Local Girl Swept Away (6 page)

Cooper Thorne always entered a room as if stepping onto a stage, his extravagant smile backed up by bone-deep confidence. Eight years ago Cooper had been the youngest writer ever admitted for a JSAC residency, and now he was the assistant director of the place. A few months ago his first novel had been published to very good reviews, and he had a perpetual cat-with-the-feathers-still-in-its-mouth look on his face. Who could blame him?

“Hey, Jackie! This is getting to be a regular gig for you.”

“I know. Elsie gets busy this time of the year.” I held off making eye contact with him as long as possible. A full-on eyeball blast from Cooper had been known to tie up my tongue like a calf at a rodeo. “She's in her studio if you need her.”

“Not at all. I'm just looking for a friendly face at the end of a long day, and I'm more than happy to see yours.”

I glanced up at him and, sure enough, whatever I was about to say melted in my mouth like cotton candy. I needed a drink of water.

Cooper Thorne had green eyes that sparkled with flecks of gold, like turquoise stones, and a shock of dark hair he was constantly flinging back with a toss of his head. The combination made it seem as if he was flirting with everyone he spoke to. Or maybe he really
was
flirting with everyone, but only in the sweetest way. For all his success, he never seemed arrogant. And then, of course, there was the incredible wattage of his smile, which could electrify an entire building.

Over the years I'd crossed paths with Cooper many times, at gallery shows or at the Rosenbergs' house, but until this summer, he'd never paid much attention to me. I'd noticed him, of course, but only as that good-looking guy who worked for Elsie. The last few weeks, though, something had changed. I'd been running into him a lot at the Center and he was always very nice to me. It was probably just my overactive imagination, but whenever I was around Cooper now, it almost seemed as if something was bubbling up between us—friendship or . . . something. I tried not to look at it too closely.

“You almost done with those?” he asked, pointing to the pile of envelopes.

“This is the last one.”

“Good. It's five-thirty. Let's go sit down and have a beer.” I looked up in surprise and he laughed. “Oops. I keep forgetting how young you are.
I'll
have a beer. You can have a Coke.”

As I sealed the final envelope, I heard him feeding quarters into the soda machine in the hallway, the can clunking down the chute.

“They don't have beer in there, do they?” I asked as he handed me the cold can.

Cooper put a finger to his lips and whispered. “I keep a few bottles in the mini-fridge in my office. Don't tell Elsie.”

Right. Elsie adored Cooper. She probably wouldn't care if he was doing Jell-O shots in his office.

Cooper popped the cap off his bottle and I followed him to the Common Room, empty in the late afternoon. Of course he was only paying attention to me because nobody else was around—he was just killing time. Still, when he fixed me with those startling eyes, I was happy to forget how old
he
was too.

He flopped onto the sagging couch and propped his bare feet on the ancient coffee table in front of him. Even in shorts and a T-shirt, Cooper managed to look well-dressed. I tried not to stare at his long, tan legs, which were covered in soft sun-bleached hair.

“You must be tired,” he said. “Elsie said you work a full shift at the Blue Moon before you come in here.”

“Yeah, it's kind of a long day, but I like both jobs.” I sat down carefully, as if the couch were a seesaw and putting too much weight on my side might send Cooper flying into the air. If only I had more experience with guys so I didn't always feel so uncomfortable. How were you supposed to tell if somebody was just being friendly or if his attention meant something more?

“I admire you, Jackie,” Cooper said. It was the last thing I expected to hear him say.

My mouth was dry, and I drank some of my Coke before replying. “You do? Why?”

“The way you soldier on. You've had a lot to deal with the past few months, but you haven't crumbled.”

“Crumbled?”

He laid a hand very gently on my arm. “It must have been terrible for you to be there, to watch your friend drown.”

Oh. There were whole moments now when I didn't think about Lorna. The terrible thing about forgetting, though, was that when you were reminded, the punch was almost as bad as the first time you felt it and it was hard to breathe. I took a long drink of my soda, trying to recover.

