Cloud Nine

The girl giggled and sighed again, the sounds muffled by all the padding around her.

Sarah remembered her own college days. Too-thin sheets and scratchy old blankets had been her inspiration for starting her own business, Cloud Nine. She had dropped out of Wellesley after her freshman year. Opening her first store in Boston, she had stocked it primarily with down products made by her father, back on the farm.

The farm had been on the verge of failing. Her mother had died when she was fourteen. Sarah and her father never talked about it, but she knew she had saved him. She had gotten her own financing, come up with all the ideas, expanded into mail order, taken on lines from France and Italy to supplement the stuff from Elk Island. The original store remained in Boston, but after eight years and the last in a series of ridiculous love affairs, Sarah had expanded to this college-rich valley in upstate New York. She had been here for ten years now, and her father had all the work he could handle.

The telephone rang, and Sarah answered it.

‘Hello, Cloud Nine,’ Sarah said.

‘Happy birthday,’ the deep voice said.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Her heart contracted. She couldn’t talk. She had the feeling if she breathed or sneezed, the line would go dead.

‘I’m a day late. Sorry.’

‘That’s okay, I didn’t even notice,’ she lied.

‘What’d you do? Go out for dinner or something?’

‘I took a plane ride,’ she said. ‘To see the leaves. They looked beautiful, all red and orange and yellow, like a big bowl of Trix. I couldn’t stop smiling, it made me think of you, and I knew it would make you laugh. I mean, flying over this beautiful fall landscape and thinking of Trix. Remember when that was your favorite cereal?’

‘Huh. Not really.’

‘How are you?’ she asked. She could picture him, standing in the big basement kitchen, with a fire burning in the old stone hearth. Closing her eyes, she was back on Elk Island, could see the dark bay, the prim white house, the fields full of white geese. She could hear the waves, smell the thick pines.

‘Fine.’

‘Really? Do you still like living there? Are you honestly enjoying the work? Because –’

‘What about you?’ he asked, sounding sullen and accusatory. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m great,’ she said.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes.’ She turned her back, so the college girls wouldn’t hear. ‘I finished chemo last month, and my X rays look good. There’s no sign of any tumor. I had an MRI, and the doctor says I’m all clear. Good to go.’

‘You’re cured?’

‘Yes,’ Sarah said, biting her lip. She was the most optimistic person she knew – ferociously hopeful – and had often been accused by the very party on the other end of being annoyingly cheerful. She couldn’t stop herself. She knew about statistics, five-year survival rates, worst-case scenarios. Here she was, saying she was cured, when she didn’t even know if there was any such thing.

‘Good,’ he said. A long silence passed, and then he cleared his throat. ‘That’s good,’ he said.

‘Is your grandfather there?’ she asked.

‘He’s out in the barn. I just came in to get some lunch.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Just thought I’d call to say happy birthday.’

‘I’m glad you did, Mike. I miss you.’

‘Huh.’

‘A lot. I wish you were here. I wish you’d decide to …’

‘When’re you coming to Maine? I mean, Grandpa was wondering. He told me to ask. And to say happy birthday. I almost forgot.’

‘Was it his idea for you to call?’ Sarah asked suspiciously, feeling upset. She had been thinking it was Mike’s idea.

‘No. It was mine.’

‘Hmm,’ she said, smiling.

‘So, when’re you going to come?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. The idea of going to the island filled her with more anxiety than she knew was good for her. Her doctor had told her to avoid stress, that a centered spirit was her best defense. Just thinking about seeing Mike in the barn with her bitter old father, knowing that Mike had put himself under his tutelage, sent Sarah’s spirit careening.

‘Thanksgiving would be good,’ Mike said.

‘We’ll see.’

‘Are you too sick to come?’

‘No. I’m fine. I told you, I –’

‘Then why not?’

‘I said I’ll see, Mike.’

An uneasy silence developed between them. Sarah’s mind raced with questions, accusations, declarations of love. How could her son have left her to go there? From the day of her mother’s death, Sarah couldn’t wait to leave the island. She had let her father down, and even in his bitter silence he refused to let her forget. But Mike had gone to live with him while searching for connections to Zeke Loring, the father who had died before he was even born.

‘Excuse me,’ called the girl who had been lying on the bed. ‘I think I do want to buy some things. Can we call my mother to get her Amex number? I know she’ll say yes.’

