Page 43

Helen

Now

My father finishes the last page of Saltwater, and the guests begin to chatter. From the small orchestra comes the dull sound of tuning instruments. He scans the audience, searching for a face. For the only possible answer.

“He had to keep this,” he whispers.

Finally, in the crowd of faces, he sees him—Marcus.

I stay at the edge of the garden while my father closes the distance between himself and his brother. He leans down to whisper in his ear. Marcus nods, makes some apologies, and stands. Within minutes, they have rejoined me in the dark eddy of trees and flowering bougainvillea.

My father holds up the pages of my mother’s play and says: “Is this true?”

He’s hoping, still, that it’s fiction. That the only thing she got right was the money. And even that was an accident. But I’m amazed he can’t see it, with the two of us standing here, how strong the similarity is. I feel like an idiot for missing it.

Marcus looks between the two of us. He takes the pages from my father. Cradles them, almost. And I wonder if my father isn’t the only one who has spent the last thirty years in mourning.

“It’s true,” Marcus says.

“Why didn’t you just get rid of this?” my father says. It comes out like a whine. If only Marcus had thrown the pages away, there would be no evidence, no need to confront the truth. For me. For them.

“I couldn’t.” He shrugs. “I wanted to keep a piece of her.”

“Didn’t you already have one?” Naomi says, her voice milky.

It’s impossible to know how long she has been there, listening, but she emerges, sinuous and pale, from the depths of the garden. I think of Ciro telling me we are always two people. Yet somehow, I’ve missed this version of Naomi. I always believed her stupor was just a way to manage the sadness, but now I realize it’s been helping her manage the anger.

Richard tries to interject, but I interrupt him. It’s not just my mother’s story I’m here for, it’s Lorna’s.

The pieces slot into place: the photograph of Lorna from the night she died. The check my uncle wrote. The look that passed over Naomi’s face. It was recognition. She knew it was Marcus. Even when the rest of us didn’t. She was sure. It was why she invited me shopping, why she told me what she did. Because she was furious with him for going to see her.

“You knew Lorna had it,” I say, an accusation.

Marcus lowers his voice. “Eventually, yes. I figured out she had it. I went to talk to her that night in the marina because I had written her a check for the play. I wanted to be sure she wouldn’t give it to anyone else. You know Stan was always lingering around her, scenting her like a dog.” He shakes his head. “I just went to talk. To make sure she cashed the check, that she was okay delivering the money to Naples. To assure her we could give her more money if that’s what she needed. If that’s what whoever sent the necklace needed. I offered to run interference with Stan, too. But I did not kill her. When I left her in the marina, she was alive. She still had the money.”

“Why are you lying?” Naomi says.

Her voice is livid, and it’s as if my father and I aren’t even standing here.

“It’s the truth, Naomi,” Marcus says.

“You never tell the truth,” she says. Her voice is growing louder now, and several faces turn in our direction.

Marcus reaches out a hand to her. And there’s something in the way he looks at her that tells me I’ve been wrong in assuming it was the Lingates who were in control of the family. It was always Naomi. The money. The secrets. I believed that I needed to stay strictly controlled, quiet, out of the public eye, because of them—my father, my uncle—but really, it was always for her. We’ve spent the last thirty years placating her . Marcus, perhaps, has spent even longer.

My mere existence was always going to be an embarrassment.

“She was alive,” Naomi finally says to my father. She sounds smug, proud. As if she has won a long argument. “When Marcus found her, Sarah was still alive.”

“She never would have survived her injuries,” Marcus says, closing the distance to my father and shooting a warning look at Naomi.

I want to ask again about Lorna. About two nights ago, not thirty years ago. But it hits me. Naomi is right. My mother was alive. They might have saved her, but they chose not to. I search the audience for Stan, who is watching us closely. Does he know when the carabinieri will arrive? Are they on their way?

“All these years,” my father says, his voice hoarse, “you’ve let me believe I did it? That I killed her?”

“You very nearly did,” Naomi says.

“Can you imagine what she would have done to the family if she’d survived?” My uncle is trying to reason with my father now, but I can already see that he won’t be able to get through to him. My father is adrift in the realization that he has spent his entire life mourning a mistake he didn’t make. A murder he didn’t commit.

It’s a worse realization than the fact his wife was having an affair, that I’m not his daughter.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Marcus says. “After everything we’d done to protect this family, I couldn’t let it fall apart then.”

But what have they been preserving? This thing that has rotted from the inside out? The coldness and strictures of my grandfather? Naomi’s control and manipulation? I look down at my arms, my hands. As if I might be able to see evidence of it—this blight my family seems to have. But maybe it’s already inside me. Maybe there’s never been a time that I wasn’t infected.

“I just made the decision that was best for us. For the family,” Marcus says.

