You Lost Me There by Rosecrans Baldwin

Author:Rosecrans Baldwin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Widowers, Fiction - Psychological Suspense, Research, Medical, American First Novelists, Fiction, Psychological, Scientists, American Contemporary Fiction - Individual Authors +, General, Alzheimer's disease
ISBN: 9781594487637
Publisher: RIVERHEAD (2010年8月12日)
Published: 2010-08-19T20:59:37.828000+00:00

I must have stayed too long at dinner because the airport parking lot was empty when I arrived. The employees inside were going home. My interrogator, the federal marshal who’d confiscated my gift for Russell, was putting on her coat, still wearing her sunglasses.

Cornelia sat on the curb, her elbows between her knees, next to a tall purple backpack. She wore the same clothes as in New York: flip-flops, a billowing skirt, a silk tank top, and lots of necklaces and bracelets and glitter. When I parked, she didn’t look up from her book. On the cover were four women in tight jeans and high heels, giggling over cocktails.

“Is that what they call chick lit?” I said.

Cornelia jumped up and launched herself into my arms. My back ached when we embraced. A woman, I thought, not a girl.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said.

“Hey, it’s hard out there for a cook. You should have seen me explain why I needed to pack so many knives. You’ve got glitter on your face,” Cornelia said, laughing, and brushed my cheeks with her fingers.

We joined a stream of cars and RVs heading over to the island through the dark. Cornelia lowered her window. Steam was rolling off big kettles set up outside the fish shacks serving dinner. The tide was out and the mud flats were exposed, so the air smelled of seaweed, muck, and salt water. Satisfied, Cornelia fell back in her seat, propped up her bare feet on the dashboard and retied a silver ribbon, threaded with cowry shells, that kept her dreadlocks off her neck.

I noticed she hadn’t buckled her seat belt. She looked at me at the same moment and twisted around to pull it across her chest.

“Uncle Victor, I can’t tell you, thank you so much.”

“So I called my friend Joel,” I said. “He says he’d be happy to talk to you tomorrow. If you can pass a fiddlehead test, maybe there’s a job in the kitchen.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“I’m driving.”

“But I am, like, a fiddlehead guru.”

“I told him you were, like, a fiddlehead guru.”

“Oh my God!” she squealed.

Right before my road, we passed a white tent set up in a church parking lot. In the summer months, the island supported dozens of stands selling berries, corn, and firewood, sometimes manure. (The manure stands always had signs saying “You Buy It, You Haul It.”) The guy manning the tent wore an orange hunting cap and a New England Patriots jacket and was reading a newspaper, a night owl burning a halogen lamp off his truck battery to snare the day’s last tourists. His table was cluttered with bones. The sign hanging off his tent said “ANTLERS, FRESH, 50 CLAMS.”

I was reminded of the living room in Regina’s house where a similar rack mounted over the fireplace wore a Michigan cap.

Cornelia stuck her hand out the window and gave him the finger.

I laughed. “Are you still wearing your PETA button?”

“Dude, whatever. But who wants to buy antlers anyway? It’s, like, so fucking arrogant.

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