“Okay,” she said softly.
So they went back to his place while he showered and changed, then he took her out to dinner. She had eaten at fancier restaurants and had better food, but she’d never treasured a dinner the way she did this one. The memory of it stayed with her through the long drive back to Boston later that night, and the tense days that followed.
Chapter 13
JOHN ALLOWED HER TO GO ON the trip. She wondered if he did it because somehow he knew she was having second thoughts herself, but any reservations were gone by the time she was to leave. Hanging around the house for the first time in months, she found herself thinking about the past and the future, brooding about things she couldn’t change. She was on edge even when John wasn’t at home. She knew that if she spent the summer at home, regardless of how many weekends she spent in Timiny Cove, she would be a basket case come fall.
The trip was fun. Pam easily made friends, saw Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, San Francisco, Beverly Hills, and Las Vegas. She would have kept going when the seven weeks were finished if it weren’t for missing Cutter. And, of course, there was school.
Despite her good intentions, the fall semester didn’t get off to quite the start for which she hoped. John was right, she knew. If she paid attention in class, did all the assignments, stayed home and studied more, she would do better. But it was hard to pay attention in class when her mind kept wandering. The same went for homework. There was always something better to do in the afternoons than to study, and as for the evenings, if she could linger at a friend’s house so that she didn’t have to return to the townhouse and John, she was happier.
She was his whipping boy, the one he lashed out at when any little thing in his own life wasn’t quite right. He found fault with what she was doing, how she was doing it, where she was going, and with whom she was going. He never yelled—he was always in control—but his words were sharp, quite effective in telling her how irresponsible he thought she was. In moments of pique she wondered what she’d done to deserve his torment, but when those moments settled and she thought clearly again, she knew. She was Eugene’s daughter. John took one look at her and was defensive. By the same token, he had come to represent everything negative in her life.
Come late October, when her midterm grades came in, he imposed a weekday curfew. When three nights running she dashed in late filled with excuses, he took the car away for a week, but that didn’t slow her down. She simply arranged for transportation with her friends. On various occasions he threatened to cut off her allowance, to disconnect her phone, to sell her car—but none of that would have crippled her. John was the materialistic one, far more so than she. There were things that meant more to her than a telephone or a car.
It took him a while, but he finally came to that realization. So when her term grades arrived at the end of December showing no sign of improvement, when she came in at two in the morning from a party he’d told her not to attend, when she ran off the next day on a ski trip to Vermont without asking permission, he lowered the boom.
“Enough,” he declared from the door of her room the evening after she returned. “From now on, I want you home for dinner and the evening on weeknights. You can do what you want when you’re here. If you don’t want to eat, you don’t have to eat. If you don’t want to study, you don’t have to study. And you can do what you want on the weekends—come and go as you please, go to Maine, whatever.”
Pam held more tightly to the book she was reading. It was Love Story. She had started it while she’d been away, when the others had driven off to another party and she hadn’t felt like going. She was thoroughly caught up in the pathos, or had been until John had intruded. Now, listening to him, she waited for the other shoe to fall. Nothing he had said so far was particularly new or upsetting, but she had an uneasy feeling that something was coming.
“I don’t like feeling foolish when I tell you to do something, and you don’t,” he went on in such a reasonable tone that her unease grew. “I’ve had it with laying down laws you ignore. I can’t watch you every hour of the day. It’s time you show some responsibility. You’ll be seventeen in a few months.”
She waited. He was making her nervous by deliberately drawing out his ultimatum.
“All I ask,” he said finally, “is that you make honor roll at school.”
“All,” she echoed.
“It’s not so much. You’re not dumb. Just unmotivated.”
She thought about that for a minute before saying slowly, “If the problem is motivation, what’s to make the difference?”
“Responsibility. I’m wiping my hands of it. It’s all in your lap. It’s your responsibility to make the honor roll.”
“And if I don’t?” She held her breath.
“If you don’t, I’ll do two things. First, I’ll fire Marcy. Then I’ll sell the house in Timiny Cove.”
Pam sat forward so suddenly that the book tumbled to the carpet, but she didn’t notice. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would.” His dark eyes gleamed. “Make honor roll, or Marcy will be out of a job. She can look for another, but she’ll have trouble matching the pay I give her. Besides, she’ll have a hard time of it with no letter of recommendation.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“But I love Marcy!”
“I know. Did you know she’s been helping her mother out with what I give her? If I let her go, it’s done. Do you want the responsibility of that on your shoulders?”
Pam didn’t, not in a million years. The look of horror on her face must have encouraged him, because he went on more smugly. “As far as the house in Timiny Cove goes, it’s superfluous anyway. I make day trips mostly. The house has outlived its usefulness.”
“But I use it!” Pam cried. She was trembling inside and with good cause; the scaffolding around the frail fabric of her life had been shaken. “I love that house. Daddy loved that house.”
“Daddy’s dead,” he mocked coldly.
“But it’s all I have of him!”
“Fine. Make honor roll, and I’ll keep it.”
“John,” she pleaded.
