Fiona Range Page 7

  The Ice Princess, Fiona thought with a surge of old jealousy. The family’s eager acceptance of the accomplished Susan had made Fiona even more of an outsider. It had been the same with Ginny’s handsome husband, Bob Fay; and now she would be further displaced by Elizabeth’s fiancé. And yet just thinking about them all made her feel calmer, more centered.

  “Now how about Ginny, does she still work at the nursery school, the big one down on South Main Street?” Maxine asked.

  “Actually, she runs it.” She expected the next question to be about Ginny and Bob Fay’s separation last June. Ginny had discovered that Bob was having an affair. For someone who took such pride in her ability to see through bullshit, Ginny had certainly been wearing blinders when she met Bob Fay. Ginny had been devastated by her husband’s betrayal with his pretty young secretary. Ginny’s personality was her most attractive feature. The prediction that tall, square-jawed Ginny would come into her own as her mother had, with time mellowing the awkward angularities into a unique, almost masculine beauty, had yet to be fulfilled.

  “Where’s your cousin’s fiancé from?” Sandy called from below the counter where she squatted scrubbing the stainless steel bins.

  “New York,” Fiona called back. A logical assumption.

  “What’s his name again?” Maxine asked.

  She paused to remember what the note said. “Uh, Rudy Larkin.”

  “What’s he do?” Maxine asked.

  “He’s a teacher.” A guess.

  “Oh, so they’ll probably live in New York then,” Maxine said.

  “Not necessarily. That’s the good thing about teaching. You can always get a job no matter what.” She glanced at the clock, suddenly dreading all their polite scrutiny, the weary patience, the disapproval chilling every hug and cry of “Oh Fiona!”

  “My girlfriend’s sister’s a teacher,” Sandy called up. “Only she says it’s not like it used to be. She says they’ve been churning out so many teachers now the marks are glutted.”

  “What the hell’re you talking about?” Fiona snapped.

  Sandy tilted back on her heels and frowned. “You’ve heard that expression,” she said uneasily.

  “Do you mean the marks are glutted or do you mean the markets are glutted?” Fiona asked, as ashamed of her venom as energized by it. Articulation was a hallmark of the Hollises, who considered it a duty to point out one another’s grammatical errors. Better a loving nudge than the sting of a stranger’s criticism, Uncle Charles would always say.

  “Whatever!” Sandy rolled her eyes and sank back down behind the counter.

  “I suppose it’ll be a big wedding like the older one, Ginny, had,” Maxine said in a dreamy voice.

  “They haven’t decided,” Fiona said, remembering the stress of Ginny’s elaborate wedding. Elizabeth had been her older sister’s maid of honor. The medication it took to quell Elizabeth’s anxiety attacks had by the day of the ceremony reduced her cousin to a placid wraith, whose limp hand kept seeking Fiona’s. She hoped they weren’t trying to pressure Elizabeth into a big wedding.

  She hurried into the bathroom and changed into a long yellow skirt and loose white sweater. She preferred short skirts and sexy tops that showed off her body, but these were the kind of simple, flowing clothes all the Hollis women wore. Leaning close to the mirror, she brushed her eyelashes with mascara until they glistened thickly black. She stepped back, pleased, her dark eyes even darker, her skin whiter, her red lips wider and fuller. She always felt too made up and brassy around them. She came out of the bathroom feeling excited. Suddenly all that mattered was seeing everyone again, especially Elizabeth. She hoped this Rudy was good enough for her sweet cousin, whose dearest virtue was usually her undoing: putting everyone else ahead of herself.

  “What about you, Fiona?” Maxine called. “It’ll be your turn next. Aren’t you and Elizabeth the same age?”

  “We’re four months apart.” As little girls they had enjoyed pretending to be twins, though they didn’t look anything alike. Fiona was the dark-haired, sensual image of her mother, and Elizabeth was blond with the delicate, patrician features of her father.

  “So you’ll probably be the next one married,” Maxine said.

  “Yah, especially since George Grimshaw can’t keep his eyes off you.” Sandy giggled, then the flatware fell with an unnerving clatter as she dumped it all back into the gleaming bins.

