The Probable Future (7 page)

What’s so funny?

Matt had forgotten to drop the shovel when they took off running and was still holding on to it, his grip so tight blisters were already rising. Matt Avery couldn’t quite believe he’d actually confronted Elinor Sparrow. He hoped when he went to bed that night he wouldn’t find an onion stabbed through with pins beneath his pillow. He knew, after all, there were those in town who insisted such would surely be the fate of anyone who crossed Elinor: the gift of a small token that was said to be accompanied by seven years’ bad luck.

Matt threw down the shovel and sat beside his brother, who was still chuckling, amused and terribly pleased with himself.

Come on
. Matt was always the last to know anything.
Tell me. What’s so funny?

Will had opened his hand in front of his brother’s face. There in his sweaty palm was one of Rebecca Sparrow’s arrowheads. There was the line marked by blood.

Matt had stood up, furious.
You bastard
. Will couldn’t remember having ever heard his brother curse before.
You made a liar out of me
.

Matt took off, cutting through a weedy patch of lawn gone to seed, deaf to Will’s pleas for him to grow up and stop being such a nitwit. What was wrong with telling a lie if it served your purpose? Will was ready to share the arrowhead, if that was what Matt wanted. He was amenable if Matt wanted to claim to have been beside him when he stole the damned thing, if Matt wanted to share in the glory. But Matt never turned around. He collected his sleeping bag and lantern from the far side of the lake, and he was long gone by the time Jenny came to look for Will.

She was barefoot when she came down from the house, flushed from the fight she’d just had with her mother. Their arguments were stark, brittle things, with the insults hurled falling like bombs. As soon as Will heard Jenny approach, he slipped the arrowhead into his pocket. She might as well go on thinking the best of him. When she sat down beside him, on that green March day, her skin overheated, her hair still tangled, Will saw that she was beautiful in a way he hadn’t noticed before.

If my mother hurt you, she’ll be sorry
, Jenny told him.

She couldn’t hurt me if she tried
, Will had scoffed, his shoulder aching. All the same, Jenny’s concern had moved him; he wanted more of it. She was interesting in a way the other girls in town who chased after him simply were not.

Did you dream about an angel with dark hair last night? And there was a bee and a woman who wasn’t afraid of anything. Not even the deepest water.

Will felt mesmerized. He heard the chorus of the wood thrush, the peepers in the mud. Jenny’s looks were exotic for Unity, the long
black hair that floated down her back like lake water, the dark, bottomless eyes. Even Will Avery wasn’t immune to spring fever. He could feel it creeping up on him, clouding his reason. Everything looked iridescent and new in the glittery sunlight.

That was my dream
, he said.

I knew it
. Jenny was delighted.
I knew it was you
.

Jenny flicked back her black hair. She smelled like verbena and sleep. Will understood that she trusted him, she believed in him, and the very idea infatuated him. Sitting there beside her, Will temporarily forgot who he was and what he was capable of.

And now, all these years later, he had begun to wonder if it wasn’t the angel Jenny spoke of that he sometimes saw in the dark, waiting on street corners, standing over his bed. It was a hallucination, surely, but one that seemed to follow him around these days. This vision was apparent to him in the bar of the Hornets’ Nest most every night. It was the reason he was drinking too much on the occasion of Stella’s birthday, already on his second Johnnie Walker by the time the salads arrived.

This was one of those nights when he was sure to wind up teary-eyed. Time had passed; his little girl a teenager who would surely see him for who he was before long. Stella was busy playing with the bell on her bracelet; she seemed moody, not at all herself, although the fact that she was distracted allowed Will the opportunity to flirt with the waitress, a pretty girl who was clearly too young for him. Probably a graduate student who would expect him to have long conversations about things that mattered to her, her future, for instance, or her opinion. Seduction, Will had found lately, was so much damn work. It was far easier when someone knew you, when you could let down your guard.

“Does your mother ask about me much?” he inquired of Stella.

Stella shook her wrist. The little bell on her new bracelet made a cool, metallic sound. “Not much.”

