by Leah Stewart
In the living room I sit on the couch, my bag in my lap. The weight of it reminds me of the videotape I borrowed from Allison’s apartment. I pull it out. Allison 5, May 9, 1992.
I pop the tape in the VCR and rewind it to the beginning. When I press play, the TV fills with static, and then there’s a click and a face appears, filling up the screen, so close I can tell only that the person is white. Then the face pulls back, features emerging. It’s Allison. She is biting her lip, concentrating, while the camera moves up and down. Then she disappears to the side. The camera moves again, fitting a tall stool into the frame, and she is back. She walks backward, leans over to pick up a guitar, and perches herself on the stool.
Allison lifts her head and smiles at the camera. “May ninth, nineteen ninety-two,” she says. “I’m Allison Avery.” Her voice curls around the words, as though her name were part of the song. “Allison,” she says again, her lips slowly shaping each syllable. “Avery.” She laughs, a deep-throated, husky laugh, and then she begins to play. She lowers her head over the guitar, cradled against her stomach, her hair falling forward to hide half her face. Her body moves to the rhythm of the song, and she is beautiful. Then she begins to sing, and the room is full of that voice. I think of Angela playing the cassette for me and wonder why she didn’t choose a video. Maybe she thought it would be too much, that the sight of Allison, her chest rising and falling with breath, her fingers flickering over the guitar strings, would shake her apart.
This is the first time I’ve seen the girl alive. I can’t stop thinking of what awaits that lovely body, the way it will be broken and abandoned, emptied out.
Allison slips off the stool and walks toward the camera until her torso fills the frame. She bends down sideways, so that her face is visible, her long hair draped across her cheek, and then she says, “See you later.” The screen goes blank.
I stand up and go over to the television, rewind the tape a little and press pause as Allison’s tilted face fills the screen. She looks mischievous, as though she made this tape for someone who wanted her, someone she wanted to tease. A piece of her hair sticks to the corner of her mouth. Her lips curve in a half smile, the point of her tongue showing through her teeth. She is heavy-lidded, her lashes thick with mascara, her eyelids glittering with bronze shadow. It’s an expression that suggests more to come, mysteries to uncover.
It’s a face with secrets.
At the police station, I flip through the day’s reports, almost shivering in the air-conditioned chill. Here are the things that happen in a day in the city. A hit-and-run. Two burglaries. The murder of a woman whose boyfriend shot her, then himself, while her five-year-old watched. The boyfriend is still alive.
I walk down the hall in a daze, writing leads in my head. “Five-year-old Sergio Davis . . . Lucille Davis, 29 . . . Bullet to the temple . . .” I don’t even see Sergeant Morris until he speaks. “You heard?” he says.
“Yeah,” I say. I have no idea what he is talking about. I know it’s probably good. I flip open my notebook. “What happened?”
“A Mississippi state trooper found it abandoned off Highway Sixty-one.” He leans in close, almost whispering.
“You’re talking about the car,” I say. “The dead girl’s car.”
“What else?” he says. He tells me they found the girl’s missing shoe in the trunk of the car. Her purse was on the backseat. The wallet was gone, and her underwear was not in the car, which might mean the killer still has it. “Souvenir,” Morris says grimly.
I take a stab. “Any drugs or paraphernalia in the car?”
He looks surprised.
“Heroin?” I say.
Morris shakes his head. “Morphine. How did you . . .” He stiffens, looking past me down the hall. I don’t turn my head, just lower my notebook so that whoever is passing by won’t see it. “Lieutenant,” Morris says.
Lieutenant Nash passes us. He frowns, trying to place me. “Sergeant,” he says, and keeps walking. I’ll have to call him later to get confirmation and hope he doesn’t make the connection to Morris. Morris makes as if to go in the opposite direction. I touch his arm. He turns, a look of warning on his face. He almost looks angry. I hesitate, a drug question dying on my tongue. “What kind of shoe was it?” I ask.
He frowns and takes another step away from me. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“It could be useful,” I say, standing with my pen poised to write down his answer. He says, “If you say so.” I can see him telling his buddies about this later. “Only a woman,” he’ll say, and they’ll all laugh.
