Old Newgate Road

by Keith Scribner

  “Drive,” she says. “This is how we always do it.”

  “But why don’t you—”

  “No talking. Not until we’re home.”

  “Well, I at least need directions if you—”

  “Cole, dear. I happen to know you’re a very smart young man. I’m sure you can find your way back.” Sober as a nun.

  So he drives, and at the next traffic light he notices a brown paper bag on the seat next to him. Inside, wrapped in butcher paper, is a sandwich. “Is this for me?” He’s looking at her in the mirror, and it’s as if she didn’t hear him—gazing out the window, her eyes and face pulsing with reverie. So he eats the turkey club while he drives and, she was right—he navigates the route back to her house without a hitch.

  When he shuts off the engine, still in the garage, she says, “I’ll have a Scotch, please.”

  In the kitchen he pours her usual and a small one for himself, sitting together at the table. A few sips in he says, “So how’s Bob?”

  “Mr. Dunn to you, sonny.”

  “Who is Bob?”

  She clears her throat and picks up a newspaper.

  “Who’s Mr. Dunn?” he tries.

  “An old friend. He’s not your concern.”

  “I’m kind of curious, Tilly.” He smiles playfully. “A secret rendezvous across state lines?”

  Her face sparks, the corner of her mouth lifting just enough that he knows she’s pleased by his interest, but says nothing.

  “And such a seedy locale.”

  She looks up from the newsprint. “That establishment has been through many incarnations over the years. The Royale had dancing, wonderful bands, limousines lined up out front. You’ve never seen so elegant a dancer as Mr. Dunn.” She looks into her Scotch, takes a sip. “The Royale closed after the war and for quite some time became the Peacock Club.”

  He’s still baffled. This sounds like complete fantasy. “What war?”

  “The second, of course. It wasn’t until the fifties that the mills started to close, but the town—”

  “How long have you been having these rendezvous with Mr. Dunn?”

  “Since June seventeenth, nineteen thirty-three. It was a Saturday.”

  Cole throws back a gulp. “Wait! When were you born? When were you married?”

  She looks back at the paper, pretends to read, turns the page.

  “You gotta give me something. Every month since nineteen thirty-three?”

  She sets her elbows on the table and gazes at him with a lightness he’s never seen in her, genuine equanimity. Even the sagging corner of her mouth seems to rise into balance with the other side. “You never knew my mother, but every story you’ve heard is true. If Mima were dressed to the nines on a Saturday afternoon, shopping at G. Fox in Hartford, and she passed through the doors onto the sidewalk and met Queen Elizabeth coming the other direction”—she pauses, relishing what’s next—“it is Queen Elizabeth who would have graciously stepped aside to let Mima pass.” She tips her head, like that explains it all. Then she admires her gold watch.

  He scratches the back of his neck. “I’m afraid you lost me there.”

  She offers him a kind, composed face. “Mima wasn’t about to let her only daughter marry a welder. And anyway, he’s a Protestant.”

  “Wait. You’re telling me the love of your life—”

  “Enough!” She holds up her hand, and he knows she means it. “Same time next month.”

