The bottle was suddenly jerked from my hands, weak rays of emerging sunlight following its path, winking off the glass and giving it the appearance of a treasure hidden within the high grass where it ultimately landed. Jack’s hands took possession of mine, damp and beseeching. “Tell me to turn around, Natalia. Tell me to take you—us—away and I will. Just tell me and we’ll go.”
Birds called to each other as the world around us continued to awaken, massive trucks chugging into the lot, spewing diesel fumes, engines screeching and sighing as they ground to a halt, their drivers tiredly heading into the diner, sparing us brief, disinterested glances as Jack pulled me close, desperation and defeat in his embrace.
“How I wish I could, Jack. How I wish you could.” My forehead rested against his chest, my words emerging in the small space between us and floating off on the humid air. “But we both know you can’t.”
• • •
The sun blazed high overhead before we resumed our journey. We’d remained reclined on the car’s trunk, holding each other, until the day was fully underway. Waiting for Jack to make up his mind. And until the moment we turned onto the road heading toward Montgomery rather than away, I wasn’t at all certain he would complete the journey. I wasn’t entirely certain he knew himself until he made that turn and began speaking.
“So, Montgomery.”
“You don’t need to do this.”
“I do.” His chest rose and fell, sweat darkening the pale blue chambray beneath his arms. “I need to keep talking, otherwise, I don’t know … I’ll turn around, head the hell away from this sick madness even though I can’t outrun it, no matter how hard I try.”
Part of me wishing he would turn around, knowing he’d hate himself if he did, I gently urged, “Then tell me.”
The big car ate away the miles as he spoke—recalling the privileged, sheltered young man he’d been, exposed at Farraday for the first time to students from different cultures and walks of life. The headmaster there, a remarkably forward thinking man, encouraging that same openness of thought among the young men whose lives he was entrusted with shaping.
“Reverend Beckett and his wife inspired not only trust, but fostered an intense desire to change things. Made us aware that any world we desired to live in had to be of our own making. That if we remained static bystanders, we had no right to complain. They opened our previously narrow and defined worlds and spread it out like a treasure map. We just had to choose our paths.”
“And what was your path?” Because if I knew nothing else, his chosen path had been anything but becoming Ava’s caretaker.
“Path?” A trace of bitterness laced his short laugh. “There wasn’t a single path for me. No, I was going to follow as many as I possibly could. As many places as I possibly could. Changing the world, one column inch at a time.”
“Really?”
A corner of his mouth rose. “Nice to know I can still surprise you.”
“I suspect, Jack, there’s quite a lot about you that could still surprise me.”
Writing. Of all things.
I studied him through new eyes, the doggedness and single-minded determination sharpening into something that made greater sense. Providing a more complete, more … right picture of the man. “On second thought,” I said slowly, “not so surprising at all.”
Again, the corners of his mouth twitched. “Well, my family was shocked. And predictably, horrified—such a vulgar pursuit, you know—but I didn’t care. I went off to Stanford, full of fire and righteousness and eager to learn everything I could to become a damn crack reporter. I wanted the Pulitzer. Preferably before I was thirty.”
“Ambitious.”
“Family trait.” He shrugged. “But I was outspoken about it. Considered every bit as vulgar as my chosen career.”
So—the man who’d walked the visibly straight and narrow path of family respectability was in truth the rebel Ava had so desperately tried to be. And she obviously had no idea, thinking herself some sort of irresistible Pied Piper. Then, something more of what he’d said registered and I rapidly did the math. “You’ll turn thirty this year, won’t you?”
Outwardly, his expression never changed, but the air about him altered almost imperceptibly. “In December.”
More miles disappeared as he lapsed into silence once again, clearly struggling with the effort of condensing a lifetime of drama into the miles that remained. As if in response, the car slowed yet again, buying more time.
“Then those fucking postcards started. Day after day, each chapter detailing her nightmare—but still, I was able to shove them to the back of my mind, determined to live my life, even though the guilt did start wearing at me.” His thumb rubbed small circles on the steering wheel, smudged whorls, as if trying to obscure memories.
“Finally, a couple years later, a card came from New Orleans saying I needed to find her, now. That I needed to help her, now—before they took her away again. Like she somehow knew it was the one thing I wouldn’t be able to ignore. I flew down and found her holed up at the Monteleone with three men, one of them some deadbeat musician claiming he’d married her. They were on their honeymoon and the other two were his gift to her.” He spared me a sardonic glance.
“I cleaned up the mess, put the fear of God, the law, and the power of our family in those bastards, and got her straightened up. At least, momentarily. She was contrite, swearing up and down it would never happen again, until, of course, it did. And so, the pattern was set. After the first time, she stopped apologizing. We both knew it was a lie. She was trying to fix things to her satisfaction—find that elusive person who would make things right. Give her the fairytale ending. I suppose it came as a bonus, that when the fairytale fractured and I had to come riding to the rescue, she was exacting revenge for the one time I didn’t come. Frankly, I’m not even sure which drives her more these days—the fairytale or the revenge.”
