Secrecy (33 page)

“Ridiculous, I tell you.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I was there. God forgive me if I’m making a mistake,” she repeated, “but I don’t think so. Not with you.”

Another chill passed, shuddering through Charlotte’s body. And she said, “You’re not making a mistake. Tell me the truth.”

“I saw it. I was there when it happened. It was an accident. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think it was.”

“Somebody killed him?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it?”

“It was your father.”

There was no sound in the room or in the corridor or in the night outside, where a few lights shone upon the Grand Canal. Here, all was safe and sheltered, cushioned in silk velvet. In such a setting this raw, terrible sentence was an act of vandalism and of madness. Charlotte closed her eyes.

“Yes. And I, too, I was part of it.”

Is this real? Charlotte thought. I don’t know, I don’t—

“Are you all right?” Elena asked.

“Go on with the rest. All of it.”

“It was the day I left for Italy. Bill insisted on driving me to the airport. We started at dawn, to beat the traffic. It was still quite dark.” Now that Elena had begun to speak, her words rushed. “We were passing the mill when we saw him, Ted—I hate to say his name—walking fast with a backpack and a suitcase.

“The bastard,’ Bill said. ‘Where’s he going? What’s he doing? Is he jumping bail too?’

“He leapt from the car. I heard him call, ‘Stop! Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ Ted kept walking. He began to run, Bill after him. Then I got out of the car. I saw Bill grab him by the shoulders. They were shouting, tussling, furious. I was so scared! Oh, God, I was scared! I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t a soul in sight. At that hour the world is dead. Then suddenly Ted—he—broke free and, still holding the suitcase, rushed past the building, through the marsh, into all that mess, with Bill after him. I remember calling to Bill to come back. It’s quicksand there in spots. I called and called, but they kept racing. They grappled again and I saw Bill start to fall, so I ran toward them. I don’t know what I thought I could do, but I pulled on Ted’s coat. Maybe I pushed him too. I’m not sure of anything. Or I guess I am, in a way. Bill fought him. It was so dark.… There was a scream.” Elena stopped.

Charlotte stared at her. She still had a queer sense of unreality, as if Elena were relating not facts, but some fantastic horror story.

“And then,” Elena resumed, “I heard Bill’s cry. Stumbling, he turned to me. ‘My God,’ he said. I
remember—how could anyone ever forget?—the words: ‘My God, did you see, he’s gone down. Drowned in the sump. I almost fell in myself. It’s got to be twenty feet deep.’

“I remember us standing there, absolutely terrified, in that lonely, black place. I asked Bill what he was going to do.

“ ‘Do’? he said. ‘There’s nothing to do. He’s already dead. A fitting death for a bad lot. Let him rot there. Come on. We have to get out of here before we’re seen.’

“I didn’t know how we could continue on to the airport, how I myself could possibly get on a plane, or how I could leave him that way. I thought I’d go back home and stay until we had settled ourselves somehow. But he insisted that I leave. We had, after long reflection, made a decision, he said, and there was no sense postponing it, since we were both agreed that it was the best decision. He promised me he would be all right. He couldn’t afford not to be. He had to take care of you.

“We left. In the struggle he had lost his shoes. They’d been sucked into the swamp, along with his money clip. Of course I had to drive until we could get to a shoe store. To this day I don’t know how I ever kept the car on the road. I was sure we were being followed and would be caught at the airport. I was half crazy with fear. I bought some sneakers for him and gave him some money so he could get back from Boston. After a while he was able to talk. Actually, he wasn’t able to stop talking. For an hour or more he raged. Then he began to admit that a death
like that was horrendous for any human being, even for the most evil. He had tried to prevent it, had tried to pull both of them back. No doubt in his fury he had not tried hard enough. But given the circumstances, no one would believe that he had not pushed Ted in. That’s true, isn’t it? Of course it’s true.”

And would anyone believe that you hadn’t been part of it too? Charlotte thought. Frozen, with her hands clasped on the chair’s arms as if for support, she sat.

“So we parted at the airport,” Elena said. “And that’s the story.”

