The Lives of Edie Pritchard

by Larry Watson

  “For some kids it’s never enough,” Edie says. “I don’t believe Jennifer ever forgave me for wanting to be anything besides her mother.”

  “That’d be Brad, all right.”

  “They were good-looking boys, as I recall.”

  “And those good looks got Brad in a shitload of trouble. He had something going with a married woman—this was before the waterskiing accident—and her husband, a husband with a gun, was looking for Brad. I knew the husband a little, and I was able to talk him down. Carla never knew about it, which was just as well. I told the fellow that Brad was nothing but a weaselly little prick who wasn’t worth going to prison for.”

  “You’ll forgive me,” Edie says, “if I smile.”

  “Yeah, well. Those years are behind me. And would it make any difference if I said I was never involved with a woman who was happily married?”

  She reaches over and touches him on the forearm. “Roy. If they were happily married they wouldn’t have been interested in you in the first place. That’s what it means to be happily married.”

  “Now there I’ll have to disagree with you. There’s plenty of women perfectly content in their marriages who still have a little curiosity they’d like to satisfy. People like to think that’s only men, but in my experience the sexes aren’t so different as they’re made out to be. I’ll give you a for instance. Years ago I had a little something going with a married woman—a happily married woman. We never ended up in the sack together, but we were close. Not an affair exactly but some kind of thing. She once told me she wished she’d be cast in a movie she’d have to do a love scene in. That’s what she called it. But a sex scene was what she was talking about. And she and the actor would be in bed together. Going at it in front of the camera. Because that was her role, her job. She’d have to do it.”

  “And she told you she was happily married?”

  “That’s what she told me. But everyone could see she and her husband were happy together.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  BECAUSE GARTH HAS been baking again, his phone is dusted with flour and baking powder. He blows on the keypad, raising a tiny white cloud, and shuts the phone. Then he tosses the phone down on the counter disgustedly and walks out the front door.

  He finds Jesse on the front porch, playing his guitar. Tiffany sits nearby, endlessly impressed with his version of “Layla,” perhaps the only rendition she’s ever heard at twelve years old. Garth orders Jesse into the kitchen, and he tells Tiffany to go upstairs with her sister and Randy. Lauren and Billy are in the backyard, laughing in the dark as they try to set up the croquet set they found in the barn. When Garth says he wants to talk to them inside, they shrug and follow him in.

  Marilyn is in the bathroom, having just taken a shower. When Garth knocks on the door and then enters, she’s wearing nothing but a towel. She smiles expectantly at Garth, but if there’s an invitation there, he ignores it. “Get dressed,” he says curtly. “Then come down to the kitchen.”

  And now they’re gathered there. Jesse, Billy, and Lauren are seated around the table. Marilyn stands apart, leaning against the cupboard.

  Garth walks over to Jesse and stands so close that Jesse has no choice but to look up like a child about to be scolded.

  “All right,” Garth says sternly, “let’s hear it. What the hell kind of big scheme did you and Matt have cooked up?”

  Before Jesse can answer, Garth continues. “Because it’s sure as fuck over now.” He turns to Marilyn as though she’s the only person who’s capable of understanding what he’s about to say. “Matt got himself arrested. Some sheriff out in Bumblefuck Falls, Montana, pulled him over for a busted headlight. Searched the car and found over a hundred pounds of Ecstasy. And he had a young Canadian couple with him. I might not have all the details right, but it sounds like Matt crossed the border on a motorcycle and then this young couple picked him up on the US side. All part of the plan apparently.”

  Garth stops and glares at Jesse. “Any of this sound familiar to you?”

  Jesse doesn’t say anything.

  “Wait,” Marilyn says, shaking her head. “Wait. How do you . . . Did you talk to Matt?”

  Garth ignores her and continues to stare down at Jesse. “What about it? Do you have any part in this?”

  Jesse shakes his head no.

  Garth kicks the leg of the chair Jesse is sitting on.

  “I said no,” says Jesse.

  “Because this is a fucking federal offense,” Garth says. “So if there’s anything that’s going to bring the law to that door”—he points toward the living room—“you better fucking say so.”

