The Last Good Night (18 page)

 

M
AYBE IT BEGAN
with Jack loving me.

I kept waiting for him to change his mind.

As I went about my duties at the motel, changing beds, bleaching toilets, avoiding Garner, the specter of Jack was everywhere. I imagined him watching me as I went from room to room, guest to guest, as if he could somehow see my every movement, and I adjusted them accordingly. I was polite to the guests, and scrupulously distant from the men, lowering my eyes away from theirs.

I began to listen more closely to the announcers' voices on the radio, and carefully studied the reporters on television. I scoured the library for biographies of journalists, and worked hard to improve my grades.

Jack gave my best self back to me, that was his gift.

And it began to feel real, to feel right, even to me.

Lurking behind every well-planned sentence, though, every careful step, waiting for me when I climbed into bed at night, was the fear that Jack would see something, smell something—and turn away, repelled.

But he didn't.

How could I not do anything to hold onto that?

A
LL THROUGH
J
UNE,
the rotating digital clock and thermometer that towered over the front lawn of the Sun Coast Bank on Route 1 read 83°.

“Who do they think they're fooling?” Jack asked as we drove by. “The tourists?”

“There are no tourists,” I replied. “Who'd be stupid enough to come here in this weather?”

“Well, everyone else knows it hasn't gone below ninety-five in Flagerty since the middle of May.”

I ran the cold can of Tab I was drinking across my forehead. Though it was only ten in the morning, the sun was everywhere, relentless and inescapable, drenching the open car in its scalding white glare. We drove the rest of the way downtown in silence. We had parted only a few hours ago, in the black pre-dawn, and exhaustion prickled beneath the surface of our skin, dulling the need for conversation.

Jack parked a block from the Pelican Diner and we got out of the car. The street sign on the corner was draped in plastic red, white, and blue ribbons. Flagerty had been gearing up for the Bi
centennial for months. Store windows tried to outdo each other with the number and size of their flags, and the summer sales merchandise was bedecked in the trappings of patriotism.

Jack looked over at me as we walked. “Tired?” he asked.

“I'm all right.”

When we reached the Pelican Diner, there was a handwritten sign taped to the front door: “Closed until September.” The windows were dark behind blue-and-white gingham curtains.

“Shit,” Jack muttered. “They always used to stay open in summer.”

“It's too hot to eat anyway.”

We headed back to the car, avoiding the corner that was dominated by Pierce's. Jack took my hand and our palms grew instantly moist. From a distance, we saw a young black boy in a suit and tie on the opposite side of the street. On both legs, he wore complicated metal braces that glistened in the sun as he walked alone in the direction of the Baptist church on Gladiola Street. He worked slowly, throwing his crutches a few feet ahead and then sliding his legs up to them. His hair was cut short and his oval face and large eyes were shiny. He was smiling beatifically. Jack turned and watched him, step, slide, step, slide, until he finally reached the front steps of the church.

“Why on earth would he believe in God?” I asked.

Jack didn't answer. He continued watching until the boy disappeared behind the heavy carved wooden doors. He turned slowly back to me. “What do you want to do? We can get some food and go to the island.”

“All right.”

We stopped by a 7-Eleven and then drove with our groceries to the boat.

“I've been thinking,” he said as he rowed. “About September.”

I flinched. In September Jack would be starting college in St. Delaville, three hours away. I had missed so much school that I had to make up a semester.

“Why don't you come to St. Delaville when you graduate?” he said.

“My parents would never pay for that.”

“There are scholarships.”

“I'd never get one.”

“You make Chicken Little look like a goddamned optimist,” he teased.

“And you make Pollyanna look like a fallen angel.”

He laughed. “That's why we're so good together. We balance each other out.”

“You really think I could get a scholarship?”

“Sure. Why not? Your grades are good now. And I could make some calls.”

“Maybe.”

When we got to the island, I watched Jack unpack our picnic lunch of cold chicken and beers. His back was smooth and browned, and I was filled with a pang of longing, forgetting for an instant that he was mine.

Almost mine.

We swam first, as we usually did, as if to wash off the external world, so that when we climbed out of the water, we were cleansed down to our truest selves, the selves that existed only when we were together.

