The Measures Between Us (40 page)

“Mom, what are you doing here?”

They were the only two left, aside from the troopers and firemen, one of whom approached them and asked, “You ladies okay? Your vehicles operational?”

Mary nodded. “We're fine,” she said. “We'll be on our way in a minute.” He walked toward the fire engine, a heavy rope coiled around his shoulder, a pickax dangling from his belt.

“I'm sorry,” said Mary, facing her daughter. “I was worried about you driving in this weather. The roads and visibility and all …” She looked at Cynthia's face, expecting anger, but what she saw was more like confusion, resignation. It was the same expression she'd had when they first started talking to her about Rangely.

“It's not ice or anything,” Cynthia said.

“I know, I know. But I remember that car not being so great on wet roads.” This wasn't true, though Mary didn't know what else to say. She turned to the river, its sodden shoreline, its furious current. It ran brown with mud, as if the bed had been turned inside out. Along the banks trees leaned out precariously. The rushing water had stripped away all the dirt and you could see the tangled, ancient network of their roots.

“I shouldn't have, I know.”

Now it was Cynthia's turn to surprise. “It's okay,” she said. “But I hope you won't do it again.”

“Oh, no, I promise,” said Mary. She was so grateful for her daughter's forgiveness. Where she had anticipated anger, she instead found sympathy, compassion. Could she and Vincent have
misjudged her? Or had the time at the hospital really helped? She would have promised nearly anything at that moment—money she didn't have, property she didn't own, knowledge she hadn't learned. And for the first time since Cynthia had been home from Rangely, Mary felt hopeful. The two of them were drenched. Their jackets offered little protection, the sopped fabric soaked into nothing more than second skins. The fire truck rumbled away behind them, carving deep ruts into the shoulder of the road. Water streamed off Mary's hair and forehead. She had no umbrella, no hood like Cynthia. She had left the house in such a rush that she had forgotten both. How fortunate. Otherwise her daughter would have seen not rainfall wetting her cheeks but tears she couldn't, or wouldn't, explain.

“We should go,” said Cynthia.

Mary nodded. “I'll meet you at home.”

Henry wrote the letter the same day he told Samantha Webster that they couldn't sleep together anymore. After she left he went to his study, determined not to get up from his desk until he finished. He had saved the original index cards from the night he showed up late to the school board meeting and pinned them to a corkboard next to his research notes and course syllabi. They reminded him of what he needed to say, and how he might start atoning.

Two hours later he was done, listening to the printer spit out the pages attesting to Vincent Pareto's teaching abilities. Henry called the shop teacher “inspiring” and “sensitive,” said it would be a tremendous loss if the woodworking program ended. Shop class was about more than simply tools and wood, he argued. It was a time and place where students learned important things about themselves. He had written many letters of recommendation before, but this one was more important and he felt drained when he finished. He printed two copies on his university letterhead: one to mail to the superintendent's office and one to give to Vincent.

He waited a few days and then drove to Vincent's home to drop it off. Henry could have delivered it to the shop teacher at
school, yet he didn't want to risk interrupting class—the school year had just started—tempted as he was to revisit the room and its buzzing machinery and the students swimming in their too-big safety glasses. It would be easier to leave the letter at the house.

Henry didn't expect anyone to be at Vincent's, because he had purposely chosen a time during the school day. Maybe his wife would be there, though they wouldn't need to talk. Everything was in the letter and was said much better there than what might spontaneously come out of his mouth. Henry could just leave it on the porch next to the mail or a circular from the grocery store, slip in and out silently. As he approached, he saw that several of the streets in their neighborhood were flooded from all the recent rain, and there were hastily planted warning signs that read OPEN ONLY TO LOCAL RESIDENTS. Yellow detour arrows pointed toward alternate routes. Caution tape was stretched across many driveways and ringed utility and telephone poles. A power-company crew was opening up a manhole.

