by Ken Grimwood
Jeff watched as she took another ribbon from one of the doll-house trees, taunted fat old Chumley with it. The cat was tired, didn’t want to play anymore; it put a soft paw entreatingly on Gretchen’s cheek, and she buried her face in its furry golden belly, nuzzling the animal to full contentment. Jeff could hear its purr from across the room, mingled with his daughter’s gentle laughter.
The sun slanted higher through the tall bay windows, fell in brilliant striated beams upon the polished floor where Gretchen snuggled with the cat. This house, this tranquil, wooded place in Dutchess County, was good for her; its serenity was balm for any human soul, young or old, innocent or troubled.
Jeff thought of his old roommate, Martin Bailey. He’d called Martin soon after Gretchen was born, reestablished the contact that had somehow, in this life, been broken for so many years. Jeff hadn’t been able to talk him out of what would prove to be a particularly disastrous marriage, one that had originally led the man to suicide; but he’d made sure Martin had a secure position with Future, Inc., and some excellent stock tips now and then. His friend was divorced again, miserably so, but at least he was alive, and solvent.
Jeff seldom thought of Linda these days, or of his old existence. It was that first life that seemed a dream now; reality was the emotional stalemate with Diane, the blissfulness of being with his daughter, Gretchen, and the mixed blessings of his ever-growing wealth and power. Reality was knowledge and all that it had brought him—good and ill.
The image on the screen was one of pure organic motion: liquid rippling smoothly through curved chambers, expansion and contraction alternating in a perfect, lazy rhythm.
"… no apparent blockage of either ventricle, as you can see. And, of course, the Holler EKG showed no evidence of tachycardia during the twenty-four hours that you wore it."
"So what exactly does all that boil down to?" Jeff asked.
The cardiologist turned off the video-cassette machine that had been displaying the ultrasonic depiction of Jeff’s heart, and smiled.
"What it means is that your heart is in as close to perfect condition as any forty-three-year-old American male could hope it to be. So are your lungs, according to the X rays and the pulmonary-function tests."
"Then my life expectancy—"
"Keep yourself in this kind of shape, and you’ll probably make it to a hundred. Still going to the gym, I take it?"
"Three times a week." Jeff had profited from his anticipation of the late-seventies fitness craze in more ways than one. He not only owned Adidas and Nautilus and the Holiday Health Spa chain; he’d made full use of all their equipment for over a decade.
"Well, don’t stop," the doctor said. "I only wish all my patients took such good care of themselves."
Jeff made small talk for a few more minutes, but his mind was elsewhere: It was on himself at exactly this age, in this same year, yet more than twenty years ago. Himself as a sedentary, over-stressed, and slightly overweight executive, clutching his chest and pitching face-forward on his desk as the world went blank.
Not this time. This time he’d be fine.
Jeff preferred the comfort of the back room at La Grenouille, but Diane considered even lunch an occasion at which seeing and being seen was of prime importance. So they always ate in the front room, crowded and noisy though it invariably was.
Jeff savored his poached salmon with tarragon, basil, and mild-vinegar sauce, doing his best to ignore both Diane’s present sulk and the conversations from the tables pressed tightly on either side of them. One couple was discussing marriage, the other divorce. Jeff and Diane’s luncheon talk was somewhere in the middle.
"You do want her to be accepted at Sarah Lawrence, don’t you?" Diane snapped between bites of bay scallops à la nage.
"She’s thirteen years old." Jeff sighed. "The admissions office at Sarah Lawrence doesn’t give a damn what she does at that age."
"I was at Concord Academy when I was eleven."
"That’s because your parents didn’t give a damn what you did at that age."
She set down her fork, glared at him. "My upbringing is no concern of yours."
"But Gretchen’s is."
"Then you should want her to have the best possible education, from the beginning."
