“Close your eyes little one,
Sleep without fear,
And dream while the angels
Watch over you.
I will hold your hand.
So sleep without fear.
And when you wake with the morning,
I'll still be here.”
Spanish, then English. English, then Spanish. Ade sang. Softly. Words became whispers. Whispers became sleep. Sleep became dreams of who he was, who he had been, who he wanted to be.
Chapter 10
out of recollected places
The visit with Yale doctors proved, for Savannah at least, fruitless. Dr. Rabbinol—Logan—ran all the tests that had been run before, and then some, the results of which he wouldn’t have back for weeks. Those results would tell her nothing new. She was perfectly healthy. Her brain was fine. Blood pressure and glucose levels, blood cell counts and hair strand tests and any other possible poke or prod they could perpetuate on her person would come back fine, fine and more fine. For Margit, however, things turned out better.
“You sure you don’t mind if I cut out on you early?” she asked as they waited for their pizza. “I probably should have asked before I said yes to him.”
“Don’t be silly, sugar. Of course I don’t mind. I think you and Logan make a—”
“Don’t even.” Margit clamped hands over her ears. “He’s amazing in bed, his house is on the beach, and he cooks like a pro. Sex. The Beach. Food. In that order. That’s all there is to it. Besides, after what I found on the couch, I’m pretty sure I’m expendable back at your place.”
“Let it go now, will you?” Savannah rolled the icy-cold soda glass along her cheeks warmed as much by Margit’s insinuation as the hot summer sun. “We fell asleep talking.”
“Whatever you say. Sugar.”
From Pepe’s Pizza on Wooster Street, they went to Hammonasset where they whiled away the afternoon on the beach. Fried clams, scallops and oysters fresh out of the ocean, washed down by a pitcher of beer ended a day otherwise well spent. Except for the bruise in the crook of her elbow from the IV, Savannah had no regrets.
“You should have just stayed,” she said as she drove them home in the fading light. “It’s silly for you to make the long trip back to the farm only to come all the way up here again in a few days.”
“I want to see the clinic. And besides”—Margit pinched her side—“all my things are at your place.”
“You’re terrible,” Savannah teased. “I’m going to miss you.”
“Me too. But life goes on, right? And Ade will be happy to have his bed back.”
“Futon,” Savannah corrected.
“A comfortable futon. Where’d you get it?”
“Thrift store. There are some very wealthy New Yorkers who buy the best and then sell it rather than store it for the winter. What?”
“You bought Ade a bed from a thrift store?”
“I thought I was furnishing a room for a college kid.”
“So would you have bought him a proper bed if you’d known he was…bed-able?”
“Good Lord, sugar, you led me right into that one.”
“One of my many talents. Come on. Tell me you don’t want to.”
“I’m not even dignifying that with a response.”
“That, missy, is all the response necessary.”
“You’re terrible.”
“You said that already. And you’re smitten. Admit it. To me, at least.”
Savannah concentrated harder on the road. The harder she concentrated, the more aware she was of Margit’s stare.
“Yes, all right. I’m smitten.”
“So is he. You know that, right?”
“This is all very juvenile, don’t you think?”
“Oh, stop.” Margit slapped her shoulder. “It’s been too long, Savvy. It’s time you had a man in your life again. And in your bed. Good Lord, woman. How do you stand it?”
Savannah took a deep breath. And another. “What if I don’t want one?”
Margit’s hand came to rest tenderly on her shoulder now, a soothing gesture that worked. “You didn’t. For a long time. But now you do, and it’s okay.”
“Is it? I’m not sure about that.”
“I am. Look, I know you think you put it all behind you but—”
“But I haven’t.” Savannah gripped the wheel harder. “I don’t think it’s possible.”
“You’ve done your girls proud,” Margit said. “You’ve never wallowed. Not for a single moment. I agreed with your decision to move out of Georgia, but you pretend it never happened. None of these Yankee friends of yours know it did. Isn’t that kind of…reverse wallowing?”
“I’m not sure that makes sense.”
