Charlie St. Cloud

by Ben Sherwood

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope,” Charlie said, setting down the cake. “This week in 1941, Teddy Ballgame played a doubleheader and went six for eight. The guy was only twenty-three years old.”

  “Oh no,” she said. “A Red Sox fan.”

  “You?”

  “Hate baseball. It’s so boring, I call it standball. You know, they just stand around for nine innings. Football is more my speed, and the Patriots are my guys.”

  “Really?” he said, a bit incredulous. “I didn’t figure you going for guys with no necks.”

  “Oh yeah, big time, and the hairier the better.”

  With that, Tess suddenly felt relieved. The bubble had burst. They didn’t agree on everything, and that brought a curious comfort. He wasn’t perfect after all. Football vs. baseball. Sure, it was trivial, but that was beside the point. Then she realized she was actually keeping score. Normally she didn’t really notice what guys thought about things. But here she was regretting that she hadn’t followed the Sox box scores since Dad had died.

  He handed her a piece of cake, and she took a bite. She closed her eyes and said nothing.

  “It’s okay, right?” Charlie said. “I ran out of time and threw it together.”

  “It’s edible,” she said, rolling the chocolate over her tongue. She was working it—and Charlie—which she enjoyed. Finally, she smiled. “Actually, it’s wonderful. Like everything tonight.” She stopped, studied her Sam Adams and realized it had to be the beer talking now.

  “You like to cook?” Charlie asked.

  “No, I like to eat,” she said, slowly savoring another bite. “I make a mean Jell-O and I’m huge with the mac and cheese, but other than that, I’m pretty useless.” A third bite. “The worst part of solo sailing is the food. Miserable freeze-dried rations.” A fourth bite.

  “Slow down,” he said. “I only made one cake.”

  She grinned. Why did dessert even taste different tonight? Maybe it was Charlie, a guy who even made food better.

  “So where’d you learn to cook?” she said. “Your mom?” The question had a little edge: If he was a mama’s boy, it might take some more luster off him.

  “Yup, my mom,” he said, without hesitation. “I called her in Oregon to get some ideas for tonight. Know what? She was appalled that I wasn’t taking you out to dinner on our first date. She warned me it was a big mistake and said I’d give you food poisoning.” He winked. “Thank God, I don’t always listen.”

  “Not so fast. I think my stomach feels upset.”

  “I hear booze kills the bugs. How about another beer?”

  “You trying to get me drunk?”

  “Definitely,” he said, disappearing again into the kitchen.

  “Well, I can outdrink you and outeat you. Bring it on,” she said. He had passed yet another test. He wasn’t embarrassed to be close to his mother, but it also sounded like there was a healthy distance between them, and that must have been hard to figure out after the accident.

  “So what’s your mom doing in Oregon?”

  “She moved out there right after the accident,” Charlie called back. “She didn’t want any reminders. She’s got a new life now. She’s married with stepkids.”

  “You mean she just left you here?”

  “No, I refused to go. So I lived with the Ingalls family till I graduated. Since then, I’ve been on my own.”

  Tess got up from the table, walked over to a darkened corner of the room with maps on the wall, and switched on a lamp. The charts were tacked up with pins, and they showed the roads and waters of the Eastern seaboard. Tess noticed strange concentric circles drawn neatly on each of them. The rings spread out from Marblehead and reached all the way to New York and Canada. Next to the maps, there were tables listing the exact times of the sunrise and sunset for every day of the month.

  “What are these about?” she asked when Charlie returned. She put a finger on one of the loops. “I know it’s got something to do with distance, but I can’t figure it out.”

  “It’s just a project of mine,” he said, delivering a beer and going to the other side of the room. “Now, tell me more about this trip of yours.”

  “What about it?”

  “For starters, your route?”

  “Okay, I start in Boston Harbor on Friday, then head south to the Caribbean, and eventually go through the Panama Canal.”

