Excerpt From Jo Grant’s Journal:
…And now Reverend Will is sick. Some say it’s his heart, but I don’t know. He’s only in his forties with young kids to bring up. He’s the one I respect most and I’d like to hear what he has to say about Mom and Tom and how to get on, but I can’t bother him if he has troubles too, even though he keeps asking.
I think I’m still mad at God. It started the day Mom first said she hated me. I knew it was the brain tumor talking. But I had to be mad at somebody, or I would’ve broken down and been no use at all. I prayed hard for her, and no reprieve happened. She would’ve said, in her right mind, that God always answers prayers, but this time the answer was “no”.
That could be true, but it’s no consolation. At least not at the moment. And there could be no God at all. Obviously. Deciding to have faith’s just that – a decision that gets made. At least for someone like me who was raised believing, and slid away, and then came back later. Mostly because of personal experience, mine and other people’s, and what I found in the Bible, when I was ready to read it. Pascal and C.S. Lewis were a part of that too. Augustine, and George MacDonald, and Chesterton’s books as well.
No, I still think He’s there. But there may be evidence He’s a sadist.
I don’t actually believe that. It just makes me feel better to be rebellious. I don’t want to think right now about good coming out of suffering. Even though I know it can…
Tuesday, April 24, 1962
Spence and his dad spent an hour-and-a-half working on alterations to a custom horse van for Bull Hancock from Claiborne Farm. It could haul eight horses, with tack storage and sleeping space for grooms and drivers, and they were redesigning the mock-up for the partitions between horses, and evaluating new hardware they were considering for the ramps and doors, as well as latches for the halter chains.
When they’d finished, they got mugs of coffee from the employee lounge, and walked outside into the shade of a big broad maple that half-sheltered one of the loading docks. They talked about Bull first, and how much he’d changed Thoroughbred breeding, he and his dad both. Then they discussed the trip they’d be making to study the market in Europe.
Spencer drank the last of his coffee, and turned around toward his dad. “Europe’s actually related to a situation I’ve been wanting to discuss.”
“Something I’m not going to like, I suspect. I can hear it in your voice.” Booker was smiling, as they stood face to face, both of them at least six-two, looking each other in the eye.
Spencer laughed and said, “Maybe. Though that’s never stopped me before.”
“True.”
“I don’t think Fred is doing what we need as a Marketing Director. He’s been here almost a year, and he hasn’t accomplished anything. He thinks joining Rotary and the ‘right’ golf club, and taking folks to dinner is how you sell trailers. He doesn’t understand the difference between marketing and sales. He’s done no practical market research. He has no idea how to market out West or up East, or appeal to the jumping and cross country riders, or the rodeo folks at all. I don’t expect he’s even thought about it. And he’s the one who should’ve researched Europe, and how we should evaluate the market, and he doesn’t have a clue.”
“I agree. You know that. It’s Bill Watson making it complicated. He recommended Fred, and Bill’s been a friend of mine since we worked for John Deere in the twenties. I’ve just been hoping Fred would get better. And it’s tough on him, don’t you think? Getting him to move here, only to turn around and let him go this soon?”
Spence nodded and said, “I can understand that,” as he watched a semi back up to the loading dock with the precision of a mallard duck landing on a pond. “But how does keeping him here longer make it any easier? If you don’t think he’ll get the job done, it might be kinder to let him start looking for another position now. Finding a job at fifty-five’s easier than sixty.”
“Pro’bly.”
“We need somebody to do the work we hired him to do. Somebody who gets his hands dirty too. Fred has done next to nothing to learn about our products, standard manufactured or customized, not in any kind of depth.”
“I know, but—”
“You want to hear something funny?”
“Sure.”
“You know how Fred sings all the time, at the Christmas party or wherever he can find a piano in public? How he jumps up and starts right in on show tunes and Frank Sinatra?”
“Yeah. Sorry to say I do.” Booker smiled and shoved a hand through his hair, pushing it back against the wind.