“It probably doesn’t, but you know exactly what I mean. Can you even say it out loud? To me?”
The words skewered her, pins into a pin cushion. Sharp. Stinging.
“Say it, Savannah. Doc killed your girls and nearly did you in too. Come on.”
Eyes on the road, body maneuvering the car along the dark twists and turns, Savannah’s mind curved through her past. Not this. Not now. Not ever. Could she? “They died,” she said, her voice steady, “and I lived. I couldn’t save them.”
“Close enough.” Margit’s soft, surgeon’s hand moved up and down her arm. “No one could have saved them. Doc knew what he was doing.”
Please. Stop. Savannah gritted her teeth.
“I knew him, too, remember?” Margit continued. “I loved him. The man who went to the desert died there, Savvy. The one who came home…”
“Was a monster,” Savannah whispered. “I should have taken them away then. I should have known what was coming.”
“You could never have predicted it. Ever. After the first time he put you in the hospital, you did take them away. He found you.”
The road blurred, just for a second. Because she didn’t hide well enough, kept her job and her family ties, her girls were dead. Eleven years dead. Her leg. Her ribs. Ached. Savannah gripped the steering wheel harder. She forced herself to breathe without gasping. “I know what he did, Margit. Everything he did. Everything he was, then wasn’t.”
Margit slumped back against the seat. “I’m sorry, Savvy. We were talking about Ade. How did we get here?”
Savannah relaxed her grip. She sighed. “You’re just being a friend who wants to see me happy.”
“Does Ade make you happy?”
“He does,” Savannah admitted. Her fingers on the wheel ached. She loosened her grip, tried to unknot her shoulders. “I barely know him. He arrived on the farm and I got slammed in the gut. I don’t get it, Margit. Why him? How is it happening so fast after all these years?”
“A question for the ages. So does this mean you’re not going to push him away?”
“I’ve hired him through next year’s growing season, contract and all.”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“Let’s leave it there anyway, okay?”
Margit cracked the window. Cool air blew in, rattled the soda cans in their cup holders. “It’s so nice outside. Turn off the air conditioning, Savvy, will you?”
Subject closed. Savannah gratefully opened all the windows. Margit switched the radio on. The raw and gravely sounds of nineties grunge blared to life.
“Number One Crush,” Margit squealed like a teenager, and growled the angst-riddled, love-saturated lyrics Savannah still knew by heart. Before the song ended, she, too, was belting out lyrics she hadn’t heard in years. Smashing Pumpkins, Presidents of the United States, The Refreshments. Song after song. Memory after memory. This time, good ones, when she was young and working hard toward a goal, like her kind and wonderful husband stationed overseas. He was there doing his part, putting men and women back together again. She was stateside, tending those left behind. A baby born. A soldier mended. They were going to change the world, one patient at a time.<
br />
What I’ve seen…I can’t unsee it, Savvy. I can’t unlive it.
She cut off his voice, that bloody memory trying to worm its way out of her mind. Cut it clean just as she took stance, and fired. She sang louder. Harder.
Savannah left her demon in the dust, somewhere on the roadside in rural Connecticut. It would find her again. It would always find her. For the first time since that horrific night in Georgia, the thought wasn’t fear, but a dare.
* * * *
Ade’s hands trembled. It just never ended. Of course it didn’t. He’d been a fool to even pretend Anita would just go away and leave him be. He wanted to chuck the cell phone in his hand, but he hit play and listened to Carl’s message again.
“I swore I wouldn’t do this, but…she’s behind it, Ade. You have to know she’s behind it, even though the board is saying it’s been in the works for over a year. She made sure I knew because she knows I’ll tell you. Probably thinks I’m just some addled old prof. Maybe I am. But it’s a shot, understand?
“Your name is on the roster for the fall semester. Full professorship. Ecological Studies and…there’s a lab. I don’t remember. I’ve heard rumors of tenure too. And a sizeable grant for that field study you’ve been petitioning for. We both know the Dursts can pull the right strings to make it all happen. It’s what you’ve worked for, Ade. It can be yours, if you’re willing to pay the price. Think on it.”
