“She was the one who worked on me. Her husband began the job, but he chickened out, and she took over.”
“Oh, Jo …” Her eyes strayed to my bandages. “Well, if it’s any satisfaction, they’re both in federal prison, charged with espionage. He took that job at the nuclear plant to try to find secrets to sell to our enemies!”
I almost laughed. Once a spy, always a spy. But when it came to the Doughboys—er, Milacs, I’d lost my sense of humor.
“And the émigrés?”
“They were sent to New York—to the immigration authorities. They’ll probably be sent back where they came from.”
Sadly, I thought of the woman on the mattress next to mine who had spoken a little German.
The aide came in with my dinner. As she set down the tray, Maggie began to gather up her things. “I’ll be going now.”
“Wait.” I slid out of bed and hobbled toward her. As I hugged her I could feel her body trembling. I realized I was holding a third Maggie. Not Mrs. Santa, not Mary Poppins, but—Judas’s mother. Whoever she was. Nobody ever talked about her, or her feelings. But I had been browsing in my new Bible. Maybe I would find her.
CHAPTER 60
One day I had an unexpected visitor: Becca’s aunt. Dressed in a mauve suit, black-and-white silk scarf, and chunky gold earrings it was amazing she had made it from the farmhouse to the hospital without attracting a film crew.
“How are you feeling?” She drew a chair up beside the bed.
“Better, thanks.”
“We’ve all been so worried.”
Not certain who the “all” included, I let that pass.
“I …” She looked around the room as if for help, then continued in an abrupt burst, “I wanted you to know … Becca and I didn’t … we were completely ignorant …”
“I know,” I answered.
“Actually, you were part of the reason I took Becca to Prague,” she said. “After talking to you, it occurred to me if she was going to be an artist, she should see her native city, one of the great art centers of the world.”
“But what made you take off so suddenly?” I asked.
Avoiding my eyes, she said, “I suspected those people … They weren’t like any of the other visitors we’d had. They were furtive and … churlish. I told Juri I didn’t care for them. He accused me of being a snob. Then one day I saw Becca give the man a frightened look. I took things into my own hands. I updated our passports, ordered plane tickets, and packed our bags. At the same time, Juri suddenly got the idea into his head that Becca should meet her grandfather. ‘He isn’t getting any younger,’ he said. So it worked out very well. He actually helped us leave. He drove us to the airport.”
“Why didn’t you tell Becca ahead of time?”
“I didn’t want to worry her. I knew she wouldn’t want to leave school. I thought I had better surprise her.”
“I stopped by that same evening,” I said. “Juri told me you had gone to Florida.”
“Florida? I wonder why he said that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Juri wasn’t really involved, you know,” she assured me. “He is selfish but he isn’t—evil.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“He told me he had backed their plan because he thought it was a way to help his countrymen come to this country—”
“Illegally,” I couldn’t help inserting.
“Well … but I don’t think he knew that.” She drew a deep breath. “But I didn’t come to talk about Juri. I came to apologize, and beg forgiveness on behalf of Becca, Juri, and me …” Her eyes wandered to my bandages and looked hastily away. She continued, “ … for your suffering.” She reached for my hand.
I clasped it. “I never blamed you or Becca,” I said.
“And Juri?”
Was it so important that I exonerate her cousin, too?
She countered my silence with, “But he didn’t know …”
I released her hand. That was asking too much. If she wanted to kid herself that her cousin, boyfriend, whatever was innocent until the trial was over, that was okay. But I wasn’t going to help her. “Thank you for coming,” I said, changing the subject. “Becca has been a faithful visitor. I hope it hasn’t interfered with her schoolwork.”
“Oh, no.” She smiled. “Becca’s a good student. To tell you the truth I’m glad she has something to do after school besides hang around with that sulky boyfriend of hers.”
“Randy?”
Our eyes met and we laughed.
“I’ve found a local artist who is going to give Becca drawing lessons,” she said.
“Great!”
“He’s a painter of some note and he was very impressed with Becca’s skills.”
At this point a nurse came in to take my blood pressure. The aunt seemed to feel this was a natural time to end her visit.
“By the way,” I said, as she rose to go, “What is your name? I know you only as ‘Becca’s aunt.’”
“Ema,” she said. “With one ‘m’.”
Of course. Emma with two “m’s” would be ordinary. With one “m” it was romantic—even exotic. “Come again, when you have time,” I said sincerely. I had enjoyed her company. “Becca tells me you write poetry. Maybe you could bring some for me to read.”
She brightened visibly. “I will.”
During Becca’s next visit, I asked her about the phone call.
“I wanted to tell you about Prague. It was so awesome! And I just picked up the phone and called you. But Grandfather came in, and when he found me calling long distance without permission, he was angry. He’s very strict and old-fashioned …”
Too bad he lives so far away, I thought.
“ … So I hung up,” she explained.
“I was very worried,” I said. “I tried to trace the call.”
“You did?” She looked pleased.
“You’re a pain.” I cuffed her lightly on the arm.
“Do you really think so?” She seemed positively delighted.
“Get out of here!”
