The Dark House

by John Sedgwick

  The two of them went around to the peonies. Marj handed Rollins the flashlight, and he clicked it on: There were six or seven plants, all of them well filled out. He hadn’t expected so many. He wished that he’d brought something besides a shovel to push into the earth around the plants to probe for a metal box down below.

  “Try the middle,” Marj said. “And hurry, would you?”

  While Marj carefully parted two of the peony bushes, Rollins shoved the spade down in between, then stepped on the blade to drive it in deeper. He dug out one shovelful of dark soil, then another, and then two more. He encountered no resistance and heard nothing. “Check with the light, how about?” Marj suggested.

  He shined the light down, but illuminated nothing but black earth, with a few worms wriggling in it. He got down on his knees, soiling his new trousers, rolled up his sleeve, and pushed his hand in. His arm went in clear to his bicep. He groped around the cool dirt, feeling for something flat and hard. He touched a few rocks, and more pebbles, but nothing remotely boxlike. “I’m going to try another spot,” he said finally.

  That hole went no better. Nor did the one after that.

  A car went by on Pelbourne, its headlights illuminating some of the trees lining the drive. Rollins stopped, fear flooding his chest. Marj glanced over toward the road, then crept up the lawn to look down the driveway to check to see if anyone was coming. “It’s okay,” she whispered when she came back.

  Rollins jammed the shovel in extra deep this time—and struck something hard. It might have been a rock, except it gave a hollow sound. The two of them froze.

  His heart pounding, Rollins scraped around the hole to widen the opening. Then he dropped down on his knees and reached in. He felt a sharp corner, with flat planes running from it at right angles. “Got it,” he said. Rollins had to rip out one of the peonies to get at the box, and then dig a virtual trench to free it. He labored over the hole, the sweat flowing, while Marj edged in beside him. Finally, he reached in with both hands and managed to work the box loose. Without a word, he carried it out of the garden and set it down in the tall grass behind, where Marj shone the light down on it.

  The strongbox was caked with dirt, but Rollins could see that it was quite old, with a greenish handle on top. The box itself was black, except for a dull gold border framing the top, and the initials A.L.B. under the handle in old-fashioned lettering.

  “Alexander Blanchard, must be,” Rollins said, clearing away some grime off the top. “Cornelia’s grandfather.” The box was dented and scraped at one corner where Nicky’s shovel must have struck it. He pulled the handle, but the lid didn’t budge. “Damn,” Rollins said. “It’s locked.”

  “Here, let me,” Marj said. She set the strongbox down on its back, then picked up the shovel and, before Rollins could stop her, smashed it down on the box. The blow landed with a loud clank that seemed to echo around the field. The strongbox hopped into the air, tumbled over the grass—and landed with the lid wide open.

  Rollins hurried to the box and crouched over it while Marj shone the light in.

  The box was filled with loose papers, and some bulging envelopes. The two stared at it in amazed silence for a moment, then Rollins reached in and pulled out a white envelope. It was labeled Brookline—’68-9, and there were a number of photographs inside. Rollins plucked out the first one and held it up to the light. A young boy in Bermuda shorts and a tennis shirt stared up at him.

  “God, Rolo, is that you?” Marj asked.

  Rollins nodded, lost. “It’s our old backyard.”

  Neely’s hands on him, backing him against the dogwood by the garden. “Just stand there, would you? Just for a second?” Then her backing up, her Brownie up by her face. “Hold it. Smile, would you? You have such a nice smile. Please?”

  More photos, more memories. A close-up in the kitchen that showed him smiling widely to reveal two missing front teeth: That brought back the tunnel-like feeling the absent teeth left along the roof of his mouth. A blurry one of him running across the lawn in his Keds: the freedom of warm air on him. Richard holding a whiffle-ball bat: a storm cloud of envy, since Richard never missed. And Stephanie in diapers on her changing table, her little feet curled together. That one stopped him. Sadness all over.

  “That’s your sister, isn’t it?” Marj asked.

  Rollins nodded.

