Rescue (22 page)

Rowan swings and misses. Strike one. Webster loves the chatter from the dugout. Hey, batta, batta, batta. Rowan sets up for
the second pitch.

It’s as solid a hit as he’s seen from his daughter all season. Keeping his eye on the center fielder, Webster watches Rowan
take off, running as if the World Series were at stake. Part of her speed is due to the fact that Webster is watching—the
Parental Effect—but part is pure Rowan. As Rowan rounds second, he feels the old familiar hope soaring. The center fielder
leaps, doesn’t even get her glove on the ball. While she is scrambling behind her, Rowan keeps up the pace, beating the shortstop’s
cutoff throw to the catcher. Home run.

All right, Rowan.

Webster watches her team high-five her. Rowan grabs a towel to wipe off her face.

Webster checks his watch. He has ten minutes left. Maybe he’ll get to see another inning.

He’s aware of a person moving toward him from the direction of the bleachers. He turns to see a woman he thinks he knows but
can’t immediately place.

“Mr. Webster?” she asks.

He turns. “Yes, hello.”

“Hi, I’m your daughter’s English teacher, Elizabeth Washington.”

“Of course,” Webster says, wanting to smack his forehead. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she says. “My daughter just joined the team this year. She’s a sophomore. Julie Washington?”

“Is she playing today?”

“No, she’s on the bench for now.”

“The coach will give her playing time,” Webster assures her.

“I was wondering,” Mrs. Washington says, “if Rowan has been OK at home.”

The hair prickles on the back of Webster’s neck. The woman has on a gray blazer and sneakers. He puts her in her late forties.
Her eyes look pinched, or maybe that’s just the sun in her face.

Webster doesn’t want to tell Elizabeth Washington about Rowan’s drunken episode. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to seem
an oblivious parent, because he isn’t. “She baffles me sometimes,” Webster says. “Sweet one day, moody the next. I don’t always
know why.”

Elizabeth Washington nods. “That’s just normal teenage behavior, and maybe this is partly that, too. She’s letting her grades
slip. All second-semester seniors do it to some extent, but she’s in danger of failing English. Calculus, too. I checked.
She’s not doing the homework, not paying attention. Not doing the reading.”

Webster rocks back on his feet. Elizabeth shades her eyes.

“I’m… I guess I’m shocked,” Webster says. “Rowan’s always been such a good student that I long ago stopped checking her homework.
I talk about it with her sometimes, but I always thought she had everything under control.”

He tries to remember her last report card. B+ in English, he’s pretty sure. C+ in math, and he questioned her about that.
He can’t remember what Rowan’s response was. She didn’t seem worried, even though her grades weren’t as good as they’d been
in the past.

“She could make up some of the work,” Elizabeth says, “but it’s only two weeks to graduation. I’m concerned. If she fails
English and calculus, UVM may not take her in the fall. We have to send the final transcripts along to the college.”

“Will she graduate?”

“She’ll graduate. She’s had enough credits since early fall. But it isn’t just the grades. I guess I’m trying to find out
if anything’s amiss at home.”

“Hard to read her right now,” Webster says. “You assigned a big book recently. Something about gravity?”

Elizabeth smiles. “
Gravity’s Rainbow
. Yes. A lot of the students found the book challenging—mainly its length. But as far as I can tell, Rowan never read a word.”

Webster lets out a sigh.

“I’m sorry,” the teacher says. “I should have said something earlier. There’s really little that can be done at this point.
But I’ve been curious. And I thought I’d ask.”

Webster opens his hands and shakes his head. He knows the woman’s motives are pure, that she has Rowan’s best interests at
heart, but he feels as though he’s being called on the carpet, too. To not know what’s going on with Rowan at school makes
him feel like an idiot. “I’m completely surprised,” he says. “Thanks for telling me. Obviously there is something wrong. You
can bet I’ll talk to her about it.” He checks his watch. “I’m late for my shift,” he says.

Elizabeth touches his arm. “I didn’t in any way mean to suggest you’ve been a bad parent. Personally, I think you’ve done
a tremendous job with Rowan. She’s one of the few students I’m really fond of. But lately, she seems to be undergoing a personality
change.”

