A Shiver of Wonder (22 page)

She beamed. “Not during the summer! But for
a while now…” Her visage was dimming, dimming. “For a while now,
I’ve been in first grade.”

“But why? You could easily be moved ahead!
You could learn other things: math, or music, or other
languages…”

“I would still see the same things, in any
language,” she replied sadly.

“But wouldn’t you – ”

“I like being in first grade,” she
interjected. “It’s the life I wish I could have. A real life. A
normal life.”

And to that, David found that he had no
response. It was what he’d wished as well when he’d been young,
that his family could have been normal. No more distressing ups and
downs, no more unsuccessful attempts to make friends. No more
covert moves in the middle of the night, let alone the middle of
the school year. Clair and he did have similarities, even if the
two of them had little in common outside of those.

He phrased his next question with care.
“What you’ve said to me, Clair. Here, in the courtyard, as well as
at the school yesterday. What did you mean?”

“I’ve said a lot of things to you, David,”
she replied evenly.

He took a breath. He took his time. “About
my knowing myself. About the four things you said I would lose.
Four things that I love.”

She studied him as he fumbled about for a
better approach to this, a less cumbersome means of getting her to
throw some light upon her own words.

“It will happen,” she said. “All of it.”

“But it frightens me,” he returned,
realizing that what he was telling her was entirely true. “After
all that has happened, after all that you’ve just shared with me,
how could I not worry? How could I not think about your words and
wonder if what’s in store for me is something terrible? Something
far worse than what I could even imagine right now?”

She took a single step toward him, the first
movement her feet had made since David’s arrival in the courtyard.
He wanted to retreat; every instinct he had began to scream at him
to stay away, to
get
away from this crazy, incomprehensible
girl.

“They might be good things,” she asserted,
her eyes pleading with him to stay calm. To believe her, to believe
in her.

But David was suddenly immersed in doubts.
He saw Bill’s face as he cried, the body bag containing what
remained of Heck Vance being wheeled out of the Rainbow Arms on a
stretcher, Detective Ormsby’s sneer as he sadistically acted out
his anger with David for something that had had nothing to do with
him whatsoever.

“You don’t know that,” he stated to Clair.
“You don’t know where things can lead. You can’t follow each action
to see all of the reactions that occur when a person changes their
behavior because of something you’ve said to them. You can’t
know
that what ensues will be good or be bad!”

The wind was back. It was instantly strong,
kicking up clouds of dirt and pushing the falling water straight
out of the fountain.

“I don’t
want
things that I do to be
bad,” Clair said, her voice strained with a tinge of petulance.

“But Clair, what you’ve done isn’t all
good!” David couldn’t hide his irritability, and the growing
turbulence in the courtyard wasn’t helping matters any. “You can’t
turn men into murderers! You can’t mess with people’s lives just
because you’re able to! What you did for Mrs. Jenkins was
incredible, but what if Stacey’s ex had pulled out a knife that
night and attacked Janice instead?”

“No!
No!
” Clair shrieked. “That
didn’t happen!”

A gust so strong that it almost knocked
David off his feet swept the length of the courtyard. A scraggly
rosebush flew out of the ground and right over the back fence; the
water in the top tier of the fountain appeared to be fleeing,
streaming in fifty directions at once.

“But you don’t know who you are!” David
declared forcefully. And then a fragment of his conversation with
Carol Jenkins slammed into his thoughts. “Are you trying to figure
out if you’re good or bad?” he shouted. “Do you have any idea at
all
if you’re good or bad?”

“
I DON’T KNOW I DON’T KNOW I DON’T
KNOW!
” Clair screamed.

The fountain toppled over, but any sound
that it made was covered by the roar of the wind. David had once
again grasped the fencepost, but this time with both of his
hands.

“
Clair!
” he hollered as an entire row
of plants howled by on their way out of the garden. “
Clair!
Clair, please stop!
”

Eerily, Clair appeared to be having no
problems at all withstanding the maelstrom. Only her hair was
embroiled, careening in every direction, the velvet bow long gone.
But her eyes were still locked on David’s, and within seconds, the
pandemonium had diminished.

