Her Last Words

by Jo Barney

  For a moment, no one speaks. Perhaps, Lou thinks, that old room is lost in a fog of years. No, she can still smell it, hear its voices. The others can also. Jackie sits straighter, opens her mouth, for once doesn’t speak. Joan’s blue eyes narrow with remembering.

  Then the question fills the quiet room, brushing against lips, raising the hairs on Lou’s arms. Joan places her drink next to Madge’s and asks it. “What’s going on, Madge?”

  Madge breathes deeply, her lips trembling.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday Morning: Cloud Cover

  Jackie

  Unlike last night, the room warm with talk and wine, the cabin this morning is cold. Jackie glances at the fireplace, sees one thin curl of smoke rising from the remains of papers crumpled at the edges of the burned logs and wonders if she should start a fire. As she bends to lay out the kindling, Lou passes by, whispers, “Don’t. Let Madge’s pages burn.” Jackie feels a hand on her arm. “Let’s go for a walk, the way Madge planned.” Lou’s eyes are red, puffy with tears, and will be for a long time, Jackie thinks. Must be a relief, to be able to cry when you need to. Jackie yells at these sad moments, usually, dry grit rattling her head, body, thoughts. She leaves the smoldering papers and follows Lou out the door.

  Ten steps down the path she hears Joan call at them to wait. In a moment, she catches up, her mouth set in its determined way. “We need to look for the walking stick, like Madge said. And we need to breathe in the morning air to get ready for this day.”

  They are at the front of the dune when Lou stops. “Why aren’t you crying? Either of you? She’s gone. We all heard her walk away from us this morning.” Lou takes a Kleenex out of her pocket, wipes it across her cheeks. “You, especially, Joan. Maybe her best friend.”

  Jackie doesn’t want to defend her tearlessness. She is trying to figure it out herself, but she especially doesn’t like Lou’s comment about best friend. Madge doesn’t have best friends, not that Jackie has ever noticed, not like Joan and even Lou sometimes, leaving her out of their secrets—back in college and even now. Especially Joan. “I don’t cry easy,” she says. “Doesn’t mean I’m not sad. And I’m still confused. I didn’t want to do this, you remember.” She isn’t sure Lou is listening, and Joan moves on ahead of the other two and calls, “We need to look for the damn walking stick. I will cry later.” They don’t talk, just scan the wet beach in front of them until Lou points, runs to the stick partly buried in the swoosh of a sandy wave.

  Once they get back to the cabin, they place the stick on the mantel and sip cups of coffee in front of the fire. Jackie whisks the old ashes into the blaze she’s building. Then they wipe tears from cheeks, Lou’s, of course, and Joan, and even Jackie, as if the others’ sadness is contagious. They sit without speaking, unable to look at each other, until Lou says, “I’m empty,” and reaches down to capture the tissues under her feet.

  “I’m taking a shower. Then we’ll have to…” Joan sinks back into her chair her eyes shut. ”Damn. I need a little more time.”

  Jackie sniffs back the snot that won’t stop running. “What I don’t get,” she manages to say after a moment, gurgling a little, “is why she involved us.”

  Lou’s not empty yet, still blowing, sighing. Where does all that fluid come from? Jackie wonders. Some mechanism in the body that is dormant until the finger of fate pushes its button? She herself feels sad but now a backwash of anger inside her is also rising. She needs a drink to force it to retreat, to keep unwelcome thoughts at bay. About death. Not just about her own death, but the nearly completed death of a man she loved and still loves, a man beyond decisions. She stands up, picks up her coffee cup, heads to the kitchen.

  Joan, watching her, says “Not yet, Jackie. We have work to do.”

  “Shit, Joan. Who made you Mistress of the Universe?” but Jackie knows Joan has always been Mistress. Maybe that’s part of her anger. She’s gotten into this mess mostly because she didn’t want to disappoint a friend, and that friend is not here. She’s not sure where she stands with the two women in this room. And she’s not going to take Joan’s bossiness any more. She reaches for the kitchen phone, dials a number written on a list of emergency contacts Madge taped next to it.

