The year She Fell (22 page)
“You’ll wear it out. I know. Or it’ll break.”
“Or it will stop being special.”
He reached out and put his hand on the rock face. “Maybe that won’t happen.”
Now we were speaking in hushed tones, and I realized that he too had locked away the memory in some secret box somewhere, to keep it safe. “Maybe not.”
“What do you remember? About that time in
Tennessee
?”
I reached out too and touched the rock. It was warm from the sun, and smooth from a million years of erosion. I couldn’t imagine how Cathy had climbed it. “Not very much, after my mother found our phone number, at least. I remember after she called, we had to move to hide from her. I remember they wouldn’t give us back our security deposit, and we went to that cheap motel. Then I got sick.” I managed a smile. “I always think of it as the
Tennessee
disease. I got it in
Tennessee
. And in that Tennessee Williams play, the girl gets it. Her name was Laura too. And she said it was an old-fashioned disease. Pleurosis. Only she called it blue roses.” It turned into pneumonia, both lungs, and
Jackson
took me to the hospital. I was afraid they’d find my mother, or she’d find me, and I determined to get out of bed the next morning and find my way back to
Jackson
.
I never got the chance.
Jackson
disappeared, and Mother appeared.
“I remember the hospital,” I said. “But I don’t remember much after that.”
“I do.”
“Tell me,” I said.
“It was a mess.”
Jackson
traced a finger down a vein in the granite face. “I was going crazy worrying about you. You got so sick so fast. And I knew they wouldn’t let you stay in that hospital long without insurance. So that night, I did something stupid—broke into a drugstore, looking for medicine. I got caught, naturally. But the cop—I told him that whatever he had to do was okay, but could he make sure my wife got home, because she was sick and someone had to take care of her if I couldn’t.”
He looked away. “I guess Wade thought that was touching, you know, a young delinquent like me having a wife, and so he promised he would, and I guess—well, you’d know better than I do what happened.”
“I remember. He met me at the hospital, and called my mother, and she came down. He was kind.”
“Yeah. He came by the juvie center a couple days later and told me you were back with your mother, and that she was going to get you better, and fix everything. And I guess she did. The annulment and all.”
“I—I didn’t think I had a choice. I knew you’d gotten into some trouble. Mother never said anything, but I thought—you know. That she could make it worse for you somehow. Get you tried as adult, maybe. So I went along with the annulment. Did that hurt you?” I whispered.
“Nah. It was the right thing. I was up for eighteen months, you know, and I knew you were really sick and I wasn’t going to be able to take care of you, and it all seemed so . . . broken by then. I thought I’d messed up your life enough, and I guess I was relieved that you weren’t going to be dragged down with me.”
“I—I wasn’t strong enough, you know. I was so sick, and I thought the same thing, that you didn’t need me to worry about. It was months before I recovered, and I wouldn’t have been anything but trouble for you.”
“I know. I always knew it. I never blamed you.” He smiled. “Wade kind of took an interest in me after that. He came out once and said you’d called him and that you were better and I wasn’t to worry anymore. “
I pawed at my face. Tears. I hadn’t cried, except at the movies, for years. But then, I hadn’t thought of those
-year-olds in years. “He told me you were in school. I knew he meant the juvenile prison farm. I didn’t know what had happened, but I wanted you to know you didn’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“I—you know. It kind of overwhelmed me, to hear you were better, and that you’d thought to call him, and that—And so I broke down some, which was sort of embarrassing, but he understood. He and his wife applied to have me come stay with them a couple weekends. And then, when I turned eighteen, I got out. And he helped me get the record expunged so I could join the
Bristol
force.” After a minute, he added, “He’s the one I wanted for chief, who got forced to retire instead. “
“He was kind to us. He didn’t have to be.”
“Yeah. Christ. Can you believe how young we were? And we got married. It was crazy.”
“It was romantic. Daring.”
“Just like in the movies.” He glanced at his watch, and turned back to the car. “Look, I got to get back to town. They’re dedicating the new police building this weekend, and we got a lot of boxes to move first.”
I was both disappointed and relieved that our interlude was over. Once back in the car, I said, “Oh, yes. I heard you made extortionate demands to the town board. Chargers as squad cars, a new building.”
“We needed one. The old building never had a lockup. They just put a cell in the old house the police chief used to live in. And that’s cruel and unusual punishment, to be locked up in somebody’s basement.”
I caught his grin and realized he knew this from experience. “So do you live out there in the house over the lockup?”
“No way. It’s over on 21, halfway out of town, and falling apart. Besides, the last chief, he used to store the heroin in the garage. I was worried if I lived there, a packet he left behind would show up, and they’d figure I was in on the business too.” He turned back onto
Main Street
and shot me a glance. “And it was no sort of house for a kid, anyway.”
