by Belva Plain
“Then Roger must be very much okay,” Elena said, laughing. “I see Bill as the typical father who never thinks any man is good enough for his daughter.” She jumped up and, drawing a bracelet from her arm, said impulsively, “Here, you must have this to remember the day you sat on the Piazza San Marco and told me about Roger. Here, put it on.”
“No, no, I don’t want to take your bracelet,” Charlotte protested.
“The occasion calls for a present. Besides, it’s not emeralds, for heaven’s sake. Take it. Now let’s walk back and dress for dinner. We’ll have a gala celebration, and afterward you’ll telephone to Roger and tell him about it.”
Very much touched, Charlotte put on the bracelet. Life with Elena, she thought. Generous gifts, generous galas, generous, foolish heart.
They sat long and late over dinner, from fish soup to chocolate bombe, to the final cheese and fruit. On the table, candles bent in the wind. Far below the dining room the lights of gondolas and vaporetti splashed wakes onto the flat, black water. Elena chattered like a nervous young girl, rushing from one topic to another, from place to place: the film festival here in Venice, the music festival in Salzburg, and the Highland Games in Scotland. Nevertheless, she was still interesting; between visits, Charlotte thought, you could forget how she sparkled. Indeed, she was as sparkling as she had ever been. It was almost comical to think of her in Kingsley, hiking out to the lake or discussing the budget at the Board of Education meeting.
“I took a room next to yours,” Elena said, “so we can talk. Let’s go up now, if you’re finished. You must tell me more about Bill. How is he, really?”
“Dad’s pretty well,” Charlotte began when they were sitting in her room on the rose velvet chairs. “Of course it was a great relief to get rid of those awful tenants without having to fight a court battle that we’d most likely lose.”
“I can imagine. Oh, your marvelous project! Kingsley won’t recognize itself. I’m so proud of you, I could burst. I’m going to hang this beautiful picture you brought me in my bedroom, right across from the bed, so I can see it when I wake up. When do you expect to be finished? It should take at least a year or two, shouldn’t it?”
“I don’t know.” She heard her own words ring in a minor key. “We haven’t even started it yet.”
“Haven’t started? Why not?”
She was about to give an evasive reply. And yet, why not admit the troubling truth? So she told it, while Elena listened with sharp attention to the detailed, plaintive account.
“So that’s where we’re stuck, you see,” Charlotte concluded in that same minor key. “I can’t understand Dad’s thinking, especially since he’s in such bad shape financially—even worse than Cliff is, who at least earns a little from his book.”
“I would gladly help Bill out, although I suppose he wouldn’t accept anything from me,” Elena said.
Charlotte had to smile at that piece of truth. “No, I’m afraid he wouldn’t.”
Elena got up and poured two glasses of wine. “Let’s not spoil our first evening with troubles. Let’s drink to better luck,” she said briskly.
“If a drink could bring it, I’d drink a whole bottle,” Charlotte replied.
“Yes, you’ve had a hard year with all this going on. And Claudia’s death too. That was sad. She was too young to die.”
“It’s especially sad that she didn’t live to see her son come home again, even though it’s the FBI that will be bringing him.”
“My God! The FBI?”
“Yes, the native police are well on his track. The FBI were at the house searching through everything, every paper in Cliff’s and Claudia’s desks. It was awful.”
“Yes. Awful. You didn’t tell me.… But how will it be for you when he comes back?”
“Mama, you know that I’ve put that past me. I’m over it,” Charlotte said steadily.
“Oh, I’m so glad to hear you say that.” Elena shook her head, her face gone grim with recollection. “You went through pure hell back then. We all did. It almost killed your father. You didn’t know that. How could you have known, at your age? He’s such a loving man. I have always admired him, Charlotte.”
A loving man. As if I, of all people, didn’t know.
“That’s why I’m so upset about what’s happened,” Charlotte lamented. “I was very angry at him the last time we talked. It hurts to think about it.”
Remembering that telephone conversation, she felt chilled. And she sat there silent for a minute or two, crumpled in the chair, hugging her knees.
