“Goodness doesn’t just come naturally, Fiona. Believe me, it doesn’t,” he said with startling intensity. “It’s always a battle. Always!”
“I know, but you’ve got to admit, it’s a whole lot easier when people think you’re a good person. When they treat you that way,” she added.
“That can be its own burden,” he said in a harsh whisper. “A terrible burden when people think more of someone than he does of himself.” He sat very still for a moment, and it saddened her to realize he meant himself. Aunt Arlene was right. He didn’t know what a good man he was. She tried to tell him how much she had always admired him and how much it had meant to her the other day when he dropped everything and came when she called.
“I mean, it was like the two of us, you know. I mean, we were both in it for the same reason. Just to help poor Larry.” Her voice faltered under his now blank gaze. “I mean, you didn’t have to do that, but there you were—”
“Well, be that as it may,” he interrupted, “my main concern now is for Elizabeth.”
“Yes, and poor Lizzie, she’s going through the same thing too,” she said softly, trying not to be hurt. “You know, thinking she has to do what everyone expects of her whether she wants to or not. And now she’s just turning it all in on herself.”
He stared at her. “Then how can you do this to her? Why would you, when you know she’s so vulnerable right now.”
“What do you—”
“Or is that why? Because there’s a weakness, so you think it’s all right to just take what you want.”
“No!”
“And I don’t think you even care about him, because it’s me, isn’t it?” He stared, his face ghostly pale. “It’s me you’re really trying to hurt.”
“I’m not trying to hurt anyone!”
“I couldn’t figure it out at first. I couldn’t understand what was going on. They seemed so happy, so right for each other. And then it all started falling apart. You can’t do this, Fiona! It’s tearing Elizabeth apart. It’s destroying her, and I can’t just sit back and do nothing.” He rose suddenly and stood over her. “I can’t let this happen. Just like I can’t watch you keep throwing your life away. So at least this way,” he said, pulling a folded paper from his breast pocket and handing it to her, “I can help give you another chance.”
It was a check for twenty-five thousand dollars. Stunned, she kept looking at it.
“This way you can go somewhere, Fiona. Get a fresh start. Make a life for yourself. This isn’t what you want, is it?” he said with a sweep of his hand. “It couldn’t be. Bad enough what it’s doing to Elizabeth, but it’ll devastate your aunt Arlene. It will. I know it will.”
“Oh, I see.” She dangled the check between them with a weak laugh. “This is why you came.”
“When you need more all you have to do is let me know.”
“You want to know something funny? For a minute there I really thought you came here to help me.” She dropped the check and it fluttered onto the table. It was all as ridiculous as it was horrible. “Jesus Christ, I must really be some pain-in-the-ass loser!” She picked it up and stared at her name in his blunt, black script.
“I’m trying to help you the very best way I can.”
“Oh! Lucky me.”
“And just so you’ll know, Fiona, I’ve talked to Rudy. I’ve explained that as far as I’m concerned this was nothing more than an aberration brought on by any number of tensions and pressures, confusions, misunderstandings.”
“Really?”
“Yes, and he agrees,” he said without hesitation. “And also agrees that no one need know, most especially not Elizabeth.”
She turned away. She would rather gouge out her eyes right now than cry. She got up and hurried into the bathroom. He tapped on the door and asked if she was all right. She sat on the closed toilet lid with her head in her hands.
“I’m okay,” she said when he asked again.
“Everything will be all right, hon. You’ll see.”
She looked up, astonished. It was the soothing voice she remembered as a child when he would sit on her bed holding her hand after a nightmare. “Uncle Charles?” She opened the door. She put her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “Oh, Uncle Charles, all I want is for you to love me, but everything keeps getting so messed up. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“And that’s why.” He stiffened and held her out at arm’s length. “You just need a change of pace, that’s all. A fresh start.” He smiled.
“You think that’s what I need?”
“Yes, hon, you not only need it, but you deserve it,” he said with a wink and a clubby nod.
“Look at me, Uncle Charles, look at me! I’m a mess! Everything I touch turns to shit. Going away’s not going to change anything. No. It’s the exact opposite. I need to stay right where I am and deal with my problems. And I’ll be the first to admit I’ve got them, believe me, and that I do need your help. But not that.” She gestured at the check. “Not paying me to get out of your life.” She tried to laugh. “I need you to be patient with me. And to keep on loving me.” She paused, but he didn’t say anything. “That’s what I really need right now.” She hated her thin, groveling voice.
“It’s all in the way you look at this, Fiona. You think I’m trying to get you out of my life, but I’m not. I just want to see you happy. I just want to help you. Fiona, call Lucretia Kendale. Tell her you’ll go to Florida with her.”
“Maybe you better go now, Uncle Charles.” She felt sick to her stomach.
“Don’t be upset. That’s not what I—”
“I’m not,” she interrupted. “I just need to be alone, that’s all.”
“Are you sure?” he asked, obviously relieved as he eased toward the door.
She nodded.
