Onyx (67 page)

Between Tom and Justin it was so absolute as to be electrifying.

The beating had smudged Justin's face in the way an impressionist artist might blur the features of his subject in order to show character and bone structure. The ultimate effect was to make the shape of Justin's head more distinct: Though it had not been apparent before, he and Tom had the same long skull, the same curve of jaw.

The pewter hair and the white shone with identical lambency. Both men were tall, both bodies showed the vigor that carried them tirelessly through days of heavy, damaging labor. There was a force, a power in their carriage.

Hugh looked from one to the other, and though his shock at seeing his loved and hated nephew was so immoderate to be a stranglehold around his neck, a secret smile curved his hard mouth. The long-delayed emergence of genetic configurations fit his cherished belief in ties of the blood. The mysteries of heredity cannot remain forever hidden.

Caryll's gaze, too, moved from his father to Justin and back again, his hand involuntarily clenching on his stomach as he viscerally experienced the shattering recognition of the long, well-guarded secret.

Maud peered through her glasses at Justin, not looking at Tom. Her cheeks, high-colored without benefit of rouge, went sallow, and the small, harsh sound that emerged from her throat seemed to rise from deep within her bosom.

Zoe, who had continued to look at Caryll, turned to the entry. She saw Justin.

For her there was only the djinn-like materialization of her brother: in her emotional ferment there was nothing else. Her fingers loosened on the stemmed crystal, and splashes of martini darkened the exquisitely draped azure silk jersey of her dinner gown. She set down the cocktail glass, and the clink rang through the pall of unnatural silence.

Justin closed the door.

Zoe and Justin stared at each other with a hunger that swept aside animosities as well as the harsh victories of time. Their innocent selves returned, the strong, incorruptibly fair older brother, the willful, turbulent little beauty, who had dwelled together in the tall early Victorian house with a joyous, vibrant black-haired woman.

Justin held out his arms, and Zoe plunged across priceless antique Aubusson rugs. Each clasped the other's waist, hugging.

“Oh, your poor face,” she said in a rushed whisper. “Your poor, poor face.”

“Zozo, how I've missed you.”

“You've gone all gray.” She pressed her warm, perfumed cheek to his. When they pulled apart, he clasped both her hands.

Tom had kept his eyes on Justin, and Maud's owl gaze, too, remained on the embracing brother and sister.

But Caryll continued to stare from his father to Justin, his expression of painful recognition usurped by one of horror.
Zoe
? his lips moved silently.
Zoe, too
?

Hugh ran a fingernail down the arm of his chair, an irritating rasp that he did not realize he was causing. Surprised by the blundering of delight at Justin's presence, amazed by the resurrection of his old avuncular love, horrified by Justin's bruises, he said the first thing that flashed into his head. “I didn't hear any car.”

“I took the Guelin place's lakeshore path, climbed over your wall. Then the servants' cloakroom.”

“Yes, that door's always open.”

Justin leaned against the doorjamb, his urgency about Elisse muted by a wave of vertigo only in part attributable to his bashing. Expecting Hugh alone, he had not calculated on the psychic cost of seeing his sister and the gathered Bridgers. He inhaled deeply to regain his equilibrium.

“Dad?” Caryll muttered, stretching his hand with a child's gesture of dependence toward Tom. “My God, Dad?”

Tom's normal sardonic expression had deserted him: the lower half of his long, angular face had fallen, giving him the appearance of toothless age. He turned away from Justin's accusatory bruises and Caryll's burning, horrified eyes, resting his elbows on the end of the mantel.

Maud's topaz beads were rising and falling on the rich, gloomy brown satin over her bosom. With a loud, incongruous burst of laughter, she said, “Now I see why you pushed to marry
her
.”

Tom did not shift. The fire flickered ruddy patterns on his white hair.

“Mother, then it's true?” Caryll asked.

“Everyone said she was a whore.”

Zoe asked shrilly, “What is all this?”

“Mother?” Caryll repeated.

“You have eyes,” Maud said loudly. “See for yourself.”

Caryll looked neither at his father nor at Justin. Touching the tip of his tongue to his lips, he said, “Yes.”

Zoe returned across the room to her husband. “Please, Caryll. What's going on?”