He says the word again— family —and it’s like a revivalist onstage murmuring amen until he’s finally shouting it. Family. Family. Family . A call-and-response to the three of us. But I don’t want to believe that’s what we are. There’s a nostalgia and softness to the word . It conjures things I’ve never known: gentleness, physical affection, a mother. Here it means only money. Or even less, it means a performance.

“You left her for dead, Richard,” Marcus says. And the sentence is a slap, a reproach. “You didn’t want to know. You never want to know. Ever since you were a child, you’ve been that way. You’re timid when it comes to the truth. That means someone has to shield you from it. And that person has always been me.”

At this, my father takes a step closer to Marcus, and Naomi brings her hand to her mouth. She seems almost giddy, childlike. I move toward both of them, as if I might be able to stop it.

“Fuck you,” my father says.

He pushes Marcus, and even though my uncle is bigger, his body broader, my father is working with surprising force. Marcus stumbles several steps back; he stops near the edge of the garden, close to the low stone fence that separates the patio from the cliffs. Most of the audience is watching us now, but they’re too far away to hear our words.

“You should have told me the truth,” my father says. “You owed me that.”

I want to interrupt, to ask them what they think they might have owed me. To ask them, again, about Lorna. About what they did with my mother after my father pushed her. But they’re moving too quickly. And I can feel it: as our family starts to fall apart, as it starts to break open, there’s suddenly more oxygen for me, more space. It’s the thing Lorna and I had talked about, the thing I wanted on the other side of this. Through the chaos, it’s inching closer. The Lingates have always had a fragile shell; the crack is irreparable.

“I didn’t owe you anything, ” Marcus says. His voice an urgent whisper. “I did everything for you. To cover for you. To fix what you broke with Sarah. If I didn’t do it, where would we be now?”

“Oh, Marcus,” Naomi says, her voice low, “you did it for yourself, too. Didn’t you?”

My father looks at his brother.

“They were having an affair!” Naomi says. “That’s what she’s been trying to tell you—” She gestures at me. “She made you finish that stupid play so you would finally believe your brother and your wife were sleeping together! So that you would understand your brother didn’t tell you Sarah was alive that night because he wanted to keep their relationship a secret!”

The last row of the audience behind us hears what Naomi has said and quickly passes it to those seated ahead of them. The sound is like the murmuring of the ocean as their words disappear into the garden and out, across the Mediterranean. Their release is liberating. I realize I don’t need to hold on to the things that have seemed solid and oppressive for so long. My father. My uncle. My family name. Even my mother. At the heart of her death, at the heart of Lorna’s death, was never money or greed; it was always jealousy. The worst secret was Lorna’s pregnancy test. The worst secret was me. My father, my real father, has watched his brother raise me as his own child for thirty-three years, all to ensure the status quo continues. All to ensure the Lingate name.

My father wouldn’t listen to me, but Naomi has been more successful breaking through.

“Is that true?” my father asks. “Is that why you let me think I killed her? To protect yourself?”

“Richard—”

It’s all Marcus has to say: Richard. And my father is on him.

Naomi giggles. I try to get between them, but my father has the advantage of surprise. My uncle takes a step back and holds up his hands. He refuses to fight, but my father batters him around his face, his shoulders. Several of the men seated in the back rows stand and attempt to pull them apart.

“You have to stop this, Richard,” Marcus says. “Let me explain. There are people here.”

And it’s true. These are their friends. The friends who have jumped into the fray, who end up getting their silk shirts stained by Marcus’s blood, by my father’s anger. The brawling circle has grown and moved even closer to the edge of the patio, where only a low stone wall keeps them all from falling into the Mediterranean. And when I look out at the sea, I see the telltale blue and white flashing from three boats in the night—the carabinieri are on their way. Just as I hoped. Just as Stan and Ciro promised.

“What could you possibly explain?” my father says, pausing the onslaught. He sounds sad in that moment.

Marcus takes a step toward him.

But as he does, a well-meaning bystander, assuming Marcus wants to engage with my father, gets in between them.

“That’s enough,” the man says. His soft calfskin loafers have been scuffed by my father’s shoes. Abrased. “Let’s act like gentlemen.”

“This is a family issue,” my father says, stepping to the side.

The man mirrors him, and my father, exasperated, tries to push him out of the way. It’s not a hard push. It’s an annoyance, a flick. But the man trips, he falls backward. And when he does, his body connects with Marcus’s chest. My uncle manages to right the man, but the weight and momentum cause him to take an unbalanced step back, then another.

My father reaches for him—a desperate hand, a call: “Marcus.”

But Marcus’s knees buckle over the low stone wall and his back slides over the edge until he falls, headfirst, onto the cliffs below.

The sound, like my father said, of body hitting stone is impossible to forget.

The audience gasps.