Locust Lane(94)
When she got home, she poured herself a brandy and took it to her father’s study, now a dark, moldy repository of mismatched furniture, fading photographs, and odd wall hangings, most notably a framed map of the Galápagos Islands. And of course the closet. Katharine’s boudoir was directly above; Celia heard her on the phone, berating some poor soul. She collapsed into the ancient leather club chair and took a sip of the brandy, then closed her eyes until her mind was free of Alice’s twisted fantasies. After a while Jack returned from his session and went straight upstairs.
She usually avoided this room. This was where John de Vissier administered his corrections. There were good old-fashioned beatings for her brother, John Jr., currently living in exile in Kingston-upon-Thames. His implement of choice had been the belt from his old navy salute uniform. But Katharine had forbidden him from striking her daughters—she didn’t want scars on that snowy skin. And so he had to get more creative with Celia and Emily, who was currently raising alpacas in Simi Valley. Hence the airless closet where forgotten things were kept.
She’d only looked in it once since those days, soon after her father died. Its contents remained mostly untouched. The naval dress uniform that would turn into a radiant white ghost as her eyes adjusted to the darkness. The putrid leather shoes that would gather around her like patient rats, waiting for her to nod off. The collapsing cardboard box of damp and swollen books. A tightly tied plastic trash bag whose contents she never did determine.
But the bucket was gone. So at least there was that.
There was no lock on the door, so he’d angle a straight-backed chair beneath the knob. Not that she ever tried to escape. Because he was right there. Sitting in his leather chair, reading about admirals and explorers, battles and mutinies. Sometimes, although not often, he would be at his desk, working on his magnum opus, the infamous nautical novel that disappeared with his death. If it ever existed. Whatever he was doing, he was not to be disturbed. Making a fuss would only mean an extension of her sentence. And so she learned to stay perfectly still. Waiting for the bad time to end. Waiting for the light to return. Waiting to escape to Farmington, to Wellesley. To Oliver, whom she never told about any of this. In fact, the only person she ever spoke to about it outside the family was Alice, after she’d described the beatings her own father administered.
“Do you think it messed with your head?” she asked.
“Well, I suppose I avoid spending any more time inside closets than absolutely necessary. But otherwise, not particularly.”
Alice had smiled but said nothing. Celia had only complained to her mother once, after a particularly long internment.
“Well, that’s just how our world works, my dear,” Katharine said. “If it’s not to your liking, go live in the other one. See how much you like that.”
The exhaustion and the brandy finally got to Celia. Her mind loosened, like a massaged muscle. Before long it was if she was sitting alone in a dark theater, watching a random replay of the last ten days. The stunning red of the beets in the salad Michel had made. The churned earth of the patio. Oliver’s digitized face as he spoke to her from Connecticut.
And then it was there, as well. The lost memory, arriving fully formed. Patrick and Jack stood beside the kitchen island. Her son terrified; Patrick gripping his arm. There was something tentative, almost embarrassed, about the intruder’s posture. His words were an incomprehensible jumble about darkness and trees and Eden. And then Jack’s eyes widened and Celia sensed the familiar, solid presence behind her, the mass she’d anchored herself to since she was little more than a girl, desperate to flee her father’s merciless world. Patrick’s eyes were focused on Oliver. The confusion was gone, replaced by something else. Not fear or alarm, but recognition.
“Wait…” Patrick said.
He raised his arm, there was something in his hand.
“Gun!” Oliver shouted behind her, before Patrick could say what he now knew.
And then the world exploded and Patrick’s eyes were emptying and Jack was fetal on the floor, a phone with the dead girl’s face on its cracked screen next to him. Celia went to her son and got him on his feet and led him to the front lawn, where they waited as every siren in town descended.
Wait. Of course. It was so obvious now that she’d remembered. They were spitting images. Dead ringers, provided you didn’t look too closely. Everyone always said it. Son and father. Father and son.
Celia stood and walked to the kitchen. Her computer slept on the table. She opened her email and typed the letters e and z into the search box. A long list of identical subject headings appeared. [email protected]. Monthly Account Statement. She got right on—the password was stored. There was a charge for last Wednesday, from the turnpike: 1:41 a.m. Oliver’s Mercedes, heading east. Charlton to Framingham. Coming home. She stared at the page for a very long time. There were no charges going back. But he had gone back. She’d seen him there, spoken to him. He must have taken surface roads. Because something had happened, something he hadn’t planned. Something he needed to hide, even though it was too late.
She closed the computer. It was quiet upstairs. Jack would be talking to Hannah, Katharine slumbering. She briefly wondered what it would feel like to inhabit a different life, where she could gently shake her mother awake and tell her about this terrible thing she’d just discovered, and then listen as the steely matriarch provided her with sage advice that would lead them all to a happy resolution. It certainly would be a far cry from where she was now. That was something her father used to say: A far cry. I sure am a far cry from that life, Celia thought.