New England White (36 page)

CHAPTER 38

AGAIN MAIN STREET

(I)

A
RRIVING BACK IN THE
L
ANDING
after her cryptic conversation with Trevor Land, Julia parked on Main Street just as the snow began to fall. She stepped out of the car, planning to dart into Cookie’s for a quick fix, which she would disguise, as usual, with purchases of gifts for others, and Jelly Bellys for the jar on Lemaster’s desk in Lombard Hall. She was burning with anger.

Bruce Vallely. Did Trevor Land really expect her to talk to Bruce Vallely? The same Bruce Vallely who, with the slightest encouragement, would winkle out Vanessa’s entanglement with Kellen? And who, according to Sister Lady Regina Thackery’s account of Bruce’s interview with her husband, had been asking a few questions too many about Lemaster?

Julia thought maybe it would be better if Bruce Vallely took an early retirement. Oh, he was a nice enough man, she told herself as she hurried along the sidewalk, struggling toward calm. Bruce was hulking and socially clumsy but did not seem to have a mean bone in his body. Grace had certainly adored him. But the risks involved in any sort of collaboration—

Cookie’s was closed.

Odd. Vera Brightwood had not taken a vacation in living memory, and she was never sick. Lemaster liked to say she got rid of germs by bestowing them, in the form of her diatribes, upon her customers.

Julia checked her watch, but it was not yet two-thirty, and the candy shop was usually open until half past four. Vera took Sundays and Mon-days off, but today was Friday. The front step had been shoveled and salted, and, as Vera was too cheap to pay anybody else to do it, she must have done it herself, meaning that the store had been open earlier in the day. Julia knocked, then peered through the glass just to be sure, but the shop was empty. Puzzled, she walked three doors down to Luma’s Gifts to ask Lurleen Maddox, Vera’s only friend, whether the Landing’s leading gossip might have suffered an accident or a death in the family.

Only Luma’s was closed, too.

Julia stood on the sidewalk, nibbling her lip. Was it some special holiday in the Landing? No, because the florist was open. So were Greta’s Tavern and the real-estate office and the bookstore and the CVS drugstore that stood on the lot once occupied by the grand house in which Anna and Merrill Joule had raised their daughter. She glanced across the street. The antiques shop was closed. Had Frank left town, driven by his fears? Then where were Vera and Lurleen? On impulse, she headed for the bookstore, because Daniel Weiss, the former professor of Shakespeare who ran it, was Lemaster’s frequent ally in chasing down antiquarian books. Danny might know what was going on.

But the assistant manager told her that Mr. Weiss had left early today. He said he had a meeting.

“Oh, right,” said Julia, inventing poorly. “I forgot. Danny and my husband were getting together for lunch.”

“Really? Wow. Maybe there’s been a mix-up. I thought Mr. Weiss said he had to see Miss Brightwood.”

Out on Main Street again, Julia considered. Why was she worrying? It was not her job to ferret out the friendships among Main Street shopkeepers, and if a bunch of them wanted to get together on a Friday afternoon, it was none of her business. She was a member of a couple of Landing social clubs herself—the Caucasian Squawk Circle—and knew their penchant for testing loyalty by scheduling meetings at peculiar times.

But Julia was arguing against her own convictions. As she slid behind the wheel of the Escalade, she conceded that the coincidence was simply too large.

Trevor Land, who just happens to be Gina Joule’s godfather, tells her he has to drive out to the Landing this afternoon for a meeting. And suddenly, along Main Street, a clutch of longtime Landingers also vanish—for a meeting.

I’ll tell you another thing I heard about your friend Kellen,
Boris Gibbs had told her over lunch.
A few people out in the Landing were pretty angry with him.

Julia took a breath. Maybe she was just being Mallardish, seeing conspiracies everywhere, but as she sat in the Escalade drumming her fingers on the wheel, she decided that she had to know.

Instinct told her where to search.

Julia drove north, away from Main Street, quickly leaving the village proper. She watched her rearview mirror. The houses were increasingly scattered on wooded lots, and then she crossed a narrow bridge and was in the more rural northern half of the Landing, broad fields of perfect white, punctuated by enough stone walls and farmhouses to inspire an army of New England poets.