“It was really dark,” I said, finally. “We couldn't actually see too much.”

He shook his head. “God. It's so unbelievable. She was there one minute and gone the next.”

I nodded, a little disappointed that, even though Cooper said he admired
me
, the conversation was turning out to be about Lorna. I tried, these days, to keep a pillow tucked around my heart, so the misery could lie down and rest, and maybe even be smothered by the soft comfort. But all it took was someone saying her name and immediately the white jacket rose to the surface of my memory again, and the pain woke up screaming.

“I guess it's no wonder Finn's always in such a miserable mood. I feel so bad for you both. Although, I think you're a more resilient person than he is. Finn's stuck in a very dark place.”

I wasn't sure how to take that. Did Cooper think I wasn't as affected by Lorna's death as Finn was? Did everybody think that? That I was a second-string mourner? It seemed very drama-queeny to insist I was just as miserable as Finn, and maybe that wasn't even what Cooper meant. He acted as if he were complimenting me.

“Don't misunderstand me,” he said, removing his warm hand, which I instantly missed. “I know you're upset about what happened too, but I think it's admirable that you're getting on with it. Life sucks sometimes, but if you let yourself sink down into the misery, sometimes you can't find your way out of it. Nothing ever seems good again. But I don't think you're like that. I think you're a positive, optimistic person, and eventually you'll be fine.”

“You think so?” I hated the whine in my voice, like a five-year-old begging for a pat on the head.

“I do.”

“I hope you're right. I want to be happy again,” I said. And then the most appalling thing happened. Just as Cooper was praising my ability to bounce back,
tears
started beating down my cheeks.

“Oh, my God, I made you cry,” he said, taking his feet off the table and leaning forward. “Now I feel terrible.”

I tried to soak up the moisture with my hands, but I would have needed a sponge to staunch the flow.

I could see that Cooper was looking around for something to give me to wipe myself up with, but there was nothing obvious in the room. And then, suddenly, he whipped off his T-shirt, wadded it up, and held it to my face, dabbing at my tears.

“You'll be happy again, Jackie,” he said. “I know you will. I'll help you.”

I was so surprised by both offers, his clothing and his help, that I stopped crying immediately, but I kept the T-shirt up to my face anyway so he couldn't see my shock. What did he mean he'd help me? Just that he was willing to absorb a few tears, or more than that?

I was embarrassed that he was sitting next to me without a shirt on, and I was excited that he was sitting next to me without a shirt on. I kept my face hidden in his T-shirt for the longest time. It smelled of lilac, as if it had gone through the wash with Elsie's clothes.

On my days off I got up early, loaded my camera, drawing pad, and pencils into my backpack, and headed away from town, sometimes to the marshes near the breakwater, sometimes to the beach at Herring Cove, but most often, like today, I headed to the dunes across Route 6. I liked the dunes best because the people I was likely to come across out there weren't tourists, but artists, writers, and other old hippie types spending their summer living off the grid in one of the weathered, mouse-infested dune shacks that dotted the National Seashore land.

I went to the dunes to see what I'd seen so many times before—sand, beach grass, cloud formations—but to see them differently every time, to watch them change. I loved spending long hours lying on my back in the dunes, watching the clouds mass and pull apart, first hiding the sun, then lifting the curtain on a high-noon performance, casting shadows that changed the landscape minute to minute.

Being out here always made me think of Lorna, partly because everything made me think of Lorna, but mostly (and oddly) the dunes reminded me of her because they were the one place I often came without her. I loved drawing and taking pictures out here, but Lorna didn't enjoy watching me do it. She didn't really like
watching
anything. Lorna liked being out front—she wanted to
be
watched.

In truth I didn't really want her around anyway when I was working on art projects. Lorna thought being an artist was a pretty useless goal. When I daydreamed out loud about becoming a famous painter someday, Lorna scoffed. “
Famous?
The only people who'll know who you are are people who go into art galleries. My
life
is going to be art,” she said. “
Me
, not something I draw or take a picture of.” That seemed perfectly possible to me.

