Look Closely (6 page)

I was quiet. I felt as if I was holding my breath and didn’t know how to let it out. I’d never known where my mom was when she died or exactly how it had happened. I was only seven at the time, and I didn’t remember anything—nothing at al — which had always troubled me. And yet my father and I rarely talked about the subject. When we did, or I should say when
I
did, it was too painful for him.
She became ill,
he would say, tapping his head as if to indicate some injury or disease in the brain. His eyes would cloud over, making me fearful he might cry. I knew I looked like her in some ways—my slim build, my wide shoulders, my long sandy hair. I always assumed that resemblance, combined with the horrible memories, made it too painful for him to talk about her death. And so I never stayed on the topic for long. What difference did it make, real y? Eventual y, I managed to ignore the issue altogether. But that letter had let loose the wonderings again.

“There was some talk, I guess,” Jan said. “The rumor was that someone had done something to her. I got this al secondhand, of course. I was just a baby when it happened.” She checked her watch. “Anyway, let’s finish up.”

Shestartedtotakeastepaway,butIgrabbedher arm.Shelookedatmyhand,thenatmeinsurprise.

“I’m sorry.” I took my hand away. “I didn’t mean to startle you, but can you tel me what you mean by the rumors. I mean, what were the rumors, exactly?”

Jangavemeanotherwarylookandrubbedatthe spot on her arm. “I don’t know real y. Like I said, we’re not supposed to talk about this on the tour, and I wasn’t around to hear about it at the time.”

“I understand.” I tried to make my voice easy, conversational. “But what have you heard? I’m just curious.”

Jan paused a moment, then shrugged. “Wel , to be honest, I heard someone kil ed her, but no one was ever charged, so I’m sure it’s one of those old wives’ tales. Now let me show you the master.”

I trailed behind, her words reverberating in my mind.
Someone killed her.

We entered the master bedroom, a large space with a huge bay window of curved glass at the opposite end. A secretary’s desk was tucked into the bay, but I remembered how my mother had instal ed a long bench under that window and covered it with pil ows. I would often find her there, writing in her journal or just looking through the glass onto the front lawn.

I studied the rest of the room, and the cold feeling returned. I remembered so many things al of a sudden—my parent’s king-size bed against the right wal , a bureau of cherrywood with a mirror over it, more flowers, my mother’s yel ow sweater hanging over a chair, an armoire to match the dresser, paperbacks and tissue on one nightstand, a lone alarm clock on the other. Recol ections poured into my brain with such speed that they startled me. And yet, there was something else about the room that I couldn’t recal .

“Thank you,” I said, interrupting Jan’s remarks. “I have to be going.”

I turned and left the room.

“Is something wrong?” Her voice fol owed me.

I hurried down the stairs, distantly hearing Jan’s feet pounding behind me, until I made myself stop on the landing.
Be calm,
I told myself.
Be calm.
It wouldn’t be good to act crazy when I’d come here seeking answers.

I opened my mouth to say something, but as I gazed down the stairs, I saw my mother again in the powder-blue suit. She was struggling to stand, holding a hand to the back of her head.

The doorbel rang once, then again, then pounding came from the door. My mother moved slowly, inching toward the doorway, the white of her hand never leaving her head, holding it gingerly, as if she was keeping her hairstyle in place.

“Is something wrong?” I heard Jan say again.

“No. Nothing at al .” And I turned away, because if I said anything else, I might have told her what I suddenly knew—that my mother, Leah Sutter, died in this house.

4

After leaving the Marker Mansion, formerly the Sutter home—my home—I drove slowly, not sure where I was going, letting the sights of Woodland Dunes fil my head and refresh my memories of the place. I passed the town’s riding stables, matching white barns with green roofs resting on a large field, a white fence surrounding the property. Patsy and I used to ride there on Saturdays, eating brown-bag lunches in the long grass behind the barns when we were done. The town’s championship golf course with its rol ing greens and intermittent circles of sand appeared the same as it did years ago, just like the lighthouse at Murphy’s Point.

I turned left on the outskirts of town, then left again toward the lake. And suddenly, there it was. A square plot of land on a hil side dotted with trees and sprinkled with gray and white headstones. The Woodland Dunes Cemetery. I hadn’t realized I was so close. In fact, I didn’t know if I could have found it if I tried.

