by Jess Lourey
“Joan! You stopped by.”
Her pleasure seems so genuine that I don’t question it and instead follow her inside. Her apartment is small, a studio with her living room, kitchen, and bedroom combined, and the only doors lead to a bathroom and closet. It’s cluttered, and I feel safer here than I have anywhere else in Lilydale, including my own home.
“It’s a nice place,” I say, watching her toss her purse onto a pile of clothes on the floor before setting her grocery bag on the counter.
“It’s a shithole,” she says. She pulls out eggs, milk, bread, and butter. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Do you have cola?”
She tugs her fridge open, biting her bottom lip in concentration, her hair braided in a single plait down her back. She’s wearing a peasant blouse and a miniskirt so short that I get a peek of her red underpants when she bends over. Her outfit is cute, and young, and makes me realize I’m dressing like an old maid, that I’ve been sliding down that path since moving to Lilydale, growing big and slow and domestic.
“Questionable orange juice, water, or whiskey. That’s what I can offer you.”
“Water will be fine.”
“Suit yourself,” she says, closing the fridge and pointing to the cabinet to the right of it. “Cups in there, water in the tap.”
I open the cupboard. It houses four jelly jars and a chipped mug. I grab a jar, run the tap until it’s cool, and fill it. “How long have you lived here?”
“What’s the date?”
“May 27.”
“Six months, then. Can you believe I showed up here in winter and still decided to stay? How long are you planning on being a Lilydale resident?”
“I’m working here now. At the newspaper.”
“I know. I read your article on the music pageant. It was good.” Once the groceries are away, she yanks open the cupboard, pulls out another jelly jar, and splashes a shot of whiskey into it. She shoves clothes off a chair and indicates I should do the same.
She laughs when I move them to the bed.
“They’re dirty,” she says. “Might as well be on the floor.”
“Is there a laundromat in town?”
“Yes. Since I’m down to one clean pair of panties, I’ll have to visit it soon.” She drinks her whiskey. “You drove here. I saw you pull in. Don’t you live over on Mill Street?”
“I do.” I force myself to relax. “I was in Saint Cloud working on the Paulie Aandeg article. You met him yet?”
Now I have her interest. “He’s been to the bar every night this week.” She drapes the back of her hand across her forehead, miming a woman fainting. “I do declare, he is one dreamy hunk of love.”
My cheeks pink against my will.
She crows with laughter. “It’s no crime to have eyes, lady.”
I reach for her whiskey and take a sip. “It’s not just eyes. My loins saw him, too.”
She’s still chuckling as she pours me my own glass of whiskey. “Had an aunt that got pregnant when she was forty-eight. Can you believe that shitty luck? Anyhow, she swore the pregnancy made her hornier than a sailor on shore leave. The baby’s daddy wasn’t around to help her out in that regard, either. It got harder and harder for her to pick up men as her belly grew.”
I grimace.
“I’m not saying that’s you,” she says, furrowing her brow. “You’ve got a man at home. I’m only telling you that it’s normal to have extra-strong urges when you’re pregnant.”
“I went to see the sheriff who handled Paulie’s case back in 1944,” I say, changing the subject.
“How old’s he?”
“Seventies.” I refrain from saying he’s a black man. I get the idea Regina wouldn’t care. Or maybe I don’t want to seem like I do. “He said Kris could be Paulie. He’s going to look into it.”
Regina polishes off her whiskey and reaches for more. “It must be exciting, being a reporter. You said you did that when you lived in Minneapolis. Did you cover your own mugging?”
She’s smiling, has no idea she echoed the same crazy thought I had while the man in a porkpie hat held a knife to my throat, and just like that, the whole story tumbles out. Not only the mugging, or the fact that I’d won Slow Henry out of it, but that I’d imagined I’d seen the mugger here, two different times, and the second time he’d looked dead as a doornail on the road.
“It’s silly, isn’t it?” I ask when I finish, positive that Regina is going to judge me as harshly as Ursula did, desperate for her not to. I need someone else to believe my stories, crave it.
