“Interwoven,” I suggested. “Threads of one century interwoven with threads of another.”
“Rather comforting, isn’t it?” the Colonel mused. “Like those houses on Skippack Pike, I suppose.” He paused. “And damned disconcerting.”
We drove up Prince Street, turned onto Washington Street and headed out of the city along the tree-lined Parkway, which parallels the Potomac all the way to the gates of Mount Vernon.
“Your general’s home,” he sneered ungraciously. “A national shrine now, I should imagine.”
I smiled and kept on driving. The next time we stopped for gas the Colonel pumped, noting gallons and dollars, securing the gas cap, replacing the nozzle. I gave him a twenty dollar bill and he paid the cashier, bringing me the change.
“Since we’re eloping,” he said wryly, “I suppose I should ask how you’re set for blunt. We clearly know my circumstances.”
I must have looked blank.
“Money,” he clarified. “Is that a vulgar topic?”
In answer I upended the contents of my purse in his lap. I explained the function of credit cards and checkbooks, counted out the cash I had (two hundred seventy three dollars and change), and showed him my debit card.
“Under the circumstances,” I told him, “it’s not a vulgar question.”
We left the gas station and picked up the interstate again while the Colonel consulted the map. Twenty-five miles later we sailed past Fredericksburg, whose exit I pointed out. I would have loved to cruise the streets there as we had done in Alexandria, but I couldn’t. In the soft light of early evening I’d surely recognize someone — who would (more to the point) recognize me.
We pushed down the artery of Interstate 95 to 295, which took us east around Richmond to Interstate 64. Sixty miles later and in contradiction of my promise to her earlier, I called Lila on the cell with the Colonel breathing over my shoulder in astonishment, ogling the little phone.
On the other side of Norfolk, we left the interstate again. Daylight faded, which frustrated my navigator, so he occasionally switched on the courtesy light (“wonderfully convenient, this”) to trace our route across the North Carolina state line. Eventually, we picked up Route 158, which carried us to Currituck Sound and over the bridge to Kitty Hawk.
At last, we were on the Outer Banks. For the last several hours the Colonel had fired off thousands of questions on topics ranging from wireless communications (my cell phone) to interstate commerce (all those mammoth tractor-trailers) to religion (a radio sermon — it was, after all, Sunday night). I was sure he had not rested at all the night before, and I kept hoping that with darkness he would finally sleep, like a parrot in a covered cage. But he didn’t.
At Kitty Hawk I headed south along the Beach Road instead of the Bypass, thinking the cottages and dunes and the occasional moonstruck flash of breakers would, even in the dark, occupy his attention too thoroughly for questions. I was wrong. Instead I was obliged to offer a geological description of the Banks (barrier islands) as well as a brief synopsis of their history (pirates and shipwrecks). Finally I pulled into a gas station at Whalebone Junction, bought a local map, and waited while he studied it under the lights of the marquee. Then I drove to Oregon Inlet, crossed Bonner Bridge to Hatteras Island, and continued south through dwindling traffic and endless dunes into a starry blackness. When we came to the village of Avon I turned left onto a sandy road that twisted through dunes and scrub. Finally, I pulled up a narrow drive paved with cement and broken oyster shells, and parked beside the cottage on a smooth concrete pad atop the dunes. Beneath us in the dark lay the edge of the world where the sea rolled tirelessly against the wide, sandy beach.
We were home.
Avon
Chapter 13
“It appears we have arrived,” the Colonel remarked, his voice lifting with interest.
I gazed through the windshield at the star-strewn sky and nodded.
“And the premises seem deserted,” he observed.
We can only pray, I thought. I roused myself and began dragging stuff out of the car and up the stairs to the front door. It took the Colonel a minute or two to realize that footmen and assorted servants weren’t any more likely to appear here than they were in Pennsylvania, but once he figured it out he scrambled hastily after me, lifting a suitcase out of my hands while I fumbled with the keys. A second later I stood in the darkened foyer with my hand on the light switch, wondering, in some twisted recess of my exhausted brain, if the Colonel’s shadowy traveling companion, through some trick of time and place, was waiting for us.