The snow was turning to rain.

She was taking the long way around, she knew, but that was because she had spotted a car on her tail and wanted to see if he, or she, would stay there. The Escalade breasted a hill and the car was still there, a quarter-mile back. She zipped through a stand of conifers, and when she looked back the car was still there. She turned off the main road onto a barely plowed track and stopped, quite boldly, waiting for her pursuer to pass, cell phone at the ready just in case.

Nothing.

Julia drummed her fingers, watched the road, watched the clock, watched the sky shift from slate to gray. Heavy frozen drops pelted the car. At last she decided she had been mistaken and pulled back onto the road. Five minutes more and she was surrounded by trees again. She found Pleasant Road. Snuggled in the woods near the end of the cul-de-sac was the dull-red saltbox belonging to Vera Brightwood.

Julia never slowed down. She made the wide turn, fishtailing on the slippery tarmac, and sped the other way.

In Vera’s driveway were three or four cars. One of them was Frank Carrington’s Ford pickup. Another was a blue Infiniti she had seen at Hunter’s Heights half a dozen times. It belonged to Trevor Land.

A few people out in the Landing were pretty angry with him.

Maybe all the angry people were finally getting together.

(II)

J
ULIA BEAT THE SCHOOL BUSES HOME
by a hair and listened to Jeannie burble about her day while Vanessa chanted upstairs. The dean called to discuss next week’s conference with the Lombard bean counters, but Julia, deep in a discussion of the details, nevertheless sensed within herself a rising lack of interest in the affairs of the divinity school. She kept peeking out the living room window as if expecting the meeting at Vera’s house to conclude with an angry march up to Hunter’s Heights. She thought of calling Lemaster, who was down in Washington, but was not sure what to tell him. She e-mailed Mary Mallard, outlining the possibility that some of the older Landingers were up to something, then fed the children and sent them off to do their homework. Up in the master suite, she curled on the bed with Rainbow Coalition, poured herself a glass of wine, and turned on an old movie. When she opened her eyes, it was almost eleven.

Jeannie had put her perfect self perfectly to bed, but Vanessa was down in the kitchen, sitting at the shining black counter, a bowl of Cheerios beside her, rushing through homework she had started much too late. Julia stood at the sink, mind weaving tangled skeins of conspiracy, trying to frame the question that only one person in all the world—the person sitting in front of her—would not think insane. But before she could ask, Vanessa spoke.

“Oh, Moms, while you were asleep? You got a message from Mary. She says it’s important.”

“From Mary?” Julia was surprised. Like Mona, the writer avoided the telephone for anything of substance. “Mary Mallard?”

Vanessa nodded, furiously polishing a French translation. “Uh-huh.”

“Did she want me to call her back?”

“It wasn’t a phone call.”

“Are you saying she came to the
house
?”

“No, Moms, no.” The start of a grin behind the braids. Vanessa, like Kellen, liked her verbal fun. “It was an e-mail.”

“She
e-mailed
you? I don’t
believe
this.”

“No, Moms. She e-mailed
you.
”

“You read my e-mail?”

“You should really change your password more than once every couple of years.”

Julia’s voice was flat with anger. And fear. “How much have you read?”

“Enough to know you’re wasting your time. DeShaun did it. Nobody else. Just DeShaun. Remember I’m like the world’s leading expert on Gina Joule.” Vanessa’s nose never lifted from her book. In the night quiet, her tone was placid and soothing, the voice of adult authority. The ensuing explosion came as a shock. “So why can’t the two of you just mind your own business? It was
DeShaun
! Why can’t you leave it alone? Why are you letting this woman push you around? You used to leave
everything
alone, so leave this alone, too!” Vanessa was shivering, but forced a trembling calm into her words. “Anyway, the e-mail said Mary found this witness who—never mind. You can read it.”

“Why are you so upset, angry, honey? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She turned a page, pretending to read. “So, what’s next? Looking for Shari Larid?”