  * * *

  —

  That night she’ll go to bed early, and the next night too, but by midweek they’ll be back to their usual schedule. She is Cole’s best bud and drinking partner, and they both count on the routine. She’s reading the paper as he studies chemistry—his most difficult course. He can feel the rhythm of their drinking internally, reaching out to give her a pour just before she tips back the last swallow, pacing himself so he doesn’t suddenly have a belly sloshing with booze. Prime the pump, enjoy the period of the alcohol working its clarifying magic and cutting through the blur he’s felt all day, and that initial spark that can be extended if done right. He’s sharper, chemistry makes sense, as do Shakespeare and cosines and the five root causes of the Cold War. It’s something like perspicacious, like a panacea (SAT words). Tilly turns a page, says, “Edith Fallows died,” and he gets through the chapter, finishes a worksheet, and pushes the textbook aside, tops up her glass and his mug, and then they get down to serious drinking, not to become merely drunk, not the swirly, dizzy stupidity of drunkenness, but to get plastered. “Damn, that light’s bright,” he says. “Watch your mouth,” she snaps. She looks at the two fluorescent rings on the ceiling, lifting her chin, getting haughty. “Grandpapa insisted on proper lighting. Excellent vision until the day he passed.” Cole remembers him with two pairs of glasses on cords, clacking against each other when he carried his warm beer in a shaky hand from the counter to the table, to the very chair where he’s sitting now. “You’ll have to come home early from school tomorrow,” she says, “to take me to the doctor.” He swishes, then swallows. “Electroshock?” he says. Her mouth elongates in what might look like a sneer but he knows is a suppressed smile. He laughs. “They gonna zap the crazy out of you?” He’s hot, always heats up when he drinks, so he takes off his chamois shirt and tosses it over a chair, leaving him in a Dark Side of the Moon tee. From Liz. “It’s your father should’ve got zapped,” she says. She gets cold when she drinks, and now wraps his chamois shirt around her neck like a scarf. She points at him. “But you did good,” she says conspiratorially. “You did what needed to be done. Now, sit up straight,” she tells him. “A man looks weak hunched over. Do you think air-force men carry themselves like that? What do you think your sister would make of your posture?” He recently got a letter from Kelly recounting impressive morning runs through mud, all rigor and discipline, signing off with “Aim High!” She seems as permanently gone as his mother and father, and although he’d like to see her he feels guilty that he doesn’t miss her more. He stares into the booze in his mug, thinking that all of this is temporary, the stage before living resumes, and suddenly it’s his mother’s voice he’s hearing. “When we’ve completed the restoration” began any of a hundred lines she repeated over and over: “Phil and I are going to do Europe right,” “we’ll actually take a family vacation,” “I’ll start reading,” “I’ll start yoga,” “I’ll start cooking more gourmet,” “I’ll start enjoying the weekends,” “we’ll actually start living in this house.” But she never got that far, and he feels a rush of sadness, which Tilly calls self-pity, so he never lets her see it. Like his mother did, he’s living in the in-between, but soon this will be over and he’ll be in college on the other side of the country, all rigor and discipline and Aim High! But Tilly rings the rim of her glass with a fingernail, and Cole does the only thing that makes sense: a stiff pour for her and a stiffer one for himself, and he throws it back in two hard swallows and bellows, “Tell me again, Tilly, about the time you and Grandpapa took the goddamn train to Atlantic City!”

  20

  Crossing Hatchet Hill to the next town, it’s not just a few turns he knows but every curve and rise in the road, every stretch that narrows along a hillside or flattens out by the river. Today is the anniversary of his mother’s death, always a day when he feels a shiver of finality—she was his mother and then she was gone. But this time he’s restless, as if that night continues on, much like his father and the unfinished business of this unfinished house.

  The cemetery and their old church aren’t far from the restaurant in the converted mill where he had lunch with Liz, almost two months ago now—months in which he feels like he’s lived outside of time. Coming around the corner, he sees that the church has been sided in vinyl. Still, it’s an attractive, broad-shouldered little building with a stout bell tower, perched on a hilltop with the cemetery spilling down the gentle slope behi
nd it.

  He parks in the lot and climbs the steps to the front doors, but they’re locked. Across the lawn, there’s no activity in the rectory, blinds drawn, and he stands in the shade for a moment. When he was last here, he was helping carry the casket down to a hearse that drove it the few hundred yards to the grave site. Since his right hand was in a cast, he was positioned so he could grasp the casket rail with his left. He was surprised by how light it was, what little effort was required to bear the body of his murdered mother.

  He walks back along the street and into the cemetery, stopping at a statue of the Virgin Mary just inside the gate and gazing down the slope to the left where she’s buried next to Grandpapa. Tilly’s grave must be right beside them.

