Pinch of Love (9781101558638) (22 page)

“Hey,” I say. “I still have the EpiPen.”

“Keep it. I have a million of them stashed all over. Oh.” He pulls Nick's keys from his jeans pocket. “I guess I should give back these.”

When I take the keys, his lips part, as if he's about to add something. But instead he nods and softly closes the front door behind him.

 

 

THREE FORTY A.M. It's just Ahab and me at the hilltop field, under spotlights so intense, they make it look like daytime. The snow here looks pockmarked, and the cold air catches my breath in little white clouds. I watch them disperse into the night.

On the far side of the field, snow flies after Ahab. He gallops half an arc, pauses, and strikes a beatnik-poet pose. He sneezes, and the sound echoes off the bleachers. Then he sprints ten feet in one direction, pivots, and sprints again, and I glimpse Mr. Bedard's cat on the other side of the fence. The cat swishes his tail and meows. Ahab gives up, paces toward the goalpost, and paws the snow.

I shiver and recall Garrett's lips on mine, his arms encircling me as he pulled me close and wrapped me inside the blanket. Kissing him was a mistake. It was too soon. It's still too soon.

My fingers find something small and metal in my coat pocket. The charm, Trudy's fairy, which pierced the paper bag of goat cheese she sent home with me, that first time I went to her house.

Finally, Ahab lopes back to me, panting. He's happy and spent, like those people meant for the mural in Gail's g.d. guest bathroom. I clip the fairy onto his collar, alongside his scratched, fire-hydrant-shaped dog license, which is proof that he is a Munker, embarrassed yet proud, like us all.

AHAB AND I SHARE A PILLOW. I breathe into his neck. I'm just about to fall asleep, hovering in that between-world, where sometimes Nick's voice sounds so close, I swear he's next to me in bed.

In my half dream—and in real life—Gladys and the boys sing about that midnight train. She'd rather live in his world than live without him in hers.

On the words “He's leavin',” the Pips skip. “He's leavin' ”—scratch.

“He's leavin' ”—scratch.

“He's leavin' ”—scratch.

Ahab stirs, yawns, and rubs his face against the pillowcase. Nick's pillowcase.

I'm out of bed. I'm at the turntable, studying the record in my hands. The scratch is almost imperceptible.

“How, Cap'n? How'd it get scratched?”

I answer for him in croaking Captain Ahab Voice. “Peckered if I know, Rose-Ellen.”

When I blow across the vinyl, a fleck of lint flies up. G.d. lint. Sometimes it's not big things that break me, that destroy me. Sometimes—maybe even most times—the small things are the most explosive. Something about that lint twisting around in the lamplight makes me feel lonely and fragile, hopeless and trapped and tiny. My hands shake; my lips tingle. I almost cry but stave the tears with a few deep, ragged breaths.

My heart doesn't thump for four whole seconds. I imagine it suspended in a dark cavity like a watch on a chain, like a sleeping bat in a wet cave. Then it beats again, crazily, like horses trapped and kicking in a fiery stable. Then nonbeats. Then fierce beats.

Nonbeats.

Fierce beats.

I need to get out of the g.d. house. Get away from the attic, the singed cube—and whatever is inside it.

I'll go to the Muffinry. And this time I'll enter the Muffinry. EJ and I will talk. It will be okay, and life will go on, because it has to. Because it should.

Trembling, I kiss Ahab above his furry eye patch and pull the covers to his chin. But he stands, shakes the covers off, and follows me downstairs. He'll never leave me, my Captain.

“Laugh, by Lucifer's teat, laugh!” I say. I yank on his booties, his coat. “
'
Tis a merry hour! Arr!” I zip my boots over my pajama pants. I zip my coat over my T-shirt—Nick's T-shirt from The Trip, one of the corny ones Russ made. It's red and says WIPPAMUNK LOVES NEW ORLEANS. Pastor Sheila gave me the T-shirt that morning in Gail's driveway. Paint covered both my arms, and a dead pine needle poked from Pastor Sheila's strawberry curls. Father Chet stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders, his cheeks wet. Mom and Dad, Terry with an arm around Gail, who pressed Tasha against her hip—the five of them watched from the deck, lined at the railing. In my memory they're perfectly still and sepia toned, like figures in an old-fashioned lithograph.

“Yo-ho-ho!” I clip on Ahab's leash.

We slip and slide down High Street, past prefab colonial homes, Bedard's Orchard, the police station. We turn left onto Main Street and head for the junction of Route 331.

The sky is a weird black-pink hue, no stars. Which means—as every Munker knows—snow. “Red sky at dawn,” I mutter, “sailors be warned!”

My chest alternates between fierce thumps and nonthumps.

A police cruiser slows and stops in front of the cemetery gates, by the three-hundred-year-old maple, the oldest tree in Worcester County. Blue and red lights swirl as France stands in the open driver-side door.

“Hey,” I say. “What's up?”

“Bit late for a walk, Zell.”

I shade my eyes. “Or a bit early.”

“Need anything?”

“Nah.”

“Need a ride?”

“Just some fresh air.”

Ahab whines; he hates stopping.

“France? Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“On The Trip, did Nick ever mention a present?”

“A present?”

“He was going to give it to me,” I say. “When he got back.”

“Is that what was in your oven?”

I nod.

“No. Not to me, anyway. Sorry.”

“That's okay. Just thought I'd ask.”

