Out the Summerhill Road: A Novel

Isabel and Jackson

202 Out the Summerhill Road Isabel and Jackson After Gaynor had driven her home, Isabel walked into her house and opened the refrigerator. When had she eaten? She gazes at left-over chicken and a broccoli casserole, two over ripe tomatoes and a wilted head of lettuce. She takes a carton of strawberry yogurt from the freezer, dips out a spoonful, stares at it and throws the carton away. She takes a quick shower, slips into a gown and pours herself a glass of wine. Standing by the wine cabinet, she drinks the wine and splashes more into her glass. Then she opens the drawer in her bedside table and retrieves Mary Martha’s diary. Sitting on the south terrace, Isabel holds the diary in her hands. After the long and sorrowful day, she feels numb, unable to mourn the death of Mary Martha, unable to find her way through a fog of memories. When she finishes the wine, she will read the diary. Right now she’s all to pieces. Leaning back against the recliner, she gazes into the darkness. The moon is waning, but the stars are bright. She takes a deep breath and exhales, slowly counting the brightest stars of the Big Dipper. She tries to weigh the import of the day. The minute Jackson had walked into St. Alban’s, she heard the whispers—Jackson, Jackson, Jackson. She imagined his name on every lip. The church had filled quickly. She knew some had come because they thought Jackson might appear. Others had come because of the sensational coverage of Mary Martha’s death: History Repeats Itself! the Cold Springs Gazette had trumpeted. Now, looking out into blackness, Isabel feels as stunned as she had been when the deputy took her arm to tell her Mary Martha had been murdered. Her grief had not been assuaged by the funeral service. Jackson’s presence and the brutality of Mary Martha’s murder had robbed the age-old sacrament of consolation. Even when she read aloud the eulogy she had Part 5: 1980 • A Jury of Her Friends 203 written, she had not been thinking about Mary Martha or about the horror of her death. Instead, she had been searching the faces of the congregation, but she had not found Jackson ’s face. At the graveside Sarah had whispered: “He’s here. He’s right behind us.” Isabel’s quick nod acknowledged that she heard, but she refused to turn around. She could not bear the thought of seeing Jackson at Mary Martha’s fresh grave. Sitting on her terrace tonight, she cannot bear the thought of it now. Her eyes are adjusting so that the dense forms of the magnolias around the terrace begin to emerge. Her mind is a sieve of memories, of strange, powerful images that on ordinary days would have had no significance. The mournful sound of a train’s whistle when they gathered at the grave. A magnolia leaf that fell like a hand on her shoulder when she stepped forward to place a rose on the coffin. A blue heron that flew overhead, flew higher, spiraling upward until it disappeared from sight. Spirits? Spirits singing Mary Martha on her way to heaven. How good to believe in spirits, as Gaynor does, when one loses a friend. When Isabel had placed her rose on the coffin, Gaynor followed , ceremoniously kissing the white flower before reverently placing it alongside Isabel’s. Gaynor, Irish through and through, knows how to mourn properly, she tells herself now. As Timothy Rogers’ widow, it was years before Gaynor looked at another man. But soon after she moved into her own house (Isabel suspects it was then), Gaynor had begun an affair with Bill Holly, a man young enough to be her son. Everybody in town talked about her and Dr. Holly, everybody except Betsy. If Betsy has guessed, she’ll never admit it. And why should she? The one time they met for bridge at Gaynor’s farmhouse had been an utter failure as far as their bridge game. But that’s 204 Out the Summerhill Road when Isabel began to suspect the affair, although Gaynor’s house seems an unlikely place for romance. It’s drafty, and it’s cold in the winter and hot in the summer. It’s not well lighted. And it has a wild, feral smell, one that Isabel finds heady after...