Fiona Range Read online

  “Aren’t you going to go up?” Fiona said.

  “No, he’s all right.” Terry listened a moment. “Sounds like he’s going back to sleep.”

  The crying stopped, but Fiona stood up. She really had to go, she said, heading for the door.

  “Fiona, wait! You heard about Brad and Krissy’s baby, right?”

  “Yah, I knew the night of the party. The baby was born the day before, remember?”

  “I mean about the baby’s heart,” Terry said. “There’s a problem with one of the valves. The poor little thing’s in Children’s.”

  No, she hadn’t heard anything at all, she said.

  “Brad and Krissy just about live there.” Surgery was a possibility, Terry explained, but first the baby had to get stronger. “It breaks your heart to see him, tiny little thing all wired up to machines and monitors. Brad’s taking it worse than Krissy. She told Tim she’s really worried about him.”

  Fiona felt sick to her stomach.

  There was creaking on the darkened stairs, then Tim came around the corner into the kitchen, squinting, with Frankie on his hip. The little blond boy was sucking his thumb, his plump cheeks shiny red. “Didn’t you hear him?” Tim said, passing him into Terry’s arms. “He’s been crying for the last ten minutes.”

  “I thought he stopped,” Terry said, cheek on her son’s brow. “Poor, sweet Frankie doesn’t feel good, does he?” she crooned at his ear.

  “He’s burning up,” Tim said, still not acknowledging Fiona.

  “I’ll take care of him.” Terry jiggled the whimpering child on her hip. “You go back to bed now.” She tried giving him a cup of water, but he pushed it away.

  “I can’t believe you let him cry like that,” Tim said.

  “I told you, I thought he stopped.” Terry glared at him as she wet a dishtowel under the faucet then dabbed Frankie’s temples and brow with it.

  “Well he didn’t,” Tim said through clenched teeth.

  “It’s my fault, Tim. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was so late,” Fiona said.

  He opened the refrigerator and took out a carton of milk.

  “Tim!” Terry said as he got a glass from the dishwasher. “Tim!” she said again, but he continued to ignore Fiona.

  “Hey, it’s okay. You know me, I see a light and I figure maybe there’s a party going on,” Fiona said, opening the door.

  He turned then. He drank the milk slowly, eyes riddled with loathing as he watched her leave.

  The minute the door closed she heard Terry say, “How could you do that?”

  “Easy. It was real easy,” Tim said.

  “Well, I don’t care, she’s my friend and—”

  “She’s a screwup and every time she comes around you turn into one too!”

  “You don’t know her. She’s a good person.”

  “Face it, she’s a pig, Terry!

  Fiona tiptoed down the steps and slid into her car, cringing as she turned the key, feeling even more exposed and shabby with the old engine’s roar. She squinted as she drove. She didn’t want to see anyone or anything familiar, not a car, house, or street sign.

  For the next week she got up at five and jogged three miles before work. She unpacked every box in the apartment, cleaned the three tiny rooms, and hung curtains in the bathroom. After her Monday night class she stayed for the extra help and even tutored Kendra and Ann one night at the library. She ate only fish, vegetables, grains, and fruit. Vowing that caffeine and alcohol would never again pass her lips, she drank eight glasses of water a day. Her good health showed. Whatever she was doing she should keep it up, Chester said. Bestowing her highest compliment, Maxine said she looked like a model.

  A few nights later, instead of going straight through the intersection, she turned abruptly onto Elm Street. There was a light on in George’s house. Before she could change her mind, she hurried onto his front porch and rang the bell.

  “Is it too late for company?” she asked when he opened the door.

  “Oh no, I was just watching the game. Come in! I’m so glad you’re here.” He grinned. He was in his pajamas and bathrobe. His hair was wet and he looked freshly shaved.

  “I’ll just stay a few minutes,” she said. “I have to get up so early, and I know you do too.”

  “That’s okay. We can both be a little tired in the morning.” He picked up the remote and turned off the television. “Here, sit down.” He gestured to one end of the sofa. “Actually I was just thinking about you.” He sat at the other end. “Then the doorbell rings and here you are.”

