The Probable Future

  Matt looked out at the pink street, a much poorer man than he’d been that morning. There was a lot he could say, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t look up at the third-floor window, though he knew that was where their apartment was. He supposed it was in his nature to keep what he felt to himself. If he made good time on the highway, he’d be home in a little more than an hour, and that’s what he intended to do. Some histories were meant to be forgotten, and others were fated not to begin in the first place; they remained where they belonged, in the hazy universe of lost possibilities, in the world of never-had-been.

  “I mean it, brother,” Will called as Matt was leaving. “I’ll pay you back.”

  Matt laughed as he pulled back out into traffic. “Like hell you will,” he said.

  IV.

  STELLA AND HAP STEWART had decided to test local bodies of water for possible toxicity as their earth science project, which meant they had to track through the woods all over town, in search of ponds and inlets, any body of still water, each and every larva-ridden puddle. They tromped through nettles and poison ivy, wild blackberries and duck grass. They had passed by so many peach trees beginning to flower that they soon grew hungry for peach cobbler, peach jam, and peach pie.

  All of the water samples were bottled, labeled, and brought over to Cake House. Hap knew his grandfather came here often, but he himself had never been any farther than the driveway. Unlike Jimmy Elliot, he’d never gone swimming in Hourglass Lake; he’d never seen the mist people vowed was a dead horse rising from the weeds, or done battle with one of those ferocious snapping turtles. Jimmy Elliot had the tip of one finger missing from an encounter with one such turtle, or so people said; the notion had so terrifed his fellow students in earth science class that no one dared walk past the old turtle kept in a tank at the rear of the room.

  “Come on,” Stella said when Hap balked at the steps to the porch of Cake House. Stella’s back was aching from the heavy bottles of water stowed in her backpack. “My grandmother doesn’t bite. And we can get some food. I’m starving.”

  They were covered by mosquito bites, and brambles had caught in their hair. Frankly, they’d had a perfect afternoon, and Stella had learned her way around town. Due to a teacher conference, they’d had an early release day and had been gathering samples since noon; they’d skipped lunch and Hap had to agree his stomach was rumbling.

  As soon as they came into the house, Argus approached and let out a deep woof. “Whoa, boy.” Hap backed up against the wall, hands up, as though he were about to be mugged.

  “Argus won’t hurt you. He’s ancient,” Stella assured Hap. “He’s a pussycat.”

  “Uh huh.” Hap carefully petted Argus’s head. The wolfhound was as big as a lion, though his eyes, true enough, were cloudy, and his teeth worn to nubs.

  Standing in the front hall of Cake House, Stella and Hap kicked off their muddy boots and wet socks. Hap took note of the woodwork and the threadbare carpets that felt like silk under his bare feet.

  “I hear your grandmother doesn’t like visitors,” Hap said when Stella suggested they go fix themselves something in the kitchen. Actually, he had heard trespassers often found onions riddled with pins nailed to their doors, a curse on both the present and the future.

  “Oh, don’t be silly. Come on.”

  Stella went to the kitchen, and Hap had little choice but to follow; he didn’t take his eyes off Stella’s pale hair, which reminded him of the snowdrops that appeared in the woods so early in spring they were easily mistaken for snow.

  Argus padded after them, then situated himself beside the table, where he waited politely for crusts from their peanut butter and peach preserves sandwiches. After lunch, they searched and found the perfect place to store their water samples, in the scullery where potatoes and onions were kept. As they sorted the bottles, their hands touched accidentally. Of course, they acted as though nothing had happened, but afterward Stella wondered if Hap might be something more than a friend. Shouldn’t her hand have burned at his touch? Shouldn’t she feel her heart in her chest when she was with him? Shouldn’t she know for sure?

  Last night Stella had sneaked down to the parlor at a little after midnight to call Juliet Aronson. She didn’t realize she was talking nonstop about Hap until Juliet had asked if she thought she might be Hap’s one true love.

  “How would I know?” Stella had laughed, embarrassed.

  “Ask him who he would want to have with him on a desert island and see what he says.”

  “That’s hardly conclusive evidence.”

