Escape the Night (13 page)

Phillip was up unusually early; the two brothers were in the sunroom, with coffee and the New York
Times
. Phillip was reading the book review section: Robert Bloch had reaped praise for a novel called
Psycho
and Phillip was guessing that it would make a “fantastic” film. He grinned broadly at Peter. “'Morning, Prince Charming,” he called out. “The Yankees won.”

Peter put down the boat and scooted with Dewey into Charles's lap. “You promised, remember?”

His father hugged him. “I forgot to bring Dewey up, didn't I.”

“It's okay.” Peter burrowed in his neck. “I went to get him …”

“Listen, Peter.” Phillip snatched up the sports page and began reading, “‘Yankees beat Red Sox sixteen to seven on home runs by Bauer, Skowron and Carey.'
Carey
—someday that'll be you, Peter.”

Peter stared at him. Then he turned to his father. “What are we going to do today, Daddy?”

“I don't know. Maybe your Uncle Phillip has some ideas.”

Reluctantly, Peter looked back at his uncle.

“A little bored, Prince Charming?”

Peter shook his head.

“Don't worry, you won't hurt my feelings.”

Peter squirmed in Charles's lap. “Maybe a little bit bored.”

“I'll tell you what, Charles. Why don't we take our boy to the reservoir and let him sail that yacht in earnest?”

His father squeezed Peter's arm. “What about that? Or do you just want to stay here?”

Peter hesitated. Phillip spread his arms wide and smiled his most ingratiating smile. “Up to you, Peter. Whatever you want.”

For a fleeting moment, Peter felt sorry for his uncle's discomfort. “We'll take Mommy, too,” he said.

It was cool and gray as their convertible passed through the granite pillars and headed toward the reservoir.

Phillip's mint-green Sprite led them along steep roads winding through landscapes more rural than urban: early American farmhouses with green shingled roofs, birches and evergreens and pink blossoming dogwood, grassy fields split by crooked stone walls. Charles chased after Phillip, hugging the curves. Phillip drove faster. Allie, wearing a silk scarf, patted her hair. Behind her, Peter held Dewey in his lap. From the radio Charles Collingwood read the CBS news: John F. Kennedy had made inroads in Wisconsin; Eisenhower had picked Chester Herter to replace the ailing Dulles. Tires humming, they followed Phillip Carey along roads named with antique quaintness: North Street, Dingletown, Stanwich.

Cognewaugh.

The white wooden sign came so abruptly that Charles, hitting the brake, turned on to Cognewaugh at a forty-five-degree angle and hurled Peter against the side of the car. “Be careful,” Allie warned. Charles glanced quickly over his shoulder; Peter was laughing. “Go faster, Daddy. Don't let him beat you!”

Charles grinned, accelerating to catch up with Phillip. Allie reached back to zip Peter's windbreaker. She touched his cheek. “Then at least you won't catch cold.”

Peter leaned forward, wind whipping his hair. The road grew steeper, dipped into a shady hollow, rose sharply in front of them. The precipitous grade ahead, curving to the right, snapped in front of him like a photograph. Charles took the curve, sped up the grade between the green trees that dappled it with light and darkness.

At the top of the grade, almost without warning, flashed an abrupt left curve.

Phillip took it, the mint-green car vanishing. Peter's laugh grew wilder. Clutching Dewey by the trunk, he shouted, “Catch him, Daddy!”

Charles stepped on the gas. Two hundred feet, a hundred …

“
Charles
,” Allie entreated.

Peter grasped Dewey's trunk. “Faster, Daddy …”

Charles braked abruptly, crying, “I've lost control,” as the steering wheel spun like a toy in his hand and their car slid toward the cliff. In sickening freeze frames, Peter saw them jump the last rocks, trees and sky appearing in the windshield, his father turning to his mother, their eyes locking for one split second before his father whirled and threw him from the car.