“When I was up in Detroit last week working with the parts manufactures, I ran into a guy who’d worked with Fred Heffner at G.M. You know how Fred said that he’d resigned because he didn’t ‘like the direction G.M. was going?’ Well, this guy said the real story was that the wife of a V.P. in Fred’s division liked to sing at cocktail parties and dinners and wherever, and Fred always made a beeline for the piano before she could get there. Apparently she got so irritated with him stealing her thunder, she talked her husband into firing him.”
Spence and Booker both laughed, before Booker shook his head. “Man, I hope that’s not true. What kind of commentary would that be on big company decision-making? I mean that’s absolutely crazy.”
“I wouldn’t be completely surprised, would you? The big three squeeze their suppliers, overproduce intentionally and can’t see it’s wasteful, and spend so much on executive nonsense it makes you wonder what their boards are up to.”
“You won’t get me to argue with that.”
“Don’t you think we could find someone really competent to fill Fred’s position if we took our time and used an experienced headhunter?”
“Let me talk to Alice and see where she stands. Anything else?”
“Yes. I thought I’d take Tara to see them breezing at Keeneland before work some morning. You and Mom want to come along too?”
Something closed behind Booker’s eyes. And Spencer saw it for what it was. He cocked his head to one side, and circled his shoulders as though they needed to be loosened up while he watched his dad’s face.
“I don’t think so, Spence. I do my best work at five in the morning when you’d be going to the track, and I hate to cut it short.”
“That’s okay. Let me know what Mom thinks about Fred.”
Alice had a day, by the end of it, that she would’ve liked to forget. The easy part was talking to Jack Freeman. He’d made an appointment and shown up early in a charcoal suit that looked like it might’ve belonged to someone larger. The belt was hiked high and the sleeves were too long, but the shoes were new and looked like they fit, and the shirt was neatly pressed.
She’d talked to him about what they needed done, primarily at the plant, but at her house in Midway too. She told him she’d be in the hospital for a few days, and that her husband would be going out of town not too long after that, and she’d like Booker to have a break from working in the yard for the next two or three months.
Jack told her about his experience with landscaping and fix-it kinds of jobs, and she agreed to take him on, doing yard work and exterior building maintenance. He was ready to start right away, but she knew from Alan Munro that he was still recovering from pneumonia, and they settled on the following Monday. She’d pay him by the hour both places and guarantee him thirty hours a week, maybe as much as forty, if he took on some of the interior plant maintenance as well as the work outside.
He hesitated before he said he preferred to work outside, but would certainly be willing to do what she needed in the plant as well.
It had looked to Alice as though he’d had to steel himself to say that, and for some largely intuitive reason, it made her even more willing to give Jack a chance. She liked his seriousness. And his humility. His honesty about his drinking. His appreciation of Alan and Jo, and what they’d been doing for him.
The conflict came later that afternoon when she stopped Michael Westlake in the hall. He’d been half an hour late coming back from lunch, and Alice could smell liquor on his breath. She asked him to join her in her office and close the door behind him.
He was a tall man, six-four or five, but very thin and un-athletic looking, and Alice watched him drop into a guest chair and sprawl against the back. He was sweating, and his limp brown hair looked damp around the edges as he rubbed his eyes with one hand. “I couldn’t help being late. I was clear across town having lunch, and I ran out of gas on the way back. I know you said that if—”
“Michael, you’ve been drinking too, haven’t you?”
“NO! No, I haven’t. I used some mouthwash in the men’s room, but—”
“I wish you well, Michael. I really do. But we’re going to have to part company. I explained that to you last week. I’d be glad to put you in touch with someone who could help. I know one of the men who leads A.A. in town, and a doctor who’s had a lot of experience, but—”
“I don’t need any help. I told you that before. What I need is this job.” His hands were steadier than they had been that morning, as they wiped at his face with a crumpled handkerchief. But his chin had started to tremble, and he lowered it toward his chest, as he said, “Please, Mrs. Franklin. Give me another chance.”
Alice looked away toward the file drawers next to her desk, to give them both time to recover. “Michael, we’ve talked about the tardiness four times. It’s documented in your personnel file. We’ve talked about the drinking twice. I want to help, I really do, but nothing will change for the better until you can see you have a problem.”
