She set down her pen, adjusted the Tensor lamp, and looked critically at the more fully realized sketch of the Pharos on her drawing board. Not bad, really, given that she had so little factual detail to work with. Or maybe that was what made it good, the opportunity to give her imagination free rein. The image had come to her almost unbidden. Wouldn’t it be strange if the shining marble tower of her sketch actually resembled the ancient, vanished lighthouse? How did metaphysicians explain things like that? The collective unconscious? All of mankind’s knowledge stored in a pool and available to any given individual should he tap into it. Something like that. She’d have to ask Jan; he’d know.
She raised her head, looked at the slick blackness of the window behind her worktable. She couldn’t see much of the cliffs and the sea beyond, but she was aware they were there. Normally she loved the ocean, could sit and watch it for hours, even at night. But tonight the thought of it-cold and turbulent, gnawing insatiably at the rocky shore-filled her with a wrenching loneliness. She wanted warmth, cheerful sounds, companionship-none of which were available with Jan gone. The only sound was the wind, baffling around the lighthouse tower, muttering down the kitchen chimney.
She got up, switched off the light, went into the living room. Jan had apparently fed some wood to the fire before he’d gone out; it still radiated a small amount of heat and the room was somewhat smoky. She debated the two evils-cold or smoke-opted for smoke, and knelt to add a few more chunks of wood to the stove. Then she went into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of red wine.
Back in the living room, she sat on the couch and pulled her feet up, tucking them under the folds of an old afghan. The fire was burning strongly now, the room was warmer, the smoky smell was not unpleasant. She glanced at the table beside her, where the telephone sat. Too late for anyone to call now. And too late for her to call her best friend Kay or her mother or anyone else. She didn’t feel like reading. Didn’t feel like doing much of anything except sitting.
How long had Jan been gone? she wondered. She slipped her left arm from under the afghan and looked at her watch. Ten-twenty. Not that that told her anything. She’d been so absorbed in her sketch when he left that she hadn’t noticed the time.
The wind gusted sharply; smoke backed up into the room. Alix coughed, fanned it away. North wind tonight-and its gusts seemed to spiral around the lighthouse from top to bottom, bottom to top, in an unrelenting assault. It made her feel very much isolated and alone, more so at this moment than at any time since their arrival.
A bittersweet memory struggled to the surface of her consciousness. Boston, twelve years ago. Jan’s apartment on the shabby back of Beacon Hill. Winter. Ice slick on the steeply slanting sidewalks, newly fallen snow covering it deceptively. And wind, freezing wind off the Charles River that threatened to batter the flimsy building into rubble.
The apartment had been on Russell Street, in a row of tenements soon to be condemned. The buildings on either side had already been vacated, but the stubborn residents of Jan’s building had insisted on their right to stay until spring and the arrival of the wreckers. The combination of the fresh snow and the empty shells of buildings gave the area a hushed, unreal quality, muting even the wail of an ambulance on its way to nearby Massachusetts General Hospital.
She had entered the apartment as stealthily as a burglar, knowing she was an interloper and probably unwelcome. But even the most unwelcome of guests have their ways of gaining access; in her case, she’d known where Jan hid his spare key. Her Hight bag in hand, she stood in the tiny living room with its threadbare carpet, brick-and-board bookcase, Salvation Army couch and coffee table. She hadn’t packed much before leaving New York. She didn’t expect to be permitted to stay.
She went into the bedroom. It was dominated by the narrow built-in bunk that they’d often shared-never mind the discomfort-and the bunk was neatly made up. Trust Jan to rise early and perform his household chores before leaving for Boston University, where he’d taught history after receiving his Ph. D. from Harvard two years before. Setting her bag on the bed, she glanced around to see if anything had changed since the last time she was there. It didn’t appear that much had. Then, feeling like a sneak, she opened the closet door and peered inside. Jan’s clothes, nobody else’s.
Relieved, she went back through the living room and into the bathroom and kitchen that opened off its far end. Both were tidy and contained only his few possessions. He’d even washed his egg cup and spoon, which also didn’t surprise her. There was some brandy in the cupboard over the sink, kept mostly for visitors. She poured a couple of fingers into a glass, for courage, and then returned to the living room to wait. And as the wind howled and the underlying quiet assailed her, she practiced what she would say when he came home.
I will not allow you to just walk away from me without an explanation.
No, too pushy. It would only anger him.
How can you turn your back on me, push me out of your life, without telling me what’s wrong?
Too pitiful. Tears would come to her eyes, and that would force him to feel sorry for her-something she didn’t want.
Jan, let’s discuss our relationship in a straightforward, adult fashion.
God, if anyone approached her like that, she’d throw up!
I love you and I don’t want to lose you.
Better, but there was so much more that needed to be said…
She had formed no definite conclusion when, twenty minutes later, she heard Jan’s key in the lock. He came in, wrapped in his too-large tweed overcoat, blinking in surprise at the light. His eyes, behind the hom-rimmed glasses, were startled and wary until he saw her curled up on the couch; then they brightened-briefly. The sudden spark of pleasure dimmed and the comers of his mouth pulled down in what might have been displeasure and might have been resolve. He came all the way into the apartment, set his shabby briefcase on the coffee table, and struggled out of the coat (which could easily have held two of him).