“Did you mean it?” I asked as we dried off and climbed back into our clothes.

“About what?”

“About St. Delaville.”

He wiped a single wet tendril from my eyes. “Yes.”

We kissed once, wet on wet, and then sat down to eat.

“I've decided to tell my parents I'm going to go to law school,” Jack said in between bites of his chicken leg.

“Why tell them now? Why don't you just wait and see what happens?”

“Because I've made up my mind. It's what I want to do. And I
don't want to live under false pretenses for the next four years. If nothing else, I owe them honesty.”

“What do you think they'll say?”

He smiled. “They'll probably blame it all on you.”

I grimaced. He was joking, but his parents despised me and couldn't wait to see Jack safely out of my reach.

“And they'd be right,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

He was serious now, resting his gnawed chicken leg back on the paper plate, reaching for my knee. “I want us to be together,” he said.

“We are together.”

“I mean for good.” He leaned over and kissed me.

Everything inside pitched. “What does that have to do with law school?” I asked.

“I don't know. Nothing. Everything. I guess I just want us to be clear about things.”

I took a sip of my beer.

“I was thinking,” he said. “We could live together. In St. Delaville. We could get an apartment.”

“Your parents would love that part.”

“I wasn't actually planning on telling them.”

“Honest Abe tells a lie?”

“I may be honest, but I'm not a fucking idiot.”

I laughed.

“They have a journalism department,” Jack said. “It's not great. But they have their own radio station. It's something, anyway.” He looked out at the water and then back to me. “I can't imagine going without you.”

He pulled me to him, and we kissed with greasy lips, falling back onto the scratchy wool blanket, melding into each other, here, just here.

He lay still inside of me for a long time after he had come, reluctant to leave. “Imagine this every day,” he said.

“Imagine this every night.”

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about what it would be like to go to sleep and wake up every morning together, away from parents, away from Flagerty, away from everything but each other in a place where no one knew us.

“You're serious about all this?” I asked as we were packing up to leave.

“Yes.”

“You really think we can?”

“Yes,” he answered firmly. “Don't you?”

I smiled.

“Do I take that as a yes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

We took a final swim at nightfall. As we tread water, he wrapped his legs around my hips and entered me, our bodies weightless but rooted to each other deep within. Everything other than where we were touching seemed to float away into the water, into the dark.

 

F
ROM THAT DAY
on, we both considered our futures settled, entwined. The rest was just getting there.

Jack, elated, rushed headlong at it, our future.

He called the St. Delaville student union and found the name of a landlady in town who rented him an apartment by phone that would be big enough when I joined him. He called the financial aid office and got all the necessary applications. He continued on, tying up strings, knotting them twice, wary that I might change my mind.

Though I never gave him any reason to think that. A part of me was already there, in an apartment I imagined in a town I had never seen.

The present faded to a shadow, insubstantial, unreal, now that I was leaving.

 

I
WAS IN
a light doze when I heard the door to room 203, which I was supposed to be cleaning, creak open. I opened my eyes and saw Garner standing in the doorway, looking down at me. He closed the door behind him. The air conditioning had been off and the air was stifling, fetid. He didn't say anything, just continued to look down on me. Finally, he motioned to the cleaning supplies on the floor. “What's all this?” he demanded.

I didn't answer.

“You too tired from being out with your boyfriend all night to do your duty around here?”

“What business is that of yours?” I retorted, sitting up, hugging my knees to my chest.

“You little slut. You think your boyfriend is going to remember you when he goes off to college? Forget it. Not Mr. Pierce. He'll find some nice girl there and before you know it, he won't even remember your name. You can count on that.”

“Did anyone ever tell you you're an asshole?” I hissed.

Garner tripped over the bucket filled with rags as he took a step closer to the bed, his face contorting into a sour laugh. “You know what you are to him? Practice, that's what you are. Just practice. You don't think you'll ever be anything more than that, do you? I don't care what he tells you now.”

I lurched from the bed and slapped him across the face.

He grabbed my hand, still laughing. His other hand was reaching behind my back, pulling me to him.

