Two If by Sea (46 page)

“We all know that, Frank,” Eden said. “Or something like it.”

“What? How?”

“Your widowed brother comes home with a little kid. Even he can't figure out how his wife was really related to this little kid, so he tells you three or four different things. You think, your brother doesn't really have a gift for lying, so he must have lost his mind. Or something else is up.”

“Why didn't you say anything?”

“What would we say?” Marty said gently. “Clearly, Ian loves you. You love him. There must be an organizing principle, if he has no one else.”

“I feel like an idiot,” said Frank.

Eden said then, “And we know the rest of it, too. Mom decides she's going to buy an aquarium the size of Lake Mendota one day. And a bag of every kind of candy at Miller's Market. Sure, maybe this is all Mom wanting a grandkid, sure, but Mom is a stern woman. She gave us grapes and said they were candy. And then . . . just wham! She buys all the Lego Star Wars sets there are. Sets that cost fifty bucks, a hundred bucks. This is the same mom who used to try to get Tupperware small enough that she could save two teaspoons full of peas, because who knows when you might need two teaspoons full of peas, right? She's driving to
Chicago
because Brookfield Zoo is better than Dane County Zoo. I didn't even know they had a zoo in Chicago until I was in high school. One day I say, that kid is going to get rickets, because Ian's eating a corn dog for breakfast and a corn dog for lunch. She says, well, Eden, that's what he wants. And she sounds a little like the Children of the Corn. So I asked Mom about . . . how Ian is. And she told me. And, wait up, Frank, if she hadn't, we would still have known. We have our own eyes and brains.”

At least that was in the family, Frank thought. This was turning out easier than he'd thought it would be. No expressions of disbelief or disapproval had come forth, and who cared if Ian had something to do with making everyone be nice? He turned to Claudia. “And you haven't told anyone else, have you?”

“Yes, I have,” Claudia said. “Of course.”

“What?”

“Well, I told people what he did on Eden's wedding day, of course.”

Frank was incredulous. “Why would you do that?”

“What do you do if something amazing happens right in front of your own eyes? You tell people, right?”

“Wrong,” said Eden. “He wouldn't tell anyone, and not because he's a former cop, because . . .”

Claudia ignored her. “How was I to know that I'd train with you? How was I to know that I'd know you more than that one day? All I knew is that I'd seen this little kid do something I only ever heard of once before in my life. I wanted to ask you if I could observe him, but then I came here, and I began to care about Ian, and about you . . .”

Marty went into the kitchen to brew more coffee. He said, “Be fair to Dr.—to Claudia, Frank. She didn't have any responsibility to keep what she saw a secret.”

“You
told
people?” Frank bored in, still staring at Claudia.

Claudia shrugged. “I didn't give a lecture. But yes, some friends. And some colleagues. And later, I called my former professor, the one who introduced me to Julia Madrigal . . .”

“No wonder the whole fucking world knows.”

“It's not because of me!” Claudia shouted, jumping up from the table. She pointed to Patrick. “You think that asshole kid who was trying to steal Glory Bee didn't blab to his buddies? And what about Patrick here, the cockney Romeo of southern Wisconsin?”

Patrick said quietly, “That's hard, Claudia. And it's unfair. I never said a word about Ian since the day on the plane. Not once.”

Claudia began to cry. “I'm sorry, Pat. I'm sorry. I'm scared. What a bitch.”

“There, never mind,” Patrick said. “Never mind. You're on edge.”

“Do you know what the consequences of this are?” Frank said. “Does anyone think how these boys might be prized for their gifts? Does anyone know that was the first reason why I wanted them with me?”

Claudia whirled to face Frank. “Don't make yourself out like the big self-sacrificing hero, Frank. Yes, you rescued Ian. But you wanted Ian because you wanted Ian. You wanted Ian because he wanted you to take him. He was the one who knew that you were the right dad for him.”

“If it weren't for Frank, the boys would be dead,” Hope chided her gently.

“I know,” Claudia said, and cried harder.

“This has to be contained!” Frank said. A voice in his head said,
We're starving, Dad
.
We want pancakes
.

