The Select

CHAPTER FIVE

In what had become a daily ritual, Quinn sat on her window seat in her cozy little bedroom, raised the binoculars, and aimed them across the front yard toward the end of the driveway. And with each new day the suspense grew. It had swollen to a Hitchcockian level now.

The front yard wasn't much—a hundred feet deep, rimmed with oaks and elms, filled with laurel and natural brush, and a patch of winter-brown grass. Pretty drab and lifeless now, but soon spring would bring the forsythia into buttery bloom and then there'd be lots of color. The house was old, the foundation even older—the first stones had been placed a century and a half ago. The superstructure had been built and rebuilt a number of times since then. The current structure had been completed sometime in the Roaring Twenties. Over the years Quinn had lined her little bedroom nest with photos, pennants, posters, honor certificates, medals and trophies from her seasons as a high school track star. And many a night she had spent fantasizing about the children who had occupied the room before her, where they were now, what they had done with their lives.

They hadn't all stayed farmers, she was sure of that.

The farm. The acres stretched out behind the house. Lots of land. If this kind of acreage were situated near the coast, or better yet, along the inner reaches of Long Island Sound, they'd be rich. Millionaires. Developers would be banging on their door wanting to buy it for subdivision. But not here in the hinterlands of northeast Connecticut.

The farm had changed crops since Quinn was a child, and that had changed the look of the place. Dad grew hay, potatoes, and corn now, but back in the seventies the Cleary place had been a tobacco farm—shade-grown tobacco, for cigar wrappers. Quinn had helped work the farm then, feeding the chickens, milking the cows, sweeping out the barns. All of that had stopped when she went off to college. She no longer thought of herself as a farm girl, but she could still remember summer days looking out the door at acres of pale muslins undulating in the afternoon breeze as they shielded the tender leaves of the tobacco plants from the direct rays of the sun.

Thinking of those fields of white triggered the memory of another color. Red...blood red.

It had been in the spring. Quinn had just turned seven and she was out in the fields watching the hands work. A couple of the men were stretching the wire from post to post while the others followed, draping the muslin between the wires. Suddenly one of the men—Jerry, they called him—shouted in pain and fell to the ground, clutching at his upper leg. He'd pulled the wire too tight and it had snapped back, gashing his thigh. He lay in the dirt, white faced as he stared at the blood leaking out from under his fingers. Then he fainted. And with the relaxation of the pressure from his hands, a stream of bright red sprayed into the air, glinting in the sun with each pulsating arc. One of the men had already run for help, but the other three simply stood around their fallen fellow in shock, silent, staring.

Quinn, too, stared, but only for a heartbeat or two. She knew Jerry would be dead in no time if someone didn't stop his bleeding—you couldn't grow up on a farm without knowing that. As she watched the spurting blood, the story of the little Dutch boy flashed through her mind. She leaped forward and did the equivalent of putting her finger in the dike.

The blood had been hot and slippery. The feel of the torn flesh made her woozy at first, but she knelt there and kept her finger in the dike until Dad had come with a first-aid kit and a tourniquet.

For a while people referred to her as the gutsy little girl who'd saved Jerry's life. The accolades faded, but the incident had a lingering effect. It had swung open a door and allowed Quinn to peer through and view a part of herself. She had done something. Because of her, life would go on with Jerry around; if she had done nothing, he would have died. Up to that time she'd had a vague image of her future self as a veterinarian, caring for the livestock on the family farm and all over Windham county. From then on there was never a question in Quinn's mind that one day she would be a doctor.

Quinn shook off the memories and focused the binocs on the mailbox where it sat on its post in the afternoon sun. The red flag was still up. She lowered the glasses and tapped an impatient foot.

Where is he?

"Is there no mail yet?"

