The Clairvoyants(99)

I told Alice and Erika how Del and I had held our séances on summer nights, a candle throwing our shadows onto the pool shed walls. Outside, the fireflies had dipped between horse chestnuts and honey locusts. Luna moths had flitted around the pool shed’s yellow outdoor light. For a dollar we’d communicate with the dead with the sole intention of collecting money for lip gloss and gum. Sometimes, I would know the color of a dress. I would smell lavender. I’d get an urge to sing part of a song I’d never heard before. I didn’t tell them that any of it had been real. I let them speculate—another clairvoyant’s trick.

Alice and Erika and I sat outside until late, startling at any sudden noise, imagining William’s Triumph revving down Milton’s Main Street, his silent approach around the side of the house. Erika slipped inside to make up a bed for me, though it would be a sleepless night. I planned to call Del and tell her everything, so she would know that it wasn’t William’s ghost she’d seen but the man himself, but I did not. I sat on the bed and I played William’s messages—the first an angry attempt to reason with me, a promise not to reveal what had happened in the asylum. The second message was more of the first—spiteful, hateful, a threat to find me, to do what he should have done to me before. The third message was blank, at first. Then water sloshed against a boat’s sides, buffeted by wind, by William’s slow breaths. “Why couldn’t you love me,” he said softly, despondent.

The next morning, under ash-colored skies, Officer Paul arrived to tell us in person that William’s body had been found in a small boat on the lake, a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

We stood in the driveway, Officer Paul scuffing his dark shoes. It began to rain—a soft drizzle. “He won’t hurt anyone else,” he said.

He ducked back into his cruiser, offering a quick nod of sympathy, imagining the ordeal I’d been through. Alice put a tentative arm around my shoulder. The rain misted the grass, the tar road, the metal street signs. All I’d ever wanted was to be loved. All William had wanted was for me to love him. Even Mary Rae, under the elm, had wanted something. As much a mystery as the appearance of the dead was the way none of our wantings could ever be aligned.





37




Del had her baby six weeks early, in July. She held him, briefly, then she took off with a man she’d met while pregnant, a yachtie who’d invited her sailing. At times I imagined she was fleeing Detective Thomson and his questions and, later, that she was running from the baby and the predictability of the life she would have lived with him. The baby—she’d named him Owen—was born blind. His eyes were like Del’s, the same color and shape, heavy with lashes. For five years I saw only photographs of him, and from those I couldn’t tell for sure if he was William’s son. I thought that on meeting him I would sense it, that I would somehow resent him. But by then he was school-age, sturdy and thoughtful. I hadn’t been around children much and had no idea the things they taught you about yourself.

My mother and I would get postcards and e-mails from various ports of call—Grenada, Tobago, St. Vincent—the boats Del was on and the men she was with constantly changing. When she was in town she went by our mother’s to visit, but only for an hour or two. My mother, when I asked how Del was, would say that she’d warned her to use sunscreen, but that Del had a dark suntan.

“And what else?” I’d say.

She’d shift the phone to her other ear, her hands busy in the kitchen sink. “Her usual impulsive self.”

Del would bring Owen spice drops, watch him play, read him The Velveteen Rabbit, then go. Later, I would get an e-mail from Del about how the visit went—a humorous description of our mother’s attempts to satisfy Owen’s every whim, and play hostess. Tea on a tray, Del would write. For God’s sake. About Owen she said little. He is a clever little man, she wrote. He asks more questions than any human being I’ve ever met. Even You-Know-Who.

We’d stopped hearing from Del in May—no cards or e-mails. Last we knew she’d been on a yacht called The Pearl, anchored off a small island in the Grenadines. My mother had put out inquiries, but Del couldn’t be located. We assumed she’d taken off with someone new. But it wasn’t like her to stay out of touch. Together, my mother and I had invented a story for ourselves: Del had decided to stay put on some island, and was eating papaya and roti, entertaining yachties at the island bar with her stories.

The first week of June, my mother called and asked me to come home. Ordinarily, I would have made some excuse. This time I did not.

“Why do you want me there?” I asked.

“It’s your birthday. And it’s time you met your nephew.” The pendulum of the old regulator clock echoed through the kitchen. “Stay for a few days. Stay for a month or the whole summer. It’s up to you.”

“You’ve heard something about Del,” I said.

“No, I have not.” My mother’s voice was crisp, annoyed.

I took the train into the Old Saybrook station and called a cab to take me to my mother’s house.

The morning was cool, the weather always changeable near the shore. Driving down our road I smelled the Sound, the remains of morning fires lit to ward off the damp. Overhead the trees shook their bright leaves. The house was the same, the windows flashing the sun. The barn was gone. My mother had called me two years before to tell me we’d lost it, but I’d forgotten. “Fire,” she’d said, and nothing more. As the cab pulled into the pebbled drive the missing barn was all I could see. My mother came out onto the wide front porch.