The River King

  Bob Thomas had asked her to rush the photographs, so she went directly to the art building. She was happy to be working, hoping she might keep her mind off Abe, and as it turned out, the photographs she’d taken that afternoon were quite good. One or two of the prints would make their way to the front page of the Sunday edition of the Haddan Tribune—the one of Sam Arthur and Bob Thomas shaking hands and another of Chazz Dixon wailing away. It was amazing how the lens of a camera could pick up information that was otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The suspicion on Sam Arthur’s face, for instance, when he gazed at the dean; the sweat on Chazz Dixon’s brow. Betsy had assumed she’d be most rattled by the photograph of Abe, but in fact he had moved and the image was blurry. It did him no justice at all. No, it was the photograph Abe had taken of her that turned out to be the most disturbing. Betsy let that print sit in the developing vat for quite some time, until it was overdeveloped and streaky, but even then, it was impossible to ignore what this picture revealed. There, for all the world to see, was a woman who’d fallen in love.

  THE ARBOR

  IN THE PEARLY SKIES OF MARCH there were countless sorrows in New England. The world had closed down for so long it seemed as though the ice would never melt. The very lack of color could leave a person despondent. After a while the black bark of trees in a rainstorm brought on waves of melancholy. A flock of geese soaring across the pale sky could cause a person to weep. Soon enough, there would be a renewal, sap would again rise in the maples, robins would reappear on the lawns, but such things were easily forgotten in the hazy March light. It was the season of despair and it lasted for four dismal weeks, during which time more damage was done in the households of Haddan than the combined wreckage of every storm that had ever passed through town.

  In March, more divorces came before old Judge Aubrey and more love affairs unraveled. Men admitted to addictions that were sure to bring ruin; women were so preoccupied they set fire to their houses accidentally while cooking bacon or ironing table-cloths. The hospital in Hamilton was always filled to capacity during this month, and toothaches were so commonplace both dentists in Hamilton were forced to work overtime. Not many tourists came to Haddan during this season. Most residents insisted that October was the best month to visit the village, with so much marvelous foliage, the golden elms and red oaks aflame in the bright afternoon sunshine. Others said May was best, that sweet green time when lilacs bloomed and gardens along Main Street were filled with sugary pink peonies and Dutch tulips.

  Margaret Grey, however, always came back to Haddan in March, despite the unpredictable weather. She arrived on the twentieth of the month, her boy Frank’s birthday, taking a morning flight up from Florida and staying overnight with Abe. Abe’s father, Ernest, could not be asked to accompany her; Margaret wouldn’t have expected her husband to face the cemetery any more than she would have insisted Abe pick her up at the airport in Boston. She took the train up to Haddan, looking out at the landscape she once knew so well; it all seemed terribly unfamiliar, the stone walls and the fields, the flocks of blackbirds, the multitudes of warblers who returned at this time of year, marking Frank’s birthday by swooping across the cold, wide sky.

  Abe waited for his mother at the Haddan train station, the way he did every year. But for once he was early and the train was late, held up outside Hamilton by a cow on the tracks.

  “You’re on time,” Margaret commented when Abe came to give her a hug and collect her suitcase, for he was notoriously late on the occasion of these visits, postponing the sorrow that inevitably accompanied the day.

  “I’m unemployed now,” he reminded his mother. “I’ve got all the time in the world.”

  “I recognize this car,” Margaret said when Abe led her over to Wright’s cruiser. “It wasn’t safe to drive twenty years ago.”

  They stopped at the Lucky Day Florist where Ettie Nelson hugged her old friend and told Margaret how jealous she was of anyone who lived in Florida, where it was already summer when here in Haddan they still had to struggle with dreadful blustery weather. Abe and his mother bought a single bunch of daffodils, as they always did, although Margaret stopped to admire Ettie’s garlands.

  “Some people swear by them,” Margaret said of the garlands. Some were fashioned of boxwood and jasmine, others of pine boughs, or of hydrangeas, twisted together in a strand of heavenly blue. “Lois Jeremy’s boy, AJ, nearly died of pneumonia when he was young, and Lois went out to the Haddan cemetery day after day. There were so many wreaths around that lamb’s neck you would have thought it was a Christmas tree. But maybe it worked—AJ grew up strong and healthy.”

