by Jill Kelly
Hansen went back to the lesser routines of small-town police work: robberies, burglaries, DUIs. He missed the work with Capriano, but he felt too old to move to a big city and start over. He worked his garden, went camping for a week with each of his girls. He felt old and tired much of the time. He thought about Ellie, missed her, missed the possibility of romance and companionship he had hoped would happen with her. But he didn’t try to see her. He let that go.
Sandy moved to Pittsburgh but couldn’t convince Ellie to do the same. Ellie liked her apartment, liked being close to campus. What’s more, she didn’t really associate it with Joel, since they had spent most of their time together in the city at his place. She missed having Sandy close but saw her on campus every work day and often spent Saturday night with her in the city.
For a while they had talked about Arlen and Joel and what they knew, but that grew too tiresome and too painful. Sandy seemed to focus solely on Arlen’s betrayal of their marriage vows of fidelity and that annoyed Ellie, who saw the issues as so much larger. She and Joel hadn’t agreed to be monogamous, and she didn’t care if he had been bisexual or had slept with the second man, as Hansen had suggested. That wasn’t the betrayal that she felt deep within her heart. No, it was the fact that she had been a pawn in their game. She had not been a person to them, and they had not considered her at all, except as an object to be used however they wanted.
Ellie was not naïve. You didn’t get a PhD in French literature without reading the Marquis de Sade. You didn’t live sixty years of a life with your eyes open to the world without knowing that people played sex games, innocent and not, without knowing that some women and some men liked being tied up and some liked being peed on. She also knew that women got raped all the time, maybe every five minutes, by soldiers and grocery delivery boys and frat brothers and even drunken husbands. But that was not what had happened to her.
She and Danny had done their share of timid sexual experimentation. They had tied each other up with silk scarves and had sex in an airplane bathroom and fondled each other in a restaurant one time. They had even swapped partners one drunken evening in Houston, but it had been more interesting to him than it had been to her and he had quickly agreed to not doing it again.
But none of this had prepared her for Joel’s indifference and his disrespect. These words were too timid for what he had done-and let be done-to her but she couldn’t find other words, not in speaking about it to the trauma counselor, not in writing about it in her journal. The counselor encouraged her to own her experience, to use “abused” and “tortured” and “betrayed,” but even those bigger words couldn’t explain the inner hand that squeezed her chest and belly and throat when she thought of Joel and now of Arlen, too. They couldn’t explain the tears that came unbidden in the produce aisle or, worse, in the classroom. They couldn’t explain the dreams that seemed unrelated in content but that carried a sense of dread and death.
So Ellie threw herself into school. She took on some additional responsibilities advising international students, planned a new course on African women’s literature, volunteered for committees that a year ago she would have avoided at any cost. She needed work to ground her. She volunteered at the local animal shelter, joined a choir. Anything to stay busy, to stay connected to others.
Twice she dreamed of Hansen and Paris. She wondered if she should call him but she, too, let that go. They had had chances to reconnect and it hadn’t happened. She couldn’t chase him down, not with how little she had to offer.
50
Ellie drove out to the ranch to see Al as the evening was falling. The late September heat still wafted off the pavement, but there was a small breeze, so she turned off the air-conditioner and opened her windows. The drive out to the ranch had become familiar. The ranch wasn’t home—she still couldn’t quite imagine that, but it was comfortable to drive down the long entrance and come up to the big low house with its veranda and to have Al and Beemus waiting for her in the porch swing.
She put her hand on her husband’s shoulder in greeting. He touched it with his own and then she sat down beside him in the rocker that he’d gotten her as a wedding gift.
“Gracie came to see me,” she said.
Al reached down to pet the dog. “I was afraid she might.”
“I wish you’d told me that. I wished you’d told me about her.”
“I’m sorry. I should have.”
“She tried to frighten me away.”
Al frowned. “What? Did she threaten you? She’s hot-tempered but I don’t think she’d hurt you.”
“Actually she implied that I should be afraid of you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never hurt her. I told you I don’t hit women or animals.” He got up and paced the porch, finally making a full circle of the house. When he came back, he was carrying two glasses of ice and lemonade. He handed her one, then sat down. “What else did she say?”
“To ask you what really happened to Annie.”
He sighed. “That seems fair enough.”
And so, as the dusk turned to dark and the day’s heat turned to desert chill, he told her the long story. How Annie had nearly died of grief when Stevie drowned. How in the months following, she had begged him to make another child with her, another son. How he had at first refused, too mired in his own sorrow to want to touch her. Then they had tried and tried and tried, and sex between them became not love, not pleasure, but desperation. Twice Annie thought she was pregnant. Twice it turned out not to be true. Early menopause had come instead of another child.
Al had the ranch, the cattle, the crops, the hired hands. This saved him. Annie teetered on the edge for several years, then found herself in a church-run grief support group. When someone died, she was there for the spouse, the parents, the children, the friends, the neighbors. She took an apartment in town so she could be on call 24/7. They lived mostly apart for a number of years.