He tucked his phone back into the breast pocket of his work shirt. Light dappled through the trees, leaving patches of sunshine like stepping-stones along the path ahead. Behind him, the upper field he’d poured his passion into since arriving in Bitterly. No heirloom varieties yet, but a testament to nature and her ability to renew, to survive, to thrive.
What had Anita promised Carl to deliver the message?
Ade was a man changing, but he hadn’t changed all the way yet, and the old Ade knew a set up when he saw it. Carl’s message went against everything he knew about the man, and was in keeping with everything he knew about Anita. It had nevertheless gotten the job done.
Closing his eyes, Ade inhaled deeply. Wildflowers and dirt and trees and heat, and the ever-present odor of gasoline from the coot idling where he’d stopped it. These were the scents of long-ago summers, when he was a boy in Ecuador. The chaos and always-exhaustion of those days had been the best of his life. Until now. A year ago, he would have laughed had someone even suggested such a thing. A year ago, he was a famed lecturer, scientist, enviromentalist, sought after for knowledge gleaned over decades of hard work, cunning, and compromise.
He shifted into gear. The engine kicked in and the coot rolled on. Adelmo Gallegos, compromise? He prided himself on being uncompromising in his views on nature, ecology, conservation. Endorse an effective but toxic pesticide because of a donation to the university? No way in hell. Seduce the lobbyist to get the donation anyway? All the time. Had he considered it compromise, then? A means to an end? A necessary evil? In the end, a better result for the common good.
Compromise. Yes. He had. He’d compromised himself, if not his views. Integrity came in all colors, all scents and sounds and deeds done in the pursuit of achievement. He’d drawn his line and over again, always moving it slightly further along the path that led him to his ultimate goal—lecturing in the most prestigious establishment of higher learning, attached to the most influential family in the city, a family capable of buying and selling most others in the United States. He had it all, and let it go.
But he could have it back again, and then some.
Ade pulled the coot into the tractor barn and switched it off. Birds still sang. Tractors rumbled. Sprinklers schk-k-ked among the rows. Students weeding and debugging as per his instructions sang slave songs they learned in their high school chorus. Did they even consider the irony? Would it occur to them not to sing those songs when Savannah was home? But she wasn’t home. She was in New Haven with Margit.
Heading into the house to use the shower there, Ade unbuttoned his shirt. He shucked it off in the kitchen along with his boots and pants and crusty socks. Alone but for the flies he let in, he dropped his briefs as well, retrieving his cell phone and his wallet from the dirty pile.
They weighed almost the same. Slim as was the phone, so was his wallet. Anita had taken everything from him, even what was left of his own savings after sending money home to Ecuador. A single call from a Durst was enough to freeze his account. All he’d been able to retrieve was the one ATM withdrawal. Five hundred dollars, and that was nearly gone.
Ade clicked the cell phone display on. Carl’s voicemail illuminated.
What he worked for.
All he wanted.
If he was willing to pay the price.
Standing naked in Savannah’s kitchen, Ade swiped out of the voicemail screen, to the text screen. No new texts, though he already knew that. She was waiting for him to get Carl’s message. To make a decision. For all the things there were to despise about her, Ade could not help admiring her strategy. Tell him lies. Cut him off. Harass him. Let him feel the pain of poverty and the loss of respect. Dangle a carrot that was more like a winning lottery ticket. A million dollar lottery ticket. A billion. And all he had to do was accept her lie, pretend the child she carried was his, and go back to living the life he’d worked so hard to make.
The antique mantel clock in Savannah’s parlor chimed five. The field kids would start heading home. Taytay and Tío were probably already in the doublewide calling out for dinner. More Chinese food, and not from the upscale restaurant on the Green, but the hole-in-the-wall place that used way too much MSG. And Ade still stood naked in Savannah’s kitchen, cell phone in one hand, wallet in the other.
