One Night Page 10

  Tom stared at the house without speaking. “So the delivery girl grew up in the swankiest neighborhood,” he finally said. “Does that make you Dakota City royalty?”

  “Hardly. My grandfather was just a plain old hardworking lawyer, and she was a tireless volunteer with all the right charities. They climbed up the ladder by working, climbed up to a nice big house on Lake Lucille.”

  “When did your mother die?”

  “She didn’t.” I tipped my head. “She lives there, right there in my grandparents’ house. With Billy and…their little girl. Not with my grandmother of course. She died last spring.”

  “But you said your parents were dead. Another lie?”

  “I didn’t say they were dead, Tom. I didn’t lie about that. I said that I had no family except for my aunt, and that’s true. My father has been gone forever, and for some time now she’s been gone from my life.” I picked up the paddle and stroked twice, straightening the canoe, keeping it pointed toward shore. “I think the little girl’s room is the one on the left, second floor. See the glow—a night-light, don’t you suppose?”

  “The ‘little girl’ is your sister, your half sister?”

  “Her name is Louisa. She’s going on three.”

  “And is she gone from your life, too?”

  “That’s right. That’s how it is.” I resumed paddling, turning the craft away from shore and heading it toward the widest part of the lake. “Daylight pretty soon, we need to get out of this bay if you want a view of the sunrise.” Or if we didn’t want to be spotted watching the house.

  The sky was lightening. A few cars were turning onto the lake drive. A lone runner moved along the pedestrian path. Morning.

  Tom twisted until he could see me. He said, “What’s the story, Kelly? What happened?”

  A kayak whizzed out at racing speed from between the islands, passed us, and was gone, headed toward the lagoon leading to another lake. I pointed. “If we go that way, we connect with all the lakes. We could spend the day on the water, going from lake to lake.”

  He waited.

  “Please understand, Tom, that I don’t feel sorry for myself. There’s no self-pity. I just look at the facts and say I did what I did and that’s how it is. I hurt them very badly. I was dangerous to them and they did what they did to protect themselves from being hurt again. And that’s what anyone should do. Isn’t that what you did? Built a life separate from your parents’ to keep yourself safe? Yes, it’s the right thing to do.”

  He said, “Tell me the story.”

  Drug stories are boring, Tom, they’re even worse than family stories, so don’t worry, I won’t bore you much with all that. Won’t bother you with the story of fights with my mom—after all, who doesn’t fight with her mom? But you know, I don’t like to use the word. Mom. I don’t have a claim on that word, not anymore.

  Really, the fights weren’t even that bad. Typical stuff. Not bad at all, not even when I quit the violin grind. Guess what she said about that. “If that’s how you feel, then it’s fine. Go find something else, but whatever it is, be good at what you do.” And I remember thinking, What sort of reaction is that? All those years, all the work, and that’s all she can say? “Be good at what you do”? I mean, didn’t she care? But that’s what she said when I pulled the plug on everyone’s dream.

  Which was considerably different from my grandmother’s reaction. There was nothing indifferent about that. As soon as she heard, she raced to where I was, and the first thing she did was put her hands on my shoulders—God, I can still feel those hands on my shoulders—and she said, “After all I’ve done for you…” And then she couldn’t go on, she was so livid.

  It wasn’t the last time I heard her say that very same thing. I gave her plenty of opportunities to say it again.

  You know how I did it, how I walked away from it all? I was playing—in the middle of actually playing for judges in a big competition, my third that year. It was Chicago, the Midwest Musicians of the Future, a very big deal, at least in that world. I’d come in second place the year before, and this year was supposed to be mine. I think it could’ve been, except for one thing. I didn’t want it.

  But there I was and I was trying. Playing a Paganini sonata. I was nailing it, too. Well, if I look at it clearly, maybe I wasn’t nailing it, because I wasn’t focused. And then there I was in the third bar of the second movement, and suddenly I was thinking, Screw this. I don’t want to do this anymore. And so I sailed out of Paganini into an Andrew Bird motif. And I finished and said to the judges, “Wasn’t that a whole lot nicer?” Then I packed up and left. And later when everyone asked, Why? I said, I’m done. I’m done with this forever.

