Body of a Girl

by Leah Stewart

  He looks astonished. “But I want to,” he says, and shuts the door behind us. The air inside the house is hot and close, and it’s dark where we’re standing. I follow Mrs. Gillespie into the kitchen and set the bag on the counter. She is putting her groceries away, milk and eggs in the ancient refrigerator, canned corn on the shelf on the wall. “Mrs. Gillespie,” I say. “I’m so sorry to trouble you at a time like this. I wondered if I could talk to you for just a few minutes, about what your family is going through. About what they’re doing to your boy.”

  “Jared’s a good boy,” she bursts out. She takes a paper towel and wipes her forehead. “They’ve got him locked up.”

  “I know,” I say, moving in closer to lay a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I know how hard it is to see your boy locked up in that tiny cell. I’m sorry this has happened to you. You seem like a good woman.”

  She stares at me. “Who did you say you were?”

  “Olivia Dale,” I say. “From the newspaper. I won’t take but a few minutes of your time. I want you to tell your side of the story.” I squeeze her fleshy shoulder. “Jared’s side.”

  “All right,” she says, nodding. She waves her hand in the direction of the living room. “You just go ahead and sit down. I want to freshen up.” She pulls her sticky tank top away from her breasts. “I won’t be but a minute.”

  In the living room, Mike leans against the wall, hands in his pockets, talking to the girl. She sits with her feet up under her on the couch, absently petting the tabby cat. Mike turns his head when I walk in. “Teresa and I went to junior high together,” he says. “She was a year behind me.”

  “I had to drop out in the ninth grade,” Teresa says, her voice high and heavily accented. She’s talking to Mike, but her eyes are fixed on me. “I got pregnant. I stayed until I couldn’t fit inside the desks no more, then I had to drop out. I was fixing to graduate, too.”

  “How old is your daughter?” I ask.

  “Almost four,” Teresa says. “Her name’s Annabelle.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” I say, easing down onto the couch. I touch the cat’s tail, and it twitches away. I snap my fingers and hold my hand out, and the cat leans in to sniff me, then rubs its face against my hand and begins to purr.

  “She likes you,” Teresa says. “She’s Jared’s cat. She’s been lonely without him. Haven’t you, kitty?” she says to the cat. “Haven’t you?”

  “Jared’s your boyfriend?” I guess.

  “He’s my fiancé,” she says. “We’ve been engaged two years.” She shows me her ring, a tiny gold band with a diamond—or imitation diamond—so small it’s hardly even there. “It’s real,” she says, as though she knows I’ve been wondering, and then she strokes it with the tip of her finger. “We’re supposed to get married in September,” she says, her voice breaking. She lifts her head, gulping for air, and then she stares at me angrily while tears roll down her cheeks.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say. I reach out, slowly, and lay my hand on the back of hers where it rests on the couch. She stiffens. I keep my hand pressed on hers, and after a moment she relaxes. “Mike,” I say, “can you find Teresa a tissue?”

  “In the bathroom,” she says, pointing. When Mike is gone, I say, “How can they think Jared did this awful thing?”

  She shrugs, wiping at her face with her free hand. “I guess it’s because he was gone those days.”

  “He was gone?” I say, trying to keep my hand relaxed on hers.

  “Yeah,” she says. “He wasn’t at work, and couldn’t nobody find him.” Mike comes back in, holding a wad of toilet paper. She thanks him, and slides her hand out from under mine to blow her nose.

  “You didn’t know where he was?”

  She shakes her head, dabbing the tissue carefully beneath her eyes. “He left for work Friday morning like always, but then I guess he never got there, ’cause his boss called here to see where he was. He didn’t come back until Saturday night.”

  “Why would he disappear like that?”

  She shrugs again. “Sometimes he does,” she says. “When he’s been drinking and whatnot.”

  “Whatnot?”

