A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  I called back, but he couldn’t hear.

  Quickly, gingerly—almost possessed—I descended the tree to the lowest branch. I strapped on my gaffs and used the chain to descend the trunk as if I’d done it a hundred times. I bagged the equipment and ran through the woods and across the meadow to my dinner.

  – 41 –

  THE DUMBWAITER

  I went in the front door instead of the back and called to the kitchen that I wanted to change my shirt before dinner. My arms were caked with dirt and dried blood from my climb, and my hands were black with pitch. I ran upstairs and washed as best I could; I masked my wounds with a long-sleeve T-shirt.

  Downstairs, dinner was already on the table. In addition to the usual vegetables, bread, and lemonade, my father had grilled kabobs, which meant he was completely under Serena’s spell.

  “Where did you get off to?” Serena asked me offhandedly.

  “Just hiking around.”

  She glanced at me suspiciously and passed the peas to my father, who served himself some and passed them along. When we had all been served and had begun eating, my father stood up abruptly.

  “We forgot Dad’s medicine,” he said.

  Serena immediately grew tense and sat rigidly in her seat.

  “I’ll get it—” she said.

  She started to rise, but my father waved her off and moved quickly to the cupboard. Oh, no, I thought. This isn’t the best way to handle it. Really it isn’t. He retrieved the medicine bottle and scrutinized the label. He opened the lid.

  “I can do it, Brother Jones,” Serena said. “Really.”

  “I’ll do it. He gets two? Or three?”

  “Two,” Serena admitted.

  She watched tensely as my father shook two pills into his palm. I’m sure she was wondering, as was I, how it would play out. He looked at them closely, and then he looked at Serena deliberately. The room became still. Very still.

  “It’s effective, this medicine?” my father asked archly.

  After a pause, Serena broke their stare and poured lemonade into Grandpa Samuel’s glass.

  “You would be surprised how effective,” she said as if she had just dodged a bullet.

  He nodded and replaced the pill container in the cupboard. He returned to the table and set the pills in front of Grandpa Samuel. He resumed his seat, and I wondered why he didn’t say something! What was the point? Not only of corroborating the truth but of doing it so obviously in front of Serena? I didn’t get it at all. Grandpa Samuel swallowed his pills with lemonade.

  “It’s good to see you so concerned about Daddy’s well-being, Brother Jones,” Serena said, flashing her smug cat eyes at my father.

  “It’s important that we all work together on this,” my father said. “Alzheimer’s is difficult for everyone involved.”

  “It certainly is,” Serena agreed.

  And then we ate dinner.

  * * *

  I was baffled by my father’s behavior. I already knew he and I weren’t on the same team, but I thought his complicity in Serena’s scheme was born out of willful ignorance. A collaboration by benign neglect. I didn’t realize my father would actually take part in the scheming and manipulations. I thought that was all Serena’s doing. Nevertheless, I had hidden the power of attorney, which I equated with stealing the distributor cap of an old car, like they do in the movies. It slows the guy down for a while, but it never stops him completely.

  As I headed to my room, I was struck by a different thought. It occurred to me that each time I had seen Serena give Grandpa Samuel his Alzheimer’s medication, a visit from the dancing ghost of Isobel had followed in the night. The thought was so provocative, I stopped still in the hallway. Pills. Restlessness. “Medicine.” Dancing. While I pondered the connection, I noticed a shadow. I heard a creak. Was it Ben, unable to resist giving me a clue? I walked down the hall to find the door to a small pantry space ajar. Had my uncle of some level of greatness returned to me? I pushed the door open to reveal a small, empty, white room with a counter against one wall. On the counter was a wicker clothes hamper. I pushed the hamper aside, revealing a hatch door. I opened the hatch and found the shaft.

  The dumbwaiter shaft.

  I hopped up on the counter, ducked inside the shaft, and climbed the ladder to the top. The hatch on the third floor opened into the closet in the ballroom. Just like that. Fascinating.

  I closed up the hatches and slipped from the house unnoticed to visit Grandpa Samuel in the barn. I scavenged a hammer and some small nails from his workbench and returned to the house. I was going on a hunch. Instinct. Alzheimer’s meds equaled Isobel visit. And Isobel always magically vanished when she was noticed. I could do the math, as Serena liked to say . . .

  I tacked the hatch door shut in the ballroom closet, being careful to make as little noise as possible, and then I returned the hammer and remaining nails to the barn, at which point I spent the evening keeping my grandfather company by reading to him from Harry’s journals as he worked on his chair legs, time we both enjoyed.

  – 42 –

  REDEMPTION

  Later that night, I was lying on my bed, trying unsuccessfully to write my impressions of my journey to the top of the tree—it was so clear and so vivid, yet the words would not come to describe it; I was distracted by the trap I had set with the dumbwaiter, and I wondered if it might actually work—when my father knocked and let himself in. He perched at the end of my bed, his elbows on his knees, looking through his hands at the floor; he said nothing. I put aside my journal; I didn’t believe my father had come into my room looking for something, but to offer something instead.

  We sat silently for quite a while before he spoke.

