Brass Ring (10 page)

“Excuse me.” Claire interrupted him. “I don’t understand why children who were this talented and about to go to Juilliard would live in Harpers Ferry.”

Randy nodded his understanding. “Guy had come back to Harpers Ferry because his parents and sister were there. He met my mother, and kind of got stuck there, I guess. We were planning to move to New York, though. At the time of the accident, the house was on the market.”

“I see.”

“So, as I said, the twins were not normal.” Randy pursed his lips. “Now I, on the other hand, was a normal kid.” He let out a small chuckle. “My only gift was for screwing up and getting in trouble. The articles always mentioned me in a little aside: ‘And the twins have an older brother, Randy.’”

There was a long pause before he spoke again. “I loved them, though,” he said. “They were my baby brother and sister. They got bullied a lot because they were soft, and I protected them.” He shook his head. “I once broke a kid’s nose for tripping Charles on the sidewalk.”

Stillness filled the theater again, and the air was growing colder by the minute. Someone must have turned down the thermostat on his or her way out. Claire thought of lifting her coat to her shoulders, but she didn’t want him to think she was ready to leave.

She looked at the empty stage, wondering how to word the question she couldn’t leave without asking. “Would you mind telling me what happened on the bridge twenty years ago?” she said finally.

Randy swept his hand over the wool coat one more time. “I’ll tell you,” he said, “but that’s it, all right? I’ll talk about it this one time, and then I don’t want to think about it again.”

“Yes. Fine.”

“I was fifteen at the time,” he said. “The twins were ten. My mother had asked me to walk over to their piano teacher’s house— they’d spent the night there because a big snowstorm hit during their lesson. It was about a mile from our house, across the bridge. So, I met them at their teacher’s house, and we started walking home.” He looked up at the beamed ceiling. “The bridge was covered with snow,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

“Yes,” she said.

“We started throwing snowballs at each other. They were playing like normal kids for once. Charles got carried away, though. He was chasing Margot with snowballs and horsing around like an honest-to-goodness kid. But then he climbed over the guardrail. I have no idea why. I think he wanted to slide along the platform out there while he was holding on to the railing.”

Claire caught her breath, remembering again the vertigo she’d felt on the bridge.

“We were yelling at him to come back, but he ignored us. Then suddenly, he was gone. He just fell out of sight. It happened so suddenly that, for a minute, I thought he was still joking around. We ran over to the side of the bridge and could hear him screaming, although we couldn’t see him. We were too far from the edge of the bridge.” He hesitated a moment. “I’ve always been glad of that. That I couldn’t see him.”

Claire nodded, although Randy wasn’t looking at her.

“Margot flipped out,” he continued. “She thought she could get to him somehow. She ran over to the spot where the bridge is built into the embankment and tried to climb down, but she fell and hit her head. Knocked herself unconscious and tumbled a few yards down to a rock.”

“How terrible.”

“I felt as if, in the space of a few seconds, I’d lost both my little sister and brother. And I was supposed to be walking them home to keep them safe. Terrific job I did, huh?” He glanced at her but didn’t wait for a response. “Anyhow, I climbed down the embankment and got to Margot. She was still breathing, but her head was covered with blood and she was unconscious. I half carried, half dragged her all the way home.”

Randy suddenly let out a growl and rested his head back against the pew, squinting at the ceiling. “That damn bridge,” he said. “I still can’t drive over it. I hate that thing.”

For the first time, Claire could see the pain inside him. He was circling it, edging closer. She had no desire to push him headfirst into it, but she needed to know the rest of the story.

“Margot was in a coma for a while?” she asked.

He sat up straight again and seemed to regain his composure. “She was unconscious for a couple of days,” he said, “and when she came out of it, she was different. She couldn’t handle losing Charles. He was her alter ego. She was extremely depressed, and afraid to leave my mother’s side. Literally. My mother couldn’t use the bathroom without Margot sitting right outside the door, waiting for her to come out.”

“Could she go to school?”

“No, but she’d never gone to school in the first place. My parents taught her at home. Margot eventually wrecked my mother’s marriage to Guy. If they tried to kick her out of their bedroom, she would sneak in and curl up in a ball and spend the night on their floor.

