The Deep End of the Ocean

  He peered. “Yeah.”

  “Do you want to take it?”

  “I never used this kind of camera.”

  “It’s easy,” Beth told him, putting her fingers on top of his, feeling the jolt that still accompanied her contact with his downy skin, showing him the buttons. “I’m going to stand up now, and you shoot it.”

  She stood up and, backing off a step, collided with something hard; she whirled, nearly toppling an old man. Beth yipped in surprise, and to her relief, the stranger pushed his striped railroader’s hat back on his sunburned forehead and began to laugh.

  “Think I was a ghost?” he asked. Then, noticing Sam, who had continued to click the shutter, not even turning at his mother’s shriek, he asked, “Who’s the photographer?”

  “My son,” Beth said, adding, “Actually, I am. I take pictures for my job. But we’re just playing around here.” Sam stood up then, and extended his hand, carefully settling the camera on its strap around his neck first.

  “Hello,” he said, and the old man, taking the boy’s hand, smiled at Beth, a conspiratorial smile of shared pride in Sam’s almost antique politeness.

  “I’m Will Holt,” the old man said.

  “I’m Beth. I’m from Chicago. This is Sam. Do you work here?”

  “Work here, live here.” He smiled, a farmer’s face with permanent riverbeds along the margins of his jaw. “Not here, I mean. At least not yet, though I suspect the time will come. But live in Peshtigo. Always have.”

  “I’m looking for the graves of the fire survivors.”

  He laughed again, harder. “Got none of them, I’m afraid, young lady.”

  “The victims, I mean, of course.” Beth blushed.

  Beth noticed that behind him, Holt had a little wheeled cart, shaped like a wheelbarrow, but really more like a wagon. It was filled, as nearly as Beth could tell, with masses of red and blue flowers and piles of tiny American flags. Following her eyes, Holt told her, “Fourth of July. Wanted to get them cleaned off before it rains and they fade. That saddens people. The Christmas wreaths sat here until February. I felt bad about it. Had flu for a couple of weeks and was weak as a kitten most of the winter. Better start jogging, eh?”

  “Better,” said Beth. “Can I take a picture of that wagon?”

  Holt gestured at the cart. “Well, sure, why not?” he said. Sam handed her the camera.

  “Are all those from soldiers?” he asked Holt.

  “No, not all, son,” the old man said. “Some. But most are just from the graves of ordinary people. Their folks miss them, on the holidays.” He turned to Beth, who’d finished her shooting, and continued, “Now, most of the fire graves are up there—not in the middle, over there, just under the aspens. Of course, that’s not where they originally were; parts of this cemetery were moved a few years back.”

  “I know. I’ve been here before,” Beth said.

  “Ah,” said Holt. “Live up here?”

  “Chicago,” Beth repeated. “I used to live in Madison.”

  “Madison,” said Holt. “I went to college in Madison. Ag school. I was the Langlade County extension agent for more years than Ollie’s cows have legs.” He walked stiffly toward the cart and lifted its handle. “Then I retired and all. And now I do this, just whenever I want to. Little money. A little peace. I used to dig the graves with some boys, but now they have a backhoe for that.”

  Holt began to walk, and Sam followed him. Beth caught up. They walked along a wide, glimmering, flat swatch of green that led to the foot of the ridge. They passed a grave that looked too new for the rest of its companions. “Caron Anne, Our Youngest,” it read. “1985–1988.”

  “Now that’s the Willards’ youngest. The funniest thing—died of an ear infection. Seems that my grandkids get one of those a week, and it hasn’t killed one of them yet. Her mother wanted her up here, though most people prefer all the landscaping in the new cemetery by the church. We all felt so bad, we wouldn’t have suggested otherwise, and of course, there are generations of Willards up here, so she’s among her people.”

  They walked on.

  “That’s a kid, too,” Sam said, pointing.

  “Right you are.” Holt nodded, taking off his hat. “Places like this should be reserved for old folks like me, but it don’t always run that way. Now, Grace Culver was the age of my older boy, Bill. Her brother told her on the school bus he was going to shoot her with his daddy’s gun when they got home, and that’s just what he did. That was in ’56. Yes, that’s right—’56.”

