Her Last Words

by Jo Barney

  Lou coughs with a half-giggle. “We’re all a little crazy, you know.”

  That is Jackie’s cue, and just in time. “I’m sorry. I have to—I’m going to be sick. All this tension…” She stands up and goes to the bathroom door. “Please go ahead without me.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Sunday Evening: Backshore

  Lucius

  Lucius definitely smells a rat. Running in the middle of the night, in her slippers? One of them drunk, throwing up at this moment in the bathroom, the other one in fresh lipstick despite her bathrobe, putting the make on him? They are trying to distract him. Either that or they are all crazy, like Lou said. Maybe both. He plows ahead.

  “We’ve knocked on most of the doors, and only a few people responded. None of them have seen Madge Slocum, although a couple of them know of her, her writing. And no single men here that we could determine. So if she went with someone, she really went somewhere.”

  Both women frown, and Lou, still panting, says that wasn’t like Madge. She might create a little storm, but she wouldn’t abandon ship.

  Lucius glances at the dividing wall next to the kitchen and sees that the tide table is no longer lying on it. Liz has gotten one for him, but he needs to know which line had been highlighted to test a theory he’s been mulling over, especially with these women acting so weird, guilty actually, not that he suspects they are murderers, or anything, but stranger things have happened. “I’m thinking that the only area we haven’t looked yet is in the cove on the other side of the point. I’ve never seen it, but my assistant tells me that you can’t get around except when the tide is very low. Do you know about that?”

  Joan shrugs. “I haven’t been there either. We never visited at the right time, I guess. Lou, where is that tide table we had around here?”

  “Junk drawer, I think.” Lou goes into the kitchen after sending a look at Joan that Lucius catches also. After some rattling and slamming, Lou returns with a small gray book in her hand. “This is it, I think.” She hands it to Lucius, who finds the June page and the highlighted line: -2.5. Yesterday morning, the morning Madge Slocum disappeared.

  “What?” Joan has moved in next to him again.

  “She could’ve walked north instead of south, gone to this cove.”

  “Why would she do that? And why didn’t she invite us, if it’s such a special place?” Lou leans over them, squinting at the orange line.

  “What time?” Joan is warming his thigh with hers.

  “5:21 a.m., it says here. Or,” he hesitates in order to give himself time to pull back, to get Joan in focus, “I hate to think it, but somebody could have gone with her to the cove.”

  For a second, Joan’s blue eyes flicker with surprise. “You mean you think someone has hurt her, maybe left her there?” She gathers her lips, thinking about something, Lucius sees, not quite about the horror of the speculation, more like should she go along with it. He recognizes that look. Calculating. Second wife, again.

  “I can’t bear to think of anything like that.” Lou straightens, skinny hand to forehead. “No one would ever hurt Madge, would they, Joan?”

  Joan shakes her head. She’s decided. “No, of course not. But the cove is the only place we haven’t looked. How low does the tide have to be to get around the point?”

  “Liz would know.” Lucius’ finger follows the line of numbers down the page. “No other -2.5 all month; only this -2.0 tomorrow morning.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cell phone. “She should be back home by now. I’ll ask her.” When it doesn’t connect, he goes to the phone on the kitchen wall.

  Liz, her voice muffled as if she is still under the covers where her father has probably awakened her, tells him that a -2.0 is iffy, would probably involve getting wet, and they’d have less than an hour in which they could get around and then back. The waves come at diagonals from both sides and are dangerous to fool around with, she adds. “I can remember one time when me and a bunch of kids…” Lucius interrupts with a thank-you and hangs up. He repeats this information to the women.

  They don’t need to discuss it. “We’re going around the point in the morning,” Joan says. Lou adds, “The three of us.”

  Lucius understands that they’ll go whether he’s with them or not. The tide book is the only lead he has, and it points to the cove. “Okay, but only if I can find a couple of other guys to help. We’ll use a rope or something to keep us together in the surf.” He’s on the phone again when the door to the deck rolls open, and Jackie steps in, her face white with cold and maybe with wine.

