Only Love Can Break Your Heart

by Ed Tarkington

  “NO!” I cried, leaping up and backing away. “Get out,” I said, less forcefully at first than I was supposed to. I repeated the words, louder. Becky fled the stage. I mimed the blinding of Blake Burwell and the rest of the horses and then fell to the floor as the horror-movie sound track of stamping hooves echoed through the theater. The shame and wrath were genuine. Rex LaPage had been right all along: Everything in life is performance. And the performance is life.

  Marcus Vaughan spoke the final lines. The stage went black. When the lights came up, the lot of us stood spread out across the stage, Marcus Vaughan and I at the center, flanked by Blake and Becky and Cinnamon and the others as we took our bows. The audience looked a bit shell-shocked but managed to summon a round of generous if not rousing applause. A scattered few rose to their feet, clapping slowly and steadily, as if unsure what had so moved them.

  When the curtain fell, LaPage met me at center stage.

  “My God, Richard,” LaPage said.

  He didn’t have to say anything else. Looking back, I know that it wasn’t technically the best performance I ever gave, but sometimes it doesn’t matter—something just happens, and while the performer can never be completely delivered forever from his own limitations, he is, however briefly, lifted above the world.

  Cinnamon clutched my arm as we walked offstage.

  “Sorry for hitting you so hard,” she said.

  “Did it leave a mark?” I asked.

  “You might call it your first tattoo,” she said.

  She kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her, full of gratitude and relief and something that felt like love. It must have looked strange, seeing the two of us, still in costume as mother and son, brazenly canoodling.

  The euphoria faded. I felt a bit faint.

  “What’s wrong?” Cinnamon asked.

  “I need a minute,” I said.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  As the others went off to greet the backstage well-wishers, I headed back alone to my dressing room. When I opened the door and entered, I found Patricia, sitting in my chair.

  “Rocky,” she said, “that was magnificent!”

  Her tone was dry, as if she meant to make me wonder whether she was mocking or genuine.

  “You’re not supposed to be back here,” I stammered.

  “Oh, rules, rules,” she said. “You were always so guilt-ridden, Rocky.”

  She stood and examined herself in the full-length mirror. I noticed that she was holding Paul’s letter with both hands.

  “What a sweet note,” she said. “It’s very biblical, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Saint Paul, writing letters from prison,” she said.

  This time, the bitterness under her words was plain. The exhilaration I had felt before I walked through the door had faded into an uneasiness bordering on fear—though of what, I couldn’t say.

  Patricia bent to the table to smell Marcus Vaughan’s roses.

  “I have to go,” I said. “People are waiting for me.”

  “I just wanted to see you, Rocky,” she said. “Nelson and I are leaving tonight. Our visit this afternoon with the police has made him a tad uncomfortable. So we’ve decided to take a little trip. I’m afraid I might not see you again for a very long time, if ever.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “It’s better that I don’t tell you,” she said.

  She sat down and crossed her legs and folded her hands over her knees. Her face was pale and puffy, as if she had not slept for some time and had no hope of rest in the near future. The tone of her voice turned dreamy and wistful.

  “I’ll hate to leave the horses. Reggie most of all,” she said. “But they belong to Charles, not to me. I expect he’s already planning to sell them.”

  She smiled. For a moment I saw a flicker of the Patricia I’d fallen for—the illusion of vulnerability, the sense that there was a sweet, wounded little girl beneath the icy surface.

  “Isn’t it funny, you being in this play?” she said. “I imagine it’s been therapeutic for you.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  “But you do, don’t you?” she said. “Honestly, I had such plans for you. But our mutual friend Leigh Bowman had to spoil that for me also, didn’t she?”

  My throat was dry. I licked my lips and drew in a deep breath.

  “Are you the devil, Patricia?” I asked.

  She stood and walked toward me. My back was against the wall; I couldn’t get to the door without pushing her away.

