In spite of herself, she kept picturing Linda and Jenny seated together, so alike in appearance it was uncanny. She looked at herself in Jenny’s mirror, her blond hair and dark brown eyes completely unlike those of her daughter. She and Greg could be brother and sister, they looked so much alike. In fact, his friends had teased Greg about it when they were dating. “She’s my soulmate,” he would say seriously. “Of course we look alike.” It had always seemed so unimportant that Jenny resemble them. But, still, it had been a shock to see how closely she mirrored the looks of her biological mother. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and for some reason that hurt.
Karen looked away from the mirror and noticed that Jenny had found a spot for the music box on the top of her bureau. Karen opened the lid, and the tune of “Beautiful Dreamer” tinkled forth. A little ballerina danced on a mirror. If I gave her that, Karen thought, she would think it was stupid. But Linda was a different story.
The sound of a car in the driveway startled her. She dropped the lid and went to the window. Linda’s car was in the driveway. Jenny clambered out of the front seat, clutching her stack of mementos, and Linda got out as well. They stood for a moment, talking, and then Jenny threw her arms around Linda, and they embraced.
A dart of jealousy pierced Karen’s heart at the sight. She could not remember the last time Jenny had embraced her like that. Lately she drew back if Karen reached out for her. Why? she thought as she watched her daughter cling to this woman she barely knew. Yes, she gave birth to you. But I rocked you, and nursed your colds, and made your lunches, and dried your tears. What does it mean to be a mother, if not that? You always felt like my very own to me. Didn’t I seem like your very own to you?
As if sensing Karen watching them, Jenny turned away from Linda and glanced up toward her room. Seeing Karen there, Jenny waved and smiled. Ashamed of herself for her jealousy, her self-pity, Karen waved back and retreated from the window. How could she begrudge Jenny this important relationship? Why should it threaten her? she asked herself. Determined to be better, she composed her expression and headed down the hall to her own room. The front door opened and Jenny called out, “I’m back.”
“I’m up here,” Karen called out in that old, familiar way. She heard Jenny bounding up the stairs. Jenny stuck her head into her parents’ room, where Karen was busily arranging clothes in her dresser. “Hi,” said Karen. “I’m just putting some laundry away.”
“Hi. Oh sh…oot,” said Jenny. “I forgot to tell you not to put my red shirt in the dryer.”
“I hung it up,” said Karen.
“Oh, thanks, Mom,” said Jenny.
“How was your visit?”
“Great,” said Jenny. “I’m going to put these scrap-books away.” She headed down the hall to her room and, hesitantly, Karen followed. She stood in the doorway as Jenny dumped the albums on her bed and then began to shove them, one by one, into her bookcase.
“So, you had a good time.”
“Yeah, it was great. We couldn’t stop talking.”
“Well, that’s good,” said Karen.
“It’s incredible all the things we have in common,” Jenny said. “It’s weird, really.”
“Did she like the albums?” Karen asked.
“Oh, yeah. She just kept staring at those old baby pictures, saying how cute I was.”
“Well, you were cute.”
Jenny smiled. “I don’t know.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a photograph of Linda holding a cat. “She gave me this. It’s the only recent picture that she has of herself. This is her cat, Igor.”
Karen took the proffered photograph and stared at those familiar blue eyes, slightly sad, the gentle smile.
“That’s a good picture,” she murmured as Jenny took it back and stuck the photo into the frame of the mirror over the bureau.
“Well,” said Karen, “after you finish up here, I want you to come down and help me chop some vegetables. I thought I’d make that chicken casserole you like for supper.” She walked toward the door and then turned back. “Unless you’re too full from your late lunch,” she said.
Jenny shook her head. “I was too keyed up to eat much. That casserole would be great. I’ll be right down.”
Smiling to herself, Karen went downstairs and began to assemble the ingredients for supper. She felt all right, almost as if it were a normal day. In a few minutes Jenny bounded in, humming cheerfully. “What shall I chop?” she asked.
“Slice that zucchini,” said Karen.
Jenny picked up the knife and the vegetables. She had a tendency to labor over the evenness of her slices with the precision of a diamond cutter. Karen teased her a little, but otherwise they worked in companionable silence, as they often had. The shadows of twilight began to fall over the quiet, dense greenery of the land behind their house and dimmed the brilliant hues of the spring flowers. Karen looked out at the familiar sight nth a renewed sense of how precious it was—the everyday sights and sounds, the smiles of your loved ones, the safety of it. She did not want to break the mood, but she also felt as if she had to know. She tried make her voice sound offhand, but she was glad Jenny could not see her face.
“So, are you going to see her again?” she asked.
“Oh, sure,” said Jenny. “Of course. I’ll probably see her every day while she’s here.”
Karen breathed in sharply, then forced herself to smile. “Well, that’ll be good. Then you two can really get acquainted.”
“Yeah, and then when school’s out I’ll probably go and stay with her in Chicago for a while.”
Karen turned and stared at her daughter. “What do you mean by that? Who said anything about you going to Chicago?”