  Chapter Four

  Saturday Noon: Slack Water

  Lucius

  The sheriff is not pleased. It is Saturday, finally spring, a month past flood season, the golf course has dried out, and he has a tee time in forty minutes. Liz, the teenaged girl who answers the off-hours phones for the office, a local who is pretty good at the job except for her pronouns which are indigenous to this slip of Pacific coastline, calls to say a message has just come in. “Something about a cane left on the beach. Some woman missing. The lady was kind of excited and I couldn’t understand her. Me and my mom thought you should know?”

  Lucius Baker took the job of sheriff in Greensprings as a soft landing after his flight from twenty-five years on a city police force and three disappointing marriages. The town, just a few miles inland from the ocean, has a population of three thousand people and at least twice as many cows standing motionless most of each day in the midst of vast green meadows, their noses pointed into the wind.

  So far, in the year he’s been at this job, Lucius has chased a number of rampant Holsteins down county roads, waded across flooded fields to rescue cats and goats from the roofs of outhouses, calmed fist fights in each of the two taverns on Main Street, and once he investigated a series of obscene phone calls thought to be coming from a beach house down the road. The cabin turned out to have neither electricity nor a phone. That file still lies on a corner of his desk, but since the calls have stopped, he isn’t spending any more time on it, concentrating instead on his golf game at the local public golf course, formerly a pasture. Still a pasture, really, cow pies moldering under the rough green grass from which he should be teeing off at this moment.

  He looks at his watch and dials the number.

  Chapter Five

  Saturday Noon: Riprap

  Joan

  When the phone rings, Joan waves a hand at the others. “Let me talk.” She licks her lips, a nervous trait familiar to the women stilling their own lips, and with a voice she manages to twang with tension, Joan tells the sheriff that when the three friends woke up this morning, a fourth friend, Madge Slocum, was gone. “On a walk, we thought, so we went out to meet her on the beach. That’s when we found it, the walking stick, the one Madge uses going up and down the road and to poke in the sand, lying there just above the tide line.”

  Joan looks at the other two to see how she is doing. Jackie is hunched in a wicker chair, drinking something clear, concentrating on slits of ice cubes threatening to inhibit her next swallow. Lou is walking around the kitchen plucking yellow sticky notes off the stove, the refrigerator, the microwave, and wadding them in her jeans pocket.

  “We kept walking and reached the end of the bay and we didn’t find her.” So far, so good. Joan listens, uh-huhs a goodbye, hangs up the phone.

  They decided last night that Joan would be their spokeswoman. Jackie, in a fit of anxiety, mislaid that decision in the tearful hours of the morning and took it upon herself to make the first call to the sheriff after which Joan told her to never pick up the phone again. Perhaps this second phone call has repaired the damage.

  “He’s coming by,” Joan says. “After his golf game and dinner. He figures she just might be taking a time out from us.”

  “Shit.” Jackie rouses herself and stands wobbling and slightly cross-eyed. Jiggling the ice cubes in her empty glass, she says, “I’m going to have trouble with this, Joan. It’s against my belief system.”

  “Your belief system isn’t your problem, friend. Go drink some coffee and get ready. We’re in this together.” Joan calms her voice, no need to get angry, adds, “Remember?” She goes to the big window, looks out at the blueness spreading out to the horizon. A small dune rises in front of the cabin, its flowing grasses cushioning the rumble o
f the sea lying in a broad glistening streak beyond them. She will not give in to the sadness that is washing over her, sinking deep like a cold wave on sand. She sits down, opens a magazine, and forces herself to bring back a better day. Joan can still hear that sweet man’s voice. For the few hours they were together, he never lifted his eyes from hers. Or so it seems now. She turns a page, then another.

  From the kitchen Jackie yells over the clatter of ice cubes. “How long do we have to wait?”

