Seasons' End

by North, Will

  “It’s just that the overnight flights from the States get in practically at dawn and I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Colin’s attention, at this moment, was fixed upon the rear elevation of the perfectly proportioned, almost doll-like woman climbing the stairs ahead of him. She was wearing a nearly ankle-length skirt with small floral print on a straw-yellow background, a waist-length cotton cardigan the color of French vanilla ice cream, and saddle-tan flats. As she ascended, there was a very slight hitch in her right hip, an asymmetry that gave her a delightful bounce. Long blond hair, almost as pale as the cardigan and parted in the middle, shimmered like a shaft of sunlight between her shoulder blades. Why hadn’t Tyler told him this lovely creature—this “girlfriend”—was coming to visit?

  Colin stashed Pete’s pack in a corner of Tyler’s room and settled her on the sofa in the bay window that overlooked their shady cul-de-sac—a “mews” was what the English called it. After he’d pulled on a pair of jeans, he put on some music and went to the kitchen to make tea. When he returned with their mugs the girl was fast asleep, curled like a ginger cat among the worn cushions of the couch. He watched her sparrow-like chest gently rise and fall, her porcelain face childlike in repose. There were the faintest freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose. Her right hand cradled her cheek and the slender fingers of her left hand, the nails neatly manicured but unpainted, draped limply over the seat cushion like tassels. He had never seen anything or anyone so perfect in his life.

  He knelt and touched her arm. She jerked awake.

  “Oops,” she said, rubbing her eyes and smiling sheepishly. “Jet lag.”

  He stood, then handed her a mug of tea.

  She peered into the cup and sniffed. “No coffee?”

  “Um, no; you’re in England now. The choice is very bad coffee or very good tea. Go for the tea every time; no use trying to resist.”

  She smiled. “And it cures jet lag?”

  “Actually, no. There is only one known cure.”

  “A nap?”

  “Wrong. A walk. Daylight affects the melatonin in your brain, which in turn tells you when to be awake or asleep. Your melatonin is someplace over the mid-Atlantic, where it’s still dark. You need to let it catch up.

  “With a nap,” she repeated, snuggling into the pillows again and giggling.

  “With a walk and lots of sunshine which, uncharacteristically for October, seems today to be in ample supply, though I doubt they call it ‘Indian Summer’ over here. A nap, you see, would only worsen your jet lag.”

  “What are you, a doctor?”

  “Sort of. But the science is very clear on this.” What’s more, I should very much like to spend the rest of the day while you’re in a conscious state, Colin thought to himself.

  “So I have a modest proposal,” he continued.

  “Didn’t Jonathan Swift have one of those?” the girl said, giggling again. Her laughter reminded him of sleigh bells.

  “That was several centuries ago, and I’m not Swift.”

  “Oh, I don’t know; you’re doing okay so far…”

  Colin was caught off guard.

  “And your proposal was…?” she prompted.

  He collected himself. “I propose we head out and see what London has to offer us this fine day, while we await Tyler’s return.” He listened to his own words and heard how formal his address had become after a few years in London, how incongruously thick his New York accent still remained, and it flustered him even more.

  But the girl sat up and grinned as if it were Christmas. Then her look turned serious.

  “May I just ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, you know. Who are you? What’s your name? What are you doing in Tyler’s apartment?”

  He had no idea why his roommate had never mentioned him to his girlfriend—any more than he knew why he’d never mentioned the girlfriend. Or that she would be visiting. Or that he wouldn’t be here when she arrived. And yet it didn’t entirely surprise him, either. He’d learned that Tyler Strong, while affable and generous, was chronically unreliable. It often seemed to Colin as if Tyler was perpetually distracted by a narrative that was running parallel with the one in which he appeared to live but attended to only fitfully. Often it was amusing… when it wasn’t annoying. Today, it was annoying.

