The Whole World (26 page)

The house is modest in that it’s not some huge edifice. It’s an aesthetic stack of all-white boxes with windows in a swath all the way across. It was really built in the thirties, not an homage to the thirties, and you can tell the difference. It’s kind of cramped, a little shabby with age, but full of strong shapes and interesting light. The whole thing is topped by a tangle of branches reaching over from the wood behind it.

I rang the bell. A girl answered. This had to be Nick’s sister, Alexandra.

“Hi,” I said. “I’m a friend of Nick’s. He’d borrowed something of mine. I’m really, really sorry to bother you. I didn’t want to do this, but I really need to have it back.”

She squinted at me. “What was it?” She didn’t open the door any farther, only kept it open enough to stick her face through.

“Some photographs. They were in a big box.” I gestured with my hands to indicate the size. “And some papers and stuff, but mostly photos. Do you know if he left them here?”

“Nick doesn’t really keep anything here.”

“I know. I know, but it isn’t at the Chanders’ house or in his office and so I thought …” The contents of those two places had been discussed in the press.

“Were they some really old photos?”

Yes! “Yes,” I said. “Really old. They were mine, and I’d like them back.”

She lifted her shoulders, then dropped them in tandem with an enormous sigh. “Somebody dumped some old photos in the pond. I thought it was our neighbor. Why would Nick do that?”

I told her something about Nick trying to protect me from some old memories that he thought weighed too heavily on my mind. She squinted at me. Good girl for being suspicious; that had sounded stilted even to me. So I tried it a little different and beseeching: “Oh, please, can you tell me where the pond is?”

She squeezed her arm out without opening the door any farther and pointed.

I thanked her and ran around the house. I didn’t see any photos; just nature. The ground near the water was unmaintained, a wild mess of roots, leaves, and weeds.

It was nearing dark already. Winter afternoons don’t last long here. I swept at leaves with a stick, to see what was under them. Nothing but bugs and dirt until, halfway around, a white corner stuck out. I picked it up and turned it over. It was of Gretchen and her friends, at some high school event. It was useless to me itself, but it was like a big fat X in the dirt: The Linda Paul pictures were here. And they’d been discarded; I could collect and sell them legitimately. I could sell them
all
, not just a discreet few. How could Gretchen complain, when she’d thrown them away?

I got down on my knees to push the leaves around with my hands. Then a stick plunged down in the dirt, right next to me. It nearly impaled my wrist. I fell back and shielded myself. The person with the stick shined a flashlight on me.

“You’re trespassing,” she said. “I demand you leave immediately.”

“I’m a friend of the Frey family …” I said, but my excuse counted for nothing.

“Then you would do well to return to them before I phone for the police.”

I backed up like a crab, and she followed me, poking the flashlight at my face so I never felt comfortable rocking forward to stand up.

“Look,” I said, “I just made a mistake, okay? I didn’t mean to cross into your yard….”

Then she saw the picture in my hand. She snatched it up and scampered backward, out of my reach in case I planned to wrestle her for it.

She turned her back to me and trained the light onto the picture. Now, with the light facing away from me, my eyes readjusted.

Every one of those big trees had photos nailed to it. At first they were all just rectangles to me, but as my eyes coped with the fading light I made out the shapes of familiar scenes. There didn’t seem to be any order to it—black-and-whites and color ones were grouped haphazardly; baby Gretchen and teen Gretchen and young Linda Paul. The neighbor lady put her flashlight on the ground and I couldn’t see much anymore. But I heard her
—thud, thud, thud
. She must have been nailing up the picture she’d taken out of my hand.

I stood up and rubbed my arms. There! Hanging primly from its wire, the way you’d hang it in a drawing room, was the framed photo of Linda and Ginny. I remembered it. It was formal and beautiful and surely the biographer would pay something for that. Wilting flowers had been intertwined through the elaborate frame. The glass front was cracked. She was distracted. I stepped toward it.

