A Place We Knew Well (21 page)

Somewhere over there, Charlotte was in her Sunday best, a red knit dress with large white buttons, waiting with the other girls in the Homecoming Court. At some point, after they were introduced, she'd said, each girl would toss a ceremonial log onto the fire.

“Sounds like fun,” he'd told her.

“Sounds like Lamesville to me,” she'd retorted. “But it's part of the deal, apparently.”

But as the bonfire flames leaped higher and higher, their reflection like fiery tongues licking the lake's surface, as the cries of the crowd for an Eagles victory rose to a roar, Avery couldn't help but wonder: How could two people share the same experience yet see it so differently?

For him, the night of Sarah's hysterectomy began with the inexplicable sound of suffering, an anguished animal-like cry that, in the first few moments, he thought was a doe or a fawn caught in a hunter's steel trap. Rolling out of bed, he followed it to the bathroom, where he was shocked to find her doubled over on the floor in a spreading puddle of blood. Her face was deathly white, her eyes glazed with fear and pain. Stunned, he'd run to call the doctor, then rushed back to wrap her in blankets and gently, quickly, carry her to the car.

He'd been barely aware of Charlotte slipping like a shadow into the backseat. In fact, after the frantic drive to the hospital emergency room, one hand on the wheel, the other on Sarah's bent-over back urging her to hold on, he was surprised to hear Charlotte exclaim, “There's Doc Mike, Dad, beside the gurney!” Odd word,
gurney;
he'd wondered how she knew it.

They waited for hours, unable or unwilling to put the worst of their fears into words, until finally Doc Mike appeared, exhausted but upbeat. “She was hemorrhaging badly. It was touch and go for a while, but she's fine now. She's going to be just fine.” Avery had hugged the man and thanked him for saving Sarah's life. In his mind, that's what the hysterectomy was—a lifesaver.

But for her, it was “the death of hope”?

No
hope
? He'd been stunned to hear her say it. Yet hard on the heels of his surprise came the aching memory of the one and only time they'd talked about it.

“Are you…aren't you sad about this?” she'd asked him, in the hospital while she was still recovering.

“Well, of course I am, darlin',” he'd told her. He would have loved a son. “But isn't the important thing that you're okay and we still have Charlotte?” His attempt at optimism had triggered a bout of bitter weeping.
Children of our own
was a dream they'd both shared since the beginning. He'd done his best to comfort her, but to no avail. He remembered wondering, How do you grieve a dream?

And for how long?
he asked himself now.

“Ahem.” Martell stood at the kitchen door.

“Doc.” Avery turned awkwardly. “Get you something to drink? Water? A soda?”

“No, thanks.”

Something in the doctor's manner had the whiff of bad news. Avery braced himself for it. “What do you think?” he asked quietly.

Martell took off his glasses and tucked them into his shirt pocket. Without them, his face looked oddly undressed. He pinched the bridge of his nose between his eyes then said, “Neurasthenia.”

“Nure-azz-what?”

“Nervous exhaustion. Sarah's extremely overwrought. Hanging on by a thread, I'd say…on the verge, if we're not careful”—his naked look admonished Avery—“of some sort of breakdown.”

“Breakdown?” The word was incomprehensible. “How? Why?”

Martell spread out both palms. “You tell me….”

“Well…” Avery was grasping for an explanation. “It's been a crazy week, that's for sure—the Civil Defense show, all this business over Cuba, plus homecoming….”

“
Week?
I'd say this goes back a lot further than that. She was asking about the hysterectomy, and that was two years ago, Wes. I tried to divert her attention to something more concrete, more in the present—like the fact that Charlotte will be leaving home soon, that a lot of women dread their kids going off to college—but I'm afraid it's much more complicated than that.”

Disconcerted, appalled, Avery longed to say,
Is this my fault somehow, Doc? Something I said or did?
But instead he asked, “What do we do now?”

“Well, I'm no headshrinker. But if it was up to me, she'd be in Florida San—R and R, four to six weeks.”

“The sanitarium?”

“Yup.”

“What'd she say about that?”

“I didn't bring it up, but it's definitely something we should explore…I've given her something to sleep.”

“Will she…I mean, she's in there because it's the darkest room in the house. Should I move her back to our room? To keep an eye on her?”

“No need,” Martell said confidently. “Most likely, she's already out. I'll stop by in the morning, give her something to help get her up and out of bed. And I'll call Florida San to check their availability. My best advice for now is to avoid upsetting her. Keep things as calm and quiet around here as possible.”

“But what about the parade tomorrow? And the game Saturday night, the halftime ceremony? Sarah would be horrified if she missed homecoming. If not now, definitely whenever she comes out of this…this what?”

Martell, frowning, held up an open hand to stop him. “Let's cross each bridge when we come to it, shall we?”

“S
ailor, turn
TO
!” Was that a woman's voice—“Skipper on deck!”—out of Steve's service bay? Avery did a double take.

She was a stout redhead, with rosy windburned cheeks and blue-gray eyes with a clearly flirtatious twinkle. She handed Steve a socket wrench, then sashayed across the service bay to greet Avery in the office doorway. She had an ample bosom, amply displayed, and her forthright handshake was as firm as a man's.

