How It Ended Part 24

"It's part of the job."

"So I'm just another Ketel and tonic to you."

"I wouldn't say that."

This wasn't like her, this silly flirtatious banter. But he was was cute. When they were finally seated, he leaned over and whispered in her ear that he'd be upstairs in the office if she needed anything. She nodded, then leaned toward Toby. "Do you think that a great writer, by definition, is someone who can't be surprised? Who notices everything?" cute. When they were finally seated, he leaned over and whispered in her ear that he'd be upstairs in the office if she needed anything. She nodded, then leaned toward Toby. "Do you think that a great writer, by definition, is someone who can't be surprised? Who notices everything?"

"Someone on whom nothing is lost."

"Exactly."

"Are you trying to decide whether Kyle's a great writer?"

"Maybe."

"I think you know the answer to that question."

"I do?" But he was right, of course.

As the dessert plates were being cleared, she thought it was only proper to go up and thank Brom for everything. He rose from behind his desk when she appeared in the doorway. It would seem quite wonderful later, when she recalled the moment, that he hadn't even hesitated. He'd just walked right over and taken her by the shoulders and kissed her so violently that her lips felt bruised the next day. Standing in front of the mirror that morning, she studied her swollen lips and wondered if Kyle would even notice.

As it turned out, he did eventually ask about the hickey on her collarbone, but by then it was too late.

2008.

Reunion The early-morning silence of the graveyard is broken by the approach of a car. I duck behind a stone as the sound of the engine rises toward the gate and falls away among the streets of the town. Sitting on a flat marble slab, Tory continues cutting pieces of masking tape, which she attaches to the back of her hand. The cemetery gra.s.s is brown and worn, as if it has been grazed by sheep. The last shreds of morning haze cling to the old stones, which tilt at eccentric angles.

I stand up again but remain hunched, feeling conspicuous among the squat headstones, while Tory seems right at home, though she has warned me this is illegal. The old cemetery is surrounded by the town; although it is wooded and on a rise, I feel exposed. A seagull cruises overhead with an inquisitive squawk. My eyes are dry and itchy from waking too early.

"Stretch this as tight as you can across the face of the stone," she says, holding out a big sheet of newsprint from the tablet we picked up at a hobby store last night. I kneel as Tory directs me to raise and lower the paper until finally it's just where she wants it; then she secures it with masking tape and rubs the crayon across the paper. Crayons, drawing tablets, masking tape. I find it strange that we have come to visit the dead with children's art supplies. "Not too hard," she says. White, archaic letters rise to the surface of the paper. The letters gradually become words. HERE LYES emerges, then BODY OF. I think of it as ghostwriting. The inscription states the facts: name, age and parents. The stone is a triptych, the outer tablets bearing images of a grinning skeleton on one side and Father Time on the other. A skull appears under Tory's crayon, then ribs. "This guy was very rich," she says. "The stonework's amazing. Look at these details-you can even see the anklebones on Father Time." Tory nods toward the tablet of newsprint. "Give it a try," she says.

I stalk the uneven avenues for a likely stone. In the corner near the savings bank, I find one dated 1698, with the name NATHANIEL MATHER NATHANIEL MATHER. A winged skull presides over the inscription: AN AGED PERSON WHO HAD BEEN BUT NINETEEN WINTERS IN THE WORLD AN AGED PERSON WHO HAD BEEN BUT NINETEEN WINTERS IN THE WORLD. I sit down on the gra.s.s and touch the stone. What does it mean? I once read about a disease that accelerates the aging process so rapidly that its victims die of old age in their teens. Or is it just a metaphor-a young man worn down by troubles?

"Michael, come here," Tory calls.

I get to my feet and look around. "Where are you," I ask in a loud whisper.

"Over here." She raises her hand and waves from behind a cl.u.s.ter of stones. I watch the cemetery gate as another car pa.s.ses, then scuttle over.

"Look at this." She points to a lichen-covered stone. The engraving has a crude, homemade look. THE CHILDREN OF CHARLES AND SARAH THE CHILDREN OF CHARLES AND SARAH ... The surname is unreadable. ... The surname is unreadable. EMILY, TWO YEARS. CHARLES, SEVEN MONTHS. ETHAN EMILY, TWO YEARS. CHARLES, SEVEN MONTHS. ETHAN.

"There's no age for Ethan," I say.