“What kind of shoe was it?” Bishop says. He snorts into his beer. “What the hell you ask that for?”
“That’s the point,” I say. “That’s what I’m saying.”
“She doesn’t know why she said it,” Evan says.
“What kind of shoe did you think it was?” Bishop says.
“A black sandal,” I say. “I was picturing it, this one shoe sitting there when they opened the trunk. I bet she pulled up her foot and unbuckled it and took it off to bang on the roof, for all the good it did her.”
Evan looks under the table. “You’re wearing black sandals,” he says.
“Don’t psychoanalyze me,” I say. “Half this town is wearing black sandals.”
“Not me,” says Bishop. “You, Evan?”
“Sneakers,” he says. “White.”
“Don’t forget I saw the body,” I say. “That’s probably how I knew. Because it was a sandal. He told me.”
“What color?” Bishop says.
“I didn’t ask.” I drain the rest of my beer. It’s flat, acrid. “Her toenails were pink, if you want to know.” In my head I see a foot, small, with toenails painted a shade called Innocence. I don’t know if I’m remembering that color or making it up, but I know that shade of nail polish exists—my mother put a bottle in my stocking last Christmas. It’s the color of Pepto-Bismol. I’ve never used it. Pink, the color of girls. Some women never stop being girls. I never wanted to be one in the first place.
“What else have you got?” Bishop asks.
“I’m running down a couple of leads,” I say. “I found some interesting stuff at her apartment.”
“Her apartment?” Bishop says. “How did you get in there?”
“Her friend Angela took me,” I say. “She seems to think we’re friends.”
“That’s a little weird,” Evan says.
“I guess,” I say. “She wanted someone to go with her.”
“Hanging out with her friends,” Bishop says. “It’s above and beyond the call.”
“What, you don’t spend time with the people you’re interviewing? When you’re trying to get something from them?”
“It’s different,” Bishop says. “What are you trying to get? It’s a stranger killing.”
“You don’t know that,” I say.
“I befriend people while I’m interviewing them,” Evan says. “It’s over when I walk out the door. I don’t call them up later and ask them to the movies.”
“She asked me,” I say. “And I learned something in that apartment.”
“Like what?” Bishop says.
“Yeah, what?” Evan repeats.
They’re both leaning in now, eager for the scoop. I realize I don’t want to tell them yet. This is still my story. “She stole,” I say. “She stole a sweater from her neighbor.”
Bishops snorts. “I don’t think that got her killed.” He leans back in his chair, losing interest. “What else did you learn? The girl’s shoe size?”
“Her taste in couches?” Evan says. “Whether she made her bed?”
“You,” I say, pointing at Evan, “dig through people’s trash.” To Bishop I say, “You hung around a trailer park peering in windows.”
“The suspect’s windows,” Evan says. “The suspect’s trash.”
Bishop says seriously, “It’s a stranger killing. What do you think you’re going to learn from the victim?”<
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“Why are you two turning on me?” I say. “You’re the ones who taught me everything I know. You’re the ones who showed me how to lie and cheat and steal.”
“I could teach you to shoot a gun,” Bishop says. “It’s not my fault if you blow off a man’s head.” He points his finger at me and pretends to shoot.
We go outside, and it’s only a moment before a sheen of sweat covers my skin. “Damn,” Bishop sighs. “I’m moving to Alaska.” He pulls his button-down shirt loose from his pants and fans his stomach with it.
“Send me a postcard when you get there,” I say. “I’m going home.” I pull my hair up into a ponytail and start walking back to the newspaper to get my car.
“Do you need a ride?” Evan calls after me. I shake my head and keep walking. Evan calls, “See you.”
When I pass a pay phone two blocks later, I stop and dial into my voice mail. Three messages from Peter. I hunt in my pocket for more change and call him back. “Olivia,” he says in a rush, when I’m only halfway through identifying myself. “My parents aren’t here. Can you come?”
