Crushed (11 page)

Chapter 33

A Door to the Past

Sunday night. The radio announcer said it was twenty-eight degrees. Clyde's mother was asleep, and his father had gone out for groceries. Clyde was working on an English assignment, but was stumped for a way to compare William Carlos Williams to Robert Frost. He thought about Wickham and Audrey, about how smoothly Wickham had said, “My price is reasonable and not negotiable.” Was that what made Clyde suspicious of the guy—that he was just a little too smooth?

Clyde touched the icon that connected him to the Internet; then, after closing his eyes for a few seconds, he took a deep breath and opened the various virtual gates that led him to the legal records of South Carolina. He took Manda's note out of his pocket.
Dr. James Edward Yates.
Clyde stared at the screen and typed in
Wickham James Hill,
hoping that Wickham would have received one of his father's names as a middle name. Nothing.
Wickham J. Hill.
Nothing. Then, glancing at his watch to see how long his father had been gone, he quickly tried
Wickham Edward Hill,
and text began to appear on the screen:

Cypress County Superior Court, State of South Carolina
People vs. Wickham Edward Hill

Vehicular manslaughter. Guilty. Sentenced: 5 years parole.
Driver's license revoked.

Clyde read the words twice, with a tingly feeling. He supposed this was why people became cops and FBI agents: the sensation of opening the right door. Clyde printed the page and carefully folded it in two. He slipped the paper into the literature anthology, between William Carlos Williams and Robert Frost.
What next?
he wondered. Maybe there were newspaper stories about the trial. Clyde stood up to look out the window and saw the headlights of the Corolla swing up, then down, as his father steered gently over a dip in the road. Clyde sat down quickly and logged off. Then he went back to poems about ovenbirds and red wheelbarrows glazed with rain.

Chapter 34

Within the Snow Globe

For Audrey, the daylight hours of the next week passed in slow, agonizing expectation of evenings with Wickham, which themselves passed so quickly they seemed sliced out of time. She worried what her father would say about a relationship that had progressed so far in just two weeks, and when she wrote her weekly letter to Oggy, she talked about tea-dancing and studying, and wished she had not told Oggy in a breathless letter about receiving her first kiss.

“A girl's
Keuschheit
is the one investment that never, never fails,” Oggy had told her when the subject of virtue and innocence came up, and Audrey had believed her. She could still call herself a virgin even after time spent on the brocaded sofa downstairs at Wickham's house, but meeting Wickham had made her waver. Feeling good about herself had always been hard for her. Wickham made it simple. He brought a lightness and ease to everything they did—he seemed to float above the conventional rules, and in his company she seemed to float above them, too.

One week to the day after Jemison had enjoyed the warmest November 8 on record, it began to snow. The snow fell lightly in the afternoon and thickened toward twilight, with broad, dry white flakes falling densely from a slate-gray sky. Audrey had spent the morning with Lea and C.C.—first at Bing's, then at the mall, where she kept her purchases to some underwear and a pair of earrings—and had spent the afternoon cleaning the house (carefully), doing her homework (quickly), making a beef stew (nervously), and thinking of Wickham Hill (mostly).

By the time the snow was falling hard, the beef stew filled the house with its mouthwatering aroma and Audrey had gotten a steady fire going in the dining room fireplace. It was like playing house, only more so. For Audrey, this wasn't just make-believe; it felt wonderfully like the real thing.

Wickham appeared at her door carrying a book bag and wearing a beautiful camel-colored coat and a black scarf, which Audrey took hold of in order to gently pull him toward her for a kiss.

“Yum,” she said. Then: “What's in the bag?”

Wickham had brought five Cary Grant videos from the library. “But we can only watch one,” he drawled, smiling.

Audrey stood, drinking him in. “You're my own personal Cary Grant.”

He grinned. “I am?”

“You are,” she said, then turned the movies to see their titles. “Which shall we watch?”

He'd unwound his scarf and was unbuttoning his coat. “You choose.”

Audrey narrowed her choices down to
An Affair to
Remember,
because it was so crushingly romantic, and
Suspicion,
because she'd never seen it. “I'm torn between these two,” she said.

He closed his eyes, dramatically extended his hand, and picked
Suspicion.

