Rescue (20 page)

“You got the warming blanket with you?”

Koenig takes the shiny blanket out of the trauma box and covers the man up to his chest.

“Lumbar fracture?” Webster asks Koenig.

“Think so.”

Webster can overhear the cops talking behind him. “Who would try to kill himself by jumping off a two-story building?” one
of them asks, and another starts laughing.

“Call it in,” Webster says to Koenig. “Tell them we got a jumper, possible L-1, compound tib-fib fracture, knee dislocation,
bleeding profusely from the back of the head. ETOH. Conscious and talking.”

“I want full-body immobilization,” Webster says. “Bring the rig around,” he tells one of the many cops who have gathered just
to see the novel scene. Webster tosses him the keys. “Make it quick,” Webster says.

By the time Webster and Koenig slide Randall onto the stretcher, the cop has the rig waiting, the back door open. “I can feel
the guy shivering right through the stretcher,” Webster says. “He’s in shock.”

Webster climbs in back with the patient and starts a line, the first of two. He can hear Koenig calling it in. Webster warms
the IV liquid and jacks up the thermostat.

The guy is shivering so much, he can barely make himself understood. Webster wants to keep the guy talking and awake.

“So why did you do it?” Webster asks.

“Girlfriend.”

“Randall, stay with me. Look at me. You with me?”

Randall nods once.

“What about the girlfriend?” Webster asks.

“She died.”

It’s an answer Webster wasn’t expecting. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he says in a loud voice. “How did she die?” he asks while
taking the man’s vitals.

“She killed herself,” the man says.

“Really,” Webster says.

“She jumped.”

Oh God.

Webster feels it coming on and tries to suppress it. The more he tries to suppress it, the worse it gets. A deep, cosmic laughter
rumbles up through his chest.

He turns away from the patient just in time. Facing the back corner of the rig, Webster opens his mouth wide, suppressing
the sound as best he can. Tears run down his cheeks, and he wipes them with his sleeves. The laughter stops. Webster catches
his breath. Thinking it’s over, he starts to turn, and then has to whip back around. He puts an arm over his mouth. He can’t
stop himself. He bites on his sleeve. He puts his forehead against the padding. The guy behind him says something unintelligible,
which sets Webster off again. He pounds his fist into his palm to make himself stop. He keeps it up until he’s good to turn
around again. Koenig pulls into the bay, Webster opens the doors, and he can see an ER nurse running toward him. Tears still
in his eyes, he gives his report as quickly as he can. He motions with his head for Koenig to go in with the stretcher.

When Koenig comes out, Webster is in the passenger seat.

“What the hell happened to you?” Koenig asks. “I couldn’t believe my eyes.”

“Oh God,” Webster says. “I asked the guy why he tried to kill himself, and he said his girlfriend died. So I asked him how
she died, and he tells me she jumped. And…” A high-pitched sound escapes him. Koenig shakes his head and starts laughing.
Webster pushes the heel of his hand hard against his knee. Koenig snorts.

After a time, they stop.

“That was awful,” Webster says.

“That was pretty bad. You might be losing it.”

“I
am
losing it.” He remembers Rowan with the hose.

“We don’t ever have to talk about this again.”

“No, we don’t.”

Koenig puts the rig in gear and heads back to Rescue.

C
helsea seems to Webster to be a maze of industrial, abandoned, and triple-decker residential buildings. He makes his way to
a water tower at the top of a hill and drives by what appears to be a hospital straight out of the First World War. When he
passes the fire station, he searches for an attached building for Rescue, but can’t see one from the street. He drives past
a church called Saint Rose and a number of flat-roofed buildings on a busy road.

In spite of his MapQuest directions, Webster can’t find the address. He’s sure he’s circled and recircled the same teal and
brick school. Because he needs gas anyway, he pulls into a Mobil station and asks the guy there if he has a local map for
sale. There are no Chelsea street maps in the stack, but the man asks him what he’s looking for and Webster gives him an address.
The man, with the name Peña embroidered on his pocket, draws out the directions for Webster. Webster tries to thank the guy
with a five, but he won’t take it. Webster buys a coffee and a doughnut.