“Lillian,” she said with a cocky grin. “Lilly for short. Sometimes Lil, but not for long. And you're Wes, of course.” She surveyed him up and down, like a little admiral on inspection. “Steve said you were tall, but he never said
anything
about handsome. Why, you're a dead ringer for that actor—oh, what's his name, Steve-O?—I loved him in
Witness for the Prosecution.
The guy everybody underestimated, till he turned out to be the killer in the end?”

Steve's face appeared from under the hood of John Dunham's Eldorado. “Tyrone Power.”

“Bingo!” Lilly agreed. “Steve-O says you wouldn't say ‘shit' if you had a mouthful, but I always say it's the quiet ones you gotta watch.”

“Steve-
OH
?” Avery echoed, with a deliberate hike of brows in Steve's direction.

“Ohhh.” She had a gravelly chuckle. “That's my little pet name for a certain midshipman knows his way around a lady's lower deck.”

There was a loud metallic clang in the corner. Accidentally or not, Steve had dropped the socket wrench on the service bay floor. “All right, Lilly,” he said, his tone half pleading, half warning.

“Oh, I'm an old Tartar!” she trilled to Avery with another wicked wink. “Everybody says so. But a woman has
needs
same as any man. Requires
regular
maintenance, same as any car or ship. And your master mechanic over there…”

“Lilly!” Steve groaned, emphatically dropping the Cadillac's hood. “Watch yourself, Cap. She's a walkin', talkin' instruction manual.”

Avery hoped his smile covered his embarrassment, and his curiosity. And the rapid replacement of his mental image of Steve's lady friend—Miss Lillian, the demure New Smyrna Beach nurse whom Steve visited on weekends—with
this
Lilly, the living, breathing lust bucket before him. He shot Steve an appreciative glance.
Lucky guy,
it said.

“And it ain't like
his
tongue wasn't hanging over his toes a few minutes ago!” she added cheerfully. “When
your
lady friend stopped by.”

“My…?”

Steve walked over, wiping his hands on a service rag. “Wild Rose of Sharon, remember? From the other day?”

Kitty? “Here?”

“Looking forward to the parade, she said. Wanted to drop off a good-luck gift for Charlotte.” Steve chucked his chin toward a small flat package on the desk.

“Gift?” Avery felt the uptick in his blood. Hadn't they agreed that all she'd do was
look
? Not touch, not talk, definitely not
gift
!

“They're gloves,” Lilly explained. “Long ones up to here.” She pointed to the soft pink flesh above her elbow. “
Very
elegant.”

And they were. Long white gloves, neatly folded inside a clear plastic bag. “For luck, she said. There's a card, see?”

Visible through the plastic was a small white card with what had to be Kitty's looping handwriting:
For C., This is your moment. Savor it! Good luck, A friend.

C.,
it said. For Carly instead of Charlotte?

“Thought we oughta put 'em in The Admiral, so we don't forget,” Steve said. “But she said to make sure you saw 'em first.”

With some effort, Avery masked his response, stilling the muscles in his face. Inwardly he reeled with revulsion and self-recrimination. A bead of sweat crept out of his armpit and trickled down his ribs. Kitty
here,
waltzing in with a
gift
for Charlotte, wishing her luck from “a
friend
”? Where did she get the nerve? What if Charlotte had been here? Worse yet, what if
Sarah
had been here? Sarah, who was under doctor's orders to
avoid
any upset. Wouldn't seeing Kitty, on
this
of all days, be enough to push Sarah right over the edge? No doubt. So
no way
he could allow the gift, right?

But if he didn't, was it possible that Kitty would seek them out on the parade route and demand an explanation? Or worse yet, show up at the house? Good Lord, what a
disaster
that would be. And if Kitty decided to bring up the cottage?

Avery closed his eyes, shook his head at either option. When he opened them, he was confronted by the amused gleam in Lilly's blue-eyed stare.

“Got a problem?” she asked softly.

Avery blanched. The layered lilt in her tone, the smile playing across her face, implied she'd leaped to the conclusion that Kitty
was
his girlfriend, that the day was ripe with potential intrigue.

“Not at all,” he managed. “I'm sure Charlotte
and
her mother will be delighted.” Even to his ears, it came out lame, an obvious lie.

“Well, then, I'll just set them in the backseat for this afternoon.” She was clearly unconvinced.

Steve waited till Lilly was outside to say, “Sorry, Cap. She just showed up late last night cryin'. Said that all week, people at the hospital been sayin', ‘See ya tomorrow, if there
is
a tomorrow,' and that yesterday it just got to her. Said that, if this is
it,
she wanted to be with me. Besides, she knew I was lendin' The Admiral to Leo and could use a ride.” His look was apologetic, his face more hound-dog than usual. “Oh, and by the way”—he handed Avery the clipboard with the fuel chart—“we're outta Supreme. Called Tampa again. Maybe somethin' Monday, maybe not.”

