House of Secrets - v4 (2 page)

The eyes had it.

While sitting motionless in the wooden chair, Smallwood had also deduced that just as the human eye is attached to a human consciousness, this extraordinary collection of eye-stars must be linked to a Supreme Sage Consciousness. And that Consciousness — of this he was positive — fully aware of what it was Robert Smallwood was planning to do in just under an hour’s time. It
knew
. It was aware of his motivations and it was aware of his intentions. And it approved wholeheartedly.

Of course it did. It couldn’t
not
.

The rope of muscles along Smallwood’s shoulders ached wonderfully from the strenuous rowing across the choppy sound to the island beach earlier in the evening. Once settled in the wooden chair he had made a vow to remain completely still and to simply wait, to keep all his energy balled up, hugging his knees to his chest and bringing forth his Prodigious Patience. The only part of his body to which he had granted permission to move was his glorious head, which swiveled slowly, like a methodical owl’s: a perfect calibration of ball bearings in the neck. Smallwood scanned the calm inlet, taking in the black sound just beyond it, as well as the phosphorescent haze hovering over sleepy Greenport Harbor, some half mile distant. This sublime level of stillness — his oscillating head notwithstanding — enthralled Smallwood. Such contained and sustained energy, he couldn’t explain. He found it so
exciting
. Smallwood felt that had he chosen to, he could have detonated the energy gathered at his very core and propelled himself out into the sky
exactly
like a rocket or a missile. In fact, when at one point a shooting star grazed the edge of his peripheral vision, a Mona Lisa smile tugged at the corners of Smallwood’s mouth.

That’s me. There I go. Faster than a blazing motherfucker
.

A
ll flights were canceled. The midsection of the country was taking too hard a pounding. Ben and Christine were moving briskly through the terminal. Ben implored Christine as they stepped onto the moving walkway: “But Lillian will insist that I bring you back home.”

Christine was adamant. “It doesn’t make any sense, Ben. I’ve had my visit. I’m just going to get a room in one of the hotels here. I’ll fly out as soon as the weather clears. I tried to tell you both it wasn’t necessary for you to drive me out here in the first place.”

“I know. But…” Ben gave up the fight.

“If you want me to call Lillian myself and tell her, I will.”

“No. It’s okay, Chrissie. I’ll explain it to her. Don’t worry about it.”

As they reached the end of the moving walkway Christine spotted an airport bookstore. She brushed Ben’s elbow.

“Hold on a second.”

Pulling her roller bag behind her, she veered off the carpeted hallway and into the store. A round table just inside the entrance held a pyramid display of the current bestseller by the latest spiritual health guru, a seven-figure smile beaming from the book’s cover. Christine moved past the guru’s pyramid to a second display table, this one featuring several titles in more modest stacks. Christine picked a book off one of the stacks. Even three weeks into the whole thing, the funny feeling still came to Christine’s stomach when she saw Andy’s book.

A SENSE OF URGENCY
S
ENATOR
A
NDREW
P. F
OSTER

Christine still considered the photograph on the cover essentially shameless: her and Andy’s daughter, Michelle (six years old in the photograph; seven and a half years old now), whispering something into her daddy’s ear and Andy responding with a huge burst of laughter. Part of what was so special about the photograph was the knowing expression on Michelle’s face, the little girl’s awareness that what she was whispering to Daddy would definitely trigger his funny bone. The striking family similarity in the two faces lent an additional power to the photograph.
Little Wizard, Big Wizard
. Neither Andy nor Christine could recall precisely when the paired nicknames had first surfaced, but Michelle and her father had been employing them on each other now for several years at least. Christine had thrown a small fit during Andy’s recent reelection campaign when Andy had allowed the media
(invited
, had been Christine’s assertion) to catch Michelle on tape using the nickname. Michelle had subsequently been referred to as “the Wiz Kid” in most of the news outlets, a development that had done little to stem Christine’s irritation with her husband.

