Her hand flew up to cover her open mouth. “What time is it?” she gasped.
He checked his watch: three twenty-five. Even if they walked out the door this minute, it was too late to cross Edgewater Drive to their reserved seats in front of the bank, which, he decided, was probably a blessing.
Sarah turned frantically and ran toward the hall. “I need my shoes…my jacket…my…”
He followed her into their room, where she disappeared into the closet in search of the dark red jacket and pumps that matched her skirt. “I’ll be right there,” she called, out of breath.
He went out, grabbed two folding lawn chairs off the back wall of his workshop, and at the last minute reached into the Buick for her dark glasses.
She came out of the house pinning her hair into a French twist. With red lipstick and a bit of makeup, she looked more like herself—except for her eyes. They scanned the yard, the truck, and him as if seeing it all for the first time.
“You look great,” he lied, and gently helped her into the truck. “Pretty glary out here,” he added, handing her the dark glasses.
The parade had mustered south of downtown at Dartmouth Street, and would be heading north on Edgewater Drive to wind up at the high school. Avery drove three blocks east to the relatively quiet corner where Bryn Mawr crossed Edgewater. The wooden sawhorses were already up, and about twenty-five people crowded the street behind them. Avery was relieved to see that most of them were what he called their “nodding neighbors,” people who knew them on sight but not much else. He made a two-point turn and backed up behind them. He set the lawn chairs in the truck bed, and helped Sarah up and into one, then sat down beside her.
“Balcony seats,” she said, seeming relieved by the privacy of the elevated truck.
A whirl of flashing lights, the wail of a siren, and blare of a horn drew their attention to the street. The big red engine, pride of the College Park volunteer fire force, announced that the parade was on its way.
The girls in the convertibles were interspersed between floats that were frothy concoctions of chicken wire and crepe paper, each created by a different grade level, all variations on the theme of the mighty Edgewater Eagles bashing, smashing, trashing, and lambasting the wimpy Winter Park Wildcats.
The first two girls to pass by in convertibles, both blond, were cheerleaders who smiled and waved like pros to the people rimming the parade route.
Charlotte was third. Dressed in shimmering white, ensconced above The Admiral’s red leather backseat, its gleaming black trunk and fins, she’d never looked lovelier, a spectacular pearl in a radiant black-and-red box.
Avery put two fingers to his lips and blew out his loudest whistle, a holdover from his farm days calling home the cows. Charlotte recognized it and turned. Avery stood and windmilled his arms to get her attention. He was rewarded with her eager wave, her shy and tremulous smile. Emilio, sharply handsome at the wheel, turned and waved.
To his right, Avery heard Sarah’s sharp intake of breath. “Kitty,” she croaked.
“What?” Avery felt the wildfire spread of alarm. He scanned the crowd across the street. “Where?”
Of all the blocks and intersections along the parade route, how on earth could Kitty be here?
Avery grabbed the chair back to steady himself. He’d been a fool to invite her. And an even bigger fool to let Sarah out of the house in this condition. She couldn’t possibly handle seeing her long-lost sister here and now. And when the truth came out—how Kitty had come to be here—he was doomed. Everything, every single thing he cared about, was lost in a disaster of his own making.
“Her gloves, Wes,” Sarah insisted. “Kitty wore gloves just like that when she was crowned Homecoming Queen. Where in the world did they come from?”
It wasn’t Kitty she’d seen. It was her gloves. Her gol-durn gloves. Avery felt the damp cling of his shirt to his back, and the high hammering of his pulse. He dropped back down into his chair, kept his eyes straight ahead.
“Oh, Wes,” his wife whispered. “Isn’t she beautiful?”
—
“BUT WE HAVEN’T SEEN the band,” Sarah exclaimed, protesting Avery’s suggestion that they go. “Or the other two girls!”
So they stayed to watch the other floats; the fourth girl, another blond cheerleader, rail-thin, all teeth; and the fifth and last girl, gorgeous Barbara Everly in Charlie Novak’s cherry-red Corvette. Though girl was hardly the word for Barbara, Avery decided. Where Charlotte in white had reminded him of a pearl, a polished princess, Barbara in the same color was a sparkling diamond. On looks alone, she was the smoldering queen of the girlish court.
