A Sudden Light

by Garth Stein

  Someone laughed at his joke, and the tension was defused. The chairman gave you the key to his office and told Jones where the guest clothes were, the ones he kept in case someone showed up without the proper attire, or tripped and fell off the dock, as sometimes happened. As you unlocked the door to let him inside, he placed his hand on your shoulder.

  “I would like to take you sailing,” he said.

  “I would love to go sailing with you, Mr. Jones,” you replied.

  “Sunset, then?”

  You had to scramble to get someone to cover the rest of your shift. You waited for him on the dock, and he led you to an exquisite wooden sailboat. You’d never seen something so beautiful. He gave you a thick sweater because you had worn a light dress to impress him with your girlishness. He warned you it would get cold on the water. And you sailed with him out onto Narragansett Bay as the falling sun set the sky ablaze.

  “Is this your boat?” you asked him.

  “No,” he replied. “I built it. The owner let me take it out as a favor.”

  “No offense intended, Mr. Jones, but I don’t know what it is you do. Build boats? Are you famous?”

  “I have a bit of a reputation,” he said, modestly omitting that his rapidly spreading reputation was in having a unique and special touch with the creation of wooden sailboats, such that the fabulously wealthy patroness Greta von Tiehl, granddaughter of the founder of the yacht club at which you worked, had commissioned one of his hulls. Which was what the fuss was about.

  He turned the boat in to the wind and let the sails luff, and they made a loud clapping sound. He sat down next to you and touched your face with his rough fingers, but the roughness felt good to you; it felt like home.

  “Are you enjoying our sail?” he asked.

  “I am enjoying it, Mr. Jones,” you replied. “But I wish I knew your given name. You’ve only been introduced as Mr. Jones.”

  “You know my given name already,” he said. “You know everything about me already.”

  He kissed you, and you kissed him, and the sail clapped as if in applause.

  And you, my dear mother, were in love.

  – 46 –

  AFTER THE FALL

  I don’t know how long Grandpa and I stood there watching. Five minutes. Thirty minutes. An hour. I don’t know, because I was numb. In the distance, I could hear sirens. A neighbor must have seen the smoke and flames; a neighbor must have called. The sirens were getting closer. I heard a loud boom, something exploding. Part of the roof collapsed, shooting sparks high into the air. Some of those sparks settled on and ignited other parts of the shake roof. More fire. A hot summer: no rain, and a wooden firetrap of a house. It wasn’t long until a wall collapsed, and then more fell in on itself. The fire trucks arrived, but the firefighters seemed baffled by the rage of flames with which they were confronted; they had no tools to fight such an inferno. Forest-fire helicopters would have been of little use; thimbles of water thrown on a volcano by tiny men with tiny buckets.

  I watched the firefighters as they mounted an attempt, despite the odds. They were going to try, because trying was what they were supposed to do. But they all knew already. Everyone knew. Riddell House was gone; there was nothing left to save.

  Brother Jones did not escape Riddell House that morning. Nor did Sister Serena.

  For a few days after the fire, I imagined that my father and Serena had escaped together. Maybe they had used a secret back staircase to exit the house. Maybe they ran away, escaped down the creek to the railroad tracks, and hopped a freighter bound for a distant land. Maybe they were dancing this very minute to old records they found at the local Goodwill in whatever town had accepted them as strangers. Maybe they would live happily ever after.

  But I wasn’t allowed to cling to that fantasy for long; their remains were discovered. The investigators from the city identified them by their teeth. Even Serena, as untraveled as she was, had dental records; thus was the evidence. Thus was the proof.

  Because the earth calls. The soil, the rocks, the clay. It calls to us to remind us, to make sure we remember. The earth will ultimately win. It always does. We will, all of us, end our lives here. Even the birds.

  – epilogue –

  FINAL REUNION

  “What happened after that?” Beth, my younger daughter, asks me when I’ve finished my story.

