Point of Balance Read online

  “What are you driving at, Jim?”

  “It does Julia no good for you to work so hard.”

  I wasn’t about to dignify that with an answer, so I shrugged my shoulders and stared at him. He stared right back.

  “I just sold up, Dave.”

  That took me completely by surprise. Jim had always bragged that when death came calling it would find him behind the counter. I could always picture him scowling at the Grim Reaper’s scythe blade and selling him a Bester-brand whetstone.

  “But, Jim, those stores, they’re your life.”

  He squirmed and crossed his arms.

  “Ever since Rachel’s death, I haven’t had my mind on the job. I can think only that life is short, and there’s more to it than fussing over Allen keys.”

  Those had been Rachel’s very words at dinner, once, between the mashed potatoes and the turkey.

  “The Ace Hardware guys have been trying to buy me out for years, as you know,” he went on. “Today I sat down with them and we made a deal. They haven’t paid me all they would have five or six years ago. Times are hard. Still, I’ve got more than enough to see me through. I’m sixty-three and I’ve worked like a dog for half a century. I deserve to enjoy life and take care of the things I love and cherish.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, Jim. You’ve done the right thing. Good job.”

  The old guy nodded his head. Maybe he was drumming up the courage for what he really wanted to say. Finally he spat it out, true to form, right between the eyes.

  “You don’t get it, David. I want Julia to come live with us.”

  I glared at him, dumbfounded, and made a ridiculous sound, somewhere between a hoot and a snort.

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  But there wasn’t a trace of humor in Jim Robson’s eyes.

  “It’ll come as a relief to you. I’ll be doing you a favor. And it’s what’s best for my granddaughter.”

  “Are you suggesting I’d let go of my own daughter, Jim?” I said, trying to take it all in as I got madder and madder.

  “Washington is no place for a girl. They’ll turn her into one of those robots in uniform. She’d be better off in a good small-town public school.”

  That rankled. Rachel and I had searched high and low for the best school for Julia from the very moment we knew she was on the way. We had chosen one that put art and feeling good before competitive edge. They had twelve applications chasing every place at that school. We had waited in endless lines and called in favors from everybody we knew until we got her in. And now this busybody comes along and tells us we’ve got it all wrong.

  “Julia goes to Maret. It’s one of the best schools in the country, where they don’t wear a uniform, by the way. And I certainly don’t think it’s for you to tell me how to bring up my daughter.”

  “Think about it. That way she’ll have somebody waiting for her when she comes in from school, someone to take care of her. She’ll eat proper food, good home cooking. Julia’s all skin and bone.”

  I got up and stomped around the table to face him. He stood right up.

  “Listen, Jim. Out of respect for you and Rachel’s memory, I’ll pretend we never had this conversation,” I said with a wave of my hand, as if I were brushing off a fly. “You’re the girl’s grandfather; that’s all. You’re welcome in this house anytime. But I beg you, if you want it to stay that way, then don’t you ever come out with such crap again.”

  I backed off and he sat down.

  “You’ll be sorry for this, David,” he said through gritted teeth, somewhat humiliated. I let that go because I wanted to put the whole stupid business behind us.

  “I’d better go and see how Julia’s doing,” I said, and shot upstairs.

  When I came back down, I was surprised to see Jim gone from the living room. I went into the kitchen and found him there, whispering in Svetlana’s ear. She nodded, very straight-faced. When they noticed me, they drew apart, startled.

  There was a guilty expression on my father-in-law’s face.

  Back then I had thought no more of it. Jim’s veiled threat seemed no more than the typical outburst of a man used to always being in the right and getting his own way. I also took Jim’s talking to Svetlana as his trying to show who was boss after I’d hurt his pride. I imagined him lecturing her on what to feed his granddaughter, or on the quality of Virginia tomatoes—which are great, I must say.