“The next time you want to exploit our child, why don’t you put her on your payroll first?” Christine had told him pointedly. “There’s one public figure in this household, okay? And it’s not the kid with the pink backpack.”

As she gazed at the cover of her husband’s book, Christine was seized by twin twinges of guilt and hypocrisy, hardly the first of either. The truth was, she had not only been the one to tell Michelle what to whisper into Daddy’s ear, she had been the one aiming the camera, nailing the composition perfectly. It’s what she did. She took pictures. What was worse was that ultimately she had allowed Andy and his editor to convince her that the photograph absolutely had to be used for the cover of Andy’s book. The sense of hypocrisy Christine felt whenever she fielded compliments on the photograph was due in no small part to the fact that for all that it irked her to have given in to the use of her daughter’s image for the furthering of Andy’s career, she couldn’t help but take pride in the photograph itself. In the end, it had been on
that
basis as much as anything else that Christine had given her blessings for its use.

Ben appeared next to her. “You know, I’ve been dying to ask. Just what is she saying to Andy that’s so funny?”

Christine lied. “Oh, who knows? It’s just those two. They’re always goofing together.”

The two exited the bookstore, Ben insisting on commandeering Christine’s roller bag. Christine granted the man his chivalry, and as the two continued down the terminal hub, Ben asked yet another question whose answer he already knew.

“So, when does Andy get back from Florida?”

“He flies into D.C. tomorrow morning,” Christine said. “Then home for the weekend, and we’ll spend Easter with my dad and Jenny.”

“And the book? It’s selling well?”

“It’s looking pretty good so far. Everybody seems to be pleased. Andy’s been getting more-than-decent turnouts at the bookstores.” She let out a gently mocking laugh. “The publisher’s hoping that all the retired New Yorkers down in Florida will flock to see the great man.”

An electric cart carrying half a dozen elderly passengers was trundling down the center of the wide aisle, beeping as it approached. As Ben and Christine skirted to the side to let it pass, Christine noted the anxious expression on her stepfather’s face. “Is everything okay, Ben?”

Ben’s gaze trailed after the receding cart. “I probably shouldn’t be bringing this up. But… I just wanted to say that it was really good of you to visit, Chrissie. Seriously. I know your mother can be a handful sometimes.”

“Sometimes?” Christine could not contain her laugh. “Good Lord, Ben,
you
should be the one in politics. You said that with a completely straight face! Yeah. I most certainly do know how she is.”

“Your mother misses the East. Denver is just not Lillian’s speed.”

Christine scoffed. “Neither was Albany. And apparently neither was Greenwich. In fact, even London didn’t seem to float her boat. I’m not sure that anywhere is Miss Lillian’s speed. You’re amazingly sweet to put up with her, Ben. Daddy used to say that governing the state of New York was the simple part. It was governing his wife that took all his real skills.”

Ben’s nervous laugh betrayed his discomfort. The poor man, Christine thought. I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t know.

S
mallwood spotted the ferry carrying his cousin Joy within a minute of its leaving Greenport.

He watched as it crossed the bay and disappeared from sight on the other side of the wooded point that jutted into the water. Smallwood’s insights about Cousin Joy had been surging through his mind for months now, his large brain gathering and processing and gathering and processing with prodigious efficiency. He had her nailed, pegged, analyzed, dissected. Gone was the sweet little girl with whom he used to spend summers out on the island. In her place was a creature Smallwood barely recognized and had come to despise.

Smallwood had taken the train out from the city and then “borrowed” the rowboat to travel over to the island. He had come to confront his cousin with the results of his analyses. There could be no more avoiding it. Lately Joy had been refusing to even answer the phone when he called. It had been a pure fluke that she had refused his most recent request to get together by letting him know — angrily — that she was heading out that night to the house on Shelter Island.

Or possibly not a fluke. Possibly it was all in the stars.

The temperature had dropped in the past hour. Some fifteen minutes after the ferry docked, a car’s headlights had appeared on the hill, stopping at the very last house. Through the magic of sound on water, Smallwood had heard a pair of doors closing, followed by the tiny buzzing sounds of conversation. A man. A woman.

