names and money. But Eliot is unconvinced. It is not these men themselves, who he knows are separated by hundreds of miles of desert and jungle and American soil, but the possibility that anyone could become like them—this is what is frightening. They are ordinary men, Rosita says, who have children and parents and favorite television shows and whose lives have been changed by anger. They were not born like this.

Eliot used to think danger belonged to the outlandish—to unfamiliar people and things that donned all the obvious and muscular trappings of death, violence, and hatred. But if it can come from even good men—or at least not really bad men—how is it to be avoided?

S
ince Rock's car rounded
the driveway to the house, Eliot has been in hiding. First in the mudroom closet, then behind the garage, now in the wood at the edge of the golf course. Holding his breath behind the coat rack, he could hear Rock walk in, call out, stand absolutely still for a moment with the dogs barking madly before switching the lights on.

Now it is late enough to get started. In the hour since Rock arrived, the fallen leaves and branches on the ground have been obscured by darkness and the sky has faded from a prescient glowing lavender to a deep, indifferent shade of purple. Eliot feels calm, sluggish almost, from the prolonged effort of anticipation—like one of those elephant seals he has seen on the Nature Channel, whose heartbeat slows to four per minute as they make their way underwater up the icy Canadian coastline. He navigates his way out to the edge of the lawn, which he can skirt protected by shadows, all the way to the break in the bushes that divide the Dunlaps' land from the Dellars'. Once on the softer, more artificial expanse of the Dellars' manicured lawn, he straightens and tugs the straps of his pack tighter. He has what he needs—his copies, his Paul Revere britches, Forester's set of keys.

He imagines for a moment that he is Roberto. He is walking through the patch of uninhabited jungle outside the town his grandmother lives in when he hears gunshots and shouting. Which makes him run, only this time he will run like the wind. He will not let himself be grabbed by some fierce-faced man who wants to make him into a soldier. Eliot will fight back, he will run down the hill he imagines leads out of the lush green jungle. He will run and run—here on the path he breaks into a jog—away from this man and the others. He will make himself disappear into his own life, not the one they have imagined for him. Eliot's legs pound the packed dirt, avoiding roots and fallen branches, staying on the path his flashlight illuminates before him, until he is completely winded. Then he slows back down, shining his flashlight twice behind him to be sure there is no one there, and of course—of course, he reminds himself—there isn't. There is the rush of cars in the distance and the sweet, bleating sound of the night peepers.

No one has ever looked for Roberto. No one has ever helped Rosita hunt him down and demand he be returned to her. What about the police? Eliot has asked. What about the law? It doesn't work like that there, Rosita says. She does not like to talk about it. Eliot does not understand this. If there are no police, what happens to the thieves and lost children?

At the top of the hill he stops for a moment to adjust his backpack and checks his watch: nearly ten o'clock. The black digits race over the illuminated watch face like industrious carpenter ants—breaking down and building up minutes, exposing the machinery of time. His wrist thrums with the motion of recorded instants, sends a buzz up through his shoulder and around the curve of his armpit, all the way back down through his body to his toes.

There is an unfamiliar light to his right, just visible between the slender trunks of a stand of white birches. Eliot takes a few steps toward this, and then looks up to get his bearings. Yes, he is at the rim of the hill that climbs up behind Memorial Road—and it is, yes, his own house, there below him, lit up as if inside it there is some great, all-encompassing fire blazing. He stands spellbound for a moment, all thoughts of Roberto and his father frozen by the bright and unfamiliar definition of his house against the land around it, as if, for the first time in three hundred years, it has decided to stand up.

F
AITH HAS ALLOWED
herself t
o be lured into eating at Jean Pierre's “most favorite restaurant on the Eastern Seaboard” now that she has managed to reach Eliot from Jean Pierre's cell phone. He was just out walking this morning, he said—or she
thinks
he said. It was not a good connection; his little voice kept cutting out in spaces. He was at home, though. Not missing. Not wandering along the median of a highway somewhere. The knowledge is a huge weight off Faith's shoulders, although she still feels a prickle of unease in her chest. If she could have heard him more clearly, or had the privacy to ask more questions—what the map is for, for instance, and why it was in her pocket—she would be more certain of his safety. More convinced there was nothing to worry about. But it is silly to be so demanding. She has spoken to him. He has assured her everything is all right. She tries to smooth over the stubborn wrinkle of unease with one of Dr. Marcus's positive attitudes.

From their table in the dining room of the Wilford Inn, they can see through the twilight all the way out to the elegant sweep of the Bourne bridge and the rise of Cape Cod on its other side. From here it all looks so basic—dark land and pale water, as simple as the language of ones and zeroes.

“It is a fine view, no?” Jean Pierre asks.

Faith nods appreciatively and takes a sip of her wine. It has been a delicious meal—bluefish and baby parsnips, buttery warm biscuits, and a blueberry cobbler.

“Such an American place,” Jean Pierre said when they walked in, gesturing at the furnishings of the tiny front hall: a shaker bench, a braided rug, a whole series of needlepoints hanging behind the desk, one of which was embroidered with
Friends welcome, relatives by appointment
. “You see?” he had said, pointing at this. Faith nodded blankly. Was this really somehow quintessentially American?

“Are you Lucy's only—” Faith stops short and blushes. “French cousin” sounds suddenly like a euphemism—or something derogatory. “Do you have siblings who come to Pea Island also?” she rephrases her question.

“Siblings?” Jean Pierre looks blank. “Ah—brothers and sisters! No, no—I am the only one of my parents' marriage. They were not so—how do you say—much interested in
le bon famie
.”

“Why not?” Faith asks.

