The chimes of her doorbell rang through the house, and Katherine stood. “Saved by the literal bell. Happy Halloween, folks.”
Beneath the front door’s light, a seven-year-old boy in a lobster costume waited in a cage, a piece of paper with the words Free Me tacked to the front. The lobster’s lobsterman father, Donald, hunched in his usual oil jacket and muck boots.
“What’s going on here, Jeremy?” Katherine asked the seven-year-old.
“I’m a vegetarian,” he said, and poked a white pillowcase through the bars of the cage. “Trick-or-treat!”
Katherine grabbed a handful of fun-sized chocolates and tossed them into the pillowcase.
“Cool costume, dude,” Zach said.
“So original,” Celeste added.
“Nicely done.” Barry unwrapped a milk chocolate bar and popped it into his mouth.
“What happened?” Katherine asked Donald.
“They say you should bring your kid to work with you. They say it will be good for him to see what his dad does. They say it’ll improve the kid’s confidence.”
“Who exactly are they?”
“The wife.”
Katherine grinned. “Can’t argue with them.”
Donald shook his head and helped his lobster down the walkway. A few more kids and parents made their way down the street. Flashlights bobbed in the dark. The high voices of children, the deeper sound of their parents’ replies. And the smell of the season’s first wood fires. She could see neither bay nor open ocean from her house, but she could hear it, its roar so much more pleasant than the drone of highway traffic. The background sound track of her childhood.
Katherine shut the door, caught Barry and Zach digging into the candy. Good. “Where’d Celeste go?”
“Ladies’ room,” Zach provided.
Katherine peered out the sidelight. “Do me a favor and man the door.” She grabbed a box of Whoppers for herself and went back to her seat at the dining table. She popped one in her mouth, concentrated on the soft chocolate giving way to the sweet, pithy malt ball. She gazed at the jack-o’-lantern’s flame-brightened scrollwork, set the soles of her boots on the floor. She scooped up the three cards from the table. Without looking down, she shuffled.
Will I keep my secret?
She was so much like Zach. She wanted to have a relationship with Zach. She wanted to keep the secret of Zach from hurting Barry. She wanted it both ways.
Will I keep my secret?
At the front of the house, Barry and Zach stood on either side of the black cauldron, munching on the Halloween candy. Zach glanced her way. He bent his head to Barry and spoke too low for Katherine to make out the words clearly.
She took a centering breath that tickled her throat. She flexed the cramps from her fingers and gave the cards a final shuffle.
Will I keep my secret?
“Cool, see you around eight,” Zach told Barry, the words hushed but unmistakable.
It was ten past six. If Zach and Barry stayed until the end of the two-hour trick-or-treat block, of course they’d see each other around eight. But they wouldn’t talk about it. See you around eight meant Zach and Barry were planning on leaving before eight. See you around eight meant they were planning on meeting up later tonight. See you around eight could mean they were planning on talking about Katherine.
Energy jittered through her hands.
Will I keep my secret?
Barry held up a candy wrapper close to his face, as though he were trying to read it without his reading glasses. He handed the wrapper to Zach.
Katherine slid a single card from the center of the deck and laid it on the table before her.
Katherine’s arms and legs felt rubbery and foreign, as though she were a stranger in her own body. Her mind buzzed with a confusion of white noise. Her vision blurred around the edges of the card.
A bolt of blue lightning jagged from a cadmium-yellow cloud and struck a slender building. Bricks tumbled from the structure. A man and a woman dove headlong from a Gothic arched window. Flames rose from the folds of their sapphire-blue robes.
Out of seventy-eight cards, Katherine had pulled The Tower, the tarot’s greatest symbol of crisis and upheaval.
CHAPTER 16
Barry Horowitz reminded Zach of his father.
