The Rope Walk (26 page)

“You hungry? Go call your father, okay? Dinner is ready.”

Alice wandered through the house in her bare feet, the soft light in the rooms setting everything aglow, the burnished wood of her mother's old secretary desk, the tarnished silver trophy bowls on the mantelpiece, the living room's rose-colored drapes that had worn thin over the years, the setting sun's golden light behind them now. She felt tired after playing the piano for so long, but peaceful, too. The painful scene at Kenneth's from earlier that afternoon, Kenneth and Gifford hugging each other, had dulled a little in her mind. Like exploring a recent wound, she probed gently at the idea of Kenneth and found she could just bear it. Was it possible that she and Theo were wrong, she thought, and Kenneth wasn't dying, after all? Maybe he was just very, very sick and everyone was worried he
would
die.

She found Theo and her father in Archie's study, where Archie was tilted back in his chair with a tumbler of Scotch in his hand,
watching the television. Theo sat cross-legged on the floor beside him, his chin in his hands.

When Alice came to the door, Theo turned around. “They bombed the Tube in London,” he said importantly. “I told you they were everywhere.”

Alice stopped at the door.

“That's the London subway,” Archie said, not turning away from the television screen. “People used to take shelter in the Tube stations during the Blitz.”

Alice didn't know what the Blitz was, but it didn't sound like a good thing, or else why would people have needed to take shelter? She glanced out the window; an evening breeze had come up, and the leaves on the trees against the hillside moved a little, like a dark crowd in a stadium.

“And a hurricane wiped out a whole island,” Theo said. “Hundreds of people died. There's another one getting ready out in the ocean, too. Also, there was a mud slide in California. Some dad went out to get ice cream and his kid's birthday cake, and when he came back his whole house was gone.” His voice sounded oddly excited, and Alice saw Archie sit up in his chair and take notice of Theo as if for the first time.

“Dinner's ready?” Archie said to Alice. He drained his glass and set it on his desk. “Turn off the television, please, Theo.”

With an expression of reluctance, Theo crawled forward and hit the button on the television set. “Don't you guys have a remote?” he said. “Remotes are great.” But his face looked drawn and pale. Alice wondered how so many bad things could have happened in the world in just one day. It made her feel a little sick to imagine how many bad things lay ahead, if one day could contain so much tragedy.

• • •

“Let's not go in if these guys are still there,” Theo said as they walked to the Fitzgeralds’ the next morning.

They had decided to go straight to Kenneth and explain everything to him, if his friends had left. Theo had already spoiled the secret about the rope walk, they figured, and it might cheer up Kenneth to hear about it.

“It could be the thing that, you know …” Theo said.

“What?” Alice was carrying a bunch of black-eyed Susans that Eli had cut from the garden that morning. A bee swerved in front of her, and she waved the bouquet to shoo it away.

“You know …” Theo put his hands in his pockets. “Maybe it will make him want to live,” he said. “Maybe it will save him.”

Alice walked beside him, contemplating the enormity of this possibility. Could that really happen?

As if he were reading her mind, Theo said, somewhat stiffly, “Miracles do happen, you know.”

Something about his tone made the remark sound a little too easy, Alice thought, even a little condescending. She frowned. She didn't believe in miracles, not really. Santa Claus had been a miracle, for instance, and he wasn't real.

Theo seemed to sense her skepticism, “My mom wants to go on a pilgrimage and have a miracle,” he said, defensively. “In Spain. People have been going there for thousands of years. It's called the Road to Ipanema.”

Alice frowned again. She knew a song called “The Girl from Ipanema” about a girl walking to the beach. Archie liked it. Regardless, this was more than Theo had ever divulged about his mother. “What do you do on a pilgrimage?” Alice asked.

“Get cured, dude! That's why people go.”

He had begun to walk very fast. Alice hurried to keep up with him. “What's wrong with your mom?”

“Oh, she has depression.”

He spoke breezily, but Alice knew him now, and she knew that he was telling her something important, that it had taken a great effort.

“That's like when you're sad,” she said.

“Really, really sad. Like, kill-yourself sad.”

He had slowed down a little. Alice leaned into him with her shoulder and bumped him gently. She didn't know what to say. He bumped her back a little.

“That won't happen,” Alice said.

“I know,” Theo said.

Then he sped up and started to run. “Race you,” he called over his shoulder.

When they arrived at the house, Kenneth was alone, puttering around in the big room in a distracted way. He appeared surprised by their arrival, whirling around when Alice said his name from the French doors.

