Keepsake (38 page)
He was having a hard time breathing, much less eating, but he plowed away at his soup and crackers, wondering how he could have considered it a treat when he was a boy, and why he had ever made the mistake of admitting that to his hostess.
He was rescuing the grilled cheese sandwiches from their overlong stay on the griddle when Mrs. Dewsbury shuffled into the kitchen. She was managing to get around without her walker nowadays; it was one of the few bright spots in the black void that Quinn was currently calling a life.
"I'll do that, I'll do that," she said, waving the package at him. "Here. Open it. I'm so curious. There's no return address, did you notice?"
"Yeah." He took out his Swiss Army knife and sliced through the wide clear tape that sealed every edge shut—Olivia was nothing if not thorough.
He found it hard to believe that she was returning the ring and the letter to him, but if she was, he had an explanation ready for the curious old lady who was hovering near: the ring was his, the letter, an old note from his dad. Mrs. D. couldn't possibly read
Rand
's handwriting, much less recognize it.
That was the general theory, anyway.
He opened the flaps of the shallow box and stared at the contents. Olivia was not re-burdening him with the care and protection of the critical—and possibly criminal—evidence. She was merely returning,
in order of importance, his pa
jama tops, Mennen deodorant, Bic razor, and Oral-B toothbrush.
"Well, that's odd," said Mrs. Dewsbury. "What are
those
all about?"
Quinn went blank. He was clean out of lies,
excuses, and stories to tell.
"Um," he said.
"Olivia sent these, didn't she?" asked the savvy widow. Without waiting for an answer, she said, "You two have had a fight. Well, that explains your mood, and why
you've been hanging around the
house and fixing everything in sight."
In silence, Quinn went back to the grilled cheese sandwiches, cutting each of them diagonally and allocating three halves for him, one for the widow.
"For heaven's sake, Quinn—how long are you going to let this go on? Whatever you do, don't turn it into a competition between you. Just say you're sorry and get on with
your lives. It's so much simpler in the long run."
"It runs a little deeper than that," he said quietly.
"How deep?"
"Too deep."
"You mean you two have broken it off?"
"It looks that way."
"That's ridiculous! Pardon the clich
é
, but you two
are
meant for each other."
"Thanks," he said tersely, taking his seat again. "That makes me feel better."
"Don't play the sullen teenager with
me,
young man," she said, tapping the table with the tip of her forefinger. "I want you to march right down to that little shop of hers and take her out to lunch and make things up with her."
Quinn was completely at a loss over how to deal with his old teacher. He'd never been mothered before, and he could feel his impatience waiting to spring.
He tried disarming her with humor. "What? And walk out in the middle of this fine repast?"
"Oh, please. I'm sick of tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches; you must be, too," she said, snatching away his plate and sliding the meal into the garbage can.
"Mrs. D.—!"
"Right now. You don't want to be going off to
California
for two weeks and leaving her so upset. Life is too short to waste time in anger. Quinn, believe me. No one ever listens to the old, but we know better than anyone: Life is
short."
"Don't you think I'm aware of that?" he said through gritted teeth.
"Obviously you're not, or you wouldn't be doing this. Not only that, but you don't seem to understand how hard it will be to reconcile by telephone."
"Oh, for chrissake! There's not going to
be
a reconciliation!" he said, standing up so abruptly that he knocked his chair over. "And I'm not going off for two weeks!"
Right now, all he wanted was to get away from the widow's well-intentioned kindness. He'd made it just fine so far without a mother and without a wife. Obviously nothing was going to change.
The old woman searched his face and must have found the answer she was looking for in the misery that was etched there. "Oh, no. Oh, Quinn, no. You're not going to run
again?"
He'd heard the exact same taunt from Olivia recently. But this time it had no effect.
"I didn't run," he said with an utterly grim smile. "I accompanied my father."
"Whatever! This time it's running!"
"This time, I don't care," he said, and he left to go off to McDonald's.
A crooked heart. How fitting.
Olivia caressed the smooth surface of the red glass paperweight, a quirky Elsa Peretti design that so enchanted her when she came across it in a Tiffany catalogue that she had ordered six of them for the Valentine
's Day window of Mir
acourt.
But that was a month ago, when the world made sense and her own heart was still in good shape. Now she rued the extravagance.
Still, Keepsake's shoppers looked forward to Olivia's window displays, and she did not want to disappoint them. Against a backdrop of discreet gray, she began to arrange tiers of classic French ribbons that she had painstakingly rewrapped around antique wooden spools—exquisite ribbons of velvet and organdy, passementerie and jacquard, in silk and cotton and wool.
