A Sudden Light: A Novel (6 page)

“Wait,” my father interrupted. “
That’s
who he hears? He hears Mom?”

“No, no, of course not. Mother died a long time ago. He hears the rain on the roof or the mice in the walls. In his dementia, he has conjured the ghost of Mother. It’s all in his mind.”

My father frowned at her, and she turned her attention back to me.

“It’s time for your father and me to take charge of the house and grounds and develop the property so we have the financial wherewithal to care for your grandfather long term, should that be needed. Naturally, as developers, your father and I would also benefit from this transaction.”

“Oh,” I said, understanding the scheme. “
That’s
why we’re here.”

Serena shrugged obviously.

“Do you know how much this land is worth?” my father blurted. “Millions. Millions upon millions if the subdivision is developed properly. I can’t walk away from that. I’ll be able to provide for my family, which I haven’t been able to do of late, if you haven’t noticed our current living situation.”

I knew what that meant. It meant he believed my mother would take him back if he had money. I believed it, too. He didn’t have to be rich, he just needed enough to buy our house back. Then my mother would love him again. She loved that house, and I did, too. We probably couldn’t get our old house back, but we could get one like it.

“You should do it, then,” I said to my father. “Do whatever it is that will make Mom love you again. You shaved; that’s a good start.”

Serena laughed; she leaned over and refilled my father’s glass.

“Of course there is the minor obstacle of getting Daddy to grant us power of attorney so we can do what needs to be done,” Serena said. “That’s your father’s job.”

“Why don’t
you
do it?” I asked her.

“Because I’m the one who stayed behind,” she said, smiling at me curiously, as if the answer were obvious to everyone.

She raised her eyebrows, finished what little was left in her glass, and stood up.

“There’s a tradition in this house, Trevor,” she said. “The one who cooks doesn’t clean. Your father started the tradition when Mother first became ill. Before that, she did all the cleaning. Well, before
that
, we had servants, didn’t we, Brother Jones? Before Grandpa Abe died and the entire Riddell Empire was dismantled. Remember those days?”

“You had servants?”

“Oh, yes,” Serena said. “We had a driver to take us to school in a big black car. And we had a cook and a housekeeper, and there were men who tended the orchard. That was a time, wasn’t it, Jones?”

“Is that where our millions of dollars went?”

“No,” Serena said, laughing. “Our millions were gone before that. Elijah gave most of his fortune away before he died. Everything except this house. The cynic in me thinks he was trying to buy safe passage for his soul to the afterworld, but I may be unfairly extrapolating. It’s an interesting story; maybe one day your father will tell it to you. And then Grandpa Abraham lost his inheritance because some people are losers, and, no matter how they fight it, they will always lose. Your father and I have nothing unless we can sell this house. I ask you, Trevor, where is the justice? Well, no matter. Justice has arrived in the form of Brother Jones, who will fix all things, won’t you, dear brother? Oh—”

She went to the telephone table and picked up a thick, blue three-ring binder, which she set down in front of my father.

“Here’s some reading material for you, Brother Jones, should you suffer from any insomnia
après voyage
. It’s fascinating stuff, and I’m sure you will find it quite compelling. Good night, gentlemen. If you need something, you can find me in the servants’ wing, down this hall. Otherwise, I assume you will make yourselves at home.”

“Why do you sleep in the servants’ wing?” I asked her.

“The inquisitive mind always has another question,” she remarked patiently. “It’s nice here in the main house now, because it’s summer. But it can be so drafty and leaky during the rainy season, which runs from October until June. Daddy and I stay in the servants’ wing because it’s more comfortable and easier to manage. Anyway, I was able to take today off from work, but tomorrow is a workday for me, so it’s time for me to retire.”

She yawned sleepily and glided out of the room in a way I could only describe as balletic, taking her beautiful blue toes with her. I looked at my father, who didn’t meet my eyes. He swept the binder off the table and set it aside before I could see what was written on the cover.