But he couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Besides, we weren’t even sure he existed.
My fingers flipped the switch. Light flooded the foyer and spilled into the living room and beyond. I found myself moving rapidly — too rapidly — through the downstairs rooms, switching on lamps as I went, trying to chase away the gloom. Several lamps didn’t work, leaving disturbing shadows here and there, and I made a mental note to buy some light bulbs. Next, I picked up the phone and checked in with Lila, who was clearly relieved I had made landfall safely.
While the Colonel ran solo relays from the car to the foyer, I took stock of kitchen supplies. There were only ice cubes in the freezer, but the pantry contained canned soups and vegetables, some crackers, and an unopened package of Oreos. The Oreos tugged at the corner of my consciousness, a nagging thought which I pushed aside. I found a pan, dumped in a can of chicken noodle soup (the children’s favorite), and turned on the stove. Then I grabbed the little suitcase in the foyer that held the Colonel’s meagre supplies and headed up the stairs to the bedrooms. At the open landing I stumbled over the Colonel himself, who was gazing out over the living area.
“It’s like a ship,” he commented, relieving me of his suitcase.
Actually, I suppose it is. The cottage, with its exposed beams, polished wood and open rooms, did seem somehow ship-like. There’s always been a family cottage on this site, possibly on these very pilings, this particular cottage sprouting up after a hurricane washed away its predecessor shortly before I left for college. Its construction was really therapy for Lila, who had herself just graduated (so to speak) from 2 years at Havenhurst (the “hospital,” Mae-Mae called it), where she went (was sent) during a particularly severe spell when I was a sophomore in high school.
I glanced at my guest. “Let me show you to your room,” I said shortly.
There are four bedrooms on the second floor, none of them very large. The biggest has always been Lila’s, and the next largest was Cameron’s and mine — although no longer collectively, since we had not been to the cottage simultaneously in over a year. The two smallest bedrooms were general-purpose guest rooms/children’s rooms, and it was to one of these that I led the Colonel. Then I took him on a quick tour of the cottage, showing him the baths (one up, one down), the living and dining area, the big, open kitchen and the sunroom/study, which is a latter-day addition. Lila has filled the walls throughout the house with photographs, and these held the Colonel transfixed.
“You could never do this with paint or pen and ink,” he said. “What are they?”
I told him.
“Photo,” he said slowly, repeating the first syllable. “From the Greek meaning light.”
I sighed audibly.
“And how—”
“With a camera.
“Do you mean a camera obscura?”
I drew a blank.
“It’s a curiosity,” he explained. “A box with a lens that, um, focuses light to project an image on a wall, say, or perhaps a piece of paper—”
“I suppose this is similar,” I said. “Except that ultimately we get an actual picture, a print.”
“But how…”
I resisted an impulse to whimper. “Cameras are little boxes that capture an image with a lens and reflect it on, ah, a sort of chemically treated, um, plastic strip called film, which retains a kind of chemical impression of the image so that it can be printed on
a special kind of paper. That’s how.”
The Colonel stared at me a moment. “Very illuminating,” he said finally. “Of course, kamera is Greek meaning—”
At that point I really didn’t care what kamera meant. I pulled open a sliding glass door and led the Colonel, who was now ruminating on the probable root of the word lens, out to the deck that wrapped around the entire first floor. When I last saw him that night, he was heading out across the sand in the darkness, toward the flash of breaking waves.
I went back to the kitchen, turned off the stove, and went to bed. I had no idea what time it was. The little digital clock on the bedside table wasn’t working. It stared at me, its face dark and blank, but I was too tired to care. I turned on my pillow and closed my eyes, thinking that I was too wound up to sleep, too strung out and undone. But I was wrong. I slept hard and without dreams.
