The From-Aways (8 page)

“I don’t know what Charley is like, really,” I say. “She barely talks to me.”

Quinn splits a peanut in two and the nut skitters across the table. She picks bits of red skin off the table with her finger and eats it. “That’s just how it goes,” she says. “She rode my ass when I first started too. Sent me maple sugaring for my first assignment.”

“When did she stop picking on you?” I say.

“When you showed up!” Quinn says, and laughs a rumbly cigarette laugh, coughing, letting it build and roll over.

“Maybe I should recruit another employee,” I say.

“Oh yeah, just call up your friends at the
Gazette
. Tell them you’ve got a real great opportunity up here. Prime-time shit.”

I crack a peanut and eat it. “It’s like she’s already made up her mind about me,” I say. “Henry isn’t like Charley. Henry is solid.”

Quinn pinches the bridge of her nose twice, a liar’s tic, and stares at me. “
Solid?”
she says, an octave too low.

“What’s wrong with solid?” I say. I eat another peanut.

“Solid sounds boring.” Quinn leans on her elbows. “I thought marriage was for when you found someone life re-magnetizing, or reason-for-living-producing, or good in bed.”

She waits for me to respond, but I’m not sure what life re-magnetizing might mean. My old editor definitely would have struck it. She would have put a red line through Quinn’s whole phrase. I grab a handful of peanuts and start lining them up on the table, rank and file. I say, “Solid is good. You’ll see. Eventually you just start caring about different things in a relationship.” As soon as it’s out of my mouth I realize this is something my parents once told me.

“
That
is condescending as hell,” Quinn says. She pulls a peanut from my line and smashes it open. “How old are you anyway?”

“Twenty-four.”

“And today is my birthday, so, so am I. Are you saying I’m going to experience revelation in my sleep? Is the archangel going to come down and give me the news that what I’m now looking for is a
solid
woman?”

“No, not like that,” I say. I can’t really believe we’re the same age. I also wonder if I should follow up on that last bit. In spite of her total lack of journalistic skill, I find myself liking Quinn. I like the way she’s testing me. So I do:

“Woman?” I say.

“Women,” Quinn says. Her whiskey hovers halfway to her mouth, which is set in a challenging line.

“But never solid ones?” I say.

Quinn grins. “Never. I make a point of it.”

I press my fingers to my mouth. Quinn drinks.

“I haven’t been here very long,” I say. “But it seems to me that Menamon is exactly the sort of place to look for unstable women.”

Quinn laughs and can’t keep from spitting her drink back in the cup. She wipes her mouth and smiles. “I know,” she says, and shakes her head.

Q
UINN DROPS ME
home late at night, a little worse for the wear. When we get to my house I say, “This is me.”

Quinn puts a hand to her forehead and looks at the bull’s-eye glass above our door. She looks at our symmetrical shrubberies. “You live here? Leah, this is a grown-up’s house.”

“I am very grown up,” I tell her, and climb out of the car. Before I even have my keys out, Henry has opened the door. He stands in the doorway. His face is cast in darkness and the hallway light glows around his silhouette, and I think of a story he told me once:

Henry accidentally set the neighbor’s barn on fire when he was twelve, a campfire experiment gone wrong. He ran home to hide before anyone found out it was him, but of course when he got there his father was already standing in the warm square of the doorway. Henry said that was the most scared he’d ever been. Hank took him back next door and made him watch the barn burn while the firemen tried to put out the blaze. Hank explained that they were too late; the barn was ruined and would need to be rebuilt. Henry rebuilt that barn all summer. Hank taught him how. It was so much work, Henry said. It was so difficult to raise a thing from the ground like that. I remember all the details Henry told me because whenever he mentions how strict his father was, I think about how he was so, so lucky.

