Rescue (29 page)
“Yours,” Webster says. “You shook it.” He thinks it good advice for his daughter.
“But the box belongs to you,” she counters. “I gave it to you.”
“OK,” he says, relieved that the liquid produced nothing worse. “I’ll take it.”
Rowan shakes the cube again.
“Treasure awaits if you can find it,”
she reads. She looks puzzled. “What does it mean?”
“I think it means exactly what it says,” Webster replies. “Something wonderful is out there if you can recognize it.”
“But what is it?”
“That’s for you to discover,” he says.
“You do it,” Rowan says, holding the box out for Sheila. Sheila takes a step backward. “No thanks,” she says. “Maybe some
other day.”
Surprises don’t work for her either.
Sheila and Webster make their way across a field of green. They aren’t as early as Webster imagined they would be. The front
rows are filled already. Sheila’s heels sink into the sod, and once they have to stop so that Sheila can extricate a shoe.
Webster chooses a seat on the aisle. Always the need for the quick getaway, a habit from years on the job. Sheila sits beside
him as he waves to Gina’s mother, Eileen, who isn’t hiding her curiosity about Sheila. Webster scans the large crowd. Grandparents
and siblings next to parents his age and older. He’ll know which clan belongs to which student when the seniors cross the
stage. The family will shout and cheer and make catcalls to single out their child. Webster is glad he has Sheila with him.
How much noise can a single father make?
His parents once sat here, as he is doing now. He remembers wanting only to get away with his friends and go to a series of
parties that left him so wiped out by the end of the night that he fell asleep on a stranger’s floor.
A woman he doesn’t recognize approaches from the side. Beside her is a young man in black glasses. “Mr. Webster?” the woman
asks.
“Yes?”
“This is the baby you helped bring into the world nineteen years ago. Aaron and I are here for Joshua, Aaron’s younger brother.”
“No kidding!” Webster says as he stands. He glances from mother to son. He’s tickled and amazed. “Hello, Aaron.”
The boy shakes his hand.
“I was so afraid that night,” the woman says.
“You and me both. I was just a rookie.”
“I’ve wanted to thank you for years, but our paths have seldom crossed, and when they did, you were always with someone else.”
“Well, it was a great experience for me.”
“The thing you said that made me not afraid? You said, ‘This baby’s going to come out hollering his head off. I can hear him
already.’ And that made me laugh, and I knew then that everything would be OK.”
She gives Webster a quick pat on the arm. “I’ll never forget it,” she says.
Webster sits. He’s treated a number of people in the crowd. He isn’t a hero in town. In fact he’s someone they hope never
to see at their homes or in the middle of a highway. But he’s part of the safety net that wraps itself around Hartstone, and
for that they are grateful.
The sun beats on his head and the temperature rises. Maybe high seventies already? Webster watches as men shed their jackets,
women their wraps. The field seems vast and fertile. Canned music begins from the speakers, and everyone stands. A line of
students in maroon robes is poised at the entrance to the aisle of chairs. The teachers lead, some with academic gowns or
sashes. Mrs. McDougal, the principal, has on a black velvet beret. Women in the audience have tissues out already. It’s the
music that sets them off.
The kids in line seem ebullient, ready for anything. Is high school so awful, they can’t wait to be out? Or are they merely
cel
ebrating a milestone? Webster is aware of Sheila beside him and is glad she’s tall enough to witness the spectacle coming
down the aisle. Webster will have to wait until the end to see his daughter. He minds that by the time Rowan reaches him,
many of the parents will already have turned away and sat down. Webster will stand until all the students are in place up
front.
The lump is in his throat already—the music must have been composed for this effect. He glances at Sheila, who has a tight
smile on her face. But she softens when she catches a glimpse of Rowan. Webster turns and watches his daughter approach the
stage. She’s unzipped her gown just enough to show off the blue and silver necklace—a gift to her mother. The mortarboard
seems to be doing its job. Rowan’s posture is for once erect. Her walk is steady, and she’s a mixture of gravity and playfulness,
winking at Webster as she passes.
The hooting and shouting dim as Mrs. McDougal takes the podium. She asks for a moment of silence for Kerry Coolidge, and Webster
notices that many of the senior girls are crying. Parents, too. It’s an awful moment, and Webster can’t help but think that
it might have been Rowan they were honoring with this brief silence. It’s an unbearable thought. He wonders if Kerry’s parents
are in the crowd. Had it been his daughter who died, he would have stayed home. Or he’d be in Africa. Anywhere but on this
field.
Mrs. McDougal swiftly returns to the ceremony by relating what a great year this has been for the seniors. She ticks off their
collective accomplishments, the only interesting one being the fact that the debate team won the state championship. The football
team didn’t fare as well, nor did the hockey team. The principal tells the crowd that eighty-five percent of the senior class
will
go to four-year colleges. The crowd applauds. Webster thinks about the fifteen percent who won’t. What will they do? Community
college? The military? Farming? Mrs. McDougal adds that she’s particularly proud of the community outreach by Rowan’s class—how
they’ve worked at shelters and volunteered their time to go into the elementary schools and work with special students.
