Russell Banks - The Reserve

The guide had made several halfhearted attempts to explain to Evelyn Cole why Vanessa was doing this to her and had asked her to reconsider her decision to send Vanessa to Zurich and agree to turn her daughter’s inheritance over to her and, as he put it, “let bygones be bygones.” And if Evelyn agreed, the man said, he would take her back to the Tamarack Club tomorrow and would even be willing to drive her home to Tuxedo Park in her car. “Miss Cole can stay here at the lake, if she wants, and I’ll come back up on the train,” he said, adding that he’d need a few dollars’ advance for the fare.

Evelyn had agreed at once, but Vanessa read her mind and told the guide that her mother was lying, that as soon as she got back to the city she would take out a fresh set of commitment papers and would send the sheriff here to carry her out of the Reserve in a straitjacket, tossing her in a paddy wagon and driving her to some upstate insane asylum, where she’d be confined with the lunatics for the rest of her life. It would be worse than sending her to the hospital in Zurich, she had said to Hubert. And the man had believed her, and when the three of them had finished eating supper, he had locked Evelyn in the bedroom again. “I’m sorry to have to do this, Mrs. Cole,” he had said to her. “Maybe in the morning you two will see more eye to eye.” Then he had gone outside and closed and hooked the winter shutters over the bedroom and bathroom windows, plunging both rooms into darkness.

Out on the porch, Jordan Groves said to Vanessa, “Look, I came out here this morning to talk to you. I don’t need ol’ Hubert here to hang around while I’m doing it. I don’t know what you two have going on between you, but I’ve got enough reasons of my own to want to drive the man into the ground with a hammer. So if you value his physical well-bring, you’ll tell him to disappear for a while, until I’m gone from here. Then you can resume whatever it is you two were doing before I interrupted. All right?”

“All right,” she said. “But, believe me, there’s nothing going on between us. Hubert, do you mind?”

He said no, he didn’t mind and got up and left the porch for the deck outside, disappearing in the direction of the outbuildings among the trees in back — the guesthouse, the toolshed, cookshack and woodshed, the outhouse, and the open lean-to where the help slept.

Afraid that her mother, still locked inside the bedroom, might hear the artist’s voice and cry out for help, Vanessa needed to get Jordan Groves away from the main building. “Let’s walk down by the lake,” she suggested, and the two left the porch and made their way across the sloping, rust-colored blanket of pine needles down to the rocky shore. She needed to keep the two men apart, too. Hubert, his resolve somewhat softened by her mother’s pleas last night, was not an altogether reliable ally in this and might take it into his mind to confide in Jordan or ask for his help, and she had no idea whose side Jordan would take in this, once he knew the truth.

He pulled his leather jacket off and spread it across the hull of Hubert’s overturned guide boat, against the dew. They leaned back on the boat and held the mugs of coffee close to their mouths, warming their faces and hands, and gazed at the rising mist and the smooth, black surface of the lake. A pair of loons cruised low over the lake from north to south and dropped into the water with a quiet splash. Every few seconds the water was puckered by feeding trout and then was still again.

“I keep looking along the shore for Daddy’s ashes,” she said. “Or do you think when they hit the water they just sank?”

“The ash dissolved right away, probably. He’s part of the lake now. It’s what he wanted, right?”

“What about the bigger bits and pieces? There were some. I looked.”

“On the bottom, I expect. Or in the belly of a lake trout. Watch what you catch and eat,” he said.

“Jordan, really!” she said and smiled. “Where’s your airplane? How’d you get out here?” she asked.

“Anchored in a cove up a ways. No sense in advertising its presence.”

“I didn’t hear it come in,” she said and wondered if her mother had.

“I cut the engine back pretty far. Practically glided it in.” He turned to Vanessa then and said, “I know you saw my wife over at Hubert’s place yesterday.”

“Yes. I did.”

“And what did you make of it?”

“Make of it? Why, nothing. I went there to hire Hubert to bring in supplies to Rangeview. I had business with him. I assume she did, too. That’s all. Why, was there more to it than that?”

“A lot more. What’s he doing here now?”

“You’re changing the subject, Jordan. And it’s not really any of your business anyhow,” she said. “But if you must know, he rowed out with the second load of supplies after dark, so I suggested he sleep on the porch and go back in daylight.”

“Well, that’s not what he told me. Anyhow, what he’s doing out here is my business. The man’s been sleeping with my wife. She’s in love with him, she says. So if he’s sleeping with you, too, I’d like to know it. It’s got nothing to do with you. You’re free to sleep with anyone you damn well please.”

“Thank you very much.” She laughed lightly and lay the palm of her hand against his cheek. “No, Jordan dear, I’m not sleeping with Hubert. He’s very pretty, and sexy in a stolid sort of way. But there’s nothing between us. I’m curious, though. What did Hubert tell you?”

“About why he’s out here? He said he was helping you with your mother. Didn’t make sense, so I didn’t believe him. I don’t believe you, either. The fact is, I’m reasonably sure my wife’s in love with a man who’s screwing at least one other woman. You. And probably a couple more for good measure. I’m going to see that she knows it, and I’m going to take the bastard down for it.”

“For what?”

“For deceiving her. And me. And deceiving you. Though I don’t expect you’re in love with him, too. Are you?”

Vanessa laughed again. “Oh, if I’m in love with anyone, Jordan Groves, it’s probably you,” she said. Smiling, she put her mug down on the boat and kissed him, sweetly, sincerely, not quite passionately, but capable of becoming passionate in a matter of seconds, he could tell. Reluctantly, he removed her hands from his face and pushed her away, and her expression suddenly darkened, and she said, “Oh, dear.”

He followed her gaze and saw what she saw — Hubert St. Germain trudging slowly toward them, head down, hands at his sides, and a few feet behind him, Evelyn Cole. She walked woodenly, but with calm determination, her face cold and tightly knotted. And she held a double-barreled shotgun aimed at his back.

“What the hell is this ?” Jordan said.

“Oh, Christ, she’s got one of Daddy’s guns,” Vanessa whispered.

They drew near, and in a trembling voice Evelyn Cole told Hubert to stop right there. “Mr. Groves, I need you to take me out of here in your airplane,” she said.

Hubert said, “I went to check on her, and she was waiting with the gun. It was in the closet. We forgot.” He looked glum, as required by his lines, but also oddly relieved, and Jordan wondered if this were an event somehow rehearsed and staged for his benefit, some kind of weird, amateurish piece of theater.

“He doesn’t have his airplane, Mother! Please, put the gun down. You don’t need the gun!”

“No, I do have it. I have my airplane,” Jordan said. “But somebody tell me what the hell this is all about.”

“They’ve gone crazy, Mr. Groves! Crazy! Both of them. They won’t let me leave. You have to take me out in your airplane! Where is it?”