  “Well, you know,” she says, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Sometimes . . .” Mrs. Gillespie’s heavy footsteps sound in the hall, and Teresa shuts her mouth and sits up straight. She blows her nose again, then raises her eyes to Mrs. Gillespie’s face. They stare at each other for a moment, and I wonder what there is between them. Then Mrs. Gillespie nods, once, as though she’s decided something, and sits down in the tattered plaid armchair next to the couch. She has changed into a flowered dress with a wide neck and a short skirt that strains over her knees. No one speaks.

  I lean forward, my elbows on my knees, and turn my head so I can look into the woman’s downturned face. “Mrs. Gillespie,” I say softly. “I’d like you to tell me about your son. I’d like to know what kind of person he is.”

  Mrs. Gillespie starts talking, telling me stories about Jared as a little boy, about the troubles that started when he was eleven. I don’t even have my notebook out. I’m just nodding as she talks, and when she pauses, I say, “How awful,” or “And then what?” or “I understand.” I glance at Mike and see that he’s closed his eyes, slumped back against the wall. Teresa stares out the window, petting the cat robotically until it gets up, shakes itself and jumps down from the couch. We all start when we hear a car motor, the crunch of tires on gravel.

  “Are you expecting someone?” I say, standing, and Mrs. Gillespie shakes her head. I go to the door and open it a crack. Outside, Teresa’s little girl, Annabelle, is standing, her feet apart, her hands clenched at her sides, watching a van with Channel 5 emblazoned across its side pull up. The van comes to a stop, and as the door opens and a high-heeled shoe appears at the bottom, Annabelle pulls her hands back and lets fly with a rock that thuds against the windshield. I hear a high-pitched “Oh!” and see the man behind the wheel instinctively duck his head. I open the front door all the way as Mrs. Gillespie and Teresa come to stand on either side of me. The van’s back door opens and a young man in jeans and a baseball cap steps out. “It’s Joe,” Teresa says.

  “Who’s Joe?”

  “He works at the diner,” she says.

  “Mrs. Gillespie?” Joe calls. “I’ve brought the TV reporters to talk to you.”

  Annabelle lets fly with another rock. Joe jumps to the side, and says, “Now, now, Annabelle.” She says nothing, just bends and picks up another rock. Then Lydia McKenzie steps out, smiling, her hands up and palms out like she wants to show she’s unarmed. Her camera man is right behind her. “Mrs. Gillespie,” she calls. “I’m Lydia McKenzie from Channel Five.” She takes a step toward us. Annabelle’s next rock strikes her foot. Lydia squeals and bends to rub her foot. Annabelle takes aim at the camera and comes within inches of hitting it. The camera man hustles his expensive equipment back into the van while Lydia hops out of the way of another flying rock. “Damnit,” Lydia splutters. Then I hear a strange sound and look around to identify its source. It’s Mrs. Gillespie. She’s laughing, her face turning red, making a sound that’s closer to choking. Teresa lets loose with a high-pitched giggle as Annabelle throws a shower of gravel in the direction of the van.

  I stand at the door, waving good-bye, as Lydia McKenzie drives away. Annabelle keeps throwing rocks, watching them thud with a puff of dust into the place where the van used to be. Mrs. Gillespie touches my arm. “Come back inside,” she says. “Can I get you some iced tea?”

  The truth is, Mrs. Gillespie knows her son carries a darkness inside him. She knows he is sullen, and violent, and careless, that he can’t hold down a job and doesn’t always seem sober. With a hopeless look in her eyes, she keeps insisting that he’s a good boy. It’s too late to stop loving him now.

  I ask her about the underwear found in his room and she says that they’re probably Teresa’s. I ask about the credit card and she says the real murderer left the wallet where Jared and his fri
ends found it, that’s all. I ask her about the DNA testing, and she draws herself up, and says, her voice shaking, that she knows it will prove her boy’s not guilty. What I would really like to ask her is what it’s like to love a monster. What is it like, Mrs. Gillespie, to carry a killer in your womb?

