The Golden Hour Read online

  Inquiry

  “Miss Davies, when you take the stand you are going to be sworn to tell the truth. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And so it’s important you tell us everything that happened, exactly as it happened.”

  Sometimes I dream the smell of the air that afternoon. The green, muddy, spring smell. The blossoms and bloom. Sometimes I only dream this: not his face, not his hands, not the knife. Just the scent. And for some reason, those dreams are nearly as terrifying as anything else my mind could conjure.

  There are several weeks in the spring in New Hampshire when the ground is still cold, frozen in places, while the leaves and trees assert themselves. Defiant. It is purgatorial, this place between the chill of winter and the promise of spring. This is where I lived: between winter and spring, between childhood and adolescence. Between that grassy field full of sunshine and the terrifying depths of those woods. At the precipice. At the sharp, thin edge.

  A shove. That is how it began. Two hands pressed against my back so hard it took the wind out of me, and then I was facedown in the mucky leaves. They were cold, almost frozen. My eyes blurred, and the musky scent of the leaves filled my nose. I tried to stand up, but he pushed me down again.

  “So he followed you into the woods. Once you were there, did he push you down? What did he say to you?”

  He said nothing. There were no words for what was happening. Maybe he knew this too.

  I remember he wore sneakers, filthy, his toes pushing through the ends. And for just a moment, I felt sorry for him. That his shoes were falling apart, and that the ground was so wet. For one, bizarre moment, it was pity I felt for him.

  And I still believed then in the possibility I could somehow get out of this. That this was all just a cruel joke or some sort of misunderstanding. I racked my brain for something that would explain why Robby Rousseau in his ratty sneakers and Wrangler jeans would be angry enough to knock the wind out of me and drag me into the forest. Had he heard me say he was creepy to someone during lunch? Had I accidentally done something to offend him? I struggled to understand what I could possibly have done or said or even thought, because in this moment I believed—I had to believe—I still had the power to undo it.

  His hands were on my shoulders then, pinning them to the ground. I felt the cold, damp earth soaking through my T-shirt. And he was above me. I remember the sun made a sort of golden aura around him. His features were obscured by my own blindness.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. But I knew even as the words left my mouth it was ridiculous, a blanket apology for anything I could possibly have done to him.

  There was terror in his eyes. I do remember this. And for just a moment I thought he was going to let me go. His grip on my shoulder lessened. He was scared. But then I looked up and saw his brother standing there, leaning against a tree, smacking gum between those vicious jaws.

  “Miss Davies, are you okay?”

  Auld Lang Syne

  That first week alone at the house without Avery, waiting for Pilar, crawled. I became obsessed with the photos. With this woman, this photographer, who had lived here all those years ago. Was she the woman whom the man in the restaurant was talking about? If so, what happened to her? Where did she go? And why did she leave her photos behind? Seamus had to know something, but I wasn’t sure how to ask him. Especially not with Fiona around. Maybe at the New Year’s Eve party I’d get a chance to speak to him again.

  In the mornings I dragged myself to the dining room to work on the birches, avoiding Ginger, who checked in at least every other day on my progress. Avoiding those other, empty, canvases too. In the afternoons (often into the evenings), I’d go through the contact sheets. By the time New Year’s Eve arrived, I had at least fifty negatives I wanted to have printed. I cataloged them chronologically. It seemed important to me to get it right. To what end, I still didn’t know. With every image, I felt like a voyeur.

  All of the sheets from 1978 featured the woman (the woman from the mirror, though her hair had been chopped away now). In one whole roll, she was reclined on a chintz sofa, in a dress too small for her body. The thin straps dug into her shoulders and her breasts pushed uncomfortably against the tight bodice. The images on the contact sheet were small, and it was difficult to see the details, but when I peered closely, I could see something lying on the floor, half of it outside the frame. I squinted to make out what it was. Then I realized: it was the baby. Its fat arm reaching toward the woman. But her gaze was at the camera, again somehow both accusation and plea.

