Since Amory had been so strange with me in the cellar that night, I decided to try there first. I passed through the kitchen, banging my hip against a table that was never there before and didn’t fit. I pointed the flashlight at the far wall. Strange, weedy things were hanging from the curtain rod above the sink; old green mason jars of dried beans and spaghetti cluttered the counter. The place was a mess. A newspaper was scattered half on the floor, half on the table, where a paperback cookbook lay open, facedown and broken-spined, next to a crumpled cigarette package and a book of matches. I was surprised, but I shouldn’t have been. Ellen smoked too.
The cellar door was stuck. After some tugging it suddenly gave, slamming me in the shoulder. Gingerly, rubbing my shoulder, I went down the stairs, shining the light in front of me like a ship’s beacon. At the bottom I swept the light around the walls, making giant shadows. An inch of dust had settled over everything: a battered toolbox, jars of rancid fruit, a bicycle Horace used in high school, cans of paint. Picking my way around the floor, I knocked on the walls behind the shelves for hollow spaces. I looked inside crumbling boxes, an old chest of drawers, under a mildewed mess of rags.
Nothing. The dog started whimpering and yapping and pawing the top stair. “Hush!” I told it, but then I took one last look around and scurried upstairs. I don’t know what I was afraid of; nobody around there could hear, and if they could they wouldn’t think much of it. Raccoons, rats, snakes—a dog barking for a reason in the country is like Peter crying wolf.
I moved across the hall into the living room, stumbling over a few chairs in the dark. With all the windows open the place was a little cold, and I pulled down the sleeves of my sweatshirt. I got down on my knees and went around the room, tapping on the floorboards. There wasn’t much furniture to speak of: a beat-up old couch that I think we might’ve left; an end table; a standing lamp. In the far corner I found a hand-painted cupboard she must’ve rescued from a trash pile. Groping around inside it, I knocked over a glass, which smashed on the floor, sending the dog skidding backward in surprise like an ice skater.
The dining room looked like a junkyard. There was no furniture except a wooden contraption with a seat on it in the middle of the room. All over the floor large, strange-shaped objects squatted on heavy plastic and canvas spattered with paint. They were like the rocks I’d seen in pictures of the moon. Training my flashlight on each one, I could see that some were faces, some hands. Some were giant feet. When she said she was a sculptor I had imagined earthenware bowls like the one she gave me, candlestick holders, uneven pots. I thought of her sitting out here making teapots and mugs to sell at the Dinner Bell or maybe at a gift shop at the mall. But these pieces were ugly, nothing anybody I knew would ever want to buy. I touched one of them with my foot and pushed it over. I rapped on it with my knuckles, and the sound it made was hollow. I tried another, and another. All of them sounded the same. They reminded me of the piñatas we hung at Christmas in church. On Christmas Eve the kids all stood in a circle while one of them, blindfolded, beat the donkey with a stick until it burst. Candy flew from its insides like guts, and the children scrambled around on the floor trying to get as much as they could. I tapped one of the pieces again. Why were they hollow? Why were they so big?
All at once it came to me. I picked one of the faces up—it was fairly light, like a gourd—and felt for an opening, but there wasn’t one. I realized what she must have done, and my heart started beating like the dog’s tail, thump thump thump, and my head felt fuzzy. I shook the face and held it to my ear, listening for a swishing sound, the sound of paper. I looked around the room. There were at least a dozen pieces scattered on the floor—a dozen possibilities, a dozen hiding places. Now it all made sense: she found the box—she knew I knew she’d found it—and thought I might come after it. She made these ugly pieces to hide my letters in.
Cradling the face in one arm, I shined the flashlight at it. It was a flat face, a woman’s face, and it looked strangely familiar. It had a funny expression, not frowning, but not smiling either. I put down the flashlight and tossed the face in the air like a beach ball. When it landed back in my hands the weight of it drew me forward. I shook it again and heard a rustling sound. Then I closed my eyes, gritted my teeth, lifted it above my head, and let it drop.