  “Sorry, Joan, I had to come in. I was freezing my butt off, and I think I’m going to throw up again.” She swoops across the room, her blanket catching on corners of chairs. “Excuse me,” she says when she steps on Lucius’ shoes. “I’m no good at this.”

  “None of us are,” Joan tells her as she captures the shivering shroud and heads her toward a bedroom. “Here’s your bed, all warm and waiting for you.” Lucius hears the bedsprings creak, and then Joan comes back, her fingers at her throat. “We are cracking up,” she says. “What in the hell was she doing on the deck?”

  “Looking for Madge, in her Jackie way,” Lou answers. “And we’ll all be ready at 5:00 a.m. to continue the search, Sheriff.”

  Once again, Lucius knows he’s being dismissed. The women walk him to the door, and as he makes his way down the road to his car, he notices that he has the tide table in his hand. If it is a clue to this mystery, the possible perpetrators have handed it over without a twitch of hesitation.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Early Monday Morning: Sneaker Wave

  Joan

  As the door closes, Joan smiles at Lou. “Worthy of Mamet, with a little bit of Coward mixed in. A comedy of errors, or is it manners? I never get those terms straight. We make quite a team.” She’s not surprised any more, Lou pulling through like that, her tears dried up, at least for a while.

  “Jackie helped too. But we need to sober her up. And find a place for Roger until tomorrow afternoon. And move the car back.” Lou begins to unknot the belt of her robe. “Methinks this little drama isn’t over yet.”

  “Any coffee?” Roger, leaning against the doorframe, looks even worse than ever, hanks of long graying hair escaping the rubber band and snaking across his lined cheeks. Joan starts the pot as he takes off his jacket again and follows her into the kitchen. So far, Roger’s arriving a day early is the only hitch. Joan’s annoyed. If he knew about the plan, why is he here to upset it? “Tomorrow’s going to be tough. Did you hear us talking?”

  “I want to go around the point with you.”

  Lou is tucking her pajama top into a pair of old lady jean, and Joan hears her murmur, “Shit,” a good word, Joan realizes for a lot of situations, even when Jackie isn’t around. “I can’t think how, Roger. Madge was very clear. You are to be left out of this.”

  Roger takes the cup of coffee and stands in front of the cold fireplace. “I should never have allowed her to come here, involve you.”

  Joan kneels at Roger’s feet, wads up some newspaper for the fire, piles kindling on it, strikes a match, watches as the flames take hold. “So why did you?” She knows the answer.

  “For the same reason you three have agreed to go along with her plan. I owe it to her. She saved my life.”

  He has his own story to tell, apparently. Did Madge plan this, too? This unwritten tale? Joan places two small split logs on the fire and stands up. “Let’s talk.” Lou is already curled on the couch, waiting.

  Roger takes Joan’s usual spot on the pillow on the floor and for a moment, his hair falls loose as he pulls off the band and combs it with his fingers. He looks like Gabriel the Archangel, the glow from the fire behind him a golden halo. Good looking in a gritty sort of way, Joan decides, as if angels sometimes need baths.

  His hair recaptured, Roger sips on his coffee. “I was a heroin addict when I met her. She gave me a reason to stop using. She went through a mont
h of hell with me, brought me food, listened when I raved, locked the bedroom door and stood with her back to it when I tried to break it down. I walked out a shaky but new person, and she asked me to live with her, help her manage the details in her life so that she could write. She also asked me to be her lover. I agreed to everything. But she didn’t ask me to help her die.”

  “You know why, of course. So why did you come here now, instead of tomorrow or maybe never?” Lou’s voice is a tense, a non-Lou growl. Fucking up the plan, Joan imagines her thinking. Jackie would have said it out loud.

  Roger puts his coffee down, the cup rattling under the tremor of his fingers. “I have to be there when she is found. I have to finish this, say goodbye.” His words escape between small heaving sobs.

