“Why did he do this to us?” Lucas demanded. “That was inhuman. He was a monster.”

  “Probably. Most obsessed people are, in one way or another. I think he wanted you to know, each of you, that he wasn’t as much of a monster as you thought. It’s a terrible thing to think your father has killed your mother; I can’t think of anything worse. He knew how bad it was, and I think he wanted to straighten that much out He wanted you to know he was human, not very good much of the time, demanding and hard to get along with, but he wasn’t a wife killer—not Winona, not Sally, not Viola—and in his own way he loved each of you.”

  Regina was standing near the foot of the bed watching them, listening to Hugh’s soothing voice, his more soothing words, and she saw a ridge along his jaw that had not been there before. He was staring fixedly. His entire body looked as if he had been caught in the middle of a scream. How could he control his voice like that when he looked as if he were ready to erupt into pieces? She felt more afraid of him than of anything else she had seen or heard in the house. He had them all, she thought; he had gathered them all into himself and was one with them. He was containing them, controlling them because he was stronger than they were, because he knew them, understood them, knew how to make them obey him.

  . . his crutch?” He was looking at her, had spoken to her although she had not heard.

  She drew back a step. His eyes were the eyes of a madman, glittery and inhuman.‘She fumbled on the floor for the crutch, not able to look away from him, as if now he held her also, knew how to force her obedience. She handed the crutch to Lucas and both men got up, Hugh steadying Lucas until he was firmly on his feet.

  “You two go on down,” he said and walked to the window, and stood with his back to them, looking outside. “Dawn’s about to break,” he said. ‘It’s almost over now,” He had to clean up the mess, Regina thought, holding Lucas by the arm as they went to the door. She looked back; he was still by the window. They would kill him, she thought in confusion. No one could know that world well enough to control it and stay alive in this world. She didn’t know what the thought meant. He turned and regarded her soberly for a moment; Lucas was moving ahead, and she hurried to stay with him.

  Dawn came in silently with a soft rain that made the vines and trees and lawn sparkle. The house was still. As he had promised, Bill Strohm arrived at seven-thirty to read the will. Hugh met him at the door on his way out. For a few minutes he stood on the porch and regarded the farm, a work of art in four dimensions, changing with time, letting time itself finish it here and there, add a touch of silver, a patina of velvety moss. He took a deep breath and went to his car and left the property, driving slowly, feeling the road beneath his wheels, feeling the grasses growing, the trees stirring under the drops of water, feeling the freshening air as it moved through the ferns.

  Bill Strohm waited until everyone was seated in the sun-room, before he opened the envelope he had taken from the safe in the master bedroom. There was a single sheet of paper. He adjusted his glasses and read it aloud:

  “I, John Daniel Culbertson, declare that the test is officially over. Those who have gathered to hear this reading of my will have all passed the test. If you are winners or losers only you can tell. I direct my attorney, William S. Strohm, to proceed with the reading of my one and only will and testament, which he will find in my bedroom safe.”

  Strohm stopped reading. “What shit is all this?” he demanded furiously and strode from the room, leaving the paper on the table.

  Conrad picked it up and read it silently.

  “But what about the book?” Janet asked. “I have it. I thought he would want me to read something from it* Something…”

  “You’re the one? I wondered,” Conrad murmured.

  “And you’re the one who tore up the place, I suppose,” she snapped.

  “No, not Connie. I did,” Mallory said. “It was the only way I could make the voices stop.” He sounded miserable.

  Regina was slightly apart from the family members, watching them, hearing the silly song that sometimes dominated her thoughts, sometimes faded almost completely away. Nothing was explained, she thought, disappointed. He never tried to explain himself in life, and he would not have tried as a last gesture. It ‘was out of character. She shifted uneasily in her chair and looked out the window. That was where she had been that day, looking in. He wouldn’t have known how to make them understand him, even if it had occurred to him to try. He never understood a thing about people.

  For a moment she was looking at her hand on the table, and it was Mallory’s hand that she saw. And she knew that Mallory had the heaviest burden of guilt; he was the one who had chosen to believe his mother was dead rather than accept that she had abandoned her two boys, that she had been paid off. And from that belief the rest had sprung. Mallory looked pinched and exhausted. He would find Winona, if she was alive. He would take care of her, maybe settle her in this house again, if she wanted that He looked at Conrad with so much pain etched into the lines of his face that Regina had to avert her gaze. But they would be all right she realized; they would forgive each other.

  She looked at Lucas and wanted to go to him, hold him hard, protect him from his own thoughts. He had to come to accept that his father would not have allowed him to leave that night with his mother. Culbertson had known where he was hiding; he had blocked the stairs when she would have gone up there. There was no way that Lucas could have prevented the crash; because he was blameless, he no longer had to blame his father. In time he would accept what he knew. Again and again Culbertson had tried to protect them, had shielded them from truth too painful to face and they had reviled and hated him for it.

  The house was stirring again and she found herself singing under her breath.

  Strohm reentered the room, red-faced and angry looking. “This is the original will I drew up for him,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  The song drowned out his voice; she could hardly follow the words. The lump and the road were one, and the trees and the road and the lump, and the man inside…and the house that rose before him, and the furnishings, the file cabinet…The song was getting louder in her head, the words faster and faster, running together. She thought distantly that she was not certain which would be worse, to have it stop or to have it continue forever. She dreaded having it stop. In the file cabinet, behind the folders, was the gun Laura had insisted on having in the house. It felt cool and heavier than it looked. It was loaded.

