Fire and Rain (23 page)

“He was blond?” Carmen asked, surprised. “I knew he was blond when he was very young, but even in junior high school?”

Dan bit into something that snapped in her ear. “He’s not blond now?” he asked.

Carmen pictured Jeff’s nearly black hair, and thought she’d better answer prudently. “I wouldn’t really call it blond.”

“I wish I could see him. Can’t picture him without that mop of yellow hair.”

For a brief moment, she wondered if she might be digging up information on the wrong Robert Blackwell after all.

“What else do you remember about him?” She opted for the open-ended question, since Dan Grace seemed to be enjoying this. She pictured him leaning back in his chair in his poshly decorated office, a carrot stick in his hand, and his feet, in their Italian leather shoes, propped up on the desk.

“He liked baseball and he wrestled for a while, but he wasn’t very good. He wasn’t aggressive enough—although, wow, if you stepped on the toes of a friend of his, watch out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it was like he was always taking up for the little guy. He could handle a lot of abuse himself—I mean, he’d let the rumors roll off his back—but he couldn’t stand to see someone else get dumped on. I remember one incident. There was this really nerdy girl in our class. I mean, beyond nerdy. Strange. Not groomed well. Had a little… aroma to her. And you know how junior high kids are. They picked on her unmercifully, like she wasn’t even human.”

He paused for a moment, and Carmen heard him take a drink of something.

“I’m sure
I
even made fun of her from time to time,” he continued. “She was the class scapegoat. The sacrificial lamb. Phyllis, her name was. We called her Syphillis, although I’m sure ninety-five percent of us didn’t even know what the word meant.” Dan chuckled. “Anyhow, she sat behind Robbie in science class, and during a test one day I noticed he was holding his paper on his desk in a way that she could copy from it.”

“You mean he was intentionally letting her copy?” Carmen jotted down the anecdote, wondering if it could be interpreted as an early disregard of rules and authority. It hardly seemed to fit.

“That’s right,” Dan said. “I couldn’t believe it. I don’t think he even knew her well enough to talk to her, but he felt sorry for her. Then a few months later, this group of kids was taunting her out on the sidewalk in front of the school. Robbie and I were walking past them, and when he saw what was happening, he told the kid who was the ringleader, ‘You’d better stop it, or else.’ Of course the kid laughed at him and kept on tormenting Phyllis. So, the next day, Rob mixed up some concoction and put it in a little capsule and set it on the kid’s chair in homeroom. When the kid sat down on the capsule, it broke, and for the rest of the day he smelled as though he’d messed his pants. No one would get near him.” Dan laughed. “Whew. This is a real memory test. Haven’t thought about this stuff in years.”

“He had a vindictive streak, then.”

“That’s stretching it, Ms. Perez,” Dan said, dryly. “What he did have was a sense of what was fair and what wasn’t, and an intolerance for anyone who’d try to make himself look or feel good at someone else’s expense.”

Carmen was quiet as she wrote down his words. Then she took a deep breath. “Gail Vidovich thought his mother died.” She bit her lip, waiting for his response.

“Yes, she did,” Dan said. “Some sort of accident. Car, I guess, but to be honest, I’m not sure if I ever really knew what happened.” He took another bite of something. “Excuse me,” he said. “This must sound pretty obnoxious.”

“No problem,” Carmen said. “Did you know her? What was she like?”

“She was very pretty. Younger than most of my other friends’ mothers, and maybe because she was younger, she understood better what it was like to be a kid. So she and Rob were very close.”

“That must have been terrible for him. Losing her, I mean.”

“Yeah. She was all the family he had. Blood family, anyhow. They lived with a black man, although I don’t think his mother ever married him. She went by Cabrio and the man’s name was Watts. Robbie called him Dad. I spent a fair amount of time over there, and Mr. Watts acted like he was Rob’s father. He’d make rules for him and that sort of thing, and he’d buy u him all these kits—you know, chemistry sets, telescopes. Made me jealous, actually. He was very proud of Rob, too. I remember him coming to the science fair when Rob won first place, and he was beaming.”

“What was Rob’s science fair project?”

