Quinn

by Sally Mandel

  Soon after, Marianne and Will began their regular Saturday evening trips to Edward’s house. The three of them took turns reading aloud: Marianne from Emily Dickinson; Will from John Donne and William Blake and the Lyrical Ballads; Edward from Chaucer, in the original Middle English. It was all food for Will, and he would stumble out of the little house in the early morning hours, exhausted and stuffed like a man well fed.

  Will felt a certain trepidation about bringing Quinn to see Edward. Even after Marianne was killed in the car accident, her presence had always hung in the air of Edward’s living room like the smoke from his fireplace. Quinn’s visit was bound to disturb that familiar haze, and yet her meeting Edward was as important as her knowing his family.

  Will pulled into the driveway in front of a shoebox house perched on cinder blocks. Before he could raise his hand to knock, Edward opened the door and stood aside.

  “Come in, come in. You must be half frozen.”

  Automatically, Will ducked to avoid hitting his head on the low frame.

  “Quinn, this is Edward French. Edward, Quinn Mallory.”

  They shook hands. “I’m delighted to meet you,” Edward said.

  Quinn was trying not to show her surprise. She had imagined Edward as approaching the stature of Paul Bunyan, but the man was hardly bigger than she was. His hands were tiny. He had a square face with deep lines around the mouth, large, rather prominent blue eyes, and thinning hair. Quinn liked the fact that he made no attempt to camouflage the baldness by sporting one of those corny hairpieces or combing the longer strands up from the sides. That kind of futile vanity always irritated her.

  “Come sit by the fire,” Edward said. “What can I get you?”

  While their host went to fetch drinks, Quinn looked around the room. Three out of four walls were obscured by bookcases. Every now and then there was a gap in what seemed an endless array of titles for the display of small, exquisite Japanese wood-block prints. The twin wicker sofas before the fire were upholstered in a bamboo pattern.

  Edward set down a tray, poured their beer into glasses, and settled opposite them with his Scotch and water. Will had purposely occupied the cushion farthest from the fire that had been Marianne’s spot. He didn’t think Edward would want to see Quinn sitting there.

  “Are you an English major too?” Edward asked her.

  “No, poli sci. I didn’t even like English until this year. We have a great teacher. A little on the affected side, but he knows how to get people excited about books. At least he did it for me.” She looked at Will. “And Will helped.”

  “We had some pretty nasty debates about the Brontës. Quinn has a philosophical preference for Charlotte.”

  “That was in November.”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about Cathy Earnshaw?”

  “I’ll admit she’s been growing on me,” Quinn said.

  “What do you plan to do with your political science?”

  Quinn kept her eyes on Edward so she wouldn’t have to see Will’s face. “I’m applying for a job with a television network in New York. The current affairs department.”

  “Ah,” Edward said. It was a carefully noncommittal “ah.” Will stared into the fire.

  “Tell me, how’s your friend Harvey Jackson?” Edward asked.

  “You know Harvey?” Quinn asked incredulously, then realized that no, of course he didn’t.

  “I feel that I do,” Edward said.

  “I always pick Edward’s brain about how to handle the little bastard,” Will explained.

  “I could use some help in that department,” Quinn said.

  “There’s some resentment about Quinn,” Will said.

  “Just a bit,” she agreed wryly.

  “But he’s really getting into the Tolkien. It’s just what he’s hungry for. Total fantasy, but challenging for a kid his age.”

  “Just think what he’d have been capable of if he’d had the luck to be born in Shaker Heights.”

  “You sound as if you’re writing him off,” Quinn said.

  “It’ll be a miracle if his intellect can survive, much less flourish, with the road he’s got ahead of him,” Edward said.

  Will drained his glass. “That’s all I ask. A small miracle.”

  “But he’s so smart,” Quinn protested.

  “Maybe he’ll make it,” Edward said. “I have something to show you, Will.” He got up and went to his desk.

  Quinn was thoughtful and quiet. She was visualizing Harvey as a grown man nodding on a Roxbury street corner like so many other black men she had seen in Boston. It had never occurred to her that those wasted people could have started out with gifted minds.

