Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea (9781101559833) (22 page)

“Oh, come on. It's very French to have a glass of wine with dinner.” He poured me some and waited until I took a sip.

“I'm taking the truck home,” Andy said.

“You are?” Mr. Barrington said.

“I was planning to stay another week or two, anyway,” Andy said. He took a big gulp of wine. “Then head back.”

“Oh?” Mr. Barrington said. “Head back to what?”

“Not sure yet,” Andy said.

“Not to school, I guess,” Mr. Barrington said.

“No,” Andy said.

Mr. Barrington leaned over to me and said as if he and I shared a secret, “Andrew was tossed out in November. Did he tell you that he's been kicked out of four schools?”

“Stop messing with her,” Andy said. He didn't look at his father, but studied his chicken as he moved it from one side of his plate to the other. He herded orange carrot coins into a small corral he'd made out of his mashed potatoes.

Mr. Barrington said, “I'm not messing with her. I wondered if you'd told her.”

“It doesn't matter to me,” I said.

“Oh. Then that makes it all okay, doesn't it?” Mr. Barrington said. “Yes, that makes it fine.” He sniffed the air. “I smell something else in the air. What is it? It's not chicken. It's not potatoes or carrots. No, it's sweetish. Dessert, perhaps?”

“You know what it is,” Andy said.

Mr. Barrington winked at me. “Just teasing you, Andrew. Of course I know what it is.” He leaned toward me again and whispered, “Andrew's pot smoking has cost me thousands of dollars—what with changing schools and fines and bail and such.”

“I don't care,” I said again.

“Well, of course you don't, Florine. Then again, you weren't saddled with the fines,” Mr. Barrington said. “Would you like a ride home when we leave for Boston?”

“I'm not going anywhere with you,” Andy said.

“Yes, you will,” Mr. Barrington said in a cheery tone. “I've called the sheriff to come by, in case you needed persuasion. He knows you're living high—excuse the pun—on the hog up here. I gave him permission to search the cottage, if it comes to that. You can be his guest for a while, if you like. Or, we can finish our meal, clean up, and go home. The truck will be all right here.”

“How'd you find me, anyway?” Andy said.

“Stella—is that her name, Florine?—gave me a call. Told me you were up here and said she was worried about you being in this cold house. I said to her—Stella, Della?” He looked at me.

“Stella,” I said.

“Thank you. I said to Stella, you must be mistaken. He's being tutored in New York and he's living with his mother. But then I called your mother and it turns out that she is in the Bahamas. So I called her there and she told me she thought you needed a break. You told her you wanted to come up here and she gave her permission as well as some of the money I pay her each month for your sorry keep.” Mr. Barrington stood up and walked over to the fireplace, glass of wine in his hand. He looked into the flames. “You lay a nice fire, son,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Logs stacked just so. Fine job. Fine job.” Andy sat very still. He looked at me and his face went white.

“What's wrong?”
I mouthed, but he shook his head.

Mr. Barrington said, his voice low, “Andrew, I don't give you permission to be here,” and he threw his glass of wine against the side of the fireplace. The glass shattered and he aimed a kick at the heart of the flames. Logs and sparks snapped and hissed and I jumped and spilled my glass of wine into my lap. Andy didn't move, just shut his eyes.

Mr. Barrington turned to us and said, through gritted teeth, “You have cost me too much money and embarrassment for you to be able to just waltz up here, buy dope and booze, and screw the fisherman's daughter. Now finish up your meal and let's go.”

Except for Mr. Barrington's breathing, the cottage went silent. I heard a drip outside as an icicle melted, or maybe it grew thicker, even as things cracked and broke inside.

Andy said, “D . . . D . . . Don't insult Florine like that. I love her.”

“Oh Andrew,” Mr. Barrington shouted and threw his hands into the air. “Andrew, my son, you wouldn't know what love was if it came up and bit you on the ass.” He looked at me sitting on the divan, a puddle of white wine warming my thighs. “She's lovely right now,” he said, and he moved his hand as if to make me disappear. “But many, many women are, and it doesn't last. It isn't important in the long run. Please use your head—the one on your shoulders. I beg of you. Go back to school—whatever school will have you. Then go to college. Do it. FINISH this one thing.”

