A Measure of Happiness

by Lorrie Thomson

  When you realized someone had raped the girl you loved, your heart actually hurt, as if that someone had torn your heart from your body and crushed it in his hand.

  Zach wanted to go after Matt and pound his face until even Matt’s mother wouldn’t have recognized him. Zach wanted to punish Matt for getting away with rape.

  With neither a witness nor physical evidence, a rape charge came down to a pissing match of he said, she said. And even if Celeste could manage to get sexual assault charges lobbed against Matt, any defense attorney worth his or her salt would rip Celeste apart on the stand.

  Probably the reason Zach’s father refused to take on rape cases.

  A girl who got drunk and willingly went back to a guy’s room didn’t stand a chance. The rape wasn’t Celeste’s fault. But if Zach was going to be brutally honest, he’d have to admit he was a little irked with Celeste for ending up drunk in Matt’s bed. Did that make Zach a monster, too?

  For the second time in two days and without the benefit of the night sky, that feeling of being lost in time came over Zach. He wished he could go back in time to the moment when Celeste had decided to follow Matt to his room. Better yet, Zach imagined going back to that party Celeste had mentioned, where he’d rip the drink from her hands and hand her life back to her, shiny and bright as a promise ring.

  Zach struggled to standing and stretched out a kink in his lower back, his body’s way of complaining about sleeping on his side on the squishy couch. His father had a bad back, having thrown it out once playing baseball, another time helping a colleague move filing cabinets. Could you take on someone’s physical attributes by virtue of proximity? People who didn’t know Zach was adopted often claimed to see a family resemblance, their minds playing tricks on them and superimposing comfort for the truth.

  He plodded into the kitchen and scanned the clean counters for new smudges and crumbs. He went to the bathroom and yanked aside the flowered shower curtain, swiped the tub with his hand and found it dry. He knocked on Celeste’s bedroom door and then, heart hammering, threw the door wide. He slammed on the lights and tore the top sheet from her bed.

  Out in the parking lot, without Old Yeller, Matilda looked worn and tired, the old girl belatedly showing her age.

  Maybe he was being a worrywart. Two o’clock was early for Celeste’s shift, but maybe she’d gone in to work on a batch of biscotti or a three-tier wedding cake or to blow off some steam. He stared into middle space, finger combing his hair, and then gave himself a shake and found Katherine’s number programmed into the phone.

  Katherine answered on the first ring, as if she’d been waiting for his call. When she asked what was wrong, Zach took a chance and told her about the rape. She needed to know Celeste’s state. Zach needed an ally. Celeste could punch his other eye out later.

  Fifteen minutes later, Zach and Katherine met at the door to Lamontagne’s. He’d tossed a hoodie over his flannel, but he shivered in the night air. Katherine turned the key in the door. She squinted beneath the lights. “What happened to your eye?”

  Zach squinted back at her, only his squint was lopsided. “Celeste.”

  “Did you deserve it?”

  “Not really.”

  Katherine’s dark eyes glowed, bloodshot, as if she’d been crying for Celeste. Katherine glanced down at Zach’s sling and then brought her gaze back to his shiner. She shook her head. “This town is bad for your health.”

  For the first time since the shiner, Zach grinned. “Tell me about it.”

  Inside the kitchen, the counters were squeaky clean. Blake had washed, dried, and put away every last dish, pot, pan, and mixing bowl.

  A seam of light seeped from around the closed stockroom door. Katherine and Celeste’s blackboard to-do list, usually propped by the door, lay on its side. Katherine opened the stockroom door. Rolling ladder, bins, shelves stacked with canned goods and mason jars, chest freezer and marble worktable. Same as the kitchen, nothing was out of place.

  When Katherine went into the room, Zach intended to right the blackboard. Instead, he discovered the to-do list erased from Celeste’s column and a note taking its place:

  Forgot something in New York. Be back tomorrow. C.

  Zach’s left eyelid ticked. The smiley face made him want to puke.

  Inside the stockroom, Katherine was on her knees before the skirted worktable, as if she’d read his mind.