“Cliff has been trying to reason with him, although to no avail,” she said at last. “Maybe I’ll phone Cliff tonight and ask him to get hold of Dad again. If Cliff were to be furious, really furious, about this craziness of Dad’s, I believe he could force him to change his mind.”
Elena, who was still standing with glass in hand, now replaced it on the table. She opened her mouth to speak, was hesitant, and said, “I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t try to force Bill. No. Leave him alone. Don’t call Cliff.”
Surprised, Charlotte asked, “Why? But why?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Elena made a vague gesture. “He’s had a bad time, that’s all. So many troubles.” She straightened a tilted gladiolus in the vase. “I remember how Bill used to fuss over these, taking them out of the ground in the fall, storing them, and replanting them in the spring. So much work, I always thought. But they are lovely, really lovely.” And she went on, murmuring, “Such striking colors, so intricately made, folded and folded.”
She made a picture, standing over the flowers in her robe, lemon colored and sumptuous as an evening gown. Yet her features had contracted into a troubled frown that had no connection with her words or with the folded petals. The flowers were irrelevant. In an instant Charlotte sensed that they were a diversion, an artificial gesture. And were those tears that had glistened in her eyes before she turned away from the lamplight? If so, they were extraordinary; Elena had never easily shed tears.
“I don’t understand,” Charlotte said. “Don’t I know Dad’s had troubles?” She was thinking that she knew it far more intimately than Elena possibly could. “But why must I not call Cliff?”
Elena hesitated. “I meant—I meant only that Cliff—that he’s had a bad time too. Why bother him? I’d let the whole matter drop if I were you.”
Charlotte pressed for an explanation of these queer, mysterious remarks. “Let what matter drop? You can’t mean the whole building project?”
“Why, yes, if you must. Or at least the part of it that’s causing the problem.”
What on earth could Elena know about it? She had never been interested in business to begin with. And feeling both puzzled and somewhat impatient with such interference, Charlotte replied, “Excuse me, Mama, but you don’t know the first thing about it.”
“I suppose I don’t.” Elena sat down, twisting her rings and staring at her fingers for a long minute while Charlotte waited.
In a swift yet subtle way the atmosphere had changed. Elena the self-possessed had entirely lost her self-possession. Several times she seemed to be on the verge of speaking, but unable to speak. She trembled. Her agitated movement trembled in the Venetian mirror on the opposite wall.
Presently she said, “You’re a responsible woman. You can be trusted. Can you be trusted, Charlotte? If I were to ask you never, never to repeat a thing, would you never repeat it?”
“Well, I should think you know you can count on that,” Charlotte said.
“Yes, you’re Bill’s child and he’s the straightest, most responsible person I ever met. Look at me.”
And Charlotte, now reflecting the other’s almost hysterical condition, obeyed. The two pairs of eyes, solemn and scared, looked into each other.
“Charlotte … I have something to tell you. I’m trusting you. You promised. God forgive me if I’m making a mistake.”
“Please!” Charlotte cried out. “What are you saying? Please!”
“Listen
to me,” Elena whispered. “Listen. That Ted, that monster, is never coming home. They can stop waiting for him.”
How on earth did Ted fit into this subject? An aberrant thought struck Charlotte: She is ill. She’s having a breakdown. Unconsciously, she put her hand on her mother’s, as if to calm her. And humoring Elena, as she had read somewhere that you are supposed to do when a person is distressed, she said quietly, “I’m listening, Mama. What makes you say that?”
“Because he’s dead,” Elena said, still whispering. “He died a long time ago.”
“But they have found him. People have seen him.”
“Ridiculous, I tell you.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I was there. God forgive me if I’m making a mistake,” she repeated, “but I don’t think so. Not with you.”
Another chill passed, shuddering through Charlotte’s body. And she said, “You’re not making a mistake. Tell me the truth.”
“I saw it. I was there when it happened. It was an accident. Or maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know. Sometimes I don’t think it was.”
