Chapter 1 #3
Alice had never known how to describe what her dad did.
Mr Hendricks was a lawyer for an advertising firm.
Jan and Tag’s dad, Mr Martin, was a pastor.
Mr Logan worked in accounts. Carly’s dad was in jail for killing someone (accidentally: he ran a red and hit them with his truck, but still) but even he had run a bakery when he was around.
But she knew, because her mother was always telling her, that this was nothing to be ashamed of, that she should be proud to be one of the Jansens of Orchard, and that her mother, being a Palmer and from Massachusetts, was also a person of importance.
Mr Kynaston was often away, so Alice was in the habit of wandering up close to Valhalla just to stare at the Hudson and the wooded hills on the other side and the Canada geese, flying in a V, silently, up the river.
But she rarely went inside. Sometimes she’d look out for Mr Kynaston’s younger sister, Teddy, for on the first floor of the grand house, with its small interconnecting rooms like a series of tombs in a pyramid, there were photographs of her everywhere: a bob-haired, long-legged, darkly furious young woman.
Teddy Kynaston cast a long shadow, in the house and in the town, where stories of her exploits were legendary.
The time the governess ran sobbing down the driveway past the gatehouse; the time she threw fireworks into the graveyard during Cemetery Supper, shouting, ‘They’re all dead anyway!
’; the time she jumped out of the car rather than listen to her proselytizing father; the time she argued so hard with her brother she slapped him, giving him a bloodshot eye that lasted for weeks.
But more usually Alice would encounter Mavis the housekeeper, and sometimes Wilder Kynaston, snoring in a deckchair, or shouting poetry into the mist, whiskey in hand, or, once, throwing graham crackers into his mouth dressed only in a Hawaiian shirt and underpants.
Alice knew he did not live up to his reputation of a great man of literature, but did not say this to her father, who was loyal to a fault.
‘He’s working on something now. When it does come, it’ll be the Great American Novel, wait and see,’ her father would say, while Mavis would silently move through the grounds, picking up the broken cracker pieces, the peanut shells, the empty glasses rolling on the lawn.
‘So what have you got me? A deer? Is it a deer?’
‘I’m not saying.’
‘A tennis racquet.’
‘I can’t see that fitting on the shelf, can you?’
‘Okay. Is it …’ Alice racked her brains. ‘I can’t think. Hey, Josie. Do you know what animal Dad’s gotten me for my birthday?’
Josie set down the sundaes, took the check out from her pad and slapped it on the table with a smile. ‘I’d be risking my life to tell you,’ she said, smiling at Alice. ‘But you’re gonna love it, honey. Thanks, Bob. And, hey, in case I don’t see you tomorrow, have a great day!’
Alice smiled at her. ‘Thank you so much.’ She looked down at the table, at the glistening red strawberry sauce, the brownies, the jelly, encased like geological layers in the curved sundae glass. ‘I’m so happy right now, Dad.’
Her dad blinked. ‘I’m glad, honey.’
‘So … what’s my present?’
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘But you can’t tell your mom, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I mean it, Allie – she doesn’t know about it.’
‘ Okay .’
‘It’s hidden at Valhalla this time. And you have to find it.’
‘What is it?’
‘I’ll give you two clues.’
Alice picked up her spoon and drove it into the sundae, which was starting to melt. She touched the glass, the condensation slowly bleeding into the paper tablecloth in the late-afternoon heat.
‘What are the clues?’
‘The clues are … Well, Teddy’s the first clue.’
‘I don’t know Teddy. I don’t talk to Teddy.’
‘No,’ he said gently. ‘But perhaps you should. She’s probably lonely. You’d like her.’
‘She’s – weird.’
‘She’s not. She’s wonderful. Go find out.’ He was still blinking. ‘The second clue, it’s … “Sevenstones”. That’s the second clue.’
‘What kind of word is Sevenstones, Dad?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means I haven’t finished the clues yet!’ He rubbed his face again, chuckling at her fury.
‘Dad.’ Alice rolled her eyes. ‘Just tell me where the present is.’
‘I won’t. You have to find it yourself. Don’t go digging for it. It’s not buried.’
‘Why do you make everything into a story? Just tell me.’
‘The shelf will be full after this,’ he said, shaking his head and smiling a little, and she saw something in his eyes, an expression she would wonder about for the rest of her life.
Her father leaned across and dipped his long spoon into her sundae. ‘That’s darn delicious, Allie. I should have gotten one of those myself.’
And Alice laughed without meaning to, because she was still a little peeved. She reached out and stroked his coat sleeve, the smooth brushed cotton. The arm underneath, the feel of it, flesh and bone, his warm, comforting, steady form. ‘You always say that.’
‘I know I do,’ he said imperturbably, taking another spoonful of her sundae. ‘And you always say, “You always say that.”’
Afterwards, they walked down Main Street, the June heat shimmering in the early-evening light.
They were making their way home, winding past the Victorian-era storefronts and white clapboard houses that lined the street and those off it, which she knew as well as anywhere.
Mackie’s, the diner. Denny’s, the deli and the grocery store.
The hardware store – Burt’s, though Burt had been dead for twenty years.
The beauty parlour, where the mom of that new girl Dolores worked now, and where her mother went to get her hair blown out and swept up.
The tiny town hall and tiny fire station, both barely needed for a town that took care of its own.
She looked up as a train thundered down the tracks at the edge of the river. Saw the gleaming grey bullet speeding past, watched it skirt the cemetery until it was out of sight.
