The Smoke Jumper Read online

  Everyone was talking but nobody was talking to him and suddenly he felt isolated and grouchy. It was stupid and unreasonable, he knew. They were all having a great time and he didn’t want to be a party pooper. He sat back in his chair and drained his glass in two gulps.

  Linda, with her back to him no doubt, was on his right and Maria was on his left, telling his mother all about her recent vacation in Aruba and how dreadful the food had been. He was very fond of her; she was a sweetheart. But, man, sometimes, did she go on. She could pack more words into a minute than a stockyard auctioneer.

  ‘All they had was burgers. Burgers, burgers, burgers,’ she was saying. ‘Coke and burgers.’

  ‘So snort the coke and the burgers taste just fine,’ Ed said.

  But Maria didn’t seem to hear. Nor anybody else. Or maybe they thought the joke in such poor taste that they had better pretend not to. What the hell. Ed felt around for the wine bottle, filled his glass again and had another drink.

  Suddenly he felt Julia’s arms reaching from behind him around his neck and felt her face nuzzling his. She kissed him on the cheek and asked quietly if he was okay.

  ‘Me? Yeah, I’m fine. Why, what’s the matter?’

  ‘Nothing. I just wondered.’

  ‘Don’t I look fine?’

  ‘Of course you do.’

  ‘Then what’s the matter? Why ask?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s okay. I’m sorry.’

  She removed her arms and he could hear her footsteps going away and immediately he felt guilty for being so unpleasant. He heard Connor talking sweetly to Amy and - again he couldn’t help it - but it made him feel . . . what? Angry? Not exactly. More like . . . God, what on earth was the matter with him?

  Jealous.

  There was no point lying to himself about it. He felt jealous. And to be honest, he’d felt that way all weekend, whenever Connor was around Amy. He resented the fact that Connor could see her. And that he could see Julia too. It was insane, Ed knew, but it made him feel excluded, made him feel that Connor somehow had more of them than he did. Even now he could picture Amy sitting happily on Connor’s knee and people looking at them both and knowing that he was her real father. And then glancing over at poor old Ed sitting all alone and getting drunk at the end of the table and thinking, poor guy, what a pity he couldn’t do it himself; but isn’t it all just lovely? Well, it wasn’t. He hated himself for feeling this way, but it wasn’t.

  Suddenly he realized Maria was talking to him.

  ‘So Ed, tell me,’ she said. His isolation had obviously been spotted. This was charity.

  ‘Tell you what?’ he cut in. He sounded so rude and he didn’t mean to.

  ‘Don’t you think Amy looks so like Julia?’

  There was a terrible moment of silence. Ed could imagine everyone staring, aghast, waiting for his reaction. It was a fabulous double bull’s-eye, drawing attention both to his blindness and his sterility. He could imagine the poor woman’s face mortifying as she realized what she had said. Ed started to laugh.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Ed reached out and found her hand and squeezed it, still laughing.

  ‘I’m so, so sorry. I just didn’t ...’

  ‘Maria, it’s okay. Honestly.’

  ‘Sometimes I’m so stupid.’

  ‘You’re never stupid. You’re beautiful. And I love you.’

  He leaned across and kissed her and he could tell she was starting to cry and he put his arms around her and gave her a hug.

  ‘Hey, come on. Maria, it’s fine. Anyway, I know she looks like Julia. She’s got that same little tummy.’

  Everyone laughed. He could sense the relief.

  ‘I’m just glad she doesn’t look like that ugly old sonofabitch whose knee she’s sitting on.’

  ‘Steady, young man,’ Connor’s mother said. ‘Son of a what was that?’

  ‘Sorry, Maggie. It’s short for son-of-a-betchya-never-seenawoman-so-lovely. ’

  ‘That’s more like it.’

  They all laughed again and after a while the conversation picked up. Then Amy started to cry and Connor handed her to Julia in whose arms, as always, she again became calm. And after a couple more glasses of wine (and a third spilled over the table), Ed stopped feeling sorry for himself, although, through the haze of sound, he knew that the evening never quite recovered.

  The next thing he knew, Julia was undressing him and putting him to bed. She plumped the pillow for him, leaning over him with those wondrous breasts brushing his face and he tried halfheartedly to kiss them but was too tired and too drunk for anything more. And the last thing he remembered was her kissing him on the forehead and saying goodnight and telling him that she loved him.

  Connor didn’t know how long he had been lying awake but it was certainly hours. He never liked to look at his watch when he couldn’t sleep because it only seemed to make things worse. You ended up notching off the minutes and then the hours and before you knew it the whole night lay whittled in pieces on the floor. Until a couple of years ago, he’d never understood insomnia. When people said they couldn’t sleep, he used to think they must be exaggerating and that all they meant was that they just didn’t go to sleep right away or for so long. But now he knew. He rarely lay awake all night, but he rarely slept a whole night either.

  After all the others had left, he’d helped Julia lift Ed out of his chair where he’d fallen asleep and haul him up to bed. Then they finished tidying up in the kitchen while Linda sat perched on the worktop, smoking another cigarette and doing her best to entertain them. But they were all tired and soon went up to their separate rooms.

