“It wasn’t your fault,” he tells her.
It’s a gift he gives to her, and a lasting one at that. She goes to the jail later in the evening, ignoring the threat of a thunderstorm, bringing along supper for Ethan. The sky is shining, the way it always does before a storm, and the roads look as though crushed diamonds have been set in the asphalt. Jorie drives past those banks of daylilies, which haven’t much more than another week to bloom. Every time she comes out this way, she finds she has an overwhelming desire to make a U-turn. Words begin to escape her as soon as she turns onto King George’s Road, and by the time she reaches the county buildings, she is as cautious as the king rails who hide in the marshes of Maryland, secretive and silent even when danger is near.
Jorie parks behind the jail and walks down the path to the back door, dodging any reporters or well-wishers who might lie in wait. The wind came up last night, and it’s still racing through the sky, shaking the leaves on the trees. There are just a few people gathered on the front lawn; die-hard supporters like that pretty Rosarie Williams, along with Warren Peck and Mark Derry, who chat with Dave Meyers as the men gather trash from the previous evening that has been left scattered over the grass. Jorie walks faster and slips through the back door before anyone notices her. Because it’s a small town, people at the jail have been considerate for the most part; they’ve let Jorie visit at whatever times suit her. It’s true, there’s been some talk about how infrequent her visits have become, just as there have been some whispers about how often Rosarie Williams has come to call. It’s gotten so that the men who work at the jail find themselves waiting for Rosarie, and several of them have started to dream about her. Even Dave Meyers, a faithful, honest man, has dreamed that Rosarie asked him to run away with her, although thankfully he woke in his own bed, beside his wife, before he found out whether or not his dream-self decided to take Rosarie up on her offer.
Tonight the two guards on duty Frankie Links and Roger Lawson, are both disappointed to find it’s not Rosarie waiting at the gate, only Jorie. Still, they’re polite enough when they let her in. Frankie, who was two years behind Jorie in high school, looks through her purse and the basket of food she’s brought with some of Ethan’s favorite treats, egg-salad sandwiches, lemon drop cookies, cole slaw fixed with carrots and homemade mayonnaise.
“Crappy weather out there,” Frankie says as he leads Jorie down to the holding cells. Frankie is being civil enough, but he’s always had a nasty streak, and when they arrive at Ethan’s cell he gets a funny smile. “Visitor for you, Mr. Bell,” Frankie calls, and he gives Joric a look from the corner of his eye to see her reaction once he invokes Ethan’s real name.
But Jorie doesn’t react, and why should she? Everything seems like a dream to her now; the way he’d kissed her, the way she’d loved him. The steel bars that slide open seem real enough, however, as does the echo of Frankie’s footsteps in the hall after he shoves the door closed when Jorie enters, so he can return to the guards’ office.
“You don’t know the way I’ve missed you,” Ethan says to her then.
He comes toward her, but it’s as though he were speaking to her from a very great distance away, a place where the fields were green and the dirt was so red it left a film on collars and cuffs, red as the reddest roses. When he’s about to embrace her, Jorie turns away She places the basket of food on the bed, keeping her back to him. Standing there, she thinks for a moment that she hears the ocean, but it’s something inside of her, wailing.
“I couldn’t bring a Thermos in, because of the sharp edges. I guess they think you could smash it and use the pieces to cut your wrists or attack someone, so I just made sandwiches. I probably made too many.”
“You haven’t been coming to see me, Jorie.” His voice is plaintive, a tone she’s never heard from him before. “It less and less all the time.”
Jorie looks at him. She feels something racing inside her.
“Mark said he’s offered to pick you up and take you to the rallies, but you won’t go. You don’t want to talk about it and you don’t want to see me, and I’ve been missing you.”
Jorie thinks about blackbirds, about the way it’s possible to know someone, yet still be completely astonished by who they turn out to be.
“I was at the last rally” She has bitten her nails down until they are bleeding, little red half-moons that remind her of how she sits up nights and frets. “Charlotte and I were there.”
