The Four Corners Of The Sky (43 page)

Sam moved away the woman’s hand, flicking the little wood Scrabble squares across the board. “Come on, Ruthie, stop messing around. No proper names.”

Sipping her wine, the coppery-haired woman shrugged. “Hey,
ruth
means sorrow and compassion.
Jack
’s a word too. It means, oh, an apparatus to jack up a price or an automobile; it means jack-o-lantern, jack-in-the-box, lumberjack, blackjack, hijack, jack-of-all-trades, straightjacket, jackrabbit, let’s see, jackpot.
Jack
means whatever the jackshit you want it to.”

With perverse pleasure, Annie laughed, impressed by all the rapid effortless words, aligning herself with this stranger against the aunt she knew and loved. “
Jack,
” she agreed, “means a lot of things.”

Ruthie, swallowing the last bite of her praline, reached for Annie’s algebra notebook and pencil, glanced at the unsolved problem written there. “What are you looking for?” she asked the teenager. “The roots of that cubic?”

“I don’t usually have trouble with this kind of thing,” Annie felt she needed to say.

Ruthie wrote something on the margin then handed her back the notebook. “Just a little glitch. One of the solutions is an imaginary number. Try 2i and the others will come. Okay?”

Annie looked at the equation, now solved “…Oh. Right.”

Sam folded, unfolded the dishcloth.

The woman leaned over, affectionately rubbing Sam’s short hair. “You never let it grow out?” She found a brush in her purse and drew it through her own rich wild hair. “Listen to this, Annie. Sam’s mother cut Sam’s hair off when she was about your age. Just ran at Sam with the scissors, held her down and cut it off. Right, Sam?”

Annie’s heart jumped in horror. “Why did she do that?”

The stranger said mildly, “I think she went crazy after her husband killed her little boy.”

“Ruthie, for Christ’s sake,” Sam muttered.

“Oh he didn’t do it on purpose. Accidents happen.”

The phone rang and rang. Finally Annie pulled her eyes away from the visitor. “I’ll get it in the hall; it’s probably Georgette,” said Annie. “Nice to meet you.”

“You too.”

Annie ran out of the kitchen and through the house to the hallway. From the kitchen she could hear Georgette’s aunt saying to Sam, “So Jack had a kid. Amazing. Where’s her mother?”

Sam’s reply was too soft to hear.

“Georgette, I’ll call you right back,” Annie whispered, hanging up so she could tiptoe back to the doorway of the kitchen, where she was shocked to see Sam in tears, her long tan strong arms stretched out across the table toward Georgette’s aunt. Ruthie said to her, “Well, if this woman ever does show up, she’ll see who the real mother’s been.”

Sam cried more. “I wish you could stay a little longer. Clark would be glad to see you.”

“Would he? Why?”

The two were silent a moment and then Sam nodded. “That was a miserable summer, wasn’t it? We all messed up.”

“You can mess up a lot before you’re even twenty when you’re moving too fast.”

They left together by the kitchen door. Annie watched them slowly walking through the back yard, past the old rose garden, past the orchard of plum and peach trees, toward the Nickerson house. She went into the morning room to look at the blue-sky puzzle that had been left practically untouched for years. There was now only a third left to go.

That night Annie had a version of her old dream that she’d had so often when she was younger that it had been called “Annie’s dream.” She was flying in her small red airplane over the ocean but this time she had all the flying knowledge that she’d learned from D. K. Destin. Down below her she saw the small ship in the tumbling waves. On the ship stood the young woman in a gold cape. The woman raised her arms, calling on Annie to save her before her ship sank under the waves. This time when Annie’s dad flew past her in his little red plane, she didn’t even bother calling for him to come help. He soared away to the horizon, leaving behind him a trail of curling smoke. She flew as fast as she could to the ship but it was sinking quickly, waves swelling over the bow. Annie awakened in a sob and Sam came hurrying into her room, promising her everything would be all right.

Everything pretty much was. Annie’s life was full and immediate. The next day Georgette and she were preoccupied with composing a letter to old Mr. Neubruck next door, who had called the police because of the noise of their latest party, informing him that his refusal to recycle and his massive use of pesticides on his tomatoes were polluting the planet.

Within a week, they were no longer discussing the mysterious Ruthie, who had left in the night with cardboard boxes from the Nickerson house. (Georgette’s mother said they contained Ruthie’s share of the family plates and silverware but such objects seemed too mundane to interest such a woman.) She never, as far as they knew, returned to Emerald.

