A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  But they didn’t know. They looked at me blankly.

  “Richard,” I said. “You’re the historian. You know the history of this house.”

  “I don’t know this part of it,” he said.

  “Benjamin loved Harry—”

  “Harry,” Grandpa Samuel echoed.

  “Harry Lindsey,” I confirmed. “His gravestone is up on Observatory Hill next to Ben’s. They climbed trees together on the coast. Ben was supposed to marry Alice so the deal would go through, but then Harry died. The next day, Ben died.”

  “How did they die?” Richard asked.

  “I don’t know yet. But they died one day apart, and they’re buried next to each other.”

  “How do you know what you do know?” my father asked.

  “I told you, I went to the library and read old newspapers.”

  “All of this was in the newspapers?”

  “No,” I admitted, wondering how far I should go. “I found some old journals, and an old diary.”

  They looked at each other with what I thought was confusion on their faces. But then I realized it wasn’t confusion. It was concern bordering on agitation.

  “You found journals?” my father asked. “Where?”

  “Serena has never mentioned a diary,” Richard added, looking especially consternated.

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose my sources,” I said quickly. “And anyway, that’s not the point. The point is, the clues are everywhere, but no one wants to admit it. There are ghosts in this house. Dad, you saw someone in the staircase when you were a kid—a spirit.”

  “The power of suggestion,” he parried.

  “Grandpa. You said Ben sits with you.”

  “No, no,” Grandpa Samuel said, casting a furrowed brow toward Richard. “I didn’t say that.”

  “You said Ben sits with you in the barn. He tells you stories about Harry.”

  “No, no,” he insisted. “I didn’t say that.”

  Grandpa Samuel kept glancing at Richard, and I saw the tension there, so I turned to Richard.

  “Dickie,” I said without a smirk. “You told me all about houses and their histories and lingering spirits and smudges.”

  “I’ve seen too many episodes of In Search Of . . . ,” Richard said. “And don’t call me Dickie.”

  They wouldn’t admit anything. They were afraid that admitting they believed the unbelievable would derail their plans for Riddell House. I realized I probably shouldn’t tell them any more of what I knew until I knew more myself. It was too early to show my hand when all the cards hadn’t been dealt.

  “I want to stress the need for us all to be on the same page here,” Richard said after a lengthy pause. “The sled doesn’t move forward unless all the dogs are pulling together.”

  “You’ve heard the footsteps,” I said to my father, making a final attempt.

  “You’ve heard the footsteps?” Grandpa Samuel asked quickly.

  My father glanced at me, but then averted his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “I haven’t heard any footsteps.”

  “But you’re here to find Isobel?” I asked.

  “Grandpa Samuel has title to the house,” my father said, still not looking at me. “He needs to sign the papers.”

  “Or we’ll have him declared incompetent by the court,” Richard added. “Which is a much longer and more arduous process.”

  After another silence, Grandpa Samuel spoke. With his head bowed and to nobody in particular, he said: “Grandpa Samuel has Alzheimer’s syndrome.”

  “Disease,” Richard corrected. “It’s a disease, not a syndrome. It’s important to use the correct nomenclature.”

  Serena entered then, with a tray of ice cream sundaes and after-dinner drinks, and set the tray on the table.

  “Dickie!” she cried. “Your favorite dessert!”

  I looked at the other men at the table and saw that everything we had discussed had vanished, swept under the expensive, old Oriental carpets. We had spoken of things, but those things would not be spoken of again. We ate our dessert glumly, silently, staring at our plates, Serena shaking her head to herself because she really didn’t understand what was going on.

  When enough had been consumed, Serena stood up from the table.

  “Let’s go dancing,” she suggested with great enthusiasm. And we moved to the ballroom.

  * * *

  The chandelier threw a twinkling light against the ceiling, and old sconces dripped yellow light down the walls. Serena reached behind the curtain on the small stage and turned on stage lights, which I hadn’t noticed before. Lights like you’d see in a theater, but smaller, clamped onto a metal pipe attached to the ceiling. Downstage center was the old phonograph.