Charlotte’s mind was split in two. During Elena’s narration she had become part of the scene, of the dark, still morning, and the agony; at the same time she was herself, observing herself as a recipient of these facts and this devastation. What was she to make of them, now that they had been given to her?

Yet experience had forced her to face realities. And so, after a few minutes had passed, she was able to ask a blunt question: “What is to be done?”

Weakly, Elena replied, “Why, nothing. The body, or what’s left of it, is still lying there. Poor Bill, it must give him nightmares. I’m pretty much able to put it out of my mind, but he’s not like me.”

Poor Bill
. Poor Dad, who has had this weight on him. All the time, whether he was at the high school play, hiking into the hills with her, or reading her college papers, this weight had been on him.

“And that, of course, is the reason why that particular section of the property must not be disturbed. That’s what you meant,” Charlotte said.

“Exactly. Now you see, don’t you, why you cannot do that?”

Charlotte’s hands were wet. I’m sick, she thought. I’m sick.

Trying to reason, to pull facts together, and recalling Elena’s phrase
given the circumstances
, she asked, “What circumstances did you mean? Since nobody knows about what happened to me, why would Dad come under suspicion?”

“The money. Ted was jumping bail, which Bill and Cliff had raised.”

Charlotte mused. “Then Cliff, too, would be a suspect, or more so, because Claudia was his wife.”

“Ah, no. You’re forgetting the money clip and the shoes. I’m sure the shoes had his name. I always wrote his name in his shoes when I took them to the shoemaker. And the bill clip was a good one, gold, with initials.”

Indeed, every possible article in that house, from towels, sheets, and shirts to silverware, had borne initials or a monogram. Still those articles of Bill’s must be past recognition by now, she thought, and said so.

“No, not at all. Look at the things, shoes and suitcases in very fair condition, that they’ve brought up from the
Titanic
. And it’s been lying on the ocean floor since 1912.”

That was true.

“So you see what you must do. Or, rather, not do.”

“Yes, I see.”

“Are you feeling all right? I keep asking because I
know I’ve shocked you awfully, and probably I shouldn’t have done it. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I am, I am, and you had to do it.”

“For God’s sake, you’ll never let this go any farther, will you, Charlotte? Of course, you can tell Bill. Yes, you should tell him that you know. But no one else. Not your—not Roger. God, no. Promise me.”

“We’re going to be married!” Charlotte cried.

“Yes, yes. And what if you should be divorced? All divorces aren’t like your father’s and mine. They can be horribly revengeful, my dear.”

“Roger and I will never be divorced. That’s one thing you can be sure of.”

Elena’s smooth, arched brows rose with her skeptical smile. “Come on, Charlotte. This is 1996, and we don’t live in never-never land.”

Charlotte made no effort to hide her resentment of that smile. “Not everyone has your attitude. Look at Cliff and Claudia, for example.”

And suddenly she thought, What if Claudia had known about this? It was appalling. Claudia had been really fond of Bill. The two of them had surmounted the unmentionable subject of Ted’s crime.… And she thought of her father, looking down at the wreckage of the mill on the very day she had had her “inspiration.”

“This place haunts me,” he had said.

Elena persisted. “So you won’t be divorced. Okay. Guaranteed. That still has nothing to do with your promise.”

Miserably, Charlotte argued, “You don’t know the kind of man Roger is.”

“He can be a prince, but even so, things have been known to slip out accidentally or innocently. And this is not your dangerous secret, anyway. It’s Bill’s.”

And yours, Charlotte thought. I have heard too much. I don’t want to hear any more.

As if she had read Charlotte’s mind, Elena continued. “You want me to be still. But I need your promise again. Bill’s peace and safety are at stake.”

She was protecting Bill, not asking on her own behalf. And Charlotte’s heart was moved.

“This is serious business, Charlotte.”

“As if I didn’t know!”

“Then give me your promise never to tell this to Roger.”

Peace and safety
 … “I promise never to tell Roger—or anyone,” Charlotte said.

She was overcome with the need for silence. Yet words burst out of her mouth. “I can’t bear it anymore. My father—” And then her voice broke. “I can’t believe—”

“If there’s any thought in your mind that he could willfully have caused that monster’s death, put it out of your mind. I could have done it very easily,” Elena said, laughing a little, “but Bill never could.”

