Blue Diary (20 page)

They turn onto King George's Road and travel beyond the county buildings, past the courthouse and the jail, until the road becomes more rural, unlit by street lamps, and lined by old stone fences that are crumbling into dust. The night is dreamy and dark. Along the side of the road, there are banks of daylilies; the flowers look like birds that have settled down to sleep among the leaves.

“Right here,” Kat says suddenly. “Turn.”

Kat knows that Collie may not forgive her for leading his mother here, but what choice does she have? Sitting in the passenger scat, holding on tight while Jorie makes a wide, wild turn onto the dirt road, Kat knows that she will always feel the way she feels about Collie right now. No matter what happens, even if she gets married and has a dozen kids, even if she never says it aloud. It will always be him.

“How did you know this was here?” Jorie wonders when the old Monroe house comes into view. She and Anne came here several times when they were kids, but she never could have found it again. She cuts the headlights and lets the truck roll closer to the house. Something flutters in the trees up above, bird or bat, it's impossible to tell.

“He comes here to get away from everyone,” Kat says. “Including me.”

Jorie looks at Kat and thinks to herself, She's only
twelve.
She tells Kat to stay where she is, then goes out into the warm, hazy night. As Jorie makes her way up to the house, she breathes deeply. The air carries the scent of apples and ashes, and when she goes in through what she supposes was once the side door, she picks up the scent of another human being. She can feel someone watching her.

“Collie,” she calls. Her heart is beating too fast, perhaps because it's even darker inside the house than it is outside among the overgrown shrubbery. There's no response, and jorie finds herself wishing she'd brought along a flashlight. She can't force her son to come to her; she can't pull him by a leash or a string. If he flatly refuses to come home, Jorie's not sure what she'll do, but then out of the emptiness he calls back, “Go away.” Just hearing his voice makes everything bearable. She can see more clearly through the dust and the dampness of this old house.

“I'm not mad or anything,” Jorie says. “I just came to take you home.” There are crumbly things under her feet, rotting floorboards, most probably, and she makes certain to walk toward the sound of his voice carefully, arms outstretched to catch herself in case she should fall. They haven't talked about Ethan's confession: they've avoided it thoroughly, going so far around it, all they've managed is to get stuck right in the middle of it.

“Oh, yeah?” Collie says. “Where's that?”

He's sitting on an old timber in what was the parlor, a large, gracious room where cider soup was served to guests on cool, crisp days. The scent of apples here is strongest. Perhaps the wooden fireplace was carved from one of the hundreds of Christmas apple trees that once grew on the property. Jorie finds herself imagining what it would have been like to live in this house. What it would have felt like to look out your window and know you owned everything as far as the eye could see, trees and land, hillsides and fields.

“And here's another question.” Collie's tone is harsh. “What's my name supposed to be?”

The moldings around the ceiling of the room have retained some of their gold leaf, so that there is a gleaming through the darkness, even in the places where the plaster has become little more than powder.

“If our real name isn't Ford, and I don't want to take a murderer's name, who am I?”

Jorie sees the saw then, one of Ethan's best, ruined and sticky with sap, tossed into a dim corner. The odor of the apple tree Collie cut down clings to the saw, and to his hands, and to his clothing. He is staring at his mother, desperate for an answer. He barely looks like himself in the dark, but she knows him, perhaps better than she knows anyone in this world.

“You're still the same person.” Jorie is surprised to find she continues to have faith in someone. She still believes in who her son is and who he will be. “Even if he's not.”

Collie thinks this over as he follows her out of the old house. They go through the front door without bothering to collect Ethan's saw. Instead, they leave it in the parlor, where the wood is so rotted one heavy footstep can cause an individual to fall right through.

“I'm not going to use his name,” Collie says once they're outside.

“You might want to think about it.” It's warm outside, but Jorie wraps her arms around herself as though she's cold.

“I already have.”

Collie sounds too old, and Jorie wonders how this has happened so suddenly. Her boy nearly a man, with opinions of his own. But perhaps this transformation would have occurred anyway; certainly it is happening to Kat Williams as well. The little girl next door who's now as tall as Jorie is sitting on the bumper of the truck with a lit cigarette in hand.

