I accepted all this counsel politely, with a glassy smile and a glaring sense of unreality. Many adults seemed to interpret this numbness as a positive sign; I remember particularly Mr. Beeman (an overly clipped Brit in a dumb tweed motoring cap, whom despite his solicitude I had come to hate, irrationally, as an agent of my mother’s death) complimenting me on my maturity and informing me that I seemed to be “coping awfully well.” And maybe I was coping awfully well, I don’t know. Certainly I wasn’t howling aloud or punching my fist through windows or doing any of the things I imagined people might do who felt as I did. But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.
v.
QUITE HONESTLY, MY DECKER grandparents were the last thing on my mind, which was just as well since Social Services was unable to run them down right away on the scanty information I had given them. Then Mrs. Barbour knocked at the door of Andy’s room and said, “Theo, may we speak for a moment, please?”
Something in her manner spoke distinctly of bad news, though in my situation it was hard to imagine how things could possibly be worse. When we were seated in the living room—by a three foot tall arrangement of pussy willow and blossoming apple branches fresh from the florist—she crossed her legs and said: “I’ve had a call from the Social Services. They’ve contacted your grandparents. Unfortunately it seems that your grandmother is unwell.”
For a moment I was confused. “Dorothy?”
“If that’s what you call her, yes.”
“Oh. She’s not really my grandmother.”
“I see,” said Mrs. Barbour, as if she didn’t actually see and didn’t want to. “At any rate. It seems she’s not well—a back ailment, I believe—and your grandfather is looking after her. So the thing is, you see, I’m sure they’re very sorry, but they say it’s not practical for you to be down there right now. Not to stay with them in their home, anyway,” she added, when I didn’t say anything. “They’ve offered to pay for you to stay in a Holiday Inn near their house, for the time being, but that seems a bit impractical, doesn’t it?”
There was an unpleasant buzzing in my ears. Sitting there under her level, ice-gray gaze, I felt for some reason terribly ashamed of myself. I had dreaded the thought of going to Grandpa Decker and Dorothy so much that I’d blocked them almost completely from my mind, but it was quite another thing to know they didn’t want me.
A flicker of sympathy passed over her face. “You mustn’t feel bad about it,” she said. “And in any case you mustn’t worry. It’s been settled that you’ll stay with us for the next few weeks and at the very least, finish your year at school. Everyone agrees that’s best. By the way,” she said, leaning closer, “that’s a lovely ring. Is that a family thing?”
“Um, yes,” I said. For reasons I would have found hard to explain, I had taken to carrying the old man’s ring with me almost everywhere I went. Mostly I toyed around with it while it was in my jacket pocket, but every now and then I slipped it on my middle finger and wore it, even though it was too big and slid around a bit.
“Interesting. Your mother’s family, or your father’s?”
“My mother’s,” I said, after a slight pause, not liking the way the conversation was going.
“May I see it?”
I took it off and dropped it in her palm. She held it up to the lamp. “Lovely,” she said, “carnelian. And this intaglio. Greco-Roman? Or a family crest?”
“Um, crest. I think.”
She examined the clawed, mythological beast. “It looks like a griffin. Or maybe a winged lion.” She turned it sideways into the light and looked inside of the ring. “And this engraving?”
My expression of puzzlement made her frown. “Don’t tell me you never noticed it. Hang on.” She got up and went to the desk, which had lots of intricate drawers and cubbyholes, and returned with a magnifying glass.
“This will be better than my reading glasses,” she said, peering through it. “Still this old copperplate is hard to see.” She brought the magnifying glass close, then farther away. “Blackwell. Does that ring a bell?”
“Ah—” In fact it did, something beyond words, but the thought had blown away and vanished before it fully materialized.