“Yah? Well, I don’t do much talking.”
“That’s okay. This is great! I just like being here. Being with you! We don’t need labels or names for anything, I mean, for us, for what this is.” She put her hand on his arm. “I like you. I like you an awful lot. And all I want is for you to like me.”
With his head half turned, he looked at her hand still touching his arm. His chest rose and fell with deep, labored breath. “You better go now,” he said with a sudden yank of the string that turned off the overhead light.
They were driving down Chestnut Street in Patrick’s station wagon. When she started her car the engine had stalled and she had to go back inside his house. That happened sometimes, she explained, but if he didn’t mind she’d just wait and try it again.
“No, it might take too long,” Patrick had said, making no effort to hide the fact that he wanted her out of there. He said he’d bring her car by later if he got it going. She was almost home. Her mind raced with all the things she wanted to know.
“So how old were you when you went to Vietnam?” She held her breath.
“Nineteen. Twenty when I came back.”
“God, that’s so young! Were you scared?”
“I was too stoned to be scared.”
“You were a hero though. You got a Silver Star, right?”
“Right,” he said with a bitter snort.
“Well you deserved it. I mean you were so badly—”
“Screwed,” he interrupted. “That’s where this came from.” He touched the scar. “Somebody made a mistake, that’s all.” He glanced at her. “So drop it, will you?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “I guess a lot of veterans don’t like to talk about it.”
“Because there’s nothing to talk about.”
“There must be. And I’m interested. I am. Really.”
“Well don’t be,” he growled with a glance so sharp it stirred the air between them. “It’s like going to the bathroom. Everybody knows why you went in, so when you come out, who needs details?”
She tried to laugh. “Well, me! Or anyone else who wasn’t there.”
“Why? You like to puke? You want to taste it and smell it like it’s on you all the time? I don’t think so,” he said in a childish, singsong tone.
They were almost at the bottom of the hill. To beat the yellow caution light at the intersection, he accelerated and turned the corner on screeching wheels. Just then two teenage boys darted between parked cars into the street.
“Look out!” she yelled as he hit the horn and jammed on the brakes. Laughing nervously, the boys scrambled back to the sidewalk into the startled pack of teenagers milling in front of the drugstore. Patrick rolled down his window. “Stupid shits,” he muttered, glaring at them.
“Hey, Patrick, slow down!” one called out.
“Yah, Patrick, Jesus, what’s the big rush?” another called.
There was a high, piercing whistle and then a flurry of young male voices. “Hey, who’s that?”
“That your girl?”
“Not bad, Patrick.”
“Way to go, Patrick!”
“Hey I know her that’s Fiona Range! Fiona hey Fiona!” bellowed a deeper voice.
“Fee-yona! Fee-yona!” the boys began to howl. “Fee-yona!”
With that he opened the door and stepped out. He stood in the middle of the street facing them, his hands on his hips. Two cars had come around the corner and idled behind them. “You want to talk? I can’t hear you too good. Come here. Come here,” he urged, gesturing.
They bunched closer as he advanced on them. They stared with the same horror Fiona felt. He was only making things worse. Cars inched by, the drivers glancing between Fiona and the scene on the sidewalk. Patrick seized the arm of the tallest, heftiest boy, and said something. The boy cringed and shook his head miserably. Groaning, Fiona slid low and covered her eyes.
“Leave him alone, will you?” a girl yelled.
“Jesus, it’s just Larry,” another yelled.
Turning, Fiona realized it was Larry Belleau in his blue-and-gold satin football jacket.
With the two girls yipping like small dogs at his heels, Patrick released Larry’s arm with a disgusted flip of his hand. As he walked back to the car Fiona could see them all struggling not to laugh. Only Larry still looked troubled.
He got into the car and shifted into gear. “Little assholes,” he grunted as they drove past. She looked back and saw them stagger into one another with hysterical laughter.
“No respect, that’s the thing. That’s what the trouble is.” He looked at her, and she nodded uneasily.
