“All I mean is that you don’t have to waste your time here anymore. I’ll take care of everything.” Echoing Kat Williams, she adds, “Go home.”
Charlotte uses her key and slips inside. It’s an odd sensation, standing in the front hallway of the Fords’ house. Charlotte always goes around the back, and for this reason it seems that she’s stepped into a stranger’s home.
“Jorie?”
Charlotte doesn’t want to be one of those statistics, some neighborly soul shot through the heart when all she’s doing is trying to help.
“Anybody here? Its me, Charlotte.”
She goes into the kitchen, where she finds a box of cereal left out on the counter, along with two unwashed bowls. A mess such as this isn’t like Jorie, who is always so house-proud. As Charlotte continues on, she doesn’t have to look outside to know that Barney Stark is still there, waiting to make certain no one needs him before he goes home. A man such as this is a mystery to Charlotte. Why, he’s as much a riddle as the Sphinx in the desert. She cannot even imagine what it might be like to have a man who would stand by you, who’d love you for whoever you are.
The staircase is dim, and Charlotte keeps a hand on the wall to guide her. As she goes up to Jorie and Ethan’s bedroom, she feels a bit like a Peeping Tom, treading softly, roaming through the place uninvited, even though the house belongs to Jorie, who’s closer to Charlotte than she is to her own sister. The night is so strange she can’t help but wonder if they’ve all been hypnotized. There have been cases of people who shared the same dream, and maybe that’s what’s happened. Perhaps Charlotte and Barney Stark and Jorie are asleep, entering freely into one another’s dreams, walking down the same imagined empty streets, watching the same nonexistent news broadcasts, having conversations they would never be party to during the shining hours of daylight. If one of them wakes, surely the rest are bound to follow, jolted out of their slumber, panting for breath, frightened by how close they’ve come to disaster.
But when Charlotte peers into the bedroom, Jorie doesn’t have her head on the pillow, her breathing shallow, the way a dreamer’s is whenever the dream feels as real as everyday life, dreams of bread and butter, and of lives gone wrong, and of quiet houses where couples sleep through the night. No, this is no dream. Jorie is sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing the same clothes she’s had on since morning, her face drained, her beautiful golden hair lank as straw. Collie is the one who’s asleep in the big bed, but anyone can tell his rest is fitful, for he turns and pulls the quilt closer, then groans, a fluttering boy noise that causes a catch in Charlotte’s own throat.
“What you heard isn’t true.” Jorie’s voice is low, so as not to wake her son. All the same, there’s something in her tone that sounds desperate.
“Of course it isn’t.” Charlotte usually expects the worst of people, but she’s more than willing to make an exception in Ethan’s case. There has to be someone worth trusting, hasn’t there? One man among them to whom even a disbeliever like Charlotte can pledge her faith. “The whole idea is insanity. Jay called me from the Safehouse. and everyone down there is outraged. Don’t worry about what people are thinking. Everyone knows they’ve got the wrong man.”
“ Really? Well, our friends were the ones who came to get him,” Jorie says with real bitterness. “Hal Roderick. Adam Sorrell. Dave Meyers.”
These men have worked with Ethan on dozens of occasions, pooling the resources of the volunteer fire department with the police whenever there’s an accident on the highway, or a heart attack phoned in, or a stretch of woods left in flames after a fierce lightning storm.
“Dave himself stood out on our front porch and read Ethan his rights. As if he had any!”
Charlotte and Jorie have known Dave Meyers, now the sheriff of Monroe Township, since grade school, and although that hadn’t stopped him from arresting Ethan, Dave certainly wasn’t able to look Jorie in the eye. I’m sorry, he’d muttered, as if his apology was worth anything.