One waiter cleared their empty plates away as another approached with the dessert wagon. Jeff took advantage of the interruption to lose himself in the multiple reflections from the restaurant’s many mirrors: the fir-green walls, the crimson banquettes, the splendid floral bouquets that looked freshly cut from a Cezanne landscape.
He knew Diane was less concerned for Gretchen’s education than for her own freedom from daily responsibility. Jeff saw his daughter little enough as it was, and he couldn’t bear the thought of her living two hundred miles from home.
Diane picked crossly at her raspberries in Grand Marnier sauce. "I suppose you think it’s all right for her to continue associating with all those little urchins she keeps dragging home from public school."
"For Christ’s sake, her school is in Rhinebeck, not the South Bronx. It’s a wonderful environment for her to grow up in."
"So is Concord. As I know from personal experience."
Jeff dug into his Peach Charlotte, unable to say what was really on his mind: that he had no intention of seeing Gretchen mature into a clone of her mother. The brittle sophistication, the world-be-damned attitude, great wealth seen as a birthright, something to be assumed and utterly relied upon. Jeff had acquired his own riches by a stroke of supranormal good fortune and by force of will. Now he wanted to protect his daughter from money’s potentially corrupting influence as much as he wanted her to reap its benefits.
"We’ll discuss it another time," he told Diane.
"We have to let them know by next Thursday."
"Then we’ll discuss it Wednesday."
That put her into a serious pout, one he knew she could resolve only by a concentrated, almost vicious, splurge at Bergdorf’s and Saks.
He patted his jacket pocket, took out two foil-wrapped tablets of Gelusil. His heart might be in excellent shape, but this life he’d created for himself was playing hell with his digestion.
Gretchen’s slender young fingers moved gracefully over the keyboard, yielding the poignant strains of Beethoven’s "Fur Elise." The fat orange cat named Chumley slept sprawled beside her on the piano bench, too old now to frolic with the reckless abandon he once had shown, content merely to be close to her, soothed by the gentle music.
Jeff watched his daughter’s face as she played, her smooth, pale skin surrounded by the dark curls of her hair. There was an intensity to her expression, but it was not caused, he knew, by concentration on the notes or tempo of the piece. Her natural gift for music was such that she needed never struggle to memorize or drill herself on the basics of a composition once she’d played it through the first time. Rather, the look in her eyes was one of transport, of a melding with the wistful melody of the deceptively simple little bagatelle.
She rendered the coda of chords and double notes over a repeated-note pedal point with expert legato, and when she was done she sat silent for several moments, returning from the place the music had taken her. Then she grinned with delight, her eyes those of a playful girl again.
"Isn’t that pretty?" Gretchen asked ingenuously, referring only to the beauty of the music itself.
"Yes," Jeff said. "Almost as pretty as the pianist."
"Oh, Daddy, cut it out." She blushed, swung herself coltishly from the bench. "I’m gonna have a sandwich. You want one?"
"No, thanks, honey. I think I’ll wait till dinner. Your mother should be back from the city any time now; when she gets home, tell her I took a walk down by the river, O.K.?"
"O.K.," Gretchen called, scampering toward the kitchen. Chumley woke, yawned, and followed her at his own ambling pace.
Jeff stepped outside, walked along the path through the trees. In autumn the corridor of elms was like a half-mile shaft of envel
oping flame. Emerging from it, Jeff saw first the broad meadow descending gently toward the Hudson, then the steeper drop a hundred yards to the left where a rocky chain of waterfalls cascaded in the chill. The dramatic entrance to this place never failed to give him a thrill of awe, that such beauty could exist; and of pride, that it was his possession.
He stood now at the crest of the sloping green, contemplating the vista. Two small boats moved quietly down the river beneath the blaze of fall colors on the far side. A trio of young boys ambled along the opposite bank, idly tossing stones into the coursing water. At the top of a rise above them was a stately home, less grand than Jeff’s but still imposing.
