The Myth of Perpetual Summer Page 21

  I feel sick. Griff isn’t coming home today.

  * * *

  Mr. Rykerson insists we wait until we’re back at Gran’s house to talk. I’m nearly coming out of my skin by then.

  “I want to make a call to my assistant first.” He and his briefcase walk right past us, up the front steps, and into Gran’s house.

  “Use the phone in the library,” Gran calls. “Off the main hall to the left.”

  Gran makes coffee. Ross sits on the stairs, bouncing a knee. I pace, making closer and closer passes to the closed library door, until Gran shout-whispers my name and calls me into the parlor.

  Finally, Mr. Rykerson emerges. Gran hands him a cup of coffee. Ross and I stand, our nervousness quivering in the air between us.

  “First of all, Griffin was arrested without a judge’s warrant. That’s a good thing. It means the arrest is based solely upon what the police feel is probable cause. The prosecutor, or a judge, could see things differently and decide there isn’t enough evidence to press charges. Griffin says he was with Miss Colbert in a group, never alone, at the bonfire. He insists they were not dating or involved intimately.”

  Gran has a sharp intake of breath. “Gracious, I would hope not.”

  I whisper to Ross, “Were they dating?” The words are bitter on my tongue. I should be the one who knows.

  Ross leans close. “I don’t know.”

  I should be ashamed of my immature sense of satisfaction.

  Mr. Rykerson says, “He said he left the bonfire—alone—about 10:00 p.m., went straight home, showered, and went to bed. According to him, she was still at the bonfire with a large group of friends the last time he saw her.” He gives Gran an apologetic look. “There was a large amount of alcohol involved.”

  “She was with other people when he left!” I say, as if my team just scored the victory point.

  Mr. Rykerson holds up a broad hand. “We need more corroboration than your and Griff’s account of his timeline. That’s why I made that telephone call. My assistant Phillip is very good at ferreting out witnesses and information. He’ll be down here tomorrow to do face-to-face interviews.”

  “Chief Collie wouldn’t tell us anything about the case,” Gran says. “Did they tell you anything?”

  “We’ll get the police department’s take on all of this soon enough. I’m more interested in what we can discover at this point. This is a small town and things get around—again, my man is very good.” He looks at his notepad. “These are our indisputable facts. The young woman’s body was discovered at 6:00 a.m. at the base of the stairs in the bell tower. It appeared she fell from a considerable height and had been deceased for a few hours.”

  I think of those stairs, wrapping around the square walls of the tower. When I was little, Griff and I used to climb up there and look down the open center all the way to the bottom. It always made me so dizzy I would crouch down until the handrail was at my neck.

  “I saw her drinking,” I say. “She must have fallen.”

  “Maybe,” the lawyer says. “We’ll know after the autopsy report. It will establish time and cause of death and if there are any, um”—he casts an uncomfortable glance my way—“other physical findings vital to the case. And of course, Phillip will track down her friends, collect their accounts of the evening, particularly regarding what happened after Griff says he left the bonfire.”

  “Griff didn’t just ‘say’ he left the bonfire. He left. I heard him come home!”

  “I’m not arguing against that,” Mr. Rykerson says in the bland, even tone that is setting my teeth on edge. I want him angry, indignant. I want him to sound like he’s fighting!

  Mr. Rykerson is still talking. “I have court in the morning but will be free to come back later in the day if we get a preliminary hearing. But the prosecutor can take another day or two if they deem it necessary.” He stands and picks up his briefcase.

  “You’re leaving?” I shout.

  Ross’s hand wraps around the fist at my side.

  I yank my fist free.

  “Tallulah!” Gran scowls at me, then addresses the lawyer. “We’re so very appreciative that you have made time for us on such short notice. Is there anything we can do here?”

  “Just keep faith, ma’am.”

  “Do you feel we have a strong chance?” It breaks my heart to hear the naked hope in her voice.

  “We’ll know more tomorrow.” He looks at all of us in turn. “Until then, don’t discuss any of this with anyone. You never know how things will be construed.”

  Mrs. Saenger says, “We’ll walk you out, Sam.” She takes Gran’s hand. “We’ll be at the cottage until this is all sorted out. Call if you need anything at all.”

