Blue Diary

by Alice Hoffman

  When at last he hears someone in the hall, Ethan cranes his neck to see who’s approaching, hoping only that it’s not his wife. He will not have Jorie witness his degradation in this cell again. The mere idea is anguish to him, and he’ll do whatever he can to prevent such an occurrence or, at the very least, postpone it. Naturally, he’s relieved to find that his visitor is only Barney Stark.

  “Hey,” Barney calls as Dave Meyers leads him to the cell. Usually, Frankie Links or one of the other guards would have this job, but today Dave has come in on his day off to ensure that Ethan will get proper treatment. Still this is always an awkward moment, men trying to act as though nothing unusual is occurring when one individual is locked up and the others are free. “I got us breakfast.” Barney rattles the paper bag he’s brought with him. He’s already stopped at Kite’s Bakery, where he picked up two coffees to go and a sack of sugar crullers, along with his favorite Danishes. Barney asked Jorie to meet him at nine because he needs a little time alone with Ethan to walk through some of the details Ethan will no doubt want to spare his wife. How much a trial can take out of you, for instance, if circumstances should come to that, and how damned expensive such an undertaking can be, particularly if investigators charging by the hour are needed to track down witnesses who, in the span of fifteen years, might have gotten to be just about anywhere.

  Barney figures something sweet might help this information go down, hence the pastries. but that’s not the only reason he stopped at the bakery. He had hoped to see Charlotte, and although he was disappointed to find she wasn’t there, he wasn’t surprised. His guess: she’s spent the night over at Jorie’s, fielding phone calls and chasing off unwanted visitors, such as himself. Anyone can tell that’s the kind of friend Charlotte Kite is, and if there was one thing Barney respected, it was loyalty. Loyalty is the reason he’s here, for his practice doesn’t run to complicated criminal cases. Ethan and Barney may not be the best of friends, but they’ve coached baseball together and their knowledge of each other is at a deep level. Each knows how the other deals with failure, and with false hope, and with the absolute and fleeting bliss of an eleven-year-old hitting a fly ball over the fence.

  Driving here, Barney had eaten one of the Danishes he’d bought at Kite’s, and he brushed the crumbs from his suit jacket as he signed in for his visit. He knows the officers on duty, he’s grown up with most of them, and he doesn’t blame them for their hang-dog expressions. It was Ethan Ford they had locked up in the holding tank, not some drunk who’d had one too many at the Safehouse and had been temporarily corralled for his own protection while he slept it off “I’m not happy about this,” Dave Meyers tells Barney as they walk down the corridor to the holding area.

  “Nobody’s happy about this, Dave,” Barney agrees.

  When the door to the cell is unlocked, Ethan stands to greet Barney, but he’s not interested in breakfast. “Just coffee, thanks.”

  Barney shrugs and hands the bakery bag to Dave. “Knock yourself out.” Barney knows that Dave can never get enough to eat. yet, unfair as it may seem, he’s as lean as poor Barney is heavy. As soon as Dave leaves them alone, Barney lets Ethan know that even though his practice is primarily family and estate law, the least he can do is get the ball rolling. He can access the court documents, including the Maryland demand for extradition. Barney is talking about the intricacies of the law, a subject he loves, listing the steps they’ll have to take to fight the transfer south, when he notices Ethan isn’t listening. Distracted, Ethan appears to be studying the shadows of the bars that fall across the linoleum floor. The kind of disinterest he’s displaying is never a good sign. Either he’s confused, or he’s given up, or, worst of all, he simply doesn’t care about his own fate.

  “I know this is a lot to take in,” Barney says. “Hopefully most of it will make sense in time.”

  Ethan’s face is unshaven and his black hair looks blue in the shadows. Remembering the coffee Barney brought him, Ethan picks up the cup. His hands shake as he removes the lid. He’s aware that Barney is trying to help, but he can’t focus on that now. “I’ve got to talk to Jorie first.”

  “Sure.” Barney understands. “She’s coming at nine.”

  “You’ve got to help me with something.” Ethan gulps his coffee, hot as it is. What difference does it make, since he’s burning anyway. He’s got the pent-up demeanor of a man who’s got to have his way. at least when it comes to the matter he wishes to discuss. “I can’t have her see me in here.”

