The Rope Walk (8 page)

At that involuntary movement, Archie seemed to wake up from the trance of his inspection of her. His eyes widened a fraction, and then, after a moment, he gave her a rare smile.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy, “
he said. He looked back at his wineglass and took a long swallow. Then he raised his eyebrows and surveyed the table. “Well? Anyone?”

“Uh, Lear?” James said.

“No,” Eli said quietly. “It's Hamlet.”

Archie pointed his fork at him, “Horatio's your clue. Exactly,” he said. “Ten points to Eli.”

After dinner, Tad and Harry went out to the barn to play Ping-Pong. From the back door of the kitchen, Alice looked across the grass at the parallelogram of light that fell from the open barn door and illuminated the daffodils, most of them flattened by the hail, that ran along the stone wall. Only a few of the pale heads floated above the mist. Faintly Alice could hear the
Ping-Pong game, the dull plocking sound. This was the hour when the pair of doves that roosted in the birch tree near the back door made their good-night noises; and there they were, with their fussy, throaty warbling sounds. Where had the doves gone during the hail, she wondered? The leaves of the trees rustled in the darkness, as if something were settling itself there, staring out at her.

Alice helped carry plates to the sink and stood waiting with a towel while James washed the dishes. She could see their reflections wavering in the dark glass of the window, James's tall shape in his white shirt, Archie far off behind them where he sat reading at the table, the lenses of his glasses glinting. Her own face, when she stared at her reflection in the windowpane, was soft and smudged as a thumbprint. In a photograph from her parents’ wedding, her mother wore a bright red dress with a gold pin shaped like a whorled feather that Archie had given her; Alice had studied the photograph in minute detail. She had had to ask what the pin was, because it was too small in the photograph to make out clearly. She had been unable to see the scar on her mother's forehead, for instance, though of course she had not known to look for it. Wally crossed the room behind her. His shirt bloomed blurrily against the mirror of the windowpane for a moment, and Alice startled and nearly dropped the glass in her hand.

James glanced over at her and grinned. “See a ghost?” Archie pushed back his chair from the table, folding the newspaper and slapping it against the table's edge. Eli, who had been sitting at the table beside him looking through an old gardening book of their mother's, didn't look up.
“What fools these mortals be
,” he said; this was what Archie usually said when he read the newspaper.

“Quite right,” Archie said. He stretched. “Let's go,” he said to Alice.

Alice had been waiting for this, the moment when she and Archie would leave the house together and walk down to the river. This was their tradition on her birthday, a tradition begun by Archie for Alice alone. It did not have the gaiety of the rituals developed by Alice's mother; it was instead a grave occasion. But Alice loved it. Now Archie helped Alice root in the drawers of the pantry until they found a candle stub; it was too tall, and Archie sliced off the end with his knife. Then he sat down at the table again to fold the tinfoil boat into which they would affix the candle stub and set it to sail in the big, calm pool of the river. The ceremony, the embarkation of the little boat with its flickering candle, had filled Alice all her life with a serious pleasure.

The little cut on her forehead gave a sudden twinge, reminding her; the wonder of it, the strangeness of the coincidence, filled her again for the second time that evening. She felt very small suddenly, like something floating in the river and approaching the gnashing, tumbling confluence of the many branching streams that met just above the falls.

Outside, when they stepped into the darkness, the sky overhead was streaked with clouds like ghostly ponies’ tails, the moon's face blazing down at them.

“Time is like a fashionable host…”
Archie began when they were seated on stones at the river's edge, listening to the water.

All the MacCauley children were handy with Shakespeare. Tad and Harry, especially, had an endless store of lines taught to them by Archie which they used as ripostes or insults or excuses or purely irrelevantly.
“Now, infidel, I have thee on the hip!”

Where was Harry? Someone might ask Tad, and he would be unable to prevent himself from striking a pose and replying:
“I saw young Harry with his beaver on.”

“Potationspottle-deep
,” they warned Archie, who liked his wine with dinner.

Chided, they hung their heads and confessed:
“I have a kind of alacrity in sinking.”

