by Delia Ephron
Sam returned with a letter from his father, complaining again about the hair spout and suggesting that Sam might be better off living with him. This was typical of exchanges between Allan and me. We were both remarkably polite during any phone calls that might be overheard, but disparaged each other’s parenting skills in secret whenever possible. Allan clung to a certainty that whatever went wrong at my house would never have taken place at his. I despaired of my own inadequacies even as I refused to admit them.
A most curious thing to greet my son, the strangest mix of elation and depression, the taste of sweet and sour on the tongue at once. He had invented a hug that kept me at arm’s length by holding his body in a posture so concave that it prevented any meeting in the middle. He acknowledged Bernadette with only the merest flick of his eyes. She hefted his overloaded dirty backpack—he was dragging it along the floor—and announced, “What a ton.” She informed him that she was our houseguest. “But I’m not staying in your room, don’t worry,” she added graciously.
“So your mom’s got a boyfriend,” she said as we drove home.
“Huh?” said Sam.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Just kidding,” said Bernadette. “She got home late because of the”—she dangled over the front seat between Sam and me to throw in the last piece of information—“dead body.” Then, without stopping for breath, she told him every particular before collapsing into the back.
“Did Deidre call?” Sam spoke a whole sentence. How encouraging.
“No,” I said, “but I’ve been on the phone a lot myself.”
“The dead body,” Bernadette intoned again. “Is Deidre your girlfriend? She’s thin. I wish I was thin, but my hair’s great.” In the rearview mirror, I saw her flip a lock in front of her eyes to reassure herself.
“How’d she die?” asked Sam.
“No one knows.”
He smiled.
“Why are you smiling?” I asked.
He shrugged.
“Well, that’s inappropriate.” Bernadette giggled. “You must get it from your mom.”
“Excuse me?”
“You smile all the time, like on the way to the airport, you were grinning. Just driving along with this dumb grin on your face. Turn on KRCU, Swap Meet is on. I once traded my mom’s crocheted shawl for a ceramic dog bowl. She was pissed.”
Deidre was folded up on our front doorstep, waiting for Sam, skinny arms wrapped around her pole legs, chin resting on bony knees. “Nuqneh,” she said.
“What’s that?” asked Bernadette.
“Klingon.”
“Oh, cool, I’ve heard she speaks that. But Star Trek is over, you know. It’s kind of a dead galaxy. Nice to meet you, Deidre, wonk, wonk.”
“Wonk?” said Sam.
“I just made that up,” said Bernadette.
Dinner was interrupted continually by trick-or-treaters. I answered the front door, admired the costumes, and distributed candy, while Bernadette, Sam, and Deidre ignored them. They preferred to recap plots of sci-fi shows, delighting especially in one bad guy who had his head reprogrammed. Deidre scratched her arm incessantly. Bernadette finally seized it, examined the red blotches, diagnosed, “Poison ivy, what bushes have you been hiding in?” before returning to a discussion of messages written in blood that oozed out of a wall.
The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” I said.
“Maybe that’s my boyfriend.”
“Did you tell him you were here?”
“No,” said Bernadette.
I picked up the receiver. “Hello.”
“Hello.” Tom’s voice, and a noisy background. He must be out somewhere.
Bernadette was watching me. “It’s for me,” I told her. “I’ve got a full house,” I said to Tom.
“Okay. Meet me in the parking lot behind Bright’s. I’ll be on regular patrol tomorrow, passing by around twelve-thirty.”
Perfect. I could meet him before my bank visit with Jane. “Sounds good to me.” I hung up.
“Who was that?” asked Bernadette.
“Are you the nosiest person in the world or what? Who wants dessert?”
Deidre pressed her rash against Sam’s bare arm, then slid her eyes up to lock with his.
“That’s so romantic,” said Bernadette.
Oddly, it was.
