Set This House In Order Part 26

"You should try to sleep now, Andrew."

"No." I shook my head. "I don't think I can. It, it's too much like blacking out again. . ."

"Just try. Lie down. Don't worry, I'll stay with you."

"All right."

I put the lights out and lay down, thinking I'd never be able to sleep now -- and, as often happens when you think that, I soon became very drowsy. My father stayed in the pulpit, talking softly with me as I began to drift off.

"Father?" I asked at one point, very near the edge of sleep.

"Yes?"

"It was an accident, wasn't it?"

"Yes, it was."

"OK," I said, finally believing it. But then another question came to me, why and from where I don't know, and even now I can't say whether I really asked it or only dreamed that I did: "Father?. . .

Did Andy Gage's stepfather have an accident, too?"

And to that, no answer, only the lapping of the water on the sh.o.r.es of the lake, as I slid down imperceptibly into sleep.

15.

I woke the next morning wondering for the second time whether I'd dreamed the whole thing, whether Warren Lodge's death had just been a nightmare; but an uncommon silence from the pulpit and the house told me that I hadn't, and it wasn't. When I went into the bathroom to start the morning ritual, Jake wouldn't come out to do the tooth-brus.h.i.+ng; Seferis, running through his exercise routine, twice lost count of his sit-ups; and Adam and Aunt Sam, while still insisting on their shower privileges, didn't try to wheedle extra time the way they usually did.

Even Mrs. Winslow was acting out of sorts: I came out to breakfast to find she'd fixed us a single large helping of scrambled eggs and toast. "Oh goodness," she exclaimed, realizing her mistake even as she set the plate down in front of me.

"It's all right," I said. "I don't think the others are that hungry this morning."

"Are you sure, Andrew?"

"Yes." In fact Adam was already objecting, but when I ignored him he quickly gave up, and n.o.body else made a peep.

Mrs. Winslow sat down to her own breakfast. We chatted while we ate, same as we always did -- about what, I honestly can't say, only that Warren Lodge was never mentioned -- and after I cleaned my plate, my father came out for his usual mug of coffee. So that much at least was normal. But still there was something else missing, and as I was getting up to go I realized what it was: Mrs. Winslow had never turned on the morning news.

"Do you think she knows?" I asked Adam.

"About what really happened yesterday?" Adam snorted. "How could she?"

"I don't know. But --"

"She doesn't always listen to the news."

"But today of all days, not to --"

"Probably she just doesn't want to hear about how he killed his kids for the millionth time -- you know they're going to rehash the whole story again."

"Well. . ." I had to admit, it made sense. "I suppose."

"I'll tell you something else, though," Adam added. "You owe me a breakfast."

"Adam. . ."

"Because I'm not upset about what happened."

I thought he probably was upset, though. Maybe it was only that my father had warned him not to, but it seemed to me that if Adam were really happy about how Warren Lodge had died, he'd have made a lot more jokes about it.

I said good-bye to Mrs. Winslow and set off for work. Coming onto Bridge Street, I had a bad scare: I saw a green van parked out front of the Autumn Creek Cafe. It was the wrong shade of green, and it had a roof rack and chrome trim where the van that had hit Warren Lodge had had neither, but still I stopped dead when I saw it. I waited; when the van didn't fade away like a mirage, I went up to it cautiously. I put out a hand, and touched one of its side panels.

There was a tremendous crash of gla.s.s. I whirled around: a deliveryman had just dropped several racks of bottled ice teas off the back of his truck. A pa.s.sing group of kids on their way to school broke out in applause.

I bent over and vomited up most of my breakfast onto the sidewalk. This brought another wave of applause from the school kids; I half expected Adam to join in, but the pulpit was empty.

Penny was waiting in my tent when I arrived at the Factory. She looked like she wanted to have a long talk, and I tried to discourage her: I broke into a big yawn in the middle of saying h.e.l.lo, and pinched the bridge of my nose as if I had a headache.

"Are you all right?" Penny asked me.

"I didn't sleep very well," I told her. "Can I help you with something?"

She bit her lower lip nervously. "I'm going to call Dr. Eddington," she announced.

"I know. My father told me you'd decided to make an appointment. That's good news."

"No," Penny said. "I mean I'm going to call him this morning -- right now. And I was wondering if. . . if you wanted to call him with me."

"With you?"

"Well . . . I remember Dr. Grey wanted you to make an appointment with Dr. Eddington too, so I thought maybe we could both --"

"Oh," I said. "Oh. . . no. No thank you." Of course I did intend to call Dr. Eddington, but right then, I didn't want to. "I'm not ready to call him yet."

"Oh. . ."

"Penny," I said. "You know it's all right. Dr. Eddington's a good person. You shouldn't be afraid to call him yourself."

"OK," she said. "All right." Her teeth came together again, not just biting her lower lip but worrying it, and I knew she was going to ask me if she could talk to my father. But neither he nor I was up for that, so I said hurriedly, "Is there anything else?" and gestured at my desk as if I had an important project to get to. Penny, taking the hint, shook her head no.

