The Ferryman (8 page)

When the procession began, Annette stepped forward first, breaking that link that had sustained them. With a frown, she turned to glance at him, eyes bright with the expectation that he should follow her. After just a moment, he offered a flicker of a smile and stepped into the procession behind her.

One by one they passed the casket, there beside the hole in the ground where Ralph Weiss's mortal remains would lie until they crumbled to dust. The hole was covered, of course, treated as though it were something obscene, the way some Muslims insisted upon women covering every inch of their flesh.

Garish.

The word came unbidden to David's mind, but he could not banish it.The flowers that bedecked the casket seemed too bright, the sky too blue, the sun too warm with hope and the promise of life.

As David passed the casket, he surprised himself by bending down to pull a single rose from an arrangement near his feet and tossing it onto the casket. Others ahead of him had done it, but he had not known he would follow suit until he felt himself moving.

A whisper of prayer passed his lips and he glanced to his left and saw Weiss's widow, supported by her children, dabbing at her eyes. As though she could feel his eyes upon her, Mrs. Weiss glanced up and stared at him a moment. A flicker of recognition seemed to wash over her face and her brow furrowed slightly. David wondered how many times her husband had complained to her at home about the former student who had come back to St. Matt's to teach and thought he could do it better.

Suddenly flushing with guilt, he broke the gaze and put a hand on Annette's shoulder, rushing her a bit so that they could escape into the small knot of mourners now gathered on the grass near their cars. Annette turned to look at him and blinked in surprise.

“What?” he asked immediately.

She glanced away. “Nothing. I'm sorry. I'm just ... I guess I didn't expect to find you crying for him.”

Baffled, David wiped a hand across his eyes and was astonished when it came away damp with salty tears. He had not even been aware that he was crying.

Annette's gaze was upon him again, and David shrugged.

“Maybe they're not for him, y'know? Maybe they're for his family. Or maybe they're for me. I sort of feel like I've lost something. Kind of twisted, I know, when I didn't even like him”—he whispered that last—“but still. It's like part of my past has been taken away.”

With a sweet smile, Annette reached out to take his hand. She stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, and he still had to bend slightly for her to peck at his cheek.

“You're a good man, David Bairstow. Trust me. I'm pretty objective.”

David wiped at his eyes again but found no new tears. He nodded. “Thanks, Elf.”

Even as he said it, he saw Father Charles striding across the lawn toward them. Annette followed his gaze and her expression changed a little. She was probably the only person at St. Matt's who didn't get along with the priest. Father Charles had never been anything but nice to her, but he had also admitted to her once that he supported the church's teachings about homosexuality. Annette had been cold to him ever since, though David thought it was more to protect herself emotionally than that she was angry.

Still, they both turned to greet the priest as he hailed them.

“Well, now, two of my favorite teachers,” Father Charles announced as he reached them. “You're both well, I trust?”

They assured him that they were. The priest eyed them one at a time, then glanced sidelong toward the casket and the grieving family.

“A teacher is an extraordinary thing,” he told them in a tone that would brook no argument. “To draw into the world the mind of another person, young or old, to educate, to provide form and a method of understanding experience. Glorious.”

Now he studied them again, a small, beatific smile on his face, though his eyes were stern. “Don't ever forget that, either of you. We are, all of us, teachers. As we are all students. We never stop learning, or teaching. But those who dedicate their lives to the pursuit and the cultivation of knowledge and understanding are God's own instruments. Even one who is less than eloquent, for he still teaches by example, by dedication, the value of learning. There's a special place in heaven for teachers, I believe.

“I really do.”

As though trying to determine if they had understood, he eyed them one last time.Then he nodded once and turned to go. With the second step, he paused and faced them again. He went to Annette, touched her gently on the shoulder. Then he took David's hand and leaned in to whisper to him.

“He knew,” Father Charles told him, his words hushed and intimate. “Despite your sparring, Ralph knew you still respected him, David, and he respected you as well.”

Then he walked off, leaving David to stare after him mutely. He felt the warm sting of another tear slipping down his cheek.

This time, however, he did not pretend to be surprised.

“You're not going to rub it in, are you?” Annette asked. “That she made a mistake leaving you?”

With an embarrassing snort of laughter, David turned to stare at her in shock and amazement.

“Jesus, Annette, no!” he said, snickering a bit. “You're unbelievable.”

“Well, she did dump you, after all.”

He adopted a hurt expression that was only half-feigned. “It was a mutual decision.”

“Yeah, mutual 'cause she wanted to give Spencer another shot at the brass ring,” Annette replied.

David had no response for that. He stared at Annette for a moment. She sat behind the wheel of her aging SAAB and sipped at her coffee as she waited for the red light to change. Medford Square traffic was arrayed all around them, creating an illusion that they were jammed up. But David knew from experience that as soon as the light turned green, it would flow. Annette pushed a lock of her bobbed blond hair over her left ear and turned to gaze back at him.

“That wasn't meant to hurt you,” she said, studying him. “I'm just saying there's nothing wrong with being a little angry at her.You guys had a good thing going and she fucked it up.”

David nodded. He remembered the night Janine had revealed to him that Spencer wanted to be back in her life, and that she intended to let him. Her perfume had a cinnamon scent that insinuated itself into his nostrils and his brain, sparking instincts both romantic and lustful. Even now he could never inhale the aroma of cinnamon without forming illicit pictures of their lovemaking in his mind.

A tiny smile flickered across his lips as he thought of that scent now. But it was a fleeting thing, that smile. For his mind was on their words that night, her telling him it did not mean that she did not care for him, and him declaring that he believed, wholeheartedly, that a day would come when she would regret it, regret abandoning what they'd shared.

