Fiona Range

by Mary McGarry Morris

  Poor gullible Sandy. No wonder she’d been so late for work every morning, and so tired, and so happy. She probably thought she’d died and gone to heaven now with rich, handsome Todd Prescott in her life.

  Fiona glanced up at the clock on the corner of the Dearborn Savings Bank. Twenty minutes to go until class ended. If she got on the highway and drove really fast she’d make it in time to apologize to Lee Felderson. And then what? She’d still have a D. She couldn’t have studied any harder for that test than she had. And it would probably be the same next time, or worse. Yes, flunking Fiona Range would probably be the high point of Miss Pisspot’s year.

  “Screw it,” she muttered, then turned and drove down the hill over the railroad tracks to the pay phone in front of the 24-hour store. What she needed most right now wasn’t going to be found at Dearborn Community. She got out and opened the telephone book, looking for George’s number. She ran her finger down the page, then stopped at GRADY, Patrick, surprised he had a phone, much less a listed number. Maybe the only reason was in the hope that Natalie might call. She wondered if he’d felt like Aunt Arlene in the beginning, listening for every car, thinking each time the phone rang it might be her. She remembered his hard, slitted eyes, the seething anger when she said her mother had called. Maybe it wasn’t anger at all, but hurt and resentment that she had received the call instead of him. Maybe he had avoided, ignored, and denied her all these years not because he believed her another man’s child but because she was the image of the woman he had always loved. Poor Patrick Grady. For the first time she felt sorrier for him than she did for herself.

  She moved her finger up the next row of names.

  “George!” she said to the sleepy answering voice. “This is Fiona. You’re not asleep, are you?” It was nine-thirty.

  “Not anymore.”

  Apologizing, she told him to go back to sleep. No, no, he said, he was glad she’d called. He’d been getting up so early for this latest job that he was in bed every night at nine.

  “You haven’t been in and I thought, well, maybe you were sick or something.” She cringed. She’d been afraid all week that he’d heard something about her and Brad Glidden.

  “No, I’m fine. It’s just I have to be at the site by five every morning.”

  “Oh. Well, you said to let you know when my schoolwork was done. So this is the call!”

  “Great! Well when would you like to go out?” he said, and she heard bedsprings squeaking.

  She smiled. “How about tonight?”

  “Tonight?” You mean now?”

  “If that’s okay. I mean if you don’t mind.”

  “It’ll take me a few minutes and then I’ll be over.”

  “No, I’ll come over there. I’m right around the corner.”

  He opened the door as she came up the porch steps. Barefoot, he’d managed to put on jeans and was still buttoning his shirt in such haste that he’d missed a button; one side was higher than the other. “Is everything okay?” He turned on a light in the den. “After you hung up I thought maybe something was wrong.”

  “No, not really.” She shivered as she sat down on the sofa, its black vinyl cold against the back of her legs. She hugged herself to get warm. “I was just feeling kind of alone, and I remembered what you said about, well you know, being whatever I might need, a friend, or a plumber, or whatever.”

  “So which do you need?” He smiled down at her.

  “Well right now the thing I need most is to get warm.”

  “Oh, the heat, it’s not on,” he said, turning up the thermostat. It shouldn’t take too long for it to come up, he assured her, suggesting some cocoa or coffee or tea in the meantime. She didn’t feel like any, she said. He’d get her a sweater then, he said, explaining that he was so accustomed to working in the cold that he seldom noticed it himself.

  She patted the cushion. “If you’d just sit down I’ll be warm in no time.”

  He smiled and sat down, blushing. His earlobes were red. “Now how come I didn’t think of that?” He put his arm over the back of the couch.

  “Maybe you’re just out of practice.”

  “No to be honest I don’t really have too many moves. I’m kind of”—he made a chopping gesture with his free hand—“you know, right straight on.”

  She laughed and made the same gesture. “What does that mean, right straight on?” She pulled his arm down over her shoulder and leaned into him with a shiver.