As Jorie speaks of the morning’s events, her voice rises dangerously; and Charlotte nods at Collie, who starts in his sleep. The women retreat to the window seat Ethan built last year, making use of some old oak paneling he’d removed from the tumbled-down Monroe house, abandoned long ago on the outskirts of town. Jorie moves the curtains aside, and from where they sit she can spy a man on the sidewalk, peering up at them. It’s still hot outside and the man keeping watch wipes his face with a handkerchief “Don’t worry. It’s only Barney Stark.” Charlotte leans her elbows on the casement. Just as she suspected, Barney has stationed himself on the walkway. He’s taken off his loosened tie and stuffed it in his pocket, but he still looks awkward and overdressed and worried. Charlotte waves, and Barney cautiously waves back. “He’s come to see if you need help,” Charlotte tells Jorie. “The big oaf.”
“How do we get rid of him?”
The women look at each other and laugh.
“Easy enough. I could always get rid of him.” Charlotte motions to Barney that he can go. “Come back tomorrow.” she calls. “Jorie will be fine till then.”
“Tell her I’ll meet her down at the holding station.” Barney certainly doesn’t wish to use the word jail. He’s a polite, well-bred man whose mother was extremely proud of him up until the day she died. “At nine.”
Charlotte turns to Jorie. “The jail at nine A.M. And remember,” she adds when she sees the wash of anxiety cross Jorie’s face; again Charlotte is thankful for Barney “Innocent people need lawyers, too.”
“Right.” Jorie pulls at her tangled hair. She is frighteningly pale, as though her flesh has turned to fish scales, her blood to ice water. “They say he was in the same town where some girl was killed, but what does that prove? How many people pass through Monroe every day? Does that mean they’ve all murdered someone?”
“It means nothing.” Charlotte is quick to agree.
Collie is deeply asleep now ; he turns and flings one arm over the side of the bed. Awake he is close to being a teenager, and the man he’ll become is evident in his rangy appearance. Odd how children look so much younger when they sleep; perhaps their slumbering forms are what prompt adults close by to try their best to protect them from every evil under the sun.
“I had him sleep in here tonight because I didn’t want him to be scared. Now I think I was the one who didn’t want to be alone.”
Jorie had cried in the car as she drove home from the jail, wanting to get it all out before she picked up Collie. Then she’d gone and broken down in the doorway of the Williamses’ house like a common fool, some poor woman who was at the mercy of whatever the fates might bring. She’d made herself stop, then had brought Collie home where she sat him down in the kitchen and told him that his father had been taken over to the county offices on King George’s Road. It was nothing for them to worry about, a few questions about a crime committed years ago, a thousand miles away, by someone else entirely. Life wasn’t fair sometimes, and this was one of those times. Sooner or later it would be sorted out, but until then they’d just have to get through it; they’d have to hold tight and wait for Ethan to be cleared of any charges. They’d have to stand by him till then.
It had been a horrible day for Jorie, most of it spent in a hallway at the county offices. She had tried to talk to Dave Meyers and to Will Derrick over at the county prosecutor’s office; she’d tried to make some sense of what was happening, but she’d gotten absolutely nowhere. When at last she demanded to see Ethan, who’d been brought down to a cell in the basement, she’d found she could not breathe. It was panic she was feeling, this drowning sensation that overwhelmed her. It was fear caught in her lungs where there should have been air, plain and simple as that.
Go home, Ethan said to Jorie when she came to stand outside his cell.
He wouldn’t look at her, not even when she reached in through the bars.
Don’t you hear what I’m saying? I don’t want you to see me here. Don’t you understand that?
&nb
sp; She’d started crying then, stunned by his resolve and by the stark reality of the situation. Ethan had relented at last : he’d rested his head against the metal bars, and Jorie had done the same, and when she closed her eyes she could imagine they were far from this horrible place where they stood.
