by Tricia Dower
On the other side of the highway, breathing heavily, she slowed her pace, still looking left and right. Daddy would have a point about her not being hurt. It hadn’t been as big a deal as it could have been. Who was Linda Wise compared to all the women in the world who’d actually been raped? All Georgie had done was threaten her with a knife, come on her leg and curse at her. His language had shocked her as much as anything: he’d spoken to her as if she were no more than lint. Arlene and Dee would probably find the whole thing a riot if she weren’t too embarrassed to tell them. They’d turn it into one of their stories and spread it all over school, ribbing her for not even getting a whisker burn out of it. Did Georgie have whiskers? She should have paid more attention. Should have scratched his license plate number in the dirt with a stick. But what if she had? Who would have cared?
It wasn’t like anything had really happened.
SEPTEMBER 18, 1958. Betty worked every Tuesday and Thursday from four in the afternoon until eight at night, typing invoices, completing insurance forms and calling patients whose accounts were long overdue. Lou Pierce’s office was in a mansion built in the early 1900s by the founder of a music-box company. Lou’s late dad, also a doctor, had bought the place sometime in the 30s and turned the downstairs into a medical office. Lou, his wife and their two children lived on the second and third floors. Betty had never been upstairs, but she wasn’t bellyaching. It was enough for her to step up on the pillared porch of the grand white building on the elm-lined street and know she had as much right to be there as anyone.
She appreciated the solid feel of the front door and, as she opened it, the scent of furniture wax and rubbing alcohol that greeted her nose. The polished wood floor of the large waiting room, a once-upon-a-time parlor with fireplace and fancy molding, creaked as she crossed to her desk. Her brown leather chair sounded important as it rolled over the Plexiglas that protected an Oriental rug. An adding machine, typewriter, pens and pencils, sheets of vellum, envelopes and stamps waited just for her.
On this Thursday, when Betty arrived, Lou’s nurse, Rose, was wrestling her coat on. “Doc’s already gone upstairs,” she said. “His last patient canceled. Big news in the paper, hey? That’s all anybody could talk about when they came in today.”
“I didn’t see it. What’s up?”
Rose crossed to a square coffee table in front of a leather couch and picked up the Elizabeth Daily Journal. “Terrible thing,” she said. “Such a pretty girl.”
Betty scanned the article and sagged like an empty sack. The body of a girl the same age as Linda had been discovered in a pine grove by a couple walking their dog.
“From Avenel,” Rose said. “Practically next door. What gets me is the parents reported her missing over a month ago and the police did doodly-squat. They assumed she ran away.”
Betty sat at her desk for a few minutes after Rose left, thinking about Linda at home right now by herself. Roger would still be at work. Betty punched the outside line and insisted Madge put him through right away. She told him about the girl from Avenel and was surprised he’d seen the story but hadn’t mentioned it when he called her that morning.
“I didn’t think we knew the family,” he said. “Do we?”
“No, but I don’t like the idea of Linda alone while a maniac’s on the loose.” The girl had died of knife wounds and, judging from the state of her body, the police figured she was already dead by the time her parents reported her missing. “Can you go to the house right now and stay with her until I get home?” Roger ordinarily didn’t stop by until after dinner.
“I can, but why the panic? The girl was killed a month ago.”
“I know, but the story came out today. They were probably talking about it at school. Linda could be scared silly right now with neither of us to talk to.”
“Ah, okay. I’ll wrap things up here.”
“The paper says her parents had no idea how she’d ended up in those woods. Linda could have been missing all the time we were in Boston and we wouldn’t have known.”
“We called her every day,” he said. “And a number of folks were keeping an eye on her. We would have known pretty quickly.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Betty had wanted her to come with them. Linda wanted to stay with Arlene but Roger had said nothing doing. He’d suggested his place with Mrs. Ernst. Linda cried, said they never trusted her and begged to stay home alone. In the end, guilt about what they’d put Linda through in the past year and her accusation that they were overprotecting her led them to give in.