“You were there and you didn’t come up to the stage? You didn’t come up to be with me?”
“There was such a crowd.” It sounds like a weak excuse, even to her. It sounds similar to what Collie’s been saying. “You were surrounded by people.”
“But none of them were my wife.”
Jorie can see how hurt he is, yet she finds she’s unmoved. She thinks of Collie in that old, abandoned house, crouched down in the dark. She thinks of the years they’ve had together and the promises they’ve made. If she'd had to guess where their life would bring them, she never would have imagined this. But this is where they are and there’s no way out until they’re through.
Ethan sits down on the bed, hands in his lap. He’s not angry at Jorie, in fact. he’s quite calm. Guilty men are supposed to be anguished, but Ethan has found peace. He’s had more than enough time to think this over. Fifteen years, as a matter of fact.
“You want to know how I could lie to you, well, I’ll tell you the truth, it was easy It didn’t seem like a lie. For the longest time I couldn’t even think about it, and then when I finally could, it was like everything had happened to somebody else. Like it was some story I’d read a long time ago, so far in the past I could hardly remember it anymore. It wasn’t like telling lies. I didn’t feel I knew the man who did those things, and I still don’t. I would never do the things he did.”
Jorie has been unpacking his supper, but Ethan takes the basket of food and sets it on the floor, just to stop her from searching through it. He wants her attention. He clearly needs it.
“The man you married? The man you know? That’s me. That’s who I am.”
It’s odd the way words echo inside a cell, as though they were coming from so very far away when they’re right there in front of you, right in your face.
“Even now, when I force myself to think about it. it’s like it never happened.”
“I went to Maryland,” Jorie says. “And I can tell you, it happened.”
Ethan looks at her in a strange way when she says this.
“You went down there? And you didn’t tell me?”
Jorie laughs, a harsh sound, even to her own ears. “This is not about what I didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t know where that place is anymore. I couldn’t find it if I tried.”
“Well, I did.” Jorie feels like crying when she thinks about following James Morris through the field. She feels like crying when she recalls the way his dog, Fergus, tagged after him with true devotion, no matter where the path might lead. “It’s still there.”
Jorie has found herself wishing that Frankie Links would come for her. He would do it out of spite, thinking he was upsetting them if he cut the visit short; he’s a mean-spirited individual, but this time Frankie would be doing her a favor.
“Jorie, we can go over the facts again and again, but that’s not going to get us anywhere. I didn’t have to confess. I wanted to. I needed to. And now I’m asking you for your forgiveness.”
Jorie has the terrible feeling that she might choke; she might stop breathing altogether. “That’s all? That’s all you want? ”
Ethan Ford goes down on his knees, there in the cell that has mostly been used for drunk drivers in the past, right on the cement floor. He looks up at her and it’s him, the man she married, the one she fell in love with, forever, she said.
“Don’t do this.” Jorie takes a step back.
“That’s all I’m asking for.” He has a face like an angel. He has eyes that are so dark you could never lo
ok away once you gave in. “I don’t care what anybody else thinks, Jorie. I don’t even care what they do to me. I just want your forgiveness, baby”
He looks up at her and Jorie realizes that she knows him at least well enough to know what he wants. He wants her to sink to the ground and thread her arms around him; he wants her to kiss him and vow to forgive each and every one of his sins.
“What about Collie? Do you want his forgiveness, too?”
“In time, he’ll forgive me,” Ethan says.
Standing before him, Jorie thinks of their child, how he’d never hurt a single creature in his life, how he’d went around the house collecting the ant traps she set out every spring. She thinks of the white blossoms floating through town after he’d cut down the apple tree. She thinks about those orange lilies that have always frightened her so, and of her friend Charlotte Kite, with her beautiful red hair shorn. She had loved her husband so deeply she surprised herself, but now she knows the way to Maryland far better than he ever will. She understands that forgiveness isn’t so easy to give, and that without it there is only empty space between them, a yard or a hundred miles makes no difference. It’s the sort of distance that is impossible to cross.
“I hope you’re right about that. I hope he does forgive you someday:”
“What about you?”
