The Cartoonist (15 page)

Scott walked out onto the dock and stood at its edge, gazing into the choppy water. He found himself trying to imagine diving in, stretching up onto his toes, arcing out...but he felt suddenly dizzy and had to step back onto solid ground.

Jesus, I wish that phone would ring.
He could feel its silent weight inside his jacket. One way or the other, knowing would be so much better.

Or would it?

He sat on the picnic table with his feet on the bench and his face in his hands and rocked in silent anguish. The thought of harm coming to his wife or his daughter was unendurable. It filled him with a swooning dread...no, it was stronger than that. Since discovering those drawings and their possible connection to his family, Scott had been terrified, jumping at shadows, imagining scenes of ruin he was unable to sweep from his mind. He’d even experienced what he supposed amounted to a fatigue and stress-induced hallucination, seeing Kath’s doll gored and bleeding in a flicker-flash of lightning. Every minute that passed without Krista’s call doubled his certainty that the old man was right, there
had
been an accident...and a bad one. He felt cold, husked-out, hollow, like the barrels beneath the dock.

At one point while he sat there in the strangely electric air, a gull mumbled plaintively behind him, making a sound that was disturbingly human. When Scott turned, imagining in his fatigue that it was Kath sneaking playfully up on him, he saw the gray and white bird perched on a rock, disemboweling a minnow and watching him with wary yellow eyes. Furious at it for its unknowing deception, he flailed his arms and the gull lifted off, its call like a laugh as it winged away.

Tears welled in Scott’s eyes. Through their blur he spotted something lying on the ground near the dock—twin, rose-colored irregularities. Looking closer, he realized they were a pair of Krista’s barrettes. Then he remembered: she’d taken them off before skinny-dipping with him a few weeks before and had later given them up for lost. As Scott picked them up, he smiled. He took them with him to the table, where he reconstructed that night in all of its warm and intimate detail.

It was a Saturday and Kath had been staying over with a friend, leaving him and Krista alone for the weekend. They’d been down by the dock, getting tipsy, acting the fool, when Krista suggested a swim and began to disrobe. Scott remembered clearly the pale swells of her breasts, contrasting so erotically with the tan of her skin in the grainy half-light of the moon. Clear, too, was that vague, giddy fear of swimming at night, a sensation that had always heightened the thrill.
Until the other morning
, he thought grimly,
until that rocky bottom, those weeds
. They laughed and swam and splashed and then Krista took him in her hand and made him hard. And they made love there, naked on the dock in the starlight. Good love. Afterward, incredibly, they fell asleep there, wrapped warmly around each other.

This memory lead to another—oddly, Kath swallowing an ice cube when she was five and nearly choking on it. Then, in a kind of cerebral chain reaction, memory lead to memory, until soon a brilliant cascade of them blurred through his mind.

After a block of time Scott would have been unable to define, the wind freshened and it started to rain again. Adrift in that mosaic of memory, he missed the first warbling ring of the remote when it sounded inside his jacket. He heard its second ring and removed it from his jacket, but he did not answer it. He was unmindful of the rain. He was aware only of his dread, its weight, its crushing grip on his heart. It would be Gerry calling, and his big voice would say,
I’m sorry, Scott, but they’re dead...both dead....

On the third ring he brought the phone to his ear. The voice on the other end—high, strained, familiar—cut in before Scott had a chance to speak.

“Scott?”

That single word was an anodyne. Pain and apprehension vanished in a quivering whisper of breath.

Scott started to giggle.

“Scott, listen...you’re not going to believe the shit I’m into down here...are you laughing? I’m not kidding, Scott...”

It was Krista.

“...will you listen?”

Before Scott could reply, he heard his wife’s voice sharpen angrily, then muffle as she cupped a hand over the mouthpiece. She was addressing someone at her end—and none too politely.

“Could I have some privacy here, for Christ’s sake? Jesus.” She came back on the line. “You would not
believe
these jackasses.”

Scott found his voice. “Krista, what’s going on?” He couldn’t wipe the grin from his face. “Are you okay? What happened? When you didn’t call, I —”

“I’m sorry about that, honey, I really am. But let me explain. Oh, it’s a long story...I hit a goddam cow with the car last night—”

“A cow?” Scott said, starting to giggle again.
A cow
, he thought hysterically,
only a stupid bloody cow
.

