William H. Hallahan - (28 page)

"Do you, Trevor?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you have the discipline?"

He nodded. "Discipline I've got. It takes the same attributes
to win boat races. Thank you."

She began to protest again. "Annie," he said. "You
take that little bauble and keep it. I promise you there are no
strings attached and it's little enough for what you did for me."
He smiled at her. "I think you're a smashing girl."

She kept waiting for the frontal assault, dreading it, feeling
more and more guilty about Brendan. But the assault didn't come. He
was always delighted to see her; sometimes he would hold her hand
crossing a street. But he never made overtures. It seemed as though
he too was weighing their situation, unsure what to do next.

There were times when she wanted to cradle his head in her arms
again as on the night of the regatta in Newport. He was so gentle and
warm it was hard not to move closer to him. Still she held back.

"He's gaga about you, kid," Jackie said in his Humphrey
Bogart impersonation. "You could take him home like a Kewpie
doll. Under one arm."

She nodded and turned her face away.

"Annie." Jackie turned her face back to him with a
finger. "I can't give you any advice but Maeve swears Brendan
will never be back. You have to decide for yourself but I think the
odds are against seeing him again."

"I miss him so much it hurts. Twenty-four hours a day."

"You can say that for both of us."

That night Trevor asked her, "Do you like me a little bit,
Anne?"

In reply she had Trevor come to her apartment. "I want to
tell you about someone," she began.

Trevor nodded. "I know, Brendan Davitt. Everyone raves about
him. It's all very confusing, isn't it?" He watched her nod.
"Well, I'm not good at fighting ghosts or memories. I like you a
lot. We could build something solid on that. But maybe--well, suppose
I back off for a while. Give it a rest And we'll see. Okay?" He
stood up. "I envy him."

He left and Anne knew he wouldn't be back. His campaign had ended.

She went to church and she prayed. She would willingly live in a
cellar with rats with Brendan. But if it was true, if he was never
coming back, she would waste her life pining. Aunt Maeve had given
her the best advice: Get on with it. Live your life. Anne didn't know
what to do.

She wrote a letter to Brendan. She told him how lonely she was,
how much she loved him, how much she missed him.

And she told him about Trevor. She knew what Brendan would say;
she could hear him say it. "Go for him, Annie. Make a life for
yourself."

Each evening thereafter she wrote to Brendan and each morning she
destroyed the letter. But each letter seemed to help her settle
things in her mind.

She honestly missed Trevor. She was deeply fond of him, she
admitted. He was a wonderful, gentle and witty man, the catch of a
lifetime, and unwittingly, she realized, she had been handling him
just right. The slightest move toward him would have scared him off.
Wealthy young men are very skittish.

She called him. He came right over. He almost jumped up and down
like a boy, he was so delighted. He spent the whole evening with her.
He even told her his deepest secret: where he got the name
Hirondelle
for his ketch.

"Trivia question: What was the name of the stagecoach that
Madame Bovary--Emma--took to Rouen for her assignations?"

"Hirondelle?"

"Right! And do you know what
hirondelle
means?"

"No."

"The swallow. I never told that to anyone else."

She took his hand. "Go slow. Okay?"
 
 

She and Trevor went to the movies one night. He took her hand as
they crossed a street on the way back to her apartment and she
continued to hold it, led him up the stairs and into her apartment.

"I love you, Anne," he said.

"Oh, please, Trevor."

He held up his hands. "It's okay. I'm sorry. I have to go."
And he fled. She heard his step on the hall carpeting, then on the
stairway. She quickly pulled open the door.

"Trevor," she called down the stairwell. "I'm
sorry. Don't go."

When he came back she kissed him. "I don't deserve you,
Trevor."

"Annie, I'll marry you right here, right now."