CHAPTER 12
OVERNIGHT the temperature dropped. In the morning people were sporting knitted caps and gloves, down parkas, and especially fleece, the fabric du jour. “An unseasonable dip,” the radio reported. “February knocks in early November.” Parked in the public lot, I was holed up in my car with the heater blasting.
In my childhood, before something new or exciting, I was always seized with hunger. This accounts for why I was devouring a large bag of sour-cream-flavored potato chips on Monday at 12:20 p.m. in the parking lot behind Bright’s Pharmacy. I adjusted the rearview mirror to examine my reflection, and indelicately poked a nail between teeth to dislodge embedded chips, trying to remain spiffy for my encounter with Tom. A driver honked—was I about to back out? I waved him on. Another honked. I waved again, and shoveled in another handful. The chips were my only nourishment since coffee and yogurt at breakfast, when Bernadette had asked if Sam belonged to Aryan Nation.
“He’s not a neo-Nazi, he simply has a similar haircut. It’s more samurai,” I responded.
Sam remained mute, constructing a sandwich out of an English muffin, slabs of butter, and jam. I had been considering whether I should get his cholesterol checked when the word “samurai” issued from my mouth, and I realized that, unknown to my conscious self, I had been searching for a relatively benign explanation for his appearance.
“Where’s the milk, aren’t you kind of fancy?” Bernadette was commenting on my attempt to look slightly prettier than usual: eye-liner, a hint of sage-colored shadow, and one of my more sparkly lipsticks, in addition to the usual mascara and blush. “God, you’re wearing a ton of makeup.”
“Hardly.”
Bernadette wrinkled her nose. She was big on facial contortions to accent her remarks. For disgust, she might stick out her tongue; nose wrinkling indicated disapproval. “Can I ride with you to work? What kind of mustard is this?” She removed a jar of Grey Poupon from the refrigerator.
“It’s called Dijon mustard. The milk’s on the table. Where the hell is your car, anyway?”
No matter how waspishly I spoke to Bernadette, she roared on—tasting the mustard, informing me that her car’s plugs were shot. “My boyfriend’s supposed to replace them, only he’s not my boyfriend. Sam, you’re a pig.”
Sam actually laughed.
In the car, I requested peace and quiet, but she droned on about how everything in her mom’s vegetable garden always died.
“Can’t your boyfriend waylay you at the paper?” I asked.
“He would never. Besides, he crews on a boat that leaves at the crack of dawn. He respects my professional life.”
“Really. That’s nice.”
“Yeah,” said Bernadette, as if she did not think so. She leaned over. “What’s this? A wrapper.” She snatched another off the floor, smoothing it to read the print. “‘Mynten.’ Well, you’re a slob, dropping garbage all over the car.”
In a scattershot way, Bernadette’s intrusiveness put me at risk of exposure. As a protective measure, I censored both expressions and thoughts. I didn’t revisit my night of rapture, didn’t recall my favorite moment, when he kissed my eyes to open them, ruffling my heart with his lips. Tom had a light, almost ticklish touch, but I had better not dwell on that. A lustful grin might overtake me. Having surrendered myself wholeheartedly, I was denied the tiniest journey back. Life is cruel, although it is also occasionally ironic, even after irony has been tossed overboard.
At the morning editorial meeting, Art polled us for ideas. He wanted to cover every inch of newsprint with the dead woman. “I noticed a line to get into the hardware store,” I told him. “What’s
that about?”
“Locks,” Bernadette answered. “There’s a maniac loose. I could write something about that, how everyone’s installing more protection, couldn’t I?” She seemed amazed to have floated an idea.
“Sure you can,” Art replied.
“Doors and windows?”
“Absolutely.”
She noted this, then kept her pen poised above her pad as if another great notion might alight at any minute.
“Talk to Len at the hardware store and to Sakonnet Bay Security. Their business has undoubtedly picked up,” Art advised. Bernadette wrote madly. “Who else?” he asked. It was more a test question than an actual question.
“Just folks,” said Bernadette. “To discuss their fears.”
“Right.”
She beamed.
