The Queen of Everything (36 page)

He brought our clenched hands to his own mouth,
ran the back of my hand over his lips softly. His eyes peered at me in the
darkness. "I heard it. It was real. I had to say the hell with park
rangers."

Jackson held my hand next to his cheek, like I
was something treasured. I
felt
treasured with him.

"What I'm saying I guess, Jordan, is, when you
need help, there is always something to bring you home."

The next morning Jackson was not sitting with
Big Mama at the kitchen table when I got up. The house was quiet. I wondered if
they were both still asleep. But Big Mama never slept late. It was as beautiful
a morning as I thought it would be, and I looked out the back door, expecting to
see the two of them out there, sipping from their mugs. But the two lawn chairs
we had sat in the night before were empty. Frankie lay under the kitchen
table.

"Where are they?" I said. Which excited
him

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unnecessarily, causing him to scurry out and
leap around at my feet. I parted the curtains over the kitchen sink. Jackson and
Big Mama stood to the side of Jackson's truck. I watched them talk a while, then
Big Mama gave Jackson a hug, thumping him on the back. It pleased me to see them
together. They walked up the path and I ducked behind the curtains again. The
door opened, and I heard the scuff of Jackson's shoes as he wiped them on the
mat.

"Where were you two?" I called.

"Packing up," Jackson said.

I walked to the hall where they stood. "Are you
going somewhere?" I asked.

"We," he said. "We are."

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Home," he said.

Big Mama just stood behind Jackson, her arms
folded across her chest, smiling a small smile.

I thought about this. "But I haven't even had
breakfast," I said.

"We weren't planning on sending you off
hungry," Big Mama said.

We had breakfast. Big Mama was pleased because
Jackson had gotten her convertible top to close. "It's good to let God pick a
man for you," she whispered to me as we were leaving. "We don't do so well when
we pick them ourselves. They end up like lipsticks in a drawer, all

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those wrong colors you thought looked so good
in the package."

Outside, Big Mama propped her camera on the
gatepost and we all hunched together next to Jackson's car as the shutter
clicked. "You will want this," she said. "Later."

I was ready to go. And not just because the two
of them had been working on me.

I was ready because I saw a glimpse of him. The
Second Chance Guy. In a Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat with a flower in the
brim. He looked good. Tan. His arms hairy and brown, his nose a happy pink. He
was giving me a sideways glance, a little wink. I guess I was ready to find out
what was going to happen next in my life.

"I want to hear the bagpipes," I said to
Jackson.

And so he played. "Okay," I said.

364

Chapter Seventeen

Yes. I crossed the sea on the way home, but it
was not a treacherous voyage of ten thousand miles, but a slow easy ride on a
ferry called the
Whidbey.
I did not have to fight currents or the hungry
mouths of swordfish and seals; I only had to hold the hand of the strange young
man who loved me. And when I arrived, I did not have to leap a ladder or fight
the stream with my last strength, but was gently pulled into port by a trio of
Franciscan nuns yanking on a thick rope while trying not to step on the hems of
their habits.

Just the same, I came home.

I was sick with nerves when we landed, don't
get me wrong. But I felt like a different me was arriving back there, on Parrish
Island. I felt

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as if for a long time I had been just standing
outside one of those photo booths where you sit on a swivel chair and get four
poses for a dollar, just waiting for the smelly strip still wet with chemicals
to slide down. And now it had, and the person there was not who I was
expecting.

Jackson's truck clanked over the metal ramp of
the ferry. I did not look down the street where Eugene's Gas and Garage had
turned into Abare's. I would not look for a long time. We passed Randall and
Stein Booksellers, turned onto the Horseshoe Highway. Even the forces of nature
seemed to be working to shake my shoulders and make me sit up to take notice of
what I had around me, because the island looked especially beautiful that day.
The maples and the dogwoods and the alders were beginning to turn orange at the
tips of their leaves, and the waters of the strait glittered around the
sailboats taking a few last spins before winter. Cliff Barton had his biplane
parked, and so the skies were quiet except for the rich sounds of the thrushes
and sea birds. If you went down to the university research center on a day like
that, Grant Manning would let you put on his headphones to hear the hums and
whistles and clicks of the orcas gliding in the coves of the Strait of Juan de
Fuca.

I loved that place.

That crazed energy that begins in early
June

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with the first smell of spring was beginning to
quiet; now would be the quick drop into a gray and drowsy winter of thick socks
and looking down to keep the rain from your face. It was catch-your-breath time,
the last big sigh before the weather changed. The island had been busy showing
off its beauty and aliveness, and now, like a wild summer girl in an open
convertible for whom the show was temporarily over, it had an air of resignation
and calm.

The signs on the oil tank had gone back to the
mundane, happy sweet sixteen, kristen! and vitamin e for long life with the
number for that prune Cora Lee at the Theosophical Society. When we curved onto
Deception Loop, Jackson took my hand. Probably because he heard how loud my
heart was beating.

I started to swallow hard when Jackson's tires
first crunched along the gravel driveway, when I saw the door fling open and my
mother run down the steps, her braid flying out behind her. My throat closed
tight when I saw Nathan standing in the doorway, holding Max's hand, Max
squirming to get loose; and when I saw the curtains fold back and caught Miss
Poe trying to peek outside without being noticed. But I couldn't hold back the
tears when Jackson squeezed my hand and said, "They're waiting for you. All the
people who love you." And then the wind picked up, and all the crazy
sculptures

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went spinning and jangling, and my mother's
arms were around me as I sobbed into her shoulder. And I was so grateful for
her.

