A Place We Knew Well (25 page)

“Steve's out to lunch. I'll leave as soon he gets back.”

“Okay. Please hurry, Dad.”

“
G
OOD AFTERNOON.
C
HERRY
P
LAZA
H
OTEL.”

“Yes.” Avery cleared his throat. “I'm calling one of your guests. Miss Ayres, Kitty Ayres?”

“One moment, please…I'm sorry, sir. Miss Ayres doesn't answer. May I take a message?”

“No message. Thank you.”

He strode to the office doorway, peered across the street for the return of the red Firebird. He considered calling Bo Hammond to summon Steve and Lilly back to the station; but he had enough on his plate without setting off another round of Lilly's suspicions. Besides, they were due back at one and it was already twelve forty-seven.

Thirteen minutes, he thought, plus the four-minute drive home. Surely Sarah and Charlotte would be okay till then.

Intent on the traffic, he was surprised to find his view suddenly blocked by the side panel of a large white truck, and to hear, magnified beneath the rain-enclosed canopy, the keening squeal of the Divco brakes.

Milkman Jimmy Simms sat slumped in his seat. His face, normally ruddy, was drained of color. His eyes stared blindly ahead; both hands gripped the wheel tightly. On the dash beside him, the microphone of his two-way radio squawked static.

Was he having a heart attack? “Jimmy, you okay?”

Simms's eyes floated in Avery's direction but failed to focus.

Avery put a hand on Simms's shoulder. “Jimmy? You all right?”

“They lost one,” Simms said, his tone disbelieving.

“One what, Jimmy?”

“One of them turkey buzzard planes you were so hot to see. Took off early. Didn't come back. Sonuvabitch Castro shot it down, just like Powers over Russia!”

“A U-2?”

Simms nodded. “Not one of them black ones, though. Buddy at the barn says they're all there. Musta been a silver.”

With the lone air force star. Avery flinched in alarm. Shooting down an air force plane was a clear-cut act of war. And no doubt the very thing LeMay and the other Chiefs had been hungering for.

This was the trumpet's call to the final horror—a war of missiles that, once started, would be over before most people even knew it had begun.

R
ACING HOME, HIS SPIRITS
in a sickening spiral, Avery tried to recall what he'd told Steve about needing to go, about not coming back for the rest of the day. He failed.

In fact, turning onto his own street, he realized he remembered nothing of the mile-and-a-half drive except his quick stop at the empty cottage to scribble a note to Kitty:
Game canceled on account of rain. Sarah not well. Had to go. Sorry, Wes.

The air inside the cab was too close and, with the defroster blasting, too warm. Avery felt chased by the downpour of rain, trapped behind the slap of the wipers on the windshield and the rain-muffled roar and whine of jet engines overhead. He swung into his own driveway a bit too quickly and felt the truck's rear end give way in the curve. He braked into his usual space under the carport, took the truck out of gear, and nearly opened his door into Charlotte, who'd come rushing out of the house.

“She's gone
bonkers,
Dad!”

“What do you mean?”

“All I did was offer to make her a sandwich and she looked at me like she'd seen a ghost—”

“A ghost? What did she say?”

“Nothing, Dad. She just ran out the door, onto the back porch, and started yelling at the poor parakeets!”

“Still there?”

“No. After that, she ran outside. She's out there now…standing in the rain! I tried…I really tried to get her to come in, but…she wouldn't come.” Charlotte was weeping.

He reached out and gave her shoulder a comforting squeeze. “Okay, Kitten. I'll go out and talk to her. Meanwhile, you drive up to Doc Mike's. Tell him we need him right away.”

She wilted with relief. “I called Mr. Beauchamp back. Told him Mom was sick and somebody else needed to make her calls.”

“Good thinking, kiddo.”

“I tried calling Emilio, too. To let him know about the game,” she said in a rush, climbing into the truck, “but nobody's answering out at the camp.”

Were they evacuating the Pedro Pans? Where to? “How 'bout after Mike's, you run by the Catholic church. Look up the priest—Thomas is his name.”