Archie looked down at Alice now. “Well, somehow you've gotten very old,” he said.

Above their heads, bats crossed the river in the black sky in pursuit of the night's insects. The stones were black; the little rills and rapids in the river frothed white in the darkness.

“You know, I'm always grateful to Eli, whenever I come down his path,” Archie said into the silence that was filled with the musical rippling of the water, the childish sound of bubbles and splashing. “The older I get, the more grateful I am. It's a wonder none of you ever sprained an ankle coming down here at night to swim,”

Alice sat on crossed legs beside her father. The stones did not hurt her. She was able to fit the sharp bones of her backside into comfortable little hollows, shifting the stones around beneath her. She loved to be outdoors at night. Everything smelled different, as though during the day the sun bleached away the scent of things; only at night did the cool darkness release them, a mysterious intoxication. She lifted her nose to the breeze, like a fox.

She felt Archie reach for her, his arm fall around her shoulders. She turned to look up at him, and he touched the little wound above her eyebrow with a fingertip.

“What are we to make of that,” he said quietly, but it wasn't a question.

She leaned against her father's shoulder. He reached into the pocket of his coat and found the candle and matches. From the
breast pocket of his shirt he unfolded the tinfoil boat and tweaked it clumsily until it held its shape. He offered it to Alice and opened the box of matches, striking one, and holding the flame to the bottom of the candle, letting it drip a pool of wax into the saucer of the boat. When he was done he affixed the candle and returned the matchbox to his coat pocket. Alice, looking up into his face, saw him glance upward as if suddenly aware of something that had passed swiftly over them, a rush of wings. His eyes were wide-open and startled, and Alice felt the hair rise on her arms.

He looked down at her after a minute. “Owl,” he said. “They're so quiet.”

Alice watched him raise himself painfully from the stones of the beach. She took the boat from him when he held it out to her. Together they crouched by the water, and Archie fished in his pocket for the matchbox and lit the candle. Then Alice released the craft with her fingertips into the water. They watched it wobble out and catch in the current, a little light that brought the darkness in close around them.

Alice lifted her imaginary camera, made a silent click against her teeth with her tongue.

Then suddenly the light sped away, borne off in the flow, and in the next moment it had gone out altogether, the fragile boat toppled and the candle extinguished.

“Ah, well,” Archie said into the darkness beside her. “Another year come and gone.”

They came up from the river and walked toward the house through the shadows in the orchard, between the old stone posts that had marked where the gate had once stood, and into the field. A length of white ribbon from the rope walk was still tangled
in the branches of one of the trees, an end trailing over the grass in the darkness, shiny and out of place. They stopped for Archie to shake it free from the branch. He gathered it up and stuck it in his pocket. As they crossed the lawn toward the back door, Alice looked up toward the house and saw James at the screen, silhouetted there as if he'd been watching for them. When he saw them, he stepped forward and held open the door.

“O'Brien called,” he said as Archie and Alice drew near. “He's on his way over here.”

They stepped inside. “What is it?” Archie said.

James glanced down at Alice for a second. “It's Helen,” he said to Archie.

At that moment they heard the car in the lane. Archie went out the door again, letting it bang shut behind him. The headlights of O'Brien's car blazed in the dark, illuminating a stretch of the lawn and the crabapple tree with its twisted Oriental posture, the one Alice had pretended, when she was younger, was the enchanted figure of a princess trapped inside like Daphne, the girl who had been turned into a windswept laurel tree to protect her from Apollo. From the back door, Alice saw Archie lean in the driver's window, his hand on the top of the car. After a moment, he stood upright again and opened the back door. Theo climbed out. Archie shut the car door and put a hand on Theo to draw him onto the grass away from the driveway. The tires squealed once as O'Brien backed up, reversed, and then headed up the driveway. Alice watched Archie look down at Theo standing beside him in the darkness. Theo had cinched his belt very tightly; even more objects seemed to be hanging from it. His waist looked as tiny as a grasshopper's.

