Wildwood

by Drusilla Campbell

  “You should have seen the place when we went in. It was like something in a Hitchcock movie. It hadn’t been cleaned in years and inside there were cardboard boxes everywhere all filled with old sheet music and newspapers and magazines. The only clean room in the whole place was the boy’s. Billy’s. Remember him? Sort of weird, maybe retarded? The old lady kept his room like it was before he died.” Gail took a mouthful of curry and kept talking. “There was his pitiful little room with this blue chenille bedspread and a shelf with his little metal cars all lined up like gridlock and no dust on them anywhere. She’d even left his calendar on the wall. I walked in that room and there was Joe DiMaggio staring down at me.”

  “I remember him,” Mindy said. “He died near here didn’t he? Down at the creek?”

  “DiMaggio died at Bluegang?”

  “Shut up, Teddy,” Mindy said.

  “Someone died at the creek?” Dan asked. “You never told me about this, Hannah.”

  Hannah shrugged her shoulders. “I guess it never came up.”

  Mario spooned a fresh helping from the rice bowl.

  Gail said, “That stuff’s got calories, you know.”

  Mario said, “Liz and Jeanne and Hannah and me were all in Mrs. English’s class when it happened.”

  “Not to mention your future wife,” Gail said. “I got the attendance prize that year.”

  “Billy was older’n us,” Mario said. He turned to the other men at the table. “You guys don’t know this story? Dan? Teddy?”

  They shook their heads.

  “There was this boy, like Gail said, he was retarded. About the same age as your Eddie, Dan. We all knew him.”

  “Creepy,” Gail said.

  “Do we have to talk about this?” Hannah asked.

  Dan said, “I want to hear the story.”

  Hannah looked at Liz and then quickly away.

  “I remember my dad and his brothers talking about it. Uncle Delio and Uncle Leonard were both on the police force.”

  “Back then,” Mindy said, “they were the police force.”

  “I wanted to be a cop too, so I’d hang around the dinner table and listen to their war stories . . .”

  Teddy laughed. “Cops in Rinconada with war stories?”

  “What happened was, this kid Billy Phillips apparently fell down the hill at Bluegang and hit his head on the boulders. Some boys found his body the next morning.”

  “Is this why you’re always after me about a new fence, Jeanne?” Teddy asked.

  Jeanne ate with determination, focused on rice and chicken and chutney, coconut, peanuts. She didn’t look like she was listening but she had to be.

  “You remember him, Hannah,” Mindy said. “From your old bedroom window, we could see right down into his backyard. One time we spied on him digging up the yard, making roads and bridges and stuff for his little cars. It was so incredibly peculiar the way she let her child tear up the yard like that. You must remember.”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Uncle Del said he must have had about two hundred of those Dinky toy cars.”

  “Some war story,” Teddy said.

  Dan laughed and walked back to the kitchen with the curry bowl in his hand.

  Mario raised his voice so he could be heard in the kitchen. “Lenny and Del didn’t think it was an accident.”

  “Murder?” Gail cried. “You never told me that!”

  Jeanne looked up at Liz again and this time there was a slight tilt to her mouth, the bud of a smile.

  Mario dropped his voice. Dan came to the kitchen door and listened, still holding the curry bowl. “There was one thing wrong with the accident theory. The kid had scratches on his neck and arms that looked like fingernails made them.”

  Jeanne refilled her wineglass.

  “I don’t get it,” Gail said.

  “Leonard was convinced there was a fight and the kid got pushed.”

  “What kind of fight?” Hannah’s voice was a thin soprano.

  “Well,” Mario leaned farther forward, “I heard this story. Like a rumor only more substantial, you know? A few months before, someone took out a complaint about Billy Phillips. Some girl said he came on to her.”

  “Gross,” Gail said.

  “Let me get this straight,” Teddy drawled. “There’s a retarded boy and he dies and it looks like murder—”

  “No,” Hannah said. “Not murder. An accident.”

  “All right, an accident. But a very suspicious one. And no one investigates?”

  “No evidence. Plus, there was only Del and Leonard . . .”

