Fire Point

by John Smolens

  He just wanted a look at the guy.

  One night he saw the Mercedes parked in the small lot beside the pharmacy. He walked over to the car. In Italy a Mercedes was a sign of prestige; here it was just an oddity, a sign of someone wanting to be different. Sean looked around the lot, which was empty except for a couple of other cars. He went to the back of the Mercedes and kicked the right taillight. There was the sound of glass falling on the pavement as he walked away.

  MARTIN SELDOM SAW Hannah on school nights, and when he did it was more or less on the sly. She said she didn’t want to “advertise it”—she was already the subject of enough rumor and speculation. She was also wary of her mother finding out she was seeing a man ten years her senior. So he agreed that she would contact him and arrange their meetings, and often it became a game for them. His phone would ring and she’d say something like “Petit Marais Point at nine-thirty” or “The far end of the harbor parking lot at eleven.” Sometimes she wanted to just talk and hold hands, tell him about her day. Other times she made it clear immediately that they were meeting for a quickie because she didn’t have a lot of time. It was part of the game, urgent and clandestine. She had one stipulation: They could not make love in his car. Spring is slow to come to Lake Superior, but on the occasional warm evenings in May they’d take a blanket and find a place on the beach. Usually they went back to his aunt’s cabin. There was something frantic and desperate in her approach to sex. She seemed determined to achieve an orgasm followed by total exhaustion. It was self-negating, a purgative, as though only during those moments of release could she completely expel all knowledge, all recollection of who or what she was—afterward she once said, “For a minute there was just this.”

  ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON Hannah went to Martin’s house after school to help. She particularly liked demolition. She wore a mask and leather work gloves, a blue bandanna wrapped around her skull. Her black T-shirt read U2 in white letters. For over an hour she tore out plaster and lath with a crowbar and sledge, loaded it into the wheelbarrow, and took it out to the pickup. When they were through for the day, they sat out on the front steps drinking beer. After Pearly packed up his truck and left, Martin opened the last two beers.

  “Your mother working at the hospital tonight?” he asked.

  “Three to eleven,” Hannah said.

  “She know yet?”

  “About us? I haven’t, you know, told her outright that I’ve been seeing you, but the other day she said something about how I wasn’t hiding in my room as much.”

  “You do that at home? Hide?”

  “Since last year I’ve spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling above my bed. I don’t know—I just get turned inside out. Ripping out walls and ceilings is therapeutic.”

  “Think it might be better if you told her before she, you know, finds out?”

  Hannah wanted to tell Martin about Sean, that he had returned to Whitefish Harbor. But she couldn’t because it might seem that Sean still meant something to her. It shouldn’t matter whether Sean was back or not. It shouldn’t make any difference to them at all. But she knew it did. “Martin, you want to meet my mother?”

  “How do you think she’d take it?”

  “After last year, I don’t know,” Hannah said, and then she smiled. “She’s forty-two. Maybe she’d want to date you herself.”

  “She ever see men?”

  “Mom? Not in years. She works at the hospital, comes home, eats, reads in bed, sleeps, goes back to work. It’s been years since she’s gone out—says she’s too exhausted.”

  “My guess is she finds out on her own, it’s not going to sit well.”

  “I like the fact that nobody knows,” Hannah said. “It’s our secret.”

  “She’s going to find out eventually.”

  “Does it have to be tonight? Mom won’t be home until late, so it’s just us.”

  “No. I like it this way, too. We can go public when you want.”

  “My mom is not the problem.”

  She knew Martin was staring at her. “Is there a problem?”

  “Not exactly.” She looked at him. “Not between us.”

  “Good,” he said.

  PEARLY MADE HIS usual rounds, concluding at the Portage a little before last call. The bartender Sally was in her late thirties and she had strawberry curls and a nose that veered slightly to the left. On nights that her teenaged son Jason stayed with her ex-husband in Newberry she sometimes took Pearly home with her. For which he was indeed grateful.

