by Melanie Finn
Her ankle hurt, a sharp pain.
She looked down. There was a dog. Attached by its mouth. She left it there, grateful for the pain, for she saw, now, the room was dusty, cobwebbed, abandoned decades ago. She dragged the dog, which made low growling sounds, the little needle teeth embedded in her flesh, just as well, it was anchoring her. Rose stood in the room, she touched the tweed, and then she clutched it in her fist with something that felt mostly like hunger but might have been anger or some other human inconsistency. She had loved him, or tried to, and in moments he may have loved her, and in their stumbling they had made Miranda. Then as now, he was as unknown to her as a far galaxy, mysterious as unnamed stars, and yet she realized she had no curiosity. None at all. She did not care to know — not denial; rather, a banal disinterest. The questions — and their answers — were not hers anymore.
Miranda’s just trying to find out about her dad. That’s all, Diane had said.
That is all.
The facts of Bennett’s death may be revealed or they may not, Rose could do nothing either way, and there would be other discomforts in Miranda’s life that she could neither prevent nor alleviate. She could not protect her daughter anymore, and she must not try. Miranda was a strong tree, grown with good light on rich soil, well-tended, and she would absorb the barbs of life’s wire within her bark. She knew her mother loved her.
Rose turned and staggered back down the hallway, towing the dog.
In the living room, Barbara was pouring herself another drink, the booze right there by her chair so she didn’t even have to stand up, simply move a decoy to the side. Then she lifted her eyes, deep Atlantic blue, and Bennett looked out through them. “You wanted to talk about my brother.”
“Actually about his daughter. Miranda. She wants to know more about him. His family, his history. You. She doesn’t even know you exist.”
“You’re sure this isn’t about money?”
“It isn’t —”
“— becawse with Bennett it was always about money, he only ever telephoned when he wanted some.”
May 1993, Rose thought. But it didn’t matter. She smiled, extending warmth: “She looks like you.”
“Her name — Miranda —” Barbara began, then fortified herself with another go at the sherry. “Bennett chose it?”
Rose affirmed. “From Shakesp —”
“Our mother was Miranda.”
There was a brief pause, while Rose absorbed this. Of course, of course. She said: “She was a painter.”
“How did you know?”
“The watercolors,” Rose made a small gesture to the hall. “They’re very good.”
“They are not,” Barbara declared. “But they are all that remains.”
The remains: what is left, what you gather and take with you for the rest of your journey or what you leave for others to find.
Rose rushed on, as if downhill and certain of her course: “Miranda wants to know about her father. She has a child, Anika, with the same eyes, your eyes and Bennett’s, and they also live by the sea. Bennett loved the sea and maybe the whole story of us would have been different if we’d lived by the sea instead. I’ve made a terrible mess, but she’s my daughter, my daughter, and I want her to be happy, whatever that is I’m not sure, only as a mother, what I really want is to not hurt her.”
Barbara turned the sherry glass in her fingers and Rose was now writing Miranda’s number on a scrap of paper, handing it to the old woman. “Will you call her, Barbara? Will you call her soon? Now? Will you tell her who you are, and tell her to come here, take her into Bennett’s room, tell her about him?”
Barbara took the paper, held it. “He just disappeared, you know. I wouldn’t lend him any more money. There comes a point… one just can’t anymore…” She trailed off and glanced at Miranda’s number.
“Tell her about your mother. What a wonderful artist she was. Take her down to the beach and walk with her. Tell her about Bennett when he was a child.”
Then the dogs barked. They leapt up and shrieked, racing to the French doors, tiny paws battering the glass. A gull had landed on the deck and was sauntering back and forth, mocking them. Rose moved the other way, quickly down the funnel of sad sailing pictures toward the front door, aware that Barbara was struggling up from the chair on stiff knees. Flinging open the door, Rose gulped the hay-perfumed air.
Barbara arrived, the tide of dogs at her feet. “Rosie,” she said. “Yes, I think he mentioned you.”