  “Every soul is itself, Rocky,” she said.

  I could smell the scent of her nape and feel her breasts pressing against me.

  “I suppose this is good-bye, then,” she said.

  I did not notice her hand slipping forward between my legs until she was clutching my scrotum as if she meant to tear it off. Before I could cry out or even gasp in pain, she had disappeared out the door.

  A few days later, we learned that in the midst of our performance, down the hill at the field house annex, Bobby Carwile had been on the phone with the commonwealth’s attorney, trying to determine whether he had enough probable cause to hold Patricia Culver and Nelson Waltrip for questioning.

  In retrospect, Patricia had been extremely reckless, sticking around for a high school play. But her choices were always enigmatic. In any case, the police had missed them—they were in the wind.

  PAUL WAS RELEASED in time to see the final performance of Equus. Afterward he and Leigh stayed for the cast party, which was held onstage in the theater. There was a champagne tower and a case of sparkling apple cider. Rex LaPage ceremoniously popped the cork on the first bottle and began pouring its contents into the top glass until it overflowed into all the others. A few couples danced, including Cinnamon’s parents, who performed a respectable Carolina shag to Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” I stood and held Cinnamon’s hand as we leaned against the door to the loading dock. At the center of the stage stood Paul and Leigh, their arms wrapped around each other, swaying back and forth, bathed in light.

  29

  NOT LONG AFTER PATRICIA DISAPPEARED, the Twin Oaks Task Force moved out of the field house annex and disbanded. Bobby Carwile went back to the mundane crimes and misdemeanors of rural Spottswood County. Instead of being shunned, Paul was received as a hero by the regulars at the Wahoo—he couldn’t buy his own beers for over a month. Once again, people smiled and whispered “Bless her heart” at the sight of Leigh Bowman cruising along Bonny Lane on her bicycle with a basket full of books.

  Before fleeing, Patricia had left behind a terse note for the task force investigators proclaiming her and Nelson Waltrip’s innocence. Ironically, in their note, Patricia used the scapegoating of Paul and Leigh to explain her and Nelson’s decision to run. How can the police be trusted, Patricia wrote, if they were willing to frame innocent people based on nothing more than rumor and superstition?

  A reexamination of the evidence, however, supported a rather damning case against them. The day before the murders, Patricia and Nelson had in fact gone to Baltimore, as the task force investigation had confirmed months before, to spend a long weekend going to see the races at Pimlico. They were seen at the track by friends, and they had been found there when the police were notifying the victims’ families. This seemed to have been part of their plan from the beginning. After a day at the races, they had purchased tickets to an art house double feature of the original James Whale–Boris Karloff Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein—again, details the detectives had already confirmed. The box office cashier didn’t recall having seen either of them.

  The police searched both Patricia’s and Nelson’s cars and found nothing. Later, however, they discovered that on the day the murders were believed to have occurred, Nelson Waltrip had rented a car in Baltimore. The mileage added to the car roughly matched the distance of a round-trip to S
pencerville and back. Despite the car’s having been cleaned several times between rentals, the crime scene investigators were able to find microscopic traces of Brad and Jane Culver’s blood in the cracks between the seat cushions. The knife was never found; the detectives assumed Patricia and Nelson had dropped it into the James or perhaps the Chesapeake Bay, along with Brad Culver’s .38 handgun, which had been used to inflict the postmortem leg wound meant to cast suspicion on Paul.

  After a brief manhunt, the police learned that Patricia and Nelson had driven directly to Dulles, where they booked tickets on a red-eye to Heathrow. The Spencerville DA contacted the FBI, who contacted Scotland Yard. Patricia’s and Nelson’s names and photos were added to the wanted posters that appear in federal buildings and American Express offices, but that was the end of it. Apparently, Patricia knew how to disappear.