Quinn turned at the sound of her mother's voice, still touched with the lilt of her native Ireland. She was standing in the doorway, a pile of folded towels balanced in her arms. Quinn had inherited Dad's lean, straight-up-and-down body type and Mom's fair skin and high coloring. How many times had she wished things were reversed? Her mother was fair-haired, too, but with a womanly shape, a good bust and feminine hips—she was only in her mid-forties and she still turned heads when she was out shopping. Dad was built like a beanpole but his skin type never blushed.

It seemed to Quinn that she had wound up with the leftovers of her gene pool.

"Henry's late today."

"He'll get here," Mom said. "A watched pot never boils."

Yes it does, Quinn wanted to say. And an unwatched pot boils over. Instead she nodded and said, "I know."

No sense arguing with Mom's Old Sayings.

"I'm very proud of you," her mother said. "Who'd have ever dreamed when you were born that my little baby girl would be in demand by the finest medical schools in the world."

Sure. Great. She'd heard from Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown. All acceptances. All wanted her. Which was fine for her ego but didn't get her any closer to being a doctor. Each called for twenty- to twenty-five thousand dollars a year. She couldn't come up with even half of that.

Quinn said nothing. What could she say? Her father broke his back every day working this farm and what did it get him? He met expenses. Food, clothes, seeing to the cars, repairing the machinery, insurance, mortgage payments pretty much took it all. If she hadn't won a full ride at U. Conn, she'd never even have come this far.

Dad's ego had taken a real beating during the past dozen or so years, so she couldn't even hint at how she'd die inside if she couldn't go to med school. It would crush him.

But Mom knew. And although her mother never said it, Quinn suspected she was secretly glad they couldn't afford it. But not through any malice. She'd probably hurt for Quinn as much as Quinn would hurt for herself. But Mom had her own agenda, her own reasons for wanting Quinn home. And none of it made any sense to Quinn.

"It's got to come today," she said, raising the glasses again. She wished there weren't so many trees out by the road so she could spot the white mail jeep as it rounded the curve half a mile down. The way things were, she had to wait until he was within a dozen feet of the box before she saw him.

"Don't be forgetting the old saying," her mother said. "Be careful what you wish for—you may just get it."

Quinn kept her face toward the window so her mother wouldn't see her rolling her eyes. That was Mom's favorite Old Saying.

"If I get what I'm wishing for I'll be really, really careful," Quinn said. "I promise."

The phone rang.

"I'll get it," Quinn said.

She dashed down to the kitchen and grabbed the receiver off the wall. It was Matt.

"Quinn! Did you hear yet?"

"No, Matt. No mail yet today."

He'd called every day this week, ever since he'd received his acceptance to The Ingraham. She wished she could tell him to sit back and wait until she called him, but he was pulling for her, almost as anxious as she.

"Damn. You said it's usually here by this time."

"I probably won't hear today either."

"Maybe. But when it comes, it'll be a yes. Has to be. How could The Ingraham turn you down when Harvard and all those others want you? You're in, Quinn. No sweat. So don't worry. It can't go any other way."

Then why are you calling every day? she wanted to say.

"If you say so."

She wished she could share Matt's optimism. Maybe then she wouldn't feel like an overwound spring. And every day her insides seemed to wind tighter.

Matt had heard last Saturday. Here it was Friday and she still hadn't. Every passing day had to decrease her chances.

"I don't..." The words caught in her throat but she managed to force them out. "...think I made it."

"No way, Quinn. That's—"

"Look, Matt. You've got to figure all the acceptances went out in one wave. It's not like they were mailing two thousand of them. There's only fifty spots. And it's not like I live in California. I mean, you're in New Haven and I'm in the boonies, but we're both in Connecticut. So let's face it, Matt. The acceptances all went out and I wasn't in there."

"I don't believe that, Quinn. And neither does Tim."

"Tim?"

"Yeah. He's staying over for some golf and a sortie to the reservation casino."

The memory of the exam last December, the answers Tim had marked on her sheet, and how she'd passed them in still rankled. She'd resented him—and her own weakness—for a long time. Now it didn't seem to matter.

