There’s a pep in his step as he makes his way into the kitchen and rummages through the drawers for matches. He’s going to light a fire in the fireplace. A hearth makes a home, he can hear Donna’s voice. He uses the pages of a book to kindle the wood. He pumps the bellows, which make the flames dash upward. It’s not enough, he needs firewood. Somewhere in this monstrosity of a house there’s firewood. The basement. That’s where he’ll look.
He chuckles. The kayak in the pool house, who would have thought? Leave it to Donna to just barge in here and know exactly where to look. Those ramblings of a disturbed teenager, whatever Donna read into them, the words she deciphered, he couldn’t have done that, he didn’t know Penelope well enough. All those months he had turned the place upside down and come up empty.
Hell, if there’s no firewood in the basement, he’ll burn that damn kayak instead.
On the basement stairs, he stands on the top step in utter darkness. A door slams, he doesn’t know why, maybe the draft from the windows he keeps ajar, the doors he props open even when it’s cold outside. There’s a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, he faintly recalls, and he reaches up and grasps for the string but can’t get ahold of it.
This damn basement. It had cost a fortune. It smelled of damp and that stench. That foulness. What was that? He crinkled his nose. Sewer gas backing up into the house? He’d pour a few gallons of water down the drain and see if the odor is eradicated. If not he’d use bleach. That ought to do it.
His hand reaches and swipes through the air, catches hold of the string but only for a moment, then it escapes his grip. Grasping for it again and again, he absentmindedly takes another step. And another and another. His foot slips.
The step Donna told him needed repairing. The contractor wanted to put in new steps altogether, he mentioned someone might have skimped on the basement. Edward can see the man as if he stood right in front of him, short, of average build with red skin, some sort of rosacea. “You have to do it right, you can’t take shortcuts, the concrete down here stays forever wet, never cures.” Donna had told him over the years to get that fixed. He was cheap about it.
Edward can’t help but think of Penelope. How they’d done it all wrong from the beginning. Head in the sand is the phrase that comes to mind. Like an ostrich, burying its head in the ground when faced with attack by predators, stupidly believing that if it can’t see its attacker then the attacker can’t see it.
Edward holds his hands up in the air, thinking he must protect his fingers and his wrists above all else. He is a surgeon, he can’t risk a broken finger, a shattered wrist—that would be the end of his career. He catches himself, holds on to the railing, comes to a stop but then his foot can’t get a grip, his other hand reaches into nothingness—no banister, no railing, no nothing. He slips and there’s an impact, elbow then wrist, then the head, but it happens so quickly, he can’t quite wrap his mind around it but what he does notice is that the last step is his downfall. A tumble, a painful shock to his back like someone took a bat to it. His skull makes contact with the concrete floor.
The last image is that of a wine cellar with empty shelves. Edward, strewn across the cold concrete, bare bulb dangling overhead, feels the cold seep through his clothes. Soon he’ll be shivering.
He thinks about the jeep suddenly, the blood-soiled seats, the clotted puddle of blood on the floor mat, and the night he drove the car to the stock pond at the very back of the property. He watched the jeep roll down the hill and submerge into the cold darkness. He had no clue if the pond was deep enough to hide the car and for a while it sat there, the bright-red roof like a beacon. He stood there, fingers laced above his head, please, please, please, he found himself begging some sort of power to have mercy on him, please please please, and then there were bubbles floating to the surface and the car sunk deeper as if there was a sudden drop-off and the roof was no longer visible.
As a physician, he has often imagined what death looks like, what people feel the moment they pass. He hadn’t imagined it to be so insignificant.
Darkness comes with an almost anesthetic effect. There are hardly any thoughts left. Half a thought, barely: the house has claimed me.
63
DONNA
They told me Edward was dead. Fell on the basement steps. No one looked for him, no one caught on. They smelled him before they saw him. The mailman did and only because Edward had a habit of leaving doors unlocked.