  “Patience is a virtue.” She must have caught it from him, this urge to use adages to sum up things. When he did it, she laughed. No one is laughing now, though, in this anxious room. She watches as Lou wipes her eyes on the neck of her sweatshirt as she crunches yellow slips of paper. She reads out loud, “5:30, turn on the oven,” and looks at Joan, and Joan nods.

  Chapter Six

  Saturday Late Afternoon: Downdrift

  Jackie

  Slumped back against the sofa cushions, Jackie thinks about the walk down the beach yesterday afternoon, when Madge was with them, all of them grinning, an aura of warm sisterhood swirling around them. That’s when she was sure she would be able to let it out, tell the others what happened and no one would say I told you so. They would marvel at her finding the truth, finally. She’s been looking for the truth for a long time. That, of course, was before Madge read her story last night, asked them to help, before Jackie understood that her own story wasn’t why they had come to the beach house, was not even very important.

  She grimaces as she rubs the lumps of knuckles that used to be capable of gripping ski poles and parts of bodies when she was in college. It still pisses her off, this falling apart. In her head she’s still the girl who got only one sympathy vote from the committee when she tried out for rally squad, she being about ten inches taller than all of the other girls, as tall as some the basketball players who needed to be cheered at and probably as good a guard as a couple of them, and who went on to become a champion snow ski bum.

  Every weekend the Gamma Psi’s housemother squinted at the forged note from Jackie’s parents, put it her pocket, and sent her off to the mountain in a borrowed VW. She returned Sunday nights, sometimes with a trophy, always sucking breath mints as she sidled past Mrs. Troutman. Similar mints hide in a few pockets and purses today. For a good reason, Jackie tells herself, willing her knees to straighten, hold her upright. Right now, she needs to focus. She had agreed, finally, hadn’t she? And the menu on the fridge says she is in charge of dinner.

  “Madge said stir fry tonight,” she calls out as she opens the refrigerator door. “I can handle that.” Chopping the greens and marinating the sliced chicken, concentrating on keeping her fingers away from the serrated blade, quiets the vodka, scatters the anger, and she decides it’s time to open some wine. Joan and Lou agree when she raises the bottle towards them.

  A half hour later, their chopsticks poke into bowls of rice and bok choi, and the Gallo Sauvignon (not Jackie’s choice but what did the mountain girl who brought it, know about wine?) edges closer to the bottom of the bottle. “So what now?” Jackie can’t help saying out loud as she pushes her bowl away. She’s still having a little trouble tracking.

  “Like I said, Lucius will ask us to repeat what I’ve told him.” Joan’s fingers scoop up the last of her rice as Jackie watches in disbelief. California Girl wouldn’t be doing that if she weren’t annoyed at Jackie’s tracking problem. Patience is a virtue, she would like to remind Joan.

  “Lucius?” Lou’s skinny elbows rest on the table and prop up her head up as if it is too heavy for her neck. Jackie has felt that sensation herself, sometimes from alcohol, sometimes from worry. Lou’s heavy head would be in the second category.

  “The sheriff. He asked me to call him by his first name. It’s a small town thing, I suppose. He’ll say he can’t do anything until it’s been twenty-four hours and she’ll be officially missing.” Joan sends her arched-eyebrow look at Jackie who is pouring the last inch of wine. “We need to not drink anymore,” she says, as she licks a finger.

  Chapter Seven

  Saturday Early Evening: Lagoon

  Lou

  Lou forces her lips to move. “What, just think about it, what if Madge just left her walking stick, left it on the beach, and went somewhere, a B&B or somewhere. She could have. She wasn’t really out of it, you know.” Lou hopes there might be a smattering of truth in this idea, but a sudden wash of reality dampens the thought. Madge’s goodbye had become gray ashes in this morning’s warm fireplace.

  “No,” she says, as she picks up their dishes. “I suppose she did it, don’t you think? Madge always did what she said she was going to do. She was good that way.”

  She glances around the kitchen. She’s gotten them all, the Post-its Madge had pressed onto the cabinet and refrigerator doors to help herself get through yesterday. Tossing them into the fire will be like a ritual, a way of sending a part of Madge into the universe, along with, perhaps, a bit of the ache lodged deep inside herself, near her heart.