My own parents used to catch me coming in late. I’d take my sneakers off outside the apartment, lift the doorknob as I pushed, thinking maybe I could make it past them if only I could keep walking on the balls of my feet. Mostly they caught me. My father still up and working on briefs with a red pen, sipping a tumbler of club soda for his stomach. Wearing a set of actual pajamas, light blue linen with dark blue piping. His longish black hair, gray at the temples, swept back. His papers propped on his belly like that’s what he had it for. He’d look over his enormous tortoiseshell glasses and say something vaguely interested-sounding like,
Late night?
I’d kiss his forehead, hope he didn’t smell the night’s trespasses on me, and jaunt off to bed. In the morning it would be my mother’s turn. I’d sit on a high stool at the bar in the kitchen eating too much organic cereal from a bowl that was meant for soup while my mother used the kitchen mirror to do her makeup.
Your father says you had a late night,
she’d say to herself in the mirror as she clipped on large gold-knot earrings. She had short auburn hair feathered around her face and always smelled of mature perfumes that came in frosted glass bottles. She’d pick up her matching necklace, hand it to me, and turn around. I’d do her clasp for her, and as I did it I’d say,
Yes, I did,
and that would be the end of it. I love my parents, I do, but I always felt it was as if the three of us were members of the same exclusive club that just so happened to have its headquarters in our penthouse. It was an old and dignified bond that brought us together in our blood, but like all those old clubs, we’d been at it so long we’d lost our sense of what we were there to do.

“Where the hell were you?” Henry says now, and I am delighted he is angry. That he cares I was gone. I have burned a barn and he will be strict with me! I throw my arms around him.

“You are mad!” I say. I kiss his cheek. “I was at the bar with a friend,” I tell Henry. “I forgot to call. I’m sorry.”

Quinn waves. “I’m the friend,” she tells Henry. She rubs her hands on her jeans, as if to clean them, and sticks out her right for him to shake. “Quinn Winters. I work for your sister.”

He shakes her hand. We all stand there for a minute, not sure what to do next. “Well, I’ll be going, then,” Quinn says. I wave awkwardly as she gets back into her car. Her tires spin out and fling bits of clamshell as she accelerates out of the driveway.

Once we are inside, Henry says, “That girl has eyes like a rabbit.”

“I know,” I say. “And that girl gets along with your sister.”

“Listen,” Henry says. “I’m not saying you can’t do what you want but do you think you might call me next time you go off the grid?”

“So you can worry about me?” I say.

“So I
won’t
worry about you,” Henry says. “So I don’t wait for you to eat and stuff. Logistics.” Henry palms my head and smoothes back all the little pieces of hair from my face so he can see me.

“Yes,” I tell Henry. “Of course.” I should know this: When you are married you need to tell people where you are going so they don’t worry, because they love you. And because of logistics.

“How was your first day?” Henry says.

“I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow,” I say. “Right now I am very sleepy.”

Henry falls asleep easily. He is a champion sleeper. I roll around next to him for a while and then creep downstairs. Sometimes you need to stare into the refrigerator glow awhile to get ready for sleeping. But when I open the fridge I see that Henry had made enough dinner for both of us. There is a bottle in there too. Champagne, unopened. My chest constricts.

When I crawl back into bed with him he sighs but does not wake. Already this is more difficult than I’d thought it would be, being each other’s family. I thought that because I loved Henry it would be easy to do the right things but sometimes I forget to be thoughtful. I forget to do what is right. Sometimes I just charge on ahead and do what it is that I want. Tonight my love cannot fix the small thing that I have ruined. I am too late. A barn burner.

I
CALL MY
parents.

I got a job, I say.

We’re very happy for you, they say.

I’m covering all sorts of real American news, I say. Things that matter to real Americans.

Are we not real Americans? they say. The
Gazette
isn’t for real Americans?

You know what I mean, I say.

How is Henry? they say.

Henry is good, I say. Fall is a busy planting season.

You missed the Hopper at MoMA, they say.

Everything here is good. Very good. So good, I say.

It’s great to hear that you’re doing so well, they say.

