Cloud Nine

‘My planes like grass strips,’ he said, grinning. ‘When do you want to go?’

‘That’s the thing,’ she said. ‘Thanksgiving. I know you probably have plans, so … If you’re even working that weekend.’

‘I am,’ he said.

‘Well … do you want to think about it? You can work up a price and let me know?’

‘Sounds good,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to watch the weather. My big plane has the most instruments, and at this time of year you never know what to expect in the way of storms. But it’s more expensive.’

She nodded, swallowed hard. Making transportation arrangements brought her one step closer to actually going. Seeing Mike! Her throat vibrated with a laugh, and she started to let it out until she realized that by returning to Elk Island, she would be facing her father for the first time in many years. He had never gotten over her growing up, leaving the island for college, coming back just long enough to get pregnant and cause a scandal. Trapped by his grief for Sarah’s mother, her father just grew more bitter as the years went by. Sarah had tried taking Mike there for summers long ago, but after a while her father’s darkness had stopped her.

‘I’ll call you,’ she said, shaking Will’s hand.

‘Right,’ he said, glancing at his watch. It looked huge and heavy, about ten pounds’ worth of chrome, a very high-tech chronometer. But it looked exactly right on his strong wrist. ‘Guess I’d better get back to work.’

‘Fly safe,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ Will said, starting to walk away. Sarah stood still, both hands holding her cup of hot chocolate. He started to disappear into the crowd. Then, turning, he called her name. ‘Hey, Sarah!’

Walking toward each other, they came together in a throng of teenagers. Bumped and jostled, Sarah brought her elbows into her body, making herself small. She and Will were standing in front of a booth festooned with burgundy paisley scarves, curved swords, and magic lamps. Mysterious sitar music wafted out. The sign read: GYPSY SECRETS OF THE ORIENT, FORTUNES READ BY THE LIGHT OF THE ETERNAL FLAME. A turbaned man flew out the door in pursuit of a young man.

‘Stop him!’ the turbaned Gypsy yelled. ‘He blew out the eternal flame!’

‘The eternal flame!’ the fortune-teller wailed, agonized. ‘Ahhh!’

‘Wow,’ Will said. ‘That sounds serious.’

Sarah smiled at him, shrugging her shoulders. ‘My son blew it out last year. Keeping up a tradition, I guess.’

‘Teenagers,’ he said. They stood there like two tourists being stampeded at Pamplona. Sarah stared into his eyes, which were bluer than the sky. He seemed to have forgotten why he’d called her back. Facing each other, their toes were touching.

‘What was it?’ she asked.

‘Secret lives with her mother and stepfather,’ he said. ‘I mean, Secret is my family, but she doesn’t live with me, and she’s having Thanksgiving with Alice. So it’s no problem to fly you to Maine.’

‘Oh,’ Sarah said. She was trying to think of what to say next, when another pack of boys charged by. Looking through their faces to see if she recognized any of Mike’s old friends, she noticed they were wearing team jackets from a nearby town. One of them grabbed her bowler hat.

Sarah felt him drag the hat off her head. The brim scraped her scar, and she felt a flash of pain. The kids dropped it with embarrassment. ‘Sorry!’ one of them yelled. Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mouth had dropped open, and for one terrible instant she looked at Will and registered her own shame in his eyes.

Ducking her head so he wouldn’t see her cry, she felt his arms come around her. He held her against his chest. She felt his breath on her scalp, his hands covering the back of her head. She had moved freely without a hat all these weeks, but somehow the kids’ cruelty and the idea of facing Mike had made her feel incredibly uncomfortable, self-conscious about her awful hair.

‘It’s pretty,’ he whispered. ‘It’s so pretty.’

‘It’s ugly,’ she wept. ‘My son’s going to hate it.’

‘No, he won’t,’ Will said.

‘He ran away when I got sick,’ she said. ‘He’s never seen me this way, it’ll never grow out by Thanksgiving.’

‘Well, he’ll see you then,’ Will whispered, his mouth against her ear. ‘I’m taking you there myself.’