  But when I had arrived home an hour before and couldn’t find Julia, and figured Svetlana could not have moved out by herself, the threat suddenly became very real, and that word in the nanny’s ear had taken on conspiratorial proportions.

  As I took the last bend in the road to the Robson home, my mind was churning over the same questions I had been asking all the way there.

  Would Jim have dared to take away his granddaughter? How had he talked Svetlana into it? Had he offered her money? I didn’t know what Ace Hardware had paid him, but I believe years before Rachel had mentioned an offer in the millions. Even if they had settled on the low side, Jim could still afford to put a young foreigner through grad school. For sure, Jim was as stubborn as they came, but would he go to such lengths to get his way?

  He couldn’t be that stupid, I thought. He must see that he’ll never get away with it. Does he really think I’ll turn the other way while he takes my daughter?

  I finally drew up outside the house and parked on the stony slope that led to the garage on the edge of the farm, a place that has been in the Robson family for four generations. They had been poor all that time—Rachel was the first Robson to get into college—but nobody could top them for pride.

  A soft rain was falling, which did nothing to settle my nerves. As I approached, I saw the light above the front porch was out. They usually left it on all night, as well as a pair of lights downstairs. My in-laws thought this climate-change talk was something Al Gore had made up to sell books.

  I walked up the front steps in two strides and had the knocker in my hand when the door abruptly opened. There was Jim, in a checkered bathrobe. He looked me up and down, and then let me in. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

  “Come in and keep quiet. They’re both asleep, upstairs.”

  I felt intensely relieved to hear that. It swiftly took a load off my mind and I could breathe deeply for the first time in hours. I saw he had only one slipper on, and his footfalls sounded off-kilter as he padded along. I was still angry, but the sight of my father-in-law’s bare, skinny calves was dismal enough to dismiss any thoughts of quarreling.

  I followed on his cracked and parched heels to the study, where he would wind down at night and take in some TV while he had a beer, before he turned in. But that night Jack Daniel’s had stood in for Bud in the starting lineup, and to all appearances, Tennessee’s finest was on fire.

  The other difference was even more worrying. The TV was switched off and there was a big silver picture frame on Jim’s easy chair. It was plain the old man had been poring over it. I knew only too well that frame didn’t belong in Jim’s study, but on the mantelpiece.

  He picked it up as he sat down and poured himself another finger of Jack.

  “She seemed so full of life, David. And so happy.”

  He lifted up the photo to show me, but he didn’t need to. I knew every bit of that picture, because for nights on end I had sat up with it in my hands, too, and drunk myself stupid gaping at it, like the old man. We had that much in common.

  It was a photo of our wedding. Rachel was holding a bridal bouquet by the church door, while we gazed into each other’s eyes. I hadn’t seen in her face the happiness Jim spoke of, at least not an overdone or mawkish happiness. What I saw was the full knowledge she had found her soul mate. But then I hadn’t simply seen the photo; I had been on the receiving end of that look.

  “She surely was, Jim. I think she
was happy the whole time we were together.”

  He tilted his head to one side and hesitated. Perhaps he was mulling this over. His skin was bone dry and his cheeks obscured by spider veins. He stared at the bottom of his glass, seeking the answer there. And then he knocked the drink back in one.

  “Yes. Yes, I think you’re right.”

  He helped himself to more. He waved the bottle at me, but I shook my head and he didn’t insist. Someone had to keep a clear head around there. Besides, I was worn through and too jumpy to hit the bottle. I longed to pick up Julia and split but couldn’t do that without talking to him, and furthermore it would break my heart to drag her out of bed that late. I greatly feared I would have to stay the night.

  “She was so sweet. Like a love song. Oh sweet Rachel, oh my darling dear . . .” He hummed for a while, getting drunker by the minute and slurring his words. “She never got mad. She was so even tempered.”

  “You think she would have approved of this?”

  “She didn’t mind her dad having a drink now and then. No, sir.”

  “I don’t mean that, Jim. Where’s Svetlana?”