  Edward returned with a folder. Will took it while Edward explained to them, “She’s rather special, I think. Half-Indian, half-Canadian. I’m very excited about this particular story.”

  Will was already on the second page. Edward watched him read, and when Quinn glanced at the older man, she suddenly saw something that chilled her. Edward’s eyes, as they moved from the typed page to Will’s face, were full of adoration and pain. The moment lasted for the barest fraction of a second, but Quinn was stunned. Then she began to flush. Edward looked up at her, smiled pleasantly, and rose. He held out his hand and ushered her to his bookcases, where she could get a closer look at the prints.

  “You seem a little warm there by the fire,” he whispered. “This is a Yoshida. It’s my particular favorite.”

  “It’s not a wood block, is it?”

  “Yes, amazingly. I don’t think anybody in the western hemisphere has mastered the technique.”

  “What’s that light?” Quinn asked. She was staring out the window above Edward’s desk.

  Edward followed the direction of her gaze and laughed. “Stars.”

  “That’s incredible.” She turned to look at Will, who was still absorbed in the manuscript. “Do you think we could go out?”

  “Certainly.” Edward helped her on with her coat and slipped into a down jacket. “We’ll be right back,” he called to the oblivious Will.

  They leaned back against the jeep and lifted their heads upward.

  “I’m grateful to you, Quinn,” Edward said in a hushed voice. “It’s been a long time since I bothered to look at that.”

  “It’s not the same sky. Is Idaho that much closer to heaven?”

  “There’s no light to distract the eye. No cities. The nearest town is Red Falls, and everybody’s probably turned off the lights and gone to bed by now.”

  “It’s a little scary. I’m not very big to start off with, but this is ridiculous.”

  “I know just what you mean.”

  They smiled at each other in the starlight. Soon there was a beam of light from the house and Will’s figure appeared in the doorway. They blinked at him like blind creatures.

  “Finished. Are you coming in, or should I come out?”

  “Let’s go in,” Edward said, taking Quinn’s elbow. “It’s cold.”

  Standing by the fireplace, Edward explained, “We were being reminded of our insignificance.”

  “I feel like your basic dust mote,” Quinn said. “An awed dust mote. How was the story?”

  “It’s good. It’s better than good.”

  Edward nodded. “She’s a lovely girl, too, but I think her classmates neglect her. What a plague to be extraordinary at that age. Quinn, would you like to read it?”

  They had sat down again. Quinn took the pages and began to skim through them. It was a story about an Indian child’s odyssey to New Mexico, written in a vivid, straightforward style, but Quinn couldn’t concentrate. She kept her head down and flipped pages while she listened to Will, and Edward.

  “If I could have one student like this in a lifetime of teaching, I think I’d be satisfied,” Will said.

  “Yes. I hadn’t had such a thrill since …” Edward glanced at Quinn, whose face was invisible under a curtain
of hair. She filled in the blank: Marianne. “Her first assignment was very rough,” Edward continued, “but the purity was there, the power.”

  “I can hardly wait to start.”

  “You’d be very fortunate to run into a student like this right away.”

  “If I can just excite someone the way you did me, that’s enough.”

  Even if Quinn had been involved with the words on the page, her attention would have been caught by the depth of feeling in Will’s words. His voice, normally so measured, resonated with eagerness. He drummed his fingers on the arm of the sofa. Quinn had never seen the gesture from him before. She watched his hand, transfixed.

  They drank some more and talked about Thomas Hardy, the poet versus the novelist. Finally Will began to yawn, and soon they got up. At the door Edward gave Quinn a kiss on the cheek. He stared into her eyes for a moment. They smiled at one another and embraced. Then Edward shook hands with Will. He followed them out to the porch with his right hand in his pocket. Quinn wondered if he was trying to preserve the sensation of Will’s fingers on his.

  “Well?” Will said as they drove off.

  “He’s a dear man. He’s also crazy about you.”

  Will was silent.