  There was a close rumble of thunder, then a streak of lightning through the hard, gray sky as Fiona ran out to her car. She couldn’t wait to tell them she was taking a night course. She was unlocking her door when a white Saab convertible pulled into the alley.

  “Hello, beautiful. I was hoping I’d see you,” Todd Prescott called, grinning.

  “Yah, well I’m in a hurry, Todd, so move out of my way, will you?” she called back.

  “I will, but first I have to tell you something.”

  “No, you don’t!”

  “But there’s something—”

  “Jesus, you don’t get it, do you?”

  “Come here, come sit in the car with me, please? Just for a minute. I promise, that’s all it’ll take.”

  “No, I have to go somewhere, and I don’t want to be late, so will you please move?”

  “I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about what happened last—”

  “Uh-uh, Todd, don’t want to hear it,” she said, then got inside her car. She turned the key. The engine gave one faint groan, then died and wouldn’t start again.

  “So where’d you steal it from?” she said, running her hand across the soft red leather dashboard. Todd had promised to drive her straight home and nowhere else.

  “What do you mean steal? It’s mine!” he said, laughing.

  “I take it then your father got all the charges dropped.”

  “The cops were such screwups there weren’t any,” he said with a scornful chuckle.

  “Oh really?” She shook her head. Once again Mr. Prescott had managed to save Todd’s hide. “So what’s this a reward for then?” Probably for staying away from her. His family had always blamed the trashy Fiona for their son’s troubles. Mr. Prescott had told Todd once that she was “nothing but bad baggage like her mother, Natalie, and her father, Patrick Grady.”

  “No reward. As a matter of fact, I’m doing what you always said I should. I’m working my hump off loading trucks at the warehouse. My father says I gotta learn the business the same way he did, from the bottom up.”

  “Well, that’s good. I hope you do then, Todd.”

  “Do what?” he asked, grinning at her again.

  “Make something of yourself. It’s about time, isn’t it?”

  He laughed, and his hand fell from the wheel to her thigh. “God, I’ve missed you, Fee. You have no idea,” he said, his touch and raspy voice sending the old current through her bones. She pushed his hand away. She had been fourteen when they first made love.

  “You’ve missed me too, come on, I can tell.”

  “Oh really?” she said, relieved to see the rambling old farmhouse ahead.

  “Nobody makes me feel the way you do. And I mean that in every way,” he said, returning his hand to her leg. “Every possible way.”

  “Toddie!” She sat forward as he drove past the pale gray house with the big red barn in back. The driveway was filled with cars. They were all there.

  “We’ll go up to the beach house. No one’s there,” he said.

  “No! Don’t be ridiculous! Jesus, Todd!” she cried as he pulled off the road into a clearing. “My family, they’re waiting! I have to go to dinner!”

  “I’ll take you to dinner! Where do you want to go?” he said, laughing as he tried to pull her to him.

  “No, don’t!” She struggled and batted away his hands. “Stop it! God damn it, Todd, leave me alone. Just stop it!” She shoved him back against his door. It was starting to rain, and they were getting wet.

  He stared at her with pink-rimmed, glassy eyes. His pupils w
ere dilated. He was high, and she hadn’t even known it. “I heard something. I heard something funny about you.” She knew by his sly laugh he meant Brad Glidden.

  “Please, Todd, will you just bring me back?”

  “Something about you and George Grimshaw. Tell me it’s not true, babe. Tell me you’re not that desperate.”

  “Todd, will you please bring me home? Please? I’m begging you.”

  He looked up as if he had just realized it was raining. “Is it true?” he asked, starting the car. “Just tell me that.” He pushed a button and the convertible top closed over them.

  “No. Of course it’s not true,” she said, remembering his need whenever they broke up to know not only the names of anyone she’d dated, but every lurid detail.

  “Because you’re still my dirty girl, aren’t you, little Fee-fee?” He reached for her again. She kept trying to push him away, but his fingers dug into her arms. He looked up as headlights bounced over the foggy rise ahead.

  “Shit!” he said as a police cruiser drove slowly past them. As soon as it was gone he pulled onto the road. A minute later the same cruiser bore down on them from behind, siren blaring, lights flashing.