  “I don’t know about the healthy part,” Abe said as he thanked Ettie and paid for the flowers. “He’s a bully and a drunk, but maybe you’re right. He’s definitely alive.”

  Frank was buried in the new section of the church cemetery. Each September, Abe put in chrysanthemums at the base of the memorial and in the spring he came to weed around the hedge of azaleas that Margaret had planted that first year when every day hurt, as if sunlight and air and time itself were the instruments of heartache and pain. Today, as he watched his mother place the daffodils at the graveside, Abe was struck by what a short time Frank had had on this earth, only seventeen years. Abe himself might have had a son that age if he’d ever managed to settle down.

  “I should have known it was going to happen,” Margaret said as they stood together. “All the signs were there. We thought it was a good thing that he locked himself away from other people. He was studying so hard and doing so well.”

  Abe’s parents had always seemed to agree that what happened that day had been an accident; a boy who didn’t know any better playing around with a shotgun, a single instant of misfortune. But clearly Margaret had come to believe this hadn’t been the case, or maybe she just hadn’t the heart to admit her doubts before.

  “When you look backwards everything seems like a clue, but that doesn’t mean it is,” Abe told her. “He had French toast for breakfast, he washed the car, he was wearing a white shirt. Does any of that matter?”

  “He’d be thirty-nine today. The same age as AJ Jeremy. Both of them born on the day before spring,” Margaret said. “That morning I knew something was wrong because he kissed me, just like that. He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me. He didn’t even like to be hugged when he was a baby. Frank wasn’t a people person that way. He was always going off on his own. I should have known then and there, it was so out of the ordinary. Kissing wasn’t his way.”

  Abe bent to kiss his mother’s cheek.

  “It’s your way,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears.

  There are secrets kept for self-interest and those kept to protect the innocent, but most spring from a combination of the two. For all these years Abe had never told anyone about the favor he did his brother. He kept his promise, just as he had on that hot summer day. It was so rare for Frank to take an interest in Abe or include him in his life, how could Abe have denied him anything he might want?

  “I went with him to get the gun.” This is what Abe had wanted to tell his mother since that hot afternoon, but the words had stuck in his throat, as if each one had been fashioned from glass, ready to cut at the slightest admission. Even now, Abe couldn’t look at Margaret. He couldn’t abide the expression of betrayal in her eyes that he’d imagined since Frank had died. “He said it was for target practice. So I did it. I climbed through the window and got it.”

  Margaret’s mouth was set in a thin line when she heard this information. “That was wrong of him.”

  “Of him? Don’t you hear what I’m telling you? I got the gun.” He clearly recalled the look on Frank’s face when he crouched down so that Abe could climb on his shoulders. Never had Abe seen such certainty. “I helped him do it.”

  “No.” Margaret shook her head. “He tricked you.”

  Above them in the sky, two hawks glided west, cutting through the canopy of rolling clouds. The weather had turned n
asty, the way it often did on Frank’s birthday, an unpredictable day in an unpredictable month. Margaret asked if they might go out to Wright’s farm. She had always believed that kindness begot kindness but that truth was more complex, and that it brought to an individual whatever he wished to take. Truth was a funny thing, difficult to hold on to, difficult to judge. If Margaret hadn’t been the one to be with Wright Grey on the last day of his life she would never have known that her husband, Ernest, was not Wright and Florence’s natural son.

  “Don’t be silly, Pop,” she had said to Wright when he told her.

  She’d been young and nervous around death and she remembered wishing Ernest would hurry up and relieve her. When she heard his car pull up she was grateful.

  “I found him,” Wright had insisted. “By the river. Under some bushes.”

