Twenty-nine

HE GOT AS FAR as Massachusetts Avenue before he hailed a cab.

He sat in the back, his hand over his eyes.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Jamaica Plain,” David answered. He felt sick to his stomach.

“Where in Jamaica Plain?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He pressed down harder on his eyelids, wishing he could blank out the glare of the day completely. “Forest Hills…”

“Forest Hills station?”

“Yes,” he said, not caring. “Anywhere.”

It was five or ten minutes before he could take down his hand, and look out of the window. The traffic was heavy; it was coming up to five. He wound down the window, and took deep breaths of the fumy air.

The driver looked in his mirror. “You OK?” he said.

“Yes,” David answered.

“Don’t look OK,” the driver said.

“I’m all right,” he said.

He had never hit anyone before. At least, not since he was eight years old in the school playground. If you could count pretend punches that never connected. He looked down at his hands. Stupid thing, he thought. Stupid bloody thing, to let himself get so out of control.

It had been half past three when Grace had taken her cell phone out of her bag. They had left the ward, and taken the elevator downstairs, and walked a way to the river. It felt better there: more air. He had found a place for Grace to sit, worried at the ashy color of her face. Rachel had stood looking at the water.

“I’m going home,” Grace said, after a few moments’ silence.

“You found the car?” he asked.

“It’s impounded,” she replied. “I called my neighbor at home. She’s coming to pick me up.” She had lit a cigarette, drawn in the smoke. “I ran out of the house without even locking the door,” she said. “I need a change of clothes. Find my cat.” She smiled wanly, raising her eyebrows at him.

“You’ve got a cat?” he asked.

“A tabby. Rachel loves him,” Grace said. “He’ll be sitting on the porch with an evil glint in his eye by now.”

They smiled.

“Will you be OK with Rachel?” Grace asked. “Jen will help you.”

“We’ll be fine,” he reassured her.

She looked in her bag for the phone. “I’ll speak to her,” she said.

The phone had been switched off in the hospital; now, Grace saw the text message waiting. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. She showed it to him; then immediately dialed Jen’s number. As she sat with the phone to her ear, he saw her face grow even paler. Then her eyes filled with tears.

When the call finished, and she told him what had happened, he got up. A kind of white fury filled his head. “I’m going to see him,” he said.

“David, wait a minute—”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t. Where shall I meet you?”

They had looked at each other, then she waved her hand. “I’ll bring Rachel to the house,” she had said, finally. “Be careful.”

“With him?” he’d asked. “Yeah, right.”

It was some fifteen minutes later that, as the cab came through an intersection, he suddenly leaned forward and tapped the driver’s seat.

“What is that?” he asked.

“What is what?”

“The trees over there?”

The driver gave him a look. “Guess it’s a lot of trees,” he said.

“Can you stop?”

“Sure.” He pulled onto the side of the road, taking David’s money without comment.

There was a fence around the parkland, and shrubs crowding close to it. David looked up and down the street, and then began to walk. After five minutes, he came to a gate. Inside, he saw a flight of steps, and a broad building that looked down on the acres below. He walked past the gate, up the steps, and stared at the frontage. He tried the front door, but it was locked. The note on the door showed the public opening hours: ten to three.

He walked down a few steps, and sat down on the stone flight, and looked out over the trees ahead of him: dawn redwoods, katsuras, tulip trees, magnolias, lindens.

He knew exactly where he was. He knew that there were mountain laurels here, and cedars of Lebanon; honey locusts, hemlocks, sweet gums, ginkgos, catalpas. Japanese zelkovas, probably still in flower; mountain ash, bamboos. There were over two hundred varieties of lilacs here, all still heavy with their blossom. And a dove tree. There was a dove tree near a place called Bussey Hill. If he walked down the asphalt lane opposite him, he could probably come to it.

He put his head in his hands.

Anna’s house was probably less than twenty minutes’ walk from here, he thought.