Except for a single spool of
red grosgrain, the colors were rich, muted, and subtle: earthy greens and old-world mustards, royal burgundies and not-quite-blues, and a shade of rose that hinted of the spring that must surely come, easing the pain of winter.
Olivia laid the glass hearts among the spools, refocused the halogen spotlights, and then stepped outside onto a deserted sidewalk to gauge the effect. She was unhappy with it. The left side seemed more harmonious than the right. Now what? Rearrange the whole thing?
She looked at her watch. It was nearly seven. Eileen and Rand were having a dinner party to celebrate their twelfth anniversary. Olivia had promised the children that she'd come over early to play with them; she hadn't seen them in weeks. Obviously that wasn't going to happen. If she hurried, she could just catch the end of the cocktail hour before having to sit through a meal she couldn't taste while smiling at chitchat she didn't want to hear. The window would have to do.
****
February 5
Dear Mrs. D.,
So far, so good. Made it to Philadelphia, but then detoured to Harrisburg, PA on a whim (went that route out west with Dad the first time, and wanted to see if I could touch base with old ghosts there. I could. Made me feel better, somehow.) Anyway, heading south again. Hope you can read this tiny print on your CCTV.
Love, Quinn
****
On February 15, Olivia removed the Elsa Peretti hearts, but she left the spools of ribbon in place. She had no real inspiration for a new display. Anyway, why bother? The spools looked all right.
****
March 1
Dear Mrs. D.,
Forgot to put a stamp on my last postcard to you. Did you get the one from Cape Hatteras? Don't know where my mind has gone. I stayed there longer than planned. Liked the wild, windy beaches. Did a lot of walking. Hope all is well with you. Is the new window flashing doing the trick?
Love, Quinn
****
On March 3, Olivia bought three paper shamrocks from the Hallmark shop on
Main
and tossed them on the spools of ribbon. Green was green.
****
March 18
Dear Mrs. D.,
Good talking to you last week. Glad to hear that things are quiet up your way. Spent yesterday at a bar in Lubbock called O'Toole's. Meant to grab a sandwich and ended up staying till last call. I'd forgotten what it means to be Irish. Yesterday I was reminded. Hope the squirrels are leaving your crocuses alone.
Love, Quinn
****
On March 18, Olivia sat on the edge of her bed staring at a little stick that she held in her shaking hand. She was fighting back not only nausea but terror as she watched the pink color move across the top.
After weeks of on-and-off vomiting, Olivia had decided that simple stress could not be the cause. And since as far as she knew there was no such thing as two-month flu, she had bought a guide to medical symptoms and looked up potential causes. Tumors, gallbladder problems, ulcers—all were possibilities. Bulimia was not. That left morning sickness associated with pregnancy.
It couldn't be that, she knew. She and Quinn had always used condoms. Besides, she was getting sick at all different times of the day. They didn't call it afternoon sickness, after all, or nighttime sickness. She had been looking up ulcers, thinking that they were to blame, when
suddenly it had dawned on her: s
he couldn't remember her last period.
With a pounding heart she had tried to clear her brain of every other thought but her monthly flow. December, yes, December was easy to remember. It came before Christmas. She had been wearing a pale knit dress and the onset was sudden and heavy; she had had to go home to change the stained dress.
Okay, January. January, January. She couldn't remember most of the damned month. When would she have been due? Sometime in the middle. The middle was the wrenching breakup with Quinn. No, definitely: no period. But was that so surprising? She had skipped periods before in times of stress, and it didn't get more stressed than the middle of January.
February. When had it come in February? Obviously not at all. February was the darkest, the dreariest, the most depressing month she'd ever known. Much of her body and all of her mind—everything that wasn't absolutely essential to life—had shut down during the month of February. That explained the lack of a period in February. Surely that explained it.
But it was heading for the end of March; something should be flowing by now. Olivia hadn't the excuse of being frantic, as she had been in January, or desperately depressed, as she had been in February. Nowadays she wasn't happy, wasn't sad, wasn't anything at all. She was numb. Which was fine with her. Numb let her get on with her day and sleep through the night and get through the occasional visit with her family.
Her life was normal—almost abnormally normal. Her family, relieved that Quinn was gone, was being excruciatingly kind to her. Her mother seemed to have forgotten their blowup, her father had gone back to being preoccupied with getting his tax break from town, and her brother had begun again to exhale. On the professional front, both the shop and the outlet were making money.
So where was the blood?
She watched in horror as two lines showed up in the little window.
