The Drowning House (22 page)

Chapter 19

THAT EVENING, ELEANOR CALLED ME
into the room that had been my father’s study. “It’s for you. Michael.” She stood cradling the phone against her neck and shoulder as if it were a pet animal or a small child, although I had never seen her hold either. Something about her pose struck me. I steadied the Leica and shot from my hip. The shutter clicked.

Eleanor said, “I can’t believe you haven’t phoned. You owe him that much.” She took her hand from the receiver and spoke into it. “She’s right here.” She replaced her hand. “Just try,” she said. “Make an effort.” She gave me a look and left the room.

The study was still very much my father’s. Sitting there among his things—the walls of books, the Audubon prints, the gold fountain pen on the desk—confronted with their persistent reality, it was hard to believe I’d ever had another life. This space was what endured—the stripes of light, the complex old-house smell.

Michael said, “Hello? Clare? This is the third time I’ve called.”

Of course. He had been keeping track, carrying the information around with him, hefting it the way he did the handful of change in his pocket, trying to determine its worth. His voice was clear and full of energy. I could almost see it zinging through the wires, shooting out the receiver.
This is important
, it said,
pay attention
. Juries always paid attention to Michael.

There was a pause, and I could feel him adjusting his manner, taking it down a notch from what he would have offered a client or a colleague.
Measuring out exactly the level of response our relationship required. “I called to see how you are,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

I thought of my father then, and how he had objected to any other reply.
It’s a formal exchange, for God’s sake. A social gesture, not an invitation to rehearse their symptoms. Do they expect me to give medical advice on the street?
In the end, he had stopped asking people how they were. Instead he went directly to the weather talk that was always acceptable on the Island.

I tried to listen to Michael, who was describing a trial that involved a hit-and-run.
I owed him that much
. It was one of many debts I had incurred—a small one, but still, another mark on an invisible score-card. Had there been a time when our marriage wasn’t an exercise in assessment? I remembered Michael’s proposal. What he’d said was, “I love you enough to marry you.” I didn’t know how much that was, but I was equally sure that Michael did, exactly. At the time, it had reassured me.

I spoke into the phone. “Do you miss me?” I asked.

There was a pause. Then Michael said, “Of course. Well, there’s a lot going on. So the car made it okay?”

“Yes. Otis cleaned it up.”

“Otis?”

“He works for Will. Will Carraday.”

“You found places to stay on the way down?”

“Yes.” I knew Michael meant overnight, that he was thinking of motels, bed-and-breakfasts along the route he had drawn. He would not want to hear that I’d left the highway, that I’d slept by the side of the road and in parking lots. He still talked about safety and risk as if they were things we could control. When what had happened to Bailey made it clear that no one was safe.

“And the exhibition?” Michael asked. “How is it coming?”

“I just started.” I looked around the room. I couldn’t explain the feelings it aroused, anxiety and something else, pressing. The need to hide, to disappear. “I was tired,” I said. “I got here and went to bed
and slept a long time. Then I went to a party.” I thought of the photos I’d set aside at the archive. I hadn’t made much progress. Part of me didn’t seem to care. I recognized the feeling, the irresistible slide into indolence that was part of Island life.

I could hear Michael breathing. Was he laboring as hard as I was to keep things going? I pushed on. “The party was for Will’s birthday. You would have enjoyed it.” I recalled Will with his guests, imagined Michael at the door. I thought how easily Will would have managed him.

There were noises on the other end of the line. “Call me next weekend,” Michael said. “I’ve got to go.”

Then I heard another voice. “Hi hon.” It was a female voice, a little sugary, familiar, though not immediately recognizable. There were muffled sounds, then silence.

“Is that Denise?” I asked.

“Denise who?”

I couldn’t remember his assistant’s last name, and it made me feel as though I were somehow at fault. Was this what he did to witnesses? No wonder he was so successful. Already, he was turning the situation into a test of my interest and competence.

“It’s Maureen. One of the second-year associates. We’re going over some paperwork.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, and found that I meant it.

Michael began to speak, and I listened until I understood that he wasn’t talking to me. I waited for a minute. Then I asked myself what I was waiting for. Deliberately, I hung up.

I picked up the gold pen that had been my father’s. I could easily imagine what had gone into choosing it. He would have tried and rejected dozens before selecting this one, the pen with just the right weight and balance, just the right flexion in the delicate nib, so that its use was a unique source of pleasure. But as I held it in my hand, I could get no sense of this. It was like trying on someone else’s shoe. I think he would have liked that—the fact that no one else could experience or enjoy this thing that was his in precisely the same way.

I tried the point against the desk pad, tentatively at first, then with more force. Nothing happened. It seemed to be dry. I shook it hard, and when I tried again a sudden stream of ink flowed out. I wiped my fingers on the blotter, leaving long smudges. I licked my fingers and wiped them again. The smudges spread. The blotter was ruined. Before I left the study, I worked it out of the leather frame, folded it several times, and buried it at the bottom of the wastebasket.