10

Quinn

I
’m sitting on a wrought-iron bench that’s radiating cold into my ass, feeling bad for myself about the fact that my mother is dead. I let myself do this about once a week. I figure, if I allot time for it, it won’t come creeping up on me at other, less convenient times. This mostly works not at fucking all. I light a cigarette. They’re tricky, these feelings of missing someone. They burrow like gophers, creating tunnels in the matter of your self, riddling everything with holes. I tell myself if I keep puffing I’ll smoke them out eventually. I smoke and I smoke. We’ve just gone to print, it’s not late, but the Neversink Park carousel is closed. The ancient horses are still but their eyes roll wildly, too much white exposed.

I make a pitiful face for no one. I try to conjure a tear, a slow roller, for show. When I was a kid, I used to imagine Carter could see me. Not in a crystal ball or anything, but in his mind. I reasoned that, because I had half his genetic juice, maybe he had the ability to check in. Not that he would ever do it, that he would care. But whenever I lied to my mother, or shoplifted gum, or did any of the dumb shit requisite of youth I always sort of thought Carter would know. So I acted different. I sat up straight even when no one was looking. Ever since I got to Menamon I’ve been doing this again. Alternately trying to look cool, like I don’t give a damn, and trying to look sad, so he’ll feel guilty.

I spot Billy Deep shuffling down the wharf. He has one hand in his jacket pocket and he’s holding a burlap sack. His knit cap is pulled low and he keeps his head down as he walks.

“Hey,” he says, and as he gets closer I see he’s shifty-eyed.

“What’s in the bag?” I say. The burlap wriggles.

“A cat,” he says.

“The fucking proverbial cat of lore? What really?”

“It’s a damn cat, Quinn, would you lower your voice?” He speaks in the hushed tone of the guilty. A mrowling from the bag confirms this.

“All right,” I say, lower. I look up and down the deserted waterfront. “What are you doing with a cat?”

“Just been bagging cats is all.”

“Bagging? What the fuck, Billy, why?”

“Elm Park.”

I ignore the fact that Billy didn’t answer my question—not my best investigative moment—and ask instead, “Billy, is that someone’s pet?”

“He’s got a tag says ‘Ginger Boots.’ ”

There is almost certainly a frantic woman somewhere calling this name into the tree line, which would be hilarious if it weren’t so fucking sad. “What’d you bag him for?”

“You know how much rent is at the store as of next month?” Billy says. “Four hundred dollars more than it was last month.” I don’t like to see his boyish face all fevered like this. It spoils the charm. “And you know what people are paying for fish next month?”

“How much?”

“The same they’re paying for it this month.”

“Shit,” I say. “Shit.”

“Yeah,” Billy says, and swooshes his black forelock under the band of his cap. “And you know why?”

“Elm Park?” I say.

“Elm Park and your new big-house neighbors.”

I get what this is about. The town vote went badly this week. The school budget wasn’t passed and there’s been talk property taxes will be higher next year. For the issue we just closed I’d suggested
GENERAL
GRUMBLING
IN
RESPONSE
TO
EPIC
BUDGET
FAIL
as a possible headline, but Leah wouldn’t have it. We ran with
BUDGET
VOTE
SHOWS
NEW
DEMOGRAPHIC
AT
PLAY
IN
LOCAL
POLITICS
.

I say, “What does the big house have to do with cats, Billy?”

He shrugs. “They get lost easy after new people move in. Just trying to let people know this is a hostile environment. Besides, there’s a demand.”

I knew I should have taken this kid out drinking. Boys need booze in their veins to keep them too lazy to get into trouble. Forget the YMCA.

“A demand for cats?”

“For taxidermy.”

I feel nauseous. “Billy, do you sell cats to Carter Marks?” Billy scans the waterfront for eavesdroppers, like I don’t write for the town paper anyway. “Billy, you can’t kill that cat. You’re not that kind of guy.”