The Forgotten Hours(36)
David arrived an hour late—no surprise there. All his life he’d run behind, always late for the school bus, eyes crusty with sleep, teeth unbrushed. Today he looked again like he’d just rolled out of bed, hair flattened, one blue sock and one argyle. Katie jumped right into his car with him (a tiny Jeep, borrowed from a friend, with a cloth roof and no sides), and they drove over to the other side of the lake, to the Nicholses’ house.
“How do you feel?” Katie asked as they drove along the dip by the club, where the road descended toward a small bridge over the dam. Through the trees, the clubhouse with its green siding was just visible.
“A bit tired, but otherwise pretty decent,” he said.
She sighed. “No, Davey, I mean about being here.”
“Pretty weird. Yeah. But I did come back once with Mum. You’d gone off to college already. She brought me up here one day, kind of like to say goodbye. But I hated it—I mean, it was so bad. It’s always been the two of them here together, you know? And he was gone. I cried all the way back home.”
“Ugh, sounds awful,” she said. “I never came back even once.”
“And Mum cried too. I think that was the worst part. She kept talking about how people should live with ‘integrity.’ Like we hadn’t already known that. I think that might be the first time I ever saw her cry. It was totally fucking unnerving.”
When Katie was little, she’d been fascinated by the way her mother grimaced, pulling her lips down over her teeth so she could get the eyelash curler in the right place on her eyelids. How she’d put on John’s worn-out shirts from the office, tying them at the waist, making them look sexy with a pair of jeans and some sandals. Katie had imitated her voice, how her mouth cupped her tongue, her lips narrow and often pursed. But her mother had so often seemed impatient with her. She’d sigh as she squirted out some extra face lotion when her daughter asked, or she’d snap at her to go play when Katie stared too hard at how she was filling in her eyebrows or sticking Gram’s diamond studs in her ears. Katie always had the sense that her mother expected something more from her, that Katie had failed a test without even knowing she was taking one. But she never figured out what it was her mother really wanted from her, and eventually she gave up trying to find out.
Constance Nichols was sitting on the front porch of her house, wearing an oversize straw hat and a red kimono and reading a book. Her skin was very pale, almost bluish, her neck long and elegant. She seemed out of place in the woods. Katie remembered her from before: she always sat in the shade, and even when she swam, her arms and legs were covered. She looked up warily and walked across the porch as they rolled in.
“David? Is that David Gregory?” Constance asked as David and Katie climbed out of the Jeep.
“Mrs. Nichols,” said David, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Good to see you again. You remember Katie, my sister? How are you? Is Joshua around?”
“Joshua?” Katie asked.
“Our younger son,” Constance said. “Brad’s brother. He works at the gardening supply store now, down in Blackbrooke. You know the place?”
“Yeah, I think so,” David said. He ran his hands over his hair, but it sprang up between his fingers. “Nice.”
Constance folded her bony hands in front of her. “We’re very happy about it.”
“So Katie says you have the Falcon. That’s crazy—I had no idea.”
“Oh. Well, yes. Your mother decided she would rather just, you know. Keep it, for when . . . for later.” Her eyelids fluttered. She looked stricken, as though to even mention John Gregory’s name would break some unspoken rule.
“That’s so kind of you,” Katie said. “Thank you. Uh, my father, he asked us to see if we could try to get the car going.”
“Ah,” Constance said. “He’s being released, is he?”
Katie’s cheeks went hot. “Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, dear, it hasn’t been driven in forever, but who knows. I’ll wrestle up that key.” When she returned and handed it over, she held Katie’s eye. “What good kids you are. How loyal. Your father is a lucky man.”
The garage was little more than a lean-to behind the main house, a gray clapboard structure with broken doors.
“Did you know he was my first kiss, that kid Joshua?” David hissed at his sister. He helped her heave open one of the doors and then dusted his hands off on his jeans. “Perfectly nice guy, just a little wacko.”
“How old were you, like, five?”
“Yeah, I know.” David laughed. “We all have to start sometime, don’t we?”
In front of them, a blue tarp stretched out over the car, lumpy and covered in debris from the rafters. There was a fluttering in the corners, a frantic flapping, and something darted above their heads before escaping through the open doors. David yanked the tarp off the back end of the car, sending particles of dust flying into the air. With two hands he hauled the cover up over his head and folded it back on itself, releasing the powerful smell of damp corners, cracked leather. Nesting animals with their hard-won scraps. Rotting pine needles and something chemical.
Both of them stood still for a while, surveying the scene. The car was still as bright as nail polish. The chrome bumper was rusted but intact, both tailpipes shooting out like exclamation points above the packed-dirt floor. The candy-red taillights like jewels set into a silver mount, the dash of the Falcon insignia connecting them, the word “FALCON” spaced out, rusty with the passing of years.