  “We can move you into the sheriff’s office for some privacy. I don’t think Dave has to worry that you’ll climb out the window and take off.”

  For the first time, Ethan looks directly at Barney, just a glance, a quick one, but it’s not the kind of expression Barney would have wished for. All the same, he claps his friend on the back.

  “Hey, relax. I’ve been here before. You think mistakes don’t get made all the time? It will take time and money and effort, but eventually, we’ll set things right.”

  By now, Ethan has drained the coffee and is tearing the cardboard cup apart. He does it systematically. so that the pieces are all the same size. Barney doesn’t like this either. Some people become really quiet when they’re confined, but others get wired: you can see how keyed up they are and how it might be possible that they would do almost anything in order to escape: punch a police officer, bolt and run, grab an old friend and put an arm to his throat, threatening to break his windpipe with a single move. Ethan has turned out to be the wired kind, and innocent or not, this sort of behavior will not put him in good standing with anyone.

  Barney calls to Dave Meyers and explains that Ethan would like to speak to Jorie privately: This isn’t an unreasonable request, and of course the sheriff agrees. Dave’s got two children, a seventh-grade girl named Hillary, and Jesse, an athletic boy who’s just finishing up sixth grade, in the same class as Ethan’s son and Barney’s daughter. As a matter of fact. Jesse Meyers is on their Little League team. He’s a good kid, with a lot of power in his arm, and they’ll probably turn to him more and more often this season. Ethan is the one who practiced with Jesse all last year, and as a result, Jesse’s pitching has greatly improved. From Dave’s rueful expression, it’s clear that he knows about the extra effort Ethan has put in with his son.

  “I wouldn’t have done it this way if it was up to me.” Dave knows he should keep quiet, but he feels the least he owes Ethan is an apology. “The pressure’s coming out of Maryland, and let me tell you, these guys are a royal pain in the ass.”

  “I’ll bet.” Ethan is quick to let Dave off the hook, and why shouldn’t he be? These two men have worked together many times, most often when both the police and fire departments are called in to oversee an accident on the interstate. Last month, they had been part of a team that had worked for hours to free a teenaged driver from a pickup that had become a burning pile of scrap. Once the kid had been taken to Hamiiton Hospital, they’d gone off together to the Safehouse. having quickly agreed it was not just their right to get drunk, it was their duty.

  “Take your time,” Dave tells Ethan now He goes to the window and raises the shade in an attempt to make the room a little less gloomy. As he does, he remembers how blistered Ethan’s hands had been that night at the Safehouse when they shared a few drinks. Ethan had grabbed onto the hot metal door of the kid’s truck without a thought for himself during the rescue, and hours later he still hadn’t noticed how badly he’d been burned. “Take as much time as you want,” Dave tells him, and although he’s the sort of man who hates to break the rules, Dave’s surely not about to pay heed to the twenty-minute visitation limit. Not when it comes to Ethan.

  “Thanks.” Ethan runs a hand through his hair. He blinks in the stream of sunlight that pours into the dingy office. There’s still a whole world out beyond the confines of the block of county offices, including an old field of meadowsweet crisscrossed by crumbling stone walls. Anyone can see how much Ethan Ford wishes he were
there: if only he could walk through the wild grass and wait in the sunlight for his wife to arrive. In thirteen years, they’ve hardly spent a night apart. Other men might yearn for such things, for freedom and solitude, but not Ethan. He cannot begin to imagine how he will ever manage to sleep without her.

  “If there was something I could do to stop this, I would,” Dave Meyers mutters before he goes. Once a guilt-ridden man starts talking, he can never seem to hush, and this is the case with Dave, who has never been particularly well suited for his job. The rules and regulations are one thing, but the personal heartbreak is something else entirely. “They’re hoping to take him back to Maryland by the end of the week,” he tells Barney.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Barney replies. “I’m going to petition the court for a probable-cause hearing, and the least they’ll have to do is respond to it. That’s not going to happen by the end of the week.”

  Once they’re alone, Ethan turns to Barney. It impossible to read his dark eyes. His complexion is chalky, or maybe it’s the dreadful lighting that bleaches the color from his skin. “You think you’re going to save me.”

