The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (34 page)

Instead, he spent four months in 1989 meeting with attorneys from Atkins and Thames, testifying on the effects of QR66, “telling the truth.” He was tired of being a tobacco chemist, tired of telling the truth, tired of
telling
anything, for that matter.
If it will end sooner, let me lie
.
Just let it be over
. He didn’t know he was a scapegoat.

In November he flew to Chicago. He was exhausted and feeling old. Back in North Carolina, Patty flew to Puerto Vallarta by way of Raleigh and Dallas. She said, “Just for the week. We’ll both get home at the same time. Then we can have missed-you sex. I will miss you.” She smiled. “It’ll be over soon. Don’t worry.”

“You could come with me.”

She weighed the options. “Puerto Vallarta or Chicago? Sorry, pal.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’ll do great. When all this is over, we’ll spend a month in Mexico.”

She was his rock.

In Chicago, he met with Atkins and Thames’s attorney, Victoria Petersen. He smacked his forehead on the table. They sat in a large conference room. “Why am I here? I can’t take this anymore.”

She said, “There are multiple lawsuits. I was under the impression that everything had been clearly explained to you.” She was a twenty-something up-and-comer. She wore glasses, her hair in a tightly wound bun, an oversized jacket.
She’d look better in something fitted
, he thought. Her figure wasn’t bad.

He finished testifying in two days. Patty wouldn’t be home for five.

Could he still entice a twenty-something woman to bed?

He booked a suite at the Knickerbocker and plied Victoria the attorney with chocolate and champagne. He slid off her flats. She explained, “I don’t wear heels. They make my corns ache. I’ve got this thing.” He plied
himself
with champagne. He massaged her feet, her back, her inner thigh.

They had sex in five different positions. Victoria said, “You’re the best lover I’ve ever had.” Rowan didn’t know that Victoria Petersen had been a wallflower in college. She’d only had three men before him, and one was her second cousin.

He bought her a tailored suit before he flew home. “This will look great on you.”

She said, “Thank you.”

“I probably won’t see you again.” She’d seen the wedding ring, but he showed it to her again.

“I understand. You’re happily married.” She wished him a safe flight before he left the suite.
Their
suite. She called her dad at home in Morgantown. She didn’t tell him what happened. Instead, she said, “I’m lonely,” which was his cue: He said, “You’ll find the right man. You deserve someone extra special. You’re a princess and you should be treated accordingly.” Victoria looked at herself in the mirror. She looked at their bed, at the half-eaten strawberries, at the fitted suit he’d bought her, at the new high
heels that didn’t hurt her feet.
Rowan said I was beautiful. He said, “If I weren’t married. If I didn’t already have a family …”

He reminds me of my dad, not in a sick incestuous way, but in a normal, every-woman-is-looking-for-her-father kind of psychological way. Maybe he’s my prince
.

She’d never had an orgasm before Rowan.

A week later, Victoria telephoned Patricia Burke. She explained what had transpired between herself and Rowan. She was very descriptive, saying, “I think I love him.” Adding, “If it weren’t for you, I think he’d marry me.”

Patty said, “You can have him!”

Patty Burke would never be made a fool. Rather than confronting Rowan, she plotted her exit. Telephoning banks, attorneys, airlines, and Mediterranean villas for rent, she built up her resolve. She loved Rowan. This wouldn’t be easy.

After Victoria the attorney telephoned him at home the first time, Rowan told her to
stop
. He even used profanity, which was not in his makeup. She telephoned again. He wrote a short letter to Victoria the attorney:
I’m not leaving my wife ever. I made a mistake. I love my wife. I’m sorry if I misled you
.

In January, Rowan was where he wanted to be—finally—on the back deck of their Cedar Island home, sipping a mug of coffee, feeling relaxed for the first time in a very long while, when Patty said, “I want a divorce.”

At that exact moment, a gull defecated on Rowan’s hand. “Fuck!”

He said, “Patty-Cake, don’t do this! I need you.”

