The Writer's Children

The Writer’s Children

Rebecca Ash

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Chapter one

Serotinus

November 2007

The late afternoon held a unique light, as though everything had a slight touch of silver. The metallic-looking sea crested on the grey sand with white tips and the grass on the bank blew in ripples with the wind; the sky above was almost the same non-descript colour of the sand, a complete grey dome covering the land.

The taxi pulled up at the gate where she had requested, and Anna paid the driver the fare, forgetting to leave a tip, and feeling instantly guilty about this as she hauled her bag from the trunk and he drove off, his red tail lights moving further and further along the coastal road; admonishing eyes.

She put her bag down by her feet, unconsciously wiping her hands down the side of her light dress, shivering inside its material. Emotions of her return had not come to her yet, as she looked around her at the familiar yet distant scene. The wind whipped her thin, lacklustre hair and she felt like a tall, gray statue amid the equally fairly bleak scenery.

Everything was where it always had been. The beach in front of her; to her right, about a mile along the road, the town of Eastleigh, the buildings curving in tune with the undulation of the land, rolling down to the rocky town beach. To her left was the long road, leading eventually to the town of Westport and then to the I-95 and more populated domains.

And behind her was home, ‘The Admiral’s House’, stated the sign on the gate that led to the drive-way. She pushed this open, surprising herself by not remembering the tremendous creak it gave. The house sat square in the middle of the large garden, looking as if it had been there as long as nature itself, with its haphazard, sprawling manner and the peeling paint of the weather-boarded facade. The porch ran right the way around the house, and Anna wondered if in summer it was still covered by that purple plant whose name she always forgot.

No cars sat in the drive, but that was not unusual this time of day, she knew.

A drop of rain fell squarely onto her nose, and she picked up her bag, walked up the drive-way, and tried the screen door, then the front door. Of course, as always, it was open, despite constant warnings to her parents from just about everyone, that crime did exist, even in this quiet corner of Connecticut.

Anna stepped gingerly into the two foot space between the screen and the front door, before opening the door into the main hallway. The Mud room, her mother called this, and with reason, for it was always filled with muddy shoes and boots. The old parka coats still hung up on the hooks, giving off that waxy smell that Anna had detested as a child, and yet now she suddenly had a desire to throw herself upon them, inhaling deeply.

She opened the door to the house, and all at once was hit with a thousand memories, evoked by familiar odours. The smell of home reached into her throat, of mothballs and candles, cooking, ink, paper, smoke, pot pouri, damp dog. The wooden floorboards creaked reassuringly under her weight, as if they knew her. She looked around her. To her right was the closed door of the dining room, with its long medieval table that they used to pretend was their pirate ship, when their mother wasn’t looking. Anna looked to her left - another closed door, and this was where the faint smell of mothballs came from. This was the ‘parlour’, or ‘great room’ as they called it, a large, beautiful room, with blue-striped wall paper and silk sofas from Thailand. It had always been strictly out of bounds, except for a few terse times when grandparents came for a visit and the children had been dressed up and told to sit still, be on their best behaviour.

Ahead of her was the wide, wooden staircase, and other doors leading off - one to the library, another large room full of a vast quantity of ancient, dusty books, a fireplace and many green leather chairs; at least, these were the objects Anna remembered. Another door hid the stairs down to the den and the basement, and a door at the end of the hallway led to a few more steps up to the breakfast room, another room barely used, and then only when visitors stayed over.

Anna opened each one of these doors, starting with the dining-room. The walls were a dark red, the fireplace at the end of the room not fitting in with the colonial style of the house but more with a gothic era, as did the candle-lights on the walls. She had never really liked this room, she recalled, and closed that door, going across the hall to the parlour. This room, in contrast, was light, with two bay windows giving grand sea views, the white floor-length curtains giving an airy feel. In the corner of the room was a baby grand, and the bar, with all the drinks that had seemed so foreign to them as children, like colourful yet untouchable jewels. This all changed of course, with the onset of their respective teenage years. About ten years in all had been spent with one or another of them taking the easiest bottle to purloin, drinking from it with friends at the bottom of the garden, or on the beach, and quickly re-filling it with a non-alcoholic liquid of the same colour. She wondered now, did her parents know about this? Did they just say nothing, knowing this to be a particular rite of passage that all young people go through, occasionally making themselves sick enough to not want to do it again for months? Probably, she acknowledged.

Anna ran a hand over one of the silk covers on the sofa. So smooth and delicate, with a few snags and threads here and there, as if to reaffirm to her that time had indeed passed. She looked up at the paintings on the walls; understated, small in size, rich in quality. She left that room and went next into the library. A tall, abundantly green house-plant was the only new addition here; everything else was the same, the musty smell of books, those green leather chairs, a fire having been lit and extinguished perhaps even the night before. There was a very old feel about this room, in fact, about the whole house, as there had been as long as Anna could remember. She ran her hands over a row of leather-bound books, long forgotten masterpieces by long dead writers she had never heard of, the writing on the cracked bindings in burnished gold. A gilt frame with a small, crude oil painting of a horse was the only decoration of any sort above the fireplace. The horse was side profiled, with a gray sky and rolling fields in the background. It reminded Anna of a visit she had paid to a friend in a neighbouring town, many years before, whose parents owned a riding farm. There had been several friends there that day, and Anna remembered nothing about the visit or the other young girls – her only memory was of rain starting, and standing by a fence watching a horse gallop up and down a field. While the other girls soon grew bored of this, Anna remained, as her face grew wet and cold, and watched the beautiful creature, trying to work out whether it was running for the pure joy of being able to or to protest against its confinement. Its muscles rippled under the gloss of its brown coat, each movement so perfectly in tune with the other. It tossed its head and let its mane fly freely as it ran, making small whinnying sounds as it moved.