When I first awoke the sky was pearl grey and the rush and sigh of the sea murmured reassuringly at my bedroom windows. I glanced at the blank clockface and closed my eyes again. I dozed, dreaming that the Colonel, searching for his portal among the breakers, had swum out to sea. There was undoubtedly something wishful in this dream. With the Colonel gone, I could go home. I would have my life back, my children with me. The physics of time would cease to trouble me, leaving Cameron as the only fly in my ointment.
The next thing I knew, yellow daylight filled my room and the scent of tomato soup wafted under my bedroom door. I sat up in bed. Something was definitely cooking downstairs, which meant my houseguest had not found his portal, had not swum out to sea, and was, apparently, alive and well in my kitchen. Suddenly, I felt unaccountably depressed.
I swept back the covers and staggered from bed to bath, showered, dried my hair and contemplated my closet. All of us (Cameron included, until I began to move him out) kept a small wardrobe at the cottage to minimize packing and unpacking, and my first impulse was to pull on a shirt and pair of shorts. But then I considered the Colonel’s sensitivities: my houseguest had been nearly staggered by my ankle length jeans, so appearing at breakfast bare-legged probably wouldn’t do. I reached into the closet to grab a pair of relatively modest summery white slacks, and suddenly realized that Cameron’s clothes, which I had patiently packed and carted off to Fredericksburg, were back on their hangers.
Only they weren’t the same clothes. Also, they were new: a bottle-green canvas shirt (with the tags from a near-by shop still on it) and a pair of cotton drawstring slacks resembling (appropriately enough) surgical scrubs. Hmmm. I eyed the bureau and tentatively opened the top drawer. Nothing. Well, nothing beyond my own things, that is. But the second and third drawers yielded up assorted items including swim trunks and two brand-new T-shirts. I paused, remembering the Oreos I found in the pantry. Oreos were Cameron’s favorite cookies. Suddenly I snatched up the non-functional clock on the bedside table and saw the plug dangling from the end of the cord. Of course. Cameron always and compulsively unplugged things when he left the cottage, which would explain the lamps that didn’t work last night. I’d probably find that the TV, stereo, and half the appliances were unplugged, too, which meant that in the weeks since I was last here, Cameron had paid a visit.
I know Cameron better than anyone, and he’s not the sort of man who’d willingly spend a solitary weekend anyplace. Nor is he the sort of man to hang out with the guys. So if Cameron was here, then he was here with…
I stared at the open drawer, at the swim trunks and T-shirts, and felt heat rise in my face. The jerk had brought a woman to my mother’s cottage. She had slept in my bed, showered in my bath, gazed at photographs of my children on the walls. Impulsively, I yanked the drawer from the chest and flung it across the room. Clothing spilled out over the floor and the drawer landed with a muffled thump on the bed. I swore and kicked at a tangle of spilled T-shirts, sending them flying in a colorful burst, then watched as they sailed gracefully back to the floor like large, bright butterflies.
For a long moment I considered the scattered t-shirts, thought about the cookies, the unplugged clocks and radios. What was missing here?
Finally, I got it: Cameron may have left his own signature behind, but I had yet to see any forgotten panties or lipsticks or bikinis lying around. This did not mean I was leaping to conclusions. Anyone who knew the man knew he had someone with him. What it did mean was that he was careful to remove her evidence. It would simply never occur to him that anyone would be smart enough to figure out what he was really up to.
Two thoughts struck me in rapid succession.
The first was that Cameron on the trail of a woman would give no thought whatever to me, my whereabouts or my activities. He gave little to begin with; now he would give even less. In my current circumstances, this was useful.
The bright side, Kathy Lee.
The second thought was dark and twisted. I now knew something Cameron would prefer I didn’t, something that might give me a bit of leverage at some point. I knew he had been to the cottage with another woman. Unfortunately, the evidence was entirely circumstantial.