“Oh! And one more thing. There’s no point in saying anything about this to your aunt.” He went back to the table and picked up the check. “This is just between you and me.” He handed it to her again, this time watching closely to make sure she truly understood. “And that way you’ll feel better about it. It’ll be easier for you.” He smiled and patted her hand that still held the check.
As soon as the door closed, she started to tear the check in two, then stopped. Instead she dressed quickly and grabbed her car keys. She would deposit it before he changed his mind. Or she changed hers.
She had just left the ATM in the bank parking lot when she saw Todd Prescott come out of the Quik-Mart with a gallon of milk. She watched from the car. His weary, plodding gait and downcast eyes depressed her even more. “Hey, Toddie, whatcha doing?” she called, forcing a smile.
He hurried toward her, grinning. They talked through the open window for a few minutes, their breath steaming the air between them.
She said she was sorry to hear what had happened that night after he’d left her place.
“No you’re not,” he said, smiling. “Come on, Fee, admit it. You told Patrick to nail me, right?”
“It wasn’t Patrick! He didn’t—”
“Yah, he did. But a short memory’s better than a long trial.” He reached in and held her chin. “And besides, I didn’t want to cause you any more trouble than I already have. I mean that, Fee. I really do.”
Staring at him, she removed his hand. She said she hoped he was all better. Just some occasional twinges in his lower back, he said, which had turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it had gotten him out of the grunt work at the furniture store’s warehouse.
“I never was much of a heavy lifter,” he said.
“I know,” she said, and he laughed.
He was spending time in the showrooms now. After that he’d be in the billing office a while. His father wanted him to learn the business from top to bottom.
“You’re being groomed.” She hugged herself against the cold.
“Yah, like the thoroughbred I am,” he said as a blast of icy wind ballooned up the back of his jacket.
&nb
sp; She made herself laugh. “Well that’s good. I’m glad everything’s going so well for you,” she said, then shuddered with a sudden chill. Her teeth were chattering.
He hunched closer to the window and touched the side of her head. “Your hair’s wet. No wonder you’re shivering. You better get going.” He slapped the side of the car and stepped back. He seemed tired, but the weight he’d gained made him look healthier than he had in years. His hair was short and his eyes were clear and bright. He waved and called goodbye.
“I’ll turn on the heat.” She started the engine. “Come on, get in! We can talk for a few minutes.”
He glanced back at the fluorescent glow, the windows patched with paper signs advertising the week’s specials. He switched the jug of milk to his left hand and climbed into the car. He asked how Thanksgiving had gone. All right, she said, updating him on all her cousins, though she could see he didn’t really care.
She asked him how his day had been. Stressful, he said. They’d had dinner with his parents. The problem was his mother’s complete control of Sandy and the girls. His mother was the only one who could make the girls behave, so Sandy never said anything. “So I don’t know. I guess it’s okay. After a while it just starts getting on my nerves, that’s all.”
“Well,” she began, her bruised and jumbled thoughts scrambling to assemble themselves. “That’s because Sandy’s so young. So . . . what’s the word I want . . . no, not childish, not immature. But naïve! That’s it. You know what I mean? She was like that with Maxine too. And with me!” She looked at him and didn’t dare blink. She felt herself clinging to the side of a sheer cliff. This was it. A last, desperate chance. “It was scary sometimes. I mean, how needy she was. But then look where she came from. I mean, she’s done so well when you consider all that.” She gulped with complete self-disgust. It wasn’t jealousy, or even that she knew life with Sandy would be a disaster for him, but her own excruciating loneliness right now.
“I don’t know.” He sighed and looked out the window. The milk sat between them. “Mostly it’s my father. He’s driving me nuts. Like today he tried. He really did. He tried to be pleasant. But then, little by little, he’s right back to it, watching me like a hawk, you know, ready to pounce at the slightest thing. He just looks at me and I feel like such a loser. And Sandy doesn’t get it. She says I’m just being super sensitive, that my father’s only trying to help.”
“See, that’s what I mean. She’s so young.” She put her hand on his arm. “But give her time. She’ll learn.”
“Hey!” he said with a broad smile. “How about a quick beer. C’mon!”
Pacer’s was jammed. The minute they came through the door old friends called out to them. She had forgotten how many people came home to Dearborn every year at Thanksgiving. They were still in the doorway of the bar, and it seemed they’d already been stopped to talk at least twenty-five times. Lance Bowman had just bought them a beer and was telling them about his limo rental business in Hartford. He had a fleet of six stretch limos and two super stretches. His wife, who was a former runner-up for Miss Missouri, had her Ph.D. in Renaissance art. “What about you?” Lance asked Fiona, shouting over the garbled voices and the music.
“I’m still working on mine,” she shouted back, following Todd into the bar.
They quickly found themselves surrounded by more old classmates, all delighted to see them still together.
“Well, do you live together?” asked Laura Clay when Fiona said they weren’t married. Laura had just bought a house in Lincoln, Nebraska, with her bushy-haired husband, Thomas, whose clerical collar and black shirt indicated some kind of religious affiliation.
“No. We just get together now and again,” Fiona tried to explain. Todd pulled her close and whispered in her ear, but she couldn’t hear what he said.