  What was Patricia’s motive? Why would Nelson Waltrip kill for her? Had he acted alone? Just as had been the case after Leigh’s wedding, the town would have to content itself with rumors—of which there have been and will continue to be many. For some, it was money: after all, Patricia had been surprised to discover she would inherit nothing after her parents’ estate was settled. For others, it was revenge—though such a grisly fate seemed a heavy price to exact for not being allowed to major in English at Oxford. Only two people know the truth. Thus far, they have yet to be seen again. At least one of them, however, was heard from.

  Two weeks after Patricia and Nelson vanished, I received a typewritten letter with no return address, postmarked in London:

  Dear Rocky,

  I’m sorry for how things went when we saw each other last. I was under a bit of stress. It was wrong of me to punish you for things I brought on myself.

  I doubt you’ll believe it, but I never meant for Paul and Leigh to come so near to being blamed. Perhaps that’s why I said what I did to Leigh. Isn’t it reassuring to think there’s a small shred of humanity left within me?

  If there had been time, I would have told you everything. But you have inklings, don’t you? Remember that first night at the stables? Did you never wonder what my father was doing there when you found him? Why I would be down there so late at night, alone? Did you think I was waiting for you?

  You did save me for one night, I suppose. It made no difference to me by that point—he’d been coming to me like that for years. I suppose he thought he had me too well trained to turn against him. You’ve no idea what it feels like to be used that way by your own father. As for Mummy—I don’t think she approved, exactly, but she seemed to prefer his coming to me over anyone else. There were others before me, I think. She must have liked having someone who would keep him close to home.

  You know why I’m telling you all of this, don’t you? I saw the look on your face when you found him there, Rocky. I knew what you wanted to do. It was then that I first thought you were going to be the one I’d been waiting for. I might even go so far as to say that you gave me the courage, and the inspiration. Leigh and her madness intervened, which was fortunate for you, I suppose. I had to find another friend. Still, you should know, what happened—it was for you too. If you don’t believe me, ask William.

  Don’t hate me. I gave you quite a gift, after all.

  She left the letter unsigned; furthermore, she had typed everything, including the name and address on the envelope. Why had she done those things? It’s not as if there was any mystery about who had sent it. Had she dictated it to Nelson Waltrip? Had he written it for her, without her consent? No, I thought. Even if she’d told him everything, he couldn’t have written it alone—that was Patricia’s voice. Every time I looked at the letter, I could practically hear her reading it aloud.

  Were any of Patricia’s allegations against Brad and Jane Culver to be believed? There was no evidence to confirm them—just the letter—and one would have to regard the claims of someone like Patricia with extreme skepticism. But when I thought of that early morning when I found Brad Culver reeling and drunk, skulking around outside his barn while Patricia waited within, I had little doubt that what she’d written about her father was true.

  And what about William? What did he have to do with anything? If you don’t believe me, ask William, she wrote. Was that her last manipulation? One final red herring, like the bullet in Brad Culver’s thigh?

  Clutching the letter in my hands, I walked out into the yard and down to the fence where I could see Twin Oaks, once again empty and spectral.

  Paul appeared beside me. I offered the letter for him to read. When he was finished, he slowly folded it and passed it back to me.

  “Here,” he said.

  He handed me his Zippo. I lit the end of the paper and held it aloft until nothing was left but smoke and ash borne away on the wind.

  A FEW YEARS LATER, on a short visit home from college, I ended up at the Wahoo, drinking draft beer at one of those graffiti-strewn tables with a few old high school friends. We had just ordered a third or fourth round when I looked up to see William at the bar, sipping a Coke and smoking one of his menthol cigarettes. I felt a twinge of uneasiness when my eyes met his, as if he’d been watching me like that for some time. I peeled away from my friends and made my way to the bar.

  “William,” I said.

  “Whassup, Rock,” he said. “How’s your pops?”

  I slid onto the stool next to him.

  “Hanging on,” I said. “He’s over at Saint Bernard’s now.”

  “How ’bout your momma?” he asked.

