Blue Diary (31 page)

PEOPLE CAME FROM ALL OVER MASSAchusetts to see him in that week before he was transferred to Maryland, and when they weren't allowed into the county court building, they settled outside, in the grass and on the road, perching like the warblers traveling south through the Commonwealth at this time of year. It was the last week of the blooming lilies, and the thin, green stems flutter each time a car passes by, the petals falling like leaves. Twice in the past few days, eggs have been thrown at the courthouse, and a bomb threat has been phoned in from a long-distance exchange, but the crowd that has gathered has come to support Ethan Ford, and sitting alone in his cell he can hear people call out his name, and he finds comfort there, where he least would expect to encounter it, in the voices of those who believe in him.

Rosarie Williams is at the top of that list. She has personally sent out thirty thousand fliers, folding paper until her fingers are bleeding, licking stamps until everything she eats tastes like glue. Mark Derry fashioned the task force room right where his dining room used to be, and that's where the faithful congregate, quick to reassure one another that the world they know is not as perilous as some might have them conclude. Good deeds prevail among these people. A fax machine has been donated by the friends of the town council, and the volunteers at the firehouse have presented the task force with a Xerox copier. On most days, Mark has a crew of five or more staff members working away, raising both money and awareness, but Rosarie Williams is his right-hand girl, running back and forth to the jail, making herself useful in the dining room office, donating her time and energy even on Saturday nights, when most girls her age are out looking for a good time.

Mark Derry has grown so fond of Rosarie that he sincerely regrets the fact that she broke up with his son; she might have been a cherished daughter-in-law if circumstances had worked out differently, present at holiday dinners and birthdays. But of course it's clear to Mark that Rosarie is far too mature for a boy like Brendan. She doesn't even glance at him whenever Brendan glumly edges past to go into the kitchen to fix himself a ham-and-cheese sandwich. On evenings when Brendan comes home from his job at the Pizza Barn, with free pizzas for everyone, Rosarie doesn't blink an eye. She's too busy thinking about the way Ethan looked at her when she last went to visit him at the jail, how he'd drawn her close and told her he'd be lost without her, how he would have given up long ago if not for those who had faith in him.

As for Brendan Derry; he pouts at first, tormented by how close Rosarie is, and still, how far away, but soon enough he takes to avoiding his own house. Seeing Rosarie makes him feel wretched deep down inside. He feels the way people do when they start to go bad, a wizening of the spirit, a desire to take foolhardy-chances just for the hell of it. He's stopped showing up for work on most evenings, and he's started driving fast in an aimless loop around town, looking to self-destruct, and tempting fate every time he walks out his front door. He might have done himself in completely, crashing into those big rocks down at the tricky intersection on the way to Lantern Lake, if Barney Stark's Lexus hadn't been broken down by the side of the road one pearly evening.

The blinking lights cause Brendan Derry to slow down, and when he does, he glimpses a scene that causes him to step on his brakes. Kelly Stark and her sisters are inside the car, all of them shaking and pale, afraid they've ruined their father's most prized possession. The three girls are crying about how their father has left them, moved out for no reason to live in his office; they're certain he'll hate them if his beloved Lexus is ruined. But the trouble is only a flat tire, caused by broken glass on the road, easy enough to fix. In fact, Sophie and Josie Stark are given the job of working the jack, which allows Brendan and Kelly to stand together on the side of the road in the dark, listening to the call of the frogs in the lake and finding each other much more interesting than they'd ever imagined they might.

After this encounter, Kelly does her best to avoid Rosarie Williams. She's heard firsthand from Brendan how cruel Rosarie can be, and besides, Kelly has begun to have serious doubts about working for Ethan Ford. According to Brendan, Ethan is nothing but a reprehensible murderer, slithering his way into their lives. Now whenever Rosarie phones, Kelly tells her sisters to say she isn't home. She's repulsed by the way Rosarie has been acting, practically throwing herself at a man in jail. She's begun to think Ethan Ford's wife has a right to know the real story and is tempted to reveal what goes on when Rosarie goes to visit Ethan. There is such intense flirting that the guards are said to be aroused at the mention of Rosarie's name. They grow feverish the minute they see her, drinking so much icy water from the cooler that the bill for spring water at the jail has doubled this month.

