December 23rd

She had been staring at Evelyn Creton’s last page for hours. Sitting up in her cot, she would doze off with the book still in her lap and awaken to stare again, the stiffness of her neck telling her whether she had been asleep for hours or just minutes. Her mind was completely blank and her fingers lay still and calm on the edges of the cover. She now looked up at the clock on the basement wall and the westward angle of the metal hour hand told her it was nine o’clock. But nine o’clock in the morning or evening? Nine o’clock of what day? Of what season? It was cold, colder than it had been when she first came down, so it must be winter. It was nine o’clock and it was winter. It snowed in the winter. And the air got warmer when it snowed. She could feel it becoming warmer down there now. Was there snow on the ground outside? A lot of snow? Snow that would melt when the spring came, to create water that drained into the soil, nourishing the trees out there so they would produce leaves in the summer to disappear in a burst of flaming color in autumn, leaving the branches bare, bare and ready for more snow. The seasons—whatever season it was now—would change.

The book left her lap in one fierce sweeping motion and crashed against the clock, bouncing onto the floor. A jagged vertical line now cut across its circular face. She had enjoyed those changes; each one had brought some sort of beauty into the world. And that beauty had given her comfort. She wasn’t like these other women; she had coped and they were crazy. They never changed. She pressed her lips together and looked at the crack on the clock. Anger began to scratch at the scars in her mind and she trembled as fresh blood seeped through the opening wounds. That’s why Luther never talked about them: there wasn’t a normal one in the bunch. But there was nothing wrong with her. She remembered loving the seasons, loving life. And there just couldn’t have been anything wrong with what she had wanted. A home. A husband. Children. That was all, and that was so little. To ask for so little and to have it taken away. No, it wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t sick. If there was any sickness, it was in this house, in the air. It was left over from the breaths of those women who had come before her. The Luwana Packervilles, Evelyn Cretons, and God knows who else. Blood from the open scars dripped down behind her eyes as she looked around the basement, futile and bewildered. This didn’t happen in a moment or even in a marriage. This had happened a long time ago. She could taste the anger at the back of her throat as her eyes came full circle to her son. His lace-draped arms were still spooned toward the air, the outline of her body permanently carved into the curve of his limbs. The blood’s saltiness created a craving to strike out at what had happened, to destroy those beginnings. But she couldn’t touch what had already escaped her long before she came to Tupelo Drive. She was left with only the ends. She grabbed up the other book and began ripping out the pages. Goddamned insane—all of them. She balled up handfuls of the delicate pages as she relentlessly tore away. She was too weak to break the heavily sewn binding, so she flung it to the floor and, swinging her legs over the cot, stepped on it savagely. Sick. Every last one, sick. The taste of blood spurred her on and she stumbled to the corner, kicking aside the cookbooks littering the floor.

She overturned boxes, pulling out dresses and scarfs, ripping easily through the rotting material. Shoes were thrown against the wall. Blouses, feathered hats, and beaded bags lost their buttons, trimmings, and sequins. Dried flowers spilled out of diaries and letters as she mutilated the pages. Shredded paper floated down around her feet in pastel heaps. She didn’t have to read them. She would read nothing else. Nothing. She just didn’t care anymore about their sad, twisted lives. She was surrounded by the perfumed fragments of the Nedeed women. What she couldn’t tear, she stomped on, regretting that her mouth was too dry to summon up enough spit. The pleasure of her destruction mingled with the anger in her blood as one box spilled out piles of photographs and she tore at them blindly. The slick, thin paper gave way too easily so she gathered huge handfuls and dozens of women disappeared with one pull. She started on another and another until she wanted to scream from the sensation building within her. Her breathing was labored and her forehead clammy as she forced her tired arms to keep going. She pulled at the pages between the covers of a heavily padded album, but the cellophane cut into her palms, resisting destruction. She threw it on the floor and tried to mangle the pictures with her heels. Her foot skidded across the slippery surface and she lost her balance, falling to her knees. Kneeling, she slammed the album against the wall; it bounced back, fell open, and she found her frustration met by a pair of soft, compassionate eyes.

The young woman’s heavy, wavy hair was parted in the middle and swept down the sides of her ivory face into a French knot that rested on her lace collar. Her upturned pug nose and narrow chin were tossed over the left shoulder, and the slender arms seemed poised to spring her body off the cushioned seat as if her full lips were caught in the act of saying I knew you would come, and I’m so pleased to meet you.

She knew it was the shadows cast by the light in the basement, her trembling body, and weakened vision—those lips hadn’t just closed in front of her, they were never open. They sat there now on the girl’s face, full and still. It’s just that there seemed to be so much life in that posture. The thrust of the chin and the tilt of the waist, straining against the creamy band. But what held her were the eyes. Large, oval wells with a bottomless capacity to absorb any seen or unseen challenge. They slowly drained away her desire to destroy their owner, but even if she still wanted to, the finely arched brows told her they would understand.

Almost against her will, she turned the page. The girl was posed by an old Packard, one hand drumming the roof and the foot propped on the running board revealing a white-stockinged leg and T-strap shoe tapping a restless staccato while the hand on the left hip pushed back an open fur coat over a pleated mid-calf dress. The same thrust of the chin, this time with an impatient pout that only managed to escape being ridiculous on the face of a beautiful woman. The next image that shutter would capture was so evident: a cloud of dust as she jumped in that car, gunned the motor, and sped away. A cigarette dangling from her fingers and a passing wave to the local bootlegger as she went to buy another set of dancing slippers that would grow worn before they grew old. Whoever she was, she wasn’t a Nedeed.

Flipping the page, she discovered she was right. A yellowed newspaper clipping was slipped under the cellophane:

Mr. and Mrs. Delmore McGuire of New Canaan, Connecticut, have announced the engagement of their daughter, Priscilla, to Mr. Luther Nedeed, son of Mr. Luther Nedeed and the late Evelyn Creton Nedeed. An April wedding is planned.

And in the next photo, Priscilla McGuire sat smiling upstairs in the den—married to her Luther. He stood posed beside the girl and the same leather wing chair that was still in front of the fireplace. His dark immobile face, protruding eyes, and short barreled torso sent an immediate shock of recognition through her, defied only by reason and the man’s clothes. The spats, butterfly collar, and pocketed vest. One hand hooked in a heavy watch chain and the other firmly planted on the bride’s shoulder. Her costume was as formal as the announcement. Triple-tiered lace on the scoopedneck gown, a pearl necklace and matching tiara fastened on her thick, wavy hair. Her legs were positioned tightly together, so the huge bouquet rested securely on her lap. But just to the right of a white rose petal a slender pinkie finger was crooked in a salute to the photographer as the arch of her brows and lips seemed set to burst into laughter the moment after the flash went off.

The bride was laughing openly in the next picture. Bent dangerously over the railing of a steamship, her fur boa and loosened curls flying in the wind as she watched the arc of the bouquet flung toward the camera. But her husband’s expression had never changed, with that same dark hand still firmly on her shoulder. She found her eyes riveted to his short blunt fingers. They just didn’t belong there. They interfered with the effects the wind had on the loose silk coat. The light material billowed up gently, giving her shoulders the space they needed to sweep into that posture of ascending wings. But in spite of his hand, the cloth still hung on her as it would on those sea gulls near the boat’s smokestack.

She saw that in the next picture his hand had finally left her shoulder. Priscilla McGuire was now held down by the child on her lap. She was again seated in the wing chair and had positioned the infant to face the camera, her hands gently supporting the arms as its spine rested under her bosom. Her shoulders and chin were bent down in a protective curve that demanded the lens capture her pride in this new extension of her flesh. With its dark oversized head, huge eyes, clenched fists, and bowlegs, only the veiled anxiety and awe in her eyes proclaimed her as the mother; but even the blindest fool could see that the man standing beside them was the father. His hand was resting contentedly on the back of the chair. And for the first time, he smiled. Lilac-colored ink had marked the bottom—Luther: 1 month.

Luther: 1 year. The child could now sit upright in Priscilla McGuire’s lap, so her long pale fingers were only clasped around its middle. The next five photographs were exactly alike except that her hands kept getting farther and farther apart as the child’s body widened and grew. At Luther: 6 years, the child stood up, at the other side of the chair. Priscilla McGuire’s hands were now free to be placed wherever she wanted them, but they were folded completely still in her lap—as if she’d grown accustomed to them being there. She was a striking contrast to the dark figures on each side of her, the son a miniature of the man, in almost identical poses with their matching tweed suits and vests. As the years went by, they could have been three wax figures but for the determined animation in the arch of her brows and her insistence on changing the way she held her head: a little to the left, a quarter turn to the right. No one called this woman just Mrs. Nedeed; they sent cards to Priscilla. Rang up and heard a clear, bell-like voice announce that name. She decided which parties to attend, who bored or amused her, and whom she would have in that house. She was already telling the photographer that she had her own way of thinking and acting, her own definition of important or trivial, right or wrong. Twenty minutes of instruction to the housekeeper and she was off. Those rigid rooms upstairs couldn’t contain her, and it was hard to imagine that she would have come back. But obviously she did each day because it was so important to sit each year and mark the progress of her child with lilac-colored ink.

There was no change—the same den, the same wing chair and the assorted beige dresses of which she seemed so fond. And the same dark fire in those eyes, matching the dark figures on each side of her. The first at the polls for the national elections in 1920. And she voted the Socialist ticket. She believed that Darwin was a fool and that Ida B. Wells should be canonized. She ran for president of the local Association of Colored Women three years in a row—and won. She urged her friends to get tickets for A Doll’s House, and later would think Lady Chatterley’s Lover the most important book of the decade. Luther: 8. Luther: 9. Luther: 10. But she cried at the club ceremony that made her Mother of the Year.

Ten years passed before she noticed the shadow. As the child grew, the height of his shoulder cast a faint shade across Priscilla McGuire’s body. It had started at her lap and then slowly crawled up across her stomach, chest, and neck. What began as a slight, gray film was now deepening into a veil. She squinted in the light. It was just another illusion; the woman wasn’t fading in the photographs. It was so easy for the eye to follow the dark lines from the son, across her body to the identical dark lines of the father. Her light skin, beige dresses, and prematurely graying hair could be easily dismissed if you didn’t stop to catch the flashing highlights in those eyes. Why didn’t she sit up in these pictures? She was leaning too closely toward the son, causing herself to be lost in his shadow.

A tight knot gripped her middle. The veil was now over her chin, drawing closer toward her mouth. The woman was not disappearing. She turned much more quickly now, forcing herself to stare only into Priscilla McGuire’s eyes and fix her on that page. She knew she was losing her mind. They were nothing but family portraits taken at a time when photography wasn’t sophisticated about angles and lighting. These were probably only the rejects that she kept for herself, placing them here as some sort of joke: the wedding portrait with the crooked finger, the bouquet flung into the wind. This woman loved to laugh: Look at her now, sitting there obviously amused by her position between the two grown men. Priscilla McGuire was staring straight ahead, surely laughing inside at something. But there was nothing in front of her except a round camera lens with her aging reflection caught permanently in a staid leather chair. Luther: 20 years. He had gotten no taller, so why was the veil now across her bottom lip? And in the next, it had finally crept up to cover her mouth. She had to know what was happening. Luther: 21 years. She was no longer recording the growth of a child; the only thing growing in these pictures was her absence. In the next, she would finally stand up. She would be out in the garden or strolling on the beach. She kept turning the years over and hoping.

Willie’s shovel lifted another wedge of heavy snow. He had just picked up some momentum when his blade hit yet another raised flagstone that jarred his spine.

“Aw, shit!”

“You rang?” Lester looked back over his shoulder, a light spray from his shovel hitting the corner of the house.

Willie pointedly ignored him.

“I told ya, you’re doing it the wrong way,” Lester said. “This stuff is too deep to clear it with one stroke. You gotta take the top off first and then do another layer. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be tired out before we even get around to the front of this barn.”

“Well, nobody can say that of you.” Willie arched his sore back, turning toward the rear of the Dumonts’ house. At least three inches of snow still remained on the side of the patio that Lester had cleared, while Willie’s half was so clean the color of the flagstones was visible. “When I say I’m going to do a job, I do it right. And if you think I’m going back over your mess, you’re crazy.”

“By the time we make it to the front, nobody’s gonna be able to tell the difference the way it’s still snowing.”

“This is nothing but flurries,” Willie said as he began working again.

“But-it’s-stick-ing, Wil-lie,” Lester sang. “Look at what’s happening already.”

“So I’ll go around again for good measure and when you go around again, you’ll have twice as much to do.”

“Not me.” Lester shook his head. “Even if I had gone to jail, it wouldn’t have been sixty days at hard labor. And anybody who can afford a set-up like that”—he nodded toward the covered Olympic-size pool with its high diving platform—“should be able to cough up for a lousy snowblower. They get one free round from me, and that’s it.”

Willie pressed his lips together and snow started flying from his shovel.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Willie. But these folks ain’t worth it.”

“Maybe what I’m trying to prove is that I’m not an ungrateful, self-serving bastard like some people.” A huge clump flew to the side and Willie’s blade dug in again. “And if it takes breaking my ass to do it, then I think it’s worth it.” He kept his eyes on the path in front of him, refusing to look into Lester’s face. He knew he had hurt him, but being justified didn’t make him any less ashamed of his words. When he finally sneaked a glance at Lester’s silent back, Willie saw that his friend was fiercely clearing his section, the blade scraping the packed gravel.

“Hey look, Shit. You were right, it’s coming down too hard to get this driveway clean.”

“No, you were right,” Lester said without turning around. “If you’re going to bother to do something, then you do it like it should be done.”

Willie watched him for a moment, sighed, and then anchoring his shovel, approached him. “Well, then what I was trying to do was apologize. And I should do it like a man and just come out and say I’m sorry.”

Lester eyed his extended hand, letting his bottom lip tremble slightly for effect. “You’re really saying you’re sorry?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean—really sorry. Not just half-assed sorry, or white folks’ sorry. But deep down in your black balls sorry. The way someone should be who’s been biting off his best friend’s head every time he’s opened his mouth this morning—that kind of sorry?”