Lorna knew I liked being alone sometimes, but she couldn't understand it. She hated being alone. More than once she'd made a joke about what a loner I was, and I could tell she was a little angry about it.

Once when we were little kids, the boys and I hid from her. We'd been running around in a wooded field off Harry Kemp Way and somehow she got separated from us and we hid. Maybe we knew it would freak her out—I can't remember. We could see her from where we were hiding though, and at first it seemed funny that she was so distraught.

“Where
are
you?” she yelled, turning in wild circles. “I hate you for doing this to me!”

We snickered under our breaths.

But then she fell to her knees and cried as if her heart was broken. “Don't leave me! Don't leave me
alone
,” she wailed, and suddenly the game wasn't so hilarious anymore.

When we came out of hiding, she wouldn't speak to us. Her tears had dried in dirty streaks down her face. She stomped off, furious, and we followed her home, begging her to forgive us, to speak to us again. But she didn't, not for the rest of that day. And though we often teased each other, we never tried to trick Lorna again.

Maybe that was what Charlotte meant when she said Lorna was “needy.” She depended on us because, well, we didn't let her down the way her parents did. Char's idea of Lorna as someone to be pitied as much as admired had lodged in my head and I couldn't get it out. Obviously, the three of us had needed Lorna at least as much as she'd needed us—no doubt about it. But I could see that our need for her and hers for us was not as out of balance as it might have seemed.

As I hiked through the dunes I thought of Lorna asking, “Why do you take the same picture over and over?” I'd tried to explain, but she was an impatient listener. The thing was, every time I clicked the shutter I became more aware of the subtle variations in my surroundings, the small secrets that rose to the surface and were sucked back under. I loved the way a photograph could stop time, put a frame around it. It captured a moment and held it forever, even if the world kept changing. Lorna was like that now, too, mounted, matted, framed, alive only in photographs.

The last time I'd been on the dunes, it was so hot I emptied my water bottle before noon and had to hike to the ocean to cool off. But today it was overcast and rainy, the clouds so dramatic I couldn't make myself leave until I was so wet my shoes belched water every step of the walk home.

“For God's sake, you're dripping wet!” Mom greeted me the minute I came through the door.

I don't think I've ever come into this kitchen without seeing my mother at work, chopping up vegetables or cleaning fish. This afternoon she was tossing handfuls of potatoes into a big black pot that sat on top of our ancient stove. She waved me back into the doorway.

“Take those shoes off before you come in here. Don't you have enough sense to get in out of the rain?”

“I'm in, aren't I?” I toed off my soaked sneakers.

“Go upstairs and change clothes, and then come back down here. I want to talk to you.”

Damn. As the youngest of four, I was used to flying under my parents' radar, but since my older brothers had all (finally) moved out of the house last year, Mom had begun paying more attention to me, which drove me slightly crazy. I slipped into dry clothes, toweled off my hair, and padded back downstairs barefoot.

“You hungry?” Mom asked. Which must be the most-often asked question in this house. When my brothers were around, the answer was always yes.

“Not really. I took an apple with me.”

“An apple's not a meal. Make a sandwich,” she ordered. She opened the refrigerator door and got out two packages wrapped in white butcher paper, enough salami and American cheese to feed all three of my relocated brothers.

“I'm not hungry, Mom. I had an—”

“I don't want to hear about your
apple
. There are fresh rolls in the breadbox. No daughter of mine is going to starve herself.”

There was no use arguing about it. I got out the bag of rolls. For years Mom had been getting up before dawn six mornings a week to knead dough into round loaves for the Portuguese Bakery. Our breadbox was always stuffed with baked goods. I cut a roll in half and topped it with a thin slice of cheese.

Teresa handed me a plate. “Where were you this morning? Dunes again?”

I nibbled at my sandwich and nodded.

“I don't know what's so great about sitting out there in the middle of that big sandbox hour after hour.”