A Sudden Light: A Novel (43 page)

“How do I do it?” I asked the tree. “How do I climb you? You let Harry and Ben climb you, but you won’t let me? Why won’t you let me climb you?”

The tree said nothing.

“I am a Riddell,” I said to the tree. “I can save you. If you let me climb you, I promise I will save you so that you can live forever. You will be part of the immortal forest.”

The tree did not answer.

“Ben,” I said. “Help me.”

But he did not help. Or did he? For I had a thought in that moment of Harry’s journal, and of his observation that we focus on the contradiction and the separateness between and within ourselves, not on the union. And I thought that perhaps my believing that I had to conquer the tree to climb it wasn’t the point at all. The point was for me to
join
the tree and be one with it. So I focused on the tree with that thought deeply in mind, and, after a moment, I felt something shift. The energy, or the wind? I didn’t know. But I knew with some great assurance that I should take two fistfuls of slack out of the chain. I knew I should set my weight by pushing my hips into the trunk, that I should arch my back and keep my wrists above my shoulders and take smaller steps and kick harder into the bark and set the gaff with my weight firmly before shifting onto it.

And so I did. And so I climbed. With sheer determination and grit, I climbed. Two steps, then four, then eight. Whether it was my will or the tree’s acceptance of me, or Ben’s boost, I didn’t know. Because I didn’t think about it. I thought only about climbing: my gaffs in the bark, my hips into the trunk, my back straining to hold me.

When I had reached the lowest branch, I pulled myself onto it and sat for a moment. The ground was very far below me, seventy feet or more. A fall from this height would surely mean death. And yet, it wasn’t enough.

“I want to get to the top,” I said out loud. “I want to see.”

I removed my gaffs, my sneakers and socks, because that was how they climbed in my dream and that was how I would climb. Up I went, and up higher still, into the belly of the tree. Into the place where the tree held me close and my climb was easy, where the tree coaxed me even higher. I didn’t look down. I didn’t question the wisdom of my journey or how long I had been climbing. I simply climbed. Higher. Until I reached the point that the branches grew thin and the trunk tapered. Until I knew I was near the top.

“How high will I go?” I asked the tree.

The tree didn’t answer, so higher I went, to the very top. To the place from which Ben had departed. I knew it because I had seen it in my dream.

The world spread out before me in all directions, and I clung to the swaying spar of tree as the wind circled us and pushed us about. The mountains and the water and the city sparkled in the distance. The houses and the people below. I could see the breeze sweep through the branches of the trees around me, the ripples of light reflecting off the leaves and needles. From the tallest of trees on a hill so high, I felt I could see the whole world. I could see all of humanity. It was terrifying, but I was not afraid. It was thrilling, but I was calm. Because everything was in its proper place for that moment. I could feel it—the rightness of my world! I would not fall, because the tree was holding me; the tree would not break, because I was holding it. In the quiet at the top of the tree, I heard the music of the breeze as it drifted past my ears. In a mash of dizzying colors and movement, I found a clarity of sight. In that moment I knew why Ben and Harry had climbed trees to the very top; I knew what they felt; I
felt
what they felt.

I’ve tried to explain these things to my mother over the years; she will not be convinced. Maybe it was her upbringing, or maybe her personality. Or maybe just her obstinacy. I don’t know. But I’ve tried to tell her what she may never come to believe: at that moment in Ben’s tree, when I was fourteen years old, my life changed entirely. Before that, I wanted to believe; after that moment, I
knew
.

Oh, my faith has flagged at times. It’s easy to fall back into the same routines and paint over the sublime with coat after coat of indifference. But now, in this moment of my telling this story to you, my faith is full. And I promise you something: when you have touched the face of God, you can never unlearn what you have learned. You can never unsee what you have seen.

As I clung to the top of that tree, a feeling welled up inside me so
powerfully that I let go of the tree and reached out to the sky. I reached out and tried to grab the blue. I wanted to be carried away into the ether. I wanted to be all of everything.

But the sky wouldn’t have me. The sky refused to fall low enough for me. And I heard a call from below. My name. Someone calling my name. From the top of the tree, I could see the meadow before Riddell House, where a small figure—my father—stood by the kitchen door calling for me.