  She’d been on her way home from class, she said, when all of a sudden her car veered sharply then came to a dead stop in front of his house.

  “What do you think happened?” he asked, smiling.

  “I think I’ve been so damned self-disciplined lately my funky old car can’t stand me anymore.”

  “That’s great. Especially if it brings you here,” he said, laughing.

  “Yah, except I don’t know how long I can stand me either.” She began telling him about her constant struggle between thinking she was the smartest person in the class, then suddenly worrying that maybe things weren’t as simple as they seemed, that maybe the complexities were apparent to everyone else but her.

  “Like tonight I was in the middle of an answer and it got real quiet in the room and the teacher’s looking at me and all of a sudden I thought, they don’t know what the hell I’m talking about! So maybe this is some kind of manic high I’m on and nobody wants to tell me.”

  He chuckled. “You underestimate yourself,” he said, half turning as he put his arm over the back of the sofa.

  She laughed. “It’s kind of like the opposite. People have always underestimated me, so to compensate I tend to overestimate my abilities.” She laughed. “And then I end up with this huge gap, like some kind of weird void I flounder around in.”

  “You never seem like you’re floundering to me.” He was touching the ends of her hair.

  “Well, you’re not in my history class,” she said as the hair brushed the nape of her neck.

  “No, but I’ve known you a long time.”

  “Long enough to know better,” she said with a deep shiver.

  “To know what better?”

  “To know better than fool with my hair like that.”

  “I’m sorry!” Red-faced, he pulled away quickly then sat very still with his arms folded.

  “George, I was kidding. I was only kidding.” She groaned and held up her hands. “See! Look at me! I’m floundering, now, right here before your very eyes. George,” she coaxed, sliding closer. She put his hand back on her hair. “I like that. It feels good.”

  “Are you sure?” he said so uneasily that she leaned closer, just a breath of a kiss passing between them. He sighed, and she kissed him again, gently, for a long time. When she started to ease away, he pulled her against him. He slid his hands under her sweater and she shivered as his rough fingers stroked her back. He smelled of soap and shaving lotion. She could taste peppermint on his tongue. She put her hand on his hard flat stomach and could feel his deep moan.

  “I should go now,” she said against his open mouth.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think I have to study.” Even her eyelids ached.

  “But you already know it all,” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “Yah, that’s right.” She nibbled his lower lip.

  The telephone rang. He reached so quickly behind her that she fell against the sofa arm with a little laugh.

  “Hello?” His face reddened as he turned away to listen. “Nothing, just . . . Oh! . . . Well . . . Well, that’s good . . . But you didn’t have to call. I would’ve . . . No, I know . . . I know.”

  She knew by his expression that the voice in his ear was a woman’s.

  “You will . . . You know you will . . . Well, anyway, I better go. I’m . . . No! No, I didn’t. When?” A stricken look came over him now as he listened, nodding. “O
h God. That’s awful. That’s just so awful . . . I know . . . Especially after waiting so long . . . Well, okay then, let me know . . . Maybe I’ll see you there then . . . Maybe . . . I don’t know . . . No, nothing!” His voice dropped. “No, just me . . . I do? I don’t know, I’m just tired, maybe that’s it . . .”

  “And who pray tell was that?” she teased when he hung up. She put both arms around his neck. She liked the bristly feel of his cropped hair against her cheek.

  “Elizabeth,” he said with a hard swallow.

  “Elizabeth?” She sat back. “What did she want?”

  “She was telling me about the fiancé.” He looked at her. “She doesn’t think he likes it here.”

  “Huh?” She shook her head in disbelief. “And what are you supposed to do about it?”

  “She just wanted to talk, I guess, that’s all,” he said, so regretfully that she jumped up.

  “So call her back, George. For godsakes, don’t let me interfere.”

  “No, I didn’t mean it that way. Please, Fiona, come here.” He took her in his arms. “We’re just friends, that’s all. That’s all we are.”

  “Who do you mean, me or Elizabeth?” she said, stiffening. She wanted to go.