  “Mother taught us how to dance, didn’t she, Brother Jones?” Serena said, slipping a record from its sleeve and setting it on the platter. “As I have taught Dickie.”

  She started the record, and Grandpa Samuel, my father, and I watched as Richard approached her and bowed. Serena curtsied. The music was vaguely Baroque, though I hardly considered myself qualified to identify it more precisely. It sounded like the music my mother would put on the radio station on Thursdays when she cleaned the house. I would hear it if I was sick, maybe, or on a school break. I remembered those days of blaring music and my mother cleaning furiously. There were horns, the pace was not slow, but not especially quick. Whatever the music was, I would forever associate it with the smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap.

  Richard held his arms open, and Serena stepped into him and took his hands and they began. Their dance was clunky and awkward. Serena held her chin high and kept her face blank; she didn’t look at Richard at all. Richard slouched and his moves lacked any precision. He seemed lost much of the time; I could see Serena squeeze his left hand on occasion, giving him a hint on which way to go. The music staggered on until it finally ended; Serena bowed elegantly to her audience; Richard slumped, relieved. We all applauded. The next song began, but Serena lifted the needle before it gained momentum. She took the kerchief from Richard’s suit pocket and dabbed his forehead with it.

  “My, but you do perspire,” she said.

  She turned her attention to my father.

  “Brother Jones,” she said mischievously. “Won’t you ask me to dance?”

  My father saluted her with a wave of his hand and approached. With one hand behind his back and his head bowed, he offered his free hand to her.

  “Sister Serena,” he said. “May I have the honor?”

  He looked over at me and nodded toward the record player. The record was still spinning and the arm was raised. I lined up the needle over the dark groove as best I could and lowered it with the lever. The music began.

  I had only seen my father dance once in my life, at an outdoor wedding my parents had taken me to in Connecticut. It was fall, and the kerosene heaters inside the tent roared to fend off the cold evening outside. My parents were fighting. Not angry fighting, but they were at each other. Sniping. Things had started to unravel with my father’s business and there was a lot of tension in the air. The bride was the daughter of a rich guy for whom my father had built a hull in the past, and I think my mother was angry at that very concept: when my father built hulls, we had a future and we had security—and those things were going to be taken from us because he wasn’t building hulls anymore.

  The groom made a speech, and everyone cheered and toasted, and the band started playing. My father motioned to my mother as the guests moved to the dance floor. But my mother ignored him; she looked away and picked up her wineglass, snubbing my father. I remember my father nodding to himself and picking up his own wineglass and that was that. But then he glanced at me and smiled, as if he’d just remembered I was there. He took a napkin from the table and spread it out on the grass at my mother’s feet. He knelt before her and took her hand. He said something I couldn’t hear, and then he let his forehead fall against her knee. She looked down at him for a long time and then
she slipped her hand from his and touched his head lightly. He looked up and she nodded. And then they danced. I watched them from the table, and they looked so together. Time had stopped. There was no fighting; there were no problems. There was just dancing. And I remember thinking how much I loved my parents. A lot of kids in school didn’t even like their parents, but I loved mine. And I had faith that they would always be together.

  With Serena in the ballroom that night—the second time I saw my father dance—I could see where he learned to dance like he had with my mother. My father and Serena were dancing as one. They looked boneless, arms and legs working together as they danced around in circles, and then he spun her and then he dipped her and she pointed her toe and arched her back and he scooped her around so quickly, but never with a moment of doubt or hesitation. He was assured. His body was erect and tight. He was in charge and Serena responded to his every command like they had been rehearsing it for years. They were ready for competition.

  When the song was over they stopped. Grandpa Samuel applauded loudly, and I lifted the needle. Serena and my father bowed to each other. And Richard said, “I can dance like that,” in a self-deprecating way, and Serena took his kerchief to mop her own brow, and she smirked at him.