Peter hit dirt, still clutching Dewey, falling, tumbling, air bursting from his lungs, rocks buffeting his skull and ribs. He glimpsed his father's car plummeting next to him down a hundred-foot deadfall of jagged rock, and then lost sight of it as he spun in punishing darkness on a long strip of grass without rocks and rolled until the speed of it threw him on his stomach at the bottom of the cliff, and he saw, within ten feet of him, two red cars smashing into trees, his mother's necks snapping like two rag dolls, and then his vision fused, and a single car burst into flames, and his father screamed in animal torment as fire consumed his body and his face fell forward …

“Daddy!”

“Peter!” Phillip Carey stood atop the cliff …

“Daddy!”

“It's going to explode.” Phillip began scrambling closer down the cliff. He stopped to look at the boy, then at the flames leaping toward him from the Jaguar. He stood there, face contorted; suddenly, impulsively, he rushed forward. “Peter—for God's sake,
move!
”

Peter could not. Hugging Dewey as his father's face disappeared in flames he could only cry, rhythmically, repeatedly, in a mindless chant: “Daddy … Daddy …”

Leaping, Phillip rolled him from the car …

It exploded.

Englehardt gazed into the rising flame.

From the tape he had just received, now cradled in his hands, his own voice whispered, “This is John Joseph Englehardt …”

He slid the tape from the machine.

For one final moment, he held his secret in his hand.

Then, carefully, he knelt to drop it in the fireplace.

The tape crackled, writhing as it burned, and then it was ashes, and only the will remained.

With his doctor's permission, Phillip Carey told the speechless ruin of his father that his older son could not visit anymore.

In the silence of the dark apartment, Phillip thought he saw his father crying.

He left quickly.

In the morning, rising to bathe him, the nurse found John Carey cold and pulseless, and gently closed his eyes.

They opened the will directly after the funeral, in the gray, airless conference room of a Wall Street firm, where John Carey had kept it in a vault.

The will left fifty-one percent control to Charles Carey.

Its final clause provided: “Should Charles Carey predecease me, then the aforesaid fifty-one percent interest shall be held in trust by my son Phillip, until the thirtieth birthday of my beloved grandson, John Peter Carey.”

Without speaking, Phillip Carey left the room.

Peter Carey, sleeping with Dewey in a bare hospital room, knew nothing of his future.

For sleepless hours, Phillip paced outside. Limp and devastated, he watched and listened to his nephew's breathing, rising and falling in a drugged, unbroken rhythm. He shivered at the thought of Peter's waking to his memories.

But Peter Carey had no memories.

He could remember nothing. Nothing about the birdbath or his boat. Nothing about looking for Dewey, the drive, the plummeting car, his father burning. Nothing past entering the driveway, Phillip stepping down to greet them …

In his sleep, remembering only his father's love, Peter Carey cried out.

PART II

M
ANHATTAN

JANUARY–MARCH 1982

CHAPTER 1

Noelle Ciano cried out.

Dawn flashed through her lover's apartment; a streak of winter sun lit her thick black hair, falling across his face. Her eyes shut as his torso, thrusting upwards, drew from her a last convulsive shudder, running the length of her body. Her face softened; the shudder, dying, became a slow and gliding movement of her hips. She threw her head back. Her rhythm turned fierce, yet controlled; sweat glistened on the cords of her neck as she strained to draw the nightmare from his body. She felt him grow inside her. When at last he came, soundless, her eyes opened again, and searched his face.

Peter Carey grinned up at her.

An hour before, he had cried out in fear, awakening from his dream.

It was that last moment before daybreak; the night was like thin smoke. Charles Carey stole through his brain in the nightmare of his childhood, relentless and unpitying. They were hiding in the tunnel near the Bethesda Fountain. It was a game; his father smiled at him, and then his mouth opened in a tortured scream and his face turned to ash and bone before Peter could pull him from the tunnel. Peter held the empty sleeve of his father's windbreaker, crying out as the faceless man began stabbing his eyes with garden shears. As Peter went blind, blood spurting from the sockets of his eyes, he heard laughter echo through the tunnel, and screamed aloud …

Noelle had wiped Carey's forehead with a cool cloth; he had foreseen their loving in the blackness of her eyes.