  Colin shook his head, smiled, and introduced himself. They had their tea. And after Pete freshened up in the bathroom they stepped out into the crisp autumn streets, strolled through Chelsea, and played boulevardiers as they passed the designer shops along Fulham and Brompton roads, until they reached Knightsbridge. Colin guided Pete into that vast brick-red terra cotta palace of luxury, Harrods, and bought them a picnic lunch in the department store’s sprawling ground floor Food Halls, with its acres of cheeses and fish and game and meats and fruits and vegetables and breads, all presented so artfully you’d think the same people who merchandised the designer clothing upstairs did the food floor as well. They ate on a Hyde Park bench beside the long, gently curved lake called the Serpentine.

  “How long have you and Tyler been dating?” Colin finally asked.

  Pete looked at him and, to his surprise, just shrugged.

  He squinted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She watched the swans which, like icebreakers plowing through floes, cut wedges of open water through the fallen leaves papering the lake’s surface.

  “It means I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, not really. The thing is, we’ve just always been together, since childhood. I really don’t know when the ‘dating’ began. You know what I mean?”

  Colin didn’t, but said he did.

  “He was always there; I was always there. We were always an ‘us.’”

  “And you never had a second thought?”

  She turned from the swans and looked at him. “No. Not till now.”

  He had a momentary rush of hope before she added, “Why’s he not here?”

  ***

  COLIN KNEW FOR a fact that his roommate had spent the night before with an expensively-dressed and exceptionally well-preserved middle-aged woman who, as it transpired, owned the new pub they were trying out on the edge of West Kensington: the Bunch of Grapes. The woman sat alone under an arch at the softly-lit far end of the bar. A tiny pin light above her head tipped her spiked black hair with mercury, etched her high cheekbones, and shone on a single strand of pearls that led like lanterns along a narrowing path to the declivity between her breasts. She wore a black taffeta jacket with padded shoulders and plunging, knifelike red lapels and, though the lighting kept her eyes in shadow, the angle of her head made it clear she was watching them. She steadied a half-empty martini glass with three manicured fingers.

  “Power dresser,” Tyler mumbled. “She’s wearing Thierry Mugler.”

  “Huh?” Colin said.

  “French designer. Very big now.”

  A moment later the barman brought a round of unrequested refills and tilted his shaved head in the woman’s direction.

  “Compliments of the Guv’nor, gents.”

  Tyler nodded in the direction of the arch and lifted his pint. When the barman called last orders an hour or so later Tyler was in the power dresser’s bosomy embrace.

  ***

  COLIN GLANCED AT Pete, then out across the Serpentine.

  “Oxford’s not like schools in the States, you know,” he said, making it up as he went. “There aren’t regular class periods or anything. I’m sure he’s just hung up with some windy don going over some essay, Pete. That’s all.”

  He looked up again. He hated lying to her.

  After lunch they walked south on Sloane Street. On their way back to Chelsea, amid the ever-colorful crowds thronging the pavements along the King’s Road, Pete slipped her arm through his. He knew it was to keep them from getting separated, but it f
elt sweetly intimate as well. They talked and laughed and he absorbed her enthusiasm like oxygen.

  It was dusk when they returned to the flat; Tyler was asleep in his room. There was no sign he’d even noticed Pete’s backpack. Pete looked in on her inert boyfriend, then found Colin in the kitchen, staring into the fridge.

  “I’ve got leftover take-away Indian curry. Only two days old!” There was a limp white cardboard box in his hand.

  Pete smiled and shook her head. “I’m practically asleep on my feet, Colin; can’t fight the jet lag another minute. But I had a wonderful day with you.” She pulled his sleeve, got up on tiptoes, and kissed his cheek.

  “You’re a good man, Colin Ryan.”

  Colin shrugged. “Welcome to England, Pete.”

  He watched her close the door to Tyler’s room, dumped the curry into a saucepan, snapped on the electric hob, and stared out the window to the courtyard below.

  Terrific. I’m in love with my roommate’s girl.

  three

  COLIN KNELT BY THE BODY in the middle of the road. The mist-thick Northwest forest around and above them was so quiet he could hear the blood pumping in his ears. Somewhere far across Quartermaster Harbor he could hear the high whine of an outboard running south from Dockton to the deep water channel beyond, where the salmon were running. Along the roadside there was a bank of overripe wild blackberries that, in the dewy air, breathed the fragrance of cassis. Even the gulls were quiet, as if the fog were a blanket beneath which they slumbered.