His friends had gone back to New York, he told them, but they were flying back again the next weekend to take the photographs. He was jittery and restless, and the prospect of his friends’ return seemed to worry him or make him a little angry. He said, “I think they feel they need to … hurry it up.” And then he added nonsensically, “I haven't been sleeping well,” staring at them as if he were making some sort of appeal.

Miss Fitzgerald came in as they stood there. She was wearing what looked like an old pair of men's trousers, bunched up around her waist with a belt. She paused at the door, just long enough to convey to Alice and Theo her surprise and unhappiness at finding them there before she crossed the room to set a
tray on the table. “Mr. Fitzgerald needs his medicine now,” she said, as if this situation called for Alice and Theo's immediate departure.

“For God's sake.” Kenneth came over to the table and sat down. “I'm just swallowing pills, Hope. Give me that.” He reached out for the glass.

They hadn't seen Miss Fitzgerald in several days, and Alice thought she looked exhausted, almost worse than Kenneth. Alice turned away, embarrassed; it was awful, looking at Miss Fitzgerald and remembering how messy her house was and how nobody liked her. The twins had said they'd cleared out everything except the furniture from the first floor, but they hadn't been able to make much of a dent in the second floor before they'd gone back to Frost, and it had smelled horrible upstairs.

“You've had a lot of excitement, Ken,” Miss Fitzgerald went on patiently and soothingly, as if she hadn't heard him, “a lot of visitors and—”

Kenneth burped suddenly, a loud, wet, fantastic burp. He gripped the arms of the chair, his face surprised, and Alice felt herself growing hot all over; it had sounded as if he might throw up.

Miss Fitzgerald's head swung around toward him; he looked up at her, his eyes desperate. Then he held up his hand. “I'm all right,” he said. But he was breathing hard and sweat stood out on his forehead.

Suddenly, Theo approached the table. “Do you want to hear about the rope walk now, Kenneth?” he said.

Kenneth turned vaguely in Theo's direction; he was still breathing hard.

“It's so you can go out into the woods and walk by yourself. Alice and I have been working on it,” Theo said, his voice quiet and steady. “It's just like those guard ropes in museums or the
ropes along a ship's deck. We've got them going from tree to tree, and the path is completely clear, so all you have to do is walk along with the rope under your hand and walk for as long as you want and then you can turn around and come back. Nobody has to go with you. You can go by yourself.” He took a few steps away, gliding over the floor as if he were skating, with one hand held out to his side. “We've got all the roots and rocks and everything out of the way, and we've nailed the ropes so they're the right height and everything.” He skated back to Kenneth, sweeping over the imaginary ice. “See?”

Alice, who had been holding her breath while Theo spoke and now let it out in a gasp of relief, wondered whether Kenneth had just that moment gone completely blind, for his expression showed bewilderment.

“It's a rope walk. They had one at Alice's party,” Theo said patiently. “That's where we got the idea.”

Kenneth stared at him. “Extraordinary,” he said at last. “Extraordinary, extraordinary children.”

“It's not finished,” Alice said hurriedly, coming to join Theo.

“We've got a
lot
of work to do,” Theo said. “A
lot.”

“But it's going to be great,” Alice said. Kenneth looked stunned; she wanted to reassure him.

“Tell me, Hope,” Kenneth said then, turning away from them to speak directly to his sister. “Tell me what great act I performed in my life that has brought them to me, here and now, when I most need them,”

But Miss Fitzgerald looked away from him and began busily putting the pill bottles and the water tumbler back on the tray. “Well, I don't know, Kenneth,” she said, but her voice sounded angry. Alice, standing there watching her, thought with sudden, unhappy clarity that Kenneth had not been nice enough to his sister.

“Do you want somejuice?” Miss Fitzgerald said. “You should have one of those Ensures. I got the chocolate ones. You haven't had anything—”

Kenneth didn't bother to answer her. He turned around to face Alice and Theo and held out his hands. “You're proof,” he said. “I've been looking for it my whole life, but now I know. There
is
a God, and he made you and sent you to me.” His hand as he took Alice's was cold and bony; she had to fight the urge to pull her fingers away. She was glad he was happy—and he was, clearly, happy and grateful—but she wished he had not ignored his sister like that.