She said, “There’s bird shit in your coffee. Good luck with that psycho.” No matter her feelings, this relationship was over. “See you in court.”

Patty-Cake left in a taxicab already waiting in the driveway.

Rowan was alone.

Colin’s three-story house, named Sunnybrook, had a formal dining room, a great room, a kitchen, and one bathroom on the main floor. Upstairs, there were five bedrooms and three baths. On the basement level, there was a game room, a laundry room, and Brittany’s studio. Except for the basement, the ceilings were high, the rooms well lit, the walls white. The first thing Colin hung on his stark walls was the Yeatesville photograph he’d bought from the Belle Tara Gallery. He hung it above the mantel in the great room.

Next, he hung reproductions of children’s artwork from Terezín, Brittany commenting, “That’s morose.” She jingled, walking from one room to the next. Sometimes he heard her bubbling. His therapist said he was projecting his want of verve and life onto her. His therapist said, “No woman actually bubbles.” He wanted to hang his vibrant wife’s art on the walls.
She does bubble!
But Brittany wouldn’t let him enter her studio.

He hired a photographer to take Brittany’s picture. He hung those pictures on the white walls. He hung paintings by lesser-known artists Thomas Van Auken, Anne Chamblin, and Melinda
Thacker on his walls. He hung his mother’s picture. Quickly, he filled the bare walls with the images he loved.

In 1990, Susan Cruisenberry (Sue of Sue’s Gallery) sent him the program for Lightning Fish. Right away, Colin purchased
Fish, Number Fourteen
, hanging it beside his mother’s photograph and requesting Becca’s contact information from Susan Cruisenberry. She said, “I can’t do that, but I will tell her you inquired.”

Colin didn’t want to seem weird, like a stalker. Telephoning Susan right back, he said, “Forget it. Please send me any future programs.”

“You bet.”

Colin touched Becca’s brooch to his lips. He hadn’t mentioned Becca Burke to his therapist. Maybe he should do that.

When Colin became suspicious of what Brittany was doing all day in her studio, he used a screwdriver and jimmied the lock. On a white stool, he found a stack of eight-by-ten photographs of his naked wife; his naked wife and the naked photographer, his naked wife, the naked photographer, and the photographer’s naked wife; his naked wife having sex with the photographer’s naked wife; and his naked wife having sex with the naked photographer. Colin was not interested in making it a naked foursome.

Aside from the photographs, Brittany had also completed some stick-figure drawings. He imagined he’d save one as a testament and reminder to why this marriage was a mistake.

Brittany got a good attorney. She assumed she would need one, with the damning pictures, but she didn’t. Colin didn’t care about the money.

Buckley boarded the
Tide
, Paddy John’s thirty-six-foot North Carolina sportfisherman, at four in the morning to prepare the day’s tackle, rods, and bait. His thumbs and biceps ached from the previous day, when he’d had to brace himself in the fighting chair and reel in that Ohio lady’s blue marlin. His head hurt too because after the trip the three couples who’d chartered the boat had offered to take the captain and his first mate out for beers. Buckley cursed Paddy John, who knew Buckley couldn’t drink. Buckley should’ve refused outright, but Paddy John was a stubborn old man these days and wouldn’t take no for an answer from anybody.

Buckley, Paddy John, and the three vacationing couples sat at the Wanchese Marina’s bar, Pirate’s Way, drinking draft beers until past ten o’clock. Paddy John told one story after another, and Buckley kept saying, “We should go. Joan and Sissy come tomorrow.”

“We’re fine,” Paddy John said. “Have another beer.” In the cabin, Buckley popped two aspirin and sat in the recliner. He couldn’t believe he’d been in Wanchese five years now, watching the sun rise, watching the sun set, fishing for marlin and yellowfin tuna, king mackerel and wahoo. Watching the seagulls and the pelicans and the silver fish circling his fingers in the greenish brown muck of the Wanchese Marina. Buckley never thought he would live by the ocean, not after what had happened
to his mother, and he told Paddy John as much that first day, riding from the bus depot in Elizabeth City to Wanchese. Paddy John said, “There’s a time when you have to let go.”