Suddenly we heard the door swing open. Astrid stood in the doorway, the sun behind her, smiling nervously. “What's going on in here?”

Garner released me and stepped back. “Your daughter seems to think she's too good for the likes of us. Seems to think she's above doing a little cleaning.”

Astrid, momentarily nonplussed, turned to Garner. “Someone's on the phone for you, hon,” she said. “Something about a lawn mower, I don't know. You'd better go check.”

Garner glared at me one last time and then stormed out of the room.

“Bastard,” I muttered.

Astrid sighed as she bent down to pick up the bucket. “Come on, I'll help you.”

 

I
BEGAN TO
steal small amounts of money when I sat at the front desk checking people in and out. Ten dollars, maybe twenty. Astrid and Garner were too lax, too lost to realize. It would be money to live on in St. Delaville with Jack. And anyway, I had earned it. Garner and Astrid never paid me.

I did not tell Jack about the money that grew in my top drawer.

He, too, was working hard, saving what he could.

We told no one of our plans.

Only together during our stolen hours on the island did we let them out to prosper, the apartment we would share, the meals, the bed, the life.

The Bicentennial came and went, and the Democratic and Republican conventions, the Montreal Olympics; twenty-nine people died of a mysterious disease at the American Legion convention in Philadelphia. The summer gave every indication of passing.

 

W
HAT DID WE
talk about then?

Labor Day Weekend, fast approaching.

Jack leaving.

Missing each other.

Writing, calling.

January, when I would move to St. Delaville and we would be together all the time, forever. One of those words we used then,
forever
.

 

I
T IS HARD
now to remember if I ever really believed we would get there.

Certainly Jack did.

But we were different. He had never been truly disappointed before, he had never been truly scared.

I clung desperately to the belief even as I waited for the blow that would destroy it.

Each day, I studied my calendar. Five weeks, three, now two weeks to go until Jack left.

 

T
HE THERMOMETER HIT
98° by nine in the morning.

I was sitting at the front desk reading the back-to-school issue of
Glamour
magazine, filled with clear-skinned, clear-eyed girls, when one of our only guests, Mrs. Patrick, came in. Though she never went anywhere, she was dressed formally in a crisp white floral shirtwaist dress hanging on her skeletal frame, stockings and high-heeled white sandals. I left my forefinger on my page and looked up.

“I asked for more towels yesterday,” Mrs. Patrick said.

“No one told me.”

She frowned. “Well, I'm telling you now, aren't I?”

I got off my stool, went to the supply closet and got down two towels. There was a cigarette burn in one but I folded it so that it couldn't be seen.

“Here,” I said, going back out and handing them to Mrs. Patrick.

As soon as she was gone, I returned to my magazine.

When the office door swung open again fifteen minutes later, I hardly looked up, expecting it to be Mrs. Patrick complaining about the burn hole in the towel.

But it wasn't Mrs. Patrick's voice I heard.

“Hello, Marta. It's good to see you again.”

I looked up.

Frank Xavier stood in front of the desk, smiling.

I felt everything sink, just sink.

The magazine slipped to the floor.

“Oh, Mr. Xavier, what a nice surprise,” Astrid exclaimed as she came into the office, curious to see who the stranger's voice belonged to. “I was beginning to wonder if you forgot about us.”

“Now how could I do that?”

“We're glad to have you back. Would you like a room overlooking the water this time?”

“You know, Mrs. Clark, I'm a creature of habit Funny thing about being on the road so much, you take whatever familiarity you can get.” He shrugged, smiling. “I think I'll take the same room as last time, if you don't mind.”

“Whatever you want.” Astrid handed him the keys to room 110. “Marta, show Mr. Xavier the way.”

I frowned.

“Oh, there's no need for that,” Xavier said. “I remember.”

 

I
KNEW RIGHT
then that this was how the end began.

I left the office and went back to my bedroom, locked
the door and lay down, afraid to make a sound, afraid to breathe.

I heard the television go on in the living room and the raucous gaiety of a game show. I heard Astrid and Garner in the kitchen as they ate lunch. Later I heard the lawn mower sputter and die, and a single splash in the swimming pool.