I park down the street and walk up to the Averys’ house. Peter said he didn’t want the neighbors to see my car in the driveway. “I know they’re watching me,” he said. “I heard my mother talking to Mrs. McAndrews on the phone.” I’m not sure why I have to be a secret, but I oblige him. I have a strong feeling that there’s something he can tell me, and I want to know.
When Peter opens the door, cool air touches my skin. He is wearing a white T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and he smiles when he sees me. “Come in,” he says, and steps back inside. In silence, I trail behind him into the kitchen. “I just made coffee,” he says. “You want some?” I nod and he takes two matching blue mugs from the cabinet and fills them. All of his movements seem slow, precise, as though he’s drunk again and aware of how careful he has to be not to spill. I sit down at the kitchen table and he sets the mugs down in front of me. A few drops of liquid slosh out of one. “Shit,” he says under his breath, and turns slowly to the counter for a paper towel. I watch him lay the towel flat on the table and press his hand against it. When the brown stain has soaked into the paper, I look up at his face. He’s staring at his hand on the towel but he’s not seeing it.
I touch his hand with a finger, and he starts.
“Sit down,” I say. “I’ll get it.”
He eases into a chair. I move briskly, keeping my voice matter-of-fact while I ask him where the sugar is, opening and closing cabinets. I set everything on the table, pushing his mug toward him, dropping a spoon beside it, opening the carton of milk. The coffee is strong and bitter. “Good coffee,” I say, nodding at him over my mug.
“What?” he says. He hasn’t touched his.
“Good coffee,” I say again. “Thanks.”
Finally he picks up his spoon, adds sugar. “I’m glad you came,” he says.
“Well,” I say. I reach in my bag, fingering the metal rings of my notebook. “How are you?”
He meets my eyes and smiles. He actually looks grateful. “I’m okay,” he says. He lifts his mug.
He tells me that he’s been trying to keep busy. He hasn’t wanted to see his friends much, they’re nervous around him, he feels them watching him like he’s become someone different, someone unpredictable and strange. They’re afraid to laugh around him, afraid to talk about anything but Allison, and there’s only so many times, he says, that he can listen to them say they’re sorry. He tried going to work. Two women sat at one of his tables before he was finished clearing it, and he was awkward, trying to clear the dishes from the small table around them, their elbows and purses. As he walked away, he heard one of the women say, “I certainly hope the food is better than the service,” and rage flooded his body. He dropped the bus tray to the ground where it crashed, silencing the restaurant, and then he turned toward that woman with his fists clenched. He got out, “If you think . . .” between his teeth before the manager grabbed him and hustled him into the kitchen, where she told him in a low, sympathetic voice that it would be better if he took a few days off. He’s been watching a lot of television, he says. He’s been working in his greenhouse. Even his parents are hard to talk to now, caught up in their own anger and grief.
“I feel like a crazy person,” he says. “At least everyone treats me like a crazy person.”
“People are afraid of you, because something terrible has happened to you.” I stand up and go to the counter for the coffeepot. Leaning over him, I pour him another cup. For a moment I rest my hand on his shoulder.
“I guess you’ve been around a lot of people who’ve had something terrible happen to them,” he says.
“Yes. A lot of people.”
“And what about you?” he says. “Has anything terrible happened to you?”
“No,” I say. I don’t say that I wonder whether, when it does, I’ll feel it like he feels this. Maybe I’ll be one step removed, as though even my life were only another story I’m writing.
“You’re lucky,” he says. Then he takes the coffeepot from me and sets it on the table. “Do you want to see my greenhouse?” he asks. “It’s in the backyard. I’d like to show you.”
When he said “greenhouse,” I pictured a lush jungle of tropical flowers and creeping plants, so many that they would block the cloudy glass walls, making it impossible to see in. But here are only neat rows of tiny trees, and the setting sun shines right in through.
“This one,” he says, “is a maple grove. Forty years old.” At first they look to me like leafy sticks planted upright in a pot, but then my vision swings around and I can see that they have the grace of whole trees. For a moment I feel that I am the one who is wrong, out of proportion, monstrously large. “Aren’t you going to say how small they are? Some girls say”—his voice goes high in imitation—“ ‘Oh, how cute! They’re so tiny!’ ”
“I’m not a girl,” I say.
