The Orphans of Race Point: A Novel

by Patry Francis

  It wasn’t until the rain came down in great splashing buckets that he caught up to her. “First you call my best friend an arrogant asshole, and now we’re caught in the middle of a typhoon. Thanks for ruining my day.”

  “I ruined your day—excuse me? If it weren’t for you, I’d be sitting in a cozy shack drinking a nice cup of Jamaican coffee and checking out Wolf’s newest paintings. And I never said Gus was an asshole. Well, not exactly.”

  “So you’ve changed your mind about Saturday? How does nine o’clock sound?” Neil said as he raced toward the road.

  “You never give up, do you?”

  “You should know that by now.”

  Hallie wondered why it mattered so much to him that she go out with Gus, but she was too wet and cold to pursue the discussion. She had just reached the truck when Neil darted into the middle of Route 6, opened his arms, and lifted his face to the unexpected downpour. “You’ve got to feel this, Hal. This just might be the best moment of our lives.”

  “You know something? You really are insane,” Hallie yelled, but she followed him into the road, laughing as she swallowed the needles of water.

  Chapter 7

  The following Monday, Aunt Del discovered a sheet of paper folded like an origami bird wedged inside the mailbox when she went out for the mail. “Apparently this is for you,” she said, lifting her penciled eyebrows when Hallie came home from school.

  “For me?”

  Aunt Del indicated the name that was scrawled across the wing: Hallie Costa. “Looks like you’ve got a secret admirer.”

  “It’s probably from Felicia,” Hallie said. “She’s always making cool things.” Then she grabbed a jacket and took it onto the porch to open alone. Inside the folds was a smudged note in recklessly male handwriting: It’s you or nobody. Always has been, always will be.

  Hallie turned the creased paper over, looking for a signature. Finding none, she spun around to see if someone was watching for her reaction. The street was empty. She thought of the way Neil had described Gus’s feelings for her: Crush isn’t even the word for it. There had been something almost mocking in his tone, but now she wondered.

  Hallie scrunched the note into a ball and jammed it in the pocket of her jeans. A light snow began to fall as she spotted Felicia coming around the corner.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me Gus Silva asked you out,” Felicia said, sounding offended.

  “Actually, he didn’t. Someone else asked for him. How did you hear about it?” Hallie opened the door and started for the stairs, a finger to her lips when they passed the door to the office.

  “How do you think? Neil told me. He acted like he was hurt on Gus’s behalf,” Felicia said.

  “They’ve always been like that. Cut one and the other bleeds.” Unconsciously, Hallie touched the scar on her finger as her mind was drawn back to the ceremony in Beech Forest when they were nine.

  She closed the door of her room, and popped an R.E.M. tape in the cassette player. Their favorite band had become a necessary backdrop to every important conversation that year. Felicia flopped across Hallie’s bed on her stomach.

  “So you really said no?” Felicia asked when Hallie joined her on the bed. Miguel, the fat white cat, took his position between them.

  “Is that so shocking?”

  Despite the coolness of her words, Hallie’s skin felt hot as she produced the note from her pocket and watched as her friend absorbed it.

  “Holy shit,” Felicia said when she looked up. “Who would have thought Gus was so romantic?”

  “You really think he wrote it?” Hallie asked. “I mean, it’s not signed, and I didn’t see—”

  “Of course, he wrote it. Be logical, Hallie.”

  “Logic is my middle name, but the last time Gus and I really talked, we were kids.”

  “And you think lo-o-ve is about meaningful conversations, especially for guys? Please.” Felicia jumped up impulsively, and went to Hallie’s desk, where she foraged for paper and the nearest writing implement, which happened to be a purple crayon. She drew a crooked heart.

  “What are you doing?”

  “You’ve got to write back, don’t you?”

  “I couldn’t answer even if I wanted to—which I don’t,” Hallie said. “I’m still not convinced—”

  “Come on, Hallie. Gus Silva crooked his baby finger in your direction the other day and you said no. He must have been crushed. I mean, rejection is something that happens to other kids—not the great Voodoo.”