  Jesse shakes his head again.

  Garth turns to Marilyn. “I talked to his lawyer. Matt gave him my number. Hoping I’d go his bail. Or pay the lawyer. Or both.”

  Billy and Lauren stare down at the table.

  Garth asks Jesse, “Where in hell did Matt get the money to make a buy like that?”

  Jesse says nothing.

  “Him and his sister had some money from when their dad died,” Billy says.

  “Insurance,” Jesse adds. “Plus they sold his house.”

  Marilyn says, “On the street—”

  Garth answers before she completes her question. “Three, maybe four million? Sound about right?” he asks Jesse.

  “I didn’t know he was bringing in that kind of weight.”

  “Did you have a connection lined up around here?”

  “No,” Jesse says.

  “Nobody’ll come knocking on the door asking about a delivery?”

  Billy says, “We thought, you know, like a few pills. Sell a handful in a bar maybe. At a concert. Like that.”

  Garth walks to a cupboard and grabs a bottle of ibuprofen tablets. He brings it to the table and shakes it in front of Billy. Garth then hands the bottle to Billy.

  “Look at the label,” Garth commands. “Two hundred and twenty pills in there. And how much does this weigh? A pound? Not even. And Matt had over a hundred goddamn pounds. You thought you’d maybe sell a handful? Shit. You could fill the fucking bathtub with what he was carrying.”

  Garth walks over to where Lauren is sitting, and rather than loom over her as he did with Jesse, he gets down on one knee in front of her. He reaches forward and with both hands grabs onto of the back of her chair. Lauren shrinks back but, of course, she cannot escape the cage that his arms have formed.

  “Do you see, darlin’?” he says. “Do you see what you’re mixed up with here? These two will land you in trouble you don’t need a bit of. You deserve better.”

  Marilyn says matter-of-factly, “She’s just a kid, Garth. And that’s her boyfriend you’re talking about.”

  Garth pushes himself stiffly back to a standing position, but while he is still bent over Lauren he says softly to her, “Save yourself.”

  He looks at everyone in turn again. “Is Matt anything to any of you?”

  His gaze lingers on Marilyn. “Don’t look at me,” she says. “He’s your cousin’s kid.”

  Garth continues to stare at her. It’s the kind of unwavering, baleful look that’s usually supposed to elicit a confession. Marilyn stares right back at him and says nothing.

  Garth turns to Jesse. “You?”

  Jesse says, “We both had temp jobs with a book distributor last winter. Like I told you before. In Redmond. Just outside Seattle. Then Matt quit early because he heard there were opportunities out this way. ‘Come out and we’ll join up,’ he said. So here we are. But I know what you’re saying. Federal prison? Huh-uh. Not for us. So long, Matt.”

  Billy adds eagerly, “We’ll probably try to find something in town.” He looks at Lauren. “Right, babe? Like we was talking about before. I mean the pills was actually just kind of an add-on. They was never supposed to be the whole deal.”

  Garth continues to stare at Jesse, and now Jesse stares back, only Jesse’s look is as dead-eyed as roadkill.

  For a long moment no one moves or speaks
.

  Finally Marilyn says, “Well, fuck this,” and she walks over to the stove where a full muffin tin is resting. She takes out a single muffin and holds it up as if she were displaying a work of art for bidders. “And what kind are these?”

  Her question momentarily unsettles Garth, but then he says, “Cranberry walnut.”

  “Do I know the muffin man? I believe I do.” She smiles and sings, “Who lives on Drury Lane . . .”

  LAUREN, BILLY, AND Jesse have been given the attic for their bedroom. It’s a long narrow room, its beams and studs covered over with sheetrock and with rectangles and squares of carpet remnants on the floor. The roof’s pitch is so steep that only in the middle of the room is it possible to stand up straight. There are two mattresses on the floor, the length of the room apart, a single mattress for Jesse and a double for Lauren and Billy. The attic smells of mildew and wood rot with an undertone of the funk given off by the mattresses. Through one of the windows comes the constant hum and rattle of the air conditioner in Garth and Marilyn’s bedroom a floor below.

