Chapter 6
It was July when everything started to fall apart.
The Maynard family owned Crossings, the grand old house up from Valhalla.
The Maynard money was in railroads, and they must have seen the way things were going, because they had built Crossings on half an acre of land high up on the bank, encircling it with trees, and, before the railroad came through, a bridge and a small stone man-made beach jutting out on to the river.
A jetty was there, and a pontoon, and a beach house.
It was where they had Fourth of July and swimming parties.
Alice had been before, when she was a little girl, but it was more the kind of place the Hickses and the Kynastons had gone to, and the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilts, and all the grand families who built their mansions nestled in the cool woods along the Hudson.
Alice had never told Dolores how much she liked Jack.
She wasn’t sure if Dolores knew or not, and it was pathetic of her to mind, when Dolores had gone out with him first. She felt, unreasonably, that she should be more mature than other kids her age, given what she’d been through.
So she couldn’t explain how the sight of them driving off together made her want to stamp her feet, scream out loud and fall to her knees crying at how unfair it was.
‘Alice? Where you off to, honey?’
‘I’m going up to the Maynards’ again, Mom. Do you need me?’ Silence. ‘Mom?’
But her mother didn’t answer.
Up in her room Alice brushed her hair, tying it into a long ponytail, and stared at herself in the tiny round mirror.
She found herself gazing at her face, utterly bored by it, by the sameness of everything, and her eye fell on the view over her shoulder of the shelf of little treasures.
It had been months since she’d paid them any attention, not even dusting them.
The truth was she didn’t like to any more; every time she did she was reminded of her dad, and his last day, and the way it ended.
But today, with the summer light playing in her small, bare bedroom, she did, picking up each of them in turn.
The first thing she took off the cluttered shelf was the silver oval pill box, which contained a lock of her father’s hair as a child.
How strange, holding something that had been part of him, from long before she was born.
When had it been cut from his head? Where had he been, what room in his family’s house?
Who had cut it? And what would happen to it, to the shelf?
What would happen to her? What would happen if she died, and there was no one to remember him, to carry on his name?
Oh, not like Jack’s dad, with his obsessions over Princeton and West Point, but rather a line of connection to Dad, with his shining kind eyes and his flat feet that could kick up in the air, his baritone crooning of ‘I Have Confidence’ and ‘Put on Your Sunday Clothes’, his smile as he tackled a Rita Hayworth, the sound of him, change jangling in his pockets …
Who was there? Alice’s hands shook; her palms were sweaty.
She brushed a tear from her cheek; she hadn’t even noticed she was crying.
How stupid. Breathing heavily, as though she’d been sprinting, Alice picked up the rest of the treasures, one by one.
The blue-and-white cats, holding hands, their strangely human faces, the delicate brushwork that she had spent hours some nights staring at.
The hopeful expression of the tiny grey-and-white Scottie dog.
The dormouse, clinging like a monkey to the ear of corn, the thick varnish that made it glossy.
And her old friend the black bird. She remembered something – a fleeting thought, gone in an instant.
But – ravens. The black bird wasn’t a blackbird at all. It had a thick beak, dark eyes. It was a raven. She’d been wrong, all these years –
‘ Allie! Come here, honey! ’
Her mother’s voice, sharp and sudden on the stairs, made her jump and Alice’s hands, sweaty from the heat, slipped as she was placing the little bird back on the shelf.
It fell to the ground, knocking off the Scottie dog, the Labrador and the dormouse with it.
They shattered, cracking into small, neat clumps of half-shiny, half-dull china.
Only the raven survived intact, one wing neatly chipped.
Alice gazed at the raven’s head, smaller than the nail of her forefinger.
‘Allie! Can you hear me? Come down to the kitchen, would you, before you go?’
‘Sure, Mom.’ Alice picked up the broken pieces of the other animals and put them in an envelope, one of the Labrador’s foolish bright black eyes smiling at her as she sealed it shut, then wrapped it in newspaper. She did not cry.
‘Mr Kynaston came by yesterday,’ her mother said, as she entered the kitchen.
‘Why?’
‘It’s his house, Allie. He can come by when he wants.’ Alice, in the doorway, saw the tips of her mother’s ears were very slightly pink. ‘He’s organizing the Cemetery Supper. He wants me to help. And, since you’ve graduated and you have no plans, I thought it’d be nice if you helped out too.’
‘Oh,’ Alice said. She could not see, yet, the moves Wilder Kynaston had played, but she saw with a blinding realization that she was in the game, and was three or so moves behind him. ‘Of course he wants you to help. You’re his new Mavis, only he doesn’t have to pay you.’
Betsy dabbed at her cheeks and forehead.
‘This heat! Now, Allie, don’t be so unkind.
Mr Kynaston’s a good man. He had his literary agent with him.
John’ – her mother screwed up her eyes, trying to remember, like a schoolgirl reciting times tables – ‘yes, John Matheson. A real nice gentleman. They’re making plans for the new book, and he was taking him on a walk and wanted to come by and visit.
Allie, Mr Kynaston asked if you’d drop by the house. He has something he wants to ask you.’
‘No.’ Alice picked up her bag. ‘I’m not going up there again, tell him.’
‘He might be able to help you with late applications to college –’ Alice turned away, unable to face it. ‘He says he wants to help you –’
‘He can whistle for it.’
‘Alice Jansen, how rude, when he’s been so kind.’
‘Oh biscuits,’ said Alice furiously. ‘I’m not being rude.
He’s using you, Mom. And me. You told me not to bother about college and now you’re saying I should start over with applications all because Wilder Kynaston thinks it’s a good idea?
