And the Dark Sacred Night

by Julia Glass

  Also by Julia Glass

  The Widower’s Tale

  I See You Everywhere

  The Whole World Over

  Three Junes

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Julia Glass

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.

  Pantheon Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glass, Julia, [date]

  And the Dark Sacred Night / Julia Glass.

  pages cm

  ISBN 978-0-307-37793-7 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-307-90863-6 (eBook)

  1. Unemployed—Fiction. 2. Family secrets—Fiction. 3. Birth fathers—Fiction. 4. New England—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title. PS3607.L37A83 2014 813’.6—dc23 2013024331

  www.pantheonbooks.com

  Jacket photograph © 2013 Shigeru Inami/Flickr/Getty Images

  Jacket design by Joan Wong

  v3.1

  For Elliot:

  the brother I always wanted … and found out I had all along

  Every knot was once straight rope.

  —James Lapine, Into the Woods

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1: Somebody to Love

  2: Coming in From the Cold

  3: Things I Wish Were True

  4: The Bright Blessed Day

  5: What I’d Be Without You

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  SHE SAW HIM THROUGH THE TREES, and she almost turned around. In just eight days, she had come to believe that this wedge of shore, tumbled rock enclosed by thorny juniper and stunted saplings (but lit by the tilting sun at the western side of the lake) was her secret. Each afternoon, it became her refuge—just one brief measure, a piacere, of solitude—from another attenuated day of rehearse, practice, and practice even more; of master classes and Popper études, hour after hour of Saint-Saëns and Debussy; of walking over plush lawns, passing adults who spoke zealously, even angrily, in German and Russian; of waking and going to sleep in a room shared with three other girls.

  Not that this life wasn’t precisely, incandescently, what she had craved, dreamed about, most of all worked for. How funny that all this discipline and deprivation rewarded Daphne with the headiest freedom she had ever known: freedom, to begin with, from her mother’s vigilance and her brother’s condescension, from another summer mixing paints and copying keys in her father’s hardware store.

  During Afternoon Rest, some campers retreated to their rooms to write letters or take naps. When the rooms were too hot to stand, they spread beach towels under the estate’s monumental trees—or on the sliver of sandy beach. Others loitered at Le Manoir, though nobody called it that. They called it HQ. There was a games lounge with a moth-eaten billiards table; you could play Monopoly, backgammon, chess. They took turns using the pay phones on the porch.

  But Daphne came here: sometimes just to sit, sometimes read, more often to gaze at the water and let herself wonder at … well, at the hereness of here. To reassure herself that it was real. To be alone.

  Except that today she wasn’t.

  Malachy, first flute, sat on her favorite rock facing the lake. She recognized him right away, because just that day, standing behind him in the lunch line, she happened to notice the distinctive swallowtail of his tame brown hair as it forked to either side of his narrow neck. (His close haircut seemed almost affected; most of the boys had mussed-up manes, Paul McCartney hair.) His posture, typical of flautists, was upright, attentive. He wore his T-shirts tucked into the belted waist of loose khaki shorts. And like his hair, his shirts were defiantly square: no slogans, tie-dyed sunbursts, silhouettes of shaggy rock stars, or sly allusions to other music camps. That day his T-shirt was orange.

  “What, not practicing?” she said.

  He did not jump, nor did he stand. Waiting till she stood beside him, he looked up and said, “If it isn’t the swan herself, come to test the waters.”

  Daphne’s swimsuit was a navy-blue one-piece chosen by her mother. She wore shorts as well, book and towel clasped against her chest, yet she blushed.

  “You don’t suppose,” he said, “that Generalissima has spies in these woods? I’ve heard there’s a flogging room in the cellar of HQ.”

  Daphne laughed.

  “Not kidding,” he said.

  “Yes you are.”

  Malachy’s prim expression broke. “Pretty martial around here, don’t you think? And can you believe all the Iron Curtain accents?”

  “What did you expect, the cast of Captain Kangaroo?”

  This made him laugh. “Maybe Hogan’s Heroes.”

  “You mean, we should dig a tunnel and escape?”

  “We could steal those little mallets Dorian uses to play his glockenspiel.” Malachy had swiveled to face her. He sat cross-legged, his calves pale and sparsely freckled, his bare feet long and bony.

  He shaded his eyes. “Sit, or I’ll go blind. And then I won’t be able to see my music, and my brilliant symphonic career will flash before my irradiated eyeballs.”

  She unrolled her towel and sat, facing him. He had no book or other obvious diversion. Was he there to meet someone? What a perfect place for a private meeting.

  “So are you aware,” said Malachy, “that Rhonda would pay me a nice reward to drown you here and now?”

  Daphne laughed nervously. She and Malachy played together in Chamber One; Rhonda was her counterpart, a cellist in Chamber Two. Openly and cheerfully competitive, she’d announced at their first dinner that anyone assigned the swan solo in the Saint-Saëns was clearly the director’s pet. (Daphne might say the same of Malachy, chosen to play “Volière.”)

  “I just got lucky,” said Daphne.