  “My God in heaven,” Beth breathed.

  “Oh, ma’am, I’m sorry,” Holt said, gesturing at Sam. “I never meant to scare him.”

  “I’m not scared,” Sam said, his eyes level. “I was kidnapped once.”

  Holt shot a glance at Beth. She nodded. “He was,” she said.

  “Were you afraid?” Holt asked Sam.

  “No,” Sam replied. “I was little. And my mom, she…Well, I just got back before school let out.”

  “You were away for months?”

  “Years. My whole life,” Sam said.

  Beth squirmed, adjusting her cameras. “It was…you probably read about him…we lived in Madison then. Benjamin Cappadora.”

  “Oh my yes, oh my yes,” said Holt. “Goodness yes.” He looked Sam up and down. “Still, you seem to have survived it.” Then, to Beth, “And you, too. Things okay now?”

  “Yes, mostly,” Beth said, struggling with a sudden longing to tell this gentle ghost encountered in the graveyard, “You should know better than to believe everything you think you see; our son was stolen, and we never really got him back, though you may have read otherwise in People magazine.” She wanted to ask, “Now, Mr. Holt, you have long experience of human nature, does this polite and curious young fellow seem at home in the world to you? Like the prodigal son of one of the luckiest and happiest of families? And me? Do I seem like his mother? Or an actor? Actually, it was his other mother who was the actor—”

  Then Sam asked Holt if the graves nearest him were people from the fire. “They all have the same name,” Sam said.

  “Well, Sam, that’s another one of those stories. Carrie Moss and her four children. Oldest was eleven, the youngest one three.” Beth looked down at the neat gray stones, all exactly matched, then at Sam. Should she stop Holt? This was damned gruesome. Sam was transfixed. “Fellow was a railroad worker. Hailed from all over, you know the kind. But born here. The way he said, when they got hold of him in Madison, was that he was in love with Carrie Moss from when they were children. One day while her husband was out harvesting—oh, not a half-mile from the house—he came to their house.”

  “The guy…” Sam’s voice was low, choked. “He killed them?”

  “He did,” Holt said evenly. “That house is still there right out on the road near Keller Creek. Nicely built. But nobody ever bought it. Frank Moss moved to Des Moines. No, I’m wrong there. It was Dubuque. This was just before the war—’43. Not all the crime happens in Milwaukee—no, not by a long shot. Not all of it happens in Chicago.”

  They walked up a small footpath to the knee of the ridge. A single stone stood just to the left of the path, and Beth stopped. No, she thought. Maybe Sam won’t notice it.

  David Taylor Holt. No dates, simply the etching of a water lily on the marbled rose of the surface. Sam squatted down, touching the stone.

  “Is this a relative of yours?” Beth asked softly.

  “Yep,” said the caretaker. “I’m sorry to say that this is my son.”

  “Did he die in the war?” Sam asked. “Was he a soldier?”

  “Sam, wait,” Beth rebuked him.

  “Oh, no, it’s all right. I like to have him here—better than if we had to go down to Beloit, his mother and me. That’s where he was living. He wasn’t a soldier, son, just a college kid.”

  “Was he…was he sick?” Sam asked.

  “No, no,” said Holt. “Though in a sense I guess you could say he was. We thou
ght it was what a boy goes through—some of the drinking, the bad grades, missing classes. But I guess you could say he was suffering a case of depression. He was in love with a girl—you might say she never returned that. And one night, well, he drove home, he’d been drinking, and he parked his car in the garage at the house where he rented a room. And he just left it on. He had a full tank of gas. The landlady, poor woman, she nearly died as well.”

  “He was mentally ill,” Sam said. “That’s too bad.”

  “Sam!” Beth didn’t know how to react.

  “You’re right, Sam. He was ill. We just didn’t know.” Holt reached down and brushed a clump of clotted leaves from the face of the stone. “His mother, now, she thinks Donnie fell asleep. And I must say, I tell her that I do, too. But the truth is, I know better. I found this part of something, a poem he was writing. It was as sad as one of those country songs. He wrote, ‘I may be weak and I may be strong, but I’ve been in this wicked world too long.’ So I knew then he just couldn’t wait. And he wrote this, probably at the Christmas before, when he was home for break. Months before. Well, well. It’s been ten years now.”

