The Drowning House (13 page)

Frankie paused. Then she said, “You know, I thought about studying music.” She looked down at her fingers, spread and flexed them. “That was as far as I got. I never even tried to apply to a conservatory. Because what he told me was, ‘It’s wonderful to have a musical wife.’ Making it clear that if I went on playing, that was what I could expect to be, that lesser thing. Whatever has happened, at least you’ve made your own choices.”

“I think you’re giving me too much credit. I did a lot of stupid, dangerous stuff trying to … I suppose I was trying to assert myself.”

Frankie had always been competitive. Even now she couldn’t help saying, “You weren’t the only one who did dangerous things. Remember the time I jumped out the window into the tree at the Hildebrandts’?”

I did. When he heard about it, all my father said was, “Frankie would have made a fine boy.”

She went on. “I did it because I wanted his endorsement. And he gave it. He gave it! I got congratulated for doing the same things that would have gotten you into trouble. Does that make any sense?” She looked up and her voice was hoarse. “Is that what parents do?”

I saw that there were tears in her eyes. She brushed at them with the backs of her hands. “I should have been on your side. I know that now.” Then her tone changed. “Look at you. God, what a getup,” she said. “The queen of the Gypsies.”

In the past, I would have shot back a comment of my own. But I couldn’t do it to this new and unfamiliar Frankie, who not only looked but behaved differently. Then I realized with a rush why she tolerated Eleanor’s prodding, why she was willing to say what she never had before. And I knew that Frankie would do anything, make any sacrifice, if she could find and undo the one wrong thing that had made
everything else go wrong, the transgression that had left her childless. I understood that she blamed herself for what had not taken place, just as I blamed myself for what had. At last, we’d found something in common.

“Are you going to join us, you two?” Eleanor called.

We walked out to where four cast-iron chairs stood around a low table. Eleanor was trimming roses, angling the stems, pulling off extra leaves, placing the flowers in a vase. She seemed to know exactly how to position each one, and as we watched an arrangement took shape.

I’d never cared much for roses. They made me think of the kind of movies Aunt Syvvie liked, where the heroine wears too much red lipstick and the sound track is all swelling strings. But these were different—loose, pretty. Fragrant.

A door slammed and I heard muffled shouting. Eleanor sighed. “Trouble in paradise,” she said, tilting her head in the direction of the neighbors. “The young parents. I think they’re having a hard time adjusting.” Stephen’s expression didn’t alter, he still wore his habitual smile, but his face seemed to stiffen. Frankie began to search for something in her purse. Frankie had endometriosis, that was the reason she and Stephen had trouble conceiving. It must have been disconcerting for her. Frankie’s life, her success, had been about having the right answer. Now, as always, she had it, but it did her no good at all.

“We could have put you up,” Eleanor went on smoothly. I understood that “we” meant Eleanor and Will. That their relationship was acknowledged and accepted.

“Thanks, but we’re fine where we are,” Frankie answered.

“Where is that?” I asked.

“We have a condo out past Stewart Beach where we stay when we come down,” said Frankie. “Once you get beyond the beach parking lot, it’s amazingly peaceful, even this time of year.”

“You could have had the cottage to yourselves. That would have been peaceful.”

Stephen groaned. “Except for the memories of med school. Calls
every fifteen minutes from the ICU staff, just when you think you’re going back to sleep.”

“That was at the hospital,” Frankie pointed out. “Not here.”

“You didn’t like med school?” I asked.

“Oh well,” Stephen said. “You live through it.”

Frankie laughed. “I think you’ve scandalized her.” She turned to me. “You know what Stephen said the first time I met him? We were eating lunch in the cafeteria, six or seven of us, all first-years, and he said, ‘I think I’ve made a mistake going into medicine. I had no idea there were so many terrible diseases.’ ”

“I wasn’t the gunner your sister was,” Stephen said.

“It was what we were all thinking,” Frankie said. “You were the only one who was willing to say it.” Stephen ran his hand gently along her forearm.

