Embers

by Antoinette Stockenberg

  Damn Tremblay. Fussing over saving the dollhouse from the flames, when all along ...

  Meg shuddered and shook herself free of the scene that had begun to reshape itself in her soul; she couldn't relive it twice in one night. And yet, what could she do? Not sleep, certainly. Not now. She snatched up the letter, locked the shed, and ran out to her car, then changed her mind and ran back to the shed.

  Meg couldn't leave the nursemaid doll lying there like that, discarded and undressed. She slipped the doll's clothes back over its head and placed the doll gently back in the nursery. Then, on a grim impulse, she took an armoire from a guest bedroom and jammed it up against the little nursery door.

  I'm losing it, she decided when once again she was in her car. If I don't resolve this soon, I'll probably go the rest of the way out of my mind. And then who'll see to it that Terry gets through school, and Dad remembers his blood-pressure pills, and the Inn Between pays its taxes on time?

  She drove to Tom's cabin with the air conditioning on, even though the sun was down. The East Coast heat wave had pushed north all the way to Maine, leaving the residents of Mount Desert gasping for breath. Meg wondered whether the heat wasn't melting her brain. Maybe all she needed was an air-conditioner and she — and the wax dolls — would be fine.

  Meg drove much too fast over Tom's potholed drive and pulled up in front of his cabin. His lights were on, which hardly mattered; Meg would've enjoyed dragging him out of bed to show him the letter. He was a cop, he wanted proof, she had the proof. She banged loudly on the cabin door, the kind of pounding that state troopers give a door before they knock it down altogether.

  She heard his voice before the door opened. "For God's sake, Meg, hold on ..."

  So he'd checked and knew who it was. Naturally. City cops didn't throw their doors open casually. It was more evidence of the chasm that divided them. She would've yelled, "C'mon in; it's open."

  When he did open the door, he was shirtless and belting his pants. "Too hot," he said with a shrug. "What's up?" Obviously he could see from her face that it wasn't a social call.

  "I've got the proof that he raped her," Meg said flatly. She whipped out the letter from the pocket of her skirt and waved it in front of him. "You remember the letter my grandmother tried to show Orel Tremblay? This is it. I found it, no kidding, in a secret compartment in the dollhouse. Read it, Lieutenant. I'll wait."

  She gave it to him, then watched in bitter triumph as he took it over to one of the two dim lamps in the room. He held it under the muslin shade and read through it quickly. The light fell in a soft halo over his torso and she noted, quite without thinking about it, that he was more muscular than a person convalescing from a gunshot had any right to be.

  She folded her arms and waited for the shock, the surprise, the sheepish acknowledgment that she'd been right and he'd been wrong.

  He handed her the letter, then took up a T-shirt from the back of the couch and put it on. "She kissed him back," he said.

  Meg blinked. "'She kissed him back?' You read the whole letter, and that's what you got out of it? 'She kissed him back'?"

  "It's a love letter," Tom said evenly. "Apparently it was written because he'd had some encouragement from your grandmother."

  "Encouragement!" Meg said, choking on the word. "My grandmother spurned him! Repeatedly!"

  "Not under the willow tree, she didn't. Unless you think he's lying."

  "Of course he's lying!" But even Meg didn't believe that. "He was deluded, that's what he was! Deluded and obsessed."

  "I agree he was obsessed."

  "Then why can't you agree he raped her?" Meg cried. This was incredible. Meg understood — really understood, for the first time in her life — how a woman must feel who staggers into a police station crying rape.

  "This letter doesn't prove she was raped."

  "It was the next goddamned step!"

  "A jury couldn't be sure."

  "Damn the jury!" Meg said, furious in her frustration. "This isn't about our system of jurisprudence! This is about my grandmother! She was raped by Gordon Camplin, over and over again! I had a ... a vision ... I didn't want to have it, I didn't. He was demonic ... insane," Meg said, breaking down into jagged, jittery incoherence. "And he ... he ... wouldn't ... stop ... until ... she p-passed out ... oh, God ... oh, God ... and not even then ... Because ... because she woke up, she knew ... oh, God."