I pul ed into the lot, the tires of the rental car crunching over the gravel. As I got out, I remembered where to go. My dad had brought me here a few times before we moved. I walked toward the far left corner, the heels of my loafers sinking into the damp, spongy ground. I passed an older man in jogging clothes squatting over a smal , simple headstone. He pul ed stray weeds with a quick hand as if accustomed to the movement.

I stopped when I came to the tal white column made of stone, an angel on either side looking down, protecting the grave. A grayish-green film had made its home in some of the crevices of my mother’s memorial, around the angel’s wings and in the edges of the lettering that read: Leah Rose Sutter, Beloved Wife and Mother, 1942–1982. The rest of the grave site was remarkably clean. No weeds or sand on it like some of the others nearby.

Then I noticed it. A single yel ow tulip lying at the base of the monument. I stood completely stil , staring at it, my mind latching onto our old house again, wandering the rooms inside, seeing it the way my mother had always kept it. Flowers below the porch, blooms in the vases in the library, and more flowers in her bedroom. In the spring, when the air was new and clean as it was now, those flowers were usual y tulips, mostly yel ow.

Iwrappedmyarmsaroundmyself.Thefactthat mymotherlovedyel owtulips,andthefactthatthis one had been placed by her headstone had to be a coincidence. I wasn’t aware of anyone who visited

hergrave.Mymother’sownparentshaddiedafew

years

after

her,

and

she

had

no

siblings.

Once

we

movedaway,myfatherandIneverreturned.Asfar

asDanandCarolinewereconcerned,Ididn’tknow

wheretheywere.Theyhadbothbeensomucholder

thanme.Aftermymomdied,Carolinehadgoneoff

toboardingschoolandDantocol ege.Weneverreal y saw them after that. My dad and I moved al overforhisworkatthefirm—SanFrancisco,London, Paris, Long Island—and when I asked about Caroline and Dan, he said that they had their own livesandfamilies.Hegavetheimpressionthatthey didn’t want to be a part of ours any longer.

Maybe the flower had come loose from a nearby bouquet. I glanced at the other grave sites. Some were untended and nearly overgrown. A few had smal flower arrangements but no tulips.

When I looked back at my mother’s grave, I had the odd feeling that someone was watching me. A few more glances around told me that I imagined it. The man in the jogging clothes had turned away, walking back to the parking lot.

I bent down and lifted the bud. It looked fairly new,onlytwoofthepetalsshowingsignsofdroop, probablynomorethanadayortwoold.Ilaiditgently on the cool stone again, wondering who could haveleftithere.Nomatter.Iwasgratefultotheperson for honoring my mother, for remembering her.

This time, there were two cars parked in Del a’s driveway. As I pul ed in behind them, the front door flew open, and a short woman dressed in gray slacks and a sleeveless white blouse rushed down the sidewalk. I got out of the car and opened my arms to hug Del a, the woman who’d helped raise me until we moved away from Woodland Dunes, and someone I recal ed wel , as if there was nothing to fear from my memories of her.

“Oh, Hailey.” Del a held a warm hand to my cheek. “You’re so grown-up. You look so much like your mom.”

“Thank you.” Other than my father, I didn’t come across many people who knew my mom, and I liked hearing about the resemblance.

Del a took me by the hand and led me around the back of the house where she had a pitcher of iced tea and a tray of cookies waiting on a metal patio table. The branches from a tal oak tree formed a canopy of shade, the breeze making its leaves ruffle and whisper.

Del a fussed over me, tel ing me to sit in one of the chairs. While she spooned ice into our glasses andplacedafewcookiesonapaperplate,Inoticed howlittleshehadchanged.Heroliveskinwasstil smooth, her cheeks stil ful with a pink glow. Her hair,thoughobviouslydyedtokeepitsblackcolor, stil layincrinkledwavestoherchin.She’dputon a few pounds, but they only made her seem more like the comforting figure of my memories.

“Tel me,” Del a said, settling into the chair next to me. “Tel me everything about you.”

