A Sudden Light: A Novel (44 page)

“I know.”

He looked at me curiously, but didn’t question my comment.

“My father sent me away a week after she was buried,” he continued, “so how do I know she hasn’t been waiting for me here the whole time? I mean, she dances for Grandpa Samuel, doesn’t she? I’ve heard it, haven’t
you
? She’s
here
, isn’t she?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said after a moment. “But only if you tell me that you believe in this stuff. Did you see Ben at the top of the stairs? Or was it the power of suggestion, like you said before?”

He looked at me for more than a minute. I think he was trying to discern whether or not I really knew anything at all.

“I saw him,” he finally admitted.

“So you know?”

“Yes, Trevor, I know. Now tell me what you know.”

I told him. I told him everything I had seen, from the beginning to the end, the same as I had in the upstairs bedroom, but this time he listened differently. And then I told him about seeing Isobel in the dark at the top of the stairs.

He said nothing for a long time, then he asked if he could see the matches I had. I took the matchbox out of my pocket and tossed it to him. He turned it over in his hands.

“It was a game,” he said. “It was a trick. That’s what they told me, anyway. I was about your age when I started to doubt her. I went down to the magic shop in the Market and asked the guys working there if there were really spirits. If magic was really magic. No, they said. There are no spirits; there is no magic. None of it is real. Houdini debunked all the mediums, and then he debunked himself by never returning to his wife. They convinced me that my mother was playing a trick on me, and that tricks were for children.”

“So what happened?”

“I told her I didn’t believe.”

“And then?”

“And then she died,” he said.

“But that had nothing to do with—”

“Everything has everything to do with everything,” he said. “That’s the message. Everything has everything to do with everything. No thing, no person, is not a part of the everything. How do I know that she didn’t make herself sick and die just so she could return and show me the truth?”

“I don’t think someone would do that,” I said. “I don’t think if someone really loved someone, she would do something like that.”

“I’m very confused right now,” he said, tapping the matchbox against his thumb. “My head hurts. I don’t know what’s going to happen with me and Mom, with me and you, with Grandpa and Serena . . . I don’t know what’s going to happen to
me
. If I brought you here for a reason—even if I didn’t know it consciously—then
this
is the reason. What do I do now?”

“You should do what Ben wants you to do,” I said without hesitation. “You should return Riddell House to the forest.”

“What about Serena?”

“You’re going to have to stand up to her and tell her you’re not developing the estate.”

“Should I tell her we’ll sell the books for money?” he asked, truly confused.

“She doesn’t want money.”

“Should I tell her we’ll sell the books
and
I’ll go with her on the cruise?”

“Is that what you want to do?” I asked, surprised by the question.

“I
raised
her,” he said, pleading for my understanding. “My mother was terminally ill and my father was a hopeless drunk. I did everything, Trevor. I cooked, I cleaned, I helped with her homework. I washed her clothes. I read books to her. I went to the parent-teacher conferences and talked to the teachers about her performance in school. You don’t understand how life was around here. I mean, I have to offer her
something
.”

“You have to give her what you can,” I said. “But even if you give her everything, she might not be satisfied.”

He sighed because he knew my answer was true. He stood up and walked to the door, placed his hand on the doorknob, and looked over at me.

“I’ve been speaking with Mom,” he said. “On the phone. I feel like I’m in high school again; I look forward to her phone calls.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and I think it’s all going to work out, you know? I know this has been tough on you, and I appreciate the faith you’ve shown in me. But we’re making headway and I have a good feeling.”

“Really?” I asked again, wondering if it was true or if they were fooling themselves, and if they were fooling me along with them. If we all wanted to be fooled, because in a fool’s world, everything works out in the end.

“Yeah. I mean, no promises—”

“Sure.”

“But, I mean . . . a status report . . . yeah. ‘Signs point to yes.’ ”

I could see how my father struggled to arrange the facts and conversations and ideas in his head to make them add up, and how there was more hope than conviction in the look on his face. Still, I appreciated his effort.

