A Charmed Place

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  The tower was lit: a glowing green luminescence shone feebly through the chaos of rain and wind and swirling atoms of sea. The tower was lit. God in heaven, the tower was lit! She held up her arm to visor her eyes, afraid that she was hallucinating. No. It was lit. She was forced to look back down: salt spray was needling the wound on her cheek and stinging her eyes. Sobbing with determination, she forced herself on. He was there, somewhere, and she would find him.

  The sandy beach had disappeared, lost to the continuous roiling seas that piled up one upon another. The fragile, submerged dune grass catching around her ankles was her only reference point; to her left apparently was the road, awash now, with worse to come. She stumbled along with her face down, her clothes drenched and clinging to her body under the vinyl slickers. Her lips were briny with salt. Her eyes burned from it, prompting tears that were helpless to wash it away. Her running shoes caught continuously in the wet, swirling sand. The blackness was impenetrable now: the green light was no longer visible. Cold hard fear wrapped itself around her soul, and yet she staggered on, compelled by a force as powerful as the sea itself.

  "Mad-day! Maad-day!"

  It was Dan's voice, a faint echo of the howl of the storm. She listened again, heard nothing. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called out his name, and then strained to hear him call hers.

  "Mad-day! Maa-a-d-daa-ay!"

  "D-a-an! Dan-niel Haw-w-wke!"

  She pushed ahead, screaming his name, in agony listening for her own. For a hideous span of time she thought she'd never hear his voice again, and then she saw him just a few feet away. How she found him, she never afterward knew. He was on the beach—what used to be the beach—perhaps halfway between the lighthouse and Rosedale, and he was in danger of being dragged into the sea.

  He was crawling toward higher ground, but his gear was obviously too sodden, his boots too heavy to let him break free of the ocean's grip. She saw him struggle to his feet, then get knocked back down from behind by a crashing wave that had no business being so high on the beach. The hissing of the retreating sea sounded venomous, diabolical—as if Neptune himself had decided to make an example of Dan and drown him like a junebug.

  And then the earsplitting din of the storm fell away and the hurricane became all fury and no sound. All Maddie could hear, all she wanted to hear, was Dan calling out her name. In the total silence of that fierce desire, she staggered through the dune grass and grabbed the shoulders of Dan's jacket while he was still on all fours, trying to stand. Her strength just then was obviously greater than his. With her to anchor him, he was able to resist the pull of the sea and stumble over the low dune and onto the road. There, the water was up to their knees still, but the footing underneath was more sure.

  Now the storm, cheated of its prey, rose up in newer, louder fury than before. Maddie felt Dan's weight bear down on her as she struggled to support him on their way back to Rosedale, but their progress was pitiably slow.

  "Your boots ... we have to get them off!" she shouted in his ear. Was he lucid? She couldn't tell. "Your boots!" she shouted again.

  "BOOTS!" he shouted back. He nodded in comprehension, then dropped down on his rear end. He was his own little rock in the ocean; the seas swirled around him shoulder high as Maddie struggled to pull the open-topped, rubber-handled monstrosities from his feet.

  Where had he found them? They weren't sailors' boots at all, but firefighters' boots, made to get into quickly and capable of holding gallons of water. No wonder he hadn't been able to move. Somehow between them they got them off. Maddie threw them aside, then helped Dan back on his feet. Freed of the encumbrance of the water-filled boots, they were able to make better progress than before, wading slowly but purposefully down the asphalt road that was now a vast black whirlpool, strewn with floating debris.

  Plywood floated around and into them, and resin lawn chairs, and broken-off pickets and neatly split firewood, as they waded the interminable distance to Cranberry Lane. Exhausted and traumatized as she was, Maddie was still shocked to see that the sea kept tagging along with them down the lane: it flowed through the pickets of her front garden, killing with salt as it went, and was lapping at the bluestone stoop of Rosedale cottage.

  Please, God, let this be the surge; let this be the worst of it.