Willie just stared at him, his lips pushed to the side.

“’Cause if that’s the kind of sorry it is,” Lester said and smiled, “if that’s really and truly the kind of sorry it is, then I just might consider—”

“Aw, go find a high roof and a slippery ledge.” Willie laughed and Lester joined him.

“But seriously, White, I’ve been wondering what’s been eating you this morning. I thought you were pissed off because me and my big mouth got us into all this in the first place.”

“Naw, it’s got nothing to do with you. I just …” Willie sucked his teeth. “I just don’t sleep good at night anymore.”

“Man, you should be sleeping like a stone as hard as we’ve worked this week. I’m gone before my head hits the pillow.”

“Me, too. But then I get all these crazy dreams and when I wake up, I can’t get back to sleep. I must have been up since three o’clock this morning.”

“Yeah? Those must be some kind of dreams.”

“No, a lot of stupid crap. Like last night. I went into this store downtown and wanted to buy my mother one of those new Disc cameras for Christmas, and the woman behind the counter wouldn’t sell it to me. And so I started shaking her but she kept yelling, ‘I can’t sell it to you.’”

As Willie talked, he wondered why he couldn’t bring himself to tell Lester the real truth about that dream. The saleswoman wasn’t just shouting, she was terrified when he walked into that store and had kept screaming over and over, “You can’t use my camera because you have no face,” And there was no way he was going back to sleep after that. Because he knew that when she struggled free and reached for the mirror that she’d tried to get before he grabbed her, it would be true.

“And that kept you up? It doesn’t sound that scary to me.”

“I didn’t say the dreams scared me, Les,” Willie snapped. “I’m not a kid. I just said that when I wake up I have trouble sleeping again, so I’m tired in the morning.”

“Tired and evil.” Lester winked.

“Yeah. Especially when I realize I’ll be stuck with you all day,” Willie said, as he went back to get his shovel. A wad of wet snow hit him in the collar and he spun around.

“See, no hands.” Lester held up his palms and grinned.

“I’ll no hands you, turkey.” He scooped up a large mound while Lester put his hands in front of his face and began to dance.

“You get one throw to square it up—just one.”

“I need Spoon and the Brown Bombers right now.” Willie made an exaggerated attempt to round off the ball and aim. “They wouldn’t miss, and those niggers were deadly. They loaded their ammunition with boulders and aimed right between the eyes.”

“They caught me once, too.” Lester pointed to his forehead.

“It shows.”

Willie’s smile disappeared, and he dropped the snowball when he saw Luther Nedeed coming toward them. He walked slowly around the two-foot drifts, his narrow English boots leaving triangular prints along the side of the house. Wherever he had appeared from, they knew he’d been outside for quite a while because there was a layer of snowflakes on the shoulders of his worsted overcoat.

“It seems that this is my week for running into you gentlemen.” He addressed them both but looked directly at Willie, who picked up his shovel and held the handle in front of his chest.

“Looks that way,” Lester said, “but you sorta surprised us this time since there’s no funeral going on.”

“I think you tend to forget that I have interests in this community beyond that, Mr. Tilson. If everyone died, who would occupy these homes?” Luther frowned slightly. “Yes, it’s important that people decide to live. But then you can’t stop them from doing the other either, can you?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Nedeed,” Lester said. “I never thought of folks having a choice about that.”

“Sometimes they do.”

Willie wanted to start working again, anything to get that guy’s eyes off him. Why did he keep staring at him when Lester was the one talking?

“Well, I guess you should know.” Lester kicked at his shovel. “It is your business after all.” He was growing visibly uncomfortable. “Well, we’ll see you.”

“Yes, tomorrow night, isn’t it?”

Willie cringed.

“Well, uh, no, Mr. Nedeed,” Lester said. “I don’t think we’ll be able to make it—Christmas Eve and all that.”

“That’s a pity,” Luther said, and it seemed as if he meant it. “I know how hard you’ve been working this week, and why you’ve been doing it. I didn’t plan to take up much of your time and I was willing to match every dollar that you’ve earned so far.”

“Every dollar?”

“That shouldn’t surprise you, Mr. Tilson. My family has always believed that industry should be rewarded.”

Lester looked at Willie. “Why, we’ve already made almost two hundred and fifty dollars each this week.”

“Then I would match it for each of you.”

“One night’s work?”

“A little less than two hours’ work. I imagine that’s the best offer you’ve gotten this week.”

“God, I’ll say. Why, sure we’ll—”

“Money isn’t everything, Mr. Nedeed.” Willie found his voice and forced himself to look directly into Luther’s face. His hands gripped the shovel as if he expected the earth to open up or lightning to strike. He didn’t know why, since it was only a man—a short, well-dressed man who was standing there waiting patiently for his next sentence. But staring into those flat brown eyes, Willie felt that, somehow, those following words would be extremely important. “And I think that if you were in my place,” Willie continued slowly, “your next question would be, exactly what do you want us for?”

It seemed to take a slow age for Luther’s eyes to move over Willie’s body. No, it was more like moving through his body, well beneath the tissues that covered his internal organs.

“I see that I’ve assessed you correctly, Mr. Mason. And that gives me great pleasure, since I pride myself on being a good judge of men.” And then he smiled, an unhurried full curve of the lips that took another age to complete. “I want you to help me trim my Christmas tree.”

“That’s it? Just trim a tree?” Willie asked.

“That’s all. You see, my family is away for the holidays and, unavoidably, I’ll have to spend Christmas alone. Don’t think I’m buying your company, it’s just that old habits die hard, and it’s been a tradition in my home to adorn our tree on Christmas Eve. The ornaments are quite unusual, they’ve been used by us for generations. And it’s a beautiful sight when it’s completed—but like all beauty, it’s much more meaningful when it’s shared, wouldn’t you agree?”

Willie only nodded.

“Fine. Then I’ll see you tomorrow night at nine o’clock.” He turned and walked away as quietly as he’d come.

Lester blew out his breath. “Christ, what a creep show. Just when you think you’ve got that guy figured out, he comes up with surprises. Imagine Nedeed getting all choked up over a tree.”

For a moment Willie didn’t answer. He knew what it would take, Willie thought, he knew exactly what it would take to get what he wanted from each of them. He was in awe of the man. Sure, they could go there and decorate his tree, ooh and aah, then collect all that money and split. But for Nedeed there was much more to it than that. Nedeed had told them what he wanted without ever really telling them why.

“It’s not about his stupid tree,” Willie finally said.

“Hey look, don’t start that again. You said you would go if you knew what we were going for, and now you do. Willie, I’m begging you, don’t mess this up. A hundred and twenty-five bucks an hour.”

“No, I’m going.” Willie frowned. “I’m just saying I know it’s more than just some tree.”

“Yeah, right.” Lester shook his head. “You forgot to ask him exactly what we’re gonna hang on the tree—maybe shrunken heads. And then we’d have to find out exactly whose heads.”

“Well, that leaves yours out ’cause he said the thing’s really pretty when it’s done.”

Lester bent to pack a snowball and Willie picked up his shovel like a baseball bat. “Throw it on your life.”

“Come on,” Lester said as he brushed off his hands, “let’s stop jacking around so we can get out of here.”

They worked steadily for the next half hour, clearing the left side of the house and the front walkway. They had just started up the right side, moving toward the back again, when they heard a woman’s voice calling, “Laurel.” It was much softer than the other sounds of life around them. It blended with the scraping of their shovels, the clinking of tire chains on a car driving slowly up Tupelo Drive, the distant whir of a snow-blower on the next street.

“Laurel.”

Now they could tell it was coming from the rear of the house. The woman’s voice had increased only slightly in volume, registering the image of someone being summoned to take a forgotten package or a set of keys. At first Willie thought that the footprints leading from the back patio to the street belonged to that person. But they would have seen her pass long before, and no one would wait until now to call. He glanced over his shoulder, expecting the person to emerge through the front door, and then he could tell her that someone back there wanted her. But the door remained closed and the street vacant as the woman called again, a bit louder and insistent—“Laurel.”

Willie saw his own question reflected in Lester’s face. Why was the voice in the rear of the house? There was no passage back there. No one could walk through those eight-foot hedges.

“Law-rail,” it sounded to their ear, “Law-rail.”

They frowned at each other and took their shovels with a silent accord and returned up the path they had just cleared, moving toward the patio and the long-drawn call. It now held an edge of impatience that might be used to summon disobedient children. Looking up, they saw the old woman they had met in the house. She was leaning over the windowsill, the printed housedress open at the throat, and snow flurries blowing into her face. “Law-rail.” Her impatience now turning into mild anger at being ignored as she shifted her numb hands on the ledge, wisps of gray hair collecting snowflakes like soft lint. It could have been a child with her mittens off, books dragging, and boots filled with snow. It could have been a bowl of soup growing cold, or a sandwich going stale. They followed the direction of the woman’s voice and saw that it was a tall, slender body in a silver bathing suit crushed into the bottom of the empty pool—“Laurel”—but it remained the cry of an old woman, calling a little girl home.

“I heard you the first time, Grandma.” The child ran into the house, her dress and socks splattered with muddy water.

“So why didn’t you answer the first time, miss? A hard head makes a soft behind.”

Roberta Johnson closed the screen but hesitated before shutting the peeling wooden door. The wind was sending damp gravel spinning down the Georgia dirt road, and the tops of the sycamores and pecan trees were already bending over. It was going to be a blowing rain, no doubt about it. But it might not reach past the porch, and she would welcome the breeze.

“You still standing there in them wet clothes? The last thing I need is a case of pneumonia on my hands.”

She got a towel and sat the child on a kitchen chair, kneeling to remove the damp shoes.

“You’re determined to be a trial today.” The towel dabbed gently at the feet and legs dangling from the chair. “Determined to wear me out—as if this heat isn’t doing a good enough job as it is. You think I got nothing better to do than chase up and down these roads after you? Well, I’ll tell you, miss, I got a whole lot of things more than you on my mind.” She spied a tiny scratch just above the calf and bent to examine it closely, satisfied it was the same one she’d seen yesterday. “Heartaches. Children ain’t nothing but a mess of heartaches. And ain’t this red mud?” She frowned at the towel and then picked up the discarded socks. “You been in that ditch! Laurel, I have told you and told you more times than you—”

“I know”—Laurel nodded, her thick braids swinging over each shoulder—“more times than I have fingers and toes. And guess what, Grandma? I know how many times that is—it’s twenty. I can count up to twenty now.” Her full, round eyes were triumphant and only a shade less proud than the ones she smiled into.

“Well, ain’t you something,” Roberta said as she took in the coffee skin and thick, bushy brows. “Hardly five and doing that.” She might be the spitting image of her poor mama, but she always knew the child would take her brains from their side of the family.

She stood Laurel on the chair to pull off her dress. “But I’m warning you, miss—stay out that ditch or you won’t live to count past much more than that. All I need is a drowned child to show your daddy when the summer’s over. Yes, Lord, that’s all I need.”

“Oh, I can’t drown, Grandma.”

“You’ll drown fast as the next one, miss.”

Not that your father’s new girlfriend would mourn much, Roberta thought. She had never seen a clutchier, more mean-spirited woman. And her son couldn’t see through it. He actually thought there was something behind all that head-patting and cheek-pecking that barracuda rained on Laurel when they brought her down in the summer. Why, the only sincere thing that woman ever did was wave good-bye to the child through the window of that car: just like his daddy, God rest his soul, soft in the head and loose in the pocket when it came to a pretty face.

“But Daddy told me I can’t drown.”

“Now, why you making up tales on your daddy? I know he never told you any such foolishness.”

“Uh huh.” Laurel’s face was serious. “He told me I was his brown sugar baby. And sugar don’t drown, Grandma, it melts in the water and makes it sweet.”

Roberta laughed in spite of herself. “Well, I’ll tell you what. I don’t want all this brown sugar melting away in a nasty old ditch, ’cause then I couldn’t do this.” And she gave her a hug.

Laurel’s small arms wrapped around the woman’s neck, and she whispered in her ear, “Oh, but, Grandma, you should hear what pretty music the water makes.”

Roberta released the child slowly, stared into her face for a moment, and set her firmly on the ground.

“It’s time for your nap.”

Then she sat alone in the quiet house, listening to the rain drum on the tin roof. When it finally stopped, she put on a pair of her husband’s old overalls and fishing boots, and dragging a pick and shovel to the road, she began to fill up the ditch. Since the ground was soft and she worked steadily, Laurel was still asleep when she came back into the house.

Music and water. Laurel brought both in abundance to that five-room cottage each summer. There was a constant chorus of glasses breaking mezzo-soprano, chairs scraping baritone, doors slamming in measured time to the shrill notes of her laughter mixing with those of the neighborhood children. The only silence came from dripping bathing suits and towels thrown over the shower rod and back-porch railing. When Roberta had realized that it was impossible to keep Laurel away from the water, she made sure that she learned to swim. Standing by the edge of the sandy pond with her arms folded, she had watched five summers ago as a neighbor’s boy taught Laurel to float. He had a difficult job because the eight-year-old kept struggling against his hands. She didn’t want him holding her up, she wanted to be free. Now Roberta shook her head and cursed that day as she maneuvered around the pools of water left by the dripping clothes. No one needed this many bathing suits. Whoever heard of such nonsense: freshwater suits for the pond, and saltwater suits for the lake. And when you multiplied that by three times a day, it added up to a whole lot of aggravation. And she knew Laurel was lying about not going out to the far end of that lake, ’cause she was hardheaded.

Once Roberta had walked those three miles behind Laurel’s bicycle tracks and stood in the lake’s high weeds among the maidenhair fern and sea roses, watching her slender arms cut through the glassy surface, well past her friends, until she could have been some sort of silver fish way out on the waves that Roberta, arms crossed, willed to hold her up. She knew that if they didn’t and Laurel went under, no power on earth could have kept her on that shore, and she didn’t swim a lick. She waited and argued with the girl all the way home, contented now that there was no need to worry. But she still asked the same question each time her long-limbed granddaughter bounded through the door.