Webster follows the new directions, paying attention at every turn, and finds himself driving up a residential hill. He spots
the sign he wants and then the correct house number. He parks across the street.

The house is a triple-decker with asphalt shingles: pink on top,
gray on the bottom. The building runs right up to the sidewalk with only a chain-link fence holding it back. He takes a long
sip of the coffee and then a bite of the doughnut. The sun is high. From where Webster is parked, he can see that whoever
lives in that house has a terrific view of the Boston skyline and of a large body of water. Boston Harbor? The Mystic River?
On his side of the street, in front of a pale green vinyl-sided house are a pair of Virgin Marys cemented onto concrete pedestals
that form a front gate. Adjacent to that house is a dwelling with a Santa in a fake well. It’s the last week of May. The porch
is covered with linoleum tile.

Finding Sheila was easier than Webster imagined. According to the Internet, there were twenty-two Sheila Websters in Massachusetts,
but only six Sheila Arsenaults, one of them in Chelsea. He couldn’t be sure that one was his ex-wife; maybe there was a large
clan of Arsenaults in the city. And for all he knew, Sheila could have settled in New York or California. It would be nearly
an eight-hour drive round trip, and Webster wondered if it was worth going just to find out he had the wrong Sheila. He thought
of calling to make sure, but he didn’t want his first contact with her to be over the telephone. They had to see each other
face-to-face.

He thought of calling McGill over at the police station and requesting a search through their records, but then they might
discover an outstanding warrant for Sheila Arsenault that could cause her all sorts of problems. What was the statute of limitations
on vehicular assault, anyway? Webster wanted only to see Sheila. Ever since Rowan came home drunk, he’s felt that she might
be able to help him with his daughter. The plan isn’t well thought out—he’s come on an impulse, the urge to see Sheila
strong. What does he think she can do? See Rowan? Talk to her? He can’t really imagine either.

Long after the coffee in the cup is cold and he’s finished the plain doughnut, he steps out of the car and walks over to the
porch. There are three residences in the building, each with its own buzzer. The third buzzer has the name
Arsenault
beside it. He rings the bell.

He hears footsteps coming fast down an interior stairway. He braces himself. For all he knows, the cop from Chelsea might
open the door.

“I wondered when you were going to come in.”

It’s Sheila, and it isn’t. He feels the same as he did at his twentieth high school reunion, seeing hidden faces within faces,
features morphing as he watched. Only this time, the sensation is so interior that he feels he is observing himself change
in a mirror.

“Sheila,” he says.

The hair is long and dark brown and gray near the temples. She must be forty-two now. She has on jeans and a plaid shirt,
both paint-splattered. No shoes. There are crow’s-feet around her eyes, but the mouth is precisely as he remembers it. She’s
slim but not athletic-looking.

“What are you doing here?” she asks.

Webster puts his hands in his pockets. “I came to talk to you about Rowan.”

There is no thought of shaking her hand or embracing her.

“You came from Vermont?” she asks.

“I did.”

She says nothing.

“Can I come in?” he asks.

She stands aside so that he can step over the threshold. He
takes in the dark interior, the steep staircase, the stained glass in a side window.

She gestures with her hand toward the stairs. “Third floor,” she says. “All the way to the top.”

“You saw my car,” he says when he reaches the landing.

“Well, it’s a different cruiser. How many have you had?”

“Since the first, three.”

Since she drove away in the first.

“I thought it was an undercover stakeout. Then I saw the license plate.”

The scent of turpentine is strong. Webster follows Sheila into a large room with several windows on three sides. The sun makes
rectangles against the white walls. There’s a long wooden table that has on it paintbrushes in glasses, old rags, bottles
of turpentine and linseed oil, a palette, dozens of squeezed tubes of color, and various rags. On the floor, all along the
perimeter, are canvases of different sizes, each facing the wall.

“You’re a painter?” he asks.

She spreads her hands.

He knows nothing about the woman in front of him. They spent nearly three years together and fifteen apart. Though everything
about her is somewhat familiar—her stance, the sound of her voice, her body, her gestures—she’s a stranger to him.