  Marj pulled out a picture of his father. Henry Rollins’ face had been blacked out in angry strokes with a ballpoint pen, but his thick hair and lean build were unmistakable. “Look at this.” Marj pointed to his father’s groin, where someone—Cornelia presumably—had drawn in a monstrous phallus.

  Rollins took the photograph in his hand for a moment. He was shocked by the rage in those slashing strokes of Cornelia’s ballpoint.

  “So, it’s true,” he said.

  “Sure looks like it,” Marj said.

  He stuffed the picture back in the envelope, which he returned to the strongbox.

  He noticed a small cardboard box inside. Rollins plucked off the cover: a yellow rubber ducky.

  Stephanie’s back glistened where she floated, head down, and the yellow duckies bobbing beside her, like boats by a tiny island.

  “I guess.” Rollins gave it a squeeze. The ducks had always used to squeak, something that had delighted Stephanie. But, after all this time, this one gave out only a chuffing spurt of air.

  Then footsteps. Rollins turned. Out of the night, a figure loomed beside them. Nicky. A yellow raincoat thrown over her black bathrobe. “Just firming up Cornelia’s monument, are we?” she whispered.

  “Sssh,” Rollins told her.

  Her eyes zeroed in on the open strongbox, and she moved toward it. “What have you found?”

  “Just family stuff.”

  “Buried in the garden?”

  A door opened and a deep voice boomed from the doorway. “Who’s out there?” It was Ben Stanton. He shined a powerful flashlight toward them.

  Rollins flicked off his own light, but he could feel himself being lit up by the brighter beam. He slammed the box shut and tucked it under his arm. “Come on!” he told Marj. He ducked down and scurried along behind the stone wall bordering the garden, then, beckoning to Marj to follow, he crossed the open field, staying as low as possible, and made for the far trees.

  “Who’s there?” Stanton repeated. Dogs started barking from inside the house, inspiring other dogs in other houses much farther away. Glancing back, Rollins could see the light trained on Nicky Barton, who was struggling to run with her shovel.

  “Nicky? That you?” Stanton shouted.

  A heavy tread, frantic rustling, then a shriek pierced the night air. Rollins looked back again. Ben Stanton had grabbed Nicky by the shoulder and was hurling her to the ground. Rollins and Marj had reached the trees by now. They stopped, panting.

  “Let me go!” Nicky cried. She swung the shovel at Ben, but he grabbed it and flung it to the ground.

  “What in hell?” he demanded. “Who were those two?”

  But that was the last Rollins heard. He and Marj pushed on through the trees. They had to tread carefully. It was nearly pitch black, the ground was marshy and uneven, and tree branches and bushes poked out almost everywhere. But they kept forging ahead. Rollins felt oily under his clothes, and his breath came rapidly. “Look—there,” Rollins whispered, when a glimmer of starry sky appeared in the distance ahead of them. They kept pushing and pushing, and finally broke through to the road.

  Twenty

  Rollins called Schecter from the pay phone near the pizza place on 102, but all he got was an automated message saying the cell phone was out of range.

  When he told Marj, she stepped into the booth with him. It quickly filled with their combined heat.

  “I’ll try my machine,” she told him, and slipped past him to the phone. She dialed her number, then pressed in more keys. She listened, tipping her head lazily this way and that. “My mother,” she whispered. “Her messages go on forever.” Then
she straightened up. She remained silent for a few moments. “It’s Al,” she said. “You better hear this yourself.” She pressed another button, and handed him the phone.

  There was a click, and then Schecter’s voice came on: “Hi, Marj, could you give this message to Rollins, please? I’ve got Jerry holed up in a motel here in Littleton, way out past Concord on Route 2. God knows why. But here’s the thing. I just called in to see how your friend Elizabeth was doing. Don’t worry—I pretended I was a cousin in San Francisco. She died this evening, Rollins. Sorry. Leave a number where I can reach you once you get settled, okay, buddy? I don’t want to have to worry about you.”

  The answering machine clicked off, and Rollins hung up the phone. His arm felt heavy, weighed down by something he couldn’t see. He thought of Elizabeth gasping for breath, coughing so hard, trying to expel death from her lungs.