Kelly's father is representing Jorie in the sale of her house, and one afternoon Kelly meets up with Jorie in the hall outside his office. Standing there, making polite conversation, Kelly is about to whisper,
watch out for Rosarie,
but then she makes the mistake of really looking at Jorie. The anguish she observes forces her to take a step backward, so that she lurches into the wall. The idea of causing more harm raises gooseflesh on Kelly's arms, and so she keeps silent, merely watching as Jorie rushes to the realtor with the papers Barney Stark has prepared for her in hand.

When it comes to the sale of the house, Jorie knows she should be thankful that the young couple from Framingham have decided to buy; some people, it's true, won't even look at an address where a criminal has lived. You never knew what you might find when you dug up the garden to put in a swing set. You never could tell what the attic crawl space might yield or what might be hidden in the garage. Luckily, these buyers have no qualms about the house's history, especially in light of the great deal they're getting, thousands less than the asking price of any other house in the neighborhood. It's true, photos of the house had been in both the city papers and the
Monroe Gazette,
but no one pays much attention these days; cars don't drive past slowly anymore, with the occupants' tongues wagging, embellishing and refining an already sad story. Occasionally, a reporter may circle Ruth Solomon's house on Smithfield Road, but Jorie's sister, Anne, has been known to turn the hose on such people, an act of defiance she greatly enjoys. She's on her own family's property, after all, and even Gigi, who is usually such a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to wicked behavior, applauds her mother's efforts to maintain what little privacy they have left.

But most people in town don't need to read the newspapers to get the facts anymore; they've made up their own minds by now, especially when it comes to their opinion of Jorie. Some have made the choice to ignore her completely; she doesn't even exist for such individuals. On the streets and in stores, many people Jorie has known all her life have begun to look the other way when she walks by, as if she'd never set foot in their universe, never sat next to them in school, or shopped at the Hilltop supermarket alongside them, or washed cars at the PTA bazaar, or brought homemade blueberry muffins to the Friends of the Library day. These are the citizens of Monroe who wonder how Jorie has the nerve to show her face, and for the life of them they can't figure out how she's managing to live with herself now that she knows she's been sleeping next to a monster for so many years, dreaming in his arms.

If pressed, some people might admit they haven't recently turned against Jorie. in truth, many held a grudge long before Ethan was brought into custody. They always believed Jorie was too pretty and stuck-up for her own good, and they view her with an indifference that is far from cold. There are quite a number of people in town who always resented the arrogant manner Ethan possessed when he refused an award ceremony back when the McConnell house burned down. Still others have never approved of the way Jorie and Ethan kissed each other in the field during baseball practice, so brazen, right in front of everyone, there for all the children to see.

Sometimes Jorie wears sunglasses when she has to run errands; she ties a scarf around her head and does her best to hide. But there are other times when she stares right back, eye to eye, in defiance of the prying glances sent her way in the drugstore and the bank. Either way, folks who know her can tell she's been crying; her eyes are puffy even on days when she doesn't shed a tear. Her pretty honeyed hair is snarled, her clothes are wrinkled, her face drawn. A few weeks ago, Jorie had been a beautiful woman, but that's over now. She's been avoiding people, spending most of her time inside, behind locked doors. She holds the diary in her hands when she's alone on the sun porch, hiding it beneath her pillow if her sister or mother should happen to approach. She has given up gardening and going for walks with her mother's dog, Mister. Now, whenever she ventures into the Sunlight, Jorie finds she breaks out in a rash, sorrowful bumps of grief that rise on her arms and legs and along her chest, in a red line beside her heart.