I felt a pain in my chest, a sudden seizing. Stupid, I told myself. Stop it. Nothing showed in my voice, however. “I know what you mean. A child could get locked into the cell. Especially if there was more than one child. A few times I would have liked to lock my sisters behind bars.” The barest pause, as I gathered my composure. “Do you have just the one?”
“Yeah. Carrie. She’s twelve.”
Twelve. So he probably waited years before he married again. That at least was some comfort. “Is she going to be at the dedication?”
“No. She lives with her mother back in
Bristol
. We got divorced last year, before I took this job.”
The seizing in my chest stopped as suddenly as it started. I shouldn’t care. It wasn’t like anything would happen between us. I didn’t want anything to happen between us. I wanted something to happen with the architect back in
Long Island
, that good-looking and sensitive artistic guy. He would be just right for me, I knew it, just the right sort of man for me—if I could bring myself to touch him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
We parted at the garage,
Jackson
speeding off in his squad car, I following at a more tentative pace, unwilling to push the Porsche’s goodwill. I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a packing box and a roll of strapping tape. Then I returned to the ugly old house, retreated to my room, packed up my father’s watercolors, and addressed the box to Grady, the architect in Southhampton. Just in case—just in case.
On the way to the post office, I called Grady on my cell phone to let him know the package would be arriving, and that I’d like the pictures arrayed on the walls of my new breakfast nook. He accepted this without demur, though I wondered if he’d be so tolerant when he saw the dinosaurs. The construction was going well, he assured me. “I miss—” and then, quickly, he added, “I miss your insights on the design. The contractor—well, he just follows directions.”
“A good thing in a contractor, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but dull. So will you be returning soon?”
I replied vaguely something about next week, wondering why two relatively experienced adults had reverted to a junior high school way of relating. He could just ask me out for a date, after all—or, for that matter, this being a new millennium, I supposed I could ask him out. But instead we traded innocuous comments that we meant to be heavy with significance, and neither of us took the risk of direct speech. When I got back, I promised myself, I’d just do it—take him out to dinner, take him dancing, take him to bed . . .
My chest tightened. I wasn’t ready. I just . . . wasn’t ready.
It wasn’t Grady’s fault. An intuitive man, he wouldn’t press me if I resisted.
I needed to know him better, I told myself. That was all. I needed to know him well enough to be absolutely sure that he would be kind and gentle, that he wouldn’t turn into a monster. I had to trust him.
Rationally, I knew he wasn’t a monster. I knew he would be kind to me. But my body didn’t know that. And I needed my body’s cooperation, if I were to resume a normal love life.
That night I crawled into my old bed, and dreamed of making love again—and for the first time in a long time, the dream didn’t become a nightmare. But the man in my dream, the man who took me past my fear, wasn’t Grady, the artistic, sensitive architect. It was Jackson McCain, the bad-boy turned cop.
I woke when the early morning light slid in through my lace curtains, and lay there, my face flushed, remembering the dream. It made some odd sense. I was like a virgin again, frightened by the prospect of sex yet desperate for it. And who better to initiate me than the man who had done it the first time?
By the time we all
met at the attorney’s office, I’d figured Mother out. She was determined to give that college president more than he ever dreamed, and I didn’t see much reason to stop her. It was her money. Well, it was my father’s money, actually, but I supposed I was being sexist. She’d earned it, marrying well and staying respectable all these years, at least as far as everyone knew. And if she wanted one last chance—
I couldn’t blame her.
When Dr. Urich walked into the attorney’s office, I saw the shock in Ellen’s eyes. She couldn’t believe Mother had invited him. And Theresa, in her quiet way, radiated something— disapproval? No, that was Mother’s default radiation. Theresa radiated suspicion. Neither of them could believe that Mother would invite an outsider to this most complicated of family occasions.
But I wasn’t surprised. Mother always did whatever she wanted. Oh, she’d always say she did what she thought was proper, but that was a bit backwards. Whatever she did, she thought was proper . . .
because she was the one doing it. And if Margaret Wakefield decided to take on a younger protégé and groom him up a bit, well, who was to say it wasn’t the entirely appropriate action?
He was acting, of course. I do it for a living, so I recognize it when I see it. His technique was good—a bit understated, self-deprecating, boyishly abashed. Good sincerity. But I saw that slight effort in the gestures, the dimming when she wasn’t looking at him . . . He was acting.
But then I noticed—so was Mother.
Not much. But she was a bit more . . . Mother than usual. Just turning up the heat a fraction.
I leaned back in my chair and watched more closely as Mother sedately outlined her grand plan for our old house. At first I thought she was doing this to rebuke us, to punish her ungrateful daughters. But no. She wasn’t playing to us. She had an audience of one—Dr. Urich. He was the one she was trying to persuade.