Under My Skin

by Jaye Maiman

  Keep your feet on the ground, I warned myself—wings clipped, talons dug in. The car revved and I dialed an oldie channel. Frank Sinatra was belting out “I Got You Under My Skin.” I sang along with something akin to hilarity bubbling in my chest.

  Maybe it’s just gas, I mused, my fingers crossed on the wheel.

  Chapter Seven

  The Unitarian church was hewn from native stone. In the gray-pink light, the snow glistened softly on the steeple. There were eight cars in the lot. I pulled in next to the last one and parked, the slam of the door sounding like an explosion in the snowy hush. I gathered my flannel jacket around me and climbed the stairs. The carved-brass doors grated to a close behind me as my heartbeat raced. I stood stock-still till my eyes adjusted to the dimness, a faint smell of incense tickling my nostrils. In the distance was the drone of voices. I followed the sound.

  The meeting was already underway. Eight pairs of eyes, at once suspicious and curious, turned toward me. I muttered an apology and headed for a metal chair positioned near the coffee urn. Before I could get there, a slender older woman with frosted hair and cheap lipstick took hold of my hand. “Sit in the circle, dear.” She slid a chair next to her and patted my shoulder. I smiled weakly and obeyed.

  Now that I was here, I felt like a mean-spirited jerk. The man across from me, clad in a plaid hunting shirt and heavy boots, looked like an aging lumberjack. He was sniffling into a woman’s handkerchief. “Man, I was close. This close. But I knew if I did it, if I touched that bottle, it was over for me and Cynthia. And no one’s ever stuck by me like that woman has.”

  I looked away. The group consisted of five men and three women. If Maggie’s sponsor, Lisa, was here, it shouldn’t be hard to find out.

  The lumberjack was bawling now. “How can she even face me in the morning after what I done? Shit. I can’t sleep no more, thinking of how I run that little kid down...” The woman next to him grasped his hand.

  As he spoke, my eyes filled and my stomach churned. This was not a good idea, I admonished myself.

  “I thought that poor baby was a deer. Got out of my Bronco cursing the beast for bolting in front of me. When I saw what I hit... Lord, I ain’t never going to have another minute of rest.”

  “You will, Bill. Someday, somehow, you’ll have to find a way of living with the truth without a bottle in your hand.” The woman holding his hand had the smallest voice I had ever heard. But her words were spoken with indisputable conviction. “We all have to make peace with ourselves, with our pasts. I know you don’t believe in God anymore, Bill, but there are other higher powers you can hold onto. Cynthia’s love, for instance.”

  It was as if she were talking to me. When she and Bill hugged, my body shook involuntarily. The elderly woman to my right wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I wanted to bolt. Instead I cried along with the others, all of us lost in our own lives. Finally, the official part of the meeting ended and we all stood up, held hands, and recited the serenity prayer.

  I was anything but serene. As soon as the circle broke up, I dashed for the door.

  “Was it that hard for you?”

  I turned and looked into the gentlest blue eyes I had ever seen. She was the woman who had comforted Bill. With a sinking instinct, I knew this was Lisa. I nodded dumbly, my emotions tangling in thoughts totally unrelated to Noreen or Maggie.

  She grasped my upper arm with surprising firmness and said, “Why don’t we talk outside? Groups can be awfully intimidating for first-timers.” A discreet gesture informed the others that she would return soon. Still holding my arm, she steered me to the center of the church. She was at least six inches shorter than I am and so slight she seemed free from the weight of gravity. Next to her I felt ungainly. We settled on a side pew, the cold, hard seat pressing into the back of my thighs. I could feel the sciatica taking its revenge.

  “This is better, isn’t it?” she asked kindly.

  My eyes darted around the room. This modest chapel with faded stained-glass windows and a scent that commingled incense, mold and human flesh, made my heart clench. Looking at the woman next to me, I realized it wasn’t just the church. “Is your name Lisa?”

  Her eyes widened. No mistrust, just interest. “Yes.” I had intended to wheedle my way into her confidence. Instead I plunged into the truth. When I finished detailing my suspicions about Noreen’s death and Maggie’s disappearance, she looked tired.