  Marj reached for him, stroked the side of his face. “It didn’t look too good for her when we left.”

  “No, it didn’t.”

  “I guess we keep the strongbox now.” She was carrying it under her arm.

  “I’ve got to find him,” Rollins declared.

  “Who?”

  “Father.” Rollins picked up the phone again and called his brother in Indianapolis. Richard’s wife, Susan, answered sleepily. Rollins told her it was a family emergency. “Just a moment,” she told him. Rollins waited without moving, the receiver tight to his left ear.

  “I need Father’s address,” he said when Richard came on the line.

  “You need—Ed, do you have any idea what time it is?”

  “It has to do with Cornelia.”

  That calmed him momentarily. Richard asked if she’d been found—the standard question from family members, it seemed.

  “No—not yet.”

  “You’re not getting all wound up over this, are you? Mother said you were obsessing about Neely again.”

  “You were talking to Mother about me?”

  “It wasn’t all about you, Ed. She was concerned. We both are. We know how you get.”

  “The address, Richard.” Rollins’ family had exploded all around him, and he was the only one to notice. “That’s all I need from you, okay?”

  “Look, I don’t have it. The last I knew he was in Santa Clara. In California. With that stewardess of his—Kathi. With an i, God help us. Why do you need him, anyway?”

  “I can’t tell you now.”

  “No sweat, big brother. I know how it is. You’ve got your stuff, I’ve got mine.”

  Rollins assured him that he’d get back in touch with him later.

  “If you want,” Richard said.

  When Rollins closed out that call, Marj pushed into the booth again and massaged his neck. “That sounded a little rough,” she said.

  “He thinks I’m crazy.”

  “Yeah? Well, wait till he sees these.” Marj held up a thick handful of letters from the strongbox. “They’re all from your dad to Neely. Looks like he was still writing to her, begging to see her again even after she left the house.”

  Shocked, he took the stack of envelopes from her and looked through them. No question—the letters were all addressed to Cornelia Blanchard in his father’s swift, forward-slanting script. Some to a post office box in Weston, some to Smith, some to an apartment in Jamaica Plain where, Rollins seemed to recall, Cornelia had lived while doing graduate work at B.U.

  “He’s a guy, Rolo. Guys do that.”

  “Begging?” Rollins asked her.

  “Demanding, more like. As if she owed him.”

  Rollins opened a letter he’d sent to Jamaica Plain. It was on a single sheet of white paper, written in longhand with what looked like a fountain pen.

  Neels—dearest,

  Do you have any idea what I am going through? Do you? I long for you every minute. My life makes no sense anymore, not without you. I’d divorce Jane in a moment if I knew you’d have me. I can hardly bear the sight of her anymore—or of myself. I sleepwalk through the days. My life is so empty without you! I don’t know how to be happy. Let’s go away together—please! I dream of you, Neels. Remember that secret knock of mine on your door. Do you remember? Remember that pink nightie you used to wear? The one with the bow? It tortures me. Please—speak to me when I call. Is that too much to ask?

  In memory of what we had,

  Love always,

  H

  It took Rollins a while to pull his eyes away. His father had always seemed so dry and self-contained—lifeless, even, a waxed figure. His hair brushed straight back, his back straight, his chest out. A man made for a dinner jacket, starched shirt, and pressed trousers. He hadn’t imagined that Father was capable of such passion, such need. Even when Rollins was literally down on his knees begging his father not to leave, his father had not bent down to him or taken him in his arms. He had merely waited for Rollins to detach himself, as, with the help of his brother, he finally had.

  But the letter was so stark, such a naked display of emotion. It was like seeing them together.

  The writhing.

  “I’ve got to find him,” Rollins said. With trembling hands, he stuffed the letter in the envelope and handed it back to Marj. He called Santa Clara information. An operator came on and said that she wasn’t showing any Henry, only an initial K—for Kathi, presumably—on Cypress Street. An automated voice gave him the number.

