The Halo Effect: A Novel

by Anne D. LeClaire

  At last, the ceremony came to an end, and the family departed, politely murmuring their appreciation. “I hope you feel better soon,” Gloria said when he took her hand. Alone, he sat for a moment in the front pew, welcoming the quiet of the empty chapel. His stomach rumbled, and he realized he hadn’t eaten since morning and then it was something light. A soft-boiled egg. He’d feel better when he got some food. By now, with any luck, Lena MacDougall would have gone home and Father Burns would be off somewhere. Hiking, he thought, remembering those shorts with pockets on the hips and rear and legs, more than anyone could possibly have need of. As he rose to leave, he spied a rumpled Kleenex in the front pew where the family had gathered, and on the floor by the altar a few rose petals had dropped from the bouquet. He made a mental note to see if Mr. Jervis would arrange to come and tidy the place before his usual scheduled time on the weekend. As he locked the door behind him, a wisp of a thought sat on the edge of memory, too elusive to break through.

  Mrs. Jessup had left a platter of deli meat and a second plate of tomatoes, sliced and lightly dressed with olive oil and salt. He was relieved to find that indeed Father Burns was nowhere to be seen, and so he fixed himself a dish and sat there at the kitchen table. The meal reminded him of those his mother and grandmother would prepare from the daily bounty of their summer gardens. Cucumber and corn and tomatoes and green snap beans. When the first crop of corn was ripe, the family would sometimes have a meal consisting entirely of sweet corn, ear after ear of it dripping with the butter his grandmother had churned herself, all of them delighting in the pleasure of that first taste of the season. Or blueberries. He could almost taste them. One time he and Cecelia had eaten almost a whole watermelon between them and been sick well into the night. At the memory of his sister, his eyes filled, and he wiped the tears away. He was turning into a sentimental old man.

  When he was finished with his meal, he cleaned up the kitchen, poured himself a second glass of iced tea—Lena MacDougall’s advice still echoing—and carried it to the living room in time to catch the first inning of the game, the second of a double header. As he stooped to pick up the remote, the thought that had eluded him earlier in the chapel stayed his hand. As clearly as if the scene were unfolding on the flat-screen in front of him, he recalled the day earlier in the summer. He saw himself sitting in the chapel where he had gone to work on a homily. He recalled the chill in the building, the coldness of the stone floor as it seeped through the leather soles of his shoes, and he remembered catching sight of an object half hidden beneath a pew. He had been working on a sermon. A sermon on the teachings of the apostle Paul. The power of hope and faith in the face of despair. Yes. That was right. So it had been in June. He remembered picking the object up and discovering it was a child’s toy. The little figure that Will Light believed to have belonged to his daughter. Where did you get this? He saw Will’s face across the table at the café. He knew the passing pleasure of solving a little mystery, and with this small victory, a win over elusive memory, the tribulations of the day—fainting during Mass, Lena MacDougall bending over him on the sofa, his failure to say exactly the right thing at the little ceremony in the chapel—all this receded. He clicked on the television and settled in with his tea to watch the ball game, making note before he turned his full attention on the game that he must remember to tell Will Light how he had come to have the little toy.

  It was only later, after the game had ended—the Sox riding a five-game winning streak—and he was about to fall asleep that another question occurred to him. If the Yoda had indeed been Lucy’s as her father believed, how had he come to find it in the chapel so many months after the girl’s death?

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Sophie crossed the lawn to me, her body fit and tan, her step light, and I was ambushed by this thought: This is the woman Lucy would have grown to be.

  Then she was in my arms, embracing me without hesitation, holding me for a long moment. “Hey,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

  Another tsunami of longing swept me. There on the sloping lawn that led down to the cove, my wife in my arms, I had a deep sense of coming home. Please, I thought, can we begin again? “Sorry I’m late,” I said. “I got caught in traffic.” Much too soon, she slipped from my embrace.

  “I was worried about that. Was it bad?”

  “Yes. I completely forgot about weekend gridlock. I should have left earlier.” Is there still a chance for us?

  “It doesn’t matter. That’s one of the things I love about being here.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, the way everything slows down. The way time is measured not by clocks but by the tides, moon, and sun.”

  “Sounds good.” And it did. A timeless universe.

  “Honestly, Will, it’s amazing how when we stop paying attention to minutes and hours, they become nearly irrelevant. Sometimes this feeling is so strong I think we all must walk around wearing a mantle of stress or tension that we aren’t even aware of.” She looked at me. Her head slightly tilted in question. “Do you know what I mean, Will?”

  “I do.

  “And somehow, here, in the timelessness of this place, that tension dissipates.”

  I felt it too, the relaxation of being freed from ordinary demands. Or maybe it was being with Sophie. For a moment, and if that was all it was, one moment, I would take it and be grateful, for that moment, the world was nearly right. That day in Maine the inevitability of what lay ahead was as far away as Jupiter.

  “Honestly,” she said, “it makes me want to do away with every timepiece in creation. Without them, everything expands.”