  Without a word of reproach, she stood up and grimly pursed her lips. “I know few believe in our vow of confidentiality, but I take it very seriously. You’re asking me to violate a trust people have placed in me, and I simply won’t do that.” She started to walk away.

  “What’s more important, your confidentiality or someone’s life?” My voice boomed.

  Lisa turned slowly. Her gaze was so direct, it burned. “When I saw you crying during Bill’s story, I sensed you were in trouble yourself. Your pain seemed so real, so close.” It was as if she were subjecting me to a Vulcan probe. I took a step back. “Perhaps it is,” she said, with a sympathetic tilt of her head. “Noreen’s death is very sad for me. She reminded me so much of myself.”

  I couldn’t imagine two women less alike. My confidence wavered.

  “I was so proud of her. She had turned her face to the light and was determined to keep it there. My greatest disappointment was that she didn’t reach out to me before going over the edge.”

  Frustration shook me to the core. “Even if you believe it’s too late to help Noreen, what about Maggie? Aren’t you even worried about her?”

  Her face clouded and she continued, more to herself than to me, “I have to remember that I can rescue no one but myself. Ultimately, we all have to choose. It’s hard to put aside responsibility and take up acceptance, but I know of no other way to make it through the day.”

  Her language was stilted, but I sensed it was more from emotional strain than from artifice. This woman was in a battle for her life. I suddenly felt ashamed. Resigned, I exited the church, the blast of cold air a welcome slap of reality. I was halfway to the car when I heard feet pounding toward me. I spun around, immediately on guard.

  It was Bill. He glanced over his shoulder furtively. I strode ahead, opened the passenger door and gestured to him, then got into the car.

  Bill’s volunteer fireman cap pressed against the roof of my Subaru. I stared at him and waited for him to speak. He scratched the side of his nose nervously, his shoulders hunched forward. A faintly sour smell emanated from him. It was well below freezing and the man was sweating bullets. “I heard you talking to Lisa,” he said guiltily. “About Noreen.”

  He fell silent again, licking his cracked bottom lip with a white tongue. At a loss, I popped open the glove compartment and offered him a Life Saver. He grabbed for the roll, jamming his elbow into the dashboard. It seemed like his bulk was expanding before my eyes. Any second, my car would explode.

  “I got a daughter, you know.” The non sequitur was uttered with incredible tenderness. With a tentative glance toward me, he faltered, “She’s, uh, you know—”

  I finished the sentence for him. “A lesbian.”

  His head wrenched in my direction. “Yeah,” he said, looking startled at my apparent clairvoyance. “Like Nor. Only not as, uh, manly. She’s twenty-four now. A few years ago, when she told me and my wife about her, you know, her ways, we was floored. She’s a pretty girl. No reason she couldn’t hook some decent feller. We tried to get her help, but she took off to Philly and wouldn’t have none of our interfering. We didn’t talk till this past summer.” Beads of sweat were pooling on his forehead, running along his sideburns, and through his rough beard. His broad hand swept over his face self-consciously.

  “After the accident, she come home to see me in jail. What a moron I was, acting like she was no good while all the time I’m the one sitting in that cold cell—a boy’s life gone ’cause of me. Soon after I started these meetings, and me and Nor hit it off right away. I could see she wasn
’t so bad as she liked people to think. She got me talking to Jane again... Lots of people tried to get through to me, but Nor was the only one that could. You don’t let a family slip through your fingers.” He wiggled his sausage-thick fingers toward me for emphasis. “She said, ‘Love makes a family. Love’s got to hold it together.’”

  His eyes turned glassy. “I’ll never forget that. What I’m getting at is this. I called Nor the night she died. I was in a bad way...she carried me over the hump. I read the paper, all that talk about her being drunk. That simply ain’t true. I talked to her and she was as straight as you are right now.” He rushed ahead awkwardly. “I mean sober. It ain’t right everyone saying she went off the wagon. I don’t know how she died, but I know she wasn’t drinking when she did.”