“You been out to the deep end of that lake?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Liar!”

Laurel laughed and sat spread-legged at the kitchen table.

“Get your wet bottom off my chairs, miss. It ain’t enough I hardly got one dry spot in this house already? Go change into something.”

“It’s too hot.” Laurel folded her towel over the chair seat.

Roberta stopped chopping her turnip greens and went to the refrigerator. “The Morgan boy came by looking for you today. Seemed mighty disappointed that you weren’t around.”

“Aw, who cares about him? I don’t even like boys.”

“Yeah, and a kitten don’t like cream.” She set the glass of lemonade on the table and went back to the sink. “But it does my heart good to hear you say that, ’cause it’s just what I told him.”

“Oh God, what did you say, Grandma?”

“Just about what you just got through expressing.”

“No, I mean what exactly did you say?”

Roberta never turned around. “For somebody who don’t give two hoots about a somebody else, you sure seem awful interested in what went on this afternoon.”

“I just hope you didn’t hurt his feelings, that’s all. You know how you can talk sometimes, and everybody might not understand you like I do.”

“Now, I like that.” She turned her head toward the table. “I talk the way I’ve talked all my life, miss—plain and clear. And the folks around here don’t have any trouble understanding me. That little peanut-headed boy got my message right off that you were only thirteen years old in spite of them long legs and whatever lies you been telling him about your age, and you didn’t care to be keeping company. And I said that if that’s the reason he keeps hauling his little greasy behind over to this side of the road, he just better haul it back the other way.”

“I can’t believe you did that.” Laurel rolled her head in her hands.

“Well, believe it,” Roberta said, “’cause I did. And his feelings didn’t seem to be hurt one bit. No, as a matter of fact,” she continued slowly, “his feelings seemed right healthy when I invited him to supper tonight as long as he was willing to sit at my table and behave himself like a proper gentleman.”

She took Laurel’s kiss stoically and glanced at her back as she ran toward the bathroom. “Yeah, I thought that would get your butt out of that wet suit.”

Later that evening they sat on the porch together, Laurel’s head resting in Roberta’s lap, the crickets and bullfrogs competing as hard to give them sound as the fireflies and stars did to give the light.

“You know, you getting too big for this,” Roberta said as she stroked the thick, wavy hair.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave you.” Laurel sighed and buried her head deeper into Roberta’s lap.

“It ain’t me you don’t want to leave, it’s Mr. Yes, Ma’am-No Ma’am over there.”

They laughed again as they had while washing the dishes about the Morgan boy who had come to supper with his tie so tight he could hardly swallow, and so nervous he had answered each of Roberta’s offers of food with both Yes, Ma’am and No, Ma’am.

“No, really, Grandma. You don’t know how awful it is at home.”

“I seen your awful—nice big room to yourself, color TV, record player, and all kinds of gadgets. I should have it so bad.”

When Roberta’s son had announced his sudden marriage last year to a woman she had never met, she made it her business to take a twenty-eight-hour bus trip and do just that. She arrived on their doorstep with four suitcases, two packed with her clothes and two that were empty. She stayed just long enough to find out what she wanted to know: whether or not she would have to fill those two other bags and use the extra one-way ticket safely tucked away in her pocketbook.

“Well, I hate it there now.”

She felt the slender shoulders tense as the words hissed through the girl’s clenched teeth.

“Your daddy should hear you talking like that, it would break his heart. He’s worked real hard for you, Laurel. You know, some men wouldn’ta saddled themselves with a baby all alone, and you weren’t much more than that when your mama passed. I tried to get him to leave you down here with me then, but he felt that you were his responsibility. And he’s done right well by you. I know it ain’t easy for you to share him now. You’ve never really had to share anything, have you? But I think you’re old enough to understand that grown men have needs, Laurel. Needs that can’t all be satisfied by a little girl. And I got to give him credit; he coulda married a long time ago, but he was waiting for the right one—not so much for himself, but for you. And your new mama seems right nice.”

“She’s not my mother. My real mother would never treat me the way she does.”

The hand that was stroking Laurel’s hair became as still and glacial as the next words: “What has she done to you?”

“She won’t let me cut my hair.”

Roberta expelled a burst of air that burned her lungs as it left. “Lord have mercy! You been laying here whining ’cause of that? I oughta cut your throat.” She shoved Laurel’s head from her lap.

“No, really, Grandma.” Laurel sat up and leaned over. “I have a chance to swim in the city-wide competitions, but all this hair slows my official time.”

“So braid it up and pin it to your head, like you do here.”

“I do, and that’s just it. It’s too bulky to fit under a cap and these braids are added surface friction. And in the water that can make a lot of difference.”

“I don’t see what difference a few ounces of hair can make. And she’s right not wanting you walking around looking like a scalped Indian. Besides, the Good Book says that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”

“See that, you’re taking her side—just like Daddy. He’s always taking her side about everything. I thought at least you would understand. But no one understands.”

And her eyes burned with that strange intensity that always bewildered Roberta. The child was too high-strung. She would wrap her soul around the most trivial things: the slant of sun on a rock, the curve of a wildflower. And they had to be pried gently from her hands because the need for them came from some mysterious valley that opened without warning inside of her. Roberta could tell when that was happening; her voice took on the plaintive echoes that it did at that moment. She was down there now, and Roberta would have to coax her back.

“Laurel, remember the story of Brer Fox and Brer Bear.” It was halfway between a question and a command. “They had stolen Farmer Brown’s chicken, plucked it, and put it in an old gunny sack. And then they met him on the road and he had his huge, double-barreled shotgun over his shoulder and wanted to know what they had in the bag. So they told him it was nothing but an old tomcat they had found and skinned: And when Farmer Brown went to untie the sack, Brer Bear whispered to Brer Fox, ‘What we gonna do when he finds out it ain’t no cat?’ And Brer Fox said—‘Me, you, and that chicken is gonna improvise.’”

She didn’t get the smile she was used to, but she went on anyway. “So you see, sometimes when things ain’t going quite your way and you gotta deal with just what’s on hand, two people can put their heads together and maybe come up with a way to turn what could be a bad situation into a tolerable one.”

Laurel listened, but her eyes were far away and filled with tears. She put her head back on Roberta’s lap.

“What I was thinking,” Roberta said, “is that if we go into town Saturday and get Miss Lucinda to put one of them new relaxers in your head, you could still keep peace at home and your hair would flatten out enough to fit under a cap so you could swim. How does that sound?”

Her only answer was Laurel’s soft breath and the tears she could feel hot and acidic through the thin summer cotton. “I want my mother. I want my mother.”

It wasn’t petulant or whining, but it echoed such an emptiness that Roberta shuddered as she cupped the thick hair in her hands.

“Well, I’m the closest thing to a natural mother you got,” she whispered through the screen and out into the night, “so God help us both.”

Music and water. The two became one for Laurel the next and final summer she would spend in her grandmother’s house. Roberta stood on the edge of the pond, holding a tape player like it was some unpredictable animal.

“Now when I’m in the water, you count to five and push the button I showed you,” Laurel called from the rocks. Wildflowers had been pinned into the two thick braids crossed over the top of her head. And the body that had rounded and filled was curved gracefully over the boulders as she moved into an arabesque that propelled her into the water.

Roberta gasped when she disappeared under a surface that gave almost no evidence it had been disturbed. The five seconds seemed a lifetime and when she pushed in the concave button, the recorder came alive in her hands with the vibration of violin strings that she could feel all the way up to the top of her skull. Simultaneously, the strings pulled Laurel’s arched form out of the water, into a backstroke that hit the surface each time a full note was played. It was difficult to tell whether her body was making the music or the music her body, as she turned, plunged, and lifted to each change in tempo. She’d disappear with each roll of the bass drums to be resurrected by a clash of cymbals and sent spiraling toward each edge of the shore by the wind from the clarinets. It seemed effortless, as if she’d changed the water into another element. It was liquid air that rewarded every perfect twist and turn by keeping her afloat, keeping her moving, and keeping her free.

She came dripping up on the gravelly dirt, laughing through her heaving chest. “What do you think? I was a little off during the second movement, but I’m working on it.”

Roberta handed her a towel. “I didn’t know you was gonna jump from them rocks. My heart almost fell out of me.”

“Aw, that’s nothing.” She waved her hand backward, not even granting the ledge the dignity of a glance. “When I work with my group, I come off a ten-foot platform and I hold form all the way down. Just imagine, Grandma …” She sectioned the horizon with her hands. “There’s Cheryl, Renée, Connie, and then me—all on these ascending platforms. First strings, Cheryl goes. Second strings, Renée. Third, Connie. And then, crescendo—me. Right through this flowered hoop. It’s wild.”

“It’s insanity.” Roberta thrust the recorder at her. “I don’t know what’s gotten into your father, letting you do something like that. You could break your neck.”

“Oh no, not in the water.” She stared out over the pond. “It can be a little scary when you’re first up there. But it’s all in the balance and how you hit the surface. And it’s the greatest feeling in the world when you do it right, Grandma. It’s like there’s no difference between the air and the water except that the water is safer. Once you get down there and hold still, it lifts you right up, sorta like it was a pair of warm hands or arms. And you come up to all this beautiful music that was really there anyway if you knew how to listen. And then you just move and move and move.” She began to do arabesques, jetés, and pirouettes around Roberta.

“Well, if you wanna dance to all them fiddles, why don’t you go take up regular ballet?”

“Because it’s not the same. It’s—” Laurel stopped as if the need for that question would make any answer futile. “It just isn’t.” Then she smiled. “I’m hungry now. Let’s go home.”

But Roberta wasn’t fooled by that smile. She saw Laurel drawing her thoughts into that private valley that she visited so much that summer while offering everyone else the tokens of her eyes, ears, and mouth.

Roberta touched her shoulder. “I must say you looked right pretty in that water. And with all them flowers in your hair. I guess you’re glad you didn’t hack it all off last year.”

“Uh huh,” Laurel said as she pulled the columbines and daisies out of her braids, crushing them before they were thrown in the dirt.

Roberta knew she had made another mistake. Even a passing reference to Laurel’s stepmother sent her into one of those “moods,” where she picked at her food or settled in the porch swing, staring into space for hours.

That summer she grew especially quiet when it rained. She played one tape over and over. Chopin’s Fifteenth Prelude, she told Roberta, who still called it the one where the man kept plunking off-key. It was just her womanhood coming down, Roberta thought, the insides got to catch up the outsides. And knowing how exhausting that race could be, she would bring her a glass of milk, a slice of peach pie, or some biscuits and jam. “Keep your strength up,” she’d command before going back inside to her ironing.

It was music and water that kept Laurel away the next year. But the phone brought her voice into the house. Summer was the only time she and her group could really practice together. And she wanted a job this year, but she would try to come for a visit before school started. If not, Roberta was still coming up for Christmas, right? No, she didn’t have her eye on some fast-tailed boy up in Cleveland. They sure eyed her enough; but didn’t Roberta always say that looking wasn’t having, and having wasn’t keeping? Well, no boy was going to keep her tied down. Kisses, hugs, and loads of love but it was time to go now. So Roberta didn’t hold her, and she put the phone in its cradle with only a twinge of regret, accepting that it was indeed time for Laurel to do that.

The telephone became an important presence in Roberta’s house. She knew it would ring at the end of each school year, on her birthday, Easter, and the second Sunday in May. It gave her ordered and aging years a predictability that was pleasant, but when it rang at sporadic times because Laurel couldn’t complete the cycle of some triumph or crisis without sharing it with her, it gave those remaining years meaning.

It rang now, insistent and shrill because she couldn’t reach it quickly enough. The act of getting up from over the washtub had to be performed in small increments, making sure the back would unbend, the knees would support the body, and the legs would get her across the room. There was no need to come to graduation because she was going to kill herself, the voice announced dramatically and was told that Roberta would save her the trouble if she didn’t shut up and stop all that crying. She had been accepted at Berkeley and she couldn’t go. That woman had decided to get pregnant and now her father could only afford the state university. No, she wasn’t being selfish. They knew she had wanted to go to California for ages. Hadn’t she worked for the last three summers, saving all her money for this? Yes, the state university had business administration but they didn’t have a decent swimming coach. If she went to Berkeley, she might get a shot at the Olympics. No, California was not full of freaks and mass murderers. She didn’t care what the National Geographic special said, it wasn’t going to fall into the ocean. Why was she bothering to talk to her anyway? This whole conversation was a waste of time. And a waste of money, Roberta reminded her before slamming down the phone—Laurel had called collect.

Roberta went to that high school graduation, and Laurel went to Berkeley. But even if Roberta had been invited to her college commencement, she wouldn’t have gone. She had learned to become truly suspicious of anything associated with the state of California. She stopped watching its game shows, and predicted well in advance for her residents the national ills that would come from putting two of its citizens in the White House. And it even reached the point where she refused to buy its oranges and raisins. It wasn’t paranoia or senility; it was just extreme caution. Because all Roberta knew was that she had cashed in her life insurance to send a child she had named Laurel Johnson to the state of California, and it sent her back a stranger.

Laurel Dumont got out of the silver Mercedes and stood in front of the weather-beaten house. The scant material of her halter top clung to her back and she ran her hands over her damp throat. Already she could feel the sweat rising through the pores in her scalp, her closely cropped hair forming tight ringlets at the base of her neck. She was glad that Howard had decided to stay back at the Sheraton, he was finally right about one thing: Atlanta was the only civilized section of Georgia. This place was ungodly hot. But he was wrong about the car; renting the Mercedes didn’t make her seem more at home. Sitting in that heavy, air-conditioned box and trying to maneuver it over these winding, bumpy roads had given her a fierce headache because she had to concentrate in order not to lose her bearings. Landmarks that should have been familiar took on a different shape and size through the tinted glass and over the circular hood ornament. The only way to tell when Clover Road changed into Bennett’s Pass was the texture of the ground, when gravel became clay. But the cushioned springs made it all seem the same, and she’d almost missed turning right at the crucial third pine. As the tires screeched to a halt and she had to do the impossible, back up with a dusty rear window, she might have cursed Howard for leasing the car or cursed herself for making the trip, but that would have taken some clarity about exactly who was to blame, and she didn’t have that. There was just the pervasive feeling that she in that car on that road was wrong.