“You don’t wantta help! What the hell do you know about my life? You and Booker. The King and Queen. So cool and superior! I s’ppose you’re gonna tell me you’ve been praying for me too!” He was leaning forward now, across the top of her desk, his face red, the veins in his neck straining against the skin, the mouth gaping and vicious.
“We’ll give you six months’ salary and pay for an employment agency, but—”
“You bitch!” He was shouting, standing now and leaning over her.
Alice stood too and said, “I want you to leave my office. Go home and call me later when you’re ready to talk more calmly.”
“Oh, I’ll go alright!” He wrenched open the door and grabbed up the guest chair he’d been sitting in and shoved it toward Alice’s face. He twisted sideways, then threw it out the door, where it crashed into the wall on the other side of the hall. “You’ll regret this! You and Booker! You better look over your shoulder, bitch, ’cause I’ll be coming after you!”
“You better look over your shoulder, buster!” Spence had sprinted down the hall and grabbed Michael from behind. He wrenched his arm behind his back and shoved him down a hundred feet of hall and out through the front door.
Michael shouted and swore and tried to break his grip, but stopped struggling, finally, in the parking lot. He laid his forehead on the roof of his car, his upper body shaking, while Spencer tried not to watch.
When Michael stood up and opened his car door, Spence said he could take him home if he wasn’t okay to drive.
Michael didn’t answer. He found his keys and climbed in his car, then backed out and drove off alone.
Alice watched them from her office window – until Booker ran in from the plant, where Alice’s secretary, Peggy James, had found him working with one of the welders.
“You okay? Allie?” Booker walked up behind her and tightened his arms around her waist.
She nodded and leaned back against him, before she said, “I’m fine. It’s unnerving though. Seeing someone break down like that. It’s got to be horrible for him.”
“I feel the same way when Jeff Grady calls at three in the morning from some bar in Wichita, ’cause I’m the only one he can think of he hasn’t phoned that week.”
“Michael’s never said anything about his home life. But he must have troubles there, don’t you think? That—”
“You can’t do anything about that. You had to let him go.”
“Maybe there was more we could’ve done that we never thought of.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought of it.” She smiled.
Booker laughed and kissed the top of her head.
“I hope I haven’t made things worse.”
“This wasn’t your fault, and you can’t let yourself worry about it. You’re having surgery tomorrow, and you need to rest and take care of yourself.”
“I know. I agree. Let’s just hope there’s not another letter from Tyler in the afternoon mail.” She smiled and turned and kissed Booker, then went and sat at her desk. “Can you leave by four-thirty, so we can meet Martha’s plane?”
“Yep. And then let’s take our only daughter out to dinner some place nice.”
“How ’bout the Lafayette?”
“Sure.” Booker stayed and watched Alice for a minute, then walked back to his own office and started on the correspondence he needed to finish before three.
Tyler Babcock had parked as close as he could get to the salt marsh, leaving his car on the edge of the dirt track that angled off the back road that ran from North Falmouth south to Woods Hole.
It was a beautiful day, even for Cape Cod. Summer tourists hadn’t swarmed yet, clogging the roads and beaches. The sky was endless – a soft, pale milky blue. The sun hid, and then dazzled, on and off, as wispy white clouds trailed by.
As he walked through woods, in deep worn ruts, across dusty patches and muddier hollows, toward the Little Sippewissett Salt Marsh, his canvas pack lying warm against his back, he began to think it might work. After he’d dealt with Alice Spencer Franklin the only way she deserved.
Then he could start over. He could live on land that touched water. And watch horseshoe crabs and eat salicornia. And follow the terns that lined up patiently to fish killifish out of the channels. He could live by the tides, according to the tides, with the salt smells and the sand dunes, and find some peace on earth.
He stepped out of the woods onto marshland, lying flat and green as far as he could see, with channels snaking through it. Brackish channels that worked like veins pumping new blood to the ocean – the swimmers and crawlers that populated the sea that were born there in the marsh.
Tyler looked down into the first shallow channel, three feet wide with new grass bending over it, watching flickering minnows and tiny blue crabs scuttling on the bottom. He walked across on an old weathered board set there as a bridge, and followed the length of another ditch till it flowed into the main channel that emptied into the bay.
