A Matter of Mercy Page 21

  At first there was just silence from the other end. “Caroline?” he said, thinking she’d hung up and he’d just not heard it, although the line sounded open. “CiCi, are you there?”

  Finally, “I’m here.”

  “Well, are you all right?”

  Silence again. “I wasn’t in the path of the rock, if that’s what you mean.”

  Crap, here we go again. “Look. Please. I’m sorry for our last conversation. Can we just cut through all that? I don’t have anything to do with what’s happening to you, if that’s what you think. I swear it.”

  “If not you, then who?”

  “CiCi, I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

  “One of your friends, maybe?”

  “I’ll be honest with you. It’s not impossible.”

  “And you’re telling me, you don’t know about it.”

  “I’m telling you I don’t know.”

  “And I’m supposed to believe you.”

  “Dammit, CiCi, I’m telling you like it is.”

  “And I’m wondering why you couldn’t tell it to your friend.”

  “I don’t even know for sure. If it is him, he’s a hothead who’s out of control. I will talk to him. My other partner has warned him about a hundred times not to do crazy stuff. So have I. I don’t know for sure that he is. Only that he could be going behind our backs.”

  “Will you talk to him?” Was that a slight softening in her voice?

  “I told you I would. Yes. Is somebody staying with you?”

  A hesitation. Rid guessed she was afraid to give him any information. He couldn’t sit anymore so got out of the kitchen chair where he’d perched, and walked the length of the kitchen to check Lizzie’s water bowl. Outside the window, another starless, moonless night, damp enough to blur every edge illuminated by his house lights.

  “Okay. Don’t trust me. I’m just your baby’s father calling to offer help. I’m presuming there still is a baby?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it’s still mine?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice was a just-ignited rocket.

  “Are you in on the lawsuit against me?”

  “NO. Why would you think that?” Gathering energy, flames at the base.

  “Doesn’t feel good, does it? Sooner or later we’re going to have to trust each other. Or not, I guess. Good night, Caroline.”

  Imagining the blastoff, Rid pushed the button that hung the phone up, and carried the phone in to the living room to replace it on its cradle, feeling a momentary sense of victory. By the time he’d gotten another beer from the refrigerator, dropped in his recliner, given Lizzie a biscuit, and picked up the remote, the feeling was already dissipating, something a bit like shame starting to corrode the edges, and that pissed him off. He had nothing to be ashamed of this time, dammit.

  Chapter 20

  The day after Christmas, Caroline opened her eyes in Noelle and Walt’s yellow guest room again. The air held the cold knife of a New England upstairs bedroom in winter, but her body was suspended in a cloud of warm goose down. Noelle had insisted she spend Christmas night with them; after all, she’d spent Christmas Eve night with Sharon and Charles, when Karen had come for dinner as had redheaded Carol, a widow with her regular companion, an oysterman, and, of course, Noelle and Walt. When she’d refused wine with dinner, Noelle had given CiCi her dreaded single eyebrow arch accompanied by The Look. She was tired of pretending to be fooled.

  CiCi had given Noelle a small nod. A few moments later, still not knowing what she was going to say, she began. “I hope you know how much I appreciate all this. I mean you all.” Oh, she had no energy, but she couldn’t put this off. “I know what you meant to Mom through the years, and to have you take me in the way you have, well, I just thank you so much.”

  There’d been murmurs of “Oh honey, we love you,” and “We miss your mama right along with you, you know that,” running together like currents in a river.

  “There’s something else,” Caroline looked down at her hands bunched in her lap, wondering if the rest of them could have missed it and supposed it was possible. She’d worn a long loose black velvet jumper she’d bought at a Provincetown thrift shop for twelve dollars, although there was no reason she had to be so parsimonious. High-heeled black leather boots; the added height hid some bulk. Eleanor’s thick gold chain in the neckline of the filmy white blouse, too, called attention away from her middle. But get it over with. She looked back up. “I’m pregnant.”