The house was modest, two floors and an attic. Henry tucked the envelope beneath his jacket so it wouldn't get wet and then got out of his car and walked to the porch. Rainwater beaded on the white vinyl siding. The timing of Lucinda's trip turned out to be good in at least one way, for she had missed these days of relentless gray skies. She liked storms, yet this would have been too much. The pinging off the skylights would have lost its poetry. The song of the rain became a dirge. And these storms mostly lacked the thunder and lightning she was so fond of.

Just as he dropped the letter onto a small table, the front door opened. It was Cynthia. “Oh,” she said, surprised, “I didn't realize someone was out here.”

“Sorry,” said Henry. “I didn't mean to startle you. I'm an old student of your dad's.”

“He's not here. He's at school.”

“I know,” Henry said, checking his watch, though he knew what time it was. “I just came by to drop off a letter.”

Cynthia brushed her bangs off her forehead. “I can take it,” she said, extending a hand. “Did we win the sweepstakes?” she joked.

“Afraid not,” Henry smiled. “Or at least if you did that's not what's in the envelope.” He wondered if Vincent had told his daughter about him. If he had, she was acting remarkably unfazed.

“I wasn't expecting you when I opened the door,” Cynthia said. “There's a boy from down the block who's supposed to come by. That's why I came out, to see if he was here yet.”

At that same moment the boy rode his bike up the walkway. “Hey,” he yelled, hopping off and letting the bike crash to the ground. Oblivious, he took the stairs two at a time and joined Henry and Cynthia on the porch. His pants and shoes were soaked, and he was wearing a jacket that fell to his knees. Everyone seemed to have different solutions to the rain. Some people insisted on umbrellas, despite the wind turning them inside out, while others walked around under garbage bags with holes punched out for their arms and head.

“You got it?” the boy asked Cynthia.

“Just a sec,” she said. “I'll go find it.” She smiled at Henry and disappeared into the house.

The boy stared at Henry. “You live here too?” he asked.

Henry shook his head, and the boy wiped his face with his sleeve, replacing water with water.

“Who are you to Cynthia?”

Henry, confused, didn't say anything.

“Like are you her boyfriend? Cousin? Uncle?”

“Oh,” said Henry, “none of those. I'm a friend of her father's.”

“Mr. Pareto? He fixed my skateboard once.”

Henry nodded again. “You ride your bike in all this rain?”

“Why not?” the boy shrugged. “I like going really fast through the big puddles. If there are people on the sidewalk you can spray 'em. They don't even see it coming. Cars do it better, though—they're like a boat. Mr. Pareto fixed my skateboard once when one wheel broke. He knows how to fix everything.”

Cynthia reappeared. “Here you go, Brandon,” she said, holding out her hand. In her palm was a charcoal-gray triangular stone.

“Awesome,” said the boy, taking it and bringing it close to his eye. “This must be like a hundred thousand years old.” Then he shoved it into his pocket. “I'm gonna show my dad,” he said, bounding down the steps. He righted his bike, jumped on the seat, and yelled thanks, not even pausing to look back. In a second he was pedaling hard down the curb, skidding when the tires met water slicks.

“It's an Indian arrowhead,” Cynthia said. “I saw him the other day playing with some Indian stuff so I thought he might like it.”

“How'd you come across it?” Henry asked.

“I've had it forever. My father gave it to me ages ago. I think he got it on his honeymoon. I used to bring it to school for show and tell.”

Henry realized he should leave before the conversation swerved toward him and who he was. He didn't know if he could stomach another lie right now, though there were so many
that one more might not even register. “Well, I need to get going,” he said. “I'll just leave the letter for your father with you.”

“I'll give it to him,” Cynthia said. “Keep dry.”

“I'll try. You too.”

She closed the door and Henry descended from the porch. He walked to his car through the steady rain, scanning the block for the boy charging through the shallow ponds and splashing strangers. He wasn't there. He was probably safe and warm inside his house, inventing a history for his new treasure.

That night Vincent called to thank Henry. “Actually,” the shop teacher said, “it looks like it won't be necessary. I met with the principal today, and he said I should be safe, along with art as well.”

