Page 103 of Saltwater

He pushes Marcus, and even though my uncle is bigger, his body broader, my father is working with surprising force. Marcus stumbles several steps back; he stops near the edge of the garden, close to the low stone fence that separates the patio from the cliffs. Most of the audience is watching us now, but they’re too far away to hear our words.

“You should have told me the truth,” my father says. “You owed me that.”

I want to interrupt, to ask them what they think they might have owed me. To ask them, again, about Lorna. About what they did with my mother after my father pushed her. But they’re moving too quickly. And I can feel it: as our family starts to fall apart, as it starts to break open, there’s suddenly more oxygen for me, more space. It’s the thing Lorna and I had talked about, the thing I wanted on the other side of this. Through the chaos, it’s inching closer. The Lingates have always had a fragile shell; the crack is irreparable.

“I didn’t owe youanything,” Marcus says. His voice an urgent whisper. “I did everythingforyou. To cover for you. To fix what you broke with Sarah. If I didn’t do it, where would we be now?”

“Oh, Marcus,” Naomi says, her voice low, “you did it for yourself, too. Didn’t you?”

My father looks at his brother.

“They were having an affair!” Naomi says. “That’s what she’s been trying to tell you—” She gestures at me. “She made you finish that stupid play so you would finally believe your brother and your wife were sleeping together! So that you would understand your brother didn’t tell you Sarah was alive that night because he wanted to keep their relationship a secret!”

The last row of the audience behind us hears what Naomi has said and quickly passes it to those seated ahead of them. The sound is like the murmuring of the ocean as their words disappear into the garden and out, across the Mediterranean. Their release is liberating. I realize I don’t need to hold on to the things that have seemed solid and oppressive for so long. My father. My uncle. My family name. Even my mother. At the heart of her death, at the heart of Lorna’s death, was never money or greed; it was always jealousy. The worst secret was Lorna’s pregnancy test. The worst secret was me. My father, my real father, has watched his brother raise me as his own child for thirty-three years, all to ensure the status quo continues. All to ensure the Lingate name.

My father wouldn’t listen to me, but Naomi has been more successful breaking through.

“Is that true?” my father asks. “Is that why you let me think I killed her? To protect yourself?”

“Richard—”

It’s all Marcus has to say:Richard.And my father is on him.

Naomi giggles. I try to get between them, but my father has the advantage of surprise. My uncle takes a step back and holds up his hands. He refuses to fight, but my father batters him around his face, his shoulders. Several of the men seated in the back rows stand and attempt to pull them apart.

“You have to stop this, Richard,” Marcus says. “Let me explain. There are people here.”

And it’s true. These are theirfriends.The friends who have jumped into the fray, who end up getting their silk shirts stained by Marcus’s blood, by my father’s anger. The brawling circle has grown and moved even closer to the edge of the patio, where only a low stone wall keeps them all from falling into the Mediterranean. And when I look out at the sea, I see the telltale blue and white flashing from three boats in the night—the carabinieri are on their way. Just as I hoped. Just as Stan and Ciro promised.

“What could you possibly explain?” my father says, pausing the onslaught. He sounds sad in that moment.

Marcus takes a step toward him.

But as he does, a well-meaning bystander, assuming Marcus wants to engage with my father, gets in between them.

“That’s enough,” the man says. His soft calfskin loafers have been scuffed by my father’s shoes. Abrased. “Let’s act like gentlemen.”

“This is a family issue,” my father says, stepping to the side.

The man mirrors him, and my father, exasperated, tries to push him out of the way. It’s not a hard push. It’s an annoyance, a flick. But the man trips, he falls backward. And when he does, his body connects with Marcus’s chest. My uncle manages to right the man, but the weight and momentum cause him to take an unbalanced step back, then another.

My father reaches for him—a desperate hand, a call:“Marcus.”

But Marcus’s knees buckle over the low stone wall and his back slides over the edge until he falls, headfirst, onto the cliffs below.

The sound, like my father said, of body hitting stone is impossible to forget.

The audience gasps.

Helen

Now

An hour later, I amspeaking with the police, explaining how, in the aftermath of my father’s actions, several men in leather loafers tackled him to the ground.He pushed him!the men said.He sent his brother to his death!

To my eyes, it was an accident.A family issue.But I don’t tell the police that.

Just as I didn’t correct the men when they secured my father in a Moroccan-themed bathroom until the carabinieri could reach the villa. I do tell the police how, in the moments following Marcus’s fall, Naomi nearly threw herself off the edge of the cliff after him. Two women, who served on the boards of the New York City Ballet and Lincoln Center, respectively, stopped her. They held her in their bejeweled arms and let her cry until she almost collapsed. I tell them how a group of party guests took a flotilla of boats and flashlights around the tip of the island to search for my uncle. How they found his remains on the rocks below but didn’t know how to proceed, so they left him there, being lapped at by the sea.

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