They might be unhappy about their childlessness, but I didn’t sense any uninhabited space between them, no wasteland like the one that had sprung up between Michael and me. I wondered what it felt like to want a child as they did, abstractly, whether their desire might be purer than my hunger for Bailey. Flesh of my flesh.

I thought then that I had no real understanding of Frankie’s marriage or my parents’ or even my own. What did that mean? That marriage was generally unfathomable? Or that there was a mystery at its core, one that other people shared, that I still knew nothing about?

“So Clare,” Stephen asked, “how is the research going?” When I didn’t respond, he prompted, “For the exhibition?”

I didn’t want to admit that I hadn’t begun or describe how I’d spent the day. So it was just as well that Tyler Henry strolled in then from the direction of the alley. He didn’t call out, and his khaki pants were the first thing I saw emerging out of the dusk. Stephen jumped up to look for another chair, Frankie straightened and put on a formal countenance, Eleanor waved him over.

Ty sat down next to Eleanor. He indicated the vase. “These are beautiful. You were educating me about growing roses. You said the climate makes it difficult. Who would know?”

“Look.” Eleanor picked up a discarded leaf. On its smooth surface
was a round, black spot. “This is what happens. It’s futile to try and grow roses here.”

“But you do.”

“I don’t actually. Will is the one with the rose garden. He likes to take on the impossible. There.” She set the clippers down and relaxed. I saw the others sit back too.

“So Will is a gardener?” Ty asked.

“He
has
a gardener,” Frankie corrected him. “Don’t imagine Will Carraday doing any actual digging. He just enjoys his flowers. Like God. What’s that passage in Genesis? God walking in the garden in the cool of the day?”

“I’m sure he’d be flattered by the comparison,” Eleanor said.

Frankie’s comment reminded me of my father. He hadn’t approved of Will’s money or his interests—art, architecture, gardens—either. My father said once, of Will, “I suppose he’s some kind of aesthete.” I didn’t know yet what the word meant, but I sensed that coming from my father, it was a reproach.

Ty said, “I went by the house, and they told me he’d already left. I thought he might be here.” He made it sound perfectly natural. Clearly Ty was capable of fitting in. He would do well in Galveston. He laid a manila folder on the table. It was the same color as his khakis, which explained why I hadn’t noticed it.

“Will is out of town,” Eleanor said. She named the residential facility on the East Coast where Catherine lived. “He has a daughter there. She’s disabled. She can’t look after herself or communicate. Something went wrong when she was very small. She has to be attended to at all times, or she’ll do herself an injury. She doesn’t even know him, but he visits every month anyway.” I saw her glance in Frankie’s direction. Was she thinking there were worse things than being childless?

Frankie said brightly, “He has his own plane, so don’t imagine him waiting at the airport, standing in line, dragging a suitcase like the rest of us. His flight never gets canceled.” Again it seemed to me that Frankie was voicing my father’s opinion. But her words didn’t
have the weight of his. They seemed to drift away and disappear into the garden.

“Frances.” We were adults, but there were limits, still, to what Eleanor would put up with from either of us.

“I didn’t know there was a daughter. I’ve met his son,” Ty said. “Patrick.” The silence was deafening. No one wanted to be the first to talk about Patrick in my presence, certainly not in front of a guest. Frankie might have said something, but she had been reprimanded. Now she stared up at the lighted windows of the Carraday house, her face a deliberate blank. I waited. “He works at the bank,” Ty said.

It was Stephen who spoke first. “Patrick has been in a lot of scrapes.” It was like him to cast Patrick’s troubles as the shortcomings of a high-spirited boy.

“He works at the bank?” I asked.

“In the trust department.”

Frankie couldn’t resist. “I’m sure Ty knows the truth. He must! Patrick is a glorified errand boy. He’s never held a real job, and I doubt he could. The trust department—that’s droll. Word is, he spends more time at Lafitte’s. That’s where his friends are.”