“No?”

Her father seemed wounded, so Stella quickly backtracked. “Well, sometimes. But it’s not like we communicate or anything. I can’t talk to her the way I can talk to you.”

Will smiled, delighted. At least someone still trusted him.

Stella leaned forward on her elbows. “Actually, I have something I need to talk to you about right now. Something she’d never understand.”

So that was the reason the girl had been so ill at ease all through dinner. Will hoped this wasn’t to be a confession that involved sex or drugs. He was no one’s moral compass, how could he hope to weigh in with a parental opinion? Stella was looking at him as though she really needed him, and that in itself was a worry. She had the same gold flecks in her eyes he had; the same habit of lowering her voice when she had something serious to discuss.

“I think I can tell what’s going to happen to some people,” Stella told her father.

Will laughed out loud. He really couldn’t help it, not when he thought about all the crap he’d been into at her age. The terror he put his poor mother through, the nights he hadn’t come home, all those rules he felt compelled to break, hashish stored in his closet, bags of marijuana in his desk drawer, the fires he’d started when he’d needed a little excitement, the many times he’d misbehaved and poor Matt had covered for him and taken the blame.

“Sorry,” Will said when he saw the hurt look on Stella’s face. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m just relieved. I thought you were about to tell me something awful.”

“It
is
awful.”

“Baby, listen, I can tell what’s going to happen to people also.” He nodded to a rear table where a couple had been bickering all evening. “See those two? They’ll be divorced by the end of the year. Take it from me. Oh, and another thing, I can predict that your
mother will be furious that we went to dinner without her. I can definitely foresee that.”

“I don’t mean things like that.” Stella leaned closer still. There was the chime of the bell on her bracelet. “I see how they die.”

“Ah.” Will lit a cigarette and thought this over. Outside, the brown twilight washed over Beacon Street. There were a dozen pigeons on the sidewalk, their feathers pale and gleaming in the fading light.

“I think you should put out that cigarette,” Stella advised.

Her tone was suddenly so sure, so adult, Will found he was spooked. He felt something cold drift across his skin. His future, perhaps? His well-deserved fate? He had been coughing a good deal lately and more often than not he awoke with a sore throat.

“Why? Because it will kill me?”

There was a little smile on Stella’s lips. “No. Because we’re in the no-smoking section.”

Will laughed and stubbed out his cigarette in a half-eaten roll. There was indeed a sign on the wall:
NO PIPES, NO CIGARETTES, NO CIGARS.
“So I’m not about to die of lung cancer any time soon?”

“I can’t see it with you. It’s only with some people, and I never know who it will be. I don’t control it.”

Will finished his drink and called for another. He’d begun to relax. This didn’t sound too awful. Premonitions, fears, that sort of thing; surely, it was bound to pass. She had probably fooled around with a Ouija board or a pack of fortune-telling cards. It was nothing when compared to the troubles some people had with their children: schizophrenia, anorexia, kleptomania. What were a few visions compared with all that? The way Will figured the situation, Stella was passing through some developmental stage, a natural fear of death mixed with anxiety caused by her parents’ breakup. He’d read a book about children reacting to divorce—actually half a book, since the philosophizing bored him silly. But now he wondered if he should have read all the way to the end. He wondered if Jenny
hadn’t been right; they probably should have gone into family therapy, but of course Will had refused. It didn’t seem worthwhile to pay for an expensive hour of questions and answers when all he would tell were bold-faced lies.

“Can you see it with anyone here?” Will had decided to treat Stella’s alleged affliction as though it were a parlor game.
Tell me how many aces I have in my hand, how many one-eyed jacks, how much time I have on earth.
“What about those two in the corner?”

Naturally he would choose them, two young, attractive women in their thirties, clearly enjoying a night out. One of the women had honey-colored hair, pulled back from her pale face; her companion was wearing a black dress, not unlike the one Juliet had given Stella, and a dozen silver bracelets on her arms.

