She was already at the door to the hallway when I called her name. She looked back over her shoulder, bottles in her arms, wisps of hair around her face. She looked much younger than she really was. Her cheeks were flushed and the light from the lamp glittered in her eyes.
“How did he end up here, do you think?”
She looked at me for a while. “Coe?” she said. She shrugged her shoulders, pushed open the door with her foot, and walked on.
Halfway through the evening—the hare a jumble of bones, the foggy glasses, and the decanter nearly empty—there was a flash of lightning above the sea. It flickered blue between the clouds and you could hear a distant rumbling of thunder. We looked outside. Coe wondered why a thunderstorm at sea was always so different than inland, and my mother remembered how, in her youth, lightning had struck in the village. Just then the door opened and the black-clad figure of my grandmother appeared. She stood in the doorway with the cologne-soaked handkerchief over her mouth and stared, wide-eyed, at the candlelit scene.
“Julia!” she said. “The parachute!”
My mother shot out of her chair. Her glass fell. A red stain began spreading over the tablecloth.
“Mama,” she cried.
“Ma’am,” said Coe. He got to his feet, his left hand on his chest. “My sincerest apologies. It was never my intention to…blow in here…so unannounced.”
“The parachute!” cried my grandmother again. “Julia, you’ve got to hide the parachute!”
“The weather,” said Coe. “Took me by surprise. Terrible storm.”
I stared at him in amazement.
My mother laid her hand on her mother’s shoulder. “Everything’s been taken care of, Mama.”
My grandmother stared a few seconds more at the visitor and then allowed my mother to lead her out of the room.
“My mother has hardening of the arteries,” she said, when she returned. “She’s very confused.” She raised her glass and only noticed that it was empty when she was about to take a sip. I stood up and poured her another drink. She took a large gulp, nearly choked, and dabbed at her lips with the napkin. When her eyes fell on the wine stain on the tablecloth, she jerked her head away.
There was a lengthy silence, during which I tried to figure out what was going on. Things somehow weren’t what they ought to be. I couldn’t put it into words, but it reminded me of a doubly exposed photograph, in which you saw two images: one real, and the other a faint echo of the first.
As I sat there brooding, I felt my eyes growing heavy. The walk on the beach, the glass of wine, and the steady swaying of the candle flames were beginning to take effect. It wasn’t long before my mother saw my head nodding and sent me upstairs. I protested feebly, but there wasn’t any point. She wouldn’t be contradicted and I was too tired to offer much resistance. I shook Coe’s hand and kissed my mother and headed for my room.
When I got upstairs I was just barely able to lay my clothes on the back of a chair. I must have fallen asleep the moment my head hit the pillow.
THAT NIGHT I WAS AWAKENED by the slamming of the front door. It was nearly midnight, I had slept less than two hours, but I sat bolt upright in bed and was wide awake. I went to the window and looked outside, where, as I had expected, there was nothing to see. Without knowing why and without thinking, I threw on my clothes and sneaked out the door. On the stairs, I could feel a clammy chill moving through the house. The front door stood wide open and with every gust of wind it banged against the doorframe. The latch had been pulled out, so it couldn’t fall shut. Coe’s and my mother’s coats were missing from the coatrack. I pulled on my jacket and boots and walked to the door. Then I suddenly remembered my grandfather’s flashlight and I ran to his room to get it.
When I came back into the hallway, my grandmother was standing on the stairs. Her long gray hair hung down over the shawl she wore over her white nightgown and for a moment she looked like the ghost of my mother.
“The parachute,” I said. It was the first thing that came to my mind. I’d barely uttered the words, when all of a sudden I began to understand. The doubly exposed picture I’d thought of before became clear: one of the images, the most recent one, dissolved and what was left, a still life from the past, came into focus.
“I have to go bury the parachute.”
My grandmother pulled the shawl tighter around her and nodded, relieved.
“Go back to sleep. I’ll take care of everything.”
She turned around and walked back up the stairs. I waited until the white of her nightgown was smothered by the darkness and I had heard the click of her bedroom door.
Outside in the cone of light from my flashlight I saw puddles and small meandering streams that barely hid a crisscross of footprints that seemed to lead to the beach. The rain was pouring down so hard that I couldn’t keep my eyes open unless I bowed my head. But I knew these surroundings like the back of my hand, and even in the darkness and the rain I had no trouble finding my way to the beach.
There must have been a moon hiding behind the clouds, but it wasn’t much use to me. Now and