“Frances, was that necessary?” Eleanor turned to Ty. “You’ll have to forgive us. We’re a little on edge tonight.”

Frankie said, “I don’t know why we always have to cover for Patrick. To pretend he’s still finding himself.” She turned to Ty. “Let me tell you a story about him. One night he and this drinking buddy of his, Lowell Morgan, go out together and get wasted. Then they take Lowell’s car out to the west end of the Island to see how fast it will go. Lowell’s driving, but not fast enough for Patrick, who reaches over and puts his foot on top of Lowell’s and pushes down as hard as he can. Lowell’s yelling, but Patrick won’t quit. They’re out where the paved road ends. So Lowell basically has a choice between driving into the marsh or driving onto the beach. He knows Patrick’s history, and neither of those options seems like a good one, so he twists the wheel and crashes into the side of a beach house and takes out two of the pilings. When the owner comes out, Patrick reaches into his
pocket and hands him seven thousand dollars that he just happens to have on him.” Frankie sat back. “Patrick is never going to find himself,” she said. “He’s a grown man and the only place he’s looking is at the bottom of a bottle.”

“Listen to you,” Faline said. “Drive down from Houston and think you know all about it.” She was crossing the lawn, carrying something in a baking dish covered with a towel. She turned to Ty. “You fortunate I happened to be making cobbler, or you wouldn’t be getting much of a supper tonight. Little bit of cold meat.”

“Will you stay?” Eleanor asked Ty. “I don’t know why you’d want to, with all this squabbling. Still, you’re welcome to join us. It’s nothing elaborate. But really, there is plenty. We’re going to eat out here.”

Faline said, “He probably going elsewhere, get him some real food.” She turned and made for the steps.

I followed Faline into the kitchen. She set the dish down and removed the towel with a flourish. “Too bad your mama never could learn to bake.” Faline scorned the kind of meals we had eaten all our lives—roast meat, plain vegetables, fresh fruit. She squinted at the chicken resting modestly on its platter, the salad in its wooden bowl. “You want food to taste good, you got to
do
something to it. Well,” she said, “I guess you can manage.” She patted my shoulder. “You come by at a decent hour, bring my dish.”

I opened one cupboard, then another, and found colorful pottery plates. I counted out knives and forks. I looked out the window and saw that Ty’s chair was empty. I wondered if he had gone. But when I turned to look for the napkins, he was standing just behind me. He held out the manila folder. “I wanted to show you this. It’s the painting Will mentioned. The one in the Louvre? I thought he’d be interested. I was going to give it to him.”

I nodded. It was understandable. Ty, in his new position, wanting to make a good impression. People were always trying to do things for Will. I didn’t know how to explain that where Will was concerned there was no opportunity for favors, no interval between the wish and its realization. If Will wanted something done, it happened. If
he’d wanted to see the painting, he would have. If he hadn’t seen the painting, it was because he didn’t care to.

Frankie’s sandals clattered on the wood floor. “Are we going to eat anytime soon?” she asked. “Some of us are hungry. You two can carry on later.”

Ty took the chicken in one hand, the salad in the other.

“Nobody’s carrying on,” I said.

“Huh,” said Frankie. She reached one hand up toward her shoulder, but the thick, bright hair was gone. The gesture didn’t work anymore.

Chapter 13

DINNER ENDED QUIETLY
. The next morning I stayed in bed until Eleanor was back in her room with her breakfast tray, then went down to the kitchen. I drank some milk from the waxy beak of a carton in the refrigerator. There was a smiling cow on one side and a blurry photo of a missing child on the other.

I peeled a banana and walked around while I ate, opening and closing cupboards. Frankie would have said
snooping
. There were the plates and dishes I remembered, white with a gold rim, the ice-tea glasses with their delicate curved handles. I don’t know what I expected to find, what revelation I hoped for, there was nothing mysterious about any of it. I leaned under the sink to throw away the banana peel, and there in the trash was Ty’s manila folder, streaked and smelling of salad dressing but otherwise unharmed.