Home Fires (17 page)

“You're a junior now?” Ned asked.

“Yep. One more year after this, and I'm out of here.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“College,” she said with a funny defiance, as if she expected to be challenged.

“I meant which college?”

“I haven't decided. I take my SATs tomorrow.” She giggled. “I suppose the grades I get will help me make up my mind. How about you? Do you know where you're going yet?”

Ned was about to answer when Kurt stepped out of the cave. He glared at Ned, and Ned glared back. Evil stares at twenty paces, Ned thought. What a jerk.

Maggie just about leaped away from Ned. But when she reached Kurt, he turned his back. She followed him into the cave.

God, Ned hated guys like Kurt, who turned their girlfriends into puppies. Assholes who probably didn't even care for the girl. He knew some at Deerfield. They'd go to a dance somewhere like Miss Porter's, and meet a girl. They'd turn on the charm, act all sweet and sensitive, and exchange addresses with the girl. They'd write back and forth a few times. They'd get together at a dance, or a football game, or meet in New York or Boston on vacation. They'd sleep with her.

With guys like that, sex always changed things. Suddenly it would be the girl doing all the letter writing. You'd see about a hundred messages from her at the bell desk. She'd send care packages. She'd try to befriend the guy's friends, hoping for information to help her understand what was going on.

God, it was really pathetic.

Ned wandered into the cave, looking for Josh. The smell of pot was strong in the air. People had flashlights and candles, but you couldn't really see too much. Ned kept bumping into people and getting dirty looks. He must have said “Excuse me” a hundred times, and he felt like a clumsy jerk who didn't have one friend among these kids he'd grown up with.

His throat closed up, from the smoke and a lonely feeling deep inside. No one, not even Josh, was talking to Ned. He'd expected his vacation to be fantastic. As a kid, he'd always been too shy, not popular, bigger than anyone else. Kids had called him “gawk.” But coming home this time, he'd felt so proud of his acceptance to Dartmouth, he had thought that somehow things would change. That all of a sudden people would start to see him for who he really was.

He'd been feeling down ever since dinner with his father and Anne. He felt disappointed in himself for not being able to accept her. She'd seemed really nice; his father obviously loved her. His father had an almost embarrassing sparkle on the entire time he was around her. That was hard for Ned to take. His father's demeanor, and the stuff about the fire.

Moving through the cave, Ned suddenly caught sight of Maggie and Kurt. They were arguing. Kurt was stone-faced, giving Maggie a sneer of disdain while she clutched his arm, obviously trying to convince him of something. When Kurt shook her off, Maggie headed for the mouth of the cave. Ned followed.

The sea air hit him in the face, and it felt great. Breathing deeply, he watched Maggie head straight for the keg.

“You shouldn't be drinking any more of that if you have SATs tomorrow,” Ned said.

“What the hell?” Maggie said, tension making her voice thin. “I probably shouldn't even bother taking them.”

“Is that what Kurt says?”

Maggie filled her glass, as if she hadn't heard him.

“As a matter of fact, it doesn't bother him one way or the other,” Maggie said. She held the big plastic cup with both hands, not drinking from it.

Don't you wish it did?
Ned wanted to ask.
Don't you wish he'd want you to do well?
Ned had come to the island as an outsider, in second grade. His father had sent him away to Deerfield, to remove him from the tempting island mindset: don't bother trying, because you'll never get away anyway.

“What time is the test?” Ned asked.

“Nine.”

Ned checked his watch: midnight.

“If you go home now, you'll still get a pretty good night's sleep.”

“I don't have a car, and Kurt wants to stay.”

Ned wished that he had driven his father's truck, but his father had wanted to take Anne to the movies. For ten seconds he considered asking Josh if he could borrow the Taurus to drive Maggie home, but with his luck the heap would fall apart before they reached the main road.

“I'll walk you home,” Ned said.

“It's about three miles to my house,” Maggie said.

“Three miles? That's nothing. It'll make you good and tired, and you'll fall straight to sleep.”

