Wasn’t her wedding a happy thing? But watching Elizabeth sip her wine, then move her tortellini into different patterns on the plate, Fiona knew better than to ask. Elizabeth was even thinner now. Her ivory silk blouse lay flat against her chest. Her breasts were practically gone, Fiona realized with a sudden wave of revulsion. She struggled to keep her eyes on her cousin’s delicate face, the flawless white skin gleaming above the candlelight, her pupils so oddly dilated that her large eyes looked flat and vacant.
“Lizzie!” she blurted. “Why don’t you and Rudy just elope?”
“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.” Elizabeth looked shocked.
“Why not?”
“I couldn’t! I just couldn’t, that’s all.”
“All right then, why don’t you two just live together? Just put off the wedding and be together without any pressure, Lizzie. Have some fun! Enjoy each other! I mean, the way it is now, you never see each other. Rudy’s miserable; you’re miserable; what’s the point?”
“Oh look, now I’ve got you all worked up too.” Elizabeth patted Fiona’s hand. “Don’t worry, everything’ll be fine. I just needed to talk, that’s all.”
Now Elizabeth began to tell her about Ginny’s pregnancy, shifting gears as smoothly as ever. In their need to escape the fray, the Hollises were all like that, quick, not to forgive or explain, but to overlook transgressions, their own and everyone else’s. Being considerate was far more important than coming to grips with a problem.
Elizabeth was describing the nursery her mother was decorating for her first grandchild.
“The nursery?” Fiona asked.
“Well, the old sewing room,” Elizabeth said, adding, as if to remind her, that it had been a nursery once when their mothers were babies.
Fiona wondered why no one had ever told her that. But then why would they, when with any mention of Fiona’s mother, Aunt Arlene would interject, “Best not to talk about that right now,” making her mother seem as nasty a subject as distant cousin Hannibal Tooley who’d been arrested for exposing himself to little girls.
“Mother painted the old crib white, and she’s doing these adorable stencils. Green and yellow elephants to go with the mint green carpeting.” Elizabeth said that Ginny had just had an ultrasound, but she and Bob Fay didn’t want to know the baby’s gender.
“God, how can they do that? That’s just so weird!” Fiona said, grateful to finally have a target for all her pent-up irritation with Elizabeth. “Now wouldn’t you and Rudy want to know what your baby was as soon as you could?”
“Well, I don’t know. I mean, I don’t . . . I mean, I haven’t really thought about it,” Elizabeth stammered, her cornered look returning.
“Lizzie,” Fiona said when she was almost finished eating. Her cousin’s plate was still full. “I keep meaning to ask you. How come you left New York and came back home? I thought you loved it there.”
“I don’t know, I guess I just stopped liking it as much. And I missed everyone.” Elizabeth put down her fork. “I wasn’t the same person there as I am here. People don’t want to know you in the city. They just don’t want to be bothered.”
Fiona laughed. “Sounds good to me!”
“It’s all these here-and-now kind of superficial relationships,” Elizabeth said with uncharacteristic bitterness.
“What about Rudy?” She watched the fine lines around her cousin’s eyes deepen. “Did he feel that way too?”
“Oh no. That’s where he grew up. He loves the city. That’s why it took me so long to tell him I was leaving.”
“What do you mean, so long?”
Elizabeth closed her eyes and sighed, wincing as she spoke. “I was all ready to go. I’d given my notice at school. I’d found someone to sublet my apartment, and I even had the new job waiting for me here, but I still hadn’t told him. I just couldn’t. And the longer I waited the worse it got.”
“So when did you tell him?”
“Four days before I left.”
“You’re kidding!”
Elizabeth shook her head with an expression of such utter sadness that Fiona didn’t know what to say. A little procrastination would have been understandable given her cousin’s inability to hurt or even disappoint anyone. But Rudy hadn’t been just anyone. He was her fiancé. They’d just gotten engaged, the first step in their shared life. Or had that been the precise problem? she wondered as Elizabeth touched the corners of her eyes with her napkin. Had the pressure begun to weigh on her then?