  Meg's knees collapsed under her; Tom caught her on the way down and half carried her to the couch while Meg half resisted every step of the way.

  "Don't touch me, don't," she cried, trying to push him away, flailing at him. "How could you not believe me? How could you?"

  "Meg ... Meg ... stop!" he said. He held her tightly by her arms and sat her down, then sat alongside her. "Listen to me. I do believe you."

  "You don't! You said she encouraged him!" she said, hot tears of fury springing to her eyes.

  "Shh ... never mind ... I do believe you," he repeated, gathering her in his arms and pulling her close.

  "No!" She gave him a last, wild, futile push and then collapsed on his chest in bitter, wracking sobs that lasted until it hurt too much to sob anymore. The whole time, Tom pressed her cheek close to his heart and buried his face in her hair and rocked her gently, murmuring soothing syllables with no meaning at all except of comfort. And Meg was aware, as she hadn't been for three decades of her life or more, that she needed those meaningless sounds the way she needed air and sleep and water. She had gone too long without someone's arms around her, someone who wanted nothing more than to soothe and comfort. Paul had never done that. With Paul, tears and fights had always, without fail, ended in sex.

  After she calmed down, she lifted her head from Tom's chest and studied him through the last of her tears. She wanted so badly to have him completely on her side. "You called it a love letter," she said reproachfully, wiping her eyes.

  He drew a long, deep breath and let it out in a haphazard sigh. "In its twisted way, it was," he said, obviously dreading her response.

  But Meg had no fury left; only emptiness. "Is that what love is for men?" she asked dully. "Mindless possession?"

  His laugh was sharp and bitter. "You're asking me that?"

  She winced from his answer. There was so much anger and frustration in it. Meg knew that he wanted her; after Acadia, how could she not know? Nonetheless, she said, "Yes. I'm asking you."

  He got up from the couch and walked over to the window, opened to the pitch-black dark of a woodlands night. After a long, long pause, he said, "Probably you're asking the wrong guy. I can tell you what love isn't," he said without turning around. "Love isn't mindless sex. Mindless sex is mindless sex. Love is — "

  He shook his head. "You're asking the wrong guy. I lived in a series of foster homes notable for the absence of love — except for my last parents; they loved each other. But my foster father was diabetic and eventually lost both legs, and that's what the marriage became about, you know?

  "I mean, they loved each other, but I don't think they had the time or the strength to say so. There were always too many little crises going on. Like the time my dad was weeding tomato plants in his postage stamp of a garden: he tumbled out of the chair headfirst into the plants, and that's where he stayed until my mother got back from the store. She weighed ninety-five pounds; it wasn't easy setting him right again. That's what their days were about. They sure weren't about mindless sex."

  "But you were there to help her," Meg said, moved.

  "Not exactly," he said wryly. He leaned his hands on the sill and peered into the darkness, listening. "I ran away from them at sixteen out of the goodness of my heart — because I didn't want to be another burden. I figured my mom could always get a neighbor to help fish my dad out of the tomato plants, but no neighbor was going to feed me or clothe me or buy me a car. At sixteen, your brain hasn't really kicked in yet," he added with a rueful laugh.

  "By seventeen I'd wised up and came back. It was too late. My dad h
ad died — heart attack. But I stayed on, finished high school, got a job, did the night school bit."

  He turned around, sat back on the sill, and looked at Meg with a smile that broke her heart. "I can tell you all about what makes a great nurse and mother," he said softly, "but I'm not such an expert on the him-her thing."

  Meg thought of his wife and bit her tongue. Uh-uh. It was none of her business.

  "What about Lydia?" she blurted out.

  He grimaced. "Ah; now that was definitely not mindless sex. Lydia always had my full attention. But I don't think — looking back — that either of us really loved the other, not in the way you mean. Neither of us would sacrifice for the other," he admitted with a shamed look.

  "So you've never seen, firsthand, a man in love with a woman?"

  He seemed baffled by the question. "Well, you have. What about your father? What about Lloyd?"

  "This isn't about me," she said gravely. "This is about you, about why you're not shocked by Gordon Camplin's letter."