“Somehow,” Lilly announced, returning, “I thought things would be calmer away from the coast. Patrick AFB's been crazy all week, but McCoy must be a zoo! Well”—she sighed, shaking her car keys out of her pocket—“guess I'll go forage for some food. Which way's the Winn-Dixie? If this is our Last Supper, I definitely want a steak!”

“There's a Publix two blocks east of the duplex, on Edgewater Drive,” Steve told her. “Need directions?”

“I'll find it. Be back at three,” she said to Steve. “Should be an interesting afternoon,” she added, with another disconcerting wink at Avery.

T
HE TWO MEN WATCHED
Lilly wheel off in her '61 Pontiac Firebird.

“A Fireball Roberts reject,” Steve said, “from Smokey Yunick's shop in Daytona. More car than most people could handle. But now that you've met her…”

Fire-engine red, Avery observed. Figures.

Reflexively, he patted the left chest pocket of his uniform. “Need to drop off a couple prescriptions for Sarah across the street. Pick up some
real
news while I'm there?”

“That'd be good,” Steve agreed. The
Sentinel
's lead stories were predictably upbeat: The naval quarantine would continue during peace talks at the UN; a Soviet oil tanker was halted but later allowed to pass into port. “Wish they'd do the same with our tanker into Tampa,” he griped.

Avery, waiting for a break in the traffic to cross the street, had his mind on other things.

As the number of southbound convoys had lessened, the number of northbound cars and station wagons had swollen to a near-continuous stream. Whole families from Florida's big south counties—license plates from Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade—were heading north out of harm's way.

Watching them, Avery worried: Maybe I should have packed up Sarah and Charlotte at the first sign of trouble and gotten the heck out of Dodge. Like Marjorie did. Would that have made any difference? Would Sarah be fine if I had, instead of…whatever she is now?

Pharmacist Bo Hammond hailed him from behind the counter.

Avery handed over the three prescription slips that Martell had dropped off this morning. Hammond spread them out like playing cards on the counter, smiling.

“In my business, we used to call this combination ‘happy-go-lucky.' Miltown, the tranquilizer,” he said, stabbing an index finger at the middle slip, “a lot of people call 'em their happy pills. And the Dexedrine you probably remember from The War.”

Avery nodded. Dexedrine was standard air force issue to crews facing long night flights to Japan and back. Pilots called them “go pills,” or often, because of their color, “greenies.” “Greenie up, boys,” the pilot would call over the com system, meaning “Take your Dexedrine and stay alert.”

“But poor Seconal,” Hammond was saying, cradling the third slip in cupped palms.

“Sleeping pill, right?”

“Yes.” He said it sadly, as if mourning the loss of an old friend. “Ever since Marilyn, it's hard to call Seconal lucky anymore.” He scooped up the slips. “Be right back,” he said and turned to his shelves.

Watching Hammond go about his business, Avery struggled against the sudden tilt, a sensation of spin that had his hands grasping the counter in front of him. In the briefest span of days—one week!—a dizzying gap had opened between what he considered his normal life and now:

Sarah so unnerved it would take three different pills to steady her—one of them the same powerful barbiturate that killed Marilyn Monroe? Why hadn't he seen this coming? What
should
he have done? What could he do
now
to help her?

And what about Charlotte, who, this morning, seemed lost and remote, floating out the door with a look—eyes wide and wary—that tore his heart, left him flailing with frustration at how best to protect her. What he wanted, desperately, was for all of this never to have happened; for everything to be just as it was before. Before the planes, the President's speech, the trains and convoys; before Kitty showed up. And the nure-azz-whatever-it-was that had Sarah
hanging by a thread.

He turned away and headed toward the newspaper racks, not wanting Hammond to see his eyes tearing up at the sense of his own drowning helplessness. A man takes a wife and makes a life. He plans ahead, builds his business, puts away savings for rainy days and retirement. He cultivates a sense of competence and control. He strives to be a good husband, father, and friend. He anticipates and corrects the occasional ping, the odd blowout. But he expects the welds to hold. He does
not
expect things to fall apart in a matter of
days
.

A
VERY STOOD AT THE CROSSWALK,
waiting for the light, when the passing convoy slowed to a parade-like crawl. Inexplicably, several of the drivers began honking their horns and waving wild halloos out the windows. The flatbeds' cabs were uniformly taped with cardboard signs stenciled
US ARMY
in big black letters; but there was another uniformity beneath them that took him a moment to recognize.

“Wes! Hey, Wes, it's
me
—Bobby Odom!” the driver called through the window to Avery at the curb.

And it
was
gap-toothed Bobby Odom, longtime driver for Dr. Phillips's Granada Groves, waving from behind the wheel.

“Call my wife! Tell her I'm okay!”

Avery raised a hand, called back, “Sure thing!” and counted one, two, four barely disguised Granada trucks bearing their canvas-covered military loads to some point south.

How many trucks had the toothpick-sucking Geiger said the government requisitioned?

“Five from us, three from Heidrich,” Geiger informed him over the phone.

“Well, I only laid eyes on four of yours—and Bobby Odom, for sure. You'll call his wife?”

“ 'Less she calls me first. All the wives been pesterin' me for days. It'll be a relief to give 'em some real news.”