The Drowning Tree (39 page)

“E
UGENIE
P
ENROSE SEEMED TO HAVE HAD OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES WHILE POSING
for Augustus,” I tell Neil the next day when we take a break in the beech clearing. We’re sitting on a large, flat rock with our picnic lunch spread out between us. Neil looks up from the apple he’s peeling and laughs.

“No kidding? Stodgy old Eugenie? I always thought she sounded like an old prude—all that reforming zeal, organizing the factory girls into improvement circles …”

“She did a lot of good work for women,” I counter, even though I know what Neil means. Penrose College was still hobbled when I went there with Eugenie’s antiquated notions of what constituted a hygienic, well-balanced regimen for young ladies: mandatory Latin and Home Economics,
early curfews, no off-campus housing, no visitors of the opposite sex in the dorms beyond the lounges. For a woman whose mission was establishing meaningful work for women, she seemed to have very little faith in her sex’s ability to make choices for themselves.

“Maybe it was seeing her younger sister Clare fall apart over love for a man that made her so strict,” I suggest, taking a slice of the apple Neil has neatly pared.

“What makes you think Clare fell apart over a man?” he asks, starting to peel another apple.

“Eugenie’s journal. It’s obvious that Clare was falling in love with Augustus Penrose at the same time that Eugenie and he were getting engaged.”

“And you think that unrequited love made her go crazy?”

“Well, she seemed kind of high-strung before that—”

“According to whom? Her big sister, Eugenie?” Neil gouges a chunk out of the apple, which falls to the ground. I remember suddenly that when Neil was committed to Briarwood his sister Sarah had told the intake committee that her little brother had always been volatile and hypersensitive to criticism. It had seemed unfair at the time because Sarah had always been hypercritical herself. When he’d married me she’d referred to me as his little upstate shiksa.

“True,” I say, trying to smooth over the argument, “I imagine Clare would tell another version of the story.”

Neil puts down the apple and the knife and stands up, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Christine thought that Eugenie had her committed because she was sleeping with Augustus.”

“Oh. Did she tell you why she thought that?”

“I didn’t spend enough time with her to hear all her theories, Juno, although I know you think I did. Why don’t you just ask me what’s really on your mind?”

He looks down at me for a moment, but when I don’t immediately answer he looks off through the beech grove toward the river. The sun has already reached the tops of the trees while we’ve been talking and the trees’ long purple shadows stretch across the clearing. The light’s already too far gone for him to paint any more today. When he turns toward me I
notice, looking up at him, shadows beneath his eyes that match the deep purple shadows of the trees.

“Ask what?” I finally say. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“How many times I saw Christine. Whether I slept with her. Was it my baby?”

“You told me before you saw her in May, five weeks before she died. She was almost three months pregnant by then.”

“I see you’ve done the math. Unfortunately your friend Detective Falco isn’t so good with numbers—or else he doesn’t believe that I only saw Christine that once. He came yesterday to ask for some blood.”

Neil lifts his right arm and turns it over to show me the bruised skin in the crook of his elbow just above where his shirtsleeve has been rolled. “Damned police medical technicians aren’t very good at taking blood. Took them three tries to find a vein.”

“I’m sorry, Neil, but I don’t know what you think it has to do with me—Detective Falco isn’t exactly my friend.”

“That’s funny—Reg said he was your date at Penrose’s engagement party.” He smiles while rolling down his sleeve and buttoning his cuff. It occurs to me that he’s always in long-sleeved shirts even though the days have been hot. Before I can stop myself my eyes travel to his other arm, where his sleeve is still rolled above the elbow. The bruising there is worse, the puncture marks visible as a thin line of raised red dots. Of course, I realize, he’s in a drug trial. They must have to monitor his blood regularly.

I look up from his arm and when our eyes meet I feel my own blood heating my face, not, as he must think, because of his reference to the detective but because I realize how strongly I want to reach out and stroke his bruised flesh. And so, before I can explain why I went to that party with Daniel Falco, he’s turning around and walking down the hill, his long stride taking him deep into the violet-shadowed woods.