  “Of course I am.” Barney grins his big, wide grin, the one that shows his teeth and which was, unbeknownst to him, the reason the kids in school always laughed at him and called him a hyena. Well, he has laughed his way up to Evergreen Drive and that enormous house of his, and now those same kids who’d abused him so mercilessly are the first to phone Barney the minute their own kids get busted with marijuana or slapped with a drunk-driving charge. He’s the one they come to when there’s a nasty divorce or an estate hearing, or when they simply want someone trustworthy they can talk to. “I save people for a living, Ethan. That’s what I do.”

  Jorie’s car pulls into the parking lot, and as soon as Ethan spies his wife, he’s no longer paying attention to Barney. He tucks in his shirt and rubs one hand over his dark growth of beard. He’s a man in love, and he wants to look his best. He wants these few moments alone with Jorie before things get any worse.

  “Here goes,” he says. “Wish me luck.”

  Barney goes out into the hall, and waves when he sees Jorie. “Don’t look so worried.” He gives her a hug. Jorie’s face is drawn, and it’s clear she hasn’t bothered to comb her hair. “Did Charlotte stay with you last night?”

  Jorie nods. “I used the back door and dropped Collie at my mother’s. Charlotte went out the front and dealt with the reporters. They appeared from nowhere, and they won’t go away. They’ve got a van of some sort parked in the Gleasons’ driveway across the street.”

  Barney is pleased that Charlotte understands exactly what she needs to do to protect Jorie. He thinks about what an idiot Jay Smith was, as far back as in school. Everyone in town knew he was fooling around except for Charlotte, and there were several times when Barney came close to writing her a note, something gentle, yet honest. But Barney never knew how driven he was by self-interest, and in the end, he decided that the outcome of Charlotte and Jay’s marriage was in the hands of fate.

  “I’ll try my best to keep Ethan out of Maryland, and I’m asking for bail to be set. With a little luck, I’ll have him home in twenty-four hours.”

  “Twenty-four hours?” Jorie looks even more distraught when she hears what Barney had assumed would be good news. Twenty-four hours of absence between Barney and his wife, Dana, is a matter of course. There are times when they meet in their own living room and Barney realizes they haven’t spoken in days, and the worst part is, neither seems to care.

  “Go on. He’s waiting for you. And stop worrying. That’s my job.”

  Jorie has been anticipating this moment, but now that it’s here, she finds she’s afraid. The hallway seems perilous: the distance she must travel suddenly appears vast. What will she discover when she opens the door? Perhaps Ethan has changed overnight, grown sharp teeth, perhaps, or claws. Surely her fears are the product of a terrible night, for like her husband, Jorie has barely slept. She only closed her eyes for a fitful moment or two, and even then she dreamed of shadows, blue shapes shifting across her own garden, swooping down at her, darting so close she could see their eyes, cold and indifferent and dark.

  She takes one last step, then opens the door to Dave’s office. Instantly, she knows its all right. He is still the same Ethan, her dear husband, the love of her life. Jorie rushes to him and collapses against him, and Barney reaches to close the door, allowing them the privacy they so rightly deserve.

  “Jorie,” Ethan says once she’s in his arms. The word sounds like a prayer and, indeed, it is her name that has allowed him to get through his night of hell. He has walked through the fire with her name on his lips; he has drunk of it and found sustenance in it, until at last he was carried to the other side of the black river. He has contemplated this moment, re-envisioned it again and again, and now at last he’s in it. He’s already started kissing her, slowly and softly at first, and then desperate, earth-shattering kisses that make her sob. Baby, he says, I don’t want you to cry But that’s what she’s doing, she can’t stop herself, seeing him like this, falsely accused and stolen from their lives.

  Ethan brings Jorie to Dave’s old leather couch and pulls her onto his lap. He cannot let her go. But time is vanishing; they can’t hold on to it, or stop it, or bargain for more. They gaze at each other, their yearning for each other and for the lives they’ve led until now is so painful, they can barely look at each other. Jorie rests her head against her husband’s chest and listens to his heart. The rhythm is racing, but then it has always seemed to her that Ethan’s heartbeat was faster than any other man’s. He has the stamina of two men, the good looks of three, the heart of at least half a dozen. Sometimes when she watches him sleep, Jorie feels that he may indeed be an angel. drawn to earth by her selfish needs and desires. Perhaps she’s trapped him here beside her, to sleep in her bed, and cat her dinners, and go off to work. when he was meant to be elsewhere. True love, after all, could bind a man where he didn’t belong. It could wrap him in cords that were all but impossible to break.