“They were just fooling around, that’s all.” She watched him from the corner of her eye. “And Larry, he didn’t mean anything. He’s harmless.”
“Yah, harmless as a frigging moose.” He laughed. “And you know what you do when you gotta get a moose off the streets?” He raised both arms and squinted as if aiming a rifle over the wheel. “Pow, pow!”
The hair on her arms stood on end. “Poor Larry,” she said.
“Poor Larry is right,” he said through clenched teeth. “They never should’ve pulled him out. What the hell kind of favor was that?”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Nothing’s ever anybody’s fault, is it?” he said so angrily that she stared ahead and didn’t say anything. He turned the corner, then looked over at her. “Were you and him friends or something?”
She nodded. “In high school.”
“Yah, you used to be tooling around with Pretty-boy Prescott all the time.”
She tried not show her joy with the realization he had been watching, keeping track of her all through the years.
“You and him still—”
“No!” she said quickly. “God, no.”
“What about Grimshaw? How’s he figure in this?” he asked.
She squirmed with the disgust in his voice. In this? In what? In this mess that was her life? Would he be asking next about Brad Glidden? “George is an old friend, that’s all,” she said, adding that he and her cousin Elizabeth had dated for years.
He didn’t say anything, his silence as abrupt as the turn onto her street.
“How old were you and my mother when you first started going together?” she asked.
He jerked the wheel and pulled in front of her building. “I told you,” he growled through clenched teeth. “You want to know about things like that you go ask somebody else.”
“I’m sorry. I—”
“You go ask them. Ask your aunt and uncle; they’ll tell you. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
“I’m sorry. Really, I am.”
“Look,” he said, both hands gripping the wheel as he seemed to pull himself, almost rocking back and forth, over it. “I gotta go. I just gotta go. I don’t want to hear any more.”
“Okay,” she said, then told him not to worry about getting her car started tonight. She’d walk to work in the morning, then have somebody give her a ride out to his house later so she could get it. She thanked him quickly before closing the door. She paused on her front steps. The relief she felt as he drove down the street was like watching a violent electrical storm move on. One thing was clear. She would have to be more patient. There could be no mention of Natalie. Friendship would have to be enough. At least for now. It was better than nothing, better than being ignored, better than the hurt and humiliation of being cut cold all these years.
“Hey, Fiona!”
She turned to see a tall thin man running toward her. He wore a torn, baggy sweatshirt, and the brim of a baseball cap shadowed his face under the streetlight. “It’s me, Rudy,” he said, clicking off his watch. Sweat poured down his temples. He asked what she’d been up to.
“Up to?” She laughed. “You mean as in no good?”
“No, just that. As in what’ve you been doing since the last time I saw you?”
“Not much,” she said; working, getting over a cold.
He gestured down the street. “Was that George Grimshaw?”
“No, that was Patrick Grady,” she said, disappointed when his expression did not change. Surely Elizabeth had filled him in on all the nasty details of the family scandal. “My car died in his driveway so he gave me a ride home.” She couldn’t help smiling, though he seemed to have no idea who this Patrick Grady was.
“Fiona, I need to ask you something.” He kept wiping his brow on his sleeve. “It’s about Elizabeth. I don’t know how to say this, but you know that morning? Well ever since then . . .” He held up his hands in exasperation. “I don’t know, I feel like I did something wrong. I mean, really, really wrong, but I don’t know what. Do you? Has she said anything?”
“Said anything!” She gave a bitter laugh. “I haven’t seen her since then, but I think you’re right. She is upset, but not with you. It’s me.” She told him she would call Elizabeth tonight and one way or another set things straight between them.
“I better get going.” He seemed pleased, and yet she had the odd sensation of being the subject of an intense, troubled scrutiny. “Hey, I just thought. How about a run? I’ll loop around the block while you get ready.”
“I can’t.”
“Can’t? What do you mean, can’t?”
“I don’t have any running stuff.”
“Running stuff? All you need are some old clothes and sneakers.”