There was a loud, dull crash, and I jumped. The dog yipped, trotting around in a skittish circle. “Get out,” I said, raising my hand. “Out. Out!” It slunk back into a corner, looking at me. I could see its pupils shining in the dark. I grabbed the flashlight and pointed it at the floor. There was an eye staring blankly up at me, a broken mouth, an ear, part of a nose. I moved some of the fragments with my toe. A cloud of dust rose up. There were no letters.
The dog was whimpering now, circling the room, sniffing at the broken pieces. When it came close to me I hit it on the nose, and it shut up for a moment. Putting down the flashlight, I picked up a hollow, pillow-shaped piece with two mounds on the front and let it drop. It shattered.
Nothing.
The dog was really barking now. My heart felt like a marching band in my chest, THUMP THUMP THUMP. I kicked at the shards on the floor, then at the dog, but it jumped out of the way. I lifted another piece, bigger and heavier than the others, and hurled it down with all my strength, stamping on one section until it cracked in half. I seized a longer, thinner one, an arm or a leg, and swung it against the seat in the middle of the floor. My breath was coming hard now; I was covered with clay dust; my glasses were foggy. My whole body was trembling. I started coughing, choking on the dust. The dog ran after each piece as it broke across the floor. I stumbled around the room, not even thinking now, looking for those letters in the rubble.
By the time they were all smashed, I was so weak I could hardly stand. I leaned against the wall, mopping my brow, fanning myself with the bottom of my sweatshirt, trying to catch my breath. The dog sat down right in front of me, intent, quiet.
My eyes had adjusted to the darkness and I could see everything. The room was a shambles. There was silence like the silence after a rainstorm. All at once I began to feel a spreading shame, a shame so deep it paralyzed me. There were no letters hidden here. This was her project.
“Oh my Lord.” The dog pricked up its ears. “Oh my Lord,” I gasped, hugging myself, crying, shaking. I turned toward the wall for a long moment to steady myself, then stepped around a broken face and picked up the flashlight. I went through the kitchen to the hall. Gripping the banister, I started up the stairs toward the bedrooms, away from the dust and destruction.
I found the box in the closet in my bedroom, on the shelf where I’d left it, as if it had never been moved. When I saw it there I thought I might faint. Standing on my toes, I could barely reach, but I did, dragging the box toward me with my fingertips, with all the strength I had left. It was heavy, larger than I remembered. It fell into my arms with a thunk.
I carried it to the bed. For several minutes I just looked at it, running my fingers down the sides, clutching the corners like I was afraid somebody would take it from me. Then I opened it and beamed the light inside. The papers were jumbled, but it looked like everything was there.
The dog had followed me into the room and was lying by the bed with its front paws crossed. “Shoo, dog, you dumb dog.” I flapped my hand at it. I clapped, but it just lay there, watching me. I went through the papers in the box and lifted out Ellen’s diary. The leather flap had been cut. I remembered reading what she had written all those years ago. Amory must have read it too. The thought made me feel old and sad.
Replacing the letters and the diary, I gathered everything in my arms. I had to get back to my car and out of here before she came home. I hurried down the stairs, dropping the flashlight and almost tripping over it, recovering and then almost tripping over the dog, pausing for a second at the bottom to collect myself.
All at once the dog whined and raced to the screen door, wagging furiously. I followed, standing very still behind it, listening,
barely breathing. Before I heard anything I could see the small bright headlights of a car way down below, coming fitfully up the long drive. The dog was scratching at the door. Almost without thinking, I rushed into the kitchen, grabbed the matchbook from the table, and slipped past the dog onto the porch. I shot down the steps and ran for the back.When I rounded the corner I could hear the unmistakable asthmatic wheeze of her car as it crested the ridge halfway to the house.