Maybe she had come here. Maybe she walked here often. Took Rachel to the greenhouses. If she remembered. If she…

He thought that she had responded this afternoon.

He had been sitting with one hand propping his head, and the other holding her hand. Rachel had been sitting on the floor; they had found a small coffee table for her, and she had a smaller piece of paper weighted down. She was totally concentrated on the China map, copying the route of the river. A nurse had switched on the lights of a neighboring bed, and that was when he thought he saw Anna’s eyelids flicker.

“She moved,” he had said, barely breathing it.

The nurse had turned around.

“I saw her move,” he had repeated. “Just now…just now!”

The woman had come to the bedside, and checked the monitors and Anna’s pulse.

“She moved her eyes when you switched on the lamp,” he told her.

“Did she look toward it?”

He shook his head. “Yes…I don’t know,” he said helplessly.

“Move her head?” She was still solicitously looking into Anna’s face. She brought out a pinpoint flashlight, and tested Anna’s pupils.

“No.”

“She’s reacting,” the nurse commented. She gave him a small smile. “But then she’s already been doing that.”

“What does it mean?” he asked.

“Maybe reflex,” she said.

But he was convinced Anna had heard him.

He had been talking about the sunlight.

She had actually heard him.

He put his hands to his eyes.

“Can I help you?” asked a voice.

He looked up. A woman was standing on the step next to him. She carried a small briefcase, and had her car keys in her hand.

He wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, and stood up embarrassedly. “This is the arboretum?” he asked.

“The Arnold Arboretum, yes,” she replied.

He felt a great wave of emotion slam into him: unexpected, uncontrolled, it had all the force of a blow. It was as if the air had been knocked out of him. He turned away from the woman, overcome.

She put a hand on his shoulder. She was much shorter than he, and he abruptly felt the absurdity of it, a six-foot man being comforted by a total stranger, a woman eight or nine inches shorter than he, who had to reach up to put her hand on his shoulder. He took a gulp of air. “Christ,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

“What’s the matter?” she asked kindly. “Here…” She looked in her briefcase, and brought out a tissue.

“No,” he said, “I’m OK. Look, I…” He tried to explain what couldn’t be explained. The whole unwieldy mass of the last few days had suddenly rolled away from him, out of his grasp, as if it were a load he had been trying to carry, and he had finally lost control of it. He looked across at the trees. “I have a picture of this place,” he said, his voice wavering. He cursed himself inwardly, tried to even it out. “I’ve got a picture—a photo, in a book—of a man called Ernest Wilson, standing on these steps.”

She was looking steadily at him. “Wilson used to work here,” she said.

He surreptitiously tried to wipe his face. “I know,” he murmured. He balled up the tissue and put it in his pocket.

The woman turned and gestured toward the building. “He had an office right there, on the second floor,” she said. “We have his records,” she added. “In the archives.”

“I know,” he repeated. He glanced at her and grimaced an apology. “You must think I’m some sort of idiot,” he said. “I knew this was near here. I saw the sign…”

“Are you English?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And you came here to see the arboretum?” she asked.

“No,” he replied. “I’ve always wanted to. But I came to Boston for another reason.” He looked down the steps. “I ought to go,” he said. “I’m really sorry. I don’t usually sit on steps and cry.” And he gave her a painful smile.

She started to grin. “I do,” she said. “I cried like a baby at my son’s Thanksgiving play. I had to go out and have a drink of water.”

He nodded.

“Why don’t you come back and have a look through the records?” she asked. “You can make an appointment, and we’ll show you what we have.” They began to walk down the steps. “Did you study Wilson at some time?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“You know about his journeys?”

“Yes,” he said, still struggling to get the words out. He paused with her as she reached her car.

“Do you work here?” he asked.

She smiled. “I guess,” she told him. She held out her hand, and he took it. “Come back and see us,” she said. She gave his hand a lingering, comforting press. “He’s here,” she said. “He’ll be waiting for you.”