  “She’s doing all right, I guess,” I said. “Getting along.”

  “Y’all sell that house yet?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “A few years ago. Not long after—well, you know.”

  William puffed on his cigarette and sipped his Coke. I told him about the family that had moved into our old home: a doctor from out of town, with a wife and two young kids—a practical man who wasn’t bothered by the idea of waking up across the field from the “murder house.” I told him about the little three-bedroom ranch house we’d moved into, near the nursing home where we’d moved the Old Man after his condition had again worsened.

  “Miss Leigh still come by to read them books to your pops?” he asked.

  “She sure does,” I said.

  “How ’bout that brother?” William asked. “He still around?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s got his own place now, but he’s still around.”

  “What about the big house?” he asked. “What they gonna do with it?”

  At that time, Twin Oaks still sat empty. Charles Culver had put it up for sale and left Spencerville forever. For years, the house continued in its former state as an abandoned curiosity for the local history buffs and the next generation of thrill-seeking teenage trespassers until it was quietly purchased by a wealthy preservationist from Richmond.

  But I knew none of this then, as I sat at the bar next to William, nursing my beer while he sipped a Coke and smoked his Kools.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  A peculiar sadness overtook me. It was as if I were realizing for the first time that William and I had never really been friends.

  We sat there staring at each other wordlessly for an uncomfortable moment. It might have seemed to an observer that we had nothing to say to each other, but the opposite was true. I knew precisely what I wanted to say to William—what I wanted to ask him.

  “Too bad about Miss Patricia, huh?” he said. “You ever wonder where she at?”

  “No,” I said. “I guess it scares me a little. Every now and then, I get this weird feeling, and I turn around, expecting to find her standing there, staring at me with that cold look of hers.”

  “Don’t you worry none, Rock,” he said. “She ain’t never coming back.”

  William turned his head to me and looked directly into my eyes.

  “Guess they’ll never know what really happened out there,” William said.

  The way he said it made me shiver. Ask William, Patri
cia had written. I thought of Nelson Waltrip. He had never seemed tough enough to take down Brad Culver alone, much less with Jane Culver right there in the room with them, no matter how drunk they were.

  William stamped out his cigarette in the ashtray, all the while staring at me, as if I were supposed to sense some private communication from the look in his eyes. But I could never read William, even if he wanted me to.

  “I guess they won’t,” I said.

  William slid off his barstool. He picked up his flat-brimmed University of North Carolina ball cap from the bar beside him, set it squarely on his head, and offered me his dry, smooth palm.

  “Tell your pops I said hey,” he said.

  I took his hand and held it.

  “I will,” I said.

  His hand slipped from mine. He walked away from the bar and out the door to the street. When he was gone, I picked up my glass of beer and emptied it in one long swallow, my heart pounding in my chest.

  Now, years later, I’d like to run into William again sometime. I might have the courage to ask him a few of those questions I didn’t dare to ask back then. But I haven’t seen him since.

  SIX YEARS AFTER the killings, I was living in a one-bedroom dependency on an old farm just outside Charlottesville. Earlier that May, I had walked the Lawn at UVA and received my diploma, with the Old Man and my mother and Paul and Leigh looking on. At the end of the summer, I would be packing up and moving to New York to take my chances.

  One hot afternoon a few weeks after commencement, I went out running down the rural roads leading out to the working horse farms—the kind of places Patricia Culver and Nelson Waltrip must have frequented during their brief time together in Charlottesville. The road was quiet, the only sound my footfalls and the wind in the trees. So absorbed had I become in the rhythm of my stride and my breathing and the hypnotic blue green of the fields off to the left that I did not notice the storm clouds blowing in from the south, sheltered from my view by the steep woods lining the road. The heavens opened up, drenching me so rapidly and thoroughly that my clothes clung to me like paste. The sunlit rain created a surreal air—the weeping of angels or the devil beating his wife, depending on your preference.