  They passed through the opening in the picket fence where once the gate had been. With the last of her adrenaline, Maddie led Dan around the fallen maple to the back of the cottage, then unhooked the key from the side of the Dutch door and unlocked it. Despite the hellish conditions outside—or maybe because of them—the kitchen, by lamplight, looked snug and welcoming. The painted checkerboard floor danced with their dripping shadows as Dan began to shuck himself free of his gear.

  Maddie beamed a flashlight on the night watchman's clock that had sat on the same kitchen shelf her whole life long: half past three. It was high tide, pushed violently higher by the storm surge.

  "The question is, is the surge still surging?" asked Dan, expressing the thought on both their minds.

  "Ten more inches," Maddie said tersely, turning off the flashlight. "And then it'll be in the house."

  "Not to seem like a pessimist, but maybe we should start moving furniture?"

  "The hell with it," Maddie said, collapsing onto the nearest chair. She peeled off her jacket and let it fall on the floor; she was too tired to get rid of the pants. Now that the immediate danger was over, she found herself utterly without resources. Talking was an effort, and so was thinking. Worrying. Grieving. All she could do was sit on the kitchen chair with an utterly blank look on her face, the perfect reflection of the state of her mind.

  Dan wasn't much better. He hooked his jacket over the back of a chair and laid his pants over the jacket with the same precision that a visitor uses to fold a hand towel in the guest bath. Then he, too, collapsed.

  "I hate when I do that," he muttered.

  "What?" she said dully.

  "Use up another one of my lives. I'm down to just a couple, now."

  She wanted to smile, but for so many reasons the smile wouldn't come.

  After another gap, Dan said, "The boots didn't work out too well."

  "No."

  "I found them in the breeze way. Maybe someone used them to garden."

  "Maybe."

  "They seemed like a good idea at the time."

  Another long gap.

  "Thanks, Maddie," he said quietly. "I wouldn't have made it."

  "No problem."

  He sighed. "We couldn't save the boat."

  "Oh."

  "But we got the people off okay."

  "Ah."

  Again he sighed. "One of the men helping out almost got crushed between the sailboat and the launch. No boat's worth that. Men do stupid things in a crisis."

  "Mmm."

  "Not only men. What were you doing out there, missy?" he asked, reaching across the table for her hand. "Not that I'm not grateful, but what the hell were you doing, strolling along a beach in a hurricane?"

  She let her hand lay limp under his. "I wanted to be with you," she said, staring without seeing.

  He laughed softly and lifted her moribund hand. "Yeah. I can tell."

  She saw him force himself to stand, then come around to her side of the table and take her hands in his. "C'mon, Miss Nightingale," he said. "The storm's gonna do what the storm's gonna do. We can't see out the ocean side anyway. Let's go upstairs to bed."

  To bed. "No," she said, shaking her head slowly. "I can't."

  "Too many stairs, huh? Okay, then let's curl up on the couch and huddle together like two orphans in a storm. I haven't felt this sorry for myself since the day I gave up smoking."

  Again she shook her head. "I don't think so."

  "Maddie?"

  She heard it in the way he said her name: the first tremor of alarm. Deja vu, all over again.

  Could she put them through it, all over again? It didn't seem possible. Did she have a choice? It didn't seem po
ssible. Nothing, in her present state of exhaustion, seemed possible.

  "Okay, the sofa," she said, simply to put off the impossible.

  "That's probably better. If the water starts seeping through the door, we can ... we can ..."

  She gave him a look of pure despair. "We can what?"

  He shrugged. "We can lift our feet. Honey, it's not the end of the world," he said softly. "Roofs can be fixed; floors, refinished. Honeysuckle grows back. Listen!" he said, cocking his head toward the windows. "Doesn't it sound like the wind's abating?"

  He was trying so hard, though he himself was exhausted.

  She could see it in the gauntness of his face, in the hollows under his eyes. Even in the lamplight he looked worn and used up. He'd worked furiously into the night on the roof, then helped rescue a foundering crew on a boat, and after that—obviously dehydrated and weak—had still tried to drag himself through a hurricane to reach her.

  "I love you," she said, not even trying to hold back the tears.