As she carried his camel-colored coat to the closet, she felt something hard-edged in the pocket. She put her hand into it and pulled out a cardboard sheet of foil-covered pills. His Imitrex. “Migraine?” she asked him.

“Did have.” He smiled. “Now don't.”

When Audrey put the pills back in Wickham's pocket, she felt a smooth cylinder that turned out to be lip balm. PEPPERMINT, it read. So that's why he smelled like Christmas.

They ate beef stew with baguette slices while the fire crackled and the black-and-white credits for the movie began to roll. But before the movie had really begun, Audrey realized Wickham wasn't looking at the screen; he was looking at her.

“What?” she said.

“You,” he said; then, nodding at the food in front of him and gesturing at the room around him, “This.” He was quiet for a moment. “It's all so . . .” His voice trailed off. Finally he was looking again into her eyes. “I wonder if anybody anywhere is this happy.”

We are,
she thought. But she merely stared at Wickham Hill's beautiful face until the actors in
Suspicion
began to speak, and then they turned and watched and ate.

The movie was pretty interesting. Cary Grant played a charmer who might or might not have murdered his friend and business partner, and Joan Fontaine played a wealthy woman who was in love with Cary Grant but didn't know what to do with her suspicions.

“It's kind of creepy,” Audrey said, “not knowing whether to trust Cary Grant or not.”

Wickham said, “I'd trust him. I mean, he
is
Cary Grant.”

“Yeah,” Audrey said, “but this particular Cary Grant might be a wife-murdering Cary Grant.”

They had by this time moved to the sofa, and Wickham leaned close to say, “Know what you are?”

“What?”

“Funny,” he said. “Funny and smart and extremely smoochable.”

They fell easily into kissing, and didn't stop until they heard the heavy
kuh-lup
of the front door closing. In a stiff whisper, Audrey said, “My dad.”

The clicking footsteps passed on the tiled corridor and grew faint. Audrey tiptoed across the room and eased open the door in time to see her father slipping into his office. Small traces of snow marked his trail along the hallway.

“What's going on?” Wickham said.

Audrey turned. “Nothing,” she said. “He went into his office.”

“Want to introduce me?”

“I do,” Audrey said, “but he looked really tired.”

Wickham shrugged. “Later, then,” he said, and they went back to their movie until it became clear that this particular Cary Grant was not a wife-murdering Cary Grant. Then Wickham whispered, “Let's go for a ride in the snow.”

Driving the Lincoln in the snow wasn't dangerous unless it turned icy, which it wasn't. “Let me tell my dad,” she said, though exactly what she would tell him, she wasn't sure. It turned out that it didn't matter.

When she looked in on her father, he didn't see her. He stood slump-shouldered, staring out the window with his hands in his pocket. He'd turned on the yard lights so he could watch the heavy snow falling. Audrey backed quietly away. On the kitchen tablet they used for messages, she wrote:

Dad,
Went by C.C.'s. Home by 9:00.
Love, A.
P.S. I actually managed to cook stew in crockpot!

It was eerily, beautifully quiet, driving through the snowmuffled streets of Jemison. They drove by C.C.'s house (“Hi, C.C.; hi, Brian,” Audrey said in passing so that she could say, technically, that she'd driven by and said hello). They kept meandering through the neighborhoods, watching the snow float through the yellow beams of the headlights. It was warm in the car, and when they came to a cul-de-sac with a vacant lot and paved driveway, Wickham said, “There.”

Parked, with the engine off, it was even quieter. For a long time they didn't talk. They just sat in the warmth of the car, looking out. Then Wickham turned to her and said, “You know, I had a girlfriend in South Carolina.” He made a low, mild laugh. “Actually, a couple of girlfriends.” His voice turned serious. “But I can tell you right now, I've never felt this way before.” When he looked into her eyes and said this, it wasn't just a series of words, it was a door opening into a sealed world where nothing could be wrong and nothing could go wrong.

Outside, the snow floated close to the windows of the Lincoln, then melted on the glass. Wickham had begun kissing her, and he smelled like Christmas.
This is like being inside
the most wonderful snow globe,
Audrey thought before closing her eyes.

Part Two

He'll fly to the barn,
And keep himself warm,
And tuck his head under his wing.

