Summer House with Swimming Pool: A Novel (30 page)

“Mom …”

I took Julia’s wrist. “Mom will be here in a minute,” I said.

Judith and Caroline had gone upstairs with Lisa and Thomas. Judith had offered to stay with them and put them to bed, but after a brief exchange of glances with me, Caroline took Lisa by the hand and climbed the stairs with her. I could see in her eyes how torn she was; she wanted to be with Julia, first of all, but on the other hand she didn’t want to leave
her younger daughter with a stranger, not under these circumstances. Parents often forget one child when they’re worried about the other. Caroline followed her intuition from the start. I tried to, too, but I have to admit that it was harder for me.

Just then I heard a sound behind me. I turned and saw Ralph standing in the doorway. He looked like he had just come out of the shower. His hair was still wet and plastered against his skull. And he had changed his clothes after coming back from the beach: He had on a clean pair of white shorts and a red T-shirt.

“I heard …” he began; he leaned with one hand against the doorjamb above his head and made no move to come in. “Judith just told me …”

My memory of what I did then is still utterly clear. I had no desire to see Ralph here in my daughter’s presence. What I felt like most was telling him to buzz off and leave us alone. But I also thought about the future. About the various suspects. I had seen Ralph in action on the beach. I had witnessed the way Julia had grabbed at her bikini bottoms that time by the Ping-Pong table. Still, somehow, I found it too big a leap. The leap from the Ralph who slobbered over young girls, violent Ralph—to
this
. Logistically speaking, it also wasn’t very likely. After what had happened on the beach, would Ralph really have walked all the way to the other club, then back to the parking lot, and then finally driven all the way home? I tried to squeeze it into a credible time frame, but it all seemed pretty improbable. We had still been at the other beach club when Judith called home and got Ralph on the line. No, I corrected myself quickly: She got ahold of Ralph, who
said
he was at home. I had to pay close attention, the way I had earlier with Alex. Not rule out anything or anyone in advance.

Now I was paying attention. I shifted my gaze from Ralph’s face to my daughter’s face. Julia had her eyes open. I saw what she was looking at. She was looking at Ralph. She blinked her eyes.

“Hi,” she said quietly.

“Hi, girlie …” I heard Ralph say.

Now I turned to look at him. I studied his face. I looked at that face the way I look at the faces of my patients. Through the eyes of a doctor. At a glance I could see whether someone drank too much, whether they suffered from latent depression, or whether they were weighed down by the burden of bad sex. I rarely get it wrong. I know when people are lying. “Half a bottle of wine at dinner, Doctor, no more than that …” I never let them fob me off with answers like that.
And what about after work?
I ask on.
Don’t you stop at a bar for a drink then?
“One or two beers, max. But that was only yesterday—I don’t do that every day.”
Does your husband perhaps ejaculate prematurely?
I ask the woman with the deep, blue bags under her eyes.
Are there perhaps things you wish he would do with you but that you’re uncomfortable talking about?
I hear someone whistling in the waiting room. When he comes into my office, he’s still whistling.
Suicide is a realistic option
, I hear myself saying a minute later.
Some people take comfort in the realization that they have control over the way their life ends. What they dread most of all is the implementation. The way in which. A train is so violent. Cutting your wrists in the bathtub is so bloody. Hanging is painful—it takes a long time before death comes. Sleeping pills may be vomited up. But there are substances that bring about a painless, easy death. I can help you to get them …

Ralph Meier pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb
and forefinger. He pressed his fingertips against the corners of his eyes. “Aw, damn,” he murmured. Not for a single moment did I lose sight of the fact that he was an actor. One of the rare good actors. “Do you want something to drink, Marc? Shall I get you a drink? A beer? Or maybe a whisky?”

I shook my head. I looked at my daughter again. When I saw her face, something fell from me. Something. Not everything. A tiny little part of the weight that had been pressing down on me for the last hour or so. That would continue to press down on me for the rest of my life, I realized that even then.

Still looking at Ralph, a faint smile had appeared on Julia’s face.

“I’d like something to drink,” she said. “I’m so thirsty. A glass of milk would be great.”

“A glass of milk,” Ralph said. “Coming right up.”

That evening, the rest of our lives began. Let me say right away that I’m not a big fan of melodrama. I also have a natural aversion to dramatic statements.
The rest of our lives …
I’d heard people say that often enough. People who had lost someone or something. Who’d had something happen to them that you wouldn’t wish on anyone—something you would never get over. Still, it had always sounded fake to me. It’s only when it happens to you that you know it’s not fake. There is simply no better description for it than “the rest of your life.” Everything gets heavier. Especially time. Something happens to time. It doesn’t really stand still, but there’s no denying that it slows down. Like in a waiting room with a huge clock on the wall. You sit in the waiting room, and when you look at the clock five minutes later, only three minutes have gone by. The time of the mind. A day during which we have all kinds of things to do “flies by,” as they say. A day you spend waiting slows down. All the more so
when you don’t know what you’re waiting for. You sit in the waiting room. You try not to watch the clock. You don’t know what you’re waiting for. The doctor’s office or government institution to which the waiting room belongs probably closed a long time ago. But there’s no one to wake you from your spell. No one who comes by to say you might as well go home.

One moment you’re a family with two lovely daughters, the next moment you’re in a waiting room. You’re waiting for nothing. In fact, you’re waiting only for time to pass. All your hope is focused on the passing of that time. No, not all your hope. Your only hope. And the more time that passes, the further away you move from the point where the rest of your life started. But you don’t know where it ends. The rest of our lives goes on and on to this day.