Unless they'd been wrong answers.

"Matt...did Tim...make it?"

She was almost afraid to hear his reply.

"Yeah, Quinn. Tim made it too. That's why you've got to make it."

Quinn slumped into one of the ladder back chairs at the rugged, porcelain-topped kitchen table. Her gaze wandered, unseeing, from the worn linoleum floor to the stark white cabinets that had been painted and repainted so many times the edges of the panels were rounded and the type of wood beneath had long since been forgotten.

Tim had made it. That meant the two answers he'd given her probably had been correct.

Then why haven't I made it? she thought.

"Listen," Matt said. "Tim wants to talk to you. He—"

"Can't talk now," she blurted. "I think I hear the mail truck."

Not really true, but she didn't want to talk to Tim. Was it because she felt embarrassed?

"Great. Call me right back if you hear anything."

"Okay. Sure."

Quinn hung up and sat there drumming her fingers on the table top. This waiting was driving her nuts.

And then a faint squeak filtered in from the front of the house. She knew that sound. The mail truck's brakes. She ran to the front door.

There it was, the white jeep pausing at the end of the driveway. She waited until it had rolled on—no sense in appearing too anxious—then she stepped out into the bright afternoon sunshine and, as casually as she could manage, strolled the one hundred feet to the road.

She flipped down the mailbox door and withdrew the slim stack of letters and catalogs from the galvanized gullet. Electric bill...phone bill...bank statement...The Ingraham College of Medicine...

Quinn's heart stumbled over a beat. She shoved the rest of the stack back into the box and stared at the envelope. It was light, no more than a single sheet of paper folded in there. She wished she'd asked Matt some details about his acceptance notice. Had it come in a bigger envelope with instructions on the how, where, and when of registration?

It's got to be a rejection, she told herself. It only takes one page to tell you to go pound salt.

Her mouth was dry and her fingers trembled as she tore open the envelope.

Dear Ms. Cleary:

Every year, The Ingraham College of Medicine reviews hundreds of applications and entrance exam scores. It is a most difficult task to select the fifty applicants who will attend The Ingraham. The Admissions Office regrets to inform you that, although you are most highly qualified and will certainly be a credit to any institution of medical learning, after careful consideration, your name was not among those selected for acceptance to next year's class. However, since your scores were ranked within the top one hundred, your name has been placed on the waiting list. This office will inform you immediately of any change in your status as it occurs. If you do not wish your name placed on the wait list, please inform the Admissions Office immediately.

There was another paragraph but Quinn couldn't bring herself to read it. Maybe later. Not now. Her vision blurred. She blinked to clear it. She fought the urge to ball up the letter and envelope and shove them back into the mailbox, or better yet, hurl them into the road. But that wouldn't do. She'd turned twenty-two last month. She was supposed to be an adult.

Biting back the sob that swelled in her chest, Quinn retrieved the rest of the mail from the box and forced her wobbly legs to walk her back toward the house.

What am I going to do?

She felt dizzy, half-panicked as her rubbery knees threatened to collapse with each step. All those bleary nights of cramming, the cups of bitter black coffee at four a.m., the endless sessions in the poisonous air of the chemistry labs... hours, days, her whole life had been about becoming a doctor. And suddenly it was all gone...in a few seconds—the time it took to tear open an envelope...gone.

She stumbled but kept her balance, kept walking. She clenched her teeth.

Get a grip, Cleary.

She slowed her breathing, cleared her head, brushed aside the panic.

Okay, she told herself. Bad news. The worst. An awful setback. But there were other ways. Loans, and maybe work-study programs. Maybe even the military—sell a piece of her life to the Army or Navy for medical school tuition. She was not going to give up. There had to be a way, and dammit, she'd find it.

And besides, The Ingraham hadn't slammed the door on her. She was on the waiting list. There was still a chance. She'd call the Admissions Office and find out how many were ahead of her. She'd call them every month—no, every week. By September when registration day rolled around, everyone in that Admissions Office would know the name Quinn Cleary. And if any name was going to be moved off the waiting list into acceptance, it was going to be hers.