‘Oh. Someone’s there,’ Mike said abruptly, hearing the background voices. ‘I guess I’d better go. Grandpa’s waiting for lunch.’

‘Honey, I’m glad you called. You can’t imagine how happy you made me,’ Sarah said. ‘It’s ten times better than any present I’ve ever gotten, even my favorite dollhouse when I was four, and I’m not kidding you, I loved that dollhouse, I played with it constantly, just ask my father …’

‘Bye, Mom,’ Mike said.

‘Bye, honey,’ Sarah said.

When she turned back to the girls, she was smiling. Her face was calm, her mouth steady. She nodded yes, the girl could call her mother. Handing her the telephone, she told her to dial direct, not bother charging the call. She was going through the motions of selling a quilt, cultivating the business of the girls at Marcellus College, the students who were her bread and butter.

But her heart was far away with her son, Mike Talbot, her seventeen-year-old dropout, the person Sarah loved more than her own life, the boy who was single-handedly planning to carry on the family traditions of quilt making and farm saving under the wing of her father, the wrathful George Talbot, of Elk Island, Maine.

It was at moments such as this that Sarah, writing a sales ticket for a three-hundred-dollar quilt, wished that she had just let the old farm die.

In the air with the mapmaker for the second day, Will criss-crossed Algonquin County eleven times. They plotted the Setauket River, the Robertson wilderness, Lake Cromwell, Eagle Peak, and the foothills of the Arrowhead Mountains. Will flew him over small towns and Wilsonia, the county seat. They counted windmills and silos, surveyed the patchwork of farms, fields dotted orange with pumpkins. He had climbed to six thousand feet, but on their way back to the airport, he flew one low circle over Fort Cromwell.

It looked like a toy town, like the miniature buildings that had come with Fred’s model railroad. Will almost never thought of Fred’s train, but with the mapmaker paying such close attention to track beds and crossing signals, he couldn’t get it out of his mind. Fred’s set-up had looked just like Fort Cromwell: pristine town green, red-brick buildings, railroad tracks winding through the low hills. Will had been stationed in Newport then, and navy housing didn’t leave much room for toys. Fred’s railroad was super deluxe, from F.A.O. Schwarz in New York, the kind of railroad Will had wanted when he was a boy. It had taken up the entire dining alcove.

Alice had been a sport. Her mother had given them a nice cherry table, and he remembered how they had just pushed it off to one side. Susan’s playhouse and Fred’s railroad had been the main deals back then, and that was just fine. With Will out at sea so much, he didn’t suppose Alice had much use for a fine dining table anyway.

But she used that table now. Will saw Julian’s estate nestled in the trees on the top of Windemere Hill. Stone mansion, clay tennis court, circular drive, security gates worthy of a movie star or a corporate mogul. That’s where they live, Will thought. While the mapmaker updated his notes, Will banked left. His port wing pointed straight down at the stone house, like a finger of God. Blessing his daughter, Will thought, but also cursing Julian. For being in the right place at the right time, for stealing Will’s family when they were all weakened – broken really – after losing Fred.

Catching sight of his daughter parking her bike against the fieldstone garage was too much for him. Feeling like he’d swallowed a fishhook, he gunned the engine and wheeled through the sky. The mapmaker gave him a terrified look.

‘Sorry,’ Will said.

‘Is the plane okay?’

Tine, sir. Just a little turbulence.’

‘Ah,’ the mapmaker said, a deep line across his brow.

Flying home, Will wondered why his heart was pumping so hard. He could feel it pounding in his chest, as if he had just swum a hundred yards in a Force 10 sea. That had been his first job in the navy: rescue swimmer aboard the L. P. James. He could slice through twenty-foot waves, weighed down with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man, and barely notice his breathing change.

Maybe it’s all this freshwater, he thought, surveying the lakes, the river. Made him feel nervous, like something was missing. No ocean, no coastline in sight. Just like Sarah Talbot had said yesterday: It’s not the Atlantic.

Then something strange happened. Thinking of Sarah Talbot, the whole thing went away. The speeding heart, the saltwater anxiety. Memories of life as a rescue swimmer, all the good and terrible reasons for leaving the ocean he loved so much. Will started to breathe easier. He pictured Sarah, kind and wise as a beautiful owl with her wide-open eyes and feathery hair, her way of staring at the sky with unblinking gratitude, and Will Burke felt calm. Like he could breathe again without cracking his chest wide open.