  “Well it takes me a while. I mean, I’m just not loose enough. You know, I don’t want to come on too strong. I don’t want to take advantage or offend anybody.”

  “George, what are you talking about?”

  “Well like that other night, here—I wanted you to stay, but I didn’t say anything, then after you left I just felt like . . . I don’t know.” He sighed and shook his head.

  “Like what?” She reached up to pull his head to hers. “Come on, tell me,” she said against his lips. “What’d you feel like?”

  “Like what Elizabeth called me our senior year when I finally told her I wasn’t going to go to college, that I wanted to be a plumber with my father. She said the only reason was because I’d always been afraid to take a chance or to stand out, that it was safer being a shadow.”

  “You don’t feel like a shadow to me,” she said, touching his eyes, his bristly cheeks, his mouth. She had forgotten about her cousin’s need to manage and refashion those she cared most about.

  “She sent away for catalogs and she even filled out all the applications for me.” He sighed deeply as if he still bore the weight of Elizabeth’s disappointment.

  Fiona sat back. “She was always like that. She wanted everyone else to be as good and as happy she was. It’s the curse of the Hollises. They were born to do good.”

  He looked so perplexed that she patted his cheek and laughed. “I on the other hand was born to feel good. What about you, George?”

  “Yah . . . I mean . . . well, like that night I wanted to be with you. I really did, and so there we were, and all of a sudden I start thinking, well, maybe I’m just so anxious myself I’m misreading the whole thing, so maybe the thing is to just slow down and not rush anything. You know, just take my time, wait and see what happens.”

  “Um,” she agreed, kissing him again. “Good idea, George, we can do that. So let’s just take our time here and see what happens.”

  He was on top of her. The pillows had fallen off the couch and now the slippery vinyl cushions were sliding out from under them. The lampshade was crooked and her tossed skirt had landed on the recliner. His jeans were on the coffee table. She had never realized what a powerful man he was. The muscles in his back were thick as coiled rope. He was not only decent, but strong and sweet. He was everything she needed. He kept trying to tell her something. She begged him not to talk. He wanted her to go upstairs with him. She’d be more comfortable in his bed. She was very comfortable, she said. It would be better there, he said. Promise? she said, holding on to his hand as she followed him up the dark stairs.

  Afterwards, they lay covered by a sheet. She stared up at the bright gashes of moonlight down the sides of the window shade. She felt strangely, acutely awake, as if every nerve ending in her body were being electrically charged. Her brain was a network of flashing, buzzing connections and long-ago voices. Why did you do that? Aunt Arlene was asking as she scrubbed grit from the raw cut on her knee. Children’s shrieks burst into the room. Fiona was the one! She did it on purpose! She smashed the cold frame that sheltered Uncle Charles’s seedlings. It was Fiona! She pushed the doll carriage into the pond. Fiona did it! She pulled down her underpants in front of all the boys. We told her not to, but she did it anyway! Fiona!

  “Fiona?” George called from far away, and she turned, startled to see him on his side smiling at her. “Can I get you anything? Glass of water? Blanket? Pajamas?”

  “Just hold me.”

  He pulled her close, and she buried her face in his chest, timing her
breathing to his.

  “I saw Elizabeth the other day,” he said after a few minutes.

  “Oh yah? Where?” she asked, easing back her head.

  “I saw her driving down Main Street, so I hit the horn and she pulled over. I got out and then we talked for a while.” He paused as if expecting a question. “Anyway, she looks good. A little too thin though. I almost said something, but then she said she’s been training for the Marathon.” Fiona rolled over and reached onto the floor for her underwear.

  “She said you met her fiancé.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Did you like him?”

  “Yah, I did. He seems nice enough. A hyper kind of guy, but with a pretty good sense of humor.” She stood up and pulled on her panties. “And he’s crazy about her,” she added, and his silence confirmed the nagging thought she’d had while they were making love: that it was Elizabeth he’d been thinking of the whole time.