Anna pushed on with the need to re-familiarise herself with her old home, opening the door that led downstairs. With no desire to go into the cold and vacuous basement, she entered the den, and felt something akin to sadness wash over her. Here, she had forgotten, was where the photographs were. Some of course were dotted around the house. Her mother had never believed in posed portraits with the misty background and everyone smiling so she had spent hours, years, with her camera, snapping them all when they weren’t looking. As a testament to this, the pictures that filled the room in their many frames were very true to life, hardly any of them posed. Sean, the first-born, and one would argue, in every family the most secretly treasured, had perhaps the most photographic space dedicated to him - his first time swimming in the sea, in town eating an ice cream, with a sunburnt nose, him looking over Rachel’s crib at her scrunched-up red face, him with toddler Rachel and Tim as a baby. Sean with their father on a trip to Paris, the first of many. Then one of Tim as a toddler and Anna as a newborn. Countless pictures of them as children, sitting in the bath with foam on their faces, others with them grinning up at the camera, toothless. Pictures punctuated with forgotten childhood friends; Anna could not recall any of their names. Pictures of them getting older, Sean in his first car, Rachel dressed up to go to ballet, Tim with his tongue out, poring over homework. Samuel, the ‘surprise’, just born.

Anna studied all of these pictures, realising that most of them were very typical of their characters; Sean holding some sporting trophy or another as a teenager, and then with longer hair, off to Harvard, looking serious; Rachel dressed for the prom or some other dance, a handsome date by her side; and one of her wedding day, with Bill, her hair a perfect shade of caramel, her mega-watt smile bright white, her dress a shiny pearl. The party afterwards in a very expensive, gilded hotel in the city. Tim, smiling, his fair hair dappled by the sun, his face pale, even then, sitting by a pool, or reading a book, or looking past the camera. Anna, always looking shyly at the camera, or hiding her head away, or inevitably, pushing her hands down by her sides, or biting her nails. One of her and Rachel, her sister pulling a model-type pose and laughing, Anna with braces in her mouth, trying to keep her lips closed over them, hands down by her side.

Many pictures of Sam of course, too, the fifth child, the baby of the family. Pictures of his first ride on a bike without stabilisers as if this was biggest achievement in the world, even though the other four had done this before him. Pictures through from first day at school in his small blue blazer right up to high school graduation from Phillips-Exeter, proud smile about to break into infectious giggles, his whole life ahead of him now.

Anna stood up from the kneeling position she had taken to look at this one, and found herself looking at the photo she had most dreaded - the large one of Tim, that took centre stage on the mantelpiece, his blue eyes so clear and his smile so child-like. Fair hair parted to one side to make him look like a little angel. He had been about fourteen then - two years before he died, she realised. Did he look ill? Could they have known? He had always been pale and thin, even when the rest of them were bronzed by days in the sun and robust from healthy appetites, he remained the same. Anna had found lately to her private distress that her memories of him seemed to be fading - she could no longer remember the exact way he walked, or what expressions his face had. And the actual memories of moments, for what is life if not a series of moments, were disappearing too. She could barely recall a single conversation they had had, despite her being fifteen when he died. She remembered the funeral with crystal clarity, but could barely remember a word her older brother had said to her; a scrap of any time they had spent together.

Standing up, she felt the blood rush to her head, and put a cool hand to her face.

Looking around her, she took in the familiar brown couch, comfortable and worn, and the general clutter that managed to evade the rest of the house but always ended up here. Piles of Sunday papers and the supplementary magazines, books all over the place, lying open half-way through, cracked spines, forgotten, another one started. The television was old, a relic of the late seventies in its brown wooden splendour. A mug of cold tea balanced precariously on top of papers on an Indian coffee table, its insides a day old or more, with a milky rim forming around the edge. This room had French windows opening onto a small patio that had steps leading to the lawn at the side of the house. Rain streaked the glass panes at a slow rate, threatening to become heavier.

Anna turned away from the room, reluctant to look at any more photos of Tim. She was tempted to go upstairs and sleep, sleep maybe forever. Instead, she turned and went into the kitchen.

This room, always the hub of their house, instantly screamed out childhood to her the way net curtains will scream out bad taste to an interior decorator; the thousands of meals she must have eaten around the long, pale wooden table, the times she raced through the back door playing tag. The times they had slid on the smooth flagstone floors in their socks. Artefacts of their collective youth were strewn about the room, twenty-five-year old finger paintings still tacked to the walls, mother’s and father’s day cards still attached to the pin board alongside other old things, only visible peeking from behind the new things that were pinned up there such as the town meeting next Thursday to talk about the state of the bridge over the Saugatuck river, postcards from friends, a letter from Sam at college. Past these, Anna spied letters from Exeter, and Eastleigh High, that Rachel had moved herself to, for no particular reason and under not a lot of objection - it had always been fairly clear that Rachel’s ambitions did not stretch to those of academia. Anna had always been faintly surprised at this - for people like her parents to raise a child like Rachel who was head cheerleader and prom queen and all the other things exemplified by teenage movies.

Pinned to the board were some cut-outs from various newspapers, dated fairly recently. Anna plucked them from the wall.

“ ‘The Dreams of Darwin’ is, for want of a better description, superficial, pretentious bilge. Billed as a ‘radically biting futuristic satire from one of the generations’ finest writers’, it rides on the back of former and fading success, pretending to be something it is not.” Steven Jones, New York Times.