  A flurry of feminine voices and movement. Sharon and Carol got up to hug her from opposite sides and thumped their heads together. Carol tripped back over herself and ended up on the floor. When Caroline started to help her up, four people yelled, “No, don’t hurt yourself!” including Carol, and then everyone was laughing. Noelle hugged Caroline while Carol’s companion got her up. Sharon and Karen were behind Noelle with embraces, and it was clear from their excited chorus of “Do you know if it’s a boy or girl?” and “When are you due?” and “You better be prepared for a lot of grandmothers spoiling this little one,” that she needn’t have braced herself for judgment. “Your mother would be so happy,” Carol whispered, the last to get her hug in.

  “In late May or early June,” and “No, I have no idea of the sex,” and “We’ll take all the grandparents we can get,” Caroline had answered variously, then realized that the last response had opened the question of paternal grandparents. At that moment, she had longed for a glass of wine. Or three.

  “I think you’re all just too goodhearted to ask, but sooner or later I’m going to need to tell you and probably now is best. I don’t have the best relationship with the baby’s father, and I don’t know how much he will or won’t be involved. He’s one of the aquaculturists with a grant on Indian Neck. That’s honestly all there is to know right now.” She paused, and looked around the dining table, at which everyone had reseated themselves. They were waiting for her to go on. “He is very upset and distracted, to be fair, because he is one of the ones being sued by that upland owner—you know, trying to shut the oystermen down, saying that their apparatus spoils the view and all. Somehow he got the idea that I was in on that lawsuit, you know, because I own waterfront property, I guess.”

  “Are you?” That was Charles, Sharon’s husband, a chiseled-featured, sandy-haired man whose recalcitrant Southern drawl had rubbed off on Sharon after so many years.

  Ben Demos, Carol’s date, whose grant was off Mayo’s Beach, hadn’t said a word but had stiffened and was watching CiCi’s face. She felt him study her through the candles.

  Carol turned to Charles. “You’re not from here. Locals don’t think that way. This is a fishing town, always was.” Adamant.

  There was a murmur of assent. “I’d have something to say about it if she was,” Walter said to Ben.

  “Hey, I was born and raised here. This is my home,” Caroline said.

  “Of course, honey.” Noelle shot The Look at Walt. “He knows better. Men just like to hear themselves talk.”

  “Didn’t think she would,” Walt said, having taken the heat off the other male.

  The evening settled with coffee and pecan pie.

  On Christmas Day, she cried twice. When she went home, there was a grocery bag at her kitchen door. She’d have called the police, frightened to risk looking in it except that the top had been left wide open. In it was a teddy bear, with embroidered-on eyes and smile, a red satin bow. Its tag said, “For Baby’s first Christmas.” There was no note. One of her mother’s friends, she guessed, had managed to find an open store, and wanted Santa to visit the baby on Eleanor’s behalf. Caroline put her face against the yielding plush and cried.

  She’d showered and changed, and wrapped the gift she’d reserved to take to Noelle, a basket of things that had belonged to Eleanor that Noelle could use: a beaded necklace that served as a holder for glasses. One of Eleanor’s favorite pins. A sachet out of one of Eleanor’s drawers. And a piece of Eleanor
’s pottery, in a color Noelle had collected. Caroline had found it tucked away in the studio, with Noelle’s name on it, and surmised that Eleanor had been saving it as a Christmas gift. She wrapped each, using Eleanor’s handwritten “Noelle” as the tag. Using her nail, she picked the price off a bottle of good cabernet.

  Walter, a retired chef from Duck Creek Inn, was making Beef Wellington, a process he’d begun a couple of days previously when he started cooking an ox tail. When he started explaining the numerous steps in excruciating detail, Noelle asked CiCi to check if the fire in the living room needed wood.

  “No wood needed yet,” Caroline said to the couple when she returned to the kitchen. “Maybe in fifteen minutes, though. The tree is still gorgeous,”

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Noelle said. “Think how lonely we’d be without Tina and Alex if you weren’t here. And it gives Walter a chance to really show off.” Noelle’s hair was short and wavy, liberally salt and dark pepper. People pay a fortune to have that done to their hair, and here Noelle gets it for nothing. Caroline remembered her mother’s mock frustration as Noelle spoke.

  “I’m very grateful,” Caroline said, hugging Noelle spontaneously.

  “So you’ll be staying on Cape, keeping the house? I hope—I mean, we’d like to be here for you. Help with everything. And we love babies.” Noelle laughed. “Listen to me. I’m stammering.”