“That's how you found me.” Collie nods to Kat. The cigarette she smokes is one swiped from Rosarie, lit in Kat's attempt to try to calm her nerves. As soon as she spies Jorie and Collie coming toward her in the dark, Kat drops the cigarette and stomps it out beneath her sneaker. Red sparks fly up, and she crushes them, too.

Ever since Collie took King Arthur from the library, Kat has been stealing books. She's taken at least one a day and on some brave and crazy afternoons, she's filled up a whole backpack. She now has novels and biographies under her mattress and in her underwear drawer. Not that she reads any of them. She doesn't even open the covers. Still, these books make her think of her father. In his last year, Aaron Williams often checked out twenty or more books at a time, huge piles that Kat helped to carry home. This, of course, was expressly against the rules- -there was a six-book limit- -but anyone could look at Aaron Williams and know he was dying. He'd been a big, robust man before he'd taken ill, and although he was soon puffed up from steroids and chemo, it was clear that underneath it he'd become a rail of a man. No matter. If he'd wanted a hundred books, the librarian would have checked them out for him. If he'd wanted a thousand, Grace Henley would have plucked the wheelbarrow from the library's garden shed and carted the editions along to his house.

“You cut down the tree,” Kat whispers as Collie comes near. Jorie has gone around to the driver's side of the truck, and they only have a moment out of her sight.

“You told her where I was.” Collie looks straight at her and Kat feels dizzy, probably from the cigarette, although she didn't inhale. Maybe being light-headed is what allows her to be bold, or maybe it's the notion that the time for this may never come again; whatever the reason, when Collie moves back so Kat can step into the truck, Kat leans toward him and kisses him. She does it so quickly that they both think they have imagined what just happened as they ride home, sitting close together, pretending to listen to the radio as Jorie drives toward town.

In the morning, blue jays perch on the fallen apple tree. The trunk has been chopped in half, the ragged bark hacked through unevenly but thoroughly. Green leaves and petals drift over side-walks and lawns. Grace Henley is the first to see what's happened. She arrives early, woken by the stifling heat of the day and her own internal alarm clock, set to five-fifteen for the past twenty years. The morning is still dark when she briskly turns onto Front Street. Grace's eyesight is failing, so at first she imagines that what she spies is a dragon on the library lawn, coiled and fallen under the sword, and that there are pale sweet-scented scales floating above the grass, onto the roof, dusting windows and doorways and gutters alike.

When the librarian realizes what has been felled, the hateful fruit tree that has been the bane of her existence each autumn with its bushels of rotten fruit and its pools of deep shade, she decides that some prayers are indeed answered in ways no one ever would have begun to imagine. Grace takes off her shoes and climbs skyward, and she's still there, comfortable as a jay herself, when the first of the children arrive to practice for the yearly talent show scheduled to take place after supper. Grace allows the children to climb to their hearts' content, never mind that their hands will be tacky with sap and that the bits of bark are sure to give them splinters. She insists that the town crew wait on the sidewalk with their saws and all their stern warnings that someone could easily break a leg, leaving the town open to a negligence suit. Grace Henley lets the children play until every petal has been shaken loose and the grass has turned white as snow.

People who disdain Grace Henley as a bookworm who desires nothing more than peace and quiet and a good cup of tea are doing her a disservice and fooling themselves as well. Books should never be judged by their covers, and Grace happens to know quite a lot about the people in this town. She knows, for instance, that Collie is the one who chopped down the tree, not that she would ever let on. Just last summer, Ethan Ford had been hired to replace the rickety steps leading to the stacks on the second floor, and Collie had often come to assist him. Grace had enjoyed watching them work together, and had been delighted to find that rather than running over to the Dairy Queen at lunch time, the way most people would have, they sat and had their noon break beneath the apple tree. They brought along Thermoses of lemonade, and sandwiches wrapped in foil, and thick wedges of angel food cake.

