Blue Diary (32 page)

“You look like you.”

“Oh, God. That's even scarier. Let's just say I look like a Martian and leave it at that.”

When they had almost reached the street, Charlotte rushed back to the house. At first Jorie thought she'd changed her mind and decided to cover her head, but Charlotte had only returned to say good-bye to Barney, whom she'd forgotten in the doorway.

“See ya, pal.” Charlotte stood on tiptoes to kiss him, then, out of breath and happy, she ran back to Jorie, who was holding open the door of the truck. “I don't like to leave without saying good-bye,” Charlotte said as they drove away. “You never know when you won't see someone again.”

“You'll see him again.”

“Actually, I think Barney's here for the duration. You're the one I'm afraid might disappear. ”

Jorie managed a grin. “I'll let you know if I plan to.”

“We'll send each other messages from the great beyond.”

Jorie laughed at that notion. And that was fine, as long as she didn't look over at Charlotte and admit that such a loss seemed horribly possible at this point in their lives. “I was thinking more of a change of address.”

“I know what we'll do.” Charlotte looked so young without her hair. She wore a sweater in spite of the heat, for lately she was always cold. At the hospital, during her treatments she shivered and tried to imagine Florida beaches, a vacation Barney has promised they'll take when she's strong enough to travel. “We have to vow that we'll send each other lilies if we make it over to the other side. If we do that, then we'll know something remains.”

“Fine,” Jorie agreed. “If I ever leave you, I won't really be gone, and the same better be true for you.”

They sealed this promise by hooking pinkies, the way they used to, long ago, when promises didn't hurt as much.

There was so much traffic in town it took nearly half an hour to get to King George's Road, and they had to circle for quite some time before a parking place was found. From their spot on the crowded street, they can at last see the wide lawn of the county offices. People are laughing as they wait for the rally to begin; they're having a good time. Some have brought blankets and picnic dinners; children race back and forth, playing tag in the waning light. Jorie and Charlotte sit in the cab of Ethan's truck with a Thermos of milky tea and a box of Kite's doughnuts, jam and cream-filled, between them on the seat, not that either woman can eat. Charlotte's mouth has reacted to chemo with painful little sores that her doctor assures her will disappear before long. Because of this, she's taken to fixing watery oatmeal for nearly every meal; she's actually begun to enjoy the stuff although Barney continues to refer to it as gruel.

As for Jorie, her stomach is lurching about, a severe case of indigestion brought on by nerves. Watching the crowd that has gathered, she feels the ache of her own aloneness, as might be expected in anyone who was not among the faithful here tonight. Across the darkness, across the lawn, there are Warren Peck and Hannah from the coffee shop; there is Hal Jordan, the Little League commissioner, and near the stage that has been set up by the firemen, Jorie and Charlotte both can spy Rosarie Williams, dressed as though she'd been invited to a party, wearing a pale blue frock she must have borrowed from her mother, for it seems far too adult for a girl of her age. Rosarie's black hair is loose and her skin is shining, illuminated by the diamond-white light streaming from the half-dozen sparklers local boys have set out on the lawn.

“What does the Williams girl have to do with any of this?” Charlotte doesn't like the devout expression on Rosarie's face.

“She's Mark Derry's assistant.” Jorie takes a good look at Charlotte and sees that her friend is brimming with suspicion. “It's not what you're thinking. She's helping out.”

“Yeah, well, some people are attracted to trouble.” Charlotte knows how true this can be from her years of marriage to Jay “Some people can only fight battles they can't win.”

“I see. Because you're in love, you think everyone else is.”

“I didn't say anything about love. I just don't trust that girl.” Charlotte reaches for a blanket she's brought along. It's a velvet night, warm and lush, but she's chilled to the bone. “Anyway, love is different than I thought it would be.”

Everything is different, the way they are sitting in Ethan's truck on a summer's night hoping for the best, fearing the worst; the way their lives have been rattled around, as though they were dice, their futures decided by a throw onto a tabletop.

