Present Tense Page 3

  I felt bitterly ashamed and soiled.

  3

  I don’t think I slept at all the night we came home from the golf club party. I was left at dawn with the ache of a memory dismissed so long from the front of my mind. As the beech trees swayed in the breeze outside our bedroom window, I saw a vision of Chadwin as he was now, at the Abbott’s Point bar, the businessman, rocking his shoulders as he talked, strutting amongst his new acquaintances, every move saying, ‘Aren’t I great?’

  On that Tuesday morning it wasn’t easy with Greg and the girls. The three of them whispered together that Mom was in a bad mood, and they better keep out of the way. I was glad they left me alone.

  After breakfast, when Grace and the children had left the table, I said I might drive up to our summer house at Lake Chateaugay, near the Keuka State Park in York County, on Friday, after work, and start getting the place ready for winter.

  “I need some time on my own,” I added, before Greg could offer to help.

  “What’s the matter?”

  I tried to tell him, wanted to tell him, but my voice was still, and my lips closed. I had rehearsed every word of an explanation in the night, but I couldn’t speak. The impact on Greg would be heavy, and I feared its effects. I had the perhaps absurd hope, that if I didn’t tell, Chadwin would have less substance, be less real. Yes, Chadwin was here physically, and we had met momentarily, but maybe we would never need to meet again. If I told Greg, he’d be understanding and protective; that was his nature. But he’d be deeply upset, angry with Chadwin, and hurt that I had not shared my secret. Bringing it all into the open would mean making Greg as unhappy and anxious as I was. Although it was a delicate balance, because sharing with Greg would make it much easier for me. I decided I could handle the problem alone. I’ve always believed in my right, if you like, to silence over some events in my life; and that goes with an inclination to solve my own problems, rather than collapse on the shoulder of my husband or friends.

  “I feel a bit down. I’ll be OK.”

  “Anything I’ve done? Or the kids?”

  “No. It’s work.”

  I knew I could be starting to dig myself into a hole, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Well, you have a big job. I’m not surprised it gets you down at times. How long will you be away?”

  “There’s a lot to do. Sunday afternoon.”

  “Are you going to take Grace? She’d be a big help.”

  “She’s got a class on Saturday morning.”

  Later, when Greg had gone to the office, and Grace was preparing to take the children to school, I saw her watching me carefully. She usually said little, but was sensitive to my moods.

  “What’s troubling you, Loren? I haven’t seen you like this for ages.”

  “Office politics, honey. The zoo is too much at times.”

  I did not want Grace at Chateaugay. I wanted time and a place to think. Although Grace didn’t talk much, and was never inquisitive, we were very close. What was troubling me would disturb Grace, and eventually, if we were alone I would have to tell her.

  I have always lived with Grace. Greg has accepted her as part of the family without demur. She was a pleasant but withdrawn person, whose role was somewhere between housekeeper, cook and child-minder. Grace was diagnosed as autistic when she was a child, but I believed she had never fully recovered from the rape and assault by Schultz. Greg knew that she had suffered an awful experience with a man years ago, but we never talked about the precise details.

  After I had blamed my dejection on my problems at the office, we had a superficially calm but uneasy week at home. I tried hard to prevent it, but my concern communicated itself to Greg and Grace like a virus. I was glad when Saturday came.

  I arranged with Rosanne, our babysitter, to give Greg and Grace extra help with the girls, and drove the Jeep up to Chateaugay on Saturday morning. The hundred and some miles along the Eastern Expressway, Interstate 90, and Route 6 to Clayburg, passed easily in what was like summer rather than autumn weather. I had a Van Morrison compact disc on the stereo. I was looking for the bright side of the road.

  At Clayburg I turned off toward Guyanoga. Our place, ‘Pine Hill’, is in a forest of black pine, spruce and beech, beside the lake, a dozen miles beyond the town. I drove the car off the lake road, onto the concrete forecourt beside the house. The land rises here, and the house is on a high point, with a view over the forest to the south, and over the lake to the north. At ground level, the whole width of the building is a garage and storeroom-workshop. Above, there are four big bedrooms, and beyond them, with a view over the lake, are the living rooms. We have a jetty on the lake, and a ramp to launch our boats. The only houses in sight are miles away, across the water.