Smallwood rose. Stretching his arms out from his sides for balance, he stepped from the lifeguard chair and landed softly in the sand, cushioning the drop with his knees. Lifting his feet decorously — like a slow prancing Andalusian horse — large and determined Robert Smallwood marched along the sand toward the road, feeling extremely goddamned noble.

A
s Christine stepped onto the down escalator, her attention was drawn to an elderly man standing at the bottom, edging onto the moving stairs using a wooden cane. He was dressed in a plaid jacket and a red bow tie, and was stooped with age. His hair was wavy and cotton white, with salt-and-pepper eyebrows that flared at the ends. He looked like a lost vaudevillian.

Instinctively, Christine reached for her camera and began firing off shots of the man, at the same time taking methodical steps backward so that she might stay in place near the top of the escalator. Each foot landed seamlessly on the next descending stair. Ben continued down toward the bottom.

The man in the bow tie was hesitating at the bottom of the escalator, poking tremulously at the moving stairs with the tip of his cane, but finally he committed. Christine captured a dozen images in the space of five seconds. Then she paused, ceasing her backpedaling, and squeezed the zoom. An elegant face of thin rubbery folds filled the viewfinder. Christine tightened the frame even more. It was only the precise instant that the white-haired man looked directly over into her camera that Christine became aware of the tears of humiliation glistening on his cheeks.

The two passed in the middle. As she reached the bottom, Christine wanted nothing else but for a second escalator to open up in front of her and take her down, down, down. She stepped over to a row of chairs and dropped into the first one she reached. The pitiable man’s mournful face filled her mind and she had an urge to go racing up the escalator, to find the man, to do
… something
. She didn’t budge. Her eyes fell blindly on two women seated across from her. It took the better part of a minute for it to dawn on her what book one of the two women was reading. The teary old man dissolved from Christine’s mind. She realized she was staring at the photograph of her handsome laughing husband and her mildly exploited daughter.

Something felt terribly, terribly wrong.

T
o avoid the crunching sound of gravel underfoot, Smallwood kept off the driveway. His breathing was labored, from walking up the steep road as well as from the adrenaline rushing powerfully through his system.

The trees surrounding the house created an additional canopy of darkness. Smallwood felt as if he could swipe his hand through the air in front of him and come up with a smear of black on his fingers. The vision further suggested to him that were he to circle the house several dozen times before entering it, he could render himself an unseeable shadow form, as invisible as a gathering of wind.

The black wind of night.

Joy’s Miata was parked on the gravel drive. Smallwood stepped daintily over the gravel to the car and peered into the window. He was curious about the keys. The family habit when coming out to stay in the house was to forgo locks, forgo keys. The house had always been that sort of refuge from the otherwise restrictive and wary world. A place to let down your guard.

Yes. The keys were in the car.

As Smallwood turned to confront the house, echoes of the long-ago voices of his cousins and himself swirled deliciously in his head, and with no difficulty at all he could see Cousin Joy making one of those explosive leaps they all enjoyed making from the front porch, her ponytail rising behind her like an Indian’s feather, her bare skinny limbs flying in their four directions.

Smallwood froze the image: Cousin Joy suspended in the air, with her little pretty face open in a shriek of delight. Smallwood stepped over to where his mind had fixed her in space. He remained there, Black Wind of the Night, wholly motionless for a full minute… two… three… gazing at his own imagination. Inches from little Joy’s face. Studying the tiny gap between her Chiclet teeth. Breathing in her imagined scent.

Presently, Smallwood became aware of sounds. For a moment he thought the soft cooing sounds were coming from him, from his own sweet nostalgia. Then he recognized them for what they were. Not his pathetic pigeon sounds at all. Anything but. They were coming from the house.

From Joy.

No longer worried in the slightest about making noise, Smallwood marched to the side of the house and around toward the back. Off at the edge of the property, beyond the trees, floated the black pool of the inlet down below. As he neared the rear of the house the sounds became louder. Unmistakable.