Mark Derry walks out to the stage, and as soon as he does, the crowd begins to applaud. People around here know Mark from his work on Ethan's behalf, and they respect him; they get fired up when he charges them to show their allegiance, right here and now, so loud and so strong that people all the way down in Maryland will be able to hear. Horns honk along King George's Road and several Roman candles left over from the Fourth of July are set off, filling the sky with bands of scarlet and sapphire light.

Charlotte reaches over and takes Jorie's hand as they watch. Charlotte's hand is small and cold, but she has a firm grip and she holds on tight. As for Jorie, she is thinking of blue skies and fields and of the endings of things. She brings up the image of their old friends Lindsay and Jeannie from high school, two lovely girls who woke one morning without realizing it was to be their last day on earth, who brushed their hair and talked on the phone and walked out their front doors into the inky night, traveling on a road that was slick with pale rain, turned to ice before anyone noticed.

All good men make mistakes,
that's what Mark Derry is calling from the podium, and by the time he asks his neighbors for their donations and their pledges, their hands are in pockets, checks are being written. As it turns out, the usually silent plumber is both convincing and reassuring; Trisha Derry, gazing on from the sidelines, with her arms around her little girl, April, has good reason to look as proud as she does. Mark Derry speaks from the heart, he means what he says, but he hasn't been to Maryland, he hasn't walked through the cordgrass or gone through the door into Rachel's room. Rachel's diary is in Jorie's purse, beneath her wallet and a shopping list and a packet of Kleenex, there to remind her of what happened all those miles away. This is a book of hope that has never been finished, a list of dreams left undone. It's therefore no consolation to hear the jubilation that meets Mark Derry's remarks, not for anyone who carries a diary such as this.

Fred Hart's turn at the podium has come, and it's clear the attorney from Boston relishes the attention. He waves his hands in the air, getting people riled up, and when he begins to speak, his voice is just low enough to spur the crowd to lean in close and listen hard. Hart announces that a group of Monroe citizens will be chosen to travel south to assist in the effort during Ethan's trial. No one mentioned this game plan to Jorie; if Fred had bothered to discuss it with her, she would have assured the attorney it was a tactical mistake. She can't help but imagine what the reactions of local people in Holden might be when this group of supporters arrives in town. She suspects the Black Horse Hotel will be unable to accommodate them, as a matter of principle, and that they'll have to stay at the Econo Lodge out on the highway.

But what will people in Duke's Diner say when these strangers come in to order turkey club sandwiches and egg salad on toast? Will folks mention that the graveyard is just up the hill and that the mallows that grow there are carefully tended? Will they say that Rachel Morris came in to Duke's nearly every Saturday to order vanilla Cokes and French fries with vinegar and that she was the prettiest girl in town?

“He wants to have me and Collie go with him,” Jorie tells Charlotte.

“To Maryland?” Charlotte is stunned. “And he thinks you would even consider putting Collie through that?”

“Collie could stay with my mother.”

“Like you'd ever do that. You're not about to leave Collie behind.”

Jorie smiles to think of how well Charlotte knows her, for in fact when she tries to envision sitting on the opposite side of the courtroom, across the aisle from James Morris, she simply cannot see herself. In Holden, she would be an invisible woman, it's true. When she walked across town, she wouldn't leave footsteps. When she opened her mouth, no sound would issue forth.

A wave of excitement has begun to move through the throng on the lawn; it snakes like a current through the grass and the air. People rise to their feet, and from where Jorie and Charlotte are parked they can see that the door to the courthouse has opened. There is a wash of green light across the lawn.

“They wouldn't let him out for this, would they?” Charlotte asks.