“Try to calm down. You know how anxiety affects you.”
No, she didn’t. Unable to find a reason for Betty’s pain, the so-called experts in Boston had tried to buffalo her with mumbo jumbo. Considering that both the uterus and appendix cut from her had turned out healthy, they said they couldn’t rule out “hysterical neurosis.” More judgment than diagnosis if you asked Betty, but of course nobody did.
“I’m calm,” she said. “I just think we should make sure one of us is with her at all times when she’s not in school.” If Linda ever did go missing, the police might assume she’d run away like that ragamuffin Tereza had.
“How are we going to do that?”
“I’ll have her come to Lou’s office right from school the days I work. You can pick her up here, take her home and stay with her until I get off work.”
“You could stop working.”
It was hard to put a foot in a closed mouth. Betty counted to five before saying, “Two days a week is all I ask for. They matter to me.” They’d talked about it in Boston over dinner one night. Betty had been touched by the way Roger truly listened. “You said you understood.”
He sighed. “Yes, I did, and I do.” She could hear him shuffling papers. “I’ll leave now and drive to the house. And of course I’ll pick her up at Lou’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“That would be swell. Could you talk to her, too? Make sure she knows what to do if she comes across a thug. The police taught you judo or something, didn’t they?” The only advice Betty’s father ever had for her was “Never corner something meaner than you.”
Roger sniffed out a laugh. “I learned a few self-defense moves. Good thing I never had to use them. Probably would have made matters worse. But sure, I’ll talk to her.”
“Let me know how you think she is when you do. She’s been secretive for weeks. I think she’s hiding cookies in her room. I’ll bet she’s put on a good ten pounds since we got back.”
“I thought you were worried about her safety, not her weight.”
“I am, but she doesn’t eat right when something’s bothering her.”
Betty heard Roger’s briefcase snap.
“She has looked tearful lately,” he said. “I’ll see what I can find out. Do you want me to pick you up tonight? Linda can come with me.”
“No, I like taking the bus.” She often pretended it was headed for Kansas.
“Hey, listen, why don’t I move back home? It would be easier to work out a schedule.”
Betty felt herself teetering on the edge of a tall building. If she didn’t look down she’d be okay. She counted to five and said, “I suppose we could talk about it.”
YOU COULDN’T turn on the TV or walk past a newsstand without seeing a picture of that dead girl. The women who came into Herman’s were spooked. They chittered like birds warning each other about a cat stealing up on a nest. Tereza thought the girl was pretty stupid to have gotten herself killed, but Buddy said she and Dearie should be on the lookout for weirdos at bus stops.
“If anybody grabs you from behind,” he said, “raise your leg and he’ll fall over.”
Tereza snorted and said, “I’ll tell him I have cooties.” Buddy didn’t think that was funny.
NOVEMBER 16, 1958. Enzo calls Doris periodically to say there’s no progress on Bill’s case but never asks to speak with Miranda. Now doesn’t he suddenly appear at the front door for the first time in nearly a
year against a backdrop of falling leaves aswirl in a Mary Poppins wind. He looks monochromatically officious in gray overcoat and black fedora, carrying a black briefcase.
“Doris is at work,” Miranda says.
“I know. I came to see you.” He claps a hand on his hat to hold it down.
“I have chores to finish before Mickey and I collect Cian from nursery school.”
“Cian’s in nursery school?” From his expression, you would have thought she’d told him the lad had been on the cow’s back when it jumped over the moon.
“Why wouldn’t he be? He’s old enough. Four years and nine months, to be precise.” To admit him to the school, Miranda had to swear out a birth affidavit and get it notarized. Provide a father’s name. She accepts at last that it’s James and wonders how she’ll explain it to Cian when the time comes. So far he hasn’t asked, perhaps because he lives with two mothers.
“I thought with his, you know, problem, you might hold him back a year or two.”