  “And back in those days, murder was unthinkable in Rinconada,” Mindy said.

  Hannah said. “It wasn’t murder.”

  Liz held her breath.

  “I mean they couldn’t prove it. It was an accident.”

  “I’m surprised you never told me this story, Hannah,” Dan said.

  She shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t remember it very well. It was a long time ago.”

  “It’s not the kind of thing you forget,” Gail said.

  “You’re wrong,” Mindy said. “It’s exactly the kind of thing you forget when you’re a kid. What a shock. I mean, you lived next door to him, Hannah. Knew him all your life. And we played down at Bluegang. Any one of us could have fallen and hit our head.”

  Had it been so simple? Were Liz’s nightmares and sleepless nights no more than a delayed response to an accident that could have happened to any one of them? She looked down the table at Hannah. Her eyes seemed lost in the shadows and she was rubbing the place near her ear she said hurt when she was tense. Across the table Jeanne sat straight in her chair, her right hand playing with the stem of her wineglass. She looked up once and glanced at Liz expressionlessly, then away. Liz’s throat tightened and she felt a pressure behind her nose and eyes that told her she could cry without much encouragement. Gerard would say such a strong reaction meant what had happened at Bluegang was important, not simple at all. But maybe he was wrong; maybe it was all just imagination or hormones. Oh, God, she thought. OhGodohGodohGod. For a while she had forgotten she was pregnant but now it was back, the awareness of life; she felt inhabited from toes to scalp. And this was worse than Bluegang, worse than seeing Billy Phillips dead and blaming herself.

  Mindy was saying, “In severe cases like at the clinic, the poor kids, it seems like their secrets always come back to haunt them. It’s karma.” Mindy grinned wickedly at Gail. “Bal told me that. She knows all about karma.”

  A second later, the mood at the table changed as if an east wind had come through the French doors and blown away the smell of Bluegang. Liz realized she had been holding her breath, exhaled, sat back and enjoyed Mindy’s description of a set of tarot cards she’d seen at a bookstore. Gail talked about a Ouija board experience and Liz made them laugh with one of Divina’s tall tales. Dan refilled his guests’ glasses while Hannah cleared the table and brought out plates of salad: designer greens with thin-sliced grapefruit and avocado.

  “I don’t understand karma,” she said when she sat down again. “I’m a volunteer in a place in San Jose called Resurrection House. It’s a foster home for children who’re born with drugs in their systems—”

  “Shall I open another bottle of wine, Hannah?” It wasn’t like Dan to interrupt.

  “There’s one baby, a girl named Angel.”

  Or like her to ignore him.

  “Angel has nothing, nothing at all in the world except me. I go there and I hold her and I talk to her and stroke her and I’m the closest thing she has to a mother. If she could have a home and a good mother—like me—she might have a chance but as it is . . . Did she do something to deserve this? In another lifetime? Is that karma?” Liz saw how she looked down the table from Mario to Mindy, to Gail but not at Dan.

  A furrow dug between his eyes.

  This is what they’re fighting about, Liz thought.

  “Let me help you clear, Hanny.” Liz pushed back from the table. “I
t’s my karmic burden.”

  Over dessert, a perfect flan afloat on raspberry sauce, Dan told a joke about a blind skydiver and his dog and Mario went on too long about the 49ers. AIDS was mentioned. There were stories about men they all knew who had been healthy ten or more years and maybe it would not be the pandemic they all feared. Liz felt Hannah watching her and knew she was thinking about her mysterious visit to the doctor. Tomorrow she would explain everything.

  Liz talked a little, listened mostly. Nothing new here. Nothing to guard against or prepare for, no one to impress. Her unease had been for nothing. Hormones or high school feelings reborn for an evening. Zombie feelings. Dead but not.

  After a second cup of coffee, she excused herself. “I promised Gerard I’d call before ten.”

  In the den, she leaned against the closed door, shut her eyes and expelled a long sigh before picking up the phone beside the couch. It had been a fine dinner but being social took it out of her. She missed Gerard. She missed his silence. She missed feeling like herself. She dialed through to Belize and let the phone ring. Signa, the housekeeper, answered.