  I drove directly to Helen’s house, the windows wide open to clear out the car. And my head. It was just before eight when I parked outside her garage. If Helen had anything to do with Noreen’s death, one possible motive was sitting in front of me. Instead of the 1,800 square-foot contemporary on Valley Road that she had purchased with her own funds, Helen was living in the smallest two-bedroom ranch in Telham.

  The snow was heavier now and the wind no longer gentle. I scurried up the stairs. The doorbell screamed through the ranch with a too-high pitch. On the second peal, Helen opened the door wearing a white terry-cloth robe loosely tied around her waist. I knew instantly that she was naked under the gathered fabric and felt an unexpected surge of hormones. She blinked at me, still groggy from sleep. Or perhaps something more. As she stepped aside to let me in, I noticed the darkness under her eyes, the way she shuffled into the living room. The air in the house was stale from smoke. And alcohol.

  She fell into a tailored, gray tweed couch and plopped her feet onto a matching ottoman. When she crossed her legs, the robe fell half open, revealing a pale, smooth thigh.

  The house felt uninhabited, the walls bare of artwork and the furniture so new you could smell the plastic in which it had been wrapped. The only exception was the computer desk near the window. Reams of printout paper filled the corner, and the desktop was littered with floppy disks and technical manuals— graphic reminders that Helen earned her living as a programmer. With an uncomfortable flutter, I realized that both she and Amy worked out of their homes. When I looked back at her, I noticed that her features had turned wry.

  “Not exactly material for House and Garden,” she said. “But then again, who cares these days?”

  I automatically glanced back to her thighs, which were parted slightly. “Have you been drinking?” I was too irritated, and turned on, for small talk.

  “Someone’s feeling feisty. Come, sit next to me,” she said, patting the couch. Since there was nowhere else to sit except the desk chair, I complied. “To answer your question, not since yesterday afternoon. Which is pretty good for me.”

  To my chagrin, she didn’t smell stale like the rest of the house. A muskiness rose off her skin. I realized she smelled like a woman who had just made love. With a lazy amusement, she watched me grow flustered. I felt trapped. My guts told me someone was in that back room, but there was no way I was going to find out. The power play between us was in high gear. And she clearly had the upper hand.

  She reached out, caressed the side of my neck the way you’d pet a cat, and mewled, “So what can I do for you, detective?”

  “You lied to me, Helen.” I practically spat the words in her face. “Noreen wasn’t drunk when you two fought at the party, and you know it.”

  She looked perplexed for an instant, but her hand never stopped moving. God help me, I couldn’t pull myself away from that even stroke. “I never said Noreen was drunk,” she said with conviction.

  If I didn’t know better, I would have believed her. “Helen, don’t play with me.”

  A flicker of delight entered her eyes, and it dawned on me that my past infatuation with her had not gone entirely unnoticed.

  “You sure about that?” She leaned forward, her robe draping so that her creamy, full breasts were just a glance away. With a flick of my hand, that robe would be open and her body laid bare. She scissored her legs, shifting closer to me. Her unmistakable scent was making me dizzy. With incredible difficulty, I stood up. I wanted to run outside and hump a snow bank.

  I gulped and said, “Why’d you lie?”

  She gazed at me through half-lowered lids and shrugged, “Honestly, I don’t remember saying she was drunk. But if I did, you have to understand that I was pissed off and scared silly. Besides, whenever Noreen went into one of her rages, I just assumed she was drinking. Maybe that’s all I meant.”

  She stood up and crossed to me. I wanted to send her into the bedroom for more of whatever she had been receiving. Anything to escape the web she was weaving around my clay feet. A slender finger teased the top button of my shirt. There was no doubt about her intentions now. She was seducing me. Successfully, I might add. I held her hand still, ignoring the sparks between us.

  “Helen,” I said, then repeated her name as if that would protect me from succumbing. “Helen, we need to talk. I need to know more about Noreen.”