  Chateaugay is a beautiful place, and it never takes me long to respond to the soughing of the trees, and the sight of chipmunks and squirrels and bluejays and robins. But I wasn’t responding today. I left the car in front of the garage, and went up the steps to the door. I unlocked it and went inside, disturbing a silence which still contained the carefree sounds of the children, as they echoed through the rooms a few weeks ago. The place had a chill.

  In the kitchen, I switched on the central heating, made a cup of powdered coffee, and sat in my favourite thinking place, the diner, by the window, looking across the lawn toward the road. I could see the flowerbeds, with wind-burned late roses, the trees swaying in the wind, and beyond, a sparkling sliver of Lake Chateaugay. I was thinking that life for the Stamfords was very good, and I had to aim for some sort of detachment from the black cloud which inevitably swelled in my memory.

  I was startled from my thoughts by a loud and persistent ringing of the doorbell. As I approached the door, I could see through the glass the shape of a red car on the forecourt. I had a stab of irritation. It had to be Donna Kutash’s Chevvy, and I thought I recognised her bulky shape, waiting. She was still leaning on the bell as I opened the door.

  “In the shower, honey?” she asked.

  I was going to have to be very pointed to get rid of Donna. She didn’t receive messages delivered gently. She pushed past me, and walked into the house as though it was her own.

  “Just calling to see if you’re OK. We’re here for the weekend. Where’s Greg?”

  “At home. Donna, I have to go down to the shops.”

  “Fine, honey, I’ll take you. Two girls on a frolic. All the excitements of Clayburg.”

  “No, I need a little time.”

  She dropped her broad backside on a kitchen chair. “Time is something I have plenty of. Be my guest.”

  Donna was ten years older than me, a plump mother of three who always wore loose slacks and sweaters to cover her thick calves and bulging belly. Her hair was short, hennaed and curly. She had creamy unlined skin, and impertinent, rather protruding brown eyes.

  “No thanks,” I said, making it as final as possible.

  At the same time that Donna was talking to me, she was checking, or rechecking since her last visit, whether the kitchen needed redecorating, whether my blender was as big as the one she kept at the lake, and how my cedar tiles were looking compared to her felt inlay.

  Donna interrupted her assessment of the dècor with a softly spoken question which caught me unawares. “So who are you seeing?”

  “What a crazy question.”

  “I hear an old boyfriend of yours is in town,” Donna said, rolling her eyes suggestively.

  “I don’t have any old boyfriends or anybody but Greg!” I said, my voice rising sharply, and cracking slightly.

  I had thought that in her earlier remarks Donna was merely probing around with her usual prurient curiosity, but this was what she really had in mind – Chadwin. People were talking. Chadwin had been talking. There could not be any other explanation. My spirits, which had been recovering, plunged down. What had Chadwin said?

  “All right, dear. Take it easy. I didn’t mean to step on your toes.”

  “I’m going into Clayb
urg for a hairdo,” I said, trying to get back to a normal tone.

  “I’ll keep you company and read the mags,” Donna said, as though it was ordained.

  “No, Donna. I have things to do. It’ll be a waste of time for you.”

  Donna was measuring the order of the room. “What are you doing, dear?”

  “I’m cleaning up for the winter.”

  “Nice. I thought you might be preparing for a Forest Ranger on a rainy afternoon.”

  I ignored her. “Listen, Donna. I’m going on my own. Maybe I’ll call in at your place on the way back, but there’s a lot I have to do here.”

  “Nobody in Clayburg can do hair,” Donna said flatly.

  “It’s a matter of saving time.”

  Donna smiled knowingly. “You don’t have something going do you, Loren? I swear I won’t tell.”

  “No.”

  I was as cold and forbidding as I could be. “No?” Donna’s eyes bulged with expectation. “Are you sure, darling?”

