On one level, those things registered. On another I was trying to cope with the strange thing that had just happened, and the equally strange thing I thought I was hearing — that the little girl I had carried off the white line had the name we had planned to give our child, if our child turned out to be a girl.
‘Kia,’ I said. Marvelled, really. As if my touch might break her, I tentatively stroked the back of her head. Her hair was sun-warm and fine.
‘No,’ Mattie said. ‘That’s the best she can say it now. Kyra, not Kia. It’s from the Greek. It means ladylike.’ She shifted, a little self-conscious. ‘I picked it out of a baby-name book. While I was pregnant, I kind of went Oprah. Better than going postal, I guess.’
‘It’s a lovely name,’ I said. ‘And I don’t think you’re a bad mom.’
What went through my mind right then was a story Frank Arlen had told over a meal at Christmas — it had been about Petie, the youngest brother, and Frank had had the whole table in stitches. Even Petie, who claimed not to remember a bit of the incident, laughed until tears streamed down his cheeks.
One Easter, Frank said, when Petie was about five, their folks had gotten them up for an Easter-egg hunt. The two parents had hidden over a hundred colored hard-boiled eggs around the house the evening before, after getting the kids over to their grandparents’. A high old Easter morning was had by all, at least until Johanna looked up from the patio, where she was counting her share of the spoils, and shrieked. There was Petie, crawling gaily around on the second-floor overhang at the back of the house, not six feet from the drop to the concrete patio.
Mr. Arlen had rescued Petie while the rest of the family stood below, holding hands, frozen with horror and fascination. Mrs. Arlen had repeated the Hail Mary over and over (‘so fast she sounded like one of the Chipmunks on that old ‘Witch Doctor’ record,’ Frank had said, laughing harder than ever) until her husband had disappeared back into the open bedroom window with Petie in his
arms. Then she had swooned to the pavement, breaking her nose. When asked for an explanation, Petie had told them he’d wanted to check the rain-gutter for eggs.
I suppose every family has at least one story like that; the survival of the world’s Peties and Kyras is a convincing argument — in the minds of parents, anyway for the existence of God.
‘I was so scared,’ Mattie said, now looking fourteen again. Fifteen at most.
‘But it’s over,’ I said. ‘And Kyra’s not going to go walking in the road anymore. Are you, Kyra?’
She shook her head against her mother’s shoulder without raising it. I had an idea she’d probably be asleep before Mattie got her back to the good old doublewide.
‘You don’t know how bizarre this is for me,’ Mattie said. ‘One of my favorite writers comes out of nowhere and saves my kid. I knew you had a place on the TR, that big old log house everyone calls Sara Laughs, but folks say you don’t come here anymore since your wife died.’
‘For a long time I didn’t,’ I said. ‘If Sara was a marriage instead of a house, you’d call this a trial reconciliation.’
She smiled fleetingly, then looked grave again. ‘I want to ask you for something. A favor.’
‘Ask away.’
‘Don’t talk about this. It’s not a good time for Ki and me.’
‘Why not?’
She bit her lip and seemed to consider answering the question — -one I might not have asked, given an extra moment to consider — and then shook her head. ‘It’s just not. And I’d be so grateful if you didn’t talk about what just happened in town. More grateful than you’ll ever know.’
‘No problem.’
‘You mean it?’
‘Sure. I’m basically a summer person who hasn’t been around for awhile . . . which means I don’t have many folks to talk to, anyway.’ There was Bill Dean, of course, but I could keep quiet around him. Not that he wouldn’t know. If this little lady thought the locals weren’t going to find out about her daughter’s attempt to get to the beach by shank’s mare, she was fooling herself. ‘I think we’ve been noticed already, though. Take a look up at Brooksie’s Garage. Peek, don’t stare.’
She did, and sighed. Two old men were standing on the tarmac where there had been gas pumps once upon a time. One was very likely Brooksie himself; I thought I could see the remnants of the flyaway red hair which had always made him look like a downeast version of Bozo the Clown. The other, old enough to make Brooksie look like a wee slip of a lad, was leaning on a gold-headed cane in a way that was queerly vulpine.
‘I can’t do anything about them,’ she said, sounding depressed. ‘ Nobody can do anything about them. I guess I should count myself lucky it’s a holiday and there’s only two of them.’
‘Besides,’ I added, ‘they probably didn’t see much.’ Which ignored two things: first, that half a dozen cars and pick-em-ups had gone by while we had been standing here, and second, that whatever Brooksie and his elderly friend hadn’t seen, they would be more than happy to make up.
On Mattie’s shoulder, Kyra gave a ladylike snore. Mattie glanced at her and gave her a smile full of rue and love. ‘I’m sorry we had to meet under circumstances that make me look like such a dope, because I really am a big fan. They say at the bookstore in Castle Rock that you’ve got a new one coming out this summer.’
I nodded. ‘It’s called Helen’s Promise.’
She grinned. ‘Good title.’
‘Thanks. You better get your buddy back home before she breaks your arm.’
‘Yeah.’
There are people in this world who have a knack for asking embarrassing, awkward questions without meaning to — it’s like a talent for walking into doors. I am one of that tribe, and as I walked with her toward the passenger side of the Scout, I found a good one. And yet it was hard to blame myself too enthusiastically. I had seen the wedding ring on her hand, after all.
‘Will you tell your husband?’
Her smile stayed on, but it paled somehow. And tightened. If it were possible to delete a spoken question the way you can delete a line of type when you’re writing a story, I would have done it.
‘He died last August.’
‘Mattie, I’m sorry. Open mouth, insert foot.’
‘You couldn’t know. A girl my age isn’t even supposed to be married, is she? And if she is, her husband’s supposed to be in the army, or something.’
There was a pink baby-seat — also Kmart, I guessed — on the passenger side of the Scout.
Mattie tried to boost Kyra in, but I could see she was struggling. I stepped forward to help her, and for just a moment, as I reached past her to grab a plump leg, the back of my hand brushed her breast. She couldn’t step back unless she wanted to risk Kyra’s slithering out of the seat and onto the floor, but I could feel her recording the touch. My husband’s dead, not a threat, so the big-deal writer thinks it’s okay to cop a little feel on a hot summer morning. And what can I say? Mr. Big Deal came along and hauled my kid out of the road, maybe saved her life.
No, Mattie, I may be forty going on a hundred, but I was not copping a feel. Except I couldn’t say that; it would only make things worse. I felt my cheeks flush a little.
‘How old are you?’ I asked, when we had the baby squared away and were back at a safe distance.
She gave me a look. Tired or not, she had it together again. ‘Old enough to know the situation I’m in.’ She held out her hand. ‘Thanks again, Mr. Noonan. God sent you along at the right time.’
‘Nah, God just told me I needed a hamburger at the Village Cafe,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it was His opposite number. Please say Buddy’s still doing business at the same old stand.’
She smiled. It warmed her face back up again, and I was happy to see it. ‘He’ll still be there when Ki’s kids are old enough to try buying beer with fake IDS. Unless someone wanders in off the road and asks for something like shrimp tetrazzini. If that happened he’d probably drop dead of a heart attack.’
‘Yeah. Well, when I get copies of the new book, I’ll drop one off.’
The smile continued to hang in there, but now it shaded toward caution. ‘You don’t need to do that, Mr. Noonan.’