She was right, of course. Having passed through this last terrible half hour, she was already putting it behind her, and was able to laugh.

“Go to sleep. You’ve heard enough.” Silk rustled as Elena rose and placed a kiss on Charlotte’s forehead. “Do you want something to help you sleep?”

“No, thanks. I’ll sleep.”

“Get a good night’s rest so we can make an early start in the morning. We’ll put this behind us. Venice is a fairyland. I wish we had a month to walk around in it.”

She did not sleep. Her mind raged; it raged backward and forward, round and round. And the next two days, while following her mother into museums and churches, over arched bridges, down narrow alleys, her mind, in mourning, was scarcely able to believe itself.

Elena, though, had always been able to dispose of burdens at will. “I told you Venice was a fairyland! An idyll,” she exclaimed. Having said everything that needed to be said about the burden, she had no need to say more.

Yet there was so much remaining.… It was only beginning. Bill’s unimaginable anxiety, the public resentment when the project should be abandoned—and it would have to be—the untangling of investors’ accounts, all these went whirling and churning within Charlotte while Elena played guide.

“There’s the most enchanting little square I must show you. After lunch we’ll go and watch the children coming out of school. We haven’t crossed the Rialto Bridge yet either.…”

It was as if the conversation on that first night had never happened. And still, along with this apparent unconcerned frivolity, there was that loyal, deep concern for Bill whom Elena did not even love and had, very likely, never loved.

As so often in the past but more acutely now, Charlotte asked herself what had made Elena the person she was. There was no answer. Or if there was one, it was not divulged to her. She had often wondered at and, growing older, had been astonished at, but was now in one shocking instant aghast at, how little she knew about her mother. Who was she? An orphan, abandoned to the vague relatives who had reared her? She had always had more money than anyone could ever really need. So much had been glossed over, and so many questions evaded! After a while one lost interest and ceased to ask.

Poor Mama, Charlotte thought now. You have been afflicted. You must have been.

“The next time you come, you and Roger, I’ll have my situation all straightened out. You’ll stay with us in Verona.” The chatter flowed. “Now, when you get to Florence, don’t make it all study. It’s a goldsmith’s heaven. I’ll give you some money to buy something nice for yourself.”

“No, thanks, Mama. I don’t want anything.”

The original plan to rent a car again and visit Palladio’s villas on the way to Florence had lost its zest. She would go by train. So, on the morning of the fourth day, she stood at the station with Elena, saying good-bye.

They embraced, made cheerful commitments for future celebrations, and embraced again as if everything were perfect in the most perfect of worlds. Charlotte’s last glimpse of her mother as the train
rolled away was of a gay, scarlet figure under a flowery, wide straw hat.

In Florence, in another hotel room, she set down her suitcase and took out the folder in which the lectures on Renaissance architecture were listed. But these, too, had lost their zest. So, gathering her few possessions once again, she left the room and, with less than an hour to spare, caught the next flight for home.

A
few nights ago, on the edge of the Grand Canal in Venice, the story had begun. Now, a world away on the familiar back porch, it continued as her father’s voice merged with the ceaseless music of katydids and crickets.

“My hatred became so hot that I could have killed him. Yes, yes, I could. And maybe I did kill him. I knew how dangerous it was there in the muck, in the dark. And I myself knew where the boundary was and where to stop. So I could have warned him, although he was in such a rage that he might not have listened. But up against his body, a football player’s body, young and powerful, all I saw was him with my little girl.”

The voice faded. Darkness was thick, and no one had turned on a lamp, so that Charlotte was able to see only the outline of Bill’s shape, his forehead leaning on his hand. She wondered whether the conversation was a total agony for him or whether, since this
was the first time that he had ever spoken these words, it might not in a way be a catharsis.

On the long drive from the airport she had labored over the best way to broach the subject to him, and at the end, after all her labor, had virtually blurted it out. Through the long evening they had been sitting here in a state of shock, each of them more or less thinking aloud.