Julia put an unsteady hand on Vanessa’s shoulder. “You can’t be a part of this, honey.” Stubborn, fuming silence. “I’m serious. It’s for your own good.”

“Who wants to be a part of it? You and your creepy friends.”

“Just promise me you’ll stay away from this.” A kiss on the forehead. Still Vanessa refused to look at her mother. Then Julia, remembering, reared back. “And don’t you ever read another person’s e-mail again! You know better than that!”

“It was DeShaun.” Her litany. She sagged, exhausted. Dr. Brady warned the Carlyles, often, to make sure Vanessa got enough sleep. “You’re wasting your time.”

“It’s not that I don’t trust you. But I think I’ll change my password.”

“Good idea.”

Julia sat in front of the computer, clicked, frowned. “Honey?”

“Hmmm?”

“Can you show me how?”

CHAPTER 39

COMMON PRAYER

(I)

O
N MOST
S
UNDAYS,
the Carlyle family attended mass up in Norport at the Church of Saint Matthias the Apostle, an Anglican congregation that had, in the view of its defiant rector, turned its back on apostasy. The Episcopal diocese begged to disagree, and the ensuing litigation over who owned the church building had yet to be resolved. When the name of Lemaster Carlyle was first floated as a possible president, the campus paper sent a reporter to attend services at Saint Matthias for several weeks running, then ran a story asserting, in considerable outrage, that the rector, Father Freed, seemed to consider the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of God. Two professors from the divinity school were quoted on the dangers inherent in such a view.

The two Sunday-morning services drew a racially integrated congregation, a mixture of Caribbean immigrants raised in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, who found the ways of the American branch incoherent and slovenly—male parishioners showed up without ties, the priest faced the congregants across the altar instead of turning away, toward the Lord, when consecrating the wine and bread, and, oh, by the way, what was this nonsense about female bishops?—alongside the sturdy edge of the white upper crust, scattered survivors of old New England families who had yet to make their peace with a Book of Common Prayer that had been revised a quarter-century ago.

Lemaster drew his energy from tradition. For him, the very idea of “church” captured a continuing institution entrusted with custody of the historical teaching of the apostles—the “deposit,” as traditionalists still called it—of which the believer, living out his transitory life in faith and fear, dared not alter a single stroke. As for the children, Saint Matthias was the only church they knew. Julia never let on that the cloying smell of the incense, unvarying from season to season although mercifully absent from Ash Wednesday until the Easter Vigil, always seemed to transform the music of the organ into the unnerving sound-track of the old Dracula movies with Bela Lugosi, which she used to stay up late on Saturday nights to watch on the black-and-white television on her dresser, a synesthesia she dared not confess to her husband, lest he deem her insufficiently pious. It would be wrong to say that nothing meant more to Lemaster Carlyle than the celebration of the Eucharist at Saint Matthias, but the number of things that did was small. Lemaster, for all his outward liberalism, ran a traditional household. What he wanted, he got. And so it was, on the third Sunday after Christmas, that the Carlyles braved an ice storm that made driving an adventure in order to travel up to Norport for the eleven o’clock high mass.

(II)

T
HE RECTOR
, spotted hands spread before him, solemnly recited the traditional call to the altar, as specified in the 1928 version of the Book of Common Prayer, for Father Freed and his dwindling flock would hear no word of any other. “Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in his holy ways: Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God, devoutly kneeling.”

With a great shuffling silence, the congregation slid off the benches and onto the red leather kneelers. The Carlyle family, as it had done for years, also assumed the position, as absent Preston, the household wit, used to call it.

Except for Vanessa, who, sniffling, remained seated.

Her father, head bowed next to her, frowned and plucked at her sleeve.

Vanessa shook her head and snatched her slim arm away. On the high altar, twin candles flickered as though in a breeze. Someone sneezed. Someone moaned.

“You have to confess, honey,” Lemaster hissed.

“No.”

“You can’t receive the Sacrament if you don’t make your confession.”

“Then I won’t.”

Her father made a face. “But that’s the whole point of the Eucharistic Prayer.”

“I know.”