Finally, the twirls were in sight, and behind them the Fighting Eagles marching band. Avery spotted director Charles Beauchamp striding beside the band, admonishing the lines to stay straight and in step.
Suddenly Sarah leaped up from her chair. “Charles,” she shrilled, waving. “Oh, Charles!”
“Sarah, hi! See Charlotte? A vision, an absolute vision!” Beauchamp called back, gathering his fingertips to his lips then letting them fly in her direction.
It seemed, to Avery, a ridiculous, overly dramatic gesture. Beside him, Sarah flushed pink with delight.
“Brava, Madame Sarah. Bra-vah!” Beauchamp yelled. His elaborate salute and knee-deep bow set Sarah off in a trill of schoolgirl giggling.
Sarah giggling?
Avery stared dumbly at his twin reflection in Sarah’s dark glasses. A barrage of questions went off flak-fast in his head: Was Sarah somehow involved with Beauchamp? Was it possible? Was this the moment, was it him—not the band or Barbara Everly—she’d lingered to see? Had something real just happened between them? Or was his own guilt over Kitty making something out of nothing? Sarah and Beauchamp? He found the very idea of such a thing repugnant and, as he thought about it, insulting. Sarah, who was always so publicly poised and proper, and Beauchamp, the flamboyant genius? Did he dare confront her? Not with the doctor saying to “keep things calm and as quiet as possible.” But good Lord, Beauchamp?
“Don’t wanna cook,” she was saying—he noted the slight slurring of her words—on the short drive home. “How ’bout a night out on the town?” she asked, removing her glasses, her eyes still over-bright. She was brimming with nervous energy—as if her inner engine had shifted from rough idle into overdrive. Was this the result of seeing Beauchamp? Or was it just the “happy pills” kicking in?
The words I’m closing froze on Avery’s lips. Both Steve and Emilio had the night off, and Avery was scheduled to man the station from six till nine. But what kind of trouble might Sarah get into if he left her alone? Craving activity, what if she took a notion to pick up the phone and invite someone over? He shied away from picturing who. Would she visit the neighbors? Or, God forbid, get behind the wheel of her car and go somewhere on her own? How could he let that happen?
I can’t, he decided.
But Steve had worked a full day and had Lilly in town. And Emilio was headed off with Charlotte to an after-the-parade party with the twirls. For the first time in seventeen years, he realized, Orange Town Texaco would have to be closed with no advance notice to his customers. He had no other choice.
“Okay,” he told her. “But I’ll need to shower, and stop by the station on our way over.”
—
CLEAN-SHAVEN AND IN FRESH CIVIES, Avery was warming up to the idea of a night out. “Fried chicken and cathead biscuits at Chastain’s?” he asked hopefully.
Sarah, inexplicably, had changed into a bright-blue flowered dress he hadn’t seen in years, a souvenir from a family trip to Key West. She’d untwisted her hair and brushed it out into a soft drape, one side tucked behind her ear. She fluttered around the living room, fluffing pillows, adjusting lamp shades, straightening magazines, like an actress on stage playing the good wife—a far cry from the woman who, just hours ago, had panicked over a lost pin.
“Chastain’s?” She shook her head, her mouth in a coquette’s pout. “H
ow about…Gary’s Duck Inn! That would be fun!”
The one and only time they’d been to Gary’s Duck Inn, with its flaming tiki torches, lava rock waterfall, and tropical drinks with tiny paper parasols, she’d pronounced it “too tacky for my taste.”
Now it would be fun?
Seeing her float toward the kitchen to “take my pills,” Avery asked, “Do you really think you need some more?”
“Oh, yes,” she trilled. “It’s definitely time.”
When she returned to the living room, she was holding Beauchamp’s record album. “Whuz this?”
Avery eyed her carefully. “A loan from the musical genius,” he said amiably. “He gave it to me when I dropped off Charlotte’s baton.”
“Charles?” she repeated, with a husky laugh. “How sweet of him!” She set the album atop the stereo, then turned. Her smile, her whole face, seemed secondary to her darkly gleaming gaze. “Shall we go?”