BEFORE I MET MICHAEL, I
’
D THOUGHT
, naïvely, that a good witness was someone who told the truth. Now I knew that it was more complicated than that—that evidence had to be presented in a form that was appealing to the jury. A good witness was likable. A good witness was someone who would see life like a game board, laid out in vivid primary colors with clear dividing lines and straightforward routes. Who rarely hesitated or expressed uncertainty. I thought about that a lot in the months after I lost Bailey. When I was certain of nothing.

Eleanor took care of the funeral. She found the cemetery where we buried Bailey on a small hill. I remember how cold it was, the closed buds of the dogwoods shaking, the cloth enclosure surrounding the grave flapping in the wind. None of it felt real to me, certainly not the letter my father sent explaining his absence. He spoke of his role, his students, his responsibilities.

It was the thing Michael fixed on, the thing that kept him going.
That son of a bitch
, he said. He tore the letter to pieces and threw them in the fireplace. Then he put his fist through the screen door. A few days later I found him sobbing in the bathroom, and I understood that already he had accomplished something I hadn’t even begun.

What Eleanor said was
I think you need a rest
. She chose the place and I went willingly. I didn’t care where I was. Or that I would be observed. As an Islander, I was used to being under observation. And to defending myself against it.

The hospital resembled a country hotel. The buildings were aged brick or white clapboard with long verandas, the staff dressed in casual clothes. There were picnic suppers outside, a badminton net,
lawn bowling. Only the heavy doors, locked at night, and the bathroom mirrors, made of polished metal instead of glass and fixed permanently to the wall, revealed the true nature of the place. It must have been incredibly expensive.

Most of the time, I dozed. I knew there were other patients who wanted to act out, to run away. There were times when the idea hung in the air, like a low-pressure system, making the staff anxious. I had no desire to do anything. I felt as heavy as I had when I was nine months pregnant. I wanted to lie down and let it crush me, the grotesque weight that no one else could see.

During the time set aside for exercise, I settled myself on one of the outdoor chairs with my feet up like a passenger on a turn-of-the-century ocean liner. But nothing moved, every day the lawn rolled down in the same still, green waves toward a wall of trees. I stayed just where I was, drifting in and out of consciousness.

From time to time I wondered whether I would ever take another photograph. But I wondered in a remote way, as though the question had to do with someone else.

I knew a photojournalist who suffered some nerve damage in his right hand after an illness. Matt had learned to shoot with his left hand, using a special, left-handed camera, and he took photographs and sold them as he had done previously. But they were not, he said, the same photos he would have taken before.

He had been the least constrained of men. I remembered him, at a political fund-raiser, jumping on a dainty, brocade-covered stool to get the shot he wanted, impervious to the glare of his hostess or the twittering of the houseboy, who seized the stool and carried it off, the impress of Matt’s boot still clearly visible.

Now, he said, self-consciousness presided over everything he did. He was thinking of going to work for his brother’s construction firm. “No such thing as a left-handed hammer,” he said.

I wondered if now I would have to think about what I was doing every time I raised the camera, consider every possible consequence. And if I did, would I be able to go on taking photos?

After three weeks, I went home to Michael. We were carrying groceries
in from the car when I felt rain on my hands and hair, and I longed suddenly for the sky to open and wash away everything around us—the winter-brown lawn, the house, its windows vacant in the late-afternoon light, the miscellaneous objects we carried and would carry again and again, clutched to us as though they mattered. I let go of my sack. It hit the pavement with a soft scrunching sound. Cans rolled along the driveway.

“I can’t do this,” I said.

“Come inside,” said Michael, as if I hadn’t spoken.

We moved to an apartment. Away from the yard, the tree, the swing. And things were different but not better. The boxes remained unpacked, their open flaps waving. Dishes accumulated in the sink. At first Michael was patient, then he was annoyed. He had done what he could, hadn’t he? Now it was up to me.
To make an effort
. So that we could go back to our old life.

The kind of effort he and Eleanor expected was beyond me. The one thing I did do during that time was a series of photographs of him—Michael in the narrow kitchen drinking coffee, steam rising from his cup; Michael sleeping on the floor in front of the TV while the colorful bodies of a cartoon family hover brightly above him. The images are tranquil, domestic. The kind of work I had always been afraid of doing. They are among the most popular of my photographs, and I understand why. Anyone looking at them would be reassured. Anyone looking at them would think,
It’s all right
, no matter what had happened the day or the night before.

Chapter 20

THE POPULATION OF GALVESTON
is almost sixty thousand. Enough, a visitor might think, to provide the kind of anonymity most city people take for granted. But the odds of encountering someone you would prefer not to meet are greater than the numbers alone suggest. Life on the Island requires a high degree of social vigilance.

I meant to avoid any further conversations with Ty, and so far, I had succeeded.

He’d called me, and Eleanor had dutifully relayed his messages. There was nothing in them to suggest more than friendly interest, and no reason not to respond. If I’d been less preoccupied with my own concerns, I would have. But I didn’t want to hear myself talking like a tour guide. And the thought of answering Ty’s questions, of trying to explain the Island and its ways to him, was overwhelming.