Stella looked over at the corner, then quickly turned back to her father. Her face was drained of all color. One instant was all it took. One look and she knew. She could smell her father’s whisky and the faint odor of tobacco that clung to him. Dishes were clattering as the table beside them was cleared.

“The one in black will die in bed when she’s an old woman. Her heart will stop.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Will was relieved and more than a little drunk. “That’s a fine way to die, Stella, if you really want to know. Hell, I hope I kick off the same way. There’s nothing wrong in seeing that.”

Will was cheerful again.
Talk to your teenagers
, the book he’d half-read had advised.
Treat them as though their ideas mattered
.

“Anyway, I’ll bet this vision thing is like the flu. Twenty-four hours of seeing death. Take two aspirin and get a good night’s sleep, Stella, my star, and you’ll be fine in the A.M. Completely clearheaded.”

Stella certainly hoped so because these visions were nothing she wanted. They were nothing any thirteen-year-old girl could take comfort in. She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly;
she hadn’t yet told her father all of it. She paid no attention when the waitress delivered the check, along with her scribbled phone number for Will to fold into his wallet. She kept her eyes averted from the second woman at the table in the corner, the one with the honey-blond hair whose throat had been slit.

When the waitress had gone, Stella surprised Will by going to sit in his lap, something she hadn’t done for ages. “Hey,” Will said, pleased. Maybe he did have a chance to be a better father, a better person all around. “That’s my little girl.”

It took a while before he realized that Stella was crying, her face hidden against him. He could feel her tears through the fabric of his shirt. He could feel his love for her as well, worthless as it might be.

“It’s your birthday, Stell. Don’t cry.”

“Then promise you’ll believe me.” Stella’s voice was surprisingly fierce. “I mean it. Cross your heart.”

She moved back into her own chair so that she could watch as Will solemnly crossed his heart, or at least he traced an
X
in the place where his heart should have been. He listened as his daughter told him about the awful death of the woman in the corner, how she’d be murdered in her bed, how she’d open her eyes and know the darkness was about to close in, how she wouldn’t have a chance if she wasn’t warned.

“You have to do something,” Stella urged. “You just have to.”

Her bright confidence burned through Will and, for a moment, it made him a better man. He had no choice but to try to rise to the occasion of being Stella’s father.

“Fine. I’ll tell her to lock her windows and beware of strangers, but if they drag me off to the loony bin, you’ll have to tell them it was all your idea.”

Will Avery went over to the women’s table to introduce himself. He pointed out his daughter, the charming girl who was staring at them from across the room. Both women laughed when Will sheepishly
brought up Stella’s premonition. They’d remembered having overactive imaginations when they were thirteen, they’d believed in ghosts and in love at first sight and look at them now—all grown up and dubious about nearly everything, although not so much so that the blonde didn’t give him her phone number, which he slipped into his wallet, alongside the waitress’s crumpled note.

“I don’t think they believed me,” he told Stella as they left the restaurant.

“Then we still have to tell someone else. It’s our duty, isn’t it? It’s our responsibility.”

Responsibility, that notion was assuredly Jenny’s influence. Always looking forward to the next balanced meal, the next homework assignment, the next chore to be completed. And what of Will’s influence? What had he taught his daughter? To let your appetites rule your life? To do as you pleased, no matter who might be hurt?

They had turned onto Marlborough Street and were headed toward home. The air was soft and damp, fishy the way March air can be, clinging to clothes, urging the buds of the magnolias to open. Will never went up to the apartment anymore. He merely dropped Stella off and went on his way, but what way was that, really? The way of three drinks in order to get to sleep? The way of not bothering to speak to another human being most days, let alone think about anyone other than himself?

“We have to do more,” Stella insisted. “You have to.”

“More,” Will repeated.

It was as though the thought had never before occurred to him. Standing in front of the apartment building where he’d lived for so many years, Will found himself thinking of someone other than himself. He wondered if this was the way selfless people felt, this lightness inside, a sensation of weightlessness.

“Promise me you’ll do something, Daddy.”