“Make honor roll, Pam. It’s all in your hands.” Before she could do more than cry his name again, he left the room.
Her first impulse was to run after him and tell him exactly what she thought of him, but then she thought of Marcy and quickly reconsidered. Her second impulse was to grab her coat and keys and go out, but it was Thursday night, and although she was still on vacation, it was a weeknight. Her third impulse was to call Hillary—but Hillary was in New York, and besides, John wouldn’t listen to her when it came to something like this. He felt that he’d found the way to make Pam toe his mark, and maybe he had.
Her fourth impulse was to call Cutter. But Cutter didn’t have a phone. So she had to settle for leaving first thing Saturday morning for Maine. It was noontime before she arrived and three in the afternoon before Cutter pulled up in the small pickup he’d bought the year before. She had been pacing the inside of his cabin for three hours and was in a mood to beat all moods when he arrived.
“You need a phone, Cutter!” she cried the minute he opened the door. She knew she looked a little wild, but that was just how she felt. “I’ve been needing to talk with you since Thursday night, and I couldn’t! Can’t you get one? You’ve made so many other improvements around here, and a phone doesn’t cost that much. I’ll pay for it if you want. I have to talk with you sometimes!”
Cutter was standing in the open doorway, caught short by her outcry. Closing the door behind him, he crossed to where she stood, but when he tried to touch her she batted his hand away.
“I’m serious, Cutter. I was stuck in that house and couldn’t go anywhere because of John’s threats, and the one thing that might have helped was talking with you. But I couldn’t.” Again he reached for her; again she stepped away. “I thought of sending a message through Simon, but if I’d done that, he’d have called John
in a minute. Same with Leroy or any of the others. They’re all afraid of him.”
Cutter came toward her once again, but this time she wheeled around and went to the window. It was too clean, clearly depicting the winter woods dappled with patches of snow. What wasn’t cold and white was dismally gray, perfectly matching her mood. “A telephone isn’t such a big deal,” she cried, hugging herself against the chill. “I mean, I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t call Hillary. I could call my friends as much as I wanted, except they don’t understand what I’m feeling. They aren’t the ones living with a sadistic monster. They aren’t walking a tightrope. They may have fights with their parents, but at least they have parents!” She whirled to face him. “More than anyone else, you would have understood, but I couldn’t talk with you!”
When he next started toward her, she made for the kitchen, but he’d had enough of her evasion. A long arm reached out and snagged her. She tugged, but he tugged right back, bringing her fully against him. She tried to twist away, but he wouldn’t allow it.
“Cutter!”
“Easy, babe.”
“I wanted to talk with you!” she protested, but her words were muffled in the sheepskin lining of his jacket, and her will to fight was dying fast.
“I’m here now,” he said in a low, soothing voice. “Calm down. You’re all tight and shaking. Relax, Pam.”
She felt his hands on her back, coaxing the tremors from her, while his cheek rubbed the top of her head. Slipping her arms inside his jacket, she took a deep breath and let herself be sedated by his strength and his scent.
“Oh, Cutter,” she murmured.
His lips brushed her forehead. “Better?”
“Mmmm.” She listened to the steady beat of his heart. “Pretty stupid of me, huh, to start in on you like that when you were the one I came to see?”
“Y’could say that.”
“I thought the weekend would never come. I’ve never been so impatient to get here in my life.”
“John didn’t give you trouble about coming?”
“Oh, no. I now have carte blanche as far as that goes now.”
He looked down at her. “He’ll let you come up here whenever you want?”
“On weekends.” Reluctantly she dropped her hands from his waist. This time when she left him, she sank into the easy chair opposite the foot of the bed. From there, hands folded like the demure young lady she hadn’t been acting, she explained John’s terms. As she talked, the brief peace she’d found in Cutter’s arms dissipated. By the time she was finished, her hands were fluttering in the air to emphasize her protest. “Have you ever heard anything so cruel? Marcy’s job is dependent on my grades! I mean, it boggles my mind! And the house here—he’d actually sell it to spite me!”
Having removed his jacket, Cutter was sitting on the foot of the bed, his legs spread wide, elbows on his thighs. “Sounds like he’d have sold it awhile back if it hadn’t been for you.”
“No. If he’d wanted to sell it before, he would have.”
“Then he wouldn’t have had it to use as a lever. Don’t you see, Pam? That’s what he does. He finds what it is that means most to people, then threatens to take it away if they don’t comply with his demands.”
“But what’s so critical about my getting good grades?”
Cutter clasped his hands between his knees. “You’re smart. You could be doing better than you are.”
“But what does it matter? I did well on my SATs. I’ll get into a decent school. Why is it so all-fired important that I make honor roll?” Her eyes were glued to his face. She couldn’t figure out his expression. “Why, Cutter?”
“Because you can do it.”
“But I don’t want to. I don’t care about grades. They just don’t matter to me. I don’t like my classes, and I don’t see the point in killing myself for the sake of a mark.”