  “Pull over!” she yelled. He hadn’t even been speeding. The cruiser just needed room to pass. Todd hunched over the slick wheel, gripping it with both hands. The narrow road ahead was a roller-coaster of curves and turns. “Toddie!” she warned, her hand on the door. “If you don’t pull over I’m jumping out.” There was a field on their right, and he turned into it. The cruiser followed. With every hummock and rut the Saab jolted in to the air. The cruiser loomed on their tail. As they bounced along, Todd’s swearing convulsed into sobs. She pleaded with him to stop. This made no sense, and now he was just making the whole thing worse. At the edge of the field, he jerked the wheel, turning the car so suddenly that the front wheels caught in a deep gully. They lurched to a sudden stop. His head whiplashed back then hit the wheel as hers met the dashboard. Blood trickled down the side of his face. She touched her throbbing cheekbone, relieved to find no cut.

  “All right, Prescott, out of the car,” Officer Jim Luty ordered as Fiona looked up into a gun barrel.

  “You get that gun away from me!” she yelled, shrinking back against the seat.

  “Come on, Prescott, open the door and get out!” Luty opened Todd’s door and tried to pull him out, but Todd slumped dazed and moaning, his face in his hands.

  “Leave him alone, he’s hurt!” she said.

  Luty leaned closer. “Prescott, can you hear me?”

  “Why’d you do that?” she demanded of the young patrolman, who’d been a few years behind them in school.

  “He should’ve stopped!” Luty’s voice rose. “All he had to do was stop!”

  “He wasn’t doing anything wrong. He wasn’t even speeding. You were just harassing him!”

  “Harassing him! He’s driving a stolen car!”

  “What?” She scrambled to get out. “What do you mean, stolen?” She kept touching her tender cheekbone.

  The report had come in a little while ago, the tall, slope-shouldered policeman explained as the light rain blistered his shiny visor. The Saab had been stolen from Dexter Carey’s driveway. Hearing his next-door neighbor’s name, Todd looked up with a feeble grin.

  “That’s it!” she cried, throwing up her hands in disgust.

  “Hey! Fiona!” Luty shouted as she stormed off through the tall, wet grass. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  She headed toward the road. “Home!” she called back. Her family was all there and she’d be damned if she’d let a loser like Todd Prescott foul this up too. “Loser,” she panted as she marched along.

  “Get back here, Fiona! You get back here right now!” Luty demanded.

  “Nothing but a loser,” she panted.

  “You’re staying right here!” Luty’s big hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  “No I’m not!” She jerked free and hurried on ahead.

  “Yes you are!” he insisted, hurrying alongside.

  “Oh no I’m not!”

  “Oh yes you are!” There was a hard cold click as the metal cuff snapped around one wrist then her other.

  “You bastard!” she hissed.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, steering her back to the Saab where Todd sat with his head back on the seat now. “But you can’t just stomp off like that in the middle of an arrest.”

  “You can’t arrest me! I was just getting a ride home!”

  “Yah, in a stolen car!”

  “How was I supposed to know it was stolen?”

  “You could’ve asked!”

  “Oh, yah, okay, what? Every time somebody gives me a ride I gotta ask to see the registration?”

  “With Prescott you’d better,” Luty said, and hearing his name Todd’s head rose. He looked around.

  “No,” she shouted, advancing on him with Luty at her heels. “Because Todd Prescott is a screwup and I will never ever as long as I live even speak to the asshole. Do you hear me, Prescott, you loser, you stupid, stupid loser,” she said as he regarded her with a weak smile.

  Above them on the road a gray Volvo had slowed to a stop. A tall, skinny man in a yellow shirt and navy blazer jumped out and, leaving his door open, ran toward them. “Officer,” he hollered, identifying himself as a doctor. “Is anyone hurt? Does anyone need help?” He glanced at Fiona, who stood cuffed against the cruiser. “Are you all right?”

  “Oh yah, I’m just fine. Can’t you tell?” she said, rolling her eyes.

