Blue Diary

  Someone else might have called Collie a momma’s boy, but I didn’t make judgments like that. How could I when I had been such a daddy’s girl? I would have been nobody’s favorite if not for my father, who cared about people’s true selves, not what they looked like or how mean they might appear to be.

  “Well, she must have been in a hurry.” My heart was beating like crazy. I figured this was the way a criminal’s heart must start pounding whenever he told a lie or acted like he hadn’t been responsible for something he knew damn well he’d done.

  I suggested we go to my house, where my grandmother probably had her soap opera tuned in. Whenever we watched it with her, my grandmother would tell us what was going on in the story, which she'd been tuning in to for more than twenty-five years, and her narration was always much more interesting than what was actually happening. We had fun trying to figure things out before the truth was revealed—who would run away together, who’d come down with amnesia, who would find true and undying love but that day I felt sick just looking at the TV I wished I hadn’t been watching that night when Ethan Ford’s picture came on. I wished I lived in another town, someplace where nobody knew me and I didn’t have any obligations to do the right thing.

  Collie’s mother didn’t come for him until it was very nearly dark. She knocked on the door too hard, the way people do when they’re in a hurry, or frightened, or when their world has just fallen apart. When my grandmother went to let her in, she took one look at Collie’s mother and said, “Jorie, what happened?”

  Jorie Ford stood in our doorway and you could see how wrong something was from the expression on her face. Her hair was knotted and her clothes were wrinkled, and when my grandmother gave her a little hug, Mrs Ford started crying right there, half in and half out of our house. It happened fast, and then she pulled herself together just as fast. She was still upset, but she wouldn’t let any tears fall. Not in front of us. Not with Collie there.

  “What is it?” my grandmother asked.

  Collie and I were sitting on the floor in the front room, sharing a bag of potato chips my grandmother had told us would ruin our dinners. Right before his mother knocked on the door, Collie had turned to tell me something; his face was animated and it seemed as if he was going to say something funny, he always had dozens of jokes, but he never did speak. When he saw that his mother had arrived, Collie got up and went to her. As soon as she put her arms around him, Jorie Ford started crying again. You could tell she didn’t want to, she was trying with all her might to hold it back, but sometimes it’s impossible to do that. I know that from personal experience. You have to turn yourself cold as ice in order to stop yourself, and then if anything falls from your eyes it will only be blue ice crystals, hard and unbreakable as stone.

  I could tell from the way my grandmother was watching Collie and his mother that she was thinking about how quickly things could turn from good to bad. I would bet she was reminding herself of how precious every peaceful moment was, which is what she told me after my father died. She said that we had to savor whatever time we had in this world and believe in the ultimate goodness of the universe, but I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered. I bclicved I had lost my father, and I didn’t really care much about the goodness of the universe without him in it. never said any of this to my grandmother. I would never do that. People who have faith were so lucky, you didn’t want to ruin anything for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat such individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you.

  My grandmother asked if there was anything she might do to help. Considering the fact that Jorie had brought dinner over for us for two weeks straight last summer, there had to be something we could do to return the favor, for this was clearly her time of need. But Jorie shook her head; there was nothing. The sky was turning murky by then, a marine blue dipping into darkness around the edges. You could smell cut grass and heat even now. Tomorrow, the town pool would be opening, and Collie and I had plans to get there early, but I could tell we wouldn’t be going. There would be races and diving contests, the way there always were on opening day, but it wouldn’t matter. Not to us.

  “Don’t listen to anything anyone tells you,” Jorie told Collie. She sounded fierce when she spoke to him. “Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Collie said.

  Some other boy might have started asking questions, but Collie wasn’t like that. He had a serious look on his face, and you could tell he’d do exactly as his mother said.

  “Everything will be fine,” Jorie assured him.

  But from the way she was standing in the doorway in that deepening night, it was clear she wasn’t sure of that herself; she was just trying to sound like she was.

  “At least come in for dinner.” My grandmother reached to draw Collie’s mother inside our house, but Jorie took a step back. She didn’t want to be touched and she didn’t want anyone to be kind to her. She was filling herself up with ice, and when a person starts doing that any human contact can be dangerous.

  “We just want to be alone.” Jorie’s voice was ragged and her mouth looked sour. She was usually so nice to everyone. She brought my grandmother vegetables from her garden, armfuls of lettuce and snap peas so fresh Rosarie and I argued over who would get the larger portion. As soon as these rude words were out of Jorie’s mouth, you could tell she was sorry She stepped forward and put her arms around my grandmother. “I didn’t mean that. I’m not myself,” she told us both, and we nodded as if we understood, then watched as she and Collie walked across Mrs. Gage’s lawn to their own house, where all the lights were off and all the windows had been left open.

