Читать книгу Cloud Nine - Luanne Rice - Страница 10

The Fort Cromwell Fair was always held the Saturday midway between Halloween and Thanksgiving, to celebrate the harvest and the season of gratitude. Everyone went. The Old Fairgrounds were miles from town, in the middle of nowhere. Driving past at any other time of year, you might see a tractor chuffing down the road. You’d be lucky to see another car. But around fair time, traffic was backed up for miles. The now-bare fields surrounding the grounds swarmed with the expensive import cars of urban daytrippers in search of local color.

Sarah had come with Meg and Mimi. They wandered around, gazing at prize pigs and champion steers. Clydesdales clopped by on their way to the horse pull. Since the fair was held so late, someone had gotten the idea to put Santa in the hayride, and a wagon full of little kids singing ‘Jingle Bells’ rattled past.

Mimi had gotten a camera for her birthday. She was taking pictures of everything, but she wanted to do everything too: eat cotton candy, take the hayride, run through the haunted house, ride the Ferris wheel. It was the conflict between being a total kid and starting to grow up a little. Sarah remembered Mike at that age and wished he were there.

‘Want to ride the Ferris wheel?’ Meg asked. ‘I think I’ll take Mimi.’

‘You two go ahead,’ Sarah said. ‘I’m going to find some hot chocolate.’

They agreed to meet by the paint-on-tattoo booth in an hour. Heading toward the refreshment area, Sarah felt exhilarated. Fairs always did this to her: the crowds, the animals, bells ringing everywhere. She said hello to a few people she knew, mainly college kids who came into her store.

She wore a black bowler hat, black jeans, and Zeke’s old leather bomber jacket. For some reason, she had felt like wearing it. Since it had belonged to Mike’s father, she hardly ever wore it when Mike was around. Seeing it brought forth too many questions. Sarah had so few of Zeke’s things, and they all seemed to stir Mike into asking things Sarah couldn’t answer. Once Mike had asked her why his father had given her his jacket, and Sarah couldn’t even bring herself to tell him the truth: that Zeke hadn’t given it to her at all. That she had borrowed it on her own and never given it back, that she had wanted so much more.

‘One hot chocolate,’ she said to the elderly man behind the counter.

‘Marshmallows in that?’ he asked.

‘No thanks,’ Sarah said, imagining the evil health risks of even one. She felt healthier all the time. She wasn’t going to throw it all away on a marshmallow, even though she really wanted it.

The cardboard cup was scalding hot. Glancing around for napkins, she saw a separate counter with squeeze bottles of ketchup and mustard and napkins and straws. A man was blocking her way. He was tall and big-shouldered, and he was wearing a leather jacket almost exactly like hers.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, leaning around him to get a napkin.

‘Hi, Sarah,’ he said, sounding surprised and happy.

‘Hi!’ Sarah said. It was the pilot, Will Burke. She had worked herself practically under his arm to reach the napkins, and he was holding his hot dog aloft to keep the relish from spilling on her. They untwisted themselves and stood back, smiling.

‘Good to see you,’ he said.

‘You too. How have you been?’

‘I’ve been fine,’ he said, tilting his head as if he were thinking that one over. ‘How about you?’

‘Great,’ Sarah said. ‘Really great. What brings you to the fair? Are you here with Secret?’

‘Secret?’ he frowned. ‘Oh, Susan. You’ve met her?’

‘She stopped by my store.’

He laughed, shaking his head. ‘“Secret.” It gets me every time. We gave her a perfectly nice name: Susan. Not that we didn’t think of something more exotic. Delphine comes to mind for some reason, but we didn’t want her to be embarrassed. You know?’

Sarah nodded. Will was laughing, but his eyes were barely smiling. He looked like a man with something weighing heavily on his mind, but she didn’t know him well enough to ask. Maybe he and his wife weren’t getting along. Never having been married herself, Sarah was no expert.

‘She’s a nice girl,’ Sarah said. ‘No matter what she calls herself. That’s the important part.’

‘So you wouldn’t worry about it?’

‘Personally, no. I wouldn’t.’

‘Hmm.’ He frowned again. He seemed to have lost all interest in his hot dog, which was piled high with relish, chili, and onions. ‘Because her mother thinks it’s a danger sign. Some kind of call for help. I don’t know.’

‘I wouldn’t want to second-guess your wife,’ Sarah began.

‘Ex-wife,’ Will said.

‘But it doesn’t seem all that dangerous to me. She’s fifteen, just trying out new things. It could be worse –’ Sarah said.

‘Drugs,’ Will said solemnly.

‘Exactly. She’s just figuring out who she is. You know?’

Will nodded. He obviously felt better, because he started eating his hot dog again. His face and hands were weathered, the constant tan of a man who loved to be outside. He had curly graying brown hair with all-gray streaks at the temples. For a man who had been in the navy, it looked a little long. His eyes were startling, as dark blue as a Maine bay.

