Читать книгу Betwixt and Between - Jessica Stilling - Страница 9

CLaIRe

The house didn’t feel the same, it didn’t look the same, blue was not blue, red not red, as if every aspect of life from the very big to the very small had been slightly slanted left or right. From the moment Claire stepped through the door that night after the morgue it had all been permanently altered. As if she were in some kind of nether-house, the light fixtures shone at odd angles, the furniture sat tilted, she couldn’t see the sun through the windows and yet it was the same house, the only place she’d been able to stomach since the news.

It had been poison, that’s what the doctor had said after a thorough autopsy. Cyanide and Wisteria, the fruit of a poisonous plant had been ingested; they’d found enough of it in Preston’s body to kill a child, though, the doctor had explained, “an adult could have survived such a dose.” The doctor had also said the police were looking into it, they’d launched a thorough investigation and soon they hoped they’d be able to move on to an arrest. A neighbor of Claire’s was apparently what the police called “a person of interest.”

The police might be able to move on, they could stop obsessing about Preston’s death and focus on the investigation, but Claire could not. There had been times in her life when bad things had happened. She didn’t get into graduate school, her father had died of cancer when she was twenty-three years old, but through all that someone had always been there to say, “You’ll move on, you’ll get through it, this is not the end of the world.” This—is—not—the—end—of—the—world. But this, this was different, this was the end of everything. And how do you move on from that, how do you pick up the pieces once the oceans have frozen over and the land gone fallow, once the asteroid has hit and the sun is no longer shining? It was as if her life had been split down the middle, her time with Preston and her time without him. Claire was thirty-six years old, Preston had encompassed but ten years of her life, and yet looking back he had been all of it, as if her entire childhood and young adult life had been waiting for him and now the rest of her life would only be wanting to see him again. All of it was now gone, all of it was in that powder blue coffin they had just buried in the cemetery across from the church.

It had been a ceremony, that’s all Claire could say about the wake, the funeral, the burial and though she’d sat in front, looking up at Father O’Shay and Father Sherman, though she’d been there while Matthew and his mother and sister, while Claire’s sister Emily and her own mother had planned the entire affair, still it was as if she were sleeping through it. Those pills the psychiatrist had given her, she’d taken more of them, more every day, and other pills to go to sleep at night. Soon, Matthew said, she’d have to stop taking those pills, she’d have to go back to living her life, to being the woman she’d been. How could he expect that of her? That woman was gone. That woman had been buried in a powder blue box.

After the funeral, there had been food, people moved about the house carrying plate after plate of it. Claire wandered through her dining room and into the kitchen watching the food as if this were not about the people but about the casseroles, salads and plates of brownies everyone had so kindly brought, offering food because their words, their thoughts were not enough. At least a casserole was a tangible expression of their sympathy. It had started the day after she found out. She hadn’t told anyone but they knew. Kerry O’Conner had brought over a creamed chicken casserole, Tom and Frieda Spellman a tin of turkey potpie, Kathy Hannigan chocolate chip brownies, which had seemed particularly insensitive seeing that the only person living in the Tumber house who would have appreciated such a treat was gone. It had all been food, food in trays, in plastic containers, in oversized bowls. And the plastic ware, there had been so much plastic ware, oversized utensils, tiny spoons, even plastic toothpicks dressed up to look like swords, all of it accumulating in her house, taking up counter and refrigerator space. If Claire had been the kind of woman who hated to cook this food might have been welcomed, but she liked stirring stew, roasting potatoes, basting a ham and while she hadn’t been in the mood to cook all week, she missed her own food, the things she and Matthew and Preston ate at her table, in a normal world that did not feel as if it were swimming underwater.

Today the food had gotten worse. Jillian Donners had brought a lasagna and Halle Coleman a batch of fried chicken. People were over, it was just after the funeral and of course there had to be a get-together. Like following a wedding or a christening it’s not enough to simply go to the church, to listen to the priest, sprinkle some water, sing a hymn—more had to be done, fellowship had to be experienced no matter how macabre and so there was now this party. Claire had been expecting it. When her friend Linda lost her mother last year everyone had piled into their cars after the body was laid to rest, expecting to dish out plates of potato salad and summer squash as if it were a very solemn, very somber barbeque.

