Turtle Moon (28 page)

He's talked to his father twice on the telephone, and to the super once, when the dishwasher overflowed and had to be fixed, and once to say thank you to Kitty Bass, who brought over a huge box I f jelly doughnuts. What he's dreading most is the drive to the airport. He's managed to avoid his mother at home, but when they drive to the airport they'll be trapped together, just the two of them.

This morning, Keith woke up long before dawn, when there was still a moon in the sky. He'd been dreaming about the dog again, and when he woke his heart was racing. His broken ribs have been taped twice, but they still ache whenever he gets out of bed. He went through the darkened living room and out onto the balcony in his underwear, shivering. It was low tide and the scent of seaweed was bitter and sharp. Around this time the baby always startled in her sleep and had to be rocked for a while. Miss Giles might be a little deaf, but she always managed to hear when someone had trouble sleeping. If Keith was in her house, she'd come out of her bedroom in her robe and slippers and fix him some hot chocolate or tea, in spite of the hour.

He went out to say good-bye last evening. He took a taxi, which he paid for with his own money, and he brought with him a bundle of the clothes he'd borrowed from Miss Giles, all washed and folded. The baby was out by the rabbit cages; she'd been given a pan full of leaf lettuce and alfalfa sprouts. She'd gotten a little bit taller, she must have, because she could now push the rabbits' lettuce inside their cages. Since nobody knows her birthday, Miss Giles has let Keith pick, and he's chosen March first. On that day he'll always make certain to send her a present, no matter where he is, even if she forgets him completely.

Last evening he told the taxi to wait for him, since he knew he wasn't staying long. He got out and walked over to the rabbit cages, and as soon as the baby saw him she reached up her arms and said, "Uppy." It was a brand-new word, one he'd never heard her say before. He picked her up and held her near her favorite rabbit's cage and told himself it was a good thing that babies had such short memories. Already she was so crazy about these real live bunnies that she often forgot her stuffed toy on the floor of Miss Giles's kitchen, and she never used to let go of it, not for an instant; if anyone had tried to lift it out of her crib while she was sleeping she would have woken immediately and begun to cry.

He had never called her by her name or spoken to her, and he probably never would. When he put her down on the ground he could still feel how heavy she was that night when he ran along the drainage ditch carrying her. By next spring she wouldn't need any help feeding the rabbits; she'd drag an old wooden chair over and climb up all by herself to unlatch the highest cages. Keith let the taxi idle in the driveway, and as the meter ran, he bent down on one knee so the baby could hook her arms around his neck. She smelled like lemon juice and graham crackers. Miss Giles was watching from her kitchen window, she always did that, let you think you were on your own, when really she was watching over you all the time. Keith stood and carried the baby up to the porch, then put her down on the steps and nodded for her to go inside. After next March, when she turned two, she might put her hands on her hips and shout "No," but now she went right inside and Keith knew she'd probably head for the kitchen table, where Miss Giles always doled out cookies and milk before bedtime, whether you were good or not.

All the wood Keith had chopped was neatly stacked beside the porch, and he was surprised to see just how much of it there was. Seeing that wood, he almost burst into tears, but instead he walked to the taxi and told the driver to take him back to Long Boat Street. And now, as he stands out on the balcony, looking at the beach below him, he realizes that he no longer remembers what summertime smells like in New York, but he will never forget the scent of cypress and seaweed and lemons.

He could be in an airtight air-conditioned room on the other side of the planet, and he'd still remember.

He goes to his room, gets dressed, and finishes packing right then. By the time Lucy gets up at six, he's already in the kitchen having a glass of orange juice. Keith can tell she's upset, because she doesn't fix the yogurt and granola she has every morning; she just makes herself a cup of instant coffee, not even that drip stuff she prefers.

She would never believe it, but none of what he has done or is about to do has anything to do with her. Keith thinks that Julian Cash might understand this; he would know that sometimes your life leads you to places where no one can follow, except, if you're lucky, a dog who for however brief a time might offer you complete devotion, no matter who you are.

He wishes he could stay with his mother and be who she wants him to be, but he can't do that.

