Woman in Red (21 page)

When he was called into the principal’s office the following day, one look at Mr. Givens’s face told him that he hadn’t been summoned to discuss helping another kid who may have been struggling in math, the usual reason Mr. Givens wanted to see him. The expression on the principal’s face was grim. As he sank into the chair opposite Mr. Givens’s desk, Jeremy sensed he was in trouble, the kind of trouble that had last night’s activities written all over it. A cold wave of panic went through him, and he felt his hangover drain away like so much dirty water from a stopped-up rain gutter, leaving him clear-headed, every circuit in his brain buzzing.

“I just got off the phone with Missus Flagler,” said Mr. Givens. Jeremy must have looked blank, for he added, more pointedly, “Carrie Ann’s mother.”

Jeremy’s spine stiffened, and he nodded slowly in mute acknowledgment that he did indeed know Carrie Ann.

“She’s extremely upset,” the principal went on, his normally jolly face—with its polished-looking pink cheeks and clipped white beard that made him look like a modern-day Santa Claus—flat and expressionless. “It seems Carrie Ann ran into some trouble last night. Would you know anything about that, son?” He stared hard at Jeremy across the cluttered surface of his desk.

Jeremy rearranged his features in what he hoped was an innocent expression. “Uh, well, yeah we were at a party last night. Me and her and some other people. Okay, we had a little too much to drink, but . . .” He shrugged, as if to say,
you know how it is
. But even as he spoke, images from last night flashed through his head: Carrie Ann passed out drunk on the mattress, her thighs sticky with his come; then later, he and Rud and Chuckie carrying her outside while Kenny, the only one sober enough to drive, brought the car around. Shame welled up in him when he thought about how they’d dumped her in front of her house, like so much garbage.

“I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.”

“She’s all right, isn’t she?” A new fear crept in. Jeremy had heard about people dying of alcohol poisoning. Suppose something like that had happened to Carrie Ann?

“She’s fine,” said the principal, in a tone that conveyed that, while she wasn’t in any mortal danger, something was seriously wrong nonetheless. “But the police have been called in, so if there’s anything you need to get off your chest, I think now’s the time.”

“The police?” Jeremy’s voice went up an octave.

“She claims she was raped.”

After several moments of silence, in which every noise seemed amplified—the distant shrilling of the third period bell, the humming of the fax machine and tapping of a keyboard in the outer office—Mr. Givens prompted him once more. “Well, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Jeremy shook his head, which wobbled as if too heavy for his neck. “No, sir.”

The principal’s eyes narrowed. He seemed to be trying to assess whether Jeremy was holding back or if it was the shock making him so uncommunicative. He must have decided that Jeremy was innocent, at least until proven guilty, for he said, not unkindly, “In any case, I don’t think you should say anything to the police, not until we’ve spoken with your dad. I have a call in to him. I’ve left several messages, in fact. Do you know where I might be able reach him?”

Jeremy searched his mind, which was running in crazed circles, trying to think where his dad might be. Randy always kept his cell phone on, so Jeremy could reach him in case of an emergency, but parts of his territory were in areas that had spotty service.

Some impulse made him reach into the back pocket of his jeans and pull out a folded piece of binder paper with a phone number written on it. He’d been carrying it around for weeks, with no thought of ever needing it. Not until now.

He handed it to Mr. Givens. “Try my mom.”

It took Colin several days just to weed through the junk in the Henleys’ shed. With only a vague idea of what to do with the equipment now piled in his grandfather’s old studio, he located, with the help of the Internet, a small-scale oyster farmer down on the Kitsap Peninsula, by the name of Len Jarvis. Colin was on a plane the next day, and hours later he was standing ankle deep, in rubber boots, in the shallow water off Hood Canal, listening as Len Jarvis took him through the process of stake and line oyster culturing.

Len dipped a hand horned with calluses into the water and pulled up a half shell to which clung a dozen or more baby oysters no bigger than the nail on his pinkie. “Now that there’s your mother shell,” he said, explaining how the discarded shells of shucked oysters were mixed with oyster larvae. Once the larvae had adhered and were sufficiently grown, the mother shells with their “babies” attached were fixed to lengths of rope with a stringing machine, like so many bulbs on strands of Christmas tree lights. The lines were then strung out in evenly spaced rows along the tidal
flat, fixed at either end with lengths of PVC pipe embedded in the silt. It took several years for an oyster to fully mature, so it wasn’t for those seeking quick results, Len warned.

“You have your predators, too,” he went on. There was a tiny snail called an oyster drill, and something known as Denman Island disease. Starfish could be a problem, too. There were also the herons, seagulls, and otters that patrolled these waters in search of food. “We don’t mind ‘em taking their fair share, but they can be greedy little bastards, if you let ‘em.” He squinted off into the distance at the lines strung out in rows, held by barnacle-crusted stakes at either end. “Course the
real
culprits are our own kind.”

Colin gave a solemn nod.

“Back in my father’s day, the pulp mills had killed off most of the shellfish around here,” Len said. “We’ve come a long way in bringing ‘em back, but with pollution it’s an ongoing battle.” He turned to Colin. “You planning on doing this as a hobby, or are you looking to go into business?”

“I’m not in it for the money,” Colin said.

“Good. Because you won’t get rich.” He regarded Colin for a moment, sizing him up. “Funny sort of work for a man like you. I’d have pegged you more as a city boy. Just out of curiosity, what got you interested?”

Colin told him about Mr. Deets, and the summers he’d spent on Grays Island, smiling to himself as he reflected on happier times.