Cara List stood near the counter tossing a salad, two forks working away, shaking the lettuce and tomatoes as she turned and glanced at Megan, Preston’s friend, Tom Craig’s mother, who lived three streets away. They looked like regular women (and it had been so long since Clare had felt like a regular woman), heads tilted toward each other, eyes focused but willing to wander, hands animated. They seemed lost in conversation, as the salad was absentmindedly manhandled and Claire watched them, arms wrapped around herself, feeling weak, as if she might just tumble to the floor. But there was something about it, she couldn’t look away, it was so normal, so natural and all she wanted was to be the kind of woman who could just do that again. Cara List nodded knowingly as Claire turned around, walking back through the dining room to look out the windows of the double French doors. They hadn’t yet taken the swing set down, though Matthew had put Preston’s bike and the little playhouse away in the garage. Taking a screwdriver to the wooden poles and hauling the big aluminum slide up to the attic above the garage felt like too much of an undertaking, too much of a sign that it was over, really over. Not that the yard didn’t look as if it had aged a hundred years.

The clamor went on at her back and Claire tried not to notice it. It had been three days of preparation, none of which she’d wanted to do. Her mother had come out from Chicago, as had her sister; they were now sitting on the couch in the family room, sniffling as they went through an old photo album. Her mother had called the funeral home and most of the arrangements had been made through Claire, around and over Claire, though not by her. They thought he should have a powder blue casket with fine, white lining–go ahead; they wanted to read an excerpt from the Velveteen Rabbit–good idea; serve coffee at the wake–great. Everything suggested was fine with her; Claire had no complaints, no needs. There was nothing she wanted and there was no way for the wake, the funeral, even the burial in Matthew’s family plot across from the church, to make anything seem better or worse. The priest had wanted Matthew to say a few words, knowing full well Claire wasn’t up to it. Her husband had bravely gotten up and spoken about a time he and Preston had gone bowling without bumpers, how he’d always hoped to be able to kindle in his son a love for the Red Sox.

“I took my son to a bar once,” Matthew had said. “It was a bar at a pizza place, nothing too wild, and he ordered one of those root beers that come in a glass bottle, that look, you know, like the real deal. I remember watching him and thinking that we had our whole lives together, I remember thinking ‘You know, some day I’m going to be able to have a beer with my son.’ I just wish I could have been able to have a beer with my son.” Matthew teared up, he patted his eyes as he spoke, but did not break down; he simply stood, letting everyone know that he’d had a son, he’d loved him and now he was gone.

Claire looked away from the window and back at this gathering that had transpired against her will. She wanted to watch it all, letting the waves wash against her, to fall to the floor in tears, to grab hold of the carpet to anchor herself before she was tossed out to sea. She just wanted to feel this grief, to let it permeate, to be an all-consuming physical specimen of it, but she had to put on the hostess’s face. She was an adult and adults held their tongues; they nodded politely and did not scream in the faces of well-wishers, no matter how old the “I’m sorry” ‘s got. Adults did not throw a fit because their son was dead while others had been spared. No matter how badly she just wanted to scream right now, societal conventions, the pull of the real world, which was enlightened and civilized, was too strong. She’d given that up for a little while, she’d turned into a bleeding animal at the morgue, and every night alone in her bed, she thrashed and cried and screamed. But to let her connection, even her small connection, to the world go completely would be to lose so much more.

“Claire, there you are,” Cara List said, having just set the salad she’d been tossing on the table near an aluminum tray of lasagna and a pitcher of iced tea. “I thought I saw you earlier,” she went on, grasping Claire’s arm, which was clenched tight. “It was a lovely service, really a lovely service and it just makes me feel so…” Cara didn’t finish, instead she shook her head, and Claire could see that she was fighting off tears.

“Hey! Hey!” Peyton cried, running energetically at his mother and grabbing onto her legs as Eva followed. “Over here, I’m over here,” he shouted and his mother looked down at him, horrified, as Eva stayed still, staring up at Claire as if she were afraid of her.