  Margaret had stared at the window to where Ernest was taking a hospital bed from the trunk of his car, in the hopes of making his father’s last days more comfortable. While Ernest set up the bed in the front parlor, Wright told Margaret how he’d discovered the baby most people in town believed never took a single breath. That child had in fact been born and lived on, left by his mother in the care of the swans, tucked into the roots of the willows and kept out of sight until Wright had come searching for Dr. Howe. Wright had wanted to dole out some measure of punishment, for all the mistreatment Annie had suffered, but he never did thrash the headmaster as he’d set out to, even though he believed Howe deserved it, for he had been distracted by a trail of tears and blood that led to the willow where the child had been hidden from his father.

  The very next morning, Wright walked all the way into Boston with the infant tucked inside his coat. He was a man who’d always held himself accountable, even when the accounts weren’t his. He passed through towns he’d never been to before and villages that consisted of nothing more than a post office and a general store. At last he reached the city limits; at an embankment of the Charles River he spied a young woman and because of the kindness that showed in her face he immediately knew she was the one he would marry. Wright approached her slowly, so he would not frighten her away. Annie Howe’s baby was warm and safe inside his coat, sucking on a rag dipped in store-bought milk. Wright sat down beside Florence, who was good-natured and plain and who’d never before had a handsome man look at her, let alone pour out his heart to her. They raised the child as if he were their own, because that’s what he’d become. They hoped that the boy would never know grief or loss or sorrow, but such things are part of the natural world; they can’t be escaped or denied.

  Margaret Grey had married a boy most people believed had never been born, so she knew that anything was possible. “Maybe I should have bought those garlands, the way Lois Jeremy did.” she said to Abe as they drove out to the farm. “Maybe things would have been different then.”

  Margaret thought of all that she knew for certain, that day would always follow night and that love was never wasted, nbr was it lost. On the morning when it happened, Frank had gone to the market to pick up milk and bread and Margaret had watched him all the way down the road. People always say that anyone who’s watched until they disappear out of sight will never be seen again, and that was exactly how it had happened. There wasn’t a thing to be done about it, not then and certainly not now. If she had placed a thousand garlands around the lamb’s neck, it might not have kept him from harm.

  When they reached Wright’s house, Abe opened the passenger door and helped his mother out. Some people were lucky with their children and some people were not, and Margaret Grey had turned out to be both. Abe was so tall and strong he surprised her. People said he would come to no good, but Margaret had never believed that, which was the reason she finally told him who his grandparents were. He didn’t believe her at first, he laughed and said that there wasn’t a person in town who hadn’t told him how much he resembled Wright. But of course, it was possible for both things to be true and to belong most of all to those who loved you.

  The deed to Wright’s house was in Abe’s name. He still had a few developers who came sniffing around, including some fellow from Boston who wanted the acreage to build a mall like the one over in Middletown, but Abe never returned their calls. Route 17 was getting so built up that it seemed as if they were pulling into a different time when they turned onto the dirt road that led to Wright’s place. There were dozens of robins, returning from wintering in the Carolinas, and they perched in the apple trees that grew near Annie’s grave, the one in the meadow, to which Wright used to bring the flowers he picked by the river. Because of the circumstances of her death, Annie had not been allowed a burial at the Haddan School cemetery, where her husband was later put to rest, or in the churchyard. Wright had been the one to retrieve her remains from Hale Brothers Funeral Parlor, and he and Charlie Hale had dug the grave themselves on a windy day when the dust was flying everywhere and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Love someone and they’re yours forever, no matter how much time intervenes, that’s what Margaret Grey knew. The sky will always be blue; the wind will always rise up across the meadow and thread its way through the grass.

  * * *

  IN APRIL, PEOPLE HEARD THAT ABELGREY was planning to leave town, not that they believed the rumors. Some people are predictable; they never wander far. Neighbors begin to set their own lives by the clockwork of such individuals and they want to keep it that way. As far as anyone knew, the only times Abe had ever left town were on those occasions when he’d gone fishing with Joey Tosh or when he’d visited his parents in Florida. People believed he’d no more move away from Haddan than he’d dance through the streets naked, and one or two of the boys at the Millstone put money down, with serious odds, betting that Abe would remain in his house on Station Avenue until the day they came from Hale Brothers to carry him to his rest.