I called back, but he couldn’t hear.

Quickly, gingerly—almost possessed—I descended the tree to the lowest branch. I strapped on my gaffs and used the chain to descend the trunk as if I’d done it a hundred times. I bagged the equipment and ran through the woods and across the meadow to my dinner.

I
went in the front door instead of the back and called to the kitchen that I wanted to change my shirt before dinner. My arms were caked with dirt and dried blood from my climb, and my hands were black with pitch. I ran upstairs and washed as best I could; I masked my wounds with a long-sleeve T-shirt.

Downstairs, dinner was already on the table. In addition to the usual vegetables, bread, and lemonade, my father had grilled kabobs, which meant he was completely under Serena’s spell.

“Where did you get off to?” Serena asked me offhandedly.

“Just hiking around.”

She glanced at me suspiciously and passed the peas to my father, who served himself some and passed them along. When we had all been served and had begun eating, my father stood up abruptly.

“We forgot Dad’s medicine,” he said.

Serena immediately grew tense and sat rigidly in her seat.

“I’ll get it—” she said.

She started to rise, but my father waved her off and moved quickly to the cupboard. Oh, no, I thought. This isn’t the best way to handle it. Really it isn’t. He retrieved the medicine bottle and scrutinized the label. He opened the lid.

“I can do it, Brother Jones,” Serena said. “Really.”

“I’ll do it. He gets two? Or three?”

“Two,” Serena admitted.

She watched tensely as my father shook two pills into his palm. I’m sure she was wondering, as was I, how it would play out. He looked at them closely, and then he looked at Serena deliberately. The room became still. Very still.

“It’s effective, this medicine?” my father asked archly.

After a pause, Serena broke their stare and poured lemonade into Grandpa Samuel’s glass.

“You would be surprised how effective,” she said as if she had just dodged a bullet.

He nodded and replaced the pill container in the cupboard. He returned to the table and set the pills in front of Grandpa Samuel. He resumed his seat, and I wondered why he didn’t say something! What was the point? Not only of corroborating the truth but of doing it so obviously in front of Serena? I didn’t get it at all. Grandpa Samuel swallowed his pills with lemonade.

“It’s good to see you so concerned about Daddy’s well-being, Brother Jones,” Serena said, flashing her smug cat eyes at my father.

“It’s important that we all work together on this,” my father said. “Alzheimer’s is difficult for everyone involved.”

“It certainly is,” Serena agreed.

And then we ate dinner.

*  *  *

I was baffled by my father’s behavior. I already knew he and I weren’t on the same team, but I thought his complicity in Serena’s scheme was
born out of willful ignorance. A collaboration by benign neglect. I didn’t realize my father would actually take part in the scheming and manipulations. I thought that was all Serena’s doing. Nevertheless, I had hidden the power of attorney, which I equated with stealing the distributor cap of an old car, like they do in the movies. It slows the guy down for a while, but it never stops him completely.

As I headed to my room, I was struck by a different thought. It occurred to me that each time I had seen Serena give Grandpa Samuel his Alzheimer’s medication, a visit from the dancing ghost of Isobel had followed in the night. The thought was so provocative, I stopped still in the hallway. Pills. Restlessness. “Medicine.” Dancing. While I pondered the connection, I noticed a shadow. I heard a creak. Was it Ben, unable to resist giving me a clue? I walked down the hall to find the door to a small pantry space ajar. Had my uncle of some level of greatness returned to me? I pushed the door open to reveal a small, empty, white room with a counter against one wall. On the counter was a wicker clothes hamper. I pushed the hamper aside, revealing a hatch door. I opened the hatch and found the shaft.

The dumbwaiter shaft.

I hopped up on the counter, ducked inside the shaft, and climbed the ladder to the top. The hatch on the third floor opened into the closet in the ballroom. Just like that. Fascinating.

I closed up the hatches and slipped from the house unnoticed to visit Grandpa Samuel in the barn. I scavenged a hammer and some small nails from his workbench and returned to the house. I was going on a hunch. Instinct. Alzheimer’s meds equaled Isobel visit. And Isobel always magically vanished when she was noticed. I could do the math, as Serena liked to say . . .