Was there more? Rose waited for the next sentence, for qualification. He loved you. He hated you. He said he was going to see you and he never came back.
But that was it. Mentioned. Rosie had been mentioned.
Approaching Bridgeport, a sign tempted the motorist: “VISIT THE PEZ MUSEUM! OVER 1500 PEZ DISPENSERS ON DISPLAY!”
Rose remembered the exit off the interstate, left, then straight on. Nothing was familiar: the low-slung buildings, the small businesses — a cleaners, a carpet store — had all been replaced by big box malls and office buildings. For some reason she thought of Joseph Conrad — “The horror, the horror!” The horror now was the leveling of the dark and wild forests for this ubiquity. The virus of ubiquity. The Farm Shop restaurant was now Friendly’s, and jammed between a carpeting store and a car wash on the busy Boston Post Road. She parked in the center spaces, where there would be the most traffic and she thought a casual viewer would be less likely to notice her Vermont plates. Inside, she ordered an omelet, paid cash.
Outside, the late afternoon was still hot. She began to walk. Half a mile past Friendly’s, she entered a Dollar General and purchased a flashlight and a pair of black panty hose. By six, she’d reached the Southport train station. Almost nothing had changed, the quaintness retained by the very rich, their own lie that all is well in the world: the over-priced pharmacy on the corner, the post office, the small café — though this had probably changed hands and served something other than Chock Full o’ Nuts filter coffee.
Bearing left through an avenue of trees, she came out at the Pequot Yacht Club, and left again around the harbor. At dusk she reached the Mill River bridge. Cars drove past, Mercedes, BMWs, Audis. Then the road swung up, onto Sasco Hill. Here, surely, it was always such summer, the rich could buy year-round summer. Towering maples shaded the narrow street. Prim green verges, immaculately tended, backed onto high walls that hid the mansions beyond. She heard the droning choir of lawnmowers. The sea could only be glimpsed through the trees and walls — a titbit, a hand-out, a donation to the poor — blue and glimmering and set upon with yachts. Not yachts: boats.
By the time Rose reached the entrance to the country club, it was sufficiently dark. Now she cut down the access road, keeping clear of the clubhouse. Laughter and the sound of plates, glasses, silverware clinking, clattering, tinkling drifted through the open windows, a smell of cooking — hamburgers, chicken. Across the golf course itself, she was able to chart her way between the higher ground of the ridge of Sasco Hill and the low, moon-glimmering sea. The sand bunkers glowed among the dark pools of the fairways and the putting tees. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and Rose felt a deep, atavistic pleasure in being out and alone in the night. She still knew the way.
Another forty minutes of walking had passed when the golf course gave way to the narrow strip of stony beach. The sea timidly pulled at the shore, polite little wavelets left offerings of twigs, seaweed, and bottle caps. Rose followed the arc of the land. Not far ahead was Hobie’s boathouse. The lights were on, the doors to the upstairs apartment wide open. Closer, she could hear music — Miles Davis or someone similar, and it still seemed to her neither raucous nor serious nor emotive. The music was a language she had never understood, she had no ear for it. Perhaps Bennett was there now, a silver mane of hair, an expensive red wine in hand, reading The Stranger.
No: he was dead, she had killed him, she had done her time, 30 years, three hots and a cot. She was now paroled.
A dozen yards before
the boathouse, Rose turned onto the lawn, edging along the cedar hedge that ran straight uphill toward the main house. A few lights were on, though only downstairs, and Rose tried to remember the rooms. The main reception hall, the dining room, Hobie’s office were all dark, so she supposed it must be the kitchen alight. All the doors and windows were closed, the house shut-up. No one was home.
Bats sliced the air, cut from black cloth, the night’s own curtain, and the lawn was already damp underfoot. Rose noted the flower beds, the drooping heavy heads of hydrangeas and plump roses and frothing hollyhocks. The effect was as she remembered: of floral bounty barely restrained. But now the curation seemed absurd — these ludicrous flowers that could not survive without tending. Why not let the garden go, wild flowers, wild bees, dandelion, weeds, moles, voles, groundhogs, foxes, wasps? What was wrong with people — this relentless domestication?
