What about Will? Kathryn wonders now. What secret did he reveal? “It’s funny that Will never told us he was gay,” she muses.
“I don’t think he figured it out until later,” Jack says. He takes a long sip of his beer, and puts his glass down on the table. “Listen,” he says. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair. “I’ve been putting off telling you this, but I think you should know. Will is HIV-positive.”
She stares at him. “You’re kidding.”
He shakes his head.
“When did he find out?”
“About a year ago.”
“Oh, Jesus,” she says.
“He’s doing well,” Jack says. “The protease inhibitors are making a big difference, and his T-cell count is fine. He hasn’t been sick or anything, not since the beginning.”
“When did he tell you?”
“I saw him a few months ago in Boston. Really, Kathryn, he’s doing fine.”
“God, I feel terrible,” Kathryn says, putting her head in her hands. “I kept up with him through college, but then …”
“Look, he understands. It was that way for all of us,” Jack says. He smiles, softening the impact of the moment. “Anyway, you’ll see him at the reunion. You can talk to him then.”
“Ohh,” she sighs, more a sound than a word. She feels as if she’s been hit in the chest.
By this time it’s happy hour and the deck is packed. In the entrance to the deck there’s a bottleneck of people carrying plates of chicken wings and nachos in and out. They sit in silence for a few minutes, staring out at the crowd.
“Look over there,” Jack whispers, motioning toward a group of women several tables over. Their table is covered with wrapping paper and baby clothes, and blue and pink balloons are tied to the back of a chair.
Like so many people in Bangor, the women look familiar, but Kathryn can’t place them. “Who are they?”
“They were in our class. Fifth Streeters. Kristi Wilson, Dawn Sommers, Heidi Murkoff and Susan Kominsky. Most of them are married now. Looks like Heidi’s got a bun in the oven.”
In high school, Kathryn remembers, Jack knew everyone. It always amazed her, walking down the hall with him, how many people he connected with. And he had a knack for names. It wasn’t just other students—he also knew the names of the cafeteria ladies and enough about them to make conversation as he pushed his orange plastic tray along the lunch line. Between classes he got to know the janitors; he brought the principal’s secretary a Whitman’s Sampler on her birthday, and he always had a joke for the vice-principal. Jack’s teachers loved him, the cafeteria ladies gave him seconds, and the school secretary excused his tardiness. The janitors let him into school on Saturdays when he’d forgotten his books. Jack was adept at the parting quip, but he also had greater skills at his disposal. Brian called it “high-beaming”—the ability to compress sincerity into a two-sentence exchange.
Kathryn scrutinizes the table of women. Several are wearing unflattering cotton A-line tops. “She’s not the only pregnant one,” she says. “I think Kristi was in my English class.”
“You want to go over and say hi?”
She grips the handles of her chair and, still seated, moves it around so that her back is to the group. “I don’t think so,” she says.
Jack laughs. “Well, aren’t you sociable?”
“This is exactly why I’m not going to the reunion,” she mutters. “First, I’m a loser, and second, I can’t remember anybody’s name.”
“Well, I can’t help you with the first one, but as far as the name thing goes, they’ll all be wearing huge ‘Hello, my name is Donna’ tags.”
“Okay. But what if I don’t want to remember anybody’s name?”
“That’s another issue. But I’m afraid you have no choice. I’m sending you there on assignment.”
“What?” she says sharply.
“You have to go. It’s part of the story. Girl disappears, best friend back in town for reunion, etc. The reunion part is crucial. And—uh-oh, don’t look now, but—”
“Jack! I thought it was you sitting over here!”
“Hey, Dawn, how’s it going? You remember Kathryn Campbell.” He kicks her leg under the table, and Kathryn turns around.
“Kath,” Dawn says, holding out a small, cool hand for her to grasp. “God, I haven’t seen you since …”
“Probably high school,” Kathryn says.