“Well, it can't be, Frank. These kids go to school. We live in the world . . .”

“But . . .”

Hope spoke up. Even when she panicked, Frank and Eden had rarely heard her raise her voice, and she didn't raise her voice now. There was, instead, a magnificent stillness about her that brought all their rustlings and whisperings to a halt. “Frank, Eden is right. You can do whatever you want to make sure that this stays in the family until the boys are older. But you can't contain it. Whoever came here, or whatever he did or she did, maybe that wasn't even because of Ian and Colin. Maybe it was. You haven't told us that. But if it was, it started a long time ago. And not because a few people talked to their friends,” Hope said. “Anyone who really wants to know where someone is, even a child, has a vast net of resources, a multilayered buffet of information spread like a three-dimensional net of dots to connect. You really wouldn't need a detective to find someone who'd been living a normal life, doing normal things, just as Eden said, going to school, going to the dentist, for example. All you'd need would be a librarian with a computer.”

“So
what happened with this person who came here
?” Eden asked. “My back is killing me, and no, I'm not in labor.”

Quietly then, knowing his mother was right, Frank told them everything, from the moments with the animals in the cargo hold of the airplane coming to the United States to the horror of the Christmas morning visit. Marty breathed in sharply.

“You killed a woman?” he said.

“Marty, shut up,” Eden said.

“No, I didn't. She did it herself accidentally. But I would have, Marty,” Frank told him.

“Where is she?” Marty asked.

“She's gone, someone took her, hand to God,” Patrick said.

Marty said, “Claudia, maybe Ian would be safer in a lab setting, living in a nice, secure house on a campus where he can be tested because this is big, this could be very, very big . . .”

“He's my son,” Frank said. “He's our son. I wouldn't let that happen if he were a chimp.”

“Nor would I. Nor would anybody who cares about chimps,” Claudia said. Marty looked downcast. “And what about Colin? The effect of what Colin can do is not so, well, dramatic, but the fact that he does it, and their mother could, suggests inheritance. But, Marty, none of these kinds of abilities have ever been clinically proven even to exist, in trials that can be duplicated, by anyone, anywhere, ever.”

Suddenly Colin appeared.

“Do you mind?” Everyone's heads swiveled to stare at him as if he was a burglar. ”I would really like some . . . anything that's food. I can get it myself, but you're all in here yelling. You never gave us breakfast. And you never gave us lunch either.” He was dazed and jangled by a continuous loop of television. “But you guys are just sitting there eating all the muffins yourself.”

“I'll make you some sandwiches and then you should go outside and play,” Hope said.

They all stopped, listening, as if for thunder. There had never been a time that anyone thought of the boys being unsafe on this land.

Frank said, “You see that? We can't stay here.” To Claudia, he said, “I had already been thinking. What if we just got out of Wisconsin? I think about that place Tura left me. An adventure.”

“Whoa! Wait, Frank. We've had adventures enough,” Claudia said. “Anyhow, I'm not so sure I could pry you off this land.”

“With a chopstick,” Frank said. “At least now.”

“And this is something you discuss, not something you announce. We haven't discussed this at all. There are other considerations . . .”

“What if we don't have time to discuss it?”

Hope got up and slapped together fat turkey sandwiches for the boys and told them to play right where the adults could see them from the windows. Then they all got out plates and began to consume leftovers. Patrick reminded Frank that he'd promised to visit Tura's childhood home, the farm she'd left to Frank.

“It's mine now, after all,” Patrick said. As an extra precaution, Frank, just days before, had transferred the title to Stone Pastures a second time, into the name of the laird Patrick Walsh, who purchased it for the sum of one United States dollar.

But how did any of that matter? Frank thought.

After they ate, Marty and Eden slipped away to watch a movie and Patrick to make a phone call. Frank stayed at the table with his mother and Claudia. For a long while, he spun a globe in his mind. In his mind, it lit up, everywhere he turned: no ports, no big cities . . . how could he have been in so much denial? How little any of his little precautions mattered, and how had he thought any of them would? It was the work of a keystroke to unmask any of it. Safety, or the illusion of it, was not the reason they should leave here, if it ever had been. They should go—or stay—for their own health. Their psychological health. Their health as a family. If they couldn't disappear, they could still reincarnate. Many times, the Batchelders had offered to lease or buy, especially since the house and arena were updated. They would do that now.

