Ridge smiled, revealing straight, white teeth. “Hugh’s taught me a lot. I wanted to give something back.”
“Then give me a hand with this, boy,” Hugh called, tottering in from the kitchen with a silver tray of beautifully poached salmon. Ridge moved forward to take the tray from the old man’s shaky grasp. “Specialty of the house, though I haven’t cooked it much lately.”
Ridge set the salmon in the middle of Hugh’s long mahogany table. While Mary served their plates, Hugh poured the wine, lifting a glass to Irene’s memory. As they drank, Mary thought with a pang how much the transplanted Irishman had aged. Though indoors he navigated without his cane, she’d noticed a row of pill bottles lined up like tiny soldiers in his kitchen window.
“Garbage, the lot of ’em,” he’d told her. “My doctor doesn’t even shave yet. Couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow.”
“But Hugh, this is nitroglycerin,” Mary said, reading one label. “This is heart medicine.”
“It’s for indigestion.” He grabbed the bottle from her hand. “Nothing’s wrong with my heart.”
But despite the glow from the candles and ruddiness that the wine put back into his cheeks, she could tell that there was a lot wrong with Hugh’s heart. She imagined that it had less to do with cholesterol and hypertension and much more with missing his lost Irene.
They feasted on salmon and fried green tomatoes, while birds serenaded them through the long June twilight. Occasionally interrupted by a whinny from the back pasture, Mary told the two men about her disastrous job search, and her rash decision to open a practice of her own.
“Good for you, girl.” Hugh gave her a feisty nod. “Set out yer own shingle. Say to hell with the lot of ’em.”
“I still hope to get on Turpin’s staff,” she replied. “But this might work out in the meantime. I rented a small office downtown today. I figure I can furnish it with Irene’s law books and some furniture from her attic.”
“Where will this office be?” asked Hugh.
“Over Sutton’s hardware store. I’m in with a psychologist and some kind of environmental activist.” She thought of fat, pompous Sam Ravenel and shuddered inwardly.
“I know that place.” Ridge abruptly joined the conversation. “I see people going up there, when I go visit Sylvia.”
Mary was puzzled. She thought Hugh had said Ridge’s great inamorata was someone named Bethany. “Who’s Sylvia?”
“She works at the hardware store,” the boy explained. “She buys my things.”
Hugh served them both a second slab of salmon. “So when would you be opening for business, Mary girl?”
“As soon as possible. In fact, I was going to ask if might borrow your truck tomorrow.”
“Of course. Take Ridge as well, if you’d like.” Hugh glanced a bit enviously at the boy who sat intent upon his supper. “That young back’s yet to know a mustard plaster.”
Mary turned to him. “Ridge, would you help me lug some furniture up a long flight of stairs? I’d be happy to pay you.”
“Sure, if Hugh doesn’t need me.”
Suddenly the doorbell rang. Ridge jumped up from the table. “I’ll get it,” he said. “I think I know who it is.”
“I think I do, too.” Hugh looked at Mary as the boy hurried to the front door.
“Who?”
“The lass he fancies,” Hugh whispered. “She comes by most every night.”
Ridge returned to the dining room, pulling a tall, blond girl dressed in pink shorts behind him.
“This is Bethany.” Ridge looked at the girl as if she were an angel, dropped from a low-flying cloud.
“I know.” Mary smiled. “We’ve met.” Ridge’s Bethany was the waitress with the strawberry necklace.
“You have?” said Hugh.
“Just this afternoon. At Bayberry’s.” Mary turned to Bethany. “It’s nice to see you again.”
“Thank you.” The girl smiled politely, but Mary noticed that the shadowy sadness that had earlier lurked behind her eyes was tonight even more pronounced, giving her an edgy, haunted look.
Ridge turned to Hugh. “Do you need me for anything more?”
“Not if Mary’ll help me clean up in the kitchen.”
“Of course I will,” Mary replied.
“Then I guess we’ll go.” Ridge tugged Bethany toward the front door.