  “Oh, Miss Liz, he be gone.”

  Liz’s stomach dropped in disappointment.

  “He tell me somebody try steal them stone figures out by Limpe Creek. Big meeting all day ‘bout how to protect ’em.”

  “Tell him I called, Signa.”

  “Sure t’ing.”

  “How’s everything going down there?”

  “Pretty good. You better come back here soon, though. We all full up for next month and that new Aga stove not workin’ right and Mister Gerard be saying all the time he’s not no hotel-keeper.”

  Liz smiled. She could hear him.

  “I’ll be back in a few days. Tell him I’ll phone again.”

  Liz hung up and for five minutes she sat without moving, staring at the dark geometric design of the carpet at her feet. The triangles of red and green and blue, the circles and squares and shapes Euclid never named.

  She missed him. So why couldn’t she just say yes, Gerard, I’ll marry you, I’ll be your wife?

  When he asked her to go with him to Belize, she had been reluctant because she didn’t trust him or his love. Now she trusted him but not herself and never mind that she had no intention of leaving him. Not ever. She imagined tending to him in his last illness, seeing to his funeral; there was something so sweet in that thought, tears came to her eyes. And if she went first? Gerard would do the same for her. So why couldn’t she marry him?

  She walked to the window and opened the wooden blinds. In the side yard Hannah and Dan had planted oranges and lemons in three rows of four each. Their drought-bedraggled shapes were etched sadly against the night sky. She rested her hands on her stomach and thought of Gerard dead and of the baby she carried. The den door opened and Teddy looked in.

  “I’ve been sent to bring you back for champagne.” There were splotches of red on his cheekbones. Liz stood. “I’ll be along. Give me a moment.”

  “Do I see a tear?” He shut the door and stepped across the room to her. “Not bad news, I hope.”

  “Nothing I want to share.”

  He smiled and she saw the handsome young man Jeanne had introduced at a sorority dance. She repented a little of her ill will toward him. The wall above the glass-fronted Craftsman bookcase behind him was covered with framed photographs of family and friends. She pointed at one. “There’s you and Jeanne at your wedding.”

  He turned, slipped his glasses down on his nose and peered over them.

  “I liked your hair long, Teddy. Why don’t you grow a ponytail?”

  He struck a dignified pose. “Don’t forget I’m a renowned educator. I’d lose my credibility with everyone but you.” He put a finger to her lips and traced their outline. “Jeanne was an elegant bride. Hannah was Earth Mother. And you had the sexiest mouth I’d ever seen. Still do.” He wet the fingertip with his tongue and slipped it between her lips and into her mouth.

  She stepped back. “Don’t be gross.”

  “You’re the only real woman in this crowd.”

  This made her laugh. “Spare me the clichés, Teddy.” She was embarrassed and furious. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  “I like to think about you down there in the jungle humping your Frenchman. You’d be surprised the effect that thought can have on a man who lives with a woman like Jeanne.”

  She slapped him. “You’re a creep, Teddy. I’ve guessed it for years, but tonight you hit a new low.”

  He touched his cheek, smiling slightly. “Girls are such simple loyal creatures.”

  “And you, Teddy, are just plain simple.”

  “I wish I’d seen his face,” Hannah said later when the guests had gone and they had finished with the cleanup.

  “It was a blank, of course. A gorgeous nothing. He probably didn’t even hear what I said, he was trying so hard to think of a witty remark to sling back at me.” Liz smoothed the dish towel across the handle on the oven door to dry. Over the grind of the garbage disposal she asked, “Do you think Jeanne loves him?”

  “A marriage is a strange and wondrous thing, believe me. And the longer it lasts, the stranger it gets. I don’t think Teddy could survive without her. And I think she likes that. Needs it. Makes her feel powerful.”

  “They’ve both got Ph.D.s, for godsake.”

  “Yeah, but Jeanne’s the brains of that family. Not to mention the energy.”

  “If I were her, I’d get out while I was young enough to make a new life.”

  “You don’t know, Liz, you’re not married.”

