Rules of Civility (32 page)

—No, Mr. Ross. I don't think she knows a soul in California.

But if Mr. Ross were to hire a detective, I thought to myself, then I'd have some advice for him. I'd tell him to go to all the hock shops within ten blocks of the train station looking for a skateable engagement ring and a chandelier earring missing its pair—because that's where the future of Evelyn Ross had just commenced.

The next night, Mr. Ross called again. This time, he didn't ask any questions. He was calling to give me an update: Earlier that day he had talked to a few of the girls at Mrs. Martingale's—none of them had heard from Eve. He had contacted the Missing Persons Bureau in L.A., but as soon as they learned that Eve was of age and had bought her ticket, they explained that she did not meet the legal definition of missing. To comfort Mrs. Ross, he had also checked the hospitals and emergency rooms.

How was Mrs. Ross bearing up? She was like someone in mourning, only worse. When a mother loses a daughter, she grieves over the future that her daughter will never have, but she can take solace in memories of close-knit days. But when your daughter runs away, it is the fond memories that have been laid to rest; and your daughter's future, alive and well, recedes from you like a wave drawing out to sea.

 

The third time Mr. Ross called, he didn't have much of an update. He said that while going through some of Eve's letters (in search of mentioned friends who might be of help) he had come across the one in which Eve described meeting me for the first time:
Last night, I spilled a plate of noodles on one of the girls; and she's turned out to be a real jim dandy.
Mr. Ross and I shared a good laugh over it.

—I had forgotten that Eve was in a single when she first moved in, he said. When did you two become roommates?

And I could see the problem I had gotten myself into.

Mr. Ross was in mourning too, but he had to be strong for his wife. So he was looking for someone he could reminisce with, someone who knew Eve well but who was safely in the distance. And I fit the bill just perfectly.

I didn't want to be uncharitable, and having this little chat wasn't such an inconvenience, but how many chats would follow? For all I knew, he was a slow mender. Or worse, he was someone who would savor his grief rather than let it go. How was I going to extricate myself when the time came? I wasn't going to stop answering my phone. Was I going to have to start sounding mildly rude, until he got the message?

 

When the phone rang a few nights later, I adopted the voice of a girl with one hand on her key chain and the other through the sleeve of her coat.

—Hello!

—Katey?

. . .

—Tinker?

—For a second I thought I had the wrong number, he said. It's good to hear your voice.

. . .

—I saw Eve, I said.

. . .

—I thought you might have.

He gave a halfhearted laugh.

—I've sure made a hash of it in 1938.

—You and the rest of the world.

—No. I get special credit for this one. Since the first week of January, every decision I've made has been wrong. I think Eve has been fed up with me for months.

As a rueful parable, he told me how in France he had taken to going to bed early and rising with the sun for a swim. Dawn was so beautiful, he said, and in such a different way from the sunset, that he had asked Eve to watch it with him. In response, she started wearing eyeshades and slept every day until lunch. Then, on the last night, when Tinker was climbing into bed, she went off to a casino by herself and played roulette until five in the morning—coming up the drive, shoes in hand, just in time to join him on the beach.

Tinker related this as if it was somewhat embarrassing for the both of them; but I didn't see it that way. Whatever the limitations of Tinker and Eve's relationship, however expedient or imperfect or tenuous it had been, neither of them had reason to be humbled by that little tale. As far as I was concerned, the notion of Tinker rising alone for a sunrise that he wanted to share, and of Eve showing up at the very last minute from the other side of a night on the town, spoke to the very best in both of them.

In each of the various phone conversations that I had imagined having with Tinker, he had sounded different. In one he had sounded broken. In another confounded. In another contrite. But in all of them he had sounded unsettled, having come full speed through a ringer of his own design. Yet, now that I had him on the phone, he didn't sound unsettled at all. Though obviously chastened, Tinker's voice was also even and at ease. It had an ineffable almost enviable quality to it. It took me a moment to realize that it was the sound of relief. He sounded like one who is sitting on the curb in a strange city in the aftermath of a hotel fire, having nearly lost nothing but his life.

But broken, confounded, relaxed, or relieved—however his voice sounded, it wasn't coming from across the sea. It was as clear as a radio broadcast.

—Tinker, where are you?

He was alone at the Wolcotts' camp in the Adirondacks. He had spent the week walking in the woods and rowing on the lake thinking about the past six months, but now he was worried that if he didn't talk to someone he might go a little crazy. So he was wondering if I'd be interested in coming up for the day. Or I could take the train on Friday after work and spend the weekend. He said the house was amazing and the lake was lovely and

—Tinker, I said. You don't have to give me reasons.

 

After hanging up the phone, I stood for a while looking out my window wondering if I should have told him no. In the doleful court behind my building a patchwork of windows was all that separated me from a hundred muted lives being led without mystery or menace or magic. In point of fact, I suppose I didn't know Tinker Grey much better than I knew any of them; and yet, somehow, I felt like I'd known him all my life.

I crossed the room.

