“I’m not pissed off.” She reaches out to touch Isabel’s arm, just to prove she can. “I meant it; I don’t care.”
Another car swerves at them and they both jump back. It’s Danny though, pulling over with Ruth’s mom.
“Get in, you two,” her mother says. “Something’s happening at the harbor.” She doesn’t even ask where they’ve been.
That’s why the cops never showed up at Matt’s house. The cloud of smoke is real. There is something else burning in Highbone.
eight
ISABEL SEES SPARKS, flaming ash and bits of wood and paper, made lighter than air by the heat. When Danny turns onto the top of Main Street she sees them dancing against the Maxfield Parrish color of the sky. The thing is, it doesn’t seem wrong at all. Isabel can tell Ruth understands it too. It’s obvious from the look on her face. Finally, all the things they know anyway are real. Everybody can see them now. This is how it is, burning.
The world has let out its flaming breath at last.
Main Street is closed off, with a village cop car parked across it. County is pulling up as they get there, and there is already a fire engine at the corner of Baywater Avenue. The volunteers have run a hose down the alley behind the stores.
Danny drives around and down the alley on the other side, behind the diner. The whole world seems to be standing at the end of the road by the harbor. Mr. Lipsky is there, and his old dad is sitting up in the back of an ambulance with an oxygen mask on. Magdalene is there, but they can’t go over and talk to her because she’s with her father, standing next to a cop.
The fire is at the back of Mariner’s Maps and Books, and it looks like it’s spread next door to the craft shop. Mr. Hancock is there, and Mrs. Hancock, and the ’Nam vets from the park are in a huddle around the bench by the water. Ms. Carter climbs out and holds the door for Isabel. She leans on the roof, and Danny stands by her, leaning on the hood. All at once, in the heat from the flames, it’s like all of their movements have come into sync. The Hancocks and both Mr. Lipskys and Danny and Ruth’s mom are all part of the same world, like everyone is in the same movie as them for the first time.
“Isabel, why are Magda and Professor Warren here?”
“Everyone’s here, Ruth.”
“No, I mean shouldn’t they be somewhere looking for Henry?”
“Oh. Maybe they think he’s here somewhere?”
And then Ruth is running into fire for the second time that night. As if she could smother this one, too, as if she’s some kind of angel. Which she is, really. It comes home to Isabel right then that they all are. Angels, stuck somewhere, and maybe fire is the rite of passage, the magic door. Maybe Ruth is escaping now, without her.
It’s Mr. Hancock who puts an arm out to stop Ruth. He’s standing there on the corner by the fire engine. He rolls her along his arm and folds her into his chest and she’s shouting at him.
“Let me go, you dick! There’s a kid in there!”
“There’s no one in there, Ruth,” he says.
The water from the fire hose is loud, and Isabel moves closer so she can hear them. She reaches out to pull Ruth away, then changes her mind.
“You don’t know that. How would you know what’s really going on? Let go. You don’t even know me.”
“Of course I know you, Ruth. I’ve known you all your life.”
And now Ms. Carter stalks over and says, “Leave her alone, Harold.”
“You can’t make me leave her alone forever, Carol.”
“Her name’s not Carol, it’s Caroline!” Ruth shouts. “And your soap opera doesn’t matter right now. Henry might be in there.”
“Try me, Harold,” Ms. Carter says. They’re both ignoring Ruth. “You’ve got the house and the club and the trophy wife. I’ve got my daughter. Try me.”
Isabel could swear he says the next thing just for effect. Just because there’s an audience.
“I’m her father, Caroline. I have rights.”
Shit.
Ruth just sits down on the ground then, right in the road. All the expression slides off her face. Now Isabel is the only one left standing.
Old Mr. Lipsky is watching, too. He’s trying to take the mask off and talk, gesticulating at his son. Mrs. Hancock is watching, but it’s just the usual sneer on her face. Danny is still next to Ms. Carter’s car, looking at his sneakers and shuffling, with his cigarette in the hand that’s holding the back of his neck. Isabel can see this is beyond him. He has a bit part. Danny isn’t made for high drama.
