To See You Again (33 page)

During the fall of his junior year at college, Althea wrote to her son that Jamie McElroy had died—“quite suddenly”—and that Posey would spend part of her Christmas vacation with them. Not having been especially fond of Jamie, and still, to some degree, well disposed toward Posey, Walker’s general reaction to both those pieces of news was neutral. But any guest in that chilling house raised its temperature a little, and protected that family from each other. Mainly, as on all vacations, he looked forward to conversations with Lucienne, and to drinking by himself at the local inn.

“But what did Jamie McElroy die of?” Walker, for no
clear reason, asked Lucienne, on one of their first afternoons together. “No one’s said.”

A small pause, and then Lucienne’s almost harsh, quiet voice: “I believe that he committed suicide.”

“Oh, really?” Somehow that seemed surprising, an act so extreme from passive Jamie. “Does anyone know why?”

“Well, certainly I do not. Some anger, some despair. But middle age can be cruel to people who have not had much satisfaction in their lives,” she told him. Walker wondered if, possibly, she could refer to her own life, and concluded that she did not; she was not given to even such veiled references to herself, nor to self-pity, and besides, she had always such a look of contentment, of calm.

And then, on the last night of his vacation, which was, coincidentally, the first of Posey’s visit, Althea went to bed early (“I’ve got to get some sleep; these new pills had better work”) and Walker went to the inn, alone, for brandy. He came back less drunk than he sometimes was, and fairly early. In that creaking, moaning house it was quite possible to enter and leave without being heard, and thus, from the corridor outside the living room, Walker caught the following brief but illuminating conversation:

Posey: “But, darlin’, if you told her I’ll bet she could just move back to New England and be near that boy of hers. They have so much in common, really. Honestly, it’s always been hard for me to believe he’s really your son—”

And John: “Look, I’ll tell her when I’m ready. Don’t push me, baby doll. And don’t think she’s just going to move out for our convenience, even if the house is actually mine.”

“Oh, darlin’, please don’t sound so cross. I don’t care about Althea or Walker, or even the house, just you—”

Walker continued on to the kitchen, where he found a bottle of brandy. He finished that off in his room, the old
ship’s galley, before going to sleep. Fortunately, perhaps, on the trip back to school, the next day, his state of shock was somewhat mitigated by a severe hangover. Later he thought of that vacation as the last time he ever saw his mother, with whom, despite Posey’s stated view, he had not had much in common.

It was Lucienne who telephoned, several months later, in the spring, to say that his mother had died: like Jamie McElroy, a suicide, an overdose of pills. Walker had never asked how Jamie killed himself; curiously, he did so now, just after hearing the news of Althea.

Lucienne seemed not to think it an odd question, under the circumstances, and only said, “He shot himself.”

“Oh. Well, that makes it really neat for them, doesn’t it. Jamie and my mother just clearing out, conveniently. They must be in absolute heaven.” Knowing himself to be hysterical, Walker knew too that as long as he went on ranting he could not break down, although, with Lucienne, even that would have been all right. He said, “They’re murderers. I will never speak to either of them again.”

Lucienne, as she always had, chose to take him seriously. “Perhaps you are right; almost certainly you are right not to see them for a while, and I have never believed in the foolishness of funerals. I will tell John. But you know, she has succeeded in punishing them quite a lot. They will feel it.”

Walker thought she was probably right—they would feel Althea’s punishment, but at that time, and for years to come, he was absorbed in his own violent hatred for those two people. He hated them with the intensity reserved for former loves—for surely in some dim unremembered time he had loved his father, and he could remember the moment of falling in love with Posey, with humiliation, rage.

Obsessively, he thought of killing them. Easy enough: in
some disguise or other he could travel to his town, that now-burgeoning suburb on the lake, and, as he often had, he could sneak into that house, unheard. Confront them, with a gun. Talk for as long as possible and terrify them, absolutely, before shooting them both. This was not, however, a very satisfying fantasy—remaining, as it did, implausible.