“And no one would help?” He’d been a boy. The thought kept returning, rolling through my body with the force of a hurricane—that had my fists clenching against my thighs, desperately wishing I’d worn a skirt rather than the polished cotton capris, the fabric slick and too close-fitting to grasp. Never mind that he’d been older than I’d been, when I made my desperate swim to land—older even, than when I had struck out on my own. Yet it didn’t negate the fact that I desperately wanted to protect the boy he should have been. Perhaps wanting to protect the girl I should have been as well.
“Who was going to help?” Tiny bones in his neck cracked and popped as he rolled his head. “And I wouldn’t accept that my attempts were in all likelihood futile. I was too damned guilty—and arrogant. Convinced it was my responsibility to make things right. So I figured best thing I could do was put myself in a position of unquestionable power. I came back east, thrilled the family by finally following expectations all the way to Yale Law, learned the business, and put myself in charge of Ava’s affairs.”
“Jack—” I was on the verge of telling him to turn the car around—to take us somewhere we could disappear. Never be found again. Never to take on demands that should never have been ours to begin with.
“And even after all that, I was naïve enough to still hold out hope.”
“For?”
“For me.” His fingers thrummed against the steering wheel, an agitated tattoo. “What do you know of the Freedom Rides?”
Vague, grainy images—of buses, of bloodied young men and women, some white, most of them black, of uniformed men, all of them white, wielding their weapons and their rage in equal measure—flashed through my mind. Images I’d instinctively shied away from if I happened across them in newspapers or on the television, reaching instead for Molière or Austen or Wodehouse. Retreating into worlds of manner and discourse, where differences of opinion were settled with sharp wit and gentle humor, rather than angry words and fists and so much blood it was difficult to discern the features beneath.
“I know of them, but not much mo
re.”
Jack nodded, understanding evident in his quick glance. “When they happened, I thought … maybe I could have both.”
I shook my head, confused, yet knowing he would explain. Terrified, at this point, of what new nightmare would emerge.
“Reverend Beckett contacted me. Asked if I wanted to participate. Write about it. Ava and Dante were married, she was settled—actually seemed happy. Certainly happier than I’d ever seen her. And I let myself be sucked into the fantasy. Thinking it was finally over. And I knew the Ride had the potential to be one of those defining moments—the kind that would not only change lives but history. I wanted nothing more than to be there. Record it for posterity.” He snorted. “I was so damned sure it was finally my shot. That maybe, I could return to the path I’d been meant for.”
“What happened?”
“Never even made it onto the damned bus.”
A sinking feeling took hold in my stomach. “What did she do?”
“Does it really matter?” He braced his arms against the steering wheel, the tendons standing out in stark relief—ropes drawn tight, holding him together. I knew, from experience, he welcomed that tension as much as he resented its necessity. That if I reached out, his skin would be cold to the touch even as his heart raced and anger simmered beneath the surface. Rage directed at everything he had to do to maintain order and a life not of his choosing.
“I missed the first bus in order to deal with her. But I was determined to fulfill my promise to Reverend Beckett and do something that was just for me, you know?”
I nodded, even though his attention was resolutely focused on the road ahead. “As soon as I could, I came down to try to catch up with one of the other buses.”
The car lurched as he abruptly pulled it over to the shoulder, shuddering as a large tractor-trailer sped past.
“The things I saw, Natalia. What those bastards did—”
His gaze was haunted, clouded with the memories that refused to fade. Both hands firm on either side of his face, I forced him to keep looking at me. “It’s all right, Jack. I know.” Even without explicit knowledge of the details, I knew. All I had to do was recall Lazaro’s maniacal laughter, the feral viciousness of his so-called comrades as they’d paraded through the streets, attacking anyone guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. “I know what you saw. You don’t have to say anything more.”
But this was it—the final piece of his story—the memories unfolding behind the opaque, shuttered depths of his eyes, scrolling like scenes from a horror film, endlessly repeating. “The bus I was supposed to be on? Stopped and set on fire by the Klan. Other buses, under police escort, made it into Montgomery, only to see those escorts mysteriously disappear and more Klansmen waiting with their bats and iron pipes and chains.”
His jaw worked in a silent scream. “The photographer I was going to work with had gone on ahead without me. They smashed his camera against the side of his head—beat him to within an inch of his life. And people stood by and watched. No one stepping forward to help.” His chest heaved with barely restrained emotion. “He’s blind now. And I guess this is where I’m supposed to say at least the poor son of a bitch got out alive. Was one of the lucky ones.”
His hands gripped mine, urgency in his voice as he asked, “How did you do it? Forget?”
“I didn’t.” The words emerged without hesitation or thought. An absolute truth. I may have thought I’d succeeded, I may have been able to push it to the furthest recesses of my mind, hidden in a dark corner where I’d imagined it rotting away to dust that would eventually blow away, but when brought out into the light of day, had emerged as sharp-edged and fully realized as if it had just occurred. “I tried, but no matter how much I wanted to, I could never really forget.”
I wished I had some magic formula to eradicate his nightmares—and mine. To wipe the proverbial slate clean.
He stared, unseeing past me. “I can’t keep doing this. I have to find some way to make it stop.”
Did he mean the memories? Or Ava?
