The From-Aways (16 page)

The town clerk, Maude Gunthrop, is wearing a peach skirt suit with flesh-colored tights and blue snow boots. She calls the meeting to order and asks that the second chair, whoever that is, read the minutes from the last meeting. “As first chair, I call this meeting to order at six twenty-two
P
.
M
. Will the second chair please read the minutes from last meeting?”

“Forget the minutes!” someone shouts. “We’ve got stuff to talk about.” There is sympathetic muttering.

“Mr. Dawson?” says Gunthrop. “Yes, hello, Mr. Dawson, welcome. Mr. Dawson, if you’d ever come to one of these meetings before . . .” With this, she scans the crowd. “In fact, if any of you had
ever
come to one of these meetings before, you would know that this is how we begin. Protocol does not drop out all of a sudden just because we have a few additional constituents in attendance, does it, second chair?”

“No, ma’am,” says the second chair, a thin man with a head of hair like a pelt, whom I suspect of being married to the first chair, or, at least, of sleeping with her.

“Damn, Gunthrop!” Quinn says admiringly. She leans across to hiss at Charley and me, “Let’s get
her
on staff!”

The second chair then proceeds to read the minutes from the last town hall meeting. Then Gunthrop asks if there are issues from the floor.

A man with chestnut hair swept back like a lion’s stands up. “I motion that we discuss the legal limitations of Neversink Park and the Dorian property.” His voice rings like a bronze bell.

Henry turns pale. Charley nudges me and says, “You know who that is by now, I hope?”

Carter and Quinn look so much alike I can’t help but stare.

18

Quinn

N
ot only does Carter now appear properly fucking shod but Rosie’s face lights up the moment he stands. “Cut it out,” I say.

“What?”

“Glowing.”

“He’s wonderful,” she says, her
wonderful
three syllables long and she’s not the only one. Half the place has faces glowing like Rosie’s. It’s not just that Carter is a semifamous musician. It’s that something about his bigness draws people in. I could pretend I don’t get it, but I have a fox eye in my pocket. Rosie whispers, “The other day, when I brought him his eggs? He said it was vital we preserve the historical traditions and character of Menamon. Did you know the Stationhouse has been around for over eighty years?”

“Is that why our utilities blow?”

“Would you shut up?” Charley hisses. “I’m trying to get quotes.”

Carter says, “But, Ms. Gunthrop, isn’t it the benefit of governing a small town that tradition may prevail over power? Logic over bureaucracy?”

I sink low in my seat, but also hope maybe he’ll see me.

Gunthrop reiterates that the area we know as Neversink Park is not actually public property and that if the Dorians want to fence their land and get rid of the carousel, they can.

It only takes a moment for this to sink in, and then half the room is on its feet and talking at once. Billy Deep trips all over himself standing up and says, “Who said anything about getting rid of the carousel?”

“My kids grew up riding that carousel,” a woman in a wool sweater says. “It’s a historical landmark.”

A man with a red beard says, “What are they gonna do, mail out special invitations to the kids who want to ride it? Make them RSVP to get in past the gates?”

“No way, Frank,” Cliff Frame says. “They’ll tear it down. They probably think the thing is tacky. Probably it’s a semipermanent structure.”

“Ms. Gunthrop,” Carter says, and everyone gets quiet for a moment. “I wonder if you might let us know exactly what the Dorians’ plans are in regard to the carousel. Are they open to discussion with the town? Perhaps an arrangement could be made to preserve just that section of the park so that—”

“You don’t get it,” Gunthrop says. She shakes her head and smiles joylessly. “There’s no discussion to be had. The park is their land, and the carousel is their property. So whether they want to use it, or share it, or pay a bunch of wreckers to take the thing down, stick by stick, it’s up to them.”

From the back, someone shouts, “Don’t kill the carousel!”