  “No, dear, you’re begging,” Walt interjected.

  “I am not. Okay, I’m begging.”

  Caroline hesitated. “I’d like to stay.”

  “Well, then STAY.”

  “That’s my plan for now.”

  “Excellent.” Noelle said, and the word was a period.

  After dinner, they moved to the living room with tea and a chocolate torte Noelle had made. Caroline was taken aback when Noelle brought out four gifts for her.

  “Wait a minute. What’s all this?” CiCi protested.

  “Well, I already had this extra gift for you that I was going to give you today anyway. But you know Sharon. And it seems like Karen and Carol just had nothing else to do after dinner last night but to run down to Orleans to see if there wasn’t any place still open for last minute lunatic shoppers. Musta been. Because on their way to Tara’s this morning, Sharon and Charles were here dropping this stuff off. Can you tell the wrappings are courtesy of Sharon? Except for mine, of course, which looks like a normal person wrapped it.” Noelle grinned.

  “You first,” Caroline said.

  Noelle lifted the basket Caroline had so carefully filled onto her lap and started. Each item she opened brought a startle of recognition and teary smiles. Caroline went over to Noelle’s chair and sat on the arm to hug her.

  “I wish you would have let me be there more when she was dying,” Noelle said. “I wanted to. I wanted to help more, for you and for her.”

  “I don’t think I was trying to shut you out. I just felt like it was my job.”

  “Try not to do it again with the baby,” Noelle said.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you.”

  “Maybe you just had to be alone with her.” Noelle’s face was wet. “Hey, poor Walter, he must think all we do is cry. Go, unwrap your presents, honey.” Indeed, across the room on the couch, Walter looked as if a taxidermist had got hold of him.

  Noelle handed Caroline a tissue as she returned to her chair and pulled it closer to Noelle. Caroline gesturing to Walt, “Okay, it’s safe now. I think we’re finished crying.”

  “Ya sure?”

  “Can’t promise, but come closer and we’ll try to behave.”

  Caroline picked up Noelle’s gift and worked the wrapping open. Inside was a crib blanket, hand quilted, one side pastel blue with a bit of pink and white, the other side pale pink with tiny touches of white and pale blue, the blanket edged in white eyelet. Of course, Caroline cried, and Walt said, “Oh sheesh, here come the waterworks again, I thought you said you were done. Noelle’s been working on that for the past six months.”

  Noelle threw a pillow at her husband. “You stop that, Walter. It’s not even been three weeks, and you know it.”

  CiCi blushed. “I was going to tell you. I feel like an idiot.”

  Walt snorted.

  “No matter, honey. No matter. I just didn’t want the others to be asking me, which I knew would start happening soon. It needed to come from you. But don’t worry, they hadn’t realized. And pay no attention to him. It’s not like he had a clue.”

  Caught, Walt chuckled. “Hey, look,” he diverted, pointing out the picture window into the thick woods where their deck overlooked Gull Pond. The low-slung graphite sky was releasing snowflakes, which had been predicted for yesterday but never happened.

  Meanwhile, CiCi had the blanket against her cheek. “This is so beautiful, Noelle. Perfect handwork. It’s exactly what my mother would have done.”

  “I know,” Noelle said, a whisper.

  “Thank you, thank you so much.”

  “Okay, now I guess you can open the rest.”

  The rest, it turned out, were three unisex sleepers for a newborn, baby toys, a small collection of first books, and a musical crib mobile of bright, dancing animals. The other three women had, indeed, hit the Walmart in Orleans. “What, no bicycle?” Caroline joked.

  “Pretty poor,” Walt agreed. “The minute I get back from Toronto, I’d best see to that one.”

  “Well, maybe learning to walk, first.”

  “I just knew you were going to be a stick in the mud about this stuff,” Walt said, trying to duck the second pillow Noelle shot at him.

  Later, because of the millimeter of snow on the road, they wouldn’t let her leave. Her black toiletries bag with nightgown stuffed in the top was still in the car from Christmas Eve, had napped there all day like a fat cat. Caroline was glad for an excuse to stay away from her own house another night. Tomorrow, she mocked herself as she got ready for bed. I’ll think about that tomorrow.