  “No one dances like Brother Jones,” she said loudly enough for everyone—but mostly for Richard—to hear, and he felt bad, I could see it in his face. He looked deflated.

  Serena approached me, and lust sparked in my chest. She was so sexy, sometimes I thought my head might explode. I was ashamed of my feelings: I felt a flutter in my stomach when she looked at me, and my mouth got cottony and I heard my own words through her ears and I knew I sounded like a moron. And now. There were beads of perspiration on her chest, and her dress was beautiful, and even though she was wearing shoes and I couldn’t see her toes, I still knew they were there. And she smiled down at me, since, with her heels, she was taller than I was.

  “Mother taught us to dance,” she said to the room. “Mother was a dancer, wasn’t she, Daddy? She was the most beautiful dancer ever. Before she got sick, she would dance for us.”

  “It was a time!” Grandpa Samuel bellowed, surprising us all.

  “Before she got so sick she couldn’t dance any longer, she taught Brother Jones and me to dance so we could dance for her. It was her hope that she would live on in our dancing. We would carry her up the stairs—Grandpa Samuel and your father would carry her; I was just a girl—and she would sit in a chair by the wall over there. What happened to that chair, I wonder. It was there for years! We must have put it somewhere; we don’t throw anything away in this house. Your father and I would dance for her all night. Wouldn’t we, Brother Jones?”

  “We would,” my father said, and I thought I noticed a slight change in him. When he and Serena had started dancing, he was confident and cheerful. Happy, even. But with the talk about Isobel, his demeanor darkened. Not much. But he became melancholy.

  “It was a time,” Grandpa Samuel repeated more softly.

  “Tell me, does Rachel dance?” Serena asked, looking at my father directly.

  “A little,” he replied.

  “A little? I’m disappointed that you didn’t marry a dancing partner. Think of all the pleasure you have denied both her and yourself over the years. But then, maybe your omission was deliberate. Maybe you’ve been saving yourself for me.”

  She held her focus on my father for several moments. I was annoyed with my father for downplaying his dancing with my mother, and I was annoyed with Serena for her sense of possessiveness over my father, but in that instant she turned to me and smiled, and my thoughts stopped entirely.

  “You’re next,” she said. “It’s not difficult; follow me.”

  Suddenly, she took my hands. Suddenly, we were on the ballroom floor. The music began. She leaned in and put her lips to my ear. “You are a soft doll,” she whispered. “I am a girl who wants to play with you.” And she swept me one direction and then the next and it was easy. As long as I didn’t set weight on my feet, as long as my arms were firm but pliable. As long as I realized that when she squeezed my hand, we were going one way, and when she squeezed my shoulder, we were going the other. When I got nervous, when I didn’t know which direction I was supposed to go next and my arms and legs got tight, she hummed into my ear and I immediately felt like liquid and I conformed to her body and she moved me about with such assurance.

  Her eyes half-closed, she didn’t see me. Her cheek pressed against mine, she didn’t hear me. I was owned by her. She had enchanted me and she would do with me what she would and I wanted her to do it. I saw her dance with my father, the way they danced, and I wanted to look like that. I kept my chin raised, I kept my mind and face blank. I gave myself to her and she danced with me as if we had always danced, as if we would always dance together. As if we were forever one.

  The dance was over and she curtsied; I bowed. The others applauded our effort, and, as we parted, she leaned in and kissed my cheek.

  “You’re better than your father,” she whispered. “And he is nonpareil.”

  I felt flushed and victorious, even though I had no idea back then what “nonpareil” meant. Richard went downstairs for lemonade. Serena danced with Grandpa Samuel and made my father dance with me, which was awkward, but I wanted to dance, so I did it. I had never danced before, so I had never known how much I loved to dance. I loved the feeling of gliding across the floor with someone guiding me without words but with unspoken gestures. My father’s shirt was rough and he smelled like a man; I preferred to dance with Serena. But she was teasing me, so I knew she would hold herself distant, if only to prove that she could. She wanted me to remember our moment, I knew. That was how she did things. My awareness of what she was doing only made me ache for her more.