About an hour later, feeling guilty, I went by Penny's tent to see if she was OK. She was on the phone when I poked my head in; I listened, unnoticed, until I heard Dr. Eddington's name. That's all taken care of, then, I thought to myself as I ducked out again. Penny will be in good hands now.

What I'd told her was true: Dr. Eddington was a good person, and a good doctor. I'd be calling him myself soon. . . only maybe not today. Today I didn't feel well.

In fact I felt so poorly that I decided to sneak out of work early. In the middle of the afternoon, as I returned from dumping a load of Honey Bucket waste out behind the shed, I saw Reggie Beauchamps's tow truck parked on the Factory lot. Reggie sat in the truck cab, alone, smoking a cigarette and listening to the radio, looking bored, and I thought. . . well, what I thought isn't really important. But I knew I didn't want to be there to see Julie go jumping up on him again. My head was aching for real now, and my stomach was an empty pit from throwing up breakfast and having forgotten to eat lunch, so I decided to get out of there. I snuck off the lot through a hole in the back fence so I wouldn't have to go by Reggie's truck.

Back at the Victorian, Mrs. Winslow was waiting with a freshly baked chocolate cake. As I sat in the kitchen and stuffed myself, I told Mrs. Winslow that I wasn't feeling well, and asked if she would please tell anybody who called that I wasn't available.

"I'll tell you what, Andrew," Mrs. Winslow said. "I'm a little under the weather myself. So I think I'm going to leave the phone off the hook this evening." And she did.

That night, I dreamed I was floating over the landscape in Andy Gage's head. Viewed from above, the dream-geography formed a series of concentric rings, from the outermost circle of dark forest-green to the rough gray bull's-eye of Coventry. I hovered over the island, expecting at any moment to see the face of Gideon leering up at me. But Gideon never appeared, and eventually I began to wonder why. In the dream, Coventry was a barren rock, with no buildings or caves for a soul to hide in.

Where was he? I dropped lower, intending to make a careful search, but even as I did so, the mist sprang up, boiling off the lake; it obscured my view, and then I woke up to the sound of rain hissing against my bedroom windows.

By dawn the rain had stopped. It was still overcast as I walked to work, but the forecast promised suns.h.i.+ne by midmorning, and it did look as though the clouds were thinning. As for myself, I decided I felt better than yesterday; and I told myself I would definitely call Dr. Eddington today, by afternoon at the latest.

I came to the Factory and found Julie on the lot, sitting in her Cadillac, much as Reggie Beauchamps had been sitting in his truck the day before. Julie wasn't smoking or listening to the radio, though, just sitting. She looked like she'd been crying.

"Julie?" I said, approaching the car slowly so as not to startle her. She swung her head around lethargically and cranked her window down. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed: she had been crying. "Julie. . . what happened?"

Stupid question. Julie's cheeks colored, and her lips twisted in the way they did when she was about to say something really sarcastic. But she didn't say it. She took some deep breaths, and got her temper under control. "Nothing," she finally told me. Then: "Reggie."

"Oh."

"As predicted."

"Oh."

There was an awkward pause, and then Julie said: "Do you feel like blowing off work today?"

I wasn't sure if this was a proposal or just a reference to my recent absenteeism. "Um. . ."

"We could play hooky," said Julie. "Just go somewhere, take the whole day. What do you think?" I must have glanced over at the shed, because she added: "Don't worry about Dennis and Irwin; they don't really need us."

"I know," I replied, more readily than was tactful. "I mean. . . OK. Sure."

I climbed in the car. As I was pulling the door shut, Julie said: "Just one rule -- we don't talk about Reggie." I was happy to agree to that. "So where should we go?" Julie asked me.

"I don't know," I said. "Did you have someplace in mind?" She shook her head. "I don't want to go into Seattle, and I'd like to get away from here, but beyond that. . ."

"Mount St. Helens." The words just popped out. Mount St. Helens was one of those local tourist attractions I'd always thought of going to without necessarily wanting to go there, if you know what I mean. It was just something to say.

But Julie took the suggestion seriously. "OK," she said, and nodded. "Mount St. Helens it is."

She leaned forward and keyed the ignition; the Cadillac started without a hitch. "Good omen," Julie said, smiling. "Next stop, Mount St. Helens. . ."

On Bridge Street, just before the west bridge, we pa.s.sed Penny's Buick going the other way. I waved, and I think Penny saw me, but before she could wave back, Julie stepped on the gas.

"Uh, Julie," I said, as we sped across the bridge, "don't you think we should have stopped and told Penny where we're going?"

"Nah," said Julie. "This is our day out."

Because Julie had no road maps in her car -- none for Was.h.i.+ngton state, anyway -- we were forced to guess at our route: south on Interstate 5 until we saw a sign for Mount St. Helens National Park, then turn left, or possibly right (hopefully the sign would give a hint) onto the road that actually led to the volcano. It was a much longer drive than either of us antic.i.p.ated, and we groaned aloud when, having finally reached the turn off, we discovered we still had another fifty miles to go. But it was good-natured groaning -- we were still having fun, then.

