by Gwen Florio
She wanted to get the trailer to Burris’s before any more time elapsed, and the likelihood of seeing someone she knew increased exponentially.
Penelope was just emerging from the cedars as Nora’s truck approached, trailer in tow. She stopped and turned as though to retrace her steps, then edged to the side of the lane where it broadened as it made its final turn.
Nora steered truck and trailer as far as she dared to the other side of the lane to give her mother plenty of room.
The trailer lurched behind her. She must have hit a pothole. She gave the truck a little gas to get past it, speeding up with an apologetic wave, glancing in the side mirror to make sure her mother had seen, and watching instead as the trailer separated from the hitch and careened backward toward Penelope who was frozen in shock at the sight of a mountain of metal tilting her way in slow motion.
Electra teetered on two wheels and crashed on to her side.
Nora’s scream caught in her throat.
‘Oh, no, no,’ she whimpered as she half fell from the truck in her haste. She ran on legs gone leaden, wanting to get to her mother as fast as possible, terrified of what she’d find, her mind doing split-second calculations of the effect of more than three and a half tons of grinding metal on one hundred and ten pounds of brittle-boned septuagenarian.
She wrenched her gaze from the trailer lying on its side, still rocking as its weight settled into place, to a few feet away, where her mother struggled to sit up.
‘Mother!’
If Nora had taken yet another precious second to think back over the fifty years of her life, she would not have been able to remember a single time Penelope lost her composure. Now she stretched trembling hands toward her daughter, face gone pale as putty, green eyes black with terror. Her mouth opened and closed soundlessly
Nora stooped beside her. ‘It’s all right, Mother. I’m here. Are you hurt?’
She took it as a good sign that Penelope had been able to sit up. No spinal injuries, then. ‘Can you stand?’ She looked around. ‘Where’s your walker?’
Penelope raised an arm again. Pointed. Managed a single word. ‘Under.’
The trailer emitted a final metallic groan. Its rocking stilled.
‘I jumped.’ A whisper, barely audible.
‘My God.’ On a broken ankle, barely able to walk, let alone leap. ‘On second thought, don’t move. I’m going to call an ambulance.’
She hated to leave her mother, even for the few moments it took to rush back to the truck to retrieve her phone. She dialed 911 as she jogged back to Penelope, and somehow managed to give the dispatcher the necessary details before starting to cry.
The EMT explained a final time to Nora that she couldn’t ride in the ambulance with her mother. He signaled to the driver and closed the doors.
Nora watched it vanish beneath the cedars.
She turned to the cop. Brittingham knelt behind her truck, examining the trailer hitch.
‘Do we have to do this now? I need to be with my mother.’
‘You have time.’ He spoke without turning around. ‘They’ll need to get her checked in, take her vitals, probably X-ray that leg again. My guess is, beyond being a little banged up, she’s fine. She’s lucky. And so are you.’
‘Excuse me?’ Nora jogged in place, impatient to be off. ‘What do you need to know? Can we do this at the hospital?’
Brittingham put a hand to the ground and pushed himself up. The concerned, paternal manner of his previous visit had fled. Anger flamed in his eyes.
‘I wish you’d had enough concern for your mother to properly hitch this trailer. If she hadn’t jumped in time, you could have found yourself facing a negligent manslaughter charge.’
Nora gaped. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Look at this.’
She took a few reluctant steps toward him.
He nudged the ground with the toe of his mirror-polished shoe, now filmed with dust, drawing her attention to the trailer’s safety chains lying in the dust, along with the emergency brake cable.
‘You said you drove across the country with this thing. Given your carelessness, it’s a wonder you made it alive – or didn’t kill someone else on the way. You damn near killed your mother today.’
Nora stared at the chains. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Not much to understand. If you’d hooked it up properly, it’d already be sitting in Burris’s body shop. What would it have taken you, an extra five minutes’ worth of effort? But you couldn’t be bothered.’