W
HEN
I
GET HOME
I
CALL
F
ALCO
. W
HILE IT RINGS
I
REALIZE
I
’M CLOSE TO HYPER
ventilating I’m so angry, so I take the cordless phone out on the roof, hoping the fresh air will calm me down. When he answers, though, I’m hardly calm.

“When you went over to The Beeches to take Neil’s blood, just exactly what did you say to him?” I ask.

“Juno McKay, how nice of you to call. I was just thinking of you.”

“Did you tell him he was a suspect? Did you interrogate him while your butchers were stabbing him with their hypodermic needles? Do you realize that he’s in a delicate stage of recovery—”

“Whoa, missy, I’m perfectly aware of Mr. Buchwald’s psychological and medical profile. His psychiatrist, Dr. Horace, was present and advised his patient to cooperate fully with our investigation. If his DNA doesn’t match that of Christine Webb’s unborn child, that information will speak in his favor.”

“He says he only saw her that one time five weeks before she died so he can’t be the father.”

“Juno, you can’t expect me to just take his word on that and not pursue the possibility that he could be the father of Christine’s child when so many other factors make him a prime suspect in this case.”

“What other factors?”

“Well, for one thing he lives within a mile of where Christine died.”

I stop pacing and face the opposite shore across the river. Although I can’t see the mouth of the Wicomico, I know it’s there, somewhere in the fold of green hills just below where I can make out the deep violet treetops of the copper beeches. “The house where he lives is separated from the estate by a fifteen-foot stone wall topped with metal spikes and broken glass—”

“According to Dr. Horace, Neil was quite the avid rock climber back in college. He could easily have gotten over that wall.”

“But you said the other kayak was found on the east side of the river, which means that whoever was with Christine left by water. So the fact that Neil happens to live nearby is irrelevant.”

“I can’t ignore it any more than I can ignore Neil’s prior history. After all, he attempted to drown you and your baby.”

“That was years ago. He was very sick, but he’s better now.”

“I hope that’s true, Juno, for your sake. I really do.”

His voice sounds so full of genuine compassion that for a moment
my anger is deflected, replaced by a suspicion I’ve been trying to ignore these last few weeks, that the need to believe Neil is better is because I’ve fallen in love with him all over again. I take a deep breath and try to steady my voice.

“What does Dr. Horace say? Doesn’t he think Neil is better?”

“Dr. Horace believes that Neil has been cured by the miracle of modern psychopharmacology, that this new wonder drug is the hottest thing since penicillin, but even he has to admit that the drug is too new to rule out the possibility of unforeseen side effects. Prozac, for instance, has been known to cause incidents of violent rage in some patients—”

I picture Neil striding off into the beech forest today, his back rigid with anger. Above those trees, now, storm clouds are gathering that are the same livid purple as the beeches, as if the trees had breathed some poisonous miasma into the atmosphere.

“—and no drug is effective if the patient doesn’t take it,” Falco continues, “and Neil has a history of going off his medication.”

“But the staff at The Beeches is monitoring his dosage, right?” Although I don’t know this for sure, it’s what I guessed from the track marks I saw on Neil’s arm today.

“Yes,” Falco admits, “they have to. He’s part of an FDA trial so his dosage has to be carefully monitored and recorded.”

I feel a small thrill of vindication that I’ve won at least this point. Falco seems willing to concede me this momentary victory. “You may be completely right about Neil,” he says. “There’s nothing in Christine’s personal effects to indicate that she was seeing him. Some of the stuff I found in her home office indicates that she was more interested in our friend Gavin Penrose—”

“I knew it! Something’s not right with his financial situation—”

“There may be more to it than just a few unpaid bills, but I can’t make out exactly why Christine was so interested in him. The notes in her calendar and diary are somewhat cryptic. Perhaps you could help me interpret them.”

“Of course, I’d be more than happy to help.” I walk inside to look at my own calendar and because it has started to rain. “Do you want me to come to the station—”

“Well, actually I was planning to go down to her apartment again to have another look at her desk—”

“You mean her things haven’t been cleared out yet?” I ask, guiltily remembering that I’d told Amy, at the beginning of July, that I’d help when she went down to the city and now there are only three days left to the month.