  “Not everything.” I grasped her waist playfully and encircled it with my hands. “Are you even eating, Soph?”

  She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh God, yes. Joan and I eat like trenchermen.”

  Joan. I waved the name away, determined not to let anyone intrude on this time. “Not starving then?”

  “No, but you must be. When it got late, I thought you might stop on the way up, but I waited on lunch anyway.”

  “I didn’t stop.” I couldn’t wait to get here.

  “Good. Why don’t you bring your things into the house while I set out the food. And unless you prefer to be inside, I thought we’d eat outdoors.” She laughed lightly. “By some miracle, the black flies are absent today. They must have known you were coming.” I knew we were both remembering a long-ago vacation when I had declared war on the insects.

  “Outside sounds perfect.” Suddenly everything was near perfect. On the way to the car, I had the urge to shout this out. To let her know that this minute, here, with her was—well, not perfect, perfect would be another reality that was lost forever—but this was close, as close as it had been in months. I had changed, I wanted to tell her. And there, standing on that lawn, I really believed that was true. I believed I could be what she needed me to be. I believed by some miracle that summer, my anger and raging need for revenge had begun to dissipate, the grenade disarmed. But when I turned to tell her this, she had already disappeared into the house. As I retrieved my bag and the portfolio of drawings, I was aware of the quintessential sounds of summer in a way I hadn’t been back in Port Fortune, as if with each mile traveled north, my senses had been sharpened. I heard the distant hollow slapping of a screen door against a doorjamb, the echo of voices across the cove, a chorus of birdsong from the grove of trees, and from somewhere not too far away the metallic clanging of horseshoes hitting a post followed by jubilant shouts.

  The house was as I had imagined it. Summer cottage casual, a style Sophie once called shabby chic. Rag rugs thrown on worn pine floors. Furniture that had borne generations of use. A vase of wildflowers Sophie had gathered. The bookcase and the musty collection of Reader’s Digest books. There were ashes in the fireplace, and on one of the chairs I saw a thin cotton shawl I recognized as Sophie’s. I could picture her curled by a fire on a cool evening swathed in the lilac wrap. Again, as I had on arriva
l, I glanced around for a sign of Joan Laurant, but there was nothing I could see that suggested anyone else was staying here. From the kitchen, there was the clink of pottery and flatware. “Where do you want me to put my stuff?” I called.

  “At the top of the stairs, the room on the right. But just leave it for now. Let’s eat first.”

  I helped her carry out the trays. A green salad, cold poached salmon, and sliced cucumbers in a sour cream and chive dressing. The picnic bench where we sat was a repurposed kitchen table painted the same French blue as the farmhouse shutters, and it reminded me of a time we had spent one late August in Provence. A blue umbrella, its fabric faded nearly white from years of summer sun, threw a disc of shade. Sophie poured two glasses of limeade and handed one to me.

  “This looks great,” I said. And then, after a moment, “You look great.”

  “Thanks, Will. This time here has been good for me.”

  “I can see that. I’m glad.” The limeade tasted faintly of mint.

  She raised a questioning eyebrow.

  “No, really. I am.”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re glad.” She reached across the table and laid her hand on me. “I know this hasn’t been easy. I know you would rather I were home. With you.”

  “Yes.” When are you coming back? Are you coming back?

  “How are things at home?”

  “Sweltering. It’s been in the nineties for days.” I didn’t want to talk about the weather.

  “And the work? How’s that going?”

  “It’s going well. If you discount what a pain in the ass the bishop is.”

  She laughed. “I know you’ve told me a bit about who you’ve asked to pose, but I’d like to know more. How many models have you drawn so far?”

  “Fourteen. I’ve completed the working sketches for the first two panels.” I thought of the portfolio, waiting in the house. “In fact, I brought several of the sketches to show you.”

  “I’d like that, Will.”

  “And what about your project? How’s that going?”

  “I’m deep in it,” she said. She paused, as if to add something, but then stopped. She held out the platter of salmon. “More, or are you saving room for pie?”

  “There’s pie, too?”

  “Blueberry. I picked the berries myself.”

  “Keep this up and you’ll have a permanent houseguest.”

  She started to answer but settled for a smile. We ate in a companionable silence. After a while she rose and headed for the house, turning at the steps to ask, “À la mode or straight?”

  “You have to ask?”

  “Two scoops?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Speaking of houseguests,” I said when she returned. “Where’s Joan off to today?”

  She set the wedge of pie in front of me. The spheres of ice cream were already beginning to melt. “Technically, I’m the houseguest. Joan holds the rental lease. But to answer your question, she’s away for a couple of weeks. Visiting friends up in Bar Harbor.”

  “So we’re alone here. Just us.”

  “Just us.” She didn’t meet my eyes. “It’s been great to be here with her though. We split up the cooking and chores. And we’ve been taking the kayaks out every afternoon at dusk. Almost like being in summer camp. She’s trying to decide what the next chapter of her life holds.”