  “Donna, who is saying things about me?”

  Donna licked her lips and moved her shoulders, noncommittal. “Nobody. It’s kinda on the internet that you used to know Dwight Chadwin,” she giggled.

  I realised this was a crucial moment. Donna was like a bear scenting meat when it came to sexual gossip; she could smell it at a hundred yards. I put on a very faint, weary smile, and said, “That is really rubbish,” moving my head slightly to dismiss baseless imaginings.

  “Really?” Donna said, staring hard, trying to decide whether I was posing or not.

  I could see she was preparing to wade more deeply into the subject with relish, and I looked at my wristwatch. “I’m afraid I’ll have to get on with things now,” I said curtly, turning my back on her and picking up my handbag.

  “OK, dear. Bye,bye,” she said, levering herself up from the chair.

  She waddled out the front door, still grinning. But I heard the tyre-scream as she reversed her car irritably to turn it round.

  I was twenty-three when I met Greg Stamford. My parents were dead. I thought I’d put the past behind me as far as anyone could.

  I was reminded when I looked in the mirror, or when I saw what my sister Grace had become, a fragile shell of a woman; but I had learned to accept these things, and look forward.

  In contrast to Grace, I was strong. I had struggled, part-time, to get a qualification in accountancy at Yonkers Polytechnic when I was a pool clerk in an insurance firm. I got a job as a junior in the accounts department of a firm in Trenton, NJ, taking Grace with me as a kind of companion and housekeeper. I had a natural facility with numbers, although the rest of my education had gaps. I had spent too much time as a kid over the kitchen sink, and cleaning house for my widower father, when I should have been at school. But I progressed fairly fast from my junior post, through the finance departments of three firms, before joining Ulex, first as an internal auditor, and then, when I was thirty-three, being promoted to financial controller.

  Before I met Greg I had never dated a man, and had no thoughts of marriage. I lived a quiet life with Grace, and sometimes shared an apartment with co-workers and Grace. It wasn’t that I was scared of men or disliked them. I had a full life with my job, a workout at the gym, various educational classes, and occasional weekends away with a trekking club. I met Greg on a trekking weekend in the Appalachians.

  He was twenty-eight, quiet, unambitious, untidy in his dress, and rather conscious of his thin fair hair. He wasn’t good-looking, but there was something refined and humorous about his face. He made me laugh a lot. I knew instinctively that he hadn’t the self-confidence to make a pass at me. That made it easier for me to get to know him as a person whom I could trust completely.

  One thing we had in common was this ability to handle numbers. We had fun with numbers games, but Greg was in a different league educationally. He was an economics graduate of New York State University. I found his middle-class background attractive and slightly unnerving. His father had been a dentist in Baltimore. Greg was used to a comfortable, genteel life-style which showed itself in a hundred small ways, from what he chose to eat or wear, to how he spoke. I was as blue-collar as he was white, although in my work career, this had been obscured. Greg never focussed on my class background or anybody else’s for that matter. It wasn’t an angle that interested him.

  I loved Greg desperately when I got to know him. It didn’t happen overnight. We were married quietly in Baltimore. I had no family apart from Grace, and few friends to invite to the wedding. Greg’s mother, and his already married brother and sister, were glad to see him settle, although I wasn’t quite the bride that they would have wished. But my looks, and the fact that I was no fool carried me a long way with them.

  “He’ll be easy for you to manage, that’s for sure,” Greg’s sister said to me.

  I had no thought of managing Greg, but by the time I was working at the Rochester head office of Ulex, I suppose I had quietly done a lot to change the tousled, slightly forgetful, maths wizard. Greg’s bosses began to notice a smart, well-dressed man with a high-achieving wife, who was also an agreeable hostess. Greg was not ambitious himself, but he was clever, and his lack of egocentric drive made colleagues feel easy with him.

