stray pellets of rain smacked the columns of the piazza. Ella’s face and voice were colder than the approaching storm.
I followed her, silent. I met Helen in the great room. Helen stood at a window overlooking East Battery. She was in darkness, her face invisible to me. Rain began to come in off the ocean, kicking up whitecaps on slate gray water barely visible in the streetlights at the seawall.
“I spoke to Geoffrey Alexander by telephone,” Helen said. “He informs me that he met with you this morning. I have also arranged another meeting for you. Tomorrow morning. At nine-thirty. With a retired navy man. Admiral McLean Robertson. I’ve written down his address. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it. He lives on Murray Boulevard.”
“Admiral Robertson.”
“Yes. His former assistant is the one who left Charleston with your mother. I imagine you remember the newspaper articles. If you insist on continuing this futile search for her, the admiral would be a logical person to visit.”
“You are too kind,” I said. Helen had always been a controlling person. I found it amusing that she now felt she needed to control my search.
“Kindness has nothing to do with it,” Helen said, unaware of my amusement. “I simply want to know about the accident that took my son’s life. I have helped you as much as I can. I expect, then, that you will honor our agreement. I want to see what you promised me.”
I moved no closer. Helen did not turn from the window.
“With certain conditions.”
“This is my son’s death we are speaking of. I will not accept conditions.”
“You have no choice. I gave a copy of the police report to a Charleston attorney. If Pendleton and Claire finalize their divorce, and if she becomes mayor, this attorney will deliver it to you. If not, the report will remain in confidence.”
“Why? At least tell me that.”
“No.” I found I enjoyed speaking to Helen in abrupt tones.
Helen continued to speak to the window. “Geoffrey Alexander told me you want to find your mother’s former personal maid. Perhaps I can help you with that.”
“No.” I added nothing more. She might think she was in control, like earlier when she had engineered my exile. But not anymore. I was dangerous now, simply because I cared so little about anything.
“It has been years since I added the word please to any of my requests. Please tell me about my son.”
“No,” I said again. “Good-bye.”
I did not wait for Ella to escort me to the main door.
I had another destination in mind.
**
I walked from Helen’s in anger and frustration, walked through the familiar elegant halls, walked through the garden. In the last light of day, the carriage house appeared much shabbier than it had in the glow of lantern flames of the previous evening. Where climbing ivy failed to cover the exterior walls, the brick was chipped in places, weathered and bleached of color. Wood window frames showed cracks and splinters beneath peeling paint. The roof sagged slightly and was exposed in places where shingles had blown away.
I knocked on the door to the carriage house. Heard footsteps inside. Stepped back as the door opened. And tried not to flinch at impulse of surprise.
“Yes?”
She was Claire. But wasn’t.
For a heartrending moment, I thought I was ten again, shyly lost in my innocent crush on Claire. The girl in front of me could have stepped out of one of the photo albums of my childhood, before my mother left, when Claire and I were two children playing at the beach.
“Yes?” the girl in front of me repeated, an arch in her eyebrows, as if even at this young age, she were accustomed and amused to reducing men to clumsy speechlessness. She took me in from toe to head, slowly. I felt very middle-aged.
“I’m here to see Claire,” I said. “I’m wondering if . . .”
“Mother,” she called behind her, “there’s a man at the door for you.”
She turned back to me. Total self-possession, total self-confidence. “I’m Michelle. Claire’s daughter. Is this a date?”
Before I could introduce myself or reply to her question, Claire appeared directly behind Michelle, holding a glass of white wine.
“Go away,” Claire told me.
“Go away?” Michelle echoed. “Mother, Pendleton goes on dates all the time. You should take your turn too.”
I thought it was sad that a girl who could have been no older than ten or eleven spoke with such adult clarity.
“Shut the door, Michelle.”
“No,” I said. “Claire, I need to ask you one thing.”
“Who is this man?” Michelle asked. “What is this?”
“His name is Thomas,” Claire said, using my middle name. “He’s from an antique shop on King. We had a particularly difficult disagreement the other day, and I find it incredible that he would appear on my doorstep to continue it.”
“You’re lying, Mother,” Michelle said. “And not very well.”
“So be it,” Claire said. “Regardless, I am not interested in any discussion with him. Or you.”
“I am,” Michelle said. “He looks familiar.”
Claire handed her glass of wine to Michelle. She steered Michelle toward the interior of the house, which was an open floor plan and a mixture of old and new furniture beneath oil paintings and framed prints.
Claire returned almost immediately, stepped outside, and closed the door behind her. Even with the wind that swirled through the garden, scattering dried leaves of untended and unpruned trees, I smelled the plum-sweet warmth of wine on Claire’s breath. But this night she was not drunk.
“How dare you do this to me. How dare you involve my daughter in this melodramatic appearance of yours.” Gone was the stumbling slur of her previous evening’s speech. “Speak now. Speak quickly. Then leave. If you ever do this again, I will call the police.”
“You and Pendleton live apart,” I said.
