Home Fires

by Luanne Rice

  Maggie realized that this was a mistake. She breathed deeply, listening to the suck, suck, sucking sounds coming from the backseat. Kurt was drunk and feeling mean, and Vanessa and Eugene were making out.

  “Don’t hog it,” Eugene said, and Vanessa giggled. She handed the half-empty bottle of Grand Marnier into the front seat. Kurt drank from it, and Maggie didn’t even bother looking at Vanessa.

  They were speeding down the Cross-Island Highway. The road twisted and turned, and when Kurt hit the brakes, you’d hear the tires putter, trying to grab. Maggie felt afraid.

  “Where’ve you been, baby?” Kurt asked, reaching for her bare knee. Maggie let him tickle it. She kept her eyes on the road, as if her own vigilance could keep him from driving into a ditch.

  “I said, where’ve you been? Hand me a brew, will you?”

  Maggie didn’t flinch.

  Half turning, one hand on the wheel, Kurt reached into the backseat and jostled the lid off the aluminum cooler. It rattled to the floor, causing Eugene to laugh.

  “You want a beer, you just ask,” Eugene said, handing Kurt a bottle and replacing the cooler’s cover.

  The car bounded down the highway, the pavement still buckled with frost heaves and the constant effects of shifting sand. The salt marshes were on their right, miles of reeds and creeks, tidal flats and shorebirds. Crossing the bridge at Old Whisper Creek, the golden light of early evening collected in the marsh grass. But Maggie was too edgy to notice.

  “So, I hear you’re fucking the preppie,” Kurt said, raising the glass bottle to his lips.

  Maggie was about to say, Let me out of here, when Kurt swerved into the oncoming lane. The car ricocheted off a stone wall. Kurt braked, and Maggie was flung full force into the dashboard. The car careened madly, spinning in impossibly perfect circles, like an ice dancer. Screams filled Maggie’s ears, and she realized they were her own.

  Later they would determine that a mere four seconds passed from the moment of impact. Maggie’s head throbbed. Suddenly she realized that Kurt’s hands weren’t on the wheel. As the car twirled Maggie grabbed frantically for the wheel. Like a wildcat, it fought her grip.

  Vanessa and Eugene squealed.

  Four seconds.

  The guardrail, a flimsy corrugation, in place forever, came at them. They smashed into it and stopped dead. The sparkling creek beyond. Orange sun streaming through clouds. Maggie’s arms flew up, across her face. Glass cracking, bang, her head. The screams: Vanessa, Eugene, Maggie, a gray heron.

  Liftoff, into oblivion.

  Flying through the rushes, their soft tops sweeping the car like brushes at the drive-through car wash.

  Blood in the eyes, a baby at home in her mother’s womb.

  The pulse, the tidal pull of the moon in its crescent phase and the heart pumping blood through the uterus, the placenta, the embryo. The slap of waves, of your mother’s blood.

  Sleep.

  IN the end, Anne had settled on smoked bluefish with buttered brown bread and capers, fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil, and Ruby’s chocolate-chip cookies. What her picnic lacked in seductive flair, it would make up for in heartwarming spirit. The air felt balmy, and Anne dressed for the sunset in a flowing coral dress, a black cotton sweater tied around her shoulders, and silver hoop earrings.

  She packed everything into a paper grocery bag, wishing she had one of the six or so wicker picnic baskets from the big house. She knew that it should feel strange, fixing a beach picnic for Thomas with Matt on the island. But it did not. If anything, she took perverse pleasure in it, and that worried her. But Matt had made his bed with someone else for so long, and he hadn’t asked her permission.

  Thomas would be here at any minute to pick her up. On a whim, Anne lifted the receiver and dialed the big house.

  “Fitzgibbons’,” came the voice of a subdued Gabrielle.

  “Hi, it’s me,” Anne said.

  “I am so mad at you,” Gabrielle said, her voice instantly high-pitched. “Have you seen Maggie?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because I grounded her, and she’s nowhere to be found. Somehow she’s got the idea that I’m the one who punishes her, but she can always go running to you.”

  “No!” Anne exclaimed. “That’s not true!”

  “Well, when she shows up on your doorstep later, will you please ask her to call me?”

  “If she does, I will,” Anne said, alarmed by the high note in Gabrielle’s tone.