Annie never had the dream again and she forgot about Sam’s crying in the kitchen. Still, a vague memory persisted of a handsome woman who’d known how to do algebra and who had made Annie laugh by playing with such quickness on the possible meanings of the word Jack.

Now, all these years later, how odd that the memory had fluttered back at her—like approach lights blinking—the day after she’d seen the woman on the lawn of Golden Days. And even more oddly after she’d seen the woman, or someone like her, standing at the hotel pool.

Georgette thought Annie should go to bed. “This is just a series of coincidences that you’ve gotten fixated on because you’re tired. And I’ve got to go to sleep.”

“Why do all my friends keep telling me they need to go to sleep?”

Georgette yawned. “Human. Your friends are human.”

“Trevor is in bed by ten o’clock.”

“Bring him on,” said Georgette.

“Brad went to bed early too. What I need’s someone who can’t sleep.”

Georgette suggested that midnight might be a good time to go out looking for such a night owl. “Didn’t you say you were in a bar? Bars are full of insomniacs.”

A
t La Loca, Chamayra finally returned with Sergeant Hart’s home address, which proved to be only a few blocks away.

“Danny’s phone’s dead, so maybe go by the house.” The waitress added, “Don’t be causing trouble, okay? Raffy’s left me a message saying don’t talk to nobody about your dad. Where is he?”

“My dad? I hope he’s in Golden Days.”

“No, where’s Raffy? He’s suppose to be like here now and, hey, you see him?” She flung out her arms at the crowded room. “So now I’m gonna worry. You go check on Danny. I can’t leave. I can’t lose my job.” The short woman wiped sweat from her gleamy arms and face.

“I’m sorry I’m causing trouble.”

Chamayra pointed at the words “La Loca” on her turquoise shirt. “I been doing my nurse training a long time and waiting tables a lot longer. You ask me? Everybody’s like in the same crazy boat. Name of the boat?
La Loca
. Everybody’s like, you know, sailing off the edge of the world fast as they can get there. So I say, just whoa. Hang out the Love sign.” She leaned into the booth and shook the blue fish netting overhead, where the plastic G.I. Joes tangled with the Barbie dolls. “Raffy’s totally like got this thing how Dan’s gonna bust him big-time. No way.”

“No way?” Annie’s eyebrow went up. “Isn’t Hart
trying
to arrest Raffy? He sure looked like it yesterday at Golden Days when he chased him down Ficus Avenue.”

Upset, the waitress slapped her hands on her arms. “You kidding me? You saw him at Golden Days chasing Raffy?”

“Yes, yesterday.”

“Yesterday?! Why didn’t you tell me? Motherfucker, I got to get your dad out of that place pronto. Those two
pingitas,
Raffy and your dad, gonna get me fired! What is their
problem?”

“It’s a cops and robbers sort of thing with them,” suggested Annie.

“Men, they’re so stupid. And me, I had to have boys. And you know what they’ll grow up to be?” Chamayra hoisted her tray of dirty dishes. “Men.”

“Probably.”

Driving along a moonlit street beside the midnight blue of the bay, Annie finally found Hart’s small bungalow (its curb number obscured by weeds). The sawed-up trunk of a large magnolia tree lay scattered about the front lawn in raw stacks. Mounds of chippings and sawdust matted the patchy grass and there were six piles of branches arranged in a tall circle as if in the morning the yard would be the setting for some horrific auto-da-fé. On a grass-choked driveway a blue pickup truck was parked with its doors flung open and with a windsurfer in the back. In the garage sat a vintage Thunderbird coupe, pale blue with a white hardtop and color-match rings on the whitewall tires and porthole windows.

The 1920s Spanish stucco house had its windows and metal screen door thrown wide open. Out of the windows she could hear Otis Redding sadly singing, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now),” as if the house itself were in mourning. The only light was the blue wavering shimmer of a television screen. Chamayra had given her no idea whether Hart lived here alone or not. No one answered her repeated call through the opened door and finally she walked uninvited into the darkness.

Without the sound on, a baseball game in a half-empty stadium played on a flat screen television at the other end of the room.

“Sergeant Hart? It’s Annie Goode. Daniel Hart? Anybody home?” Turning from the small arched foyer into the first room, she tripped over something metallic and sharp that turned out to be a chainsaw. Rubbing her ankle, she felt for a light switch.

