Her wildest fantasy had suddenly become her wildest nightmare.
"I — I don't understand," she said, in an effort to stall further talk about babies.
Jack smiled a sad, tight-lipped smile. "I was right, then. Too soon. Okay."
She began to protest weakly — at that moment she was both the happiest and the saddest that she'd ever been — but he said, "Shhh ... never mind. It can wait."
He slid his hand from her shoulder, along her arm, into the dip of her waist, and out again at her hip. "Something about you," he said, still struggling to express his thoughts. "The way you look, the way you are with Susy — with all kids, really. Something about you ... fills me with such ... longing."
"Shhh," she said to Jack, mimicking his own suggestion. She shook her head and forced back a glistening of tears behind a tremulous smile. "Not today."
There was something about her, she knew; but it wasn't the something Jack thought he saw in her. She was no goddess of fertility, no empress for his empire. She had no qualifications at all to be his wife. All she could ever be was an inspired lover to him.
In an unbearably ironic gesture of homage, Jack bent over just then and kissed the small scar that remained from the emergency C-section she'd undergone when Susy was born. It was too much for Liz: blinking back tears was as impossible as forcing rainwater back up the downspout of her house.
Tell him, someone hiding deep inside her begged. Tell him now.
"Jack—"
Her breath came in shallow useless pants from the effort to unburden herself.
"Make love to me," she whispered as she felt his hand slip between her thighs. "Make love to me now."
****
He stayed all night. In the morning they had coffee in the kitchen and wondered about where the deer went, and whether Susy should take swimming lessons, and whatever became of the stolen letters; and then Jack walked back to East Gate to shower and change in time to catch the early tide needed to launch a deep-water boat.
After he left, Liz lingered over Cheerios. Her time with Jack had seemed so wonderfully normal. They were behaving just like any other couple in the early stages of a love affair: laughing, teasing, finding excuses to touch one another, slipping easily into everyday intimacies. She'd brushed Snowball's hairs from his navy shirt; he'd blown his nose on a paper towel and complained about being allergic to cats. She'd made his coffee strong, the way she knew he liked it; he'd remembered which drawer held the can opener for Toby's food.
Little by little, step by step, they were building a relationship. They came from different worlds and moved in different circles, but to Liz those considerations were minor details now. The truly big obstacle — not counting the ghost who kept popping in and out of her life — was the fact that Liz was misrepresenting herself.
Jack had been sending strong, almost urgent signals to her about a possible future together, and Liz had chosen to ignore them. It was too ironic for words: Ophelia had refused to tell Christopher Eastman that she was pregnant; and Liz was refusing to tell Jack Eastman that she couldn't get pregnant. Each woman wanted to be loved for herself.
But Liz should've come clean. She would come clean. The very next chance she got.
****
By the end of the day, Liz was punchy. Sailing through the crowded waters of late-August fund-raisers took all her wits and nerves of steel. The gala-competition for the weekend Jack wanted was fierce: two cruise party benefits, two balls, a champagne tasting, a dedication, a rededication, an antique yacht race, a visit by a tall ship, and a benefit film premiere. Add to that the usual blistering pace of noncharity parties, and Liz had to wonder who the heck in the state was left to invite.
Still, by the time Jack called her at home, she was feeling pretty good and winding down with a glass of wine while she tossed a salad big enough for two to go with the pizza she planned to order.
"Hel-lo," she said in warmly shy greeting at the sound of his voice. It was their third phone call that day. "I have good news, sir: I think we'll be able to get Katie's Katerers for the costume party. And Victoria tells me she knows a four-piece band that's loud and cheap."
"Not too loud," Jack said with a grimace in his voice. "Not if we're having the event at East Gate. I have a neighbor I'm trying to impress."
Liz laughed and said, "Anyway, what I need from you now is a proposal outlining the terms of the shipyard's sponsorship, and then I'll get the director of Anne's Place to send you a letter of confirmation on their stationery."
"Sure. It'll go off tomorrow. Meanwhile, I should be at your house in, oh, half an hour."
"I'll order the pizza for then. How's the round of meetings going?"
She knew they were important: Jack was courting a couple of venture capitalists, hoping to get them to back the manufacture of a small but seaworthy powerboat at the shipyard. It was all part of Jack's plan to hold on to the help. If he could keep the yardhands doing paying work in the off- season, he could keep the yard turning a steady profit — and his father would be less inclined to entertain offers from ambitious developers of uncertain morals.
Jack seemed to think that the talks with the investors were going well. The yard had a lot of things going for it, he told Liz, not the least of which was a location in Rhode Island, a state that was trying hard to attract the boat-building industry.
"We've got the men, and we've got the space, and we've got a generally friendly bureaucracy and a tax break going for us. In the meantime this dude is faxing stuff like crazy to his partner from the other office. I guess that's a good sign."
"Great. Maybe we can really celebrate tonight."
"I plan to do that," Jack said softly, "in any event."
An hour later, however, they still hadn't begun their celebration. The pizza was cold, the salad was warm, and the bottle of wine Liz had opened to breathe was about to give up the ghost.