  And yet facts were facts. A man who’s about to leave town always leaves a trail as he finishes up his business, and such was the case with Abe. Kelly Avon reported that he had closed out his bank account at the 5&10 Cent Bank, and Teddy Humphrey witnessed him searching through the recycle bin behind the mini-mart for cardboard boxes, always a sign of a move to come. Every morning, people at the pharmacy discussed whether or not Abe would go. Lois Jeremy was of the mind that Abe would never leave the town where his brother was buried, but Charlotte Evans wasn’t so sure. A person never could tell what was inside somebody or what they might do. Look at that nice Phil Endicott her daughter was married to, how his personality had changed so completely during the divorce proceedings. Pete Byers, who never gossiped in his life, now looked forward to contemplating the direction Abe’s future might take every night at dinner. He’d begun to close the pharmacy early in order to get home and discuss the possibilities with his wife, Eileen, who he’d recently discovered had a great deal to say, having saved up twenty years’ worth of talk, so that the two of them were often up all night, whispering to each other in bed.

  Betsy Chase heard about Abe when she was at the Haddan Inn meeting with Doreen Becker, going over the final plans for her wedding reception. It was the first day of spring vacation, and Betsy had taken the opportunity to deal with the details of her personal life. She had already let Doreen know that she didn’t want to hire the Chazz Dixon band, not that they weren’t terrific musicians, when Doreen’s sister, Nikki, phoned to inform Doreen that Marie Bishop had told her that she could look out her living room window and see Abe packing up his car, that old cruiser of Wright’s no rational man would have bothered to keep.

  The inn was overheated, and maybe that was why Betsy felt faint when she heard the news of Abe’s leaving. She asked Doreen for a glass of water, which did no good at all. In the hedges outside, a starling sang sweetly, the first strains of its spring song, a trilling that was a lullaby to some ears and a restless call to others. Mrs. Evans’s and Mrs. Jeremy’s perennial gardens were filled with jonquils and tulips, and the oaks along Main Street had clusters of fresh, green buds. It was a beau
tiful day, and no one thought anything was amiss when they saw Betsy walking down Main Street later on. By now they were used to her wandering through town, asking directions, and making wrong turns, until at last she found her way.

  People who thought they knew her, Lynn Vining and the rest of the art department, for instance, would never have predicted that Betsy would leave the way she did, with a hasty grade sheet drawn up for her classes and a call to a storage company to come for her furniture. Lynn herself was forced to serve as St. Anne’s houseparent for the rest of the year, a job that gave her a continuous migraine. No wonder that afterward Lynn told anyone within earshot that she now believed it was impossible ever to divine a person’s truest nature. Eric Herman, on the other hand, was not really surprised at Betsy’s sudden departure. He had seen the way she’d looked at lightning, and to his closest friends he admitted he was relieved.

  The black cat was already pacing on the other side of Abe’s door, begging to be let out, when Betsy arrived. As it happened, neither Betsy nor Abe had much to pack. They threw their belongings into the trunk of Wright’s old car, then had coffee in the kitchen. It was close to noon by the time they got going, time enough for anyone with doubts to back out. Since Abel Grey was the sort of man who liked to tie up loose ends, he rinsed out his coffeepot before they left, and emptied the containers of milk and orange juice so they wouldn’t spoil in the refrigerator. For the first time in his life, he had a clean kitchen, which made it all the easier for him to leave.

  He tried his best to get the cat to go with them, but cats are territorial creatures and this one was especially stubborn. It could not be coaxed into the backseat, not even with an opened can of tuna fish. Despite this bribe, the cat gazed back at Abe with such disinterest that Abe had to laugh and give up. When they were set to leave, Abe crouched down on the pavement to pat the cat’s head, and in response the cat’s one eye narrowed, with disapproval or pleasure, it was impossible to tell. In truth, this cat was the individual in I Iaddan Abe felt sorriest to leave, and he waited for a while in the idling car with the back door open, but the cat only turned to trot down the street, never once looking back.