by Lia Matera
Before Main Street became the highway, the windows steamed over. Ava rolled hers partway down to clear it, and to clear her head. The warm air, after her all-night hike, was making her sleepy.
She couldn’t let herself nod off, not until she’d found a market or a restaurant, someplace public in case Em showed up in a borrowed car. In the meantime, the truck kept sliding, scraping tall drifts on the sides of the road.
When she came to an intersection, she lost the snowpack tunnel keeping her in place. The truck went into a spin. It made two full turns while Ava tried to remember what to do, whether to crank the wheel into the skid or the other way. Either she didn’t make the right choice, or it didn’t work.
The truck flew sideways, cutting a diagonal where the roads crossed. A barrage of churned sleet and rock salt clattered against it. Then it jolted to a stop in a ditch. Its front wheels cracked through ice covering a trough of water on the unpaved shoulder. When she hit the gas, the tires ground themselves in deeper. From the sound of it, the rear two were no longer touching the ground.
She sat for a few moments, forcing herself not to scream. How far had she gotten? How long until Em roared up in Barton’s car?
Oh God, why had she done this to herself? Why had she come here? She loved Jess. The last time she’d given in to temptation, it had been a disaster. And for what? The misery of watching Jess tear himself apart? An engineer to the core, it had visibly maddened him not to be able to solve or fix his agony, to have to live with it every day, day in and day out until at last—very slowly—it faded. Even months later, he’d recall it with a start sometimes, wincing as if scalded.
Finally, finally, they’d gotten past it. They’d been happy for years now. Why had she risked her good thing? Why had she answered Aaron’s texts? If she came through this now, got back to Jess without his learning she’d tried to meet Aaron, she would take it as a sign. She was done trying to cheat.
She shook herself back into the present. Em was probably on her way here, maybe with Barton, maybe with a shotgun. Was there anything in the truck Ava could use to defend herself? She looked into the well behind the seats. She saw a plastic container of oil, some rags, some paper litter, a window scraper and—black and greasy, as long as her forearm—a wrench.
She grabbed it. She could hear a car or truck coming up fast behind her.
She should get out and run. If Em was insane, if she was a crazed trial-watcher, she’d be more unhinged now that Ava had taken her truck. But how far could Ava get? She was exhausted, maybe frostbitten, and the temperature was due to drop 25 degrees. She couldn’t face it.
She didn’t want to face it. She wanted to hurt the woman who’d put her through a night of misery and terror. And she’d have to do it here. Now. Because she doubted the law would help her.
It would be Ava’s word against Em’s that Em had lured and stranded her. Em could honestly say she hadn’t gone into the trailer with Ava. She could claim that the last time she’d seen it, it had been in good shape. That she’d interpreted Ava’s come-back arm motions as waving her away.
Or she could lie outright. Say she’d accidentally taken Ava to the wrong trailer. Or that Ava had come to the café asking to be driven there, no mention of a man waiting for her. If Barton backed up that story, the police would believe it.
Even if she got Em into a courtroom, things wouldn’t necessarily go Ava’s way. Em’s friends would offer testimonials, just as Aaron’s had. The judge and jury would see an amiable woman with no apparent dark side. And how would they view Ava’s testimony, knowing she’d come here for a tryst?
It might not be enough to find Aaron, either—her top priority if she got out of this mess—and have him tell a similar story. Em’s attorneys would bring up his past. They’d suggest a grateful client might lie for the lawyer who’d won him his freedom. They’d explain that his acquittal had depended on the highest possible burden of proof. They’d trot out uncontradicted evidence from his trial to impeach his testimony in Em’s. They’d argue that, having gotten away with leaving one woman to die, he might have decided to try it again, this time setting up Em to take the blame.
No, if Ava wanted justice, she’d have to find it here, not in court.
She gave a cough of laughter to see her Audi pull up behind her, with Em at the wheel. Right on cue.
She slid out of the truck. The cold soaked her like ice water.