  White peastone crunches underfoot as he steps along the narrow drive, and he’s passing under a shade tree when a car pulls into a side entrance. His legs and then his whole body slosh like vertigo, so wavery that he grabs on to the tree trunk. The car’s a canary-yellow Cadillac, identical to Tilly’s. It stops by the grave and the driver’s door swings open. Even from this distance, even after these years, he recognizes Uncle Andrew from his lanky and streamlined runner’s body, his pitched-forward neck, his long narrow head. He opens the back door and extends his arm; a hand takes it, and an old woman rises out of the car. Cole squints, watching her navigate the uneven ground over to the headstone. He’s seen her before. He knows her. But it can’t be Sandy, because then the passenger door opens and a tiny woman with a long silver ponytail and a Guatemalan dress gets out.

  How easily the old emotions rekindle. He has focused so much on rage, but now shame burns him like a branding iron. Andrew and Sandy took in all three kids—happily!—and Cole completely cut them out of his life. He’s tempted to wait under the tree, just allow them to pay their respects and leave so he doesn’t have to face them. But he regains his legs, takes a big breath, and walks across the grass through the headstones, not knowing if he’ll be met with cold shoulders or even hostility.

  Sandy’s the first to recognize him, her somber face overcome by something like elation. She throws open her arms and he rushes to her, and once he’s in her embrace he’s sobbing like a baby. She holds him until he composes himself, then he wipes his eyes and turns to Andrew, his face leaner, a Band-Aid on his cheekbone, but really looking just the same. “It’s wonderful to see you,” he says, taking Cole, his back heaving again, into his arms.

  The pitch of emotion in the air is exhausting and exhilarating. After a time they introduce him to Sandy’s mother, Faye, and he says, “I think we met thirty years ago.”

  “Yes, I remember it well,” Faye says.

  Sandy squeezes Cole’s arm and discreetly shakes her head. “Actually, Mom, that’s when you lived in France. You never met Cole.”

  “I lived in France?” she asks.

  “Yes, Mom. You and Daddy lived in Lyon for eighteen years.”

  She pulls a face, sly and girlish. “How fabulous.”

  They leave it there, but Cole still feels a familiarity about her. He wonders how old she is and almost asks. His mother would’ve turned sixty-nine this year, and Faye must be a lot older than that. It’s always been impossible for him to imagine years onto his mother; even seeing how Andrew and Sandy have aged, he can’t conjure an image of her being any older than she was that night. But maybe—Faye has a round, gentle face and soft eyes—maybe she would’ve looked something like that.

  They ask him if he’s still in Seattle, and he says, “No, Portland.” When they ask about Kelly and Ian, he’s ashamed that he doesn’t know any more about them than Andrew’s question suggests he does. He tells them at length about his brilliant and compassionate son, realizing that not mentioning his wife is explanation enough.

  The conversation turns to why Cole is in Connecticut, and he provides the broad outlines, speaking mostly about Alex and Antoine and the beauty and functionality of chestnut.

  They talk about everything except the reason they’re all at the cemetery today. Instead, in a lull, they subtly shift their footing to face the grave. After a long silence, Andrew clears his throat. “Why don’t you come back to the homestead with us for tea? Stay for supper.”

  He’d like to, and says so, but leaving his father alone much longer could be disastrous. “I’m actually trying to fix the old house up a little and put it on the market,” is what he tells him. “Hey, want a screaming deal on an old colonial? Needs some work, but it’s a gem.” They all chuckle, even Faye. “I really do need to get back to finish something, but I’d love for you to meet my son. Could we come by another time?” He doesn’t mention Phil, and they don’t ask. Maybe they assume he’s dead.

  “That would be wonderful,” Sandy says, tearing up again.

  “Where do you live?” he asks, wiping his eyes.

  “The homestead,” Andrew says.

  Cole shakes his head. Homestead? He’s not getting it.

  “Tilly’s old house.”

  In one beat he’s sitting at that kitchen table, craving a few big swallows of Scotch.

  As he’s saying goodbye, he gives Faye a hug and makes the connection: she’s who was painting in the side yard of Tilly’s house. And it was Sandy who brought her the tea. Strange that he didn’t recognize her then.