We’ll figure it out tomorrow, Ethan had promised Jorie before she left, and she had believed him, but now, sitting here with Charlotte, there seems too much to ever figure out. Jorie gazes at Collie’s sleeping face, at the pale skin, the fine features, the way he breathes so deeply as he dreams. She had been so sure of her everyday life- you wake up, you make coffee, you send those you love off to school and to work, there is rain or it’s sunny, you’re late or you’re on time, but no matter what. those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night, like that house over on Sherwood Street where the son was smoking in bed and everything disappeared in an instant. No furniture, no family photos, only ashes. Well, it’s ashes Jorie tastes now, ashes in her mouth, on her hands, beneath her feet. The fire had come and gone, and she hadn’t even know it. She’d just stood there while it swept through the door.
When Jorie goes to the bathroom to wash her face and comb her hair, Charlotte follows. The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next. Charlotte is reminded of the time in high school when their friends Lindsay Maddox and Jeannie Atkins were in a fatal car crash over on the highway. Everyone had difficulty getting over the shock of the accident, especially Jorie. who stopped eating and missed several weeks of school. It seemed so unfair that Lindsay and Jeannie would never get to finish senior year; they’d never graduate or kiss another boy or fulfill the promise of their lives. There is still a marker at the spot where the accident happened, and although Jeannie’s family moved to Florida, never to return to Monroe again, Lindsay’s mother continues to bring wreaths of flowers on the first of every month, bands of everlasting and sweetbrier and roses that she twists through the fence, unaware of whether or not there are thorns.
Every time Charlotte drives past, she remembers that she’s lucky. She was supposed to go with them that night, but her mother made her stay home because she was recovering from the flu and had a slight fever. Charlotte thinks about that whenever she’s home alone at night. She thinks about it right now. Good fortune can turn out to be bad, Charlotte knows that for a fact, and the luckiest among us can be ruined by chance: a simple wrong turn, a metal fence, a man who drives through town on a cold, foggy night.
In the harsh bathroom light it’s impossible not to notice the toll today has taken on Jorie. Still, she’s beautiful. even now. Charlotte understands why Ethan fell in love with her the first time he saw her. Charlotte herself was standing right next to Jorie, but she might as well have been invisible. She still remembers Ethan’s expression as he approached: the way he wanted Jorie was all over his face, his attraction as obvious as a drowning man’s prayer for solid land.
“Do you ever think of what your life might have been like if we hadn’t gone to the Safehouse that night?” Charlotte asks. They’re headed down to the kitchen, so that Charlotte can make them a pot of tea. “We could have gone bowling instead, or to a movie. One changed plan and your whole life would have been different.”
“It would never have happened that way,” Jorie says with conviction.
“You think you were meant to be with him? No matter what?”
“I know I was.” Jorie sounds much more like herself now. She always had an assured manner, even when they were girls. That was one of the things Charlotte envied, how Jorie never seemed torn apart by doubt. “He hadn’t decided to stay in Monroe until the night we met. Did you know that? He was on his way to New Hampshire because a friend of his was working in Portsmouth and told him there was a lot of work to be found there. He was in Monroe for exactly one night.”
After the tea is ready, Charlotte decides to fix her friend some toast as well, having rightly assumed that Jorie hasn’t thought to eat supper. She suggests that Jorie go to the living room and lie down on the couch; Charlotte will bring in a tray. While the bread is browning, Charlotte takes the opportunity to tidy up the kitchen. She’s glad she hasn’t mentioned that her doctor insisted upon a biopsy; Jorie has more than enough to worry about. Charlotte refuses to think about her own problems as she washes out the cereal bowls and sweeps up the last shards of the broken coffee cup and gets the silver tray she gave them as a wedding present. She will think about this house, instead, about this kitchen. Everything here is top of the line, hand-crafted cabinets, a stainless steel stove that would suffice for a restaurant, slate countertops that shine with silvery mica. Ethan must have gotten it all at cost, but anyone can tell he designed this kitchen for the woman he loved. It’s the curved arches of wood above the windows, fine carpentry that must have taken weeks, that speaks of his devotion. It’s the inlaid pattern of light and dark squares on the floor, fitted with such care that the wood appears seamless, black and white bark grown together on the very same tree.
