Rescue - By Anita Shreve Page 0,1
years ago, Webster gets the package open and puts the silver cube on the table. He begins to fool with it. He discovers that if he lays it on one side, it tells the time and date. If he sets it on another, it shows the weather for the next four days: two suns; a cloud with rain coming out; and then a sun.
“It’s hooked up to a weather channel somewhere,” Rowan explains as she moves her chair closer to her father’s. “It’s better if you keep it near a window. This side is an alarm clock. I tried it. It’s not too bad. The sound, I mean.”
Webster guesses the silver cube cost Rowan at least three days’ pay from her job at the Giant Mart over the state line. She commutes from Vermont to New York and back again two afternoons a week and every Saturday if there isn’t a game. Webster puts his hand on Rowan’s back and lightly rubs it just below her long neck. “I can really use the outside temperature thing,” he says. “And what does this side do?”
Rowan takes the silver cube from her father and demonstrates. “You rock it from side to side and then set it down. It tells your future inside the black square.”
Webster remembers the black balls of his youth, the ones with sayings floating in who knew what liquid. Probably something toxic.
“Whose future?”
“Yours, I guess. It’s yours now.”
Rowan returns the cube, setting it on her father’s lap. They wait. Abruptly, Webster flips the cube over, but not before he’s seen the ghost of his future struggling to the surface. Prepare for a surprise. He refuses to own the prediction.
“Why did you do that?” Rowan asks.
“Surprises, in my business, are nearly always bad.”
“You’re too cynical,” she says.
“I’m not cynical. Just careful.”
“Too careful for your own good,” she adds as she glances at the clock. “I have to go.”
She slips from her chair and kisses his cheek. He watches her graceful movements, performed a thousand times. She holds up her hair, twists it, and lets it fall over her right shoulder. He’s never seen this particular gesture from his daughter, and it hits him in the gut.
“Thanks for the breakfast and the present,” he says.
“Sure.”
Webster swivels back to his French toast.
He registers an odd silence in the hallway, not the rattle of the knob, the usual friction of the warped door in its frame. After a few seconds, Webster turns his head around.
His daughter is still in the back hallway, gazing out the window of the door.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“Nothing.”
“Rowan?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t bite my head off.”
Webster notices what might be the outline of a hard pack of cigarettes in the pocket of her light jacket. He suspects his daughter is drinking. Is she smoking, too? Is she experimenting? Is this normal for a girl her age?
Webster can’t remember the last time he’s felt relaxed with Rowan. For a few moments earlier this morning, his heart lifted: Rowan remembered the birthday, Rowan cooked for him, she was excited about his present.
“Rowan.”
“What?” Rowan asks, grabbing her backpack from a hook.
“I just… I just want you to be happy.”
Rowan sighs and rolls her eyes.
Webster struggles for the high note of the birthday breakfast. “Love my present,” he says again.
Webster can feel his daughter’s impatience. Eager to be away.
He turns back to the table. He hears the tug and pull of the door, the necessary slam.
He walks to the window and looks out. As he watches his daughter get into her car, an ache moves through his chest, sucking him empty.
Rowan is leaving him.
She’s been leaving him for months.
Eighteen years earlier
Webster got the call at 1:10 in the morning. “Unresponsive female half-ejected one-car ten-fifty.” He made it from his parents’ house in to Rescue in two and a half flat. He parked the secondhand cruiser near the building and climbed into the passenger seat of the Bullet as Burrows put his foot to the floor, turned down the lights and the siren, and swooped into the left lane. Webster had his uniform over his pajamas; his stethoscope around his neck; his gloves, trauma shears, flashlight, tourniquet, oxygen key, and window punch on his utility belt; his radio in its holster. In his head, he ran through the protocol for a 10-50. Assess scene safety, including potential for fire, explosion. Wires down, leaking gas tank, turn-out gear and visor if extrication indicated. Open the airway. Jaw thrust, if necessary. Assess breathing and circulation. Stabilize spine. Check the pulse,