Later I would keep reconstructing that first evening, down to the slightest detail. Ralph bringing the glass of milk and leaving again. Then Caroline coming downstairs. She took Emmanuelle’s place at the head of the bed. She held Julia’s hand. Every once in a while she ran her hand over Julia’s head.

There was one moment I don’t want to talk about much. For reasons of privacy. I asked Julia cautiously whether it was all right with her if I looked to be sure there wasn’t … I was a doctor. But I was also her father. “If you don’t want that, just tell me,” I said. “We can also go to a doctor here in town. Or to a hospital.” When I mentioned the word
hospital
, Julia bit her lower lip. “No, it’s nothing that bad,” I said quickly. “We don’t have to go to a hospital. But I do have to look at what we have to do.
Someone
has to look …”

She nodded and closed her eyes. I drew back the blanket carefully and looked. Years ago, Lisa had slipped in the shower and fallen hard on a metal edge. She had bled a bit.
Also … there. It wasn’t too serious; she was more shocked than anything else. I calmed her down. As her father. And at the same time I did what I had to do. As a doctor.

I tried to do the same thing now. But this was different. Julia cried with her eyes closed. Caroline used the corner of the towel to wipe away her tears and whispered sweet words. I tried to ask as few questions as possible. I did what had to be done, then I pulled up the blanket again.

It was soon after this that Caroline and I looked at each other. Wordlessly, we both asked ourselves whether this was the right moment, or whether Julia should rest first. Sleep. We didn’t want to remind her of the worst, but on the other hand, acting quickly was the only right option.

On the way from the beach club to the parking lot, I had already asked her once. I had whispered it in her ear, so Judith wouldn’t hear.
Who?
I whispered.
Who was it? Someone you know?

And at first Julia hadn’t answered. I started thinking that maybe she hadn’t heard me, then she said, “I don’t know, Daddy …”

I didn’t go on asking. Shock, that was my diagnosis. Shock blocks out what we don’t want to see. What we don’t want to be reminded of.

Now I nodded to Caroline. She was the one who had to do it; we agreed on that without speaking. This was a question a mother should ask.

“Julia?” Caroline said quietly, leaning over close to her daughter’s face and at the same time laying the palm of her hand on Julia’s cheek. “Can you tell us what happened? Can you tell us who … who left the club with you? Or who you left with?”

Julia shook her head.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Caroline caressed her cheek.

“First you were with Alex,” she said. “And then? After that? What happened then?”

Julia blinked. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes again. “Was I with Alex? Where was I with Alex?”

Caroline and I looked at each other.

Julia had started crying again.

“I don’t know …” she sobbed. “I really don’t know …”

Later that night, Stanley came home as well. He had walked the whole way, he told us. When he got to the parking lot there were no longer any cars he recognized, and he’d assumed that we’d forgotten him.

He came in for just a moment to say hello. Emmanuelle had already explained everything to him. He and Emmanuelle had decided that we should spend the night in their apartment and that the two of them would sleep in our tent. Normally speaking, when someone makes an offer like that, you tell them a couple of times that “that’s really not necessary”—but this wasn’t normal. Nothing was normal. We didn’t discuss it, we just accepted.

Later on I went to our tent with Stanley to take out some of our things, so they would have more room. Stanley put his arm around my shoulders. He said again how terrible he felt about all this. For us. For Julia. He swore. In his American English. Also in American English, he went on to say what should happen to men who did things like this. I could only agree with him.

Then he clasped my hand. He pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered me one.

“There’s something else …” he said.

We stood and smoked in front of the tent while Stanley told me how he had walked back to the summer house. Along the same high, sandy road that we had taken on the way down. And so he had also come past the spot where we had run the man from the green campground off the road.

“His car was still there,” Stanley said. “At exactly the same spot. It was really weird. I mean, it looked as though, after us, no one else had come past there. But it gets even weirder …” He glanced over toward the house. “I tried the door,” he went on, almost in a whisper. “And it was open. And the window was rolled down the whole way, too. That’s strange, isn’t it? I mean, who would leave a car behind like that? I took a good look, but it didn’t look like it was stuck in the sand or anything. I think he could have just driven away …”

“Maybe he couldn’t get it started?”

Stanley shook his head. “No, it’s not that. Listen, I did something that maybe wasn’t too smart. I leaned in through the window and I saw that the key was still in the ignition.”

Now, for the first time, I felt a shiver run down the back of my neck. The kind of shiver you feel in the movie theater when the film takes an unexpected turn.

“Jesus,” I said.

“So I climbed in the car and turned the key. And it started right away …”

I said nothing. I took such a deep drag on my cigarette that I started coughing.

“I got out again. I even did what they do in the movies. Because I didn’t have a handkerchief or anything like that, I took off my T-shirt and wiped down everything with it—the key, the steering wheel, the door. Then I walked around
the car. There’s a pretty steep slope on the other side there. I climbed down a little, but then I started to slide. I had to grab hold of a bush. Besides, it was pitch-dark up there. I shouted. Once. Then I came back here on foot.”

“But do you think he …”

“I don’t know, Marc. I just think it’s weird that he didn’t keep on driving. And if he couldn’t, for whatever reason, then it’s also weird that he would leave his door unlocked and the window open and the key in the ignition. Something doesn’t add up.”

I felt that shiver down the back of my neck again. I thought about the campground owner, who for some reason had walked around his car and then fallen down the hill.

“Maybe his nerves were shot,” Stanley said, as though he could read my mind. “Maybe we scared him more than we thought. Who knows what somebody does when they’ve been run off the road … I just wanted you to know as soon as possible. Even in this situation. Especially in this situation.”