“You are the cleverest children in the world,” Kenneth said. “And the most good, the most kind and generous. Tell me everything. How exactly have you built this marvelous rope walk, and where does it go, and …”

It was very gratifying to describe it, really, all the places they'd found the rope, and how they'd had to carry it there, and how they'd had to hack off roots and branches, and how they'd decided where the path should go, and how they'd raked it smooth. At one point, though, Alice looked up from their conversation to realize that Miss Fitzgerald had left the room without any of them noticing. Alice felt unsettled by this, as though something strange had happened to time, the clock's pliant hands bending forward and back in a forbidden reversal to erase her presence there entirely. It was as if she had never come in the room that morning at all.

Over the next few weeks, Alice and Theo worked every morning on the rope walk and visited with Kenneth in the afternoons. Every day they gave him a progress report, telling him how far they'd come, what special sorts of difficulties they'd
encountered and how they'd managed to overcome them. Apart from the weekend when his friends came back to visit and take pictures, and one two-day period when Kenneth had to go into the hospital, they did not miss a day, and his face lit up when he heard them come to the French doors in a way that made Alice's heart catch. She didn't think anyone had ever seemed so happy to see her as Kenneth was to see them. He loved hearing the news of the rope walk, how many feet they progressed each day. He gave Theo a beautiful silver tape measure with a pretty stone in the center that you pressed to release the measuring tape. Theo added it reverently to the collection in his toolbox.

One afternoon Kenneth produced the old photograph albums that his sister had tried to interest him in one day. There were funny black-and-white pictures of himself as a handsome baby wearing puffy white shorts and a blouse and little white shoes, and others of him as a young boy, with a sculpture of a giant flying creature he'd built out of chicken wire in the backyard of the Grange house, and still others of him as a young man, dashing in a naval uniform on the deck of a destroyer. He showed them pictures of his boyhood dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Winnie Churchill that could hold on to a rope with its teeth and be lifted clear off the ground. There were photographs of Hope Fitzgerald, too, as a heavy, round-cheeked baby in a christening gown and cap, or slender in white graduation robes, and then surprisingly buxom and pretty in a debutante dress with a bell-like skirt and a tight bodice. In nearly every photograph she had dark rings around her eyes, but Alice was astonished to see her smiling in some of the pictures, the even white teeth in her mouth, the way it changed the shape of her face into something pleasing. Alice realized she'd never seen Miss Fitzgerald smile, not a genuine smile, anyway.

Theo wanted to try building a bigger mobile, and one week
they worked outside on the terrace making hollow shapes out of chicken wire covered with papier-mäche and suspending them from arms made out of long curved pieces of wood Kenneth unearthed from the garage. He seemed to Alice much thinner than when they'd met at the beginning of the summer; she didn't like it when he wore his shirt unbuttoned too low on his chest, for she could not keep her eyes averted from the way his body seemed to fall in on itself, collapsed under his breast bone. And sometimes a smell came from him—she couldn't describe it; it was like air that wasn't real, she thought, struggling—that filled Alice with a distaste she tried to conceal for fear of hurting his feelings, moving her head aside when he leaned over the photograph albums beside her, pointing.

The days wore on through July, warmer and warmer, longer and longer, slow bees droning in the garden, the light of the sloping, golden afternoons so rich it seemed to melt over the towering trees at the edge of the lawn. Kenneth did some painting outside—he used a knife, not a brush, a technique Theo tried to copy and pronounced impossible—and it seemed to Alice, who stood marveling behind Kenneth at his easel, that somehow he caught exactly the quality of the long, falling rays that slanted over the garden. Sometimes the three of them lay on chaise longues out on the terrace and unrolled the awning for a little shade so Alice could read aloud to them outside. Kenneth's mood seemed milder, his voice softer, as if the heat and the sun and the light had reached under his skin to his bones, warming and comforting him, stunning him into quiet. Sometimes now when Miss Fitzgerald came to the door, a worried and worrying presence, he looked up in her direction and said, “It's time again, is it?” And she would nod. But he would get up without complaint. “Until tomorrow then,
amigos
,” he would say, taking his sister's arm and allowing her to lead him away into the back rooms where Alice
and Theo had never been. Alice did not know what happened to Kenneth when his sister took him away like that, two old people bent over and hanging on to each other. She did not like to think about it, whatever it was—a sharp needle filled with medicine, a handful of pills, even a nap. The thought of Miss Fitzgerald forcing her brother to rest, lifting his feet to the bed—and Kenneth's new, almost docile willingness to cooperate, as if he had given up—made Alice feel sick. Better he should fight, she thought.