She didn't sleep, of course. Trevor was a fabulous catch. Every
woman in New York who met him wanted him. Some never looked beyond
the money; others saw the charming reticent man
and
the money.
Anne knew he was a marvelous person even without the money but she
also knew he wasn't as strong as she was. Few women could resist
Little Boy Lost. She wondered if it would be more of an adoption than
a marriage.

And Brendan's memory tormented her. She remembered the day on the
beach when she was finishing the gown for the angel and he wanted to
touch it with his dirty hand. "All of Ireland is washed by the
Gulf Stream," he said. And she had sat and watched the wind turn
his hair and felt such great adolescent love for him it was like a
sob in her throat. She yearned to hold him. Was his face going to
haunt her forever? She could reach out with her eyes wide open and
touch all his features. He'd poured himself out like a bottomless
vessel for others.
 
 

She developed a compulsion: She believed that if she kept watch
faithfully enough, she could make Brendan come back. Vigilance would
draw him to her. So at all hours night and day, when she was home,
she would go constantly to the window, push aside the curtain and
look down at the street. And each time, she half believed she would
see him smiling up at her.

One day it rained. A winter rain that filled down the windowpanes
of the photographic studio. It was suddenly true for hen She got the
blues when it rained. She wanted to call Brendan in his office and go
have coffee with him and hold his hand. She firmly refused to look at
the rain on the window.

She had an advertising shot to take: four children ages three and
four, for a toddler's clothing advertisement in color. "Children's
Clothes for People Who Can't Resist Children's Clothes," the
headline on the ad layout said. With it was the artist's sketch of
four children to show the photographer what was wanted. The catalog
number of each item of clothing was written on the margin with an
arrow.

The wardrobe lady from the ad agency had dressed the four
children, who stood about feeling special as if in Sunday dress-up.
The four mothers hovered. This was show biz. Possibly a major break
for the child. . .and a life of fame and riches before the camera.
The wardrobe lady herded the four children to the set, a plastic
garden with plastic lattice and plastic roses and a seamless white
infinity background. They walked awkwardly together onto the set,
like four victims, their mothers' shooing voices hissing behind them.

"Jeffrey! Keep your head up!"

"Allison. Remember your promise to Mommy."

Annie looked through her camera lens and looked at the lights.
Then her assistant, a young woman who clearly thought she could take
a better picture, moved two lights unbidden.

"Put them back," Anne said. "We have to set the
children in position first."

With an exasperated sigh the assistant put them back, too far
back. Anne kicked off her shoes and walked on the set. On her knees
she began to arrange the children. She smiled at them and said
Serious Things that made them giggle. With outstretched arms she
moved them all a few inches to the right.

One stumbled and in a moment she had her arms full of laughing
children. She stood up. She'd promised herself not to look at the
rain on the windows but she did.

When she looked through the camera lens
at the children it seemed as though rain was running down the lens
too.

The three monks--Vincent, Beaupré and Zen--had left their meeting
with Brendan, vowing to perform another incantation to return the
creature to hell, if that's where it had come from.

Brendan heard no more from them. And the creature seemed to
disappear. Several weeks passed. Brendan wondered if the creature had
entered some kind of cocoon where it could evolve into a new, higher
state of malevolence.

"What have you done?" he asked Vincent one morning.

"We're working on it. Patience."

The man who delivered the food supplies to the monastery arrived
the next morning. It was February and the weather was so bitter he
actually drove his van across the ice to the island. He was short and
stubby with strong arms and a graying beard. He arrived talking.

He talked about the town of Milford, where the state institution
for the criminally insane is located. The residents for years had
been trying to get the state to move it. The buildings were old and
overcrowded and there had been an uncomfortably large number of
escapes in recent years.

Anyway--the creature had struck again. This time he had thrown
open the gates of the prison, killed four guards by twisting their
necks, and led the inmates into the town, which they proceeded to
sack and set ablaze. They looted a jewelry store, had a bun-throwing
war with the contents of a bake shop, festooned the shopping district
with bolts of cloth from a fabric store, then broke into a gun shop.