3

Secret rode her bike through town. The air was freezing cold and her fingers felt stiff in her new blue gloves. Sticking out her tongue, she caught the first snowflakes of the year. Her nose and cheeks stung. Halloween had barely passed, and clear ice had already started to form on the lake. Nowhere on earth was colder than Fort Cromwell. Newport had been tropical by comparison.

All the shops looked cozy. It got dark around five these days, practically before she got out of school, so everywhere glowed with that orange warmth she associated with England. She didn’t know why; she had never been to England, but she had an extremely good imagination. When she was very small, her mother had read her books by Rumer Godden. Secret had loved the sound of scones and tea, and she wished she had some that very minute.

She had baby-sat for the Neumanns after school. On her way home now, she was in no particular hurry; her mother and Julian were having cocktails at Dean Sherry’s house. Pedaling slower, she looked into the shops. A few still had jack-o’-lanterns in the window. Others had jumped the gun, entwined white lights with evergreen roping, getting ready for Christmas. The down shop looked especially inviting, with no holiday decorations whatsoever. The sign was enough: a magical cloud and a golden ‘9.’ Brass lamps glowed, the quilts appeared thick and enveloping. Wanting to warm up, Secret parked her bike and walked in.

‘Hi,’ the lady called from the back.

‘Hi,’ Secret said. Trying to look real, like a genuine shopper who might actually be in the market for pillows, Secret frowned and began looking at price tags.

‘Just let me know if you need any help.’

‘I will,’ Secret said, flattening her voice and earnestly rifling through a bin of small silk-velvet pillows. She had accompanied her mother and Julian to the Antiques Corner, so she knew how people who spent money looked. Spiced cider was brewing somewhere in back. What she wanted was to sink into this soft pile of velvet-covered down. She found herself relaxing, forgetting to concentrate, leisurely browsing through the beautiful things.

‘Would you like some hot cider?’ the voice asked.

‘Well, I shouldn’t,’ Secret said, feeling guilty for defrauding the lady. She had absolutely no intention of buying a single thing.

‘Are you sure? It’s pretty cold out there.’

‘You can say that again,’ Secret said.

‘Are you sure? It’s pretty cold out there.’

Secret chuckled. She glanced up, and for the first time she actually saw the shop owner. It was Sarah Talbot, the sick lady, Mimi Ferguson’s friend.

‘Oh, hi,’ Secret said.

‘Hi,’ Sarah said. ‘I know you. You were in the airport office the day I took my birthday flight.’

‘Yes. My father’s the pilot.’

‘An excellent pilot,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve had some terrible ones, believe me.’

‘You have?’

‘Absolutely. Small-plane pilots are the worst. I’ve had guys who taxi down the runway like bucking broncos. I know one pilot who flies under bridges, just for fun. When I was younger, I lived on an island, and some of them would fly when the fog was thicker than these quilts. Those pilots were the cowboys of the air.’

‘Half of them probably can’t get jobs at major airlines,’ Secret said confidentially. She leaned against the bed in the middle of the store.

‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Sarah said. ‘Sure you wouldn’t like a little cider?’

‘Maybe a little,’ Secret said. She waited while Sarah filled two brown mugs. ‘The airlines would hire my dad though. He had offers from TWA, Delta. He could fly anywhere, but he likes being his own boss.’

‘He certainly seems capable to me,’ Sarah said, handing her a mug. Secret accepted it, smelling the spicy steam.

‘The navy trained him,’ Secret said. ‘But he was a pilot even before that. He learned to fly when he was just a little older than me. He was so valuable to the navy, he could do everything. Fly, swim in times of disaster. Lead his men. He always kept his head in times of maneuvers.’

‘Maneuvers?’

‘Yes, such as the Persian Gulf. He was there.’

‘You sound like a proud daughter.’

‘I am.’

‘Upstate New York is pretty far inland for a navy family,’ Sarah said.

‘Yes,’ Secret said, sipping her cider. She felt her asthma just waiting for the next questions: Why are you here? Do you have any brothers or sisters? But the questions never came. Instead, Sarah stuck out her hand.

‘We haven’t officially met. I’m Sarah Talbot.’

‘I’m Secret Burke.’