They spoke a bit longer, Len refreshing Colin’s memory as to the different varieties of oysters cultivated in these parts: the Pacific, which could grow to the size of a man’s fist; the Olympia, which was the only native to these shores; the small, sweet Kumumoto, which had been brought over from Japan. As they walked back toward
shore, Len dipped a hand into the water once more, this time extracting a fully grown specimen. Using the shucking knife he pulled from his back pocket, he pried it open, severing the abductor muscle and running the knife along the crevice between the two halves of the shell, all in one expert motion. He offered it to Colin, who tipped it into his mouth, briefly savoring the salty-sweet taste of it on his tongue before it slid down his throat. If the best memories of his childhood could be distilled into an essence, it would be this, he thought.

Two hours later, after a tour of the hatchery, during which Len introduced him to the astounding fact that a single oyster could produce up to five million eggs, Colin was on a plane headed home. He didn’t know if he’d be as productive, but he felt the glimmerings of excitement, a sense of what the future might hold, a feeling he hadn’t had in very long time.

In the days that followed he set about fashioning the rudiments of an operation. With the table saw he’d salvaged from the Henleys’ shed, he cut PVC pipe into even two-foot lengths, into which he drilled holes with which to secure the ropes. The work was repetitive and timeconsuming, but it didn’t bother him. It eased his mind and kept his hands occupied. And at night, for the first time in years, he had no trouble falling asleep.

He wasn’t without company, either. The dog, Shep, seemed to have more or less taken up residence at his place. He’d sit on his haunches, at a dignified distance, following Colin’s every move. Occasionally Colin would find himself talking to the dog, explaining what he was doing or simply shooting the breeze. There was a queer kind of formality to the proceedings, Colin hard at work, with the border collie
standing in silent attendance, like a butler in his morning coat.

After a long day at his workbench or down on the cove pounding in stakes when the tide was out, Colin would return to the bungalow, which he still thought of as his grandfather’s, and light a fire to take off the chill. Often, as he did so, he would find himself gazing at the portrait over the mantel. It haunted him. Something about the expression on Eleanor Styles’s face was both playful and melancholic, as if she’d known the contentment she was feeling in that moment wouldn’t last.

His thoughts would turn then to Alice Kessler. Something about her had stayed with him as well. Maybe it was that he felt a kinship with her. She too was struggling to build a new life amid the rubble of her old one. He’d heard from his grandfather’s caretaker, Orin, whom Colin had kept on to do odd jobs on an as-needed basis, about the café she’d bought and was in the process of renovating. He admired her courage in taking on such a risky enterprise; not only was she refusing to be beaten down, she was flying in the face of her detractors.

He was disappointed that he had yet to hear from her, but supposed he would eventually. The portrait would still be here, whenever she had the time to stop by. For much to the regret of the dealers who’d called with offers, he’d decided to keep it. If his grandfather had wanted it in some stranger’s possession, he would have sold it years before.

One day in late November, Colin happened to glance out the window and noticed an old green Toyota coming up the drive. He watched as it pulled to a stop and a slender brown-haired woman climbed out, a woman he recognized
at once as Alice Kessler. As he hurried off to meet her, he felt his pulse quicken.

“Alice. What a nice surprise,” he greeted her.

“I’m sorry, I should have called first.” Her eyes dropped to his jeans and work shirt, streaked with dirt and PVC dust. “Is this a bad time?

“Not at all. I was just about to take a break,” he fibbed. “Why don’t we go inside. I’ll make some tea.”

Her gaze fell on the border collie, who sat looking up at her, his head cocked and ears pricked. “Hello, boy. Don’t I know you from somewhere?” She bent down, holding out a hand. Shep took a tentative sniff, his plumed tail sweeping slowly from side to side. She straightened, observing to Colin, “Looks as if you’ve found yourself a pet.”

“More like he’s found me.” Colin smiled down at Shep. “He’s a very discerning fellow. He doesn’t give his affections easily. I’m still not sure if I’ve made the final cut.”

“Well, at least you have each other for company. It must get lonely out here.” Her gaze took in the wind-scoured bluff and cove sparkling below, and to the east the high brow of the ridge, with its line of trees like bristles on a comb.

“It does at times,” he conceded.

She looked better than when he’d last seen her. Healthier. The jeans that had hung on her before were filled out nicely in all the right places and the hollows in her cheeks not so pronounced. But her eyes hadn’t lost their look of melancholy. And he sensed a certain tension in her as well, as if this were more than a social call.

In the kitchen, he put the kettle on to boil. He’d given up coffee; it reminded him too much of AA meetings, the
ever-present smell of it in the air and seeing those new in sobriety, like him, clinging to their Styrofoam cups as if to a lifeline.

“So, I hear you bought a restaurant,” Colin remarked, as he put the kettle on to boil.

“Word travels fast.” Alice smiled ruefully, removing a stack of newspapers from one of the chairs before taking a seat at the table. “Yes, I’m now the proud owner of a former fish-and-chips joint. It was pretty much on its last leg, but it’s amazing what a few cans of paint and a liberal application of elbow grease can do. The grand opening is next week. Nothing fancy, just family and friends. I hope you can make it.”

Colin warmed. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

He turned to find her eyeing him curiously. “What about you? From the looks of it, you’ve been doing more than catching up on your reading.”

“As it so happens, I’m thinking of going into business myself.” More than thinking, but he didn’t want to commit himself to anything just yet.

“Would it have anything to do with oyster farming?”

He broke into a grin. “Don’t tell me you’re a mind reader on top of everything else?”

“No. Just observant.” She gestured toward the brochures he’d left sitting out on the table, picking up a pamphlet titled
Small Scale Oyster Farming in the Pacific Northwest.
“I’ll say one thing, if you were looking for a change, this is about as extreme as it gets.”