“Which we don’t know what they are yet.”
“Right.”
Their eyes met again.
“Aden, this could get bad really quick. I don’t want you to help me if it puts you in danger, plus you could lose your job. Or, heaven forbid, they try to get you. I — ”
“You think they’d go so far?”
“If it’s big enough. I know tonight could well have been a warning. To back off.”
“But you ain’t gonna consider that,” Aden said. “So I’d be wasting my breath trying to get you to stop.”
“If I do nothing, I lose my job by next fall, guaranteed. I can see the numbers playing out already. If I push back, something good could come of it, or I could lose my job and, well, it could get ugly. Violent. Perhaps it’s already started to.”
“Then why are you so determined to get him?” Aden asked. He knew, but he wanted to hear it from her.
“Because I work for this school, for all these kids really. I’m in a position to do something. Isn’t that enough of a reason?” Lucinda said.
“And?”
“And what?”
“And Frank rubs you the wrong way and you hate to see him win?” Aden suggested.
Lucinda shook her head. “And I don’t want him wrecking everything Ben and you and I and Honor and Jennifer — and my father — and everyone has built up. Is it so bizarre to have a principle that integrity is worth risking something for? To love this place? That there should be business as well as academic integrity here? For the students’ sake?”
“No,” he said. “It’s refreshing. Possibly naïve, but refreshing.”
“Well, it’s how I am. I didn’t realize how much this whole thing meant to me until Ben retired and Frank started acting like the whole place was his to do with what he wanted, and damn the tradition and the students and the century plus of goodwill we’ve built up. But, Aden,” she said, placing a hand on his arm, “I don’t want to drag anyone into this that doesn’t need to be in it.”
“I think,” Aden said, “it’s too late for me to get uninvolved.” He gently removed her hand from his arm and stood up, moving away from her toward the kitchen. Each time is getting harder.
“You need another round of ice,” he said, opening the freezer compartment and leaning into the chill.
* * * * *
Bart answered his phone when Lucinda called late the night of the incident on Babson Road.
“I heard you saw my show,” he said. He paused, leaving enough time for a compliment. She still couldn’t believe he had answered; she’d called him at least fifteen times, leaving messages, during the eight months since he moved out.
“How are you doing, Bart?”
“I’m good. Really good.” His words were clipped. Lies? Hard to tell without seeing his face. She sank into his favorite chair by the fireplace, near the spot on the mantle where the green earthenware urn held the remains of Aunt Jean.
“I miss you. I was bummed you took the photograph over the bed. Every time I looked at it after you left, I… . It made me hope that there might be something. With us. To save.”
No response from Bart’s end. She heard voices in the background. Glasses tinkling.
“Can we meet? To talk? I could meet you downtown or you could come here. Please, Bart?”
“Not this week,” he said. He paused and she heard him swallow something. More laughter in the background.
“I just want to talk. There are things you should know. If… if after, you decide that we should… split up for good or something. Then that’s what we’ll decide. Or not. I’m not making sense. I just need to see you again, Bart.”
“Ok. I’ll come by a week from Sunday. That’s the best I can do.”
“What time?”
“I’ll call. I’m not sure.”
“Call my cell then. I may be at the stable. I have my new horse there.”
“Oh, yeah. How is it?”
“She’s good. We’re actually starting a bit of trail riding. She’s in rehab from a racing career.”
“Ok. See you next week. Take care,” he said.
“Oh, Bart? You still there?”
“Yeah.” More tinkling, louder laughter.
“Your show? That was your best stuff. I was really proud to see it. Proud and sad. That we had come all that way together and then you left home right before it blossomed.”
Bart ended the call.
Lucinda looked at the clock, ten forty-five. She poured herself a glass of wine and stared into the cold fireplace. Hearing Bart’s guarded voice made him seem farther away from her than not speaking to him at all. How was she going to get through to him? Let him know her deep regret was real?