Creeping right up against the house, she supposed she should look for cameras. But if there was a fancy security system, she certainly wasn’t going to outsmart it. Now was the time for Fate. She jiggled the door to Hobie’s office. Locked. Around she slunk to the front door, and this too was locked. Here, though, she could glance in. The interior had been violently redecorated in minimalist white — surely, the forceful hand of Bizza.
Rose kept going, she was light and happy, like a child playing hide-and-seek. She’d never felt so careless. She pulled the black panty hose out of her pocket and slipped them over her head. The waist band came over her chin, and the empty legs hung limply, swinging as she turned her head. The fabric flattened her nose. It didn’t inhibit her breathing, but it was hot, so she pushed the elastic back up, more of a demented beret look than mask.
The kitchen door was open.
Though Rose had never seen the kitchen, it was obvious Bizza had imposed her will upon it. White countertops, white cabinets, and white tiling: it looked like the cafeteria on a space ship. A white oven. In the corner, the white fridge hummed. Rose listened for any other sound. Perhaps somewhere an alarm was ringing shrilly. She might be shot. In the bowels of the house, a vent of some kind sighed.
Had Mitzi died? A battle with breast cancer? Or was she in exile, a gated community in Palm Springs? Golf, followed by water aerobics and lunch, an afternoon lecture on paleo-arctic human migration, more golf, dinner at 4:30, then mahjong and martinis until everyone passed out.
The reception room was a white marble quarry, the hallway that had once been filled by hunting prints now exhibited huge black-and-white photographs. Rose paused to examine them, unsure what she was looking at — slashes of black across white. Sensing it might be human flesh, she turned her head sideways, as if a different angle might make the difference. The legs of the panty hose fell across her face, and she pushed them aside like recalcitrant bunny ears. Reaching the end of the hallway, she realized these were all extreme close-ups of vaginas. Or one vagina from many different perspectives. Bizza’s?
At last, Rose had arrived at her destination. Mitzi’s gorgeous blue had been murdered by screaming white. White sofa, white arm chairs, white tables, white floor, a lunatic asylum or a bad dream. White was the Chinese color for death. For bones, ash, nothingness. For reasons known only to Bizza, the curtains were black. Hobie must loathe it. For a moment, Rose stood looking out the window at the dark garden, sloping down to the dark sea.
Now the heat started in the flesh behind her face, burning her face off like the scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazi in the black coat melts from behind his face; then around her entire skull, the blood searing between bone and skin, her hair must be standing on end, her scalp was actually sweating under the panty hose. Oh for God’s sake, she thought, for fuck’s sake, not now! At the same time her torso was the surface of the sun, her clothes were going to melt off her, she was immolating, and all that would be left was a small clump of smoking ash on Bizza’s white floor. And then, just as suddenly, the heat left, a menopausal ghost vacating the cask of her body like an exorcism. She could smell her own sweat, beads trickling down the groove of her back.
She exhaled, then laughed, a short guffaw which sounded extraordinarily loud in the quiet room, the quiet house. Her stomach made a low, creaking sound like a door hinge, and she realized she was hungry. She turned, her eyes scanning the darker section of the room. The painting was there! How lonely it seemed, the only painting on the vast wall. It had survived the great white spell Bizza had cast upon the house and the aggressive swarm of giant vaginas. Hobie, she knew, Hobie had resisted. He wasn’t going to move this painting for Mitzi, he wasn’t going to move it for Bizza.
The girl and her husband looked back at Rose from their frame. She was younger than Rose remembered, and he was older. He looked more bored than ever, as if he was posing only for her, he was indulging the wishes of his young wife; but really, he had much more important things to do — businesses, travels. The girl stared at the painter, the viewer, eagerly; she had ambitions. But when the painting was done she was disappointed. She’d expected it to be bigger, wider, brighter, more flattering — not only of herself, but of her life. Her husband looked so dull, so grumpy. Behind them, in the sunlit door beyond the kitchen, the maid stood with the dead hare’s long satin ears in her work-reddened hands.