  “Show me.” He was standing in front of a big antique map that was framed behind glass. Tess walked toward him. She was feeling warm, so she pulled the button-down up over her head and threw it on the couch. She was wearing a white tank top underneath, and she could tell his eyes were following her hands as she fixed the bra strap that was poking out. Then she took a few more steps and stopped next to him.

  “You’re limping,” he said. It was a cute attempt to cover for himself.

  “Just a few knocks from my last sail.”

  “That where you got those bruises on your arms?”

  “Yeah, I got tossed around pretty good.”

  They stood there for the longest time, just inches apart, and Tess traced her route across the Pacific. She could feel his breath on her neck as she pointed to distant stops like the Marquesas, Tuamotu Islands, Tonga, and Fiji. Then he brushed against her for a closer look as she limned the course over the top of Australia, across the Indian Ocean to Durban, around the Cape of Good Hope into the South Atlantic, where the winds would push her home.

  “That’s a long way by yourself,” he said. “Don’t think I’d be brave enough to do it.”

  “You’re just smarter than I am.”

  They were side by side, staring at the whole wide world that she was going to circle. She rubbed one of her bruises, then turned to Charlie and looked into his caramel eyes. “Where do you dream of going, Chas?” She heard herself call him by a nickname—it just came out, but she liked the sound of it.

  “Zanzibar, Tasmania, the Galapagos. Everywhere …”

  “So why don’t you?”

  He pushed his hands into his pockets and sighed. “Too many responsibilities here.”

  “All work and no play?”

  He didn’t answer. For the first time this evening, there was a twinge of discomfort. Despite his smile and twinkle, this man was hiding something. Then, up from deep inside her, came a reaction so surprising that she felt giddy. Instead of wanting to run from his secrets, she just wanted to be closer.

  “Come on,” she said, “what’s stopping you?”

  His eyes dodged her and then he flashed that smile that must have gotten him out of most tight spots. “Let’s take a walk.”

  “In the cemetery? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Anybody who’d sail solo around the world can’t be scared of a cemetery.”

  She wasn’t so sure.

  “C’mon,” he said, grabbing her button-down and two coats. “I want to show you something.”

  SIXTEEN

  IT WAS MIDNIGHT IN WATERSIDE, AND THICK FOG OOZED between the monuments. The moon was invisible behind the clouds, great walls of darkness closed in on every side, and Charlie led the way across the lawn. All was silent, and even their footfalls were muffled by the murk. Marble angels and granite nymphs appeared from nowhere as his flashlight slashed the gloom.

  It was the witching hour, and Charlie was under a spell. Everything about Tess had thrown him off balance in the best possible way. Sure, his nervousness had made him go on too long about the origins of the St. Cloud family name in Minnesota. Yes, he had filibustered about the differences between cirrus and stratus accumulations. And yet, he could tell she was having fun. She was knocking back beers and laughing at his jokes.

  From the moment she had come strolling down West Shore Drive at 8:00 P.M. sharp, he had tried to memorize every detail about the evening. Her hair was blowing wild, and when he greeted her with an outstretched hand, she ignored it, got up on her tiptoes, and kissed him hello on the cheek.

  “Dinner read
y?” she said. “I’m starving.”

  Sure enough, she ate two portions of everything and was lavish with her praise of the food. He loved the way she seemed to devour life, savoring every bite. He told real stories, not the canned ones that usually came out on dates. Tonight he had dispensed with the usual version that he projected to the world: the young man content with his job in the cemetery, the happy-go-lucky guy who never wanted to leave Marblehead. Tess drew out the real Charlie, the one with dreams of breaking free of everything and everyone that reined him in.

  He even wanted to tell her about his maps on the wall, the sunset tables, and how those concentric circles governed his life. The rings on the charts showed the ambit of his world, demarcating exactly how far he could go from Waterside and still get back for Sam. A trip to Cape Cod. A drive up to New Hampshire. The outer circle was the absolute farthest he could go. Beyond that line, there was no chance of making it home in time. The promise would be broken and his brother would be gone. It could be dangerous sharing all this with Tess, but now, with the night winding down, he was feeling safer and ready to reveal a little more.