He placed them both onto the counter, took a glass from the cupboard, and got himself water from the tap. Cold. Mineral. Restoring. In Boston, the water tasted like a swimming pool. He and Anita had used a delivery service, one of the many luxuries he never thought twice about.
Chugging the water, savoring the cool of it sliding down his throat, Ade closed his eyes. Back and back he tipped his head. Water sloshed down the sides of his face, rolled down his neck, along his torso. He drained the glass and stood panting, staring at the empty vessel.
Ade set the glass into the sink. He turned the faucet on. Watched it fill. Turned it off again. He took the battery out of his cell phone, and dropped the pieces into the water glass.
The old phone he’d come across in the drawer in his father’s kitchen would suffice. If he hurried, he could shower and still get to town before the cell carrier closed. Maybe he’d go to D’Angelo’s. Maybe he’d drive out to County Line Road and see what Charlie and Johanna were doing that evening. Or maybe he’d just make himself something and wait for Savannah to come home.
* * * *
Oh, swoon. Oh swoonery-swoon-swoon! Am I wicked? Scratch that. Of course I am. That’s what got me into trouble in the first place. But, Honest to Betsy, Ricky Ricardo is the dreamboat of dreamboats. Even the old lady in the cemetery would swoon over him if she saw all those muscles, all that skin. I don’t know that I’ve ever actually seen a man’s butt before. Maybe I have, but, golly, not like his.
I didn’t come in here looking for an eyeful, though thank you very much for that. I figured, since Savvy’s not around, it would be a good time to see if that ghoul exists here in the house, or only where she is.
After all this time dead, I’m finally learning a few things about my kind. He’s not here, the little girls aren’t either. But they are. Like shadows. No, not shadows. They’re like…like…what’s it called when you look at something a long time, then close your eyes and it’s still there but like a negative for a photo? After-image? Maybe I made that up. Or I learned it in science class. Anyway, that’s what they’re like. They’re still here, but they’re with her too. I bet they’re in a lot of places, like wherever it was they came from, with other family members who miss them. Or fear them.
Am
I, too?
Golly, that’s some thought, huh? I’m here, but am I down at my rock? Am I scaring kids there even when I’m not around to enjoy it? Am I stuck to the shack where he killed me? I haven’t gone anywhere near the place. I don’t even remember where it is. But it makes me wonder if I left a piece of myself there, like the ghoul and the girls are here. And if that’s true, are any of us ever really gone, gone?
Chapter 11
remembered forms and faces
She was longer at the clinic than most days. Margit shadowed her, lent a hand here and there, but the law prohibited her from actually doing more than assist. Officially. She left for Providence by mid-afternoon. Savannah cringed a little when her dearest friend climbed into the sweet little convertible, albeit rented, in front of a clinic full of women who mostly couldn’t even afford a second-hand car.
July was proving to be a fertile month in her part of Connecticut. Seven women had come into the clinic with an inkling, and left as ascertained mothers-to-be. And that was just the new patients. The list was longer than there were hours of operation, more so than most days. By the time Savannah got home, she was almost too exhausted to take pleasure in the sound of Ade moving about upstairs.
She picked up the notebook of instructions and sales Benny had left on the kitchen table. Fair enough sales for the end of July. It wouldn’t take long to key them into the computer. Paging through the notes, she found one from Benny:
Savvy,
My friend from Brooklyn will be in Bitterly on Friday, and will stay the weekend. She wants to see the house her grandfather built. She is also very curious about what I saw. I hope you’re up for this. I’ll bring her by about three o’clock on Saturday. Is that enough warning?
Love, Benny
Savannah closed the notebook, cursing softly under her breath. Snap decisions, especially those made under duress, were rarely sound ones. Now the woman was already in Bitterly and Savannah had no way out of it without insulting the poor old thing. Thank goodness Margit was already gone. If she knew, or worse, were around for whatever it was Benny and her friend had in mind, her next Margit-arranged doctor visit would be to a psych ward. And Ade. Savannah groaned. She’d find some way to get him away from the house. At the moment, she was just too fried to even think about it.
Waking Savannah Page 11