Years ago, we talked about who of the two of us would go first. “I’ll die first,” Edward said and took my face in his hands. “Statistically that’s a given. I’m older and men die younger. But I hope I won’t because who will take care of you when I’m gone?”
I think of those moments often. The tender ones.
* * *
• • •
A black veil hides my eyes. I feel all alone in the world. First there’s Vera. She’s moved back to Sweden. She said she’d come visit but I didn’t quite believe her. Yet I smiled. “You must. I can never replace you. Know that.” Now Edward has passed. My eyes are red-rimmed from not sleeping but I have yet to shed a tear. I have complicated feelings for him.
* * *
• • •
Returning to Shadow Garden after Edward’s funeral fills me with dread. If I can at all help it, my days here are numbered. I have plans but I haven’t told anyone yet. I have to fight every single day to remain in good spirits and it’s becoming increasingly difficult. I can go on all day but when daylight fades and time begins to slow, it all sloshes over me. I lose my rhythm and there is not enough oxygen in the room.
The car hits a pothole, raising my body temporarily off the seat. The driver lifts his hand to apologize. After a while, I nod off and when I open my eyes, my aspirations have returned. I wake with a vision: Shadow Garden behind me, the sun rising up ahead, beating down on my face. That vision tells me what I need to know—that I have to take control of my future.
A state of panic overcomes me. It begins unequivocally with a stumble of my heart, a gentle flutter. Then it throbs, speeds up, unwilling to surrender to its prior steady beat. I calm myself by imaging my new life.
I envision California. A thirties bungalow with a sloping roof and eaves with exposed rafters. A cozy atmosphere, nothing too formal, those days are over. A simple living room one enters directly from the front door—no parlor or sitting room—and a small kitchen. There’ll be redwood beams and an attic under the sloping roof. I worry about the ceiling height. I get claustrophobic at times. From what I hear, bungalow ceilings are lower than Shadow Garden’s Victorian architecture, still lower than Tudors, but I’ll manage.
I imagine a lot of white. White walls. A white kitchen. White tiled floor. Old Hollywood style. I imagine a classic antique bar cart in brass finish and a gold jigger, a cocktail strainer, an ornate gold ice bucket, a corkscrew, and gold mixing spoons. I focus on this cart, I’m not sure why, but I imagine this polished vintage-style look on wheels, perfectly suited to tote around beverage necessities. Glasses for every occasion, I will even stoop to stemless wineglasses. They are a thing now.
California is expensive but I wouldn’t mind listening to the waves all day. I’m thinking Berkeley maybe, or even close to the beach. They say the sound of water has a drowsing effect. From the pitter-patter of rain on shingles at Shadow Garden to the crash of ocean waves, that’s a nice thought. Imagine it and it will come true. I’m so steeped in this moment, so deeply entrenched in the vision that I hear myself speak out loud. “Where is the sign? The Hollywood sign?”
My voice alerts the driver. There’s a pause, a long look at me in the rearview mirror. He makes eye contact and then cracks a smile.
“This is not LA, Mrs. Pryor. We’re not in California.”
“Don’t be silly,” I say and keep my voice steady. “I knew that.” A deep sigh, a smoothing of my black skirt. “I had a moment, is all.”
A cardboard box rests on the seat beside me. When I fastened my seat belt I almost reached around and buckled the box in, but then thought otherwise. That would have been silly.
Inside the box, underneath packing peanuts and balled-up brown paper, sits a handblown urn. I had it specially made for Edward, the glass shining in all colors of the rainbow. I spoke with the company over the phone and we deliberated colors.
“We roll raw molten glass in pigmented glass like you would roll an ice cream cone in sprinkles. Then the pigmented glass is heated on the ball of raw glass, merging them in a completely random pattern. We then blow and roll it into shape. It’s not until then that the true color coverage will expose itself.”