Chapter 35

Alternating Currents

November 23. The Sunday before Thanksgiving. Dirty snow covered the lawns, and icicles reached toward and away from the McNair house like gnarled fingers. It was dusk. Mrs. Leacock had assigned the class to write a three-to-five-page biography of a physicist, and it was due the next day. Audrey still needed to finish her paper, on Nikola Tesla, and she'd offered to help Wickham finish up his.

Wickham, smelling of peppermint and cold air, took off his pea coat and scarf, and rummaged around in his backpack until he found a single piece of paper, folded vertically down the middle. He hadn't shaved, which to Audrey only added to his handsomeness, but he had the subtly stiff face she'd learned to associate with his headaches.

“You okay?” she said.

“I'm good,” he said. “Gooder than good.” But the smile he gave her was a stiff one.

“Anything a kiss could cure?” she said, and sat on his lap and kissed his earlobe.

“Maybe,” he said. “Very possibly, in fact.”

He let his hand wander, and she gently pushed him away— not that she wanted to. “Work before pleasure,” she said, and unfolded his paper.

She was shocked how little was there. Less than half a page. She turned it over, but the back was blank.

“Quantitatively,” she said, “we're a little short here.”

Wickham took no offense. “Yeah, well, that's why I came to you. For inspiration.”

Audrey read what he had written, which was a joke about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle:
Heisenberg was driving

down the Autobahn at high speed when he was pulled over by a
policeman. The policeman asked, “Do you know how fast you
were going back there, Herr Heisenberg?” “No,” Heisenberg
replied, “but I do know exactly where I am.”

Audrey chuckled, then frowned. “So you're starting with this?”

He shrugged.

“Then what? Do you have some dates and anecdotes?”

Wickham looked not only stiff and possibly sick but also lost and vulnerable, which only sharpened Audrey's affection for him. “Not to worry,” she said. She slipped off his lap and led him by the hand to the chair in front of the computer, which she leaned over and switched on. “Which search engine do you use?” she asked.

He looked at her blankly.

“Google, Teoma, Yahoo?” she said.

Again the blank look. “Those aren't nomadic tribes of the American Southwest?”

Audrey gave this a polite laugh and leaned over to type
Teoma,
then
Heisenberg.
“Okay,” she said, seeing with satisfaction a long list of scholarly-looking sites. “Now you just scroll down until you find something that looks promising and take a look. If it contains information you need, go ahead and print it.”

“Where are you going to be?”

She nodded toward a nearby armchair. “Right there, finishing my geometry homework.”

“Way over there?”

“Way over there,” Audrey said, sounding more curt than she intended. Usually, being with Wickham was like being the only two people in a place isolated by gently falling snow. But tonight that sense of snug communion was gone.

Wickham read aloud—and printed—a few more physics jokes; then he became quiet. Finally he said, “Okay, time for the cavalry,” and rummaged in his backpack until he found the familiar cardboard sheet. He popped an Imitrex through the foil and washed it down with a gulp of Coke.

So it was a migraine. Again. Audrey rose and came over to him. “Bad?”

“Pretty bad, yeah.”

It wasn't just his face that was stiff now. It was his whole body. He walked carefully to the sofa and eased himself down. Audrey put a pillow beneath his head and brought him a damp, hot washcloth.

“Why didn't you take a pill sooner?” she asked.

He made a faint smile and said, “Trying to conserve. I'm almost out. And they're fifteen bucks apiece.”

Audrey wasn't sure which was the news here—the fact that the pills cost so much or the fact that Wickham, who wore pricey clothes and took taxis to pricey restaurants, would care.

When he was settled and quiet, she sat down at the computer and found some even better sources about Heisenberg. (That wasn't cheating, was it? It was like when a librarian steered you toward the right Dewey decimal number.) She looked to see if Wickham was still awake, and when he rubbed his eyes, she said, “Um, we need a thesis statement over here.”

Without opening his eyes, Wickham said,
“Herr Doktor
Werner Heisenberg, born in 1902, dead some time later, certainly
knew how to use uncertainty to his advantage.”

Audrey couldn't help laughing. “He was born in 190
1,
not 1902, and I'm afraid you're mistaking Mrs. Leacock for someone with a sense of humor.”