‘What a shame it is when talent goes to waste... as is exactly what has happened with Jacob Jacoby’s latest drivel, ‘The Dreams of Darwin.’ From the unimaginative title, right through the unbelievable plot, the obvious metaphors and strikingly over-zealous tone to the ridiculous conclusion, unfortunately this one should go straight to the top shelf and be left well alone if you are unlucky enough to receive it for Christmas.” Sarah Welmsley, Daily Post.

“Oh, woe was me when I was given the hefty task of reviewing Jacoby’s newest. Allegedly a satire focusing on the human condition, one is never quite sure how to take a particular book from this particular author - give him a bad review and he will turn around with the response that you did not understand it - or that he does not care. Give him a glowing report and he will shrug, shying away from the ever-present media spotlight. So how to take this novel? Not very well, I am afraid. This paper was one of the first to pick up on the brilliance of ‘The Bones of the New’, his first book and post-Vietnam triumph. Followed quickly by a few other fairly well-written works on the back of his previous glory, the tone has just slipped so far below the mark now that had this been submitted to a publishing house by a firs- time writer, it would be not seen fit to spill a mug of coffee upon.” Louis Harvey, New England Literary Review

“Since the death of his son, Jacob Jacoby’s work has, alas, fallen by the wayside. Whereas once billed as a latter day Kerouac, a saint amongst the young, a voice of truth, fuelled by gritty optimism, his latest novel ‘The Dreams of Darwin’ is yet another searing example of how negativity, when not actually intended, will spill over all the pages of a book and leave a sour taste in your mouth. Only partially redeemed in places by traces of humour, intentional or not, this pretentious quaff of a novel leaves you none the wiser about the author’s intentions, and indeed wishing you had not wasted your money.” Fairfield County Post.

“Four out of ten stars.” Woman’s Weekly.

Anna pictured him, reading these reviews, raging about them, declaring all critics incompetent undergraduate buffoons who could not make it as novelists themselves, who did not understand irony or elegance, cutting them out with haste, sticking them on the board, raging some more, then reading them again, standing looking at the board, mumbling to himself, nodding in places, even chuckling occasionally, and retiring to his study.

Anna plucked the recent letter from Sam down and unfolded it.

                                      20th September

Hi guys

How are you doing? Hows things up there? How’s Boyson?

Alls good here, I made the team! Which is great news because now you can come down and watch one of our games with a purpose... when do you think that will be?

I’m thinking of majoring in psych, but I’m still not sure. Our proffessor, Larchins, says we’ve got plenty of time to chose, so I’m kind of just having a blast at the moment!

Last night we went to a frat house for a party, and one of the guys there asked if I had ever thought of joining them. I guess having a famous (ish)  father helps in many ways eh! Because most of the guys in the fraternity have got connections of come sort, loads of them political, but one of them is related to Mick Jagger in some way and Tony Curtis in another way, so there you go! So I think I will join, if the initiation thing isn’t too hideous, but then again I’ll never be allowed to tell because its all this big secret! Should be a blast though, the frat house is amazing and you get all sorts of privilidges...

Well I’d better go, I’ve got a paper due and I guess I had better haul it to the library. Say hi to everyone for me, although I gues the only one you see alot of is Rachel, with Ella.

Take care, and come for one of my games really soon!

Love,. Sam

x

Anna smiled at the Sam’s mixture of complacent insecurity, typical of many other youngest children. The way he referred to their parents as ‘you guys’ was obviously a new, college thing, and even though he secretly knew that his parents just never would travel down to Pennsylvania to sit in the bleachers and cheer him on, he still asked, almost begged.  She wondered how their father would take the frequent spelling mistakes – possibly as a personal insult.

Anna put the letter down on the table, and saw there was also a picture of Ella, Rachel’s daughter, pinned to the notice-board. She was around two and a half, Anna calculated, with the innocent curve of cheek that children have and eventually lose, blonde like Rachel, with dark lashes over blue eyes.

Anna looked around her at the silent kitchen, at the clash between old and new, the modern granite work surfaces, installed as a concession to woodworm a few years ago, contrasting with the enormous antique dresser that took up one of the walls. From the windows she could see the back of the garden if she looked one way, and the other view showed the side of the house, and a portion of the beach.

The day was turning darker, the waves boiling into a frenzy, the light in the kitchen still soft but dimming. Anna turned no lights on; instead, opened the back door.

‘Boyson?’ She called, fearful there would be no answer. ‘Boyse?’

A yellow Labrador came lumbering from the side of the house and without acknowledging Anna, strolled past her into the kitchen, shook his fur and flopped his sturdy body onto a rug in front of the aga. Anna noticed how old he had become, his eyes no longer shined as they had when he was a puppy and his joints seemed stiff. He rested his head in an almost sorrowful manner on his front paws, and closed his eyes, like a weary old man shutting out the past.

Anna sat down at the table, growing cold in her thin dress, and examined her hands. There was a crack of dry skin on one of her knuckles, and her nails were bitten down. She began to cry. Tears dropped from the end of her nose onto the wooden table, where they were absorbed after sitting bubble-like for a few seconds. She put her head into her bare arms, and sat like that for some time.

In the hallway, the front door opened, and closed.

Mary Jacoby came into the kitchen after a few moments, and if she felt surprise at seeing her youngest daughter back at home after three years, she said nothing. Anna did not lift up her head.

‘I’ve been down at this new Italian market in town,’ Mary said, filling up the kettle. ‘I love the way we Americans have suddenly cottoned on to the cultures of Europe, and now we hold a peasant style market every Friday in Main Street, although I do doubt very much that in the peasant houses of Tuscany they serve twenty-five dollar Parma ham and olive oil in porcelain dishes to dunk sixteen dollar loaves of fine foccacia bread into. Cup of tea?’