There are still some neighbors who continue to be concerned, people like Grace Henley. the librarian, and Mrs. Gage, their next-door neighbor for so long, who go out of their way to ask Ruth Solomon if there's anything to do to help out and insist upon bringing over casseroles that sit in the refrigerator untouched. These are the people it's most difficult to see, for Jorie knows they pity her, and their pity makes her even more desperate, it causes her to draw the curtains in the middle of the day and refuse to allow her son to go to the town pool even though the weather is brutal, with temperatures hovering high in the nineties, and cherries ripening too soon, and fledglings dying of thirst in their nests in the tallest of the trees.

Ethan, of course, has his throngs of supporters, those advocates who sprawl on the lawn at the courthouse and have taken up his cause. The family should feel reassured by so many well-wishers, but these good people are the reason Collie gives for not visiting his father—the crowds and the reporters, the traffic and the fuss make him nervous, or so he says. He prefers to stay on the couch with Mister, watching TV But there's more to Collie's isolation, and Jorie has seen for herself the reason he steers clear of people in town. just a few days earlier, she'd been driving by the high school during baseball practice and she'd spied two boys throwing balls at Collie as he walked past. She'd thought it was all in fun, until she saw the look on Collie's face. He'd just kept on his way along the sidewalk, ignoring the other boys' taunts and their dares, even though one of the balls had hit him between the shoulder blades, hard.

“Hey, you guys, cut it out,” Jorie had heard Barney Stark call. He'd jogged across the field from third base to lecture the offending boys, but the damage had been done. Collie continued on, the sun in his eyes, the late afternoon light turning his hair flaxen, his mouth set in a flinty; uncompromising line, his shoulders hunched to avoid further assault. Jorie knew then that things would never be the same, no matter how she might try to protect him. She found herself thinking of James Morris, a boy like her own, whose life was turned around one ordinary summer morning. She was proud of her son for not giving in to his tormentors. He'd kept on his appointed route despite them; he'd turned them into smoke and ash inside his mind.

When Jorie asks Collie if he wants to go with her to the final rally at the courthouse, she's not surprised to hear him say no. He has plans, he's meeting Kat, and they leave it at that: they don't discuss the fact that Collie doesn't want to get within five hundred feet of the courthouse, not the way he hurts inside, more deeply than he himself knows. It's Charlotte who agrees to accompany Jorie downtown. They drive to the courthouse to get a look at the last rally on this hot August night. Half the town is gathered on King George's Road, and those who are in attendance are in high spirits. Ethan's fellow firemen are there, as are most regulars from the Safehouse, along with the Little League commissioner and several people from the school board. But there are plenty of outsiders congregated as well, and many have hung their towns' banners from the trees: Everett is represented, as is Cambridge, and Newton, and Essex, along with a huge crowd from Hamilton assembled beneath the linden trees. There are women from Boston who have seen Ethan's photograph in the Herald and who can tell simply by looking at him that he has repented. There are men from New Hampshire and Maine who have made mistakes in their lives and could use a little forgiveness of their own, Someone has been selling green light sticks and the night is aglow with wands of brilliant jade. Up and down the street, there are several trucks selling ice cream and hot dogs and sizzling fried dough that leaves the air permeated with a sultry, sugared scent.

“Just be prepared when you do go over there,” Barney Stark had advised when Jorie came to pick up Charlotte. “There are all sorts of folks getting involved at this point, and probably half of them have their own twisted reasons for coming to this rally Whatever happens, don't let them get to you.”

Barney was still living in his office, but he was spending more and more time at Charlotte's. Jorie, however, felt she had been neglectful; she hadn't been to see Charlotte since she'd decided to shave her head. Charlotte explained that she'd spent so much energy fearing the loss of her hair, she figured it might be best to go ahead and get it over with, slapdash, snip snap, Jorie kissed her friend on the forehead. She had never before noticed how truly beautiful Charlotte was, and when Charlotte grabbed for the hat she'd taken to wearing, Jorie told her not to bother. “You don't have anything to hide,” she observed. “You look amazing.”

“Amazingly scary.” Charlotte had laughed, but she'd left the hat behind.