David got to Anna’s house like a dying man. He actually had to drag himself up the steps. “Jesus,” he muttered to himself. “Pull your bloody self together.”

Jen was coming down the hallway, with a basket of laundry in her hands. She opened the screen door.

“What the hell happened to you?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said. “Everything.”

She smiled, took his arm, and led him down the hall and into the kitchen. Grace was sitting at the table, looking at the sandwich on her plate.

“Look who I found crawling up the path,” Jen said. “Sit,” she ordered David. “Drink?”

“Yes. Please.”

“Coffee?”

“Have you got anything else?” he asked.

“Scotch,” Grace said. “Second cabinet, top shelf.” She put her hand on David’s, withdrew it, and looked at his knuckles.

“He didn’t feel a thing,” David said. “Dead before he hit the floor.”

Jen put the drinks down and stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

He picked up his drink. “Here’s to James Garrett,” he said. “Lover, partner, and first-class shit.”

Grace didn’t move. “Is he resting in peace?” she asked.

He smiled. “No,” he said. “He’s walking and talking.” He looked at his right hand. “I think I hurt myself more than I hurt him,” he observed. “Feels like I broke my hand.”

Grace took a deep breath, and drank her whisky. Then she lifted David’s hand and flexed it gently. “Bruised, is all,” she said.

They looked at each other. Garrett and Anna seemed to fill the room. They sat in silence, the weight of the days pressing on them. There was nothing to say. David looked at the evidence of Anna’s life all around him: the flea market kitchen chairs against an old pine table; the magnets and memos pinned to the fridge. A shopping list, still tacked to the wall, in her handwriting. It seemed impossible that she should not be here.

There was a ring at the doorbell.

“I’ll get it,” Jen said.

Grace stood up, and rinsed her glass. “Want another?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “Thanks.”

She dried the glass, and then stood with her back to the window, resting against the worktop. “Tell me something,” she said.

He looked up. “What is it?”

“Why didn’t you reply to the letter?”

He frowned. “What letter?”

Grace folded her arms. “The letter she sent to you when Rachel was born.”

He stared at her. “I never got a letter,” he said.

“But she sent it to your college. And to your father’s house.”

He sat back in the chair. “I left Oxford,” he said. “I didn’t finish my Ph.D.”

“She wrote in February…”

“I left at Christmas,” he told her.

“And they didn’t forward to you?”

“They would have sent it to Dad’s, I suppose.”

“So there would have been two letters at your father’s house,” she said.

He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I didn’t go home.”

“But he must have told you there was mail waiting for you.”

David shook his head. “I didn’t speak to Dad much,” he said. “I went abroad. I went to Gambia. Teaching. VSO.”

“Even so…”

“I never saw them,” David said.

“When you didn’t reply, she thought it was as much as she deserved,” Grace said.

“Oh, God,” he murmured. “I would have come.”

Grace sat back down again at his side. “Garrett asked her to marry him,” she said.

“He did? When?”

“Just recently. In Paris.”

“She didn’t accept?”

“No.”

“Why not?” David asked. “He had everything, didn’t he? Money. Influence. Looks.” He laughed shortly. “The full picture book. The house on the hill.”

Grace gripped his hand. “It wasn’t the same thing,” she said. “She left you because she was panicked, not because she didn’t love you. She refused him for exactly that reason. She didn’t love him.”

“Yet she stayed with him,” David said.

Grace shook her head sadly. “She had decided to get out of the contract.” She sighed. “I’m sure he guessed it.”

“But she left him her pictures, her work,” he said.

Grace straightened up with the shock of it. “She did what?” she asked.

“Left him her paintings, in her will,” he said.

For a second, Grace sat with her mouth open. Then, she suddenly began to laugh. “She what?” she demanded. “David, Anna hasn’t got a will.”

“But—”

“I told her over and over again to make one,” she said. “It was always one of those things she was going to do.”

