Sweet Everlasting (21 page)

“She’s written and illustrated a book about the birds in Franklin County,” Ty answered for her. “It’s not quite finished yet, but it soon will be. Frank Odell’s been acting as her agent, and he’s pretty sure he’s found a buyer for it.”

“Why, I declare, isn’t that something? That is purely something, mm mm mm.”

Carrie was half-afraid she might laugh out loud because it sounded so funny to hear Ty call Mr. Odell her “agent.” She smiled up at Mrs. Stambaugh—who was looking at her now as if she was Sarah Bernhardt, come to sample the cuisine at Pen?icle’s. She might’ve stood there all night saying, “Mm mm mm,” if Ty hadn’t asked her for the mustard. She pulled herself together and went off to get it, still shaking her head.

Ty had a conspirator’s grin that told Carrie he knew everything that was going on in her head. “How’s your chicken?” he asked, and she nodded that it was fine. The mashed potatoes surprised her, though; she’d never seen so much butter on just one food in her life. So this was how people ate in restaurants. Ty had been sure she was joking when she’d told him that, except for the counter at the drugstore, she’d never eaten in one before. That was after she’d told him the miraculous news about her book and he’d said they ought to do something special to celebrate. He’d made a joke—she
hoped
it was a joke—that he wanted to take her some place public for a change so she’d have to shut up and he could finally get a word in edgewise. But what a luxury talking to him was, and how fast she’d gotten used to it! The habit of muteness was old and ingrained, though, and she had no real fear that she’d unthinkingly blurt something out to him in front of everybody at Pennicle’s. Just the same, it felt strange that she couldn’t say to him straight out, right now, “Oh, Ty, I forgot to tell you in all the excitement—I got a letter today from Dr. Stoneman.” Instead she found the letter in her pocket and handed it to him across the table.

“What’s this?”

She made a gesture that said,
Open it.
She watched him unfold the one-page letter and begin to read, admiring his long eyelashes, his cheekbones, the way his jaw muscles worked when he chewed his food. He had on a striped gray coat that made him look serious and wise, not to mention broad-shouldered and handsome. His dark, shiny hair, if she said so herself, had never looked better. She liked his wide maroon tie; a “Windsor” tie, he called it. But her favorite touch was the bright orange marigold in his buttonhole—a gift from her; she’d snipped it from Eppy’s garden an hour ago.

He started to smile, then chuckle in that low, rumbling way she loved, and she guessed he’d gotten to the part in the letter about “Ingrid the Impaler.” That was the nurse who was making Dr. Stoneman obey all the rules and regulations at the sanatorium. He said
terrible
things about her, but in such a comical way that Carrie had had to laugh, too. But what she liked most about the letter was the optimistic sound of it, at least if you read between the lines. Dr. Stoneman was the least hopeful person she’d ever known, so he must be improving if he could find even halfway cheerful words to say about his stay at the hospital.

“I got a note from him, too,” said Ty, folding the letter up and giving it back to her. “Not as nice as yours, I must say. You should feel flattered, Carrie, that he cleans up his language for your benefit.”

Her notebook and pencil were beside her plate.
Do you think he’ll get well?
she wrote. She’d asked him the question before, and he always said he didn’t know, but maybe now he had new information to go by.

But he only shook his head and said, “I honestly don’t know. At least he’s finally getting the kind of care he needs if he’s to have any chance at all. If he’d done this a year or even six months ago, I’d like his prognosis better. As it is, all we can do is hope.”

And pray, she added to herself. Did Tyler believe in God? She’d never asked him. Dr. Stoneman didn’t. That had shocked her when she’d first found out.
Thank you for telling me the truth,
she wrote in her notebook.
You know—not trying to spare me.

He nodded, and started to say something, but at that moment they both saw Spring Mueller of all people, walking toward their table. A feeling came over Carrie that she didn’t have very often but which she recognized easily enough as jealousy; it got stronger when Spring raised her perfect blond eyebrows and looked back and forth between her and Ty as if she couldn’t quite put the two of them together in her head. As if she was looking at a beautiful lady in an ugly dress, or a handsome prince on an old broken-down horse.

