A Matter of Mercy Page 8

  The truth was, he didn’t see her huddled on the revetment, the rock wall the upland owners had built to keep the sea water from eroding the sandy cliff during storms when the tides could run exceptionally high. Most of them had their own wooden stairways built up from the beach, too, some even with a platform built halfway up where they could put folding chairs and have drinks as if the fancy tiers and decks and sliding patio doors on their mansions overlooking the bay weren’t enough. It was Lizzie, with her typical enthusiasm for any potential playmate, bounding out of the truck to where CiCi sat. Rid actually didn’t recognize her at first; she had a sweatshirt hood up, for one, and it had, after all, been weeks since the one time he’d seen her. A flush of guilt washed over him, then defensiveness, then wariness. But he had to intervene. Lizzie was leaping at CiCi, her tail a blur, and Rid knew her tongue was flashing at CiCi’s face by the woman’s ineffective swipes at her own cheek with one hand as she tried to hold Lizzie down.

  “Off, girl,” Rid called, slamming the truck door and breaking into a reluctant jog toward them. “Get back to the truck. Hey, hi, I’m sorry. She’s not even supposed to be out of the truck,” he added as he caught up and grabbed Lizzie’s collar. This was the last thing he needed. A woman he’d slept with and never called again who could technically be considered one of the waterfront landowners, and here was his dog loose on a private beach molesting her. Could it get worse? And dammit, he needed to get to work, and he needed to figure out how to lock Mario in a box.

  “No problem.” At least she was laughing. But she looked terrible, charcoal thumbprints under her eyes. She’d put makeup on, he could see, and her hair was fixed, he could tell that now that she’d flipped the hood back. Still, her face was almost gaunt, as if hollows had been spooned out.

  “She’s just over-friendly. I thought she’d grow out of it, but she’s almost six and I can’t hardly call that a puppy anymore. Just acts it. What’re you doing here?”

  “I brought you some coffee,” she said. “I didn’t know how you liked it, so I brought creamer and sugar in plastic bags.” Sure enough, behind her, standing on one of the boulders was a thermos. She pulled two bags out of her gray sweatshirt pocket as she said it, and took two awkward sidesteps over to lay them next to the thermos.

  “Thanks. I usually bring a thermos myself. Didn’t have time this morning so I stopped at Cumberland. Got it already.” It sounded just on the line of rude, but he was uncomfortable. What did she want? Then he remembered. “Your mother, she didn’t…?”

  “Not yet. Thank you for asking.”

  “Um, well, thanks anyway. I should be getting to work. Was there something you needed?”

  He could see she was stung. But what did she want? The tide wouldn’t wait for him, and Lizzie pulled and squirmed trying to get away. “I’m sorry, please excuse me, but I’ve got to get her back in the truck. Come on girl.” Rid released the collar and strode to where his truck was parked on the wet flats, the Lab prancing back and forth and around him. Cultch snapped and crunched beneath his waders. CiCi couldn’t follow him. She was only wearing sneakers.

  Impossibly, she did, though. Her feet had to be getting wet, no matter how gingerly she picked her way trying to avoid the eddies and go from one high spot to the next. In another minute she’d be onto a raceway and then she’d tear a net.

  “Hold up. I’ll be right back.” Rid help up a hand in a stop sign gesture behind him.

  He opened the driver’s side door of the truck. Lizzie hesitated, her pleading expression on her face. Rid pulled a biscuit from his shirt pocket, pointing to the seat with his chin, and the dog immediately leapt inside. “You have a good nap, girl. Keep my spot warm.” The Lab took the treat from his hand and he caressed her ears before shutting the truck door and turning back to where CiCi stood as if rooted where he’d stopped her. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath. He had too much on his mind this morning to worry about an ex-prom queen jailbird looking for a soul mate.

  “Didn’t want you to walk over the netting,” he explained as he approached her. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time to visit just now. I gotta use the tide, y’know?

  “I understand. I know about the lawsuit, too, and I was just wondering if we could get together sometime, to talk.”