  She’s sitting in the tall grass of the meadow of The North Estate Park, where we’ve come as a family to scatter the ashes of my grandfather—her great-grandfather—Samuel Riddell, who has recently passed away. Though we have spent many years in England and, later, in Connecticut, my grandfather’s final wish was to have his ashes scattered at The North Estate.

  Beth, who just turned eleven years old, looks positively like an angel, all long blond hair and tanned skin, and a white, willowy dress. All blue eyes and freckles and a bit of mischief in her smile.

  “Did Grandma Rachel come to collect you?” Belle, my older daughter, asks. Belle is less girlish, and more like my wife, I think. A bit more forceful, a bit more tenacious; feminine, to be sure, but with an edge.

  “She stayed in England,” I say. “She sent her brother to collect me, though I’m sure I could have handled it. She didn’t want to confront certain things, I think.”

  “Is that why she walked away when you started telling the story?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Probably. I stopped trying to figure out my mother a long time ago.”

  “Where is she?” Belle asks.

  “She went that way,” Sophie, my wife, answers, pointing to the edge of the woods.

  “If you follow the steps down into the ravine, the creek will take you out to the sound,” I explain to them. “But if you follow the path out to the bluff, there’s a gazebo that has an amazing view. If it’s still there.”

  “You answered Belle’s question, but you didn’t answer mine,” Beth complains.

  “I’m sorry, honey. What was your question?”

  “What happened after that? What did you do after the fire?”

  “We did what Ben wanted,” I said. “That’s why this is all a city park now, with the parking lot and the signs and the plaque that says THE NORTH ESTATE. And then Grandpa and I got on an airplane and flew to England to live with my mother. And then I grew up. And then I fell in love with your mother, and we had babies—you two. And we’ve been living happily ever after ever since.”

  I pull Sophie to me so our hips bump, and I kiss her with theatrical passion so the girls think I’m kidding, but I really do mean it. I mean every bit of it. I love her so much I can hardly stand to look at her. (Sometimes I’m amazed that I can feel such feelings, but I know they exist inside of me, whether or not I am able to communicate them to those I love.)

  “Gross,” Belle says, an appropriate reaction from an adolescent girl.

  “What about Ben?” Beth asks, unfazed. “Is he still here?”

  “No,” I say. “Grandpa and I set him free.”

  “How are you so sure?” Belle asks defiantly.

  “Because I saw him go. It took them a long time to put out the fire, and what was left of the house was very hot for many days. That’s why it was so difficult to find my father’s and Serena’s remains. But the evening after the fire, as the sun was setting, I went back to the house—as close as I could get—”

  “Where did you sleep, if the house burned down?” Belle asks.

  “They wanted us to go to a motel, but Grandpa Samuel refused to leave. He insisted on staying in the cottage. Neighbors brought us camping equipment—lanterns and a butane stove and sleeping bags—and food. We camped inside the cottage; it wasn’t that bad. Anyway, that evening I was so tired, I wanted to sleep for a week. But my father and Serena were still missing, so I couldn’t sleep. I snuck out of the cottage and went back up to the house to—I don’t know why I went, actually—to feel what it was that I had lost? As I stood there, looking at the smoldering remains of a once-magnificent hou
se, I felt a breeze on my neck—”

  “There’s always a breeze when he arrives,” Belle whispers to Beth.

  “When who arrives?” Beth whispers back.

  “When Ben arrives. Duh.”

  “That’s right,” I say. “There’s always a breeze when Ben arrives. I looked behind me, and he was standing next to me like I’m standing next to you.”

  “What did you say to him?” Beth asks.

  “I told him he could go. The house was gone, and Grandpa had agreed to turn the land over to the city, and so there was no reason for him to stay any longer.”

  “But your dad died,” Beth points out. “And Serena, too. Weren’t you sad?”

