The Four Corners of the Sky

by Michael Malone

  Oddly enough, she immediately knew what he meant. “You hid one of these emeralds in the cockpit of the Lindbergh plane in the airport,” she told him. “You hid one in the bathroom at the Royal Coach. You had to go to St. Louis to get both.” They were statements, not questions.

  He stared at her, slowly smiled the old smile that she didn’t consciously remember but that her muscles knew and echoed. “You were always so damn smart,” he said. “I’ve sold the Queen. I said I was leaving you a million dollars.” He laughed. “I am. More.”

  Raffy glared at his friend, surprised and not entirely pleased. Jack shrugged. It seemed to be a whole conversation, the look between them.

  Annie shook her head. “I don’t want a million dollars. I don’t want anything from you.” She dropped the green stones on the bed tray.

  Surprisingly the young Cuban took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Wisdom from Lear, Annie. Goneril and Regan? Let us grant those two daughters were 100 percent right. Their papa was not an easy man. Lear had serious—” He searched around the room for a word. “Insufficiencies. But in the end, why couldn’t Goneril and Regan show him a little kindness? Like Cordelia did. She didn’t take his kingdom from him, and frankly your papa shouldn’t exactly give away money he doesn’t exactly have, but what did it cost Cordelia to be nice? Nothing.”

  Annie snorted. “Raffy, Cordelia gets strangled to death.”

  His chocolate-sweet eyes dilated, his mouth fell open. “She does? Her own sisters kill her?”

  “By then I think her sisters are already dead themselves.”

  He looked distressed. “I’m only in Act Four. Cordelia dies?”

  “And Lear and the Fool die too. Everybody dies in the end.”

  “Ah me ah me ah me.” Mournfully the slender Cuban slipped through the door into the hall and closed it behind him.

  To Annie the moment felt hallucinogenic. Rafael Rook’s dissonant musings, her father’s presence in her life again, the thrust of their conversation. Everything was too removed from the ordinary to assimilate, too incongruous with the routines that for decades had organized her orderly days. She felt as if she were being asked to converse in an alien language in a foreign place she’d been told she had once visited but of which she had only the most dreamlike recollections.

  Walking over to the small smudged hospital window, she looked out, trying to orient herself. It was dusk; long shadows poured over the lawn. Golden Days patients still sat outside in their chairs, most of them sleeping. She turned back to her father. “Coming to see you, I had a strange run-in with a couple out on the lawn there.”

  “A strange run-in?”

  She described her encounter outside. “And here’s what’s weird. Long time ago I met Georgette Nickerson’s aunt Ruth. This woman on the lawn brought Ruth back to me so…” She thought back to how she’d felt. “…so intensely. Is there any reason Ruthie Nickerson would show up here to visit you?”

  Jack’s mouth tightened, but so slightly that if he hadn’t given her early lessons in looking for such signs, she wouldn’t have seen it. “Who?” he asked.

  “Ruthie, from next door in Emerald, George Nickerson’s sister, remember him? You may not have heard. George died of a heart attack, long time ago, before I came to Emerald, before you left me at Pilgrim’s Rest.”

  His bandaged fingers moved lightly over the green jewels. “Sam told me George died. She said our mother scared him to death when she hammered his store window.” He pulled himself up on the pillows. “George scared easily.”

  “I wondered if maybe you were…I don’t know…involved with Ruthie.”

  He said “involved” would be an exaggeration. “For a little while I had a crush on her. It wasn’t particularly reciprocated.”

  She persisted. “Could she have been this woman I saw here today?”

  He kept frowning. “Ruthie Nickerson?”

  “Yes,” she repeated impatiently. “Georgette’s aunt. Georgette and I are good friends. Best friends.”

  He stared at her. “That’s nice. George would have liked that.” It was disconcerting to hear him talk so familiarly about Georgette’s father. He asked her when she’d met Ruthie.

  “At Pilgrim’s Rest. Long time ago. She was visiting Sam one evening. Only that once. The Nickersons didn’t keep up with her. I remember Georgette’s mother Kim really didn’t like her. But I’ve seen a painting she’s in with Georgette’s dad. And photos. This woman today—”

  He shook his head firmly. “Ruthie Nickerson? Not possible.”