  Rid stiffened. What the hell did she want, this soon-to-be waterfront landowner? Maybe he was spoiling her view, too.

  “Yeah. Well, I’m pretty busy with this right now.”

  The sky was lightening and beneath his feet the sand was draining. Almost dead low.

  She looked down. “I thought maybe I could help. And I wanted to talk to you.”

  “No thanks.” Tomas’ injunction was still ringing in his head. He was treating her like a washashore, which was ridiculous because she was native. He had no reason to assume she’d think of her hometown as a postcard rather than a working place—that she’d try to take that away. But she’d left, and only come back when she had to. That made her suspect.

  CiCi’s head snapped up, startled, her eyes rounded like targets. “No thanks what?” Her bangs blew the wrong way in the wind and she held them out of her eyes with one hand which made her forehead look high and bald. Behind her, the revetment was solid, unyielding, a wall of carefully fitted boulders rising at a steep slope. Random loose rocks lay embedded in the sand around the high water mark. When the tide was full, there was virtually no beach here.

  Rid met her eyes, not backing down. Again, he noticed she looked haggard in spite of the makeup, and felt himself soften. She must be going through hell with her mother. He was being a prick. But there was Tomas’s truck just then, jostling over the rough patch from the access road onto the beach and it fortified him to stay the course. Too much was at stake.

  “No thanks, I don’t need help. And I’m sorry, I just don’t have time to talk. I’ll try to give you a call sometime. Uh, thanks for the offer.” He turned then and walked between two raceways, grabbing his bull rake and several buckets out of the bed of his truck as he passed it. October was a big harvest month. He needed to dig six hundred fifty oysters and four hundred clams for two weddings and a small raw bar today. And deal with Mario, plus whatever Tomas assigned him. Enough was enough.

  * * * *

  She’d made a fool of herself. Her feet were wet and here she was carrying the untouched thermos of coffee. He’d blown her off. Whatever had she been thinking? Hadn’t she been humiliated adequately the first time, when she’d been pathetic enough to stand out on the porch and call out after him? He’d kept right on going then, hadn’t he? So why had she expected anything else? Or hoped.

  On the other hand, at least she’d tried. It made the decision to have an abortion easier, really.

  Caroline looked up from the cultch-strewn sand just ahead to her mother’s house in the middle distance. The horseshoe cove was fully drained now, the tide all the way out. How could she be this exhausted from walking over to Rid’s grant and halfway back? It couldn’t be a half-mile round trip, and only some of it had been in soft sand. She had to pee desperately, otherwise she’d just go lie down hidden up by the beach plums and scrubby wild vegetation that scalloped the beach between the access road and where the revetment began its steep ascent.

  She stopped just to breathe. Then she swung and walked backward for a moment to have the wind at her back. All up and down Indian Neck, trucks were parked like giant beetles on the sand and the detritus of the sea farmers was uncovered, the stacked oyster cages and Chinese hats, a couple of dinghies and random buckets. The farmers themselves were out in force. They must have been arriving steadily while her back was turned. Caroline felt a quick stab of guilt. He’d said he had to work. Possibly she had been keeping him, like when she used to waitress and a friend would drop by and expect her to be to stand and chat. Still, that didn’t explain his coldness. That was something else entirely.

  She turned back and faced into the wind, forcing one foot in front of the other, infuriated by the sting of the air,
how it made her eyes water so.

  And she’d had no business leaving the house. Eleanor was awake when Caroline came in, though she’d eased the door open as silently as possible, shrugging out the sweatshirt off, then the layer beneath it before she even went over to the bed. She’d been that certain her mother wouldn’t rouse until the hospice aide showed up to bathe her and do catheter care. But when she tiptoed bedside, Eleanor’s eyes fluttered open.

  “Where were you?”

  “Oh Mom, I’m so sorry. I just took a short walk. Are you all right?”