“Vanessa, what’s wrong?” he said, still whispering, but now others were looking, not only Julia and the children, but judgment-eyed Mrs. Galloway in the pew right in front of them, and the surviving members of the vast Traynor clan just behind. One of the few things Lemaster hated, his wife well knew, was committing a faux pas before a white audience.

“Nothing,” snapped Vanessa, loud enough to be heard at the altar. Jeannie looked on in astonished delight.

“Vanessa,” Julia began, rubbing her arm. “Honey, come on.”

Louder: “Honey, come on.”

“No!” Vanessa cried and, leaping to her feet, shoved past her father, into the aisle, and down toward the vestibule, or, in Anglican-speak, the narthex. Julia started to rise and follow her, but Lemaster waved at his wife to stay put. She assumed that he meant he would go, but he simply bent his head over his neatly folded hands where they rested on the back of the next pew ahead and resumed his silent prayer of repentance. Julia mimicked him, closing her eyes against the beckoning tears, begging God to forgive her, and Vanessa, and Lemaster, too.

Then the loving fury of motherhood took her. She stood and, not bothering to explain herself to her husband, slipped into the aisle and followed her daughter.

(III)

“I
CAN’T TAKE
C
OMMUNION ANY MORE
,” Vanessa told her after they had walked in silence for a few minutes down the snow-crusted main street of Norport. A few cars wheezed along, but the business district, such as it was, was basically deserted.

Julia nodded as though this information was the most obvious commonsense point on the face of the globe. She wondered what Lemaster was doing, and why he had not followed. Leading Jeannie to the altar rail by now, she imagined.

“Okay,” she said.

“Aren’t you going to ask me why?”

“Do you want me to ask you why?”

“Oh, Moms, don’t do that. I get enough of that from my shrink.”

Conceding the point, Julia tried to slip an arm around her daughter’s shoulders, but Vanessa wiggled free.

Julia said, “Okay, tell me why you can’t take Communion any more.”

“Because I’m not in love and charity with my neighbors.” Waving her hands up and down the street. “That’s what the prayer says, right? I’m not in love and charity and—”

Again Julia tried, and failed, to hug her. “Oh, honey, they don’t literally mean love and charity with all your neighbors.”

Vanessa stiffened. “No? What do they mean, then?” As Julia fumbled for an answer, her daughter slumped again. “Never mind. I’m sorry, Moms. Look. I…Look. It’s not your fault, okay? It’s just”—for an instant so small Julia later wondered whether she had seen it, Vanessa’s eyes welled up; and then were dry again—“I can’t do it any more. Never again.”

“That’s why they put the confession before Communion, honey.” Julia, whose belief in the details of the Anglican tradition tended to be uneven at best, was weary of the dialectic. Yet she sensed the nearness of the trauma about which Vincent Brady had warned. “Even if you can’t tell me, you can still tell God.”

“Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Can we just not talk about it? Why do you people always have to talk about everything?”

Sometimes Julia found herself riding her high horse before she knew she had climbed aboard. “By ‘you people,’ I assume you mean your father and myself.”

Vanessa had stopped in front of a cheap little deli which seemed to leave the meat in the window when it was closed, which struck Julia as a poor idea, and probably a violation of about sixteen provisions of the health code. “I mean everybody. Everybody always wants to talk. They all want me to talk. But there’s things you just can’t talk about!”

“Can’t talk to me? Or can’t talk to anybody?”

“Why do you get like this?” Vanessa cried, spinning away once more and stumbling down the block. “Look. I don’t want to go to church any more. I don’t want to confess any more. I don’t want to talk to God any more.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“I didn’t say that. I just said I don’t want to talk to Him. No more—”

She stopped and hurried off, Julia striding fast to keep up with her taller daughter.

“Vanessa, please. What happened?” Successfully managing a hug this time, except that it was like hugging a wiggling snake. “Did somebody do something to you? Kellen? Is this about Kellen? Stop it! Vanessa!”

“Look, forget it, okay? Forget what I said. I’m sorry I walked out of church. Just forget it.”