  Zach thought of the Arlington Unitarian church, the voices rising up in prayer, and offered up the prayer first spoken by his mother: Find her. Then he added a prayer of his own: Save Celeste.

  Katherine lifted the skirt, bent her head beneath the worktable, and riffled through something Zach couldn’t see. “Celeste left us a note,” he told the back of Katherine’s head. “She’s gone to New York.” Zach thought of the right hook Celeste had landed and the man she’d intended to punch.

  The man Celeste meant to punish. “She’s gone after him,” Zach said.

  “Merde,” Katherine said, the first time Zach had heard her speak a word of French. The cussing didn’t bother him, but the inflection was hushed and understated, similar to the way Celeste had said, “Oh, no,” last night, right before she’d collapsed in his arms. In the warm, closed space, Katherine’s inflection shot a web of shivers up the back of Zach’s head.

  Zach got down on his knees beside Katherine.

  A two-foot-by-two-foot metal safe sat beneath the worktable. Its combination door swung wide.

  “She got into the safe,” Katherine said.

  “Celeste would never steal money from you,” Zach said, even as his mind wondered how much money she’d have in her pocketbook and whether, in her state of mind, she could’ve borrowed from the till.

  Katherine turned to Zach, her eyes widened, as though a cold blast of air had shot her in the face. “She didn’t steal money from me. She borrowed my loaded gun.”

  “Oh, shit,” Zach said.

  “Exactly. She’s going to kill the son of a bitch.” Katherine’s eyes watered and she rolled her lips into her mouth, but she almost sounded glad about it. Her voice rose an octave, as though she’d announced the daily bread on special.

  “Let’s hope not,” Zach said, but a tiny corner of his mind imagined Celeste getting away with murder. A tiny corner of his mind hoped for vengeance.

  He was better than his worst thought.

  Katherine threw him a look. “I know we can’t let her. We’ll have to call ahead, of course, let the school know—”

  “What?” Zach asked. “That a girl hell-bent on revenge is coming after one of their students with a loaded gun? The school would call the police. The police would be waiting for her. . . .” Zach’s mind unspooled the scenario. He imagined Celeste bursting into a classroom or—this one made him sick—Matt’s dorm room. He imagined men in blue just doing their jobs and taking Celeste into custody, instead of the rapist. God bless the American justice system for believing a person was innocent unless you could prove him guilty in a court of law.

  Usually that thought came around without a generous helping of sarcasm.

  “I don’t think Celeste is capable of murder,” Zach said, his statement not sounding as sure as he’d intended. Who knew what another person was capable of when pushed to the brink? Right now Zach wouldn’t trust himself near Matt with a loaded gun and a clear shot.

  “I’m going after her,” Zach said.

  “We’re going after her.”

  The phrase, Surely you can’t be serious, played in his head, churning out an image of Celeste so crisp he half-expected her to appear in the doorway, wearing her starched apron and sarcastic grin.

  “What? It’s my gun,” Katherine said. As if Zach would believe Katherine cared anything for material goods.

  “You know, maybe you shouldn’t have given her the combo to your safe.” Zach knew he wasn’t being fair, but there, he’d said it anyway. Yeah, hindsight sounded like an angry, finger-pointing thirteen-year-old boy. The one that lived insi
de him.

  “I didn’t,” Katherine said. “I was wondering how she figured it out myself,” she said, her expression a cross between an open question and an accusation.

  Typically, people chose the most obvious combinations for their safes. Their wedding anniversary, their birthday, their spouse’s birthday, or—number one on the list—the birth date of one of their children.

  Zach’s ears clogged, same as when Matilda crested a hill faster than his body could adjust to the altitude.

  He closed the door to the safe and spun the dial to reset the lock. He turned the dial twice to the right and fit the black notch of number 1 against the white indicator. He turned the wheel twice to the left and stopped on 1 a second time. From behind him, Katherine took an audible breath. His skin warmed. His pulse pinched his eardrums.