“Anyway, thanks for the talk,” he said after a moment. “Apparently, your mother raised you well while I was away.”

“You were never away,” I said.

“I was away,” he corrected me. “I was around, but I wasn’t really . . . engaged. After all, I am my father’s son.”

“You’re being a little hard on yourself, Dad.”

“Yeah? Well. I probably deserve it. I apologize for my transgressions, Trevor. I hope that one day you can forgive me.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, you’re my father. Isn’t that the way it works?”

We looked at each other for a moment, long enough to know that the apology was offered and accepted, and then my father held up the matches.

“Do you mind if I keep these?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “There’s a drawer full of them in the kitchen.”

“You should go to sleep.”

He left, and I turned out my light, but I couldn’t fall asleep; as always, the history of Riddell House kept me awake.

After a few minutes I got up and headed for the south wing. I was pretty sure I knew where my father had gone, and when I reached the linen closet and saw that the door was open, I knew I was right. The false wall was ajar. I pried it open and looked up the spiral staircase into the darkness. I heard a scratching sound, saw an orange glow at the top of the stairs. The glow lasted a dozen seconds, then went out. A few seconds later, another scratch, another glow. And again. And again. My father hoping to see his mother.

I didn’t interfere with his quest. I didn’t know why she wouldn’t appear for him as she had appeared for me. Maybe it wasn’t really her I had seen; maybe Ben sent me a message in her likeness. There were so many theories, I had no way of knowing. But I knew that nothing I could say to my father would stop him, and nothing I could do would satisfy his need to make contact with Isobel. So I left him there with his matches and I returned to my room. I took Elijah’s diary from the sock drawer where I kept it, and I began to read.

3 March 1916

My dead son came to me this evening. He sat with me. We spoke. He left moments ago.

For these many years I’ve waited. I’ve kept my faith. I’ve always believed he would return and I would see him again. So I was not surprised when he appeared. Instead, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of contentment and satisfaction.

In my room, the sun in the window, a glass of port by my side, I was making an accounting of what I have done: a ledger sheet that showed lives I have destroyed and forests I have ravaged, against donations of money and land I have made, institutions and cities I have helped, as
well as individual grants to those less fortunate than me. Ben taught me that what I have carved from the earth is not for me to keep, but for me to return to the earth. I was making my accounting as the afternoon sun flickered through the needles of the trees and upon my ceiling, and I looked up to the window, which looked out upon Ben’s tree, and he was there in the room with me.

“Ben,” I whispered. “Such a sight for a dying man. You have come for me. Does it mean I am forgiven? Does it mean I am not beyond redemption?”

Ben knelt beside my chair and I reached for him. I touched him.

“Have I redeemed myself, Ben?”

“You have.”

“I have prayed for it to be so.”

“It is not in prayer, but in deeds that we find absolution,” he said to me.

“Do you accept my compromise?” I asked him, referring to the trust I had put into place to allow Abraham and his heirs to continue living at Riddell House. “I didn’t want to break my promise to you—”

“You have kept your promise to me.”

“But the estate. The park—”

“The promise is mine, Father. It’s a promise I made to Harry, and the obligation belongs to me. You were just holding my promise until it was time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time for you to be released,” Ben said.

“Am I released?”

“You are,” he said. “I will stay now, until I fulfill my promise to Harry.”

He left me then, but I didn’t feel alone.

I must go downstairs now to rest. I will sleep better than I have slept in my entire life, for I know that I have lived my life rightly. I have made mistakes and I have hurt people, I do not deny that fact.
But I have corrected those mistakes vigorously once I understood the error of my ways.

I must go downstairs to find Thomas, my faithful friend. He will help me to bed, for I am tired and require a nap.

The cook is braising a rabbit for us tonight, which I love very much, and look forward to eating.