‘Is she here?’ Sarah asked, looking around.

‘Secret?’ he asked, grinning. ‘No, she’s home. I’m here for work. I take people up for rides – like the one I gave you – to see Fort Cromwell from the air.’

‘That was a great ride. I’ve thought of it often.’

‘You have?’

‘Yes. It was the first time I knew –’ She took a sip of hot chocolate to buy a little time, get past the emotion.

‘Knew what?’

‘That I’m okay again,’ she said. Smiling, she felt radiant, as if she were shining with health and happiness from the inside out. She shivered, but it was from the thrill of existing, of standing outside on a crisp fall day, not from the cold.

‘I’m glad about that,’ Will said. He touched her arm.

An idea came upon her. It must have been brewing, because for the last few nights she had lain awake, wondering whether she should go home to Elk Island for Thanksgiving, how she would get there if she did. Because when she asked the question, it seemed as if she had it all planned.

‘Do you ever take long-distance charters? To Maine, for example?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Lots of times. Where in Maine?’

‘Elk Island.’

He closed his eyes as if he were trying to picture it on a chart. Sarah helped him out.

‘It’s far up there,’ she said. ‘Past Penobscot Bay, almost to Mount Desert. Just a tiny little island way out at sea.’

‘Does it have an airport?’

‘Not much of one. Just a grass strip.’

‘My planes like grass strips,’ he said, grinning. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘That’s the thing,’ she said. ‘Thanksgiving. I know you probably have plans, so … If you’re even working that weekend.’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Well … do you want to think about it? You can work up a price and let me know?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to watch the weather. My big plane has the most instruments, and at this time of year you never know what to expect in the way of storms. But it’s more expensive.’

She nodded, swallowed hard. Making transportation arrangements brought her one step closer to actually going. Seeing Mike! Her throat vibrated with a laugh, and she started to let it out until she realized that by returning to Elk Island, she would be facing her father for the first time in many years. He had never gotten over her growing up, leaving the island for college, coming back just long enough to get pregnant and cause a scandal. Trapped by his grief for Sarah’s mother, her father just grew more bitter as the years went by. Sarah had tried taking Mike there for summers long ago, but after a while her father’s darkness had stopped her.

‘I’ll call you,’ she said, shaking Will’s hand.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing at his watch. It looked huge and heavy, about ten pounds’ worth of chrome, a very high-tech chronometer. But it looked exactly right on his strong wrist. ‘Guess I’d better get back to work.’

‘Fly safe,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ Will said, starting to walk away. Sarah stood still, both hands holding her cup of hot chocolate. He started to disappear into the crowd. Then, turning, he called her name. ‘Hey, Sarah!’

Walking toward each other, they came together in a throng of teenagers. Bumped and jostled, Sarah brought her elbows into her body, making herself small. She and Will were standing in front of a booth festooned with burgundy paisley scarves, curved swords, and magic lamps. Mysterious sitar music wafted out. The sign read: GYPSY SECRETS OF THE ORIENT, FORTUNES READ BY THE LIGHT OF THE ETERNAL FLAME. A turbaned man flew out the door in pursuit of a young man.

‘Stop him!’ the turbaned Gypsy yelled. ‘He blew out the eternal flame!’

‘The eternal flame!’ the fortune-teller wailed, agonized. ‘Ahhh!’

‘Wow,’ Will said. ‘That sounds serious.’

Sarah smiled at him, shrugging her shoulders. ‘My son blew it out last year. Keeping up a tradition, I guess.’

‘Teenagers,’ he said. They stood there like two tourists being stampeded at Pamplona. Sarah stared into his eyes, which were bluer than the sky. He seemed to have forgotten why he’d called her back. Facing each other, their toes were touching.

‘What was it?’ she asked.

‘Secret lives with her mother and stepfather,’ he said. ‘I mean, Secret is my family, but she doesn’t live with me, and she’s having Thanksgiving with Alice. So it’s no problem to fly you to Maine.’

‘Oh,’ Sarah said. She was trying to think of what to say next, when another pack of boys charged by. Looking through their faces to see if she recognized any of Mike’s old friends, she noticed they were wearing team jackets from a nearby town. One of them grabbed her bowler hat.

Sarah felt him drag the hat off her head. The brim scraped her scar, and she felt a flash of pain. The kids dropped it with embarrassment. ‘Sorry!’ one of them yelled. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mouth had dropped open, and for one terrible instant she looked at Will and registered her own shame in his eyes.

Ducking her head so he wouldn’t see her cry, she felt his arms come around her. He held her against his chest. She felt his breath on her scalp, his hands covering the back of her head. She had moved freely without a hat all these weeks, but somehow the kids’ cruelty and the idea of facing Mike had made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, self-conscious about her awful hair.

