by Jane Haddam
Now, at the age of forty-two, Caroline was sitting at her desk in her office off the back hall of WPBP, trying to remember just what equipment she needed to bring home with her so she could take it to Westchester tomorrow to give her demonstration. She had written the list out last night and put it in her bag so she would have it when she needed it, but somehow it had gotten lost. She had reminded herself during coffee break this morning to come down to the office to check it all out as soon as she got a chance, but she never did get a chance. Coffee break had been difficult and lunch had been impossible. She had called her Overeaters Anonymous buddy, but she hadn’t been able to get through. Then the day had gone on getting worse and worse, and here she was.
Seven-fifteen. Sitting in the office. Trying to remember what to bring. What Caroline Hazzard did for a living was to produce a local public television show on home improvement for women. Once or twice a week, she gave lectures on home improvement for women to women’s groups. The lectures were always project-specific. How to design an addition. How to build a staircase. How to replace a floor that had rotted from mildew and humidity with one that wouldn’t rot anytime soon. Caroline liked solid, practical projects that women could go home and start work on immediately. She liked specific step-by-step information that could be followed to inevitable success. She liked to see women empowered. She wanted to help women build their self-esteem. It was just that there was something wrong in her, that was all. It was just her programming that was off. That was why she couldn’t ever seem to feel empowered or full of self-esteem herself.
There was a spray of crumbs across the corner of her desk—her sister Alyssa’s crumbs, from the Peak Freans Alyssa had been eating when she’d dropped in to visit half an hour before. It was Alyssa who had made Caroline think of Jacqueline Isherwood. Alyssa always did things like that. Alyssa was a saboteur.
They were all saboteurs.
Caroline leaned forward and pressed the intercom buzzer. A moment later the speaker crackled and Sandy’s voice said, “Yes? Miss Hazzard? Can I do something for you?”
Caroline felt momentarily guilty. Sandy must have a life of her own outside the office. It couldn’t be right for Caroline to make her stay late just because Caroline couldn’t make up her mind what to do next. What was Sandy doing down there, at her desk in the typing pool, with no work to do and nobody to talk to?
If there was something Sandy wanted, it was Sandy’s responsibility to ask for it. That was what they taught you in Group. It was a symptom of codependency to think you had an obligation to read other people’s minds.
“Sandy,” Caroline said. “Yes. I need some help. Could you come in here for a minute?”
“I’d be glad to.”
“Bring your copy of the Westchester itinerary with you if you have it. I seem to have misplaced mine for the moment.”
“I have it, Miss Hazzard. I’ll be right in.”
Was that a tongue-click of annoyance Caroline heard, coming at the end of Sandy’s sentence? Caroline didn’t like Sandy much. She didn’t think Sandy liked her either. If it had been up to Caroline, Sandy would have been replaced by another secretary practically immediately. It was not up to Caroline. Sandy was a member of the typing pool, assigned to assist Caroline when Caroline needed assistance. She was also WPBF’s star hire under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She wasn’t going anywhere soon.
The door to Caroline’s office opened and Sandy came in, walking a little heavily on the brace that propped up her withered right leg. The leg was withered because something awful had happened to it when Sandy was a child, but Caroline could never remember what. The leg seemed less important to Caroline than Sandy’s weight, which put Sandy definitely on the pudgy side. People like Sandy were beyond Caroline’s comprehension. She didn’t understand why they didn’t do something about themselves.
Sandy put a thick sheaf of papers down on the edge of Caroline’s desk and sat herself in the visitor’s chair, stretching her braced leg out along the carpet. She was wearing a new pink sweater and a chipped front tooth. It was just like her, Caroline thought, to spend her money on clothes instead of dentistry.
“Well,” Caroline said, forcibly stopping herself from saying “I’m sorry.” She said “I’m sorry” far too much. They were always pointing that out in Group. It was part of Sandy’s job to stay late, not a special favor Sandy was doing Caroline.
Sandy was looking at the sheaf of papers. “I’ve got the itinerary right here,” she said, “and a copy of your lecture and your materials list. Have you packed your materials yet?”
“No,” Caroline said.
“I can pack them for you if you like. You’re going to need the compass. That can be tricky. And you’re going to need the plane. I hope you don’t have trouble carrying it.”
Normally, of course, nobody would have trouble carrying a compass and a plane, but Caroline’s weren’t the ordinary kind. Specifically, they weren’t the ordinary size. Back when the show had started, Caroline had tried using standard-size equipment. It had made demonstrations difficult, on the air and off, because the equipment had been much too small for the audience to see properly. Now Caroline had her equipment custom-made. Her plane was the size, and the weight, of a brick. Her compass was a good two feet along the pivot. Her protractor could have been used as a fan in the Plaza Hotel’s Palm Court. Carting this stuff from one end of the mid-Atlantic states to the other was exhausting.