  “Thank you,” Gran says. “We owe you more than words can say.”

  “Nonsense. We would never abandon Griff. Come, Ross.”

  For a long moment, Ross stares into my eyes. “I’ll see you tomorrow. You know where I am if you need me.”

  My emotions are so balled up in my chest, I can’t open my mouth because I have no idea what will come out—words or a scream.

  I watch him follow his mother out the door, then I face Gran. “That’s it? We just sit around and wait?”

  Gran’s eyes flash a warning. “We will do whatever Mr. Rykerson instructs us to do.”

  “How can you be so calm?”

  “I’ve lived through enough to understand that making decisions in an emotional state does not yield positive results. So you take a few minutes to get yourself under control. You and I still have things to do.”

  I turn away and close my eyes. I wish we didn’t have to tell Margo. She’ll be just one more thing to deal with. And Dad. The news has to be all over campus—all over town—by now. Wherever he is, he should know about the dead girl, about Griff’s being arrested. So why hasn’t he come back or at least called?

  * * *

  Instead of Margo’s usual detachment from our family troubles, her let-them-learn-by-their-mistakes mantra and life-lessons-are-good-for-you attitude, I’m heartened by the power of her raw outrage. This is the kind of reaction I wanted from Gran. It reflects what’s lashing my own soul. Margo rants at the unfairness of Griff’s too-swift arrest and tosses threats around in a way that confirms Gran was right about keeping her away from Chief Collie.

  I’ve never loved my mother as much as I do at this moment.

  Feeding on her fury, I’m ready to roll into town and tear that place down.

  Gran, on the other hand, is making preemptive arguments. “Calm down. We must put Griffin’s welfare first and be cautious in our actions. Of course, Drayton’s position at the college must be protected. Mr. Rykerson said—”

  “No!” Margo shouts. “Nonononono. This is how they win! When people remain silent. We have to rise up, hit them where it hurts. We will not tolerate this injustice.”

  “I understand your anger. I’m angry, too,” Gran says in an understanding voice I’ve never heard her use with Margo. “But we can’t let our anger overrule our good sense. This is a small town, everything we do will be scrutinized and affect Griffin. Care must be taken!”

  “I’ll call my people.” Margo goes on as if Gran hasn’t spoken at all. “Get a movement going.”

  Is she thinking about Griff at all, or just spouting long-practiced rhetoric?

  She’s pacing, pounding her fist into her hand with every point. “We’ll contact television stations, the newspapers, not just here but big papers.” Instead of asking for Gran’s keys so she can drive to the station to see her son and reassure him, she heads to the telephone. “I have to call Robert. He can mobilize—”

  “Oh my God!” I shout. “Will you listen to yourself? Griff is sitting in jail. Alone. They say he killed someone! And you want to make phone calls to protesters!”

  Defensiveness blooms on her face. “We have lawyers—”

  “Griff has a lawyer. He needs a mother!”

  From behind me I hear Walden’s small, cho
ked voice. “Griff killed someone?”

  I spin and look at his stricken ten-year-old face, his green eyes wide under his fair hair, his freckled cheeks flushed. Then I look at Margo, foolishly thinking perhaps she’ll say something to reassure and comfort him. But she’s fumbling with a pack of cigarettes.

  I take his shoulders. “Of course Griff didn’t kill anyone. There’s been an accident. Griff is at the police station trying to help them figure out what happened to his friend.”

  Walden’s eyes widen. “Ross died?”

  “Oh! No.”

  “Tommy?” His lip begins to quiver.

  “No, buddy. This was one of Griff’s new friends. Someone you don’t know. It’s all going to get sorted out, but Griff won’t be home for a couple of days. Where’s Dharma?”

  “She went home with Tracy after school.” He sounds relieved. Twins are supposed to have a special bond. But Dharma’s personality is so big, she doesn’t let any light shine on Walden. Sometimes I worry he’s shriveling inside.

  I hear a match strike behind me. Then Margo says, her lips around the cigarette, “Did anybody tell Dray?”

  I realize in that moment, she hasn’t asked a single question about the details of what happened; when Griff was arrested, who the girl was, the circumstances of her death, if we’ve been able to talk to Griff ourselves, any question at all about the qualifications of the lawyer.