  "Because nothing shocks me anymore, Meg," he said tiredly. "Can't you understand that?" He sat back down and took her hands in his. "Look. A lawyer could take that letter and turn it into nothing more than a macho boast, worst case. He could stack the jury with women who'd get a thrill out of it, best case. All I'm saying is, it's not enough to convict, Meg. I wish it were."

  She believed him. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was a simple desire to be done with the whole thing, but she believed him. The letter would not be enough. She felt completely limp, as if someone had pulled the plug on her lifeblood. She thought of the nursemaid doll, safely barricaded in the upper floors of the dollhouse.

  "Can I stay here?" she asked, dropping her head on the back of the couch and fixing her blank gaze on a dustweb above the door. "For a while?"

  "Shoo-ah," he said in the Down East dialect that seemed to charm him so much. He sat down again and slipped one arm around her. "Sorry I can't offer you five-hundred-channel cable TV," he said. "Will my shoulder do?"

  Meg sighed and said, "You bet," and curled up next to him, instantly soothed. She sat in silence, listening to the steady beat of his heart, wondering how it was that he could make her feel so safe from harm. That was her job, to reassure people. And yet, when she thought about it, shouldn't there be someone to reassure the reassurer?

  Tom was the one.

  After a while he murmured, "You know how you told me to let it go, back in Acadia?"

  She nodded.

  He said, "Well, it's time for you to let this go."

  "I want to," Meg admitted. "They won't let me."

  "They? Are we dealing with more than your grandmother here?"

  "Yeah. I think Orel Tremblay's in on this, somehow. I don't know ... sometimes when I stare at the dollhouse I get a sense — not of her, because with her there's always an overpowering sadness — but of Mr. Tremblay, egging me on. A kind of 'May-the-Force-be-with-you' thing. Don't laugh."

  He rubbed his chin on the top of her head. "Nothing funny about that. Ask any cop."

  "Mmmn. It's all the same, isn't it?" she said, sighing.

  Sometime after that, Meg fell asleep. How long she slept, she had no idea. Her sleep was deep and dreamless, the sleep of someone who's been piling sandbags against a flood all day and night. It was the kind of sleep that would've carried her easily into the next afternoon. But a wail, tremulous and heart- stopping, sent her bolting upright in the middle of the night.

  God in heaven! She sat on the couch, alone and completely disoriented, heavy with sleep, listening to the wail: shivery and high-pitched at first, then descending into a kind of bloodcurdling whimper.

  Oh, God, it's not over. It's still not over, she thought, her head sagging with sleep, her body weaving in a kind of drunken fear. She was drenched in sweat. It can never be over.

  The wailing stopped, as if whatever it was had died or been killed. But then it started up again, as a series of soft, eerie trills, almost purring sounds. Meg jumped up from the couch, unable to stand it anymore.

  And then she realized what it was.

  An owl; it's only an owl. It wasn't a sound she ever heard in town. She was relieved; but now she was awake. She turned off the small red lamp that Tom had left lit for her and walked up to the window, hoping for a breeze, hoping to draw some comfort from the other, kinder sounds of the woods: the crickets, the frogs, the silky swaying of the trees.

  But no night was all gentle out there, and she knew it. Creatures were hunting and being hunted; it was the way of the woods. She lifted her hair from the back of her neck, hot and tense and irrationally depressed by the thought. She wanted someone to tell her that life was fair and the good guys always survived and the bad guys always got caught.

  It was the least he could do.

  She went into the bedroom, the one other room of the cabin, and walked over to his bed. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and she could see that he was lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head. His clothes were slung over a nearby chair; he had on boxer shorts.

  His voice was low and musing. "What the hell is that thing wailing out there? I hear it all the time. A coyote?"

  "An owl," she said, looking down at him.

  He laughed softly at himself. "Jeez. Wasn't even close." She loved the sound of that laugh, loved the intimacy of it, and the way he could make fun of his city-slicking ways. She loved him.

  She sat down on the edge of the mattress, aware of the danger.

  He said tautly, "Not there, Meg. Not a good idea."