“What are you doing here?” he said.
Not a promising beginning. “Obviously I came to see you.”
“I told you not to.”
“I had to come, Jan.”
His eyes shifted away from hers, to the glass on the floor beside the couch. “Well, I see you’ve made yourself at home.”
“Yes. Can I get you a brandy?” God, she sounded assured. And all the while she was like jelly inside.
His mouth twitched: the ghost of a smile. He wasn’t put off enough not to appreciate what he often referred to as her “sassiness.” He said, “No, I’ll get it. You want another?”
“Yes.” For courage.
He returned after a minute with the drinks, then went back to the kitchen and brought out a straight-backed chair. So he wasn’t even going to sit on the couch beside her. Another bad sign.
“Why are you here?” he asked again.
“Oh, Jan, you know why I’m here. Let’s not play games with each other.”
He was silent, looking down into his glass.
“I love you and I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “But I don’t know how to keep that from happening because I don’t know what’s wrong, why you’ve… changed toward me all of a sudden. Was it something I did?”
No response.
“I don’t think it was,” she said. “First you told me not to come to Boston; you were busy, you’d drive down to New York at the end of the semester. Then you had to work on an article over semester break. I offered to come up here; you didn’t think that was a good idea. Next you promised you’d meet me in Connecticut for the weekend, but you cancelled at the last minute. You haven’t written or called in the last three weeks. Jan… is there somebody else? Is that it?”
He looked up. “There’s no one but you, you know that.”
He had spoken the words softly, apologetically, but they only served to anger her. “How can you say, ‘There’s no one but you’? There isn’t even me anymore! You’ve forced me out of your life and I want to know why.”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for you-”
“What’s best for me? Don’t you think I have the right to make that decision?”
He sighed and finished the rest of his brandy. Then he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, rolled the empty glass between his big hands. He said slowly, “Look, Alix, I’m not an easy person to be around all the time. Not an easy person to be close to. I tend to brood-”
“I know that-”
“No, hear me out. This past year you’ve seen the best side of me. I’ve been happy and that’s allowed me to open up to you in a way I never have to anyone else.”
“So why should that change now?”
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her question. “What you didn’t see this past year was the other side of me. I’m prone to periods of depression-severe depression. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to suffer through one of those periods, least of all you.”
“I don’t understand. What brings on this depression?”
“I’m not sure. I mean, it isn’t as if something goes wrong at the university, or I have a bad day otherwise, and I get the blues for a while. It’s not that simple. My depression is chronic and cyclical.”
“Why? What causes it?”
“There are things in my past,” he said. He spoke even more slowly, still rolling the glass between his palms.
“What kind of things?”
When he met her gaze again his eyes, even with the protection of his glasses, revealed a vulnerability that touched her deeply. “I told you my mother died,” he said. “And it’s true; she died over ten years ago. But what I didn’t tell you was that years before that, when I was only three, she left my father and me, ran off with another man.”
“Oh, Jan, I’m sorry.”
“His name was Petersen, he worked for the creamery in Baraboo that bought most of our milk. He was from Minnesota, some town up by Duluth; that was where he and my mother went.”
“Did your father try to get her back?”
“No. He disowned her completely, would never even mention her name. I was twelve before I found out the truth. A kid on one of the neighboring farms told me. He laughed about it; I thought at the time that everyone must be laughing and I felt humiliated. Indirectly, that’s one of the reasons I became interested in lighthouses: I spent most of my time with books, after that.”
She wanted to say something comforting, but no words came to her. None except, “But that was such a long time ago… ”
“No, listen. I know it’s irrational, but all my life I’ve felt that the people I cared most about were going to abandon me, just as my mother did. And they have: my father died when I was in college. The only other woman I’ve loved besides you broke off our two-week engagement to marry someone else. I can’t even keep a cat. They get sick and die or run off.”
“So you’re afraid I’ll leave you too, eventually.”
“Yes. Somehow, in some way. Tragedy of one kind or another has plagued me all my life, Alix.” He paused, looked away from her again. “I didn’t tell you about the murder, did I.”
A small chill settled between her shoulder blades; she sat up straighter. “Murder?”
“It happened during my senior year at Madison. There were several of us-all history majors-who shared a house near campus. Outcasts who couldn’t afford a fraternity or couldn’t get into one. In a way we formed a fraternity of our own. We had parties, of course. And there was a regular crowd of people who would come-most of them outcasts, too, I suppose.
“One Saturday night in October, one of the regular girls brought a friend to the party. Sandy. Sandy Ralston. She wasn’t an outcast; she was blond and quite beautiful. We all took a turn at trying to impress her. Maybe one of us or someone else at the party succeeded; maybe not. There were a lot of people there-loud music, plenty of beer. Everyone was at least a little drunk, and afterwards no one could remember when Sandy left, or with whom.”
“She was the one who was murdered?”
“Yes. She didn’t come home that night-she roomed with another coed-and when she still hadn’t returned or called by noon the next day, the roommate got worried and called the police. A search was organized; most of the fellows in my house joined in. She had been raped and strangled and her body left in a wooded area only a few blocks away.” He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was raw with emotion. “I was the one who found her.”