“Father Tom? Of course. Well, maybe…” She touched the side of her head and nibbled her lip, torn between the desire to go and the need to return. “If you think…”

He held up a palm, waved her away.
Go,
it said. “We'll be fine,” he promised, and hoped he wasn't lying.

He was halfway across the covered back porch when he finally saw her through the rain-streaked screen. The unlikeliness of the scene stopped him short.

Sarah, who routinely took baths instead of showers because she disliked “water splashing on my face,” stood, face raised to the downpour, hair and rain streaming down her back. Sarah, who never emerged from their bedroom without robe and slippers, stood barefoot on the grass, her sleeveless, rain-soaked nightgown cupping her buttocks and clinging to her legs. Her long, bare arms were outstretched toward the lake, flapping wildly like wings, and she was calling urgently, inexplicably, “Shoo! Go on! You're free!”

None of this made any sense to Avery. Until he saw, beside her on the grass, the three birdcages, doors ajar, pegs empty.

For reasons known only to her, Sarah had set all three of her parakeets free in the middle of a downpour.

Avery grabbed the cotton lap robe from the chaise. Sarah startled at the sound of the door and stepped farther down the lawn, her arms flapping more wildly. “Shoo!”

A spooked horse can't be forced, he'd learned in his childhood. You have to show it your respect, and gentle it back into the barn.

“Come in now, Sarah,” he said softly, draping the robe gently over her shoulders. “You'll catch your death out here.”

Rivulets of water striped her face. Rain or tears? It was impossible to tell. He reached out, tucked a strand of wet hair behind her ear. “Come back into the house, darlin'.”

She swung around to face him. Her eyes were coal black again and red-veined with misery. He wanted to fold her in his arms, carry her inside the way you would a terrified child. But the determined jut of her chin warned him away from trying.

“Catch my death? I'm half-dead already!” She stood her ground—though she was trembling all over, her teeth chattering—and let the robe fall to the grass.

Rain streamed down her body, over the two small mounds of her breasts, parting around each dark nipple, visible through the thin, wet nightgown.

“Please, darlin',” he urged softly, stretching out one hand, placing the other lightly at her back. He could feel her heartbeat racing between her ribs. “Come in with me.”

“I let them go, Wes.”

“I see that.”

“I wanted
song
birds. Canaries! But I let the guy at the shop talk me into parakeets. I
settled,
Wes. And I never heard a single note out of any one of them. Nothing but Ack! Ack! Ack! and ARK! ARK! ARK! I just couldn't
stand
it anymore! I'm
done,
Wesss.” She'd stiffened with warning, and pronounced his name with an unnerving hiss. “I'm done
settling
….”

“Nice rain we're having, don't you think?”

Avery turned. Mike Martell stood beside them, doctor's bag in one hand and a large orange-and-blue golf umbrella in the other.

“Oh, yes, isn't it!” Sarah warbled, a now smiling coquette.

Martell handed Avery his bag and umbrella and said, “Perhaps you could open the door and…” He took Sarah's hand and slipped it under his arm, escort-style. “A blanket sounds nice, doesn't it?” He patted her hand. “Maybe some hot coffee?”

Sarah made a flirt's pouty face. “Not coffee. Chocolate.
Hot
chocolate. With marshmallows on top!”

Avery held the umbrella high over their heads while Martell slowly, ceremoniously walked her toward the door and out of the rain.

Stepping in behind them, he set down the doctor's things, rushed off to grab a blanket, towels, and Sarah's robe and slippers. He thrust the bulk of it to Martell, save the robe, which he draped around her shoulders, then headed to the kitchen to put on coffee plus a small pan of milk for hot chocolate. Once he had those started, he dashed into their bedroom to exchange his own drenched clothes for dry ones.

Back in the kitchen, he stood watching the milk for bubbles and struggling to get a handle on his fears. All of them—Sarah nearly
naked
in the rain letting the birds go, Simms dumbstruck over the downed U-2, not to mention his standing up to Kitty at the cottage—swirled around him. Each was a potential disaster. But combined? His mind was a fog of imminent doom.

The metal shudder of the pan on the burner—the milk had begun to boil—brought him back to the task at hand. He grabbed mugs, spooned cocoa, poured hot milk into Sarah's mug, coffee into Martell's.