  Some time ago he had heard Amy crying but the house was now quiet again and he lay on his back with his hands clasped behind his head and watched the drapes start to glow as the moon crept around the corner of the house. There was a dull and restless aching in his chest that had been there ever since he lay down. He’d tried to push it aside and not to think about it or what its causes might be, but it was like a sore tooth that gave you no choice but to keep on probing the pain.

  He’d gone over the weekend in his mind and still couldn’t figure out why such a happy time should have left him feeling so low. Maybe he didn’t want to figure it out because the answer might only make him feel worse. Whatever it was, he knew that something had shifted between the three of them and that it could never be the same again.

  He felt it most strongly with Ed. They hadn’t had a decent talk all weekend and when they had managed a few words there was something forced about it. The reason, of course, was Amy. Before he arrived, Connor had tried to prepare himself for the moment he first laid eyes on her. But there was no way he could have predicted the effect she had on him. His own flesh and blood joined with Julia’s, living and breathing and cooing up at him from her crib. And the thought hitting him there and then like the blast of a bomb that neither child nor mother was his or would ever be his. And he thought, how could he have been so dumb to have done this? And yet, seeing the child, how could he not have? How could he wish such a beautiful creature never to have existed?

  Until this evening Connor had held her only a couple of times and then only briefly. But on both occasions he noticed that Ed seemed uncomfortable. So when he’d handed her to him after dinner, Connor had been surprised. It seemed almost like a challenge; as if Ed wanted everyone else to think how open and easy he was about Connor’s link with Amy, but that Connor himself should take care not to overstep the mark. When he cuffed him around the head, perhaps he hadn’t meant to hit him so hard. It must be difficult to judge such things when you couldn’t see. Even so, Connor was almost sure that beneath the jest lay some kind of warning.

  He told himself that it was only to be expected, that things were bound to be a little tricky at first. Hell, it was hard for all of them. Connor himself was having trouble knowing what to think. The baby stirred strange feelings in him and watching Julia hold her stirred feelings sti
ll stranger. She looked more beautiful than ever. There was a new kind of lushness or fullness to her. She had kept her hair short and her skin was golden and lustrous.

  Yesterday evening Connor had blundered into the living room and found her sitting there with one white breast exposed, quietly feeding Amy and the sight nearly floored him. She smiled and didn’t look at all bothered, just said hi and he said it back and tried to look nonchalant, pretending he was looking for a glass. He went into the kitchen and found one and made a rapid retreat.

  Even while he had the baby on his knee at the dinner table, he kept trying to convince himself that she wasn’t really his at all, that she was Ed’s and Julia’s and that his own contribution was nothing more than a favor, that the genes he’d given had no more meaning, nor any less, than the gifts he had brought back from Africa, necklaces for Julia and Amy and a drum for Ed.

  But he had to face the possibility that the whole thing had been a terrible mistake. Maybe he should never have agreed to do it; maybe it was going to mar their friendship forever. Yet when he found himself thinking this, he would look at Amy and all the happiness that surrounded her and he would scold himself for being selfish, for how could it all be anything other than good? No doubt things would soon settle down and seem normal. It was all going to be okay. It would all be fine.

  He broke his rule and looked at his watch. It was three o’clock and he was wide awake. He got out of bed and went over to the window and looked out from between the drapes. The room was on the side of the house and looked out onto the orchard. In the moonlight the leaves of the trees and the grass below were like pewter. Maybe he would just go outside and get some air. He pulled on his jeans and his T-shirt and quietly opened the bedroom door. He could hear Ed snoring across the landing but otherwise all was quiet. He walked in his bare feet to the top of the stairs.

  He saw her as he came through the living room. She was sitting outside on the steps of the deck, smoking a cigarette. She was wearing a white shift of a nightgown and was facing away from him, looking out toward the river, the smoke curling above her in the still air and catching the moonlight. She heard him and turned as he came through the open doors and onto the deck.

  ‘How’s that for luck,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t quite a whisper. ‘My first cigarette in ten years and I get caught.’

  ‘It’s okay. Your secret’s safe.’

  ‘I stole one of Linda’s.’

  ‘A smoker and a thief.’

  ‘It tastes disgusting. Funny, I always liked the idea more than doing it. You ever smoke?’

  ‘Never could get the hang of it.’

  She stubbed it out on the step. He asked if it was okay to join her and she said of course it was, so he sat down beside her.

  ‘Did Amy wake you?’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I can’t wait till she sleeps through. I wasn’t cut out for this three-times-a-night wake-up thing. I walk around all day like a zombie.’

  ‘Well, you look pretty good on it.’

  ‘I wish. I feel fat and frazzled.’

  He wanted to tell her how lovely she looked even that very moment but didn’t trust himself and they sat awhile in silence looking out into the gray night past the carved eagle perched on its totem pole doing the same as they were.

  ‘I’m sorry about Ed,’ she said.

  ‘He just had a glass too many, that’s all.’

  ‘No. You know what I mean. I think he’s finding it all a little harder than he expected.’