Grace Henley recalls how the boy had held planks of wood steady as Ethan sawed through them; how serious his expression had been, how much it meant to him to be of use to his father, whom he clearly admired. Hearing of Ethan's past, Grace feels betrayed, not for her own sake, but for the sake of the children in town, and most especially for Collie. She doesn't blame him one bit for needing to cut something down. She's observed the look on his face when he sits in the reading room, half-hidden behind the fish tank. She's noticed the hurt and the frustration there. Although Grace has refused to discuss Ethan Ford's guilt or innocence with any library patrons wishing to gossip, privately she feels quite pleased that during the last town referendum, she voted against air-conditioning the jail. She thinks it's just fine for Ethan Ford to sit in his cell and sweat.

Grace Henley is not the only one who's pleased with the current turn of events. Jorie's sister, Anne Solomon Lyle, is somewhat surprised to find herself back home at the age of forty, but even more amazed to discover she's not unhappy with her situation. After more than twenty years of moving around from town to town, following her husband across most of New England and half the Southwest, she has a settled feeling at last. As it turns out, everything she was running away from is a comfort to her now. Most people in Monroe would guess Anne must consider herself to be a failure coming home at this stage, divorced with no man in sight, dragging Gigi back to the house she herself couldn't wait to escape when she eloped with Trent right after their senior year in high school, two smitten fools who didn't know the first thing about real life.

Regardless of other people's judgments, the concerned How are you? that always seems to greet her in the market and at the bank, Anne actually feels better than she has in ages. The truth is, she's never lived anywhere where the summer air is as sweet as it is in Monroe. It's only recently that she's realized the reason for this scent is that her mother keeps flowering jasmine in the yard. Because jasmine cannot tolerate a Massachusetts winter, Ruth always brings the pots inside at the first sign of a chill, ensuring that the glassed-in porch is always fragrant, no matter what the weather outside.

Anne's daughter, Gigi, will be going into her junior year at the high school in September, and thankfully she's not in with the crowd that includes Rosarie Williams. How Anne ever wound up with a daughter like Gigi is proof that there are indeed miracles on earth. Whereas Anne was lazy and self-centered as a teenager, Gigi is thoughtful and a hard worker; she helps her grandmother around the house, made honor roll last spring even though they moved to Monroe midyear, and is currently a volunteer counselor at the library summer program. This evening, Gigi is responsible for organizing the talent show. Although her grandmother has gone to root her on, Anne worked all day at the country club up in Hillerest, where she has recently begun a position as part-time hostess in the restaurant, and she's opted out. Her feet are killing her, and she doesn't have the patience for a bunch of kids singing songs and juggling.

Anne has to be pleasant at work, no matter how rude a customer might be, and maybe that's the reason she likes to be alone in the evenings. She had thought she'd miss Trent like crazy, but as it turns out, she loves being by herself. She would like Trent to see her for one single instant. If only her happy face would bubble up in a bowl of chili as he ate lunch, or reveal itself in a glass of beer the way fortunes appear in crystal balls, just so he'd know how wrong he'd been. She's doing just fine without him, thank you very much. For the first time ever, she's at peace with the world.

The one recent development that really gets to Anne, as selfish a sentiment as it may be, is the fact that Jorie has moved home. Naturally, Anne feels bad for her sister, but they had settled down to such a perfect routine before Jorie came back, and now that's all shot to hell. Although Anne would not admit this to anyone, she's enjoyed being at the center of her mother's world. It's true she's never been especially generous, never had any big-sister urges to protect or to guide. She wouldn't know how to help Jorie if she tried, and thankfully she's never been asked to.

Tonight, Anne pours herself a glass of white wine and grabs a bag of potato chips. She has decided she will tie one on, all by herself. She'll celebrate being alive without Trent around to tell her what a mess she's making of everything and how inconsequential a human being she is. Anne is on the lawn, stretched out on a chaise, the open bottle of wine beside her, a mild buzz just beginning, when she spies her sister coming down the street. Earlier, Jorie had gone to her house on Maple Street; she really had no choice. A couple relocating from Framingham have put a bid in on the house, and it's a fair one, more than generous considering that the address has recently been in the news, which often turns buyers away.