  “You miss him,” Sam said.

  “I sure do,” Holt said. He gave himself a shake. “Now, right up there, to the left, there are your graves. I’m sorry. I have to shake a leg here.”

  “Of course,” Beth agreed. But she didn’t want to leave him. She wanted to take him someplace fragrant and homely, like the Pepper Pot in town, and buy vanilla Cokes and steak sandwiches for him and for Sam. They could sit and talk in a warm ring of yellow light until all of them felt full and strong.

  “Good luck to you, Beth,” Holt said, jolting his wagon onto the small path. “Sam, you take care of your mother.”

  “You, too,” Sam said, kneeling down again near the pink marble tombstone. “Why do you think it’s a water lily?” he asked Beth.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he loved those flowers.”

  “They smell awful. But he was a nice old guy.”

  “He was,” Beth said. “It’s very sad.”

  “Yeah.” Sam paused. “For him, you mean, or his son?”

  “Both of them.”

  “I don’t know about him.” Sam pointed at the rosy stone, which glowed in the last blades of sun. “For him, it’s probably better.”

  Beth froze, her camera dangling. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, he was so sad and all, it’s probably better for him to just…sleep. There could be worse things than being dead.”

  Beth grasped, gasped. Her camera knocked against her chest. Suddenly she wanted to shake Sam, or slap him. “Sam, he’s dead. His life is completely over. He’s not asleep. He took his whole life away from himself, from his parents. And all for something he would have gotten over if he’d given himself the time.”

  Sam stirred the loose earth stubbornly with one toe. “Maybe not. Maybe he was just too sad.”

  I could just fall, Beth thought. The very ground under her feet seemed to drag at her, draw her down with the seepage of its accumulation of mourning. Worse and worse, the bones warned her through the sound of shivering aspens above her head, there is worse and worse.

  The scythe had whickered and swung; and it had indeed missed Ben. Ben, as Sam, had endured a middling-hard childhood, and yet, as Sam, he had thrived. And now he wasn’t thriving anymore. He was surviving, and only because of a base coat of basically healthy nature.

  Not because of having his family back. Not because of that at all. Their gain was his loss. Beth had been returned a child who was as remote from her as heaven.

  And yet, and yet, wasn’t she more fortunate and ungrateful than so many others she’d met at Compassionate Circle? She could see her child; she knew his favorite dinner was gyros and yogurt, that he was a fast, not altogether careful reader, that he could touch-type; she had seen how he transformed at bat from an oversized clown, pulling faces at his teammates, to a beautiful novice athlete with a clenched jaw and a level swing that made Pat’s eyes tear up.

  She knew where her son was, Beth thought, as the last of the sunlight drained from the band of sky over the ridge. And it was not here.

  “Sam,” she said then. “I want to ask you something.”

  “What?” he said, getting up, dusting off his hands.

  “Do you ever wish you were dead?”

  He said, quickly, “No.”

  “What do you wish?”

  “I just said there might be things worse than being dead.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like everybody always pulling at your life and making you stay at a place where everybody hates you.”

  “You think that…we hate you?”

  “Not you.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Well, Vincent.” He picked up Beth’s reflector, turning his head up toward the ridge. A light winked up there, and for a moment Beth thought it could be a shooting star; then she saw it was a blinking light on a radio tower, warning planes that it was safe to come only so close, no closer. “When I was at the home, my dad and I talked, and he said we should make a list of what wouldn’t be so bad about going back. And one of the things I put on the list was that it might be fun to have brothers and sisters.”

  “And?”

  “And then…I mean, Kerry’s great, but he looks at me like…Jesus, you see how he looks at me!”

  “Sam, I don’t think he looks at you any differently from the way he looks at all of us. He’s…he’s had a hard time.”

  “But it wasn’t my fault! That’s what I keep telling you guys!” She could not see him, just the outline of his bent shoulders, but Beth reached for him then, and folded him against her. He did not resist; perhaps she imagined it, but he seemed, momentarily, to cling.

