The Best American Mystery Stories 2018

by Louise Penny

  She’d dared to speak sharply to the professor. She’d pushed away his hands and left him. Astonishing him, as she’d astonished herself, and now they were beginning anew.

  He’d brought back from a local bakery delicious flaky-buttery scones. Serving these to his visitor, with Lapsang tea in Wedgwood teapot and cups. Though she’d been stricken with nausea only a few hours before, Alyce felt now a wave of hunger powerful enough to make her tremble.

  “You do look pale, dear. I was noticing in our class the other day. You were very quiet while the others chattered so self-importantly. Is something troubling you? Or is it ‘Time’s wingèd chariot, hurrying near’?”

  An obscure reference, surely to a poem. But not a poem that Alyce knew.

  “But you’re too young, I think, to be troubled by the rapid passing of time as we others are . . .”

  At this Alyce laughed again, spilling tea from the dainty Wedgwood teacup. As if time passing wasn’t painful to her as an abscess. As if such rituals as tea mattered when a few hours ago she’d been crouched over a toilet, dry-heaving.

  “If there is something in your life that troubles you, I hope that you can confide in me, dear. I realize that at your age, so much is undecided, undefined. Recall what Paul Bowles said—‘Things don’t happen, it depends upon who comes along.’”

  Alyce had no idea who Paul Bowles was, but from the tone of Roland B___’s voice, she gathered that he was a visionary of some sort.

  How shaky Alyce was feeling, yet how elated, in the presence of this kindly man. The gleaming dome of a head, across which feathery strands of gray hair lay lightly. The pouched eyes, crinkling at their corners. The hopeful smile, exposing yellowed teeth. Alyce felt how brittle her composure, which could be broken by a tender word from this man, a caress.

  But what had he asked her? Hungrily she’d devoured an entire scone, and emptied her cup of Lapsang tea. Her hands were still trembling.

  “Well, dear. Perhaps in time you will confide in me, as your friend. From your poetry, I believe that I know you—inwardly. Please think of me as the ‘friend of your soul.’”

  On a mahogany table in the drawing room were manuscripts, drafts of poems, letters both handwritten and typed. On the floor, boxes of papers. Much of this was new since Alyce’s most recent visit.

  “I’ve had these boxes sent to me so that I can begin working on my archive here. D’you know what an archive is, dear?”

  Alyce thought so, yes. Only the estimable merited archives.

  “Virtually everything in a writer’s life. But I’ve only saved papers, documents, publications, letters—hundreds of letters. Out-of-print books, limited editions. I’ve delayed for years—never answered inquiries from Harvard, Yale, Columbia—as I’ve delayed making out a will. It’s damned difficult, you see, for those of us who fantasize that we will live forever, to think of ourselves as mortal, let alone posthumous . . . But if you could help me, dear, I think I could face the challenge.”

  “Of course, Professor. I can try.”

  Again she spoke without thinking. So yearning to please the elderly poet, so lonely, so desperate, she could barely contain herself in the presence of someone so seemingly kindly.

  “Please, I’ve told you—Roland. Professor is for les autres.”

  “Roland.” The name sounded unreal in Alyce’s voice, unconvincing.

  “Rol-land. Give it a French inflection, s’il vous plais.”

  “Rol-land.” Like an overgrown child, Alyce was blushing with embarrassment.

  “Well. That’s an improvement, at least. Merci!”

  Outside the drawing room windows, daylight was rapidly fading. In the chipped Wedgwood pot Lapsang tea cooled, forgotten. In a hearty mood Roland B___ poured whiskey into shot glasses for his visitor and himself and insisted that Alyce drink with him: “We have much to celebrate, my dear.”

  Soon a fever came into the poet’s face; he was laughing happily; by the end of the evening, when Alyce prepared to return to her residence, Roland B___’s words had begun to slur and his fine-creased skin was deeply flushed. It was touching to Alyce, how in her presence the poet seemed to warm, even to glow.

  Insisting, of course he would pay her. He would pay her very well. But she must tell no one else about their arrangement, none of Alyce’s classmates in the seminar, not anyone, for fear that les autres would misunderstand.

  Not wanting Alyce to leave. Please no! Not just yet.