“And not be ready for kindergarten? Be the oldest child in class as I was?” Miranda’s words spill out with an intensity that surprises her. “I’ll have you know he met the criteria to get in. He can count to eight, bounce a ball and pull up his zipper. He doesn’t have as many words as some his age but he’s exceptional at one requirement: listening to stories without interrupting.”
“That I don’t doubt. All those story hours. It’s wonderful, Miranda, I truly mean that.”
Enzo sounds genuine. She softens to him. She tells him that Doris worked with Cian evenings, teaching him to count, recognize certain words and manage the toilet on his own—“Good shot, Cian!” Miranda used Doris’s button box to help him learn to sort by color, size and shape, and she’s saturated his brain with cod liver oil, spinach, canned sardines, turnips and walnuts.
Enzo leans forward as if Miranda’s words are the most important ever uttered. A habit of his she misread once. She knows now he is simply conscientious at his job. Pride keeps her from telling him that some children in the neighborhood call Cian “pinhead.” Carolyn shakes her little fists at them and says, “Get lost!” Cian has always looked adoringly at Carolyn; now he loves her even more. Miranda doesn’t think she’s jealous, but lately she’s been finding Carolyn annoying: the constant nattering, the perfectly straight hair like Bill’s, the teeth so big for her face she looks always about to break into laughter.
“How are you?” Enzo asks. “You look good. That color suits you.” She’s wearing dungarees and a pearl-necked sweater in a shade called persimmon.
“I’m well.”
“I mean, how’s your life? Are you happy?”
Why does he care? She looks at him for a moment, pondering the question. One might be able to say she’s lived happily ever after St. Bernadette’s, after James. But she doesn’t know what chapter her life is in right now and where this restless yearning she’s experiencing will lead. She needs more practice with herbal remedies, but Doris will have none of her special brews. She’s read about drugs made from plant extracts and borrows books about botany and pharmacology from the public library. She’ll try to learn more once all three children are in school full-time. She hasn’t lost all interest in studying library science. But, with James’s blood swimming in her, it’s unlikely she’ll ever be anything as normal as a librarian.
“My days are busy,” she tells Enzo. And they are, making the children breakfast, walking Cian and Carolyn to their different schools, playing school with Mickey because he feels left out, fixing his mid-morning snack, doing a load of laundry, collecting Cian from nursery school, making him and Mickey lunch, reading to them, extracting something from the freezer for dinner, greeting Carolyn when she gets home from school, making her a snack, sweeping up and picking up. But for the lack of a husband, hers is a housewife’s reality and it doesn’t satisfy her.
“You’re letting the heat out,” Enzo says. “May I step in for a minute?”
She admits him but remains standing in the hallway. He removes his hat. His close-cropped hair is grayer than she remembers but vitality infuses the light surrounding him.
She shuts the door behind him. “Why are you here?”
“I need your help with a case that has the Woodbridge police stumped. An Avenel girl was stabbed to death late in the summer. Barbara Pickens. You might’ve heard about it; it was in the papers for weeks after they found her body.”
“Yes, of course.” Doris had been concerned, insisting that Miranda lock the doors at all times and urging her to not speak to strangers.
“I don’t want to remind you of too many details,” Enzo continues. “I don’t want to influence what you might see.”
Such presumption. “I haven’t tried to see things in a while.” If “reading” objects is no longer needed to safeguard a child who isn’t divine, why willingly take in another’s pain? It seems to make no difference. Murderers and their victims eventually all end up the same: extinguished like candles. There are no saints in Heaven powerful enough to intercede.
“Did you ever consider you might have been chosen for crime work?”
She laughs at his artifice. “By whom?” “Please. Without you, we wouldn’t have thought to look for bloodstains from a second person or a connection to an artist or draftsman.” Holding the bullet that killed Nolan, Miranda had seen a slim back bent over a slanted table making bold strokes with a pencil.
“And what good has that done?”
“It’ll pay off eventually, I’m sure of it.”
“Why do you care about this case if it isn’t yours?”
