Cloudburst

  “Is Mr. or Mrs. Porter in?” one of the patrolmen asked her.

  “No, this is the home of Donald and Jordan March,” she replied. “Miss Porter is their . . .”

  I paused to hear what she would say.

  “Foster child.”

  “Is either of them at home?” he asked.

  “Not at the moment, no. Is something wrong?”

  I didn’t wait to hear what they would say. I went into the house and hurried up the stairs. The image of Ryder sitting up in his coffin was still so vivid. I was still so shaken by it.

  I actually went up thinking that he might just phone.

  18

  Changes

  Once I returned to my room, I didn’t leave for the rest of the day and night. Mrs. Duval brought me dinner and threatened that if I didn’t eat everything, she’d have Jordan take me to the hospital. I ate, mindlessly chewing and swallowing. Afterward, I tried to do something else—read, watch television, go on the Internet. I even tried to practice on the clarinet, but every time I started to do something, I stopped to remind myself that Ryder was gone from my life as quickly as he had entered it. I lost interest in anything I did and slipped back into my dark depression. Before I was forced to talk to anyone else, I went to sleep.

  I didn’t have to go to school the next day, of course. This was the Tuesday that Ryder and I had first planned to spend rowing on the lake, having our little picnic, and just enjoying each other’s company. When Jordan saw me, she insisted that I remain home the following day as well.

  “You look very tired, Sasha. I know how devastated you are. Emotional fatigue is always deeper than mere physical fatigue. I’ll have the schoolwork you missed on Monday picked up for you,” she said. “And we’ll do the same tomorrow. You really need a little more rest before you return to your regular schedule at school.”

  She had been gone all day Monday and was not home until sometime in the evening. I knew that Mrs. Duval had told her what the policemen had said, of course, but she didn’t mention it. She didn’t ask if I had gone to the cemetery, either. I had the feeling that she was tiptoeing around me, afraid that she might light one of the fuses inside me.

  Later that morning, Jessica called, hoping to give me a full, detailed account of the cemetery service, but I told her I didn’t want to hear any of it. Of course, I didn’t mention that I had been there, too.

  “I understand,” she said, her voice dripping with disappointment. “Everyone is so upset and confused. There’s been so little information. Can I just ask you if you had any idea that this might happen?”

  “No, you can’t. Return to sender,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “When mail is undeliverable, the post office writes ‘Return to sender.’ ”

  She was quiet. I think I was frightening her. “You’re coming to school tomorrow, right?”

  “I believe I’ll miss school again tomorrow.”

  “When are you returning to school?”

  “I don’t know. I could be there Thursday. I could be there Friday or maybe not until next week.”

  “You are coming back, though, right?”

  “I’ll be back,” I said in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. She was silent again. I sensed that she didn’t know what to say.

  “Sasha, are you all right? I mean, I know you have to be very upset and all, but—”

  “Thanks for calling,” I said, and hung up.

  On Wednesday, as she had promised, Jordan sent Alberto to pick up my work at the end of the school day. It didn’t occur to me until sometime that afternoon that Donald had still not returned from his trip, wherever that was and whatever it was for. I recalled that he had left on Friday because we weren’t going out to eat, and that would enable him to come home sooner. It had been nearly a week. What did he mean by ‘sooner’?

  Although she didn’t say anything about it, I could see that Jordan was disturbed by that or perhaps something even more serious. She wasn’t making her usual daily attempts to cheer me up or get me to avoid thinking about Ryder Garfield. In fact, to me, she looked even more withdrawn than I had been. I saw the way her eyes drifted, realized the long silences between things she said, and watched her move through the house almost like someone who was sleepwalking. I also saw my concern echoed in both Mrs. Duval’s and Mrs. Caro’s faces after they had looked at her or heard her speak. If she was doing any of this to get me to think about something else, I thought, she was succeeding.

  “I might not be home for dinner tonight,” she told me later that afternoon. She stopped by the sitting room near the front entrance. I had been wandering about like a lost soul myself all day. My schoolwork was little or no challenge. I had finished it all quickly, but unlike what I usually did, I didn’t read ahead in any textbook. I think I had ended up in the sitting room because it was a room in the house besides my own in which Ryder had been. I recalled how he had run the palm of his hand over the piano, his face full of appreciation. I sat there staring at the piano, envisioning him and smiling to myself.

  “I hate leaving you to eat by yourself,” Jordan added, “but it’s unavoidable.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked. I thought it was time I did. She was wearing a conservative beige business suit, but her makeup was quite understated for her.

  At first, she didn’t look as if she would say anything. She shook her head and started to turn away, but then she stopped, and her shoulders shook.

  She’s crying, I realized, and leaped up to go to her.

  “What is it, Jordan?” I wanted to add, Whatever it is, it can’t be so terrible. I was thinking only of Ryder. What could be more terrible? “What’s happened to upset you? Did something happen to Donald? Is that why he’s still away?”

  She turned slowly, tears hanging off her lower lids as if they had been caught trying to escape. “No, nothing has happened to him yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “I’m meeting with my attorney. She’s a high-powered divorce attorney.”

  “You’re getting a divorce?”