  “I don’t mean you,” he said sadly.

  She pulled away before he could kiss her. “She asked if someone was here, didn’t she?”

  He nodded.

  “So why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I didn’t think you’d want me to.”

  They stared at each other.

  “George! You should see the look on your face. Devastation! Utter devastation, that’s the look. And that’s okay. I can understand that.” She put on her jacket. “So let’s not make things any more complicated than they already are.”

  He shook his head. “No! No, it’s what she just told me about Brad and Krissy Glidden’s baby.”

  “What?

  “He died. A little while ago.”

  She gasped and covered her face with her hands.

  “I’m sorry, Fiona. I forgot. You and Krissy are friends,” he said, trying to put his arm around her again, but she moved back.

  “I better go now. I’m tired. I’m really tired.”

  As she came down the walk every step felt leaden and clumsy. She had no memory of the drive home, but here she stood now in her vestibule staring at the envelope taped to her mailbox.

  Her name was written in Aunt Arlene’s careful script, the small, precisely shaped letters, without flourish, boldness, or precarious slant of angle to mark her as anything but the sensible woman she was.

  My dear Fiona,

  I am writing this note because I have tried many times to call you. Apparently your phone has been shut off, and you still don’t have it connected.

  “Which obviously means you fucked up again,” Fiona muttered as she read.

  As I’m sure you know by now, Elizabeth is engaged to Rudy Larkin, a wonderful young man from New York. We are all getting together for dinner Monday night so that he can meet everyone, and we want you to be with us.

  I know there have been some difficult moments lately, but we are a family and in the end that is the bond to which we must adhere. Please make every effort to come for dinner. It will mean a great deal to Elizabeth. We all look forward to seeing you. I’ve missed you very much.

  Love,

  Aunt Arlene and Uncle Charles

  She threw the crumpled note into the trash. The hell with them. They didn’t really want her to come. Elizabeth must have insisted. Uncle Charles had refused to sign his name so Aunt Arlene had done it. Yes, Rudy, you fine young man, there is someone missing, our dear screwup, Fiona. Every family has one, and she’s ours.

  All that night she dreamed of Brad Glidden’s corpse on top of her in this room, in this bed. No matter how she struggles she cannot push him away. She cannot speak or breathe, but the window is open, and somewhere a baby is crying to the ceaseless pulse of Uncle Charles’s voice rising and falling through the years and the long moonless night: Uncle Charles would say, Uncle Charles always said, Uncle Charles said, Uncle Charles is saying, the trouble with you, Fiona, is you don’t think before you speak. The trouble with you, Fiona, is you don’t think before you act. The trouble with you, Fiona, is you don’t think. The trouble with you, Fiona, is you. The trouble with Fiona is you. The trouble. Fiona is the trouble.

  Chapter 3

  The coffee shop had just closed. Late-afternoon rain had been predicted, and the sky through the plate glass window was heavy and gray. With the lowering darkness came even more dread.

  “Sandy’ll finish that,” Maxine called from the register.

  “Yah, what’re you waiting for?” Sandy seemed as eager as Maxine for her to leave.

  “I’m almost done,” Fiona said. She tore open another package of paper napkins.

  “Your aunt and uncle’ll think I made you late. So go, just go!” Maxine cried. Her rouged cheeks blazed with excitement.

  Fiona had brought a change of clothes to work for Elizabeth’s dinner tonight, but now she wasn’t sure if she should go. She wasn’t ready to be with them. All she could think about was the baby’s death. She knew she couldn’t change what had happened. And even if she could, if she were given back that one night and did not sleep with Brad Glidden, would his baby’s heart be healthy? Would he be alive? No, no, of course not. It had been like this throughout the day, with each bout of logic spiraling her more tightly inward until she felt not only removed, but oddly stranded. She did not even look up now as Sandy dumped out the flatware bins. The usually agitating crash of knives, forks, and spoons onto the metal tray seemed as extraneous a commotion as the distant storm.