“I still think it could be a fresh start,” Frank told Claudia. “People do that when they get married. It's not like I want to. This land has been in my family for four generations, starting with old Jack's father. I never thought I'd leave.”

Claudia rubbed the palms of her hands, with their tiny calluses that she massaged each night with coconut oil, sometimes slathering them and wearing cotton gloves to sleep. “Coming back here was Natalie's idea,” she said.

“But Australia was always a temporary thing, an escape. Of course, I didn't count on Natalie.” He let out a breath. “When I came back, I knew this was home. I couldn't imagine not feeling safe here, right here.” There was so much he would never have imagined. Frank turned to his mother.

“Marty and Eden will have their own life, but would you want to live here, on your own, Mom?”

“Not really, Frank.”

“In town?”

Claudia said, “If we were to go anywhere, and I'm not saying we are, we'd love it if you would come, too, Hope. I think you're the only one who could make some farm at the end of the world seem like home.”

Frank said, “But, Mom, you leaving Spring Green? After fifty years? Your friends? Your church? It's hard to see you anywhere else.”

“That's not accurate, Frank. My life has changed, too. I think, perhaps, I would welcome the opportunity to live in England,” Hope said. “Not that you've actually invited me. I'd have my own place, of course. England is a librarian's literary amusement park, and I've been there twice, and been drawn there all my life. I wouldn't like to think of seeing Eden only once every few years . . .”

“It would be more than that, Mom. You could come back every year at least once. I'm sure Eden and Marty would welcome you, for as long as you wanted.”

“I'd love to help raise the boys. I'd love to have that adventure you talked about, at my age.”

When Patrick returned, Frank told him the substance of the discussion.

Patrick said, “I like the USA, myself. I'll live here one day, maybe teach at that college that . . . well, that the girl tried to give out that she went to. Maybe have my own spread like this one. Maybe this one itself if I can afford it. But I'd just as soon go with you now, for I don't want to give up on Glory Bee . . .”

“You'd have to ride her, then,” Claudia said. Seeing Patrick's mouth, and Frank's, fall open in consternation, she said, “No, Pat, Frank. Listen. I've been thinking as I've been sitting here. Frank, you just threw all this at me. It's too much to train and compete and handle everything . . .” She waved her hand around her head like a small cyclone. “The boys could be uprooted yet again. Frank and I are just starting out. The children are going to need me. It's not a good time for me to try to give that dream what it deserves. Or to give Glory Bee what she deserves. My heart just would not be in it.”

“What's this, then? You're the rider, Claudia,” said Pat. “All your life. That dream.”

“Dreams don't always come true,” Claudia said.

“Yours can,” Patrick said.

“Claudia, where's this coming from?” Frank wanted to know.

“It's logic, Frank. Maybe there's still time for this dream. An equestrienne can compete for a long time, until she's fifty. Maybe I'll end up on Glory Bee's foal, down the road. Or maybe I won't. Either way, it's not the primary consideration.”

“If this is going to ruin everything you've dreamed of, we shouldn't even consider this move,” said Frank.

“So I'd be responsible for something bad happening to Ian, then?”

“I didn't mean that,” Frank said.

“Claudia, you never said a word,” Patrick went on. “You have your career. Your own family. You're okay with this? This move?”

“Pat, no one has asked a single thing about me,” said Claudia, and walked out the back door.

Hope got up, shaking her head ruefully. Patrick stared at Frank, who couldn't deny any of it. He'd thought of everything, except his best girl. How had he taken her so for granted? Claudia was a professor with tenure, a minor wunderkind. She had a life for which she'd worked exceedingly hard, friends, a community, and respect. In exchange, Frank offered her isolation, uncertainty, a staff job at some dinky hospital, and the surrender of her own hopes as an athlete.