These Women

by Ivy Pochoda

  Detective Perry spits her gum into a piece of foil and unwraps a fresh stick. “My partner is outside. We have a warrant to search the place. You should go talk to your husband.”

  3.

  THERE’S A FINGERPRINT ON THE EDGE OF THE DINING ROOM table. There’s a thread loose on the back of one of the upholstered dining room chairs. The sponge in the sink hasn’t been wrung out.

  Anneke puts her tea mug on the counter next to the stove. She opens the back door and steps into the yard. There’s a large patch of concrete surrounded by a granite path with grassy areas on either side. One wall is grapevines, the other rosebushes.

  In the far right corner is a fountain that no longer works and a weathered bench no one sits on except during the dice game. The dice game—the one time Anneke allows the outside in. A gathering of men is how she justifies it. A safe place. But there’s more to it than that.

  If your house is in order, people will come to you.

  People will respect you.

  Only darkness keeps them away.

  If they come, there is no darkness.

  If they come, your house is in order.

  They will see the order reflected in you and it will be reflected in them.

  If they come, you have kept the world right.

  It was more of a logical proof than a benediction, but one Anneke repeated every Saturday from her window overlooking the men in the garden.

  Roger is pruning the pink cabbage roses between their house and Julianna’s. He’s using the same shears, but they aren’t making as much noise. Anneke watches him change the shears for a smaller set of clippers.

  “Roger.”

  Snip-snip. His movements are deliberate and careful. He’s working without gloves, but avoiding the thorns.

  “Roger.”

  Anneke swallows her exasperation.

  “Ro—”

  He turns. She watches him bring her into focus.

  “I’m clipping the roses.”

  What should she say? What is there to say?

  “Did you want something?” He hates distraction. Anneke learned that the hard way. His meticulousness, his dull compulsions, came with a price.

  “Have you had lunch?”

  Roger looks at the clippers in one hand, a rose stem in the other.

  “I’m making sandwiches,” Anneke says. “I can bring you one.”

  “Is someone here?” Roger says. “Were you talking to someone?”

  “I’ll explain in a moment.”

  There’s comfort in the small tasks. Anneke pulls out a loaf of seeded bread. Sliced cheese. Some cucumbers and ham.

  She can hear footsteps, a man’s heavy tread and a woman’s lighter one.

  She makes two sandwiches, slices them on the diagonal. She finds two lunch plates, puts a paper napkin on each, lays the sandwiches on top, and carries them outside.

  Roger takes a plate.

  “Are these the last of the year?” Anneke asks, looking at the roses he’s clipped and placed in a basket.

  “Yes,” Roger says. “We had a long season. The repeat bloomers will come back soon.”

  “Remember how hard it was to grow roses in El Salvador?”

  “Not the Rosa rugosa. Those were easy. They like an ocean climate.”

  “It was too dirty for beautiful things to grow,” Anneke says.

  “The rugosa roses grew.”

  Anneke watches Roger eat his sandwich. She has no appetite.

  What are they looking for upstairs? What have they found? There’s nothing upstairs that she doesn’t know about.

  “Remember the woman in the water?” Anneke asks.

  Roger finishes his sandwich and picks up his napkin, brushing crumbs from his beard. “No.”

  “The woman in the sea behind our house in El Salvador,” Anneke says. “She had drowned.”

  “Oh, yes. Her.”

  “Marella thought she was a whale or a dolphin. She ran from the house to go see.”

  “I’d forgotten about that,” Roger says.

  “I found her screaming by the rocks. She screamed until her voice was hoarse.”

  “I’d forgotten that, too.”

  “She hasn’t,” Anneke says.

  “Who knows,” Roger says. “Who knows what children remember.”

  Anneke reaches for Roger’s plate. She holds one side, him the other. “You should never have let her see a thing like that.”

  “You were the one who let her run to the beach.”

  Anneke fixes him with her firmest stare. There is no hint of the tremor in her eye. “I said, you should never have let her see a thing like that. She was a child.” They continue to hold the plate. “Trust me, she has not forgotten.”

