“We haven't talked about him,” she said, hammering through a big claw. “Not all week. It's okay, if you don't want to….”
“Paul?” Margaret pried at a reluctant apron.
Diane reached out and touched her sister's forearm. “I know you blame him for Erica—”
“I miss him, I suppose, but I'm getting used to his not being there. He was going from me for so long that it seems like he left long ago. He didn't make her run away with that boy. If anyone's to blame, it's me. I should have stepped in between them, kept the peace. Talked to her like the woman she was becoming.”
Diane sipped at her beer, the slick of condensation cool against her skin. “Keeping busy, then?”
Margaret tore off a lump of crabmeat and savored the salty taste. “The Delarosas have me keep their books, and I go downtown twice a week to volunteer at the Carnegie. I'll tell you a secret, I go by Mullins there, not Quinn, and nobody seems to know who I am. I like it that way.”
With a strong twist of the wrist, Diane broke open another shell. “Well, I'm glad that you're moving on.”
Leaning back in her chair, Margaret stared out at the ocean. A young family, a small boy held in his mother's arms, pointed out a dolphin breaking the surface and rolling beneath the waves. “Moving on? How can we move on? How can I ever forget for the rest of my life what my child has done? I pray every day for some salvation.” She looked back at her sister and warned in a loud voice, “Don't touch your eyes. They'll burn all night from the spice on your fingers.”
Using the crook of her arm, Diane wiped away her tears. Though she wished she could comfort her big sister, she realized she had no idea what swam in the depths of the body, what hopes and fears were fixed on her soul.
WHILE THE CHILDREN were in school on Tuesday, Margaret and Diane drove to town, past the shuttered mill, the workers drifting by the bars and the union hall. They stopped for lunch at the diner and wiggled into a booth. Diane curled her lip when she touched the waxy tabletop and the pads of her fingers stuck to the surface. Joyce Waverly noticed them and hurried over to say hello. “Mrs. Quinn, so nice to see you again.”
“This is my sister, Diane Cicogna, come up from Washington, D.C., for a visit. Diane, this is Joyce Waverly Green.”
“Green Waverly, Mrs. Q. Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Cicogna, though I think we may have met once or twice before when I was in high school. At a party over the house. How's that grandbaby of yours, Mrs. Quinn? She like that new coat?”
“Norah?” She held her eyes on Diane a beat too long. “Poor thing caught a cold over the weekend, fell through the ice down on Miller's Pond, but she's better now, thank God, though I was worried sick there for a while. How are your children, Joyce? How's the bun in the oven?”
“Keeping toasty Tell the truth, my feet are already swelling up like pumpkins with toes. I don't know how I'm going to make the last trimester.” Joyce shifted her weight from one hip to the other. “There's been something I've been meaning to ask you ever since you last came in.”
Diane cleared her throat. “Are you one of the girls Erica ran with?”
“Don't know that I'd say it quite like that, but yes, we were friends, ma'am. Best friends, back in the day.”
“Call me Diane. I wouldn't have recognized you, all grown up and a mother too. From the shape of you, you'll have a girl this time, carrying way up high like that. Of course if you had a spoon, some string, and a Gypsy, we could be sure.”
Joyce smiled at the joke, took their order for club sandwiches, and left them in peace. A handful of other people dotted the chairs and booths, mostly solos staring at their meatloaf and mashed potatoes, former mill hunks working through the crossword or the salesclerk from Murphy's tackling the latest Stephen King. A pair of young nurses, immaculate in white, finished up nearby, talking about amnio and C-sections while dipping French fries into the last slick of ketchup on their shared platter. The prettier one hit the bottom of her glass to free the ice but sucked air, and they both laughed, split the check, and left. Diane gave them the skunk eye as they passed the table, but the nurses took no notice.