“Somebody killed him?”
“Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“It was your father.”
There was no sound in the room or in the corridor or in the night outside, where a few lights shone upon the Grand Canal. Here, all was safe and sheltered, cushioned in silk velvet. In such a setting this raw, terrible sentence was an act of vandalism and of madness. Charlotte closed her eyes.
“Yes. And I, too, I was part of it.”
Is this real? Charlotte thought. I don’t know, I don’t—
“Are you all right?” Elena asked.
“Go on with the rest. All of it.”
“It was the day I left for Italy. Bill insisted on driving me to the airport. We started at dawn, to beat the traffic. It was still quite dark.” Now that Elena had begun to speak, her words rushed. “We were passing the mill when we saw him, Ted—I hate to say his name—walking fast with a backpack and a suitcase.
“The bastard,’ Bill said. ‘Where’s he going? What’s he doing? Is he jumping bail too?’
“He leapt from the car. I heard him call, ‘Stop! Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ Ted kept walking. He began to run, Bill after him. Then I got out of the car. I saw Bill grab him by the shoulders. They were shouting, tussling, furious. I was so scared! Oh, God, I was scared! I didn’t know what to do. There wasn’t a soul in sight. At that hour the world is dead. Then suddenly Ted—he—broke free and, still holding the suitcase, rushed past the building, through the marsh, into all that mess, with Bill after him. I remember calling to Bill to come back. It’s quicksand there in spots. I called and called, but they kept racing. They grappled again and I saw Bill start to fall, so I ran toward them. I don’t know what I thought I could do, but I pulled on Ted’s coat. Maybe I pushed him too. I’m not sure of anything. Or I guess I am, in a way. Bill fought him. It was so dark.… There was a scream.” Elena stopped.
Charlotte stared at her. She still had a queer sense of unreality, as if Elena were relating not facts, but some fantastic horror story.
“And then,” Elena resumed, “I heard Bill’s cry. Stumbling, he turned to me. ‘My God,’ he said. I remember—how could anyone ever forget?—the words: ‘My God, did you see, he’s gone down. Drowned in the sump. I almost fell in myself. It’s got to be twenty feet deep.’
“I remember us standing there, absolutely terrified, in that lonely, black place. I asked Bill what he was going to do.
“ ‘Do’? he said. ‘There’s nothing to do. He’s already dead. A fitting death for a bad lot. Let him rot there. Come on. We have to get out of here before we’re seen.’
“I didn’t know how we could continue on to the airport, how I myself could possibly get on a plane, or how I could leave him that way. I thought I’d go back home and stay until we had settled ourselves somehow. But he insisted that I leave. We had, after long reflection, made a decision, he said, and there was no sense postponing it, since we were both agreed that it was the best decision. He promised me he would be all right. He couldn’t afford not to be. He had to take care of you.
“We left. In the struggle he had lost his shoes. They’d been sucked into the swamp, along with his money clip. Of course I had to drive until we could get to a shoe store. To this day I don’t know how I ever kept the car on the road. I was sure we were being followed and would be caught at the airport. I was half crazy with fear. I bought some sneakers for him and gave him some money so he could get back from Boston. After a while he was able to talk. Actually, he wasn’t able to stop talking. For an hour or more he raged. Then he began to admit that a death like that was horrendous for any human being, even for the most evil. He had tried to prevent it, had tried to pull both of them back. No doubt in his fury he had not tried hard enough. But given the circumstances, no one would believe that he had not pushed Ted in. That’s true, isn’t it? Of course it’s true.”
And would anyone believe that you hadn’t been part of it too? Charlotte thought. Frozen, with her hands clasped on the chair’s arms as if for support, she sat.
“So we parted at the airport,” Elena said. “And that’s the story.”
Charlotte’s mind was split in two. During Elena’s narration she had become part of the scene, of the dark, still morning, and the agony; at the same time she was herself, observing herself as a recipient of these facts and this devastation. What was she to make of them, now that they had been given to her?