Andy stood up and came around the table. He held out his shaking hand and I took it and stood up. Wine trickled down my legs. Andy turned around and faced his father.

“I'm not going with you,” he said. “I have everything I need here. Florine has a house on The Point and we can live there. I don't need you.”

I tried to think back to when I'd asked him to live with me and I couldn't think of when, but now wasn't a good time to bring it up. He was facing down his father, and I could see what it was costing him to do it. Right now, he was my man. My scared but brave man, and I had to stand by him.

“You are eighteen years old,” Mr. Barrington said. “She is seventeen years old. There might be some law against you two fornicating, I'm not sure. At any rate, Andrew, I meant it when I said the sheriff was coming. I told him to give me thirty minutes. Now, I'm sorry I did that, but I had a feeling you might get stubborn.”

“Well, I'm leaving right now then,” Andy said. “We're going to Florine's house. You have no right to come after me there.” And he pulled me and we went out into the hall, where he grabbed our coats.

“Andrew,” Mr. Barrington said. “You will be under arrest the minute you step out of her house. I swear you will. And it will be for your own good.”

“Come on,” Andy whispered to me and we slipped out the kitchen door. I looked across the driveway and pictured a younger Bud, Dottie, and Glen hiding in the bushes on that summer night so long ago. They looked at me sadly as Andy and I walked down the stairs and started for the truck. Mr. Barrington wasn't far behind. “Andrew,” he called. I turned around just in time to see him step down, slip on a patch of ice, and fall backward onto the steps, hard. He went still, out cold, or maybe dead. “Shit,” Andy said, and we hurried back to Mr. Barrington. His face was waxy in the night, his body limp. A dark liquid gleamed on the step in back of him. I crouched down and lifted his head as gently as I could. Warm, sticky blood covered my fingers.

I said, “Andy, we have to call a doctor,” and Andy said, “Okay.” I lowered Mr. Barrington onto the step again. Andy reached into his father's pocket, snatched the car keys, grabbed my hand, and said, “His car is faster than my truck. Let's go.”

He led me to the passenger side of the Mercedes BMW, opened the door, and sat me down on the soft, butter-colored leather seat. But instead of melting, I froze as he slid into the driver's seat, turned the key, backed the car up, and threw it into gear. We bucketed down the dirt road. I thought we would turn toward The Point, but we kept on going straight toward Long Reach.

“Where are you going?” I asked. “What are we doing? We need to find a phone. We can't leave him there.”

“Get help,” he said.

“The Point is closer, Andy. Let's go back.”

“I can't go back,” he said.

Parker passed us in his sheriff's car and I turned around in time to see him disappear around a curve.

Andy and I drew ragged breaths against the strains of some classical symphony on a station Mr. Barrington must have been listening to on the way up. I looked at the almost dried blood on my hand.

“Andy, we got to call a doctor,” I said again.

“Sheriff will find him.”

“You're mixed up. Let's go back to The Point and let them help.”

“No,” Andy said. “No. I'll take care of it.”

He pressed down on the gas pedal and the Mercedes BMW roared into another gear. “Andy, you need to slow down,” I said.

“I need to slow down,” he repeated. He took his foot off the gas pedal and braked just as we crested Pine Pitch Hill. But it was too little, too late. We sailed up and into the very trees that had spit back Stella Drowns from the dead. In the headlights of the car, those trees gleamed bright and toothpick-thin. This will be okay, I thought. The trees will break in half and we'll set down nice and easy in the bushes.

41

T
he first thing I saw when I woke up was Daddy, who was sitting in a chair beside me, looking like he'd drunk poison and it was slowly killing him.

“What's wrong?” I said. “Did they find Carlie?”

Daddy said, “No. You were in an accident.” I looked around then, at least, as far around as I could look with a neck brace. “Where am I?” I asked.

“We're in Portland,” Daddy said. “You been out for a couple of days. You're in intensive care at Maine Medical Center. You got in a car accident with Andy Barrington. They took him to Boston. Broke both legs and a hip. He's going to make it, though. Parker found Mr. Barrington—they stitched up his head. You're all lucky.”

Lucky, lucky me, I thought, as I went under.