  “You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” Will said.

  “You didn’t tell me that, either.”

  “It didn’t seem fair.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “He changed the world for me.”

  “I know. Funny thing.” Quinn shook her head. “He won.”

  “What?” Will asked.

  “Nothing. Let me drive, will you?”

  The next day Matthew wanted to replenish his supply of reading material at the Red Falls library. He appeared in the living room with a lapful of adventure books to return. Susan helped him on with his coat, then opened the front door and wheeled him down a side ramp to the jeep, where Sam and Will stood waiting. Sam scooped his father up and set him in the passenger seat while Will collapsed the chair and slid it into the back. Then Sam climbed in and started the engine. It was all accomplished in a matter of seconds.

  “That was efficient,” Quinn said to Will as Sam drove off.

  “We’ve done it a few thousand times.”

  “How come you don’t attach a lift to the back? Then he could stay in his wheelchair and you wouldn’t have to carry him.”

  “Because he loves sitting in front like anybody else. It gives him a chance to feel normal.”

  Sam and Matthew were back in an hour, and the same ritual was performed in reverse. It had begun to snow.

  “We’re in for a real storm today,” Matthew told Quinn as he wheeled in the front door. His pale cheeks were ruddy with the cold and the excitement of an excursion. “You’re likely to be trapped in here for weeks.” This time Quinn smiled at him. His expression never permitted a hint of humor, but there was something about his eyes when he was teasing her that she had begun to recognize.

  “Never snows like this in Medham, I figure,” he said.

  “Oh, no. New England flakes are entirely different. Mostly they’re square, but sometimes they’re the same shape as faces of the Founding Fathers. I especially like the Ben Franklins, but they melt too fast.”

  Matthew shot Will a look as he wheeled off toward his workroom. “You better watch out for this one,” he said, and raised his eyebrows just a fraction at Quinn. “You interested in taking a look at my studio?”

  Quinn nodded eagerly. She followed the wheelchair to a room, at the far end of the house, that had its own small fireplace. Across one entire wall hung an array of tools: jigsaws, awls, screwdrivers, picks, each in a variety of sizes. There was a smell of fresh sawdust. Quinn wandered over to a cabinet off in the darkest corner of the room and stared at Matthew’s collection of exquisite wood sculptures. He picked out a field mouse and handed it to her for inspection.

  “This is lovely. It must have taken hours.”

  “Days, more like. That one over there was weeks’ worth of trouble.” He pointed to an eagle that was poised on a rock as if about to take flight. “It’s Will’s Christmas present. Kept thinking of him while I worked on it. The bird reminds me of him somehow.”

  Quinn nodded. Yes, she thought. Sharp-sighted, beautiful, and strong. “It’s perfect,” she said.

  “I still have some work to do. Damn thing fell on its beak the first dozen times I tried it.”

  “I don’t know if we have eagles in New England.”

  “Probably not enough space, not enough sky.”

  Not for Will either, Quinn added silently. “Would you let me watch you work sometime?”

  “Sure, when you come to stay more’n a couple minutes. Here. You keep this.”

  He handed her a doe that was curled up so that it fit perfectly into the palm of her hand. Quinn stared at him in surprise. She started to murmur her thanks, but he had already turned his chair away and wheeled out into the hall.

  As Matthew had predicted, it continued to snow. Quinn stared out the window at the swirling white storm and tried to discern the branches of the elm tree just outside. Will sank into a corner of the sofa with his book. After a few minutes Quinn picked up a copy of National Geographic and settled on the opposite end of the couch. Every now and then the wind blasted a cloud of snow against the house, but otherwise all was tranquil.

  Quinn leafed absently through the magazine and set it down with a sigh. Pointing a toe at Middlemarch, she said, “Planning on finishing that today?” Will was about halfway through the six hundred pages.

  “If the storm keeps up, there won’t be much else to do. Maybe I’ll get through it.”

  Quinn felt the stirrings of panic. She got off the couch and began to pace back and forth. “If it clears up a little, do you think we could go somewhere? Maybe there’s somebody you’d like to visit?”