  She nodded and took a step toward me. “When I had that conversation with you at the lake, I already knew there were very serious problems between Donald and me. I wasn’t completely honest. We had been with our marriage counselor for a while, but that didn’t help us. Donald always found an excuse to cancel. Besides, he wasn’t being forthcoming at those sessions, anyway. Half the time, he was manipulating both me and the therapist, but I wasn’t completely stupid. I wasn’t meeting friends for lunch all those times he thought I was. I was meeting with a private detective.”

  “Why?”

  “A few times, I had caught Donald lying to me about his trips. I didn’t make a big deal of it. I realize now that I should have. Once, his office actually called here looking for him, and his office manager, Charlie Daniels, had to admit that Donald wasn’t on any business for the firm. He didn’t tell me where he was. He didn’t have to. I suppose I always knew this day would come,” she said. “I was in denial.”

  She looked as if she was struggling to breathe. I stepped back as she went to sit in the nearest chair. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and pulled up her shoulders like someone who had just been insulted. I stood there waiting.

  “However, I assure you I’m not going to be like most of my divorced girlfriends and pretend that my getting half of his assets wipes away the pain and suffering he has caused me. I’ll find the money he’s hidden overseas, too. I won’t be civilized about any of it.”

  “Donald is definitely having an affair, then?”

  “No, not an affair. Affairs,” she said, looking up at me. “Although my friends will think it, I’m not some poor, naive woman taken by surprise. I suspected that his being around all those pretty very young women was too tempting for him to resist.”

  She sucked in her breath and looked at me again.

  “I tried to keep all of this from you right now, pretending nothing was seriously wrong. Children are al
ways the ones who suffer the most when this sort of thing occurs, and with what you’re going through, Sasha, you don’t need any more grief, especially someone else’s.” She reached for my hand. “I know you’re very fragile at the moment. You have your own deep psychological and emotional pain. I’m sorry now that I brought you into all this, but I have never regretted having you here. In fact, you’ve been my joy and salvation.”

  “How long has Donald known that you’re moving forward with a divorce?”

  “He doesn’t know it yet. That’s why I’m meeting with my attorney today and tonight for dinner. She’ll have the papers ready to file. I’m thinking of bringing them home and leaving them on his desk in his office here. It’s a cold way for him to find out, but he’ll know I’m not the fool he thinks I am,” she said, standing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t worry about any of this.” She smiled. “My attorney has been working simultaneously on the paperwork I need to legally adopt you. It’s better that I do the divorce procedure first, since we’d need Donald’s agreement on everything, and I want him separated from it all first.”

  “Have you told Kiera any of this yet?” If she had, I thought, Kiera was certainly very good at hiding it.

  The light in her eyes dimmed as her face tightened. “No. I don’t trust her,” she said, and started out again.

  I followed her to the front door. She opened it but hesitated and then turned to me.

  “This is going to sound strange to you, but in a way, I envy your mother for the way she lost her husband. She didn’t have to go through all that I will have to go through out there with my friends, my family. Her husband was out of her life almost instantly. Of course, I realize what that did to the two of you. I’m thinking of it from a purely selfish viewpoint.”

  She smiled.

  “Try to keep busy, Sasha. Maybe you should return to school tomorrow. It sounds a little heartless for me to say it, but that old adage about getting right back on your bike after you fall off is so true. Lose yourself in normal teenage-girl stuff. Go to dances, flirt, do some frivolous things. Borrow a little of Kiera’s attitude.” She smirked. “At least she is a survivor.”

  “But she’s not happy,” I said quickly.

  “I know. That girl’s gotten everything she wanted whenever she wanted it. Well, maybe that’s why she’s unhappy. I’ll see you later.”

  “What if Donald comes home?” I asked before she closed the door behind her.

  “Give him a little of his own treatment. Act as if nothing is wrong. The only satisfaction I have right now is the satisfaction I’ll enjoy when he is taken by complete surprise.”

  She smiled again and closed the door behind her.

  I stood there feeling more numb than sad or frightened by anything she had told me. It was as if I had run out of emotion, any emotion. When I glanced at myself in one of the wall mirrors, I thought I resembled a prisoner of war who had been so brainwashed she was almost lobotomized. She wouldn’t even realize she had been rescued.

  So many new questions occurred to me. How would this divorce really turn out? I couldn’t imagine Donald giving up his estate, despite the fact that he was gone from it so much lately. I knew how proud he was of the house and the beautiful grounds. The Richardson Romanesque architecture had been his choice, not Jordan’s. He had been the one who wanted to build the lake, too. Would their settlement involve Jordan getting a new home? How long would that take to do? Would Kiera refuse to live in any new home with her mother? Would I have to change schools? What would happen to Mrs. Duval and Mrs. Caro? With whom would they go?

  This estate, with all of its employees, was such a big responsibility. I couldn’t imagine Jordan wanting to bear it all herself. It was impossible to be uncomfortable here or to be unimpressed with all it had to offer anyone who lived here, but I wouldn’t be particularly devastated about moving away.