  MARTIN DROPPED HANNAH off at the end of her street a little after ten. On the way back through the village, he noticed the patrol car fall in behind him. He was well within the speed limit, but the cruiser followed for about a mile. When the blue flashing lights came on, Martin pulled over to the side of the road and rolled down his window.

  It wasn’t Officer Colby who approached the car, but a young policeman.

  “Problem, Officer?” Martin handed him his license and registration.

  “I usually have to ask for these. You’ve been pulled over before?”

  It was hard to see the officer’s face in the dark, and his flashlight at times struck Martin right in the eyes. “I’ve had some experience, yes.”

  “I’ll have to check to see what kind of record you have.”

  “Is that the reason you pulled me over?”

  The officer leaned down to the window. “You wouldn’t be challenging me?”

  “No. Just asking the nature of this—”

  “It’s the nature of your taillight. Which is broken.”

  “It is? I didn’t know that.”

  “Because otherwise you wouldn’t drive this vehicle at night, would you?”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” Martin turned his head away from the flashlight and looked out the windshield.

  After a moment, the officer said, “If you’ll wait here. Please.”

  Martin watched him in the rearview mirror as he returned to the patrol car. Even his walk was pissed off. The flashing blue lights gave his movements a strobelike jerkiness, as though he were in an old movie. When he got in the patrol car, the interior light shone down on his face. For perhaps five minutes he sat in the cruiser, his head lowered, and he hardly moved.

  Finally he got out and came back to the Mercedes. Handing the license, registration, and a slip of paper to Martin, he said, “I’m giving you a warning this time. You have ten days to repair that taillight.”

  Martin looked down at the slip of paper. It was difficult to read by the car’s interior light, but he saw the officer’s name: S. Colby. He looked up, trying to see the face above the flashlight beam. “You Sean Colby?”

  “I am.”

  “Now I understand.”

  “You do? What do you understand?”

  “I thought you were overseas in the army, Sean.”

  “I guess you did.”

  Martin leaned toward the open window, trying to get a better look at his face, but Colby had already turned and begun to walk back to the patrol car.

  HANNAH LAY IN HER BED, staring at the ceiling. She wanted to fall asleep before her mother returned from her shift at the hospital, but she was wide awake. Other nights at the cabin with Martin had been so perfect that they seemed unreal. She believed that a kind of grace had enveloped them. But tonight was different; the more they tried in bed, the more difficult it became, until they finally gave up. They went out into the kitchen and he made an omelette with mushrooms, onion, and cheese. The red wine was sharp on her tongue. His bathrobe wasn’t warm enough, so finally she went back into the bedroom and put on her clothes. They hardly spoke while they ate.

  She couldn’t get over the fact that Sean was back, couldn’t stop thinking about him. After he had gone into the army, slowly she was able to put him aside—that was the way she thought about it, aside—and as the months passed she came to realize that there were more and more days when she didn’t even think about him. So she came to understand that when she first s
tarted going with him, she had become obsessed. It seemed both easy and harmless at first, and it was such a high-school thing. Sean came on so calm, so cool. With Sean, it was all how things looked. The way they met in the halls between classes. The way they drove around in his mother’s Ford. Sitting close to him in the car was a sign of possession. Their favorite place was the dirt road that ran up into the woods above Petit Marais; the two-track was overgrown, so the grass ticked against the chassis.

  The first time her period was late, she was frightened, and she swore that if the blood would come, she would make sure it wouldn’t happen again. But when it finally came, she didn’t, and eventually there was the month when she lay night after night on her bed, trying to will her blood to flow. But this time it didn’t. She removed tampons from the carton anyway, just so her mother—who she knew kept track of such things—saw that their supply in the bathroom cabinet was diminishing. Eventually, that deception no longer worked, and the morning she was vomiting into the toilet, her mother stood outside the bathroom door and said, “You’re late, aren’t you.” The dreaded word late. But it was her nurse’s voice, calm, direct, officious. Then there was a catch in her throat as she said, “Honey, I knew it. You always leave some blood on the underside of the seat.” Hannah reached up, unlocked the door, and her mother came in; she was wearing her nurse’s uniform, white pants and a yellow print blouse. Her face was stern, determined, with bright blue eyes and short blond hair. She no longer bothered with makeup. The model of efficiency. She soaked a washcloth in cold water, and as she wiped her daughter’s face, she said, “Hannah, you don’t have to hide this, not from me.” They put their arms around each other then, sobbing.