  Rollins pressed it in. His pulse jumped when a voice answered, but it belonged to a sleepy female. Rollins identified himself and said he was trying to reach his father, Henry.

  “Wait a second, would you?” Sheets rustled in the background. Rollins tensed, afraid his father was about to come on the line. Rollins couldn’t imagine what he might say. But the same woman came back on. “What are you asking me now?” The voice had a Texas twang to it.

  Rollins repeated himself, and the woman said, “Oh, Hank’s son.” Rollins had never heard his father referred to as Hank before. “The journalist.”

  “He there?” Rollins pulled the receiver away from his mouth so Kathi wouldn’t hear his nervous breathing.

  “With me? Heck no. I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to leave that impression. He left here maybe a year ago. He went back east—to Vermont.”

  Rollins wasn’t sure he understood correctly. “Not Townshend.” That was the site of the family’s country house.

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Kathi couldn’t be sure he was still there, but that’s where he’d gone.

  “But why?”

  “You want the whole story?” She didn’t let him answer. “Hell, I would if I were you.” While Rollins half-listened, she launched into the tale of a love affair that started on a midnight flight to Albuquerque and culminated in a wedding proposal two months later in a candlelight dinner overlooking San Francisco Bay. But life for Kathi changed once she became the third Mrs. Rollins. Rollins’ attention rose with his distress as she recounted how Henry Rollins had picked on her housekeeping, her (limited) education, her taste, her accent. “He wanted me to take voice lessons, if you can believe that.” She was a brunette, with short hair in a boyish cut, but he’d wanted her to dye her hair blond, and wear it down to her shoulders. And he’d kept wanting her to take tennis lessons even though she was the “sit-around type,” she told Rollins. “I thought, my God, he’s going to kill me with all this.”

  “He ever mention Cornelia Blanchard to you?”

  The name didn’t ring a bell.

  “He might have called her Neely.”

  Rollins thought he heard Kathi sit up a little. “Wait—a novelist, like?” she asked.

  “Poet.”

  “Oh yeah, poet. He mentioned her a few times. I think he had a book of hers. Wasn’t she related or something?

  “She was my cousin.”

  It hurt to use the past tense.

  “Yeah? I pegged her an old girlfriend.”

  “She was a blonde, that’s why I mention it.” A dead blonde, he might have said.

&
nbsp; “Well, maybe he wanted me to be her.” Kathi barely paused, obviously missing the full significance. “Finally, I got a little tired of all the complaining, and I said some stuff that I probably shouldn’t have, and he said some things that he definitely shouldn’t have. Then we were going at each other pretty good. He has a temper, your dad. I don’t know if you know that.”

  “He didn’t hit you, did he?”

  “No, but I had a feeling he might have if he’d kept at it a little longer. I had to do some flying, and when I came back, he was gone. I only found out he was in Vermont because he left me an address so I could forward his mail. No note, of course. No explanation. No good-bye. No nice knowing you. No nothing. Just the address. Sweet, huh?”

  “You’re lucky,” he told her.

  “What’s that?”

  “I said I’m sorry that happened.”

  “Aw, hell—live and learn. Try him in that Townshend place. He was always going back there. If you see him, tell him his wife says hi.”

  “He’s split,” Rollins told Marj after he hung up. “He’s come back to Vermont.”

  Marj reached for Rollins’ hand. “What do you mean, back?”

  “Apparently he’s been there a few times.”

  “Rolo, was he there when—?”

  “Well, I know he spent some time there after he traveled in Europe. Just before he headed west.” Rollins suddenly had a sinking feeling.

  Marj looked into his eyes. “But when was that, exactly?”

  Rollins’ fear deepened as he thought back. “That must have been about a year after I last saw him. We had lunch together, a few days after he closed down his investment firm. That would put it in nineteen ninety-three.” He stopped for a second. “The fall.”

  Rollins looked at Marj. She was all eyes as she looked back at him.

  “When Neely disappeared,” Marj said finally.

  Rollins turned away from her. He stared out the window to the empty highway, lit by street lamps. “Hey,” Marj said. She brought her hands up to his neck to soothe him.