He's not angry or anything; it's just who he is. So he brushes his teeth, and washes his face, and gets his suitcase. The sun is breaking through the sky as they walk across the parking lot. In a matter of hours, heat waves will rise above the asphalt, and all the best shells left at low tide will be picked off the beach. Lucy fumbles I with her keys, then finally unlocks the trunk of the Mustang so Keith can lift his suitcase inside.

"I just want you to know one thing," Lucy says, when they are both in the car, making sure not to look at each other. "You can always come back."

"Thanks." Keith nods.

"You don't have to thank me." Lucy's voice sounds strange, even to herself.

"I know I can come back," Keith says.

"Fine," Lucy says as she turns the key in the ignition.

The most jealous moments Lucy has ever had came when she watched other mothers in the park, whose toddlers clutched on to them. She remembers exactly how she felt whenever she saw a little boy reach for his mother's hand before crossing the street. She has heard, down in the laundry room, that some of the children get hysterical when summer vacation comes and a visit to their father means a separation from their mother. They can't sleep, they get the hiccups, they refuse to eat anything but toast and water, they cry all the way to the airport, then worry the flight attendants with bouts of nausea and red rashes that appear at the moment of takeoff. But as they near the airport in Hartford Beach, Keith opens his window and sticks his head out, scanning the sky for planes headed north.

Lucy parks in the short-term lot, gets out and unlocks the trunk, then starts to haul out the suitcase.

"I can take that," Keith says.

The early-morning sky is the color of a bluebird's egg.

"Really," Keith says when she won't let go of the suitcase. "I'll get it."

Lucy backs off and lets Keith carry the suitcase. With every step he takes, the jar of pennies inside rattles. By this afternoon he'll be where the lilacs grow taller than a man, where lawns are green and the nights so cool you rarely need air-conditioning.

"The plane stops once, in Atlanta," Lucy says.

"But you don't have to get off. Just stay in your seat."

"Right," Keith says.

Inside the terminal, he goes to the check-in line and lifts the suitcase up to be tagged.

"I'm going to La Guardia," he tells the ticket agent. "Via Atlanta."

Hearing him say this as he fills out the luggage tag with his New York address, Lucy knows he's never really coming back, no matter what happens.

"All set?" Lucy asks.

Keith runs a hand through his hair and nods, but for a minute he looks slightly baffled. Lucy hugs him quickly, then, before he can pull away from her, she lets him go. Just yesterday, Lucy ran into Kitty and Janey Bass at the K Mart, where they were picking out new outfits with Shannon for her to take to Mount Holyoke. Lucy noticed that although all three of them were laughing, their eyes were as pink as rabbits'; they'd already spent days crying over Shannon's departure at the end of the week.

"Oh God, I'm such a baby," Janey had said. "I feel like I'm losing my little girl."

But Janey would never lose Shannon, that much was clear to Lucy from the way they were hugging each other in the sweater department.

When it came time for Janey to take Shannon to the airport, Janey wouldn't have to swallow her tears, she wouldn't have this burning feeling in her throat.

"Well," Keith says, backing away from Lucy, "I guess it 5 time.

Lucy watches him walk past the metal detectors. She lowers her eyes, so she won't actually have to see him go through the boarding area, and then, after only a moment, he's gone. He has disappeared so completely it's as if he never existed at all, except that Lucy suddenly recalls the exact moment he was born. She remembers the fierce surge of pain, like a brand of devotion, and that last instant, when he was both separate from her and still a part of her own body.

She goes to the water fountain, and bends so she can drink deeply, but the water doesn't help the way she feels inside. When she turns to face the row of windows, she sees Julian at the far end of the terminal. He's arguing with a security guard.

"I'm just saying this is against policy," the security guard is telling him. But Julian's not listening; he's watching Lucy walk toward him.

"There's no turbulence today," Julian tells Lucy.

"I checked."

Lucy looks past him so she can see the runway.

The light outside is blinding; just one look and your eyes begin to sting.

"I guess I'm always going to hate airports," Julian says. He takes out his wallet, then flips it open to show the security guard his ID. The guard backs off, though he doesn't look happy.

"All right?" Julian says to him.