In the backyard I set the box down and opened it, crumpling some of the papers on top, fumbling with the matches as I tore them off and tried to strike them, dropping each one I managed to light into the box. At first the points of flame burned like votive candles, one for each match. Before long, though, the dry papers were on fire, roaring and crackling, giving off heat. I could hear the dog barking its head off inside the house. Watching the blaze as it ebbed and then strengthened, turning the letters to ashes, I heard the car come to a stop in front. She called to the dog and then she called my name. The car door slammed, then the screen door, and then the backyard was bathed in weak yellow light. Smoke was getting in my eyes and nose and I was starting to feel light-headed when I looked up and saw her face in the dining room window.
When I got home that night the first thing I noticed was my grandmother’s car. I recognized it immediately: the mint-green siding, the white roof, the tires that looked like they’d never been used. The house was dark. I called for Blue. I was sure I’d heard him barking.
It had been another slow night at the Blue Moon, and they’d let me go a little early. I had been happy to leave. One of the clay figures was finished, and the next day I planned to assemble it outside. On the drive home I thought about how the pieces would look: a triangle of women, with faces and hands of clocks and trees and flowers, feet poised, skirts blowing, arms outstretched, as if dancing together in the field. I imagined the movement between them as continuous, each one reaching toward the others, their backs to the rest of the world.
As I got out of the car my mood of preoccupation vanished. “Blue?” I yelled. “Clyde?” I ran up the steps to the porch and opened the front door. Blue came barreling out, barking and leaping. I stroked his back to calm him and hurried inside, flipping the light switch in the hall. The door to the basement was wide open. I turned left into the living room and switched on a lamp. In the darkened far corner, pieces of broken glass sparkled like jewels. The night’s clouds had dissipated; moonlight gave surfaces a bluish sheen.
“Clyde?” As I headed to the back of the room, my voice seemed to echo in the empty house. I went to the cabinet and looked down at the broken glass, then glanced to the right.
What I saw made me gasp. The dining room looked like a slaughtering army had been through it. The floor was covered with a terrible carnage of hands and eyes and feet. I surveyed the mess in horror, my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. I took a few dazed steps and picked up a curved piece of clay, the outer side smooth, the inside rough—part of what had been the back of a head. Scrabbling through the rubble, my frantic fingers searched for a piece that might be whole, but found only jagged lips, a flared nostril, the curve of a shoulder. I rose shakily, rubbing soft, silky clay dust between my fingers.
Suddenly, through the window, I smelled smoke. I looked outside and saw the hunched figure of my grandmother. Her face, twisted toward me, was feverish and stricken in the warm light of a small fire.
I turned and ran to the kitchen and out the back door, Blue at my heels. “Clyde! What are you doing?” I shouted.
“Stay away from me!” she rasped. She coughed, bending double. In a dark, oversize sweatshirt and bright sneakers, she looked like a wizened child in the feeble glow from the fire.
“Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve destroyed my sculptures! You’ve destroyed everything!” She shrank from me, but I grabbed her arm. “What were you thinking?”
“Let go!”
I dropped her arm. “Are you totally insane?” I screamed.
Her eyes met mine. “You’re a liar,” she said. “I knew you had it. If you hadn’t lied to me in the first place, I wouldn’t have had to come looking for it.”
I looked down at the smoldering mess. Gray smoke was rising from it in a steady stream. It took me a moment to realize that it was the box. “Oh, Jesus.” I took the waitress apron from around my waist and threw it over the top, then crouched down, squelching the fire. “I didn’t have it. I didn’t start looking until you told me about it! You’re the one who gave me the idea.”
“No!” she said. “No!” She reached for the box, but I pushed her away, guarding it fiercely.
Lifting the apron, I poked through the charred, smoking papers and singed my fingers on the metal lock of the diary. I turned the book over quickly; the leather cover was scorched, but the fire hadn’t burned through.
“Give that to me!”
I ignored her.
“Give that to me!”
I stood up slowly. “I’ve already read it, Clyde.”
“It’s none of your business!”
“Of course it is. It’s my mother’s diary, for God’s sake!”
