The From-Aways (32 page)

“Rosie, seriously?” I say. “You’re not giving up on the power of song that easy, are you?”

“It’s not funny, Quinn,” she says. “You’re doing something, okay? You don’t know what it feels like, them telling us to hand out flyers like kids. They love me beaming and singing for Menamon, but when it’s time to actually
do
something, they try to send me home.”

“What do you want to do?” I say. “What else is there to do?”

“I don’t know,” Billy says. “But I bet Jethro does.”

“Then you’re a nut too,” I say. “C’mon, Rosie.”

Rosie sighs and says, “Good night, Billy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Billy says. “We’ve got a lot of flyers to pick up.” He gets in his car, and when he flips on his blinker, it’s flashing left. Rosie watches him pull out. To get to Billy’s house you make a right.

Rosie and I, we amble home. Arms looped in the darkness.

37

Leah

H
enry is working nonstop, which is the only reason he doesn’t notice that I am working nonstop too. That probably I wouldn’t be clocking quite so many hours if I were really covering delays in the construction of the Poverty Hollow Bridge and the senior center’s Sadie Hawkins dance.

When he comes to bed at night, half the bed sags away as he falls in. He breathes a kiss near my ear before rolling over. I feel so guilty. I keep planning to tell him I have changed my mind, but then I think that maybe this is the best way: a secret compromise. We both get what we want. Henry gets to be happy, thinking I’m not involved and seeing no Leah byline on the article. And I get to be happy too, grinding out this story, feeling useful in my job and good for standing up for what I believe in . . . without him ever having to know. It’s a lie. But a lie of omission! Marriages are full of these, I think. Sometimes a lie can be helpful. Sometimes a lie is best for everyone.

O
N SUNDAY NIGHT
, we finish. We sit on the desks in a circle and I read the whole thing out loud for the second time.

“It’s good,” Charley says. “Now let go and give me that.” She takes the hard copy from me and she takes the little chip of file too. She’s straw-haired and wearing a soft flannel shirt that no way belongs to her.

“You’re sure he’s still there? The printer?” Quinn says.

“I know he is,” Charley says.

“How many copies?” I say.

“A thousand.” Charley grins. “You feeling big-time, Lynch?”

“For certain,” I say. “What size shirt does he wear? This printer you know is there?”

“What time are you coming back?” Quinn says.

Charley laughs. “I’m not coming back, Winters,” she says. “We’re done. Go home. Celebrate. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

I
N THE CAR
, we roll down the windows. I can hear water rushing through all the streams that run in the roadside ditches. The energy of the thaw is in everything.

Quinn lolls an arm out the window. “I have postpartum depression,” she says.

“That’s normal. When you see it in print you’ll feel better.”

“And then?” Quinn says.

Then. I take a long pulling curve in the car and drive into the Stationhouse parking lot. Then, I hope that Henry doesn’t find out I’ve been contributing to the piece. Then, I resolve to never do anything like this again. If only he doesn’t find out this time, I swear, I will never do it again. I’ll be just as good as he thinks I am. And maybe the Dorian job will fall through, and he’ll go back to selling plants and climbing sick trees. And I will keep on at the
Star
. And we will keep living here and nothing will have to change. Menamon will be the way it is in Henry’s stories. Someday we will have children, and they will ride the oldest carousel in America and swim in the Atlantic and buy lobsters from Deep’s and be braver than he or I ever was and we will love them for that, our small brave children. He will never have to know the part I played in making all this possible.

“Then we write about something else,” I say to Quinn. “There’s always something else to write about.” Quinn is staring up at her apartment above the restaurant porch, the smell of car exhaust creeping in our windows. “Are you going to go get your girl, or what?” I say.

“I am,” she says. She clicks open her seat belt and jogs around the house and up the stairs. The porch is empty but the way the plastic chairs are left behind I can imagine a family getting up after a meal, full and sleepy as they lay their soft bills down for Rosie. I imagine wives saying to the men, “What a nice girl that waitress is, I hope you gave her a good tip.”