Wrong. The word slipped out of the mouth, forming an invisible circle of air that quickly solidified to join a similar chain of steel links tightening around her chest. Wrong—she and that man back at the Sheraton who could walk into any court and prove their legal right to sign the register “Mr. and Mrs. Howard Dumont” as long as no evidence beyond a ten-year-old marriage license was required. Wrong—she and the house on Tupelo Drive that defied all their efforts to transform it into that nebulous creation called a home. Wrong—she and the career at IBM that she clung to with a desperation mistaken for pride, ambition, or contentment; mistaken for everything but what it was—a mistake. But if she let go of it, what else was left? There would be nothing to cling to except another link in a long chain that contained only totally circular, totally evasive wrongs.

She hadn’t seen them building up behind her because she’d spent so much time captivated by the images in front of her: the Phi Beta Kappa pictures in her yearbook, front page of the New York Times business section, the bridal pictures in the Dumont family album. All before her twenty-fifth birthday, and in all of them she had been smiling. No wonder the world pronounced her happy, and like a fool she had believed them. Perhaps, just once, if she had failed a course, missed a plane connection, or glittered less at Howard’s parties, she might have had time to think about who she was and what she really wanted, but it never happened. And when she finally took a good look around, she found herself imprisoned within a chain of photographs and a life that had no point. She had kept driving because memory told her that there was a point at the clearing of those pine trees. And wedged into it was a house, an old woman, and a beginning.

She stood in front of it now, the house at the end of the road, with its parched lawn and withering borders of marigolds and geraniums. Reddish dust had coated her leather sandals by the time she reached the picket fence. The rusty latch grated against the wooden post, stripping away tiny flecks of white paint. It was amazing how large this yard had seemed once, but she had definitely grown no taller in the last seventeen years, and thank God for that. At eighteen she was already over five-ten and had shuddered to think that she would reach six feet. Now she felt sixty feet tall as she covered the narrow walkway in three quick swings, bending lower than necessary to clear the screened porch door. She was conditioned by years of striding into boardrooms on five-inch heels that gave her the speed and height to announce that she and whatever she had to say were to be taken seriously or not at all. An Amazon. That’s what she’d become. The biggest woman at IBM; she’d allow them that one joke as she sank into the chair next to the executive director and crossed the shapely pillars they had learned to respect. Those feet had kicked down doors, caving in the few faces that were foolish enough to be braced against them.

But the closed door that was now in front of Laurel shocked her. Roberta knew she was coming, she had called and told her, so this was obviously some sort of statement that she wasn’t welcome. Laurel stared at the door. Wasn’t welcomed or wasn’t believed? How many other times had she called and not come? Or come and not stayed? Laurel couldn’t count the uneaten dinners kept warm on the back burners, the freshly made beds not slept in because her business plans had changed and she was just “passing through.” Her hand reached for the latch to push open the door and hesitated. How many times had there been just no time for the woman in this house? The answer made her release the latch: just one time too many. And so she would have to knock like any unexpected visitor and hope to be invited inside.

Her jeweled hand balled into a fist and she struck the wood so forcefully the door rattled on its hinges. The silence that followed threatened to suffocate her as she grasped the door frame and pounded again. She forgot that her long wait could be credited to the dawn of Roberta’s eightieth birthday, and that the stoic lines of the face she finally saw were the result of most of those years spent rarely smiling about anything. Roberta’s pleasure was usually registered in her eyes, but they were covered now with the gray film of age and were shaded by the drawn blinds in the house.

“I ain’t deaf, but I would be if everybody who came here banged on this door like you,” she greeted Laurel.

“Well, can I come in?” Laurel massaged her knuckles as she moved past the widening door into the front room. The shadow’s made it seem small and dingy as she tried to adjust her vision to the shapes around her. “And can I give you a hug?” She could feel the bones’ fragile outlines as she wrapped her arms around the woman’s shoulders. “Aren’t you glad to see me?” She leaned back and smiled into Roberta’s stony face. “You don’t seem to have much to say.”

“Because you done asked three stupid questions in just as many seconds.” Roberta released herself. “And when you get to be my age, you learn not to waste your breath answering them.”

Laurel watched as she shuffled back to her easy chair, the sound of the felt house slippers blending with the shadows in the room. She faded into the corner behind the side of the chair, leaving Laurel standing helplessly in the center of the floor. She looked around the house with a growing despondency—the old gas stove with totally empty burners, the wooden kitchenette, the braided rugs separating the kitchen from the sitting room. Behind those closed doors would be two closet-sized bedrooms and a bath. It was little more than a shack. And the place had the smell of old age about it—that inexplicable mixture of dry sweat and moist saliva. But what had she expected? What in God’s name had she hoped to find here?

“If you standing there thinking about lemonade, it’s in the icebox. And bring me a glass while you at it.”

The voice came out of the past, melting the distance between them. She rushed to obey and do her part in recapturing the magic. Inside the refrigerator, the thick discs of lemon floated in the cut-glass pitcher with a clarity that made her want to cry. It would be sweet, sticky sweet, the way Roberta never drank it. The ice cubes were still blocked and solid, put in and timed so they wouldn’t dilute the syrupy liquid before she came. The room was dark, and as long as there were no mirrors, she might be able to believe that it was made for the little girl who had just ridden up that road on a bicycle. The little girl with two thick braids who dreamed of swimming in the Olympics. As she turned to swing open the cabinets and grab some glasses, the rows of canned food hit her between the eyes like a sledgehammer. Moving quickly to the next set of doors, she found sacks of flour and rice.

“You’ve changed the cabinets,” she cried out to the darkness and slammed the door shut.

“Miss, my cups and glasses are where they been for the last thirty years. If anything’s changed, it ain’t them.”

Laurel gripped the counter and concentrated—the far left, that’s where they were. Why did she think the right? “I don’t know why you have it so dark in here, it would confuse anyone,” she said aloud to cover her growing panic as she banged through the cabinets. “And don’t tell me it’s because it’s cooler that way, because it’s not. I sent you an air conditioner years ago which, Daddy told me, you gave away. That’s not fair, and you know it. You give away my air conditioner and then keep this place pitch-black and expect people to find things.” Her voice was an octave higher when she finally discovered the glasses. “And you had the door shut when you knew I was coming. You never shut the door. But what do you care if it would hurt my feelings.”

Her hands trembled as she gave Roberta the lemonade.

“I ain’t got to sweep your feelings off my floor like I do the dust that would blow in here on a dry day like today.”

Roberta watched her as she sat down in the chair, crossed her legs and began to swing them like the short ticks of a clock. Laurel took two long swallows and turned the wet glass in her hand repeatedly.

“But you ain’t come here to talk about my cleaning habits, or the way I keep cool in the summer.” She leaned over toward the young woman. “Why did you come, Laurel?”

There was a long pause, and then her voice was barely a whisper. “When people are in trouble, don’t they go home?”

Roberta covered her clenched hands gently. “But this ain’t your home, child.”

“I know.” She nodded as her tears further distorted the strange shapes in the darkened room. “But, Grandma, when people are in trouble, don’t they go home?”

So Laurel went home. And home was Linden Hills. If she had any doubt, she could look at her driver’s license, or call up the post office just to be sure—722 Tupelo Drive was where her mail had been sent for the last ten years. Not that the carrier needed the house number: everyone knew that the twelve-room stone Tudor had belonged to the Dumonts for over sixty years. The four bedrooms and three and a half baths could boast of nothing but the sweaty backs of lawyers on their sheets and the grime of government officials swirling down their drains. Laurel’s husband had kept the tradition going by combining both of those professions: the first black D.A. in Wayne County, hand-picked to be the next state attorney general. And he had chosen the only type of woman his family would have accepted. Laurel came with the Dumonts’ ingrained prerequisities: she was sepia, stunning, and successful. She walked into a house that was complete, and could think of no major changes to make. The couple had everything; she had to believe that because everyone told her so. And with so much in that house, they didn’t miss each other as they both stumbled on their way up, not realizing that their stairways weren’t strictly parallel. Slowly, deceptively, the steps slanted until the couple’s fingertips could just barely meet across the chasm. They might have discovered it sooner, but for years they could still see each other clearly as one packed the other’s bags to catch a plane or Metroliner, listened to the other’s speeches for that crucial meeting that always seemed to overlap a birthday, a vacation, or an anniversary. And since their hands were grasped so tightly on their respective set of stairs, it wasn’t until they had nearly reached the summit and had time to pause that they realized they had been moving together but away from each other. The gap wasn’t large, but it was enough to keep their one free hand from touching, regardless of how they strained.

Some women would have filled that space with children. Then each could have grasped the infant’s hand and let it masquerade for the flesh of the other. But Laurel filled it with the only two things she could honestly associate with home. After seven years, she had made her first changes in the Dumont property: she turned the den into a music room and installed a diving pool. Howard didn’t protest the carpenters tearing down walls and ceilings to put in shelves and speakers for her hundreds of classical albums and tapes. And seeing that she had purposely designed it to leave room for only one chaise lounge didn’t bother him much because he knew how she liked to be alone with her music. But the garage had to be moved and the entire backyard excavated for the style of pool she wanted. If they built a normal-size pool, there would be space for landscaping, garden parties, and barbecues. That sort of an arrangement would be a business asset for both of them, but few people were trained like her to use a thirty-foot diving platform. And when they had children, wouldn’t it be better—and safer—for them to be in shallower water at first? But he knew by then that his words were spoken across a void that would preclude any children. So if there was a pool, there might be a chance for a family; and if there was a family, there might be a home. When they both happened to be at 722 Tupelo Drive, they would make love on the chaise to her string quartets, and in the summer he would watch her swim. Too late, they both realized that music and water just weren’t solid enough to bridge their gap permanently. Laurel’s pool and music room hadn’t turned 722 into a home; they only gave her an excuse to return there.

She returned to Tupelo Drive that summer after leaving Roberta. And she stayed. Dressed in either a silk Japanese robe or a terry-cloth wrap, she spent the late summer and early autumn on the chaise lounge or diving platform. She began by telling the office that she needed an extra week off and then an extra month. Finally, she let her answering service intercept all their calls. Her decision not to move a step outside that property grew into inertia and, ultimately, fear. She became terrified that new words or new places would be lurking traps to keep her away from what she was seeking. Georgia wasn’t her home, nor Cleveland or California. They had been only way stations that she had passed through. The thought of her dislocation was stifling; the number of places she couldn’t claim, dizzying. She had stopped at them all only long enough to get her picture taken. And just maybe if she could freeze reality around her now, she’d know where she belonged. And with that reference point—with any point at all—she could discover what had gone wrong. So she desperately clung to the two things that had felt right for most of her life. When it became too cold to swim, the music got so loud it was deafening.

She thought she heard Howard say that he was leaving to think things over, that he had tried to reach her, but she just didn’t seem to care anymore about him or their home. Yes, he had definitely mouthed the word “home,” because she remembered that it fit so well with the rounded tones coming from the oboes. The piccolos then kept time with his trembling bottom lip. She had just let herself go all to pieces. What did she plan to do about her job, her career? How long did she think she could stay away and not be replaced? If she needed professional help, he could get it for her. She couldn’t keep herself locked away like this forever. Look at him, dammit. Something had gone terribly wrong. Her laughter reached the pitch of the violins. Had he disturbed her for that? For that illuminating piece of information? If he couldn’t come up with any sharper observations, he’d never make attorney general.

She couldn’t hear the doors slam, to the music room, bedroom closets, or front hall, but she assumed they must have because his clothes and books were gone. And she couldn’t hear the file of visitors who came all through the late autumn: her father, half-sister, and stepmother. The neighbors from Tupelo Drive mouthing concern or curiosity above the volume of her music until they tired of the competition and went away. She didn’t have to worry about hearing Roberta.

Roberta came in mid-December and just stared.

Laurel looked across the room from her chaise and there she was, sitting in a straight-backed chair she had dragged in from the dining room. Laurel said nothing but didn’t have the pleasure of feeling that she was ignoring Roberta. Hands folded in her lap, she calmly allowed the crashing cymbals and thunderous piano chords to wash over the printed housedress and worn-down slippers. She only moved when the doorbell rang, quietly disappearing to return again and take up her vigil. They spent the entire day like that together. Finally, Laurel rolled over and switched off the system.

“Well, have you heard enough?” She spoke without looking at the woman. “I’ll run down the program for you. The morning began with Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor. Then there was Beethoven’s Fourth Concerto in G Major followed by Brahms’s First Symphony. We started the afternoon with Chopin’s Fourth, Twenty-second, and Twenty-fourth preludes. Then moved into Tchaikovsky—his Fifth and Sixth symphonies, I played the Sixth twice. And for the last three hours it’s been Mahler—I especially like his work. Did you notice that I’ve spliced the tapes, so there’s absolutely no break between the last and first notes of his Eighth and Ninth symphonies?” She continued to talk into the ceiling. “I hope you’ve come to discuss what you’ve just heard, because beyond that I’ve nothing to say to you or anyone else.”

“I heard enough the first five minutes I sat here. And the rest of the time was spent trying to make sense out of what I was seeing.” Roberta’s voice was even and slow.

“I don’t care what you were seeing. You saw what all the others have seen: a woman who just doesn’t want to be bothered. Can’t everyone understand that? I just want to be left alone.”

“You said you was willing to talk about that music. Well, what I was seeing was what I was hearing. I can’t pronounce them names like you, but that last man—the one you say you like so much?”

“Mahler. Gustav Mahler.”

“Yeah, him.” Roberta nodded. “It’s a might bit different from Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, or even Muddy Waters.”

“I’ll say.”

“I can hear them starting from the same place, though.”

“The same place? They’re worlds apart.”