  “Grandpa Samuel was supposed to do it,” he said. “The doctor who gave us the medication said that Grandpa Samuel should give her the injection in case something went wrong. If there were an investigation and someone were held responsible, he said, it would be better for it to be him. Because I still had my whole life ahead of me. People didn’t do things like that twenty-three years ago—assisted suicide, or whatever they call it; I’d call it euthanasia. People went to prison for it. They still do.”

  My father laughed. He cleared his throat and fidgeted about a bit. He stood and walked across the room to my desk.

  “Fathers are supposed to do that for their sons,” he said. “I would do it for you.”

  “You would go to prison for me?”

  “If something risky had to be done and I were in a position to protect you by doing it? Absolutely. Yes, I would.”

  “But your father didn’t.”

  “No, my father didn’t.”

  “Is that why you gave him the NōDōz at dinner tonight?” I asked.

  My father was stung by the comment.

  “I wanted to know for sure,” he said. “I needed to see.”

  “But you didn’t have to give the pills to him. You could have called Serena on it.”

  “And then what would have happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “It’s better that she think I’m complicit in the deal. Until I can figure out what to do.”

  He stopped talking and we sat in silence for another minute. Finally, I opened the drawer in my bedside table and removed Serena’s letter and the cruise tickets, in their neat little envelopes. I held them in the air.

  “What are those?”

  “Evidence,” I said. “You said you didn’t believe I had any evidence. Here it is. Cruise tickets. Check the names, if you want.”

  He took them from me, opened one of the Cunard envelopes, and read the contents.

  “And this?” he asked of Serena’s letter.

  “Read it.”

  He did. When he finished, he dropped the letter and the tickets on the bed and shook his head sadly.

  “What on earth made her think I would go on an around-the-world cruise with her?”

  “Don’t you get it?” I said. “That�
��s what this whole thing is about. There are serious rare books in that library. Like hard-core, really rare books. She could sell them and have a boatload of money. But she doesn’t want the money.”

  “What does she want?”

  “Come on, Dad. Don’t be dense. She wants you.”

  He laughed.

  “That’s crazy!”

  “ ‘Signs point to yes,’ ” I agreed, quoting a Magic 8 Ball.

  “You know,” my father said, “when I was a kid I loved magic. I loved the idea of escaping from something. I loved Harry Houdini. I mean, I worshipped him. There was a magic shop down in the Public Market, and I would hang out there just to feel the magic. I taught myself how to pick locks, even, and I would have my mother lock me in an armoire with a chain around it and I would try to escape. I read everything I could about Houdini. When I think about the tragedy of his death, it still makes me sad. He wasn’t just a magician and escape artist, he was a showman, and so he had to put on a show, even though it killed him.”

  He stopped, and then he sat down at the desk chair, lost in thought.

  “Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

  “Houdini was famous for exposing fake mediums and clairvoyants. He claimed to do it in the pursuit of truth and justice. But I’m not sure that was his motive. I think he really believed in the afterlife. He wanted to see his mother and his father again. And so he made it his mission to debunk the fakes in order to find the authentic. He didn’t do it because he didn’t believe, he did it because he did believe. My mother believed, too. And she promised me she would come back to see me after she died, if she could. If it were possible.”

  “I know.”

  He looked at me curiously, but didn’t question my comment.

  “My father sent me away a week after she was buried,” he continued, “so how do I know she hasn’t been waiting for me here the whole time? I mean, she dances for Grandpa Samuel, doesn’t she? I’ve heard it, haven’t you? She’s here, isn’t she?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” I said after a moment. “But only if you tell me that you believe in this stuff. Did you see Ben at the top of the stairs? Or was it the power of suggestion, like you said before?”

  He looked at me for more than a minute. I think he was trying to discern whether or not I really knew anything at all.

  “I saw him,” he finally admitted.

  “So you know?”

  “Yes, Trevor, I know. Now tell me what you know.”

  I told him. I told him everything I had seen, from the beginning to the end, the same as I had in the upstairs bedroom, but this time he listened differently. And then I told him about seeing Isobel in the dark at the top of the stairs.

  He said nothing for a long time, then he asked if he could see the matches I had. I took the matchbox out of my pocket and tossed it to him. He turned it over in his hands.

  “It was a game,” he said. “It was a trick. That’s what they told me, anyway. I was about your age when I started to doubt her. I went down to the magic shop in the Market and asked the guys working there if there were really spirits. If magic was really magic. No, they said. There are no spirits; there is no magic. None of it is real. Houdini debunked all the mediums, and then he debunked himself by never returning to his wife. They convinced me that my mother was playing a trick on me, and that tricks were for children.”

  “So what happened?”

  “I told her I didn’t believe.”

  “And then?”

  “And then she died,” he said.

  “But that had nothing to do with—”

  “Everything has everything to do with everything,” he said. “That’s the message. Everything has everything to do with everything. No thing, no person, is not a part of the everything. How do I know that she didn’t make herself sick and die just so she could return and show me the truth?”

  “I don’t think someone would do that,” I said. “I don’t think if someone really loved someone, she would do something like that.”