  “Nobody’s around now. It’s not a regular vacation time.”

  “What about your old buddy Henry Watson?”

  “He’s in Boise.”

  “Oh.”

  She peered out the window again. “I think it’s letting up,” she said hopefully. There was a break in the whiteness; she could make out the shape of the tree.

  “Come here,” Will said.

  Obediently she went to sit beside him.

  “Let’s neck.”

  “We can’t. Not …”

  He kissed her. “You need something to do. I can tell.”

  Quinn glanced nervously toward the kitchen door. Will had slipped his hand up inside her sweater. “Oh, God,” she said. “You’re doing this to torture me.”

  “You’ve got blizzard fever. I recognize the symptoms.”

  “And you’ve got the cure, huh, doc?”

  “That’s right.” His fingers brushed her nipples. A great throbbing had begun between her legs.

  “Will?”

  Susan Ingraham appeared in the doorway. Quinn sat up, blushing furiously. Susan was merciful, allowing a tiny smile but no comment.

  “It’s clearing.”

  Quinn stood to look outside and saw that indeed the snowfall had nearly stopped. Occasionally the wind tossed a billow back into the air, but that was all. Will had already picked up his book again. Cool customer, Quinn thought. Or maybe he was used to getting caught messing with girls on his parents’ sofa.

  “I need some things at the A&P,” Susan said. Will raised his eyes above the page. “Oh, heavens, you’ve got that Do Not Disturb look.”

  Quinn was startled to hear her familiar accusation come out of Susan Ingraham’s mouth.

  “I’ll go!” Quinn’s offer was almost a shout. “Please. I’d like to.”

  “You’ll get lost,” Will said, starting to get up.

  “I don’t like to have you drive a strange car in a new place,” Susan said.

  “I’ve been past the A&P. Sit down, Will. Besides, I can drive anything, real
ly. Just give me a list. I’d be happy to go.”

  Will and Susan looked at one another, then Will shrugged. “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  “Positive.”

  Quinn knew that Susan was watching out the window and was relieved when the jeep started right up. It felt wonderful to drive. As soon as she rounded the bend out of sight, she roared into fourth gear and began to sing. Oh my darlin’, Oh my darlin’, Oh my darlin’ Clementine … Tomorrow maybe she’d get to the store again. There’d be people in the supermarket, and noise. It was lovely out west; but she was beginning to long for a little tumult, a crowd. Even a traffic jam would help. The novelty of rustic quietude was beginning to wear off.

  When she got back, Will helped her unload the groceries. After the last bag had been deposited on the kitchen counter, Quinn followed Will back outside again. He walked ahead of her toward the trees beside the house, his figure disappearing now and then in swirls of snow kicked up by a gusty wind. There was an immense drift against a fence that marked the end of the Ingraham property, and Quinn watched him flop backward into it like a small boy pretending to be shot by the bad guys. When she reached him, he was completely buried except for his face and the protruding toes of his boots. “I’d just as soon lie here forever,” he said. “Come on down.” He yanked a leg out from under her, and she fell down next to him with a whoosh. He grabbed her in a hug and rolled them both over and over in the snow. Quinn laughed, enjoying the new experience of a playful Will. Finally, breathless, they let go of one another and lay side by side in their soft white cocoon.

  “Is it true that you get really sleepy before freezing to death?” Quinn asked drowsily.

  “Urm,” Will said.

  “Then I think I’m dying.” She hopped to her feet and hauled him, protesting, back into the house.

  After dinner Susan let Quinn help with the dishes. Quinn was pleased to feel less like a guest, and shooed Will out of the kitchen.

  Susan had been to Boston once when she was a teenager. They talked about the city for a few minutes, and then Susan said, “Quinn, I wanted to tell you.” She hesitated. Quinn stopped drying the gravy boat and looked at her. “I wanted to thank you. We knew over Christmas that something had happened with Will, and when you called that day I put it together. He’d been terribly unhappy about … I’m sure you know … about this girl who was killed …”