A recessed light revealed a living room in disarray. There were half-emptied packing boxes on the bare terra-cotta tile floor. On built-in shelves along the walls, CDs, DVDs, and hardcover books had been stacked among wood angels, clay mermaids, and tin-toy bands.

On the floor lay a large, smashed framed group wedding photograph, glass slivers sticking into it, obscuring the faces.

There was no furniture in the room except for one tanned leather Deco armchair with an ottoman. Beside this chair was a round glass coffee table that also looked Deco.

Lying on the floor, wedged between the chair and the stereo, through which Otis Redding was pleading, “Please don’t make me stop now,” Annie saw a young well-built male body wearing nothing but pale blue boxer shorts and one white sock. It was the back of a young man who looked to be in perfect physical condition except for the fact that, judging from his contorted torso and stiffened limbs, he was dead. The rest of his clothes (shirt, pants, sports jacket) lay scattered about the otherwise bare floor like little throw rugs. As Annie leaned over his body, she smelt the agave fumes of tequila and saw a half-empty bottle of Cuervo 1800 in his rigid hand.

Then she screamed, as suddenly the man’s other arm flung out, hitting her back and knocking her down on top of him. Pressed against his breastbone, Annie could now see that the body was alive, the chest had a heart in it that was beating, although nothing else moved, not a tremble of the dark-bronze curls. As she tried to lift herself away, the arm stiffened rigidly.

Then the body turned over. The thick long eyelashes flickered. It was Daniel Hart. His arms moved tightly, warmly, around her and unexpectedly he kissed her. The kiss took her breath away, soft, strong, unending until she pulled back and elbowed him in the stomach.

Slowly his mouth spasmed, forming the sounds
ooofff
and then
drinnn…,
which Annie took to mean an effort at the word
drink
. Pulling herself up, she made her way along a hallway whose walls had bright-painted wood crèches and skeletons on them, past two bedrooms (one empty, one with nothing in it but a large bright blue wooden bed, its head and foot hand painted with what looked like Mexican saints).

In the colorfully tiled kitchen, someone appeared to have started preparations for some complicated Asian dish, then lost heart and quit. There were grocery bags and wooden cooking utensils everywhere, copper pans stacked by the stove.

Filling a coffee mug with water, she brought it back to the living room. The body hadn’t moved. As she lifted Hart’s head, his lashes quivered, then his eyes opened, blue as Miami neon, Deco blue, the blue of the sea in Annie’s dream. She held up the mug to his lips.

“‘Sorry, no silver cup,’” she said as she tilted the water into his mouth.

He spluttered spitting, pushing the mug aside. In a rusted croak, he growled at her, “It’s ‘Sorry, no silver cups.’ Not ‘cup.’ ‘Cups.’ You don’t look like John Wayne.”

Annie was taken aback but replied, “You don’t look like Claire Trevor either.”[__] Sam had mentioned on the phone that this Sergeant Hart had made some comment about his familiarity with old movies. He certainly appeared to know her dad’s old quote from
Stagecoach
. It might have made him interesting if he hadn’t so obviously been a hopeless drunk, an emotional wreck, and a derelict housekeeper.

She offered him more water, but he shook his head with a groan, twisting his face as he slowly unbent one rigid leg. “Listen, Duke,” he grumbled, grabbing the mug and pouring the water on his head, “Water’s not a drink.”

“Take it or leave it,” she told him exasperated. “I need some information from you about my father.”

“Get in line.” He rubbed the water in his hair over his face and chest. Yanking his jaw from side to side, apparently to see if it still worked, he lurched to his feet with moans that sounded much like the wailing lamentations of Otis Redding, now singing “Mr. Pitiful” in the background.

He stumbled, his hand on Annie’s shoulder to steady himself. “Pardon me,” he said. He hobbled down the hall into his kitchen, returning with a long-necked bottle of beer. After a long swallow, he stared a while at her immaculate white slacks and T-shirt. “Annie Goode. You look like a paramedic.”

“You look like you need one. You shouldn’t drink so much.”

“You’re telling me.”

Tugging at his boxer shorts, he walked to his opened front door, glanced out. In horror, he grabbed at the doorway, staggered back to the huge power saw on the hall floor and picked it up. “My fucking magnolia tree! I fucking sawed down my fucking magnolia tree!” Hurrying outside, he stared aghast at a lawn full of leafy branches and fat cut logs.