Anna lifted her head as though she had been asleep, and looked at her mother with bleary eyes. She nodded.

Mary picked up two mugs from the draining board, and, turning on her tap to rinse them, automatically removed her engagement and wedding rings from her left hand, placing them with a small ‘chink’ beside the sink. This gesture Anna had witnessed countless times, and to her, had always seemed a very adult gesture. One of mindless responsibility – consequently, every time she saw someone remove their rings in the same manner, she thought of her mother.

Mary made the tea, and brought it to the table, sitting opposite Anna, putting a newspaper down in front of her.

‘Cigarette?’ She offered.

‘I don’t smoke,’ Anna said, eyeing the Parliament packet proffered.

‘Oh yes, all this California healthy stuff, I remember.’ Mary lit a cigarette and crossed her legs. ‘Do they still all eat lentils and lima beans for dinner or have they progressed to real vegetables?’

‘Those things will kill you one day,’ Anna said, taking a sip of the sweet tea.

‘What, lima beans, or cigarettes? Well, so could a bus, or a mad gunman who breaks in, or a nuclear holocaust. Or a plane, which I assume you’ve just come on. I don’t know how on earth you young people do it.’ Mary shuddered, inhaling deeply.

‘Do what?’

‘Just hop onto a plane, fly here and there and everywhere... it is so unnatural, I think, to be in a metal tube, miles above the ground.”

‘Ma, it’s the safest form of travel. You’re more likely to get killed by a moose on Christmas Day than you are in a plane crash.’

‘Tell that to the lumber jacks in upstate New York last week who got attacked by a moose. Or in fact, to the poor people of 9/11.’

‘You know what I mean. It’s far more likely that you’ll die in a car.’

‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Have you seen half the cars these women drive around here? Safer than Fort Knox - the size of these jeep things that they all have now!’

‘What?’

‘All the Stepfords... they drive these enormous jeeps or SUV’s to take their two tiny children to ballet or soccer practise or Russian poetry classes.. Half of them don’t know what they’re doing in them.’

‘Aren’t you referring to your own daughter in that diatribe?’

‘Well, that’s just a phase,’ Mary said, flicking her ash on the side of the glass ashtray and drinking from her mug.

‘Really? And Bill the Dill is happy with the ‘Stepford’ life being just a phase is he? Isn’t that what he works oh so hard for on those trading floors?’

‘Don’t call him that... Rachel will get very upset if you call him that,’ Mary gave her daughter a look she had been giving her children for years.

‘Does she even notice he’s around? Surely he is just a means to an end...from what I’ve heard she’s got her big McMansion in Eastleigh like all the women she ever tried to emulate, Jacuzzi in the bathroom, full-time nanny, lunch every day with the clones...’

‘Now, stop that right now. It’s not like you’ve been here the whole way through, is it?’

It was Anna’s turn to give Mary the look she had been getting from them all through the years.

‘But I will tell you this,’ Mary leant forward, as always, ready to defend and criticise her children in one fell swoop. ‘She has been up here most days, not saying very much, just moaning about Bill, how he’s too traditional - she wanted to go out dancing, or ‘clubbing’ as you would call it, the other day, of all things, on a Wednesday night, and he said no, and she was mad... I said to her, I said ‘Rachel, you are not free and single anymore, you have a daughter and a husband and you cannot just go off dancing...Do you think I did that when I had at least two of you in diapers at any time?’ Honestly, what more does she want? They have a glorious house, if not to my taste, a nanny, a whole Portuguese cleaning team, so she never has to lift a finger, enough money to make your eyes go silly, all the clothes and things a girl could want..’

Mary stubbed out her cigarette and reached for another one. ‘Now don’t look at me like that. You know that I would not say that about anyone else... but with Rachel, material goods always seemed to really actually make her happy, I don’t know... I suppose she is hankering for something... Honestly, I don’t know, you children will be the death of me... There’s Rachel, moaning like a child even though her husband takes her to La Mar and Sanito’s and all the other fancy eating places that keep popping up in town due to all the money that’s here now... Sam who seems to be more intent on joining this fraternity than getting a degree, Sean hiding out in some God forsaken shack in the Berkshires doing who knows what, and here you are... you children... I suppose you won’t tell me why you’re here? Now, not that I’m not pleased, and your father will be delighted.’

‘Where is he?’

‘He went down to the city to give a talk at the University... So...?’

Anna shrugged.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is it to do with that young man of yours... Will, is it?’

‘No... He doesn’t know I left, actually.’

‘What? You just got on a plane... and left California, without saying a word to him? What about college? Your professors?’

‘I’m taking a very early Spring Break.’

‘Oh!’ Mary threw her hands up in the air as if in despair and stood up. ‘You children will be the death of me, not smoking. I often wonder, what did we do wrong? Was there not enough discipline? Because all of you always seem to be... I don’t know... discontent... Rachel, with everything she could ever want, whinging like a child, Sean, divorced and left his job, trying to find some great... epiphany in the woods, Sam trying to play the college golden boy, you, upping and leaving that college and your young man... did your Aunt know you’ve left?’

‘No.’

‘She’s been very good to you over the years you know, very good, when we asked her to keep an eye on you.’

‘Yes, yes. I don’t know... I just felt... like I couldn’t breathe, do you know what I mean?’

‘What, too much work? Problems with friends? What?’

‘No, nothing like that. I don’t know, claustrophobic or something, or like... I just don’t know. I just had to leave. I got sick of the sunshine.’

‘What about your roommates?’

