When I Looked Away

by Joy Fielding

  Gail hugged her daughter tightly, and then released her. “If you’re going to that party, you better get ready.”

  “What will you do?”

  Gail smiled. “Somebody’s got to hand out the poisoned apples,” she said.

  *

  By ten o’clock, only three children had knocked on the door. The first had been dressed as Wonder Woman, the next two had each come as E.T. Gail had dropped several packages of Reese candies into their bags and smiled with the knowledge that Jennifer had been right when she predicted that the majority of trick-or-treaters would come as the rubbery little creature from outer space as they had for the last several years. The only thing they miscalculated had been the numbers. Jack had bought enough candy for at least fifty callers. There had been fifty callers the previous Halloween, over a hundred the year before that. But each year brought fresh warnings, more reports of children swallowing straight pins hidden in chocolates, of children being rushed to the hospital with severe stomach cramps brought on by cyanide discovered in a friendly neighbor’s freshly baked brownies. The radio was advising parents to throw out anything that wasn’t store-bought and tightly sealed.

  Perhaps that was the reason only three children had come knocking. Was it the same everywhere, Gail wondered, or had her house been singled out? Had parents been deliberately keeping their children away?

  The fourth knock on the door came just before ten o’clock, as Gail was about to turn off the lights and go to bed. She was tired. She wanted only to go to sleep as Jack had done an hour before. She had hurt him deeply, she knew, despite the fact that she had apologized again and he had told her there was no need, that he had been wrong to interfere. Still, the fright wig he had proudly resurrected had remained in a shapeless heap on the coffee table, and he had excused himself early to go upstairs.

  What was happening to her? she wondered, as she had wondered often lately. She had always gone miles out of her way to avoid confrontations.

  The knocking at the front door continued, becoming insistent. Gail edged warily toward the door and opened it. What was the matter with some parents? she thought. Wasn’t ten o’clock a little late to be dragging youngsters around?

  They weren’t youngsters, and there were no parents with them. Instead, when Gail opened her door, she came face to face with one wild-eyed teenage boy and two frizzy-haired females. They looked to be Jennifer’s age, but there was something truly terrifying about them, their smiles, the look of madness in their eyes. Gail realized as she stood paralyzed before them that she was frightened. She debated calling for Jack, wondering who it was they were supposed to be.

  The boy held out his bag. “Trick or treat,” he sneered.

  Gail wordlessly stuffed several packets of the candy into each of their bags.

  “Is that all?” one of the girls demanded.

  Gail piled more candies into their sacks, eventually dumping the remainder of the small packages into their open bags.

  “That’s better,” said the boy. “What’s the matter with you? Can’t you talk or something?”

  Gail found her voice. “Aren’t you kids a little old for this sort of thing?”

  “You’re never too old to have a good time,” the boy told her with a leer. “You want me to send my friends away? I could show you a good time too, pretty lady.”

  “I have leukemia,” Gail said with a clear voice, watching with satisfaction as the color drained from the young man’s face.

  The youth backed off several paces. “Yeah? Well, that’s too bad.” He signaled to his two companions. “We better move on. Old Charlie’s got some more houses to invade.”

  “Charlie?” Gail asked, a queasy feeling building in her stomach.

  “We’re the Charles Manson gang,” he told her proudly. “Didn’t you hear? We got paroled!”

  Gail slammed the door on his obscene laugh, standing in the hallway shaking, not moving. She thought of Jennifer at Marianne’s party. “I’ll be back by midnight,” Jennifer had promised. She thought of Jack upstairs asleep. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me tonight,” he had said. “I can’t keep my eyes open.” Gail suddenly reached into the hall closet and grabbed her shabby old coat and purse, opened the front door and rushed out into the cold night.