  “No false modesty allowed,” said Malachy. “They decided our parts based on our auditions. Nothing here happens by accident. You know that.”

  “I guess.” She didn’t like talking about the ranking they all deplored yet knew had to be a part of their lives forever if they wanted to succeed. “So are you from one of those musical families where everybody plays something different?”

  He smirked. “Like the Jackson Five? There’s a picture to savor. No, I’m it. The one who got whatever genetic mutation makes our subspecies behave the way we do. My brother and sister see me as the weirdo. The family fruitcake. Which is a huge relief to them. They get to be the normal ones.”

  “So maybe I’ve got it, too. The mutation. Mom plays piano, but Christmas carols. Hymns. She subs for the church organist. Actually, I’m not sure how I got into this place.”

  “Give it up, Swan. They’ve got their eye on you here. I saw our taskmistress smile yesterday in the middle of your solo. For about a tenth of a second. I didn’t think she had those muscles in her cheeks.” Natalya Skovoroda, the conductor of Chamber One, was Ukrainian, with a dense, porridgelike accent. Her face—a prime object, morning after morning, of Daphne’s most devoted concentration—was as round and pale as a dinner plate, mesmerizingly smooth for someone who scowled so much. Beneath that scowl, Daphne and her fellow musicians had grown close to one another quickly, like a band of miscellaneous hostages.

&n
bsp; Malachy leaned toward Daphne. “You have that cello stripped naked.”

  “Is that a compliment?” Because he sat almost directly behind her during morning rehearsal, she hardly ever saw his face. It was long and serious, his eyes a frosty blue that made him look all-seeing, older in a way that was spooky but cool. Across his nose—narrow like the rest of him—a scant dash of freckles stood out sharply, distinct as granules of pepper.

  A speedboat careened raucously past, skimming the water, passengers shrieking as it bounced up and down. For a moment, they let it capture their attention.

  Daphne started to stand up. “I should go wait for a phone. Haven’t called home in a couple of days.”

  “No,” he said. “You should stay and listen to one of my limericks.”

  “Limericks?”

  “I’m working on a suite of limericks about our wardens.”

  Daphne shifted on her towel. “Well. Sure.”

  Malachy cleared his throat and sat up even straighter. He cocked his head at a dramatic angle toward the lake, as if posing for a portrait.

  A Soviet chick named Nah-tail-ya

  Said, “Eef you play flat, I veel flail ya,

  But come to my room

  Vare I’ll bare my bazoom.

  Maybe let you peek at holy grail-ya.”

  Blood rushed to Daphne’s face. She felt both thrilled and appalled.

  He turned to her, widened his eyes. “Svahn? May vee haff your creeteek?”

  She covered her mouth, trying to repress the spasms of laughter. “Oh my gosh, that is so … obscene!”

  “Uh-oh. I’ve shocked you. See, I told you I’m a weirdo.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Here, I’ll give you something just a bit tamer. Appetizer to next week’s celebrity recital.” Again he struck his pose.

  There once was a diva named Esme

  With a lengthy and worldly résumé.

  Listed way at the end

  Was her tendency to bend

  Quite far over and trill, “Yes you may.”

  “You are horrid!” Daphne cried. But she couldn’t stop laughing.

  1

  Somebody to Love

  IT IS THE TIME OF YEAR when Kit must rise in the dark, as if he were a farmer or a fisherman, someone whose livelihood depends on beating the dawn, convincing himself that what looks like night is actually morning. His only true occupation these days, however, is fatherhood; his only reason for getting up at this dismal hour is getting his children to school.

  The morning after Halloween is always difficult, if predictably so. Oversugared, ill tempered, Will and Fanny wake more reluctantly than ever. Will is still wearing his Eli Manning getup, minus cleats and helmet. Fanny, who walked the streets as Cleopatra, now looks more tawdry than regal, eyes deepened and blurred by her mother’s mascara.

  Will insists on wearing the jersey to school. Kit, giving in, peels two flattened candies, fluorescent and gummy, from the hem.

  At breakfast, Fanny announces that she has decided to become a chocolate-eating vegetarian.

  “That’s dumb. Vegetarians eat chocolate,” her brother informs her.

  “Like you’d know anything about it.”

  Sandra tells Fanny that her brother is right; she tells Will not to call his sister dumb. “What about vegans?” Fanny wants to know. Sandra asks if she knows any vegans; Fanny names a girl who, though homeschooled, attends her Saturday dance class. In private, Kit and Sandra refer to this girl’s large, progressively minded family as the Naked Hemp Society. (All summer long, Fanny’s fellow ballerina and her siblings are frequently glimpsed romping, without a stitch of clothing, through the sprinkler in their backyard.)

  “They have babies. How do you raise babies on a diet like that?” says Kit, realizing too late that by joining the conversation he has merely increased the risk that Will and Fanny will miss the bus, sentencing him to a long wait in the drop-off line at their school, where no amount of intellectually skewed radio can ward off emasculation by the surrounding battalion of soccermobiles, their exhaust fumes colluding in a cloud bank that threatens to engulf his lowly antiquated Civic. The occasional Mini does nothing to assuage his gloom.

