Mystery

“What do you mean, the honey trap?”

“Finish your dinner and get out of my sight.”

“I’m finished now,” Tom said. He stood up.

“You get one more year in this house,” his father said. “That’s it. Then you go to the mainland, and Glen Upshaw pays a quarter every time you take a piss.” He smiled, and looked as if he were going to take a bite out of something. “Believe me, it’ll be better for you. I told you that already. Take what you can get, as long as you can get it. Because you don’t exist.”

“I DO!” Tom yelled, pushed too far now. “Of course I exist!”

“Not to me, you don’t. You always made me sick.”

Tom felt as if he had been bludgeoned. For a second all he wanted to do was to pick up a knife and stab his father in the heart.

“What do you want?” he shouted. “You want me to be just like you? I wouldn’t be like you for a million dollars! You lived off your father-in-law all your life, and now you’re happier than a pig in shit because you think you got a better offer!”

Victor overturned his chair standing up, and had to catch himself on the table to keep from falling down. His face had turned red, and his eyes and mouth seemed to have grown smaller—he did look like a pig, Tom thought, a red-faced pig staggering away from the trough. For a second he thought his father was going to rush at him. “You keep your trap shut!” Victor bellowed. “You hear me?”

So he was just going to yell. Tom was shaking uncontrollably, and his hands were in fists.

“You don’t know anything about me,” Victor said, still loudly but not quite yelling.

“I know enough,” Tom said, louder.

“You don’t know anything about yourself, either!”

“I know more than you think,” Tom shouted at him. His mother began to wail upstairs, and the ugliness of this scene made him want to cry. He was still shaking.

His father’s whole manner changed—he was still red-faced but suddenly much more sober. “What do you know?”

“Never mind,” Tom said, disgusted.

Upstairs, Gloria settled into a pattern of steady, rhythmical wails, like a desolate child banging its head against the crib.

“On top of everything else,” Victor said. “Now we got that.”

“Go up and calm her down,” Tom said. “Or does that stop too, now that your buddy Ralph bought you a cigar?”

“I’m going to take care of you, smartass.” Victor grabbed a napkin from the table and wiped his face. Remembering the cigar and Ralph Redwing’s visit had restored him.

The telephone began ringing in the study. His father said, “You get that, and if it’s for me say I’ll call back in five minutes,” and pushed through the door.

Tom went into the study and picked up the phone.

“What’s that, the television?” came his grandfather’s voice. “Turn it down so I can tell you something.”

Tom turned off the television.

“We have to talk about Eagle Lake,” said his grandfather. “And what were you doing at the hospital this morning?”

“I wanted to find out what happened to Nancy Vetiver.”

“Didn’t I call you back about that?”

“I guess you forgot,” Tom said.

“She’ll be back on duty in a day or two. Seems she called in sick four or five days in a row. Dr. Milton scouted around, found out she was staying out too late, probably drinking too much, and bawled her out. She gave him a runaround, and he suspended her for a couple of weeks. Had to make an example of her, or they’d all be doing it. None of those girls have any background, of course. That’s the whole story.” He coughed loudly, and Tom pictured him holding the receiver in one hand, his cigar in the other.

“She gave him a runaround?” Tom asked.

“Tried to lie her way out of it. But with the shortage of nurses, even Shady Mount has to take what it can get.” He paused. “I trust that now this matter is closed.”

“It’s closed,” Tom said. “Absolutely, completely, irrevocably closed.”

“Glad you can listen to reason. Now, I have a suggestion for you concerning your trip to Eagle Lake.”

Tom said nothing.

“You still there?” his grandfather shouted.

“Still here.” He heard his mother screech something at his father. “Completely, entirely here, and no place else.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m not too sure. I just had a fight with Dad.”

“Give him time to calm down, or apologize to him, or something.” Tom’s mother screamed again. “What was that?”

“The television.”

His grandfather sighed. “Listen. To get to Eagle Lake in the old days, we had to get to Miami and take a train to Chicago, then change trains for Hurley. The whole thing took four days. I just worked out a way for you to do the whole thing in one haul, as long as you can leave the day after tomorrow. I think you should do it.”

Tom nodded, but said nothing.

“Ralph Redwing uses a private plane to take himself and his friends back and forth to the lake. The plane is coming back here to pick up the Spences, and as a personal favor to me, Ralph has agreed to let you tag along. Get your things packed, and be at the field by eight Friday morning.”

Tom said, “Okay. Thanks.”

“Breathe some of that fresh air, take walks in the woods. Get in some swimming. You can use my membership at the club. Don’t worry about getting back. We’ll work that out when the time comes.” Tom had never heard Glendenning Upshaw sound so friendly. “You’ll love it up there. Gloria and I used to think of summers at Eagle Lake as the best time of the year. She loved that place. Used to spend hours sitting on the balcony, looking at the woods.”

“And the lake, I suppose,” Tom said.

“No, some of the lodges have raised verandas overlooking the lake, but ours is on the other side—looks right into the woods. You can sit on the dock, see the lake all you want.”

“You can’t see the other docks from the balcony?”

“Who wants to see other people’s docks? Gloria and I went up there to get away from other people. In fact, until you came along—until Gloria got married and you came along—I used to think about retiring up there with her, when the time came. Didn’t know I’d never want to retire.”

“Wouldn’t she like to come with me?”

“Gloria can’t go back,” his grandfather said. “We tried it once, the year after my wife died—didn’t work. Didn’t work at all. She couldn’t handle it. Eventually I gave up and came back early, got on with my Miami business. Worked out for the best in the long run.”

“Worked out for the best?” Tom asked, appalled.

“I got that hospital built in record time.” Perhaps hearing that he and Tom had been talking about different things, he added, “I made a couple of appointments for Gloria with a doctor in Miami, the kind of fellow they called an alienist in those days. Turned out to be nothing but a quack. Most of those fellows are, you know. He wanted me to come in for appointments, and I told him that I was a lot saner than he was. Pulled the plug on that nonsense. Gloria was a child who had lost her mother the summer before, that was the whole of the trouble.”

Tom remembered his mother gripping her martini glass at her father’s table on the terrace.

“Can you think of anything else that could have upset her that summer?” Tom asked.

“Not at all. Apart from Glor’s trouble, it was a perfect summer. One of the young Redwing boys, Jonathan, was getting married to a pretty girl from Atlanta. A Redwing wedding is always a real event, and it should have been a delightful summer, what with all the parties at the club.”