  He pulled her up slowly into his arms and kissed her, then nudged away a rolling tear with his lips. "I can't tell you how scared I was on that beach," he said in her ear. "Not because I'm that afraid of dying—but because now, when I have so damn much to live for, it would be really tragic to check out. Let's promise one another not to do anything stupid for the next half century or so."

  What could she say in response to that? Nothing. She didn't even try, but only held him tight.

  He released her, reluctantly it seemed, so that she could change into dry clothes. When Maddie came back downstairs, he was sitting on the couch in his damp khaki shorts and T-shirt.

  "Call me crazy, but I'd feel goofy sitting around naked if the roof blew off," he said with a beguiling, goofy grin.

  Maddie herself had changed into shorts and a sweater and had brought down a soft cotton sweater of her father's for Dan to wear. He peeled off his T-shirt and put on the sweater instead. So now they were salty but more or less dry and warm, with nothing to do but huddle and wait. The one good thing was the complete state of their exhaustion. Hers was more emotional; his, physical.

  It would suffice.

  Chapter 29

  They dozed in one another's arms while Dot hung around, ranting and raving like a homeless psychotic left to wander the streets without medication. The hurricane shrieked and threatened and bullied, but the worst was clearly over: no saltwater seeped under the front door.

  Still, every time something cracked or broke outside, Maddie would emerge from the tumble of her dreams with a start. Then she'd feel Dan's arms around her, remember Michael's threat, and sink into the merciful chaos of her subconscious again.

  A line of especially violent thunderstorms passed over them on the tail end of the hurricane, making sleep, even dozing, impossible. Maddie jumped with every explosion. She used to love the awesome power of a thunderstorm, but she was sensitive now. She cowered in Dan's arms, praying for the ordeal to be over, knowing that when it was, a new and worse one would begin.

  They'd said little since they curled up on the sofa together. Now, between thunderclaps, Maddie had to know. "Did you call my name when you were making your way over here?"

  "Out loud?'' Dan said, absently rubbing the fleece of her sweater. "No. Why?"

  "Did you see a green light burning in the tower?"

  He laughed softly. "Definitely, no. I'm not that crazy."

  Was she? Had she simply heard what she wanted to hear and seen what she wanted to see? Was that the definition of crazy? What about Dan and his mystical experience? Yesterday she would've compared notes with him. Today, she lapsed into silence.

  The last of the thunderstorms passed over them like the muted drumroll of a distant marching band. Maddie could see that the parlor was a lighter shade of black now; dawn had arrived to shine a light on the wanton destruction that Dot had left behind.

  "I suppose we have to go see what's out there," she said, sitting up with bone-tired reluctance.

  He pulled her back close. "Part of me is afraid to know," he confessed, "and the other part doesn't care. Let's just stay here."

  She shook her head. "Life doesn't work that way."

  Dan sighed and said, "Okay—but I'm not putting any roofs back on until I've had my coffee." He stood up, circling his upper arms out of their stiffness, then arched his spine. "Ow, ow. I take it all back. My roofing days are over."

  They followed the trail of daylight to the kitchen windows and looked out at what used to be the garden. Dan groaned. Maddie simply stared. Every shrub and tree within view had been stripped of its leaves, which were lying in a thick soggy blanket over the ground. Underneath the leaves were the flowers, apparently: in any case, they were nowhere to be seen. A patio table—not theirs—lay upside down in the middle of the yard next to a section of a roof, also not theirs. A Sunfish had sailed in under its own power: the yellow and blue striped sail swung jauntily under a clearing breeze from the northwest. A bundle of pink cloth lay in a heap in a corner of the yard. In her present frame of mind, Maddie was convinced it was wrapped around a drowned body, until Dan pointed out that that it was a blanket, probably off a neighbor's clothesline, lying over a shrub.

  "Incredible," Dan said in awe. "What will the beach side be like?"

  Maddie had stepped into the on-and-off sunshine of the yard for a closer look when she heard the telephone ring. It sounded amazingly shrill.

  Dan was behind her, still in the kitchen. "Want me to answer it?'' he offered through the screen door.

  "God, no!" she cried, and ran inside to pick it up. If it was Michael ....

  But it wasn't Michael or anyone else. It wasn't even a dial tone. It was a dead, dead phone, one more brief skirmish in the overall war on her nerves.