When she really thinks about it, Charlotte knows nothing about Ethan before that night when they first caught sight of him in the Safehouse. He arrived out of nowhere with no baggage and no tales to tell. Whatever he’d said about himself they would have gladly believed, for the past hadn’t mattered much back then. Charlotte and Jorie were both so young that all they cared about was the future. They couldn’t get to it fast enough, the sweet, unexplored empire of their dreams. And why shouldn’t they look forward? The present hadn’t seemed particularly interesting. Charlotte was working in her family’s bakery after her parents had passed on, just about the last thing she’d ever planned to do, and Jorie was teaching second grade at the Ella Monroe Elementary School. At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that didn’t really exist, at least not in Monroe, Massachusetts, where they were acquainted with every available man and more than well aware of every flaw and every strike against him since kindergarten.
That night at the Safehouse, their meeting had truly seemed like fate, the way Ethan looked at Jorie, the way he asked if he could buy her something to drink, then had guessed what she wanted was white wine, as if he already knew her preferences. Jorie wasn’t the sort of girl who was inclined to take a man home on their first date, not even if she’d known him her whole life long, but she brought Ethan up to her apartment. and she’s never once regretted a decision that some might call impulsive and others might cite as the best irrational act of her life. Here she is, thirteen years later, asleep on the couch when Charlotte brings in the tray of tea and toast. Jorie is Ethan’s wife, no matter what lies anyone might tell. She has pledged herself to him, now and forever, and on this moonlit night, she is dreaming of those lilies the flower shop on Front Street sets out on the sidewalk at Easter, flowers that look far too delicate to last, but if planted carefully in the garden will come back, season after season. Some things return, no matter what, like the constellations in the summer sky or the mourning doves that alight in bushes and trees in the gardens every year at this time, so that the last days of June are always accompanied by cooing and whispering: What can happen, what will happen, what ís meant to be.
Knight of Swords
IN THE MORNING, MEN IN JAIL WILL try to sleep their time away, dreaming of home and happiness, staving off waking for as long as possible. What they wish for is a spool of invisible thread with which to sew up their eyes; what they want more than anything are soft pillows, upon which they can rest undisturbed as time falls past them in endless waves. There is just cause for this desire for sleep: the dream is often more real than what a man might find when he opens his eyes. The dream is
everything he once had, and foolishly threw away. Dinner set out on the table, the scent of summer, the woman who loves him waiting at the screen door. Awaken, and green light streams in, like fish skin, and the air is foul, overlaid by industrial-strength air-freshener that, no matter how strong, cannot erase the scent of fear. Fear, like heat, rises: it drifts up to the ceiling and when it falls down it pours out in a hot and horrible rain. A man has to train himself to sleep through such circumstances: otherwise every drop is a drop of fire from the first level of hell, wet cinders in his eyes, his heart, his lungs.
Ethan Ford is especially ill-suited to this environment. He’s a man who likes his own bed, and his life set in order. Locked up he’s unable to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, and he’s therefore deprived of his dreams. He can feel the enormity of what has happened inside his chest, feverish bands that encircle his ribs. His mouth is always dry. and the dryness cannot be relieved, not by water, not by ice. not by dreams of the blue ponds of his youth, spring fed and deliciously cold, so clear you could kneel down and drink right from the shore. Since the moment when he opened the front door to see Dave Meyers and the other men from the sheriff’s office standing there, Ethan has had a weightless feeling. It’s as though everything that has been holding him to earth has been cut away: all that remains are white bones and whatever wisps of cloth might cover him.
A sleepless night can last an eternity, and because of this Ethan has had plenty of time to decide what to do. He has already made up his mind by the time Barney Stark sets off for the jail promptly at eight the following morning. By then, Ethan has walked to hell and back while his neighbors have been dreaming in their comfortable beds. Hours later, he’s still burning. Touch him, and you burn along with him. Touch him, and you feel his pain.