  My advance in business may have been partly the result of a fear of insecurity. My father was unemployed for long periods. I couldn’t go back to that. I had to advance. One part of me would have been happy to settle down as a wife and mother, but no children arrived. Both Greg and I were pronounced perfectly healthy by the doctors, and we waited for the lucky day. But with no children, I kept my career going. About seven years ago, a friend of Greg’s sister, who played in the New York Philharmonic, had twin girls after an affair with another violinist. We were lucky enough to be in a position to adopt.

  By the time we moved into our new house in Cedar Falls, I was completely fulfilled. Now, Chadwin’s appearance seemed to threaten the calm, happy life I had created. I sat in the kitchen until it was dark, reasoning that it was absurd to feel threatened. What I really had to cope with was my unbridled imagination, and the nauseating feeling of knowing that the man was nearby.

  After dark, I called Greg. I knew the children would be in bed. I couldn’t face talking to them; they would know instantly of my turmoil from the tone of my voice, and I wouldn’t be able to answer their innocent questions.

  “Don’t do too much, Loren,” Greg said. “There’s plenty of time before the cold spell.”

  “I can manage it.”

  Greg, sounding withdrawn, said he would call tomorrow. He, too, had picked up my mood.

  “Being here is good therapy,” I insisted.

  “Donna Kutash called this morning. I told her you were up there. They’ll be at their place this weekend. I asked her to look in, and buck you up a bit.”

  The Kutashs’ cabin was a couple of miles around the shore.

  “She’s already been here. Honestly, Greg, Donna is a pain in the ass. I don’t want her here, pushing me around, telling me what I need.”

  “Donna means well, Loren.”

  “The cow treats me as if I’m her office girl. If Marty wasn’t your boss, I wouldn’t give her the time of day!”

  It was a tense conversation, and I was glad when it was over.

  I stayed in the dark kitchen, bits and pieces of my life turning over in my mind inconclusively, like washing in a tumble-drier. Then I made up a bed in the spare room, slipped off my jeans, and crawled in without bothering to wash or clean my teeth. My brain was weary after flailing around with all the possibilities, and I slept.

  At six am I was awakened by a thrush on the window-ledge. The heating was working, and the house was warm. I guessed that despite the sunlight outside, it would be chilly. I showered, put on another pair of jeans, a thick turtleneck sweater, and trainers. After a bite of toast from the loaf of bread I had brought with me, and a glass of orange juice, I went out for a walk.

  I decided to take the main r
oad rather than one of the forest tracks, which are soggy at this time of the year, and require boots. The road, as usual, was deserted. The pines stand up close to the edge; it’s dark in there, whatever the time of day. At times I could hear an animal moving in the undergrowth, probably a deer. I walked in the middle of the road, away from the direction of the lake, the sun warming my face and shoulders. After half a mile or so, I came to a County utility truck, partially blocking the road, its hazard lights blinking.

  A man in a khaki jacket was working in the ditch beside the road. He had a cage with an animal in it. I went over to him.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He leaned back and looked up at me, holding the cage up so I could see.

  “It’s a rat, lady, a very big rat.”

  The bedraggled grey creature worked its nose and tail furiously behind the wire netting. I shivered. The badge on the lapel of the County man said, ‘Pest Control Department, York County.’ He explained that they mostly used poison, but trapped a few specimens to send to the laboratory for a disease analysis.

  “You get used to them,” he said, seeing my revulsion. “The drains round here are full of them.”

  “Is it an epidemic?”

  “Hell, no, lady. It’s good ole American families and the trash they drop in summer.”

  “Would there be rats in the drains below our place, ‘Pine Hill’, back there?”

  “‘Pine Hill’? That your place? I know it. Sure. All round there. No need to worry, lady. I’ll be working past there.”

  I walked back to the lakeside. The wind was making white riffles on the water. I threw a few of the round gray stones into the tide. Some trees on the lake-edge were yellowing, but the pines formed a dominant green-black line around the shore. The chill wind drove me back to the house. The unpleasant thought of the rats stayed with me. I wondered how many were in the deep open channels that ran by the house, and whether they would come into the house.