  “My baby.” Eleanor’s eyes closed and for a moment Caroline thought perhaps she’d only awakened momentarily. But then she moved her hand, feeling for Caroline. “My baby. How can I leave you like this, with no one of your own?”

  Caroline sank into the chair that was always at the head of her mother’s bed. She kissed the hand she held, and set her head down in the hollow between her mother’s shoulder and breast wanting nothing more than to climb in and have both her mother’s arms close around her. Caroline was, at first, just trying to hide the tears of frustration with Rid, and what lay ahead. Then her mother’s hand was on her head without the strength to stroke her hair, but there. How many times had this soft place been her shelter? Then she was crying, really crying, for the first time, over the looming unchosen death.

  “Don’t leave me, Mom. Please, please don’t leave me.”

  Chapter 8

  Her name tag said Teresa DiPaulo but no one had ever called her that. “It’s just Terry,” she’d say. The head librarian at the Truro branch where she worked didn’t think nicknames were professional, especially now that they were in their big new building which was airy and beautiful with computers, open stacks, plants and separate children’s room. Rhonda didn’t seem to notice that this same staff talked quite loudly among themselves and wore jeans to work. As long as they didn’t use nicknames, she seemed to think she’d dramatically elevated the standard from the old library, the size of the average walk-in closet, from which they’d recently moved. Rhonda herself, in fact, wasn’t all that quiet in the library, though she wore skirts, kept her hair in a neat pageboy and her bright red mouth in a librarian-worthy serious line.

  Being called Teresa by her boss was a small price to pay as long as Rhonda didn’t make her work in the children’s section. When she’d applied for the job, she’d forced herself to ask if she’d have to.

  “My assistant and I generally work in all areas of the library. After all, the rest of the staff each works part-time, and, of course, the community volunteers really set their own schedules. You see, the structure of the library is such that….” Rhonda had rambled on before skidding to a halt on, “Why do you ask?”

  And Terry had intended to just tell the truth, except that she’d felt the underground river start to rise to the surface and decided that tears in an interview were worse than no answer. “Ah, no reason.” She felt Rhonda’s eyes light on the gold angel pin on her sweater, and involuntarily, Terry’s hand went up to protect it. Well, so she’d blown this interview. All right. She shouldn’t have asked. She should have sucked it up and tried to work in that room—with its little tables and chairs, bright colors, high border of sweet, fanciful animals. She plain needed a job now.

  But maybe no one else had even applied and Rhonda had been desperate, because the next day, she called and offered Terry the job. There’d been no mention of working in the children’s room or not working there, but so far, she hadn’t been assigned there. Part-timers had shelved those books, or ordered the new ones, or catalogued the incoming orders. Terry showed her gratitude by trying to look professional for Rhonda. She took pains to curl her long hair which she’d turned blonde when she was fourteen, wore skirts, stockings, dress shoes, and, of course, her pin.

  It was possible Rhonda had known. Maybe one of the job references told her and the position had been offered out of pity. Usually people who knew avoided her, though.

  It wasn’t that John hadn’t grieved with her. He’d closed the shop, stopped eating, stopped showering, and choked on his sobs. But she could do nothing to help him. She was drowning herself, and didn’t even notice whether her husband had a worn a clean shirt or whether he’d shaved for the visitation. His sister came to attend to him while Terry’s brother and her mother, one on either side of her like crutches, had gotten her into St. Mary’s of the Harbor for the funeral.

  The fourth week, John had gone back to work. He’d had to. There wasn’t insurance that would replace the income they were losing. By then, people from out of town had gone home, the casseroles that had been coming in daily slowed to four, then two or three times a week, and Terry and John were slowly left to stagger on by themselves, like robots or zombies. When Terry felt suicidal, John took her to Dr. Telmaun, who prescribed drugs that made no difference.

  Around them, the house had a sterile, unlived-in look, yet was increasingly in a state of disrepair. One night during the second year, John pointed around him and said, “Look, we’re not even people anymore. We’re like shadows. On Saturday, I’m going to fix the garage door.”