’ Alice opened the trash can and dropped in the wrapped-up newspaper.
It landed with an echoing thud. She tried not to think about her treasures, shattered and broken, lying all in bits at the bottom of the trash.
‘There’s no money. I have to go. Dolores is waiting for me. ’
Alice and Dolores walked up to Crossings past Valhalla, along the shaded path.
She avoided looking at the house, in case Wilder Kynaston was looking out for her, though, even as she thought this, she told herself she was being ridiculous, behaving as though he was the Big Bad Wolf.
But she was sure then that she heard Teddy talking and yelling as she often did, her flat voice floating out through the trees to her.
‘ Ravenoose! Ravenoose! ’
‘You’re quiet, Allie.’
‘Sorry.’ Alice was trying not to think of the smashed treasures, the empty spaces, bare circles on the dusty shelves.
‘You don’t need to apologize.’
Dolores switched her bag over to her other arm. She scratched her cheek, like she was trying to think of what to say. ‘Alice, I saw Mrs Finkelstein yesterday. She was at the beauty parlour.’
‘Mrs Finkelstein was?’ Alice tried to hide her surprise. Their history teacher was brisk and minimalist in appearance, not someone who would have enjoyed having a round mirror held up to her hair and told, ‘My dear! You look divine .’
‘She was there for a haircut. I was helping Mom washing hair, and she asked me if we were friends.’
‘She did?’
‘She said to tell you something.’
Why did people bother her, when she wanted to be left alone? She knew she wasn’t going to like it, whatever it was. ‘What?’
‘She said … Mr Williams had said you – you were the only kid not going to college. Of the ones who could, you know. And she said it was wrong, and that you were to call her – she’s in the phone book – ’cause she knows a way she can help you.
With scholarships, financial aid and all that.
’ Dolores stopped. ‘I’m sorry, I know you don’t like talking about it. ’
‘I’m getting a job in the fall, Dolores. I’m just taking the summer. I don’t care about college.’
‘Well, Mrs Finkelstein said you should be going to college.’
‘I wanted to. But I’m not, so you don’t need to keep on about it.’
Alice didn’t want to discuss it. The mood between them was sour, the weather too hot.
‘Okay,’ Dolores said, nodding. ‘But, Allie – will you talk to her, to Mrs Finkelstein? Oh, go on, Allie. She was really nice about you. She wants to see you. Here’s her phone number.’
‘Maybe.’ Alice stuffed the number in her pocket and, suddenly hugely grateful for Dolores in her life, linked arms with her. ‘You know what my dad used to say?’
‘What?’
‘“You didn’t come this far just to come this far.”’
‘I like that,’ said Dolores. ‘I wish I’d really known him, Allie.’
‘He’d have liked you.’ She squeezed her friend’s hand.
‘Thanks, Dolo.’ Then she stopped. Something was shining in the still muddy gap between the hedge where the path forked, the left tine going over the railroad and toward the river, the right a continuation of the path.
Alice bent down and picked it out of the mud. ‘Huh,’ she said.
‘What the hell is that?’
Alice thought Dolores might recognize the small metal figurine but no. She held her palm up, flat. ‘It’s Merlin. Hey, Merlin.’
Dolores looked at her like she was crazy. ‘It’s filthy, Alice, don’t put it in your pocket. What’s that noise coming from the river?’
‘They’re playing games, I guess,’ said Alice dully.
She could hear one of Jack’s friends, Andy Flaherty, a jock who prided himself both on his status as star linebacker and his friendship with Jack.
‘They’re –’ And then they heard a cry of shock, and raised voices, people talking all at once.
Alice slid Merlin into her shorts pocket and they hurried toward the river, toward the central golden bowl of light, feet slapping on the soft ground.
Jack had skipped out. Gone West, to San Francisco.
He had been planning to join Tag in the city for weeks apparently, Andy Flaherty said.
He and Tag were talking all the time. Jack had wanted to get out of here forever.
Alice knew that. He and Tag had planned a road trip to California, before returning to New York and setting up a refuge, a commune for other young people.
But Tag was not coming with him. For Tag was dead, murdered in an apartment in the East Village with a seventeen-year-old runaway from Connecticut called Emily.
Both their throats slashed. The cops had said it was a drugs deal gone wrong.
Jack knew. He had been told by Tag Martin’s sister the day before.
Andy Flaherty said, ‘Jack said he wasn’t living this life any more. He said he had to get away.’ He gazed out across the river, shaking with the shock. ‘He didn’t say anything to me about when he’d be going. Nothing at all.’ He shivered. ‘He didn’t say anything. Why’d he do it?’
All Alice could hear was Tag’s laugh, high-pitched, nervous, and see his kind face, his beautiful drawings; she remembered how he and Jack used to laugh together, how Jack looked more relaxed with Tag than he did with other people.
She put her hands over her eyes. She would not think about it.
She just wouldn’t think about any of it.
Dolores pressed her hands to her face. She was white with shock. ‘Poor Tag,’ she whispered, and her hand, stealing toward Alice’s, clutched Alice’s fingers, and they stood together, clinging to each other.
They stood in a circle, frozen in that time and place for a split-second under a golden-white July sun, the guys and the girls, and Alice was reminded of a circular version of grandmother’s footsteps, the game they used to play at school.
Who would take a step out of the circle next?
Who would run toward the centre, drop out?
‘Screw them.’ Andy turned and jumped into the river. One by one, they dove into the cool, velvet water, free from the heat of the day, as the sun continued to rise up over them, relentless, and still.