And speaking of ghosts, Liz thought, petulant now, where the hell is he? When things were going well, there he was, making a pest of himself. But now, when she could use a little divine intervention .....
"Christopher?" she said aloud, feeling foolish. He'd told her he didn't speak unless he was asked to. Maybe the same held true for simply showing up.
She waited. "Fine," she said at last when no one appeared. "Two peas in a pod." This was what happened when you began to count on someone. When you allowed yourself to look forward to things. When you ... in a fit of pique she took the pizza box — still with the pizza in it — and folded it over in two.
Which of course was when the phone rang.
It was Jack, repentant. "We got into a conference call with the partner, and I couldn't break away to call you," he said.
"I understand."
"I'll be there as soon as I can. Hopefully in about an hour. Maybe a little more."
"I understand."
"Liz — this is a good development. A great development," he said in a confidential voice, obviously not wishing to be overheard. "I think they're gonna go for it."
"Jack, really, I'm delighted for you. Honest. It's just that—" It was just that she had only one more free night before Susy would be back. But how could Jack possibly understand? All his nights were free. "It's just that I miss you, that's all. And I'm being a dope. And I'm sorry."
"Wait up for me. Please. There's no one in the world I'd rather share this with than you. No one."
"I'll wait," she said in a startled, pleased voice. "Of course I'll wait."
"And if for some reason I'm held up — say, to get something down on paper—"
"I'll leave the key under the back-door mat."
"Not under the mat! That's the first place they look!"
She laughed. "Okay, in the bird feeder, then. But I'll be up, Jack," she said reassuringly. "Count on it."
****
By eleven o'clock and despite a shower, Liz couldn't keep her eyes open. She was like Susy on New Year's Eve: the spirit was willing, but the flesh was sleepy. The TV s
ounded unbearably loud to her, and the lights hurt her eyes. She put the key in the bird feeder, locked up, turned everything off, and curled up on the down-filled sofa to catnap until Jack came in.
It's the stupid wine, she told herself. The euphoria part never lasted as long as the tired part. What a dumb aphrodisiac.
She meant only to rest her eyes. But the night was cool — one of those July cold fronts had whizzed through that evening — and it was perfect for sound sleeping. In a few minutes she dropped off into deep, untroubled slumber, the kind that usually left her refreshed and raring to go.
If only this had been one of those times.
Chapter 20
When Liz woke up, it was by force: a hand — rough, foul-smelling, horrific in its strangeness — was clamped over her mouth.
"One word and you die," a voice growled in her ear.
His breath stank: drink, rot, tobacco, she couldn't begin to guess what else. She'd been dropped into some pit of hell. Her mind shut down completely except for one thought — does he have a gun, a knife, a gun, a knife — playing over and over.
All of this took no more than a second.
"Where are they? Where the fuck are they now?"
Her eyes were wide open. The streetlight outside filtered through the shutters, throwing him into dim relief. He was a tall man, and not a young one. His hand, gross and filthy, still held her pinned to the sofa, leaving her unable to speak. She shook her head, trying to convey that to him.
He misinterpreted her. Lifting his hand away, he brought it back down in a vicious swing. Liz averted her face, but he caught the side of her jaw. She let out a stifled cry of pain — if she screamed, she was sure he would kill her — and tried to rally her senses.
"Where's what?" she said desperately. "You mean the—"
"—letters, bitch. The shoeboxes."
"Up-upstairs ... I hid them."
He stood up, grabbed her wrist, and grunting like an animal, yanked her upright. "Let's go."
This isn't happening ... this can't be happening ....
The one place she didn't want to go was into her bedroom. Not with him. Stall, she told herself. Jack will be here. Jack will be here.
"You can have them — all of them," she said as she stumbled over her own furniture toward the stairs. "But please — please don't hurt me."
"Shut up!" he said, grabbing her by the back of the neck and forcing her forward.
Something about his action triggered resistance in her. It was repugnant, an act of domination; he was treating her like a dog or a cat. Involuntarily she began digging in her heels. She was thinking of the women in the shelter, the ones who became all quiet and meek and got beaten up anyway.
She twisted her head back toward him. "Why do you want them?" she said. She was trying to engage him on some level, to get him to remember that he was a human being and so was she.
"What do you care?" he said in a low growl. At the same time he brought something out of his pocket. She heard a click. He had something long in his hand.
"I—" Oh, damn. He did have a knife. Briefly she closed her eyes against the sight, then opened them again when she felt the its cold, hard edge on her warm, soft neck. Nothing in her life had prepared Liz for this moment. It was all she could do not to pass out.
"We'll talk upstairs. Move."
Despite her terror, the question remained: why. Why did he want the letters so badly that he'd risk her life for them?
He'd let go of her and was nudging her up the steps with the knife poking the small of her back. The prod kept her moving at a quick ascent while she racked her brain for a way out of her horror.
Mace. It was her only hope. But how to get at it?
At the landing he said, "Which way?" and she pointed weakly into her room.
"Where in the room?"
"They're ... in the closet. In two cardboard boxes. Under the photographs," she said, amazing herself by her reluctance to tell him.
The shutters were still open to the view. She could see the silhouettes of her neighbors' houses, and the harbor with its twinkling lights below them: serenity, downhill from terror.