“The desk is covered with Post-it notes, file cards, books with little slips of paper in them, art postcards … like a diorama of her last few months of research. I want to have one more look at the whole thing and I’d like you there with me to see if any of it means something to you. Do you think you could come into the city with me?”

“Sure,” I say, staring at my blank calendar. Who knows if Neil will even want me to keep posing for him after today. “When?”

“How about tomorrow? The last month’s rent is up on Thursday and I told Christine’s aunt she could get in on Wednesday so if you wanted you could stay over and help her … but if you’re too busy sitting for your portrait—”

“I’ll go,” I say quickly.

“Great. I’d like an early start—can I pick you up at nine thirty?”

“Sure,” I say, and then before he can get off I ask, feeling like a teenager pumping her best friend for details about a boy she likes, “Hey, did Neil tell you I was sitting for him?”

“He didn’t have to,” he says. “I saw the painting. I’m no art expert, but if you ask me, I don’t think it does you justice.”

A
FTER
I
GET OFF THE PHONE
I
GO INTO THE BATHROOM AND START FILLING THE TUB
. Between my argument with Neil and conversation with Falco my nerves are stretched taut to the snapping point. The rain pounding on the skylight seems to be beating into my head. How could I have let myself fall in love with Neil again? How could I let him back in my life—a man who almost killed not just me, but our daughter?

“No,” I say aloud as I slip into the scalding-hot water. “No, no, no.” I’m not even sure what I’m saying
no
to, whether I’m denying that Neil could have killed Christine or trying to excise my feelings for him. I sink
back into the bath and watch the steam rise toward the skylight, where it seems to melt into the water pooling on the other side of the glass. Water seeking water, as streams find their way to rivers and rivers find their way to the sea. All these years I’ve thought that the way I felt about Neil died that day on the river but every night there he was in my dreams, a sodden ghost demanding not to be forgotten, not to be dead. Not Neil, but my love for Neil, not drowned yet, but forever drowning in front of my eyes.

I close my eyes and lean my head back until the water laps up against the crown of my head and something seems to let go inside of me. Just as Eugenie felt her spirit rise out of her body through the top of her head I feel something go out of me and twist up with the steam, twining itself into a shape like a howl—

It is a howl, a sound that turns my flesh cold even in the hot bath. I grip the sides of the tub with both hands and listen.

One of the dogs—Paolo, I think—is howling in the loft. It must be the rain that’s frightened him … but then I hear glass breaking.

I rise out of the tub as if pushed out by the water and wrap myself in a towel.

“Paolo?” I call. “Francesca?” I wait to hear the click of their nails on the tile floor, but there’s nothing. Only the rain.

I walk into the living room, holding the towel against my chest and head straight for the kitchen counter where I left the cordless phone after talking to Detective Falco. I pick it up and then turn around to check both doors—the one to the roof and the one to the side stairs. Both are closed, but one of the glass panels in the roof door is broken and Paolo is standing with his nose in the jagged opening, his body rigid, the hair on his long neck standing straight up and a barely audible growl rumbling from his taut throat. Francesca, by his side, is not as tense, but she’s also riveted to the glass door.

I hit redial as I cross the room. Francesca hears my approach and half turns, starts toward me, and then dances back to Paolo, then to me again, her long body twisting in an agony of indecision. “Good girl,” I croon, tapping my hand against my bare leg, “come here.” I’m listening to the phone but I don’t hear a ringing. I turn the phone off, then on again, and wait for a dial tone, but there’s none. The phone’s dead.

“It’s just the storm,” I say to Francesca when she dances close enough so that I can loop my fingers around her collar. I let her pull me over to the door. Otherwise I might just stand frozen in the middle of the floor. The tile near the door is damp from the rain that’s coming in through the broken glass and I feel something sharp under my bare foot, but ignore it. The unbroken glass panels are fogged over so I wipe my hand against the pane to clear a spot to see and uncover my own reflection: staring eyes, sunken shadows beneath. It’s only when he lifts his hand to knock on the glass that I realize I’m looking not at my own reflection but at Neil.