  Now what? Lou signals with her eyebrows and Joan shakes her head. The flames have become waning yellow darts, and Roger is no longer an angel. “Forget the car for now. We need to get some sleep. Maybe it will come to us, what to do.” Joan is so exhausted she cannot force herself to think about the final step in the plan, the wading into freezing ocean swells, approaching the great stones, the looking for Madge among them. She only wants to close her eyes for a bit. She lays her head back against the chair. Then, except for the shower running in the bathroom, the house is silent.

  The fire is completely out when she awakes, the dark sky outside the window paling into gray. Sometime while she was asleep, she has realized that Roger is a stranger to the sheriff; that, in fact, Roger looks like a stranger to anyone who sees him the first time, the long hair, the knit cap, the old wool coat.

  She pulls herself out of the chair, finds him in her bed, eyes open, unfocused. “I can smell her,” he murmurs.

  “Strawberry. I know.” She touches his shoulder. “Roger. Listen. Did anyone see you when you brought Madge here to help her set things up, the notes and stuff?”

  Roger turns toward her, thinks. “She had me drive her car. It was dark when we got here, and she asked me to leave early in the morning, in case one of you arrived unexpectedly. She said she didn’t want to worry you by having me around. I went along with it. I pretended I didn’t know what she was going to do.” He blinks, about to fall apart again.

  “Does anyone else around here know you, some other time you came with Madge to this place?”

  “We came here so that Madge could write. We only met one or two of the summer people. August folks. No, no one knows me.” He pulls up the quilt, rolls toward the wall.

  Joan yanks the quilt back, takes his startled face in her hands. “Good. Get some clothes on. We haven’t much time.” Then she says the same thing to Jackie and Lou in the next room, neither of them asleep. “What did I miss?” Jackie asks, feeling for her robe.

  * * *

  When the three women approach the beach though the dunes two hours later, the sky is white, and the sand stretches out in a smooth wet mat almost to the edge of the point. Lucius stands below them, as do two men carrying loops of ropes on their arms. Larry and Steve, volunteer firemen, Lucius explains. They demonstrate how the rope will work, how each of them will grasp it with one hand, balance with the other, a line that reminds Joan of pre-schoolers walking in tandem. She whispers that Lou should stay behind Jackie, to make sure she’s hanging on, her hands, you know. Joan will stick close to Lucius.

  Neither of them says anything about the mussel-gatherer in the yellow slicker and rain hat in front of them, an empty bag flung over his shoulder. If Lucius notices, Joan will say that they’ve seen him crossing the dunes in years past, from the deck of the beach house. He’s a regular; probably taking more than the limit of mussels every time he ventures into the cove and selling them at the fish store in town. Madge figures that he’s so desperate-looking people let him get away with it, like transients and Dumpster divers in the city.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Early Monday Morning: Spring Tide

  Lou

  Lou wraps a hand around a knot and pulls to test her grip. Jackie does the same, and Lou can see that her fingers manage to curl around the rope. As they move forward, the cliffs in front of them appear to be growing out of the receding surf. Lou wonders if anyone else has noticed the hazy figure stepping into the rockbound ocean edge. At that moment, the waves splash against his body and he uses a walking stick to keep himself upright. She glances back at Larry sloshing behind her. When she looks up again, the man is gone, and Lucius is pointing at the black rock behind which the man has disappeared, and Joan is talking and gesturing, the noise of the waves drowning out her words.

  Lucius stops and calls back over his shoulder, “Are you guys sure?” Lou is sure. Then you must do it, Madge whispers somewhere close. Ahead, Jackie flexes her gripping fingers. Even in the dawn’s light, her knobby knuckles show themselves below her cuffs. “It’s okay,” Jackie says. The crisp air seems to revive her and she grins. “This reminds me of the time I climbed Mt. Hood, only it’s water instead of snow, and flat instead of up, and I was young instead of old. Let’s go.”

  “Shit,” she says steps later, shaking a foot as icy water flows into her Nikes.

  Behind Lou, Larry laughs.

  Five minutes later, Lou leans into the face of the rock wall, the balancing hand reaching for holds, the other attached to the bobbing rope, her feet senseless. She slides into a hole slippery with anemones and bangs a shin into a sharp mound covered with seaweed. Her hand stings as she grabs at clusters of tiny barnacles. She goes down on one knee and sees her pants leg darken with blood.