“No, they in the same world.” Roberta shook her head. “They all trying to say something with music that you can’t say with plain talk. There ain’t really no words for love or pain. And the way I see it, only fools go around trying to talk their love or talk their pain. So the smart people make music and you can kinda hear about it without them saying anything. You can hear the hurt in Bessie or Billie and I just kinda wish that I’d come here and found you playing their stuff, ’cause that man you seem to like so much—that Mahler—his music says that he ain’t made peace with his pain, child. And if you gonna go on, that’s what you gotta do.”

“So running out and buying the records of women who were drug addicts and alcoholics would help me, right? Women who got their identities through a crop of worthless men they let drag them down? All that moaning about Jim Crow, unpaid bills, and being hungry has nothing to do with me or what I’m going through.”

“You ain’t going through nothing much more different than what they went through.”

“It’s a lot different. But how would you understand?”

Roberta narrowed her eyes. “I guess what folks say is true then. It’s lonely at the top.”

“It’s damned lonely.”

“Well, Bessie and Billie are telling you that it ain’t so crowded at the bottom, either,” Roberta snapped. “You think you done found a special music to match your misery. A misery you got somewhere in the head. No, you ain’t never had to worry, like a lot of us did, about Jim Crow or finding your next meal, but if that’s all you hear in them songs, then you don’t know as much about music as you think you do. What they say is one thing, but what you supposed to hear is, ‘I can.’” Roberta came and stood over her. “‘I can,’ Laurel, that’s what you supposed to hear. It ain’t a music that speaks to your head like some of this stuff you been playing, or to your body like that rock music of these kids. But it speaks to a place they ain’t got no name for yet, where you supposed to be at home. Open up that place, child. ’Cause if you don’t, there ain’t never gonna be no peace—with the love in your life or the hurt.

“Remember what you asked me this summer? When people are in trouble, don’t they go home? You came looking for it back there, but Georgia wasn’t really home for you. It was just a shack where you had learned to be at home with yourself. And I had prayed that when you grew up, you would carry that away with you. If you feel you’ve lost that, Laurel, you didn’t lose it in Georgia and so there weren’t no point in coming back there trying to find it.”

Laurel’s face was closed and stony as she kept it turned away from the woman.

“Yeah, I forgot. You said you only wanted to talk about this here music, and I got a little off the track, didn’t I?” Roberta sighed. “Well, I done exhausted myself on that subject.”

She returned to the hard chair with a slight limp, and grimaced as she sat down, grabbing her back. “I’m plain folk, and I ain’t educated. I’d be the last to deny that. But I’m willing to learn, and I’m ready to sit here—today, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. Baby, get up and put something else on by that Mahler man. Maybe this time it’ll get a bit more clear, and I can find something else to say to you.”

Laurel did get up. She wrapped the robe around her and went and kneeled in front of Roberta, taking her hands. But she felt even that didn’t place her low enough, so she sat back on her thighs and looked up into the woman’s face.

“Where do I begin, Grandma?”

“The beginnings are gone, Laurel. But we can start with today and what you got around you.”

“What day is it anyway?”

“It’s December sixteenth. And there’s nine more days till Christmas. If we start now, we can have us some kind of holiday—surprise everybody. Get us a tree, and the fixings for a big dinner. You can cook for an army in that kitchen of yours, but I brought my own candied fruit and spices.”

Laurel laughed and the vibrations hurt her in the middle.

“Oh yes, I did.” Roberta nodded. “Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a decent fruitcake and I been soaking them things in brandy for months. It was too much to haul up my own sweet potatoes, but I figured that even these old frostbitten northern potatoes would turn out a respectable pie with my secret mixture of cinnamon and nutmeg.”

“Grandma, the sweet potatoes in these stores probably came from Georgia.”

“Yeah, but they lose something with all that traveling, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Her eyes clouded over. “You can lose a lot when you travel too much.”

“But anyway”—Roberta’s voice got louder—“first thing we gotta do is set to cleaning this house. Get them floors and windows shining again and the sinks scoured. When I first walked in here, the dust looked at me like I was the one that didn’t belong.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, I’ve just been lax. There’s a woman I can call.”

“No, ma’am. I don’t trust nobody else to be cleaning where I have to eat and sleep. People just don’t take the same care when it ain’t their home.”

“This is my home, isn’t it, Grandma?” The question could have easily come from a dazed and lost child.

“Of course, it’s yours—and right smart at that.”

“And I can make it, I mean make it into something nice and warm for Christmas like homes should be.” Laurel’s eyes burned inward as her fevered hands gripped Roberta’s. “And I can have Daddy and the family over for the holidays. I know I’ve been awful to Claudia all these years and she’s really made him such a good wife, she’s been a better wife than … And Howard, I can try to make it up to Howard, too. I haven’t been too kind to him either. And he’s really not such a bad man, Grandma. But I can do something about that now, can’t I?”

Roberta’s nod was as slow as it was sad.

“Yes, I can.” Laurel pressed her lips together. “I can do it.”

She tried. She tried unbelievably hard—until the day that the snow began to fall. Opening up that “place where she was supposed to be at home” was terrifying when she discovered the weight of its emptiness. But she stayed close to Roberta, hoping to fill it with her presence. She followed the stooped and withered shoulders closely around the house, polishing mirrors and tables, vacuuming upholstery and changing draperies. She ignored the fact that the cleaner the house became, the emptier it felt. The discarded magazines and newspapers, the layers of dust and disarrayed rugs had at least taken up extra space, space she now covered with hanging wreaths, bunches of mistletoe, and huge trays of hard candy and nuts. She ordered the largest Christmas tree she could, and it groaned under the weight of Fiberglas balls, oversized doves and stars, yards of silver tinsel. She bought presents for people she hadn’t seen in years and piled them under the tree. She plugged in the phone again and it began ringing, shrill persistent music that accompanied the sound of whisks against metal bowls, the opening and closing of the oven door, the new Christmas albums. No Mahler, no Bessie or Billie, she told Roberta, they were too sad. But songs for this season, songs to mix with the aroma of ginger, mace, and burnt sugar that filled the downstairs. She played the music—loud. She laughed—loud. And she sat up in bed at night in the silent house and wondered why it wasn’t enough. The weight pressed down on her noticeably then, growing heavier each evening as she paced her room, hoping to relieve it so she could breathe. If she lay down with it, she knew she would suffocate and she feared dying in her sleep.

She begged Roberta for stories. Tell her again about the way she had met Grandpa, the only boy who dared come to church without a tie. Tell her about Brer Fox and Brer Bear stealing the farmer’s chickens, about the time she had spanked her for selling her tricycle for a nickel; tell her anything that she could throw into this gaping hole that threatened to crush her to death at night. With a growing horror, Laurel began to realize that all she had been doing that week only added to the weight. Roberta’s presence, the decorated rooms, the endless chatter about childhood friends weren’t filling the void, but feeding it. She was taking in the sight of an old woman, the sound of old stories, and the smells of an old tradition with nothing inside her to connect up to them. The woman-child just wasn’t in there and neither was the woman.

It soon became too painful to laugh with that heaviness on her chest, so she smiled a lot for Roberta’s sake. Then even the slightest noise, the lightest touch began to irritate her. She wanted more than anything else to be left alone, but it was too late. In a few days the house would be crowded with people and talk. Just the thought of the rustling paper and grating laughter exhausted her. She stayed in her room during the day, trying to sleep since she couldn’t at night. She told Roberta that an old knee injury made it too difficult to keep baking and cleaning. The ease with which her lies were accepted brought tears to her eyes. She ached to tell Roberta how much she cared about her, but she knew she’d start crying. And Roberta was right: only fools tried to talk their love to someone else. So Laurel sought an alternative route to allow her to meet her grandmother halfway. In desperation, she thought about the two people who had come the closest to being called friends. The three of them formed a strange triangle where she was in the middle between a woman who admired her and a woman she admired.

First she tried calling Luther’s wife, who had always thought her so strong, so self-assured. Why, Laurel had found a way to keep a career and a home going. Laurel actually headed a whole division of men at IBM and didn’t take any flak. She needed to hear the special awe and deference in that voice when she picked up the phone and realized it was her. Laurel needed that open pride for what she had become before she called Ruth Anderson to hear hidden pity for the exact same thing. The phone at the Nedeeds rang with a dull hum, ending in sharp clicks that reverberated in Laurel’s middle. She kept the receiver to her ear for at least twenty rings, dreading the moment she must put it down and add the burden of yet another empty. Now, where could she be? There was one woman who never went anywhere. She seemed so content nested down there at the end of Tupelo Drive. No, it was more than contentment, a certain smugness as if it were a privilege to wait hand and foot on that prude, Luther. She didn’t want a life of her own. She was so willing to live vicariously through Laurel’s life, to call at least twice a month and listen patiently to her complaints about her job.

Laurel frowned at the receiver and put it down. But then, her friend hadn’t called in quite a while, had she? No, not since the summer, and Laurel had been so out of it, it never dawned on her. It didn’t make much difference, she never had anything worthwhile to say.

But, then, was that what Ruth Anderson thought of her? She also hadn’t spoken to Ruth since the summer and Ruth never phoned her, but she was so willing to listen whenever Laurel rang up on Wayne Avenue. Strange, she had started calling out of pity for Ruth: a broken marriage and losing that house on Fifth Crescent Drive. And then remarrying a man who was a mental patient and worked in factories—when he could work. But slowly, very slowly, she began to sense that Ruth was actually pitying her—as if Laurel were mired down there on Tupelo Drive and the best thing that could have happened to Ruth was that divorce and moving back to Wayne Avenue. Laurel kept calling because she admired that in the woman: the ability to pretend with such ease. No, she kept calling because she admired that woman, that ease. And she became the pretender. The phone stopped after the second ring. “Ruth? It’s Laurel, darling. Merry Christmas!”

She remembered hanging up the phone and taking advantage of the relief on her chest to fly downstairs and tell Roberta that an old girlfriend was dropping by the next day. They were going to exchange gifts. No, not something you could buy but something made with your own hands. This particular woman was in pretty bad straits right now, and so they had agreed to bake each other something. Laurel prided herself on the novel idea; she had saved Ruth embarrassment. But hadn’t Ruth been the one to suggest it? Hadn’t Ruth said, “Why don’t you get up out of that bed and let’s make each other a Christmas gift?” Hadn’t there even been a tremor of urgency in Ruth’s voice? She didn’t know why, there had been none in hers. She had just called to say Merry Christmas. Her grandmother was spending the holidays with her, and she and Howard weren’t together right now. There was nothing so terribly tragic in that. Ruth had gone through a separation herself, even a divorce. She now vaguely recalled the coaxing, the soothing in Ruth’s voice. Why, Ruth had been trying to calm her down, and Laurel just couldn’t remember why she felt she had to. It couldn’t have been anything that she said: problems, yes there were problems but nothing Ruth hadn’t heard before. Was it the way she heard it now? Laurel just couldn’t remember that, but she set about making a rum pound cake with frantic energy, chattering to Roberta that she felt so much better now. Why, she was going to make a dozen pound cakes, and rearrange all the furniture in the living room for the party Christmas Eve. She thanked God that Ruth had been home, that she had this reprieve—she could try again for Roberta. And see how Roberta was watching her. Every time she turned around, Roberta was looking at her—and always smiling. She was even too excited to be disappointed when Ruth got sick and sent her husband instead with a box of ginger cookies. She badgered Roberta to show her how to string them up on the already overburdened tree. Yes, she was doing her best to make the most of that reprieve. Then the snow began to fall.

It started to come down heavily just as Ruth’s husband left, his arms full of cake and six bottles of Howard’s best wine. She looked out the window and saw it sticking firmly to the tree branches and lawn. She lay in bed, shades drawn, and felt, rather than heard, it covering the world outside. It emptied into her as she stayed awake all night, arms across her forehead. She was still in that position when Roberta tapped lightly on her door the next morning.

“Laurel, there’s a man downstairs to see you, a Mr. Nedeed. I told him you might not be up to seeing nobody. But he was right polite and said it was important if you could just spare him a few minutes.”

“Is his wife with him?”

“Ain’t nobody down there but him. When he first rang the bell, I thought it was them boys that’s out back, shoveling the snow. Did you see how much it done snowed out there? A regular blizzard, and it ain’t stopped yet.”

She didn’t have to see; she could feel that it hadn’t stopped. Inside of her, it was building on roofs and the steep slope of that hill, mantling the naked trees and dull hedges with a shimmering coat of crystals. Soon the sun would be bright and sparkling across its glassy surface, dripping tiny diamonds from the tips of branches, the landscape quickly turning into a perfect, storybook picture. The sight spilled its full weight into her middle, and she finally caved in under the inevitable. There was absolutely nothing she could do after this. She got out of bed, moving like a crippled bird. She had tried her best, but—despite all of her efforts and on top of everything else—it was going to be a White Christmas.

Luther stood up when she entered the living room and offered his hand.

“Good morning, Mrs. Dumont. I apologize for disturbing you so early.”

“It’s all right, Luther.” She sank laconically into a deep-cushioned chair, wrapping her robe around her legs. “And since when have we been so formal?”

“Well, this is a formal call.”

“Oh, I see.” She sighed. “I was wondering why you came alone.”

“My wife’s away for the holidays, visiting relatives.”

“Oh, really, where?”

“San Francisco.”

“I don’t remember her telling me that she had relatives in that city. In fact, I didn’t think that she had any living relatives.”

Luther narrowed his eyes just a flicker. “She has distant relations in several places, but I didn’t come here to discuss my in-laws.” He cleared his throat. “I assume that you didn’t receive the letter from the Tupelo Realty Corporation.”

“It may have come, I don’t know.” She glanced toward the front foyer. “There’s been a lot of mail lately. People send a lot of cards, and I got tired of opening them.”

“I understand. So then I suppose it’s safe to assume that you haven’t been in contact with your husband.”

“You don’t have to assume that, Luther. I’m sure by now the whole neighborhood knows that Howard and I are separated. His Mercedes is gone, isn’t it?”

“Well.” He cleared his throat again. “If you open the mail that you’ve received lately, I believe you’ll discover that he’s decided to file for a divorce. I’m truly sorry that you had to hear it from me first, Mrs. Dumont, but he sent notice of such intentions to the Tupelo Realty Corporation earlier this week.”