The largest section of the fountain capsized
once more, landing with a hollow thump on its rim. A dog could be
heard barking frantically, and David knew that it was Johnson,
undoubtedly trying to launch himself out the bedroom window, if he
could have leapt so high.

“Do you know, David?” Clair asked, her voice
querulous yet calm. “Does anybody?”

But David couldn’t answer. Aside from his
shock at the utter devastation of his favorite garden in Shady
Grove, he knew that no one who owned a conscience could truly
answer that question with outright confidence.

The gate that led to Bill’s cottage was
pulled abruptly open. David didn’t have to turn around to be able
to see the look on Bill’s face. “Ho. Lee. Shit,” he heard muttered
in astonishment from behind him.

Seconds later, the gate that led to the
common area was unlatched as well, and Mrs. Rushen stepped into the
courtyard. Her bearing was staid, her face was blank. She was clad
in yet another of her shapeless outfits that made it so difficult
to determine where the woman ended and the costume began.

Clair’s eyes hadn’t left David’s. She looked
sad again, and David thought he could discern the tears welling up
once more.

“It’s time to go now,” Mrs. Rushen said.

And that was when Clair blinked, and David
saw that she
was
crying. He had to admit that he felt a bit
like bawling himself.

She took four steps, until she was less than
a foot away from him. Once again, she reached forward. Once again,
she took his hand.

“You’ll know when,” she said in a whisper as
the heat from within her traveled through David’s entire being.
“You’ll want to. Just go in.”

And then she was moving away from him,
slowly, unwillingly. She took hold of Mrs. Rushen’s hand, but
turned for a few last seconds to gaze at him. One more melancholy
smile emerged. One more tear rolled down each cheek.

Mrs. Rushen nodded discreetly at David. And
then the pair departed the courtyard of the Rainbow Arms. Never to
return, never to return.

A week passed. And while this standard
period of seven days elapses at pretty much the same pace no matter
where one is in the world, it seemed an interminable seven days to
several of the residents of Shady Grove.

Bill Lopes began the laborious process of
cleaning up the courtyard. The fountain was salvageable, although
in an ironic twist, the one component that had shattered beyond all
repair was the stone piece that had been used on Heck Vance’s head.
Only three small trees and a hardy pair of rosebushes had survived
the freakish windstorm; the wooden benches had turned into
kindling, and the remainder of the garden had emerged a wasteland.
Only a few residents regularly visited the courtyard, Janice among
them, but Bill informed anyone who asked that the building’s owners
had authorized an automatic sprinkler system to be installed, which
at least somewhat explained why he’d needed to clear out most of
the established vegetation.

Janice had bought this reasoning without
question. She had only enjoyed coming to the courtyard to talk with
David, and after their strange encounter at Gâteaupia the week
before, she’d had an inkling that those amiable chats were nearing
an end. She hadn’t ended up going out for drinks with Lydia and her
crew over the weekend, but had promised to do so the following
Saturday night.

No replacement for Heck was on the horizon.
Janice thought that she might see how long she could last before
welcoming another man into her life.

Lydia missed David. A lot. She waited five
long days before she finally texted him: “Creamed spinach dulce de
leche surprise with a pine nut studded sugar drizzle. Want u back!
Your counter girl L. xoxoxo.”

David had smiled, smiled, and smiled. “You
win w/out a contest,” he’d replied. “Want to be back, let u know.
But if u hear that the door has slammed for good, marry me?”

Lydia had smiled, smiled, and smiled as
well.

Lydia’s employer, on the other hand, had
discovered that running her business, usually the activity that
most thrilled and energized her, had become a drudgery. By Saturday
afternoon, Genevieve was exhausted. By Sunday night, she was ready
to close the bakery for a month. The website that David had
architected for Gâteaupia had brought in a surfeit of extra
business, but with her thoughts not centered solidly on the store,
Genevieve had found work becoming… well, work. Like Lydia, she
missed David. But she wasn’t ready to decide what she wanted.

Genevieve didn’t actually
know
what
she wanted.