“The things some people will discuss over lunch in a public place. Delivering babies while decent people are trying to enjoy their minestrone.” Diane laid both palms flat on the placemat, her engagement ring as ostentatious as ever. “What I'd like to talk about is that little girl of yours.”
Tapping her nails like a metronome, Margaret shot a sideways glance down the row of tables to see if Joyce was coming. “Erica?”
“Tangentially Erica, but more to the point, this child Norah. Tell me again how she's come to stay with you? Out of the blue, you hear from your estranged daughter and then this illegitimate—I won't use the vulgar word—is forced upon you?”
“Not at all, not like that at all.” She sipped from her water glass. “Just after the New Year, I got a telephone call in the middle of the night. She must have forgotten about the time difference, I'm always forgetting about time—”
The sandwiches arrived, stacked high and speared with colored toothpicks. Joyce Waverly set them down carefully before the two women. “Just let me know, ladies, if I can bring you anything else. Hey, I've heard news about your granddaughter. My cousin has a boy in third grade, and he says that the new girl is a real artist. Oh, what did he say? Better than Spider-Man, he says, better drawing than in the comics, and him loving Spider-Man more than Jesus, so it's quite a compliment. Since you last came in, I was wondering how's come Erica never mentioned a daughter when I talked to her a couple years back? Maybe I'm just not remembering right. Holler if you need anything, ladies.”
They waited until she was out of earshot. “Better'n Jesus. Still the country out here, you ask me.” Diane plucked the toothpicks from her toasted bread, held them like a picador ready to make the kill, and then tossed them to the rim of her plate. “So about Erica. What does she have to say for herself after all these years?”
Her sister finished chewing the corner of the sandwich, then wiped her mouth with the napkin, a dot of mayonnaise lingering on her upper lip. “At first, I didn't believe it was her and not someone else playing a prank. But she told me it really was her and she was in trouble, a different kind of trouble, and didn't know who to call.”
“Didn't she give you some explanation?”
“What, that she's a wanted woman, that she's underground, hiding, that she feared she would be traced? Of course, she's sorry. But when your only child asks for help, you help. No questions. She said she needed someone to look after Norah for her while she got her life back together.”
“Surely the statute of limitations has run out by now. Did you suggest that she might turn herself in and throw herself on the mercy of the court?”
“It wasn't a long discussion, Diane, and I didn't think about limitations, in fact, until you just mentioned it.”
“But you at least told her about Paul, right?”
The waitress arrived to ask if everything was to their satisfaction, and when they nodded, she scratched her belly with the edge of her order pad. “I remembered what I wanted to tell you. There was a man in here the other day, a funny way about him, asking about you and Norah. Said he knew you from way back when. Very handsome and old-fashioned. Dashing, they used to say. Said he was a friend of the family.”
Diane asked, “Did he call himself Jackson?” Margaret swatted the air in front of her.
“Never gave his name,” she said. “Never saw him before or since. Just funny all of a sudden you come in and then someone asking after you. You had some unexpected company lately?”
“Very mysterious,” Diane said. “We're fine, dear, really. Thanks.”
The interruption gave Margaret a chance to think, and she bought more time by taking another bite of her club sandwich, bacon crumbling to the plate, and chewing slowly. Scrunching up her face, she unpeeled the top piece of toast and removed the tomato slices. “Hothouse.”
Between bites, Diane asked again. “
So, how did she react when you told her that her father was dead?”
“As you might expect. They never taste right, hothouse tomatoes. I don't think she broke down and cried, if that's what you meant.”
“After all that man put her through, no.”
“He was only trying to protect her. You don't know that it wouldn't have been worse.”
“Couldn't be much worse than her running off with a criminal.”
“It can always be worse. There could have been a real confrontation. Threats were made.”
“By Paul? Harmless old Paul?”
Margaret snipped off another piece of her sandwich. “By the boy. And besides, if it had gone any other way, we might not have Norah, right? This funny-looking creature, stick skinny, and an entire mystery. She needs me, at least for a while.”