  "You're right," she said in a voice overflowing with regret. "You're right." She sighed and reached her hand to his face and stroked his cheek. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Another time, another place ..."

  She could feel the muscles in his jaw working as he said, "Right. You never know."

  This was insane; why was she torturing them both? She stood up to leave. He sucked in his breath — whether from relief or disappointment, she couldn't even say.

  Go, go, she told herself. He was doing his part; why couldn't she do hers?

  But the bed was closer than the door, and the thought of being with him was infinitely more compelling than the thought of walking out of his life. She turned back to him and fell to her knees beside the bed, then buried her face in her arms on the edge of the mattress. In a muffled voice she said, "I can't be with you. I can't hurt her. Don't hate me for this. I couldn't bear it."

  "Stop." He reached for Meg's hair and threaded his fingers through it and rubbed his hand against her skull. His breath came and went in a staccato pattern as he waited for her finally to leave.

  She lifted her head. A sound caught in her throat, a stifled moan of deprivation and despair. She got partly to her feet, then leaned over him. One kiss. And then she'd go. Feeling hungry and entitled and resolved, she lowered her mouth to his.

  The taste of his warm mouth against hers was electrifying. Something opened between them, some trapdoor that sent them both hurtling through oblivion. Suddenly there was nothing to hold on to, nothing to hide behind. Suddenly she was reeling from the freedom of it all.

  "No more fine words," he said hoarsely, pulling her down to him. "No more reasons."

  He kissed her hard and long, taking the kiss to deeper depths, higher heights, than she had ever known. She couldn't breathe, didn't want to breathe; she wanted only this headlong free fall into oblivion. More than anything else, she didn't want to know where she was going.

  She wanted to say, "Ravish me, make it not my fault." But she was on top, straddling him. It was her fault. She pulled off her shirt; he undid her bra. She undid her shorts; he pulled off her panties. And in all the sliding heat, she leaned over repeatedly to kiss him: wanton, aching kisses, because she had waited so long — all of her life — for here, for now.

  His kisses were hot and deep and utterly desperate. She had the sense that he, too, knew that the free fall couldn't go on forever. He called her Margaret and Meg, wrapping the
names around her repeatedly like silken threads. But she broke free, and undressed him, and sat on top of him. Something inside of her, something honest and uncompromising, made her say to him, "I want this. Let me do this."

  He let her do it all. She dictated the pace, the pauses, the frenzied acceleration to her climax, then his. She was completely selfish about it, taking her pleasure, savoring it, with no apologies, no regrets.

  And when she collapsed on his breast, exhausted and sated and wet from heat and exertion, he gently kissed the damp curve of her shoulder and said, with lingering wonder, "You always seemed like such a nice girl."

  Her laugh was weak and love struck. She buried her face in his shoulder, unwilling to admit to him that she'd never been that way before with a man, afraid that if he knew, he'd realize how deeply she loved him. Better to have him think she was a wildwoman.

  She slid off him and lay alongside, wrapped in his arms, drunk with the mere closeness of him.

  "Can I stay?" she asked once more.

  He gave her a kiss of surpassing tenderness. "If you left now, I think I'd die," he whispered.

  His words, even more than his kiss, were a drug in her system. How could she leave him now? She was hooked. She looked at the small lit clock on his nightstand. Two A.M. The Inn Between would be fast asleep by now, and she could stay, at least for a little while longer.

  They listened together to the moaning and groaning of the screech owl, which somehow sounded more comical now than scary — like someone who's afraid to jump in the pool because the water's too cold.

  "I can't believe I woke up so frightened," she said.

  "You? I thought it was a vampire, my first night here."

  "City boy."

  "Town girl."

  He kissed her again, a lingering, interested kiss with none of the fierce, raw urgency of their earlier ones. His hand slid over the dampness of her skin and cupped her breast; he lowered his mouth to it in a fiery tease that left her gasping for air.

  In a voice that was low and seductive and altogether new, he said between kisses, "Now, Margaret Mary Hazard: Will you let me ... make love to you properly ... the way a gentleman should ... who's wanted you since the day you threw him off your front lawn?"