“You two have fun.” Mary wondered for another moment about the girl’s obvious distress, then put it out of her mind. Bethany had a beautiful summer night and a handsome young man to enjoy it with—that would no doubt cure whatever ailed her.
She and Hugh sat at the table as two doors slammed, and a small truck engine roared to life. Gravel crunched in the driveway, then the noise faded away, leaving them in a silence that seemed to underscore the emptiness of their own lives. They sat lost in their own memories, until Hugh gave a great sigh.
“God forgive an old man his foolishness, but sometimes when I see those two together, I miss Irene almost more than I can bear.”
“I know what you mean,” Mary replied, wondering what Jonathan was doing now and if he ever gave any thought to her at all.
6
Bethany sped down Hugh Kavanagh’s driveway, eager to escape the social pleasantries of the old man and his dinner guest. Though they seemed nice enough, her encounter that day with Coach Keener had left her both infuriated and terrified, in no frame of mind to chitchat about the weather or her job at Bayberry’s. After she’d gotten out of Keener’s stupid SUV, she’d slammed inside their house, screaming at her little sister that she must never ride with Coach Keener again. Kayla had thrown her own fit, accusing Bethany of not wanting her to ever have any fun of her own. Then her mother had joined the fray, asking how dare she be so rude to Deke Keener, who by giving them a ride home had saved her a lot of time and a trip to town. Where exactly did Bethany get off, acting so ugly? Nobody (her, her father, Deke Keener, the rest of the known universe) had ever been anything other than kind and generous to her, and look at how she repaid them. She was an embarrassment to the whole family and once she got to college she was going to find out real fast that she wasn’t the only pretty girl in the world and that people weren’t going to put up with her little prima donna act and if she, Paula Jane Daws, had acted like that to her father’s boss her father would have . . .
Your father would not have allowed his boss to fuck you, Mom, she’d screamed silently as she slammed her bedroom door in her mother’s snarling face. She threw herself on her bed, weeping with frustration. She was not a prima donna! She was not rude! She was just trying to protect her little sister from something that her father had refused to believe was happening! Now she’d blown everything—what had she been thinking of, threatening the master of threats with one of her own tapes? Had she totally lost it?
She lay on the bed a long time, alternately crying and trying to figure out what to do. The house sat cold and silent as an ice cube, but soon she heard her father’s truck pull into the driveway. She waited, her hands clenching the bedspread, to see if her mother would send him up here to bitch her out further, but a few moments later she heard the back door close and their voices outside, below her window. Kayla asked her mother if she could go home with Jeannette Peacock after the game, her father muttered something about needing more beer. Then an engine started. She got up from the bed in time to see the three of them driving away in her mother’s car, hurrying to Kayla’s softball game.
At that point she’d flung open her door, raced downstairs, grabbed the keys to her father’s truck, and driven straight to Mr. Kavanagh’s farm. She didn’t give a shit anymore if her parents caught her sneaking out. Ridge was the only person in the world who truly cared about her. And tonight, she needed him badly.
“So who is that Mary woman?” She turned to him now in the hope that the balm of everyday conversation might lessen her terror at confronting Keener.
“She’s an old friend of Hugh’s.” Ridge’s hand was warm on th
e back of her neck. Always, he knew how and how not to touch her. “She’s a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?” she asked, surprised.
“She rented an office over Sylvia’s store. I’m supposed to help her move in tomorrow morning.”
“A lawyer.” Bethany repeated the words as if they were some se-cret incantation that might make the whole sodden mess of her life disappear. Though she’d considered visiting a lawyer after she got her driver’s license, she’d never gotten up the nerve to call one. She’d pictured them all as frowning, parchment-faced men in dark suits. She couldn’t even imagine making an appointment with one of their secretaries, much less sitting down across from one and telling what Deke Keener had done to her. This Mary Crow, though, seemed different. She acted friendly, had left her a big tip at the café. Plus, she hadn’t been in town long enough for Keener to schmooze her. Wonder what Mary Crow would say if she played her some of her tapes?