  “I guess his spell didn’t work on me, huh?” Hallie said. But her smug tone masked a confusing disappointment. Was that all the note signified—a popular boy’s injured pride?

  “Exactly. So he had to pull something else from his book of charms.” Felicia waved the crinkled paper they’d been staring at all afternoon. “Voilà! The love note spell.”

  “Well, from what I know about feitiço, a spell won’t work if you don’t deliver it personally,” Hallie said, still annoyed that Gus had asked Neil to speak for him. She took the note and tore it in two. Then she tossed it into the trash.

  Felicia watched the waste basket suspiciously, as if it might catch fire. “I hope you don’t think that’s the end of it. ’Cause anyone who sends a message like that? They’re obviously not about to give up.”

  Though Hallie pretended to be impervious, her heart felt as delicate and fragile as that origami bird in her chest. Secretly, she wondered if her silence would force Gus to ask her out—all nice and proper—as Neil had sarcastically drawled. But when nothing happened after a few weeks, she willed herself to forget. She walked away when Gus’s name came up among her friends; and if her mind drifted to the precisely folded note, she mentally tore it up all over again.

  In early June, when Neil’s play opened, Hallie sat in the first row between Felicia and their friend Daisy, nervously clutching Felicia’s hand. The little theater in Wellfleet was sold out, and Neil was the only amateur on the bill. Felicia squeezed her hand back.

  However, as soon as Neil took the stage, playing the role of a young heroin addict, Hallie forgot her anxiety. He inhabited his character so completely that even his eyes seemed to change color. But what really overwhelmed her was the torrent of emotion that hid behind his self-deprecating slouch and lazy smile. After the first act, she headed for the exit to catch her breath; and in her rush to get outside, she nearly collided with someone. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness before she realized who had caught her shoulders. Gus Silva left his hands in place for a second too long before he released her.

  “Hallie!” he said, letting her go. It was the first time he’d called her by name in years, and he seemed as astonished by the sound of it as she was.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, somehow managing to imbue ordinary words with a rare sincerity. Was this what they called his voodoo?

  Gus nodded before he lowered his head, and disappeared inside, leaving her with a whiff of his cologne. Hallie felt as if she’d drunk half a liter of Aunt Del’s vinho.

  In the slash of light created when she opened the door to the theater, her eyes found him. Like his hands on her shoulders, the brightness only lasted an instant, but it was long enough for her to see that he was watching for her, too.

  Then, just as the door swung closed behind her, she saw the girl nestled beside him.

  The words of the note taunted her as she made her way to her seat. You or nobody. Had she believed that, even for an instant? She knew she had no right to her anger. After all, she hadn’t even bothered to respond. But there it was—one accidental touch in the doorway, the smell of his cologne, and she was curiously lifted up, shaken—and now jealous? How dare he, she thought, though she couldn’t name his offense.

  She remained aware of Gus’s presence throughout the rest of the play—and that, too, incensed her. When the cast came out to take their final bow, Gus’s voice, hooting for his friend, rose above the clamorous standing ovation. Neil lifted his h
ead and smiled in Gus’s direction, his eyes full.

  When she started for the exit, Hallie was relieved to see that the seat Gus had occupied was empty. In the foyer, Neil was surrounded by friends who were eager to congratulate him. Hallie could feel him beaming at her from across the room. When he caught her eye, he blew her a triumphant kiss, and she returned the gesture.

  It was chilly for early June, but their friends were already planning an impromptu celebration on the beach.

  Sean Mello approached the girls. “Voodoo went to see if his cousin can get us some beer. You guys coming?”

  “Not me,” Hallie said quickly. “I promised to get Nick’s truck home by ten. But maybe you can give Felicia and Daisy a ride. They probably want to go.”

  “You sure?” Felicia said, obviously feeling torn.

  Hallie reached into her bag for her keys. “Have a good time. And give Gallagher a hug for me, will you? He’s such a superstar I can’t even get close to him.”