I was partial to purple at first, the color of blooming crape myrtles Edward loved so much, but then I thought otherwise. Rainbow colors will be more fitting on my California bungalow mantel. Edward’s patent royalties and the sale of Hawthorne Court, even after all the damage he did, will support me for decades to come. Of course there will be an appropriate time of mourning and then I will have a talk with Marleen. I will offer her to accompany me to California. Her loyalty is second to none and maybe she’ll take the leap with me.
I think about the letters often, by now discarded in a foul-smelling heap on the edge of the city. I want to think it was a sign, the fact Marleen threw them out, never to see the light of day. I am saddened by their loss, at the same time I have felt the pressure ease. No one needs to know what our family went through. Once you have been torn down and reinvented yourself, it’s easier the next go-around. The beads are linked by the string, by time, but who am I to know what comes next?
64
The boxes had arrived the previous night and hours before opening, booksellers and store employees in every bookstore around the country displayed Vera Olmsted’s book stacked up high on tables, and in special store presentations. Entire windows displayed the book, making for an eerie but beautiful picture. Published posthumously and to great fanfare, it was on every bestseller list even before publication, the preorder numbers so high it wasn’t going to be outdone, not even by a presidential memoir.
Vera Olmsted’s life had rendered more than anyone could imagine: a pragmatic childhood (the book Maypole told of the day she found her brother dangling off the rafters on her family’s farm in Norrtälje) and the investigation which resulted in the conviction of their neighbor, a man she had called Uncle Ludvig all her life. Her decades-long friendship with an iconic fashion designer who rose to fame as they were rumored to be a couple. Her attendance at every super-elite literary salon from Paris to New York since the late fifties, the first woman to be nominated and reject the position of goodwill ambassador of the Council of Europe. Her affair with a Canadian politician and the media frenzy that ensued; two failed marriages, and her seclusion in an unknown location as she worked on multiple short story collections, a book of essays, and a highly anticipated novel. The last years of her life were shrouded in mystery.
Details were scarce and early critics were tight-lipped but what booksellers unpacked on publication day was nothing short of a surprise to the publishing world and the reading public: a novel about an affluent couple and their daughter who plunged to her death in the family’s mansion. The novel drew significant parallels between Donna Pryor and her daughter, Penelope, who fell to her death in their home in an elite community. No one was prepared for the frenzy that ensued on publication day, when Vera Olmsted named Donna Pryor’s late daughter, Penelope, as the hit-and-run driver who was responsible for the death of a woman at White Rock Lake Park, a case that had gone cold years ago and had prompted documentaries, conspiracy theories, and YouTube videos.
Vera Olmsted and Donna Pryor spent a year living as neighbors at Shadow Garden, a luxury estate that was home to over one hundred men and women living with dementia. Vera Olmsted blended in so well because she played the part of a patient, even going through the other tenants’ trash occasionally. Depending on the severity of the disease, residents enjoy almost completely independent lives or assisted living with caretakers. The entire staff are trained geriatric nurses who do everything from cooking meals to supervising activities at the sprawling forty-acre estate.
The novel was titled An American Tragedy.
“This is, without any doubt, the next great American novel,” said Peter Willoughby from FrontierBooks. “We are honored to publish An American Tragedy. I speak for everyone at FrontierBooks when I say we were blown away by it.”
65
DONNA
The café is located between the market and the office buildings, the aroma of coffee enticing. Shadow Garden now has a bookstore and a farmer’s market, and there’s talk of building a spa including a pool and a state-of-the-art gym.
The barista has dark eyes, a narrow nose, and a softly shaped jaw. Her hair is pulled into a bun. She changes the coffee flavor daily and I never know what I’m going to get. I’ve learned to be less picky about things.
Today, there’s a nutty scent in the air and it just might be a hazelnut day. I’ve read that there are over eight hundred known aromatics in coffee, but I could be mistaken. I come to the café daily but since Vera’s move I have yet to make friends.
People rush by the window, some enter, and every time the door opens, I look up expecting her to walk in. The interior of the café is warm and cheery, with bright lights and colorful walls.