His only real comfort and source of support in what were truly months of agony, so powerful and pervasive was his anger, aside from letters to and from Lucienne, was Timothy Stern, his former instructor who had now become a friend, a drinking buddy. Timothy’s mother too had died relatively young, although not a suicide, and his father had remarried with indecent haste, as Timothy saw it. Someone awful. Timothy’s father had died soon after that, leaving everything to the stepmother—“of course!” And so Timothy, brilliant and somewhat older, could easily understand.

From drinking and talking companions Timothy and Walker became, not too surprisingly, lovers. Walker, who had had no previous experience of that nature, although very little experience with girlfriends either, at first was deeply shocked, but quite soon it all seemed perfectly right, seemed logical, even. He felt at home with Timothy in a sense that he had never felt at home with any person, nor in any place. Except possibly with Lucienne, in her small cluttered house, or walking in her garden—and something about Timothy even reminded him of Lucienne. If only he and Lucienne had been the same age, he thought; she was the only woman he could have loved.

Thus, what had begun as an exchange of angry confidences, revelations of familial agony, became a source of warmth, of friendship and perfect confidence. When Timothy went on from the New England college to a better job in New York, Walker went along. Together they took an apartment in the East Village, and Walker, who had a little
money from his mother, worked at various bookish jobs, articles, reviewing, at the beginning of the more permissive Sixties.

Walker had adhered to his principle of noncommunication, ever, with his father and Posey, who of course in due time had got married, as Walker was informed by letter from Lucienne. Nor had he ever, of course, returned to his town, to that house.

A couple of years after his marriage to Posey, John died, of a heart attack, which Lucienne called Walker to report. What Walker first said was, “Well, now Posey can have the house. She’s getting what she always wanted most.”

“It is quite possible that you are right. Still, she is not as young as you remember her. It may not be the most comfortable place for a woman who ages.”

“Christ! It was never comfortable for anyone. It’s a terrible house, except from the outside. You know that, Lucienne.”

“Well, I have to confess to some admiration for it. And you know I always had a great feeling of friendship for your father. I will miss him.”

Again, as when his mother had died, Walker experienced more anger than grief. Though he could hardly have expected his father to have left him the house, or any part of it, still he hated the thought of Posey in residence.

“Couldn’t we go there?” asked Timothy. “Disguise ourselves in fright wigs, or sneak in when Posey’s out? Doesn’t she ever go back to Texas for visits? My stepmother went tearing back up to West Newton as soon as the old man died. After first selling his apartment, of course. But I’d love to see your house. I have such a sense of it.”

Despite their continued rapport, in some areas, however, Timothy and Walker by this time were less lovers than
generally amiable, sometimes quarreling comrades. For each of them there had been “other people,” then guilt, recriminations and at last a somewhat uneasy acceptance of each other, as less than perfect friends.

To Walker’s considerable surprise, a year or so after his father died, Posey did sell the house (“You see?” said Timothy) and she moved back to Texas. (“I believe there was an old beau somewhere in the offing,” wrote Lucienne.)

Walker wrote and asked if she knew the people who had bought the house; strangely, that was important for him to know. But Lucienne answered that she did not know them. People named Engstrom.

The notion of totally unknown, unimaginable people in that house was, curiously, deeply disturbing to Walker. Although he had for the most part hated and been miserable in that house, he had also been proud of its splendor—from the outside, or at a party. At least with his father and Posey living there, or even Posey alone, he could perfectly imagine the house, and thus in a way retain it; but now, with strange people (it occurred to him that he did not even know how many people: a family? little children?), he felt a severe deprivation.

His father’s death had been in November, and the news of Posey’s selling the house in February. And then in May, although he had not tried to describe his feelings to her, Lucienne responded as though he had.

In a more imperative tone than he had ever heard from her before, she wrote that he must now come for a visit. “I have met the people who live in your house, and they are quite nice. A middle-aged couple, and a son who sometimes visits. I have spoken to them of you, and they have said they would always be pleased to see you there. And so, my dear Walker, I urge you to come. Of course I would wish you
to stay with me, but perhaps at the inn you would be more private and comfortable. But do come. I think that to see the house would kill off some of the ghosts in your mind.”