“Brilliant. You deduced this by the fact that I am forced to live in my stepmother’s servants’ quarters?”
“Are you divorcing?”
“We are legally separated. Divorce may be the final result. Either way, I don’t want you in my life.”
“What if I told you there was a good reason for all that happened?”
“Give me the reason.”
“I can’t. I can only ask you to trust me until the day I can tell.”
“You are a fool,” she said. “With no idea of how much a fool you are.”
I stared at her. Short as her hair was, the wind plucked
at it, the way sand-filled wind had done on the beach in another lifetime.
“I can look back and understand something,” she said. “When I fell in love with you, it was because of rebellion and sympathy. I knew marrying you would be as good a protest as anything against the stranglehold of my step-mother’s wealth. And you were a lost little boy, wanting so badly to be part of the rest of us. You did anything for me, just to belong, and I was young enough to enjoy that kind of control, without knowing how tedious it might have become had we stayed married. Pendleton, for all his faults, at least made life interesting. Nor does Pendleton try to fool himself with what he wants. You? You want to believe you’re above all of our ways. But you want Charleston badly.”
She smiled, knowing the effect of her smile. And knowing the effect her words had on me.
“Nick, I’ve grown up. I don’t hate the establishment. I’m going to be the mayor. I don’t have a teenage urge to thumb my nose at Charleston by sheltering an outcast.”
Her tongue flicked her lips, as if there was some pleasure in emasculating me. “Nor do I want the kind of man who is an eager puppy, following at my feet in hopes of my attention or approval from the rest of us. That was then, Nick. This is now.”
“I’ve changed,” I said. My face felt set in stone.
She laughed. “That’s just it, Nick. You haven’t. Otherwise why would you be here?”
>
Chapter 18
I left the deMarionne mansion. Most of the storm had passed. All that remained was wind and scattered rain coming in almost sideways from the waters. The dark empty streets suited my mood; except for that familiar man walking a dog among the oaks along East Battery, I was alone as I passed the antebellum mansions with their warm yellow lights within, lights as in a Kinkade painting, taunting me with their promise of a home and peace longed for, which I might never have.
I dreaded the prospect of an evening alone in my room.
I toyed with calling Amelia, for she had given me her hotel number, but I told myself it was the coward’s way, seeking the company of one woman to replace another.
I decided to walk until I was tired and thoroughly cold and hungry. I would stuff myself with pasta at an Italian restaurant until I was drowsy. I would take a taxi back to the inn. I would soak in a hot bath until my muscles were totally relaxed. I would collapse into bed and hope for sleep without dreams. Tomorrow would bring what it would bring.
And then what? I asked myself.
I walked along East Battery. My golf shirt gave little protection against the wind, and the skin of my exposed arms was tight with goose bumps. I allowed myself that question again.
And then what?
I could not strike back at Pendleton without hurting Claire. Nor would Claire return to me. As for my mother, Amelia had answered enough; my mother truly had gone to the train station and truly had abandoned me.
What other truth would I want to know? There was no point in visiting the admiral, or even in returning to the church for more information about Ruby.
I knew that in the morning I would leave Charleston again.
This time, however, all my heart ties had been severed.
At least I had accomplished that.
**
Fueled by anger and depression, I walked as hard as my plastic limb would permit. My walk took me past the turn on East Battery, past the Barrett mansion, past the Yacht Club, and north again to the waterfront wharves, with only the occasional car splashing the puddles in the streets to break into my morose thoughts.
I reached the park at the end of Vendue Range. The storm had left the adjoining pier empty. A long, deserted path out on the pier drew me to the waters of the Cooper River, where as a boy I had watched container ships pass under the bridges during the nights I had escaped the Barrett house and had no other place to go.
Now, like then, I enjoyed the sight of the large ships gliding soundlessly forward.
Halfway to the end of the pier, I stopped to watch a ship approaching from the yards upriver. Because of the trick perspective of distance, the lights of its tower seemed to merge as the ocean-bound hulk eased through the shipping channel.
I saw a movement to my left. Between me and the street, at the beginning of the pier, was the man with the dog, moving closer to me. Not until then did I realize they had stayed with me the entire ten minutes it had taken me to walk this far from the deMarionne mansion.
Although the man’s face was lost beneath the shadow of
a fedora above his overcoat, the gap between us had closed enough that beneath the lights of the pier, I could recognize the large dog on the leash as a Rottweiler, massive across the shoulders, with a head broad like a bear. This was the same man I had seen earlier at the deMarionne mansion.
It seemed eerie, their purposeful walk toward me. Especially in light of the coincidence of their appearance the other times. I continued to watch. The man and dog passed beneath one streetlight into the shadows before the next, with only two more lights between them and me. Still, they moved closer. They stopped, only fifty feet away, in the pool of shadows on the other side of the streetlight between us.
I wondered if I knew them or if they knew me. I was about to call out a greeting when the man squatted beside his dog. I wasn’t certain because of the darkness, but it looked like the man reached for the dog’s collar.
The man straightened. The end of the leash dangled toward the ground. The big black dog stood, expectant, its head trained in total focus on me.