Shivering, she suddenly resolved to start a fire in the fireplace. Opening the flue deposited something alive onto her fire grate — a smallish tan creature with big dark eyes set in an oversized head. Gabriel and Catcher were riveted to the spot.
“Back off, boys! No fricassee of flying squirrel tonight.”
She shut the fireplace cover and found a shoebox in which to scoop the creature. Not having the heart to put it out into the snow, she bundled into her coat and limped out to the barn to put the flying squirrel in the hay loft. As she was limping back toward the house she saw its shadow swoop from the barn to the largest oak in the yard under the net of stars.
The night was clear, the stars almost achingly sharp. There were few outdoor lights around the farm, allowing brilliant night sky dazzle. She leaned against the paddock fence admiring the constellation Orion. The hunter. It was almost that time of year when she’d open the door at night, and Orion was so bright and close it was as if he were about to knock.
She and Jay broke up under stars.
Not these winter stars. It was last spring, May. She looked up the orchard hill. It was that spot there in the orchard under the apple tree with that branch that swoops low to the ground. The branches were blooming then, pinky white. They were sitting in the grass in the dark, under the stars, petals falling occasionally onto their hair, into their laps. The dual perfumes of apple blossom and field grass mingled in the night air. Bart was on a commercial gig in Providence for three days.
Jay told her he was meeting a new client at Heathrow who needed a new warmblood for eventing. Then he told her they had to cool it.
“This is how I make my money, love. I’m here, I’m there. Then I’m off to Ireland to horse shop,” he said. “I’d love for you to come with me but — “
“Well, course, but,” Lucinda said. “I’ve got my job, my… .” She didn’t say, my husband, who doesn’t seem to come home much… . “But you’ll be back in the fall. We could do the long distance thing for a bit? I could get away a few long weekends. We — ”
“I’m not good at that.” He chuckled softly. “Long distance. Different countries.”
Lucinda’s mind cycled through the last six months of his flattery, telling her she filled a massive emptiness in his soul, those gifts — a silver-and-18k-gold Claddaugh bracelet for Valentine’s Day and an expensive rain sheet (which she didn’t know at the time someone had given him) for her future new horse, his speculation on them traveling together, working with horses together, moving in together. Each lie placed sweetly on top of the other at just the right moment for him to get something more from her.
“Caitlin’s paying my way. It’s a one-hotel-room kind of arrangement.”
“But I thought this time was different for you, how much I meant to you. You said how crazy I make you when — ”
Lucinda stopped when she turned to him. The moon was full and ten zillion watt on the hideous smile on Jay’s face. Gotcha ya, now I’m free to toss ya. He didn’t have to say it.
That was when she really believed what she’d known all along but never would admit to herself. That Jay had stolen her judgment, encouraging her to think she could return from him to her marriage at any time and it would mean nothing. And he could do whatever he damn well pleased.
That it didn’t threaten the whole foundation of her marriage. It was so unlike her. God, what had made her do it? Loneliness, approaching forty with no hope of kids? All lame excuses. The horses. Perhaps she’d confused him with having horses in her world again. Freedom, speed, warmth, comfort. Guaranteed companionship. Her childhood. Her passion. Perhaps she hated Bart ignoring her. Perhaps Bart knew and had been punishing her. Perhaps… .
She returned to the living room, stopping in the bedroom to get the bracelet, which she’d stashed in an old pair of slippers. Gabriel was lapping from the glass of Chardonnay she’d left on the coffee table, while Catcher gazed out the back window, intent on the maker of the hooting sound coming from the trees behind the house.
She got a crackling blaze going and wrestled what was left of her wine from Gabriel, then hurled the bracelet into the fire. She didn’t hear the man enter the house. But when Gabriel ran past her to the intruder, she turned, startled, dropping the glass onto the stone hearth where it smashed.
* * * * *
She didn’t recognize him at first — shaved head, gaunt cheeks, brown robe under green canvas barn jacket, a bright red knit cap protruding from a pocket. Peter as monk.
