Читать книгу Cloud Nine - Luanne Rice - Страница 8

‘Did she like her ride?’

Sitting at the kitchen table, reading the paper, Will didn’t quite hear the question. He had been up since five, servicing the planes and flying a mapmaker around the state. Updating his topographical maps, measuring elevations and plotting railroad lines, he had spent the morning directing Will to fly low and come around again for a better look; he’d be back again before dawn tomorrow.

‘Sorry, Susan,’ he said, yawning. ‘Did you ask me something?’

‘“Susan”?’ she asked, frowning as she sprinkled croutons into their salad.

‘I mean … honey,’ he said, trying to remember the name she had decided to go by. ‘September?’ he asked.

‘Dad, I haven’t been September for weeks. I can’t believe you don’t even know your own daughter’s name. Try “Secret.”’

‘That’s right,’ Will said, folding his paper so he wouldn’t be tempted to read it anymore. He didn’t understand this name-changing business, and he didn’t like it, but his daughter had been traumatized by losing Fred, then the divorce, so he tended to give in on points that didn’t seem that important. ‘Okay, Secret. What was the question?’

‘Did she like her ride? That lady.’

‘Sarah?’ Will asked, remembering her shining eyes. ‘I think so.’

‘You seemed to be gone a long time.’

‘Really? Didn’t seem that long to me.’

‘Well, it was. I was timing you. Thirty-five minutes. It was only supposed to be fifteen.’

‘My watch must’ve stopped,’ Will said, trying not to smile. His daughter was so transparent. Anytime she sensed even a glimmer of interest on his part in a woman, she turned ultravigilant. She was probably afraid he’d do what her mother had done with Julian: go off skiing for a weekend and come back married.

‘Your watch never stops, Dad. You are Mr Time Man. Zero one hundred hours and counting. You’ve even got me trained.’ She glanced at the wall clock, which read six-thirty. ‘Like now, it’s eighteen-thirty. From your years in the navy, right?’

‘Right, honey.’

‘So I don’t believe your watch stopped.’

‘Well, we flew over the lake, and the leaves were so bright and pretty, we just kept going. I guess I just lost track of the time.’

‘You never lose track of the time, Dad. I know that. I just think–’ She paused, trouble in her eyes. She had made a big salad for their dinner, and she carried it to the table. It was in the big wooden bowl his brother had given him and Alice for a wedding present, that Alice had let him keep when she’d moved in with Julian. Secret had filled it with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, croutons, and white grapes, and she presented it with shy expectation in her wide blue eyes.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That looks great.’

‘Thank you. Most people wouldn’t think of including grapes, but I think they add a lot. Do you?’

‘Yes, definitely,’ he said, taking a large helping, knowing he would stop by McDonald’s for a double cheeseburger when he drove her home.

‘Well, just don’t get too attached to her.’

‘Who?’ he asked, knowing.

‘That lady. Sarah.’

‘Honey, I just took her up for a birthday ride. That’s all.’

‘She’s sick, Dad. It was like one of those trips to summer camp for dying kids. She’s all alone in Fort Cromwell, and the Fergusons wanted to make sure her last birthday was happy.’

‘It wasn’t her last birthday,’ Will said, surprised by how much the idea of that upset him.

‘If it was mine, I’d want to know. I’d want to plan my last birthday and have a great old time. We’d go back to Rhode Island, for one thing. I’d take everyone on the Edaville Railroad. There’d be more cake than you could handle, and I’d give out presents. We’d just keep going round the track till I said everything I wanted to say. And I’d have my favorite music playing. I’d want to hear all the songs I like, my own top one hundred countdown.’

‘That won’t happen for a long time,’ Will said, knowing he was in dangerous territory.

‘What won’t?’

‘You dying.’

‘It did for Fred.’

‘Fred …’ Will said, taking the chance to say his name.

‘His last birthday passed, and he didn’t know. When his last day came, he didn’t even know that. How can it happen, Dad? That you wake up happy and fine one morning, and by fourteen hundred hours you’re drowned?’

Will looked across the untouched salad plates. Secret was staring straight at him, no blame in her expression. Just the wide-open gaze of a child who still trusted her father, after everything he had failed to do, to give her a straight answer.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ he said, because honesty was the best he could offer her now.

‘Mom’s over it,’ she said bitterly.

‘She’ll never get over it. You don’t “get over” losing one of your kids, honey.’

‘She never talks about him. Whenever I mention him, she tells me to shush, it upsets Julian. And he’s just a rich bastard who spends all his time car racing and going to lectures. Is that where they are tonight?’

‘Don’t say “bastard,” Susan. A play, I think she said.’ His ex-wife’s life was a mad smorgasbord of cultural events at the local colleges.

‘Jerk, then. Idiot. Numskull. Dickhead. Drip. Flaming creep. Full-dress weenie. Turdman. Shitbreath.’

‘Susan. Secret,’ Will said wearily. ‘Stop, okay?’

‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said, drizzling plain vinegar onto her salad. She had taken only lettuce leaves, a pile of mediumsized shreds. Assuming she had left all the good stuff for him, Will took an extra helping to make her happy.