From a pile of British authors, I pulled out
Great Expectations
. There, tucked among the pages of the twentieth chapter was Tinker's letter describing the little church across the sea, with its mariner's widow, its berry-toting wrestler, its schoolgirls laughing like seagulls—and its implicit celebration of the commonplace. I tried to smooth the wrinkles in the tissuelike paper. Then I sat down and read it for the umpteenth time.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The Now and Here

The Wolcotts' “camp” was a two-story mansion in the Arts & Crafts style. At one in the morning, it loomed from the shadows like an elegant beast come to the water's edge to drink.

We went up the lazy wooden steps of the porch into a sprawling family room with a stone fireplace that you could stand in. The floors were knotty pine and they were covered with Navajo rugs woven in every imaginable shade of red. Sturdy wooden chairs were arranged in groups of two and four so that in high season the different generations of Wolcotts could play cards or read books or assemble jigsaw puzzles partly in private and partly in kin. All was cast in the warm yellow light of mica-shaded lamps. I remembered Wallace saying that though he spent just a few weeks a year in the Adirondacks, it always felt like home—and it wasn't hard to see why. You could just imagine where the Christmas tree would go come December.

Tinker began giving an enthusiastic history of the place. He mentioned something about the Indians in the region and the aesthetic schooling of the architect. But I had started the day at six and put in ten hours at
Gotham
. So with the smell of smoke in the air and the rumble of thunder in the distance, my eyelids rose and fell like the bow of a boat on its mooring.

—I'm sorry, he said with a smile. I'm just excited to see you. We'll catch up in the morning.

He grabbed my bag and led me up the stairs to the second floor, where the hallway was lined with doors. The house must have slept twenty or more.

—Why don't you take this one, he said, stepping into a little room with a pair of twin beds.

He placed my bag on the bureau beside a porcelain washbasin. Though the old gas lamps on the wall glowed with electricity, he lit a kerosene lantern on the bedside table.

—There's fresh water in the pitcher. I'm at the other end of the hall, if you need anything.

He gave me a squeeze of the hands and an
I'm so glad you came.
Then he retreated into the hall.

As I unpacked my things, I could hear him going back down the stairs to the family room, securing the front door, scattering the embers in the hearth, clicking off lights. Then, from the far end of the house there was the heavy thunk of a switch being thrown. The remote rumbling that I had thought was thunder ceased and all the lights in the house went out. Tinker's steps bounded back up the stairs and headed down the opposite hall.

I undressed in the nineteenth-century lamplight. My shadow on the wall went through the motions of folding my blouse and brushing my hair. I put my book on the bedside table with no intention of reading it and climbed under the covers. The bed must have been built when Americans were smaller because my feet went straight to the baseboard. It was surprisingly cold, so I unfolded the patchwork quilt that graced the foot of the bed. Then I opened my book, after all.

Walking into Penn Station earlier that evening, I had realized I had nothing to read; so at a newsstand I surveyed the paperback fare (romance novels, westerns, adventure stories) and settled on an Agatha Christie. At the time, I hadn't read many mystery novels. Call it snobbery. But once on the train, after staring out the window to my limit, I waded into Mrs. Christie's world and was pleasantly surprised by how diverting it was. This particular crime was set on a British estate and the heroine was a foxhunting heiress who by page 45 had already had two brushes with disaster.

I turned to chapter eight. Several mildly suspicious people were having tea in a parlor. They were talking about a young local who had gone to fight in the Boer War and never returned. There were daylilies from a secret admirer in a vase on the piano. The whole scene was just remote enough in time and place that I had to go back to the beginning of the seventh paragraph a second time, then a third. After a fourth try, I turned down the wick and the room went dark.

With the heaviness of the quilt weighing on my chest, I could feel every beat of my heart—as if it was still keeping time, measuring the days like a metronome set somewhere on the finely graduated scale between impatience and serenity. For a while, I lay there listening to the house, to the wind outside, to the hoot of what must have been an owl. Then I finally fell asleep, listening for the footsteps that weren't going to come.

—Rise and shine.

Tinker was standing in the doorway.

—What time is it? I asked.

—Eight.

—Is the house on fire?

—This is late for camp living.

He threw me a towel.

—I've got breakfast cooking. Come on down when you're ready.

I got up and splashed water on my face. Looking out the window, you could tell it was going to be a cold, bright, cusp-of-fall kind of day. So I put on my best foxhunting heiress outfit and took my book in hand, assuming the morning would be spent before a fire.

In the hallway, family photos hung from floor to ceiling just like in Wallace's apartment. It took me a few minutes, but I finally found pictures of Wallace as a boy: The first was an unfortunate snapshot of him at six in a French sailor's suit; but the second was Wallace at ten or eleven in a birch bark canoe with his grandfather, showing off the catch of the day. From the expressions on their faces, you would have thought they were holding up the world by the gills.

Drawn by other photographs, I continued past the staircase to the western end of the hall. The very last room was the one that Tinker had claimed. He was sleeping in the bottom of a bunk bed! There was a book on his bedside table too. With Hercule Poirot whispering in my ear, I ventured quietly in and picked it up. It was
Walden
. A five of clubs marked the reader's progress—though from the colors of the underlinings you could tell it was at least a second reading.