“Good evening,” she said in that affected way she’d had since she was fourteen—or before, for all Carrie knew; maybe she was born that way. “How are you, Tyler? No, please, sit down. I can only stay a second, I’m dining with my parents. Carrie, hi. You’re not sick, are you?” She laughed a false, tinkly laugh, not trying to hide her perplexity. She was worse than Mrs. Stambaugh, Carrie decided, because she was smoother, and because her supposedly humorous disbelief that Ty could know Carrie any other way but professionally was a subtler insult.

But the look on her face when Ty told her what they were celebrating went a long way toward erasing all the mean, envious thoughts Carrie had ever had about her. For a minute Spring couldn’t even speak, she was so confounded. Finally she managed to say, “Well, isn’t that nice, I couldn’t be more surprised,” and then she launched right away into a speech about how she was leaving in two days for the Whitson Teachers’ College in Harrisburg, and she wanted to be sure to say good-bye to them—looking only at Ty, of course—and how excited she was because molding young minds was a noble calling, and she only hoped she had the sensitivity and the intellectual capability for the difficult but worthy task that lay ahead of her—et cetera, ad nauseam, as Dr. Stoneman would say. Carrie stole furtive glances at Ty while Spring droned on, and at first all she could see in his face was friendly politeness; but then, in the depths of his beautiful blue eyes, she could’ve sworn she saw a flicker of impatience. A bright, unholy, completely wicked glee came over her. Even guilt couldn’t make it go away.

Finally Spring stopped talking about herself. “I hear you’re going to be getting some competition soon, Tyler.”

“I heard that, too,” he said agreeably.

When Carrie looked blank, Spring said, “Oh, didn’t you know? Wayne’s Crossing is about to acquire
another
new doctor. Do you think this means our little village is finally coming into the twentieth century after all?” She laughed the tinkly laugh. “Daddy’s doing some legal work for him before he gets here. His name is James Perry, he’s from Richmond, and he has three children and a wife named Maria.”

“He did his residency at Bellevue Hospital,” Ty added, “and he’ll be here by the end of the month. He’s buying the old Jansson house on Wing Street.”

Spring looked put out because Ty knew more gossip than she did. “Daddy says he sounds very bright. I hope he doesn’t take
too
many of your patients away, Dr. Wilkes,” she said archly, batting her eyelashes.

“Me, too. If he did, I might have to lower my fees.”

She finally said good-bye, shaking Tyler’s hand—he never had sat down—and giving Carrie a wave. As soon as she was gone, Carrie scribbled worriedly,
Might Dr. Perry really take your patients away?

“I hope so,” he said, spooning a big bite of applesauce.

But—don’t you care?

“He’s welcome to as many as he can handle, the sooner the better.” She looked at him quizzically. “The town’s long overdue for another doctor, Carrie,” he explained. “We could really use three. My work load’s always been too much for one man.” He added more softly, “Especially since it’s not what I want to do anyway.”

She nodded in sympathy. He wanted to be an “epidemiologist,” which was someone who studied diseases and thought up ways to cure them. That was certainly a “noble calling,” as Spring would say, but Carrie couldn’t help thinking it would also be a shame, because Ty was so good with people. Everybody in town thought the world of him.

Mr. Bridgers, the town undertaker and furniture upholsterer, was a perfect example. Tyler paid the check, and he and Carrie were on their way out of Pennicle’s when Mr. Bridgers, who was coming in, grabbed him by the arm and started pounding him on the back. “Dr. Wilkes! Just the man I wanted to see. You know those pills you give me for that bladder problem I was having? They worked like a charm. Lemme tell you—”

Carrie moved off down the street a ways to give them more privacy, not that Mr. Bridgers seemed to want it. The mannequin in the window of Kline’s Ready-to-Wear caught her eye, and she drifted over toward it. She was staring at the rose-colored dress on the mannequin, trying to imagine the kind of life a woman who wore a dress like that would lead, and then trying to picture herself wearing the dress, when she saw Eugene Starkey’s reflection looming up behind her. She whipped around just before he reached for her shoulder to turn her.

“Hey, Carrie, I thought it was you. What’re you doing in town so late? “He grinned as if he was glad to see her, and she smiled back, pleased to see him. “I’ve been in a meeting for the last two hours,” he said importantly. “Yeah, the work never stops. All the foremen and assistant foremen get together once a month, see, to talk about problems on the job. I had to give the shop superintendent a report on the turning department. Yeah, he said we’re doing great, we’re eleven percent above production from this time last year.”

She made an amazed, congratulatory face.