Alice glanced questioningly at James standing quietly beside her.

Wally came up behind them, his hands in his pockets. “He got here fast,” he said.

“What's happened?” Alice asked.

Nobody answered her. James was watching Archie and Theo standing in the dark, Archie saying something softly to Theo. Wally took his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms over his chest, his fists tucked under his armpits.

“What
happened?”
Alice asked again. She had begun to feel frightened. “What's wrong with Helen?”

But then Archie and Theo were coming toward the door. James leaned out and opened it for them.

Theo was carrying a suitcase and his toolbox. He didn't look at Alice or say hello.

Archie reached down and took the suitcase from Theo and set it on the floor. He made an expression of mock surprise. “Good Lord. What do you have in here?” he said. “Rocks?”

Theo looked up at him. “A couple.”

Archie looked surprised. “Well, you can never find a rock when you need one. Good to keep a few on hand,” he said after a moment. He glanced at James. “How about some cocoa?”

“Sure thing.” James moved away.

Alice wanted to ask again what had happened, but Theo's silence stopped her. Whatever it was, it must have been very bad; Helen must have been hurt in some way. When Alice's grandfather, Archie's father, had died a few years before, the news had arrived in the same way, people speaking in low voices, their heads close together. No one had told Alice immediately; no one had ever actually said the word
dead
. That evening when she had gone to find Archie and say good night, he had been sitting in the armchair in his study, a glass of whiskey in his hand. Alice had climbed into his lap, and he had closed his eyes and put his arms
around her. There had been wetness on his face, and Alice had felt that she could not bear it. It was like the feeling that came over her whenever she heard “Puff the Magic Dragon,” the sorrow of the song too powerful, too overwhelming, little Jackie Paper gone away forever and leaving Puff alone. Sometimes the boys played the song just to torment her and sang along with it in lugubrious voices, trailing after her through the house, even under the dining room table where she went to escape; then she flew at them with her fists. Once Archie had punished Tad and Harry for this.

As she had sat there that sad night on Archie's lap in his study, her face against his chest, part of her had wanted to jump up and run away. That night, after she had gone to bed, she had gotten up again and found her wooden sword; thus armed she had leapt back and forth from bed to bed in her room, plunging the sword into the darkness, whirling savagely on her enemies until she was sweating and trembling.

Archie bent to pick up Theo's suitcase. “Why don't I take these rocks upstairs?” he said. He rested a hand briefly on Theo's head. “I'm sure your grandmother will be all right,” he said. “Not to worry.”

Theo did not move from his place by the door. His demeanor of that afternoon had changed entirely. He stared at the floor.

Confused, Alice leaned back instinctively to find Wally. Where was he? When she felt him there behind her, she reached up to hook her arms in his. He lifted her off the floor for a moment before setting her back down, and she realized that she had stopped breathing for a minute. The air filled up her lungs again, a relief.

“Want to unload that box?” Wally said to Theo, gesturing at it.

Theo shook his head and looked at the floor.

“Well, come on and sit down,” Wally said. “The cocoa chef will fix us up in a minute.”

Wally frog-marched Alice over to the table and heaped her into a chair. Alice hooked her legs around the chair legs and reached out to toy with the salt-and-pepper shakers. After a minute, Theo crossed the room and sat down across from her, his toolbox on his lap.

Alice looked at Theo. “Did you see the hail?” she asked.

Theo looked down at his toolbox. He didn't say anything.

Alice hesitated, confused. “Once Archie found a live frog in a hailstone,” she offered at last.

Wally returned to the table with mugs. “That's what we like to call a tall tale, otherwise known as bullshit,” he said. He looked down at Theo's bent head. Alice glanced up at Wally, but he was still watching Theo.

James came over to the table with the steaming saucepan and a ladle and began filling the mugs. “You know what?” he said. “I remember your mom, Theo. We thought she was the most beautiful girl in Grange.”

“Really?” Alice thought this was interesting information. She reached out and pulled her mug closer.

“Definitely,” James said. “I mean, she's older than me—how old is your mom?”