Maggie took one long look at the mouth of the cave, as if she was trying to make up her mind. Flashlight beams and candle flames flickered eerily. Porno for Pyros had replaced Nirvana, and kids were dancing.

Maggie poured her full beer into the sand. Then, wordlessly, she and Ned headed down the beach, to the hard sand by the water's edge. Making their way, they listened to the waves breaking. They'd walk a mile or so on the beach, then scramble up a dune and head cross-island by road. Maggie would be home within the hour.

Chapter 14

R
elearning life, Anne discovered, was not without its setbacks. Ned's resistance and Matt's insistence had hit her hard, and she found herself holed up at her worktable, spending hours every day trying to capture
Heaven
.

Her callused fingers ached from the scissors' pressure. Her eyes stung from the close work. She was blocking out real life, inhabiting a twilight world of fantasy and collage. She'd cut the tiny bits of paper, move them around like parts of a puzzle. Presently they would form one aspect of Anne's vision of heaven, and she would fix them to the paper with glue.

The cherubs, womb, sandcastle, Karen's profile, the ferry decorated for Christmas, a box of crayons.

She left her new message machine on all the time. She and Thomas had gone too far too fast. Anne wasn't ready for the closeness he had come to expect. Her last conversation with Matt had proved it: you don't just walk out of marriage into someone else's arms without a lot of thought.

Just look at Thomas and Ned: Ned's reaction showed that the ties of family counted a whole lot more than a winter's worth of sweet feelings between two strangers. Anne found herself making a collage of Thomas's cottage in the snow, but she set it aside. That picture didn't fit with the rest of her series.

“Please, pick up the phone,” Thomas's voice would come off the answering machine. “You're there, I know it. Please talk to me.”

Then, later, he spoke more harshly. “Why are you doing this? Do you feel guilty because we were too happy?”

Warily, hearing his message, she answered the phone, stopping the broadcast.

“I'm working,” she said. “That's all. I'm concentrating on my work.”

“You're acting so cold,” he said. “As if you've gone underground.”

That sounded right, Anne thought: underground. She'd shut herself up with her stamps and scissors and her quest for heaven, and she wasn't letting in much earthly air or light.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “But I have to do this for now.”

“You're not a coward, Anne,” he said sadly. “But you're acting like one. You let a seventeen-year-old boy get under your skin and break us apart.”

“It's not Ned,” Anne said, wondering at his use of the word “us.” Because in spite of her ties to Matt, something vivid and true had been happening with Thomas. It might not be family, but they had made an “us.”

“Just do me a favor,” Thomas said. “Don't keep leaving me to your machine. Talk to me once in a while.”

“I will,” Anne said, hating and not understanding how guilty she felt.

A
ND
with the island's high season approaching, Anne got a callback from one of the jobs she'd applied for back in March. She'd be secretary for one of the whale-watching operations, just down the street from her apartment. The owners were island newcomers, and they didn't care anything about Anne as long as she could use a word processor, handle the phones, and keep track of reservations.

Making collages was dream work, and Anne knew she needed to wake up. Pure survival instincts made her accept the job. She needed to get out of her apartment, out of her own head. Her collages were heavens of the past; the apartment had started feeling airless and murky, a trap.

WHALES ARE WAITING
! proclaimed the banner over the door to her new office. The background was white sailcloth stitched with royal-blue letters, and a chubby turquoise whale with a smile like the Pillsbury doughboy, spouting a geyser of gold dust. Subtle.

She used her key to let herself in. First, she played back the messages on the answering machine. Memorial Day weekend was just about a month away, and reservations were pouring in from everywhere. Washington, DC; Hartford, CT; Winnetka, IL; Tucson, AZ; Kansas City, MO; Reno, NE; Iowa City, IA.

Out of her lonely life, into the mainstream.

Everyone wanted to see the whales, to feel the awesome surge you'd get from seeing a great humpback whale breach the ocean's surface. The company was called WhaleRush, Ltd., and the owners made no bones about the fact that they were playing on sex.

