The River King (28 page)

The snow was blinding as Abe walked away from St. Anne's; all the same, he was reminded of the hot afternoon when his brother died. He'd recognized the same thing then, how quickly the future could become the past, moments melting into each other before anyone could reach out and change them. He'd gone over how it all might have happened differently if he'd run up the stairs. If he'd knocked on the door, if he'd barged right in; how it might have changed had he denied his brother's request that morning and refused to go along to their grandfather's farm. It had been the sort of summer day that shone and glittered in the dusty sunlight like a miracle, all blue heat and endless white clouds, stifling hot, so quiet Abe could hear himself breathing when Frank hoisted him up so Abe could climb through the window to get the gun.

Afterward he'd had to do it again and again, compelled to repeat his thievery. At least these acts had stopped him from thinking, but now he was done with breaking into other people's houses. It had never done any good anyway, he'd carried his pain around inside him; it was still here on this snowy night. Maybe that was why he decided to leave his car where it was, parked by the river, and walk home. Once he started, he just kept going, past his house and halfway to Hamilton, not returning until sometime near dawn when he hitched a ride back with a plow Kelly Avon's little brother, Josh, was driving.

The next day he went walking again, even though he was supposed to show up for work, and Doug Lauder, a patrolman who grumbled under the best circumstances, was forced to take his shift, stuck directing traffic outside town hall until his toes turned blue. Before long, people in town noticed that Abe had quit stargazing. Why, he didn't even look up anymore as he walked through the village. He no longer whistled and his face was grim and he'd taken to being out at hours when decent people were all at home in bed. Several old-timers in town, Zeke Harris at the dry cleaner's, and George Nichols over at the Millstone, remembered that Wright Grey had done the very same thing for a while, walking so many miles he'd worn down his boots and then had to take them into Hamilton to be resoled.

Now it seemed that Abe had inherited this trait. Even when the weather took a turn for the worse, with ragged sleet and cold, blue ice, Abe kept at it. People would glance out their windows and there he'd be, on Main Street or on Elm, or over by Lovewell Lane; without even a dog as an excuse to slog through the slush. He had decided he would go on walking until he could figure things out. How was it, he wanted to know, that things could turn so quickly from love to locked doors? This was why he had resisted commitments for so long; he wasn't constitutionally fit for love. He had fallen into it headfirst, just like those fools he'd always made fun of, Teddy Humphrey, for instance, who was so driven he didn't care if he looked like an idiot; he'd park outside Nikki's house and blast his car radio, hoping all the songs of heartbreak he played would remind her that love that had been lost could also be found.

Abe pitied Teddy Humphrey, and now he pitied himself as well. Some days, he had a terrible feeling in the center of his chest that simply wouldn't go away. He'd even gone over to the clinic in Hamilton to have it checked out, knowing that Mrs. Jeremy's son, AJ, had been walloped with a heart attack two years earlier at the age of thirty-seven, but the nurses insisted nothing was wrong.
Get yourself an antacid,
they told him.
Stop drinking so much coffee. Stop walking in such bad weather, and make sure to wear gloves and a scarf.

Abe went directly from the clinic to the pharmacy. “What's the difference between love and heartburn?” he asked Pete Byers, who was the one person in town who surely knew about such matters.

“Give me a minute.” Pete, always a thoughtful man, assumed he'd need time to think it over. It seemed like a difficult riddle, but as it turned out, the answer didn't take long. “I've got it,” he declared. “Nothing.”

On that advice, Abe bought some Rolaids, which he swallowed right down, along with most of his pride. No wonder he hadn't trusted anyone before; you never could tell what people would do, one minute they'd be smiling at you and the next they'd be gone, without so much as an explanation or a civil good-bye. There wasn't a grown man on this planet who wound up with everything he wanted, so who was Abe to complain? He was still here, wasn't he? He woke every morning to see the sky, he drank his coffee, scraped the ice from his front steps, waved to his neighbors. He wasn't a boy who'd been cheated, who never got the chance to grow up and make his own decisions, right or wrong. The difference between tragedy and simple bad luck, after all, could be easily defined: it was possible to walk away from one, and that Abe would do, no matter how many miles it took or how many pairs of boots he wore through.