  “Just try it.” Juliet had sounded so wise and so sad, she’d sounded as if she’d done everything there was to do in this world and had been disappointed each and every time.

  Now, in the kitchen, Stella wondered what Juliet would make of Hap Stewart. He was feeding Argus a spoon of chunky peanut butter.

  “Look at this guy,” Hap said cheerfully. “He loves this stuff. It’s full of protein, so it can’t be bad for him.”

  It was when she’d spoken to that nasty Jimmy Elliot in the school cafeteria that her heart had been pounding. That couldn’t be love, could it? That couldn’t be destiny. Not possibly. Not ever. A reaction like that had to be some sort of illness, heartburn at worst, spring fever at best. For spring was everywhere in this corner of Massachusetts. The alewives were running in brooks, as they always did at this time of year, and the toads had begun to sing, that sorrowful, deep song that speaks of water and starry nights and mud. Out in the garden, Elinor Sparrow’s hands were bleeding as she worked at her early spring cleanup. She was pruning, cutting back old growth, never a pleasant task, particularly when it came to roses with their sneaky thorns, some so tiny they were impossible to avoid, invisible until they pricked through the skin. Still, she’d heard the blood of a gardener always made for an early blooming season. The blood of a murdered woman, on the other hand, killed everything in its path, as it had when Rebecca walked to the lake on the day she was drowned, so that nothing remained but clods of earth and black stones the size of a human heart.

  April was quickly approaching. Elinor could smell it in the musk of the wild ginger in the woods; she could tell by the regularity of the rain that had begun to fall in the late afternoons. Before long, there would be sheets of green rain of various different consistencies: fish rain, rose rain, daffodil rain, glorious rain, red clover rain, boot polish rain, swamp rain, the fearsome stone rain, all of it washing through the woods, feeding local streams and ponds. This was the time of year when Elinor usually began grafting floribundas with Chinas and damasks as she searched for her true blue rose. She knew it was foolish, an all but impossible task, and yet she had continued. No wonder they talked about her at gardening clubs all up and down the Commonwealth, as far away as Stockbridge, as nearby as North Arthur. Didn’t Elinor Sparrow know that genetic tinkering was the only way to make something brand-new, the single possible method of ever forcing a blue rose into being? Didn’t she know that fools such as herself had been trying to devise a blue rose for centuries, always failing, always facing disappointment?

  And yet, Elinor was convinced that spindly seedling in the north corner might surprise everyone. No one would have expected that a garden could contain one of the native swamp roses that were only found in Unity, odd vines that were spied even when the first settlers arrived. Invisibles, people called them, for the swamp roses were said to wilt once seen by human eyes. But this one had flourished in the garden; if that could happen, then perhaps Elinor would have her blue rose at last. Perhaps all those other fools who had tried and failed before her would travel to this section of the Commonwealth, in awe of what had grown despite all odds, ready to sink to their knees and kiss the earth.

  The possibility of success felt like a cherry stone in Elinor’s mouth, real and hard and true. For the past few months she’d had the impression that time was rushing past her, as though she were walking through a wind tunnel, with years streaming by on either side, days and
night disappearing in a white blur. When it came right down to it, what did she remember most of her lifetime? The woods when she was a child, the way they seemed to breathe, as if they were a single green creature with one heart and mind. Her mother, Amelia, whose hands eased pain, sewing quilts in the winter. Love’s Lost. Honor’s Gone. Dove in the Window. The moment when she first spied Saul in the library of the state college where she’d been a student and he a new teacher, an instant when the whole world stopped on its axis. Her little girl, Jenny, seeing snow for the first time. The smile on her granddaughter’s face when she waved to Elinor at the train station. The rose she had always dreamed of, always blue, always unattainable.

  When a rain shower began, Elinor went back to the house. She had in mind her granddaughter’s insistence that she wouldn’t die before snow began to fall. Was she relieved or terrified by this decree? Was she glad to know this timetable, or did she regret having asked for a date? Possibly the girl had been right: it might indeed be better to wake every morning without knowing what the day would bring, how the story would end, at what hour night would fall. Elinor was so preoccupied by these notions she hadn’t even realized she had blood all over her clothes until she went into the kitchen and noticed the look on the face of the boy who was, for reasons unknown to her, sitting at her table.

