Читать книгу Saint John of the Five Boroughs - Ed Falco - Страница 11

KATE and Lindsey were talking politely in the kitchen, seated across from each other at a round oak table with claw feet, and Hank was in the living room on the sofa, sipping a cup of coffee as he watched Keith sprawled across a throw rug over a jigsaw puzzle, a semicircle of scattered pieces spread above a partial rectangle, blue-black at the top edges, black and yellow at the bottom. Keith lay on his belly as he worked on the puzzle. He had sorted the pieces into piles of similar colors, and his legs kicked lazily at the air, as if he were slowly jogging somewhere. He examined a pair of emerald-green shapes and then looked at the cover of the puzzle box propped against the coffee table. Hank said, “What’s it going to be, bud?” and the boy quickly showed him the box cover picturing a black highway cutting through a sage-covered desert. “Sweet,” Hank said, and Keith tossed the cover down on the rug and went back to work.

What would Tim think, what would he say, if he could see this scene, if he knew the way things were? He’d be pleased to see Keith doing a jigsaw puzzle in his living room. He loved the boy. There was a connection because Tim never got the son he wanted and because he and Hank were so close. He’d like to see Kate and Lindsey talking over coffee on a Sunday morning. That much he’d like anyway: Keith working on a puzzle, the women talking in the kitchen, his little brother relaxing with a cup of coffee on the couch.

Hank was a teenager the first time he met Kate, and that thought troubled him a little. Tim started dating her when she was still in high school, her senior year, and she was five years older than Hank, so, yes, about thirteen. He remembered Timmy’s first car, a chartreuse Fiat Spider that was a family joke—and it was a piece of crap, broken down every other week, parts impossible to find. But Tim loved it and so Hank did too, because when he was nine and Tim was twenty, Tim could do no wrong.

“Hank,” Lindsey called from the kitchen, “are you hearing this?”

Hank roused himself from the couch, lurching forward as if he had been caught sleeping. He spilled a little coffee on his pants. “Look at this!” he said, holding the cup out in front of him.

Lindsey said, “Did you get any on the couch?”

Kate went to the sink for a dishrag. “It’s not a problem.” She wetted the towel and tossed it to Hank.

Hank said, “Couch survived,” and dabbed at his pants with the dishrag. Keith watched, mildly interested for a moment before returning to his puzzle. “Hearing what?” Hank said and went about emptying his coffee cup and refilling it from what was left in the decanter.

Lindsey said, “Corinne De Haven is going after Dave Price.”

“Really? What’s Lucille think of that?”

Kate said, “They’re split up.”

Hank took a seat between Kate and his wife. He held a black mug wrapped in his hands, as if he were trying to absorb its warmth. His wife was not yet thirty and Kate was forty-five, but as far as he could see, they might have been sisters, only a few years between them, Kate with just the slight hint of wrinkles around her eyes radiating out into her temples to give away her age. They talked with the same energy, were interested in the same things, had the same womanly air about them—that proficiency at the domestic that Hank associated with women, or at least women in his small circle, in his piece of the world, Salem, Virginia, the outer edge of the South. He had a momentary urge to take hold of both their hands, as if they were a religious family about to say grace, only he wanted to bow his head and ask God for forgiveness and maybe just a small piece of illumination, since at that instant he had a profound sense of not knowing who he was or what he thought he was doing.

Lindsey said, “Hello? Anybody home?”

“I don’t know,” Hank said. “What am I supposed to say?”

“Just grunt,” she said and rolled her eyes.

Kate put her hand on Hank’s forearm. “Corinne’s going to Dave’s tomorrow night with a bottle of wine. You know where that’s going to lead, and he’s only split with Lucille not even a month.”

“So,” he ventured, “you think Corinne’s being a bitch? She should give him more time?”

Lindsey said, “Duh.”

Kate said, “Don’t you think so?”

“I guess,” Hank said. “But, hell, they’re both grown-ups.”

“Oh, please,” Lindsey said. To Kate she added, “Typical male point of view.”

Kate said to Hank, “I think Corinne should respect the place he’s in right now, which has to be confused and emotionally vulnerable.”

Hank gave Kate a look. “Men are not children,” he said, and he lifted his cup to his lips. “They know what they’re doing.” He sipped his coffee and made a show of savoring it.

Lindsey said, “Since when are men not children?”

Kate laughed, and Lindsey looked as though she were about to say something else when the tinny opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth issued from someplace in the back of the house, interrupting her.

“It’s Grandpa,” Keith said without looking away from his puzzle.

Lindsey said, “I left my pocketbook in the bathroom.” She had her cell phone programmed with different rings for her principal callers. Her father was Beethoven’s Fifth. Hank was the theme song from Gilligan’s Island. As she got up from the table, she looked at her wristwatch. “I’ve got a couple of hours before I’m supposed to be over there.”

Hank said, “He likely got the time confused.”

“Probably hit the wrong speed dial,” she said, mostly to herself, and then disappeared down the hallway between the kitchen and living room.

Once Lindsey was out of the room, Kate got up from the table and went to the sink with her saucer and cup in hand, then stood quietly looking out the kitchen window. With his back to Kate, Hank watched her nonetheless, her reflection mirrored in the protective glass of a framed photograph hanging on the kitchen wall. The picture was a dramatic early-morning image of mist rising off a stream that cut through a lush pine forest. The atmosphere of the picture was serene and primeval, as if the photographer had found the last place on earth untouched by time or civilization. For a long moment, the house was silent. Lindsey had exchanged a few sentences with someone obviously not her father and then gone quiet, though Hank could hear her footsteps as she paced the hall. In the living room, Keith was entirely lost in his puzzle, and at the kitchen window, Kate appeared to be lost in thought.