The crazy lady was quick. She called out, “Yaaaaaaaah!” and ran at me. Maybe she had the hammer still in her hand; I couldn’t see. I just turned and ran. There was a large wooden fence between her land and Nick’s, so I had to head back toward the pond for an opening to his family’s well-kept grass. She stopped pursuing as soon as I crossed over, but I kept running until I got to the driveway. I stood there, hands on my knees, breathing hard.

Alexandra opened the front door, just the same amount as before: about eight inches. “I told you I thought they belonged to the neighbor.”

I got on my bike and across the road to the campus of science labs. I was shaking. I rode just to clear my head. The streets and buildings here are named after Cambridge greats: Thomson, Maxwell, Bragg. Thomson discovered electrons and his street always makes me think of Seurat and pointillism: Aren’t we all just made of little dots?

The reason Seurat painted like that, by the way, was to give viewers the ingredients of a color—say, yellow and blue, in tiny bits close together—to be mixed fresh in their eyes each time they look. Instead of some stale old green cooked up ages ago. Isn’t that generous?

That’s the exact conversation I had with Juergen once. He studies explosives in the Bragg Building. He’s nice and kind of geeky. He tried to kiss me once and I avoided it. We haven’t really hung out since then but we say hi. And I thought,
Why not see if he wants to do something?
Just hang out and maybe bullshit about art and science and all that undergraduate stay-up-all-night kind of talk. Because I really didn’t feel like running into Therese or Polly or anyone else.

I found a bench that had less dried goose shit on it than the others and sat by the pond. I know he cycles by the pond to the bike path to get back to his place. He shares a flat on Fitzwilliam Street. Next to Darwin’s old flat, no joke. He tells me stuff about Darwin and other scientists, and I tell him stuff about art.

That’s what I love about Cambridge. The smartest people don’t think someone is stupid just because they don’t know some fact or really specific thing. Specialists understand from experience that you can be deeply brilliant at one kind of thing and completely ignorant of something else. Because you’ve focused. Really smart people focus. Nick didn’t mind explaining things to me. Juergen didn’t mind explaining things to me. Rocket science, actual rocket science. And he didn’t think I was stupid for not knowing already—he thought I was smart for being interested and able to follow his explanations. He thought we were equals.

Back home everyone always acted like I was so smart. They meant it nicely, but it was isolating, you know? They said I was special. But “special” means “by yourself.” That’s what it means; “better” than everyone else means “not the same” as everyone else. I love Cambridge, because being smart means fitting in.

Those thoughts and others filled two hours. Juergen never came by on the path lit by knee-high bollards. It was Saturday; what was I thinking? Full term was just ended. There was no guarantee he’d be here. He might have been out with friends. He might be flying home. He might be here, but working all night.

The big, boxy, quickly constructed warehouse-type buildings populating the West Cambridge site had the benefit of dozens of window offices. In the dark, the ones that were lit looked suspended. I knew Juergen worked in the Bragg Building; I didn’t know which window was his.

I walked around Bragg, rolling my bike along beside me. Unattended bikes disappear quickly. Four window offices were lit. I saw Juergen at his desk.

I threw a pebble at his window. I felt like such a geek. He looked down and I waved at him. He met me at the entrance. It has scripture quoted above it. That’s the way it is when a country still has a monarch whose role is head of the Church.

“Hi,” I said. “Look, I feel really stupid, but I’ve just had a run-in with a crazy person and I’ve had a fight with this girl in my college and I just don’t feel like being there right now. Do you want to go out to a pub or something?” I must have expected Juergen to be eager for an invitation. I was surprised when he hesitated.

“Uh, look, I’ve got to finish this up. But, uh, you can hang out if you want …” I locked my bike up outside. He waited at the door and then led me upstairs. We passed a model of the double helix. Watson and Crick had been Cambridge boys. Their favorite pub had a plaque on it about them. The ceiling of it is covered by graffiti from World War II airmen.

The biggest tourist attraction near my hometown is a massive house so poorly designed by the crazy rich lady who built it that it’s marketed as a “mystery.”