  “I was very sad—”

  I stop, surprised by the upwelling of emotions I feel at this moment. I have rationalized my father’s and Serena’s deaths for so long, they have become the stuff of legend in my mind. Their deaths were necessary, I’ve always told myself, to free me, and to free future generations of Riddells from the burden Elijah carried. It made so much sense to me, I thought I was beyond the emotion of it. But standing on the bluff and talking to my daughters about it catches me off guard, and I have to take a moment to gather myself.

  “My father promised to save Serena,” I say, finally. “He had to try. He couldn’t not try.”

  I pause and rub my chin, wondering if my daughters can understand what I can’t fully understand. Sophie puts her hand on my shoulder and squeezes.

  “What did Ben do?” Beth asks.

  “He nodded to me. He knew the debt had been settled and he could go off to find Harry, or do whatever was coming next for him. He walked across the meadow to the edge of the woods. I saw him disappear into the woods right over there. See that tall tree? That’s his tree.”

  “That’s Ben’s tree?” Belle asks.

  “You climbed it,” Beth says reverentially, which makes me smile. “To the very top!”

  “And then I watched Ben climb that tree to the very top,” I tell them. “He held on up there, swaying in the breeze, for quite a while. Then he reached up with his hands and he took hold of the sky. A gust of wind came and swept him from the top of the tree, and off he flew.”

  They follow my finger as I point in the direction I saw Ben depart.

  “He didn’t fall?” Belle asks.

  “No. He didn’t fall. He flew off into the sky until he was so small I couldn’t see him anymore; then he was gone.”

  None of us speaks for a long time. Minutes, maybe. We look at the grass, we look at the trees. We look at Puget Sound and the Olympics. We wander a few feet from each other, but we still remain a unit; we stay close. We look at the sky, and at the path of Ben’s flight. In a sense, we celebrate Ben’s liberation with our silence. I like to think so, anyway.

  “We should visit the graves,” I say after a time. “Up on Observatory Hill. My father and Serena and Ben and Harry are there, with my grandmother and great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, too. And then we can go down to the beach.”

  “The beach,” Beth cries emphatically. “Finally!”

  “I’ll take them to Observatory Hill,” Sophie offers. “You should go find your mother. You can meet us at the beach.”

  “When are we going to scatter Grandpa Samuel’s ashes?” Beth asks.

  “In a bit,” Sophie says. “After we see the gravestones.”

  She gives me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Go,” she says. “Find your mother and look after her.”

  The three of them head off across the meadow. I watch as they cross over the footprint of where Riddell House stood twenty-three years ago. No evidence of Riddell House exists, but I can still see it. It’s still there for me.

  I make my way down the path until I emerge from the brush and see the gazebo. She’s there, as I knew she would be; she’s not the beach type. But I’m curious to see that someone is with her.

  She’s sitting with a man. He reaches for her hand, and she offers hers so that their fingertips just barely touch.

  I’m curious for a moment, but not really. I know that man. And I know that gesture. I remember it from a motel next to a highway in New Haven.

  My mother, after all this time, has been reunited with my father.

  I almost laugh, but I don’t because I don’t want to give myself away. I watch them together, talking and laughing and talking more. And then she leans her head into his shoulder. And then she lifts her face and he kisses her. They are complete. They are together.

  I don’t want to disturb them, but I want to speak with my father as well. I want to tell him that I understand his promise to Serena, and his promise to himself, and his promise to the dead, and that his leaving me was not an act of abandonment, but an act of love. I want to tell him that I know. But I don’t interrupt them, because I’ve already told these things to my father. I’ve felt his presence at different times and different places in my life. I know he’s been with me to see things and hear things, to share things with me and my family.

  But my mother has been so alone—and so angry—because she has never found reason to believe. I see now that everything is different. I know, because I see her with him. And if I see her with him, then she must see him, too. Which means she believes.

  And my thoughts are so loud that I disturb the moment, I ruffle the energy of the universe. For everything has everything to do with everything. My father turns and looks over his shoulder at me. He smiles and nods, and then he fades into the air. He dissipates like smoke and is gone; my mother is alone in the gazebo.