  There were more pictures of the infant, but she always appeared at the periphery, screaming in a playpen in the background of a self-portrait of the woman smoking on the couch, a pile of ash collecting on the chintz sofa. In a high chair at the table, head resting on the tray, while her mother stood as still as stone in front of the camera, her head out of the frame, just her ravaged, nude body in the forefront.

  I thought of my own body after Avery was born, how I could barely bring myself to look in the mirror. How I’d refused to undress with the lights on. How I couldn’t bear for Gus to see what pregnancy, what birth had done to me. Her audacity made me feel ashamed. Made me feel vain. The images offered such raw and unapologetic honesty.

  A few of the rolls confused me, however. They weren’t taken in this house. Not as far as I could tell anyway. Instead they seemed to be photos of the insides of someone’s drawers. Careful rows of stockings and socks. The hint of lace from a folded pair of panties. There were also photos of objects: watches, earrings. A hairbrush. The bottom edge of a mirror, which reflected a massive, ornately carved wooden footboard. There seemed to be someone in the bed. The shape of a man? There were also ten photos taken from inside a bathtub. But it wasn’t the tub I sat in each night. This one seemed to be a claw-foot tub with chrome fixtures, her naked body reflected, distorted in the elaborate faucet. There wasn’t much of interest in these photos other than piquing my curiosity. I x’ed out most of those negatives, except the ones I wanted to blow up in order to see more clearly.

  I was starting to think of the photos as being of two groups: those taken before she moved to the island, and those taken after. But which ones were the Epitaphs, and which were the Prophecies? I looked up epitaphs again online, and most of what I found were engravings on tombstones. John Keats’s: “. . . Here lies One Whose name was writ in Water.” I Googled the phrase, and found it originated from a line in a seventeenth-century play: “All your better deeds Shall be in water writ, but this in Marble.” Could the older photos somehow be that marble? The only permanent thing evidencing her life?

  But what, then, of the other photos, the domestic ones? Were these Prophecies? And if so, what did they predict? What sort of divination did these sad photos offer? While the Epitaphs photos captured something vibrant, raw and dirty and terrifying, but alive, the Prophecies photos seemed a study in domesticity: a haggard mother, the trappings of a woman’s life. There was one negative strip of just the wallpaper in the upstairs hallway, its tangled vines and cabbage roses like plump fists. She focused in on the roses until it was impossible to discern what they even were anymore. As I cataloged the Prophecies photos, I felt suffocated. The walls of this house closing in around her. Around me.

  * * *

  It had only been a week since Christmas, but I was so hungry for company. I was driving myself crazy trying to make sense of the photos. What did any of it matter? Was I just using them as an excuse to avoid the birches? Or maybe just a distraction from the looming court decision. I knew the phone could ring at any moment with the news Robby would be granted another trial. I really just needed Pilar to get here. To have someone to talk to besides myself.

  I cleaned the house, changed the linens, made lasagna and three dozen of her favorite cookies. I woke up three or four times during the night before she was set to arrive. The anticipation was almost childlike.

  On New Year’s Eve day, the sky was bright, as if th
e sun knew Pilar was coming and was making a special effort to shine. But as I was gathering my things together to meet her at the ferry, my phone rang, and before I even picked up, I knew.

  “Wynnie?” she said.

  “Yep?”

  “I’m stuck in Philly. It’s snowing like crazy, and my flight is canceled.”

  I looked out the window at the bright blue sky and felt betrayed. How could it be snowing in Philadelphia when it looked like spring here?

  “When’s the next flight?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. There are only a handful into Portland each day. I’m thinking I could maybe fly into Manchester if I have to and rent a car to drive up. But it would probably be late.”

  Disappointment felt like a brick in my chest.

  “But what about the party?” I asked. I had told her about the New Year’s Eve party and she’d been just as intrigued as I had been.

  “The last ferry is at six o’clock,” I said, “because of the holiday.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Do you think I might be able to stay at your folks’ house tonight? On my way?” she asked.