  He could stop right now, leave the lock, hit the road with Katherine, and continue to circle the issue of his identity. Inside Zach’s head, Celeste called him a fraidy cat. Zach glanced over his shoulder, and Katherine nodded for him to continue. Slowly, Zach turned the wheel to the right—past 90, past 80, all the way to 76.

  He turned the handle and opened the door.

  Instead of his pulse doing a crazy dance, the pounding slowed and settled. He breathed into his stomach and turned to face Katherine.

  Zach might be a fraidy cat, but he’d done his research. Before leaving Arlington, he’d stopped at the library. He’d researched adoptee reunion scripts. He’d read about breaking the news to the birth mother gently. He’d absorbed the importance of not acting too fast and scaring her away.

  Maybe he’d taken the advice too much to heart. “I know this might come as a shock to you,” he said. “But does the date January 1, 1976, mean anything to you?”

  Katherine’s expression didn’t change. She looked numb, but tears flowed from her eyes, spilling down her cheeks. She didn’t bother wiping them away. She didn’t even seem to notice. “I’m so sorry, Zach. I was afraid I wouldn’t make a very good mother. What I told you about my family . . . I’m still trying to figure out. I came from such a horrible place. I didn’t want to hurt you. I’ve never wanted to hurt you. I only wanted you to be happy.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Zach said, his voice suddenly formal and shy with a woman he’d known for weeks. A woman he’d grown to care for and respect.

  Katherine wiped the tears from her face with the palms of her hands. “Do you want to see something?” She tucked her hair behind one ear, hunched in the safe. Something plastic looking poked from her fisted hand. Two somethings. She handed them to Zach.

  Lamontagne, Katherine was printed across the longer, thicker plastic strip, a hospital ID bracelet. On a tiny ID bracelet, someone had handwritten Baby Boy Lamontagne. Zach laid the bracelet across his wrist.

  “You wear it around your ankle.” Katherine laughed and covered her mouth. “Wore it around your ankle. Hard to imagine . . . ”

  “Not for you.”

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t forgotten a thing. Every single day since I gave you away—” Katherine took a shaky breath. “I’ve regretted it.”

  Zach handed the bracelets back to Katherine. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t cry or don’t regret it?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  Katherine rubbed the ID bracelets between her fingers, the way Zach worried his St. Anthony token to find his center. “Your middle name, the one you despise so?” Katherine said.

  “That was my doing, the name I put on your original birth certificate. I named you after my mother, Francesca. Your parents are incredibly generous to have kept that name. I imagine they’re wonderful parents.”

  “They are,” Zach said. “At the moment, sorry to say, they’re not exactly thrilled with me. My dad—he hoped I’d follow in his footsteps to Harvard Law. I’m kind of a big disappointment.” Zach thought of the way, ten years ago, his father had responded to his phone call and picked him up in Harvard Square. Bleary-eyed and slack-skinned, Everett Fitzgerald had looked worse for wear than Zach. But his father hadn’t even yelled at him. Everett had told Zach to get in the car. Then his father had locked the car doors, hung his head, and sobbed.

  That had felt so much worse than getting yelled at.

  “In my limited experience with childbearing,” Katherine said, “when you have a child, you might wonder what they’ll choose for a career. You might even dream about it. But hope—you just hope they’re happy.”

  “I guess,” Zach said.

  “Have you and your dad sat down and discussed the whole law school issue?”

  “We’ve sort of talked around it.” Zach drew a circle in the air.

  “This circling thing”—Katherine drew her own circle in the air—“has a limited appeal. I strongly suggest you and your dad hash it out.”

  “I might just do that.”

  “I might hold you to it.”

  Katherine stared at him, and he thought she might start crying again. “We should get going.”

  Zach got up from the floor and then he offered his hand and helped Katherine to standing. Even though she was wearing boots with a heel, he towered over her. With her hair down, he could easily imagine her as a woman of twenty-two, alone in the world, adrift without a family to ground her. How would he have turned out if he hadn’t had the Fitzgeralds? How would he have turned out if he hadn’t been ridiculously loved? Why else would they have put up with his childish crap?