There’s a new uproar, but Gunthrop waves her hands around and shouts, “Meeting over! Meeting over!” When it becomes clear that no one is leaving, she and the second chair pack up their papers and scurry out the back entrance, people shouting after them: “Don’t kill the carousel!” Everyone stands around arguing for a while, until it’s clear she isn’t coming back. Muttering, they start filing out into the parking lot. Henry and Leah move fast, and by the time we’ve made it to the aisle, they’re gone. I’d hoped we’d compare notes—I wanted to know what she thought of Carter. If anyone could be invulnerable to his speechifying, I think it would be Leah, and I love her for that.

O
UTSIDE
, R
OSIE
,
A
gleam of purpose in her eyes, says, “They can’t get rid of the carousel. We need to
do
something.” People are milling around the parking lot.

“Rosie, be serious,” I say. “When was the last time you rode that rusty old trap?” Because, sure, she probably rode the thing every weekend of her childhood. It has sentimental value. I understand. But this new stance is about more than that. Rosie loves this sort of thing, sweeping generalities about justice and love. She’s the sort of girl who dreams of participating in something big. I was maybe like that once, for a second, before Marta, before everything.

I light up a cigarette and sit on the hood of my car. I see Billy leaving the meeting with his angry-young-man face on. His hands are shoved deep in his jacket pockets and his chin is tucked to his chest. “Hey, Billy,” I say. “Come here, what’s up?”

“Quinn, I have serious things on my mind today,” Billy says. He hasn’t yet forgiven me for putting an end to his lucrative cat-bagging. But he perks up at the sight of Rosie. Everyone does.

“We’re going to get a few drinks,” I say. “You want to come?”

“Can’t,” he says. “My dad just headed to the Uncle.” It’s not that they wouldn’t serve him, I know, but that Joseph wouldn’t stand for it.

“I’m a proficient bartender,” Rosie says.

I say, “Where do you think we’re entertaining, lady?”

“I have a key to the Stationhouse,” Rosie says.

“Billy,” Carter calls from the gymnasium. A triangular window illuminates a basketball hoop in its frame and the bickering voices come loud and then soft as the gym doors swing on their hinges. I think about booking it before he sees me but Carter lopes over to us fast. I hop off the hood.

“Billy,” he says again, but then he sees me. He’s short on air and braces himself, hands on his knees. “Ms. Winters,” he says. Winters. He’s read my piece, and he knows, and I understand he’s crouched down like that to catch his breath, but I think about the way a father is supposed to bend at the knees when he talks to a child. To get down to her level.

I exhale. I feel a little shaky. A little mad. It’s unfair that he spends even this sliver of time with other people. There is such a deficit, a negative amount of time he’s not spent with me.

“The
Star
appreciated your letter,” I say in a way that I hope conveys my deep and abiding sarcasm. “We stopped by Cliff’s tonight.”

“I look forward to your piece,” Carter says. He’s looking at me now, not rattled but not easy either.
Really
looking at me like he didn’t last time and I hope he’s seeing a ghost. I hope it’s clear that this is a haunting going down right now.
Please
go see your father,
Marta said.
Please
.

Carter stands up and says, “Rosalind.” He dips his head, a cowboy bow.

“Hey, Carter,” she says. Then, “I want to help. How can I help?”

“Rosie,” I say, louder than I should.

“Whatever you’re here to talk to Billy about, I want to help with it too,” she says. Billy grins, like he’s somehow responsible for bringing her into the fold.

“Rosalind, I’m only here to offer Billy a ride home,” Carter deflects.

“Bullshit,” I say. I can tell by his face he’s surprised
.
I get a rush of fear like I have one foot off a ledge. I squint at the sky because I’m unable to back up my gall with my face. The night is clear. I focus on the center star in Orion’s belt.

“I’m all right,” Billy says. “I’m going to get a drink with these ladies.” He puts a hand on each of our backs and I grind some sand from my teeth. “I’ll come see you tomorrow.”

“Me too,” says Rosie.

Carter smiles but shakes his head. “As much as I’d enjoy your company, Rosalind, there’s really no need. I’m just showing Billy some old instruments he’s interested in.”