‘What a beautiful name!’ Sarah said.

Secret glanced over to see if she was being fake. Certain older people tended to patronize her when they heard her name, but she could see that Sarah was being sincere. Sarah’s eyes were full of admiration. She had a wonderful smile, with a slightly crooked front tooth.

‘Thank you,’ Secret said. ‘I’m actually getting ready to change it.’

‘Really? To what?’

‘I was thinking of Snow.’

Sarah nodded, blowing on her cider. ‘Perfect for winter,’ she said.

‘Is Sarah your real name?’

‘Yes, it is,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ve lugged it around my whole life. For a while in seventh grade I tried out Sadie, but it wasn’t me.’

‘No,’ Secret agreed. ‘You are definitely a Sarah.’

For the first time since coming in, Secret focused on Sarah’s hair. It had grown out about half an inch, and the color was somewhere between yellow and gray. She knew people having cancer treatments lost their hair. Beauty tips were one of Secret’s best talents, and she eyed Sarah appraisingly.

‘What?’ Sarah said. The way she blushed, touching her hair with a stricken look in her eyes, made Secret feel so bad, she almost spilled her cider. Sarah was self-conscious! Secret had seen that same expression in the eyes of her friend Margie Drake when two of the cool girls, whispering and pointing, had made fun of her new perm.

‘Well …’ Secret said, trying to decide. She could lie, say nothing, pretend she had just been about to burp. Or she could tell the truth, offer to help. ‘I was just noticing your hair,’ she said bravely.

‘My poor hair,’ Sarah said, still pink. ‘Yep, I lost it. It used to be dark brown, and now look. It came in such a funny color. Somewhere between old socks and dirty dishwater.’

‘You could bleach it,’ Secret suggested. ‘The way it’s growing in, it’s so cute and punky. You could get it pure white and look so great!’

‘Like Annie Lennox,’ Sarah said, smiling.

‘Who?’ Secret asked.

Just then the bells above the door sounded. A cluster of tiny silver bells, just like you might find in England. A group of college girls walked in, hugging themselves to get warm. Sarah called hello to them, and they called back. She offered them cider.

Secret nestled into her spot on the edge of the bed. The bed took up most of the store. But it was a bed no one would ever sleep in. Like a toy bed in the bedroom of a beautiful dollhouse. Like her playhouse in the middle of their apartment in Newport. All they needed was Fred’s toy train chugging around the room, sounding its happy whistle.

Sarah served the college girls cider, but when she was done she came back to sit beside Secret. Their mugs were cool enough to really drink now. Side by side they sipped their drinks, while outside the air grew colder. The girls’ voices were cheerful and excited. Their parents had sent them money, and they were all buying new quilts for the winter. They were the paying customers, but Sarah was sitting with Secret. As if she were her friend. As if she were hers alone.

Later that night, Sarah stood in front of her bathroom mirror. The lights were bright, and she thought she looked like a startled cat. Her ugly yellow-gray hair stuck straight up, like the soft bristles of a baby brush. Ever since closing the shop, she had found herself thinking about what Secret had said: She could bleach her hair.

Thinking about it felt radical. Sarah had never dyed her hair before, never even considered it. Growing up, she hadn’t fooled around with her appearance much. She had never been much for makeup, especially lipstick. It always felt so heavy on her mouth, and she was always licking her lips to see if it was still on. It made her feel too obvious, as if she was drawing too much attention to herself. Beauty products were for other, more glamorous girls.

But now, ruffling her hair, she wanted to do something. She hated the way she looked. Ever since the chemo, she could hardly recognize herself. She looked either very old or very young, anything but her real age. Her hair had come in colorless, and she had lots of new lines around her eyes and mouth that put her close to forty, but she had an alarmed, perpetually surprised look at all times that made her look like an overgrown infant.

No one ever mentioned it, how weird she looked. Not even her friends – not even her wonderful nurse, Meg Ferguson. At the hospital, someone had come around with wigs to try on, but Sarah had said no to those. Wearing a wig would feel like having pantyhose on her head, sweaty and claustrophobic. The scalp equivalent to lipstick. Sarah had gone the distance for her brain tumor, trying every revolutionary treatment known to doctors anywhere, but when it came to her appearance she wouldn’t try the simplest things.