He looks confused. “What do you mean?”
“I’m twenty-five. That’s hardly a girl.”
He grins, that mischievous grin, and throws his arm around me. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll give you the tour.”
I try to ignore the weight of that arm on my shoulders. “This tree here is in the informal upright style,” he says.
“What does that mean?”
“See, bonsai trees are sculpted into one of several different shapes. I forced this one to grow this way,” he says. “Though it didn’t take a lot of forcing. It’s the most basic design because it follows the natural shape of the trunk.” He draws a line in the air with his hand. “You want to develop a single line of the trunk, from the roots to the top, and you want the branch structure to look natural. The branches start about a third of the way up. But right here, see? I screwed up. Because there’s not supposed to be any empty spaces.”
“I bet you bring a lot of girls here,” I tease. This is the first time I’ve seen his mood lighten. I move forward, out from under his arm, and run my fingers over the top of the tree.
“Of course I do, darling,” he says, affecting a British accent. “But in the end there’s only you.”
“Of course,” I say.
“Of course,” he says.
I can’t think of a joke to make. Against the tiny leaves, my fingers are clumsy as logs. When I look at him next he’s not smiling anymore, and I know he’s thinking about his sister. His sister. When I’m with him I find it difficult to think of her by name. Allison. He’s thinking of Allison. He keeps his eyes on the tree while his hand finds a pair of tiny scissors on the counter, and then he snips off a miniature branch. “I have to keep them pruned,” he says before he moves on down the row of trees.
I follow, watching him roll the branch between his fingers. “Can I have that?” I ask.
He looks surprised. “What for?”
“Because it’s so small,” I say. I think he’ll take this as a reason; he can file it under the category of “girl.”
He hand
s it to me. I drop it in my bag. “Maybe I should go,” I say.
Chewing on his lower lip, Peter says nothing, and I wonder if he heard me. “Maybe I should go,” I say again.
“You haven’t asked me anything,” Peter says. “About Allison.”
“Another time,” I say, taking a step backward.
He watches my face, considering something. Then he says, “Do you want to see her old bedroom?”
Yes. Of course I do.
• • •
Upstairs in her bedroom the shades are drawn and half-dead plants are clustered on the windowsills. I don’t know if I’m imagining the smell of some musky perfume. It must be her mother’s scent, because it seems impossible that hers could linger so long. In the center of the room, I turn around and around. Peter watches me from the doorway. “She just moved out a year ago,” he says. “I come in here sometimes, and it’s almost like she’s just left the room.”
I have a feeling that he expects me to put on her clothes, curl up on her bed, go to sleep, maybe, with her pillow beneath my cheek. The thought doesn’t frighten me as much as it should. I want to know her, the dead girl. I could learn so much about what happened to her, if just for a moment I could slip inside her skin.
I remind myself that this wasn’t the room she lived in anymore, and that that explains the little-girl furniture—wood painted white, with tiny yellow and pink flowers—and the framed cross-stitchings on the walls. One is a sloppy picture of a house with a fence and purple flowers around it. “Bless This House” it says across the top in red, and at the bottom her initials “AMA” and the date. On the desk is another list of “things to do.” Pay credit card bill. Write Aunt Lucy. Make doctor’s appt. B-day present for Pete.
“When’s your birthday?” I ask, and from behind me he says, “Valentine’s Day.” I turn, and he’s standing close enough to kiss. Here in his dead sister’s bedroom, he leans toward me like he’s going to press his lips to mine. I start to step back, but all he does is hug me, bending down so that his head rests on my shoulder. “I miss her so much,” he says, and we stand like this, my hands resting gently on his back. More than anyone I’ve met, this boy clouds my mind, leaves me hovering between the professional and the personal, sympathy and desire. I think, I’m holding him like this so he’ll tell me what I want to know. But he’s right—I haven’t asked him anything since I walked in the door. “Just come in the room. Just fucking come in the room,” he whispers, and I know he’s not talking to me.