  “Of course,” I said. “Do you have their number?”

  “I think so. And I’ll leave their place at the crack of dawn. I should be there by midmorning. We’ll drink champagne then.”

  * * *

  Now that Pilar wouldn’t be here for New Year’s Eve, I thought about skipping the party, just putting on my long johns, heating up the lasagna, and watching Ryan Seacrest. I’d asked Gus what he and Avery were doing, and he said he was taking her to see the fireworks in Prospect Park in Brooklyn with some friends.

  “She’ll never be able to stay up until midnight,” I’d said, feeling a little jealous. I had sort of thought I’d be with Avery when she did the countdown for the first time.

  “I’m bringing the wagon, with lots of blankets and pillows. She can snooze if she wants.”

  “Just make sure she wears a hat,” I’d said, sounding more bitter and bossy than I intended. I wondered if Mia would be there. Pictured her tagging along. Would people mistake them for a family?

  I needed to get out of the house, out of my head. If even for one night.

  I dug through my clothes, looking for something, anything at all appropriate, to wear to a fancy schmancy mansion party. Finally, when my own closet yielded nothing more than jeans and cords and wool sweaters, I went to Avery’s room and dug through her dress-up box, which she’d insisted we bring with us to Maine. I vaguely recalled putting the dress I’d worn to that speakeasy water tower party in here, thinking there would never again be an occasion for me to wear such a thing. And sure enough, beneath the superhero capes and the princess gowns was my dress. That shimmery, 1920s beaded affair with fringe at the knees.

  I wondered if it even fit me anymore. Before Avery was born, I’d been built like a boy. Narrow hips, small breasts. Pregnancy had given me curves for the first time in my life. But now, I felt like a deflated balloon. Swollen up to capacity and then popped. Stretched out. I thought about the photo in the Prophecies pile I’d seen that was a close-up of something unidentifiable at first. It had taken me several minutes to figure out it was the woman’s stomach. A network of stretch marks like a spider’s web, the hollow black hole of her belly button like a fat spider at the center.

  I stripped out of my clothes and pulled the dress over my head, yanking at it until I remembered the hidden side zipper, which, thankfully, made the job a bit easier, and as the fringy bottom tickled my bare legs, I looked in the mirror. And I realized I hadn’t looked in the mirror, not more than a cursory glance to make sure I didn’t have anything stuck in my teeth, in weeks. I barely recognized myself.

  My hair was frizzy. I’d stopped wearing makeup, unless you counted Burt’s Bees lip balm, and so my face was colorless. Gone. I looked like a ghost of myself. And I was horrified. Was this the way I had looked when Gus was here? I tried but couldn’t remember if I’d bothered to check my reflection before his visit.

  In high school, I’d worn a lot of makeup. Too much makeup. I studied Seventeen magazine to learn how to apply liquid eyeliner and eye shadow and lipstick. I spent the little bit of allowance my parents gave me on drugstore mascara and blush. I knew it made my parents uncomfortable. Why I’d want to call attention to myself was beyond both my mother and father’s understanding. After everything that happened, most girls would likely want to disappear. What I couldn’t explain was that my face was my first canvas, that cheap makeup my paint. And what I was doing was painting the face of someone normal. A regular girl. A girl who went on dates and sat in the bleachers at football games hoping one of those boys on the field would notice her. I painted the face of a girl who went to dances and ran for president of the class. I painted the face of a girl who volunteered after school at an arts center for underprivileged kids, who won art contests and public speaking contests and got a nearly perfect score on her SATs. I painted the face of a girl who wasn’t completely broken inside. A girl who hadn’t taken a shortcut home one spring afternoon in the eighth grade.

  Maybe they knew. And maybe they understood that painting this new girl meant erasing the old one.

  I dug through my drawer looking for a pair of stockings, finding mostly pilly wool leggings. Finally, I found a pair of soft pink ballet tights I’d worn exactly once, when Pilar convinced me to take an adult ballet class with her. Now the only thing I needed to conjure from thin air was a pair of shoes. The shoes I’d actually worn with this dress were long gone; the heel had snapped off that night as Gus and I descended the ladder from the water tower.