I had books in my backpack, so there was stuff to read. There was a beanbag chair, so I wasn’t uncomfortable. Juergen was doing something at the computer, something involving models and scenarios. He was into it, so I didn’t talk. We passed the whole evening like that. I think he stayed up all night. I eventually fell asleep.

Do you know how I think people become sluts? It’s like, pay attention to me. He wasn’t even looking at me. There was no conversation. No sharing something from a vending machine, or talking sticky problems through aloud. There was nothing.

The Centre for Mathematics, which is new, is very “wow” on the outside. But I’ve heard from someone who works there that it’s disconnected inside. No feeling of being part of the whole; your office is just this isolated little cave. I told that to someone else, and Nick, overhearing, had said, “Isn’t that what a researcher needs at work?” He said it like,
Of course we want to be unconnected
. Of course. And this with Juergen was like that. It was like I wasn’t even there. I think that’s what makes someone into a slut. Because I don’t even like Juergen that way, but I fell asleep thinking,
Pay attention to me, asshole
. I thought,
All right, I’ll do it, whatever. Just notice that I’m here
.

CHAPTER 11

I
t was Sunday, Day Eleven: The Day After the Dredging. The morning after I’d slept on a beanbag chair in Juergen’s office.

Term was just done. Dr. Keene was getting married. Nick wasn’t dead in the Cam, but was still gone. The bells in Great St. Mary’s played a quarter-peal at nine. Churches filled up, after which shops opened, which I hear is new. Everything, I’m told, used to be closed on Sundays not so long ago.

There is a pair of shows on the BBC called
Spring Watch
and
Autumn Watch
, made of footage of the effects of changing seasons on the natural world: deer mating, swallows nesting, that sort of thing. I think Cambridge should have its own show,
Term Watch
, where you can see footage of the sudden deflation in the bicycle population whenever students go home for break; the bloom of tourists at Christmas and summer; the after-Easter switch of season in school uniforms, from navy blazers to school-color gingham dresses on girls all over the city. Juggling buskers materialize on the corner by Holy Trinity Church whenever children have days off school. It’s all as cyclical and inevitable as any pattern of mating and migration.

Early December sees Christmas lights and banners advertising garish pantomimes dominate downtown. No snow, but deep, damp cold.

Harry’s told me that this is the time of year for the best canary feathers. Because they finish their molt, I think. He goes to bird shows most weekends this month. I’d know him gone or not by the car.

The only obstacle would be Gretchen. She wouldn’t have lights on to warn me that she’s home, so I had to keep an eye out for other hints. I got there early enough to assume that she’d be in: robe, coffee, whatever she does instead of reading the newspaper. Maybe listening to something on the radio. I wasn’t near the house, of course; I stayed by the end of the street, where it hits Barton Road. There’s a bench there. It isn’t a bus stop, just a gift to tired walkers and cyclists coming from Lammas Land or the Grantchester footpath. That sidewalk is so full of both pedestrians and bikes that it’s been split into lanes.

I fit in, wearing jeans and a sweater from yesterday, and my jacket. I looked all right. I’d had a hairbrush in my bag. I’d cycled straight there from Bragg. I needed to be there early to see her go for sure. If I came too late, and she went out in the morning, I’d never know if she was gone or not.

There were lots of cars passing me, and parked cars blocking me. No one would notice or remember me. On residential and dead-end Millington, sure. But not here on Barton, busy with cars, cyclists, and pedestrians. I looked natural. I was doing a book of Sudoku puzzles. Everyone did those.

Polly’s mother drove straight at me. She was coming up out of Millington as if from Gretchen’s. What was she doing there? Wasn’t she supposed to be in jail?

Suddenly anyone could be anywhere. A policeman could be in the car idling at the light; Nick might be hiding up a tree. Who knows who could be under this bench? I’d assumed Gretchen was home, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe I was waiting for nothing.

Mrs. Bailey turned to join the cars at the light. It greened and everything rolled on.