‘It’s pretty,’ he whispered. ‘It’s so pretty.’

‘It’s ugly,’ she wept. ‘My son’s going to hate it.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Will said.

‘He ran away when I got sick,’ she said. ‘He’s never seen me this way, it’ll never grow out by Thanksgiving.’

‘Well, he’ll see you then,’ Will whispered, his mouth against her ear. ‘I’m taking you there myself.’

‘If I even go.’

‘You’ll go,’ he said. ‘You won’t back out.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked, leaning her head back to see his eyes.

‘Because you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met,’ he said.

Secret sat in the backseat of Julian’s Range Rover. She was seething. Her mother and Julian had promised they could go to the fair, and they had started to, but now they were driving about a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction. They had made the mistake of stopping at an antiques shop, and the dealer had given them a hot lead on a Victorian umbrella stand.

‘I can’t believe this,’ Secret said out loud.

‘Believe what?’ Julian asked.

‘That you’re making me miss the fair for a stupid umbrella stand.’

He chuckled, glancing across the front seat at Secret’s mother. Torn between wanting to support her husband and wanting to give in to Secret, Alice was gazing at him with a tight-lipped smile. As in, what-an-amusing-child-I-have-don’t-be-mad-at-me. Alice was beautiful, a porcelain doll. She had golden hair and a perfect face, and three or four times a day she looked as if she might break.

‘It’s so unfair,’ Secret said.

‘We’ll get there – just be patient,’ Julian said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. He lit a cigarette for himself and one for Alice. Another thing Secret hated about him: He had influenced her mother to start smoking again after having quit five years ago.

‘It’s not just an umbrella stand,’ her mother explained, blowing a quick puff of smoke into her lap, as if Secret couldn’t see. ‘We’re sorry about the fair, honey. But it’s a great piece, a big old carved thing with hooks and a huge mirror and a bench. It’s being auctioned off this afternoon, and it would look great in the south foyer.’

‘That’s the thing about a big house,’ Julian said. ‘It needs lots of nice things to fill it up. Now that I have you and your mother with me, I want it to be even more beautiful.’

‘I’m not materialistic,’ Secret said. ‘I don’t need things.’

‘Honey …’ her mother warned.

‘Let her be,’ Julian said, giving Alice a look that translated his words into ‘let her stew.’

Secret settled lower into her seat, pulling her Red Sox cap down, leaving just enough space to look out the window. She watched the land fly by, farm after farm. Cows, cows, cows. She wanted to see boats so badly, her throat began to hurt. She wanted to smell salt air, feel the sea breeze on her face. Glancing at the back of Julian’s head, she wished she had the powers necessary to make him disappear as dramatically as he had arrived.

For a year, he had only been her mother’s boss. Then she divorced Secret’s dad to marry him.

He owned a company called Von Froelich Precision that built race cars for rich guys. Prizefighters and rock stars would fly in from all over to order custom-designed cars made to go fast and look cool. Secret’s mother had been the secretary, and she was always coming home with stories about the famous people she talked to, the movie stars who walked in wearing old jeans and scuffed-up shoes, seeming nervous about spending so much money, just like anyone else.

Suddenly, weeks after she had started working, she had started talking about Julian Von Froelich nonstop. How he was so interesting. He raced at Lime Rock and Laguna Seca and had once driven at Le Mans, he was world-renowned in the world of motorsports, but he was so humble. He hated when people asked him about Paul Newman, who happened to be a good friend. Every year he sponsored Grand Prix Day at the local high school, and he’d let all the kids sit in a race car and pretend they were driving.

Most of all, she talked about what a great boss he was, how he made Alice such a valued member of his staff: his team. She was just as integral a part of Von Froelich Precision as Julian’s head mechanic, his pit crew chief. While Secret’s dad buried himself in the newspaper and TV shows, Alice was building a new and fabulously glamorous life in the fast lane. Secret and her dad were numb zombies, too busy missing Fred to notice that her mother was leaving their family behind. Secret’s parents got divorced a year earlier. Her mother married Julian a month after that.

‘You know, the Queen of England drives a car like this,’ Julian said. When Secret looked up, she saw his eyes watching her in the rearview mirror.

‘Lucky her,’ Secret said.

‘A Range Rover. I thought you’d be interested, considering you’re such an Anglophile.’

‘What I’m interested in is when we’ll get to the fair,’ Secret said. She wanted to see her father. He was giving sight-seeing rides until three, and she wanted to get there before then. She checked her watch. ‘It’s nearly fourteen hundred hours. It’s going to be too late to go. If I’d known we were going to go looking for an umbrella stand, I’d have gone with my friends …’

‘People who think small usually end up with small lives,’ Julian said.

‘I agree,’ Secret said.

