MAUREEN PLANNED HER DEATH CAREFULLY, if not well. Finch was on summer vacation from teaching and was carousing with his pirate friends, who were participating in a two-day encampment at Winter Island. And with Zee gone for several hours, Maureen had taken advantage of the opportunity.
The note she left behind was hidden in a place where only Finch would find it. At the bottom of the note, she finished with the verses that matched the book her daughter was just that moment bringing back to her.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild.
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.
Less than fifteen minutes after Maureen took the poison, Zee came home with the book. She slammed the screen door in the kitchen before she bounded up the stairs. It was the sound of the slamming door that sent Maureen into her first seizure.
20
WHEN ZEE WOKE UP, she was still on the couch. The sky had cleared, and the moon was rising over the harbor. It was huge and yellow, and she hadn’t seen one like it for a long time. As she sat up and got her bearings, she realized that it wasn’t the moonlight that had woken her but the sound of someone pounding on the door.
Finch was already in bed, and Jessina was gone for the night.
At first she thought it might be Hawk. He’d said he might come by tonight to do the railings. But when she looked at the clock, she saw that it was after eleven. Confused and still sleepy, she made her way to the door.
It was Michael.
“I got your message,” he said. “I’m sorry, too.”
THOUGH THEY WERE BOTH EXHAUSTED, neither Michael nor Zee slept much that night. Zee’s childhood bed was an old-fashioned double, and it dipped in the middle like a hammock, which was fine for Zee alone but not great for two people. And Finch was sundowning again.
In the short time she’d been here, Zee had noticed that Finch seemed to become disoriented as the day slipped into evening, often leading him to get very agitated by normal activities like washing or dressing for bed. A normal occurrence in some patients with dementia, it was called “sundowning.” He often seemed fearful at such times, and he often wandered, which is what he’d been doing that first night he stood at Zee’s bed before the freezing episode began. Sundowning was something Zee knew about, but it was more common to Alzheimer’s patients than those with Parkinson’s.
When he was sundowning, Finch often didn’t want to take medication. It took her until 4:00 A.M. to convince him to take some trazodone, and by 7:00, when he was due to have his first dose of Sinemet, Finch was fast asleep.
“I’m sorry,” Michael said to her again after witnessing Finch’s deteriorating condition. “I thought you were just being dramatic.”
It was the same phrase that William had used to describe Lilly when he’d first brought her to see Mattei. It was an interesting choice of words, and one that Zee might have called Michael on if they both hadn’t been so tired. She bristled but decided it wasn’t worth an argument.
“I hate to say it, but I agree with the occupational therapist,” he said. “Finch definitely needs to be in a nursing home.”
“He would rather die than be in a nursing home.”
LATER THAT MORNING, CLEARLY FEELING guilty, Michael helped Zee clean out more papers. She was making a pile of Melville’s belongings, things she would get to him or things he could come sort through one day when Finch was out of the house.
They talked little as they worked.
At six o’clock they sent out for Chinese, and they ate it in the kitchen with Finch and Jessina, who was making jokes about the chopsticks, threatening to feed Finch with them instead of the fork she was using.
“Let him feed himself,” Zee reminded her. Everyone was quiet as they watched Finch try to manipulate the fork.
After dinner she opened a bottle of twenty-year-old port that Michael had given Finch for his sixty-fifth birthday.
“He still has this?” Michael was amazed.
“He still has most of them,” she said, showing him. “Melville opens one every so often, but Finch doesn’t drink anymore.”
“Man,” Michael said.
“I told you that a long time ago,” she said.
He looked at her as if her last statement couldn’t possibly be true. Then, trying to cover, he searched the cabinets until he found a proper glass for the port.
ZEE HAD TOLD MICHAEL MORE than once that Finch had stopped drinking, but Michael could never seem to remember it and continued giving him expensive bottles of alcohol on birthdays and holidays. There were other things he’d forgotten as well, things she was pretty sure she’d told him that he didn’t remember. She told herself his job was stressful. And the added stress of the wedding plans she hadn’t been making only made things worse.
It hadn’t always been like this. At least she didn’t think it had. In the beginning of their relationship, they’d talked about things. Or maybe it had been Michael who did most of the talking. He’d always been so clear about what he wanted. And the fact that he’d wanted her was flattering. Michael could have anyone. And though it angered her lately, Zee had originally liked his certainty. There was something attractive and almost seductive about knowing where your life was going. It was new for Zee.