Dawn makes a motion like she’s trying to get a helmet off her head. “I like the red.”
“What?”
“Your hair. It’s so … festive.”
“Oh,” Kathryn says, self-consciously tucking a strand behind her ear. She’s pretty sure it’s not a compliment. “You’re looking very … healthy,” she says, trying to deflect.
Dawn puts a hand under her protruding belly. “Only eight weeks to go,” she says proudly. She motions back toward her table. “Heidi’s due at exactly the same time. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Yeah, that’s great, congratulations,” Kathryn says. She looks over at Heidi, who lifts her fingers in a caterpillarlike wave. Kathryn waves back.
“So you’re in town for the reunion?” Dawn asks.
Kathryn looks at Jack, and he nods. She nods, too.
“It should be interesting,” Dawn says. “I saw Pete Michaud the other day. I couldn’t believe it—he’s totally bald. And Marcie Daniels, remember her? She was on the squad with Kristi and me. Anyway, she’s gained like fifty pounds, it’s so sad. And Janis McAlary, I heard a rumor, I don’t know if it’s true, that she’s living in Portland with a woman. You know, I always wondered about her.”
And hey, did you hear about Kath Campbell? She dropped out of school and got a divorce and a bad dye job and moved back in with her mother….
“So what’ve you been up to?” Dawn is asking. She glances at the ring on Kathryn’s left hand. “Married, I see. Kids?”
“Oh, well, no.” Kathryn covers the hand with her other. “No kids. And I’m not married—not anymore. It’s pretty recent,” she adds.
“I’m so sorry,” Dawn breathes.
“Actually, she’s in town to do a piece for the paper,” Jack says, sitting forward.
“Oh! What about?”
“The Jennifer Pelletier case.”
Dawn’s eyes grow large and round. “Did something—”
“Nothing new. It’s just a follow-up. But it’s been a while since anyone took a good look at it, and we thought it was time.”
“Absolutely,” Dawn says, nodding. “We all—I mean, it’s unbelievable, isn’t it? People don’t just drop off the face of the earth.” She shudders. “And they never found the slightest clue, did they?”
“Not yet,” Jack says. “We’re working on it.” He smiles at Kathryn, and she smiles at Dawn.
“Well, good luck,” Dawn says. She nods over her shoulder. “I should get back. By the way, everybody says hi.”
“Hi, everybody,” Jack says loudly, half standing and waving a big wave. Kathryn waves, too, and the three women wave back.
“See you at the reunion,” Dawn says. “If I can find a tent big enough to wear.” She laughs and pretends to waddle back to the table.
When she’s gone, Jack says, “See? That wasn’t so bad.”
“Which part?”
Jack sighs. “You know what you remind me of? Those old ladies who lock their doors and stay inside all day, feeling sorry for themselves. And if anybody comes along and knocks on the door, they open it just a little”—he acts it out—“but keep the chain on. ‘Hello?’” he says in a quavery, suspicious voice.” ‘What do you want? Go away.’” He pretends to slam the door.
“Do I really?” she says, slightly wounded.
“You’re just so damn self-protective,” he says. “Come on, Kathryn, lighten up. Everybody has problems. One of Dawn’s brothers died last year in a car accident, did you know that? And she always wanted to go to medical school, but she had to take care of her mother, who has Park
inson’s.”
Kathryn blushes. “I didn’t know.”
“No reason you should. The point is, everybody has a story. Yours isn’t the only one.”
“God, Jack,” she says. “You must think I’m a total narcissist.”
“I’m assuming it’s a phase,” he says. He looks at her for a moment.
“Now, listen, whaddaya say we order some food? We missed the free wings, and I’m starving.”
She smiles, looking into his gray-green eyes, and he smiles back. He seems so certain, and she feels so uncertain about everything. “All right,” she says. “I’d like that.”
WHEN SHE GETS home that night, her mother is sitting in the red wingback in the living room in her bathrobe, flipping through Country Interiors.