He watched the phragmites shift in the wind up and down the dunes, the new green reeds, barely a foot tall, in between the eight-foot skeletons topped with drooping dried plumes from last summer, that were breaking now in sharp pointed angles like dry tan bones.
It was almost low tide, and he waded through another channel, hardly noticing the marshy reek of iodine and rotting marsh grass, and climbed the high dune that kept him from the beach that was broad now and buff-colored and soft beside the dune, but hard and rippled in ribs of wet sand below the high tide waterline.
He let the west wind sideswipe his face and blow his hair around him, longer now than it’d ever been, hanging past his collar, stinging his eyes before he closed them to listen to the splash of water, sluicing up across the wide beach, falling back in a rhythmic wash that made the world feel clean.
He walked then, for almost an hour, the only human on the whole beach, watching a small motorboat off and on, a hundred yards out in Buzzards Bay, just two men that he could see, fishing alone for their families.
There was a concept. Family. The best and worst. Healing and wounding. The harbor that traps your heart.
He walked back the way he’d come, to where he’d crossed the mouth of the main channel, and set his backpack on a strip of soft sand.
He sat where he often did on a large driftwood log and took out what he’d bought the day before and fitted carefully in his backpack. It had been a purchase he’d been planning for years. Approaching and avoiding, and giving up too long.
First he took out the lidded plastic water glasses he’d filled before he’d left (one for drinking, one for rinsing brushes); then the fourteen-by-eighteen-inch block of textured paper, and the square metal plate with shallow indentions; the two-layer box of very good watercolors he’d had to go to Boston to buy; then paper towels, and small sponges, and three drawing pencils, plus twelve high-quality bristled brushes held with a rubber band.
He began to draw the sweep of the land, from where he sat to the left, where reeds pierced the dunes close by, and salicornia clutched the surface with small succulent legs around toothpick-sized holes left behind by ghost spiders hiding from the sun.
He didn’t know what their real name was, the tiny transparent spiders, waiting now to come out at dusk, when they’d crawl up invisibly, in incalculable numbers, making the beach breathe – making it look as though it did, as though the sand itself was rippling. They could seem threatening when an army-sized horde began to crawl all over you, with ranks and regiments surrounding you, moving toward you too.
But he’d watched them for hours when he was young without telling anyone. Keeping it a miniature world that couldn’t be touched, or changed, or trivialized, with words or looks or indifference.
He worked for almost three hours with reeds and water and marsh and salicornia, lost completely in getting it right, getting back to what he’d loved his whole life. He let the water take the paint where it would, with the same wash of waves and waterfalls and clouds streaming by, of wet sand running into rivulets – except where he wanted a color to stain, or stop, or flow into another, in ways that came from something inside him he’d never understood, but trusted.
Or had once. Before he’d died. And turned into someone else.
He slid the scalpel underneath the finished painting, the top sheet on the thick block of paper, and cut it away on all four sides, then laid it on the beach, held down with shells at the corners, with the others he’d already painted.
He’d drawn a horizon line and a waterline parallel – when a woman’s voice behind him made his hand freeze in midair.
“I thought you’d be here.”
Tyler didn’t answer and didn’t look around. He left the pad on his knees and stared across the beach toward the dark green sea.
“I assumed you wouldn’t stay at Daddy’s house. That you’d ask Wally what you could rent. And, of course, I found I was right.” She laughed when she said it, but Tyler didn’t act as though he’d heard her.
“And if you came to the Cape, I knew you’d come here eventually. All I’d have to do was look for your car by the trail. Your hair’s even longer than mine.”
Tyler didn’t begin to react.
She walked around the driftwood log and stood stiffly in front of him, sprayed blond hair unmoved by the wind, khaki pants and white silk shirt still perfectly pressed, new boat shoes speckled with sand, mouth as red as her nail polish, eyes unreadable behind very dark glasses in wide white frames. “Aren’t you going to say hello? After I’ve come all this way?”
“I told you not to look for me.” Tyler said it quietly, staring down the beach toward the solitary shingled house more than a mile away on the top of a straight-sided cliff.