  *

  There were only a handful of other people walking the streets when Gail looked at her watch and saw that it was almost eleven o’clock. Her shoulder bag slapped against her side and Gail looked at it, studying the glow of the white straw bag against the darkness. Nancy would have a fit if she saw this bag, Gail smiled. A white straw purse at the end of October. None of her friends in the shadier reaches of Newark thought there was anything wrong with a summer purse in late autumn. Of course, it could be that they were too polite to comment. At any rate, she’d do everybody a favor and change it when she got home. She had last year’s beaten brown leather one somewhere in her closet. She’d have to get it out. Make Nancy happy. Gail laughed out loud.

  She was suddenly at Memorial Park with its now empty swimming pool and deserted, netless tennis courts. She stood for a moment at the entrance, surveying the black panorama of trees and pathways, wondering if she had come here deliberately. The park had developed a reputation of late for attracting derelicts and winos at night. Like any other park in cities everywhere, people were advised not to cut through after dark. Gail put her hands in the pockets of her coat and stepped into the park.

  She moved with relative speed until she realized how fast she was traveling and slowed down. There was no need to race. Now that she was here, she might as well make the most of it, look for clues, try to pull some facts from the darkness. The killer was a loner, a frequenter of parks. Perhaps he chose this park in which to sleep. Perhaps all the while she’d been renting rooms in Newark and East Orange, the killer was cozily staked out in her own backyard. Gail slowed her pace further, reaching the tennis courts without having seen a soul.

  She stood in the middle of one of the courts, in the spot where the net would normally be, and watched an invisible ball being hit furiously from side to side. The forces of Good and Evil, she chuckled aloud, watching as Evil rushed the net to deliver the winning overhead smash. Gail turned and walked away from the courts.

  She moved to a concentration of trees. There were two benches in front of them, both occupied by sleeping drunks, a cheap bottle of wine opened and empty beside them. Her eyes searched their features for traces of their lives, but she saw only years of self-abuse and neglect, and she turned her head away, wishing to see no more.

  She heard a scuffling behind some bushes and turned immediately toward them, but then all was quiet, and, feeling suddenly tired again, and cold from the wind, she decided to return home. She would learn nothing here. She was almost out of the park when something was shoved into her from behind.

  She gasped and turned, but her assailant was quick and strong, and he pushed her roughly to the ground, kicking at her ribs and grabbing at her shoulders, flipping her over onto her back. It was only when she was in this position, reeling with the pain of the attack, feeling her ribs aching in her chest, that she realized he was not after her but her purse. She rolled over on top of it, but a second kick to her side sent her sprawling away, retching into the dirt. Her assailant tore the purse from her hand, and when Gail looked up to try to see him—the whole episode had taken place so quickly that she hadn’t had a chance to determine anything about her attacker except that he was tall and skinny—his fist came smacking fiercely down against her cheekbone, knocking her flat against the cold ground.

  She lay there listening to his footsteps recede into the darkness, amazed by the suddenness of her loss of control. As she closed her eyes, she realized she hadn’t seen his face at all.

  Jack came to the hospital at just after two in the morning to pick her up and bring her home.

  A patrolman had found an empty white straw handbag lying on the road by the entrance to the park and become suspicious. He
had gone through the park to see if there was any trouble and had found Gail semiconscious on the ground. He had taken her to the hospital. She had no recollection of the drive over, and it took her a few minutes to realize that what had transpired in the park had not happened only in her imagination. For a terrifying time she had thought she might be waking up in the hospital just after the news of Cindy’s death and that everything that had happened in the last six months had been a prolonged nightmare she would only have to live through all over again. But then the shooting pain at the side of her face and under her rib cage assured her that the attack in the park had been very real.

  She remembered someone sticking something with a very unpleasant smell in front of her nose, being jolted awake, being ushered from one room to another, being poked and prodded and X-rayed, and later questioned extensively. The truth was that she remembered little of the assault, knew nothing of the man who had attacked her. The police, for their part, seemed more curious about her motives for being in the park. Didn’t she know it was dangerous to go walking alone in the park at night? Had she gone there to meet someone? Was she soliciting? Who was she?

