In the doorway, he paused automatically for a glance at the brandy bottle, then turned his back on it and headed for the kitchen.
She was standing at the sink, a glass in her hand. Turning at his approach, she extended the glass to him and ordered him to look at it.
“What is it?”
“Just look at it.”
He took it from her hand, looked down into a glass half full of a cloudy brown liquid.
“Smell it.”
He did, and wrinkled his nose in distaste. It smelled of the bottom of a swamp, of something equally foul.
“It came out of the tap,” she explained. “I wanted a glass of water and that’s what came out of the tap. This house is driving me crazy.”
He reached to turn on the taps, the cold and then the hot. The water ran clear.
“I know,” she said. “It’s crystal clear now. But that’s what I got a minute ago.”
“Well, it’s an old house. Old plumbing.”
“I know it’s an old house.”
“And maybe it has nothing to do with the house. Maybe it’s the water supply. There was something in the paper not long ago, they were getting little red worms in their water up around Race and Rutledge. Maybe it’d be a good idea to let it run awhile before drinking, but—”
She shuddered, took the glass from him, poured its contents down the sink. “It’s this house,” she said. “And that stove, with the pilot lights going out all the damned time, and I’m forever smelling gas.”
“It’s not dangerous, you know.”
“So I’m told, but—”
He put an arm around her, rested his hand on her shoulder. She stiffened under his touch but he left his hand there. “You’re under a strain,” he said.
“Is that what it is?”
“Of course, and it’s understandable. Maybe it would be a good idea for you to see Gintzler again.”
“I’m not going crazy and I don’t need to see a psychiatrist.”
“He helped you before.”
“I’m not sure he helped me and I’m not sure I needed any help in the first place. I don’t want to see him now.”
“If you say so.”
“I say so.” She turned, drew away from him, and he withdrew his hand. There was a challenge in her eyes. He thought fleetingly of the bottle of brandy in his study — just a reflex thought, just a matter of habit — and then he rose to the challenge.
“This weekend,” he said, “I think you ought to take Ariel for a drive.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“A nice drive in the country. God knows it’s the perfect season for it. Ramble around inland or take a nice leisurely drive up the coast, just the two of you.”
“What are you getting at, David?”
“While you’re gone, I’ll clean out Caleb’s room.”
“While the child and I take a nice leisurely drive in the country.”
“That’s right.”
“While we’re doing this, you’ll clean out his room.”
He nodded.
“I don’t think I understand,” she said evenly. “Are you implying that Caleb’s room is dirty?”
“No.”
“Or disorganized? Are things out of place?”
“You know what I mean, Roberta.”
“You mean you want to get rid of his things. Throw them out.”
“Or give them away.”
“No.”
He flared. “For Christ’s sake, Roberta, why are you punishing yourself? What do you want to do, make the kid’s room into a national shrine? Or do you figure if you leave everything just the way it is maybe he’ll come back to it, like a soldier missing in action? Is that what it is?”
“Stop!”
“I’m not trying to hurt you.”
“You’re doing a good job of it. What are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to help you get over something.”
“What? His death? Or his life?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You want to erase Caleb. You want to deny he ever existed.”
“And you want to deny he’s dead.”
“That’s not true.”
“Are you sure of that?”
She turned away from him. Other thoughts came to mind and he fought to keep himself from giving voice to them. There were just too many things they couldn’t say to each other, too many subjects that didn’t get mentioned.
She said, “The night he died—”
“What about it?”
“When I woke you—”
“Yes?”
“You went to his room to check him.”
“So?”
“What did you do?”
“I checked him.”
“How?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, did you pick him up? Did you touch him? What did you do to check him?”
“I don’t remember.”
“You don’t remember?”
“Jesus,” he said. “It was the middle of the night and I just woke up out of a sound sleep. I didn’t pick him up. I suppose I touched him.”
“Maybe you just looked at him.”
“Maybe.”
“Did you put the light on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, please. You must know.”
He thought for a moment. “I didn’t turn the light on. There was enough light from the window.”
“And you looked at him.”
“Yes.”
“Was he alive?”
“Of course he was alive.”
“How do you know?”
“Roberta—”
“You don’t know for a fact, do you? You just looked at him to put my mind at rest. You didn’t take me seriously, did you?”
“I checked him and he looked fine. What the hell’s the matter with you, anyway?”
She didn’t answer immediately. Then she said, ”Why did my son die, David?”
“It just happened.”
“You mean you can’t explain it? I thought you had an answer for every question.”
“Sometimes I don’t even have the questions.”
“But I’m sure you have a theory.”
“Well—”
“I just knew you had a theory, David.”
He ignored the bitchiness in her voice. “There was something that came to me at the funeral,” he said. “When the minister was talking about the will of God.”
“Oh?”
“I was thinking how a century ago, even more recently than that, it was commonplace for a woman to bear half a dozen children in order to raise one to maturity. That was a part of natural selection. Infancy was a very hazardous period and only a small percentage of infants survived it—”
“So?”
“So... it occurred to me that crib death may be nature’s method of weeding out structurally weak children. Maybe a certain percentage of babies are born with constitutional defects that modern medicine isn’t yet aware of. But there’s some factor that makes them weak, and one night they go to sleep and don’t wake up—”
“And it’s just nature’s way.”
“That’s right.”
“The same as death is just nature’s way of telling us to slow down.”
“Roberta—”
“You filthy son of a bitch.”
He took a step backward, driven off by her words, by her tone of voice.
“You bastard,” she went on. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? The idea of my son being defective. So the great God of nature just took a wet rag and wiped him off the slate. You’d love to think of it that way, wouldn’t you?”
“Your son.”
She looked at him.
“Caleb was our son. Remember?”
And he thought, “You’re seeing him again, aren’t you? You and Channing. Don’t ask me how I know. I can read it, I can sense it. You’re the way you were on Coteswood Lane, before Caleb was born, before he was even conceived. The same sort of detachment, the same preoccupied air.