Tory looks up at me. She doesn't say anything at first. She holds the crayon like a cigarette and touches it to her lips as she stares at me. Finally she says, "He died in childbirth." She says this as if she holds me responsible.

"Where are the witches?" I ask.

"They didn't bury them in the cemetery. This is hallowed ground. They put the witches in unmarked graves on Gallows Hill in Salem Village."

"I wanted to rub a witch's stone."

"You can do the guy who sentenced them to death. Judge Hathorne's right over there. That would be a good one for you to get. A fellow pillar of the legal profession." Tory is on her third rubbing of the children's stone. The first two were black. This one's red. I pick a stone near hers, keeping an eye on the entrance.

"There was one man named Giles Corry, who refused to confess or to implicate anyone as a witch, so they put a beam on his chest and started piling rocks on top to force a confession. But he refused to speak. They piled more rocks on. His ribs broke and finally he died."

"That's a lovely story," I say.

Tory's a little morbid these days. But she says this grave rubbing is something she's been doing since she was a kid. This is the first time we've come up here. Though we've been living together in New York for over a year, Tory hasn't been eager to come home for a visit. Her parents separated shortly before she and I moved into our little apartment. Her mother hung on to the house, but things are strained between her and Tory. I suspect Ginny's unable to live up to the high standards that Tory sets for those she loves, although I'm not sure, because we seldom talk about it. Tory is furious with her father for leaving with another woman; yet she also seems to blame her mother for letting him do so, for not being the kind of woman that no man would ever walk out on.

Shortly after we arrived, Tory gave her mother a lesson in makeup. Ginny submitted patiently as Tory demonstrated the uses of blush and mascara. Ginny has the skin of a tennis player and the hair of a swimmer; the makeup seemed to disappear without a trace moments after it was applied. Later, Tory worked on her mother's taxes; Ginny has an antiques shop that was operated for years on the principle of losing money to write off her husband's taxes. But with the division of property hung up in the courts and two years' worth of taxes due on the house, Ginny now is faced with the new and baffling imperative of making money.

The family, sans patriarch, has ostensibly gathered for Bunny's graduation. There are four sisters, spread over ten years, all conspicuously blond. Carol, her new husband, Jim, and her daughter by a former marriage are here from California. Carol's pregnant. Jim's a Christian. Under his tutelage, Carol has been born again. She is the eldest, and, according to Tory, she has been exemplary, doing all of the stupid and illegal things that her younger sisters might've been tempted to do. Bunny, who just turned twenty-four, is able to seem merely adventurous by comparison. She started Radcliffe but dropped out to marry a cocaine dealer. When the marriage broke up, she moved back in with her parents. In two days she'll graduate from a local state school, where she's dating a married professor twice her age. Tory is the third child. Mary, the youngest, still lives at home and mostly is into cars and boys. I'm not sure whether she likes the boys because they have cars, or the cars because the boys have them. She speaks confidently about horsepower, engine displacement, biceps and pectorals. She doesn't think much of me-I drive a Toyota and wear a thirty-eight regular. Last night at the supper table she noticed me long enough to ask if I would make a lot of money now that I've graduated from law school.

This family reunion might be the last one in the old house. Ginny can't afford to keep it. I'd love to live in a house like this one, an old post-and-beam saltbox core that has been added to in various directions over the last couple hundred years, jammed with primitive furnis.h.i.+ngs of scarred, fragrant wood; crude iron implements; cloudy bull's-eyed blue-green gla.s.s. I like the outbuildings, the sagging, disused stables and greenhouse; even the pool, cracked and covered over with a green sc.u.m, has the aspect of an ornamental pond.

I grew up in houses that were vague, standardized descendants of those in this neighborhood. Since arriving yesterday I've conceived an indeterminate fantasy of saving the old homestead with my legal skills, distinctly featuring the grat.i.tude of this family of attractive females.

But for several weeks now I have felt helpless in the face of Tory's medical problems. She has been bleeding erratically. Her gynecologist in New York has several hypotheses. In two days she will check into Ma.s.s General for tests, and I'll drive back to New York to start an a.s.sociates.h.i.+p at Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

On the way home from the cemetery, we stop at a package store, where Tory waits in the car. A red Camaro is idling in the parking lot, heavy metal blasting from the open windows. Inside the store, a kid with an Iron Maiden T-s.h.i.+rt hefts three cases of beer up to the counter. His denim jacket has the sleeves ripped out, BILLY embroidered above one pocket, HEAVY CHEVY over the other. He asks for three bottles of Jose Cuervo tequila. The clerk checks his ID doubtfully. "Frank Sweeney?" he says.

