“Your children must have died of boredom,” she snapped, beginning to tremble.
How stupid to have no food in the house! Surely the weakness in her limbs came from hunger. Sam rubbed his wet nose at her waist, slobbering.
Among the rusting tools and old flowerpots she looked about for an implement in case she had to force a window. She found a trowel and added it to her supplies.
There are but a few sands left in the glass of your time.
Don’t listen to that old bigot, Wilkie said. Now’s your time to act.
Pushing the barn door open, she tried keeping the dogs blocked behind her, but they were too strong and they forced themselves by, running ahead down the driveway. The mist had cleared but overhead the sky was still a low ceiling of cloud, the nimbus of the sun visible only as a brightening patch of gray on the horizon.
Don’t go, he said.
Slowly, she turned, the membrane porous, time’s order shuffled.
Eric sat on the weathered oak bench by the ladder, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, as young and beautiful as the night she’d met him.
Don’t go, he said. Stay here awhile.
“But if the man comes back … I’ll lose my nerve.”
You never did. You’ve always been beautiful to me, in that way. You never lost your conviction.
“I kept thinking of you.”
I know. I heard you. You were heard. And Nate, you were good to him. You have to remember: our love isn’t the only kind. You have loved, my darling. You have loved so much. I see it. I see it in you now. You’re beautiful.
“No,” she said. “Look at me. Look at what I’m about to do.”
But you won’t. I know you won’t. It’s okay. Close the door. Sam and Wilkie, you can let them go now. They’ll be all right.
“But there’s no one to feed them.”
Someone will feed them.
She feared he would disappear if she stepped closer. And so she remained still, blessed now, she understood. The dearest thread in that old fabric of being had loosened, letting him pass back through to her. And so at last she could tell someone, “It’s not the dogs’ fault — the things they shout. They’re in me, the ministers. The puritans and the slaves. God help me,” she said, tears leaking from her eyes. “I tried to love my country.”
As it should be loved.
“But weren’t we fools?”
Yes. Loving fools.
She wiped at her dripping eyes. And when she looked again he was gone.
She stood motionless, gazing at the bench, at its bleached wood, still as stone. A mute object. Eternal in the perfection of its indifference. For the first time that morning, she noticed the clouds of her breath visible in the bitter air.
Heading back up the ramp, she crossed the breezeway, and stepped back into the kitchen. The fridge door hung open, its shelves holding nothing but a jar of pickles and a few bottles of soda water. In the drawer, greens rotted in a plastic bag. A sack of sprouted potatoes lay on the floor between the fridge and the counter. The counter itself was barely visible beneath the clutter.
Proceeding into the living room, she wondered how it was that she had never seen the mess. How long had she been living in this ruin? When, precisely, had the storm struck?
She sat on the one cleared spot of her sofa. She could hear the dogs barking at the door, clawing at it, trying to get back in, to get at her once more. Even at this distance, their voices reached her. They were no longer distinct and yet louder than ever. A roar that nearly drowned out the litany in her head, the one she’d lived by and with, her litany: Henry II and Magna Carta and Gutenberg and Calvin and Milton and Kant and Paine and Jefferson and Jackson’s rabble and Corot and Lincoln and Zola and Dickens and Whitman and Bryan on his cross of gold and the patterned fabrics in the paintings of Matisse and Walker Evans and Copland and Baldwin and King in Memphis, the chorus exploding in her, the ideas all that were left, a pure narrative drive using up the last of her.
It had to stop, she thought, reaching into her canvas bag. She could make it stop. She could at last exercise her will over history’s reckless imagination of her.
The open-faced books on the coffee table soaked up the turpentine like arid soil.
She thought to close her eyes as she struck the match and dropped it, but then that wouldn’t be right. She would watch.
Chapter 19
The press conference announcing the discovery of trading fraud at Atlantic Securities was held at the U.S. attorney’s office in lower Manhattan one morning in late October 2002, shortly before the opening bell on Wall Street. Minutes later, Jeffrey Holland, solemn but confident, stood before another lectern at Union Atlantic headquarters in Boston to inform the public that the authorities would have the company’s complete cooperation in investigating the matter. Risk-management safeguards had clearly broken down and would be overhauled with the help of an independent advisory committee chaired by a former head of the SEC, whose recommendations would be followed to the letter. After consultation with the board, it had been decided that the role of chairman and chief executive officer should henceforth be separate. In the months ahead, Holland would step aside as CEO to focus on the larger, strategic issues facing Union Atlantic Group.
A consortium led by JPMorgan Chase and the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi had agreed to purchase a twenty-billion-dollar stake in the troubled bank to secure its capital base, while the Dutch bank ING would be acquiring the Atlantic Securities division for a nominal sum in return for assuming a portion of its debt.
In early trading, the stock plummeted thirty percent but it began to recover soon after the Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a statement saying the plan had the Fed’s full backing and that it stood ready to provide liquidity as needed in the event of serious market disruptions. The Treasury Department followed with a statement of its own.
When asked to comment on the mismanagement and near collapse of one of the largest financial institutions in the nation, the White House press secretary disagreed with the characterization of “near collapse,” saying it appeared to be a case of a few bad apples. The president, he said, was glad to see that the private market was responding appropriately to maintain its own stability and had full confidence that the regulatory authorities would continue to monitor the situation.
Doug watched these announcements unfold on a television mounted behind the counter of the diner in Saugus, where he had come to purchase a new passport. In order to make bail, he’d been forced to surrender his at the arraignment, along with the title to his house. After the hearing, the government had made it clear that McTeague and Sabrina were already cooperating. Which meant all Doug’s efforts at concealment were now evidence against him. If he stuck around for the two or three years it would take them to prosecute the case, and by some miracle managed to drag Holland down with him, he might get eight to ten, depending on the judge’s mood. But he had no intention of going to prison. Not in the name of bureaucratic punctiliousness about where to draw the line between aggressive investing and fraud. If other fools wanted to take the fall for that nonsense then let them. Doug had violated the spirit of the law years ago, if that’s how you chose to understand it, by commencing mergers not yet permitted. But then the law had changed, the profits had rolled in, and Holland had become a business hero. And now Doug was expected to do time for a bad bet on the Nikkei? You’d need to be a true believer or have a wife and kids to put up with that.