  “She just looked so familiar. This woman drove up with a gray-haired man in a Mercedes. It was like they were headed inside here, then all of a sudden they turned around and drove off.”

  On his elbows, her father pulled himself up even higher and tried to look out the small window. “Who drove off?”

  “Raffy knew them. He said the man was Feliz Diaz.”

  Urgently, Jack called out in a louder voice than she’d heard him use before. “Raffy! Raffy!”

  The Cuban quickly slipped back inside the room, sliding the door closed. “Keep your voice down!”

  “Diaz was here and you didn’t tell me?”

  Raffy gently pressed Jack’s shoulders back on the pillow. “I took care of it, Jack. I didn’t want you to worry. He’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  Raffy stroked his friend’s arm. “It was really clever. I take Annie’s phone. I quick call the driver—I know him from the band days, good cornet player—and I tell him to get Diaz on the phone pronto pronto. He does and I tell Diaz it’s me and I’ve got the Queen for him.” Raffy nodded proudly. “That’s right. I tell Diaz you’re hiding out on the Keys but I know where you left the Queen. I tell him I’ll sell you out for fifteen grand, cash. I made it a big number. I say I’m at the Hyatt in West Palm and that’s where the Queen is and if he brings me the cash tonight at eight, I’ll give the statue to him. He bought it 300 percent. He thinks he got a bum steer, whoever told him you were staying at Golden Days. So he drives off and never knows you’re here. Pretty smart, huh?”

  Annie could see thoughts move in Jack’s eyes, looking for angles. He tapped his friend’s arm. “Yes, very smart. Until eight o’clock when you won’t be at the Hyatt.” He wondered aloud who’d told Diaz he was hiding here at Golden Days.

  Raffy hunched his shoulders. The birds on his shirt hunched too. “I do not know the answer to that question. But you don’t have to worry. I said some rats were spreading the rumor. I said I’d tried to make you stay here at Golden Days, but you’d refused; I said you’d told me you’d rather die on the side of the road.”

  Jack made a rueful face. “That much is true. Okay, thanks, Raffy. Very smart.”

  The Cuban slipped back out through the door.

  With a clumsy movement of his bandaged hand, Jack pulled out a small old-fashioned-looking pack of Chesterfields from under the sheet. The effort appeared to exhaust him and he made no attempt to light the cigarette.

  She studied him a while. “Why don’t you give yourself up and sort this thing out before somebody does kill you. If you’ve actually got a relic that belongs to Cuba, give it to the police. Get yourself in a good hospital and for God’s sake, stop smoking. I can’t believe they even still sell those things.”

  “Oh, darlin’, they sell anything somebody wants and somebody wants everything.” Her father pressed his bandaged hands together as if they were shackled. “I can’t be locked up again, not even overnight. I really can’t. So I was, well, damn grateful to Sam and Brad for getting me to Miami. Me and a whole cargo of express smoked salmon.”

  Ruefully Annie shrugged at this confirmation that Sam and Brad had arranged to fly her father out of St. Louis. “Sam’s fond of Brad.”

  “You’re not?” he asked.

  Unaware, she rubbed at her unadorned ring finger. “We’re getting a divorce.”

  He looked saddened. “I’m sorry.”

  She crossed her arms. “You
can love somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

  He smiled. “Who else is there?”

  Abruptly she asked him if he’d ever been married to her mother. And by the way, where was her mother?

  His cough sounded real. He seemed unable to stop. “Never married, no clue where she is.” The sharp relentless coughing doubled him over.

  “Is this cancer operable?” She wondered why there was no medical chart attached to the foot of the bed.

  “Nope. But stranger things have happened. Than my dying, I mean.”

  By now Annie had had time to collect herself. Her face was calm, her voice level. “I only came here to find out my mother’s name.” She moved beside his bedside table, took the emerald on a chain from her pocket, showed it to him and dropped it on the tray beside the other two. “Just the truth.”

  He looked up at her, rubbed at his nose where the oxygen tube was clipped. “Dangerous thing…” he whispered. “Truth.”