“It’s not funny. We could have been hurt...or killed. Anyway, that poor Holstein is beefsteaks now. I busted its hind legs with the bumper. The farmer said he’d have to shoot it.

“You see, Kath and I got lost yesterday afternoon and, well, you know what I’m like when I’ve got someplace to get to.” He did. “It was dark and I was speeding on this windy road—that’s one thing New England has plenty of, is windy roads.”

Krista was genuinely upset; Scott could tell from her rambling dialogue. Still, be couldn’t stop smiling...they were all right. Thank God, they were all right.

“We came around this sharp curve and there they were, cows, maybe sixty of them, all over the goddam road. And half a dozen farmers with flashlights and dogs. The cows had tramped down the fence and got out of the pasture.

“The car’s okay...sort of. I mean, I can drive it. The grille’s a bit crumpled. I swerved and took the ditch. God, I felt like a criminal. Those farmers shot me some pretty dirty looks...and then they had to push the car back onto the road.

“Anyway, to make matters worse, it starts to rain, thunder and lightning, a real storm. And you know how Kath gets in a storm.”

Sitting in the rain and grinning, Scott nodded to no one. Kath regressed five or six years in a bad thunderstorm. On one or two occasions the previous summer she’d become nearly hysterical and ended up bunking in with him and Krista until the storm had blown over.

“I was beat anyway,” Krista was saying, sounding a trifle hysterical herself, “so I asked one of the farmers how far it was to the nearest motel. He looked as if he’d rather tell me to...well, use your imagination, but he told me anyways. So off we went, me shaking like a leaf after hitting that cow, Kath scared and carrying on like a three-year-old.”

As he listened, Scott started back up the hill toward the house, aware only now that he’d been sitting in an August downpour writing obituaries for the two people he cared for most in the world. Escaping his notice, the rain-soaked sole of his shoe crushed the four-leaf clover he’d marked with a branch. Only the highlights of Krista’s mile-a-minute account were reaching his higher centers for descrambling, but that didn’t matter. Krista’s voice mattered—feisty, exasperated, switching back in her excitement to the Newfie drawl of her childhood...alive. The car didn’t matter. The cow didn’t matter. The Cartoonist didn’t matter.

“So finally I found this motel: Nomad’s Notch.” Krista uttered a short derisive laugh. “More like Nomad’s Crotch if you ask me. What a dive.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Oh, shit, that little bitch proprietor heard me. I was going to call you when I got here. It was late, after twelve, and I knew you’d be worried. But the lines were down with the storm. The power, too.

“So Kath and I had to trek out into this muddy yard in the rain, looking for room seventeen. Turns out the little frump gave us the shack at the far end of the row, with a leaky ceiling, no heat, and a musty old mattress. I woke up this morning with spring marks all over my ass.”

Krista was beginning to lose control and Scott thought she might start to cry. In his relief, he hadn’t appreciated the full extent of her upset. To him, Krista’s tribulations seemed petty held next to the fate he’d envisioned. But all things were relative.

“ ...kept dreaming about that poor cow. It shit itself when I hit it, Scott. Right onto the hood.” Krista paused, her breath hitching noisily over the miles. “Then...” Now she
was
crying; Scott could almost hear the teardrops. “Then
this
. At five-thirty this morning my motel room door is shoved open and these two brain-damaged
cops
come barging in.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Scott said, finding the whole situation suddenly hilarious. Gerry...his detective work had paid off.

“Scott, what’s going on? They think I’m some kind of criminal. A kidnapper, if you can believe that. I’ve shown them my license and ownership and all that, and Kath told them I’m her mother, for Christ’s sake, but they say they’re waiting for some kind of clearance from Canada.”

Immediately Scott saw a way to come out of all this smelling like a rose. Maybe even a hero. “Listen, sweetheart, don’t cry. Give me the number there and I’ll call you right back. I’m going to get in touch with Gerry and see if he can’t clear up this whole silly mess. There’s obviously been a misunderstanding.” He noticed the crumpled drawings by the phone and hesitated. Then, acting on an instinct he would only understand some several hours later, he added: “Then I’m going to book a flight and join you in Boston...meetings, job, psychiatry be damned.”