“Oh, something I didn’t understand.” Dan sounded as if he were yawning. “Science wasn’t my thing. It was some sort of ecosystem, I think. Some sort of enclosed life space, with plants and things in it, in which he somehow controlled the atmosphere. He adjusted something to make light and warmth and rain. I didn’t get it, but the judges certainly did. He went on to compete in the state and national competition, if I remember correctly.”

Carmen closed her eyes. A chill started low on her spine and the hair on the nape of her neck stood on end. She definitely had the right man. If he could do something like that at the age of thirteen, what could he do now?

“Rob’s family always had money,” Dan continued. “Not a ton. Not old money. But they were a lot better off than my family, although they didn’t own a house. They rented the top story of one of the big houses on Seventh Street. The driveway was always filled with Mr. Watts’s old cars. He loved fixing them up. He drove a Model T, and he used to give us rides in it.”

Carmen was still shaken by the realization that Jeff might be for real. She tried to collect herself, to focus on what Dan was saying and keep up with her note-taking. Her hand ached from writing so quickly. “What did Mr. Watts do for a living?” she asked.

“He worked on other people’s cars, though I used to hear my parents saying they didn’t understand how that would bring in so much money. Beth—Rob’s mother—worked at Teppers, but Mr. Watts was usually home. He cooked supper every night, and I remember thinking that was strange. It wasn’t the division of labor I was accustomed to at home.”

Dan was quiet for a minute, and Carmen waited for him to speak again.

“Rob was with my family when his mother was killed,” he said finally. “We were down the shore, and he got a call from Mr. Watts telling him about the accident. I remember watching him on the phone, all the color draining out of his face. He wouldn’t say a word when he got off, just sat in the living room staring out the window. He wouldn’t tell us what was wrong. My mother was sitting there with him, trying to draw it out of him, but he wouldn’t even look at her. Mr. Watts drove down and picked him up, and he’s the one who told my parents Beth was dead. Robbie got into the car without saying a word, without even saying good-bye.” Dan sighed. “I didn’t know what to say to him myself. It’s one of those things I wish I could do over, now that I’ve had a little more life experience. Know what I mean? Especially if I’d known it would be the last time I saw him.”

“The last time?”

“Yes. It was the summer before high school, and I thought I’d see him in a few weeks. But when I got home from the shore and tried to call him, I found out that he and Mr. Watts had moved.”

Once again, the disappearing act. Had Jeff been on the run his entire life?

“Do you know where they went?” she asked.

“It was somewhere in south Jersey. Cherry Hill, if I remember correctly. My mother found that out from the woman who owned the house they’d rented, but she had no street address. Somewhere along the line we stopped trying to track him down. I never heard from him again.”

“Shall I give him your number?”

“Hell, yes.” There was a grin in his voice. “And it’s your turn now. Tell me how he is? Is he married? Does he have kids? I bet he’s a rocket scientist, huh?”

“To be honest, Mr. Grace, I don’t know that much about him.” She grimaced, not wanting to be coy. She wanted to tell him more, but she would have to be careful. “He’s very reserved,” she said, “and he’s working on a project of a scientific nature that he hopes will help a lot of people.”

“Well, tell him to get in touch, please,” Dan said. “I’d love to talk with him.”

CARMEN AGONIZED OVER HER
script for that evening’s news report. She studied her notes, and her eyes were drawn again and again to the one line of all Dan Grace’s words that haunted her most.
He had an intolerance for anyone who’d try to make himself look or feel good at someone else’s expense.

But the facts were simple. The meatier she made her reports, the higher the ratings would climb.
What choice do I have, Jeff?
she thought
. You’re my job.

In the end, though, her script was calculated, restrained. Her wording was gentle. Her characterization of Jeff was, for once, kind and compassionate, and although she said nothing about his childhood science fair project, for the first time there was no skepticism in her tone when she described his work in the warehouse.

She arrived at Sugarbush after midnight. A light burned in Mia’s cottage, but Jeff’s and Chris’s cottages were dark. At her kitchen table, she penned a note on a scrap of paper. “Forgive me for questioning you about your mother the other morning,” she wrote. “I know what it’s like to grow up with loss. I’m sorry.”