“You should have left it alone,” the man said. Then casually he spoke one more word. “Kill.”
The dog erupted into motion, launching forward like a silent, savage rocket of teeth and muscle, passing beneath the wash of the streetlight with a blur of tan and black.
The edge of the pier was only a dozen steps away, but I lost any chance to turn and dive for water in the first few heartbeats of frozen fear, my mind flashing images of my bare forearms torn as I raised them in protection. My mind moved past that and even before I realized I was thinking it, I was pushing the heel of one shoe with the toes of my other shoe and stepping out of the shoe with a snap of shoelaces and reaching down and rising with it in both hands just before the Rottweiler hurled itself upward at my throat.
I brought my arms upward into myself, shoving the shoe into the dog’s face with the desperation of raw, unthinking panic. The momentum of the beast flung me onto my back, cracking my head against the pavement of the pier.
The shoe saved me for the first few moments of the attack. It had wedged into the dog’s mouth. I clung to that shoe as the dog, in his daze, tried to shake it back and forth, finally breaking the horrible silence with a muffled snarl of frustration.
The dog weighed as much as a man. Its front claws raked at my chest. Rear claws scrabbled for traction against my pants legs.
I rolled, forearms between my chest and the dog, still clutching the shoe that was the only barrier against the leverage of the dog’s bone-cracking jaws. The dog kicked and scraped, gathering its rear legs to gouge at the softness of my belly.
I rolled again, frantic from the pain and terror, frantic the dog might release its grip on the shoe and tear into my throat. The rough pavement banged the points of my shoulders, banged my elbows, scouring skin to the bone.
And still I rolled, hoping I had guessed right, hoping the attack hadn’t disoriented me. The edge of the pier was too far away and what I needed was one chance at safety,
a chance that would come if only I could roll beneath the safety chains of the railing on the near edge of the pier.
Then the pavement dropped away. For a breathless second, there was only weightlessness. I had been prepared for this drop, hoping for it. I had time to gulp in air. Then came the icy shock of oily harbor water.
It was high tide, and the plunge threw the dog and me below the surface, still locked in a macabre embrace of a primal death fight between man and animal.
I felt the dog’s legs push against me. Not in attack. But
in its own panic at the depth of the water. And my fear became a gush of hot, unthinking rage. My hands found the slick skin of the dog’s neck. Keeping my grip, I slid around the dog’s body so that those gouging claws pushed vainly against churning water instead of my chest and belly and groin. Still underwater and almost riding the dog now, I squeezed my fingers into its neck, in my rage trying to rip into the cartilage and flesh.
My advantage was that one gulp of air. The extra thirty seconds of oxygen. The dog sagged, and still I tore at the dog’s neck in total fury, feeling the animal’s windpipe like a hose in the grip of my fingers, reveling in my own savagery. I held tight until blackness began to burn inward from the edges of my brain. And then, finally, I pushed away the limp mass of fur and muscle and with my last few moments of consciousness, fought for the surface of the water.
I found night and air and took a heaving gasp of renewed life. I paddled for a few moments to orient myself.
The lights of cars on the bridge showed me I was pointed upstream, and with another turn, I saw the dark form of the pier. On top, I saw the outline of the man, sharp against the streetlight, leash still hanging from his hand. Beneath his hat, the man’s head was focused on the water, as if he was straining to see me.
The man held a pistol, had it trained on the water.
I paddled silently and slipped backward. Ex
hausted, I let the slow current take me away. Farther down, I would angle back toward land, toward moored yachts, and pull myself up in safety.
Chapter 19
I woke the next morning with my bedsheets stuck to the crusted blood on the skin of my belly and chest. Upon returning to the bed-and-breakfast the night before, I’d soaked in the bathtub in darkness, for I never enjoyed the sight of my half leg ending so abruptly. Soap and hot water had stung the scratches badly, but most of the bleeding had stopped before I’d gone to bed for a night of broken sleep.
Yes, it hurt to pull away the bedsheets, but a person can take savage satisfaction in pain in the heat of battle.
I was that person.
Somewhere along the way, my actions and questions since my return had prodded this attempt on my life. In finding the truth about my mother, I could also smash those who had smashed my life. My pain was secondary; the pain I would inflict was primary.
I folded the blood-encrusted sheets so that the stains did not show and left them on the bedcover. I hardly cared what questions or suspicions they might raise among the genteel owners of the bed-and-breakfast if the laundry maid happened to open the sheets before washing.
After showering—try that someday on only one leg—I blotted the fresh blood off my belly and chest with tissue paper and flushed it away. Where the bleeding had stopped, angry red ridges showed where I had been clawed.
I put on a fresh T-shirt to soak what blood might seep out during the day and covered it with a loose oxford shirt.
I spent my usual awkward few moments adjusting my plastic limb, then finished clothing myself.
I was ready.
**
Half an hour later, I sat in the cool dim quiet of the Mount Carmel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Pastor Samuel’s wife, Etta, had gone to get him from the church office.
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