Both men had this easygoing way about them. When you were talking to them, you never got the feeling they’d rather be somewhere else, your presence an inconvenience on their way to either a more interesting activity or their own thoughts. Whether Zach was talking to his father about a job or the Red Sox or the latest way he’d screwed up, Everett Fitzgerald would take off his reading glasses, rub his face, and look at Zach with fresh eyes. If his father was watching the evening news, he’d turn off the set and pat the seat cushion beside him. When Zach asked for help or redirection, his father had never turned him away.
Whether Zach always agreed with his father’s suggestions was an entirely different story.
That didn’t entirely explain why Zach had claimed he needed to go for a beer run, dropped Celeste at her apartment door, and sped off for a secret meeting with Barry Horowitz at his house.
Before peeling out of the parking lot, Zach had memorized the directions Barry jotted down on the back of his business card. That business card now sat in Zach’s pocket where he’d first slipped it earlier, alongside a Hershey’s milk chocolate wrapper and his St. Anthony pocket token. Zach drove with his left hand, stretched the fingers of his right hand from the sling, and patted above the pocket for good luck. He passed through the center of town, followed Ocean Boulevard for about two and a half miles, and slowed to watch for Barry’s driveway. Under the light of the waning half-moon, a marsh took shape on his right.
He’d gone too far.
Zach pulled to the side of the road, banged a uey, and found Barry’s driveway: a hairpin switchback with a simple mailbox. The names Lamontagne and Horowitz gleamed in Matilda’s headlights. Zach pulled into the wooded driveway, grinning and shaking his head at no one.
The Barry and Katherine duo reminded Zach a little of his parents.
Katherine and Barry spoke their own language, a comedy routine where Barry was the joker, Katherine was the straight man, but they were both in on the joke. Zach got the distinct feeling that, despite her protests, Katherine was crushing on her ex-husband. Why else would she have invited him to dinner? And even if Barry hadn’t kept Katherine’s name on his mailbox, there was no hiding the obvious. Barry couldn’t keep his eyes off Katherine.
That still didn’t explain the secret Fitzgerald-Horowitz rendezvous.
Matilda bumped up the driveway, pitch-dark beneath the thick pine forest. Zach hummed a song that seemed to start in his center, the way you were supposed to sing, and thrummed his vocal cords. “Prince, ‘I Would Die 4 U.’ Nice,” Zach said, naming the song and praising himself for the naming.
He liked it better when Celeste was sitting by his side, playing along, and he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
This thing with Celeste that had no name? He was getting closer to naming.
As promised, the road opened up to a shared drive. Zach veered right, and the back of a white New Englander rose from a grassy hill. He parked against the scrub, unlatched his seat belt, and slid the St. Anthony token from his pocket. For the second time since coming to town, he recited the prayer, asking for the restoration of things lost or stolen. “I would die for you,” he told the darkness. He liked the sound of the words.
Zach jogged around to the front of the house and found Barry sitting on the porch in one of those metal chairs. Beyond a small front yard, Barry faced the woods and a killer view. A maze-like tidal river glowed beneath the half-moon and emptied into the night.
“Wow.” Zach squinted up at the two-story house. Judging by the height and width, he estimated a good three thousand square feet and at least three bedrooms. “You live here alone?”
“Just me and my thoughts.”
“You and
Katherine didn’t have any kids,” Zach said, more of a statement than a question.
“That,” Barry said, “wasn’t for lack of trying.” Barry’s voice sounded winded, like a Boston Marathon runner who stumbled across the Copley Square finish line hours after sundown. When Barry stepped from the porch, Zach caught a glimpse of his expression, a grimace of regret. Then Barry tilted his head to the night sky.
Zach followed Barry’s lead, and his stomach took a nosedive. The Milky Way stood out against the dome-shaped jet-black backdrop, a collection of every star visible with the naked eye. Zach’s gaze gravitated to the Big Dipper and the seven stars that marked its path. Sure enough, just like his father had taught him, in autumn the Big Dipper hung low in the sky, its handle pointing straight at Polaris, the North Star.