And then Mrs. McDougal does something Webster didn’t anticipate. She asks all the parents to stand. She commands the students
to rise as well and give their parents a big hand for the love they’ve given and the sacrifices they’ve made to get the students
to this point.
Webster has eyes only for Rowan, who smiles and raises the fist of her good arm, her bad shoulder preventing clapping. He
gives her a grin.
Webster glances down at Sheila, who looks as though she’s been socked in the face. He tries to get her to stand with him,
but she sits rigid, waiting for the applause to end.
“I’m sorry about that,” Webster says when he sits down. “I had no idea they would do that, or I’d have prepared you.”
Sheila gives a small shrug, as though it means nothing to her, but Webster can see the pain on her face. For fifteen years,
she’s had to make no sacrifices for her daughter. She simply wasn’t there.
The heat rises as the speeches drone on. Sports awards are handed out, giving them greater weight than the academic awards,
which were handed out at a separate ceremony the previous week. Webster doesn’t mind this ritual. It’s partly for the kids
who have nothing else, some of whom have barely managed to graduate, who have nowhere to go next year. They get their shouts
and cheers, their fifteen seconds of fame.
In the hospital, Webster and Sheila managed to get Rowan to complete two take-home finals. His daughter finished them off
with ease, which suggested to Webster that she’d deliberately sabotaged herself. Elizabeth Washington called the admissions
committee at the university, explaining Rowan’s recent and unusual circumstances. Rowan will go to college in the fall.
Webster sheds his jacket, and Sheila does so as well. The teachers, in their robes, fan themselves with programs. Webster
yanks his tie. The weather will be a topic of conversation at graduation lunches: how off the forecasters were, how it feels
more like August than June. Hairdos will be limp; shirtsleeves will be rolled.
When the principal reaches the Rs, Sheila nudges him and asks for the camera.
“That’s OK, I can do it,” Webster says of the moment when he will leave his chair and squat in the grassy aisle with the parents
of the Ts and the Vs to snap a picture of sons or daughters receiving diplomas.
“I want you to be able to see it,” Sheila says. “You can’t see the real thing if you’re trying to frame a photograph.”
“You know how to use this model?” he asks, afraid that at the last minute Sheila won’t know which button to push.
“I do,” she says.
When the principal reaches the middle of the Ss (and there are always a lot of Ss), Sheila slides past him and makes her way
toward the front, running bent over in her white silk top and black trousers. He notices that her feet are bare.
He glances up just in time to see Rowan on the stairs to the podium. He hears his daughter’s name called.
Rowan Webster.
As she walks across the stage and shakes the hand of the vice
principal, many students clap and shout. Webster, surprised, adds his own catcall and whistle. It’s the injured-player syndrome,
the audience applauding the fact that Rowan is there at all, that she can walk across the stage just like the others. Rowan
smiles, flips off her mortarboard, bends, and points to the bare patch at the top of her head. The audience roars.
Before Rowan leaves the stage, she poses for the formal picture that every student will receive during the summer. In it,
her face will be turned, and Webster and Rowan will remember why. She’s searching for her dad, who is waving with both hands.
That’s it,
Webster tells himself as he surveys the field with all the parents and their children.
That’s all I need in life.
Sheila slides into her seat. “I got some good ones,” she says. She bends to put her shoes back on.
Webster, as if he’s done it every day of his life, as if he did it just the day before, trails his fingers from the small
of Sheila’s back to the nape of her neck.
Sheila turns her head. “Go slowly and be careful,” she says.
My tremendous thanks go to Linda O’Leary, EMT-I with the Manchester Rescue Squad of Manchester, Vermont, for her hours of
help with the EMT scenes. Any mistakes are my own.
Many thanks also to Genevieve Martland for her tour of Chelsea, Massachusetts. Again, errors in that chapter are mine only.
Thanks are not enough for Asya Muchnick, my lovely and gifted editor; for Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, my lovable, full-service
agent; for Michael Pietsch, to whom I owe everything; for Terry Adams, my loyal and savvy paperback editor; and for John Osborn,
love of my life.
Anita Shreve is the acclaimed author of fifteen previous novels, including
A Change in Altitude; The Pilot’s Wife,
which was a selection of Oprah’s Book Club; and
The Weight of Water,
which was a finalist for England’s Orange Prize. She was awarded the John P. Marquand Prize in American Literature. She lives
in Massachusetts.
LSO BY
A
NITA
S
HREVE
A Change in Altitude
Testimony
Body Surfing
A Wedding in December
Light on Snow
All He Ever Wanted
Sea Glass
The Last Time They Met
Fortune’s Rocks
The Pilot’s Wife
The Weight of Water
Resistance
Where or When
Strange Fits of Passion
Eden Close
Copyright © 2010 by Anita Shreve
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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First eBook Edition: November 2010
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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12916-9