“Okay, hon,” Krista said, sniffling but sounding more in control. “You’re a dear.” She gave him the number. “Thanks. And I’m sorry about the car.”

“Forget the car. My girls are all right and that’s all that matters. I was thinking of trading it for a Chevette, anyway.”

Krista laughed and Scott felt like a millionaire.

“I love you, Scott.”

“Me too you.”

When they hung up Scott was still outside, standing on the deck in the cool, refreshing rain.

THE PHONE RANG AGAIN, AND although it startled him, it no longer seemed fearsome. Just a phone ringing, a prosaic sound, a sane sound. He stepped in off the deck and answered it cheerfully.

“Hello?”

“Scott.” It was Gerry. “Listen, we found them and they’re fine. Krista’s madder than hell, though.”

“Yeah, I know. She just called. Thanks, man. I owe you a big one.” Scott chuckled. “Now, can you get me out of this? If she finds out I’m behind all of this, never mind the lunatic reason for it, I’ll be a dead man.”

“That’s the easy part,” Gerry said.

“Thanks, pal. You must think I’ve been out in the sun too long.”

“Well, you know what they say about shrinks...no, really, I was moved by your concern for them. You’re lucky to have someone you feel that way about.”

“Yeah, I know,” Scott said, feeling a small arrow of pain for his friend. Gerry’s wife, Steffie, had left him two years ago—a ransacked apartment and a note on the kitchen table.

“Can you tell me about your ‘loony reasons’ now, or do I have to wait for the miniseries?”

“You deserve at least that much,” Scott said. “But not right now. Next week over beer and pizza at the Hut, maybe. My treat. I want to get back to Krista. I’m going to join her in Boston tonight.”

“Okay, José. But give me ten or fifteen to sort out the ‘mix-up’ in the States before calling...and stay out of the sun.”

“Bye for now,” Scott said with a laugh. “I’ll give you a buzz.”

He set the rain-beaded handset on the counter and whipped spryly upstairs, taking the risers two at a go. In the bathroom, whistling tunelessly, he removed his soaked clothes and hopped into the shower. He felt great, better than he had in days. And yet, as the hot water worked its magic, he could feel the exhaustion creeping surely through him. He was headed for a major-league crash and he knew it. He’d probably sleep through his first two days in Boston.

A cow
, he thought again. No shambling zombies from the valley of the dead. Not that he believed for one moment...

It occurred to him then that the Cartoonist had been right. Scott had been so distracted with relief, he’d discounted this basic truth. His girls
did
have an accident, it did happen at night and they did hit something in the road.

So they’re out of danger...right?

He stepped out of the shower, toweled off briskly and padded into the bedroom. Still a bit shaky, he picked up the phone and called the Air Canada reservations desk. The best they could do, they told him, was a connecting flight from Montreal. He would be flying Air Canada out of Ottawa at eight, then Delta from Montreal an hour later, arriving in Boston at ten fifty-five. This suited him fine. The later flight would allow him time to straighten things up at the hospital.

Next he dialed the number Krista had given him. A woman answered in a Yankee drawl, which to Scott sounded contrived.

“Mornin’, Nomad’s Notch.”

“This is Dr. Bowman,” he said with as much authority as he could muster. “Give me Krista Bowman, please.”

The receiver was clunked against something hard; Scott got an image of coffee-stained Formica. “It’s fer you,” he heard the woman say.

“Scott?”

“Hi, I reached Gerry—”

“Yes, I know.” Krista sounded cheerful and relieved. “They’ve gone, those mobsters. No apologies, nothing. Just, ‘Here’s your license, lady, you can go.’ Pigs. Well, we’re going, all right. Kath thinks it’s all a party. I called Caroline already. She laughed, but I know she was worried, too.”

She paused a beat, thoughtful. Then: “I’m okay now, you know. You don’t have to fly down here. I’d like it, but...”

Scott glanced again at the drawings, which he’d tossed on the bed before showering. “Just have the harem assembled at the Delta off-ramp at eleven tonight.”

Krista uttered a tiny squeal reserved for situations that delighted her.

“Krista?” Scott said in a voice that was almost a whisper.

“Yes, hon?”

“Do me a favor?” He saw the terror in the cartoon-child’s face and realized that his hairline had beaded with sweat.