Now Sam Lipsky bends down with his hand on Ruth’s shoulder, saying, “There’s no one in there, sweetie. The firemen looked in every room. My father was the only one there. They checked.”
Sweetie. It sounds weird coming from him. He keeps trying to be all fatherly lately. She puts her hand on his arm, and that’s strange too.
“What happened, Mr. Lipsky?”
“I don’t know, Isabel. The whole . . .”
Water sprays up over the shops and then stops. The cordon is in the middle of Main Street, but people back up onto the far sidewalk to keep from getting soaked. There are no more sparks, but the smoke has turned black and it smells heavy, like if you breathe in you’ll be taking something solid into your lungs. There is a minute of silence, and then the whole town breathes out. The fire is gone from the sky.
When Isabel looks down again, everyone is facing away from the bookstore, towards the harbor. She’s too short to see what’s coming; there’s just a bunch of backs and falling ash and the sound of people gasping. It’s like watching fireworks when you’re little. She is trying to slide between people when a cop shifts the crowd around the ambulance and Lefty comes through. People’s gasps have turned into words now, but everyone is talking at once so it still doesn’t make sense.
Lefty is holding Henry in his arms. He walks through the huddle of ’Nam vets next to the harbor and over to the nearest cop car, carrying Henry like he’s a hurt bird or a newborn baby. People back away from him instinctively, but the cop is still waving them away. Lefty looks like the Virgin Mother, holding Christ after they took him down from the cross.
Only Henry’s not dead. His head moves, and when he sees Magda he smiles a little, weak smile. He looks filthy. There’s slime all over his face and his clothes. When Mr. Warren sees Henry he doesn’t shout or run towards him. Instead he turns around to Magdalene and slaps her. The cop standing next to them doesn’t even flinch when she falls back against his car.
He just says, “Don’t worry, Professor Warren. We’ll make sure your boy’s all right.”
Danny gets to Magda first, before Isabel. When Isabel bends down and holds out a hand, Magda looks at her and says, “I don’t know why he did it. I don’t understand.”
“Don’t worry, flowergirl. You’re okay.”
“Not my father. Jeff. I don’t understand what I did wrong, Isabel.”
“Jeff? The guy from the beach? Magda, what happened?”
Then Danny leans close to Magda, telling her Henry is fine.
She puts a hand on Danny’s arm and says, “Where’s Ruth?” That hand is like a blessing and a dismissal. Magda’s big, sad eyes have gone holy. She is about to rise up. “I need to talk to Ruth,” she says.
Now Old Mr. Lipsky is there, with his son behind him saying, “Pop, you need to sit down.”
“You okay, little Miss Buonvicino?” He turns around and flaps a hand at his son. “Stop fussing, you old woman! I’m your father. You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
Magda looks up at Old Mr. Lipsky and they smile at each other.
“Your little brother will be fine, Irene’s baby. Don’t worry.”
Ruth is shouting again, behind her. When Isabel turns around, a cop is handcuffing Lefty’s one hand to his own. Ruth runs around them in circles, trying to make them listen.
“Mr. Lipsky.” Isabel grabs his arm. “Stop them! He didn’t do anything.”
“You don’t know that, sweetie.” Sweetie again. They’
re all sweeties tonight.
Magdalene takes in a loud, slow breath. “Yes, we do.”
It’s like she got her bones back the minute she saw Henry. She’s standing up straight for the first time in days. The real Saint Magdalene the Magnetic is back, pointing them to the center of everything. Isabel can feel the tension go out of her own body.
“We do know,” Magda tells them. “He’s just Lefty. Henry likes him. He’s our friend.”
Professor Warren glares at Magdalene like he might hit her again.
Lefty says, “I had to wait until the water was out.” The cop sucks in his breath, and for a minute Professor Warren looks like he might throw up.
“The tide,” Lefty says, struggling. “I had to wait until the tide was out and the fish were gone. He was in the dark behind the water.”
“He tried to tell us.” Ruth shouts over at Danny and pulls on the cop’s belt. “Danny, he tried to tell us this morning, remember?”