Hank and Lindsey were seniors at VCU when he proposed to her. He was thirty-two and Lindsey had just turned twenty-one. Lindsey had gone to college straight from high school, while he had spent ten years after high school working in the family business. During that time he had learned enough about landscaping construction to be convinced that he would never find the work fully satisfying, so he had gone to VCU to pursue a new career and get some distance from Salem and his family, which had roots in Salem going back three generations. Once at VCU, he fell in love with the first girl he met from Salem, married her upon graduation, got her pregnant on their honeymoon, and found himself back where he’d started, only now with a family. Sometimes all this amazed him.

When Lindsey appeared in the kitchen doorway, she was clutching the cell phone to her heart. “Ronnie’s being airlifted somewhere,” she said. “He’s been wounded. Jake Jr. called Friendship looking—”

“Goddamn it,” Hank said, and he surprised himself by how loudly he said it. “Do they know how bad?” He turned to Lindsey and leaned forward but didn’t get up. “Who were you talking to? Your father?”

Kate was at Lindsey’s side immediately, touching her arm, looking ready to embrace her. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “My God.”

Lindsey said, “Somebody called from Friendship. One of the nurses took the information. She had Dad’s phone.”

“Does your father know?” Kate asked.

“They didn’t tell him. They wanted to tell me first, and then—” Lindsey’s thoughts seemed to shift suddenly, and she stopped speaking.

“Honey,” Hank said. He went to Lindsey and touched her shoulder. “Did they say how badly he was wounded?”

“Just that he was being airlifted and he’d undergo surgery—and then they’re supposed to call again after . . .”

“Surgery,” Hank said, the worry clear in his voice. “Was there any mention of where he was airlifted?”

“Yes,” she said. “It didn’t register, though. I need to call back.” She started pressing buttons on her cell phone. “For God’s sake,” she said, “what are we supposed to do, just sit around and wait for someone to call? That’s crazy.”

“Lindsey,” Kate said, “sit down, honey. Let me make you some tea.”

As if she hadn’t heard, Lindsey walked to the front door with the cell phone to her ear. When she stepped outside, Hank tried to follow, but she held him at arm’s length. “I want to be alone,” she said. “Let me try to figure out—” When someone answered the call, she started asking questions and walked out into the front yard. Hank watched her from the steps as she paced the lawn. A minute later, she disappeared around the corner, walking away from him as if she didn’t want him even looking at her. He went back inside. The kitchen was empty and Keith was sitting up beside his puzzle with his hands folded in his lap. He watched Hank carefully, with wide eyes, in silence.

Hank said, “Buddy, it’ll be all right.”

Keith opened his hand and looked a little surprised to find that he was clutching a puzzle piece. “Did Uncle Ronnie get shot in Iraq?” he asked, his voice so soft and quiet that Hank had to lean forward to catch all the words. “Will he die?” he added.

“No, no,” Hank said, and he knelt beside the boy. “I mean, yes, Uncle Ronnie was wounded in the war—but we don’t even know if it was a bad wound yet. It could just be something that’s not really serious at all, that, you know, he’ll recover from and be good as new.”

“Do you think that’s it?” the boy said, and Hank heard in his voice more of a plea than a question.

“Yes,” Hank said. “That’s what I think. We won’t know anything for sure for a while yet—but I think Uncle Ronnie’s going to be fine.”

“Are you sure?” Keith asked.

Hank squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “You keep working on that puzzle,” he said, “stay out of everybody’s hair for a little bit. That’ll be a big help.”

“Okay,” Keith said, and he stretched out again on the floor, as if grateful for permission to go back to his puzzle.

Hank said, “Where’d Aunt Kate go?”

“Down the basement. She said she’d be right back up.”

Hank found Kate standing in front the washing machine, her arms resting atop it as she looked out a narrow window only inches above the ground. When he came up behind her, he saw that she was watching Lindsey in the backyard, where a breeze was ruffling her sundress and she was holding it down with one arm while pressing the cell phone to her ear with her free hand. She looked besieged as she turned in small circles, taking a few steps one way and then the next to best position herself against the wind. On the horizon, a bank of clouds turned the sky that deep slate blue that announces an oncoming storm. Hank said, “It’s going to pour in a few minutes.” He put his arm around Kate’s waist and leaned into her.

She reached back and rubbed his thigh. “You should go be with her,” she said.

“She doesn’t want me with her.”

Hank kissed the back of Kate’s head, and she turned and held him close, wrapping her arms around his waist. “It’s terrible,” she said. “She’s so close to Ronnie.”

Hank nodded, agreeing. “We don’t know if he’s hurt badly yet,” he said, “but—”

“What?”

Hank pushed back from her a little. “Being airlifted isn’t good,” he said. “There’s a U.S. hospital in Balad where he’d go if the wounds weren’t bad.”

“Where’s Balad?”

“Iraq someplace.”

“Where would they airlift him?”

“Landstuhl, probably. Germany. That’s where they flew those reporters, the ones that got blown up on air.”

Kate shook her head as if she didn’t know what he was talking about but didn’t want the explanation either. “How come I feel guilty?” she said, and then her eyes were suddenly full of tears.

Hank rubbed her back and neck to comfort her and she rested her head on his shoulder. In the yard, Lindsey was talking heatedly into the phone. She was angry at something or someone, and her head bobbed a little with the force of her words. In her anger, she had forgotten about her dress, which was blowing up into her face, exposing a white slip with a gauzy patterned fringe that was pushed up over her knees. He thought that she was beautiful still, her hair, so thick and dark down to her shoulders, whipped around her head now by the wind.

Kate whispered, “She’s as much a mother to that boy as a sister.”

Hank said, “I hate this. It’s all—”

“I know,” she said, and she kissed him on the lips, tenderly, before turning to look again out the window.