  I rummaged through my closet: clogs, Uggs, sneakers, a pair of vintage motorcycle boots. Finally, near the back, I found a pair of ballet flats. They’d have to do.

  I had nothing to wear to keep warm besides my big, lumpy down parka. I shrugged. Whatever. It was freaking Maine after all.

  * * *

  All afternoon, I had heard the whirring sound of helicopters overhead, delivering guests to the island, I supposed. I could also hear the party from my house. It was so strange for the still air outside to suddenly be filled with the distant sounds of music. I could also see the lights from the living room windows. The whole house was so illuminated that the lights glowed through the trees separating the two properties. Still, I didn’t want to be the first to arrive, so I waited until nearly ten thirty before I made my way (down the rocky ledge, across the beach, and up the steps) to the Fergusons’ house.

  I was greeted at the door by a gentleman who looked like he was dressed up as a butler before I realized he probably was a butler. He ushered me into the house, taking my lumpy parka.

  I was shivering, and my body trembled when the air hit my bare arms.

  “Come in, please,” he said. And he motioned for me to follow him across the cold marble floors of the great room, toward the sound of the music.

  He left me at the ring of the doorbell.

  I stood at the threshold of a formal living room, staring at a sea of people who seemed not to have noticed my entrance at all. And I wondered for a minute if I was really here. If this was a dream.

  There was a string quartet set up around a grand piano to the left, the musicians sawing away at their cellos and violas. To the right was what I assumed to be an open bar, where a man in a tuxedo was pouring drinks. The bottles of liquor and wine reflected the lights of the enormous chandeliers hanging overhead. Most of the people seemed to be contemporaries of the Fergusons, elegant older ladies and gentlemen. Powdery skin, coiffed silver hair. Every person here was white. There were a few people who looked closer to my age, women in expensive dresses and impossible heels. Men in tuxedos, laughing loudly. There was more money in this room than in all of Maine, I suspected.

  I almost turned around and went back the way I had come. Seriously, I did not belong here, but suddenly Seamus materialized at my side. “Wyn,” he said. “I’m so delighted you were able to come. Where is your friend? Pilar, is it?”
/>
  “There’s snow in Philadelphia,” I said. “She won’t be here until the morning.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “We’re missing a few of our guests from the West Coast because of that storm. The party’s usually much bigger.”

  I looked around at the room full of guests. There had to be two hundred people here.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked.

  “Whiskey?” I shrugged. I knew wine wasn’t going to cut it tonight.

  “Sure thing,” he said, not taken aback at all by my request. “How about a nice single-malt Scotch?”

  “Perfect,” I said.

  “Come,” he said and we walked toward the bar, where he leaned into the bartender’s ear. Within moments, I had a cold glass in my hand. And Seamus had one too. “Chin chin,” he said.

  We clinked glasses and I took a good, long swallow. A couple more, and I might lose both the chill I’d brought in from outside and the weird chill in the room.

  “I want you to meet some people,” he said.

  I really, really wished Pilar were here. She’d gotten good at hobnobbing in the last year. It was part of her job now. And despite the fact that she looked like an eccentric artist, she would have been completely comfortable in this room. I, on the other hand, felt like someone wearing something from her four-year-old’s dress-up box.

  I wondered where Fiona was.

  “Harry,” Seamus said to an older gentleman with one wandering eye. “This is our neighbor, Wyn Davies.” I could not recall ever giving Seamus my last name.

  “Wyn, this is Harry Johansen. He’s one of my oldest, dearest friends.”

  I extended my hand, which he bent down and kissed. I’m pretty sure this was the first time anyone had ever kissed my hand.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Wyn and her friend, Pilar, are artists,” he said.

  “Pilar Santiago?” Harry said, his eyes widening.

  Again with the last names. Maybe this was some sort of psychic convention.

  “Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”