  What did occur to me was Jordan’s emotional tie to Alena’s room, my room. Would she really be able to leave that behind her? I was sure she would take many of Alena’s things, but I still had the impression that whenever she was in the suite, she was standing in a shrine.

  Even without this news, I realized that there were many more cloudy days to come for me. The gloom that had entered with news of Ryder’s death would settle for some time in every nook and corner of this mansion. The silences I had known here would deepen. Shadows would be more secure. Even the sunlight would feel out of place and gladly flee from closed shades and curtains. Neither the size of this estate with all that it offered nor all of its opulence and beauty could stop the winds of melancholy from blowing in and over us all.

  Mrs. Duval knew I’d be eating alone. She suggested that I have dinner in the kitchen nook. She and Mrs. Caro would join me if I liked. Of course, I said yes. They were really my family now. I didn’t think they knew what was coming. I would say nothing about it, of course. Sitting with them, I had the first meal I’d enjoyed since Ryder’s death. I listened to them talk about their own youth and some of the silly things they had done. They laughed and made fun of each other. I knew they were doing it mostly for my benefit, but I so enjoyed them.

  Afterward, I took a short walk around the grounds. I went to the pool and sat. Commercial jet planes looked as if they were as high as the stars. I imagined that those heading west were heading for Hawaii, Australia, or Asia. People in them were settling down after their dinners, too. Some were watching television or reading. I envied them, so far above the problems of the world below. They were leaving their mundane, everyday life behind and looking forward to some wonderful new adventure. They’d sleep peacefully, dreaming of their arrivals.

  Ryder would understand why I was thinking like this. When would I meet someone like him again, someone with whom I knew I could share my most intimate thoughts and feelings? Maybe I never would. Maybe I’d fall into a marriage or a relationship doomed to end the way my mother’s had or the way Jordan’s was going to end.

  Sitting there and thinking these thoughts, I realized why it was that Mrs. Caro would never predict anything terribly important for me—or anyone else, for that matter. It wasn’t a blessing to see your future. First, it could be tragic, and second, if it wasn’t, you’d worry about the tomorrows to come that might bring unhappiness, an unhappiness that would be deeper and stronger because it came after so much pleasure. Life, no matter who you were or how much money you had, was never a straight and narrow line in either direction. It was full of ups and downs, smiles and tears, joy and sadness. True, some people had less of one or the other, but no one had only one. Surviving seemed to be the only point to living. It was as true for me as it was for that ant I saw moving with determination over the edge of the pool. Maybe it was lost and was finding its way home.

  That’s what we all do, anyway, I thought, try to find our way home.

  I sat for quite a while until I saw the glow of a pair of headlights sweep the grounds and turned to see Jordan pull into the garage. Carrying a folder, she went quickly into the house. I rose and headed in myself. I was tired, and I thought I just might take her advice and return to school tomorrow, even though I dreaded what awaited me.

  When I entered the house, Jordan was coming back from Donald’s office.

  “I was just going up to your room to see how you were,” she said.

  “I’m okay. I think I will go to school tomorrow.”

  “That’s good, Sasha,” she said, and put her arm around me. “We both have to get stronger and stand by each other now.”

  She kissed me on the forehead, holding her lips there a moment or two longer, and then we headed up the stairway in silence. When we paused at my room, I asked her if she knew when Donald would be home, since he still had not returned.

  “He left word that he would be back tomorrow, but he would be going to his company office first. It’s not going to be pretty,” she said. “I left the papers in his office here, and with them are the pictures and the details
my detective accumulated. Don’t you worry about it, though. Nothing will change for you,” she promised, kissed me again, and went to her bedroom.

  Nothing will change for me?

  I was young when my parents’ marriage was coming apart, but the memories of those arguments, the horrid things that were said, the rage my mother felt and showed, all of those images were like sleeping rodents. Once one was nudged, they all woke and scurried through my mind, scratching and clawing at my resistance until each scene was once again vivid enough to make me shudder and cry as hard as I had cried back then. I knew what to expect here. What little laughter there had been in this house lately would surely evaporate.

  It was difficult to fall asleep. I listened to every sound in the great mansion like someone waiting for the second shoe to drop. On top of all of this was the sorrow I was anticipating the moment I entered homeroom tomorrow and saw Ryder’s empty desk. I was afraid my heart would simply tighten up, shrivel, and stop. I knew everyone would be watching me, too, perhaps expecting me to burst into tears or simply get up and run out of the building. They would try to talk about other things, but their eyes would be asking questions constantly, hoping I would just break down and tell them everything.

  Mrs. Duval came by in the morning to check on me as usual, but by the time she did, I was already dressed and ready to go down to breakfast. Jordan was up, too, and already at the table.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked the moment I entered.

  “Okay,” I said. I wasn’t. I was trembling so hard inside myself already that I couldn’t imagine getting out of the car in the school parking lot and managing to reach the entrance.

  “Would you like me to drive you to school this morning? It’s no problem for me.”

  “No. If I’m going to do this, I had better do it all,” I replied. “Thank you.”

  She leaned over to pat my hand. “That’s what I like to hear. We’re both going to be all right,” she said. “I’ll be home for dinner, so don’t worry if I’m not here when you return from school. There is still much for me to do.”