  * * * *

  The next morning Caroline drove home, the back seat loaded with the baby gifts the women had brought to Noelle’s. Wait, she thought as the replayed the previous day—if their gifts had been brought to Noelle’s, where had the teddy bear she’d found on her back step come from?

  From that thought, she traveled directly to panic without a rest stop. Was there a bomb, like a secret black heart inside it? She’d left the bear on the kitchen counter. She’d set down her guard as casually as a teacup. And now Noelle and Walt—all the others, too—had left to visit married children. She hadn’t even thought to ask Noelle and Walt for a key to their house and make up some reason she might have to stay there. She could have said more ants. Whatever. She felt sweaty in the layers of sweatshirt and down jacket, wool scarf, gloves. Impatiently, she swiped her hood off her head and cracked the car window. Immediately she was chilled and nauseated. The scrub pines along Route 6 looked bent-shouldered and heads-down against the cold, in need of simple mercy. Patches of black ice showed here and there where last night’s new snow had blown from the road. The salt trucks hadn’t gotten here yet

  How strange to be so equally desperate and terrified to get home, her mind perfectly divided against itself. No one to call now.

  She drove toward her house because there was nowhere else to go. As she stopped at the top of the driveway, Caroline studied the outside of the house, looking for any broken windows, signs of forced entry or vandalism. Her heart thudded, too loud, too fast. Shh. Shh. Still in the car, doors locked, motor running, she talked to herself. That can’t be good for the baby. Calm down. I don’t see anything. Help us, Mom. Keep us safe.

  And she didn’t see anything amiss. The window she’d had replaced was still intact. The outdoor lights, left on, were still glowing as were the indoor lights, anemic in the daytime and like neon signage that she was away. The east windows were opaqued by the dull light of the barren sky. Caroline started to breathe easier and, at walking speed, pulled the car farther into the driveway where there were n
o tire marks in the snow. No footprints.

  She scoured the house and yard with her eyes again, all still well until, squinting, she made out two little squares, paper maybe, on the steps up the small back stoop off the kitchen door, and a larger, thicker square on the little porch itself. The steps were largely protected by a roof built out over the porch, and there was very little snow on them.

  Her heart started up its wild stomping. Why didn’t she have a cell phone? She promised herself she’d get one today. She thought of going to get a policeman to come back with her. But maybe what was on the paper were benign notes—even sweet little notes about the baby from her mother’s friends, left on their ways off Cape. If she brought the police back with her, they’d decide once and for all that she was plain paranoid, and they’d write her off completely. She’d lose whatever sanity ground she’d gained in their eyes after the rock was thrown through her window.

  She pulled the car as close to the porch as she could, ignoring the snow-obscured boundary between gravel drive and grass, and the stone walkway to her mother’s studio. Leaving the motor running, she opened the car door and took four steps to where she could bend over to look at what was on her steps.

  Confused because she’d started at the top where there was a piece of burned toast lying at her kitchen door, she had to go back and start reading the sticky notes from the bottom up. In that order, the notes read first, You, and then ARe.

  Chapter 21

  Rid had the heat on in the truck, but still an involuntary shiver ran down his spine. The late sky, which had been the color of a file cabinet, was darkening toward gunmetal. Dreary. The penetrating cold of humid air, that dankness. He’d finished buttoning the grant today, a relief because the real cold had hit earlier than usual this year. His remaining oysters were in the truck bed, ready to go into the pit. Now his winter work would start in earnest: repairing old cages and trays, building new ones, casting new Chinese hats. He’d check all his mesh envelopes and bags, looking for holes, taking inventory of how many new ones he needed to buy. And, of course, troll for the best deal he could get on quality matchhead quahogs and seed oysters for the nursery. He’d gone as far north as Maine to buy them last year. And he had to straighten out the mess of his paperwork or the state would be after him. Cut firewood. He’d try to pick up work on a scallop boat or a shrimper out of New Bedford, too. A couple of weeks and the cash would front him money for seed. The hatchery down in Dennis let him take seed on credit, and they were a guaranteed market for his mature stock, but he didn’t want to be overly dependent on any one place, any more than his father had.