  “Almost around,” Lucius yells. Then a wall of water, a sleeper wave they’ll call it later, plows into Jackie and lays her flat against the pile of riprap at the base of the head. Lou goes down next to her, swallows salty brine as Larry pulls her, then Jackie, to their feet. Jackie has lost her wool cap, seems to be looking for it, is tugged over the last hump of rock before she can find it. She pulls the dripping hat over her hair as all six of them step onto soft wet sand.

  Lou coughs, seawater filling her mouth, and takes Jackie’s arm to steady herself as she spits. Her feet have sunk to the ankles in quicksand. Joan stands next to her, about to say something, when Lucius swears. Everyone turns to see what he’s seeing. Tangled in morning fog, huge dark rocks pierce through the mist. Birds guard their peaks, calling out warnings; the ocean, mysterious, smooth as glass, has slunk away leaving behind a glistening landscape. Just as Madge had described.

  “I’ll be damned. We’re on Venus.” Lucius still hasn’t moved.

  Maybe, Lou thinks, if Venus is dark gray, its sky, starless, deep blue, if its arched windows lead to an endless sea, if its inhabitants, feathered, anxious, speaking in shrieks, flit about, panic-stricken, as they poke in to the sand, or soar above the water looking, looking, never resting. Always in a hurry, seeking. The six intruders on their planet are not in a hurry. Lou feels the rope drag from her fingers, as it drops to the sand when Jackie and Joan let go of it. She can’t lift her eyes from the rocks lined up like mourners at the edge of the still, low tide. Somewhere…does she sees movement? Her heart quickens. Maybe…?

  “That guy’s found something. Let’s go.” Lucius has stopped winding up the rope, is pointing to a small black outcropping fifty yards down the beach.

  A man in a yellow slicker, Roger of course, stands at the base of the rock and beckons to them. They are close enough for Lou to see the mussels armoring the rock, protecting a secret. Lou begins to run, the others following, stumbling, wildly pushing their bodies towards it, shrieking with the birds.

  Then they drop to their knees, their tears an ocean of grief. Lou reaches out to Madge, wedged under an overhang, her beautiful face the wrong color, her eyes clouded with salt water, her smile a trail of wet sand flowing from her mouth. She wears a necklace and bracelet of green seaweed. The cuffs of her pants are caught round her knees, her stiff legs and arched feet make her seem as if she’s about to leap up and out of this hellhole. One hand clutches the bag strapped on her chest, her gift to them.r />
  “She came back here for mussels,” Lou moans. “For us.” She’s remembered her lines. Madge has reminded her.

  Lucius tells them to not touch her yet. Larry pulls a camera from his parka pocket, takes pictures, the flash offering details they have missed, the abraded forehead, torn nails, the tire iron piercing a shoulder of the rain jacket, its blunt end lodged against the ledge of rock above, pinning her body like a butterfly to the sand.

  “Okay,” he says.

  The women pull at the iron pressing into the rock, holding her down, and when it is loosened, they crawl under the ledge so that they can close her eyes, brush the sand from her face. Their fingers close her eyes, brush away grit from her lips. Lou unlatches the backpack and the mussels fall out onto the sand at her knees. She can’t bear to look at them as she begins to gather them up, pile them into the front of her parka. Joan takes Madge’s hand, rubs warmth into stiff fingers, Jackie closes the hole in the shoulder of the jacket and pulls the collar up to protect a cold neck, and Lou stands, mussels dripping through her jacket, and remembers Madge’s last warning.

  “Lucius, we need to get her back,” she forces her frozen lips to call. “The tide…” The water has come alive, the birds are skittering frantically away from the new waves, the roar of tide and gulls is rising.

  Lucius motions to the men; the young one, Steve, bends and picks her up. “Over my shoulder,” he says. The two men lift Madge and drape her across his back, and Lou sees him shudder as water drains down his spine. She tries to speak, but she cannot.