SNOW FELL ALL THROUGH DECEMBER, covering the Christmas tree in front of town hall with a blanket of white that would not melt until the tree was taken down, as it was every year, on the Saturday after New Year's. This was the season when the north wind slammed around town, tossing garbage cans into the street, shaking store awnings. The days were so short they were finished by four, at which point the sky turned black, and evenings were cold enough to freeze a person's breath in the crystal-clear air. There seemed to be handfuls of stars tossed right above the rooftops in Haddan, keeping the town still alight at midnight. Some people joked that it would make sense to wear sunglasses after sundown, that's how bright the snow was; it shone in the starlight, causing even the most serious people to put aside all caution and restraint and jump into the biggest of the drifts.

The boat shed at the Haddan School was unheated and drafty; it overlooked a bend in the frozen river, and although the building was closed until spring, that didn't mean it went unused. On Friday nights kegs of beer were set up beside the tarp-covered kayaks and canoes, and several girls in the freshman class had already lost their innocence there beside the sculls. Although she was embarrassed to be like so many others, Carlin had spent a good deal of time in the boathouse with Harry, but by the end of the semester, all of that had changed. Now whenever she was with Harry, she would discover a stone in the pocket of Gus's coat; some were black and some were white and others were a crystalline blue-gray, the color of the ice that formed in the shallows of the river. The floor of Carlin's closet was now covered by a collection of such stones; they rattled every time she reached for her boots, and soon she noticed the stones turned clearer as the hour grew later, so that by midnight they were transparent, nearly invisible to the naked eye.

When it came time for winter vacation, a group had arranged a weeklong trip to Harry's family's place in Vermont. It was assumed that Carlin would be going with them, and she didn't let on that she was staying behind until the day before they were to leave.

“You're not serious.” Harry was deeply annoyed. “We made all the plans and now you're not going?”

They were his plans actually; still Carlin did her best to explain how difficult it would be for her to leave Haddan. Miss Davis could no longer rise from her chair and was often too tired for dinner, falling asleep at the table, her untouched plate before her. Miss Davis had been so grateful at Thanksgiving that Carlin didn't feel she could leave her employer alone for the holidays.

“I don't care,” Harry said. “I'm selfish and I want you there with me.”

But Carlin could not be convinced. At five the next morning she was in bed when she heard Amy leave. The van Harry had hired was idling in the parking lot, headlights cutting through the dark, and when Carlin listened carefully, she recognized the voices of the lucky few Harry had invited along on the ski trip. She kept her eyes closed until the van pulled out of the lot; the rattle of the engine drew farther and farther away as it turned onto Main Street, passing the fences decorated with white lights, and the brilliant tree outside town hall, and the graveyard behind St. Agatha's, where so many had already deposited wreaths to mark the season.

On the first day of vacation, St. Anne's was deserted, save for the mice. All of the girls had gone off with family or friends, and in the emptiness left behind there was a moment when Carlin felt lost. She went to the pay phone and called her mother, Sue, who cried and said it just wasn't Christmas without Carlin home to celebrate. As much as she loved her mother, by the time they were through talking, Carlin was glad enough to be in Haddan. Sue Leander had sent Carlin a present of white musk cologne, which Carlin rewrapped and presented to Miss Davis.

“You must think I'm trying to catch myself a man,” Miss Davis said when she saw her gift, but she was persuaded to try out a dab or two on her wrists. “There,” she proclaimed. “I'm a knockout.”

Carlin laughed and set to work on the dressing for the goose, which she'd had delivered from the butcher in Hamilton. As it turned out, Carlin was a good cook. She, who'd been raised on frozen dinners and macaroni and cheese, could now julienne peppers and carrots in seconds flat; one afternoon she made a vegetable soup so delicious that when the aroma drifted through the dormitory several girls came down with a bad case of home-sickness and they cried themselves to sleep, dreaming of their childhood homes.

“Pecans in the stuffing?” Miss Davis sniffed, as she peered over Carlin's shoulder. “Raisins?” Her voice was grave with mistrust.