  I approach. She hears me and turns. She’s wearing her sunglasses, and she has such a peaceful smile on her face; she seems somehow more contented than I’ve seen her since I was a child.

  She is still my mother, with her sharp features and taut skin and dark, curly hair. The way she’ll talk and talk around things until you throw up your hands and say, it’s fine, I give up, you win. But she isn’t the same mother I remember from so long ago in Connecticut. She’s not the mother who took me fishing when I was a kid because my father was obsessed with building his wooden boats so he didn’t have time for me, or the mother who loved the first apples of fall when we would go on our drives upstate—the snap and explosion in your mouth of that first, tart bite—or the mother who would cry and be unable to finish reading me The Giving Tree, because she was so overcome with sadness at the image of the old man sitting on the stump. That mother died in the fire with my father.

  But I don’t know. As Serena would say: There’s so much we don’t know, how can we pretend to know anything at all? Serena, with her forever blue toes.

  I sit down next to my mother in the gazebo. She looks over at me, takes a quick breath, and purses her lips. Through her sunglasses, I see tears welling in her eyes.

  “I know,” I say.

  “You know what?” she asks with forced nonchalance. “What do you know?”

  “I saw him with you.”

  She shakes her head quickly. The tears in her eyes bulge, and then flow down her cheeks from behind her dark glasses.

  “I can’t believe it,” she says, and she leans against my shoulder, which catches me by surprise, because she has never leaned on me before.

  “It’s impossible, isn’t it?” she asks. “He was here, wasn’t he? Didn’t you see him?”

  “I saw him.”

  “So you are my witness.”

  I put my arm around her, and she folds into me, and I like the feeling of being able to comfort my mother. It’s not something I’ve felt before.

  “He said he knew that one day you would bring me back here,” she says after a time.

  “I would have brought you sooner, but you—”

  “But I refused,” she says. “I was afraid. I didn’t know he’s been waiting here for me all along.”

  “No, Mom, he hasn’t been waiting. He’s always been with you. You just haven’t been able to see him.”

  “It’s The North Estate, then, isn
’t it?” she asks, sitting up straight and composing herself. “I was sitting here, and I felt a breeze. It was cool and pleasing. This place is so beautiful and I could feel the magic of it, and then I heard someone say my name and I turned, and he was there. He sat with me, like you’re sitting with me. We talked, and he held my hand. Then he kissed me and told me that he will always love me and I should never be afraid.”

  I rub my neck, thinking of my father and my mother together again. What I had always wanted. I finally did it; I’d accomplished my goal. Although not very conventionally, I suppose.

  “The last thing he said was, ‘My peace I give unto you,’ ” she says. “I must have looked confused, because he told me you would know the significance of those words.”

  My peace I give unto you. My mother sees my reaction, and it’s her turn to reach out to me. She holds me and rocks me back and forth like a mother should. All of the emotions about my family, my father, but also the generations before him, Elijah and Ben and Harry. Isobel and Serena. My grandfather and his fingers. Everything spills out of me until I feel purged.

  “Those words are from the book by John Muir that Ben wanted me to see,” I say when I am ready to speak again. “The Mountains of California. I tried to tell you about Ben’s messages when I was fourteen, but you wouldn’t believe me. Those are the words Dad said to his mother moments before he euthanized her. I saw it in a dream. Those same words are on Benjamin Riddell’s tombstone, who died in 1904. My peace I give unto you.”

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I thought you were making up stories—going a little crazy in this house with your imagination and nothing to keep you occupied. I didn’t know how to believe you. I’m so sorry.”

  “None of that matters because you believe me now.”

  And so we sit silently for a time, as the minutes stretch out against Puget Sound. We indulge in the Zen of Grandpa Samuel. Until my mother finally breaks the moment.

  “Your story,” she says. “I didn’t think I could stand to hear it.”