“That would interest me too,” Rosie says. “Quinn and I are in a band.”

I could kill her, but instead I keep staring at the sky. I can feel Carter looking at me. One two three stars in Orion’s belt. One two three in the sword. Elsewhere in the lot someone tries to start his engine. It sputters, screeches, turns over on the third try.

“Well then, by all means, come by,” he says. He clears his throat, making his voice even deeper and more fucking mellifluous, as impossible as that seems. “Ms. Winters, you should feel free to stop by as well. An important cause always has at least one journalist in its pocket.”

“I’m not pocket-sized,” I say.

“Quinn,” Rosie says, but what the hell does she want me to do?

“Well then, see you around,” Carter says. He leaves.

I
HAVE WHAT
I think is a memory but if I’m honest might only be a dream, of Carter singing to me as a baby. If I try not to think too hard, remembering around its edges, it’ll develop. I remember him whistling the melody line of “Thick as a Brick,” the part Anderson plays on his flute, and then singing me the rest. That’s it, the whole damn memory. But I’ve held on to that a long time. Now, however, that I’ve actually met him? I feel like that memory can’t have been true. It must have been just a lonely-ass dream.

R
OSIE LETS US
into the Stationhouse even though it’s after-hours. I’m pissed at her and she knows it. I get a bottle of whiskey and my guitar from upstairs, and when I pour the drinks I pump Billy’s full of ginger ale so I don’t get him into too much trouble.

Rosie is in the kitchen cooking us a griddleful of home fries. “You never let
me
in here after-hours,” I shout in. And believe me I have asked. Many a night at one in the morning I have dreamed of those industrial-sized ice cream buckets they keep in the walk-in. But Rosie was always firm.
That wouldn’t be professional,
she’d say.

I mess around with some finger picking. Play a few chords.

“It’s for the cause,” she calls back now. “Billy is working to preserve Menamon’s historic character.”

“There’s no fucking cause,” I say. “There’s just Carter bitching about that shitty park and Billy catnapping people’s pets. Which, by the way, I think is reprehensible.”

“You’re just pissed because your old man likes spending time with me,” Billy says, all of a sudden a big man, an appeaser.

“That is not true,” I say. Through the crisscrossed windowpanes I see the moon cut up in four pieces. “How the fuck did you know that?”

“He told me,” Billy says, and reaches for his drink like it’ll save him. He vigorously chews ice. “Besides, you’re his spitting image. Doesn’t take a DNA test.” He looks out the window. “
Moon river
,” he sings.

And
this
is the thing that’s knuckling down on my heart: everyone fucking knows, including Carter, and it doesn’t change anything. That scrap of please Marta left me, it felt like the first direction in a scavenger hunt. I thought if I did like she asked, the next step would just become obvious, one clue leading to another waiting on Carter’s doorstep or something. Marta, did you have any plan at all? I whistle Jethro Tull. I try to pick out the chords for “Moon River.”

“Where’d you pick up a dusty old song like that?” I say.

Billy tilts back in his chair so a square of moonlight falls on his buttoned-up belly. “They listen to WKML while they shuck the oysters in the back,” he says. “I hang out in there sometimes.”

“Sing it again,” I say.

“
Moon river!
” he croons, his voice filling the empty room.

“Motherfucker,” I say. “Billy, you can sing.”

Rosie comes out with a plate of potatoes all browned up with onions and peppers mixed in. She takes a seat and pours the Stationhouse’s cranberry chipotle sauce all over them. Billy is ready with a fork, starts shoveling it in.

“Want to be in our band?” Rosie says.

His mouth full of food, Billy says, “What band?”

“Cassandra Galápagos and the Aged Tortoise,” Rosie says.

Billy rolls his eyes. “I’m not being in any band called Cally Hoo-Ha and the Fuckin’ Turtles,” Billy says. “That’s gay.”

I give him the hairy eyeball.

“You know what I mean,” he says.

19