‘If I even go.’

‘You’ll go,’ he said. ‘You won’t back out.’

‘How do you know?’ she asked, leaning her head back to see his eyes.

‘Because you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met,’ he said.

Secret sat in the backseat of Julian’s Range Rover. She was seething. Her mother and Julian had promised they could go to the fair, and they had started to, but now they were driving about a hundred miles an hour in the opposite direction. They had made the mistake of stopping at an antiques shop, and the dealer had given them a hot lead on a Victorian umbrella stand.

‘I can’t believe this,’ Secret said out loud.

‘Believe what?’ Julian asked.

‘That you’re making me miss the fair for a stupid umbrella stand.’

He chuckled, glancing across the front seat at Secret’s mother. Torn between wanting to support her husband and wanting to give in to Secret, Alice was gazing at him with a tight-lipped smile. As in, what-an-amusing-child-I-have-don’t-be-mad-at-me. Alice was beautiful, a porcelain doll. She had golden hair and a perfect face, and three or four times a day she looked as if she might break.

‘It’s so unfair,’ Secret said.

‘We’ll get there – just be patient,’ Julian said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. He lit a cigarette for himself and one for Alice. Another thing Secret hated about him: He had influenced her mother to start smoking again after having quit five years ago.

‘It’s not just an umbrella stand,’ her mother explained, blowing a quick puff of smoke into her lap, as if Secret couldn’t see. ‘We’re sorry about the fair, honey. But it’s a great piece, a big old carved thing with hooks and a huge mirror and a bench. It’s being auctioned off this afternoon, and it would look great in the south foyer.’

‘That’s the thing about a big house,’ Julian said. ‘It needs lots of nice things to fill it up. Now that I have you and your mother with me, I want it to be even more beautiful.’

‘I’m not materialistic,’ Secret said. ‘I don’t need things.’

‘Honey …’ her mother warned.

‘Let her be,’ Julian said, giving Alice a look that translated his words into ‘let her stew.’

Secret settled lower into her seat, pulling her Red Sox cap down, leaving just enough space to look out the window. She watched the land fly by, farm after farm. Cows, cows, cows. She wanted to see boats so badly, her throat began to hurt. She wanted to smell salt air, feel the sea breeze on her face. Glancing at the back of Julian’s head, she wished she had the powers necessary to make him disappear as dramatically as he had arrived.

For a year, he had only been her mother’s boss. Then she divorced Secret’s dad to marry him.

He owned a company called Von Froelich Precision that built race cars for rich guys. Prizefighters and rock stars would fly in from all over to order custom-designed cars made to go fast and look cool. Secret’s mother had been the secretary, and she was always coming home with stories about the famous people she talked to, the movie stars who walked in wearing old jeans and scuffed-up shoes, seeming nervous about spending so much money, just like anyone else.

Suddenly, weeks after she had started working, she had started talking about Julian Von Froelich nonstop. How he was so interesting. He raced at Lime Rock and Laguna Seca and had once driven at Le Mans, he was world-renowned in the world of motorsports, but he was so humble. He hated when people asked him about Paul Newman, who happened to be a good friend. Every year he sponsored Grand Prix Day at the local high school, and he’d let all the kids sit in a race car and pretend they were driving.

Most of all, she talked about what a great boss he was, how he made Alice such a valued member of his staff: his team. She was just as integral a part of Von Froelich Precision as Julian’s head mechanic, his pit crew chief. While Secret’s dad buried himself in the newspaper and TV shows, Alice was building a new and fabulously glamorous life in the fast lane. Secret and her dad were numb zombies, too busy missing Fred to notice that her mother was leaving their family behind. Secret’s parents got divorced a year earlier. Her mother married Julian a month after that.

‘You know, the Queen of England drives a car like this,’ Julian said. When Secret looked up, she saw his eyes watching her in the rearview mirror.

‘Lucky her,’ Secret said.

‘A Range Rover. I thought you’d be interested, considering you’re such an Anglophile.’