  When we say good-bye at the door, she presses my hand and tells me she’s praying for the poor girl’s family. “I don’t know what I’d do if something like that happened to my Jared,” she says. “I hope they catch the real killers. I’m praying that they do.”

  • • •

  By the time I reach the afternoon press conference I’ve already learned more about Jared Gillespie than the police are going to tell us. I’ve learned, for instance, that since turning eighteen he’s been picked up twice for drug possession. I take notes while the captain announces what I already know, that there’s been an arrest, that the evidence is good. Flipping through my notebook I see Teresa’s phrase “drinking and whatnot,” and I can’t stop thinking about that moment, the secretive look on her sharp face, the way she shut her mouth when Mrs. Gillespie came back in the room. I raise my hand and ask the captain about Jared’s record. “Was it heroin?” I ask. “Was he dealing?”

  The captain says it was heroin, but as far as he knows that has no relevance to this case.

  This story will run front-page lead. THREE TEENAGERS ARRESTED IN BRUTAL RAPE, MURDER. Back at the newsroom I type their names into my computer and stare at them, the ordinary names of these young boys. Robby Shavers, 16. Cody Parker, 17. Jared Gillespie, 19. The last people to see her breathing, the boys who took her life.

  At the end of the day I go down to watch the presses roll. I lean my forehead against the glass and watch those pages fly by. When I leave here, I’m going to go find Nate and ask him if he knows Jared Gillespie. It’s my last possible answer to the question of why. When I close my eyes, I don’t see the white pages or the neat type of my story. I see the needle in Nate’s hand.

  By now Allison’s family has gotten the news about Jared Gillespie and his friends. I imagine her mother talking calmly about the death penalty while Peter slams his fist into the wall, picturing their faces. I wonder if he’s thought of me at all today, if he knows I’m the one who wrote the story. What would he have thought if he could have seen me sitting in Jared Gillespie’s living room, holding his mother’s hand?

  • • •

  I knock sharply on Nate’s door. From the other side of the door I can hear music, but Nate doesn’t appear. I lean in close and shout, “Nate, it’s Olivia. Peter’s friend,” and then I hear him shout, “Come in.”

  Nate is sprawled out on his tiny couch. Again he’s wearing nothing but a pair of gym shorts, his skin so pale it’s almost translucent. “Hey,” he hails me. “What’s goin’ on?”

  “I wanted to ask you something.” I stand over him.

  “Shoot,” he says genially.

  “Do you know a guy named Jared Gillespie?”

  He frowns. “The one who . . .” He lowers his voice, glancing behind him. I follow his gaze. There’s no one there. “The one who killed Allison?”

  “You know about it?”

  He points with his chin in the direction of the kitchen. “Pete’s here,” he says as Peter emerges through the door. He stares at me like he’s never seen me before, then moves slowly to the armchair and sits down, looking at the floor.

  “ ’Scuse me a moment,” Nate says, slipping off to the bathroom.

  I go to Peter and graze the back of his neck with my fingers. “What are you doing here?” I say.

  He reaches up and grabs my hand. “What are you doing here? Looking for me?”

  “What did you do today?” I ask. “After you heard?”

  He is silent for a moment, playing with my fingers. Then he says, “For a while we sat around, my parents and me, and my mother talked about what will happen now, how there will be a trial and lots of media attention and how we need to stay calm and do everything we can to make sure these people get what they deserve. Then she and my father decided to go back to work. My mother said we have to keep doing what we do, and that she had patients to see.”

  “And you?”

  He sighs. “After they were gone, I got in my car and drove to Mississippi. I drove around that shitty little town where they came from. I felt like I wanted to burn the whole place down.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I found out where he lives, the one they think was the leader. I drove up and down past that house. It’s a dump.”

  “I know. I saw it.”

  “You talked to those people?”

  “I talked to his mother, his girlfriend,” I say. “That’s my job.”