Carey sensed this, his prescience of sex in her glance and gestures, the first time they made love. Over eight months it had grown stronger. Now her body moved in his mind. He saw, even before her key clicked in the dead bolt, Noelle stalking from the elevator, camera slung on her shoulder, hair bouncing as she walked. Inside, she would reach to turn the latch; in Carey's mind her breast arched to his lips. Skin to skin, they were like lovers in a dream …

“It was the same dream, wasn't it—about your father.”

She still looked down at him; the sun grazed her shoulders now, turning her skin a rich olive. Carey could smell their lovemaking. Nodding, he said, “You'd think I could do better.”

She touched his face. “Why can't you tell me what it is?”

“Because then
you
might begin having it.” He kissed her forehead and got up.

Noelle waited for a few moments before she put on the terry-cloth robe, knowing where she would find him.

Passing through the apartment, she recalled her initial impressions. The rooms were light and sparsely furnished; noting the elaborate deadbolts and alarm system, she at first had thought him haunted by some past robbery. In the living room—a tan sectional couch, a desk with laser lamp, two silver-framed originals by Kandinsky and Klee—she had noticed the low redwood shelf of books he had edited, stamped with the eagle of Van Dreelen & Carey. None of them was autographed. After Noelle had slept with him, climaxing for the first time in her life, she had re-examined the room for hints about his past. Only later did she understand their absence.

She knew now, although she did not know why, that his nightmare drove him to the window. Her keenest sense was visual, even in memory: it was not the first shock of his screaming she remembered, but his profile, perfect as a photograph, staring down into Central Park.

Peter Carey watched snow clouds darken the distant towers of the East Side, casting thin shadows across the park. In winter, stripped of grass and people, Central Park became a moonscape, the lake an icy mirror, reflecting the frozen branches of naked trees. A few strays—dogs, deviates and early runners—wandered past Bethesda Fountain …

He felt her behind him, even before she spoke.

“What was he like, Peter?”

He didn't move. “It's hard for me to remember, really. I guess it's hard to even talk about.”

“Don't you think you should talk to someone?”

Carey could not shake this feeling of helplessness, the residue of his nightmare. “You still think I need a psychiatrist.”

“The dream's happening more often.” She hesitated. “You can't remember anything about the accident, can you?”

He closed his eyes. “Only what Phillip told me.”

They sat drinking Italian roast at Peter's kitchen table and riffling the New York
Times
.

The Russians had loosed germ warfare on the Afghans, the Saudis had raised the price of oil, the forty-third postwar government seemed about to fall in Italy. A kidnapping had been solved: inside was a photograph, stark and flawless, of police removing a young girl's body from a car near the East River. Peter winced. “Pretty grim.”

Noelle turned from the picture. “I know.”

As Peter reached for another section, Noelle stopped to watch him: she valued those unguarded moments when his face, eased of nightmares, turned soft as a child's. Now his blond hair curled uncombed at his neck and his blue eyes seemed guileless. His full mouth turned up a little at its right corner: when she had first photographed him, for an article in the
Times
, she saw that he favored his left profile, which was colder and more angular, concealing this trace of humor. Later, when he would not give reasons, she tried seeing his past in this asymmetry. The right side became Peter as a child, waiting for his father. He had turned the left to Phillip Carey.

Now his head angled to the left, eyes narrowing at something on the page until all softness vanished. The look was distinctive; Noelle knew, without being told, that what he read threatened him. She had seen that same expression—head tilted, eyes cold and piercing—trained on a well-known writer who had confronted him at a cocktail party, over money, until the writer had apologized; Peter had said not a word. Thinking the trick deliberate, Noelle had asked him where he had learned it. He replied that he didn't know; it was a mannerism he had always had, without intending it. “I don't plan everything,” he said.

Noelle had smiled in disbelief: more than anyone she'd known, Peter Carey let no surprise invade his life, left no opening for weakness or mischance. Only sleep, spawning images which made him cry out like a child, escaped his grasp. In New Hampshire once, after making love beneath a grove of trees which echoed with the spill of a nearby brook, swollen with spring, Noelle had asked what he would wish for were his life to start again. Softly, he had answered, “To never dream.”

“What's so awful?” she asked him now.