“That’s where she lives, Mom,” Jenny drawled, as if pointing out the obvious to a mentally deficient person. “So that’s where I have to go visit her.”
“Jennifer Newhall, you will not go jetting off to Chicago just because you feel like it.”
“I am not a baby,” said Jenny. “You can’t order me around and tell me what to do. If I want to go and see my mother, I can.”
There it was again. The technically correct term that made Karen wince when she heard it. It was all she could do not to clutch her stomach, which felt as if it were being twisted inside of her. “And where do you think you’ll get the money to go flying off to the midwest?” Karen demanded.
Jenny laid down the knife and narrowed her eyes. There was a note of triumph in her voice. “We already discussed it. She’s sending me a ticket. She wants to. She promised.”
The back door opened and Greg walked into the kitchen, laying his newspaper and the keys to the van down on the counter. “Hey, you two. How’re my girls?”
Karen and Jenny glared at one another and did not reply.
Greg stifled a sigh. It was not the first fight he had walked in on between them. He pretended not to notice. “Honey,” he said, “can we eat a little early? I’ve got to meet with some people who need an estimate tonight.”
Karen maintained a deafening silence. With a note of surrender in his voice, Greg asked, “Okay, what’s this all about?”
“Your daughter was just telling me about her travel plans.”
“I am going to visit Linda in Chicago when school gets out,” said Jenny defiantly.
“Wait a minute, hold it,” said Greg, raising up his hands.
But Karen could not back down. “Let me tell you something, little girl. You do not make the decisions around here. Not while you are living in this house.”
Jenny’s eyes were fiery. “Well, maybe I won’t live in this house anymore. Maybe I’ll just go and live with my real mother.”
“Don’t you threaten us,” Greg exclaimed.
Jenny ran from the kitchen.
“You get back in here,” he yelled after her, “and apologize.”
“I won’t,” Jenny cried, and they could hear her footsteps thudding up the stairs. Greg turned back to Karen, who was wiping her hands dist
ractedly on a dish towel. “It’s just a lot of big talk,” he said.
Karen shook her head. “No,” she said quietly. “This is the real thing. This is just what I was afraid of.”
“You’re letting her walk all over you,” he said irritably, taking a beer out of the refrigerator. “It’s all going to blow over. This woman will get back to Chicago and forget all about Jenny.”
Karen squinted at him as if she were having trouble seeing him. “Are you listening to what’s going on?” she demanded. “Are you paying attention? We’re losing her. I am going to lose her.”
“You’re just not thinking clearly,” he said. “If you weren’t still depressed about the baby, you’d realize that this isn’t going to amount to anything.”
“I can’t talk to you,” she said.
“There’s no reason to think we will lose her.”
“There was no reason to think we’d lose the baby…but we did.”
“That’s different and you know it,” he said.
“Why is it different? One day everything is going along fine, and the next day your world collapses. It happens.”
Greg stared past her shoulder, out into the darkening yard.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
Greg shrugged and shook his head. “Nothing.”
“You know I’m right.”
Greg took a swig of his beer and sank down on a stool beside the island. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Dinner will be ready in an hour,” she said in a chilly tone.
“I’ll just go wash up,” he said. “Look up a few prices before this meeting.”
Karen ignored him. It’s my problem, she thought bitterly as he left the kitchen. I’ll deal with it.
Chapter Eight
“Well hallelujah,” said Margo Hofsteder, waddling back to the desk from the front door of the motel. “Knudsen finally showed up to fix the ice machine. His truck just pulled in.”
Eddie, who was still groggy from his afternoon beers, glanced up at the clock. “Kinda late,” he said. “It’s nearly seven-thirty.”
“Better late than never,” said Margo, plucking another cookie from the box on the desk and returning her attention to the old detective movie on the TV.
“I checked about the spindles for the railing,” Eddie reported. “They won’t be in until next week. Is there anything else?”
Margo held out the box of cookies. “Have one of these. They’re good. I got them at the volunteer fireman’s bake sale.”
Eddie waved the box away. “I don’t want no cookie some fireman baked.”
Margo chuckled and rummaged around the desk for a list. “Here,” she said. “Just a couple of burnt-out bulbs.”
“What’s this?” Eddie complained. “I can’t read it. There’s grease all over it.”
“Gimme,” said Margo, waggling her butter-stained fingers. She put on her half glasses and frowned at the list. “That’s 216, and 250. And check 160. They sneaked a dog in. Carpet stain.”
Eddie made a face. “All right. I’ll get it.”
“Be back by eight,” said Margo. “My back’s bothering me.”
“I’ll be back,” he said.
“I’ll leave you a couple of these cookies just in case,” she said cheerily.
Eddie started off down the open corridor to the janitor’s closet to get the light bulbs, thinking about Margo. She was a pest in a lot of ways, but he’d worked for worse people. He wondered if she treated Anton the same way she treated him, always reminding him of everything twice, telling him the same things over and over. That could get to be real annoying if you were married to it.