Anna shrugged.

‘I don’t seem to be able to have fun with them anymore...’ she trailed off. Mary set about making another cup of tea, glancing at her daughter every now and then.

Making friends had always come easily to Anna, which in turn had come as something of a surprise. Quiet by nature, her shyness was mistaken for detachment, and many people befriended her not for warmth, but for respect they seemed to have for what they perceived as disdain and aloofness. Several strong friendships had formed over the years, at boarding school, and at college, without Anna ever having to try. One of her teachers at Philips Exeter had pointed out to her that to come from a family with many brothers and sisters was to feel natural being around many other people, so even the shy person who has come from a large family will most likely be surrounded by others. This seemed to be the way of it, until recently, when she had wanted to be alone more and more frequently, feeling instead like the only child the teacher had also made reference to, who finds solace in his own company.

‘So... you just got on a plane, and came here?’

‘Yes. I put it on my credit card, flew to JFK, got a train to Grand Central, then another up to Eastleigh, and a taxi to the house.’

‘Well. I must say, all you kids are lucky there’s money. What if you had no money? Hmm? If your father had written no books and we were poor?’

‘Then I’d probably have had to work two jobs to stay at college and I wouldn’t be questioning everything or be such a brat, and be glad to be where I was, but secretly envious yet disdainful of the wealth I saw around me at college.’

Anna folded her arms, looking down at a freckle on her skin.

‘Oh, you children... always questioning things, always looking for answers where there are none...’ Mary sat down again, and took another cigarette from the packet.

To her surprise, Anna did the same.

‘I thought you didn’t smoke,’ Mary said, a half-amused look on her face.

Anna said nothing, but took the lighter and lit the tip, inhaling deeply, gratefully.

‘You see what you reduce me to,’ she said to her mother.

‘Oh yes.’ Her mother replied, then glanced down at the folded newspaper in front of her. ‘Look at this. After ten years, they’re finally going to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Execute that man. The one who killed that doctor in 1996, 97.’

Anna pulled the paper toward her.

She read: ‘“The execution date for Philip Dwight, murderer of abortion doctor, Dr Gary Tremont, has been set”. I didn’t think they would do it.’

‘I didn’t think you even know what this was.’

‘Just because I’ve been in California, they still show the news.’

‘Terrible case.’

‘Must be a nightmare for you. Here you are, pro-choice, pro-abortion, whatever, and yet against the death penalty.’

Mary shrugged.

‘What I think won’t make them change their minds.’

‘Do you think he deserves to die?’

‘You know how I feel about capital punishment.’

‘But, for argument’s sake, this Philip Dwight shot this Dr Tremont in cold blood, just because of what he does, or did, for a living.’

‘And this Philip Dwight was just eighteen when he did it - if you look at his backstory, from a ferociously Catholic family, the types who picket outside these clinics, bomb them even, you know the types I mean,’ Mary said, laying her hands over the newspaper.

‘But he still did it. He was still compos mentis. But does he deserve to die?’ Anna said, biting her fingernails.

‘Who makes the judge, or whoever decides, god?’

‘Who made Philip Dwight god when he took his father’s gun, waited patiently for Dr Tremont to leave his surgery, then shot him twice?’

‘Of course, I see your point. I never knew you were such an eye-for-an-eye child.’

‘I’m not. For the record, I’m anti the death penalty. But it’s not out of any misguided sympathy for the criminals. If it really were eye-for-an-eye, this Dwight would just be shot when least expected. Rapists would get raped. Robbers would be stripped of their personal possessions. But the death penalty, as it is, here, lethal injection, allows the condemned man to have a last supper, final rites, and be sedated. No such luck for his victim.’

‘What should be done with him then?’ Mary asked her daughter.

‘It shouldn’t have to happen in the first place. In an ideal world there would be none of this sort of crime. People would accept that abortions happen, they might not like it, but that’s the way it is. I’ve seen it on the news. Frightened young girls hurrying past the protesters into a clinic. What do these people think they can achieve?’

‘Live and let live, and all that,’ Mary nodded.

‘And all that.’

‘Alas, it just doesn’t work like that. Sure, in an ideal world, everyone would be accepting of everyone else, if you are going to be religious, people would respect that and you would respect other people’s beliefs, etc, etc, but it doesn’t work like that.’

Anna looked at her mother.

‘It should.’

They sat in a fairly companionable silence for a while, Anna smoking with a hungry ferocity, Mary looking out of the window.

‘No Indian summer this year.’

‘What?’

‘No Indian summer. Global warming. When I was young, summer would stretch on til late October.’

‘It’s November,’ Anna said, absent-mindedly.

‘A harsh winter this year as well, they say. Definitely a white Christmas. Will you be joining us this year?’

There was no pressure in the voice, as another mother might have added.

‘I don’t know. Last year about seven of us rented a beach house.’

‘I remember you saying. Last year, Rachel and Bill and Ella came, and Bill’s mother, and Sam and his girlfriend. No Sean, but that’s no surprise. Bill gave Rachel a necklace worth three thousand dollars.’ Mary opened her hands in a gesture that said she really did not understand this behaviour.

Anna smiled slightly.

‘Ah, but don’t you know, mother, that in this modern age, love can of course be measured in the amount of money one spends at Christmas?’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘And what gifts did you dish out this year? Copies of Dad’s latest book again?’

Mary snorted at the memory.

‘I don’t think that would have gone down well with Mrs McGovern. Old money you know, so always thinks she can identify with your father. I, of course, do not even originate from new money, so she is still slightly wary of me.’

Mother and daughter both smiled.