She was still holding Em’s wrench. As if on its own, her arm went up and down, over and over again, on the truck’s front windshield, buckling it into concave webs of cracks. When she swung it at the driver’s window, shards of glass rained onto the seat. She walked on, dragging the greasy metal across the truck’s body, carving a gash into its black paint. She heard Em’s exclamations, the scrunch of her boots on snow as she ran. She felt the steel of Em’s grip, pulling her away from the tail light she was smashing.
Em was shouting, exploding with fury. Ava shoved her so she fell. She lifted the wrench then, wanting to let herself lose control, wanting to bloody Em, to see her flesh burst and hear her bones crack.
She forced herself to drop it, half hoping Em would pick it up and come at her, give her an excuse to detonate, to beat and kick her, to snap her neck. Her backward step was the hardest she’d ever taken.
Em was saying, “What the hell? What the hell? I’m about to come check on you, and there you are, stealing my truck. Well, you’re going to pay. Whatever it costs for body work, you’re going to pay.”
So that was how Em would play it. Em, the concerned innocent.
Ava’s hands were shaking. She pulled the filthy blankets from her head and shoulders and flung them over Em, just to do something. Something other than murder.
“Sue me,” she said. “Sue me for damages, and see what I unleash in my counter-suit.”
She walked past the still-supine woman. Em was screaming that this would cost Ava plenty. And how was she supposed to get her truck out of the ditch, and had Ava lost her damn mind or what?
Ava slid behind the steering wheel of her Audi. The key was in the ignition. Good.
She was slamming the door when Em bellowed again—as if to make sure it was on the record—that she’d been on her way to check on Ava.
Em got to her feet. Ava gave her another minute to reach for the wrench, to run forward brandishing it. To give Ava a reason to start the engine and mow her down. Em didn’t.
As Ava turned the key, she glanced at the gas pedal, imagining herself stomping it, barreling toward Em. She caught the glint of something on her black floor mat.
A small round disc caught the light, gleaming a dull silver. It was a coin. Where one might land after working its way through a hole in a pocket, after dropping from the pant leg of someone getting into or out of the driver’s seat.
She picked it up, then stared at it on her palm. It told her why Em had confronted her with complete self-assurance. Why she’d shown no anxiety that Ava would demand her arrest, no fear that the police would force her to lead them to Aaron.
The coin was about the size of a nickel but lighter in weight. It had bas relief chrysanthemums on the side facing her. She knew it had a 50 and some Japanese characters on the other. Like all fifty yen pieces, it had a neat round hole in the center.
It told her it wasn’t Barton who’d moved Ava’s car from the middle of Main Street.
She pushed the button to lower her window, her emotions suddenly too big for the Audi’s interior. She threw the coin at Em. It landed at her feet.
Ava tried to speak, but the words were acid in her throat. She swallowed, took a breath, finally managed, “Tell Jess to get his pocket mended.”
Em scowled at the coin in the snow, then bent to grab it. Her expression changed from indignation to guarded blankness, as if a curtain had dropped.
Ava backed up and turned to get on the road.
For mile after mile, she hardly saw the scenery. In her mind, she kept replaying her FaceTime conversation with Jess. He’d asked her to join him in Kyoto. And she’d made a mess of answering—reddening, stammering, thinking only of Aaron, of contacting him to say she’d changed her mind, she’d meet him after all.
Jess had guessed why she’d refused to give up three days without him. He’d guessed whom she’d decided to spend them with instead.
Jess the problem-solver. Whose problem had been how to keep his wife from cheating.
A few easy steps: Buy a cell phone, on the assumption Aaron hadn’t had a chance to get one so soon after his release. Send a text message, supposedly from Aaron, to sound Ava out. And when her response was, Yes, I’ll meet you, tell me where? Jess had flown home from Osaka, instead of taking the train to Kyoto. He’d rented a car at the airport. He’d gotten to Em’s café half a day before Ava.
He’d grown up in these mountains. Maybe he’d gone to school with Em, they were about the same age. Maybe he’d gone to school with Barton. He must know one or both of them well, if he could ask for help teaching his wife a lesson. A non-lethal lesson, just for one night.