“Will you tell me the story of Elijah?” I asked.

He poured more Jim Beam, which seemed like a lot. I was concerned Riddell House wasn’t the best environment for him.

“Not tonight,” he said, downing his shot of whiskey in a gulp.

“When?”

He poured another shot but didn’t drink it.

“You must be tired. You can go upstairs; I’ll clean this up.”

“I’ll help you if you tell me. Why did Elijah want this to be a park? And why did Abraham want to develop it so badly?”

“It’s natural to want to make money. You can use it to buy food and clothes and cable television—all good things to have.”

“So tell me the story.”

“I don’t know the story,” he said with an edge of anger. “I don’t know it, and I don’t care about it. Now go upstairs and leave me to clean this mess.”

I waited for a moment, hoping he would relent. He didn’t meet my eyes, but he knew I was still there.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m getting a headache. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”

I left him to clean the kitchen. On my way out, I stopped at the telephone table and swiped the Post-it that had Grandpa Samuel’s writing on it. As I walked down the long hallway toward the front door, I read the words he had scratched on the paper: MUIR MTNS CA. The letters were written in caps, and he had gone over each letter several times so they were boldfaced. He must have been pressing down hard when he wrote it because I could feel the indentation on the paper from underneath. But what did it mean? I looked up and met the eyes of Elijah Riddell, who glared at me from the portrait in the parlor. The old man with his white hair and his cane, reaching out his hand as if to pull me into the painting with him.

S
ince 1990, I have devoted much of my free time to researching my family’s history, and I have yet to discover an authorized biography of my great-great-grandfather Elijah Riddell. I have no corroborative evidence, but I’ve constructed a fairly convincing circumstantial case to prove, at least to myself, that Elijah had lieutenants whose job it was to listen for reporters with ambitions—those who might be found sniffing around the mills and yards with questions about Elijah’s past in order to advance their own careers. When approached, an author of an accounting of Elijah’s personal and business activities would likely be persuaded that continuing with such a project would not suit the best interest of either party, while a cash settlement would be mutually beneficial. The offer, I believe, was made only once. Should it be rebuffed? Well, in those days many tragic accidents happened in the north woods of Minnesota—where Elijah first began to assemble his empire—and often bodies were not recovered until after the spring thaw, and memories rarely lasted through the winter anyway.

This doesn’t mean several
unauthorized
biographies weren’t written, published on small presses and left to linger in the remote stacks of small-town libraries, or available for fifty cents in the dusty reaches of a St. Paul used bookstore. Over the years, I have come into possession of several of these accountings of Elijah’s life, which profile his thoughts and motivations, so that, while much of Elijah’s history remains vague, some of it is known. Enough for me to paint a picture of the man, at least.

Judging by the writings I have unearthed, as well as Elijah’s private papers, he was a solitary man and a shrewd negotiator. He kept no counsel. He conducted his business in a small building on the site of his first mill in St. Paul, Minnesota, and, from that cold room, he built an empire that was truly impressive, even by American standards. He worked doggedly, never taking a vacation or break, never stopping for illness. He worked six days a week, and, though he observed the Sabbath by conducting no business on Sundays, he worked in his mind every Sunday, making plans and conducting business in his head in order to make up for the lost work on the following Monday, when he would work doubly hard. He lived alone and worked alone, corresponding with his deputies by letter or telegraph. Such was his reclusive nature. But one day, feeling a profound emptiness inside, he stepped out of his shed, looked at the world he had created, and saw that it was empty of people. So he set about to rectify the situation by creating a child.

It was not hard to execute his plan. He had a house built to look like the houses of other wealthy citizens of St. Paul. He had clothes made so he would look like another wealthy citizen. He hosted large parties, to which he invited the other wealthy citizens, and at one of these parties, he selected a woman of satisfactory breeding and intelligence, who was also sturdy enough to withstand the difficult Minnesota winters. Her name was Sara Green. Elijah paid a healthy dowry to her family, married her immediately, and impregnated her. He then packed his things
and left for the rich forests of the West Coast. After all, he had an empire to build.