‘You know, I often wonder what Tim would be like, now. He would be twenty-two now. I wonder if he would have been the one that I couldn’t moan about.’

‘Oh, most likely, mother. He would probably be a happy nuclear physicist, saving the world, and content with his life and character at the same time.’

‘Thanks, smart ass.’

‘Or, come to think of it, he’d probably be as screwed up as the rest of us. Maybe trying to make it as a neo-gothic poet in the shack next door to Sean. Maybe even addicted to some hallucinogenic drug.’

‘Perhaps.’ Mary gave a wry smile. ‘But I like to think that maybe he would have moved away, maybe to London, where he has a job, as a scientist of course, as he was always so good at that, and he has a lovely apartment, overlooking the river Thames, he paints and sees his healthy-minded group of friends in his spare time. He’s engaged, perhaps, too, to a lovely English girl called Rose who is neither too clever nor too dumb, so none of you can pounce on her when he brings her home for Christmas.’

They sat in silence for a while, the air slowly filling up with a fog of smoke, as the day grew even darker.

‘Boyson looks old,’ Anna said.

‘He is old.’ Mary plucked another Parliament from the pack and lit it.

‘I was just saying.’

Anna drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Do you remember, who was it that once told me that was a sign of calling the devil.’

Mary looked up, wide-eyed from her reverie.

‘What are you talking about?’

Anna drummed her fingers again.

‘That. Maybe it was one of the grandparents who told me off once for trying to summon the devil.’

Mary looked slightly bemused and shrugged.

‘Who knows?’

Thunder rumbled in the distance; from somewhere over the sea a flash of lightning illuminated the sky.

‘Come on.’

‘What?’ Anna asked, looking up at her mother.

‘Tell me why you’re really back? There must be a reason? As glad as we are to see you, one does not up and leave one’s life.’

Anna smiled at the ‘we’; for after decades of marriage, it appeared to be possible to gauge someone’s pleasure without them even being present.

‘Maybe one does.’

‘Well, maybe one would like to tell me what that young man is going to say! Have you met his family? His father is a surgeon, an eminent one I gather from Betsy Willis, who I mentioned him to.’

‘Sorry,’ Anna shook her head. ‘There’s too much lunacy here. One minute you’re wondering what’s wrong with me, then worried about what Will’s ‘eminent’ family think? And for the record, he’s a plastic surgeon. In Sherman Oaks.’

‘Ah, I thought she was looking a little tight around the eyes. No frown lines, do you know? I would never do that myself. No way. Nature gives you one body, and time takes its toll for sure, especially after five children, but there’s no way in hell you’d see me, lying on a hospital bed, needles at the ready.’ Mary shivered with what appeared to be disgust.

‘What if you were disfigured after an accident?’

‘Well... how much?’

‘You know - really awful. Nose gone, lips on your forehead, burns all over your body. That kind of thing?’

‘You know what? After Tim being sick for so long, I never want to step foot in another hospital, especially not to do something as stupid as to beautify myself.’

Mary dragged on her cigarette almost with defiance and looked out of the window.

Anna, unsure what to say, took another from her mother’s pack and lit it. The smoke tasted like calming acid on her throat.

‘I just felt everyone was so... fake.’ She said, after a while.

Mary looked around, at her daughter, who was picking at the bit of wood on the table.

‘Stop that. It’ll get stuck under your nail - do you remember when Rachel got a needle stuck under her nail after trying to pierce her own ears? Horrendous pain - don’t do it. What do you mean, fake?’

‘Just so phoney, you know? All concerned about how much money there is, or what party to go to, or what party to support for that matter, or what club to belong to, who to date, what are the best authors to read, what to wear, how to do hair properly, how to climb the fucking social ladder...’

‘See now, if you’d gone to a state college, none of this would have happened.’ Mary said, a small smile on her lips. ‘But what do you mean, phoney?’

‘Well, everyone’s a phoney.’ Anna rubbed her face with her hands, leaving red marks down it that faded back to white almost immediately. ‘I have this lecturer, Dr Wash - can you believe that name? And he’s a poet of some sort, meant to be a really famous guy, ok? But he’s the worst of it. You would think a poet if anybody would be the last person to be trying to climb the ladder, or writing about just exactly what he knows his audience will want to hear...’

‘Well... what is poetry to you?’

‘Something beautiful, something serene even - something from the soul... not writing for money or applause. And there’s my English lit professor, Stace. He’s even worse perhaps, than old Doc Wash. On graduation day, standing there cheesing it with only the Honours students for the parents with the most expensive cameras...and he has these after class ‘gatherings’, where he gets the cream of the crop, who incidentally are the most gullible, and sits them in his faux panelled study, listens to what they think is rare classical music but really he got on a free CD of ‘Classics from the Movies’, and he tells them all this bullshit... I went to a couple of meetings, I was invited you know, lucky old me... and they idolise him, not because he is telling them anything remotely important about life, but rather sits there name-dropping about how he used to hang around with all these famous writers in the sixties and seventies and met Allen Ginsberg, which is a flagrant lie because he’s too young, I reckon anyway.... and you know, you just know that half the time he hasn’t even read any of these things he claims to know- he’s read the hype on the net and of course no-one’s going to disagree with a professor.,.. like old Wash... I took him this essay I wrote on Beloved, and he said it was marvellous, but a little deep - he said the grades weren’t there for my kind of analysis. I mean...’

Anna looked at her hands again, in despair.

Mary frowned.

‘You children.’

‘What?’ She frowned at her mother.

‘You are just, just the same as Sean, when he was in college. Banging on about the fake-ness of everyone, how everyone is the same, after the same things...’