Caryll reached to hold his wife, then his arm jerked to his side as though the gorgeously sensual body were corseted in molten metal.

“
She's
not your father's, Caryll.” Maud's laugh was mirthless. “He didn't start going to England until after she was born. If he had, the story would have been quite different. But he didn't. So she's not his child.”

“What
is
everybody talking about?” Zoe cried, tossing her vivid, burnished head, a gesture left over from childhood tantrums. “I can't bear it!”

“Justin and Caryll are brothers,” Maud said with clogged vindictiveness.

“Brothers-in-law,” Zoe denied.

“Half brothers,” Maud said in that same thick intonation.

Zoe flopped into the sofa, limp. After a moment her beautiful, stricken eyes sought Justin. “Is it true?”

Yet in my lineaments they trace/ Some features of my father's face
. “Afraid so. Yes.”

“Father Bridger and Mother?”

Justin nodded.

“But that's hideous.… There was Uncle Andrew, too. Creepy … horrible …” Zoe's murmur was barely audible. “Why didn't you ever tell me?”

“When I found out, I left Detroit. I felt … ashamed. Zozo, you can understand that, can't you? Ashamed.”

Tom's shoulders twitched under the finely tailored gray worsted, but he gave no other sign. His inner anguish at the disintegration of his long-kept vow to Antonia far outbalanced the hysteria that gripped the air in Hugh's library.

“So you're Hugh's nephew. That's why he brought us here.” A blush stained Zoe's flawlessly rounded throat. “Who told you?”

Hugh caught his breath. Somewhere in the office wing a phone jangled, then was silent.

“I found out, that's all,” Justin said.

“How?” Zoe persisted.

“Einstein.” Justin managed a battered grin. “I proved the theory of relativity.”

No one smiled. But Zoe nodded and rested her head back.

Hugh exhaled raggedly. Tom's love letters would remain a heap of blackened ashes. Justin never betrayed a confidence, and had he, Hugh, accepted this, he could have avoided nearly a decade of treading on eggshells with his brother as well as general wretchedness. That old tribal affection for his nephew was reasserting itself in stronger and stronger waves.

“Zoe …?” Caryll muttered raggedly.

“Your mother's right, Caryll,” Justin said. “No need to worry. This has nothing to do with Zoe. I'm the only bastard.” He forced another bruised grin.

“You look rotten, Justin,” Hugh said. “How about a drink? It used to be Scotch.”

“Nothing, thanks.”

“You need bucking up,” Hugh said.

“You do look woozy, Justin,” Zoe said.

“I'm fine.”

“Why are you here?” asked Maud bluntly.

Justin planted his muddy shoes apart. His bruised face suddenly wary, vaguely hostile, as though he had been thrust into enemy territory, he looked directly at Hugh. “My wife is missing.”

“Your wife?” Hugh asked, the warmth retreating from his voice.

“I want her.”

“She's not here.” Hugh was overly polite. “I do assure you she's not.”

Caryll asked, “Was Elisse in that mess today?”

“Yes. She was supposed to meet me at the sound truck after I came down from the overpass. She never showed up. I don't know where she is, but the police took a lot of people in.”

“If she's been arrested,” Hugh said, “you can post bail.”

“I tried to.” Justin's eyes showed intensely blue between slitted, bruised lids. “She hasn't been booked.”

“Then she hasn't been arrested.”

“Find her.”

“I'm afraid there's no way I can.”

“The department's in your pocket.”

“Hardly. Might I suggest you telephone some of her union friends. Maybe she stopped off to visit.”

Tom took a step away from the fireplace. His left hand clenching and unclenching, he spoke to Hugh, his first words since Justin had opened the door. “Call Arden.”

“Say she
has
been taken downtown, Tom,” Hugh replied. “How would he know? The police chief? One woman? On a day like this?”

“Call,” Tom ordered.

“There's no point.”

Tom strode to the shadowy ell where a spindle-legged Tudor cabinet housed the telephone. “What's his home number, Arden?” he snapped.

Hugh recited from memory.

Tom asked the operator for the number, then identified himself, asking for Chief Arden. Waiting, he switched on the floor lamp. Without a greeting he said that he was looking for Mrs. Elisse Hutchinson, yes, that's right, she was the AAW president's wife, and the last anyone had seen her was in that crappy deal on Archibald. At the inaudible reply his expression briefly wavered, the vulnerable upper lip curling back to reveal his uneven white teeth. “I see,” he said in a flat, inflectionless tone, listening another half minute before he replaced the earpiece as delicately as if it were a precision tool.

