Twilight

by Nancy Pickard

  Perhaps I should have felt annoyance, or even anger, at his presumption, but he just looked so damned unhappy for my sake that it was all I could do to keep myself from comforting him. I wanted to say, “Hey, really, I’ll be all right, don’t worry about me.” Instead, I just nodded in farewell and then gently prodded the Miata’s gas pedal to start inching away from him.

  As I moved away, he did, too.

  But in turning, the long wooden pole to which his sign was affixed grazed my arm, which was, bent at my elbow, protruding from my driver’s side window. “Ow!” I said, but didn’t look and kept on moving, because I wanted to get completely away from the man. It was only when I turned my head to peek back at him in my side mirror after I pulled into the street that I noticed there was blood on top of my forearm. I was wearing a business suit that day, but I’d taken off the jacket before I went into Nellie’s store and had laid it across my passenger side seat. And I’d rolled up the sleeves of my silk blouse, leaving my forearms bear. Now the blood from a long scratch was running into the loose cuff of peach silk above my elbow.

  “Dammit!”

  My tolerant understanding proved shallow, as I burst out aloud, “That idiot scratched my arm with his signpost! How am I ever going to get blood out of silk?”

  Furiously, at the first stoplight I dug into my glove compartment for tissue, with which I temporarily staunched the light flow of red beads. It was only a superficial scratch, maybe four inches long, but not deep. The blouse was ruined, though, and I was incensed.

  Leave me with a mark of the devil, would he?

  “I ought to send you my cleaning bill!”

  Or the charge for a new blouse.

  As the light changed, I brought my arm into the car, to keep the tissue from blowing off. It stuck nicely to the blood, an effective emergency bandage.

  I told myself to calm down, that it was only an accident.

  But was it? One thing the scratch had revealed was that I wasn’t quite as sweetly transcendent about his little Satan lecture as I had acted. I’d had experience with religious fa-. natics before—who hadn’t, in one form or another, even if it was just somebody coming to your door to preach to you? But this guy, I had to admit in retrospect, had been downright spooky in the power of his dreadful sincerity.

  I said out loud, “Well, I powerfully and sincerely advise you to stay away from my festival!” Then I smiled, even laughed a little. “Or I’ll sic the Goddesses on you.” My board of directors, I meant. They’d decided that it was too boring to be called “directors,” or “trustees,” and they’d rather be known as the “Goddesses.” Privately, of course.

  Personally, I didn’t have much truck with goddesses.

  I’d been doing a lot of reading about myths and rituals lately—because of our Halloween theme for the festival. I’d learned, for instance, that Halloween was originally a Celtic feast of the dead; the Celts believed it opened a crack in time when the living might commune with the ghosts of their ancestors. Besides fascinating me, the research had effectively killed any sentimental notions I might ever have had about matriarchies or goddess religions as opposed to patriarchies and gods. They all sounded like bad ideas. Unbalanced, unjust, arrogant and savage and frequently horribly avenging, and just plain out of whack with my idea of natural relationships between grown-up men and women. I didn’t want either a patriarchy or a matriarchy, thank you very much. I thought it was high time for everybody to grow up, without anybody needing to lord—or lady—it over anybody else.

  And speaking of growing up …

  As the scratch stopped stinging and I calmed down, I thought about a certain underlying message for me that had been unconsciously hidden beneath Ardyth’s jibes:

  Welcome to the big leagues, Jenny.

  She was right about that: There was a lot more riding on the festival than I had ever risked before. However it turned out, success or failure, I’d be pulling other people’s fortunes up or down with me. Never in my years in foundation work had I ever attempted anything of this scale and importance. I’d never had so much of other people’s money riding on anything. Been responsible for so much. Had so many people depending on me. Put so much at risk for myself and my friends and my town.

  I put the Halloween protestor out of my mind. I would buy a new peach blouse. My skin would heal. But my foundation might be mortally wounded, might even die an early and untimely death, if the festival didn’t go off as planned.