  “Oh, Ben…Sam,” she said into his hair. “Do you know how many million years it was that I could never hug you? That you had to be without me to hug you, too?”

  He patted her back then, like a fond colleague, as Angelo might have done. “They hugged me,” he said. “They hugged me all the time.”

  She was barely able to summon the words that naturally followed. They would seal something, and her throat was paralyzed with pity and conscience.

  “What do you wish, Sam?” she finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Just that…everything was like it was before. Except that would hurt Pat and you. And I can’t stand that, either. I just…don’t know.”

  Beth thought back then to the early questions Sam had asked, and how hard she had to resist to keep from turning every answer into a forty-minute lecture. Had Beowulf liked him when he was a baby? Did he see Kerry right after she was born? Did Beth remember if he was allergic to cinnamon? He was sure he was now, though George said that was just because he once threw up after eating a whole pound bag of sticky buns. After weeks of the little questions, little answers, Beth had taken the plunge: she’d called Sam in one lazy Sunday afternoon and told him that she wanted to show him something. The apprehension in his eyes almost stopped her; but she pressed ahead, taking him upstairs to her and Pat’s room, to where the large hooped cedar chest Rob Maltese had built for them as a wedding gift still sat, used mostly by Pat as a clothes rack for piles of shirts destined for the dry cleaner. She swept the shirts aside.

  As a filer, Beth considered herself a failure. It was one of the sinkholes in her motherhood resume. Vincent’s baby book was a virtual anthropological study, recording, in the margins when the spaces gave out, not just the date of the eruption of each tooth, but the development of moods, gestures, intellectual milestones that Beth considered evidence of genius. By contrast, Ben’s and then Kerry’s albums were basically repositories for cards and photos. Beth hadn’t even been sure that the words she scribbled in as “firsts” actually were, since the scribbling had so far postdated the actual events.

  But she had done one thing carefully and well. Each of the children’s christening gowns and “coming home” outfits was sealed
in a plastic envelope Beth bought from Sears, with photos and mementos of each of those momentous days and placed reverently, impervious to time and shift, in the cedar chest.

  She’d lifted out first Vincent’s package, letting Sam sift through its contents—he was curious, even avid—and then the one marked “Benjamin Patrick Cappadora.”

  “They’re so little,” Sam had said, laughing. “Was I really ever this small? They look like Kerry’s doll clothes.” Some of Ben’s clothes, Beth thought then, in fact were now Kerry’s doll clothes; and she’d almost said that.

  But it happened then. Ben lifted the lacy gown Rosie had so lovingly embroidered up to his nose, inhaling its sweet, hamster-cage scent.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked.

  “Cedar. It’s supposed to preserve clothes and keep moths away. Lots of closets are lined with it. Didn’t you ever smell it before?”

  “No,” Sam said firmly. “It could be…maybe it was that my yaya had a trunk like this. I think so. She brought it from Greece. Maybe I played with it when I was a kid.” But his face didn’t register confidence. “At least, I think so.”

  And then Beth had noticed, with growing excitement, that tears were welling in his eyes. She had never seen Sam cry, except for an instant at the intake center when he’d kissed George goodbye. Now, he was scrubbing at his eyes with twelve-year-old modesty, shaking his head.

  “What? Sam?” she’d asked, daring to think, This is it. Something, some gear has engaged. He remembers. And then Sam had reached out and patted Beth on the shoulder. “I’m just so sorry,” he said.

  “For what, honey?”

  “I’m sorry because this happened to you. I know you loved this…loved me so much when you did this. I’m so sorry.”

  “Sam, Sam…you don’t have to feel that way.”

  He shook his head, more fiercely this time. “But I also think you believe that my mom and dad are bad people. And they’re really not.” He went on, Beth barely hearing him, her stomach gone icy. “Just because I’m really sorry that this happened doesn’t mean I don’t love my dad. And I love my mom, too, Beth. She doesn’t mean to be sick.” Numbly, Beth nodded, mechanically reaching for the christening gown, folding it against the creases so it wouldn’t disintegrate. Sam was crying hard now, hiccuping. She wanted to hold him against her, stroke his broad back with its immature and jutting bones. “Beth,” he finally gulped out, “can I see my dad today?”