Belonging (46 page)

Partly this was because she didn’t rest well at night, haunted as she was by nightmares of the fire. Every night, before her eyes, her letters or a favorite sweater or one of Christopher’s innocent toys would spontaneously ignite, shooting flames and curling into ashes while she stood helplessly watching. The fire would flare up, a writhing wall surrounding her and her child. Heat would sear her skin. The monstrous roar and crackle filled her ears. She would awaken panting, heart thudding, overwhelmed with terror and grief.

More than that was the simple sense of hopelessness that weighed on her these days. Sometimes she lay staring at the wall, thinking of the Chorus Girl, and her grand old house, and her dreams of family life, and her belief in Carter’s love, and even her belief in Doug Snow’s interest in her as a woman. All had somehow been torn away from her and consigned to a hazy never-never land.

She disliked herself for being so maudlin. She chided herself for giving in to self-pity. She’d always been strong, a survivor; she’d always picked up her burdens and tossed back her head and carried on. She urged herself to get on with it, but all she wanted to do was to sleep.

Jake called to tell her that
Fabulous Homes
had been bought for syndication with another cable TV network; now five years of old shows ran on a local station every Saturday afternoon at three o’clock. That Saturday Joanna determined to watch it, hoping some architectural style she’d loved a few years ago would catch her eye now and fire her inspiration. Instead, she felt her breath knocked from her lungs. How slender she’d been only a few years ago, how young and sleek and glowing! She didn’t have to look in the mirror to realize how much she’d aged in only a year. Sometimes she found herself exhausted by the sight of how she used to be.

It was hard to know what to do with her anger. For anger was there, a dark vein twisting around all her other emotions, webbing up her heart in a net of fine and cutting threads. If only the Snows were alive, so she could sue them and berate them and hate them for all the losses they had caused her, for the damage they’d done to Madaket. But the worst damage they had inflicted on themselves, and Joanna could not separate her anger from her deeper pity.

The officiating minister called Pat Hoover to ask her to let Joanna know, if the question arose, that Helen Snow, Doug’s widow, Todd’s mother, would prefer it if Joanna did not attend the funeral and burial service, and Joanna respected the woman’s wishes.

The day of the funeral Joanna got out of bed only to care for her baby. Other than that, she lay curled on her side, playing desultorily with Christopher when necessary, and when he slept, closing her own eyes. But she was not sleeping. Nor was she thinking, really. She let her thoughts drift, and it was a kind of dreaming that she did, in which Doug and Todd stood before her, whole and healthy and vigorous with life’s normal greed. They had wanted Farthingale’s treasure. She had wanted Blair’s husband, and then she had wanted Helen’s. She thought of the sandy ground beneath her house. She thought of the sandy ground in which the bodies of Doug and Todd would be put to rest.

Joanna awoke from violent dreams the day after the funeral and found that while she’d slept, her subconscious had been working furiously, and during the night had woven a new obsession into her thoughts. Joanna left Christopher with Pat and drove by herself to the cemetery and walked across the dry, winter-crisped grass to the plots where the new mounds of earth lay side by side, for father and son.

The day was bitterly cold and a great flat barricade of clouds walled up the sky,
dulling all available light. Joanna knelt to place her offering of spring flowers at the foot of the graves, then stood for a long time, trying to empty herself of all thoughts of anger and retribution and also of lust and insult. So much had gone wrong between her and the Snows. She could not believe it was entirely their fault, and as she stood in the bitter cold, she made a resolution, and before she left the graves, she spoke aloud to Todd and Doug. She made them a promise.

As soon as she walked into the house from her visit to the cemetery, Joanna called Helen Snow and asked if she could pay a brief visit to her the next afternoon. After a moment’s hesitation, with a voice weary of emotion, Helen agreed.

The next afternoon Joanna once again left her baby with Pat, and drove out to the western area of the island known as Madaket, to the Snows’ home. To what had been Doug’s home, and Todd’s, and now was only Helen’s.

The small gray-shingled ranch house sat on a slight slope of land with a sweeping view of the water, and Joanna saw that at this end of the island, all around the sheltered harbor, ice laced the shoreline with a frosty embroidery. The Snows’ driveway and yard were crowded with cars and trucks, including the red pickup, and with boats covered with tarps, waiting for the winter’s end. Shrubs rattled under the windows.