Gently, Rose lifted the picture off its hook. Hobie had hung it himself with a hammer and a small nail, not even a proper picture hook that braced itself back against the wall. It could have fallen at any time. The weight of it was about the same as a carton of eggs. She lifted it close to her face, inhaled. The sharp odor of gesso and oil were still there, 500 hundred years later.
“You’d better put that back.”
The voice made her jump, like a slap. A house-keeper? Rose clung on to the painting, keeping her gaze fixed on the young girl at its heart. She seemed to be amused, now, and somehow pitying. Rose thought of Nick. The young do not believe it will ever happen to them — this sagging, this wrinkling, this ennui grinding the days like meat.
“No, I will not,” Rose said. She pulled the panty hose back down over her face.
“I’ve called the police.”
Rose turned to face the woman. She was in a bulky satin dressing gown, her wrinkled face glistening with cream. Pointless, Rose thought with a savage thrust, no cream is going to give you smooth skin.
“You’re stealing my painting.”
Rose took a few steps forward. She was in a movie, everything was going to work out, the bold are always rewarded. She was a little surprised herself that she believed this quite so fervently. Her time had come.
“It’s not your painting,” she said.
“The police will be here any minute,” the woman countered.
“Mitzi?” Rose wondered aloud.
“Who are you?” Mitzi demanded.
Far off, but incoming, the sound of sirens. Rose dashed forward, holding the painting tight, shoving Mitzi aside, running down the hall. Vaguely, she heard Mitzi tumble and cry out. Her focus was her trajectory through the house. Her legs seemed to expand and her heart grow large, she was sucking great quantities of air. Down the stairs, through the bar — all of this white, white, white! My God! Mitzi had erased every trace of her life with Hobie! The room to the left, once his study, was painted black.
The sirens were closer now, but so was she. The latch was simple, it clicked open and Rose was outside, the cool air, the sea scent. Just as the red and blue strobes hit the front of the house, she was down the garden, the painting firmly under her arm, she was ducking into the cedar hedge, the rich smell of cedar, the gummy residue of the branches flashing across her face, snagging on the panty hose. Rose plunged on through the night garden, she was in the rough grass that led down to the dark sea and the limitless ways beyond. Obligation fell from her, hate and doubt, and love, too, and she ran, her body was light-boned, long-limbed, unburdened. She was free as a hare, she was bounding.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is for Kate Shaw, my one and only agent, who
has been with me since the start in 2002. Kate has perfect instincts — not just as an insightful and bare-knuckle reader of manuscripts, but, like a badass PT trainer, she knows when to cajole, when to reassure and when to make me do the literary equivalent of 100 push-ups. Thank you, Kate. My thanks also to Detective Corporal Matthew Knisley with the Montpelier Police Department for background info, and Steve Gabrault for turning Rosie into a hunter; any mistakes noted by pedants are completely mine. My mother, Rosalind Finn, and Hope Bentley read cronky early drafts and gave crucial feedback. There is no one of this planet I would rather work with than Eric Obenauf and Eliza Wood-Obenauf at Two Dollar Radio. I’m continually amazed by their commitment, kindness and style, and am proud to be among the exceptional talent they publish. Eliza is a brilliant copy editor: thank you for your care, sharp-eyes, curiosity, and patience with my spelling. Eric: I love the cover. Gratitude and love to my husband, Matt, who keeps the faith in my writing and our marriage when I falter; and our daughters, Molly and Pearl, shining star, deep blue sea, who allow me to love them wildly and sometimes messily. Their forgiveness of my maternal short-comings is curative, miraculous. I know a dark and a powerful circle has been broken.
The Hare is also for my sister, Catriona.