I don’t think she saw me.

I picked up my pencil.

About fifteen minutes later Harry surprised me by being on foot. He turned toward Newnham Road and downtown. Later a taxi turned down the L of Millington Road, then came back up with Gretchen in it. She went in the opposite direction of Harry, out of town.

I walked my bike down Millington. I parked it around the side of a house for sale; I didn’t want anyone to see it parked at Gretchen’s. I used the key they’d given me for working with the photos.

Inside the house, I walked a wide arc to avoid the Chinese dog statue. Stupid. It wasn’t going to bite me, it wasn’t going to bark. I made myself go back, right up to it, and nudge it with a little kick.

And that’s how I felt about Gretchen.

This whole time I’d acted like she has some kind of power. But she doesn’t. I don’t need to walk a wide arc around her. I can kick her if I want. She’s just a person, like the stupid Chinese dog is just a statue. She’s not anything I need to be afraid of.

I went upstairs. I examined their bill history online. I created a new payee, directed to my bank account, but named it to look in its record like a regular billing account. I transferred ten thousand pounds. It was easy. It would come through by the second business day: Tuesday. I didn’t think they would notice the discrepancy before then. Gretchen had been distracted lately.

Then I’d have to go away. I’d be like Gauguin. I’d find my own Tahiti. I’d—not go home. It was important to not go home.

That meant the world to me. Polly would think it was too small, but it’s not like I chose to be squeezed this tight. It’s not like I asked for it.

The phone rang. I just about jumped. I’d ignored the computer narrating my keystrokes, but the phone was unexpected. At the same time, the front door opened. I could tell by the foot stomps on the doormat that it was Harry. It sounded like he had plastic bags, like from Sainsbury’s. Groceries.

The phone kept ringing. Instead of picking up in the kitchen, he went for the stairs. A machine picked up, a machine in this room. It didn’t seem like he was going to answer, but there was every chance he’d listen to the message. I do that. I screen. It’s normal. He was coming.

I’d already shut down the banking site and the monitor. I slipped out of the den and could only follow the hall away from the main stairs. And the only thing there was the ladder to the bird room. Jesus. There were feathers and sawdust on each step, and the air smelled like balsa with a tinge of refrigerator rot.

The voice came from the den: “You’ve reached Gretchen Paul and Harry Reed. Please leave a message.” Gretchen, Paul, and Harry—they sounded like a folk group. Ha. Then a long, irritating whine for a beep.

Harry had paused outside the den door to listen. I was wearing ballet flats, but even so I didn’t think I would get up to the bird room without obvious creaks. He might even be on his way there anyway. And—Jesus, there was a dead bird on the top step. A dead orange bird …

“Hello, Gretchen. I’m calling again to make sure you know that Miranda Bailey has been released. I thought you’d want to know that her situation has been resolved by a witness. Phone if you have any questions; I’ll be in the office.”

It was the lawyer. So it wasn’t Polly’s mother who did it, whatever had been done. Sometimes I wondered if Nick had pulled a Gauguin of his own.

Harry came closer. I hunched in the corner, behind the ladder stair. I should have just grabbed some papers and said I was working. He didn’t care when I was there. Shit. I closed my eyes. He gasped.

It was the bird. It wasn’t me.

He’d seen it. Poor thing. The feathers were fluffed out, making it almost spherical. The body itself was rubber-chicken limp. He stood on the bottom step and scooped the body gently in both his hands together. Then he gasped again, and thundered up the stairs. He froze with his upper half inside the bird room, standing on the middle step. I looked up at him. There was nowhere to go. I kept still. His head fell forward and he saw me.

“Liv?” He sounded strangled.

“I was just … I was finishing up with the pictures….”

I wasn’t even thinking about the money anymore. I thought for sure he’d blame me for the birds. Indignance blossomed in my chest, blossomed so big it hurt. I defended myself: “I don’t know what the hell happened up there. Jesus.”