The bulbs were in the top shelf of the janitor’s closet. He got down a package of two and closed the closet door. As he walked out, he checked the parking spot for room 173. Her car was there all right. He glanced at his list, hesitated, then stuffed it in his pocket. It would have to wait. He edged down the corridor and saw a crack of light between the heavy drapes and the window frame. Transferring the box of light bulbs under his left arm, Eddie looked around, then used his passkey to get into room 171. The room was dark, and he did not turn on the light. He set the light bulbs on a chair and headed for the closet.
He had discovered the secret of room 171 by accident. Some guest had complained about the closet bar being loose, and Eddie had gone in to check on it. It turned out that rooms 171 and 173 had back-to-back closets, but some joker had put a door into the wall between them. Eddie figured that it had to be Anton. The guy had to get off somehow. It was a cinch that he wasn’t doing much with Margo. Every time Margo maundered on about her dear, departed Anton, Eddie thought about that door, and the late, lamented Anton slipping back and forth between those closets. Eddie loved the idea.
You couldn’t use them that often—only when one room was occupied and the other wasn’t. And you had to be very careful. But sometimes the show was well worth the trouble. And he had definitely had the adjoining closets in mind when he gave room 173 to Miss “I don’t want any ice” Emery.
Eddie crossed the carpet of the darkened room 171 and opened the closet door, making sure not to jostle the empty hangers. Listening at the wall, he could tell that she was not near the closet. He undid the unobtrusive latch and pulled the door to him. He was looking into her closet. A couple of dresses hung there, redolent of a light, spicy scent. There was a pair of pants folded over the hanger, a couple of pairs of shoes piled haphazardly on the floor, and an inch-wide column of light that told him he was really in luck. Her closet door was slightly ajar.
Carefully he pushed apart the clothes, blessing the plastic hangers that slid silently down the bar, and let himself into the closet. He inclined one eye to the crack where the door and the frame were separated. His heart was thumping and his mouth was dry, not from fear, but from excitement. He was already feeling aroused. If she was anything like most people, she had immediately undressed when she got into her room that evening. Any minute he would catch a glimpse.
At first he did not see her. Then he heard the toilet flush and the tap running. A few moments later she walked by the closet, still wearing a gray dress, her only concession to comfort being her shoes abandoned on the floor, and she was in her stocking feet.
Eddie felt the letdown, and pressed his lips together so as not to swear. There was still hope. She might be going out again, but on the other hand, she might decide to take that dress off at any minute. And then he could watch her shimmy out of it, which would be even better. Of course, it meant he’d have to be quick about getting out of the closet if she decided to hang it up.
While he was considering his options, the woman seated herself on one of those stiff chairs beside the window. Both the voile and the heavy drapes were carefully drawn closed. She was not one to relax like some people, Eddie thought, sprawling across the bed in their undies or less. On the other hand, the idea of spying on someone so uptight only added to the anticipation. He had a feeling that under that plain dress was something brief and lacy.
She drank a soda, smoked a cigarette, and fidgeted on the chair, glancing occasionally at her watch. All of a sudden Eddie realized that she was waiting for someone. He jumped at the sound of the door knocking, just as she did. Then she got up, stepped into her shoes, and let the guy in.
She and the visitor did not even shake hands, much less embrace. The man edged past her as if reluctant to make any contact with her.
Shit, Eddie thought, as the guy sat down on the other stiff chair. I haven’t got all night to see if this thing warms up. The phone rang and she walked over and picked it up while her visitor, his arms folded across his chest, looked disapprovingly around the room.
Disgusted, Eddie backed out of the closet, quietly shut the connecting door, and walked back through room 171. He started to let himself out of the room when an old couple came walking down the corridor. His impulse was to duck back inside, but he reminded himself that there was nothing suspicious about what he was do
ing. Then he remembered the light bulbs. After letting himself back inside, he picked up the bulbs and looked at his watch. He’d really have to hurry to get these replaced before his shift. The hell with it, he thought. It would give him a good excuse to come back down later on. This guy had to leave sometime. And she had to take her clothes off sooner or later. The night was still young.
Chapter Nine
“You just keep a lookout. Make sure nobody’s coming,” said the man. “And turn off that flashlight until I tell you.”
Obediently the woman clicked off the switch and scanned the empty parking lot, still lit by halogen lamps, in the predawn darkness.
The man lifted the rear door of the station wagon, grumbling as he hauled out overstuffed plastic garbage bags and dropped them to the ground with a thud.
“I don’t think your mother threw one goddamned thing away in forty years, Jean,” he said.
The woman ignored him. She’d been listening to this for three days now. They’d just put her mother in a nursing home, and now she and her husband, Herb, were cleaning out the family home so they could sell it. Herb had made a number of trips to the county dump, but it was half an hour’s drive away. They’d been supplementing their wholesale trash removal with late night and early morning drop-offs in the open Dumpster bins behind some of the local stores. So far they’d put stuff into this particular grocery store’s Dumpster three times without being caught. Jean felt as if they were pressing their luck, but Herb was getting tired of that drive to the dump.
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