But somewhere along the line, she had stopped talking to Michael. Maybe it was because he was no longer listening, or maybe she’d never really talked to him that much. She had certainly never told him her dreams. But that was largely because she didn’t know what they were. Beyond completing grad school and getting her license to practice, she hadn’t really allowed herself to dream much at all. She knew that this was a product of childhood, of living with Maureen’s illness and not ever being able to make plans. But the fact was, from the moment they met, Michael had always just assumed that he knew Zee. He had never asked her what she wanted out of life. Which was probably a good thing. Though she might have known when she was twelve, these days she had to admit that she had no idea.
TONIGHT MICHAEL WAS DRINKING TOO much. He had finished the bottle of port and had found and opened a Côtes du Rhône. As he drank, his face reddened, and she could feel the tension building.
He reached to pour another glass and caught the lazy Susan with his sleeve, setting it spinning, sending the salt and pepper shakers and Finch’s prescriptions flying.
She started to reach for them.
“I’ll get them,” he said angrily.
She waited while he retrieved the bottle of Sinemet and the salt shaker.
“This is a dangerous drug,” he said. “I don’t understand how anyone could be stupid enough to leave it on the table.”
Zee said nothing. She knew he was trying to start a fight.
“Stupid,” he said again. He got up and walked to the bathroom and put it in the medicine cabinet. “Someone should have done that a long time ago,” he said as he sat back down at the table.
Zee said nothing for a moment. Then, instead of engaging him, she asked a direct question. “When did we get so angry with each other?”
“You may be angry. I’m not,” he said.
“Please,” she said. “I’ve never seen you so angry.”
“I was angry this weekend,” he admitted. “But you explained and apologized, and I totally understand what happened.”
“You were angry the night Lilly jumped off the bridge.”
“That wasn’t anger, that was frustration.”
“Semantics,” she said.
“I had to pay the wedding planner six thousand dollars.”
“I’ll pay the wedding planner,” she said. “I told you that.”
“That’s not the point.”
“I hated the wedding planner. She was bossy and intimidating, and I didn’t like her taste.”
“You liked the sushi.”
“Of course I liked the sushi. Everyone in Boston likes O Ya sushi. I didn’t need a six-thousand-dollar wedding
planner to tell me I liked O Ya’s sushi. Which, by the way, we never would have served to over a hundred people. I don’t even think O Ya caters.”
“So we’ve established that you didn’t like the wedding planner.”
“Did you?”
“Not really,” he admitted. Then he thought about it. “Actually, I couldn’t stand her.” As soon as he said it, he started to laugh.
“Then why the hell did you hire her?” Zee smiled back at him.
“It’s what you do. You fall in love, you propose, you hire a wedding planner.”
“Simple, simple, case closed,” she said, quoting Mattei.
“For most people,” he said.
“Evidently not for my people,” she said.
“True enough,” he said.
His glass was empty, and he filled it again. He started to fill hers, but she put her hand over the top. “I’ve had enough,” she said.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“I don’t have any idea,” she said.
“Do you want to postpone the wedding?” he asked. “I mean, in light of what’s going on with your father.”
“We probably should,” she said.
“But you still want to get married,” he said.
“I never said I didn’t,” she said. “You were the one who said that.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, we can postpone,” he said.
She wanted to say something else, something definitive. She knew she should, that he was waiting for something more from her, but nothing came. She was exhausted. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “Are you coming?”
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll stay up for a while.”
She could hear him pouring himself another glass as she walked down the long hall to the bedroom.
LATE THAT NIGHT MICHAEL FINALLY crawled into bed next to her, rolling them both into the sagging center of the old mattress. Zee awakened to the smell of good wine turned sour on breath. Michael was kissing her.
Instinctively, before she was awake enough to catch herself, she turned her head away.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she saw the hurt look on his face and realized what she had done.
She knew he was angry, but he was also very drunk. And she was too exhausted to talk about it now.
She picked up her pillow and went to the den to sleep, leaving him the bed.
By the time she woke up the next morning, Michael was gone. The note on the table was short but clear.
Dear Zee,
You were right. I am angry. I’ve had enough.
21
ZEE CRIED MOST OF the day on Wednesday. More than a few of the tears were relief; because it was over now, she had no big decisions to make. Some of the tears were for the last three wasted years of her life. Some were for Finch, some for Maureen and The Great Love, and some were for Lilly Braedon.
She listened to her thoughts roll around her achy brain. Her sinuses were swollen from crying, she didn’t dare look in the mirror. She went into the bathroom, ran cold water in the sink, and splashed it onto her face.
Outside, she heard the sound of Finch’s walker. Jessina was in the kitchen making breakfast. Zee dried her hands. She noticed the engagement ring on her left hand, wondered what she should do with it. Should she send it back to him? Should she even call him? She didn’t want to, realizing on one level how relieved she was not to have to call and, at the same time, understanding that she would have to get in touch with him eventually to pick up her things. Eventually, but not now.