Yet experience had forced her to face realities. And so, after a few minutes had passed, she was able to ask a blunt question: “What is to be done?”
Weakly, Elena replied, “Why, nothing. The body, or what’s left of it, is still lying there. Poor Bill, it must give him nightmares. I’m pretty much able to put it out of my mind, but he’s not like me.”
Poor Bill. Poor Dad, who has had this weight on him. All the time, whether he was at the high school play, hiking into the hills with her, or reading her college papers, this weight had been on him.
“And that, of course, is the reason why that particular section of the property must not be disturbed. That’s what you meant,” Charlotte said.
“Exactly. Now you see, don’t you, why you cannot do that?”
Charlotte’s hands were wet. I’m sick, she thought. I’m sick.
Trying to reason, to pull facts together, and recalling Elena’s phrase given the circumstances, she asked, “What circumstances did you mean? Since nobody knows about what happened to me, why would Dad come under suspicion?”
“The money. Ted was jumping bail, which Bill and Cliff had raised.”
Charlotte mused. “Then Cliff, too, would be a suspect, or more so, because Claudia was his wife.”
“Ah, no. You’re forgetting the money clip and the shoes. I’m sure the shoes had his name. I always wrote his name in his shoes when I took them to the shoemaker. And the bill clip was a good one, gold, with initials.”
Indeed, every possible article in that house, from towels, sheets, and shirts to silverware, had borne initials or a monogram. Still those articles of Bill’s must be past recognition by now, she thought, and said so.
“No, not at all. Look at the things, shoes and suitcases in very fair condition, that they’ve brought up from the Titanic. And it’s been lying on the ocean floor since 1912.”
That was true.
“So you see what you must do. Or, rather, not do.”
“Yes, I see.”
“Are you feeling all right? I keep asking because I know I’ve shocked you awfully, and probably I shouldn’t have done it. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I am, I am, and you had to do it.”
“For God’s sake, you’ll never let this go any farther, will you, Charlotte? Of course, you can tell Bill. Yes, you should tell him that you know. But no one else. Not your—not Roger. God, no. Promise me.”
“We’re going
to be married!” Charlotte cried.
“Yes, yes. And what if you should be divorced? All divorces aren’t like your father’s and mine. They can be horribly revengeful, my dear.”
“Roger and I will never be divorced. That’s one thing you can be sure of.”
Elena’s smooth, arched brows rose with her skeptical smile. “Come on, Charlotte. This is 1996, and we don’t live in never-never land.”
Charlotte made no effort to hide her resentment of that smile. “Not everyone has your attitude. Look at Cliff and Claudia, for example.”
And suddenly she thought, What if Claudia had known about this? It was appalling. Claudia had been really fond of Bill. The two of them had surmounted the unmentionable subject of Ted’s crime.… And she thought of her father, looking down at the wreckage of the mill on the very day she had had her “inspiration.”
“This place haunts me,” he had said.
Elena persisted. “So you won’t be divorced. Okay. Guaranteed. That still has nothing to do with your promise.”
Miserably, Charlotte argued, “You don’t know the kind of man Roger is.”
“He can be a prince, but even so, things have been known to slip out accidentally or innocently. And this is not your dangerous secret, anyway. It’s Bill’s.”
And yours, Charlotte thought. I have heard too much. I don’t want to hear any more.
As if she had read Charlotte’s mind, Elena continued. “You want me to be still. But I need your promise again. Bill’s peace and safety are at stake.”
She was protecting Bill, not asking on her own behalf. And Charlotte’s heart was moved.
“This is serious business, Charlotte.”
“As if I didn’t know!”
“Then give me your promise never to tell this to Roger.”
Peace and safety … “I promise never to tell Roger—or anyone,” Charlotte said.
She was overcome with the need for silence. Yet words burst out of her mouth. “I can’t bear it anymore. My father—” And then her voice broke. “I can’t believe—”
“If there’s any thought in your mind that he could willfully have caused that monster’s death, put it out of your mind. I could have done it very easily,” Elena said, laughing a little, “but Bill never could.”