He was calmer than I expected. He’s a big man. I thought for sure he’d grab me up by my shirt and throw me into a wall. He had that kind of energy in him all of a sudden. But it wasn’t directed at me. The sound that came out of him was weird and keening, and he pounded the top step with his fist.

I wasn’t sure how he was reading the situation, but I felt like I had to prove it hadn’t been me. I followed him up the ladder. He squatted in the middle of the mess, righting cages. Dead birds flopped inside; living ones flapped and chattered.

I took a broom propped in the corner and pushed sawdust and birdseed together in a pile. Little bits of broccoli too. I swept around the cages. It was really important that he know this wasn’t my doing. Jesus. There are some things I would do but this was horrible.

While I swept, he got all the loose cages piled up. The big cage in the middle was bashed in, one corner completely concave, and the door couldn’t close anymore. Some birds were still in there. A few had escaped. They were perched or lying dead or out the window.

A white one was on a chair seat. It was alive, but it wasn’t sitting right. Like it was hurt. I picked it up, in my two hands together, like he’d done with the dead one on the stairs. It quivered. I switched to cupping it; maybe it was cold. I brought it to him, like,
What do I do now?
I thought he would open a cage. Harry turned from righting a cage and looked straight at me, this awful look. His eyes slowly lowered to my hands.

He freaked. He wanted me to put his bird down. I didn’t know where to put it down. He stood over me. He’s really tall. He started waving his arms around and there was really nowhere to go.

The bird twitched, making awful noises. He was trying to get me to let it go, but it was crazy. He was crazy, and all the grief and wonder in him about what had happened up here made this wall of crazy that backed me up to the point that I couldn’t do anything.

He grabbed my elbows. I didn’t want to drop it. Did he want me to drop it? The sharp little feet were scrabbling at my palm and he was shaking me. Jesus. He was, like, huge. I screamed at him, “Get the fuck away from me! Get the fuck away!”

“Please,” he said. “Please.” He wanted this one bird. He wanted it. But he had my elbows. I didn’t know what he was going to do. He was crazy about this bird, like my holding it was worse than what had already happened to it.

I charged forward with my shoulder. I pushed him hard. There was this kind of
oof
, but I kept pushing. My legs churned, sliding on spilled lettuce leaves. He went down the ladder steps.

I put the bird down, finally. Without him looming over me, I was able to pop it into a cage. It was going to die anyway. It wasn’t sitting right; it was broken.

I looked down. Harry had fallen onto the back of his neck. His legs were diagonal up the steps; his head was flat on the carpet. His body looked short and strange to me from up here. It reminded me of Mantegna’s laid-out
Dead Christ
, which everyone studies. The way he used foreshortening of the legs to position the viewer, anyone looking at the painting is right there, at dead Jesus’ feet, near and kneeling. It’s like I was right there with Harry. It’s like this was real.

I had to walk sideways to get down past him. The phone rang. Four rings, the long beep again, “Gretchen, Paul, and Harry …” Ha. Ha. Ha.

It was Gretchen. I listened. It’s human nature to listen.

She was sorry, she said. It was she who had done it to the birds. She forgave, I don’t know what. She needed to be picked up. Her mother was … something. And the money.

She was suddenly bent on moving the money.

Charity. Immediately. I could hear the disgust in her voice. She was shoving the money away from her, like a plate of bad food. I needed until Tuesday. I needed.

I deleted the message. I took the keys out of Harry’s pocket.

I picked birdseed out from the tread of my shoes before I went downstairs.

The orange Sainsbury’s bags sagged by the front door. I put the milk away, and the hot cross buns, and the coffee beans. It seemed important. My fingerprints wouldn’t matter. They were already all over the place, they were supposed to be. It just seemed important that this not look sudden, not look caught-in-the-act. I pushed the empty bags in with the recycling under the sink. A small, white feather, which must have come off of me, was caught between them.

I picked it out very carefully. It was very important that nothing confuse the simplest explanation of what had happened, an explanation that didn’t include me.