He dragged Liz over the threshold and shoved her across her bed, then backed up to the windows and began closing the shutters top and bottom behind him. She saw the knife clearly, poised and ready to go.
"Turn on a light," he commanded as he closed the last pair.
Liz had one and only one chance to elude him; and that meant not turning on a light.
"Okay ... just ... let me do it," she said. She made a big deal of crawling back to the nightstand side of her bed, then reached down for the canister of Mace that she now kept alongside.
He saw that she was up to something and lunged for her. At the same time she began spraying wildly in his direction. Somehow, some way, she got him. He screamed much louder than she had and dropped the knife. Liz scrambled out of bed and went flying down the stairs, still gripping her canister, with him screaming in agony behind her. But she stubbed her toe
on a rearranged table so violently that she went hurtling to the floor.
The intruder fell on top of her.
New horror! She felt as if she were trapped under some writhing, putrid snake. With cries of disgust she shoved and pushed at him, infuriating him still more. He was still making ghastly sounds of pain, animal sounds; he sat on her, then grabbed her hair with one hand and slammed her head to the floor.
She was knocked nearly unconscious from the blow. She groped half-heartedly at the floor around her, searching for the canister. No use: it must've rolled out of reach. She felt like a swimmer going down for the third time. Jack, Jack, Jack, she thought, as if by invoking his name she could invoke his presence.
What happened next was as bizarre as it was abrupt: the intruder suddenly leaped up from her and clapped his hands on his ears, then began bending over in more excruciating agony than before. Liz was only semiconscious and it was mostly dark, but that was what she saw: the man was covering his ears — not his eyes — and howling with pain.
Only then did she become aware of the chime-sound, louder than usual, clearer than ever, a sound of awesome power and phenomenal beauty. If an archangel had a sword of heavenly tempered steel and he slammed that sword against the gates of hell, that was what it would sound like.
Christopher, she thought, slipping further into a stupor, more deeply into confusion. Not Jack, then.
Another surprise: she heard the back door burst open — explode, really — and heard Jack yell out her name. She wanted to answer him, to say, "You took your sweet time," but that was so many words ... so many syllables ... so many vowels.
****
When she opened her eyes, the lights were on, the police were at the open door, Jack was holding her, and the intruder — a filthy-looking derelict — was lying, out cold, on the living-room floor.
"God," she said to Jack, "you must've really clobbered him."
"You're the one who got clobbered," said Jack in a shaky voice. He helped her to her feet. "How do you feel?"
She rubbed the back of her head. "Ow-ow," she said, wincing. "Okay, I guess." She was alive. That was all she cared about. But why did her jaw hurt?
The paramedics were there now, too, although she hadn't seen them come in. They looked Liz over and asked her questions. Liz knew her name, the day of the week, and how to count backward from ten, but they wanted to take her to the emergency room anyway.
"No!" she said impatiently. "Absolutely not. I'm fine. I'm just — pissed, that's all."
She watched with loathing as the police cuffed the derelict — whom they obviously knew — and read him his rights before they took him and the recovered knife away. The detective from the Grant Dade case arrived before they left and talked in the street with the arresting officers, then came and asked Liz if she felt in shape to come to the station and make a statement.
"Whatever it takes to keep him behind bars," she said grimly.
Detective G
ilbert nodded in agreement, then hesitated and said, "Here's something you might find interesting, Mrs. Coppersmith. The perpetrator has scars on his hands and forearms that appear to be recent."
"Does he?" said Liz. She looked at Jack and sighed. "Okay, so it wasn't Grant Dade the other time. So sue me."
Jack gave her a complex look that made her heart, tired as it was, beat a little bit faster.
Eventually the professionals left, the neighbors retreated, and Liz, who'd been doing her best to look spunky for everyone, collapsed on the sofa before her legs gave out altogether. She closed her eyes, then opened them again instantly. There was no peace in darkness. Perhaps there never would be again.
Jack came in from outside and sat down next to her. "How did I not see this coming?" he said in a voice of bitter self-reproach. "Obviously — once the grad student was cleared — I should have figured out that someone was still running around with an uncompleted agenda."
Liz said tiredly, "What does he want with the letters? That's what I want to know." But she didn't want to know, not really. She never wanted to think about him or his motives again. She shuddered at the recollection of him on top of her. "I have to take a shower first," she said in numb tones. "Then we can go."
"Oh, sweetheart, oh, Liz," said Jack, embracing her.
She pulled violently away. "No! He made me so—filthy. I don't want him to be passed on to you."
"But I don't care—"
"Jack!" she said, nearing hysteria. "Just let me do this! Let me get him off me!"
"Okay, I'm sorry ... darling, I'm so, so sorry."
"I know, I know; I'll be fine. It's going to take a little while, that's all," she said stoically. She stood up and began heading for the bathroom, then turned and said to Jack, "Who is he? Obviously they know him."
"Eddy Wragg? Yeah. He's a vagrant. He's been in and out of Newport over the last few years. They had a warrant out for him for breaking and entering. There's more. I'll tell you later, if you want."
Time After Time Page 28