The tip of her nose is bright red; the rest of her face looks blanched. Major Memory Smack: At my wedding, toward the end of the night, I stepped out onto the balcony of the base lodge to clear my head. I gazed at Mount Wippamunk—the incredible spotlights, the skiers, the boarders, the chairs in their relentless ascents and descents. Next to me the roof sloped low, and a life-size Santa perched on a red sleigh. He gripped the reins, directing a team of little foam reindeer.

I heard a hiccup. “France?” I said.

Her bony arm—sheathed in navy crushed velvet—shot up from the back of the sleigh. Her speech was slurry. “Over here. That's Officer Frances Hogan to you.” She kept her hand raised for the duration of our conversation; I spoke to brittle, hang-nailed fingers.

“You're not a cop yet, France,” I said.

“Bummah,” she said. “You mean I can't legally handcuff Santa?”

“Why don't you come down out of there?”

“I'm so happy for you, Zell. I'm so happy for you and Nick.”

“Thanks.”

Another hiccup gave way to sniffling.

“Beer tears?” I asked.

“Nick is a good man. And you are a lucky woman. You won, fair and square.”

“Won what?”

“You won. You're a winner.” Sniffles. Hiccup. “You're
the
winner. The winner of Nicholas Roy.”

“Can I help you down out of there? It's not a real sleigh, France. It's probably only plywood or cardboard. And you're three stories up, on a slanted roof. And you've had
a lot
to drink.”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” France shouted, like a bingo announcer. Her hand formed a thumbs-up sign. “We have a winnah!”

Real life. Real time. Four A.M. Main Street, Wippamunk.

“I said, do you want to come see my kitten?” France says. She tugs her head toward a little brick building nearby: Wippamunk Flowers. Her apartment's above the shop. “Come meet him. He's so cute.”

“What about Ahab?” I say. “He likes to chase and eat cats.”

France opens the back door of the cruiser, and Ahab climbs inside. He looks more like an heir stepping into a limo than a dog hopping into a car.

“We'll be right back, Captain,” says France, shutting the door. “Good boy.”

I follow her around the back of the flower shop and climb the slippery iron stairs, gripping the railing tight. She keys in, turns on a dull lamp, and makes a few kissing noises. The kitten skids across the kitchen floor, mewling the whole way. It's solid gray with a black nose, green eyes, and a scabby notch in its left ear.

“His name's Bergie,” France says. She scoops him up. “It's short for Bergamot. I was going to name him Earl Grey—get it? Like the tea?—but I decided that was too obvious. So, Bergie it is.”

“He's adorable,” I say. “And the name suits him.”

“Too bad Bergie and Ahab will never have playdates,” she says.

Her apartment is hot, as if she turned up the heat full blast before she left for work. I undo my coat halfway. Little pebbles of kitty litter dot the kitchen floor.

She sits in an old wicker rocker next to the window. Bergie immediately settles in the seam where her legs touch. He tucks his front paws underneath his body. She scratches his chin and imitates his purring. “I got him at the shelter. The dog officer tipped me off that he had a kitten. A cute little sweet gray kitten who'd been abandoned. Want some soup?”

“Nah,” I say. Soup's an odd thing to offer someone at four in the morning, but that's France.

“I could open a can and heat some up.”

“I should get back to the Captain soon.”

I look around. Besides the kitchen, there are only three rooms: a closet-size bathroom; a little sitting room with a stained, sagging couch and milk crates for bookshelves; and a tiny bedroom. Through the bedroom door I see the corner of an old cedar chest, and a bedpost, which Bergie apparently uses as a scratch post.

“Are you okay?” France asks.

“Sure.” I unzip my coat all the way and take off my hat. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we haven't hung out in a while. We should go out for a beer or something sometime. At the Blue Plate. Talk about things. You know. Girls' night.”

I try to look enthusiastic about girls' night—I appreciate the thought—but my face falls.

Balls.

“I'm sorry, France,” I say. “It's just that, a lot of times when you're around, I think about Nick's last night in Wippamunk. It's not your fault, of course. But . . .”

She gives Bergie's back one long, slow stroke. “You mean, the accident on Old Rutland Road?”

I nod. “I just wish his last experience with Wippamunk was a positive one. Instead of a horrible one.”

A Memory Smack nearly sends me reeling, and I steady myself on the back of a kitchen chair. I awoke at 12:02 A.M. to find a note on Nick's pillow.

HE CAME HOME an hour later, maybe more. He took off his boots. They thunked on the floor. I heard him undressing, and I kept my eyes closed, my back to him, as he told me what happened.

On Old Rutland Road his headlights illuminated a flattened tangle of metal and rubber, glass and tree bark. What used to be a black car was upside down. Blood washed the pavement and the dashboard, which rested against the base of a tree. Fragments of guts and brain and skull dotted the pavement.

France walked around the car and shined her flashlight here and there. Dennis followed Chief Kent around the scene and took notes. Nick photographed the tow-truck operator, who struggled trying to hook the wreck onto a big chain.

“It was horrible,” said Nick, fluffing his pillow and sinking into it with a sigh. He caressed my butt cheek over the blanket. “Horrible and sad. France said the driver was just a kid. He was flying down Old Rutland Road. It's a curvy road, slick with wet leaves this time of year. Kid wasn't wearing a seat belt. He struck a tree head-on. First responders searched for his body for twenty minutes because it had flown fifty yards into the woods and landed ten feet up, in the trees. Zell?”

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry. I shouldn't be telling you all that. Filling your head with all that.”

“It's okay,” I said. He snuggled against me, and somehow I fell asleep, feeling almost guilty for my comforts: my husband's arm around me in our warm bed, Ahab stretched across my feet.