We stopped for lunch at a visitor center high up on the mountain road. A scenic overlook offered panoramic glimpses of our goal: Mount St. Helens, swept by storm clouds, drifted in and out of view at the end of a long river valley. It was beautiful but not especially inviting, and rather than drive closer we decided to stay where we were, in the suns.h.i.+ne. We got a blanket out of the Cadillac's trunk and spread it on the gra.s.s, and sat down to watch the day go by.

"This is nice," Julie said, sighing contentedly. "Let's stay here forever, Andrew."

"OK," I replied. "I'll build us a cabin."

"Yeah. . ." With another sigh she lay down, resting her head in my lap. I tried not to move -- I was sitting back, propped on my arms, not a comfortable position to maintain for long, but I thought if I could just keep still, Julie might fall asleep.

The weather betrayed me before my triceps could. The clouds obscured Mount St. Helens completely, and started heading our way; Julie sat up again, smelling a downpour in the wind. "We'd better head back," she said. "If it rains like last night, the car's not going to be happy."

It didn't rain; the clouds remained in the mountains as we returned to the highway. There was, however, plenty of traffic: I-5 was stop-and-go from Olympia northwards, so the car wasn't happy anyway, and soon neither were we. We were pa.s.sing Tacoma when the Cadillac's engine coughed and died. Julie quickly got it restarted, but that was only the first of several stalls, each one requiring greater efforts of resuscitation. After the fifth or sixth -- we were alongside Boeing Field now, almost within sight of Seattle's skysc.r.a.pers -- we sat so long I thought for sure we were going to have to abandon the car and find a phone.

But Julie wouldn't hear of calling Triple A; with her luck, she knew which tow-truck driver they'd send to get us. "I will get out and push this car back to Autumn Creek if I have to," she said. The Caddy seemed to accept that; it started on the next try, and ran smoothly the rest of the way home.

We got back to Autumn Creek a little before five o'clock. I figured Julie would go straight to her apartment, or maybe swing by the Factory; instead, she found a parking s.p.a.ce on Bridge Street outside her favorite bar. "I could really use a drink," she said. "How about you?" The correct answer to this question, of course, was "No thank you." Drinking was still against the rules of the house, and by this point in my life, experience argued against it as well: every other time I'd had alcohol -- all three times with Julie -- I'd ended up regretting it. Really, I knew better.

So I have no excuse for the bad choice I made then. I suppose I could try to blame it on lingering shock at having witnessed Warren Lodge's death; or on Adam, my father, and the other souls in the house, not one of whom spoke up to try to stop me -- the pulpit was empty and had been all day, so that, sitting there in the car, I almost felt the way a singular person must feel, with no other selves to answer to. But these things don't even hold up as explanations, much less as justifications. The real reason -- not excuse -- was Julie herself: the way I felt about her; the way I'd felt when she laid her head in my lap on the mountain; and the way I still hoped, given the right combination of circ.u.mstances, she might come to feel about me. "Sure," I said. "I'll have a drink with you."

We started with a pitcher of beer, then at Julie's recommendation moved on to depth charges, mugs of lager into which shot gla.s.ses of bourbon had been dropped like underwater mines. By the time we switched to straight scotch, Julie had broken her own taboo and started telling me all about her breakup with Reggie Beauchamps. It was difficult to listen to. Julie got really worked up, railing about what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d Reggie was. . . and against all logic, I felt myself getting jealous, envying the intensity of her feelings for him, even though it was a negative intensity.

Julie sensed my discomfort, and stopped. "Sorry," she apologized. "I wasn't supposed to talk about him."

"It's all right," I told her.

"No, it isn't. It upsets you."

"It doesn't upset me," I lied. "It's just. . . I don't understand. If he makes you as unhappy as you say, and you knew he was going to make you unhappy, after what happened the last time you were together. . . why did you hook up with him a second time? I mean isn't the whole idea of going out with somebody that you at least think you're going to enjoy it?"

Julie gave me a rueful smile. "Now you're being rational. . ."

"Seriously, Julie -- "

"Seriously, Andrew. . . Look, I don't mean to make it sound like it was all bad. I mean we did have some fun, before Reggie reverted to being a s.h.i.+t. . ."

"OK, then," I said. "I still don't really get it, but OK."

Julie sighed. "You don't get it because you're more together than I am, Andrew. You're smarter than me." I made a face at that, but Julie insisted: "It's true. You are more together than me. And I'm not the only person who says so. Penny thinks you're really together. . . Penny thinks you're great."

I frowned. "Why do you keep doing that, Julie?"

"Doing what?"

"Talking about Penny like there's something romantic between us."

"Well, she does like you. . ."

I shook my head. "I don't think so, Julie. Not like that."

"Come on, Andrew. I saw the way she kissed you."