by Sue Halpern
“I’m upset,” he said, as if that made it all right. And then he told me that back when he was applying to college, the Doctor and he made a deal: Cal’s parents would pay for his education, college and medical school (because of course Cal was going to be a doctor), so he could start his career without debt. In return, Cal promised if he took the money, he’d come back to practice if the Doctor ever asked him.
“It seemed so theoretical at the time,” Cal said.
“But you were so young!” I said indignantly. “You shouldn’t have to keep a promise you made back then.”
“I was young when I made a promise to you,” he said bitterly. “So should I break that, too?”
* * *
I do not on gray ashes count my sorrow . . .
—Anna Akhmatova
As soon as Rusty left, Kit took the Lake Erie photograph off the wall and studied it carefully. It was a picture that had followed her from place to place to place. It was never not on a wall or mantel or bookshelf, no matter where she lived, and as a result had become part of the backdrop of her life, ambient as air. Looking at it now, what she couldn’t believe she’d never noticed before was the resemblance between her father and the man she married. It wasn’t anything specific—not their eye color or the way they combed their hair or the slant of their noses. Rather, it was their unmistakable self-possession, the way they held their bodies, the certainty that appeared to emanate from the square of their shoulders. Kit was remembering, again, how she’d slide her hand into Cal’s and he’d lock his fingers around hers, and wondered if the safety she felt then was vestigial, left over from those early months with her dad.
She heard footsteps on her porch, and then knocking at the same time as Rusty’s voice.
“Hey, Kit,” he called, and her heart sank. Why couldn’t people leave well enough alone?
“Yo, Kit,” Rusty called again, knocking harder. “I’m really sorry to disturb you. If you can hear me, please open up.”
Kit could hear him—she could hear him just fine—but the last thing she was going to do was to let him think that she’d come running at the sound of his voice. It was dumb, she knew, childish, or girlish, and then her phone started ringing and she reluctantly got out of the chair and went to the door. Rusty was standing under the yellow bug light, his face a garish citron, still staring at his phone.
“Sorry,” Rusty said, looking up. “I guess the place where I left the car wasn’t a parking spot. There’s a boot on it.”
“Did you call the number on the ticket?”
“That’s the odd thing,” Rusty said. “It went to voice mail. So I called the Riverton police directly, and that went to voice mail, so I called 911, and the dispatcher said to call back later, everyone is out on a call. Good thing it’s not a real emergency. I’m sorry to ask, but would you mind running me up to the Tip-Top?” And when she didn’t answer right away he said, “Or I could call a cab.”
“I’ll get my keys,” Kit said. “Wait here.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you drive,” Rusty said as she unlocked the doors of the Volvo sedan in the driveway.
“I like to walk,” Kit said.
“So you’ve said.” He paused. “I’m sorry if—”
“No,” she said, and after that they drove without speaking, Kit looking straight ahead, Rusty training his eyes to the right, to the river. A police car came up fast behind them, and Kit pulled over till it passed, and Rusty joked they were coming after him, and then another cruiser went by in the opposite direction and made a screeching U-turn not far behind the Volvo. Kit pulled over again, and waited until there were no flashing lights in the rearview mirror and none coming at them.
“Weird,” she said. “There must have been a bad accident on the highway.”
But when they got on the highway it was clear, a few cars going north, a few going south, almost all of them with kayaks and canoes and paddleboards and bicycles hanging off them like giant Christmas tree ornaments. Just before the exit for the Tip-Top, three fire trucks, sirens blaring, cut them off, forcing the Volvo over the rumble strip and onto the shoulder before Kit had time to slow down.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” Rusty repeated as the car bumped along, and Kit, heart pounding, fighting to keep the wheels from running up on the grass, said, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” until her foot was firmly on the brake, and it was.
“It’s okay, Rusty,” she said sternly, when he didn’t stop keening. And then, more softly, “It’s okay,” and Rusty shook his head and pointed west, over her left shoulder, to a curious spectral glow illuminating the scrim of trees on the rise above the road and a black funnel cloud reaching skyward.
“It’s got to be the Tip-Top,” he said. “It’s got to be the Tip-Top. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”
The roadblock started at the bottom of the motel access road. People in yellow turnout gear patrolled the entrance, waving everyone away except first responders, firefighters, and the police.
“But he lives there,” Kit said, pleading with a small woman who was lost inside her oversized jacket and overalls. Even her helmet was too big and had slipped forward, its brim covering the tops of her eyes.
“We have to keep the road clear,” she said.
A radio, clipped to her belt, was broadcasting static, and then a raspy, mechanical voice said, “Winchester One, five minutes out,” and Kit said, “That’s Chuck,” and the woman pushed back the helmet and leaned her face into the car, and Kit realized she was looking at Chuck Odum’s beautiful wife.
“I know you,” the woman said. “You’re Chuck’s boss now.”
“I don’t think anyone is Chuck’s boss,” Kit said, laughing.
“True enough,” the woman said.
“I’m Kit,” Kit said.
“Linda,” Chuck’s wife said.