"Yeah, right," the kid says. The clerk sighs and hands the ID back. Coming out of the store, I spot Mary, Tory's younger sister, inside the Camaro. She waves. The kid with the ID is loading the stuff in the trunk.

"How do you like my wheels?" Mary says. "Don't tell Mom you saw me, okay? I'm supposed to be at Laura's house." The kid comes around the side of the car and looks me over. Mary doesn't introduce anyone. They leave in a roar of exhaust.

Back in the car, I describe the scene for Tory, who has been reading. "She's young," Tory says, then goes back to her magazine. Mary is the only member of the family who escapes Tory's censure. Tory's still able to see her as the baby. It seems to be something she clings to, this idea that there's still a baby in the family after all that has happened.

In the kitchen, Carol and her daughter, Lily, are playing with Barbies. Carol has four months to go on her next, but she's already huge. Between her religion and her fertility, she's bursting with contentment. Ginny, the ap.r.o.ned matriarch, is fixing lunch.

Lily lifts her Barbie toward me and waves it from side to side as she speaks in a high, squeaky voice. "Look, Barbie, it's Ken."

"That's not Ken," Carol says. "Who is that?"

"That's Michael," Lily says in her own voice, hiding her face in her mother's arm.

"You like Michael, don't you?" Carol says, doing a Barbie voice.

Lily shakes her head back and forth. She won't look up.

"Don't teach her to be a dumb blonde, Carol," Tory says.

"And who's that?" Carol says, directing Lily toward Tory.

Tory kneels beside Lily's chair and points her finger at herself. "Do you remember my name?"

Lily shakes her head and hides it again in her mother's shoulder. She can't remember Tory's name but has the others down cold.

"That's Tory," Carol says. "Isn't that a pretty name? Tory Tory rhymes with rhymes with story story and and glory glory, doesn't it?"

Tory says, "And gory." gory."

"Do we have a kiss for nice Aunt Tory?"

When Lily shakes her head against her mother's shoulder, Tory stands up and leaves the room.

"Sandwiches are ready," Ginny says. "Grilled cheese, tomato and bacon." Ginny's one of those people who believe that there is very little that can't be fixed by putting a meal on the table.

"Jim doesn't eat bacon," Carol says.

"I thought he was a Christian. Isn't it Jews who don't eat bacon?"

"We eat low cholesterol."

Ginny puts the hot tray down on the counter. She takes off the oven mitt and lights a cigarette. "You eat low cholesterol. You don't smoke. You don't drink. You don't swear, and you don't like it when other people do. Is there anything else I should know as your innkeeper? Would you maybe like some more hay in your manger?"

"Jesus loves you, Mom."

Jim, the born-again husband, comes in, looking sleepy. "Is that bacon I smell?" he says.

"I was going to do fishes and loaves," Ginny says, "but I couldn't find a good recipe."

I find Tory in her room, lying on the bed with a stuffed tiger in her arms.

"I brought you a sandwich," I say.

She shakes her head. I sit down beside her on the bed. A framed grave rubbing hangs over the headboard: HERE LYES THE BODY OF HERE LYES THE BODY OF ... The bedside table displays a collection of handmade dolls. I pick up a porcelain doll in peasant costume, then put it back. ... The bedside table displays a collection of handmade dolls. I pick up a porcelain doll in peasant costume, then put it back.

"This was my room all the time I was growing up," Tory says.

"Maybe one of these days we'll buy ourselves a big old house like this," I suggest. I wish I hadn't said "maybe," but I feel uncertain of the future. Tory and I have talked about marriage, though everything seems to be changing. I don't really know what I want. Everything has become so gloomy and difficult lately.

"I don't want a big old house," Tory says. "A big old house needs kids in it."

"Don't be so pessimistic. The doctor said that was a worst-case scenario."

"Doctors have been treating women like children for centuries."

There's a knock on the door, and Bunny comes in.

She throws herself down on the bed beside Tory. "And now the graduate, exhausted from rehearsal in the hot sun, takes a load off her feet," Bunny says. "Also, by avoiding her own room, she hopes to escape interrogation at the hands of the mother of the graduate."

"What interrogation?" Tory says.

"She wants to know whether Bill's going to be at the ceremony."

"Is he?"

"Of course."

"You could introduce him as the father of the graduate," Tory says. "He's even older than Dad. Is he going to bring his wife with him?"