Henry is in the back of the ambulance now, with a lady paramedic talking to him and making him sip something from a straw. He’s looking through the crowd and smiling at Magdalene, just smiling like he won the game and Magda is the prize. Professor Warren is telling the police to do their job. Magda turns her back to him and walks over to the ambulance. Her father doesn’t matter anymore because Henry is back.
The fire is out.
nine
DARKNESS HAS BECOME a substance with a feel and a smell, but it isn’t as good as Ruth imagined it would be. Something heavier than an early-summer night is hanging over Highbone. Always has been, really, but now it seems like everyone can smell it and touch it, not just her. The falling ashes are like pieces of something that’s been there all along, the precipitation of everything suspended in the air of Highbone.
Two hours pass before they’ll let the Lipskys go back in the store. People spend it wandering in and out of the park and Flannagan’s and the Harpoon Diner. Everyone in town is too wired to go home. Ruth follows Magda and Isabel around the back of Mariner’s to look. It isn’t falling down. In fact, it’s weird how little damage there is. She leans against the wall on the other side of the alley and looks up. There is a hole like a hell mouth in the back of Mr. Lipsky’s building, burned around the edges. You can see the stairway through it and the opposite wall is covered in soot. The firemen told Mr. Lipsky it’s safe now, the structure is solid and it’s okay to go inside.
“Hey, Irene’s baby.” Old Mr. Lipsky is holding five dollars out to Magdalene. “The Harpoon’s open, making coffee. Go on in and get us five. Black for Samuel, mine’s milk and two sugars. Maybe some extra milk if they got it. I think maybe my refrigerator might not be working so good right now.”
“You’re gonna have to come to my house, Pop.”
“All right, Samuel, stop fussing for a minute while we get these little ladies something hot to drink. Look at the little movie star. She’s soaking wet. She looks like a drowned kitten.”
“Ruth, come with me?” Magda asks like she needs it, like it’s a favor.
Everything is close and vivid, like they’re tripping, but they’re not. Anyway, the veil is gone from between her and Magda. Ruth can see her again, but she changed while she was invisible. She looks hurt and scared, for the first time in their lives.
Now Magda grabs the tail of Ruth’s wet shirt and pulls her towards the diner. They have to stand in the doorway because there’s a line of people waiting for coffee. They don’t need Old Mr. Lipsky’s five dollars. The Harpoon is giving out free coffee tonight.
“Magda, we did it. We went back to Matt’s house and put everything back, and I think we saved his life, maybe. Isabel couldn’t get how you knew. She doesn’t understand you.”
“Yeah, it worked. Ruth, Jeff hurt me.”
“What?”
“He’s like my dad, but worse, and I didn’t even see. Every time he went away, I couldn’t wait for him to come back and touch me again. Then he hurt me. Maybe he was mad about the weed, or about me. I don’t know.”
“I knew something was wrong. I never thought it was that. Why didn’t you say anything? You just sprung him on us. On me. I tell you everything, Magda. I used to tell you everything.”
“You know what? It isn’t like that with us. I can’t turn around and lean on you. Me and you aren’t made like that.”
“Maybe you can now. We’re changing, haven’t you noticed?”
“It doesn’t even matter now, Ruth. Henry’s not mine anymore. All of a sudden, my dad noticed Henry is here. Did you see that?”
Professor Warren wouldn’t let Magda hold Henry. He put him in the car and took him home, told Magdalene she could walk. But Henry smiled over his shoulder at them and said, “Don’t worry, Magda. I knew you would find me, and Isabel taught me how to not be scared.”
Professor Warren just said, “Get your seat belt on, Henry.”
Ruth watched Magda lean in to wipe the slime off Henry’s face with her sleeve. She had to snatch her arm out when her dad put the window up and pulled away. Their car has automatic windows that make a sound like a table saw.
“It won’t last,” Ruth says now. “People come and go and come back again. You’ll see.”
“He’s going to take him and teach him to hate me.”
“No one can teach him that, Magda.”
Back inside Mr. Lipsky’s store it smells horrible, but it looks surprisingly normal. In the back room, Ruth can see that all the boxes are soaked. There must be dozens of ruined books, but in front everything is like always. Except for it’s weird to be in here in the middle of the night. And except for the smell.