But, indeed, they have. Four men have joined the others on stage: Dave Meyers and two of the guards, and with them, Ethan Ford. The cheering is truly wild; it bursts into the vast night above the courthouse, above the linden trees. Tonight, the rules have been bent to allow for Ethan's presence at the rally, but that's to be expected. This is Monroe, the town that supports Ethan; these are his friends and neighbors, several of whom will travel to Maryland. leaving jobs and families to work on his behalf

In return for these many favors, Ethan offers the crowd endless gratitude, and people hush each other once he begins to speak, the better to hear. They move in closer, the better to see.

“Do you want to go up there?” Charlotte asks

To Jorie, Ethan looks strangely small in the distance. Someone has brought him a clean white shirt for this occasion, and he glows the way stars do, so distant that, as it turns out, they're not what they seem to be. Mark Derry stands to Ethan's left, Fred Hart to his right. The men lift their linked arms into the air, victorious and hopeful and so far away they might as well be in another galaxy.

Jorie thinks about the day their life split apart, when Ethan's past was laid out for everyone to see, like an accident on the highway, or a piece of fruit, golden on the outside, gray and coarse within. She thinks of how well she thought she knew him. She would have recognized him anywhere just from his smile. She knew everything- the way he walked, the sound he made low down in his throat when he was displeased, the thumbs-up signal he gave to each and every boy on his team, whether or not the play they made was successful. She knew how he reached for her at night and how she felt when he did so.

“No. I don't want to go up there,” she tells Charlotte.

Does she imagine that most things cannot be hidden in the way that Ethan concealed his past? That if she took a single step forward, the diary in her purse would begin to bleed, and once it began, it would continue until the lawn of the courthouse was awash with it, until everyone's shoes were slick and blood coursed down the sidewalk, into the streets?

“Then let's get out of here,” Charlotte suggests, and they do exactly that. While the crowd is applauding, while Ethan is thanking those gentle, loyal people who support him, Jorie and Charlotte drive out of town. In any other part of the Commonwealth, this is nothing more than a pleasant August night. They turn the radio up, the way they used to when they were girls. Out of habit, they find themselves on the road to Hamilton; they pull into the parking lot of the Safehouse, but they don't go inside. It's empty in there anyway, with Warren Peck's dad, Raymond, holding down the fort, and only a few customers who are too old or too confused about the issues to attend the rally for Ethan.

“I shouldn't have made you come here with me that night,” Charlotte says. “You probably never would have met him if it hadn't been for me.”

There is a big moon hanging in the sky, just above the trectops.

“Don't think that way” Jorie closes her eyes, but she still sees the moonlight. “I wouldn't have Collie without that night. ”

Collie himself is currently wishing that he was miles away from Monroe; anywhere at all would do, as long as it's far from Massachusetts and everything he's ever known. When he walks through the familiar streets he's accustomed to, they feel too small for him, lamplit and shadowy; the linden trees block out the sky, even in the dark they take up too much space. Collie usually waits for Kat on the corner; since moving into his grandmother's house, he can't bring himself to revisit Maple Street. Tonight, Kat rides her bike to meet him, and because Collie's own bike is pretty much ruined, the tires wobbling wildly, the frame bent from the time he slammed into the fence, they ride together on Kat's bike, out to the abandoned house. Collie is behind Kat, his arms around her waist. They are so close, he swears he can feel her heart beating : he can hear his own heart as well.

They come to the old house almost every night; nobody's keeping tabs on them, nobody knows where they are. This place is theirs, at least temporarily. They've found an old couch, which they've set up in the parlor, and they've stored flashlights and cans of soda in the rubble. This house was here before Monroe was a town. only fields and apple trees as far as a man could see, but it won't be standing much longer. Kat and Collie both have the sense that it's crumbling around them. Each time they come here, they're afraid they'll find nothing left, only bricks and slats of wood, all falling to dust. They can feel what little time they have. The summer is fading away, drifting into a green haze. This is what summer will always mean to them, even when they've grown old. The way the crickets called, the way they huddled close together on the old couch that was abandoned here long before either one of them had been born, the way they didn't want to step forward into the future, not yet.