  They offer Cole a lift to the church lot, but he declines, and Andrew makes a slow loop through the cemetery, the polished yellow car sparkling in the sun. The chrome shines like mirrors, the tires oil-black, the whitewalls gleaming. It’s obviously his prize possession, a cherry ’70s Coupe de Ville with white leather seats, acquired from the original owner.

  * * *

  —

  When he gets home he walks from room to room, discouraged by all that remains to be done just to get the place presentable enough to invite realtors in. And Ben called as he was driving back: all their jobs have hit snags, manageable snags, but issues that Cole could best handle on-site. On top of that, they lost a remodel for the fall because the city made demands about the design, something about the angle of the driveway and a retaining wall, and the customer got tweaked that Cole couldn’t meet with them immediately to fix it.

  He squats down and pulls at a dried-up bead of caulk where the shower stall butts up to the plaster: wet and spongy right down to the floorboard. Since arriving in East Granby he’s been living across time, through time. It would solve a lot of problems if he could figure out how to live across space, to be here and in Portland at once.

  He makes pasta and a big salad for dinner, then drives Daniel to a party at LK’s, and coming back he can hear the piano from the driveway. As he walks behind his father, he stops and lays his hands on his shoulders through the end of the movement. And as the next lighter, trillier movement begins, he opens a second beer and listens while he washes the dishes.

  For a couple hours he sits in the wing chair in the parlor with his laptop, trying to solve another issue that Ben mentioned on the phone. They’re adding a second story to a bungalow, and in his original design the stairs rise up directly opposite the front door; but now the client says he doesn’t want to walk inside and look at nothing but staircase.

  “But it’s going to be the most beautiful goddamn staircase they’ve ever seen,” he told Ben this afternoon. “I was thinking I’d even use the chestnut. There’s four times what I need for my family room.”

  “Well, he says he wants a sightline straight through the kitchen and out the back windows.”

  So Cole nudges the stairs over by four feet, then tries to fix the size of the new bedrooms and deal with a load-bearing wall in a living room that’s four feet narrower. In building and design two rules typically hold up: there’s always a solution to a problem, and you can get used to anything. But as he looks away from the screen and notices it’s gotten dark outside, he fears he might not find the solution to this one. Ben’s right, it would really help if he were
there and could see it for himself.

  He closes the laptop and shuts his eyes to study the image that’s stayed with him all day: the old mint-condition Cadillac, rolling at a walking pace past headstones and hedges and mounded earth, Sandy and Andrew and Faye waving in slow motion behind the glass until they passed through the gate and were gone.

  He calls Nikki and tells her about the graveside meeting.

  “Wow,” she says. “I’ll bet that stirred up a lot.”

  “It’s kind of incredible that Andrew welcomed me with open arms after I broke his nose over my own misunderstanding. I’ve got to stop denying my fucked-up role in all of this or I’ll never forgive myself, ever. This isn’t just about forgiving my father.”

  “You were a kid,” she says. “In hindsight, yes, it’s a bummer you beat up your uncle, but your mother had just been strangled and you thought he was hitting Sandy, and anyway he was screwing his high-school students. If one of those girls’ fathers had found out, it would’ve been even worse. And with your parents, how could you have stopped it? You did much more than any kid should be expected to. Imagine Daniel blaming himself for our problems.”

  “I know. But Daniel doesn’t go into a rage and lose control—”

  “Cole, you did what you had to do to protect your mother and it still wasn’t enough, but that isn’t your fault.”

  So Nikki, like him, has come to believe the story she tells. “Remember what you said that night when I was stranded out there at the prison? You’re totally right. I can’t tell the difference between letting go of control and losing control, and the reason is that I’ve never faced what I did, so how can I forgive—” His phone beeps. “Sorry,” he says, “I’m getting another call.” He checks in case it’s Daniel, but it’s Liz.

  “I should go anyway,” Nikki says.

  “No, that’s all right. I don’t need to answer it.”