Dreadful Sorry (33 page)

"Oh, I'm fine, just fine," said Abner. He struggled to his feet.

"Just trying to keep us on our toes, is that it?" joked the nurse. She thanked everyone for their help and steered Abner toward the door.

He turned back to them, confusion clouding his face. "But where is Clementine? I need to give back her hatbox!"

There was total silence for a long moment. Molly ached to be able to do something to erase the loss from his eyes. And what did he need more than to know Clementine had not betrayed him?

She crossed to his side and put her hand on his arm. "When I was in Clementine's head," she began, speaking clearly and looking straight into his watery eyes, "I knew just what she was thinking and feeling. On the night she went out in the boat with Hob, she wasn't thinking straight. She realized she had been wrong to leave you. She knew her place was at home with you and the other children. Hob tried to turn back, but he couldn't."

Everyone was looking at her now. Molly trembled with the lie but had to continue. "When the boat sank, her last thoughts were of you, Abner. She was desperately sorry she had let you down and hoped you knew she always loved you best."

Molly held her breath, watching the old man struggle with this offering. A curious mixture of emotions raced across his lined face, and she thought for a moment she had succeeded in comforting him at last. But then he shook his head violently.

"But you didn't die!" he cried. "Because here you are." He reached for her hands. "Oh, Clemmy, you've come back to me."

Molly disengaged her hands and sighed, defeated. She looked helplessly at the others. The nurse patted Abner on the shoulder. "Now, now. Let's go on home, Mr. Holloway."

He pulled away, reaching for Molly. "Clemmy, your treasures!" He tried to give the box to Molly.

She put her hands behind her back. "Oh, no."

His wrinkled hands trembled as he held out the hatbox. "You have to, Clemmy. It's your doll and your locket. The atlas isn't there anymore, but you must want Molly dolly after all this time."

Molly backed away, hopeless tears springing into her eyes.

But then Paulette suddenly moved forward. She plucked the hatbox from Abner and pressed it into Molly's reluctant arms. She spoke briskly. "Thank you so much, Abner! Mollydolly was always so special, wasn't she? What a nice thing you did, hanging on to this box all these long years." She looked up at Molly. "And now, what do you say, Clementine? Aren't you going to thank Abner properly?"

And then Molly understood. She could almost feel the dark braids atop her head and the weight of the long gray skirt. She stepped up and smiled into Abner's eager face. "Of course I'm delighted to have my hatbox and treasures back again," she said, reaching up to touch his lined cheek, then enfolding him in a quick hug. "You're my good, sweet, wonderful boy, and I can't ever thank you enough."

Abner stopped trembling. "All these years," he mumbled as the nurse helped him out the door, "I saved it for you, darlin' Clementine." Then he smiled, and it was the bright, carefree smile of a happy little boy.

During the weeks that followed, Molly found herself stopping work and standing with wallpaper paste dripping from her brush, listening for the sounds of children. She would linger in the doorway to the study and sniff carefully, trying to detect a whiff of pipe tobacco beyond the scent of fresh paint. But there was nothing. The sudden hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen or the drone of bees over the blueberry bushes out on the headland made her shoulders tense with waiting for the song to begin—but the only music she heard had identifiable sources: the television or CD player or Paulette crooning a sentimental song to Bill. The dream had left her, too. She slept deeply each night and awoke refreshed. The only reflection in the mirror was her own.

Because Paulette was confined to the couch and Bill's ankle kept him off stepladders, Bill invited Jared to move in with them and help with renovations in return for free meals and a place to sleep. He happily agreed to come for the two weeks left before he had to return to Battleboro Heights to teach swimming at the rec center. He slept on the couch in the study at night, worked afternoons at Day's Catch, and spent the mornings with Molly, stripping the old and hanging the new wallpaper. Although Bill sometimes limped in to supervise their work, most of the time they were alone.

Molly and Jared worked companionably, mostly in silence, each keenly aware of the nearness of the other. As Molly measured patterned paper from the big rolls with a tape measure or stroked paste onto long strips of paper with her brush, she felt the band between them stretching all the way across the room to where Jared was pulling old paper off the opposite wall. They were links on the same chain, and when they stood close together to press new paper onto the wall, her whole body angled against his until they touched. The fear and hollow guilt had vanished completely that rainy night on the cliff ledge. Now her body wanted contact with Jared's in a way that Clementine's body had never cared about Hob's.

They finished painting the study walls on their last day together before Jared left for Ohio. As they were struggling to fold up the big drop cloths that protected the floor, Paulette walked slowly and carefully out of the study on her way to sit on the front porch. Molly didn't notice. She wrestled with the heavy cloth, then, annoyed, heaved it over to Jared. She loved the easy way Jared's muscled arms shook out the wrinkles, the heavy material fluttering high over their heads like a sail. She loved the way their fingers touched as they lined up the corners of the cloth and folded it together into a neat square. She loved the look on his face as she, walking toward him with the material still gathered in her hands, stepped right into his arms for a kiss.