‘No! I hitched it just this morning. I crossed the chains and fastened them, and the breakaway cable. I have a checklist that I follow. It’s in the house. I can show you.’
Brittingham’s face was brutal in its skepticism.
Nora stammered on. ‘I drew it up just so I’d never forget anything, no matter how tired I am when I hitch and unhitch it. And when I’m done, I go back and check everything twice. Officer Brittingham, I hooked those chains myself, screwed the fastener on breakaway cable tight. Plugged in the brake lights, pushed the latch down on the ball and fastened it. The only way this came undone is if someone undid it.’
His lips twisted as though in an effort to hold back words. A single one escaped.
‘Who?’
‘I have no idea. There’s no one here but me and my mother. Well, Em Crothers came by this morning with the tarp for the trailer, but he left before I did. I hitched the trailer up, but then Mother needed her medicine right away, so I took her car into town and came back for the trailer. I was taking it into Burris’s to finally get the paint removed. Somebody must have unfastened the chains while I was gone.’
‘Who?’ The man was relentless.
‘I have no idea. We could ask Mother. Maybe she heard something.’
‘I will.’ He looked at Michael Murphy, standing at quivering attention in the middle of the lane, gazing after his departed mistress.
‘What about you, boy? Did you hear anything?’ Murph glanced at him and looked away without so much as a single wag of his tail. ‘When your mother’s able to talk, I’ll ask if he barked at anyone. He’s a pretty decent watchdog. Gave me the impression he wanted to take my head off when I was here before.’
‘About that. Somebody already took the trouble to vandalize my trailer. Is it so farfetched to think the same person might have done this, too?’
‘But why?’
Isn’t that what you’re supposed to find out? Nora had regained enough composure not to respond aloud. She crossed her arms and waited.
‘Go see your mother. Tell her I’ll be around to speak with her.’ He started for his car and stopped. ‘You going to be here all by yourself?’
‘Yes. Well, me and Murph.’ The dog chanced another quick backward glance at the sound of his name. ‘And there’s a cat around here somewhere.’
‘If’ – Brittingham stressed the word in a way that let her know he thought it was a pretty big if – ‘someone did sabotage your trailer, you want to be careful. You’ve obviously pissed off the black crowd.’
Crowd. As though they were nameless and faceless.
‘And talking with the Attorney General’s Office hasn’t won you any friends in the police department.’
‘How did you …’
Of course he knew. If Satterline and Holiday were worth their salt, they’d have run her version of the police interview past the cops in Chateau. Which meant that Alden knew she’d gone to the Attorney General’s Office. And even though nothing she’d told them implicated him in any way, it didn’t help him, either.
‘You’re not afraid, staying all the way out here in this big house alone? Under the circumstances.’
His tone suggested she should be very much afraid.
‘Of course not,’ she snapped. ‘You know what scares me?’
‘I’d love to hear it.’
‘Mother’s condition. I really need to go see her. Now.’
Thing is, she thought as he finally d
rove away, it wasn’t just bravado.
She knew that he was right; that given a second attack on her trailer, one that had very nearly killed her mother, or could have killed someone, she should be panicked.
But all she could see was her mother’s chalky face, eyes wide with terror.
She could worry about her own safety later. First, she had to reassure herself of her mother’s.
FORTY
1967
After her first week back at work at Quail House, Grace was too tired to take the long way home, going blocks out of her way around the tanks and National Guard troops on Commerce Street.
She trudged past them, stopping when she glimpsed the light glimmering between the cracks in the plywood over the pharmacy’s broken-out windows. She looked one of the soldiers in the eye, an impermissible bit of defiance unthinkable just weeks earlier. But that was before Bobby. Nothing scared her now.
She jutted her chin toward the pharmacy. ‘They open?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I want to buy something in there.’
He was shorter by half a head, the kind of stocky that would turn fat in just a few more years, his pale skin blotchy with freckles, sweat sliding down his cheeks from beneath his helmet. His jaw muscles popped as they worked a wad of gum.
‘Ain’t much left in there after what you all done. Go on now.’