‘Well, why do you think he’s living in a shack in the woods? He wants to get away from them all, too.’

‘You know what I think the problem is - all of you kids, more so you and Sean, you’re too smart for your own good. Desperately searching for enlightenment and killing yourselves in the process. Always questioning things, always going on and on about the ridiculousness of the human race, how you are the only few who can see beyond it.’

“Like Dad,’ Anna said pointedly.

Mary shrugged, in a non-committal fashion.

‘Well it’s true... if Pa hadn’t had these kinds of thoughts when he was younger, and gone to Vietnam, the book would never have been written, you’d most likely never have met, a whole generation would never have been wowed.’

‘Well, perhaps...’

‘Oh, but for sure, don’t you think? Had he have just been a run-of-the-mill teacher or something after college and Nam, had that part of his brain never worked, you wouldn’t have met.’

‘I think we would have met anyway. Don’t rock on your chair,’ Mary said, and Anna sat forward, unaware she had been doing it.

Mary stood up, and put the kettle on again.

‘You know, after all these years,’ she began, opening the door to the pantry, where the smaller freezer was, ‘your father has suddenly developed a liking for frozen pizza. I mean, honestly, he’s a middle-aged man, and suddenly, emerges from his study, demanding pizza, with pepperoni on top. This, from the man who used to claim to follow Buddhism, of sorts, and that his body was a temple... Next thing he’ll be going to that MacDonald’s drive-through in town. Spelt T H R U.’ She shook her head as she emerged with a pizza box with ‘Italiano Duluxe’ written on it. ‘You know, obviously we were mostly to blame for the way you all... well, I want to say turned out, but you’ve all turned out ok, it’s just the fact that you all, mostly you and that brother of yours, beat yourselves up because you can’t stand the human race, because everything is so fake, because there are no answers to any of the great questions... of course, if you grew up in this house, there were only two ways you could go. We always had people here, your father would sit long into the night with them at this table, talking philosophy and theory and theology, with all you kids running around... well you kids were either going to turn out like you and Sean, questioning everything in the world, or like Rachel, and Sam’s going that way too. Materialistic, wanting to be the best, the most beautiful... I don’t know. But I do know that Sean has got a very self-destructive personality, so perhaps you should try and...’

‘Try and what?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’ She ripped the serrated edge from the pizza box, took off the plastic and placed the pizza into the Aga. ‘Now, what would you like for dinner? I’m going to throw myself together some pasta and vegetables and chicken or something, and your father is sure to get a nice red out of the basement.’

‘I’m not hungry.’

‘Well look at you. Skin and bones, gaunt as anything... not even a healthy tan to show for three years on the west coast.’

‘Are you aware that frazzling oneself on a beach could possibly lead to skin cancer. Are you at all aware of the years of medical research that have led to that belief?’

‘Don’t be mouthy with me, young lady,’ she waved the pizza box at Anna. ‘All I’m saying is that you look as pasty as an Eskimo. You’re obviously having some kind of personal crisis, but no one comes under this roof and refuses to eat.’

‘When’s Pa home?’ Anna asked.

‘He should have caught a train up from New York about an hour ago, so in about twenty minutes, I suppose. But you never know. He could decide to up and leave, hop on a plane, not tell anyone.’ Mary looked at her daughter with the look.

‘Well, he’s done that before.’

‘Yes, of course, but only up to Albany for the day to meet someone or something, never across the country.’

‘Were you ever worried?’

‘Worried?’

‘You know... that he was a bit... flighty, back in the day, when he would just discover some wonderful thing he had to go and see in Vermont, some miracle of nature or an old pal from the early days, and that he would, you know... meet someone else, and never come back?’

Mary observed her daughter, so pale yet lovely looking, dark shadows under her eyes, her hands constantly tying and untying themselves in knots.

‘You know, I never was.’ She sat back down at the table and took a cigarette, lit it, and leant back in her chair. ’Oh sure, we spent a lot of time apart in the day, pursuing our interests, I was teaching on and off, he was holed up in his study writing away or off in the city, or I was, but we always came back together at night, and we had children - if that doesn’t cement a marriage, nothing does.’

‘But surely it’s wrong, for people to stay together for the sake of the children?’

‘Sure. For some people. But when you have children they become your marriage, part of your life, your whole life, really. I could never imagine him playing away, either. It just wasn’t his style. Just like, even though it’s the two of us now most of the time, can you imagine us ever selling this place? The children and the house are such a big part of everything...’ She trailed off.

Anna looked at her mother. Once, according to friends and her father and pictures, she had been a very beautiful woman, the kind of classic beauty that didn’t really seem to exist in the modern day. She had ringlets of burnished hair, smooth alabaster skin, intelligent eyes, and she had height and poise. Now, wrinkles ran rivers through her face, too much smoking had dulled the skin. While her legs were among the most slender and shapely that Anna had ever seen, even on young women, having children had left her looking like a dainty potato on legs, as her middle had become rather portly. While still an attractive woman, there was something about Mary Jacoby that was ever so slightly out of proportion. As with her character, Anna thought. For the wife of a famous author, she seemed to divide her free time with worrying after their children, proof-reading his books, talking with him about ideas late into the night, occasionally teaching classes in poetry at the high school, gossiping with friends, some of whom were even the ‘Stepfords’ she had dismissed earlier, although she would never really admit it, and what else? Anna was not sure; what defines a person after living a life of being ever so slightly in someone else’s shadow?

Anna knew that Tim’s death had taken its toll in many more ways than her mother would ever let on. One of Anna’s most poignant memories was of walking upstairs, about three months after it had happened, on a brilliant autumn day where the house seemed to be alive with the colours from outside, and seeing that Tim’s door was ajar. For a moment, she had forgotten he was gone, then remembered, and went quietly up to the door, intending on closing it, as it had been since he died.