  She had a curfew, Alyce tried to explain, laughing. All undergraduate women who lived in university residences had midnight curfews.

  Ridiculous! Alyce should move out of such a confining place to a place of her own. He would help her pay for it.

  9.

  How happy Alyce was, in the Poet’s House! It did not have the power to paralyze her here.

  That interlude of days nearing the winter solstice when Alyce arrived breathless and hopeful at the red-brick residence between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Bringing her schoolwork, anthologies and texts she had to read for courses, papers she had to write, her notebook in which she kept drafts of her poems, in the interstices of helping Roland B___ organize the archive.

  “My dear, we are making progress! I’m proud of us.”

  By the time Alyce arrived Roland B___ would have had a whiskey or two, a glass of wine or two, or three. Grateful to see her. Trying to maintain dignity. Kissing her hand, hands.

  Sometime between 8 and 9 p.m. they would eat a meal together, which Roland B___ ordered and paid for, delivered to the Poet’s House from one of a half-dozen restaurants in town. By the time the food arrived Roland would have had another whiskey, or begun another glass of wine, and Alyce would have left the work table to set the dining-room table with beautiful if chipped and cracked china she’d discovered in a sideboard, tarnished silverware, white linen napkins, cut-glass water goblets. Candlestick holders, candles. Their food was delivered in Styrofoam packages, transferred by Alyce to platters set in an oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit. The aroma of heating food made her mouth water, she’d never been so ravenous.

  Interludes of nausea were behind her now, mostly. Her center of gravity was settling in the region of her pelvis, closer to the ground.

  Five days a week Alyce came to the Poet’s House. Soon then six days a week. Seven. For always there was much to do that was thrilling to do, and in addition Roland B___ paid her generously as he’d promised, often in twenty-dollar bills, hastily, scarcely troubling to count out the bills, as if paying were embarrassing to him, as being paid was embarrassing to Alyce. “You need not report this income, you know, dear,” Roland B___ said quietly, “as I shall not. What passes between us, IRS shall not know.”

  On Roland B___’s sturdy old Remington typewriter Alyce typed ribbon copies of poems as well as numerous drafts of poems, personal letters of Roland B___ which she was entrusted with critiquing and even correcting.

  Telling herself, I am doing this for him, he is my friend. The more I do for him, the more he is my friend.

  Only when she left the overheated Poet’s House to return across the snow-swept campus to her residence a quarter mile away did reality sweep in upon Alyce, jarring as a clanging bell.

  What was happening to her! What must she do.

  Out of compulsion checking her underwear, her nightgown. Bedclothes. Hardly recalling what it was she sought, smears of blood, barely recalling it was menstrual blood, which had begun to seem to her remote like an imperfectly recollected dream.

  Yes, but: the swell of her belly. Definitely. She could feel.

  No longer losing weight out of anxiety and nausea but gaining weight. Five pounds, six . . . Eight pounds.

  Roland B___ remarked how beautiful Alyce was. How smooth her skin, how shining her eyes . . . She wasn’t so thin as she’d been. Definitely she was looking healthier.

  “You see, you are my Alice. Come into my life when Alice was required, like magic.”

  Alyce laughed, embarrassed. Did Roland B___ really mean such thin
gs, or was he being fanciful? Poetic?

  She wondered if in his vanity the elderly poet might have thought that his undergraduate assistant was falling in love with him.

  It was becoming ever more difficult for Alyce to politely decline Roland B___’s offers of drinks. Possibly she would take a few sips of wine. But whiskey—no.

  Pointing out, primly, “You know, Professor—I’m underage.”

  Roland B___ protested, “My dear, this is a private residence. No one can intrude here. The state has no authority here. My domicile.” Pausing, slyly considering: “Our domicile. Our Wonderland. Without a warrant no officer of the state can cross the threshold and certainly no officer of the state can arrest me.”

  Soon too wanting Alyce to stay the night.

  And what were you thinking, Alyce? That it would just—go away?

  As one might be fascinated by a lump in a breast, a thickening tumor. A kind of paralysis. Sleeping heavily, her limbs mired in something soft like mud. Warm mud.