Elijah Riddell died a hero. I read his death notice in the
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
, March 12, 1916. The banner headline was
A CITY, A NATION, MOURNS DEATH OF ICON
. Front page, above the fold.

The same man who had been skewered by the press twenty years earlier for all the cynical, shark-like deals he made. The man vilified for destroying entire forests, ruthlessly shutting down towns and schools, and treating his workers and their families with no mercy at all. By the time he died, he had redeemed himself to some degree, at least.

Enough to be forgiven by his son.

A
t 3:02
A.M
., I heard voices. It was not unusual. Nothing was unusual in Riddell House.

I went downstairs to investigate and found Grandpa Samuel with a glass of medicine. Sitting across from him at the table was my father, also with a glass of medicine. They were talking about boats or wood or something. They were talking about the house or Isobel or Serena. They were talking about the wind that came from the southwest, from the Pacific Ocean, raced through the mouth of the Columbia River and around the Olympics, bringing in the rain. They were talking about trees.

“Are we being too loud?” my father asked when he saw me in my pajamas, standing sleepily in the doorway rubbing my eyes.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I lied.

“Join the club,” he said jovially, indicating a seat.

I wondered if I should join them. I wasn’t sure it was right. But then I saw the liquor jiggling in the bottle and realized they were in full swing
and wouldn’t mind my company. I grabbed a Coke from the fridge, took a glass from the cupboard, and sat at the table. My father topped off Grandpa Samuel’s glass.

“Maybe a little less milk this time,” Grandpa Samuel said.

“Good idea,” my father agreed.

And then we toasted. The three of us. Grandpa Samuel, who seemed to be carrying on his own conversation in his head, nodded vehemently.

“I should have been the one to do it,” he said.

“But you didn’t do it, Dad,” my father said. “And it had to be done. So
I
did it.”

“You should have let
me
do it,” Grandpa Samuel protested.

“But you
didn’t
do it.”

“No.”

“So
I
did it. It had to be done.”

“It had to be done,” Grandpa Samuel agreed after a sip of his medicine.

They drank again, and refilled, and I knew they were rocked.

“So why did you send me away, then?” my father asked his father. “You at least owe me an explanation. Why?”

“I couldn’t do it.”

“Then why did you send me away?”

Grandpa Samuel nodded his drunken nod, but didn’t reply.

I knew what they were talking about, and I remembered Serena’s talk about emasculation. That was why Grandpa Samuel sent my father away. You can’t take away someone’s manhood like that.

“You banished me,” my father said. “You told me you never wanted to see me again. Why?”

Grandpa Samuel ruminated. Ideas swimming in his head.

“Ben is nervous,” he said.

My father shook his head in confusion and looked at me.

“Ben is here?” I asked.

“Ben is always here.”

“What about Isobel?” my father asked. “Is she always here?”

Grandpa Samuel was silent for a moment, then he spoke: “When she dances, she’s here.”

“But not usually?”

“Not usually,” he said. “But Ben . . . he’s nervous.”

“Why?” I asked.

Grandpa Samuel looked at me with milky eyes. His seeping eyes and his sagging face and the whiskers that bristled on his cheeks and eyebrow hairs that were so long, and his long white hair, and his T-shirt that Serena had put out for him, his twisted black T-shirt that said:
FUCK MEAT.

Fuck meat.

It was like a haiku. So simple and yet so complex. Ezra Pound might have translated it from the Chinese.

“It made me sick to look at him,” Grandpa Samuel said to me. “She wanted me to do it, but I couldn’t, so she asked Jones. After he’d done it, I couldn’t look at him without feeling sick.”

“Dad, I’m right here. You can talk to me.”

“I knew I would poison him if he stayed. He would be infected by my sickness. I didn’t want him to live his life hating me for hating him.”

“Dad,” my father tried to interrupt, frustrated that Grandpa Samuel was speaking only to me and not to him. “Say it to
me
!”