  “You’re bleeding, Gran,” Stella said in a perfectly reasonable voice. There was quite a lot of blood, actually; some of it was still leaking from a cut on Elinor’s arm. The boy at the table looked as though he might faint, but not Stella. She had no fear of blood; in fact, she found it quite interesting, a strange and mysterious elixir. She brought her grandmother to the sink, where she ran cold water over the places where the thorns had gouged out pinpricks of skin, then went to the scullery for some bandages.

  “It’s nothing,” Elinor insisted. She would have to tell Brock Stewart how the blood hadn’t bothered Stella in the least. How quickly the girl had reacted, as though caring for someone came to her naturally. In that regard, she clearly had not taken after her father.

  “What’s he doing here?” Elinor nodded to Hap. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “We had half a day. Anyway, it’s four o’clock now. And this is Hap Stewart, the doctor’s grandson. I’m sure you know him, Gran.”

  “We’re using a toxicology kit I ordered from the Fish and Game Department to test local water.”

  Once he began to speak, Hap couldn’t seem to shut up. He couldn’t quite believe he was sitting in the Sparrows’ kitchen in a house that some people in town said had been known to rise above its stone foundation, especially on windy days.

  “We’ve either found some pretty interesting microorganisms or a lot of fish poop,” Hap went on.

  Elinor narrowed her eyes, but the boy still didn’t seem familiar. Interesting, but she could see that the boy didn’t have a single lie in him. A very rare condition, especially for the male of the species. In this way, he certainly resembled his grandfather. Of course, she had known Brock Stewart was lying to her that one time, when he came to tell her about the circumstances of Saul’s death. Elinor could see through an honest man as if his soul were a windowpane. Why, when old Judge Hathaway was still on the bench and Elinor was a girl, he’d often call her down to the courthouse to get her opinion, particularly in issues of domestic disputes. This girl knows her liars, the old judge would say. Try telling her a tall tale and see where it gets you.

  And, indeed, she knew Brock Stewart was lying when he told her Saul was alone in his car at the time of his accident. Things were different back then, people listened to doctors and held high their opinions in all matters, not merely medicine. Dr. Stewart must have convinced Chip White, then chief of police, and several members of the Boston Highway Patrol to go along with his story. For they had all conspired to leave out a single fact: one of Saul’s colleagues, a woman new to his department, had died along with him in the crash. Once Elinor picked up the doctor’s lie, she phoned the college, but even they wouldn’t give out any information. Still, she understood now why Saul had often been late coming home in the evenings, why the telephone rang and, when she picked up, no one was on the line. How had she, of all people, not known of his disloyalty? Saul had never quite lied, that was the thing; he had only not told her the truth, and even Elinor Sparrow could not decipher emptiness and evasion.

  Ever since the accident, Elinor had wondered if Dr. Stewart’s lie had forever bound them together, tied their fate into one strand with invisible thread. She remembered exactly how cold the day was. How the doctor’s breath had turned to frost as he lied. It pained him, she could tell, but he lied anyway. There was snow, the swirling sort that never stuck to the ground, and Elinor went through the snow into the garden, where she could feel the weight of the lie the doctor had told, the lie she had been living when she was so certain she was the one person in town who could divine the truth. She left it to the doctor to tell Jenny, even though it was her duty to do so. Elinor was in so much pain, she couldn’t think straight. She was bleeding from the inside out, and unlike Stella, Elinor had never been able to stand the sight of blood, especially her own.

  Even now, she couldn’t bring herself to examine the red marks left by cutting back the roses. If Stella hadn’t been there to see to her wounds, Elinor would have surely ignored them, such was her habit and her inclination, even though she knew whenever someone ignored what hurt her most, she’d wind up in grave circumstances. Ignore love, she now understood, and a person might bleed forever, even if no one could tell.