“You what together?” Laura leaned closer and asked with a sly smile.
“We’re friends!” Fiona shouted.
“And what else?” Laura asked.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Todd said at her ear. “Bye,” he called to Laura, who asked where they were going.
“West Palm Beach,” Fiona called back as Todd steered her through the crowd.
“West Palm Beach?” he asked when they got outside. “What’s West Palm Beach?”
They sat in the car with the engine running for heat while she told him she was moving to Florida.
“I wish I could do that, take off and start all over again.”
“No you don’t. Oh God.” She sighed, looking back at Pacer’s. “If only we’d just done what we were supposed to.”
“I thought we did!”
“I’m serious, Todd. I mean, everyone in there,” she said, pointing. “They’ve all got good jobs. They’re married. They’ve got kids, houses, nice cars.”
“We could have had all that,” he said.
“Yah. If we’d wanted, right?”
“No. If they’d left us alone—our families—if they hadn’t interfered, we’d probably still be together,” he said, touching her cheek. He ran his fingers through her hair the way he used to, combing it back from her face.
“We were so young.” She sighed, trying to keep her eyes open. She leaned her head on his arm. The gallon of milk pressed into her hip.
“But we knew what we wanted,” he murmured against her mouth.
Maybe he was right, she thought as they kissed. If their teenage elopement hadn’t been thwarted, they might have been forced to grow up and make something out of their lives. Maybe it had been the same for her mother and Patrick. If the war hadn’t come and her aunt and uncle hadn’t interfered, then they might have been able to work out their problems.
Todd sat back suddenly. “There’s one thing I have to say though. Well actually there’s about a thousand, but the most important thing is that I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused you.”
“You think you can get off that easy? Uh-uh,” she said, bringing her mouth to his. “No. You’re going to be in my debt for a long time. You owe me.” They all do, she thought. Todd, Brad Glidden, George, Rudy, every goddamn one of them. From now on she’d just take what she wanted and not look back.
“When do I start paying you back?”
“Now’s fine.” She pulled out of the lot. As she drove, he kept adjusting the angle of the heating vent. She told him to turn it down if he was too warm.
“It’s not me. It’s the milk. The girls won’t drink it if it’s not real cold.”
The car hit a bump and the frame vibrated. “Do they need it now? Is Sandy waiting for it?” She lifted her foot from the accelerator.
“No,” he said, waving her ahead. “She’s probably already got some.” He shook his head and sighed. “She probably called my mother and they ran it right over.” He chuckled. “Actually it’s kind of funny. They’re, like, at her beck and call. On the one hand they think she’s ignorant and trashy, but then again she’s like their last hope. You know what I mean?” As they came into town he slid down in the seat.
“Who are you hiding from?”
“Take your pick,” he said, adding that tonight it would probably be his father. Last week Todd had bumped into an old friend so they stopped at Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee. When they came out his mother was sitting in his car waiting for him.
Her skin crawled. It was like being sixteen again.
“No!” Todd said at the light when she put on the directional to turn into the Quik-Mart lot. “Keep going! They’ve probably got my car staked out.” He slid even lower.
“Then I’ll drive you to Sandy’s.” She turned up the hill toward the little house the Prescotts hoped would finally make a dependable man of their wild son.
“No!” He insisted he wanted to be with Fiona.
Then they should at least drop off the milk, she said, slowing down.
“No!” he shouted. “Jesus Christ, Fiona, keep going!”
“I’ll just leave it on the front step.”
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sp; “No! No!” he groaned, his hand over his eyes.
“But what if the kids need it?”
“Okay, that one!” He peered over the dashboard. “The blue one.”
The only light in the tiny house shone from an upstairs window. She parked at the curb, grabbed the milk, and ran it onto the top step. Her hungry gaze took in the butterfly pattern of the taut lace curtain on the front-door glass, the skimpy grape ivy in the adjacent window, the two little red snow shovels and the tall one leaning beside the door. She hit the buzzer, then sprinted back to the idling car and drove away. “There. Don’t you feel better now?”
“No.”
The minute the door to her apartment closed he took her in his arms and kissed her. She couldn’t tell if he was in a hurry or wild with desire. After a few minutes she eased away, and he tried to pull her back. “No, don’t, Todd. Please. This is just one more dumb mistake we’re both going to hate each other for.”
“I’ve never hated you, Fee. Never! How could I?” he said with such stunned conviction that she tried to smile.
“Oh God,” she cried, covering her face with her hands. If only he could fill that terrible emptiness, but leave the rest of her alone.
“Poor Feef. He nuzzled his face in her hair. “What can I say? What can I do? Let me make you feel better. You know I can. I know all your secret places.” He ran his hands up and down her back as he kissed her neck and shoulder. “There. There, now,” he crooned. “You want me, don’t you? You know you do.”
“But I don’t,” she gasped against his neck, sweet with another woman’s fragrance. “I really, really don’t.” She wanted Rudy, but he belonged to Elizabeth, and in their goodness neither would abandon the other. They were better and stronger than she was. Better and stronger in every way.
Fiona Range Page 43