  That night around three, Hallie awakened the way she used to when she was a little girl. Almost like a sleepwalker she climbed down from her high bed, and turned on the mermaid night light Nick had plugged into an outlet when she was small. Or maybe it had been there even longer. It had been years since Hallie used it, but whenever she tried to throw it away, her father always found it, and managed to slip it back into place. As if such talismans could still keep her safe from the world. Safe from her own dreams.

  She slipped out of the tank top and pajama bottoms she wore to bed, and revealed her sixteen-year-old body to her mother’s antique mirror. In the dim light, she traced her cheekbone, the lines of her jaw, her lips, and then lifted her chin and discovered her long neck. This was what Gus had seen.

  When she rested her hands lightly on her shoulders, she felt the imprint of Gus’s palms on her body. Almost hypnotized, she tested the weight of her breasts and touched the arc of her hip. It occurred to her that Gus had probably traced a similar cartography on another body that very night. Again, she was assailed with unreasonable anger. At him—yes, but mostly at her own foolishness. What had he done to make her feel she might be different from his other conquests? Say he was sorry for nearly bumping into her? Stop the collision with his hands on her shoulders? God, she was as bad as the lovestruck girls who had undoubtedly believed—if only for a day or two—that it was them or nobody.

  Hallie unplugged the mermaid light, pulled on her pajamas in the dark, and carried the dinged sea siren into the bathroom. She wrapped it in tissues so Nick wouldn’t see it and threw it away for good.

  Chapter 8

  That summer, Hallie helped out in her father’s office, as she did every year. Trapped in the claustrophobic waiting room, she couldn’t avoid the latest chapter in the Silva saga. After seven years of steadfastly refusing to see his son, Codfish had apparently changed his mind. He was not only willing to see Gus; he demanded it. Fatima’s friends said she wept when she came home with the news. But her joy had been transformed into fury when her ungrateful nephew flat out refused to visit.

  The ensuing standoff had been so bitter that Gus spent two weeks sleeping on the couch in his football coach’s house in Brewster before his uncle’s truck roared into the driveway, kicking stones everywhere, and Manny insisted he come home.

  Hallie tried her best to tune out the exaggerated updates, but she couldn’t help reacting. She left the room when people said that the football player known for his politeness and his brilliant smile had lost his temper “just like Codfish.” Others insisted that it was Fatima who’d turned violent and driven the boy out. But the heart of the gossip was Gus’s refusal to see his father, and everyone who passed through the office was compelled to express an opinion about it.

  “People who don’t forgive go to hell. It’s as simple as that,” Izzy Brodeur said to a full waiting room one Monday morning in July. As the Sunday cantor at St. Peter’s, she didn’t merely say the words, she pronounced them. “That boy needs to get himself to Millette State Prison before it’s too late.”

  “And what happens to people who judge, Izzy?” Nick asked, bursting out of the examining room, a tongue depressor still in hand. “From what I recall, there’s something about that in your holy book, too.”

  Everyone in the office laughed—especially Nick—when Izzy huffed out of the office, saying that from now on, she would seek treatment from a doctor who wasn’t known as a quack all over the Cape.

  In the corner, the usually taciturn Bobby Cleve, who’d been a crew member on Codfish’s boat, the Good Fortune, spoke up. “Not that it’s anyone’s business, but the kid did go to see his father. Manny told me he was planning to take him up last week.”

  For a moment, the waiting room fell silent as all eyes turned to Bobby. “Planning doesn’t mean much,” Aunt Del said. “How do you know they actually went?”

  However, when pressed for details, he returned to a tattered copy of Field and Stream that had been in the office for years and muttered, “No one’s goddamn business but the family’s.”

  But two weeks later, everyone seemed to have forgotten Nick’s outburst and Bobby’s enigmatic statement. All they remembered from the incident was Izzy’s prophetic words: before it’s too late.