She knocked on the door. Helen Snow answered it almost at once, and nodding brusquely in greeting, stood back for Joanna to enter. The front door gave immediately onto the living room and Joanna saw that the ranch house was compact but cozy and bright. A multicolored rag rug lay before a fireplace. Pictures of Todd and Doug and others paraded across the mantel. Facing an enormous color TV were a much-used sofa and a scuffed vinyl reclining chair, which probably had been Doug’s. Helen indicated with her hand a rocking chair with a braided rag cushion, and Joanna sat down there, her coat still on, her muffler still wrapped around her neck.

“Thank you for letting me come,” she said.

“I don’t know if you’ve met my daughter, Chrissy.” Helen spoke tonelessly as she sank onto the sofa next to a sullen-faced teenager.

“I haven’t. Hello, Chrissy.”

Chrissy’s nod was curt. For a moment the three women only looked at each other. Both Helen and Chrissy had Todd’s blond hair and blue eyes and both were quite lovely even now with their eyelids swollen from tears and their faces drawn with grief. Helen
had a French delicacy and paleness to her skin and bones, and she was very slender; she had the looks of one who might easily have been called “Princess” by her parents and by her husband.

Joanna took a deep breath and began. “I want to tell you how terribly sorry I am about Doug and Todd.”

Helen only stared, and now Joanna understood that Helen’s eyes held the absentminded, faraway gaze of someone on sedatives.

“I should have realized that the thought of finding more treasure in the house was tempting. I was so afraid of publicity, of a commotion at a time when I needed peace and quiet. And then with the baby—the babies …”

Chrissy spoke up, her voice cold and shaking with emotion. “They found rubies.”

“Yes,” Joanna agreed. “But they never found anything else. I let them dig. You must know that. Todd and Madaket spent many nights looking, and they found nothing but sand.”

Helen spoke. Her voice was high and almost singsong, like a child’s. “In any case, they were wrong to take dynamite to your house. I asked them not to. I told them it was wrong, dangerous. They promised they wouldn’t use it when you and your baby were in the house. They meant only to cause a small explosion, enough to crack through the brick wall.” She was beginning to tremble bodily. “I told Doug. I begged him. You’ve never used dynamite before, I told him, but he said his brother had told him just what to do. It would be short and sweet, he said, you’d never know.”

“Don’t, Mom.” Chrissy put her arm around her mother.

Helen’s lower lip quivered. From a pocket in her cardigan she drew a handkerchief and twisted it in her hands. “I’m sorry your house burned down. I really am. I don’t know what to do about it.”

Joanna leaned forward. “Oh, Helen, please. That’s not why I’m here. Listen. Please. I took the two rubies to Boston a few weeks ago and sold them. I want to give you some of the money. Thirty-five thousand dollars.”

“I don’t want your money.”

Chrissy jerked her mother. “Mom.”

“I don’t think of it as my money,” Joanna explained. “I was planning all along to give part of it to your son and part of it to Madaket. I just didn’t get around to it with the baby and all that happened.”

“I can’t take your money.”

“I want you to know that if you don’t want the money, I’m planning to donate it to the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, in Todd and Doug’s name.”

“We want the money,” Chrissy said. “For God’s sake, Mom!”

“You don’t have to decide now,” Joanna told her. “Just think about it.”

“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” Helen said.

“I only wish I’d given them the money before,” Joanna told her. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“You’re lucky you can just give away that much money,” Chrissy said accusingly. Joanna looked at her. “Yes, I am. I’m lucky in many ways that I’m only now discovering.”

“We could use the money,” Helen admitted softly. “We really could use it, especially with the funeral expenses. And now that Doug won’t be working …” Her voice broke off in a sob. “Working!” she cried, and shook her head at her words, and dropped her face into her hands.

Joanna opened her bag and took out an envelope. The check was enclosed, made out to Helen Snow, but she handed it to Chrissy, who opened it, and took the check out and stared at it in wonder.

“Mom,” Chrissy said. “Look.”