Paulette leaned against the door frame and smiled at them. "I see you've got it right this time," she said.

 

After Jared left, Molly went with Grace Wilkins to flea markets in small towns along the coast. She read books from the library about the
Titanic
and played gin with her father. She even thought about going back to Benson to visit Abner in his nursing home but was afraid of upsetting him again. For her, the weirdness seemed to be over. There were no dreams, no visions. Whatever had been going on was finished.

At the end of July, Bill drove her to the airport in Bangor. He hugged Molly hard when they said good-bye at the gate. But as sorry as he was to see her go, she knew he wouldn't stay, as some people did, to watch the plane take off. Her father would be hurrying back to Paulette. Molly missed her stepmother already and planned to be hurrying back soon herself—at Christmastime when little Star was born. Or little Saint Nick.

The airplane lifted off with the afternoon sun glinting on the wings. Molly sat in a window seat with her nose pressed to the pane, watching the airport terminal grow smaller and smaller. She looked out the window to the east, where the line of sea was disappearing beneath the clouds. She reached down under the seat in front of her and pulled Mollydolly from the hatbox. As she held the little doll on her lap, the memory of cold dark water flowing into her lungs was for an instant as real as anything that had ever happened. But it didn't bring the sucking, lurching terror it once had. That fear was gone now along with the visions, settled somehow back into the past where it belonged.

She leaned her head against the headrest, smoothing Mollydolly's stained dress, and looked out at the sky and puffs of clouds like sea foam below. Then she closed her eyes, listening to the hum of the jet engines, and there was no hidden song, just tuneless humming. She had a sense of herself as a traveler, moving on and on—out of a wild, dangerous land into a new place where the roads were charted and the beasts had been tamed. There
were
more things in heaven and earth, she knew that now.

The second leg of the flight, from Boston back to Cleveland, passed quickly, and soon the plane was landing smoothly. Molly gathered her belongings and moved down the aisle. Jen was waiting at the gate, her smile wide and welcoming. Kathi stood uncertainly behind her and laughed with relief when Molly hugged her. They drove home in Jen's red car with classical music blaring, and Molly felt so normal again, it was almost as if she had never been away at all.

***

On the grass outside the pool at the Battleboro Heights recreation center, mothers and toddlers swarmed everywhere. Kids from the public high school and from West River Academy lay on towels, soaking up the sun. When Molly arrived with Jen, Derek saw them and cheered raucously from the far side of the pool. Kathi and Michael greeted Molly with hugs. Jen stayed outside chatting with them while Molly went into the locker room to change into the new suit she and her mother had picked out at the mall three days before.

The big room with the rows of metal lockers and long wooden benches was empty except for two little girls rinsing off in the showers. Then Molly heard a voice behind her and turned to see Coach Bascombe striding past the lockers. "Well, Molly Teague!"

Molly bit her lip.

"Here to sunbathe, are you?" Coach Bascombe's voice was teasing.

Molly took a deep breath. "No, actually I'm here for lessons." It was time to get out there and prove that the past—her own past and Clementine's—no longer held her prisoner.

"Well, good for you." The coach looked surprised but nodded approvingly and headed into the showers. "That's the way to do it," she called back over her shoulder in a jocular voice. "Just climb back in that saddle and head for the sunset!"

Molly reached into her canvas bag for her hair clip. Her fingers brushed Mollydolly's china head. She was carrying the little doll as a talisman.

Standing in front of the big wall mirror, Molly pinned her braid high on her head. She started walking out the door, then turned back and peered hard into the glass. Had the glass flickered? But the face looking back at her was her own, pale and calm.

She walked out of the dim locker room into the bright day. The squeals of the children and catcalls of boys leaping off the high dive reverberated in the air. She stopped at the edge of the pool and looked down. The blue surface rippled in the sun. She dipped in a toe, and the faces of Clementine and Hob flickered briefly in her memory. As she blinked them away, she knew quite suddenly and with absolute certainty that if she were to jump in and stretch out her arms and legs, the water would buoy her up. It would hold her just as it held harbor seals and sea gulls, fishing boats and swimmers everywhere.

Then she saw Jared standing alone. He was sporting the official green trunks of the swimming instructors, and he was waiting for her. She walked straight over and put her hand in his. The hubbub of the swimmers receded as he grinned down at her.

"Ready, darlin'?"

And the determined smile that had been Clementine's was now Molly's own. "Ready," she said.

O
THER
H
ARCOURT
N
OVELS BY
K
ATHRYN
R
EISS

 

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