With her brain spinning at the possibility of a courtroom, a trial, of jurors finding Keener guilty and a judge sentencing him to death, she drove full-speed along the country road. The honey-colored twilight lingered, and the sweet aroma of hay and new-mown grass filled the car. She glanced over at Ridge. He rode with his eyes shut, his face turned to the breeze, as if gleaning aromas from the air. How she loved him! Though his ways were strange, he was good and kind, and when he put his hands on her she realized the true depravity of Keener’s caresses.
Ridge must have sensed her gaze upon him, because he opened his eyes and smiled. “Where are we going?”
“Laurel Overlook,” she announced as they pulled up at a four-way stop. They used to end their dates there, before her father forbade her to see him. Since their time together now was stolen and therefore more precious, they drove there immediately, hungry for the taste and feel of each other. Tonight, especially, she longed for the safe harbor of Ridge’s arms.
She turned left at the four-way and drove on, her heart heavy with her secret. How she wished she could tell Ridge everything! He would believe her, without question; she’d even dreamed the conversation a hundred times in her head.
“He’s done this to you for six years? Why didn’t you tell someone?”
“I was scared. He said if I told, he’d fire my dad and throw us out of our house.”
“But why didn’t you tell your parents anyway?”
“I tried to tell my dad once. He wouldn’t believe me. He said that I was overreacting, that he’d known Deke Keener for years and the thought of him putting his hands on me was just so crazy that he wasn’t even going to dignify it by asking him about it.”
“What about your teachers? Or the cops?”
“Every Saturday Keener plays golf with my principal. Every Sunday he takes up the collection at church. He went to high school with the new sheriff. Why should they believe me when my own father wouldn’t?”
With that, Ridge’s face takes on a look she’s glimpsed only once before, when he thought some children were torturing a snake. The planes of his face sharpen and his eyes narrow. If she didn’t know better, she would swear the boy she loves has turned into some kind of beast. Though his wild dark eyes are still full of love for her, they hold something quite different for Deke Keener. Finally, Ridge says, “Then I will go and make him sorry for what he’s done.”
And that was precisely why Bethany hadn’t told Ridge Standingdeer what Deke Keener had done. She knew that if she did, that look would return to his face and he would, as naturally and easily as he told her he loved her, walk up to Deke Keener and rip out his throat. She’d seen the strength in his hands, the flashes of wildness in his eyes. Ridge would kill Keener, then it would be Ridge the judge would sentence to death. And her own cowardice would claim yet another victim.
She turned off onto the road that led to Laurel Overlook, the little truck skidding on the slick clay. Higher and higher they climbed, until the road disappeared into a thicket of rhododendron. She drove through them, the branches slapping against the windshield, then fifty yards later the bushes thinned out and they were on a small patch of cleared land on the edge of a mountain, looking out into the valley below. The sky bloomed crimson as the sun sank in the western sky.
She turned off the engine and looked at him. “Ridge, there’s something I need you to do for me.”
“Sure,” he said, kissing the curve of her shoulder. “What?”
Trembling, she leaned forward and pulled an Altoid box from her purse. “I want you to put this in our cache.”
He took the box and shook it. Though she’d bound it with several rubber bands, he could tell that something other than breath mints rattled inside. “This is just like those others I buried. What do you keep in these things? Money?”
She knew that this was the moment to play for real the conversation she’d rehearsed so long in her head. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Though Ridge was different from every other boy she’d known, how could she be sure that he would want a girl who’d allowed herself to be pawed and fondled for so many years? She answered his question with one of her own. “What would you say if I told you I was planning to do something that would ruin a lot of people’s lives?”
“Whose lives?”
“Mine and all my family’s. And some other people’s, too. Maybe even yours.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to tell a secret.”
“What kind of secret?”
Again she hesitated. She longed to jump into a cleansing sea of admission, yet she was afraid to take the plunge. “A bad secret. A shameful secret.”
He frowned, as if trying to fathom her meaning. “You want to know what I would think if you told a bad secret that would ruin a lot of people’s lives?”
“Yes.” She nodded, eager to test the waters of his reply.
He pondered her question, gazing at the purplish red sunset. “I guess if you did it for a good reason, it would be okay,” he said finally. “Why don’t you tell me first? Then I could tell you how bad it was.”