  “First you get me drunk, then you take me on a forced march,” she was saying as they tramped up a hill. “Where are we going?”

  “Trust me, it’s special.”

  They walked on, and the moon finally poked through the clouds, gently touching headstones in every direction. “We used to sneak in here all the time when we were kids,” Tess said. “I made out with my first boy behind that obelisk over there.”

  “Who was the lucky guy?”

  “Tad Baylor. I think he was in your class.”

  “The human fly?” Tad had run afoul of the law junior year, when he was captured stealing final exams from the copy room after scaling the wall of the administration building and climbing through a fourth-floor window. “You have excellent taste.”

  “I was fourteen,” she said, “and he was a great kisser.”

  They kept on going across the lawns. An owl hooted from the treetops. The air was cool, and Charlie buttoned up his pea coat.

  “So how long have you worked here?” Tess asked as they passed through a plot of Revolutionary War graves.

  “Thirteen years,” Charlie said. “Barnaby Sweetland gave me my first job here when I was in high school. He was the caretaker for thirty years. Remember him? The guy had a voice like an angel, and he ran the chorus at the Old North Church. Every day in the field, planting, cutting, sweeping, we could hear him singing to the skies.”

  Charlie kneeled down near a gravestone and pointed his flashlight at the damp ground. “Barnaby showed me every single thing I know about this place.” He scooped up a handful of damp earth with an unmistakable aroma. “You’ve probably smelled this your whole life when you’ve gone outside in the rain. It comes from these strange compounds called geosmins. Barnaby taught me the chemical names for everything.”

  Tess started to laugh. “Be still my heart,” she said.

  Charlie smiled. His mind was cluttered with all sorts of obscure information, but now he had to wonder: Would a girl setting off to conquer the world ever really fall for a guy who lived in a cemetery and knew why grass and dirt smelled the way they did?

  “This way,” he said, pushing forward into the night.

  “So whatever happened to Barnaby?” Tess said, following closely.

  “One winter he took a long walk in a snowstorm and never came back. I found his body up there on the Mount of Memory.” Charlie aimed the flashlight into the night. “He had a choir book with a note in it, saying he was tired of working so darn hard. After seventy-two years on earth, he was ready for the next world.”

  “You mean he killed himself?”

  “I don’t think so. He just wanted to spend the rest of eternity singing. That’s where he promised I would always be able to find him. You know, in the songs of the choir and the organ on Sundays.”

  “Was he right? Can you still hear him?”

  “Yes,” Charlie said. “If I pay attention, he’s always there in the music.”

  They had reached the crest of a hill where two willows hovered over a small, square stone building above the harbor. Guarding the entrance were two columns and a pair of crossed baseball bats. Tess walked straight to the front steps. Charlie aimed the flashlight at the name ST. CLOUD carved on the lintel.

  “Your brother,” she said.

  “Yes, Sam.” Charlie traced the sharp outline of the structure with his beam. “Mausoleum, noun,” he said. “A floor covering used in crypts.” He paused. “That’s one of Sam’s jokes.”

  Tess smiled, touching the smooth stone. “Is it all marble?”

  “Imported from Carrara. They spared no expense. The driver of the eighteen-wheeler that hit us was drunk out of his mind. His company paid for every inch of this. It was all about public relations.” He ran the flashlight down one of the columns. “They gave the guy five years, but he got away with three for good behavior. He’s probably in a bar right now getting loaded.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He shook his head. “It was my fault. I never should’ve taken Sam to Fenway, and we never should’ve been on the bridge in the first place. If I’d been paying any attention, I could’ve avoided the crash, you know, gotten out of the way of the truck.”

  And so without noticing, Charlie broke one of his cardinal rules. He began talking about Sam. With everyone else in the world, he had always dodged the topic. It only made folks uncomfortable and awkward. But, he could tell, Tess was different. From the moment he met her, he knew she would understand.