The creature had worn a crown made of gold chains and wristwatches
and a cape made from the satin cloth taken from the jeweler's display
cases. It had sat on an elevated shoeshine chair in the midst of the
mayhem and flames and tittered while the inmates had formed a merry
daisy chain around it.

A small army of state police plus the combined police forces of
nine nearby communities joined to cope with the shooting inmates
before the fire engines drawn from as far away as forty miles could
fight the fires. The whole downtown of the historic village was
burned to the ground, including seven historically certified
buildings. Fifteen people were dead, dozens injured and maimed.

The creature just disappeared. No one saw it leave. No one even
got a photograph of it.

By the time the deliveryman finished his story, all eight monks
were in Brother Beaupré's kitchen, listening solemnly. Brendan
looked at Vincent and Beaupré and Zen. "I wonder what that
creature will do when it discovers hydrogen bombs and biological
warfare," he said.
 
 

There had been an early March thaw. For three days a wind blew out
of the southwest and turned the lake surface to slush. Brother Zen
was out in his snow-filled garden with knee-high boots, checking the
earth. Inside the greenhouse he had things going like a beehive. Four
monks were helping him now, setting out seeds in large pots and
trays. By midafternoon each day when the sky was clear, the sun,
rising higher in the northern sky, poured heat into the greenhouse.
Winter was dying. And Brendan sensed it was a matter of time before
he would be outside spending his days in the garden, increasing his
visibility. And his danger.

It had been three months since Brendan had fled from New York
City. When he was a little boy, he'd cried once so long and hard that
his throat ached and he felt empty. That was the way he now felt, day
after day. An ache in his throat. His thoughts more and more fixed on
Anne. He found himself in the midst of a task, cleaning the kitchen
or mopping a floor, and he'd be there in midstride, lost in thought,
remembering some moment in his life with Anne in all its vivid
detail. He could say her name softly to himself and feel his face
flush.

How could he spend his life in mere safety? The price was too high
just to be allowed to draw breath. She'd said she'd take two weeks of
life with him. And now he felt that was an abundance of time
together.

One evening during a nightly conversation, Brother Luke talked
about the nowness of life. "You can't defer life by trying to
live in the future. Today's the day you have to live. It's the
nowness of life you have to accept."

If Brendan accepted that thought completely, he could go to the
city and spend this day with Anne. Just this one day. It seemed an
incredible stretch of time to be with her.

After sacking the town of Milford the creature had become quiet
again. And Brendan wondered what staggering act it was incubating.
Each day he watched Brothers Vincent and Zen and Beaupré go through
their chores, and each night he saw them take to their beds without
having taken any action.

One day Brendan was working inside the greenhouse, planting tomato
seeds in starter trays. The sun had grown so strong Brother Zen had
to open a number of windows to let the heat out. Snowmelt dripped
rhythmically everywhere. As he worked, Brendan watched Brother Zen in
the vineyard, checking the vines and removing some of the heavy
tar-paper wrappings. The monk was working down near the corner of the
wall where the creature had disappeared several times. Brendan
wondered if it could see him now--see his purple aura.

A moment later, Vincent came out from the kitchen with a chair and
sat himself down in the sun to read a newspaper. He began to smile
and he called into the kitchen and read a short item aloud, then
emitted a short sharp baritone laugh.

Brendan straightened up and shoved his trowel into the mound of
dark earth. Deliberately he walked into the monastery and down the
corridor to the library.

He patiently searched the shelves until he found it--Paxton's
Demonology. Then he drew it down. When he came to brother Vincent, he
gripped the man by the elbow and led him around the corner of the
building out of sight of other eyes. He slammed the book against
Vincent's chest. "Tonight," he said, and walked away.
 
 

That night at eight the evening session was disjointed. They were
all preoccupied. A new headman had to be chosen; two months had
passed. A deep undercurrent of competition had appeared in the
monastery among the eight monks.