Martell had pulled up a chair beside the chaise, where Sarah sat facing him, bundled in her robe and the blanket; wet hair turbaned in a towel. They were talking urgently.

Avery, feeling odd man out, cleared his throat. Sarah glanced up, accepted her cup with a bright smile that immediately dimmed. “No marshmallows?”

“Sorry,” he faltered and, after handing off Martell's coffee, turned back toward the kitchen.

“I'll just be a minute,” he heard Martell say, heard his footsteps click cross the porch's dark terrazzo. Inside the kitchen, the doctor scowled. “You know that bridge we talked about crossing the other day?”

“Yes.”

“It's here.”

Avery was silent.

“She needs to go to Florida San, Wes. And soon. Mind if I make a call?”

While Martell dialed the number, Avery watched himself, as if from a distance, fish the plastic bag of miniature marshmallows off the pantry shelf, walk across the kitchen, step out onto the porch, and fill the top of Sarah's cup.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. She sipped on her mug, not looking at him.

He was glad, because he was trying—oh, how
hard
he was trying—not to look guilty over what they—he—was about to do to her.

Avery the observer watched himself squirm through a knot of questions: Did Martell bring his car? Will we drive her to the sanitarium together? In the doctor's car or Sarah's Buick? Has she forgotten about homecoming? What will we do if she refuses to go?

Martell appeared in the doorway, lips pursed in obvious aggravation. He curled a single finger in Avery's direction.
Come,
it said.

Avery looked at Sarah. She was licking a combination of chocolate and marshmallow foam off her lips and staring out at the rain. She seemed, impossibly, content.

“Everything okay, Sarah? Would you like another?”

“Another what?” she asked flatly.

In the brief hardening of her eyes, the sharpening of her features, Avery felt again the shadowy brush of a furtive, feral wildness. Instinctively, he folded one arm over the other, hoping to disguise the rise of gooseflesh on both his forearms.

“Another hot chocolate, darlin'.”

Her look softened instantly. “Yes, please. And a grilled cheese?”

“Of course. Be right back.”

Martell, who'd been watching their exchange from the doorway, backed silently into the kitchen.

Avery crossed the distance slowly, sensing the other shoe and dreading its inevitable drop.

“They're telling me the ward is full; that we'll have to wait for an empty bed. The chief surgeon and I were in med school together at Gainesville. I'll pull some strings, but it might take awhile. Tomorrow at the latest.”

“What'll we do till then?” The guilt he'd felt earlier, Avery realized, had been lined with relief that Sarah would be safely away from Kitty and in someone else's professional care. Now what?

“For starters, we'll take her off the Dexedrine; it's obviously over-stimulating her. And let's up the Miltown, which should calm things down a bit. The Seconal's been working at night, right?”

“Yes,” Avery answered, eyeing the doorway. What if Sarah walked in and found him huddled in conversation instead of fixing her cocoa? She was so erratic….“Could you write it down?” Avery pointed to the counter notepad and pen. He got out more milk, bread, cheese, and butter, set them down beside the stove, pulled out a frying pan, and refired the burners.

“Tonight of all nights,” he was thinking. And was surprised to hear he'd said it out loud.

Martell looked up, blinked confusion, then apparent understanding. “Oh, yes. The dance. Nancy and I are chaperoning.” He had a daughter, too, Avery remembered, a pretty cheerleader who'd be a senior next year. “This is Charlotte's big night, isn't it?”

Avery nodded, resigned to missing it. Sarah wasn't going anywhere this evening.

Martell tapped the tip of his pen on the paper. “Look here, Wes. We're supposed to be there at seven-fifteen. I could come here instead. Then you could go on with Nancy, watch the ceremony, and come back.”

“I couldn't ask you to do that—”

“Oh, yes, you could. Y'see”—Martell shot Avery a conspiratorial wink—“the Gators are in Baton Rouge and they're televising the game at seven. I come here, I could probably catch the first quarter, maybe even the first half.”

“And Sarah?”

“This'll knock her out for the rest of the day,” he replied, ripping his note off the pad. “When I come back, I'll give her a shot that'll take her through to tomorrow morning.”

Before Martell left, he explained her new dosage to Sarah.