Forgoing the truck, he helped her into the Buick, his mind churning with questions he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, ask. At the station, he swung into his usual parking spot. “Back in a few,” he told her.
He replaced the day’s signs (CLOSED 3–6 PM FOR HOMECOMING PARADE) with those intended for tomorrow (CLOSED AFTER 6 PM FOR HOMECOMING) and transferred the contents of the till to the floor safe. He was composing a quick note for Steve—Closed early. I’ll explain tomorrow.—when the phone on the desk startled him.
“Orange Town Texa—”
“Wes, it’s Kitty.”
“Hel-lo.” He eyed Sarah, who was eyeing herself in the Buick’s flip-down vanity mirror.
“I see she liked the gloves.”
“Apparently.”
“Oh, Wes, she’s lovely!”
“Thank you. We think so.”
“I…well, I’ve decided to stay over another day. I couldn’t stand heading back to Tampa without seeing whether or not she won.”
Avery felt the sharp clench of his gut, its rapid pull on his breath.
“Don’t worry. I’ll wear a hat and hang out on the other school’s side until halftime. Nobody will even know I’m there.”
I’ll know, Avery thought. His jaw jutted at the thought of repeating today’s nightmare of nerves at tomorrow’s game.
“You’ve no idea what it felt like, seeing her,” Kitty prattled on. “I used to wonder, but I never imagined she’d be so…And she has…” Avery heard the catch in her throat. “…Carlo’s smile. Exactly. I wasn’t prepared for that.”
“You…” Avery hesitated, pained that she’d misread his silence as permission. For days now, the entire week, he’d felt the constant push of things, people, predicaments spinning out of his control. He wanted—and needed—to push back.
But how?
Everything he cared about—his daughter, his wife (who was now looking his way, long fingers drumming the dashboard), his business, his entire life felt like a house of cards in the advancing path of gale-force winds. How could he explain that to Kitty?
“It’s impossible. If Sarah sees you, there’ll be all hell to pay.”
“Sarah’s had her for seventeen years, Wes,” Kitty snapped. “Surely, she—or you—can’t begrudge me a few minutes.”
Avery heard the hunger, the hardening resolve in her voice. Careful, he warned himself. Don’t let this get ugly.
“Does she know, Wes?”
“Know what?” he asked, too quickly.
“About me? Me and Carlo. That you and Sarah—”
“No,” he interrupted flatly. “She knows nothing.”
He felt the long, slow intake of her breath, like a rasp drawn sorely across his heart.
“Doesn’t seem exactly fair, does it?”
For the second time that afternoon, Avery felt the high, flailing hammer of his pulse. Only this time, it wasn’t Sarah’s state of mind at stake; it was his daughter’s entire world.
“I want to meet her, Wes,” Kitty was saying.
Avery felt lost, falling headlong through the dark into a new hell. With nobody, not one single person around to save him. Worse yet, outside the window, Sarah was opening the Buick door.
“W-wait a minute, j-j-just one minute,” he stammered. His fist dropped on the desk so hard it made the phone shudder, its inner bell ding.
“You can’t…I can’t talk about this right now, but we have to…we will talk about this tomorrow! Okay?”
“Why, sure, Wes. I’m not going anywhere. How about one o’clock—no, one-thirty—at the cottage where we met before?”
No way. His mind balked. Not the cottage, not again. No way, Hozay. Tell her no. Say it, you fool! Say no, say NO now!
“All right,” he heard himself say, “one-thirty tomorrow,” and banged down the receiver.
High afternoon winds had chopped the cloud cover into long rippling rows, like roof tiles, or fish scales, glazed gold to pink to peach by the setting sun. A mackerel sky, Old Pa would have called it. “Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships take in their sails,” he would have said—a warning to batten down the hatches, rough seas ahead. Like things could get worse than they are already?
—
THEIR WAITER WAS A smiling Filipino who handed them the ornate, leather-bound menus and asked, “Something to drink, boss?”
Avery gave their standard order: “Two sweet teas, please.”
“Oh, no! What’s that?” Sarah asked, pointing toward a nearby table. “With the gardenia in it?”
