“Your father will be delighted to see you, I’m sure, but he’s asleep right now. He had a difficult night.”
“I need to talk to Dad,” Frances said. At that moment she wished her sister were with her. She wanted someone to help her deal with the intense emotion that was sure to come in the next several minutes.
“Is everything all right?” Lily asked. She leaned over and stubbed out the butt of her cigarette.
“Clio’s dead.” Frances didn’t know how to say it any other way. None of the euphemisms for death ever sounded right.
Lily gasped, then started to tremble. She wrapped her arms around her waist as if to comfort herself with an embrace. Frances could see tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry, oh, I’m so very sorry. Oh, I just don’t know what to say. Your poor father,” Lily rambled.
Frances walked past her and entered the house. Lily was the health care professional. This was her job. If Lily fell apart, Frances was not at all sure that she could remain in control. “Please get my father now,” she instructed, forcing her voice to sound authoritative.
Lily wiped her hands on her starched white uniform, followed Frances inside, and left to awaken Richard.
As Frances waited she walked quietly around the perimeter of the living room, stopping to study the built-in bookshelves at one end. Photographs in blue-and-white-checkered frames were perched amid rows and rows of hardbound books, Richard’s golf trophies, plaques that he’d received from appreciative investors, other memorabilia of glorious days at Pratt Capital, and a model of a wooden motorboat with a wide deck of varnished mahogany. There were pictures of Richard and Clio, smiling, hugging, wearing straw hats on a sailboat, holding hands on a golf course, clinking Champagne glasses in some cozy restaurant. All Clio’s doing, Frances thought. She gave him a happy life, and now she’s left him surrounded by happy memories.
Frances turned as she heard the sound of rubber squeaking on the wood floors. Richard sat up in his wheelchair, looking straight at her as Lily pushed him from behind. He wore a seersucker robe, and Frances could see his white pajamas with blue piping underneath. Lily had not bothered to dress him.
“Is it Blair?” he asked as soon as his wheelchair came to a halt. Lily secured the brake so he wouldn’t roll. She sniffled and dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
“No, Dad. Blair’s fine.” Frances stood a few feet from him. “It’s Clio. She’s…she…Dad, Clio’s dead.” Even though she spoke in a low tone, the words seemed to bellow about the big space, resonating against the walls.
Richard lowered his head. His thin torso slouched forward so that Frances could not see his facial expression, and his body started to tremble. As his forearms fell off the armrests of his wheelchair, his hands dangled toward the floor. His feet turned inward, pigeon-toed on the metallic foot stabilizers. It was precisely the posture she had imagined, but this physical reaction looked worse in real life.
“I’m so sorry,” she heard herself say in a voice that seemed miles away. She reached out to touch his shoulder but realized the space between them was too far, and her feet seemed unwilling to move closer to him. Her arm dropped to her side.
Richard mumbled something that Frances couldn’t understand. Then he slurped his saliva back down his throat.
“She was found at Fair Lawn. The cause of death hasn’t been determined for sure, but it appears to be heart failure,” Frances said, anxious to share what little information she had. “I’ve told the police to go ahead with an autopsy. I thought it best.”
Richard said nothing.
Frances felt lost, unsure of what to do or whether she could do it even if she knew. She shifted her weight from side to side, feeling her feet sweaty in her leather loafers. She looked at Lily, who was gently rubbing Richard’s back. Frances watched her hands as they moved in small circles. First Justin, then the stroke, now Clio, was all Frances could think. It was more pain than any one person should have to bear. Her throat and eyes burned. She needed to leave this house before she herself broke down, but she knew she should stay.
“Should I call Dr. Farley?” she asked. She wanted her father’s physician to prescribe a sleeping pill for him, maybe one for her, too. They could both drift off into peaceful sleep, hoping this entire morning were a nightmare that would disappear when they awoke.
“I can contact him if we need him,” Lily replied.
“There must be something I can do,” Frances said, more to herself than her father. Neither Lily nor Richard responded. “Is there anyone you want me to call?” she asked, knowing the answer. Clio had no immediate family, and friends could be notified later. “Do you want to be left alone?”
“Maybe he should rest,” Lily said softly. “I can reach you if there’s anything he needs.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything from the medical examiner. That is, if you want to know.” She assumed her father would be anxious to hear details, but she knew that nothing she could say or do would lessen the horror of the situation. “Clio loved you so much. You have to remember that. You two made each other incredibly happy, and that’s more than most people ever have.” Her offering sounded feeble, a Hallmark sentimentality, and she faulted herself for her inability to articulate the sorrow she felt for him.