  Hannah heard her mother’s car pull into the driveway. For the next few minutes she listened to the routine she knew by heart: Her mother came into the house, put ice in a glass, and poured herself a drink, always Scotch except in the heat of the summer when she’d have a beer; then she sat in the living room and leafed through a magazine or newspaper. The turning of pages in the middle of the night—it was the loneliest sound imaginable. Hannah feared that sound more than anything. After another shift at the hospital, her mother was waiting for the one thing she still craved in life: sleep.

  6

  SEAN WAS GETTING OFF his morning coffee break when he came out of the Hiawatha Diner and saw Hannah standing across the street by his patrol car. He thought it was funny how some people reacted to his uniform. They would look away quickly, trying to pretend that they didn’t see a cop—as though that would keep him from noticing them. Sometimes a driver, who was well within the speed limit, would slam on the breaks. Others tended to raise a hand to shield their faces so they might not be identified. But not Hannah. She was leaning against the parking meter, her arms folded, and when she saw him she did not look away.

  He crossed Ottawa Street and said, “Hi.”

  “What do you think you’re doing, pulling Martin over?” She was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt.

  “I didn’t know it was him.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “He had a busted taillight.”

  “Yeah, and how did he get that?”

  She took her weight off the parking meter and started walking quickly up the sidewalk. Sean stood there, holding a warm Styrofoam cup of coffee in one hand; then he placed the cup on the roof of his patrol car and followed her. At the end of the block, she turned in the alley that went down to the harbor. Conscious of the fact that he was in uniform, Sean walked quickly but tried not to look anxious or desperate to catch up.

  When he reached the end of the alley, he was relieved to see her standing on the beach, surrounded by a cluster of rowboats, turned upside down. He stopped next to her and for a moment they both stared out at the harbor. “Listen, I didn’t give him a ticket,” Sean said. “Just a warning.”

  “Why would you do that? Why would you break his taillight?”

  “Did I say I broke it?” She turned toward him; he shrugged. “All right. I just wanted a look at him.”

  This simple admission seemed to undermine her anger. She sat on the nearest rowboat and pushed the hood off her head. A slight breeze coming off the lake blew fine strands of hair across her face, which she ignored.

  Sean propped one foot on the stern. “I’d heard he was older and I wanted to see for myself. Christ, Hannah, I’ll bet he’s ten years older than you.”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “It’s not just age. I mean, look at him, Hannah. He’s, what, from Chicago? What’s he doing up here?”

  “His mother was from here. Maybe he likes it here, Sean.”

  “Well, there you go. That’s fine. And he drives a Mercedes and has bought that old house. But do you think he’s going to stay here? He going to settle here?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “My point is it won’t last. Whatever it is between you two, it’ll never—”

  She stood up. “Who are you to say?”

  “It’s so obvious—you should at least admit it.”

  Her hands were jammed in the front pocket of her sweatshirt; he glanced down at her breasts for a moment, then looked out at the water. “Listen,” he said, “I miss you—I really do. I’m glad to be back and I was hoping that we could—”

  “I know what you miss, Sean.”

  “We had bad luck. We weren’t careful and we got caught. But remember what it was like before all that?” To his surprise, there was a softening in her eyes, her mouth. “I behaved badly,” he said. “I know that. I was scared. Afraid of the whole thing. What my parents would do, what people would say. I lost sight of the most important thing: us.” Her eyes were welling up, glinting in the sunlight reflecting off the water. “I wish I had—”

  “Had what, Sean?”

