“Yes. Don’t you?”
“I do,” he answered. “But so many things happen by chance.”
“Yes, a great many,” Julia said. She sat in the chair opposite him, looking through the window. Her face, in profile, was calm and reposed.
“If there’s a God, why does He...?” David stopped and shrugged. “They could have been killed,” he said. “I was only there by luck. It makes me wish...”
He stopped suddenly. He looked at Julia quickly and then took another swallow of brandy, and then turned his attention to the lake outside, silent.
“What does it make you wish, David?”
“Nothing.”
“Your father,” she said softly.
“No.”
“Yes,” she insisted.
“Yes, it makes me wish I’d been in that boat with him!”
“Why?”
“To help, to... to tell him his foot was caught in the line, to... to jump in after him... to help... to save him.”
“He didn’t want anyone in the boat with him.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked if I could go along.”
“No, you didn’t,” David said.
“I remember,” Julia said.
“No, Mom. I was taking your picture. And you asked him to get in the picture, and he said no, he wanted to take the boat out.”
“Yes, but I said I wanted to go with him.”
“No, you didn’t. He just walked down to the lake and got into the boat, and I watched him through the binoculars, I...” He cut himself short and pulled at the brandy snifter. The glass was empty. He rose, walked into the other room, and poured another from the decanter. His mother was still sitting in the chair, unmoving, when he returned to the living room.
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” she said suddenly.
“What?”
“If one of us had been with him...”
“If we’d gone along...”
“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Julia said.
The room was silent. He could hear the wind in the high trees outside.
“It would only have happened another time,” Julia said, almost in a whisper.
“That’s silly. He caught his foot in the—”
“He killed himself,” Julia said.
David stood in his grimy bathing trunks with the brandy glass in his hands, staring at his mother’s profile, staring at the unflinching set of her face, the strong August sun limning her nose and her jaw, the wrinkles smoothed by the flat even reflected light of the lake, she could have been the same woman whose picture he had taken that day years ago, she could have been that woman, time was being very kind to Julia Regan.
“What?” he said.
“He killed himself.”
“What?” he said again, but she did not repeat the words, and he stood staring at her dumbly, and then said, “You don’t know that. How could you know that?”
“He told me he was going to kill himself.”
He put down the brandy glass and walked to where she was sitting. His mother did not turn from the window.
“He told you?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“When I...” Julia paused. “A few days before.”
“He said those words? He said he was going to kill himself?”
“Yes.”
“Look at me.”
Julia turned slowly.
“When did he tell you this?”
“I told you. A few days before... before he drowned.”
“And you did nothing to stop him?”
“I tried to stop him.”
“Tried? He killed himself, how the hell did you try?”
“I talked to him. I tried to show him I loved him.”
“Didn’t he already know that?” David shouted.
The question startled Julia. She looked up into her son’s face and said, “He knew it.”
“Then how was that going to help?”
“Nothing was going to help. He’d made up his mind. He wanted to kill himself.”
“Why?” David said.
The question hung on the air.
“Why?” he repeated.
“I don’t know why,” Julia said.
“He talked to you. You said he talked to you.”
“Yes, but he didn’t...”
“Why did he want to kill himself?”
“I don’t know.”
David seized his mother’s shoulders. “Don’t lie to me,” he said.
“You know all there is to know.”
“There’s more. Tell me what it is!”
“Why?”
“I spent four goddamn years in prison because—”
“What? What?”
“Tell me why he died!”
“He died because he wanted to die.”
“Why did he want to die?” David said slowly and evenly.
Julia’s eyes held his steadily. Her voice came as slowly and as evenly as his own. “I don’t know why,” she said. “He never told me why.” She paused. “Perhaps he was just tired, David. Perhaps he was suddenly too tired.”
David stood by the chair and looked down at her. “I don’t believe you,” he said.
Julia made no sign that she had heard him.
“But I don’t suppose that matters a hell of a lot to you.”
“It matters, son.”
“Sure, Sure, it does. The way it mattered that I was in California waiting for you to...” He shook his head violently. “Forget it!”
“I came to see you,” Julia said quietly.
“Once! In four years, you came once!”
“Some get nothing,” Julia said, almost in a whisper.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing.”
He stared at her for a moment, and then picked up his brandy glass and went into the next room. He took the decanter from the sideboard, and then went upstairs.
He had left the house drunk, and she lay in bed wondering where he was and whether he was all right, and telling herself, He is twenty-eight years old, he can take care of himself, and yet thinking it was her fault that he’d drunk so much brandy, her fault that he was somewhere in the night now probably drinking himself into a stupor, I shouldn’t have told him.
She could not sleep.
She threw back the covers and went to the telephone. She dialed, and then waited. He is a grown man, she told herself. She could hear the telephone ringing at the cottage next door. It’s almost midnight, she thought. I shouldn’t be doing this.
“Hello?” the voice said.
“Amanda?”
“Yes?”
“This is Julia.”
“Oh, hullo, Julia.” Amanda’s voice was edged with sleep. “Is something wrong?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No, no, that’s all right. What is it?”
“Could I speak to Matthew, please?”
“Yes, just a moment.” She heard Amanda’s voice recede. “Matthew, it’s Julia,” and she heard Matthew answer, “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. Take the phone.”
“Hello?”
“Matthew?”
“Yes, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry to be calling at this hour...”
“Don’t be foolish. What is it, Julia?”
“David left here drunk. I’m worried about him.”
“Where did he go?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to look for him?”
“Would you? He took the Alfa, and I’m just afraid he might...”
“I’ll get dressed,” Matthew said.
“Thank you, Matthew. I appreciate...”
“I’ll call you later,” Matthew said, and he hung up.
“What did she want?” Amanda asked.
Matthew took his trousers from the chair. “David’s crocked and on the town. She wants me to find him.”
“He’s not a child,” Amanda said. “Really, I think—”
“I know he’s not. But he’s Julia’s son, and she’s worried about him.”
“And that’s enough to drag you out of bed in the middle of the night?”