  My grandmother and I went out to the porch and stood there in the dark. I could tell we both felt like crying, but for different reasons. One by one the lights turned on in Collie’s house, but I already knew: his father wasn’t there. They’d come to take him away while we were at school, and maybe that was for the best. Maybe it’s better not to be at home when such things happened. Close your eyes and count to ten whenever sorrow strikes you, that’s what my grandmother recommends, although in my opinion even ten thousand isn’t a high enough number. But tonight, my grandmother didn’t offer any advice. She only circled her arm around me, and she didn’t even tell me not to be afraid of the dark the way she usually does. We could hear the leaves on the mimosa trees moving. We could hear the caterpillars that would turn into white moths before long. Soon enough it would be exactly one year since my father died. The night before it happened, he stood underneath this same sky and told me he would always love me, no matter what. He said that if somebody really loved you, you would always hear his voice somewhere inside your own head.

  “That poor woman,” my grandmother said of Jorie.

  We couldn’t see them anymore. Their door was closed, and it was just as if they’d never even been standing here with us and we’d been alone the whole time. It’s like that when people leave you behind. You get to wondering if you ever had them in the first place. Still, it was a beautiful night, and my grandmother went out to the lawn that had been in bad shape since last summer, uncared for and littered with weeds. She picked a pod of milkweed and blew on it until the seeds lifted into the sky. She has always told me that you could blow your bad fortune away by doing so, and as I watched the milkweed drift upward into the sky. I wished I still believed in things like that. I wished I could fly our troubles away.

  The Conjurer

  CHARLOTTE KITE SMITH, STOOD UP by her best friend and her soon-to-be-ex-husband on the very same day, is a smart woman, one who is well aware that there are some losses an individual simply has to accept. She believes that bad fortune is a wake-up call and that most people would do well to have their eyes open. Those who were dreamers often wound up as sleepwalkers and Charlotte is not about to become one of them. She’s a practical woman
who’s learned not only to curb her resentments, but has managed to temper her hopes for the future as well. Today during her physical, for instance, she wasn’t surprised when her doctor suggested a biopsy for the lump that she’d found. Nothing has worked out quite as she'd expected: why should her body be any different? She had thought at this stage she’d have half a dozen children, when in fact she’s living in her house on Hilltop alone. Through the years she’s learned not to assume that she’s already had her portion of bad luck, even though she lost her parents when she was barely out of high school, one following the other in a matter of months, and has recently gone through a prolonged and complex breakup with Jay. In Charlotte’s opinion, suffering is not the border on the outer edges of one’s life, but the cloth itself, elegantly stitched on one side, crude and miserably sewn on the other.

  But who can dwell on such disappointments? Certainly not Charlotte Kite. It’s a beautiful evening, far too rare and fine for her to waste feeling sorry for herself When she looks out the window of her house high on Hilltop, she can see the whole town before her, a grid of deep blue shadows and sparkling light, as though diamonds have been thrown down in the hillocks beyond the trees. Tonight, Charlotte runs a cool bath to wash away the scent of chocolate and rum that clings to her from the day’s baking. She’s used to spending her evenings alone, but perhaps her loneliness is the reason she continues to work at the bakery so faithfully, though it is now one in a chain of many and can handily be run by accountants and bakers who know the recipes and the business far better than Charlotte herself does. Still, she does not wish to pass her days alone as well as her nights. It’s a big house she lives in, built at the turn of the century as a wedding present for Ella Monroe, whose father founded the town and left a ring of apple trees a mile wide around the old abandoned house where he once lived, smack at the end of King George’s Road, a location that was wild frontier at the time, when it wasn’t unusual for bears to eat their fill from the orchards and bobcats to claw at the bark of the saplings.

  Charlotte’s house is so large there are rooms she hasn’t been in for months; the entire third floor, which might have been perfect for a nursery, has been closed down and even the cleaning service won’t venture up there. Too many spiders, they complain. Not enough light.

  So many of the girls Charlotte grew up with had been jealous when she’d married Jay Smith at the age of nineteen, the year after her parents died, but those girls are now grown women who consider themselves lucky that Jay passed them by. He seems to be a man who’s constitutionally incapable of fidelity; in the interest of a peaceful parting, Charlotte has decided that in his case adultery should not be viewed as a lack of character, but rather as a hereditary defect, clearly evident in Jay’s father, who, at the age of seventy-eight, is still chasing the ladies, marrying for the fourth time only weeks before he entered a nursing home.

  Jay can’t even be depended upon to come and pick up the last of his belongings, which was supposed to have been done this evening. Charlotte had hoped they might have one final dinner together to celebrate the end of their fruitless union. It’s true, every now and then she wonders if his passion for her could ever be reignited, about as likely a possibility as a bear knocking at her front door and asking directions to Hamilton. When Jay doesn’t show up, Charlotte takes her bath, and afterward phones in an order to the Pizza Barn. By now, she doesn’t have to give her address. The counterman knows who she is: he even asks if she wants extra cheese, per her usual. When the delivery boy, Brendan Derry. arrives, Charlotte tips him twenty dollars. She does it not to spite Jay. who is notoriously cheap, but to see the grin on Brendan’s face. How lovely that someone can feel joy over such a little thing. How wonderful to know there are still some people in this world who can manage to be happy.