Jean Pierre shrugs. “Too much in love for having children.”

“Oh,” Faith says, taken aback. It has never occurred to her that people who have children could be in love. There is something awfully brave and at the same time foolish about the idea of it. She pictures love as a pond to be stepped into, swum around in, and then climbed out of and toweled off before getting too chilly. Only Jean Pierre's parents have just gone on swimming, defying laws of gravity and resilience, challenging the durability of human skin.

“You were much in love with your husband?” Jean Pierre asks.

“Oh, no—I mean—well, maybe in the beginning,” Faith answers. “I guess.”

“Hmm.” Jean Pierre frowns.

“Why?”

“No reason.” He pauses. “You deserve to have been.”

It gives her an inadequate, wasted feeling, as if she has been a coward, someone to be pitied. “Well,” she says, feeling in her handbag for her lip gloss.

“You were in love also before you met him?”

Faith considers early boyfriends—Pete Sammuels, and Trick Hudson with those awful braces which had food stuck in them half of the time. But this is embarrassing; to remember possible love affairs she is harkening back to the ninth grade when she was barely even a full-fledged adolescent! Of course, Frank Lawrence was crazy about her, and that was right before Jack, when she was eighteen, but love—the idea never even crossed her mind. He had that ridiculous way of speaking as if he were involved in an amateur performance. . . .

“There were other times.” She does not need to sit here and be treated like an old maid. “Excuse me,” she says in a formal voice, leaving Jean Pierre sitting with a funny look on his face, staring after her as she walks away from the table.

In the bathroom she reapplies her lipstick and pats her hair, takes some time squirting the lotion from the little white dispenser beside the sink onto her hands. What is she doing here? It feels lonely, suddenly, to be in this place that is neither New York or Boston—where no one knows her whereabouts. She might as well be in some nondescript airport in a connecting city. And meanwhile (there is the prickle again, more uncomfortably this time) her little son is quite possibly all by himself in that big, creaky old house, doing what? What on earth is there for him to be doing? She should have done something to make sure he didn't end up alone there for the weeks until he will go off to that horrible camp Jack insists all his sons go to. She should have made more of a fuss in the custody hearings; she should have tried to have him spend the whole summer with her. Especially if Jack is in some sort of “mess,” according to Rock Coughlin.

This stops her short. She has not thought of this, actually, since telling Lucy about it this morning. She doesn't really care what sort of mess Jack is in, but what might it mean for Eliot? He has possibly been even more than marginally neglected. She could be back in Concord by now, getting to the bottom of things, checking in on her son. She picks her purse up off the bathroom counter and walks out into the dining room with an urgent sense of purpose.

“What is it?” Jean Pierre asks, looking up at her in concern when she has reached the table.

“I think—” Faith is surprised to feel her eyes are hot with tears. “I have a feeling—” She stops, unsure how to continue. “I should go back to Boston right now. I think my son who I called is—maybe is in trouble—”

And already, to her amazement, without any questions or laughter, Jean Pierre has raised his hand to signal for the check from the waiter.

“E
LIOT
,” C
AROLINE CALLS
almost before she is through the door once she is back from the Artful Dodger. She tries to keep her voice normal—curious, maybe—but not worried or upset. It sounds strange when it comes out, though—shrill and ineffective, the voice of some tired, hysterical old aunt.

“Eliot?” she repeats as the screen door slams shut behind her. The house is lit up like a Christmas tree. Its ancient windows look stretched out with the pressure of so much brightness from within. Out on the front lawn, Stephan, who has driven her back from the Artful Dodger, is making his way through the purply darkness to the oak with the Revolutionary War bullet in it. She wishes he had just dropped her off and driven home—she is in no mood to give him the tour he has requested.

Caroline crosses the kitchen and the dining room—both fully illuminated and exposed somehow; the dining room in particular looks small, uninteresting, and naked under the bright light of the dusty chandelier. As she walks through the doorway to the gun room, Caroline can hear chaotic clapping and announcing sounds. The television—she breathes out a great sigh of relief. “El?” she calls again, more steadily this time.

But the voice that greets her is not her brother's. “Carol?”

Rock is sitting sprawled out on the sofa, feet up on the coffee table. He has an amazed, wide-eyed look, as if it is five
A.M
. and he has been up all night.

“What are you doing here, Rocky?” Caroline asks, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “Have you seen Eliot?”

“No—he hasn't—not since I've been here. I just came by—I wanted to—” he is saying, but already Caroline is sprinting up the stairs. “Eliot?” she calls hopefully. Here, too, the lights are blazing—is this Eliot's work or Rock's? There is no sign of Eliot in his bedroom, the bathroom, the maid's room that was Rosita's, the old smoke room with its age-old smell of cured animal fat at the end of the hallway, or anywhere else. Rock is right—he is not home. For the second time today, he is missing.

Caroline walks back down the stairs and stands in the doorway to the TV room, trying not to give in to the heavy feeling of foreboding balanced on her shoulders. On the TV, lots of husky girls in red and white miniskirts and ponytails are leaping around to what sounds like a speeded-up arrangement of “My Country 'Tis of Thee.”

“Do you want to sit down Carol?” Rock says, turning to look at her.

“I don't—” Caroline begins. “I just—” She feels overwhelmingly tired suddenly. And the sofa
does
look inviting. She sits down on the arm of it, leans her head against the wall. Onscreen, the troupe of cheerleaders—that is what they are—spin and whirl around some awful gymnasium. Caroline stares at the TV, her mind whirring—or stumbling, really—through possibilities of rational explanation for where Eliot could be. A friend's house (does he even have friends?). Should she call the cops? Would that be hysterical?