WHEN SHE COULDN’T STAND BEING in the house any longer, she decided to take a ride, driving Lafayette Street into Marblehead, then taking a left onto West Shore Drive. There was something she’d been meaning to do, and now was the time. She stopped at the Garden Center and picked out a grave planter basket, with geraniums, trailing petunias, and dracaena spikes. Then she kept going until she reached Waterside Cemetery.
She pulled the Volvo down the narrow, tree-lined lane and up to the office, where she parked and walked inside.
“Hi,” she said to the woman sitting at the desk. “I hate to bother you, but do you think you could direct me to Lilly Braedon’s grave?”
Cathy took in Zee’s blotchy face. Normally she might have had to look up the location of a grave site, but Lilly Braedon’s headstone had been installed only yesterday, and Cathy had seen Lilly’s husband and kids come by to visit it as she was leaving last night. So sad, she thought, wondering what would have caused the young mother to make the leap from the Tobin Bridge into the Mystic River. She felt particularly sorry for the kids.
Cathy walked Zee to the door and pointed up the hill. “It’s right up there next to the pavilion,” she said. “Under that big oak tree.”
“Thanks so much,” Zee said.
Zee left her car by the office and carried the flower basket up the hill, stopping at one of the faucets to water it. When she reached the top of the hill, she took in the view. From here she could see all of Salem, from the Willows to the Gables, to Shetland Park and the old mill buildings with their peaked rooflines that looked like a row of white tents. Beyond Shetland was the district called the Point, with the tenement houses where the mill workers had once lived—the Irish, the Italians, the French Canadians. The mills were long gone, but the housing remained. These days it was mostly Dominicans. Jessina and her son, Danny, lived in the Point.
Zee found Lilly’s gravestone. It was simple granite, a matte gray. On it just Lilly’s name, her date of birth, and the day she died. Zee found herself doing the math. Lilly was thirty-four, only two years older than Zee and the same age as Maureen had been when she committed suicide, but Lilly had seemed younger than Zee ever remembered her mother being. Certainly more naive, she thought, though it was odd to make that judgment, Maureen’s era would have almost certainly dictated a lesser sophistication than Lilly’s. Looking back on it now, Zee realized that it was the filter of a child’s vision that had clouded her perception. If she saw them next to each other, most likely they would have seemed the same. In many ways, of course, they already did seem the same, at least in Zee’s mind’s eye. It was barely possible to keep them separate while Lilly lived, but now their images were blending more and more.
Zee placed the basket on the flat base of Lilly’s grave. She hadn’t thought past doing it, but now she thought she ought to say a few words or, barring that, at least a silent prayer or something, but nothing came to her.
She tried her best to clear her head, to think about Lilly, but when she looked at the gravestone, she just wanted to cry again, which would have been appropriate except that she didn’t think she could stand to cry anymore. Her head ached so much from crying that she willed herself not to. Instead she walked up to the pavilion and sat looking out over the harbor toward Salem.
The House of the Seven Gables was partially visible from here. She tried to identify Finch’s house, but it was blocked by the boatyard across the street. The light from the Salem Harbor power plant blinked on and off, and for some reason, standing here, she thought for a moment of Gatsby standing and looking out at Daisy’s pier, though that light was green and not white, and lower to the ground and not on top of some coal-fired smokestack that people in both towns were trying their best to get rid of.
Zee fell asleep watching the harbor. It surprised her, first that she could sleep in the daytime—she had never been one to take naps—and second that she could sleep out in the open in a public place. The added confusion of an interrupted dream cycle meant that for a few seconds after she woke up, she had absolutely no idea where she was.
It had been the sound of an engine that had awakened her. A red truck was moving along the narrow lanes, driving first up one side of the hill and then down the other, taking each parallel street slowly, finally stopping and backing up when it came to Lilly’s grave. Adam didn’t turn off the engine before he got out of the truck. It idled and sputte
red, creating a sound track that in retrospect would make what Zee saw him do seem more like a film than real life.
Adam walked over and stood for a long time in front of the grave. He looked at the headstone and then at the basket of flowers. Then he looked around to see if anyone was watching him. He picked up the flower basket Zee had just laid on the grave and heaved it. She watched as it arced in slow motion up and over the gravestones, finally landing on the pavement, where it smashed and scattered. Then Adam got into his truck and took off.
Zee was so shaken that she didn’t move for a while. She didn’t walk into the office and report the incident. Instead she got into her car and drove back to Salem. When she stopped for a red light, she dialed Mattei’s number and left a message.
“I know you told me to let it go, but I just saw something that made me think that Lilly Braedon’s death really wasn’t suicide. I need to talk to you.”
The Map of True Places Page 18