“I came to talk about Rowan,” he repeats.

“Is she all right?”

“She is, and she isn’t.”

“Is she sick?”

“No,” he says.

Sheila stands at the other side of the room, her arms crossed over her chest.

“Could I get a glass of water?” he asks.

She gives him a dull look, but walks past him. He follows her to the kitchen, cluttered but not unappealing. The table and
the chairs have come from an older generation. The walls retain a printed wallpaper, definitely a relic from years ago. Utensils
are lined up on hooks near the stove. Along another wall are bookcases, one shelf filled with cookbooks.

“You live here alone?” he asks.

She nods, turns on the tap, and lets the water run. She pours him a glass of water and sets it on the table. He reaches for
it.

“You still living with your parents?” she asks.

“They died years ago,” Webster says.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she looks as though she means it.

“I still live there,” Webster says. “I inherited the place.”

“My sister sold me this house for a buck. I grew up here.”

Webster is amazed at their civility. Shouldn’t they be screaming at each other? Weeping? Throwing things?

From where he stands, Webster can see planes coming in to Logan. That he would enjoy. Watching the five o’clock rush hour
from that balcony out back. A beer in hand.

“What are you doing here?” Sheila asks again.

“I thought it might help. To talk to you about Rowan. She came home drunk a few nights ago. She’s not herself. She seems to
be spiraling off the rails.”

Sheila is silent.

“Rowan’s changing. And not for the better.”

Sheila bites the inside of her cheek.

“She’s beautiful, Sheila. She looks just like you. She’s been a real good kid—up until now.”

Every cell in Sheila’s body has changed since he last saw her.

“Are you sober?” he asks.

“I am. Ten years.”

He’d taken a chance. He might have found a drunken Sheila.

“I assume we’re officially divorced,” she says.

“We are.”

“On what grounds?”

“Abandonment. It was all I had. My lawyer tried to find you, but you weren’t in the system anywhere.”

“What year was this?” she asks.

“Ninety-eight?” he replies, not quite sure.

“I was in Mexico.”

“I don’t think he tried very hard,” Webster says.

She twists her hair in the back and lets it fall onto one shoulder. It’s a gesture he remembers, and it startles him. It’s
Rowan’s gesture now.

“So you’re not married?” he asks.

“No. Are you?”

He shakes his head. He points to a gold ring on the middle finger of her left hand.

“It belonged to someone I once loved,” she says.

Once loved
.

A threadlike pain moves from one side of Webster’s chest to the other.

“I’m sorry,” Sheila says, “but I can’t do what you ask. I know you came all this way for a good reason. But you don’t know
me anymore. You don’t know me at all.”

The silence in the kitchen lasts so long that Webster finds his breathing shallow. “She’s seventeen,” he says.

Sheila shakes her head.

“She thinks she’s an alcoholic. Or maybe I think she thinks she’s an alcoholic.”

“Is she?”

“She’s acting out, and it’s dangerous.”

Sheila winces. He notices that her hands are trembling.

“This is a shock. Your coming here.” She pauses. “I was her mother,” Sheila says, “and then I wasn’t. You of all people should
know that. I severed the mother-daughter tie the minute I got in the car drunk with Rowan in the back.”

Webster thinks of reminding Sheila that it was he who sent her away, but he doesn’t want to argue about who is to blame. He
sees no good outcome to that conversation.

“Will you at least think about it?” he asks.

“Meeting her?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“You came all this way for nothing.”

“But you’ll think about it.”

Sheila was silent.

“May I see a painting?” Webster asks in desperation.

Sheila seems confused by the abrupt request. When she leaves the kitchen, Webster follows her. In the front room, she turns
a painting around. It’s of an old wooden table, an aged plaster wall behind it, a shiny blue and white bowl on top of the
table with a red chili pepper in the foreground. It’s beautifully executed. He recognizes the blue and white bowl. It used
to be his mother’s, but she gave it to Sheila.

One by one, Sheila turns all the paintings around. He watches as she bends, handles each item with care, and then leans it
against the wall.