Russell Banks - The Reserve

“What do you mean?” She reached out and touched his sleeve lightly, holding it between thumb and forefinger, reinforcing her plea to go ahead, Hubert, tell the truth.

“I guess…yes, I am kind of upset. Actually, I’m kind of worried about you coming to my place. When Alicia, Mrs. Groves, was there. In case you got the wrong idea,” he added, preparing to lie, knowing he would not be believed anyhow, and hating it, the lying, regardless of whether she believed him. He was a man with secrets, perhaps, but he did not lie.

“There was no wrong idea to get, Hubert. I mean, your private life is your own. It’s no business of mine. I don’t know Mrs. Groves, anyhow. Not personally. But she seems like a good person. And I do know you’re a good person.”

“This is sort of a strange conversation for us to be having. Isn’t it?”

“Yes, I guess it is.” She was still holding his sleeve. “I wish…I wish you could be the one to help me. I need someone to help me.” Her eyes opened wide and turned dark.

He heard himself say that he would help her. She wasn’t going to make him lie about Alicia, she was changing the subject for his sake, so maybe he was in her debt for that. “What do you need me for?”

Vanessa said, “I’ve done something…something wrong. Wrong, and very rash. And I don’t know what to do about it, Hubert. I’m confused, and I’m in trouble. A lot of trouble.” She let go of his sleeve and pressed the flat of her hand against the side of his upper arm. It was a friendly, trusting, comforting gesture, as if he and not she were the one asking for help and were receiving it from her touch. “Oh, God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”

“What have you done?” Their faces were drawn close together now, their eyes locked, and he could smell her hair. It was like fresh-cut grass. Or maybe tea leaves, he thought. A woody, clean smell.

“You must promise to tell no one. It has to be a secret. No one else must know.”

“You can trust me.”

“You can’t tell anyone. Promise me.”

“All right. I won’t tell anyone,” he said, and meant it.

“I’ve done…I’ve done something bad to my mother.”

“Your mother? Mrs. Cole? What do you mean, ‘something bad’? I don’t understand.”

“It’s hard to explain. It’s just, I got trapped in…a situation, trapped by her, and to escape it I did something very…rash. And now I don’t know what to do about it. I can’t undo it. And I can’t keep doing it, either. Because…well, because she’s my mother. And it’s wrong.”

“Tell me what you’ve done. It can’t be but so bad. I’ll help you,” he said again. “Have you accidentally hurt her or something?” Maybe they had a quarrel that turned violent, he thought. It happens sometimes in families, even families like the Coles. It had happened in his.

“No, I haven’t hurt her, not physically.”

“Well, it can’t be so bad, then.”

“Oh, yes, it’s bad, Hubert.” She took her hand away from his arm and held his hand in hers and told him to come with her to the house. “I shouldn’t be doing this, involving you, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t have anyone to turn to, Hubert.”

“It’s okay, Miss Cole. You can trust me.”

Vanessa turned and walked quickly toward the house, Hubert following a few feet behind. They crossed the wide deck, passed through the screened porch, and entered the living room. He checked the sofa — Mrs. Cole wasn’t there, asleep or awake. He looked around the room and said to himself, So she lied about that. He wondered what else she’d lied about. Maybe everything. Maybe he shouldn’t have agreed to help her. She was capable of tricking him into behaving in a way that he’d be sorry for later, sorry and humiliated. Something ugly was going on. Maybe a thing has been done here that only rich people do, he thought, and he wished that he were not here in this house alone with this woman, wished that he were by himself in the deep woods tracking a deer instead of following this nervous, frightened woman who lied all the time. If he could not be alone in the woods, he wished he were with Alicia in the mountain meadow up behind his cabin, showing her the new-blooming pasture roses, the black-eyed Susans, and the pink yarrow. Alone in the deep woods; and with Alicia: they were the only times he had been happy in years. Maybe since he was a small child. Maybe always. Even with Sally, his wife — whom he believed he had loved, at least until he met Alicia — even with Sally he had not been happy and had preferred being alone. Secretly, he knew that his grief over his wife’s death had been eased and tempered by the sudden solitude that had followed it.

Hubert said, “Your mother’s not here, I guess.”

“No. She’s…she’s in her bedroom.”

“Maybe I should take a look at her,” he said. “Make sure she’s okay.”

“No! She’s all right. She’s fine. It’s just…she’s indisposed.”

“I believe I need to see her, Miss Cole. You said some things outside that make me think I need to see her. Just to make sure she’s okay.”

“Yes, I guess I did,” she said and sighed. “All right. You can see her. But you mustn’t talk to her. You mustn’t. And you can’t tell anyone that she’s here. You said I could trust you. And you said you’d help me, remember?”

“I did,” he said, but he did not promise her anything more. He was a man who tried not to make promises that he might not be able to keep; yes, he had told Vanessa that she could trust him and he’d help her; those were promises he could keep. But he was not sure that he would not talk to Vanessa Cole’s mother or tell someone she was here at Rangeview. Not until he had seen the woman first with his own eyes and had determined what Vanessa had done to her. For that was what she’d said, wasn’t it? That she had done something bad to her mother.

Vanessa unlocked and opened the door to her parents’ bedroom. She stepped aside, and motioned for him to enter. He walked to the doorway. Looking past Vanessa into the bedroom, he saw the woman. It was Mrs. Cole. Her name was Evelyn, he remembered, but he had always called her Mrs. Cole. Dr. Cole had long ago told Hubert to call him Carter. The guide had liked that. The woman’s hands and ankles were bound, and there was some kind of cloth over her mouth, and Hubert did not know what to think. Whatever he had expected to see, it was not this.

Mrs. Cole looked over at Hubert St. Germain, the family’s longtime guide and caretaker, standing by the door, his hands hanging empty at his sides, Vanessa beside him, and the woman seemed to recoil from him, as if he had come to do something to her that Vanessa couldn’t bring herself to do alone. Mrs. Cole’s eyes widened in fear, and she shook her head wildly no, as if pleading with him not to do it.

Barely two seconds passed, and Vanessa grabbed Hubert by the hand and pulled him away from the room and slammed the door shut on her mother and locked it.

“Let me back in there, Miss Cole!”

“No. I can’t,” she said and stood with her back to the door.

“I got to help her!”

“No!” She cried, “Help me, Hubert! Please, I’m the one who needs you.”

“ How? What’s going on here? Why is she like that, all tied up and gagged like that?”

“I can’t explain. But you have to trust me, Hubert.”

“Then you got to tell me the reason she’s like that.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’ll have to untie her and let her tell me.”

Vanessa looked steadily at him for a moment, her lips pursed, as if she were taking the measure of the man. Finally, she said, “It’s not my mother who’s trapped. Believe me. It’s not my mother who’s a prisoner, Hubert. It’s me.”