Regina shakes her head. “It’s not silly; it’s this town. It was either a guy who looks like him, or it was him. Stranger things have happened.” She reaches across the Formica table and pokes my stomach right where it’s bulging. “You have to trust your gut.”
I want to weep with relief. “I haven’t told anyone about thinking I saw the mugger here. Not even Deck, or my best friend in Minneapolis.”
She paints an X over her heart. “Your secret dies with me.”
“You think I should go to the police?”
“You positive he was the one who got hit by the car?”
“That’s just it. I don’t know that anyone got hit by a car. I know a vehicle went off the road downtown and that a man who looked like the mugger was on the ground immediately after. Did you hear any buzz about it at the bar?”
She glances toward the ceiling, like she’s sorting through memories. “Not that I recall. But I tell you what. If it was me, I wouldn’t go to the police. First of all, I avoid them on principle. Had some run-ins. Second, it sounds like the situation sorted itself out one way or another. I think the real problem is that you don’t feel comfortable talking to your old man about it.”
I notice for the first time that she’s wearing a necklace, a tiny tooth-colored pearl on a gold chain, very much like the one I stole for my mom. I smile and take another tiny sip of the amber whiskey, its warmth rolling down my throat and unhitching my bones. “It’s not Deck I don’t trust,” I finally say. “It’s Lilydale, like you said. It makes me jumpy. I’ve never lived in a small town before. I always feel like I’m being watched.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” Regina says. “Welcome to the fishbowl.”
It could be the whiskey, or the fact that she isn’t treating me like I’m mad, but I suddenly want to tell her everything about the Fathers and Mothers. I haven’t been sworn to secrecy, but I sense they wouldn’t want me to share.
To hell with them.
“You know that Johann Lily who founded the town? Well, he started a group, too. They’re called the Fathers and Mothers. Can you believe that? And they want me to join!”
I hoot, and Regina laughs along, exactly like I wanted Ursula to do. I’m beaming.
“Would you like more whiskey, Mother?” she asks.
Impossibly, my laughter doubles. “Yes, please, Mother. But we mustn’t tell Father.”
She can’t breathe, she’s laughing so hard.
“I think I am going to ball Kris,” she says.
I hold up my glass in a toast. “Go with God.”
She clinks her jelly jar to mine. “Not like there are a lot of men to choose from, with them all off at war. Why isn’t Deck?”
“War’s for uneducated men,” I say, before I realize I’m mirroring Deck’s own words, something he said to me back in Minneapolis.
Regina stiffens.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Her face seals like an envelope. “And waitressing is for uneducated women, I suppose?”
I grab her hand. “Please, Regina. My mom was a waitress, and she’s the best woman I’ve ever known. It was a stupid thing to say. I’m a jackass. Forgive me?”
A slow smile blows across her mouth. “Your Mother forgives you, child.”
And we start belly-laughing again. I’m desperate to stay connected to her, to remain in this easy, amber-colored girlfriend space.
“You have a scissors?
” I ask.
She glances around the kitchen. “Somewhere. You wanna sew?”
“I want you to cut my hair.”
Her eyes go wide. “What?”
“Yep. Cut it all off. I’m turning into an old lady, Regina, fast-track dying right in front of your eyes.” I tug out my headband and bobby pins, shaking out my shoulder-length hair. I’ve used so much hairspray that it barely moves, even without anything holding it in place. “Save a gal, would ya?”
She grins and stands, rustling through the drawers. “You’re lucky I used to cut my boyfriend’s mop all the time. I hope you’re okay with a flip.”
“I was thinking more of a pixie.” When I close my eyes, I see Mia Farrow on the cover of Vogue. “Could you do that?”
She spins, holding a pair of scissors in hand. “I can try.”
CHAPTER 34
She does a marvelous job.
I help her clean up bundles of my hair.