Frances closed her eyes, wishing she could put this scene out of her mind. Her father’s words, the only discussion she and he had ever had about death, returned to her from her distant memory. She had been eight, and her first pet, a guinea pig, had died. She remembered holding the limp, furry body in her cupped palms and crying to her father. She had wanted him to comfort her, to console her, to give her an explanation for what she perceived as a monumental unfairness. Instead Richard had rubbed his index finger along the spine of the creature and said, “There’s nothing I can do to make you feel any better. That’s the problem with losing what we love. No words can replace it. No tears can fill what must be a huge hole inside you. Others may tell you that time will make you feel better, that as the weeks go by your pain will lessen. I’m not going to tell you that, Fanny, because I don’t think it’s true. We learn to live with our pain, to tolerate it in a way that allows us to continue to go on, but nothing makes it disappear. And no one else can ever really understand what you are feeling. As much as I love you, you are ultimately alone with your sadness.”
“I’ll check in with you later, see if there’s anything you need,” Frances said. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t lessen his burden. She walked quickly out the door to the Miata, got in the car, and fixed her gaze on the road ahead as she sped away. As the distance between her green sports car and the house on Ox Pasture Road increased, she felt the sea of her emotions flatten and calm.
Frances pushed the accelerator and sped east along Montauk Highway. Planted fields and fresh produce stands overflowing with corn, potatoes, and tomatoes filled her vision. After six miles she turned left at a blinking light and headed toward Sag Harbor. The road twisted and turned past gabled churches, a high school with basketball courts empty for the summer recess, and lawn after lawn leading up to well-kept Colonial homes. She headed toward Peconic Bay.
It was nearly four when Frances reached the dirt road leading to Blair and Jake’s house. The cottage with its pair of doghouse dormers sat perched at the top of a small hill overlooking the water. Someone had removed the shutters, and Frances could see the discolored rectangular outline on the shingles where they had hung. A variety of mosses spilled over the sides of the two Mediterranean planters that were placed on opposite sides of the black painted door.
The place was quiet. Frances parked the car and sat for a moment, looking out to sea. Wind formed whitecaps on the surface of the blue expanse. The temperature had dropped. She promised herself that she would check briefly on her sister and then head home.
Frances walked around to the back of the house. On the weather-treated deck, her sister lay on a lounge chair with a small white pillow over her eyes and a cotton blanket over her feet. She wore gray sweat pants and a striped T-shirt. Her hair was wet.
“Blair, it’s me, Frances,” Frances said quietly so as not to startle her.
“Fanny, I’m so glad you’re here.” Blair removed the pillow and placed it behind her head. “I tried to wait for you at Fair Lawn, but the paramedics insisted I get to the hospital. I must say, I think they were right. Valium is a wonderful drug.” She smiled sheep-ishly.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Frances said.
“Can I get you anything?” Blair asked, reaching to pick up the glass of red wine on the deck beside her. “There’s white, too, if you prefer, or beer.”
“No thanks.” Frances sat in an Adirondack chair next to her sister.
“Did you talk to Dad?”
“Yeah. I told him.”
“How did he seem?”
Frances didn’t know how to answer. Sad, weak, pathetic, old, all words that described her father, but none of which captured the sadness he must have felt. “I didn’t stay long. Lily was with him.”
“Don’t tell me you just told him his wife was dead and walked out.” Blair closed her eyes in seeming disgust.
“It wasn’t exactly like that, no. He was asleep when I arrived. I told him what I knew, which wasn’t much, and he was quiet. There wasn’t anything else for me to do.”
“What do you mean? He’s our father, for God’s sake. You couldn’t stick around to comfort him?”
Frances didn’t need Blair’s accusations. For the last twenty minutes she had asked herself over and over why she couldn’t do a better job of sharing her father’s grief at the loss of his wife. “I came to check on you, but I’m too tired to argue.” Frances started to get up.
“Don’t go.”
“What do you want me to do? You asked me to tell Dad because you didn’t want to. I did that. I did it in the only way I knew how.”
“I’m sorry, Fanny,” Blair apologized. “You’re right.” She pulled the blanket up over her waist. “I tried calling a little while ago, but Lily told me he didn’t want to be disturbed. I should go over there myself, but, frankly, I feel too weak. You can’t imagine what it was like just walking into the bathroom and finding her dead.”