‘The grapes were a good call,’ he said, taking a bite.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘She looked nice.’

‘Who, honey?’

‘That lady, Sarah.’

‘She was,’ Will said.

‘I hope she’s okay,’ she said. ‘Because death sucks.’

Sarah had begun to open the shop for a few hours every day, usually from ten until two. She loved how the morning sun streamed through the tall windows, throwing light and shadows on the pale yellow walls. Today she felt a little tired. She imagined curling up for a nap in the middle of the things she sold: quilts and pillows, some filled with white down from the geese on her father’s saltwater farm in Maine.

The bell above the door tinkled. She glanced up from an inventory list she was perusing, and smiled at the two college students who walked in. They stared at Sarah for a second. She felt she still looked weird, with her tufty white hair, and she grinned to put them at ease.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Let me know if I can help.’

‘We will. Thanks,’ the taller girl replied, smiling as her friend lay flat on the sample bed, prettily made up with a fluffy quilt in an ecru damask cover. Feather throw pillows covered with narrow umber stripes or golden swirls and hand-printed oak leaves were strewn around the headboard.

‘I want this exact bed,’ the second girl sighed, sprawled amid the pillows.

‘You do?’ Sarah asked.

‘The linen service at school doesn’t exactly provide sumptuous bedding,’ the tall girl explained. ‘We’re fantasizing.’

‘Be my guest,’ Sarah said. ‘Everyone deserves sweet dreams.’

‘I don’t have a credit card,’ the other girl said. ‘But if I call my parents and they give you their account number, can I charge every single thing in your store and take it back to campus?’

‘That can be arranged,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll deliver it myself in a silver sleigh.’

The girl giggled and sighed again, the sounds muffled by all the padding around her.

Sarah remembered her own college days. Too-thin sheets and scratchy old blankets had been her inspiration for starting her own business, Cloud Nine. She had dropped out of Wellesley after her freshman year. Opening her first store in Boston, she had stocked it primarily with down products made by her father, back on the farm.

The farm had been on the verge of failing. Her mother had died when she was fourteen. Sarah and her father never talked about it, but she knew she had saved him. She had gotten her own financing, come up with all the ideas, expanded into mail order, taken on lines from France and Italy to supplement the stuff from Elk Island. The original store remained in Boston, but after eight years and the last in a series of ridiculous love affairs, Sarah had expanded to this college-rich valley in upstate New York. She had been here for ten years now, and her father had all the work he could handle.

The telephone rang, and Sarah answered it.

‘Hello, Cloud Nine,’ Sarah said.

‘Happy birthday,’ the deep voice said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Her heart contracted. She couldn’t talk. She had the feeling if she breathed or sneezed, the line would go dead.

‘I’m a day late. Sorry.’

‘That’s okay, I didn’t even notice,’ she lied.

‘What’d you do? Go out for dinner or something?’

‘I took a plane ride,’ she said. ‘To see the leaves. They looked beautiful, all red and orange and yellow, like a big bowl of Trix. I couldn’t stop smiling, it made me think of you, and I knew it would make you laugh. I mean, flying over this beautiful fall landscape and thinking of Trix. Remember when that was your favorite cereal?’

‘Huh. Not really.’

‘How are you?’ she asked. She could picture him, standing in the big basement kitchen, with a fire burning in the old stone hearth. Closing her eyes, she was back on Elk Island, could see the dark bay, the prim white house, the fields full of white geese. She could hear the waves, smell the thick pines.

‘Fine.’

‘Really? Do you still like living there? Are you honestly enjoying the work? Because –’

‘What about you?’ he asked, sounding sullen and accusatory. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ She turned her back, so the college girls wouldn’t hear. ‘I finished chemo last month, and my X rays look good. There’s no sign of any tumor. I had an MRI, and the doctor says I’m all clear. Good to go.’

‘You’re cured?’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said, biting her lip. She was the most optimistic person she knew – ferociously hopeful – and had often been accused by the very party on the other end of being annoyingly cheerful. She couldn’t stop herself. She knew about statistics, five-year survival rates, worst-case scenarios. Here she was, saying she was cured, when she didn’t even know if there was any such thing.

‘Good,’ he said. A long silence passed, and then he cleared his throat. ‘That’s good,’ he said.

‘Is your grandfather there?’ she asked.

‘He’s out in the barn. I just came in to get some lunch.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Just thought I’d call to say happy birthday.’

‘I’m glad you did, Mike. I miss you.’

‘Huh.’

‘A lot. I wish you were here. I wish you’d decide to …’

‘When’re you coming to Maine? I mean, Grandpa was wondering. He told me to ask. And to say happy birthday. I almost forgot.’

‘Was it his idea for you to call?’ Sarah asked suspiciously, feeling upset. She had been thinking it was Mike’s idea.

‘No. It was mine.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, smiling.

‘So, when’re you going to come?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. The idea of going to the island filled her with more anxiety than she knew was good for her. Her doctor had told her to avoid stress, that a centered spirit was her best defense. Just thinking about seeing Mike in the barn with her bitter old father, knowing that Mike had put himself under his tutelage, sent Sarah’s spirit careening.