I tacked the hatch door shut in the ballroom closet, being careful to make as little noise as possible, and then I returned the hammer and remaining nails to the barn, at which point I spent the evening keeping my grandfather company by reading to him from Harry’s journals as he worked on his chair legs, time we both enjoyed.

L
ater that night, I was lying on my bed, trying unsuccessfully to write my impressions of my journey to the top of the tree—it was so clear and so vivid, yet the words would not come to describe it; I was distracted by the trap I had set with the dumbwaiter, and I wondered if it might actually work—when my father knocked and let himself in. He perched at the end of my bed, his elbows on his knees, looking through his hands at the floor; he said nothing. I put aside my journal; I didn’t believe my father had come into my room looking for something, but to offer something instead.

We sat silently for quite a while before he spoke.

“Grandpa Samuel was supposed to do it,” he said. “The doctor who gave us the medication said that Grandpa Samuel should give her the injection in case something went wrong. If there were an investigation and someone were held responsible, he said, it would be better for it to be him. Because I still had my whole life ahead of me. People didn’t do things
like that twenty-three years ago—assisted suicide, or whatever they call it; I’d call it euthanasia. People went to prison for it. They still do.”

My father laughed. He cleared his throat and fidgeted about a bit. He stood and walked across the room to my desk.

“Fathers are supposed to do that for their sons,” he said. “I would do it for you.”

“You would go to prison for me?”

“If something risky had to be done and I were in a position to protect you by doing it? Absolutely. Yes, I would.”

“But your father didn’t.”

“No, my father didn’t.”

“Is that why you gave him the NōDōz at dinner tonight?” I asked.

My father was stung by the comment.

“I wanted to know for sure,” he said. “I needed to see.”

“But you didn’t have to give the pills to him. You could have called Serena on it.”

“And then what would have happened?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

“It’s better that she think I’m complicit in the deal. Until I can figure out what to do.”

He stopped talking and we sat in silence for another minute. Finally, I opened the drawer in my bedside table and removed Serena’s letter and the cruise tickets, in their neat little envelopes. I held them in the air.

“What are those?”

“Evidence,” I said. “You said you didn’t believe I had any evidence. Here it is. Cruise tickets. Check the names, if you want.”

He took them from me, opened one of the Cunard envelopes, and read the contents.

“And this?” he asked of Serena’s letter.

“Read it.”

He did. When he finished, he dropped the letter and the tickets on the bed and shook his head sadly.

“What on earth made her think I would go on an around-the-world cruise with her?”

“Don’t you get it?” I said. “That’s what this whole thing is about. There are serious rare books in that library. Like hard-core, really rare books. She could sell them and have a boatload of money. But she doesn’t want the money.”

“What does she want?”

“Come on, Dad. Don’t be dense. She wants
you
.”

He laughed.

“That’s crazy!”

“ ‘Signs point to yes,’ ” I agreed, quoting a Magic 8 Ball.

“You know,” my father said, “when I was a kid I loved magic. I loved the idea of escaping from something. I loved Harry Houdini. I mean, I
worshipped
him. There was a magic shop down in the Public Market, and I would hang out there just to
feel
the magic. I taught myself how to pick locks, even, and I would have my mother lock me in an armoire with a chain around it and I would try to escape. I read everything I could about Houdini. When I think about the tragedy of his death, it still makes me sad. He wasn’t just a magician and escape artist, he was a showman, and so he had to put on a show, even though it killed him.”

He stopped, and then he sat down at the desk chair, lost in thought.

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Houdini was famous for exposing fake mediums and clairvoyants. He claimed to do it in the pursuit of truth and justice. But I’m not sure that was his motive. I think he really
believed
in the afterlife. He wanted to see his mother and his father again. And so he made it his mission to debunk the fakes in order to find the authentic. He didn’t do it because he
didn’t
believe, he did it because he
did
believe. My mother believed, too. And she promised me she would come back to see me after she died, if she could. If it were possible.”