  “Barney says it will take twenty-four hours to get you out. I’m guessing it will be less once the court realizes how foolish this is.”

  “Let’s not think about time. ”

  It is then that Jorie notices what grows directly outside Dave Meyers window. There is a row of orange lilies, all facing cast, drawn to the strength of the sun. Blood lilies, Jorie thinks. She gets up and goes to the window, drawn there just as certainly as the lilies are drawn to the sun. Outside. there are dozens of blue jays, picking through the damp grass. She thinks about how surprised she was when Collie told her that a jay’s feathers had no blue pigment. and she blinks at the riotous blue blur as the birds take flight. There are fields of wild lavender beyond the sheriff’s station, and the birds are always attracted to the purple blooms. It’s the time of year when fledglings are especially susceptible to hawks, but they come to feast in the fields anyway. Jorie turns away from the world outside; she lowers the window shade and welcomes the darkness. Her universe is contained within this room. Fair skies and blue jays no longer concern her. Not anymore.

  Ethan has been watching Jorie carefully. With every move she makes he can feel how time is coursing past them, shaking the floors and the ceilings, rattling their world. He can’t get enough of Jorie, he can’t let her go, and yet he’s afraid that may be exactly what he’s about to do. When Jorie turns back to Ethan there’s something in his eyes she doesn’t recognize. Then, all at once, she knows what it is. It’s fear. It’s the one thing she doesn’t want to see. Everything looks blue in these moments: the walls, and Ethan’s face. and the shadows that are cast upon them both, blue as hyacinths, lasting as heaven.

  “People are going to say a lot of things about me,” Ethan tells his wife, as if this weren’t occurring already. Down at the Safehouse and at the bakery, in the schoolyard and in the streets, his name has been repeated so often it has become an incantation, calling th
e bees from the fields, until there is a buzzing sound drifting over town, a low rumble that informs every word that is spoken aloud.

  Though Jorie has heard none of this gossip, she knows people in a small town often feel the need to meddle, and she laughs, her voice sweet and clear. “Honey, don’t you think I know that? People are always going to talk. That’s human nature.”

  Ethan thinks over the right way to tell her. He has thought it over for years, but the time has finally come, so he’ll just have to say it as best he can. “I mean real bad things. Jorie. Things you won’t want to believe.”

  “How bad could it be?” Jorie sounds lighthearted. but that’s not the way she feels inside. Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes, it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before. “Are they going to tell me that you have another wife down in Maryland? That you want a divorce?”

  “No.” His love for her is nothing to joke about, and he’s stung by her mocking tone. Still, Jorie goes on teasing him.

  “Maybe you’ve got a family you left behind. Three kids who called you Daddy before you moved up here and met me.”

  “There’s only you and Collie. You know that.” The thought of his son having to endure the taunts that are bound to arise makes Ethan’s color deepen. His son’s discomfort was the last thing he’d ever want.

  Jorie knows what he’s thinking, she can see the haze of guilt, the worry. the look on his face when he gets like this, for he’s a man who always puts others’ needs before his own. “Don’t worry. Collie will be fine just as soon as you get home.”

  Ethan gazes at his wife with gratitude and with sorrow. He never wants to stop looking at her. Jorie can feel his desire, on her face and her shoulders, in her blood and her bones, how much he longs for her. How many women have that, after all? They were destined to be together. Otherwise he wouldn’t even be in New England: he’d be a good two thousand miles from here. Although. in truth, he wasn’t on his way to New Hampshire the night he met her, as he’s always told her. There was no job, and no friend up in Portsmouth. These were lies he made up on the spot. He told Jorie what he thought she wanted to hear, but that doesn’t mean anything he said was true. In fact. he was headed for Las Vegas on the night they’d met, for he’d gotten it into his head that a man could start fresh there. He’d be one of thousands of individuals who’d made mistakes and could still manage to roll through town with no past and nothing to prove.