‘Thanksgiving would be good,’ Mike said.

‘We’ll see.’

‘Are you too sick to come?’

‘No. I’m fine. I told you, I –’

‘Then why not?’

‘I said I’ll see, Mike.’

An uneasy silence developed between them. Sarah’s mind raced with questions, accusations, declarations of love. How could her son have left her to go there? From the day of her mother’s death, Sarah couldn’t wait to leave the island. She had let her father down, and even in his bitter silence he refused to let her forget. But Mike had gone to live with him while searching for connections to Zeke Loring, the father who had died before he was even born.

‘Excuse me,’ called the girl who had been lying on the bed. ‘I think I do want to buy some things. Can we call my mother to get her Amex number? I know she’ll say yes.’

‘Oh. Someone’s there,’ Mike said abruptly, hearing the background voices. ‘I guess I’d better go. Grandpa’s waiting for lunch.’

‘Honey, I’m glad you called. You can’t imagine how happy you made me,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s ten times better than any present I’ve ever gotten, even my favorite dollhouse when I was four, and I’m not kidding you, I loved that dollhouse, I played with it constantly, just ask my father …’

‘Bye, Mom,’ Mike said.

‘Bye, honey,’ Sarah said.

When she turned back to the girls, she was smiling. Her face was calm, her mouth steady. She nodded yes, the girl could call her mother. Handing her the telephone, she told her to dial direct, not bother charging the call. She was going through the motions of selling a quilt, cultivating the business of the girls at Marcellus College, the students who were her bread and butter.

But her heart was far away with her son, Mike Talbot, her seventeen-year-old dropout, the person Sarah loved more than her own life, the boy who was single-handedly planning to carry on the family traditions of quilt making and farm saving under the wing of her father, the wrathful George Talbot, of Elk Island, Maine.

It was at moments such as this that Sarah, writing a sales ticket for a three-hundred-dollar quilt, wished that she had just let the old farm die.

In the air with the mapmaker for the second day, Will criss-crossed Algonquin County eleven times. They plotted the Setauket River, the Robertson wilderness, Lake Cromwell, Eagle Peak, and the foothills of the Arrowhead Mountains. Will flew him over small towns and Wilsonia, the county seat. They counted windmills and silos, surveyed the patchwork of farms, fields dotted orange with pumpkins. He had climbed to six thousand feet, but on their way back to the airport, he flew one low circle over Fort Cromwell.

It looked like a toy town, like the miniature buildings that had come with Fred’s model railroad. Will almost never thought of Fred’s train, but with the mapmaker paying such close attention to track beds and crossing signals, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Fred’s set-up had looked just like Fort Cromwell: pristine town green, red-brick buildings, railroad tracks winding through the low hills. Will had been stationed in Newport then, and navy housing didn’t leave much room for toys. Fred’s railroad was super deluxe, from F.A.O. Schwarz in New York, the kind of railroad Will had wanted when he was a boy. It had taken up the entire dining alcove.

Alice had been a sport. Her mother had given them a nice cherry table, and he remembered how they had just pushed it off to one side. Susan’s playhouse and Fred’s railroad had been the main deals back then, and that was just fine. With Will out at sea so much, he didn’t suppose Alice had much use for a fine dining table anyway.

But she used that table now. Will saw Julian’s estate nestled in the trees on the top of Windemere Hill. Stone mansion, clay tennis court, circular drive, security gates worthy of a movie star or a corporate mogul. That’s where they live, Will thought. While the mapmaker updated his notes, Will banked left. His port wing pointed straight down at the stone house, like a finger of God. Blessing his daughter, Will thought, but also cursing Julian. For being in the right place at the right time, for stealing Will’s family when they were all weakened – broken really – after losing Fred.

Catching sight of his daughter parking her bike against the fieldstone garage was too much for him. Feeling like he’d swallowed a fishhook, he gunned the engine and wheeled through the sky. The mapmaker gave him a terrified look.

‘Sorry,’ Will said.

‘Is the plane okay?’

Tine, sir. Just a little turbulence.’

‘Ah,’ the mapmaker said, a deep line across his brow.

Flying home, Will wondered why his heart was pumping so hard. He could feel it pounding in his chest, as if he had just swum a hundred yards in a Force 10 sea. That had been his first job in the navy: rescue swimmer aboard the L. P. James. He could slice through twenty-foot waves, weighed down with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man, and barely notice his breathing change.

Maybe it’s all this freshwater, he thought, surveying the lakes, the river. Made him feel nervous, like something was missing. No ocean, no coastline in sight. Just like Sarah Talbot had said yesterday: It’s not the Atlantic.

Then something strange happened. Thinking of Sarah Talbot, the whole thing went away. The speeding heart, the saltwater anxiety. Memories of life as a rescue swimmer, all the good and terrible reasons for leaving the ocean he loved so much. Will started to breathe easier. He pictured Sarah, kind and wise as a beautiful owl with her wide-open eyes and feathery hair, her way of staring at the sky with unblinking gratitude, and Will Burke felt calm. Like he could breathe again without cracking his chest wide open.