Quinn is back. She slams the door after her. Does not buckle up. “She’s not there,” she says.

“Maybe she’s at the bar already,” I say.

“Maybe,” Quinn says. “She might be out with Billy, picking up their flyers for tomorrow.”

I can imagine Rosie and Billy on the balcony of the Stationhouse, tossing down pink leaflets. Spreading the news. Shouting from the Stationhouse porch.

“Maybe we should swing by Deep’s, give her a lift,” Quinn says.

“Let her do her thing,” I say. “I bet she’ll show up later.”

T
HE
U
NCLE
’
S PARKING
lot is full of trucks. You can hear the bar from outside. We push in the doors and the heat and the noise of the crowd is something to be waded into. Every fisherman in town is here and has a half-dozen empty glasses in front of him. The jukebox is pumped full of quarters.

We push our way to the bar and try to order but Sara Riley is nowhere to be seen.

“Can I get a whiskey?” Quinn shouts down the bar. No one answers.

A man holding a glass in each fist notices us and says, “There are women! Whose women are these? We said no wives!”

“I’m no one’s wife!” Quinn shouts.

I see Joseph Deep at a corner table, smiling and nodding at some bearded man. “Joseph!” I shout.

Joseph sees us and excuses himself. The guy he was talking to lifts his glass and shouts, “To the DMR pulling their heads from their asses!”

Joseph lifts his glass in return, and comes over.

“What the hell is going on?” Quinn says.

Joseph smiles. “The Department of Marine Resources just released a study that says the lobster population is on the rise. They’re lowering the minimum-size catch.” I look to Quinn for translation but she is looking at me. “It’s good news,” Joseph says. “We’re allowed to bring in more lobsters. You here to celebrate as well?”

“It’s gone to press,” I say. “But I wasn’t really working on it. Just Charley and Quinn.”

Joseph gives me a look that shows just how little he believes that, looking down his nose at me. “Really?” he says.

“Really,” I say. This is when I realize I have made a terrible mistake: no matter what the byline says, no one is going to believe I kept my hands off this piece.

“Come join the party,” Joseph says, and motions us over to a table.

We pull up seats. “Leah, did you—” Quinn starts to say, but is interrupted.

“Marks!” someone shouts. “Hey, Marks!” I look around for Carter but don’t see him. Quinn is doing the same. Then I realize the man is pointing at Quinn.

“I think he means you,” I say.

Quinn wheels around to face the guy. “Me?” she says.

“You’re Marks’s girl, ain’t you? What number is that song of his?”

“J42,” Quinn says, and she turns around. The jukebox starts singing about the whiskey-eyed dame.

A red-haired guy sits at our table. He puts down a bottle of Old Crow bourbon. “It’s a good enough day, hey, Joseph?” he says.

Joseph reaches out and they clasp each other’s arms. “It is,” he says. “You know Quinn and Leah?”

I stare at the new man, trying to place his face. He looks familiar. He sees me looking and says, “Frank. I bought the bottle, if that’s what you’re thinking. Thought it would be easier than going back and forth.”

“Smartest thing I’ve heard all night,” Quinn says, and shakes his hand before filling a glass with Old Crow.

“Were you out on the water when they radioed it over?” Joseph asks Frank, his face almost splitting open in a pumpkin grin.

“I couldn’t get a clear channel for ten minutes,” Frank says. “Every channel I tried had someone whooping on it.” He settles into the chair and kicks his legs out. A dark Celtic tattoo winds around his calf.
But give me a kiss and I might let you,
he said.

“You run the carousel,” I say.

Joseph and Frank start laughing. “When I’m not on the boat, sure I do. Joe Sanford told me to take care of the thing when he moved down to Carolina,” Frank says. “And you, Mrs. Lynch, are still too tall to ride.”

“Who’s taking care of it now?” I say, thinking about the Dorians.

Frank looks at me sideways. “Well,” he says. “If someone wanted a ride about now . . .” He pulls a ring of keys from his pocket, holds them up, and fingers a little brass one. “I suppose they’d need this.”