Zach’s father used to say that no matter where you were, you could always find your way home. All you had to do was look up.
When Zach was thirteen and he’d run away, he’d only gotten as far as Harvard Square. There he’d met a group of like-minded kids, teenagers in search of a place to call home. After the local crowds had dwindled, the tourists and college kids tucked themselves into hotels and dorm rooms, he’d followed the ragtag bunch to the sheltered entryway of the Harvard Coop. In place of dinner, they’d passed around something in a greasy brown bag that tasted like NyQuil and inspired an instant dreamless sleep. But when he’d awoken sometime past midnight to the loud rumble of a boy snoring and the soft gurgle of a girl crying, Zach had struggled from the sleeping bag and stared up at the sky, his father’s voice echoing in his head.
Tonight, away from the city glare, the light pollution, Zach was finally able to connect the stars between Polaris and the Little Dipper’s outer bowl. Turned out, after years of pretending for his father’s sake, Zach had only needed the clarity of a country sky to see through his father’s eyes.
“Beauty,” Zach said.
“So,” Barry said, “about your girl, Celeste.”
Zach grinned. He liked a guy who got to the point. He liked that Barry thought beauty was synonymous with Celeste. He liked that Barry had called Celeste his girl. He liked Barry.
“Am I a worrywart?” Zach asked, his mother’s phrase conjuring an image of his mother. Even though she’d sent him away, was she worried about him?
He’d never considered that.
Before dinner, Zach had told Barry he was worried Celeste had some kind of eating disorder. He’d asked Barry to watch the way Celeste ate. He’d asked Barry for a secret consultation. If they were talking about Celeste behind her back but for her own good, were they still gossiping?
Zach had never considered that either.
Instead of answering Zach’s question, Barry offered one of his own. “Did Celeste eat more than she usually does for dinner?”
“Maybe,” Zach said, thinking back to the few times he’d seen Celeste eating dinner. “She usually hides when she’s eating. She’ll sneak off to the kitchen or go into her bedroom and shut the door.”
“You’re living together, but you take your meals separately?” Barry asked.
“We’re not really living together,” Zach said. “I’m sort of crashing on her couch.”
Zach thought of the Harvard Square kids again. He’d asked them what they did to survive the winter, and they’d told him they couch surfed, the time-honored tradition of another kid—usually an older kid—with a room or an apartment laying out the welcome mat for homeless travelers in need.
Now Zach hoped Celeste would let him help her. He might not understand the meaning of life or even what he was supposed to do for a long-term job. But trying to unravel whatever had happened to Celeste back in New York and help her deal with the fallout? That meant everything.
“When I went into the kitchen before dinner,” Barry said, “I advised Katherine to serve from the head of the table.”
Zach nodded. “No wonder she practically grabbed the vegetables out of my hands.”
Barry sighed, a heavy sound. “If you allow someone with anorexia to feed themselves, they’ll take as little as possible. For that reason, when they’re struggling, it’s best for family and friends to measure the patient’s food.”
“Celeste isn’t a patient,” Zach said, his need to defend rising from his stomach to his throat. “I mean, she’s not really sick.”
Barry caught Zach’s eye. How much did Barry know about Celeste? How much of her history? Had Barry known her back when she’d had that trouble with the boyfriend from high school?
Crazy, but for a second Zach was jealous of Barry for being a part of Celeste’s life before Zach had even known she’d existed. Standing under the night sky had always given Zach the strangest feeling of being lost in time, of time being like a river that could flow in either direction.
But, of course, you could only paddle the curvy path forward.
“She’s not sick,” Zach repeated, but this time the statement sounded like a question.
Barry clamped a hand to Zach’s left shoulder, as if sensing Zach needed grounding, as if he could read all the questions behind Zach’s questions and everything he feared. “Plan special meals with her,” Barry said.