  "They must be working on the phones already," Dan said, trying the phone and then laying it in its cradle again. "That's good news."

  Good news? Terrible news. Michael would know. Somehow or other, Michael would know if Dan was there. He'd find out from the neighbors, or from Trixie, or from their daughter, if and when he did return her to Maddie.

  Overwhelmed by the need to tell him about Michael's vindictiveness, Maddie blurted, "Something's happened, Dan!"

  Dan snorted. "Yeah, a frickin' hurricane's happened."

  "Something else. Something worse."

  "Worse'n Dot?" he joked, still milking his beloved pun. But underneath the light tone, he was heeding her anxiety. "Is this what's been bothering you, above and beyond the hurricane?"

  She nodded and swung away, unable to bear up under his sharp scrutiny.

  Déjà vu, all over again.

  Dan came up behind her and turned her around. "All right, it's Michael. That much I can see in your eyes. What about him?"

  "He ... he has Tracey," she said, looking away again. She stared at the hell that had once been her paradise. "He's keeping her."

  "Well, he doesn't have much choice," Dan said mildly. "Water Street may be torn up. If not, it'll be buried under sand and debris. It's going to take a little while to clear this mess."

  Biting her lip, she shook her head.

  "Longer than that?"

  "Permanent custody," she managed to get out. "He wants it."

  Dan's reaction was succinct. "The guy's an asshole! Look ... Maddie ... don't worry. It'll be fine. He's an asshole, he's jerking you around—that's all. He's jealous, and this is his response—dragging you through a custody review. Hell, he's not going to go through with it. He wants you to suffer, that's all. He wants you to think about him—and he'll take any thoughts he can get."

  "It's true," she said faintly.

  "Don't give him the satisfaction," Dan urged, trying to take her in his arms. She turned away again.

  He came around to face her. She saw that his cheeks were flushed with emotion. Anger? Panic? Both?

  "Don't let him get to you, Maddie! If you do, he's won. You know that. Don't let him."

  "You don't understand—"


  "Sure I do! I know his kind! They claim to care about everyone, but they care about no one—no one but themselves! People will see that. A judge will see that—assuming it ever gets to a judge. Michael's an ex who wants revenge. Everyone will see right through his motive."

  "Tracey doesn't."

  "Oh, Tracey—she's a kid! What does she know?"

  "She's told him she wants to stay with him."

  "You're not going to believe him when he says that, are you?"

  "Tracey's told me that, too."

  She saw Dan flinch. It was the beginning of the end.

  "It doesn't mean anything," Dan said, taking another tack. "Kids her age change their minds every five minutes. Tomorrow she'll decide she doesn't like the view out the bedroom and she'll want to come back home."

  "He knows about the beach—"

  "Big deal!"

  "And—oh, God, I still can't believe this—my mother is willing to back him up when he goes to court."

  Now it was Dan's turn to stare. "Your mother? Your own mother?''

  Maddie lowered her gaze and nodded.

  "She can't hate me that much," Dan murmured, stunned.

  "She thinks it's best, temporarily," Maddie added, trying to soften the blow.

  "She said that to you?"

  Maddie shook her head. "Michael told me."

  "Then how do you know, Maddie? How the hell do you know?"

  Throwing up her hands, Maddie said, "Well, I can't very well ask her, can I? For one thing, the damn phone is out and my cell got drowned—and for another, she refuses to talk to me! Doesn't that tell you something? Besides," she added, beginning to pace, "Michael sounded too smug to be lying."

  "He's lying! He's a lying shit! I'll wipe that smug right off his face—"

  "Don't even think about it!" she said angrily. "It would just give him more evidence to take with him to court. Everything becomes evidence now!"

  "That's crazy! That's stupid crazy! You're in love with another man—you're going to marry another man—that doesn't mean you're an unfit mother! Why make it sound like you're selling your body for crack?"

  Maddie suddenly stopped and brought her fist down hard on the kitchen table. "It's everything, don't you see? It's your past, it's my family, it's our scandalous behavior on the town beach, it's first and foremost Tracey's choice!''