Russell Banks - The Reserve

Vanessa left the library and carried the folder to the living room. There she held it against her breasts and stared at the fire for several seconds. The flames had begun to die, and she was shivering from the cold now. Kneeling, she placed the folder flat on the hearth. She reached behind her for the fallen sheet and draped it over her shoulders like a robe. On her knees, she stared at the file folder and reached one hand forward and nudged the folder a few inches toward the open fire, all the while murmuring and shaking her head from side to side as if arguing with herself. She pushed the folder another inch closer to the flames. She looked up at the mantelpiece. She could feel the heat of the flames against her face and throat. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again….

She stood then and slowly approached the mantelpiece, reached out and lifted the kerosene lantern off it. Holding the bowl in her two hands, she backed a few steps away from the fire. She hurled the lantern through the flaming mouth of the fireplace into the darkness beyond, and the entire room filled with a flash of hot light.

JORDAN GROVES MADE HIS WAY WITH RELATIVE EASE ALONG the rocky shore. The full moon above the lake was like a gigantic eye looking in on the earth. He pushed through brushy undergrowth and splashed across the mouths of small, rock-strewn brooks to the hidden cove a mile south of the camp, where his airplane was anchored. Stepping onto the near pontoon, he pulled the anchors free of the lake bottom and climbed into the cockpit and started the engine. He hit the rudders, and brought the airplane around to the south, facing the soft wind. A broad streak of moonlight crossed the water in front of him like a brightly lit, rippled runway, and his takeoff along it was quick and smooth and straight, a gracefully rising arc drawn from the surface of the lake into the cloudless, star-filled sky above. As he passed over the camp buildings, he kept his gaze fixed on the stars above and ahead of him and did not see the living room windows of the camp suddenly change color — dark orange flaring to bright yellow.

ALICIA MOVED SLOWLY THROUGH THE HOUSE, SHUTTING OFF the lights one by one. The boys had finally fallen asleep — all day and into the evening they had been anxious and somber, as if they knew that something was about to change their lives irrevocably, even though Alicia had made every effort to demonstrate to them that today was just another ordinary summer day in the life of the Groves family. Papa was gone someplace in his airplane but would be back in a day or two, she told them, maybe even tonight. Where has Papa gone? they wanted to know. She wasn’t sure, it was business, it had come up suddenly, and he had left early before any of them was awake and didn’t give her the details. They’d memorized and rehearsed singing the Jimmie Rodgers songs, and in the afternoon, after Hubert came and left, she asked the boys to keep helping Papa’s new assistant learn everything she could about the studio, told them to go on teaching the girl the names and places of the different tools and materials the same way Papa had taught them, by making an inventory of all the inks and paints and pastels and pencils, all the blocks and plates and even the sheets of paper organized by weight and size, and the rolls of canvas and stretchers and the brushes, knives, chisels, gouges — reminding Wolf and Bear that Frances had never been inside a real artist’s studio before yesterday and that by helping her they were helping Papa, because when he got back he would have lots of new work to do and would not have the time to train her himself.

With Frances and the boys safely ensconced in the studio, Alicia had continued to behave as if it was just another normal late July afternoon — weeding the garden, gathering the first summer squashes and cucumbers, restaking the branches of the tomato plants that were about to break under the weight of the clusters of new green tomatoes. And later she’d taken Wolf and Bear to swim in the river, and the dogs, as anxious and somber as the boys, for the first time refused to go into the water. They stood on the sandy shore and watched, as if protecting the boys, who dutifully practiced their strokes a short ways beyond, and when the boys came out of the water and Alicia toweled them down, the dogs lay on the warm sand of the short beach and continued their watching, as if something strange was happening, when, in fact, everything was normal, life as usual, just another afternoon and evening at the Groveses’.

But it was not life as usual, and they all knew it, even Frances, Jordan’s new assistant, who at the end of the day came to Alicia and asked if maybe she should stay home tomorrow and wait for Mr. Groves to telephone before she came back to work. Alicia said yes, that was a good idea, since she wasn’t sure exactly when he would be back, and there was no point in her hanging around in the studio when he wasn’t here to tell her what to do. Unless, of course, she needed more time to familiarize herself with the artist’s tools and materials. The girl said no, the boys had taught her real good, she said. She said they were amazing, the boys. So smart and helpful and well behaved. Alicia thanked her and gave her some money for her two days’ work and sent her on her way, believing that she would not see this girl again, at least not here. She’d bump into her in town, maybe, see her by accident at the grocery store, and the girl would ask after the boys, politely avoiding any mention of Mr. Groves or her brief employment as his studio assistant. For he would no longer be there, working in his studio, managing his household, raising his sons, sharing his life with his wife. Alicia did not yet know where in fact he would be or what he’d be doing there or whom he would be sharing his life with, but from the moment she woke at dawn to the sound down by the river of his airplane engine starting up and heard the plane take off and fly over the house and up the valley, gone, she had known that he would return only to organize his permanent absence from this house and from her, and from now on his sons would at best be mere visitors in his life, his unhappy guests on holidays and school vacations.

So she was not surprised, as she walked through the house shutting off the lights, dropping the house room by room into darkness, that she did not, as usual, leave a light burning at the kitchen door for him. She passed through the library, where barely twenty-four hours ago, she and Jordan had last held each other and wept over the damage they had done alone and together to their marriage, and she stood a moment beside his desk as if he were still seated there and she were waiting for him to turn to her and say All is forgiven , and All our lies and betrayals belong to the past now . Her glance fell on the wicker basket beside the desk, and she saw in it a sealed and stamped letter torn in half and half again, Jordan’s cream-colored personal stationery with his familiar logo for the return address and letterhead — a river, the River Jordan, he had once explained to her, represented by three parallel, waved lines rippling below a grove of three pines. It was his mark, his stamp, his signature. She reached into the basket and picked up the four pieces of the torn letter and envelope and saw that it was addressed to John Dos Passos. She knew then where her husband would go when he left her. She did not read what he had written to Dos. She didn’t have to — he had written it before learning of her betrayal and the months of deception. He had written it when he thought he knew who she was. Everything was different now. And then she heard the high, nasal hum of the airplane in the distance, its tone dropping and volume steadily increasing as it followed the river north toward home.