Julian reaches down for a wooden crate, and when he shoves it toward the guard, Lucy hears a peculiar sound.

"What's in there?" she asks.

"I wouldn't be surprised if I never get on a plane again," Julian says.

"Considering my last experience." He shifts his gaze to the security guard.

"Want to do me that favor? Or do you want me to tail you every time you get in your car?"

Lucy watches the security guard carry the crate to the boarding gate.

The terminal is supposed to be air-conditioned, but it's unbelievably hot.

"What makes you think he'll want that puppy?"

Lucy asks.

"People want all sorts of things they never thought they would," Julian says. "You know that."

When the plane leaves the ground, Lucy and Julian both watch the sky.

After the boy opens the wooden crate, somewhere above them, maybe he'll find a way to live with what's happened to him, and maybe Julian will too. It's amazing how many losses a person can bear. If Lucy walks away now, Julian will survive. He knows that as well as he knows that by noon the temperature will be in the high nineties. He can look at the long, thin clouds dissolve over the runway and be certain of what the weather holds. And, since it's the end of May, he can live with the heat too.

People in Verity get used to it; it's no longer so daunting once May has passed. It's simply what you have to get through every day until the end of summer.

At around this time of the year, when Julian was a boy, Miss Giles used to take out her mosquito netting to hang over the beds. He remembers that when he used to sneak out at night, the mosquitoes zeroed in on Bobby and left him alone. He always wondered about that, whether he had some special sort of protection, or whether even mosquitoes didn't dare come too close to him. He has plucked a bee right out of the air and had it sit in the palm of his hand, too shocked to sting. He has had fire ants run away from his shadow, so what can he expect from Lucy? The best he can do is to keep his mouth shut as the plane taxis out on the runway. When the plane has disappeared and he asks Lucy if she needs a ride home, he knows she'll back away from him.

It is, after all, nearly the end of the month, the time when people begin to snap out of whatever sort of spell they've been under and realize just how close they came to ruining their lives.

Lucy goes back to work the last Friday in May, and when she gets to her desk she discovers that two women have died the night before, of natural causes, over at the retirement home on West Main.

One of the women had been a schoolteacher in New Jersey, the other a homemaker for fifty-eight years. They both left loved ones scattered all over the Eastern seaboard, children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, all of whom owned woolen afghans that had been knitted during hot afternoons on the porch of the retirement home.

As she types, Lucy thinks of the obituary that will never be written for Bethany Lee.

She keeps Bethany's photograph in her wallet, wedged between her driver's license and her MasterCard, and it will still be there long after 8C is cleared out and resold. For a while, Lucy wondered if Randy had gotten off too easily; now she sees his punishment as just, whether he knows it or not. He will never know how quickly his child will learn her colors and numbers. He won't know that when her hair is washed with lemon juice it will turn a shade of gold you can't find anywhere else.

If she wrote the obituary for Bethany, there wouldn't be space to list everything: the look on Bethany's face when she heard the cry on the intercom, the way she held her baby in the pool so she could kick her feet and pretend to swim, the way her heart beat, so fast it seemed like the heart of a dove, when she crossed the New York State line.

Lucy would have to stick to the simple facts, and they don't even begin to tell the story of someone's life. She's tired of that. And so after Lucy finishes her last two obituaries, she r up her desk. She intends to resign on there's no reason to drag it out. If she's learned one thing from this job, it's that every second she wastes becomes morning, afternoon, long cool evening.

She leaves at exactly five o'clock, and as it turns out, it is still the hour she dreads, only now it's because she no longer has Keith to argue with.

She can do whatever she wants, but that's just it.

She ties a scarf around her head before going out to her car. The Mustang is driving much better; Evan had the radiator replaced before sending it back from New York. Lucy stops at the 7-Eleven for yogurt and soda and a small package of chicken wings, then drives home. But when she gets to Long Boat Street, she pulls over to the side of the road instead of making the turn into the parking lot. It is the time when you can sense evening falling, even though the sky is still filled with light. You can almost tell what it used to be like here, before there were condominiums and paved streets. Right here, in the parking lot of Long Boat, there was a small pond where alligators slept, submerged beneath the murky water, called to the surface by the yellow light in May.