The Whiskey Tide (50 page)

     
Then music began. The horse beneath her leaped and floated, carrying her backward through the years until she was a girl again, with dreams. She laughed breathlessly with Kate Hinshaw, beside her, and with Mr. Santayna standing next to her white horse like a page, and then she saw nothing except the wonder of it, blurring the world she passed.

     
Tatia was watching for her when she returned home some hours later. As soon as she'd said her good-byes, Zenaide went straight to her and embraced her.

     
"Dear Tatia, I know I distress you at times, and I'm sorry. But today was — it was extraordinary! I did something I'd longed to do for so long, and it was every bit as splendid as I'd imagined. So I wasn't silly for wanting to do it. I was silly not to do it. And I shall never, never forget that lesson!"

Thirty-six

     
The outing with Mrs. Cole haunted Joe in a way he couldn't explain. Watching the joy of an old woman doomed to tedium by her fear of stepping beyond what was known and comfortable, he'd wondered whether he, likewise, was shackled by fear of change.

     
His disquiet drove him to Mass and then to the hospital, which would make him late picking up Rita. He'd been surprised to hear Theo wanted to see him. He and Kate's cousin had nothing in common except the war. As he neared Theo's door he was brought up short by seeing it closed with a No Visitors sign.

     
"The army friend," a nurse said behind him. Joe recognized her as the one he'd gotten past with that fib. "Mr. Fletcher said he'd see you if you came. Don't stay long."

     
Something had happened, but Joe didn't know what. Kate had told him that morning that Theo was better. Opening the door he found the shades drawn and another nurse checking the pulse of the man in the bed. He lay flat and still.

     
"The other nurse said I could see him," Joe said as the nurse looked around.

     
"He's in and out." She moved and Joe saw the empty space under the sheets.

     
"Jesus!"

     
Theo's head turned. "Joe?" His voice was thick.

     
Joe was drawn to the bed, wordless. The nurse glided out.

     
"Decided to... let the Huns have it." Theo's eyes were strangely glazed. "Wasn't sure I'd have... guts...."

     
"Take it easy."

     
"Maybe I deserved to lose it. Fools like me led... thousands... to be slaughtered. None of us trained, really. Not like the West Point fellows. Blundering sometimes...."

     
"Someone had to do it. The army needed officers. It took men it knew were used to managing and making decisions and giving orders. Anyway, those men at Concord weren't trained either. Just farmers, doing the best they could."

     
Theo's unfocused gaze turned toward him in gratitude. Joe didn't know whether fever or drugs were loosening the other man's tongue, but he could feel Theo's torment.

     
"I dream," he said thickly. "About the masks. Insects."

     
Joe understood. His first weeks home, he too had wakened violently from visions of men in the gas masks they'd been issued. One night, sitting around the kitchen table, his uncles had gotten him properly drunk. Irene had objected, one of the few times he'd ever heard her. "It'll do him good," Vic had told her. Had he talked then? Purged himself in his uncles' rough company as this man in the bed hadn't been able to?

     
"You won't now the leg's gone," Joe said, implanting the hope. He didn't know what to do and he felt awkward.

     
Theo's eyelids drooped. Joe supposed he was sleeping and started to turn.

     
"Will you sit for a bit?" asked the voice from the bed.

     
Joe hesitated. "Sure," he said at last. Hoping Rita would understand.

     
She didn't.

     
It was half-past nine and he was two hours late when he knocked at her door. He found her in Finnegan's drinking a near-beer with Iggy Viela.

     
"You lose your watch?" she asked shortly.

     
"Rita, I'm sorry."

     
"Sure you are. Well, I found better company."

     
Joe felt like a fool standing there by the table where she sat with Iggy. To the crowd in Finnegan's, this was better than a picture show. He knew he was in the wrong. Once upon a time he would have turned on his charm, flashed his dimples, edged Iggy out. Tonight he didn't feel like that.

     
"Look," he said to Iggy, who was a good deal shorter than he and drove a delivery truck. "I owe an apology here. Would you give us a minute?"

     
Iggy wasn't pleased, but he wasn't going to fight either. "If you want to go somewhere else for a while, have a drink, dance a little, we could," he told Rita.

     
She rewarded him with a smile. "Thanks, Iggy. Maybe I will if he doesn't start treating me better."

     
Nice as it was, everybody could see that it was a brush-off. Somewhat guiltily Joe experienced a puff of pride. It was him alone Rita was interested in, and she was letting everyone know. But her gaze poured over him like boiling tar as he sat down.