He detailed his departure for the West in a letter to a colleague:

Before I departed, I told my wife I would send for my son when he was ready. She giggled at me in that flirtatious way I always find annoying, and asked me how I was sure it would be a boy. About certain things, I have no doubt. When my child is born, he will be a boy. I know this much. His name will be Benjamin, and he will change this world for the better.

And it was so. Benjamin Riddell was born as his father amassed acres and acres of Northwest forests.

Elijah returned to St. Paul once a year to check on the status of his son, Benjamin, who was healthy, strong, terribly intelligent, and precociously wise. Elijah had provided servants and a generous allowance so mother and son could live quite comfortably in their expensive house. He never returned to St. Paul for more than a fortnight’s stay.

It was ten years later, the records show, in 1886, that Elijah returned to St. Paul to collect his wife and son, whom he planned to have join him in Seattle, a town which Elijah deemed acceptable for a woman and a boy—his previous headquarters of Portland, Oregon, and then Aberdeen, Washington, being too rough-and-tumble, according to him. Sara Green willfully refused to move westward one inch. In fact, she told him, rather than move west, she was planning to move east, to New York, where her family resided. She was tired of the cold and lonely Minnesota life; furthermore, she was tired of her cold and lonely bed. “I was so incensed by her intimations, I ‘warmed her bed’ for her on that very spot,” Elijah wrote in his journal. “The following morning, I departed for Seattle with Benjamin, who chatted without stop as we crossed the country by train in our private coach.”

A year after that, Elijah received a letter from his wife in New York.
She had given birth to their second child, another son, and gave him the name Abraham. Elijah replied by return post that she and Abraham must move to Seattle immediately. She, by return post, flatly refused. And he: a stern warning that if she and her son did not report without delay, she should consider both herself and her son disowned. Thusly, their correspondence ended.

After a few short years in Seattle, Elijah escorted his son Benjamin to Phillips Exeter Academy, where the most promising boys from affluent families were sent. Years later, after Benjamin’s death, Elijah recounted their final dinner together. I learned this through his diary, which I found that summer at Riddell House:

We finished our meal in grand style with a toast of fine port. I told Benjamin I would come for him when he was ready. He looked at me in a striking fashion, with his thick black hair and piercing eyes and a sense of suppleness about him, like a tree bending in the wind so as not to be broken, and I remember thinking he was still a boy, but standing on the precipice of manhood.

“I will be ready, Father,” he said.

I nodded and left him in the care of the faculty there. I have always been amused that he did not afford me the chance to seek him out, for he was more able than that. Seven years later, when he had graduated from Yale College a full year before his peers, he delivered himself to my door in Seattle. My longtime manservant, Mr. Thomas, received him.

“Do you have an appointment?” Mr. Thomas asked the forceful young stranger who stood before him on the porch of my city residence on Minor Avenue.

“Tell my father I am ready,” Benjamin said.

Mr. Thomas stiffened with recognition.

“Master Benjamin,” he said with a deep bow, opening the door wide to reveal me standing in the shadows of the entry hall. “We have been anticipating your arrival.”

I
remember feeling frustrated and homesick that first night at Riddell House. I had to walk down a long hallway to get to the bathroom, and I resented the fact that Riddell House was so big but had so few bathrooms. I wanted our old house back. It was small, and my bathroom was across the hall, not a football field away. And my parents were within easy reach when I was little and had the occasional nightmare. I missed our house. I missed my mother. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, so even though it was late and the house was dark, I went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I opened the refrigerator door, and in the blue light that spilled across the kitchen floor, I saw someone sitting at the table; my heart jumped before I realized it was my grandfather.

“Serena?” Grandpa Samuel ventured, squinting into the shadows.

“It’s me,” I said. “You scared me.”