“Then one day, my pastor came to see me. He was retired by then. Jack was a great guy. A dad to me after mine died. We sat and talked on this porch one long Sunday afternoon, and he told me I needed to start courting my wife again, that people who loved each other could overcome their difficulties.
“So Annie and I started seeing each other again—dating, I guess you’d say. We went to dinner and the movies and walked a lot together in town. I learned who she had become over those years and I guess I let her see who I was by then, too. There wasn’t any passion left and that made me sad. But bit by bit we got our affection back for each other. And that seemed good. So she moved back to the ranch and we had eight more good years together.”
Al tipped the lemonade glass on end. It was empty and Ellie said, “I’ll get us some water. Stay put.”
She took her time, used the bathroom, brushed through her hair. She wanted to give him space for all those memories.
She brought a shawl out and a blanket with her. Al didn’t want either one so she wrapped herself in both. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t cold, why men so often weren’t cold.
Al sat swinging and petting Beemus and for a moment Ellie wondered if he’d even seen her come back out. Finally she said, “So you and Annie had eight more good years before she died.”
Al gave a deep sigh. “Not exactly,” he said.
“We had eight more good years. At least they seemed good to me. One summer, disease went through the herd, but we had the money for the vet and we saved most of it. Annie was right there by me. She went on doing some kind of volunteer work in town, but she’d stopped focusing on that group of survivors. For a while she took some classes at the college. Then she started working with babies at the hospital and I hoped that would satisfy the grandbaby need that women get. I didn’t know how else to help her with that. Life went on. You know how it does.” Al looked over at Ellie for confirmation.
She nodded and smiled at him.
“At the end, Annie seemed really happy. We went to bed together more often, talk
ed of doing some traveling. The last day, she spent making pies. I heard her singing in the kitchen.” He looked out into the night. “The next day she was gone.”
“Heart attack?”
“Heart attack? No, she was gone, just gone. Took her clothes, that was all. Left me a Dear John letter. Blue envelope on the kitchen table. The stuff she always used for condolences. Said she’d met someone, wanted a chance at a different life.”
His words took Ellie by surprise. Not just the content, that Annie had run off with someone, but the sorrow in Al’s telling of it. There was no bitterness, no anger, just grief, deep grief. She reached out and touched his hand but he didn’t respond.
“At first, I was …” he said after a bit. “I don’t know what I was. Shocked, stunned, baffled. Angry. I felt so foolish. How could I not have seen this coming? It wasn’t me who was making her happy. It was some other guy. I tore up the place looking for clues.”
He got up in agitation at the memories and went out into the yard. Ellie watched the old dog hesitate: follow or stay? She felt the same way. In the end, she stayed where she was and, after a time, Al came back to her.
The rest of the story wasn’t long. Al had done what he could to find her, then hired a detective. The other man was an English teacher at the college, younger than Annie by fifteen years. They had gone to San Francisco. Al flew out and met with Annie but the meeting hadn’t gone well.
“She was in love, she said.” Al’s voice was steady in the darkness but Ellie could hear an old bitterness. “Through with the ranch and the winters and the dust. She wanted to be a city person. Go to museums and plays.”
Ellie felt a wave of sympathy for this other woman, a wave that touched on her own doubt.
Al went on. “I couldn’t blame her. I couldn’t offer her that. I’m a rancher, born and bred to it. She gave me her rings back, and I told her she was free. Then I came home.”
Ellie waited to see if he would say more, but he just went on rubbing Beemus behind the ears and the only sound was the dog groaning in pleasure.
“Did you see her again?” she asked after a bit.
“Oh, yeah. We divorced that next year, but the teacher wouldn’t marry her. Didn’t believe in it. Apparently didn’t believe in faithfulness either. She came back to Farmington for a while, lived in town with Gracie. We saw each other some but she didn’t seem to want what I had to offer and I didn’t want a reluctant wife.” He stood up and stretched and this time Beemus got up with him. The old dog tottered down the steps and then around the corner. Al moved over to the stairs to wait for him.
Ellie was tempted to go to Al, to console him. It was a painful story. But there had to be more to the story, to Gracie’s words. She moved over to the porch swing. “Come sit here with me, Al. Tell me the rest. I need to know why Gracie felt she had to warn me about you.”
51
Oscar was sitting on Ellie’s chest when she woke up. The mid-August Pennsylvania sky was heavy with white-gray humidity, the summer fog of heat and wretchedness. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly eight-thirty. No wonder Oscar was all over her. He was hungry. And what happened to the alarm that chimed promptly at seven each morning? she wondered. She felt groggy from too long in bed.
She let Nellie in through the front door, fed both cats, then used the bathroom. If she hurried, there’d be time for tea and breakfast before she headed off for her Saturday drawing class. She made the tea, some peanut butter toast, and a dish of yogurt and banana. The edginess of being late and the residual sluggishness from the half-Valium she still took each night battled for her wits. The tea helped. So did the food. Her head began to clear.