  “Don’t you think I want to go on?” Terry said later that month. They’d been in the kitchen, where it had been Chinese take-out again, as opposed to pizza, as opposed to deli sandwiches. It was May and the lilacs outside the baby’s window were blooming. They’d never stopped calling him the baby, even though chronologically, he wasn’t one. Not one item in his room had been changed. Some of the clothes he’d worn still had his smell, even if John didn’t get it. On her worst days, Terry shut herself in his room and buried her face in his red sweater or his denim jacket.

  “We have to go on together,” he said, wrapping his arms around her back and stroking her hair with one hand. She’d forced herself not to pull away although she felt like something carved out of cold stone, like the marble marker over her baby’s grave.

  “What do you want from me? I’m trying.”

  “Let’s have another baby.” It wasn’t the first time he’d whispered this. Of course, family on both sides had prescribed it. “I am not trying to replace him,” John insisted that night. “I am trying to start over.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Are you ever going to be?”

  “I don’t know. Goddammit, John, leave me alone.”

  When he moved the stack of read-aloud books off the coffee table in the living room. Terry raged at him. “Put them back, put them back, put him back,” she shouted.

  John started sleeping in the spare room, saying it was too frustrating to sleep in the same bed. They had a bitter fight about money; Terry was calling in sick a couple of days a week because of her headaches. She’d used all her sick time and then days and days more. Sometimes she couldn’t get out of bed. Wouldn’t get out of bed was the way John saw it, as in not trying. He said as much.

  Still, when he actually left, it was like the cruel surprise of a patch of ice in May, one that flew her feet out from underneath her and landed her hard on her back, breathless and alone.

  At first it was much worse to have no one there and then, finally, in a bizarre way it was better. No one criticizing her, no one serving up guilt like a daily gruel. If she got up, she got up. If she didn’t, well, she didn’t. Same with taking a shower.

  Predictably, she lost her job in the hardware store. She was fired with great kindness. “We’d love to have you back when you feel better. We just have to have someone here every day.”

  Suicide was forbidden in her religion but God was on her shit list so she no longer ruled it out.

  Then, the strangest thing happened—something that affected her in a way the church she’d repudiated had not. Something that gave her peace unlike the drugs that hadn’t helped at all, or helped enough, or the trite and vacant words of well-meaning family and friends. Late one night when she was playing hopscotch through the channels, she landed on the shopping network where a woman was selling guardian angel pins, a psychic by her
side. Viewers were invited to call in and the psychic would try to contact a loved one on the other side of the veil. If the psychic was able to receive a message, the viewer would presumably wish to purchase a fourteen karat gold guardian angel with the birthstone of the loved one as tangible evidence of the contact. The angel was available in yellow or white gold and a choice of twelve birthstones.

  It took Terry forty-eight minutes to get through. She hadn’t expected to believe, in fact she’d expected not to. But when the psychic said, “I have only this message for you from the other side: your baby wants you to know he is all right, and whole now,” she couldn’t discount it. That word, whole. And then the psychic had said, “He loves you and he’ll see you again later.”

  He’ll see you later! That’s what the baby had said after she or John had read him his last story and tucked him in at night. I love you, sleep tight, see ya later, alligator,” was their line, and the baby would answer, love you, see ya later.

  * * * *

  There really were only two downsides to the library job. Rhonda hadn’t asked Terry to work in the children’s section, not once in three years, but she did have to check the books out when someone handed them to her. The first time someone handed her a too-familiar-cover, she shut herself in a bathroom stall and stifled sobs, until she worked it out. After that, when any young mother with a toddler boy in her arms handed her a book like Goodnight Moon, she was ready. “I’m sorry, this should haven’t been shelved. It’s been reserved,” Terry would say, cool. Lying for her baby was easy. His favorite books should never be touched by children who wouldn’t appreciate them. Goodnight Moon would disappear, swaddled in a drawer at home with the others marked TRURO PUBLIC LIBRARY. Since Terry was in charge of book orders, there would be no replacement.