  In the office of Nicolao Costa, M.D., the morning when the news came, the doctor had taken a rare half-day off due to a toothache. Hallie busied herself by organizing the files. A natural lover of order, she lost herself in the task, sorting the active from the inactive charts, and restoring their alphabetical sequence. She kept the shades down to mute the heat; and for once, she filled the office with her music. As she sang along with an old Joni Mitchell song, she felt suffused with a calm happiness.

  She was even glad that Aunt Del was late for work. However, when her great-aunt still hadn’t shown up at ten, Hallie began to worry. She had the phone in her hand when she was stopped by the ferocious rat-a-tat of Del’s stacked-heel sandals on the walk.

  Sensing trouble, Hallie got up and opened the door. But Aunt Del sailed past her as if she didn’t even see her. “Close that,” she ordered. “Maybe they’ll think no one’s here.”

  “They?” Hallie said, looking under the window shade to see if someone had followed her aunt. It took her a moment to realize that they referred to the town itself.

  “I thought for sure someone would have called by now,” Aunt Del said, sinking into her tired swivel chair. “Not that Nick could do anything about it, but there are people who dial this number as a reflex. Hurricane comin’? Call Dr. Nick.”

  “What kind of hurricane are you talking about this time?”

  Aunt Del let out a strangled sob. “Poor Codfish finally finished the job.”

  “What are you saying? You mean he—”

  In response, Delores made the sign of the cross. “They found him hanging in his cell. People should have known something was up when he asked to see Gus.”

  Hallie wasn’t sure what brought on the wave of nausea she felt—the thought of Codfish’s act, Aunt Del’s obvious sympathy for him, or the mention of the son who hadn’t visited.

  While Aunt Del searched for the number of Nick’s dentist—as if she, too, believed he had the answer to every disaster, Hallie wandered into the examining room. She shut the door, hoping to quell the hammering of her heart, which had reacted to the news with one word: good. She knew it was wrong, but she couldn’t forget the desolation, the sheer ruin in Gus’s eyes that day she came to read to him, or Nick’s description of how he’d found Gus near catatonic in his mother’s closet. Filho da puta! she shouted at the dead man. At the same time, tears sprang into her eyes.

  On the wall a framed quote from Mother Teresa that Nick had received as a gift from a patient, seemed to taunt her.

  IF YOU JUDGE PEOPLE, YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO LOVE THEM

  It had hung in the room for years, an unspoken, imperfect contract between Nick and every patient who entered—even wife beaters and murderers. If there had been a bowl or a vase ha
ndy, Hallie would have hurled it at the pious words. But since there was nothing, she turned the framed quote to the wall.

  “You all right in there?” Aunt Del said, knocking on the door. “I shouldn’t have blurted the news out like that. It’s just that I was so upset—”

  “Upset—over a killer? I don’t understand this town. In fact, sometimes I don’t even understand my own family.” Hallie walked past her aunt and retrieved her bike from the alley.

  As she navigated Front Street, she suddenly confronted the same impulse that had directed her course when she was nine. She had to see Gus Silva.

  The center of town smelled like fried seafood and popcorn. It was clotted with cars, and with vacationers on foot who’d come to point at the drag queens on the street, to be titillated or entertained by the artists who were happy to take their money. (When Hallie had complained to Nick that tourists only saw their own stereotype of Provincetown, never the complexity of what it really was, he only laughed. “We don’t see them, either. We just see a google-eyed horde reeking of suntan lotion, cameras dangling from wrists. Don’t you think they’re more than that—every one of them?”) Recalling the words, Hallie felt even more impatient and annoyed—not only with the google-eyed horde that stood between her and her destination, but with Nick, too. Did he always have to wax philosophical over everything—even the annual invasion of outsiders? Couldn’t he just complain along with everyone else?

  As she took the turn, the question inside her suddenly caused her bike to skid to a stop. What was she doing? She hardly knew Gus. Why would he want to see her now? The emphatically penciled note rose up in answer: It’s you or nobody. Always has been. Always will be. Even the wind seemed to agree. It propelled her forward as she pedaled toward the outskirts of town.