Justin had come to stand near him. “Where is she?”

“Quite a few women are in the Fifth Precinct Station.”

“So she's there?” Justin asked.

“Probably. I'll run you over.”

“That's quite unnecessary,” Hugh said. “I'll have Gallagher take him in his car.”

“Yes,” Maud said. Concentric circles formed around her mouth so that her face seemed like an illustration of the angered, puffing wind god. “You stay put, Tom.”

“Come on, Justin.”

“You're not to go!” Maud cried.

“Maud,” Tom said, a plea undershadowed by warning.

“She had your bastard—”

“That's enough!” Tom snapped.

“I've been square with you. But every single day of our marriage you lived a lie!”

“We'll go over this when we're alone.”

“Hah! As if you could ever explain! You're beyond me. First you push him ahead for all he's worth, then there's years without a word to him, and now suddenly you're taking up with him again. Who could understand what goes on in your head besides automobiles! All right, I can't figure
you
out. But you can understand
me
. Tom, you aren't leaving this house.”

“Let's go, Justin.”

“Tom—” Justin started.

“Don't you dare, Tom!” Maud was screaming.

“Let's get a move on,” Tom said to Justin.

“Leave this room and we're through!” Maud had never intended a challenge, but she could repress neither her fury at always playing second fiddle to her dead rival nor her own inviolable honesty: it was the same as that long ago day in their stateroom with the foghorns wailing. She opened her mouth and her anguish burst out. “Go with him and as far as I'm concerned it's like you're on top of that skinny, black-haired whore again!”

Tom gripped Justin's arm, propelling him from the library.

V

For a minute there was silence in the room, yet the large, warm library seemed to ring with the sound of furious voices.

Hugh pulled back a curtain, staring after the moving red lights, his thoughts focused on his nephew and brother on the front seat of that Onyx. Shivers reverberated along his skin. It took him a while to pinpoint what he felt.
Left out. Cast away. Abandoned. Forsaken. I should be with them. They're my people. Not Caryll. But what am I to them? A cipher puffed with grandiose dreams of past and future king-making, a scarred, marred gargoyle. Alone
, Hugh thought,
forlorn, forlorn
.

The taillights disappeared around the curve. He went to pour himself a stiff drink.
At least I'm forlorn in style: Russian caviar and Polish vodka
. The thought garnered him no comfort.

Maud's hands were clasped on her lap. Her seated figure had a granitic heaviness as though she had suddenly gained thirty pounds. Why had she hurled down that gauntlet? Though the revelation of Justin's identity had shocked and horrified her, she accepted that men were men and the past was the past, so why had it seemed so monstrous a betrayal that Tom would drive his natural son to the police station? Why was she caught up in this irrational cyclone of jealousy? Antonia was dead, and by her own sensible lights Maud had always been realistic even about
that
, as she mentally referred to Tom's major adultery.

He lied to me, he deceived me all along, he lived a lie, that's why I'm in this state
, she told herself, but her honesty balked at this. If she were outraged solely by the deception, why did she have these sharp, feverish visions of stabbing the dead woman, shooting her with a pearl-handled revolver, of tightening her hands around that long, slender neck? Why this mosaic of murderous urges? Bending stiffly, she fumbled for her sewing. Unconscious of what she was doing, she pulled at the pink batiste, ripping her fine stitchery.

“Mother Bridger,” Zoe murmured. “You're ruining Petra's dress.”

Maud's fingers continued to rip apart the smocking.

Zoe's tears oozed silently without marring her loveliness. Her weeping had nothing to do with her mother-in-law. Though the revelation about her brother's disparate blood had jarred her to her roots; it was the apparition of Justin himself—battered, still so very dear—that shocked her psyche from its self-centered locus. She had been lashed with pity for his poor bruises and for that awful, humiliated smile. Justin, whom she had always considered as invincibly strong, was vulnerable, as vulnerable as she. Maybe more vulnerable because the good have fewer defenses. Dabbing at her tears, she glanced at Caryll.