“It was awful,” Elizabeth said. “He was so upset. I thought he was going to have a nervous breakdown. He kept trying to talk and he couldn’t. He cried,” she whispered, looking away as if from the still too vivid memory.
“You mean that was the first he knew of it?”
Elizabeth bit her lip and nodded.
“He had no idea?”
Elizabeth shook her head.
“God, Lizzie!” She couldn’t imagine the energy it must have taken to maintain the loving lie. No wonder Elizabeth still seemed so drained and confused. “So what did you do?” she asked softly.
Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I left.” She gave a little gasp, then could not look up. “It’s probably the worst thing I’ve ever done.”
“Yah, I think so,” Fiona agreed. “At least the worst I ever heard you do.”
“He drove here that same night, and the next day he’d gotten himself a job at Memorial, and a room at the Collerton Y.”
“Well, I’d say that was pretty damn ballsy of him. God, I’d be so flattered if any guy ever did something like that for me.”
“But that’s part of the problem. He makes me so nervous. He’s just too impulsive sometimes.”
“Oh, and you weren’t, just taking off like that?”
Elizabeth laughed, but so weakly that Fiona would later recall it as a sigh, a long, sad, hopeless sigh.
It was windy as they walked down the street, arm in arm, kicking their way through drifting leaves. Fiona was conscious of Elizabeth’s bony frame leaning against her. They were singing their old Bubble Gum song, trying to remember the words so Elizabeth could teach it to her students.
Chew, chew, chewie, chew-chew,
And I know how to chew, chew chewie, chew-chew, do you?
“Yes!” Elizabeth shouted, raising her fist now as they made it through the last line without a mistake.
Fiona didn’t know if it was the wine or the relief of finally being able to confide in someone, but Elizabeth was her old affectionate self again. The brisk autumn night was alive with stars, wisps of clouds racing past the yellow crescent moon, and the distant pungency of woodsmoke through the dark.
“Anyway,” she said, clutching Elizabeth’s arm. “Just so you’ll know, the thing with George and me, it’s—”
“That’s okay,” Elizabeth broke in. “There’s no point in beating the thing to death.” She continued walking, and though Fiona was right beside her it felt as if she couldn’t keep up.
“No, but I want you to know. It’s over. We—”
“I know. You don’t have to say it. It was just one of those . . . those situations people find themselves in. You were both lonely, but you’re just two very different people, that’s all.” Elizabeth stopped to face her, smiling sweetly. “And now that’s done, so we don’t have to talk about it anymore. Ever!” She threw her arms around Fiona, who couldn’t help wondering if Elizabeth had not only known all along that it was over, but had coached George in his lines, with herself playing the role of Fiona until he managed to get it right.
Chapter 9
During the night the temperature had dropped below freezing. The minute the door opened the rush began and now every table was taken. It was so warm inside the noisy coffee shop that the plate glass window was dripping with steam. Three parties waited to be seated. Sandy and Fiona hadn’t had a moment to catch their breath. When Maxine wasn’t working the register she was refilling coffee from the pots she brandished in each hand, regular an
d decaf. She had given up any attempts at homey chatter. One side of today’s elaborately plaited hairdo drooped over her ear.
Fiona backed out of the kitchen with four plates of omelets. The front door swung open and Larry Belleau barreled inside past the line of waiting customers. “Fiona!” he shouted, wading heedlessly between the crowded tables. “Fiona I gotta talk to you I gotta tell you something I have to really I do!” he announced, as he trampled one man’s foot, jostled a woman’s arm, spilling her coffee, knocked coats off the rack, now jarring a table as he bent to retrieve them. “Sorry . . . Sorry . . . I didn’t mean to do that . . . excuse me . . . Excuse me,” he said, finally reaching Fiona with the coats slung over his arm. Everyone stopped eating. All heads turned with his turbulent apology. He hadn’t meant anything bad when he’d called out her name the other night. He’d never say anything bad about her. Never. Honest, he wouldn’t. “Honest to God!”