  Janet began to laugh hysterically and Mallory put his arms around her. Lucas grabbed Regina, nearly crying, too excited to speak, and she realized that they had inherited the farm equally.

  “We won! We won!” Janet was crying. “We beat him!”

  “It’s over,” Mallory’s deep voice rumbled. “Thank God, it’s over. We don’t even have to stay here!”

  “Perhaps if I ask Mrs. Mantessa to bring coffee we can settle down and finish this,” Bill Strohm said, but no one paid any attention to him.

  “Honey, it’s over. I can feel it. Everything’s stopped. It’s really over!” Lucas was shaking her, and she thought he was crying, but he was laughing. “It’s fucking over!”

  .…he played knick-knack on my thigh…She was looking at Hugh sitting behind his desk holding the gun. The song stopped and there was a terrible silence in her head and she remembered his finger puppets, his falsetto: “As for you, Wilberforce, take that!” This is what Culbertson had wanted to give them, she thought. It could never be explained; it had to be experienced. He was so wrong about people always; he thought they could take it, that they could live knowing this. Max and Wilberforce, she whispered to Hugh, that’s the real legacy, isn’t it?

  He looked at her without expression. “You don’t have to know it,” he said. “You can still reject it, forget all this. Get out and forget it, Regina. You don’t have to know it”

  “But I do know.*’

  He shook his head. “Not yet.” He looked past her at the glaciated mountain, dismissing her, recapturing a private moment. She watched him raise the gun, and she shared his eagerness as he pulled the trigger. For a moment she knew she was in the center, that she could choose which direction to take; for a moment she considered pain and humiliation and unhappiness, and for the same moment she considered love and joy and the incredible beauty of the world.

  With the sound of the shot still in her ears, she slumped in Lucas’s arms unbalancing him and together they fell to the rattan sofa. She heard her own voice in her head: And the farcical times, and the sad, and the ecstatic •…

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Bill Strohm breathed.

  “I’m all right,” Regina said, trying to untangle herself from Lucas. “I got dizzy all at once.”

  “It’s the excitement,” Janet said, hovering over Regina and Lucas while Conrad helped Lucas to his feet. He sat down by Regina again immediately and put his arm around her.

  “Can’t you skip the rest of it?” Conrad asked Strohm. The attorney tightened his lips and Conrad said hurriedly, “Okay, okay. Read the goddam will. I’m going to get her some water.”

  He left and came back with a glass while Bill Strohm finished reading the will, racing through the words, the clauses. When he was done, he stood up and left without their noticing.

  “Honey, it’s okay. You’re fine. You didn’t eat a bit of breakfast, after all, and up all night No wonder you got dizzy.”

  He’s dead, she wanted to tell them, but she held the words back as Lucas murmured to her.

  “What it means is that well have a nice apartment for now, and later on a house of our own. I’ll have a studio and you’ll have an office, and we’ll go out to eat a couple of times a week. And well take good vacations now and then…”

  There was something she had to remember, she thought, something she had learned that was important, that she should tell them. She tried to recall it, but Lucas’s words were in her head and whatever it had been, it was beyond reach.

  “It isn’t going to change us, honey, just make things a little easier, a little better. You feeling okay now?”

  She nodded.

  “Well leave as soon as you feel up to it Get that motel room you talked about, rest, eat. Do it all.”

  It didn’t matter, she wanted to tell him. The house was quiet now; it really was over. And yet, for a moment…She frowned, trying to remember something that eluded her.

  “We have to talk about the house,” Mallory said. “My kids have grown up on the desert, it’s what they like, but I don’t know. Sometimes I think I must have webbed feet after all.”

  Janet nodded. “Someone should live here. A house deteriorates so fast if it’s left empty.”

  Regina leaned her head against Lucas and listened to them almost dreamily. The house was quiet again, but there was no ominous quality to the silence now, it was rather as if good manners had taken over, this was how a house should behave.

  It was decided that Mallory would stay in the house, make frequent trips back to his ranch, and get the legalities straightened out. And they could all come back at Christmas and make real decisions then.

  “Doesn’t the heather bloom around Christmas?” Janet asked.

  No one could remember, and Regina found herself nod—ding. That was how it should be, each one separate, protected by an invisible shield…She remembered what she had written in her notebook: We came separately and day by day that separateness was stripped away until there was no I, no you, no other. She no longer knew what she had meant by that. Culbertson had brought them back to make them all relive their past, to sort out the true memories from the false, to understand themselves. And they had done exactly that. And Hugh? She felt a small tremor in her stomach and pushed him out of her mind again. There was something she should remember about Hugh, but it was gone for now. Later it probably would come back. Something about a silly song, a mountain, something…She deliberately turned her thoughts to New York, to apartment hunting, the space they could now afford, the long life they had before them, together. She would forget all this week; with the thought she felt a rush of anxiety that made her feel like a child singing as she walked past a cemetery.

  Lucas was talking about the kind of studio he had always wanted, and he was fingering the bandage on his wrist. It would take time, she thought, a long time, but the wrist would heal; together they would find all the small pieces of Lucas that had been blown apart this week, and together they would put them back in place. They had time enough. She concentrated on his words, nodding with him, denying the memory of a glaciated mountain, of being for a moment in the center, of choosing.

 

 

  Unknown Author, A Sense of Shadow (v1.0)

 

 

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