  Recalling overhearing her mother and an aunt speaking in lowered voices of a friend’s daughter, who’d had a six-months miscarriage when no one, including (allegedly) the girl, had even known that she was pregnant. A stocky girl, wearing loose-fitting shirts, overalls, not a very attractive girl (so it was said, an important detail), utterly astonished the family had been, disbelieving, scandalized. It had seemed improbable at the time that the girl hadn’t seemed to know she was pregnant, yet now Alyce understood. It was very easy not to think about it. Anxiety about the future was replaced by a sudden need for a nap.

  A swoon of ignorance, the most refreshing of deep sleeps.

  That somehow it would go away. Cease to exist.

  And you would wake to discover that it was all a bad dream—like Alice waking from her nightmare.

  “My dear, unavoidably I must be away for the rest of the afternoon. But I will hurry back, I promise!”

  It was flattering to Alyce that Roland sometimes left the Poet’s House while she remained behind. The poet had come to trust his assistant, deferring to her out of respect for her good judgment or out of a cavalier wish not to be bothered with details. Yes, yes!—those were letters from T. S. Eliot, who was plain “Tom Eliot” to anyone who knew him, indeed yes, as Robert Lowell was “Cal,” Alyce was correct, such precious archival material needed to be kept in plastic binders, but—where would you get such binders? The university bookstore? Huge ghastly place with racks of insipid bestsellers, dour textbooks, T-shirts and sweatshirts, couldn’t bring himself to step inside a second time . . .

  Of course Alyce would acquire the binders. Far more capably than Roland B___, Alyce did such mundane tasks.

  Mesmerizing to Alyce, to lose herself in hours of close, exacting reading, deciphering handwritten letters to Roland B___, faded carbon copies of Roland B___’s letters, handwritten manuscripts by the poet himself, annotated galleys. Hundreds of letters from individuals whose names were known and from individuals whose names were unknown. In the 1930s Roland B___ had begun publishing verse; by 1954 Roland B___ had become poetry editor of the Nation and would correspond with dozens of poet-friends. You could see—Alyce could see—how the young ambitious poet had made his way, not unerringly but erratically, haphazardly, sending poems to whoever would receive them and offer comment or publication, grateful for any attention, encouragement, acceptance from any editor, like one who is climbing a wall of sheer rock, grasping at slippery surfaces.

  Often Alyce brought letters to the window, to read carefully. Small crabbed handwriting, faded typewriter ink. A letter from John Crowe Ransom, editor of Kenyon Review, praising and accepting several poems. A short, scribbled letter from the poet Delmore Schwartz thanking Roland B___ for some favor. A letter from Elizabeth Bishop on hotel stationery, a sequence of dashed-off sentences, rueful complaints about “Cal”—had to be Robert Lowell. In these letters there was an air of intimacy, intrigue, and gossip that fascinated Alyce, who had nothing like this in her life.

  Very easily she could fold up such letters. Some of them were paper-thin—blue airmail stationery. Slip them into her bookbag. Roland B___ would never know, for Roland B___ was a very careless custodian of what was his.

  Especially the poet’s early limited-edition publications, what Roland B___ called chapbooks, carelessly crammed together in boxes.

  One of these was Phantomwise and Other Poems, published in 1936, beautifully printed on stiff white paper, with a mother-of-pearl cover and, on the title page, Roland B___’s youthful grandiloquent signature.

  According to the copyright page, there’d been just fifty copies of this Phantomwise printed. In the box were three copies, each water-stained and torn.

  The epigraph was familiar to her:

  Still she haunts me, phantomwise.

  What was this: a line from Alice in Wonderland? Charles Dodgson looking back at the seven-year-old Alice, suffused with yearning.

  Leafing through the water-stained little book, which was just twenty pages. A half-dozen poems of Roland B___’s which Alyce had never seen before, and did not fully understand. Probably forgotten now by the poet himself.

  Quickly she returned the copy of Phantomwise to the box. Even if her eccentric employer never knew the book was missing, even if no one would ever care that it was missing, Alyce would not behave so dishonestly. She could not steal.

  It would be a betrayal of Roland B___’s tender regard for her. Her regard for him. Their mutual respect, which was unlike anything else in Alyce’s life.