You all.
Grace stretched herself to her full height, looking down on him. ‘I want to go in there.’
He snapped the gum. ‘Then you got to have an escort.’ He raised his gun and stood aside to let her pass, then followed so close behind the barrel of the gun nudged her back. She stiffened. Had the person who shot Bobby put the gun to his body? Looked him in the eye and pulled the trigger? Or – as would happen to her if her escort as much as stumbled – shot him in the back? Or had the bullet that robbed her of her brother come from a great distance, someone lying in wait?
She tapped at the boarded-up door. Heard footsteps, then a feminine gasp. ‘Oh, Myron. They’re back. I thought the Guard was supposed to be protecting us.’
Grace rapped harder. ‘Miss Slocum? It’s me, Grace Evans. I need to buy something.’ She waited. The street was utterly silent except for a crow soaring overhead, diving low for a look, cawing as it swooped away.
‘One of those soldiers is here with me.’
The door cracked an inch. Verna Slocum peered out, saw the Guardsman and opened the door a bit wider. Her husband stood behind her in his white pharmacist’s coat, a baseball bat in his hand.
‘I just want to buy a notebook. Anything left in stationery?’
‘That’s about all they left.’ Grace knew she was included in that damning they. ‘And now here you come, wanting to buy something instead of just taking it. If that isn’t just rich. Hold on.’
Her husband’s knuckles whitened around the bat. Grace had known him since she was a little girl, and she’d stopped in regularly when she’d worked at Quail House before to pick up the Smythes’ prescriptions. Now he refused to look at her, not deigning to offer so much as a ‘Sorry about your brother’ or even a simple ‘hello.’
His wife returned and flung something through the door. A notebook, its black-and-white marbled cardboard cover smeared with greasy soot, landed at Grace’s feet.
‘There. You happy?’ She slammed the door.
The Guardsman smirked at her. ‘You got what you came for. And for free, too. That lady’s a lot nicer than I would’ve been.’
‘Go fuck yourself,’ Grace said, counting on the shock and embarrassment of hearing such language from a woman’s mouth to stop him from coming after her – or, worse yet, siccing his fellow Guardsmen on her.
She strode away quickly, tensed for the sound of booted feet, shouts, magazines clicking into place, but heard nothing except her own footsteps as she walked through the wreckage of Chateau.
FORTY-ONE
Penelope was barely a bump beneath the white blanket stretched across the high, narrow bed in Chateau Community Medical Center.
Nora pulled up a chair beside the bed and watched her mother breathe. After what she had feared as Electra tilted toward Penelope, it was enough.
A young black woman clopped quietly into the room on those white rubber-soled clogs all the staff seemed to wear. ‘I’m Dr Abell. They told me family was here.’
‘I’m her daughter. Is she all right?’
Tape fastened an IV needle to the back of Penelope’s hand, her papery skin bruised blue and angry around it. Lines ran from beneath the blanket to beeping machines.
‘We gave her something to help her sleep. She’s got some pretty large contusions up and down her left side. Don’t be startled when you see them. They’ll be sore for a long time, but they’re not serious. Remarkably, she didn’t reinjure her leg. In fact, it’s practically healed. She’s a long way past needing the walker, although she may want to use it again, given how banged up she is.’
Nora recalled the pretzeled bit of metal peeping from beneath Electra and made a mental note to ask Slocum’s Pharmacy to order a new one.
‘Our more serious concern is that she’s got a couple of broken ribs. She needs rest to heal but if she lies still too long, fluid could collect in her lungs and lead to pneumonia. But if she moves around too much, a rib could pierce her lungs. We’ve taped her chest, but that’s all we can do.’
Pneumonia. A pierced lung. The doctor was still talking but Nora heard nothing past those words. ‘Excuse me?’
‘I said we’re going to keep her for a couple of days for observation. Don’t worry. We’ll take good care of her. You’re family, so you can visit at any time. I’d discourage other visitors, though.’