She walked outside, and the coyotes’ song made her shiver as she slipped the note under the windshield wiper of Jeff’s car.

CHRIS WANTED TO GO
to this game. He wanted to conquer the fear of facing the stadium again, of facing old fans he’d disappointed, of being on the outside looking in. He wanted to recapture the pleasure he’d once taken from the best sport in the world. For far too long now, he’d cut himself off from that joy.

More than anything, though, he wanted to see a good baseball game. He wanted to smell hot dogs and drink beer, to hear the crack of a bat and the roar of the crowd. He wanted to watch his old team play, to see how his old friends were holding up, how the new players were fitting in.

Jeff sat next to him as they drove to the stadium in San Diego, and they had spent the entire last hour talking about baseball—what games they’d seen when they were kids, what players they had worshipped. Jeff had been a serious fan. The only difference in their stories was that Chris had attended the professional games with Augie, and occasionally another friend or two. Jeff didn’t elaborate on who he’d gone with, and Chris knew better than to probe.

“Rick and I are planning an experiment,” Jeff said after a break in the conversation.

“Oh, yeah?”

“We’ll need two-way radios.”

“All right.” Chris made a mental note stop by the electronics shop in Escondido the following week.

“And is it possible to get a TV in the warehouse?”

Chris glanced at him. “You want to catch Carmen’s news reports, huh?”

Jeff rubbed his temple with the palm of his hand. “Don’t talk to me about your wife,” he said. “She dissects me for public consumption and then tries to make it up to me by leaving vague notes of apology on my windshield.”

“Ex-wife,” Chris said. “She left you a note?” He remembered what Carmen had said about Jeff on the news the night before. She’d spoken to one of his childhood friends who had described Jeff as an extremely bright boy—this wasn’t news—who took up for the underdog and occasionally played pranks on other kids in junior high school. She’d added that he’d been very affected by the death of his mother, which occurred when he was thirteen.

“Yes, she left me a note,” Jeff said, in a voice that was closing the subject.

Chris switched on the radio to the sports station for the pre-game chatter. He started humming
Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

“You’re up for this,” Jeff said.

“Yeah.”

“I thought you said going to a game scared the shit out of you, or something to that effect?”

Chris pressed his palms against the steering wheel. “Yeah, it does.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

Chris sighed. “Oh, that someone will recognize me and make some crack about what an asshole I was when I left, and he’ll, you know, alert the thousands of other people in the stadium to the fact that I’m there, and I’ll become your basic object of scorn. Nothing serious.” He laughed. “But as long as I’m incognito and walk in there as Joe Fan and nothing more, I think it’ll be fine.”

They found a parking space in the outer reaches of the crowded stadium lot. Daylight was fading quickly, but Chris decided to leave his sunglasses on for the walk across the parking lot. He opened the trunk of his car and produced two old brown and orange padre caps.

“Camouflage,” he said, handing one of them to Jeff. “Everyone will have them on. We’ll blend in.”

Jeff laughed, setting the cap on his head, and there was a sudden, dramatic change in his appearance. For the first time, he didn’t seem so much the outsider. He looked like a born-and-bred San Diegan.

They walked across the parking lot toward the stadium, making their way through the maze of parked cars and the cleanup detail from tailgate parties. Chris breathed in the scent of fried chicken and beer and summer stadium air, caught off guard by a pang of nostalgia.

He could feel his heart pounding against his ribs by the time they reached the ticket window. They stood next to each other in line, quietly. Chris was too anxious to talk. It was going to be all right, though. He caught a glimpse of his reflection, with sunglasses and cap, in the glass of the ticket window and hardly recognized himself.

But the grizzled, middle-aged man behind the glass had no problem at all.

“Chris Garrett!” he exclaimed, exposing a set of perfect dentures in a wide grin.

Chris tensed, his smile freezing in place. Behind him, a ripple of recognition passed through the line, and conversations stopped, only to begin again with new enthusiasm.

“How are you doing?” he asked the man, as though they were old friends. He slid enough money for two tickets under the glass shield of the window.

“Great!” Still grinning, the man passed the tickets back to him. “Good to see ya, fella,” he said. “The game hasn’t been the same since you were out there.”