sorry. Each of us thought the other was pretty dangerous, I guess. But I admit I don’t think about it much. Absolutely destroying this line of questioning.
“I remember,” I say softly.
“Well, anyway, in those days, I used to take a bus-was it the S4?-up to your house. You know, to see Addison? I mean, if he happened to be in town? I never went when your parents were there, or when you and Mariah were there either. I sort of only went to meet Addison alone.” A small, sheepish grin. “The truth is, I never told my folks where I was going either. Dad was just as bad as Uncle Oliver-that disapproving look, I mean. Maybe all the guys in your family have that frown. I mean, except Addison.”
I consider suggesting that we were disapproving because there was something to be disapproving of, that a sexual relationship between first cousins is incest. But Sally would probably remind me that she and Addison are not blood relations. Or perhaps she would cite Eleanor and FDR at me; and I would answer that they were actually first cousins once removed, contrary to popular understanding, which means that their family relationship was distant indeed, their last common ancestor something like five generations back; and Sally would accuse me of patronizing her; and the conversation would spiral downhill from there.
Besides, she has already admitted that what they did was wrong.
I say: “If I could just hear about McDermott…”
“You’re so damn single-minded.” She laughs and lies down on the bed again, this time with her heavy knees in the air. “The thing is, Tal, you have to understand, I would never have been in that house if I knew your father was going to be there. I was supposed to meet Addison, and we were supposed to be alone. Your father-well, he was supposed to be away.” She closes her eyes, frowns. “Not on the Vineyard, though. I think-I think he was supposed to be at some judges’ convention.”
“Probably the Judicial Conference,” I murmur.
“Huh?”
“The Judicial Conference. Federal judges’ group. Meets during the summer. He was probably there.”
She shakes her head. “Maybe he was supposed to be there, maybe he told Aunt Claire he would be there, but where he was, was in D.C.”
I bite my tongue. If Sally is telling the truth, she has caught the Judge lying to my mother, which, I would have sworn until this moment, never happened once.
“Anyway, I didn’t know your father was around. I was supposed to see Addison. We were both just out of college, both in town for the summer, and he was living at home. So was I. And he called me up and said everybody was away for a few days, so we could… we could spend some time together if I wanted. Well, I wanted.”
As I nod and offer no comment, I see something behind Sally’s words: Addison was the pursuer. He was a year younger than his cousin, but, from the start, even on the Vineyard, my brother was the seducer, not, as family folklore has it, the other way around; and a part of her hates him for it.
“So, anyway,” Sally is saying, “I told my folks I was going out with some girlfriends or something and not to wait up for me, then I hopped on, let’s see, must have been the 30 bus, or the 32, and then got on the S4”-wanting me to know, from all this, how hard she worked to see her love-“and, well, anyway, I got to Shepard Street and went up to the house, and Addison was there…”
Pausing to see if I have any reaction. When I do not, she resumes.
“Anyway, after a while, I fell asleep. I don’t know how late it was. I know it was dark when these voices woke me up. Not loud. Kind of whispery. But still angry. I mean, they were arguing, and maybe they were trying to argue quietly, but I still heard them. I realized there was somebody else in the house, and I sort of got scared. So I turned to wake up Addison, but he wasn’t there. So I figured it must be Addison arguing with somebody. I thought it must be Uncle Oliver, which would probably mean we were caught, which would mean we were seriously up the creek. So I put my clothes on. I figured I would sneak out the back door. I’ve snuck out of a lot of back doors in my life, haven’t I?” Another one of her mirthless laughs. There is no point in responding; the question is clearly rhetorical, and we both know what the answer is.
“Addison’s bedroom was on the third floor,” she continues, rolling onto her side, facing me now, except that her eyes are still closed. “At the end of that long hallway. The old servants’ quarters, I guess. You know, low ceiling, gables, the Nathaniel Hawthorne thing.” Actually, I know perfectly well what the house looks like, having grown up in it, but I have no intention of breaking the flow, now that she is telling the story. “The argument was way down in the foyer, two floors away, but I heard it anyway. I think it was some trick of the ducts or something.”
Now it is my turn to smile in memory. The Shepard Street house has old-fashioned heating grates, metal screens covering what are basically holes in the wall with chutes behind them, left over, I suspect, from the days when the whole house was heated by a single stove. We had radiators, of course, but they were added sometime after the house was built. The ducts themselves were never removed. My parents never realized that sounds from the first floor, especially the foyer, routinely found their way to the top floor, where Addison and I slept. Perhaps there was some common vent: I never figured out how all the old ductwork ran. In any event, my brother and I were always able to hear what was going on down there.
“So, anyway,” Sally resumes, “I got dressed and went on downstairs. I planned to sneak out, but first I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Down the back stairs, I mean. The servants’ stairs.”
We both laugh, although nothing is funny. I glance at the digital clock on the nightstand. It is close to ten.
“So I went down to the second floor and then went out into the hall. You remember there’s this long landing that runs all around the foyer, what do they call it?”
“The gallery.”
“Oh, right. And the gallery has this, um, this balustrade, I think is the word, and the, uh, the wooden posts- what are they called? Spindles? Dowels? Whatever they are, the posts that hold the balustrade? They’re very wide. Almost wide enough to hide behind.”
“Especially for a child.” I smile briefly, remembering how, when we were children, Addison and Mariah and Abby and I loved to play hide-and-seek, and I used to hide up in the gallery there all the time. One of the things I quickly discovered was that, if the lights were on in the foyer and off in the hall, and the one who was it was down in the foyer, he-or she-couldn’t see me hiding in the gallery.
“Well,” says Sally tartly, “I was never that tiny, but I could hide up there anyway. Or I did that night.” She stirs: the memory is starting to bother her. Maybe her moral sense has kicked to life. But she does not stop talking. “Anyway, the only light that was on was in your father’s study. That’s the part I remember best. It was so dark in the foyer, like Uncle Oliver was… oh, like he was doing something that needed the darkness. I know that sounds crazy, Tal, but that’s the way it felt. And the voices I heard were from inside the study. I couldn’t make out what your father was saying, I think because he was trying to keep his voice down, but the other man was yelling: ‘That’s not how the game is played.’ Something like that.”
“He said ‘the game’?”
“That’s what I said he said.” She pouts, not as prettily as she probably thinks, and continues. “Well, anyway, the other man, the man who was yelling, came out into the hallway, and he was pointing at your father, shaking his finger like he was angry or something. That’s how I saw the birthmark, when his hand moved into the light. It was McDermott. Whatever his name is in real life. Was.”
So Sally knows he is dead. Which means Mariah probably knows. Which means that everybody knows. Maybe that is why Sally has chosen to break her silence. I say, “His name was Colin Scott.”
“Fine, Colin Scott. The same man who was in the living room the week after your father died, okay? He was right there in the foyer, talking to your father, twenty years ago. I swear he was. And he was saying something like, ‘There are rules for this kind of thing.’ Something like that. And then I heard Uncle Oliver’s voice. You know, his lecturing tone: ‘There are no rules where a’-and then he said some word I couldn’t quite understand-‘is involved.’ He sort of dropped his voice on that word I missed. Not because he thought anybody was listening. It was sort of like a hiss. But I kind of heard it, Tal, and I think-I think it sounded like dollar. Like ‘There are no rules where a dollar is involved.’”
“They were arguing about money?”
“I don’t know. I might not have it exactly right. But it sounded like that. And the other man, he was shaking his head, like No. And then Uncle Oliver came into the light, and his face, his face was wild, it was scary. I figured he had been drinking.”