I mulled this over for a moment, trying to see it from his perspective. If confronted, Cameron would admit to being at the cottage (sure, I was there, so what?) but deny having anyone with him (where’s the proof?). And I had no proof, no evidence (other than absolute, certain, in-my-gut intuition). But Cameron didn’t know that. If I was smart, I’d let him think I had proof, something he had overlooked, something someone down here saw. Something I found or heard.
And what would I do with this leverage? Where would it get me?
Pondering this, I picked up the clothes, slipped the drawer back into the dresser and slowly straightened the room. The activity was somehow soothing. When I was calmer, I finished dressing and headed downstairs to the kitchen where, sure enough, the Colonel was standing at the stove carefully stirring something in a pan. He was also quietly singing:
“Of all the trades in England/begging is the best/for when a beggar’s tired/he can lay him down and—”
He broke off as soon as he saw me. “Good morning, Mrs. Finlay,” he said pleasantly.
“Good morning,” I replied, and peered over his shoulder. It was tomato soup, all right. “Ahhh. My favorite breakfast.”
“Tell me, Mrs. Finlay, at what hours does one normally eat on this side of the portal?”
I glanced up at him, the realization slowly dawning that mealtimes have changed over the decades, never mind the centuries. When my grandmother was a girl (she told me once), country people often ate dinner in the middle of the day, and some families still serve Sunday dinner at two in the afternoon. I bet the Colonel never even heard of lunch.
“In civilized places,” the Colonel went on, “one normally breakfasts between eight and ten and dines between half-past two and four of the clock. Supper,” he added, “is late and light.” He looked at me expectantly.
“On this side,” I told him, “no one bothers with breakfast, they eat lunch at their desks and dinner in their cars on their way to soccer practice. By the way, how did you figure out the soup?”
“I read the directions on the, um, wrapping.”
“Label,” I corrected. “But what I meant was, how did you figure out to open it?”
“Ah.” He nodded. “You left that clever little opening wheel on the stove last night and the empty cans were in the rubbish bin. I simply … experimented. Incidentally, that chicken soup you left out was rather good. I had it before I went to bed.”
“How did you figure out the stove?”
“I read the dials. How else? Actually, it’s quite like your automobile.”
He was referring to the dashboard. I smiled, remembering him experimenting with the radio on our way down, and understood that his encounter with the dashboard of the car had equipped him with the essential skills he’d need to operate almost anything in the house.
“The most difficult part,” he told me, “has been keeping the soup warm without scorching it.” He lifted the p
an from the stove. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
*****
We sat on stools at the kitchen counter and spooned our soup from mugs while the Colonel bombarded me with his usual thousand questions. While I slept he had discovered the TV, which he referred to as the “televiewing device.” Evidently, Cameron had overlooked the plug.
“It’s called television,” I said. “How did you come so close to its actual name?”
“I assumed it operated on the same principal as your telephone. Hence, similar terminology.”
“Did you turn it on?”
Pause. “Oh, you mean did I engage it. Of course I did,” the Colonel said, giving me one of his (by now familiar) impatient looks. “How else would I know what it is?”
That’s right, Kathy Lee. How else?
“Two people sitting on a sofa,” he added, apparently referring to what he saw.
A talk show? I wondered. A soap opera?
“I could barely make it out,” he went on. “Either you haven’t perfected the invention yet or your, ah, receiver isn’t functioning properly.”
So I told him about television. We did not have cable at the cottage and reception in the Outer Banks is terrible without it. Lila hates TV, anyway. The only reason we even have one at the cottage is for the out-dated VCR, and in fact we have a sizeable library of videos (never having upgraded to DVDs). I didn’t mention the VCR, however, and the Colonel mercifully had not yet discerned that it was a separate and distinct device with a function of its own. Instead, I gave him a quick explanation of broadcasting and cable, then changed the subject before he could ask why we had a television set without the means to receive programming.
“We need groceries,” I announced.
“Ah,” he said. “Yes, I suppose so. Your little soups, charming though they are, probably won’t sustain us very long.”
Out of Time Page 9
