| Lisa of the Fields Chapter 1, Page 1 A telephone ringing at four in the morning is rarely good news. When the apparatus calls out to the parents of a teenager in the dark hours following the prom it is ominous�an indifferent bearer of bad tidings. When the phone beckoned, Randy Delacroix was dreaming�hunting, out beyond the interstate highway and past the spacious, verdant fields, deep in the woods, which quickly fell into blackness as if falling into a well. He was hunting, stepping cautiously between trees and over twisted roots, his nose up as though he were a bloodhound, his eyes slicing into to the darkness like lasers, his rifle alert, poised, ready. A thought occurred and tugged at Randy�s shirt like a child desiring ice cream: what is it, exactly, that I am hunting? The thought caused him to pause and, in doing so, Randy had momentarily let down his senses and instantly something had wrenched the rifle from his grip and wrapped a pair of cold hands around his throat. That�s when the phone rang. Next to Randy, on her side of the sagging queen-size mattress, lay his wife. She had not been dreaming. In fact, Donna claimed that she never dreamed. It was one of those annoying proclamations that she often made. She never softened the blow by stating that something was her opinion, or that there might be other, also true, sides to a story. Randy always seemed to start his sentences with, �In my opinion,� or �As far as I know,� or �It seems to me.� Donna aggravated him when she spouted her decrees as though her words were infallible, like tablets handed down from Sinai. �I don�t dream and I never will,� Donna said, despite what Randy had seen on a program about sleep research one night on cable television. That was one of Randy�s quirks that annoyed Donna: he was always quoting some fact from a newspaper, or talking about something he had seen �on the cable.� One day when she sat down to have a cup of coffee and a cigarette he told her about a newspaper article he�d read touting the health benefits of green tea. And whenever the temperature breached 90, he was sure to talk about the ozone layer and global warming and the greenhouse effect as if he were some kind of scientist with extensive research in the field. When his wife told him to be quiet, Randy said, �It�s true. World�s getting hotter. We�re all gonna fry some day soon. I saw it on the cable,� to which Donna replied, �That don�t matter to me. What matters is that I�m sweatin� my fuckin� ass off, and when you talk about that greenhouse shit it just makes me fuckin� hotter.� Randy and Donna had been married for 15 years. She was pregnant and a senior at Kingston High School when his folks rented the church hall at Our Lady of Fatima on a Saturday evening. They got married upstairs in the church, and then the newlyweds and their guests walked down a flight and sat at tables reconfigured from their bingo layout of straight rows for the reception, silver-colored paper ashtrays scattered about. There was no honeymoon; there was no affording it. On Monday morning, Donna was back at Kingston High, sneaking a smoke in the girls� room. Randy was back pumping at the gas station and, between customers, checking out what the mechanics were up to, trying to learn a little here and there. Randy�s mom, Claire, had said at the time that it was a shame that the newlyweds were unable to arrange any sort of post-wedding excursion, and she always laid part of the blame for whatever marriage woes the pair faced on the absence of a honeymoon. Therein lay the beginning of Donna�s souring, Claire thought, for every bride deserves a nice honeymoon to start off her married life. Take away that part of the equation and things aren�t quite the same. They become unbalanced, out of whack, unaligned, and Claire was a big believer in alignment. �Everything in the universe has its place,� she would say, thumbing through one of her astrology books. �The stars are all aligned in a certain manner, as our lives should be. Once one piece goes outta whack, then the whole thing is doomed.� Donna�s return to Kingston High School did not last long. She dropped out in February of 1983, about a month before Lisa was born. Lisa, who was now in her freshman year at that very same Kingston High; Lisa, who had gone to the senior prom that night, despite her father�s reservations (�She�ll be fine,� was Donna�s ruling, and that was that.); Lisa, who had not yet returned home when the phone in the Delacroix home rang suddenly and sharply at four in the morning. In the kitchen of the Delacroix home, the black chordless sang out with its high-pitched birdlike call, while a more traditional phone at Donna�s bedside�square-bottomed and black�rang in a more traditional manner. Whenever a call came in, it sounded as though a pair of small animals were trying to outdo each other, vying for the attentions of some fertile female (maybe they are each trying to attract the toaster, Lisa had thought, giggling, and then imagined some late night rendezvous between the objects). Randy was awakened by the first ring and had started to reach over his wife when Donna pushed his arm out of the way and grabbed the receiver herself. The police officer on the other end told Donna that there had been an accident and that Lisa was at Southern Maine Medical Center. �What? What happened?� Donna demanded, but all the officer would say was that the parents of the girl should get to the hospital quickly. �Jesus, Donna�what happened? Is Lisa alright?� Randy asked when she�d hung up the phone. �We have to get over to Southern Maine. There�s been an accident. I swear, I am going to kill that fucker, that Billy Armstrong, if my daughter is hurt.� Randy pulled some jeans on and went to rouse the couple�s 11-year-old son, named Jeffrey, but called Free by everybody because that is what Lisa first began calling her baby brother when he came home and she either couldn�t pronounce the entire name, or simply chose not to. �You shoulda let him stay sleepin�,� Donna told Randy when he came back into the bedroom to put some shoes and a shirt on. �He woulda been fine.� But Free accompanied his parents as Randy drove the black Buick over to Southern Maine Medical Center, which was just off the interstate and only a mile or so from their house. The streets were empty and dark, and the stoplight at the intersection of Center Street and US Route 1 was in its blink mode to accommodate the sparse traffic of the night. Free, in the backseat, really just waking up, tried to think if he had ever seen Kingston at that time of night. He could not remember the stoplights eschewing their green/yellow/red sequence for this blinking stuff. He stretched and wondered if his sister was dead. |