She doesn’t blink when I ask if I can use some mouthwash to rinse away the perfume of whiskey. I touch myself up in her mirror—I look so different, so young, my eyes wide and innocent when framed by the pixie cut—and walk back to my car. My plan is to drive it home so it’s there if Deck needs it and then walk to the newspaper offices.
Now that I’ve talked to Grover, I want back in those archives. Meeting with the retired sheriff made me realize how lax I’ve been in researching the article, how complacent Lilydale has made me, either deliberately or because it’s the nature of a small town.
When I reach home, Slow Henry is the first to greet me.
Deck is the second.
He goes white when he sees me.
I feel the hot itch of guilt, and I don’t like it. “You’re home early!” I say with false cheer.
“Look at your hair,” he says, still pale. He swallows, seems to collect himself. “I love it.”
I touch it self-consciously, all the buoyancy I felt with Regina draining away. Should I have consulted him? “Thanks. It was a spur of the moment decision.”
He nods. “How was Saint Cloud?”
“Good.” I scramble to remember what I told him I was doing today.
“You liked the shopping?” he asks.
I try to hold the mask on my face. That’s right, I said I was going to the mall. “It was wonderful! I didn’t stumble across anything I needed to have, though. Maybe that’s why I got the haircut. So I didn’t drive all that way for nothing.”
I go to him. I want to be in his arms if for no other reason than that he can’t see my face.
He doesn’t return my embrace, but I nuzzle in.
He finally wraps his arms around me.
“I adore you,” he says.
The emotion in his voice catches me off guard. He squeezes me tighter. “And this baby,” he says. “I’m going to love it more than I’ve ever loved anything.”
My eyes grow warm with tears.
“Hey, you know what we should do?” he says. “We should buy a crib. There’s a store over in Cold Spring that’s supposed to have quite a collection. I can sneak out of work over lunch tomorrow and take you shopping. Would you like that?”
“I’d love it, Deck.” In the safety of his arms, I speak the closest truth that I have, hoping to bridge the distance that’s grown between us since we’ve moved. “I haven’t been feeling like myself, you know that, right? I’m so jumpy, worried all the time.”
“You’ve been through a lot this year, Joanie.”
“I know, but—”
“We’re having people over for dinner tomorrow,” he says, talking right over me. “It’ll be a big party. Everyone on Mill Street plus some others, so all the important Mothers and Fathers.”
I stiffen and extract myself from his arms. “And I suppose I’ll be cooking?”
He reaches out to touch my cheek, but I pull back.
“Honey, don’t be like this,” he says. “The other women will lend a hand if you want. You just have to reach out. It wouldn’t kill you to ask for help every now and again.”
They’re not going to like my hair. “Do I get a say in who’s coming to my house?”
“If you’ll only listen, you’ll understand this is really for you. The Fathers and Mothers want you to invite Kris so they all can meet him, and you can spend some more time with him. Won’t that help your article?”
“I don’t need help.”
“See? That is exactly what I’m saying. You won’t accept assistance from anybody.”
I feel trapped. “I want to invite Regina.”
Deck reaches down to pet Slow Henry, who’s braiding himself between his legs. “Who?”
“She works at Little John’s.”
Deck straightens. “She won’t fit in.”
“Neither do I.”
Deck doesn’t leave my side all night, even following me to bed when I finally tell him I’m tired. Old me might say he’s a doting boyfriend. New me wonders if I’m being babysat. Anyone but Regina would call that foolish, tell me that the pregnancy has tipped me off-kilter. But it hasn’t. I’m feeling fuzzy headed, more tired than usual, but that’s a natural part of carrying a child. Having a whole town watch me? My husband keeping me on a short leash, even though he calls it our “romantic night in”?
That’s crazy.
For all my exhaustion, though, once I crawl into bed, sleep eludes me. My nightgown twists around my stretched belly. The room is hot. A mosquito buzzes near my head. Deck snores with a rhythm that is so consistent I want to smother him with a pillow.