“Cops help each other. You never know, another detective might come across something that solves Bill’s case someday.” He gives an embarrassed laugh. “Also, to be honest, Stony River gets mostly bicycle thefts and bad checks. It’s a chance to put what I studied into practice.”
A soldier with no war, a healer with no sick.
Enzo sets his briefcase on the floor gently, almost reverently. He removes his coat and folds it over his arm. “This girl, this Barbara,” he says. “She was only fifteen, a good girl, from all accounts. She sang in the choir, did modern dance in school. Talented, you know? Now she’s gone and whoever killed her could be getting ready to kill again.”
Miranda glances into the living room where she left Mickey building a cushion fort. “I’ve been saving my energy for healing with plants. I mean to do something important with it one day.” She’s determined not to be like James, who treated only his family and shut himself off from a world of needs.
“Preventing another girl from being murdered seems pretty darn important to me.”
Since leaving St. Bernadette’s, Miranda has begun to understand that life is a series of exchanges: her confinement in exchange for James’s freedom to practice his beliefs, the sale of their house in exchange for St. Bernadette’s agreement to keep Cian, the prospect of mystic communion in exchange for the facade of normalcy.
“I was wondering if you might find my mother’s burial place,” she says. “I know where and when she died, but that’s all.” She has decided to leave James where the city buried him. Eileen’s bones call her now.
Enzo’s eyes widen for a moment and then he nods. “It’s possible.” He brings out his notebook. She gives him the details.
“Would you like to sit?” she asks. “I must keep an eye on the lad.” He follows her into the living room. Mickey’s brown eyes look up at him but the child says nothing, resumes the secret sounds of his play.
Miranda pulls out a chair at the dining-room table. Enzo takes one opposite her. From his briefcase he withdraws a plastic bag containing a petticoat the color of bones. He calls it a “slip,” a word that makes her think of falling. He slides the garment from the plastic and pushes it toward her. It gives off a smell like old fish.
She feels hot and cold at the same time. “It’s been so long, I don’t know how I’ll react. Will you watch over Mickey?”
“Of course.”
/> She runs her hand over the petticoat’s straps, bodice and skirt, its finely stitched seams. Expensive. A patch of skirt is stiff and faintly stained. She closes her eyes and inhales deeply, one, two, three times. As she begins to lose the edges of physical awareness, panic bubbles in her chest. She opens her eyes to see Enzo staring intently, pencil poised above his notebook.
“I won’t let you go too far,” he says.
She closes her eyes again and visualizes what she has touched. It’s the right size for her mind to slide into, as easily as her body once slid into her mother’s petticoat. That one was cotton and rough. This is a softer, thinner fabric, but something scratches her body all the same: sticks, pebbles and pine needles. She lies on her back among trees, the petticoat bunched at her waist, a burning, rusty taste in her throat. Everything hurts: her back, arms, legs, chest. She cannot move for pain and weakness. A tire squeals. She’s been abandoned. Left to die. Her thighs are sticky with something that brings back Cian’s conception with revulsion and shame. She pushes away the girl’s final desperate thoughts, opens her eyes and swallows back a sour taste. “She’s not wearing underpants.”
Enzo falls back against his chair. “Woodbridge kept that from reporters. What else?”
“She’s in the woods.”
“That was in the news. People walking their dog found her.”
“She’s alive when a car drives away. I think she was taken to the woods in that car.”
“Did you see the car?”
“No.”
“Okay, from the top. Tell me exactly what you saw. Every detail you can.”
She does, except for her revulsion and something else she can’t explain. He writes it down, packs up the petticoat then drives away in the autumn wind.
The rest of the day she’s haunted. It’s true she didn’t see the car, but she had a strong sense the driver was Bill Nolan. That’s impossible, of course. Her lingering animosity toward him must have caused a feckless impression. If Enzo visits again, she’ll refuse to help further. Who knows what damage she could cause, what person she could unjustly accuse? Prisons are odious places.