She pulled on the old black cotton slacks and sweatshirt she used for the studio, got the fishing tackle box full of pastels out of the closet, and went out to her car. She saw that there was a sheet of paper face down on the windshield. Her heart leapt for a second. Had Hansen left her a note? But no, he’d have come to the door if he’d wanted to see her. She pulled the paper off and saw that it was a circular for an end-of-summer plant sale at the grocery store two blocks over. She put it in her car and headed off.
The drawing was something new for her. Even with months gone by now since Arlen’s death, she felt the same driving need to stay busy, busy with her hands, busy with her mind. And slowly it was working. She and Sandy seldom talked about Arlen or Joel or anything that had happened. It began to seem another lifetime. She still had dreams, but they had faded in intensity, and every once in a while, she didn’t think about any of it for a whole day.
She stayed two hours at the drawing studio, then left the class early. None of the sketches she’d done pleased her or engaged her. The music was too raucous, too energetic. It incited her restlessness rather than distracting her. She didn’t make her apologies to the instructor as she left, just nodded at him after she’d cleaned up her workspace and gathered her things. She stopped at the grocery store on her way back. The sun had come out and the plant sale was in full swing. She added a big pot with tiny maroon mums to her cart.
Fall was coming on early, and the big trees on her street were all starting to turn. The first sprays of yellow and russet softened the old elms and she felt inspired to get her camera out when she got home. She could take the print with her the next week to class. Maybe using that subject would take her deeper into the drawing.
She went in and put the ice cream away, then went back down to the car and wrestled the pot up the stairs, stopping every two or three steps to set it down. It must have weighed thirty pounds and was awkward to grasp. She cursed herself for not buying two smaller pots. But when it was in place on her little landing, it looked so cheerful, she was glad she’d gone to the trouble.
Winded and sweaty from the effort, she stripped her clothes off in the central hallway and got into the shower. She let the water run on her head and shoulders a long time, then, still drying off, she went into the bedroom. As she rummaged for something to put on, her eye caught something bright in the mirror on the closet door. She felt her breath catch in her throat.
There, dangling from the bedposts, were four braided gold cords.
52
This is Detective Hansen. Leave a message.”
It was the sixth time Ellie had called and she hung up when she heard his voice. There was nothing to say that she hadn’t already said. If he was getting his messages, then he knew what was going on and he wasn’t calling her back. That seemed unlikely. Surely he would call her back. But what kind of detective didn’t get his phone messages?
Ellie’d been on the road for two hours now. During the first moments of terror, when she’d believed the second man might be in her apartment, she’d felt paralyzed. It had been all she could do to pull on her clothes to make herself less vulnerable. Then she’d screwed up her courage and gone downstairs to find her landlord. Taylor was in his living room, just off the front porch. She could see the football game on TV when he came to the door.
She didn’t say much, said she thought an intruder had come into her place and might still be there. Taylor took the look on her face seriously. He disappeared briefly and then he came back with a baseball bat and preceded her up the stairs. There was really no place to hide on the first floor—the rooms all opened out onto the central landing and only the bathroom and bedroom had doors on them. The bedroom had the only closet big enough to hide in and he certainly wasn’t there. Ellie stayed below while Taylor went up into the third floor, but he found nothing. The rooms there had no closets and no one was lurking in the funky second bathroom where she kept the litter box.
“I didn’t find any damage or any sign that someone’s broken in or gone out one of the attic windows,” he said as he came back down. “Is anything missing?”
“I’m not sure,” said Ellie. “I was mostly afraid he was here.”
“Maybe we should call the police. I can do that if you like.”
“No, I’ll call them from my friend Sandy’s hous
e. I mostly just want to get out of here. It feels kind of creepy here.”
The younger man shrugged. “Okay, well, I’m just downstairs if you need me.” And he took his bat and went out the door.
Ellie locked the door behind him. She didn’t let her mind go to implications. She just got busy. She brought down two roller bags from the attic and packed as quickly as she could. Then she put the cats in their carriers, gathered up their food and litter and a spare litter box, and put it all in the car. She didn’t bother to lock the door on her way out.
Sandy wasn’t home and, in a way, it was a relief. She couldn’t count on Sandy to be an ally at this moment. Her own grief and loss stood between them. She let herself in with the key Sandy had given her to the new condo, and she carried in the cats and the food and the litter and left a note saying that she just had to get away and would let Sandy know where she was in a day or two.
Then she got in the car and headed to Gettysburg, to Hansen. It was the only safe place she could think of.
It was almost six and getting dark when she pulled up in front of the brick building that housed the Gettysburg police. There were two police cars out in front and lights on, but no one on the street. Hansen had not called her back.
She locked the car and got out. She was stiff from the hours of sitting hunched over the wheel, watching her rearview mirror to see if she was being followed. She had stopped only once-at a rest area to get a cola and a chocolate bar from a machine. She’d needed the sugar and caffeine to stay sharp. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
She hadn’t been to the station before. The year before, the detectives had talked to her at the hotel, at the hospital, at the B&B. There had been no reason for her to come here. She pushed the glass door open and stepped up to the counter. The officer on duty was black and wore his belt low beneath a ponderous gut. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”