“I don’t understand why I had to hear it from you at all.” Laurel straightened up in her chair. “Not that I care one way or the other. But it’s none of your corporation’s business what goes on in this house.”

“You’re perfectly right. But this house, itself, is my business. And since your husband has informed us—as he’s legally bound to—that he no longer plans to reside in these premises, I came to find out when you plan to vacate as well.”

“Oh. I don’t plan to vacate at all. If Howard doesn’t want to live here anymore with me, that’s his affair. And my lawyers will have to get in touch with him—by mail, I assume—since he’s kept his whereabouts such a secret. But I’m sure he knows that I’m more than able to buy him out of whatever rights he feels are his.”

“I don’t think you understand, Mrs. Dumont. This land was only leased to the Dumonts in 1903, and subsequently the Tupelo Realty Corporation underwrote the mortgage for the house that was built on it. Now, that gave them the right to live here for a thousand years and a day, which in effect is a small eternity, but it’s still a lease. And under our stipulations, if the Dumonts no longer wish to reside here and there are no children to inherit the lease, the property reverts back to the original owners: my family—the Nedeeds. That decision has been made, Mrs. Dumont. And, believe me, I was quite pained to hear it, because the Dumonts are one of the oldest and finest families in Tupelo Drive, and I had hoped to have them here forever. But, unavoidably, things do happen, and I’m inquiring about your personal plans to vacate.”

“No, let’s back up a minute, Luther. Howard Dumont made that decision, not Laurel Dumont—not me. And this Dumont is telling you that she’s going to stay here.”

“The decision isn’t yours, Mrs. Dumont.”

“You’re damned right it’s mine.” Laurel leaned over. “Don’t come in here, bringing any of that crap from the Middle Ages. You see, I know how it is in your house, Luther. But Howard speaks for Howard, and I speak for me. We’re in the twentieth century up here at Seven Twenty-Two Tupelo Drive. And I have as much say about the future of this property as he does.”

“You’re in Linden Hills, Mrs. Dumont. Read your lease. And this property belongs to the Tupelo Realty Corporation. Whatever is in this house and whatever you’ve added to this house is between you and your husband to divide by whatever laws of whatever century you choose. But Howard Dumont has decided that there are to be no more Dumonts at Seven Twenty-Two Tupelo Drive, and according to the original terms of the lease, that’s how things must stand.”

“I’ll see you in court, Luther.”

“Unfortunately, you won’t be the first.”

“But I’ll be the first to drag your ass all the way to Washington, D.C.”

“There’s no need for that sort of language, Mrs. Dumont. When you think about it, what would you do alone in a house this size? You would probably come to the conclusion that it was best to move anyway.”

“Daniel Braithwaite didn’t move, and his wife has been dead for years. I didn’t see you running down there to kick him out—when you should have. That crazy old Peeping Tom with his decayed willow trees is a disgrace to this neighborhood.”

“Daniel Braithwaite has the right to that property for as long as he lives. And there was always the chance that he might remarry.”

“Well, I might remarry, too. Did you ever think about that?”

“Of course, a young woman like you should. But if you did, the lease would still be invalid unless we decided to negotiate with your new husband—if he qualified.”

“This conversation isn’t taking place.” Laurel shook her head. “There is no way that this conversation is taking place in my living room, with this man looking me straight in the face and telling me that I don’t exist. That I don’t live in this house.”

She began to laugh, shrill bursts of air with her head thrown back. It went on and on.

“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Dumont. But that’s the way things have always been here.”

“Don’t look so distressed, Luther.” Her hand went to her heaving chest. “You see, this has never been home, and you’ve just added a new dimension to it for me. Thank you, and Merry Christmas.” Now her laughter couldn’t be differentiated from a scream.

“Please, do you want me to call someone for you?”

“No, why?” She took deep breaths and then tightened her lips. “I’m fine. I just want you to get the fuck out of my house. But don’t worry, we’ll meet again in court.”

“I don’t think so, Mrs. Dumont.” He stood up, his eyes penetrating and a bit sad. “I truly don’t think so.”

If it had been honest anger, it might have helped. Or just simple indignation would have carried her through. But she watched his retreating back and felt nothing. If the house had burned down the moment he closed the door, she wouldn’t have cared. She had fought him only through reflex, a reflex triggered by a history of firing against ingrained male assumptions that she didn’t count. But now that the practice session was over and the target gone, Laurel took in the full weight of his words: she had never lived in a house in which she had never lived. He thought he was bringing bad news and he had looked so comical sitting there, trying to be compassionate when he’d actually come with no news at all. Yes, Luther had brought her absolutely nothing.

She wanted to laugh again, but the lips that curled up to smile were trembling. The emptiness of all he had said finally expanded the waiting void to the top of her skull. It pressed her mind up against the rigid cranial bones, so that the shapes and textures in the room could only filter through its vacuous light, and it gave them a clarity that was monstrous. The reds, greens, and yellows exploded around her. The sharp points of each Christmas-tree needle, the curve of the sofa arm, the fine print in the wallpaper, were standing disembodied and torn from any meaning or sense that her compressed mind could have given them. Dear God, she was going insane. She clung to the fragment of reason that had voiced the thought. Pressing her fingers against her temples and squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to push back the tremendous weight crushing her brains. There had to be something left to save her. A tiny blue bubble formed by the pressure of the void against the soft brain tissue began to balloon at the remaining tip of her mind. She concentrated as it grew round, translucent, and shimmering: Oh, but, Grandma, you should hear what pretty music the water makes. It inflated in smooth, undulating ripples, lightening her head and lifting her body out of the chair. Of course. What could she have been thinking of to let things get this far? Where was Roberta?

She sped past the textures and shapes that now took form and meaning through the waves of blue light. This table once held a bathing cap, that coatrack a terry-cloth robe. These steps led up to a bathroom where swimming suits could be draped across shower rods. The diamond tiles in the kitchen pointed toward the patio door, whose metal tracks slid open to a flagstone path. And at the end of the path was the pool. She must find Roberta, tell her that although things hadn’t worked out her way, it was still going to be all right.

Roberta wasn’t downstairs, but Laurel found her up in the guest room, eyes fluttering and breath rattling with light sleep. A flood of tenderness came over her. She had put this woman through so much this past week. She had made her carry the load for both of them, and it showed. Roberta rarely took naps during the day. Laurel started to awaken her and share her happiness over the tiny blue sparkles cascading down the walls of the room, but she hesitated. For once in her life she wouldn’t be selfish, she’d let the old woman get her rest. Laurel smiled, kissed the wrinkled forehead, and gently closed the door.

Running into her bedroom, she quickly stripped down and stretched the silver bathing suit over her lean body, feeling it become one with her skin. She glanced at her bare feet and frowned: there was so much snow outside. The doubt threatened to overwhelm her, but going to the back window, she saw that the path was miraculously clear. Slipping on a terry-cloth robe and a pair of thongs, she headed for the patio door.

The cold air might have stopped her as it numbed her exposed body, or the metal tarpaulin rings that resisted her efforts to release their frozen hooks. But she made it because she thought music. Clenching her trembling jaws, she pulled and rolled, pulled and rolled, until the pure aquamarine of the pool’s high walls and floor jumped up to engulf her eyes. The color vibrated the blue bubble, filling her middle with fluid sound as she shed small, icy tears of relief.

She hurried back to the base of the platform because flurries were already trying to speckle the pool’s bottom. Her limbs were stiff so she ran in place and did several deep knee bends. Feeling the blood circulating and warming her, she dropped the robe, kicked off the thongs, and began to climb. One hand over the other, grasping the aluminum rungs, she stopped every ten feet to massage her fingers and flex her knees. On finally reaching the top, she breathed deeply. The platform was covered with snow, so she held on to the side railings and pushed it away with her bare feet. She had to be careful or she would slip and go crashing onto the cement siding. She knew this was dangerous even in the best of weather. The body weight had to be evenly distributed on each foot, the arms and torso held at an angle that provided the vital balance as you moved toward the end of the platform. And it was much more difficult because the cold was numbing her extremities and distorting her sense of weight. Lining her toes up evenly an inch from the platform’s edge, she began to swing her arms over her head in a 180-degree arc. She knew it by heart: it was going to be a straight, thirty-foot dive at the twenty-foot end of the pool, but each time you must judge the point of descent. A slight dark movement at the far corner of her eye didn’t break her concentration: she was used to spectators. Choosing an area where it was still totally blue, she began to talk herself through the part that never came naturally. Legs straight, body forward, toes thrust. She sprang. Chin close to her chest, that familiar grip of terror in her stomach—anything could go wrong up in the air. But once she got down, there would be nothing to fear. Once she got down, she’d be free.

“Laurel, Laurel.”

The old woman hung dangerously out of the upstairs window, the name on the verge of becoming a hysterical chant.

“Oh my God.” Willie was immobilized, his head swinging between the pool and the window.

“We better get to her,” Lester said, and at first Willie couldn’t figure out which woman he meant. “She might fall out of that window.” Lester ran toward the open patio door, his motion snapping Willie back.

“Call the cops,” he yelled to Lester as he headed for the pool. “No, call an ambulance—call somebody.”

He swung himself down the ladder at the far end, the high aquamarine walls looming over him as he ran. Pink and beige stains were slowly spreading from Laurel’s body into the surrounding snow. From the angle of her neck, she couldn’t possibly be alive, but he had the irrational fear that she might be suffocating with her nose pressed so firmly into the bottom of the pool. Without thinking, he turned her over.

Her face was gone. The photo album trembled in her cold hands as she realized there was no mistaking what she now saw: Priscilla McGuire ended at the neck—and without her features, she was only a flattened outline pressed beneath cellophane. The narrow chin, upturned nose, and deep fiery eyes were a beige blur between the shadows cast by the two grown men on each side of her. The entire face, the size of a large thumbprint, had been removed. This had been done on purpose. There was no way this wasn’t done on purpose. Cleaning fluid. Bleach. A drop of hot grease. Over and over, page after page, the smeared hole gaped out into the dim light. The sight of it sickened her as she kept slamming through the album, feeling her empty stomach heave. She had been tricked into this … I knew you would come, and I’m so pleased … into another twisted life. What other kind of woman would have kept something like this? A healthy mind would have never … She came to the last photograph. And scrawled across the empty hole in lilac-colored ink was the word me.

The bile moved up into Willie’s throat and he quickly turned his back to the crowd in the yard. He had been trying to keep his stomach muscles tightened against it for the last half hour, but the sight of Laurel’s covered body being lifted from the pool on a stretcher brought back the image he had blocked from his mind. Running to the unshoveled side of the house, he retched into the snow. Lumps of yellowish-green mucus slid into a set of deep footprints. Ashamed, he tried to cover it up by pushing snow over it with his feet, but his body acting with a will of its own emptied his stomach again. He tried to muffle the sound as if he could be heard above the squawking police radios and the loud murmurs of neighbors brought out by the sirens. They stood in puzzled and horrified clusters around the pool’s edge, a few still trudging up the path he had shoveled what seemed a decade ago. Willie reached for a handful of snow to clean his sour mouth, but the moment it touched his fingers he got flashes of the colored stains that had surrounded Laurel’s body. Dropping it, he brushed off his hands and rummaged in his pocket and found a piece of stale licorice.

Turning, he saw that Lester was still talking to the policemen. He should go back over there and say he was leaving if they didn’t need him anymore, but his legs weren’t steady and his limbs kept vibrating from the weakness inside him and the frigid temperature outside. He jammed his hands into his coat pockets and tried to stop shaking. He refused to look at the pool, afraid that his stomach would let go again. He avoided any eye contact with the occasional glances that the neighbors threw his way. He didn’t want to be asked any more questions. So he stared at the snow banked between the hedges and the house, at the double path of footprints now focusing clearly. The strange, triangular-shaped crevices appeared vividly in two determined sets of lines, leading up and then away from the backyard. This was the path she had taken? No, she might have come up that way, but it was certain that she didn’t go back. She had gone out wrapped in white canvas. She had gone out without a … Willie’s insides began to cramp again. God, please let his legs work—he had to get out of here.

“Son, are you all right?”

He hadn’t seen the old man approach, so he almost screamed when his shoulder was touched. The man’s light-brown skin carried an ashen tint from the cold air, but the gray eyes were gentle through the steel-rimmed glasses. There was something reassuring, almost calming, about the slightly stooped back as he leaned over Willie.

“No, I’m not.” Willie’s jaws trembled as he spoke. “I don’t feel too good. I’ve gotta get out of here. I mean, I’m cold and we’ve been out here so long and—” He pressed his lips together and jammed his hands deeper into his pockets.

“Of course.” The voice was smooth, soft. “You’re one of the young men who found her. I saw you talking to the police. You’ve probably been out in this weather for hours, and no one’s given a thought to your comfort. You must excuse us, we’ve all been overwhelmed by this. But wait a moment, please.”

Before Willie could respond, he left and returned as quietly as the first time. “I believe the police have all the information they need from you. If there are any further questions, I told them they could reach you at my house.”

“Hey look, I just wanna go to my own place, ya know?”

“Of course. But I assume that you live some distance from here, and you can’t walk back up this hill the way you are now. And if you’re willing to accept my hospitality, you’ll get a little rest and some warmth while I call you a cab.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to sound like that. It’s just that … Oh Christ, I don’t know what I mean anymore.”

“I understand, believe me, I do.” The gray eyes never left Willie’s face. “My name is Daniel Braithwaite, and my home is just one street down. Once we’re there, you can collect yourself and be on your way.”

“Thank you.” Willie was growing uncomfortable under the man’s bland stare. “But I have to wait for my friend.”

“I’ll go see what’s keeping him. Why don’t you meet us by the front steps? Go this way.” He pointed Willie toward the side of the hedge. “It’s a bit snowy, but you won’t have to work your way through the crowd.”

Willie plowed through the snow, following the set of triangular footprints toward the front of the house. He knew exactly what they were now, but he refused to think about what they meant. He didn’t want to think again for a year. He let his mind go blank as he sighed and stared at the front of the Tudor.