  He leaned forward and placed his hand at the top of the bony corduroy of ribs radiating from Pete’s sternum; he had never done anything so intimate with her before. He marveled at how a woman who had borne three children could still look delicate as blown glass. Her skin was cold, yet he thought he felt a heartbeat.

  He placed two fingers lightly on the carotid artery in her neck and her eyelids, smudged with mascara, fluttered open like bruised wings. He jerked his hand away.

  “Jesus, Pete! I thought you were dead!”

  But the seawater eyes never focused. “Pete” Petersen Strong was not dead, but she was nearly comatose and, he guessed, now that he was close enough to smell, dangerously drunk. Gently, he opened her slack jaws and checked her throat for vomit. The principal cause of death in cases of alcohol poisoning, he knew, wasn’t the alcohol; it was asphyxiation. Alcohol suppresses the gag reflex. Her throat looked clear. With an uneasy sense of intimate invasion, he felt her limbs and torso in the dim light for signs of injury and found none obvious. He stared at her dark form for a moment and shook his head. There was no reasonable explanation for her to be here on the double yellow line of the Vashon Highway, no reason except intention.

  Colin slipped his arms beneath her shoulders and knees and, as if lifting a large dog at the clinic, pulled her toward him and rose in one fluid movement. He carried her across the road to the shoreside verge, leaned her back against the steel guardrail, then removed a light rain shell from a holder behind his bicycle seat. He’d just begun to slip her arms through it when, in the gathering of the light from the east, he noticed bluish bruises ringing her birdlike arms just above her wrists. He zipped up the jacket, tried to make sense of the welts, and could not. A few yards away, its vigil disturbed, the great blue heron unfurled its vast smoky wings and hauled itself into the air, skimming low above the harbor’s surface and croaking loud complaints to the dawn.

  Pete’s breathing was slow and shallow, but not irregular. He had no idea how long she’d lain in the road and he knew he needed to get her to someplace warm and safe. Someplace safe. He looked again at the wrist injuries. Almost certainly, they were bruises of restraint. But why? How? He couldn’t imagine Tyler hurting his wife, and yet he couldn’t imagine who else could have caused those injuries in the very few hours since he’d seen the two of them last.

  Fury rose in his throat. No wonder she’d fled. He knew so much about them, and yet so little. What could have happened? Why would she choose this end? For years, he’d been made to feel a part of their family, an intimate. But he knew nothing, really, about this woman he held dear to his heart, nor about the husband he thought a friend.

  He knew nothing. He was, as he always had been, an outsider.

  ***

  IT HAD BEEN the traditional Madrona Beach Labor Day weekend ritual, one Colin knew had changed little for generations. Three families—the Petersens, Strongs, and Rutherfords—owned half of the dozen or so houses and cottages scattered across the gently rising ground above the water. Each family had, over the years, established its own compound. But the families only summered at the beach; the rest of the year the houses lay empty, staring blank-eyed out over the water and shuddering through winter storms that flung salt spume over their lawns and ripped shingles from their rooftops.

  Labor Day weekend was the end of the two-month rolling house party that was “The Season” among the summer people. They arrived just before the Fourth of July and departed on Labor Day, their various SUVs and minivans crammed to the roof with children, dogs, cats, beachwear, and sports equipment. It had been, in most respects, the usual last night boozy bash: the careening children, the overindulging adults, the hours-long communal dinner, and the end-of-season fireworks on the beach, a melancholy echo of the July Fourth festivities that started it all.

  But this year it seemed to Colin there was something else, an edginess like distant atonal music the source of which he’d not been able to identify: sarcasm over cocktails, discord during dinner, as if the season had lasted a bit too long and too much sun had left everyone tender and cranky.

  And now there was this. He placed a hand on the livid wrist of the unconscious woman beside him and wondered what extremity of hopelessness had brought her to this point.