Webster shakes her hand, simply because he can’t think of any other way to say good-bye. He has two minutes to make it to
Rescue. He wishes he could pull Rowan aside and ask her about the bad grades, but unless there’s an emergency, it’s understood
that a parent doesn’t pull a player away from a game.

But failing English and calc? Isn’t that a valid emergency?

He glances in Rowan’s direction, but though he can see her face, she doesn’t look his way. Her lips are pressed together hard.

W
ebster strokes his rough chin while gazing at a pile of bills he’s been neglecting for weeks. Usually, he practices triage,
dividing them into three piles: those that have to be paid immediately, those he could pay at the end of the month, and those
he could let go for a few more weeks. Today there will be no triage: all the bills are late. He ponders the tuition bill that
will soon come due. He’ll have to take on more shifts at Rescue or mortgage the house. At least UVM’s tuition for in-state
students is reasonable.

Since Elizabeth Washington took him aside the day before, Webster completed his tour and was waiting for Rowan when she woke
up this morning. In the kitchen, he confronted her with what he knew.

“So?” Rowan asked, trying and failing to brush it aside.

“So?”
Webster asked. “
So?
You might not get to go to college.”

“So?” Rowan repeated.

“That’s it,” Webster, fuming, said. “Give me the keys.”

“Seriously?” Rowan asked. She had her backpack over her shoulder. She hadn’t planned on having breakfast.

“You bet,” he said, holding his ground, though he could already feel that platform shift beneath him.

“How will I get to school?” Rowan asked.

“Walk. Lots of kids have to walk.”

She tossed the keys onto the table. They slid in Webster’s direction. “No one walks, Dad,” she said in a tone that suggested
she felt sorry for his ignorance.

He watched her leave the house. He did not stand to see her make her way down the driveway.

At the table with the bills, he checks his watch. One thirty.

Tomorrow night is Rowan’s senior dance. He wonders if she’ll be speaking to him by then. The talk this morning didn’t go as
he imagined it would. Why does he continue to expect reasonable conversations with a seventeen-year-old whose moodiness is
taking over her entire personality? Because he used to have sane conversations with his daughter.

He takes a sip of cold coffee. He could heat up the coffee in the microwave, but he decides to make another pot. He has at
least an hour with the paperwork ahead of him anyway.

He wipes a spill of water with the tail of his cotton shirt. He’ll stick it in the laundry basket when he goes upstairs. He
has on the beat-up slippers Rowan gave him two Christmases ago. They have fur inside and are too warm for this time of year.
He’ll have to find his boat shoes.

He hears a sound. The front doorbell? Only FedEx and UPS ever use the front door.

A package for Rowan, he guesses. He pads down the hallway. So few packages are for him. Because she shops online and is, for
the most part, frugal, Webster doesn’t mind the odd delivery or two. He likes the look on Rowan’s face when she catches sight
of a package on the kitchen table.

Webster opens the door.

A package he never expected.

“You have some nerve,” he says.

“So do you.”

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

“One good surprise deserves another,” Sheila says.

Webster feels his body gearing up for an emergency.

“I came to talk about Rowan.”

Webster takes a step backward, which she reads as an invitation.

He closes the door behind her. She glances around at the small foyer, the dining room to the left, the kitchen straight ahead.

“You haven’t changed too much.”

He can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not.

Sheila has on a short black jacket over a pair of slim gray jeans. She’s wearing leather sandals. She has an unusual necklace
made of large beads. She’s worn her hair up in a kind of a smashed ponytail. He watches her take in the house.

He hasn’t shaved. The cotton shirt is well past its sell-by date. He probably smells. He hasn’t brushed his teeth.

Why the abrupt change of mind? he wonders.

“Come into the kitchen,” he says.

Webster goes ahead and sweeps up an armful of papers from the kitchen table and lets them fall onto the dining room table.
“Bills,” he says when he returns.

Webster wishes there were acronyms for what’s about to happen.

“Would you like some coffee? I have a pot on.”

“Sure,” she said. “Thanks. I’ll leave before she gets home. There’s no need for her to know I was here.”

“Rowan and I don’t keep secrets.”

A lie. Especially lately. He wonders how long it’s been since he and Sheila had a conversation about their child’s welfare.
Did they ever?

He notices that her hands are trembling. “I’ve thought about Rowan every day since I left her,” Sheila says.