One dark and bitter night, alone in a trailer. Jess would never have expected her to leave it, soft city girl that she was. In fact, he’d set things up so she couldn’t leave it. He’d chosen (with help from Em or Barton?) a spot with no cell service, miles from any other house. He’d left a fading glow stick instead of a flashlight, to keep her from venturing out into the night. And, Ava supposed, Em hadn’t been lying this morning—she had been about to go check on Ava. To bring her back “unharmed” so she could return to the city and wait for Jess.
No wonder Em had approached her with such confidence. She knew that when or if Ava got to the bottom of things, she’d find the scheme wasn’t Em’s at all.
“It almost worked,” Ava said aloud. “I’d have given up on Aaron. Because this seemed so … karmic. A comeuppance.”
When Ava got far enough down the mountain that cell service was restored, she would probably find a message from Aaron. A real message from him.
She would feel no guilt this time when she replied, Yes, I’ll meet you, tell me where.
The Children
“The Children” was first published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2011.
(The story continues in the novella Champawat.)
Ella awakened face-down on the concrete. She spat out grit that swirled in the night wind, then rolled painfully to her side. The Kingstons’ windows were dark but the glare of arc lights on their jack frost hurt her eyes. She dropped her gaze to an iron fence like a line of spears from the Corinthian porch to the next rowhouse. She struggled to free her arm from the sheet wrapped around her, but the effort made her lungs boil with coughs. Earlier, she’d come to with her nose mashed and her mouth covered, struggling to breathe through the filthy linen. She remembered twisting and slithering toward the gate, frantic to expose her face. Now, if she could pull herself through and tumble down the steps to the basement level service entrance, the wagon wouldn’t see her when it passed. It wouldn’t matter if she blacked out again, the drivers wouldn’t mistake her stupor for death. They wouldn’t toss her onto a pile of corpses stacked like cordwood. Maybe she could hang on till Cook came out for the milk. None of the servants knew that Charles, Cook’s bad-tempered husband, had dragged Ella to the curb like garbage. He’d waited till long past midnight, and if he’d wakened Cook afterward, it would have been to take his vulgar pleasure, not to tell her what he’d done.
Charles had been glad to get rid of Ella, she knew that. When the Kingstons brought home baby Annie, they’d wanted the house kept warmer at night. Charles always slept through extra stokings of the furnace, so Mr. Kingston forced him out of his wife’s warm bed and onto a cot in the basement. To keep him from sneaking back to the attic room and passing out there, Mrs. Kingston sent Ella, till then on a feather mattress in the nursery, to take Charles’ place, “problem solved.” As if the Kingstons knew anything about problems.
Most nights, Charles would slip upstairs after the two o’clock stoking and lie with his wife as if Ella weren’t in the bed at all, as if Cook didn’t weep with shame into her pillow, knowing Ella merely feigned sleep.
The men in the household were pigs. All but little John, eight years old and a master of silly limericks and botched riddles. Ella hoped he didn’t grow up to be like his father, who’d felt no compunction about accepting an “accommodation” from her in lieu of references.
The fact that this had been a good deal for Ella didn’t make his part of it right. He’d put his children into a stranger’s hands knowing nothing but what she’d told him herself. And she’d have said anything to escape a shirt factory that left women half blind and coughing up cotton dust.
The Kingstons should have let her die inside, no matter their terror (everybody’s terror) of the Spanish flu. At first, they’d put her in a corner of the basement, as far as possible from the potato bin and the new wringer washer. She didn’t know how long she’d lain on old blankets like a stray dog gasping for breath. She’d overheard Charles, his voice full of false concern, tell the Kingstons they’d best set her out for the wagon soon. She’d be dead before it arrived, and why risk having the sickness seep through the house till then? What if he should nod off and miss the moment? They couldn’t put her to the curb in the daytime. It wasn’t that sort of neighborhood—cabinet members and senators and a supreme court justice lived within a stone’s throw. But if they kept her inside, the stench would waft upstairs all day tomorrow, perhaps to baby Annie’s room, or to six year old Muriel’s or little John’s.