Instead, she stretched out at the end of the bed, being very careful to avoid my sore feet, and began to conjugate French verbs for tomorrow’s vocabulary quiz.
CHAPTER 61
The morning of my release, Dad came to the hospital in Paul’s pickup and drove me home. As we entered the parking lot we passed my motorcycle, parked in its usual spot. This was reassuring. Someday I would ride again. Who had retrieved it for me, I wondered? Paul? Tom? We went straight to my room, but our progress was slow. To my chagrin, I had to use a crutch to get up the steps one at a time and lean on Dad as we walked down the corridor. It was my feet. The Milacs had done a job on them. Loaded with nerve endings, they are one of the most sensitive parts of the body.
My room looked good. The Dufy sparkled. Someone had removed Ichabod. Paul, probably. I hoped he had dismantled him gently and laid him to rest in peace. His clothes were stacked and folded in a neat pile at one end of my futon, my tattered gray Columbia sweatshirt topmost. I grabbed it, pulled it on, and curled up under my comforter. Scanning my bookcase, the worn copy of The Wizard of Oz caught my eye. I would never read it with the same relish. In fact, I would probably never read it again. My children, if I ever had any, would have to settle for The Secret Garden or Treasure Island until they were old enough to read for themselves.
Dad stood uneasily, shifting from one foot to the other. He looked older. I hadn’t remembered him looking so old. He needed to get back to work. He didn’t do well without work.
“It’s time to go, Dad,” I said gently. “Your print shop is waiting. So are your customers. If you don’t go soon, you won’t have any customers.”
“But …”
“I’ll be fine. I have good friends.”
He nodded. He’d met them. “That Canby fella …”
“Yes?”
“He …”
“I know. I owe him.” I wished he’d go. I wanted to be alone. But I felt g
uilty about it.
He came over and planted a kiss on my forehead, the way he had every night when I was a kid. “Come see me as soon as you feel up to it.”
“Sure,” I said, as I always did. But this time I meant it. I reached up, indicating I needed a hug. When he released me, he took a last look around the room, as if wanting to remember every detail.
The door closed.
With a sigh, I reached for the TV remote and turned on the soaps.
CHAPTER 62
I was happily engrossed in the climax of an episode of General Hospital when the phone rang. “Damn!” I reached for it.
“Hungry?”
I thought a minute.
“We have a date,” he reminded me.
“At the Blue Arrow?”
“No.” Pause. “Every now and then I like to branch out.”
He saved your life, remember? “Okay, let’s branch,” I said. “Should I dress?” In Bayfield, going out to eat was a big deal. Some women even wore skirts.
“No. The place I have in mind is very laid back.”
“Great.”
The fact that I let him help me into his pickup shows I was still convalescing. We didn’t talk much, but the silence wasn’t unfriendly. He drove over long, flat roads that stretched to nowhere. South Jersey specializes in such roads. The sky stretched to nowhere, too. I’d missed the sky. It was good to be out. Out of the hospital. Out of the motel. Under the sky.
“Juri’s in jail,” Tom said. “Along with Nick.”
“And … the Milacs?” I spoke their name carefully.
“In custody, awaiting trial.” He cast an anxious glance my way. “You’ll have to testify.”
“My pleasure,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Did you know Mrs. Milac was once a mule?”
“Come again?” I had better names for her from the animal kingdom.
“In the past, she exported drugs to various destinations in her abdomen. She packed the drugs in plastic, then placed them inside the prunes before swallowing them. The prunes helped the drugs go down easier and also helped bring them out faster at the other end.”
“Yuck!”
That explained the ugly scar on her tummy. Drug traffickers were not into cosmetic surgery. That might explain her illness, too. Crab cakes and prunes are probably not a good mix. “Dad went back to New York,” I said, changing the subject.
“And Paul went back to church.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Last Sunday he took the plunge.”
“Maggie must be happy.”
“She’s ecstatic. Served him roast beef on her best china, even though it wasn’t a holiday.”
“What made him go back? Certainly not the return of his prodigal son!”
Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “You.”
“Me?”
“We had a few beers to celebrate your recovery, and …”
“I hope it was a high-class brew.”
“Heineken. And he told me you had restored his faith in …” He swerved to avoid a rabbit. “ … goodness,” he finished.
I let out a low whistle.
“That bad, huh?”
Was he grinning? “Well, I never claimed to be Goody Two Shoes.” He was grinning. I felt a blush coming on. “Becca’s back in school,” I blurted, “and on her way to becoming a famous artist … or architect. Prague blew her mind.”
“And you?”
“And I’m—about to become what I always wanted to be.”
“And that is?”
“A famous, humble country doctor.” I stole that line from Linus, of Peanuts fame.
“Oh, yeah.” He chuckled. “I saw your picture.”
The Bayfield Press had dug up a snapshot of me on my bike, scarf flying. The headline read: LOCAL DOC BREAKS SMUGGLING RING.
“By the way, where are we?” I sat forward, looking around. When you’re in the hospital you give up, let other people take charge. I was ready to end that.
“Don’t worry. I never get lost.”