When they hand out the coffee Old Mr. Lipsky sits in the captain’s chair and Isabel gets into her place in the bay window. Ruth and Magda sit on the floor, and Young Mr. Lipsky walks up and down between everyone, looking into the street and then back at the counter.
“You’re in shock, boy-o,” his dad says. “Don’t worry about it. You got insurance.”
“Boy-o? Boy-o? Where have you been hanging out, Pop?”
“Where’s Gaius Pollio, Mr. Lipsky?” Isabel calls from the window.
“Don’t you worry, little Miss O’Sullivan,” Old Mr. Lipsky says. “Cats take care of themselves. I bet you she smelled the smoke and took off right away. She’ll stay away a week and then come back crying for food.”
“Gaius Pollio’s a she?” Isabel says it like it might matter. Like it’s another one of tonight’s crucial pieces of information.
“Oh, you’re an endless source of comfort today.” Young Mr. Lipsky says it to himself, staring out at Main Street, but Ruth can hear him, muttering under his breath at the window. He sounds like a sleepwalker.
When Ruth looks over at Magda she can see tears coming down her face, but Magda isn’t moving or making a sound. She reaches for her hand, and there is no Isabel between them. She’s in another world, sitting in the display window. Is this how it will be, then? Will it go back to how it was when they were little? Will they leave Isabel here and go away?
Later, they stand in the hole at the back of the store and Old Mr. Lipsky fusses about them walking home, but everyone tells him it’s okay. There are still cops and people all over the place. When they come out through the burned back door and around onto Main Street, there’s a chill blowing off the water. Magda wraps her coat around her and pulls out a pack of Larks. Her coat is silent, and Ruth reaches over to feel inside her pocket.
“Hey! Hands off.”
“Where’s all your stuff, Magda?”
“I don’t know. I must have emptied my pockets at some point. I think I was looking for my father’s watch.”
Magda hands around cigarettes. She stands still with her lighter while they each try to use the giant flame without starting another fire, then they move on up the sidewalk together. The three of them are darker shadows in the night, carrying burning sparks up the hill out of town.
“Magda?”
“What, Isabel?”
&nbs
p; “Lefty.”
“Yeah, I saw.”
Ruth grabs Magda’s arm and feels a shudder go through her.
“Lefty knew, Magda. He tried to tell me and Danny this morning. He knew the whole time.”
“What will they do to him?” Isabel says. “We can’t let him get blamed.”
“He won’t,” Ruth says. She only knows it’s true when the words come out of her.
Tonight is the night when all the laws of force and motion reveal their secrets. It all clicks together like one of Magda’s mechanisms, the Molotov cocktail and the bookstore, Ruth’s cheap gin and Mrs. O’Sullivan’s brandy, Lefty and Henry and the tide. The fire at Mr. Lipsky’s, the blood soaking into the cement in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot, it was all part of the pattern.
“We’ll fix it,” Magda says. “We’ll fix it tomorrow.”
ten
ISABEL IS STANDING by the window in her room when they come for her the second time. Her window faces the neighbors in back, and she sees the clanky cop Ford round the corner before she hears the doorbell.
She looks over at Ruth’s flower that never became a tulip, René Char’s poem held to the slanted ceiling with yellowing tape. The ashes of her Navy sweater that she put in a peanut butter jar next to the bed.
She can picture time stretching out and dust gathering. The room should have a clock with stopped hands, and a burned wedding dress like Mrs. Warren’s. She doesn’t have to go downstairs to know that things have caught up with her. When she sees this room again, if she ever comes back here, time will be piled up in drifts. It will all be cold and invisible.
She turns her back on Ruth’s flower and heads down the stairs.
There are two cops this time, and the baby social worker. They’re all working hard on their serious cop facial expressions. The baby social worker tries to make himself taller, standing in the hallway next to the cops. They’re here for keeps. Hardball. Suitable metaphors for seriousness. She tries to care and can’t manage it.
One cop has a uniform. County again. Is that because the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot is on the far side of 25A, or is it always county if you try to kill someone? Too much for the tourist board and the quaint little rent-a-pigs, murder. They say “serious assault” and then they say “attempted murder.” They say “protective custody.”
Little Wrecks Page 24