“But he told me just now,” David said. “He told me that’s why he took them.”

Grace’s look hardened. The laugh died down as quickly as it had come. “Because he thinks she’s dying,” she said.

“Because he thinks that, yes.”

She simply shook her head. “Oh,” she whispered. “That man, that man…”

“Does he ever do anything else but lie?” David asked.

“I don’t think he even knows the distinction anymore,” she murmured.

The hall door opened. Jen came back in the room. She was carrying a little package.

David looked up at her. “Who was at the door?” he asked.

Jen smiled at them bemusedly. “The police,” she said. “They brought this.”

And she opened the brown paper wrapping, and put the little toy on the table. It was a battered blue plastic bridge.

“They said they found it in Anna’s car,” she told them.

Long after Grace had gone, David sat in the same kitchen chair, staring at the bridge.

Then, he took the toy and walked upstairs, and knocked at Rachel’s door.

When there was no reply, he pushed it open gently. His daughter was sitting on the floor, surrounded by her model buildings and cars, all arranged on a wide plastic floor rug: one where a city map was laid out, in garish yellow blocks, with red traffic carriageways. It was the kind of toy made for preschool kids, sized up to take big plastic cars. But on each block, Rachel had put her stores and garages. At each street corner was a bridge.

“Hello, Rachel,” he said.

She glanced up, then away.

“Look what I’ve got,” he prompted her. He held out his hand with Mofty in it. There was a pause, while she looked at his hand; then she got up, took the toy, and walked to the very end of the room, the closest she could get to the corner, holding it to her chest.

“A policeman brought it,” he said. “They found it for you.”

“You had it,” she said.

“No,” he replied quietly.

“You brought it in,” she said.

He saw the brutal logic of it. “Yes,” he said. “I brought it upstairs. From the front door. A policeman brought it to your house, and I brought it upstairs.”

She nodded, satisfied. He didn’t know what else to say. He looked at the shelves along the wall, for inspiration. They were full of McDonald’s figures.

“Rachel,” he said. “Who are these?”

She didn’t answer. He picked up the nearest.

Immediately, she took two or three steps, and then stood still, looking at the floor. “That’s a Disney merchandising figure,” she said. “It’s a cartoon character from a film.”

“The Lion King,” he said.

“His name is Scar,” she said. “He’s the bad brother.”

“You have a lot,” he said, replacing it carefully.

“I have the series,” she said. “There are different series.”

He looked at the floor map. “You want to play a game?” he asked.

“I’m constructing the block,” she told him. She held out Mofty, and he saw that she was considering where to place it.

“There’s a gap by the petrol station,” he pointed out.

“The gas station.”

“That’s right, the gas station.”

She calculated a moment. “The dimensions don’t fit,” she said.

He looked across at the bed. The covers were very plain, and dark blue.

“Rachel,” he said. “Want to play a board game?”

Her eyes flickered once to him, then away.

“Chess?” he asked.

“I play Othello,” she said.

“OK,” he replied.

She stood next to him, hesitating, looking at the map and back to the cupboard where the game was stored.

“You can sit on the window chair,” she said, abruptly. “You put that white chair in the window. That’s where it goes. You can sit on it.”

He walked across the room, and did as he was told, watching her bring out the game, arrange the table, pick up and put down the last bridge she had been making.

“Does your mother play with you?” he asked. “This game?”

“You can play white,” she said. “Until she comes back.”

He looked at her face, and his father in her face. Behind him, in the garden, the light reflected blue, the color of the dusty clapboards of Jen’s house, a blue that was almost gray, even in the sunlight.

Time slowed down to almost nothing. To the click of the counters on the board. He thought of Anna, and the click of the ventilator, the breathing of the machine. He wondered how long they would all wait. Whether it would be weeks, or months. Whether it would be years.

“OK,” he said, to Rachel’s downcast face. “Just until she comes back.”