  “Okay if I give you a hug?” Katherine asked.

  “Of course,” Zach said, and he hugged her first. She radiated warmth through her thin blouse. Her embrace felt strangely familiar, as if somehow he remembered being an infant in her arms.

  For the third time in two days, that feeling of being adrift in time came over Zach. Only this time, he didn’t fantasize about going back in time to change history. He didn’t imagine himself as an adult Zach who’d walk into the young Katherine’s hospital room and tell her not to make the biggest mistake of her life and give him away.

  This time, if Zach could go back in time, he wouldn’t change anything at all.

  By the time the sun rose over the Mass Pike, Katherine had watched Zach inhale four biscotti, three lemon bars, and half a dozen sugar cookies. Then his stomach had growled, as though he were just getting started.

  Katherine had polished off the remaining pastry—a plain croissant—and a small black coffee. Her left leg ached heel to hip, the sciatica by-product of standing on her feet for decades. She was seriously contemplating letting Zach drive her Outback the rest of the way to New York. Besides that, she was blushing, painfully, like a woman caught enjoying herself with a man she’d barely known.

  “So what did you say his last name was?” Zach asked, referring to his biological father.

  “I didn’t,” Katherine said. “But he told me it was Bell.”

  “Adam Bell,” Zach said, adding his father’s first and last names together and seeming to come to some conclusion. “Anything else? Where’s he from?”

  “I got the feeling he was from somewhere in New England. That he was in the early phases of his journey.”

  “Basing this feeling on anything concrete?”

  Here Katherine grinned. “I consulted neither the tarot nor a crystal ball.”

  Zach chuckled.

  “I don’t know. It was so long ago.... His accent or lack of a discernible accent? His level of enthusiasm? You know how you’re excited at the beginning of a trip, but then as the realities of the road make themselves evident, you lose steam?” Katherine flexed her left foot until the ache receded.

  “But you have no clue where Adam was headed.”

  “Of that, I have no idea.”

  The sun peeked over the horizon, washing out the road. Katherine and Zach flipped down their sun visors.

  “If I’d known where he was going, I promise you, I would’ve contacted him.” Katherine’s throat tightened. A question she was sensing from Zach or one she needed to answe
r for herself? She glanced at Zach, but his expression betrayed little. Side view, he looked nothing like her or Adam. He only looked like himself.

  Himself with an eye socket that had gotten in the way of Celeste’s fist.

  “Not to hold him to any sort of responsibility, mind you,” Katherine added. “Just because he had a right to know about you.”

  Zach nodded and drummed on the glove compartment with one fist.

  Katherine turned on the radio to static and then turned it off.

  “I bet I could find him,” Zach said. “I bet I could track down Adam Bell.”

  The back bumper of a sedan came into view before Katherine, and she slowed. “I bet you could, if that’s what you need. I bet you’d make a great detective. After all, you found me,” Katherine said, thinking of Zach eating his way across the bakeries of Casco Bay in search of a baker who’d lived there twenty-four years ago. She hoped he’d one day tell the story to his children. She hoped she’d one day know his children.

  That brought Katherine to Celeste and the reason Katherine had thus far delayed stopping for gas and giving her one-armed, squinty-eyed friend Zach the wheel. Even if they drove into Underhill, New York, on engine fumes, even though they couldn’t be certain when Celeste had left or if they had a chance in hell of getting to the campus of Culinary America ahead of her, they had to try. They had to keep going.

  Two hours ago, by mutual consent, they’d both agreed not to freak out about Celeste until they neared the campus. So far, they’d been mostly successful.

  “I bet,” Zach said, his tone playful, “I could locate your parents for you, if you’re interested. Where did you say you grew up?”

  “Stoughton,” she said, the word sounding hushed, like a guilty confession. Like something you hid behind a closed door and a locked safe. Like something you hid away so you wouldn’t frighten yourself. There was nothing wrong with the town. Anywhere she’d lived with her father would’ve been hell.