Luckily Max got loose and lifted his bangs,
showing me the banana-peel sticker he'd put there, and Nathan explained that
they'd just looked through a
National Geographic
on India, and we all
laughed. Homer came around the corner, jingling prettily from the pair of finger
cymbals hanging from his mouth that he'd snitched from the marimba school next
door. Finally, Miss Poe could stand it no longer and clunked down the steps in
her new clogs, which she showed off to me by holding up one pant leg.

And I can't tell you why, but this made me cry
too. Everything that day made me cry.

You will want to know that I saw my father
shortly after. That I brought him his architecture book that I'd carried in my
backpack. I was afraid it might make him sad, but he seemed happy when he saw
it. I asked him why he did it. Of course I asked him why. He just shook his
head. "I don't know," he said. His hands trembled when he said it. "I don't
understand it myself. I stepped out of my life. I killed a man I didn't even
know.... And I don't know why." He says he still loves her.

I am trying to get used to having him
different, as Big Mama says. To see him when there is

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always something between us. I am trying to get
used to the sadness of his life. Bonnie Randall sees him frequently. They write
almost every day.

You will want to know about Gayle D'Angelo. She
sold her house right after the murder and moved to the mainland. Gayle D'Angelo
tried to sue for my father's assets. "I can't even date, I'm so terrified," she
told the newspaper. She said she hoped no man ever loved her that much
again.

Melissa heard from someone that Remington tried
to run away from home. I couldn't help but think that maybe he knew the truth
about his mother's role in his father's death. I heard later that Markus got a
scholarship to some fancy college. People tell you these things, as if it is
information you should have. I still wonder about Remington and Markus, what
they thought and felt through all of this, how they are doing now. It's like
there's a weird bond between us. I hurt for them.

My grandmother tried to have Gayle D'Angelo
investigated. "She put the gun in his hand," Grandma said. "She put the idea in
his heart. He only thought she needed protecting," Grandma said. The only new
thing the investigator discovered was that before the D'Angelos married, Wes had
followed the advice of his wealthy businessman father and had gotten
a

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prenuptial agreement. Divorcing Wes would have
left Gayle with a lot less money than the way things turned out. Unfortunately,
although Grandma and I didn't know this before, my father's attorney did. It
would not have changed the outcome much, he'd told us. My father had pled
guilty.

Because of where my father is, Gayle D'Angelo
will never be gone from our lives.

When I first came home, my mother wanted me to
see a counselor. Her friend Bea Martinson, the one who tried to be a lesbian but
couldn't, did that sort of thing. I refused but finally compromised and let her
take me back to Dr. Mary, who, with the help of Nurse Larry pronounced me the
picture of health. Despite her cheery prognosis, I had some getting well to do.
I didn't go back to school for my last year at Parrish High, though Melissa
tried her best to get me to go. I didn't want to see Kale again, who after
stealing the car got let off with a few hours of community service. According to
Melissa, he'd had to pick up litter along the Horseshoe Highway, with Jason Dale
and the gang driving by every few minutes to honk and yell and throw gum
wrappers, and now he wore his notoriety with the same pride he used to wear that
stupid flowered hat.

Seeing Kale, though, would have been nothing
compared to dealing with the crap I knew I

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would get from the other kids. I didn't feel
strong enough for that. I couldn't be the person they thought I was now. I
imagined my empty seat. People would look at it and claim they'd seen tragedy
coming.

I just needed to be home. I needed to figure
out how to make sense of something that made no sense. I needed to be where I
could see the photo Big Mama sent later, which I had propped up on my dresser.
The three of us in front of Jackson's car in Nine Mile Falls.

Ms. Cassaday started bringing me books. I was
too smart, she said, not to get my diploma and go on to college. Ms. Cassaday
understood what it was like having other people thinking about the most private
things in your life. She came every week. I read a lot of books, books about
plants and nature and people and Renaissance architecture. She told me I ought
to write out my story.

I used to think it was stupid, those people who
talked about finding themselves. But I got lost enough myself once, to need
that. I wandered away from myself one day and ended up in a small town. At last
I pulled up beside myself and said,
Hey Jordan, glad I found you! What the
hell are you doing here?

I do not measure fat girls anymore. People
measure me. They wonder about what kind of person I am, his child. They ask
their questions,

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and I try as hard as I can not to give them
what they want. Those things are mine. I keep them locked away. I picture them
folded up in velvet, hidden in a case; it looks like the Baptistry in Florence
my dad used to show me in his book. The one that looks like a rich lady's
jewelry box, the one with the doors so beautiful they are called the Gates of
Paradise. My father will never get his wish to see those doors.

I work at the Hotel Delgado, at my favorite
part of the island. Every now and then I walk the path to the McKinnon family
plot. Sometimes I even sit in one of the stone chairs. I hope the McKinnons
don't mind. I like it there. I like that family table made of stone. That group
of people who always have a place with one another.

Mostly, the things in my life are broken but
still whole. At my mother's house this is literally true. The screen door will
come off its hinges one week, the freezer will drip an ocean of water onto the
floor the next. The dryer has been broken for more than a month.

So I ride to work with my wet waitress uniform
on my handlebars. I wave to the nuns at the ferry terminal, who have gotten used
to seeing me pass. By the time I get to where I'm going, my uniform is
dry.

And sometimes Jackson gets there before me. He
stands on the hill behind the hotel,

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