“There was no foul play,” I piped up, aware that it would only irritate Art to be deprived of his felony. “The death was an accident, a drug overdose from extensive frolicking of some sort, somewhere, that’s all.”
“How do you know?” Art asked.
“Intuition.” I trotted out my smuggest smile.
After that we adjourned, and I spent the rest of the morning interviewing the young man who’d stumbled on the body. Then came my hunger attack, when I purchased the potato chips and repaired to my car.
Twelve-thirty. I brushed the salt from my hands and left the Honda. As I sauntered toward our assignation, a police car entered the lot and traveled the same way.
“Lily! Lily, over here.”
Jane? Where was she? Oh, on the steps of the Times office, where she’d obviously been hunting me down. She was early, a whole half-hour. We weren’t suppose to meet at the bank until one.
She beckoned me over, but I stubbornly persisted in tacking toward McKee and pointed to the pharmacy as if I had urgent business at the shampoo rack or a desperate need for antihistamines.
“Watch out,” she called. I was so busy transmitting hand signals I didn’t realize that I was about to slam into McKee’s car, which was stopped, awaiting my arrival.
“Hi,” I said to him, somewhat shocked to find the car looming, a sudden wall.
“Lily, take care,” he said.
“Don’t worry.” I glanced around to see if anyone was noticing us. Jane, still a distance off, was weaving in our direction through a maze of autos. “I can be secretive.”
He shook his head. “Not that. You’re such a scrambled egg. I mean, don’t get hurt. Don’t get so nervous that you have an accident.”
How had I lived so long without someone who worried for my safety?
“How are you?” Tom could charge the most ordinary pleasantry with intimacy.
“I’m great,” I said.
“You look beautiful.”
“Really?”
The littlest things could make me cry now. I had to guard against this, let in the joy inch by inch.
“Hello, Sergeant McKee.” Jane came up behind me. “What’s the news on that poor girl? How’d she die?”
“My lips are sealed,” said Tom.
“And I’m a gossip,” said Jane.
So here we were, having a sunny conversation, each of us with something covert on our minds.
“There are no autopsy results, are there?” I asked.
“I heard we might have them by tonight, by the time I get off. Nine o’clock.”
“That late?”
“Nine tonight,” he repeated, hesitating a dramatic instant before adding, “But maybe not, maybe not until the end of the week.”
“How exciting, I can’t wait.” I was getting mixed up, displacing my thrill at receiving a secret message—a date tonight at nine—onto autopsy findings. I endeavored to speak more soberly. “I’ll phone you with the details, Jane, as soon as I hear.”
Jane was facing me, but there was no other evidence that my words had penetrated. She had drifted, possibly to the worrying business to come, our bank visit to separate her money from her husband’s.
“I’ll call you, Jane, as soon as I hear about the autopsy.” I spoke louder.
“Oh, okay.”
“You must be hungry. She’s always distracted when she’s hungry,” I told Tom. “See you around.”
“Likewise.”
“Bye,” added Jane, a bit late.
And then he was gone, off to patrol, perhaps to cite a jaywalker.
“Should we go to the bank or have lunch first?” I asked.
“The bank.”
“Okay.” I towed her along. “Let’s get it over with.”
We dodged a few cars before taking an alley shortcut.
“Where do you think Jonathan got together with his girlfriend?” I asked her.
This problem interested me for a personal reason. Where could I rendezvous with Tom? In Sakonnet Bay, privacy was more elusive than neon. Consider Bernadette—she was compelled to hide out with me of all people. Every car was known, not just by model and year, but by dents and bruises. The beach was only marginally private. Shore parking lots were a favorite for in-car lunching, as I had noticed during my meeting with Tom. I’m sure cops regularly prowled them at night, and occasionally napped in them.
“An out-of-town motel on the road past the bay, or maybe those dilapidated stops along Route 12.” She’d given this some thought.
“Nobody would spot you?”
“It’s less trafficked.”