“You wouldn’t have to kill yourself and you know it. All you’d have to do is to pay attention in class. You’re quick, Pam. And you do like your classes—at least some of them. You like French, and you really like English. You don’t want to admit it, because you think that would be capitulating to John, but I don’t see why you’re sabotaging yourself because of him. You could graduate at the top of your class if you wanted to.”
She learned forward in disbelief. “What are you saying?”
His voice was gruff. “I think I said it pretty clearly.”
“You want me to study? You want me to do well in school? You want me to join that . . .?that rat race worrying about grade-point average and class rank? Cutter,” she protested heatedly, “what’s with you?” When he didn’t answer, she said, “You didn’t think school was so terrific when you were going through it. You skipped it whenever you could and dropped out the day you turned sixteen. You didn’t care about grades or class rank or college. It was fine for you to do what you wanted. Why is it so awful for me to want to do the same thing?”
He had straightened and was looking appalled. “Is that what you’ve been doing—following my example?”
“Not directly, but what was okay for you should be okay for me.”
“Well, it isn’t!” he declared. Rising from the bed, he stalked halfway across the room before turning back to glare at her. “I skipped school because I thought I was stupid, and I didn’t like feeling stupid. I decided I didn’t need that any more than I needed parents. I could make it on my own.” He took a tight breath. “The truth is that I was scared shitless of life, and angry at the world and everyone in it for making me scared. Do you know that I actually liked it when Verne locked me up for a night? I was in a warm, safe place and there was someone else near. I’d have bought prison for a lifetime sooner or later if it hadn’t been for your daddy. He put me to work and made me feel less afraid and more sure of what I was doing, but by that time I was too old for school. I was a working man. The life I knew and trusted was goin’ back and forth to the mountain each day.”
“Is it so awful?” she asked. She hadn’t thought Cutter was unhappy.
“It’s not awful at all, which is why I keep doin’ it. But I’m missing things, Pam. I’m not stupid like I thought. I like to read. I do it all the time.” The only clutter in his cabin was the reading matter piled on his shelves. “I’d have been embarrassed to say that a few years back, but not now. I can understand things to do with the company, or things to do with the economy or the government that the old coots sittin’ over at the bench on the green can’t understand. If I’d gone to school when I was supposed to, if I’d paid attention and tried once in a while, I’d’a made something of my life.”
Pam was out of her chair like a shot. “You have made something. You’re—”
“A miner,” he cut in with a grunt of disgust. “I’ve been a miner for the last eight years and I’ll be one for the next eight and the eight after that. I’m not going anywhere, Pam. If I’d been smarter when it mattered, I might’a gone to college. But it’s too late for that, too. So I’m stuck in a rut.”
She tried to take his hand, but he turned away. Grabbing a log, he hunkered down before the wood stove to push it inside. “I’m not moving, Pam, but you are. You’ve got a future ahead of you. You can do well in school and go on to college, then you can work in the company way up there at the top of the ladder. I’ll never be able to do that. Don’t you see? I’m down here at the bottom. I’ll always be down here at the bottom. I ain’t got nuthin’ to boost me up.”
Pam ached for him. Squatting before the stove with his head down, he looked defeated. “That’s not true. You have a record for eight years of good, hard work. You could be a supervisor—”
“Not under John. Maybe if Eugene were alive, but there’s no way John would move me up.”
“I could ask,” she offered, and would have done it in a minute if the look he shot her hadn’t been so quelling. Her asking John for a promotion on Cutter’s behalf would be asking for trouble for them both, and anyway, Cutter had too much pride to let
her do it.
“I thought you didn’t want to be a supervisor. That’s what you told me once.”
“It was a long time ago. Things have changed.”
“What things?” she asked more quietly. When he didn’t answer, she grabbed a handful of his hair. It fell thick on his neck and was perfect for tugging. “Tell me, Cutter. What things?”
He twisted on the balls of his feet to face her directly then, and she almost wished she hadn’t pushed. His look was so intense that her insides quivered.
“If I was a somebody—”
“You are a somebody—”
“If I was a somebody—” He cut himself off this time.
“What?” she prodded.
He stared at her for another agonizing minute before giving a short shake of his head. Hands on his thighs, he pushed himself up. “Nothing.”
“What were you going to say?”
He went to the refrigerator. “And anyway, being a supervisor at the mine isn’t what I’m talking about.” He popped open a beer and took a swallow. Reaching in again before the door swung shut, he tossed her a can of Coke. “I’m talking about moving up and out. Getting a fancy apartment or buying a house. Wearing a shirt and tie. Driving a sports car. Traveling.”
“You can do all that.”
“How? I’m not trained for a damned thing besides mining, and even if I was, I don’t have any degree. Pick up the papers any day and see who the big men in business are. Most of them went to college and graduate school. I didn’t finish high school.”
“So go back and finish. You could do it. You could go to college—”
“Not now.”
“Why?”
“I’m too old.”
“You’re barely twenty-four! Loads of people are still in school at that age.”
“Not high school.”
“You could do it if you wanted.” Coke can in hand, she went to the refrigerator and nudged him aside. “No one’s stopping you.”
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