“Peyton Andrew List,” Cara hissed, visibly embarrassed. “You know better, you calm down and go sit by your father,” she instructed with that Mom voice, the kind of tone only certain women could pull off, a tone Claire was sure she did not possess anymore. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into him. I’ve tried to explain to him what happened to Preston, but he doesn’t really understand yet and he won’t stop acting up. I always thought he’d be a little older before we’d have to start talking about this.”

“I know,” Claire replied, still hugging herself. She could feel the warmth of her own body, as if the rest of the world were freezing.

“And I just want you to know how sorry I am…how I didn’t know and if I had, I wish I had known to call the police when Preston didn’t come back to our house. Maybe if I’d done that they would have found him sooner.” Cara shook her head and Claire watched her neighbor. She didn’t want to blame her, not for neglecting to contact Claire about Preston’s leaving her house or for being the mother to initiate the newfound freedom the children had been allowed this year. She couldn’t blame her, and though part of Claire really wanted to accuse this woman she knew it would do nothing, it would mean nothing and what was the point—Cara List hadn’t poisoned him.

Claire gave Cara the tiniest, tightest smile as she gently touched her arm and walked away, saying a slow, quiet “thank you.” Claire knew in another world she’d never have been so impolite to her friend, but she couldn’t concentrate now, the pills had wrapped a blanket around her mind and she could barely focus on the people here. Cara stayed behind, turning once Claire left and tending to the salad that a few neighbors had started to dig into. “No, no, no, make sure you take the avocado,” Claire could hear her neighbor instruct as she left.

She turned into the living room to find Eva’s parents standing there. Claire had never known Gloria and Derrick Murphy very well. Sometimes they chatted at school functions, a paper cup of weak coffee in their hands as they discussed the PTA, the latest class play, what the school was planning to do about the cricket problem. They were doctors and didn’t have a lot of time; Eva’s last nanny, who’d left a year ago to start a family of her own, had basically raised her.

“I’m so sorry,” Gloria Murphy said, grasping Claire’s arm as the grieving mother looked at her. She was a pediatric oncologist and Claire was sure this woman had said these exact same words many times to other mothers before. “I can still hear your voice on the phone when Preston went missing, I shudder each time.”

“We’re really sorry, Claire,” Eva’s father added stiffly. He was, Claire had heard, the brilliant surgeon the hospital called in when all was lost. He had an entire team of doctors behind him and had probably rarely had to leave an operating room to tell a family they’d lost a patient. He had a staff for that.

“Thank you,” Claire replied, nodding kindly, not knowing what else she could do. She pursed her lips and stared at the floor until Gloria Murphy grasped her husband’s arm and, sensing Claire’s discomfort, moved to walk away.

“Well if you need anything…”

“Thank you, I know,” Claire said, moving further into the living room.

She turned and there was Matthew standing with a plastic cup resting at his lips. He sipped from it as he watched Kyle Clinter, his golf buddy, who seemed to be explaining something. Todd Snider and Terrell Jacobs were also standing around as if they were in the driveway after a mid-afternoon basketball game, the kind she’d seen her husband partake in on many a Saturday afternoon. Matthew casually shuffled two steps away from the conversation, but remained with his friends as they surely commented on how “awful” this all was.

The front door opened; Claire turned her head just as it began to creak. No one else noticed it; people had been moving in and out of the house all day. This was the kind of gathering where people came and went, opening the door as if this house had become, at least for the time being, communal property. Only this time it wasn’t any old neighbor who entered, or Father Sherman who’d said the Mass, or one of Matthew’s mother’s friends from Andover. It was the neighbor from two streets down, the one from the cul-de-sac near where Preston had been found, Gregory Hawthorne.

He was a youngish man, his features played up by a pouty baby-face. Gregory was probably about thirty-two, thirty-three, with prematurely thinning dark hair, a pale face and watery blue eyes, the kind of eyes that belonged not to a grown man, but to an old person. He was hunched when he walked and looked too skinny yet a little chunky at the same time. He was the kind of man who would have been made fun of on the playground, the kind who might never have gotten over it. He worked with computers, that was the generic job description the people in the neighborhood gave, he’d made a lot of money that way and he’d never been spotted with a woman, or a man for that matter. Sometimes he could be seen outside shooting baskets in his driveway, only he didn’t do it like the teenagers did, he didn’t play with anyone else and was always attempting long, elaborate shots and then celebrating excessively, and a bit too loudly, whenever one went in. He stayed alone in his house and ordered his food in; sometimes he had a housekeeper cook for him. It was rumored that he never kept one for longer than a couple of months because, as Shannon Forrester’s old nanny had said, “He is too picky, too picky for everyone, they all quit.”