  Lauren’s eyes are open, but since she’s lying at the edge of the mattress and turned toward the tight dark space where floor, wall, and roof meet, she can’t see much more than she would if her eyes were closed. Tonight the air is unmoving and the dark and the heat seem inseparable.

  She hears a soft Shh, yet she hasn’t made a sound. Billy is lying beside her, and he has one hand on top of her head, loosely gripping a handful of her dreadlocks. He’s worked his other hand inside her tank top, and his fingers are busily tickling and pinching her breasts. Does she doze off for a moment or two? It’s difficult to tell, just as it’s difficult to tell where one’s body leaves off and the attic heat begins.

  There is the hand teasing first one breast and then the other. And the hand that twists its fingers in the cylinders of her hair. And the hand that caresses a path up her thigh, higher and higher, until it insinuates its way inside the elastic of her underpants.

  And at that touch—in that instant—she comes fully awake.

  She jerks herself away so abruptly she rolls off the mattress. When she tries to sit up she bumps her head against the wall. She crawls and scuttles around the mattress until she can stand up.

  “What the fuck! What the fuck!”

  She’s looking down at the mattress now, at the mattress and at Billy and Jesse, lying where they could both reach her, their bodies pale shadows in the dark room.

  “I had a bad dream,” Jesse says. “I crawled over and—”

  “Garth! You said it was Garth! But it was you who had those . . . those ideas! It was you, it was you all the time. You fucker! You fucker!”

  “Laure,” Billy says, “Laure, Laure—”

  “Get away get away get away get away!”

  But it’s neither Billy nor Jesse who moves—it’s Lauren. Bent low to keep from hitting her head on the ceiling, she moves quickly around the mattress. Once she’s clear of that makeshift bed and the brothers she grabs her clothes and hurries down the stairs.

  “Laure!” Billy calls after her. “Wait, Laure!”

  “Let her go,” Jesse says.

  In the living room Lauren pauses for a moment as if, like a sleeper who has been roused from a dream, she can’t be sure of her location. But then she runs out the front door, the screen door banging behind her.

  She leaps from the porch, and though she’s barefoot she keeps running, down the driveway, where the gravel and the stones can bruise and cut her feet. But she doesn’t stop until she’s out in the road again, the blacktop still warm with the heat of the day, exactly where she stood before, helpless, hopeless, and looking off in every direction but the one she came from.

  She pulls on her cutoffs and reaches for her phone. Surrounded by so much darkness, the bright screen seems as though it could be a beacon visible for miles.

  IN HER ROOM at the Holiday Inn Express, Edie pulls back the covers and breathes in the odor of freshly bleached bed linens. As she climbs into the bed, she gives a little sigh of satisfaction. She has just closed her eyes when her phone dings. Edie brings the screen up close to her face to read the text.

  10 or 11 miles north of bismark on dreary lane farmhouse

  Edie sits up and types a reply.

  Be there tomorrow. Soon enough? OK?

  The answer arrives almost instantly.

  ok

  With the phone still in her hand, Edie grabs her key card and leaves the room. She walks across the hall and knocks softly on the door. Then she knocks again, harder, loud enough to wake anyone who might be sleeping inside.

  But Roy has not been asleep. He answers the door barefoot but still dressed, though his shirt is unbuttoned and his belt is unbuckled. The sight of Edie in his doorway—Edie in her nightgown—does something to him. He’s surprised, of course, but confused too, and in his confusion it almost seems as though he wants to close the door on her.

  Edie steps inside and holds her phone up to his face. “She called! Texted, I mean. But she said where she is!”

  Roy however is not looking at the phone.

  “Dreary Lane!” Edie says. “How hard can that be to find?”

  Then she must realize where Roy’s gaze and mind are directed. She wraps her arms tightly around herself. “Oh, Roy. Jesus. Don’t tell me.”

  He shrugs helplessly.

  “God damn it, Roy! I’m not the girl whose dress you looked down in Dennis Rooney’s basement! These are sixty-four-year-old boobs!”