She raises her chin and purses her mouth. Her mouth is still lovely, he’ll give her that. Her long neck is mostly unwrinkled.
He refuses to look at her body.

“If you’ve thought of Rowan every day, why haven’t you called her? You say you’ve been sober for ten years.”

“It’s complicated,” she says.

“Try me.”

“I was afraid,” Sheila says. Webster sets a cup in front of her. “The sobriety still feels new. I was afraid that if I opened
that door on… you, Rowan, Vermont… I’d start drinking again. It wasn’t something I positively knew. It was something I felt.”

“Past tense.”

“It’s why I’m here.”

Webster waits.

The grandfather clock in the hallway chimes the hour. Sheila smiles. “You kept that running,” she says. “It’s nice.”

“You hardly notice it when you live with it all the time.” He takes a sip of his own coffee. “Rowan’s a great kid. But she’s
right at the edge. The edge of what, I don’t know. She’s testing, testing all the time. And, as I mentioned at your place,
she seems to think she has a genetic disposition to alcohol. I told you that I found her here one night in a state of near
blackout.”

Sheila winces. “Webster, I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I’ve missed a lot.”

It’s a bald statement, as true as anything she’s said. He tries to imagine himself in her shoes, but his mind won’t let him.

“Rowan’s spinning just beyond my reach,” Webster says. “She’s let her grades go. She was about to go to college at the University
of Vermont, but because she’s currently failing English and calculus, she might not be able to enter in the fall.”

“College,” Sheila says with a wistful tone.

“She worked hard for it, too,” he says. “And now she’s almost blown it.”

Sheila glances around the room. “I’m really surprised you didn’t marry,” she says. “You always seemed like the marrying kind.”

“No time,” he says. “When I didn’t have work, I had Rowan. I had to be mother and father to her both.” He pauses and stares
at his ex-wife, wondering how she is taking this. An unwanted thought enters his mind.

“It’s amazing,” he says, “given where you came from, that you were in Vermont that night at all. And then you married me.”
Webster pauses. “It’s almost as though you decided, spur of the moment, to try on a life, like trying on a new dress. Then
you realized that the waistband was too tight, that the sleeves weren’t long enough. And so you chucked it. Me and Rowan and
Vermont. Tossed it onto a heap on the floor.”

“It was a dress I loved,” Sheila says. “It didn’t fit, but it was a dress I loved.”

“As in adored? Couldn’t live without?”

“I adored Rowan. You know I did.”

“Tell me one thing,” Webster says. “That night, on the land, the first time we made love, you weren’t on the pill, were you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Sure you do.”

“It wasn’t what you think,” she says. “I didn’t con you into marrying me. I felt that I could be careless with you because
you made me feel safe.”

Webster doesn’t trust himself to speak.

Sheila leans forward. “Webster, I would like to see her.”

“I’ll have to ask Rowan,” he says. “At the moment, she doesn’t even know I’ve found you, never mind that you’re sitting in
her house.”

Sheila smoothes her temples.

Webster looks out the kitchen window. “When I went to Chelsea, you were so cold, such a stranger, I decided I didn’t want
her to meet you.”

“But I want to meet her,” Sheila says. “I
am
her mother.”

“I think you have to earn the title of mother,” he says.

“You took that away from me.”

“No, you took it away from yourself.”

She picks up her purse. “This is ridiculous,” she says.

Webster realizes he doesn’t want her to leave. “What happened to you after you drove away that day? I’ve always been curious.”

She gives him a hard stare. “I ditched the car and made my way to my sister’s in Manhattan. I was drinking all the time then.
She had a young child, too. I could hardly stand it. I made her life hell. At a bar, I met a man who lived in Piermont, just
north of the city. I was nuts about him. I went up there to live with him, but I was still drinking.” She pauses. “One night,
we had a spectacular fight, and I went out into the streets, drunk, swearing my ass off. I was arrested on a drunk-and-disorderly
and put in jail overnight. Paul said he’d bail me out on one condition: that I go into rehab. That day. And so I did. In upstate
New York. When he came to pick me up after my stint was done, he drove me to Mexico, where we lived for eight years. His idea
was that if I was far away from familiar surroundings, I wouldn’t be as tempted to drink. And… it worked.”