She had seen through the gap that Mary was inside, kneeling on the floor. Spread around her were Tim’s clothes, ranging from when he was a baby to present day, the baggy jeans and hooded jumpers and the hats that had hidden his smooth bald head in the last months. Mary had her back to the door, and Anna felt herself stop even breathing as she saw her mother stroke some of the clothes, pick them up, press them to her nose. Mary had picked up a tiny shoe, one from when he must have been no more than six months old, for it was black patent leather and impossibly small. The vulnerability or the size or the fact that it had once been on the miniature foot of her child who just did not exist anymore, pulled great sobs from Mary. This shoe, rather than anything else in the room, racked her body with sorrow, as Anna watched from the door; Mary had raked her hands with desperation through her hair, pulling out clumps that lay on the floor, and she had clutched the shoe to her, falling eventually to one side, still shaking, lost to her grief.

Anna had silently shut the door, leaving her mother to herself, and had never told anyone. Mary had not been a big crier after Tim had died; she held the family together, had been the glue, after their father drank his way through the following months; after Rachel proceeded to affirm her life by sleeping with anything that moved, preferably men from the service industry; as Sean ran away for half a year to Europe and didn’t tell anyone where he was going; as Anna watched.

Anna looked at her mother now and wondered at the fabric of a character, so many layers deep.

‘Well now, you’re awfully quiet,’ Mary said, standing up to pull on oven gloves and open the heavy door of the Aga with a clunk, checking on her husband’s pizza.

‘Sorry. I’m tired. I just feel... exhausted. Worn out.’

‘Go and have a rest then.’

‘I meant, exhausted of life. Of constantly struggling with everything...’

‘You think you’re the first person to feel that way?’

Anna shrugged, looked down at her fingers, bit her nails slightly.

The front door opened and slammed shut. Boyson, from his basket, leapt up in a frenzy, running out into the hallway, his nails scratching the well-worn floor.

As had always been the way, Jacob Jacoby, the imaginatively named author, went to his study as soon as he arrived home, before greeting anyone else.

‘Do you think you should go and say hello?’ Mary said to Anna.

Again, she shrugged, and stood up, stretching.

‘Goodness me, look at you! There’s no meat on you at all,’ Mary said, as Anna left the room.

Mary took the pizza from the aga, and picked at the burnt cheese on the top.

Instead, Anna went to the hallway, and up the stairs, the floorboards creaking in familiar places. She pushed open the door of her old bedroom, no more emotive a place when growing up.

From the bay window the view of the empty beach was of course unchanged; the sea, her constant companion all the years. She looked around her, everything the same, and yet so strange. The brass double bed, with slightly frayed light blue covers; her dressing table, with the artefacts of youth still sitting in an orderly manner across the tableau. Her window seat, where she must have spent hours, days, sitting and staring at the scene beyond the glass. Things collected over the years, stuffed toys forgotten on top of the wardrobe, postcards tacked to the wall, posters, pictures of far-away places cut out magazines; she had never been one for boy bands and chisel-faced actors.

Anna picked up the old quilt from her bed, filled with musty smells, and wrapped it around her shoulders. This room had always been cold, she remembered. She sat in front of the oval mirror at the dressing table, wondering how many times she must have examined her ever-changing face. She looked now, put her hands to her cheeks, which were surprisingly warm. In symmetrical movements, she touched her skin, from her chin, up over her cheek bones, her forehead where the skin stretched taut; the delicate eyelids, strumming each eyelash past her fingers. She looked deep into herself, so used to her own image that she, perhaps like everyone, could tell neither whether she was ugly or beautiful.

Anna dropped her hands, and felt her right one brush against something. The knob to the drawer she had almost forgotten about, and as she opened it she saw letters, to old school friends, from friends, foolish letters, she thought, but sentimental all the same. Little cards she and Rachel had written one another, at one time or another when they had been friends instead of sisters, a period that had been brief in its sweetness. A few birthday cards. A picture of her and Tim, just the two of them, that she could not remember putting in there, and wondered if she had done so before or after he died. She lifted it up; it was old, yellowing, the way photographic paper will be after fifteen years. They were brown, little, half naked, with gaps in their teeth and buckets and spades in their hands. Unaware of anything, of their father’s vaguely reclusive fame, of leukaemia, of any other pain than that of a stinging nettle on the knee.

The letters were underneath that picture; the letters to Adam in their dozens, that he, she was almost sure, would never read now. She reached to pick them up; but thought better of unleashing them, knowing how a memory can come back, almost knocking one to the ground,. She understood why victims of crime were reluctant to give evidence in court, as remembering something can bring it back as though it is happening all over again.

Anna half longed to read the letters, read her own thoughts again, but she put them back, slid them to the back of the drawer for another day. She looked at herself again, resting her head on clasped hands.

She was a person capable of staying in one position for a very long time, completely still, lost in thought, and this she did, feeling her own chest rise and fall, staring into her own unblinking eyes.

Then she remembered her father was home, and stood up, wrapping the quilt closer around her shoulders as she had done as a child. Before she left the room, she opened her bedroom window, as it probably had not been opened since she left. Then again, her parents had occasional cleaners, she was vaguely aware of that, so maybe it had been opened and shut week in week out for three years, little by little letting her scent out completely.

The air was thick with salt and the debris that the tide had brought up; slick seaweed lay bedraggled on the damp sand. Anna turned away from the window, and went downstairs.

* Serotinus

Belated/late homecoming