‘You’re too good for the fair, Susan. A bunch of cheap garbage for sale and a lot of badly maintained rides. Mechanically, they’re dangerous. Wanting to go to the fair is beneath you. I want to show you beautiful things …’

‘I was thinking of something else,’ she said. ‘About thinking small.’

‘Honey,’ her mother began, wanting to cut her off.

‘You were? What?’ Julian asked, meeting her gaze in the rearview mirror. He had eager, puppy-dog green eyes that made her feel terrible – he wanted her to like him, and she never would. He had long dark blond hair that he tied back in a tucked-under ponytail. Secret knew he thought he looked sexy, as if he were trying to be one of the rock-movie types he hung out with, but she thought he looked pretentious. She wondered how he’d feel if he knew he had a small bald spot on the back of his head, about the size of a silver dollar.

‘What?’ Julian pressed, tossing his head, not taking his eyes off her. ‘What’s thinking small?’

‘People who buy things all the time,’ Secret said quietly.

Julian drove in silence.

‘I feel sorry for them,’ Secret said.

‘Susan, you love shopping. Don’t –’

‘No, let her talk,’ Julian said, sounding hurt. ‘I want to hear.’

‘Nothing,’ Secret said, scrunching down. ‘Just that every time you have a free minute, you seem to be driving somewhere to buy something expensive. How many priceless antiques does one person need?’ She thought of the carriage house, filled to the brim with mahogany tables, rosewood chests, teak benches. ‘You could open your own shop.’

‘Yes, but I don’t need to,’ he said.

‘I know,’ Secret said. For some reason she thought of Sarah Talbot; she sold beautiful things, but she did it to make people happy. She wanted the college kids in town to feel safe and warm, wrapped in thick down quilts and soft wool blankets. They might be far away from their parents, but they could feel all cozy and tucked-in with things from her store. She wondered if Sarah had gone to the fair.

‘Honey, with all the beautiful things Julian gives you, you’re not sounding very grateful,’ Alice said.

‘Dad gives me everything I need.’

Julian made a sound through his nose.

‘What?’ Secret asked, feeling something hard in her chest. Her breathing became faster, and her airway constricted.

‘You’re right, you’re absolutely right,’ Julian said.

‘Then why did you make that noise?’ Secret asked. She felt the wheezing start.

‘Oh, no reason. That’s correct, what you said about your father. He puts clothes on your back, and he sends us money for your food. But …’

‘What?’ Secret nearly screamed.

‘I guess it’s a matter of where you like your clothes to come from. If Cromwell Casuals is okay for you, then fine.’

‘It is!’

‘You’re a little young, Susan. But one day the names Armani and Prada might mean something to you. Dolce & Gabbana, you know? I want to treat you like a princess. I don’t have a daughter of my own. I haven’t noticed you putting those Gainsboroughs out in the hall. Being a pilot is very cool, but the salary doesn’t buy great paintings. You know?’

‘Julian, I think that’s enough,’ Alice said.

‘I just want her to understand,’ Julian said, reaching across the seat to stroke his wife’s head. ‘The way the world works.’

‘Don’t talk about her father,’ Alice said, lowering her voice. ‘Don’t say anything bad to her about Will.’

Her mother was trying to defend her father, but it was too late. Secret was having an asthma attack. She fought to breathe. The air rasped through her mouth, into her lungs. Alone in the backseat, she gulped a sob. Her chest ached, and her throat stung, but that wasn’t the worst part. Secret’s heart was being squeezed. It was being crushed, as if two big hands had grabbed it and wanted to break it.

Reaching into her pocket, she found her inhaler. Pumping it once, she placed it in her mouth and took a breath. The aerosol hissed. Her lungs filled like a balloon; she could almost hear them inflate. Her mother looked back, and with her eyes asked Secret if she was okay. Secret nodded, her eyes glittering with tears. They stared at each other, each wanting something they could never have.

When her mother turned back to Julian, to try to cajole him out of the bad mood he had just fallen into, Secret was miles away. Her eyes closed, she was sailing. Out in Narragansett Bay, the white spire of Trinity Church sharp against the blue September sky, the sloop was flying across the water. Her father had the tiller, and Fred was trimming the jib, and Secret and the woman were just sitting back, their mouths open with joy, drinking the wind. The woman was so happy, her eyes shining with love. Secret knew she was supposed to be her mother, but in the fantasy she wasn’t. In the fantasy her mother was off spending money with Julian.

With her eyes closed, as she sat in the backseat of Julian’s Range Rover, speeding away from the fair, Secret clenched her fists to keep the fantasy going. The day was fine, the bay was calm, her father and Fred were laughing. The woman sitting beside her had brought a thermos of hot cider. They were sailing to an island, a secret island none of them had ever been to before, and they were going to have a picnic. The woman was smiling into the sun, and she turned to Secret and touched her hand, and now Secret could see her face, could see her kind and accepting face, could see she was Sarah Talbot.