  “Meanwhile Matt is sitting at the table here, moping, and I just want to kill him,” Gabrielle said, her voice shaking. Anne couldn’t remember hearing her so upset.

  “I love you,” Anne said. But her sister had already hung up.

  Before she left that evening, Anne left a note on her apartment door:

  Maggie—

  CALL YOUR MOTHER!

  A.

  Waking slowly, Maggie explored her mouth with her tongue and came upon something hard. The car door had caved in, trapping her right arm, but she worked her left hand free and cupped it under her lower lip. Along with a mouthful of blood, she spat out a tooth.

  She heard whimpering in the backseat. Sleep threatened to drag her away, but she forced herself awake to try to determine where they had landed. Still in the car seat, she was on her back, like an astronaut ready for takeoff, looking straight up through a broken windshield at the sky. Bands of purple and gold streaked across clouds. She could hear the sound of gurgling fluid. The blood rushing in her ears.

  “Maggie,” came the weak voice.

  She blinked, trying to focus. Blood dripped from cuts in her head into her eyes. Squirming, she felt a jagged pain slash down her back, and the world went black.

  When she awakened again, the sunset was still there. Still bright, and so close.

  “Maggie,” she heard again, above the gurgling.

  Very painfully, she half turned her face. There was Vanessa, up to her chin in brown water. Sitting on Eugene’s lap, she was trying to hold Eugene’s face above the surface. That was the rushing sound, Maggie realized: the car had flown into the creek, and water was seeping in through the car doors.

  Kurt was slumped over the wheel, passed out. Brown sludge and red blood coated the windshield inside and out. But out the side window, Maggie could see they had plunged off the road into the shallow marsh. Somehow the car’s back end was sinking faster than the front. She heard little squeaks of panic coming from Vanessa, and she tried to think, to keep from passing out.

  “The water,” Vanessa said. “We’re going to drown.”

  Without speaking, saving her strength, Maggie reached her left arm across her body and tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge. Stove-in at a forty-five-degree angle, the door metal speared her right side. Her right elbow was pinned into her body, totally useless. When she took a deep breath, pain stabbed her chest; she must have broken some ribs.

  “Kurt,” she said. “Kurt.”

  He wouldn’t respond. With her left hand, with all the energy she could muster, Maggie tapped his knee, his thigh. Nothing.

  “We’re going to die!” Vanessa cried, a diluted wail.

  “Whassa matter,” Eugene said.

  It hurt Maggie too much to turn fully around. Painfully, she moved her left arm between the two front seats, reaching back to Vanessa. Weeping, gulping air, Vanessa grasped Maggie’s hand.

  “Whadappened?” Eugene asked, and then Maggie heard him spitting out water. Salt water was flowing steadily into the old Volkswagen through the engine in back, the rust holes, the doors.

  “Keep holding my hand,” Vanessa pleaded.

  “I will!” Maggie said, even though it hurt unbelievably to hold herself in that position. Every time she moved her spine, silver dots flashed through the blood in her eyes.

  Eugene thrashed, spewing like a geyser to keep his throat clear.

  Vanessa tugged his chin, stretching it to keep his mouth clear of the rising tide. “Please,” she cried. “Don’t go under
.”

  “Can you move?” Maggie asked, her senses beginning to clear.

  “No, I’m pinned between the cooler and the car door. Maggie, I’m hurt,” Vanessa said.

  “We’ll be fine,” Maggie said resolutely, squeezing Vanessa’s hand. Her shoulder muscles were aching with massive lactic acid and hot knives were stabbing her spine, but she would not let go.

  Why wouldn’t Kurt wake up? Now that Maggie’s adrenaline was kicking in, she called his name again and again. She heard Vanessa shouting it. The rescue squad should be on the way. Someone must have seen them go over. Someone had already dialed 911, and Ned was on his way now. They would be here any moment, pulling Maggie and her friends to safety.

  Was the sunset quite as bright as it had been? Suddenly the thought that darkness was falling filled Maggie with dread, and she must have moaned.

  “What?” Vanessa screamed. “What?”

  “It’s okay,” Maggie said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Eugene, try, try,” Vanessa was pleading. “Hold yourself up! Try! Maggie, help!”