  He took off his cap and studied the inside, where his name was written on a card in a plastic sleeve. “I wish I had just said we have it and we raise it. I wish we were married now.”

  “Do you?”

  “I do.” He continued to stare at the cap.

  Hannah began walking up the beach, but then she stopped. She stood with her back to him and he wondered if he should go to her. But he waited. A rising puff of wind lifted her hair off her right shoulder. She lowered her head and turned around. He’d never seen her face like this: stone.

  “I don’t believe you, Sean.” She said it carefully, evenly, as though for the record. “I don’t believe you at all. You did what you did. What you say you wish you’d done doesn’t matter. You have no idea how this has affected me. At school. All over town. My mother, too. So don’t tell me otherwise. Your folks sent you away to the army, but I guess you screwed that up, too.”

  “I lost a year in that shit,” he said.

  “You’re talking to me about a year? It’s a piece of time, Sean. I’m talking about something else, something very different. The way people see me now—it’ll never change, it’s this—I don’t know, this thing, this perception set in their minds. And you know what? I don’t care. I—don’t—care.”

  “You think it’s been easy for me?”

  “I don’t know what to think, but I know you’re not any different than before. I wish you were—I really do. But you’re not. And now you think you can spoil what I’ve got—that’s what’s really behind this. That’s why you busted his taillight. Well, you can’t,” she said. “Do you understand me? You can’t.”

  She walked up the beach. Because of the sand, she almost appeared to be marching.

  He thought, I can’t? We’ll just see about that.

  Then he said it aloud, for the record. “We’ll see about that.”

  But she had reached the alley between the two buildings that faced Ottawa Street, too far away to hear him.

  MARTIN HAD GONE to Superior Gas & Lube and talked to Arnie Frick. They didn’t carry Mercedes parts, of course, but Arnie had found a place in Marquette that did, and he called the next day when the taillight cover was d
elivered. A few minutes after Martin arrived, Sean Colby showed up in a white truck; he got out and came over to the Mercedes.

  “This wouldn’t be just a coincidence?” Martin said. He was kneeling on the pavement, a Phillips-head screwdriver in his hand. He glanced past Colby, to Arnie, who was standing in the door of the garage.

  “I want to talk to you.” Colby wasn’t in uniform, but wore a T-shirt and jeans. He looked like he worked out regularly.

  “Fine.” Martin began to screw the plastic cover onto the taillight.

  “It’s about Hannah.”

  “I gather that.”

  “It’s not right, you and her.”

  “There a law? You going to give me another warning?”

  “No more warnings.”

  “I see. Just tickets?”

  “I don’t know what she told you about me, but it’s not like that.”

  “Like what? What’s it like?”

  “She’s told you a lot of . . . stuff. About what happened between us.”

  Without looking away from the taillight, Martin said, “What Hannah tells me is, well, it’s between us, right? I’m not concerned about what happened between the two of you. It’s in the past. She recognizes that, I think. Don’t you?”

  Colby’s face turned soft with disbelief.

  “The fact is she never even mentioned that you were back,” Martin said. “What do you conclude from that?”

  “Conclude?”

  “Maybe she just didn’t think it was that important.”

  “What, are you giving me a lecture?”

  “Not at all.” Martin tightened the last screw in the taillight cover.

  “Then what would you call it?”

  Martin got to his feet and tucked the screwdriver in his back pocket. “I would call it an assessment. An assessment of the present situation.”

  “Is that what this is,” Colby said, his voice high and nearly breaking, “a situation?”

  “It doesn’t have to be, Sean.” Martin could see that using his first name didn’t work; something hardened in his stare. “I don’t want a ‘situation,’ nor does Hannah.” He went to the driver’s-side door. Before getting in the car, he saw that Colby was staring down at the new taillight cover—and he looked like he was considering which foot to kick it with.