“I brought a tin of butter cookies,” he said, holding it up in his palms. “A lotus flower for you.”
Lucinda sunk down into the armchair, her hands covering her painfully beating heart.
“God, Peter,” she whispered. She breathed deeply, feeling the terror drain away.
“Sorry, Cinda. I didn’t think you be up and didn’t want to wake you by knocking.” He smiled his one side of the mouth up, the other down smile. His gray eyes loomed large under the shaved dome.
“You just about gave me a heart attack,” Lucinda said. “I almost grabbed the fireplace poker. Come sit and warm up.”
“Is someone after you?” Peter said, levity dissolved.
“Well, I’ve made some minor enemies at P-H, but that’s par for the fundraising course.”
Peter sat on the couch on the spot closest to the fire, Gabriel soon in his lap. He kept his coat on.
“Gabriel remembers me,” he said stroking the cat’s plush marbled coat. Catcher looked over at him from the window sill, squeezed his eyelids together briefly as if in greeting, and then continued to peer through his reflection from the lamplight in the window.
“He’s plotting how to get back out to the barn,” Lucinda said.
“How come your door’s not locked? It’s after two.”
“Nobody comes down here,” Lucinda said. “I just came in from ushering out a flying squirrel and gawking at Orion and hadn’t locked it for the night.”
“You should keep it locked if you’re here alone,” he said. “Which you are now.”
“Yes, little brother. You gonna share those?” Lucinda said, indicating the tin of cookies.
“Oh, yeah. Here.” He passed it over to her.
She fumbled with the tape sealing the tin and handed it back to him. He patiently found an edge and pulled, releasing the top of the tin. When he offered her the open tin, she wondered how much he knew about what was going on with Frank and Warren. How could he know? Tori knew some of it and might have told Martin… .
“What are you doing here? Did you leave the monastery?” She ate a cookie, then put two more apple wood logs on the fire.
“Well, I haven’t really left. Not yet anyway. I’m just… taking a break,” he said, grabbing a cookie.
Lucinda eyed her brother. “Taking a break from what?”
“My mind was screaming. I couldn’t get it to stop. Hey, what’s that in the fire?”
She looked at the flames.
“It’s a bracelet,” she said, as if people routinely disposed of bracelets in the fire. “From that Jay guy.”
Peter looked at her questioningly, but remained silent. Lucinda got up to sweep up the glass shards scattered across the hearth, first contemplating their arrangement as if looking for some secret message.
“You ok?” he asked after she returned from disposing of the glass in the kitchen garbage can.
“Fine,” Lucinda said. She smiled at the bracelet, glowing in the coals.
“It’s not gonna burn, you know,” Peter said. “Or even melt unless you get that blaze a hell of a lot hotter.”
“No, but it sure won’t come out the same,” she said.
* * * * *
After a late breakfast of scrambled eggs that Lucinda made and apple muffins that Peter had brought, they walked up to the private memorial plot just below the crest of the orchard hill. Although Aunt Jean, Professor Tyne’s sister, had been cremated, she didn’t want her ashes buried in the plot unless Lucinda moved from the property.
An eight-foot-high, ten-foot-wide erratic — a boulder left by the last glacial ice retreat a little more than eleven thousand years ago — formed the center of the memorial. On the boulder’s southern side, facing the ocean, a smoothed and polished portion of rock displayed Jean’s birth and death dates and beneath that appeared the inscription — Your view is eternal. The back of the boulder overhung itself, sheltering a shallow indentation just big enough for someone, hunched, to keep out of the rain. Surrounding the boulder were the graves of the procession of Aunt Jean’s black Labrador retrievers through the years, marked with small bone-shaped granite headstones enclosed within a roomy plot surrounded by a three-foot-high wrought iron fence. Today was the nineteenth anniversary of her memorial service.