“That's great news,” said Henry. “What a relief it must be.”

“It certainly is,” Vincent agreed. “One less thing to worry about.”

“I guess sometimes the politicians don't make stupid decisions,” Henry said.

“Thank you for writing the letter. I think I'll keep it, in case there's some new surprise crisis. You never know.”

They didn't talk for long. Henry thought about recounting his inadvertent meeting with Cynthia but decided not to. There was so little to be gleaned from those few minutes on the porch, and he didn't want Vincent to press him for speculation, especially when there was nothing to base it on.

Just as he did every night Lucinda had been away, he cooked pasta for dinner. He ate late, figuring it shrank the hard hours between after dinner and bedtime. “It's like you're on a European schedule,” Lucinda said one night when she called and he
was in the middle of cooking. No, he thought, I am so far from that kind of effortlessness. The Sox were in Kansas City, far from the rain, but they had the night off, so he couldn't depend on a ballgame for distraction. He didn't like watching much else on television. All the shows were sliced up by frequent commercial breaks, and they all seemed to take place in either a hospital, a city apartment, or a police precinct.

After he finished eating, he took a drink to the back porch. During the rare lulls in the rain, the lightning bugs came out. It seemed late for them, yet maybe the weather had disrupted their life spans. They were signaling, but what? Cynthia's arrowhead had made the boy so happy, maybe he was playing with it still. The lights in the house across the yard went out. His neighbors were going to bed, closing their eyes to the patter of the sky. Everyone hears something different in the rain. They had washed up, checked the locks, set the alarm. The day was over, the night too. No one was ringing the doorbell, no one was in Texas.

White sands was a two-hour drive from Janet's house. Janet had told Lucinda that it was something she definitely should see, as long as she was all the way out here. “It looks like nowhere else,” Janet said. “It feels like you're on another planet.” Lucinda was skeptical. It didn't look like much on the map, a small blip between nothing New Mexico towns and a decommissioned missile-testing range. She ended up taking the trip regardless, partly because she had quickly exhausted all the distractions in San Elizario. She was eager to see more of the landscape, too, to cross into New Mexico if only to be able to say she had visited one more state.

The drive brought her deeper into the foothills of west Texas. The towns she sped past appeared even less populated than San Elizario, dilapidated shacks and rusty, listing mailboxes dotting the side of the road. Sprawling ranches paralleled the highway, occasionally giving way to an abandoned gas station. Huge semis and pickups rumbled past her, and her rental car suddenly felt very small, no more substantial than a Matchbox car. A gust of wind could have capsized it.

Everything was so dry. When she saw animals grazing by wire fences, she expected them to be parched and starving, with
skin stretched painfully tight over nearly exposed ribcages. They were fine, though, perfectly healthy looking, and Lucinda decided the drought must not be as bad as it looked. Under the hard brown surface of the mountains and foothills, she imagined springs, subterranean streams and rivers, with tributaries branching off like arteries. There had to be secret sources. Otherwise the roadside would be crowded with animals, children, hands clutching empty cups and begging for something to drink. Or maybe that was just a few years off?

That morning over breakfast, Janet had again said, “Lucy, why are you here?” She was serving Lucinda scrambled eggs. “I think you want me to stop asking you that question. But can't you explain it a little?”

The smell of chorizo and potatoes filled the kitchen. The windows were open, and an intermittent breeze pushed the curtains off the sills. Callie was out back, working diligently on a rawhide treat Janet had given her earlier.

“I can't really explain it,” said Lucinda. Janet stood behind her, serving herself the eggs that remained in the skillet. “I mean,” Lucinda continued, “everything at home, everything with Henry and with my pregnancy, it all started to feel so strangling. There were these moments—they came up out of the blue—when I'd literally choke. I'd be gasping. It was so scary.”

“Did you talk to a doctor?” Janet asked, now sitting across the table. “It sounds like something medical.”