All Things Cease to Appear (55 page)

At the bottom there’s a salutation.

Yours truly,

Willis B. Howell, District Attorney

Willis, he thinks with genuine pity, touched that after all these years he’s still on her mind.

—

ON THE FIRST
of November they predict freezing rain, high winds. He calls the front desk for a cab and tells the operator he’s seeing his endocrinologist.

An hour later, they come to get him. Your cab’s here, Mr. Clare.

Diabetic retinopathy is the official name, but to him it’s just dirty sight. Reading is very difficult and he will soon be blind, the result of abnormal blood vessels, like jellyfish, swarming his eyes. No matter, he thinks, he has his cane, his reliable mate. Despite the weather, he’s wearing summer-weight clothes under an unlined raincoat. His old Top-Siders. On the arm of his nurse, he walks out into the large lobby. He’s been here for almost a year—too long for any sane person to endure. In the beginning his daughter had visited him, but she has her own life to worry about now. She doesn’t need her old man burdening her.

It hurt that she didn’t call to give him the news, that he had to learn about his daughter’s wedding from the
Hartford Courant.
It seems incredibly ironic to him, and not a little disturbing, that her name is now Frances Hale. But the truth is, he’d always liked Cole. For the better part of a week he’d sat in his chair trying to think of what to send to her. Something nice, something useful. He went through the catalogues they put out in the main room, pictures of appliances and monogrammed towels and plates and so forth. But it all just felt wrong. In the end, he sent nothing.

She’d have plenty of money once he’s gone, he figured. She could buy whatever she wanted. The thought brings him a little comfort. They’d tried to be close; they had tried very hard. Ultimately, he’d failed in that department. He had failed miserably.

The cab is waiting for him in the circle. Lisa, his favorite nurse, helps him out to the car. She’s a pretty girl, engaged to one of the doctors, a gerontologist, and he often thinks of his daughter, the surgeon, involved in such a life—his pride is almost too much to bear.

’Morning, he says to the driver, getting into the back. The cab smells of pineapple and some sort of hair oil. All the cabbies are Jamaican these days.

Medical Arts? he asks in his thick accent.

George takes the cash he has set aside from his pocket, bundled in a rubber band, and drops it over the seat.

The man holds it up. What this about?

Change of plans, he says, and gives him the address. That is, if you’re not too busy. It’s kind of a long drive.

No, I take you. No problem.

The driver heads down Farmington Avenue and gets onto the highway, heading south. George doesn’t mind the forty-minute drive to the shore. The towns they pass are familiar to him, Middletown, Killingworth, Clinton. The towns of his youth, he thinks solemnly, with all their pathetic drama. They ride along the water and he puts his window down, letting in the cold sea air.

They arrive at the marina in Westbrook, at the Singing Bridge. With the season over and done with, the place is desolate. He has the cabbie pull down to the docks. DeBeers’s boat is waiting for him. His old friend.

Whatchu doing here, man? the driver asks, staring at the closed-up office, the empty parking lot. You shouldn’t be out here on a day like today.

I’m all right.

You want me to wait?

No, I’ve made other arrangements, he says. I’m meeting someone, a fellow named Swedenborg.

The driver shakes his head. You crazy, man. Well—you take care.

He waits for the cab to pull away.

Using his cane, he shuffles slowly down to his slip at the very end. For years now he’s maintained this boat, paying to have it stored for winter and launched in the spring, and he told them to pull it out next week. Well, that won’t be necessary now.

It’s been a long time, he says to the boat as he carefully steps on board. He doesn’t waste any time getting sentimental and gets busy rigging the sails, mostly by feel. Something he could do in his sleep. He starts the motor and sets out into the channel. He has just enough vision to decipher shapes, the banners of gritty light along the shore. At this time of year there’s no one out here. The tide is high, the wind cold, fast. The clouds dense and low, promising rain. He can smell it on the wind, the torrent that will come. It pulls the ocean in all directions, like an anxious woman.