  I almost—but not quite—looked forward to talking to Melissa Barney. A small favor. How nice. How … manageable. And, at a time when I felt like the hub of a giant speeding wheel, it was downright refreshing to know there was no connection between the death of her husband and the birth of my foundation.

  For a smart girl, I can sure be dead wrong sometimes.

  3

  IT WAS NEARLY ELEVEN-THIRTY BY THE TIME I PULLED ONTO ABIGAIL Adams Lane, which is one of our downtown side streets. Although the narrow cobblestone street was lined with picturesque stores and offices, I only had eyes for the modest brown two-story saltbox house at the end.

  What a little beauty!

  New roof. Fresh white trim paint. Neat little front yard. Orange and yellow mums. Newly repaired driveway leading to a parking lot in back. All accomplished with donated supplies and volunteer labor. Topped off by the generous gift of a discreet brass plate beside the doorbell, engraved: THE JUDY FOUNDATION, EST. 1995.

  Now it was increasingly known as “Judy’s House.”

  I parked across the street from it (all other places being taken by volunteers’ cars) and would have lingered to enjoy the view, except that it was spoiled by the presence of a wine red Jaguar convertible with a tan top. The sleek and gorgeous Jag was parked in front of a white Dodge van with an empty bicycle rack on its top.

  The Jag’s driver, golf-tanned, elderly, elegantly white-haired, looked over at me. He was waiting imperially for me to come to him. The mountain. Mohammed. There was a boy beside him.

  Oh, well, I had to get out of my car sometime.

  And I couldn’t behave like a child and pretend he wasn’t there.

  I strolled casually across the worn-down cobblestones to his car.

  “Good morning, Pete.” I peered in, saw that the boy looked eleven or twelve. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “My grandson.” Peter Falwell, ex-employer, nemesis, enemy of my family, couldn’t keep the pride and affection out of his gravelly voice, not even in front of me. He’d stolen my family’s third-generation canning business, this pirate had, many years before. And gotten clean away with it. I truly hated only one person on earth. This man. By comparison, for someone like Ardie Kennedy I felt the mere irritation of the cat toward the flea. Pete was looking annoyingly dapper this morning, wearing one of the large railroad insignia tie tacks that had lately become a trademark of his appearance. I’d heard he had a fabulous model train setup in his basement, and now I wondered if the child beside him might not be the reason why.

  “Chapman, this is Ms. Cain.”

  The boy—stocky, handsome, sandy-haired—stared at me out of wary brown eyes. Damn. Was it fair of Pete to turn the next generation of his family against me? He’d been talking about me, I could see, prejudicing this child with one-sided stories. Which, to be honest, is exactly what I might have done if it were my grandkid. This was war between Peter and me, and fair didn’t enter into it. The only problem was it was a war in which my own family had disarmed me.

  I stood weaponless before him.

  “I hear you’re involving yourself with God’s Highway again, Jenny.”

  Involve. I thought I recognized one of Ardie Kennedy’s favorite words, to go along with connections.

  “Do you, Pete?”

  “Don’t. Not that you ever take wise advice. But I’m giving you fair warning. Don’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is sacrosanct. A national treasure. You nearly scuttled it at the beginning. Don�
��t meddle with it now. It doesn’t need fixing, and certainly not by you.”

  I could easily guess the source of his instant information: a phone call from his hyperventilating political puppet, Ardyth. What I couldn’t guess—and never had understood—was the reason for Pete’s devotion, from the inception, to the cause of a nature trail so beloved by conservationists. They called it “God’s Highway” because all the little squirrels and rabbits, deer and foxes loved it, and wildlife was protected there. Usually, Pete Falwell had about as much environmentalist in him as did his favorite ex-President, Ronald Reagan. I could have told him I wasn’t “involved” … yet. But that wasn’t any of his business, one way or the other.

  “You coming to the festival, Pete?”

  A wicked question.

  But he surprised me. “In fact, I’m coming, and I’m bringing Chappie and some of his little pals.”

  I smiled at the boy.

  Tentatively, his mouth crooked upward. He looked like a nice kid. He just wasn’t sure whether it was okay to be friendly to me.