“My mother died of cancer three years ago, but Margot had lived with her until then. Once Mother was dead, it was obvious that Margot couldn’t take care of herself. She would get into bed and stay there, not eating, sometimes not even getting up to use the toilet.” Randy sighed again. “So Guy, who was living in D.C. at the time, and I got together to try to figure out what to do. He had remarried and had a new family and essentially wanted no part of her. I felt guilty about institutionalizing her, but I couldn’t see taking her in—she needed round-the-clock care. So we committed her. I’m still not sure that was the right thing to do, especially now, knowing she was able to get out and kill herself.” He spread his broad hands flat on his knees. “Maybe I could have done more for her,” he said. “I don’t know. She was my sister, but sometimes I pretended she didn’t exist. It was easier that way.”

He fell silent, but Claire was too lost in her own thoughts to notice. Something he had said struck a chord in her.

“I have a sister, too.” Her voice was as soft as a whisper in the cool, dark air of the old chapel.

Randy waited.

“She’s two years younger than me, and I haven’t seen her since I was a child.”

“Why not?”

Claire shrugged. “Our parents divorced, and she went to live with my father in Washington State.” With the entire country between them, it had required little effort to pretend she had no sister. Randy was right. It was easier that way.

Suddenly, an image passed before her eyes: a smooth, white surface—porcelain, perhaps?—smeared with blood. Claire’s breath caught in her throat. The image disappeared as quickly as it had come, but she stood up abruptly, panicked.

Randy looked at her in surprise.

“I didn’t realize it was so late,” Claire said, although she had no idea of the time. “I have to go.”

The theater was spinning, and she clutched Randy’s arm as he stood up. Her stomach churned with the threat of nausea as he reached out to steady her, one hand on her shoulder.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’ve gone white.”

She nodded, letting go of him. She felt his eyes on her. “Yes, I’m fine,” she said, lifting her coat to her shoulders. Her legs trembled as she walked out of the pew, but once she reached the aisle, the vertigo had subsided, and she felt well enough to be embarrassed.

“I’m sorry,” she said as they walked toward the foyer. “I guess I stood up too quickly.”

“No problem.” He held the heavy door open for her, and she stepped into the foyer. The poster announcing the opening of the play faced them from the corner.

She hugged herself through her coat. “You’re playing the magician?” She nodded toward the sign.

“Uh-huh.” He put on his long black coat and quickly regained that distinguished, sanguine demeanor he’d had onstage.

“And just what does the magician do?”

“Essentially nothing.” Randy pushed open the outside doors and a cold and welcome gust of air swept across Claire’s face as they stepped onto the sidewalk. “He’s not a magician at all, you see, but everyone thinks he is, and that’s all that matters. He only has to stand back and watch the magic happen.”

“Oh.” She raised the collar of her coat up to her chin as Randy turned to lock the door. “I see, I guess.” She looked toward her car, the only one still in the parking lot. “Do you need a ride?” she asked.

Randy pulled a pouch from his coat pocket. He removed a pipe from the pouch and slipped it into his mouth. Claire was mesmerized by the way he cupped his hands around the bowl as he lit it, and fragrant puffs of smoke rose into the air above his head.

“I prefer walking.” Randy took the pipe from his mouth. “I don’t live far.” He motioned north of where they stood. The streetlight caught the blue of his eyes, and Claire had that sense of familiarity again, as if she had known him for a long, long time.

“Listen, Claire,” Randy said. “I really am grateful to you for what you tried to do. It renews my faith in humankind that there are people out there like you. But forget about Margot. It’s obvious that you’re beating yourself up over something that was in no way your responsibility. Or your fault. You couldn’t possibly have saved her.”

“Thank you.” She wanted to put her arms around him and bury her head in the brushed wool of his coat while he said those words to her over and over again.