I ask the barista for a croissant. “Would you warm it up for me, please? Sorry for being so particular.”
“That’s all right, dear, I don’t mind,” she says and her eyes light up.
“Thanks.”
“Have you found a place yet?” she asks and I must have a puzzled look on my face. “You were looking to move, remember? You were looking for a house?”
I laugh, though I don’t remember having told her of my plan.
“I found a place. I think it’s just perfect.”
“I’m glad,” she says and hands me a brown, warm paper bag. “Enjoy.”
* * *
• • •
I have indeed found a house online. With Marleen’s help and shortcuts that help me navigate, I have fallen in love with a house halfway between Santa Barbara and Ventura, in the small coastal town of Youngsport. The pictures of the moderately priced bungalow in short walking distance to upscale eateries and vintage stores looks like a dream to me. The bungalow sits on less than half an acre, a stark departure from Hawthorne Court and Shadow Garden, but it’s all I’ll need.
Youngsport is a picturesque Spanish-style town close to the beach and a cliff. I imagine standing on that cliff, listening to the layers of the sounds of the ocean; some waves come from afar, build up to a murmur, followed by a roaring surf when the waves crash against the cliffs, a sound I imagine to be closer, almost as if it took less time to reach the shore. Though Youngsport Beach has a moderate swell at best, it’ll be perfect for swimming. I’ll be able to watch sea lions flop around on the beach at the nearby sanctuary and I plan on making a sizeable donation to them. I imagine seagulls everywhere and their constant wailing and squawking, the chirping and the cawing in the distance nothing but white noise. It’ll be a nice change from the grackles at Shadow Garden and there’s a short uphill hike that culminates in some amazing ocean views.
With Marleen’s help I’ll make a life there. We’ll go for daily walks in town and the historic buildings make Youngsport an attractive filming location with numerous movie productions underway. What a thrill. I’d never admit it but I wonder how it would feel to be a former actress who has retired after a long and prosperous career and maybe I’ll pretend a camera is following me as I go about my daily life. But those are just games I play with myself.
* * *
• • •
I’ve got word Vera has passed. When the air gets thick, I tell myself she’s somewhere scribbling away
on those yellow notepads she loved so much. It’s a lie I tell myself, but it makes mourning for her bearable. The bag on the chair next to me contains the book Vera published posthumously. I basically forced Marleen to buy a copy and eventually she gave in. I can be persuasive, I know that about myself. I’m proud of Vera and all she achieved, but mostly I’m proud of the friendship we had. Hearing her name makes me weepy and Marleen changes the subject.
I love the title. An American Tragedy. Marleen is critical of the book, maybe she’s concerned about my obsession with it. There’s an overall change going on with her. She, after the initial shock of Edward’s death, has come into her own, she no longer wears black skirts and drab blouses but has taken my suggested casualness to heart. On one hand she seems to have adapted, in her wardrobe as much as in her behavior, though lately she’s been up to her old tricks again. Unrest is the word that comes to mind, excessive attempts to keep me busy. I don’t know what that’s all about but I ignore it. The less said about that, the better.
I shut down the laptop and pull the book from my bag. It’s a hardback with an embossed sleeve, glossy black letters on a white background. A chandelier shattered in pieces on a black-and-white checkerboard floor.
A simple dedication on the first page, all by itself. For Donna. And then Vera quotes Thornton Wilder, we can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures. I ponder that one a lot.
The story is rather tragic. It’s not the kind of book you consume in two sittings, it feels more like a true friend you return to at the end of each day. I form a quiet yet firm attachment to the characters and before I know it I’ve been sucked into the story. I finished the book quite a while ago but the moment I read the last sentence, I feel compelled to begin again. Some sort of loop I’m stuck in, as if I want to remind myself of something—I caught myself reading paragraphs over and over—and as the plot unfolds, it’s like plucking petals, and I cry and cry.
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