“That’s what I don’t have. Sneakers,” she lied, irritated with his persistence.
Looking down, he asked what size she was. Seven? The same as Elizabeth? She was an eight, she said. He was disappointed. Elizabeth had left her sneakers at his apartment, and if they wore the same size he would’ve gone and gotten them, he said, so eagerly that she laughed.
“Boy, you must really be hard up for a running partner then.”
“Yah, well, actually I am,” he said, clicking his watch back on as he jogged a few steps backwards.
“Well, thanks!” she called after him. “Thanks for asking me. Thanks a lot.”
“Get yourself some sneakers, so next time you can come!”
“Maybe I will!”
“Hey, what street does George Grimshaw live on?”
“Elm Street.”
“What number?”
“I don’t know,” she called. “But it’s a little blue house with white shutters.” Now that would be interesting, Rudy and George as running mates, she thought as she headed up the steps. She was inside her apartment when she realized that Rudy didn’t want to run with George. He wanted to run by George’s house to see if Elizabeth was there. That’s why he had asked her to come, so she could point out George’s house. He had probably run by her building any number of times tonight looking for her car, waiting for her to come home.
Was Elizabeth spending her free time with George instead of Rudy? She picked up the phone and called home, relieved when Elizabeth answered and not her uncle. She explained that she’d just seen Rudy out running, and she thought maybe Elizabeth might feel like doing something with her. Girls’ night out, maybe go to a movie or rent a video. Elizabeth yawned and said she’d actually been on her way to bed. It had been a crazy week. Tomorrow night then, Fiona said. They’d have dinner together. Elizabeth didn’t know if she could. There might be a meeting—
“Come on Lizzie, this is ridiculous,” Fiona interrupted. “We have to talk. You know we do.”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked, breathless with dread.
Fiona paused. “The wedding, Lizzie! It’s not that far off,” she said, smiling when she heard Elizabeth’s relieved voice agreeing, yes, it wasn’t that far off now, was it; they’d have to get together soon, real soon.
“Tomorrow night,” Fiona said.
The next morning she almost cried when she looked out the window and saw her car down in the parking lot. The note on her windshield said he’d put her key in the mail slot. A heady warmth rushed through her. Her father hadn’t wanted her to have to walk to work.
They met at Verzanno’s again for dinner. The waitress had taken their orders, and now Fiona waited impatiently for the conclusion of Elizabeth’s detailed story about two of her first-grade students, twins who lived on a tiny, run-down farm with their grandfather. An old man, he did the best he could, but the girls usually came to school in the same soiled clothes. Last summer when their long curly hair got too snarled to comb he decided the simplest thing to do would be to start over, and so he had shaved their heads.
“Their hair’s finally starting to grow, but they still look like shivery little goslings,” Elizabeth said in a little-girl tone.
Fiona hunched on the edge of the chair with a forced smile. She had intended to talk about that morning with George as soon as they sat down, but Elizabeth wasn’t giving her the chance. This bubbly chatter people found so sweetly guileless had always been Elizabeth’s bell jar, the glass fortress that kept her irreproachable and safe.
The twins were always being pointed out and stared at, Elizabeth continued, her exaggerated pout suddenly more clownish than endearing. During the first weeks of school they would only speak to each other, but that was changing now, thank goodness. Elizabeth was picking them up for school every morning. She had bought them a few nice outfits, and Aunt Arlene was knitting them both sweaters.
“They’re just the sweetest little girls. They get so excited with the least little thing you do for them. Daddy’s been dying to meet them, so the other night we took them to Friendly’s for sundaes. Every time Daddy said anything to them, they’d look at each other and giggle. Well, you know Daddy. He just melted. Now he wants to get them both bikes and new winter jackets.”
Typical, Fiona thought. The dear, saintly Judge who had refused to help his own niece couldn’t do enough for two little ragamuffins.
“Lizzie,” she said quickly. “Not to change the subject, but . . .”
“I know, I know, the wedding. Mother called you, didn’t she?”