“Jane, you could figure out something by checking Jonathan’s odometer. See what it registers in the morning, then read it when he returns home.” This was a depressing but clever notion. I might be more suited to being the betrayed than the betrayer. I might be better at being Jane. Or Ann. Her name is Ann, I reminded myself. Tom’s wife is real, a person. Although I was clearly ruthless and uncaring, having just pumped my dear friend, distraught over her husband’s infidelity, for ideas on how I could conduct my own. How could I account for this level of duplicity? How was I able to detest Jonathan, but adore Tom?
Jane balked. “My legs won’t walk.”
“Yes, they will.” I tugged her on. “There’s Coral Williams, say hello.”
“Suppose Jonathan turns up,” she whispered.
“He won’t. I promise. Hold it, don’t cross yet, the light’s red.” The bank was now directly across the street. We had to reach the fort before the ambush. “Tell me what you’re planning.”
Jane’s hand took up residency in front of her mouth. She spoke into her palm. “I’m going to take most of what’s left out of our joint savings, only about two thousand dollars, and transfer it. Then I have a commission check to deposit, it’s really all I have left.”
“Come on, the light’s green.”
“He raided my earnings. That weasel.”
“Jane, cross. We’ll open an account for you, and then you won’t have to worry.”
“Right.” Her voice had all the animation of defeat.
There was one place for Tom and me to meet, I realized. Only one. I wasn’t stopping this affair. I could scold myself, berate, condemn, but my heart was mapping a plan with the efficiency of a brain. The problem was as simple as this: A nut once cracked open could not be put back together.
As Jane moved across the street, I could feel her trembling. I clamped my hand around her arm and guided her into the bank.
Every commercial establishment in Sakonnet Bay seemed ambivalent about whether it was a home or a business. The bank was no exception. Both vice-presidents sat behind desks decorated with pictures of their children; one displayed a china family of miniature painted spaniels. Teller lines were lively with conversation and people shouted across the echoing space to weigh in on matters that had nothing to do with them. I steered Jane to the VP who did not have miniature dogs. His name plate read “F. Pritchard.” I was reassured by his solid geometric shape: square head, square shoulders—a box of a person, with a trim set of bristles above his upper lip. Reliability and order were what Jane needed.
“Could you please help us?�
��
“Hi, Frank.” Jane kicked into gear, pulled out a chair, sat on her purse, then wrenched it out from under herself. “Do you know Lily Davis?”
“From the paper?”
“That’s right.” I sat, too.
“I heard you were attacked last Saturday.”
“Excuse me?”
“Right after that girl was found strangled.”
Several customers in line swiveled our way.
“Who told you that?”
“Rose Bacon.”
“I don’t know Rose Bacon.”
“Her brother lives across the street from you. Heard you scream.”
“I wasn’t attacked. Someone surprised me at my door, that’s all. Good grief, what an insane rumor.”
“Oh.” I thought I detected disappointment. Frank wiped a large red handkerchief over his face. “That’s not what I heard.”
“And that girl wasn’t strangled.” I turned to address the viewing gallery. “She wasn’t strangled.”
The VP at the next desk rolled her chair closer. “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know. The cause of death wasn’t apparent.”
“You certain about that?” asked Frank.
“Positive.”
“Well, well,” Frank clucked sadly. “I’d better tell my wife. Now what is it you wanted?”
“Not me. Jane.”
He turned to Jane, whose lips parted, but no sound emerged.
“She wants to open a new account.”
“Checking or savings?”
“Fine,” said Jane.
“Which?”
She looked to me for an answer. “Savings,” I suggested.
He thumbed through some forms, extracted one, and passed it over. Routine to him. “How’s Jonathan?” he asked.
“Fine,” said Jane again.
Fine. Everybody used this word when they meant the opposite. Although perhaps Jonathan was fine. Perhaps, like me, he was better than fine.
I chatted more with Frank about the dead woman. He used to go bird-watching where she was found. Jane pressed the pen down so hard she tore the paper. He handed her another form.