  “Come early on Saturday,” I advised the boy, “for apple fritters and hot apple cider. And stay all day and come back on Sunday. Kids get in free. I promise you’ll see everybody you know, and you’ll have a great time. There will be carnival rides and games and lots of crafts, if you like that kind of thing—” He had grimaced at the mention of “crafts,” which made me smile. “And more food than a dozen twelve-year-olds could ever eat.”

  “I’m ten,” he said shyly.

  “Oh, well, then we’d better order more food.”

  That made him laugh. He and I could be friends, I thought, if it weren’t for the poisonous toad in the driver’s seat.

  “There will also be,” interjected Pete, “thousands of strangers tromping over our town common. If any harm comes to the common or to any of the structures the foundation helped to restore, you will be held responsible, Jennifer.”

  By “the foundation,” he meant the one he headed—my old source of employment—not my new one. In Pete’s view, made clearly and repeatedly known to anybody who’d listen over the past two years, this town wasn’t big enough for the both of us—the Port Frederick Civic Foundation and the Judy Foundation. I knew it was. They did great work—Pete, notwithstanding—but they couldn’t do it all, and there were many projects they wouldn’t touch that I couldn’t wait to get my radical hands on.

  “That’s what insurance is for, Pete.”

  The words came out of my mouth before I could catch them, too impulsive to censor them. I waited for his inevitable verbal jab on the sensitive subject of insurance and was surprised when he didn’t grab the chance to take a poke at me.

  He merely hurrumphed and turned his key in the ignition. That meant that the only cliché left for the old fart to say to me was, “You mark my words …”

  The idea of that made me smile again, which caused him to stare at me with renewed suspicion and dislike.

  “What are you thinking?” he demanded.

  “Why don’t you put the top down on this baby, Pete?” I patted the roof of the Jaguar. “Nice fall day like this? Your grandson would love it.”

  “Oh, yeah, Grandpa! Can we, can we?”

  Pete’s right hand moved to the gearshift. “Now, Chappie, it’s much too cool for that today …”

  Pete laid his right arm along the top of the boy’s seat and looked behind him. I saw him put the car in reverse to get a better angle at pulling out into the street.

  And so, having sowed a single small seed of familial dissension, I started to happily walk around the front of the Jag.

  The next thing I knew, I was sprawled in the street, on my face on the rough cobblestones. I heard voices yelling. A car door slam. And a second slam. Footsteps running. I opened my eyes and saw concrete curbing less than an inch from the top of my head. And suddenly I was aware of hurting in a whole lot of places.

  “Grandpa, Grandpa!”

  “Jennifer, for heaven’s sake, why did you walk in front of me? Here, get up, you’re all right! I barely tapped you. Here—”

  “Wait, wait!” A female voice, sounding familiar. “Leave her there, wait until we find out if she’s okay to move—”

  “Grandpa, she’s bleeding, oh, I’m gonna be sick!”

  “Chappie, get back in the car. Now!”

  I placed my left palm down on a cobblestone and used its hard, gritty, old roundness to push myself over onto my side. I might hurt, but lying on those damned stones wasn’t making me feel any better. I looked up, saw Pete’s face—looking more angry than concerned—hovering over me, and also the much kinder, younger, and more upset-looking face of the woman who made our festival supply deliveries for us. She was down on both knees in the brown grass between the curb and the sidewalk, her face upside down. A long silver pendant on a silver chain had dropped out of her blouse and now swung just above my eyes. To her, I said, “I’m okay. Honestly.” I hated looking stupid in front of Pete. “I didn’t even hit my head. Help me up, will you …” For a moment, I couldn’t remember her name, and I wondered about brain damage. “Uh. Cleo?”

  “Are you sure, Jenny?” One of her strong arms came around my shoulders, the other reached for my left arm. “Oh! You’ve scraped yourself!”

  “No, no, that was earlier.” I laughed a little as I looked up at her. “Is today Friday the thirteenth?”

  “You scared me to death,” she said, as she got me to my feet, totally without any help from the elderly gentleman, I noticed. She tucked the silver pendant back out of sight, into her blouse. “I thought you’d bonked your head smack into the curb. Are you really sure you’re all right?”