Sighing, she walked into her bedroom. Annie Lennox played on the CD player; Sarah had put her on for moral support. Annie and Sarah. And Secret. She wondered if Secret Burke knew what a big favor she had done her, breaking the ice about something that had been driving her crazy with stupid worry.

Thanksgiving. What if she went? Aside from all the old sorrow with her father, their history of letdown and resentment, Sarah had an even bigger fear about the possibility of going home to Elk Island in less than three weeks. She was afraid to have Mike see her this way. She didn’t want him to feel scared, or disgusted, by his own mother. She would have to hire extra help or close her shop for the long weekend.

She remembered naming her first shop. She was nineteen years old, a college student in Boston. Nineteen! Hardly older than Mike! Where had she gotten the confidence, the ambition? The shop was tiny, one single room with a brick wall and parquet floors. Sarah had walked through the door and filled the place with all her dreams. She would stock the shelves with Aunt Bess’s quilts, become a successful businesswoman. Envisioning additional stores, catalogue sales, a chance to save the farm, a way to make her father happy on earth and her mother proud in heaven, Sarah had named her store Cloud Nine.

Cloud Nine. Leaning against her bureau, Sarah remembered designing her logo: a golden ‘9’ on a white cloud superimposed on a blue oval, tiny white down feathers drifting down like snowflakes. She had commissioned David Walker, a woodcarver on Elk Island, to make the sign. Naming the store had given her so much pleasure, such a sense of dreams coming true, of knowing exactly who she was. She hadn’t felt anything like it before and never would again until Mike was born.

Michael Ezekiel Loring Talbot.

Thinking her son’s name filled Sarah with so much emotion she had to grip the bureau top. She had always loved the name Michael. It was strong, and it had belonged to an archangel, and it sounded poetic. She had given her son the name of a leader and an athlete, someone who had fun and took risks.

Sarah had wanted to name Michael for his father, but she had been free to give him ‘Loring’ only as a middle name. Michael, like Sarah, was a Talbot. Perhaps that was why he was clinging so tenaciously to the island and his grandfather, to the old farm and the refuge it provided.

Her eyes brimmed with tears, and she blinked them away. No use crying about things she couldn’t change. Mike had made his decision. She couldn’t even say he had run away from home, because he hadn’t even hidden his plans. And his destination wasn’t New York or Los Angeles or even Albany: It was the family farm. Still, he was only seventeen, now living on Elk Island with the original recluse. In search of the truth about his own dead father. Mike would kill her if he knew she still thought of him as her baby, but she did.

Sitting on her window seat, Sarah took a sip of herbal tea. She ate only healthful things now. She walked a little every day, as much as she felt able to. Some days she felt strong enough to run on the college track, like she had before getting sick, but she wasn’t ready to push it. Her doctor had told her to take it slow, and Sarah listened to what he said. She wanted to live. She had brought a boy into this world, and she wanted to live to see him safely moving on a shining path.

Alice Von Froelich walked into her daughter’s bedroom and tried to determine by her breathing whether she was actually asleep or just faking it. Several blankets and a quilt were piled high, pulled right over her head. The radio was playing, but Susan had been falling asleep to music for as long as Alice could remember.

Standing stock-still, hoping to catch her moving, Alice hardly breathed herself. She glanced around the room. The lamps were turned off, but the hall light illuminated certain things. Undeniably elegant, like the rest of Julian’s house, Susan’s room showed very few signs of being occupied by a teenage girl. Noticing this, as she did every time she entered, Alice crinkled her brow and exhaled worriedly.

Susan loved the idea of England, so Julian had let her choose two Gainsboroughs from his collection: a little girl in a blue dress, and two spaniels on a satin pillow. Her furniture and accoutrements were English too: the Queen Anne bed and dresser, the antique rocker covered in Susan’s favorite shade of rose, the monogrammed sterling silver brush and mirror on the vanity. Julian had given them to her last Christmas, along with several sterling picture frames for her great collection of photos.

Stooping down, Alice took a closer look at the photos. Susan certainly did love her father: Will was in every one. There they were, in the cockpit of his Piper Cub, when Susan was four years old. Sitting on his lap under an umbrella at the Black Pearl, the family’s favorite restaurant in Newport. Standing on the dock just before he’d shipped out for the Middle East. Alice remembered taking all three pictures. And then her eyes fell upon the fourth.