In another three months the river would be frozen solid, a great white highway stretching south toward the city and north toward the Adirondacks. The trees would be bereft of leaves, but seldom barren: Snow would lace their branches, and some days even the smallest twigs would be encased in a cylinder of ice, glittering by the millions in the winter sunlight.
This was the land, the very county, that Currier and Ives had mythologized as the American ideal; they’d even sketched this precise view. Standing here, it was easy to believe that all he’d done had been worthwhile. Standing here, or holding Gretchen in his arms, embracing the child he and Linda had once yearned for but could never have.
No, he wouldn’t send his daughter to Concord. This was her home. This was where she belonged until she was old enough to make her own decisions about leaving it. When that day came, he’d support whatever choices she might make, but until then—
Something unseen stabbed his chest, something more painful and powerful than he had ever felt before … except once.
He crumpled to his knees, struggling to remember what day it was, what time it was. His staring eyes took in the autumn scene, the valley that had, an instant before, seemed the very emblem of hope regained and possibilities unbounded. Then he fell on his side, facing away from the river.
Jeff Winston gazed helplessly at the orange-red tunnel of elms that had led him to this meadow of promise and fulfillment, and then he died.
SEVEN
He was surrounded by darkness, and by screams. A pair of hands clutched at his right arm, fingernails stabbing through the fabric of his sleeve.
Jeff saw before him an image of Hell: weeping children, shrieking and stumbling as they ran, unable to escape the black, winged creatures that swooped and pecked at the children’s faces, mouths, eyes …
Then an icily perfect blond woman pulled two of the little girls into an automobile, safe from the onslaught. He was watching a movie, Jeff realized; a Hitchcock movie, The Birds.
The pressure on his arm subsided along with the scene’s intensity, and he turned his head to see Judy Gordon smiling a girlish, embarrassed smile. On his left, Judy’s friend Paula snuggled into the protective curve of young Martin Bailey’s arm.
1963. It had all begun again.
"How come you’re so quiet tonight, honey?" Judy asked him in the back seat of Martin’s Corvair as they rode to Moe’s and Joe’s after the movie. "You don’t think I was silly to get so scared, do you?"
"No. No, not at all."
She intertwined her fingers with his, leaned her head against his shoulder. "O.K., just so you don’t think I’m a ninny." Her hair was fresh and clean, and she’d dabbed a few drops of Lanvin on her slim, pale neck. Her sweet scent was exactly as it had been on that awkward night in Jeff’s car, twenty-five years ago … and before that, almost half a century ago, on this same night.
Everything he’d accomplished had been erased: his financial empire, the home in Dutchess County … but most devastating of all, he had lost his child. Gretchen, with her gangly almost-woman manner and her intelligent, loving eyes, had been rendered nonexistent. Dead, or worse. In this reality she had simply never been.
For the first time in his long, broken life he fully understood Lear’s lament over Cordelia:
…thoul't come no more,
Never, never, never, never, never.
"What’s that, honey? D’you say something?"
"No," he whispered, pulling the girl to his chest. "I was just thinking out loud."
"Mmmm. Penny for your thoughts."
Precious innocence, he thought; blessed sweet unawareness of the wounds a demented universe can inflict.
"I was thinking how much it means to me to have you here. How much I need to hold you."
His old boarding school outside Richmond, like the Emory campus, remained unchanged. Some aspects of the place seemed slightly askew from his memories of it: The buildings looked smaller; the dining commons was closer to the lake than he recalled. He’d come to expect that sort of minor discontinuity, had long ago decided it was due to faulty recollection rather than to any concrete change in the nature of things. This time, nearly fifty years of fading recollection had passed since he’d last been here. A full adult lifetime, though split in two, and now begun again.
"College treating you all right?" Mrs. Braden asked.
"Not too bad. Just felt like getting away for a couple of days—thought I’d come up and see the old school."
The plump little librarian chuckled maternally. "It hasn’t even been a year since you graduated, Jeff; nostalgia setting in that soon?"