Wickham kept his eyes closed. “It's just a biography, right?” He sounded tired, or bored, or both. “Heisenberg was born here, his mother did this, his father did that, he disowned them and became famous.”

“He disowned his parents?”

“Maybe that was somebody else,” he said without much interest. He sighed and said, “So how would you write it, Miss Term Paper?”

“I am not Miss Term Paper,” she said coolly.

“Look, Audrey,” he said. “I just can't do this right now. Let's skip it, okay?”

“If you skip it, you flunk.”

This seemed not to faze Wickham. “Yeah. . . . So?”

Audrey's voice softened. “So I thought we were going to college together.”

They had planned it one night in this very room, when her father was working late and they had the house to themselves. They would get married after graduation. They would both go to Syracuse University, her father's school—not Audrey's first or even tenth choice, but her father was always giving money to the school and she thought he might be able to help Wickham get in there. Hadn't her father always wanted Audrey to attend his alma mater?

“I just can't write a paper when my head is doing this,” Wickham said. “I'm sorry. Give me an hour and I'll feel better.” Then he put the pillow over his face and fell asleep.

Her father came home, and Audrey tracked the sounds of his car door, the front door, and his footsteps on the stairs. He said, “Knock, knock,” and stuck his head in.

He looked tired. He always looked tired now. He regarded Wickham on the sofa. As far as Audrey could tell, her father liked Wickham. They had met one afternoon in the kitchen, and Wickham had made a good impression, shaking Audrey's father's hand, calling him “sir,” and talking knowledgeably about her father's favorite basketball team. Her father had said afterward that he seemed “genteel—not like most kids today,” and when he'd asked if Wickham was smart, Audrey had grinned and nodded yes. For her father, a boy wasn't a candidate for anything if he wasn't smart.

Tonight, her father looked at the sleeping Wickham and said, “Dead of a heart attack at age seventeen?”

Audrey laughed, mostly out of relief, and said, “He's got a migraine.”

Her father nodded, but somberly. “It's getting late, Audrey. And if he's sick, he needs to be home.”

Wickham slowly sat up. “I'm sorry, sir. It's the medicine I take—it knocks me out sometimes.” Absently, he began to fold the blanket Audrey had put over him.

“Can't he stay until ten o'clock?” Audrey asked. “He needs to finish his paper.”

Her father silently considered this. It pitted propriety, which Audrey knew he believed in, against getting your homework done, which he also believed in. “Ten's okay,” he said finally, “but no later.”

What Wickham wrote at the computer that night was shocking to Audrey. He had to be able to spell better than that, and how could someone so charming and witty seem so simple-minded on paper? Maybe it was the migraine—probably it was—but Audrey read the paper with a perfectly blank expression at 9:55 and said it was great, but maybe she should just go through and fix a few commas.

“And whatever else you find wrong with it,” Wickham said as he shouldered into his heavy coat. The taxi he'd called had just wheeled into Audrey's driveway. After Wickham kissed her at the front door, she watched him walk out into the snow. She hoped he would turn around to wave good-bye so she could see his face one more time, but he didn't. He just slipped stiffly into the cab, which rolled away.

Audrey went back inside and sat down at the computer. Wickham had gotten some dates wrong (like saying that Himmler had exonerated Heisenberg of charges the SS made against him in 1983 instead of 1938). When she checked that fact, she found a great anecdote he hadn't even used and a few other details that would make the paper more interesting, and she put those in, too. Then she set to work on Nikola Tesla's alternating currents, her own topic. It was 2:15 when she finally crawled into bed.

In the morning she called Wickham.

“Hello, schoolmarm,” he said, which hit her the wrong way, especially since it was said in the cheerful tone of someone who'd gotten a good night's sleep.

“Don't call me that,” she said. Then, softer: “Meet me at my locker so I can give you your paper, okay? I don't think I should be pulling it out of my bag in class. It'd look like we're cheating.”

“Which we're not,” Wickham said. “You're just my editor, is all. My editress.”

Editor. Editress. It was true—that's all she was. Audrey again felt the sensation of snow falling softly outside a room where she and Wickham were safe and warm.

“See you at my locker,” Audrey said, and Wickham, in his soft drawl, replied, “Yes indeed.”