She quickened her stride. That was it. She would not let this get her down. She wasn't beaten yet. One way or another she was going to medical school.

As she stepped onto the front porch she glanced up and saw her mother standing there, waiting for her. Her mother's eyes were moist, her lips were trembling.

"Oh, Quinn."

She knows, Quinn thought. Does it show that much?

Then her mother held out her arms to her.

Quinn held back for an instant. She was an adult, a woman now, she could handle this on her own. She didn't need her mother cooing over her like a kid with a scraped knee.

But somewhere inside she wanted a hug, needed one. And the understanding, the shared pain, the sympathy she saw in her mother's eyes tore something loose in Quinn. Inner walls cracked and crumbled. Everything she had dammed up, the agony of the months of waiting, the hurt, the crushing disappointment, the fear and uncertainty about what was to come, all broke free. She clung to her mother like a drowning child to a rock in the sea and began to sob.

"Oh, Mom...what am I going to go?"

She felt her mother's arms envelope her and hold her tight and she cried harder, cried like she hadn't since her dog Sneakers had died when she was ten years old.

*

"You're secretly glad I was turned down, aren't you?"

Quinn said it without rancor. She'd pulled herself together and now she was sitting at the battered kitchen table while Mom brewed them some tea.

Mom looked at her for a few seconds, then turned back to the whistling kettle.

"Now why would you be saying such a thing, Quinn, dear? Glad means I take some pleasure in your hurt. I don't. Nothing could be farther from the truth. I feel your hurt like my own. I want to go down to that Ingraham place and wring somebody's neck. But, well, yes, deep down inside some part of me is... relieved."

Over the past couple of years Quinn had sensed in her mother an unspoken resistance to her dream of becoming a doctor. Now she felt oddly relieved that it was out in the open.

"Why...why don't you want me to be a doctor?"

Mom brought the teapot to the table and set it on a crocheted potholder between them.

"It's not that I don't want you to be a doctor—I'd love to see you as a doctor. It's just that I..." She paused, at a loss for words. "Oh, Quinn, I know you're going to be thinking this sounds crazy, but I'm worried about your going to medical school."

Quinn was baffled. "Mom, I've been away at U. Conn for the past four years and—"

"Oh, it's not the going away that bothers me. It's just this...feeling I have."

Uh-oh. One of Mom's feelings.

"Sure and I know what you're going to say, how it makes no sense to let these kind of feelings affect your life, but I can't help it, Quinn. Especially when the feeling is this strong."

Quinn shook her head. No use in arguing. Mom sometimes thought she had premonitions. She called it "the Sheedy thing." Some turned out true, but plenty of others didn't. She tended to forget all the ones that didn't, and cling to the ones that had panned out. Mostly they were just apprehensions, fears of what might go wrong. She almost never had premonitions of anything good.

Mom seemed to think this sort of sixth sense ran in the family. If it did, it clearly was one more useful gene Quinn had missed out on. She wished she could have seen that letter coming. She would have prepared herself better.

Watching Mom pour the tea, she decided to play along, just this once.

"What's it like, this bad feeling about med school?"

"Nothing specific." Her eyes lost their focus for a moment. "Just a feeling that you'll never come back."

Is that it? Quinn thought. She's afraid of losing me forever to some faraway medical center?

"Mom, if you think I'll ever forget you and Dad or turn my back—"

"No, dear. It's not that sort of thing. I have this feeling you'll be in danger there."

"But what danger could I possibly be in?"

"I don't know. But you remember what happened with your Aunt Sandra, don't you?"

Oh, boy. Aunt Sandra. Mom's older sister. The two of them had been teenagers when the Sheedy family came over from Ireland. Aunt Sandra was always having run-ins with "the Sheedy thing."