At the bottom of Sandy’s sheaf of papers was a copy of the poster Caroline took with her everywhere she was to speak. Sitting as she was, Caroline could look right down at the part in her own black hair.
She got out of her chair and went to the window. It wasn’t much of a window. It looked out on the low roof of the building next door, which was about to collapse from neglect.
“Sandy, did you see my sister come in, or leave? My sister Alyssa?”
“Yes, Miss Hazzard, of course I did. She stopped by on her way in and her way out.”
“Stopped by where?”
“At my desk, of course.”
“Alyssa stopped at your desk?”
“Yes, Miss Hazzard, she almost always does. If she has the time.”
“How extraordinary,” Caroline said, completely at sea. “Well, that’s very nice of her, I suppose. Did you talk about anything?”
“Not anything in particular. She had some cookies.”
“Alyssa always has cookies.”
“It must be nice to be able to eat like that and stay so thin,” Sandy said. “I gain weight if I so much as look at fudge.”
“It’s a kind of addiction,” Caroline said. “Alyssa is addicted to food. She can just kid herself that she’s not because she never gains weight.”
“Oh,” Sandy said.
“We’re an addiction-prone family. We all are. Even my brother James. Did Alyssa tell you what she’d come here to talk to me about?”
“No, of course not.”
“Did you know I used to have a stepmother? A woman named Jacqueline Isherwood.”
“Isherwood?”
“Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard.”
Sandy looked surprised. “The one who was murdered? Really? I’m very sorry. That must have been awful for you.”
Caroline shrugged. “I suppose so. A lot of things have been awful for me. I was very damaged as a child.”
“I should have made the connection,” Sandy said slowly. “I always knew your father was the psychologist. And it was in the papers at the time.”
“What was?”
“That she was married to the psychologist. That her husband—”
“Yes,” Caroline interrupted hastily. “Yes, I see. Well, it was four years ago, for goodness’ sake. There’s no reason it should have stuck in your mind. You weren’t working here then.”
“I was in high school then.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t expect someone in high school to pay much attention to the papers, or even to the six o’clock news. I was ju
st wondering, you know, about Alyssa. About anything she might have said.”
“I really don’t know what you mean, Miss Hazzard. Your sister didn’t say anything in particular. Hello. How are you. Would you like one of these cookies. That kind of thing.”
“She didn’t say anything about my stepmother?”
“No.”
“Or about my father?”
“Oh, no.”
“Or about me?”
“She asked me if you were in your office when she first arrived, Miss Hazzard. I’m afraid I don’t quite understand—”
“No, no,” Caroline said, talking too fast again. “Of course you don’t. Why should you? I’m sorry, Sandy. Would you pack up for me, the way you offered to? And as soon as that’s done, we can both go home. You’ll probably be glad to get away from this place.”
“I won’t mind.”
“No, no, of course you won’t. Of course you won’t. Here, let me get the compass for you, I had it to work on the ell plans with, I lost my regular one this morning—oh, damn.”
“Miss Hazzard?”
“Never mind.” Caroline had dropped the compass on the floor. She picked it up and put it back on her desk. She was trying to avoid looking at her shoe, which had a stripe of white leather across the toe. The stripe of white leather was now marred by a splotch of black, where the point of the oversize pencil the compass held had hit it.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Sandy asked. “Could I get you something? Maybe you want one of your tranquilizers?”
One of her tranquilizers? How did Sandy know she took more than one kind of tranquilizer? And who else knew? God, this was really awful. This was a disaster. She was losing it completely. What did they call it in Group? That feeling you get that you’re more stoned on your own than any dope could make you.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Caroline said. She edged around the side of her desk and then around the chair Sandy was sitting in, looking at the ceiling, looking at the floor, looking at nothing. “I just have to go to the bathroom again. I’ll be right back.”
“Are you sure there isn’t anything I can get you?”
“Of course I’m sure, Sandy. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be right back.”
Caroline was at the door to the hall now. She whirled around and plunged out into it, into the dark, and as she did, it occurred to her that it was a metaphor.
She was always plunging out into the dark.
She was always falling into the abyss.
It would be easy enough to blame it on Alyssa and Alyssa’s taste for the sensational, but Alyssa was just as much a victim as Caroline was.
They were both victims of Jacqueline Isherwood Hazzard.
And of their father.
There was a window open in the ladies’ room, blowing cold polluted air in from the streets of Philadelphia.
Caroline had never been as glad of the smell of carbon monoxide in her life.
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Copyright © 1994 by Orania Papazoglou
cover design by Heather Kern
ISBN 978-1-4532-9302-7
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