The Drowning House (25 page)

“I don’t know. But I’m not going back to him.”

“Mother’s telling everyone you are. That you’ll be done with your research in a few weeks and you’ll be leaving. Christ! It makes me crazy the way everyone attends to her. She is not the center of the universe.” She raised the oversize menu and disappeared behind it. When she set it down again, she said, “I used to think it was just a habit we’d all gotten into. But I’ve seen her do it to other people.
Including Stephen.” I could hear the disappointment in her voice. So Frankie had imagined that Stephen would win that battle for her. I hadn’t thought of her as someone who needed help.

“I used to blame Michael for what went wrong with us,” I said. “I don’t anymore.”

The restaurant was filling up. Two men sat at the table next to us. A family of four settled with more drama near the door. There were two daughters, the elder girl about fifteen, in a short skirt and tube top. When she crossed the room, one of the men at the table next to us watched her over his tortoiseshell half-glasses. Up close, I could see that she was more like thirteen. She wore sticky lip gloss that matched her top. I watched the man’s eyes tracking her.

“Don’t you think the relief portrait of Stella is strange?” I asked.

Frankie looked perplexed. “Of Stella Carraday? Are you talking about the one over their mantel? I thought that was supposed to be a copy of something in a museum.”

“It is, but it’s Stella, too. And there are goat legs on either side of the fireplace.”

“I don’t know. You said you wanted to talk about Daddy. What does any of this have to do with him?”

“Nothing, I guess.”

Frankie pointed at the menu. “The shrimp salad is good.”

The waiter returned and we ordered. After he left, I spoke first. “What Eleanor’s saying doesn’t surprise me. She’s always liked Michael.”

“What she likes about Michael is that he keeps you at a distance. No, wait. I know how that sounded. What I mean is this—she’s thinking of herself. Of what she wants. Not what’s best for you or for him.”

“Maybe that’s her secret,” I said. It was true that Eleanor never doubted her own desires. If she wanted something, she took it. While other people were pulled in different directions by inclinations at odds with their sense of what was right, Eleanor’s feelings and convictions were all lined up like metal filings in the presence of a magnet.

Our food arrived with a little flurry. When the waiter was gone, Frankie said, “She doesn’t want you here. You must know that.”

I thought back to the night of the party. Eleanor’s strange remarks. “She said she wants me to be happy.”

“I’m sure she does. As long as it doesn’t mean giving up anything she wants.”

“She was the one who called me about the exhibition.”

Frankie stirred her tea with an impatient up-and-down motion that made the ice cubes dance. “It was Will’s idea,” she said. “He made the whole thing happen. Funded it, I assume. Got the library involved. Mother would never have called you if he hadn’t pressed her.”

I experienced then a moment of clarity—like what happens when you paint the walls or replace the carpet, and the space you have known, the room and its familiar contents, rise up fresh and vividly detailed around you. My thoughts arranged themselves in a new and compelling order. All along, it had been Will who had moved things forward. Will who had prompted the official invitation. Will who had led me to Stella’s room.

“Are you sure?”

“Would I say so if I weren’t?”

We sat quietly for a while. Then finally she spoke.

“I heard about what happened at the party.”

I sighed. “If you’re talking about Tyler Henry, I’m sure it’s all over the Island by now. But I promise you, there is nothing to talk about.”

Frankie speared a cherry tomato neatly with her fork. “You do understand how it is here? There are only two sides, the Island side and everything else. We’re not from Galveston anymore. We’re fair game.” She paused. “You said there was something you wanted to show me?”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the plaid camp shirt. “Do you remember this?”

Frankie looked puzzled. “It’s old, isn’t it?”

“I found it in Eleanor’s closet.”

“You haven’t changed, have you?” she said. “Still snooping in other people’s things. I don’t remember it. Why? Should I?”

“No, it’s nothing exceptional.” I looked down at the limp handful
of faded cloth. “I don’t think she chose this shirt in particular. I wore it a lot, that’s all. But she has some old clothes of ours mixed in with hers. Do you know why she kept them?”

“I have no idea.” The delicate lines between Frankie’s brows deepened, and I sensed her impatience. “Was this what you wanted to talk about?” We had come a long way, but I could see that I was asking too much. I put the shirt back in my bag.

“Did either of them—our parents—ever discuss the fire? Did they ever say anything about it? About why Patrick and I were sent away?”

Frankie shook her head. “I don’t remember anything. But there’s no mystery there. If you’re Will Carraday, the easiest way to deal with any problem is to make it go away. Literally. Why not? Think of Catherine.” When Frankie put it like that, the logic seemed irresistible. There was no reason to look for anything more.

“There’s something else,” I said. “I found a photo at the archive. Of the bust in our front hall.”

“You mean Lavinia?”

“It’s supposed to be Lavinia, but it’s not really. It was part of a trade show. It has nothing to do with the house.”

Frankie sat back. “You’re kidding.”

“I can show you,” I said.

“No, I believe you.” I could see she was thinking hard. Finally she said, “All right. We have plenty of time. I want to eat, and then I want to tell
you
something.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I know.” Frankie cut the tails off two shrimp, then pointed with her knife at my plate.

I pushed the food around, watching her as she ate, efficiently, like a person who had limited time for meals. Inevitably, one of the few bites I took fell apart and salad dressing dribbled onto my chin. I reached for my napkin, and Frankie’s mouth twisted.

“You’ve always done that,” she said. “What I’ve never understood is how you can look beautiful with food on your face. Faline used to say, ‘A girl pretty enough it don’t matter how she do.’ ”

“She did?” I was amazed. Then I realized it was just the sort of thing Faline might have said to put Frankie in her place. I knew she meant well, but I wondered if, growing up, we might have gotten along better if we had been encouraged, even a little.

