David Gates - A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “Can we go back to generalities?”

“So how’s Madeleine?” her father said.

“Queer,” she said. “What else does anybody care about?”

“Okeydokey.” Her father nodded at me. “You want to have another go?”

“No thanks,” I said. “But I like her anyway. Anybody this angry has to have a heart of gold.”

“Sorry I was pissy,” she said when we pulled into the driveway. “This is just a little weird, being back here. Did you change shit around?”

“I don’t think you’ll see much difference.” He got out, pulled the seat forward for her and took her bag.

“I don’t know, I kind of wish you had. You need to trim the hedge.” She got out and looked at me. “I bet you trim yours.”

“I thought you weren’t going to be pissy,” he said.

“I do, actually,” I said. “If we’re talking about lady business. Do you?”

“Okay, I need to stop,” she said. “I guess I can see why you guys liked each other. Can we go in and get this over with?”

When she went upstairs, he patted my ass. “Sorry about the trial by ordeal. You’re doing fine.”

“What did you do with all my shit?” she yelled down.

He went to the foot of the stairs. “You took it to New York,” he called. “There’s some of your stuff in the closet.”

“Yeah, isn’t that appropriate,” she yelled.

“Give me patience.” He shook his head. “Why on earth she needs to make me the bad guy…”

“Because she thinks she’s a bad girl?”

“Even I know that much,” he said. “I’d hoped Madeleine would’ve gotten her over this.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to get over it.”

“She’s twenty-five, for Christ’s sake. Why is she still being so teenager-y?”

I said, “You love her.”

“Where do you get these insights,” he said.

I heard the door shut upstairs, and she came stomping down. “I knew you had this.” She held up a pink plastic-bound diary with a little gold padlock. “This is when I was eight. Did you and Mom read it?”

“Avidly,” he said. “Your mother was going to set it to music. What is it, your memoirs?”

“I couldn’t find the key,” she said. “Do you have anything to cut this?”

“I’ll look in my toolbox,” he said. “As I recall, it could use a little cutting.”

“How do you deal with him?” she said to me.

“We’ll talk,” I said.

That night he stuck to wine after dinner, but he’d been up since six and a couple of times I saw his eyes shut and then come open again. Finally he looked at his watch, braced a hand on the coffee table and got to his feet. “You gals probably want to have a little hen party,” he said. “So if you’ll excuse me.” After he’d gone upstairs, I opened another bottle of red and she and I sat cross-legged on opposite ends of the sofa.

“So how is this for you?” I said.

“Better than I thought, to be honest. I mean, you seem to be good for him.”

“I hope to be.”

“Yeah, everybody hopes to be. Even him, I guess. Look, I don’t mean anything against Dad, okay? I just don’t feel like I ever knew him all that well.”

“But you were away at school, right? For part of the time?”

“Yeah, whose idea was that?” She pointed a thumb at the ceiling. “I don’t know, sorry, I feel like I’m planting the seed or something. Isn’t that what the stepdaughter always does? This must be weird for you too. Like which of us is the third wheel.”

“Maybe all of us,” I said.

“Right, what a concept. Like a tricycle. Or like tricyclics. I can’t believe I was so rude to you.”

“You were funny, actually.”

“So are you okay? Being with him? Not to be rude again, but he seems pretty old for you.”

“We do fine,” I said. “You’re not asking me to be graphic, right?”

She put down her glass, stuck her fingers in her ears and went La la la la la .

“Are you happy with your person?” I said.

“You don’t have to be such a priss,” she said. “Yeah, she’s great.”

“That’s what your father says.”

“Sure, because he’s hot for her—you know, I mean he was . I thought .” That pale skin made her blush easily. “Can I have just about that much more?”

“You don’t have to be a priss either.” I poured her another half glass, then more for myself. “People can be hot for more than one person.”

“Yeah, tell me.” She drank off what I’d just poured and held her glass up again. “So what were we talking about?”

“I’ve lost track,” I said, picking up the bottle.

“Okay, I think I’m boring you.” She put her hand over the glass. “I probably need to get to bed.”

When her father took her to the train in the morning—I waved from the doorstep like a housewife—I went up and stripped her bed first thing, then came down and started putting stuff in the dishwasher. I held her wineglass for a few seconds, touched the lipstick smear with my tongue and tasted that sweet, chalky nothing-taste of lipstick before telling myself, Five minutes from now you’ll have forgotten you did this .

—

He hadn’t let her know he’d be putting the Rhinebeck house on the market; before bringing her up to the loft to show her the paintings he’d been working on, he’d taken the plans for the new house down from the wall.

“I feel a little funny that she doesn’t know what’s going on,” I said when he got back from dropping her off.

“I don’t think she has any great attachment to this place. Is there any coffee left?”

“That wasn’t the impression I got.”

“Well, whatever the case. There’s time enough for her to come back and say her goodbyes if she wants to. Did you say there was coffee?”

“You were sneaky about it,” I said. I heard the washer in the basement stop, then start the spin cycle.

“I just thought it best not to throw everything at her all at once.”

“She isn’t a child,” I said.

“Are we talking about the same person?” he said. “All right, perhaps I’m the child. I didn’t want to have to deal with any theatrics.” He headed into the kitchen. “I’ll go make some coffee.”

“So you love her but you don’t respect her.”

He looked over his shoulder. “This isn’t going to develop itself into our first fight, I hope? Shall we both go sulk now and gather up our energy for the reconciliation?”

“I need to go get the laundry,” I said. “This isn’t very real to you, is it?”

“So-so. Nothing to write home about. Suppose we depart from the script: you forget the laundry, I’ll forget the coffee, we’ll have a drink like civilized people and go upstairs.”

“It’s eleven in the morning,” I said. “No, I don’t want to go upstairs.”

“It was a euphemism,” he said.

“Yes, do you think I’m stupid?”

“What’s put you in a mood? Were you two overbonding last night? I did think she looked a little blue around the gills.”

“Maybe so. I’ve got a wicked headache.” Which I did, now that I thought of it. “Is it going to fuck up the whole day to do the drink part?”

“What are days for ?” he said. “I think my work of corruption is nearly complete.”

I slept until five thirty in the afternoon, left him in bed and took a shower, then brought my book out onto the little back porch off the kitchen. I’ve forgotten what book, but let’s say it was Jane Eyre — Reader, I married him —just because it wasn’t. But I couldn’t concentrate, so I watched a pair of chipmunks playing around the base of a tree: it must have been the tree whose branches I saw out my window. I hadn’t written my thousand words today. Or my thousand words yesterday. It was still warm; the sun had just gone down behind the house on the other side of the back fence. So green out here: bushes I couldn’t name, a small tree I knew to be a dogwood, a lumpy square of ground, overgrown with grass, that must have been where his wife grew her herbs. His wife, did I say? I am Mrs. de Winter now.