  He turns his back on her and walks across the room, back to the desk where his glass and his bottle of Jack Daniels wait. As he walks he buckles his belt and shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter, Edie. Doesn’t matter. It’s you. Don’t you get that? You. Youyouyou. However the hell it works between men and women, love, or imprinting or some other bullshit. For me it’s you. No one else. Never has been. Never will be.”

  “It’s not me. It’s some idea of me. Some . . . an obsession or something.”

  He turns around to face her. “How can it not be you? I’ve known you longer than almost anybody.”

  She’s shaking her head. “But most of that time we’ve been apart. People don’t stay the same. They change.”

  “Yet here we are,” he says. “There has to be a reason for that.”

  Edie holds her phone up again. “Here’s the reason. Dreary Lane!”

  He sits down heavily in the desk chair and swivels around until he’s no longer facing her. He lifts his glass of whiskey and drinks. Then he says, “Can I tell you about a fantasy I’ve had, Edie?”

  With that single question, he drains away all the excitement she felt over Lauren’s text. She slumps and closes her eyes and feels behind her to find the bed. She sits down. If she didn’t know before what matters most to him on this trip, she knows now. And it’s not the address on her phone.

  “Go ahead,” she says. “I’m listening.” Her attention is how she must repay him for accompanying her. Tonight she’ll listen; tomorrow they’ll find Dreary Lane.

  “I used to think, what if Dean and I were identical twins? The kind where people can’t tell which one is which. No, hell—where you couldn’t tell us apart. So you’d be waiting for Dean to come pick you up and take you to a movie or something. Only I’d show up. Or at a school dance. I’d walk across the gym and ask you to dance, and of course you’d say yes. And then later when you were married and living above the bakery, and I knew Dean wouldn’t be going home from work right away, I imagined I’d walk in and . . . and you’d welcome me. You’d never know the difference. And as long as I’m probably creeping you out—after Dean was dead, I imagined showing up. Crawling into your bed. ‘Hey, Edie. It’s me again. It’s Dean.’ And you wouldn’t be able to resist. You’d know it was Dean’s ghost.”

  He’s drunk. But that doesn’t make his confession any less chilling. She’s always known how Roy feels about her, but she didn’t think he’d be willing to sacrifice his identity to have her. She realizes all ov
er again how tightly, intricately entwined the lives of these brothers have been, knots that not even a death can loosen.

  “After I moved back to Gladstone,” Edie says, “you could have called me. You could have asked if I wanted to meet for coffee. The way two people would who share as much history as we do.”

  “I was ashamed of my own thoughts. Hell, I’ve been ashamed of them most of my life. And this is coming from a man who’s got plenty of deeds to be ashamed of. Besides, I thought if I stayed away, I could cure myself.”

  “What a waste, Roy. What a waste. And you make me feel guilty. Like I’ve been a part of your wasted life.”

  “Hey, don’t feel sorry for me, Edie. I knew what I signed on for.”

  “You make it sound like you took a vow.”

  She rises from the bed and walks over to the desk. Though this brings her close enough to Roy that he could easily reach out and touch her, he doesn’t move. He doesn’t even look at Edie as she picks up the whiskey bottle.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts,” she says.

  He still doesn’t look at her.

  “Have you got another glass?” she asks.

  “Bathroom,” he says.

  She returns with a plastic glass half filled with water. She uncaps the bourbon and pours a generous amount into the glass. “I hope,” she says, “this doesn’t taste like your toothpaste.”

  After taking a long swallow, she goes back to sit on the bed. “Do we have to watch sports?” she asks. Roy has a baseball game on.

  He picks up the remote control and tosses it onto the bed.

  Edie puts her whiskey glass on the nightstand. She stacks up the pillows on the bed so she can sit up. She begins to scroll through the channels. She pauses just long enough on The Weather Channel to see that the forecast for the next few days is constant: sunny and hot. Then she switches to another channel and another until finally she lands at Turner Classic Movies, with Robin and Marian just starting.

  “Do you mind?” she asks Roy. “I can watch this every time it’s on.”

  “Knock yourself out,” he says.