  For the first time in her life she felt deeply afraid and insecure. Her brash self-confidence, with all its old defenses and excuses, was being undermined the way a deep current erodes an embankment. So invisible was the weakening that every step, each shift in weight felt treacherous. The baby’s death wasn’t her fault. She knew it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. The pitiful excuses kept flashing through her thoughts like surreal images through the window glass of a speeding train: the baby’s weak heart, the baby’s weak and stupid father, holding her as she stumbled up the steps because she had been drunk, and weak, and stupid, and because, because, because of her recklessness, because of her sin a price had been demanded, a terrible punishment exacted, and now anything could happen, anything at all, and she needed to do something—something that would change it all back and put everything into place. But what? She looked around the empty coffee shop. She needed to be with her family. She needed to go home. She would be safe there. There were only a few more napkin dispensers to fill and then she would leave.

  “I wonder if she’s having her cheese pinwheels. The paper had her recipe. I think it was last Christmas, you know that holiday food thing? On the Social Set page,” Maxine was telling Sandy, whose blank gaze only seemed to encourage her. “Well, anyway, when I saw it was Arlene Hollis’s recipe I just had to make them. I wasn’t even having a party, but they were so good I ate every one myself. Fiona, you be sure and tell your aunt how much I love her cheese pinwheels. They were so gourmet! And I’ll bet the dinner’ll be like that too tonight—really, really gourmet! In fact, I just thought! I saw your aunt Arlene in the supermarket the other day! Well, she doesn’t know me, so of course I didn’t say anything, but anyway it was the poultry section, and she was near those little what-do-you-call-them, you know, gaming hens. Corn . . . Corn something . . .”

  “Corn Ware!” Sandy called.

  “Yah, those Corn Ware gaming hens, and I bet that’s what the engagement dinner’ll be tonight.”

  “Cornish game hens, you mean,” Fiona said stiffly, adding that big family dinners were usually turkey.

  “Turkey,” Maxine repeated with a look of wonder. Well if that didn’t just prove what down-to-earth, real people the Hollis family was, she continued, her proprietary chatter about the family making Fiona fe
el even more exposed and vulnerable. The Hollises were such wonderful people, upstanding and so generous whenever their help was needed. Why just last Christmas when the Dodsons’ house burned, Judge Hollis put the entire family up in one of his properties rent-free until they could rebuild. Maxine knew from personal experience what a kind, fair man he was, she said with a sharp nod, as if expecting Fiona to disagree. “And believe me, there’s a lot more I could tell. But that’s the way that man is. All Judge Hollis wants is to help people and he doesn’t need the whole world knowing about it.”

  Fiona had heard this cryptic comment from Maxine before, but she refused to be baited. She was used to people feeling obliged to point out her ingratitude to the Hollises.

  Maxine was telling Sandy what a nice person the Judge’s wife, Arlene, was. “She was always that way. You never would’ve known the Ranges had money. They were just the nicest girls, Arlene and Natalie.”

  Fiona looked up, startled. Natalie. Natalie. Yes. Natalie, she thought, smiling, and without knowing why felt a wholeness taking shape in the unfamiliar sound and cadence of her mother’s spoken name.

  “Now what about your cousin, Jack?” Maxine called from her wobbling stool at the register. She grabbed the counter edge to steady her rickety perch. “He’s in computers, right?”

  “No, he’s a court officer,” Fiona said. After his layoff Jack had been unemployed for almost a year before his father got him a job in one of the district courts in Boston.

  “Oh, so he’s following in his father’s footsteps,” Maxine said with an approving smile.

  “He’s not a lawyer,” she said. And had never wanted to be one, though Uncle Charles had urged him in that direction. Jack had wanted to make a name in his own field, but had been forced into his father’s.

  “Now, he’s married to Susan Daley, right? She is so pretty!” Maxine called to Sandy. “Do they have any children?”

  “No, Susan works for ZyCo,” Fiona said.

  “That’s right. She’s got some really important job. She travels all over the country, right? And she’s got the most beautiful blond hair. So light it’s like silver,” Maxine told Sandy.