  “I hate them,” he says, his voice catching. “I know they’re not the ones who killed her. But I hate them, all of them.” He squeezes my hand. “When I was sitting outside their house today, I kept wishing I could make it explode, so the whole thing, all that junk in the yard, would just disappear like it was never there. I knew he wasn’t there. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do. But I wanted to do something. So I backed up, and then I slammed on the gas and drove my car into his mailbox.” He laughs, a short, bitter laugh. “He killed my sister. I knocked down his mailbox.”

  “Did it make you feel any better?”

  He looks up at me and shakes his head. “Now there’s a big dent in my car,” he says, and two fat tears spill out of his eyes. He brushes at them impatiently. “I came here to get high,” he says abruptly.

  “You mean to shoot up,” I say.

  “Yes,” he says. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He looks at me like he’s waiting for a lecture, but I don’t give it.

  “Olivia,” he says, his voice choppy with desperation. He clutches at my hand. “Listen to me. It will make this all go away. Think about it. No pain, no anger.” He presses my hand against his mouth and puts a kiss in the center of my palm.

  No desire. No fear.

  Nate returns before I say anything. “The thing is,” he says, “I don’t have any.”

  “Can you get some?” Peter says. “I’ve got money.”

  Nate stands up, reaching for a T-shirt crumpled in the corner of the couch. “In that case,” he drawls, “I’ll see what I can do.” He pulls on his shirt, heading for the phone on the floor in the corner. I kiss Peter on the temple and slide my hand from his. Then I get up and go to the bathroom. It looks as though it hasn’t been cleaned in months. Instead of a bath mat Nate has a crumpled towel on the floor. The bottom of the white shower curtain is stained with mildew, and some of the holes at the top have ripped, so that the curtain sags, barely holding on. The toilet seat is up and the rim of the bowl is stained yellow. With a piece of toilet paper in my hands I gingerly push it down. It lands with a clatter, and I think how ridiculous it is that I won’t touch his toilet seat, but I’m considering letting him put a needle in my vein.

  At the sink I wash my hands twice and splash my face with cold water. I look at myself in the mirror, letting the water drip off my face. I feel as though I should have put that pink wig on, painted my lips a deep red.

  When I go back in the living room, Peter has sunk even lower into the chair, staring at the ceiling with a look that suggests he’s trying not to cry. One of his legs is jiggling, the way David’s does when he’s itching for a cigarette. Nate is still on the phone. He has his back to me, and he’s rising up and down on the balls of his feet. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he is saying. “Tell me where?” He turns from side to side, looking lost. “Got a pen?” he says to me.

  From my bag I take a notebook and pen and hand them to him. He flips to a blank page and writes something. “Take a left there?” he says, then writes something else. It’s the most prosaic of conversations. “See you in half an hour,” he says, and hangs up the phone. He rips out the page, folds it up and slides it in his pocket. “You ready?” he asks us, handing me the notebook and pen.

  “Should we get some needles?�
�� I don’t know what the proper etiquette is, so I just ask him. “Do you have clean ones?”

  “Brand-new,” he says. He frowns. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Just checking.” I slip the notebook back in my bag.

  “I’ve just got to find my shoes,” Nate says, looking around. I follow, two feet behind him, as he hurries into the bedroom. I stand in the doorway and watch him crouch to peer under his unmade bed. His T-shirt rises, and I stare at his narrow lower back. I’m starting to feel a strange tenderness toward him, he is so thin and pale. At what moment did this become his life? I wonder if it was the first time he took a hit, or even earlier, the first time he skipped chemistry class, the first time he picked up a guitar he’ll never really be able to play. “Shit,” he says, straightening up. He comes out of the room so fast he almost collides with me in the doorway.

  I watch him roam around the room, lifting newspapers and clothes and finding no shoes. He’s chewing on his lip, and he stops and puts his hands on his hips. “Did you look under the couch?” I say. My voice booms out across the room. Nate drops to his hands and knees and peers under the couch. He gives a cry of triumph and stands up with a pair of old sneakers in his hand.

  It takes him a long time to put the shoes on. I’d like to go over there and tie them myself. I just stand there, trying not to think.