  Finally, she had told them her name, and they had left her alone. She closed her eyes.

  When she opened them only minutes later, both Jack and Lieutenant Cole were standing by her bed. Again she felt disoriented. Was it now or six months ago? Had she imagined everything? Had she really been attacked or was she still trapped in that last awful afternoon in April?

  “Mind telling us what you were doing walking through the park at night?” the lieutenant asked her as Jack rubbed his hand across his eyes. She could see that he had been crying.

  “I just went for a walk,” she answered, wishing there was something she could say that would comfort him, knowing how her words sounded, even to herself. “I got restless at home. I needed some air.”

  “So you went walking alone through a park on Halloween at midnight?”

  “I know it was a stupid thing to do . . .”

  “More than stupid, Gail,” Lieutenant Cole told her. “Very dangerous. You’re damn lucky that guy didn’t kill you, that all you got were a few busted ribs and a black eye.”

  Was she? Gail wondered. “Why are you here?” she asked Lieutenant Cole, knowing how late it must be.

  “One of the officers who questioned you recognized your name and called me at home.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gail said.

  “You should be, but not because of me.”

  “Did Jennifer get home okay?” Gail asked Jack suddenly. He nodded, but said nothing.

  “Jack,” Lieutenant Cole began gently, “would you mind waiting in the hall for a minute?”

  Jack obeyed wordlessly.

  “Is he all right?” Gail asked, startled by Jack’s zombielike state.

  “He’s understandably upset. The police woke him up when they phoned. He hadn’t realized you’d even left the house. How do you think he feels?” Gail said nothing, trying to imagine. “Gail . . . is there something that you want to tell me?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Anything. Maybe the real reason you were in that park tonight.”

  “You know the reason,” she said, trying to find one. “There was no reason.” Her eyes challenged the lieutenant’s. “Can I go home now?”

  His voice was sad. “If that’s what you want,” he told her.

  “It’s what I want,” she said.

  Chapter 24

  As soon as she was able, Gail was back on the streets of Newark.

  Her room at 26 Barton had been rented to someone else when she had failed to show up the next morning with the required rent money. Gail wasn’t surprised; she was relieved. She wondered what, if anything, the man with the dark curly hair had made of her absence.

  She walked directly to 44 Amelia. Had the police bothered to investigate her phone call at all?

  “Do you have a room?” she asked the landlady whose gray hair was still in pin curls. Did she ever take them out? Gail wondered. The landlady obviously didn’t recognize her, and though she took note of Gail’s black eye, she said nothing.

  “Twelve fifty a night,” she answered brusquely. “Payable in advance.”

  “Yes, I know,” Gail told her, fishing in her purse for the correct amount and handing it over. “Does Nick Rogers still live here?” she asked as the landlady led her up the first flight of stairs to her room.

  “Never heard of no Nick Rogers,” the woman said.

  *

  She saw him from a distance of about half a block and was about to turn around or cross the street when she realized he had seen her and was coming quickly toward her. Gail braced herself for a barrage of questions, pulling her shabby cloth coat tightly around her.

  (“For God’s sake, Gail, don’t you think it’s time you got yourself a new coat?” Jack had asked on their way home from the hospital three nights earlier. It was all he had said.)

  “Gail,” he said, reaching out and touching her arm. “For God’s sake, I thought it was you, but what the hell are you doing in this part of Newark?” He looked her up and down. “Going to a costume party?” he joked, his voice growing quickly serious. “And what, in Heaven’s name, happened to your eye?”

  “Hello, Mike,” Gail said, ignoring his questions. “How’s Laura?”

  “She’s fine,” he answered. “She misses you, of course. She’s just got too much pride to keep calling. You haven’t answered my questions. What happened to your face?”

  Gail’s hand automatically touched the swollen area under her left eye. “I got mugged. Someone stole my purse.”