Now, according to Paddy John and evidenced by the tips Buckley raked in from the grateful fishermen, Buckley was a top-notch first mate. Paddy John said, “You’re as good as Tide ever was.” Paddy John was quiet then. It had been a long time since Tide had been good at much. It’d been a long time since Paddy John had spoken to his son. Buckley, on the other hand, kept in touch with Tide, but he knew enough to keep quiet. If he told Paddy John that he was still helping Tide with his bills and rent, Paddy John would be disappointed. It was better that Paddy John think Tide was making his own way in the world.

Buckley’s brown hair had grown shaggy and golden in the North Carolina sun. His stocky frame had grown muscular from life on the water. He was often mistaken for Paddy John’s son, and Paddy John never corrected the mistake. “Buckley,” Paddy John often remarked, “has grown up to be a good man.” He told Buckley, “Your mother would be proud of you.” There was nothing better, Buckley thought, than hearing those words and believing them true. She had loved the ocean. Now he did too, making it his home.

Today, Buckley was eager for the day to end and it hadn’t even begun. He looked forward every year to the two-week vacation he and Paddy John spent with Sissy and Joan Holt. They didn’t go anywhere or do much of anything. They rested. They sat on the deck of Paddy John’s beach house, a house built from cedar in 1946. They watched the ocean, the rise and fall of the tide, the stars’ and the moon’s reflection on the water. They walked the beach. Buckley read Paddy John’s dusty paperbacks, and each evening, Paddy John manned the grill while Buckley mixed tropical drinks, keeping Sissy and Joan happy. Joan Holt was very old. Ninety-something. Buckley guessed a hundred. She talked incessantly before nodding to sleep in the rocker while Sissy rolled her eyes at Joan’s musings. Joan rattled on about Wally Holt and her
own mother—who survived the 1900 hurricane that killed more than eight thousand in Galveston, surviving with baby Joan swaddled and bound to her chest. It was a great story, but Sissy had heard it a hundred-plus times. Joan rattled on about the carnage of the sea oats; about the kids today, who no longer respect nature. Her mother had seen Mother Nature at Her most furious, and she’d taught Joan to respect Her.

Paddy John told Buckley, “Sissy won’t make it after Joan dies.”

Buckley wouldn’t think about Joan dying.

Paddy said, “She’s had a good life.”

Buckley tuned him out.
Joan’s life is not past tense
. He knew more than anyone the inevitability of death.
We are born. We live. We die
. But he wouldn’t anticipate anyone’s death, no matter how old the person was.

Joan was wrinkled from the Texas sun, so wrinkled that someone who didn’t know her might turn away. Sometimes she didn’t make sense, but the sound of her voice was like the sound of the ocean to Buckley. It soothed him.

This year
, thought Buckley, wiping the salt from the captain’s bridge,
will be our best yet
.

At five-thirty, Paddy John boarded the
Tide
. He said, “They’re calling for gale-force winds offshore. I’m not going to risk it.”

Buckley emerged from the cabin, his head still foggy with last night’s beer.

“I thought you’d be glad. Let’s close her up.”

“Are there really gale-force winds?”

“There can always be gale-force winds.” Paddy John, his face cut deep with age, smiled. Birds chirped as first light appeared. “Get to work.”

Buckley rinsed out the big coolers and set the minnows in the well free. He carried the rods into the cabin and unfastened the fighting chair. He grinned.

For the past five years, Buckley R. Pitank had been happy—winning at the game of life. He helped out on the boat and around
the house. In the fall, he boarded the windows when the National Weather Service called for nor’easters and hurricanes. He and Paddy John huddled in the living room, a bottle of whiskey and a candle between them. The island evacuated while he and Paddy John remained. After the storms blew through, Buckley was on the ladder, a pouch of nails at his waist, pulling down boards, reattaching shingles and siding, doing what needed to be done. It felt good to be needed.