“It’s okay, Larry. I know. I know you wouldn’t,” she said, managing to slide the plates onto the table. With a firm hand on his huge arm she tried steering him toward the door.
“I like you.” He kept looking back. “I like you a lot I always did and you know I do right?”
“And I like you too, Larry, but there aren’t any seats,” she said, moving him along.
“I don’t want a seat I just want to say how nice you always are you’re so nice you always are always!”
“Okay, good. Just keep going and you can tell me how nice I am outside.”
“Yah and I never say bad things about you never!” he said, his voice rising.
“I know you don’t,” she said quietly, already dreading the words his contorted, earnest expression struggled to emit.
“And when you do bad things I never say anything I don’t I don’t really!” he shouted.
“That man’s got my coat!” an elderly woman cried. “He’s got my coat!”
“Oh, Jesus,” Fiona said under her breath, as she tugged away the coats.
“So will you tell Patrick I didn’t say anything bad please please Fiona because next time he said he’s gonna beat the shit outta me.” His hand flew to his mouth. “Sorry.” He winced as he looked around the dining room. “Sorry I said that sorry.”
After he left, she fled into the kitchen. Sandy was behind the bench, telling Chester what had happened. He shook his head and kept chopping celery.
“Poor Larry,” Sandy sighed on her way into the dining room.
After that Chester had little to say, and Maxine barely spoke to her. Lunch was almost as busy as breakfast. By the end of the day they were all exhausted. At three-thirty Sandy’s neighbor across the hall called to say that Todd hadn’t arrived yet to pick up the children. “Something must’ve happened,” Sandy said as she grabbed her jacket. “Todd just wouldn’t forget them like that.”
“Yah, right,” Fiona said, watching her run up the street. “He’s so dependable.”
Maxine slammed the register drawer shut. “Why don’t you just back off, Fiona?”
“What?” Fiona laughed.
“You can’t stand it that they’re happy together, can you?”
“That’s happy?” she asked, pointing toward the street. “Do you have any idea what kind of life she’s going to have?”
“Yes, a very nice one. Probably the best money can buy,” Maxine said.
“That’s disgusting!” she blurted. “That’s so disgusting!”
The two women stared at one another, and it was Fiona who had to look away first.
She was hanging the Closed sign when Patrick Grady tapped on the glass. She opened the door. Her first impulse was to scold him for threatening poor Larry. She changed her mind when she saw how nervous he was. He kept wetting his lips and scratching the back of his neck. She wondered if he had an appointment somewhere. His hair had been cut and he was so freshly shaved that the nick on his chin still bled. He wore green corduroy pants and a red-and-white-striped shirt, dated and tight but a big improvement over his usual dark, seedy clothes. With some of the ragged edges smoothed, it was possible to see what a good-looking man he was in spite of his scars. And how handsome he must have been before them.
“No problem,” he muttered when she thanked him for bringing her car back that night. She said she was disappointed, though, that he hadn’t come in.
“It was late,” he said.
But that would have been all right, she told him. It wouldn’t have mattered.
“I figured you were sleeping. All your lights were out,” he said, and she felt a little weak inside that he would even know which windows were hers. So he was at least curious about her, maybe even interested. Certainly more thoughtful than she’d been.
Until this moment she hadn’t even wondered how’d he’d gotten back home. He must have had someone meet him there. A woman, which was probably why he’d gotten himself all spiffed up like this. He was on his way to see some woman and, illogical and absolutely bizarre as it was, she felt jealous. There’d already been too much time wasted to have to share him with anyone right now. Especially not with some woman who might try to keep them apart.
“So how’d you get home then?”
“Cab,” he said.
“Oh you shouldn’t have done that. Here,” she said, pulling ten dollars from her pocket and putting it on the table. She had just cashed in her tips. “That must have cost a fortune to go all the way out there.”