“Christ!” Lester shook his head as he came around the corner. “The way those cops were going on, you woulda thought we pushed her off that diving board.”

“Maybe somebody did,” Willie said almost to himself.

Lester stared at him and started to speak but changed his mind. “She was just nuts, that’s all.” His face was pale in spite of the cold. “But what a way to die.”

They stood there in silence until Braithwaite joined them.

“A pity, a true pity.” He spoke while looking up at the windows. “They had to sedate the grandmother, and the authorities are going to have to locate her husband. This will be a crushing blow for Howard.” His long sigh formed a double tube of condensed air from his nose. “I would hate to be in his shoes when he finds out. Of all people, for it to be his wife.” He sighed again. “His wife.”

“Her name was Laurel.” Willie was staring into space.

“What?” Braithwaite turned to him.

“I said, her name was Laurel.” Willie’s voice got louder. “Laurel.”

Lester looked at him strangely. “You okay, Willie?”

“No, of course he’s not.” Braithwaite touched Willie’s arm. “This whole affair has been a shock to all of us. And standing out in this weather won’t help matters any. Well, come along.”

The noisy hum of activity around the Dumont home was swallowed up as they followed Braithwaite down the gently sloping road that curved to the right, bringing them into the back of the third and final set of houses on Tupelo Drive. They walked in complete silence, each seemingly intent on the crunch of snow underfoot. Willie’s head was tucked into his collar as he guided himself by the impressions of Braithwaite’s round-toed boots, so he didn’t notice that headstones from the cemetery flanking the streets were now quite visible through the low-hanging pine tree branches. Braithwaite’s house was the only one in a widely spaced crescent of four that didn’t have a huge wall of hedges in the back. The split-level ranch house was surrounded on three sides by gnarled willows, their branches trailing the ground like bleached skeletal fingers. They approached the house between low stone benches and the dwarfed bonzai trees of a Japanese garden holding intricate patterns of rocks and boulders that pushed up through the snow-covered dirt.

“It’s difficult to keep up a lawn on this sandy incline, so I decided on this arrangement. It’s really quite pleasant in the summer. I stock those pools with goldfish.”

Willie could easily imagine the old man sitting under his pale-green willows on those stone benches next to the small marble ponds. His whole manner seemed to fit that type of setting.

“We can go in through the side door. I rarely use the front.”

The steps were brushed clean, exposing a grass welcome mat. And over the bell was a brass plaque engraved Dr. Daniel Braithwaite.

“The nameplate is new.” He ran his fingers over the surface. “I used to have one with my wife’s name on it as well, but I’ve been a widower for almost twenty years and I don’t know why I hung on to the old plate. I suppose keeping Anita’s name up there somehow kept her close to me. But there comes a time when we have to accept the reality of things, don’t we?”

“But if you’re a doctor, why didn’t you help?” Willie said. “I remember that you were one of the first ones who got there right after the police. Why didn’t you see if—”

“You’ve mistaken that sign.” Braithwaite opened the door. “I’m a history professor, or at least I used to be.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were a real doctor.”

Braithwaite laughed soundlessly. “You just might have a point, young man. Maybe I shouldn’t have that up on there. If I accept that I’m no longer married, I should accept the fact that I’m not associated with the university anymore. But I’m still doing research and so I guess that justifies it. Besides, I’ve lived longer as Dr. Braithwaite than I’ve lived as anything else.”

“It looks like I’m gonna spend the whole day apologizing to you. But I didn’t mean anything, Dr. Braithwaite, really. I wasn’t trying to insult you.”

“Yes, I know.” Braithwaite led them into a large, dark room. “It’s strange, but even in academic circles nowadays young people prefer not to be addressed that way. They think it old-fashioned. But when I got my degree from Fisk, it was something to be proud of. There were so few of us at the time, and we wanted it to be known. Why, with the Civil War just being over …” He winked at them and seeing their blank faces, burst into laughter. “My God, I guess you really do think I’m old enough to have been around then.”

“Of course not,” Lester hurried to say, “but maybe World War One or something.”

“Yes.” Braithwaite smiled. “I was alive during that war. But believe it or not, I was just a bit too young to fight.”

He turned on the overhead light and motioned for their coats, but for a moment they forgot him as they stood in stunned amazement. The room had to be over half the size of the house, and at first, they thought it didn’t have any walls. The ten-foot ceiling must have been held up by the stacks of books starting down at the very floor. But the oak shelves were custom-built to fit every available inch of wall space, even lining the door frame and the fireplace. Crammed in above the leather-and-gold bindings and loose, dusty spines were manila folders and newspapers. Three-foot stacks of papers and files surrounded a scarred desk, facing the only unshelved wall; instead there was a heavy purple drapery hanging from ceiling to floor—next to it, a high-powered telescope.

Willie finally spoke. “This is amazing.”

“No, it’s a mess.” Braithwaite motioned them toward the couch in front of the fireplace. “But I wasn’t expecting any visitors today.” He removed an empty soda bottle, soiled paper napkins, and a greasy plastic plate from the coffee table. “Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

The patchwork quilt draped over the sofa’s back smelled of fresh sweat and old dust. The sofa’s arms were slick, and the cushions had been mashed down and bore the imprint of a human body.

“Did you ever?” Lester ran his hands along one wall of books. “This place reads like a Who’s Who in American History—Paine, Franklin, Henry Adams. Willie, look at this. The entire set of the Federal Works Project’s slave narratives. And he’s gotta have every Crisis in existence—his start from 1910. Journal of Negro Education, Journal of Negro History, Black Enterprise—all of them, Willie.” Lester kept going down the line, “Booker T. Washington’s The Negro in Business, Carter G. Woodson’s The Negro Professional and the Community, Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie. I don’t believe this—every one of the Atlanta University Studies and, oh my God—Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro.” He took the volume out. “And it’s a signed first edition. I bet these are all first editions. This room is worth a fortune.”

“I know,” Willie said. “He’s got more books than the library over on Wayne Avenue. There’s got to be at least five hundred just over this fireplace.” He looked at a thick volume entitled Poetry of the Negro. Imagine, he had thought it was a big deal because he’d memorized 665 poems, and there was more in this one book than in his entire head. There was something awesome about one man owning all this knowledge.

Braithwaite came in with a silver tray, holding a crystal decanter and three sherry glasses. “I hope you don’t mind sitting in here—there’s not much to the rest of the house. After my wife passed, I kept it closed off to save on fuel. Don’t look surprised, we’re not all well off down here on Tupelo Drive.”

There was a quiet dignity and deliberateness in the way he poured their sherry and handed the glasses to them, his long fingers cracked and ashen in the joints. It made it easy to overlook the crumpled pants bagging in the seat and knees, and the frayed shirt collar with gravy stains.

“I thought of heating some soup. But this will set you right.”

As the effects of the alcohol spread through his body, Willie realized how tired he had been. His insides began to loosen up, and all the feelings and questions he had suppressed that morning rose toward the surface. If he drank enough of this stuff, it would deaden them, and that’s exactly what he wanted. He knew he couldn’t do it here, but he ached to be home so he could really get drunk.

Braithwaite leaned back in his chair and stared at them with his opaque gray eyes. “World War One, eh?” He seemed to be enjoying a private joke. “Yes, I was just a bit too young to be drafted for that one, and as luck would have it, when the second one came I was just a bit too old. So I’ve seen no combat—on the battlefields at least. But wars are fought in many ways, my young friends, many ways.” He sipped his drink and his mind seemed to drift off. “We saw such a battle today. She fought valiantly, but she lost. I knew it was going to happen, it was just a matter of time.”

“You mean you knew she was crazy?” Lester asked.

“She wasn’t insane,” Braithwaite said. “True insanity, as frightening as it might be, gives a sort of obliviousness to the chaos in a life. People who commit suicide are struggling to order their existence, and when they see it’s a losing battle, they will finalize it rather than have it wrenched from them. Insanity wouldn’t permit that type of clarity. Laurel Dumont died as deliberately as she lived, believe me. And I could tell she was on that path months ago.”

“But if she was a neighbor of yours,” Lester said, “and you could see she was disturbed, why didn’t you do something?”

“What would you suggest I do?” Braithwaite’s voice was mild.

“I don’t know—talk to her old man. Get her to see a shrink. Something.” Lester leaned over. “If she had been a friend of mine, I—”

“But think now. She was the daughter of someone. The wife of someone. And even the granddaughter of someone right there in the house with her. Could they stop her? So how do you suggest that a mere outsider would have been any more effective?”

Willie shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dr. Braithwaite, but I can’t buy that. I can’t believe that someone would know what was happening and just stand there.” He shuddered. “That’s not being human, that’s being a … a I don’t know what.”

Braithwaite looked at him fixedly. “Weren’t those very human footprints that you saw in the snow?” He nodded at the shock on Willie’s face. “Yes, I know you saw them and I saw them, too.”

“What footprints?” Lester’s head swung between the two of them while Willie just stared in his glass.

“The footprints of someone who came up along the side of that house, stood there, watched, and then went away. Right, son?”

“Willie, what’s he talking about?”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about.” Willie gripped his glass.

“I’m talking about not being able to stop the course of human history, a collective history or an individual one. You can delay the inevitable, set up roadblocks and detours if you will, but that personal tragedy today was just a minute part of a greater tragedy that has afflicted this community for decades. And the person who watched it unfold understood that. He understood that to try and stop her would be like trying to ward off a flood with a teacup.”

“I don’t have a tenth of your education, Dr. Braithwaite,” Willie said, looking slowly around the room. “You’ve probably forgotten more than I’ll even live to know.” Now he looked straight at Braithwaite. “You see, I’m from across Wayne Avenue. And two guys on a Saturday night will often get into a real ugly argument. Everybody knows they’re not mad at each other, they’re mad about the lousy paychecks in their pocket—or no paycheck. And then they’re mad because they’re in that bar anyway, or at that poker table, when they should be home ’cause there’s kids to feed and rent to be paid. But they can’t face that ’cause they know those paychecks ain’t gonna do it, and they’re even madder that they’ll do it even less once they leave that bar. So they’re aching for a fight, ya know? And if they start a fight, someone will probably get killed. And everyone else in the room knows that ’cause they’re feeling the same way, too—that it would take just a little to push them over the edge. So you make a joke, you buy one of them a drink—you do something to keep the steam down. Even though you know that next week the same thing will probably happen again—different faces maybe, but the same damned thing. And it’s gonna keep going on, ’cause Putney Wayne won’t change and those paychecks won’t change. But you still say to yourself, ‘It would be a crime to let this happen.’ And I don’t care how you want to break it down, there was a crime committed out there today. As sure as I’m sitting here, there was a crime.”

“Holy shit, you mean someone killed her?”

“They might as well have.” Willie looked down into his glass.

“But who?”

“That’s not the point, Lester.”

“I believe it is.” Braithwaite nodded. “Tell him who saw it.”

“Yeah, who, Willie?”

Willie hesitated. “Nedeed saw her, Lester. And he just stood there. He didn’t lift a finger.”

“Christ, that figures. But how did you know?”

“His footprints. Remember how he seemed to appear from nowhere? Well, those pointy-toe shoes were all on the side of the house that we didn’t shovel.”

“And you think that’s a crime?” Braithwaite asked.

“I know it is,” Willie whispered.

“You’re damned right,” Lester said.

“There was a time when I would have thought so,” Braithwaite said very gently, “when I was young like you. But I’ve seen too much over too many years.” He went over and drew the draperies on the far wall. “You see, I’ve had the privilege of this.”

Brilliant light flooded the room because the entire wall was made of double Plexiglas. And in front of his desk, Linden Hills stretched up in its snow-covered awesomeness. Through the naked willow trees, they could clearly see the police car pull out of the Dumonts’ driveway, the shrubbed meridian running up Tupelo Drive to the brick pillars, sections of Linden Road, and even the very housetops on First Crescent Drive.

“You didn’t think you could see that far up from here, did you? It’s a strange topography. When you’re up there, you can’t see all the way down, but if you’re situated at just the right point on Tupelo Drive, you have a view all the way up. No one’s ever thought about that here, because these homes were designed to face down—except, of course, for the Nedeeds.” He caressed his desk, a full, measured stroking. “I’ve spent many years having the privilege of seeing what Luther Nedeed has seen. Yes, I even watched him enter and leave that backyard. And I understand his futility.”

The light gleamed on his steel-rimmed glasses as he turned around to them. “Do you know what this area was like once, when Luther’s grandfather was around and your grandmother, young man, Mamie Tilson? Oh, yes, I knew who you were. I’ve watched you both all this week, slowly making your way down this hill. Well, the road you took was unpaved once and most of the homes there little more than shacks. And the Nedeeds changed that almost single-handedly. A lot of families up there owe their educations to the Nedeeds. I know I do. My family’s biggest dream was for me to become foreman at the turpentine factory that was once on the other side of town. But Luther’s grandfather set up a scholarship fund that made it possible for me to attend Fisk. He said, ‘Daniel, go out there and learn all you can and then bring it right back to your community. Whatever field you decide on, we can use it here in Linden Hills.’ He didn’t think he’d wasted his money when I came back as a historian instead of a lawyer, engineer, or a real doctor. He put me down here and let me work. I’ve built a reputation from my studies about Linden Hills. The Nedeeds have given me exclusive access to all of their family records: survey reports, official papers from the Tupelo Realty Corporation, even the original bills of sale that date back to 1820. Priceless information that wouldn’t have been appreciated at the time anywhere but here and by anyone but them. When I first started my studies, no one in the outside world cared about the fate of a ragged sod hill. But look at it now. Sure, researchers come from all over the country and even Europe, trying to get access to the records about this community. But Luther has assured me that they will be mine exclusively for as long as I live.”

“Then you know everything about the Nedeeds.” Willie could feel his heart pounding as he leaned toward Braithwaite. “I mean the wives and children and all? You’ve got their lives all in your books?”