  Richard returned with a tray of glasses, a pitcher of lemonade, and a bottle of vodka. We took a break and he poured us drinks; I was slightly disappointed when he didn’t pour vodka into my lemonade, but I was only a kid, after all, so I understood. Grandpa Samuel began to talk about Isobel. How she could dance. How he met her after his father had donated so much money to the university, after they had named buildings after his father, and though he had already received a superlative education in the nation’s most elite colleges, Grandpa Samuel still liked wandering about the university campus, sitting in on classes and learning things, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and thinking great thoughts. No one ever bothered him during his self-directed postgraduate education. People knew who he was. Other students talked about him, but they rarely talked to him. He read the books that were assigned for the classes he sat in on. While he didn’t participate in class discussions, he turned in assigned essays with the other students, and the essays would be returned to him without grades, but with notes and comments. And that’s how he spent his twenties, because he had little else to do. The army wouldn’t take him because of his missing fingers, so he was passed over by World War II. His father wouldn’t hire him because Abraham thought of his son as an incompetent dolt. What else was there to do but smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, and learn things? He was the grandson of Elijah Riddell, after all. The son of Abraham Riddell. He didn’t need anything but that.

  “And then he met Mother,” Serena said.

  “It was a time,” Grandpa whispered almost inaudibly.

  “What happened then?” I asked.

  “She wanted to dance in New York, didn’t she, Daddy? So Daddy and Mother moved to New York City. Mother was a wonderful dancer, but in New York . . . well, only the best of the best need apply. And while influence takes many forms, Grandpa Abe wouldn’t make that donation, would he, Daddy? Grandpa Abe wouldn’t make the financial investment necessary to secure Mother’s acceptance to an academy and ensure her position in a company of note.”

  “Why not?” I asked.

  “The subjective nature of truth once again rears its ugly head,” Serena replied. “Daddy thought it was because Grandpa Abe disapproved
of Mother specifically, and the arts in general. We learned later that Grandpa Abe really didn’t have any money left that wasn’t borrowed, and so there was no money to give. Nevertheless, the result is what people live with, not the cause. After a year of frustration, they moved back here. But they moved back as a married couple, and then Grandpa Abe couldn’t deny Mother, could he?”

  “We got married in Tarrytown,” Grandpa Samuel said. “We took a train. The justice of the peace married us and then we walked out to see the river.”

  “It was a beautiful fall day,” Serena said.

  “It was a time.”

  We all fell into our own thoughts, which were different because we were all different people. But I knew we all pictured our own versions of Grandpa Samuel and Isobel, freshly married, walking along the banks of the Hudson River.

  “When they moved back here,” Serena said, “Grandpa Abe was furious. He gave Daddy a job counting logs, if you can believe that, and he made Daddy and Mother live in the cottage. Have you seen the cottage?”

  I thought a moment and it occurred to me that I had seen the cottage. In fact, I’d been inside.

  “They lived there?”

  “They did. For a long time. They weren’t allowed in the main house. Not until Mother told Grandpa Abe she was pregnant with your father.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why was Grandpa Abe so mean?”

  “He wasn’t mean, Trevor,” Serena said. “He was filled with hatred. That’s different. Just because you’re filled with hatred doesn’t mean you’re mean.”

  “No?” I wondered.

  “No. If he had been mean, he would have driven them apart. He would have sent Grandpa Samuel off to work in the forests of Montana or Oregon, somewhere where Mother couldn’t have followed him. He would have made her wait for him for years, until her youth faltered. He would have intercepted their letters to feed their growing doubt. He would have used all of his influence to destroy their love. If he had been mean, Trevor, he would have crushed their hearts but left them alive to forever feel the pain he had inflicted, the remnants of their broken hearts clenched tightly in their bloody fists.”