Did it even matter?
Twenty-six
The powerful rumbling ceased, giving way to clicks and rattles as the engine settled, a pleasant counterpoint to the sharp staccato of rain against the windshield and the sibilant rush of tires on wet asphalt. A nearby traffic signal flashed its sequence of green to yellow to red, the lights piercing the eerie, storm-shrouded gloom with authority. People strolled briskly beneath the sheltering domes of umbrellas or, if caught unprepared by the sudden storm, dashed past with greater purpose, newspapers and handbags held aloft.
On the sidewalk beside where Jack had parked, a well-dressed Negro woman, slowed by an armful of shopping bags and the young child whose hand she held in a firm grip, paused beneath an awning’s shelter, shifting her packages and blinking rainwater from her eyes. The moment was infinitesimal, barely long enough for her to catch her breath, but it was more than long enough to pull a florid-faced man to an abrupt stop. With the rain thrumming steadily against the car and the windows closed tight, we could hear nothing, but it wasn’t necessary. It was like an old-fashioned silent movie, all large eyes and exaggerated gestures, his mouth drawn back in a rictus evocative of an angry child as he pointed to the prominently displayed Whites Only sign and she nodded, her gaze cast resolutely downward, shoulders hunched forward, her white-gloved hand cupped around the child’s head.
“The more things change—”
I shifted my attention to Jack, whose gaze remained focused on the ugly scene, one hand curled around the door handle. Only when that white-knuckled grip relaxed, his hand sliding to rest on his thigh, did I glance back to the sidewalk, where the woman was nowhere to be found and the man remained, thumbs hooked in his waistband, a smile wreathing his fat face as if he’d been solely responsible for putting down an insurrection. Unease shuddered along my spine as my mind superimposed olive drab and rifles and cries of “¡Viva Cuba Libre!” over the man’s self-satisfied posturing.
Change, regardless of reason, always seemed to be heralded with blood and violence and men playing at soldier even when they had no real understanding of why they fought. Maybe especially so.
“There will be more bloodshed before it’s over, won’t there?”
“I’m afraid so. If it can ever really be over.” He scrubbed a tired hand over his face, rubbing at bloodshot eyes with thumb and forefinger. “But that’s a fight for another day. Or maybe for someone else who still has the idealism and energy.” He took several deep breaths; with each, he appeared to sit straighter, exhaustion ceding to resolve, his gaze cool and calculating.
“Well, at least we’re in the right place.” He pointed out a sleek white convertible parked in front of the station, neatly situated between two lines, the neon lights from the Greyhound sign painting the car’s shimmering surface with wavering, imperfect waves of blue and red. “Time to see what the hell she wants now.”
“Should I remain here?” Suddenly uncertain over what he might want. He’d needed me to this point, but would he want a witness to this final chapter? “I understand if this is something you need to do by yourself.” Even though I was experiencing a deep-seated reluctance to his leaving the car. Temptation washing over me once more—near overwhelming in its intensity—to beg him to just turn the car back on and go. Anywhere. Away from this.
He sat, silently staring out at the sheets of rain. Long enough for the storm to subside to a gentle shower, faint slashes of blue bleeding through the gray morass of clouds. “I know I should tell you to stay here. That this is my battle and I need to finish it by myself, but I don’t want to. I need to know that someone’s beside me for once.” He took my hand, his hold light, yet conveying a wealth of emotion. “I suppose I can add selfish bastard to my list of sins.”
It was my turn to sit quietly, studying the rivulets of water as they trickled down the slope of the windshield. “I think … even if you told me to stay, I might not liste
n.” I turned my hand so we were palm to palm. “I stood and watched the man I loved die, helpless to do anything. Watching as no one would do anything. I’ve spent too much of my life since then little more than a passive spectator—watching life go by, afraid to become involved with anyone or anything. I can’t do that any longer.”
My voice dropped. “Has anyone ever chased you, Jack?” Each word emerging slow and hesitant into the hushed silence of the abating storm. Asking, even though we both knew the answer.
He leaned in, his forehead coming to rest against mine. “As soon as this is over, we’re going to start over, Natalia. I promise.” His breath ghosted against my cheek, prompting me to shiver and clutch his hand, my voice trapped in my throat. Squeezing my hand, he brushed a gentle kiss across my temple, putting an effective seal on the words that were struggling to escape.
Emerging from the safety of the car, we crossed the street, pausing just outside the spotless glass door. From our vantage point, we could see her, swathed in white, from the magnificent fur coat to the broad-brimmed hat, to the framed sunglasses. As if sensing her very alienness, everyone walking through the terminal gave her a wide berth, but for curious glances and whispers while she sat, isolated like a queen surveying her subjects, steadily smoking.
The only indication that she noticed our entrance was a slight cock of the head, as if listening to voices only she could hear.
“Stay behind me,” Jack said quietly, just before pushing open the door. Approaching slowly, he spoke in a steady voice. “Okay, Ava, here I am. I found you. Again.”
“Of course you did, darling. A child could have found me.” A narrow plume of smoke wound itself about her head, an obscene halo.
Between Here and Gone Page 27