  Joan has moved to the window again, looking for Japan, perhaps, and Lou wonders if she is feeling the same ache. Joan is opaque when it comes to revealing her feelings. She’s doesn’t share them, and she doesn’t invite sharing from others. Her only response to the news of Lou’s divorce five years ago was to tell her that her own divorce resulted in the solid earth heaving, new ground revealed, new growth promoted. At the time, her words didn’t seem comforting. Perhaps now they are.

  Jackie, back on the sofa, “I let the fire go down.” She raises her glass to Lou, says, “While you’re up, maybe?”

  Lou makes her way through the huddle of fat armchairs to the fireplace, finds the same box of matches Madge must have used this morning. She reaches into her pockets, and in a moment, the Post-it wads flare up. She adds kindling and bark to keep the flames alive. A fire, even though the heat goes up the chimney to the seagulls hovering above, warms a person.

  It’s the same on the mountain, under the Doug firs. She and Susan always keep a fire going at dinnertime, even in the summer when the garden glows in purples and greens and yellows and they have worked themselves into a sweat beating back the wild stuff that lives miles beneath the fir needle turf. “It may be trying to tell us something, this soil,” Lou said once. “Like, why fight nature?”

  “Indeed,” Susan had answered.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday Evening: Undercurrent

  Lucius

  Through the open door, Lucius smells burning oak and something Chinese. The kitchen, visible above a narrow divider wall, is to the left of the entry. Dishes are stacked in the sink; an empty wine bottle stands alone on the counter. They have just finished dinner, he guesses, maybe even saving a plate of leftovers for their missing friend. Two women sit on a sofa at the ocean side of the house, under windows looking down on the surf. The blonde who meets him at the door points to an armchair in front of the stone fireplace.

  “I’m Joan Costas. Please sit down.” Her voice reminds him of warm cream. A thin, silver-haired woman on the sofa raises her head at him and then looks down at the hands folded in her lap. The woman sitting next to her pushes a wayward strand of black curly hair from her forehead and smiles a small hello.

  Joan chooses a chair on the other side of the fire. “Is this too warm?” Without waiting for an answer, she gestures towards the others. “Lou Hanley.“ The thin woman looks in his direction. “And Jackie Clayton.” The tentative smile dissolves. Something, fear, maybe, widens the Clayton woman’s eyes, pulls her mouth into a straight line. “Hello, Sheriff,” she says, the s’s and f’s slumping against each other.

  Each looks to be in her sixties somewhere. The blond, white, and in Jackie’s case, black, hair can’t disguise the age of the rest of their bodies, their hands and necks freckled and dried by a sun worshipped fifty years earlier.

  Lucius has become aware of such changes in himself lately when he squints into his shaving mirror. The brownish spot on hi
s temple has widened, the hair over his ears is crosshatched with white. At fifty-nine, the ravages of time are setting in, around the eyes, especially.

  He’s maybe a decade younger than these women, but they still look pretty good, the blonde, Joan, especially. She probably has had some work done, of course, but who hasn’t these days? Not Lou, her thin legs now crisscrossed in front of her, bare feet up on the cushions, her face, furrowed the way thin women’s faces get after a while.

  Then the one named Jackie, tall, his height if you count her wavy mane of hair, stands up and crosses the room. “I can’t do this, Joan. This is too awful.” She wiggles goodbye-fingers at him as she bumps through a doorway that Lucius guesses leads to the bedrooms.

  Joan is silent until a door shuts somewhere. “Jackie’s taking Madge’s disappearance very hard, as we all are, and she’s had a bit too much wine at dinner. She’ll be all right as soon as Madge comes back. So will we all.” She looks at Lou who is staring at her folded hands.

  “Is this a habit of Madge’s? Taking off?” Lucius would like to ask the same question about Jackie.

  “No. That’s not Madge. We have to believe she’ll be back soon, don’t we?” Lou nods, and Lucius wonders if the woman ever speaks.