Julia had a temper, too, although she had learned, under Brady’s guidance, to keep it in check, especially around Vanessa. But sometimes it was so hard. She said, as gently as she could, but more harshly than she wanted, “Vanessa, I love you. I would march through fire for you. Now, you know that. I don’t know what’s bothering you, but, whatever it is, I just want to help you. I want you to be happy.”

The speech, as she had feared, clunked. “Happy! You want me to be happy!”

“Yes, darling. Of course I do.”

“Then tell Senator Whisted to get out of the race.”

“Do what?”

“They’re gonna nominate him, right?” The swift tears again, appearing, then vanishing. “Well, don’t let them do it!”

“Honey—”

“Dads can do anything, right? He can get people fired with a phone call. If he tells Whisted to drop out of the race, he’ll drop out of the race.”

Julia stood shivering in the wind, hands in her pockets, unwilling to surrender to the voluptuous possibility that the mystery was solved. She had wanted it to be Scrunchy, but now the evidence pointed the other way. Kellen had sent Mary the photograph of Mal Whisted. Maureen Whisted had warned Julia that everybody had bad secrets in their past. Mitch Huebner had gone hunting for his father’s diary ten years ago—around the time of Mal Whisted’s first campaign for the Senate. Now here was Vanessa, the self-proclaimed expert on the case, who insisted that DeShaun was guilty—and yet thought Malcolm Whisted should drop out of the primaries.

Julia spoke gently, but unrelentingly.

“Does this have something to do with Gina?”

Vanessa lifted her chin, and the wide mouth started to move. For a brilliant moment, Julia thought her second-eldest was going to explain. Then Vanessa shook her head. “Look. It wasn’t even my idea, okay? He told me—”

She covered her mouth and shook her head, wind picking at her jacket. They were close, so agonizingly close. Julia spoke gently. “Go on, honey. It’s okay.”

Vanessa tried. She lifted a palm as if to display the answer and said, again, “He told me to try—”

Again she stopped.

“Who told you, honey? Who told you what?”

“It doesn’t matter, Moms. It’s not important.”

“But honey—”

“No.” Hands out in front of her, palms downturned, the sign of abnegation Vanessa had employed even as a child. She could be as unyielding as her Barbadian father, and living with the both of them sometimes seemed to suck the oxygen from the air. “It’s over, okay? Just leave it alone.”

Be firm but loving,
Brady had said.
Don’t cross-examine. Never press her into a corner. But do not forget for a moment, and don’t let her forget, which one of you is the child and which one is the parent.

“All right, Vanessa. We don’t have to talk about it. Not just now. But we are going back inside.” A hint of steel to remind her daughter that the Harlem side could be as tough as the Barbadian.

“No.”

“What did you say to me?”

“I said no. I’m not going.”

More steel. “Vanessa, I’m not taking a public-opinion poll here.”

“And I’m not stating an opinion. I’m stating a fact. I can’t go in there.”

Then she calmed down. “Look. I really can’t be in there just now. I’m sorry. I’m not being disrespectful. But I can’t go back in there. I just can’t. Please don’t make me.”

Julia studied her child’s troubled face, saw moisture welling in her eyes, felt the mistiness in her own. Oh, Vanessa, what’s wrong with you? What’s happening? “Then I’ll stay out here with you.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I want to.”

“No. No, it’s okay.” Touching her mother’s coat, the gesture at once affectionate and dismissive. “Really. You go back in. Maybe you can still get a wafer.”

“Vanessa—”

“I’ll be fine, Moms. Honestly. I promise not to burn anything, okay?”

“That’s not what I was going to—”

“Moms, look. I’m a big girl. I just want to be alone for a few minutes, that’s all.” The eyes implored her. “Please, Moms. Trust me.”

She knew what Lemaster would say, but, this once, it was not his call. Vincent Brady had suggested that they show more faith in Vanessa, and Julia decided to give it a try. “Okay, honey. We’ll be out in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.”

“I’ll meet you at the car.”

“Promise?”

Vanessa clapped her mother on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I said I’ll meet you. And I will.”

“Okay.”

But she didn’t.

It was another ten hours before they tracked her down.