“What are you doing up?” Kathryn asks. She looks at her watch; it’s 12:30 A.M.
“I couldn’t sleep,” her mother says. She yawns and stretches her arms over her head, and the magazine slides to the floor. “So,” she says casually, “where have you been?”
“I was out with Jack.”
“Oh, really.”
“Didn’t you see the note I left on the table?” she says, trying to ignore her mother’s insinuating tone.
“You said you were having drinks.”
“We did have drinks. Then we had dinner.”
“And then?”
Kathryn rolls her eyes. “God, Mom! I feel like I’m in high school.”
Her mother stands up and smooths her bathrobe, tightens the belt. “Well, to tell you the truth, Kathryn, I was a little worried. It’s late to be out driving around. Especially if you were drinking.”
“I wasn’t drinking. I had a few drinks. Over six hours. And you don’t need to be worried about me; I’m an adult.”
“Adult or not, you’re living under my roof.”
Kathryn stands very still, counting to ten under her breath.
“And besides,” her mother adds, “I was curious about how it went. Six hours is a pretty long date.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Well, whatever it was. Six hours is a long time for anything.”
Kathryn is tempted to tell her mother to leave her alone, that she’s tired and has a headache and wants to go to bed, but something in her mother’s voice changes her mind. She’s probably been sitting in that chair for hours, Kathryn thinks, keeping an eye on the clock and pretending to read magazines. It reminds her less of high school than of college, when she and her roommates would wait up for each other to report the evening’s events. Unlike some of her friends, she’s never had that kind of relationship with her mother; their exchanges have been more fraught. She has always felt the pressure, real or imagined, of her mother’s agenda: that Kathryn not scare her, not let her down, not marry someone unsuitable and end up divorced, as she did. But now the worst has happened. Her mother’s fears have been realized, and somehow, oddly, it may have taken the pressure off both of them.
Kathryn puts down her bag and sinks onto the couch. “Will Pelletier is HIV-positive.”
“Oh, Kathryn,” her mother says.
Tears well up in Kathryn’s eyes, and her mother comes over and sits beside her on the couch, putting her arms around her. “Baby,” she murmurs, kissing her head, and Kathryn feels herself relax into her mother’s warm embrace.
Chapter 14
Rachel lives in a small cottage in Orono, near the University of Maine campus. The front yard blooms with roses—pink roses spreading up the front walk, white roses climbing a trellis around the gingerbread-hut front door, yellow roses with orange-tipped thorns beside a white fence. The roses will survive for only a few months in the fickle Maine weather. It is so like Rachel, Kathryn thinks as she pulls into the driveway, to lavish time and attention on such fleeting beauty.
Rachel had been different from most of the kids at Bangor High. Her parents were Russian Jews, professors at the university, and they lived in a drafty modern solar-powered house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and overlapping Indian rugs. In high school it was Rachel’s ambition to be a poet; she read Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and e. e. cummings, and scrawled her own poems in a large hardbound notebook that her father had picked up for her in England, carrying it everywhere in her Guatemalan bag.
When she was fourteen she asked her parents to send her away to boarding school. No one understood her in Bangor; school was boring, the teachers were bland. Without more stimulation, she insisted, she would wither and die like a raisin in the sun.
Her father said, “So you’re suffering here.”
“Yes, I am,” Rachel said solemnly.
“You don’t belong, you’re an outsider.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, then, this may be the most important time in your life!” her mother exclaimed. “What more could a poet ask, than to be unappreciated and misunderstood?”
Rachel never tried to fit in with most of the other kids, in their ragg sweaters and penny loafers and copycat hairstyles. Her fine, dark hair was cropped short against the delicate bones of her face, and she dressed in velvet dresses from thrift shops with long underwear and hiking boots and dangling jewelry. Kathryn had always envied Rachel’s resolute self-assurance, her daring in dressing outlandishly, the way she’d go to movies or coffee shops and sit serenely by herself without the slightest concern about what anyone else might think. Kathryn was more insecure, always looking around for someone she knew, self-conscious about sitting alone.