Mr. Kingston, a lawyer, had blown hot air around it. He’d said it was a shame there were no caskets for the dead anymore, nor anyplace to put them, with funeral parlors stacked floor to ceiling. “Cook says the mother’s dead and no father, that sort of family, so we’d have to bear the expense ourselves. But there’s just no possibility of a burial now.” Taking her to the hospital had been ruled out. “The Post says they’ve run out of everything, beds most of all. The sick are outside on the ground, both sides of the driveway and down the block. They can’t do a thing for them. Pity the vaccine was useless.” Mrs. Kingston wondered if taking Ella there would at least solve the problem of her disposal. “But how to get her there?” Mr. K was slightly curt, as usual with his wife. “It’s no use sending for the Packard, no one at the garage will fetch her. They’re not medics, can’t expect them to risk contagion.” He’d added, “And do we want our hospitals steam shoveling holes out back, piling in thousands of bodies like they do in Philadelphia? Not that you can blame Philly—4600 dead there last week alone. But I think our method’s better, let wagons collect them off the streets and take them to rural Virginia.” They’d agreed it was a mark of excellent governance that they could toss an afflicted servant to the gutter like trash and think no more about her.
As she walked out, Mrs. Kingston turned to say, “Charles, I’m terrified for the children. Is there someplace you can go for a few days after handling her … her body? I appreciate that you’ve stayed down here, away from all of us, since moving her. I’ll leave some coins for you on the washer, for lodging and food. Please don’t take the chance … don’t say good-bye to Cook. I’ll explain to her tomorrow.” Charles had said yes, missus. “And you have no guess how the disease came into the house? We kept you all inside, none of us has been out for days.” Charles said nothing. The servants knew Mr. K slipped away once or twice a week, returning just before dawn. He’d been doing it for months. “I’ll have Maid put on gloves and a mask and send the rest of Nanny’s things down the laundry chute. You’ll get them burned before you go?”
Later Ella realized, blearily from her corner, that Charles was feeding something other than coal into the furnace. He was stuffing in her clothes and hats, in case some trace of sickness clung to them. There would b
e nothing left of her. Her body would melt away in a lye-covered layer of a mass grave. There would no stone with her name on it, there would be no ceremony. Funerals, like all public gatherings, were forbidden, illegal on order of the mayor. Not that any but the very rich could afford coffins—the few that could be found cost as much as Model Ts.
She noticed a darting movement in the shadow between the arc lights. A rat. It approached in tentative sets of steps. She wanted to scream but couldn’t get enough air into or out of her lungs. She tried to unroll herself from the constricting linen, desperate to free her arms, to ward off this creature that, like her employers, couldn’t even wait till she was dead. The rat turned, its ears angling toward the sound of metal wheels, the clomp of horseshoes on cobbles. Then it dashed back into the shadows.
The death wagon had turned onto her street.
Ella knew, from nights watching through the attic window, that two men in rubber boots would climb from the wagon’s benchlike seat. As their horses stomped and fussed, they’d bend over her. From above, she’d look like a rolled carpet or bundle of bedding. Each would pick up one end, then they’d stagger to the open back of the wagon. With a practiced swing or two, they’d hoist her onto the stack. Men had been doing this since the middle ages.
And how was 1918 different than 1318? People were dragged away to prison for speaking against their ruler, thanks to the Sedition Act. Girls were burned alive, not at the stake but in locked shirtwaist factories. Men were tortured and lynched by mobs, not of peasants but of Klansmen. The poor fought wars so the rich could divide the spoils. And again, the streets rattled with wagons full of pestilent corpses.
They had been right, at the Anarchist’s Hall. (It was shuttered now, many of her friends deported.) Mamma had taken Ella almost every night—it was where all the immigrants went, it was their social center. They staged plays and songfests, they collected money for strikers and shingle-weavers with cedar lung, they hosted speakers and held rallies. Ella and the other children had rampaged up the halls, jumped down the stairs, played games in the kitchen, and ignored the endless blather. They didn’t care if someday humans treated each other as equals and shared their wealth. Things seemed just fine at the Hall. She couldn’t imagine why the grown-ups complained all the time.