That day had most assuredly come. Yet David found only sadness for Janine now that it had. He certainly had never imagined something like this when he had spoken those words.

“I'd never do anything to hurt her, Elf,” he said.

“You still love her?”

David glanced at Annette. She cradled her coffee between her thighs and rested both hands on the wheel.

“You know I do,” he said. “But I've moved on.You don't just freeze in place when a relationship ends. Or, okay, you do, but not for long. Life happens when you're trying your best to wallow in your misery.”

Annette chuckled at that. “Now, there's a bumper sticker slogan.” She shook her head.“It's going to be fine. Really. No pressure.You care about her. She's had a rough time. Anything else is just subtext.”

The light turned green and Annette accelerated, nosing her way through other cars until she was headed up Winthrop Street toward Janine's apartment. David watched the familiar storefronts and houses ticking by, the sweet spring breeze in his face.Though he was a teacher in a Catholic school, he was not in the habit of praying.Yet in that moment he silently thanked God for the weather. Between the sadness of Ralph Weiss's funeral and the anxiety he felt over seeing Janine again, a rainy day might have just about done him in.

He had removed his jacket and tie after they had left the cemetery. Now he unbuttoned and rolled up his sleeves. The air was full of the smell of growing things; David liked that. An old seventies song came on the radio. Just the opening chords of “Brandy” were enough to make him chuckle and turn up the volume. Softly, David began to sing along.

Annette laughed and joined in.

The brakes on the SAAB whined in protest as Annette slowed to turn into the driveway of the old house where Janine had an apartment. Oak and maple trees dotted the property, and in the back, beside the barn, wild lilac bushes were already beginning to bloom. There were only a couple of cars in the small parking area, but he spotted Janine's familiar Toyota in the farthest spot. A wicked flash went through his mind.
Oh, the things we did in that car.
They'd been like teenagers.

A twinge of guilt made him close his eyes a moment. There was a lot more to his feelings for Janine than such memories, though he cherished them. She needed him here as a friend, not her ex-boyfriend. David opened his eyes, cast a sidelong glance at Annette as she pulled the car into the nearest spot, and wondered if men really were the sex-obsessed pigs modern culture cast them as, or if women were just better at hiding it.

“The eagle has landed,” Annette said, mostly to herself.

As they climbed out of the car, David looked around again at the house and the yard. There was a kind of electricity in the air. His surroundings were both familiar and yet surreal, the way he felt every time he drove past the places he had played as a boy, as though a wrinkle had formed in time.

As that thought crossed his mind, a rare cloud passed across the sun and its light dimmed, casting the world around them in a pall of gray. David shuddered as though chilled. Something in motion caught his attention off to the right, and his gaze flicked toward the barn again. One of the enormous old doors was open and in its recesses he saw the MG convertible stored there by the retired doctor who owned the place.

Beyond the car, though, that was where something had moved.

A figure—a person—watched him from the shadows beyond the car. In that moment in which the sunlight was occluded, he caught the hint of a beard and thick, knitted eyebrows. But then the cloud passed and the rays of the sun made everything glow brilliantly once more. In the barn, the shadows deepened, and he could no longer see the man.

Still, the chill he had felt in that moment without the sun remained.

“What is it?” Annette asked.

David started a bit, then turned. She stood on the top step, the door to the foyer open, and waited for an answer. He had been so distracted that he had not even heard her press the buzzer for Janine to let them in, though she must have.

“Nothing,” he replied as he shook off that chill. “Just saw someone in the barn. Probably Dr. Feehan, right? It's mostly his stuff in there, I think.”

“Probably. Though I don't know that I've ever seen him,” Annette said as they stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind them. “Damn shame to leave that sweet little car gathering dust in there, though. Janine should get in his good graces; maybe he'll will it to her.”

“Maybe he'll will it to
you
?” David suggested.

“If God weren't so grumpy, He'd be doing stuff like that for people all the time,” Annette replied, a wistful grin on her face.

“God's grumpy?”

“You taken a look at the world lately?”

“Wow, good afternoon, Miss Pessimist,” David teased.

Annette shot him the middle finger over her shoulder as she went up the stairs to the second floor. At the landing, she barely paused before she knocked on Janine's door. David took a deep breath.

He heard her footsteps as she crossed the apartment. The click of the lock quickened his heart, and he was startled by the realization of exactly how much trepidation he felt about this meeting.

The door swung open. Janine wore a tight, white, ribbed cotton top and burgundy Levi's. Her feet were bare, finger- and toenails painted a dark, bruised red. Her black hair framed her full, pale features in a way that had always reminded him of old-style Hollywood glamour. Even in jeans.

But it was her eyes that caught him. Though they seemed brown most of the time, they had a way of shifting color with the light, or even with her mood. Gold and amber and copper, Janine's eyes were all those colors, if you simply caught her at the right moment.

When she opened the door, her gaze went to Annette first. Janine smiled tentatively. Then she looked at David, and her smile turned sad, wistful.To him, frozen in that moment, she seemed diminished somehow, fragile and tentative, as though she had learned a terrible secret.

He supposed that she had.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.”

“I'm really glad you came.”

Then the melancholy seemed to burn right out of her, her smile sparkled, and he thought of the cloud that had passed over the sun just before they had come inside.

Janine stepped out into the hall and embraced him forcefully. Her body felt full and
right
against him.Where Annette was petite and girlish, Janine was tall and full-bodied; not exactly voluptuous, but doubtless in that neighborhood.

They fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. He recalled the way they had lain together at night before drifting to sleep, when she had nuzzled against him, his arm around her, her leg thrown over his. A puzzle, yes, and how well the pieces fit had seemed to hold some divine truth of the universe then, as if there really were such a thing as destiny.