  Charlotte eats pizza out of the box on the floor of her bedroom. Because of the size of the house, she likes to cocoon in the one room where she feels most comfortable, and so she’s there, munching on crusts and going over some paperwork, when she happens to glance up at the eleven o’clock news, thereby learning that her best friend’s husband has been arrested for murder that very morning, in the doorway of his own house. Charlotte’s initial reaction to the news is helped along by the slices of pizza she has consumed, far too many, as well as the hour, far too late for someone who wakes at five A.M. But perhaps what makes Charlotte ill is the mere idea that on a perfectly ordinary night, as June bugs hit against the window screens and the whole world smells of honeysuckle, there is no protection from disaster.

  Whatever the cause, Charlotte goes into the bathroom; she holds back her red hair and vomits, then washes her face with cool water. When she returns to the bedroom, she searches her closet for a crumpled pack of cigarettes she keeps for occasions such as this. Quickly, she lights up, then grabs the phone and dials Jorie, whose number she knows so well she could recite it in the depths of her sleep. The TV is still on, filling the bedroom with wavering light. It’s turned on in houses all over town, as well, illuminating living rooms and bedrooms in the old section of town and up here in Hillerest. Even those residents who usually go to bed early stay up late on this strange and singular night; they wake their husbands or wrives and say. Look at this, mostly because they find themselves doubting their own vision, obscured by the snaky blue images on their TVs, wondering if their sight is failing.

  But what they see on their screens is real, there’s no denying that fact. It’s a portrait of Ethan Ford in an old photograph, when he was a good fifteen years younger, a likeness that glides through the air, circulating past apple trees and telephone wires, drifting through town like a fine rain over people’s rooftops. This handsome and familiar man, boyish but still recognizable, startles people as they walk to the bathroom to brush their teeth and makes them forget the simplest of tasks. Cats are not put out for the evening, sleeping children are not checked upon, husbands and wives are not kissed good night.

  Residents of Monroe are stunned by the possibility of something amiss. This is a safe village, far from the crime of Boston, and yet tonight many will lock their doors, some for the first time in years. They’ll use bolts they had previously judged to be pointless and make certain to secure their windows in spite of the fine weather. Not that everyone in town believes what they see on the news. Warren Peck’s father, Raymond, who helps his son out at the Safehouse Bar every now and then, and whose wife Margaret’s heart attack might have been fatal had Ethan not been so quick to arrive on the scene, applauded when Warren threw a pitcher at the TV perched above the bar during the news broadcast, so outraged were they by what were obviously bald-faced lies. Neither old Raymond nor Warren took the time to think about how the TV screen would splinter, however, smashed into thousands of shards, leaving customers to find slivers of glass in every bowl of peanuts and cashews set out during happy hour the following week.

  Charlotte lets the phone go on ringing even when it becomes clear that Jorie isnt going to answer. She sits on the floor next to her bed, smoking one cigarette and then another, thinking about the last time both couples had gone out together, to DiGorina’s Restaurant in Hamilton. Ethan and Jorie couldn’t seem to stay away from each other that night. Their behavior was nothing unexpected for people in love a few kisses, hands on each other’s legs, whispered jokes no one else was privy to but sitting there with Jay didn’t make their display any easier for Charlotte. She remembers thinking how unfair it was for Jorie to have wound up with everything. They’d both had hopes, hadn’t they? They’d both deserved happiness, and yet their fates hadn’t been measured out in even amounts. Charlotte recalls exactly how sharp her envy had felt that night, little pinpricks that caused her great pain.

  When her own phone rings. she grabs for it. hoping Jorie is calling. To her surprise, it’s Jay. He apologizes for not showing up, but then he was always good at excuses.

  “I caught the news over at the Safehouse,” Jay tells her. “What a bunch of bullshit.”

  “It
’s all a mistake.”

  “They’ve got the wrong man.”

  For once, they agree on something. It’s quite a shock to both of them, and they laugh.

  “Too bad we couldn’t have a conversation when we were married,” Jay says.

  Charlotte can hear the crowd at the Safehouse. She can close her eyes and visualize Jay standing at the phone beyond the bar, his head bent close so he can hear.

  “You were never around when we were married.” Charlotte reminds him.

  “That does make it difficult,” Jay concedes. “How’s Jorie?”

  “Not picking up the phone.”

  “Poor kid.” Jay has always had a soft spot for Jorie. I don’t see her complaining, he’d said to Charlotte on more than one occasion and Charlotte had always fought the urge to spit back Of course you don’t. She’s got nothing to complain about.

  Charlotte lights up another cigarette and inhales.

  “Are you smoking?” Jay asks.

  “Do you care?” Big mistake. Never ask a question you don’t want an answer to. And never tell bad news to someone who’s already walked away She had mentioned her doctor’s appointment to Jay the last time he came by to pick up a suitcase full of clothes, but he clearly doesn’t remember, and why should she expect him to? They have been little more than roommates for quite some time.

  “My life’s my own business, right?” Charlotte says. “If I want to smoke, I can puff away.”

  “That’s right, honey,” Jay says, and for a moment Charlotte isn’t sure whether he’s speaking to her or to some other woman at the Safehouse, some lovesick paramour, perhaps, who doesn’t know any better than to wait around for a man like Jay.

  Charlotte laughs at herself and whoever else is foolish enough to respond to Jay’s charms. “I pity whoever falls in love with you.”