'O.K.,' Gretchen called, scampering toward the kitchen. Chumley woke, yawned, and followed her at his own ambling pace.
Jeff stepped outside, walked along the path through the trees. In autumn the corridor of elms was like a half-mile shaft of enveloping flame. Emerging from it, Jeff saw first the broad meadow descending gently toward the Hudson, then the steeper drop a hundred yards to the left where a rocky chain of waterfalls cascaded in the chill. The dramatic entrance to this place never failed to give him a thrill of awe, that such beauty could exist; and of pride, that it was his possession.
He stood now at the crest of the sloping green, contemplating the vista. Two small boats moved quietly down the river beneath the blaze of fall colors on the far side. A trio of young boys ambled along the opposite bank, idly tossing stones into the coursing water. At the top of a rise above them was a stately home, less grand than Jeff’s but still imposing.
In another three months the river would be frozen solid, a great white highway stretching south toward the city and north toward the Adirondacks. The trees would be bereft of leaves, but seldom barren: Snow would lace their branches, and some days even the smallest twigs would be encased in a cylinder of ice, glittering by the millions in the winter sunlight.
This was the land, the very county, that Currier and Ives had mythologized as the American ideal; they’d even sketched this precise view. Standing here, it was easy to believe that all he’d done had been worthwhile. Standing here, or holding Gretchen in his arms, embracing the child he and Linda had once yearned for but could never have.
No, he wouldn’t send his daughter to Concord. This was her home. This was where she belonged until she was old enough to make her own decisions about leaving it. When that day came, he’d support whatever choices she might make, but until then—
Something unseen stabbed his chest, something more painful and powerful than he had ever felt before … except once.
He crumpled to his knees, struggling to remember what day it was, what time it was. His staring eyes took in the autumn scene, the valley that had, an instant before, seemed the very emblem of hope regained and possibilities unbounded. Then he fell on his side, facing away from the river.
Jeff Winston gazed helplessly at the orange-red tunnel of elms that had led him to this meadow of promise and fulfillment, and then he died.
SEVEN
He was surrounded by darkness, and by screams. A pair of hands clutched at his right arm, fingernails stabbing through the fabric of his sleeve.
Jeff saw before him an image of Hell: weeping children, shrieking and stumbling as they ran, unable to escape the black, winged creatures that swooped and pecked at the children’s faces, mouths, eyes …
Then an icily perfect blond woman pulled two of the little girls into an automobile, safe from the onslaught. He was watching a movie, Jeff realized; a Hitchcock movie, The Birds.
The pressure on his arm subsided along with the scene’s intensity, and he turned his head to see Judy Gordon smiling a girlish, embarrassed smile. On his left, Judy’s friend Paula snuggled into the protective curve of young Martin Bailey’s arm.
1963. It had all begun again.
'How come you’re so quiet tonight, honey?' Judy asked him in the back seat of Martin’s Corvair as they rode to Moe’s and Joe’s after the movie. 'You don’t think I was silly to get so scared, do you?'
'No. No, not at all.'
She intertwined her fingers with his, leaned her head against his shoulder. 'O.K., just so you don’t think I’m a ninny.' Her hair was fresh and clean, and she’d dabbed a few drops of Lanvin on her slim, pale neck. Her sweet scent was exactly as it had been on that awkward night in Jeff’s car, twenty-five years ago … and before that, almost half a century ago, on this same night.
Everything he’d accomplished had been erased: his financial empire, the home in Dutchess County … but most devastating of all, he had lost his child. Gretchen, with her gangly almost-woman manner and her intelligent, loving eyes, had been rendered nonexistent. Dead, or worse. In this reality she had simply never been.
For the first time in his long, broken life he fully understood Lear’s lament over Cordelia:
'What’s that, honey? D’you say something?'
'No,' he whispered, pulling the girl to his chest. 'I was just thinking out loud.'
'Mmmm. Penny for your thoughts.'
Precious innocence, he thought; blessed sweet unawareness of the wounds a demented universe can inflict.
'I was thinking how much it means to me to have you here. How much I need to hold you.'
His old boarding school outside Richmond, like the Emory campus, remained unchanged. Some aspects of the place seemed slightly askew from his memories of it: The buildings looked smaller; the dining commons was closer to the lake than he recalled. He’d come to expect that sort of minor discontinuity, had long ago decided it was due to faulty recollection rather than to any concrete change in the nature of things. This time, nearly fifty years of fading recollection had passed since he’d last been here. A full adult lifetime, though split in two, and now begun again.
'College treating you all right?' Mrs. Braden asked.
'Not too bad. Just felt like getting away for a couple of days—thought I’d come up and see the old school.'
The plump little librarian chuckled maternally. 'It hasn’t even been a year since you graduated, Jeff; nostalgia setting in that soon?'
'I guess so.' He smiled. 'It seems a lot longer.'
'Wait until it’s been ten years, or twenty; then you’ll see how distant all this can seem. I wonder if you’ll still want to come back and visit us then.'
'I’m sure I will.'
'I do hope so. It’s good to know how the boys turn out, how all of you deal with the world out there. And I think you’ll do just fine.'
'Thank you, ma’am. I’m working at it.'
She glanced at her watch, looked distractedly toward the front door of the library. 'Well, I’m supposed to meet a group of next year’s new students at three, give them the twenty-five-cent tour; you be sure and look up Dr. Armbruster before you go, won’t you?'
'I’ll be sure to.'
'And next time, come by the house; we’ll have a glass of sherry and reminisce about the old days.'
Jeff bade her good bye, made his way through the stacks and out a side exit. He hadn’t intended to talk to any of the faculty or staff, but had known when he’d driven up here that a chance meeting or two would be inevitable. All in all, he thought he’d handled himself pretty well with Mrs. Braden, but he was relieved that the conversation had been brief. He’d grown confident about handling such encounters at Emory now, but here they would be much more difficult to deal with; his memory of the place, the people, was so distant.