  “How’s that?”

  “She gave her notice at school and is leaving after this year, but she hasn’t any definite plans beyond that.”

  “Hmmm.” I didn’t pursue the subject of Joan or her plans. We fell into a silence but again not an uncomfortable one.

  “Can I get you another piece of pie?”

  “No thanks. I’m good.”

  “Then I’ll just clear things up.”

  I started to rise, but she waved away my help. “I’ve got it. You just relax.” She pointed to the hammock strung between two pines. “I think that’s calling your name.”

  I wasn’t really wanting to laze in the hammock, but I wanted to please her and so let myself fall into it without a murmur and waited for her to come back, wondering as I stared up at the sky if the woven sling would hold both of us. When she returned, she had changed into a bathing suit, and at the sight of her my cock swelled.

  “I’m going to take a swim. Want to join me?”

  What I wanted was her. Then. “I don’t think so.”

  “You sure? It might feel good after your drive.”

  “Maybe in a bit,” I said. I followed her progress as she descended the worn path through the grass down to the narrow pier that stretched out into the cove. Her shape was still girlish. She hadn’t thickened through the middle as many did in midlife, and I felt an irrational pride at this. She walked to the end of the dock and executed a perfect jackknife, then surfaced and called up to me.

  “It’s feels fabulous. Sure you won’t change your mind?”

  “Later. I’m feeling pretty lazy right now. I’ll enjoy it vicariously.” She had always been a good swimmer, and I took pleasure in watching her as she cut through the water, her strokes strong and rhythmic, hair wet and slicked close to her scalp. Otter-mother of our otter-child. Selkie woman.

  I woke to a spray of salt water. Sophie stood over me, flicking drops on me and laughing. “You should have come in with me. It was delicious.”

  “Delicious.” I stared at her, letting my eyes trail over her body. “Yes.”

  She blushed and avoided my eyes. “I’m going to change and then I’ll bring us some wine.”

  “Why don’t I get it while you change?”

  “You look too comfortable to move. Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Long minutes passed, and when she didn’t return, I rolled from the hammock. I found her in the living room, still in her swimsuit, a circle of water at her feet. She was holding the portfolio, and when she looked up her eyes were wet with tears.

  “Oh, Will,” she whispered. “These are—I can’t find the words.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Don’t joke, Will.” Her gaze was steady and serious. “These are stunning. Truly, Will, they’re the best work you’ve ever done. I don’t know how you’ve done it. They are remarkable.” She lifted the sheet with Saint Brendan. “Take this one of Leon Newell. It’s Leon, but it’s Leon elevated to something higher. And look what you’ve done with Duane.” She indicated the drawing of Saint Sebastian. “You’ve captured something broken in him, something wounded, but he shines, Will. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “You’ve drawn the saints, Will. You’ve conveyed them in all their humanness and their transcendent holiness.”

  “I just did what you said, Soph.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “I did it for Lucy.” Lucy. The name that was a constant pain in my heart slipped from my lips with an ease I wouldn’t have believed possible. “For Lucy.”

  “Oh, Will. She would have loved them, you know. She would have been so proud.”

  But she will never know, I thought. Unwilling to pursue this—to destroy the moment—I steered the conversation toward the safer topic of my technical decisions: having all the saints in robes of their individual periods, the variety of ways they clasped hands in prayer. I sensed the shadow that flickered momentarily over her at the shift in subject, but she followed my lead. No more talk of Lucy.

  We cleaned up from the lunch, and Sophie suggested a walk. We began by strolling the cottage property and then continued past the overgrown bushes where Sophie had picked blueberries for our pie and ended up by following a narrow path to the point where the cove spilled out into the Atlantic.

  Earlier, she had asked me if I wanted a copy of her finished chapters to take back to Port Fortune, but I’d said I would prefer to wait until she had completed the entire first draft, but the truth was I was not able to bear reading of murdered and disappeared children, bereft parents, and so, as if by mutual agreement,
we had spoken no more of it. If she was disappointed, she concealed it.

  We ended our walk by the dock, drinking Chardonnay and dangling our legs over the edge of the dock. Sophie had hitched her skirt up to her toned and tanned thighs. My chino cuffs were rolled to my knees. Water lapped our ankles. A lock of hair had fallen over her cheek, and I reached over and pushed it back. “Shall we go change and take a swim to cool down?” she asked.

  The effort of going up to the house to put on a suit was beyond me, and I said, “Right now I’m enjoying this.” And so we sat, sipping wine and staring across the cove, listening as the sounds slowly shifted from those of day to evening. The echoes of mothers calling their children in from play reverberated across the water. We were quiet, falling again into a companionable silence.

  Sophie spoke first. “Lucy would love this.”

  My mind was far away as I’d been thinking about whether I should drive into the nearest town and pick up another bottle of wine or suggest that we go out somewhere for dinner. A shore dinner. Lobster and clams. The whole thing. And her words jolted me back to the present. Lucy would love this. Lucy. Our ever-present ghost-child.