  He sat down on the steps of the mausoleum and said, “You were right this afternoon. Sam is why I work here. I promised I’d always take care of him.”

  “So you think he’s around?”

  Charlie looked up at her. “As sure as I am of anything.”

  “God, if only I had that same certainty about my father.” She sat down beside him. He could smell her shampoo and feel her warmth. “I wish I knew Dad was close by.”

  “What makes you think he isn’t?” Charlie said.

  “There’d be some kind of sign, don’t you think?”

  “I think those signs are all around if you know where to look.”

  He made an absentminded looping motion with the flashlight beam, and as it swept the darkness he saw the most unexpected sight: Sam was hanging upside down from a hemlock branch and making a funny face. Charlie shut off the beam and leaped to his feet.

  “What’s wrong?” Tess said.

  “Nothing. Just got a chill.” He flipped the flashlight on again, turned it in the direction of the branch, but Sam was gone.

  “You were telling me about Sam,” she said. He focused on her emerald eyes. Did she really want to hear the answers? He was about to speak, but with his peripheral vision he saw something move. Over her shoulder in the light of the emerging moon, there was Sam racing across the lawn with Oscar.

  “What do you miss most about him?” Tess asked.

  “I miss punching him in the nose when he was a brat,” he said in a voice that he hoped Sam would hear. “He liked to spy on people even when it was totally inappropriate.” Charlie checked over Tess’s shoulder again, and now Sam was gone.

  “Most of all,” he continued, “I miss that feeling when you go to sleep at night and when you wake up in the morning. It’s the feeling that everything is all right in the world. You know, that amazing feeling that you’re whole, that you’ve got everything you want, that you aren’t missing anything. Sometimes when I wake up, I get it just for a moment. It lasts a few seconds, but then I remember what happened, and how nothing has been the same since.”

  “You think that’ll ever go away?”

  “I doubt it.” And then, incredibly, he found himself opening up even more. “Some days are better than others. You know, I finish work and hang out at the Barnacle or shoot pool at Bay State Billiards. It feels like it’s gone, and I’m just like ever
yone else. Then, without warning, it comes back and lodges in my mind. That’s when I don’t feel right being around anyone. So I stay here behind the gates, listening to music, thinking, and reading books. I guess I never really know when it’ll hit me. It’s like the weather. Blue sky one day, thunder and rain the next.”

  “Same for me,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “But it’s strange. Tonight’s the first time in two years that I haven’t missed him so much it hurts.” Then she smiled and did the most incredible thing. She reached over and squeezed his hand.

  A hemlock branch snapped behind Tess. She spun around, surprised by the noise. A fistful of needles landed on her shoulder. She turned to Charlie with one eyebrow arched. “Did you just see something? What was that?!”

  He laughed. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “Go ahead, try me.”

  “Maybe it was your dad.”

  Tess scoffed. “If Dad was here, he wouldn’t pussyfoot around making tree branches snap. He’d really let me know.” She stood up. “Tell the truth, do you really believe in that stuff?”

  “Absolutely. I’ve seen too many things that defy explanation.”

  She chuckled. “You mean like twigs falling from a tree?”

  “No,” he said. “Like meeting you. Like dinner tonight.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes seemed full of feeling. Then she abruptly changed the subject. “Charlie, tell me. You ever seen a ghost?”

  Sam was now perched behind her on the roof of the mausoleum. His fingers were jammed into each corner of his mouth, stretching it wide into a funny face. Irritated, Charlie knew there was no good answer. He had gone far enough tonight and they were entering uncertain terrain. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t want to scare her away either, so he chose the safest route. “I’ve heard the Screeching Woman down by Lovis Cove.”

  “No way, the one killed by pirates?”

  “The very one.”

  “So you think your brother and my father are here somewhere?”

  “Maybe.” Charlie looked for Sam in the darkness, and he popped up behind a gravestone. “But I don’t think spirits stay here for very long unless they want to,” he said. “I bet your dad has moved on to a better place.”