“You’re part of the reason I haven’t told it.” She blinked away sudden tears.
“Why?”
“Because it would make you crazy. And it would change everything between us.”
“Bethany, I—”
“Hush.” She pulled him close, shame again overtaking her fledgling courage. This was the boy she loved, the boy whose touch she treasured above all else. She couldn’t risk losing him by confessing her relationship with Keener. She would go see Mary Crow, first thing tomorrow. As hard as it would be to tell all that had happened, at least she would still have Ridge. She kissed him. His lips, as always, were soft and sweet. “Forget I said anything. Just put this in our cache, will you?”
“Okay,” he said, puzzled.
“And don’t look inside. Only one other person in the world knows about this, Ridge. You’ve got to swear that you will never tell anybody else. Not for the rest of your life.”
“Okay.” He looked so solemn that she realized he must think this was another strange flatland romantic ritual. She’d already had to explain flowers and Valentines and engagement rings to him.
She watched him take the little box and walk into the nearby woods. One night, he’d dug a hole beneath a beech tree, wrapped a few things he considered needful in a piece of deerskin, and buried it. He’d called it a cache and told her that this was tradition, where he came from. Over time it had become their little private ritual—when either of them had anything significant to contribute, he dug up the deerskin and added it. At first she’d saved mostly sentimental ticket stubs and photographs. Lately, however, she’d wrapped all her Keener tapes in Altoids tins and had passed them along to Ridge, to put in their hiding place. Here they would be safe from Keener’s sharp eyes and unremitting inquisitiveness.
Moments later, Ridge walked back to the truck. She spread their red blanket out on the ground and held out her arms for him. “My beautiful bear,” she whispere
d, pulling him close. “I love you so.”
Later, they both lay naked beneath a glittering sky. Above them, everything seemed to swirl just like the Van Gogh painting that hung over her bed. The moon, the stars, Ridge’s sweet face; then suddenly her mother, her father, and Kayla. All of them seemed to spin and dance beneath Deke Keener’s laughing eyes, as if he were some monstrous puppeteer who put them through obscene antics purely for his own amusement. In all the heavens, hers was the only face missing; hers was the only face that could reveal Keener exactly for what he truly was.
7
He’s just celebrated his eighth birthday. He’s sneaked into a shed on his father’s first golf course. They keep lawn tractors in here; the place is full of weird tools; the sharp smells of compost and machine oil. He loves to climb up on the big machines and pretend he’s driving a tank. He heads toward his favorite, a green John Deere tractor, when he hears a noise in one shadowy corner of the shed. An irregular, rustling sound. Wondering if it’s one of his father’s despised gophers, he tiptoes over to investigate. There, behind some big sacks of grass seed, he finds a rat. It’s twice the size of Jeep, his guinea pig, with a long, bare tail. The rat looks up at him, but its small, glittering eyes don’t seem to see him. He realizes, then, that something is wrong with the rat. It crouches for a moment, gasping for air, then goes into a fit, scurrying in a tight circle, white foam bubbling from its mouth, its tail whipping like a live wire. He watches, hypnotized. The rat’s frothy mouth and gyrating tail make his own penis grow hard, exciting him in a way he’s never known before. Suddenly someone grabs him from behind. It’s his uncle Mark. “You got a sick little wiggle worm there, boy,” Mark says, pointing at his small stiff penis. “Sure hope your dad never finds out that you fuck rats.”
He struggles to get away, but Mark is too strong. His big hands pull at his T-shirt, his shorts. Then suddenly Mark changes, his thick arms become slender, his voice high as a girl’s. Now someone else grasps him. Again he tries to wrench himself loose, but the arms are sticky, like taffy, and smell like burnt sugar. He hears Bethany Daws, laughing. “Tapes,” she’s saying, her voice monstrously loud. “I hope your dad never finds out about these tapes.” Then she loops her taffy arms around him, over and over, squeezing him like a boa constrictor. “No!” he tries to scream, but he can’t force a single sound from his mouth. “Nooooooooo!”
Legacy of Masks Page 6