  He looked up at me, slowly, with wide staring eyes.

  “In your lousy house, I guess. Is Julia here? You bring her?”

  I didn’t have to stop and guess whether he was lying. His stupefaction was overwhelmingly real, and with that a wave of confusion washed over me. I felt dizzy and had to hold on to the armrest.

  “Of course you didn’t. You never do. You’re too busy saving other people’s lives, Dave,” he said, almost in a murmur.

  I hardly listened to him. His words were daggers that stabbed me in the guts, but there were more important issues. I breathed deep and tried to get a word in.

  “Jim—”

  “Everybody’s life is important, except your wife’s. That right, Dave?”

  “Jim, when I got here—”

  “The fancy brain surgeon, the star of the future, and you didn’t see it coming, did you, big shot? You didn’t see it, didn’t see it ­coming.”

  “Jim!”

  “What!?”

  “Jim, you said they were upstairs. Who’s ‘they’?”

  He stopped and seemed at a loss for a moment. His ears appeared to have caught merely a faint echo of my question, but at last it found its way through the boozy haze.

  “What are you talking about? Why, my wife. And Kate, who else? She’s on leave. Come to see her folks. Good girl, Kate. She knows where her heart is.”

  By then he was mumbling so badly I almost missed the last bit, which sounded more akin to wherrahardiz, but I didn’t care, because the hunch that had driven me there had melted away. It had all been a big, bad misunderstanding. Julia had been missing for hours and no one was out searching for her. To make matters worse, I was there, sixty miles from home, when I should have been talking to the police to get them to hunt down Svetlana and whoever she was in league with. All of a sudden, fear and anxiety floored me again.

  I stood up and grabbed my cell phone. I dialed 911 and pressed it to my ear.

  It was busy.

  That was bizarre. The emergency number could never be busy. A sneaking feeling gripped my throat, an idea I could dimly remember, a cry from afar I could faintly hear.

  Something was amiss, and not only with Julia.

  “Listen, Jim . . . I need to use your phone.”

  The old-timer shook his head and wobbled to his feet.

  “Don’t you go calling now. I want to talk to you!”

  “It’s an emergency. I have to—”

  That second my cell phone buzzed to show I had a text. I clocked the screen immediately, thinking it might be Svetlana, but it wasn’t. The caller ID was vacant. It didn’t even say “Unknown.” It was blank.

  GET OUT OF THERE, DAVE.

  I unlocked the phone and opened the inbox to see who had sent it, but the text I had received a moment ago was nowhere to be seen. The latest one was from a colleague, at the hospital.

  “What do you mean, an emergency, David? Emergencies have always come before your family, for you. Yes, everything’s more important to you, Mr. High-and-Mighty Surgeon, yessir. A piece of shit, that’s what you are.”

  I started at the insult and was about to answer when the message tone buzzed again.

  SAY NO MORE. TELL HIM NOTHING ABOUT JULIA.

  “Jim, if you shut up a minute and let me ex—”

  “How dare you tell me to shut up in my own home! She was sick, you son of a bitch. Sick, all the time, under your nose. Right under your goddamned, smart-assed Yankee nose.”

  I didn’t answer. I was too stunned by everything taking place around me to mind my father-in-law’s words. I suppose this was the only way his sort could cry for help, but in that moment all the hatred and resentment he flung at me simply bounced off and rebounded on him, making no impact. Except it made him even angrier.

  “Answer me, damn you!” he said while he shook his fist at me, his face flushed with anger and drink.

  I dodged him as best I could and shifted to one side. He stumbled, fell forward and knocked over a side table next to his easy chair. The tray with the whiskey and shot glasses fell on the floor to the sound of breaking glass.

  The message tone buzzed again.

  GO HOME, DAVE.

  YOU’RE EXPECTED.