“Whales love each other,” Sam Crichton, the owner, told Anne. Sam and his wife, Lori, were oceanographers trained at Woods Hole and Scipps, and they'd found a way to parlay their expertise and love of whales into cash. “Whales have courtships, marriages, heartbreaks. They sing to each other. When they're happy, they zoom into the air at sixty miles an hour just to tell the world they're in love. We hang aquaphones over the side, and we pick up these songs, so beautiful and heartsick you'd swear it was Roy Orbison himself. People eat it right up.”

They sure did. Anne took down reservation after reservation, from people who wanted to see the whales. Then she got the following message:

“Are you avoiding me? Meet me for lunch at Ruby's at twelve-thirty, and I'll forgive you.”

Gabrielle.

Anne rolled her eyes. She considered calling her sister to tell her that she would be too busy to have lunch today. She didn't feel like seeing anyone. Thomas's phone call was sticking with her, making her face some hard facts.

She typed out letters of confirmation to the people who had called. A travel agent called to ask whether WhaleRush gave volume discounts, and Anne told her it was company policy to do so only after fifty paid-in-full bookings. Robin Drexel, the woman who owned the stationery shop next door, stopped by to see if Anne could convince the Crichtons to consider ordering from her instead of the wholesale stationers they used in Boston.

At twelve-thirty she taped a “Back at One” sign to the door and headed down to Ruby's.

Gabrielle occupied a booth halfway down the room, on the right. Her arm shot up upon sight of Anne.

“How's work?” she asked as Anne slid into her seat.

“I like it.”

“The chowder's great here. So is the clam hash.”

“I'll have clam chowder,” Anne said to the waitress.

“Chowder. And a BLT,” Gabrielle said. Then she focused on Anne. “Will you please tell me what's going on? Why haven't I seen you for I-don't-know-how-long?”

“New job, spring, I don't know.”

“You're mad at me.”

A silence fell over the table as the waitress delivered Gabrielle's chowder.

“Yes, I am,” Anne said when the waitress was gone. “What makes you think it's okay to tell Matt I'm seeing someone?”

“Because he cares.” Gabrielle stared at Anne with amazing intensity, ignoring her soup.

“What does that have to do with anything? Don't I have a right to privacy?”

“You are still his wife.”

“God, I sometimes forget how puritanical this place is. Yes, I still have the marriage license, but no, Gabrielle: we are not still married. Not in any way that counts.”

“Tell me you don't love him.”

Anne shook her head hard, to show how stupid she thought her sister was acting.

“Tell me.”

“You don't just stop loving someone,” Anne said slowly, with deliberation. “But that doesn't mean the marriage is solid. I do love Matt. I always will. But I don't ever want to think of him as my husband again. Got that?”

“You don't mean that.”

“And I don't want you telling him about me,” Anne said.

“Anne, he's been my brother-in-law for more than ten years. He and I have a relationship, too.”

“Then tell him about yourself. About Maggie, Steve. But don't discuss me and Thomas with him.”

With Gabrielle's chowder untouched, the waitress brought the rest of their lunch. Anne dug right into hers.

“Well,” Gabrielle said, rebuffed. She stared at her soup, as if she were too devastated to eat it. Anne refused to take pity on her.

“What does Steve say about the house?” Anne asked.

“It's almost ready.”

“Just in time for summer.”

“Are you sure you don't want to move back there?” Gabrielle asked, beginning to eat.

“Positive.”

“You own two perfectly lovely places, and you choose to rent a tiny little apartment. I'm not criticizing,” Gabrielle added, at Anne's look.

“I can't live in the past,” Anne said. “I don't want constant reminders.”

“Hearing you say that,” Gabrielle said slowly, “makes me wonder.”

“About what?”

“About whether that's the reason you don't want to try again with Matt. Because he's too much of a reminder.”

“That's ridiculous.”

Gabrielle hummed thoughtfully, as if she held all the secrets of the universe in her older-sister soul.

“I have a proposition to make,” she said. “It has to do with the house.”

“What?”

“That bed-and-breakfast idea I had,” Gabrielle said, withdrawing several sheets of paper from her bag. “I really think I could make it work. I'd run it and pay myself a salary, but otherwise we'd split the profits fifty-fifty. I've called around, and people are getting a hundred dollars and more a night in high season.”