  “I didn’t—” Roger says. Then he lets go of the plate.

  “You did,” Anneke says. “You did.”

  Roger takes up the small clippers and climbs the ladder, returning for the last of the cabbage roses.

  “I know I don’t need to tell you to do a good job,” Anneke says. “But please do. The police are here. They are searching the upstairs. When you go, I expect you to go quietly without a scene. And leave the roses in perfect condition.”

  There’s a momentary break in Roger’s snip-snipping, a hair’s breadth of resignation. “They won’t find anything,” he says.

  “I know,” Anneke says.

  “Did you call them?”

  “No.”

  Roger doesn’t turn around. “At least not this time.”

  “Exactly, not this time.”

  He cuts the last rose. Anneke takes the plates inside. She glances down the hall and sees Detective Perry and another detective at the foot of the stairs.

  “Did you find anything?”

  “Do you go to church, Mrs. Colwin?” Detective Perry asks.

  “My father was a missionary.”

  “That’s a yes, then.”

  “No,” Anneke says. “I don’t go to church.”

  She looks past the detective and sees that the street is swirling with red and blue lights.

  “I did find something in your possessions.” Detective Perry holds out a piece of paper. Anneke doesn’t have to look closely to see that it’s a program from a church in Inglewood. “This is the church where Feelia Jefferies works.”

  “Feelia?”

  “Orphelia Jefferies,” Detective Perry says. “If you waste my time by telling me you don’t know her, I’ll take you down to the station along with your husband and charge you with felony stalking. That plus poisoning Dorian’s birds should be enough for jail time for aiding and abetting.”

  Anneke takes a deep breath and puts her hand to her eye, trying to stop the twitch before it starts. To her surprise, her eye is still. “I know Orphelia. Not personally.”

  “But you’ve been stalking her.”

  “I’ve been watching her.”

  “Why?”

  “I keep my world in order, Detective Perry.”

  “You wanted to know if she remembered the person who tried to kill her.”

  “I keep my world in order. I keep my world in order. And order follows me.”

  Detective Perry raises her eyebrows. “Is that so?” She tucks the flyer into an evidence bag. “Your daughter has already given us what we needed—a water bottle with a fingerprint that matches both Julianna’s cell phone and evidence from one of the women murdered decades ago. When the DNA comes back, I’m sure that it will match two samples taken from two separate victims. I’m going to send Detective Spera out to get Roger now.” Detective Perry nods toward her partner, who heads for the backyard.

  Anneke glances around the kitchen, down the hall, out the window on the front door that is washed in red spinning light. She hears the back door open and close, then open again as Roger is led in by Detective Spera.

  Anneke stands aside for her husband. If it weren’t for hands cuffed behind his back, no one would notice anything amiss.

  “Don’t worry, the wives alw
ays claim they didn’t know,” Detective Spera says as they pass. “The neighbors, too.”

  The front door opens. From the hall Anneke can see a half-dozen police cars crisscrossing Twenty-Ninth Place.

  She’s not going to hide. She’s going to follow Roger out, watch him go. There will be no denying what he’s done.

  She steps out onto the porch. Her neighbors are out—all of them. Some stay behind their gates. Others have ventured onto the sidewalk. A news van rolls down St. Andrews. Detective Spera hands Roger to an older detective who holds open the back door of an unmarked car and ducks Roger inside. He shuts the door. The window is tinted. Anneke can’t see Roger as he is driven off.

  She looks up and down the street.

  At the far end of the block she can see Detective Perry on a mountain bike riding behind the unmarked cruiser carrying Roger. Before the car turns onto Cimarron, the detective peels away, makes a tight U-turn, and heads back toward Anneke’s. She stops in front of the house.

  Two officers are taping off the squares of pavement in front of the house. Two more are setting up some sort of command station in the driveway.

  Detective Perry leans her bike against the fence and pushes past her colleagues. She rushes up the steps, pinning Anneke against the wall. “You knew about all of them.”