Two!
Her cheeks turned hot, her pulse knocked around violently in her head.
Pregnant. Pregnant?
Impossible! They had been so—
Oh, my God. New Year's Eve. In the middle of the night on New Year's Eve. She and Quinn had engaged in sex that was uncalculated, uninhibited, unbelievable—and unprotected. Would that have been her fertile time?
Fool! Idiot! Of course it had been her fertile time. That's what created the drive that made the babies! And yet the next day neither of them had alluded to the possibility of her getting pregnant. Not even a simple "Gee, we should be more careful next time." Their lovemaking had been somehow more sacred than that; she remembered well her reluctance even to bring it up the next morning.
Pregnant.
For a long time, Olivia sat on the edge of her bed holding the stick. From there she could see the box from the testing kit, still half nestled in its bag from a Wal-Mart far away, sitting on the bathroom sink.
Of all the half-formed thoughts that took turns fighting for stage center of her brain, only one kept coming back: Thank God she hadn't gone to the drugstore on
Main
.
****
Punchy from his long drive, Quinn dropped his duffel bag next to the door and headed straight for the
phone
.
The feeling of impending doom that hit him after he sent off the postcard from
Lubbock
was so strong that he had chucked his plans to knock around southern
Arizona
and had driven straight home instead. He arrived to find that his house hadn't burned down (though the plants had all died) and his business hadn't gone bankrupt (though it might be on the way), so his premonition must have had something to do with out east.
His first thought was for Mrs. Dewsbury, he told himself. She was old, she was frail, anything could have happened to her. But the darker thought, th
e more hidden thought, was that
something had befallen Olivia.
It was ten in the morning out there, a good time to call. He waited impatiently through at least half a dozen rings, opening windows as he wandered through
the
rambling, one-story house on his way to the bedroom. As soon as he threw open the patio doors, he got hit with the scent of roses. Damn, if he didn't prefer this to March in
New England
.
"Hel-
lo," came the cheerful, upbeat voice.
Immediately Quinn knew that nothing was wrong. "Hey,
Mrs. D.," he said, relieved. "Just thought I'd call and let you know that I made it back safe and sound."*
"For goodness' sakes! What happened to panning for gold in
Arizona
?"
"I bought a few lottery tickets instead. How's your weather?"
"Oh, don't ask. It's been raining ever since you last called. I might as well be living in
Oregon
. Every joint in my body is killing me, including my two new fake ones. I'm not sure I can manage these stairs much longer."
"Baloney. You're just looking for an excuse to move in with your son."
She laughed out loud at that; she had told Quinn a hundred times how much she wanted to die in her own home. "Oh, I do miss you, dear. Every time Gerald and Kathy come over, they treat me like a helpless, doddering thing—or worse, a child. I really do not like being condescended to. You've spoiled me that way, treating me as a friend the way you do."
"Well
,
that's because you are," said Quinn, swallowing down a ridiculous surge of self-consciousness. No, damn it! He was done with emotional commitments of any kind. Been there, done that, got burned good.
"And Olivia stopped by," she added, giving the knife a little twist.
"How nice." His tone was dangerously polite.
Accepting the rebuff, she turned quickly to another subject. "I'm working to clear up a little mystery about you, by the way."
"Oh?" He didn't like the sound of that. "What mystery would that be?"
"I'm not saying. In case I'm wrong, I don't want to look like an old fool. But I'm willing to bet my Social Security check that I'm right. I'll know more tomorrow, after Judy Damian drops by."
"Ah, Miss Damian the librarian. Is she driving the library van nowadays?"
"She's doing a little research as a personal favor to me. We're in cahoots. How do you like
that,
Mr. Leary?"
He laughed politely, puzzled by her smug tone. He was in the kitchen now, holding open the fridge door and staring at its lone contents, a six-pack of Coors. His idle mind was computing that it had cost him about five bucks a bottle to keep them cold for the past three months.
"So... I take it that all's quiet on the eastern front?" he asked, knowing she'd understand what he meant.
"Oh, yes. No tricks, no pranks, no random acts of violence. The town has been absolutely quiet since—"
"I left," he said, helping her over her embarrassment.
"It
was
Coach Bronsky behind it all, wasn't it?" she said. "He's the one who bashed in my monitor."
Quinn sighed. He had bought a forensics kit and dusted the trophy weapon for fingerprints himself; it had been wiped clean. "It's nothing we'll ever be able to prove, I'm afraid."