A strange letter, and one by which Walker found himself strangely, deeply excited. He made plans to leave the following weekend, which would be the first in June. He chose to go alone, Timothy being “involved” with one of his students, or so Walker believed. He would stay at the inn.

And so at last, after so many years, once more Walker sits in Lucienne’s small memento- and photo-crowded living room, in the heavy June scent of roses, and earth. They are a mile or so from the lake, from his house. “I will give you a cup of tea on your way there,” Lucienne had said. “But I think you should go out alone, don’t you?”

Violently agitated, Walker agreed. Now, seated across from her in that warm familiar room, he is exhilarated, even, with a sense of some extraordinary event quite close at hand.

Lucienne has at last left middle age, he notes; she is old. Her fine skin is finely wrinkled, her hair quite white, and soft. She moves a little stiffly, pouring out the tea, going back into the kitchen for something forgotten—as always, refusing his help. But her voice is exactly the same: slightly accented, a little hoarse, and low, and beautiful.

She is talking about the Engstroms, who now live in what she tactfully persists in calling “his” house. Mr. Engstrom is an engineer; Mrs. Engstrom teaches in the local public school, and is politically involved, somehow. The son is mentioned again: a graduate student, at Madison, in literature. “Quite handsome,” remarks Lucienne—and in his overcharged, susceptible state, for one wild instant Walker wonders: is Lucienne trying to “fix him up”? They have never in an explicit way discussed his “tastes,” but of course
she must know. But the very idea is crazy, and he dismisses it.

And then it is time for him to start out. Four-forty-five. He is due at the house for drinks at five; taking his time, over that familiar mile (an inner, imperative voice has insisted that he walk), he will make it by five-fifteen. Just right.

“You won’t be too hot?” cautions Lucienne, seeing him off. She has offered to drive him, or to lend her car.

“Oh no.” They kiss in their customary way, brushing each cheek, and then Walker starts off, in the early June warm bright dusk.

Lucienne’s house is on a ridge of land from which one cannot see the lake, at first, so thickly wooded is that area. The wide white highway winds down and down; on one side, where there used to be the deepest, thickest woods, of oak and beech and poplar, now there are newish houses: expensive, very conventional, set widely apart from each other. Across the highway there is an upraised, still-unpaved sidewalk, where Walker makes his way toward his house. His clothes are indeed too hot for the day—old tweed blazer, gray flannels—and he feels, as he walks, a painful weight of apprehension, somewhere in his chest. The combination of the blood-familiar landscape with the unfamiliar new houses superimposed is radically jarring.

Then, before him, there is the lake. All his life it has been unexpected, a sudden violent glimpse of the deepest, sharpest possible blue. And enormous, miles and miles of lake, lake water.

Hurrying now, his heart risen, Walker can see his house, and he experiences a soaring pride in its splendid outline: the wide high spread of roof, and all the bright reflecting glass, in which, as he draws closer, he can see the wind-driven lake.

Someone has put in flower beds where there used to be a
severe graveled area, Walker notes as he approaches the actual house: beds of multicolored primroses, giant pansies and thriving yellow cowslips.

He knocks, and almost immediately is confronted with a big round-faced smiling woman, who greets him enthusiastically. “Oh, Mr. Conway, I’m so very glad you could come. Such an amazing coincidence: I’ve been reading and admiring your reviews for years, and now it turns out that this is your family’s house!”

Quite unused to being greeted in that way—book reviewers do not gather a lot of fans, Walker has learned—he tries to readjust his normally diffident manner, but it comes out stiffly as he says, “You’re too kind.”

Undeterred, Mrs. Engstrom smiles yet more warmly as she says, “Oh yes, you seem to have such a different feeling for what you read. Most reviewers—they’re so—small-minded.”

Walker murmurs in what he hopes is a helpful, assenting way, but she needs, apparently, no help.

With a small frown she tells him next, “I’m so glad you’re here, but I have been worried. How you’d feel about how we’ve changed your house.” And she begins to lead him down the hall, which is now lined, he notes, with blown-up cartoons by an artist that he himself very much likes.