  Chapter 5

  Fiona glanced in the mirror as she ran by. She still didn’t like the way she looked. Heaps of clothes littered the bed and the floor. She had tried on just about everything in her closet. Nothing felt right. Ever since Elizabeth had called her at work and invited her to dinner she’d had this tightness like a fist in her chest. There had been an urgency, a breathless edge in her cousin’s voice.

  She began to feel better though as she drove to the restaurant. She couldn’t remember the last time she and Elizabeth had spent any time together. She turned onto Main Street and looked for a parking space near Verzanno’s. Elizabeth had said one of the doctors Rudy worked with loved it. He wasn’t going to dinner with them, but it would probably be like that all night: Rudy this and Rudy that, the same way Elizabeth had been with George: George likes peas; George thinks I should keep my hair long; George says . . .

  Smiling, she backed into a space near the corner. She had been with George every night this week. He had called her at work this morning, but when she finally was able to call him back he wasn’t there. She had left a message on his machine saying she was going to dinner with Elizabeth and that she’d be home after nine. He couldn’t understand how she could live without a telephone. He had offered to help her pay off her old bill, but she didn’t want the relationship to start with George deciding what she should and shouldn’t do. The other night he had asked why she always wore such tight things, then seeing her eyes flare, tried to squirm his way out of it by asking, weren’t tight clothes really uncomfortable? Not at all, she’d said, with a level stare. She liked the way they looked and the way they felt.

  As she came down the street she noticed the ladder in front of the Wishing Well Gift Shop. Patrick Grady stood halfway up washing the small-paned picture window. He sprayed another pane, then leaned forward scrubbing intently. When his hand faltered then darted back to the glass, she knew he had seen her reflection.

  “Hello,” she called, but he didn’t stop scrubbing or look back. “Looks good. You’re doing a good job,” she said.

  He sprayed the next pane, set down the bottle, and began to work his rag into the corners. He hunched over the ladder.

  “Oh, am I bothering you?” She went to the foot of the ladder. “Or maybe you can’t hear me. I can talk louder,” she said, voice rising. She cupped her hands to her mouth. “Is this better? Can you hear me now?” she called.

  “Get outta here!” he said, turning, and her stomach weakened with his hateful expression. She thought of him years ago, handsome and fearless, poised on the highest ledge of the quarry while shrieking girls begged him not to dive. Had her mother been among them? Calling to him, begging him not to. Her aunt said Natalie had begged him not to go to Vietnam. Such a waste, all that loss and pain.

  “It’s a public sidewalk.” She folded her arms. “I can stand here as long as I want.”

  He dumped his rags and bottle into a plastic bucket, then scurried down the ladder.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked as he yanked a rope that brought the top half of the ladder down with a metal-scraping clang. “Why can’t you talk to me?” She followed him into the alley where he swung open the rear door of his old blue station wagon and tossed his supplies inside. “You said I should be afraid, but you’re the one that seems afraid. Why? Do you think I want something from you? That I’m going to start calling you Daddy or something?” She laughed and followed him alongside the car. She asked if he had any idea how ridiculous this was after all these years. “I mean, I’m thirty years old.”

  He started the engine as soon as he got in. She leaned down at his window. “I just want to—”

  “Get the hell away from me, will you?” he growled.

  “I just want to be able to talk to you, that’s all!” she was shouting into a cyclone of dust as he sped out of the alley.

  Red candles flickered in wax-ribbed Chianti bottles. The low, arched stucco ceiling shimmered with light and shadows. The cavelike little dining room seemed even darker with its damp redolence of garlic and red wine. The minute she saw her cousin she felt better. Elizabeth sat at a small table in the far corner. She smiled as Fiona hurried toward her. “I know, late as usual,” Fiona said with a hug, alarmed that Elizabeth felt so fragile. She drew back carefully, hand extended as if to catch whatever bones she had dislodged.

  The waitress took their drink orders, a daiquiri for Elizabeth and a beer for Fiona. The minute she left Fiona blurted, “God, Lizzie, you’re so skinny! What’s going on? Are you all right?”