"He's not older than Dad. They're the same age."

"That makes it perfect."

"He's in terrific shape. He works out and plays tennis every day."

"You're going to ruin the graduation for Mom if she sees him there."

"She won't see him."

"Is Dad coming?"

"I didn't invite the b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

The sisters fall silent, both bouncing lightly on the bed, as if responding to some signal I can't hear. The resemblance of the two sisters lying on the bed is eerie and exciting. They seem to lend each other beauty, their juxtaposition creating a context for appreciation. In silence, they exercise a lifetime of intimacy. I hear the clop-clop of a horse outside on the road. Dust swarms in the wedge of suns.h.i.+ne coming in through the curtains; a shaft of yellow light catches the edge of Bunny's hair and appears to ignite it. Both women have their eyes closed. I watch them. They seem to be asleep.

When I go downstairs, Ginny is sitting at the kitchen table, reading a magazine. The TV is on, a game show. Ginny looks up and smiles. "My Gourmet Gourmet arrived, so I'm happy," she says. "I hardly ever cook anymore, but I love to read the recipes." I take a seat at the big round table that is the hub of family activity. The house has dens, living rooms and I'm not sure what else, but everyone hangs out in the kitchen. I wonder if it was always this way. arrived, so I'm happy," she says. "I hardly ever cook anymore, but I love to read the recipes." I take a seat at the big round table that is the hub of family activity. The house has dens, living rooms and I'm not sure what else, but everyone hangs out in the kitchen. I wonder if it was always this way.

Ginny closes the magazine and looks up at the television. Then she looks at me. "Do you think in this day and age it's possible to win an alienation of affection suit?"

"I believe it's very difficult," I say. "But I'm afraid it's not my area." I wish I could tell her something encouraging, save the farm, stay the execution. I imagine myself flat on my back while a hostile jury piles stones on the beam across my chest. I went into law school with a vague notion of righting wrongs. "I don't know much about divorce law," I say. "Corporate marriages are my field. But I could look into it for you."

"No, that's okay. I've got a lawyer. I shouldn't be bothering you for advice." She reaches over and pats my hand. "It's good to have you here. I'm so pleased that Tory has someone like you to take care of her. You're great together." She lights up a cigarette. "Carol-I'm just relieved that she's not in jail or the nuthouse. If Jesus is what it takes, fine. Although I must say having those two around makes me want to curse and smoke and drink just out of spite." She looks at her watch.

"How about a drink, Ginny? I picked up a bottle of vodka."

"Well, I suppose, since it's the weekend. ..."

"It's an occasion," I say. "I think we're well within our rights here." I fix the drinks. We were pleased to discover, last night, that we both like vodka on the rocks with a splash. Tory, less pleased, thinks her mother drinks too much.

"I'm so glad you're a sinner," Ginny says. "I can't tell you what a relief it is. Carol and Jim were here for two days before you arrived, and it felt like two weeks. Cheers."

The phone rings. Ginny jumps up and catches it on the second ring. She says h.e.l.lo three times and hangs up. "That could've been one of three people," she says after she's back at the table. She raises her hand and holds up a finger. "It could've been my husband, calling to see if I was out so he could sneak over and steal the silver. He tried one afternoon, but Bunny came home and caught him." She lifts a second finger. "It could've been Bill, Bunny's aging lover. He hangs up if I answer, because he knows I won't let him talk to Bunny. Can you tell me what a young girl would want with a fifty-five-year-old man? And he's married. He keeps telling her he's going to divorce his wife, but he certainly hasn't told the wife yet. Although she knows all about it." Ginny raises a third finger. "Bill's wife is the other mystery-phone-call candidate. She calls sometimes when she doesn't know where her husband is, to see if Bunny's home. She disguises her voice when she asks for Bunny."

Ginny takes a long sip of her drink. "You know, I almost feel relieved when I think of Mary drinking beer with boys her own age."

While I freshen our drinks, Ginny starts dinner. Mary calls to say she's having dinner at Laura's house. I wonder if Ginny knows about Heavy Chevy Billy. I feel uneasy, vaguely responsible for her. What if she's in an accident tonight? Lily cautiously enters the kitchen, without parents, self-conscious and pleased when Ginny and I compliment her on her new dress. She tells us her mommy made it. "Your mommy mommy made it?" Ginny says. made it?" Ginny says.

Lily nods.

"Christ really does work miracles," Ginny says.