“Can I see that?” I say.

He hands me the whole heavy snarl of keys. I examine them, and remember when Henry and I had just moved here, months ago, when I thought the carousel had the gears that kept the town running. Maybe it’s the whiskey, but with Frank sitting here with the keys, the carousel still, and every able-bodied man in the bar tonight, I can’t help but wonder: What is running Menamon tonight? It feels like some natural rule has been suspended. Like our parents are away or the whole night is happening off the record. The carousel is not yet gone, but it’s not running either.

Quinn pours me a generous glass. “Have a drink,” she says. She grabs my face and squashes my mouth into a couple of grimaces. “What’s wrong? We’re supposed to be celebrating.”

I sit there, my face squished in her hand, and say nothing.

“You didn’t tell him?” she says. “Tell me I’m wrong. Please. Tell me you told him.”

“I didn’t tell Henry,” I say.

“Oh, lady,” Quinn says, and exhales about three people’s worth of air from her lungs. “You’re in deep trouble.”

She sits back and grabs her glass, clinking it against mine where it sits on the table. “Well, there’s nothing to do about it now. You’d better make merry while you may.”

How bad will it be? I’m thinking now. Will there be yelling or just quiet disappointment? Will he leave for the night? For longer? How bad was it, how bad am I, and was it worth it? That I don’t know yet. Won’t know till I see how everyone reacts when the article comes out. How Henry reacts.

I drink my whole glass down to the film at the bottom.

“There you go,” Frank says, and fills it up again.

Sometimes I lean too heavy on the rational facts. I put too much stock in being right. And why can’t it just be that if you’re the one who’s right, you won’t need to plead your case so hard? I finish another whiskey.

I see Joseph watching me. He has been listening. I see that he understands everything.

“What do you think the over-under is on how long it will take him to forgive me?” I ask him. “A week? A month? What?”

Joseph shakes his head and leans back, away from my question. “It’s hard to say, Leah, with things like this.”

“Hey, buck up, Bernstein,” Quinn says. She puts her glass down for a refill, too hard, and I know she’s feeling the booze too. Sometimes a drink will hit a girl at just the right angle to upend her. Quinn shouts loud: “Someone put on a song that will cheer this lady up!”

An up-tempo country song starts playing on the jukebox. A couple of the guys get up and start stomping, dancing. A few men do drunken little jigs.

“Time for dancing,” Joseph Deep says, and pulls me up by the hand.

Frank looks Quinn up and down. “You dance?” he asks.

“Hell yes, I dance,” Quinn says. “But if you think I’m dancing with you, you’re zonked.”

We take to the floor and I feel light and dizzy as Joseph and I do a little country four-step turn around the dance floor. The men form small circles and move surprisingly lightly for the number of heavy boots in the room. Quinn and Frank are dancing, not together but
at
each other. Quinn might be winning. The song ends and Frank says, “Trade partners?,” to Joseph, and I say, “Sure.” I cut in and grab Quinn’s hand.

I put a hand on Quinn’s waist, which doesn’t really exist. She snorts, but dutifully makes her arms into a triangle with mine. I start us off with a hop and then I’m leading us around in a waltzing gait.

Quinn cracks up. “Look at Frank’s face.” She laughs. Sure enough, Frank is watching us, then looking at Joseph, who extends a hand, which Frank slaps away.

Quinn and I spin around the dance floor, me drawing her under the tall bridge of my arm, her dragging me under hers. The men start whooping. We go faster, one spin feeding another. The reel moves a million beats a millisecond and the men start stepping and hopping in time to the fiddle. I let myself forget about Henry for a minute, here in the heart of the Menamon I was trying to save. We have done it! I think. This is it. Tonight in the bar is the way Menamon is supposed to be. Quinn and I have written our article and soon we will be heroes and everyone will know that we, we two From-Aways, are the ones who have set things right so this place doesn’t have to change, or grow up, ever.