  But I wasn’t done, not with the music, just with that music. I started playing other stuff, with other musicians. I was learning a whole new sound and living a whole new life. As much as you can when you’re barely fifteen. But it was enough, and I got in over my head.

  It wasn’t like I had a gutter-sniffing habit. I never progressed to needles. I always had access to money, so I never had to steal or do worse to get stuff. A very middle-class habit, Tom. But a habit just the same and you can’t hide it forever. When they found out I was using, they packed me up and shipped me off to rehab. One month to a new life.

  I was lucky, I guess, to have people who cared, who took action. My grandmother visited whenever they let her, which was often enough. And why not? She was paying. She’d come for an hour and we would have tea. And when the hour was over, she’d kiss me once on each cheek and say the very same thing she said before every recital, every concert, every competition.

  Don’t disappoint me.

  That’s when Kit enters the story. She heard what was happening and knew what it meant. Knew how my grandmother—her mother—would be trying to deal with things, control the situation, take charge. Kit quit her job and moved here, just to be close. Gave up the writing and reporting and started talking about movies and menopause with America so she’d have something to do while she settled down in Dakota City. She did all that to be an option for me. An option to my grandmother’s iron will. She knew about that iron will, of course. She was her mother’s oldest child and she knew.

  When I got out of rehab, I moved in with Kit. Everyone agreed that it might be better. Everyone agreed we had to try something new. I’ll say this: I didn’t start again right away. I didn’t want to start again at all, but it was there by then; it was in me. The longing was in me.

  Up to a point it’s easy enough to hide that you’re using. So when I did start again, no one knew. I was careful this time not to be gone at night and raise questions. Careful to keep the pattern of using under control. Up to a point you can do that. I was careful to wait until Kit was asleep or gone. Poor Kit. She never knew, never saw what was happening. No one did, of course, but I was living under her roof. Her mother never forgave her for that.

  About the time I started using again, they had a baby, Billy and my moth—oh, let’s call her by name. Her name is Ann. They wanted to make a show of trust, of confidence in me. They let me baby-sit from time to time.

  She was a beautiful baby, Tom. I could always stop her crying. I could always get her to laugh. She loved me. Took a bottle from me and only me. When it came to eating, she wanted to be nursed by her mother or she wanted me. Five months old. That’s how old she was the last time I saw her.

  Up ’til then, I swear, I never did anything when I was with her, especially not when I was taking care of her. And I don’t know why I did that time, except I started feeling sorry for myself. That’s why I don’t get into feeling sorry for myself, Tom, because then it’s easy to do stupid things, and stupid things can be dangerous.

  But that night I did. I broke my rule. First, though, I took care of her. Fed her, walked her, sang to her, held her, changed her. It was a very hot night, a lot like tonight was. So I had her in just diapers and a T-shirt. A little pink T-shirt. I put her in bed, pulled the shirt down over her belly, and tu
rned out the light.

  Then I went to the room that used to be mine and I turned on the radio. Am I boring you? All these details? I think I’m just now remembering these details; forgive me.

  I turned on the radio, mistake number one.

  I lit candles, mistake number two. The radio was tuned to 88.5, “Jazz Overnight,” live that night from Club Chase. I tuned in to other people playing while I was watching a baby, and whaddaya know, I started feeling sorry for myself, lying there in my old room with its pastels and lace curtains and sweet little flowers on everything.

  Then I must have reached in my pocket. Mistake number three, because that’s when I found the dope a friend had given me earlier that evening. At Leo’s—I’d picked it up at Leo’s.

  I remember that the radio announcer talked between sets about the meteor shower going on outside, and I must have thought, Hey, go outside and see. So I did Mistake number—oh, what does it matter. I went outside, and the sky was ablaze with falling stars, all right. Billy and Ann didn’t live in the lake house then, it was another. They moved in here when my grandmother died last year.