He motors along until, in deep water, he cuts the engine and raises his sails, the wind now roaring in his ears. The wind is various, wild. It makes him want to shout. He knows he should reef the main, but there doesn’t seem much point.

He sets off, pulls in the sails. The line is taut in his hand, blisters forming on his palm.

After a while it is dark. On the empty ocean, he is alone. You don’t need a plan for this sort of thing, he reflects. No maps, no compass. He doesn’t even need his sight. He opens the good bottle of whiskey he’s been saving for the occasion and takes a long drink. He drinks and drinks, wanting to lose himself, wanting to be very lost indeed.

He stands with his arms stretched out as if he’s waiting for God. Water swells under the hull, levitating him for the briefest of moments. The bow slams down like a whale, smashing against the rolling surface. He drops his line and staggers to retrieve it, but now the boom smacks him on the head and he falls. What he feels is love. Love like a warm flood.

It begins to rain. Cold, fat drops on his face.

It won’t be long now, he thinks. He hopes it will at least be brutal. And then it will end, somehow. It will end.

Acknowledgments

It was a lucky day indeed—and I mean
really
lucky—when the stars lined up just right as Gary Fisketjon was reading the manuscript of this book, and every single day since I have thanked the writer-Gods above for this stroke of wizardry. I am deeply grateful to him for his extraordinary editing of this book and for helping to renew my faith in my own work. Enormous thanks also to the outstanding team at Knopf who had a hand in bringing this book to fruition, including Ruthie Reisner, Lydia Buechler, Anne Zaroff-Evans, Cassandra Pappas, and Claire Bradley Ong.

Another stroke of luck brought me to the Clark Art Institute one afternoon where, just by chance, a woman named Adrienne Baxter Bell happened to be lecturing on none other than George Inness. Of course I had already bought and read her marvelous book,
George Inness and the Visionary Landscape,
but hearing her speak about the artist and his rather unique obsession with Emanuel Swedenborg helped me to better understand the direction of the novel.

Other excellent and indispensable references I depended on include:
George Inness and the Science of Landscape,
by Rachael Ziady DeLue;
Different Views in Hudson River School Painting,
by Judith Hansen O’Toole;
American Paradise: The World of the Hudson River School,
from the Metropolitan Museum of Art;
Conserving the Painted Past: Developing Approaches to Wall Painting Conservation,
edited by Robert Gowing and Adrian Heritage;
Kant on Swedenborg: Dreams of a Spirit-Seer and Other Writings,
edited by Gregory R. Johnson;
Journal of Dreams,
by Emanuel Swedenborg;
Heaven and Hell,
by Emanuel Swedenborg;
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature,
by William James; and
Emanuel Swedenborg: The Universal Human and Soul-Body Interaction,
edited by John Farina.

I want to thank my agent, Linda Chester, for staying the course with me these past twenty years and for always being there as a friend and advocate—for getting back to me in record speed, especially when it’s about new pages, and for always knowing just what to say to inspire me to make them better. I could not do this work without her. I want to thank Gary Jaffe for just about everything he does and how brilliantly he does it.

My good friends who are also realtors were of great help in so many ways and include: Don Moore, Beth Pine, Nancy Roth and especially Sue Baum, for taking me to a very special farm that she knew I had no intention of buying and which provided me with just the right insight and family history to get started, and to the great cows of Cook Farm in Hadley, Massachusetts, who were always outspoken about their lives and contributed greatly to my necessary, source-material-getting ice-cream breaks, and to the milk guys at Meadowbrook Farm in Clarksville, New York, for answering my questions as they hustled to deliver our milk.

I want to thank our neighbors Jake and Arlene Herzog, Jake Herzog, Jr., Angelo and Claire Dounoucos, Kurt and Joyce Anderson, Janet Breeze, and John Breeze for their wonderful stories about our little town and the residents who have occupied our house for two centuries, many of whom, in spirit, helped to shape this book. Many thanks, too, to Jill Silverstein, sailor Mike Donovan and coyote expert Joseph Cea.