  Sandra, clearing plates, declares that though she will support Fanny if she wants to follow the “usual vegetarian restrictions,” veganism is another matter. While urging the twins toward brushing their teeth, she points out that vegans do not wear wool or leather, meaning that Fanny would have to give up her favorite purple sweater and the purse that her grandmother bought her at the crafts fair in Maine.

  Kit gets them to the bus just in time, one child an aspiring quarterback, the other resembling a small punk musician the morning after a three-set gig. Please let that not be her aim in life, he thinks as he waves at Fanny through the passing window. Given the choice, he would prefer the crush of a murky, airless rock ’n’ roll dive to that of a football stadium, but boys who like the tough sports—boys who are virtually nursed on that potion of hustle, slam, and grunt—they’re the ones with the best chance in life. He believes this now, though with more resignation than zeal. Kit has even begun to admire the beefy dad who coaches Will’s football team, lingering at pickup time to thank him for his efforts, laboring at small talk. Lame, he knows, but Will is the one whose passions should call the shots (so to speak), whose wants Kit should also want for him, no matter how far they seem from Kit’s desires. Illogically and prematurely—and absurdly, considering his own predicament—Kit has begun to brood about what his children will “be” when they grow up.

  Returning to the house, he notices that one of the jack-o’-lanterns by the front door was savaged by squirrels and that the leaves he has yet to clear from the lawn are membraned with frost. In the kitchen, Sandra idles at the sink, eating yogurt from a bowl, looking intently out at the yard.

  “Should have cut back the butterfly bush before now. And that rose by the shed. Snow will break those canes—look how tall they’ve grown.” She speaks with a tone of regret—rare for Sandra—and Kit knows she’s worried because the peak season for her work is over; no one will be hankering after new bushes, new pathways, arbors, or flower beds for the next several months.

  He waits a careful moment before saying, “Interesting—if Fanny really does give up meat.”

  “Not a bad thing,” says Sandra, still focused on the garden. “Will’s been brainwashed by the notion that athletes eat steak for breakfast. Something he read in a magazine at the dentist.” She knocks loudly on the window. “Away from there, you fiends!” Squirrels: Kit knows without looking. “Maybe,” she continues, “we should get a cat.”

  “Fanny would be thrilled. Though cats are meatatarians. Potential conflict of interest.”

  Sandra smiles at him. “Meatatarians. They certainly are.”

  Kit coined this term for members of an Inuit community they visited back in his grad-school days, a place where the body shape of everyone over twenty tended toward spherical—somehow, pleasingly so—and the oldest people had bronzed moonlike faces, cheeks taut and lustrous from all the animal oils and blubber they consumed. That was well before children, before the Jersey suburbs, before they could imagine a spectrum of tribulations ranging all the way from the vandalism of squirrels to the whims of professorial committees. Days of whales and ice floes, Sandra calls the time they were crazy in love. And they were. (But what couple, nowadays, does not have a history of crazy-in-love? Arranged marriages, shotgun marriages, marriages by mail order—all such unions persist, but among the people Kit knows, everyone chose freely after a long leisurely dance of passion and deliberation.)

  Sandra sets her bowl in the sink and fills it with water. She turns to the counter, where yesterday’s mail still lies in a pile: catalogs yet to be recycled; envelopes opened, the contents perused but unfiled—uncensored, Kit realizes as Sandra utters the words he’s come to dread from her more than any others.

  “What is this?”

  Sometimes the stress changes (
What is this? What is this? Or even, though this variation is sometimes a sign of amusement, What is this?), but whether she is looking at an overdue bill or a magazine whose subscription was supposed to be canceled or a package containing an unnecessary book he ordered, the person required to answer the question is almost always Kit, even when the answer is plain as frigging day.

  This time she’s addressing a sheet of paper she has just removed from the dignity of its envelope. Without looking over her shoulder, he knows exactly what it is: notification that he’s being denied an adjunct position because his file is incomplete, the deadline past. There would be no letter, of course, if Kit did not know someone at the school in question, a school where he has no desire to teach, mostly because it lies across two rivers, so far out in Queens that it might as well be in Montauk.

  “It wouldn’t have worked. It was one course.”

  “Which could have led to more,” says Sandra. “Would have, once they saw you in front of a class. You can’t afford to be so picky. I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

  He doesn’t want to talk about what he, or they, can or can’t afford.

  “Didn’t Ian write a letter to that guy he knew in Chicago?” she asks.

  “I’ve asked enough of Ian already. And Chicago? Would you really, honestly consider moving to Chicago?”

  She refolds the letter, puts it back in the envelope, and says conclusively, “Oh, Kit.” Sandra doesn’t waste energy on arguments she’s had before. Yes, she might have reminded him, she would move to Chicago. Children change everything. Long stretches of unemployment, too.

  She goes upstairs to dress. When she returns, she tells him she’s going to the garden center to pick up salt hay, which goes on sale once Halloween scarecrows have served their purpose. Would he deal with the children’s bathroom sink, which isn’t draining properly? Would he transfer the clothes from the washer to the dryer when the cycle is done? Would he please rake?