  “Gerard’s not a tree. Does that mean he doesn’t know anything about them?”

  “For some people, being discontented becomes so familiar, they don’t want to take a chance on something worse. Plus, divorce is messy and public and our Jeanne likes to keep things orderly and private.”

  “Are you and Dan okay?”

  Hannah looked surprised. “Of course. What made you ask that?”

  “I just thought . . . I felt something. An atmosphere between you.”

  “You and your imagination. We’re fine.”

  Liz had asked the question without expecting an honest answer. If there was to be any truth-telling, it would have to come in Hannah’s own time and at the demand of her own need. Not Liz’s.

  So why am I here? Why didn’t I just stay in Florida?

  They sat opposite each other in the breakfast nook. Hannah poured the last of the Fumé Blanc and drank her glass quickly. She traced the delicate crystal rim with her index finger. The grandfather clock in the front hall chimed eleven-thirty, and from her bed in the kitchen corner Cherokee woofed softly in her sleep.

  “Sometimes I wish I still smoked,” Hannah said.

  “God, me too.”

  “Maybe I’ll start again when I’m ninety.”

  “Like one of those decadent old French courtesans.”

  Hannah nodded. “Like Colette. I’ll stay in bed all day, drink champagne and smoke.”

  “That’d actually make old age something to look forward to, I guess.”

  In the paddock the waifs and strays barked at something and Cherokee lifted her head and ears and then went back to sleep.

  Hannah said, “Mario tells a good story.”

  “When Gail lets him.”

  They looked at each other, grinned and said in unison, “Marriage is a strange and wondrous thing.”

  Hannah held her wineglass up to the light and turned it slowly. “I don’t remember scratching that boy.”

  “It makes sense though.”

  “I don’t like to think about that, about having his skin under my nails.” She examined her manicure.

  “I think tonight we could have told what happened,” Liz said, choosing her words carefully. “and no one at the table would have blamed us.”

  “You weren’t even there. It happened to me, remember?”

  “Jeanne and I were part of it. Part of leaving him.”
>
  Hannah shook her head as if to say that nothing counted but the doing and the deed.

  “You’ve never told me the whole story.” The wine was sour on Liz’s tongue. She got up and poured a glass of bottled water. “What did happen?”

  The dishwasher purred in the background, a wet velvety sound.

  “I don’t remember it all that clearly. There are gaps.” Hannah’s breathing broke into a shiver. “He wanted me to touch his penis.” She made a face. “He called it Mr. Pinky, can you believe that? And when I wouldn’t he grabbed my blouse, where I had it knotted.”

  Hannah held the wine bottle upside down over her mouth. Liz watched a half dozen drops fall on her tongue. She put the bottle down. “We were too young for bras so I felt his hands on my . . . skin . . . they were sweaty . . . and it was such a surprise and I was so scared . . . that’s when I think I must have scratched him.” Hannah spread her fingers wide and stared at them. “How long do you think it was there? A week?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. Would you be here right now if it didn’t matter?”

  “I don’t mean it doesn’t matter. I mean—” Liz grabbed Hannah’s hand and made a fist of it within her own. “I mean it was another world, and we were so innocent. I don’t think I’d ever heard of a boy attacking a girl.”

  “The thing is, I don’t remember scratching him. I suppose I had to though, to make him stop . . . what he was doing.”

  “He was fifteen.”

  “And strong, Liz, I remember how I couldn’t make him let go of my hand when he held it down to his . . . crotch.” Hannah looked at Liz intently, as if to make sure she understood that she had tried to wrest free of Billy Phillips.

  “Of course you couldn’t. My God, Hannah, you don’t have to convince me of that. Plus, you were terrified. That’s the whole point. You never had any choice but to do what you did.”

  I, on the other hand, knew it was wrong to do nothing. I let Jeanne bully me into silence. I was too afraid of my parents to speak up when I knew I should.

  “I wanted to tell my mother,” Hannah said. “But you know the way she was. And what Jeanne said about publicity, that it would ruin my dad, I believed her. Didn’t you believe her?”