  Maggie struggled to free herself from the car. How bad could it be? The windshield, and most of the front, was sticking straight out of the water. The car felt stationary. Yet water was pouring in from behind, and the car felt like it was sliding backward, downward, its nose in the air. Sinking.

  “Maggie!” Vanessa said, water clogging her throat. She spit it out.

  Maggie noticed the lid of the metal cooler. It had flown into the front seat from behind, come to rest on the dashboard. Wedged between the windshield and the steering wheel, it stayed in place, a sharp-edged piece of aluminum.

  Her eyes blinked, her consciousness flickered. There was the evening star, the crescent moon swinging in the western sky. A brilliant sunset blazed. From the backseat, Maggie heard her friend sucking sludge.

  “Maggie,” Vanessa gurgled, her voice desperate. She yanked her hand away, and Maggie heard it slapping at the seats, the window. The sound of rushing water filled Maggie’s ears. “Maggie …”

  Maggie tried to turn, to see Vanessa, but her body wouldn’t obey. The level of water had risen, and Maggie could no longer hear Vanessa’s voice. Blinking the salt and blood away, she saw that darkness was falling.

  Something bobbed into her lap. Maggie flinched, terrified. Something horrible from the marsh had swum into the car. She tried to clasp, but could not reach, Vanessa’s hand.

  “Vanessa?” Maggie asked, shaking. Vanessa wasn’t answering.

  Overhead, the moon bobbed and weaved, as if the car in which Maggie sat was tilting precariously. The water level was rising. It had been at her ankles, then her knees, and now it was at her waist.

  “Vanessa!” Maggie called, but again, no answer.

  Maggie’s consciousness flickered again. Blackness, then the waning colors of sunset again.

  “Vanessa!”

  The thing danced in the tide. It thumped Maggie’s chest, reminding her that it hadn’t gone away. They had plunged into a marsh, a saltwater creek. Could it be a blue crab? A bass? Hardly daring to look, Maggie opened her eyes.

  It was round, and heavy. Bloody strands trailed from one end, like the tentacles of a jellyfish, and minnows nibbled at them. With her left hand, Maggie Vincent held the thing steady. She took a deep breath, turning it over.

  It was Kurt’s head. It stared at her with sightless eyes. Like a wax model, with pale cheeks, blue lips, hair streaming in the current. Small fish darted at his eyeballs, into his ears and nostrils. Veins and arteries dangled from the neck, and blood flowed into the water.

  The lid of his metal cooler had decapitated him on impact. Maggie heard her scream rise through the dusk, piercing the island air. She held Kurt’s head in her good hand, trying not to think of her two oldest friends drowned in the backseat, and the fact that the tide was rising to claim her.

  Screaming with horror, Maggie watched a torrent of sandpipers skitter across the windshield of Kurt’s car. Their tiny white bellies grazed the broken glass, then disappeared. She was going to die here.

  DRIVING cross-island from town, Thomas knew he had never felt happier in his life. The evening would be perfect: another half hour of silvery-purple sunset, and then a night of stars. Such clear weather in June was unusual. When Anne had suggested a beach picnic, Thomas had known there was only one spot: the secluded cove at Tim’s Lookout.

  They drove along in his truck, holding hands across the bench seat. Every so often Thomas couldn’t help shooting her a helpless look of love, and she’d throw one right back. They spent most of the trip with big grins on their faces, thrilled just to be together.

  Rounding the bend at Old Whisper Creek, Thomas noticed wide black skid marks on the road.

  Braking, he followed them with his eyes. Just off the side of the low bridge, he saw the nose of an old wreck clearing the surface of the tidal marsh.

  “I don’t remember seeing that before,” he said, gazing at the car’s rusty hood tilting skyward.

  “Me neither,” Anne said.

  Thomas gave her an apologetic glance. It was probably nothing, but he had to check. Striding to the edge of the pavement, he heard Anne give a low wolf whistle. He blushed, in spite of himself. He was a middle-aged guy in jeans and a sweater. She could be having cocktails on any terrace in Newport or Edgartown if she wanted to. Why in the world would she want to be with him?

  But when he got close to the guardrail, his heart quickened, and not because of Anne.

  “What is it?” Anne called, getting out of the car.

  “This just happened,” Thomas said, noting for the first time the cracked guardrail, broken reeds, and fresh tire tracks in the mud.