  “No, it’s a little knowledge that’s a dangerous thing—” She started to add, “Dad,” but the word now stuck between palate and tongue. She said, “Jack,” instead.

  “Think so?” he asked. “I always thought truth was a lot more equivocal than its reputation…You are just beautiful.” With a delicate incredulous shake of his head, he touched one of the gold buttons on her white uniform cuff. “Remember when we bought you that sailor jacket, gold buttons down the front?”

  Her mouth tightened against memory but she admitted, “Yes, I loved that jacket.”

  “Admiral Annie.”

  She almost laughed, then thought, why should she laugh or cry or feel any of the things she was feeling? Irony took hold of her and sat her down. “I’m not an admiral but I am a naval lieutenant. Well, first I went to elementary school. Your sister Sam raised me. Sam and Clark. You know, after you dropped me off when I was seven and drove away? I went to high school, and after Annapolis, I went to flight school, oh, and I got married to a fellow midshipman, your buddy Brad Hopper, and now I’m getting a divorce, but I told you that. Brad holds the fighter test-flight range record for the FA-18E Hornet. I hold the second-place record. Later this month, I’ve got a chance to set a new record in an experimental jet.”

  He smiled quietly at her. “A-plus.”

  “So thanks for giving me the King of the Sky. It was the start of something good in my life.”

  “I’m worn out,” he said, an astonishing admission. “Wizard of Nod, huh? Maybe I’ll take a nap.”

  Annie looked around the room for signs of medical apparatus. Surely he’d be in intensive care if he were in imminent danger; he’d be on a heart monitor; he’d be better attended. “I’m taking you out of here. This is bullshit treatment you’re getting; your oxygen isn’t even on.”

  Her father turned his head toward the tank by the bed. “It’s not?”

  “What’s your doctor’s name?”

  He hesitated. Raffy called from the doorway, through the opening of which his head had periodically projected every few minutes. “His doctor is Parker, Dr. Tom Parker. He’ll be here at eight in the morning.”

  Jack just kept smiling. “Let’s don’t talk about doctors now. Every night, every motel, you’d line up your shoes at the foot of the bed. Tennis shoes, cowboy boots—”

  “I don’t want to talk about life on the road. I want my mother’s name.” She backed away from him. “You faked a birth certificate saying Claudette Colbert was my mother. Last night you told me her name was Geraldine Jeffers, a character Claudette Colbert played in Palm Beach Story.”

  His eyes closed. His hands lifted, fell and he changed the subject, the way he always had. “Your aunt Sam…she’s great, isn’t she?”

  Annie said, yes, she was.

  “Sam and I used to sneak off to watch movies together. Get more out of life, go to the movies. And believe me, darlin’, life with Judge and Mrs. Peregrine? That was definitely a life you wanted to get more out of—”

  Drawn back to him, pulling a metal chair toward his bed, she sat down. “So do better than they did. Here’s your chance, Dad. There won’t be another one. Talk to me about my mother. Tell me about her.”

  He turned so the slanted light from the half-closed blinds caught his face; his gold mustache was paler; his green eyes, she realized, resembled Sam’s and like Sam’s were unmistakably filled with affection for her. It was disconcerting.

  “Okay, fine, it’s no fun but I’ll tell you the story.” He began, the way he’d always started, “A long time ago…”

  “Don’t tell me a story. Tell me the truth.”

  “This is a true story.” He gestured to the window, where the last slant of sun streamed in, blinding him until she adjusted the shade so he lay there in shadows. “Your mom and I met in Barbados. We hustled bridge games at the beach resorts. We were good at it. She liked the life there, so we hired on fulltime at this resort: she’s bartending, I’m waiting tables. Tips are great, plus introductions to suckers. We’re really young, just hanging, still in our late teens.”

  Annie’s heart quickened. Her father’s voice had a flat sound that rang true to her. Was this it finally? Her mother not a princess, not a rock star, just a teenager hustling tourists in the Caribbean sun and surf? Had Annie come all this way to stop dreaming?

  Chapter 34

  Reach for the Sky

  From under his pillow, Jack slid a silver cigarette lighter, with the engraved initial C. He tumbled it between his fingers. Given his burns, Annie would have thought the movement would have been painful.