  “Jesus, Pete,” Colin whispered. “Why didn’t you say something?”

  ***

  COLIN COULDN’T LEAVE her to get help and tried to will an early pickup truck to pass so he could flag it down, but the road was empty and quiet. He knew the sensible thing was to get Pete to the island’s medical clinic a few miles to the north. But he also knew that if he did so, the news of Pete’s attempted suicide would race across the island like a forest fire and the Strongs and Petersens would be furious. Even in an emergency—and wasn’t this one?—they would consider it a betrayal. And yet he certainly couldn’t take her back home to Tyler. Not with those wrist bruises.

  He looked at his watch. Another twenty minutes before the ferry traffic picked up. He put his arms around the woman he had never quite stopped loving and tried to warm her. There was no response, not a sound, not a reflex. In the east, the sky was brightening and, as the sun began to slice shafts through the drifting mist, Colin heard what sounded like the low gurgling engine of an antique Chris Craft motor cruiser coming from the direction of Burton. Fog had a habit of making ventriloquists of any noise source and it seemed to him this old yacht was motoring right down the Highway instead of across the outer harbor.

  The anomaly resolved itself moments later when an ancient white Cadillac Coupe de Ville rumbled out of the brightening swirl and came to a halt beside them. To say the automobile was white was a stretch. It had spent decades parked beneath an ancient cedar and in the tree’s perpetually damp shadow it had developed a patina of green algae that blotched the vast sheet metal expanse of its hood and trunk like a pox. The once glacially white vinyl roof now supported colonies of native mosses, as if the vehicle were a traveling exhibit of local flora.

  Colin recognized the car immediately.

  Edwinna Rutherford, known to everyone on the island as “Miss Edwinna,” pressed a button and—miraculously, given the age of the mechanism—her window descended. The elderly driver nodded once and said, “I thought so.” Then she negotiated a lurching three point turn in the middle of the road, pulled beside them, activated the passenger window, and said, “Get her in.”

  Colin lifted Pete from the roadside and laid her on her side on the burgundy crushed
velvet rear seat. Then he swung his bike into the Caddy’s cavernous trunk and joined the driver in the front seat.

  “Good morning, Miss Edwinna,” he said.

  “The hell it is,” the woman snapped.

  Edwinna Rutherford favored purple as a wardrobe color of universal utility and appeal. She was wearing a faded purple terrycloth robe and had a patterned purple silk scarf wrapped, turban-like, around her head. She’d had cancer years earlier and her hair had never grown back with its former luxuriance, so she’d shaved her head and wrapped it in scarves ever since. She was a large woman with a face as weathered as lichen-crusted roof shingles. Despite her advancing years—Colin guessed she was easily eighty—she had a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue.

  “Goddamned nuisance is what this is.” She gunned the engine and the car vaulted through the drifting feathers of the fog. The mist would burn off early this morning.

  “Were you on the way to the ferry?”

  The driver shot him a look. “No, I saw her. I hate getting up at this ungodly hour.”

  “Where did you see her?”

  “In my dream, you imbecile; where did you think?!”

  “She was trying to commit suicide, Miss Edwinna.”

  “Does that give her the right to wake me? People are so inconsiderate...”

  Colin had treated Edwinna’s cat Desmond for years. Desmond was a loving, but somewhat neurologically-challenged giant of a feline, a Maine Coon cat to whom Miss Edwinna, her protests to the contrary notwithstanding, was devoted. Edwinna lived at the far eastern end of Madrona Beach in a simple bungalow that thirsted for paint like a man lost in a desert did for water. And though the Rutherfords owned two of the cottages on the beach, Edwinna lived apart from them and was seldom recognized as one of the clan. This was partly because Edwinna had married into the family and, in short order, made known her opinions of its members. But the thing that really made Miss Edwinna troublesome was that she “saw” things. Edwinna Rutherford was genuinely clairvoyant. It unnerved people, and frankly it annoyed her, too. So she kept to herself, using isolation like psychic insulation.