  Anneke can smell her fruity gum.

  Anneke towers over Detective Perry. “There’s knowing and there’s believing.”

  “And there’s being believed,” Detective Perry says.

  “Exactly. Now you, Detective, tell me which of those is the most important in this world.” She holds the detective’s stare.

  She kept her house neat. No one can claim otherwise.

  4.

  DETECTIVE PERRY IS NO LONGER RUNNING THE SHOW. SHE’S been replaced by a cookie-cutter set of detectives in descending sizes like nesting dolls. A bulky, ruddy-faced man named Bourke is in charge. He looms in the doorway, blocking the square of sunlight.

  The detectives keep the curtains closed. They’ve turned on all the lights.

  It’s like being abused, violated—the cops crawling all over the house, picking up objects, sifting through drawers, plucking fibers from the couch, the carpet, the towels. Like her fabrics are guilty. They march up and down the stairs, their heavy tread shaking the window frames.

  Anneke goes to the kitchen and looks at the schedule for her shifts at the nursing home on the small corkboard. She’s on at six tomorrow.

  She uses the landline and calls West Seas. She’s certain no one’s going to complain about her filling in for the overnight shift.

  She fills a thermos with soup. She doesn’t eat the food she serves the patients. She checks everything in her purse and takes her car keys.

  Bourke is still standing in front of the door.

  “Going somewhere?”

  “I’m going to work,” Anneke says.

  Bourke checks his watch. “Now?”

  “Should I stay here and supervise you instead?” Anneke asks.

  The detective doesn’t move. He looks as if he is thinking up a reason to prevent her from leaving.

  “Unless you are planning on arresting me, I’m going to work. I will come down to the station to answer your questions tomorrow. Last I checked it’s not against the law to do my job.”

  Bourke steps out of her way.

  The neighbors are still out. The street is a traffic jam of cop cars and news vans. Camera crews are roving from house to house. Anneke’s car is parked in the driveway, blocked by an unmarked cruiser. It takes several minutes to locate the detective who has the keys.

  Anneke stands by her five-year-old Honda. She doesn’t shield her face from her neighbors. They know what she looks like. She doesn’t hide from the reporters. She takes out her cell phone and taps Marella’s name. But before she dials, her daughter is there at the base of the driveway.

  She looks like Roger. She has his brown hair, his darker skin, his sturdier build. He is in her. He always will be. Marella will have to carry that forever. The sins of the father.

  It looks as if Marella hasn’t slept or showered.

  “You need to clean yourself up,” Anneke says. “You need to take care of your appearance.”

  Her daughter’s mouth opens and closes like an empty nutcracker. There are bags under her eyes.

  “They’ve arrested your father,” Anneke says.

  “I know.” Marella’s voice is shaky.

  “I hear you gave them a water bottle.”

  “He was scary, Mom. Last night in the gallery.”

  “He’s always scary. Or hadn’t you noticed?”

  “Had you?”

  Anneke puts her hand to her eye to stop the twitch.

  “Mom,” Marella says, her voice growing steady, impertinent almost, “had you?”

  “Did I raise you to repeat yourself?”

  “You knew there was something wrong with him, didn’t you? You knew and you didn’t do anything.”

  “Don’t tell me what I did and didn’t do. I kept you safe from this world.”

  Marella folds her hands over her chest. “You sent me away. That’s what you did.”

  “For your own good.”

  Marella’s eyes widen. “You were keeping me away from him.”

  “I did what I had to do.”

  “Did you think he would hurt me?”

  “You can’t take risks. You can’t take a chance that something undesirable brushes off on you. I kept you at a distance.”

  There’s a dark look in Marella’s eyes reminiscent of Roger’s.

  “He’s your father,” Anneke says. “One day you will understand him. I’m working tonight, overnight. I’m sure the cops will be finished with the house by the time I get back tomorrow. I’ll see you at home for lunch.”

  She opens the car door. She’d kept her daughter safe. She’d succeeded. Her work is through. She doesn’t need Marella of all people correcting her.