He came in wearing a dark blue T-shirt and black jeans. He walked on two steady legs and still it seemed as if he were stumbling. His wide eyes seemed terrified of something, like a kid who knows he’s done something wrong and can’t make eye contact, and yet he kept on walking, right until he was nearly in the middle of the living room, facing Claire.

“I just want to say,” he fumbled and Matthew moved away from his friends, to stand between Gregory Hawthorne and his wife. “Mrs. Tumber, I am so incredibly sorry,” the man said, sniffling. “And I didn’t know…I mean…” He kept talking despite the tremor in his voice, and the way his hands had started shaking.

“Who the hell do you think you are, coming in here?” Matthew called. “What is wrong with you?”

“Matthew, stop it,” Claire shouted and she could hear her own voice pierce the room. She sounded like a wife, a wife trying to keep her husband from getting out of control.

“I didn’t know….I swear to God,” the man mumbled. “Mary and Mary Clark…” Gregory kept stammering.

The police had been to his house twice to talk to him, they’d come with a warrant once and searched the place, trashing the inside, or so the Huxburries, who lived next door to him, had said. They couldn’t find anything, and there was no proof that Gregory was the culprit, only the fact that Preston had been found so close to the Hawthorne house, that Gregory Hawthorne had gone to the hospital with a stomach ache that same night that Preston had been poisoned, that they’d found he’d been poisoned with traces of the same chemical… But Claire, as the grieving mother, only could know so much, and still the police did nothing, because a stomachache, they said, was not enough in the way of proof.

“I want you to go,” Matthew said, calmly but forcefully through clenched teeth, and the man still stood there. He looked shriveled, as if a giant monster had taken his entire body in its fist and crushed him.

“I’m so sorry. And he was such a nice boy,” Mr. Hawthorne groveled, looking at Claire, he reached out, taking a step toward her. Matthew moved in, grabbed Gregory Hawthorne’s arm and pushed him back.

“Get out of here!” he cried. “Didn’t you hear me, I said get out!” he was shouting and though no one else could see it, Claire could tell, because she knew her husband, that he was ten, maybe twelve seconds from crying. “I said get out!” Matthew yelled, and though the get-together had stopped, though this solemn gathering had already fallen to its knees, it seemed to break and shatter like glass as Matthew, the father, lost his cool.

“Hey,” Terrell said to Gregory, “I think it’s time you get going.”

“I don’t think they want you here,” Kyle elaborated, and Gregory Hawthorne stumbled back.

“I just wanted to say,” he went on, looking at Claire like a little boy who is truly sorry for something. “I mean, I just wanted you to know, just you, as his mother, that…” He took two more steps toward Claire and she wondered, even with all these people here, should she be afraid?

“Get out!” Matthew cried, and lunged at the man; he had him on the floor in three seconds, holding him down. He swung once, swung twice and Claire couldn’t tell if her husband had hit him, but one of the women cried out and Terrell and Kyle ran toward Matthew, picking him up and setting him right. Another one of his friends stood Gregory Hawthorne up, looked him over and grabbed his arm, half dragging, half walking him through the front door and tossing him into the yard.

“I’m sorry,” Matthew apologized to the entire gathering, which had stopped to watch. “I’m sorry,” he said, sauntering away toward their bedroom. One of his friends looked to Claire and she followed her husband—she knew it was her job even in all this to follow him. That’s what adults do, that’s what the wife of a grieving husband is for, to follow, to sacrifice, to not break down even when all she wants is to fall to her knees.

As she turned toward the stairs to their bedroom, she passed the window in the foyer. Claire looked out of it for a second, half expecting to see her son’s shiny red bike. Instead Gregory Hawthorne was standing there, about to walk away. He shook his head, he turned around, but not before their eyes met and Claire wasn’t sure if it was pity she felt for him.