The wooden gate is slightly ajar. Kathryn walks up the short stone path to the house and raps the brass knocker. The door opens and Rachel appears, smiling, wearing a floral peach dress and a necklace of seed pearls.
“Oh, Kath!” she says, coming up and hugging her from underneath, her arms going around Kathryn’s shoulders. “It’s wonderful to see you.”
“You, too,” Kathryn murmurs. She pulls back awkwardly. “Look at you—you haven’t changed.” It’s true; Rachel’s dark hair is still in a pixie, and she’s as slender as she was in high school, with pale, dewy skin.
Lightly touching Kathryn’s shoulder, Rachel looks into her eyes. “You have. You look … wiser.”
She resists the impulse to laugh, or cry. “You mean older.”
“Like you’ve learned something over the years.”
“I wish that were true,” Kathryn says, shaking her head.
Rachel goes into the kitchen to put a kettle on for iced tea—a characteristically elaborate and old-fashioned gesture, Kathryn thinks—and Kathryn settles on a couch in the living room. Opening her bag, she takes out a tape recorder, notebook, and pens. She looks around the room at the Victorian furniture and white cotton curtains and books stacked in piles as high as coffee tables. On the mantelpiece over the fireplace are several photographs of Rachel in exotic places—on the Spanish Steps, on a gondola in Venice, holding up a beer stein in a brightly lit café—with people Kathryn doesn’t recognize. There are a few pictures of Rachel’s cheerful, bespectacled parents, and one of a dark-haired man in a Bangor Rams T-shirt, standing in a clearing. Kathryn looks closer. “Hey, isn’t this Mr. Hunter from the high school?” she asks.
“Oh, yes,” Rachel says, coming into the room. She’s carrying a tray with a teapot, two tall glasses full of ice, a small bowl of lemon wedges, and a plate of English digestive biscuits. “We’ve gone on a few treks together up north. Is Celestial Seasonings okay? I don’t keep caffeine in the house.”
“Sure,” Kathryn says, clearing a space on the coffee table for the tray. “You didn’t do orienteering in high school.”
She laughs. “No. It was Jennifer’s thing, you know? But it’s a great way to get exercise. I’m sorry I didn’t take it up sooner.”
Kathryn nods. “So how’d you hook back up with him?”
Rachel lifts the lid of the teapot and jiggles the bags a few times. Replacing the lid, she pours the tea into two glasses. The ice splinters and cracks. “I didn’t really know him back then. I never took h
is class. But we happened to both be doing a five-K run for, I don’t know, the United Way or something a few years ago, and we started talking, and he told me about orienteering and, well …” She shrugs. “I’ve only done it a few times, but I love it.”
Kathryn takes a cool glass, wet with condensation, and wraps her hands around it. “What do you love about it?”
Rachel squeezes a lemon wedge into her glass and stirs her tea with a long, tarnished spoon. “Well, you know Jennifer and I both ran cross-country—and there are similarities. Orienteering is a running sport. But unlike cross-country, you run with a map and compass and choose your own way. There’s always the possibility that you’ll get lost—and for me, that adds to the excitement of it.” She takes a sip of tea and places the glass back on the tray. “Actually, technically what I do is called wayfaring: recreational, noncompetitive orienteering. I’m more interested in the running and the art of navigation than in winning a competition, not that there are opportunities around here for adults to compete anyway. Rick—Mr. Hunter—learned about it from friends in Massachusetts who belong to the New England Orienteering Club. Sometimes he goes down there for competitions, but I prefer to do it just for fun.”
“You seem to know a lot about it,” Kathryn observes.
“I guess I’ve gotten hooked.”
“So, just out of curiosity, are you and Mr. Hunter …?”