  She gets behind the wheel and shuts the car door, cocooning herself—the walkie-talkies, the whispers, the gossip, the loudmouths who want to be heard on the news, who want to be the news.

  MARELLA STANDS AT THE BASE of the driveway. She doesn’t move until Anneke turns the ignition and creaks backward.

  Anneke is about to straighten onto Twenty-Ninth when she sees Armando Vargas standing on his porch. Two camera crews rush him at once, both greedy for the exclusive. But Armando isn’t looking at the reporters. He’s staring straight through Anneke’s windshield. Her foot goes to the brake, jolting her forward. She takes a deep breath. She sits up straighter and makes sure the car is still in reverse.

  She returns Armando’s stare, pulls out onto the street.

  Traffic is light until she reaches the PCH into Malibu, where she discovers cars at a standstill. West Seas Adult Care is not on the beachfront but up in the mountains, where the residents look from the floor-to-ceiling windows in the common room to catch a glimmer of the Pacific—a small tease of the world they will not visit again.

  Emergency units are forcing cars to turn around on the two-lane highway. When Anneke reaches the front of the jam, she can see the road in front of her is a river of mud strewn with rocks and debris. Several abandoned cars are trapped in the flow, tossed haphazardly from their lanes.

  Two Los Angeles County firefighters are blocking the road. When Anneke doesn’t immediately turn around, one of them blows his whistle and signals that she should move into the opposite lane and head back.

  She waits. She hears the fireman’s voice through her window. “Ma’am, the road’s closed. Turn your car around.”

  Anneke rolls down her window. The air still smells of smoke from the fires mixed with the damp, mildew scent of rain. An odor of burning houses and bodies. “I’m going to work.”

  “Road’s closed. The canyon’s being evacuated.”

  “I’m going to work.”

  “Where do you work?”

  Anneke points up toward the hills. />
  “The whole area’s under evacuation, ma’am. Turn your car around.”

  Anneke does as instructed. But at Will Rogers State Beach, she cuts across and up into the hills. It takes her an extra forty minutes to arrive at West Seas. She has to circumvent several road closures, two road crews clearing debris, and a constant flow of cars heading in the other direction.

  She parks and heads for the nurses’ break room. She changes into her starched uniform. It’s the start of dinner hour, the time for shift change. Many of the residents are already sitting in the common room, waiting to be led to the cafeteria. Anneke watches the row of rocking chairs and wheelchairs lined up in front of the glass wall. The sun is plunging into the ocean, dyeing the water pale pink and bright, cold blue.

  “I heard the mud is flowing,” one of the women says as Anneke wheels her chair to the cafeteria. “Mud always flows after fire.”

  At dinner the talk is of disaster. Earthquakes and wildfires and mudslides. At West Seas the apocalypse is always waiting in the wings. The residents are prophets and survivors. They are forecasters of doom. They know earthquake weather and can sense it when the nursing home is preparing to tumble into the ocean. They can smell fire a county away.

  They are alert to epidemics and outbreaks.

  They know someone who has survived every tragedy—the loss of an entire family, a plane crash, three types of cancer, heartbreak, amputation, divorce. They know people who have fled regimes and domestic abuse. They know people who have survived unreliable housekeepers and thieving babysitters.

  They know better than anyone on the TV or the radio.

  They have seen everything and fear nothing.

  And they have retired, turned away from the world, let it continue its messy, disordered, chaotic, violent existence outside the walls and windows of West Seas.

  Anneke applauds them.

  Dinner comes out on trays—neatly organized, easy to cut, to chew, to digest.

  As she removes her tray, a woman pats Anneke’s hand. “You look well, sweetheart. Porcelain beauty.”

  Her hand feels like tissue. Her veins pop like worms, as if she’s already on her way to decomposing.

  After dinner Anneke hands out medicine in paper cups. She looks at the pills. Trust is humanity’s greatest mistake. It would be easy to switch the pills, to cross-medicate or overmedicate. She hands the cups to willing, careless hands.