“No!”
“She’s a wreck because nothing’s been done, but every time I even think about it my heart starts pounding. I don’t know why things like that get me so worked up. Mother wants me to get a prescription like I had for Ginny’s, but I told her, I said, what am I going to do, be on medication for the whole next year?”
“It’s less than a year, isn’t it? Next September, right?” Fiona asked.
“Oh God, yes. It is!” She closed her eyes and shuddered. “Oh, I don’t know, it just all seems so crazy, all this commotion, and for what? I mean, when you think about it, it’s just one event! One day! That’s not the point, Mother keeps saying. I shouldn’t look at it that way. It’s not just some event, but my wedding, she says, and then I start feeling like I can’t breathe.”
“Lizzie!” Fiona reached for her hand.
“I won’t even tell you how many people they want to invite. And then I think of the expense, I mean, all that money. And even though I know Daddy’s—”
She stopped abruptly and sat back as the waitress arrived. Her pale cheeks were so suddenly red they looked stained and unnatural. Her eyes followed the wineglass’s descent to the table.
“Lizzie,” Fiona began the minute waitress turned away.
“But wait, let me just finish,” Elizabeth said, the rim at her mouth. She took a quick sip, then smiled. “I can tell the way you’re looking at me, I must sound like such a neurotic, but at least you’re not all over me like Ginny has been, and God, Susan! She’s made an appointment Saturday at this bridal shop in Concord for the three of us to go look at dresses. I can’t do that! Especially not with Susan. You know what it’ll be like. They’ll flatten me. That’s what they’ll do. They’ll just flatten me! I know they will! I’ll never be able to stand up to them. Oh Fiona, I wish I were more like you, and I could just tell everyone to leave me the hell alone and let me live my own life. That’s all I want. I just want to do things my own way.”
“Then go ahead. Do it, Lizzie. Tell them!�
��
Elizabeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I can’t,” she said in a small, pained voice.
“All right then, I’ll go with you! It’ll be fun! Just the two of us!”
“I don’t know. They’ll be so hurt.” Elizabeth took another sip. “Oh, I don’t know what to do.”
“Lizzie, it’s your wedding. Do whatever the hell you want. And besides, I’m your maid of honor, not Susan.”
“You wouldn’t mind?”
“Mind! No, I’d love to do that with you.”
“What if I don’t see anything I like? What if I hate everything there?”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else. We’ll just keep looking, that’s all.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“But there is one thing, Lizzie. Don’t you think we better get the whole George Grimshaw thing out of the way?”
“What do you mean?” Elizabeth’s cheeks were scarlet.
“What do I mean? Lizzie!”
“Well, I mean, I know what you mean.” She glanced around uneasily. “But I don’t see any point in talking about it and making us both feel . . . well—embarrassed all over again.”
“Embarrassed? Lizzie, I was mad! I wasn’t embarrassed.”
“I was,” Elizabeth said in a low voice.
“No, you weren’t. You were upset.”
Elizabeth looked down, and for a moment the other diners’ voices swelled around them. Somewhere in the distance a telephone was ringing.
“And that’s okay,” Fiona continued. “I mean, after all those years, all that time you and George . . .” Her voice trailed off as Elizabeth’s head shot up.
“Yes, I was upset,” Elizabeth admitted, eyes fast on Fiona’s. “But not in the way you think.”
“What do you mean? What way?”
“Well, it’s me, I’m . . . it’s just such a confusing time right now, that’s all.” She waved her hand back and forth, shaking her head, eyes wide with the dread of tears. It wouldn’t do for Miss Hollis to go to pieces in Verzanno’s. They had been such well-behaved children, never crying in public, squabbling, or, God forbid, talking back to their parents. Taking a deep breath, she forced a grim smile. “I’m so emotional. It’s all this wedding business. The least little thing can set me off. So anyway,” she said, raising her glass with a perky tilt to her head, “let’s just talk about happy things.”
Fiona Range Page 18