  Elinor wondered why this boy, the doctor’s grandson, was hanging around, grinning, eating peanut butter. The motive might be water samples and fish excrement, but it might be something more. So often love was invisible; sometimes only two people could see it, and everyone else was blind. The women in the Sparrow family never looked before they leaped; they were easily pulled into the sort of desire that wouldn’t let go. Unless Elinor was mistaken, Stella was wearing lipstick and some sort of black gunk lining her eyes. Well, the girl was growing up, wasn’t she? And even if Elinor didn’t see Hap and Stella as well suited, who knew where their friendship might lead. The cat, after all, was most definitely away. Jenny phoned every night, but her attention was taken up with Will Avery. He had returned, trapped in Boston by a court order; he had nowhere else to stay and Jenny hadn’t the heart to turn him away. Well, Jenny certainly wasn’t close enough to hear the bell chiming on her daughter’s bracelet as Stella went out walking into the rain with Hap Stewart. She thought she still had a child as a daughter, but she had something entirely different, someone who had turned thirteen.

  As Stella walked along the driveway with Hap, she wished she could predict the weather. She wished she could stay underwater the way Constance Sparrow was said to have done, in which case she could take water samples from the depths of Hourglass Lake. How much better it would be if she could ease someone’s pain, or find what was lost, or tell a liar from an honest man. Instead, all she could see was that Hap Stewart would break his neck when he was thrown by a horse. She had seen this shadow the first day she met him, but she hoped it would disappear. Now as she walked closer beside him, shivering in the rain, she looked at him again. His death was still there.

  Stella had already seen that Cynthia Elliot, who worked at the tea house and was two grades ahead, would die of pneumonia in her eighty-second year, and that Mademoiselle Marcus, who taught French I and French II, would be felled by a stroke. She had seen that the wiseguy who had stood behind Jimmy Elliot and teased her in the school cafeteria would be in a car wreck when he was a freshman in college. The way she saw the future of such people was as real to Stella as anything else in this world: a mockingbird, a table, a chair, the smile on Hap Stewart’s face as the rain fell down on them.

  There was no way that Stella was going to allow Hap to be thrown from a horse. He was her only friend in town.

  “Do you like horses?” Stella asked as they walked along. Havin
g pulled their wet socks and muddy boots back on, there was no need to avoid the mud puddles in the driveway.

  “Does this have something to do with the dead horse in the lake?” Hap asked. “You know I don’t believe in that.”

  “Just wondered if you liked to go riding. That’s all.”

  “Nope.” Hap grinned. “I’m not exactly a cowboy. Anything else you’d like to know about me?” The rain was pouring down now, but neither one cared.

  “Maybe. Let me think.” Perhaps she should try Juliet’s test. Perhaps she should feel more about Hap; he was perfect for her, after all. Anyone could see that. “Who would you most want with you if you were stranded on a desert island?”

  “Living or dead?” Hap said thoughtfully.

  “Either.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Either.” Stella felt sillier by the moment. Her hair was wringing wet and her clothes were drenched. They were passing by the lake where the rain fell like stones into the still water. They stopped by the shore to watch as lily pads floated by.

  “I guess it would be you,” Hap said.

  For a moment, Stella thought she’d misheard. Maybe her pulse had drowned out his words. But, no, she had heard him correctly. He was such a good person, so careful and thoughtful. He knelt down near the shallows to take a water sample from the lake and he didn’t spill a drop. She knew she should feel the same way, but as Hap closed the last sample of cold, green water and tadpole eggs and algae, she had only one person in mind, the most unfortunate, horrible boy in town, the one she couldn’t stop thinking about, even when she tried.

  IT WAS NOT as though Jenny was about to take Will back, despite what her landlady and the other tenants in the building might think. Naturally, they would all be against a reunion of any kind, for each and every resident, from the first to the fifth floor, despised Will Avery. These neighbors did not care if Will was handsome, if his eyes were flecked with gold; they did not give a damn if he knew by heart every tune Frank Sinatra had recorded and could play Scott Joplin rags in his sleep. These were the same people who’d been forced to hear him going at the piano at all hours when he’d lived in the building before: Dylan songs in the middle of the night, “Idiot Wind” or “Tangled Up in Blue.” Louis Armstrong in the afternoon, when most hardworking people had better things to do. Repetitive practicing of four-octave scales when he really wanted to let his neighbors have it, right at dinnertime, played fiercely, without mercy.