I let that pass. A small frame house popped up on the horizon. After a minute, we slowed and turned into the driveway. Not a driveway by suburban standards; more a hole in the tall grass.
“New restaurant?”
“Famous for home cooking.” He turned off the ignition.
“You cook?” I asked, as he helped me down from the cab and handed me my crutch.
“Every now and then.”
“What’s on the menu? Venison burgers?”
“They’re delicious, by the way,” he said maliciously.
I didn’t respond. By now I had learned how destructive deer could be and that the county was overpopulated with them. I stared at the house. From a distance it didn’t look like much, but up close I could see the work that had gone into it. There was a long screened porch. Perfectly plain—no fancy gingerbread that would need painting every other year. No porch furniture in sight, but I could imagine sitting out here in a rocker on a summer night, watching the lightning bugs bump against the screen. The floor of the porch was made of rough-hewn boards, polished, stained, and coated with something durable to protect it from the weather. A pile of cut logs was stacked in one corner. “You have a fireplace?”
“Sort of.” He opened the porch door into the kitchen. Although it had big windows, it was toasty warm. A wood stove, perched on a raised brick platform, was the source of heat. I sniffed.
“Apple wood. You can’t beat it for scent.”
The warmth and the scent enveloped me. “Let’s eat here.” I slipped onto a wooden chair next to a window overlooking an empty field. The field was white, although—to my knowledge—it hadn’t snowed. “What … ?
“They’re back.” Tom came to look. “Snow geese. They were feeding here yesterday, but I thought they’d gone south.”
“I thought they were seagulls,” I admitted. I still had a lot to learn.
“Want to see something spectacular?”
“Not if it means getting up.” I was surprised how tired I was after spending a day doing nothing.
He grabbed both my hands, pulled me up, and half-dragged me to the base of a flight of crooked stairs. The steps were stained and polished like the porch. He half-pushed me up them.
“How old is this place?” My voice sounded hollow in the stairwell.
“Not old. 1892. It was a tenant farmer’s house. Story goes …”
I didn’t hear the rest. I had reached the top.
There was only one room up here. Large and square with huge windows on all sides. It was like standing in the cabin of a ship. But instead of blue water, I was surrounded by white fields. The winter brown of the fields was completely hidden by the snow geese. As we watched, the geese rose as one—in a single white sheet.
I gasped, “How do they do that?”
“Fly?”
“No, smart guy. Take off all together.”
“Nothing to it. The head goose gives a toot. A kind of bugle call.”
I continued to stare at the geese trailing south in a V. The last rays of the sun caught their white underbellies, illuminating them like strings of Christmas tree lights. Then they were gone. The field was brown again and twilight wrapped the house in violet.
“What are you thinking about?”
“The Chrysler Building.”
He laughed.
“No, seriously. Every night at this time, its lights come on—six jagged arcs. When I’m in Manhattan I try to find a spot where I can see it. After the Twin Towers went, it became an evening ritual. I used to check every night to make sure it was still there. Forty-second and Fifth is the best view. But Thirty-fourth and Lex’ll do.”
“I thought the Empire State was the big attraction.”
“For tourists. The view from the Empire State is good. But the view of the Chrysler Building is better.”
“Homesick?”
I looked at him. “I guess I am.”
“Why
did you leave?”
I glanced at him sharply.
His return glance was equally sharp.
I turned away with a shrug.
He grabbed my shoulders.
“A child died. It was my fault.”
His hands dropped to his sides, but he held my gaze. “What happened?”
I told him about Sophie.
He walked over to one of the big windows and stared out. There was nothing to see now but darkness. With his back to me, he said, “We all have something.”
I waited. But he offered nothing more.
“My boyfriend told me it wasn’t my fault. That I should forget it.”
“Your boyfriend was wrong. There are some things you never forget. You carry them to the grave.” He went on in a dull tone. “You may bury them for a while, but they’ll jump out at you when you least expect it … .”
Like when I saw Becca jump on her bike, grinning back at me. Sophie. Becca.
“ … and the older you get,” Tom continued, “the more of this baggage you carry around.”
This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. But I suspected he was right. And I sensed he was speaking from experience. Someday maybe he would tell me about his baggage.
“That’s why people are bent over when they grow old,” he added.
“No, it isn’t. They have osteoporosis.”
His laugh broke the somber mood. “Are you still taking Becca to New York?” he asked.
“Sure. As soon as I can walk.”
His gaze strayed to my feet, encased in a pair of oversized bedroom slippers. He looked away. “May I come?”
“Have you ever been?”
“Once. Class trip.”
“What did you see?”
“The usual. Empire State, Statue of Liberty, Brooklyn Bridge.”
“What did you like best?”
“The bridge. No contest.”
“You can come.”
I turned, scanning the simple room. Whitewashed walls. A couple of rag rugs. A bureau—rescued from a flea market, probably, and redone, carefully, lovingly. A small table with a single lamp. And a mattress tossed in the corner, covered with a worn patchwork quilt that looked like the real thing. Bachelor quarters, country style. “Is that where you sleep?”
Scarecrow Page 19