  They weren’t her kids, but she liked them better than she had ever liked her own. So she left them her money, her house, her charity work, her place in the life of this city.

  Back then, though, they lived in their own house. Smaller, but with a huge yard rimmed with lilacs. I can’t remember if they were in bloom. And I lay in the backyard and watched the sky. No: First I snorted my bag, then I lay back and watched the sky.

  A heroin high isn’t the same every time. Sometimes I’d start with a pure manic single- minded rush, where I’d get this goal in my head and that’s all I could think about, do, see. I used to clean a lot, those times. Middle of the night I’d be cleaning my room or scrubbing my bathroom. Reorganizing the books in Kit’s library—I did that more than once. She’s a sound sleeper, my aunt.

  But sometimes it takes you the other way. Most times, maybe. A lockdown, that’s how I think of it. There’s no noise, no thought, no feeling. There’s no one watching or talking or judging. It’s all just shut out. Everything shuts down. That’s how it was that night when I went out to look at the stars. In the whole wide world, it was just me and the stars, one after another, falling out of the sky.

  You can finish the story, right? You can figure what happened next, how it happened?

  The candles, the curtains. The baby-sitter, useless, nodding off in the backyard. That’s where they found me, wasted, untouched by the fire, not even aroused by the fire. While the baby…

  She didn’t die. They got to her through that smoke and heat. One lung was destroyed, but she didn’t die. You might say, Tom, that it was the one good thing about that night.

  No, there’s a second. The moment they heard that the firemen had found me—how they had found me—in the yard, Billy and Ann put up a wall. Built a big solid wall between my life and theirs. And I’m glad they did it. I mean it, believe me; with all of my heart I’m glad they did it.

  I’ll never hurt her again.

  I picked up the paddle and straightened us out, pointed us east. I was hoping hard that Tom would stay quiet. I didn’t want to hear what he was thinking, not now. Didn’t want to deal with judgment of any type, didn’t want—

  “Tom! What are you doing? Don’t stand up in a canoe!” But he didn’t heed me and he rose to his feet. The paddle nearly flipped out of my hand when I grabbed the gunwales, trying to steady the rocking. The paddle dropped to the canoe floor with a loud clang that echoed across the water.

  “You’re going to tip us. Tom! You can’t just stand up and turn around in a canoe.”

  “I want to look at you.”

  “Well, look at me later. Besides, the sun’s coming up over there. Now you’re sitting the wrong way.”

  “I’m not going to tip us. Quit your moaning. Oh, Kelly, you shouldn’t have made me give up the suit at the thrift shop. I had a handkerchief in it. You could use one.” He settled in. “All safe.”

  I rolled my eyes. Wiped my face with the back of my hand.

  “We’re a lot alike,” he said.

  “I don’t see the least bit of similarity. For one thing, I know how to behave in a canoe.”

  He smiled. “As I was saying: a lot alike. Our families are a mess. And we both have sisters just out of reach.”

  I rolled the paddle in my hand, the smooth wood a familiar comfort. “Even if there is a resemblance, Prince Tom, that’s where it ends, because mine is better off for the separation.”

  Tom raked me over with those changeable eyes. Then after a very long time he said, “Is your mother beautiful, too?”

  I looked at the house one more time before setting my paddle in and steering us away. I nodded and whispered, “Very beautiful. Athletic. She had a wonderful laugh. She painted and sewed. She made such gorgeous things. Quilts, you should see the quilts she made.”

  “You make it sound like she’s dead. Tell me more. Tell me another nice thing about her.”

  I thought for a moment. “She never once said ‘Don’t disappoint me.’ I never once heard it from her. Just that one weird thing: ‘Be good at what you do.’ But you know, now that I think about it again, I can see that maybe it’s kind of a wish, isn’t it? A wish for someone you…”

  “Someone you love?”

  I didn’t answer.

  He flicked his hand in the water, scattering drops. “So when you did disappoint her, it really mattered.”

  “I’ve said enough, Tom.”