  I put an arm around Walden and lead him outside. “Let’s take a walk.”

  Gran can deal with Margo.

  Dad, too, for all I care. My brothers and sister are all that matter now.

  * * *

  I’m up with the chickens and dressed so I’ll be ready to go downtown if we get the call from Mr. Rykerson. It’s too early for the phone to ring, but I hope my gnawing worry will ease if I’m moving.

  A foolish thought. In fact, everything I do—teeth brushing, walking past the checkerboard, putting away Griff’s favorite Tomorrowland glass (from Tommy, after his family vacation to Disneyland several years back)—breeds a panic that there will be no more regular-life memories made with my brother.

  My solitary suffering ends when Ross arrives on our doorstep, looking as if he didn’t sleep any better than I did. I push open the screen. “Come in. I’m the only one up.”

  He hesitates on the threshold. “Um, have you been out here this morning?”

  I get a sick feeling. “No.” I step onto the porch and follow his gaze to the front of the house. The word murderer is spray-painted in blood red. Three feet tall. The sight freezes my lungs.

  Ross grips my arm. “Are you all right?”

  I’m drowning again. I feel the pressure of the water in my ears, against my chest.

  “Lulie?”

  I’m starting to see stars.

  “Hey!” He gives me a little shake and that somehow knocks my body back into functioning.

  After a couple of ragged breaths, I say, “I’m okay.”

  He starts toward the steps. “Do you know if there’s any house paint around?”

  “I doubt it.” I can’t even remember the last time the house was painted.

  “Backwater morons.” Then he comes back and stands before me. “Don’t worry. Sam will get him out today.”

  “That won’t make any difference,” I say through numb lips.

  “Of course it will. Once word gets out that the police don’t have any evidence against him.”

  He doesn’t understand, can’t understand. Lack of evidence isn’t going to change the minds of the people who did this. Not in this town. Not when it comes to our family.

  I head inside. I can’t imagine having to go back to school to the sneers and stares. How can we send Walden and Dharma to school to face this kind of stuff alone? Walking into the kitchen, I stand motionless. It feels wrong to put on coffee and pour cereal as if it’s a regular day.

  Ross takes me by the shoulders and presses me into a chair. He empties the old grounds from the percolator and fills it with water. I watch as if I’m a guest as he measures the coffee into the basket and plugs it in.

  Before the coffee is done perking, Gran comes through the back door. I look past her to see if Dad’s with her. But it’s just Gran and a tray of blackberry muffins.

  “Tallulah, I have a coffee cake and a breakfast casserole in the car. Would you bring them in?”

  Apparently, Gran spent her sleepless night baking.

  Ross helps me bring them in. As we come back inside I ask her, “Did Mr. Rykerson call?”

  “Not yet,” she says with a hollow smile as she sets the butter on the table. “But it’s quite early. He has the number here, too. Is anyone else up?”

  She doesn’t mention the graffiti on the front of the house, so I don’t, either. “Dad’s not here.” I don’t want to get into all of that in front of Ross, but I want her to know he hasn’t shown up yet. For now, I’ve decided to park myself on the side of anger rather than worry. “The twins are still asleep. Margo was on the phone until the wee hours trying to start a movement.”

  Gran makes a disgusted sound deep in her throat. “Any luck?”

  I shake my head and I pick at a blackberry muffin, watching the minute hand move sluggishly around the face of the clock.

  A half hour later we’re still listlessly poking at cold food. The phone rings. I jolt out of my chair as if it were electrified and snatch the receiver off the wall. “Hello?”

  “Killerrrrsss.” The word is drawn out so that I feel it rasp across the back of my neck. The voice is gravelly, an old person, or a smoker. “Vengeance is come. Blood always tells. You’ll all burn in hellfire and damn—” I slam the phone back in its cradle.

  “Wrong number,” I say to Gran’s expectant face. “I’m going to take a walk.” Only the orchard can wash me clean of that call.

  “I’ll come with you.” Ross stands. “Thank you for the breakfast, Mrs. James.”

  “Ring the dinner bell if Mr. Rykerson calls.”