  I marched to the doorway, the feeling of unease ballooning inside me. Nothing around me made sense, and I couldn’t find my way in the dark. In my haste I had banged my hip on a piece of furniture. I felt a sharp pain in my side as I pulled the front door open. The rain was pouring down now and had turned the front steps into a slide. I tripped again, and this time slithered to my knees on the sodden lawn.

  All the skill God put in your hands, he took away from your feet, Dave.

  Rachel’s dulcet voice came back to me as I got to my feet, my pants covered in mud. I used to hate it when she made fun of my clumsiness. She would have howled to high heaven to see me climb into the Lexus in such a mess.

  I would have traded in all the cars in the world to hear her taunt me, just once more.

  “Come back, you!” Jim bellowed from the doorway.

  I could scarcely see to put the key in the lock. The goddamned battery in the remote was busted, and I could never remember to get it fixed. The outside light came on unexpectedly, so I got the key in place. I turned it, thankfully, then ducked when I saw my father-in-law’s whiskey bottle fly my way. It bashed the bodywork and shattered into a thousand pieces, leaving an ugly dent behind.

  Then a fourth text landed, which made my flesh creep. I clambered into the car and fired her up. With no time to reverse back to the road, I turned across the lawn. Jim ran down the steps and thumped the hood.

  “Run, run! That’s all you can do!”

  The sight of the old man threatening me with his bony fist popped up in my rearview mirror, but I paid no heed because all I could think of was Julia and the text I had just received.

  NO COPS.

  4

  I don’t remember much about the drive home.

  I know I was in a total panic, such as I had never been in before and don’t think I’ll ever be in again. Bewilderment and foreboding had overcome me, so I drove on autopilot, lost in my thoughts. New questions piled on top of the ones that had nagged at me on the way over, and they unsettled me far more. Terrible visions of whose hands Julia might be in crossed my mind in an endless and troubling stream.

  “Just let her be okay. Please, please,” I said over and over, to try to cast out those visions.

  I wonder who I was pleading with. I guess with a God I don’t believe in, and one I’ve turned to so often for help. Just two cells down from where I write these words, there’s an inmate who says there are no atheists on death row.

  It’s easy to see why.
/>
  When I got to Dale Drive I didn’t even bother to put the car in the garage. I left it in the driveway, open and with the keys in place. I dashed into the house in a beat. I stood breathless in the hallway, more because of tension than the rush, in a complete muddle and covering the mat in mud, until a new text lit up.

  GO TO THE BASEMENT.

  The doorway was between the hall and the kitchen, papered in the same pattern as the rest of the wall. I had to pull hard because it always jams a bit.

  I went down the stairs very slowly. The steps creaked underfoot because the wood was very old, probably the same wood the house was originally made from. We never had the time or money to change them, and we didn’t go down there often, anyway. Something hit me in the face, halfway down. It was the pull chain. I tugged it and a yellowy light filled the basement, casting long shadows and illuminating gloomy nooks, where before there had only been a pall of darkness.

  I went on down, aware that hours before, when I had looked for Julia, I had barely stuck my head through the basement door, hollered and closed it again, but had failed to go down. Shivers ran down my spine. Perhaps I had made a fatal mistake.

  When I reached the bottom of the stairs, the light blinked twice, went out and left me in the dark. There was a box of lightbulbs on a shelf at the back, but I couldn’t grope my way through the cavernous basement in the dark without breaking a leg. I decided to run the app that turns my phone into a flashlight.

  “Julia?” I called out, in a bid to calm myself. I didn’t know what I expected to find, but I was scared, very scared. Not only for my daughter, but because I have a deep-seated fear of the dark. The faint light beam from the phone did little to allay that fear.

  I got close to the metal shelving where we kept electrical supplies and other seldom-used clutter. I met with an obstacle. It was Rachel’s bike, which was flat on the ground. I thought that strange, because nobody had ridden it in more than a year, and it should have been on its rack by the wall. There were some boxes behind the bike, so I couldn’t hop over it. I had to go around and skirt the boiler instead.