Cloud Nine

‘Sarah?’ Will asked, remembering her shining eyes. ‘I think so.’

‘You seemed to be gone a long time.’

‘Really? Didn’t seem that long to me.’

‘Well, it was. I was timing you. Thirty-five minutes. It was only supposed to be fifteen.’

‘My watch must’ve stopped,’ Will said, trying not to smile. His daughter was so transparent. Anytime she sensed even a glimmer of interest on his part in a woman, she turned ultravigilant. She was probably afraid he’d do what her mother had done with Julian: go off skiing for a weekend and come back married.

‘Your watch never stops, Dad. You are Mr Time Man. Zero one hundred hours and counting. You’ve even got me trained.’ She glanced at the wall clock, which read six-thirty. ‘Like now, it’s eighteen-thirty. From your years in the navy, right?’

‘Right, honey.’

‘So I don’t believe your watch stopped.’

‘Well, we flew over the lake, and the leaves were so bright and pretty, we just kept going. I guess I just lost track of the time.’

‘You never lose track of the time, Dad. I know that. I just think–’ She paused, trouble in her eyes. She had made a big salad for their dinner, and she carried it to the table. It was in the big wooden bowl his brother had given him and Alice for a wedding present, that Alice had let him keep when she’d moved in with Julian. Secret had filled it with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, croutons, and white grapes, and she presented it with shy expectation in her wide blue eyes.

‘Wow,’ he said. ‘That looks great.’

‘Thank you. Most people wouldn’t think of including grapes, but I think they add a lot. Do you?’

‘Yes, definitely,’ he said, taking a large helping, knowing he would stop by McDonald’s for a double cheeseburger when he drove her home.

‘Well, just don’t get too attached to her.’

‘Who?’ he asked, knowing.

‘That lady. Sarah.’

‘Honey, I just took her up for a birthday ride. That’s all.’

‘She’s sick, Dad. It was like one of those trips to summer camp for dying kids. She’s all alone in Fort Cromwell, and the Fergusons wanted to make sure her last birthday was happy.’

‘It wasn’t her last birthday,’ Will said, surprised by how much the idea of that upset him.

‘If it was mine, I’d want to know. I’d want to plan my last birthday and have a great old time. We’d go back to Rhode Island, for one thing. I’d take everyone on the Edaville Railroad. There’d be more cake than you could handle, and I’d give out presents. We’d just keep going round the track till I said everything I wanted to say. And I’d have my favorite music playing. I’d want to hear all the songs I like, my own top one hundred countdown.’

‘That won’t happen for a long time,’ Will said, knowing he was in dangerous territory.

‘What won’t?’

‘You dying.’

‘It did for Fred.’

‘Fred …’ Will said, taking the chance to say his name.

‘His last birthday passed, and he didn’t know. When his last day came, he didn’t even know that. How can it happen, Dad? That you wake up happy and fine one morning, and by fourteen hundred hours you’re drowned?’

Will looked across the untouched salad plates. Secret was staring straight at him, no blame in her expression. Just the wide-open gaze of a child who still trusted her father, after everything he had failed to do, to give her a straight answer.

‘I don’t know, sweetheart,’ he said, because honesty was the best he could offer her now.

‘Mom’s over it,’ she said bitterly.

‘She’ll never get over it. You don’t “get over” losing one of your kids, honey.’

‘She never talks about him. Whenever I mention him, she tells me to shush, it upsets Julian. And he’s just a rich bastard who spends all his time car racing and going to lectures. Is that where they are tonight?’

‘Don’t say “bastard,” Susan. A play, I think she said.’ His ex-wife’s life was a mad smorgasbord of cultural events at the local colleges.

‘Jerk, then. Idiot. Numskull. Dickhead. Drip. Flaming creep. Full-dress weenie. Turdman. Shitbreath.’

‘Susan. Secret,’ Will said wearily. ‘Stop, okay?’

‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said, drizzling plain vinegar onto her salad. She had taken only lettuce leaves, a pile of mediumsized shreds. Assuming she had left all the good stuff for him, Will took an extra helping to make her happy.

‘The grapes were a good call,’ he said, taking a bite.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘She looked nice.’

‘Who, honey?’

‘That lady, Sarah.’

‘She was,’ Will said.

‘I hope she’s okay,’ she said. ‘Because death sucks.’

Sarah had begun to open the shop for a few hours every day, usually from ten until two. She loved how the morning sun streamed through the tall windows, throwing light and shadows on the pale yellow walls. Today she felt a little tired. She imagined curling up for a nap in the middle of the things she sold: quilts and pillows, some filled with white down from the geese on her father’s saltwater farm in Maine.

The bell above the door tinkled. She glanced up from an inventory list she was perusing, and smiled at the two college students who walked in. They stared at Sarah for a second. She felt she still looked weird, with her tufty white hair, and she grinned to put them at ease.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Let me know if I can help.’

‘We will. Thanks,’ the taller girl replied, smiling as her friend lay flat on the sample bed, prettily made up with a fluffy quilt in an ecru damask cover. Feather throw pillows covered with narrow umber stripes or golden swirls and hand-printed oak leaves were strewn around the headboard.

‘I want this exact bed,’ the second girl sighed, sprawled amid the pillows.

‘You do?’ Sarah asked.

‘The linen service at school doesn’t exactly provide sumptuous bedding,’ the tall girl explained. ‘We’re fantasizing.’

‘Be my guest,’ Sarah said. ‘Everyone deserves sweet dreams.’

‘I don’t have a credit card,’ the other girl said. ‘But if I call my parents and they give you their account number, can I charge every single thing in your store and take it back to campus?’