“It's fine with me,” Anne said. “But what about your catering business?”

“I'd just operate from over there. You know I love that kitchen.”

“What would you call it? You can't exactly stick with the ‘Big House.'”

“Why not? We could have a cute little jail theme. Handcuffs and manacles by the bed, striped pajamas.” Gabrielle chuckled. “No, I was thinking of ‘Fitzgibbons.'”

“I like that,” Anne said, nodding. “Sort of a tribute to Mother and Dad.”

“Yes, that's what I've been thinking. Although they'd probably turn in their graves. They were so proud to own the bakery, to be ‘prosperous Americans.' Prosperous! Anyway, at least they didn't have Irish dirt under their fingernails anymore. I don't think they'd take to the idea of opening the family homestead to paying strangers.”

“Let's hope they never find out,” Anne said.

“I thought I'd run a few ads before Memorial Day. In a few Sunday papers. You know those country-inn listings?”

“Won't that be expensive?”

“Honey, we'll make it up the first weekend.”

“Sounds exciting.”

“Well, if you get tired of the whale business, I'm sure we could create a position for you.”

“Actually, I'll shill for Fitzgibbons',” Anne said. “I'll convince all the tourists to leave their hotels for the best guest house on the island, with breakfasts by the Seduction Table.”

“Great,” Gabrielle said, jotting it down. “I'll stick that in the ads.” She looked up. “Are you still mad at me?”

“No.”

“Why don't you and Thomas come to dinner some night soon? Next weekend?”

“I'll ask him. Thank you.” That left her an out, Anne thought sadly. She could always say he wouldn't be able to make it, that he'd made other plans.

“You're welcome, my sweet,” Gabrielle said, with the relieved air of a woman whose olive branch had just been accepted.

A
NNE
was coming for dinner and Thomas was in the garden, passing time. The earth was ready for planting. Each spadeful of dirt was dark and rich, free of big stones. Earthworms and wood bugs squiggled for cover while robins perched nearby, waiting for Thomas Devlin to go inside. He uncovered two carrots, a potato, and a trove of leeks left from last year. Not many things brought him more joy than gardening, but this year he readied his vegetable patch with a heavy heart.

Anne was pulling away from him. Her feelings for him were different, and he felt the shift as surely as he felt the change in seasons.

Since she had taken the new job, he'd heard nothing but forced cheer in her voice. She'd talk about the office, the customers, the Crichtons, with great enthusiasm. Nothing could please him more than knowing Anne had found satisfying work. But she was treating him like a stranger: reporting the facts of her day with the upbeat blankness of a weather forecaster.

No matter what she said, he dated the growing distance between them to Ned's visit. Certainly Ned's reaction to the circumstances of Thomas and Anne's first meeting was disturbing, but also understandable. Thomas had no doubt that Ned would get over it. More upsetting to him was feeling Anne withdraw from him.

In the months since he had known her, Thomas Devlin had found pure happiness. That Anne could love him had seemed to him a miracle. With half the skin on his body burned off, he knew how repulsive he looked. He had never expected to be touched by a woman again. He could not say that he had given up hope of it; since the fire that deformed him, he had simply ceased to consider the possibility.

But that night at Anne's apartment, when she had entered the bathroom and looked upon him without flinching, when she had touched his naked body, her soothing strokes so full of love and acceptance, Thomas Devlin had felt redeemed.

That he was the person she chose to tell about Karen had made him want to sweep her into his arms, into his home, and make her his wife. That's what he wanted more than anything: to marry her. From that cold winter's night, when he had pulled her from the fire, until now, his feelings for her had been building and growing.

When Thomas Devlin thought of Anne Davis, he knew that he had found his heart's desire.

Now, working his garden, he listened to the clocks in his workshop chime six o'clock. She would be arriving soon. He had caught some flounder that morning, which he planned to serve for dinner. But for some reason, as the dinner hour drew closer, he felt less and less hungry.