“I don’t want that! Here, take it!” He shoved the money to the edge of the table and glared at her. “I said, take it!” His eyes widened, not with anger, but desperation that she let him do this for her.
“All right then,” she said, returning the money to her pocket. “Thank you.”
“It start up okay?” he asked.
“Yes! As a matter of fact it’s been running great. Better than ever.”
“The battery. There was a loose terminal. Plus all the corrosion. I taped it and got some of the crud off.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Thank you! Thank you so much!”
He shrugged, his mouth twitching self-consciously.
“You didn’t have to do that.” She couldn’t stop grinning.
“Yah, I did! I had to get it started, didn’t I?”
“Well it’s awfully nice of you. And I appreciate it. I really, really do.”
He asked for coffee and a slice of blueberry pie. She was cutting it in the kitchen when Maxine asked who it was for.
“I said, who’s the pie for?” Maxine repeated shrilly, and Chester’s head shot up.
“Patrick,” she said in a low voice.
“He better be paying,” Chester called as she started toward the door.
She came back, not wanting Patrick to hear. “Of course he is,” she said.
“That’s not the point,” Maxine told Chester. “You go out there and tell him to leave!”
“Why? He’s not bothering anybody,” she said.
“He knows he’s not supposed to be in here!” Maxine said to Chester.
“But he’s not doing anything!” Fiona said. “He’s just waiting for me to finish up,” she added, and couldn’t help smiling.
“He can wait somewhere else! You go out there right now and tell him I said so,” Maxine said.
“No. I won’t.”
“Then you tell him,” Maxine demanded of Chester, who grabbed a towel and patted his forehead and jowls, his ritual before entering the dining room.
“No!” Fiona said before he got to the door. “I will.” She couldn’t bear the thought of him being humiliated when he’d come only to please her.
Patrick lowered the newspaper as she came out of the kitchen. “Where’ve you been? Out picking the berries?”
“No, baking the pie,” she said.
He grinned. “So where is it?”
“Well, I’ve got some bad news, Mr. Grady.”
“You burned my pie?”
“No.”
“You dropped it.”
�
�No. Worse than that. Much worse.”
“What could be worse than that?”
“Well, it’s Maxine,” she said quietly. She wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of hearing her tell him. “She’s got a problem with you being here.”
His grin wrenched to a trembling sneer. “What’d she say?”
“She wants you to leave.”
“That bitch,” he muttered, grabbing the paper as he stood up. He charged outside. He stopped at the curb, then turned abruptly and raced back to the doorway. He pointed toward the kitchen. “You tell that low-life bitch she better watch what she says about me,” he yelled, hitting his breast so hard she winced with the hollow thumps. His chest heaved with thin whinnying gasps. Spittle frothed in the corners of his mouth. He teetered back and forth. “I don’t have to take shit like this from her or from anyone. You hear me?” he yelled into the dim coffee shop. “You hear me? Who the hell do you think you are, you bitch, you lousy no-good tramp!”
The kitchen door swung open. Patrick’s tormented face smoothed into an eager, glint-eyed grin as Chester ran toward him.
“You bastard, talking to my wife like that, you no-good bastard!” Chester bellowed.
“Don’t! Please, don’t,” Fiona cried, trying to block the doorway between the two men. Maxine was holding on to Chester’s arm.
“Come on, Chester!” Patrick taunted. “Come on, come on out and get me!”
“No, don’t, Patrick, please. Please, just go,” Fiona begged, pressing against him. “Please!”
“Yah, I’ll go. I’ll go,” he shouted, lurching back. “But I’m not going to forget this, you son of a bitch. You’re gonna pay for this, you no good motherfucker, you . . .”
Passersby darted aside. Shouting and jabbing his fists into the air, Patrick stormed down the street. The bell-bottom pants he wore were probably as old as she was. Poor Patrick. Had everything ended for him that long ago?
Fiona Range Page 19