She snatched the diary from my hands and pressed it to her chest, looking at me steadily. “You can’t prove anything. Just because Ellen said what she did doesn’t make it the truth. There are things you can’t understand, things that happened a long time ago—”
“You were afraid I was going to find out what really happened, weren’t you?”
She stepped back. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”
“That you killed Bryce Davies—”
“Shut your mouth.”
“And then Amory found out and he ran off the road in revenge. Is that what happened?”
“Shut your mouth,” she said. “That’s not what happened!”
“What happened, then?”
She looked around desperately. “It was an accident. She dove in and—and the whirlpool sucked her down, and there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t do anything!” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “He jumped to conclusions. It was what he wanted to believe. And I was so mad about everything that happened before, I didn’t want to try to make him think different, and then—and then that night … Just leave me alone!” she sobbed. “I don’t have to tell you anything!” She turned, hugging the diary, and stumbled away from me, out into the field.
“Stop, Clyde!” I shouted. “Don’t go—”
She screamed, and then I heard a sickening thud. I ran to where she was lying sprawled over a shallow pit, groaning and holding her side.
“Are you all right? Can you move?” I knelt beside her. She tried to get up but cried out in pain. “Are you okay? I’m calling an ambulance.”
“No,” she whimpered.
“I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
“No, no!” She winced. “Don’t leave.”
“Clyde—”
“No.” Her voice was barely audible.
I hesitated. Blue had followed me and was pawing at the edge of the hole. I noticed a glint and saw that her glasses had fallen off. I cleaned them and put them back on her face as gently as I could.
“Look,” I said. “I’m not going to tell anybody any of this.”
“No, no, no,” she moaned, grasping my wrist.
“Clyde, I have to get help.”
She dug her fingers into my flesh. Her hand was cold.
I looked at her soft, frail form, her halo of snowy hair, her clenched hand. “Just tell me one thing,” I said. “Why did you destroy my sculptures?”
“I thought … I thought you’d hidden the diary in there.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“I didn’t think you’d tell me the truth.”
I shook my head slowly. “Oh, Clyde. Whatever happened, that diary doesn’t prove anything.”
She tightened her grip, and I felt a shudder run through her body.
“And for what it’s worth, I don’t think you did anyt
hing.”
“But I did,” she said. “I did.”
I pried her fingers loose and clasped them.
“I was so upset, all I wanted was for him to hurt like I did—and then Ellen—”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was. Don’t you see? I let him think I did it. I wanted him to think it. And—oh, God—then—”
I sat very still.
“My words killed your mother, Cassandra. If I’d kept quiet he wouldn’t have gotten drunk that night, he wouldn’t have been driving that car. And just to see that look on his face when he thought I was capable of it—I was so glad.” She was sobbing again, her body quivering, her mouth twisted in a grimace. “I was so, so glad.”
I looked up into the sky. The moon was large and pale, and pinprick stars were beginning to appear. I looked all around us—at the grasses swaying in the light wind, at the fields stretching out to the edges of darkness, at the sturdy white house and the single light inside.
When I turned back to Clyde, she had stopped crying. For a moment the only sound was her breathing, heavy and labored. She clutched my hand tightly. “Oh, Cassandra,” she said. “There are so many stories I could tell you—”
“I’m here,” I said softly. “I’m listening.”
In the hospital waiting room I called Horace from a pay phone. He didn’t ask any questions; he just said gruffly that he’d be right there and would call the others.
I picked up a magazine reflexively and found a seat, looking around at the drawn faces of the few other visitors, yellow-gray under the humming fluorescent lights. I glanced at the clock; it was one in the morning. The hospital smelled of anything but human beings: new carpeting, old Venetian blinds, liquid cleanser. Over by the nurses’ station two orderlies were joking and leafing through baby pictures. Their laughter evaporated quickly in the antiseptic air.
Elaine blew through the emergency room entrance first, with Larry right behind her. “Where is she?” she demanded, walking straight toward me.
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