“How we parent,” Peter put in, “is a private decision. Do you have children, Mr. Blanding?” He, unlike Eliza, had missed the clues: the pen and pencil set, the coffee mug.
“Two, an eight-year-old and a three-year-old,” he said.
“Well, then you understand that some things are off-limits, not for others to comment upon.”
Blanding started to say something, checked himself. “I’ll do what I can do because I know it’s what Walter wants and I can’t see how it will harm him.” Again, Eliza felt guilty, wondered if the guilt read on her face. She didn’t like deceiving this man. “I don’t expect you to understand this, but I’ve really come to like him. He has such an interesting mind. I like the way he turns over words and phrases. He sees more than most people.”
But what, exactly, does he see? What did he see in me?
Peter and Eliza walked back to the hotel, hand in hand. “I could live in Charlottesville,” he said, but it was the only time either of them spoke during the walk, and he was just making conversation. Eliza didn’t think she could live here, although she didn’t blame Virginia for the memories she had of it. Still, it had been odd, skirting Middleburg on the way here. She could tell she and Peter were both weighed down by the secret they had withheld from Blanding. If Walter did confess to her, Blanding would not think her well intentioned. He might, in fact, believe her to be completely disingenuous, a glory hog who had considered only herself in this enterprise. But she could not allow herself to be affected by what Blanding, or anyone, thought of her. She was doing the right thing for the right reason. Almost.
The children wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon at the indoor pool, delighted as only children can be by the steamy, almost fetid room, with its fogged windows and chlorine smells. Eliza had never really liked swimming. She could do a passable bastard stroke, somewhere between breast and fly, and she was strong enough to swim in the currents of the Atlantic. It had been nice, when Iso was small, to go to the flat, friendly beaches of South Texas, where the steady stream of cars posed far more risk than the lazy wavelets that lapped the shore. But she didn’t really care for water. Whereas Peter was in his element, joining the children in the pool. She admired his body, still trim and athletic despite the fact that he had less time to exercise. She wondered if he still admired hers and decided to decide that he did.
“Mommy. Mommy? Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy?”
“What, Albie?”
“Aren’t you going to come in?”
“I didn’t bring a suit.”
“Then I’ll come out.”
“That’s okay, darling, I’m having fun watching you.”
Albie swam-walked back to his father and spent the next half hour squealing happily as Peter flung him away with great force. Peter would move toward the children like a lumbering gorilla, grunting the song about the man on the flying trapeze. Even Iso, presumably too big for such nonsense, begged for a turn, shrieking with laughter. They did this over and over again, never tiring.
Change the sound track and the setting, and it might look terrifying, Eliza thought. But did that work the other way around? Were there terrible things that could appear lovely if framed differently? She remembered a moment in a Piggly Wiggly, when she had been difficult and obdurate, arguing for a snack that Walter had arbitrarily decided was off-limits. This was toward the end, perhaps a day or so before they happened upon Holly on the road. Walter put his hand on the back of her neck, viselike.
“How nice,” the checker had said, “to see a brother and sister who are affectionate with one another.”
Three days later, he took her to dinner in a nice restaurant, one with linen tablecloths and silver, and told her she could have anything on the menu. Again, the waitress complimented Walter on his solicitous manner toward his little sister.
An hour later, he raped her.
Eliza watched as Albie, then Iso, flew through the air with the greatest of ease, screaming with laughter.
34
TRUDY DID NOT CONSIDER HERSELF a Luddite. She liked technology. But she also believed machines required several generations before they became attractive. Televisions, for example, and all their accessories-it had taken years before someone had figured out how to design a system that wasn’t a welter of cords and extensions, snaky as Medusa’s hair. Computers, too, were hideous when they first came along, and while laptops were smaller, they were still ugly to her way of thinking. Even those clamshells, especially those clamshells, which one was supposed to carry like a purse. As if Trudy would ever own such a purse. And no matter what computer one used, e-mail itself was ugly, begging the eye to skim, flee. She wanted no part of it.
She prided herself on keeping a stock of rich, creamy monogrammed paper, writing notes as necessary. Or picking up a phone-a phone, not a cell-when she had something to say to someone. Her sons had pleaded with her to get an e-mail account, dangling visions of daily photos of the grandsons, more frequent communication. But e-mail, in Trudy’s view, wasn’t communication. It was a one-sided conversation, zipping back and forth, barely connecting. Terry had an account and she checked it a few times a week, but she never hit the “reply to” button. And, yes, sometimes, there were photos of grandchildren, but they existed only on the screen, she had to sit there if she wanted to look at them, as she didn’t have a proper printer for photos. “We could send them to your phone,” her sons said, but her cell phone was just a phone, with no other capacity, and it spent most of its life in its little cradle of a charger.
But since Terry’s conversation with their Sussex friend, Trudy’s mind had returned again and again to a tantalizing detaiclass="underline" I got you the number. You can put it in a reverse look-up. She hadn’t understood what the woman meant at the time and hadn’t wanted to ask, revealing her presence on the line. But Trudy was an old hand at puzzling through things, and she put it together eventually. All she had to do was plug Elizabeth Lerner’s number into the computer and there it was, her street and zip. She could even call up photographs. O brave new world, she thought.
Trudy had dialed Elizabeth Lerner’s number several times since she obtained it, at first hanging on only to hear it ring over and over, then hanging up on the first or second ring. No voice mail, how odd. And why was no one ever home to answer it? She always called on weekends or around supper, the most likely time to find people at home. Did they ignore the calls, thinking she was a telemarketer? Did they have caller ID, which would out her as T Tackett? Idly she picked up her phone, even as she continued to stare at the photograph of the Benedicts’ white, nothing-special house. She thought longingly of T’n’T, their farm in Virginia, which had managed to be gracious and comfortable, no small feat when someone has three rowdy sons. The name-she didn’t regret it, refused to find belated menace in its pun. The Tacketts hadn’t even chosen it, although they had laughed when a friend had made the joke at a party, then later gave them the painted sign they put at the foot of their long drive. She had considered it arch acknowledgment of their good fortune. Trudy always had known that life could blow up at any moment. But perhaps that was hindsight.
She listened to the phone ring. She knew the photograph was not live-the trees were green and leafy-but she couldn’t help feeling that she was watching the house, that she might see a curtain twitch or a light come on, even hear her own call ringing inside. Answer me. Talk to me.
Not even an hour later, she was standing in front of it. Funny, because the Maryland side of the Beltway always seemed miles, galaxies away, a place she seldom ventured. But the highways had been almost eerily empty. Oh, it was Saturday, she remembered. Terry had gotten up to go play golf, not go into work. She zipped around 495 and across River Road, telling herself that she was bound for Tysons Corner, then the Saks on Wisconsin Avenue.