“Maybe you can threaten to keep her daughter.” Diane laughed. “That might bring Erica home.”
24
Tracks began at the edge of the bicycle path and cut on the diagonal through the maze of bare trees rolling into the hills, and the children bent to inspect the footprints: four toes and heel pad, the steps ten inches or more apart. Sean fingered the edges, and granules of snow rolled away in a miniature avalanche. Squatting next to him, Norah peered down the trail to the point where it vanished over the horizon.
“They're fresh.” Sean spoke with authority. “Probably a dog wandering through.”
“Not a dog,” Norah answered. “No claw marks in these prints.” “Or a raccoon, I was about to say. Maybe a possum.” Norah followed their progress between the trees. “How long have you lived in these woods, Sean? All your life? The front paws of a raccoon look just like a human hand, five fingers stretched out. And claws, amigo. Possum looks like a raccoon only the fingers are more spread out, like you were playing piano. Claws too. This thing we're following is a cat. Or maybe a gray fox, though the claws would show up in the snow this deep.”
“A cat? We're chasing after a cat?”
Norah waited for him to catch up, then bent to the print. “Definitely not Tiger or Fluffy. It's not a housecat, or if it is, then a really big cat, probably wild. But look how deep here. That animal weighs about twenty pounds, and look how it's walking.”
“Like there's only two legs? Where did its other feet go?” “A cat walks like this.” She splayed out her feet and hands and slunk forward with an arched back, rolling each shoulder in rhythm, which made him laugh uncomfortably. “But a wildcat will put its back foot right in the middle of the hole left by the front one.”
“A wildcat? Like a leopard?”
“If it's a leopard, I'll connect its spots. Bobcat, I think. C'mon.”
They hurried through the winter forest, the snow fresh and undisturbed save for the solitary set of tracks and the windblown litter scraping along the surface, the papery oak leaves, the empty acorn cups, the feathery twigs snapped off in the latest storm. In the boughs, frostings of snow remained, and when the children brushed against low-hanging branches, powder would sluice off and shower to the ground in their wake. The scrub pines and occasional firs provided the only color, the rest dun or gray in the cold and damp. Deep in the forest, a rare quiet pervaded, the snow hushing all sounds but their own footsteps. He could hear her labored breathing, which reassured him when she hurried ahead out of sight, and he caught up by following the husky rasp to find her squatting again before a thrash of marks.
“See this deep impression here,” she said, pointing to what looked to Sean like nothing more than two wide scrapes. “Kitty is tired. She sat back on her haunches for a siesta. Or maybe to watch a mouse skitter under a stone.”
“What if it turns out to be a bobcat, Norah? What if we catch up to it?”
“Have a little faith.” Her nostrils flared as she breathed deeply. “The game is afoot, my dear Watson. Well, come on, man!”
The afternoon faded to shadows as the trees grew thicker. Coming to a culvert between two hills, she paused and pointed to other tracks bisecting the cat's, showing him the rabbit run by the different patterns of footfall, the small front legs and the leaping pads. He expected blood on the trail, but the two animals had passed hours apart. Norah inspected the rough snow where the cat had casually sniffed the hare's scent and moved on. The sun dipped below the treetops, the upper branches splintering the sky into maroon and orange. The children climbed a path to the crest of the next hill, and she waved for him to stop and be still.
Silhouetted against the pewter clouds on the next rise about fifty yards ahead stood the cat in sharp relief against the snow. Its head cocked, nose in the air, catching their scent on the wind. A cloud cleared the setting sun, and the cat was bathed in light, its fawn-colored coat mottled with spots, the long white hair cloaking its paws and bristling at the tips of its ears and the bobbed tail. As quick as a breeze, it strayed into shadow and was gone. They could smell the tang of urine, hear the soft crunch of its getaway, and see its ghost standing on the vacant spot, fixed by magic and time.