"I guess so." He smiled. "It seems a lot longer."
"Wait until it’s been ten years, or twenty; then you’ll see how distant all this can seem. I wonder if you’ll still want to come back and visit us then."
"I’m sure I will."
"I do hope so. It’s good to know how the boys turn out, how all of you deal with the world out there. And I think you’ll do just fine."
"Thank you, ma’am. I’m working at it."
She glanced at her watch, looked distractedly toward the front door of the library. "Well, I’m supposed to meet a group of next year’s new students at three, give them the twenty-five-cent tour; you be sure and look up Dr. Armbruster before you go, won’t you?"
"I’ll be sure to."
"And next time, come by the house; we’ll have a glass of sherry and reminisce about the old days."
Jeff bade her good bye, made his way through the stacks and out a side exit. He hadn’t intended to talk to any of the faculty or staff, but had known when he’d driven up here that a chance meeting or two would be inevitable. All in all, he thought he’d handled himself pretty well with Mrs. Braden, but he was relieved that the conversation had been brief. He’d grown confident about handling such encounters at Emory now, but here they would be much more difficult to deal with; his memory of the place, the people, was so distant.
He ambled down a path behind the library, into the secluded Virginia woods that surrounded the campus where he’d grown from adolescence to young manhood. Something had drawn him here, something stronger, more compelling than mere nostalgia. Christ, by now he’d had far too much fulfilled nostalgia thrust upon him to seek out any more.
Perhaps it was the fact that this was the last significant living environment of his life that he had not replayed, and that still existed as he remembered it. He’d already been back to his childhood home in Orlando, had twice returned to Emory. And the places he had originally lived after college, where he’d been a young bachelor and later married to Linda, contained no part of him in this life or the one he’d most recently been through. Here, though, he was remembered; he had put his own small stamp of personality upon this school, just as it had, in this existence as well as the others, had its greater effects on him. Maybe he simply needed to touch base here, to confirm his own being and remind himself of a time when reality was stable and nonrepetitive.
Jeff pushed back the overhanging branch of an elm that was drooping over the path, and without warning he saw the bridge that had haunted him with guilt and shame for all this time.
He stood there in shock, staring at the scene that had troubled five decades of his dreams. It was just a little wooden footbridge across a creek, a simple structure not more than
ten feet long, but Jeff could barely control the panic that rose in his chest at the sight of it. He’d had no idea this was where the path was leading.
He let go the elm branch, walked slowly toward the diminutive bridge, with its hand-sawn planks and lovingly crafted three-foot guardrail. It had been rebuilt, of course; he’d always assumed that. Still, he’d never come back to this spot again while he was in school, not since that day.
He sat down on the creek bank next to the bridge, ran his hand along the weathered wood. On the other side of the stream a squirrel nibbled on an acorn that it held between its paws, and regarded him with a placid but wary eye.
Jeff hadn’t really been a shy boy, that first year here at school; quiet, and serious about his studies, but by no means timid. He’d made several friends quickly, and joined in the boisterous dormitory horseplay: shaving-cream battles, draping another student’s room with toilet paper, that kind of thing. As far as girls went, he’d had as much, and as little, experience as might be expected at fifteen, in that more innocent year. There’d been one steady girlfriend his last year in junior high, but as yet no one special among the high-school girls who came in from Richmond on weekends for the dances here on campus; that fondly recalled encounter, with a girl named Barbara, would have to wait until he was sixteen.
That first year, though, he fell in love. Thoroughly, mind-numbingly in love with his French teacher, a woman in her mid-twenties named Deirdre Rendell. He wasn’t alone in his obsession; roughly eighty percent of the boys on the all-male campus were in love with the willowy brunette, whose husband taught American History. Each night at dinner, there would be a mad scramble for the six student seats at the Rendells' table in the dining commons; Jeff managed to grab himself a place there two or three nights a week.