Finally, I want to thank my family: my husband, Scott, for his inexhaustible work ethic and inspiring determination that keeps everyone else going; our kids, Hannah, Sophie and Sam, for their original ideas, creativity and astoundingly practical advice; and Daisy, for insisting on long walks that always lead to some unpredictable discovery. And to my amazing parents for their devotion, encouragement and unrelenting support. I couldn’t have done this without you.

About the Author

Elizabeth Brundage graduated from Hampshire College, attended NYU film school, was a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and received an MFA as well as a James Michener Award from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has taught at a variety of colleges and universities, most recently at Skidmore College, where she was visiting writer-in-residence. She lives near Albany, New York.

An A. A. Knopf Reading Group Guide

All Things Cease to Appear
by

Elizabeth Brundage

The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of
All Things Cease to Appear
, Elizabeth Brundage’s haunting literary thriller that explores the circumstances surrounding a grisly murder in a quiet rural town in upstate New York.

About this Book

Chosen is a sleepy rural hamlet: a town where everybody knows everybody, where doors are left unlocked, where men and women have worked the land for generations. It is also a town in transition, with class divides becoming sharply apparent after wealthy Manhattanites move to the area seeking a pastoral idyll. One such family, the Clares—George, a charismatic art history professor; his beautiful and shy wife, Catherine; and their three-year-old daughter—seems to be picture-perfect. When they move into their new home, a charming but dilapidated farmhouse, Catherine imagines a contented rural existence, yet it soon becomes apparent that happiness will be elusive. Their home, a once-thriving dairy farm, has been witness to a horrific tragedy, the repercussions of which are still felt throughout the town—and especially in eerie apparitions in their own home. Eventually, a dark pall is cast over the Clares’ domestic bliss, straining the relationship between husband and wife. When Catherine is brutally murdered, all fingers point to George, unraveling a complicated portrait of a marriage that is as compulsively readable as it is expertly executed.

When a committed local cop probes the case, eager to prove George’s guilt, much is exposed about the circumstances of the Clares’ marital distress. From his infatuation with a local waitress to the bold lies he has told about his academic career, George’s methodical deception and manipulative behavior reveal a man far more disturbed than what the townspeople ever imagined. Boldly plotted and darkly riveting,
All Things Cease to Appear
is a masterful exploration of psychology and motivation, family and community, and the forces that shape our collective identity.

Discussion Questions

1.  The issue of class differences weighs heavily throughout
All Things Cease to Appear
. Discuss the faltering farm economy in the area and how that affects morale. Which characters seem to represent the “old guard” of the town? How does distrust of the wealthy Manhattan set factor into the town’s perception of George?

2.  Discuss the role of otherworldly influences. How does Brundage use voice and character to create a foreboding, eerie feeling throughout the novel? Discuss George’s hesitance to believe in these spirits. How does this create a gulf between him and Catherine? When, if ever, does Catherine feel validated for believing in the presence of these spirits?

3.  Discuss the idea of “lost mothers.” as explored throughout. How do the Hale brothers each cope with the loss of their beloved mother? How does Catherine become a mother figure for the Hales? Which brother does she have the greatest influence on over time?

4.  How does Uncle Rainer help to shape Cole’s understanding of the world? Describe Rainer’s emphasis on education. How does Cole take this to heart?

5.  Discuss Willis’s trajectory throughout the novel. How would you describe her disposition as a teenager? What has shaped her worldview? How does her relationship with George affect her later choices in lifestyle and career?

6.  How is the concept of motherhood explored throughout the novel? How would you define motherhood for Catherine? Mary? How do the obligations of motherhood tie into wifely obligations? Which characters represent a backlash to the established 1970s ideals of womanhood?

7.  Discuss the evolution of Catherine’s personality. In the months before she is murdered, how does Catherine begin to defy the expectations of her role as wife? How is her discovery of poetry via Adrienne Rich significant to her development as a character? What other influences shape her?

8.  Discuss the scene in which George cuts Willis’s hair during an intimate encounter. Why do you think he chose to do that? Explore the power dynamic in their relationship.