  My hips were a second away from pumping against her. K.T. had unleashed a monster. I envisioned K.T. the way she had looked this morning, the sheets tangled around her moist calves. I swallowed hard and asked, “Do you know that Manny inherits the house?”

  Unexpectedly, the magnetism between us lost its charge. Maybe it was the impact that the memory of K.T. had on me, or maybe Helen picked up on the determination in my voice. All I knew was that she tightened the robe’s belt and sat down again.

  With a sigh, I pulled over the desk chair and sat opposite her.

  She ran a hand through her dark, tangled hair, pausing to sniff her fingers surreptitiously in a final tease. “I just found out yesterday. Ironic, isn’t it? Manny did two lousy months, and she gets my house.” I didn’t have to be an expert in body language to read how the words stung. She was hugging herself like someone who had been kicked in the stomach.

  “When I signed the house over to Noreen, we had an understanding. She’d keep my name in the will. I guess that’s another reason I was so scared when I found her body. If anyone questioned her death, I had to be the number one suspect. As it turns out, no one seems to give a shit.”

  Except me, I thought.

  “Wasn’t that unusual, your asking to stay in the will?”

  She exclaimed, “It was my fucking house. Noreen may have been the one to decide where we moved and what we bought, but it was my money that paid for the place. All because that stupid detective’s cousin said Telham was a good place for dykes. None of it ever made sense to me.” Her face was beet red. “I gave up a good job in Philly to move here. Noreen was running her own house-painting business, we could have gone anywhere. I wanted to move to San Francisco, but Noreen got it in her head that she had to be here. In Canadensis. In goddamn Telham Village. Who the hell knows why? But I went along with her. And you know what? I ended up loving that damn house. When the house was quiet, you could hear the Acee River rushing over the rocks. It was magical.” I could almost hear her counting to ten before she spoke again. “Maybe you didn’t know this, but Noreen was physically abusive to me.”

  My eyes must have narrowed in doubt because the next thing I knew Helen had dropped the top of her robe so that her shoulders were bare. A puckered scar ran along her left collarbone.

  “About a year ago, before we moved here, she flung me through our living room window. If you’re interested, I can also show where the iron landed on my hip. Or maybe you’re not into burns.” She was taunting me now, her eyes sparking with past nightmares.

  I was barely breathing. “God, I’m sorry, Helen. I didn’t know.” The robe was back in place, but the images she planted rooted instantly in my mind.

  “Right,” she said. “No one did. Except me.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?” I sounded like an audience member on Oprah. I wanted to shove a
sock in my mouth. Helen looked like she’d be happy to help me.

  “I did.” Her chin was lifted defiantly. “Maybe it took seven years, but I did leave. At the time, the house felt like a small price to pay.”

  There was a part of me that wanted to back off and leave her alone, but the need to know the truth was far stronger. “What happened when you broke it off?”

  She laughed unpleasantly. “Not much. My timing was ideal. About a month before we closed on the house, Noreen found out she had a mild heart condition. The doctor said if she kept on drinking the way she had in the past, she was bound to have a heart attack. She finally got herself into AA. I had already been there for years.” Wiping her eyes wearily, she said, “Guess I’ll be starting up again,” and exhaled like someone tossing an anchor over the starboard side. “When we broke up in August, Noreen was saner than at any other time in our relationship. I think the appropriate term is ‘window of opportunity.’ I saw it and I leapt for it.” With a sneer, she added, “She was pretty civil. I’m sure the house helped.”

  “Did she stay sober?”

  “You’d have to ask Manny that, now, wouldn’t you?”

  The woman was an aerosol can under pressure, she was working hard not to explode. I didn’t want to be around when she did.

  After the interview with Helen, all I could think about was curling up with K.T. near the stone fireplace. It struck me that for the first time in years it was my work I wanted to escape from and not my life. I pulled up to the cabin and frowned. K.T.’s car was gone. I scampered to the door, afraid of the emptiness and yet hopeful she’d somehow still be there. I could feel her absence as soon as I opened the door. The fireplace was littered with ash and the only sound came from branches scratching against the roof. The rush of snow outside only added to the sense of stillness.