When I can’t take it anymore, I trundle out of bed as smoothly as my ever more cumbersome body will allow. I recognize my belly is hitting more things. That I can’t stand as quickly. As much as I’m excited for this baby, the vulnerability scares me. I pad downstairs and into the kitchen. Underneath the sink, tucked in a bucket hidden beneath clean rags, I locate the pack of cigarettes.
Dr. Krause said I can have four a day.
I step into the backyard, moonlight settling like silk across my shoulders. The temperature is ten degrees cooler out here. I shove sweaty hair off my face and go to one of the Adirondack chairs.
It must be two in the morning.
Nighttime’s cloak is the closest thing I have to privacy in Lilydale.
I sink into the chair, feeling drowsier already. Maybe I could sleep outdoors tonight? I bring a cigarette to my mouth and light it. The smell instantly drops Ursula into my consciousness.
Joanie, she’s saying softly, you have to stop making up your stories. You spin everything better or worse than it is. You know what happened to Libby that night. After the party.
The orange ember at the end of my cigarette starts fluttering like a trapped insect. I bring it to my face but can’t find my mouth for the shaking.
You know what happened to Libby that night.
I begin to sweat with the effort of holding the snapshot image from Halloween: Libby, Ursula, and me, laughing, in our costumes at the end of the night.
That’s what happened! Laughter. Friendship.
But the cigarette smoke isn’t letting me hide, not when it smells like Ursula, not when it drifts like poison fog across the anxiety I’ve been swimming in, not when I can no longer keep all my stories straight.
Libby was a vivacious redhead with a laugh that lit up a room, and she reminded me of my mom the second I met her, though I don’t suppose it mattered as much then, when Mom was alive. The three of us—Ursula, Libby, and me—had been assigned to the same dorm floor, and we’d immediately grown as tight as a book, with Ursula the ink, me the paper, and Libby the glue.
That had been something for me.
My first real friends.
So many good memories. Ursula setting off the fire alarms in the dorms while teaching me and Libby to blow smoke rings in the bathroom. The three of us catching the Beatles at Metropolitan Stadium. Eating my first Chinese food with Ursula and Libby, gobbling down chow mein that was all salt and sweet and tender s
trips of pork. Smoking grass with them, stumbling home after parties with them, sharing my dreams and fears.
Laughing in that Halloween photo.
You know what happened to Libby that night.
I do, know even more than Ursula.
Ursula went home with her boyfriend after the Halloween party, which is probably why Libby sought me out, crying, resembling my mom more than ever. I’d tried my best to listen. She wanted to meet with the abortionist Ursula recommended, but she was Catholic, and terrified she’d go to hell, and what did I think?
I thought it would all look better in the morning.
That’s what I told her.
She killed herself that night. I found her body the next morning.
Joanie, you have to stop making up your stories. You spin everything better or worse than it is. You know what happened to Libby that night. After the party.
Suddenly, I can’t sit in this Adirondack chair another moment. I’m busting out of my own skin, too awful, too fragile to go on. It’s my fault Libby died. I didn’t say the right thing, wasn’t a good friend. I jump up and stab out my cigarette and walk the butt to the trash can. I slip the lighter into the pocket of my dressing gown. I tread across the wet grass, toward Dorothy and Stan’s home, the night’s dew gluing grass clippings to my feet.
If I don’t do something to calm myself, something I know I shouldn’t, I’m going to lose my mind.
I slink to the rear of the house, where I guess the kitchen to be.
I approach the door.
Unlocked.
I slip into Stan and Dorothy’s kitchen, my pulse thudding, the sharp yellow light of the moon revealing a floor plan identical to my own house. Which means—if the upstairs truly is no longer in use because of Stan and his wheelchair—there is only one main-floor room that can be used as the bedroom.
The slashes of moonlight I walk through brush against my skin like cobwebs, warning me back. It’s dangerous, what I’m doing, insane, and I can’t stop myself. I need Dorothy’s white enamel locket.
I need it.
I pad through the dining room, put my hand on the cool doorknob of what I believe is their bedroom. Every hair on my body has become a nerve, a feeler, a shivering caution.