Frankie nodded, her mouth full. She rested her forearms on the table. “You haven’t eaten much.”

I started to respond, but she shook her head. “You need to hear this. When I was getting ready to apply to med school, I asked Daddy to contact some of his former colleagues at the hospital where he did his residency. I thought I might like New York. Talk about different! But he refused. He gave me a speech about striking out on my own. At first I believed it. Then I began to have doubts. Remember, he was the one promoting medicine as a profession.”

She picked up her glass and drank as if it were an assignment she’d been given. When she set it down again, she said, “Doctors have mentors. It’s a big part of why they choose one specialty or another—because the chief of surgery is a genius, because the pediatric oncologist is a saint. So who were they? His mentors? He wouldn’t say. It didn’t make sense. I went to Eleanor. I said I knew something had happened. Now it makes me laugh to think I didn’t know. I asked her to tell me.”

“What did she say?”

“She didn’t. Not the first time or the second. You know how she is. She looks at you, but she’s seeing something else.”

I nodded.

“She actually backed away. But I followed her through the house. She kept talking about plants and the natural order. I remember she asked me if I knew what a sport was. A mutation.” Frankie snorted. “She was hinting at something. I’ve always hated the way she makes you feel less than subtle because you want a straight answer. So finally she went to the kitchen sink and turned on the water so she couldn’t hear and stood there with her back to me. She thought we were done. But I picked up the garden shears and held them between her shoulder blades. Don’t look at me like that. I wasn’t going to do anything. I
just wanted her to understand that I was serious.” Frankie closed her eyes and shook her head, as though refusing something.

“What did she do?”

“She smiled. Not a social smile,
Hello, how lovely to see you, can I get you a drink?
The private one she does when she’s looking in the mirror. Then she told me. ‘Since you’re so determined to know,’ she said.”

Frankie folded her hands in front of her. “Daddy had a young patient. She told her parents that he hurt her. The hospital kept it quiet, but he was asked to resign. He was lucky to get the appointment here. Someone did him a favor. Someone with local connections.” She looked down at her lap. Frankie had followed him into the profession. His shame was her shame, and she felt the weight of it.

“She stayed with him. She never told anyone,” I said.

“Don’t imagine she sacrificed herself. It wasn’t like that. Mother has always been clear about what she wanted.” Frankie glanced at her watch. “I have to take a call at three.” She reached for her purse and made as if to stand. Then, instead, she leaned forward, her voice straining with the effort she was making. “Didn’t you ever wonder why our parents had separate bedrooms? She told Daddy that if he wanted her to stay with him it would have to be on her terms. Do you understand? This thing with Will Carraday isn’t new. It’s been going on for a long time.”

I know Frankie expected me to react. But the memory came back suddenly. A morning in the garden in back of our house. I was emerging on my hands and knees from under the porch when my father, who was passing by, swung his leg into me. His heavy brown shoe caught me just below the ribs. He said nothing, just kept on toward the alley. He must not have noticed Eleanor, who had been working, half hidden, among the plants. She straightened slowly. “I saw that,” she said.

“Well, damn it.” My father flushed. Half circles of sweat showed under the arms of his white shirt. He clutched the handle of his briefcase. “What is she doing under there?”

There was a long pause. I saw Eleanor fix him with a look so cold it
burned. I didn’t understand it, but I had a sense then of her power, I felt that she could make him stay there, bear that contemptuous gaze, for as long as she wanted.

Frankie pushed back her chair. “I’m glad you called,” she said. “I’m glad we talked. Stephen and I will be down for a couple of weeks in July. If you want, we can get together.”

I looked at my sister, so known to me in so many ways, and wondered who she really was. “I’d like that,” I said.

Chapter 22

MY FATHER KEPT HIS BIRDING BINOCULARS
in the alley house. Once I grew too big to fit under the porch, it became my principal refuge. Since the med students were always at the hospital, and my father rarely visited it except on weekends, the alley house was surprisingly safe.

So was the clump of cannas nearby. No one tended or cut them back. In Galveston, cannas were poor folks’ flowers—cheap, easy to find, rhizomes that grew and naturalized in any kind of soil. The clump was bigger each year.

In the days when Catherine still lived at home, I often visited the alley in order to listen for her. Catherine didn’t speak. She made guttural breathy sounds, long fluting calls, and when she was frustrated, grinding shouts of rage. These sounds both frightened and fascinated me because I knew they came straight from inside her. They were not complicated by thought or constrained by any standard of behavior. It seemed to me that, for all her limitations, Catherine was able to express herself in a way I was not.

I should have realized that the routes we took—mine, Patrick’s, my father’s—would converge in the alley eventually.

One evening, a group of boys, four of them, turned down the sandy path. Hearing voices, I stepped in among the tall red-orange blooms.

“Tony’s got to piss,” said one of the boys.

“So let him.” There was shuffling, and I heard the unmistakable sound of a stream hitting the packed earth.

“That’s pathetic,” said a voice. “I bet I can hit that trash can.”

I parted the leaves just enough to see them standing together. One was zipping up, two of them had their flies open and were holding themselves in readiness. I had never seen a naked boy who wasn’t still a baby, and I was curious about their bodies in the detached way of a child who is generally inquisitive. I remember examining their penises, the tender, proprietary way they held them, and thinking for some reason about the newborn mice I had seen once at school.

At that moment, Catherine blundered through the hedge. Somehow she had eluded Faline and found her way to one of the places where Patrick and I had created an opening. She had to press herself against the thick, springy branches to squeeze through, but she seemed not to notice that they had scratched her bare arms and legs.