“This is nice, but I need to get up there,” Rusty said, and jumped out of the car and started running up the hill.
“You’re not authorized,” Linda Odum yelled after him, but it was too late. He was sprinting and soon out of sight.
“Look,” Linda said. “Find a place to ditch the car, and you can head up there and find your friend. Everyone is busy. They probably won’t notice.”
“Thanks,” Kit said, as the woman backed away from the car.
Ditching the car was easier said than done. Cars and trucks were parked on both sides of the road, almost all with first responder or EMT license plates, or volunteer fire company stickers displayed in the back window. Kit followed them around a bend, noticed a spot on the other side of the road, and did a messy three-point turn and pulled in behind a Silverado jacked up on massive off-road wheels. She checked her watch. It was after ten. She could just make out the insistent wail of a siren, getting louder as it charged up the highway. She started to walk and then to jog. It was dark on the road, and it was narrow and twisty, and she wasn’t wearing anything reflective. She picked up the pace.
“There you are,” Linda said when Kit approached the roadblock. “Just stay out of the way. If anyone asks, you snuck in,” and waved her through.
The access road was steep, and as she walked, Kit had to avoid rivulets of water coursing down from the top, carrying sand from last winter’s snows and detritus loosened by the pressurized hoses. She was winded, and as she began to breathe through her open mouth, bitter flakes of soot landed on her tongue and she had to stop and spit, and as she did, she noticed the sky—what she could see of it—was flecked with what looked like black snow tacking lazily toward the ground. A tanker truck went by, heading downhill to the river for more water, and pretty soon she started to pass fire trucks and rescue vehicles, idling by the side of the road, waiting their turn to head up to what was left of the Tip-Top. No one tried to stop her or question what she was doing, so Kit made her way around them, climbing higher, smoke filling her nose, until she could see flames taunting the long arcs of water trained on them from a phalanx of fire engines lined up side by s
ide. Someone had set up klieg lights around the perimeter, which made the whole scene look like a movie set, but there was nothing pretend about the heat coming off the building, which was fully engulfed.
“You can’t be here,” a sweat-stained man said to her, and pointed to an area at the far end of the parking lot where someone had set up cots and a water station, and where she could just make out Rusty, kneeling, talking to someone sitting on one of the cots who, as Kit approached, put her arms around him.
When she got closer, Kit could see tears had streaked the soot on his face.
“I told him,” the woman was saying. “I told him.” She was older and spoke with an Indian accent.
“I know, I know,” Rusty said, soothing her. “It was an accident.”
“It was not an accident,” the woman said. “I told him.”
“I know,” Rusty said again. “He’s going to be fine.”
“Rusty,” Kit said. “I’m glad I found you.”
“This is Mrs. Patel,” Rusty said. “My landlady, I guess you could say.”
“Grandmother,” she corrected him. “Your Indian grandmother.” She was smiling now, and then, just as suddenly, tears began to flow down her face.
“I was so worried, so worried,” she said to Kit. “I thought he was still inside. I knocked on his door and no one answered, and the door was locked and the key was in reception where the fire started.” She was sobbing now, rocking back and forth, and Rusty was holding her. “I was so worried about you.”
“Everyone is okay,” Rusty said. “That’s what matters.” And then, looking up at Kit, “Her husband is in one of the ambulances. Smoke inhalation. They’re giving him oxygen.” And then, to Mrs. Patel, “Do you want to go see him?” And when she said she did, Rusty helped her up off the cot and took her arm in his and told Kit they’d be back.
While she was standing there, a firefighter came up and asked her to fill a couple of water bottles, and then another came by asking to lie down for a minute, and before Rusty came back, Kit was running the rest station, even though no one knew who she was or what she was doing there. The fire was relentless. As soon as the firefighters vanquished it in one spot and turned to another, it would reignite, first as a small flame and then, when it found a stray piece of curtain that had somehow escaped being soaked or a splinter off a joist, flare up again. “Like Wile E. Coyote,” she heard a firefighter say.
It was over just before sunrise. As the sky brightened, the klieg lights were turned off, and before long the curtain of daylight was raised on a scene no one would have predicted. There was nothing left. Not a single beam or wall or bed or television or towel rack. The footprint of the Tip-Top was a slurry of ash and melted plastic, smoke hovering above it like an incubus. Every so often a small flame would suddenly appear and just as suddenly subside, like a trick candle on a birthday cake, Kit thought, standing next to Rusty, watching it.
The elder Patels were going with their son and daughter-in-law to a relative’s motel somewhere else in the state, and when they asked Rusty if he’d like to come with them, as their guest, Kit said, “No, he’s coming with me.” The words just flew out of her mouth, surprising Kit most of all.
“You couldn’t go with them,” Kit explained, as she and Rusty reached her car and she was telling him why she jumped in before he could answer the Patels. “You don’t have a vehicle, remember?”
“Thank you,” he said, distracted. “They are very good people. Very generous. They cook for me. Every night. I don’t think they’ve charged me in a month. I tried to pay, but they said anyone who liked their rogan josh and lime pickle as much as I did was family.”