  “Of course, she’s all right?”

  Thoroughly put out by his cavalier attitude to my safety, I glared at Pete and was surprised to find a glint of a smile in his cold blue eyes.

  “Jenny’s tougher than she looks,” Pete informed the delivery woman. Then he glared right back at me. “Don’t you even think about suing me, Jenny Cain. You stupidly walked right out in front of my car. It was entirely your fault, not mine.”

  “You had your car in reverse, Pete,” I retorted.

  “I did not.”

  “Did too,” I snapped, and then I giggled, we sounded so much like children quarreling. He heard me and looked at me as if I must be concussed. “And thank you so much,” I added sarcastically, “for your kind sympathy.”

  “Oh, you’re all right,” he said dismissively.

  Pete swiveled on the heel of one of his well-polished shoes, and strode back to his waiting car and grandson. The boy, I saw, still looked huge-eyed. I smiled at him, to reassure him.

  “Let’s go in the house, Cleo,” I said, “before the heartless old bastard runs me down again. He had that car in reverse, I know he did. I saw him do it.”

  “I believe you,” she said, like a nurse to a sick patient.

  She probably didn’t, I thought ruefully, because who would think that Pete would change his mind, throw his car into forward gear, and bang his bumper smack into the side of me, sending me sprawling? Even I couldn’t believe he had done it on purpose. I just thought he’d done it without looking first, and now he refused to accept responsibility for my injuries.

  I did hurt, no matter my disclaimers.

  The side of my right knee hurt like hell where he’d hit me, and my entire left side felt bruised, because it had taken the force of my fall. On top of that, the cobblestones had sandpapered me and my clothes from stem to stern. I looked forlornly down at myself. New blouse. New skirt. New hose. I could salvage the shoes.

  “I’m a mess,” I said to Cleo.

  “Yeah, but you’re alive,” she pointed out, as she held open for me the front door of Judy’s House.

  It appeared that nobody else had witnessed my accident.

  Not wanting to make anything more out of it than it really was—which was essentially nothing at all—I excused myself and limped to the bathroom at the back of the house to
clean myself up. I always kept a change of clothes at work, and they certainly came in handy that morning, as I quickly stripped to my underwear, sponged my bare skin down to remove pebbles and blood, and then pulled on fresh outer clothing. This time, it was a bulky, comfortable, and comforting Irish fisherman’s sweater over a short black suede skirt. Of course, I had spare stockings, and my flats were okay to put back on. A quick brush through my tousled—and grit-filled—hair, a dab of new makeup here and there, and I was a new woman.

  She felt like banged-up goods.

  My right knee was starting to swell, along with a place high on my left thigh and another one at the top of my left shoulders. My back felt a bit wrenched, as did my neck, and, oh hell, every single vertabra in my spine, if I told the truth.

  I popped three over-the-counter painkillers before I left the bathroom, washing them down with cool water cupped in my hand. Given the way I was feeling, I hoped they worked soon.

  Should I surrender and go home?

  No way. Too much to do.

  I figured I could limp well enough through the day to get most of my work done, and then I would scurry home for a long soak in a hot and healing bathtub.

  I came back out into the foyer to thank Cleo.

  Cleo was the regular delivery woman from our local express company, Post Haste. By now, ten days before the festival, and dozens of packages and express letters later, she and I were on a first-name basis, even though I had temporarily forgotten it out there in the street.

  At the moment, she was coming through the front door with a cardboard box.

  If you looked only at Cleo’s face and her height, she appeared too slight for many of the loads she carried. But over several weeks of watching her tote and carry, I had learned she had the strength of ten. Of me. I’d felt some of that comforting strength when she helped me up.

  “I’m really grateful you were there when it happened, Cleo. Thanks so much. Pete probably would have backed up his car and run over me again.” She laughed, thinking I was joking. Hah. I stepped closer, trying to get a look at the package in her hands. “What do you have for us this morning, Cleo? Something from Portsmouth, I hope, I hope?”