  “Tell me about—”

  “Nothing more. You’ve pushed me this far, Your Highness. Any more, and I’ll push you—into the water. The sun’s coming up. You’d better look; after all, that’s why we’re here.”

  My eyes were on the distant lakeshore, but I could feel him looking at me, deciding how far he could go.

  He was no moron. “All right then,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s watch the darn sun. I guess I’d better change position.” He stood up, waited until he had my attention, then grinned and rocked the canoe. Ha ha, it’s a joke, his dopey look said, but then that vanished when the canoe kept on rocking with a rhythm of its own. He tilted on one foot, arms flailing, weight shifting. I set down the paddle, dropped low to my knees, grabbed the gunwales to steady things, and ordered him to sit.

  He obeyed the command, shifting around slowly so he was facing front. He sat down low, leaned back against the thwart, and relaxed. I was still on my knees, and his hair brushed my cheek as he settled.

  “Pretty sunrise,” he said.

  “See that silver streak between the trees?”

  “No.”

  I pointed. “Between the spiky pine and that big round oak. That’s the university art museum. It’s at least three miles away, but it’s on the town’s only hill and we can see it way over here. It has stainless-steel walls and they reflect the light like you wouldn’t believe. There, that flash, did you see it?”

  Tom didn’t say. He simply pulled my arm down, set it across his chest and held it in place. Then (what the hell) I wrapped the other one around him and rested my chin on his head.

  Oh, a canoe is a dangerous place. Not because you’re one stupid move from cold weedy water. But because there you are, just the two of you, with maybe all the time in the world to talk. Or not talk, and that’s dangerous, too.

  After a while, a nice long while, he spoke. “When I go back to Lakveria,” he said softly, “it’s likely I’ll be killed. The terrorists won’t give up ’til they’ve done that. They thrive with chaos. They get rich from the chaos. Any hint of order or peace is a threat. That’s what Natalia was, a threat. She was becoming respected, maybe loved, and that suggested the possibility of peace. Anything that could remotely unify the Lakverians, they’ll want to destroy. I’m a target, Kelly Ray.”

  “You have security.”

  His chest moved under my hands as he laughed. “It was no match for you and Simone.”

  “Don’t go back to
Lakveria. Don’t let them make you king.”

  “I have to. It’s who I am, and it’s what I have to do. There’s a chance I might help, Kelly, there’s a chance things can be better. If I can help that to happen, then Natalia’s suffering won’t be for nothing. That makes it all worth it to me. It’s as simple as that.

  “It’s what I have to do,” he repeated softly. “I will, and I want to, but sometimes I feel like I just don’t know how.”

  “One day at a time, Prince Tom. Take it one day at a time.”

  He crisscrossed my hands under his, squeezed them tight, and then said, “Look!” just as the sun broke over the trees, opening up another fine summer day.

  three

  talk now

  There were three police cars in the small lot near the canoe racks. Tom shrugged and said “Hardly matters now” when I pointed them out, but I wasn’t so blasé. It didn’t matter what had been said and what promises he’d made; I wouldn’t rest until I’d made the delivery.

  The officers were rousting figures sprawled near a cluster of trees on the boulevard. Bottle necks protruded from three brown paper bags. The rousting wasn’t work enough for six men and women, so one of the officers sauntered over to the racks as I was securing the canoe.

  “Gonna be a hot one,” he said. “Six a.m. and already seventy-eight degrees. I bet it was nice and cool out on the water.”

  “Nice as can be,” said Tom.

  I glanced over to the other cops. They had successfully hauled the men up and were guiding them to separate patrol cars, offering a one-way ticket to detox. Yet another of the cops walked toward us. “Whatcha got, partner?” he asked the one with us.

  “Just a couple of lovebirds back from a morning paddle.”

  I could feel the heat of his partner’s gaze on my back as I locked up the canoe. I emerged from the racks and grabbed Tom’s hand. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” he answered. Then he flashed a royal smile on the two policemen and said, “We both have to get to work.”