“Had you seen her earlier in the day?”
“Briefly, just to say hello. I had been on the porch of the clubhouse, like everyone else, watching the men’s doubles tournament. She was there, too. I can’t remember who she was with. Anyway, the next thing I knew, I went to the bathroom and found her.”
“Was the stall door open?” Frances interrupted.
“Partly. Enough so that I could see that someone had collapsed inside. Then I pushed it open farther, thinking I might be able to help whoever was in trouble, and saw it was Clio.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t really remember. I screamed. People came running in. I called you. That’s about it.”
“Did you talk to anyone about what happened?”
“The police, briefly. The paramedics arrived and pretty much took me away. Why does any of this matter?”
“It doesn’t. I don’t know why I’m asking,” Frances replied, realizing how easily she fell into her role as lawyer, questioner, and examiner. She scratched at a mosquito bite on her ankle.
Blair took a sip of her wine. “I’ll head over there tomorrow. There’s probably a lot to organize, and I doubt Dad’s up to much. Someone’s going to have to take charge of that monstrous house, all her stuff, figure out what to do with it. There actually may be things we want.”
Frances hoped Blair’s words were Valium induced. She watched Blair run her finger around the rim of her glass absentmindedly. Moments like this made Frances realize how different she and her sister were despite their shared genes, shared experiences, and deeply felt affection for one another. Neither the material remnants of Clio’s life nor the organization of the house on Ox Pasture Road had occurred to Frances.
“I won’t miss her. I know that’s a terrible thing to say about the dead, but she was a horrible woman.”
“Dad loved her,” Frances replied.
“Dad wanted a wife who wouldn’t leave him, that’s all. Look what he put up with to get it. She made our lives hell. I can’t believe that was a good thing for Dad.”
“Dad didn’t have to let it happen.” As she spoke, Frances regretted her words. She didn’t want to be drawn into a conversation about growing up with Clio. Frances and Blair had gone on to live their own lives. What had happened over the course of the thirty years that Clio had been a part of the Pratt family was over, and rehashing childhood memories was not particularly productive, especially now.
“Do you remember the time she locked me out?” Blair asked.
Frances didn’t respond.
“It was the summer after sixth grade, so I must’ve been eleven. I can’t remember where Dad was, a business trip or something because it was a Saturday in July and otherwise he would’ve been there.” She closed her eyes as she spoke. “It had been a bad week. I lost in the semifinals of the twelve and under to Hilda McLennen. Bobby Carter broke up with me because I wouldn’t let him get to second base, and Felice Finlay had a slumber party and didn’t invite me. God”—Blair laughed—“it’s so vivid, it feels like yesterday. Anyway, I called Mom in the city that morning and begged her to come out to see me. I actually remember whispering into the kitchen phone so Clio wouldn’t hear me. I had to lie to Clio and say I was spending the day at a friend’s house because I was nervous about her finding out that Mom was coming during our time with Dad. The irony being that Dad worked all the time so we hardly saw him anyway.”
Blair continued. “Of course, Mom came out. We had a great time. She took me to lunch, listened to me cry and babble about the hardships of my life, how I really and truly loved Bobby and would never survive our breakup, but by the end of the meal, she convinced me that he was a loser and I was lucky to be rid of him.” Blair laughed. “Something only a mother could do. Anyway, she bought me a sundress from Lily Pulitzer, you know the ones that were hot pink and chartreuse in wild patterns? Mine had shells and seahorses on it. At the end of the day, Mom had to go back to the city. She dropped me off at the end of Dad’s driveway so Clio wouldn’t see her. When I got to the house, the door was locked. I knocked and rang. No one came. I walked around the house calling for help. Still no one. When have you ever known that house to be empty? I banged on windows. Nothing. I actually saw Kitty, I think that was her name, the Irish nanny we had with the mole on her nose, remember? She walked right by, as if I were invisible. It got dark and I was scared. I kept ringing the bell. I was crying and no one came. I debated breaking a window, but thought Clio would get really mad if I did that. Anyway, I ended up sleeping on the terrace. Kitty came out early the next morning to get me. I asked her why she hadn’t come for me sooner, when I was begging to be let in. She told me that Clio had instructed all of the servants to leave me outside overnight. That I would never lie again.”