The temperature warmed generously overnight, sending the snow and ice glaze sliding off the boulder by mid-morning so Peter and Lucinda could sit side-by-side upon the dry boulder looking out over the salt marsh, the dunes, the sea. The view is eternal, Lucinda thought.
“You know,” Lucinda said. “It’s sad, but I remember more of Aunt Jean than of Mom.”
“Well, you only had twelve years with Mom,” Peter said.
“Why didn’t Dad remarry?”
Peter looked out at the sea for a moment. “I don’t know. Mom was kind of hard to live with.” He put his right hand above his eyes to get a better view of something far offshore, and then he turned toward Lucinda. “Not to criticize her, but she needed someone to help ground her, and Dad didn’t always want to do that.”
“He always wanted to be off on botanizing trips too,” Lucinda said.
“I don’t think he loved her any less though. He just didn’t wanna get married again after she died.”
“Did he tell you any of this?” Lucinda asked, turning toward him.
“Some,” Peter said. “When I visited before I left for the monastery. It was weird, you know, like he saw me in a whole different light. He started telling me all this stuff.”
“Well, it is a big change from Your Money Man.”
“I guess. Though in some ways, not.”
“I think he started considering his students and faculty in his department as family,” Lucinda said. “His office was always packed, and people hated to leave. Students hung out on his couch doing things with plants.”
“Family is where you find it. Or make it,” Peter said. “Take Aunt Jean. Everyone thought she was nuts trying to run this orchard as a business, and then when Caroline moved in with her — ”
“She didn’t care if folks didn’t like her. Went against her. She had grit. I really liked that about her.”
“You would,” said Peter, smiling, his face tilted toward the weak sun.
Getting Ugly
The door to the library shut abruptly.
“I can’t justify admitting him,” she said.
It was the Saturday night of the donor party when John Pringle, heading for the large potted bamboo, took a shortcut behind the screen with the cranes on it and heard Margo’s voice. He’d been making the rounds lighting hurricane lamps and candles in the president’s mansion library when he noticed the bamboo looked dry. At the sound of her voice, he froze in place behind the screen, watering can poised over pot, then peered through the crack above a hinge.
Frank glanced around the library. They were alone. The gas fireplace blazed silently.
“If you let Kevin in, I’ll pay Bally’s board,” he said, resting a warm hand on the shoulder of Margo’s fitted silk jacket.
“Why does this one mean so much to you?” Margo asked. She drew away and scrutinized her reflection in the nearest mirror. With so many mirrors in the house, there was bound to be one close by when needed. She fluffed out her already perfectly cut and arranged curls and inspected the state of her navy eyeliner and copper eye shadow. She adjusted the waist of her sapphire sheath dress under her jacket, an ensemble that could function as both sexy and businesslike depending on the requirements of the evening.
“Because Fargill can do wonders. For Peabody. He even brought Sean on board to start operations in South America,” Frank said. He sipped bourbon. He’d already had one drink, and the donor cocktail party was yet to officially start. “He texted me that doosie one night just after you left.”
Frank, feeling a little too good from his second bourbon, admired Margo’s curls, knowing now they were softer than they looked.
“Lucinda is wrong,” he said. “Saying these guys will be fickle. Won’t be in it for the long haul.”
“Lucinda is a royal pain in the butt,” Margo said. “Nevertheless, I don’t like to admit it, but she knows her stuff. She knows I know my stuff. We live in a state of agitated truce.”
“Of course you know your stuff. Normally I wouldn’t go against your admissions judgment, but — ”
“Here’s the bottom line on this one, Frank. I never would want this to get out, but if Kevin reapplies with a much better essay — he could hire one of those former admissions directors that specialize in that sort of scam to write it — and does some spectacular community service project his senior year, and I mean knock-your-socks-off spectacular, we’ll let him in. No financial aid though. And there’s no way I can accept you paying Bally’s board.”
Halt at X: A North of Boston Novel Page 14