“Listen, Sean. Tell me what you hear.”
He heard nothing but the sound of his own breathing and the bare hour, the sound of the land in stillness.
Norah faced him, her eyes glistening, as if she were remembering some past pain, and she asked her questions in a care-laden tone. “Do you know about the atom bomb? The ones they dropped in Japan?”
Though he was not sure that he remembered any details, he nodded.
“There was just silence, like this, after the fires, after the sirens. Everything was still. Even the birds were gone. And those who survived walked around the destroyed city stunned to be alive.”
The cat was long gone, he was sure, unlikely to come near the sound of her voice.
“I know a story that they tried to keep hidden,” Norah said. “About Mrs. Quinn's husband. He was there, in Nagasaki, Japan, after the bomb was dropped, with the army's medical team. He saw the ruined city.” As he listened to the details, Sean grew frightened, not only of the story about the young doctor facing so many dead and dying, but of being lost in the dark woods.
She finished in hushed whispers. Hunching her shoulders against the falling temperature, Norah pivoted on her heels and began to retrace their steps. Sean stumbled along behind her, nearly out of breath when he reached her side. They strode together, stepping in the prints they had made outward bound.
“Didn't I tell you it was a bobcat?” she said.
“I never seen anything like it,” said Sean. “I saw a possum once crossing the yard, fat as you please, early one morning on my way to school. But a bobcat, wow. I had no idea they even lived around here.”
“There's much you don't know and much that is hidden from you. Look beyond the surface, amigo.” A phlegmy cough rattled her chest.
“That was so cool, but how are we going to find our way back when it gets dark?” He cast a worried eye to the skies. “Aren't you afraid of getting lost?”
She spat onto the snow. “Don't worry, it won't get dark.”
“But the sun is already setting. You can barely see as it is.”
Norah stopped and faced him. “Sean, if I say you'll get home before nighttime, you have to believe me.”
He pleaded with her. “But it's sunset—”
“Where is your faith? If I wished, it would be bright as the noonday sun this very moment. Believe in me.”
Having no other choice, Sean marched behind, following her through the trees, head tipped against the breeze, as relentless as a wave. Hidden nearby, the one who watched let them go. In his arms, the wildcat squirmed and growled until his captor absentmindedly released his grip. In the opposite direction, the boy and the girl trudged home. Along the way she provided a running commentary on the forest, the names of the winter plants, the places where turtles slept and field mice hunkered down for the season. They passed a set of human prints, a man's dress shoes, leading in and out of a maze of paper birches, but she said nothing about the mysterious tracks. Out of the woods an
d onto the paths, she sang and whistled carelessly, distracting him from the passing time. When they arrived at his front door, he was astounded to glimpse the sunset horizon and the underside of the clouds glowing vermilion in the last gasp of the dying day.
25
When he was alone, Sean did not know what to believe. Caught between fear and fascination, he thought at first that she might be a magician, a witch, a devil, able to stop time or change her appearance at will or keep aloft objects with her very breath. But though she intended some deception with Mrs. Quinn, or at least her aunt Diane, she had no evil purpose he could determine. The evidence pointed elsewhere. What had she said? With every breath, God exhales an angel?
But if she was an angel, what about her wings? In almost every picture, they had huge white feathered wings that began between the shoulder blades and arced in triumph, curving until the tips nearly brushed the ground. Sean could not figure out how they got off the ground with such wings—some aspect of aerodynamics seemed all wrong—so he scoured his Children's Illustrated Bible and other books for pictures of angels in flight. Every image captured some static moment, and he could garner no sense of the wings in motion. The angels in books wore white robes and sandals. Some had starry halos behind their heads. Norah had no halo. Many angels wore their hair long and perfectly coiffed, as if having just come from the stylist. Her hair was a fright. Their faces were universally kind, impassive or gentle, and they were almost always depicted as men. How could she be an angel? She had no wings, no halo. Angels do not bite.