  “Just him.” Luty gestured to Todd. The doctor leaned into the car to look at Todd. He asked a few questions, then ran back to his car and returned with a black leather case which he opened on the hood of the Saab. He wiped blood from Todd’s forehead, then peeled open an H-shaped bandage and stretched it over the gash. A second cruiser arrived. Groaning, Fiona turned and closed her eyes. She knew this cop too, Gil Liota. He bent over Todd, who seemed alert and talkative now. His serene responses to Liota’s questions rose in surreal snatches. “. . . forced off the road . . . a terrible misunderstanding . . .”

  Someone touched her shoulder. “You sure you’re okay now?” the doctor asked, and she could only nod. He left, then moments later Todd’s father sped up with his neighbor Dexter Carey, who was nervously trying to explain that it had all been a big mix-up. Carey said he had totally forgotten that Todd would be coming by this morning to pick up the Saab.

  “Yah, right,” she muttered.

  Mr. Prescott glanced between the officers, nodding as if to validate each of Carey’s points. Just completely slipped his mind, Carey said. And so when he looked out and saw the car gone his first thought was to immediately call the police and report it stolen. Which had obviously been a terrible blunder. Mr. Prescott assured him it was a mistake anyone might make. Especially in this day and age.

  “Why was Mr. Prescott picking up the Saab?” Luty asked.

  “No, no, not Mr. Prescott. Todd,” Carey said, and Mr. Prescott smiled patiently.

  “Yes, that’s who I meant,” Luty said, and Carey and Mr. Prescott looked at each other.

  “Well, to have the . . .” Carey started to answer.

  “To bring it to the . . .” Mr. Prescott said simultaneously.

  “To the car wash,” Todd said, and now both men echoed, “That’s right, to bring it to the car wash. The car wash, yes, that’s exactly right.”

  A few minutes later Dexter Carey drove off in his muddy Saab, its tailpipe jiggling inches from the ground. Mr. Prescott assured the grim-faced officers there would be no accusations made, no blame assigned in the matter of Todd’s injuries. As far as he was concerned it was a misunderstanding most likely colored by the taint of past unfortunate events. And the presence of certain people, he might as well have added with his foul look at Fiona. He said he’d better hurry up and get his son to the family physician. No, Todd was protesting as they drove off, he had to pick Sandy up. He’d promised to give her
a ride home from work.

  Jim Luty waved now as he drove past Fiona. He had dropped her off at the corner so no one in the house would see her getting out of the cruiser. She hurried up the back steps and slipped into the big warm kitchen. They were all in the dining room. Forks clinked, and she could hear Uncle Charles’s deep voice telling a story that made Elizabeth and Ginny both cry out at once in laughing protest.

  “No, Dad’s right. He’s right. I remember,” Jack insisted over his sisters’ howls.

  “See! Jack knows. He remembers,” Uncle Charles said, and now the women at the table were protesting that Jack didn’t know. He couldn’t. He hadn’t even been there. He always did this, Ginny cried, taking his father’s side against the girls.

  “Girls?” Uncle Charles said. “Now if I’d said that you’d be accusing me of God knows what kind of loathsome chauvinism.”

  Fiona smiled. The stripped turkey carcass was on the counter. Gravy simmered on the stove. She turned it down, then put a scrap of dark meat in her mouth and tiptoed toward the little bathroom under the back stairs. She wanted to at least comb her hair.

  “Fiona!” Aunt Arlene said from the doorway. “I thought I heard someone in here.” Halfway across the room she stopped, her wide, toothy smile fading. “What in God’s name happened to your face?”

  “I don’t know. What?” She held her breath as her aunt came toward her.

  “Your cheek,” Aunt Arlene said, peering closely as she touched Fiona’s face. “It’s so red. And your hair. You should see your hair!” She looked down. “And you’ve got burrs all over your skirt!”

  “I had a little car trouble,” she said, wincing. “That’s why I’m so late. I’m sorry.”

  “Well anyway, you’re here,” her aunt said, hugging her so tightly that Fiona bit her lip and closed her eyes with almost dizzying relief. “And that’s the most important thing now, isn’t it?” she whispered at Fiona’s ear, then drew back to look at her again. “I’ve missed you, little girl,” she said with a tremulous smile as she kept trying to smooth down Fiona’s mussed hair. “I’ve missed you an awful, awful lot!”