They were back on the highway. The sun was up. The only other vehicles were fire trucks and ambulances, their sirens off, lumbering back to base with no sense of urgency. Rusty turned away and rubbed his eyes.
“The truth is,” he said, and stopped. “The truth is after a while I got tired of it. I was just hungry. It was just free food. I am such an asshole.
“At least I come by it honestly,” he mumbled.
“What are you talking about? You’ve been through a lot tonight, but stop being an idiot.”
Rusty cleared his throat. He was about to speak, then stopped, sighed, closed his eyes, and absently pinched and kneaded the skin on his forehead.
Kit looked over, thinking he might have fallen asleep. She’d read about soldiers, during World War I, being so exhausted that they would fall asleep in the thick of battle, standing up, firing their weapons. She knew Rusty was bone-tired. She was, too, and she hadn’t watched all her belongings go up in smoke.
“Remember that lunch?” Rusty began. “The one with Carl and the other guys? At the hospital?”
“Green Jell-O parfait,” Kit said.
“Exactly,” Rusty said. “There was a reason they took me out. They wanted to tell me something.”
“Okay.”
“You know about my mother, right?” Rusty said.
“You mean the bankbook from 1950?”
“That,” he said, “and that she was adopted.”
“Right,” Kit said, beginning to connect the dots in her head.
“Well, here’s the thing: both Carl and Patrick remembered that there was this kid a couple of years older than they were, the great-grandson of one of the original mill owners, so an heir to one of the first families of Riverton. Wealthy, and a real jerk, apparently. And what they remember is that around the same time that my mother was born, this guy got one of his family’s housekeepers pregnant and was bragging about it, bragging about what he did and how he did it and saying disgusting things about the girl. So, therefore, an asshole. Actually, much worse than an asshole.”
Rusty paused, and a dozen questions came into Kit’s head, and she tried to work out how to ask them without sounding like she found the whole story far-fetched. Plausible, but far-fetched.
“It’s speculation. You don’t know if it’s true,” Kit said. “Wasn’t your mother from Minnesota?”
“My mother was adopted by people from Minnesota, but that doesn’t mean she was born in Minnesota. She was actually born in upstate New York.”
“So what’s the connection to Riverton?” Kit asked, and knew the answer as soon as she’d said it.
“The bankbook,” she and Rusty said at the same time.
“Carl said it was probably some kind of payoff or hush money, or even the family trying to do right by this girl.”
“What happened to her?”
“They didn’t know. Carl said he was pretty sure she never came back to Riverton. But why would she? But where do girls like that go?” His voice trailed off. “I like the story my mother told me, that she was adopted at birth and those people are her true mother and father. It’s vague, but a lot better than ‘I was the product of’—I don’t know what you’d call it, I don’t even want to go there—‘by an entitled bastard.’”
“Fair enough,” Kit said, “but your mother probably didn’t know, right?” And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “Is he—that guy—still alive? He’d be, what? In his eighties?”
“Nope,” Rusty said. “And that’s the only good part of the story. Patrick said that he was one of those guys who thought he was invincible, and took a dare to jump his motorcycle over the narrowest part of the river and clipped a stanchion and got tangled in his bike and went under. As I said, a real asshole. My grandfather. Me. It must be genetic.”
“The Patels love you,” Kit said. “They don’t think you’re an asshole.”
“Well, they should. When they wouldn’t let me pay, I told Mr. Patel that I was going to buy him a microwave to replace the crappy old hot plate with frayed wires he used to heat up his food, but I never did.”
“So you think this is your fault. Is that what you’re saying?”
“Isn’t it?” he said. “They lost everything.”
They were pulling up to her house, and as tired as Kit was, she found herself angry, too.
“Come on,” she said, leading him into the house, past the bottle of wine they’d emptied so many hours before, past the photograph she’d left askew on the coffee table. Kit climbed the stairs and Rusty followed, and when she sat down on the bed and pointed to the other side, he sat down, and when she took off her shoes, he took off his, and when she lay down, unwashed and fully clothed, he lay down, too, and under a cover of sunlight, both fell fast asleep.
Chapter Eleven
8.16.10–8.22.10
Sunny/truth
The mall opens at ten, but Willow tries to get there early to set up her kiosk, which means my parents usually leave the house around nine. I was on my bike at nine fifteen–ish, and rode the back way into Riverton and got to Coolidge Street around ten after ten. If Steve went home right after helping Willow, he’d already know I was gone, though he’d have no idea where I was. Two can play the secrets game.
Kit’s car was in the driveway, but when I knocked on the door, she didn’t answer. I knew she liked to bring her coffee and a book up to the top of the house where we’d watched the fireworks, and figured that if she was up there she’d never hear me knocking, so I tried the door and it was open, so I stepped inside and called her name again, and again she didn’t answer.
I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was in her house. I coughed. I dragged my feet so my sneakers would skid on the floor. Nothing. When I got to the bottom of the staircase I called out her name again, hoping my voice would carry up to the cupola.