He has gotten off his knees and is facing her. They can both hear Frankie opening the door into the hallway of the jail. The guard is whistling, a sharp little tune.
“I am who you think I am,” Ethan says. “I’m still the same man.”
Jorie takes her time when she drives home, passing by the far shore of the lake where she and Charlotte used to go swimming, back before there was a town pool, when they had no choice but to confront snapping turtles if they wanted to cool off in the summertime. Teenagers in town still prefer this place in spite of the turtles and the muck; there’s privacy here in the dark water, freedom on the wooded shore. Jorie pulls into the dirt parking lot, and as soon as she gets out, she slips off her shoes, leaving them beside the truck. She takes what used to be her favorite path down to the water, treading carefully because she knows this is a place where wild calla and star grass grow; it’s easy enough to trip if you’re not careful. On the other side of the lake, she can hear some kids whooping it up. Probably that Rosarie Williams and her gang of friends, sneaking beers, kissing each other with hot, greedy mouths, not caring about the rest of the world, centered only in the intensity of their private moments: the dive off the rock, the embrace in shallow water, the whisper in a pink, curved ear.
The reeds are overgrown around Lantern Lake, and peepers call, a thin, wobbly melody Jorie and Charlotte used to believe that if a falling star crashed into the lake, the water would turn silver; the glow would light up the whole town. One Halloween, they painted their faces silver; they wrapped themselves in old silver-threaded scarves and came here to dance under the moon. They danced themselves silly, until they collapsed into a silver pile on the shore, and they laughed so loud, their laughter echoed and came back to them across the water, like a gilt-edged cloud.
Jorie walks into the water. It doesn’t matter that she’s wearing her favorite blouse, or that stones may collect in her pockets and perhaps weigh her down. She likes the feel of mud between her toes, how smooth it is, how slick. Bullfrogs startle as she goes on, and a water lotus drifts near, an elegant yellow variety that glitters in the dark with a soft light, like a watery firefly. The crickets are wild in the heat. they make the night shudder. The thunderstorm that has been threatening has moved on toward the coast and is now passing by with only a few grunts and groans in the crackly air. In between the clouds, Jorie can see stars. The brightest ones are reflected in the lake water, as though that falling star she and Charlotte had waited for had appeared at last.
When she is waist deep, Jorie dives in, grateful for the cool water on her clammy skin. She doesn’t think about love and forgiveness as she floats in the dark water. She thinks of apple blossoms and of girls dressed in silver; she thinks how strange it is that she never noticed how beautiful Charlotte was until she lost her hair. Jorie floats until she is shivering. It’s a Friday night, and the teenagers on the other side of the lake have lit a bonfire and switched on a boom box. Music falls across the water, and frogs jump in the shallows; the darkness is soft and hot. You could go under here and no one would know it; you’d drift to the bottom, so deep not even the starlight could reach you, so deep you’d never come back again.
Jorie gets out and wrings water from her clothes, then hikes back to the parking lot; she picks up her shoes and gets into the truck. No one who saw her now would have guessed her hair was honey-colored, or that she had once been so pretty other girls had been jealous. They would never have imagined that only a few weeks ago she had been so in love with her husband she'd thought herself the luckiest woman alive. Her clothes have turned a watery gray; her hair falls in strands that are as green as weeds. And yet Jorie feels a sort of light inside her, as though she really had been swimming in water lit by falling stars.
She keeps the windows open as she drives home, in spite of the clouds of mosquitoes, little cyclones buzzing through the night. The funny thing is, when she pulls into the driveway of their house on Maple Street, it just doesn’t seem real to her anymore. She understands why Collie refused to come back and pack up his belongings. Jorie’s had to empty the house by herself, and in the end she brought most of their clothes down to St. Catherine’s over in Hamilton for the end of the season back-to-school jumble sale. Tonight, it doesn’t seem as though they ever lived here, but that may change. Years from now; when Jorie and Collie stand on the sidewalk, they may remember things they’ve forgotten now: how the scent of grass came through the windows in summer, how the snow piled up on the front walkway, how he really did love them, despite what he’d done.