Randy smiled and took her hand, holding it between both of his. When he let go, he turned and started walking away from her along the sidewalk. The street lamp cut an angle of light across the back of his coat, and she held her eyes fast to that silver light, watching as he crossed the street. He walked briskly, and soon all she could see was the white patch of his cheek moving through the darkness. Then, nothing. She stood numbly under the street lamp, her eyes still riveted on the distant point where he’d disappeared, and felt an inexplicable sense of loss and longing, as if he’d given her a chance to learn something she desperately needed to know, something she could never hope to learn without him.

VIENNA

JON WAS STILL AT
the gym, even though it was after ten on a Wednesday night. He’d worked late at the foundation, eating take-out kung pao chicken at his desk as he made phone calls to some of his West Coast colleagues. Usually on Wednesday nights, he and Claire made dinner together and rented a movie. Claire had begged out of tonight’s date, though, to meet with Margot St. Pierre’s brother. She’d asked Jon if he wanted to go with her, but he’d declined. This was Claire’s business. Besides, he was tired of Margot St. Pierre. Ol’ Chopin was beginning to grate on him, as well.

He was working out on a long row of exercise machines, all of which were open to accommodate a wheelchair. He had donated all eight of the machines to the gym several years earlier. The equipment faced a wall of mirrors, and he observed the comforting bulge and release of his muscles as he raised and lowered the weights. Great mirrors. Close enough to let him see the sweat glistening on his arms and shoulders, yet not quite close enough that he could make out the lines around his eyes.

The out-of-character vanity that had suddenly broadsided him this last year disgusted him. So, he was going to be forty in a couple of months. Big deal. Claire had turned forty a few months earlier, and she’d celebrated for days. She’d been positively boisterous. “Oh, it’s
wonderful
to be forty,” she’d told the world. “What a fabulous age!” He wouldn’t be able to accept passage into his fifth decade with such ease.

He left the gym at ten-thirty. When he pulled into his long driveway, it was nearly eleven, and the sight of the darkened house disappointed him. She must still be out.

The garage door opened, and he saw her car in its usual spot when he pulled inside. Good. She was home. Probably went to bed early. He felt suddenly foolish for having stayed out so late himself.

He wheeled through the back door into the kitchen, where the small light above the stove cast a pool of white on the tiled floor, and he shut his eyes at the strains of Chopin coming from the stereo.

“Claire?”

“In here.”

He wheeled into the family room. She was sitting on the sofa, in the darkness, and he felt an unfamiliar surge of fear.

“Why are you sitting in the dark?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Just didn’t get around to turning on the light, I guess.”

He hit the wall switch and saw her wince at the intrusion. She had drawn her feet onto the sofa and sat hugging her knees.

“How about some different music?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Sure.”

He wheeled over to the stereo and hit the disc-skip button. Otis Redding started singing about the dock on the bay, and Jon thought he had never heard a more refreshing, soul-reviving, sound.

Claire had lowered her head to rest her cheek on her knees, and she ran her fingers slowly over the pale tweed fabric of the sofa. What was wrong with her?

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She nodded without lifting her cheek from her knee.

He wheeled closer. “How’d your meeting go?”

“Okay.” She sounded unsure of the answer, but she raised her head to look at him. “We met in this quaint little theater in McLean, and he told me about the night Margot and her brother fell off the bridge when they were kids.”

She recounted the story to him, and he studied her face as she spoke. There was something unrecognizable there. Maybe it was the odd angle of the lighting. It illuminated her right temple and the small jut of her chin, leaving the rest of her features in darkness. Her face was not her own, and her voice was flat. That same intonation might have sounded perfectly normal in someone else, but in Claire, whose voice usually bubbled with life, the words sounded dry and stale.

He listened carefully and without comment until she had finished. Maybe she simply needed to talk, he thought. Maybe if she got every speck of it out, it would end. Every day he hoped it would end. Instead, she seemed to be getting drawn even more deeply into the pit of gloom Margot had dug for her.

Claire sighed when she had finished speaking. She stretched her arms toward the ceiling. “Anyhow,” she said, “listening to Randy talk about Margot made me think about Vanessa.”

“Vanessa?” Jon frowned. He didn’t see the connection, and he hadn’t heard Claire mention her sister’s name in years.