  “I’m very confused right now,” he said, tapping the matchbox against his thumb. “My head hurts. I don’t know what’s going to happen with me and Mom, with me and you, with Grandpa and Serena . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. If I brought you here for a reason—even if I didn’t know it consciously—then this is the reason. What do I do now?”

  “You should do what Ben wants you to do,” I said without hesitation. “You should return Riddell House to the forest.”

  “What about Serena?”

  “You’re going to have to stand up to her and tell her you’re not developing the estate.”

  “Should I tell her we’ll sell the books for money?” he asked, truly confused.

  “She doesn’t want money.”

  “Should I tell her we’ll sell the books and I’ll go with her on the cruise?”

  “Is that what you want to do?” I asked, surprised by the question.

  “I raised her,” he said, pleading for my understanding. “My mother was terminally ill and my father was a hopeless drunk. I did everything, Trevor. I cooked, I cleaned, I helped with her homework. I washed her clothes. I read books to her. I went to the parent-teacher conferences and talked to the teachers about her performance in school. You don’t understand how life was around here. I mean, I have to offer her something.”

  “You have to give her what you can,” I said. “But even if you give her everything, she might not be satisfied.”

  He sighed because he knew my answer was true. He stood up and walked to the door, placed his hand on the doorknob, and looked over at me.

  “I’ve been speaking with Mom,” he said. “On the phone. I feel like I’m in high school again; I look forward to her phone calls.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and I think it’s all going to work out, you know? I know this has been tough on you, and I appreciate the faith you’ve shown in me. But we’re making headway and I have a good feeling.”

  “Really?” I asked again, wondering if it was true or if they were fooling themselves, and if they were fooling me along with them. If we all wanted to be fooled, because in a fool’s world, everything works out in the end.

  “Yeah. I mean, no promises—”

  “Sure.”

  “But, I mean . . . a status report . . . yeah. ‘Signs point to yes.’ ”

  I could see how my father struggled to arrange the facts and conversations and ideas in his head to make them add up, and how there was more hope than conviction in the look on his face. Still, I appreciated his effort.

  “Anyway, thanks for the talk,” he said after a moment. “Apparently, your mother raised you well while I was away.”

  “You were never away,” I said.

  “I was away,” he corrected me. “I was around, but I wasn’t really . . . engaged. After all, I am my father’s son.”

  “You’re being a little hard on yourself, Dad.”

  “Yeah? Well. I probably deserve it. I apologize for my transgressions, Trevor. I hope that one day you can forgive me.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, you’re my father. Isn’t that the way it works?”

  We looked at each other for a moment, long enough to know that the apology was offered and accepted, and then my father held up the matches.

  “Do you mind if I keep these?”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “There’s a drawer full of them in the kitchen.”

  “You should go to sleep.”

  He left, and I turned out my light, but I couldn’t fall asleep; as always, the history of Riddell House kept me awake.

  After a few minutes I got up and headed for the south wing. I was pretty sure I knew where my father had gone, and when I reached the linen closet and saw that the door was open, I knew I was right. The false wall was ajar. I pried it open and looked up the spiral staircase into the darkness. I heard a scratching sound, saw an orange glow at the top of the stairs. The glow lasted a dozen s
econds, then went out. A few seconds later, another scratch, another glow. And again. And again. My father hoping to see his mother.

  I didn’t interfere with his quest. I didn’t know why she wouldn’t appear for him as she had appeared for me. Maybe it wasn’t really her I had seen; maybe Ben sent me a message in her likeness. There were so many theories, I had no way of knowing. But I knew that nothing I could say to my father would stop him, and nothing I could do would satisfy his need to make contact with Isobel. So I left him there with his matches and I returned to my room. I took Elijah’s diary from the sock drawer where I kept it, and I began to read.

  3 March 1916

  My dead son came to me this evening. He sat with me. We spoke. He left moments ago.

  For these many years I’ve waited. I’ve kept my faith. I’ve always believed he would return and I would see him again. So I was not surprised when he appeared. Instead, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of contentment and satisfaction.

  In my room, the sun in the window, a glass of port by my side, I was making an accounting of what I have done: a ledger sheet that showed lives I have destroyed and forests I have ravaged, against donations of money and land I have made, institutions and cities I have helped, as well as individual grants to those less fortunate than me. Ben taught me that what I have carved from the earth is not for me to keep, but for me to return to the earth. I was making my accounting as the afternoon sun flickered through the needles of the trees and upon my ceiling, and I looked up to the window, which looked out upon Ben’s tree, and he was there in the room with me.

  “Ben,” I whispered. “Such a sight for a dying man. You have come for me. Does it mean I am forgiven? Does it mean I am not beyond redemption?”

  Ben knelt beside my chair and I reached for him. I touched him.

  “Have I redeemed myself, Ben?”

  “You have.”

  “I have prayed for it to be so.”

  “It is not in prayer, but in deeds that we find absolution,” he said to me.

  “Do you accept my compromise?” I asked him, referring to the trust I had put into place to allow Abraham and his heirs to continue living at Riddell House. “I didn’t want to break my promise to you—”