At Shady Grove Elementary School, Carol
Jenkins had had a premonition of her own: by the time Clair’s third
unexcused absence in a row had been marked off and sent down the
hall to the principal’s office, she knew that the odd little girl
who had offered her such comfort with her words was never going to
set foot in her classroom again. Carol was saddened by this loss,
and yet at the same time felt at peace. Clair had given her a hug
goodbye after school ended on Monday, and a surprised Carol had
held her close for a long minute. After her emotional meeting with
David Wilcott during the lunch break, she had found her eyes
drifting over and over again to Clair, who had met her gaze
frankly. Clair had obviously been saying goodbye to her that
afternoon, and Carol was glad that she had done so. It added
closure to an episode in which Clair had provided her with a
different sort of closure. Mrs. Jenkins knew without a doubt that
their interactions had altered the course of her life. She was
content now. And even though she understood that she could never
have her daughter back again, she was ready to live for herself
once more.

Living, though, was something that Grandpa
Wilcott was
not
of a mind to do. David’s visit with him on
Saturday had been brief, and a disappointment for both men. After
two complaint-laden rounds of Gin rummy, David had put down his
cards, stood, and left. He wasn’t in the mood for his grumpy
Grandpa. He wasn’t in the mood to be around people who had given
up.

David himself had spent the seven days
painstakingly attempting to make decisions. He knew that he wanted
to stay in Shady Grove. He knew that he needed to live somewhere
other than the Rainbow Arms. He knew that he wanted to be with
Genevieve. And yet he wasn’t prepared to contact her until both of
them were entirely ready to give their relationship everything they
had.

If they were
in
a relationship
anymore, that is.

David and Johnson had taken many long walks,
and David had gradually come to acknowledge that he truly liked who
he had become in Shady Grove. He wasn’t important, he wasn’t a
critical cog in any machine. But he was accepted, and comfortable,
and fulfilled. He could wish for more, but why? He had had more
once, and it had brought him none of the happiness that he had
experienced in this bucolic town.

On Friday night, exactly a week after their
previous conversation, he had called Jess. “I suppose you’re going
to tell me that all of this is
my
fault,” was how she’d
answered the phone. Nervous before he dialed, David had found
himself perfectly at ease with her within seconds. They had chatted
for over an hour, as though they’d been friends for years. David
had declared that he couldn’t wait to meet her in July. Laughing,
Jess had replied that she expected him to treat her to Longworth
House, whether or not Genevieve was in the mood to join the two of
them for dinner.

Both had promised to keep their conversation
to themselves this time. Both intended to keep that promise.

The Shady Grove Courier had experienced a
plummet in sales, beginning on the Wednesday following the press
conference that had featured Detective Ormsby. Deke and Thickman’s
whereabouts had remained a mystery. And while the newspaper’s
editors had done their utmost to stoke the public’s curiosity and
keep it stoked, the conundrum of where a small-time drug dealer’s
alleged killers had fled was not one to occupy the public’s
attention for long. A half-page write-up on the upcoming ‘Lez Hang
Out’ LGBT meeting in June had been the most interesting article of
the Saturday edition.

Detective Ormsby had heard from Todd,
though. Saturday afternoon, half an hour before the start of the
game that both of them had planned to watch. One of them ended up
calling the other every commercial break – to bitch about the
errors the teams were making, to discuss who should play
quarterback for the Shady Grove Eagles next season, to knock around
which brewski went best with the TV dinner each of them would be
enjoying for supper that evening.

Harvey Ormsby went to bed a happy man.

A long seven days. But not for everyone,
clearly.

The weather in Shady Grove cooled down a
touch, for which Bill Lopes, for one, was grateful. Digging, hoeing
and planting were harder chores than they had been forty years
before, when he’d first begun caring for the courtyard garden of
the Rainbow Arms. On Friday, he actually
did
contact the
owners of the building to ask about installing some automatic
sprinklers, and they’d agreed. A lie come true, but Bill was
grateful in a way for all the work that remained to be done. It
kept him occupied. It kept his thoughts occupied.