She saw her dad looking at the cemetery.
‘Cemetery Supper’ll be here before you know it,’ he said. ‘Gosh, every year it rolls around quicker. I’d better talk to Wilder.’
‘Oh, Dad. It’s so old-fashioned. Do we have to go this year?’
He turned to her in surprise. ‘Don’t you like it?’
Alice, who noticed and disliked so much of the class system she saw around her in play, felt a thrilling secret shame at her fascination with the Maynards, the Kennedys, the British Royal Family and especially the Cemetery Supper.
The oldest Orchard families assembled, dressed in black, faces grave, though Alice always wondered if they weren’t secretly thrilled.
The dark, autumnal ritual ceremony of it, the dying of the season, the growth of night that meant you were moving toward the shortest day of the year.
For the rest of her life she would love any festival that was pagan.
She did not see it as anything to do with God.
(She did not believe in God, but she had not told anyone at all that.) ‘I guess so.’
‘You always used to love it. Sitting on Mayor Cooper’s knee. Handing round the apple pie. Don’t you remember?’
‘I was a little kid, Dad. It’s just …’ She scratched her nose, trying to put into words how she felt. ‘Going into the cemetery, having dinner with them? They’re dead and gone, Dad. Doesn’t it seem kind of … pointless ?’
Her dad didn’t answer. He just carried on walking.
‘Allie,’ he said after a few moments, ignoring the question, ‘tell me quickly. Are you really mad I won’t let you go to the dance?’
‘I’m not – mad.’ Alice didn’t know how to articulate it, how she wanted everything to change and yet to stay the same. ‘I just want you and Mom to trust me.’
‘Of course we trust you,’ he said, a frown puckering his forehead. ‘But we want you to keep safe. There’s all kinds of nonsense out there. Folks acting crazy. The world is acting crazy.’
‘But you – Dad, you always say things have to change. How unequal some stuff is. That’s why I don’t like the Cemetery Supper so much any more, I guess. It seems so outdated.’
‘Okay, honey.’ He held her hand for a moment. ‘You’re right, of course.’ He squeezed her fingers. ‘You’re always right, my Allie.’
And they carried on walking.
Did she say anything else? Was there something more that she didn’t remember afterwards, something that explained what happened? They were almost at the railroad line. The bugs were soaring above them in the golden summer light, pricking the rays of sun.
‘Did you want to see The Sound of Music again on the weekend?’ her dad said.
‘Dad! That would make it, what – the fifth time? What is it with that movie?’
‘It makes me feel happy,’ he said. ‘As though there’s something to hope for.’
Was that what he’d said? She was never sure.
But she remembered she said, ‘I’m not sure I want to see it again, Dad. I’m sorry. Maybe, maybe another weekend?’
Her dad was rubbing his eyes and blinking again, and she turned and felt her stomach drop, her heart ache.
‘Dad – are you crying? You’re not crying, are you?
’ she said, putting disbelief and almost mockery into her tone to force him to say no, I’m fine, everything’s fine, because it was terrifying all of a sudden, and she didn’t know why.
‘I’m happy, honey. I’m happy.’ She remembered him saying that, and it couldn’t have been true, but she was sure he said it.
‘Let’s just enjoy the walk,’ he said, blinking, and jangling his change in his pocket, the way he always did as he was walking toward their house, so she could hear him coming.
‘Hold my arm, Allie. Let me just enjoy the last moments of you being fifteen. You’re going to change the world. Make sure you hurry up and do it.’
‘If you let me go to the dance with Jack Maynard, then sure, I’ll change the world,’ she said, and they both laughed, and he sang softly:
‘I … have … confidence …’
And she joined in, holding his hand, and he jumped in the air kicking his heels to the side, like Julie Andrews, and they collapsed together, laughing, holding hands again.
‘Ah, happy birthday, honey,’ her dad said, and he kissed her cheek.
The heat was oppressive. Her dad was moving more slowly. She could hear the thock of someone’s tennis game in the park behind Main Street and the sound of clinking glasses, laughter rising into the air – Orchard residents enjoying the relative cool of the summer evening.
In the distance, something, or someone, stirred on the green and golden track that wound away from the town.
‘A train’s coming,’ said her father, but Alice’s eye had been caught by a shape disappearing into the green tunnel of foliage down the track.
A deer, frozen in the afternoon light, turning to assess the threat, ears pricked, pale caramel hide flecked with white, delicate hooves barely seeming to touch the ground.
Its eyes met Alice’s briefly. Then it was off, leaping toward the railroad tracks.
‘The deer –’ Alice called, and her voice was elongated, low, as if it had been pulled apart and played back in slow motion. In years to come she would try to recall what happened, those last few minutes, and never quite could.
She saw the deer turn, its eyes bright.
‘Look, honey,’ her father said, as the train approached like thunder, ripping through the peaceful uplands. ‘There they are. All your animals, your treasures.’ And he gripped her arm suddenly, so hard that she gave a small yelp of pain. ‘Honey, I had to go. You understand, don’t you?’
Alice turned at the sound of a bird in the trees, calling, then saw the deer darting off the tracks and into the woods.
And someone watching on the street below screamed:
‘Bob. BOB!’
There was a loud screech, a smell of brakes and burning rubber, a whiff of smoke that afterwards she still smelled everywhere on the breeze, especially on hot summer nights in cities.
Her dad was gone. He had vanished and she never saw him again, and that was that – the world was the same, the clinking glasses in the background, the tennis, the calling bird, but forever now horrifically torn in two: before, and after.