Jorie opens the garage door and goes inside. There are only a few cartons left, Ethan’s belongings. On the workbench is his tool-box, along with files from every job hed taken on during his time in Monroe. Jorie opens the files, one by one. She drips lake water onto the pages and the ink runs, but it doesn’t matter, no one will ever bother with these papers again. The new people will set them out on the curb on trash day, and they’ll be taken to the dump at the end of Worthington, and that will be that.
Ethan’s personal effects have been left in an orderly fashion on the workbench, but then he always was neat and methodical in his habits On a metal rack, behind glass jars of carefully sorted nails and screws, are the keys to every house he’s worked on, each one tagged. in case of emergency. Say a family was away on vacation and the pipes burst, or perhaps raccoons managed to eat through wallboard or if a break-in occurred. Ethan always had the ability to set things right.
Among the keys on the board, there is only one that has no tag. It’s silver, smaller than the rest, and when Jorie reaches for it, she knows it’s the right one. It’s been here all along. The key is attached to a bit of ribbon, frayed blue silk unwinding into strands. Jorie takes the key and goes out to her garden, where for years she has grown the sweetest strawberries, the crispest lettuce, bushels of snap beans so delicious even children begged for a taste. She thinks about the difference between right and wrong; she has already decided that if the key fits she will read Rachel’s diary, even if that means she has to leave him.
This key has been in their garage for thirteen years; it’s rusted and cheaply made, but it still turns the lock. Inside the diary, Rachel’s name is printed carefully; the paper carries the scent of cologne, Jorie guesses lily of the valley, that flowery, young odor, as hopeful as it is sweet. There are pages of pretty, looping handwriting in several shades of ink. Rachel must have had one of those pens that can hold a dozen cartridges, the sort Collie got one year for his birthday, but her last entry is written in blue. That is the entry Jorie turns to, skimming past the pages that record the scant six months Rachel Morris had to live in her fifteenth year. Its the be
ginning of August, but it’s the end of her life. She will brush her hair; she will give her little brother a piggyback ride; she will walk down the road to the store where she works on a day so hot the asphalt melts beneath her sneakers and the sunlight turns her skin the color of apricots, so that for that brief moment, as blackbirds swoop across the distance, she is the most beautiful girl on earth.
The final entry is a hurried, giddy paragraph in which every “i” is dotted with a perfect heart. Jorie can feel her pulse pounding; it’s as if someone’s life is rising off the page. She can feel Rachel’s words in her own mouth, melting there, on her tongue.
I met the handsomest boy in the world today. We went swimmining. He kissed me more times than I could count, Kissed at last. Hurray!
After Jorie reads this passage, she goes back to the beginning. She sits in her garden and reads every word. Before long, she knows more about Rachel than she knows about her own sister, and by the time she is through she understands what James Morris meant. She knows exactly what to do. Some other man’s wife might agree to go to Maryland, but Jorie has already been there. She knows how the blackbirds sing in the morning and how the roads skirt the brackish water and sweet gum trees. Instead, she’ll set off for somewhere she’s never been before: she’ll pack up everything that’s important to her, and she and Collie will drive as far and as long as they want to.
When they’re tired at last, they’ll stop at a motel where no one knows them, where they can be anyone they want to be, even themselves, if that’s what they choose. She won’t be thinking of Ethan as she packs up, nor will she dwell on her loss as she cuts down an armful of lilies to leave at Charlotte’s door, a small token to assure her friend that there are some things that never change--their friendship, for instance, will go on and on, here and beyond. Ethan may pass through Jorie’s mind as she drives down Front Street, a fleeting, sorrowful thought that pains her, but by the time she heads toward the highway Jorie will be concentrating on the map spread out on the dashboard. She won’t care if Collie turns the radio up, and she won’t be bothered by the heavy traffic as people return from their summer vacations. Another woman might drive to Maryland, but that’s not what Jorie intends to do. Instead, she’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully, until the world is yours once more.