I wound up with a twisted, badly sprained back and neck, a broken right leg, a mangled right arm and shoulder, cuts and abrasions, and a bad concussion. I drifted in and out for about a week, mostly out.

They kept me in intensive care until the concussion went away, and then they wheeled me into a semiprivate room with an old lady named Hazel who had pneumonia. She hacked up phlegm while I floated down rivers of medication. We were quite a pair.

Hazel was so small that only the tips of her feet and her hands folded on her stomach showed under the blankets. Her face was yellow against the white pillowcase, and her white hair was in bad need of a trim. When she could talk without coughing up her lungs, and I could speak without jarring some nerve, bone, or muscle, she told me she lived alone with her twelve cats. She told me the story of each one. Hazel couldn't wait to get home to her cats. “A neighbor's watching them, but it's never the same,” she said.

Jane, a student nurse only a few years older than me, told me one day when Hazel was sleeping that she wasn't going home. A couple of nieces had found a nursing home for her. Hazel's house had been sold to pay for Hazel's spot in the home. The poor cats had been sick and about half of them had been put down. The other half had been taken to the local shelter.

I went along with Hazel and her cat stories for as long as she was there. The day the nurses wheeled her out with her nieces on either side of her chair, Jane and I had a good cry thinking about what must have happened when she realized that she wasn't going home, and that her cats were gone.

Without Hazel to distract me, each injured body part took a turn putting on a show-and-tell of pain. It was hell not to remember what had happened. For a long time, the last thing I could remember was Andy saying, “I got to take care of my baby,” in front of Grand's house. Then it began to drift back to me: Stella talking to Mr. Barrington, Mr. Barrington smashing the wineglass into the fireplace.

I wanted to talk to Andy in the worst way, to get his take on things. But like most of my life, during those early days after the accident, he seemed like a dream to me, as if we had never happened. It was almost as if he and what we had meant to each other had been jarred out of my head. To bring him back, I did something I'd done when Carlie had started to fade in my memory. I went through each sense; how Andy looked, smelled, tasted, felt, and sounded.

When Dottie wasn't bowling, she showed up after school and stayed until closing time if she could. She sat with me, along with Daddy, Madeline, Bert, Ray, and once and a while Glen, Bud, and Susan. Ida and Sam Warner visited once, but Sam was nervous and Ida explained that he hated hospitals. I told him not to come back if he was going to be spleeny. He kissed my forehead, thanked me, and left.

I wouldn't let Stella near me, no matter how Daddy tried to smooth things over. “She was afraid you would get into trouble. She was protecting you,” were some of the reasons Daddy thought were enough for Stella to have ratted out Andy.

“She did a bang-up job of it all,” I said to Daddy.

“She feels terrible, Florine.”

“Good.”

“Well, honey, you got to forgive her, because you have to come home with us to our house when you leave here,” Daddy said. “You got to have a first-floor bathroom.”

“Cold day in hell,” I said.

“You don't have a choice,” he said.

“What will happen to Andy when he leaves the hospital?” I asked.

“He can take a flying fuck through a rolling donut hole as far as I'm concerned,” Daddy said.

Dottie wasn't quite so plainspoken. “Parker said Mr. Barrington is sending Andy to some kind of military school. He'll get taught at home for the rest of the year and go there all next year.”

It broke my heart to think about the military whipping him into something wooden. It would be like hauling a seagull out of the sky and turning it into a chicken. I ached for the free spirit in him. I got Jane to help me as I tried to call him one night. I told her the number, and she did the rest. She dialed a friend in Boston who worked in the hospital where Andy was a patient, but when she spoke to her, she found out that Andy wasn't allowed a phone.

When I was higher than a star in the sky, I thought of us under layers of blankets on the freezing floor in front of the cottage fireplace. I talked to Jane about him in the middle of the night, when she was on shift. I told her about Carlie, too, and she said she remembered reading about that and wondering what had happened. I told her I wondered every day.

Parker came to see me in the hospital to get my version of the Mr. Barrington and Andy show and I gave it to him, trying to make Parker see that Andy had been scared and that he hadn't meant for us to get into an accident. Before Parker left he promised, once more, to look for Carlie for as long as it took. “Don't you think I won't,” he said, and I pretended I believed him.