“How about dessert?” Zach thought of the ice-cream sundae fixings. Every day he’d checked and found the ice cream unopened, the hot fudge sitting in the refrigerator door behind his yellow mustard. The whipped cream—how could you ignore whipped cream?—hiding behind the OJ. The pecans looked as if Celeste had opened the bag and eaten exactly three halves.
“Dinner, dessert. Doesn’t really matter. I suggest you plan on eating as many meals as possible with Celeste. Make sure you plate the food for her.”
Zach chuckled. “She loves when people serve her.”
“Zach,” Barry said.
A shiver ran up the back of Zach’s head. Whenever his father was about to tell him something important, he’d say Zach’s name, too.
“If Celeste is struggling with an eating disorder, everything about eating is stressful for her, including deciding how much food to put on her plate.”
“So I’d be, like, helping her get better?”
“Exactly. And sitting down to eat with her is helpful, too. You’re showing her an example of someone who’s svelte and has a good appetite. I noticed how much you enjoyed Katherine’s cooking.”
Was there anything this guy didn’t notice?
Zach’s hand wandered to his belly, the muscles corralling three servings of roast and seconds on the best devil’s food cake he’d ever tasted. And yet he was still hungry. He pretty much never got full. “My mother says I have a separate dessert stomach.”
Barry patted Zach on the back. “Enjoy it while you’re young.”
“I don’t get it,” Zach said.
“When you get older, your metabolism slows down, and—”
Zach sighed, a sign he was getting older. “I mean, about Celeste. Why would someone try to starve themselves? Even if someone needed to lose weight, which Celeste doesn’t, it would be the worst torture imaginable.”
“Have you ever been stressed out?”
“Sure,” Zach said. “Who hasn’t?” Zach slipped his hand into his pocket, and he rubbed the token between his thumb and forefinger.
“Have you ever felt overwhelmed, like everything is out of control? You know you’ve done nothing wrong, yet someone or something has taken away your power?”
“Definitely.”
Zach’s mind glanced off the memory of his parents telling him he wasn’t who he thought he was, jumped over his search for his birth mother and his relationship with Katherine, and landed on the cause of Celeste’s stress.
Barry crossed his arms and turned his gaze to the tidal river. “Eating disorders are just another unhealthy way of attempting to cope with a stressor. There’s so much you can’t control, so you shut down and control what you can.”
“I still can’t imagine . . .” Zach said, and then, out of nowhere, he could.
He re
membered the weeks after his parents’ confession and their plea for him to come to them with questions. He remembered his mind bursting with questions. He remembered fearing those questions, and the way he needed to close his bedroom door, curl into a ball, and clamp his mouth firmly shut to keep them contained.
“You can’t make me,” he’d said. Beneath his cool, white sheets, his words had wrapped him in a hot, humid bubble of protection.
His parents could unlock his bedroom door, but they couldn’t make him talk.
“You’ll figure it out,” Barry said, sounding more like Zach’s father than ever. “I have faith in you.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your advice.” Zach reached out his left hand for a shake.
Barry took Zach’s hand and then clamped a second hand on top, letting Zach know he was important to him. Then Barry tugged on the back of Zach’s shirt. “You know Halloween is over? You know you can put away the cape for another year, right?”
Zach laughed. Even under the light of the half-moon, the Superman cape glowed. Obvious, now that Barry had pointed it out to him. “I guess I forgot to take it off,” Zach said.
In his car, Zach slid the St. Anthony token from his pocket.
Something’s lost that can’t be found.
Celeste couldn’t remember everything that had happened back in New York. But did she really want to know? When Zach had tried to push her on it, she’d retreated behind her bedroom door. Had she accidentally forgotten but on purpose?
What the hell did he know? He wasn’t a shrink. He wasn’t even a detective. He was just a guy working as a dishwasher, wandering through life, and trying to figure out how to stay in one place.
Zach untied the cape from around his neck and set it on the seat beside him. Then he refolded the cape so the yellow S blazed through the darkness, Superman as his copilot.
A Measure of Happiness Page 25