Carlin held the goose up by the neck and asked if perhaps Miss Davis would like to take over. The goose looked rather naked and strange to Miss Davis's eyes and, truthfully, the notion that she might fix anything more complicated than a cheese sandwich was far-fetched at best, while the idea of her taking a dead goose in hand was nothing short of ludicrous. Quickly, she reconsidered. When all was said and done, pecan dressing would be fine.

Helen hadn't wanted to like this girl who worked for her; it was foolish to begin attachments now, when it was far too late for such things. She would never have admitted how glad she was that Carlin had stayed for the holiday. The girl was good company and had an exceptional talent for solving problems that seemed insurmountable to Helen, arranging, for instance, for a cab so that Helen could attend mass at St. Agatha's instead of going to the services led by Dr. Jones in the school chapel. Having been raised Catholic, Helen had always wished to go to St. Agatha's but she'd feared local parishioners would be unfriendly to an outsider, particularly a lost soul such as herself, who hadn't been to a proper mass for so long. As it turned out, the congregation had welcomed her warmly. Pete Byers helped her to her seat, and afterward some nice young man named Teddy had driven her back to St. Anne's. When she arrived home, she found that Carlin had set out a real Christmas dinner, which brought to mind the holiday meals Helen's own mother used to serve, with dishes of candied yams and brussels sprouts, and of course the goose with its lovely stuffing.

Halfway through dinner, Helen Davis gazed out the window and saw that handsome man again. Abel Grey was standing by the rosebushes, even though it was snowing. He was just about the best-looking man Helen had ever seen, and she thought now that she should have found herself a man like that back when she was young, rather than moping around after that worthless Dr. Howe.

“Look who's here,” she said to Carlin, and she quickly sent the girl to fetch him. Carlin ran through the falling snow, the black coat flaring out over a white apron and her good blue dress.

“Hey,” she called to Abe, who didn't seem happy to have been discovered. “Miss Davis wants you to have dinner with us. You might as well, since you're lurking around here anyway.”

Carlin jumped up and down to keep warm, but at least the boots she'd bought at Hingram's were doing the job, and Gus's coat was a blessing in weather such as this. Those big snowflakes were still falling, and Abe's hair had turned white. He looked sheepish under all that snow, the way any man would be who'd just been caught peering through windows.

“I'm just out for a walk,” he insisted. “I'm not lurking.”

“Miss Chase went to a hotel in Maine with Mr. Herman. So you might as well have your dinner with us.”

Abe had already had his Christmas lunch at the Millstone—two drafts, a burger, and a large order of fries.

“Come on,” Carlin urged. “I'll pretend I never saw you sneaking out St. Anne's at three in the morning and you can pretend you're polite.”

“What are you having for dinner?” Abe asked grudgingly.

“Goose with pecan stuffing and candied yams.”

Abe was surprised. “You cooked all that?” When Carlin nodded, he threw up his hands. “I guess you talked me into it.”

By now, the light had already begun to fade. Abe hadn't really expected Betsy to be home, nor had he planned what he might say should she be there. Would he have begged for her to reconsider? Was he that far gone?

As they approached St. Anne's, Helen Davis opened the back door; when she saw Abe she waved.

“I think she's got a crush on you,” Carlin confided.

“I'm sure she'll dump me before dinner's over.” Abe waved back. “Hey there, Helen,” he called. “Merry Christmas!” The black cat slipped out onto the frosty porch. “There's my buddy.” Abe clucked as if calling chickens, but the cat ignored him and went instead to rub against Carlin's legs.

“Pretty boy.” Carlin leaned down to pat the cat's cars.

“Again your cat has failed to recognize you,” Helen noted as they all traipsed into the kitchen, cat included. Helen had placed a cover over the yams and she'd shoved a plate atop the bowl of vegetables to keep them warm. A few small exertions and those brief moments on the porch had left her exhausted. Standing there at her own dinner table, holding on to the back of a chair, Helen seemed likely to topple over, exactly like Millie Adams over on Forest Street, who had been ill for years before she passed on, so weak that Abe often stopped by on his way home from work to make certain that Millie had made it through the day. Now, Abe helped Miss Davis to her chair.