The doctor’s words were perfunctory, clipped. Nora had seen the way the doctor’s gaze swept her up and down, the start of recognition as she came into the room. Judgment hung heavy in the air. Nora wanted to apologize but didn’t know what for. Wanted to say, ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ the protest of any accused person, no matter how accurate the charge.
She settled for ‘I appreciate everything you’re doing for her,’ and endured an incredulous snort as the doctor left the room.
Penelope’s eyes moved beneath her closed lids.
‘Mother? Are you awake?’ She bent close to hear words barely more than a breath.
‘Of course I am.’
‘Did you hear what she said? You have two broken ribs. You’ll be here for a couple of days. They’re being very careful. Mother, I’m so sorry.’
Penelope’s eyes flew open, her stare surprisingly bright. ‘What happened?’
‘Somebody unhitched my trailer – not quite all the way, just enough so that it would come loose while I was driving it. It’s a miracle you weren’t killed. I’m so sorry.’
Penelope’s eyes slid shut. A long moan escaped.
‘Mother!’ Nora was on her feet. ‘Are you in pain? Do you want me to call a nurse?’
Penelope started to lift the hand with the IV, grimaced and waved her other one. ‘No. I’m fine. Your trailer …’
‘I called a tow truck. It’s at Burris’s. And the police are looking into it.’
Penelope’s head moved on the flat pillow. ‘They’re after me.’
‘What? Who?’ Nora bent over the bed. ‘Mother, who’s after you?’
Penelope started to raise her hand in a trembling version of her old imperious wave, wincing at the tug of the IV. ‘You. I meant you. I told you before, and I really mean it. You need to go. I can’t bear the thought of someone trying to hurt you.’
She closed her eyes against Nora’s protestations and, when Nora persisted, pressed the call button for a nurse. ‘I’m in so much pain. Can’t you give me something for it?’
The nurse procured two fat pills and a tiny paper cup of water. ‘You’ll be asleep in no time. You’ll be out for a couple of hours. No reason for anyone to stay.’
Nora, knowing herself defeated, left without saying
goodbye.
She wanted to go home but feared police would still be on the scene, doing whatever it was they did after such an occurrence. Brittingham had been busy putting small orange plastic markers at various places on the lane as she’d left.
Instead, she sought reliable refuge at the library, with its carrels tucked in out-of-the-way places where she was unlikely to encounter anyone but the most determined browser or student with a particularly challenging assignment.
But when she sat down at the computer, she didn’t even know what to search. ‘They’re after me,’ her mother had said, only to follow it with a demurral that, to Nora’s ears, rang false.
But why would anyone be after her mother? As far as she knew, her mother’s life after her father’s death had continued much the same: endless rounds of luncheons and genteel good works and community involvement – the gardening club, the historical society – the sort of small, neat existence that Nora had once envisioned for herself. Thanks to Alden’s early betrayal, she had instead catapulted herself into a world of academic and career achievements. It occurred to her – why only now, after all these years? – that maybe Alden had done her a favor.
The blank search field mocked her. She typed in her mother’s maiden name and the town, Chateau, and saw evidence of exactly the kind of life she’d remembered, short one- or two-paragraph notices of this function or that. A photo of Penelope at the Founders’ Ball, resplendent in hoopskirt and tight bodice that showed what was, to a daughter’s eye, a daring amount of décolletage. Nora’s father’s obituary: Hiram Best, born in North Troy, Vermont. Met his bride at a dance held by their respective boarding schools in Massachusetts. Served as a manager at Smythe’s Backfin Crabs until his untimely demise. Survived by his loving wife, Penelope, and daughter, Nora.
And, scrolling back farther still, the briefest notices of Nora’s birth and her parents’ wedding. Hiram Best and Penelope Smythe …
Nora sat up straight. Weddings in Chateau, especially when involving a First Family, were lavish affairs, with receptions featuring long linen-draped tables sagging beneath the weight of glistening pink hams, pyramids of beaten biscuits, and pats of butter with leafy designs pressed into them.