The widow snorted and said, "I'd like to bash
him
one. But never mind, I've had my vengeance: Coach Bronsky has been fired. He showed up drunk once too many times for the school committee's taste. Of course he's filed a grievance, but I'm not worried. He's finished at Keepsake High, and good riddance to him."
"Well, well."
Immediately Quinn began to work out the ramifications. All in all, he'd rather have the coach staggering drunk around the field than sitting home drunk with time to brood. "Look, I want you to make absolutely sure that you—"
"Yes, yes, I know. Keep the alarm set at all times, even when I'm pruning roses ten feet from my door."
"Even then." They chatted another minute or two before Quinn, dog-tired and still nursing a headache from his St. Paddy's Day hangover, hung up with promises to keep in touch.
Now what? Threaten the coach again for good measure? It would be so much simpler if the man would just drink himself into a stupor every day. But Bronsky wasn't a worst-case wino, and it made him all the more dangerous. Hell!
Consumed by guilt with no hope of absolution, Quinn headed for the medicine cabinet in search of aspirin. His stomach let out a sullen, hungry growl, like some beast in a cage who could care less if his handler wasn't up to speed.
Feed me.
Quinn popped the aspirin and, rubbing his stomach, went foraging through the cupboards. He hoped the beast liked Dinty Moore.
****
Rubbing her belly surreptitiously under her coat, Olivia stood in line at the Book Bay, the biggest, most anonymous bookstore in the area, clutching a Dorothy Sayers mystery and a Fodor's Guide to Bermuda with a copy of
Pregnancy and You
sandwiched discreetly between them.
Don't get sick, don't get sick, this is a bad time; don't get sick. Think about something else.
But the book on babies might just as well have been a real live toddler bouncing on her arm. She could think of nothing
but
the baby she apparently was carrying—at least, if the three pregnancy kits were to be believed. She had made an appointment with a gynecologist (in the next county) to make the results official, but in the meantime, she wanted to learn all she could before deciding what to do.
She knew virtually nothing about pregnancy. Because it had little to do with running a business, Olivia hadn't paid much attention whenever her friends—even Eileen—became pregnant. The women all got bigger and bigger, and then they went into a hospital and when they came out, they were smaller and had a baby in their arms. Olivia was only slightly more knowledgeable about the whole process than the child who's been handed a bill of goods about the stork.
A tap on her shoulder sent her jumping. She whirled around.
"Mrs. Hyart! What a surprise! Well, how do you like that! Gosh. Shouldn't you be in your quilting class?"
The sixty-ish woman smiled and shook her head. "Tonight's my reading group. I'm here to pick up our copies of
Rebecca
so that I can pass them out for next week's discussion. We're doing three months of classics."
"Ah! What an interesting life you lead!" said Olivia with revolting cheerfulness. She sounded unhinged; truly, she was scaring herself.
"What about you?" asked Mrs. Hyart, tilting her head to read the spines. Before Olivia could react, the appallingly curious woman said archly, "
Pregnancy and You
?
'
"It's a shower present."
"Oh, trust me, then; she probably has it."
"Bridal shower! I'm
moving along
."
"Do you think that's—? Well, all right," said the woman, straightening back up with an apologetic smile. She acted as if she'd just stepped on Olivia's newly planted pansies.
Olivia whipped out her Visa, paid for the books, and got out of the
Book
Bay
as fast as she could. She was thinking about the doctor she'd signed up to see; obviously she should have chosen one in the next state, not merely the next county. Damn all small towns! Suddenly the charm of them eluded her completely.
She drove home and read until midnight, trying to devour every fact, every nuance, every clinical detail of what it meant to be pregnant. By the time she closed the book and went to bed, Olivia understood many things, including her craving for cheese and her aversion to fish, but she didn't know the answer to her most burning question: What should she do about this incredibly unexpected development?
Her dreams that night were muddled and terrifying. Old college chums with sophisticated attitudes about unwanted pregnancies drifted in and out of them, and her cousin Alison was screaming at them all, and Quinn was racing to catch Alison before she dropped into the quarry and drowned. Only Alison wasn't drowning, she was hanging by her neck, and Olivia was crying and trying to cut down the rope and pull her cousin to safety. But Alison was too heavy; Olivia needed Quinn.
In her last dream, Olivia had the horrifying sense that she was going to fail; that Alison wasn't going to make it and it was going to be Olivia's fault. Just before it happened, she woke herself up. And after that she kept herself up, propped in a sitting position against two pillows, one of them Quinn's, until the first glimmer of light appeared and a robin began its absurdly cheerful refrain from a branch of a maple outside Olivia's bedroom window.
It was the first day of spring.