“How awful for you!” She reached over, put her hand on his arm. Almost convulsively, he set down his glass and twined her fingers with his.
“We were all suspects, of course, everyone who’d been at the party. We were questioned over and over again. None of us remembered much about that night-it was all a blur. At first we talked about it, but it wasn’t long before things got strained among us. We began to look at one another differently. Could one of us have strangled Sandy Ralston? Rob had been dancing with her about ten. Kevin kept bringing her beers. She talked to Neal for a while. And so forth. After a while, along with wondering if one of your friends was a murderer and a rapist, you began to wonder what each of them was thinking about you.”
Jan’s fingers were gripping hers so hard he was hurting her. She pulled her hand free, as gently as she could. “Did they… did they ever find out who did kill her?”
“Yes. Inside of two weeks they arrested the fellow who had the room next to mine-Ed Finlayson. He claimed he didn’t do it, but they had a strong circumstantial case and eventually he was convicted and sent to state prison. All of us in the house wanted to believe in Ed’s innocence, but at the same time it was a relief to think the murder was solved; even before the trial we had more or less abandoned him. I didn’t even go to visit him in jail.”
He paused, and then said softly, “I’m not proud of the way I abandoned Ed. And I’ve often wondered if he wasn’t telling the truth. The others must have felt the same way, because by the end of the term our group had disbanded and we’d all gone our separate ways. Ashamed to face one another as well as Ed, I suppose.”
She came off the couch, knelt beside him, held his hand in both of hers. “Jan, you were young then. And afraid. It’s hard to do the right thing when you’re inexperienced and frightened.”
He nodded slowly, looking down at their clasped hands. “I know, and the incident in itself isn’t important. It’s that it’s part of a pattern in my life: people going away, people dying. And me letting down the people I care about, too. If I let you into my life, I’m afraid the same sort of thing will happen. And I couldn’t face that… ”
He had always seemed so strong and self-sufficient; now that he needed her, she felt totally ineffectual. Every phrase that came to her mind seemed trite: It will be all right. Maybe you should see someone, get some counseling. I won’t leave you, I won’t go away, I promise you I won’t.
And then something warm and wet touched the back of her hand. A tear. And when she glanced up at his face, others had squeezed out from under his glasses and were sliding down over his cheeks. Silently, very silently, he was crying.
His tears washed away her inadequacies. The pain was no longer only his, but a wrenching emotion she shared with him. She reached up, removed his glasses, set them aside. Then she pulled him off the chair, into a kneeling embrace with her face close to his, and held him until their tears mixed together in one healing, strengthening flow.
“I love you,” she said. “That’s all that matters. I love you, I love you.”
It was later that night, after they’d made love, that Jan had asked her to marry him.
Now she sat staring at the still-smoking woodstove, her wine untouched beside her. She had no regrets about marrying Jan. Good God, no. By and large they’d been happy. His periods of depression had been relatively few, and certainly no tragedy had befallen her or anyone close to them in the past eleven years.
Oh, there had been difficult times, but they were the kind that surfaced in most young marriages. When they’d been in such dire financial straits in Boston because funding had been cut back and Jan was on half salary and she could find no work. And later, when he’d been humiliated after discovering her father had finagled his position at Stanford for him. Her two miscarriages, and the realization they’d never have a child of their own. The formalized ordeal of his application for tenure.
But through it all there had been love to anchor them, love and Jan’s steadiness-a calm, often wryly humorous strength that had helped them weather the very worst of it. It was what Alix loved most about him, beyond his good looks, his quick intelligence, or his confident sexuality. It was a strength that came of self-knowing, an acceptance of what he was, his good points as well as his limitations. Other people whom Alix cared for and admired had the same quality-her father, her mother, her friend Kay-and she sensed that over the years she had developed a measure of it herself. She had even coined a term for it: character. A simple word that said much about an infinitely complex and desirable quality.
The strength was still there in Jan, but lately the ability to laugh at himself seemed to be vanishing. It hadn’t been long, only these past few months, when the depression had returned with such frequency and Jan had been subject to moody silences and brief rages. Only these past several months that he had begun a frantic work schedule, begun acting in other ways that puzzled and concerned her.
She consulted her watch again. Quarter of eleven. Where was he? Well, Hilliard was a place where everything but the taverns probably shut down with the setting sun, even on a Friday night, and taverns might not stock pipe tobacco; it wouldn’t be unlike him to have gone as far as Bandon, especially if he planned to start work early in the morning. Jan always worked better when he could smoke his pipe.
Restlessly, still fighting off the loneliness, she went upstairs to see what he’d accomplished tonight. She was eager to get on with her sketches, and if she read his pages now they might give her an idea for the next in the series of drawings. In his study she sat down and picked up the typescript that lay beside the old Underwood portable in a neat pile. But as she did, she noticed something on the desk next to Jan’s pipe rack: his oilskin tobacco pouch. Frowning, she reached out and felt it. Half full. Now why had he told her he was going out for tobacco when he still had plenty here?
Why had he lied to her?