  “My God! Did they catch—?”

  “No,” Gail said quickly, shaking her head before she remembered it was still painful to do so. “But they have several leads.” She wondered if Mike was aware of her underlying sarcasm.

  “And what are you doing here?” he asked again.

  “I have a few things to take care of,” she said vaguely.

  “In Newark?”

  “Why not in Newark? You’re here.”

  “I’m a criminal attorney, and I’m visiting a client. Look, it’s damn cold out here. Why don’t we go somewhere for a cup of coffee?”

  “Follow me,” Gail said, knowing there was no point in protesting. She led him across one street and then another. “Here.” She stopped suddenly in front of Harry’s, her favorite of the local greasy spoons. “They make a good cup of coffee,” she said as they walked inside. Mike looked behind him, as if he were afraid that someone he knew might see him entering such a place, then followed her inside.

  “Hi there,” Harry called from behind the counter as Gail walked past. Gail smiled in acknowledgment and led Mike to her favorite table near the back.

  Harry was immediately beside them, wiping the table clean and putting two glasses of water in front of them. “What’s the other guy look like?” he asked, turning Gail’s chin around with his free hand. “That’s a real beaut,” he pronounced. “What’ll it be?”

  “Just coffee,” Gail said.

  “The same,” Mike agreed.

  “I got a fresh batch of those pastries with the cherries that you like,” Harry winked conspiratorially.

  “Not today,” Gail told him.

  He nodded and went away. That was one of the things that Gail liked about Harry. He asked but he never pestered. And Harry had been very helpful in his own way, gossiping with her about his regular customers, filling her in on neighborhood habits. She smiled and realized that Mike was staring at her from across the table, his confusion almost tangible.

  “You come here often?” he laughed, a serious question disguised as an old joke.

  “Sometimes,” Gail shrugged.

  Mike looked around. The restaurant was small and narrow, with a row of arborite tables running down one side and a traditional counter and metal stools on the other. The colors were nondescript greens and grays; the cutlery was only marginally fan
cier than plastic. There was a smattering of people in the restaurant, the lunch hour having come and gone. Gail studied Mike’s face as he made a concerted effort to look relaxed.

  “So,” Mike tried again, “aside from the mugging, how have you been?”

  “Fine,” Gail nodded.

  “I understand you and Jack spent a few days in Cape Cod.” Gail nodded. “How was it?”

  “Cold.”

  “That’s what Laura said you told her.” Again Gail simply nodded. “How’s Jennifer?”

  “Fine.”

  “Doing okay in school?”

  “Yes. Fine.”

  “Good.”

  Harry brought over two cups of hot coffee, several small containers of cream resting on Mike’s saucer.

  “You forgot her cream,” Mike told him.

  “She doesn’t take cream,” Harry answered before moving away.

  “He seems to know you better than I do,” Mike observed, not trying to hide his bewilderment.

  “We went to school together,” Gail said.

  It took Mike Cranston several seconds to realize that Gail was putting him on and when he did, he didn’t smile. “Gail, what’s going on? What are you doing here?”

  “I’m having a cup of coffee with a friend,” she said, and the look in her eyes told him she would say no more.

  “Okay, have it your way.” He took a sip of coffee, burned his tongue and quickly added more cream. “Look,” he tried again, “why haven’t you returned any of Laura’s calls? She’s been sick about what happened between the two of you. You know she’d never say anything to deliberately hurt you. She loves you. Can’t you call her, tell her it doesn’t matter . . .”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not, for God’s sake?”

  “Because it does matter.”

  “She was only trying to help,” Mike continued, eloquently pleading his wife’s case. “Ever since this awful thing happened, that’s all she’s been trying to do—help you. Make things easier for you. She loved Cindy, Gail. And she loves you. She’d cut off her right arm before she’d do anything that would intentionally hurt you.” His voice caught in his throat.