"Of course." Quinn had heard this story a thousand times. "But—"

"She awoke one night and saw this light in the hall outside her bedroom..."

Mom wasn't going to be stopped, so Quinn leaned back and let her go.

"...The glow got brighter and brighter, and then she saw it: a glowing hand, and clutched in that hand was a glowing knife. It glided past her bedroom door and disappeared down the hall. Three nights in a row she saw it. The third night she tried to wake your uncle Evan but he was sound asleep, so she got up alone and followed the glowing arm with the knife down the hall. It glided past your cousin Kathy's room and went straight to your cousin Bob's, passed right through the oak door. She rushed inside and saw it poised over Bob's bed. And as she watched, it plunged the knife blade into Bob's stomach. She screamed and that woke everybody up. But the hand was gone as if it had never been. Your uncle Evan thought she was going crazy, and even Bob and Kathy were getting worried about her." As she always did, Mom paused here for effect. "But the next day, your cousin Bob was rushed to the hospital and taken to surgery where he had to go under the surgeon's knife for a ruptured appendix." Another pause, this time accompanied by a meaningful stare. "Thank the Lord everything turned out okay, but after that no one ever doubted your Aunt Sandra when she had one of her premonitions."

Silly, but the story yet again gave Quinn a chill. The thought of being the only one awake, sitting in the dark and seeing a glowing, knife-wielding hand float past your bedroom door...

She threw off the frisson.

"Mom, you haven't had any, uh, visions about me, have you?"

Mom stirred honey into her tea. "No. Nothing like that. Just a...feeling. Especially that Ingraham place. Giving you everything free. That seems...unnatural."

She was sounding a bit like Matt.

"Well," Quinn said, "I don't think you have to worry now. Nothing bad is going to happen to me at med school."

Saying those words, med school, triggered a pain in her chest. Crying it out, talking it out, having a cup of tea with her mother had helped her put aside the crushing loss. But only for a moment.

"I've got to call Matt," Quinn said around the newly formed lump in her throat. Which was the last thing she wanted to do. She hadn't made it and he had. So had Tim. She felt humiliated, ashamed. But might as well grit her teeth and get it over with. "He's waiting to hear from me."

*

Tim sat in Matt's bedroom and watched his friend hang up the phone. He stared at it accusingly, as if it had lied to him. After a moment he turned and faced Tim.

"They turned her down," he said, his voice hushed. "The Ingraham fucking College of fucking Medicine turned down Quinn Cleary. I don't believe it."

Tim already had gathered that from what he'd just overheard. He felt a pang, almost like a soldier who'd just lost a comrade. His hurt, he realized, was a little selfish: He'd been looking forward to spending some time with Quinn.

"Doesn't seem right," Tim said. "I mean, I don't know her as well as you, but she strikes me as someone who was born to be a doctor."

"Damn right," Matt said, his lips thinning as he spoke—Tim could tell he was getting angry now. "What the hell's wrong with them, anyway? Turning down Quinn—what kind of bullshit is that? Where are their heads? What are they thinking about? Do they have any idea what they've just done to her life?"

"Probably not," Tim said. "They—-"

Matt stood up and kicked his wicker wastebasket against the far wall, then began to stalk the room. No mean distance, that. Matt's bedroom was the size of the living room in Tim's home, which wasn't exactly a shack.

"Damn, this pisses me off! I've had reservations about that place from the start, all their prissy rules and regulations, but this ices the cake! If they don't want Quinn Cleary, I've got to ask myself if The Ingraham even knows what the hell it's doing."

"And what's worse," Tim said, silently tipping his hat to Groucho Marx as he tried to lighten things up a bit, "they accepted me. I'm not even sure I want to go to a medical school that'll take me as a student."

Matt didn't smile. "I'm not kidding, Tim. I'd like to turn those bastards down, just for spite."

Tim saw that he was serious, and the seed of a scheme began to germinate in his mind.

"Hold that thought," he told Matt.

SUMMER

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