The room spun. Stopped. Spun. I stepped out of bed. My brain, a hunk of shattered glass, painfully clinked inside my head. But I could stand; I could walk; I even remembered where I was: the Hilton Hotel in Istanbul. Gingerly, I made my way toward a balcony overlooking the Bosphorus. Gianni Paoli was basking there in the sunshine, eating breakfast and reading the Paris Herald Tribune. Blinking, I glanced at the newspaper’s date. It was the first of September. Now, why should that cause such severe sensations? Nausea; guilt; remorse. Holy smoke, I’d missed the wedding! Gianni couldn’t fathom why I was so upset (Italians are always upset; but they never understand why anybody else should be); he poured vodka into his orange juice, offered it to me, and said drink, get drunk: “But first, send them a telegram.” I took his advice, all of it. The telegram said: Unavoidably detained but wish you every happiness on this wonderful day. Later, when rest and abstinence had steadied my hand, I wrote them a short letter; I didn’t lie, I simply didn’t explain why I had been “unavoidably detained”; I said I was flying to New York in a few days, and would telephone them as soon as they returned from their honeymoon. I addressed the letter to Mr. and Mrs. Jake Pepper, and when I left it at the desk to be mailed I felt relieved, exonerated; I thought of Addie with a flower in her hair, of Addie and Jake walking at dusk along Waikiki beach, the sea beside them, stars above them; I wondered if Addie was too old to have children.
But I didn’t go home; things happened. I encountered an old friend in Istanbul, an archeologist who was working on a “dig” on the Anatolia coast in southern Turkey; he invited me to join him, he said I would enjoy it, and he was right, I did. I swam every day, learned to dance Turkish folk dances, drank ouzo and danced outdoors all night every night at the local bistro; I stayed two weeks. Afterward I traveled by boat to Athens, and from there took a plane to London, where I had a suit fitted. It was October, almost autumn, before I turned the key that opened the door of my New York apartment.
A friend, who had been visiting the apartment to water the plants, had arranged my mail in orderly stacks on the library table. There were a number of telegrams, and I leafed through those before taking off my coat. I opened one; it was an invitation to a Halloween party. I opened another; it was signed Jake: Call me urgent. It was dated August 29, six weeks ago. Hurriedly, not allowing myself to believe what I was thinking, I found Addie’s telephone number and dialed it; no answer. Then I placed a person-to-person call to the Prairie Motel: No, Mr. Pepper was not at present registered there; yes, the operator thought he could be contacted through the State Bureau of Investigation. I called it; a man—an ornery bastard—informed me that Detective Pepper was on a leave of absence, and no, he couldn’t tell me his whereabouts (“That’s against the rules”); and when I gave him my name and told him I was calling from New York he said oh yeah and when I said listen, please, this is very important the sonofabitch hung up.
I needed to take a leak; but the desire, which had been insistent all during the ride from Kennedy airport, subsided, disappeared as I stared at the letters piled on the library table. Intuition attracted me to them. I flipped through the stacks with the professional speed of a mail sorter, seeking a sample of Jake’s handwriting. I found it. The envelope was postmarked September 10; it was on the official stationery of the Investigation Bureau, and had been sent from the state capital. It was a brief letter, but the firm masculine style of the penmanship disguised the author’s anguish:
Your letter from Istanbul arrived today. When I read it I was sober. I’m not so sober now. Last August, the day Addie died, I sent a telegram asking you to call me. But I guess you were overseas. But that is what I had to tell you—Addie is gone. I still don’t believe it, and I never will, not until I know what really happened. Two days before our wedding she and Marylee were swimming in Blue River. Addie drowned; but Marylee didn’t see her drown. I can’t write about it. I’ve got to get away. I don’t trust myself. Wherever I go, Marylee Connor will know how to locate me. Sincerely …
MARYLEE CONNOR: Why, hello! Why, sure, I recognized your voice right off.
TC: I’ve been calling you every half-hour all afternoon.
MARYLEE: Where are you?
TC: New York.
MARYLEE: How’s the weather?
TC: It’s raining.
MARYLEE: Raining here, too. But we can use it. We’ve had such a dry summer. Can’t get the dust out of your hair. You say you’ve been calling me?
TC: All afternoon.
MARYLEE: Well, I was home. But I’m afraid my hearing’s not too good. And I’ve been down in the cellar and up in the attic. Packing. Now that I’m alone, this house is too much for me. We have a cousin—she’s a widow, too—she bought a place in Florida, a condominium, and I’m going to live with her. Well, how are you? Have you spoken to Jake lately?
(I explained that I’d just returned from Europe, and had not been able to contact Jake; she said he was staying with one of his sons in Oregon, and gave me the telephone number.)
Poor Jake. He’s taken it all so hard. Somehow he seems to blame himself. Oh? Oh, you didn’t know?
TC: Jake wrote me, but I didn’t get the letter until today. I can’t tell you how sorry …
MARYLEE (a catch in her voice): You didn’t know about Addie?
TC: Not until today …
MARYLEE (suspiciously): What did Jake say?
TC: He said she drowned.
MARYLEE (defensively, as though we were arguing): Well, she did. And I don’t care what Jake thinks. Bob Quinn was nowhere in sight. He couldn’t have had anything to do with it.
(I heard her take a deep breath, followed by a long pause—as if, attempting to control her temper, she was counting to ten.)
If anybody’s to blame, it’s me. It was my idea to drive out to Sandy Cove for a swim. Sandy Cove doesn’t even belong to Quinn. It’s on the Miller ranch. Addie and I always used to go there; it’s shady and you can hide from the sun. It’s the safest part of Blue River; it has a natural pool, and it’s where we learned to swim when we were little girls. That day we had Sandy Cove all to ourselves; we went into the water together, and Addie remarked how this time next week she’d be swimming in the Pacific Ocean. Addie was a strong swimmer, but I tire easily. So after I’d cooled off, I spread a towel under a tree and started reading through some of the magazines we’d brought along. Addie stayed in the water; I heard her say: “I’m going to swim around the bend and sit on the waterfall.” The river flows out of Sandy Cove and sweeps around a bend; beyond the bend a rocky ridge runs across the river, creating a small waterfall—a short drop, not more than two feet. When we were children it was fun to sit on the ridge and feel the water rushing between our legs.
I was reading, not noticing the time until I felt a shiver and saw the sun was slanting toward the mountains; I wasn’t worried—I imagined Addie was still enjoying the waterfall. But after a while I walked down to the river and shouted Addie! Addie! I thought: Maybe she’s trying to tease me. So I climbed the embankment to the top of Sandy Cove; from there I could see the waterfall and the whole river moving north. There was no one there; no Addie. Then, just below the fall, I saw a white lily pad floating on the water, bobbing. But then I realized it wasn’t a lily; it was a hand—with a diamond twinkling: Addie’s engagement ring, the little diamond Jake gave her. I slid down the embankment and waded into the river and crawled along the waterfall ridge. The water was very clear and not too deep; I could see Addie’s face under the surface and her hair tangled in the twigs of a tree branch, a sunken tree. It was hopeless—I grabbed her hand and pulled and pulled with all my strength but I couldn’t budge her. Somehow, we’ll never know how, she’d fallen off the ridge and the tree had caught her hair, held her down. Accidental death by drowning. That was the coroner’s verdict. Hello?
TC: Yes, I’m here.
MARYLEE: My grandmother Mason never used the word “death.” When someone died, especially someone she cared about, she always said that they had been “called back.” She meant that they had not been buried, lost forever; but, rather, that the person had been “called back” to a happy childhood place, a world of living things. And