  His cough stopped him and he rested, then went on with his story. “Here’s the way it was. Your mother is smart, super-smart, and she talks all the time about wanting to go to college. But she’s three months pregnant. We discuss abortion but she’s torn; it goes against something in her. We worry the thing back and forth, back and forth. Then, one day, she decides to have the baby. Why?”

  Annie raised her eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Claudette Colbert. We run into Claudette Colbert on Silver Sands Beach.”

  She laughed. “Come on.”

  He waved his hand. “I’m serious. We’re walking on the beach; Claudette Colbert’s having a picnic all by herself, sitting there in a canvas chair with a big striped umbrella, and a little table with champagne and coffee ice cream on it and she’s smoking. Chain smoker.” He held up the cigarette lighter. “She was a gorgeous woman. She really was.”

  Disbelieving, Annie frowned. “You met Claudette Colbert on a beach in Barbados?”

  “We get into a conversation. We hit it off.” Jack showed the silver lighter to Annie. “She gave me this lighter that day. It happened to be my birthday and I said so and right there on the beach she said, ‘Here, Jack, happy birthday.’”

  Annie thought, It’s possible; things like that do happen.

  “So she asks if your mother’s pregnant and we get into the abortion thing and she encourages us to have the baby. She was very sweet to your mom and me. Your mom was really listening to her advice. I mean, she was Claudette Colbert. Finally Colbert’s chauffeur drove up behind the beach and walked down to get her and we helped him pack her up and she gave us a ride back to the resort.”

  Annie’s memories raced through snippets of all the Claudette Colbert films she’d studied so earnestly as a child. It was easy to imagine the star in the setting. “The movie star Claudette Colbert? It Happened One Night, Palm Beach Story, that Claudette?”

  “Yes.” He dropped the lighter in her hand. “She had a home on the island; she sort of retired there.”

  Annie studied the beautiful initial C on the slender silver lighter. She had always assumed that her father had chosen the actress’s name entirely randomly. But what if the story was real? On the other hand, C could be anybody’s initial. “So then what happened?”

  He told her that at about this time they’d met a couple from Ohio whom they’d gotten to know by playing bridge with them at the resort. This couple hadn’t been able to ha
ve a baby. The wife was sweet and desperate; the husband was practical and rich. After weeks of talking it over, Annie’s mother, more and more feeling Jack and she weren’t ready for marriage, much less a family, finally decided to carry the baby to term and give it to this couple. She believed giving up the baby would be best for all of them, for Jack and her, and most of all best for the baby, who would grow up in a stable, well-to-do home.

  The Ohio couple offered Jack a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to “help with the costs” of Annie’s birth. Jack took it. He knew it was really a check to purchase Annie but he never said so to the couple, nor did they say so to him. He cashed it and put the cash in their dresser drawer.

  Annie winced. “Cheap at the price.”

  Her father nodded. “Much too cheap.”

  Annie thought about it. “So that’s where that story came from, about how you could have sold me for twenty-five thousand dollars? Sam thought it came from the movies.”

  “Things do.” He reached awkwardly, only the top half of his fingers free of bandages, for a wallet on the bedside tray. From it he took a faded snapshot: it was a delivery room picture of a pink newborn, minutes old, bawling. “I saved this.”

  Annie looked at herself, less than an hour old.

  “Fourth of July. Anne Samantha Peregrine. I named you for Sam. Two days later, I’m back in the hospital looking at you. I go in the maternity ward and your mom’s checked out. Gone.”

  “Gone?” She repeated the word; it tasted strange in her mouth. Every word he said was like a bitter taste.

  “This hospital is real loose on the rules and I tell them it’s just a communication glitch between your mom and me. I take you and I run back to the resort, a little one-room tin-roof bungalow we had, and I lie you down on the bed, pillows ’round you so you won’t roll off. I notice, your mom’s clothes are gone. The twenty-five thousand in cash is gone. No note, nothing. I run all over the island, looking. Finally a guy working at the resort tells me a taxi drove her to the airport.” His bandaged hands stroked along the white starched sheet. “Never saw her again.”