  “Actually, I’m in training,” Elizabeth said, grinning.

  “For what, a death march?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “I’m running the Marathon next April, so I’m getting ready now.”

  “April! Well at this rate you’ll be in the wheelchair competition. If you’re lucky,” she added, reluctant to say more. There had always been the sense in the family that calling attention to problems only made them worse.

  “Well there’s just been so much going on,” Elizabeth said with a weary sigh. “With Daddy being sick and trying to get Rudy settled. We finally found a place he likes on Salem Street. It’s right by the hospital.”

  “What’s wrong with Uncle Charles?”

  “He was having chest pains so we took him into Boston. The General kept him a couple of days and ran all kinds of tests, and everything came up negative. Fiona!” Elizabeth leaned closer and touched her hand. “You should see the look on your face. The tests were negative. He’s fine.”

  “I didn’t know he was sick! Why didn’t anyone tell me?” She was stunned.

  “You don’t have a phone, Fiona.”

  “You could have called me at work. You called me there today.”

  “But that’s different. You know how private they are about things like that,” Elizabeth said in a low voice. “And Daddy didn’t want people to know.”

  “People! Is that what I am? Jesus Christ!”

  Elizabeth’s back stiffened, her fine blond hair swishing back and forth over her shoulders. Her delicate jaw sharpened to a point like her father’s, who she resembled more than any of them. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she said.

  “Then why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “It was all so fast.” Elizabeth explained that the pains had started late at night, after the engagement dinner.

  “It was me, wasn’t it? When I said that about my mother.” That’s why no one had told her.

  “You mean your mother’s phone call? Of course not! No, we were all so happy for you, you know that.” Elizabeth leaned forward, intrigued as ever by the mystery of Natalie. “I’m dying to know. Has she called again?”

  “Obviously not. I don’t have a phone, do I?’

  “Then how did she call before?” Elizabeth asked, watching so carefully Fiona knew this question had already been raised among the family.

  “It was last summer. In my old apartment.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us then?”

  “When? At the family banishment?” Her voice rose. “If you’ll
remember, no one wanted to hear anything I had to say!”

  “Oh Fiona. Fiona,” Elizabeth coaxed, taking her hand. “Let’s just be happy. Please? It’s so much easier.”

  Yes, for some people, she thought, watching her cousin’s easy smile as the waitress served their drinks. Even as a little girl when Fiona had been sent to her room, convinced that no one cared or understood, there was always Elizabeth slipping notes under her locked door. “Just be good,” she would write. “That’s all Mommy and Daddy want. Just try.”

  The waitress asked if they wanted to order now. Someone else was coming, Elizabeth said. “Rudy,” she told Fiona. “I told him seven to give us some time alone.”

  “Oh.” Fiona smiled to hide her disappointment. She should have known there would be the same lockstep marital intensity in this relationship as well. She still remembered walking by the barbershop once when they were fifteen and seeing Elizabeth primly reading a magazine like someone’s mother or wife while George got his hair cut.

  “I try and keep him busy,” Elizabeth said. Even though Rudy insisted he was happy here, Dearborn had to be so boring after New York. “He’s so intense. He’s one of those high-energy people; you know, they don’t walk, they run. He’s always got to be doing something.”

  Fiona blinked with the image of him racing down from his car to bandage Todd Prescott’s cut.

  “In two days he not only built bookshelves, but he painted his entire apartment,” Elizabeth said.

  “His apartment?” Fiona interrupted. “Don’t you live there too?”

  “No, I’m still at home.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Well, I stay there sometimes.”

  “Conjugal visits, well, I hope so!” She laughed. Elizabeth’s pinched expression drew Fiona forward to add softly, “I mean, after all, Elizabeth, you are engaged. And the wedding’s not until next fall.” Elizabeth stared at her with almost virginal discomfort. “Well, you’re not going to be living at home that whole time, are you?”