  “Which of these do you prefer, Alyce?” The poet was revising poems originally published years ago, in 1953, in preparation for a Selected Poems; with the tactlessness of the young, Alyce said, “The older version. It’s much stronger.”

  “Really? The older version?”

  “Yes.”

  The poem was a clever imitation of a Donne sonnet. Alyce, who knew only a few poems of John Donne, knew this. The harsh rhythms, masculine accents. By adding lines Roland B___ had softened the poem.

  Her remark had surprised him. As she’d surprised him, yes and pleased him enormously, entering the Poet’s House with the little cracked opal ring on the smallest finger of her right hand.

  The look on Roland B___’s face! Like a candle, lighted.

  My dear. You have made me so happy.

  But now he’d gone away, not so happy.

  In the kitchen she heard him clattering about. Seeking a glass.

  Often Alyce washed dishes after their meals. Liking the feel of hot soapy water. If she had not, the elderly poet would have left dirtied dishes in the sink, in a pool of scummy water, awaiting the cleaning woman on Wednesday mornings. He seemed incapable of washing even teacups and coffee mugs. Whiskey glasses, wineglasses accumulated, out of an impressive store in the Poet’s House cupboards, until Alyce washed them, and left them sparkling on the shelves.

  Of course, Roland B___ was getting a drink now. To soothe his jarred nerves.

  Returning at last, whiskey in hand, to Alyce’s relief no whiskey for her.

  But he also had a gift for her—“In gratitude for your astute insight, and your honesty, dear Alyce. A ‘collector’s item’—supposedly.”

  It was a copy of Phantomwise, the slender chapbook with the mother-of-pearl cover. Alyce felt her face burn as if she’d been exposed as a thief.

  But Roland B___’s face was crinkled in a wide smile, without irony.

  Holding the water-stained little book out to her, opened to the title page—For my dear Alyce, who brings the light of radiance into my life. With love, Roland.

  Alyce took the book from Roland B___’s fingers. Tears leaked from her eyes. It was not possible to keep from crying, Roland B___ was so kind.

  “Oh Alyce, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”

  Heard herself telling him, at last: she was pregnant.

  That word, blunt and shaming: pregnant.

  How long, how many weeks exactly, she didn’t know.

  Didn’t
want to know. Had not allowed herself to know.

  Stammering, sobbing. Like a child. A broken girl. Her composure shattered as backbone might be shattered. Roland B___ tried to comfort her.

  Later Alyce would realize that the elderly poet had not been so very surprised. Must have known, suspected—something . . .

  Of course, he was very kind to Alyce. Sitting beside her on a sofa, gripping her hands to still them. Letting her speak in a rush of words, and letting her fall silent, choked with emotion. Such kindness was terrible to her, obliterating. She could not recall when anyone had been so kind to her. So sympathetically listened to her.

  “My dear. My poor dear. This is not good news for you, is it?”

  No. Not good news. Alyce laughed, wiping her eyes.

  He was holding her. As an older relative might hold her.

  Assuring her he would help her. If she would allow him.

  In his arms Alyce wept. Heaving sobs, graceless. Her pride had vanished. She was exposed, helpless. The posture she’d so rigorously maintained in her classes, within the gaze of others, abandoned. Suddenly a pregnant creature, helpless.

  “Marry me, dear. Make me your husband. I will take care of you and your baby. It will be our baby.”

  Roland B___ spoke urgently, his words slurred from the whiskey.

  Alyce laughed, nervously. No, no! She could not.

  “I know you don’t love me—yet. I can love enough for both of us. You know, you are my Alice.”

  Alyce wanted to push away. Alyce wanted to snatch up her dignity, what remained of her dignity, and flee the Poet’s House. Yet there was Alyce, weakly huddled in the poet’s arms. As if shielded from a strong wind. Scarcely recalling the man’s name. Yet her mind was working rapidly. He will help me. He has saved me.

  In the four-poster bed, in the dim-lit bedroom. An antique bed with a hard mattress that creaked beneath their weight. It was too absurd, Alyce thought. This was not happening! The elderly man breathing loudly, panting as if he’d climbed a flight of stairs. Tenderly holding her, kissing her mouth, her throat. Feathery-light kisses that became by quick degrees harder, sucking kisses that took her breath away.