Helen looked at the check through her tears.

“This is so generous.” Her voice was thick with effort. “I don’t know what to say. I never expected … Thank you.”

For a long moment the three women sat in silence. Then Joanna rose. “I’ll see myself out.”

She crossed the room in silence and quietly pulled the door shut behind her as she left the house. But when she reached her Jeep, she heard her name called. “Miss Jones!” She turned to look.

Chrissy ran out of the house and down the walk and stopped on the other side of the Jeep. She was wringing her hands near her heart in an anguish of emotions, and her eyes spilled over with tears.

“We really
are
grateful,” the young woman said. “This means I can go to college. I want you to know that. We couldn’t afford for Todd to go to college, and he knew how much I wanted to, and he loved me, and I’m going to miss him so much, but I know he
would be glad about the money.”

Tears streamed down Chrissy’s face, and she shivered unaware in the cold. Joanna thought her heart would break open.

“Thank you for telling me. It helps to know.”

They stared at each other across the hood of the Jeep for a long moment, then Chrissy ducked her head and ran back into the house.

It amazed Joanna that her act of generosity brought her such enduring pleasure. She was financially comfortable, because she had worked very hard for many years and because she’d saved her money. But she was not so wealthy that thirty-five thousand dollars meant nothing to her. If she’d kept it, she could have contemplated not working for a year, while she enjoyed her baby. Or she could have put that money into a trust fund for Christopher when he was grown—for his college education.

She’d considered all this before she gave the money to Helen Snow, and she’d even warned herself that once the money had actually been transferred, she might experience regret and anger.

Instead, she felt as if weights had been taken from her shoulders. Her spirits lifted, her heart grew lighter. She knew she had done the right thing.

Ten days after the fire, Madaket was released from the plastic bubble and into a private room in the Burn Center. Joanna packed a suitcase for herself and one for her baby and one for
Fabulous Homes
and flew with Christopher to Boston. She checked into a Holiday Inn near Mass General, set up a temporary base, and then with her baby in one arm and a bag of presents in the other, she went to visit Madaket. And visited her every day.

There were things about which to be glad and grateful: Madaket hadn’t developed pneumonia or infections, both common with burns. Her scalp was covered with a fine bristle of black hair and the doctors promised that Madaket’s thick hair would grow back. Even the most damaged skin on the side of her face and hands was recovering.

On the other hand, Madaket would never look like she had before the fire. As the days went by and the dressings were removed, the scarring of Madaket’s face was revealed. A giant patch, a continent of injured flesh, spread across her left temple and cheek from her hairline to her nose. Eventually the angry burgundy and crimson would fade but in its place would be new skin of a different shade and texture than the rest of
the skin on her face. Madaket was no longer beautiful. Because of the scar, her face was shocking, painful to look at. The first time Christopher saw Madaket after the fire he made abrupt little startled movements and burst into tears. Joanna continually fought to keep herself from wincing when she looked at Madaket’s flesh and especially to prevent pity or shock from showing in her eyes. Each day as the new skin grew, the nurses left more of the area open to the air, and in spots where the skin was weak and sensitive, it broke open; the nurses dabbed Mercurochrome on those spots, adding yet another vivid, unnatural hue to Madaket’s multicolored face. It would be months, the doctors said, before the wound healed enough for them to evaluate the necessity and possible benefits of skin grafting.

In the early days of Madaket’s recovery, Joanna refrained from speaking of Todd, or the fire, or the money from the rubies. Madaket was no longer dulled by painkillers, but she was far from her normal self, and spent most of her time either sleeping or staring blankly at the television.

“Is Madaket depressed?” Joanna asked Lisa Hale, the head nurse, one day as they stood together in the hall, far from Madaket’s room and hearing.

“Of course,” the nurse replied sensibly. “Wouldn’t you be?”

“Because of her appearance?”

“No, I don’t think that’s the case with Madaket. She spends very little time looking in a mirror. I think it’s more a matter of simple exhaustion. You must understand that even though she was helped with morphine, she experienced a debilitating amount of pain. It will take a while for her body to recover from that. I think it’s just a matter of time. Be patient with her.”