“That’s a scorpion, miss.”
“Yes, please.” She nodded happily. “And he’ll have a rum and Coke.”
We’re drinking now? Avery wondered.
When the drinks arrived, Sarah removed the fragrant gardenia floating in her drink and stuck it in her hair above one ear. “Remember gardenias?” she asked, a deliberate flirt.
Her pupils had once again eclipsed her irises.
She’s already high as a kite, Avery realized. His heart sank. So what happens when you add alcohol to the mix? Wish I’d had the good sense to ask, he was thinking, when he was suddenly confounded by a silk-stockinged foot snaking its way under his pant cuff, above his sock, to the bare skin on his shin.
He stared at the woman who resembled his wife but who was acting like somebody else entirely. “Gardenias? How could I forget?” he told her.
He ordered the fried shrimp platter while she, on the waiter’s suggestion, went for something called Flounder en Papillote, which turned out to be a fillet baked inside a paper bag. She ordered another drink.
“Another sting of the scorpion’s tail, miss?” the waiter joshed her.
“Absolutely!”
Where had this Sarah come from? And where did the real one go? Had this wilder side of her always been lurking about, waiting to be set free by seven little pills and a couple of scorpions?
On the drive home, she leaned into him, nuzzling his neck, nibbling his ear, crooning softly a song from their early days, “Gonna take a senti-men-tal jour-ney…”
The scent of gardenia filled the front seat. Avery found himself hoping Charlotte wasn’t home.
“Never thought my heart could be so yearn-y,” Sarah continued, her voice velvety, her breath warm and rummy against his neck.
Sarah half staggered, half stumbled backward into the house, hands tugging at his belt, fingers fumbling for his buckle and then his fly. Avery tottered after her awkwardly, one eye on the open curtains to the street, the other on their path through the darkened living room and down the hall.
At their bedroom, she flung open the door and lurched sideways, reeling him in. Avery one-armed the door closed and with the other kept her from falling backward onto the hard corner of the cedar chest at the foot of their bed.
She fell on the floor instead, grasping and tugging him down on top of her, teasing his chin, neck, and ear with her tongue as his hands sought the soft snaps connecting stockings to girdle covering panties and the musky hollow below.
“C’mon, c’mon,” she w
as saying. She seemed fierce and feral and not at all Sarah-like as she undid the last snap herself, and somehow freed the patch within the tangle of their clothes, guiding him, “here,” urging him, “in, in,” urgently “now!”
The question swooped through his mind—Is it wrong to take advantage of her in this state?—but only briefly. What could be wrong with a man making love to his wife?
The storm, heralded by last night’s mackerel sky, commenced with a steady downpour before dawn. When Avery woke, the windows were rain-darkened, their bedroom deep in the blue gloom of very early morning. He turned to check the clock and was surprised by the time. Nearly eight o’clock. He hadn’t slept so well in…who knew how long?
Thank God it was Steve’s turn to open.
He lay back, replaying the evening’s events.
They’d been hard at it like honeymooners when Charlotte knocked on the door to say she was home.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Avery had called. “Good night.”
“Mom okay?” she’d asked tentatively.
“A-okay,” Sarah had trilled beneath him. “Never better!”
What had Charlotte made of that? He’d wanted to wait for the sound of her door closing down the hall. The interruption had softened him. But Sarah, knees locked tightly around his hips, had rolled them over and, with a skill he didn’t know she had, rocked him back into hardness.
Afterward, though, she’d simply rolled off him, stood, and staggered into the bathroom, where he heard her retching her dinner, plus the two scorpion drinks, into the toilet. He’d scrambled up to help her—hearing in his mind the waiter’s mocking “Another sting of the scorpion’s tail, miss?”—but she’d waved him off. He’d wet a washcloth then, at her pained request, found and opened the prescription bottle for her sleeping pills.
Avery glanced over at her now, sound asleep; a soft, rasping snore muffled by the curtain of her hair. Had the combination of the drugs and the drinks prompted last night’s wild ride? Or was this the way a woman “hanging by a thread” acted, seesawing from one extreme to another? He wished he knew.
A Place We Knew Well Page 19