“The family is right out there.” Braithwaite pointed up the slope. “You see Linden Hills and you see them. The first Luther Nedeed lived for this community, and he passed that spirit on to his children. That there was something to strive for, something to believe in, that we could make it in spite of what the world said. Believe me, he wasn’t terribly happy, always having to fight the Wayne County city board, the white realtors, and sadly enough, the folks right here to turn this place into something to be proud of. The Nedeeds kept going because they felt our people needed a role model. It wasn’t easy, but they did it. And that was real black pride.

“I watched them build this place up from practically nothing. A handful of illiterate and unskilled people came here and prospered because of them. I’ve seen families grow up and grow out from being under the heel of Wayne County. Those families owe all that to the Nedeeds, but somehow they’ve forgotten that. Now, moving in here has simply become the thing to do, the place to be. But to be what? They don’t see that clapboard house at the bottom of this hill anymore. At the foot of this hill are colored men with a sense of purpose about their history and their being. If Laurel Dumont had had that, she wouldn’t have been so tormented that she felt the need to throw her life away.”

“If you really knew my grandmother, then you knew that she despised the Nedeeds,” Lester said. “They caused this mess that you’re talking about. They built the homes and they set the price tags, Dr. Braithwaite. They wanted a bunch of puppets who would give anything to be here. And that’s just what they’ve got. My grandmother used to tell me and anyone else who would listen, ‘You wanna make it in Linden Hills? You just gotta sell—’”

“‘That silver mirror God propped up in your soul,’” Braithwaite interrupted him. “Yes, I can almost hear my old friend now. And I remember her well, sitting up there on that porch chewing her tobacco. Your grandmother was a very shrewd woman, young man. But she was wrong about that. You see, she’d only come down here on occasion to fish with Luther Nedeed, and passing by these houses as you’ve done this week, she thought that the people in them were selling little bits of themselves to make it. If she’d had my vantage point all of these years, she would have known that they’ve sold nothing; pieces of themselves were taken away. And if anyone was more disturbed about that, it was the Nedeeds. They slowly began to realize that people could live here, but with a few exceptions like myself, it was inevitable that they couldn’t work here. So they had to keep going out and coming back with the resources to move down, but with less and less of themselves. You see, Mamie Tilson mistook the ends for the means. And that wasn’t the fault of the Nedeeds. If you must fault them for anything, fault them for wanting power. But it was black power they wanted. These were to be black homes with black aspirations and histories—for good or evil. But that’s not what Luther inherited. Put yourself in the place of a man who must reign over a community as broken and disjointed—as faceless—as Laurel Dumont’s body. If he could have stopped her, he would have. But what he saw diving off that platform was already a shattered dream.”

“So what you’re saying is that what he did was right?” Willie asked.

“Now, think back, I never said it was right. And I’m not saying it was wrong either.”

“But it’s got to be one or the other,” Willie said.

“Why? Why should it be other than from some personal need that the young, like yourself, or the intellectually sluggish have to want their worlds neatly boxed? Was slavery wrong? It would depend upon who you were talking to and when—black or white. The rise of Hitler? The fall of the Aztec empire? There are no absolute truths, and the best historians know that. You strive to capture a moment of time, and if your work is done properly, history becomes a written photograph. Put your subject too much in the shade, too much in the light, dare to have even a fingernail touch the lens or any evidence of your personal presence, and you’ve invalidated it.” He went to a shelf and pulled out a huge tome. “Look at this—the work of a lifetime. It’s one of my eleven volumes about the history of Linden Hills. By the time I had only completed volume six I was being seriously considered for a Nobel Prize. It was with this volume that I detected that there was a drastic change in the goals of this community, that what my studies were actually amounting to was the record of a people who are lost. I didn’t bemoan that fact and I didn’t applaud it; I did nothing but continue to compile the data that Luther brought me and to crystallize my own observations. I’m now into the twelfth volume, and I’ve heard that I’m being considered again, because no one else has been privy to these documents, and since the turnover here is tremendous, there’s a mass of data almost each year.” He stepped over to the window and tapped the telescope. “I miss nothing; I record it all in its minutest detail. As long as they keep coming—and they will do that—I’ll finally get that ultimate recognition.”

“Did you ever stop to think that you could use your work to help save people?” Lester asked. “If you admit it’s a terrible situation and you have all the evidence to prove it, why not come out and say so? You’re in the position to have people listen to you.”

“I don’t believe you’ve heard a word I’ve said. People are going to come and live in Linden Hills regardless of what I or anyone else does. Do you know that when that crucial sixth volume brought me international acclaim, Luther’s father threw a huge party and made gifts of the entire set to everyone who lived here? Did they sit down and take the time to read it? Did they trace themselves as I’d traced them, making that headlong rush into damnation? If they did, it hasn’t stopped them. Because it’s inevitable, don’t you see? And I would have been foolish to try and hold back that flood. And since that’s the case, I would have been a greater fool not to take advantage of the access the Nedeeds have afforded me to this priceless information. Luther knows and I know that I can only hope to record that knowledge, not rectify it.”

After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

Willie was startled when they both looked at him, and he realized he had thought aloud. “I wasn’t asking that question. It’s just a line that popped into my head from some poem. I really don’t know why,” he lied as he glanced around the room involuntarily. “It doesn’t have a thing to do with what we’ve been talking about.”

“You know, I’m quite fond of poetry and I’ve quite a few interesting collections here. There’s even a signed copy of that wonderful Mr. Cullen’s The Black Christ somewhere in this jungle. I’ve always felt that creative artists and historians are somewhat in the same business, the task of capturing life. Who was the poet you were thinking of?”

“You know, it’s really funny but I can’t remember.” Willie felt rather than saw Lester’s shock, and he prayed he wouldn’t say anything. The linen napkins carefully folded for them, the silver tray and crystal decanter obviously held back for special company and offered with the long, delicate fingers that had spent a lifetime scribbling what would do people no good—or a little worse than no good. You don’t repay kindness with needless cruelty.

“That’s a pity,” Braithwaite said, “but it’s one of the reflections of our times. Young minds today are dulled by television and other visual sensations. When reading was one of the few pleasures available, we could recite whole passages to each other.”

“Yeah, that must have been something,” Willie said.

Here I am, an old man in a dry month

Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.

I was neither at the hot gates

Nor fought in the warm rain

Nor knee-deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass

Bitten by flies fought.

My house is a decayed house.

Lester turned to Braithwaite. “I wanted to get back to something you mentioned before. Since all your work about Linden Hills comes from the records and information that the Nedeeds have given you, no matter how objective you try to be, you’re still only getting one side of the story—their side.”

“That would be true if I relied solely on their documents. But that’s not how a reputable historian works. You take the family records and then you must view them in light of material from other sources: county court transcripts, the minutes of the state realty board, personal interviews with the residents here, et cetera. It becomes a whole series of checks and balances from numerous sources before you come up with the whole story, the real story if you will.”

After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now

History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors

And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,

Guides us by vanities. Think now

She gives when our attention is distracted

And what she gives, gives with such subtle confusions

That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late

What’s not believed in, or is still believed,

In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon

Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with

Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think

Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices

Are fathered by heroism. Virtues

Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.

These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.

“But the greatest test of all is what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I have studied these people. Yes, I’ve moved among them, eaten with them, laughed with them, but I’ve known my purpose here from the beginning and I’ve never let myself get too involved. I was placed on this very spot as soon as I graduated from school, so there was no way for me to get caught up in the mad rush down this hill and have my work tainted. I’m already sitting on the last street of Tupelo Drive, and no one will ever live in that house at the very bottom but the Nedeeds. Remember, this whole wall is a window that faces up, and it always will.”

“Those willow trees block your view for over half the year,” Lester said. “And Nedeed might be counting on that.”

“My trees are dead. I killed them when I realized that they might interfere with my work. I didn’t cut them down because I was so terribly fond of them. Willows are the most elegant of all trees. And, you see, in the fall and winter I can still imagine that they will bud again in the spring, and my sense of loss isn’t so great. Yes, I had often thought about what you just said, and yes, I am certain that the information they give me can be verified.”

To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition

I have lost my passion: why should I keep it

Since what is kept must be adulterated?

I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:

How should I use them for your closer contact?

“No, son, these are photographs,” Braithwaite said as he weighed the volume and frowned, “taken with extreme care and immeasurable accuracy.” He took off his glasses and pointed to his eyes: “And this is the camera.” He turned to Willie. “You see, I knew you didn’t have the whole story of what went on today. How could you? You were too close to it. So I made a special effort to bring you here to explain—not Luther’s side or my side, but all of it. And for you especially, it’s important at this stage in your life to guard against hasty conclusions.”

“Well, sir.” Willie cleared his throat. “I’ve seen a lot these last few days and I’ll admit that I haven’t sorted it all out yet. But I can say one thing, and I hope you won’t take this the wrong way—I wouldn’t live in Linden Hills if it was the last place on earth.”

The even voice that answered was as soft as it was sad: “Then you must read the twelfth volume of my work when it’s completed, because everything you’ve done this week is in there. I’ve watched you, and I’ve made inquiries. You’re bright. Ambitious. And now, up close, I can smell the potential about you. You might think you’re only passing through, but for someone like you, young man, this probably will be the last place on earth.”

“Hey, how about that, Willie?” Lester winked. “The professor’s predicted that we’re gonna be neighbors.”

Willie didn’t smile. He wanted to punch Lester. He always went on like everything in life was a joke. But some things were deadly serious.

“Excuse me, Dr. Braithwaite, this has all been nice of you, but I’d really like to go home now and lie down. Could you call that cab for us?”

“Surely. Forgive me. I suppose you’ve figured out that I don’t get much company, but I didn’t mean to bend your ears.”

“No, this has been great,” Lester said. “I wanted to ask you about that copy of The Philadelphia Negro. Did you really know Du Bois?—because it’s signed.”

“Why yes, we met once at a dinner party at the Nedeeds. Now, that’s an interesting story …” he began, and then glanced at Willie. “But unfortunately, it’s quite a long one and—”

“No, you can tell him,” Willie said. “If you don’t mind showing me where the phone is, I’ll call the cab myself. It might take a while to get through with all this snow.”

Willie had gotten three busy signals in a row when he put down the receiver and sighed. He could hear Braithwaite’s laughter through the open door in the hallway. To his left, the darkened front room had dust covers on the furniture. So he really didn’t use this part of his house. Quietly, Willie moved into the living room and saw the closed drapes on the front bay window. That was probably the one that looked down the hill. Feeling like a thief, he walked over and pulled one edge of the drapery, the bright light making him jump as if an alarm had gone off. He glanced back over his shoulder before pressing his nose to the glass.

The white clapboard house at the bottom of the slope sat quietly behind the snowbanks and its frozen lake. There was no sign of life in or around it. It was difficult to imagine children ice skating down there or women hanging wreaths in those windows, sweeping the porch, drying laundry, but in almost two hundred years it must have happened sometime. History is a written photograph. Closing the drape, Willie wondered if Braithwaite would have gotten a much different picture all these years by keeping his desk up against this window.

She knew she was dying. Sitting back on her heels with the album in her lap, she could feel it happening: the passage of air through lung tissues that disintegrated a little with each breath; heart muscles that pumped and weakened, pumped and weakened with each surge of blood through the body; blood moving through each loosening vein, each tightening artery, nourishing cells that split and divided toward a finite end hidden by her skin. The cold that settled around her and the emptiness within her helped to give the process a clarity that would have been lost if she’d had the freedom of the outside world. In the normal rush of affairs, it was so easy to forget that she was born dying. And being deprived of the infinite expanse of the stars or the sound of waves from a bottomless ocean, she had to anchor the questions and answers for her limited existence to the material enclosed within those four walls.

It had all come to this. She curled her fingers around the cellophane pages, the past dissolving into the present and bringing with it the meaninglessness of whatever had gone before. Everything else, every other word or action had been only a bizarre temper tantrum against fate. Because after all that, here it finally was: a dying body, the ticking of a cracked clock and a smeared photo album marked me.

Staring at the gaping hole that was once Priscilla McGuire, she reached her hand up and began to touch her own face, her fingers running tentatively across the cheeks and mouth, up the bridge of the nose, and spanning out over the eyes and forehead. She tried to place the curves and planes, the shape of the jutting cheekbones and texture of the hair into the hollow of the hand that she brought back and held before her. The fingers returned again under the parted lips, in the holes of the nostrils, over the arch of the brows, and under the hair to the bone of the scalp. She brought her fingers back again and again with a new shape and form to place in the air before her.

But it was difficult to keep it all in position. When she returned with the curve of her ear, the chin had shifted and melted up toward the mouth; the nose dissolved before she could bring back the lips. She started all over, pressing a bit harder into the hollows of her cheeks, under the chin, moving quickly to return with a new shape in her fingers before the image vanished. She now closed her eyes and used both hands, trying to form a mirror between her fingers, the darkness, and memory. What formed in her mind might be it, but she needed to be sure. She looked at the small light bulb overhead—if she only had a shiny surface. The plastic cereal bowls were too dull and crusted, the silver spoons too small. Her head turned toward the sink and the aluminum pot she had used for catching water.

The pot was tilted against the sink, its handle lodged in the drain. Water had collected there, so she lifted it carefully and brought it back under the light. Holding the pot as still as she could, she found that an image would form if she brought it down to her waist. As the water came to rest, a dim silhouette appeared in front of her. Rimmed by light, there was the outline of her hair, the shape of the chin, and if she turned her head slowly—very slowly—there was the profile of her nose and lips. It was impossible to determine the shape of her eyes, even from the side, but this was enough. No doubt remained—she was there.

She took the water and began to walk back toward the cot. She moved slowly past the metal shelves, the empty cereal and milk cartons, the scattered and torn remnants from the boxes and trunks, the shrouded body of her child. In that small space, she passed the ghosts from every spectrum of human emotion she’d released in that room. But when she finally sat down to cry, the tears belonged to none of them. The gentle drops were falling from her bowed head into the pot because this was the first time she had known peace. Raising the rim to her lips, she began to drink the cold, rusty water. So it had all come to this. She would take small sips, very small sips—and think. Now that she had actually seen and accepted reality, and reality brought such a healing calm. For whatever it was worth, she could rebuild.