“What about me! Tyler! Look at me. Please!”
“My entire life has revolved around you. House. Job. My daughter’s—”
“She was my daughter too!”
Tyler didn’t say another word.
She waited for half a minute before she tried again. “You aren’t being fair. When you left Harvard, you wanted to work for Daddy.”
“No. I didn’t. You wanted me to work for ‘Daddy.’ There’s no reason to talk about this. I told you in Boston I won’t be coming back.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing! They’re holding your place at the firm until—”
“I will never work as a broker again. Do you understand me? I am not coming back, Sandy. That life is over.”
“It’s because of Jenny. You’re not seeing things clearly, and you need professional help.” Her diamond rings were flashing in the sun as she reached out to touch him.
Tyler stood up, threw his pad in the sand, and grabbed her upper arms. “I am going to say this one more time. I was meant to be a painter and I—”
“Oh, please! And how would you make a living? Even you said you’d never be good enough. That your girlfriend Alice was better. Her mother too, without doubt. You knew that all those years ago when her mother gave you lessons.”
“I was eighteen when I quit. I didn’t pursue it as a man.”
“That’s beside the point. You like the good things in life, like I do!”
“Good things!” He pulled her even closer up against him, then threw her glasses in the sand. “Look me in the eye, Sandy. One last time. I hate the life I’ve lived! Do you hear me? I will not live that way again! Jenny’s death made me look at myself, and I am now going to make a new world without the pressures I’ve given into… buckled under might be a better description… throughout most of my past.”
“And all I was, was one of the pressures?”
He didn’t say anything, but he let her go and watched as she picked up her glasses.
She didn’t put them on but moved them from hand to hand while she stared down at the beach. “If I’d known you were that unhappy, maybe we could’ve changed things. But you never said once. I never understood!”
“I said. You didn’t listen. And finally, you’re right, I gave up. This wasn’t your fault. I let myself get pushed.”
“I don’t understand toward what? You liked going to Tuscany, and buying art, and not having to scrimp and save. Other than giving up painting, I thought you were—”
“Remember the Beacon Hill house? And the partnership in the brokerage? It was easier than domestic warfare, and I could keep telling myself I gave in for Jenny. But it was me being the patsy. Taking the easy way out. Not putting my painting on the line because I was afraid I couldn’t make it as a fulltime artist. But now, once I finish with Alice, I’ll go away and start again with nobody else’s expectations waking me up at night.”
“Tyler…” She was staring at him, the long hair, clean but unkempt, the two-week beard, the old jeans and T-shirt, the lined face, suntanned and dry-looking, the tired brown eyes.
“What?”
“What are you going to do to Alice?”
“That’s not your business.”
“Tell me you’re not going to hurt her.”
Tyler didn’t answer.
Sandy stared down the length of the beach, then looked straight at Tyler. “Alice’s father didn’t murder Jenny.”
“Don’t!” He stepped toward her, fast this time.
But she didn’t move back. “Don’t you remember how your father used to talk about how hard it can be for any doctor to diagnosis appendicitis? And that peritonitis is very often the—”
“Walk away, Sandy! Now. We aren’t going to talk about this again!”
He was shaking, a foot away from her, his hands clenched by his thighs. The horror and hostility contorting his face made her start toward the high dune between the beach and the marsh. “If you change your mind about us, I’ll be willing to talk again. As long as it’s one day soon.”
“There’s nothing else to talk about. I’ve explained my position more than once.”
“But one year from today, if you see things the same way, have the decency to send me an address where my lawyer can forward the papers.” Sandy had slid her glasses on and was halfway up the dune.
“You know who my lawyer is. Send the papers now.”
“You know what I think?” She was twenty feet away, at the top of the dune, when she stopped and turned around.
Tyler didn’t answer.
And she watched him again before she spoke. “I don’t think you ever stopped loving Alice, and now you’ve come up with an excuse to hate her instead. You’re jealous of Booker, and the life they’ve had together, and you want to make her hurt because you’ve been miserable, and you have to blame someone else.”
“I’m the one who broke the engagement!”
“It’s why you did that makes the difference.”
“GO!”
“Don’t forget what I’ve said.”