  ‘I guess, having a house full of people and all—’

  ‘Connor, you know what I’m trying to say. It’s the first time you’ve been around Amy and . . . well, you know.’

  He did but he didn’t know what to say.

  ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said simply.

  ‘Of course she is.’

  ‘And the way Ed is with her. He’s a great father.’

  ‘Yep. He’s amazing.’

  They were silent again. Julia was staring at her bare feet.

  ‘Oh God,’ she sighed. Suddenly she stood up and stretched her arms high above her. ‘Will you walk to the river with me?’

  ‘Sure.’

  They walked side by side through cool damp grass, following the rail of rope to the riverbank. And where the trail narrowed she went ahead and he followed, watching her shoulders dark above the moonlit glow of her nightdress and through it the shadow of her body. There was a wooden bench now in the place where Connor and Ed had lain talking a year ago and Julia sat town at one end of it and he at the other and they looked out at the river and for a long while said nothing.

  ‘So how does it make you feel?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Amy?’

  ‘Yes.’

  What was he to say? That it almost broke his heart? That he sometimes wished he had never laid eyes on Julia, for only then would he be whole again and not some empty shadow of a man, like the outline of a body chalked on a cold stone sidewalk?

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to say if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I’m just real happy for the both of you.’

  She looked at him for a long time.

  ‘But?’

  ‘No buts. That’s how it is.’

  ‘Connor, you’re such a poor liar.’

  He smiled. She was still staring at him and he held her gaze for a while but then had to look away.

  ‘I was thinking just now about the first time we met,’ she said. ‘Do you remember? When you came to collect us at the airport?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘It’s weird but it wasn’t like meeting you. More like recognizing you. As if we somehow already knew each other.’

  ‘I felt the same.’

  ‘You know how some people say things are “meant to be”? Your mom, for example. She’s always saying this or that was “meant to be,” like it’s written in the stars or something. Do you think that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I never used to. But now I think it might just be.’

  ‘With me it’s the other way around. I used to think it was all meant to be, but now I don’t.’ She paused a moment and looked away across the river. ‘I remember Skye saying one time how all the important things in life happened by accident. And I said no, I didn’t think so, that in my view life was all mapped out and decided and just got revealed to us as we went along. But I don’t think that anymore.’

  ‘You think she was right?’

  ‘No. I think there are accidents and then we have to make choices.’

  Connor didn’t reply.

  ‘But you now think it’s all mapped out?’ she said.

  ‘No. I think you’re right. There are choices. It’s just that sometimes the important ones aren’t ours to make.’

  ‘Well, you’ve sure made some pretty big ones lately. Look at Amy. Look at this new career of yours. Going off to all these dangerous places, risking your life the whole time. I mean, they don’t get much bigger than that.’

  He laughed.

  ‘What? What’s so funny?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Come on, tell me.’

  ‘Well, it’s just that I don’t see it that way. I do what I do because someone else made the big choice. Not me.’

  She frowned at him. ‘What choice? Who?’

  He smiled and shook his head and looked away. He had already said too much.

  ‘Come on, Connor. You can’t just leave it like that. Tell me. Who?’

  He looked at her. She was still frowning at him, waiting for him to go on. And maybe because already in his heart he knew that this was the last time he would see her, he went ahead and told her.

  ‘You,’ he said simply. ‘You chose Ed.’

  She stared at him in silence and even through the shadowed air between them he could see her face slowly fill with sadness as she understood.

  ‘Oh, Connor,’ she whispered. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘You must have.’


  ‘Never for one moment.’

  ‘Then I’m a better liar than we both thought.’

  ‘Oh, Connor.’

  He smiled sadly at her and waited for her to go on, for if she felt anything of the kind for him, now was surely the time to say. But she said nothing, just sat there staring at him and shaking her head.

  ‘I’ve loved you from the very first moment I saw you,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t. Don’t say any more.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should never have told you. And I promise I’ll never say it again. But that’s just how it is. And hell, I’m a lucky guy. I’m part of Amy and she’s part of you. And whatever happens to me, she’ll have you forever.’

  She stared at him and slowly lifted her hands and pressed her fingertips to her temples and he saw her mouth tremble.

  ‘Oh, Connor. Oh God.’

  She closed her eyes and started to sob and the sound was so deep and harrowing that it seemed to come not from her but from some dark netherworld of long-forgotten sorrows. With her eyes tight shut she slowly opened her arms to him and he moved toward her and held her and held her head to his chest and felt her tears wet against him and felt tears of his own begin to run. She lifted her face and kissed him and said that she loved him too and had always loved him and she kissed him again and kissed his tears and Connor kissed hers.

  How long they stayed like that, he didn’t know. All he could think of was that these few precious moments were all he would ever have of her and that he must live them and feel them with every particle of his being. And then store them away and treasure them for the rest of his life.

  PART THREE

  21

  Amy Constance Tully was an angel. She even had the wings to prove it. One of them, however, was looking a little lopsided right now and neither went too well with the black Yankees T-shirt her godmother had sent her for her birthday. In truth, her whole demeanor, as she stood there on the kitchen table, sulking and kicking her heels, was something less than beatific.