     
"You don't care about me; don't give me any more thought than a mug of Finnegan's beer —"

     
"Rita, that's not true."

     
"It is!"

     
"This fellow I know's in the hospital. Had his leg that got shot up in France amputated today. I didn't know 'til I got there. He asked me to sit with him."

     
"Honest?" Her anger wavered.

     
"Honest."

     
She toyed with the rim of her glass. "I guess it's okay then."

     
Joe wanted to tell her about it, but knew she'd look at him the way she did sometimes when she had no idea what he was talking about. He felt unaccountably weary.

     
"You want something to drink?" she asked. But Finnegan, having judged the waters smooth, was already on his way with beer and a shot and a boiled egg.

     
"We've been going out for almost a year now," Rita said when he'd downed the shot and they'd sat in silence.

     
"Yeah." Joe reached across the table and took her hand. "I've been thinking about that."

     
"Have you?" Her relief was evident.

     
If he paid more attention to Rita, maybe he'd spend less time thinking of Kate. He and Rita got on okay.

     
"I was thinking... how about coming with me to hear the band on the Common next Saturday?"

     
The smile that had started to curve her lips faded. "Don't you always take those old aunts of yours?"

     
"Sure. They won't mind. They'll like meeting you."

     
Rita wrinkled her nose. "That music they play on the Common is for old people."

     
"Nothing old about it." Whistling ‘Maple Leaf Rag’ Joe caught her other hand and rocked her back and forth as if they were dancing. Rita pulled away.

     
"Some other time, maybe. There's a dance at my cousin's parish over in Lynn. Maybe I'll go to that."

***

     
With final exams looming, Kate was pressed into service for tutoring on Wednesday. She called the settlement house to say she wouldn't be in.

     
"Why don't you drop me off and drive yourself home when you're finished?" she suggested to Rosalie as they got the car out. "It's time you tried it alone."

     
Rosalie looked uncertain. "Kate, I'm not sure I'm ready—"

     
"You are. And you're always done long before I am." Kate got into the passenger seat, and Rosalie with a look of determination took the wheel. She'd park blocks from the dry goods shop to find what she deemed an adequate space, but her driving skills were good enough now that Kate knew she'd have no problem.

     
Kate's students, struggling to grasp science concepts they'd missed in the classroom, were more attentive than usual that afternoon. Impending grades and the thought of parental scoldings were great motivators. Regular classes were done for the day and the building was silent except for the voice of a French tutor droning irregular conjugations at the opposite end of the hall. When the front door to the building slammed, Kate's three girls looked up. There were running steps. Aggie burst in.

     
"Kate, you must come!" she gasped breathlessly.

     
Kate bristled. Aggie hadn't spoken to her for more than a week, not since returning from New York and learning Theo's leg had been amputated. She was absolutely convinced Kate had known of his plans and kept them secret.

     
"Aggie, if you'll wait—"

     
"Come on!"
Aggie caught her arm and dragged her forcefully into the hall. "Rosalie's been arrested!"

     
"What?"

     
"For delivering bootleg! Thank God we finally got a phone in the shop — and thank God I answered instead of Mama! Kate, she's in
jail
."

     
Her students forgotten, Kate raced down the front steps with Aggie. Her sister's report made no sense, but Kate felt a thundering fear that Rosalie was somehow bearing a blame that by rights should be hers.

     
"Theo swears you didn't know what he was planning to do," Aggie said as the waiting taxi they entered left the curb. Two tears pooled in her eyes and fell unchecked. "I guess I ought to apologize. It's just that I'm so awfully jealous of you."

     
Kate heard in surprise. "Of me? Why?"

     
"He asked you to marry him. I adore him, you know. At first it was just flirting, like you accused me. Only it wasn't, really. I think — I
know
— he loves me, but I hate knowing I'm second choice."

     
"Don't be stupid, Ag. He was no more in love with me than you were in love with Felix."

     
Kate's blunt analogy had the desired effect. Aggie blinked and sat locked in thought for the better part of two blocks. They were nearing the Common and Hawthorne Boulevard. All at once she began to talk, telling Kate about a night she'd spent in jail and Theo bailing her out.

     
"You'd better stop for money first," she cautioned. "I only have two dollars on me. I expect they'll want at least twenty."

     
But it turned out money alone wasn't enough to free Rosalie

     
"She's charged with a serious crime," a gaunt policeman at the front desk told them. "She's got to go before a judge. Not long to wait, though. Four o'clock."

     
"May we at least see her?"