  I make for the pecan orchard at a regimental pace. I can’t get that voice out of my head. Cold fingers of death brush my shoulders. In my worry over Griff, I haven’t even thought about a dead girl who won’t have another birthday, another Christmas. And if someone did push her, he’s still out there and the police aren’t even looking for him.

  I thought I’d outgrown my secret place, or just grown so accustomed to upheaval and hatefulness that I don’t need it. But right now, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I haven’t been here since junior high.

  Ross keeps a bit of distance, but I hear his footfalls at a steady pace behind me.

  Reaching the corner of the pecan orchard, I climb quickly, the movements as instinctive as breathing. I pull myself up to the sanctity of the familiar thick branch.

  Ross climbs up on the fence but stops there. When I glance over my shoulder, he’s sitting on the top rail, as if he knows this place is precious and private and should not be intruded upon without invitation.

  I settle my gaze on the river below and toss my bright-burning anger and dark fears into the current. And then I wait.

  Finally, the hypnotic ripple and flow of the river eases conscious thought from my mind. As the tension leaves my shoulders, I realize how raw and beat up I am. The physical toll of emotional turmoil surprises me. A person would think I’d be used to it, like a runner who no longer gets sore muscles.

  As I sit in the quiet blessing of birdsong and soft morning air, I gain a new perspective. I cannot change the course of my family. I am bone weary from trying. This town is going to come after us until there is nothing left. Margo doesn’t care; in fact I think she likes it. Gran thinks if we pretend everything is perfect it will be true. I’ve always thought no matter which way Dad’s moods swing, he’d be there when we really needed him. Well, Griff needs him, and where is he?

  There is only me. And I am about as effective as Don Quixote jousting windmills.

  I keep my focus on the ever-changing ripples of the river. “You can
come up.”

  Silently, Ross moves to sit beside me. I lean slightly into him, welcoming the crutch of his strength.

  For some time, we sit staring at the water. I can tell he wants to say something. The unspoken words crowd the air around us.

  “Just say it,” I finally say.

  His gaze turns my way. “Say what?”

  “Whatever it is you’ve been thinking for the past twenty minutes.”

  After a pause, he says, “I was just wondering about your dad.”

  Time to surrender. No sidestepping. No pretending to misunderstand. I look him squarely in the eye. “You mean where he could possibly be that he hasn’t heard about Griff’s arrest? And if he has, why hasn’t he called or come home? I’m wondering the same thing.”

  “Are you worried that something has happened to him?”

  “Oh, something has happened to him.” I think of his broken plea in that dark locker room. “But nobody wants to see it.” I tell Ross about the books and the crazy theories and the drinking. I don’t tell him there’s a very real possibility that he’s somewhere screwing a coed. Of course, Ross might already surmise that considering Dad’s Mother’s Day show two years ago.

  Ross’s eyes show concern, not judgment. “You said he left your grandmother’s without his shoes.”

  A bark of laughter bursts from my mouth. “After everything I just told you, his leaving barefoot is what you find noteworthy?”

  He offers a sad smile. “Well, I don’t think we’re going to figure out why he did any of those other things. But we might figure out where he may have gone.”

  “Oh, Ross. You can’t apply logic to his thinking. First of all, we don’t know if he was in shadow or hurricane when he left.”

  “If he was what?”

  “His behavior. Hummingbird or slug. So full of energy you can’t scrape him off the ceiling, or buried in anguish so deep he won’t get out of bed. Usually his moods settle in for a while, but the other night he swung like he was on a trapeze. I’ve never seen him like that.”

  “So he’s always one or the other?”

  “No. Sometimes he’s just a regular dad for so long I think maybe the roller-coaster moods are gone forever. And then Margo will do something, or she’ll go away for a long while, and he gets really sad. I’m not sure what brings on the hurricane. Sometimes it’s fun. Once, before the twins were born, he got us all up in the middle of the night and said we were going to the beach. We didn’t get dressed or pack a bag, just piled in the car and went. It was vacation season, so there were no motels with a vacancy, so we lived in our pj’s and slept in the car for two nights, lived on bologna and Wonder Bread we kept in a Styrofoam cooler. ‘An adventure in resourcefulness and ingenuity.’ ” I smile at his phrase. It all seemed so wonderful when I was four. “So, you see, the fact that he left barefoot isn’t much of a clue.”