“Yeah. So.” He put his hand on the glass behind her and leaned against it, bringing their faces close. “So how’ve you been? Good, good. Me, I’ve been fine. So listen, what are you doing next Sunday? Want to go on a picnic? Some of the boys at work are going up to High Rock for the afternoon. The girls make the food, and the guys bring the beer,” he grinned humorously. “What do you say?”

She said no, as politely as she could, in a rather long, explanatory note in her notebook.

“Aw, come on,” he wheedled when he’d read it, bracing his hand on the window again and bending over her. “Sunday’s your day of rest, ain’t it? You need to get out some or you’ll turn peculiar, up there on Dreamy with nobody for company except old Artemis.
Anybody’d
go crazy living with that lunatic. Come on, Carrie, let’s have some fun.”

She shook her head again, looking regretful and apologetic. Footsteps sounded behind her. Eugene looked past her shoulder and straightened up, and a second later Tyler joined them.

“Hello, Eugene,” he said pleasantly, coming to stand beside Carrie.

She could tell the instant Eugene realized they were together, because his face closed up and his dark eyes turned cold and hard. “Oh, hey, don’t let me keep you,” he said in a slow, sarcastic voice. “You two have a real nice evening.” He turned on his heel and stalked off down the sidewalk, stiff-legged and tight-shouldered. But for once, Carrie thought he looked more hurt than angry. The idea troubled her all the way to Ty’s house.

“No emergencies—we’re in luck.”

Carrie nodded, peering through the dusk at the blank message board on Tyler’s office door.

“Do you want to come upstairs and have something to drink?” he invited. “We can sit on the back porch and watch the fireflies.”

“That sounds perfect.” The perfect end, she mused as they walked around the flagstone path to the back of his house, to a perfect day.

Louie greeted them with a lot of joyful barking and ecstatic rolling around on his back. He was still an adolescent and he didn’t have much dignity yet, but Carrie thought he showed a lot of promise. He lay with his chin on her shoe as she sat beside Ty in one of the kitchen chairs they brought out onto his back porch. They sipped lemonade in peaceful silence, staring off at the dipping, rising, winking lights in the trees across the way, listening to the katydids and the crickets. But Carrie’s thoughts kept going back again and again to Eugene, and once she sighed so heavily, Tyler asked her what she was thinking about.

“Eugene,” she answered readily.

He grunted. “What about him?”

“He asked me to go on a picnic with him. I said I couldn’t, and I think I hurt his feelings.”

He’d taken his coat off and loosened his Windsor tie; he had his feet up on the railing, his hands folded over his stomach. She loved to see him at ease like this. Sometimes the fact that she was actually one of his personal friends, someone he spent free time with on purpose, struck her as too good to be true. It was the sort of thing so much more likely to happen to someone else, not Carrie Wiggins. “I’ll take your word for it that Eugene’s got feelings to hurt,” he said dryly.

She looked at him in surprise. “Oh, no, Ty, he’s very sensitive.”

He looked skeptical, but didn’t say anything for a while. “You’re fond of him, aren’t you?” he finally asked her.

“Yes. In a way.”

“Why?”

“Because … he’s not really a bad person.”

“Probably not. But I think there must be more to it than that.”

How clever he was; she wondered what it would be like to try to keep a secret from him. “There’s another reason,” she said slowly, “something that happened a long time ago. I’ve never told anybody.” There was a long, long pause, while they both waited to see what she would decide. “I’ll tell you if you like,” she offered in the end.

“Do you want to?”

He was making it her choice, not trying to talk her into anything. “Yes, I do want to. But …”

“But?”

“It’s embarrassing to say it out loud.”

He reached across the little bit of space between them, offering his hand. “Don’t look at me, then,” he suggested. “Look off up there and say it to the lightning bugs and the tree frogs.”

She could do that. She put her hand in his, and the wide warmth of it comforted her. She could tell Ty this. She loved him—he was her best friend. And he wouldn’t think less of her afterward.

Still, he was right about it being easier to look straight ahead, not at him. “It happened three years ago,” she began, her voice soft to accommodate the quiet night and the story she had to tell. “I was fifteen and Eugene was a little older, but he was still in my grade at school. Some of the kids used to laugh at me, you know, because I couldn’t talk, and—Eugene was one of them. He was one of the worst, to tell you the truth. He was the one who first started calling me ‘dummy,’ and after that they almost all did.