I talked about law school, my job, my apartment in Manhattan. When I final y slowed down, I took a bite of an oatmeal-raisin cookie, the soft, sweet taste raising a recol ection of Del a in our old house, lifting a baking sheet out of the oven, placing a hand on my head, tel ing me to wait until they were cool.

“And you’re not married?” Del a said. She bit into her own cookie, but her eyes watched me, waiting for an answer.

“No. I’m a long way from married.”

“No one special then?”

I shook my head. “A few years ago, I was dating someone seriously.” I thought of Michael, sitting bare-chested in his bed, eyes playful, holding firm to my hand, trying to pul me back under the covers.

“And what happened to that?”

I shrugged. The therapist I’d seen after Michael and I broke up had nodded her head at the end of our first and only session and said in a grave tone, “Abandonment issues,” as if she was making a horrible diagnosis like, “Permanent facial disfigurement.” It was natural, she said, for a child who lost a parent so young to have such feelings, but I couldn’t carry them over into my adult relationships and push people away. I knew she had a point, but I had never learned how to avoid keeping most people at arm’s length. I got busy with the bar exam, and I didn’t keep up with the prescribed weekly appointments. Michael met someone at his firm our first year out of law school, and he slid away from me the way the others had. I didn’t think I was ever real y in love with Michael, or with any of them for that matter.

I felt that I’d know true love when a kiss could make everything, the rest of the world, disappear. I kept waiting for that moment with Michael. I didn’t expect it to happen right away, but I hoped each time. I’d close my eyes, feel his lips settle over mine, and while I enjoyed it, I was always stil right there. Nothing ever disappeared, not the Miles Davis music Michael always played or his high-rise apartment where we often stayed. I began to wonder if maybe I was incapable of feeling that kind of love, or maybe I was laboring beneath an unattainable fantasy.

Del a asked me about col ege at UCLA, about high school on Long Island, about the tutors in Europe and grade school before that in San Francisco. And then we were back to Woodland Dunes, to the year my father and I left.

“I missed you al so much when you were gone,” Del a said. She raised a paper napkin to her eyes, and I wondered for a second if she was going to cry. “It was like a part of my family had left.” Her voice creaked, betraying her age. “Of course, I had my own family to take care of. Max was twelve and Delphine ten. My husband said I had to get over it. I had to get over Leah’s death and get a new job.”

“And did you?”

“Oh, I got other jobs, although never as a housekeeper or a nanny again. I cleaned office buildings for a janitorial service, and I cooked meals for the sick.” Del a tsked, as if none of that had mattered much. “I never got over Leah.”

“You two were close,” I said. An image drifted back of my mom and Del a in the kitchen, sun slanting through the high window over the sink, the two of them laughing as they washed dishes. It seemed to me now that my mother probably kept Del a around as much for her company as her housekeeping skil s. I couldn’t remember my mom having any other close friends.

“She was a wonderful woman.” Del a’s voice was softer now. “A good friend. And I miss her every day.”

I stayed silent, and tilted my head up for a moment, watching a squirrel above me racing from branch to branch. I had missed my mom every day, too, but not in the same way. I longed for the vague concept of my mother, of
a
mother in my life. I missed her especial y when I was learning about boys, shopping for prom dresses, graduating from col ege, from law school.

I had my dad for al those things, and he tried to be everything— father, mother, friend—but sometimes I craved female guidance and companionship. My friendship with Maddy had fil ed some of that void, yet no one could total y replace a mother.

“Howdidshedie?”ItwasthequestionIcameto ask, the one that had been haunting me since I read that letter, but I hadn’t meant to say it so abruptly.

Del asatstraighterinherchair,thenraisedahand toherlips.Sheliftedhershoulders,thenletthemfal again. “It’s hard to say. What do you remember?”

I pushed my mind back to that time when I was seven years old. I remember not needing to ask the question of how she had died, as if I had known the answer and didn’t want to be reminded. But somewhere along the way, I lost the knowledge.

“I don’t real y remember anything specific,” I said. “That’s the problem. And I need to know.”

Del a pushed her plate away and leaned on the table. “Do you remember talking to the police?”

I felt a strange pulse beating in my neck. “The police? I talked to the police?”

“We al did.”

I tried to conjure up some sense of my seven-year-old self, in a police station, sitting across from a detective, swinging my legs underneath the table. “I don’t remember.”