  He heard Anne gasp, and he turned to see her face. A mask of horror, she was staring at the car.

  “Maggie!” Anne screamed.

  There, her face barely visible through the car’s window, was Maggie Vincent. The tide zipped fast through here, creating the noise of a loud whirlpool. But if you listened hard, you could hear Maggie crying, pounding on the car door.

  Before he knew what was happening, Anne was pulling off her sandals, plunging into the water. He watched her fight the current swirling from the marsh to the sea, swim straight for the automobile. Her dusky pink dress tugged her down, but she reached out a hand for the girl trapped inside.

  “Don’t touch it!” Thomas bellowed.

  Anne stopped, treading water, a frantic look on her face. Kicking off his shoes, Thomas dove into the water. Holding his breath, he swam beneath the becalmed Volkswagen, the current rushing past him.

  The automobile’s rear end floated freely in a wildly flowing torrent. What prevented the entire car from sinking, from filling with seawater instantly, was the fact that its front axle rested precariously on the tangled root system of an old tree. The illegal dumping practices of some local landowner had just saved Maggie’s life. If it weren’t for the twisted roots of some forgotten oak, she would have already drowned.

  Thomas surfaced, sputtering.

  Anne treaded water, meeting his eyes. She glanced from him to her niece and back again.

  “It’s a seesaw,” he said. “The car could go under any minute.”

  Maggie was panicking, rocking the car back and forth with her efforts to open the mangled door.

  “Maggie!” Anne called in a ringing but perfectly calm voice. “Don’t move. I’m here with you. I won’t let anything happen.”

  Out of panic, Maggie rattled the door for another moment. But then Anne’s serenity touched her, and she met Anne’s eyes. She gulped the rising water, her head tilted back. And she nodded.

  “What can we do?” Treading water steadily, Anne asked Thomas these words in a perfectly easy voice, her eyes on Maggie.

  “We need help.”

  “Go get it,” Anne said, with no change of tone.

  Thomas struck out for shore. He scrambled up the bank and ran for his truck. Clicking on the CB, he called in a code. For not even one secon
d did his eyes leave Anne in the swift current or Maggie pinned inside the car. Peggy Lawson was dispatcher.

  “Send an ambulance,” Thomas commanded, giving his location. “Divers. The hydraulic tow, and the Hurst. On the double, Peggy.”

  “Roger, Dev,” she said.

  MAGGIE was swimming with Anne. They were separated by a bloodstained window, but they were together. If only Maggie could wrench herself free of the metal holding her prisoner. She could wiggle into the creek, and Anne would take care of her. Anne would carry Maggie to her mother, and everything would be okay.

  Something veiled Maggie’s eyes. Ripping off a shred of seaweed, she nearly lost her breath. The sun was going down. Soon it would be as dark as a blindfold. Wadding the seaweed into a ball, she swallowed a muddy mouthful of salt water. Kurt’s head kept coming back. She pushed it out of the way, hysteria bubbling into her throat. Could Anne see?

  Maggie felt the water rising on her body. It was up to her chest. The car lurched, tilted forward. She screamed, frantic. But then, as if the car had found the fulcrum’s sweet spot, it held steady. Maggie huffed every breath, straining out water. It helped to know that Anne was right outside, but she couldn’t stand to open her eyes. She was terrified of seeing Kurt’s head.

  THE call came just as Ned and Josh were tacking in from a totally frustrating sail. The tide had been stronger than usual, and in spite of Josh’s genius reading of the tide charts, they hadn’t made it past the breakwater.

  “What’s that?” Ned asked at the sound of Josh’s beeper.

  “Emergency,” Josh said.

  Whizzing into the dock, they occupied themselves with hoisting the centerboard, lowering the sails, walking the boat over to the ramp, and loading it onto the dolly. Only when they had reached Josh’s Taurus did they hear the scanner, broadcasting to volunteers everywhere:

  “Submerged vehicle,” the woman’s voice crackled. “Passengers trapped inside. That’s Old Whisper Creek where she meets the Great Salt Breachway.”

  “On our way, Peggy,” Josh blurted into the microphone.

  Thinking of Maggie, wanting to go straight to her, Ned nearly protested. Then he gave his own stupid hormones a good talking-to. You signed on to the force, he told himself. Someone needs your help. Think about what’s important in life.